#I will never not make sonic a trans man it's just not happening

[lovedeltaa]

little dump of an au me and my friend have been working on, in which everyone's life is awful

it's not fully fleshed out at all but here's a summary of tails specifically..... if anyone cares.....

#sth #sonic the hedgehog #miles tails prower #amy rose #renegade au #<- thats the au name teehee #tails with an accidental drug addiction is among the craziest things we've come up with I think #sonic is pre-op #I will never not make sonic a trans man it's just not happening #u guys are not ready for the diabolical ass maria we're cooking #amy is a psychic #srry just spitting out whatever comes to mind that's relevant in this post #tails ties up his paralyzed tail so that it's not in the way #he's too scared to cut it off womp womp #his knee pads r cuz his balance got messed up bc of the unusable tail #poor bastard is falling over #I think that's all I got off the top of my head #bye #luc arte

[jerseymuppet]

i might be stupid but. is the gothamverse a muppets batman au? is that what the thing in ur bio means? (either way plz do tell me abt it)

That would definitely be infinitely cooler than my idea! Gothamverse is the beautiful result of me playing arkham knight while waiting for an mcr livestream to start up and thinking ‘damn bitches from jersey are fucking insane! ....wait a minute’

It’s basically a silly little idea I came up last March with where all the mcr guys are from Gotham and what their villain origin stories would be etc. I followed the main Batman villain archetypes: extremist, anti-hero, camp, and serial killer, and I had a fucking blast! It’s very silly and just something I did for fun. I guess I can go a lil bit into it here.

full disclosure, I am psychotic and disabled and I do not believe in the vilification of mental illness or disability in media, all of these characters will eventually get the help they need. Batman at its core is about a mentally ill man helping others who have been failed by society and I will never forgive dc for making him into an overpowered, glorified cop.

Frank’s character (Francis ‘Frankie’ Stein) is the extremist (duh). He’s the son of a mafia boss who is steadily ruining their town with crime and Frankie just kinda snaps and kills him to take his place as the head of the family and try to undo some of the damage done. He has great intentions, he’s just very unyielding and kind of insane 💕 his moniker is Frankenstein! And his whole schtick is that he’s very hard (if not impossible) to kill. He’s also chronically ill and Jewish, these are not important to his character but they are important to me !

Mikey’s character (Micheal Way) is the serial killer. He’s a ‘sociopath’ (theres nothing actually wrong with him, people just suck and made him feel lesser and out of place :/) trying to fit in with everyday society but he always feels like something is missing and becomes a neuroscientist to try to find what exactly it is. He invents a machine (the empathsizer) that allows him to experience other people’s memories and emotions as though they are his own. From there he accidentally gets addicted to the chemical responses his brain has to doing that. And keeps doing it. Even after the testing phase is no longer accepting applicants. It gets worse after he experiences someone’s near death experience and starts chasing the high it gave him. Idk what his moniker is? It’s sandman for right now but that’s honestly so boring and uninspired.

Ray’s character (Raymond Ortiz) is camp but very loosely. He’s an engineer by day and a rockstar by night! He’s really only an engineer to save up enough money to pursue music full time but it’s hard because he doesn’t get paid that much. Winter hits and with it, cuts to his hours! So he’s forced to choose between rent and electricity. When he gets really sick as a result, he can’t afford a doctor. And when he wakes up with his hearing gone as a result, theres nothing he can really do but spiral into a depression. Until he realizes he’s a literal biological engineer. If he can’t fix his problem he can at the very least prevent it from happening to someone else! Research does cost money, so it’s very fortunate that Gotham has so many banks. His moniker is Dr. Megahurtz! His weapon of choice is his guitar, which has been retrofitted with sonic emitters to amplify and weaponize the hertz. Not enough to hurt, but enough to incapacitate.

Gerard’s character (Jules Moss) is the anti hero! She’s (yes I made Gerard’s character a trans girl, they took too long to make a trans character so I did it for them) has the same backstory as Gerard actually! On her way home from work she witnesses a terrorist attack, but instead of starting a band she decides to fight crime instead. She does so bad. Literally her first night out patrolling she gets killed by some priest who’s been driven insane by what he claims is an angel that’s ‘chosen him to impart gods will’ but it’s just a fallen star looking for a vessel to possess and the first guy it came across wasn’t dead lol. The star turns into a sword of pure light and that’s what Jules gets stabbed with, but also it fuses itself to her dna so she wakes up a few days later, schrödingers girl, with some scary new abilities and a voice in her head that definitely wasn’t there before. Her whole arc is her trying to find the guy that killed her and get revenge. Her moniker is stigmata! Because when she gets impaled it also goes through the palms of her hands and the wounds don’t heal.

but yeah that’s the bare bones of it all! I’m planning on making this into a comic series but the script is still being written at the moment! Thank you for letting me ramble about it 💕🥰

#Also worth mentioning that Raymond and Jules do eventually get together! #I didn’t mean for that to happen but like they are best friends and they are both trying to hide what happened to them from each other #like Raymond only being able to hide the fact he’s deaf from Jules because he knows her so well that he can just anticipate what she’s #going to say can only go so far before it’s like okay these guys want to kiss I think? These two are in love #ALSO WORM IS THERE!!! #hes jules’ guy in the chair and he goes by wyrm to fit her whole medieval/joan of arc aesthetic #ANYWAY #gv #< Gothamverse tag #Also yes I’m aware Jules’ arc is literally just fashion statement I didn’t notice until someone pointed it out #same with Micheals character being like if the song sleep was a person #totally unintentional but I’m working with it! #jude.answers

[skaruresonic]

You know what this Lanolin and Silver situation reminds me of? How not so long ago the comic had Whisper do basically the same level of smacking and smack-talking to Jet. Yes, the context there was more "comedic" I guess because they also have him be an excessively annoying fanboy for her, even after she smacks him. But I do remember that the "fans" were for the most part making memes like "lesbian on gay twink violence lmao" about this. Same thing but it's now happening to a more "well-received" character (though looking through both tumblr and twitter, you'd think babylon rogues have about as many fans as any other character).

But I do remember that the "fans" were for the most part making memes like "lesbian on gay twink violence lmao" about this. ah yes, such fantastic representation IDW has: - one lesbian who exists just to suffer forever from her woobie backstory, one she will never be allowed to move on from, - another who has the IQ and emotional intelligence of a potato, who makes her friend/gf feel like she was in the wrong for being triggered by her insensitive remark, - yet another who is bossy at best and a bully at worst, - a possible trans character whose pain and trauma get dismissed by Sonic in the name of his principles, and who never receives proper closure with her creator, - a gay man who suffered a brutal mental breakdown before getting his head caved in by a steel girder and eulogized as "big oof" by Mr. Principles not an issue after the latter said he'd have been willing to give "even" him a chance, - an edgy traitorous murderer, - and two background OCs whose names nobody can remember.

---

Yes, the context there was more "comedic" I guess because they also have him be an excessively annoying fanboy for her, even after she smacks him. ...I haven't read that part. Why are my OOC senses tingling. somehow I can't picture Whisper doing that. peak writing

And this, kids, is why framing is important. There's a difference between "hurting" a character for Rule of Funny (the critical difference being that they're not actually substantially harmed) or for cartoonish effect... and playing it so painfully straight that it reads like disciplinary abuse.

The art doesn't seem to make it terribly clear, so in hindsight I realize I may have probably misread this panel. But to me, this initially read as Lanolin smacking Whisper repeatedly about the head. Maybe that's not the case, but even so, wouldn't you get that vibe with how stuttered Whisper's speech is? It's as if she's trying to speak between blows but Lanolin won't let her. Look at the crowd. They're either gawking or uncomfortable. One background character is covering her eyes. The Wisps look like they don't want to be there. The overall feeling this one panel emits is just all sorts of "ugh" BECAUSE it's played so painfully straight, without a hint of irony. Even more uncomfortable is the fact that Lanolin could have simply shrugged Whisper off when she grabbed her arm, or at least told her to knock it off like she told Silver, but no, she had to make a scene out of the situation for Drama. Or something.

Please excuse me using my own work to provide a counterexample, but just to demonstrate what I'm talking about:

Sonic gets hurt throughout the VN as part of a running gag. It's played for laughs, emphasized by the cartoonish amounts of squash and stretch. With the possible exception of Eggman, no one hurts Sonic with any real malice, and unlike Whisper's case at Lanolin's hands, it isn't treated like a public flogging intended to put him in his place.

#asks

[sarah-dipitous]

Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 357

The Star Beast

“The Star Beast”

Plot Description: the Doctor lands in London to find an old friend, a new enemy, and aliens wreaking havoc

I’M SO EXCITED!!!!!!!

I get we have to do this recap opening for new comers or whatever, but DID WE HAVE TO???

God, they miss each other so much. And it’s nice to have these three episodes of (potential) closure for them after seeing two other companions get closure from their Doctors last time

Am I mad FOR Ncuti that the Doctor didn’t go from Jodie to him? Yes. But man…….it’s hard to be mad to see David as the Doctor again

Of course the first person he runs into and tries to help IS Donna…and then tries to back out of helping because what if she remembers him?

Of COURSE Donna is continuing her streak of missing big alien happenings in London 💀

The nostalgia!!! The first of likely more than a few Allons-y’s!!! ❤️❤️

Donna’s daughter Rose also got Donna’s last name. I’m a Donna Noble fan til I die. She gave away nearly ALL her lottery winnings??!

Ohhhh Donna’s mom vehemently denying the existence of spaceships (…one’s not made here) to protect Donna 😭

Fuck yes!! Donna being a trans ally for her daughter l, being the kind of loving, affirming parent she deserves. Donna’s mom is imperfect but trying

YOU LOST YOUR BEST FRIENNNNNND, DONNA!! That’s what you lie awake at night thinking should be there in your life

I know the meep is supposedly super dangerous but it’s SO SO SO SO CUTE

SINCE WHEN CAN THE SONIC SCREWDRIVER MAKE PROJECTIONS

He CALLED DONNA HIS BEST FRIEND AND ACTUALLY SAID HE LOVES HER!!! You know what that is? Growth

All these seasons and I think this is the first time I’ve seen a young but still adult actor in a wheelchair. Good that it’s happened, took too long…and took too long for me to realize that

Meep talks like Gollum but us still so cute

Oh no oh no oh no oh no…I can’t believe I’m about to say “poor Sylvia Noble,” but poor Sylvia!! She’s got too many crises to handle that are really just one, and she’s NOT DOING IT WELL AT ALL

How many alien races are looking for this meep?!?!

Nooooooooo because watching this ON BERNARD CRIBBINS’S BIRTHDAY KNOWING HE IS NOW DEAD but I swear to all that is good, if this is another “great big outer space dumbo” moment. Donna just said Wilf “isn’t with us anymore,” and the Doctor’s gonna go waxing poetic…he just doesn’t live with the family anymore, right? He’s in a retirement home or something??

I was right. And both Donna and Sylvia called him an idiot for it 💀

Not to say poor Sylvia again, but like…their home is now being attacked and invaded by two different sets of aliens (well, one is humans being possessed by something alien), and she just wants to keep her daughter alive!!! But she keeps saying all this doesn’t exist. There’s no way to deny it now

Look, I’ll overlook the slightly hamfisted “did you assume the meep’s pronouns?” But I cannot abide by the sonic screwdriver 3D printing a barrier to protect the group from all the blasts happening in this house

You know the movie Cats Don’t Dance? The meep just took a turn more drastically evil than Darla

I mean…if you’ve never heard of the meep, you would one hundred percent fall for its cuteness

Donna’s heart is so good. She gave away her lottery money because it was a way she could help people living in danger, pain, and fear

Excuse me?? Did you just say “sounds like the kind of thing you would do”?? Like she’s starting to remember the Doctor? Maybe???

I kind of wish the meep had kept its cute docile demeanor while still being super evil. That would have been a little more interesting, but I recognize this is not a creature of my creation

SHE CALLED HIM THE DOCTOR

I love that he thinks telling Donna she can’t get involved actually means anything, actually means she won’t. You traveled with her before. She cannot be told no

Omgggg Donna’s “okay” when the Doctor told her that they could save London together but it would mean she would die. Like, on one hand, believable that Donna would be okay with dying to save her daughter, but imagine the pain of the lengths Sylvia has gone to for 15 years to keep HER daughter safe and alive.

He’s waking her like a sleeper agent?? Like the Winter Soldier??

Pffffffffffft, she’s so mad at himmmmmmm for being the inspiration for giving away all her lottery moneyyyyyy I’m dead

Fuck, Donna is so cool. Earlier sh said if anyone gave her daughter trouble she would DESCEND. And as she ruins the meep’s plans to destroy London she just yells “DONNA NOBLE IS DESCENDING,” explosions behind her and everything

Oh! Hello Rose!!

Wait…wait…wait…are they trying to say that the metacrisis of the Doctor Donna would eventually make her daughter transgender???? The implication does seem to be there (I can’t wait to unblock the Doctor Who tag)

She also passed down some of her memories of the Doctor and part of what made her Doctor Donna onto Rose…that part does kind of seem very wibbly wobbly biology

And they’re just able to let go of the metacrisis energy or whatever?? I mean, they had to get around it somehow to be able to do two more episodes and I’m glad Donna and Rose did it and not the Doctor…but I can’t help but feel like there could have been a more interesting way. I dunno…

Donna’s husband is so chill. I’m glad she found him

Ok I was gonna be a party pooper about the all white interior for the TARDIS but it’s got color changing lights which is cool

What a heartfelt conversation cut short by Donna spilling coffee in the control center of the TARDIS, making it go haywire, taking them WHO EVEN KNOWS WHERE

Ok Disney+…just because I watch ONE show with a man with some magical powers and artifacts with the title Doctor also starring a character who is a strongwillled red haired woman does not mean I want to watch Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

#hellsite nostalgia tour 2023

[orifu]

ok im just gonna write a bunch of my disorganised thoughts on the new doctor who episode the star beast. enjoy. or dont.

story wise it was very enjoyable. all the characters were written like actual people (cough cough chris chibnall) and i really enjoyed watching it. the twist of the meep being evil was (at least in who circles) pretty well known so having the rose metacrisis twist too was really effective (even though i totally guessed it would happen (shower oracle)).

and before i get into what i didnt like im just going to say im not like siding with the you know twitter users youtube "reviewers" called like The Neckbeard Skeptic or something when it comes to this stuff. i thought the inclusion of rose as a trans character was a really good way to start the new era as a kind of warning to those kinds of people that they really wont enjoy it.

but with the representation came a couple lines which just struck me as.. off. the first was definitely rose basically calling the doctor out for assuming the meep is he/him. and like yeah thats a valid criticism to make. but if i were writing this episode i would absolutely not get the trans person to say that. it comes across as playing into the "did you just assume [the meep's] pronouns??" transphobic stereotype but i think knowing how many people would get mad at this i am fine with the line overall.

the next line was the line "binary binary / nonbinary" bit. i think its a cool callback and another neat way of pissing off the right people but honestly back in s4 that binary binary bit was a really devastating moment as you see the doctor's face and the music kicks in. playing off that moment as like a kind of gag just seems kinda messed up to me.

and the last one was the "male presenting time lord" thing. just seems like a twitterised version of feminism and the messages behind it. feminism is meant to be a deconstruction of gender as a social construct and its effects in society which manifest as eg the patriarchy. feminism is not when you go "you look like a man therefore youre bad". thats not feminism. in s4 this was explained as time lords "lacking that little bit of human" which i think just kinda makes more sense tbh.

i imagine this is kind of what it wouldve been like seeing series 1 back in 2005 and maybe back then jack harkness looked over the top or the whole thing felt in-your-face. maybe 18 years from now ill look back at this and think "wow. i thought that was a lot?" and i really hope so. but for now i just hope this was over the top to get rid of all the bigots before doctor who (2023-) REALLY begins.

anyway enough of the criticisms that make me sound like a 2017 anti sjw. i think donna and rose just being able to "get rid" of the metacrisis by just "letting it go" is honestly kind of stupid. i was expecting a lot more of a destiny plotline across the 3 specials that probably ended in donna about to die forever but only then the metacrisis is stopped or something (and i think the slower metacrisis could have explained this). but nope there it goes done and dusted in the first special. its not the direction i wouldve taken but its fine i suppose. im not the award winning writer here.

next its literally never explained where the doctors sonic comes from. he just kinda. has it. and thats fine i guess stuff happens sometimes but like. why is this sonic completely overpowered? a big criticism of the chibnall era was that the doctor was constantly just scanning stuff and going "hm yep blah blah" and instead of going back to the sonic being an occasional tool, its now able to create screens and forcefields and. what. but fine. whatever.

but now. big question. why does the tardis interior change? it didnt go up in flames or anything like in s5/s11 nor was the doctor feeling a change like in s7/s8. it just changes. but i guess the tardis was feeling like it or whatever. now the real controversial take. i dont really like the new interior. its just completely white. i know the original tardis interiors looked like that but it looks so plain. it looks like they only had that much built when they filmed it and hadnt finished. the lights make me like it more but it just seems kinda gimmicky tbh. im sure itll grow on me over time (or be changed in the ncuti era? pls).

anyway. i still really enjoyed the episode and i cannot wait for wild blue yonder (this has been the mystery episode for like over a year now) and the 2 more specials and 2 more series to come. doctor who is Going Places and id much rather those places be cheesy pronoun stuff than have bigots around the dw community.

if you read all that, you just wasted your time. also i love you

#ori is between meds

[tedturneriscrazy]

And here we are with Yesterday's Lie, the season 2A finale!

