#ill be reposting art on there over the next few days!!! and ill try to keep it updated with my new art

[mkulias]

follow me on twitter. or dont <3

[riiwrites]

boyfriend!dazai who…

a/n : for my love @perfectlyjollyland who requested this ages ago but i didn’t see until recently because i only pay attention to my inbox! im so sorry ill be checking comments too next time, hope you’re well! <3

a/n : also i hope you’re okay with the pre-boyfriend/before boyfriend part, i just thought that’d be cute i love lovesick!dazai sooo much.. more boyfriend dazai under the cut!!

chuuyas version | atsushis version

dividers used belong to @/benkeibear

masterlist | taglist | main page

pre-boyfriend!dazai who at the start asks you for a double suicide (as per usual), but when you give him the cutest smile and giggle and say no, he knows he’s too deep in now.

pre-boyfriend!dazai who becomes head over heels when he first meets you and now has a new mission, making you reciprocate those feelings.

pre-boyfriend!dazai who loves the cliches, the random ‘anonymous’ love notes on your desk when you’re at work or the random flowers delivered to your workplace/home - he loves it all.

pre-boyfriend!dazai who respects your boundaries if you were to tell him to lay off or if he was making you uncomfortable.

pre-boyfriend!dazai who finally gives up..gives up throwing hints and just decides to take his shot.

“So..say, if a handsome stranger who’s kind of not a stranger since you know him as an acquaintance asks you out because he’s given up with all of the deadpanned hints he’s been giving you for the past few months but he’s kind of scared of being rejected..what would you say?”

You stare him with a few blinks as he looks at you with a great smile on his face, although you can see subtle drops of sweat dripping down the side of his temple.

"..Is this said handsome stranger you, perchance?”

Dazai let’s out a single laugh, placing his hands on his hips.

“Ha! How bold of you, though..I am charmed your first thought of this handsome stranger would be me, bella~” He coyly smirks, closing his eyes in what you can’t tell is either pride or suspense.

You furrow your eyebrows with a little smile, fixing up your paperwork as you place them on the desk. “No, I just figured since it was you who’s been leaving such persistent and eager notes on my desk as of late.”

You watch his expression slightly change as he lets out a cough of embarrassment, locking eyes with you now.

“Well..” He starts, then gives up halfway through.

“..Is it a yes?”

pre-boyfriend!dazai who not only is taken by surprise by your response, but his heart does a few jumps in joy as his efforts became a success, making him now your boyfriend.

boyfriend!dazai who has his hand down your back pocket whenever you two are walking together.

boyfriend!dazai who’s love language is both physical touch and acts of service, always having his hands on you in the littlest way and also providing the most he can to his s/o.

boyfriend!dazai who has the reputation of being quite the flirtatious one, gives it up to his precious s/o.

boyfriend!dazai who googles cheesy and dirty pickup lines to try and rizz you with, always ending them in a winky face.

boyfriend!dazai who sends you little messages every day now that he has your number, little words of affirmations and talks to get you ready for your days.

boyfriend!dazai who if he had a tiktok account he’d make slideshows of you two and repost videos of couples relating to you two.

boyfriend!dazai who you spend all of your holidays with, especially christmas and new years.

boyfriend!dazai who practically lives at your house now, but nobody’s complaining.

boyfriend!dazai who has a box of every little thing you’ve given him, so when he’s feeling down he can look at it and smile.

boyfriend!dazai who tries to keep you away from his past, to protect you from the ugly truth.

boyfriend!dazai who opens up about oda, not all of it but most of it since he believes oda would’ve liked you.

boyfriend!dazai who takes you to the places he has the fondest memories in. the lupin bar, the art gallery, the agency.

boyfriend!dazai who appreciates the little things, as he’s not someone who can afford much he tries to give you the best he can.

boyfriend!dazai who always argues that he loves you more trying to get the last word and when you think you have it, you hear a little mumble of “I love you more” as you walk away.

boyfriend!dazai who loves your hands, tracing the lines of your palm and fingers and creating little shapes on them makes him feel at peace.

boyfriend!dazai who can be possessive but in a good way, he has good reasons to be possessive.

boyfriend!dazai who when he sees someone give you a half lidded smirk or bedroom eyes, he gives them a deadly stare that could imprint on their skull as he wraps an arm around your waist.

boyfriend!dazai who constantly babbles on about you at work with the agency, always telling Atsushi about the cutest things that you did the night before or what you did the day before that.

“Ahh..and the way they just clench their fists at their sides when they are angry with me! Ah~ I could melt..”

“That’s..really nice, Dazai-san..”

“Oh! And the way they grab my hand so tightly when we’re in public ahhh~ I could melt!”

“D-dazai-san..-“

“Ahhh, and the way the-“

boyfriend!dazai who ends up with about 14 wounds all over his body because of kunikidas beatings..kunikida says he’s lucky it wasn’t 15.

boyfriend!dazai who you take care of at his lowest.

boyfriend!dazai who sometimes can’t understand why you put up with him, but you reassure him with words and kisses all over his face.

boyfriend!dazai who peppers your face with kisses back and gives you a small smile despite how sad he can feel.

boyfriend!dazai who watches the fireworks with you and doesn’t think of going out just as beautifully because why would he let such a precious thing slip out of his hands like that?

boyfriend!dazai who doesn’t care about himself or his mental health, but cares the most about yours.

boyfriend!dazai who once felt like he was drowning, but then found his light to the surface who has a smile of diamonds and a heart of gold.

TAGLIST : @hauntedsol @hopefulpain @forgotten-blues @ruru-kiss @texas-bitch-yee @lvstyangel @thetizzler @is-therelife-onmars @atlasnessie @101strawberries101 @reesesnieces @suzurans-world @mackereland-slug @heartsfourdazai @iratherowan @onlinewhisper14 @nomnomventi

white = unable to be tagged :(

@/riiwrites - reblogs are highly appreciated ❤︎︎

[scullysexual]

A Jewel Beneath The Moonlight [Reposted Anniversary]

You can read chapter’s One and Two here or alternatively you can read all three chapters on ao3.

@today-in-fic @mypanicface @improlificinsarcasm @enigmaticxbee Please let me know if you’d like to be tagged in this!

- - - 

Chapter Three

She extends her hand instead and Mulder gawks at it before his own hand grips hers and they shake. An electric buzz goes through her- one she can’t say she’s ever felt before as she beholds the man in front of her.

She’d seen him before, earlier, near the gate, felt him staring at her and when he wasn’t looking, she’d stares back at him.

She didn’t believe in fate, it was just coincidence that they would meet again, after all they’re stuck on a ship- a big ship but a ship all the same, they’re paths were bound to cross again and probably again another time.

But that buzz. Dana couldn’t explain it, she didn’t think anyone could.

They break contact, arms falling back to their sides.

“Scully…” Mulder says, testing her name out on his tongue. It sounded weird to be called by her surname; she was Dana to her family, sometimes Dee to Charlie, and Girl for the family she’d worked for briefly in London, but never was she Scully.

