#also yes the three toe thing was an actual complaint fans had back then

[fabuloustrash05]

Back when TMNT 2012 was first coming out, I remember fans were mad about 3 specific things:

It's gonna be 3D animated

April is going to be a teenager

The Turtles having 3 toes instead of 2

#take a wild guess exactly why 87 fans were mad that April was gonna be a teen in 2012 #also yes the three toe thing was an actual complaint fans had back then #random thoughts #tmnt 2012 #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt leonardo #tmnt raphael #tmnt michelangelo #tmnt donatello #april o'neil #nickelodeon

[spade-riddles]

Submission: Adjusting expectations

Okay, guys. Wading in here where it’s possible no-one wants me, but … here goes. 

We - Kaylors - are in a hard place right now. People feel hurt, they feel hopeless. They feel like they were led on by the likes of Spade. I’m not here to invalidate any of the feelings that come from seeing Karlie and Taylor play out this charade.  

But I think we (collectively, as a fandom) need to take a breath and ask if any of this is really as bad or unfixable as we think it is. Because, for me, the recent stunting is hard to stomach but not truly surprising. On some level this is how I expected Karlie and Taylor to handle both the birth of the baby and the launch of the rerecorded albums. As much I wanted to believe in the idea of spring breaking loose and bringing with it a fervent revolution … I could see the pieces still in play on the board and I doubted it was coming. 

I think the problem is that there was a split between the optimist and pragmatist sides of the fandom, over the last year or so. To be clear - I’m not judging the optimist side of the fandom. Not at all. Taylor has pulled wildcard moves before, and emotions run so high in all this, especially with a baby involved now, that I don’t blame people for wanting to believe the best. But it reached a stage where some of the things people were trying to talk themselves into were just wildly unrealistic. And when that happens, of course you’re going to get hurt. It’s inevitable. 

But let’s really look at this for a second. We should have known that neither Karlie nor Taylor was going to be shaving her beard in March. Ditching Jerk right after or just before the birth would have been too soon for Karlie. It’s not unusual for a celeb marriage to fizzle out within a year of the birth, but before the baby even arrives? That would be weird, and would draw attention just when it seems Kaylor don’t want it. They just had a baby. That’s an adjustment in itself, and Karlie is suffering enough social media hate on top of that. I wouldn’t blame her for just wanting to take a break and lie low during this difficult time. And unfortunately, for Karlie, that means maintaining the status quo of the situation she put herself in with Jerk. She may be doing the bare minimum to maintain it, but if she wants to avoid attention, she has to make it seem like everything between her and her “husband” is normal. And that she’s trying to make it work, which I believe will be important later. Good people try to make it work, even in bad relationships. 

Toe wasn’t going anywhere either. Taylor had relied on him so heavily during the promotion of Folklore, with the William Bowery narrative, that she was almost backed into a corner. She had to give some allusion to his air quotes “creative input” and their so-called happy relationship, or her failure to do so would have become the story and overshadowed her night. The headlines would have either been break-up speculation or complaints that she didn’t give him his due. We think the cutesy coverage after she named him in her acceptance speech was bad, but negative headlines have a far longer shelf life and can take on a life of their own. They would have been worse. Whatever we might think of Taylor’s actions, Folklore is one of her best albums and she deserved to have her night. 

So, on to the announcement of the birth. This is a tricky one, and again, I completely understand why people reacted so badly against it. It was everything we as a fandom said we didn’t want. It was Jerk using the baby for personal good PR. But I have to be honest here. I always thought we were kidding ourselves believing he would NEVER be seen with the baby or implied to be the father. I do believe Karlie is doing her damnedest to minimize the digital footprint of his involvement and keep her actual baby out of it. But he was always going to get to bask in the glow of playing daddy for a while. It’s the trade off Kaylor made when they used him to shore up their closet. 

This is also why I increasingly suspect the timing of the announcement got the green light from Kaylor too. If Jerk was always going to be assumed to be the father of Karlie’s baby, then there was always going to have to be a birth announcement that incorporated him somehow - unless the girls were ready to answer awkward questions, and it doesn’t seem like we’re there yet. So the best way to minimize the damage is to have his moment of glory overshadowed by a bigger win for Taylor. It worked pretty well actually. Even on Kaylor blogs the stunt was mostly buried by Taylor content.

I know a lot of fans feel gaslit by all the hints, but I do think there’s a possibility Taylor really didn’t grasp how hurt Kaylors would be. From her perspective, she “fed” fans three times over that night. She gave us a beautiful performance, a gorgeous red carpet moment, and a win to celebrate. I think it’s possible she really didn’t realize the double whammy of stunting that night would make it all feel worthless for many.

Taylor is in an awkward position. As a consequence of Kaylor retreating into the closet, the support base for them has shrunk. (When I use the words “Kaylor fandom”, I refer to this support base.) I would say Kaylor fandom consists of two parts. There is a silent portion, who observe events and comment anonymously, but don’t say anything “on main”. And then there are the small corps of true believers, who think Karlie and Taylor are still together and the baby is theirs. This latter group do most of the actual talking about Kaylor, but they tend to be pretty battle-hardened. They’ve been around for years, they never believe any of the stunts and their capacity to be hurt by them is, as a result, pretty limited. These Kaylors criticize sometimes, but they tend to fall back in line eventually and mostly adopt a “let’s wait and see how this all shakes out” approach. The problem is that I would say these “chilled” Kaylors are the minority. For their own sanity they curate their blog experience and often don’t post the more negative anons they get. Which is fine, but if you were looking at it from the outside, I could see how it might create an impression that the fandom as a whole can roll with the punches. And for a lot of the silent majority, that’s not the case. 

But again, I can see how Taylor might not necessarily know that. She went quiet after the Grammys, when I might have expected more celebratory posts from her. If I had to guess, I’d say she didn’t expect the backlash. I’m especially noticing a backlash against her for allowing Karlie to take so many hits while her own reputation has never been better. And I can’t defend her on that one, except to say I hope she has a plan. But I understand where people are coming from when they say the songs aren’t enough and actions speak louder than words. It’s tough to watch. 

Still, we’re in a position we should realistically have been able to see coming. We should have known Jerk wasn’t going to be out of the picture immediately after the birth. This is one of those things nobody likes, but maybe we all just have to be patient on. I don’t see Karlie busting out of the closet to admit her marriage was a fake, or testifying to the FBI. I think she’ll just let her marriage quietly fall apart, as many real marriages did during the pandemic. And for that to work, she needs to make it look like didn’t throw away a family unit lightly. Hence the “I tried” post, the social media break, and the suggestions of spending time with Jerk’s family. All of this can be spun later into a narrative of Karlie having tried to make it work, only to never really be accepted. The hate online affected her mental health and she gradually realized how unhappy she’d become and decided she needed to break free and find her old self again for her baby’s sake. This is the most likely narrative for Karlie’s freedom and it’s one that could work - but it’s going to take time to unfold. Personally, I’m giving it a year. If we don’t see a separation by then, and definitive moves to a reunited Kaylor, I’ll be bowing out. I’ll still know what I believe the truth to be, but I won’t see the need to devote my energy to defending it. ,

Meanwhile, the masters rerecords are about to be released, and Taylor has invested a lot in their success. Because of this, I can’t envision her coming out until at least the big three (Fearless, 1989, and Red) have dropped. She might drop hints, but I don’t expect anything earth-shattering. Even the order of the album releases seems to confirm this. She’s breaking out the big guns first. 

I’ve seen people speculate that because Rep can’t be rerecorded until 2022, Taylor will hold off on any coming out until then. And I’m not so sure of that. Yes, people listening to the album for clues would give Scott and Scooter money, but if we’re being honest, a fair amount of people are probably listening to those albums already, regardless of the drama. Those sleazeballs are profiting from Rep, full stop. But if Taylor profits more, from her bigger albums, she still wins. And she can still put out a Taylor’s version of Rep with vault tracks and collabs, to seduce people away from the Big Machine version in early 2022. Honestly, I think there’s a good chance Taylor would consider this is a worthwhile trade-off anyway, if it meant she got to live a more open life with Karlie - and most crucially, begin to repair Karlie’s reputation. As children get older and the world begins to leave the pandemic behind, it becomes harder to live behind closed doors. I guess we’ll find out how Taylor finds the reality of such a life, and what she considers worth sacrificing to step away from it. 

All this to say: I can’t predict the future more than anyone else, but I don’t think the situation we’re in now is irreparable, and if we’re being really objective, I don’t think it’s even surprising. I do think Taylor should give us something, if she wants to keep us around. No-one can live on a complete absence of hope, and as I’ve stated, letting the fandom dwindle to this extent has its own dangers. But I think we also need to keep our time frames realistic, even if it means rejecting lifelines like the Spade riddles. We shouldn’t expect Karlie to be free of Jerk for around a year, and we shouldn’t expect Taylor to do anything much beyond general music promo until at least the big three have dropped. Sucks to say it, I know. But at least this way we won’t be disappointed, and if Kaylor do pull a wild card and move towards freedom, we can be pleasantly surprised. 

Just my two cents. 

___________________

Well written and fair arguments on our reactions and expectations. I had typed up more, but I will let others post their comments before I chime in.

[vodkassassin]

world state: refresh, chapter two

Last chapter: “—From the description, it’s basically the same as the synopsis of your run of the mill VRMMORPG anime, except the virtual games are real worlds.”

“Sure, but if they’re real worlds, then what does being a Game Master mean?”

Shen Yuan grins down at him.

“Hey, Airplane,” he says. “How do you feel about being an actual god?” [Read ch. 1]

—

“Oh, yaaawn!” She throws herself back onto the plush surface behind her and stretches her arms above her head. “Man, what a chore! Hey, Dorazou, make a note to always double check the Mission Rating before accepting an Assignment in the future. No way in hell am I gonna be doing that again!”

“AwRAWRight!” The tiny avatar cheers, pumping a little red scaled fist into the air. “Reminder set! Hey, Host, if it’s any consolation, this system thinks you totally aced it!”

“Hmm,” she crosses her arms and stars at the collection of screens that have popped into existence before her. “The mission grading will be the judge of that. Let’s see, here…. Oh, awesome! I earned a double S score! You know what that means!”

Dorazou gives another little roar cheer that sounds more like a kitten's mew than anything. Ah, so cute! “Host may close her next Assignment! Congratulations!”

The agent gathers her hair up into a loose and messy bun at the top of her head, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Awesome. Let’s choose something easy, why don’t we? That last world was only an A-rank, but it gave me a lot more trouble than I bargained for. It should have been labeled at least S-tank! Dorazou, bring up all available Assignments. B-rank or lower only, please!”

“Gotcha!” The tiny dragon-themes sprite gives a little twirl, it’s clunky arms flailing adorably. “Assignment list set to: Easy!”

“Perfect, thanks! Let’s take a look, now… Otome-world…. Fantasy style cooking show star, haha. I have zero talent in that area, so please decline it for me, Dorazou…. Another Knights Order needs a Pure Heavenly Maiden for such and such ritual, ah, that honestly just sounds so sinister, decline! And here we have yet another otome assignment, damn. These things are such pests. Oh, what’s this?”

Sitting up, the agent leans in and peers closely at the screen, eyes bright in excitement. “Hey, Dorazou! This one calls for a team of agents!”

“That is correct!” Dorazou says, beaming. The dragon floats up to sit comfortably on the girl’s shoulder. “System Agents 74 and 81 have put in a request for additional manpower in the Game Master Assignment for World-120MAX. If Host accepts, she and four other agents will be tasked with working under the leadership of Agent 74 in creating and managing a Game World.”

She tilts back again, kicking her legs up into the air with some excitement. “What’s the deadline?”

Dorazou is quiet for a moment as it studies the screens. It gives a hearty cheer and pats the agent on the head. “No deadline! Host will remain on Agent 74’s GM Team until it is decommissioned by the Team itself!”

She jumps off the beanbag entirely to float up into the air, catching the little dragon sprite and hugging it to her chest. “Awesome! So it’s basically a neverending paid vacation, if we want it to be? That totally rocks! Dorazou, we lucked out with this one!”

“AwRAWRight!” The tiny system cheers, looping its scaly arms around her neck in a hug. “Is Host choosing this Assignment, then?”

“As if I’d ever turn down a chance like this! System Agents hardly ever get to work together! Dorazou, please confirm my acceptance!”

“Assignment chosen! Does Host wish to rest in the home space before starting?”

“Nah, I’m way too pumped now,” she clenches her fists and grins. “Dorazou, let’s go meet our new friends!”

“RAWR! World-120MAX loading! Twenty-eight percent! Fifty-percent! Eighty-three percent! World load complete! Entering database now!”

The agent grins as she dissolves into light. This is gonna be sweet!

—

“Nice to meet you! My name is Myra Khol, System Agent 23! I’m here for the Game Master Team Assignment!”

“The what?” The boy says, expression just positively befuddled as it has been when she’s first loaded into the world, and Myra tilts her head in slight confusion. Has this guy never met another agent before?

She hops down from the tree and steps over to him, a little surprised when he takes a step back in return. Man, this guy is shy! How cute!

“Wait a minute, did you just say ‘System’?” The boy straightens up, his eyes going even wider than they’d already been. “Does that mean you are also a transmigrator?”

“What else would I be?” Myra huffs out with some bemusement. “You guys clearly haven’t put any people in this world yet, so the only ones you’d be seeing are yourselves or another agent.”

“Agent…” the boy echoes, holding the fan up to his lips in thought. It’s an endearing gesture, something so old fashion being slightly out of place with the futuristic fantasy design of the boy’s outfit, and yet it still somehow fits him.

Myra blinks at him, and then decides to take pity. From the looks of it, this kid is a noob at the job. She remembers when that had been her. The good old days!

“Didn’t your Systems explain it to you guys yet?” She asks.

At her words, the boy’s expression darkens. “The System? No. Why would the System explain anything?”

Oh. That sounded like anger, there. Myra reaches out a hand and nervously scoots her precious Dorazou over until it’s hidden behind her back. The little dragon makes a tiny noise of confusion, but goes along with it.

The boy narrows his eyes at her action. “Speaking of systems… is that one yours?”

“Um, well,” Myra coughs. “Yes? But! Dorazou is such a sweet little thing! Wouldn’t harm a fly! Please take care of it!”

The boy looks confused. “Wouldn’t harm a fly! Have you never been threatened with Punishment Protocol?”

Myra gapes, aghast. “No! That’s reserved for triple S class worlds on the highest difficulty setting! Why would an Assignment like that be given to newbie agents?”

The boy stares at her, face pale.

“Oh.” Myra presses her hands over her mouth, staring at him in horror. “I mean, I’ve heard it happening only once. Someone being given an extreme-difficulty Assignment for their very first world. It was basically an impossible mission, but she luckily managed to complete it successfully. The Assignment Parameter glitch that led to it was suppose to have been fixed since then, though. Are you really saying…?”

The boy lets out a weak sounding laugh, bowing his head. He rubs the back of his arm across his eyes, and Myra feels something in her chest ache at the sight. These two agents… they’ve really been through the wringer, haven’t they?

Clearing her throat hesitantly, she asks, “The Assignment said there were two agents behind the request. Since you’re here, where’s your partner?”

“He’s on the other side of the Level, touching up on some persistent glitches that are occurring in quadrant five,” the boy releases an aggravated sigh. Then, he glances at Myra in surprise. “Oh, I haven’t introduced myself yet, have I? My name is Shen Yuan, it’s really nice to meet you.”

Myra grins back at him, relieved. “Is it? For a moment there, I thought you weren’t happy to see me.”

“Are you kidding?” Shen Yuan laughs again, and this one is much lighter. It suits him way better than the faintly grieved sound from before. “I am ecstatic to meet you. It’s nice to know that we’re not as alone as we thought. Here, I’ll take you to my… partner. He should be about finished by now.”

Myra bounces onto her toes in excitement. She grabs Dorazou by the tail and troops after Shen Yuan when the boy turns his back and begins to walk away.

“Man, not being given a tutorial world really sounds like it sucked,” Myra says, side eyeing her new teammate as she comes up beside him.

Shen Yuan has an odd smile on his face when he replies. “It was… definitely something, yes.”

“You want me to lodge a complaint with Management?” She asks, a pinch of worry between her brows. “If all three of us do it, they’ll have to take another look at the glitch and make double sure that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

Shen Yuan is quiet for a long while as they walk along the quaint little dirt path. The silence stretches into minutes, and Myra decides to leave him to his thoughts, because it looks like he’s pondering something pretty deep.

She busies herself with checking out their surroundings as they move along. Shen Yuan has called this area the Level, and she’s assuming it’s the first of its kind, and therefore intended to be the Starting Area for the Players when they enter into this world. She’s done her reading while loading into the Assignment, so she’s fairly confident in her ability to assist Shen Yuan and his partner with whatever sort of administration work they need help with. So far though, from what she’s seeing, the two of them are actually off to a really good start. One or both of them must have some sort of experience in world building.

What a perfect Assignment for them, if that’s the case.

Especially if what Shen Yuan says is true, and he really had suffered through a triple S class of extreme difficulty for what was suppose to be their tutorial world. He really deserves a paradisal vacation such as this, where he can recuperate from the troubles he’d faced.

“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Shen Yuan finally says, voice so quiet that Myra wouldn’t have heard it if the rest of the world around them wasn’t dead silent. It seems the audiosphere hasn’t been set up, yet.

Myra glances over to her side, and finds Shen Yuan staring down at the ground with a frown on his pretty face. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides.

“You said they already patched the glitch, so it shouldn’t have happened. They — whoever they are — clearly didn’t do their job.”

Myra bites her lip, and hugs a strangely quiet Dorazou to her chest. “Yeah, so we should file a complaint, right? And we can get the rest of the team on board with it, too, once they get here. I’m sure they’ll agree, too.”

“The rest of the team?” Shen Yuan asks, frown still present. He flicks his wrist, and the fan opens with a sharp snap and a skillful flourish. Myra stares at the action in awe. So refined! So graceful! And the fan itself was exquisite.

“I’m sorry, could you elaborate on the… Assignment Parameters you mentioned before? Xiao Lei and I just needed help, and the system said we’d have it. It didn’t explain what that help was, or where it would come from.”

Xiao Lei must be the other agent, Shen Yuan’ partner. Myra files the name away and directs a bright smile in the direction of her new teammate.

“Sure thing! Basically, your request generated a new Assignment in the listings for agents. It asks for five agents to form a team directly under you and your partner, though Agent 74 is suppose to be the team leader. That wouldn’t happen to be you, would it?”

Shen Yuan blinks at her, before his frown returns in full force. It looks faintly irritated this time, and the boy calls out, “System, what is my, uh, Agent number?”

There’s a faint sound of static, before a slightly stilted and robotic voice replies, “Host is filed as Agent 81.”

Myra glances down to see a Siamese cat, tail poised elegantly in the air and ears perked upright, weaving between Shen Yuan’s every step like a ghost. The cat glances up at her and blinks it’s bright blue eyes at her with an indifferent gaze.

“Oh, is that your System? It’s so cute!” She squeals.

The cat glances away from her, and Shen Yuan huffs.

“It’s an absolute snob, is what it is,” the boy refutes.

His system doesn’t look back up, and Myra feels a little bad for it, but…. Well, she supposed, if she’s been trapped in an SSS-rank hell world for her first Assignment, she might have some resentment toward her system, too.

She clutched Dorazou to her chest at the terrible thought, and is comforted when the little dragon spite turns around to nuzzle her back. It seems she’s really lucked out, huh?

“Does your system have a name?” She asks, scratching Dorazou behind the ear.

“Does it need one?” Shen Yuan asks coldly.

Myra cringes, glancing down at the aloof-looking cat that darts between his legs. It doesn’t even twitch at the way that it’s host speaks about it, and Myra decides to change the subject least the air becomes too awkward.

“So, um, I guess your partner is the designated team leader, then!” She tries, her smile fixed in place.

Shen Yuan shrugs. He flutters the pretty fan in front of his face and holds his other arm behind his back. He looks like some sort of regal young master of an ancient dynasty, with a posture like that. Myra wonders what the setting of his last world had been. Imperial court drama, perhaps? That sort of plot was almost always a guaranteed S rank.

“It suits him,” Shen Yuan says. “He has the most experience in creating worlds, so I guess I’d follow his lead even if he wasn’t the boss. Though, I’ll definitely be there to advise him, so he doesn’t get too carried away.”

“Carried away?” Myra wonders.

“It happens, sometimes.” Shen Yuan grimaces. “If it’s true that we’ll be a team, then I’ll be counting on you to keep an eye on him, as well.”

“Yes, of course!” Myra is a little confused, but Shen Yuan obviously knows his partner best, so she’ll take his words to heart. She salutes him. “You can definitely rely on me for that!”

This gets her a faint smile, and she inwardly cheers. This boy is surprisingly difficult to get a response out of. Myra hasn’t met someone like him in a long time.

Suddenly, Shen Yuan pulls to a stop, and gestures ahead of them. “We’re here,” he says, and then sighs. “Looks like he’s not finished… I wonder….”

Myra looks ahead of them, to see a huge structure looming in the distance. The forest they’ve been strolling through has given way to an open plain, grasslands mixed with an opaque sandy desert. A few hundred meters away sits a hulking building, which in closer examination is not a building at all, but in fact some sort of autonomous being. It’s collapsed on its side, limbs askew, a central panel of its torso gaping open to allow its mechanical insides to be strewn about throughout the grass and sand around it. There’s faint noises of metal hitting against metal coming from within it, and when Myra squints, she can just make out a tiny figure perched on the very edge of the thing’s opened chassis.

Shen Yuan takes a step forward, and Myra keeps back. He closes his fan with a satisfying clack and slips it into the pocket of his shorts, and then cups his hands around his mouth. “Hey, Shang Lei! Come here!”

Oh, so the other agent’s name was Shang Lei, not Xiao Lei.

Myra pokes at her lip in thought as she watches the distant figure poke it’s head up out of the mechanical innards of whatever creature they were tinkering around inside of. Shen Yuan, Shang Lei… those names both sound pretty Chinese to her. And in Chinese, Xiao is often used as a diminutive or an endearment. So, this must mean that Shen Yuan and Shang Leo are actually very close friends, right? Myra covers her smile with a hand.

Due to context gathered from Shen Yuan's earlier words, it must also be likely that they were partners in their last world. Meaning that Shang Lei also experienced what was, in layman’s terms, called a Hell Assignment. And it is likely that the Hell Assignment was also Shang Lei’s first Assignment, given that Shen Yuan has no idea about a lot of System Agent common sense.

If they were partners all this time, if Shang Lei had previous transmigration experience, he’d have schooled his partner on it by now. And yet, Shen Yuan was ignorant of a lot of things.

