#life's great lie

[five-rivers]

Clocking in at just under 55k, Life's Great Lie, my Danny Phantom + Avengers movie crossover is now complete!

Hope you've enjoyed it!

[inkskinned]

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

[lastofthe20thcenturygirls]

the OG cool kids

[dead-girl-tells-stories]

Okay so I didn't like this idea at first for multiple reasons, mostly because I didn't like cheating no matter the circumstances. But the idea would not leave my head until I did something with it so I'm sharing on the internet where some people might like it.

Okay so Jack and Maddie for some reason were having a rough patch in their relationship and thought that maybe some time apart would help them a bit. Jack and Jazz go and visit his parents and Maddie goes and stay with her sister in Gotham. (I like to think that her sister is Harley Quinn)

During this time Bruce Wayne was in his play boy era and was well.... sleeping around... a lot.

Anyways Bruce and Maddie somehow meets each other, get drunk/tipsy and have a one night stand. And that was the end of that. Until it wasn't.

A few weeks after moving back in with her husband she notices that she has really bad morning sickness. She takes a pregnancy test and the realization hits her like a truck. She has no choice but to tell her husband.

Good thing for her is that her husband loves her no matter what. They decide to keep the baby. And when Danny was born he looked enough like Jack to be passed of as his. So they did.

Flashforward a few years later and Danny is sixteen. Everything that happened, happened.

Danny was killed and revived by his parents ghost portal and became a half ghost. He became a superhero and fought off the ghost from in the portal. More shit happens. He had to fight Phria Dark and won. Became the ghost king. And last but not least, told his parents about his half ghost status.

The last part may or may not have strained his already strenuous relationship with his parents, but he loved them no matter what. And they love him too... he thinks.

Anyways Danny and the ghost came to some sort of agreement, allowing to actually do well in school which allowed him to come on this field trip to Gotham. ( I imagine that it's for history class and they're there to learn about the city's history and architecture and shit like that )

Anyways one of the bat fam sees him and goes like ‘Holy shit this kid is a carbon copy of B! Is it a clone?’ and then proceeds to follow him around. The trip last for a few days and they were able to successfully get a DNA sample from the kid. ( And Danny can't help but feel as if he was being stalked the whole trip. )

They carry the DNA sample back to the Bat Cave to test it and holy shit it's worse/better than a clone!! They are so going to be having a few words with B themselves. They all are. Also the kid's DNA is fuckin... something holy shit!

A few weeks later there's a knock on the Fenton's door. It's strange because anyone who lives in Amity knows that knocking on their door is a bad idea. The parents aren't home so Jazz opens the door and... Is that fuckin Bruce Wayne‽

Yeah that's my idea. If you like it do as you want with it just tag me please because I would like to see what people do with it.

[revertrate]

Still not over the april fools drawing that it's technically canon(?) that juwan becomes a young dad

[modmad]

Seeing you on this site from time to time is always so strange bc in middle school i had a mad mod hyperfixation and consumed like, all of your mad mod content. All of it. Yes even the roleplay. The one where he was a hologram fashion teacher and was idolized by jack spicer. I was very starved of content

anon here knowing my dark online origin story and expecting me to be able to have a normal day afterwards i

[im-no-jedi]

alright when were y’all gonna tell me that the blood moon is officially known as a Hunter’s Moon

also

I’m toooootally gonna be normal about this yup yeah mm-hmm 🫢

[scribblersobia]

My past self asked me: And, what will you never do again?

My present self replied: I will never ''IGNORE MY GUT FEELING'' again!

@scribblersobia

[five-rivers]

Life's Great Lie 17

AO3

.

“Oh, thank God,” said Tony, “Bruce is here.”  All the other green, angry looking people were secondary, as far as he was concerned.  Having the Hulk on hand meant that he didn’t have to play Jonah again.  That had been.  Unpleasant.

A dart of red broke off the crowd of ghosts and angled towards Tony.  Valerie Gray.  And Bruce, too.  As Bruce. 

“Where do you want us?” shouted Valerie. 

“Take your pick!” shouted Tony, even as he lined up more shots.  He was going to be running out of all but the special anti-ghost ordinance soon.  “But—Bruce, you’re going to have to suit up.”

“Of course,” said Bruce, rubbing his face.  “Yeah.  Okay.  You would call it that.  Miss Gray, if you could take me up towards one of those…  big things…”  He gestured vaguely at the space whales.