She liked it. And she liked it coming from him.

“I saw you earlier,” she says. “Staring.”

He looks away, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

Scully shrugs, smiling slightly. “It’s fine. You get used to it.”

Mulder looks at her shocked. “I wasn’t staring because you’re…you’re…” He struggles to find the words.

“Poor?” Scully offers, not feeling as offended as maybe she should be.

He shakes his head quickly. “No! Because you’re…”

“Fox!”

Scully turns to find an entourage of people walking towards them. An older Mulder leads the pack as the rest follow.

“I thought you’d gone back to your room?” the older man says.

“I went to get some air, see if that would help,” Mulder explains.

Scully watches the scene unfold in front of her, her eyes flicking back between Mulder and who she can only presume is his father.

“Well, we’re all heading back now, perhaps you would like to come with us?” It wasn’t a question.

Mulder nods and Scully doesn’t miss the way they outwardly ignore that she’s even there. She’s not naïve to what the upper class, English upper class especially, think of her, of her country and her ‘outlandish’ ways so she stands in silence, glad to be invisible for this moment.

“Let’s go then,” the father says, reaching for Mulder’s arm.

Scully doesn’t miss the way Mulder tenses for a second then relaxes. She wasn’t always the best at reading people but she can see here that there’s no real relationship, no love, and as she watches the two she realises she has no affiliation with this type of dynamic. She may not of always seen eye-to-eye with her parents, her own father especially the older she got, but there was love there, that was one thing she had a lot of.

She watches Mulder begin to walk off, feeling for him in that moment and maybe he’d felt that sympathy, turning back to look at her, a sad smile across his face.

The next day brings Charlie dragging her down the corridor. He’d made a few friends last night it seems and he seemed anxious for her to meet one of them.

“Charlie, where are we actually going?” she asks, slightly annoyed, she had better things than be dragged down a hallway by Charlie.

“Hugo,” Charlie says turning back to her. “He mentioned last night that his daughter had come down with something and he was worried.”

Scully sighs, rolling her eyes. “So you mentioned me?” she huffs.

Charlie shrugs, stopping as they reach Room 52. “I just said I had a sister who was good at medicine and she might be able to help.” He knocks on the door twice then begins to walk away, Scully notices, catching his arm and pulling him back before he could go any further.

“You’re not gonna stay with me?”

“You’ll be fine,” Charlie says, taking his arm from her grasp. “Just do what you do.” He walks off then leaving Scully alone in the long corridor.

The door opens and a large man stands in the doorway, towering over Scully.

“You are Charlie’s sister?” the man, who Scully assumes is the Hugo her brother mentioned, asks.

“Aye. Your daughter is sick?”

Hugo nods, stepping out of the way to allow Scully into the small space.

A girl no older than eight lies in a bed, from where she stands Scully can see the sweat dripping down her face, hear her ragged wee breaths. Dana steps into the room, donning the Doctor Scully persona she’s already made up and walks over to the bed.

She sits in the space near the edge. “Hello. I’m Dana, what’s your name?”

“Agnes,” the little lass splutters.

Scully smiles, “That’s a pretty name.” She touches Agnes’ forehead feeling the heat radiating off her. Turning to Hugo, she asks, “How long has she been like this?”

“Three days,” Hugo answers holding up three fingers to indicate. “They said they would not let us on ship but we begged and we told them Agnes would get better but she has not.”

Scully nods, looking back down at the girl.

“Do you know what is wrong with her, Doctor?”

A thrill ripples through Scully to hear be referred to as a doctor. She pushes that thrill aside, however, there’s time to bask in that later.

She moves from the bed to the wash basin in the corner. Grabbing a cloth nearby she runs it underneath the cold water before rinsing it and returning back to Agnes, placing the cloth against her forehead.

She thinks back to the journals, to her own gathered knowledge of caring for Charlie when he was sick.

“It’s just a fever,” Scully says. “It’ll break soon and I’m sure Agnes will be back to normal.”

Hugo looks as though he’s about to cry. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you, thank you.”

Scully smiles, warmth spreading through her. There’s a knock on the door then and Hugo’s sincere expression turns to one of confusion. He turns back to the door, opening it slowly.

On the other side stands Mulder ducking slightly in the short doorway and looking entirely lost.

Scully stands, dumbfounded at why he’s here.

“Mulder?” she asks.

“You know this man?” Hugo asks.

“He’s a friend,” Scully clarifies. “Take Agnes out to the docks as much as you can, the fresh air will do her some good.” Hugo nods as Scully leaves, her hand grasping Mulder’s as she pulls him away from the door.

“What are you doing down here?” she asks now that her attention isn’t divided.

“I was looking for you,” Mulder says. “Your brother said you were in Room 52 so…”

In his other hand, she notices he carries a black book. Still holding his hand she guides him along the corridor to the exit.

“Come on, you cannae be seen down here.”

They pass through the Galley on their way to the deck, many people gawking at Mulder and his fancy clothing on the way out. Scully tries to get him out of there as soon as possible but not missing Charlie’s frowning questioning look as she goes.

Once outside, she lets go of his hand.

“You’re a doctor?” Mulder asks, completely surprised.

Scully blushes, trying not to let it show. “Not really,” she admits. “Though I’m trying to be. It’s why we’re here, everywhere else said no so we thought maybe America would be better.”

It still pains her to remember the looks of disbelief she got when she went into the schools and hospitals asking for a place. Some had looked at her like she was seriously ill, others thought she was joking and some even laughed in her face. She was ready to give it all up, to sail back to Ireland and forget about it all, marry some farmer’s son and have some children, all until Charlie won the tickets.

“That’s amazing,” says Mulder. They begin they’re walk down the deck to the gate that separates third class from second.

Scully smiles, not quiet sure she’d heard the words right, and tucks a piece of her behind her ear.

“It’s worth trying, I suppose.” They pass through the gate, ignoring the incredulous looks the second class passengers give them as they witness the rules be broken so poignantly and a clearly first class passenger conversing with steerage.

“What’s this?” Wanting to steer the conversation away from her, Scully reaches for the black book in his hand. She gasps as her hand touches real leather, feels the material under her fingers tips.

“That’s not…”

She opens the first page and is completely taken away by the image that stares up at her.

A drawing of a girl between seven and nine stares back at her, her hair in pigtails and the biggest smile on her face as she jumps in the waves.

Scully stops frozen, staring at the drawing in complete amazement.

“Mulder…” she says, unbelieving what she sees before her. “Did you…did you draw this?” she asks.

Mulder nods. “I was eleven,” he says, redness forming on his cheeks. “It was the first one I drew.”

“There’s more?” Scully asks, wanting to see more of this beauty. She flips the page- an old man sitting on a bench in the park, flips another page- a girl playing with a skipping rope, a boy playing football. “Mulder, these are…” She flips more pages, finds more drawings, each one increasing in detail. “These are incredible.”