Myra presses both her palms to her cheeks and sighs quietly as she watches Shang Lei approach them. Shen Yuan has stepped up to meet him, but she can clearly see the hesitant way that Shang Lei holds himself, the wary way that he eyes her. The way that he slides himself into the shadow of Shen Yuan’s barely taller stature when he realizes she’s looking back at him.

She sighs in her heart, as well, and clutches Dorazou in one arm like a teddy bear. Her system pays her on the hand.

“—apparently posted an assignment asking for other agents to come and lend us a hand.” Shen Yuan is explaining quietly to his partner — his friend. He gestures at her with a hand. “This is Myra Khol, the first one to accept the mission.”

Myra steps forward the smallest step she can take without it seeming like she’s wary of them, too. It still makes Shang Lei duck even further behind Shen Yuan. She does not let it dim her smile.

“Hi, I’m Myra, System Agent 23! I’m pleased to meet you, boss!”

Shang Lei peeks out from behind his friend with wide eyes. There’s a complicated expression on his face.

“... Nice to meet you, too,” he mumbles, and curls back behind Shen Yuan as soon as the last word is out.

That is it! Myra has decided! She will help these two to the best of her abilities, not because it’s the Assignment, but because she wants to!

Dorazou! Edit Assignment self parameters!

[[Host!]]

The dragon sprite makes a soft noise from within her grasp. She sees the way that Shang Lei’s eyes dart down to it, and the frown that graces his face as he glances shyly back toward her with an expression that almost looks faintly concerned. For her. And given the fact that it’s very possible that Shang Lei’s opinion of systems is the same as Shen Yuan’s, due to their not-so-great past experiences, the look that he’s sending her now makes Myra’s heart melt.

[[Assignment parameters, self edit mode!]]

Myra’s smile broadens.

Take care of Agent 74 and Agent 81! Priority!

#scum villain's self saving system #bofuri #cheating men must die #world state: refresh #update #vodkassassin fanfiction #cucumberplane #vodkas ocs

[scandeniall]

Let’s Make a Song

Pairing: rnbsinger!atsumu x rnbsinger!reader

Summary/warnings: ur long term on again off again bf Atsumu wants to do your first song together. Thing is you’re currently off/honestly just cursing. 1 tiny implied nsfw sentence. Literally 1

the 2nd piece in rnb!haikyuu bc why tf not. Other

a/n: The song that’s written is change by Arin Ray & Kehlani (that’s also the cover art mentioned later)

Wc: 2.8K

When your manager relayed the invitation to collaborate with Atsumu you were rather surprised. He didn’t do many new collaborations, reserving those for people he’d worked with in the past. Then there was the fact that he hadn’t asked you personally. The two of you were more than acquainted and he definitely had your phone number. But then again it’d been months since you’d last had any contact.

The two of you had been on and off again for the larger part of your careers, meeting in high school and building a friendship for years. A year after graduation you’d decided to make the switch from friendship to relationship. And it worked. The two of you both wanted to pursue music and understood one another. You were one another’s number one fan, muse, and confidant as you grew in popularity.

He’d gotten signed before you but neither of you thought it would change things. Then he started being around less and less getting busy recording his first studio album while you continued to work independently. He’d still come back to you at the end of the night. However that was short lived thus bringing about the first of many splits over the years. It was mutual—things were too busy to give the love someone deserved.

During that first split you’d ended up getting signed yourself. In only a few months you were immediately thrusted into the same professional world as Atsumu and that brought the two of you back together. He’d seen the announcement post on social media and paraded over to yours that night rambling about the betrayal of you not telling him you were in talks with a label. He’d bought over dinner and the two of you got back to talking consistently and rekindled in mere weeks.

That had been at 19. Now at 23 the two of you were still a roller coaster. You’d broken up for a number of reasons over the years. Busy schedules, his ego, your attitude, internet rumors mixed with poor communication, poor timing, you name it. Yet the two of you always found your way back like magnets.

You weren’t quite sure what you expected when you agreed to doing a song with Atsumu, who you were currently off with. In all your years, the two of you had never done a song together. Sure you’d fucked around with writing a few times but neither of you ever used any of those songs. You two had different styles, him focusing more on heavy bass, and reminiscent on the SoundCloud style. Meanwhile you were more soulful and melodic.

You hadn’t even so much as texted atsumu in like three months So of course it was a surprise when you made your way to his for a writing session to see the lyrics he’d already come up with. Lyrics that just by the way he read them to you, were clearly about you.

you’ve got me all in my feelings And I know you get tired of running You stole my heart and I mean it When we break up, can’t wait to make up

“That’s all I got so far,” he sighed leaning back on the couch next to you. “What do ya think”

“It’s different from your usual shit. It’s softer.” You ignore the scoff he sends you and sit back on the couch before he starts complaining. “But I like it. What was the inspiration.” You’re not even sure why you asked. Maybe it was the desire to have confirmation that you really have been the one all these years. There was still a chance it could’ve been someone else

“And you say yer the smart one between us,” is all he says before grabbing his laptop off the coffee table. “I got this beat too. Suna sent it over this morning and I think I wanna use it.” You choose to ignore his confirmation as you begin to get comfortable against the couch. He plays the instrumental and it only further surprises you from just how different it was from his usual. It was undoubtedly more your style and you're almost offended that your friend hadn’t sent you the beat instead. “Ya like it?”

“Could you play it back.” You begin to hum along a few nonsensical words to yourself and you’re aware of Atsumu’s eyes on you. He watches as you hit the voice record on your phone, already aware that you do that in case you say something that you like. You try to think back to what he started with and He moves his notebook closer to you so you can get a better view of the words messily scribbled.

You can’t keep coming and going In and out of my life please make up your fucking mind I give you time and you kill it

Immediately after that he pauses much to your annoyance and ignores your complaint. “I like that.”

“Yeah?”

“Sounds like yer replying back. Like a conversation,” he nods. “Is that really how ya feel about me?” You don’t miss the way he tries to subtly put his arm around the back of the couch and subsequently you. And your laugh.

“God you’re annoying Atsumu.” You end up caving, moving the laptop back to the table in front of you and moving under his waiting arm. You can’t even deny the way you like it either, comforted by the way his hand rubs up and down your arm. “Is that how you feel about us,” you challenge referring to the lyrics he’d come up with

“Course. I look forward to making up ya know.” He chuckles and the look of faux disgust you send him before continuing. “But I mean it. Ya got my heart and have for years.” The words are paired with a kiss to your temple.

You two sit in silence for a few moments before you break it with a sigh. “I’m tired of this shit Tsumu. It’s been years of us and this and the older I get, the more draining it is. I wonder all the time if I should stay or just leave for good.” It’s the first time you’ve ever admitted it to anyone other than yourself, and it’s to the person that has the power to break your heart at any given moment. The only small comfort is that you know it’s mutual and that you hold his as well.

“If you’re tired then write it out (Y/N). It’s part of the reason I asked ya to do a song.” He nudges you to sit up and catches your eye. “I think about ya way too fucking much and I’ve thought about if shit between us was worth it too.” He looks like he’s in through for a moment before quickly grabbing his notebook scribbling for a minute before showing you.

thinking of you is all I do honestly I might go insane cause when we break up can’t wait to make up Some things will never change

He’s playing the instrumental before you can say anything waiting until a certain part and signaling for you to just wait. Then his voice softly fills your ears as he goes into the words and points at you to follow up with what you’d sung before. As you near the end you gesture for him not to stop it yet

It’s very personal to me That you give it everything Should I stay? Should I go? Should I leave? I don't know.

After that your mind blanks and you reach over to pause the track. It felt good. Really good. “I think I have my verse,” you exclaim. “And what if we repeat your part. Maybe starting from thinking of you” you half mumble the words already writing away at your own notebook. You don’t even notice the look Atsumus giving you until you look back up minutes later after humming along and trying to string the words together. “What”

“It’s nothin. Just love watching ya write that’s all.” You end up shooting him a soft smile before focusing back on the words in front of you. “Actually, this beat is more you than me so did ya wanna do the bridge”

That causes you to look up in confusion. “Are you sure? It’s your song. It’d be weird for me to have a bigger part?” Atsumu is brushing off the question of you asking him to be serious. You didn’t want to step on any toes or offend anyone.

“If it’s that big a deal to ya we can go back n forth or somthin’.” His eyes question yours for a moment before smiling in victory at your agreeing. “Besides, Suna was gonna send it to ya anyways. Paid him to let me have it instead. Didn’t take much just-Ow!” HES quickly cut off by your fist coming into contact with his shoulder. “Why’d ya-“

“You’re an ass, did you know that,” you roll your eyes in response. No wonder the beat was so different from his usual. Because the track wasn’t meant for him. You’d have to bitch at Suna later for giving the track to Atsumu of all people. And for who knows what kind of lowball offer it was. “Wanna tell me why you did that. Or I can leave. Your choice” you’re closing your notebook at this point shifting away from him a bit.

“I missed ya.” It’s the only thing he says before your scoffing and getting off the couch and starting to gather your things.  “I’m serious (Y/N).” The feeling of his hand grabbing at yours causes you to stop. “I kept thinking about us and couldn’t Bring myself to text. I got Suna to give me the track cause I wanted to see ya and talk.”

“Why couldn’t you just text?”

“I can say it better in a song. And I know you can too. Now c’mon don’t go alright?” You allow him to tug you back down onto the couch with a sigh. He wasn’t necessarily wrong. You’d wanted to settle things between you both once and for all for a while now. He just provided the opportunity. You both needed to know if you were just wasting time.

“Listen. If ya wanna talk about it outside of the song let’s go for a drive then.”

“First you steal my beat to get me to come over, now you wanna trap me in a car with you?” Atsumu only looks at you unbothered before you sigh. “Let’s go before I change my mind.”

“If it’s that bad, you know how to tuck and roll. I might slow down enough.” —-

“Atsumu what are we doing,”

He doesn’t even spare you a glance before responding. “Driving.” When you don’t reply he lets out a sigh before giving a real answer. “Do you still love me?”

“Yes,” it’s like you answer before your brain even ponders the question. “Do you still love me?”

“Wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t.” His words are just as confident. He shoots you a quick glance before continuing. “I wanna get back together. For good this time. Heard about yer date with that Semi guy.”

Your breath hitches for a moment. While you’re not surprised that he knew about the date last month, you didn’t think he’d mention it. You’d woken up the morning after notifications crazy. Pictures of the two of you filled them and many of the tweets had actually tagged Atsumu as well.

“We weren’t together so ya don’t have to go explaining anything,” he stops you from your attempt at an apology. “Of course i'm not sure what ya saw in that guy. But it made me realize that yer the one I want. Always been the one.” He shrugs before the hand closest to you comes to rest on your thigh. “And I’ve always been the one for you too right?”

“Are you serious about wanting to make us work this time?” His hand leaves your leg for the wheel again and you watch in confusion as he makes a few sudden turns. He mutters something about giving him a few minutes before pulling into a random parking lot. He shuts the car off before unbuckling so he can turn his entire body to face you. “What are you doing Atsumu?”

“Move in with me.” You’re looking at him like he’s grown another head before he continues. “My lease with Samu is almost up and he’s been wanting to move closer to his shop and I wanna be closer to a studio. I’m serious about us and I just think-“

“Would you actually help with boxes or just sit on your ass and watch?”

The questions cause him to frown a bit in thought and you can’t help but laugh as he actually interprets the words and what they really mean. You could tell the exact moment he gets it and a lazy smirk settles on his face instead. “No promises babe. I kinda like watching ya walk away.”

The way his face eased closer to yours had you following his lead until your lips met. You can feel yourself smiling as one of his hands comes to cup your jaw. The kiss is sweet, lips moving slowly against yours in a reunion of sorts. “Stay over tonight we can work on the song again tomorrow.” He pulls away just enough to insist, resting his forehead against yours.

“Already told Samu so he’s bringing enough dinner home. And I got a new toothbrush in the bathroom.”You lean to peck his lips before sitting back in the seat. “You knew this would happen didn’t you.” Despite the accusation you find yourself agreeing with no hesitation.

“I hoped. It’s a difference babe. If not, more food for me” his hand quickly grabs yours to place a kiss on your own before settling back on the wheel. “Let’s get back I’m starvin”

—— “Are yer eyes closed? Are you sure? Don’t peek-“

“Hurry up Atsumu,” you groan as you allow him to lead you to god knows where. The song you’d guys finished a few weeks ago was set to release in a few hours and Atsumu refused to let you see the song cover. It was a surprise, or so he told you every time you tried to ask. Even in his new song tease on twitter he just posted blank images. New song with a surprise guest coming soon ;)

He’d had you meet him at his label and jumped on you the second you stepped into the building blindfold in hand and stupid grin on his face. “Don’t act like this is a new thing for ya,” he’d whisper in your ear as he tied the blindfold and laughed when you attempted to hit at him and miss.

“Stop complaining before I make you wait until the songs officially out. We’re almost there” you feel his hand leave yours before it’s placed on your back. You can hear a door open before he instructs you in. “Small step up.” With your restricted sight your hearing has seemed to increase tenfold. You can hear the sound of blinds opening and him moving around. “One second babe.”

After a few more moments and complaints for him to hurry up a pair of arms wrap around your waist. Leaning into the warmth you feel his lips kiss up your neck before stopping. “You can look now.”

It takes a moment for your eyes to spot it. First your eyes dart around the room to see nothing out of the ordinary save for a table with a champagne bottle. Then one of his arms points toward the window and you freeze in shock. “Atsumu is this?” You turn to look at him expectedly as he nods and pushes you near it. From the window of the building you see the cover art plastered on a billboard.

“Where did you find that?”

Atsumu’s voice grows closer as he stops next to you. “Our mom came down a while ago. Had some shit to deliver and brought some scrapbooks. It was in there.” You nod in understanding before he continues. “Ya like it?”

The picture was one from years ago. He’d just gotten signed and that weekend you and a few friends went on a road trip to celebrate. That particular picture had been taken on a Polaroid as you two were outside supposedly star gazing. On the mountain of blankets it was clear that his attention was more on you than the sky. It was one of your favorite pictures for a while then eventually you had broken up (for the first time) and it was long forgotten.

“Love it. Brings back memories you know?” You don’t even notice he’d gone to pour you a glass before he's dangling off in front of your face.

“Here’s to our first song together babe”

bonus things

yall actually filmed a music vid (this isnt included bc i am only now finding out theres a mv despite having this song in my music for a year)

he tweets the song link with “decided to stay”

atsumu ends up buying suna a ps5 game he wanted as a thank you (not w/o complaining though)

ppl on the internet arent even surprised that yall are back together (theyre tired too tf)

atsumu ends up putting that polaroid in his clear phone case <3

this is yall 6th time getting back together (yall keep trying HUH lmfao. but yall never actually ended on bad terms and always stayed friend)

you end tweeting a joke “ok last time yall i promise LMFAO”

#haikyuu x reader #hq x reader #atsumu x reader #atsumu imagines #hq imagines #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu imagines #rnb!hq #im starting a tag for it i guess LMFAO #its almost 3 am time for my usual post and dip mwah see yall next year #atsumu imagine

[magicallygrimmwiccan]

The Opposite of Love (Indifference) Chapter II: It’s Better To Feel Pain (Than Nothing At All)

“If this is to be my wardrobe for the near future,” Logan growled, “then I demand all photographic evidence be burned upon completion of this period.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Virgil drawled, rolling his eyes. “Besides, Dee thought you’d need a break. And what better way to make you take a break-”

“Than to make sure there were no traces of my royal wardrobe, yes I know,” Logan sighed, holding up a pink turtleneck sweater. “I still do not appreciate this.”

“Aw, I think you’ll look downright adorable,” Virgil teased. “Besides, it’s more comfortable than your regular clothing, you have to admit.” Logan grumbled in complaint but ultimately agreed. The sweaters all looked much softer and more pleasing than his usual silken attire, and the purple cargo shorts looked to be much less restrictive than his typical trousers. He had always had a weakness for knee-high socks, and Converse made him extremely happy as well.

(He sincerely hoped that Virgil would not remember that this was the outfit they had first met in. Logan would possibly die of embarrassment if Virgil recalled that little detail. Dee had surely given him this wardrobe on accident, and Logan was determined to never let Virgil know the true implications of what this outfit symbolized.)

“Well… I suppose it could be worse,” Logan sighed. “And seeing as my current outfit is ruined-” He was fairly certain Virgil had done that out of spite. “- I must change. Please exit the room.”

“Sure thing. When you’re done, I managed to find some books you might like.” With that, Virgil left, leaving Logan alone in a strange room in a weird house in the middle of nowhere. He let out a shaky sigh and began to undress, choosing to leave his binder on. Yes, it had been on for four days, but he wasn’t feeling any pain or difficulty breathing. He would be fine.

Logan exited his room after a minute or two, only to be faced by a glaring Virgil again. “Yeah, go take off that binder, mister.”

“What? It-”

“It has been on for four days, Logan, so go take it off right this second.”

“How-”

“Dee told me. Take it off and leave it off for a week or I make you.” Logan was going to give Dee a stern talking-to about privacy once he got back to the palace, but for now, he was unwilling to see what Virgil meant by “making him”. With a sigh, he walked back into his room, wriggled out of his binder, and took a moment to breathe before heading back out to Virgil. Virgil nodded in approval before carefully taking his elbow and leading him to the living room, supporting his still-shaky legs.

Logan gasped as he saw the pile of books awaiting him on the coffee table. “Are those all for me?”

“Yeah, I’ve been collecting old books for a few decades now. Figured I should try and preserve as much of the past as I could, ya know?”

“Virgil, this… this is lovely, thank you,” Logan said, turning to face the vampire with a small smile on his face. “This was quite kind of you.”

Virgil shrugged. “Not really, but okay.”

Logan let out a sigh but ultimately put the issue to rest, moving forward to inspect the books further. Dante’s Inferno, Frankenstein, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, all literary classics, all ridiculously hard to find now in their original book forms. How Virgil had managed to find these was a mystery Logan didn’t care to solve, as he was far too happy just getting lost in the books in front of him.

“Oh I guess I’ll just… leave you,” Virgil mumbled, stepping back and vanishing into the kitchen, pulling out the ingredients to make a kickass lasagna while Logan buried himself in books behind him.

------------------------------------------------

Virgil woke up only a day after the Book Incident (that plan had worked too well) to the smell of smoke wafting through the house. He bolted upright and dashed out into the living room, clad only in the tank top and skinny jeans he’d fallen asleep in.

“Logan?!” he yelped, nose burning from the scent of smoke. Coughing answered him and Logan emerged from the kitchen, fanning his face and looking at Virgil with red-rimmed pink eyes.

“My apologies, I accidentally set fire to the ravioli I was attempting to boil,” Logan coughed, smiling shakily at Virgil. “Um… I turned off the stove before anything too bad happened?”

Virgil groaned and pushed past Logan into the kitchen. “Stay out, sugar, you’re liable to melt. I’ll handle it.” His eyes widened as he took in the disaster before him. How had Logan managed to also burn the water?! The sauce he could understand, as making brown butter took skill and sage burned quickly if the heat was too high, and the ravioli he could also kind of comprehend, but the water? How was this man such a disaster?

“Logan… I think you’re officially banned from the kitchen,” Virgil announced.

“That is quite fair,” Logan called back. “Would you like help cleaning up?”

Virgil was about to answer when the sauce finally exploded, covering him from head to toe in sage butter. He stood, frozen, for a solid minute, before he forced himself to reply.

“No. No I would not.”

-------------------------------------------------------

Virgil would like to go back and ask his past self exactly how oblivious he had been for thinking that Logan would actually sleep once removed from the situation with the Ice Queen. Because Logan, Virgil was slowly realizing, was not only stubborn and stupid and lacked an understanding of the definition of self-care, but he was oblivious to his own body’s needs.

It had been a week since Virgil and Logan had moved into this little tree house in the middle of nowhere, and Logan had only slept twice in that entire time there. Once when Virgil had dragged him in, and once the afternoon of the Cooking Incident. It was frankly getting ridiculous, and Virgil was about two seconds away from tearing his hair out in frustration over the stupid prince he was currently babysitting. Logan needed to go to sleep right this goddamn second or Virgil knew he was going to fucking scream.

“Are you quite alright, Virgil? You look tense,” Logan observed, looking up from the copy of The Great Gatsby Virgil had managed to find for him. Virgil grit his teeth together before leveling Logan with a harsh glare, allowing all the anger and frustration and possible-worry over the prince’s health bubble up and heat his gaze.

“No I am not alright,” Virgil hissed. “You are being an idiot who isn’t sleeping and it is getting on my last. Nerve.”

Logan blinked, thoroughly confused. “Oh… well, that is, quite frankly, none of your business, Virgil.”

Virgil gay-up hissed like an irate cat and shot to his feet, marching over to tower over Logan. “Go the fuck to sleep, bitch.”

“No.” Logan met his glare with a steady gaze, not even flinching. Virgil let out a sound that totally wasn’t a scream as he began to pace around the living room, muttering to himself. What would make Logan go to sleep? What was a fool-proof plan for success? Virgil needed one now, and short of continuously knocking Logan out, something both Patton and Roman would take issue with, Virgil had no answers.

“Well, have fun with… whatever it is you are doing. I will be making more coffee in the meantime,” Logan called, beginning to stand. Virgil froze, an evil smirk crossing his face. Oh. This was perfect. The perfect solution to his dilemma. How had he not thought of this before?

“You’re not getting more coffee,” Virgil laughed, strolling into the kitchen and ignoring Logan’s indignant noises. “You’re not getting more coffee until you sleep.”

“That- you can’t just do that!” Logan squeaked. “You are not in control of my actions!”

“Ah, but I can hide the coffee machine.” Logan’s face paled and he stared at Virgil with wide, pleading eyes. Virgil ignored him, however, and simply unplugged the machine from its spot, picked it up, and carried it into his room, ignoring the pleas to stop.

He kicked his door shut, shoving his bass in front of the door to keep Logan out, and floated upwards to hide the machine in the top of his closet where Logan would never find it. There. Boom. Problem solved. He was a genius.

Virgil left his room, only to run straight into a frantic Logan, who grabbed his hoodie and pulled him down to stare directly into his eyes, all the hatred of a thousand suns burning into Virgil’s soul from those eyes.

“Give me back. My coffee machine,” Logan absolutely growled, jaw clenched so tightly Virgil was surprised his teeth weren’t cracking under the strain.

“Nope,” Virgil replied, popping his p and watching with great pleasure as the fight drained from Logan’s form. “Not until you go to sleep, hulwaty.”

