#and in his mind it didn’t make any sense because that’s not the real sonic but his heart just wants the familiarity of his brother

[tornado1992]

A babyfied Tails would absolutely have a Sonic plushie, he never calms down till Sonic holds him so Amy made him his own personal Sonic to hug whenever she or Vanilla babysit him.

#miles tails prower #baby tails #baby miles tails prower #sonic the hedgehog #sonic and tails #unbreakable bond #they are brothers your honor #just imagine poor little tails being so anxious because sonic hast returned so he doesn’t want to move from the front door #so he can hug sonic the moment he comes back but he hasn’t eaten yet and doesn’t want to move no matter how much Amy asks him #so she gives him the plushie and tells him that Sonic could feel it whenever he hugged it #and in his mind it didn’t make any sense because that’s not the real sonic but his heart just wants the familiarity of his brother #so he hugs the plushie and there’s no coming back he’s not letting it go #good news is that he agreed to move from the front door as long as he had the plushie #and now he has a little sonic to hang around with #the plushie has its own chair on Amy and Vanilla’s dine table #imagine Sonic’s reaction to the plushie #imagine Sonic coming for tails and the little fox is asleep on Amy’s bed hugging the plushie #he would die #i know I would be dead #cuteness overload

[petalsonmoon]

i’ll love you in silence, from a distance, just like i love the moon.

(a certain scene of never let me go inspired me. once again english is not my first language so my sincere apologies. anyone can read! it doesn’t contain any pronouns.)

you get out of bed hesitantly.

your steps to the door are slow, your anxiety makes you be careful even if the man in the other room is concentrated watching TV.

peter was too kind and too unbelievably beautiful you sometimes felt he wasn't real. he had those eyes that told people staight away how big his heart is and how he would never judge anyone and yet you couldn't help but look at them and want to change all of you to be everything he ever wanted.

and you've known each other for so long, there's no reason for this nervousness. who are you trying to fool here y/n, you know damn right why you’re bitting your nails.

his sofa faces the bedroom door so you took a deep breath before opening it.

you open the door and leave the room, closing the door you keep looking at your hand on the doorknob. enough seconds have passed to understand that your intention isn’t going to the bathroom.

when you finally look at him, his eyes were on you with a small smile next to it to accelerate your already accelerated heart.

he lifts the blanket in the empty space next to him and you nod almost imperceptibly. it wasn't that close like cuddle close. but it was pretty close.

okay. this is okay.

and now looking at the tv you frown. he was watching sonic the hedgehog.

"it's a nice movie." you say.

he turns to you. "what?"

"what what?"

"it is a nice movie." he answers agressivily.

"that's what i just said"

"it was implied in your tone what you meant." you really try to hide a smile. there was a split second of silence. "the second movie is coming out. that's why i wanted to watch."

even though a smile was trying to escape he looked like a child who's been told he couldn't have ice cream for dinner.

and for a moment you rest your head on his shoulder in way to show him you are kidding, it was supposed to be for a second but he suprises you wrapping his arm around your shoulders and hugging you.

you end up watching the rest of the movie like this. the world and paranoias completely forgotten.

"i mean... i get it. it was because of james marsden, wasn't it?"

you say when the credits start to roll and turn to him. "i see your smirk. you were so planning to watch enchanted after this-"

a low scream escapes from your throat when he hugs you and the two of you fall lying on the couch.

it can be said that you are close but this is not a common situation. in 6 years that you are neighbors you have created an incredible bond. not of best friends but you were, in the literal sense of the word there for each other.

when you just mentioned that you would need to make a major reform in your apartment, the next day he rang your doorbell and appeared with a big bag of tea boxes saying that he knew you couldn't go on with your day without drinking it for breakfast.

“because you know, you’ll be living with me for a while.”

and stupid romcom shit like that is what makes you fall in love with somebody.

you don't have enough courage to turn your face to him but you felt his chin gently touching your forehead.

“will you watch sonic 2 in the theaters with me?”

“you didn’t watch top gun with me.”

he’s definitely pouting.

“i’ll watch barbie in the 12 dancing princess with you.”

you look up at him for a second with a large smile on your face. “will you really?”

“just say when.”

you’re certain the world stoped for you two tonight.

“pss”

he’s a child.

“hm?”

“are you okay?” and it’s implied on his tone what he meant.

“i am.”

silence.

“i really am.”

“ok.”

his hug tightens slightly and you feel his finger affectionately draw a circle on your back. suddenly you feel like crying.

“you’re going to stay on this hug for while.” he just let’s you know.

your forehead meet his neck.

“i don’t mind.” it comes out of you low like a breath.

in these 6 years you’ve been sure you were down bad for him for at least 4 of them. and never once you truly learned how to read him. sure you knew when he was lying about silly things or trying to hide the fact he was exhausted from his work. or even when a bad mood was coming.

but not once he even blinked differently at you. so being head over heals for the boy became a familiar feeling accommodated in a little room in your heart. it didn’t hurt it was just there.

that being said, it was your first night sleeping at peter’s apartment.

and he didn’t know you can’t sleep in total darkness.

“i can’t… i have a hard time sleeping without some light on.” just keep going “i have this moon shaped lamp in my room that helps me…”

he nods. maybe thinking about an answer.

“may i ask why?”

“i don’t know. something about the light makes me feel less alone? …it feels like it’s illuminating the dark paranoias out of my head.” you say the last part in a joking way but you’re not sure that’s how he interprets it.

silence involves both of you.

“did you know that a 20-second hug is good for the heart?”

“really?”

“yeah.” he’s very calm “i’m not gonna say you should’ve told me but i’m gonna say you could have.”

“i feel like a 14 years old when i talk about this.”

“hey, no.” you just know he’s frowning “not at all. someone’s discomfort or fear is never silly. don’t think like that.”

you nod.

“you know how absolutely terrified i am of small insects.” he says.

“me and the whole building.”

“so you better come when i shout or i’ll have to knock on mrs mulligan.”

“she’ll kill the bug then you. and right next to it on purpose.”

“with no hesitation. and we don’t want that.”

he adjusts his body so you can be face to face.

your mind is at ease but you’re afraid he can feel your heart race increasing.

“you’re not alone, y/n. not as long i live and breathe quite literally next to you.”

he gently rubs his nose on yours. oh.

you’re not sure what is happening but it’s very natural. you’re not nervous. it’s a great feeling. it kinda feels like he likes you the way you like him.

so you just go for it.

“did you know that a kiss is like a reduces blood pressure? it prevents cardiovascular problems.”

“really?”

“probably. i don’t know”

he smiles. he’s really really cute when he smiles.

“what if i told you that i can test this theory?” he whispers so close to you that for a second you think he's not real.

"oh"

he bites his lower lip like he's fighting a smile. and that's the last thing you see before he kisses you.

a slow kiss. your hands traces his chest to his neck and gently caresses his brown hair. peter's arm pulls you impossibly closer to him while the other hand draws such gentle shapes on your neck that at the same time it makes you shiver, you melt on him.

he tasted like snickers. his tongue was warm and calm while danced with yours. you’re going to deduce and say that it was a very passionate kiss with a hint of longing from both parts.

when he pulls back from you after you don’t even know how long he kisses your cheek.

“should i buy a saturn shaped lamp for my bedroom?” he whispers and you smile.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker #andrew garfield #tasm!peter parker x reader #tasm!peter parker imagine #peter parker x you #tasm!peter imagine #spiderman imagine #spiderman #peter parker x y/n #spiderman x reader

[pepirfecin]

A rant about Shadow’s trauma

I am sick of hearing about Maria. Okay okay, bold statement and I'm being dramatic for the sake of being dramatic, but let me explain.

 No matter how you portray Shadow, Maria will most likely be mentioned, since it’s an important part of his character, motivations etc. I think we should pay more attention to the circumstances of his grief though; the real tragedy isn’t the loss itself, it runs deeper than that (I'm not saying anything new here). Let me break it down, the way I see it.

1.) Identity loss: When someone close to you dies a part of yourself dies with them. With your parents’ death you cease to be someone’s child forever. In Shadows case it’s even more extreme: not only did he loose Maria, he also lost his purpose by failing to do the one thing he was made to do. Imagine, your entire life stripped away from you in a matter of seconds, leaving you with absolutely no point to even exist. With his now non-existent purpose and identity as a whole he became a blank slate for someone else's revenge, a vessel powered by sorrow. Most likely only Maria saw her as a person on the ARK, so what is he with that one singular column gone? A weapon, a tool of destruction, the Ultimate Lifeforms made to destroy the planet. 

2.) Closure: When your abuser(s) die it’s a strange feeling. The person/people who made you miserable are finally gone, but what’s left is just emptiness. They made you the way you are, and now they’re gone, but you're still the same. He didn’t get revenge on any of those people. The fantasy of standing up against them verbally or physically (taking out years of abuse is now unreachable. So is the fantasy of it ever getting better. Now you can’t hope that someday they’ll do better. They now never will. Shadow’s left without any kind of closure in relation to his trauma he received on the ARK.

3.) Time to process: Presumably he was around 15-17 like the rest of the Sonic cast at the time of the incident. Almost immediately after seeing the most important person in his life die, he was put into stasis for 50 years. In both SA2 and ShtH 05 he woke up in a completely unfamiliar world with turbid memories, grief still fresh and pervasive. In the midst of world ending level threats constantly looming overhead in almost all games I don’t think he sat down with a psychologist and ever processed what happened. (If you age him up or make any kind of AU where he has time to deal with all this then let him process his trauma. Time heals all wounds pls let the guy leave some of his baggage behind.)

4.) Help: Childhood emotional neglect and other shit make it impossible for him to even reach out for help. Learned behaviour that emotions are not okay (to feel or show), difficulty connecting with peers, hard time asking for help, lashing out instead ect etc.

+This is why I think SA2 was a good, complete arc for him. He came to the planet with revenge and destruction in mind, a weapon that Gerald forged motivated by the immense sense of anguish. He died finally getting closure: He fulfilled his real purpose, his identity restored in some way. I like to think that he died peacefully partly because he knew his promise to Maria would continue to be fulfilled by Sonic. In the English version during the Final Hazard fight he even gave up the title he so desperately clings to in other games ‘The Ultimate Lifeform’. Unlike in other games here he doesn’t need that title and identity, it is no longer the only piece of himself that he has left, so he “offers” it for the person who he sees fit as an extension of his legacy. ("Sonic, I think I've discovered what the Ultimate Life Form is, it might be you!")

Okay all this ended up being a whole lot less cohesive than I intended and I just want to say I have more thoughts on this but I'm stupid dummy dumb dumb and can’t put it into words. (Analysing media is all fun and games until I have to explain then suddenly brain go mush.) This post is a pretty personal analysis, most of it isn’t factual in any way, I just want to provoke thoughts in others about this subject, since I often see his grief be reduced to “Maria is dead Shadow is big sad about it :(” which is fine, but there’s so much to explore. 

If you have any opinions on this, contradictory or other don’t be shy talk. I want. to hear everything. 

#sorry for shit grammar #sth #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #sa2 #sth rant #I swear I can interpret media 'correctly' #rotating shadow in my head isn't enough anymore I need to maul him to death

[paranormalpainter]

Rima Crescendo-Matthews Headcannons:

She has a friendly personality, but isn’t afraid to speak her mind or hold back her thoughts if one decides to offend her or hurt/bully her loved ones. She’s very protective of her twin sister, Emma due to her twin having a hearing disability and ain’t afraid to rip a new one to those who think people with disabilities whether they be mental or physical are inferior or stupid because of their inability to do certain things. When someone thinks she’s a “damsel in distress” she ain’t afraid to make the person think twice that not all girls are “Damsels in distresses” whether it be a verbal beat down or physical force/strength when one decides to try and put their hands on her

She has two sisters and a cousin who are also attending DCA, The first being her biological twin sister Emma and the second her 2nd year cousin Amber who lives in Glastanzerin and the third being her 3rd year step-sister Operetta who lives in Chateau Beastiale

Her and her sister's surnames are combined after their father remarried to their step mom since he sees his surname as a tainted, bitter reminder of what his 1st wife had done in the past

Her dad’s one of 3 triplets, the eldest being a lawyer and private detective that’s often mistaken for being a yakuza due to his appearance, the middle sibling being her father who’s a psychologist that specializes in diagnosing mental illness as well as mental disorders, and the youngest who works in real estate and interior design who also works as a barista and bartender when he doesn’t have any clients

She’s skilled in martial arts and fighting techniques due to her uncle{the eldest brother} being a former MMA Champion before he retired and became a lawyer and private detective. She remembered one time when she was young when her uncle had to watch her and Emma for the night. While making their way home from a restaurant that their uncle treated them to for dinner, they were met with a group of gangsters who were looking to rob their uncle. She remembered how cool her uncle was when he managed to disarm and protect them from harm's way by fighting off the thugs with all sorts of MMA moves. The next time she visited him she asked her uncle to teach her his moves, but he declined due to being away from the sport for years, but instead called a friend from his MMA days who teaches martial arts classes to teach her some of the basics before he decided she was worthy of practicing mixed martial arts. Some people don’t believe she’s the niece of a former MMA champion, but she has the photo of her uncle’s trophy cases as well as photos and home videos from his MMA days with family member’s to prove it. He’ll challenge his niece on occasion to see if her skills have dwindled and so far, she hasn’t lost a match against her uncle yet even though he promised he didn’t go easy on her 

Her pets are a chameleon she named “Galaxy” due to his habit of sneaking out of his habitat to look at the night sky as well as his habit of changing his color to that of the night sky,  an iguana named “Kale” due to the named vegetable being his favorite food, and an alligator snapping turtle named “Spike” due to his shell. Galaxy can either be seen riding on Rima’s shoulder or on Kale or Spike’s back. When Spike senses Rima’s anger/patience reaching her breaking point with someone, Spike will end up biting the person’s fingers or toes{Not to the point of bleeding} as a means of warning to run before her anger reaches its breaking point and she decides to use her unique magic

Her unique magic is called “Sonic Fist(s)” when activated the arm or arms she’ll throw a punch/punches with, will glow a violet hue when she pulls back with enough force. Once released, it'll emit a powerful force enough to launch someone either 12 feet away or enough to launch them high to the sky once it makes impact on the ground, she often uses this to defend herself from multiple armed attackers or if someone decides to push to wrong button when she’s angry then she ain’t afraid to launch you high enough that you end up breaking all your bones