“Here,” he takes the book from her, sitting down on the bench and Scully follows. “Let me show you my favourite one.” He flips the pages further along, Scully catches glimpses of each piece of art, more and more impressed with his talent. He stops on a page that shows a woman sitting in a restaurant or diner. Mulder hands the book back to Scully and she takes it, staring at the drawing, all its intricacies.

���There was this restaurant in New York that we used to go to all the time and every time we would go there, that woman would always be there.” He points to the clothing. “See how her clothes are all moth eaten? I thought, maybe, something had happened to her husband and she went back to the first place they met, or the first place they had dinner together, and she was just waiting for him to come back. Waiting in that same spot, never moving, as the moths eat her clothes…”

Scully gazes at the drawing, lulled by Mulder’s voice and story, completely enraptured by all of it. See could see it. See the restaurant, see the woman as though she was real, see the story being true.

“That’s beautiful, Mulder,” she says, turning her head slightly to look at him, her heart filling up with something unexplainable for a stranger she had only met last night.

“Do you have anymore like that?” Before receiving an answer she flicks through more pages. She catches a glimpse of the next set of drawings, and a glimpse is all she needs before Mulder snatches the book away and Scully just Ohs.

“Sorry,” Mulder apologises, nervously. “You weren’t meant to see them. Nobody’s ever seen them.”

Scully doesn’t care though, she’s interested, having got a small peak at another part of Mulder’s mind, she wants to see it fully.

“Show me,” she says, daring him to.

“Are you sure?” she asks, the book clutched firmly between his fingers.

“I want to see them.”

Slowly he hands the book back to her. She reopens the page she was on and is met with a full-bodied drawing of a naked woman.

Scully isn’t jealous, she can’t be, Mulder is just a person she barely knows (but also knows everything about) and he’s entitled to his life, to draw who and what he wants, but while she looks at the drawing, Scully can’t help but wonder who this woman was to Mulder. Was she someone he once cared about? Or was she just something to draw? Scully glances to Mulder, hoping that empathy, that connection the two seem to have with each other, is strong enough to read minds, strong enough for him to answer her silent question.

It isn’t.

And it doesn’t.

Scully moves on, to the next page. This one a series of close-ups consisting of breasts and vaginas, but it’s the page next to it that Scully becomes interested in. A series of hands, some the same hand and others different, all from different angles.

“Why hands?” she asks.

“They tell who a person is,” Mulder says. “Like yours…” He takes her hand off the page, holding it close to his face. “I noticed they’re always clean.” He thumb runs along her fingers, gliding across her nails and sparks shoot through her, from fingers to toes. “And you cut your nails regularly. They’re soft, too.” He turns her hand over, palm now facing him as his thumb runs along there too. “Despite your poverty, you’ve never been forced to do hard labour.”

With his analysing done, Scully takes her hand back and looks at it.

“How wrong was I?” He asks, waiting for her to tell him he was very wrong.

Scully smiles, moved but slightly scared. “You’re not,” she whispers and a smile breaks across his face.

“You have a real skill, Mulder,” Scully says, she looks back down at the drawings. “You see people, for who they really are.”

“I try to.”

Scully stares at him, frustrated at how modest he is but also humbled by it. He honestly doesn’t see what a rare gift he has.

“What about you then?” he asks, taking the book back and closing it. “Aside from fixing people, what skills do you have?”

A mischievous smile appears across Scully’s face. Perhaps he’s expecting something along the same lines as his, but there is only one other skill Scully can think to show him.

She stands up. “Follow me and I’ll show you.”

Curiosity now replacing his modest expression, he follows Scully along the deck and through the final gate to first class, once again thrilled by breaking the rules but feeling completely free of the consequences. She finds the most secluded area and looks out towards the sea.

“Now,” she begins capturing Mulder’s full attention. “This is a skill that I’m very proud of.”

“Okay…”

She gives one last mischievous smile, fully planning on shocking Mulder, ready to gauge that reaction.

Just as she was taught, she gathers up as much spit as she can, puffs her lips out, pulls her head back and shoots forward over the railings as a ball of spit flies out into the ocean.

She looks to Mulder when she’s done, finds him completely awe struck.

“Miss Scully,” he admonishes with a smile and light of voice. “And I thought you were above your kind’s crude ways?”

Scully laughs, pleased with herself and pleased he isn’t offended by such a minuscule thing.

“There are some things I have in common with them. You try.”

He looks at her for help. “I don’t…?”

“It’s easy,” she says, shaking her head. She begins the process again. “Get as much spit as you can, gather it together, lips puffy, head back, swing forward and shoot.” Another ball of spit shoots into the air and falls into the ocean again.

Mulder tries, doing as she says, and his attempt is pitiful, most of it falling down his chin. Scully laughs.

“You can do better than that.”

She watches his second attempt, watches him try his hardest to get as far as her spit went.

Not quite there but better than the first time.

Lost in teaching him how to spit far, Scully doesn’t hear the group of people approaching, continues to gather spit, making less than appealing noises to do so, it’s only when she’s sees Mulder has gone rigid beside her that she stops and turns towards the four women who stand there.

“Fox?” The oldest woman says. “What are you doing?”

“I was just, um…”

The woman’s eyes fall to Scully, her gaze strong and unforgiving.

“Rules are set to keep order,” the woman begins to explain. Scully thinks she’s saying them to Mulder but her stare doesn’t weaver from Scully. “They keep things as they’re supposed to be, nothing out of place, nothing in the wrong place.” Her eyes move to Mulder. “You know that, Fox.”

Mulder nods. “I do, Mother. But I thought this could be an exception. See, I invited Miss Scully onto the deck.”

His mother’s lips pursue at the mention of Scully’s last name, a thin line forming.

“Scully.” The woman’s eyes fall back to Dana. “A very old Irish name, isn’t it?”

Scully shifts uncomfortably, wanting nothing more than any of the women to not acknowledge her presence, but she’s on their deck and that is a wish that is soon not to be granted.

“Aye, Ma’am,” says Scully.

“What does it mean?”

Dana thinks for a moment, her mind backtracking from it’s anglicised form to the Gaelic form and translated form.

“Student,” Scully answers, unsure of the relevance of this question.

The mother only huffs in reply.

“You know the rules, Fox.”

They make eye contact, her and Mulder, a promise that they’ll see each other again sometime.

“I need to get back to my brother anyway.”

As she goes to leave, she catches Mulder’s eyes once more. He glances down to his hand and her eyes follow. The book.

She leans closer into him, using her arm to conceal the book and takes it, quickly moving it in front of her.

“Miss Scully!” A younger, more clear-cut voice rings through the air and Scully turns, moving the book to behind her back.

“Yes?”

The youngest girl steps forward, standing next to Mulder’s mother.

“How would you like to join us for dinner tonight?”

“Phoebe…” Mulder whispers through gritted teeth, even Mrs Mulder turns to the girl in utter shock- the other two women stand watching.