Logan sighed, biting his bottom lip. “... are you sure I cannot convince you?”

“Yeah. Now, to bed. Chop chop.” Logan sighed and trudged to his room, practically slamming the door behind him. Virgil smiled sadly at the door before going back out to the kitchen, making sure to close his own door behind him. It was for Logan’s own health, he told himself, regardless of how those sad eyes on that sad face had stabbed into his soul. He was going soft. The thought, he realized, did not horrify him as it once might have. Virgil promptly decided to not analyze this thought further and began to prepare another vegetable stock for another soup. He might as well take advantage of this free time while Logan slept, right?

----------------------------------------------------

Yeah, Virgil really was going soft. Too soft, in fact, as he was more concerned about Logan sleeping than he was about his own health. It was a problem. Virgil had always either not given a single fuck about someone or cared far too much to be healthy, and it looked like he had switched modes for Logan in less than a week. Damn it.

He hadn’t slept in three days and he swore he could feel it in his toe bones (metatarsals and phalanges, Logan had told him at one point). Virgil was stumbling around the house, utterly exhausted yet also refusing to sleep. Logan still hadn’t gotten his coffee maker back, as he only slept after Virgil reminded him he held the precious machine hostage and Virgil was terrified to think about the lack of sleep Logan would get if he gave it back now.

Of course, this left Virgil monitoring Logan so much that his own sleep was left behind, a fact that he was realizing made him a flaming hypocrite. This, however, did not escape Logan’s notice; he was just far too nice to comment on it, Virgil realized.

“Hey, darling,” Logan murmured after 3 sleepless nights for Virgil, carefully draping a soft fleece blanket over his shoulders. “You’ve done enough. Time for you to rest.”

“No,” Virgil slurred, weakly shaking his head despite his body insisting on listening to Logan. “No, you… you won’t sleep if I do. Gotta take care of you.”

“Oh, love,” Logan murmured, gently pulling Virgil to his feet. “If that is what concerns you… I can sleep with you, just to make sure we both get some rest. Is that alright?”

“I… I guess. Promise you’ll actually sleep?” Had Virgil been more aware, he would have flinched at how vulnerable he sounded, but as it stood, he didn’t have the brain capacity to care.

“Of course,” Logan soothed, guiding Virgil to his room. “Now, let’s have a nap, shall we? We’ll both feel better after, I imagine.”

Virgil didn’t even complain, simply stripping down to a T-shirt and boxers before collapsing onto his bed, pulling a Logan who was clad in a too-large sweater and tall socks to his chest. He drifted off in the space between one blink and the next, the last thing he remembered being the sweet scent of Logan drifting into his nose as pink hairs tickled it.

Afterwards, both of them agreed to get sleep each night, and the coffee maker was restored to its usual spot on the kitchen counter.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Logan sneezed for what had to be the fifth time in the space of twenty minutes, groaning as his stuffed-up nose decided to torture his brain again. He had only gotten sick once before in his life, and he never wanted to ever again as long as he lived. This was torture.

“Logan, I made you chicken noodle soup, and I expect you to eat it all,” Virgil called, strolling into the living room. He held a tray in his hands, laden with a large steaming bowl and a small glass of apple juice, a severe look painted on his face. Logan groaned but forced himself to sit upright to receive Virgil’s lovely efforts.

“My thanks, Virgil,” Logan groaned, wincing at his stuffy-sounding voice. “I still apologize for falling ill.”

“Hey, none of that. You haven’t spent extended time out of the palace for ages. It makes sense.”

“Still, you should not have to deal with me.”

“My bedside manner is shit, but I’ll still take care of you. Now eat your damn soup,” Virgil huffed, sitting down on the couch at Logan’s feet and giving a look that could almost be construed as tender. Logan took the tray and began to slowly sip at the soup, glancing up at Virgil every so often. The vampire king simply watched him with a steady expression. Not a cold form of steady by any means, Logan realized. No, this was a steady that spoke of care, of tenderness, of passion and love and promises of safety. Logan had never felt safer in his entire life than he did there, on that couch, Virgil watching him as he drank his chicken noodle soup.

(Something stirred in Logan’s stomach, at that thought, and he brutally shoved it down. Now was not the time for feelings.)

“Good. Now drink your juice, and I put some pills to help on the tray as well.” Logan found them quickly and downed them with the apple juice in two gulps. Virgil smiled at him and leaned over, gently ruffling his hair. “Now go to sleep. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

Logan settled back down and Virgil grabbed the tray, retreating to the kitchen. The candy prince yawned, fighting to stay awake until Virgil returned, but he quickly lost the battle at the soft sound of Virgil’s soothing humming as he fell into a deep, dark, comforting realm of dreams.

---------------------------------------------------

When Virgil inevitably fell ill merely two days later, Logan tried to reciprocate the care. He burned the soup and spilled the juice twice, causing Virgil to laugh and Logan to blush furiously. They eventually get things to work, and Virgil began to feel better in no time, and the two of them agreed to never bring up The Great Chicken Soup Catastrophe ever again.

-------------------------------------------------------------

“So, I just… do this?” Logan asked for the tenth time, gently poking the pasta dough in front of him. Virgil nodded, too focused on his own pasta dough to correct the fact that Logan shouldn’t be poking it but should, in fact, be shaping it.

“I mean, you should be shaping it, not poking it, but yeah.” Virgil finished shaping all of his dough and turned to help Logan, snorting at the comical sight of Prince Gumball, covered in flour, staring in horror at the dough in front of him as if it were about to attack him.

“What do you mean shaping it? Shaping it into what? How do I do that when it sticks to me whenever I touch it?” Logan looked utterly lost and baffled. It was adorable. Virgil couldn’t help the small snort he let out before he shuffled over, gently picking up Logan’s dough before beginning to shape it for him.

“I think that might just be the fact that you’re made of gum, nizarat,” Virgil answered, hands expertly pinching and tucking and folding and rolling until all of Logan’s dough was in the perfect shape to make their dish. “Either way, there you go.”

“Thank you, Virgil,” Logan sighed, looking quite relieved to have this over with. “Now, what is the next step?”

“Now, we get to drop these into the boiling water,” Virgil replied, pausing when he saw Logan pale and step back a bit. “What is it?”

“Uh… is it liable to splash?” Logan inquired, staring at the pot in fear. Virgil mentally slapped himself for not considering that someone made out of sugar would not handle being hit with water well and sighed.

“It… it might. I can do all of this if you want?”

“That would be wonderful, Virgil, my thanks,” Logan replied, retreating to deal with finding the perfect dishes to plate their pasta on. Virgil sighed and went back to making sure the pasta didn’t overcook, listening to Logan’s quiet curses as he tried to find matching dishware in the cupboards.

“It doesn’t have to match, Logan,” Virgil called, voice tinged in amusement.

“Yes it does,” Logan insisted, and Virgil could just picture his puffed-out cheeks and slight glare. “If they do not match, then the presentation is wrong. And if the presentation is wrong, the meal is ruined.”

“You have to lighten up some times,” Virgil laughed, dumping the pasta into the sauce to finish cooking it. “You can’t always make everything perfect. Sometimes, you work with what you have.”

“That seems like a very… strange way to live,” Logan mumbled back. “Should you not strive for perfection in all that you do?”

“Sometimes, your best is good enough.” Virgil shrugged, bringing the pasta over to the table, before dishing it out into the bowls Logan had found with a carving fork. “And honestly, I’d be exhausted trying to be perfect every hour of the day. I’d much rather be the mess that I really am.”

Logan hummed, looking thoughtful, but didn’t say anything, simply nomming on his pasta with wide eyes. “This is delicious, Virgil. Thank you.”

“You helped make it, dude.”

“Thank you anyway.” For teaching me, for the advice, for accepting me for who I am even though you have every reason not to… Logan didn’t need to say all of that. Virgil knew.

“Of course, Logan.”

-------------------------------------------------------------

Logan secretly liked Saturdays in the house with Virgil, although he would never admit it on pain of death. Virgil would do some baking early in the morning and leave the basket of treats on the table throughout the day for the two of them to snack on. Logan would spend the morning sewing, knitting, and doing puzzles while Virgil cleaned (the vampire was, surprisingly, a neat freak, something Logan had only just now remembered). They would then have a light lunch of sandwiches before retreating back to their own quiet activities, Logan typically reading in the afternoon while Virgil sketched. The soft quiet soothed them both, and it became something they both looked forward to at the end of the loud week.

On one such afternoon, Logan finally decided to move closer to Virgil during their afternoon time. They’d been in the same house for a little over a month now, and Logan hoped that this meant he was allowed to sit on the same couch as Virgil without it seeming weird.

“Logan? What the fuck are you doing?” Virgil asked, looking up as Logan sat on the other couch cushion. Logan froze, turning to look at Virgil. Should he just go back to the loveseat?

“Um… I figured I could… sit here today?”

Virgil let out a soft sigh and stood, Logan’s heart climbing into his throat. Oh, he had messed this up, hadn’t he?

However, instead of leaving, Virgil simply turned around and lounged against Logan, his feet propped up on the other armrest. “Well, then, I guess we’re doing this today.” Logan let out a quiet sigh of relief and turned back to his book, allowing Virgil to continue his drawing in their usual silence.

Eventually, however, Virgil’s weight began to press more and more into Logan’s shoulder, and he glanced over to see what was going on. He had to stifle a giggle, however, as he saw the vampire’s closed eyes and slack face, his theory confirmed as he heard a light snore as well.

“Well, this simply can’t be comfortable,” Logan murmured, carefully shifting Virgil off of his shoulder and into his lap. “That should be better.” By some miracle, the sleeping vampire did not wake, simply shifting position once in Logan’s lap. Satisfied with his work, Logan turned back to his book, not intent on moving until Virgil woke up. He clearly needed this nap, and it would take a crueler man than Logan to take said nap away from him.

--------------------------------------------

When Virgil woke up four hours later to find Logan passed out, he simply chuckled, placed a blanket around Logan’s shoulders, and went back to sleep.

------------------------------------------------

“Logan! Come on!” Virgil called, already halfway down the ladder to the ground. Logan carefully followed, bundled up in a thick turtleneck sweater, a scarf, and a woolen peacoat. Virgil was only in his usual hoodie and flannel, apparently unbothered by the crisp chill in the air.

“Not all of us wish to risk our necks climbing down recklessly,” Logan shot back, clinging tightly to the rickety ladder as he descended. “Plus, I do not see the appeal in jumping in piles of dead foliage.”

“It’s a fun thing to do,” Virgil answered, “and you need to stop being so overcautious. Let loose every once in a while!”

“I do ‘let loose’, just not when I could be harmed doing so.” Logan finally reached the ground and carefully stepped down, the leaves crunching around him.

“You’re boring,” Virgil declared, already kicking leaves into a pile. “Come on, I wanna get this pile to be a decent size.”

Logan reluctantly began to help Virgil curate the pile of dried leaves, wincing as he accidentally touched a few wet ones. He quickly dried his hands before it could affect his skin too much, ignoring Virgil’s snickering.

Soon enough, they had amassed a pile of red, brown, orange, and yellow, about three quarters of Virgil’s height and with a radius of similar size. Virgil was grinning wickedly, causing Logan’s stomach to clench in anxiety. That facial expression spelled trouble, and Logan did not need more trouble in his life today.

“So, you want to go first or should I?” Virgil asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

Logan shook his head quickly and stepped back, hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Oh, no, no, I do not think it wise to-”

“You then!” With that, Virgil picked Logan up, ignoring the screeches from the candy prince, and chucked him onto the pile. Logan screamed and curled into a ball just before colliding with the leaves, eyes flying open in surprise as he did not feel cold, hard ground colliding with his side.

“Yeah, the leaves cushion your fall if you get them high enough,” Virgil answered his unasked question. “You didn’t think I’d let ya get hurt, did you?”

“I… I am not sure what to believe at this moment,” Logan muttered. Virgil sighed and helped him out of the pile, brushing leaves off of him.

“Yeah, well… can you at least believe that I won’t let you get hurt? I might not be a good person, but I’m not a dick.”

“Of- of course, I never meant to make you think-”

“No, Logan, relax!” Virgil exclaimed. “I didn’t- oh gosh, people just tend to think I’m evil, but even I have standards!”

“Of course you do! How can people think you’re evil? Yes, you can be overbearing and infuriating and far too unprofessional, but you are kind, and sweet, and you try your best to help people, and that is not something to be demonized or forgotten simply because of your vampiric nature!” Logan’s cheeks were puffed out in fury by the end of his rant, fists clenched at his sides. “And I will personally fight anyone who says otherwise!”

“Whoa, slow down, shorty,” Virgil chuckled, ruffling Logan’s hair. “No need for fighting. I can defend myself, thank you very much.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“I don’t find it worth my time,” Virgil answered, shrugging. “Not everything in life needs to be met with energy.” Logan’s muscles relaxed and he stared at Virgil, eyes wide.

“Anyway, help me get these back in a pile? I still wanna jump in them.” Logan nodded, and the two remade the pile in record time, this time with Logan standing back and watching Virgil bellyflop into the pile with a large grin on his face. Something warm stirred in Logan’s stomach at the sight and he let out a small giggle, just happy to see Virgil happy. Oh, he would regret this later, if the numb sensation in his fingers and nose and toes was any indication, but for now, Virgil was happy, and that was all that mattered to Logan.

-------------------------------------------------------------

A couple days after the leaf pile, Virgil was wandering around at 2, unable to sleep, on his way to get cocoa, when he was stopped by the heavy sound of whimpering coming from Logan’s room. His eyes narrowed, he stalked forward, gently pushing the door open to peek inside and make sure that everything was alright. His eyes shot wide, however, when he saw Logan’s state.

The candy prince was tangled up in his blankets, clawed fingers grasping at the air as if reaching for someone or something. Sweat beaded on his face and tears stained his cheeks, breaking Virgil’s already broken heart even further. His whimpers stabbed Virgil even further, locking his muscles in place as he bore witness to this horrifying, heartbreaking sight. The strong, untouchable, perfect prince, falling to pieces in his dreams in the middle of the night away from all his loved ones.

“No, Virgil… no, please, no, I’ll be good, please stop,” Logan begged, curling in on himself.

Virgil’s muscles finally unlocked and he lunged forward, falling to his knees beside Logan as he began to frantically try and wake him. “Logan? Logan can you hear me?” Logan’s only reply was to twist away from Virgil’s voice, curling up even tighter, possibly defying the limits of his spine. “Logan I need you to focus. You’re having a nightmare. Nothing is wrong. You’re okay. I just need you to wake. Up.”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’ll be good please don’t hurt them, please don’t hurt him, I’ll do whatever you want-” Logan whimpered. Virgil let out a growl and grabbed Logan’s shoulders, pinning them to the bed. Logan let out a cry and began to thrash around. Virgil let out a frustrated groan and swung himself onto the bed, sitting on Logan’s hips to keep him restrained.

“Logan! Wake up!” Virgil yelled, shaking Logan’s shoulders in punctuation. Logan whimpered and thrashed some more, leaving Virgil at a loss. He needed to wake Logan up, but the prince wasn’t listening, what should he do-

“I’m sorry don’t hurt them… Virgil-!” Virgil let out a short sob and shook Logan harder, on the verge of tears himself. He wanted to help, he needed to help, but how could he?

“Logan! Wake up!” Virgil screamed, releasing a hand and patting Logan’s cheek. Logan’s eyelids flickered at that, giving Virgil hope, and an idea. Muttering apologies, he drew back his hand, and, with only half the strength possible, he slapped Logan across the face. The candy man shot upright at that, gasping and coughing, and Virgil instantly shifted to caretaker mode, taking Logan’s face in his hands and making sure he was calming down from the panic attack.

“V-Virgil?” Logan asked after a minute. “Did you… slap me?”

“Sorry, habibi, it was the only thing I could think of,” Virgil whispered, thumbs stroking Logan’s cheekbones. “Are you okay?”

“N-not particularly,” Logan mumbled. “But I cannot remember what the nightmare was about.”

“That’s more than okay, Logan. Let’s just work on making sure you’re okay,” Virgil soothed, wiping away the tears littering Logan’s cheeks. “What do you want from me to help you feel better?”

“Hot chocolate or tea… and could you tell me a story? I know, it sounds childish, but-”

“But nothing, Logan. If that’s what you need to feel better, than I’ll go do that right now. Will you be okay if I leave you?”

“Could I come with?” Virgil had never heard Logan sound so… broken. He could confidently say that he Did Not Like It.

“Of course. Let me just get off of you and help you get untangled.”

They did not sleep for the rest of the night. Virgil made mug after mug of tea and hot cocoa, and although Logan calmed down by 3:15, he was terrified to enter the land of dreams once again, and Virgil had too much of a heart to leave him. Both of them would definitely suffer the next day, but neither of them could bring themselves to care in that moment. They told stories of far-away kingdoms, of lonely faeries, of a young boy with too many expectations on his shoulders, and came to an understanding.

-----------------------------------------

When Logan knocked on Virgil’s door the next night, blanket clutched tightly around him, and muttered that he was scared, Virgil allowed him in to sleep with him. Logan fell asleep with no issues this time, surrounded by security, and slept with no nightmares through the night. Virgil counted this as a win and started sleeping with Logan more often, just in case. It worked.

---------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey, Virgil?” Virgil looked up from his sketchbook to find Logan looking at him over the top of his book, eyes shining with a curiosity not seen since they were about 20 years old.

“Yes Logan?”

“Roman says you play the bass.”

“I do indeed play the bass. Roman thinks I sound wonderful.”

“Why have I never heard you?” Virgil paused, frowning, turning the question over and over in his mind. Had he really not played for Logan before? With a start, he realized that yeah, he hadn’t. Oh, sure, the reason was that they’d hated each other for so long, it would have been weird to play for him. But they’d been here for about 5 weeks now, and he still hadn’t played for Logan. That was a crime and must be rectified.

“Guess I’ve just never played while you were around. Lemme fix that. Hold on.” Virgil set aside his sketchbook and floated out of his seat and down the hall to grab his bass. He floated back, taking in Logan’s softly curled position in the soft lighting of the candles, and began to set up, taking a moment to tune each string before strumming a perfectly tuned A chord.

“So. Any requests, pretty boy?” Virgil asked, smirking. Logan simply rolled his eyes at the flirting (was that a slight blush? Virgil dismissed the thought as a trick of the light) and thought.

“Play me whatever you would like to play,” Logan decided, setting his book down and folding his hands on his lap. “I assure you, I would love to hear it.” Virgil nibbled on his bottom lip for a second, thinking, before an idea came to mind.

“Okay, this is… this is from a band that a lot of people don’t realize that I like because it’s not emo, but… I think you’ll like it.”

He began to strum, humming along with the opening, hoping that he wasn’t about to make a mistake, and began to sing.

“She'll lie and steal and cheat And beg you from her knees Make you thinks she means it this time He'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair But I still love him, I don't really care”

Logan simply stared, eyes wide and sparkling with wonder. Virgil smiled shakily back at him and continued on, a little embarrassed since no one usually was around to hear him sing. Well, except for Roman.

“When we were young Oh oh, we did enough When it got cold Ooh ooh, we bundled up I can't be told Ah ah it can't be done”

Logan’s soft smile had vanished, but Virgil was just getting into the swing of things and couldn’t find it in himself to stop.

“It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all The opposite of love's indifference So pay attention now I'm standing on your porch screaming out And I won't leave until you come downstairs”

A single tear slipped down Logan’s cheek while Virgil furiously blinked back his own. He was not crying today, no sir.

“So keep your head up, keep your love Keep your head up, my love Keep your head up, my love Keep your head up, keep your love”

Logan sniffed, and Virgil raised his head to look right into the other’s eyes, his own eyes dry only through self-restraint. His voice turned soft, tender, full of nothing but understanding. He didn’t want Logan to misinterpret the next lines.

“And I don't blame ya dear For running like you did, all these years I would do the same, you best believe And the highway signs say we're close But I don't read those things anymore I never trusted my own eyes”

Logan was freely crying now, and Virgil wasn’t faring much better, his voice finally getting a little choked up as he started the chorus.

“When we were young Oh oh, we did enough When it got cold, Ooh ooh we bundled up I can't be told, Ah ah, can't be done”

Logan sniffed again, wiping at his cheeks, and Virgil broke eye contact to stare down at his bass as he finished the song.

“Keep your head up, keep your love Keep your head up, my love Keep your head up, my love Keep your head up, keep your love”

He quickly finished out the song, softly strumming the final chord and waiting for the sound to clear from the air, before he raised his head to meet Logan’s eyes.

“Virgil… that was gorgeous,” Logan whispered. “Whoever that was for… they’re very lucky to have you love them.”

Virgil let out a little laugh. “Yeah. Yeah they’re great.” He wasn’t going to deny it anymore. That song was for Logan, and only Logan. “But, let’s go with something a bit more upbeat.”

“Of course,” Logan answered, grinning back through the drying tears. “Whatever you’d like.”

Virgil strummed at his instrument, a smile lighting his face as his fingers slipped into a familiar pattern without thinking. “How about…”

“We've waited so damn long, we're sick and tired I won't leave any doubt or stone unturned…”

------------------------------------------------

“Why are we out here, Virgil?” Logan asked softly, shivering in the light night wind cutting through his sweater. “It is freezing.”

“We’re stargazing,” Virgil answered. “I figured, might be nice. It’s a clear night and you like stargazing.”

“That is true,” Logan acknowledged. “But we could also stargaze indoors.”

“But outdoor is better,” Virgil insisted, turning to look at Logan with an intensity he’d never seen before. “Just… trust me?”

“There is something special tonight, isn’t there?”

“... yeah.”

“Then we’ll watch.” Logan settled down on the blanket Virgil had laid out, watching the sky for something special. Virgil sat next to him, placing his hand atop Logan’s. Logan did not move his hand away, simply turning to smile at Virgil briefly before turning his eyes back towards the sky.

The two did not have to wait for long, as a shooting star streaked across the sky mere minutes after they had arrived.

“Quick, Logan, make a wish.”

“Okay.”

“What did you wish for?”

“I can’t tell you, or it’ll never come true,” Logan murmured, staring at the grass. Virgil chuckled and stood, stretching out his arms.

“I guess. Hey. I have an idea.”

“Oh?” Logan’s eyebrow raised slightly. Virgil’s ideas so far had ranged from spectacular to disastrous, and Logan did not wish to partake in another disastrous one.

“Dance with me?” Logan’s brain sputtered to a stop.

“Virgil… Virgil, I do not dance.”

“I’ll teach ya! Come on.” The vampire held out a hand, grin somehow both soft and confident. “Do you trust me?”