She’s normally not easy to anger unless you decide to mess with her loved ones or offend her. If one does decide to anger her however… You better be prepared to meet the oni part of her personality that ain’t afraid to rip you a new one or resort to physical pain if necessary. The ones that run away or have their ego shattered via a verbal beatdown are considered “the lucky ones” while the ones the keep persisting wind up with a body dislocation or 2 to convince them to stop while the ones that reached beyond boiling anger end up being launched a great distance resulting with a broken bone

She became interested in Bento art through her step mother who would always make interesting pictures out of the food she made to make their lunch look appealing yet appetizing at the same time, so she acquired a some of cooking skills while learning her step-mom’s ways of making artistic yet appetizing bentos

She does offer her bento art in return for favors, but if you ask her directly, she would be more than happy to make you one, however you need to either pay her or do a favor for her to earn it since her bento art isn't free if you ask since it's a lot of hard work. She will on occasion make bento art for a random student as a gift if she's in the mood as well as a reward if one decided to fight her and she ended up losing

Since her and her twin are living in separate dorms, she sometimes worries about her since she knows she was often looked down on and bullied due to her inability to hear, so on occasion when she’s free or in between classes she would stop check in on her to see if she’s doing alright

Due to her twin having a hearing disability, she and her step-sister often communicates via sign language to her twin and both are willing to teach those interested some of the basics if they’d like

She used to live in Glasswork Kingdom, but eventually moved to Queendom of Roses after her father went through a nasty divorce with her and Emma's biological mother. Despite living in Queendom of Roses, her and her family still travel down there from time to time to visit relatives despite the location holding somewhat bitter memories

She’s in a relationship with Treat by @thenoeyebunnynobunsusmaingallery, so for any potential suitors out there… Sorry, but she’s already taken by someone else and don’t even think about trying to “prove” your the better person by bragging or showing off your physical strength or status, trust me… the last thing you wanna do is get between her and her man because any suitors who tried either end up getting brutally rejected or end up with a body part dislocated along with their pride and ego shattered because trust me, those who decide to test Rima’s anger will end up regretting it. If a certain pink haired gremlin dorm leader who loves to prank decides to be a surprise 3rd wheel during their date, she ain't afraid to slam that enchanted door in her face or launch her back to her dorm if needed. The hair accessory is actual a post-ceremonial gift from him after she got into the academy

Treat has a twin brother named Trick who Rima tends to remind to keep his filter on when the twins visit the school because since some of the girls aren’t your typical “damsel in distress” girly girls, because if he ends up ticking off the wrong student, he could potentially find himself in a body bag. The least he’ll get is a verbal beat down if he gets lucky

Her first performance song would be “Ready Steady” from Hatsune Miku Colorful Stage Vivid Bad Squad ver:

Short version: https://youtu.be/MwRS5MNAgYI?si=QgaDdfqYrtAW7Tom

Full version: https://youtu.be/y8Wl94cf2vQ?si=zLRCmL7pahXkQeyL

Diamond Crown Academy(C) @phoenix-manga

Rima Crescendo-Matthews(C) Me

#diamond crown academy #dca oc #Rima Crescendo-Matthews DCA AU

[taki118]

Thoughts on the Chip n Dale movie

So i finally watched and I think i can best summarize my feelings up with “If this wasn’t by Disney I’d like it more.” cause like there is a lot of good commentary here on animation and hollywood but because it’s Disney those things feel kinda wrong. 

- The animation: Sooooo there is 2D animation in this for background characters but its not traditional, its likely flash but anytime these characters have to do anything of substance they are made into a cell shaded CGI. Why? cost saving most likely and because Disney doesnt really have a 2D department anymore. Yeah so like the CGI surgery joke is kinda funny until you remember that Disney basically forced their 2D movies in the 2010s to fail because they wanted to invest more heavily in CGI animation due to Dreamworks success in the medium. After the Princess and the Frog sold poorly in theaters compared to Tangled (mostly due to poor marketing and timing mind you) that gave Disney all they needed to drop the department, with all the projects and employees in it, which also kinda killed the medium in the country at least on a big projects. All the references to Roger Rabbit feel a little gross as that was a marvel of 2D animation and Disney themselves see no actual value in it so blatantly that their “2D” characters arent actually 2D. 

- Ugly Sonic: First off there is the implications the studio didn’t actually get permission since they have to thank their lawyers for him and don’t want to talk much about the acquisition. Which makes you question the other non-Disney cameos. But also you have to wonder if this were another studio would Disney so willingly allow a character like this be used in such a way? Like yes he’s a hero in a sense but does that out weigh how much they make fun of his design?

- The Rescue Rangers: Outside of the base premise the other characters are really just window dressing. While you can see the difference in Chip and Dales stage persona and actual personality the same can’t really be said of the other characters. The only one who feels different is Zipper mostly for a joke. I also just need to throw this out here Chip and Dale were staples of Disney before and after the series. In fact the original premise of Rescue Rangers was an entirely new cast Chip and Dale did not exist in the original pitch. Higher ups suggested using them for marketability. I dunno what my point is here but the Rescue Rangers are such an after thought of the film that they make a joke about Gadget as a person and character are basically the same thing.

- Bootlegging and Reboots: The movie constantly makes jokes about Reboots but never out right condones them cause lets be real out of all the companies utilizing nostalgia and re-using old IPs Disney is the worst. Instead they shift the focus to bootlegs as being worse. It’s depicted as disgusting, criminal practice that destroys the integrity of a work for a cheap buck. Yet you can say the same of reboots. Also its not surprising a company like Disney that clings to their IPs would approve of a script that makes bootlegging this horrible fate for characters. (even though Disney’s actual reuse of characters has done more damage to their IPs than any bootleg) Again were it another studio making fun of bootlegs it’d be funny but with Disney mmmmm yeah not so much.

- Sweet Pete: So this is the big one, I feel like everyone has heard of the Bobby Driscoll parallels to their take on Peter Pan but if not. The child actor for Peter Pan Bobby Driscoll was promised a long career with the company and signed a contract only for then to retract it when he hit puberty,  he then fell into a downward spiral and eventually died of a drug overdoes. So um yeahhhhhhhh. Either it was an accident and someone checking the script wasnt doing their job or they overlooked it. Or they knew but didn’t care. Either way not a good look, a really disgusting look honestly. According to an interview the intent for the villain was commentary on child stars and had considered using Charlie Brown. But um yeahhhhh thats not much better. Cause see there is NO sympathy for the character, no real introspection on the lives of child actors or the practice. And I can only assume thats cause Disney has a LONG and on going history of child actors. So much like the reboot statements you can’t really condone a practice you actively engage in. I mean with all we know about child actors this kind of character would be repulsive no matter what but when you know about the company it came from, and this bit of history its just so much worse. 

Overall any messages the film makes are undermined by the Disney company and their history. I think a lot of people have over looked these things because the film is a competent nostalgia grab, and its sad how low the bar is.

#disney #chip n dale 2022 #chip n dale movie

[jackalsinthekitchen]

pop report #3 (1/21/23)

only some of our stars are problematic, but all of them are a little upset

It’s a new reshuffle for our rotation of shadowy, spacey hits, many of them familiar company by now.

“Anti-Hero” leads the pack as usual, followed by “Kill Bill”, “Unholy”, “I’m Good (Blue)”, “Creepin”, “Die for You”, “Rich Flex”, “As It Was”, “Bad Habit”, and “Something in the Orange” – each one a good song of some sort, each one deliberately on the downbeat side. “Orange”, by Zach Bryan, is striking. The title metaphor (the vermillion of a new-dawn sun) feels overstated as it goes on. But Bryan wrenches the lyric out of his throat with such a gritty, wounded passion that you’re wrapped up in the drama of the scenario even as the author doesn’t lay it out detail for detail. It’s the only song of the ten that doesn’t happily submit to the prefab trends of our time. America’s top-selling songs sound fake and spectacular.

The superstars lingering in our charts share an underdog edge. SZA toils in the shadow of Rihanna and Beyoncé. SOS may not be her breakout among Black women making artful statements in a vague genre often pigeonholed as “R&B”. Not unlike her labelmate Kendrick Lamar, she’s boldly inventive, but doesn’t foreground her ethereality the way Solange, Janelle Monae or Charlotte Adigéry do. Her music is more street and soulful, but its edge is tempered; lyrically, melodically and sonically it prefers a suggestive path, its strength its insouciance.

Taylor Swift could buy Luxemborg, but I think she’s underrated too, as the nitpicky response to Midnights demonstrates. No pop star resembles Hillary Clinton more – her deficiencies are her caution, and the pushy sincerity with which she undermines her best ideas. I admire aspects of Midnights others can’t agree on. I think Jack Antonoff’s production is fun, its overall tone of luminous gloom offset by cute little sonic surprises in the arrangements. It’s been accused of sounding soullessly synthetic, but in fact the technology purposefully emulates cheapness. And  her choice to curse in nearly every song, while contrived (and as such weirdly enjoyable), has the same insufficient-progress impact as, say, a president voicing support for gay marriage in 2012.

You probably haven’t guessed that I’m running down Billboard’s Top 10 albums, because I didn’t tell you, but Metro Boomin’s album follows at #3. I’m not that familiar with his work, but he does have friends – John Legend, the ever-resilient Chris Brown, Travis Scott, Young Thug, the late Takeoff, A$AP Rocky, and Lakeith Stanfield, who starred in the trailer, to name seven. His music emanates an indigo mood, often darkly attractive in arrangement and tune. And the uniformly macho-minded contributors explore angles of their own angst that at times yield uniquely compelling results. Still, you can imagine falling asleep to this album, and the resulting dreams wouldn’t be very much fun.

I struggle with Drake, as I’ve said, because I’m just not convinced his instincts are sharp enough for great art. He makes perfect sense when he finds a terrific hook (“Best I Ever Had”) or groove (“Passionfruit”). But as befits a performer who made his name (well, real name) on the charmingly soapy Degrassi: the Next Generation, some of his public acts have felt not just forced but unselfaware. And when he tries to catapult off his commercial primacy into playing at swagger, you simply don’t believe him – you get annoyed. That the album is reported to be quite bitchy about the artists’ ex-girlfriends has kept from me from exploring it, but at the same time it’s a valid resistance for any listener to have. Judging from its tenacity on the charts, this doesn’t seem to be too widespread a problem.

It’s conceivable that a collective American fatigue, a weariness at having been roughed by current events, explains the evidently en vogue wave of tonally sullen and slightly ominous-sounding bangers. Bad Bunny has the aura of a Casanova-rapscallion hybrid, but like Post Malone, his music is luxuriously atmospheric (at least by the evidence of his most recent album, Un Verano Sin Ti). The pulse of his beats is dependable and insistent, but his tracks are never monotonous; they’re consistently playful even when moroseness perfumes the proceedings. My girlfriend says she admires Bad Bunny’s work because “he’s fuckin’ sexy and I love his voice”; she emphasizes, though, that songs from the last record hung around in her head more than these seem to, with an air of disappointment in her inflection.

If Drake is skirting the problematic with relative impunity, who knows what you call Morgan Wallen’s 105th week on the chart. His album, conveniently titled Dangerous: the Double Album, is still selling in the long wake of Wallen’s collision with the sort of controversy that permanently stains you. Taken for what it was*, without proselytizing, his offense seems even more unthinking and less racially targeted than Elvis Costello’s 1979 barstool faux-pas, for which EC is still living off the hook. But it’s hard not to see Wallen’s persistent sales as reflecting the wokeness-contrarian impulse coursing through society.

It doesn’t help that Wallen’s general vibe is smug and shallow; he prefers to plow past deeper emotions. Most country pop works the way disco works – the way it sounds is sometimes silly, but the tone and tempo can be enough of a kick to counteract that. But it rarely feels as commanding or texturally interesting as whatever Zach Bryan is up to. The very title of his album, American Heartbreak, reflects his interest in humanity’s ragged diversity. A more civilized-sounding Tyler Childers, Bryan elevates every lyric with his plaintive, shopworn delivery. But even if he sang as insincerely as Wallen, or as weakly as, say, Kris Kristofferson, you’d still instantly sense that those lyrics are worth returning to.

Another hip-hop artist whose vibe is generically masculine, Lil Baby favors producers similar to Metro Boomin, those inclined to mine the line between dreamy and dreary. Baby has a strangely captivating flow – tuneful, viscous and casual across the consonants. And while his lyrics don’t skimp on the usual hardnosed hustler act, that flow is full of feelings unsuffocated by his swagger. That said, there’s a repetitiveness to this music that starts to feel oppressive over 23 tracks, and it makes you wonder how much fun the artist is having.

By contrast, YoungBoy Never Broke Again (good name – manifest that shit) doesn’t want you to relax. His music is chaotic, assertive, taut with tension. These boisterous collages of sound are creative enough to stay riveting, even when the cumulative effect is claustrophobic or unpleasant. YB N B A raps, through a sizzling autotune, even more loosely and woundedly than Lil Baby. There’s almost always something interesting going on, and 19 songs in 39 minutes isn’t going to try anyone’s patience. But once again it’s a seemingly-not-so-lovable-guy unloading his problems line by line without repaying your attention with hooks.

T-Swift’s ex Harry ‘Will Never Go Out of’ Styles is another multimillionaire I’ll defend as awaiting some due. Savvy beams off his every move, and he’s turned himself into a true fashion icon. But I suspect that his reserved demeanor, plus the usual indulgent hate boy bands attract like bug zappers, has compelled certain people to assume there’s less behind those bedroom eyes than the sleek intelligence Harry’s House exhibits. Truly, he should not be allowed to wax about cinema without a set of notecards, but the pop he’s bringing these days isn’t exactly lacking scope and vision. Like the best directors, Harry is an earth angel fascinated by the sweet nuance of human behavior, and the thrill of trying to evoke it.

I’ve long appreciated that modern pop seems to have shaken off a certain kitschy artifice. The prevailing aural trends, forged in a world of limitless technology, favor heady and challenging atmospherics. Thus the corniest hits are at least pacifying, and the best profound and genuinely transportive. But evolved as the status quo feels, I’m feeling a hunger pang for the shock of the new – for a disorienting shake of the frame. Or, as with “Running Up That Hill”’s fluke success, a resurgence of the old in service of the same surprise.

*if I have it right, an inebriated Wallen casually refers to one of his (white) friends with the n-word

#taylorswift #sza #samsmith #kimpetras #davidguetta #metroboomin #theweeknd #drake #21savage #harrystyles #stevelacy #zackbryan #morganwallen #lilbaby #youngboyneverbrokeagain #badbunny

[ganymedesclock]

Ooh ooh ooh, how about your version of Sonic for the powers thing?

You see, Sonic is fast, because if he doesn't keep ahead of his problems, he'll have to actually think about them, and then he'll have a crisis.