“Cool!” said Tony, giving them a thumbs up.  “Now, all we need to do is get a shield around the portals, and we can roll up the streets.  No problem!”

“Sir,” said Jarvis.  “You may want to look at the Ops Center.”

What was going on now?  He turned and watched the shield around the airship flicker once, twice, and then go out completely.  The chitauri, who apparently were smart enough to smell blood in the water, regardless of any other tactical deficiencies, changed direction. 

“Well, that’s not good.  Anyone want to fill me in on what’s going wrong?”

“Well,” started Jasmine Fenton. 

.

“What happened to the thing being self-sustaining?” demanded Natasha as she punched out another mercenary.  Where had Loki even found these guys?  They weren’t even mind controlled.  Who in their right mind signed up to fight for the aliens in a literal alien invasion?

“Listen,” said Maddie Fenton, a little testily, “we quite literally built it on the fly.  It isn’t operating at peak theoretical efficiency, but it’s a testament to Jack’s engineering skills that we got it to work at all, much less while also trying to come up with a workable solution for the shields.  Be glad we have enough power to keep the portal open, even.”

“Forget the shields,” interrupted Tucker, his voice crackling slightly.  The Fentons’ communicators weren’t bad, and apparently they worked through the ‘spectral noise’ associated with ghosts, but they left something to be desired in comparison to the crystal-clear communications Natasha had gotten used to while working for SHIELD.  “Well, no, don’t forget them, forget them, we might still be able to—I’ve got— What’s your name again, dude? —I’ve got Selvig up here, and he says that if we can get Loki’s staff, we can shut down his portal.”

“Great!” shouted Steve.  “Anyone have eyes on Loki?”

.

The answer to that was, of course, a resounding no. 

.

“Oi, Tucker, you want to run by that thought you had about the shields again?”

Under other circumstances, Tucker might have been over the moon.  Tony Stark, asking him about something technical!  It was like a dream come true! 

But between the mind control, the alien invasion, and whatever was going on with SHIELD and HYDRA, Tucker’s enthusiasm for anything was pretty much nil.  So. 

“Uh,” said Tucker.  He and Selvig were standing in front of Loki’s portal device.  Well.  Tucker was sort of crouching, and Selvig was… sprawled.  That couldn’t be a good position for a guy that old, but whatever.  “So, Loki got the startup power for this thing from the, uh, the tower’s arc reactor, right?  So, it’s still plugged in.  The connection is live, and it looks like he used standard connectors.  Not, you know, a twelve-gauge extension cord, but Earth-made.  I think maybe we can use it to charge up the shields and use one here as the centerpiece – the power source – instead of the one in the Ops Center.  If it’s, like compatible.  Is that a thing we can do?  Mrs. Fenton?”

“Well, it isn’t impossible,”she said.  “But those portable shield relays – they weren’t made as independent shield generators, and for them to run on something other than ectoplasm – Jack, sweetie, do we still have those blueprints? – Thanks.  Alright, Tucker, you’ll have to make significant adjustments to the shield relay, probably even cannibalize one of them.  Are you able to do that?”

“Well,” said Tucker.  “Maybe?  I’ve got a lipstick laser and…”  He looked over his shoulder.   “Selvig.  Sort of.  But if it’s anything more complicated than rewiring the Speeder’s main gun to fire from the backseat window console, I’m going to need a bunch of tools and a science guy who isn’t dead on his feet.  No offense.”

Selvig waved him off. 

“You’re the one who—?  Never mind.  It is more complicated.  Quite a bit more complicated.”

“I’ll also need, you know, the generators.  Relays?”

“I’m still on my way,” said Romanov.  She sounded… upset.

“And so am I,” said Iron Man.  “Kid, I’ve got all sorts of tools in my apartment.  And dummy, too.”

Okay.  Cool.  Also, what did dummies have to do with anything?  Was that rich people code for something?

“Okay, want to give me directions, or am I supposed to just start pulling out drawers?”

.

“Hey!  Where’re you going?”

“You need more cover,” said Sam.  “This is what I have the jetpack for, remember?  Arrow boy isn’t going to get all of them, and they do have ranged weapons.”

