#i like. hate most of this run but and it was not worth wading through like 50 issues of bullshit for this but still | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hishighnesstheprincess · 13 days

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"But Prin if you hate the Sonic movies so much why don't you just write a better version of them-" ok I will.

Here are the rules. I have 3 movies and a Knuckles TV show, same characters with no major additions or subtractions, no massive character change in backstory or personality, no lore changes or massive lore additions, may as well throw the Prequill Comic and drone home in there too for good measure, no throwing in major headcanons I have just to make things flow better, working within the limitations the movies have (aka I can't just shove them into mobius for a bit bc that would be hell on the budget), and no making movie 3 just a carbon copy of sa2.

My main goal with this is going to be sticking to the rough structure and themes of the movies (movie 1 being about Sonic not isolating himself and finding a friend in Tom + him ending up in the Wachowski's residence; Prequill Comic being a series of short stories setting up movie 2 without being crucial to understanding movie 2; movie 2 being about Team Sonic coming together, the Master Emerald stuff, Super Sonic, Sonic accepting Tom as a father figure; Drone Home being primarily comedic and showing Team Sonic being somewhat dysfunctional; Knuckles Show being about Knuckles finding a purpose on the earth and developing Wade's character; movie 3 is a lot more up in the air but I imagine it's going to be contrasting sonic and shadow as well as showing their similarities, everything to do with GUN and Shadow's backstory, the general sa2 conclusion of humanity being worth saving, and maybe Team Sonic learning to work together/Sonic learning to be a leader and them all being brothers) and to improve the overall characters, arcs, and world while still sticking to those structures and themes.

Movie 1.

Main characters are Sonic Tom and Eggman.

Roughly the same setup with Sonic accidentally leading the echidna tribe to Longclaw, Sonic being teleported to another planet (which the Knuckles show confirmed wasn't earth btw) and Longclaw and the echidna tribe wiping each other out. Only noticeable change in this section will be Longclaw saying Sonic needs to protect something and that he's the only one who can use it, getting cut off either by the arrow that hurts her or from the echidnas interrupting their conversation when the arrow knocks Longclaw out of the sky. This is here to establish the presence of the Master Emerald as something that Sonic knows vaguely about and his ability to use it to go Super instead of it being something that comes out of nowhere in Movie 2. Eagle-eyed viewers may at this point say this violates my rule about not changing any lore, because in flashbacks in the original version of movie 2 we see an echidna warrior using the Master Emerald, but just hold on a second, I'm gonna get to that in Movie 2 (and the Knuckles Show and Movie 3).

From there we will see Sonic going to the planets we see Xed out on the map he has in movie 2 and discovering the reasons for why they weren't habitable for whatever reason (toxic air, hostile native life, he just couldn't find enough food, etc.) until he winds up on Earth and decides to stay, not risking his luck any more, electing to just stay in a cave in the most peaceful (and boring) town he can find, this of course being Green Hills. Then we get him spying on the town, idolizing Tom (and to a lesser extent Maddie), messing with Carl. We also see Carl's growing paranoia and desperation to catch "The Blue Devil", but also the residents of Green Hills aren't blind in this version and notice weird stuff as well- massive, unexpected windstorms, paths through the forest like someone has been running through it, someone stealing from (insert big grocery and entertainment store here) without ever being caught or leaving a trace behind, stuff like that. Tom jokes that this is the most entertaining part of this town, but he still yearns for being a #bigboycop in the big city (San Francisco if I'm remembering correctly) where Rachel lives. There is also a sequence of Sonic appreciating nature on Earth, but gradually getting bored because of his self-imposed restriction to stay in Green Hills.

And so, things continue, until Sonic has his scheduled breakdown about how empty his life is, the military takes an interest in the town, and through a series of conveniences Tom finds Sonic in his shed and shoots him in the leg with the tranquilizer dart, and Sonic loses the teleporting rings. Things are much the same during Sonic initially persuading Tom, but we include the line "Why did you have bear tranquilizers in the first place?" and Tom looking guilty/doubtful of his actions before trying to defend himself, which a still slightly woozy Sonic just decides to roll with bc a) this is his first real interaction with his hero and b) he's painfully aware that he needs Tom's help right now and doesn't want to jeopardize that. They get out of the house the same way (I am absolutely including the joke about breastfeeding because that's the funniest moment in this entire fucking franchise and the best part of the movies so far imo) but when we get to when Tom kicks Sonic out of the car and tells him to find his own way to San Francisco is the first major change of the movie. Tom hands Sonic a map to San Francisco, and we see Sonic actually go there (because in all his time learning human culture and finding his way around the universe he absolutely learned how to read a map)... and then he goes back to Tom and says he doesn't know how to find San Francisco, and Tom takes pity on him and the road trip from H-E-double-hockey-sticks begins. There is a reason for this change, which I will get into later when I cover the characters arcs in this film.

Things on the road trip don't vary up until we get to the bar fight, and during this scene (which will not include a crappy Quicksilver sequence homage) Sonic is having fun right up until he sees that Tom is actually starting to get hurt, so he then zips around and disables everyone so Tom doesn't get any more hurt. Back in the car, Tom says something about wishing he had his gun, and Sonic excitedly asks if he would have shot "one of the bad guys", at which point Tom says that people don't deserve to get shot just for being in a fight and that he would have just told everyone to leave them alone before fleeing the bar with Sonic. Sonic pouts and says that's not as exciting, at which point Tom retorts "being a police officer isn't supposed to be-" before he cuts himself off, a bit of a contemplative expression on his face. He then deflects the conversation back onto Sonic, and they get onto Sonic's bucket list, full of childish stuff (maybe for emotional impact we could have seen Tom doing some of the items himself while just living his life in Green Hills earlier in the film) and obviously the "make a friend" item. Tom looks sad but doesn't say anything about it, and they go to bed.

The next day while on the road, Tom is visibly tired and still injured from the bar fight, and Sonic is feeling exceptionally guilty. Tom says he shouldn't feel bad because he ended the fight as soon as he could, and Sonic seems to be on the verge of confessing that he could have gone to San Francisco by himself, but Tom accidentally distracts him from that by telling him that he's moving to San Francisco which Sonic gets angry about. Just as they're really getting into it Eggman attacks the car. During the fight Tom yells something about "not signing up for multiple near-death experiences", and also Sonic has to take control of the car for a lot of it, during which time he navigates using a map, which Tom sees. The fight ends the same, but just as Tom is about to question Sonic on how he can read the map, they notice the bomb stuck to Tom which both of them freak out about, but Sonic freaks out considerably harder than Tom expected him to and starts emitting blue sparks similar to his initial breakdown in the baseball field (this is because of his Longclaw trauma, which the audience is made aware of when Sonic says something like "not again, I can't be responsible for something like this again" or something along those lines), and then Sonic gets the bomb on his glove, says something about how it's better he dies than someone else he cares about, and then gets blown up. There is one other change here: the bomb gets stuck to Sonic's shoe, and his leg is injured.

Tom is understandably fucking worried about Sonic's minor breakdown and how hurt he is, but quickly realizes Sonic is alive and gets him to Rachel's house. All the human interactions go basically the same, with added Tom and Maddie interaction where he says he's furious that Sonic obviously lied to him about not being able to read the map and has potentially ruined his life, and Maddie gently reminding him that Sonic's a kid who just almost sacrificed his life to make sure Tom wouldn't get hurt. When Sonic wakes up he and Tom have a fight about the Everything™, with Tom being understandably angry that Sonic lied to him and put him in danger and Sonic yelling about how Tom wants to have a more exciting life without valuing the peace he already has. It's at this point that he yells at Tom about his traumatic backstory and why he was in Green Hills for years in the first place, at which point Tom softens and says that he's sorry, but he isn't going to help Sonic anymore. However, there's a genuine problem at this point. Sonic's leg is injured so he really can't run fast enough to just go up the side of the building the rings are on, and after some needling from Maddie (+ Rachel begging them all to get the fuck out of her house for some comedic levity) Tom agrees to smuggle Sonic up the building.

At the top of the building, Sonic says goodbye to Tom and Maddie and genuinely apologizes to Tom, saying that he would try to make up for it but he's gonna have to go live on a mushroom planet now (btw there would be a scene earlier in the film where Sonic complains about how boring + dangerous the mushroom planet is) which leads to Tom experiencing a moment of doubt as to whether or not Sonic really has to leave. Of course, at that moment Eggman shows up, and Sonic, once again freaking out over the possibility of getting Tom and Maddie killed, gets them out of the fight in the same way he does in the original movie, and starts using his powers to run again, despite the fact that he's making his leg injury worse while doing so. Like the original film, Sonic ends up in Green Hill, and Tom gets in-between him and Eggman even when both Sonic and Eggman tell him to get out of the way. It's at this point that Eggman taunts Tom over his general inability to fight like the two of them can, and says that Tom will never amount to anything more than a busybody in a small town where no one will ever need him to save them, and Tom retorts that he's fine with just saving Sonic, who he then calls a friend. Queue the third-act friendship power up and Eggman's defeat.

After all that, Sonic collapses due to the strain on his leg and Tom and Maddie say he can stay with them "until he finds a new home", which Sonic agrees to. When the GUN Commander swings by, he offers Tom whatever he wants, and Tom says he's happy with just staying in Green Hills "with my family", at which point the GUN Commander says that he meant Tom could get whatever he wants at Olive Garden (yes I find those jokes funny, sue me). The film ends with Tom and Maddie showing Sonic to his new home in their house, but when Tom says something like "now you can stay safe in an actual house now" Sonic will mumble "stay..." and glance out the window, looking a mix of genuinely happy and unsure.

That's the entire plot of this movie, bar the Tails post-credits sequence (I would personally change that to having it just be Tails noticing the massive energy surge from Sonic's breakdown earlier in the film/his powerup later, but whatevs).

Now for the character arc explanation that I promised, the idea is that Tom's and Sonic's goals in this film are relatively morally pure but get twisted because of their conflicting desires. Tom wants to be a cop who does more "important" things but fails to consider how he's already helping people in Green Hills and how he probably should not want to have a more exciting lifestyle when police officers, should, ideally, prevent bad things from happening to people and not just hunt down bad people (with heavy air quotes around the idea of crime making someone a bad person obviously). Sonic has two conflicting desires, that being wanting to keep himself/others safe by isolating himself vs. his natural desire to explore and find fun things to do. Tom wants to fulfill his wishes just by going to San Francisco where there is more crime for him to solve, and Sonic tries to satisfy his wishes by lying to Tom just to have a few days of genuine fun before isolating himself further. Both of them realize that their goals and methods of achieving those goals are flawed, and Tom completes his arc by realizing he can protect Sonic as best he can. Sonic's arc is not complete yet, but he's finished the first stage of it by making a genuine friend and no longer isolating himself.

Some other notes: during the road trip Sonic is going to spend a lot of time looking out the window and marveling at the changing scenery. Despite it all, America is quite beautiful, and I think this should be used to establish that Sonic likes exploring and experiencing nature and seeing people interact.

I don't think my version of the film is perfect. Obviously Tom is still a cop at the end of the movie and that is broadly portrayed as a morally neutral thing, but I couldn't figure out a way to put in a dissection of the politics of being a police officer in America without massively derailing the plot, so the compromise was to show that cops definitely shouldn't aim to be the """"""heroes"""""" and should just be there to actually serve and protect. Additionally, Maddie still isn't much of a character in this, she's kind of just there to be Tom's nice wife who pokes him and Sonic in the right direction. There's also some confusion with Sonic's idolization of Tom and him wanting to have "exciting" adventures vs. his trauma over the first real act of violence he was a victim of in his life, Longclaw's death, but I digress. If there are many other major issues anyone noticed feel free to put them in the notes.

Prequill Comic.

5 stories, focusing on Sonic, Stone, Knuckles, Tails, and Eggman, in that order.

I will keep Sonic's story mostly unchanged, with the caveat that it's going to be obvious that he's going stir-crazy not just because he wants adventure, but also because he's getting bored just being in Green Hills, especially with only Tom, Maddie, and Ozzy for company. This will contribute to his arc in movie 2 of getting friends/brothers while still not having the problem of Sonic's love for exploration be solved fully in the second movie.

Stone's story is unchanged I genuinely love it so much. Maybe make it a bit clearer how genuinely gay he is for Eggman.

Knuckles story I will change up a bit. I'll establish just how long he's been looking for Sonic and make it so that he also doesn't know why Sonic was important to Longclaw.

For Tails, I'm gonna take the opportunity to world build a bit. Make it canon that every "Zone" in the games translates to a planet in this universe, and have it be that Sonic's energy signature is both unique and extremely powerful, even more so than whatever is trailing Tails in the comic (which is Knuckles, who canonically has similar powers to Sonic in that his quills can serve as energy sources for other things). Also, include a mention of Chaos Emeralds in the world that Tails' ring-teleports to that he says has leftover Chaos Energy in it. Nothing big, just a few casual mentions.

For Eggman, he's also gonna be basically just the same. Maybe a bit more about how Sonic's quill is unique as an energy source in that it has potentially infinite energy if harnessed right, which Eggman does not yet know how to do.

Movie 2.

Main characters are Sonic, Eggman, Tails, and Knuckles. I think Movie 2 is vastly better than Movie 1 so there won't be as many changes but there will still be some.

The opening sequence with Eggman accidentally summoning scavengers + Knuckles will be kept the same. Sonic's escapades in San Francisco and Tom confronting him about it are also mostly the same, but Sonic expresses a desire to get out of Green Hills, at which point Tom reminds him that GUN are probably looking for an excuse to hunt him down and that it's too dangerous. When Tom and Maddie leave for Hawaii, Sonic still throws a massive party, but he still looks incredibly bored (maybe he says something about throwing the same party for himself every time Maddie and Tom are away from the house for a significant period of time). When he turns the tv on instead of showing a funny lil Ben Schwartz meta joke reference thing, it's instead going to be a newscaster following a crime being actively committed in (insert big American city here) and Sonic appears visibly frustrated but decides to stay in Green Hill.

When Eggman arrives, he's going to make a jab about the Wachowskis having a pet hedgehog as well as a pet dog. The first confrontation will play out basically the exact same, but I'm adding a line where Knuckles says, "Don't lie to me, I know she must have had a reason for keeping you safe when she killed so many others!" I don't believe this counts as a massive lore change because Knuckles in movie 2 already has a line about his tribe dying at the hands of Longclaw, so it's not a stretch to imagine that they had fatal encounters before she took Sonic in. When Tails rescues Sonic, he doesn't introduce himself during the car chase and instead focuses on how cool it is to meet Sonic. This will be our first hint towards Tails' self-esteem issues. I will also be changing things slightly to have Sonic be the one to give Tails' nickname to him. When Tails drives the car off the cliff and lifts Sonic into the air to get away from Knuckles, that's going to be the first time Sonic calls him Tails, in a clearly approving way.

Btw the scenes with Tom and Maddie in Hawaii will be mostly unchanged aside from one bit. When Tom says he wishes Sonic had friends, Maddie will say, "He already has you," and Tom will respond with, "He has only me. It wouldn't be enough for a normal kid, and Sonic is.... he wants to get out there and see this world, but I don't know how to let him do that if he's going to put himself and others in danger. And then there's the government as well," at which point Maddie says he's worrying too much and that they haven't seen the government since the end of the first movie, which Tom reluctantly agrees to (this will lead into a conflict in movie 3). Also the Eggman, Stone, and Knuckles scenes will be mostly unchanged, but again I will be adding a bit where Eggman asks Knuckles about why he hates Sonic, at which point Knuckles will tell him about the beef between the echidna tribe and the owls, but portraying the owls as the villains and the echidna tribe as just trying to protect themselves and the Master Emerald, which Knuckles will describe as being part of his heritage or something to that affect. This will later contrast with the story of the war that Sonic will tell Tails, where echidna tribe were invading conquerors, and the owls were just trying to stop them (because I never understood in the movie why Tails is the one to explain the lore of the echidna tribe and the owls, when Sonic is the one who actually experienced at least some of it). This is because I think the original movie tragically misses out on the idea that neither Sonic nor Knuckles know what really happened with the echidnas and the owls (even if the lore of the series that we see in Tails' Prequill Comic section as well as what we see of the echidna tribe in the movie 1 intro and movie 2 when Knuckles is reminiscing about his dad do imply that the echidnas were the aggressors).

During the section in Siberia, I'm going to change it to be that Sonic and Tails need to get information about the exact location of the owl temple out of the locals (because I just do not buy that humans would be a threat to Tails let alone Sonic), which is where the misunderstanding via Tails' faulty translation device comes in. Somehow the natives become hostile to them, at which point they start calling Tails a freak, and he begins to freak out. Sonic notices and gets in front of him, defending him, at which point Tails gets enough confidence to try translating again, and the machine gets enough words right this time for the locals to point them in the direction of the mountain. When they're heading up the mountain, Sonic asks Tails about him freaking out back in the bar, at which point Tails tells Sonic his backstory of being bullied for his twin tails, making him an outcast even among Mobians. Sonic would be confused and say that his twin tails make him able to fly, which is cool, and generally reassure Tails that Sonic thinks he's awesome because of his differences. Tails would be happy that Sonic thinks he's cool, but still look somewhat unsure. At this point, Tom will also text Sonic asking if he's fine and not getting up to any trouble, and Sonic will lie and say he's still at their house (paralleling when Sonic lied in movie 1).

When they get to the owl temple, Sonic gives his side of the echidna-owl conflict, but Tails appears somewhat confused and says, "But that's not what.... never mind," but when Sonic presses him on it he says that's not what he was told in school, and what Tails was taught was that the echidna-owl tribe got into a war over who should have access to the Master Emerald and wiped each other out over it, with Longclaw being one of their most powerful warriors who just withdrew from the war suddenly, leading to the rest of the owl tribe being wiped out without her. I might be stretching my rule of "no massive lore changes" here but the movies themselves do not give us a lot to go off of when it comes to what actually happened because every single active player in that story is long dead by the time we get to actually talking about it. What Tails contributes to this conversation is telling Sonic about how the Master Emerald can give the "ultimate power" to whoever can use it, and the Chaos Emeralds that forged it. Sonic then connects this to Longclaw telling him in the first movie that he has to protect something and that he's the only one who can use it, but is still confused as to what she means because Tails told him that echidna warriors in the past have used it, so Sonic doesn't know wtf she meant when she said that only he can use it properly. When they use the map to get the compass, Knuckles and Eggman show up, and they have the same fight, with Tails ending up knocked out, Eggman getting the compass, and Sonic and Knuckles get into their confrontation on the snowy cliff, with Knuckles yelling, "Longclaw killed my people and my father" and Sonic yelling, "your tribe killed my mom" showing their differing perspectives on the echidna-owl conflict. When Tails gets knocked out and Sonic decides to protect him instead of going after the compass, Knuckles looks doubtful about leaving them both behind.

Queue awkward wedding scene (I personally cannot watch this scene but only because I get intense second-hand embarrassment from media, so I will be keeping it in at my own expense). Also queue the GUN reveal, and Tom, Sonic, and Tails getting captured. The main difference in this section is that Sonic and Tom will talk while captured, and Sonic will apologize for lying to Tom again, and Tom will say, "I'm sorry you felt like you had to lie to me." He'll also say he's proud of Sonic for prioritizing protecting Tails over anything else. Tails will also wake up, and he'll apologize to Sonic for messing up, saying he's useless, etc. Sonic will reassure him that Tails was helpful and that without him Sonic would have probably gotten himself killed, and Sonic will say that he still needs Tails to prevent Eggman and Knuckles from getting the Master Emerald. When Maddie frees them, Sonic and Tails go off by themselves (after filling Tom and Maddie in on everything that has happened to them) after stealing the wedding plane, and Tom and Maddie try to get GUN on their side. Btw Rachel and Randall's plot is gonna go the same, because apparently, they're both going to be in the third movie so I can't just have Rachel kick him in the balls and be done with him.

The temple will go the same, with Knuckles + Eggman and Sonic + Tails all trying to get to the center of the temple at the same time and arriving at the same time. At this point Sonic and Tails fight Knuckles, while Eggman spectates and starts slowly making his way to the Master Emerald. With Tails' help, Sonic gets close to actually beating Knuckles, before he notices Eggman grabbing the Master Emerald and yells at Knuckles to turn around. Eggman gets the Master Emerald, Knuckles realizes he's been betrayed, and after Eggman teleports away the temple falls apart, with Sonic and Knuckles getting trapped under the water. Sonic helps Knuckles get out of the water, and Tails persuades Knuckles to go back in to get Sonic to safety, after which Tails flies all three of them to the nearby island. From there Sonic and Knuckles have their talk on the beach, come to the mutual agreement that they don't have to continue the conflict of their ancestors (biological in Knuckles' case and foster in Sonic's case) and they all agree to work together to stop Eggman.

