#like capture the flag or defend a point... that sort of thing

[pm-fmp]

Game References Part 2

I would like to add some more references from other games. These all have certain elements/features or mechanics that I love and would like to reference when coming up with my own idea

Endless Space 2 (faction lore, 4x elements, music)

Endless space 2 is one of my favourite 4x turn based strategy game's. One of the main reasons for this is the interesting factions and their unique gameplay mechanics. For example, one of the factions is called "Horatio" which is all about a an exceedingly rich eccentric trillionaire who proclaimed himself emperor and started cloning himself, until he built an army of clones which he aims to conquer the galaxy with "beatifying" it by creating more Horatio. The faction has a unique mechanic of splicing other alien species DNA into their own for bonuses.

Another interesting faction are the Cravers, which eat through the planets they occupy and enslave their species giving large production bonuses but eventually the planet is devoured granting very few bonuses.

Lastly, another faction I like is the Umbral Choir which is a stealth based faction, which has it's own unique gameplay mechanics as well, focused on stealth and plays totally differently from the other factions. One of these mechanics is that instead of settling on planets, they settle on hidden sanctuaries around the planet. Another faction may conquer said planet without seeing that there exists a sanctuary on it and using their resources.

These diverse ideas are great for my RTS game, which should also have factions with interesting lore that play differently from each other and have their own unique mechanics.

There are a few other elements of Endless Space 2 that may prove useful as well. Such as the resource system (having control of certain resources enables you to build things you otherwise would not be able to). Another cool element of this game is the soundtrack, each faction has their own unique theme and this gives the game a very nice touch of polish. It also makes each faction more immersive and unique adding to the user-experience.

Dawn of war 40k (campaign), map capture points, factions

The Warhammer universe has always been one of my favourites. Everything from the lore/factions to the concept art is fantastic. Within this universe there is an RTS series called Warhammer 40k Dawn of War, which had a few expansion packs come out (Dark crusade being my favourite one).

One of the amazing features of this expansion was the campaign. Instead of having some sort of mission list, the player picks a faction and then enters a large turn based map with territories to attack. Depending on which territories the player holds, he/she will attain certain bonuses to his army. The goal is to capture the whole map and defeat the other factions. Attacking a factions home-territory is a unique and difficult battle, similar to a boss battle in other games.

Furthermore, the following video by Stardock Games talks about this style of campaign in RTS games and explains why they're so compelling:

As well as this, I think the way the skirmish games work also provides good reference for my own. Each map is divided into zones and to take over a zone you have to capture a capture point (flag) in the middle. You can then build an outpost there with turrets to further fortify and defend that zone. This mechanic could be one that I may also incorporate into my own game.

The last element of this game that provides important reference are the factions. The Warhammer universe has very interesting and unique factions that many video games and movies take reference from. For example, there is a faction called the Necrons which are ancient machines that can come back to life when killed and their building designs are inspired by ancient Egyptian megalithic structures.

Majesty 2 (Mechanics)

Majesty 2 is another game I would like to use for reference for one very special reason. In this game you don't actually control your units, rather you act as a governor and are only in control of building buildings. "Heroes" then go to these buildings to buy potions (which you get money from) and so on. To then utilise these heroes in order to do something, you set a quest up for them to "slay this monster" or "scout this area of the map". Some heroes who are looking for adventure or riches will accept this quest and then progress through it.

I find this mechanic very unique, and perhaps one of my factions could play this way. It would certainly make my game stand out more from the crowd.

References

Dead Sun. (2023). Endless Lore: Who are the Horatio? (Humans Pt.2) [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1TEv0II9z4 [Accessed 09th April 2024]

Endless Space 2. (2017). Amplitude Studios. Paris, France: Sega.

Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. (2009). 1C:Ino-Co. Moscow, Russia: Paradox Interactive.

Pangolin Advisor. (2019). Endless Space 2 Penumbra - Umbral Choir guide [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMu5WXMWC2k [Accessed 09th April 2024]

Stardock Games. (2020). Meta Map Campaigns | Strategy Game Visions Episode 8 [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=11diZ63ES_g [Accessed 09th April 2024]

ThunderPsyker. (2016). Retrospective Review - Dawn of War: Dark Crusade [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKXxc7uVDLc [Accessed 09th April 2024]

Troidy Gaming. (2017). Majesty 2 Review - ICYMI [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsujywRapx0 [Accessed 09th April 2024]

Waervyn's World. (2018). Endless Space 2 - Introduction to Cravers [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGS5T9vT_E [Accessed 09th April 2024]

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade. (2006). Relic Entertainment. Vancouver, Canada: THQ.

#Youtube

[taibhsearachd]

Sometimes MMOs are fucking great actually.