Wow, this came up quick, huh?

Anyways...

What are you doing with all that, not-Luz?

(Also, cute photo of younger Luz. She had hair!)

That musical cue when not-Luz adjusted her hair was rather unnerving

Judging by Camila's reaction to that box being set out, she wasn't lying when she said she loved Luz's creativity

Freeing the rabbit from the trap did a lot to establish more of Camila's character. I'm glad we're finally getting more of her.

OH SHIT REAL LUZ IN THE MIRROR

"Are you sure this isn't gonna blow our faces off?" "Nope!"

That's a rather eclectic collection of ingredients for the door

I wonder if Amity also provided the abomination head

Group hug❤

There's the trailer shot

You only appear in reflections, huh? Interesting...

Jeez, Luz, priorities!

(Oh who am I kidding, the fact she's still thinking about her girlfriend is adorable)

I do love it when her accent comes through

Whoops, looks like wherever this is the magic of the Isles doesn't reach

Previously unmentioned dad whose face is obscured in the photo

GASP

Spider-Man moment

Oh, voice change in not-Luz!

Classic "I ain't goin' back, man!" moment

Also, it's beta Luz's bat!

"Monster Slayer Academia" I'm not entirely sure that doesn't actually exist...

"I will never understand anime..."😂😂😂

Oh, true form time!

Vee's gonna be a fan favorite, isn't she? (I ask, full well knowing the answer)

I mean, I've already seen plenty of Luca x Owl House fan art, so I imagine that may intensify

Luz seems to be quite understanding all things considered. I suppose all the people in the "Doppelganger isn't evil, actually" camp have been vindicated.

Oh, Eda

I don't think I like that camera...

So Gravesfield, Connecticut, huh?

Welp, there's a statue of a man that's probably Philip Wittebane

Oh, partially transformed Vee is gonna be irresistible to fanartists

Witch obsessed guy? Pamphlets? Hmm...

Wait, MARILYN?! As in Stan's ex?!

(I know she wasn't actually since the two shows don't take place in the same universe, but no way that nod wasn't deliberate)

"She tried to pay for a latte with a live raccoon" Eda I'm saying this in the nicest way possible: What the fuck

Those rats...buh

"BREAD OF WISDOM GRANTS US SPEECH! WE DESIRE MORE!"

Can't say I don't relate to Vee wrt confrontation

Luz has definitely had some...previous experiences with other kids. Creepy talking rats? Yes. Human high schoolers? No thank you.

Oh, fellow campers! Luz isn't the only one who had off-screen experiences.

That reading seemed...ominous

Right...contacts...

Side note: seems like that camp doesn't stomp out weirdness as thoroughly as previously speculated

Oh shit it's Sonic the Hedgehog! I mean Warden Wrath! I mean Roger Craig Smith!

I saw someone take issue with how Vee reacted to Luz running away to the Demon Realm, but considering her past experience and trauma, her reaction is understandable

Belos I don't care how much of a foxy grandpa you are, you fucking suck

"Skin's sure weird!"

She took the day off work to drive "Luz" to camp I just😭

Whether you think camp was a bad idea or not, Camila's a good mom

Oh dear, Sonic is a conspiracy bro

I guess we know who set up that camera. And the traps.

Oh, seems Eda didn't have elixir with her on one of her trips to the human realm...

"After watching a few Mew-tube videos I learned the truth!" Yup he's a conspiracy bro. Goddamnit, Sonic!

(I can rag on Sonic the Hedgehog all I want, I've been into the games since the Genesis days, well before most of y'all were even born)

Luz having a "BOI" moment

This guy definitely watches Alex Jones. Props to the TOH crew for teaching a new generation about these conspiracy creeps.

Vee is accustomed to a life on the run, but apparently not with Luz's determination and quick thinking.

Also, all this talk about being "outed?" Yeah I'm definitely seeing the trans allegory everyone's talking about.

Now Luz turns to the one person who can help

That "boop"❤ (Now we know where Luz gets it from)

Camila not believing all the Demon Realm stuff. Shocked. SHOCKED, I say.

Well shit, Camila's been a veterinarian all this time! Don't we all have egg on our faces!

It would explain how Luz is so good with animals

Sonic the Curator sure is something, huh

The scary thing is that there are people like him in real life. Worse, even.

Okay, I know this is a dire situation, but I am enamored with Camila's mom energy here. She's adorable.

Dude with a ponytail and cardinal on his shoulder to send the theorists in a tizzy. It'll be interesting to see how this all eventually comes together.

I just realized that that's a training wand on the table

And now Camila realizes this is no game

Further props to the TOH crew for making the antagonist of the episode a crackpot white dude. This is correct.

Yup, further trans allegory. Plus a nice example of a supportive-if-not-quite-understanding-everything parent.

And there's Camila going ham on a motherfucker. Turns out there was no lie in the "Two Truths and a Lie!" Rather, the lie was that there was a lie in the first place...My brain hurts.

Oh, she can appear in the rain. That's cool!

Now is time for Real Sad Hours

The way Camila is reacting...god...it hurts...

"Is this the only way I can touch you?" STOP😢

"Staying here was the best decision I ever made!" Uh oh...

That promise is totally not gonna come back up later in the most tragic, gutwrenching way possible. Nope. Nuh uh. No way that'll happen.

Dammit, Luz, not more lies! Oh, right. The episode title.

Her face really says it all.

Well, it wasn't quite the continuous pain train we convinced ourselves it was gonna be, but that ending? Ow. I'm glad Vee has the support she needs, but my heart hurts for the Nocedas. I really hope they can resolve the issues they clearly still have, because damn.

And now we get to chew on all that for the next however many months! Hooray! I knew I said I was ready for a hiatus, but it turns out I'm a big fat liar, because I'm not! Augh!

Well, I'll try to look on the bright side: At least my sleep schedule can normalize again? Also I can cancel my Sling subscription once 6-10 drop on D+. Neither DisneyNow nor Sling are optimal VOD experiences.

#the owl house #luz noceda #camila noceda #toh vee #vee noceda #idk i've seen other people use that for her #toh season 2 spoilers #toh s2 spoilers #the owl house s2 spoilers #the owl house season 2 spoilers #toh spoilers #the owl house spoilers

[mellometal]

HEY.

I haven't been able to keep up on the whole Dhar Mann lore as of current day, and I'm sorry, BUT FUCK THAT PIECE OF SHIT RIGHT NOW. He's not important at the moment. There's someone else who I really need to discuss. You probably know who this person is if you're in the Sonic fandom.

A few questions for anyone who's new to this person:

1. Do you know who Chris Chan is?

2. If so, what are your thoughts on Chris?

3. Does the character Sonichu ring any bells? If not, here's an official picture of him below:

For anyone who has never heard about Chris Chan, I don't have time to go into the whole lore here because it's not important. You can jump down the CWC rabbit hole on your own. There are MANY documentaries on this person. I recommend Geno Samuel's docuseries on Chris Chan, if you want to know EVERYTHING about this person so far and you're committed to the task.

To sum up Chris Chan in a few words, she's an autistic trans woman who created Sonichu and dealt with a shit load of trolls. Her parents (her late father and elderly mother) have enabled their own child her whole life.

I'm thoroughly disgusted by this person and I don't fucking respect her whatsoever. The ONLY amount of respect I'm bothering to give her AT ALL is using the correct pronouns for Chris when referring to her. That's IT.

Obligatory trigger warning (I am DEAD SERIOUS here, so please listen):

This post will be going into sensitive subject matter such as r@p3, s3xual assault, elder abuse, inc3$t, and Chris Chan ADMITTING TO (ALLEGEDLY) HARMING HER OWN MOTHER. (There will be videos linked in this post if you want to watch them. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.)

If any of those subjects is triggering for you in ANY WAY, or they just flat-out make you uncomfortable, please don't feel like you're obligated to read this post. I understand that these subjects are extremely sensitive, and I'm going to try my hardest to talk about these subjects in the most respectful manner possible. I don't want to bring back any trauma you or someone you know may have. That's the last thing I would ever want to do. Put your mental health and well-being first. Again, like I say with every post that talks about sensitive subject matter that may be triggering or uncomfortable for people, consume media that sparks joy for you.

Any resources that you or someone you know may need will be in this post too. Some countries might not even have resources for things like this locally, but I will try my best to find them.

United States:

Canada:

Latin America:

South America:

ALL European countries:

ALL of Africa:

ALL of the Middle East:

ALL of Asia:

Australia:

New Zealand:

Anyone who's still here, let's get on with the subject of this post, which are the current events in Chris Chan's life.

Recently, Chris Chan has admitted to (allegedly) s3xually assaulting Barbara, her elderly mother. There is audio that was leaked yesterday of her admitting to this very (alleged) action.

One of the phone calls that was leaked is below. This is that full phone call:

Here's a video with the segments where Chris admitted to (allegedly) s3xually assaulting Barbara (WARNING: THE THUMBNAIL IS GROSS):

As of now, Barbara is currently in the hospital for a mental wellness check to see if she's lucid. She's also there for a r@p3 test to see if there was any penetration.

Chris was detained (most likely to be questioned), then released. Her initial plans were to stay with her aunt and uncle, who live near where she and her mother live. Those plans fell through, as apparently they rejected Chris. She's not allowed to have any contact with her mother, or be at the house until August 5th. Their pets are currently left unattended in the house....I don't know who's going to be taking care of the animals with nobody there. I don't know where Chris will be staying for the next few days. That hasn't been disclosed to the public, as far as I've been able to do research on these current events.

I cannot say that Chris has actually COMMITTED THIS CRIME until the test results come in for Barbara, Chris is tried in court, Chris gets a prison sentence, and Barbara is put into a nursing home. That's why I said she (Chris) admitted to ALLEGEDLY committing this crime.

Incest between a mother and son (that's how the crime was written, please forgive me) in the state of Virginia is a Class 5 felony. Class 5 felonies are considered "wobblers", as they can be deemed felonies or misdemeanors, depending on the circumstances. If deemed a felony, Chris could face from one to up to ten years in prison. If deemed a misdemeanor, Chris could face up to twelve months in prison. Because Chris is on disability, they might go easier on her. On the flip side, because of Barbara's age, they might go harder on Chris.

If Barbara happened to be lucid during those events, the charges above would apply. If she wasn't lucid at all and was confused, shit would get VERY serious for Chris.

I also can't exactly say if the phone call is even real; however, there's evidence of Chris admitting to having a fetish for old people, including her own mother. According to a person Chris is friends with, she's had dreams about having s3x with her mother. I also am not sure if Chris is confusing herself with having s3x with fucking MEWTWO, if she was coerced into lying, or if she's hiding something else and decided to say this to cover her own ass. Did I mention she's married to some of her own characters (Magi-Chan, Cryzel, and Sylvana) AND Mewtwo from Pokémon? THAT'S TRUE. YOU CAN LOOK THAT UP IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME.

Why do I say that Barbara needs to be in a nursing home? BECAUSE CHRIS OBVIOUSLY ISN'T FIT TO TAKE CARE OF HER OWN MOTHER. I'D LIKE HER MOM TO BE SAFE WITH PEOPLE WHO CAN ACTUALLY TAKE CARE OF HER.

This whole situation is disgusting and it makes me sick to my stomach. Chris Chan is a MONSTER. I hope Barbara's okay. I know she's not a very good person either (welp, birds of a feather flock together), but I do have sympathy for the elderly and what happened to her is unforgivable.

Some other YouTubers who have talked about this are Gibi and Rogue The Internet Man, as far as I know for now.

#Youtube #mello speaks #chris chan #tw r@pe #tw elder abuse #tw inc*st #tw sex assault #this situation is disgusting #anti chris chan #fuck cwc #i hope barbara's okay #as an autistic woman we don't claim chris chan #tw dhar mann mention #tw chris chan

[cerysdelaney]

Hello! This is Sugar! Wanted to let you know I think you are an amazing writer and I believe in you! I had a quick question for you tho, how/when did you know this was what you wanted to do?

Sending you love!!💚💚💚

Short answer: This has been a long and broken path. Wanting something and making it happen was a series of false starts and self reflection.

But I have always loved storytelling. So here’s my long answer:

I started making OCs for my favorite shows since I can remember. They were all originally self inserts with powers or alterations. To name a few, I had a best friend to Sonic, a sixth Power Ranger, and an immortal being of the Force that helps Luke on his journey. There were so many.

My first fanfic was in Harry Potter, and… well… I don’t know if anyone remembers Fanfiction.Net and it’s toxicity level in the 90s… (who knows, maybe it’s never changed?) But my tiny little 12-year-old-written self-insert was eaten alive and spit out to die slowly. I had like 12 views, no likes, and 3 comments of vile cruelty.

So then I only wrote for my friends. I created a multiverse combining OCs from Dragonball Z to Star Wars… Gundam Wing to Harry Potter… Xanth to Xena and Hercules. I made their descendants, lore, etc. But it was all for my friends’ eyes alone.

In high school, I went to Creative Writing summer camps (which I later became a camp counselor in… Ah, summer jobs…). In college, one of my majors was English with an emphasis on Creative Writing. But I did realize I had another calling by then too. One that was a bit more stable. And, honestly, Creative Writing courses killed my drive to write. I was looked down on for aspiring to be a “genre writer.” And it’s crazy to think I listened to them, but I did… except once…

In my senior year of college, for my last story, I wrote about Lucifer’s fall from the perspective of the fallen angel himself. It was inspired by John Milton’s Paradise Lost (which I had taken an entire course on) and my own battle with my faith, Catholicism. I had been an active member in the church, but in college I finally let myself explore parts of me I didn’t before. I had sex. I let myself finally acknowledge that I wasn’t straight. I had more sex with everyone. I dated guys and girls, non binary and trans. And I became an outsider to the world I once knew. All that taken into perspective, I felt for a character who used to be so close to God’s right hand, and then loses his position because of choices that didn’t fall in line with the teachings. So I wrote from my heart in a tale as old as patriarchy.

And no one in class made a goddamn negative critique.

I don’t know how many of you out there have ever taken a creative writing class, but I still can’t put into words how shocking it was to not receive even a single red note. Not even that pretentious jackass who was already published in multiple online magazines had any comment for improvement. Instead, what was supposed to be a fifteen minute round robin of commentary became an hour long conversation about how jarringly relatable Satan is as a protagonist. Some were grappling with God as a tyrant. Others enjoyed the juxtaposition of Jesus and Satan. It was awesome. It was fun. It was everything I wished a my entire four years had been: talking about ideas.

But then I didn’t get a single call back from any graduate schools when I decided to use that piece and genre fiction in my portfolio. So I focused instead on the job I did get that does the other thing I love.

And I stopped writing.

Fast forward almost ten years. I’m now married, career secure, and looking to have a baby. I haven’t grappled with the fact that I love sex but have married an asexual man who I love beyond words. I’m also going into heat. (That’s a more honest way to describe the “ticking clock” everyone talks about as you near your 30s and then get into it. Holy hell ovulation is a hungry beast).

I needed an outlet, and it couldn’t be private. I was already too private. At the same time as I’m grappling with this, a friend introduced me to this deliciously dark character of Gaster in Undertale, and I just… started writing.

I created an AO3 account under the name Dark Crystal Demon and I let myself write whatever I wanted to write. I wrote rape by plants and ghosts. I wrote about women with dicks. Myself with a dick. I wrote about BDSM and Master/Pet play and It. Felt. So. Good.

I feel alive writing whatever I want because I can’t be whatever I want in real life. I honestly can’t. I’m highly respected in my career, but that all goes away if I reveal an account like this. I want to keep the career I have. So welcome to my secret den of dreams and nightmares. I’m very good at decorating closets I find myself hiding in.

I didn’t plan on writing for others, but my love for pleasuring others has definitely intermingled with my love for writing erotic content. Most of the time I write for me, but there are a few of you in my DMs who know when I’m writing for you ^_~ I can’t help but tease you. I adore you so.

Teasing friends made me realize I like world building around people’s desires. So that’s when I started taking commissions. But balancing family, career, and writing has been difficult these last five years. You all who have been with me for a while have seen my giant hiatuses in fanfics, etc.

During this pandemic I realized I wanted to finally give writing it’s chance. Instead of taking another career-advancing task, I decided to stay where I am in my job. So for the first time in a very long time, I can finally use my free time for my hobby and not extra work. (Can I just say, making a calendar for when I’m going to work on different fics, commissions, Master Classes, and erotic articles is exhilarating.)

So here I am. Told you it was a long story. Communities in writing are just like relationships, some are abusive and treat you poorly. I got lucky and found one that has let me be me. That’s why, when I tell you all I appreciate your support, it’s coming from the center of my soul. Thank you for letting me be me, especially you, Sugar. You are a very cherished supporter. 💜

#ask #sugar #Cerys talks #path in writing #long ramble #writing advice #write for yourself and your people will find you #at least that’s my experience #thank you for your support

[secret-kkh-fics]

History Repeats | Chapter 15

Due to this not being posted anywhere else yet, please like but DON’T REBLOG my fics.