This is partially a fun opener joke and it's also not. I'll let you decide how much of each it is. In the meantime, I'm going to talk about what my reads of various canons inspire in me, and how that informs Worlds AU, a bit more than talking about Worlds AU itself.

So Sonic in the initial game canon, started out with an extremely simple conceit. You can see this mirrored across all of the non-Amy classic characters: Sonic runs, that's his thing; Tails flies, Knuckles punches, Eggman makes robots and also problems, which sort of condenses into one thing considering the role robots have in the classic games.

(that damn caterkiller has cost me SO many attempts at a chaos emerald...)

This sort of got to be a problem as the games advanced. In particular, the Sonic game I started on was Sonic Adventure 2, which pitted Sonic very prominently off of Shadow. At this point, character concepts are no longer about simple capabilities, and every other member of the cast has grown up. (even Amy... though not too much. sorry Amy). Tails is now building robots to go with how his flight allows him to reach unconventional 'tricky' routes; Knuckles is now more of an adventurer, explorer, and even a mystic given his history and relationship with the emeralds. This earthly pugilist sense grounds him in a more versatile skill-set.

Sonic... basically his gimmick was remaining true to the classic formula- he was still the one going fast, popping those shuttle loops, and tumbling through a chaotic universe. Yes, they absolutely polished this and put flourishes on it- now he's grinding rails and flipping on poles, this sense of street-smart parkour that carries him cheekily through any environment...

But he's played off Shadow, where the thing about Shadow, especially in the first game, is Shadow is a person who suppresses most of his personality for his context. Not in an inorganic or badly written sense, mind- but he outright says to Rouge at one point that it doesn't matter if anything he remembers is fake- in essence, that it's more real than he is, and a dead person's wish is more important than his life.

Shadow is a soldier, is an alien, is a bioweapon, is a teleporter and he shoots lasers. We are beyond the days of simple conceits; if he was conceived in the classic era, he'd have probably been either only a jet-skater or a teleporter, and that one conceit about how he moved through the world would've been through everything.

Sonic picks up the chaos control from Shadow- in direct reaction to Shadow- and this is commented on. In this scene, Sonic not only rejects Shadow's unhealthy obsession with context- that where he came from was everything- but mirrors it with an attitude that, frankly, to me, rings just as unbalanced- Sonic basically denies having a backstory whatsoever.

"What you see is what you get!" he says.

And that flew in the classic era. We didn't really have a consistent or strongly-drawn backstory over why Sonic was fast. Most continuities around that era point it to either an accident or a happenstance synergy with an outside force. But we didn't really need a story over why Tails can fly or why Knuckles had spurs on his fists.

But in the modern era... there's context. Many characters have superpowers. And more and more, there was a sense that those superpowers had context and history, whether the outright spelled, like Shadow (he was engineered to be capable of this; if you look at him, he has most of the abilities you'd expect of a boss fight in Resident Evil, minus the squelchy, infectious sorts and the Black Arms imply he could well have those and just not use them)

...or the simply alluded, such as Blaze's ominous comment that her flames are the reason she was always alone.

Sonic... clearly has powers. He's been reframed to keep up with he setting as it changes. But that exchange between him and Shadow- where Shadow looks at what Sonic is capable of, looks at him, and asks, verbatim, "what are you," and Sonic delivers a non-answer so naked and so certain that there's not really anything to say to that.

To this end, while I think it's highly intuitive that they picked the wind as the motif to spice Sonic up to- with its sense of freedom, and with its association with speed- I think there's also something about air in general that connects to Sonic.

Air is... omnipresent. It has an extremely complex seething system high overhead. Enormous paths and belts and spirals of wind curl over us all the time, pushing clouds the size of entire states around like it's nothing. When you look at the sky, it looks stationary. But wait, squint- it's actually moving. It's actually moving really fast.

One of my absolute favorite characterizing moments of Sonic is in Archie Comics, specifically the post-reboot series. To keep context minimal, Tails confides in Sonic that he's losing his memory of a certain incident that affected both of them, and he's worried; Sonic reassures him, typical hero big brother best friend, and gives him a big hug. The scene is warmly lit.

The very next panel is literally in the shadows, over Tails' shoulder and behind his back. And Sonic's expression is... troubled. Telling. We immediately understand from that alone he just lied, and has no ability to 'just remember for Tails'.

Sonic is not a vacuous person. He's not empty, he's not innocent, and he's certainly not just your same good nostalgic friend who never changed or got complicated so you don't have to reevaluate all of those things- the guy you can always count on, just like the sky is always there- but he sure pretends to be all of those things, and tries to keep the stormy weather as far away from other people as possible.

This is given another heroic-sounding-but-actually-concerning context in Sonic Unleashed, one of several games in which Sonic shows a maybe suspicious but profound aptitude for darkness where he guzzles and serves as a very powerful conduit for the energy of Dark Gaia, who is strongly connoted with rage, despair, denial, and other states considered bad for your health.

Sonic asks Chip- who he's just found out is Dark Gaia's counterpart- if it was his protection that kept him from losing his mind the entire time. Chip denies this, and states instead it's that "you never let the darkness win."

The thing is... anger and sadness are actually pretty important to feel. And it's actually not true that Sonic as a character doesn't feel anger- there's a few rather notable scenes in which he really loses his cool, some of them within Sonic Unleashed itself (he actually scares Eggman at the culmination of the Egg Dragoon fight) and in the game Sonic and the Secret Rings he actually achieves a super form powered by negative emotions- and that game also ends on a surprisingly melancholy note, where Shahra, when leaving Sonic, specifically gives him a bunch of tissues, a nod to how they met, and specifically "So you can cry as much as you need to."

Sonic is a good person. But Sonic is also... kind of a liar. He has this powerful connection to these highly destructive and dangerous entities- Dark Gaia, Chaos- and this is a thing he, pointedly, doesn't wonder about. And it's not arrogance, or an inability to consider the possibilities- in Sonic Colors he is very real with himself that he can't outrun a black hole, but only admits that once Tails is out of earshot on the one safe ride away from it- and while gearing up to try to do so anyway.

Wind is a contradictory thing. In the sky, we consider the possibility of ultimate freedom; flight and wings are often depicted as symbols of enormous power and efficacy because the very notion of being able to go wherever you want to captivates us.

On the other hand, though, a state of freefall is terrifying. In the unparalleled freedom of the sky, absolutely nothing can catch you if you fall.

(you know, except Tails, if you're fighting Eggman in Marble Garden- I'll leave)

We can talk about a bolt from the blue, a sudden storm or a just-as-sudden clear blue sky... the mechanisms of the air around us are often very hard to perceive for their superficial simplicity. And on sunny days when the wind lazes slowly through the leaves, it's hard to think of it as capable of hurricane forces.

I guess the note I want to leave this on is, it's pretty interesting how Sonic genuinely likes running, but he also tends to either outrun or fight anything that stresses him out- and "what he is" and "what he's capable of" is something he really doesn't like talking about even if he's happy to show or compete it.

#Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic worlds AU #readmore

[alderaani]

Maybe a mixture of 65 and 58 with Wolffe or Rex please?

58 - Moving Around While Kissing, Stumbling Over Things, Pushing Each Other Back Against The Wall/Onto The Bed

65 - One Small Kiss, Pulling Away For An Instant, Then Devouring Each Other

A/N: from this prompt list! thanks so much for requesting something, i’ve been having a crisis of confidence over writing the past couple of weeks, but this got me back in some sort of groove. 

warnings: slight injury, canon-typical violence, very mildly suggestive. 

Wolffe x gn!reader:

He hasn’t spoken to you in hours. You eye the rigid line of his back across the hangar as he directs the men unloading munitions and salvaged equipment, the sharp, pointed motions of his hands and the angry jerks of his bucket as he snaps off orders spelling out his agitation.

“Maybe I should -,” you start, before Sinker interrupts, his hand on your shoulder forcing you back onto the crate you’re sat on, while one of the medics wraps your ankle. 

“Uh, no you shouldn’t,” he says. “Give him some time to cool off. You gave us a real fright out there, you know?”

You wince. It had been a split second decision down on the surface, an unexpected attack that had left you pushed at the edge of the camp and separated from the rest of the 104th with a new batch of shinies who hadn’t even earnt their paint yet. The detonators in your backpack seemed a better option than getting gunned down, but setting them had put you perilously close to the blast zone. You don’t remember much past the wave of heat and the sensation of flying; the next memory you have is waking up in the transport with your head in Sinker’s lap, his pinched face staring down at you.

“That’s what he’s mad about? But -,” you splutter, eyes darting between Sinker and Wolffe’s distant figure. “Would he have preferred I just wait to get shot?”

You go to stand again, but pushing against Sinker’s grip is like wrestling with an iron bar. The medic yanks on your trouser leg, too, grunting that you need to stay still. 

“Of course not. But, come on, you know he gets stupid about you. Think he’s more mad with himself that he let it happen.”

You frown. Now that doesn’t make any sense. “What? Sinker, what are you talking about? What you mean, he gets stupid about me?”

Sinker stares at you in silence for a couple of seconds, while the medic - Gruff, you think - shakes with laughter. 

“...Boost was right.” He shakes his head in bewilderment and a small amount of disgust. “I actually can’t believe it. You really are that oblivious. Maker, not a braincell between the pair of you.”

He eyes Gruff, who has finished with your ankle and has moved onto sluicing out the gash on your forearm to assess the damage.

“Can you believe this?” 

Gruff snorts. “I try not to believe anything around here, you leave me out of this, Sinker.” 

“What are you talking about?” You whine, glancing over at Wolffe again and jolting when instead of meeting the back of his helmet, you find his visor staring back. He stays like that for a second before stiffly turning away, his hands clenching into fists. You want to be angry, furious with him for pinning this on you, but instead you feel your eyes sting. Dropping your gaze, you sniff hard, blaming the way your throat constricts on the hard day rather than the furious set of Wolffe’s shoulder.

“Oh no, I’m not gonna be the one to let that tooka out of the bag,” Sinker laughs, then catches sight of your expression. “Hey, are you - osik. Look, he’ll come back round. He just doesn’t like getting scared.”

You’re about to snap something back, how you didn’t exactly enjoy almost getting blown up either, but if you speak you’re not sure if tears will come out instead. You’re saved by Gruff pushing to his feet.

“That arm needs stitches and if we get up to the medbay I can use a bone knitter on the ankle. Give me a hand, Sinker?”

You only look back once as they hoist you up between them, your stomach dropping like a stone when you find Wolffe is nowhere in sight.

-

Things seem only marginally better the other side of the fresher. It’s never the same without water, and you stayed under the sonics too long, trying to wash away the phantom feeling of grime, so now your skin feels tight and dry. All you want is to curl up in your bunk and sleep for the next several rotations, but rest won’t come. 

Every time you lie down all you can think about is Wolffe turning away from you, and then you spend the next twenty minutes oscillating hopelessly between rage and wanting to find him and apologise. 

The knock on your door is actually a relief - it pulls you away from sitting at your desk, rolling your comm in your hand and trying to convince yourself that typing out a message when you’re tired and emotional is a spectacularly bad idea.

At least, it’s a relief until you see who’s on the other side.

“Never, ever do that again.”

Wolffe looms over you, quietly furious, his bucket under one arm. You let go of the door controls and try to step backwards, but he follows, boxing you in between your desk and the wall. After a second of staring at him, jaw working soundlessly, rage floods through your bones to settle hot in your belly. 

“It’s not like I had much of a choice,” You snap back. “You’re behaving like a child.”

Wolffe slams his helmet down on the desk, expression spasming. “Didn’t have - you could have died.”

“So could you!” You protest, crossing your arms over your chest. “We were being attacked, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Wolffe snarls, running an agitated hand through his hair. “And you decided to get yourself blown up.”

“To save the men!” You counter, pushing up close to him as anger outweighs intimidation. “You’d have rather I just let them get mown down by a pack of B1s?” 

Wolffe scowls and pushes in too, so that you’re chest to chest and glaring directly into each other’s faces. 

“ Of course not, I - They’re trained soldiers. Trust them to do their job next time and work with them instead of being a distraction.”

A distraction? The absolute nerve of him. You make a small shrieking noise in the back of your throat and drop backwards to try and relieve the urge to smack that stupid frown right off his face. What’s almost worse is that the words actually hurt. His attention and approval always mean so much to you, more than you’re willing to admit even to yourself. For him to treat you like a wayward child...it stings. Badly. And you never go down easy when you’re backed into a corner. 

“A distraction to who?” You spit. “I don’t know why you’re being such an ass about this. The others have to make calls like that all the time and run the risk that it won’t work out, and you never go after them about it. What the hell makes me so different?”

Wolffe splutters. “Because - because -”

He breaks off and swears something in mando’a. For a second, you think he’s going to push you. His hand comes up, but instead of shoving it fists in your shirt and pulls. 

You stumble into him, his other hand catching your hip and pinning you against the plastoid, and you open your mouth to ask him what the hell he’s doing - 

His mouth slants over yours.

Your mind goes blank, screeching utterly to a halt. The world narrows down to the dry press of his lips, the heavy weight of his hands, and you cannot believe this is happening. Almost as quickly as it starts, though, Wolffe lets you go with a small gasp, so abruptly that it gives you whiplash.

“Shit,” he whispers, eyes wide. His tongue darts out and touches the curve of his bottom lip. “I’m -”

In the half-second it takes for you to catch up, you realise several things: Wolffe just kissed you. He kissed you, and Sinker was right; you are both idiots. You would really like him to do it again, but instead the bastard is now trying to apologise for it. 

Without really considering it, you slide your hand round the back of his neck, sinking it into the hem of his blacks and tugging him back down. Your back hits the wall with an oomph as you press your lips urgently to his, pouring in every desperate month you’ve spent pining after him as your free hand scrabbles for purchase on his armour.

For a moment Wolffe is totally rigid, a taut line of shock, his lips stilled against your own. For a moment, you think you’ve completely fucked this up. But then he makes a noise, a little groan in the back of his throat, and his hand comes up against the wall next to your head, returning the kiss hungrily, desperately. His other arm snakes round your waist, and you could drown in him, you really could. His hand dips under the hem of your shirt and you gasp into his mouth at the warm touch. Wolffe huffs and licks in, the first slide of his tongue and the slick wet heat of his mouth electrifying something in your veins. You whine, high and needy, hitching upwards as far as you can. 

Without breaking contact Wolffe’s hands slide down over your ass, grasp under your legs and lift, wrapping them around his waist with only a small grunt at the effort. You pull his bottom lip into your mouth and graze lightly with your teeth, savouring the shudder that runs through his body before pressing back in, sealing your lips together as he moves, carrying you with him.

