#zombies are so fucking fascinating and there are so many ways to do them... last of us def has my favorite depiction by far tho

[ink-livi]

Mmmm thinking about zombies again... :]

[shegoesbyjoy]

i've been thinking a lot about why Disco Elysium in particular has touched the core of my being in a way no other piece of media has and i think there are several factors at play here. this is half a review and half me dumping my various thoughts on this game ever since i finished it a couple months ago.

AS A VIDEO GAME ITSELF—i've been trying to identify what exactly it is about certain games that causes them to rise above all the rest that i've played, and i have come to the realization that in all of them, combat is usually one of the least consequential things on that list. i love Hades, have dumped 160+ hrs into it, but despite it being a very combat-heavy game with extremely tight controls that i do find truly satisfying, that is not what kept me playing. it's the characters, the art, the story, the world-building, the music...

similarly, while the combat in Horizon Zero Dawn is really quite fun, what really charmed me about it was its spunky, badass protagonist and fascinating mechanical creature designs, in addition to the story set in a world that captivated me from beginning to end. Night in the Woods took my breath away with its emotional & poignant writing told through a unique & delightful art style. i didn't even finish The Last of Us, but Ellie's moment with the giraffes is ingrained in my brain—and of course i went ahead and watched someone else play through to the end so i could enjoy the rest of the story without having to slog through zombie fights myself. so while i always appreciate well-executed combat in games (and have given up on games that do it too poorly), it's never what keeps my interest.

SO. what happens when you take combat out of a game entirely, and absolutely excel at everything else? you see where this is going.

THE CHOICE OF MEDIUM—the fact that DE's story was told through a video game (as opposed to a book, a show, a movie, etc.) is absolutely crucial, because of your active role in the consumption of said story. i think that's what gives some of its scenes such devastating emotional impact. watching this train wreck of a character that you happen to be playing blurt out the most unhinged responses despite your best attempt to salvage the situation, coming to terms with the awful reality of what's in front of you at the same time Harry does, seeing the immediate results of your choices as well as slowly realizing how your choices affect the story long-term as the pieces start coming together... all of this creates an immersive experience that is unparalleled. the game doesn't take self-insert so seriously that the protagonist ~can be anyone~ (Harry's characterization is, in fact, very strong and well-established) but there's absolutely no way a Disco Elysium book or show would have the same impact as me having to progress the story by fucking around and finding out.

GAME SPOILERS AHEAD—combining these two aspects of DE helps to explain what made the tribunal the MOST TENSE i've ever felt playing a video game. this is essentially as close to combat as you'll get in this game. you've just spent the last 20-30 hours becoming very familiar with the mechanics of the game with regards to the dice rolls. you become accustomed to the fact that most skill checks are white so you can come back to them, and that red checks are comparatively rare. enter the tribunal: suddenly you have several very high stakes red checks in a row. you can't leave. you can't try an individual check again if you fail. the story itself has been alluding to this very moment throughout the game. people are DYING, and the lives of those that remain, including your own, are on the line. your earlier decisions have come to a head.

it was 3 am when i got to this point in the game, and the reality of the situation i found myself in shook off every bit of sleepiness i'd been feeling up to this point—my eyes were wide open and my heart was pounding.

i know many people who play video games derive a lot of satisfaction from perfecting mechanics, learning patterns, or deducing the weaknesses of a difficult boss. for me, this satisfaction gets dwarfed by the frustration of having to spend far too long dealing with it in the first place. triggering a boss battle oddly takes me out of the story, because it feels like a very marked switch from "being the protagonist in the game's world" to "sitting on my couch playing a Video Game", where the same repetitive action of "killing the enemy" becomes my goal, no matter what the game is.

by contrast, the tribunal was very much a continuation of the story with each skill check having immediate results on how that story plays out. no other moment in the game was quite like it, and i had no idea how this sequence of events was going to go, so every action felt extremely fraught. i was on the edge of my seat in a way no other game has gotten me to feel, because the weight of this encounter felt monumental in DE. and of course, this is where you come across an iconic skill check where you find out exactly how much your previous choices matter...

i was so damn nervous during this check i probably would've cried if i failed it lmao

FUCK YOUR EXPECTATIONS—this leads me to the other thing that's got me smitten with this game: the subversion of expectations. dialogue options are never written so transparently as to have a "correct" answer, and trying to stay neutral with my answers got me a well-deserved smack in the head in the form of a brutal burn about the dangers of centrism. we have 3-dimensional characters that make you growl in frustration one moment and your heart swell in the next, descriptions that make you marvel at both the beauty and ugliness of humanity, situations where you feel crushed by sadness and dread then want to cry tears of happiness because despite all of it, there is still magic left in the world. it's also so goddamn funny. this game is fucking hilarious—and what is comedy, what is a punch line but the subversion of an audience's expectations established during the setup?

Disco Elysium is a game that far exceeds the sum of its parts. it excels in its storytelling, its voice acting brings incredible life to said phenomenal writing, its gorgeous painterly art style is visually compelling, its music is flawlessly incorporated to full effect, it's intellectually stimulating and fascinating philosophically, and as a murder mystery (oh yeah that's what this game's premise is, right?) it's just plain fun to reveal clue after clue while pondering theories as to what the heck is going on. these individual components come together to create a multi-dimensional piece of media that's deeply human, yet fantastical and absurd. it's uncomfortably relatable while inspiring empathy for even the most unfamiliar of experiences.

for instance, i have no personal experience with alcoholism or addiction, but boy do i sure know what it's like to have a compulsion to apologize at every opportunity for simply existing—to want to cease existing, period. i don't know what it's like to grow up and live in a post-soviet country yet the experience in-game felt as vivid as ever, inextricable from the story's identity. i felt a pang of pained recognition in Kim's complicated relationship with his race as diaspora, and found myself wishing i had the ability to respond even half as effectively as he did with the Racist Lorry Driver during my own past run-ins with racist assholes. this game has caused me to think more deeply about my own politics, my relationships, the world around me, the power of art, the role of capitalism, beauty, hope... even what it means to be alive.

A CHANGED PERSON—a realization i came to a while ago while talking to a friend was that almost all of the media i had enjoyed up to that point shared a theme of escapism in one way or another. there have been many moments in my life where i wished to be somewhere else. to be someone else. i immersed myself in stories where the fantasy of it seemed so much better than the reality of my own life. this game forced me to reckon with where i am, who i am. and not only that, it encouraged me to be accepting and loving of the here and now, despite every single flaw i seemed to be obsessed with pointing out. it made it abundantly clear that constantly running away was not a viable way of living, and that flaws were not a reason to give up. "something beautiful is going to happen"—i should very damn well let it.

it's not an exaggeration to say this game has changed me irrevocably, and the fact that this impossible piece of art even exists in this world feels like a miracle. i'm so grateful that i got to experience it.

[medea10]

My Review of Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

Ooh yeah, I’ve heard about this one. Prior to the announcement of this anime, I heard Gigguk (from Youtube) mention this manga. And here’s me thinking, this is the same guy that praised Oshi no Ko and Frieren before they got anime adaptations. As for when this got the anime adaptation, Viz Media was excited to release this one that there was even an exclusive screening at Anime Expo.

Akira Tendou was a bright-eyed optimist going into his new job fresh out of college. Everyone seemed nice. He had great benefits. There was a chance at meeting famous people in this line of work. And there might have been an opening with a love interest at the office. This enjoyment lasted…8 hours, give or take?!

In reality, this job was hell. Sometimes, you can’t go home for days and work at your desk. The benefits you get…you probably will never use them. The only people you’re in contact with are screaming bosses. And as for that love interest, she’s having an affair with the boss…right in his office. Akira Tendou is so numb to everything now. It’s been three years of this endless hell. Then suddenly…and I do mean really suddenly…

A zombie apocalypse!

Yep, we’re officially in Highschool of the Dead territory. Only difference is that this is with adults, the blood is replaced with vibrant colors, no Matrix boobies, and the author to Zom 100 is still alive here.

Too soon, Medea.

Tendou watched a zombie movie literally the night before this all happened and thought that if he was living through a zombie apocalypse, he wouldn’t have to go to work anymore. And that’s his first thought here. No more work! He gets a day off! First thing he does, he goes to his crush’s home to reveal that he loves her. There, he sees his boss (now zombie-fied). Tendou gives his resignation followed by shoving him out the window. Then he sees his crush (also zombie-fied) and tells her that he loves her. Then bolts the fuck out of there! Now that Tendou is living in a zombie apocalypse, he’s wondering what he should do with his free time. That’s when he goes to a corner store and gets a notebook to make a bucket list. 100 things to do before becoming a zombie. Hence the title of this anime!

Tendou is not alone in this. Along the way, he meets up with his old college friend (Ryuuzaki) who is also trying to live his life for the best during the zombie apocalypse. He meets a girl named Mikazuki who has a bucket list of her own. Only hers is the best way to survive. And near episode 8, we are introduced to Beatrix. She’s a German who has had a fascination with Japanese culture. She’s also the token big-breasted girl that slices up the zombies with a blade. It’s an anime involving zombies, OF COURSE THIS GIRL IS GOING TO LOOK LIKE THAT!

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: Viz Media wasted no time assembling together an English dub for this. And several streaming sites got dibs on playing it on a weekly basis including Crunchyroll, Hulu, and even Netflix. And if there weren’t so many damn hiatuses, this anime would have had a spot on Toonami. It will eventually. March 2024 is still better than nothing. I will discuss the several hiatuses that persisted throughout this anime’s run down this review. I’m enjoying hearing both of Tendou’s voice actors getting more roles in the last couple of years. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

JAPANESE CAST: *Tendou is played by Shuuichirou Umeda (known for Izumi on Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie)

*Mikazuki is played by Tomori Kusunoki (known for Makima on Chainsaw Man, Neiru on Wonder Egg Priority, LLENN on SAO: GGO, Setsuna on Love Live Nijigasaki, and Misha on Misfit of Demon Academy)

*Ryuuzaki is played by Makoto Furukawa (known for Saitama on One Punch Man, Haru on Fruits Basket 2019, Miyuki on Kaguya-sama, Shorter on Banana Fish, and Shourei on 86)

*Bea is played by Minami Takahashi (known for Lucoa on Miss Kobayashi, Megumi on Food Wars, Grey on Black Clover, and Yamada on Eromanga Sensei)

ENGLISH CAST: *Tendou is played by Zeno Robinson (known for Goh on Pokemon Journeys, Hawks on My Hero Academia, Genya on Demon Slayer, Shuuji on Tokyo Revengers, Tooru on Horimiya, and Garfiel on Re:Zero)

*Mikazuki is played by Abby Trott (known for Nezuko on Demon Slayer, Machi on Hunter x Hunter, and Eleanor on Misfit of Demon Academy)

*Ryuuzaki is played by Xander Mobus (known for Motoyasu on Shield Hero, Ren on Persona 5, Juuzou on Blue Exorcist, Benno on Ascendance of a Bookworm, and Momoshiki on Boruto)

*Bea is played by Laura Post (known for Ragyo on Kill la Kill, Nozomi on Love Live, Isabella on The Promised Neverland, Akari on March Comes in…, Diana on Little Witch Academia, and Macrophage on Cells at Work)

SHIPPING: Am I sensing something between Tendou and Mikazuki?

No. Focus on surviving the zombie apocalypse first. Once the zombies are eradicated, then I’ll let my mind swirl around in the shipping category.

DELAY, DELAY, DELAY: Is this the new normal? I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know a thing about getting an anime to air because we all know I don’t. But I still raise my eyebrow when currently airing animes take several weeks off at a time. Normally, when an anime is postponed, it is usually because of a sporting event, a giant news story hits, and the subject matter might be difficult if something tragic just occurred. That was something we went along with and accepted. After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, many animes were postponed. Madoka Magica’s final episodes were supposed to air around that time. But due to the sensitive subject matter, it was postponed for three months. Meanwhile, Pokemon was scheduled to air a two-parter, Team Rocket/Team Plasma special around that time as well. It was postponed. And we never heard from it again. Once again, there were special circumstances.

Moving forward to the 2020’s, Covid affected many animes and their airdates. All through the year 2020, nearly every anime was delayed by one week, several weeks, or would just stop airing for the entire season and start over the following anime season. A Certain Scientific Railgun T had to take several weeks off every now and then during the run. Black Clover and Pokemon took a several-week hiatus. And the fifth season of Food Wars aired a couple of episodes, stopped, and aired again three months later. AGAIN, there were special circumstances.

What the hell happened with Zom 100? I don’t see Covid as a reason and nothing upsetting the Japanese audience. Is this a case where they didn’t finish production on time and the staff was overworked to the point of breaking? Because that’s what it looks to me. I’m not complaining at all. I’m concerned that this is a new normal for staff members for anime. And it’s a shame that this had to happen to the studio and the good people behind it. This is a fairly new studio where this is the only anime to their credit. And suddenly I’m hit with a giant sense of irony with this situation and the first episode.

ANIME CAMEO: Did you catch the voice actors from Zombieland Saga in episode 6? It wasn’t the characters. It was just their voice actors grunting as zombies. Well, it happened. Rewind and listen closely.

ENDING: Just like the end of Highschool of the Dead, this crew goes to familiar territory by stopping in on Tendou’s family. My guess is that there’s going to be a big zombie showdown featuring Tendou, his friends and family, and the townspeople versus the zombies. Will that be the end of the season? Moving right along, they make it to Tendou’s home village. The good news is that his parents are safe as well as some of the villagers. There are even some city folks that escaped the hell going on in bigger cities. The bad news is there are some disgustos in that city folk crowd that have their own ideas for surviving the zombie apocalypse. If Tendou’s list was full of childish dreams and Mikazuki’s list is full of realistic goals, these guys…um…well, there are dark forces that work inside them.

And while the zombies are trapped inside a tunnel away from the surviving humans, one person here doesn’t have that much time left. That person is Tendou’s father. Tendou and his father have never seen eye-to-eye. Will they be able to say their peace before the worst happens? Let’s wait another couple of weeks and months to find out this answer.

CHRISTMAS DAY 2023: Okay, I watched my annual anime movie this year. This year it was Suzume. Ate cookies. Opened presents. Jammed out to some tunes. And crashed. Am I missing anything? Oh wow, Zom 100 came back for a three-episode finale!

Tendou and the gang were getting along with many in the village. Tendou got to know some of the city girls who traveled to the village for safety. Mikazuki got along with the elders of the village as she helped them with some of their ailments. Bea learned a lot about the area. And Ryuuzaki got a little girl traumatized by the recent pandemic to smile for the first time in a while. I’ll be honest, when I saw this little girl with her dog I kept thinking if she was going to go with Tendou and the rest and be that gang’s Alice and Zeke like in Highschool of the Dead. Again, I will keep mentioning that. All of this peace is about to be shattered by those disgustos I mentioned prior to the three-month hiatus. There are four of them; one divorcee, one anal-retentive chick, one forever fat bastard virgin, and the obviously voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto psychopath. The final guy I mentioned (named Higurashi) actually knew Tendou and Ryuuzaki as they all went to the same college.

Higurashi and the others have their chaos book. They removed the barriers blocking the zombies from entering the village and set everything around it on fire. The four main characters were dealing with each of the chaos agents on their own. Ryuuzaki, Bea, and Mikazuki were able to get past the chaos people. Unfortunately, two of those people wound up dying. One by the zombies and the other got electrocuted. The forever fat bastard virgin was still around by episode 12’s end. As for Higurashi, he brought the zombies to Tendou and told him he yearns to watch him become a zombie. This guy was so amped on wanting to fuck things up that he threatened to have Tendou’s ailing father eaten by the zombies.

Tendou does another impulsive thing. You’ve seen him do crazy shit the last 11 episodes, why stop now?! Tendou turned into a zombie courtesy of one of the hideaways who was a make-up stylist and tricked Higurashi. Unfortunately, things do not end well for Higurashi as he is bitten. Before time was up, Tendou was able to get through to him when learning what he really wanted to do. To be fair, any one of us could have wound up like this guy. Introverts have such the hardest times adapting to “normal” society. And I guess Higurashi envied Tendou and Ryuuzaki during college because they had friends and he was alone. Surprisingly, back then Tendou did make an effort to reach out to Higurashi, but dude ran away from them. Tendou and Higurashi do have this sweet moment before he’s turned into a zombie. Higurashi though ends up drowning in the river as he was turning into a zombie.

Tendou, his friends, and the survivors of the village survived just barely. They went to a suspension bridge that was unfortunately missing. But then, this old guy the group met prior to making it to the village made a collapsible bridge for everyone to get across and prevent the zombies from trailing them. In the aftermath, everyone was able to rebuild the village after that night from hell. Now as for Tendou’s father. I thought for months that this guy got bitten by a zombie. And as I’m watching the final 3 episodes I’m thinking, if he got bitten, it’s taking him a long time to turn into a zombie. But then it sounded like he might have a terminal illness.

Turns out dude has hemorrhoids.

Look, I know hemorrhoids are painful but…yeah, I have nothing to follow up on that. But if it gets so bad that it could be life-threatening, it might be difficult for a doctor to do anything when you’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. But, it did spark some ideas for what else to write in Tendou’s bucket list. Next stop for the crew…I guess northern Japan or Hokkaido.

Oh shit, I forgot to mention the shit. Ryuuzaki jumped in the cesspool of shit. He was covered in shit for an entire episode.

Despite the long waits in between episodes, this was a very good story. I’m just really concerned if a season two comes will the audience be subjected to long waits and will the crew be subjected to horrible working conditions? Again, seeing the irony! I think it was that first episode that seemed to strike a chord with a lot of viewers. I think at one point or another, we all find ourselves in a situation much like Tendou. I know it doesn’t have to be a job, but let’s face it, we’ve all had those jobs that tried to break us to the point of no return and you really do wish that some sort of apocalypse hits so you don’t have to go into work the next day. I really hope the anime studios kinda take a hint from this. Looking at you OLM, MAPPA, and BUG FILMS!

While I’m still on the topic of the first episode, I’m not going to lie, I honestly thought the whole zombie apocalypse was going to be a dream of Tendou’s. I can’t be the only person who thought this. He falls asleep watching a zombie movie, wakes up in total chaos, we’re treated to a splish-splash of every color on the spectrum, and Tendou is doing stunts like knock his boss out a several-story window and climbing drain-pipes. I will get a lot of push-back from manga readers for my out-loud comments here, but that’s what I originally thought. With that said, I really hope that this isn’t the intended ending for this story.

Now then, would I happily welcome a second season? Yes. Believe it or not, the several-month hiatus didn’t impact how I felt about this anime. Sometimes it does, but not here. When it returned on Christmas, it almost felt like not much time has passed since the last installment. And just because of this sloppy roll out, it doesn’t necessarily mean that any future seasons will be affected the same way the first season did. It will if the studio doesn’t take a freakin’ lesson from the anime they just put out. It seems like a couple of new characters are introduced after where this season leaves off. So, I’m looking forward to a second season. Thankfully, the manga is still in publication and the creator is alive and well. Sorry, after what happened to the creator of Highschool of the Dead, I am not taking any chances.

Enough from me! Zombie-show fans, you know who you are and we know your fandom isn’t dying off any time soon. Probably check this one out. It’s on Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll, so you have your pick of sites to watch it on. Starting March 30th, 2024, the show will also air on Toonami. And if live-action is more of your thing, Netflix has got that adaptation too.

[takeyourcyanide]

8, 19, 34 ?

Ask game link

-

8. any reacquiring dreams?