Chapter Summary:

Once again in Van Statten’s underground bunker, Rose must make a terrible decision when she comes face to face with the Dalek once more. How will she be able to stop the massive slaughter ahead?

Dalek

The Lone Dalek

“What’s that, then?!” the Doctor said in surprise. He was leaning in, squinting at the console screen in confusion. There was a persistent beeping sound, almost like a warning.

“What is it?” Rose asked him, attempting to look too. As usual, she couldn’t understand a thing, since the writing was all in Gallifreyan, but the screen was flashing red. “That doesn’t look good, yeah?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should take a look.” Immediately, he began to race around the console, hitting buttons and flicking switches. Pausing with one hand on a lever, he looked up at her curiously. “What do you think it is?”

She looked back up at the screen. “Um… I don’t know. It’s not a problem with the TARDIS, is it?”

“No, it’s from outside,” he told her.

“Some sort of distress signal?” she guessed.

“Could be. Let’s find out.” As he spoke, the TARDIS gave one final lurch, and they landed. He took one last look at the screen before instantly headed for the door and she followed him out.

“So, what is it? What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is it a distress signal?”

“I don’t know, but it’s certainly some kind of signal, drawing the TARDIS off course…”

He began to look about, and Rose’s stomach lurched as she did the same. She knew this place. It was Van Statten’s Museum. Oh god, the Dalek. She didn’t know if she was ready for this. She didn’t know if she was ready to face a Dalek again. Or if she could even stop the devastation this one Dalek caused.

She felt sick.

“What is this place?” she asked, despite the nausea. “Where are we?”

“Earth, Utah, North America. About half a mile underground.”

“Right, underground base. Not ominous at all,” she muttered. “And when are we?”

“2012.”

“That’s so close,” she said. “That’s… what, only seven years away? I should be…” She tried to do the maths in her head. She was twenty-three, so it would make her 30. No! No, she was nineteen! Biological time. Why was her age so confusing now? “Twenty-six.”

Still looking around as she spoke, the Doctor found a light switch and turned it on, flooding the halls with light and illuminating the sick, alien museum. Many glass cabinets were spaced throughout the enormous room.

“Blimey, this place is huge!” she exclaimed. “Look at this stuff. Is that alien?”

“Yeah. A big old alien museum. Someone’s got a hobby.” They began to walk down the row, looking in the cases. “They must’ve spent a fortune on this. Chunks of meteorite, moon dust… That’s the milometer from the Rosewell Spaceship.”

“Look! That’s a Slitheen arm!” she cried, pointing it out. “That’s from a Raxocorocofalipatorian! Look at it, it’s been stuffed! How on earth did they even get it? Do you think it’s from when we bombed Downing Street?”

“Most likely,” the Doctor said. Then something else grabbed his attention and he quickly approached the case. “Oh, look at you!” he said to it.

Rose followed him over, staying a step behind him as she looked at the case he was. Inside was the head of a Cyberman. Her heart began to beat rapidly in fear as she gazed at it. This had been the first place she had ever seen a Cyberman. At the time, she could never fully comprehend just how terrible they were. Looking at it, it almost looked a little silly. The design was different to they Cybermen she knew. The head rounder and skinnier, the ‘handles’ on the side were thicker and ribbed. It didn’t look as aggressive and intimidating as the ones from the other dimension, but she knew that they were probably just as deadly.

“I don’t like that thing…” she found herself saying.

“Mmm, with good reason,” he said quietly. “This is an old friend of mine… Well, enemy. The stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit. I’m getting old.”

“Well, yeah. That kind of happens when you’re 900 years old and jump about time willy-nilly.”

“Oi! I’m actually still pretty young for my species, thank you very much. Time Lords can live for thousands and thousands of years! Well, if they’re carful, which most of them are… were.”

Sensing his mood dropping as he thought of his people, Rose went with her favourite tactic of distraction. “So, where do you think the signal is coming from?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, still staring at the Cyberman head. “Everything here looks like it’s well and truly dead. The signal’s alive. Something’s reaching out… Calling for help.” He gently reached up, and before Rose could say anything to caution him, he tapped the glass.

Instantly, alarms went off and men with guns ran into the room so fast she’s surprised they hadn’t come in earlier simply from just hearing them talk. There were at least a dozen of them, and within a few seconds, they were completely surrounded, guns pointing directly at them.

“If someone’s collecting aliens, that makes you Exhibit A,” she commented. The Doctor just gave them a tight-lipped smile as if to say ‘oops’. Rose frowned. “No, really. I don’t trust this place. Might be a good idea to not let them know…”

Knowing what Van Statten was like, knowing what he was doing to that Dalek as they spoke, she could just imagine what he would do if he ever found out that the Doctor was alien when they weren’t in the middle of a crisis. She could practically see the Doctor strapped to an angled, upright table, his shirt stripped off and writhing in pain as they tortured and experimented on him.

Again, she felt so worried that it made her feel sick. She wanted out of this place as soon as possible. Taking the Doctor’s hand, the attempted to calm herself, telling her self that she was over reacting and imagining things. The Doctor would be fine. He was last time.

She just had to deal with the Dalek, and everything would be okay.

Everything was okay.

One of the armed men grabbed a radio and spoke to someone. “Sir, we have two intruders on Level Sub 53. One male, one female. They look like civilians, but we’re not sure how they got down here undetected. Can’t see anything on them.”

After a moment’s pause, the radio made a static sound as a reply came through. “Alright, check them. I’ll make sure the boss is informed.”

“Yes, Sir.” He turned to a couple of the other men. “Search them.”

The two men came over to them, instructing them to hold their hands over their head and began to pat them down. Rose was reluctant to let go of the Doctor’s hand, but complied. She would be worried that they would find the alien tech that the Doctor carried on him, like the sonic screwdriver and more, but this had happened enough times in her past that she knew by now that anything in his trans-dimensional pockets wouldn’t be felt or picked up on any scans. The only thing they found in Rose’s pockets was her phone, which, after a brief glance at her messages, was handed back to her.

“People still have these?” the man who’d grabbed it asked, staring at it like it was an old relic.

“I miss those things,” another guy commented. “Trusty old phones, like bricks. I used to have a Noikia, my wife accidentally backed over it with the car. Perfectly fine! These days you drop your phone on the ground and it’s unusable!”

“I got my dad a new phone,” someone else said. “Fell out of his back pocket into the toilet. Won’t work anymore and he’s sitting there wondering why.”

“Humans,” the Doctor sighed quietly. “Make something better and you’re still not happy with it. Still, that’s how you evolve.”

Rose smirked, but her attention was diverted by someone’s radio going off.

“Attention all personnel. Bad Wolf One, descending. Bad Wolf One, descending.”

“What’s that, then?” she asked. “What’s Bad Wolf?”

“It’s one of our choppers,” the man replied. “The big boss’s chopper. He’s just arrived. He’s the one who’s going to decide what to do with you.”

“Right… and he named his helicopter after a fairytale?” She knew that they were her words, and she realised that she was probably the one to put the words in his head, but it was Van Statten, and she felt that wanker deserved all the teasing he could get.

“I wouldn’t make light of him, if I were you,” the man warned her. “He’s got a short temper. I heard that when he fires people, he has their memories erased and just leaves them out on the street in a random place around the country, and they’re just left there with nothing and no clue who they are.”

“Charming,” the Doctor grumbled sarcastically.

“Palmer, come in,” a voice crackled through the radio, cutting off any more conversation.

“Palmer here,” the man in charge answered.

“Bring the intruders to Mr Van Statten’s office. He wants to see them.”

“Yes, sir.” He looked up at them. “Right you two, follow us. And no funny business.”

“Funny business? Me?” the Doctor said innocently. Rose could only grin and shake her head.

 Silently, they were led from the museum and into a lift, only a couple of the guards with them now. The lift went up ten or so floors before they were led out, down the corridor. Van Statten’s PA met them outside and escorted them into the lavish office. On the back wall was a large painting of Van Statten, she instantly recognised the style of a famous contemporary painter but couldn’t for the life of her put a name to the artist. It was clearly a recreation of one of the lady’s most famous paintings. And sitting at his desk in front of the gaudy, self-gratuitous painting was the man himself, taking an alien artefact from Adam.

“…Paid $800,000 for it,” he was saying.

“What does it do?” Van Statten asked, taking it from him.

“W-well, you see, the tubes on the side must be to channel something. I think maybe fuel-”

“I really wouldn’t hold it like that,” the Doctor said, cutting him off.

“Shut it,” the PA commanded harshly.

“Really, though. That’s wrong,” he continued.

“Is it dangerous?” Adam asked.

“No. Just looks silly.” He leaned forward to put his hand out for the item, but paused when they heard the sound of multiple guns cocking. Van Statten held up a and to stay them, then cautiously handed it over. The Doctor looked pleased as he lay it out flat on his palm and brought his other hand up to stroke the top. “You just need to be…” As he ran his fingers over it, it lit up and sounds came from it, like someone running their finger around a wine glass. “…delicate.”

Everyone looked impressed by his talent, and he just looked smug.

“Oh, that’s beautiful,” Rose said. “Can I…?”

Before anyone could protest, the Doctor handed it over to her. She hadn’t gotten the chance to play one quite like this, but the Doctor had taken her somewhere where she’d played something similar. With the most gentle of touches, she ran her fingers over the top, going through the scales. And then she began to play a tune. It was an easy, beautiful tune. One that she had heard almost every day for years. The song of the TARDIS. Even when she was no longer with them, the song stayed in her heart and she would often wake up in the morning with the tune dancing through her head.

She was so engrossed in playing the instrument, she didn’t see the Doctor’s brow furrow.

“It’s a musical instrument!” Van Statten said in wonder.

The Doctor nodded. “And it’s a long way from home.”

“Here, let me,” he said. He held out his hand and Rose handed the instrument back, trying to hide a pout of disappointment. Unfortunately, it was his.

She wondered if she could convince the Doctor to come back for it for her.

They watched as he took the instrument and odd, static-like sounds came out as he pressed too hard.

“I did say ‘delicate’,” the Doctor told him. “It reacts to the smallest fingerprint. It needs precision.” Van Statten listened to the Doctor’s advice and soon a few ringing notes came from it. “Very good,” he congratulated him. “Quite the expert.”

“As are you.” He suddenly callously tossed the instrument behind him and all eyes followed it as it clattered to the ground. Rose could tell by the look in the Doctor’s eyes that this was the exact moment he decided he did not like this man. “Who exactly are you?”

“I’m the Doctor. And who are you?”

“Like you don’t know,” Van Statten snarked. “We’re hidden away with the most valuable collection of extra-terrestrial artefacts in the world and you just stumbled in by mistake.

“Pretty much sums me up, yeah.”

“You’d be surprised by how often it happens,” Rose put in.

“Question is, how did you get in?” He walked around the desk, so he was standing closer to them. “53 floors down with your little cat burglar accomplice.” He leered down at her and Rose scowled. “Quite the collector yourself, she’s rather pretty.”

“She has a name, you know,” she snapped at him. “It’s Rose, and she’s gonna slap you if you don’t use it.”

“Ooh, and she’s spunky too. I like her. Hey, little Lord Fauntleroy, we might have found you a little English girlfriend.”

“Yeah, no thanks,” she muttered, shooting a glare at Adam. The Doctor looked between them with raised eyebrows, looking highly amused.

“Ah, this is Mr Henry Van Statten,” Adam introduced the smug man.

“What, and he can’t introduce himself?” she snarked. “And who’s he when he’s at home anyway? Other than some smug, rich twat with a hobby as weird as stamp collecting?”

Adam frowned in surprise at her comment, but soldiered on regardless. “Mr Van Statten owns the internet.”

“Oh, I see… That would be impressive if that was how the internet actually worked. No one can own the internet.”

“And let’s just keep the whole world thinking that way, right kids?” Van Statten said. Rose just rolled her eyes.

“So, you’re an expert on just about everything except the things in your museum,” the Doctor observed. “Anything you don’t understand, you lock up.”

“And you claim greater knowledge?”

“I don’t need to make claims, I know how good I am.”

“And yet, I captured you,” Van Statten said smugly. “Right next to the Cage. What were you doing down there?”

“You tell me.”

“The cage contains my one living specimen.”

“And what’s that?”

“Like you don’t know.”

“Show me”

“You wanna see it?”

The exchange was so quick, each man rapidly coming back with their reply in a way that reminded Rose of men showing off their toys.

“Blimey, just whip them out and measure them already!” she huffed jokingly.

“Rose!” the Doctor said, aghast.

“What, we both know you’d win,” she said to him with a smirk. “He’s clearly compensating for something.” This drew a small guffaw from the Doctor and Van Statten glared at her. Oh, she had hit the nail on the head.

“Goddard, inform the cage. We’re heading down,” Van Statten said to his assistant. He turned to Adam. “You, English. Look after the girl. Canoodle or spoon or whatever it is you British do.”

“No, thanks!”

“And you, doctor with no name…” He nodded towards the lift. “Come and see my pet.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Rose said. “I’m going with him.”

“Nope. You’re staying up here. I don’t just let anyone see my pet, and he’s the expert. So, the mouthy teen stays here.”

“Aww, but you said you liked me,” she pouted teasingly as they walked out the door.

The Doctor grinned, enjoying it probably more than he should. “Behave, you.”

“Never.”

He shot her one last brilliant grin before he turned and climbed into the elevator with the others, leaving just her and Adam in the room. She turned to face him expectantly, and for a moment, Adam just stood there, awkwardly hitting a fist into the palm of his hand. The expression he wore was clearly one of someone who had no clue what to do or say.

“Blimey, you’re a clever one, aren’t ya?”

“Oh, thank you!” he said, brightening up.

“That was sarcasm, Mate. Come on, you’re babysitting me. What are we going to do for entertainment?”

“I… Um, how-how about I show you my workroom?” he asked. “It’s no museum or Metaltron, but there’s some pretty cool things in there.”

“Metaltron?”

“It’s what Mr Van Statten has called his living specimen. See, no one knows what it is, and since we can’t get it to communicate we have no way of knowing. The alien seems to be a living creature, but it’s encased in this large, metal structure. So… Metaltron.”

“Ah, I see,” she said, trying not to laugh imagining a Dalek’s reaction to being called a Metaltron.

“Anyway, it’s ah… this way.” He led her out of the office into the hall, and into another elevator, making a belated introduction and small talk. They went down a few floors, along another few corridors, and finally into his small, cluttered workspace. “Sorry about the mess,” he said. “Mr Van Statten sort of lets me do my own thing, so long as I deliver the goods…”

Rose looked about the space, taking in all the objects around the room. She was quite pleased to find that she recognised a lot of them or could at least roughly identify what most of them were. She could also see quite a few objects she was sure were from Earth, and even something she knew was from the 51st century. She wasn’t sure if it fell through a rift, or if it had been dropped by a Time Agent, but she knew exactly what it was… and she should probably get it out of the hands of this greedy, arrogant git.

“What do you think this is?”

His voice caught her attention, and she turned around to see him holding something out to her. As she took it off him, she could see it in his eyes. That look that was practically begging her to ask him what it was so he could explain his ‘amazing’ theories to her and show off just how smart he was. She remembered how last time, even though she hadn’t had a clue what half of this stuff was, she had still played ignorant so he could show off. It was something she had sometimes done with the Doctor, just so she could listen to the sound of his voice and see how excited he got while explaining things. She had wanted to see Adam get that excited and passionate about something he clearly loved. But this time, she knew better. She knew what he was really like, and she had later realised that he had been rather condescending to her, just because she wasn’t ‘smart’. Well, she wasn’t going to let that happen again.

“Hmm….” She studied the chunk of metal carefully. “It’s porous, which would make it lighter than it would be if it where solid… Naturally occurring. But it’s been shaped. These bits are clearly broken and torn,” she traced her fingers around the edges, “but this part is smoothed flat, like it’s been worked. It’s an odd metal… definitely not from Earth. The colour is off from anything we have, and the pattern in the metal is an effect we’ve only seen on meteorites. Actually, there isn’t a metal like this in our entire galaxy, so it’s from somewhere beyond the Milky Way. It’s undoubtedly from a spacecraft of some kind, but I’m not sure which bit. The lightness of the material would definitely be good for flight, but probably not sturdy enough for the hull.”

“You-you don’t think it’s from a hull of a spacecraft?” he asked, baffled.

“No. Spacecraft, definitely. Hull… probably not. Then again… if they crashed, might be why.” She gently placed it back down on his desk.

“Oh.” He seemed quite put out, not only that he hadn’t been able to explain what it was, but also that she seemed to know more than he had about it. It brought a small smile to her lips. “You, ah… you seem to know a lot about… well, this stuff. Usually I have to try and convince people that aliens are real and that I’m not just a crazy person.”