He stumbles backwards, hands steady under your thighs, until his knees hit the back of your bunk. Then he goes down, catching you so that you land with your legs either side of his body. It dislodges your mouths and he stares up at you, his eyes wide, his lips kiss-bruised, a flush high in his cheeks. 

“Shit,” he says again, but his voice is soft and dazed. You laugh softly as he clears his throat, hand coming up to thumb over your cheekbone. “I, uh, guess we’ve got some things to talk about.”

“Yeah, but later.” you say, leaning in and stealing another kiss. “Much later.”

taglist // @nelba @bad-batch-of-fics @majorshiraharu @leias-left-hair-bun @simping-for-fives @battletales @bluejay6800 @snippytano @missinashkin @iscream4clones // list here

#commander wolffe x reader #commander wolffe x you #wolffe x reader #commander wolffe #wolffe #star wars #the clone wars #the clone wars fanfiction #alderwrites #god just being able to finish something is a RELIEF

[idw-sonic-fan-blog]

The Mandates

Just wanted to share my thoughts on the pro-ported mandates because they cast a shadow on this comic.

“Game characters cannot have relatives unless they were estabilished in the game canon, i.e. Cream and her mother.”

This one is understandable and you can blame Penders for this. Mind you that most licensed comics of gaming franchises don’t actually delve too much in personal family relationships or expand on them. So this is expected and honestly Sega should have put the screws on Archie decades ago about this.

“Game characters can not die. There are workarounds for this, such as being Mistaken for Dying or "Mistaken For Dead”

Again. Yes. Not a big deal.

“Game characters cannot have wardrobe changes unless approved. Chao Races and Badnik Bases has some characters (mainly the female game characters) wear different clothes for extreme conditions. Male characters remain the same.”

This is a useless rule but whatever. I mean Sega, you are the ones putting bad wardrobe choices on the characters so again it’s whatever.

“Sonic can't be shown getting too emotional (i.e;cry)”

This is one that it complained about because it really wouldn’t matter unless it is called attention to. A lot of superheroes don’t cry. But that doesn’t prohibit them from expressing themselves. IDW Sonic has been sad. He has been pissed. He has been furious.

Is this not too emotional?

Is he not expressing himself appropriately?

I don’t even know why this is brought up. When in this comic has Sonic not been expressive or displaying the appropriate amount of emotion? When did Sonic needing to cry be necessary?

“Game characters cannot enter in a relationship.”

Oh GOD YES. Don’t threaten me with a good time.

“All major Character Development must be approved by SEGA.”

Yeah, of course. Let me remind you that Penders and Archie ruined any strand of trust Sega could have in comic media. They played loose at first and all of the sudden, they are involved in a lawsuit about characters in a Sonic comic that they didn’t even know about. They probably lost a video game business relationship because of it. If they want to be involved in the comics, fine. That means that they are now forced to World Build. They have to invest in it now and not just be like Lucas Films and let anybody do anything with their flagship title.

“Much like the post-reboot of the Archie comic, the words "Mobius" is banned—the planet is simply called "Sonic's World". Unlike the Post-Boot, which allowed the names "Mobian" and "Mobini", anything related to Mobius is banned in this comic.”

…Of course but how about you throw the writer’s a bone and I don’t know, name the fucking planet. If it is not Earth, give it a name.

“Sonic must always win at the end. Even if he and his friends are at the losing end in an overarching story (the Metal Virus arc, for example), they must come out on top when it concludes.”

I don’t even get this rule and the knee jerk hatred for it. Why even have it? Why even share the existence of this rule? Archie Sonic didn’t really lose too bad. It’s more on how you frame a victory. The fact of the matter is that Eggman is still actively trying to conquer the planet. Sonic stops him but Eggman still has control of land and has military installations all over.

This rule is offset by this. While Sonic can’t lose, Sonic can’t completely win.

“Characters and material from other licensed properties (Sonic the Comic, Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM)', Sonic Underground, the OVA, Sonic X and the Paramount films cannot be used. This rule extends to characters and redesigns done by the current writers. The only exception is Sticks from Sonic Boom, and that's because she was created by SEGA themselves and showed up in non-Boom media, but any ideas regarding her use still need to be okayed by SEGA.”

First off I am glad that Sticks was spared by this rule and I look forward to her eventual inclusion. Second, again, this is not much of a big deal as it was expected. Sorry Freedom Fighter fans but honestly deal.

“Male characters, sans Eggman, can't wear pants, which was also a thing in the Post-Reboot, albeit never explicitly stated. The inverse is also true; female characters have to have some form of lower clothing.”

Okay this is a pedantic rule. It is so weird with how precise it is. Like…huh?

“Classic characters such as Mighty, Ray, Nack/Fang, Bean, and Bark won't appear in non-Classic issues, as Sega doesn't want Classic and Modern Sonic to mix.”

One of the most bullshit mandates fueled by the nostalgia boner fans created. Like this is stupid because Archie Modern Sonic has added more character and depth to all of these mentioned characters than any of the Sega Sonic games they appeared in which only amounts to 1 or 2 at most. Why neuter your own potential stories with this stupid limitation?

“According to Ian Flynn, a specific incident involving Shadow's characterization when he's exposed to the Zombot infection was written in a specific way because of Sega mandating that he be written as an "overconfident asshole rival" character, similar to Vegeta. He later followed up with an explanation that out of every character, Shadow has the most mandates and notes attached to how he's portrayed. According to the podcast, Sega says that Team Dark is no longer a thing. The three members are not a team and they have never worked for G.U.N.; Shadow also doesn't even consider them friends.”

This is my opinion is the worst rule. First it’s contradictory to the character Sega introduced us to. Stop trying to be like Dragon Ball for once and actually be your own thing. It’s one thing if we are changing it because Shadow was unpopular because of his personality. But no one likes this Shadow. People miss the somber but reserved Hedgehog that continued to fight in spite of the world betraying him. Hothead Shadow is a cheap Knuckles. And I don’t even understand why Shadow even has so many mandates when he wasn’t the most egregious offender. Knuckles was.

Also, Team Dark aren’t a thing and Shadow doesn��t even consider them to be his friends. First off that doesn’t even fly in your own games. Who outside of Sonic does Shadow interact the most? Rouge. They have teamed up and were a packaged duo since their inception. When Shadow appeared, Rouge appeared right next to him. If Rouge was in a game, so was Shadow.

Team Dark or just Rouge has fought alongside Shadow in every game they appeared in. Who else does Shadow talk to if not Rouge?

“Sega has stated to Flynn that only male hedgehogs are allowed to go Super with the Chaos Emeralds.”

Except in Sonic Mania.

“Ian isn't allowed to directly reference a game, since the comic is supposed to be its own thing.”

Okay. Not only is this rule stupid. But it’s untrue.

This references the end of Sonic Forces.

The first page of comic.

It has referenced Sonic Adventure, SA2, Sonic Generations , and Sonic Unleashed.

This referencing Shadow the Hedgehog.

I don’t believe this rule exists and even if it did, it is dumbest rule since the whole point of this comic is to base it off the games more. The dumbest rule.

“Knuckles is not allowed to leave Angel Island unless he has a very good reason to.”

For decades, people have complained that Knuckles routinely leaves the island. For decades. Now does this mean Sega is going to 1. Use Knuckles and 2. Amplify the importance of Angel Island and the Master Emerald? No. Again, this criticism should be levied at Sega because they often conveniently forget Knuckles purpose and just hand wave it instead of giving Knuckles more to do on the island like I don’t know, have other entities invested in attacking him.

In summary, here is what I think is going on. Do I think most of these mandates are real? Yes. Given what happened to Archie, I do think Sega is doing some brand alignment. I think they got the clamps on.

But what I think is going on is a Japanese cultural thing called Power Harassment. It is normalized abuse of power. Sega of Japan is normally laxxed about their brands. They don’t mind blatant rip-offs of their mascot nor do they get stiff about fandom creations or mods. The comic division, however, is getting tough love because not only did it cost them a publishing deal, but ruined a relationship with a high end developer. So the IDW writers and staff are being subjected to intentionally hypocritical rules and strict mandates that they know don’t make sense until they’ve shown to be obedient.

A lot of the mandates aren’t strict. But some are so asinine that I don’t think they aren’t aware with how stupid they sound imposing those rules. Like Shadow is the most narratively complete Sonic character and yet, Sega puts this tight mandate as if Archie Shadow was the most egregious thing. Archie Shadow was overpowered. He wasn’t out of character like Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails were. They can’t be that stupid or be that intentionally dense. So they want to see if the writing crew can follow orders. That’s it.

But that’s just my take.

#idw sonic #sonic the hedgehog

[naralanis]

little bumps in the road (pt. 24)

OK everyone, we’re going to finish in 26, maaaybe 27 parts if I decide to go ahead with an epilogue! Enjoy, the ride is almost over!

Previously on LBitR...

For one interminable moment, it goes exactly how Lena remembers it would. The pain—white hot and blinding, cresting in waves that crash against her very psyche in what feels like a sonic boom right between her temples. She feels it bubble up under her skin, searing the insides of her skull, like her brain is boiling.

It makes her feel… suspended, somehow. Untethered from herself—she’s not exactly an observer watching over her own body and mind succumb to the whims of another; she’s still very much there, feeling the flashes and the searing pain that come with whatever reshuffling of memories and actions that took place in her mind as viscerally as if it were all real.

Wait.

No, no, they are real. The pain is real. Lex wouldn’t have it any other way; he would always want to inflict maximum, tailor-made suffering…

Would imaginary pain so visceral it feels real be his version of tailor-made suffering for Lena?

His trigger words are still swimming in her mind, bouncing around, bumping and rattling in there like her psyche is a pinball machine, but there’s something else, too. It’s not poignant, not so invasive in her mind, but it’s there, like a mantra Lena didn’t come up with, a little obstacle everything else that has been forcefully injected into her mind has been plonking against.

You know, Lena. That means you are prepared.

Lena feels blood in her mouth as she tries to make sense of the mayhem in her head, as she ponders what the hell she’s supposed to do, detached and bound to the searing flashes all at once. It’s exhausting.

Her tongue swells a little where at the spot on the side she had apparently bit raw; she worries it against her teeth, feeling and tasting the tender muscle in something she can recognize as a conscious, deliberate action.

Oh.

That means something, Lena’s sure of it. She just needs to unscramble what’s left of her mind enough to analyse it, somehow.

“Lena, Lena, Lena,” Lex’s voice comes through the intervals between flashes, haunting and childlike, crystal clear though almost robotic as it is filtered through speakers. “Open your eyes, Lena! I don’t want you to miss the show!”

Lena wants to retort that her eyes are open, otherwise, where the hell is all the light coming from? But as she clenches her jaw, the fresh cut on her tongue throbs, and she remembers she’s in a Lexosuit.

Her lids snap open and she is immediately greeted by the orange hue of the suit’s visor as it filters the skyline of National City in a crystal clear image and rows of data. It’s a bit much for her brain—she goes from dizzying white flashes to the overwhelming displays in the Lexosuit, and it takes her several long moments to adjust.

And so, Lena blinks into a state of half-awareness. She’s flying, zipping through the air above National City, but she has no recollection of how she got there; another gift from the little implant in her temple. The way her body moves is… unnatural—she’s not controlling the way her limbs adjust so that her current flight pattern is uninterrupted by the wind, and in the part of her mind that is only partly aware of that fact wonders how exactly Lex is controlling everything, whether he’s doing it via the implant or via the suit itself.

“Hey, Lena, I’ve got an idea,” Lex says in her ear, and the Lexosuit stops in midair. It does so roughly and abruptly, enough to give Lena some hope that maybe, just maybe, Lex is not controlling her actual physical movements.

But knowing her luck as of late, he’s probably doing both.

“Let’s play a game, sis,” Lex says jovially. “Let’s play ‘Find the Blue Dot… Then Kill It’.” His laugh echoes in the confined space of the helmet. “What do you think?”

Lena tries to answer this time, but all she manages for several moments is a pitiful series of angry grunts—it amuses Lex to no end, she can tell even in her altered state as his barely contained chuckles reach her ears—until she finally muddles through a gritted jumble of words.

“Ff-u—fuck-k you…”

He tuts loudly. “Now, now, Lena, that’s no way to start a game. You have to pay attention—look, there’s a little dot coming your way right now!”

Lena feels the agonizing slowness of her reaction time; it’s like her limbs are made of lead, and she hasn’t even really tried to move them yet. Her eyes seem to move slowly too—she wonders if her pupils are contracting and dilating again with no control, because it takes her an excruciatingly long time to focus on the little blue dot that beeps on the suit’s radar, indeed careening Lena’s way at breakneck speed.

“Nngh” she grunts again, like she’s chewing out the words. “K-kar—Kara—”

“Let’s give the Girl of Steel a warm welcome, shall we?”

Everything happens in slow-motion then—or at least, the part of Lena’s brain that she’s compartmentalized away for herself perceives it that way.

She sees that little blue dot zoom through her visor once, twice, before entering her actual field of vision. Kara’s blue suit is a weird shade of green through the orange of her visor, her cape an odd brown hue as it flutters in the wind, though the movement seems so slow to Lena’s perception she might as well be in water.

With her hair cropped short and the different colours of her suit, it’s like Lena’s brain has to play catch-up for a moment; it’s like she cannot recognize Kara for a second that stretches into infinity as the Kryptonian comes closer and closer.

Lena feels something at her back—a mechanical whirr, hydraulic hisses—and then, against her will, her arms are outstretched towards a rapidly approaching Supergirl, and Lena’s brain has finally caught up, just as the blasters at the suit’s forearms click into place and begin to glow green.

An image of Supergirl, of Kara—long hair, red and blue suit, face riddled with green—flashes before her eyes, and she’s falling, falling lifeless from the skies. For a moment, Lena thinks she’s seeing the future, but at with another painstakingly slow blink she’s back in the present, where Kara’s currently barreling towards fully loaded Kryptonite blasters.

“Kara, no!”

There’s an explosion of green, and the impact is enough to send the Lexosuit reeling backwards—Lex’s laughing in her ears, and Lena has to fight to get her bearings. Kara’s blue dot still darts in Lena’s visor—the radar puts her somewhere behind the Kryptonite-powered suit.

She’s alright.

“What a miraculous save from Supergirl,” Lex’s voice cackles. “Very last minute, though; a little less graceful than we’d like, but we’re used to her brawn, aren’t we, Lena?”

“S-stop it,” Lena hisses, and she’s not sure she’s talking to Lex or to herself, but the thrusters on the suit don’t heed her choked plea.