It was true, one well-aimed shot through the Ops Center envelope could send the whole thing down.  They weren’t using hydrogen gas, of course, but an ectoplasm-nitrogen mix, so there was no danger of becoming Hindenburg Mk II, unless the aliens’ energy weapons reacted really badly with ectoplasm, but there hadn’t been any evidence of that yet, so…

Anyway, it didn’t matter.  Jazz was too busy keeping the Ops Center and the portal steady to do much else. 

“Be careful,” she said. 

“Can’t make any promises!”

.

Fury was having a bad day.  A really, monumentally, bad day.  One that was part of an already awful week but still managed to go above and beyond in terms of how completely awful it was. 

Primarily, he blamed HYDRA.  They were very easy to blame and were, in his opinion, responsible for at least seventy percent of the metric ton of crap he was currently wading through. 

But then, then he got a call. 

The call. 

Which meant that he had to take this boat riddled with snakes to fight off an alien invasion over New York.  Peachy. 

If ever he’d been tempted to give old friends a call…  But he wouldn’t.  Not yet. 

“Sir,” said Coulson, joining him smoothly as he walked down the hallway toward the main bridge. 

“What’d you find?”

“We have problems, sir.  Using the head start we were given, I’ve found no less than seventy problem areas on this ship… and some indications that the World Security Council may have similar issues.  We also have to assume there are unseen variables at play.”

Fury did not miss a step.  Benefit of being a cynical bastard.  The WSC was a shock, and a disaster on multiple levels, but the other number was… livable.  “Are there any particular personnel involved in these problems?”

“STRIKE teams seem to have an unusually high number of incidents.  Upwards of ninety percent.”

Fury strode onto the bridge.  “Tell the STRIKE teams to prepare to mobilize and pilots to scramble.”  Uriah gambits were unpleasant… but if he could kill two birds with one stone, he would, and he wouldn’t feel bad about it.  “What kind of air power are we looking at?”

“Significant,” said a comm. tech who was flipping through different news programs.  “They seem to have biologically based technology of some kind, weaponry is mainly energy-based, propulsion… unclear.”

Wonderful.  Fury scanned the other screens, trying to get a better picture of what, exactly, was happening in New York.  What tactics the enemy was using, what numbers they had, what resistance had been put up so far and by whom. 

“Sir,” said Agent Hill.  “The council is on.”

The council.  The same one Coulson had just told him was infiltrated by HYDRA.  The same one that would probably find a way to make their present situation all the more untenable and Fury’s day infinitely worse. 

It was a pity he couldn’t ignore them. 

“Put them on.”

.

Pandora hissed at the sting of the enemies’ weapons.  They were not ectoblasts, no, but there was the taste of something like magic to them, and energy was energy.  Still, they were not enough to damage her unduly, although they might prove troublesome, dangerously so, for the weaker ghosts of their force. 

But that was the nature of war.  Few battles were won without bloodshed. 

Her warriors should otherwise be a match for the chitauri.  The chitauri had numbers, doubtlessly, but her warriors had experience.  And once Frostbite and Dorathea lead their forces onto the battlefield, well… She could not estimate the number of enemies.  She had been told that they came from the stars, and those lands were numerous to the point of being innumerable.  Even so, there was a limit to passage through a choke point, and even the stars themselves may not turn things in the favor of a commander caught in one, no matter their numbers. 

But the ghosts, too, must pass through a portal.  Pandora eyed the slight waver in the portal’s outline with disfavor.  She was no expert in such matters, but many years of existence had given her some intuition for how portals should behave.  This one was stable enough, but not for long. 

All the more reason to resolve things quickly. 

“Hunter,” she said. 

“What?” snapped the mechanical man, the burnished plates of his armor flashing in the Sun. 

“Your task.  Find Phantom.  Free him from whatever compulsion he is under.”  Although Phantom still had much to learn, he was undeniably powerful.  Returning him to his proper allegiance would

Skulker looked away from the beast he was dismembering with some reluctance.  “Fine.  Dog.  Come here.”

The dog ignored him.  As it was Phantom’s, and Skulker hadn’t made the effort to learn its name, that was really no surprise.  Still, Skulker gestured at it.  It, in turn, bounded away, yipping.

“Are you, or are you not, the greatest hunter in the Infinite Realms?  Find him with or without the dog.”

Skulker grumbled but flew off.  Good. 