“Are you kidding me?” she said. “After everything that happened back home? Aliens crashing into Big Ben, the Christmas spaceship, Cybermen and Daleks in the streets?!” She wondered if he would pick up on the memory of the Daleks and realise what it was Van Statten was hiding down in his basement, but he didn’t react at all. Still, that was all six or seven years ago for him, there had to be something more recent he would remember. Oh! It was 2012! “Everyone disappearing into thin air at the Olympics?!”

“In Bejing?”

“No, the London Olympics!”

“…Th-the Olympics haven’t happened yet. They’re a few months away.”

“Right. Right, yeah. They are, aren’t they. Still, how could you not know about all these things?!”

“Seems America missed the memo,” he said, rolling his eyes. “They didn’t get a lot of what we did back home. And they thought the Cybermen were a big practical joke, like a flashmob or terrorist group or something. I was actually on a plane to Japan for a foreign exchange programme. Totally missed it… But I was there that first Christmas, that one with the spaceship. One moment there’s aliens on TV, the next I’m waking up, standing on the edge of the roof with my mum and no idea how we got there.” Rose nodded. “What about you? Where were you that Christmas?”

“Oh, I was on the ship. So was the Doctor. He fought single combat to get them to leave Earth and won.”

“I… wow. Okay. Are-are you and he…”

“Yep,” she replied, nodding enthusiastically.

She knew what he was asking. If they were involved. And they may not be yet, but they hopefully would be in the future. And she was most definitely emotionally involved with him. And she was going to stop that boy’s train of thought right there.

He was obviously perplexed by this idea and a little put out to have his attempts of possible flirting shut down. She just continued to glance around the room.

“So, how did you end up here anyway? Doing a job like this?”

“Van Statten has agents all over the world looking for geniuses to recruit.”

“Oh, okay. So, you’re a genius?”

“Sorry, but yeah. Can’t help it. I was born clever.”

See. Smug, arrogant, condescending git. The Doctor was incredibly intelligent, but he didn’t rub it in everyone’s faces quite like that. It made her want to knock him down a peg.

“Why does a genius have a hairdryer in with a crate of guns?”

“What?”

“That one,” she said, pointing to the device that very clearly was not a gun. “I’m pretty sure that one’s a hairdryer.”

His brow furrowed. “How can you tell?”

She went over and pulled the crate out, grabbing it for a closer inspection. “Well, for one thing, this is a switch, not a trigger. These dials here are for temperature and pressure. And both sides are covered with vents and grates… It’s clearly not meant to have something fired out of it, and wants to prevent anything getting in. Plus, it just… generally looks like a hairdryer…”

“Oh.” Being shown up was making him at a loss for words, and Rose was loving it. She enjoyed watching as he looked about, practically searching for a way to try and one-up her. “You wanted to be down there looking at the alien with your doctor friend, right? Well, if you’re a genius, it doesn’t take long to patch in on the comms system.”

Trying not to roll her eyes, Rose smiled and relented. “Oh, alright then. Let’s have a look.” She came around to stand beside him at the desk, watching over his shoulder as he tapped at the keys and hacked into the camera down in the ‘cage’.

“To be honest, it doesn’t really do much. The alien. It’s weird. It’s kind of… useless. It’s just like this… great big pepper pot.”

The feed flicked up and despite herself, Rose felt herself tense up at the sight on the screen. In the middle of the room, chained up, was a Dalek. Just one regular Dalek. The first she had ever seen. Back then, she had been so naïve and had no kind of clue what creature Van Statten had imprisoned in his basement. But now she did. She had seen the horrors they had caused. The people this one would kill if she let it out. The billions of people they had killed over the course of 90 years on Satellite Five. Canary Wharf…

She despised this thing for what it was. For the things she knew it would do.

It could stay down there and rot for all she cared.

She didn’t care that that horrible man was torturing it. She didn’t. It deserved it. It deserved whatever was happening to it for all the pain it had and would cause. She didn’t care. She didn’t. It deserved it. It did…

It-it could rot here forever for all she cared… She wasn’t going near it this time.

Suddenly, she was no longer in Adam’s workroom. She was down in the cage, looking at the Dalek as time passed rapidly around her. She watched as days and months of torture was inflicted upon it. She watched as Van Statten shouted at it, demanding it talk to him and be a good pet. She watched as it screamed in agony, its hatred for mankind growing even stronger than it had already been. She watched as it bided its time. As a terrible storm raged, destroying the levels above ground and sending a powerful lightning strike right down through the bunker’s electrical system, giving the Dalek enough of a boost to recharge its systems and heal itself. It wasn’t perfect, still damaged and broken from years’ worth of torture and experiments, but its gun worked, and it was strong enough to break free. She watched as the Dalek moved its way through the bunker, killing everyone in sight. As it found its way up to the surface and out into the world. She watched as it made its way across Utah, across South Western America, killing billions before the military were able to bring it down with a nuke. So much of America decimated, the land radiated and uninhabitable for decades to come. All because of one brutal creature. All because she didn’t show it the compassion and mercy she should would almost anything else.

Rose gasped as she came back to herself, leaning heavily on the desk, her eyes fixed on the screen.

“We have to go!” she gasped. “We have to get down there!”

“We’re not supposed to-”

“They’re torturing it! I don’t care if it’s a Dalek or not! It’s wrong and we have to stop it!”

“Wait, that’s a Dalek?!” he cried as she ran from the room.

  “Hold it right there!” a guard said firmly as Rose charged into the room, Adam jogging in after her, trying to keep up.

“Level three access,” he panted, flashing his ID. “Special clearance from Mr Van Statten.”

He walked past her and led her into the cage. On their way, they passed Simmons. After seeing the possible timeline where he spent years upon years torturing that Dalek, she felt herself fill with rage, and before she could stop herself, she lashed out and slapped him.

“Fucking sadistic tosser!” she hissed at him. Immediately, every guard in the room was up in arms, heading towards her with their guns drawn. Thankfully, they were stayed by Adam, who held up his hand to stop them. He looked at Rose questioningly, his expression almost screaming for her to apologise. Instead, she just looked back at Simmons. “You’re worse than that creature in there,” she told him. And then she turned and pushed past Adam into the cage.

“What was all that about?” he asked as the door closed.

“I don’t condone torture,” she said shortly. “No matter how vial the victim is.”

Adam wisely said nothing, and she turned around to face the Dalek. Her heart pounded in fear, her mind racing with all the times she had gone up against them. What she knew they could do. What she knew this one would and could do. Still, she faced the chained creature and smiled sympathetically. It really looked roughed up, many of it’s domes crushed in and one of its panels pryed open. Thick chains surrounded it, keeping it teathered to four posts.

“Hello,” she said. “Are you alright? Are you in pain?” The Dalek just stared at her. She had no idea what it was feeling, with its unexpressive casing, or if it was even feeling anything at all. “My name’s Rose. Rose Tyler. I’m going to help you. Okay? My friend and I, we’re going to help you.”

“YES,” it said.

“Good. Then let’s get you out.”

“Rose, I don’t think-”

“YES… I AM IN PAIN,” the Dalek cut Adam off. “THEY TORTURED ME. BUT THEY STILL FEAR ME. DO YOU FEAR ME?”

Hesitantly, she looked it up and down, then shook her head. “Not right now.”

The Dalek lowered its eyestalk pathetically, really putting on a show. “I AM DYING.”

It almost made her laugh. Last time she met this Dalek, she had no idea what it was, nor how dangerous it was. It had played innocent and she had lapped it up in her naivety. She never realised just how much the Dalek was putting it on.

“No, don’t be silly,” she said playing along. “We can help.”

“I WELCOME DEATH. BUT I AM GLAD… THAT BEFORE I DIE… I MET A HUMAN WHO WAS NOT AFRAID…”

It was at this point, that Rose could no longer hold in her laughter. Adam balked at her reaction, too stunned to know what to do as she doubled over.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m sorry,” she said, gasping for air. “I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”

“I don’t get it…” Adam said, looking entirely lost. It was clear it was something he didn’t like feeling.

“It was just putting on the ‘poor little me’ act so strong, I couldn’t keep a straight face,” she said with a grin. Then she turned back to the Dalek. “I’m not like these other humans. I know what you are. I know what your species has done. What you do. I know that your lot commits genocide everywhere you go because you think you’re superior. But I have seen all of your existence before. I’ve wiped you from existence before. Daleks are monsters… but you don’t deserve this. Nothing deserves this. So, I’m going to get you out of here.” She began looking about for some controls or some way to let it out. “My friend and I will take you somewhere you can’t hurt anyone. Somewhere you can build a life and do… whatever it is Daleks do when they aren’t planning or committing invasions and genocide.”

“THAT IS MY PURPOSE!”

“Yeah, well, not anymore. You know there’s no more Daleks left, right? Not anywhere else in the universe!” She wasn’t entirely sure if it was true, but she knew that the Doctor had once been utterly convinced of it. “You don’t have any higher authority. You have no objective. And no weaponry. But you have your life. So, I suggest you take it.” When she couldn’t see any controls nearby, she walked over to one of the pillars chaining it up and started looking over it. “Okay, how do I get you out of here…?” She tug on the chains, looking about for a lock or some kind of release switch. “Adam, can you do something? I can’t touch it, or it will be able to repair itself, including its weapons and probably go on a killing spree.”

“Rose, I don’t think this is such a good id-”

“What do you think you’re doing?” The door burst open, and the horrible torturer guy rushed in, glaring at her.

“Getting this Dalek away from you!” she growled. “It might be one of the most instinctively evil creatures I know of, but it still deserves better than what you’ve done to it!”

“Get away from there!” he ordered her, stalking over to her in a few strides and grabbing her wrist away from the chains.

“Let go of me!” she hissed, trying to pull away from him. She tugged as hard as she could, and he let her go, sending her flying backwards… right into the Dalek. She could feel the cool metal under her hand heat up to the point of burning, and she jumped back, looking at it in panic. “Shit!”

“GENETIC MATERIAL EXTRAPOLATED,”  it said. “INITIATE CELLULAR RECONSTRUCTION!”

Right before them, the Dalek began to repair itself, gaining strength enough to burst out of the chains like it was no more than silly string, sparks flying around the room, making Rose scoot back as far as she could until she hit Adam’s legs. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet, eyes still glued to the Dalek.

“What the hell have you done?!” the horrible guy cried.

“That was your fault!” She shouted back. “I said I couldn’t let it touch me! Now everyone is in danger, you fucking moron!”

The Dalek moved over to the man, its plunger extended out threateningly.

The man scoffed. “Watcha gonna go? Sucker me to death?” In the next instant, the plunger shot out, encompassing the man’s nose and mouth, almost sucking it in and the sounds of the man’s muffled screams and crunching bones filled the room. Rose couldn’t even bring herself to pretend he deserved that fate.

She grabbed Adam by the arm and pulled him out of the room. “It’s killing him!” she shouted at the men in the outer room. “Do something!” Someone immediately closed and locked the door behind her and Adam, and she rushed over to the man at the intercom.

“Condition red!” he called into it. “Repeat, condition red! This is not a drill!”

“What’s happening, Bywater?” Van Statten responded.

“Metaltron has broken loose. It’s killed Simmons.”

“Do whatever you can to keep it contained, we’ll video through soon.”

Rose paced anxiously as the Bywater began hurriedly tapping and keys and flicking switches. It was minutes later that the video flickered to life and she heard the Doctor’s voice, making her rush to the screen.

“You’ve got to keep it in that cell,” he ordered.

“I’m sorry, Doctor. It was my fault. I didn’t mean to touch it, but he pushed me and I fell on it. And then it said it was absorbing genetic something or other and then it was breaking loose!”

“Rose, it’s fine. That wasn’t your fault,” he assured her. “What’s important is making sure that thing doesn’t get out.”

“I’ve sealed the compartment,” Bywater said, sliding up beside her. “It can’t get out. That lock’s got a billion combinations.”

“The Dalek’s a genius. It can calculate a thousand billion combinations in one second flat.”

A quick glance at the screen showed them that the Dalek was on its way over to the entry pad and she turned back to the screen.

“Van Staten, you need to evacuate this base, right now! Get everyone out!” she told him firmly.

“She’s right,” the Doctor said.

Van Staten shook his head. “We need all essential manpower to keep it contained.”

“God damn it, you can do that without everyone here!” she shouted. “That thing is going to kill everyone! No amount of ‘manpower’ is going to stop it. It’s gonna cut through everyone like butter! If you don’t evacuate now, they are all going to die.”

Van Sataten just snorted. “I think my men can handle it.”

“No, they can’t. I’ve seen these creatures almost completely domninate many species – including you humans - countless times throughout history. My own people didn’t even truly beat them, and by the end of the war, we were experts in killing Daleks!”

“This facility is-”

“Van Staten,” she cut over top of him. “What are you going to do? Listen to the advice of some who’s battled these deadly things and actually knows what they’re talking about, or  are you going to put billions of people in danger because you’re a spoilt, rich manchild who can’t tell an alien blaster from a hairdryer and don’t want to admit how dangerous your precious little alien ‘toys’ are? No? Didn’t think so. So shut the fuck up and evacuate this entire damn base right now!”

Van Staten stared at her, offended and dumbfounded, while the Doctor full on beamed at her and Van Staten’s assistant attempted to hide a snigger.

At that moment, though, the Dalek found the right code and the door opened. The milliary personel lined up to shoot and she scooted back to the exit with them.

“Open fire!” Bywater commanded. Together, he and the woman who went with them last time began shooting at the Dalek.

“Alright! Alright! Get everyone out!” they heard Van Staten order. “Just don’t shoot it!”

“Everyone, come on!” she called to them.

“Rose, get out of there!” the Doctor told her.

“Don’t bother trying to hold it off, it won’t work! Just run, damn it!” She grabbed the two soldiers by the sleeves, tugging them with her.

“De Maggio, make sure that the civilians get out alive. That’s your job, got that?”

De Maggio nodded. “You two, make sure you stick with me!”

Right then, a voice came over the speakers. ‘Emergency evacuation – please exit the base! Emergency evacuation – please exit the base!’ The halls began to fill with the sound of footsteps as people made their way to the nearest exit.

Rose smiled even as the power failed around them and the alarm stopped. Because this time as she ran, several people ran along to safety beside her.

Chapter Index  |  First Chapter  |  << Previous Chapter  |  Next Chapter >>

#history repeats #doctor who

[stillnotfromcanada]

X-Bastards part 5

Quentin learned a few things from doing karaoke with a group of misfit teenagers.

First, Enrique and Eden could both be lead vocals for a metal band. Eden could scream and Enrique knew how to death growl.

Second, Sonya wasn’t just frog in appearance. She could jump, which became apparent when she got too into it and ended up accidentally jumping into the ceiling, and crashing to the floor.

Lastly, Emerald had a sonic scream that blew out the speakers. Quentin had to pay for damages by the end of their session.

Quentin opened the door to his, Benjamin, and Nathaniel’s apartment. His family was waiting for him.

“So, how was it?,” Benjamin asked.

“Yeah, “Professor,” how was it?,” Nathaniel asked, more teasingly.

Quentin plopped onto the chair neighboring the couch. He put his head in his hands and groaned.

“How can someone so pink know how to death growl?”

That is how Quentin learned about Kawaii Metal.

The next day was the arcade. Each kid had their own game they were good at. Emerald got the high score in DanceDanceRevolution. Dominic got the high score in skiiball. Eden was good at shooting aliens, ironically enough. Enrique got a stuffed animal from the claw machine on their first try.

Enrique moved on to the pinball machine. Quentin approached.

“Bet you $10 that you can’t do that again.”

“Do what?” Enrique was barely paying attention to him.

“Whatever you did with the claw machine.”

“Why?”

“I want to see how you do it.”

Enrique was quiet.

“After this.”

“Take your time.”

Quentin came home, proudly holding a cheap stuffed animal. Quentin propped it upon the mantle, beaming.

“Look at what my student won me!”

Next day was a different bubble tea shop.

“How’s yours?” Quentin tried to make conversation.

“It’s good,” Enrique said, a bit hesitantly.

Enrique did not trust Quentin. It was conflicting. They knew they should be able to, but there was something glaringly wrong. They just couldn’t figure it out.

Next to them, Emerald was lunging at Eden.

“Gimme some of yours,” Emerald demanded from Eden.

Eden gave it to her without hesitation, picking up hers in the process. He drank from hers.

“Mine’s better.” Eden hated the popping boba, it got stuck in his teeth.

“You’re right, yours is better. Gimme it.”

“What? No. Give it back.” Eden reached over.

He could have easily overpowered her. He had 7 inches of height over her. But he was surprisingly soft on her, despite being raised in a society that praised violence. He relented, reaching for Dominic’s drink.

“Give me yours.”

“You’re not gonna like it, man. It’s grass jelly, a real acquired taste. It’s gross, but strangely addictive.”

Grabbing it from Dominic, Eden took a sip.

“Blegh!” Eden reached for Sonya’s.

“It’s taro. Do you even like taro?” Sonya was pretty chill with sharing. After all, she basically had to share everything with Dominic. The little shit.

Eden took a sip and hated it. Who mixes grape jelly with taro?!

Eden looked over at Enrique, then at Quentin. Eden wanted to fight for his drink. Quentin could be a fun fight.