Oh, yes. Many throughout my life that were either interconnected or replayed in my head when asleep. The interconnected one was a dream in which, in the first two, I was in an organized crime group, and the last, I was in the FBI. I had killed multiple people and jumped out of the window of a tall building in the second one in order to evade what looked to be the damn swat team (lmao), and they all tended to center around the same theme pertaining to the differences between me and humans, and asking myself why I never feel any guilt for anything, even slaughtering. The repeated ones usually were more so repeated themes, said themes often pertaining to the static, but there was one that I dreamt twice. It was a zombie dream, in which I dreamt within the dream. I can vaguely recall looking out a window, seeing a hoard of zombies approaching, my mother being there and the odd house we were in, my mother being dragged away by the zombies, and me waking up and realizing it was just a dream within the dream evidently, and that I’d fallen asleep watching television. Can’t remember if I’d been watching something zombie related with her or not in that dream. Ohhh, and there was maybe three or four (can’t remember, abrupt lapses in my memory which have impacted my ability to recall and retain dreams) in which the male-bodies version of me kept trying to dismember me with an axe, viewing it as his obligation. He attempted to decapitate me in one and stopped, so I had a red line around my neck from the appearing guillotine. We both had assistants, he had a female-bodied one and I had a male-bodied one. Female-male, male-female. He told me in the last one that I could run if I wanted to but in the end he’d kill me no matter what. It was nighttime. I also wish I had that male body, I liked the way it looked and I feel it might’ve been more suitable. It would be nice if I could just push a button and be within it for a short while. I don’t consider myself as having any gender, I just would like to be able to switch around in terms of male-typical and female-typical features- intersex would be fascinating though there’s so many ways that many individuals are intersex. Perhaps we could go with something more visually obvious? I’m fine with this vessel, but I was robbed of the ability to change sexes at whim, or perhaps have a more androgynous or even male body. I am rambling now. Whoops.

19. favourite thing about the day?

Favorite thing about the day itself or favorite thing done in the day? I tend to just pace all day, sometimes draw or write if I am able. Dissect something if I’m able- it’s so fucking hot outside, not to mention humid, though. Um. I’m not longer allowed to pace much at night due to some static-related reasons, so perhaps the multiple miles I pace during the day? I like to see a blanket of grey clouds covering the sun, as well, which you don’t get to see as clearly at night. I like the look of them at night though. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the day, so I don’t have much to offer in terms of an answer. There’s often more things out to dissect, I’ve noticed, and it’s easier to see said things in the daytime. Haven’t been able to do that in a while. I must.

34. any pet peeves?

Willfully ignorant people who sacrifice their curiosity and ability to learn, as well as (often their own children) other’s, for the sole sake of appeasing their own cowardice and not stepping out of the bubble of indoctrination they were either born into or shoved themselves into, and because they are too scared of particular happenings and truths to bear them. I also don’t like those who consistently and constantly take their anger and stresses out on others. I don’t like people who are extremely hypocritical. I also have some that I believe stem from misophonia, but I won’t list those. Oh, I really don’t like those who are extraordinarily quick to judge quite literally everyone they’ve ever seen, and feel the need to scrutinize others for their differences, interests, etc. Am I meant to elaborate on these?

[all-seeing-ifer]

top five characters from musicals

ooo VERY fun question! it was actually kinda hard for me to answer this bc it turns out that when it comes to musicals I weirdly tend to not get super attached to the characters - apparently I'm here for the bops and the melodrama first and foremost

but off the top of my head here's my current fave musical characters that live in my brain rent free (also I feel like this was implied in the question but for the sake of being precise here I'm limiting this to either stage musicals or Things That Were Originally Stage Musicals, so no animated Disney musicals or anything like that):

1. obviously eurydice hadestown is my primary blorbo from my stage musicals - I’ve loved her in basically all of the show’s many weird and varied incarnations, although eva noblezada and nabiyah be’s eurydices occupy the most important place in my heart. I just think that what hadestown does with eurydice is such an interesting and unique and thematically brilliant take on a character who historically has always been kind of an afterthought in her own myth. I mean, the concept of eurydice choosing to go to the underworld is a fascinating one, and it’s not like hadestown is even the first retelling of the myth to attempt it, but I do feel like the way hadestown crafts its world and builds up eurydice’s character and flaws around it makes it feel a lot stronger than it does in other versions. SPEAKING OF WHICH ACTUALLY, I do feel like there’s a kind of... tradition, I guess, around romantic tragedy as a genre going back to the original orpheus and eurydice myth, where the female characters at the centre of them tend to be written as “pure and innocent” and like, that’s why it’s sad when the bad stuff happens to them. funnily enough you even see that in the last thing eva noblezada did before hadestown in the form of miss saigon (which is. a whole other thing that I don’t have time to get into). and so I love that hadestown is absolutely echoing that romantic tragedy tradition but eurydice is allowed to be deeply deeply flawed in a way that fundamentally impacts the narrative!! she has agency!! she has a really prominent fuck-yours-got-mine attitude that’s literally The Thing that ends up fucking her over initially but that’s never treated as making it any less tragic and it’s super compelling!!! idk it’s weird bc i wouldn’t necessarily say she’s even a particularly complex character but within that simplicity there’s still something so messy and compelling about her! i just. want good things for eurydice and i’m aware that that’s a deeply unfortunate opinion to have just on the face of it but I guess that speaks to how well hadestown is able to suck you into its tragedy

2. lydia deetz is my goth daughter and I adore her!! I think one thing I really love about musical adaptations of things is that for whatever reason they tend to be a lot less... bound to the source material than adaptations into other media - I have no idea why this is a Thing but it definitely has some interesting results! For whatever reason the people who adapted beetlejuice into a musical decided it should be turned into a story about a teenage girl coping with the grief of losing a parent, and I think the world of theatre is better for them having made that call! I love the musical’s version of Lydia and I love the Energy every actor has brought to her and I love the weird little dynamics she forms with a recently deceased couple and a Ghost Zombie Jesus. the arc she has is just. blindingly sincere in a way that really caught me off guard listening to beetlejuice for the first time and not expecting much more than a Fun Comedy Musical, and every time I think about her saying “let’s clean it up” right before the final number I want to cry a little bit in the best way possible

3. I basically perpetually have brainrot about anita westsidestory, partly because I think it’s a natural human instinct to feel a very strong sense of attachment to Rita Moreno, and partly because the new film version of west side story handed me my Entire Ass, twice because I went and saw it a second time just for the dance numbers. look, sometimes you see a character and you’re just instantly like “ok. I see why they’re considered an icon of musical theatre” and anita is one of those characters. she is a VERY memorable standout in a musical that isn’t generally remembered for its characters - she’s incredibly fun and entertaining to watch in act 1 and then makes such a dramatic shift to just having so much pathos in act 2. even though she’s a secondary character, I do feel like she’s the one I most Feel the tragedy of the musical for. anyway, uh. idk how to end this point so congrats to ariana debose for the very well deserved oscar nomination i guess?

4. would it be cheating for me to include jo march here? probably, but there is a musical of little women and she is my main girl always and for all you can say about the little women musical, jo herself is definitely one of the things they do get right, at least where it matters! it’s to the point where I’d honestly consider the musical version of Jo one of the best Jo Marches out there, and trust me, considering how inconsistent the musical is that’s pretty impressive! she strikes a great balance between unsure teenager trying to figure out how to fit in the world and completely unhinged theatre kid and I live for it. and my feelings on the ending aside, I do think her arc in the musical is really strong - when little women adaptations have jo write her book in honour of beth it basically always Gets To Me, but I do feel like the musical handles it particularly well. or maybe it’s just that the songs really heighten the emotions - who knows!

5. uhhh for the sake of my 12 year old self I kind of have to include jean valjean here - he’s not a character I’m overly invested in anymore but he was my favourite of favourites in my youth and les mis is still one of my fave musicals of all time (even if it has been kicked off the number 1 spot lately by hadestown) so consider this a tribute to my past. and also to the character who’s probably responsible for my love for the Grizzled Old Dude Who Accidentally Becomes a Dad trope

thanks for the ask it was very fun to write about I’m very sorry if all of this is completely incomprehensible

[knifesxedge]

hi love im deep in ur art blog for reasons and im SO in love with the fact that ur ghoul has his OWN nickname tattooed on him in party's writing they are SO 🥺 was wondering if you wanted to talk a bit more abt ghouls tattoos??? theyre just SO gorgeous and intricately laid out

HI i LOVE u i am KISSING u i would love love love to talk about ghoul’s tattoos 🥺❤️

^ yeah ghoul & party have each other’s handwriting tattooed!! for party it’s one of the only tattoos they have & it’s right over their heart (im sure ive mentioned this fact before but idk if ive explicitly noted that it says ‘sunshine’) and ghoul didn’t have the space to put his right over his heart because poison’s kj symbol is there so his is on his upper arm (they ARE soooooooo 🥺 i love them)

ghoul’s tattoos are a healthy mix of sentimental ink and things he just thought were beautiful. when he met the rest of the four he didn’t have THAT many tattoos because 1. he was 14 2. he’d only been in the zones for a little under a year and a half at that point but the ones he DID have (aka his oldest tattoos) were his knuckle tattoos (‘freed’ and ‘fuck’ what can i say he was 13), the big raven on his upper shoulder and neck (he started believing in the witch very early compared to other cityborns but yeah that tattoo was both a way of symbolizing his devotion to the witch and a way of marking himself as a killjoy/shedding his past in the city in the way that he considered clearest), the fangs on his hand, two bats on his leg, the zombie bite on the other side of his neck (i could get a little more into this but BASICALLY ghoul being an ex-crow trainee + a cityborn + being the only surviving member of his first crew had a problem with feeling inhuman and a lot of survivor’s guilt and so he really. idk he connected a lot with zombies & frankenstein’s monster and ghosts & the like when he was a runner for dr. d post-his crew’s deaths. he got better about Seeing Himself as a Person especially once kobra + the other two showed up but the fascination remained) (also not tattoo-related but that’s when he chose his name. before that he’d been called ‘sandpup’ by his old crew & he never had a chance to tell them before they passed but he really loved that they used that as a name for him especially with how much he didn’t want to associate himself with the city) (ghoul had A Lot of issues but the difference there is that he worked thru them a lot earlier than the rest of the four) and “I FORGIVE U” on the back of his neck (in remembrance of said former crew).

umm along with that kind of fascination with the undead/feeling that kind of connection are the frankenstein stitches on his wrists (tho thats more of a common hc) and he has this pretty big tattoo of abstracted bones following his vertebrae down his throat and chest that he’s gotten expanded/fixed/touched up over the years. ik i do a lot of b&w doodles but i feel like i’ve been kind of inconsistent about coloring (most of his tattoos are color). pretty sure ive mostly drawn them in green (???) but in my head they’re like a faded light blue using natural skin tone as highlights.

his more sentimental tattoos…let me see if i can outline them here. this might not be exhaustive but i will do my best to list what ive figured out at least thus far:

the two little bats on his right thigh are for his grandmother and little sister. his sister (juliet adele fujikawa, b. april 2009 d. december 2014) was killed in a car crash shortly before he left the city, and likewise, his grandmother (charlotte fujikawa [藤川 千尋] b. june 1936 d. december 2014) was “moved to retirement housing” at about the same time. that was pretty much the last straw & ghoul left battery city within the week

there’s his crewmates’ symbols on his chest (in order from his right to left: kobra, jet, party) (gotten when their crew had been together for a while. dating this one is based on a couple things: 1. ghoul had been with them for long enough that he felt secure 2. poison and ghoul were friends by this point, or else he wouldn’t have included their symbol and 3. poison’s is over his heart so you can read into that as you will)

text from the graffiti bible on his right calf, as protection for his crew & as a reminder of one of his former friends who was a droid that believed very strongly in destroya’s return

his raygun on his chest (he was pretty proud of the design! this was when he was ~15 or 16) that he had poison’s added to post-sing post-engagement pre-commitment ceremony (so. september 2023) (yes i have my handwritten timeline + my own drawings + my fics out in front of me rn cross-referencing sldkdksksbx!)

one of the girl’s childhood drawings (one she drew of him & her & the stuffed animal he made for her when she was a baby all having a tea party together) from when she’s about 5 or so on his right hip (december 2022 or so)

shooting stars on his upper right shoulder, partially because they’re pretty and blend well with his other tattoos and partially because they’re a reminder of a lot of things, including but not limited to his first night out in the zones seeing the stars for the first time, stories his grandma used to tell him, and right when he’d first joined the fab four and him & kobra sat on the roof during a meteor shower

besides the other one i already mentioned ^ he has more of poison’s handwriting on his left inner forearm — this is also one ive mentioned before but once they’ve been in a relationship for a while they get into the habit of leaving little love notes around for each other! there’s nothing particularly special specifically about the one he got tattooed, besides the fact that it reminded him of poison and they love each other. the text in full (which i don’t think ive ever put anywhere, though im pretty sure ive put fragments of it in fics and art) is as follows:

Good Morning baby <3! I needed new paints, went on a run. Kobra has the Girl @ the Crash Track, Jet’s at the station. call me when you wake up! I love you, be back soon. XO Party <3

he also has the anniversaries of when they started dating and their commitment ceremony (03•03•21 and 10•26•23 respectively) on the inside of his right wrist ^ !

he’s got a snake wrapping around his left leg that kobra picked out and a hand of cards with the ace of spades face up that jet picked out (and these ofc are because they remind him of his crewmates!!)

he has the phoenix witch tattooed on his ribs, left side, styled vaguely after catholic saints (since that imagery can still be found in the inner zones & especially where ‘joys who still practice that religion gather!)

there’s a version of the eye from the mailbox on his right shoulder, and this one is also a sort of symbol of protection/good luck, to show devotion to the witch and to help protect himself and his crew

the constellation libra on his left forearm! this one was done a little while after he started running transmissions and supplies for dr. d! he liked the connection that astrology — whether he believed in the practice or not is up for debate — gave people to the stars, and the feeling that he had a place in the universe, predestined or not

after charlie is born, he gets a portrait of her (~age 4) with her name and birthday underneath done on his left thigh! (~2036)

and on his lower back, he has a fairly simple tattoo of two crows on a wire with their beaks pressed together (aughhhhhh romance) that he gets done as an anniversary surprise for their 10-year (so. 2033)!

his non-sentimental tattoos are largely based off of images from books, either from dr. d’s collection when he was working as a runner for him or from cherri’s after he joined up with the fab four, or else they’re naturally occurring in the zones!! this includes but is not limited to: california golden poppies on the back of his left shoulder, strawberries around his left bicep (he doesn’t ever have a strawberry until he’s like 35, this one is absolutely based off of a particularly pretty illustration), a thundercloud with lightning on his left elbow, a moon on his right inner bicep, a ring of thorns around his right forearm right under the elbow, a dagger on his inner left calf, and a sun, small bat, cross, rose, ribbon (with the word ‘faith’ in script), and wing on his right forearm and hand, all picked from flash sheets

so yeah! that’s about everything i have to say about ghoul’s tattoos atm but ty ty ty sm for letting me ramble abt them i think about his tattoos so much 😔❤️

[raendown]

A story for @insaneflowergirl as part of the @madatobigiftexchange! Only took me six days to realize it’s June. A grand improvement over the last couple months. xD

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 4049 Rated: T+ Fandom: Naruto Summary: Trapped together by an avalanche in the middle of a mission, Madara and Tobirama make a passing attempt at dealing with the discovery that they are soulmates. And also the discovery that there is only one bed to share for the night.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Warmth in Winter Hearts

“I don’t suppose if I happened to suggest laying down to rest you might actually listen?” 

“You’re not my mother!”

Tobirama pressed the bridge of his nose tightly between two fingers and breathed slowly. “Gods but I hope not. I have neither the parts nor the patience for that.”

Across the cavern Madara scowled, looking very much like he was only moments away from sticking out his tongue. If he were perfectly honest Tobirama would not have been surprised in the least to see that sort of childish behavior after the emotionally taxing week they’d been going through. Getting put on a mission together was bad enough; they fought like cats and dogs in the tower with separate offices to retreat to, how Hashirama expected them to survive an entire month out here in the wilderness together was a mystery. Yet the worst part had to be getting snowed in separate from the man they were meant to be escorting with no way to make sure the idiot was still alive. 

“When we get out of here,” Madara growled, “I’m going to tear out that asshole’s hair strand by strand.”

“I’m not sure how much of a threat that is.”

“Excuse you, that is a terrifying threat.”

“Not everyone is as attached to their hair as you are,” Tobirama pointed out. 

He was already turning away to build up the meager fire he’d hastily thrown together upon realizing they were trapped in here. Still, he could practically feel the weight of dark eyes glaring at him from across the cave, probably staring at the back of head and judging the hair that he kept short purely for utilitarian purposes. If he hadn’t looked so ridiculous the one time he’d shaved it all off he would just do away with the stuff all together. What good did hair really do him? Not much. If his head got cold he could always throw on a hat. Beyond that he’d never found much of a use for it. 

“Maybe if you took better care of yours then you’d understand.”

“I very much doubt that,” Tobirama murmured under his breath.

The glaring intensified but he refused to take the bait. Feeding the fire and making sure they stayed warm throughout the night was much more important than tending to the quicksilver emotions of a man who, until today, had been nothing but a thorn in his side at every turn. If not for this blasted mission he never would have been anything else. Tobirama closed his eyes and counted his breaths in and out, in and out, slowly, evenly, searching for the calm balance that so many people mistook for unfeeling cold. It hadn’t been so difficult to center himself in years. 

As much as he tried, however, calm remained far beyond his reach. He could keep a placid expression for the idiot across the room but on the inside his emotions were tumbling over each other like a business of ferrets all fighting over the same morsel of food. They were soulmates. Even in his own head that felt strange to admit. So many years spent glaring across the battlefield, several more glaring across council tables and mokuton sturdy desks, only now to discover their connection mere hours before they got themselves trapped inside a system of caves by nothing more than a raging blizzard. Honestly if he weren’t so angry at the timing of it all Tobirama might have been impressed by the sheer volume of snow Mother Nature had seen fit to dump over their heads without warning. More so than the weather he was angry at their client. When he’d told that fool to stay close it had been for his own safety, not to ruffle his overinflated ego without reason. Now he’d trapped himself somewhere else in these caves by dashing off just before an avalanche of snow collapsed over the entrance. Madara had offered to melt through it all but there was little point. There would always be more to come down on top. 

Either their client would be dead of cold in the morning or he wouldn’t. Being here with them wouldn’t do much to change that outcome when he’d already declared that he would rather freeze to death than seek body heat from, in his words, lowly shinobi types. Tobirama would rather lose the income from this mission than let such an asshole touch him after words like that. 

“Ugh.” Behind him Madara sniffed a couple of times. “These smell terrible.”

“Probably because you’re still bleeding inside them.” Tobirama didn’t even need to turn around to know what the other was talking about. He’d wrapped those bandages himself only hours before. 

“I should probably change them. But it’s so cold…”

Standing up to brush the snow from his knees, Tobirama nodded shortly. “Cold indeed. An excellent excuse not to care for your wounds. I’ll be sure to share that one with Izuna when he asks how I could allow you to come home with blood poisoning.” 

A smile flickered across his face when the snuffling turned in to barely muted grumbling, probably a bad mockery of him since that was usually Madara’s last defense against being told to do something he already knew he should have been doing. It only took another minute or two of waiting before heavy footsteps were thumping across the snow-dusted rock to pause just at his back. The hand that shoved itself in to his view looked like some child’s imaginative drawing of a zombie, covered as it was in off-white linen turned black in some places with drying blood. 