Surprised too, Scully thinks for a second. “You want me to join you for dinner in first class?”

“Yes,” Phoebe says, a grin itching across her face. “My invitation since you seem to be a friend of Fox’s, I think it’s worth getting to know you.”

Scully knows how this works, knows she’s in a catch-22; she can’t deny this request but by agreeing she’s submitting herself to a night of humiliation and cattiness.

Scully supposes she’d just have to be catty back.

“Of course I will, Miss…?”

“Miss Green,” says Phoebe. “Soon to be Mrs Mulder.” Her left hand moves in front of her right, the gigantic engagement ring that could no doubt feed her and Charlie for years if they got their hands on it, shines on her ring finger.

Scully looks briefly to Mulder who, quiet accurately, looks away. The mention of a fiancé would have been grand, Mulder.

“Of course, Miss Green. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

[hawkeyebabe]

Guys, I couldn’t stop myself, I wrote a fic that I got way too into for this incredibly angsty art by @thesilentwatcher​ sorry. (please go look at it, it’s perfect and my jaw’s on the floor) (no you’re not going crazy, I’m reposting this as a separate entity just so I can organize the way my works are published)

Title: The Hypothesis and Execution of Sentiment Rating: T (blood, violence, heavy themes, questionable ending) Note: I really did flesh this tf out, it just kind of happened. Just a sprinkle of Royai in there because I have zero self control. It might hurt to read this, who knows, enjoy. Summary: During an attack on Central Command, Riza becomes gravely injured with only Edward as witness.

—–

What they heard first, echoing like distant, crashing waves, over the curve of the buildings and through the limbs of the naked Autumn trees, were the screams. Piercing, unmistakable screams, shouts of mania and cries of panic. They shredded the air like nails, biting into the cheeks of the setting sun, and Riza and Edward exchanged severely alarmed looks.

“You’re a major, Edward,” Riza had said with a joking smile, lightly pushing on his shoulder. “I don’t know why you don’t just stay in the officer’s accommodations on Central Campus. It would be far cheaper than a hotel.”

Edward had laughed and pushed her hand away from him.

“Because no way am I going to be any closer to this hellhole then I have to be. You guys are a cancer.”

“WE are a cancer,” she corrected him. “You’re one of us. You’ve been assimilated.”

She’d widened her eyes, allowed her expression to go blank, and lifted her arm like a machine. Edward laughed again and smacked it down.

“Cut that out Lieutenant!”

“Edward…” She turned towards him, eyes wide, expression blank, no whisper of a joke on her features. The hand returned, strong and demanding, to his shoulder. He did not push it away this time.

“Stay here,” she said sharply.

Something exploded in a place they couldn’t see, and the screams intensified. She held his gaze for a long moment, asking him to heed her, asking herself to protect him, then turned on her heel and bolted towards the sounds of chaos.

Where they had been, the southernmost side of headquarters that was sandwiched between the stone buildings and a small wooded area, things had seemed peaceful. Should no noise be heard, with the grass browning naturally and the picnic tables sitting beneath the trees invitingly, it seemed as pleasant a day as ever. But noise was heard; the noise of people dying, and the noise of people killing.

The images of these peaceful things blurred past her, streaking in dull colors as she pushed forward in pounding boots, pulling herself towards the rising crescendos of hysteria and ill intent, towards the booming, intermittent blasts of explosions and now gunfire, and something whispered to her wickedly that this was anything but peaceful.

The sounds of pandemonium sparked upwards like a firecracker, shrieking over Central, its origin emanating from the north; the entrance. The most populated, most vulnerable area. She ran. The rushing air flowed like river water over her bared arms, her jacket having been left in the office for what she assumed would be a short stroll to catch up with Ed.

She turned the corner to charge up the western side, and saw people running. There was another explosion and chunks of stone debris blasted through the air, whistling and pounding into the dirt. The fear that clawed at her body, ripping into her throat to try and smother her, was pushed down with the heavy blanket of reason and action. She turned the next corner…

“Hey!” she screamed furiously, her gun rising in the air as her legs continued to slam against the ground. The man, whose own weapon was pointed at the head of a civilian on their knees, looked up at her before his right eye erupted in blood and he fell on his back. Riza yelled at the civilian man to escape swiftly as she turned her attention to the rest of the grounds.

Clusters of people were running like a panicked herd, scrambling and tripping and pushing, running where, she wasn’t certain. Away, she thought. Just away. A few bodies in uniform lay dead on the ground, lives given in duty, and Riza felt nausea.

Men dressed in black, armed with rifles or handguns, were scattered around like paint drops. Each one bore a red armband, on it a symbol she did not recognize. It was stitched in hatred, and she hated it directly back. She did not know who they were. She did not care. They threatened the lives of her people.

She shot four more insurgents as she waded her way towards the center of the madness, her body a lone sail in an ocean of mayhem.

A wave of fleeing people pulled back a curtain to the scene in front of Riza, of three men planting an explosive in the barrel of a metal trashbin and pushing it up against the base of the stairs. At the crest of the stairs, the door to Central was firmly closed, likely locked; there were at least 15 people running down those steps, reaching to one another and searching madly for a place to escape, hugging and running and sobbing. One of the men pulled out a match…

The weapon in her hand vibrated savagely at each pull of the trigger, shaking the bones in her forearm and briefly numbing her fingers. The man’s match fell with him, dead. His two comrades flailed for a moment, shoving their arms over their heads in an attempt at cover as they searched her out. The blood in her fingers danced at another pull. One of the men’s hands flailed again, but this time at the impact of her bullet, and he too joined the dirt.

Her index muscles pulled into the weapon, asking it again to fire. It answered no, and it clicked, clicked, clicked, at its empty magazine. She felt her eyes widen, cursing her inattentiveness to count, before flipping her hand back to the leather pouch on her belt, popping open the flap to reach for her next clip —

The proceeding gunshot was so abrupt, so thunderous, she jumped backwards as though struck and whipped her head to the side. A man stood ten feet from her, thin wisps of smoke protruding from the barrel of his weapon, and on his face was insanity.

She felt the shallow cut on her shoulder begin to bleed, but she did not allow herself the time to marvel in her fortune.

Better luck next time, asshole.

Without taking his eyes off her, he shouted at his friends to continue their mission. To pick up the match. With a slap of fear, Riza pushed the magazine into her handgun as she turned back towards the men with the explosive, glancing up to see the civilians and unarmed military personnel on the steps scream at the match being handled, but the shadow in her eye forced her to drop as a piercing shot rang out. She barely managed to tumble to the ground as his bullet whizzed over her head. Rolling on her stomach, she pushed herself back to her feet and immediately fell back down as he shot at her for the third time. The grass pricked into her palms.