She’s zipping after Kara in what probably looks like a frenzied, disorienting game of tag over National City’s tallest skyscrapers. Kara dodges, dives, curls around buildings only to shoot upwards again, and Lena tries her hardest to follow the Kryptonian’s movement with her eyes as her body blindly follows.

She needs to stop this—she can already feel the blasters powering up again, and the suit has locked onto Kara once more, preparing to fire; Lena can even tell when Lex will take the opportunity—as soon as Kara weaves back from the CatCo building and into open skies—

“Lena!”

It’s Kara’s voice, coming from quite a distance, but Lena can still hear it, clear as day. For someone who needs to fly away from a Kryptonite-powered war-suit, Kara sounds relieved. She’s stopped zipping through the air, now merely hovering above the CatCo helipad, a sitting duck for the blasters Lena wields unwillingly.

“K-kara, stay away!” Lena shouts, the panic easing the passage of her words through her throat, even if her entire body rebels against the action.

“She never learns, does she?” Lex drawls from within, sounding absolutely giddy. The green light emanating from the blasters seems to illuminate Lena’s full field of vision; it gives everything a sickly glow.

“Kara, go!”

“You can stop it, Lena—I know you can!”

Lena feels like she’s shaking her head, but it’s hard to tell—the Lexosuit is suffocating, her mind is a jumble of thoughts, past and present, some of them not even hers. She can practically feel the implant pulsating in her temple.

“Lena! Look at me! You can stop this; Lena, just—look at me!”

Lena is, she’s looking straight at Kara, who has her arms raised above her head as if she’s surrendering despite the crackle of green in the air, as if she can’t see the blasters powering up or hear the beeping of the suit’s targeting system, and no, no, no, no—

The whole world explodes in green.

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#nara's word vomit #LBitR #supergirl #supercorp #kara danvers #lena luthor #it's the final countdown #ficwriting #femslash #Featuring Nara Being a Bastard Again #But Not For Long Now

[mahizli]

Still Learning (There Is No Ignorance, There Is Knowledge)

Art by tallterror and second chapter of Threading The Way (Jedi June).

32 BBY.

“Thank you, Anakin.”

Master Ti’s voice was gentle, and Ani met her warm, brown eyes before he bowed, like Padawans were supposed to, like Obi-Wan had taught him at the very beginning of his stay here, almost a month ago.

“It’s okay.”

His voice sounded strange. Like there was not enough air in is lungs. And his heart was beating all fast, too. It felt like… like the day he had left Mum, and Ani did not want to go there in his head. Instead, he followed the other Initiates out of the door and into the corridor.

“Hello, Master Obi-Wan…”

It sounded like a song, all his fellow-Initiates greeting his Master who stood there, leaning against the corridor walls, waiting for him. But Ani didn’t join in, didn’t say a thing: he knew just how eager they were to catch a glimpse of him, the one who lost his Master, the one who killed a Sith and was training him, him whom Qui-Gon had called the Chosen One. They were still wary of him, and he had not made any real friend, save Senior Padawan Quinlan who was going to become a Knight very soon and was actually Obi-Wan’s friend. And Master Luminara and Master Kit, who were also Obi-Wan’s friends.

Ani loved spending time with Master Quinlan, because he knew Tatooine and understood things even Obi-Wan didn’t know. And he loved Master Luminara because she had been there, with him, when Obi-Wan had started bleeding from his nose, talking funny, and had fallen down in the training grounds. She and Master Quinlan had taken Obi-Wan to the Halls of Healing, and there, Master Vokara Che had told them the bond between him and Master Qui-Gon was still bleeding, because it had been broken and not closed, and because Obi-Wan had pushed everything tight behind his shields.

Master Che, Master Yoda and Master Billaba had brought Obi-Wan back into the Force and had closed the injury in Obi-Wan’s mind. And Master Quinlan, Master Luminara and Master Kit had tried to help him with the sadness inside, even though Obi-Wan was still missing Qui-Gon fiercely and would still go very silent whenever he was thinking of him.  

Ani watched his fellow-Initiates swarm through the corridor, and checked out his Master, because it had only been a week since Obi-Wan came back from the Halls, all thin and still somewhat shaky. A week since they had cleaned and tidied up Master Qui-Gon’s stuff, and Ani still had a hard time to believe how much steadier Obi-Wan felt in the Force now.

He was no longer pale, no longer looking like he would be gone any minute, vanishing like the images people saw when they got sun-sickness on Tatooine. Obi-Wan was better now, Ani could feel it through their bond, but he still grabbed the hem of Obi-Wan’s robe, just in case, rubbing his thumb against the rough fabric.

Hello there, Padawan.

Ani didn’t smile, because people were still around, and because he still felt weird from what he had just managed to do, during Master Ti’s class. But inside, it felt like something opening up, and when Obi-Wan started to walk them back to their quarters, Ani quietly slid his hand into his and squeezed.

“How was class, Anakin?”, Obi-Wan asked, once their doors slid shut.

Ani took off his boots, shrugging out of his bag.

“Okay, Master.”

Obi-Wan never asked many questions. He never pried, like some Initiates did. He just let it go, waiting for Ani to find him. And Ani wanted to tell him, about the way he had listened to him and accepted to tell Master Ti and the other Initiates about Tatooine, about why he hadn’t been taught to read and write, about the way slaves were forbidden to do some things and to enter some places.

But Ani also knew it would make Obi-Wan sad to talk about such stuff, and he didn’t want him to be sad anymore, he just wanted to hear him talk and marvel about the way he felt so smart and quick and witty through their bond.

And he never seemed to be bothered, when Anakin asked him questions, not even while he cooked, chopping off tubers, and cutting odd orange stuff that was called pumpkin to mix them together in some kind of soup that had a nice, sugary flower.

And so Ani got to know all about Obi-Wan’s day. About the subjects he was still studying, despite no longer being a Padawan, about the way he had trained with Master Luminara because they were both specialising in a form called Soresu. About the people in the Temple Obi-Wan had talked to, and that Ani still struggled to remember.

“I like that soup, Master. It’s nice.”

Obi-Wan smiled at him.

“It’s the nutmeg. I think you have a weak spot for spices, Padawan.”

Obi-Wan knew so many things. Ani didn’t have a clue what a nutmeg was, but Obi-Wan showed him the small, brown nut, and let him grind a bit of it into his soup – and it was delicious.

They talked some more, and then Ani was sent into the fresher to shower. He knew how to use the taps and the pressure now – it wasn’t complicated, actually, much less complicated than the ventilation system on the back of Watto’s shop, or the ignition of his old speeder. But Ani still tried to be quick, because it was no sonic – no carefully harvested water from a moisturizer, but water flowing like springs from the very faucets, and it still felt like such a waste.

Obi-Wan loved showers, though. He wasn’t long about it, but sometimes, Ani heard him hum quietly through the fresher’s door, and he always felt relaxed in the Force afterwards.  

That evening, Obi-Wan didn’t shower, though. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, barefoot yet still wearing his leggings and tunics, and Ani crawled up next to him, looking at the green picture that hung across Obi-Wan’s desk. It was a landscape from Stewjon, Obi-Wan’s planet, and Obi-Wan had painted it some years ago, because his Master was very skilled at drawing, and had filled whole journals with his sketches.

“What are you doing, Master?”, he asked, his tooka-doll Spikes closely tucked to his chest.

Obi-Wan sighed, turning tired grey eyes towards him.

“I’m trying to make sense of an essay of a currently very famous yet completely unintelligible philosopher, Padawan.”

“Why?”

Ani lifted a very puzzled face towards his Master, and Obi-Wan smiled again, deftly carding his fingers through Ani’s loosened braid, undoing it before he started braiding it again for the night.

“Because he claims to be an expert about the topic I’m supposed to study, and write an essay about.”

“But why do they need you to write essays and to read boring stuff? You’re no Padawan anymore, Master. You’re one of the best Jedi ever – everybody keeps talking about you in the Temple.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes clouded for a moment, but when he lifted his face towards Anakin, his gaze was clear.

“Because the only thing I know, Padawan mine, is how little I do know and how much I have still to learn.”

Ani hung his head, letting Obi-Wan closing his braid, watching the way his Master’s knees melted with the rough fabric of the sheets.

“I know the feeling, Master”, he whispered.

I feel like that all the time.

Obi-Wan’s hand travelled from next to his cheek to his shoulder, and soon enough, Ani was pulled against his side, breathing in the smell of clean linen, of soap and Obi-Wan.

“I did it, Master. I told them. About the slaves, on Tatooine. About what it meant, to read ‘no slaves allowed’ or ‘keep out’. About the dangers out there. They didn’t ask any questions, though. I don’t think they understood much, anyway.”

Obi-Wan stayed silent, for a while, data-pad and reading forgotten.

“I am not sure one can truly understand, Padawan. I still struggle. And sometimes… sometimes I think about what you have been through, and I wish…”

His Master didn’t go on, words ending into something that was both a breath and a sigh. There was no need, though. Ani understood.

“But, Anakin… I think that the reason the Initiates stayed silent was… because they were in awe. Because they felt very ignorant, compared what you were forced to experience.”

Ani shrugged, face still buried into Obi-Wan’s side.

“I’m very proud of you, Padawan.”

Obi-Wan’s voice was even softer, and Ani wrapped his arms around his waist, wordlessly. For a while, he listened to the quiet way Obi-Wan was breathing, focusing on the way Obi-Wan’s belly was meeting his forearms, whenever he was drawing in air or letting out a sigh.

His Master had resumed reading, and it didn’t seem to make him happy, because there was a thin crease between his eyes Ani had learned to recognize. What was more, Valentine, Qui-Gon’s old plant, was hissing quietly on the windowsill, flowers turning an electric form of blue and getting all spiky. Ani closed his eyes and sent a soft Force-tendril towards her, trying to stop her hissing.

Nervous-Pointless-Anxious-Enough.

Valentine’s projections in the Force were always really helpful with Obi-Wan, and Anakin sent back Okay-Got It-Thank You-Calm Down.

“Master… I think you should stop reading. I don’t think that feel-low-something is worth it.”

Obi-Wan’s eyebrows shot up, and he turned towards Ani.

“He’s making your head ache. And I think… I think anybody who writes stuff that is so hard to understand that even you don’t manage it, well… it’s not someone who cares about sharing what he knows.”

“Anakin, I’m not the standard by whom you should… I don’t think you… It’s not supposed to be difficult, it’s just that I…”

“Master, I don’t know much. I know I don’t. But… But I know you’re so smart that every teacher here loves you. There’s not one who’s hasn’t spoken about you, and I’ve only been here four weeks. So… I don’t think you should read that stuff. I think you should stick to those who want to share what they know, not just… show off or something.”

Obi-Wan stared at him for some seconds, and then his Master did something very unexpected. Ani watched Obi-Wan’s shoulders start to shake in silent laughter, until it broke out of Obi-Wan’s very signature, in quiet bubbles of amusement.

“Oh, I think that fellow really wanted to show off…”, his Master sighed. “I’m not sure I read anything that dense for… I don’t know, probably ever?”

Anakin started to giggle as well, watching Obi-Wan close the data-pad, leaning against his headboard, still laughing quietly.

“It was… I kept reading the same page over and over, wondering what in the Galaxy was wrong with me – it felt like… it felt like… Oh Anakin, you are so right – it is some incomprehensible, self-satisfied babble, and it is positively useless!”

Obi-Wan sounded both amused and amazed by his own defiance, and though Ani had no clue about what his Master truly meant, he could feel how relieved and lighter he felt through their bond.

“I’m not going to read that”, Obi-Wan whispered, eyes growing somewhat wide, and Ani couldn’t help hugging him again, because he looked like the way Kitster did, whenever Ani convinced him to do something he was afraid of yet kept dreaming about.

“I’m going to… I’m going to focus on ignorance and knowledge instead. About the way they are sometimes mistaken for the other. There are very knowledgeable people out there who still manage to stay very ignorant, Padawan. And there are others who think themselves ignorant and who are so wise they make the world a better place.”

His Master’s hands rubbed gentle circles into his back, and Ani hugged him tighter, feeling his heart swell because of Obi-Wan’s words.

“That’s wizard, Master”, he whispered – and then he lowered his head back on Obi-Wan’s chest, because it was warm and comfortable there, and because his Master was the best Master ever.

And on the windowsill, Valentine curled on herself, flowers in the hue of a soft, tender green, projecting soft contentment into the Force – and turning still once more.

#jedi june #jedi appreciation #jedi culture #JEDI goodness #star wars fanfiction #Anakin Skywalker #young anakin #Obi-Wan Kenobi #hurt/comfort #fluff #master and padawan

[cas-kingdom]

In Another’s Eyes

A/N: A really small thing I wrote today. Set during s10e6, when the Doctor is blind and has to read the Veritas.

Title: In Another’s Eyes

Summary: The Doctor counts on you to be his eyes and help him through his blindness.

Words: 1403

 You watched everyone – including the Pope – pile out of the TARDIS from where you were leaning against the console, arms crossed while you agitatedly bit your lip. Your head was absolutely elsewhere, throwing questions and worries to the forefront of your mind and causing you to fidget absently with the stray threads of your jacket.

It was after the last person exited the TARDIS that you were jolted from these thoughts by a hand grabbing your arm, and you would have screamed had you not seen the Doctor’s face, still adorned by dark sonic sunglasses, abruptly rip into your line of vision.

You grabbed his hand, still laying on your arm, and slowly exhaled, shutting your eyes.

“Have they all gone?” he whispered almost conspiratorially, and you nodded, right before remembering with a pang that he couldn’t see.

“Yes,” you said instead. “And don’t do that again,” you added as an afterthought. He ignored it.

“I need you to be my eyes,” he said.

You stared dumbly. “What?”

“Be my eyes!” He was leaning over slightly to bend to your height, and when he let go of your arm, he reached up and tapped at the lenses of his glasses. Truthfully, it took you a while to understand his meaning. Besides from Nardole, you were the only one who knew about his lack of eyesight. Of course, it’d happened totally accidentally, and unwillingly on his part – he certainly hadn’t meant for you to overhear them talking about it – but the both of you knew you’d have found out eventually. You understood each other too much for that to not be the truth. Nevertheless, it got to you eventually.

He wanted you to guide him.

How pressurising was that?

“I can’t be your eyes!” you all but hissed at him, crossing your arms once again.

The Doctor frowned. He straightened up, mouth set in that little pout which said a thousand different words at once, and looked at you. Well. Turned his head to face you. “Why not?” he asked, as though it were the simplest of questions and his reason for asking it was entirely understandable.