“If you’re so worried for me then do something about it yourself!” 

“Use your manners if you want help.”

“Fuck you!” Madara snatched his hand back. When Tobirama looked he was cradling it to his chest with a pout that looked all the more ridiculous than usual when set above a full suit of battle-worn armor. “I’ll just do it myself then!” 

“Will you now?”

A raised eyebrow sent his companion storming off to where they had scraped the snow off a few square feet of ground. Dark mutterings made a lovely background tune as Madara dug through both of their packs trying to find the rest of their medical supplies. When he found them he gave a vicious little noise of triumph and then flopped down on to a nearby rock to pick at the knot on the back of his injured hand. It was hardly the only injury either of them had suffered during the past week of escorting their jittery client through one of the most dangerous sections of the border with Yugakure, just the most serious since it hampered the grip Madara needed on his infamous gunbai. He’d trained himself to use the other hand like most shinobi did but his effectiveness in battle was markedly different when doing so, forcing Tobirama to take point constantly rather than switching out by turns. 

“Don’t forget the ointment,” Tobirama called over helpfully, not bothering to hide a snicker when Madara lifted his head to glare in response. 

“I know that!” 

“Ah so you were leaving it behind in the pack, what, to keep it warm?” 

Madara tore off a strip of bandage and hauled it ineffectually through the air, shouting, “Leave me alone!” 

He should. In truth he really should leave the man alone. Both of them needed a little time to process the discovery of their unexpected connection. Unfortunately Tobirama didn’t have nearly half the interpersonal skills his brother did, he’d never really learned when to leave well enough alone, so instead of giving them both a little space he watched the fluttering bandage until it hit the ground and then lifted his face with a smirk. 

“Very effective. I’m all but shaking in my boots.”

“You will be if you ever let me catch you on the training fields alone!” 

“Go on then, we’re alone right now.”

“Fuck off!” Madara grunted.

Tobirama peeked over his shoulder to make sure the fire wasn’t going to collapse on itself and then turned back to his mission partner. “I don’t think I will. You are literally my only entertainment right now.”

“I am not your entertainment!” 

“No, you’re right. You’re more like a natural disaster that I just can’t help watching. It’s human nature, you know? Like a morbid curiosity.”

Even as he spoke the words he knew he was being an ass but, as he’d said, it wasn’t like there was much else for him to do in this godforsaken cave. He might as well get a few licks in while he still had the energy. Watching Madara’s ears turn red with anger was just as fascinating as it had ever been, though having to force his mind away from examining why he was so fascinated was new. 

“If anyone here is morbid it’s you!”

“Well I’m not denying that.”

“Be more insulted!” Madara screeched. “I hate when you do that!”

Tobirama folded his arms and lifted one hand to tap at his chin. “Do what, pray tell?”

“You’re always so fucking unflappable! Just- just- it isn’t fair! Be...flapped! Or something!”

“Flapped?” He’d never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. It was perfectly reasonable that he should throw his head back and start laughing, thoroughly amused by his companion’s loss for words. Madara didn’t seem to appreciate his reaction but really that wasn’t far out of the ordinary. For the most part Madara had never seemed to appreciate much about him at all and until recently that hadn’t exactly bothered him. 

Right now the only thing flapping was Madara’s jaw as the man tried several times to come up with a response, any response at all. In the end he simply tossed the end of the bandage roll in Tobirama’s direction with lethal force and snatched the closest bedroll, storming off to spread it out across the space kicked free of snow. 

It was a shame to have his entertainment taken away so quickly, even more of a shame to know that if he also tried to bed down right now the only spot to do so would be within range of Madara’s vengeful hands, so Tobirama was left very suddenly with the echoes of his own laughter and little else. The grin on his face turned rapidly in to a scowl. Patient he might be when the situation called for it but he’d never been a fan of keeping the company of his own thoughts. Books were much more pleasant. Much less likely to spiral out of control in to dangerous places or earn him another lecture from his older brother. Not having his library at hand was certainly the worst part of any mission he’d ever taken, filled as they usually were with down time in which he had little to do but plan his next move or stare aimlessly at the surroundings. 

As much as it would probably be more interesting to wander off and explore how far back these caves actually went he didn’t think it was in his best interests to take the chance at getting lost. If nothing else Madara would definitely tell on him when they got back to the village. 

For a minute or so their little cavern was filled with the rustling of Madara settling himself down to sleep, wrenching the blankets off again when he realized he hadn’t put away all the medical supplies, then fussing at them to cover himself a second time. Once he finally settled down for good there was nothing but the sound of the fire crackling merrily away. Sealed off as they were from the rest of the world, the fire was their only source of light. If not for the fact that the caves obviously went pretty deep in to the mountain it would have been a very poor idea indeed to let it keep burning away all their oxygen. Tobirama was grateful he didn’t need to put it out. Aside from giving him something to listen to besides the inside of his own head it also gave him something to look at. Or rather it gave him a bit of light by which to stare off in his partner’s direction, studying the length of Madara's body and the shapes he made under the regulation wool blanket. 

Not a good idea. Definitely not a good idea. Tobirama jerked his eyes away as soon as he realized what he was doing. Better if there had been no fire. He’d rather be blind for lack of light and leave himself at the mercy of the Sharingan for seeing any possible threats than to sit here and stare across the snowy rock like some lovelorn maiden. No matter what discoveries had been made that day they were not some pair of star crossed lovers. There was no need for whatever dramatics his face had just been doing. 

Digging both hands in to his eyes with a sigh, Tobirama decided it was probably best if he just went to sleep too. It was still too early for him to be very tired but falling asleep would at least stop him from following wherever the hell his thoughts had just been trying to go. Somewhere much too thespian for his tastes. He wasn't his brother, after all, there was no need for him to sit here and analyze his feelings or some other such nonsense. If the fire burnt down while they slept and he woke to darkness, well, he did still have Madara with him; just because he was rightfully leery of the Sharingan’s powers didn’t mean he was above taking advantage of them when he needed to. Perhaps a little mean when the man was injured by, hey, he wasn’t the one who could see in the dark and that was hardly his own fault. 

Another sigh caught at the edges of his teeth and slipped out sounding more like a hiss when he pushed himself up on to his feet, striding over towards their packs with careful footsteps. There was no telling what sort of uneven ground could be hiding under all this snow. So far away from the dancing flames his already poor vision was even worse so at first Tobirama assumed that Madara had simply kicked everything out of place while looking for the bandages. It wasn’t until he gathered all of the packs together and dug through every one of them that he realized one very important item was missing. 

His eyes snapped over to the prone figure only feet away. Madara lay stretched out and perfectly still on top of his bed roll. Or, more accurately, the only bedroll. In all the kerfuffle of their client running off and the avalanche trapping them in it appeared they had lost not only some of the food they’d been carrying but also their second sleeping mat. 

If not for the snow on the ground it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. He still had a blanket and it wasn’t like he’d never bedded down for the night without something comfortable to lie on, catching a few hours up a tree whenever he had to and doing so without complaint. The problem was that lying down on frozen rock had only one outcome and with both of them already injured in various ways he certainly couldn’t take the risk of waking up with pneumonia when there was a perfectly viable - if crushingly embarrassing - solution snoozing peacefully right there. He really hoped Madara wasn’t too comfy just yet. 

“What?” his partner snarled when he was nudged lightly with one foot. 

“Shove over,” Tobirama demanded. 

“The fuck? There is literally a whole cave of space, go make your bed somewhere else.”

“Can’t. I have to share your bed so shove over, Uchiha.”

Madara snapped upright so fast they both heard something in his back pop, though neither paid it much attention. “You fucking what now?”

“There appears to be a distinct lack of a second bedroll anywhere so unless you want me sneezing all over your bandages when I inevitably have to change them you will shove the hell over.” Tobirama crossed both arms over his chest like they could hold in all the confusing emotions trying very hard to bubble their way to the surface. 

He wasn’t sure what to think of the way Madara’s jaw hung open wordlessly, couldn’t properly make out the nuances of that expression without more light to see by. Maybe if he weren’t standing at such an angle as to throw the other man in shadow- but to step aside now so he could see better would be to admit how bad his eyes really were and that was a weakness he’d never bothered to share even with his own brother. He settled instead for standing his ground until that rounded jaw snapped shut again for Madara to harrumph loudly. 

“Fucking- are you serious? This is ridiculous! Where did the other bedroll go?”

“Probably lost in the snow somewhere but I would honestly much rather be sleeping right now than trying to guess at things I may never have an answer to. So. Shove. Over. I will not say it again.”

Ignoring Madara’s voice shouting in his ear was as easy as tuning him out, a feat barely comparable to the task of tuning out Hashirama in the middle of high drama. Tobirama untied his armor and set it all aside carefully. By the time he turned back he noticed that, although the screaming hadn’t so much as paused, Madara had gone ahead and moved over a few inches anyway. He did give vent to a few choked noises when Tobirama slid in under the covers with him but it wasn’t difficult to parse out why. Tobirama was still up on one elbow when he paused to examine their situation.

Which way was he supposed to face? They would both be warmer if he faced inwards and curled himself around Madara’s back but such a position felt much too intimate. Facing away from each other would be blessedly less intimate but there wasn’t exactly a whole lot of space on the mat beneath them and it would take only a single shift for one of them to roll away from the other, taking all the blankets with them. Sleeping on his back was generally the way he preferred but, again, space was the main issue. He would have to lay half on the snow to do that. 

“Just...just pick something and go to sleep,” Madara grumbled.

“Eager to cuddle?” Tobirama snapped at him, a response born more of habit than any particular ire. 

“Fuck off!” 

Just for that Tobirama slumped down on to his right side and made sure to curl in as close as possible, grinning viciously to himself as the other man stiffened noticeably. He himself was far from immune to the awkwardness but petty spite had always driven him faster than any care for his own comfort. If Madara hated this then he would lie here awake all night before he rolled over to make them both comfortable. 

It would have been nice, he admitted silently after several minutes, having enough mercy in his soul to relent and just roll over. Tomorrow promised to be an absolute bastard of a day, not least because the task of digging them out of this place would undoubtedly fall mostly on his own shoulders. He definitely could use some rest before tackling that. Instead he lay there with eyes wide open staring at the back of Madara’s head and wondering what reactions he might get if he pulled on some of that bristling hair. Almost as though the man could hear his thoughts Madara curled in to himself a little tighter. The movement was an innocent one. The way it pushed Madara’s rump in to the cradle of Tobirama’s hips was most decidedly not an innocent result even if it was obviously unintentional. 

“Nnngg!?” 

“Very intelligent,” Tobirama breathed, not wanting to speak louder for fear the sudden rush of want running through him might be heard in his voice. 

“That wasn’t- I didn’t- fuck off, Senju!” 

“I will have you know that it is taking all of my energy not to instinctually respond with an implication you would rather I fuck you instead.”

Madara’s screech could probably be heard through the several feet of snow blocking their cave entrance. “It doesn’t count if you still say it you idiot!” 

Yet for all the screaming protests he went on to ring both of their ears with, Madara’s reaction notably lacked one thing. He never once tried to move away. Oh he waved the arm he wasn’t lying on and jawed until Tobirama began to wonder if he wasn’t wearing down the bones of his own skull from overuse but not once did he so much as tilt his hips in to a different position. 

Such telling body language gave Tobirama all the clues he needed to figure out exactly what he’d missed in their earlier conversation. It was possible these types of clues were something he’d been missing in all of their past interactions, body language he never noticed simply because he tried to look at the other man as little as possible. To his shame such a habit had been built entirely on the premise that Madara hated it when people didn’t pay attention to him. From now on he promised himself he would pay closer attention - even if he might not let Madara see such efforts. Just because he was begrudgingly interested didn’t mean he was willing to set that spite down just yet. Some habits took longer to break than others. 

And some would never fade but maybe that was more of a personal failing than anything else. 

“White flag.” The words were out and hanging in the air before Tobirama even realized his mouth had decided to speak before his brain had a proper sentence ready. In front of him Madara stiffened impossibly further. 

“The hell are you on about?”

“I...am waving a white flag. We both need rest. This is, ah, comfortable enough. Let’s just put any further arguments or conversations on hold until tomorrow and go to sleep.” 

Madara seemed to chew that over for a moment until he asked very quietly, “Like this?” 

“I am comfortable if you are.”

He half expected to have the man roll over and deck him in the face for such presumptions. When the silence began to stretch he wondered if he was meant to take it as agreement until he heard very quiet words drift back to caress his ears, a softer sound than he had ever heard from this man in his life. 

“Your arms’ll go numb sleeping like that. Might as well...might as well stretch them out.” 

“Ah. I didn’t presume-”

Tobirama cleared his throat before very carefully shifting back to make room for where both of his arms were folded tightly against Madara’s back. When he stretched one out neither of them said anything about Madara lifting his head to make room for it beneath the pillow they shared. And when he stretched the other out with very delicate movements they both remained utterly silent as he laid it gently across Madara’s waist. 

It was the subtle relaxing of all the muscles pressed up against his front that finally made everything click. Oh but he was a blind man. A very blind man with terrible vision to boot. If anyone asked he was going to blame every misunderstanding on the man in his arms with zero shame. 

Tomorrow they would wake to fight their way past the snow and put in at least a token effort to find their wayward client. Somewhere along the way they would search for the supplies that got lost in the shuffle. But as he closed his eyes Tobirama smiled to realize neither one of them was likely to put a whole lot of work in to finding that second bedroll they had lost, not when it seemed their newly discovered bond was something Madara wanted much more than he’d let on before. 

[legionofpotatoes]

we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

[rextasywrites]

Open Up Jill - a Jill Valentine monsterfucking story

Note: this is the dirtiest thing I have EVER written! monsterfucking is something i always wanted to try out but this came out dirtier and nastier than i expected it to be, but the person i wrote this for was very happy about it

Warnings: Monsterfucking! could count as rape! violence! heavy TW!!!

!!!DON’T LIKE DON’T READ!!!

Racoon City.

Hours after the outbreak.

Just to take a deep breath. A single deep breath and they’d continue their journey through the crumbling ruins of what used to be a city. Fires and enemies attacking had made their journey a risky one, often barely escaping with their lives. The bench inside of a building used to be part of a waiting room. Now it was filled with death, guts and gore.

“And how many animals are infected?”, Jill asked as she handed Carlos a water bottle, sweat rolling down her temples.

“I have no idea. I have seen some stray dogs running around, but nothing too...dangerous? Nothing that we cannot deal with.”, Carlos said after he had taken a few sips from the bottle, holding it in his hands. He had seen a weirdly mutated dog once which appeared to be larger than an usual dog, but that was a single time. He handed Jill the water bottle back, saving up the last few sips for her. Jill was thankful for this, finishing what was left before placing it on the bench next to herself.

“Can you check the door for a minute? I need to check my gun out, something isn’t right.”, she said. Carlos obeyed to the wish of his new mate, heading to the only non-blocked entrance of the room. Jill started to take her gun apart in the meanwhile, cleaning it of waste and other stuff which had blocked the trigger from time to time. It took its sweet time, cleaning zombie organs wasn’t part of Jill’s to do list. Hydrogen peroxide was good against blood, but what helped with guts of half dead...things?

“Jill, are you done?”, Carlos asked, to which she replied a simple ‘No’. Suddenly, the two heard a door being thrown shut close to them. Carlos raised his assault rifle to the place where the noise came from. One of the blocked entries… Jill frantically tried to put her gun back into one piece, failing as the entry was busted open. 

In the opening of the doorway, now a huge gap in the wall, was a dog- like thing, standing on two paws as it scanned the room. Carlos, after a split second of surprise, started to fire at the mutant. To his unpleasant surprise, the bullets hardly did any damage to the animal. With a quick look, the animal saw Carlos and how uncovered he was. It grabbed hold of a chair which had been used to block the entry. In a swift motion, the animal threw the chair at Carlos, hitting him at full speed.

“Carlos!”, Jill screamed as the mercenary went to the ground, a pool for blood forming under his body. She couldn’t help herself and hurried over to the man, while the animal watched with fascination. “Hey, hey, you are gonna be okay…”, she begged, reaching over to feel on Carlos’ throat… There was a pulse! Carlos wasn’t dead!

The moment of celebration was cut short as the animal hurried over, grabbing hold of the defenseless Jill. Without a gun and with Carlos passed out under a chair, Jill was at mercy of this dog-looking creature. And she knew, it wouldn’t be gentle at all. In the best case, she’d escape with her life and a few broken bones. Worst case, death. But there was one case she hadn’t thought of before she felt it.

Was this massive...werewolf...having a boner?

Jill dared to glance down while the animal carried her, and her worries were confirmed. This thing was having a massive boner, poking right up to her ass as it carried her to the other side of the room, away from the passed out Carlos.

“No…”, Jill whispered as the thing placed her down on the floor, its cock slapping her face as she was forced down. What a weird smell, she thought, as the mutated animal towered above her, caging her in as her only way of escaping was to obey.

The mutant above her let out a grunt as it started to slap its cock against Jill’s cheeks, making her grimace at the weird feeling. She had taken several cocks before, but that was a new one..

Each slap was harder than the previous one, forcing Jill to gasp in pain as red marks showed up on her cheeks. “What the fuck?”, she asked and rubbed the painful spots once the mutant stopped for a bit.

A growl ripped her out of her pity, and the tip of the mutant’s cock was pushing against her lips.

It would never ever fit in her mouth! Shit, not even her pussy could take it!

But the mutant wouldn’t care about it.

By holding her nose shut, the dog creature tried to force Jill to breathe through her mouth. The woman fought bravely against it, but the instinct to survive came out. Jill gasped for air and in the same second, any air in her mouth was replaced by a huge cock. Her cries of pain were muffled by the sheer giant size of the mutant’s cock, minimizing any chances of her crying for help.

The mutant slowly pushed its way through her mouth and down her throat, making her gag as it was probably halfway down to her stomach by the time her nose hit its knot, no chance of getting further as her jaw was pushed to its limit. Jill tried to push it off, tears running down her cheeks as the mutant slowly dragged its cock out of her throat. By the time the tip left her lips, Jill felt as if she was about to pass out. Stars circled her vision as she was able to breathe again, spitting out all the salvia in her mouth as the mutant watched her.

“You sick fuck!”, Jill cried out, wiping the tears off her cheeks as she looked up. Her gaze caught the spit covered cock, throbbing in plain sight, showing that the mutant wasn’t even close to being done. And the sounds coming from the mutant sounded just so closely to a chuckle.

The mutant grabbed hold of Jill, throwing her across the room onto the floor, closer to Carlos, who was still laying under the chair, passed out from the impact. Jill whimpered, her last hope vanishing into thin air. Her last hope for safety, to security.

Jill had to cough as the mutant dog walked up to her, its cock still twitching as a warning sign for her. “Please not…”, she whimpered to no avail. The monster grabbed her once more, slamming her face first into one of the tables surrounding the area, her nose bleeding as she looked up. Everything felt ‘white’ at this point, as if this moment wasn’t real. But the taste of blood in her mouth and the monster’s paw on her back indicated that this was her harsh reality.

With a quick movement of its free paw, the mutant ripped her jeans open, just a big enough rip to reveal her pussy, free of any cloth which could protect her from the wolf’s wrath.

"It's not gonna fit!", Jill cried out, a last attempt to resonate with the beast behind her - to no success. The beast just huffed a breath and pressed its cock against her entrance. All the wiggling and groaning did not help as it slowly pushed inside of her, making her yell out. Pleasure? Pain? A mixture of both? Jill didn’t know anymore at this point.