#world of warcraft #video james #context: [What A Long Strange Trip It's Been] is a meta achievement #that requires you to complete MULTIPLE achievements for each major holiday #so it takes a year to get in itself #but usually much longer than a year BECAUSE of this [School of Hard Knocks] achievement #which occurs during Children's Week #(other holidays are multiple weeks long btw this one is a week) #and requires you to take the orphan you're babysitting into four different PVP battlegrounds #and achieve an objective in each of these battlegrounds #like capture the flag or defend a point... that sort of thing #WHILE everyone else is also trying to complete that objective so they can get the achievement #and while the other team is trying to murder you bc it's PVP of course they are #so one week a year many people are doing battlegrounds while not actively trying to win the battle? #bc their major goal is to get that damn achievement #many of these people don't even pvp the rest of the year they're just going for this achievement #no person in their right mind would go into a bg during Children's Week looking for a normal bg experience #but EVERY TIME there's at least one person in a battleground shrieking about how their team isn't playing to win #they could literally take one week off playing battlegrounds and never have to deal with this #but no #they actively choose to enter battlegrounds and allow this to somehow ruin their day I GUESS #...anyway I'm delighted that I pulled off this achievement after four years in WoW #AND managed to absolutely enrage one of those people at the same time #it would have been satisfying anyway but my god this elevated it to a whole other level

[cogentranting]

This may be an unpopular opinion but I think the Ayo and the Dora mishandled the situation at the safe house. And Ayo’s fractured relationship with Bucky is not wholly justified. 

Should Bucky have broken Zemo out? Debatable. It’s not black and white. Bucky viewed it as necessary in order to stop what was happening with the Flag Smashers and with a Hydra remnant creating super soldier serum (that’s what Nagel was) for a crime lord (the Power Broker). Sam wasn’t thrilled with the idea but he’s gone along with it so he must believe it’s necessary too. And they’ve gotten as far as they have because of the information that Zemo has provided. They have needed him. 

Is it still a breach of trust between Bucky and the Wakandans/Ayo and a betrayal of sorts? Yes. I understand why they’re angry and trying to put a stop to it. I don’t blame them for that at all. 

However, Bucky and Sam were never going to let Zemo go free. It’s not explicitly stated (that I can recall) that they were going to put him back in jail when they were done using him, but I think the reason it didn’t get stated was because it’s obvious and doesn’t need to be. Do the Dora still have reason to be mad? Sure. But Bucky pulling Zemo out to help with this mission before returning him to prison, is not the unforgiveable insult to Ayo and the Wakandans that some make it out to be. The thing is, that’s not the last straw for Ayo. 

When Ayo and the Dora show up to get Zemo, it is not Sam and Bucky who cause that fight. It is everyone but them. Sam tries to get Walker to stand down and I think, if he couldn’t convince the Dora to let them keep Zemo a little longer, he probably would have handed them over rather than fight them. Same with Bucky. 

Then Walker escalates the situation. And he rightfully, gets a beat down. But here’s the thing. The Dora don’t seem like they were stopping. Sam and Bucky are initially content to watch it all happen. They don’t mind seeing Walker get put in his place a little, but then they feel the need to intervene. The Dora have Walker and Lemar outclassed by a mile. They could have stopped once they had them down, but they keep pressing forward. It’s then that Bucky and Sam feel the need to step in. Ayo has a spear pointed at Walker’s face and is pulling back to drive it forward when Bucky grabs it. It kinda looks like she might have been willing to kill him, but I’m not willing to commit to that interpretation because that seems really extreme. But it certainly looks like she’s going in to stab him. There’s a very similar moment with Lemar and the Dora fighting him when Sam jumps in. Keep in mind that at this point in the story, Walker hasn’t really done anything yet (not to the Dora at least). Enough to maybe deserve a bit of a beat down, but not to warrant being stabbed when they’re clearly beaten. 

When Bucky and Sam step in, they’re not defending Zemo, or even trying to keep him away from the Dora. All they’re trying to do is deescalate the situation back from a physical fight that is quickly getting out of hand between two groups that are theoretically allies in this situation, back to a conversation. But then Ayo and the Dora turn on Sam and Bucky. Fighting Ayo, Bucky is pretty much entirely defensive. He’s not really throwing any punches, he’s mainly just grabbing at the spear to keep it out of play. the only time he even uses the vibranium arm is to block the spear. Bucky is not the one who wants to fight there. And that’s when Ayo makes her move and sort of disowns Bucky. She removes his Wakandan made arm and calls him James instead of White Wolf, indicating that she’s done with him or rejecting him in some way. 

If she had reached that point because of Bucky freeing Zemo, I might say she was justified. But freeing Zemo wasn’t the last straw. It was stepping in and standing up to Ayo in a moment where she was the one in the wrong. So it seems less that Bucky has done something so bad that she can’t forgive it, and more that in the heat of the moment Ayo was so angry that lashed out at him for getting in her way. 

And, maybe most notably, it is the Dora’s escalation that allows Zemo to escape. When Bucky and Sam have to fight the Dora, that is when Zemo has the opportunity to get away. Up until that point, Sam and Bucky had done a pretty good job keeping Zemo on a leash (in Madripoor he had a few opportunities to escape but had enough incentive to stay. In this episode they’re keeping closer watch over him, and even when he does run, it’s more from the Dora than Sam and Bucky). 