Pandora manifested a joint in her neck just long enough to crack it and drummed her fingers on the lid of her box.  It had been too long, far too long, since she had engaged in a proper battle against evil, and the more vicious of the leviathans flying through the air looked like they would, at least, give her a challenge. 

.

Thor had become more open-minded since his short stay on Earth, with Dr. Selvig, Darcy, and… Dr. Jane Foster.  Truly.  But he had to admit, these ghosts were unnerving.  Too similar by far to the draugr that had ofttimes haunted the stories of bards – the ones that made his father glare and try to shoo away both Thor and Loki. 

He had to find his brother.  Soon.  With all that had happened, with how, exactly, Loki had behaved, he believed, truly believed Daniel Fenton’s assertion Loki was being controlled, somehow. 

It was a foul thing, to put such a geas on a prince of Asgard…  Although, to be fair, putting a geas on anyone was foul.  It just seemed especially foul to Thor, that someone should do it to his brother. 

Loki had, perhaps, never been quite so good as one might hope, but he had always been… himself, as vague as that description was.  Even when he’d been consumed by madness, letting jotnar into Asgard, sending the Destroyer after people on Earth, he had still been himself.

Thor did not like this new version of Loki, who was very much…  It was like seeing his brother through a warped pane of glass, or in a reflection.  In fact, he liked it so little that he couldn’t even enjoy the utter destruction he was wrecking on the chitauri, lightning, head-crushing, and all.  Not that he had been enjoying combat quite as much as he once did in general.

The price of being worthy, he presumed. 

Alas. 

A bright green flying dog whipped past him at speed, heading towards the tower.  He narrowed his eyes at it.  Most of the ghosts had stayed concentrated around the portals.  What cause had this one to stray?

But he could not go investigate.  He could still hear the screams of the civilians cornered in the buildings nearby.  He would not leave them to fend for themselves until he had cleared this street. 

.

Danny and Loki would both have preferred to use the elevators.  Unfortunately, significant parts of the main upper elevator shaft had been repurposed for extension-cable-from-hell-powering-up-a-doomsday-device purposes, and no one wanted to mess with that, and the military-type guys they still had with them recommended shutting them off from a tactical perspective of ‘there’s more of them then there are of us, and we don’t want to guard them all.’  So.  No elevators. 

Danny could have just dropped them through the floor instead, but Loki seemed concerned about the effect serially dropping through floors had on Danny. 

Or, well, the effect that the effect it had on Danny was having on him, in any case. 

“I refuse to get stuck in a ceiling again.  I am a god.  I am to be treated with some degree of gravitas.”

“It was one time.  You should’ve seen what I was like when I first got my powers.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“Year and a half ago, about.”

Anyway, they were taking the stairs.  Danny wasn’t really upset about it, because it gave him more time to be annoying.  Right now, he was in the midst of a recital of all the ‘annoying younger sibling’ noises he had ever made.  Right now, he was working on ‘long drawn out sighs,’ which had really been a hit with Jazz, when he’d been eight.  Which was to say, she hated them.  A lot. 

And Loki didn’t seem to a have a lot of tolerance, either. 

“What,” he snapped, “are you doing?”

“Nothing,” said Danny, enjoying the way Loki’s face pinched up, as if he were searching for a way to order him to stop without really screwing up his other orders…

… speaking of which, could Danny have interpreted ‘get me out of here’ to mean ‘get me out of New York?’  Maybe.  But at this point, there were plenty of reasons to want them both in New York, including-- 

Danny’s train of thought derailed as he noticed the sound of footsteps echoing up the stairwell.  He looked down and then threw himself backwards as a redheaded woman – Romanov – brought a gun to bear on him.  She fired, twice, in quick succession.  Wow.  Rude.  And pretty brutal, too, but then again, New York was being invaded by aliens.  And she knew about his powers. 

(Hecking Fury, telling people about his powers.)

Although, considering trajectories… no, he was too sleep deprived to consider trajectories. 

He grabbed Loki’s arm, intending to drop them through the floor. 

“No, wait,” said Loki.  “Let’s see what the Widow wants.”  There was a malicious, almost cruel, edge to his voice, but there was a hollowness underneath it.  He did want to see why Black Widow, Natasha Romanov, was here, but the tone, the phrasing, was just to rile her up. 