You tilted your head and sent him a look. The kind of look that perfectly portrays the sentence ‘are you serious?’. “Because,” you began, elongating the last syllable in order to show this almost irritation. “Your eyes are thousands of years old and mine are eighteen! Eighteen! How can I see what you could?”

The Doctor was clearly processing your words, even after you’d finished and slumped against the console, dropping your head to stare down at the ground.

Everything you’d said was true.

You’d been his companion for years, yes, but that still didn’t mean you understood everything. What you had learnt from him in your time together was a tiny fraction of a tiny percentage of knowledge that he possessed. How he expected you to be able to tell him what was going on went beyond you. Especially with how serious this was.

Yet, when you glanced up after a short moment of silence to attempt to gauge his reaction as much as you could while not able to see those eyes that usually held more emotion than you could handle, you were the smallest bit surprised to see him, supposedly staring at you, a knowing smile on his face that you’d seen all too often whenever you had said something he considered endearingly human.

“Y/N,” he said, head tilted the slightest bit to the side, “you are always my eyes. Even when I can see.”

You frowned deeply. “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

He let out a noise between a sigh and a groan, and you highly doubted he hadn’t rolled his eyes as well. “You make me see what’s real. What’s important. You make me see the beauty of humanity, of mortality, that all the stars in the sky could never amount to one person’s life. You make me see what it means to be human. You always have. You guide me as much as I do you.”

Your eyes had softened unbelievable amounts since he had begun to speak, and now, you were unsurprised to find your vision growing fuzzy. Twisting your face to ensure the tears wouldn’t fall – hiding them from the Doctor was never easy, but perhaps this time you’d be given a chance – you reached up and swiftly wiped at them.

The Doctor was still facing you, arms hanging by his side. “Without you, I can’t see. I never did before I found you. Not truly.” And he turned, walking off towards the door as though he hadn’t just held an overly heartfelt – albeit one-sided – conversation. You didn’t mind. That was just him. Well, this regeneration, at least.

“So-” You glanced up to see he’d twisted around by the top of the stairs, hand on the railing and one long finger pointing straight at you- “do what you do every day and be my eyes... just know that this time lives depend on it.”

You laughed at that – a watery laugh but a laugh all the same – and rubbed at your eyes once more before shaking your head. “You were making me feel better before you said that!”

“Ah, just delete it,” he said, waving a hand dismissively.

“You’re an idiot.”

“I know. An idiot without eyes. So get over here.”

He turned to walk down the stairs but jolted with a yelp when he felt you suddenly crash into him from behind, wrapping your arms around him and all but burying your face in his back. Your eyes were squeezed shut, so you didn’t see his look of shock turn to one of his soft smiles, the corners of his lips curving upwards as he reached an arm behind to grasp your jacket and pull you to his chest. He looped his arms around you and rested his chin on the top of your head, shutting his own eyes, though it made no difference. The blackness was still there.

“You know, you still have eyes,” you muttered quietly, rubbing at yours once again to ensure he didn’t hear you snivelling, “you just can’t see out of them.”

The Doctor scoffed. “Being snarky will get you nowhere in life.”

You smiled. “It got you pretty far.”

He jabbed two fingers in your side a couple times, keeping you against him even as you jerked. “Wild thing,” he mumbled to himself, lightly shaking his head, before he stopped and rubbed your back, leaning down again to press his lips to the top of your head. “Don’t get tears on this shirt. I bought it from a pink woman on a planet I can’t remember the name of and I doubt there’s another somewhere,” he whispered, and you stilled, wondering if you’d accidentally sniffled a little too loud. So much for hiding your tears. Though, really, you should have known the Doctor didn’t need his eyes to tell when something was up with you.

“Hey, uh- oh.” You flicked your eyes quickly to the door, seeing Bill’s head poking in. The Doctor turned his own head, not relenting in his hold on you. Bill pursed her lips, glancing between the both of you for a moment. “Sorry, but, uh, the Pope’s getting impatient, sooo…” She gritted her teeth in an awkward smile, shrugging.

“Yes, of course,” the Doctor said, and Bill nodded, ducking out of the door and shutting it behind her. You took in a deep breath and stepped away from him, rubbing your eyes and not protesting when the Time Lord grasped your hand and pulled you down the stairs with him. He stopped at the door and pushed up his glasses, fiddling with them a moment before sighing. “Ready, eyes?”

“Ready, idiot.” And you shoved the door open, leaving him to follow you out. He felt your presence by his side immediately as lights lit up inside his mind of the building’s predominant features, and as soon as he heard the voices of those around him, your arm looped around his, and you walked together.

And a sense of security shot through him. Him. Security. He had not felt it until the moment he’d felt you. And that was something.

After all, it was a big thing to be a thousand-year-old’s pair of eyes.

But to be a thousand-year-old’s pair of hearts…

That was something else.

Doctor Who Masterpost

#doctor who #12th doctor #twelfth doctor #doctor who x reader #doctor #doctor x reader #the doctor #the doctor x reader #12th doctor x reader #twelfth doctor x reader #bill potts #bill #potts #bill x reader #bill potts x reader #the doctor x bill #doctor x bill #reader fic #daughter!reader #daughter reader #doctor who fanfic #doctor who imagine #sonic sunglasses #mine

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 129

Despite the last couple weeks of work being profoundly exhausting (think 60 hours, easily), I am proud that I’ve been able to keep writing and stay ahead! I literally could not have done that without @baelpenrose, @charlylimph-blog, @the-raven-fae, and @anotherusrname. Y’all are my real-world rocks when everything gets crazy.

***Shameless Plug: @the-raven-fae has the first episode of the podcast up now! you can find it here!! ***

The other thing that has been keeping me going is each and every one of you who has found this story and binged it from start to finish as a speed-run. I can’t even name all of you at this point, but I want you all to know that I see it, and it makes me smile so hard my face hurts.

Now, who is ready for some Charly shenanigans?

A few days later, I had just enough time to sweep dinner off the table in my quarters before Charly unceremoniously dropped a long something in the midst of us with a dull thud.  Immediately, a rusty red cloud rose up and set us all into a fit of tears and coughing.

Out in the hallway, I was eventually able to convince my lungs to at least try to breathe long enough to wheeze out, “Geezus, Charly, what the hell was that?”

“Soooo….” Uh oh. “ItmayneedsomecalibrationthecloudwasntsupposedtobethatbigandIdidntmeanforittogooffbut - “

I shook my head and typed a quick message on my datapad. “Please breathe because right now I don’t think the rest of us can and I would love to know why.”

She stopped rushing out what I think were words long enough to read the message and try again. “Chili powder arrows. I think I need to recalibrate them, though, because it shouldn’t have gone off at less than one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, and there’s no way I set it down that hard.”

“Why?” I rasped, still swallowing as hard as I could and mentally begging Noah to bring us some water or a medical transport.

“Defensive measures,” she insisted. “Scent navigation is really common in the Galactic community, and so is sensitivity to capsaicin, so…”

“Makes sense,” Conor managed to get out as he tried to gasp for air. “Even Noah.”

“Bit much.” I pinched my fingers as closely as I could without touching - which was more difficult than expected considering that I was shaking.

Maverick was the first to get up off the floor of the corridor, just as the medical transport arrived.  He and Charly helped us on before distributing bottles of water to rinse our mouths and eyes. “It was… a good idea…” he panted once we were all seated. “Just… bit overkill…”

“The range of the cloud is only supposed to be five feet,” she insisted fretfully. “And I swear the pressure sensor is supposed to be calibrated to only go off if it’s fired from a bow or swung really, really hard.”

“Who...want...swing?”  I was honestly starting to get dizzy fighting my airways to breathe.

Once we arrived at a medbay, Charly helped a couple of Miys’ bodies get us out of the transport and lying down in berths. In a glitch-like transition, suddenly I could breathe easily and she was joined by Arthur and Coffey in sitting with us.

“Wait… when did… I’m so confused,” I admitted, my voice only slightly strained.

“Lethe field, apparently,” Arthur shrugged. “You didn’t want to be awake for that.”

Conor sat up and rubbed his sternum. “I remember chili pepper arrows - Charly, love, that was brilliant except the, you know, going off bit - and getting off the transport.”

“Respiratory lavage,” Charly winced. “You know, war crime if done incorrectly?”

I shuddered and nodded. “Yep. Didn’t want to be awake for that, thanks.  Glad I can’t remember, don’t ever want to, would rather remember the pepper bomb you set off. At point blank range?”

She snuggled further down in Coffey’s lap as he gently rubbed her scalp with his fingertips.  Arthur spoke in her defense, instead. “She’s sending the schematics to Zach and Derek to find out what went wrong.  Tactically, they were a brilliant idea - she’s right about the large amount of species who would react even worse than you did if hit with one.”

“I only inhale spices figuratively.  I would prefer not to do it literally - like, ever again.”

Maverick sat up and gave Charly a curious look. “You said they can be swung… Unless I saw something wrong, the arrow was only two feet long.  Who would want to swing something like that?”

Coffey and Arthur both held up gas masks and wiggled them. “Between my arm reach and the length of one of those, I could do it, no problem.”

“We aren’t all so fortunate,” Arthur intoned drily. “Plus, that doesn’t mean someone closer isn’t getting hit.”

Conor raised his hand politely before pointing out a potential flaw. “What if they have gas masks?”

“Noah has a topical reaction,” I answered, my mind racing. “And I assume we have other measures in the works?”

“Multiple types of sonic weaponry are being tested,” Coffey intoned with a nod. “Sub- and ultrasonics, infrasound, and just loud music.”

Still in full Devil’s Advocate mode, Conor persisted. “And if they are covered, head to toe, and none of that works?”

A deafening silence filled the medbay. The prospect of being forcibly boarded had only been a known issue for a week, and apparently this prospect hadn’t been covered yet in the defensive planning.

Finally, it was Maverick who spoke up. Had anyone else been talking, we couldn’t have heard him, but in the quiet his whisper echoed like a gunshot. “The interior hull is organic, not magnetic.”

“Mav, we know that. It doesn’t help us.” Conor’s voice was confused.

Arthur, however, looked like he had just seen a travesty occur in front him, unable to stop it. “You’re talking about blowing the airlocks.”

I scrambled to sit up, clawing at the blanket that covered my legs. “What!? Maverick, he’s wrong, right? You aren’t talking about that, right?”

“It makes logical sense,” Charly added, still laying her head against Coffey’s chest. “If someone boards the Ark by force, and they have enough gear that no amount of defense we mount even bothers them, they would be wearing enough gear to survive being blown into space.”

“And they can’t magnetize to the hull,” Maverick confirmed. “Maybe the outside, but not inside.”

“What about Noah?” I demanded. “They are a non-combatant.”

“Noah evolved in vacuum,” Charly pointed out.

“You’re talking a war strategy!” I nearly shouted. “What about Arthur? Coffey? Or Ivan? Are you seriously going to tell me they won’t be the first people charging to defend the Ark?” I pointed at the previously brandished gas masks with a damning glare.

“We are talking about a last-ditch defense to save as many people on this ship as possible,” she whispered.  “I don’t make the decisions, I just make the tools they are going to use. You know, you know I don’t want us to use any of this. And I plan to booby-trap everything within an inch of all our lives to keep us from having to use as much of it as possible.  Hence, arrows. As many kinds as I can make up.”

I started taking deep breaths, trying to calm down. At my heart of hearts, I knew she was sincere - Charly was almost as much of a pacifist as I was, at the end of the day. Even Arthur wasn’t necessarily a warmonger, just… uninhibited in what he defined as ‘the best defense is a good offense’.

Frustrated, I swung my legs over the side of the berth. “I need to go home. I want dinner, and a nap.  Probably a drink.”

Charly reached out and pushed my legs back on to the bed. “You’re under observation for another hour. Dry-drowning risk.”

I groaned and gave her a pleading look. “I’m hungry, and this isn’t my bed.  It’s honestly half the reason I’m in such a bad mood. You and Arthur probably make absolute perfect sense to less-sleepy, fed Sophia, but right now, not so much.”

“Your limey assistant is bringing a change of clothes, your sister, and some food,” Arthur smirked. “So you get to stay right there,  not die, and get some sleep.”

“But Mac…”

“Is at Derek and Sam’s, but very nice try,” he confessed.

“I wanna go home,” I grumbled sullenly.

Maverick nodded, and gulped down some water Charly handed him. “Did someone turn on the scrubbers in there yet?”

Conor and I turned wide eyes to him. The thought apparently never occurred to either of us. “Charly love,” Conor started hesitantly. “How much bigger was the cloud than you thought?”

“I’m not sure,” she confessed, sheepish. “It was pretty big.”

Rubbing my face briskly, I suppressed the urge to sob. “My blankets… the furniture… our clothes…”

“Else is working on it.”

I glanced at Coffey, confused. “Else is? They eat iron.”

Noah’s voice broke in from the ceiling. “Correction. When still a bacterium, Else fed on iron. However, as they have evolved, their needs have expanded to include a more diverse diet.”

“Are you telling me that there are faceless baby chickens flooding our quarters, eating the chili powder?”

“They do show a preference for foods more toxic to the general Galaxy.  We estimate that this is due to their origin within human beings, who share the same marked trait.”

“At least someone is appreciating my hard work,” Charly grumbled.

I strained to suppress a smile. “I’ll make you whatever you want for dinner, for a week, to make up for being ungrateful?”

“Maybe just tell Alistair it was an accident?  He gets upset when you almost die.”

“Both?”

“Both. Both is good.”

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#the miys #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #aliens #improvised weaponry #found family #apocalypse #earth is space australia #science fiction #original science fiction #post apocalypse #post post apocalypse #sci fi #original sci fi #original writing #my writing

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

The Great Gingerbread Phantom

(Donkey Kong marches through a pristine-looking building, the walls colored white, pink and red, while carrying a thin looking man with a bag on his head over his shoulder. DK pushes open a large set of double doors, revealing Peach sitting patiently at a fancy-looking desk. Ken and Daisy are standing on both sides of her, Ken with his arms crossed and Daisy brandishing a Home Run Bat. Both are clad in formal business wear. DK roughly drops the figure he’s carrying into a chair in front of Peach’s desk. Peach looks over to Ken and gestures towards the man. Ken walks over and removes the bag… revealing none other than Joker, slightly bruised but barely exhausted. He glances around the room for a second before turning to Peach and smirking.)

Joker: …Sup?

Peach: Good evening, Joker. Or may I call you Ren?

Joker: Well, you already abducted me, so I think politeness is out the window.

Peach: (chuckles darkly) They didn’t tell me you’d be funny. I guess the name makes sense now. But you’re right. I think we should skip the formalities and get right down to business. (she reaches into her desk and pulls out a folder. She pulls a picture out of the folder and shows it to Joker) Do you know what this is?