“Mr. Quentin. Give me your drink.”

“Sure, buddy! Here ya go!” Quentin took the drink out of Eden’s claws and replaced it with his.

Eden was a bit stunned. All his life he heard horror stories about this Quentin Quire character being heartless and powerful. What happened?

“So, Mr. Quentin, what’ve you been doing these past years? No one’s heard from you since you lost the Phoenix Force.” Emerald kicked her feet against the wall.

The air went cold. It was heavy with the tone change.

“How do you know that?” Quentin’s demeanor changed from friendly to frightened.

“I read files when I’m bored. You been good?” Emerald was oblivious to how her question hurt him.

Quentin’s mood changed to a bittersweet feeling.

“After she left me for Rachel, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Benji, he let me stay with him and Nathaniel. Obviously, I had to pull my weight. Their house was filthy! Thanks to me, it’s presentable. Their lives would fall apart without me,” Quentin bragged.

“So you’re,” Emerald was a bit confused. “A househusband?”

“Yep!,” Quentin said proudly.

“And you’re fulfilled?,” Emerald probed.

“I never thought I’d be able to survive past the Phoenix, so, yeah. I’m happy, finally.”

“Good for you, man,” Dominic said.

“Hmm.” Emerald bit her lip in thought. “Whatever makes you happy, Mr. Quentin. Hell of a 180, though.”

“More of 175, honestly,” Quentin joked. “Old me would’ve been repulsed by what I am now. But fuck him, he’s a prick.”

“You’re different now. You’re not the fighter everyone told me you were.” Eden looked so disappointed.

“Isn’t it great? I’m so fucking happy! Like your dad didn’t change when he had you. Life changes you, kiddo.”

“How was my dad before me?”

“Oh boy! Angry, impulsive, pompous, arrogant, violent. A real dickhead. A royal douche. But when he got you, he shoved you in everyone’s face, he cradled you in his arms constantly. He loves you, buddy”

Eden loved his father. Kubark was his hero. He was the reason Eden felt comfortable coming out as trans. He could be exactly like his dad, a man adored by his people, strong, and brave.

Eden was always close to his father. A single dad raising his son in the monarchy. A monarchy that didn’t want him. A monarchy that called him an abomination undeserving of the throne. The empire threw a fit when Eden was crowned prince. It was no longer a game. The failed experiment was going to rule them all some day.

Eden had survived assassination attempts, coming out, and learning how to fight in a world full of violence. His father was always there for him. He knew his father loved him.

“I know.”

#quentin quire #i ams serious comic book man #my ocs #writtenbybitchhands #x bastards #emerald #eden #sonya #enrique #dominic

[coyoteeugly]

♥ What’s the WORST thing that has happened to you rp wise?

hough strap in for some transphobia, boys. it’s gonna be rough.

I’m not gonna name anyone bc fuck witchhunts I don’t want to be involved in anything I’m too tired. Even if I do think what this person did was deplorable being involved in drama makes me physically sick. I really hate conflict I’m sorry. 

Don’t take my lack of action as an ok though, you know who you are if this is about you. If you see this, you really gotta not do this ever again to anyone.

The worst thing that I went through was probably the time someone used rp as an open excuse to force their fetishes on me, send me nudes and fetishize me as a trans man. Going so far as to make changes to my muses without asking just so they could get off to a muse of mine being a trans man and having sex – but instead calling them a c*ntboy. so.. Y  EA H,,

It costs 0 dollars and 0 cents to not fetishize trans people, it’s really easy. If you got questions on what words are and aren’t okay I’m always down to help people out and put to rest any ignorant ideas that were there just bc of not understanding. But I do not dig having someone use the fuckin word c*ntboy esp when the only reason they wanted to make my character trans was so they could fuck and literally nothing else. 

I really hate it when people are like “i headcanon them trans uwu but here let me only draw them in porn like that and never mention this headcanon any other time or expand upon the experience of a trans man / trans woman”

This kinda thing runs rampant in the O.verwatch community ( though that’s not the fandom this happened in surprisingly it was the Sonic one lmao rip ) I’ve noticed and that’s really why I stay tf away from it. I don’t mind if someone headcanons characters as trans (in fact I 100% dig it) but not if the only reason they want to is so they can get off. I don’t care if the character fucks or whatever just please for the love of god don’t only make them trans so you can get off. 

If you want to make a character trans, whether it be a canon character or an oc, ask yourself why. Is it because you want to offer representation, is it because you want to get off, is it because you want to make fun of trans people, is it because you want to explore that experience through a character? 

            * munday salt meme.    /    accepting.

#hi I went off woops #I'm really on one this week I'm one big angry #tw: transphobia mention #tw: slur #⟨ OUT OF CHARACTER ⟩ ; « ʰᵉʸ ᶰᵒʷ˒ ᴵ'ᵐ ᵒᶠᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜˡᵒᶜᵏ ˢᵒˑˑˑ » #⟨ ASKS ⟩ ; « ᵈᶤʳᵉᶜᵗ ᵒʳᵈᵉʳˢ »

[beardycarrot]

This post is way too long so ignore it and just keep scrolling

Alright. Having played both Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces, I can now say, based on my own experiences... that Sonic Forces is a smoldering garbage heap.

First off, let me get this out of the way: the character creation system is... okay. In the screenshot above, you can see My Original Character,  Blonic  Eiko the Cat. You have several different anthropomorphic animal species to choose from, each of which has their own species-specific ability. Birds can double-jump, cats hold on to a few rings even after taking heavy damage, that kind of thing. There’s a selection of three head types for each species, about a dozen eyes, and can set two skin/fur/scale/feather colors. Not bad.

For the game’s main selling point, though, it feels a little weak... especially in comparison to the last game I played, South Park: The Fractured But Whole. In addition to your character’s physical appearance, which meshes perfectly with the South Park style, you can set your character’s gender (male/female/non-binary/multi-gender), whether they’re cis or trans, both their race and ethnicity, their sexual preferences, religion, all sorts of stuff that are pointless in the context of the game but let you make your character whatever you want them to be. I’m not saying that all games should have this, but I did just play that game, so I can’t help but compare Sonic Forces to it since the character creator is meant to be one of the game’s big gimmick.

Anyway. In addition to your character’s body, you also get to dress them up with outfits you unlock as you play. I guess this is a cool concept, with you getting between three and twelve costume pieces every level depending on how well you do and whether anything you did in a level completed a special objective... but it’s annoying constantly being pelted with costumes you’ll never wear. I was a mixture of fortunate and unfortunate in the fact that clothes I like (a tactical outfit in black and olive green) were unlocked within the first couple levels, so I could wear an outfit I like throughout the game... but it also meant that I never had any reason to change out for new gear or experiment with costumes that would only be less appealing to me.

There’s also the jarring fact that with clothing on, your character looks completely out of place. Most of the other characters in the game wear nothing but white gloves and sneakers, and seeing you alongside them just makes them look naked. I’ve spent way too long talking about customization. Moving on...

...You can also customize your avatar’s weapon, which I guess is the power of the Wisp aliens from Sonic Colors stored in a gun? There are probably advantages to all of them, but you spend less than half of the game playing as your avatar, every enemy in the game dies in one hit, and the fire weapon I started with can clear a screen of enemies in literally two seconds... so I never really bothered with them. You also occasionally find Wisps locked in capsules, but the game never actually gives you a real tutorial for them. It’s possible that it was explained in a hint marker, but it’s possible to take a route through a level or jump at just the wrong moment that you miss the marker and can’t go back to see what it said. I eventually figured it out in level twenty-five, which is right at the end of the game... and that level also happens to be a great example of why I don’t like this game.

I know that as a still frame this is kinda incomprehensible, but what you’re looking at is a little vertical shaft kind of thing. There have been shafts like this elsewhere in the game, but they’ve always been things you either just dropped down through or rode an elevator in or had platforms to jump on. Here?

This game apparently has a wall-jumping mechanic, which only appears here, in the twenty-fifth of thirty levels. I’m completely fine with video games using mechanics sparingly or even basing levels around a gimmick that never appears again... but this is the only time in the game that this happens, and the mechanic isn’t even implemented very well. If you’re too close to the wall it will sometimes fail to activate, if you press the jump button again too soon you won’t cling to the wall, and sometimes your series of jumps will have you end up jumping over the wall to the left instead of going right... which is an issue considering that for the second half of the level, you have to do this while trying to outrun a giant instant death laser. Assuming you can even get to that point.

I can’t tell you how long I was stuck here. To the left is a checkpoint, and all you can do is collect what looks like an electric Wisp in a capsule, then... wait to the blue death laser to kill you and put you back at the check point. The dark red boxes are breakable, and you’re clearly meant to either get down through this shaft to continue... but there’s no obvious way to do this. I thought that you were supposed to use the electric Wisp somehow, but I guess you can only do that if you have the right Wisp weapon equipped, as the game only seems to care when I collect capsules with fire Wisps in them.

I was eventually forced to watch a video of someone playing this level, and they just kind of... broke through all the boxes at once. After further research, I discovered that if you press the Crouch button (which I’ve never pressed up to this point and forgot existed) while in the air, you’ll do a stomp move that the game never bothered to teach me.

Once you’re past that, the next section is incredibly difficult... I figured out how to use the encapsulated fire Wisps (it’s the “Wisp Special” button that I’d previously been unable to figure out the function of) to skip over the obstacles, but if you don’t time/aim it properly, you’re back down in the area where you have to deal with the wall jumps that occasionally send you careening backwards.

I know that I’m just complaining about one difficult end-game level, but the entire game is like this. It’s all either gameplay mechanics the game doesn’t explain properly that are prone to failing, or levels that are way too short and simplistic. I haven’t even touched on the jumping mechanics... Want to know how many times I died replaying that level to get those screenshots?

A couple of those are from the laser section, but it’s mostly falling into bottomless pits because you’re pretty strongly locked into your jump trajectory when playing as Your Own Character, and the platform placement in that level sucks. It’s not as big of a deal when playing as Sonic; I think Classic Sonic has free control in the air, and you only play as him in two or three levels, while Modern Sonic’s levels are so completely filled with enemies and jump pads that you can just spam the jump button to string homing attacks through anything that isn’t a speed section. Places where the gameplay becomes frustrating aren’t as common as in other games I’ve played recently (L.A. Noire comes to mind), but that’s because the majority of the levels are ridiculously simplistic and easy, and when you reach the end without anything really happening you’re just like...

Which brings me, finally, to the worst part of the game: the story. This is among the worst video game writing I have ever seen... and as someone who does a lot of art for indie, amateur, and fan games, I’ve seen a lot of scripts from “idea guys” who’ve never taken any kind of literature or creative writing classes.

The basic premise of the story sounds interesting, and seems like a huge departure from the normal Sonic formula: Dr. Eggman and his new associate Infinite use the powers of all the major antagonists from past games to kill Sonic and take over the world. The remaining characters of the Sonic universe form a resistance movement (the forces in Sonic Forces) to fight back, and half a year later Your Own Character joins up after their home city is destroyed.

Damn, man! That’s pretty dark! Unfortunately, it completely fails to deliver. Unsurprisingly, Sonic isn’t dead... but he HAS been held prisoner and tortured for the last six months. Despite that, he’s in high spirits and joking with his captors... yeah I dunno, just bad writing ...and manages to escape when the resistance attacks the base and temporarily disables the power grid. Why Sonic was in a Laser Prison and wearing Laser Handcuffs that require uninterrupted power to operate is just more bad writing, as is the fact that he was being held on a space station and you’re never shown how the resistance got up there.

More importantly, it’s never explained how the resistance discovered that Sonic was still alive. There are other captives in the same area, so THEY would know he’s alive, but there’s never any indication that one of them managed to escape. Speaking of which, they’re all still imprisoned after Sonic breaks free, and I think the space station ends up destroyed... so those guys are probably all dead. That reminds me of another point: most of the levels just end at a random arbitrary point. You ostensibly have a goal that you’re trying to reach, but the goal markers are always, like, in the middle of a hallway, which looks no different from anywhere else, and there’s no cutscene showing what happens what the characters do after reaching their goal... the level just kinda ends.

Most of the game’s dialogue and exposition is in the form of radio conversations that occur on the map screen, which I can’t help but admit makes sense: media too often forces characters to be in the same place for scenes to occur, when logically they would’ve just spoken on the phone. The issue I have with this is that it really does make up the bulk of the game’s dialogue, and none of the conversations are ever that interesting. Honestly, more than anything it reminds me of the kind of story you’d see in a free-to-play mobile game... except there isn’t really any kind of story being told, just information being relayed. There isn’t any kind of character development, since the game expects you to already know who everyone is and what their paper-thin personalities are.

After Eggman spends six months taking over Literally The Entire World, and the resistance apparently does very little to stop this, Your Own Character joins up and things start happening instantly. They rescue Sonic, then Classic Sonic appears out of nowhere to save Tails from Chaos, the creature from Sonic Adventure. I guess they included him (Classic Sonic, that is; after this cutscene, Chaos is never seen again) to trick people into thinking that this game would be similar to the much more popular Sonic Generations. I think the plot of that game involved time travel, accounting for the two Sonics, but here they’ve retconned him as “the Sonic from another universe”.

Speaking of time travel and alternate dimensions, Silver and Blaze are in this game... I’m no big Sonic fan (in fact, Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces, both of which I played this week, were the first Sonic games I’ve ever beaten), but them being part of the resistance is kinda inexplicable. To my knowledge, Blaze is from an alternate dimension, but in Sonic ‘06 was somehow Silver’s partner or something in the post-apocalyptic future. In the end, I think Sonic saving the day included the elimination of the timeline in which Silver existed... so I’m not really sure what’s up with Silver and Blaze being in this game. Are they now retconned to just being normal people who live in the same place as everyone else?

I’m also really confused on how this game fits in with the rest of the series. Infinite’s power is to create autonomous physical virtual reality projections, and he uses it to create his own versions of the Chaos, Zavok, Metal Sonic, and Shadow... so in addition to being in continuity with Sonic Generations and Sonic Colors (the game the Wisps are from), you also have to include the Sonic Adventure games and Sonic Lost World. Again, I’m no expert on Sonic, but... I’m pretty sure at least a few of these games feature planets populated with humans, and not the hordes of bipedal animals that make up the only characters in this game. Is there just no official continuity at this point?

As an aside... every character you see in scenes like this are made with the character creator, but for some reason they’ve limited themselves to a very small number of models instead of just using a bunch of different random colors and other features. See that bluish-purple dog at the front? If you look closely, you can see five or six identical dogs in the background, all doing the same animation where they raise their guns up in the air.

I’ve gotten REALLY off-topic, which is basically a war crime with how long this post is already. Anyway, as I was saying before I derailed myself, once Your Own Character joins the resistance things happen super fast. Sonic is alive, Classic Sonic appears out of nowhere and punches the Chaos clone (which is subsequently never seen again, despite Infinite being able to create an infinite number of them), and Eggman for whatever reason reveals that his ultimate plan will be complete in just three days. I’m not really clear on what this plan is, but it involves a virtual reality projection of the sun... I don’t know, Majora’s Mask-ing the planet and killing everyone, maybe? Again, bad writing.

Sonic faces off against Infinite and, despite the player winning the boss fight, gets his $#!+ kicked in... and that’s when Infinite says, and this is an actual, verbatim quote, “You’re not even worth the effort to finish off”. I think I might actively hate the writers of this game. I feel like I should probably also mention that the boss fight takes place on the back of a giant snake that’s just kinda floating there, suspended in mid-air, above a forest that is also a casino?

It’s at this point that Infinite drops a prototype version of the Phantom Ruby, which is what gives him his powers. How did he fail to notice that he’d dropped something the size of a softball? How was he even carrying it? WHY was he carrying it, when the finished perfected ruby was already embedded in his chest and he’d been using it for over six months? If you expect these questions to have answers, well, that bold text in the last paragraph must’ve caught your eye and you’re just now at this point starting to read the post. Hello, welcome! The writing in this game is absolutely abysmal!

Your Own Character picks up the prototype ruby and holds onto it for the next three days... well, except for when they drop it while Infinite is looking right at them after a boss fight, and he doesn’t notice ...and at the end of the game, uses it to somehow get rid of the virtual reality sun. How do they know that the ruby is and how to use it? No idea. How do they get rid of the sun? Happens off-screen. Then, further confusing matters vis-a-vis whether the prototype ruby is invisible to bad guys, Eggman acts as if he saw it... despite it breaking and disappearing before he arrives. Weird.

Alright, backtracking a bit, I need to touch on the stupidest plot point in the game: the Phantom Zone. Well, I think it’s called Null Space or something, Eggman calls it “a little something the Phantom Ruby cooked up”, whatever that means... but it’s basically the Phantom Zone. A pocket dimension that supposedly contains literally nothing. Eggman opens up a portal into it, Your Own Character tries to save Sonic from it, and they’re both pulled in... man, that’s a scary concept, isn’t it? Being trapped in an empty void?

If a regular prison held Sonic for six months, and he only got out with help from the outside, then I can’t even imagine how long this will-- haha just kidding it’s twenty seconds this game was written by chimps.