Dammit…! Anxiety tornadoed up through her lungs and chest as he shot again and she continued to dodge his untrained shots, her precious few moments between each pop of his rifle dedicated only to the defensive; dropping and rolling and jumping away from the eye of his barrel —

Out of the corner of her vision, she saw something bright, yellow, hot and red, and it twirled through the air like a beacon. For a wonderful, blissful moment, she thought she’d hear his voice, see him and relish in his aide, hear that unmistakable snap and know things would be alright, but her ears were instead met by the voice of a detonation, a bellow and clamor of antagony and flame. Daggers of metal trashbin screamed through the air and skewered the ground.

Someone had succeeded in what she had failed to prevent, and she was completely gripped with a drowning fear for the price of her failure. She spun herself around to look with wide, dreading eyes. Somewhere distantly behind her, she heard the click, click, click of an empty trigger…

She saw rising flames, licking at the smoke hazying overhead, she saw burning grass and crumbling stone stairs…

She saw the ground moving like the ocean, like water, as it scooped up the falling people and shielded them from the flames and debris. She saw a red coat and a yellow braid. A relieved and desperate choke fell out of her lungs at the sight of their safety.

Something cracked into the side of her head, sending her body reeling to the ground and her mind through a fog. The gun fell from her hand, flung in a direction she couldn’t discern. She gasped and grabbed her throbbing skull, feeling warmth trickle through her free-flowing hair. The clip laid in pieces beside her.

Her mouth opened in shock as she saw the man’s boot coming for her face, and she shielded herself with her palms just in time for the toe of his shoe to smack into her hold. Grunting, she grabbed the boot with one hand while the other wrapped around the back of his calf. Sucking in a breath, letting her adrenaline pulse through her without tame or control, she pulled him off his feet, his back smacking on the same ground she was becoming far too familiar with.

The man let out a war cry, a declaration of his commitment to his unjust, cruel, murderous cause, and flung himself towards her. His hands hit her shoulders like a pair of anvils despite her wrapping her arms around his, pushing against him, hitting, yanking. They were heavy, they were strong, they were impending, and they snaked towards her throat despite her every effort to fend them off, and suddenly she could not breath.

She tried to gasp but felt only the bitter and painful disappointment of nothingness.

The dirt beneath her fingers rumbled like an engine, humming, drumming, and the man soared off her body. A log-shaped protruder made of dirt stood in his wake, and behind it, the view clear thanks to the disappearance of the man, was Edward.

“Edward!” she coughed, forcing herself onto an elbow. His hands sparked as he rose from the ground. “You shouldn’t be here!” It was a reprimand, but Riza knew his presence saved more than just herself.

“I thought you could use some help.”

Riza looked away from him, glancing at the thinning crowds and the smoking remains of the bottom half of the stairs leading up to the Central building. The small group that had once been there was running, far enough away to be safe, their backs to Riza.

Beyond the broken steps, up there at the top, stood eight men, shoulders bolting into the wooden doors, guns blasting into the heavy internal lock, shouting and pounding on the door with the butts of their weapons. Someone flung a large bag off their shoulder and unzipped it.

“They must have locked down the building…” she surmised, rubbing her throat, breathing heavy from her fight.

“I imagine they must have some important stuff to protect in there.”

“And important people…” She watched them yell as they ran themselves into the door again. Inside were men and women of the highest statute; generals, politicians, journalists. The quickest way to a statement was smearing the blood of those people on the steps of the most important building in Amestris. A hand reached into the mysterious bag and pulled out something square.

“If those men get their hands on either asset…”

They were nobodies, affiliated with a cause she did not know, but their driving, mad passion to make themselves known left her hollow.

“I’m on it,” stated Edward frankly, running forward without another word, red cloth flowing freely behind him.

“Edward!” she called out immediately. He didn’t hear her over the sound of the detonation of another bomb. The thick oak door splintered horrendously, but did not breach. One of the men who stood too close was thrusted backwards over the steps.

These people were insane; they were grown, brawny, dangerous men. They were enraged; they were driven with detestation. Their brows were turned down and their voices scratched with yells of malice. They were foul. They were killers.

A boy ran towards them, a boy named Edward who was none of those things, and Riza felt her boots collide with the increasingly ashy ground as she followed, her body rigid with fear and her hands tingling with a terrible kind of foreboding.

The men began to shout at each other when they noticed the boy’s approach. They reached into their coats, into their belts. Bodies of metal glinted in the orange sun.

Riza yelled with all her energy, screaming at Edward to retreat back to her, but he did not hear. She screamed for him to stop, but the third bomb that sun setting day shook the very wavelengths of the air so she could not hear even her own voice. The door broke wide open and pieces of wood sailed skyward, rising and falling like rain.

The boy clapped his hands together and slapped the ground, the browning grass weaving together, swimming over and upwards, ascending towards the men and puddling over the entryway they had just created. It blocked them completely, someone yelled shoot him down, and Riza’s heart lurched so aggressively she thought it would stop beating. Voices muddled behind her but she could not perceive who they belonged to. Her legs burned with every step, her muscles numb, as she neared Edward. The redness of his coat tricked her into seeing him covered in blood and it made her very own run cold.

The metal bodies raised. There could have been one hundred of them, or there could have been one. They could have been just an intruder, or the Fuhrer himself. They could have been an entire army. They could have been God or the Devil or anything in between. Nothing would have stopped her.

Edward clapped again. He slapped again. The earth covering the door thickened, ending any kind of chance the terrorists had at entering, and the steps flattened like bread so the men’s ascending comrades sunk into rising air and billowing dust. Her eyes burned, and through the tightness of her throat, she felt a great swell of pride for the young alchemist.

His eyes were down, then up, watching them, ensuring their demise, concentrating wholly on what he’d set to do, on the goal he’d given himself, on the lives he intended to save, and through the dust and smoke he didn’t see the metal bodies at the top of the steps raise at him nor did he see hers clamber around until she blocked his sight entirely.

She barely made it. In fact she feared she may not have, having heard the shots before she came to a complete stop, fooling her into thinking she was a just a breath too late, but the truth was not so. The guns rang out, dotting the smoking afternoon with the sound of desire, a want for a boy dead, and the air in Riza’s body left her gently, ghosting out of her open mouth, and she jerked just barely at the impacts. The reassurance she felt, the incomparable solace at knowing she’d succeeded in sparing him, was spectacular.

She blinked slowly up at the men at the top of the stairs. They raised their weapons once more and yelled at each other, aiming down the sights and forcing back their hammers. That’s fine, she told them silently. I’m not moving anytime soon.

But after a few moments, they began to drop like insects. One after the other, they fell, little red flowers blossoming on their heads or their shirts or their necks. She didn’t hear the bullets sliding into their bodies, but she saw them. She saw them sink.

Who…she wondered, accepting that their threat was gone, as she too fell backwards.

Her head fell over the arm of a young man, and she took him with her to the ground. Her body shook aggressively, but after a moment she realized the jitters were not coming from her.

Edward was on his knees holding her, an arm wrapped back behind her shoulders and a thigh beneath her for support, and in his face was absolute horror. His body wracked irregularly as he took in unbelieving, shocked, panicking breaths.