And I get why this happened. I’m not trying to make this out to be “Ayo’s awful for the way she treated Bucky and the Dora are just as bad as ____________”. That’s not what I think and not my point. The Dora I think are overly aggressive because Zemo’s capture is deeply personal to them because of what happened to T’Chaka. Ayo said as much in her first conversation with Bucky. But it means they’re on edge and they’re angry. And I think they messed up because of it and caused the very thing they were trying to prevent. 

Bucky’s not blameless in this but neither are Ayo and the Dora. And what you have with Bucky and Ayo is two people who have some level of trust and respect between them, who are both trying to do what they believe in, both making questionable decisions, and both coming into conflict because of it.

#tfatws #ayo #bucky barnes #long post #tfatws meta #cogent metas

[thegoodgayshit]

Luz’s mother really doesn’t want to send Luz to camp. She knows once she leaves, there is no going back. But Luz has a knack for getting into trouble, and one day she stumbles into the same type of people her mother would have preferred she avoided. After helping Luz dissolve her high school bully into dust, Eda and Lilith know right away that this kid is just like them - a child of the gods. So Luz hops on a Pegasus and heads to Camp Half-blood, where she embarks on a dangerous quest that makes her both friends and enemies... and she might even save Olympus along the way.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Amity Get’s in Touch with her Ares Side

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Amity said quietly, watching Luz carefully from next to her by the holographic table.

Luz had probably zoned out again, staring at the map of Mt. Elbert with a frown on her face. She was trying not to worry her friends, but the more she thought about her conversation with Alador Blight, the more worried she got.

What did he mean by her dad was looking out for her? She hadn’t heard a word from him her entire life. How could he be watching her? And what was this whole “balance of the world” thing? The paper Alador had given her was still sitting in her pocket, and she could picture the little map he’d drawn without needing to look.

The fire made no sense. Hestia was the goddess of the hearth and home. Why would Belos need Hestia’s hearth to open the portal? Why not a god-like Hephaestus, whose fire was used to create and destroy? It just didn’t make any sense.

Luz knew she was onto something, she had a gut feeling she was on the right track, but she’d hit a roadblock in her thinking, and couldn’t shake the feeling she was missing something big.

Now, as she zoned back into reality, she noticed that her friends were watching her with a worried expression. She had told them about most of the conversation with Alador, (leaving out the little part where she’d asked out her dad, it wasn’t like it mattered anyway) and Amity had listened quietly while worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

That had surprised Luz, she would think that it was good she and Amity’s dad had a relatively good interaction. Anything was better than talking to Odalia Blight again. She’d ask Amity later about it.

Now, though, she had to worry about acting as normal as possible. She didn’t need to unload her spiraling brain on her friends.

“I’m alright,” Luz insisted, and carefully reached under the table, taking Amity’s hand gently and squeezing it. The action itself was bold, and Luz didn’t know how she’d gotten the course to do it, but judging by the heavy blush that built its way up Amity’s face she hadn’t seemed to mind.

“Ok,” she responded after a moment, swallowing hard. “I just… my parents aren’t the easiest people to deal with. You’re sure things with my father went fine?”

Luz nodded, tossing Amity a little half-smile. “Yeah, I think they did. I don’t know what I did to deserve it… but I think your dad likes me.”

The little giggle that came out of Amity’s mouth made Luz’s stomach do flip flops. She wondered if she’d accidentally drank milk instead of apple juice with her dinner.

She had no idea how long she’d been standing there smiling, (and probably looking like an idiot while it happened) but it was long enough that Willow awkwardly cleared her throat and put her arm around Gus’s shoulders, who was so enamored by the war table he hadn’t really been paying attention.

“Right, then if you’re all good, Gus and I should go get our stuff packed, especially since we’re planning to leave bright and early.”

“We should?” Gus said, looking up at Willow with a furrowed brow. Willow elbowed him, and he yelped, clutching his arm. “Ow! Okay fine, let’s go pack.”

The two quickly shuffled out of the room, leaving Amity and Luz standing there awkwardly. Luz pressed her hands against the war table, fixating her eyes on the holographic Mt. Elbert. She could hear Amity shuffling her feet beside her.  

It’s not like Luz was feeling awkward around Amity, because she wasn’t. She had nothing to feel awkward about. All things considered, she and Amity were in a really good place. They were closer than they ever had been, a real team, and had gotten closer in more ways than one.

So why was Luz feeling so awkward?

Amity eventually cleared her throat, and Luz made the mistake of looking up at her. She watched Amity pull back a strand of hair behind her ear, and Luz watched, unable to tear her eyes away. Eventually, she met Amity’s eyes and saw that her face had pinked.

Luz looked away quickly, her own blush forming at being caught staring.

“So, your dad is not what I expected,” Luz said quickly, and when she looked up again she saw that Amity’s face had fallen. She looked disappointed again, like she’d had when they’d been waiting outside of the workshop for the taxi to prom.