Final fight time! Eggman goes to Green Hills to pick up Stone and also destroy the home Sonic has made for himself with the Wachowskis, and Team Sonic (gonna use that from now on to refer to Sonic + Knuckles + Tails without typing out all of their names individually) teleport there using one of Tails' rings. The fight goes broadly the same, but at one point Eggman mentions that the power of the Master Emerald is getting harder to control, and Knuckles says that even the best echidna warriors couldn't use it for very long. Things during the fight go basically the same, with Knuckles and Tails knocking the Master Emerald out of Eggman and Sonic grabbing it on the ground and running away with it. Tom and Maddie save Sonic before their car gets blown off the road, and Eggman has them trapped and is about to kill them. Sonic gets his Super Sonic power up and defeats Eggman pretty easily, but afterwards Knuckles freaks out over Sonic using the Master Emerald as well and is surprised when Sonic gives up that power easily. Knuckles explains at that point that even the best echidna warriors could only use the power for a brief amount of time, and that anyone who used it for too long will eventually get overloaded by the power and die, or get corrupted somehow and start using it for evil (for clarification: it's not inherently evil just an extremely powerful source of energy and considering that it can literally grant wishes, even the slightest amount of bad intentions in its users can result in catastrophe, which is why the owls hid it instead of using it themselves). He asks Sonic how he was able to use it so well and give it up easily, and Sonic says he doesn't really know, but he didn't feel like it was hard to handle at all.

From there we get Sonic accepting Tom as his father figure, Team Sonic officially forming to protect the Master Emerald, and all that. When Knuckles reforms the Master Emerald, he says that it's lost a lot of its power so it shouldn't be capable of letting anyone go Super anymore, but that they should still keep it safe. At the end of the movie, Sonic will be happy about having new friends/brothers, but still feel somewhat dissatisfied with his life in Green Hills, even if GUN's interference at the wedding has made both Tom and Maddie want to keep the three Mobians in Green Hills for their own safety, which Sonic reluctantly accepts once again. Post-credits scene with Shadow will be unchanged.

A lot of the lore stuff I put in there is just gonna be used to explain why the Master Emerald is not a magical "solve everything" button that Team Sonic can use for any and all physical threats, as well as trying to make the echidna-owl conflict less one-sided by introducing questions like, "Why did Longclaw leave the war and take Sonic? Even if the echidnas were the initial aggressors in the conflict, was it right for them to be wiped out?" and just generally making it clear that it was a terrible thing that unfortunately got passed down to Knuckles and Sonic, which they eventually move on from after realizing they shouldn't be tied down by the mistakes their predecessors made.

I also changed things to give Tails more screentime, and developed his and Sonic's relationship a bit more, because I felt like in the original movie Tails was tragically overshadowed by Knuckles (who later got a TV show where he was overshadowed by his own human sidekick probably due to a lack of budget), and made it so that Tom and Maddie have an actual reason to want to keep Team Sonic exclusively in Green Hills for their safety, and also continuing the instances of Sonic lying to Tom. Those last two things are going to have a payoff in the third movie >:)

Drone Home.

Main characters are Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Unit.

Drone Home is mostly the same, but with extra emphasis on Knuckles going ahead regardless of what Sonic wants them to do as a Team, and Sonic's reliance on Tails' plans to get out of trouble after getting himself into it.

Knuckles TV Show.

Main characters are Knuckles and Wade.

Honestly, I think the Knuckles show could be vastly improved just by having more focus be on the titular character. I will be changing the overall theme of the show, just because I feel like the topic of finding a home and purpose in other people is already decently well covered in movie 1 and 2. Instead, I will be changing it into a bit of an exploration of Knuckles' character and how to find a purpose in life after already achieving what you thought would be the culmination of your life's work.

Basic setup will still be the same, Knuckles being extremely overprotective of the Master Emerald and hostile towards the people just trying to work on the house and getting grounded by Maddie as a result. That will all happen in episode 1, but when Pachamac shows up he tells Knuckles that he has to "continue the legacy of the tribe" and train another warrior. Pachamac will also say that legacy can only be protected with violence. Through comedic circumstances that are actually well-written this time, Knuckles comes to the conclusion that he must train Wade in becoming a warrior at bowling. The episode ends with him getting captured.

Episode 2 is broadly the same, but with the plot point that the two ex-GUN agents are using Knuckles' own quills to power the machine that is keeping him contained (because otherwise he could just break out easily using his power), but at the end of the episode when Wade is about to lose to the female ex-GUN agent (I cannot be bothered to remember their fucking names I'm sorry) the power of the quill fails, so Knuckles breaks out and saves Wade before fleeing the mansion. The ex-GUN agents were able to get a decent number of quills from Knuckles before his escape, so that's going to power their weapons for the rest of the series.

In episode 3, I'm removing the stuff about Wade's mom learning Krav Maga in the IOF and just keeping it strictly about Jewish religious practices. I'm also removing the joke where Wade's mom learns about Knuckles' tribe being wiped out and goes "oh so he's basically Jewish" because that just puts a bad taste in my mouth. This may not be my place as a gentile person, but equating Judaism with being genocided isn't a joke I'm comfortable with. This episode will still cover the Shabbat Dinner, because I think including Jewish representation is still important regardless of real-world events currently happening. I'll also be changing Wade's sister to make her less... actually abusive towards Wade, and while she'll still be just as obnoxious in my ideal version of this show the writing will be actually funny, so it won't be a problem. At the end of the episode, we get the fight where Knuckles and Wade's mom protect the candle, and at the end of it Wade's mom thanks Knuckles for protecting the candle and their Jewish heritage. Knuckles says that he should have finished off their attackers, and she says that protecting the candle is more important than anything else (is the symbolism and theme obvious enough yet). Also, at the end of the episode I'm just going to insert a scene of Sonic and Tails covering for Knuckles to Tom and Maddie.

Episode 4. I'm gonna have Wade's bounty hunter ex-friend capture both Wade and Knuckles, planning on handing both of them over to GUN/the government, and Knuckles tells Wade about all his adventures. I guess I should include the low-budget rock opera musical, we can have it be that Wade is hallucinating from getting electrocuted by the cage, so he imagines it as being the musical. Also, they can't just magically escape because Knuckles got electrocuted repeatedly so he just doesn't have the strength after that and also the massive amount of fighting he's done in the past few days. Wade asks why that is when Sonic never seems to run out of energy no matter how much he uses, and Knuckles says that Sonic is uniquely powerful among Mobians, even though they don't know why yet, or if there even is a proper reason why he has so much energy. Eventually Wade figures out a way to trick his ex-friend into getting close to the cage, at which point Wade grabs him and Knuckles knocks him out, and they escape the cage before heading to Reno.

Episodes 5 and 6 blur together in my head, but I'm gonna say that they're broadly the same except Knuckles helps Wade in the tournament (because in the beginning of the show they made a big deal out of it being a doubles tournament which is why Wade's ex-friend wanted to find someone better than Wade to partner up with but when they get there it's just a singles tournament and oh my god this show is so poorly written but I digress) and when they expect to go up against their second-to-last opponents (before facing Wade's dad) they instead find the ex-GUN agents. During their fight Knuckles throws a few bowling balls which end up scoring Wade and Knuckles enough points to move them on to the next round. When they defeat the ex-GUN agents Wade questions how they knew they were here, and then Knuckles and Wade realize that Wade's father sold them out to GUN. They move onto the bowling tournament final, where Wade's dad's bowling tournament partner turns out to be the guy giving the ex-GUN agents weapons. He and Knuckles fight while Wade and his dad do the bowling tournament stuff. After both of them win their respective fights, Wade comments that he should have maybe treasured the family he already had instead of disregarding them to look for his dad, and Knuckles realizes he doesn't have to be a warrior anymore, he just have to protect his family and his inheritance. They have the sitcom high-five, and Knuckles goes back home.... only to be greeted by a furious Maddie and Sonic and Tails sheepishly saying they failed to cover for him.

I don't think I did a very good job with this one aside from just making the plot more logical and trying to make the theme about protecting your inheritance being more important than attacking those who you think will hurt you. The stuff with Pachamac was kept deliberately vague because the movies might at some point make a loose adaptation of sa1, but I wanted Pachamac's characterization to be closer to his game counterpart and have it be more that Knuckles was misinterpreting his advice instead of just having this chieftan warlord tell Knuckles he has to help a random guy in a bowling tournament. Also, I removed the instance of Wade getting superpowers

Movie 3.

This one I'm just gonna have to guess that the main characters are Team Sonic, Eggman, Shadow, prooooobably Tom, and Gerald, with GUN initially being friendly to our heroes then turning out to be the main antagonistic force.

We start with Shadow waking up on Prison Island (why now of all times will be explained later) and breaking out. For a few weeks (during which the events of the Knuckles series take place) GUN tries to keep everything hush-hush but when it becomes clear to them that they just can't take Shadow out without help. It's at this point that they go to the Wachowski household, blackmailing them using the property damage Knuckles caused in his TV show and Sonic's crime-stopping adventures in the very beginning of movie 2 to get them to stop Shadow for him. This is secretly a plan from GUN to get Team Sonic and Shadow to wipe each other out (they have a backup plan to deal with Shadow if it comes to it), so they don't tell Team Sonic about Shadow's combat prowess and his ability to teleport.

Team Sonic gets wiped by Shadow in Tokyo, after which they ask GUN why Shadow is seemingly attacking random places, at which point the GUN Commander tells them that he's attacking GUN facilities all over the world which contain the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic furiously asks why they weren't told about this initially, and GUN says that they didn't know that Shadow could use them in combat (for his chaos powers like teleportation and such). Team Sonic is extremely skeptical of this claim but ultimately accepts it. They then go to England (ew) where GUN says they have another facility with a Chaos Emerald. Tails looks into GUN's files and sees that they've erased a lot of their own files recently, but then Shadow attacks, and while it is less one-sided Shadow still wins, but during the fight he says something about being imprisoned by GUN, which confuses Sonic. Team Sonic question a random GUN agent (Krysten Ritter's character) about Shadow, and she accidentally lets slip that Shadow was imprisoned on Prison Island for 50 years.

It's at this point that Team Sonic fully don't trust GUN, and they go to Eggman because they figure that if Eggman was previously employed by the military/government, he may have more knowledge of what is going on than they do. They trade Sonic's quill for his help with taking down GUN/Shadow, and Eggman manages to guide them all to another GUN facility, this one not on any of the maps GUN gave them to show where all the Chaos Emeralds were being kept. It's at this point that they find some evidence of what happened on the ARK, and Eggman, exploring the facility by himself, finds Gerald. Gerald explains GUN's intentions of wiping out

Because Team Sonic has gone sort of AWOL, GUN takes Tom as a sort-of hostage and keeps him at another facility in (insert big city here. Personally, I'm hoping we get some South American representation if this really is a globe-trotting adventure). This is the next facility Shadow attacks, and because Team Sonic is busy getting exposition-dumped by Gerald/whatever physical files they find in the abandoned facility, Tom ends up getting injured in the fight and almost dying. Sonic is furious at this, and goes along with GUN when Shadow attacks the next facility (for anyone keeping track Shadow has now attacked four facilities and has five Chaos Emeralds, the fifth one being from Prison Island which he nabbed on his way out), which results in Tails and Knuckles almost getting killed... from a GUN soldier firing on all four Mobians while they were in the same area.

This results in Team Sonic directly confronting the GUN Commander (they've separated from Eggman and Gerald at this point, there was a betrayal which they all expected) with all they've learned, at which point they learn everything about the ARK, Shadow, Gerald, and Maria. Sonic is furious and says that he won't fight Shadow anymore, but he is told by the GUN Commander that Shadow aims to destroy the entire world (no one knows about Maria's wish yet, and that whole thing with Gerald which I will be changing from its sa2 version so just hold on until then).

Meanwhile, Gerald is slowly drip feeding Eggman information, saying that they can rule the world together after Shadow brings them all the Emeralds. He skirts around the topic of Maria, which Eggman notices. Eggman than inquires about the ARK, but everyone (Eggman and Team Sonic and GUN) get distracted by Shadow attacking yet another facility, aiming to get another Chaos Emerald (let's have this one be in Africa). Team Sonic does go to try and stop Shadow again, but this time Sonic attempts to reason with Shadow, drawing parallels between Shadow's loss of Maria and his own loss of Longclaw. Shadow is furious at this and says they're nothing alike because Maria died in his arms, and Sonic retorts that he was directly responsible for leading the echidna tribe to Longclaw, whereas Maria's death was definitely not Shadow's fault (so they both lost loved ones but are carrying around two different types of survivor's guilt). Shadow once again says that he doesn't know what he's talking about, but seems a little more hesitant this time. The GUN Commander sees Sonic trying to talk it out with Shadow, and at this point fully betrays Team Sonic, trying to kill all of them. Shadow gets the sixth Chaos Emerald and dips, but confuses Sonic by saying "we have them all now" and "when we're done, there won't be anything left". Team Sonic gtfo of there, and they quickly figure out that Shadow has an ally who already has the last Chaos Emerald, who they then realize is Gerald.

It's at this point that Gerald reveals his true intentions to Eggman. After both he and Shadow witnessed Maria's death (and her final words were "Shadow, I beg of you, please do it for me..." but she crucially DOES NOT FINISH SAYING HER WISH BEFORE DYING. I know this will be a massively controversial change but I'll get back to it later), Gerald assumed she wanted humanity dead and persuaded Shadow that that was what she wanted before they were both captured by GUN, Shadow put into his cryosleep coma and Gerald forced to help GUN become an overwhelmingly powerful military force with branches all over the world. During this time Gerald secretly worked on his ARK Project, building a weapon into it that would require a massive power source, which he designed from his research on the owl temple on Siberia. While Gerald never found the Master Emerald temple he resigned himself to just waiting until someone else found the Master Emerald, which happened 50 years later. When someone did find the Master Emerald Gerald immediately woke Shadow up (how he accomplished all of this.... ig it's just because he's a genius who can manipulate GUN into letting him do whatever he wants and he had 50 years to put all this into place) and told him to go find the Chaos Emeralds.

It's at this point that Eggman asks where the weapon is, where the ARK is, and where the last Chaos Emerald is. Gerald says they're all in one place- the very facility both of them are standing in- and when Shadow arrives, the very last part of Gerald's plan activates. The ARK is the facility they're all in, and Gerald has the last Chaos Emerald. With all of the Chaos Emeralds gathered in the same space, the ARK is capable of powering itself again, detaching itself from the planet and lifting into the outer atmosphere, orbiting the Earth. Gerald begins charging the Eclipse Cannon with the Chaos Emeralds.

GUN at this point just plans to raid the facility mere hours before it fires and kill Gerald and Shadow, and has put Team Sonic on house arrest. Sonic goes to see Tom, and says that he's not going to lie to himself or Tom anymore- he plans on stopping GUN and Shadow and Gerald, and that no matter what he does he's still going to be threatened by people like the GUN Commander and Eggman, so he'll just live as true to himself as he possibly can. He thanks Tom for being his dad but says, "every kid has to grow up someday," and Tom reluctantly agrees, asking Sonic to keep himself as safe as possible. Krysten Ritter's character sneaks a ring to Team Sonic and they use it to teleport into the ARK, ready for the final confrontation.

Knuckles and Tails try to deal with the hordes of machines Gerald has on the ARK, while Sonic goes directly to Shadow, asking why he's just going along with what Gerald wants, and asking if this is the fate Maria would want for the world and for him. After a fight in which Sonic and Shadow tie (something something they're equals now something something rivalry), Sonic tells Shadow that he's never going to give up on this world or on his family, and Shadow finally admits himself that Maria probably wouldn't have wanted him to do this, and goes with Sonic to stop Gerald. At this point Eggman is already working with Knuckles and Tails to get to the center of the ARK, and with Sonic and Shadow's help they get there, with Tails and Eggman disabling the Eclipse Cannon (during all this GUN is being generally unhelpful and trying to kill everyone). At this point Gerald gets truly desperate and goes straight for the kill switch, causing the ARK to start hurtling towards the earth. Sonic and Shadow both realize what they've got to do, and they use the Chaos Emeralds to go Super, using Chaos Control to teleport the ARK and stop it from crashing down to Earth. Shadow falls out of the sky, but Sonic, having flashbacks to Longclaw falling out of the sky and Tom getting hurt, refuses to let him go, and it's at this point that they both get rescued by Tails and Knuckles. Gerald, refusing to accept his loss, dies fighting GUN, and Eggman escapes. Tails forces GUN to back down by threatening to reveal the truth about what happened on the ARK, and Krysten Ritter's character forces the GUN Commander to step down and takes control of GUN herself. She promises to leave the Mobians alone from now on (unless they really do need their help dealing with any kind of extraterrestrial threat) and says they'll all be forgiven for all their crimes, including Shadow.

The movie ends with Sonic offering Shadow a place in their family, which Shadow rejects because he wants to find his own path, and to see what Maria loved about the planet. He goes his own way. The Wachowskis slowly recover from everything that's happened over the course of the movie, but when Tom is fully recovered he pulls Sonic aside and says he knows that Sonic wants to leave Green Hills and explore the universe. Tom is very clearly sad about this but willing to let Sonic go (and potentially Tails and Knuckles if they want to go), even if there is still the possibility of Sonic being attacked by rogue GUN agents or Eggman. Sonic hugs him and says he'll visit often and bring back lots of souvenirs. The first place Sonic ends up going to once he leaves Green Hills is his old house where he and Longclaw used to live, and he says goodbye to her as well, promising to keep her and everyone else he's ever met in his heart. Then he sets off to an unknown planet in search of new adventures. In my ideal version of movie 3 the post-credit scene would be setting up a CD adaptation, with either Amy Rose or Metal Sonic being shown (with Eggman creating Metal Sonic using the quill he got from Sonic earlier in this movie).

This movie is intended to be the end of a trilogy in my version, and whatever the next movie is should start fresh with new themes. But the throughline for the trilogy is not letting yourself be ruled by the past, whether that be Gerald directly trying to manipulate Shadow into doing what he wants using Maria's memory or Sonic and Knuckles assuming that they have to fight just because their ancestors fought or even Sonic just going along with what Tom and Maddie want him to do to keep himself safe instead of finding his own path in life. The other main part of the trilogy is Sonic growing up, I imagine there wouldn't be any major character changes for him after the third movie.

Apparently, there's talks of a Shadow TV Show and Movie 4 being in development but I'm not even going to try and write a version of that when we haven't even seen movie 3 yet.

Conclusion

I am way too fucking tired to write out a proper conclusion after all that shit, and yet I feel that I have to write it anyways.

Truth be told, I still don't think my version of this universe would fix a lot of the fundamental problems I think it has. There are a lot of bits that are clunky, heavy-handed, rely on the audience just not thinking too hard about the logistics of everything that is happening (especially in movie 3), and many more problems that I can think of even as the person who created it. I still, in general, don't approve of it being a live-action adaptation, I don't like the celebrity casting, and I don't like movie Sonic's personality in general or how he's voiced (sorry Ben Schwartz, I like you in other stuff just not this), and the lack of female characters would still be a pretty big problem! But I do genuinely think that even with these limitations, the movies could have been so much better than what they are. I hope my version shows that, and fixes at least some of their problems.

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avoutput · 1 month

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Ryan, Wade, Logan, and Hugh || Deadpool & Wolverine

I have been on a bit of hiatus from seeing films in the theater, but what always seems to bring me back is even the faintest hint of good action comedy or the glimmer of a return of some legacy. In Deadpool & Wolverine, you get the promise of both in a single package. But I waited so long because I was still apprehensive. It bothered me more as time went on because it was so well received, as of now I believe it's the highest grossing “R” rated film of all time. The public largely isn’t a good barometer of whether anything is good or not, certainly not the amount of money it brings in, and definitely not the collective critical conscience. Word of mouth from trusted sources. People you love to disagree with. When both of those sources agree you simply have to take a look. I brought one of those people I disagree with, my father. A man who claims to hate the profane, but indulges in all sorts of films with deeply profane language, especially ones starring cops or detectives. Still he has always had a love for the X-Men, for Wolverine, and the chance to see him in the iconic 90’s suit was enough of a draw despite his lack of interest in Deadpool. He sat through all the violence, all the gore, all the dirty innuendo, the implied buttsex, and the 4th wall nods to the camera. He was the balance to my indulgence, and as I glanced over at him, I saw in his stoic stare, fingers resting on his temples like he had a headache, just how much it bothered him to see the swearing and the gore, and I knew in that moment that we might have a home-run on our hand.

Out of the gate, I’ll go ahead and assure you that the spoilers for the film will be marked at the very end of the article, and the initial review will simply go over the main points and my thoughts on the film in general. All I can think about right now is how I wish I was clever enough to write a review in a voice that broke the 4th wall, if there is even such a thing.