“No…” He protested, his voice shaking. “No…”

She hadn’t the time to realize that despite the season, she had been sweating from her involvement in the attack. The crisp Autumn air cooled the clamminess of her forehead, and the slickness of the several wounds on her stomach. It was only for a brief moment that the injury pained her so terribly that she couldn’t think, but the sensation flitted away so she was left only throbbing. She raised a steady hand to push against the wounds and blood spilled between her fingers.

A gloved hand pressed over her soiled one.

She was surprised at how easily and naturally a small smile crossed over her features as she looked up at him, looked up at his wide, petrified, scared eyes. It was a smile she called for to mask the unmistakable pulsing pain, and to mask the severity of the situation they’d stumbled into it.

The gravity of the moment, the significance of her wounds and how they felt against her beating heart, came to Riza like speech. It was simple, concise, and transparently obvious, and in a language only she could hear, she knew two irrefutable things; she was going to die, and Edward Elric was the one who was going to witness it.

Oh, Edward…she thought with an utter sadness. I’m so sorry it has to be you.

The corners of her mouth rose further and she lifted her free hand up to his face, the back of her fingers brushing across his cheek.

“Edward…” she said as she studied his peril. “It’s alright.”

Tears welled in his eyes and he failed to fight back a sob. She heard the shouts, the orders, of military men. They were distant and foggy, like they were behind a thick wall of glass. He’s safe…

“No, Lieutenant, no, I didn’t…I didn’t mean…”

“Ed you did nothing wrong, sweetheart…” She’d never called him that before, but as she bled and as he held her, it came off her tongue naturally. He was young. He was good. He did not deserve to be there with her.

“You stopped those men,” she continued softly, “from breaching the building…”

Those impending wounds in her body, pulsing and stabbing, began to grow numb. The back of her throat and the depths of her gut iced like a frost.

“You…saved…so many…”

“Don’t,” he choked. “Don’t do that, please, Lieutenant Hawkeye, please…” He could not stop the sob that wracked his body or the tears spilling down his face. “You can’t go, I can’t let you, dammit!”

“Hey, hey, hey…” Her fingers wiped at the tears. “It’s fine, Edward. Really.”

Her insides trembling, Riza was selfishly grateful for her need to comfort the boy. Without it, without him, she’d be left to swim in the terror she surmised was lurking beneath her strength.

“Listen…” Paresthesia prickled her failing nerves. An invisible sadness pushed against her heart as she pictured his face. “I need you to look after the Colonel for me, okay?” It was a question asked through a calm smile. She coughed weakly, and knew by the bitter taste of iron in her mouth that something red was running slowly down her face.

“He needs…someone to keep him in check.”

Crying, Edward could not stop shaking his head, like the repeat of the motion would chase away the scene. Would chase away the dark figure waiting patiently for Riza to finish consoling him. Would wake him from the nightmare he’d found himself in, from the nightmare she was responsible for. The fingers around her shoulders tightened.

“C’mon, Lieutenant,” he forced. “The soldiers are here, they’re…they’re here, arresting those guys…” He tore his eyes away from her as though realizing his words, looked around wildly, and he screamed,

“Help! Someone please help me! HELP!!!”

But no one heeded his plea. The mania of the event had not yet dissipated, and there were more civilians and criminals than soldiers. No one spared him a glance, or likely even heard him.

“Someone’s…” His chest convulsed as he took in a breath. “Someone’s gonna come…and,” he inhaled terribly. “And get you help, alright? Please…”

She looked up between his eyes, his bright, golden eyes, and she saw him. Saw his past, and his future. She saw a broken boy and a strong man. She saw how he looked at his brother, and how he studied his books; she saw a history in them that was so saturated yet still so incomplete, and she saw something, someone, truly magnificent. In his eyes, she saw herself loving him.

“Don’t let Mustang push you around too much, Edward…keep fighting for you and your brother…I know you will…get your original bodies back…”

The muscles she’d grown with, used since birth, toning and fighting and living with, whispered to her when once they sang. They deteriorated completely until they disconnected, abandoning her, no longer a continuation of mind, as she continued to die. Darkness crept into the corners of her eyes, bleeding towards Edward’s face, and things began to fade.

“It’s alright, Ed…trust me…it’s…alright…”

“Lieutenant Hawkeye, please…!”

“Come on, Edward…” Her eyelids drooped as if she were falling asleep. “Don’t be upset…it’s okay…”

He shook her, a wild attempt to jostle her bleeding body, to wake her, to stop the descent of her eyes, but it did nothing to sway a stilling casualty.

“Lieutenant!”

“Ed…” It was a breathy release of his name. Her index finger moved just barely, a final smooth stroke of his cheek. “It’s okay…”

Her eyes slipped fully closed, the fingers against Edward’s face stopped moving, and the hand fell limp against his shoulder as her head lolled with the absence of life. She became completely, utterly, unquestionably still.

Edward cried openly, then. Cried out her name, cried out a curse. Sobbing, shouting, eyes clenched shut and wet tears falling, desperation clung to him like a wrap. No amount of despair brought her back to comfort him yet he could not halt its onslaught. No amount of regret could halt his crave for her to touch him again, to tell him it was alright even though it was not. Her body was heavy against his, her blood slick beneath his palm, her face pale and her whole self stiller than sleep.

Edward! It’s great to see you! How have you been?

Edward. You really ought to be more gentle with Al. What harm could a little kitten do?

Edward, don’t let the Colonel, or anyone, for that matter, bother you too much. Everyone’s grumpy around here anyway. And they’re old. Go to the library and do your research.

He hugged her close to him, smelling the gunpowder on her clothes and feeling the warmth of her flesh drift away.

Lieutenant, how can you stand to be here all day every day? Aren’t you going mad?

I would have when I was your age. But this is my purpose now. And believe it or not, I do not hate it. But you, of course, would.

Her lips were parted silently, open as her head hung backwards. Pieces of blonde hair stuck to her face, the rest of it splaying both over and under Ed’s arm, rough against his coat.

Hey, Ed. I heard you and Al were coming by today so I brought some of that tea with me. You really should try it, it’s very good. And here are a few of my books for Al; I finished them a long time ago.

The scene fell on deaf ears and and blind eyes. Uniformed men dug out of the mud entrance of Central to detain the living; identical boots marched over the grass to tackle stragglers and lead hiding civilians; ash still falling, still drifting, from the explosions prior, peddling over her black shirt and down her hair.

Some men were born to light things on fire, and some men were born to put those fires out. He’d never noticed the flash of something in her eyes when she’d said that. You don’t need to be both, Edward. You can just be the one who fights for what is good, and what is right. You don’t need to try being the arsonist to be the one who fights them. Trust me…it isn’t worth it.

You’re a good person, Edward. Don’t lose that, okay? It’s a rare thing. And it is you.