“Yeah, he’s… a little unpredictable,” Amity said carefully, her eyes training to one of the bronze figures dressed in Greek armor. “But most Ares kids are like that… so it’s not surprising.”

“Ares is your grandfather,” Luz said slowly, and Amity’s face dipped into annoyance.

“Yeah? And?”

Luz couldn’t help but chuckle at that, leaning over to gently push Amity’s shoulder with her fist. “Nothing, it’s just that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, you know?”

“Are you calling me unpredictable?” She retorted, her face twisting dangerously. Luz forgot how intimidating Amity could be when she tried, but right now it only caused Luz to laugh louder at the irony of it all.

“You’re kind of proving my point right now,” Luz pointed out, and Amity blinked. After a moment she rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly.

“You’re right, sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Luz said with a shrug, tilting her head to shoot Amity a teasing smile. “I don’t really know if you could have any of Ares’ godly DNA anyway, but it would explain where all that skill with your sword comes from. Those moves during capture the flag? All Ares.”

Amity blushed again, all her previous annoyance forgotten. “The second generation of kids born from half-bloods are called legacies. If their parents are half-bloods, then sometimes they can show abilities from their godly grandparents, but they’re usually pretty diluted. I guess I never really thought about myself as being both a half-blood and a legacy.”

“What? The great Amity Blight?” Luz exclaimed, putting on a flaunty voice that was probably insulting to British people. “Camp Half-Blood’s prodigy and the co-leader on the quest to save Olympus breaking yet another half-blood boundary? I’m shocked.”

“Oh shut up,” Amity laughed, pushing against Luz’s shoulder hard.

Luz was laughing when she’d been pushed, but she also hadn’t been expecting the force that came with the nudge, and couldn’t help but stumble back and lose her footing. She probably would have hit the ground flat on her back if Amity hadn’t also seen it, reaching forward and wrapping her hands quickly around her waist to steady her.

When Luz looked up, she suddenly became very aware of how close the two of them were. Amity’s face was inches from hers, so close she could feel the shaky exhale of breath on her face, and once again see the splash of freckles across her nose. Luz’s mouth suddenly felt very dry, and without meaning to her eyes once again darted down to glance once at Amity’s lips.

But this wasn’t the Luz at the prom. She wasn’t dancing with Amity under the florescent lights of the university ballroom, dressed her best in a suit and filled with the confidence of a pep talk from her best friend. This was the Luz who was dreading a hike up a dangerous and probably life-threatening mountain, so zoned out thinking about what was coming next she couldn’t even fathom the idea of what would happen if she closed the gap between them. So, like a coward, she swallowed and leaned back, and Amity’s hands fell from around her waist and awkwardly back at her sides.

When Luz looked back up, she couldn’t handle the deep look of hurt on Amity’s face, and she knew she’d probably made another one of those big mistakes she couldn’t take back.

But the swirling in her stomach wouldn’t let her do anything about it. Instead, she just did what Luz did best in a crisis.

She rambled.

“You’re dad said he feels guilty about the last time you were here.”

Whatever kind of reaction she’d been expecting out of Amity was nothing compared to what she did next. Amity’s face dropped from disappointed to furious in a matter of seconds. In the blink of an eye, Amity was suddenly clenching her fists, her eyes narrowing to a point where Luz could barely see the golds of her eyes.

“He what?” She said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. But Luz knew better. Amity was a moment away from exploding. It was the same expression she’d had on her face during capture the flag, right before Luz had shocked her.

Luz recoiled out of reflex, backing up until the small of her back smacked against the side of the war table.

“Uh,” she said meekly, not wanting to anger her any further. “I don’t know if you actually want me to repeat it or if you were just asking rhetorically…”

“I heard you,” Amity said, and when Luz didn’t give any sort of reply to that, she just scoffed loudly, turning to the left and walking in quick paces back and forth along the length of the room. “I just can’t believe he would say something like that.”

Luz’s confusion was quickly starting to outweigh her fear at Amity’s angry reaction.

“Wait… you can’t believe he would feel guilty?”

“He doesn’t have the right to feel guilty!” Amity snapped, turning back to her furiously, and Luz shrunk back against the table. “He isn’t allowed to just pull you aside and talk to you about how he feels guilty behind my back when he did nothing to defend me in the first place! If he feels so guilty, he should do something about it! Blame Achilles for throwing us off course, or the oracle for making this prophecy the most confusing and ridiculous thing in the entire world!”

Amity took a deep, shuddering. breath, turning back to look Luz in the eye. When Luz saw her face, she felt like her entire heart was tearing in two. Amity looked devastated, a single tear threatening to fall down her face. Her next words were broken, cracking like she could barely say it. “If he really cared, he would call out my stupid mother for throwing me under the bus. He would be there for me, instead of making me feel like this whole thing is my fault.”