“I suppose,” Logan answered, taking the proffered hand and standing. “Although, I must warn you that I am certain your poor feet are about to be trampled.”

“I can live with that,” Virgil laughed, placing his right hand on Logan’s waist and taking Logan’s right hand in his left. “Now… just follow my lead.”

And there they danced, under the bright silver moonlight, for hours. Not a soul dared disturb them up on that hilltop, the stars the only witnesses to this baring out emotion. Toes were stepped on, frustrated tears were shed, and laughter was sounded, but above all, two became one that night. Wrongs were forgiven. Slights, given apology. These two disparate souls, whom no one thought could ever be anything resembling friends, proved everyone wrong. They were not just getting along. They were not just friends. Here, in this moment, they knew: they were in love.

-------------------------------------------------------

Virgil was just finishing up watering the little tree he’d dragged inside a couple weeks ago when a knock sounded at the door. He paused, a small frown crossing his face. The alarms hadn’t gone off, so it wasn’t the Ice Queen. It was too loud to be Dee. Therefore, it had to be Roman or Patton, which meant… the Ice Queen had been dealt with! Virgil jumped up and practically sprinted over to the door, throwing it open with a large smile on his face.

“Patton! Roman!” he cried before his brain could register who exactly was at the door. He was rewarded for his slow brain with a harsh blow to the head, one that would have killed him had he not been practically immortal. As it was, Virgil crumpled to the ground, instantly unconscious from the blunt force trauma delivered to his skull. Logan jumped, staring in horror at the limp body of the vampire king, not thinking to run away. Slowly, the intruder stepped inside, Logan’s breath catching in his throat as he saw who exactly it was.

“You really should put more work into your alarm system, Logie,” the Ice Queen giggled, fangs bared in a wide, manic grin. “Is that any way to greet your ruler?”

“You are not my ruler,” Logan managed to stammer out, slowly setting his book aside. He stood from the couch, forcing himself to meet the Ice Queen’s eyes despite his discomfort doing so. It would not do for him to show weakness now.

“Oh, really? Last I checked, you are a Prince, and I am a Queen.”

“I am my own monarch, thank you very much,” Logan shot back, starting to slowly inch backward. The Ice Queen noticed and chuckled, her laugh inexplicably sending a sharp paralyzing chill down Logan’s spine.

“You’re cute.” Her smirk turned into a leer and she stalked closer while Logan remained rooted in place. “It’s almost like you think you have any power here.”

“I… well, last I checked, I do.”

“Cute.” With that, she held up a spray bottle and released a stream of blue-white gas into Logan’s face. Logan coughed and stumbled back, his legs finally working, but it was too late for him. His head began to swim as his vision filled with blue-white mist. His ears rang with a high-pitched drone and his legs buckled, sending him sprawling on the floor.

“What did you do?” he tried to mumble, but his tongue would not cooperate. The Ice Queen seemed to understand him anyway and she laughed, stepping closer before squatting down.

“Oh, Logie,” she crooned, running a cold bony hand through his hair. “Does it matter?” He tried to form an answer but found he couldn’t, thoughts swimming away as his mental fingers brushed them. “Because when we get home, you’re not going to be leaving my castle for as long as you live, which is a very long time indeed.” With that, she slung him over her shoulder and walked out the front door, Logan not able to put up any semblance of a struggle. His thoughts felt like wading through taffy and his limbs felt like they were composed of cotton candy. He doesn’t quite remember anything, not registering anything but the jostling of his body as the Ice Queen walked a bit before teleporting to her castle, the portal’s lights officially ripping Logan’s consciousness from him as he ceased to process anything.

#big bang 2019 #adventure time au #enemies to friends to lovers #oh my god they were roommates #sorry not sorry

[arethereanyoriginalusernames]

Character Spotlight 1, P1

DAMIAN BEELZY

DISCLAIMER BECAUSE YES,

I do not own zoophobia. Zoophobia would belong to the lovely Vivian Medrano (I believe that's how her last name is spelt? Meh, I'll check later), otherwise known as Vivziepop

Also, while yes, this is a series where I am going to be critical of the source material, this is NOT a critique of vivziepop herself, as zoophobia is...2, 3 years old? It'd be unfair to judge her and her writing skills based on something she did a while ago.

I'm not doing this because I hate the source material either. On the contrary, I love Zoophobia. The reason I'm doing this is because I believe that if we find flaws in media we enjoy, we could all learn something valuable from it, and apply it to our own work.

If you disagree with something stated here, that's alright. Feel free to tell me what you think and ask questions. I'm not telling you what to think. I simply hope you enjoy.

I apologize for wasting your time.

-ATOUN

-----------------------'---------------

......So, I'm back.

I've already talked about Dame before in my favorite zp characters list. I've already stated why I like him. For anyone who might not have seen that list, let me give you a spicy recap. I found Dame to be one of the more entertaining characters throughout the comic and he was one of the better written characters during the 5-ish chapters we got from this series. I've already stated what I like about him, so let's just get into some things I don't like.

Oh come on, let's be honest. We all know why we're here. We all can see how much attention my least favorite character list got compared to my favorite list (even if admittedly some of that attention was me thanking people, which btw is something I should really do more often ). You're all here because you want me to tear a hole in this series. It's the same reason most people watch car racing. We don't wanna see who wins. We wanna see some epic car crashes.

Still, I want to start with critiques towards this character I don't agree with.

-----------------------------------

1. Damian is a bad main character because he only has negative character traits

A character having only bad character traits does not in itself mean a character is bad. If that character is poorly written, then it's a bad character. Also, I'd advise you read chapters 3 and 5 where Dame is shown to have some good traits about him. (Ex. Chapter 5 where he expresses concern for Addi )

2. Damian's design is too bland compared to other characters

While I agree with this to some extent, something I want to say here is that Dame is not unique in this regard. You could apply this to Spam, Vanex, Jackie, and Kayla as well. This is more aimed at those who single Damian out as the only one with this problem.

3. Damian is a bad villain

Damian is not meant to be the antagonist. He has been confirmed to be apart of the main cast, and you'll notice that in all of Vivz's villain line ups, he is not present. At most, he may a rival or adversary to either zill or Jack.

4. He is unoriginal as a character.

.....and any other characters in media today are? It's very rare in this day and age to come across anything 100 % original. It's even been proposed that there are no longer any original ideas left. Besides, a character being bad does not mean the character itself is bad. At most, it's a reflection on the writers laziness.

5. He's too edgy.

Ah yes, a commonly used complaint you'll hear spouted by angsty 13 year olds who think (despite the fact "edgy" characters are often fan favorites since they often turn out to be the most interesting / relatable characters ) that edginess = bad, and that anything bad happening to a character like, I dunno, EMOTIONAL ISSUES THAT REAL PEOPLE DEAL WITH makes that character edgy by default. Edginess can be done wrong, but not every edgy character is bad. Shut your pie hole, and hustle your buns out of my Italian styled soup kitchen, you cotton headed ninny mugginses. *cue air horns*

Also, hunny, if you hate edgy characters, oh boy, you do NOT wanna read ANY of my stories.

----------------------------------------

There. Now onto the main event. The butchering of a popular character. Let's get ready to break the hearts of fan girls everywhere! MUAH-HAHAHA!

Actually, I wasn't really able to find too much wrong with a character save for a) something completely subjective, b) something related more to a problem a have with zp's pacing as opposed to the character and c) a concern about how the character is written.

A) Damian being too much of a jerk. I disagree with this, but I didn't mention this above because. ...yeah, some people can feel that Dame is too much of a jerk, and I get why. It's more subjective as this attributes more to a subjective opinion on the character.

B) Damian's freak out in chapter 3. It's just the pacing in that scene that gets to me. It feels as though Dame goes from 0 to 6 in only a few frames and that entire segment where he's slowly becoming angrier and angrier feels rushed. According to Dame's character sheet (shown above ) Damian is supposed to be good at hiding his more demonic tendencies, but you would've never guessed that from this scene. This is something that kind of happens throughout zoophobia where the pacing with be slow, then all of a sudden, we just speed through an entire scene. For instance, the start of chapter 5 is pretty slow. However, we speed through the scene with Tom so fast, his appearance doesn't really do much or become really memorable. This more of a story problem and less of a character problem.

Now.... onto c.

First of all, by concern, I'm referring to something that might be a problem depending on how the rest of zoophobia turns out. The problem with both critiquing and defending Zoophobia is that we only have 5 chapters to go off of to determine its quality. This is something more like the tangent I had about Addison in my least favorite character list. I suggest for this, you grab a spoonful of salt and force it slowly down your throat as you read this as my concerns could easily be proven wrong here.

So what problem could I possibly foresee? Well, for an example of what I'm about to discuss, let me take you to a dark corner of the internet. The RWBY fandom. Specifically, let me introduce you to one of it's main cast

Blake Belladonna.

For anyone outside the loop, Blake is (currently ) one of the most hated characters in the series. There are many reasons why, but for this, I'm going to lock in on one problem in particular. Throughout Volumes 1-5, Blake was notorious for being an inconsistent character. Granted, in volumes 1 and 2, this was not a problem unique to Blake as the writers were still trying to figure out how to write her and the rest of the characters. They couldn't decide weather they wanted Blake to be the introverted, bookworm, straight man character, or to be silly. In later volumes, however, the problem just got worse. While all the other characters were sorted out and had settled on their own personalities, Blake's character seemed to change whenever she was in a new scene. While it's not bad for a character to have multiple sides to them, this is not how you want to do it. One scene, Blake was a bitch who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Next scene, she was an emotionally mature figure helping her gay chameleon friend with issues. Next scene, she was a trauma victim. Next scene, she was a freedom fighter fighting oppression. Next scene, she was a badass haunted by her past. Next scene, back to bitch.

You see the problem?

This made Blake a hard character to fully connect with, and eventually, the fandom ended up agreeing that Blake is better whenever the scene isn't focused on her.

So what does this have to do with Damian? Well, one thing I noticed with him when I first dipped my toe into this fandom was the three main interpretations of Damian's character there seemed to be. One, a flirty, yet cartoon villainy jerk; two, a misunderstood, rebellious boi who was somewhat mischievous; or three, an overposessive, yet tolerable brat who hated not getting his way. Just to clarify, I'm referring to fans who had only read the comic and had not seen any posts about him from Vivz.

I pondered why during the third zoophobia rewrite, and I eventually came to this conclusion : the type of Damian fans seemed to remember depended on WHICH Dame they remembered best, Ch2, Ch3, or Ch5. Why? Well, it basically wolloped me upside the head after reading a post where Dame's personality was described as "diverse". Because yeah.... It's diverse alright.

Let's put Dame under a microscope for a second and go through each of his appearences, and his character sheet which (someone correct me if I'm wrong ) came out between ch. 2 and ch.3.

His character sheet lists the following about his personality : he ranges from mischievous to a downright brat, he loves entertaining and messing with others and making them laugh, he's flirty, he's open, he can be spoiled or arrogant at times, he gets bored easily, and he is secretly lonely but hard to impress and has an enormous heart. He also has a dark side he's good at hiding

CH 1. Appears to be that one kid who enjoys messing with others, acts slightly flirty towards Kayla, and doesn't seem to take much very seriously.

Ch 2. I've often described this Dame as sociopathic, because honestly, he kinda is. He doesn't care about anyone here but himself. He acts flirty towards Kayla, and torments both Zill and Jack just to further his goal of charming a girl he supposedly knows will "give into temptation eventually " and he's outright manipulative here. He even finds Zill's pain amusing to some extent and mocks him and Jack while aggressively leaning on his cousin (probably to assert dominance (can aggressively leaning be the new t-posing? Please? ))

CH 3. Dame still has some lack of empathy, finding the idea of his cousin being burned alive funny, however this seems to be limited to just Jack. He's a lot more fun loving here, as seen in him running around town with his friends. He darker side makes an appearance. We see him entertaining others at the beginning, and oddly enough, he's more self conscious here. He gets embarrassed by Tenta, is bothered when he is teased about his nanny, and is triggered by the priest spouting that tasty religious bull shit. His conversation with his parents also makes him seem like he needs his daddy's approval, and may have daddy issues.

CH 5. Here, he's more of a brat. He's possessive of Addi, and at the beginning, he's more flirty and care free.

Thus far, Vivz seems to switch between various sides of dame depending on what she needs him to be for a certain scene. As scene with Blake, this isn't something that really works out well. And it's not like Vivz can't write characters with different sides to them. We see her do this with Jack, Kayla, and Cameron. In one chapter, these characters can show more then one side to them. In Damian's case, he's like play-doh. He just molds into whatever Vivz needs instead of just being his own character.

Like I said before though, this is a concern. Future chapters can easily prove me wrong here. This is just the sad ramblings of a Canadian who is obsessed with covering themselves in glitter. Tell me what you guys think and if you enjoyed!

Now to wait for zoophobiapika to either message me or reblog this, quoting a line from it.....

#zoophobia #zoophobia damian

[ohhkkaebsonggg]

One Kinky Christmas

Pairing: Jinyoung X Reader

Genre: College!au; Smut, Humour

Summary: You weren’t a fan of seeing your family during Christmas break so Jinyoung decided to take you up to the mountains to stay in a cabin for Christmas with him. 

Warnings: Teasing, Oral (giving), Kinky Stuff going on in that Cabin, overstimulation, Jinyoung just being a prince

⌦ 2.4K Words

Christmas break was coming up and you were not keen on going home, especially after finding out your parents are getting a divorce you didn’t feel like it’s best to be with them right now. So, you told them you and Jinyoung had made plans to spend Christmas together and they understood happily with a few complaints about how you should be home with your family. Jinyoung and you had been dating for nine months, last month he popped the ‘L’ word and you have never been more in love yourself. He was everything a guy could ever be to his girlfriend, kind, caring, smart. He was studying to become a doctor you were studying archaeology, something your parents don’t really see as a ‘career’ but they let you do your thing.

You were in your apartment, packing your clothes for your trip tomorrow. When you have informed Jinyoung of what was happening at home and you not going home for Christmas he spoke with his parents who gave him the idea to take you up into the mountains for two weeks and to spend a Christmas there. His parents had been there before, saying that it’s a lovely place and it snows and it’s quiet too since it’s Christmas and everything is with their families. You liked the idea, it gave you reason to pack sweaters and leggings. You were focused on what to pack, not sure if you should bring some proper clothes or just lounging clothes?

Your thoughts interrupted when your felt two arms snake around your waist and a soft pair of familiar lips pressed a kiss just below your ear. “Don’t spend too much time packing, we have to be up at three and on the road by four.” You didn’t even realise the time; it was quarter past eleven no wonder why you felt so drained.

“Okay, give me a minute and I’ll finish up.” You smiled, kissing his cheek before his arms left you and he waltzed towards the bathroom. Turning around with a playful grin on his face as his tongue swiped over his lips.

“Join me when you’re done.” He winked, turning around and slipping his shirt off. Your thighs squeezed themselves together, due to your busy schedules you and Jinyoung didn’t really have much intimate time to spend together. He had suggested shower sex so you both could shower at once and you both could make it to classes and exams on time. Of course, after spending two minutes and forty-seven seconds in the shower you had already four bruises across your body all from falling over. So, maybe your shower was a little bit too small, but it doesn’t mean you can’t tease each other.

You smirked, going over to your closet and pulling out a box, a box which contained things Jinyoung was clueless about most likely. You always hid the box so he wouldn’t come across it, that’d be too embarrassing. You pulled out the red lace, making sure you had all the parts to it. Jinyoung always gasped when you wore lace panties or a lace bra, so you wondered what the full thing on you would get from him. You stuffed it into the bottom of your bag along with some other little things you might try out on your boyfriend up in the little cabin.

You walked into the bathroom, already a blanket of steam hitting you as you stepped inside and began to undress, Jinyoung humming softly as he washed over his body, waiting for you to come in. You slipped in, wrapping your arms around his torso and kissing his shoulder. Of course, though being the way he is, Jinyoung turns around and is now the one to hold you, a cheeky grin evident on his lips.

“Excited for tomorrow?” He asked softly, kissing your nose playfully. You nodded, you needed a getaway, everything had been so stressful lately with college and also working and trying to study, eat and sleep normally. It was these moments you enjoyed the most with Jinyoung, and you wanted him to know that. Pushing yourself up onto your tippy toes you connected your lips to his, slipping your tongue inside his mouth before your hands moved down to grip his member softly. He pulled away with a hiss, clearly trying to control himself.

“Hands to yourself.” He growled, a clear warning that you should stop now. He grinned, loving how still affected he gets under your touch. Two months is also a long time to go without sex, so there is that as well. “We need to get some sleep, we have two whole weeks in that cabin to fuck around. So let’s sleep for now.” His kissed your forehead, that’s what you loved about Jinyoung. He wasn’t some 24/7 horny person that fucks you all the time. He likes to wait for the right moment, like how he waited until your birthday like you asked before sleeping with you. You both washed each other quickly before slipping out of the shower and getting ready for bed.

You grabbed his black hoodie, slipping it on with some panties before getting into bed and waiting for him to join you. He wore this hoodie yesterday so his scent was still fresh on it, it sounded creepy yes but hey every girl loves the smell of her boyfriend. Unless he smells like he never showers then no, boys reading, please shower always for your girl. You sighed, watching your boyfriend crawl into bed next to you and pull you into his arms. Your legs tangling under the sheet, and his face moving to lay in the crook of your neck. Like you, Jinyoung loved your scent so he liked to have his face laying in the crook of your neck so he can feel you and smell your rose perfume you like to wear.

“Baby.” You could hear the faint soft voice, not sure if it was your dreams or not. “Baby~” You heard it again, this time opening your eyes at the peppering of kisses along your neck and jaw. You roll over, arms stretching out and a small groan leaving your lips. You tried to keep your eyes open, it was hard to but you managed to get them to see the beautiful man hovering above you.

“We have to get ready, it’s half past three and I’ve already showered and gotten ready.” He cooed, brushing some hair behind your ear before helping you sit up. You got out of bed, slipping on some sweat pants before grabbing your bags and putting them in the car along with Jinyoung. You went back inside, packing some food you both bought the other day for your trip up to the mountains. After you were sure you had everything ready you both got in the car and began your route to the cabin.

“Keep them closed, keep them closed.” Jinyoung had his hands over your eyes, a playful grin on his face as he led you inside and removed his hands. Your eyes opened the second they were gone, looking around at the large cabin. Your mind during the drive was thinking of a tiny cosy little cabin with a small camp fire, not a full barn. You loved it either way, turning around and giving Jinyoung a quickly kiss before running around and checking out the different rooms.

There was a living room, a large TV hung up on the wall above the fireplace that was profoundly large, the couch stretched from one side to the other and a fluffy polar bear rug laid on the floor just in front of the fire place. You were surprised at the amazing interior of this place.

December 24th Christmas Eve 

You had been staying in the cabin for a whole week already, and Jinyoung had been ignoring you every time you tried to initiate something. Was something wrong? Did you do or say something? He had been keeping you on edge for a while, and tonight you were determined to find out what was going on. You were laying in the tub, bubbles covering your chest as you hummed softly. Jinyoung was lying in bed reading his book.  You got out, drying off your body and grabbing the red lace piece and slipping it on your body. Adjusting the clips and bits before looking at yourself in the mirror. Taking your hair out of the bun and letting it cascade to your shoulders.

You walked towards the door, swinging it open and leaning against the door frame. Your eyes trained on Jinyoung who looked so cosy laying there with his eyes glued to the pages. He was only wearing his sweat pants, his body looked too good not to touch. You licked your lips, walking over and sitting down on the bed next to him. Something you usually did before bed was moisturize your legs so they were smooth. Jinyoung’s attention finally moved from his book to you, scanning you up and down like you were a meal.

“Well isn’t this a nice surprise?” He grinned, putting his book down and gripping your hips so you were now straddling him. You could feel him already hardening below you, you needed him so badly. “It’s Christmas Eve, and I think it’s fair I get to unwrap one of my presents.” He smirked at you, licking his lips as he eyed you.

“I’m pretty tired actually, I think we should get some sleep.” You said, going to get off him and go back to your spot but he wasn’t having it. Rolling his hips up, the roughness of his movement causing you to jolt at the feeling of pressure on your clit. You didn’t expect it so you moaned out of instinct. You gripped his shoulders hard, digging your fingers into his shoulders causing him to hiss.

“Your body is saying otherwise kitten, and besides it isn’t fair you leave me to deal with this by myself.” He groaned, leaning forward to leave open mouthed kisses along your chest. “Christmas is my favourite time of year, I get to see you all dressed up.” You closed your eyes, brushing your hair behind your shoulder to allow him access to your neck. He flipped you over quickly, bruising your neck with his mouth softly as his fingers struggled to unclasp the top of your one-piece. You giggled, reaching around to unclasp it yourself before guiding his fingers to your breasts.

Your nipples hardening between his fingers as he started to play with them, your hips moved up to grind against his own.

“Alright, I get it. I’ve been a tease.” You smirked, crossing your arms over your chest waiting for him to continue. “And I have been purposely ignoring your attempts at trying to sleep with me. But it’s only because I was waiting until tonight. Like I said, I get to unwrap one present.” His lips connected with yours and you were hooked on him. 

Your hand slipped beneath his waist band, gripping him firmly in your palm and watching him groan softly from above. You loved watching his face scrunch up like that, it just turned you on even more. You grinned, pulling the lace from your body quickly.

“No foreplay, I need you Jinyoung.” You groaned, kicking his sweat pants down with your feet his cock springing out. Hot and leaking precum, you bit down on your lip, quickly getting up and running over to your suitcase.

“What are you up to Kitten?” He asked, you stood up. Hiding the handcuffs behind your back as you walked over to the bed.

“Lay back and close your eyes.” You grinned, he cocked his head to the side unsure of what you were up to but he obliged anyway. Laying back, ready for whatever game you were going to play. You on the other hand were very cheeky. You latched the handcuffs onto the bed frame first before quickly handcuffing his hands in. His eyes shot open and he quickly realised what you were doing.

“Y/n, what are you doing? This isn’t funny.” He growled, tugging on his restraints. You only smirked and began kissing down his chest, leaving a trail of wet open-mouthed kisses before licking the underside of his cock. His hips bucking up towards your mouth causing you to smirk. “Oh god, I thought you said no foreplay.” He groaned, biting down on his lip and you continued to tease his head with your tongue.

“I lied.” You smirked, wrapping your lips around him and sucking slowly, taking inch by inch into your mouth before feeling him graze the back of your throat, almost causing you to gag. You played with his balls using one hand while the other pumped what you couldn’t fit in your mouth. You began bobbing your head, watching with desperate eyes as his head fell back and his fingers wrapped around the cold metal holding him back. Jinyoung soon found himself bucking up into your mouth, chasing his high.