“…Fullmetal…”

Ed’s eyes snapped open to look at the knees of a man in blue, and they traveled up to lock with the gaze of Roy Mustang.

But the contact was brief as Roy’s eyes landed on the body in Edward’s hands. He watched him as Mustang fell to his knees.

“Please save her,” Edward spurted, tears dribbling down his cheeks. He didn’t know what else to say, or how to say it. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know anything.

“Please save her…”

The older man wordlessly slipped his gloved hands beneath the woman’s shoulders and knees, and he pulled her into his lap. The limp hand that was against Edward’s shoulder fell to the ground with a soft thud. Blood stained Ed’s pants like a commandment.

“…I can’t…” Mustang finally said quietly.

Edward’s eyes widened, the skin beneath them gray and hopeless, as he studied the officer. You can’t? he thought. You can’t?

“Then…how…?”

Edward, of course, knew the answer. He’d known it the moment his only hope in the form of Roy Mustang had said no.

The raven haired man tensed as he watched the woman in his arms and he just shook his head. He did not tear his eyes from her, and he shook his head, shook his head, like she’d done something disappointing, shook his head…

Remember something, Edward. What the Colonel and I do, or what the military does, or the Fuhrer or the receptionist or the chefs or the accountants or the damned garbageman, do not be concerned with our agenda. Because we’ve had…well, we’re rarely right. Adults don’t know what they’re doing. I certainly don’t. Don’t pay attention to us. Just focus on you and your brother.

Don’t tell him I told you, but the Colonel’s car broke down two days ago. He’s always more short when his machine is broken; he loves that thing too much. Don’t take it personally.

Are you in town for awhile, Ed? Good. I want to have lunch with you boys.

Alright, Edward. Have a good night.

The Flame Alchemist’s features quivered until he finally closed his eyes, slowly, like he’d been made of molasses. Edward sat there lamely, the backs of his hands against the ground, as he watched with his mouth open and his tears falling.

Mustang turned to stone, as still and unmoving as the person he held.

Numbly, without thought, Edward rose to his feet. He blinked and let his eyes drift, felt shock twine around his spine and inside his skull. A faceless soldier had his knee on a person’s back, cuffing him. A man and a woman embraced each other and cried. A mother held her child and spoke tearfully with an officer. There was a person sprinting up the street in black slacks and a grey sweater, a white labcoat draped on his shoulders and a black briefcase swinging with his gait.

Something without reason, something that didn’t just see Riza Hawkeye close her eyes, told Edward to take a step towards him.

I know you’re dedicating your life to finding the answers, Ed, but don’t forget to try and have fun once in awhile.

Ha. What’s ‘fun’ mean, Lieutenant?

Who knows. I’ve never tried it myself. But I think you should.

He took another step. The man looked like a civilian doctor, coming to count the cost and aide out of good nature and service. Ed stepped again, again, and each step he took increased in speed until he was galloping, his arms and limbs turning to jelly, the tears drying and the salt sticking to his skin.

Edward, hey! It’s great to see you.

Edward, please eat that sandwich. I brought it for a reason.

Edward! I can’t believe how much you’ve grown.

Edward, I know you’re stubborn and don’t want to tell anyone if you’re having a hard time. But if you or Al need a place to stay, my door is open. I have a dog and hot meals. What more could you need?

Edward…

…I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?

Yes, he thought bitterly. Yes, you will.

[myfriendpokey]

7 bubsys of the world

1. museum bubsy:

i love bubsy bobcat's ghastly, staring eyes, which look past everything around him, as if he were the dead theologian mentioned in swedenborg - who upon death simply moves without knowing into a new eternal house shaped exactly like his own, but which over time begins to grow dimmer, more transparent, he finds rooms he's never seen before, populated by dead and faceless men, themfurniture and writings fade, until we can only imagine some final increment of ghostliness leads to the awful truth that - - aaah!!

but of course the distance in bubsy's stare comes from a different location, not so much the gulf between the living and the dead as that between the living and the 90s. bubsy looks at us from the depths of a bubsy 3d that NEVER ENDED, that rather than being a temporary and ignoble home for the hovering bubsy spirit (as expressed in various promotional materials) has somehow become the final determining limit for where that spirit can go. bubsy can explore any kind of content, go on any kind of adventure.. once it is re-expressed within the conditions of this mangled polygonal plain..... i think that it's so easy (and so profitable!!) to fall into a sort of idealist conception of videogame history as one of various platonic bogeys (truth! gameplay! mario!) temporarily given shape in base matter before disintegrating to appear in some new form. we don't really think those material expressions have anything to say about their spirits, obviously mario isn't "really" as chunky and polygonal as he is in mario 64, just as videogames as a form can easily be distinguished from any of the various rather sad attempts to embody that form. so it's a real shock to find our credit rescinded and be told, no, this is what you have. bubsy is trapped inside his temporary emblem, inside a world he never made, drifting around haplessly and at last thrust towards that final refuge of the doomed, which is the effort to at least be Cultured.  do his unseeing eyes still register a sense of potential alterity in the artwork he consumes, or just the frozen parody of same?

2. personal bubsy:

interestingly very few of the bubsy fangames try to replicate the protagonist's canon personality at face value, very likely because it's unbearable. but maybe also for other reasons. the bubsy games themselves play with the idea of bubsy as either an actor seperable from the gameworlds he inhabits ("bubsy the bobcat in claws encounters of the furred kind") or as at least possessing a kind of bugs-bunny-ish awareness of an audience (who are all those quips addressed to?). but that's within the games' own conception of themselves as exciting blockbuster product - taking them as failures of one kind or another as it's become standard to do converts bubsy's actorliness from that of the starring attraction to a sort of jobbing z-movie shlub, mired in one contractual dispute after another and forced through a variety of ill-concieved ventures. and i say interestingly because as far as i can see there's little to support this good will or sense of implied interiority - i'm not aware of gex, say, or duke nukem being extended the same kind of escape clause from their own insufferability. maybe the sheer unbelievability of what these games are telling us about themselves, as mediated through some decades of bubsy trash-talk, gives them a plaintive quality.

3. omnipresent bubsy:

i made a bubsy bobcat fangame once because i thought it would be funny to have a fangame for a character nobody actually liked. it got picked up and reposted by a bubsy fanblog a few days later ("Added for the sake of Bubsy completeness... man this looks bad... but you can download it XD".)