I am not sure if it's worth explaining the plot of the film, because it feels as though by design that it hangs around in the background, simply a vehicle for the jokes. Going into most action comedies, the driving force is usually the plot with the attached jokes along the way. With a franchise like Deadpool, forced to merge his well thought out and narrow franchise with Marvel, limited as it was by the copyright protections and constricted access to characters outside the Fox owned universe, you would be wise to be concerned that this wouldn’t be handled well. Even though both previous Deadpool films should have proved this creative team is a well oiled machine, I was still surprised by how well they merged their ideas into the Disney Marvel conglomerate. This film is constructed upside down, with the jokes being the engine and the plot being the fuel. Comic moments are designed in which the plot flows through them to create the momentum instead of the plot having appropriate jokes to follow the action. When the comic moments collide with the plot, you get these uniquely Deadpool action moments, with his masked smirk, potty mouth, and penchant for splitting bodies apart starting at the taint. It's quite an elegant display of talent that you don't see too often. If I had to make one thing clear, this action comedy redesign is the shining crown on Deadpool’s tight ass.

To satiate the curious, let me pour out the fuel for you, though common sense would tell you not to huff fumes, but it's your funeral. Wade Wilson is having another downer moment. In a desire to prove to himself that Deadpool is an important cog in the new Marvel Cinematic Universe he has found his way into, he tries to join the big leagues at Marvel headquarters. When he doesn’t make the cut, he gets depressed and the love of his life, Venessa, decides he needs to grow before their relationship can continue and moves out. Deadpool is then recruited by an interdimensional agency that keeps the multiverse from unraveling, which he is genuinely excited about. Only, the agency decided that Deadpool is the only thing left in his home universe that can be useful and relay to him they plan to destroy it prematurely. They plan to destroy it because the central character from his universe, Logan, perished heroically in a completely unchangeable Fox story cannon. Realizing the now dead Wolverine is the center of his home universe, Deadpool sets out across the multiverse to find the perfect Wolverine to replace his own so he can thwart the multiverse administrator villains and stop the destruction of his universe. Unfortunately, the only one he can find is a Wolverine that failed to live up to the legend of any other Wolverine’s from any other universe. This exhaustive story presentation is brought to you by the people who overthink Deadpool.

Brilliantly, this setup appears to be born out of conversations with a possibly real Disney boardroom. Disney appears to have told Ryan Reynolds and the Deadpool team that when James Mangold, director of Logan, closed the door on the X-Men universe when he put Logan out to pasture, and that all the other characters and creative choices across the Fox cannon were now worthless. Except for him. Ryan and Deadpool radiate star power, and Hugh Jackman had already confirmed he was done playing the Wolverine. This transformation of real world conversations into compelling meta-narrative is the part that feels genius. Not only did they write a narrative to fit the world in which they were writing Deadpool, they found a way to make that an entertaining bedrock of their film. And then they flipped it one more time, made this narrative the background story, the fuel as it were, of the film instead of the engine. They made the comic moments the focus, the action the result, and their creative purpose the driving point. Like Deadpool on screen, the creative team wants to matter and maybe the only way for anyone to believe in them is for them to prove that all that creative work at Fox has more value than the Disney executives can possibly imagine. As a result, they spoke the one language any executive knows, that language translated to now 1 billion dollars in ticket sales. Creative work again saved by the power of capitalism. (I hope that hits with the irony intended. I am not in the Deadpool creative team.)

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are still sublime as their alter egos. They define these characters for an entire generation. As such, it should go without saying that they are incredible in their roles this time as well. In fact, every actor in this film hits pitch perfect notes on every joke, every line, every stroke. I’d list out the various actors, and their strengths, but some of them feel like spoilers and as a man of my word, I cannot betray your trust. My only personal complaint is the amount of blood and gore in this movie would make a Mortal Kombat fan blush. It was by a wide margin the only thing in the film I thought should be toned down. It was consistently distracting in almost every one of the action scenes to the point that I couldn’t even be sure of what was happening, especially when they really got things going. It made me wish for an “R” rated, light cut of the film. All the language, half the gore. The take away from this should be that the only bad thing about this film was how distracting the gore was. Imagine this horse I just beat to death is an example of how distracting the gore in Ryan & Hugh: BFF4Life was as a whole. Damn, that is a great turn of phrase and critique. Good job me.

I can’t lie to you though. Or maybe I just won’t lie to you. I left the film after this meta-narrative thinking that, while the film was great, it came with a lot of baggage. The fire to this fuel is mostly lit by knowing not just the catalog at Marvel, not just Fox, but the careers of the actors, the artists in the soundtrack, and a never ending myriad of collective popular culture knowledge as well. I can still remember sitting down in the year 2000 to see the first X-Men film in the Fox franchise. It was quaint by today's standards, and while fan service could be found in the film, it wasn’t created to specifically cater to the demands of fans or their knowledge. Its primary focus was to tell the classic X-Men story. Lucky for us, Fox attacked it with a kind of fever no one really expected at the time. Not quite as unique as Tim Burton’s Batman, and not quite as earnest as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, but it was grounded without being gritty. It was real. Just before that, Batman & Robin and its 60’s hokey aesthetic had basically closed the door on superhero films for a while, or that was how it seemed. But a slow build was happening adjacent to this with R rated features like Blade, a gorey mess that kept the hinges of that door oiled. Fast forward almost 25ish years and Deadpool & Wolverine turned all these creative successes (and failures) into their showcase for the executives at Marvel. In doing so, they had to throw everything in the entire backlog at us, for us and everyone who worked on those films. They asked fans to light the fire, but in doing so, they ended up having to make a film that relies on people in the future being cultural anthropologists, lighting their own torches as they dive deeper into the dank caves of our popular culture past. I think films should have some amount of presence in the present, but at this point, we are basically asking people in the future to understand an entire lifetime to truly capture the thrust of the film.

And this time tunnel goes both ways. If you are my father’s age, a boomer disconnected with the now, there are a series of synapses that don’t fire. He may know a lot about X-Men, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the history of mutants, all sorts of nerd culture, but I could see him lost in about every other word out of Ryan’s mouth. He may have been alive, he just wasn’t participating in pop culture beyond his 30’s. He just can’t connect to it. I fear that may be how people perceive this film in the future, and in fact this whole MCU. The MCU as a franchise is an overwhelming excess that rarely touches brilliance across its entire catalog. It's not like it is a new cinematic language either, but rather a recreation of what makes serial comics like those under the Marvel and DC banner so uninviting to newcomers. What I love about films of the past is that they may capture the moment, but not at the cost of the story and not at the cost of the future. It's helpful to know what was happening around the time of films like The Godfather or Apocalypse Now, but the films don’t misfire because of your lack of historical awareness. When Iron Man came out, it was alone. It set a tone for itself and it was completely free to do so. Future generations would better grasp the whole of the film with knowledge of the Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan wars of its era, but the film doesn’t rely on this knowledge for its story and thus will have a stronger legacy.

That being said, even if it is stuck in the present, all cylinders are firing on this film, even if it's only because I know how the car works. I think it can still run without it, just like starting a car is a simple turn of the key or press of a button, I don’t need to understand how the engine works, but it helps. Ryan and Hugh have completely brought to life Deadpool and Wolverine as they were always intended to be, you’d think they were born to play the roles. I think that here and now, we can call this film a complete creative success, and that is truly set in stone, but I am subtracting a few points in my own cannon simply because I believe films should also preserve their point within the runtime of that single film's arc. They should be able to stand on their own, speaking the human condition without the baggage of complete cultural knowledge. A great film is both universal and timeless. But I can still love a good film. And maybe that’s enough. It's clear that the success of this creative endeavor is shared by the entire team, from the director, the actors, the writers, the camera operators, all the way down to the lowly grips. Maybe that will be clear to new people watching this film in 50 years. Maybe that will ring true across all the baggage, across all the jokes, across all of time. A collective creative success.

****SPOILERS****

The greatest spoiler is that I won’t burden you with any spoilers at all! No, no, I jest. But with a kernel of truth. This film has a never ending slew of celebrity cameos, all playing a few one off jokes, but ultimately, they aren’t really worth talking about in a review because they have very little consequence. The Marvel Universe usually has cameos for the purpose of creating branching paths, but that doesn’t really happen in Deadpool. Not really. It's like an Easter egg hunt where there are hundreds of eggs of all different sizes and colors and it's hard to really tell them apart or make any one of them more important than the other.

So let me share my favorite eggs with you. I really enjoyed the post credit sequence, making the final case for the creative passion that went into Fox's cinematic universe over the years. I really enjoyed seeing Wesley Snipes’ Blade turn the corner and make possibly his last appearance as Blade, with all the original swagger. The riff on Gambit’s accent was fun, and Channing Tattum really hit the mark, but still made you wonder if Gambit really ever stood a chance on the big screen. And finally, seeing most of the original X-Men and X-Men First Class series villains. I think the biggest loss was not seeing Nighcrawler or Mystique. But you can only do so much, and the film acknowledges that. So there we go. Remember to plug yourself like daddy Deadpool likes and thanks for reading!

#Film #Review #Deadpool #Wolverine #Deadpool and Wolverine #Deadpool & Wolverine #Ryan Reynolds #Hugh Jackman #X men #Marvel #MCU

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drabbles-mc · 11 months

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Palliative Care

Horacio Carrillo & F!Reader

For @narcosfandomdiscord's Day of Horror: came back wrong

Warnings: 18+, major character death, angst, scars, blood, hospitals, all the sad angsty things idk

Word Count: 1.8k

A/N: Is this a day late? Yes. Is this one of the strangest, saddest fucked up little things I've ever written? Also yes. No clue where my brain went during this but here we are. I also think this might be my first ever fic with no dialogue. What a day!

Narcos Taglist: @ashlingnarcos @garbinge @hausofmamadas @cositapreciosa @narcolini @proceduralpassion @artemiseamoon @justreblogginfics (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

palliative care (noun): treatment that reduces the pain without curing its cause

You had been one of the lucky ones. You knew it, too. With the minor exception of a few scars running up the side of your body, you came home fully intact. And compared to what you’d seen happen to so many others, a few ridges along your ribcage and thigh were hardly worth mentioning. You were grateful, in your mind at least, even if you didn’t always feel it all the way down into your bones.

The only thing that had gotten you through the atrocities that you’d seen, the losses that you’d suffered despite how hard you tried to prevent them, was the knowledge that one day you would be back home again. You weren’t going to live out your days wading through the carnage of war. And even though there was no guarantee of it, you were determined not to become and be buried as part of the mess yourself.

Unfortunately, no amount of determination and wishful thinking prepared you for what it was going to feel like being home again. All the days and nights you spent begging for some stability, some peace, maybe even a little bit of quiet, and once you got it you had no idea what to do with any of it. So many months in the midst of war and once you were relieved of that sense of urgency, your body just couldn’t accept it. There was no turning the dial down. The last thing you wanted was more chaos, but it felt like you were constantly filled with adrenaline, ready to handle crises that weren’t even there.

After months of struggling with guilt and the dreaded thought that you were somehow subconsciously ungrateful for the opportunity to be home and safe again, when you were asked whether or not you wanted another change of venue, it felt like the only answer was yes. It’d be different than last time, they assured you, but it wasn’t going to be some quiet hospital in the middle of a relatively safe city like where you’d been in the interim. Part of you knew that this was the last thing you probably needed, but if peace and quiet wasn’t fixing you, maybe getting thrown back into it would do the trick. So, off to Medellín you went.

It was different, just like they’d said. But in a lot of ways it was also the same. The apparent spontaneity felt familiar. There wasn’t always an obvious rhyme or reason to when the violence would crescendo, although you supposed that was the point.

The thing that felt the most familiar, though, was the underlying feeling of futility that you felt. More officers, more soldiers brought to you begging you to not let them die. You’d spent enough time doing triage on battlegrounds to know relatively quickly if you were going to have any control over the outcome. You hated how often you didn’t. But you knew better than to let them know that. Calm, collected, reassurance even if it was a lie was the best you could do for any of them regardless of whether or not you could help them.

You didn’t like the feelings that came rushing back, the familiarity of it all, but even though that was the case, it was the first time in a long time that you didn’t feel like you were out of place.

You grew to recognize the people that filtered in and out of the hospital on a regular basis. Sometimes they saw you frequently because they themselves were getting injured. As much as you hated seeing people getting hurt over and over again, at least return trips meant that they kept surviving.

The other people you saw frequently were the officers in charge. Sometimes they were getting patched up by you, but other times they were coming through to check on their men. All you could hope was that you had good news for them. The same way you could tell within moments of seeing someone getting brought in whether you’d be able to help them or not, officers soon learned to be able to tell whether or not you had good news for them. They never held it against you when you didn’t—the families were another story.

You didn’t know much of anything about Colonel Carrillo outside of the things you’d heard about him in passing. Your conversations with him were always short, always professional. He never seemed to show any emotion to you one way or another regardless of whether you were delivering good or bad news to him. His expression almost always stayed the same. Neutral, hardened. No matter what you said, he’d always conclude the conversation with a tight nod, and an even tighter “Thank you” before going off to wherever he was needed next. He never seemed to want to listen to your apologies, whatever condolences you used to try and offer him. You stopped giving them after awhile—he seemed almost relieved about it.

His absence wouldn’t have been something that crossed your mind at all if you hadn’t heard other nurses and doctors talking about it in passing. People stopped showing up all the time—you considered yourself lucky if you weren’t there to find out the reason why. If you hadn’t heard the murmurs, you never would have given it another thought. You would have just hoped the best for him, while in the back of your mind knowing it most likely wasn’t the case.

But then you heard them talking about how he’d gotten sent away. You watched the news enough to put it all together. Part of you felt relieved knowing that at least he was one person who wasn’t being sent away from the war in a pine box. Another part of you felt the tightness reappearing in your chest the more you thought about it. You knew what it was like to try and leave the fight. You’d done it of your own volition and you still couldn’t handle being away from the thick of it all. You could scarcely imagine what being pulled away before he was ready would do to someone who seemed to operate the way that Carrillo did.

He faded from your mind eventually, the way that most people tended to when you saw so many of them each day. You had much more present issues to think about. All of Colombia did. The surges of violence had you feeling like your hands would never be clean of blood no matter how hard you scrubbed them, no matter how scalding the water was. More officers than you could try to count or keep track of, dead before they got to you if not shortly after. There was no way to keep up with it. It was a feeling of drowning that you had felt before, one you never wanted to feel again. This time around, though, you at least knew how to tread water—exhausting but vital work.

The days had blurred together so completely that you lost track. You didn’t know how long Carrillo was gone for, but suddenly he was back again. He strode across the hospital floors like he hadn’t even been gone a day. You saw the difference in him, though. Soldiers all reached a point where they get pushed so far that they will either break, or they’ll evolve. You’ve seen the fallout of both those options and it was impossible to say that either one was preferable. But you could tell by the set of Carrillo’s jaw that he wasn’t broken. He was different, but not broken.

He spoke to you like no time at all had passed, so you returned the favor. Right back into old scripts, old routines. He had more jagged edges now where you just had more exhaustion. Maybe when all of this was said and done you’d simply be too tired to do anything but adjust to a quiet, normal life. More wishful thinking.

You felt like you had needed to claw your way out of your shift. The hours just kept slipping on by. Just when it seemed like there was no end in sight, you were told to go home. You didn’t need to be told twice, immediately taking off to get your things so you could grab what precious few hours of sleep that you could manage.

Your car keys were in your hand when you heard the sudden rush of yelling voices and running feet. It would’ve been so easy to pretend you’d missed it all, to slip out the back and cross the lot to your car. Avoiding it was infinitely easier than confronting it and throwing yourself into the middle of it. You knew that. Easier would’ve been such a nice change of pace. And yet you threw your keys back into your locker and headed back out towards the floor.

There was chaos and cussing and men groaning in pain. Immediately it became a game of Tetris trying to organize and find room for everyone, both patients and hospital staff alike. Only so many of you could populate a floor and still do your jobs without tripping over each other.

You were trying to figure out where the hell you were supposed to start when you felt someone’s hand reach out and grab yours. You returned the gesture on instinct, never one to deprive a desperate soldier of a last hint of comfort. However, when you looked down at the person who had grabbed your hand, you couldn’t hide the surprise on your face. You’d never seen the Colonel being anything other than cold and composed—never the one on this end of the equation. You’d definitely never seen him reaching out to anyone for comfort.

When you took in the state of him, you couldn’t help but to wonder if he was just looking to you to confirm what he already knew. No amount of tactical gear in the world would’ve saved him from whatever he’d gone through before he got brought to you. Despite all the blood and the pale look of his face, the grip he had on your hand was surprisingly strong.

All of your usual words got caught in the back of your throat, things you would typically say to provide comfort in moments like this. But it was Colonel Carrillo, a man who wanted nothing to do with being placated. It was better that way for both of you now because the lump at the back of your throat made it impossible for you to say anything at all, comforting or not.

The tighter he tried to hold onto your hand, the more you tried to match his grip. You brought your hand that he wasn’t holding to rest on his shoulder, fingers wrapping over the curve of it. You tried not to pay attention to the blood that seeped from his uniform into the pads of your fingertips. Even as the seconds ticked by, and his grip started to weaken, and tears began to cut the edges of your eyes and his, you didn’t apologize. He didn’t ask for one either. He didn’t ask for anything. He just held your hand until he couldn’t anymore.

#narcoctober #horacio carrillo #day of horror #horacio carrillo x reader #x reader #x reader fic #horacio carrillo x you #narcos #narcos netflix #narcos netflix fanfiction #narcos fanfiction #my writing #fanfiction #drabblesmc

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shidiand · 9 months

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2023 year review

2022 review

Another long year -- the second year of funemployment. There were good moments, I think. But most of them were overshadowed by the glum, endless fog of the job search. I will come back to those good moments in a bit. First, the job search.

The job search It was bad. I am certain you know well that the job search in current year is steeped in misery, but please -- permit me to expound upon the horrors it subjected me to. I beg of you.

(Feel free to skip the following passage when the bleak misery of Darkest Dungeon-style narration starts to overcome (bore, or otherwise fill with unfun vibes) you.)

Gathering the resolve to emerge from the cocoon of joblessness was its own ordeal, but the weight of growing shame gave me no choice but to push forward. This was resolve I had gathered by the end of 2022, the first year of funemployment, as was discussed in 2022's review.

Despite this resolve, my ever-present sense of dread kept me from attacking the job search in earnest until March. Those first two months were spent on the first and most hopeful of my self-improvement projects, which, like the others, petered out and died a death too ignominious for me to recount in detail. This act would turn out to be a symptom of a deeper insecurity and impostor syndrome that would immediately attack me during my next hurdle, which was confronting, once again, the emptiness of my resume. Even working up the courage to look at my old resume was its own ordeal, let alone facing the lacking accomplishments and projects from the job I had run away from at the beginning of 2022, dredging up memories of two pandemic years filled with holes of depression, and forcing myself to curdle them into recruiter-friendly bullet point sentences, promoting myself with the excruciating dishonesty that the process of discovery demands.

Further subjecting myself to terror and shame, I then had to reach out to my colleagues and manager on L*nked*n to request the favour of serving as my professional references. What a mercy it was that I had somehow managed to part on good terms with all of them, without my fraudulent self coming to light, that they all jovially agreed to provide this favour. However, this meager blessing would only hang heavy around my neck during the long coming months, when the search truly began.

Slowly I began to settle into a daily routine of browsing of the Job Posting Sites, wading through those hateful, cheery descriptions with a sullen tread. I soon developed the eye with which to discern by a glance offers bearing promise from those without, well before I should try to read them in full and despair at my lacking qualifications. I developed many such mechanisms of defense, to limit the decay of my flagging spirits; filtering strictly, limiting the scope of my search and my aspirations -- fewer positions crossed my path, and the daily pains of trawling through them became all the more bearable. I could not bear to fake my way through writing a false and cheery cover letter for each hopeful spot, only to inevitably be greeted by silence: I bluntly sent only my resume, but sent all the more resumes for it. Thusly, I would play the numbers game; I whispered this to myself.

As you well imagine, it was not long until the doubts assailed me. Was the time I was investing insufficient? Was my fragile heart dooming my own efforts, just to save itself from despair? Would a hardier, more industrious soul have pushed through and sought more offers of worth, written more attractive cover letters, and have found a job already? Certainly my family took no shortage of pains to inform me of the success of my various family's friends and their children in jobs of significantly superior recompense and status while I, hapless captive audience, drove them to the produce market each week to purchase several bags' worth of delicious vegetables at competitive prices.

Every day that turned up little to no suitable results in my searches, every day I woke up to an empty inbox only served to drive home the bleakness of my search, a year delayed after the date of my last employment. The mistake of my depression, that I hadn't strength to turn away, was coming back to haunt me. But my networkless existence had no recourse to seek but this. I repeated this process for months without the strength or courage to change it. I simply drifted on.

I was not without luck, for I did receive a scant few interviews for my efforts. I tormented myself with preparation for the most common questions and further introspection about the memories of work from my troubled last job, working myself up with anxiety, and did my best to rally my sallow self into a front of appealing normalcy. Some calls were ruined by my own hand, other seemed to go almost well. A few led to technical interviews or online assessments. All ended with eventual rejection, or, worse, radio silence.