When Amity brought her hands up to her face, Luz could see that they were shaking. She used on hand to wipe under her eyes, and she scoffed, but it wasn’t humorous at all. It was the sound of a girl who had the weight of the entire world on her shoulders when she’d never asked for it.

“Why is everything always my fault?”  

Luz lunged forward out of instinct, stepping towards Amity and pulling her close, wrapping her arms around her waist and pulling her into a tight hug. Amity took a shaky breath at the embrace, and Luz gave her a moment to pull away if it was too much.

For a second, she thought Amity might. But then, her hands tentatively wrapped around Luz’s shoulder blades, and she leaned in, pressing her face tight against Luz’s collarbone. She gripped the back of Luz’s hoodie with her hands, and just cried into her shoulder. Luz stood there silently, letting her cry, rubbing reassuring circles around the small of her back.

After a little while, Amity’s face turned, and Luz could see the damp patch on her hoodie where Amity’s tears had soaked it.

“I’m sorry,” Amity said shakily, and Luz just shook her head, tightening her grip on her waist.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Luz replied gently. “Take as much time as you need.”

With another shaky breath, Amity leaned back into Luz’s shoulder, crying a lot less quietly now. But Luz could feel her body shaking, so she just nestled her cheek into Amity’s hair, holding her tightly.

Eventually, Amity did pull away, just enough that they were still almost nose to nose. Amity’s hands were still wrapped up in Luz’s hoodie, and she took a few shaky breaths. Her mouth opened and closed softly, like she wanted to say something, but no words were coming out.

When she looked up at Luz, she saw guilt flashing in her gold eyes, and Luz shook her head gently, reaching up to gently wipe a tear away from her face with her thumb.

“Amity, stop,” she whispered softly, “you don’t need to feel upset with yourself for crying. Everything you’re feeling right now is okay.”

The daughter of Aphrodite swallowed thickly, before bobbing her head. Luz smiled, using the hand that was already on her face to gently cup her chin.

“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here. Okay?”

Amity sniffled, but she managed a weak smile. “Okay. Thank you, Luz, I-”

“What is going on in here?”

Amity leaped away from Luz like she was on fire hastily reaching up to rub and her cheeks. Luz spun around, so startled she almost called out her sword. Her eyes widened in horror when she was met with the towering figure of Odalia Blight, her eyes narrowed and set upon the two of them.

She looked at Luz almost with disinterest (Luz tried not to feel too offended by that), but then her head turned, and her eyes bore into Amity with a ferocity that shook Luz to the bone. Odalia Blight pushed her shoulders back straight, and crossed her hands in front of her, raising her index finger to point at her. It wasn’t an inherently scary gesture, but Amity flinched, her back bumping into the war table.

“Amity,” Odalia said, and the tone was so frosty it sent shivers down Luz’s spine. The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. “Have you been… crying?”

Amity straightened her back, and Luz saw that she was desperately trying to hold face against her mother, but it just had no effect. Her eyes were still red and her cheeks tearstained, and her hands were pressed against the back of the table so hard her knuckles were turning white. When she opened her mouth, Odalia’s eyes seemed to narrow again, and the atmosphere got even colder.

“Don’t even think of lying to me.”

It was suddenly occurring to Luz that the room was actually getting colder. Goosebumps were rising on her skin, and when she exhaled, she could see her own breath. When she looked over, she saw that Odalia’s index finger was spinning very slowly. Luz hadn’t been a half-blood for long, but even she could tell that this was magic.

Luz’s heart was hammering in her chest at the tension, but she also couldn’t help but feel a protective spark beginning to rise up in her stomach. Amity didn’t deserve this. She already pushed herself too hard, it wasn’t fair that Odalia would catch them the first time Amity had ever been able to acknowledge and feel her pain.

She clenched her fists at her sides, doing her best not to glare daggers at Odalia. Luz always made things worse, and she knew it would really hurt Amity if she made things worse.

“Yes, ma’am,” Amity said softly, and despite her voice not wavering, Luz could tell she was panicking.

“So explain to me, Amity,” Odalia replied, taking a single step closer, her eyes narrowing even further at her confession. “What would a demigod in your position have to cry about?”

Luz’s jaw clamped, and she fought the urge to charge at Odalia right then and there as Amity recoiled. How could Odalia not see that she was the reason Amity was crying? Her and her horrible expectations and standards impossible for Amity to uphold.

Maybe she did know. Maybe Odalia was just a completely vile person. Luz was having a hard time reminding herself not to intervene.

“You have been given a tremendous opportunity at a second chance after your repulsive first failure.” Odalia continues, taking another step forward. “You put both me, your father, and your siblings to shame.”

Luz couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t watch this. She couldn’t let Amity hear this for one more second.

“You should be overjoyed. At the very least, you should be helping your companion instead of crying on her shoulder over your petty and childish issues.”

Something in Luz snapped, and she stepped forward furiously, right between Amity and Odalia. The rage had built to a point where she was seeing red, and she held out her arms protectively.

“Leave her alone! Why are you talking to her like that?”