4. dialectic bubsy:

to clarify: i made a bubsy bobcat fangame because i wanted to be funny, but i also wanted to be annoying. i was interested in the "indie games" scene (as distinct from the rpg maker one) and in 2009 the public face of that was very much High Designist, minimal, meaningful, squares, grids, programming, Passage, etc..

i was making a game for an experimental gameplay workshop open jam and figured since i lacked all qualification for this style of art i might as well deliberately disqualify myself from it and make something that was sort of ostentatiously mired in the same junky, unreflective commercial culture that stuff was trying to escape.  so it was partly a tease, but not a very dangerous one. bubsy was so visibly, universally reviled within videogame culture that it was hard to imagine any kind of sincere identification with the character taking place - using that franchise therefore meant being able to convert the ickier associations of the fangame format (unoriginal!! un-"challenging"!! made by and for hobbyists and women!!) into more aestheticised, and also more acceptable, forms of disagreeability ("punk" recontextualisation and deliberate badness, etc). so it's a funny ugliness but also one that relies on a sort of shared, unquestioned sense of what's genuinely "un-touchable" in this artsy context, and of course bonding over mutual agreement on what's beyond the pale of acceptable taste is one of the founding rituals of "gamer culture". i'd never played a bubsy game and probably only knew about the franchise from seanbaby or something like that.

what happened next is more interesting. i'd made a game called space funeral, which was popular enough on gamejolt to generate a fairly active fanart tag and even some fangames, a number of fangames all by different authors and with different approaches. and one of the fangame authors ended up playing my own bubsy fangame and decided to re-include bubsy as a character in space funeral 4 as something of a callback to that. i think (forgive me, i only browse the tag) this slowly became the occasion for some drama within "the community". Words Were Said re. furries and the appropriateness of same within this context, bubsy continued gaining more and more of a prominent role in the new fangame, "new bubsy" was also reimagined as a trans sex worker with an extremely prominent chest, these decisions appeared to be contentious, eventually the developer of SF4 declared that they were sick of the fandom, sick of the original game, and going to start a new project based entirely around their new bubsy character.... all of which is well and good and Culture In Action and frankly i stopped having any opinion about space funeral long before the first fangame came out. but what i'm interested in here is bubsy, and specifically the idea of how the deliberate reuse of the bubsy character acts as a way to thematise and re-engage whatever's felt to be awful, unacceptable, within some specific space. in rip van bubsy that means pushing against artgame's more apollonian efforts with a reminder of the garish, lumpen, unsignifying qualities of most actually existing videogames; in space funeral 4, the ironic repurposing and sexlessness of games like rip van bubsy and space funeral is itself critiqued by a sincere / artless / horned-up reusage of the same material which is similarly "unacceptable" within that framework. the travelling figure of bubsy appears as an index of dissent around the format...

5. negative bubsy:

i think it's a known and documented phenomenon that punk music has a weird, recurring affinity for the purest of pure MOR pop - sex pistols, the clash, nirvana all known abba fans, the minutemen covered steely dan, sonic youth the carpenters, madonna floats across michael azerrad's "our band could be your life" as eerily recurring presence and talisman... all of which might just be a catalog of private tastes. but it's also tempting, given that in seperate ways these were all very self-fashioned, ideological, image-alert bands, to take this taste for pure pop as to some extent  deliberate, as maybe part of the same self-fashioning. the very distance of abba from anything approaching punk, noise, art-rock, becomes a reason to like them - they become a kind of model of aesthetic autonomy, serenely detached from any kind of taste or wider expectation - abba are a vantage point from which you can critique punk rock itself. and punks and abba become comrades in their mutual distance from pink floyd("horseshoe theory").

why so many art games about bubsy? there are many perverse or ironic reasons, but i wonder if one of them could be that he occupies something of the same role within the videogames imagination. the idea of a franchise for a character nobody likes turns into an image of art for art's sake. the fact that bubsy is irredeemable from a "meaningful, expressive" perspective makes him useful as a point from which to hypothesize forms of art which deliberately avoid the meaningful or expressive - as in ulillillia's marvellous bubsy 3d videos, which transform the game into a oulipean suite of detached operations.

6. material bubsy:

the recieved idea of the mid-1990s mascot platformer audience is like the old analogy of the pre-revolution french peasant as a man walking up to his nose in water - while the ground is flat, he can persist indefinitely, but come the slightest decrease or pothole he will instantly drown. with the bubsy games as tipping point for the temporary demise of this form. but it's still curious that he was chosen, rather than, say, zool or cool spot, mascots who were "worse" on an objective moral level in that they were literally marketing contrivances to sell snack food to children. the videogames audience is traditionally able to accept any level of ghoulishness of this kind as long as it is presented in an appropriately humble,relateable way - the only sin really punished is that of pride, of getting above your station. so here we have a sort of martyr-bubsy, whose only real crime was not exemplifying videogame industry hubris and cynicism so much as making insufficient effort to cover for it...

well, maybe not, maybe we should honor the "disproportionate" scapegoating of bubsy as a real moment of disgust at the habitual crapness of mass media and avoid that charitable revisionism which is so easily rolled out to brands with the power to outlive many of their critics. but there is a  certain fascination that comes with those games blamed for or associated with some kind of crash, collapse - - like the atari ET game, they can no longer be regarded as "just games" operating within some fixed economic niche, they fall partly out of that niche and into the material world, they temporarily dispel the sensed changelessness of the industry. if ET really did destroy the industry it would be the best videogame ever made. bubsy never acquired this glamour, but it means that within the awful pantheon of named videogame characters he's one of the few which can be identified with any kind of negative drive, which gives him a special affinity for hobbyist games interested in tarrying with that drive.

7. official bubsy:

how many bubsys can you shut up? in 2016 a new, official bubsy game was released for pc and ps4, proving once and for all that that is not dead which can eternal lie, and came with a nauseating press-release-cum-interview with bubsy himself in which he ruminates smugly about his ensuing return to planet earth. the fake interviewer glosses the weird and largely negative history of the franchise (bubsy is a "gaming legend", apparently - i can't see anyone described as a "legend" without thinking of those awful laddish testimonials to the likes of boris johnson and raoul moat); bubsy throws in an unexpected jab at "unauthorized indie pixel games and deeveeart  portraits", suggesting he's at least seen space funeral 4; the overall  tone is that same bullying landlord chumminess of people deposed by scandal who pop up on the chat show circuit five years later with memoir in tow, blandly self-certain about the place they  deserve to keep in public life. whatever human meaning had accrued to the  franchise - in failure, in the way that failure could be used, repurposed, in wider ongoing arguments about culture - is firmly pushed away, in favour of that strangely anonymous recognition-without-history that constitutes ultimate value for any IP.

but it's also hardly unexpected - nothing dies anymore, even those forms whose only interest was in death, and we're of course not restrained by the threatening (litigious?) distinction between authorized and unauthorized versions of the same wretched official culture. better just to see it as yet another fan-bubsy to add to the catalog- a horrible-undead-persistence-under-capitalism bubsy, a bubsy that now signifies as well as everything else the monolithic stupidity by which "authorized" culture attempts to safeguard its possessions. so maybe we will see this new bubsy start to emerge places as well, an all-new emblem of the negative, emerging where you want it least... a bubsy for our time..!!!

[image tags: bubsy visits the james turrell retrospective, bubsy the bobcat in rip van bubsy starring bubsy, space funeral 4, “rabbid better than bubsy” by shinxboy on deviantart, bubsy animated tv show]