All the while, I remained caught in the cycle of madness and anxiety, paralyzed between the need for immediate results and the desire to undertake new projects and make something else of myself, an accomplishment to line my resume that would surely provide the edge I was lacking. I was crushed by the need to move forward without being able to decide how. Forcing myself into solitude, I passed the time endlessly, unproductively.

I made a number of attempts at self improvement throughout this year. None bloomed into full reward. But, I tell myself this, attempting them was a fruit in itself. I tried many things, some for my potential career, others for some distant resume-lining project, and many just for my personal interests. Gamedev ideas, full-stack curriculums, UI design, blog writing, reverse engineering, romhacking, video essay scripting; none of them culminated into something greater, but I can claim some pride in the fact that I was, each time, able to cobble together my determination long enough to attempt them at all. I created little, I despaired, but I endured.

I do not know if it was my efforts that bore fruits, or just my dogged endurance, but I received a hopeful portent in August that slowly opened the door to further interviews throughout the remainder of the year, and eventually struck a positive enough impression with an interviewer to advance to pre-hiring checks. I have yet to receive my offer from this organization, but things are going well, and I may be able to start working in January. What a welcome blessing. What a wretched journey.

I cannot provide much advice for other seekers on the path. I can only offer you the cold solace that the despair you feel was mine too. I cannot promise anything. All I can ask is that you endure.

This concludes the job search portion of the year in review.

The rest of the review There were also other things I was doing when I wasn't beating my head against the wall, or rather, avoiding the duty of doing so, the millstone that I had tied around my neck.

I finally built a new PC to replace my shit ass laptop that couldn't run most games good and didn't even have a working screen so I had to constantly keep it plugged into an external monitor and the W key kept threatening to fall out so I had to press it awkwardly every time, piece of shit fuck I carried with me when I left home in 2020 and then back when I returned home in 2022 that couldn't run any modern fighting games that my friends wanted to play without dropping frames that had me running 0 texture quality mods that made Guilty Gear Strive look like a .bmp file in motion. It was a great relief of a longstanding pain.

I drew very little, and wrote little as well. However, by the end of the year, I got excited to write again. While I was still in despair about the fate of my employment, I started working on some ideas for an original novel. This has taken a step back in favour of another set of ideas that I'm going to put into a fanfic. I've hashed out a lot of the planning already, and even finished the introductory chapter. It remains to be seen whether I will be able to follow through on it, or if I will let it fall by the wayside like my every major project before, but… I really want to write it. It desperately needs to be written. So, I think it will.

Twitter continued to decline, yet I stayed on it anyway. The sobering depression it enclosed me in granted me many thoughts as I languished in unhappiness. Alas, I will continue to use that site in my small and closed-off manner until it finally manages to drive me away, or it falls apart.

I somehow got roped into translating a Bandori doujin from traditional Chinese into English. It was a productive week of terrific pains that served as a reminder that I cannot read traditional Chinese very well. https://mangadex.org/title/f4971f28-fc7e-48a9-b103-970c692e91dc/bang-dream-sono-kamen-wa-ta-ga-tame-no

Did you know that 讓 (23? strokes) is the traditional equivalent of 让 (5 strokes)? I didn't, until I started translating. It's not the best translation I could have done. But it could have been much worse.

Um. Let's do the media roundup here.

There were many okay anime shows and manga I saw this year. At first I felt like there wasn't anything that was both complete and a life-changer that I saw, but there were a lot of pretty alright works that I enjoyed.

Hello Girl. https://malaises.itch.io/hello-girl 4 hour yuri VN entry for the indie VN Cup about Ana, a telephone switchboard operator, and her lonely life in a small town. Delightfully crafted showing on all fronts; art, music, writing, RenPy presentation.

Koi Yori Aoku (ongoing). https://mangadex.org/title/4a89da3a-ebf9-467b-94a1-beeb7d1bd3e8/koi-yori-aoku Slowly developing relationship between two girls from different schools who catch the same train one day after school and hit it off well. I'm kind of surprised the more vocal himejoshis in my peripheral circle haven't talked about this one. Its premise and setting may be mundane, but the execution of its writing and art, combined with the depth of the author gives their characters, really stand out to me.

Yuri is Forbidden for Yuri Otaku (YuriOta). https://mangadex.org/title/6e4ad3f8-9304-49e1-9b45-821488e9bc60/yuriota-ni-yuri-wa-gohatto-desu Die-hard himejoshi Watanabe Fuyu has finally made it into her school of choice: catholic girls' school, the yuri heaven of all her favourite stories. She understands that she has no part in this world of yuri, and contents herself with watching from the sidelines. But when cheery, unladylike gyaru Yoshiokari Rika threatens to destabilize this delicate ecosystem with her extremely trendy demeanour, only Fuyu can preserve this school's yuri! But can she do so without falling into the trap of breaking her manga-titling credo? Laugh out loud gags, charming art style. Then it hits you with the good stuff. Wonderful execution.

Urasekai Picnic volume 8 (novel). This series has taken a couple of directions over the course of its run, but this one was a surprise to me. There are some unforgettable scenes in this one that really feel like the culmination of every volume prior. Very happy with this one; the series could end here and I would not be too unhappy with this as an ending point.

Hirogaru Sky Precure (ongoing but almost finished). Hero girl from the floating island country of Skyland falls through portal into Japan to save a mysterious baby, she becomes Precure and helps stop darkness guys in both Japan and Skyland. Some unusual Precure decisions like a boy Precure and a young adult Precure. It's my first full airing precure viewing experience, and I'm sharing it with a friend, which has been quite pleasant. I think it's pretty decent. Not highest peak, but it's been a pleasant weekly show to share with someone else.

Girls' Frontline story events up to Chapter 13.Z via cutscene viewer https://gfl.amaryllisworks.pw/ I ended up muscling through this from beginning to 13.Z (this is the first decimal scheme I've seen that's weirder than touhou) over like a month. GFL's story is messy, hard to keep track of, and the military squad stuff wears on you; in many ways I find it lacking compared to Arknights', although they're both guilty of making me sigh and steel myself for oncoming Chinese Novels. However, it has SOP and RO, and I love SOP and RO. I'm not sure I can recommend that other people put themselves through this. But I think I had a good time. So. Sure, on the list it goes.

Lobotomy Corporation LP, then the game itself https://lparchive.org/Lobotomy-Corporation/ This is a really fun and informative LP that's like 75% composed of dialogue acted out by the agents, who the author gave their own personalities and backstories. I think it builds on the narrative of the game in a wonderful way, and it's extremely informative and strategically helpful to boot. It is very long though. A great time all the same.

I also played through the game after reading it. It's a game full of personality, love, and emergent interactions. But I have certainty that it would be horribly stressful to play blind, so you really need to consult the LP or have some friends to guide you as you play. This game is actually pretty relaxing when you're informed and feeling in control. Pretty good time.

Siren: Blood Curse (LP) This game is weird. It's an alright Siren game, I guess. It has its great moments. There were things that put me off, like I thought the protagonist was voiced by Yuri Lowenthal for the whole game, only for the credits to say otherwise. Sorry Mr. Stephen Fisher.

Pudding (Pudding and Shield Lyre) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2424240/Pudding/ Shmup-like story game. Lyra, you have to save the kingdom from the demon king with your Shield Lyre! I can only read like 50% of this game, but that which I can read, combined with the Katatema pedigree, assures me that I will love it all the more when I can read the rest of it. A game that's not as long as it seems, tragically, but it still delivers a fascinating narrative in full. As always, watson's music is a delight.

World of Horror It's pretty neat, but there's no keyboard support, so I'm clicking tiny squares all the damn time and I don't like that. Got maybe 20 hours of play out of it before I felt like I had my fill of the runs and scenarios.

Tetris There was a few weeks' stint where I got pretty into stacking tetronimos on Tetrio and really put some effort into trying to improve. But then I stopped feeling the drive to practice and learn techniques, and I haven't touched it since.

vivid/stasis (free game) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2093940/vividstasis/ Some girls in Japan investigate a weird mystery. It's also a rhythm game.

Pretty nice showcase of songs on a four key rhythm game. I appreciate the passion project production, and I played it a lot during the summer. My scores have taken a backslide after a long break, which is a bit depressing. The initial Ch.1 story wasn't quite enough to hook me, but Ch.2 has shown some more cards, so I'm a little more invested in it now.

OBAMAQUEST: The Search for the Melon Slurpee (YT video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6_puHKl_UY Travelogue of MajinObama's bullheaded bike ride from Tokyo to Asahi. A culmination of Obama's many stories about his earlier years in Japan, fighting games, and the death of the arcade. I watched this live on stream and it was a spiritual experience. This cut is only a portion of that experience, but I think it's still quite good.

I also revisited some media from my past with my abundance of time, just to confirm whether they were as good as I remembered.

Starwish: RPG Shooter (rewatched all cutscenes on YT because i cba to play that shit) Flash side-scrolling shmup with a significant VN component. I remember being really impressed by the surprising scale of this Flash-era story, and to some extent I still am, but upon reviewing all the endings, almost all of them were not that good. Only Ginny's was alright. This soured my nostalgic impression of the game greatly.

Super Paper Mario I like the story and characters a lot. The game is kind of whatever. It looks like it has more depth than it does.

Yagakimi It was enriched by a reread. Still good.

DEADBOLT Very clean stealth game about a reaper doing hits in the underworld. I think it pulls off a 2D stealth game and a 2D shooter incredibly well, it's very satisfying to land headshots but just tricky enough to require good execution to perform consistently. Game has a good length on first playthrough, but streamlines to a nice short length when speedrunning. I spent a few weeks going for the deathless clear but never got there before I gave in. Stylish presentation and bumping Chris Christodoulou (Risk of Rain) OST.

Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition WH40k board dice strategy game about scifi fantasy bloodsport football. Features long-term team building and perilous RNG. Reasonably entertaining in single player for some time. Got my fill of it after achieving a reasonably developed Orc team and not feeling much resistance from the AI any longer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQB5aandpf4 An authority I follow has recommended not playing this game.

Fallout: New Vegas I mean, it's good, it's full of fun stuff, but the combat lost its luster for me after some point. I went through some pains to curate a big list of recommended mods and such but I still fell victim to loss of momentum eventually, didn't make it through the full DLC lineup. I like the character of the New Vegas wasteland and its quests a lot though. Not bad.

Helen's Mysterious Castle https://store.steampowered.com/app/418190/Helens_Mysterious_Castle/ Extremely cleanly put together RPGMaker game with a really nice take on turn-based combat. Worth just to see what it does. Simple but doesn't overstay its welcome. I'm glad I went back to finish it.

Bones of an Invisible Person (reread) https://mangadex.org/title/0717cb7b-b36f-49df-baa5-70a8006099b7/the-bones-of-an-invisible-person A girl who endured family abuse for too long discovers she has the ability to turn invisible. She kills her dad without being caught, and then must live on. It's still quite good. Some motivations I didn't understand on my first read made more sense to me this time. There's an omake chapter floating around on other sites, but I recommend that you don't read it and just let Chapter 22 stay your pleasant last memory of the story. It will only remind you that this author was the author who wrote Semelparous OMEGALUL

Healer Girl (mostly complete rewatch) Girls train to become medical healers who heal through song. This may sound corny, but the writing establishes vocal healing as a new emerging field that intertwines with modern medical practice, it's quite well done. It's still good. Delightful musical bits and very fun characters. And I still was moved by the episodes that moved me when I first saw them.

Titan Souls I tried it a while ago, and I tried it again. As echoed in other reviews, the runback time is unacceptably long for a game where you die in one hit. Reflushed.

End of Goldfish Kingdom https://mangadex.org/title/bf238392-168e-48b4-af02-2d78a413d568/end-of-goldfish-kingdom Story about a young girl who decides to give up eating meat, and the ordeal of stubbornly clinging to this pure ideal. As a manga, it's delightfully drawn and quite well-written. Well worth the read.

This concludes the media portion of this year in review.

Not much left to discuss. I think I've accepted that I'm in Touhou retirement. I got excited when I saw the 19 announcement, but by the time it released I no longer cared to play it or read about all the cross-dialogues within. I feel a bit estranged from the community these days. I've made my peace with that. I'll still read the works of authors I know, and reflect fondly on works I remember, but I'm hibernating once more as my focus shifts to some other fandom.

I'm cooling down on fighting games somewhat too. One of my potential resume projects was fighting game-related, but as it died I've lost a lot of my passion to write about them. I don't watch Will It Kill any more, nor Sajam livestreams (although I still enjoy watching his edited pieces on YT). And I don't think I really ever had the drive to grind and improve on any particular character for any particular game. I still enjoy doing cool combos in training mode, and they are still fascinating and meaningful to me, but I've accepted that I'll probably never become a cool expert at them. That's fine.

I made new friendships, rekindled old ones, deepened others, let a few drift away. By my own standards, I think I did alright socially. When I'm bored, I sometimes read back through my Discord DMs and smile.

Was I funny? Was I good to other people? Did I create things I liked? Did I grow as a person?

I think so. So, it was an alright year for me. Despite the agonies.

Horrors abound in the world around us. I feel quite powerless, all the time. So all I can do is focus on doing what I can for myself, for now. I will continue to move forward once more in 2024.

"There's no guarantee that I will reach the peak that is preserved for me. I may get cheated out of it; I might cheat myself out of it."

This quote comes from James Booker, and is used in the song "Peak" by Windmills from their album "Stay Golden". Windmills is a hip-hop group whose output ranges from pretty good to sort of whatever. Mostly whatever. But thanks for the quote.

As I write, I am currently doing idle game cocaine at the end of the year again, but this is kind of a recent thing so im going to leave it out of the formal count. I have chosen not to disclose the identity of the idle game in question for the safety of my followers. This shit is spreadsheet crack. I now choose to optimistically believe that my avid play of this game will not portend ill omens from myself in the coming year, as I magically develop the discipline and focus to set it aside when I need to.

We're all going to make it. That's what I choose to believe.

#bulb

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afterlife-2004 · 11 days

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People have been speculating that Tom is most likely gonna get killed in the prison island explosion

I think Tom's somewhat speculated death is gonna be the thing that tests Sonic's resolve thats established at the start of the trailer.

Will he succumb to hatred and anger like Shadow has? Or will he stay true to who he is despite the loss and pain he’s going through

It would push Sonic to his breaking point and it would lead to Sonic getting the chance to kill Shadow (most likely during the fight on the Ark), but then remembering what Tom said and choosing not to become like Shadow.

Plus one thing that would kind of tie it in with the previous films, is that when he's had his final fights with Robotnik, he's ALWAYS gone for the kill (even if he still survived lol).

So for him to choose not to end Shadow and forgive him, would be a neat little arc too.

It would be really interesting gets really angry of course powering up almost about to kill shadow and remember what Tom told him of course, because unlike Sonic? Shadow does not have loving parents to go back to, plus Maria is dead, so…

I’m thinkin’ a fakeout death would really motivate Sonic to go all out on Shadow.

Gonna be honest with ya? I highly doubt they’re actually fully gonna kill off Tom, the difference between him and a character like Maria Robotnik is that Maria was a character who was created from the ground up to be killed off for backstory reasons, and we already have that same type of character for Sonic in these movies, that character being Longclaw, however, that doesn’t mean they can’t do like a fakeout death with Tom, or make it LOOK like he got brutally injured and beaten up by Shadow, and Sonic is told that Tom may or may not have a lot of time left to live for very long

sonic already lost longclaw whenever he was just a little kid 😭 HE’S LOST ENOUGH

I’ve just came to a realisation that if the Sonic Movies just so happened to be animated in CG or whatever, and that they actually kept the human characters? (i.e Tom Wachowski, Maddie Wachowski, Agent Stone, Wade Whipple, etc), none of these people would be bitching, moaning, and complaining about they should totally, most definitely, 100% ABSOLUTELY get rid of them…

“I hope Shadow kills Tom”

“Why?”

“It’s fun”

go to therapy, man

I really fucking hate the “it’s just a work of fiction, it’s not worth getting upset about” excuse smh

i swear sonic fans hate humans more than shadow does…

These mfs seriously want Sonic to be fatherless 😭

“He’s a fictional cop lmfaooooooo”

and this is a film franchise based on a video game series about a blue hedgehog who runs super fast and eats chilli dogs

your point?

Sonic 3 killing Maria: 👍👍👍👍💯💯💯😁😁🥰🥰🔥🔥🔥🔥

Sonic 3 killing Donut Lord:

sorry, just HAD to make that joke LMFAOOO

2/16

PART 3 👇

#lifetheghostkitty #LifeTheGhostKittySPEAKS #sonicmovie3hype #sonicmovie3 #sonicmovie #SonicMovie3DiscussionTime #sonic the hedgehog

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cqlqrcqdedwitch · 2 years

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the top of the feminism hashtag being… that.

and then rest of it being viral watered down acceptable feminist roe v wade memes and then a bunch of posts from 2015-2019, let’s me know not only is modern feminism dead but most don’t even notice or care. tumblr used to be regarded as a horrible place that you couldn’t escape “sjw feminist bullshit” if you tried. now feminist is just some loose word you carry around that doesn’t mean anything and that you don’t really care much about. you’re burned out.

but we used to care so much, and do so much. so instead of just taking what’s thrown at our feet; ie an anti feminist post being the top of the feminist hashtag? and it being the only post getting actual engagement and conversation going because the only time “good men and women” even talk about feminism anymore is to shit on it, we need to stop letting actual feminism be run into tinier and tinier corners of the internet.

we need to engage with and boost insightful and important feminist topics under this tag. the way we organize and talk online can’t and shouldn’t be pushed so much to the outskirts that anti feminsim is literally now feminism. dunking on feminism is the new feminism. i wish someone would try to turn blm into that; black and brown liberation into some self own movement. as a black person imagining that is just disgusting. take back feminism.

use the # to talk about the harm of sex work and young women sexualizing themselves, talk about poor women and the dangers they’re in even with all their “support networks” (not), talk about women and shame and how to free yourself from it, talk about how not to let men diminish your self worth in the dating scene by creating an immovable sense of self worth not rooted in liberal feminism!

girls and women want this info to be popular again. the only place i see it going viral is on tik tok and it’s mostly pushed through jokes and venting without much politics and real world solutions, endless talks about how horrible liberal feminism is and how it’s lead to them hooking up and getting plastic surgery and eating disorders while still feeling worthless;

yet with radical feminism being demonized most of them just hate feminism now. abandoning it and turning to centrist or more conservative political leaning or just letting feminism be a dormant nametag belief they just call themselves but don’t understand or really like; when in reality, every complaint they said was true, they just were lead astray by a co opted and unhelpful feminism that doesn’t have women’s best interest at heart. they need to be able to search feminism and find tangible help from an active and strong presence!

feminists revive actual feminism !!

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dropssofjupitter · 3 years

Text

Of Pride and Promises - P. 2

Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Reader

Summary: It has been a mere three weeks since your breakup with Draco Malfoy. Though your feelings haven’t changed, circumstances have.

Word Count: 2.1 k

Warnings: Angst-ish(?), swearing, sectumsempra, fist-fights, blood (minor?), aftermath of a breakup

Requested? - Yes

Masterlist Part One

A/N: For the lovely nonnie that requested it! I hope you like it! (I’m not exactly happy with it but hey, something is something!) [This work has not been beta read. Any mistakes are mine and mine alone]

Edit: I would also like to announce that I am looking for one, possibly two, beta readers! If you are interested please let me know!

Loving Draco Malfoy was like wading through quicksand. The more you resisted, the stronger the pull. Until eventually, you were pulled under.

That’s what it had been like for you. That’s what it had felt like. You were suffocated and sedated until you couldn’t think straight, until you couldn’t see straight. Your hands were no longer your own, your magic was merely an extension of his. Everything that you owned, was his to use.

Until you broke free. And then suddenly you could breathe. You felt lighter, you felt happier. You felt like you were more. But every time you saw him in the halls, every time you passed him in the Great hall, every time you so much as glanced in his direction, an intense wave of hurt and pain swept through you.

And Draco only seemed to be getting worse. Dark circles clung to his eyes like forgotten friends, his cheeks had sunken in, and his skin was a brand new shade of waxy white. He looked sickly, often reminding you of the Victorian children that haunted the paintings in the Slytherin common room. You were no fool. You knew that although the breakup may have been hard on him, it was nowhere near the severity of whatever threatened him now.

“Merlin, is that Katie Bell?” Pansy whispered to you, her chin propped up on her hands as she shamelessly stared at the girl who had just entered the Great Hall. “She looks like shite,” she said with a laugh, dragging her gaze back towards you.

“Yeah Pans,” you replied, stabbing your fork into one of the many potatoes that lay on your plate. “Being cursed will do that to you.”

The girl groaned, paying no mind to your snarky comment as she sat back in her seat, arms crossed over her chest. “And there goes Saint Potter, probably trying to be first in line to the pity parade and get all the sympathy points.”