“S-stop, I’m g-going to c-cu-m.” He groaned, hips snapping up and stuttering as he was tipped over the edge. White ribbons hitting the back of your throat as you continued to guide him through his orgasm. You knew he was starting to be overstimulated when his thighs started shaking and his head rolled back. His legs squirming under your touch.

“S-shit.” He groaned, his second orgasm coming along faster than he thought it would. You began swallowing around him, knowing how that pushes him over the edge quickly. “I can’t, I’m going to explode if I keep going.” You whined, you had never seen Jinyoung so submissive before, and you weren’t going to lie when you say you were living for it. His hips moved again, stuttering as he finished in your mouth once again. Praying you were done with your torture. You wiped the spit and cum that was dripping from your lips, sucking on your finger while keeping eye contact.

“Y/n, please let me out of this.” He groaned, you moved over and unlocked the handcuffs, watching him sit up and sigh with a dark look in his eyes. “Thank god we have another week left in this cabin, because I’m going to make sure you can’t walk and cum is still dripping down your legs after I’m through with you.”

#park #jinyoung #smut #angst #fluff #humour #smut game #junior #got7 #christmas #request

[the-homicidediaries]

Teri Jendusa-Nicolai

Teri Jendusa-NicolaiYa girl is baaaaack.With, you guessed it, another true crime story you have probably never heard of. (Or maybe you have!)Also, at this point, I am going to stop apologizing for these essays being ten years long. This is a long one.Listen, Linda.I cannot even begin to fathom how in the h e double hockey sticks this story is actually true. My brain doesn't understand it.I have a really hard time reading or listening to stories about anyone who is physically abused. It makes me nauseous. But I consider myself an advocate, so it IS important. In the United States, 85% of domestic victims are women.One in four women, in the United States, will experience domestic violence in their lifetime and women account for two out of three murder victims killed by an intimate partner. Domestic violence is also the third leading cause of homelessness; 50% of women who have experienced domestic violence end up homeless.National Domestic Violence Hotline[phone]I am throwing statistics at you so you will see this is a huge issue. And yes, we as women know; Not All Men.85% of men, bros.Anyway.Tonight I want to talk about Teri Jendusa-Nicolai and the horrible abuse she endured at the hands of her ex husband, David Larsen.I could not find a single thing about Teri or David's childhoods, so I guess I will start when they met.I watched a few videos and the episode of I Survived... featuring Terri. She has light brown hair, dewey skin, and her soft-spoken Wisconsin accent is calm enough to make you feel at peace and want to sleep. She also has a beautiful smile. When Terri first met David in 1995, she was really impressed with him. He was good looking, had a really good job as an air traffic controller, and he owned his own house. The two fell in love and after a year of dating, they were married in 1996.Terri said clues of her husband's abusive tendencies began to surface early on, as in, on their honeymoon in Hawaii. After they had a fight, something Terri called a lover's quarrel, David hit her several times in the head. Again...On their honeymoon.I am absolutely not making this about me in any way, shape, or form, because I was not physically abused, BUT, I have talked to an abuse hotline representative and they actually gave me a lot of helpful information that really put things into perspective for me and ultimately, that's what led me to leave my ex husband.The representative told me that abusive people will be as sweeeeet and charming and charismatic as they can possibly be to win your heart. Their true colors start showing when they "gotcha!"What I mean by that is they have you trapped. For me, it was my pregnancy with Journi; for Teri, it was her marriage. David was probably thinking, "We are married now. You're not going anywhere."And let me step on my soap box, because I've heard it a million times, "She knew he wasn't a good person, why did she have a baby with him?"Uh, she probably didn't know he was a bad person because he hid it until he "gotcha!"ed her. "Her family and friends probably told her he was awful."Red flags just look like regular flags through rose colored glasses.I really could go one for days about the stigma against abused women but I will shut up for now.Okay, back to Terri.SooooooooooDavid and Terri very quickly started a family. In 1997, Teri gave birth to a baby girl she named Amanda, and in 1999, she gave birth to a baby girl she named Holly.Over the course of their three year marriage, neighbors said they seemed like a happy, normal family.But ooooooh no. David was violent and unreasonably controlling.He would yell at her if the window curtains were out of place or if the towels weren't folded a certain way. He insisted she keep the door open when she was showering or using the bathroom. She was so afraid of his explosive reactions to accidents, like breaking a glass, she would throw away any incriminating evidence in the neighbor's garbage bin. I also read they she couldn't escape because he locked all of the doors and only he had the keys.Teri said she stayed because she thought she could change David.(Pretty common reason why women stay. Also, "Well, if I do this, say this, don't do this, don't say this, he will be happy.")Even though their neighbors thought everything was happy and normal, the police responded to several domestic violence calls.In 1999, Teri made the decision to divorce David because their relationship was having negatives affects on their daughters. (HARD RELATE)ButtttttThe judge awarded David joint custody, leaving Teri always afraid for her life, especially after David told her the day they were divorced she would regret ever divorcing him.Say it with me now:Shared. Custody. Leaves. Women. Vulnerable.Thank you.Teri was forced to have regular contact with David and she always felt a threat of violence from him because every time she dropped off her children, he was still verbally abusive towards her.Nevertheless, she did manage to change her life. She met a man from church, Nick Nicolai (such a bad ass name), and the two were married. Teri never stopped fighting. She went as far as telling the court David is abusive, why should he be alone with her children?The court was just impressed a father wanted to spend time with his children.(I'm not even gonna touch this one.)The order from the court stated David was not to have firearms in the house, yet Teri knew he did. That still wasn't enough evidence for a warrant to raid David's house.Teri was helpless, but wanted full custody.So David drew this out as long as possible, four years actually. The judge eventually said there would be no more delays, the two would have to go to court and Teri would have a chance to fight for full custody of her children.Thaaaat, made David lose his ever-lovin' mind.On January 31, 2004, Teri went to David's house to pick up her children, now 6 and 4. It had been three years to the day since the two had been divorced, and that was not lost on Terri. She said David was uncharacteristically calm and he lured her into the house by telling her the girls were playing hide and seek, so she would need to come in and find them. (So messed up.)Everything in Teri told her not to go inside, but she didn't want to disappoint her girls. Hi, here's my lovely warning that the next words you will be reading will be AWFUL, okay thanks.David attacked her from behind - hitting her with a baseball bat at least 10 times in the head. In an interview, Teri said, "I remember him saying, 'You're not taking the girls away from me. You always said that I abused you. Now you can see what abuse really is.'"David then taped her ankles, wrists, and face. Teri thought if she shallowed her breathing and pretended she was dead, David would leave her alone.But no.This monster picked up Teri, shoved her into a large garbage can, then filled the garbage can with snow, and put the garbage can in the back of his truck, covering it with tarp.Yes. He beat his ex wife with a bat, then put her in a garbage can, then covered her head to toe in snow. In January. In Wisconsin.Did I mention Teri and Nick found out the day before they were expecting too???And then as if none of this had even happened, he went back inside to get the girls.While Teri was alone, she reached in her pocket and called 911. She was shouting David's address to the operator, and although the operator could barely hear her, they did manage to get David's address.Teri said she could hear the sirens pulling up to David's house, but he was already driving away as the cops arrived to his house.When police searched the house, they did, fortunately, see signs of a struggle and blood. But there was no sign of Teri or the girls anywhere. Investigators did issue an Amber Alert for the girls, which I thought was excellent.Three hours after Teri and the girls were supposed to return home, Nick called the police. Nick gave the operator David's address and the operator said a woman had called in earlier with the same address but when authorities showed up, the house was empty.(I'm just a huge fan of Nick by now. Nick stan for life.)While all of this is going on, Teri is still bleeding and suffering head trauma from the baseball bat, so she is in and out of consciousness.Teri managed to make another call to 911 for help. She told the operator her husband was trying to kill her and that she was in the back of his green Dodge Ram. She said nothing about her daughters. Detectives returned to David's home, hoping they'd find Holly or Amanda there. What they found instead made this case even more urgent: black sweatpants that matched Nick's description of what Teri had been wearing that day; a large blood stain on the carpet; and an empty handgun case. Now they were operating under the assumption that Teri had been badly assaulted, and David was armed.Nearly 100 police officers and several volunteers, some who had never even met Terri before, began frantically searching for her.But Teri was in a storage unit 40 miles away from David's house. Barely dressed, hurt, taped, unable to breathe, and in and out of consciousness, Teri stayed in a snow filled garbage can for the next 26 hours.David dropped the girls off at a babysitter's house at 6pm and reported to work where police were waiting to arrest him for kidnapping and child abduction.When they told David his ex wife was missing, he pretended to be concerned. According to a criminal complaint, he later told police he had struck Teri with a baseball bat because she suddenly appeared in his home with her pants around her ankles and holding a hammer over him.(Sure, Jan.)Back at the storage unit, Teri was fighting for her life. She did manage to get the garbage can lid open to let in air, but it was barely above zero, so the air was brutally cold.Police kept David in custody and finally hit a break the next morning after going through his things. They found a business card to the storage unit which was barely a mile from where he worked.Police quickly arrived and when Teri heard them, she started yelling David's name to see if he was near. When he didn't answer, Teri started screaming for help.Police officers found Teri in the corner of that unit; her core body temperature was 86°F. She was within an hour of dying, doctors would later say. David had inflicted so much trauma on Teri, including a crushing injury to her skull, police feared they would cause further damage if they tried to move her from the trash can—so they left her in the garbage receptacle until paramedics arrived.The surgeon who treated Teri, Dr. Terri Martin was shocked by the trauma she had suffered. "Her eyes were swollen shut. She was black and blue all over the face … she just wasn't recognizable as a human being," Martin said.Doctors did have to give Teri the devastating news that she had miscarried and her feet were so frostbitten that all of her toes would have to be removed.But the good news?(Besides Teri unbelievably surviving all of this?)Five weeks into her ex husband's stay in jail, she was awarded full custody of her children.On August 25, 2006, David Larsen was sentenced to 35 years in prison for attempted first-degree intentional homicide.Teri was hospitalized for seven weeks and remained in a wheelchair for another several weeks. She made a full recovery and is now an advocate for domestic violence victims.Teri, her daughter, Nick, and their son are all doing really well.When asked how she found the strength to live on the bitterly cold night she was left to die, Teri quotes Nancy Reagan: "A woman is like a teabag—only in hot water do you realize how strong she is."Pictured below are:Teri and David on their wedding day, Teri after she was found, Teri and her infant son, a copy of Teri's book, an evidence photo of police going through David's belongings, and Teri with her two daughters the day she married Nick.LikeCommentShare

[bang-exo-tan]

"Etched Hearts and Broken Parts" - Chapter 1

Tags/Warnings: Chankai x Chubby!Reader, mentions of blood, insecurity mention, angst 

           As you rounded the corner you felt your phone vibrate in your pocket for what was probably the tenth time. You didn’t know if your phone could take as much action as it had been getting in the 10 minute span since you left your house. You examined your poor little phone as you slid it out of your back pocket. It hadn’t been the newest edition when you first bought it and that was a couple of years ago. Being a videographer who could do anything when it came to television and filming, your slim little touch phone with all of its cracks and scratches had seen everything from hardwood, to concrete, to asphalt and everything in between, yet still the poor thing held itself together. It wasn’t that you couldn’t buy a new one, you had enough money to. You were just frugal and you felt like you and the phone had something in common. Broken, but still holding it together the best you both could.

          You slid your finger across the broken glass thankful that after all this time, you had never been cut by it and dialed the number that had been texting you practically non-stop since you left the apartment.  “You’re going to kill my phone if you keep this up. What is it?”

          “You didn’t give me a hug goodbye,” she said. You could easily picture the big pout that was spreading across her lips.

          “I’m sorry?” you giggled at the random childishness she was showing. “I’ll hug you when I get home.”

          “You didn’t give Xing one either,” she said matter-of-factly.

          “Tell him I’m sorry I guess?” your awkward reply went up a higher pitch at the end signaling to her that you were uncomfortable with the current topic.

          “So you’re going to come straight home after work right?” she asked and you could hear Yixing in the background immediately ask her what you had replied.

          “Yes. I’m coming home, right after work.” you emphasized. “It’s just an interview it should be a really quick shoot then I have to put away all the equipment and stuff. I promise I’ll be home right after that.”

          “Ask her if she’s going to be working the camera today,” you heard Yixing ask. Before she could even repeat his question, you began to reply. “No I’m not going to be working camera. Jongdae is probably going to have me doing all kinds of work with audio and directing but I’m not going to be on camera.”

          “GOOD,” they both exclaimed in unison.

          “What’s going on?” You asked, “Why does it matter if I’m going to be working camera or not?”

          “Ummm… well….” She mumbled a habit she always had when trying to come up with some kind of excuse when she was caught doing something she knew was wrong.

          “Your sunburn!” Yixing yelled, “You always start feeling really sick after you get a sunburn and you got one yesterday. So ummm….”

          “We just want to make sure you won’t be standing up the whole entire time. You know…” she explained.

          “You know so we don’t have to hear you complaining about your legs and back being sore while you’ve got sun sickness,” Yixing began again. “No one wants to deal with that. Ha. Ha. ….. Ha.” His laugh was more awkward than usual but you didn’t have any more time to argue with them. The strange conversation distracted you from how long you had actually been walking and you had already made it to the subway.

          “Okay. You guys just enjoy being weird together while I’m gone. I’m at the subway, so I’ll talk to you when I’m on my way home,” you were about to hang up when you heard Yixing yell your name.

          “Come home soon. Okay? We’re waiting,” he said.

          You let yourself get pulled back into the nostalgia of it all, and giggled as you walked down the stairs toward the subway, “Yeah, be back 

                                                  ~*~

          “What happened to you?” You heard an all too annoying voice

          “I don’t know, Jongdae,” you sneered over at your “boss” if you could or should even call him that. “Maybe my “boss” had me training a bunch of newbies in the scorching sun all day yesterday. Does something like that ring a bell?” You raised your eyebrow as you looked over at him, he was rocking back and forth on his tiptoes and whistling obviously ignoring your complaints.

          You made your way to the brightly lit studio room and set your bag down to the side bringing out all of your labeled cables in case the camera operators. The studio was normal, nothing special really. A big room with a wall and floor at one end painted completely in white with three chairs in the middle, cameras docked in their rightful places at the other end, a ceiling covered in lights with some hanging down for more controlled light, and a control room off to the side; completely closed off so the ambient noise from the control room wouldn’t contaminate the studio.

          You bent down to make sure all of the cables were labeled correctly, you knew they were but the double checking had become a habit.

          “Here,” Jongdae said as he waved a tube of crème in your face.

          “What is it?” you didn’t move to take the tube, you wouldn’t put it past him to sneak something in it.

          “Here,” Jongdae grunted as he took your hand and almost smashed the crème into your hand. “It’s for sunburns. I bought it on my way here. I have a feeling that I’m going to get a call later from a very pissed off couple complaining that I’m a slave driver and giving my best worker a sunburn. Please tell them I got you this.”

          His pleading look made you laugh out loud, “Thanks man,” you said through tears as you put your hand on his shoulder. You started making your way to the control room when you were stopped by a tug on the back of your collar.

          “Actually about that… we’re down a few people because of the interviewees. They wanted as little people as possible and well… I have a floor manager and I’ll work all everything in the control room but I need you to work camera.”

          “What?! Oh come on!” you huffed but you knew there wasn’t anything you could do.

                                                  ~*~

          After 30 minutes of helping Jongdae get everything ready in the control room, the interviewer and floor manager filed in. Figuring that the interviewees were not far behind, you made sure that the two cameras (one on the interviewer and one on the two people being interviewed) were in place and made your way to the camera in the middle, which you would be using the most.

          Just as you predicted, it wasn’t very long after that two men strolled into the studio. The taller of the two came in first. He wore a black button up shirt with white stripes going both horizontal and vertical, making a tick-tac-toe pattern, which was tucked into his black skinny jeans, and a black blazer. There was a wide black leather band on one of his wrists, and the outfit was finished off with a pair of black ankle boots. The other, just a bit shorter but not by much, wore a white button down, with a black leather jacket on top accentuated by large gold zippers, blue jeans and black pointed ankle boots with gold studs around the bottom. Their outfits matched together perfectly and accentuated the best parts of them – which was everything from what you could tell.

          You looked down at your own outfit and almost guffawed at the stark contrast. You were wearing a gray bomber jacket with an alien patch, a rainbow tie dye tank top, light wash blue jeans with rips at the knees, and gray converse. The separation of worlds just by clothing alone was comical.

             The men went to sit down in their two seats to the left, and just sat and talked with each other as the interviewer reviewed the questions a few more times. The floor manager came up beside you and leaned down to your level, “This is so exciting,” he whispered.

          “I guess,” you shrugged as you moved from camera to camera checking focus, headroom, and all of the other things that were needed to make the shot look good.

          The floor manager didn’t hesitate to follow you around while you were doing your last minute checks, “You’re not telling me you’re not excited that one of the top celebrity couples came out with a big secret and we’re the first ones to interview them about it?” He asked but you just stared at him with a blank expression.

          “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you replied, “I don’t know who these people are. I’m just here to do my job.”

          “You mean you don’t know –” he began to say rather loudly but you couldn’t hear what he said because Jongdae had stuck his head out of the control room and yelled for everyone to get ready.

          You went back to your main camera and put your headphones on waiting for directions from Jongdae. When you looked in the view finder, both men were staring at your camera so intensely you peered from around your position to see if you saw correctly. When you did, they quickly went back to talking with themselves until the floor manager started counting down.

          “We have the exclusive interview here with the most popular couple in Korea!” The interviewer began, “They’re with me today to answer some questions from their fans and also to give us an EX-CLUE-SIVE announcement!”

          You had started feeling sick from your sunburn about halfway through the interview, so you weren’t really paying attention to what was being said until you heard the announcer’s voice cut in after the last commercial break. “Let’s not waste any more time,” she smiled as she turned from her own camera toward the couple. “Chanyeol, Jongin, please tell us about your BIG announcement.”

          Your eyes widened and you stared down at your wrists, you could see it written there, as clear as the first day you saw them all those years ago. The two names written on your wrists that no one else could see, that for years no one believed were really there. Park Chanyeol, written on the left, Kim Jongin, written on the right.

          You just stared at the marks on your wrists until you heard something that caused you to jolt your head upwards.

          “So what do you mean you have a third soulmate?” the interviewer asked in shock.

          “Well, it means just that. We have another soulmate out there,” Jongin said as he held his husband’s hand.

          “It’s hard to talk about since we obviously have no proof of it, but it is true. We have a soulmate out there somewhere.” Chanyeol reiterated as he took his other hand and placed it on top of Jongin’s and squeezed.

          “So are you looking for them? Why did you wait this long to announce news like this? Why did you decide to announce it now? You’re already married, how will this other soulmate fit into the mix?” The interviewer came at the couple with a barrage of questions.

          “I mean we’re not particularly looking for them,” Chanyeol mumbled.

          “We don’t really have all the answers right now,” Jongin said, “All we can say to the fans, to those watching is that we can no longer – in good conscience – hide that we have another soulmate.”

          You were back to looking at your wrists after that not even knowing that the interview was over, it was like you were frozen in place. You were telling yourself that it was a coincidence, that maybe you weren’t the only person born with Park Chanyeol and Kim Jongin written on your wrists. That these two people, this famous celebrity couple you didn’t even know about, they couldn’t be your soulmates. They must have been someone else’s. Not you – the ugly, overweight, poor, useless, nobody. You looked up and saw the couple and the interviewer headed towards the door to the control room when Jongdae came out of the door waving his hands around.

          “_________, what are you doing? Pack it up and go home. Did you get sick from the sunburn or something? Why are you just standing there?”

          Your eyes widened with fear and your heart started pacing.

          “____________?” your left wrist started to burn and sting and ache.

          “____________.” your right wrist began to feel the same as the man named Jongin took a step toward you.

          You turned on your heels and without looking back, without thinking, you ran. As you felt the blood start to trickle down from your wrists, as you felt the stinging of names being carved into them by some unknown force, you felt the tears stream down your cheeks because , your fears had been right all along. They were perfect, they were in love, they were married, and you were an overweight nobody. You had been left behind for the second time in your life. You were broken.

#exo poly #eventual smut #exo smut #exo soulmate au #exo au #exo au scenarios #exo fanfic #chankai x reader #chankai #exo poly fanfic #kpop chubby reader #chubby!reader

[suspiciouslycurly]

“I could really get in trouble here...”

Swarmed with an unexpected wave of inspiration (I get those once every couple years lol), I commited this one-shot something - and since I probably won’t be writing anything else anytime soon, I decided to keep it on my main blog. It’s long and it’s bad but it’s about Jack and I hope maybe I’ll manage to put a little smile on your faces :)

***

What: Jack Lowden gets on board a plane and a certain flight attendant catches his attention

Word count: 1776

Warnings: none

“Security search completed”, she reported to the chief purser of the upcoming flight and drifted off to the front galley of the plane, as she was assigned to the business class this time.

“Ugh, why again…”, she mumbled to herself while nervously looking at the watch on her wrist, painfully aware the passengers could arrive on board any second.

She wasn’t a fan of her flight attendant job - to say the least - and long haul flights were a nightmare she wished she could avoid; in turn, life had decided not to go easy on her and instead of burying herself under her own sheets and sleeping forever (or at least until things got better, which didn’t seem too likely to her) in her own bed she now also had to face business class passengers - and they weren’t exactly the easiest to please, could as well become a real pain in the arse on a ten-hour flight. It came as no surprise that also her personal life was in pieces thanks to her very irregular schedule - waking up all alone in random hotel rooms around the world might have seemed exciting to some but to her it was what made her lonelier than ever.

“Psst, passengers are coming”, her colleague said and made her come back to reality.

‘Here we go again… God, give me patience’, she thought, fixed her lipstick and put on her signature smile.

The passengers started flowing in, slowly filling the business class seats. As she smiled at a lady in what seemed like an expensive designer coat, she felt someone else’s stare on her. She lifted her head curiously just to lock her eyes with an incredibly handsome man with a beard and a pair of hypnotizing blue eyes, standing behind a couple other passengers waiting to walk through the plane door. She felt her heart drop to her stomach, as he looked very familiar, she just couldn’t place him anywhere…

Her eyes widened in shock as she suddenly remembered where she might have seen him before. ‘Wait, is that… can that be?’, random thoughts started filling her head. ‘No way… is there?’

“Welcome on board, sir, may I see your boarding pass please?”, she stormed to the middle galley, barely hearing her colleague talking to the blue-eyed man. She also didn’t notice him observing her sudden escape with a very amused look on his face.