Or to appear as if he wanted to rile her up.  Danny hadn’t listened to all the things Barton and Loki had discussed – too busy freaking out about the whole situation vis a vis mind control and alien invasions – but he hadn’t gotten the impression she was all that easy to rile up. 

But Danny had his orders.  And he still had to defend Loki.  Ice began to spread out from under his feet.  It was a bit sluggish, but it would give him the terrain advantage as far as maneuvers went.  The Widow kicked open the door on her landing and rolled out, into the floor beyond, staying more or less out of direct line of fire for both Danny and Loki. 

“I have eyes on Loki,” she said, out loud. 

.

“Crap,” said Tony, tossing the box to the Foley kid.  “Sorry, got to go, but hey!”  He was already heading for the edge of the roof.  “Maybe we won’t even need that if we do this right!”

.

Black Widow definitely been looking for them, which wasn’t surprising, but what was she carrying?  The bag was bulky and angular.  A weapon?  If so, why hadn’t she used it? 

Loki stepped out past Danny but stayed well within Danny’s ability to grab – or drop through the floor, if necessary.  Making the floor intangible instead was a valid strategy. 

“What is it you want, Widow?  Natasha Romanov?”

Romanov, meanwhile, had disappeared, almost as thoroughly as Danny could.  He tilted his head to one side, listening.  This floor, it seemed, had been imagined as semi-open lab space.  There were long work benches, empty places for equipment, some kind of robotic arm in the ceiling, and a cart full of plastic-wrapped computers, monitors and towers together. 

It was kind of cool.  There were a lot of places to hide. 

“Is this… revenge?  For Barton?”  Loki’s smile was sharp.  “He told me much about you, and I suppose Stark mentioned avenging this place.”  Two false images split off from Loki to prowl among the lab tables.  “It suits you better than it does him.  But don’t you think it somewhat… hypocritical?”

.

“Okay, Romanov, here’s how it is.  Loki likes illusions?  Let’s give him an illusion.”

.

Danny saw a flash of red out of the corner of his eye and angled himself to intercept, but no attack came. 

“After all… you’ve done so much… so much that others would be more than justified retaliating for, don’t you think?  All those regime changes, shall we call them?  And Barton’s no better, really.”  He hummed.  “The things you two did together.  Drakov’s daughter?  Sāo Paulo?  The hospital fire?  And you think taking vengeance on me will change anything?  You think it will make you some sort of hero?  Give you peace?  When you—”

One of the doors flew open, revealing Iron Man.  Who plowed through one fake Loki (Faki?  Fauki?  Fauxki?  Meh, he’d workshop it.) and swerved to shoot one of his repulsors at another.  Romanov popped up from behind a table and threw something at the feet of the real Loki, who crushed it with his heel, ignoring the sparks of electricity that flew up off of it. 

Danny batted Romanov back with a shield, straight into the cart of computers, which fell down on her.  Ouch.  But she’d be able to get back up and into the fight.  The important thing was that, right now, she wasn’t an immediate threat, which meant he could ignore her. 

Give her time. 

If she hadn’t wanted something, she would have run, kept hiding.  Just these few minutes – She was a shield agent, sure, but she had to have some kind of specialty in—

Anti-ghost missiles were a lot harder to avoid in such a small place, especially when distracted.  Danny hissed as one impacted his shoulder and splattered green all over his shirt, but he caught the next, and threw it back at Iron Man.  He tried to phase off the green goo, but it wouldn’t go.  It had to be some of that phase-proof stuff his parents had been working on.  Nasty stuff. 

Although, he had to be grateful it had only given him a bruise and hadn’t been mixed with something that would melt him.  It gave him hope for his future relationship with his parents. 

In the meantime, it definitely limited his options regarding protecting Loki and just removing themselves from the situation without getting into more destructive behavior. 

He hoped Iron Man knew what he was doing… for everyone’s sake. 

The missile exploded right in front of Iron Man’s mask, splattering him with green goo.  Danny had no idea what kind of sensor array he had, but that would probably buy at least a little time as he adjusted it to compensate for the eye-holes of his mask being covered up. 

He turned back to Loki, only to see another Iron Man grab the staff from him. 

Only for that Loki and that staff to dissolve into the air. 

Loki, the real Loki, stopped being invisible and laughed.  “Oh, that was good, that was very good.”  Not only was this Loki real, his smile might have been as well.  “But you didn’t think you could fool me, did you?”