You sighed and rolled your eyes, chancing a look over your shoulder at the scene unraveling in the middle of the Hall. You had to hand it to Pansy, she had nailed Katie’s description perfectly. The girl looked almost as haggard as Draco did.

You watched uninterested as Harry no doubt grilled the poor girl about the happenings of her curse, your hand perched under your chin. You were about to turn back to your food and to Pansy, who had not stopped talking to you apparently, when your eyes caught on Draco’s form.

He seemed frozen in place at the entrance to the Hall, unmoving as he looked at Harry and Katie in what appeared to be mute horror. He locked eyes with Potter and turned around, quickly making his way out of the Hall and down an unknown corridor. Harry soon followed him, and it was pure instinct that drove you to stand up from the table and follow after the two boys, much to Pansy’s dismay. Something else was happening here, and whether it had to do with Draco’s distance before your break up or not, you were going to find out just what the hell it was.

Chasing after Harry, you frantically tried to match his pace, running into students and Professors alike as you turned corners and skidded down hallways. It was a miracle that you hadn’t run into a wall yet, truly. You watched as he disappeared from view, ducking into the usually haunted girls bathroom. With a frown etched into your face and nary a thought to the consequences, you followed him.

Curses being flung across the bathroom at lightning speed met you on the other side of the door, and you had to duck almost immediately to avoid being hit. You lay flat on the ground, mumbling things like “What the bloody hell could have set them off in three minutes?!” as you fumbled for your wand with one hand and protected your head from shattered stalls with the other.

You crawled forward as soon as your wand was in your grasp, dragging yourself through the wrecked toilet stalls and avoiding most of the spells being hurled across the room as you prepared yourself to intervene. You moved into a crouch, murmuring a quick shielding charm before walking through the door half torn off its hinges and into the middle of their duel.

“Wands down -” You were barely able to get a sentence out before you had to dodge a curse sent by Potter himself, drawing your arms into your body as you heard him yell “Sectumsempra!”

Draco was flung across the room, his body hitting the floor with a dull thud. Both you and Harry looked over at him, pausing your actions as you realized that he wasn’t moving. “Draco?” you called out anxiously, taking a step closer to him. That was when you saw the blood blooming on his shirt and bleeding into the water. “Merlin,” you muttered to yourself, wasting no time in rushing over to his body, hands shaking as you tried to remember the proper healing spells.

“What the hell did you do to him, Potter?!” you yelled, looking over at Harry quickly before looking back at Draco. Dozens of cuts had opened up on his body, continuously bleeding and showing absolutely no signs of stopping. “Shit shit shit shit.” You hated to admit it but you still loved him. You still loved how it had been when you were with him. And you were so, so scared that you would lose him like this. So suddenly.

As if he could hear your thoughts, Professor Snape appeared out of nowhere, quickly rushing to Draco’s side and sending a long, slow look at Harry.

“I don’t know what to do,” you said, rushed as you stared down at Draco. “They won’t stop bleeding. He won’t wake up.” The professor placed a seemingly comforting hand on your shoulder before wordlessly beginning to move his wand over Draco’s body, murmuring a spell underneath his breath so quietly that you couldn’t catch what he was saying. You didn’t care. The blood that had previously been pouring out of Draco’s body was returning to it, and the wounds were sealing.

Footsteps sounded behind you, and you realized that Harry was running away. You shouldn’t chase after him. Not when you were no longer with Draco. And certainly not with a Professor standing right next to you. But all rational thought had left your mind, and all you could think about was making Harry pay. So you stood, and you ran.

If you thought that Harry was fast before, he was even quicker now, running as if he knew he was being pursued. And maybe he did. But that just made it more satisfying for you as you ran him down, slowly but surely beginning to catch up with him until you hit him with a stunning hex and sent him careening to the ground.

“What the fuck was that Potter! What, do you preach the absence of curses until it’s convenient for you like a fucking hypocrite?”

Students and staff alike were turning to watch the exchange, gathering nearer as they sensed a fight. It was likely that you didn’t have much time before you were stopped so you decided to make it count. The stinging hex was wearing off by now, you knew it would be. So you kicked his wand away before pocketing yours. If they wanted a fight they would get one.

Harry turned to look at you, quickly standing up and getting to his feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The way he turned up his nose and squared his shoulders told you that he was trying to appear confident. The sweat on his brow and the shiftiness of his eyes also told you that he was epically failing.

“Is that really how you want to play this Potter?” you asked, danger creeping into your voice as you squared off with the boy wonder.

“Well it’s how your boyfriend wanted to play when he threw a hex at me,” he retorted, taking a step closer to you in a challenge.

You barely had time to think before you were punching the Chosen One. Punching him poorly, might you add. You were pretty sure that you heard a faint crack from your thumb. But the blood that had begun to spurt from his nose made your minor injury all worth it.

Harry cried out, falling back and to the floor as he immediately held one hand up to his nose. He looked at you in surprise, and it only took a few short seconds before a teacher was calling out your name and dragging you up towards Dumbledore’s office.