“Can I borrow the passenger list for a sec?”, she asked another flight attendant and took the piece of paper in her hands. She skimmed through the never-ending column of names just to find what she’d already been expecting to find:

LOWDEN, JACK ANDREW – seat 3F

‘No way in hell.’

She sighed anxiously, remembering all too well how amazed she was with his performance in Dunkirk, and it made her feel even worse than she already had before. Her back slouched and with no energy left in her, she walked back to the front of the plane.

“Go serve the welcome drinks, I have to take care of something real quick”, her colleague said and left her with a tray in her hand and a puzzled look on her face.

‘Ugh, get yourself together, even if it’s him you’re still at work here, be professional for heaven’s sake!’, she scolded herself and put her smile back on.

As she was maneuvering between passengers and serving them cold glasses of champagne, she could swear that Lowden guy was watching her every move, smiling to himself as she smiled at other passengers.

“Would you like some champagne, sir?”, she finally asked him feeling so anxious she was shaking from head to toe.

“Champagne from a beautiful lady, what else could I ask for?”, he said, giving her a long stare and not blinking even once. “Except maybe for drinking the champagne with the lady herself, ‘f course”, he added and giggled.

She could feel all her walls come down. ‘God, stop it, I’m trying to work here’, she thought and tried to remain as poised as she could being all shaky.

“Ye probably get that a lot, don’t ye”, he stated with a smirk.

“Not really, no…”, she murmured more to herself than to be heard by him, remembering all the obnoxious passengers she’d had to deal with before. She hated when they tried to get too close, one because she had to follow certain rules and they’d often make it difficult for her to stay calm, acting all almighty because they could afford a seat in business class; two as even though she was obviously working in hospitality, she was more introverted than she let on and sometimes people invading her personal space would simply drive her crazy. Plus she always felt like the ugly one among her crew members.

It was somewhat different with him around though, she slowly realised. His small talk wouldn’t annoy her at all, in fact, she slowly started to feel like she could actually survive this flight without feeling the urge to kill someone.

Whenever she walked past him, he’d rotate his head to catch a glimpse of her entirety; whenever she was serving meals or drinks together with another flight attendant, he would only look at her and completely ignore the other one, finding a thousand excuses just to catch her attention. When the service was finished and she came up to him to collect his dirty dishes, he started chatting with her about whatever came to his mind; he could see something was wrong, he noticed that even though she smiled at him, her eyes would stay sad and he just couldn’t bear that so he’d throw the dumbest jokes at her just to somehow ease that pain he could see in her.

Finally, when food had already been served and most passengers drifted off to sleep, she had some time to herself as she was left all alone in the front galley in her duty time. She was flipping through some women’s magazine she’d found in one of the compartments, a paper cup of tea in her hand. As much as she despised her job, she could get used to those moments of temporary calm. This time was a little bit different though, as Jack Lowden was in fact on the same flight as her. She couldn’t shake off the feeling he was probably still staring at her through the walls that very moment.

She was deep lost in her thoughts when she heard a raspy voice ending with a soft chuckle:

“Ohh, so there ye were!”

She jumped from her seat, completely taken-aback by him appearing behind her out of nowhere, spilling her tea all over her uniform dress in result.

“Can I do anything for you, sir?”, she asked confused, trying to somehow take control of that utterly ridiculous situation.

“Oh no no no, don’t do that! Lemme help ye”, he rushed to her rescue and grabbed a paper towel from the counter.

“This is seriously the worst…”, she mumbled to herself, shaking her head in disbelief. “No, sir, I’m going to take care of that, could you please go back to your seat? I’ll bring you anything you need in a sec”, she added rushedly while trying to get the stain off herself.

“Nah, ye know… We’re still hanging in the air and all, could’ve ended up crashin’ or somethin’… Today’s not really the worst if ye ask me”, he laughed and scratched his head. “Jack”, he added, putting the used towel back on the counter and taking her right hand in his to plant a kiss on it.

“Y/N”, she said, giving up her official tone at last. She slowly looked up at him, just to be met with two mesmerisingly blue eyes, and instantly felt dizzy.

“But please don’t write any letters of complaint later just because you made me speak to you unofficially”, she added and winked at him, just because it felt right at that very moment. Her nervousness slowly started to subside, being exchanged with bits of self-confidence she never knew she had.

“Can I show you something?”, she asked, pulling him closer to the small window placed in the plane door. “Look”.

At first he couldn’t see anything but pitch black space all around the plane but when she pressed a button under the window, everything suddenly became the bluest sky one could possibly imagine, and the horizon was made of fields of fluffy clouds, white as December snow.

“Woah… almost as beautiful as ye”, he said amazed and squeezed her hand tighter.

“We’re landing in about three hours, do you think you can let me work for at least that much?”, she turned to him and smirked. “I could really get in trouble here, the pilots are so close they could even be listening to us right now…”

“Let ‘em listen, let ‘em know they’ve a true gem on board and I’m gonna snatch it for myself”, he gave her a mischievous look before finally bursting into laughter.

“Right…”, she said skeptically and pouted her lips.

“Can I borrow a pen, love?”, Jack asked, moving his eyes from her face to her cleavage where she had previously clipped a pen on her dress’s rim. His stare made her laugh nervously all over again.

“S… sure?”

He took the pen from her as she handed it to him and leaned over her, getting way too close to call it appropriate in that situation. She felt her heart pump blood harder and faster than ever, it seemed like it could just burst out of her chest anytime. He reached to the counter behind her for a napkin with the airline logo, still looking deep into her eyes, their faces dangerously close yet not quite close enough.

“Call me, yeah?”, he pulled back, quickly scribbled his number on the napkin and put it into her hand. “Pleaseee…?”, he added, waves of hope storming through his intensely blue eyes.

“I… I might”, she teased, trying to compose herself again now when he backed out a little and was out of her comfort zone. “Unless the pilots really heard us and you just got me in serious trouble”, she smiled widely, this time also with her eyes, and put the napkin in her pocket. She didn’t know why but whenever he was around, she felt like life wasn’t all that bad after all.

“Ye tease!”, he left out a soft chuckle and pulled her into a bear hug, feeling her relax in his arms and completely ignoring the sound of footsteps behind the curtain getting closer with each second.

#jack lowden imagine #jack lowden imagines #jack lowden x reader #jack lowden oneshot #dunkirk cast #dunkirk imagine #dunkirk imagines #mine #i'm so embarrassed omg #my writing

[privateplates4u]

Choosing the 2017 Motor Trend Best Driver’s Car

Patron saint of literary cool Joan Didion—who stalked the steamy, smoggy canyons of Los Angeles in a Daytona Yellow 1969 Corvette Stingray—once said, “Rationality, reasonableness bewilder me.” If only Didion were along for this year’s Best Driver’s Car competition. There is nothing rational or reasonable about holding the keys to $1.9 million worth of the world’s dreamiest sports cars, exotics, grand tourers, and supercars. It’s one thing to parse the packaging of family-friendly compact SUVs. That’s our day job. Best Driver’s Car is about the way a car makes you feel. It’s about the bees in your belly as you clip an apex, the giggles induced by the slingshot launch of barely restrained acceleration, and the sense of satisfaction that comes from the melding of man and machine. Where’s the cupholder for my latte in the McLaren? Can you fit anyone in that back seat of a 911? How much does that Ferrari 488 really cost? Don’t know. Don’t care. Our Highway Patrol–assisted closure of California State Route 198 and subsequent invasion of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca are the highlights of this event. But the Best Driver’s Car format actually began two weeks prior at Auto Club Speedway, when our testing trio of Kim Reynolds, Chris Walton, and Erick Ayapana took their first crack at our contenders with our battery of standardized instrumented testing. To earn the title of Best Driver’s Car, a vehicle must deliver a balance of usable performance, intuitive handling, and driver-friendly design. The winner should be a vehicle with a multidimensional personality, a car that will delight and reward the enthusiast driver on any road at any time, regardless of weather and traffic conditions. We had quite the field this year, with representation from Italy, Germany, Japan, England, and the V-8 thunder of American freedom. But as the test team crunched the test results, there was no clear leader. A storm was brewing. Highway 198 Revisited A four-hour drive along I-5’s trackless wastes brings us to our hotel in King City, California. Most of the other judges had convoyed up together around noon. But with most of California tucked into bed, associate editor Scott Evans and I made great time in the Aston Martin and Corvette. We rolled into the King City Days Inn a tick past midnight. We were the last to arrive, but our hotel clerk couldn’t have been happier. It isn’t every day you get to meet a YouTube hero, a certain “Mr. Lieberman,” who earlier had given an impromptu car show to our host. His fan club is everywhere. Highway 198 is a magical place, an undulating public two-lane roadway filled with tight switchbacks, sweeping curves, midcorner bumps, long straights, and panoramic views. It’s a gorgeous 4.2-mile stretch of roadway that climbs about 1,000 feet, allowing Motor Trend judges to test each contender at its (and their own) limits. Any shortcomings of either car or driver will be quickly identified on this passage. It is the mill that grinds the grist. Just past daybreak, the ground fog still clearing, we pulled to the side of the road to set up camp, clean cars, and wait for the California Highway Patrol’s black and white Ford Explorers to close the road so we could begin. After a team meeting, we fired up all 86 cylinders and commenced our first runs up the beckoning hills—each of us starting in the familiar car we had driven from L.A. That meant the Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport, intimidating in looks and sound, for me. The ’Vette is really a sweetheart once set up properly—Driver Mode Select in Sport and the steering wheel set to Tour. In those modes, the throttle response is linear and quick, and the suspension is dialed in to maximize the car’s speed around corners. The steering is light and direct, though you need to make a conscious effort to slow yourself down because turn-in is still very quick. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. “Needs 100 extra horsepower! Felt slow!” Jonny shouted after his turn behind the wheel. Also, the crowded seven-speed manual gearbox has rubbery, ropey throws and doesn’t like to be rushed, and the gear ratios felt too tall for the track-oriented Grand Sport. Said executive editor Mark Rechtin: “It seems like there was a big gap between the powerbands in third and fourth gear.” Chevy used to sandbag the Camaro to avoid stepping on the Corvette’s toes, but those days are gone. The Camaro ZL1 1LE is an uncaged race car. As he pulled into our makeshift pit lane, Jonny could be heard screaming, “Yeaaaah!” and clapping his hands. You’d think power would be why the Camaro works so well, but it’s actually grip that’s the key to this muscle car. Those steamroller-wide, superglue-sticky Goodyear tires work hand in hand with the DSSV dampers and the added aero aids to ensure that the Camaro can use each and every one of its 650 horses. “You quickly learn you can trust the tires as you unleash the power,” Detroit editor Alisa Priddle said. Scott added: “There’s a lot of vertical movement in the cabin, but the car never jumps sideways a foot when it hits a midcorner bump; it never moves around laterally at all.” The downside to the Camaro’s grip is its ride quality—basically there is none. “I’ve encountered smoother paint mixers,” guest judge Derek Powell said. “The bouncing was so bad that I found myself reacting to that instead of focusing on the sheer act of driving. The nuclear-waste green Mercedes-AMG GT R  provoked whoops and hollers from all of the drivers. A brutal supercar that rewards fortitude, the AMG needs to be driven flat out in order to properly enjoy it. Dig deep into the 577-hp twin-turbo V-8, and you’re compensated by a violent surge of power and the soundtrack “of a small arms factory exploding behind your hips every time you come off the throttle,” as Jonny put it. “Let it rip,” Alisa added. “The AMG has the power to get unruly, but it holds the road incredibly well.” Although the Mercedes’ nose bites with ferocity—only fighting back once you approach its limits—the rear end wasn’t as well behaved even at sane speeds. “There were several times when the rear would hop side to side or even produce drop-throttle oversteer or on-power oversteer,” Chris said. Unlike the Merc, it’s hard to get into trouble in the Mazda Miata RF. Like any good naturally aspirated engine, the Miata is happy to rev its way to redline, growling sweetly as you stab the clutch and flick the six-speed manual into its next gear. The Miata is not fast, but it rewards a driver’s skill. Entering corners, the Miata RF is surprisingly tail-happy. Mazda rehashed the ragtop’s suspension for 2017, but the RF is unsettled. “It’s always dancing on the top of its springs and edge of its tires,” Scott said. With traction control on, the Mazda’s electronic systems are constantly grabbing at the brakes to keep the Miata’s tail in line—sapping the little power the RF has to give. A better beginner sports car to explore one’s limits might be the Porsche 718 Cayman S. “The chassis is so beautifully balanced, the handling so predictable,” Derek said. “Each movement is connected directly to the brain’s synapses.” Scott agreed, adding: “Steering is among the best here—talkative and light, quick enough but not too much. I wish the Miata handled like this.” The 718’s 350-hp mid-mounted turbo flat-four is a good match for the platform, too–even if some of our judges wish it sounded less like a garbage disposal eating a fork. Alisa silenced those critics: “There are those who miss the sound of the old throaty engine, but the trade-off for a nice, wide powerband is worth it.” There isn’t much room for improvement in the 718, but the Aston Martin DB11 could use some help in the braking department. Its 600-hp V-12 is more than capable of getting its nearly 4,200 pounds of British aluminium going (and quickly at that), but it lacks the brakes or suspension to handle that heft on a twisty road. The DB11 has three suspension settings, but all feel inadequate for spirited performance. Its body control was subpar, the car displaying a tendency to porpoise through corners and over bumps. “It’s a wonderful GT car and is happy at high speeds, as long as the road doesn’t twist too much,” Scott said. Upsides: The V-12 provides epic thrust, and the steering is beautifully weighted, light, and linear—just as a British GT car should be. As the Aston’s counterpoint in the grand touring department, the Lexus LC 500 was a revelation, having done its homework on chassis and suspension tuning. “The fundamentals are all there,” Jonny said. Scott provided further details: “Weight transfer is nicely handled, and the car sits in a turn nicely.” The Lexus provides light, progressive feedback from the wheel, and its four-wheel-steering system helps make the LC feel smaller than it is. The LC’s 5.0-liter V-8 makes a good match for the 10-speed auto, though the gearbox was frustrating for its abundance of overdrive gears. “How can this car have 10 gears and never, ever be in the right one?” Chris asked. “There were at least a dozen rejected downshifts.” You’d expect the lone four-door sedan in our group to be soft, but it’s clear the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio “is a sports car regardless of how many doors it has,” Derek said. The Alfa’s sportiness is baked into its chassis; it’s a car that rewards smooth inputs yet begs to be driven hard. “This might be the best-handling sedan I have driven in 25 years of automotive journalism,” Mark said. “And yes, that includes the W124 and E39.” The 2.9-liter twin-turbo V-6 is laggy down low, but it hits you in the face with a sledgehammer once you’re above 2,000 rpm. Its eight-speed auto rattles off shifts as if it were a dual-clutch transmission. Complaints? A few. The engine, for all its power, doesn’t communicate what it’s doing at redline, making shifting by ear difficult. Some also found the Alfa’s Italian electrics a little buggy, with inconsistent brake-by-wire feel and a seemingly overeager overheat protection mode that would impose a 5,000-rpm rev limiter on the engine and limit torque vectoring at the rear axle. The other Italian in our group, the Ferrari 488 GTB, delivered thrills on an epiphanic level. After piling out of the Ferrari babbling a red-mist rant, Mark calmed down enough to say, “This delivers every teenager’s fantasy when they think of Ferrari.” The Ferrari 488 is one of those rare cars that makes you feel immediately at home despite its exotic appearance. The cabin is open and airy with a driver-focused interface. There are no distractions. Your hands hold a flat-bottomed, carbon-fiber and leather steering wheel, and all the needed controls are a finger’s reach away. Not only does the 488 GTB feel magical merely sitting still, but it’s also glorious to drive. The Ferrari’s small twin-turbocharged engine makes 661 horsepower. “It’s a force of nature, like being picked up by a tornado,” Scott said. The 488 also carries tenacious grip “with a flat attitude and fingertip control while cornering at speeds 10 to 15 mph faster than other vehicles—with the same if not greater confidence heading down 198 as up,” editor-in-chief Ed Loh said. The Achilles’ heel for the Ferrari is its brakes—the carbon ceramics have a slightly wooden feel and squeak like the midnight subway to Coney Island. If on the emotional scale the Ferrari is an embrace from a Victoria’s Secret model, the McLaren 570GT is a polite but firm handshake from gritty Bruce himself. Last year’s winning 570S was a highly rewarding and technical car, but in softening the 570 for grand touring duty, McLaren seemed to scrape away some of the special sauce. “It’s not what I would have expected,” Chris said. “This one feels far more ass-happy and less balanced and composed.” The 570GT feels stuck between sledgehammer and rubber mallet—it no longer drives like a supercar, but it’s not soft enough to drive like a proper GT. The issue is especially apparent if you’ve forgotten to press the “Active” button. Turn on the Active Panel, and dig into the 30-some-odd possible drivetrain configurations, and that sharpens steering and throttle response. But then the handling becomes unpredictable. “There were times when I’d exit a corner and the engine and transmission would be ready for it, and I’d rocket out onto the straight at full boost,” Derek said. “Other times it felt like I caught the car unaware.” When the McLaren is awake, there’s a hint of that 570S magic in its fingertip-light steering, supple ride, and peaky but powerful little engine, but the 570GT’s inconsistency hurt its credibility. If you want instant confidence bordering on immortality, the Porsche 911 Turbo S is your machine. Despite the PDK seven-speed dual-clutch doing the shifting, despite the torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system constantly shuffling around the twin-turbo flat-six’s 580 hp, and despite the four-wheel steering making the 911 feel smaller than it is, the Porsche makes its driver feel responsible for it all. “Right out of the box, the 911 Turbo S lets you drive as fast as you dare, brake as hard as you can, and turn as much as you wish,” Derek said. “It doesn’t just inspire confidence. It inspires a relationship with the driver.” Still, some, like Jonny, thought the 911 made things too easy. “This thing is weaponized speed,” he said. “It’s maniacally capable but not the most engaging car, let alone 911, I’ve ever driven.” Added Ed: “It is a focused tool intended for one purpose: going very fast. Really hard to find a flaw here; if I’m being really critical, it’s a bit anodyne.” He quickly followed with: “I take it back about it being boring.” Now eight years since it made its debut, the latest Nissan GT-R NISMO still remains very proficient at hauling ass. Defined by what should be physically impossible levels of grip, it’s a car that you chuck into corners, mash the gas, and let the all-wheel-drive system sort things out. Godzilla’s 3.8-liter twin-turbo V-6 is indeed a monster worthy of the name—boost hits strong, and the power keeps coming. “This engine pulls and surges effortlessly,” Erick said. Ed said it was “noticeably sharper, like they ran the GT-R over a Japanese whetstone.” But some things don’t change. The programming on the GT-R’s six-speed dual-clutch is lacking, making manual shifting a must for performance driving. The ride is literally a sore spot. And then there’s the steering—it broke. Nearly every judge had a bizarre issue after hitting a midcorner bump, where the steering wheel would go cockeyed at a 20-degree angle, yet the car would be going straight down the road. Then the steering wheel would correct itself as if nothing had happened. Chris had it happen multiple times, with GT-R chief engineer Hiroshi Tamura riding shotgun. “It was an unusual electro-mechanical anomaly,” Chris said. “Tamura-san was as curious about it as I was.” As Motor Trend en Español editor Miguel Cortina nursed the NISMO back to our makeshift Highway 198 paddock, he handed the keys to Tamura-san and the Nissan team for repairs. The question as we pointed our field north toward Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca was whether the GT-R would be fixed in time for our staff champion racer Randy Pobst’s hot laps around the track. Hot Shoes, Cool Fog Monterey, let alone Mazda Raceway, has its own microclimate. Monterey proper was warm and clear, but the track was cool and foggy. It would be lousy for visibility but great for the turbocharged cars that Randy would run that day. After a quick sighting lap in our long-term Honda Civic to scout the conditions, Randy, Ed, and the test team determined which six cars to run on day one. 718. Corvette. Ferrari. McLaren. Camaro. 911. The assembled teams scrambled off to start prepping the cars. Meanwhile, a local Nissan dealer was attempting to bandage Godzilla. The Cayman was ready first. Randy hopped in, fired up the rumbly little four-pot, and set off for his hot laps. Not long after—1:40.22 to be exact—Randy pulled the ticking 718 into the pit with a huge smile on his face: “People! Marry this car! This is not like the crazy, scary girlfriend who will give you the time of your life and then boil your rabbit in the morning. The Cayman S has such beautiful balance; it’s so good that I felt like I could push it harder and harder.” Not long after, Randy set out in the red, white, and blue Corvette. But when he came back, Randy’s smile had been replaced with a scowl: “It wasn’t until the second timed lap that the tires started to get some temperature, but the car still wanted to power oversteer at throttle tip in. The front is ready to turn full blast, and the rear isn’t. Or the rear is ready to accelerate, and the front’s not too happy.” Going out in the Ferrari 488 GTB seemed to cheer Randy up before he was flagged for breaking Monterey’s punitive noise regulations: “I talked about marrying the Cayman, but this car is your mistress! This car accelerates so quickly that I needed to apex a lot later. The turbos on that Ferrari V-8 give it a big, fat torque curve. The transmission is such a beautiful match for that engine.” He did caution that the brakes did not provide a solid initial bite and that pedal pressure and brake force were not in cahoots. And like that, Randy was off in the McLaren 570GT, choosing to leave the stability control on because it felt fairly easy to break the rear end loose. “Track mode gets into a nice place where it allows some drift,” Randy said. “But it’s controlling the throttle a bit for me, and it’s less satisfying because I’m not the one driving. I could even feel the stability control activating significantly in Turn 1. The McLaren is fast enough that we’re arriving there at over 140 mph, and the car gets light and a bit oversteery.” You’d think the Camaro ZL1 1LE that Randy lapped next would be as oversteery as the Brit, but its claws stuck into the track. “This thing handles so well,” he said. “For a front-engine, rear-drive car with 650 horsepower, the traction was incredible. It put power down extremely well. Stability controls aren’t necessary for the average good driver.” The same rules applied for Randy’s last car of the day, the 911 Turbo S. “I don’t want to get out,” he said. “This car is the one you married, and it’s your mistress. It’s the whole package. I’m so utterly blown away by its capability. It was incredibly rewarding to drive. I was driving that car hard because I could.” As we wound down for the day, the Nissan GT-R arrived—but after a quick spin, Chris and Tamura-san quickly shut it down. Not ready. Nissan PR called for an identical white GT-R NISMO to be shuttled up from L.A. the next morning. It needed to arrive before the track went cold at 5:30 p.m. The Final Countdown As the clock started ticking for the NISMO on day two, we turned our attention to the remaining cars’ hot laps. Or warm laps in the case of the Miata RF. Its lap around its namesake track is not surprisingly the slowest of our 12, but it’s probably one of the most fun. “The MX-5 makes every trip to the grocery store feel like a Grand Prix at 34 mph,” Randy said. “I have to really slow my hands down because it leans over a lot. I like to trail-brake into a corner, and the Miata does not like that. But you can go around screaming at redline all day and not end up in jail.” By comparison, the Mercedes-AMG GT R is a go-directly-to-jail card. “This AMG really has personality in its engine,” Randy said. “It’s satisfying to pull all the way to redline. The fat torque curve makes it easier to drive, too, because it’s more controllable.” But the brakes started exhibiting signs of heat soak by the time Randy was on his final lap. Although the Lexus LC 500 might not spring to mind as a track car, Randy found it to be a delightful experience. But he also had some caution. “When attacking the corners, the Lexus is reluctant to change direction,” he said. “But once it finally comes down the apex and I go back to power, it’s beautiful from then on.” Randy was pleasantly surprised with the other front-engine GT car in our group, the Aston Martin DB11: “My expectations were low. I thought it would be a boat, but I was wrong. Well behaved on the track. Surprisingly good handler. Responsive and well damped in the Sport Plus suspension setting.” But the Aston’s brakes were shot midway through its second hot lap. With still no sign of our missing NISMO, Randy hit the track in the Giulia Quadrifoglio, returning with queries about cornering inconsistency: “I think there are electronic variations with the torque-vectoring differential. When I started at a quick pace, small steering changes really brought the car into the corner. Then when I go flat out, I get a lot of understeer in the middle of the corner under some circumstances but not others. I noticed the brake pedal doing something similar, too. It’s a lot of fun, it’s fast, it’s quick handing, but I’m not a fan of variation.” The Return of Godzilla All available cars having run, there was still no NISMO. Ed called a meeting; the manufacturers who wanted another lap would get one. Porsche wanted the Cayman to run again, citing the fog on day one. Ferrari wanted a run with flushed brake lines and new calipers and pads. The Corvette would run in Sport mode. And why not? The AMG GT R and McLaren 570GT could rerun, too. But if the GT-R showed up, bonus laps would cease. The Cayman, Corvette, McLaren, and Ferrari improved their times—the Italian by nearly a full second, leading some to suspect Ferrari’s mechanics did far more than change the brakes. But the AMG was actually 0.2 second slower. With 45 minutes on the clock, our replacement NISMO rolled into the paddock. The garage buzzed around the NISMO. The test team hooked up our data-logging gear, replaced wheels and tires, torqued lug nuts, and checked pressures. Video mounted and prepped cameras. Sound strapped down microphones. Everyone else stayed the hell out of the way. Some Formula 1 pit crews aren’t this in sync. At 5:15, Randy hopped in the GT-R and blazed a 1:35.01 lap. “The GT-R has been around for a long time,” he said. “It has gotten better and better, and the NISMO is the best version, but after it brakes pretty well once or twice, it starts getting hot. And when you first tip into this thing, it gives you full power and throws the car completely off balance. All-wheel drive or not, it suddenly makes the car run wide.” It was 5:30 on the dot. Time to hash out the winner. Final Tally When you have such a closely contested field, it is almost harder to pick the last-place car than the winner. Someone has to come last even if we really truly love our cellar dweller. And love, love we do, the 12th-place Aston Martin DB11. The DB11 is a great car to drive, but it’s not a good driver’s car. It’s a little too heavy, a little soft. There’s still plenty to like, though. “It’s beautiful inside and out,” Miguel said. It has a killer engine, too. Derek described the sound of the starter as “God Himself wound a pull cord around the flywheel and gave it a wondrous yank.”   Coming in 11th place is a car that was minutes away from earning a DNF: the Nissan GT-R NISMO. Mechanical issues aside, the Nissan’s 11th-place finish is a testament to how competitive this year’s field was. Yeah, it’s a bit heavy and a bit vague through corners, and it isn’t as fast as some of the new kids on the block. “It’s impressive that there are still improvements to be made,” Ed said. Godzilla might be old, but he sure as hell can still breathe fire. Tenth place goes to the Mazda MX-5 Miata RF Club. Miatas are the go-to for entry-level racers, and that ain’t just because of its price point—it’s because it is an exceptionally well-composed sports car with approachable, unintimidating limits. But although the Miata ragtop finished in third a few years back, the package isn’t improved by adding 125 pounds worth of complicated hardtop, which doesn’t accommodate a helmeted driver. Also, Mazda’s suspension tweaks fell out of favor of our judges. Oh how the mighty have fallen. After winning it all with the 570S last year, McLaren comes in ninth place this year. The 570GT is unsure of its place on the road. There are moments of brilliance in the delicacy of its steering, its surgical precision, and its tremendous brake feel, but the 570GT never gives you the confidence to go for more. “Somehow the magic of the 570S didn’t translate into the 570GT,” Chris said. “It’s a brilliant car, but it’s no winner.” Jonny had argued against bringing the Lexus LC 500 because it’s so big and heavy. But chastened, following its respectable eighth-place finish, he said: “Folks, we have an athlete on our hands.” We were all impressed with the Lexus’ sonorous V-8, quick-shifting automatic, and crisp steering feel—even if the LC was too eager to default to understeer at its limit. “Tighten this thing up, cut some weight, add some power, and you’ve got a really good GT car here,” Scott said. It seems that the Chevrolet Corvette is always this close to perfection, and that remains the folly of the seventh-place Corvette Grand Sport Z07. First the good: Its 6.2-liter V-8 is fantastic. It’s got a big, meaty powerband, and although it could probably benefit from an extra 100 horsepower, it’s tremendously rewarding to drive. The Corvette’s biggest issue is its transmission—its gearbox doesn’t like to be rushed, and its gear ratios are ultimately too tall and too widely spaced for performance driving. Sixth place goes to the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio. The Alfa is high strung, but that’s part of the fun—the engine is laggy down low and peaky up high, and the steering is so quick off-center that you’re liable to drive off the road if you so much as sneeze. “LOL-fast steering, short gearing mixed with a turbo-tickled powertrain,” Ed said. This is where things get real close; any of our top five could have justifiably won the whole shebang. Finishing a few points shy of fourth place, the Mercedes-AMG GT R is a helluva car. “The harder you drive this thing, the better it gets,” Erick said. But it needs to be driven at ten-tenths to get the most enjoyment out of it. Wring it out for all it’s worth, and it rewards you with endless grip and lightning-quick shifts. But it isn’t as gratifying at five-tenths as it is flat-out. The Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE’s fourth-place finish was a contentious one. We could agree on power and grip. The fact that all 650 of the Camaro’s horsepower is usable without instantly vaporizing the rear rubber is an engineering feat. But some of us maintained that a car couldn’t win Best Driver’s Car if you didn’t want to drive it every day. “I’ve probably lost all my fillings, and my kidneys are bruised,” Derek lamented, to which Jonny retorted: “Some judges thought the ride was too harsh on their way to Pilates class, but who cares? Finishing fourth is a failure of democracy.” One vote is all that separates our second- and third-place finishers. One. Earning the bronze is the technological tour de force that is the 911 Turbo S. It never seems to run out of grip, power, or brakes. “The 911 Turbo S is so amazingly competent on every level—without having any visible compromises—that it’s easy to forget how high its limits are,” Derek said. “Some might be tempted to punish the Porsche for its unflappable greatness. Big mistake.” Life’s funny. The Porsche 718 Cayman S wasn’t supposed to be here. We didn’t invite it until a last-second dropout had us scrambling to fill a hole in our lineup. Now the 718 Cayman S is tootling away with a silver medal. “There is something really spirited and sweet about this car,” Alisa said. “It’s so well balanced and smooth, so seamless in its power delivery and responsive to the slightest steering input.” Mark agreed: “It’s an exacting corner-carving machine that entices you to push your limits even more.” Erick, who did his best to hog the Cayman most of the week, called it “lovely,” adding that it “felt impossible to do wrong in this car.” Simply put, the 718 is a phenom. Deus ex Machina You’d think a mid-engine supercar would be a one-trick pony, but our 2017 Best Driver’s Car proves that wrong. First place goes to the Ferrari 488 GTB. This Ferrari makes you your best self behind the wheel. It grabs your attention, it focuses you, and it helps you improve. The 488 GTB lets you know when you screw up and pushes and prods you to do better next time around. The Ferrari 488 GTB’s powertrain is an endless assault on your senses, with wave after wave of devastating power. The engine pulls all the way to 8,000 rpm and then, bam, the seven-speed gearbox upshifts, and the engine digs deep for more. The powertrain is happy lugging around, too. “This car is amazing even loafing along I-5,” Mark said. Derek agreed about its cruising manners: “Very little engine noise makes it into the cabin despite it being inches away from the back of my head.” Chassis, steering, and suspension tuning are equally impressive. “The steering is very lively and requires constant attention—this car needs me,” Chris said. The 488 GTB does it all. “The Ferrari fulfills the complete list of needs, from extreme exotic to dauntless touring car,” Mark said. It’s memorable, too. “This is one of those cars, one of those drives, one of those moments that will forever be seared into my synapses as an epic moment,” Chris said, “a true deus ex machina experience in my life.” Joan Didion once described driving in Los Angeles as requiring “a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over.” The Ferrari 488 GTB is that rapture. It is that rhythm. It is our 2017 Best Driver’s Car. Read more about 2017 Best Driver’s Car contenders: Ferrari 488 GTB Porsche 911 Turbo S Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE Porsche 718 Cayman S Lexus LC 500 Mercedes-AMG GT R Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport Aston Martin DB11 Nissan GT-R NISMO Mazda MX-5 Miata RF McLaren 570GT The post Choosing the 2017 Motor Trend Best Driver’s Car appeared first on Motor Trend.