Inch by inch, the monster forced its way inside of her, Jill had stopped thrashing around by now. Replaced by bliss, watching as the mutant’s cock bulged out on her stomach, twitching visible from the outside. She had never felt something like this before and probably never will again.

“Wow…”, Jill muttered, placing a free hand on the bulge, feeling every little movement that was happening inside of her. Slowly, the mutant retreated its cock from inside of her, leaving her empty and needy...just to push right back inside, making her scream out.

This very scream made Carlos blink awake. He rubbed his eyes, taking some time to realize what was going on. By this time, Jill’s pussy was fucked raw and the mutant about to pump its load inside of her. With a loud growl, the monster came inside of her, filling her up to a degree she had never felt before. She whimpered and groaned, trying to get her body away from the load flooding inside of her, and everything went black for her.

“What the hell…”, Carlos whispered as he watched the scene unfold in front of his eyes. He grabbed his assault rifle and fired a few bullets at the monster. Which, in return, drew its attention to Carlos, away from the now passed out Jill. Its cock slipped out of her as it charged towards the mercenary. Carlos got hold of the rocket launcher which landed not too far away from him and hit the mutant right into the face. Guts, brains and who knows what other fluids spew out of its throat as it dropped to the ground.

“...Carlos?”, Jill whispered as she slowly opened her eyes again, her vision a bit cloudy still. As her eyesight came back fully, she was able to see the outcome of her latest fuck session. The mutated animal was dead, Carlos’ rocket launcher had given it its rest as it tried to escape. 

“Get up. We aren’t fucking done yet.”

Carlos grabbed Jill by her upper arm, dragging her back onto her feet. The mutant had left its marks on Jill, bruises, blood dripping out of small wounds, and her absolutely fucked through pussy which still leaked cum by the time Carlos had dragged her away to safety, far away from the now headless dog mutant.

“What the hell was that?”, Carlos asked, pointing to her ripped jeans, at this point they were more decoration than useful.

“This thing? A...dog?”, Jill answered, dropping on the ground as soon as they were in a secure place. She laid on her back, hand placed on her stomach as she felt the afterwaves of this absolute crazy fuck. Carlos watched her with worry in his eyes, placing his hand on Jill’s as he looked at her. “Maybe a dog. Don’t know, I hope my organs are still intact.”

Carlos sighed, letting his hand travel from her stomach to her face, cupping her bruised cheek as he leaned in, pressing a kiss on her forehead. “Let's get you back to the station and patched up. Cannot fight enemies like that.”

[turnupthestrobe]

Halloween 2020 Film #1

City of the Living Dead/Gates of Hell (Lucio Fulci, 1980)

I thought, since I’m newly back on Tumblr, and sine I haven’t written in a long time, and since the world is a terrible place and it doesn’t really matter what I do, that I’d try to write about a horror film every day this month.  I really sort of dislike writing about film right now, and even moreso hate writing about myself, but it’s an exercise I feel like I should participate in, and to be honest, I don’t have much else to do right now, so why not?

The first film I watched this month is Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead.  Fulci emerged as a horror filmmaker int he late 70s but he’d been making movies for 20 or so years already, as kind of a journeyman, working on whatever genres were popular at the time.  Early in his career, he made a number of sex comedies, which is kind of hard to imagine give the listlessness of his later films, which rely on slow, dreamlike pacing that seems fairly antithetical to the kind of madcap sex comedies popular in Italy in the 60s and early 70s.

Fulci fared much better with two excellent giallo films, Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Don’t Torture a Duckling, and in westerns, especially the devastating Four of the Apocalypse, which despite it’s old west milieu, could arguably be seen as a horror film as well.

He made his first proper horror film in 1977, with the Psychic, but it was 1979′s Zombie that brought him his first attention from horror fans in America (it was featured on the 8th cover of Fangoria magazine).  Released in Italy as a Bootleg sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Zombie’s mix of gauzy atmosphere, over the top gore and an grinding, pulsating synth score by Italian soundtrack mainstay Fabio Frizzi caught audiences’ attention around the world and bumped Fulci’s reputation from talented if not especially visionary working filmmaker to cult horror legend.

Fulci followed Zombie up with a handful of films revealing his unique vision as a filmmaker.  His imprint on his films is primarily aesthetic, as he showed little interest in putting together a coherent narrative and had any quality performances thwarted by his films being postdubbed, which was standard for Italian genre films at the time, making them easier to dub for foreign markets.

This period of Fulci’s career resulted in some of his best work, namely City of the Living Dead (1980) and the Beyond (1981), which made up kind of a loose trilogy with slightly lesser The House by the Cemetery  (1981).  These films show Fulci at his most aesthetically pronounced, following vague, ephemeral and ethereal threads and obsessions, not the any foregone conclusions, but in a kind of phantasmagorical. almost psychedelic vein.

These films are full of atmosphere, slow burn drama punctuated with shocking acts of violence.  The extreme gore of these Fulci films became something of a director’s hallmark, as did he preoccupation with eyeballs, seem often in closeup and more than occasionally in states of distress or mutilation.

Watching the City of the Living Dead again this year- I think it’s the best of Fulci’s early 80′s films, the most atmosphere and “complete” feeling in terms of creating a tone of absolutely dread and despair (The Beyond, meanwhile, is the more fun and exciting of these films, though it certainly has its share of creepy and disturbing moments), I was struck by a few things.

The eye trauma thing is almost a joke among horror fans.  People love to point it out as though it weren’t very much obvious and on the surface of the films.  Fulci was fascinated with eyes, both showing them in extreme closeup and occasionally mutilating them in graphic ways.  This motif actually fits into the narrative of City of the Living Dead, and to an extent the Beyond, as both films feature moments where characters are destroyed be seeing.  The idea is perhaps that there are some things that are so horrible, simply seeing them is a horror unto itself, one that can result in the body’s expulsion of organs or, simply, life.

The gore in these films serves a similar purpose, I think.  Fulci really escalated the goriness of his films through his career, with later films like A Cat in the Brain becoming especially disgusting, but also self-referrential (Fulci plays a version of himself in that one).  Like the idea of seeing something so horrible it destroys our lives, Fulci strove to put to most horrible images he could imagine on screen.  

As much, City of the Living Dead is at moments pornographically violent, with a character getting a drill through his head in close up, and another vomiting up her intestines upon viewing the visage of a dead priest who serves as one of the avatars of ultimate evil in the film.  Again the idea seems to be showing the viewer, as the character, something so terrible it cannot be unseen, a co-mingling of many contemporary horror tropes from the body horror of the early Cronenberg films to the silent, cannibalistic masses of George Romero to dark and unstoppable evil that lurks around the corner in John Carpenter’s Halloween to the supernatural elements of The Exorcist, the Omen and the Ammiityville horror.

And yet, at the same time, I don’t think Fulci was operating by some kind of thesis of the nature of horror, or by the nature of seeing.  His films are too loose and shambling, too detatched, for him to have much of an intellectual agenda as a director.  Rather, I think he distilled these popular elements instinctually and regurgitated them through his own filter, a combination or personal obsession and adherence to the demands of the marketplace.

In truth, I am the last person in the world who gives a fuck about authenticity in film, but Fulci is remarkable in that he managed to be both fully authentic, adhering to a person vision and aesthetic, and yet entirely inauthentic, making films without any particularly welll-developed narrative or actual sense of artistry or personal intentional, at the same time,.

The results of this are mixed, but when they work, as in City of the Living Dead and the Beyond, the work incredibly well, creating singular nightmare scenarios that play by an internal logic that only exists within their own realities.  And the notion of seeing and not being able unsee as a mechanism of horror is especially strong in the se films , particularly in the ocularly obsessed City of the Living Dead, which has a bleakness to it that highlights the sense of dream of what might be seen, what should be unseen and what the true nature of visual horror means for the viewers of a horror film.

[letterboxd]

Lonesome Cruiser.

Blockbuster composer Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL, talks to Gemma Gracewood about composing for titans, his pride in Dutch cinema, friendship with George Miller and longing for Olivia Newton-John. Plus: his Letterboxd Life in Film and why he’s selling his prized collection of recording gear.

It has been a spectacular spring for Tom Holkenborg, the Dutch musician also known as Junkie XL, who has crafted the scores for multiplex fare such as Mad Max: Fury Road, Deadpool, Terminator: Dark Fate, Sonic the Hedgehog and the upcoming zombie banger Army of the Dead. Only weeks apart, two blockbusters landed on screens with his sonic stamp all over them: Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong and Zack Snyder’s re-realized Justice League.

Thankfully, the Godzilla vs. Kong score was complete by the time the Justice League telephone rang. Holkenborg—who had lost the Justice League gig along with Snyder the first time around—knew the Snyder cut was coming; he had closely watched the growing calls for it online. “Zack and I already started talking in 2019. He’s like, ‘What if we were to finish this? What would it take?’ Those conversations turned to ‘Well, how many recording days potentially do you need and how much of an orchestra do you potentially need?’ Finally, somewhere in April 2020, that’s when that phone call came: ‘Okay, light’s green, start tomorrow, and start running until it’s done because it’s four and a half hours’.”

Ray Fisher as Cyborg in ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’.

Holkenborg approaches the titanic task of blockbuster film scoring with an engineer’s mindset: “Building a fantastic, huge house with 20 bedrooms and the dance hall and the kitchen… You’re not going to start by building the third bathroom for the third guest room, right?” Once he has identified the scenes that are most important to his directors—for Snyder, they included the introduction of Cyborg, three fight set-pieces, and a scene of The Flash running that comes towards the end of the film—the composer identifies instrumental “colors” in order to build a theme around each character. Then he holds some of those colors back, theorizing that “if you want like an, ‘Oh!’ experience by looking at a painting that has a huge amount of bright yellow in it, it’s way more successful to see fifteen paintings in front of it, where yellow is absent.”

The Godzilla vs. Kong score satisfies Holkenborg’s life-long love of both characters. “I don’t have a preference for either one. I love them both for various different reasons.” Their respective histories fascinate him: Godzilla as a way to make sense of Japan’s nuclear fall-out, and Kong as a gigantic spectacle that ended up attracting the sympathies of the audiences he was supposed to scare. Even when the science makes no sense (“what the fuck are plasma boosters, anyway?!”), Holkenborg is still happy to wax lyrical about the emotional depth of Kong’s stories, the elaborate concepts of the Godzilla-verse, and his musical approach to the pair—dark, moving brass for Godzilla, with synthesized elements “because he is a half-synthesized animal”, and a more organic, complex orchestration for Kong, featuring “one of the world’s bigger bass drums”.

Adam Wingard’s ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’.

All of this seat-shaking bombast is composed on an “insanely massive sound system” in Holkenborg’s small home studio (though he reassures pandemic-stricken film lovers that he has recently seen both Godzilla vs. Kong and Justice League on his laptop—and “really enjoyed watching it like that”). The process, he says, was “pretty intense”, but only in terms of the sheer amount of score needed. Composing in quarantine was not much different from his usual workflow. “I’m a pretty lonesome cruiser anyway. Composing, by nature, is like a solo exercise—obviously with assistance.”

Like many creatives (Bong Joon-ho recently told a film studies class that he is up at 5:00am most days to watch a movie), Holkenborg is an early riser, waking by 4:00am. “I’m super sharp between like 4 or 5:00am and 9:00am, so I like to do a lot of creative work in that slot.” He takes care of business until mid-afternoon, when another creative spurt happens. “And then I have another batch of calls usually to make, and then around 8:30pm, I’m going to retire for the rest of the day and just chill out a little bit and watch stuff that I want to see, read things that I want to read. Right now I’m studying Portuguese.” By 10:30pm, he’s asleep. “And then at three o’clock I get up.” (Needless to say, Holkenborg’s children are no longer small.)

The pandemic simplified a lot of things for a lot of people: for Holkenborg, it has been a moment to tidy up the physical side of his work. In November last year, he opened an online shop to divest the bulk of his gear—synths, pedals, guitars, drum machines and much more—that he has been collecting since the late 1970s. When friends told him he’d regret it, he disagreed. “At some point I’m going to die. I can’t take them to the afterlife. I also found out I don’t need them. I love to have them around, but I don’t need them.”

Tom Holkenborg with the bass drum used in the ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ score.

It certainly solves the question of what he’d take if his house was on fire. “The hard drives with sounds and music over the last 40 years, 45 years, that’s hard to replace. So, that would be it. I’m just thinking about things that are absolutely irreplaceable and there are not that many, really.” Alas, it’s bad news for that bass drum. “I can’t take that with me when the house is on fire. Unfortunately, it’s going to make the house burn longer.”

Anyone who has interviewed or spent time with Holkenborg will agree: he may be a lonesome cruiser, but he is also personable, funny, loves to settle in for a chat. As he lights his second or third cigarette in readiness for his Life in Film questionnaire, I’m curious about his relationships with the esteemed filmmakers he has worked with—who include his mentor, Hans Zimmer, directors Sir Peter Jackson, Tim Miller, Robert Rodriguez and, especially, Fury Road’s George Miller.

The story of how Holkenborg scored Mad Max: Fury Road bears retelling: that George Miller did not want a soundtrack (“he was convinced that the orchestration of sounds of the cars would be enough to carry the whole movie”), that Holkenborg was only brought in to create a little something for the Coma-Doof Warrior’s flame-throwing guitar, that they hit it off, the job grew, and grew, into a score that covers almost the entire film.

The Coma-Doof Warrior in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015).

What is his best memory of Fury Road? “Well, obviously, when I saw the movie for the first time and I was like ‘what the hell am I looking at?’,” he laughs. “What I mostly look back on is the friendship that I developed with George and the film school one-on-one that I got admitted to, while being paid at the same time, to study with somebody like him. We would talk all night about all kinds of things and nothing, because that really defines our relationship so much—a joint interest in so many different things.”

Happily, Holkenborg and Miller are working together again, on Three Thousand Years of Longing. “It’s really great to be in that process with him again. It’s just like about pricking each other with a little needle. It’s like, ‘Oh, why are you saying that?’ We do that with each other to keep each other sharp. ‘Oh, but if you’re doing this, I’m going to be doing that.’ And then, ‘Oh, if you’re doing that, I’m going to be doing this.’ So it’s really interesting.”

What is your favorite Godzilla film?

Tom Holkenborg: 1989’s Godzilla vs. Biollante. It’s a very obscure one where he’s basically fighting a giant rose. Let’s not look for the logic there.

Why has that particular Godzilla captured your heart? It’s so corny. Yeah. Mothra vs. Godzilla is also great. Mothra looks like a very bad Arabian carpet that was imported through customs and it got delivered by FedEx completely ruined and then laid outside for like four weeks in the rain.

‘Godzilla vs. Biollante’ (ゴジラvsビオランテ, 1989).

What is the first film you remember seeing in a cinema? Bambi. I was six years old, yeah.

And is there a film you have fond memories of watching with your family—a movie that became a family favorite? Not, like, a family favorite because our opinions were too diverse for that, but the next movie that became very important to me when I was a little older was Saturday Night Fever. I thought the soundtrack was, like, groundbreaking, mind-blowingly insane. It’s not necessarily those three massive beats of the Bee Gees on there, but all these other really alternative, left-field tracks by bands like Kool & the Gang. And the way that that darker disco music played against that really dark movie about what it’s like to live in New York and become a competitive dancer, it’s incredible. And still, today, it’s one of the movies where film music and the film itself had so much impact on me, even though it’s not a traditional film score in that sense. It’s incredible.

What is the film that made you want to work in movies, given that you also have a whole musical career separate from movies? (Enjoy Junkie XL’s early 2000s remix of Elvis Presley’s ‘A Little Less Conversation’.) For me, the move from a traditional artist into film scoring was a very slow gradual process. There’s not one movie that pushed me over the cliff. It’s just, like, all the great movies that were made. And I still have a list of obscure movies, classic movies that I need to see.

Yesterday I saw the weirdest of all, but I do want to share this: the original, uncut R-rated version of Caligula, [from] 1979. He [director Tinto Brass] was notoriously brutal and he organized orgies and had terrible torturing techniques. But it’s really weird, there’s Shakespearean actors in there, and then it goes to full-on porn sections. It’s really weird. The music is incredible. You can find it online. You will not find it anywhere [else]. I can just imagine what this must have felt like in 1979 when the film came out. Suspiria, that’s another one. It’s just like, how weird was that thing?

What is your favorite blockbuster that you did not compose? Ben-Hur. I’ve seen that one at least 20 times.

What’s your all-time comfort re-watch? The movie I’ve seen the most is Blade Runner. It’s just, like, it’s a nice world you’re stepping into, that fantasy. It’s not necessarily because I have memories [of] that movie that brings me back to a certain time period, it’s not that. It’s just that I just love to dwell in it. It feels a little bit like coming home. You can use it as comfort food, you can use it as, “I’m not feeling anything today”, or the opposite. You feel very great and you feel very inspired and it’s like, “Oh, let’s go home and watch that movie again.”

Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line’ (1998).

Hans Zimmer has been an important mentor to you. Do you have a favorite of his scores? Yes, The Thin Red Line. It’s also the filmmaking of Terrence Malick—he forces a composer to think a certain way. He would always say, “It’s too much, make it less, make it smaller, make it this, make it that.” So, A, it’s a very good movie and B, he got Hans into the right place and Hans just over-delivered by doing exactly the right things at the right time and then shining just because of that.

Who is a composer that you have your eye on and what is one of their films that we should watch next? It’s so sad to say, but I mean, let’s call it like a retrospective discovery if you will. I’m so sad that we lost Jóhann Jóhannsson. He was a composer I felt really close to. We started roughly in the same time period making our way in today’s world. Also, Jóhann came from an artist background, even though it was a modern classical background. He made really great records, great experimentation with electronic elements, with classical instruments, and the mix between the two of them—very original way of looking at music. With Denis Villeneuve as his partner in crime the movies that they did were just mind-boggling good, whether it was Sicario or Arrival or Prisoners, and his voice will truly be missed among film composers. So people that are not super familiar with his work, I would definitely check it out.

‘Turks Fruit’ (Turkish Delight, 1973).

What is a must-see Dutch film that we should add to our watchlists? Holland has small cinema, but it has a really rich cinema and a very serious cinema culture. Usually because there’s not enough work in film, people are serious stage performers but then they also act in movies so they understand both really well. And we’ve delivered. There’s a string of actors that make their way to Hollywood or star in well-known series, whether it’s like Game of Thrones, or what we just talked about, Blade Runner. Many directors like Paul Verhoeven, Jan de Bont, the cameraman.

And so a movie that I’d like to pick is an old movie, called Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight) from the 1970s. Rutger Hauer is a younger guy, like, this completely irresponsible guy that starts this relationship with a really beautiful young girl, and they do all these crazy things, they do a lot of drugs and they have a lot of sex. He’s just like a bad influence on her.

Then he finds out she [has] cancer and it’s terminal. And to see him deal with that, and to see him want a change, but also in that change he does a lot of bad stuff at the same time… It was a sensational movie when it came out. And it actually was directed by Paul Verhoeven, one of his earlier films. When you see it, you’re just like, ‘Why am I watching this?’ for the first 45 minutes and then it starts and it’s like, ‘whoa’. So it’s really good, even in retrospect.

Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in ‘Grease’ (1978).

What is the sexiest film you’ve ever seen? When I was super young, it was definitely Grease, with Olivia Newton-John, when she was in her catsuit at the very end of it. I had her picture on my bedroom, above my bed sideways because I was only like ten years old or something. I was so in love with Olivia Newton-John. It wasn’t the film per se, it was her. Yeah, I find, personally, movies from the ’70s to be more sexy, but it has something to do with the super-loose way that people were dressed and people were behaving.