You passed Snape on the way up, making eye contact as you noted the unconscious Draco in his arms. You nodded once, more towards yourself than towards him, before turning your gaze back to the professor currently lecturing you on the do’s and don'ts of fights at school. You tuned them out and every interaction after.

~~~~~~~

You couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity that the tables had been turned on you. Yet again. Instead of you waiting in the dark to confront Draco, he had waited for you. You had known he was there as soon as you had closed the portrait, your eyes catching on his barely illuminated form as he sat in front of the fireplace.

“I suppose I should ask you why you aren’t asleep yet.” You threw his words back in his face as you walked over to the couches, deciding to not even try and avoid him. Your arms were crossed protectively in front of your chest, a poor attempt to try and prevent what was probably about to come.

Draco raised his hands under his chin, propping it up in a habit that he had learned from you long ago. “Why were you there,” he asked slowly, still not turning his head to look at you. It annoyed you, but you would let him have this for now.

“I was tired of being lied to.” It was the truth, and that was more than he deserved.

He clenched his jaw and turned to face you, his eyes narrowed. “You could have died. Didn’t you stop to think about that at all?”

You sat down in the arm chair to his left, arms and now legs crossed in defiance. “I didn’t think that I would be barging in on a duel. It’s not my fault that you and Potter couldn’t keep it in your pants.”

“This isn’t a joke!” His voice echoed across the common room and you froze. His gaze was level with yours, eyes glaring at you and hands clenched into fists. “You could have died!”

“You could have too!”

“That’s different!”

“How? How is it different Draco.” At some point you had stood up again, a finger pointed in his face in your anger. The sheer familiarity of the situation was hitting. The two of you had been in these kinds of arguments many times before. “See this self-sacrificing bullshit is why we broke up. Because you couldn’t realize that your life was worth just as much as mine!”

“No, we broke up because you got scared,” he retorted, standing up and matching your stance. “You got scared that I was actually being self-sufficient for once and you couldn’t handle not being in control!”

You knew he was deflecting. You knew that the two of you were both lashing out, emotions high from the day that you had, but still you recoiled slightly. “Is that really what you think?”

He just stared at you, stubborn ignorance formed in every fraction of his being.

You swallowed thickly, straightening your clothes and taking a step back from him. “Alright then. Gad we cleared that up.” You turned around and took but two steps before you moved to face him again. “And for the record? I was scared. But I was scared that you were recklessly risking your own life because you couldn’t handle even the slightest threat to mine. Not because I wasn’t in control.” You paused, clenching your jaw as you searched his face for any type of reaction. There was none. “I guess today just proved that breaking up had been the right thing to do. Goodnight Malfoy.”

You didn’t stop walking until you made it to your room with the door closed securely behind you. Letting out a breath, you allowed your body to sag against the door. You weren’t even sure if you could call that conversation closure. It felt more like another couples spat if you were honest, but you had meant your words.

From now on, you didn’t care what Draco did. You didn’t care if he was sneaking around at odd hours of the night, or looking positively zombie-like. He wasn’t your problem anymore, so you were going to stop making him one. You were done with him. For good.

Taglist:

@hydrasbitches @tayyymeek

Add yourself to my taglist

#Harry Potter #Draco Malfoy #draco malfoy fanfiction #draco lucius malfoy #draco malfoy angst #draco malfoy x reader #professor snape #Pansy Parkinson #katie bell #angst #jupe writes

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geminiwritten · 4 years

Text

heatwave ; bucky barnes

fandom: marvel

pairing: bucky x reader

summary: you’re not a huge fan of the hot weather until a certain super soldier finally gets his arse out of bed and gives you a reason to love it

notes: i wrote this over quite a few days so i’m really sorry if its disjointed, and i’m so sorry if its repetitive of my last piece! i’m still trying to get through a bit of writer’s block, so i hope y’all enjoy!

word count: 3359

The heat seemed to wash over you in waves. Pulses of warmth rolling through your body and stealing your breath. Every inch of your skin glistened with a thin sheen of sweat, drawing all the hydration from your body and draining any energy you might have possessed if it wasn’t for the heatwave currently sweeping through New York City.

“Ugh,” you groaned, your head lulling to the side where Natasha laid, “I think I’m dying.”

She let out a breathy laugh, “You’re not dying.”

“I might be.”

“Oh, come on you two,” Sam hollered from the pool a little way across the balcony, “have some fun for once in your lives!”

Natasha propped herself up on her elbows and squinted over the top of her sunglasses, “With you idiots? No thanks.”

“Why are you always such a killjoy, Romanoff?”

“Why are you always such a pain in the ass, Wilson?” you called back, mimicking Natasha on your elbows.

He scoffed, “That’s rich coming from the whiniest member of the team.”

Your frown deepened, this time out of anger and not because of the bright glare from the sun.

“Watch it, Wilson,” a voice called out from behind you, “or she’ll come over there and kick your ass.”

Both you and Natasha whipped around to find Bucky. He had probably only just woken, his mop of hair tied up into a loose bun with escaped tendrils sticking to the hot skin of his neck and forehead. This time, it wasn’t the heat that knocked the air from your lungs.

“Nice to see you’re alive, Buck,” Steve chuckled as he waded through the pool toward where Sam was leaning against the edge.

Bucky rolled his eyes, opening his mouth to say something smart but having his breath stolen as he stepped out of the shade and into the sun. “Holy shit,” he gasped, “it’s hot.”

“Sharp observation skills, Einstein,” Natasha quipped.

“At least Barnes will get in the pool unlike you two party poopers,” Sam said, before copping a volleyball to the back of the head thanks to Bruce’s poor aim.

He spun around quickly, ball in hand and ready to hurl it back at his attacker.

“Well then,” Bucky sighed, now standing beside you, “I guess it’s time for a swim.”

He looked down at you sprawled across your towel, one arm draped over your eyes to shield from the sun and the other resting on your bare stomach. You suddenly felt exposed, nervous under the gaze of his pale blue eyes.

“Want to join me?”

Your pulse thudded in your ears, and you wanted nothing more than to get in the water with him, but the sound of shouts and spraying water reminded you of the rest of the team.

“I’m sorry, Buck, I’ll have to pass,” you replied.

He pushed his bottom lip forward, “It’s your loss, doll, this heat is a killer.”

Your limbs turned to jelly at the sound of that pet name rolling off his tongue.

“Ugh,” Natasha scoffed beside you, “you two are sickening.”

You wanted to turn around and bite back at her, but what happened next had you paralysed. Every nerve in your body ignited, goosebumps rising across every inch of your skin in spite of the steamy weather. Bucky’s fingers curled under the hem of his shirt, tugging it up and over his head to reveal his sculpted body beneath. His abs rolled and tensed as he rid himself of the material and discarded it on the ground, making your mouth water and your head spin with a thousand different unholy thoughts.

A shriek from the red headed woman beside you broke you out of your trance, and only then did you notice the spray of pool water that had washed over you and most of the balcony.

“You’re an arse, Barnes!” Natasha yelled, standing and angrily snatching up her towel.

You pushed your sunglasses further up your nose as you let your gaze settle on the giggling men in the pool. Bucky’s now wet, broad shoulders glistened under the sunlight, his alabaster skin taught across the landscape of muscle.

“Do you want some lunch or are you just going to keep staring like a creep?” Natasha asked as she stood over you.

Your gaze hardly wavered, “I’m not hungry.”

“Are you sure?” she pressed, her lips curling into a smirk, “because I think you’ve got a little bit of drool on your chin there.”

If Bucky wasn’t pulling himself out of the water right at the moment, you might have turned around to poke your tongue at her, but instead you opted for flipping her the bird while your eyes remained trained on the pool area.

The rest of the steamy day went by far too quickly. Despite your hate for the heat, you stayed out on the balcony until the sun began to set. Only when Bucky and Sam wrapped themselves in towels and declared that it was time for dinner did you finally put your book away, not that you had managed to read even a single page of it.

“Is it supposed to be this hot again tomorrow?” Sam asked as the three of you stepped inside.

“Yeah,” you replied, “and the day after.”

“I bet you’re happy about that,” he chuckled, watching disappointment sweep across your face as Bucky pulled his shirt over his head

“Shut up.”

He chuckled at your feeble attempt to jab his side, easily evading your attack.

“Alright, children,” Tony called from the kitchen, “dinner’s ready.”

Like moths to a flame, the rest of the team gathered around the kitchen bench where Natasha and Tony had laid out the pre-cut ingredients for everyone to make their own burgers.

“I’m going to have a shower before eating,” Bucky said, to no one in particular as he draped his damp towel over his forearm.

“Do you need any help?” Sam asked, his grin evil, “Because I’m sure Y/N would love-”

“Sam!” you snapped.

Thankfully, Bucky remained oblivious, his brows knit into an adorable frown.

“Never mind, Buck,” you said, “I’ll make sure they save you some food.”

His face broke into that familiar smile that melted your heart, “Thanks, doll.”

Once again, your legs wobbled like jelly and you had to steady yourself on the back of the lounge.

“Ugh,” Sam groaned, “I can’t wait until they day you two finally fu-”

“Language,” Steve interrupted with a disapproving glare at Sam.

You poked your tongue out before turning toward the array of burger ingredients, your empty stomach rumbling at the sight.

The next day rolled around just as the weather forecast had predicted. The air was thick with humidity and the sun blared down just as it had yesterday. Once again you found yourself on a towel beside the pool, half of the team splashing around while the other half laid languidly in the shade.

“Still not getting in today?” Steve asked as he approached the bar fridge near where you had placed your towel.

You shook your head, “I’d rather not get caught in the crossfire of an overly aggressive game of chicken.”

“I mean, you could play the game with us, maybe even get to climb onto Bucky’s shoulders.”

You whipped around, your glare lethal, “What the fuck, Rogers?”

He chuckled, “Sorry, Sam told me to.”

“You are the last person I would expect to stoop to his level,” you said, crossing your arms indignantly.

He shrugged, “Well, no one has told Buck, if that makes up for anything.”

“I’m guessing everyone else knows, though.”

He didn’t respond, only smiled sheepishly.

“Ugh,” you sighed.

“In my own defence, Natasha told me about your crush months ago and I haven’t let it slip once. It’s been-”

“Sam,” you interrupted him, “I know.”

He took a generous sip of water before crouching beside you, “For what it’s worth, I think you should tell him how you feel.”

“Yeah, right,” you scoffed.

Steve knew he couldn’t say anymore. He knew nothing he said would convince you to tell Bucky how you felt, and he knew he couldn’t betray his best friend’s trust by divulging the fact that Bucky really had confessed his feelings for you before. He decided to let you be, gathering three more bottles of water before heading back to the pool.

The day passed almost identically to the one before it, and so did the next. It wasn’t until two o’clock in the morning on the third night of the heatwave that you felt a sudden change. You awoke abruptly, a shiver running down your spine as cool air blew through the open window and brushed across your bare skin. You frowned at the night sky before tiredly pulling your duvet up to your chin and falling back asleep.

By morning, the heat was well and truly gone. Clouds blanketed New York City, threatening to rain as they rolled angrily across the grey sky.

“I guess it’s back to work today, Avengers,” Tony said from behind his tablet.

Almost everyone was awake, crowded around the kitchen bench awaiting Clint’s famous French toast.

“What work?” Peter asked.

“Homework for you, kid,” Steve replied, earning an indignant frown from Peter.

You couldn’t help but giggle into your mug of coffee, before almost spraying it back out at the sight that then exited the elevator.

Bucky. Shirtless. Again.

You began to wonder what you had done to be so lucky, your heart thrumming against your rib cage so hard you worried that someone might hear it.

“Oh, my, Barnes,” Tony gasped, “you know it’s still in the A.M., right?”

Bucky simply rolled his tired eyes before slumping onto the lounge, mumbling, “Hungry.”

It wasn’t long before Clint served breakfast, everyone scoffing their food as if they hadn’t eaten in days, and soon after that, Peter dismissed himself for school and Tony and Bruce made their way to the lab.

“I think I need to get back into the gym today,” Clint sighed, stretching his arms above his head.

You sighed, “Same.”

“Bucky and I were planning on heading down there in the afternoon actually, we could do a group training session,” Steve said as he filled the sink, ready to wash everyone’s dishes.

“I’m in,” Natasha replied, “I was going to head into town for some groceries this morning, so the afternoon is better for me.”

“Yeah, alright,” Clint added, “Count me in.”

“Me too,” Sam said through his last mouthful of toast, “and obviously Y/N will be there too.”

You turned to him quickly, a frown already etched between your brows, “What the hell does that mean?”

He chuckled, “Steve said that he and Bucky were planning it, so obviously you-”

You elbowed him sharply in the gut before standing from your seat at the dining table and stomping over to the kitchen.

Natasha sighed, “You better be careful, Wilson, you’re playing with fire.”

“But it’s so obvious that they both like each other, why can’t they just fuck already.”

Steve’s ears turned red and Natasha laughed, but neither of them seemed to notice as Bucky finally made his way over from the living area.

“Who needs to fuck already?” he asked, brows knit.

“No one,” Steve answered quickly, “Tony wants help moving a new delivery, I said we’d help him out. Come on.”

He ushered the confused Bucky out of the room, but not before shooting daggers at Sam.

After breakfast you decided to go with Natasha into town. The compound was running low on a few things that Tony always forgot to add to the weekly grocery delivery, so you took your time shopping and chatting. It was nice to simply enjoy the feeling of not having sweat drip from every inch of your skin, though you couldn’t help mourning the sticky weather that would encourage Bucky to constantly walk around shirtless.

It was almost four o’clock when you finally changed into your workout gear and headed for the gym. Most of the team were already in there, and those that weren’t had kindly declined the offer of a group training session.

Steve, Sam, Tony, and Bucky were gathered around the sparring mats each taking turns at attacking the training dummy, while Clint was over by the weights alone. You quickly found Wanda and Natasha on the treadmills and decided to start there.

“Afternoon,” Wanda greeted you, her smile sweet as she swiped the sweat from her brow.

You grinned back, “Fancy seeing you out of your room.”

“I don’t do heat,” she said, “but Nat has just been telling me about how much you’ve been enjoying it.”

You tossed your gym towel at her, gasping, “Oh, shut up!”

The two red heads giggled, thankfully too amused to notice the way your eyes drifted across the gym to where Bucky was training.

After almost an hour on the treadmill, chatting idly about nothing in particular with Nat and Wanda, Steve called the team to attention. Everyone moved in from around the gym, forming a misshapen circle around the sparring mats that he and Clint had just hauled from the storage room.

“It’s a bit stuffy in here,” Sam said as he plopped down on the floor and began stretching his legs out in front of him, “is the air on, Tony?”

Tony, who was chugging half a bottle of water, simply shrugged and waved haphazardly at the control panel by the main entry doors.

“I’ll check it,” you offered before turning on your heel.

You tapped the screen and it came to life, but the display wasn’t the same as the one in your room. It had more options and dials for more variables than just the temperature, but on the top right of the screen was a little green button that you assumed meant it was on. You chose the dial that looked like it controlled the fan speed and turned it all the way up.

“All good, Y/N?” Steve called.

You nodded before hurrying back to the group, bending your right leg up to your buttocks in a quick stretch. Steve and Nat then took their positions in the middle of the circle and began demonstrating the fight sequences that they wanted the team to practice.

“Now partner up, pick a mat, and practice until you can do it as fast as you can,” Steve said, before looking directly at Sam, “without hurting each other.”

Sam sighed with exasperation as he turned to his partner, Bucky. You turned to Wanda while Nat joined Clint on a mat and Tony stepped up to where Steve was. Each pair started slowly mimicking the moves that had just been demonstrated.

“It is hot in here,” Wanda said, her breath heavy as she ducked your fist.

You simply nodded, too focused on your movements to be able to speak.

Grunts, huffs, and the thud of heavy feet on the vinyl mats echoed throughout the gym for fifteen minutes before Steve called a break. You practically dove for your water bottle, only to choke on the first mouthful of water when Bucky yanked his sweat-soaked shirt over his head. Wanda caught your eye, giggling as you spluttered.

“I thought the heatwave was over,” Clint said.

Tony nodded, “It is, I think the air-con is playing up.”

“It’s broken?” Wanda gasped.

He shrugged, opening his mouth to respond but stopping when Steve spoke first, “Alright, enough chatting, let’s get back into it.”

Over the next thirty minutes, Wanda’s fist made contact with your shoulder, your abdomen, and almost your jaw if she hadn’t quickly noticed that you were too distracted to block her swing. Her foot then collided with your hip twice before she finally gave in on trying to get your attention.

Your eyes were glossed over and glued to the super soldier duelling Sam. His exposed skin glistened with sweat, muscles rippling under taught, alabaster skin. His stare was hard, eyes almost grey as they narrowed on every move that Sam made. Your palms began to sweat, knees wobbling as you watched his tongue swipe quickly across his pink lips.

“Y/N!” Wanda snapped, her fingers gripping your chin and forcing you to face her, “focus.”

“Shit, sorry,” you muttered.

You raised your shaky hands, trying to block out the shirtless man still in your peripheral vision.

By the time Steve called the training session to an end, the air was almost as dense as the storm clouds outside. Everyone was soaked in their own sweat, hair clinging to sticky skin and muscles beneath burning from use.

“I swear to God, Tony,” Wanda said as she draped her towel over her shoulder, “if the air-con is broken, I’m not going to let you sleep until it’s fixed.”

He chuckled, fingers already moving swiftly across the tablet in his lap, “It’s not broken.”

“Then what the fuck is this?” Sam exclaimed, arms gesturing wildly toward the gym’s huge windows that were completely veiled in condensation.

Tony nodded toward you, “Y/N turned the temperature up instead of down.”

Heat blossomed in your chest, crawling up your neck and to the tips of your ears. Every pair of eyes landed on you, a mixture of irritation and amusement etched across the faces of your teammates.

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled, “I got confused.”

Most of the group simply chuckled or shrugged, collecting their things and heading for the door, but Sam took his time. The devilish smirk adorning his lips made your pulse begin to race.

“Far out, Y/N,” he said, “you didn’t have to torture all of us just to get Barnes to take his clothes off.”

Your eyes went wide, brows shooting up toward your hairline as every coherent thought left your head. Your heart pounded deafeningly in your ears.

The team was suddenly silent, those closest to the door hurrying out and the rest quickly rushing after them. Wanda stuck her elbow into Sam’s side before dragging him out by his shirt collar.

Bucky remained, paralysed feet still glued to the ground as he quickly tried to catch up on what had just happened.

“Sam was just joking,” you finally managed to speak, “he’s an arse.”

Bucky blinked slowly, “Yeah… such an arse.”

You nodded, mouth dry as you tried to swallow the lump in your throat, “Okay, well, I’ve got to-”

“He is an arse,” Bucky interrupted you, blue eyes wide with curiosity, “but he doesn’t usually lie.”

You didn’t know what to say, your nervous fingers tangling behind your back. His stare was heavy, pressing down on your shoulders and holding you still as he slowly stepped closer.

“Do you like me?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course I like you, Buck, you’re-”

“No,” one last step and his breath fanned the exposed skin of your neck, “do you-”

This time, it was your turn to interrupt. Every bit of pent-up tension and suppressed desire propelled you toward him, coming up onto the balls of your feet and wrapping your arms around his broad shoulders. Your lips crashed into his, so hard you might have worried about bruising them if the thought of a mark left by Bucky wasn’t so thrilling.

He hesitated only for a moment before his hands found your waist, practically lifting you off the ground and squashing your body against his. Your fingers tangled in his hair as his tongue glided across your bottom lip, begging for entry. A low, almost feral growl rumbled up from his chest once you allowed him in, tongues clashing.

You only parted when breath became absolutely necessary, your lungs burning for air. He let you back onto your own feet, though his strong arms stayed wound around your waist.

“Um, yeah,” you said between gulps of air, “I really like you, Buck.”

He chuckled, “Well, that’s a relief because I really like you too.”

He pressed his lips to yours once more before pulling away completely and wrapping his gym towel around his shoulders.

“I need a shower,” he said, taking your hand in his and tugging you toward the door, “and it’s your turn to take your clothes off now.”

END.

184 notes · View notes

deniigi · 4 years

Note

my supervisor fucked me over with all my other coworkers present. can I request a one shot from you to cheer me up featuring Sammy?

Did I give y’all the fic about the hotpot?

Well if I didn’t, I’m giving it to you now.

Title: hotpot

Summary: Ganke checks the comments for the Blindspot comic daily and there’s this one asshole anon who keeps talking shit about BT.

The Blindspot comic went live in the fall and Ganke couldn’t stop checking the hit count every five seconds. All night there had only been ten hits.

He told himself not to be disappointed. The only person who really mattered had read and loved the comic.

Miles said that BT had even forced everyone on the team to read an abridged version of Journey to the West, and had gone as far as to make a quiz to determine everyone’s character.

Miles refused to disclose who he’d gotten.

BT had clearly rigged the game to make himself Sun Wukong and Ganke was proud of him.

That kind of enthusiasm was exactly what he’d been hoping for, anything else now was just icing on the cake.

Even though it would be cool if it wasn’t just BT reading his own comics.

That would be pretty cool, right? Like. If people online all started reading BT’s comic. That would be sort of amazing.

Kind of excellent.

Definitely worthy of an A+ and double pats on the back.

Right?

The hit counter didn’t think so. But hey, five more people had opened the page since last night. That was something, wasn’t it?

MM: dude why not just ask Sam to tweet out the link?

How dare you, Miles Morales.

How dare you waltz into this place with logical thought.

GL: I can’t do that. That’s like. Idk. Inflating the views.

MM: okay yeah explain to me how appealing to the person in control of the largest part of his own fandom is inflating the views

GL: I see your logic and I’m banishing it

MM: I’m messaging him

GL: DON’T

MM: too late

MM: he says ‘gimme link’

GL: asdksjsjdks

@blindspot: hi I know y’all can’t get enough of me to the point of asking shockingly invasive questions and for you I say good news! Some amazing folks have gone through the trouble of making a Blindspot comic. it’s good guys check it out [link]

It helped.

A lot.

It helped a lot.

People, on the whole, had great things to say. The panels were screenshotted and tagged and sent all over social media and even though Miles was pretending to be chill and aloof about the whole thing, Ganke could imagine him smiling big and bright and white at his phone non-stop.

Mom and Auntie saw a few of the bits on Twitter and tittered over them in the kitchen like pigeons.

The pride rose like a wave. Ganke kept waiting for the crash.

It came two days later in the form of a comment that read ‘Christ, look at all this fuss. BT is fine. I hate his brother.’

It felt like someone punching the wind out of Ganke’s lungs.

He took comfort in the handful of people who leapt in to shout down the commenter. They emphasized that if the anonymous commenter didn’t like the story or the characters, then they didn’t have to read it and they, especially, didn’t have to say anything about it.

Ganke appreciated those guys. He got the feeling that a lot of the people on there knew that the whole thing had been done but a couple of kids.

Not that Anon cared.

Anon replied to all these comments ‘No, I’m gonna keep reading, thanks. Anyways, the brother is lame. The smart part is cool, but why’s it always gotta be a guy?’

The part that haunted Ganke even after he’d shut his laptop and had gone to stick his head out the window for some big breaths of cleansing air was that Anon was kind of right.

GL: should we have made Guotin’s brother a sister?

MM: no

GL: why not?

MM: cause BT’s always wanted a brother

Oh.

Okay. Then it was fine?

MM: yeah man ignore them. it’s chill.

GL: k thanks my ego is huge and fragile

MM: trust me I know

Asshole. Fine, moving right along.

It didn’t stop. Anon commented on every page. Every. Single. Page.

Ganke didn’t know what to do or say. On the one hand, clearly this person was dedicated and deeply engaged with the comic, on the other hand, they needed a Rude Alert button. Ganke wondered if Ned could code one for them and them only.

The latest of their fury was directed at the big reveal in the second issue—BT’s face.

Having now met Sam, BT, Blindspot, Ganke’s whole image of him had changed.

He was not conventionally attractive as far as like, K-Pop idols and famous Chinese dudes went. His eyes were puffy and narrow and his face was round everywhere but the jaw. He leaned more towards ‘cute’ than ‘sexy,’ which Ganke sort of loved about him.

He was friendly. Stressed and grumpy and feisty as hell, yeah, but first and foremost friendly.

Miles claimed that he called it his ‘number one asset in employability.’ Which was wild because hello, Blindspot.

Obviously, BT couldn’t help his face. But Miles and Ganke could help Guotin’s.

Ganke had sent Miles about fifteen different images of Chinese celebrities and had told him to do his worst. They’d reviewed the final few drafts and had picked one that was most like a young Chen Kun. His face was more oval-shaped than BT’s. His chin and lips were slimmer but more defined. He was pretty, but not so pretty as to be called ‘feminine,’ which Ganke thought was a solid compromise between ‘handsome as sin’ and ‘looks like he’s got a quirky sense of humor.’

Anon hated him.

Anon thought that he looked like an idol, and they were not here for it.

They told ‘the artist’ to give him a mole or something, anything to make him look ‘less pristine. God, I can smell him from here and he smells like Dior and staph habitat.’

Ganke had to look up what a staph infection was. He regretted it. He asked Miles if they should censor Anon.

Miles said ‘mmmmm, idk it’s not like they aren’t saying anything that isn’t true.’

Ganke resented that. Clearly this was defamation of BT. This person hated him and was taking their feeling out on the comic.

MM: I mean yeah but it’s not like they’re talking about the comic, man. They’re talking about the style and like, thinking about it, a mole or smth to help you tell him apart from other folks would kind of be helpful. Like, especially if we ever put him in a crowd, you know?

HHHHHH.

Fine.

Anon could stay. But they were on thin ice.

It was hard not to be bitter about Anon’s comments, especially when they arrived daily, as though Anon knew exactly what they were doing and which page they’d left off at. They couldn’t possibly be reading the comic one page at a time, this was intentional.

Ganke’s jaw hurt from all the tooth grinding he’d endured as of late.

This latest one read ‘yo, has BT ever mentioned fighting with a sword? I don’t recall him mentioning. Someone should take that thing away from him before someone loses an eye—or maybe even two.’

That felt like a pointed jibe.

That turned the churning irritation in Ganke’s gut into something much, much colder.

Did Anon know about BT’s black and blue eyes? How could they know? Was it a coincidence? It seemed to be more than a coincidence.

The pile of critiques was growing bigger and bigger, and now that Ganke thought about it, they all seemed to take issue with things that didn’t match the real Blindspot’s personality.

It was as if they knew him.