Apparently “completely empty” means “filled with blocks you can run on”, and Sonic manages to get out... by double-boosting. There are a handful of levels where you play as both Sonic and Your Own Character at the same time (the “you’re next to me and I’m next to you” in the Hoobastank song you hear in that video), allowing you to use the Wisp weapons while also using Sonic’s super speed. You’ll also be prompted to “double boost” at set points, which consists of the characters jumping in the air, fist-bumping, and then... holding hands and somehow running even faster, I guess? I’m not at all clear on how this works, or how it broke them out of Null Space.

I’d be totally okay (bored, but okay) with the prototype ruby being responsible for them escaping, but that’s not how it’s presented: they’re meant to have escaped through the power of friendship and running really, really fast. I mean, I can come up with a reason it works, gimme a minute... uh... virtual reality... pocket dimension... gotta go fast.... gotta go faster faster faster faster faster... aha! Maybe it’s an empty, infinite void because it’s being created as you move through it, but the double boost allows them to move faster than it can be created, allowing them to break free? Yeah, that’s dumb but plausible in-universe. Too bad the writers made literally no attempt to explain it.

After that, it’s time for the big showdown with Infinite, the game’s hot new antagonist. Who is he, why does he hate Sonic, why is he working with Eggman? What kind of awesome boss battle will you have against him? Not explained, not explained, not explained, and it’s just a slight variation of the boss fight you have with Metal Sonic earlier in the game. You DO get an explanation of who he is if you play Episode Shadow, free DLC consisting of three levels that you played in the base game that serves as a kind of prequel. All of your juicy Infinite-related questions are answered: he’s a nameless mercenary who went all emo because Sonic beat him up. Oh. Well. That’s... lame.

This post is already over three thousand words, so I’ll wrap it up. After your boring rehashed boss battle with Infinite, he just kinda... runs away, never to be seen again, and you have to contend with Eggman and his giant robots. It’s not very interesting. Once the day is saved, you get this completely inane exchange between the characters, which in most games would be the worst bit of writing... here, it might be in the top five. Knuckles says that the fight is over, everyone can go home, there’s no longer a need for the resistance... but then Amy (or someone) says, “no, we’re just getting started!”, and Knuckles nods in agreement as if she didn’t just directly contradict him. As if two characters doing this isn’t bad enough, Tails then does the exact same thing all by himself, saying something like, “we won, the resistance is done, now we have to come together to save the world!” I think he also says something about just one person not being able to change the world, which I’m pretty sure runs contrary to a “one person CAN make a difference!” message the game had been going for earlier.

And... that’s about it. I have nothing more to say. This game is bad, anyone who defends it is lying to themselves, and it’s entirely possible that I’ve spent more time writing this unfocused rambling post than I did actually playing the game. I’m not a Sonic hater; the playground politics surrounding video games in the early nineties didn’t exist where I grew up, so to me Sonic has always just kinda been that series with the interesting music that I had no particular interest in playing. As I mentioned, I played through Sonic Mania at the same time as I was playing Forces, and loved it. It’s a bit on the hard side for someone who’s never played a Sonic game, but aside from a few annoying bits in Hydrocity and Oil Ocean, it’s a blast all the way through. That’s a great game... and Sonic Forces, in my opinion, is decidedly not.

Back in 2017 I made a post about the Metascore for Sonic Forces, and received backlash for it. I decided to wait until as many critics as possible had reviewed the game, and... never really felt like doing the update, so didn’t get around to it until now. So, how much of a difference does a year make in the review score?

Oh wow, it’s like I knew what I was talking about or something. Well, kinda. At the time I said that Sonic Forces didn’t seem like a bad game, based on what I’d seen of it. Having played the game for myself... I think my opinion is known.

#sonic forces #long post #very long post #extremely long post

[maevefiction]

Your Light in the Mist - Chapter 46

A little over an hour later, pleased I’d remembered that Tom and I needed to remove our rings before opening the room door, I was being escorted to the Hokulea Suite by Simon the Loud and Annoying, my hair still dripping wet, dressed in cut off sweat-shorts and my X-files T-shirt. He was gifting me the details of all the fun he’d had last night with Anne, gushing over her wit and demanding that we all head to New Orleans for Mardi Gras 2017 because he needed her to show him her favorite haunts IN PERSON or he’d never forgive himself or me until my stomach rumbled and I felt a rush of saliva in my mouth, wrinkling my nose at the queasiness that followed.

“We need to detour, dude. Bridezilla requires nourishment prior to prettification.”

He huffed, rolling his eyes. “Really? Really? It’s already after one, and…”

I crossed my arms. “And…what? And you want me to dry heave my way through the vows?”

“Ewwww…Maude. So gross.”

“Whatever. Stress plus hunger is not a good combo for me, apparently. Not going to make the same mistake as yesterday. We’ll still have three hours or something, and if that’s not enough, you can just find me a veil somewhere and I’ll wear it all evening long. Problem solved, am I right?”

“Well, since I am, frankly, rather fearful of what will become of me if I dissent, oh yes, right you are.”

“Mmm hmm. And about that whole Mardi Gras business…have you forgotten that you’ll have two screaming, squalling, pooping machines in your midst by then? Sounds like a less than Ideal experience to me, especially the trans-Atlantic flight part.”

His hands flew up to cover his mouth briefly, then extended open, palms out, to either side of his face. “OH MY GOD YOU’RE RIGHT BABIIIEEEESSSSSS…” He inhaled, then exhaled deeply. “So you really don’t think we can just, you know, bring them with us?”

Shrugging, I took him by the arm and began walking toward the lounge. “Truthfully, I have no fucking idea, and though you obviously have vastly more experience in this department than I do, I’m reasonably sure that’s listed under ‘Super Mega Dumbass Scenarios’ in the parenting handbook.”

He stopped short, and when I turned to him the expression on his face was a mixture of jubilation and pure terror. “When Roland was a baby, I was working so much that Lisa handled…well, everything, essentially. Now I’m going to, like, BE LISA, and the question is, CAN I be Lisa? And with double the poop machines?”

I wrapped my arms around him, kissing each cheek in turn. “You don’t need to be anyone but you, Simon. Because you’re amazing, and you know what? If anyone can pull off bringing two infants across the ocean to do Mardi Gras with Anne Rice, it’s you.”

He squeezed me tightly. “Thank you, Nice Maude.”

“You’re welcome. But if we do end up going, you should know that I am absolutely, positively taking a different flight.”

Snorting, he let go of me and took two steps backward, waving. “Au revoir, Nice Maude.”

I was still snickering as we entered the lounge, wherein I voraciously inhaled two waffles laden with raspberry syrup and whipped cream, two scrambled eggs, four pieces of bacon, a toasted everything bagel with butter, half a melon, a tall glass of orange juice and two cups of Kona coffee, which, after trying it the very first time, I knew I never wanted to live without. A giant blech escaped me as I rose from the table, which struck Simon as so hilariously funny that I wound up sitting back down to wait for him to get a grip, and just as he was able to quasi-communicate it happened again, and then we both completely lost our shit. Those moments are some of life’s best, when the most ordinary thing suddenly becomes a source of incapacitating amusement, and when it turns infectious…even better.

It was going on two-thirty when we finally arrived at the Hokulea Suite, and I could hear the faint thumping bass of what I immediately recognized as Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ through the door. Veronica was a huge fan, attending every show she could manage, occasionally discussing her dream to somehow find herself as the Lady’s stylist, even if only for a single day. And in this particular instance, ‘occasionally’ meant every time one of Gaga’s songs came on. I couldn’t see Veronica when we first entered, but I could hear her singing, so as Simon headed one way toward his dressing area I followed the sonic trail and discovered her behind one of the far screens working on Anne’s makeup. The sight of Anne high up in the director’s chair, hair hidden beneath a shower cap, body wrapped in a black plastic cape and her bare feet tapping on the tiny rest made me smile widely. She’d been through so much in her own life, yet here she was, still going, still enjoying, still loving, still…living. I felt a pang of regret that I’d shut her out for so long…despite all our differences and disagreements, she was the closest thing to an actual mother I’d ever had. If it weren’t for her encouragement and support, I might have never started my own business, and if that hadn’t happened, my path and Tom’s might never have crossed. I blinked, noticing that both Anne and Veronica were staring at me. Anne reached out to pat my upper arm.

“Love ya, kiddo. Thanks for letting me be a part of all this…I always prayed you’d find someone who’d lift you up and…”

I interrupted her sentence with an embrace so strong I was afraid I might crush her. “Thank you for that. I did. He does. I love you too.”

She chuckled, and as I pulled back the smirk on her face alerted me to what was coming next. “Maude Gallagher, has my sense of hearing failed me or did you just thank me for praying?’

I pointed my index finger first at her, then at Veronica. “Never speak of this again, either of you.” I paused for dramatic effect. “So, anyway…where would you have me go, fine friend and Chief Beautification Enforcer?”

Veronica snorted. “To your designated private but not really private at all temporary staging area. I’ll be done with this one’s makeup in a few minutes, then I’ll come get to work on you. Everyone else is done…well, not me, but that won’t take long.”

“Because you’re naturally gorgeous.”

She smiled. “Born This Way.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’d quote a meaningful Gaga lyric back at you but the only thing that comes to mind right now is p-p-p-p poker face and that always makes me think of poke HER face and…yeah. I’m gonna walk away now. Bye.”

The director’s chair taunted me, all tall and spindly, begging me to climb in so it could tip itself over and dump my ass out onto the ground. If I were a director, I’d demand something leather and cushy with wheels so my personal assistant could push me around the set. Sighing, I checked the mechanisms responsible for holding it open, making sure they were on the up-and-up before I slipped off my Birkis and clambered aboard. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, though I forced myself to remain as still as possible, just in case. A few minutes later Veronica arrived, Telephone now cranking at an unreasonable volume. I removed my T-shirt so she could cape-drape me, and while she worked on my eyelids I nodded off for a few seconds. The short spell was broken by her sternly warning me that if she had to start the process all over again because I’d been up late doing god knows what she’d make me look like one of the Kardashian sisters and that was the end of Maude’s Naptime Session. After makeup came hair, which was going to be all drawn up in a large bun that rested just above the nape of my neck, enclosed in a silver wire cage that was fastened in place with six large silver bobby pins. I couldn’t actually see anything other than the components as they came together, though, because Veronica insisted that I wait until I was fully dressed before looking at myself in the mirror. I managed to remove myself from the chair without incident after Veronica took off my cape, and then followed her instructions to strip down the rest of the way. We’d discussed underwear previously, deciding that a thong would be best, so I’d put a white silk one on this morning, not giving a single thought to the fact that my ass might bear bruises that were unmistakably the marks left by grabbing hands. I let my shorts fall to the floor, hoping there was nothing to see, but her snort as she looked my way after hanging the cape on its hook caused me to instantaneously abandon said hope.

“Well, well, well…you WERE up late doing god knows what, weren’t you?” She drew closer for a better look, emitted a low whistle, and I could feel my cheeks flush. “Honey, your man has some huge hands on him. Oy, I feel like I should cross myself or something for where my mind went next. Anyway. Let’s hope they don’t show through the fabric.”

“Oh my GOD do you really think…” I craned my neck in order to see her face, saw a wide smirk upon it, and realized that she was totally fucking with me. “Dude. Not cool. NOT. COOL.”

She grinned. “I know. I also know I should be sorry, but I’m not. Take that bra off while I get your gown out of its bag, please and thank you.”

My phone chirped, and I bent down to fish it out of the left front pocket of my shorts. It chirped three more times before I stood up and unlocked it, and for a moment my heart fluttered, wondering if another bout of ugliness awaited me. Thankfully, what I found were four messages from Melanie.

The Big Day is finally here! – Melanie

Everything is in place and just as it should be. Two videos to follow. See you soon! – Melanie

The first was of the ceremony site, white chairs on either side of the purple carpet facing the ocean and the arbor. We didn’t want an arch so we’d chosen a more minimalist, almost Oriental-style construct. It was rectangular, four thick, squared poles forming the bottom, connected at the top by two flush pieces at the sides, two extended beams across the front and the back. All had been painted white, the front and back beams wrapped with alternating purple and green fabric that draped down the sides. Large square glass containers had been fastened to the front poles using three strips of burnished silver sheet metal and filled with purple orchids, lady’s mantle, and flowering comfrey. More purple carpet lined the bottom of the structure, and she’d started filming at the far end and walked up the aisle and, of course, waterworks once again loomed. I closed my eyes, breathed in, then out, then again and again until I calmed down because, makeup. The second video was of the Paddle Room, and it was…perfect. Exactly as I’d specified, right down to the books specifically chosen for each table. Another message came through, and I exited the file to view it.

PS - don’t be concerned if you notice the cake isn’t included. That needs to be a surprise. – Melanie

I typed out a reply, my shaky hands making it extra challenging.

It’s all perfect. Totally perfect. Thank you so much for doing this. Amazing. Surreal. Everything. – Maude

Another chirp.

You are very, very welcome. So happy you’re happy! – Melanie

I put my phone away, bra still in place when Veronica returned. She rolled her eyes at me, and I undid the hooks and tossed it onto the chair. The mini-dress came first, followed by the silver gladiator sandals, then the maxi-skirt. Veronica sighed heavily, smiling.

“Maude, you are…breathtaking.”

My left eyebrow rose. “In a good way, or in a Seinfeld you’ve-got-to-see-the-baaaaaaaby way?”

“Come see for yourself, why don’t you?” She held out her left hand. “You have to close your eyes until we’re there so you get the full effect. I’ll lead you.”

“M’kay.” I reached for her, closing my eyes once I’d established a firm grip, silently hoping that this was indeed a simple walk to the mirror and not an instance of ‘surprise the bride’ because I was in no condition to handle that sort of fuckery.

After navigating what I assumed was the center area of the room Veronica stopped me, let go of my hand and turned me around, speaking only a single word.

“Open.”

I tilted my head downward and let my eyelids slowly lift until I was staring down into my own cleavage. Exhaling, I began to raise my head, higher and higher, and then…there I was. Maude Gallagher on her wedding day in her wedding dress ready for her wedding ceremony and wedding reception. She was me, but…not me. The woman in the mirror appeared to have just stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine spread, and I found myself reaching out to touch her because that woman couldn’t be me, wearer of ancient T-shirts who sniffed items of clothing found on the floor to judge by scent if they were acceptable to wear just one more time before washing them. My fingers connected with the surface of the mirror and I gasped.

“It IS me. Holy. Fucking. Shit.” I heard laughter, but I was too busy studying my reflection to acknowledge it. Veronica had dressed me for my dinner at Daniel with Tom, and there had been some serious wow factor then for sure but this…she’d coordinated my eye shadow with the bridesmaid dresses, a gradient from purple to green starting at eyebrow level with a faint overlay of silver. The liner was black, and my lashes were darkened with black mascara, impossibly long and thick, yet somehow still appearing natural. On my lips was a shade of deep maroon-purple, again matching a component of the bridesmaid dresses, thinly lined with a dark green which should have looked awful but…didn’t. It worked, and worked well. Paired with the style dress I’d chosen and the silver-crowned bun, the overall effect made me feel like I could absolutely, positively land a role in the next Star Wars film as Leia’s progeny and that was right off the fucking charts, man. Right. Off. I turned to the woman with limitless talent next to me, shaking my head back and forth slowly.

“Veronica. VERONICA. VER. ON. ICA. You’re like…you’re a fucking SORCERESS. For real. Really. I can’t…I just…thank you. Thank you.”

She grinned, pointing her index finger at me. “You’re very welcome, dear darling Maude. Now don’t fuck it up before we go out there, okay?”

I snorted. “Listen, I’ll do my best, but you know the face probably won’t last through the ceremony and the dress is doomed to be destroyed at cake time, if not before. Better get some pics for your portfolio while you can, my friend.”

“I will. But first I have to make myself presentable.” She turned to Emma, Sarah, Trudy and Anne, all of whom had gathered behind me. “Ladies, please keep the bride out of trouble while I’m gone.” They laughed, nodding, and Veronica disappeared behind one of the screens just as Simon emerged from behind his own. He screeched at the sight of me, hands raised to shoulder height, palms facing me, fingers spread widely.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! OH MY GOD LOOK AT YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! MAAAUUUUUUUUUUUDEEEEEEE! SPACE PRINCESSSSSSSSSSS!”

I screeched in return. “I KNOOWWWWWWWWWW! AND LOOK AT YOUUUUUUUU!”

He smirked as he spun in a circle. “I. AM. FABULOUS.”

“YOU ARE! SHOULD WE STOP SHOUTING?”

“PROBABLY!”

He air-kissed my cheek. “Poor Tom. I don’t think he’s prepared for this level of gorgeousis spectacularity.”