And the other one was later in life: Basic Instinct. Sharon Stone. I’m not talking about like the famous shot, right, where she crosses her legs. I’m not talking about that, but the way that she acts throughout the whole movie. It’s insane. It’s really great.

Are there any films that have scared you? Like, truly terrified you? Yeah, I’m not a big fan because I get sucked up too much in it. The found [footage] horror movies like Paranormal Activity and things like the Japanese version of The Grudge, I cannot watch that stuff. That gets me too much. Because when I watch a film, I cannot watch it with one eye half open, the other one closed, like, ‘Okay, kind of cool, interesting’. I just get sucked into it.

Is there a film that has made you cry like no other? Oh yeah. Multiple. Once Upon a Time in America. The Godfather. Hable con Ella (Talk to Her). Betty Blue.

Thomas Holkenborg, AKA Junkie XL.

These are the films that make you weep? Not like on a regular basis, but I remember those were the ones that I really got hit. I’m talking particularly about the third Godfather. That whole end scene when they get out of the church and then… It’s really well-acted. So many Godfather fans that were dismissive of the film when it came out, in retrospect, ten, fifteen, 20 years later, are like, ‘it’s a really good film’. And I actually think so.

Final question. Is there a film from the past year that you would recommend, that you’ve loved? [Long pause.] The thing is that I watch pretty much a movie a day. So, that’s like three to four hundred movies. It [has] happened so often that I watch a film and then I’m just like an hour and 45 minutes in, it’s like, ‘wait, fuck, I’ve seen this thing before’.

So, we have an app for that… [Laughs.]

Related content

Junkie XL’s Letterboxd Life in Film list

Freddie Baker’s review of Justice League

Dutch Cinema: Danielle’s extensive list of more than 2,000 films

Letterboxd Showdown: The Perfect Score (best film scores)

The official Junkie XL Reverb Shop

Follow Gemma on Letterboxd

[stetervault]

Hello! Do you do rec lists? Would you be willing rec some Steter fics that aren't the most common/popular ones? If not, no worries!

Technically this isn’t a rec-finding blog lol but I do make rec lists sometimes if someone asks and I have the time and I feel like it. Here are some (I think?) less known Steter fics, oldies that people may have missed or forgotten (Idk how well I succeeded, I just picked a bunch that have significantly less reads/bookmarks than the really big fics):

Fear (Doesn't Mean I Can't Fight) by azerblazer

Peter is the damsel in distress, the Sheriff is the hostage, random unnamed hunters are the bad guys.

Stiles has a bat, a hoodie and a willingness to do anything to protect those he's loyal to.

Bring it on.

A Lean and Hungry Look by kototyph

The woods aren't the only place you find wolves.

You're Mine, Valentine by orphan_account

In which Peter decides to court Stiles, and does so by leaving him hearts.

Bloody ones.

Zodiac by Green

"You know, Taurus and Libra make a good match," Peter says with a sly smile.

Stiles looks away. "Yeah. I looked that up, too."

Surviving Peter and the Zombie Apocalypse by Nopennamesleft

Its the end of the world and Stiles has run out of luck. He saves a werewolf from certain death. Will they begin to rely on each other to survive or will the wolf just eat Stiles for a midnight snack?

He Is A Villain By The Devil's Law by neglectedtuesday

Stiles’ lungs are burning, blood is pumping through his veins and he’s pretty sure that if he stops running then he’ll just keel over into the gutter. But God does he feel alive. The sirens are wailing, loud and clear. Just one more block. One more block. Stiles ducks down an alleyway, the bag full of bank notes swinging behind him. It hits his side with a dull thud. The alley smells like cat pee and yesterdays trash so Stiles breathes shallowly through his mouth. He continues walking down it until he reaches the end. It opens out onto the street. He stops just shy of the exit, waiting. He waits a bit more. Then he kicks a can lying idle on the ground. He whips out his burner phone, punching in a number.

“Where the fuck are you?” Stiles growls, “Where’s my goddamn getaway car?”

“Change of plans Stilinski, you’re gonna have to get away on your own. Also ditch the phone.”

Fascinated by lemonstiles, migratoryslashfan

Stiles pontificates over Peter's naked body.

Night-blooming Flowers by imriebelow

Peter always gets what he wants. Stiles learns to live with it.

None of These Things (Are Happening) by Horribibble

After years away, Stiles returns to Beacon Hills just in time to put Isaac's insides back where they belong.

It's cute how people think he's trustworthy.

-

Peter can smell the violence inside him, the urge to do something grand and possibly cataclysmic. It’s there—mixed with a balance and natural calm, but in the undercurrent, it’s there. He has seen things beyond the scope of Beacon Hills’ petty horror show. He has learned things.

The Terrible Things We Do (For Love) by rospeaks

Being a demon, he’s seen some of the pretty nasty things that humans are willing to do for love. Things that, were he still alive (and human), would make him hesitate to be in a relationship with anyone lest his partner start getting some funny ideas. That said—

"This seems a little desperate for a kid your age," he says to Stiles.

Spin, Sweet Clotho by ChuckleVoodoos

Oh, it’s a beautiful thing to watch, the way they dance around each other, spun in sugar and glittering glass. Like a fragile little fairytale, a tender rosebud just waiting to unfurl. It makes Peter sick.

Because love is a fairytale, and his dear darling nephew does not deserve a happy ending.

whisper by tricksterity

Stiles was tired.

He was done of people pushing him and his pack around. They’d already lost so much and he was damned if he’d let them lose anyone else, especially to this psychopath who had no reasons for what he did other than he liked it.

And that’s when the whispers in his mind grew louder.

Remember Darling, All the While by Sang_argente

It was fire, ice, electricity. It was the first kiss, the last kiss, and every kiss inbetween. It was lips parting, tongues sliding, hearts beating.

Impress Me by ToAStranger

Their new English teacher has gone missing.

Falling Upward by moonstalker24

There is nothing quite like flying. There is a calm and a peace found in the sky that cannot be found on earth. All the chaos of the world is below you and there is no sound save that which the propeller makes as the engine turns it. You are free and unfettered and the clouds are close enough to touch; all you need do is stretch out your hand to grasp them.

Stiles takes Peter flying after he gets out of Eichen House.

Sweeter Than Gingerbread by taylorpotato (Stetallison)

The saying goes that lovers who commit suicide together start their next life as twins. Perhaps that's why Stiles and Ally feel the way they do about each other.

The Shadow Effect by Mysenia

What was the fun in being a twin if you couldn't trick a person or two?

Deep under by Sashaya

There's a reason Stiles knows so much about drowning. He'd rather not remember why...

All the World's a Stage (but the light design is subpar) by BonesOfBirdWings

Peter Hale is a successful Off-Broadway actor, and Stiles is a stage lighter who literally falls into his life.

Peter smiled at him. "Thank you, Stiles. But should I take this to mean that you don't want a meatball sandwich from Banh Mi Saigon?"

Stiles' mouth dropped open. "You - I - Yes, I want! Oh my god, you do the best apologies! Can you piss me off more, please? I accept all future apologies enthusiastically!"

Peter chuckled. "I'm sure that won't be a problem, dear boy. I've been informed that I'm an asshole by a very reliable source."

Stiles beamed. "But you have good taste in food, so things balance out?" he ventured.

Peter threw back his head and laughed. Stiles' grin brightened in answer.

The D.C. Backroom Deal by septima_sum

Stiles is a regular prostitute with moderate life goals – until his current client makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

Strange Duet by BelleAmante, thiliart (thilia)

The past three years have been a series of shocking, or not so shocking, successes for 2018 Tony award winner and two time Grammy nominee, Stiles Stilinski. You don’t typically find classically trained opera singers singing alternative folk rock to crowds at Coachella. Nor do you find indie singer/songwriters winning best actor awards at the Tony’s for their Broadway debuts. Stilinski has made it his lifetime habit to defy and exceed all expectations.

-or-

A Steter fic loosely based on Phantom of the Opera

Hold Me Down by sneksonaplane

Waking up in Peter Hale’s bed was weird. Waking up in Peter Hale’s body was even weirder. Stiles had been disoriented and confused when he’d found himself in a plush, king sized bed in an unfamiliar bedroom instead of in his own room (and seriously, why did Peter even need a king sized bed? Why would anyone need a bed that big?) It had all come back to him when he’d glimpsed the body he was inhabiting, one that was shorter but more defined than his own, and older, and kind of hot.

OR

The one where Stiles and Peter swap bodies, Peter relives his adolescence, Stiles suffers, and then suffers a little less when he discovers Peter's fetlife profile where he's listed as a submissive seeking a daddy.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night by Guede

This is a ghost story. It’s not straightforward.

Put My Faith in Something Unknown by Twisted_Mind

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, suspended between thought and action, unable to feel. At some point, he becomes aware that there’s a hand on his face. A warm palm cradles his jaw, and a thumb brushes across his cheekbone tenderly.

The Rest of Our Lives by mia6363

“I don’t know, as a kid I watched a lot of movies, you know? And at first I figured like… I’d be on some great adventure that would take me away from it all, you know? Like Indiana Jones comes around and is all, ‘Hey Stiles, buddy, come with me we’ve got to go save the world.’ Then… you and… everything happened… then I just… I figured I’d die before I was eighteen.”

Enemy Action by pprfaith

Once is chance, twice is coincidence and three times is far too many bodies on the ground.

Buy Me a New Pair by Julibean19

"I don't practice law much these days."

"And why is that?" Stiles asked, wondering why a handsome and presumably successful lawyer wouldn't want to continue working.

"I've been drawn away by more pleasurable pursuits," Peter said, lips quirked upward as he spoke.

Tale as Old as Time by wynnebat

The one in which Lydia's got better things to do than be Belle, Stiles is a much more likeable Gaston, and Peter is a beast but not quite beastly.

The clothes make the man by FeelingsDusk

The trick to sneaking into a building where you shouldn’t be is to make it seem to all eyes like you should. Stiles has been doing this since he was a little older than toddler and he wanted to get back his Batman action figure from the evidence room in his dad’s Police Station.

(Spolier alert: just like back then, Stiles gets caught.)

Smile Like You Mean It by NinaRooxx

After sulking about the changing weather over the autumn, Stiles notices that despite the weather getting colder, Peter’s wardrobe isn’t changing at all.

Swing by ShippersList

Stiles wants to fly.

Angels, Devils, and Peter by Triangulum

Everyone has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. They give advice, help guide their human through life. They tempt, they listen, they offer help. Everyone has one of each. Everyone except for Stiles.

OR

Stiles and Peter are murder husbands.

love and madness by sinequanon

Peter and Stiles haven’t seen each other in months when the alphas ask them to meet up to look over an abandoned house. Now, they’re going to be seeing a lot of each other for quite a while to come.

Not This Again by RebaK1tten

There's a rumor that the last episode of the show will have Peter getting killed, again. Perhaps to give him a redemption arc or something.

A Light at the (Near) End of the World by ladyoneill

The world he grew up in has ended in a supernatural war that devastated the human population. A survivor, Stiles lives a solitary, quiet life in Wales until there's a knock on his door.

Through Space and Time by MaroonDragon

When Stiles pulls the body of Peter Hale into his ship, he doesn't expect him to be alive. He also doesn't realise he might have gotten more than he bargained for.

His Color by SushiOwl

“Darling, have you been carrying a throw-away comment I made in your mind for almost four months?”

Stiles’s face felt like it was one with fire now.

After You by FlyAwayMeow (rjaejoo)

It’s true that sometimes what you want the most, you can’t have and that you’ll miss what you once had all along when it’s finally gone.

After breaking his engagement to Chris, Peter heads to New York to start over. He meets Stiles, a young author at his publishing house who helps him piece his confidence back together. When tragedy strikes, he discovers how to finally let go of his past and have the family and future he's always wanted with the pieces already in his life.

Looking After You by Slayer_of_Destiny

Can Peter be a chance for Stiles, can Stiles be a second chance for Peter? When Peter offers Stiles a relationship will the younger man take the chance with the werewolf?

Maybe We Both Are by lavenderlotion

The first time Stiles lets his fingers brush against Peter he wasn’t expecting the response he got. They were sitting on Stiles bed researching something. Or, they were researching. Now they were just talking. They did that a lot these days, just talked. They also ate together a lot. Or got coffee.

these words bear my scars (paint your love on my skin) by WindyRein

One day butterflies and childish codes change to I'm sorry you're meant for a murderer and he won't realize for years how much that changed his life.

Before you let go (and the light takes you in) by Issay

Stiles makes one last errand - goes to leave flowers on all the other graves. Fuck, so many graves. The grief is as endless and as inescapable as the sky.

He goes home and there is a thing wearing his father's face, waiting for him in the kitchen.

The Lady of Lightning by kiranightshade

"Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside"

Can You Use Lube For That? by AlreadyBoss

“You think your what is haunted now?” Surely he'd misheard. There was no way-

“My vibrator,” Stiles answered with alarming sincerity.

Well. He hadn't misheard after all.

Pianist Envy by Bunnywest

Stiles is the piano player.Peter can think of other things he'd like to see those hands do.Shame the guy's straight.

Everything You Deserve by Areiton

You think about it. More than you should, you think about it. About what would have happened, if you had bitten Stiles instead of Scott.

Home by Ragga

Don't be like him, they would say, and then add, or else you get burned.

Unable to bear the whispers any longer, This One left. He forsook those who forsook him, left him bear his scars alone, the scars he bore for his herd. It was better to be alone, stay off the currents, than swim with those most undeserving of his loyalty. So mote it be.

That is, until he met That One.

Lord Peter by Therapeutic_Steter

Peter rung out the rag before gently placing it on his mother’s head, reaching over to feel his father’s equally flushed features.

“Such a good boy,” his mother said, patting his arm with what little strength she had remaining. His father smiled softly at him even as his fell unconscious. Peter pushed back the lump in his throat, smiling shakily for his mother before venturing out into the living space.

knit me together by nezstorm

Peter asks Stiles to stay the night after a really awful day.

Warriors by CinnamonLily

Peter is ten years old when humans discover Azure, a planet not unlike Earth. From there on, he wants to learn everything about their new neighbors and the planet itself. It takes him over twenty years to get to Azure, but when he does, it's so worth it. His anthropologist heart is happy, and a new acquaintance in the form of an Azurian called Stiles might just make the rest of him happy, too.

[crystalninjaphoenix]

Hold the Field

Switch AU

Back at it again with these boys. We last left off with some shocking turns of the plot that left everyone Less Than Alright™, and so how do you follow up from that? With this, apparently. See, I’ve decided to focus on one of the boys for the recent stories. You probably noticed that the last two were focused on Jackie and Anti, and now we’re turning that attention to JJ in this fairly long chapter. Don’t worry, the other two will have their turn ;) Anyway, in this story, JJ makes a very risky decision. Does it come to fruition? Who knows? Let’s find out!

More of this AU found here

We have to have a meeting about all this. In person. Tomorrow at five?

Jameson reread the message again, then glanced at the clock. “They’re all late,” he muttered.

“‘T is only ten minutes, Jems,” Marvin said from his usual chair in the corner of the living room. Looking down at the nearby table, he was concentrating on trying to stack playing cards into some sort of structure—a feat made more difficult while he had Mr. Fluffington asleep on his lap. “They’ll be here.”

“Yeah...you’re right,” JJ nodded, placing his phone down on a nearby table. Still, he couldn’t sit down. Sighing, he picked up a book sitting casually on the table surface, opening it and skimming through the contents. “Do you think I have time to get some practice in before they arrive?”

Marvin looked up, glancing down at the book JJ had picked up, taking in the purple cover edged with gold. He immediately frowned. “If t’at’s the book I think it is, no. No, you don’.”

JJ snapped the slim volume shut. “Well, you sound rather disapproving all of a sudden.”

“The last time you tried t’at sort of spell, you were coughing up feathers for a week,” Marvin reminded him.

“Yes, but if I practice, I’ll be able to actually turn into an animal.” The study of animal transformation was fascinating. It was a complicated magic that you had to be very precise with, lest something go wrong and you get stuck.

“And t’en you’ll get stuck,” Marvin said, placing another two cards on the structure to make a triangle. “And I’ll have t’tell ev’ryone why you’re a bird and feed you little birdseed. And keep Mister from huntin’ you down.”

JJ chuckled. “Mister doesn’t seem like the hunting type. He seems to prefer, you know, sleeping.”

“Hey, you’ve seen him with t’ose little feathered toys on string!” Marvin looked down at the cat on his lap and started petting, running his fingers through Fluffington’s long fur. Soon after, Fluffington opened his eyes and yawned widely. “Oh no, I’ve awoken him! Did I disturb ye, Mister? So sorry.”

Fluffington got to his feet, stretching his back. He turned in place, until his eyes landed on the house of cards Marvin had been making. “Hey, no,” Marvin said warningly. “Don’ you dare.” Of course Fluffington didn’t listen and hopped onto the table, batting at the cards with his front paw. “Mister! No!” Marvin picked up the cat and twisted away. “I trusted you!”

JJ outright laughed at this. “Ah, one of cat’s most primal instincts: smack the thing.”

Marvin sighed, and leaned over to set Fluffington on the ground, where he immediately began wandering. “Now I have t’pick up fifty-four cards.”

“I thought there were only fifty-two cards in a deck.”

“T’is one has two jokers. And a rules card, but t’at’s still in the box.” Marvin began sweeping the fallen cards into a pile. “Some decks have as many as six jokers, which, by the way, were orig’nally made to be the highest level card in the game Euchre.”

“Really?” JJ leaned back against the table. “Never heard of that one. How do you play it?”

Marvin looked up, about to answer, but then the doorbell rang. “Ah. Well, t’at’ll be the others. I’ll explain it t’you later. Can you get t’at?”

 “Sure. Be right back.”

Jameson walked over to the front hall, opening the door. The moment the entrance was wide enough, Anti shoved his way inside. “Okay, we’re all here? Good? Let’s go then, where’s Marvin?” he said. Anti looked a little bedraggled. His hair was a mess and his jacket and shirt rumpled, like he’d slept in them. He was holding a green backpack with a scene of cartoon dinosaurs printed on it.

“Living room,” JJ said, gesturing back towards it.

Anti nodded, hurrying over. JJ threw the door open the rest of the way for the other two.

“Sorry we are late,” Schneep said, walking inside. “We had the idea to pick Anti up, but he’d already gotten on the bus, so he got off and we had to find him—it was a whole thing.” Jackie entered behind him silently, the hood of his hoodie pulled up over his head. He seemed a bit pale.

“It’s fine, let’s just get started,” said JJ. The three of them entered the living room. Schneep and Jackie sat down next to each other on the sofa, while Anti remained standing, clutching the small backpack in his hands. JJ walked in, also still standing. He cleared his throat. “Right. So. We all know why we’re here. Why don’t we just...cut to the chase?”

“Do you guys remember those detectives?” Jackie suddenly asked.

“The ones who keep askin’ you for a lead?” Marvin asked, busying his hands with getting all the cards into a single stack.

Jackie nodded. “I mean, they stopped, but yeah. Anyway, you’re not gonna believe what they’re—”

“Oh my god, those two are the ones looking for the kids?!” Anti scowled. “Hmm, yes, I’m sure they’ll be fucking fantastic at that.”

“Well, for police, they seem to actually do their jobs,” Schneep mumbled.

“Not in a situation like this,” Anti said darkly. “You all saw the photos I sent. We know who’s behind this.”