GL: miles did you read the new comment from AnonTheAsshole?

MM: lol yeah

GL: tell me if I’m talking out my ass or whatever but like

GL: you don’t think they could be Muse, could they?

Silence.

MM: oh no

Yeah. Fuck.

MM: chances are low.

GL: they know so much tho??

MM: might be stalker? Maybe someone who’s over-invested in BT’s social media pages?

GL: maybe.

MM: hold on let me ask Spidey to screen it

GL: does he know Muse?

MM: no, but he’s paranoid and he’ll get Wade to be paranoid with him, and then they can decide whether its worth giving to DD for verification. He knows Muse.

Ganke’s head was spinning. His fingers shook with guilt and the thought of Muse’s pale body hunched over a secret, cracked cell phone in a high security prison who knew where.

In Ganke’s head, he smiled wider and wider, until the skin on his cheeks cracked. He dug out scraps of paper and redrew Blindspot—Sam—with gaping holes for eyes and a screaming mouth and he drew dismembered corpses in black lakes and he laughed.

He just kept laughing.

MM: hey ganke

MM: it’s going to be okay. It’s just a comic. I’m sure AnonTheAsshole is a stalker. They’re not threatening anyone.

MM: Sam can deal with a stalker. And we can too, okay?

There was a reason that Miles was a hero. Ganke wiped at his eyes and swallowed.

GL: okay. Thanks for doing that.

MM: 👍🏾

It took a few hours because Spidey and Deadpool had lives outside of being Spidey and Deadpool, but not so long that Ganke ran out of nails to chew.

Miles messaged him back and said that Spidey had read through everything and ‘escalated it.’ This meant that whatever he’d seen had caused him enough concern to take it to DP.

Miles said that he’d get back to Ganke with DP’s verdict as soon as he had it. In the meantime, he’d run the comments by the other Spideypeople and they thought that it most likely wasn’t malevolent but was maybe something to keep an eye on in the meantime. He tacked onto all, somewhat stiltedly, that he had a weird feeling all of the sudden. The pink Spidey’s tone had changed. She’d shut down and gone cagey, which allegedly wasn’t like her at all. Then she’d told the taller guy to DM her and they’d vanished from the chat. Miles wasn’t sure what was going on there or if maybe they knew something about stuff going on that he didn’t, but he wasn’t super comfortable with it.

GL: crossing my fingers its nothing?

MM: same man, same.

DP escalated it.

Ganke couldn’t stay still in his room. There was no comfortable place to sit or stand or lay. There was nothing to do that would make him stop thinking about everything.

MM: It’s gonna be fine, man, DD always knows what to do.

Miles kept saying that for every step of the way, and yet here they were. Double escalated. Ganke wasn’t so sure he even knew what was happening anymore.

That was scary. Miles was supposed to be part of the in-crowd.

MM: Wade doesn’t think it’s anything that can’t be nipped in the bud.

That was easy for a contract assassin to say, wasn’t it?

MM: he says that you and I are fine. Doesn’t see any links there. Waiting on DD for confirmation of tone.

Hurry up, Daredevil. Your apprentice’s life might be about to take a nosedive into a heap of trash.

Two hours. One text.

MM: >:/

Ganke couldn’t contain the bubble of laughter.

GL: good news?

MM: [image]

He opened it.

SC: HANNAH YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE. STOP BEING A BITCH ON MAIN

HC: You can’t tell me what to do

SC: I CAN

HC: Mom he’s being MEAN

SC: Mom she’s scaring children online

HC: I scare children everywhere I go why are these ones special???

SC: Because I said so

HC: that doesn’t fucking work Samuel you’re not her

SC: I am your older brother

SC: your ELDEST brother

HC: YOU AINT SHIT

SC: THEY DON’T COUNT

SC: HALFSIES COUNT

What.

MM: so.

MM: she’s not Muse.

MM: Red’s laughing his ass off at all of us for taking this to a level three

GL: wait I don’t understand

MM: Hannah is Sam’s little sister. She’s found a new hobby in our website.

Blindspot’s little sister was reading the comic??? Holy shit.

GL: she hates him?

MM: no I’ve been informed that they would literally commit murder for each other but this is how they express love.

No way. Siblings were wild.

GL: so we’re good?

MM: [image]

SC: apologize 🔪

HC: eat my ass

SC: apologize or else

HC: or else what? You gonna come in here and sit on me? Huh? Huh????

SC: I know your email password. All 3 you cycle through. What was his name? Uuuuuuuuuh Jing?

HC: you fucking bastard

SC: Hi Jing, it’s me, Hannah. I’ve been in mad crush with you since sophomore year. Please notice me senpai 😖

HC: Die

SC: kill me

HC: I will.

The giggles that came this time were a mix of relief and genuine intrigue. This lady read the comic every day. She took the time to scroll through pictures of her brother being an absolute lunatic and fighting with a huge monkey. Then she hopped into that comment box and took him—not Miles, not Ganke, specifically Blindspot--down a peg.

She must miss him a lot. Ganke wondered if this was her way of keeping him in her thoughts.

MM: I don’t think we’re getting a sorry, man. DD says Sam’s been at this all morning and has been tricked into apologizing himself twice

GL: so you’re saying that she’s an evil genius

MM: idk but she’s def Sam’s main nemesis. I always thought that older siblings got like, rights or something over younger ones, but idk anymore. Angel says this is normal.

GL: do you think she misses him?

Miles took a long time to respond.

MM: yeah

Yeah, Ganke thought so, too.

GL: should we change Guo tin’s brother’s name to ‘hamish?’

MM: ASDLDSDSFKdsjf

MM: one moment.

MM: sam says yes. Hannah says that she thinks our comic is shit and we need to draw everything uglier

GL: she’s kind of funny

MM: 👀perhaps she would like to be a consultant?

GL: 👀👀👀👀

MM: brb asking

MM: sam says no. Hannah says she’s got better things to do than proofread comics on the internet. She’s also not sorry. She wants that to be clear. DD says that the conversation has moved from English to Chinese and to maybe duck and cover for now. He says all is good tho. Thanks for checking in.

MM: Muse doesn’t use punctuation and talks in riddles, so if we get any of that, we’re supposed to send it to DP right away.

Oh, nice. That was a relief.

MM: oh

MM: sam wants to put us in a chat. Can I give him your number?

Uh, only if he wanted Ganke to hyperventilate.

GL: sure

[GL has been added to a Secure Chat]

It was a page of characters and emojis that were somehow more menacing than Ganke had ever seen them before. Miles popped a little waving hand into the fray, as though testing the waters, but the characters just carried on scrawling around it.

Ganke wasn’t quite sure what to do.

GL: hi? Are y’all okay?

There was finally a pause. Then a few shorter lines of characters. And then finally, Blindspot switched from Chinese to English.

SC: yes we’re FINE. We’re GREAT. Aren’t we, sibling from hell?

HC: who’re you? Why are you in our family chat? This is a family only zone, can’t you read?

SC: God Hannah he’s Korean don’t be a dick

HC: I can’t not be I learned it from you

SC: fair but pretend in the face of company

HC: okay fine. Hello losers.

MM: adksadfadsdfldfsldf

MM: hi

GL: hi?

SC: go on

HC: UGH

HC: fine

HC: I didn’t mean to shit talk your creation. Only my brother.

SC: also a sin, we’ll get to that later

HC: no one cares about you Samuel, stop spreading lies

SC: you first. We both know this is no lie, my white dad cares about me a whole lot

HC: well we can’t all have white dads now can we

SC: don’t be jealous

MM: lol you really call Matt your white dad??

HC: who is this person and how do they know our mutual parent’s name?

SC: this is not a mutual parent situation how many times have we been through this. He’s mine. Get your own.

MM: hi! 👋🏾I’m Bitsy! Spidey no. 4

GL: I’m his friend. He draws the comic. I write it.

HC: oh. nerd children x2

HC: anyways yeah Matt is our dad

SC: ffs

MM: he’s sort of dadly ig.

HC: ?? oho

SC: mind your face. Think about your face. Think about how much you like your face.

HC: little spider, did you not hear?

SC: kay everyone out. We’re done here

MM: hear what?

HC: lol Sammy you didn’t tell them about how Matthew Mcconaughey adopted you in all ways but paperwork?

Ganke held his phone away from his face as far as it would go.

MM: …wait are you for real?

SC: no. okay out.

HC: awwww Sammy so shy now. What are you embarrassed about? It’s cute.

SC: Hannah literally shut up I’m not playing

HC: damn okay sorry

MM: can I be honest?

SC: no

MM: I’m going to be anyways: I think we all sorta knew.

SC: …

HC: right?

SC: what does that even mean?

MM: idk, it just felt right, you know? You two are always fussing at each other and red lost his shit that time you got shot. He doesn’t treat you the way he treats the rest of us and we’re his teammates. He doesn’t even treat spidey like he treats you. So like, yeah. It fits.

MM: I’m really happy for you guys.

MM: is there a reason it’s a secret?

Ganke eased himself back down onto the mattress. This was real. This was like, actual, real information. Something that he and like, four other people in the world now knew.

He kind of wanted to forget it. It didn’t feel right to know.

SC: I dunno.

HC: if sam has an honest emotion towards anything he has to calculate its weight so he can make space for it in his collection of satellites.

MM: wh

SC: you’re so not funny.

HC: it’s called emotional repression, darling. It’s all the rage in this family.

MM: oh

MM: so that’s why you and Red get on so well

SC: HHHHHHH

HC: HA

SC: okay but listen his is different, I’ve only seen him cry at his wedding. I cry at least 4 times a week. Obviously under the bed, but that can’t be emotional repression. That’s expression. That’s clearly expression

HC: I can make the old man cry watch me

SC: please don’t I’ll die

MM: awwwww

SC: shut up it doesn’t even matter.

MM: AWWWWWW

SC: LEAVE ALREADY

MM: no I like it here. I want to hear you talk about how much you love your white dad

SC: I don’t. He loves me. I’m fine with this because it results in food, shelter, and continued employment.

HC: uh huh

SC: I’m using him

HC: yeah because you’re like the most manipulative person I know.

SC: thank you

HC: /sarcasm

SC: I know I ignored it.

MM: so wait why do you actually pretend like you hate him tho?

SC: wh

SC: what the fuck am I supposed to do? Just go on up for a cuddle? Have you met Matt? The second someone starts crying, he finds trash to take out to the bins. Hell no. Life is easier for everyone if I stab him with a stick and he kicks my ass in training. It’s fine.

HC: Sam is learning how to be a Manly Man. This is step one.

SC: I’m plenty manly

HC: you’re what mom imagined as manly

SC: which is perfect. That’s all I need.

HC: mama’s boy

SC: must suck to suck, no one’s kid.

Wow. Ganke had never been more glad that he didn’t have a sister.

GL: That’s kind of cool, though.

GL: that you and DD are close like that I mean.

GL: Its different from all the other mentor/mentee superheroes we see who like, sort of hate each other.

SC: wh

SC: OH. you mean Peter and Kate. Peter doesn’t actually hate Stark, fyi. And Kate calls Hawkeye the Old bi-weekly to make sure he’s still breathing. It’s actually pretty normal.

MM: he doesn’t mean like that Sam. I mean, like those guys don’t associate with their Olds now that they’re grown up and stuff, but you and DD stick together. It’s like you’re family.

MM: and that’s super cool. Idk if Spidey would ever consider me family. I don’t think he wants that for us.

SC: I?

SC: oh shit

HC: CLARITY ON THIS FINE DAY. What was your name again, tiny spider?

MM: miles

HC: PRAISE BE TO MILES

HC: AN EMOTION WAS HAD

SC: get fucked

HC: An epiphany was obtained!

SC: would you shut up

HC: Something has finally permeated that non-porous, two-inch thick skull of my esteemed eldest brother

SC: I’m your only brother

HC: you’re not

SC: they don’t fucking count

HC: now will you FINALLY invite our mutual dad to hotpot?

SC: Hannah he doesn’t want to come to hot pot we’ve talked about this. it’s too spicy for him.

HC: I’ll make it 1/3 less spicy

SC: that’s still too spicy

HC: I’ll make it 2/5 less spicy

SC: 3/5

HC: listen

HC: I have all this fucking equipment that SOMEONE left here callously

MM: what’s hotpot?

SC: 👀

HC: 👀

GL: 👀

SC: well fuck

HC: EYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

GL: have we never taken you with us for hotpot???

MM: no?? is this the sticks?

HC: can be. Where do you live?

SC: Hannah no

HC: Hannah yes. We’ll make one here. You’ll make one there.

SC: do you know how much shit I’ll have to buy? Where are we gonna put it?

HC: this wouldn’t be a problem if you’d taken your goddamn inheritance with you to SF

SC: HHHHHH

MM: you guys are actually being serious?

HC: I am. I am here all on my lonesome. Abandoned by my only kin. I require enrichment.

SC: try doing your fucking homework

HC: did anyone hear something?

MM: lololololol I like you

HC: 😊

SC: wh

SC: oh no. No no no.

SC: you two don’t get to be friends

HC: come here bb pspspspspspsps

MM: I’m here

HC: got ‘im. Let’s have hotpot. Sammy send me resippy. We’ll do it together over video so I don’t fuck it up.

SC: I’ve got to go. This has been traumatizing.

HC: byeeeeeeeeeeee

HC: is he gone? Hell yeah, he’s gone.

HC: hey thanks for making that comic thing. It’s hella rad. He loves it. Mom used to call him Monkey when he was little.

GL: omg aw

HC: ikr? P cute. He misses her a lot so I think it brought back good memories. Anyways, I’m actually going to make hotpot. Come over and have some with me, it’s more fun with more people.

MM: you’re not joking

HC: nope, it’s been ages since your whole team has gotten together, right? Ask them to do it. I’m a shit cook, but Sam’ll show us how not to screw it up. And he’s playin’, he’s totally down to hang out with us. We never had more than three people. It’ll be new. Exciting. Enriching even.

MM: are you secretly a nice person, Hannah?

HC: the fuck do you mean ‘secret’??? I’m a delight.

MM: Okay I’ll ask the team and my mom

MM: ganke?

HC: 👀

That—

Sounded kind of nice?

GL: I’ll ask my mom.

HC: nice. You can tell them that it’s a friends dinner or whatever. Idc. I promise I’m not going to kidnap and murder you. I’ve got like, class and work and shit. I don’t have time for that.

MM: 👍🏾

GL: 👍🏼

HC: great here I’ll message you my number. This is legit our sibs chat so Sam’ll freak if you’re still here when he gets back.

MM: thank you! And sorry for thinking you were muse!!

GL: yeah that too

HC: lol np ttyl

That…had really just happened, hadn’t it?

Ganke needed to sit down even though he was already sitting down.

GL: they’re so nice???

MM: ikr?

GL: are you actually going to ask your mom?

MM: Im gonna ask BT if its cool first. Then yeah. Why not? Our team really hasn’t gotten together in a minute. Everyone’s been super busy. It would be a nice change of pace, and if everyone brings smth then Hannah doesn’t have to pay for anything.

MM: ah, Sam says it’s okay. He says sorry his sister is weird and that he’ll make sure she doesn’t poison us.

GL: I kind of love her

MM: same

MM: okay will check in with the others. Talk to you later.

GL: yeah see you later

Damn, at this rate, Ganke’s family was going to triple in size, and all thanks to a comic.

Before he left for downstairs, he made a note to make Guo tin’s brother snarkier.

#fic #inimitable verse #blindspot #samuel chung #miles morales #ganke lee

189 notes · View notes

shatouto · 4 years

Note

I.Raised as sith Anakin au asdfghjkl I actually cried at some parts when obiwan was treating his injuries. T-T “I always looked at you like this… should I not?” …. My poor (criminal) child has a lot to learn. I wanna go down the angst road but I’ll never find my way back so let me just go the opposite direction because I feel like ani will short circuit everytime obiwan shows him any positive reaction/emotion that he can’t recognize...

aaaAAHH thank you SO MUCH for these asks, i am so so so happy that you like this super self-indulgent au (at least on my side). writing a very needie babie woobie ex-sith anakin is one of my biggest guilty pleasures, so i am always super grateful when people join in. i LOVE anakin and ahsoka bonding with that sibling rivalry. im not super good with ahsoka so i’ll probably leave that to @obiwanobi; for the time being i will go feral over the idea of anakin not knowing how to read ;;O;;

lost lonely loth-wolf

It’s not just boredom that scratches at Anakin’s bones from the inside; it’s idleness. Under Darth Sidious’s care (for want of a better word), he must always make himself useful, be it training or killing. No waking moment should be wasted; he should spend every of them on bettering himself in combat and commanding. He must always convince his Master not to doubt his worth, lest he be cast back into slavery again. Idleness is but the short-lived quiet before storm.

Having nothing to do makes his old scars ache.

It borders on astonishing him how the Jedi can afford themselves so many luxuries. Music halls, corridor murals, gardens, so many gardens. Not that he has seen all of them; he only saw glimpses from under his hood, whenever Obi-Wan takes him by the hand and walks him through the Temple to get to the hangar, for their nightly trips in the park. He’s no stranger odious displays of wealth, but the Temple is not odious, and that is hardly wealth. Everything looks simple and… soothing, somehow. The Jedi seems not wealthy, but rich.

The thing they are the richest with, is books. Loads and loads of them, along with datatapes and datacards. Anakin hasn’t been to the Archives, but he has heard the apprentice (Ahsoka, she has a name) talking about it. There are datatapes in Obi-Wan’s quarters as well. Obi-Wan can often be found poring over his datapad with one of those tapes plugged in, quiet and serene and glowing at the edges, backlit by the late orange sun. There’s always a lock of hair falling over his forehead. Anakin can’t recall how many times he has had to stop himself from reaching over to brush it back in place.

“Anakin.” Obi-Wan’s voice stirs him out of his reverie. Their eyes meet, and Obi-Wan smiles a little. Anakin’s face heats up, which he promptly ignores. “What are you looking at?”

You, the true answer. Obi-Wan did tell him not to stare, though, so Anakin shrugs and drops his gaze to the glowing device on Obi-Wan’s lap. Obi-Wan, in turn, rests a warm hand on his shoulder.

“You can read anything on those shelves, you know.” He gestures towards the bookcase in the living room. “They’re all my favorite novels. The bottom shelf is younglings’ stories, and I still enjoy them greatly. Ahsoka leaves her comics lying around often, in which case you are perfectly in the right to read them as well. Force knows how many times I have told her to tidy—”

“I hate reading.”

Silence shatters upon them. Anakin scowls deeply, biting the inside of his cheeks. Books are written to corrupt you with lies. The majority of them are but garbage. There’s no need to busy yourself with those things, no need to wade through messy pages of drivels composed by Force-blind loudmouths, when your Master can dispense true wisdom to you. Your Master has great plans for you, so great that you needn’t burden your mind with trivia. So Anakin doesn’t read.

Nobody ever taught him to.

Obi-Wan gives a dismayed little “Oh.” Anakin rises to his feet and escapes to the fresher, as reluctant as he is to leave his warmed seat.

He shouldn’t have said that. At least not in that harsh manner. Night after night Anakin can’t sleep without seeing Obi-Wan’s face: his upturned brows, his downturned lips, his eyes wide in surprise. They never truly speak of it again, because that is how Obi-Wan is: if Anakin refuses something, Obi-Wan will simply let him be.

Obi-Wan leaves on a mission once more. Day after day Anakin passes by the bookcase in the living room, eyes sweeping over the datapads, fingers itching to pull one out - just to look at the pictures if there are any. He could now, right? There are no eyes looking over his shoulders anymore. No Master to sneer at him, call him a silly boy, and order him to go to meditate in the Sphere.

It takes Anakin another day to make up his mind. He picks a nice moment into the evening, after he has had his one meal of the day (the way he eats when he is alone), and crouches before the bookcase. He could have taken one of Ahsoka’s comics, but his eyes keep getting drawn towards the bottom shelf. Younglings’ stories, Obi-Wan said.

Anakin plucks out a datatape with a lilac casing, and takes the datapad left free for use on the other end of the shelf. He settles on the couch, something like excitement brewing in his belly as he plugs the tape into the datapad. The screen lights up in its familiar cyan glow. The cover page is a beautifully drawn illustration of a Loth-wolf under a great tree. He taps through the pages until he reaches the other illustrations. The Loth-wolf is depicted in various sceneries: in its den, between the trees, atop a boulder, under the starlight, and there never seems to be any other being around, beast or sentient. It feels wrong to him, so he keeps tapping to go through the pages. There has to be at least a scene where the Loth-wolf is with its pack, doesn’t it?

The main door slides open, and Anakin almost drops the datapad. He snaps his gaze up to find Obi-Wan staring back at him. Whatever expression Obi-Wan is wearing, Anakin can’t afford to study it for so long. He rises to his feet, fumbling to unplug the datatape from the device with just one hand and the Force.

“Oh, is this The Lonely Lost Loth-wolf?” Obi-Wan says with utter delight, his hand gently covering Anakin’s. “I hope you’ve been enjoying it, Anakin. This is one of my most-read books yet.”

“I…” Anakin struggles. He’s hot in the face and tongue-tied and his eyes flit over their nearly entwined hands in the bluish light from the screen. He dreads the moment Obi-Wan asks, I thought you didn’t like to read? - something he’s bound to do. Mockingly, maybe. The truth perches on the tip of Anakin’s tongue; what would Obi-Wan think of him if he says it? Even younglings a quarter of his age know how to read.

But Obi-Wan asks no such thing.

“What a strange coincidence; I’ve been meaning to reread this story,” the Jedi Master tells him with a gentle smile. “I would be loath to fight you for the datatape, though. I think we’ve had enough of fighting for a lifetime.” Humor twinkles in his eyes, and Anakin blinks, stumped. “So how about we share this?”

“Uh… Yes?” Anakin lets go of the datapad, now that Obi-Wan has a hold on it. “How?”

“Well, I would like to read to you, if that’s alright with you.” Obi-Wan squeezes his hand lightly. “I do prefer to take it from the beginning - it’s been a while since I read this last - unless you…”

“No,” Anakin says immediately. “I—Yes. Yes, I… want to hear it from the beginning.”

Obi-Wan changes into something soft, and insists Anakin settle in bed for comfort, just for the night. (To be truthful, Anakin would settle in bed with him every night if he could bring himself to.) It’s reminiscent of his first night here, only with a lot less blood and a lot more tenderness.

There was a time when Lothal was made of forests. There were more beasts than men, and among the beasts, the wolves were the strongest, wisest, most respected of them all. There were two Loth-wolf clans: the blue-eyed, and the golden-eyed. They did not always like each other. On the night the first daughter of the blue-eyed clan was born, the golden-eyed wolves hatched a plan…

Obi-Wan’s voice pours like velvet, smooth and warm with the occasional sparkles in his melodic lilts. Anakin’s eyes droop; he strains to open them as the kidnapped Loth-wolf princess begins her journey to travel back from the swamp land, to find her family and restore peace in the realm. At some point, he finds great, pooling-blue eyes looking down at him, and ashen fur with markings like the stars. A calloused hand runs through his hair.

The stars blink at him, and Anakin smiles as he drifts into the softest darkness.

#ask #prompt #blueara #raised as sith anakin #always a sith anakin #obikin #oh god my baby #this is such pure fluff

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katytheinspiredworkaholic · 3 years

Text

Dog Days, Chapter 05

Pairing: Moreid (side pairings: temporary Morgan/Savannah)

Summary: An Unrequited!Love/Dog-Sitting fic disguised as a Holiday fic. Everyone knows that the myth of ‘The Reid Effect’ has been debunked when it comes to babies and children, but interactions with dogs still leaves much to be desired. That is, until Reid finally happens to meet Morgan’s dog – Clooney. Turns out, most dogs might dislike the young doctor, but Clooney is absolutely enamored with him. Will not leave his side, begging for attention, and Morgan can’t help but see the opportunity for what it is: a chance to help Reid past his fear of dogs (because his dog is the best and what’s not to love?), while he gets a prospectfully new dog sitter as he travels to Chicago to visit family for the holidays. And Spencer is terrified of this dog, but still says yes in the face of Morgan’s earnest request. Because Dr. Spencer Reid has been silently in love with his best friend for many years, and despite his every attempt to move past it – how could he ever deny him anything? Even looking after his giant, wolf-like dog.

Rating: Mature

Chapter CW/notes: More angst and sadness, and a lot of talk about weather-proofing and home improvement activities so I hope it’s not boring. These boys are so dumb. I adore them.

Word Count: 4,113

Masterpost Link

Ao3 Link

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Chapter 05

–

-3 Days Remaining-

—

At first, things are fine. Spencer hates the word fine: an informal adverb made common by slang, it even appears in dictionaries in this manner. Claiming to mean 'satisfactory or pleasing in manner' when, in reality, it's always used to mask a whole slew of emotions that mean anything but. Things go fine, as in there is nothing displeasing about the experience, nothing to complain about, and yet he can't say for certain if he's enjoying himself even when he thinks he might be. It doesn't feel right. There's something off, something missing, and his very circumstances mean that he can't allow himself to think about what exactly that 'something' is.

Even when his particular 'something' is texting and calling him at a near constant rate.

Which is fine. Everything is fine. If Spencer had to be snowed in anywhere in the city, Derek Morgan's newly refurbished townhouse was certainly nothing for him to snub his nose at. It's comfortable, well stocked, and organized purely because everything is still half in boxes. And Morgan messages him multiple times a day, telling him about something that came to mind that Spencer might want or enjoy or need or just to… see how he is. How Clooney is. At first it's a lot about his dog, but more and more the queries are about Spencer, who can't help but think there must be much better things the older man could be doing with his vacation time. He knows his mother and aunts have put him to work around their homes, since he's there for a week, and of course Derek would gladly accept every task. It encompasses two of his favorite activities: home improvement, and helping people he cares about.

The way that man loves is enough to send Spencer into heart palpitations that hurt far more than they should.

As the days and hours tick by, Spencer also acclimates to Clooney nearly entirely. The overlarge dog is underfoot practically at all times, follows him from room to room, except for the few times he lets him outside in the small back courtyard. Or the one or two times they brave the weather together and venture down the stoop steps to wade through the snow on a walk. The air outside is always crisp and clean and bright despite the overcast sky, the street quiet and vacant with nothing but the resonating hum of falling snow. They usually end up soaked to the bone from the snow, and have to spend the rest of the day by the fire to dry off and warm up, but Clooney getting to bound through the piled up snow drifts and run off energy in the way he was best bred to do really does make the whole experience worth it.

Morgan demands video at one point, because he's never gotten to see his dog running through two feet of snow, and although it takes Spencer quite a few tries with his phone he does manage to do so. The video itself starting with him pointing it the wrong direction, a cold flushed image of himself with flurries of snow caught in his hair and scarf until he gets the camera flipped around. Clooney literally disappears into a snowbank on the street and then reappears coated in the light flakes, galloping backwards and forwards with his leash trailing behind him. Spencer now trusts the dog not to run off on him again, they've done this so many times, and if he ever gets too far just a quick call of his name has the dog trotting back to him faithfully. He's never had anyone listen to him so obediently or attentively about anything, so it still astounds him that the canine (who could definitely outrun him) listens to his every command.

Morgan doesn't ask for any more videos than that, but does thank Spencer for it the next time they do a Skype call – claiming he wants to see Clooney and know how they are doing – and from somewhere in the background one of his sisters (Desiree, Spencer thinks) says he's watched it about a hundred times. Spencer highly doubts that is the specific number, but it makes him laugh. He knows Morgan is just calling and messaging him so much because he's stuck in his house; despite their talks that first day, he probably is worried that Spencer is literally with all his things. Although there really isn't much to find among his clothes and few unpacked possessions.

But Spencer would be lying if he said he didn't mind the attention, or the company – even long distance.

It soon becomes a constant back and forth, multiple times a day, texts and Skype and phone calls if need be; every time he hears Derek's voice warming Spencer just a little bit more. Small doses of the man that's surrounding him in the house without actually existing in the space. But it becomes second nature by the fourth day in Derek's home. The eve of Christmas Eve.

Which is why when Spencer wakes up to a guest room that is colder than it ever felt outside, buried under blankets with Clooney now closer to him up the bed and keeping him warm with body heat and thick white fur, he immediately calls Derek out of instinct. Reaches for his phone, which luckily hasn't stalled from the cold, and when he exhales his breath fogs in front of him. That sends him into a mild panic, praying that the other man will still pick up a time zone away.