Danny flicked invisible, noting with disfavor that the green goo stayed visible when he did so, and moved closer to Loki, fending off attacks.  Two Iron Men – Where did the second person come from?  Was it Barton, in a suit?  Someone else entirely?  The War Machine person?  Danny couldn’t remember his name.  – and Romanov together was a bit of a challenge for Danny to keep track of, given his present mental state. 

Luckily, however, one of the two suits, the first one, didn’t seem to have nearly the tactical awareness of the other.  He’d say it was Stark in the second suit, the fresher-looking one… the one without any form of ghost proofing Danny could detect. 

Danny swiped an intangible arm through the suit, cleaving through delicate wires as he did so, but leaving warm, human flesh untouched.  Several pieces of armor fell away, revealing a band t-shirt, but not the whole thing.  Interesting. 

Romanov threw a Fenton Ghost Zapper at him.  Loki knocked it out of the air, the sharp end of the scepter cutting it in two as he did so.  Iron Man – the one he was pretty sure was Tony Stark – tried to grab it again, even as Loki pivoted to try and catch Black Widow with it.  Danny used that as a pretext to pull Loki back, away from Black Widow.  They did not need her under control.  Nope. 

But… they wanted the staff.  They wanted the staff now. 

Selvig must have gotten knocked free.  He must have told them, one of them, about his safeguards. 

If one of these three could get the staff, get back to the top of the tower…  Then it would be over.  They’d have won. 

.

“Director Fury, the council has made a decision.”

Fury flexed his fingers behind his back.  “I recognize the council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid ass decision, I've elected to ignore it.”  It’s what he’d say if he hadn’t learned what he’d just learned.  If HYDRA wasn’t threaded through every element of SHIELD like a deadly parasite.  If this sounded more like a simple fear-driven overreaction and less like a way to destroy one of HYDRAs most famous enemies and his new and very powerful allies? 

“Director, despite your shocking negligence, bordering on dereliction, you’re closer than any of our subs.  You scramble that jet—”

“That is the island of Manhattan, councilman.”  Although considering that HYDRA, in the person of Red Skull, had tried to blow it up in the past, he wasn’t sure that would sway them.  Until I’m certain my team can’t hold them—”

“There are two armies of alien origin, emerging from portals above that island.  If we don’t—”

“I will not order a nuclear strike against a civilian population, much less the densest population in the United States.  And the other army is an ally.”

“Based on what intelligence?  Based on what invitation?  That of someone already suborned by Loki?”

“If we don’t hold them in the air,” added another councilmember, “we lose.  We lose everything.”

“If I send that bird out, we already have.”

.

“Director Fury is no longer in command.  Override order, seven, alpha, eleven.”

“Sorry, sir,” said the pilot, who had just taken his seat.  He watched with some trepidation as Agent Coulson led a pair of his colleagues away.  This was all very irregular.  “I’m not familiar with that code.”

There was a pause.  “What’s your name, son?”

.

Cujo frolicked through the city.  It was loud, yes, but nothing he hadn’t been in training for while alive, and nothing he hadn’t experienced while dead.  So, a non-issue, obviously. 

The actual issue?  His person had just thrown a stick.  Obviously, Cujo had to go fetch it. 

[missabbynormal]

Me showing up to midnight Christmas mass ✨

[annadelveys]

always love it when i go through a Major Crisis but you wouldn't guess from the way i post <3 anyways I'm going through a Major Crisis

[quatregats]

How do I exist in a way that is both kind to my body and does not make my brain feel like it's going to explode

[jjs-other-other-blog]

3 major milestones of supernatural, the 200th episode, the 300th episode and the grand finale. What do they have in common? Glad you asked! Well, you see, the people behind spn hated Castiel and Misha with a passion, but they also couldn't get rid of them bc fans loved them too much. So they simply excluded fanfavourite main character Castiel (as well as his son, another fanfavourite main character) from all 3 of these huge celebrations. Because the show was always at its best when it was just about the brothers, amirite?

[diamondpython00]

I was watching videos on Psychonauts 2, specifically on the imagery and meaning behind Hollis’ mind, when I had an interesting realization: a lot of the characters in both Psychonauts games have family-related problems.