The room fell silent. Jameson resisted the urge to pick up his phone and look at the group chat again. Anti had sent pictures of what happened to his apartment: the way it had been turned upside down and smiles had been scrawled on the walls. That had been...ominous. And more than that, it felt like a taunt.

Schneep cleared his throat. “Well. Michelle and Will disappeared the night before last. There has been nothing since then, not from normal kid-taking types or from the Distorter. We...have no leads,” he finished quietly.

Another silence. “Quite...grim, isn’t t’at?” Marvin asked tentatively.

“Okay, idea,” Anti said. “We talk about the other thing and come back to this.”

Everyone made various noises of agreement. “So, then...” Jameson coughed awkwardly. “Anti. About this weird...eyeball...thing.”

“Way ahead of you,” Anti said, unzipping the backpack. As soon as it was open, a ball of glowing green shot outward. Jackie and JJ made near-identical shrieks of surprise. The floating eyeball hovered in the middle of the room, twirling as it looked around. “Second item of business: this fucking thing!”

“Jesus,” Marvin breathed. “What...what is it?”

“It is clearly an eyeball,” Schneep pointed out.

“No, I mean—” Marvin sighed. “What...is it? Why is it like...t’is? Alive? And big? And glowing?”

“I’ve been doing some research,” Jameson said, picking up his phone and unlocking it. “There are some magician-run websites online that have been helpful. But I can’t find any references to a living, glowing green eye, so it’s not an established magical creature, and therefore probably unique. And if it’s unique, it’s called a ‘being.’” He shrugged. “Simple, broad term that can cover a lot of different things. Basically, it’s magic, and it’s intelligent, but it probably wasn’t ever human at some point.”

“Very helpful,” Anti remarked.

While the others were talking, the eyeball was flying about, seeming to examine the room. At one point, it crept up close to Mr. Fluffington, who was sitting on the floor by the couch. Fluffington leaned forward to sniff the eyeball, and seemed to accept it as not a threat. He did try to smack it, but the eyeball dodged just in time, flying back over to hover near Anti’s head.

JJ lowered his phone. “Well, look, all I’m saying is that we’ve never seen anything like this before. So to the rest of the world, it doesn’t exist.” He laughed bleakly. “Seems we attract that. Never before have we seen a time traveler, a vigilante with shock abilities, and a zombie-like thing that can hypnotize people.” The laughter died into a disappointed sigh. “Which means we...don’t have any outside help with this.”

Jackie kept watching the eye as it moved. “At least this thing seems friendly,” he pointed out.

Anti nodded in agreement. “Yeah. It can, uh, understand what we’re saying. Right, um...Mr. Eye?” The eyeball looked over at Anti and bounced.

“Why are you assuming it’s a guy eye?” Jackie asked.

“I was thinking it was a girl,” Schneep said. “Do not know why.”

“Okay, gender neutral eye,” Anti said. “Mx. Eye. Anyway, we can talk to them. They can’t talk back, though. Or can they?” He reached into the backpack again, and pulled out a folded board.

Marvin leaned over to get a better look at it. “Oh jesus, Anti...” he said. “Is t'at...a ouija board?”

“Yes, it is,” Anti said defensively. “I bought it for a Halloween video last year and immediately shelved it until now. Figured it could work to communicate with our eye friend, cause it has all the letters and shit. What, are you gonna scold me about summoning ghosts?”

Marvin rolled his eyes. “Ouija boards are toys an’ parlor tricks. I jus’ never thought you woul’ be one to buy one.”

“You mock ghost summoning, but we know magic is real,” Schneep argued. “Who is to say ghosts are not?”

“That’s debatable,” JJ said. “I mean, necromancers can summon spirits, but ghosts are a different thing. And also as far as I’m aware, ouija boards are bullshit.”

Anti made a strangled noise. “Jackson! You swore!”

“Yes, I can swear,” JJ said defensively. “It’s not like I”m incapable, I just don’t like to.”

Marvin chuckled. “Yet ouija boards got you worked up enough to allow it.”

“Alright, let’s move on,” Jackie said. “We have a ouija board. How’re we gonna use it?”

Anti slung the backpack over his shoulder and glanced around the living room. He then pulled one of the end tables over towards the center of the room. In the process, he nearly caused the lamp on said table to fall over. Jameson let out an alarmed, strangled noise, and rushed over to catch the lamp. “Why don’t you have a coffee table, Jackson?” Anti muttered. “That would be easy.”

JJ was too relieved that he’d caught the lamp to answer, so Marvin jumped in. “It doesn’ fit wit’ the style of the room,” he said.

“Fuck style, be practical. You need a central table for moments like this.” Anti put the ouija board down on the table surface. Schneep and Jackie scooted closer to get a better look of it, while Marvin leaned forward for the same purpose. JJ sent the rescued table lamp down on the floor and walked over. “Alright. Mx. Eye,” Anti looked over at the eyeball, hovering nearby. “You can use this to spell out words, okay?” The eyeball bounced. “Okay. That’s a yes. Now...what should we ask?”

“Do you have a name?” JJ asked.

The eyeball darted down, hovering over the ouija board and looking down at it. They landed on the YES square.

“Good. So, can you tell us what it is, then?” JJ prompted.

The eye flew back into the air, circling around the board for a moment. Then they darted about, pointing at letters with the end of their retinal nerve. They spelled out S-A-M.

“Sam?” Schneep repeated. “That is not the name I was expecting. Not very...magical-sounding.”

“Nice name, though,” Jackie muttered. “Gender neutral.”

“Sam,” JJ repeated. “Well, Sam. Is there anything you want? With us?”

Sam bounced, and spelled out H-E-L-P.

“Wait, does t’at mean you need help, or you want t’help us?” Marvin asked.

After a moment’s pause, Sam landed on YES again.

“So...both?” JJ asked.

Again, Sam bounced, landing on YES.

“Well, what do you need help with, then?” Anti asked, a bit impatient. “Cause all you’ve been doing is running around my apartment and sometimes staring at me creepily.”

Sam looked down, almost seeming embarrassed. They shot up and spelled out L-O-S-T.

“You’re lost?” JJ asked. Sam bounced a YES. “Well, I’m not sure how we can help you with that. I suppose we could take you back to where you’re from, but...we’re sort of in the middle of...a situation. Do you know that?” Sam glanced at Anti, then bounced YES again.

“Unless you t'ink you coul' help us with t'at?” Marvin asked.

Sam considered this, then spelled out I L-O-O-K.

“Okay, the flying eyeball’s offering to help us search,” Anti muttered. “Great. Fantastic. What the fuck are our lives?”

“Anti shut the fuck up,” Jackie suddenly snapped. “Our kids are missing and we’re gonna do every-fucking-thing we can to find them, and if the magic eyeball is offering to help we’re going to take it! Okay?”

Anti stared at Jackie, eyes wide. He took a step back. “I...didn’t mean to say that we weren’t going to,” he said slowly. “I just...it’s weird. I don’t know. Sorry.” He folded his arms around himself, shoving his hands underneath his armpits. “I mean, they can help. They managed to follow me all night, so they’re...capable. Never mind. Sorry.”

Jackie exhaled slowly, rubbing his eyes under his glasses. “No, I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Didn’t mean to yell. I’m just...freaking out.” Schneep scooted closer to him, reaching out as if to put an arm around him, but hesitated. Jackie leaned into his side, and Schneep pulled him closer.

“Alright, alright, so Sam’s offering to help look,” Jameson said, redirecting the conversation. “That’s good. We can look, too.”

“Eh...Jems...” Marvin said slowly. “You wouldn’ happen to have...a crystal ball or somet’ing?”

“What?” JJ looked over at him. “Well, there’s one that I use as a prop sometimes, but it’s in storage at Jewett. Why?”

“I was jus’ t’inkin’...” Marvin leaned back in his chair. “T’at...maybe there woul’ be some way to use t’at to look for the kids? Magically? I mean, isn’ t’at what crystal balls are used for in fairs and carnivals? True, it’s usually for seein’ the future, and I’m pretty sure fortune tellers are scams, but...somet’ing like t’at?”

Jameson blinked. “There is scrying. That’s a form of magic. We wouldn’t necessarily need a crystal ball, just something reflective. We could pour water in a bowl, and—oh my god, why hadn’t I thought of that sooner?” He hit his forehead with his hand.

“This is a whole mess, Jamie, we have all been distracted,” Schneep said. “Is not your fault.”

“Can we do that now?” Anti asked. “We’re all already here, might as well—shit!” Sam had flown up and tried to land on Anti’s shoulder, but at the slightest touch, he’d started and instinctively tried to smack them away. Luckily, they jumped off at the right moment. “Don’t...don’t do that,” Anti said to them. “Not from an angle where I can’t see you.” Sam bounced.

“Yes, we could do that now,” JJ said slowly. “I know one of my books have a scrying spell in it...we’d need something that belongs to one of the kids—”

“Got that,” Anti said shortly, clutching the strap of the small backpack he’d brought Sam in.

“Um...right. Then we’d just need a bowl of water, which we definitely have.” JJ headed towards the living room entrance. “Why don’t I find the book I had the spell in, and you guys all move to the dining room? I’ll meet you there.”

Okay a few minutes later, the group had gathered around the dining room table. JJ was sitting in one of the chairs, scanning the instructions for a scrying spell on page 239 of the spellbook he’d found. On the table in front of him were the backpack and a wide bowl full of water. “So I think I understand,” JJ said. “There’s no incantation, but not all magic needs one.” He looked over his shoulder. “It might be easier if you two would stop hovering.”

Anti and Schneep, leaning over his shoulders, immediately backed away in unison. 

“So how does this work?” Jackie asked, sitting in the chair to JJ’s right. 

“Well if this works, there will be an image in the water that’ll tell us where the kids are,” JJ explained, closing the book. “If it doesn’t...well, there won’t be, I guess.”

“Let’s jus’ hurry it up, t’en,” Marvin said, sitting on JJ’s left.

“Right, right.” Jameson exhaled deeply, placing his hands on either side of the bowl. It would just take a little magic push for this to work...

A pressure built up behind his eyes, and he soon felt his fingertips tingle with magic. The water in the bowl slowly turned blue, the color spreading through the water like dye. Then it started swirling on its own, a miniature whirlpool starting to grow in the ceramic bowl. JJ quickly broke one hand away from the bowl and touched two fingers to the edge of the backpack. Pulling them away, he left a trail of teal—not the usual color of his magic, interesting—in the air. He tapped his fingers on the side of the bowl, and a streak of teal found its way into the whirling blue liquid. That was what the instructions said should be happening. And now, he just had to concentrate on the kids.

At this point, Jameson couldn’t have looked away from the water if he tried. He couldn’t even blink, eyes fixed on the whirling water as it began glowing. The water swirled violently, picking up speed and throwing droplets high, yet it never spilled over the edge of the bowl.

And then suddenly, it all stopped. The water suddenly smoothed over into a glassy surface, the blue glow fading. Jameson saw his reflection, as well as the reflection of the others, leaning close. Then the reflections faded, turning into a vignette on a blue background. The scene shown in the water was blurry, oddly out of focus, and in colorless grayscale. It looked like the image was moving, traveling down a suburban street like someone out for a walk. The image picked up speed, homing in on a certain location. Then it stopped. The scene blurred, streaks of gray smearing. And when it cleared, it was rushing forward. The group watched as the scene flew out of the city and into the empty fields that bordered the town on one side. Then, abruptly, it faded away into gray fog. The water turned to solid ice in less than a second, cracking the rim of the bowl.

Silence filled the room. Jameson squeezed his eyes closed and opened them again several times, getting used to moving his eyes again. “What...was that?” Anti asked, a note of...was that fear in his voice?

“Was t’at what the spell was s’posed to do?” Marvin asked.

JJ turned to the scrying spell in the book again. “Well, not exactly. It says that sometimes if you’re trying to lock down something that’s somehow magically protected, the spell might ‘wander’ about looking for it for a while. And if it can’t find anything, it’s supposed to just...fade away? There’s nothing there that says anything about that...change of direction.”

“Maybe that was the wandering the book meant,” Schneep said, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced.

“Why’d it turn into ice?” Anti took a few steps backward. Sam, previously hovering nearby, flew over to him. “That doesn’t seem like something that’s supposed to happen.”

“No, I don’t think it was,” Jameson muttered.

“Do you t’ink...Distorter is outside the city?” Marvin asked hesitantly. “Maybe he took the kids away.”

“It’s a possibility.” JJ bit his thumbnail, anxiety working at his stomach. “I suppose, with his powers, he might be able to somehow interfere with the scrying. If we really wanted, we could find another magician to try again, but I don’t think anything will change.”

“Okay, so what do we do about it?” Anti asked. “Are we supposed to check out that field outside the city or something?”

Jackie, who’d been unusually quiet the whole time, frowned, and mumbled, “That’s not...”

Everyone looked at him. “Is...is there something you want to say, Jackie?” Schneep prompted gently.

Jackie folded his arms, grabbing the fabric of his hoodie and balling it in his fists. “I just...don’t recognize...that place,” he forced out. “I-I thought I...I would.”  He shook his head. “They...they might be somewhere else. Which is...is good, really. It’s good that they’re not...there.”

The air felt heavy. The other four all looked at each other with varying expressions of sympathy. “Right, it’s very good,” Jameson finally said. “So...perhaps if we check this field out, we may find a clue to where they actually are.”

“We might,” Schneep said. “Or it could be a trap.”

“Yeah, if Distorter somehow messed with the spell, I wouldn’t fucking put that past him,” Anti added.

“So what I’m hearin’ is we be more cautious t’an not,” Marvin summarized.

JJ frowned. “Well...I still think we should see if there’s anything there. We don’t know that Distorter was interfering with the scry. Obviously we be careful, but we shouldn’t avoid it altogether.”

Anti rubbed his temples like a headache was beginning to form. “Yeah, I get that, what we just need to do is make a plan for when we go there.”

Jackie laughed dully. “Right yeah. Let’s—can we do that tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?!” Marvin repeated, straightening. “Time is of the essence here! We can’ just sit around—”

“I know we can’t!” Jackie snapped. “I’m not saying we do! I just—we’ve done a lot today—”

“And we shoul’ keep goin’ while we’re here!” Marvin insisted. “Might as well hit him tonight! If we’re lucky we can—”

“If we’re lucky,” Jackie repeated, leaning across the table. “We might not be lucky at all! This could be a trap, remember? We—we’re not losing anyone!”

“If we don’t hurry, who knows what’ll happen?!” Marvin emphasized, leaning forward as well. “They’re kids! Are we leavin’ kids t’ere?!”

“No, we are not doing that!” Jackie slammed his palms on the table surface. “I don’t want to wait, but I don’t want any of you to have to—any of you to be taken, either! It’s a risk, but we can’t afford it if anyone else ends up like—like that! With him!”

“Oh, well, you’re a bit feckin’ late if ye don’ want anyone else to be affected by him!” Marvin drawled. “By about a few years—or a few decades, depending on what actually happened t’ere, I don’ remember! They are children. Will we let them alone in t’is situation?!”

“That’ is not what we’re doing!” Jackie shot to his feet. “What, you can’t wait a day?! So impatient! We need a plan, Marvin! Otherwise everyone else will end up like us! Do you want that?!”

“I don’t want children to end up like t’at, either!” Marvin shouted, standing up and putting his face into Jackie’s.

“None of us here do! But we can’t just go rushing in!”

“We can’ wait, either!”

“Will the two of you just shut up?!” Anti yelled. “Fucking god! You’re wasting time fighting when we could be deciding what to do to save the fucking children in the hands of a nightmare!”

Marvin and Jackie glanced over at him, then back at each other. In almost comical unison, they both sat down.

Schneep sighed. “Well, we may need time to break just so you two can calm down. Anyway, we will take a vote. Who wants to go investigate this field today? Raise your hand.” Marvin’s hand shot in the air, and Jameson’s followed, more slowly. “Who wants to meet up tomorrow to plan and investigate then?” Jackie, Anti, and Schneep raised their hands. “Then it is decided,” Schneep said.

Marvin cried out, frustration evident. He stood up, violently pushing his chair back, and stormed out of the room.

Jackie looked after him. “I didn’t...mean to make him...”

“He’ll be fine,” Jameson said quietly. “I’ll talk to him.”

The remaining four quickly decided to meet again early tomorrow. Then Anti, Schneep, and Jackie left, with Sam following Anti. Jameson waved goodbye to them at the door. The minute they were out of sight, he closed the door and pressed his forehead against it. That...hadn’t ended well. He’d never seen Marvin and Jackie fight like that. Sure, they argued, but never about anything serious. Never did it devolve into shouting at each other.

Speaking of which...JJ took a deep breath, and turned around, heading down the hall towards Marvin’s room. The door was closed. If he listened carefully, he could hear muffled sounds from inside. He knocked. “Marvin? Are you alright? The others are gone.” There was no answer. He knocked again. “Marvin? Are you okay?” When there was still no answer, he said, “Marvin, I’m coming inside, alright?” and pushed the door open.

Marvin was lying on the bed, curled up with his back to the door and his face buried in his pillow. Now with the door open, Jameson realized the muffled sounds he’d been hearing were the sounds of sobs. “Are you okay?” he asked gently. “Do you need anything?”

After a moment, Marvin looked over his shoulder to stare at him with red-rimmed eyes. “No, don’ need anyt’ing,” he mumbled.

Jameson nodded slowly. “Do you...want to talk about it?”

Marvin paused. “It’s...I just don’ want...” He reached over to the nightstand and grabbed a handkerchief to wipe his eyes. “They’re jus’ kids, Jems. A-and after ev’ry...all of...ev’ryt’ing that I...” A shudder wracked his body. “I want them t’be alright, but...they might...”

Jameson waited for more, but soon realized it wouldn’t come. “They will be alright, Marvin,” he reassured. “We’ll be looking out for them. I’m sure one day won’t make too much of a difference.” But, though he said it confidently, he felt doubt in his heart. “Do you want me to stay, or...?”

Marvin shook his head silently.

“Alright, then. Just call me if you need anything.” He started to close the door, but then looked down as something brushed past his leg. “Oh, looks like you have a visitor.”

Mr. Fluffington walked inside the room, stopping next to the bed and looking up at Marvin. After a moment, he hopped up onto the surface and began sniffing at Marvin’s face. Marvin made a small laugh, and reached over to pet the cat. “Y’can leave the door open, Jems,” he said.

“Got it.” Jameson backed away, eventually turning and heading down the hall.

This whole thing was...terrible. Not only for Will and Michelle’s sakes, though that was awful enough on its own. But the group was falling apart because of it. Jameson couldn’t let that happen. He’d always fought so hard to keep them together, to keep everyone alright. Perhaps...perhaps there was something he could do. Something that would make everyone happy.

———————

Later that night, at midnight exactly, Jameson left the house, driving out of the city and following directions he’d looked up online. He’d do a quick scout of the location they’d seen in the scrying spell. It wouldn’t take too long; he just wanted to see if he could detect anything magical. Accordingly, he’d dressed in his stage outfit of a cape and his mask—not necessarily required for magic, but it got him in the right head space.

Empty fields bordered the town on the south side. There wasn’t really a distinct end to the city limits, just the suburbs in the south gradually spreading out, then stopping. The paved roads came to an abrupt end, but at different spots for each road. JJ drove as far as he could on the street, then parked his car and got out, staring out at the empty planes of rough, knee-high grass. It looked kind of...foreboding, in the dark. But he’d had to leave at night, so that Marvin wouldn’t know he was going to check it out. As much as Marvin had pushed for them going to the location immediately, JJ knew he’d be upset that he was going out on his own, without any backup.