http://www.motortrend.com/news/choosing-2017-best-drivers-car/

#Best Driver's Car #Car Performance

[platonic-plots]

I Can Count On You.

Request/Summary: You and Bucky have been almost inseparable since he took you in when he was laying low in Bucharest. He waits until the eve of the day he is being frozen again in Wakanda to tell you about his decision.

Pairings: bucky x daughter!reader (kinda-ish eh close enough)

Words: 1868

Warnings: vague mentions of abuse, lil bit of swearing n stuff

Specific time/Important info: i forgot that Bucky only had one arm when i was writing this and i don’t think it actually matters but just a heads up incase anything i’ve mentioned has something to do with it, also civil war has already happened to Bucky but he hasn’t been frozen yet.

Bucky had taken you in over a year ago. Terrified, starved, beaten - you had found him after fleeing the environment that almost killed you and he had taken care of you like you were his own child since. You owed this man everything; he was (and still is) the best father figure you’ve had in your life. Both of you suffer from horrific nightmares and there isn’t a day that goes by without at least one of you being sleep deprived, but each of you had at least some form of knowledge and experience of what the other had felt - you two were the only people who had successfully comforted the other during every sleepless night. You knew everything about each other, he told you unsettling tales of what hydra had done to him and you explained the uncountable nights when your drunken parents had hurt you beyond belief and messed with your mind. Bucky trusted you with his life and vice versa.

Then the civil war occurred.

He didn’t want you to get involved with any aspect of it. Understandable? Yes. Reasonable? Maybe- but not in your mind. Still, you couldn’t physically do anything to help (any of the fighting avengers had more strength in their little toe than you would ever have in your whole body) and the last thing you wanted to do was disappoint Bucky. He’d done everything for you, and going against what you’d promised would break his heart.

There was chaos. Despite not knowing them on any personal level, you were unbelievably relieved to know that nobody was killed, and that Bucky was okay. You were filled with relief when you saw him return to the motel he left you in.

You’d never hugged someone so much, “Please, please, please don’t do that again.” Your voice cracked slightly while it was muffled by his shoulder, you refused to let your tears fall but you couldn’t contain how you were feeling. You almost lost the last person you cared for.

“I’m sorry, y/n/n,” he held you closer.

You only stayed in the US for around a week before Bucky told you about Black Panther’s country.

“He’s invited us there, to Wakanda. To see what it’s like, are you up for it?” Despite the smile on his face, his eyes seemed to hide something, like he was keeping something from you. But you couldn’t assume that. After all you’d done for each other, you knew he wouldn’t keep anything important from you.

“Uh, y-yeah,” you replied. Bucky knew you were only agreeing to make him happy and he was grateful that you didn’t argue, for he didn’t want to break his news to you so soon- he was too scared.

So, that was it; within twenty-four hours, you’d packed your bags and got on the jet that had been sent for the both of you.

“Woah,” it was the only thing you could say, Wakanda was beautiful.

Bucky pointed out a man - surrounded by a big group of intimidating security guards - waiting after you touched down. T’Challa. You were introduced, you accidentally made yourself look like an idiot, the king smiled, and you were on your way to the room you and Bucky would be sharing. There wasn’t another way to describe it, you were staying in a building that was worthy of, well, royalty.

Bucky left the room after about ten minutes while you finished unpacking your stuff. When he was gone, you found yourself staring out of the window. Landscapes had always left you in awe, and this was no exception. If you craned your neck enough, you could just about make out an amazing statue, a panther.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Bucky announced as he came back into the room

“You must be y/n.”

Steve Rogers was standing at the door with a small, warming smile on his lips. You knew who he was; Bucky had told you stories about him from ‘back in the day’. You wanted to act like anyone else, you wanted to smile back, say hi, anything normal, but you couldn’t help it. Considering it took you over a week to trust Bucky, he wasn’t surprised when you backed away slightly at the sight of a stranger. He walked back over to you.

“It’s okay, y/n. He won’t hurt you, I promise,” Bucky spoke quietly to you, but you could tell Steve had heard him from the sympathetic look on his face.

Sensing you and Bucky needed to talk, Steve told his friend he needed to unpack and left the room.

“B-Buck,”

“I know, I’m sorry. But you can trust him, I swear, y/n. He’s saved my life - more than once” he smiled, “Please, y/n/n.”

“I’ll- okay.”

“Thank you,” he smiled and hugged you - you weren’t sure, but it seemed like he was more relieved that he should’ve been, “I love you,”

“I love you too.”

The rest of the evening flew past in a blur. The three of you had a meal together in an attempt to bond and it didn’t fail like you expected - you weren’t even that awkward around Steve. By the end of the night, you’d even had a conversation with him. Bucky really wanted you to feel comfortable around Steve and you were actually trying which made him feel a little proud. If Bucky trusted him so much, then you could too, right? That felt like seconds ago, as you sat in bed in his arms after a nightmare. It was 4 am and you had been woken up by a worried looking Bucky after you’d had a dream that he was killed and you were all alone, and you couldn’t shake the thought of one day not having him there. He sat with you, calming you down and telling you that you were okay. What would you do? You knew the thought would only stress you out, so you pushed it away, and it was morning before you knew it.

You spent the day being hectically rushed around on a tour of the buildings surrounding you and talking to T’Challa. The ‘day’ was over by around seven, so you and Bucky just went back to your room.

“Damn it, I’m late. This is really important, y/n. Steve’ll look after you, it’s only for a couple of hours. Okay thanks- bye.”

It’d only been an hour before Bucky was busy yet again; you watched as he raced down the corridor. Bucky had just finished explaining to you that he had some sort of meeting with T’Challa and it was a ‘private matter’, and he deliberately rushed off before you could object. You didn’t have a problem with Steve, you just weren’t a fan of new people in general. Despite this, you couldn’t help but feel like you’d warm up to him in no time. Just as the thought was crossing your mind, he opened the door to his room, which was next door to yours.

“Oh- um, h-hi,” you mumbled in an awkward reaction to seeing him so soon.

“Hey,” he smiled warmly and followed you into your room. You weren’t sure what to do, so you just sat next to the pillow on your bed and Steve did the same on the other side, picking up the tv remote. The movie channel was on and low and behold, it was showing Rise of The Guardians; your favorite film, although you’d only ever watched a total of 4 movies. You couldn’t help but give a little reaction when you heard him give a small grunt of a complaint.

“Hey,” you quietly dragged out, accompanying it with a half-smile.

“What, you like this?” his eyebrows raised slightly and he grinned- you could tell he was glad to get you talking.

“Yes! Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, I mean, okay I don’t know,” you gave a small laugh as he continued. “Like this part-” he gestured to the scene where all the easter eggs were being decorated, “isn’t it all just a bit too happy?”

“Alright, miserable. But with everything that’s been happening, it’s good to take a break, right? I’m assuming you don’t want to be watching movies about robot wars.” he laughed and you went back to watching the movie in peace. Subconsciously, you lay your head on his shoulder - only now did you realize how tired you were. “A- oh, s-sorry I didn’t rea-”

“Y/n, it’s okay, stop worrying. No offence, but you look exhausted, c’mere,’ Steve opened his arms. He engulfed you in his embrace and you were asleep in minutes.

“You still haven’t told her? Buck, it’s tomorrow. That isn’t fair for her- you were gonna tell her, right?”

“Of course I was, I just couldn’t. Every time I wanted to, something about her made me stop. Y/n, I mean, she’s too young. I’ve told you the shit she’s been through, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about this.”

“Tell me about what?”

Realising you were awake, Bucky’s face dropped and his eyes filled with guilt. Steve looked at you with something that almost resembled pity and mumbled something about seeing us tomorrow, before leaving.

“Bucky? What is it? What’s happening tomorrow?”

“L-let’s just sleep, we’ll tal-”

“No. Buck, please,” your voice cracked as you thought about the worse possible situations. What didn’t he want to tell you? Why didn’t he want to tell you?

“We came here, to Wakanda, because I needed help, and T’Challa offered it to me. Since I woke up after being frozen, I haven’t been able to control what hydra did to me a-and I’m scared for the people around me- for Steve, for you. I-I don’t want you to be in danger, I don’t want to hurt you, y/n. The scientists here, they’re trying to figure out how to stop it taking over, but until then, I’m going back under.”

“N-no.”

“Y/n-,”

“No, you, you can’t. You can’t just wait until, until” you couldn’t even form a sentence.

“I’m sorry, y/n/n. Listen, I know you’re mad, just try to-”

A tear fell down your cheek and you buried your face in his chest and clung onto him. Initially, Bucky was shocked but within seconds he hugged you back just as tight. You were understandably pissed off but you were quick to realise that nobody knew how long it’d take to figure out how to stop the thoughts of hydra from changing Bucky, and you didn’t want one of your last encounters with him to be so negative. Although you didn’t want to admit it, you could reason with his choice of not telling you. If you were in his place, you probably would’ve ended up doing the same thing. You silently stood there in each other’s arms for a few minutes before a few quiet sobs left your lips and Bucky spoke in response.

“Shh, I won’t be gone for long, I promise, y/n/n.”

“I-I know, I’m just scared. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’ve got Steve- he knows how much you mean to me, he’d risk his life if he had to. I swear you’ll be fine. I can count on you.”

Ok I know this isn’t great but I tried lol. Also if anyone cares enough, send me an ask if you either (a) want to be tagged in any future fics or (b) want to request a fic :) Thank you for reading!!

#marvel #mcu #daughter!reader #bucky barnes #marvel imagine #mcu imagine #steve rogers #imagine #daughter imagine #s.h.i.e.l.d. #i can count on you #marvel fic #reader insert #t’challa #the winter soldier #daughter!reader x bucky barnes #platonic!reader x steve rogers

[drabblemesilly]

Tyler Seguin #10

Requested by Anon:  Hi are you taking requests for anything? If so can you plese write one about tyler seguin where one of his lines is "commitment is never my thing but then there's you" or something like thah XD thank you love you and yur writinfs!! 😄

*Thank you so much! I hope you like this one. I tried to slip in your line on there. :) Enjoy!*

Word count: 987

People all over the deep boroughs of the internet are wreaking havoc and you’re definitely not invited to the party. This is the moment you’re kissing past you for thinking to put your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter profiles on private a few weeks ago.

You pressed play on the post-game interview and watched Tyler Seguin say, “uhh, yeah,” he did that stretching of his lips thing that he always does, “I’m also just looking forward to going home and having dinner with my girlfriend,” cue his awkward chuckle, tongue out for all to see.

Girlfriend. That was the trigger word. The moment that word left his mouth, the hockey world of the internet exploded.

Tyler Seguin just said, nonchalantly by the way, on national television that he had a girlfriend.

That girlfriend is you, right? It must be because you’ve been seeing each other the past few months. You never detailed your relationship but seeing that you’re here right now, on his couch, with his dogs while he was on the kitchen getting your nightly cup of hot chocolate, it must be you.

Speaking of the devil. Tyler came into the room with your mug.

“You know the internet is having a feast with your post-game interview, right?” you asked, refreshing your Tumblr dashboard for the sixth time in four minutes, “they just asked you what you were doing to celebrate your win tonight.”

The Dallas Stars, after struggling for the most part of the season, by some form of miracle has secured a wildcard berth to the playoffs. Hallelujah!

He placed the mug on the table in front of you and sat beside you, pulling his knees close to his chest. He grabbed the remote from your hand and replayed his interview, “I don’t look like I smell on that one, I think I’m improving,” he chuckled, ignoring your question.

You looked at him pointedly, “you just had to say you have a girlfriend, didn’t you?”

Finally, he turned to look at you, one of his eyebrows raised sassily, “don’t I?”

You shrugged, “I don’t know, you tell me,” you grinned, not wanting to make him feel like you’re assuming your role in his life.

Tyler put an arm around you and kissed the top of your head, “so what if they know you exist?” he said patiently, subtly asking your question that yes, you are his girlfriend.

You curled your toes to stop yourself from giggling out of glee, “you didn’t have to say it though,” you handed him your phone, “look at this.”

He scrolled through the Tyler Seguin tag on Tumblr and chuckled. Fans were speculating about his so-called girlfriend now: was she blonde or brunette? Is she this girl on the background of one of his pictures? Was she the one he was with on that Snapchat video three days ago? Has he ever brought her to any of the Stars functions? Was she that girl in the photo Candace posted and she captioned ‘sisters’?

Ha. You haven’t even met Candace yet.

“Tyler,” you tapped your finger on your phone screen, “focus, I’m freaking out here.”

He ignored you and continued to smile and grin at the speculations thrown on the internet by his fans. Tyler Seguin has finally admitted to having a girlfriend and it might have broken the hockey fandom for a while.

As the song goes, even the best fall down sometimes.

It has been proven: Mountains can be moved because you just moved one.

“What’s up?” Tyler’s voice broke through your thoughts.

You turned to him, “huh?”

He rubbed his palm on his beard, “you have this smug smirk on your face,” he sniggered, “like you’re pretty pleased with yourself.”