Joker: Umm… that appears to be a gingerbread house. The kind you’d make around Christmas.

Peach: Yes. It's my gingerbread house. A fixture of the Mansion Christmas party since Melee. Far exceeding any ordinary centerpiece, it is a fully sized structure, getting bigger and bigger each year, with every detail lovingly crafted by yours truly, with the finest ingredients gathered by Toads from across the Mushroom Kingdom. And with flavor that has become infamous… and that has made it a prime target for thieves such as yourself.

(she pulls several more photos. This one shows pseudo-mugshots of several of the kid Smashers prior to grounding, including Mega Man, Bowser Jr., Toon Link, Sonic, and Villager)

Peach: You see, the children’s access to this gingerbread is highly restricted. They’re enough of a handful without extreme amounts of sugar in their systems. So every year, I would keep the gingerbread under extremely heavy surveillance, and the offenders would be strictly punished to discourage further misbehavior. And for a while, it worked. Not a single team, no matter how coordinated, could steal the gingerbread… until three years ago.

(She grabs the rest of the photos and slams them down on the desk. They show several knocked out adult Smashers, including DK, Dark Samus, ROB, and Bowser, and a single empty photo with a crude outline of a house drawn on it)

Peach: It was my most intricate creation yet. Days, weeks, months of work down the drain. Not one of my guards can tell me what happened. As you can imagine, I was quite angry. This happened in 2018. Now tell me, Mr. Ren… do you think it’s a coincidence that the first successful gingerbread heist in Smash history happened the same year that you, an infamous Phantom Thief, moved into the mansion?

Joker: Oh, that’s why I’m here? Because I heard the League of Villains did that.

Peach: (chuckles) It’s funny you should mention that, because I confronted Wario over it, and he claimed that he had no knowledge of this heist.

Joker: Maybe he was lying.

(Peach stares at him for a second… and then starts laughing. After a couple seconds, Daisy, Ken and DK join in. Everyone in the room except Joker continues laughing… until Peach stands up, snatches the bat from Daisy’s hand, and slams it on her desk. The pictures scatter. The room goes quiet.)

Peach: I’m not an idiot, Ren. I had Mewtwo read his mind. He found no traces of anything related to gingerbread. (she moves from behind the desk and stands directly in front of Joker, close enough that he could feel her breath) I’m just gonna drop the bullshit right here, okay. I know what you did. And I hate being lied to. Almost as much as I hate punishing the kids. But someone has to keep order, or else things like this would happen everyday.

Joker: Yeah, real responsible of you to do that, but I’ve got a question. (he adjusts his glasses, casually revealing that he slipped out of the ropes on his hands in the process) Let’s just say, hypothetically, that I did do that thing three years ago. What would you do about it? One, it was three years ago, and you’d look like a fool accusing me without clear evidence. Two, I don’t live in the Mansion. I live with my mother and Ganondorf, completely out of your jurisdiction. How would you punish me?

Peach: …I literally just had Donkey Kong beat you up and drag you over here.

Joker: …Fair point. So, are we done here? Or did you have more in mind for me than this whole “scare em straight” thing?

Peach: Oh no… we have much more to discuss. We also know that you didn’t do it alone. Now, we know that you won’t give up your accomplices, but we have an alternative proposal in mind… we believe that they’re plotting to steal it again this year.

Joker: …It’s March. They’re planning the heist ten months in advance?

Peach: …Show him. (Daisy puts down a blueprint for an absolutely massive gingerbread house. Joker studies the document intensely) Beautiful, isn’t it? The first one I’ve made since that dreadful night. It’s at least half the size of my very own castle. So large that it requires ten months of construction just to have it ready for the holidays. It should be impossible to steal, but we also said that about the last one.

Joker: So, what? You want me to infiltrate the heist crew and rat them out? Because if you knew me, you’d know that that’s not happening.

Peach: No, Mr. Ren… (Ken hands her a suitcase. Peach opens it to reveal several stacks of cash, and a large bag of gingerbread) I want you to steal it again.

#I know it’s way too early for Christmas stuff but I saw the original story and couldn’t help myself #incorrect super smash bros #super smash bros #incorrect quotes #smahs bros #submission #Peach #Joker #Wario #Mewtwo #Donkey Kong #Super Mario #Persona #Wario Ware Inc #Pokemon #DK

[werewolf-cl4ws]

Sonsally Week 2021: Day 7 - Slip

Jumping ahead to my Time Skip AU again, though with this entry it has a little backstory.

I'm still on the fence about Kitty!Sonic actually discovering that his parents are alive so I'm not 100% sure if it'll happen for real, but this scenario has been in my head for YEARS and I just like the idea of this happening so I'm using this prompt as my excuse to type it out. I didn't really have a prior scene/scenario to use as a build up, so we're just diving right into it here.

Also for the moment I'm using the Sonic the Manga's names for Sonic's parents; no offense to Jules and Bernie or even Alena, but for Jules and Bernie I still keep flip-flopping over using those names because they belong to Him and I want none of that even though Ian made them awesome, and Alena... well... I'm working out some details on that too. Because nothing is ever simple for me.

“Actually, that was something that we wanted to talk to the two of you about,” Sally began, still apprehensive as she glanced at Sonic. There was a look of hesitation in his eyes as well, but when he gave Sally a subtle nod she felt some of her tension ease a little. “We think that Sonic is your son.”

A mixture of emotions crossed Brenda and Paulie’s faces, but the most prominent was outrage that seemed to overtake their expressions whenever anything else tried to come through. Brenda made to say something, her teeth gritting as she bite down on her words to get some level of control over them, but was stopped when Paulie placed his hand on her shoulder as he stepped forward.

“You can’t go saying things like that,” Paulie warned. “I don’t know what Brenda told you exactly, Sally, but there’s just... too much attached to that. It can’t be taken so lightly.”

“We ain’t takin’ this lightly,” Sonic sighed. “I didn’t think it at first either but you gotta admit, Brenda ‘nd me are pretty similar. Like how many hedgehogs do you know that can book it like we can?”

“Just me,” Brenda blurted. “There aren’t a lot of hedgehogs around like there used to be. And even then--"

Brenda’s voice trailed off slightly as a thought occurred to her, before confusion crossed her face.

“-- it was rare in my family. I was the first to have it in generations...”

She slipped a hand over her mouth as she tried to process everything, the earlier outrage now long gone. She glanced at Paulie briefly before stepping over to a corner of the room, where a small pile of knapsacks and bags were piled amongst their limited personal belongings. As Brenda rummaged through them Paulie turned back to Sonic and Sally, a deep frown on his face.

“There’s no way any of this can be possible,” Paulie pointed out. “When we lost our child he was barely a few weeks old, and the village was practically decimated, there was no way he could have lived through that or gotten away.”

Sonic shrugged, not really sure what to say. “That doesn’t make sense to me either, ‘cause I was raised in Mobotropolis by my Uncle Chuck. I don’t think I was ever anywhere else.”

Brenda’s head snapped up, startled, before she looked back at Paulie, who now had gone a shade lighter. When his legs began to falter Sally and Sonic were at his side instantly, Sonic catching the older hedgehog by his arm while Sally grabbed a nearby stool and brought it closer.

“Paulie? Are you all right?” Sally asked as Sonic helped him onto the stool, watching with concern as he all but collapsed right onto it.

Paulie hid his face in his hands for a moment, trying to compose himself, but Sally could see that his shoulders were shaking as he tried to keep his mind whirled. As he wrestled with his thoughts Brenda returned and kneeled down at his side, running a hand along his back, the motion making him pull his hands away from his face so he could look at her.

There was a moment of silence between the two of them, but even through that they seemed to be able to communicate what they were thinking loud and clear to each other, and they both realised that there might be some substance to what Sonic and Sally were saying.

“Did you say Chuck?” Paulie asked as he addressed Sonic once more, his voice sounding almost haunted. “As in Charles?”

Sonic blinked, then nodded.

“Yeah, he always told me to call him Chuck. But everyone else called him Charles,” Sonic confirmed.

A laugh slipped from Paulie’s lips, but it was humourless, and almost a little strained.

“... he used to hate it when I called him that,” Paulie murmured, rubbing a hand over his muzzle. His eyes shone as unshed tears began to well up. “I loved teasing him with it when we were younger, it used to wind him up so much.”

Next to him Brenda pulled Paulie close to her, squeezing him tightly as he rode through his emotions. From the corner of her eye Brenda noticed Sonic lower himself to the ground and tilt his head at them, watching them expectantly. Not far from him Sally was also watching them, though she kept her distance from the three hedgehogs, knowing that this was their moment and not wanting to intrude any further, despite being part of the discovery.

At this point Brenda wasn’t sure what she should do, as the pieces fitted together suddenly so well it was almost blindsiding her. As she comforted her husband Brenda glanced down at what she had dug out from her belongings, then handed it to Sonic wordlessly.

“What’s this?” Sonic asked as he took it, at first thinking it was a piece of paper.

But when he flipped it over he realised it was a photograph, one that had gone through some wear and tear over the years as pieces of it were stuck together with yellowing tape, while the edges were starting to look frayed from frequent handling.

The photo itself, however, was still pretty clear, considering how old it was. It showed three hedgehogs, two of them Sonic recognising as Brenda and Paulie despite being younger in the photo, and the third being Uncle Chuck, also younger compared to how Sonic remembered him, but still easy to pick out.

“That’s Uncle Chuck!” Sonic gasped, a mixture of joy and longing hitting him all at once the second he spotted his uncle. As he looked the photo over some more Sonic also spotted a small baby swathed in cloth and cradled in Brenda’s arms. Even with the hedgehog wrapped so snuggly, Sonic could see familiar blue quills poking out from the bundle.

“’nd that’s me, isn’t it?”

“It is you,” Brenda breathed, her lips trembling now. She had given Sonic the photo to see if he would recognise Charles, and seeing his genuine reaction to the photo now confirmed what Sonic and Sally had guessed. “It is you, I can’t believe it!”

Before anyone could react Brenda practically launched herself at Sonic and pulled him into a fierce bear hug, her grip so tight that Sonic could barely move even with his own strength.

“You’re alive!” Brenda cried, giving Sonic another squeeze. “Paulie, Nicky is alive!”

Sonic stiffened suddenly, and Sally watched as a pained expression cut through his face.

“Sonic? Are you okay?” Sally asked, a little taken aback by the sudden change in his demeanour.

From his seat Paulie had been watching Brenda as she almost tackled Sonic in her excitement, wanting to give her a chance to embrace their long lost son before he joined in. Because of this he too had seen the sudden change in Sonic, and at first he thought that his wife had somehow hurt the hedgehog in her excitement. After a moment though he winced himself, and gave Sonic a sympathetic look.

“Ah, she didn’t know, did she?” Paulie asked, causing Brenda to finally pull away from Sonic to figure out what was going on.

Once Sonic was free from Brenda’s grip he hid his face in his hands, and flopped back onto his rump as he sighed, the sound almost pained.

“No. No, she didn’t,” Sonic muttered as he shook his head, his voice a little muffled as his ears folded back in embarrassment.

“Didn’t know what?” Sally asked, confused now as all three hedgehogs had switched from heartfelt joy to sudden awkwardness so fast that even she couldn’t keep up.

She thought about what was happening at that moment, still caught up by the fact that the three had managed to piece together that they were family, so it took her a moment to pick out what was now making Sonic look like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole.

Then something clicked in Sally’s head, and at first she dismissed it, but then it hit her a little harder, and stunned realisation flashed through her.

“Wait? Nicky?” Sally repeated, her eyes widening as Sonic flinched like he had been struck. “Did you say Nicky?”

“It sounds worse comin’ outta you,” Sonic groaned, curling into himself almost into a ball.

Sally stared at Sonic, now torn between wanting to be happy for him, and wanting to interrogate him about the bombshell that had just been dropped on her. Sally had known Sonic almost her entire life, and it had never, ever occurred to her with even the slightest of possibilities that he would have had any other name other than Sonic. And even though now it made sense, as Sonic’s parents would have not known if Sonic had possessed his speed until he was a bit older, the more she took in this new fact, the more Sally’s mind seemed to want to twist into itself. So much so that she continued staring at Sonic in stunned silence.

Paulie meanwhile was snickering quietly into his hand, his earlier tension now gone.

“You really are fast, Brenda. Two seconds into finding our son and you’ve already embarrassed him,” Paulie laughed, barely flinching as Brenda playfully smacked at him.

“I thought she knew! And I’m allowed, I missed out on embarrassing him, so I’ve got some making up to do!” Brenda chided.

“Okay, I’m out,” Sonic remarked, standing now and giving everyone in the room a short, sweeping wave before he turned to leave. “This has been great, ‘nd I enjoyed havin’ real parents for all o’ ten seconds. But I’m gonna now go run through the desert ‘til I die.”

“Sonic!” Sally snapped, but it did nothing to stop Sonic from leaving.

“You’ll run out of desert before that happens, hon. I’ve tried,” Brenda called after Sonic, drawing more laughter from Paulie.

“Thanks, Brenda. I’ll figure it out,” Sonic called back as he left.

“Call me mom before you go die, Nicky!” Brenda stated, only to receive an indignant groan that escalated into a yell from Sonic, which just made her grin broadly.

“Oh this is amazing! I love this so much!” Brenda laughed as she faced Sally, now grinning from ear to ear.

Sally blinked at her, then shook her head a bit, half amused and half reeling still at everything that just transpired.

“Yeah, you’re absolutely his mom,” Sally sighed.

#boundforfreedom #sonsally week #sonsal #SatAMAU #sonic the hedgehog #sally acorn #fic #SatAM-TimeSkipAU

[solalunar-eclipse]

Scars You Can’t See - Chapter 7

Chapter title: Exhaustion

Word count: about 3300 words

Author’s Note: Thank you all for being so patient with me during the months this fic was on hiatus...but thankfully, the wait is over! I hope you all enjoy!

No warnings for this chapter, though it is pretty dark.

First | Previous | Next

...

The team had been working nonstop through the past several days, spending hours upon hours at different libraries throughout Westopolis and the surrounding areas. They never used the same one twice, so they couldn’t be traced. Hopefully.

Loading the full video and an explanation onto the three different USB drives they had bought took up most of that time, since it required a lot of formatting and download time and they couldn’t stay in any one place for too long. Rouge was the most talented with technology from her hacking experience, but slow Internet connections were something even she couldn’t work around.