Oleander’s initial levels (the brain tumbler experiment and basic braining) don’t have much beyond initial foreshadowing for plot reasons, but meat circus is such a colossal mess of daddy issues that i think it makes up for it

Sasha’s main problems are the death of his mother and the memories of her he collected from his dad’s mind that freaked him out (nooo little german boy don’t use your psychic abilities to read your father’s mind)

Milla’s trauma has to do with her relationship to the children at her orphanage and her failure to protect them, something that while she has moved past, definitely still hurts her. She’s still working as a caretaker of some kind though, and it’s clear that she’s not eager to repeat that mistake.

Gloria was pretty seriously messed up by her mother’s emotional neglect and high expectations, her treatment at the boarding school, and her deadbeat dad. This trauma is only compounded with her mother’s suicide, which starts her downward spiral.

Fred’s problems have to do with his family legacy, literally being constantly berated in his mind by the image of his ancestor. To Fred, he’s failed at being a Bonaparte, and his ancestor has come back from the dead to express his displeasure.

Lili and Raz both have fairly complicated relationships with their fathers - Raz views Augustus as constantly pushing him in acrobatics and outright denying him his interests, while Lili has had to grow up a little too fast thanks to how busy her father is, and expresses some of that frustration with a tough front.

Loboto. (i don’t think i really need to say more. yikes doesn’t even begin to cover it)

Although Hollis’ family is notably absent from her mind, some dialogue from her and her mind’s NPCs implies a very fraught relationship with her parents. She acknowledges to Raz that “family is horrible”, and the maternity ward patients in her mind all express very bad reasons to have kids, ranging from using children as a proxy to having kids because your partner wants them. Couple that with the absence of her parents from her entire mind, and... well, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

Compton’s issues aren’t exactly related to his family, but they ARE hereditary. All three Booles in both games have both a connection with animals and some blastokinesis, although most of the issues seem to have skipped Sam. Dogen especially is very similar to Compton - both are socially anxious, get overwhelmed by their telepathy, and accidentally blow up heads when they get overwhelmed. It’s not hard to imagine that Compton’s parenting or influence may have had something to do with Dogen’s issues.

Ford doesn’t exactly have family issues, but boy howdy did he sure cause some.

The seed (heh) of Bob’s alcoholism seems to be related to his aunt’s alcoholism and death. His aunt dealt with her problems by drinking them away in her greenhouse, and now that Bob has gone through very similar loss, he uses the same coping mechanism - drown your issues under a lot of alcohol.

Gristol’s main problem is his overwhelming sense of entitlement, but his father plays a very significant role in his worldview. From Gristol’s perspective, his father ruined the inheritance Gristol was owed, and failed both Maligula and the country with his rule. Gristol believes he is entitled to rule of Grulovia thanks to his father, but also deeply resents him for his failures and is driven by the need to set right what he thought his father did wrong.

Nona, or Lucrecia Mux, had most of her issues brought on by the accidental killing of her sister and the false familial relationship she was deluded into believing was real her whole life. Although Maligula is the manifestation of her problems, Maligula very clearly would not exist if it weren’t for Marona’s death.

And these are just the people who’s minds we explore in some sense or another. There is the exception of Boyd, Edgar, and Helmut, but I’ll address that a bit later. None of the campers or the interns mention much about their family, but we can also infer from the way Loboto was treated that psychics are not exactly looked upon favorably. While certainly not all of the campers or interns have bad relationships with their parents, it is interesting that there is no mention that I can remember of a good parental relationship anywhere in either game. It’s either a bad relationship or it goes unmentioned (like Edgar, Boyd, and Helmut). While I can’t say definitively what this theme of complicated or bad familial relationships is intended to mean, there are a couple theories I have. It could be that Psychonauts is trying to tell us that mental illness is often a result of environment - children raised in non-loving environments rarely escape unscathed, and dealing with those issues often involves confronting that familial relationship. It could be that leaving your family trauma unresolved is very unhealthy: the only families we see recover from these issues, the Aquatos and the Zanottos, do so through honest communication. It could be that blood family does not obligate love, and that chosen families (like the psychic six or nona and augustus) are better because they actively choose to love each other. It could even be something completely unrelated that I haven’t thought of. But what I am pretty sure of is that Psychonauts 1 and 2 are definitely trying to tell us something with the family theme. What do you guys think? Is there something to this?

[perfectly-clear-from-here]

in the process of trying to convince the lads in my band to cover little illusion machine for our next gig. wish me all the luck 🙏