Uneasy dread curled up in his stomach. Jameson hesitated. If this was a trap, it wouldn’t really be a good idea to be here...alone...without having told anyone where he’d gone. But no, he’d planned this out. He’d read up on several defensive spells in case he’d forgotten any, and even tried out a light illusion spell that would hide him from view. Besides, he didn’t want any of the others to worry. They were upset enough recently, the events of the last few days taking a toll on all of them. He could do this on his own—in fact, he had to.

Taking a deep breath, Jameson forced himself to step off the familiar asphalt of the dead-end street and into the tall grass. Okay, the scrying spell had gone fairly far into the fields before failing, so he had some way to go. And since there wasn’t a lot of cover out here, might as well try that illusion spell. “Kui me malí ab scomumbrae,” he whispered, hoping he’d remembered the incantation correctly. There was a gentle blue glow, and then he felt suddenly a bit chilly—more so than usual for a November night. When he looked down, he couldn’t see his own body. Seemed to have worked.

He kept walking. There wasn’t much to identify one spot in the fields from any other spot, except for turning around and seeing how far away the city lights were. Jameson tried to remember how far away the buildings had appeared in the scrying spell.

It felt like he’d been walking for a while when he decided to try and run a quick detection spell. If there was anything magical out here, he should be able to find it with that. No incantation for this one, just concentration and listening to your inner voice. And his inner voice said that there was something...something further away from the city.

Jameson glanced back over his shoulder. The city lights really were starting to fade into the background. He could make out the shapes of buildings, but he wouldn’t be able to walk back to them—or at least not quickly. For a moment, he thought that maybe he should turn around.

And then he heard...a voice.

Jameson stiffened, and turned back to look over the empty field. He could hardly see anything now, hardly any light from the city stretching far enough to light up the empty expanse of grass. But that voice...it sounded familiar. Was it crying?

Wrapping his cape around himself, he headed towards the noise. It sounded like it was getting closer, but he couldn’t see what was making it. He didn’t want to risk saying anything in case the wrong party overheard him. Maybe...if he cast a light, the illusion spell would conceal it?

Might as well try. He held up his hand, and a brief flash of blue light lit up the area. The sound of crying stopped. “H-hello?” The voice of a little girl called out. A familiar little girl, in fact.

Jameson’s heart stopped. So, Michelle and Will were out here. Or at least Michelle was. But...perhaps this was part of the trap they’d been worried about earlier? JJ silently cast another detection spell. There was magic here, much closer. It didn’t feel hostile...which was strange enough in itself.

“Who’s there?” Michelle’s voice asked, fear ringing in each word. “I-I’m—my name is Michelle Parker-Diaz, I...I came out here with my friend...I-I don’t know where he is...hello? Is anyone there?”

Jameson slowly walked closer. Unfortunately he’d neglected to pull up more light, and in the darkness, he tripped over something in the grass. “Oof—!” He stumbled, but managed to catch himself.

“Hello?!” Michelle’s voice cried. “I know you’re there! Can you help me find my friend? Th-there’s a monster out here, there’s...” She trailed off. “I-it’s close by...”

Something rustled in the grass nearby.

Jameson cast his eyes about again. By now, it was almost pitch black, only the slightest hint of light coming from the moon and stars above. He bit back a curse, then cast another flash of blue light.

The rustling increased. Michelle screamed. “It’s here! Help! Please, someone help!”

All caution was immediately abandoned. Jameson dropped the illusion spell and cast a more substantial light spell, crystallized bits of blue magic dancing around his fingers. The field lit up in a circle around him. He could see the grass rustling, in the same direction Michelle was screaming from. But it sounded like she was getting farther. “Michelle?!” He called. “Don’t worry, I’m coming!” He ran after the screams.

“Help! Please! It’s coming, it’s coming!” 

“Don’t worry! I’m—” Not looking where he was going, his shoe slammed into something hidden in the grass. There was no time to stop the fall. Jameson merely braced himself as he landed hard on the ground.

“No! No!” Michelle screamed again, the sound piercing Jameson’s ears.

And then the scream changed.

Into...laughter.

“You always seemed clever.” Michelle’s voice began warping, lowering and shifting into something that definitely wasn’t her, but wasn’t definitely anything else. “I guess the heart overrides the brain in your case, huh?”

“Shit,” Jameson whispered, climbing to his feet. So it had been a trap. And out on his own, he didn’t have anyone to stop him from falling for it. Well, only one thing to do now. He turned around and ran back towards the distant city lights.

“Going so soon? Aw, that sucks. It was just starting to get fun.”

The city buildings in the distance shimmered like a heat wave rising off the highway. Then they shifted position, now to Jameson’s right. Then to his left. Then in front again. Then behind. Jameson stopped running, turning in circles trying to catch up with where the city was. He raised his hand higher, the crystal blue lights illuminating a greater area. Though it helped him see, it didn’t stop the location of the city from shifting. And it was then that he remembered Distorter couldn’t actually change his surroundings. It was all an illusion. “What was the point of this?” He called out.

“What was the point of trying to find me?” Distorter snapped back. His voice seemed to be coming from all over, making it difficult to pin down his location behind the illusion. “You didn’t really think it would be that easy, did you? Well, maybe you did, considering you waltzed right out of the city. All on your lonesome, too. Nobody else volunteered to come? Wow. Bad parenting, sending someone else to get your kids.”

“Hey, you shut up,” Jameson snapped. “What do you know about parenting?” After a moment’s hesitation, he started walking in a direction that he thought was the way he’d come. The distant city lights were blurring and wavering, and occasionally disappearing altogether.

“Aw, I bet they’re worried,” Distorter said. “Worried about their little bitty babies. Well, don’t. I know enough to take care of them. They’ll be better off here, anyway, than with a violent asshole and a man who can’t even live in the same house as his daughter.”

“That second one is your fault, don’t deny it,” Jameson said. “And that first one is a wild exaggeration.”

Distorter laughed. “Spoken with the confidence of a man who’s never seen another’s thoughts! Oh by the way, you’re heading in the complete opposite direction.”

Jameson rolled his eyes. “And why should I believe you in that matter?” He kept walking solidly in the direction he was going. “You lured me out here, you pretended to be Michelle, you are not above misleading me.”

A pause. “I lured you out here?” Distorter repeated. “So...then you are on your own. No one else hiding in that invisibility spell? It’s just you?”

Icy fear suddenly splashed through Jameson’s veins. “Would I tell you if there was?” He asked, hiding the tremble in his voice. “Let’s just admit we both have reason to lie to the other and call it a day. Or, uh, night. You do realize we outnumber you, yes? It doesn’t matter how powerful you are, we can overwhelm you all together. So are you willing to risk that?”

“Wow, now you’re just rambling. Nervous, huh?” Distorter’s voice faded away.

Something flickered in the corner of Jameson’s vision. He stopped walking and spun around. His eyes darted around the vast, empty surroundings, all dark beyond his little bubble of light. Perhaps it was time to put those defensive spells to use. He muttered an incantation under his breath, and the blue light weaving around his fingers flared, shooting outward in a circle.

Distorter laughed. “You talk too much.”

Jameson spun back around, the blue light twirling away from his fingers and fading in surprise. There was a shuffling movement in the darkness.

And without any warning, Distorter was right in front of him, grinning and bleeding and tackling him to the ground. Jameson cried out in surprise, mind scrambling for a spell to help. But then something red splashed, and Jameson felt a sharp, sudden pain in his neck. He gasped, and choked as something tasting of copper ran down his throat.

Another laugh, and Distorter backed away, disappearing into the darkness. Jameson’s hands immediately flew for his neck, wincing as they made contact with a wound that instantly drenched his fingers in warm liquid. He pressed against it, choking more as the movement put pressure on his windpipe.

“Wow, that’s a lot of blood.” Distorter’s voice was right in Jameson’s ear. He jumped. Something grabbed his hair and wrenched his head backwards. “Yikes. I think you’re actually going to die, magic man. Way out of the city, nobody nearby to rush to your aid...yeah, you’re going to die tonight.” Distorter sounded delighted by that fact. “All these spells and enchantments you can do, and you’re going to die of blood loss. Not a very magical end. Are you starting to feel dizzy? Maybe your vision is going all out of whack. Eventually you’re going to pass out, though, so at least it’ll be like dying in your sleep. And hey, at least the pain will stop. God, what’ll Marvin think? I bet he’ll be devastated. Oh, well. I’ll give him your regards.”

Jameson tried to push Distorter away, but it was so dark, he couldn’t see where he was. Not the priority right now. He gathered his cape into a ball and pressed it against his neck. It was instantly soaked. He had to at least try to get away, didn’t he? It couldn’t...couldn’t end like this.

Was it always this cold? It didn’t matter. He had to stand up. But when he tried, he just stumbled and fell again. Okay, crawling, then. Pushing past the strands of tall grass and just...just heading forward. Just keep going. Keep...

The field was lit up by a golden yellow light.

“What the fuck?!” A female voice shouted.

Jameson caught movement out of the corner of his eye. And also movement right in front of him. The light was coming closer. Was this...?

“Oh my god, what happened here?! That thing—what—? You’re hurt! Wait a minute, don’t I know you?”

Jameson looked up at the light, and then his eyes rolled back and he passed out.

———————

He didn’t expect to open his eyes again. Or at least, not to something so ordinary as this. It looked almost like a hospital, with the rows of beds and white walls. But there was something more...casual about it. There was wooden paneling on the bottom third of the walls, the beds looking more like they’d belong in a bedroom than a hospital. The weird room was empty, except for him...and a red-headed woman sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed.

The woman looked up. “Oh good, you’re awake. How’re you feeling?”

Jameson frowned. His throat...really hurt. He tried to say something about that, but ended up just making a hoarse wheezing sound and coughing.

The woman winced. “I meant with the whiteboard.” She pointed to Jameson’s side. If he’d tilted his head just a little bit, he’d have seen a nightstand next to the bed, with a whiteboard and dry erase marker on it. But then again, tilting his head hurt.

JJ reached over and grabbed the board, scribbling out My throat hurts.

“Yeah...I expect it would.” The woman inhaled sharply. “There was some...serious damage there. That thing managed to carve deep enough to do damage to your vocal chords. Healers say you should be able to talk again...mostly. With some, um...it’s not good, okay?”

JJ blinked. This woman looked familiar. Who are you? he asked. How did I get here?

“Do you have ninety minutes?” The woman asked, then chuckled. “Sorry. Bad reference. Anyway, we’ve met before, a couple months ago. Your name’s Jameson Jackson, and mine is Aoife Kelley.”

That name did ring a bell. JJ cast his mind back, and then it hit him. You’re that ABIM magician who didn’t help us, he wrote, glaring at her.

“Look, I’m really sorry about that,” Aoife said sincerely. “But the regulations exist for a reason. And, uh...if what I saw last night was real, I am so, so sorry for not stepping in. That thing was...haunting.”

Wait, “last night”? JJ wrote. I have to get home! The others will be worried! He sat up straight, throwing away the blankets.

“Whoa, hey, be careful!” Aoife stood up and pushed him back down as he started to stand up. “You lost a lot of blood. The ABIM healers hooked you up with a replenishing potion, but you’re still not fully up and ready.”

JJ glared at her. I didn’t tell my friends where I was going. I have to let them know I’m okay.

“You didn’t...? Well, don’t you have a phone? Text them or something.” Aoife glanced at a clock on the wall. “It’s about eight. I can drive you to your house.” She paused. “And, uh...if you need help with this...whole...situation you’re in, I’m ready to help.”

You didn’t seem so ready to help when I asked for it a few months ago.

“I was! I just couldn’t.” Aoife sighed. “Look, my magical specialty is divination. Last night, I was woken up in the middle of the night, and just...strongly felt I had to go to that field. And when I saw you there, and that thing, I started wondering...maybe our fates are intertwined.”

JJ blinked. If you’re flirting with me, I must inform you that I am very gay.

Aoife laughed. “No, not like that! I meant just like—like I’m meant to help you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, rectangular piece of wood, which she then handed to Jameson. “I think I’ve given you this before, but this is my cell phone number. If you need help, call or text me, okay?”

JJ sighed. Yes. Alright. I appreciate the offer. He paused, then added, Now can you please take me home?

———————

Jameson entered the house, slamming the door behind him. Immediately, there was a “Jems?!” from down the hall, followed by the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. JJ looked over, and was hit by a sudden hug from a familiar figure. “What happened?!” Marvin asked. “Are you—whoa!” He started listing to the side, and Jameson hurried to help him back to a stable position. “Thanks,” Marvin breathed. “Now. Where have ye been?! When d’you leave?! What happened to your neck?! Are y’alright?”

JJ patiently waited for the onslaught of questions to fade, then he grabbed the whiteboard and marker Aoife had generously given to him, and wrote out, I made a very bad decision.

“Okay, what was t’at?”

I went to the field we saw in the scrying spell.

“On your own?!” Marvin grabbed Jameson by the shoulders. “What were ye t’inkin’?! I know I was all for actin’ quickly, but together! Not by yourself in the night!”

Jameson looked down at the floor, then up again. I just thought this would be the best way, he explained.

Marvin blinked. “Why?!”

It took a while to write out that response. Well, we do need to get the kids back, sooner better than later. But I didn’t want to trouble you or Jackie because you were upset after that fight. And Anti seemed a bit overwhelmed with that Sam eyeball and all the stress. And Henrik has his own plate full.

“Jems,” Marvin said, sounding absolutely stunned. “Okay, yes, t’is is all correct. But did ye really jus’—just t’row yourself into danger so as to not make anyone upset?!”

Jameson paused. Well it sounds bad when you put it like that.

“Oh my god, Jems.” Marvin buried his face in his hand. “Ye can’ look out for ev’ryone all the time and not yourself. You’ll get hurt.”

Figured that one out, Jameson pointed out, resisting the urge to touch the bandages wrapping around his throat.

“I mean you’ll get hurt in your head,” Marvin said. “It’ll run you dry. Look, I didn’ call any of the others yet, but we were s’posed to meet up later t’is mornin’, right? So we still meet up, we tell ev’ryone what happened, and then—then!—you are goin’ to rest up and not worry about anyone other t’an yourself. Alright?”

Well...I’ll probably need that rest, anyway, JJ wrote slowly. He hesitated. Marvin. There might have been some...permanent damage. It’s a long story, but...if I’m lucky, it’ll be difficult to speak. If I’m unlucky...He couldn’t bear to finish writing that sentence.

Marvin nodded. “Well. We’ll deal wit’ t’at when it comes. I’m sure we can tackle it. And for once, I will be the one making sure you are alright. And you are goin’ t’like it!”

Jameson let out a wheezing laugh that he cut off not long after it began. Thanks.

“You’re welcome. Now. Go lie down, I’ll call the others.”

Jameson headed into the living room and lied down on the sofa. Mr. Fluffington, previously towing with a bit of string on the floor, walked on over to see what the fuss was about, and hopped onto Jameson’s stomach. JJ smiled a bit. And despite passing out for about eight hours last night, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

[cross-d-a]

tag meme: list 3-5 snippets of literature/media that live in your head rent-free to the point where you have them memorized; write them down from memory, no cheating allowed!

aaahhh thank you @vishcount for tagging me!! These are always so fun!! (also omg this is like- the 5th time trying to fill this out, tumblr keeps eating the post up before I finish!!)

I'm just straight up cheating because my memory is shit✨ So forgive me, but I'm not actually asking for forgiveness hahaha I just wanna get my quotes right!!

•

“I feel like I became a zombie

Not alive, but I'm still walkin'

When the sunrise is upon me

I'll be waiting for the day to pass by, oh why?"

vishcount got me hooked on Zombie by Day6. This half of the chorus is always playin' in my head 24/7. But really the whole song just hits me in all the best/worst ways haha Doesn't hurt that it's catchy as fuck.

“It must hurt a lot."

"Fortunately...fortunately I'm used to getting hurt."

"I do not deserve what you are doing for me."

"You're worth it."

"Then what do you want me to do?! Hah?! Be indebted to you? To bow to you? You are not immortal! Why should I so casually owe you a life?"

"This life is what I'm returning to you."

Episode 23 of Guardian. 32:41-35:41. Three minutes of pure serotonin. Actually, I'm not sure I should call it serotonin. It just Ruins me and I keep coming back for more like it's a drug. I've watched this scene so many times I know exactly where to skip to. It might be my favourite scene in anything I've ever watched. I cry every single goddamn time. Zhu Yilong and Bai Yu play Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan so fucking brilliantly. It's just so intense and heartfelt and I literally lost my breath watching it that first time.

“The mute prayed for the Thunder God to bring his daughter back. The Thunder God was touched by the mute's prayer and decided to help him. After a big clap of thunder, the emperor's kingdom was filled with sea roaches that attacked his people. But the emperor didn't care. Then, after another clap of thunder, all the clams on the beach crawled up to the dry land. The emperor's soldiers suffered many casualties. The mute was also forced to the oceanside. After the third clap of thunder, all the origami people and horses came to life. The mute was finally able to save his daughter. But the emperor didn't give up easily and went after him. The mute had no choice, he folded an origami boat and pushed his daughter into the depths of the open sea. After the last clap of thunder, his daughter turned into the monster called Ei Gao Gong Zhu and finally killed the emperor...Later, to remember this mute, the local villagers called him the South Sea King and his daughter the Mute Princess."

This whole legend from The Lost Tomb Reboot struck me like lightning and I've been obsessed with it ever since. It's just so fascinating and goddamn tragic. I might be a bit in love with the Princess Mute. Who knows. I have so many headcanons surrounding this whole thing.

“San-shu, I am not afraid of death. It's just that leaving my loved ones is so painful."

That whole scene in Reboot where Wu Xie is left alone in the ritual chamber while Xiao Ge, Pangzi and Hei-ye desperately try to save him is just...I still sob thinking about it. His whole speech there is just so...Wu Xie. It truly shows the heart of his character and the depth of his connection to his loved ones.

“I won't leave you. Not this time."

This line from the Twilight of the Apprentice (Star Wars: Rebels, season 2 finale) has lived in my brain rent-free since March 30th 2016. It's haunted me for five whole fucking years. Ahsoka and Anakin just twist me up inside. I love them so fucking much words cannot explain. The whole finale ruined me really. I've never been the same since.

Tagging @haru-tl @adrawrable @thewindsofsong @lichelleme @undyingsunshine @traineecryptid and anyone else who wants to do this! As always, only do it if you want to! :)

[the-dubstep-strawberry]

Top 10 Female Characters

Rules: Name your top 10 favorite female characters from 10 different fandoms and then tag 10 people.

Tagged by @pchberrytea​, with many thanks!

Okay, this is going to be good. Let’s see here... this is not and could never be an exhaustive list, but here are ten of my faves off the top of my head. (Warning, may contain *spoilers* for their respective franchises.)

1. Commander Susan Ivanova (Babylon 5)

Second-in-command of the Babylon 5 station. Suffers no fools whatsoever, especially not gladly. Proudly Jewish, Russian and bi. I love everything about her, not least the fact that she’s played by the gorgeous and talented Claudia Christian. Perennial fave of mine. Needs more GIFs of her, there are never enough.

2. Judge Cassandra Anderson (Dredd)

Played by the magnificent Olivia Thirlby, newbie Judge Cassandra Anderson demonstrates to her badass boss that you can be strong, capable and compassionate and that there is no true justice without mercy. Reads minds, kicks ass, passes the Bechdel Test. Even capable of rescuing herself. What more could you ask for?