Shadow really wanted to be a major part of the process, but his struggles with the video itself had posed serious issues for his involvement. While he had eventually been able to view the other part of the film, he’d still had a strong reaction and then needed an hour to decompress afterwards, all while feeling frustrated at (in his words) his “lack of self-control”.

Rouge and Omega were strongly opposed to that wording, since it suggested that his trauma- because it was trauma, despite his arguments- was something that he could control.

In the end, Shadow was often forced to take a backseat during much of the work, or else his mental state would be a mess throughout the rest of the day. He still helped out in any way possible, though, even if it was something as simple as going out to buy food to keep Rouge’s strength up.

Today was the final day. Team Dark was fully prepared to make a post on three of their main social media pages, and all three envelopes with the USB drives inside had been mailed out (under the false cover of being simple job application letters). They were headed to three different media organizations, which- while not necessarily mainstream- were at least somewhat reputable and sympathetic to their current cause.

While it was still unlikely that the general public opinion would change after this information release, there would hopefully be enough supporters for this to mean something.

At exactly 12:00 p.m. on Oceanic Standard Time, ten days after Team Dark had stolen their original files and fled capture by G.U.N., the videos were released out into the world for everyone to see.

At 12:01 p.m., OST, as the team watched from a public computer, the Internet basically exploded.

All three of the team’s accounts were flooded within seconds, ablaze with accusations, conspiracy theories, and more. The best were the expressions of sympathy and support, though. Those boosted the general mood in the room while providing the three with enough bravery to actually write back to a few people.

There were a few particularly vocal supporters who the team members recognized right away… it seemed that the members of Team Sonic had grown tired of sitting around while their friends put their lives on the line and were now channeling all of their frustration into their keyboards. The team’s morale only rose higher. (However, considering the depths they had been in before, this mainly meant that they seemed almost normal again.)

Through it all, G.U.N. remained silent.

The team decided not to stay at the computer for long- the organization was always watching and probably had some of their best hackers on the case already. Shadow grabbed a couple of books before they left, but none of them really even had the energy to read at this point. They’d spent so many late nights going over and over the wording of everything they would say and every move that they would make, and the replies they’d given just now were carefully considered by all three of them as well.

As soon as they made it back to the hotel, Omega whipped out his charging cord and shoved it into an outlet, and Shadow fell face-down onto the bed. “Oh chaos. Oh chaos we’re really in it now, aren’t we.”

Rouge sighed, sinking into a chair and massaging her brow. “Yes, we are. It's worth it, though.”

“I know.” Shadow muttered into the bedspread. “It’s just…” he trailed off, uncertain as to how to express his thoughts.

“...exhausting.” Rouge finished his sentence for him. “It’s tiring to work so hard on something, all the time.”

The hedgehog pointed a gloved finger at her briefly, before letting his hand fall back onto the mattress. “That sums it up perfectly.”

They lay there for awhile, just allowing themselves to rest after the frenzy of the past few days.

Eventually, though, Shadow forced himself to sit up. “So what are we doing next?” he asked, a frown set low over his eyes.

Rouge got to her feet, exhaustion weighing down her movements. “I think we should probably take a couple of days before we do anything else, hon. That was a lot of work.”

“I know,” Shadow said quickly, looking down at the mint-green sheets of the bed. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you weren’t working hard, I just-”

“I didn’t think you were.” she said gently. “I know you want to stop them as soon as possible, and so do I. But...we’re not in any shape to do much like this- being tired always makes people sloppy.”

Rouge smirked faintly. “I learned that one the hard way.” she mused, recalling a particular heist that she’d tried to pull off after going 48 hours without sleep. It had not ended well, to say the least. 

“I’m gonna head down to that restaurant we looked at earlier. I need food.” the bat muttered quietly. Omega gave her a thumbs-up as she walked out the door.

Rouge wandered through the town, looking around. She saw so many different people, all of them going about their ordinary lives, and reminded herself that soon enough, the world would be just a little bit safer for them to enjoy. This raised her spirits, if only slightly. Just enough that she felt like being a little more friendly to the (likely overworked and underpaid) workers in the restaurant than usual.

In fact, she suspected that recently when she had gone out to eat, she’d come off as almost as sulky as Shadow- constant work and paranoia really took it out of a person. Today, though, her work was temporarily finished, and she could take a deep breath with, if not relaxation, then at least a certain amount of freedom.

Rouge got her food quickly, but with a (perhaps a little too) bright smile and a cheerful wave. 

She left a sizable tip in the glass jar out front, all the while trying to ignore a little voice inside her head that whispered you should give that money to others, you won’t be needing it for much longer…

The bat hated trying to imagine just what G.U.N. was capable of, as well as the potential consequences of their actions. That was exactly why she spent the rest of the day relaxing in her room with Shadow and Omega, mostly reading or playing board games with them. As nice as it was to be able to relax and not obsess over sentences and file formats, they all missed being able to go about their ordinary lives, instead of having to control their every move in order to stay alive. She could feel it in the atmosphere of the room. 

Out of nowhere, Rouge felt the sudden fervent hope that Shadow’s motorbike and Omega’s weapons collection would be okay. She had seen the occasional picture of Club Rouge during her time spent working, and it was all cordoned off and dark and sad...she had made a lot of fond memories there. 

Whether or not some of those memories were of kicking particularly irritating patrons to the curb when their behavior went too far was entirely nobody else’s business.

Rouge hoped for another day or two like this before they had to do any more work- they needed it if they were going to succeed. Shadow had dark rings under his eyes and this was Omega’s first day in over a week where he hadn’t gotten a “power low” warning. If they tried to pull off the kind of heist she had in mind like this, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

The next morning, however, it became clear that Team Dark wouldn’t get that kind of luxury until their work was completely finished.

Allowing herself one quick yawn as she strolled downstairs (given that her fangs could appear quite menacing to those without them), Rouge traced a familiar path to the hotel’s breakfast buffet, planning to fill the gaping void that was currently her stomach.

Her shoes clicked across the tiled floor, irritating her tired ears, and the too-bright lights didn’t do anything to help her overworked senses. She seriously considered just going back upstairs and hiding under the covers for another hour or two, but the smell of pancakes and ripe fruit dragged her over to the long table that held the complementary food from the hotel. 

Filling her paper plate, Rouge began to think again about G.U.N. and the various...unsavory tactics she’d seen them use over the years. Often enough, the soldiers in particular were not above frightening or intimidating those groups of people they saw as ‘threats’ while simultaneously politely cooperating with those that didn’t. While she did her best to distance herself from those kinds of people, filing a complaint would only get you a reprimand or even a hint that you might be fired. No real action was ever taken against those who had joined the force to hurt instead of protect.

She had seen, though, that the commander was definitely trying to make the organization a better place- the raid on Space Colony ARK had clearly left an impression- but that didn’t mean he was succeeding. Over fifty years of brutality, violence, machismo and deceit were not so easily rooted out, not even if the person trying to create change was at the very top. The bat had seen a few too many people being beaten mercilessly by a soldier long after they’d shouted their surrender to think that G.U.N. was all good. Indeed, fighting first and asking questions later was ingrained in the very foundation of the organization.

But whenever Rouge’s mind went down these pathways, there was one thought that always rose above the rest…

While she may have seen what they did, Shadow had lived it.

Rouge sighed, trying to control her violent emotions that always appeared regarding that particular event, and took another pancake. The poor hedgehog had dealt with so much already, and now this...she truly felt for him. They were constantly on the run, always trying to stay ahead of the entire military organization, and despite his status as the ‘Ultimate Lifeform’, she knew that he was struggling. Shadow would insist otherwise, of course, trying to carry the world on his shoulders as he so often did.

She knew better, though.

Rouge glanced upwards to get another look out the window, the general paranoia that came with being a spy too deeply ingrained in her body to ever fade. There were plenty of times when it was just a nuisance, if not embarrassing, but right now those reflexes came in handy.

That was when she saw the five G.U.N. agents talking to the receptionist out front.

She took a deep breath, standing very still at the table. Panic would not help her now. Rouge took two very deliberate, very slow steps to the side, obscuring herself behind a helpfully placed tiered food display. 

The bat caught a snippet of conversation. One of the agents was talking to the man at the front desk, asking, “Have you seen someone matching any of these three descriptions?”

The receptionist frowned, leaning in closer to study the photos, and Rouge decided it was about time to get out of there.

She put her plate down slowly, and then walked purposefully but calmly back to the stairs. Once she was sure that they couldn’t see her any longer, she beat her wings and began to fly up the stairwell as quickly as possible.

Once she got into their room, she slammed the door shut, catching Omega’s attention from where he had been constructing a paper-clip chain. Rouge allowed herself two deep breaths before rushing over to the bed and shaking Shadow’s shoulder with surprising gentleness.

“What do you want?” he mumbled, his eyes only half open.

The bat beat down another wave of nostalgia for relaxing weekend mornings (focus, Rouge, your lives depend on it!) and instead gave him a sad smile.

“They’ve found us.” she said, shattering her teammates’ relative peace in an instant.

Shadow practically catapulted himself out of bed. “G.U.N.? What? When?”

“Yes, five agents, and just now.” Rouge said, beginning to pack up their few belongings.

“What shall we do?” Omega asked, an almost staticky tone creeping into his voice. It had the effect of making him sound rather more dangerous than usual, which was probably intentional. “I would be happy to burn this building to the ground. Just say the word,” he said, revving up his flamethrower.

“No burning.” Rouge said, and it was evident just how used to Omega’s antics she was that this statement was delivered in a completely calm tone of voice. “Here’s what I’m thinking. We split up- there’s only so many of them there. We’ll get out of here any way we know how. Meet up at 9:30 outside that waterskiing shop. Got it?”

“Yes.” Omega and Shadow said simultaneously.

“Alright, good. Omega, take the suitcases. Let’s go.”

She threw herself out the window as Shadow teleported the robot down into a nearby alleyway before vanishing again. Her wings folded tightly against her back as she shot down the side of the building, her fingers nearly skimming across the steel and glass. Rouge forced herself to trust in her wings, snapping them out at the absolute last moment before she could hit the ground and hoping that nobody in any of the rooms had seen much more than a red-and-black blur.

She almost laughed to herself- that used to be Shadow.

Laughing wasn’t something any of them did much anymore.

She stalked through a dark alleyway before rushing down a couple of blocks, trying to get as far away from the hotel as she could on foot without being too suspicious. By now, G.U.N. would have realized that the team did not look like they used to, which would make it a lot more difficult to escape their notice.

Rouge spotted Shadow moving quickly several blocks down, and made an immediate left to stay away from him. There was still over an hour until their rendezvous time, and until then it was best to stay away from one another. A hedgehog and a bat together would only draw the organization’s attention. 

Rouge forced her legs to take one step in front of the other- she had to stay moving. The bat was...a little too used to pushing through exhaustion when simple survival was her only goal. Memories of having to hide after heists, constantly walking to nowhere just to stay away from the police surfaced vaguely in the back of her mind. Rouge was still tired from nights of obsessing and writing and rewriting with Shadow and Omega, and this new stressor wasn’t helping at all, forcing her back into the same introspective cloud that always surrounded her whenever important things started happening.

Yet at the same time, she couldn’t bring herself to feel afraid of what could happen should she get captured. It was almost as though she wasn’t truly awake. She was worried for the rest of the team, it was true, but they were all already in such deep trouble that it almost felt as though she’d maxed out on stress.

As she walked, Rouge wanted to feel something more, some sense of a higher purpose to keep her inspired…

...but when it got down to the basics, change wasn’t always glamorous court battles or powerful arguments delivered to roaring crowds. Sometimes you just had to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until finally someone took notice and listened to what you had to say. It was tiny steps, day by day, almost like trying to grind down a mountain with a single stone. Despite being part of the catalyst, she couldn’t see any of the effects from here.

Was anything even changing? Rouge didn’t know.

She shook her head, trying once again to bury these thoughts in the back of her mind. This was just like a mission. Do the task, then think about the bigger picture afterwards.

The bat briefly wondered if this mentality was why the organization had gone downhill before forcing herself to focus. Right now, she needed to use her instincts. That was all.

…

After an hour, during which she had to hide behind a dumpster (in other circumstances, she would have laughed and called it cliche) to evade G.U.N. pursuit, she met up with the other two at the waterskiing store. Thankfully, Omega had managed to acquire a new car- their old one would have to be left back at the hotel and become more collateral damage, as much as they all wished otherwise.

They’d really liked that car.

Rouge and Shadow piled in, and the bat could only feel relief that Omega didn’t really get tired like they did, so at least there was low danger of someone falling asleep at the wheel. 

“We’re in the final stages now,” Rouge said encouragingly, trying to keep up morale. “Just this last heist to get more dirt on G.U.N., and then we’re free to do as we please…”

Shadow sighed. “I hope.”

“Perhaps…” Omega said cautiously, “...G.U.N. will get so busy with lawsuits that they will cease pursuing us after that. Their public image is...somewhat important.”

He didn’t sound like he believed his own words, though.

Rouge, feeling tired, had to practically beat her nagging thoughts off with a stick by this point. What if they never stop, the voice whispered. What if they just keep coming and coming until you give up because you’re just so tired of running-

“Rouge.” Shadow said quietly. “Are you doing the overthinking thing again?”

“What, hon?” she asked, feeling underequipped to have any conversation, let alone one about herself.

“The thing.” Omega called from the front seat. “Where you insist upon shouldering all of the burden simply because you’re the self-appointed team leader. That is not allowed in this car. At all.”

The bat smiled faintly. Even after all this work and exhaustion, they were still worrying about her. That kind of thoughtfulness was enough to relax her a little, and she leaned on Shadow’s shoulder.

“Let’s talk about stupid stuff for a little while.” she said firmly. “We should talk about something like, like- when we went to that one restaurant and Shadow ate like three bowls of their five-alarm chili in twenty minutes and won that T-shirt.”

Shadow smirked briefly. “It didn’t hurt at all and Sonic and Knuckles yelled at me for being a cheater. Having specially bioengineered taste buds has its perks.”

They reminisced about the good times, all three trying to keep the mood light and not discuss the elephant in the room (or car, as it were)- which was of course when they might be able to do that sort of fun thing again.

And then they were on the highway, and headed to what was hopefully the last place G.U.N. would ever expect them to be.

Central City.

#team dark #shadow the hedgehog #rouge the bat #e 123 omega #scars you can't see #sycs #as always i hope the characterization is good! #interestingly enough this fic has changed a lot since its creation #originally it was intended to be a fun action/adventure sort of thing #but now it's very different #much darker and more sad #it...could probably even be called a vent fic #at a stretch #this chapter in particular showcases that part of it #there'll be more action soon though #thanks for reading! #sol’s fanfiction