Odalia blinked, and for the first time Luz saw what looked like surprise on Odalia Blight’s face, but it was quickly replaced with anger. “Excuse me?”

“Luz!” Amity whispered from behind her, and Luz turned her head to look. Amity was staring at her with wide eyes, panicked, but not pleading for her to stop talking. Luz took that as her cue to keep going.

“Amity did not fail you, or her dad, or anybody else,” Luz spat ferociously, staring her down. “She works harder than anybody else I’ve ever met, and she’s saved my life more than once. You’re being cruel to her for no reason!”

“And what gives you the right to talk to me about how to raise my daughter?” Odalia shrieked, and if Luz hadn’t been so angry, she probably would have been terrified by the way Amity’s mother was yelling at her.

“I’m her friend!” Luz yelled back, stamping her foot so hard it caused all the objects on Adalor’s desk to tremble and the bronze armor on the figures to clack together. In the back of her mind, Luz knew she was taking it too far. She heard footsteps sprinting down the hall, and vaguely saw the heads of Willow and Gus watching silently in the doorway. She thought she might have seen Alador’s shadow standing behind them too, but she was too angry to tell.

She pointed an accusing finger at Odalia, staring her down with every last scrap of rage she could muster.

“I care about Amity. I won’t let you treat her like she’s worthless when you’re not even half the demigod she is-”

Everything happened very fast after that.

Before Luz could even register what was happening, Odalia had thrown the knife. She wasn’t even sure where it had come from, maybe the inside of her suit pants, or maybe she’d had it in her hand the whole time and Luz just had been too angry to notice. But she was able to recognize that it was spinning towards her and that there was no chance she would be able to dodge it unless she wanted it to sink into Amity’s stomach.

So she just braced for the impact of the knife into her chest, but it never came. In front of her, a hand was thrown out to protect her, a bronze shield shifting in an instant to deflect the knife and send it scattering loudly across the floor.

Amity’s shield.

The daughter of Aphrodite stood with her chin close to Luz’s ear, breathing heavily as she glared at her mother. Her arm was crooked across Luz’s chest, the shield still covering her body.

“You can do anything you want to me,” Amity said, her voice void of any fear she might have been feeling before, “but you don’t touch her.”

There was a brutally tense silence. For a second, nobody moved, everybody staring each other down, but then Odalia straightened. She adjusted her blazer, crossed her hands together, and then turned her head completely away from them towards the door.

“Get out.”

Amity moved her hand away from Luz, and the shield transformed back into a bracelet. Reaching over, she took Luz’s hand firmly in hers, and she walked quickly out of the study. Willow and Gus were waiting by the door with their bags, and they slung them over their shoulders. Luz wasn’t able to look at Willow or Gus as she took it, too afraid of confronting what had just happened.

Instead, Amity’s grip tightened on her hand, and she pulled Luz towards the entrance to the manor, Willow and Gus loyally on their heels. Amity pushed open the huge double doors, and Luz felt a cool rush of the summer night’s air hit her face as she descended the stairs.

As they walked down the driveway and past the gates, Willow and Gus slowly fell in line to Luz’s right. They took off straight down the street, and even though Amity didn’t look back, Luz couldn’t help herself.

As she turned around to see the Blight Manor getting smaller and smaller the farther they walked, she locked eyes with Amity’s father standing on the steps of the manor.

Luz thinks she was probably the first person to ever see Alador Blight shed a tear.

#the owl house #lumity #luz x amity #Percy Jackson AU #shelby speaks

[transformersvn]

Thoughts on Transformers: War For Cybertron - Earthrise

My thoughts on this are less cohesive than last time, so I hope you're ready for a long ramble as I try to figure out exactly what I think about the series.

Tl;dr - still looks really pretty, but Siege’s weak writing hasn't improved.

Spoilers below the cut.

Earthrise generally suffers from being part 2 of 3. It's focused on getting characters from point A (Cybertron) to point B (Earth) and doesn't really do much in the meantime. You could've cut episodes 4 and 5 and it wouldn't have affected the plot all that much.

Megatron and Optimus

They need to stop having fights. It'd be best for their characters and the plot if they hadn't spent several minutes pointing guns at each other and saying that *this* time they were actually going to kill them. Just follow through already and if you can't then keep them apart until the climax.

Optimus getting distracted by Cog running up and going 'Optimus! What are you doing?!' was stupid. Cog should've been glad that Optimus was finally at the point where he wouldn't sacrifice every last Autobot to save Megatron if given the opportunity.

Them being trapped together was pointless and stupid (aside from that one screenshot we all made). Megatron's point that Optimus keeps screwing up and it's Megatron who pays the price was interesting - but it was surrounded by so much nonsense that it fell flat.

Speaking of…

Autobot Decepticon teamups

Are they trying to lean towards ending the series with mutual cooperation and peace? Their 'we all need to work together' moments were always horribly shoehorned and the Autobots didn't once try to put measures in place to defend themselves when the Decepticons inevitably betrayed them.