3. Jill Valentine (Resident Evil)

My zombie-killing heart belongs to Jill Valentine. She was the star of one of my very first favorite games and I just adore her. Strong, smart, just, compassionate and lovely in every way. I will incidentally ship her and Carlos for all eternity (Chris Redfield who?)

4. Morticia Addams

Bewitchingly beautiful, morbidly lovely, full of style and grace. Adored and worshipped by her husband, Morticia is a woman of many talents. She fences, paints, writes, plays the violin, tends to a conservatory of carnivorous plants, makes black the new black, harnesses the forces of darkness, crushes the whole “being a mom” thing, and dances like nothing you’ve ever seen. 100% iconic.

5. Ellen Ripley (Alien, Aliens et al)

World’s best space mom and cat-lover. Wasn’t trained for any of this, but since nobody else was capable of saving the day, she stepped up and made the Alien Queen her bitch. Interplanetary problem? Call Ripley. She’ll kill it with fire. (The franchise did her wrong and we all know it, but she will always be the best.)

6. Rose DeWitt Bukater (Titanic)

A bit of a spoiled brat, I know, but my favorite poor little rich girl was born into an incredibly restrictive lifestyle that she never asked for, or wanted. The hell with table manners and tea parties and privilege - Rose wanted to be free to ride horses, fly planes, and do whatever the hell she pleased, instead of being married off to a jerk-ass millionaire against her wishes to save her mother’s sinking social status. Ironically, the only person for whom traveling on the Titanic was a literal lifeline. Faking her death and starting over so she could live the life she actually wanted is just #goals. (And so, incidentally, is her wardrobe.)

7. Empress Emily Kaldwin (Dishonored)

Empress, assassin, heir to her mother’s throne, and the product of a doomed love affair - Emily is a fascinating young woman, passionate in every way, trying to walk the line between the call of duty and the lure of adventure. Although I usually play as Corvo, who is Getting Way Too Old For This Shit, I love a good playthrough of Dishonored 2 and seeing all the cool stuff that our favorite Lord Protector taught his badass not-so-secret daughter to do in defense of the realm - and herself. We learn along with Emily that her caring and dutiful mother had something of a wild, romantic streak (she hated her own iconic hairdo because she preferred having her hair loose and flowing, and would much rather have been off in a rowboat for a picnic with her beloved bodyguard than sitting through tedious matters of state), and as we get a good look at the young woman who now has to fight for control of her own damn Empire, we can kind of see where she got that passionate, rebellious streak from.

8. Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire)

So you thought Sansa was a spoiled princess who only cared about dresses and sewing and boys? Well, she was at first. Unfortunately she was in for a very rude awakening, and since she isn’t a trained killer like her little sister, Sansa is forced to make etiquette her armor and play politics in order to survive. She endures (amongst other things) forced marriage, political imprisonment, the deaths of most of her family and friends, her own aunt attempting to murder her, a fucking zombie apocalypse in her own back yard, and having to put up with some very creepy bullshit from an older guy who had a crush on her mom (eww). Frankly, giving her a kingdom of her own to rule after all that was the least they could do. Long live the Queen in the North.

9. Edith Pelham (née Crawley), Marchioness of Hexham (Downton Abbey)

Poor Edith! She’s always getting kicked around by her big sister, ignored or taken for granted by her parents, and being disappointed by suitors, who have an unfortunate habit of dying, running away, already being married - and in at least one instance, all three. Fortunately, she learns how to hold her own in the high society “scandal and quiet female rebellion” stakes. Over the course of the series, she eventually finds her own voice and vocation, and ends up bagging the best husband of them all... and she was cemented as my forever-fave when she finally snapped and told Mary what she really thought of her. Good for you, Edith.

10. Mothra (Mothra, Mothra vs. Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Mothra, Rebirth of Mothra trilogy, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, et al)

No list of my favorite female characters would be complete without the Queen of the Monsters! Sometimes she’s on Godzilla’s team, and sometimes she has to show him who’s boss, but no matter how and where she appears, Mothra never fails to steal the show. A literal goddess. Last on this list only because she’s 10/10.

Tagging: @avaleon​​, @itsmesaberaltered​​, @falsenostalgia-sundries​​, @ladynyxeris​​, ​@tess-etc​​, @solesurvivorkat​​, @scorpio-skies​​​, @pchberrytea​, @theartofblossoming​ and @sharonaw​​​!

[raendown]

My part of a trade with @rookie-d and boy was this fun to write! 

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 3477 Rated: T+ Summary: Madara hated the morning shift. It was always boring and getting up early sucked. Thankfully the one time he had to work it something interesting happened, at least.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Zombies Before Noon

Their first meeting was one that Madara would remember for all the reasons Tobirama probably wished he would forget. Several hours in to a criminally early morning shift he was bored out of his skull and wondering why the hell a comic book shop needed to be open before any of the local nerds around here were even awake. He’d already tidied the shelves four times and dusted the entire premises twice when the cheery jingle of the bell over their door made him lift his head hopefully. That look quickly morphed in to horror as he took in the sight of what was clearly a zombie entering the store. 

Skin so pale it looked almost paper white, circles under his eyes so dark they looked drawn on with marker, and clothes rumpled like they hadn’t seen an ironing board in years, the man who stumbled in had his eyes completely closed and his arms hanging loose at both sides. Only three steps in he stopped dead and just stood there. Motionless. Possibly not breathing. Madara looked around for a hidden camera, wondering if his younger brother had set him up for some kind of weird prank. That was the sort of thing Izuna would do. Nothing new or suspicious stuck out to him, though, so he turned back to the stranger who was now slowly blinking his eyes open. Well, partially open. They remained squinted so tightly he probably couldn’t see any better still. 

“Coffee?” he rumbled in a deep slur. Madara looked around for cameras again. 

“Uh, we don’t serve that here.” 

“...black.” 

Furrowing his brows, Madara repeated himself. “We don’t serve coffee.”

The pale man blinked slowly with a gaze that didn’t seem to really be focused on anything. 

“Extra espresso…” his words trailed off like he meant to continue with something off and yet nothing came. After almost a full minute he managed to close his jaw again with a muted click. Then he merely stood and let his narrowed eyes bore directly in to Madara’s. 

It was the single creepiest thing this shop had ever seen. And considering the varying clientele that was saying something.

For a good hot second Madara contemplated reaching in to his pocket and calling the police. Or maybe the Disease Center. Either one of them would no doubt be very interested in this spontaneous zombie apocalypse. Then the moment passed and he realized this was probably the most interesting thing that was likely to happen to him until the early afternoon crowd began to show up near the very end of his shift. He might as well see how it played out. 

“Would an energy drink do you? We’ve got all sorts of those. Pretty cheap too.” 

“....mn.”

Since he wasn’t very sure what that meant Madara opted for believing he’d just made a sale. Trying to ask questions about flavor and the like would most likely get about as coherent an answer as the ones he’d already gotten so after a moment of going through their inventory in his mind he stepped over to the fridge behind the counter to pick out the highest concentration of caffeine they carried. It also happened to be one of their cheaper brands as well, which was great in case he ended up having to pay for this himself. Did zombies remember how to pick out money from their wallets?

Did zombies even carry their wallets?

“Here. These don’t really taste all that great but it’s got enough of a kick to revive you or whatever.” 

A few seconds after he handed it over he realized his mistake. The oddly still man blinked slowly when Madara cracked the can open for him but finally seemed to understand that there was a liquid in his hand he was meant to drink. His head tilted back to reveal a surprisingly shapely throat that bobbed up and down in a steady rhythm until the entire can was emptied, hung there unmoving for a few seconds more, then his head tilted back down with an honest to god pout on his face. Apparently he’d thought the can was bottomless.

“Right. Feel free to browse or whatever before you come settle up. Register’s over there.” Madara jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “If you pass out try to fall away from the merchandise.” 

“Nnmm.”

“Oookay.” 

Scurrying back to the register was more for the sake of anyone looking in through the windows on their way by than for his own sense of safety. He really didn’t need anyone to call his boss and say they spotted him stalking a customer in his own store. At least he had a comfortable perch from which he could survey the entire floor, set out in a semi circle as it was, giving him a perfect view down each of their short aisles. No matter where this one man circus drifted he would be within eyesight. Madara watched with undisguised fascination while the guy drifted down aisle three, staring hard at a display entirely covered with merchandise for a popular children’s show about brightly colored ponies. The empty drink can remained clutched tightly in one fist.

With drunken steps he wound his way out of that section and in to aisle five. Despite staring directly at their selection of comics for a particular super hero universe Madara got the impression he wasn’t actually seeing any of them. Either he was hopelessly lost inside his own head or he had astrally projected so hard he wouldn’t find himself for another week. Just as the man lifted his hand, perhaps at last to interact with the world around him, the door of the shop jingled violently open to admit a harried looking woman. 

“There you are!” she screeched. Without even sparing a look around the rest of the open space she marched around a display of new releases and clapped a hand down on the zombie man’s shoulder. “I have been looking for you for over an hour, you absolute dick! Do you know how worried we’ve been? Your brother would have taken my damn head off if anything happened to you on my watch!” 

“...nm?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, the woman shook her head and finally looked around. The fact that there weren’t any other customers seemed to console her a little bit, probably relieved there weren’t more witnesses to her bad skills at keeping track of one man. When her eyes looked on to Madara he refused to quail under the force of her glare. A part of him sort of wanted to. He spent as much time in the gym as the next self-conscious guy but the look she was giving him promised that she, in fact, was the one with an ability to rip heads. To his absolute shame, he looked away first. But only for long enough for the weight of her gaze to leave him so he could go back to watching this drama unfold in front of him. 

“Come on,” she growled, tugging at the man’s sleeve. “Next time this happens I am tying you to the bed until you fucking learn! Did you even pay for that drink? You are so paying me back for this, I don’t care if it’s only a couple bucks!”

It wasn’t all that surprising how little resistance the man offered to being pulled across the floor and back out on to the street, though Madara did give some thought to whether or not he should be calling the police. Should he be reporting assault over this? It was too bad the owners were too cheap to install any real security other than the one camera pointing straight at the door and the one directly over the till. Some proper footage of what happened probably would have made great evidence if someone came back to question him.  

For several minutes after he was left suddenly alone Madara stared towards the door and wondered if it was possible that he might have hallucinated everything that just happened. Maybe he’d been reading too many of the comics in here. His mother used to warn him when he was little that using his imagination too much would rot out his common sense - but, then again, she was a cantankerous old bitch who kicked him out as soon as he turned eighteen. He’d never put much stock in anything she had to say. And then there were the coins that crazy lady had tossed over the counter on their way by, that was pretty solid evidence that he wasn’t hallucinating. 

Without a live zombie show for entertainment the rest of his shift at the comic shop mostly passed in boredom. Usually he worked the afternoon shifts just for this very reason. The mornings were always dead but he’d had to reschedule an appointment with his doctor three times already and trading shifts today had been the only way he was getting in there without having to wait several more weeks for another open spot. Medical care in their city seriously needed a bigger budget. Desperate to pass the time without resorting to the merchandise he wasn’t supposed to fiddle with on shift, Madara ended up slumped over the front counter doodling on the back of some old receipt paper he found stuffed in to a random drawer. Nearly half the page disappeared under swirls of red ink before he realized that he was drawing a dead, moaning zombie. With a sheepish look around he set the red pen aside and reached for a black one instead. Hopefully that would inspire some less creepy doodles. 

As expected, a couple hours before the end of his shift he finally started seeing some customers, his fellow nerds flocking in to check for new issues of the latest detective comic or merchandise for their favorite anime characters. Madara kept a sharp eye on the ones he didn’t recognize and gave no more thought to the entertaining if odd start to his day. After work he scurried off to the bus stop and barely made it to his long overdue doctor’s appointment before stumbling back on to the bus an hour after that with a bandaid on his arm and several vials of blood less in his body. 

“M’ home,” he called weakly as he shuffled inside the apartment. Something clattered around the corner, followed quickly by the sound of Izuna swearing.

“Did the appointment go well?” His brother’s voice shouted after him on his way down the hall. 

Tossing his jacket through the door of his bedroom, he called back. “Went fine. Had to get some blood pulled. Dumb ass doctor doesn’t think I know my own body enough to tell when I’m having seasonal allergies. He wants to test me for heart disease!” 

“But...those aren’t...anki, that makes no sense!” 

“I know!” Madara rolled his eyes even though the other couldn’t see him. “Apparently being short of breath because of the all the ragweed means I must be on the verge of a heart attack.” 

“Probably got his medical degree out of a cereal box.” 

Tired, a little loopy from having too much blood drawn without eating anything, Madara’s thoughts for the rest of his evening were filled mostly with grumbles about incompetant medical staff and listening to Izuna go on about the latest drama from his apprenticeship. Work was so far from his mind he entirely forgot to mention the strange occurrence from that morning. He went to bed that night thinking only that he was grateful his shifts were back to their usual afternoon schedule tomorrow because he certainly didn’t want to wake up early again, his dreams filled with needles that laughed at him while he sneezed uncontrollably. 

Several days went by with the usual humdrum of the life Madara and his brother had fallen in to. As much as he despised the morning shift, he loved the afternoons with equal fervor. His job at the comic shop didn’t pay much more than a basic living wage but he loved the environment, loved his regular customers, and he especially loved the hefty discount it gave him on all the nerdy merchandise he couldn’t help filling their home with. Things went about as normally as they usually did in his life until the fourth day when Madara looked up from checking out a regular customer to find the next person in line was an actual walking snack. 

Wild hair artfully arranged to somehow look purposefully messy, skin so pale he could be mistaken for an albino, red eyes that Madara would swear could see right down in to his soul, he was already a dreamboat even without taking in the deliciously toned rest of his body. Something about him looked familiar but it was hard to concentrate past the broad shoulders standing straight and tall. 

“Can I - ahem - how can I help you?” Madara fought with his cheeks not to flush bright red and prayed that no one would comment on the massive crack his voice had just done. 

“You wouldn’t happen to be Madara, would you?” the man asked in a deep rumble. “Your coworkers described you to me when I came in here yesterday.”

“I am, yes. Uh...is there something wrong?” 

Shaking his head, the man coughed a little as though feeling uncomfortable. “No, no. I only wanted to come in and thank you for not kicking me out of your store the other day. I was, ah, fairly ill at the time and my behavior was not the best. Several shops had already sent me on my way but you allowed me to stay in one place long enough for my cousin to catch up so I wanted to say thank you for letting me stay somewhere safe. Anything could have happened to me in that state.” 

For a second Madara tried to subtly look the man up and down, trying to determine if he was lying or not. Surely this couldn’t be the same guy? It was only after he mentally added some black streaks under the eyes, hunched the shoulders, and squinted the eyes that he realized it was. This was his zombie customer. 

“You don’t look the same at all!” was the first thing his stupid mouth chose to blurt out. 

“Ah. Thank you, I think.” The man coughed awkwardly again. “I’m told I look fairly awful whenever I work myself in to sleep deprivation.” 

“Oh is that why you were acting so much like a zombie? Wait no! Shit! Sorry, that was rude! Um, shit- gah, I’m not supposed to swear, fuck. Damn it!” Exasperated with his own lack of self control, Madara smacked a hand over his face. Nearby one of his regulars could be heard snickering but glaring them in to silence would have meant removing his hand and facing the hot stranger who’d made him splutter. 

To his eternal relief, no comments were made about his verbal idiocy, although he could definitely hear traces of amusement in the man’s tone when he continued speaking. 

“Yes, unfortunately I have a habit of getting a little too involved in my studies. Exams are coming up so I’ve only been sleeping about two or three hours a night and it, ah, finally caught up to me apparently. I don’t remember much but my cousin tells me I wandered out of her house sometime around six in the morning and she didn’t find me until, er, whenever it was she found me in here.” After scratching at the back of his neck he seemed to jolt himself and then held out the same hand. “I’m Tobirama, by the way.” 

“Madara. But um, you apparently already knew that.” 

They shook hands, at which point Madara realized the other man’s incredible height also came with massive hands that practically engulfed his own. He really hoped he wasn’t blushing as brightly as it felt like he was. 

“So you live around here then?” he asked. Then he wanted to slap himself again because that was probably way too personal of a question. 

“Not really. Well, not yet. I’m staying with my cousin so I can take some courses at the university but my brother is thinking of moving back to town so I’ll probably move back in with him if he does.” 

“Back to town?” Madara perked up. “So you’re from around here originally?” 

Tobirama nodded. “We grew up in the west end.”

“No kidding? Me too.” Squinting, Madara tried to determine whether they might have crossed paths when they were younger. The man did sort of look familiar but age could change a lot about a person and it wasn’t like he’d kept contact with anyone from that end of town. Not after he’d been summarily tossed to the curb. 

His closer interest did not go unnoticed. For a moment he flushed even deeper than he already was, thinking Tobirama might have been offended by his scrutiny. Then his ears were flaming for another reason entirely and he couldn’t even bring himself to be upset about the misunderstanding when the other leaned in just a bit closer with a slow smile. 

“I don’t suppose you’d like to go for coffee sometime?” he asked. “As a thank you, of course.” 

“On one condition,” Madara told him, feeling suddenly bold.

“Do tell.” Tobirama looked even more amused by his request. He leaned farther down to rest his weight on both elbows to patiently await the condition he would supposedly need to meet. 

“If you can describe the premise behind any of the comics in this store then you’ve got yourself a date. I’ve had too many people try and steer me away from ‘childish interests’ and think they can ‘help me grow up’.” 

After breaking up with the fourth person in a row who mocked him for his interests Madara had made a pact with himself to never again date anyone who didn’t accept him for who he was and what he loved. He might be a massive nerd but he’d learned the lesson of self value a long time ago and he wasn’t about to let himself be blinded by a pretty face again. 

To his utter delight, he needn't have worried this time. With a competitive sort of light in his eye Tobirama pointed out half a dozen different comics within eyesight and not only named the main characters but also the basis of the main plot for each of them. What made it all the more impressive was that he mostly chose rather obscure franchises that couldn’t be considered mainstream. Madara was half in love before he was finished describing the third one. Handsome, intelligent enough for university, and apparently in to the same geeky stuff as him? Sign him up. Immediately. 

“Okay, okay, point made!” Throwing up his hands in surrender made Tobirama smile. “You mentioned your exams are coming up so I’m guessing you’ll be busy for the next little while. Why don’t I give you my number and we can go out for coffee to celebrate after you don’t need to study so much?” 

“I would appreciate that a lot,” Tobirama murmured earnestly. 

“School’s obviously important to you if you’ll work yourself in to a zombie state over it,” Madara pointed out. 

He got a grateful look that made his stomach flip flop. Rather than make a fool of himself again he printed off a bit of blank receipt paper and wrote his number down, sliding it across the counter. He expected Tobirama to slip the paper in to his pocket but instead he pulled out a beaten up cell phone and entered the number right there, smiling to himself like he'd won an unexpected treat. 

“I’m sure Hashirama will be thrilled to know I’m finally being more social.”

Madara nearly stopped breathing. All the triumph of having secured a very promising date suddenly drained right out of him as he stared at the man across the counter in horror, several little clues falling in to place at once. Finally he’d figured out why Tobirama looked familiar and it wasn’t because he’d seen him in zombie form. Images of his childhood best friend danced across his memories.

“You’re...you’re Hashirama’s little brother,” he whimpered. “Oh god. Oh god! He’s going to kill me! He’s going to come back to Konoha just to cut all my hair off in a bowl cut to match his!” 

While Tobirama stared at him with a mixture of horror and amusement Madara decided that as long as he got that date first he didn’t much care how he died. One conversation - and one look at those well defined biceps - was all he’d needed to know that Tobirama would be well worth it.