You leaned over to him and gave him a smack on the lips, “I’m your girlfriend.”

“Hmm,” he agreed.

“I just feel like I can move mountains,” you snorted, “I like it.”

Tyler put his feet down and hoisted you on his lap, your side against his chest, “I like it too,” he said, tickling your neck with his beard, “I want to shout it to the whole world.”

You snorted, “you know, by shouting it to the whole world,” you told him, “you have created this movement of Tyler Seguin fans speculating about what your girlfriend looks like, how you met, what she did to make you commit,” you slapped his chest playfully, “I don’t even know what I did to make you commit and I’m your girlfriend.”

He continued to nuzzle his nose on your neck, kissing up to your jaw. You leaned closer to him and rested your hand on his chest, “this is nice,” you whispered.

“Nice,” he repeated, lips still grazing your skin, “very nice,” he kissed your jaw gently before pulling back and looking at you with clear eyes, “my girlfriend,” he said, narrowing his gaze at you, “looks like you,” he kissed your cheek, “and it doesn’t matter what they think because I think you look stunning,” he leaned over and whispered, “even at four in the morning with your mouth open and drool on your pillow,” he teased.

You flicked his nose, “liar.”

He chuckled, “we met at the supermarket that one time I actually decided to get decent food and not wait for the housekeeper,” he snuggled, “you got my cart by mistake,” he quirked an eyebrow, “according to you,” he pulled his head back again and looked at you seriously, “and you didn’t do anything to make me commit,” he started, “commitment was never my thing and then there came you and you made it cooler,” he chuckled, “I gotta say, babe, you made commitment easy.”

You rolled your eyes but kissed him anyway, “okay if we’re being honest,” you grinned, “I turned out liking you more than I originally planned too,” you shrugged, “but no complaints here.”

He hugged you closer to him, “no complaints here either.”

#tyler seguin #tyler seguin imagines #nhl imagines #hockey imagines #imagines #drabble #drabbles #my writing #fanfic #dallas stars

[robertkstone]

Choosing the 2017 Motor Trend Best Driver’s Car

Patron saint of literary cool Joan Didion—who stalked the steamy, smoggy canyons of Los Angeles in a Daytona Yellow 1969 Corvette Stingray—once said, “Rationality, reasonableness bewilder me.”

If only Didion were along for this year’s Best Driver’s Car competition.

There is nothing rational or reasonable about holding the keys to $1.9 million worth of the world’s dreamiest sports cars, exotics, grand tourers, and supercars.

It’s one thing to parse the packaging of family-friendly compact SUVs. That’s our day job. Best Driver’s Car is about the way a car makes you feel. It’s about the bees in your belly as you clip an apex, the giggles induced by the slingshot launch of barely restrained acceleration, and the sense of satisfaction that comes from the melding of man and machine. Where’s the cupholder for my latte in the McLaren? Can you fit anyone in that back seat of a 911? How much does that Ferrari 488 really cost? Don’t know. Don’t care.

Our Highway Patrol–assisted closure of California State Route 198 and subsequent invasion of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca are the highlights of this event. But the Best Driver’s Car format actually began two weeks prior at Auto Club Speedway, when our testing trio of Kim Reynolds, Chris Walton, and Erick Ayapana took their first crack at our contenders with our battery of standardized instrumented testing.

To earn the title of Best Driver’s Car, a vehicle must deliver a balance of usable performance, intuitive handling, and driver-friendly design. The winner should be a vehicle with a multidimensional personality, a car that will delight and reward the enthusiast driver on any road at any time, regardless of weather and traffic conditions.

We had quite the field this year, with representation from Italy, Germany, Japan, England, and the V-8 thunder of American freedom. But as the test team crunched the test results, there was no clear leader. A storm was brewing.

Highway 198 Revisited

A four-hour drive along I-5’s trackless wastes brings us to our hotel in King City, California. Most of the other judges had convoyed up together around noon. But with most of California tucked into bed, associate editor Scott Evans and I made great time in the Aston Martin and Corvette. We rolled into the King City Days Inn a tick past midnight.

We were the last to arrive, but our hotel clerk couldn’t have been happier. It isn’t every day you get to meet a YouTube hero, a certain “Mr. Lieberman,” who earlier had given an impromptu car show to our host. His fan club is everywhere.

Highway 198 is a magical place, an undulating public two-lane roadway filled with tight switchbacks, sweeping curves, midcorner bumps, long straights, and panoramic views. It’s a gorgeous 4.2-mile stretch of roadway that climbs about 1,000 feet, allowing Motor Trend judges to test each contender at its (and their own) limits. Any shortcomings of either car or driver will be quickly identified on this passage. It is the mill that grinds the grist.

Just past daybreak, the ground fog still clearing, we pulled to the side of the road to set up camp, clean cars, and wait for the California Highway Patrol’s black and white Ford Explorers to close the road so we could begin.

After a team meeting, we fired up all 86 cylinders and commenced our first runs up the beckoning hills—each of us starting in the familiar car we had driven from L.A.

That meant the Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport, intimidating in looks and sound, for me.

The ’Vette is really a sweetheart once set up properly—Driver Mode Select in Sport and the steering wheel set to Tour. In those modes, the throttle response is linear and quick, and the suspension is dialed in to maximize the car’s speed around corners. The steering is light and direct, though you need to make a conscious effort to slow yourself down because turn-in is still very quick. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. “Needs 100 extra horsepower! Felt slow!” Jonny shouted after his turn behind the wheel. Also, the crowded seven-speed manual gearbox has rubbery, ropey throws and doesn’t like to be rushed, and the gear ratios felt too tall for the track-oriented Grand Sport. Said executive editor Mark Rechtin: “It seems like there was a big gap between the powerbands in third and fourth gear.”

Chevy used to sandbag the Camaro to avoid stepping on the Corvette’s toes, but those days are gone. The Camaro ZL1 1LE is an uncaged race car. As he pulled into our makeshift pit lane, Jonny could be heard screaming, “Yeaaaah!” and clapping his hands.

You’d think power would be why the Camaro works so well, but it’s actually grip that’s the key to this muscle car. Those steamroller-wide, superglue-sticky Goodyear tires work hand in hand with the DSSV dampers and the added aero aids to ensure that the Camaro can use each and every one of its 650 horses. “You quickly learn you can trust the tires as you unleash the power,” Detroit editor Alisa Priddle said. Scott added: “There’s a lot of vertical movement in the cabin, but the car never jumps sideways a foot when it hits a midcorner bump; it never moves around laterally at all.”

The downside to the Camaro’s grip is its ride quality—basically there is none. “I’ve encountered smoother paint mixers,” guest judge Derek Powell said. “The bouncing was so bad that I found myself reacting to that instead of focusing on the sheer act of driving.

The nuclear-waste green Mercedes-AMG GT R  provoked whoops and hollers from all of the drivers. A brutal supercar that rewards fortitude, the AMG needs to be driven flat out in order to properly enjoy it. Dig deep into the 577-hp twin-turbo V-8, and you’re compensated by a violent surge of power and the soundtrack “of a small arms factory exploding behind your hips every time you come off the throttle,” as Jonny put it. “Let it rip,” Alisa added. “The AMG has the power to get unruly, but it holds the road incredibly well.”

Although the Mercedes’ nose bites with ferocity—only fighting back once you approach its limits—the rear end wasn’t as well behaved even at sane speeds. “There were several times when the rear would hop side to side or even produce drop-throttle oversteer or on-power oversteer,” Chris said.

Unlike the Merc, it’s hard to get into trouble in the Mazda Miata RF. Like any good naturally aspirated engine, the Miata is happy to rev its way to redline, growling sweetly as you stab the clutch and flick the six-speed manual into its next gear. The Miata is not fast, but it rewards a driver’s skill.

Entering corners, the Miata RF is surprisingly tail-happy. Mazda rehashed the ragtop’s suspension for 2017, but the RF is unsettled. “It’s always dancing on the top of its springs and edge of its tires,” Scott said. With traction control on, the Mazda’s electronic systems are constantly grabbing at the brakes to keep the Miata’s tail in line—sapping the little power the RF has to give.

A better beginner sports car to explore one’s limits might be the Porsche 718 Cayman S. “The chassis is so beautifully balanced, the handling so predictable,” Derek said. “Each movement is connected directly to the brain’s synapses.” Scott agreed, adding: “Steering is among the best here—talkative and light, quick enough but not too much. I wish the Miata handled like this.”

The 718’s 350-hp mid-mounted turbo flat-four is a good match for the platform, too–even if some of our judges wish it sounded less like a garbage disposal eating a fork. Alisa silenced those critics: “There are those who miss the sound of the old throaty engine, but the trade-off for a nice, wide powerband is worth it.”

There isn’t much room for improvement in the 718, but the Aston Martin DB11 could use some help in the braking department. Its 600-hp V-12 is more than capable of getting its nearly 4,200 pounds of British aluminium going (and quickly at that), but it lacks the brakes or suspension to handle that heft on a twisty road.

The DB11 has three suspension settings, but all feel inadequate for spirited performance. Its body control was subpar, the car displaying a tendency to porpoise through corners and over bumps. “It’s a wonderful GT car and is happy at high speeds, as long as the road doesn’t twist too much,” Scott said. Upsides: The V-12 provides epic thrust, and the steering is beautifully weighted, light, and linear—just as a British GT car should be.

As the Aston’s counterpoint in the grand touring department, the Lexus LC 500 was a revelation, having done its homework on chassis and suspension tuning. “The fundamentals are all there,” Jonny said. Scott provided further details: “Weight transfer is nicely handled, and the car sits in a turn nicely.” The Lexus provides light, progressive feedback from the wheel, and its four-wheel-steering system helps make the LC feel smaller than it is.

The LC’s 5.0-liter V-8 makes a good match for the 10-speed auto, though the gearbox was frustrating for its abundance of overdrive gears. “How can this car have 10 gears and never, ever be in the right one?” Chris asked. “There were at least a dozen rejected downshifts.”

You’d expect the lone four-door sedan in our group to be soft, but it’s clear the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio “is a sports car regardless of how many doors it has,” Derek said. The Alfa’s sportiness is baked into its chassis; it’s a car that rewards smooth inputs yet begs to be driven hard. “This might be the best-handling sedan I have driven in 25 years of automotive journalism,” Mark said. “And yes, that includes the W124 and E39.” The 2.9-liter twin-turbo V-6 is laggy down low, but it hits you in the face with a sledgehammer once you’re above 2,000 rpm. Its eight-speed auto rattles off shifts as if it were a dual-clutch transmission.

Complaints? A few. The engine, for all its power, doesn’t communicate what it’s doing at redline, making shifting by ear difficult. Some also found the Alfa’s Italian electrics a little buggy, with inconsistent brake-by-wire feel and a seemingly overeager overheat protection mode that would impose a 5,000-rpm rev limiter on the engine and limit torque vectoring at the rear axle.

The other Italian in our group, the Ferrari 488 GTB, delivered thrills on an epiphanic level.

After piling out of the Ferrari babbling a red-mist rant, Mark calmed down enough to say, “This delivers every teenager’s fantasy when they think of Ferrari.”

The Ferrari 488 is one of those rare cars that makes you feel immediately at home despite its exotic appearance. The cabin is open and airy with a driver-focused interface. There are no distractions. Your hands hold a flat-bottomed, carbon-fiber and leather steering wheel, and all the needed controls are a finger’s reach away.

Not only does the 488 GTB feel magical merely sitting still, but it’s also glorious to drive. The Ferrari’s small twin-turbocharged engine makes 661 horsepower. “It’s a force of nature, like being picked up by a tornado,” Scott said. The 488 also carries tenacious grip “with a flat attitude and fingertip control while cornering at speeds 10 to 15 mph faster than other vehicles—with the same if not greater confidence heading down 198 as up,” editor-in-chief Ed Loh said. The Achilles’ heel for the Ferrari is its brakes—the carbon ceramics have a slightly wooden feel and squeak like the midnight subway to Coney Island.

If on the emotional scale the Ferrari is an embrace from a Victoria’s Secret model, the McLaren 570GT is a polite but firm handshake from gritty Bruce himself. Last year’s winning 570S was a highly rewarding and technical car, but in softening the 570 for grand touring duty, McLaren seemed to scrape away some of the special sauce. “It’s not what I would have expected,” Chris said. “This one feels far more ass-happy and less balanced and composed.” The 570GT feels stuck between sledgehammer and rubber mallet—it no longer drives like a supercar, but it’s not soft enough to drive like a proper GT.

The issue is especially apparent if you’ve forgotten to press the “Active” button. Turn on the Active Panel, and dig into the 30-some-odd possible drivetrain configurations, and that sharpens steering and throttle response. But then the handling becomes unpredictable. “There were times when I’d exit a corner and the engine and transmission would be ready for it, and I’d rocket out onto the straight at full boost,” Derek said. “Other times it felt like I caught the car unaware.” When the McLaren is awake, there’s a hint of that 570S magic in its fingertip-light steering, supple ride, and peaky but powerful little engine, but the 570GT’s inconsistency hurt its credibility.

If you want instant confidence bordering on immortality, the Porsche 911 T from PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3 http://ift.tt/2fimEW0 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3

[kjwongsbrain]

What's a pirate's favourite alphabet?

The era of comic book movies is now. We're getting like six of them every year thanks to the combined efforts of Marvel Studios, Warner Brothers and DC playing catchup, and also 20th Century Fox's obligations to keep making ones they want to keep the license over. It's not as if comic books never got made into movies before - in fact you can trace back the movies all the way back to the 50s - but they're thriving harder than ever now and are among some of the most profitable films ever to be made.

It used to be an idea that major actors would often refuse to star as recurring superheros in fear of being typecast into that one role, or have their entire career be recognized for donning on a funny outfit and doing silly moves on camera instead of what some would consider 'true acting'. Some actors often tried breaking out of the mold of Superhero by doing things completely different from that previous role, either by taking on a serious dramatic role, or going to stage shows in order to establish their abilities as an actor instead of a character.

But I'm starting to wonder if that's the case anymore. Seeing the excitement of people like Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland on being inducted into the ever growing cast of actors that make up the MCU, and then looking at the sheer popularity and success of the movies as well as the genuine appreciation the fans show leads me to believe that maybe the ultimate role for an actor these days is in fact a superhero. The mark of a great career should be one that has a superhero in it. At least once. Only now that Marvel is issuing 6 film contracts, it won't just be once most of the time.

Back before actors signed multi-movie deals with studios like Marvel, I used to worry when an A-list actor was cast as a recurring character in a Marvel movie because it would mean it would be near impossible to get them to come back for another one. Take for instance the current Limbo that Red Skull is in because Hugo Weaving isn't doing it again. Chris Evans has long expressed a desire to finish playing Captain America and move on to new things. Hemsworth on the other hand seems to be enjoying the role just fine.

All that leads us comfortable to Hugh Jackman who now holds the record for playing the same superhero character the most times at 8 (counting the little cameo in First Class). Not only is Jackman one of the most respected castings in superhero history, it's also the role that's really cemented his career in history forever. And if you watch some early interviews with Jackman, he took the gig not knowing how big the role was really going to be.

And so it is with a huge thank you - the kind audiences do for retiring pro wrestlers - that we now come to talk about Logan.

But before we get into it, I must go back to the thought I began with. The era of comic book movies that we are in now can really be traced back all the way to two films that helped really establish what the genre was capable of and what it was going to look like for years to come.

Everyone of course remembers how big and pivotal the Tim Burton Batman film was but there's another one that was equally responsible for studios finally willing to shift a proper amount of resources into making these films - Blade.

Yes, Blade was one of the first few comic book movies that was a proper commercial success. And also the thing Wesley Snipes was famous for before the tax dodging. Blade was a demonstration that comic book movies could be taken seriously and not be too campy and targeted at children, but also staying true to the source material. A lot of people forget just how pivotal Blade is in regards to the shape and feel of comic book movies today.

That being said, in this almost 30 year period now since Batman and Blade, comic book movies have done a lot of evolving. With Blade and Batman being the first commercial successes, studios started thinking about the ingredients in those films that led to their success. This is the primary factor that influenced the design of the first really big superhero film, the first X-men. I love the first X-men. I have a very special place in my heart for it because of how many things it did right, and how much it helped usher in the world of the MCU we have today. But I've always felt that the early X-men movies missed a beat by taking what Blade and Batman did and applying it too directly into what was originally a bright and colorful world.

This would later be fixed when Marvel took its chances by delivering Iron Man and audaciously painting him bright gold and red instead of turning him black like the new Robocop. Marvel took steps into bringing the look of the original comics back into their world and the move was celebrated by fans. Fans, like me, were incredibly excited by the vibrant image the new era of the MCU presented, especially in comparison with the much darker, bleaker, and paler DC universe.

This went on to make Disney and Marvel billions of dollars in ticket sales, and also in the ridiculous merchandising arm of the franchise. But with that merchandising arm being such a big factor, there also was the long debate about content rating in the movies. While children were buying the toys in heaps and droves, it was really the adult comic fans that were propelling the series forward. Their loyalty to the franchise was something that was consistently bankable and Marvel knew this.

The problem now was that Marvel had to toe the line between creating films that were family friendly, but never straying too far into the kid friendly content of the early years (pre 1989) that the adult fans would lose interest. And they have done so brilliantly, but that involved navigating around and away from some of the grittier material that comics have long included in their storylines.

Then came Deadpool. Which isn't the first R-rated comic book movie by any chance. Heck, the genre defining Blade was R-rated. But there wasn't an audience as big as the one today to celebrate the fact that R-rated comic book movies could be great. And so the evolution of comic book movies has now come full circle. With dozens of movies already hitting the merchandisable market, fans have been clamouring for movies to adopt some of the more adult themes and presentations that they've enjoyed for years in the comics.

And so Deadpool delivered. It was the right time and piece of material for it to be a smash hit success. With studio executives still nervous, Deadpool's success meant that directors and actors who dreamed of making some of the more adult-themed material had the guts to push for it. And so we have Logan. And Logan's a big big hit looking at the opening weekend. And I think that rather than helping make the film better, the R-rating really made things worse for Logan.

Hear me out.

The first fifteen minutes or so were probably in the film solely to piss off some producers who went into the meeting thinking that they could still rein in Jackman and Mangold who were hell bent on making an R-rated film. What with the outrageous amount of violence in the opening scene, and then the outrageous amount of swearing between two characters that have never done so in the history of their appearances on screen. I don't find it difficult to watch Logan run his mouth, but when Charles and Logan are having a spat at each other, swearing like sailors, that ruined the moment for me.

It's not that I don't believe either of them were capable of it either, but it's simply that without any progression from one incarnation to another, it almost felt shoehorned in there solely to validate the R-rating. And then after those ridiculously out of character fifteen minutes have gone by, the film actually starts out properly.

That bummed me out harder than anything. And as the movie went on, the only question I had to keep asking myself was whether the R-rating was necessary. And I think it really wasn't. Wolverine has taken down his enemies 6 times prior to this film and nobody complained. Nobody complained that you couldn't see his claws rip people's heads off and spear through different body parts. Wolverine has existed without the necessity for on-screen violence in this capacity without complaint. And so, by that logic, none of the extra violence really added anything to the film. The strengths of the movie rested in the three main characters of Charles, Logan and Laura. And that story is actually a beautiful story. There were heavy emotions played out as Charles dies full of regret, and as Logan comes to terms with his humanity and death. And all of those could've been done without a single ounce of gut splatter on screen.

Now why is this such a big deal? Why am I complaining about how unnecessary the R-rating actually is? Isn't it a great way to show just how far comic book movies have come after all these years and isn't great that we can have these films like Logan and Deadpool made?

Yes. Deadpool was perfect. Deadpool is a ridiculous character that genuinely needed to be expressed in a ridiculous way in order for it to work.

Logan? Nope. Just think about it for a second. If the scenes that made Logan an R-rated movie were simply ingratiating violence and language, what did it do to make the movie better? The best parts of the movie were the ones that had nothing to do with any of that. Sure the scene of Logan swearing and bashing the shit out of his car helped convey some raw emotion concerning the death of Charles, but hundreds of movies have done the same without uttering a single word even.

And this is a problem because people are celebrating Logan for the wrong reasons. Pretty soon we'll want an R-rated Batman. And then an R-rated Avengers simply because we think that the R-rating is a gateway into better stories and still maintaining financial credibility.

And then what will we give our children?

I made this similar argument when people were celebrating Adi Shankar's ridiculous Power Rangers short. The adult thinking that everything is immediately improved by making it darker, grittier, more violent, and more sexual. It's the natural growing up of the things we've enjoyed as children. And the same people would lament that kids these days don't have the same kind of complex characters that we did.

Well, how the heck do you share Wolverine with your children if his greatest achievement is buried in Logan? Imagine your kid watching the new X-men cartoons and coming to love Wolverine as a character the same way you did, and then finding out that a brand new Wolverine movie came out and hearing how great it was, only to be told that he or she can't see it.

Look, I get that there's a natural divide that will always happen when stories like these appeal to the widest of audiences of all cultures and ages. But I do personally think that going R is never the right thing to do for a character that is as important and incredible as Wolverine. There are always more ways to approach adult themes and messages in a movie that do not have to resort to R-ratings. Take 'A Monster Calls' as an example. That movie deals with some of the most difficult themes even I as an adult have seen on screen, and it does all this with the appeal of a fictional monster and a PG-13 rating.

And without the R-rating hook to rely on, Logan becomes decidedly average. I'd say it was almost identical to 2013's The Wolverine in terms of story, pacing, and design. It would seem that Mangold really didn't do much to improve The Wolverine other than tack on a whole bunch of on screen slashing and swearing. It wasn't boring enough to send me to my phone, but it wasn't exciting enough to really keep me interested. There were some mysteries here and there like the events a year ago at Westchester, and also the real cause of Logan's illness, but none of them really had any bearing on the story at all.

And so Logan lands in the pit of 'meh' for me. Not really anything to shout about. It will be sad saying goodbye to perhaps two of the most perfect pieces of casting ever in the world of Marvel. It is also a bit of a mystery as to what the future of the X-men franchise will look once the final movie between the two major X-men casts is fleshed out. Will we see the new mutants? Will the entire X-men universe reboot itself? It's hard to know.

A fun fact to end this piece is something I just learned recently. Some of my friends were lamenting that Hugh Jackman never once donned the famed Wolverine black and yellow suit and mask. But, it was teased in an alternate ending in The Wolverine. It actually makes an appearance instead of just a snarky joke mention and it looks beautiful. Go check it out.

In the meantime, here's to waiting for 2017's MCU showings to finally hit the screen.

#movies #Movie Reviews