I like hero/villain teamups, but it doesn't work if the heroes are stupid about them.

Scorponok fight

There is a big room with a big enemy in. The Autobots have shut themselves in a corridor on one side of the room. They need to reach the other side of the room without getting killed. Whose idea was it to try and kill Scorponok instead of just evasive maneuvers to the other side of the room?!?

To be fair, Optimus did try and run distraction, but Bumblebee decided that was a stupid plan and standing still and shooting at the enemy - that none of their blasters had even scratched - was a better one.

It was a stupid fight. If they wanted a Megatron/Optimus moment so badly then, hey, the Autobots have rigged the station to blow and the Decepticons don't know that - have Megatron set off an explosion by accident and trap him and Optimus (who could've been diving forward to try and stop Megatron, thereby getting close).

The Dead Universe

You could've replaced this with Optimus getting a vision from the Matrix and Megatron having a short visit from future!Galvatron. It wasted time that could've been spent on actual character development.

Skylynx had about 3 lines that he just repeated variants of the whole episode.

Was it clear to anyone who hadn't seen the 1986 movie exactly what the Megatron/Galvatron link was? They were pretty vague about it.

Also, if Skylynx's advice made Optimus go 'hmm, yes, I should stop looking back and actually kill Megatron to prevent my own death', then Galvatron's advice to Megatron should've made him go 'I don't hate Prime this much/if he’s dedicated all his effort into stopping Prime and still failed, there must be another way'. I suppose, he didn’t kill Optimus when given a perfect opportunity, but that also just felt like an extension of their endless *points gun* “one-liner” *tables are turned* cycle.

Elita

Poor, poor, badly written Elita. She can't get anything done without Jetfire - the big strong man - questioning her or being the one to save the day, or making a desperate plan to try and fight their way out of captivity when they're going to be sacrificed, but we never see their escape attempt.

I don't think she acts like someone who is on a doomed planet. Breaking into prisons camps makes less sense than trying to find a way to fix things. Let her fail, fine, but give her a fighting chance to try and reignite Cybertron or, say, find someone who is rumoured to be able to create synthetic energon - which could've been a reason for prison breaks at least.

And it was probably meant to be read differently, but Elita's silence over her name when Megatron called her Ariel to her face, versus Optimus snarling that ‘her name is Elita-1!′ when Megatron used 'Ariel' around him, kinda makes me wonder whose decision it was to rename her.

Cog

They don't get to make me sad about a character death when that character had previously stopped Optimus from finally trying to kill Megatron and also failed to just bloody shoot Deeceus. And had he really taken the enemy ship? Really?

Misc

We never found out why the station was trapped halfway through the Spacebridge.

Optimus's voice actor still sounds like a bad Batman when he's angry, though he might've gotten away with it if Megatron's voice actor didn't have such a good "Prime" snarl.

Everyone is miserable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in a series about the struggles of war, but when it's aimed at kids you have to ask the question: are they enjoying it? It is fun to watch?

Ultra Magnus's head was sort of flagged up as important - specifically its location was noted by Elita - but never appeared again once Megatron left Cybertron. Did he take it with him?

For having such a hard-on for the 1986 movie, their decision to have Megatron beg for mercy (something quite out of character for this version of Megatron) and not include Optimus's 'you who are without mercy now plead for it?' line was a weird whiplashy moment.

Showing Glavatron and Unicron in the trailer when they literally appear for one episode and five second respectively was seriously false advertising. When did people forget that watching a trailer is supposed to give you an idea of the type/style of plot the media is supposed to deliver?

The editing is bad in several places. There were often moments where there would be an explosion in place A, then it'd cut to a battered character in place B getting up in a ruined room, making it look like they'd been in said explosion. Confusing in a series where palette-swapping and similar character designs already make it difficult for newcomers to tell what's going on.

The velociraptor-bot at the end looked like 90's CGI and I really hope Kingdom doesn't all look like that.

If Hot Rod doesn't show up and get the Matrix in Kingdom I'm going to be severely disappointed.

Starscream really likes speechifying to a tiny audience. He makes his bid to become leader in front of a nameless Decepticon, Soundwave, Ravage, and an injured Megatron - who promptly shoots him. I have to admit that he’s probably the character they did best by, his coup moments were pretty good and captured Starscream as we all know him.

Like the question of what exactly was under siege in Siege, Earthrise only gets to Earth at the end of the last episode.

Wheeljack felt weirdly useless. He didn’t get to go through with his plan of blowing up the station and couldn’t open a pair of blast doors that Soundwave had 0 problems with. After not being the one to fix the Spacebridge in Siege, he’s not feeling much like an engineer.

You had to guess motivations and plans and fairly often piece things together backwards after the fact. Having an idea of who everyone was made that easier for me than for non-fans, but I still ended up running on incorrect assumptions about what people were going to do and why.

...

So, there you go. I guess I’m still going to watch Kingdom when it comes out, but I think I’ve lost all my optimism for it being any good.