The thought that I’d soon be walking down the aisle with Simon at my side, seeing for myself just how prepared Tom was, took its place front and center in my mind, and as I assessed whether or not I’d be able to cope with such a thing, the realization that my father was absent in all of this slammed into me, and hard. My gaze turned toward the floor, and I closed my eyes tightly to shut out everything around me. He’d been gone for so long, and while I thought of him often, it was always briefly, the moment tinged with fondness for a memory, a touch of sadness, and a wish that he’d found peace. This time, it was fury, and a longing so intense it was physically painful. He’d left me alone in this world with a mother who had no love for me whatsoever, and he’d never know me as I was now, the woman I’d become, the things I’d accomplished, and on this day when I was celebrating the love I’d found, he was a corpse in a crypt in New Orleans when he should have been here, giving me away, sharing a father-daughter dance. He’d never know Tom, never know our children…and they’d never know him. I understood the why of what he’d done, but the fact that it, to me, his child, his ONLY child, felt like such a wasteful, selfish act was inescapable. He’d chosen himself over all else, including me, and here I was on my wedding day, with his death on my mind and threatening to override my happiness. Which I was NOT going to permit…too many moments had been stolen from me already. This was MY time now. And my life. And my god, what an amazing, beautiful life it had become. I swallowed, inhaled, exhaled, and then swallowed again, beating the sorrow and rage into submission. I felt hands grasp my forearms and I opened my eyes to find Simon staring at me, his own eyes full of worry, and when I smiled his face changed and he breathed a sigh of relief, his voice soft and low as he spoke.

“Want to talk about it?”

My head shook back and forth slowly. “Ghosts. I’m over it. Thank you.” I twisted my wrists so my hands could clutch his forearms, linking us like a snake eating its own tail. “Thank you for being willing to walk me down the aisle, Simon. It means so much to me, more than words can say. I love you. Like, a whole lot.”

He nodded, acknowledging that he understood, knowing me so well that what I’d been thinking about was perfectly clear to him. “You’re very welcome. I love you too. And bitch, if I cry and get droplet marks all over this very fine suit and ruin your wedding photos, that’s all on YOU.”

We both giggled, and just as I opened my mouth to explain to the women standing around me Melanie walked through the door and announced that we were fifteen minutes from go time.

****************************************

A row of white screens had been set up to one side of the ceremony site in order to block any possible viewing of me prior to my grand entrance. No one had seen the bridesmaid dresses yet either, but apparently no one was concerned about ruining that surprise because they were all allowed to peek around the barrier and comment on how incredibly handsome Tom looked, and also how he was fidgeting more than a kindergartener who needed to use the bathroom but didn’t want to miss story time. As part of his sound system, Sammy had set up a microphone at the far end of the site and outdoor speakers throughout, and I could hear strains of native Hawaiian music, though it was muted by the pounding of my own heart in my ears. Instead of using the traditional walk-in song, I’d decided to go with a version of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ that I’d seen on YouTube…any version moved me to tears, but this one made me sob like a baby. Which, in hindsight, might not have been the wisest choice…but it was so beautiful, and the timing was perfect. It was an orchestral performance in a town square, starting with one lone bass player, with additional groupings being added as the piece progressed. The faces of the crowd were full of enchantment and wonder in the video, experiencing the sound of notes put together by someone long ago in the present and amongst other humans, all feeling…well, just FEELING. That was the point. In the moment, in harmony, so ALIVE. As Melanie signaled for everyone to line up, the Hawaiian music stopped, and in the silence that followed I tried to imprint the moment, the quiet, the before…and then the sound of the bass began to resonate, and it was really, truly go time. The wedding party would have the duration of the instrumental portion to reach their places, and Simon and I would start our walk when the soft chorus began, hopefully reaching Tom and Luke, whom we’d decided should remain at Tom’s side since Simon would be with me, just in time for the pause point before the escalating chorus and finale began. Ken and Anne were first, followed by Ben and Veronica, Chris and Trudy, Guillermo and Sarah, then Hugh and Emma. Simon proffered his right arm for me to hold, and I shifted the bouquet of purple orchids and lady’s mantle to my right hand in order to take his arm with my left. We rounded the corner just as the singing began, and all of our guests rose from their seats as I took my first step forward, then froze in place as I witnessed Tom’s knees buckle at the sight of me, Luke grabbing him by the elbow in an attempt to steady him. Simon tilted his head sideways in order to whisper in my ear.

“Don’t freak out, honey. You can do this. Keep. Moving.”

And I did. I don’t know HOW, but I did. Everything and everyone other than Tom was a blur, our guests, the wedding party lined up, Tom’s chosen people on the left, mine on the right, the judge, all of it…except for my husband, who was already my husband, but not yet my husband as far as anyone else was concerned. There he was, in his black suit and white dress shirt with a purple waistcoat I knew I’d see more of later when he ditched the jacket to dance, his silver pocket square jutting out in a perfect triangular point, black patent shoes practically glowing in the sun. I watched him shake his head and mouth the words ‘oh my god’ over and over before he smiled at me, the tears in his eyes threatening to spill over, followed by a hand across his mouth, then a silent ‘I love you’ and a grin that grew ever wider as I drew nearer. And then there I was, with Simon releasing my arm and Tom taking my hand in his, not even noticing that my bouquet had somehow gone missing when I raised my right hand to wave like a child at my beautiful man and managed to squeak out a single word.

“Hi.”

He waved back, voice cracking as he returned the greeting. “Hi.”

I heard a whooshing sound and briefly thought I was dying, then realized the noise had been everyone sitting back down in their chairs. The judge cleared his throat, and we turned to face him, backs to our guests. Today he was wearing a proper suit, which startled me because my addled brain had been expecting the tuxedo T-shirt. It was dark green linen, with a white shirt and bow-tie, and I wondered if it was a coincidence that he coordinated with our color scheme or if Melanie had requested that he do so. He smiled at us, then began speaking.

“We gather today in this place of sea and sky and sand and sun to join the couple who stand before me in matrimony. That word, it’s a significant word, an important word, but what it represents is most meaningful…two individuals who feel a profound connection between them, both physically and spiritually, a connection from which stems a deep and abiding love so powerful that the two seek to become one. To become… a family, not to which they’re born, but one which they choose to create.” He paused briefly, then continued. “Thomas William Hiddleston and Maude Gallagher, is it your wish to marry each other on this day, June 29th, 2016?”

We nodded, speaking in unison. “Yes.” The urge to say ‘absofuckingloutely’ had been overwhelming, and I was super proud of myself for exercising some self-control.

“Then let us proceed. It is my understanding that you’ve prepared your own vows?” Another nod from both of us. “Please turn and face each other. May I have the rings?”

After panicking for several very long seconds because I had no idea how we were handling that bit for this ceremony, I spotted Luke stepping forward and passing them to the judge, who in turn gave Tom’s to me. I sighed in relief, having hoped that’s how it would play out this time around as well. I reached for Tom’s left hand, which I’d released as we’d turned, and grasped it with my own, pretending to wipe sweat from my brow with my right hand.

“Well thank the universe for small favors…I SO didn’t want to have to try and come up with something after this one had a chance to speak. “ I hooked my right thumb in his direction, noting the soft chuckles that emanated from our friends and family as I met Tom’s gaze. “One year ago, I drove out to Talk Story because I, book nerd that I am, couldn’t resist the prospect of maybe, just maybe, finding that long-sought first edition of The Gunslinger. I didn’t…not that time, anyway…but I did find One Hundred Years of Solitude. Which, looking back, is so over the top ridiculous, because…that’s what the life I’d lived before that day feels like since you appeared in those stacks, trying to go all incognito and using a certain bullwhip-toting archeology professor’s name as your alias. Up until then, to me, you were that incredibly talented actor whose social media accounts I used as an example of what NOT to do in my lectures. But in your presence, seeing you, then and there…gotta be honest, I kinda lost the plot for a few seconds.” A round of laughter from our guests ensued. “Which was, you know, totally unacceptable. No thank you, hard pass, Maude is better off alone. But then you followed me outside, and then you KNELT on the sidewalk in front of me…deep down, I knew I was a goner when I let you have one of my Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup peanut butter cookies, but my jadedness persisted. For like, a few hours. And that night, in my hotel room…which is now OUR hotel room…when you tucked me into bed and spent the night…when you stayed…that was that. There you were, the other half of my soul, and finally, I’d been made whole.” I’d managed to not cry, but tears were running freely down his cheeks. “So, Dr. Jones…are you ready for the life-long adventure of being my husband? I don’t have an Ark or a Holy Grail, but I’m pretty good in bed, and I promise to love you with all that I am and all that I’ll ever be.”  

He nodded, wiping away tears with his free hand. “I do love a grand adventure…and I’ve never been more ready for something in all my days.”

I turned his left hand over, opened my right one, then slipped the band onto his left ring finger. “Well then, with this ring, I thee wed. Off we go!”

Tom let go of my hand in order to hold his up high, grinning proudly as he moved it slowly back and forth to show off his new accessory to the crowd before turning his attention back to me, taking hold of my left hand, then bringing it to his lips and placing a gentle kiss on my knuckles. The judge placed my ring in Tom’s open right palm, his fingers closing tightly around it as he stared into my eyes, and I knew the vows he’d planned on using had gone right out the window, because he was re-writing them right then, crafting with his heart and soul words that would likely echo my sentiments. Following a slight nod that indicated he was satisfied, he began to speak.

“One year ago, I drove out to Talk Story to pick up a book I hoped would assist me in playing a role. I was in a rush, as Luke had scheduled a meeting I wasn’t expecting. In an attempt to avoid being recognized, which would have slowed me down and made me late for, as I’m sure Luke will confirm, the millionth time, I donned a baseball cap and Hawaiian print shirt as a rather crude disguise. When I walked through the door and saw the staff wearing Loki shirts, I panicked…and then, I saw you. And, like you, I lost the plot. It was as if the heavens had opened up and the sun shone on you and you alone, lighting my way. I followed the path, finding myself standing behind you, thoroughly unable to form words as I watched you choose your books so very carefully. When you spun around I thought you might slap me, but instead, you recognized me, understood my plight, and solved my problem. When you called me Indy…well, how could I NOT follow you outside and beg for your number?” I snorted. “I was completely bent out of shape that I had to leave in order to make that damn meeting, which I had no desire to attend in the first place, because all I wanted to do was be near you, to talk to you, to get to know you. The entire ride back to this side of the island all I thought about was you, and I was telling Luke that this was it, you were THAT woman, MY woman, as we walked into Kauai Pasta and…there you were. You were the person Luke had set up the meeting with. Of all the people in this world, it was you. Over the next few hours, I fell in love with you at least a hundred times, each instance pulling me deeper and deeper until we parted company and…I couldn’t bear it, so I turned up at your door practically in the middle of the night with tea and truffles. And later, when I stayed…I knew I never, ever wanted to leave. In seeking out something to help me play a make-believe role I’d already been cast in, through some miraculous alignment within the universe, here I am stepping into the real-world role of a lifetime, the one I was born for…that of being husband to you.” I’d managed to swallow back my sobs, but hot tears were dripping down and off my nose. “So, Ms. Gallagher…are you ready for the life-long adventure of being my wife? I’ve no Sankara stones or crystal skull, but I’ll always have truffles at the ready, and I promise to love you with all that I am and all that I’ll ever be.”  

I nodded. “You had me at truffles. Plus, you’re really good in bed. Sign me up and let’s roll, baby.”

He turned my left hand over, opened his right one, then slipped the band onto my left ring finger, absent of my engagement ring, which was currently residing on my right hand. “Well then, with this ring, I thee wed. Off we go!”

We looked to the judge, who had placed both hands in front of his chest, palms together. “By the power vested in me by the state of Hawaii, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

There was no waiting for permission…our lips were locked before he even finished his sentence, and if it weren’t for Simon poking me in the ribs we would have missed our exit cue. Ode to Joy’s divinely loud chorale had begun, and Tom and I started upon our first official walk as husband and wife, our guests all on their feet, applauding, cheering, and whistling as we worked our way to the white screen, where we waited for the rest of the wedding party to join us. When the tempo sped up, they ran towards us, and Tom picked me up by my waist and spun me around…it was such an incredible moment, a happy moment, the kind you want to freeze frame and go back to again and again, one you wouldn’t mind having as your very final thought on this earth. And then, it was over in a flash as I desperately signaled for him to put me down, making my way behind the screen just in time to barf on the impeccably groomed green grass.

Just as it had the day before, my stomach purged itself until it was empty, and afterward I felt perfectly fine. Tom surrendered his pocket square so I could wipe my mouth, and while I dabbed at my lips I noticed no one else was around. He placed a hand on my bare back, smiling softly.

“I shooed them back around the screen. Figured you wouldn’t want an audience.”

“Thank you. That was…bizarre. Have I reached that age where spinning makes you puke? But I wasn’t spinning yesterday, that was stress…so, is EVERYTHING going to make me puke now? Or is it a stomach virus? Because I was really queasy earlier before I ate.” I looked down at my dress, and the mess I’d left on the ground. “Well that’s disgusting. Sheese. But, the dress appears to be unscathed so, commence picture time. Though I’d kinda like to bush my teeth or at least rinse, and I guess I could use some more lipstick…”

“Why don’t we go back to your dressing area so you can freshen up?” His smile was still the same, which struck me as odd, and I felt my mind wander into ‘oh my god is there something really wrong with me and I’m the only one who doesn’t know it’ territory. I nodded, and he kissed my cheek. “I’ll go let everyone know we’ll be back in a bit – they can head in to the Paddle Room with the guests, then come back out when we’re ready to do group shots before our session with the media.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

When he returned from around the screen I could discern from his expression that something was absolutely up, which made me freak out even more. He took my hand and we walked the short distance to the Hokulea suite in silence. After we were inside, he went into the kitchen, grabbed a Coke from the fridge, then sat on the sofa to our left and motioned for me to sit down next to him. I did so, as carefully as possible, suddenly dying of thirst and wanting what was in that can more than anything else I could think of. He popped the top and passed it to me, and I drank three-quarters of it a few long, loud gulps then wiped my lips with the back of my hand.

“This is so COLD and so GOOD. Mmmmm.”

Tom’s hand came to rest on my knee, his eyes first staring downward, then lifting to meet mine. “Maude, I’ve…over the past month or so…I...I’ve observed some…changes…in your behavior, and now, over the past two days, there’s been a physical manifestation…” The world started to dim around me, and I could feel my internal temperature rising as panic washed over me. “I just…I didn’t know how to broach the subject, so I haven’t and I still don’t know but…I think need to ask you a question and…well…have you been…are you…you know…late?”

My brow crinkled as my head tilted to the left. “Late? I don’t…what does that…late with, like, what? Or do you mean slow on the uptake or something, to which I’d respond with a resounding yes but I thought it was all the pressure but do you think I have dementia or a brain tumor or something? It’s okay, just say it…”

“Oh no. No, no, no.” He slid closer to me so our legs were touching. “Your period. Have you been late with your period. I know you’ve been expecting it, and it hasn’t arrived, and when I thought back, I don’t recall you having it for quite some time, so…”

Shaking my head, I put my Coke down on the floor. “By a few days, maybe. But my cycle’s been wacky since I went off the pill. Christ, you scared the SHIT out of me.”

He swallowed, wondering, I imagined, how to proceed because he obviously thought differently. I counted to ten silently, because for some reason I was fast on my way to becoming pissed off, then put my hand over his.

“Tom, I know, I can’t stand waiting for it to happen either, but it’s on my calendar and everything. I’ll go get my phone.”  I stood, then walked back to where my shorts were bunched up on the floor and dug the device out of my left front pocket. As I sat back down on the couch, I pulled up my calendar and swiped back to May. “Yep, there it is. May 27th. So yeah, I’m technically late but I went 21 days in March and then 32 in April or something, so…” And then I swiped back to April. And then I swiped back to March, then back to April. Then to May, then back to April. And then, my jaw dropped open and I REALLY started to freak the fuck out. He just sat there, expressionless, while I tried to wrap my head around what I was seeing.

“I…I…I can’t believe this. April. There’s nothing there. No data. Not. There. I think…I think I…now that I’m like, really THINKING about it, it does seem like it’s been a while since I bought pads and I think maybe I put April’s dates on the May grid and that means May was period-less and that means…I’m late. Like late…enough. Wow. WOW. This is CRAZY. Tom. TOM. I thought you were hallucinating or whatever and here I am trying to prove you wrong but you’re like, not wrong, I don’t think. Okay. We can’t be sure until I take a test, right? And I don’t think I can wait until after the reception to know. I need to know. Oh my god. CRAZY. Can I sneak out of here in this outfit and go to the drug store around the corner without anyone recognizing me, do you think?”

He shook his head, the corners of his mouth turning up just slightly. “No, I don’t think that’s possible. Honestly, I don’t know how we’re even going to send Luke or Simon or someone else we’re comfortable discussing this with to purchase a pregnancy test what with the media lurking all over. Even if they’re dressed in casual clothing.”

We were interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by Melanie Hale’s voice, inquiring softly.

“Maude? Tom? Is everything all right?”

Tom and I looked at each other, and I gave him a double thumbs up. She was a local, not as overly-adorned as the rest of us, and the press had no clue who she was yet since we hadn’t mentioned her on social media as part of our effort to keep the wedding details under wraps. And, since she’d not mentioned a blessed thing either, I had complete faith in her ability to keep a secret. I shouted for her to come in, and when she saw us sitting down she placed one hand over her heart and said some seriously magic words.

“If there’s something I can do to help, anything…please, feel free to ask.”