And Derek answers him, despite the early hour and the late night Spencer knows he had with his family. No hesitation, barely a single ring and Derek's sleep-rough voice is saying his name – "Reid? What's going on, something happen?"

Spencer can't tell if that makes his heart ache or swell with affection, or a combination of both, but the reaction makes his very pulse skip dangerously. Desperately.

And he's afraid that in his efforts to forget the Derek Morgan he had fallen in love with at the FBI, he had instead fallen in love with the Derek Morgan embedded in the very walls of this home.

Maybe he really is doomed to remain forever broken-hearted.

—

The power went out in the night. About ten city blocks wide, a whole power grid, and it wasn't the only one; the local news would show the power outages across the city in varying degrees making the map overlay look like a patchwork quilt. But the house Morgan had refurbished and rebuilt was still very old at it's foundation, and the electricity hadn't kicked back on when the power was restored. Bundled up like he's outside, Spencer shuffles to the electric panel near the kitchen, and follows Morgan's instructions over the phone to get everything turned back on. Flipping switches and resetting the breakers. Things Spencer really should already know how to do, he'd played with electricity quite a bit at MIT during his engineering Ph.D., but he'd never applied that knowledge to something practical like regular household maintenance. The very essence of why such studies are taught in colleges. It's instances such as this that really make him feel so very separated from the real world; as if he's still caught up in an academic bubble where there's only books and reports and the next thesis to propose, the next experiment to conduct. Roundtable discussions and Socratic seminars and lecture series. He wonders idly how many of those scholars and doctorate holders could turn the power back on in a house built before they were born if the system had to be reset.

But Derek doesn't make him feel unintelligent or ignorant for not knowing how to do such basic things; just walks him through it step by step and knows that Spencer will be able to follow them to a tee. He is, if nothing else, a quick study in quite literally every field or activity he's ever tackled. He can even shoot a 100 with his revolver during gun recertifications, now, thanks to Hotch and Derek's guidance.

"Everything good? Did the heater kick on?" Derek asks from where Spencer has his cell phone pinned between his ear and shoulder, holding a flashlight in his mouth and pointed toward the interior of the breaker box. The lights in the kitchen have just flickered to life, allowing him to spit out the flashlight and listen careful to the vents overhead.

"It's not warm, yet, but it's making a sound like a dying combustion engine so I assume that's the heater," Spencer says. The old house was doing the best it could given the circumstances, just as Spencer was.

"Okay, that's good but you should really light a fire in the living room, and then check out everything else."

Spencer is already way ahead of him on the fire, logs in the hearth and the gas turned on. It only takes him a few minutes, now, to get the fire lit (and that really gives him a great sense of competency and pride, if he's honest) but Derek's words stick out as he gets the kindling burning.

"What else are you talking about?"

"Well, the pipes, first of all. The water heater. You probably need to go outside and make sure the vents aren't covered either." He sighs after a moment, no doubt thinking of a few other things that he'd like to be done. "I wish I was there."

That makes two of us.

But Spencer feels himself frowning as he sits in front of the fireplace, going through the list himself and knowing that all of these things are maintenance he's never done before – but could do effectively, in theory. His reminder of his days at MIT really kick in during that moment, and he tries to sound teasingly offended as he answers Derek. "You do remember I have an engineering doctorate, right? I can do this, and I'm not going to wreck your house Derek. Just tell me what needs to be done and I'll do it."

There's a mildly stunned pause as Derek gapes at the phone, Spencer can nearly swear he can hear it. He can certainly picture it. "I know you can, Mr. Not a Genius but I have Three Doctorates, you just shouldn't have to. It's my house."

"And I'm taking care of it, so tell me how to check if the pipes are frozen and where the main water valve is," Spencer says in determination, pretending he can't hear the man smiling, chuckling, shaking his head. Half of those things shouldn't be audible.

"Go test the faucet in the kitchen. If the water pressure is low, or you get no water at all, then some pipes are frozen."

So, to neither of their surprise, no water comes out of the faucet at all – meaning the pipes are frozen, and Derek tells him in a not so confident tone that Spencer needs to go down to the sub-basement to turn off the water valve. That's also where the water heater would be, and there wouldn't be much they could do until the house heated up enough to help thaw some of the pipes, except open all the sink cabinet doors and maybe take a blow-dryer to them one at a time. Because if one actually busted or broke, there was no way a plumber would be able to reach Spencer in the storm.

Donning Derek's work boots, only a size or two too large, and some tools the man said he might need, Spencer descends into the sub-basement armed only with Derek still on his cell phone and the same small hand-held flashlight from before. Clooney isn't allowed to follow him down the wooden steps smelling of damp and dust and decades past, so he leaves the dog whining at the top of the stairs and ventures into the one part of the house he hadn't planned on stepping foot into. Knowing immediately that the frozen pipes were probably located down there next to the water valves, it feels even more cold with the damp as he reaches the basement floor. The air temperature changing much akin to when one descends in ocean water layers beneath where the sun can reach.

"Alright, I'm in the basement," he says, the darkness pressing in and looking for any kind of lightswitch or hanging bulbs. The basement is mostly unfinished but still heavily worked on, fresh beams and piping and the smell of sawdust and rust mingling together strangely. Tall as he is, Spencer walks straight into the hanging pull-strings for the lights overhead before he can see them, and yanks on the thin chords with a soft click that illuminates the space in golden hues.

"Not doing so well in the dark?" Derek chuckles, not forgetting Spencer's inherent fear of lack of light. He'd mostly gotten past it, but it still spiked his heart-rate none too gently when in complete darkness.

"I think the next thing on your list of upgrades is more lights down here," Spencer quips back, using his flashlight still despite the lights, finding the water heater and water valves down one of the small corridors that are distinctly out of the range of direct light. He turns on more lights as he comes across them. "And drywall, that would be good." The litany of beams stretching off into the darkness is like the Mines of Moria, without the pleasant architectural details.

"I warned you it was unfinished, did you find the water valve yet?"

"Yes, yes," Spencer inspects it, and the pipes around it, and everything looks okay – but the pipes are ice-cold to the touch and the valve looks like something one would find on a steamer ship. "How old is this thing?"

"Just turn it off; you turn the crank to turn off the water. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey."

"What?" Spencer blanches, laughing a bit.

"You can't tell me you've never heard that before," Derek laughs right back.

"I know how to turn off a valve, Derek," Spencer says with just as much invigoration, and together (through the phone) Derek walks him through getting the water turned off and wrapping some of the pipes in plastic insulation to help warm them and protect them from the cold.

"We'll make a construction worker out of you, yet, pretty boy," Derek teases when Spencer finishes up, proud and – once again – kind of wishing Derek as here. That they could be doing this together. He's never built something like this with his hands. Sure he has a litany of patents for things he's engineered, but from the ground up this was work with his hands that felt real and tangible and purposeful all at once. "If I'd had time to finish the basement up before we left it probably wouldn't have been an issue, so I'm sorry about that."

"It's a learning experience, that's for sure," Spencer assures him, a smile evident in his voice and Derek makes amused noises in response. The two playing off each other in effortless ways, even hundreds of miles away. But their good mood is quickly turned by the sound of creaking, straining metal – "Derek…"

"What? Is something–"

The pipe beside where Spencer had been working a little further from the valve protests greatly, and Spencer's too quick thought processes realized (purely from a comprehensive engineering standpoint) that even though the water was turned off they still needed to drain out what was in the pipes to keep the ice from making them expand. Which he hadn't done. And couldn't do from where he was kneeling on the floor.

Surprise! He’d been too late after all.

It burst with an explosive spray of water that was, thankfully, short lived thanks to the water indeed being turned off – but it's trajectory aimed purely at Spencer's face and chest making him emit a very undignified shriek and dropping his phone. He could barely hear Derek calling his name over his own sputtering and laughing, because of course the pipe broke just as he thought he was finished! But he swore he heard the other man say his first name once more –

"I'm fine!" Spencer calls, keeping the phone away from the pooling water and his dripping hair. "The pipe broke! It ended up on me more than the floor. Hold on–" He fumbles to get the phone on speaker, fails for long enough Derek doesn't seem to think he can hear him.

"Reid, pretty boy, you know you charm the hell out of me and I love you for it – but how on Earth do you get yourself into these messes," the man is laughing, contagiously caught from Spencer's own, a back and forth symphony that Spencer echoes even though he's sure his heart has stopped in his chest. He knows he heard the man correctly, the words ringing in his ears, but not enough to drown out what follows. "You okay, kid?"

"I'm fine," he lies, but at least this time it's only a half lie. He feels like he’s floating on air. His heart a runaway thing in his chest, but the water was ice cold (and probably very unsanitary – he’s trying not to think about it), but it pulls in the cold of the basement like a magnet. Settles deep into every cell in his body with each passing second. "Just recalling whatever I've read about preventing hypothermia." Most of which requires another body and body heat, and he flushes – thankful that Derek called him on his phone and they weren't video-calling on the computer.

"Well, should we consult the professional on that one?"

That comment alone stalls everything in its tracks.

He's ashamed to admit it, but Spencer had forgotten about Savannah entirely in that moment, and in many of the moments leading up to it. It sobers him faster than the cold water could ever have.

"I do trust her advice more than yours, right now," Spencer quips to cover the sudden dead-drop his heart had just done, quietly wounded and refusing to acknowledge why.

"How is this my fault?" Derek sputters in faux outrage, and it makes Spencer smile the smallest bit. Eases the strain of his very literal reality check, bringing him back to the day-dream-like bliss he’d been in that made his smiles so much easier to hold. Adoring and charmed by Derek, as the older man had so eloquently put it, tossing banter back and forth while Derek fetched Savannah to give Spencer his treatment instructions – and Spencer patched the pipe as best he could.

The activity is a definite throw back to his days at MIT working on the atom colliders and other experiments his fellow doctoral students would work on. He actually knew how to use part of the rubber hosing and C-clamps to mend the broken part of the pipe, but he made affirmative noises and nodded along as Derek explained it to him anyway. Just to hear his voice in his ear a little bit longer.

—

Penelope messages Spencer just about as much as Derek does. For much the same reasons, (him being alone in Derek's house), but entirely different motives. Spencer can't actually speak to Derek's motives anymore. It's been a few days and he has the run of the house down now – as well as Clooney's routine – and yet Derek messages him day and night.

Not that Spencer's complaining any.

But Penny is worried about Spencer, and makes that very obvious by stating it at least twice a day. Because 'getting over Derek Morgan' is very much an impossible when living in his house. No matter what Spencer says to her, or himself, for that matter.

[Penelope] I really don't like you there all alone. And I don't like me all alone either. We should have made a snow-proof bunker together.

[Spencer] Next time you and I can find a place to hole up when the city gets snowed in.

[Penelope] And not at Morgan's house. My place. Yours is too cold.

[Spencer] I think it’s the insulation that is terrible. I'm learning a lot about home improvement from what books Morgan has lying around.

[Penelope] God, I bet every room in that house is toasty warm.

[Spencer] All except the guest room, Morgan says it needs new insulation. He keeps telling me to sleep in his room where it's warmer.

[Penelope] Spencer Reid don't you dare.

[Penelope] I will get to you in this snow, don't think I won't.

[Spencer] I might not have a choice if the power goes out again, but I'll avoid it at all costs I promise.

[Spencer] And you stay off the roads please. You scare me even when there's no ice on the streets.

[Penelope] I drive better than you. I've seen your parking.

[Spencer] Which is why I take the bus, or car pool with Derek.

A millisecond too late he realizes what he typed and sent. His fantasy-like informalities slipping through once more. God, he hates texting. But Penelope is pretty insistent on it – otherwise their phone calls could go on for hours. He makes a pained face and lets his head fall to the kitchen counter, where he'd been messaging her and drinking his mid-day coffee. Still a little chilled and his hair lightly damp from his run-in with the pipes in the basement that morning. He bangs his forehead there a couple times waiting for Penny's reply.

[Penelope] I really worry about you there, honey.

[Spencer] I know.

[Spencer] I'm going to be fine.

He only wishes that sounded convincing, but Penelope drops it for the time being. The lie so plain and obvious that it really warrants the pity she bestows upon him. Leaving him in the crushing silence of Derek's house, with nothing but his thoughts echoing in his head in time with every beat of his battered heart.

Abandoning his coffee, still warm and only half gone, Spencer retreats to his chilled guest room and Clooney follows faithfully. A little more quiet than usual, a soft whine sometimes coming from his throat. But Spencer finds himself preoccupied by his thoughts, about how often he's had to lie to Penny and to Derek and to… himself, about being 'fine.' When he's not really that fine at all. He's lying so often it's becoming blatantly discernable – all of it. About his state of mind, and the wounds on his heart. Before coming to stay in this house, Spencer had truly believed that he'd been treading this strange no-man's land of friendship and infatuation, where he could finally – finally get over this damn crush. This love. That has been years in the making, and taken deep roots beneath his feet.

He just kept telling himself that if he could make it one day not longing for his best friend, go a whole 24 hours without thinking about Derek Morgan, then maybe there was still some hope out there for him to not go through life this broken-hearted.

He thought maybe being snowed in would solidify that.

Instead, it's made everything worse.

The bed dips beside where he's been sitting, and Clooney leans into his side tentatively, laying down so as not to send the thin man toppling. He curls up there, facing away but offering a steady back and canine shoulders, thick fur and enough solid grounding to hold him up if he wanted to. The soft whine of empathy, sympathy, compassion is back. And it lowers another crumbling wall of inhibitions, to the point Spencer accepts the offered shoulder. So to speak.

He leans into Clooney in turn, and hugs the dog carefully. Feeling ridiculous, and small, and like a child hugging an over-large teddy bear. But after a moment it's hard to find a reason to care about any of that. He'd gone in search of the only comfort available to him, leagues from the nights he spent alone at home, and found it in the companionship of the one creature he's feared for most of his life. There's an irony there, but his brain is too soaked in despair to decipher it.

Holding onto Derek's dog like a lifeline, Spencer refuses to let go for long minutes, and pretends his eyes aren't burning at the overwhelming enormity of it all.

If only the snow would melt, if only Derek would come home – so Spencer could leave this place, and hope to forget that it feels like he belongs there more than anywhere else in the world ever has before.

—

tbc…

—

Tagged list so far: @lilibee, @dumpsiteforfics, @kenni-woodard, @merpancake, @emmyraebird, @physics-magic, @thaddeusly, @tobias-hankel, @sideblogforcrimpy @anxious-enby

(To be added to the taglist just send me a message via comment, reblog, ask, or DM!)

#good morning lovelies #I finished this last night somehow - but it needed one more read through this morning #have some angst for breakfast 💕#I know it's Tuesday again. Time is a social construct #this has a lot of technical and home improvement stuff in it so I hope it's still interesting #going to post and run and pretend I'm not still nervous #thank you all for still reading along far after Christmas lol #Dog Days #Moreid #katyswriting

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skaylanphear · 3 years

Note

Hi there! Do you have any advice on improving traction towards a fanwork/fic? I love writing—and it's not for notoriety by any means—but having validation and feedback also feels nice (I hope that's not conceited). What would you recommend to someone without a large audience/follower base? I do "advertise" on tumblr when my work is written/updated on AO3. How did your journey start? Thank you!

This is an interesting question and I doubt most people are going to like the answers, but here we go:

So, first and foremost, you need to be realistic about why you're creating in the first place. If you're doing work in a fandom that is older, where content has stopped coming out, or that is simply smaller, you're not going to get much engagement, period. There will, of course, be activity in these fandoms, but it will be far less and the people involved—while they may view your work—will be less likely to comment/spread it around simply because there's not much going on. So if you're creating in that sort of environment (which can be a really good environment if you're looking for something chill with no pressure), then you have to be prepared for low engagement, even if the people you do meet and who are willing to talk about your work are more regularly in your sphere. You can probably make better/closer friends in these sorts of fandoms, if you're willing to try.

But, on the other end of this, if you're coming into a huge fandom late, it's also going to be harder to wade through the massive following to get your stuff out there. For example, in both the Miraculous and Sk8 fandom, I started work pretty early on, when the shows were still gaining traction, and so my "name" as a creator gained traction parallel to that growth, as opposed to when I started writing in the Voltron fandom. With Voltron, I came in super late and so what few fics I had that did gain traction took a lot longer to get there because people already had their fav content creators in the fandom, etc. It's not impossible to get popular in this situation—far from it—but it does take longer.

You'll also benefit from having finished works early on in a fandom's lifespan, at least with writing. This is because there's less competition for views and so more people will be filtered to your work, initially. This means that you have a better chance of getting those comments and kudos. Having a finished work increases this engagement because people look for finished works before works in progress. Generally, the length of a fic doesn't matter much for popularity, so long as it's DONE. When I was writing in the ML fandom, quite a few of my earlier fics were shorter, and they compete in popularity with my longer fics, because people care more about having a finished story, not a long story. That's why when it came to Only Practice Makes Perfect in the Sk8 fandom, I worked hard to get that shit done, because it was the most popular story I had in the fandom and I decided—like an idiot—to make it a long fic. Which, yeah, means people probably love it/remember it more in the long run, but if I hadn't finished it in 2 to 3 months, I'd have lost considerable traction as far as making a name within the fandom.

This leads into one of the most important points, if not THE MOST IMPORTANT point in gaining an audience—consistency. If you do want to be a successful creator, you Have To Be Consistent. This is the most difficult hurdle for all creators, and it is oftentimes impossible to make happen. If you want to aim for professionalism, which a lot of fandom creators don't care about (which is fine), then consistency is how you get there. Nobody wants to read a fic or follow an artist who doesn't stick to creating what they start (RIP all my unfinished works and the people who left me as a result, LOL). Using my most recent works as an example, I very, very, very consistently updated Only Practice Makes Perfect multiple times a week. To the point where people got comfortable expecting it, which is the key variable here. When people become comfortable that you will regularly create content, they not only stick around, but will be more interactive with you and your work. Nobody likes the disappointment of getting involved with a work only for that work to rarely get updates. Most people don't have the attention span to care. I'll admit, if I read a fic that's not finished and the writer takes one week to update, then one week, then THREE weeks, I probably will, like, forget about it. That's just life.

The best thing you can do is schedule. And again, this is the HARDEST thing to do, because it holds the creator to a deadline. Most people who create in fandoms don't want that kind of pressure—and that's fine. I go back and forth on when I have scheduled releases and when I don't, depending on what I'm aiming to do. But if you to retain your audience, telling them that you will update a work regularly on such and such a day and such and such a time, it creates something for them to remember. If they're invested in your work, they will think, "oh, it's Friday, that means such and such is coming out with something new." But, with that in mind, you also have to commit to a schedule that people will remain invested in. Which basically means you can't put things out more than a week away from each other, unless you're really, really famous, lol. If I told people I was going to go on a two week update schedule, I would lose most of my audience. But a week is long enough for people to both still remember and anticipate. That's just how the scheduling of the world works. And if you're an artist that's working on a big project, then you have to share progress, or pieces of what you're doing on a regular basis. That's what generates "buzz" and keeps you relevant. And, yeah, that's a really hard schedule to commit to, because it's a lot of work. BUT this consistency is where you see people being successful. Popular youtubers may not have gained their popularity by being consistent, but most sure do retain it that way. And again, there are outlying exceptions, but they generally ARE exceptions.

Speaking of hard work, here's probably the second hardest thing to accomplish—you have to be prolific. Especially as a writer. You have to write A LOT if you want to gain an audience. And yeah, that means you have to work, a lot. I love my work, so I enjoy that "grind," and I also have developed a lot of strategies to work around writer's block and every other obstacle that tends to catch people up. I work in a very professional manner—I do outlines, and drafts, and plan. I do a lot of stuff that people who do this kind of thing for fun can't be bothered with (and that's fine), but that's because I find it to be what works best in creating an efficient environment. I'm also very, very NOT lazy, lol. I was raised in an environment where you have to work for everything that you want. My parents didn't buy me my first computer, or snowboard, or what have you. We were tight on money and if I wanted something, they couldn't help me—I had to get that shit on my own. And I also grew up on a farm, where hard work was a staple of how you did things. You did things the right way, even if it was the hard way. You can't cut corners and it's the same with this. If you want it, you have to actually do the work, that's it. Some people get lucky with popularity, most don't. Most famous actors didn't become well-known off their first efforts, they had to keep trying and keep working and then they have to continue to do that to stay relevant. So if that doesn't sound great to you, then you might want to not focus on your audience and just create because you enjoy it, lol. Sometimes that's what I do too, when I don't wanna deal with the pressure.

Moving on, here's another point that nobody is going to like. Simply put, you also have to be good at what you do. I think some people don't realize that I've been writing fic for over fifteen years. I currently have nearly 2 millions words worth of fics on AO3 and that doesn't include a majority of the stuff I've ever written. I practice A LOT. I write every day. And I'll tell ya, when I started out in middle school, my stuff was not good. But I worked hard, I ignored the hate, and I kept going. That is the only way you will ever get better at anything. There's no quick way to become a better writer, or artist. And a vast majority of people are only going to pay attention to your stuff if it's quality work. Getting to that point is a process, on top of then creating stuff that fits into popular molds. Not only am I good at what I do (and I don't care how arrogant that sounds—I've worked my ass off), but when it comes to fandoms, I rarely write "rare pairs" and "crack ships." Generally, if it's popular, that's where I am. That makes a big difference and I honestly don't have sympathy for people who write rare pairs and such and then complain about lack of engagement. You knew what you were getting into (it's mostly the Miraculous fandom that gave me this bitterness). If you're not writing what people WANT to read, then your audience is simply going to be smaller. And that audience doesn't owe you their attention, no matter how frustrating it is or how good your work is. I could be the best writer in the world, but if I'm writing RekixCherry fic, I have nobody to blame but myself when nobody reads it. BUT if that's your passion, and writing a certain unpopular thing makes you happy, then, again, you need to not be concerned with traction and your audience.

The last point I'll make is that it matters HOW you present yourself online. A good chunk of the well-known creators in any fandom are, simply put, older people. And those that aren't, and are able to connect with those older creators, have generally created a bubble around themselves of maturity and, like, of being nice, lol. A lot of creators are skittish these days, and if you're an asshole (anti) or fight a lot over stupid shit, you may get a bigger audience, but you will isolate yourself from other creators. And this is important because oftentimes it is your exposure to other creators that will get your work circulating. The reason I got popular in the ML fandom? I wrote a short angst fic and a really popular artist shared it/talked about it and the rest was history. But if I'd had a habit of being an asshole, probably wouldn't have happened. And, granted, I'm not saying don't voice your opinions, but if you're loud all the time, it does turn people off. Especially creators because they are oftentimes the ones being attacked. They don't want to pull more of that negative bullshit into their lives. I'll admit, when I was in the ML fandom, I was down for a fight, but then that's what people came to expect, and it probably did turn others off, and then when I didn't fight, or didn't think the way my audience thought I should, it, again, turned people off. It's really not worth it unless being that type of person IS your platform.

So, that's all the advice I can give, I suppose. And even if you do all this stuff, that still doesn't mean you're going to be popular. At the end of the day, the thing that I stick to is this—I do what I want, I love what I do, and I work hard. If I'm in a position to worry about all that other stuff, then sure, I do, but otherwise… There's no easy way to become popular and, quite frankly, it's better to just "live" working hard and being a decent person than it is to focus on all this bullshit. I've created a working environment where I function within these "points" quite naturally, so it's not something I think about (except for schedules, lol). Sometimes I get popular in fandoms, sometimes I don't. At the end of the day, it comes down to how much work you're willing to do, because you will always be giving more than you are getting back, so you have to at least enjoy what you're doing.

Seriously, just do it because you love it. And if the pressure of everything above is something you don't love (I like a good, high pressure situation, lol), then don't do it that way—it's not worth the grief.

#skaylanphear replies #anonymous

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