My face scrunched up as I spoke. “Weeellll…now that you’ve mentioned it, there is this one thing…”

****************************************

After hunting down the lipstick shade Veronica had applied earlier and giving myself a fresh coat, I texted Simon and told him we were ready to have the bridesmaids and groomsmen join us back at the ceremony site for photos. Focusing on the task at hand was nearly impossible, my mind preoccupied with images of Melanie walking into a store, choosing a pregnancy test, paying for it, driving back to the hotel, then sneaking up to our room, using the key we’d given her to enter, and leaving it behind along with what she’d purchased as we’d planned. I attempted to estimate how many more shots the photographer would likely require before this session was declared complete and we were permitted to move on to the next one, all the while attempting to portray myself as a woman who’d just wed the love of her life, which I was…but now I was ALSO a woman who might be carrying his child, and trying to disguise the fact that the anticipation of confirming such a thing was driving me insane turned out to be a wickedly difficult challenge. Finally, it was over, and Tom and I headed to the same room the press conference had been held in yesterday to pose for the media outlets, all of whom had complied with our requests. A large backdrop had been positioned at the front of the room, a medium-grey gradient that was typically the first choice whenever someone specified ‘not the blue one’. They’d structured their positioning and rotation on their own, so all Tom and I had to do was smile and shift around to add some variety. One photog yelled ‘dip her!’ and I held my breath during the act, hoping I wouldn’t throw up at such an inopportune time. I didn’t, and even managed to spin around a little in order to make my skirt flare out without any repercussions. Tom had set his phone alarm, and when it went off, we thanked the group for respecting our wishes, then exited via the side door, closed it behind us, and held hands as we walked to the stairwell and up to our room. He released me to slide the keycard, and I followed him inside, then pushed past him to get to the gift bag on the bed. There was a card attached, written in Melanie’s overly-rounded cursive.

“Got you a few different kinds – that’s what I’ve always done. Fingers crossed for you!”

Melanie’s definition of ‘a few’ was six, apparently, because that’s how many there were, along with three plastic shot-glass sized cups. That she’d thought to use a gift bag to bring it all into the hotel was a testament to her thoroughness, and I stopped to seriously consider offering to pay the entirety of their college tuition for her kids, then decided that if Tom and I got and kept her name out there she wouldn’t need any help with that. At all. Tom’s arms slipped around my waist from behind, and I leaned back into him.

“Maude, I hope you won’t be upset with me if…”

“I won’t be. I’ll be disappointed…BEYOND disappointed…but I’m glad you brought it up. I had no clue. None. It might have been another month or two before I noticed, and this way, if I’m not pregnant and something else is going on, we can address it sooner as opposed to later. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway. Let’s do this. I hope I can use those cups to pee in, because the odds of me landing any on the actual sticks are slim to none.”

Four of the tests were supposed to show results in three minutes, the other two in five minutes. And yes, cup dipping was an acceptable substitute for stream-to-stick. Even still, I took off the maxi-skirt and hiked up my dress as far as possible before I went into the bathroom in order to avoid any unpleasantries…as any woman who’s ever endured a urine specimen collection will attest to, at best, you’ll wind up with a little on your hands. At worst, there will be none in the cup when you’re done and you’re back at square one. I was really grateful for that Coke and the length of time that had gone by since I chugged it, because I filled those cups like a fucking champ, handing them one by one to Tom, who placed them ever-so-gently on the counter. I finished my business, washed my hands, and we each dipped three tests, one in each cup, placed them on the other side of the counter in a tidy little row, then went out into the main area to wait. Neither of us spoke as we stood watching the countdown timer on Tom’s phone he’d set for five minutes click off the seconds, and when it reached the two minute marker I reached for his hand, my own shaking so badly I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold on to him. He grabbed, then squeezed as he exhaled heavily.

“Are you ready?”

“HA – no, dude. No I am not. But I think they can give false results if you wait too long so…”

He nodded, and since we couldn’t fit through the door side by side, we closed our eyes until we were both inside the bathroom. His voice echoed off the walls as he spoke.

“All right, open on the count of three, then…one, two…THREE.”

I counted two sets of pink vertical lines, two sets of blue vertical lines, one grey plus sign, and one ‘pregnant’ that I’d later insist blazed in neon purple showing through the little plastic window. Six tests, six positives. I counted once more to be sure, blurting out the very first thing that came to mind.

“Oh my fucking god, Hiddleston. You did it. You knocked me UP.” I turned to take stock of his reaction, but his face wasn’t where it was supposed to be so I tipped my head downward and discovered that he’d sunk to his knees and was white as a sheet. My jaw dropped, and I put my hands on his shoulders. “Babe, are you okay? You don’t look okay. Talk to me.” His head lifted slowly, eyes blinking rapidly as he started at me, his mouth hanging halfway open, still silent. “Tom?”

He reached out and wrapped his arms around my hips, then pulled me close, resting his head on my lower belly. In which I was growing a tiny human. I felt my body go cold, and as I began to shudder Tom rose, shifted the tests to the side, then picked me up and plopped me on the counter top. He placed his hands on the sides of my face, leaning in so his forehead touched mine.

“You’re pregnant.”

I nodded, his head moving with the motion as well. “I’m…pregnant. Pregnant. Is this real? How can this be real? Who finds out they’re pregnant in the middle of their wedding? Seriously. I mean…I’m pregnant. I…I can’t believe it. I really didn’t think it would happen, you know? And it happened and it’s like one miracle on top of another and I just…” I began to sob, full-body, noisy, grateful sobs. Tom leaned back and gently pressed my head to his chest, smoothing my hair, and I could feel his body heaving as he sobbed right along with me. As much as I needed to be as close as possible to him right then, the desire to see him was greater, so I leaned back and grabbed his lapels, still weeping as I spoke. “We’re having a BABY.”

“Yes. Yes we are.” He smiled through his tears and began to sing. “You’re havin’ my baby…what a lovely way…”

I screeched and covered my ears. “NO OH MY GOD NO TOM NO I HATE THAT SONG…”

He laughed, which made me laugh as well…at least until I remembered we had a reception to attend, and pondered if we should keep this news to ourselves, and, if we went that route, precisely how we were going to do such a thing while surrounded by all the people we’d be dying to tell.

#your light in the mist #chapter 46

[myfriendpokey]

7 bubsys of the world

1. museum bubsy:

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

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

2. personal bubsy:

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

3. omnipresent bubsy:

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

4. dialectic bubsy:

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

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

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

5. negative bubsy:

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

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

6. material bubsy:

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

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

7. official bubsy:

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

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

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

#bubsy

[flowerpatchhomos]

Went to Sonic with my dad last night for my birthday and it was

Honestly absolutely awful

You see I really

Really hate my dad

Some of those reasons I will very much not be getting into on here

But I live in Texas

And the roads are very,very icy and not safe

I think the fastest we drove was maybe ten and we still slid

Every time we slid I would negative stim and honestly get very close to having a panic attack

He laughed

Idk if he noticed but he laughed and made several stupid comments

We almost got stuck in the parking lot of Sonic and I was very much panicking when he got out

I feel like it's very obvious that I was panicking considering it was not only very visual but very audible in not only my voice

Butthenegativeverbalstim

So then we go to Walmart because they didn't have soda (our town is having a water issue) and we were gonna pick up some things there too

Well I was very,very much not ok and very thankful of the furby I brought as fidgeting with him was helping me calm down but then I started getting really, really overwhelmed in the store and started neg stimming again and I asked for space which I badly needed but he didn't fucking listen and was very much too close so I started walking and fast to try to get away from him

which he followed still and once again thank fuck I brought licorice because he calmed me down from that too..

Later on I was getting something and-

Let me say right now that I'm trans

I am a man,but physically I'm female

I haven't come out to him and never will because he's very transphobic and homophobic and just..lgbtq+ phobic in general

My mom knows though and she's really supportive and I love her

Anyway I was getting something and trying to decide what to get

I'm probably one of the most indesisive people you'll ever meet and the dad made a really sexist joke about it

I can't remember all of what he said but it was something along the lines of that's a woman for you

Not those exact words but that's basically what it boiled down to

I, obviously,was very much shocked he said that and tried to pretend I didn't hear it

Then he goes

"that's an older joke"

And YEAH I can fucking tell!!

No one makes jokes like that anymore!

No one SHOULD make jokes like that anymore!

I also would like to mention that I have alot of issues with people standing both too close and behind me

The behind me part is what I have even worse issues with and I won't get into why here

I probably told him 5 times to not stand behind me and none of those 5 times did he listen to me!

Later on I started to neg stim again really hard over getting overwhelmed and almost had a fucking breakdown right there in the store btw and he wasn't with me because I was getting something that I'd forgotten to get earlier and he was at checkout

I was almost in tears when I brought it to him and he was a dick about the fact I brought two and I had to put them back

Which I also did on the verge of tears

So then we get back to the car and earlier I had put a can in the basket earlier

I told him I put it in there

And yet he still said he didn't know it was in there and got mad at me,then he had to go pay for it and I was sitting the car,finally left alone

Where I had a quiet breakdown and let some shit out

When he got back I just pretended to be calm

Though I doubt if I wasn't calm he would've noticed or cared ..

Alot more panicking happened in the car with every time he slid and by the time we got home I was an absolute mess on the verge of a breakdown

Then

I noticed they got my order wrong at Sonic and I got

Honestly barely any food

Now normally I'd take this with a "ah fuck I can't believe you've done this" and eat that with something random

But gah did that tiny annoyance completely send me over the edge and I just straight up have a breakdown

Tried to break something and went in the bathroom to just start crying

Now the mom was trying to help me actually and when I told her this she got p i s s e d and yelled at the dad as soon as he tried to talk to us

Which honestly shook us up because we..

Can't deal with loud noises very well

Honestly it really panicked me too but was still better than that entire night as a whole

..anyway sorry for the long vent I have something to do,sorry

#tw sexism #vent #personal vent #tw homophobia

[hhhhh-waitwhat]

Star Trek: The wrath of Khan

Finally watching this immediately after seeing tmp for the first time and I already miss This Simple Feeling [SPOILERS BELOW]

-spock looks amazing as always I am already in love with this red outfit aaaa

-wait where's kirk

-damn indeed

-evasive action! *explodes*

-SPOCK!! UHURA!!! We are one minute in

-Jesus? No, that's just Kirk, he's extra like that

-aaaaa i see

-yaas bones so dramtic

-Jim why must you roast them like that

-shdhejje they're gifting each other poetry now?! This is the best of times

-illegal smuggle buddies

-old man Kirk better wise up we have 3 more movies to go

-FIRST OFFICER CHEKOV?! in my dreams

-whos this nervous mop and cool lady what

-not at all ominous shed in the desert, looks like a good place to chill

-always trust Chekov

-the Botany Bay mafia has arrived

-WHAYHSHb great to finally meet you mr khan

-read the room new captain geez

-Chekov never told me the tale too :(

-Jim is a busy man khan he can't just keep checking on everyone he abandoned

-TITS OUT KHAN

-aww but it's like a worm armadillo

-oh nooo don't out it in their ears ewww

-AAAA IT LICK

-aah back to the comfort of the enterprise

-personally i love the dad glasses Jim

-a tiny boi SIR

-vulcan the real language of love

-lmao bones and Jim snarking on the new guys

-YES ASTRONAUT GUY!!! tiny spaceman is my favourite reoccurring star trek movie minor character

-Sulu's smile melts my heart 💖

-more like Starship Un-reliant

-someone save Chekov my poor baby

-Bones lmaoo are you casually drunk

-SHAKE YOUR HEAD NO JIM ITS CALLED NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION YELL CAROL NO

-be still my beating heart Spock in a robe

-ohohoho suddenly Spock's out here with the outbursts of Jim you're the only one for me the enterprise

-AAAAYYYYYY WE GOT EM, I GOT MY 'THIS SIMPLE FEELING'

-I have been, and always will be, yours.

-I have been, and always will be, yelling about this scene from now on

-*chanting* Captain Kirk, Captain Kirk

-khan really does subscribe to the Jim Kirk Titties Out look

-coughwhydotheycallthemmrsavik is this a subtitle error orrrr trans vulcan Savik confirmed

-hmm seems kinda op to just make any planet living

-cant see how that could go wrong at all

-alright Bones we should probably go about this at a different way instead of insulting Spock but I get what you're putting down

-hahs khan that's your intimating line?! I love it, reminds me of megamind lmaoo revenge is a dish served cold

-that guy just FLEW on the bridge!!!

-oof khan got em good, his bite is stronger then his bark

-sup khan long time no see

-unforgivable that they did that to the lovely lady enterprise

-amazing work as always Jim but Chekov!!! We must save him and his worm

-good god who is that in your arms Scotty why did you bring them to the BRIDGE

-its the baby boy!!! you did well my red shirt baby, rest well

-i love how bones didn't even wanna be here at first but now he won't even let Jim beam down to planets alone without him

-hewwo? Mop head and the lovely and smart Carol?

-oh there are the rest

-CHEKOV IS BACK!!! everyone hug him NOW

-thats a big sonic screwdriver

-mop head and Carol, living it up in a bunker woot woot

-Chekov betrayal! I don't blame you baby boy I blame the rest for not listening when you told them about the ear worm like what did we expect

-Terrel noooo!! I didn't appreciate you enough I'm sorryyyyy

-wait why did Chekov's worm leave is he just that powerful

-that "KHAN" was so loud I'm surprised the enterprise didn't hear it ahshssh

-OFC Kirk has a complicated relationship with Carol smdh

-LIKE HIS FATHER?!? MOP HEAD IS KIRKS...?!?!

-my son.. look at my son!! *bursts into Hamilton song and dance

-not gonna lie I did read a spirk fic today where I believe it mentioned his son and wife died but I paid it no heed, now I'm second guessing everything ajsjsje the line between cannon and fannon continues to blur in my mind

-wowow dang Carol you really outdid yourself this place is straight ART

-kirk big brain cheated and Starfleet were so impressed they just let it slide immmm

-okay wow this crew montage and dramatic music has no right to get me this pumped up

-omg mop wears a jumper around his shoulders like a rich tennis player are we SURE this is Jim's son

-khan even nearly has the titty scar wound too he's more like Jim then mop boy will ever be

-second movie second serve of flashing lights, I really need to stop watching these in the dark

-do y'all really think khan is the kind of guy to surrender lololol

-crazy that spite kept him and only him alive like that huh

-AAAAA SHITS GETTING REAL SPOCK WENT ROGUE

-no hesitation we mind meld with whoever, Spock you naughty boy

-Me, Bones and Scotty all yelling at Spock to STOP SACRIFICING YOURSELF at every dang opportunity sjjdidkdj we CARE

-dang khan what a way to go out

-All is good so far? Did we win?

-OH FUCK SPOCK! RUN KIRK, RUN TO SPOCK HE NEEDS YOU

-wow I've never seen him run so fast and- did he just push over a random guy??? Go Jim nothing can stop you

-oh my god no

-no

-this is the second movie he can't die now?!?!? im not ready for thefamous touch through the glass scene I glimpse on Tumblr IM NOT READY

-i just have it paused. i don't even want the camera to pan across and show Spock I KNOW I'll cry

-deep breath

-i can't type too busy crying my heart out, spoooooooooooooooooooock

-OH MY GOD JIM DONT CRY TOO WAAAAAAAAA THE TEARS DONT STOP

-i should never have watched the movies I was so happy with just the original series, imagining my boys together exploring space for all eternity

-amd now I'll never stop crying ahsjdusjjs

-Okay okay okay I couldn't even wait till the end of the movie i HAD to know NOW, my poor heart couldn't go on otherwise-so, after a brief glance at the next movie descriptions Spock is IN bones in Search for Spock?!?! And then he's alive maybe in the next one I'm so confused my heart is so wearyyy

-too numb for the rest I can't deal with you rn mop head

-we are in MOURNING

-Jims broken I'm broken we're all fucked up now

-cant even hug right I feel ya Jim we are empty on the inside

-okay bones sure he's not dead if we remember him but also HES NOT DEAD DEAD RIGHT?! It's too late now to start another movie but I am dyingggg to know what happens next send help

-you're going to bring up your birthday Jim?!? Remind both of us how you were too busy sulking to appreciate Spock's poetry I swear to goddd next time you see Spock I am BEGGING you to shower him in all the love and affection he desrves

-wish they'd do a Sherlock and he's just hiding behind a tree :(

-wellllll I mean??? He sorta was??? Egg spock

-stop making me cryyyyyy opening in Spock's voice ahshshsbs I hope those gravely lines are the last thing I hear

-FINALLY it is OVER I can try to mend my broken heart with fanfics hhhhh

-got me outta nowhere with Spock and I am draineddd, can't wait to watch the next one soon 💕

#liveblogging #star trek #sorry its long I just had to get my thoughts out #what a movie that was so different from the first!!! in a good way but man was there a lot going on #dont think i could watch it again though spock dying is just TOO SAD #if anyone out there has any great fics I could read that dont spoil the next movies and preferably have a good ending pLEASE let me know #ACK sorry the tags are all messed up i wanted the movie title first but i wrote star trek tmp like a FOOL #wrath of khan #st: twok #star trek the wrath of khan