#non VN stuff #transformers #war for cybertron #earthrise #WFC

[carewyncromwell]

Next installation of the POTC AU, at long last! Sorry for the delay...RL has been a bit of a hindrance, and I also had to kind of restructure some things in the storyline to help with flow and such, and that resulted in me having to draw another drawing, and yeah, blah blah, Tory lost her sense of rhythm and pretty much daily update schedule in the process. XD; Mea culpa!

In this part, we’ll have focus on both sides of the “divide,” with both Carewyn and her new ally Davy Jones/Finn McGarry @theguythatdraws and Charlie Weasley (pictured above in an even more pirate-y coat and hat than we saw last) and his sloop’s passenger Chiara Dalma. Will our pirate friends be able to reach Shipwreck Cove before they’re cut off by our non-pirate ones?

Interestingly enough, there was a pirate called Moody in the 1700s, though this one was Christopher Moody, not Alastor. Not much is known about him aside from his brutality (refusing to take prisoners), his unique Jolly Roger flag (which was red and gold rather than black), and his death by hanging in 1722. Pirate!Mad-Eye is going to be much more like his book/movie/game counterpart, but I just thought it was a fun coincidence. (Particularly his red/gold color scheme for his flag, which of course are Gryffindor colors!!)

Jules Farrier-Weasley belongs to @cursebreakerfarrier, last part is here, and whole tag is here! Hope you enjoy!

x~x~x~x

Carewyn knew there was no way she would be able to get Jones’s heart as long as her men were guarding the Chest -- yet, at the same time, she couldn’t just order them to abandon it without cause...and she’d need that time, if she wanted to unlock it without stealing the key from Rakepick. And so she’d need a proper diversion.

Davy Jones himself came up with a solution. If the Flying Dutchman was engaged in battle, then the soldiers might have to jump in to help defend it. All they’d have to make sure of was that the enemy they engaged in battle was one Cutler Beckett would approve of -- namely, one of the more wanted pirates in the Caribbean, and someone who could end up being one of the Pirate Lords.

“I do not know any of the pirates’ current list of so-called ‘Lords,’” said Jones, “but if I were to guess, I would say your brother’s a viable candidate.”

Carewyn shook her head. “Rakepick blew up the Tower Raven. Jacob managed to escape, but he only has one other person with him and he won’t have a ship.”

“Not his flagship, perhaps, but the rest of his fleet would have still survived,” pointed out Jones. “And the more ships there are, the most justification there would be for your Navy reinforcements. Once I have my heart returned, I can always call off the attack -- there’s no need for me to capture or kill them, aside from following Beckett’s direction.”

And so it was very reluctantly that Carewyn agreed to let Jones covertly seek out the remainder of the Tower Raven’s fleet while supposedly looking for Shipwreck Cove. Little did Carewyn know that the Tower Raven’s fleet was likewise headed for Shipwreck Cove, and that they were on a collision course with a tiny red sloop steered by Charlie Weasley.

When Charlie came upon the fleet of pirate ships, he initially wasn’t too worried. Yeah, naturally, they dwarfed his vessel easily, but he presumed that they were heading for Shipwreck Cove as well, and they didn’t have much reason to attack a small sloop like his. What Charlie hadn’t factored in was that the captain of one of those ships -- Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody -- had gone through his fair share of trauma when he used to be in the Navy and was something of a paranoid sort...and so within minutes, the little sloop Charlie and Chia Dalma were on was soon pursued by Moody’s much larger galleon, called the Phoenix.

Fortunately Charlie was more than talented enough of a sailor to keep his head. Using the advantage of his boat’s size, he weaved expertly through the remainder of the Tower Raven’s ships to evade the Phoenix’s cannon fire.

“Oi!” Charlie bellowed up at one of the ships he was hiding behind. “Tell your mate to bugger off! I’m not with the bloody Navy!”

Chia made no move to help Charlie: instead she stood on the other side of the sloop, watching the seas with a wary eye. There was something troubling on the wind -- something in the air...

A pirate from the Phoenix came up to the railing to look down at Charlie and Chia on their sloop as Charlie sailed it around his galleon. He was a broad-shouldered man about Charlie’s age with dark red hair under a black bandana and small emerald green eyes, and he was dressed in a burgundy-colored coat.

“Hey -- you!” the pirate bellowed down at him. “Down there! Shout up your name!”

Charlie hesitated at first. He knew it was unlikely that most pirates would recognize his name as being that of a pirate -- if anything, the name “Weasley” was associated more with the Navy, even if he, Jules, and Bill had recently been branded criminals.

‘Even so,’ he thought, ‘I’m never going to be able to build a reputation as anything other than a Navy veteran if I don’t use my name. And well, these guys answer to Carey’s brother -- it should be safe...’

“I’m Charlie Weasley!” he shouted back. “Quartermaster of the Revolution under Captain Jules Farrier-We -- ack!”

Before Charlie could even finish, both he and Chia had gotten a net thrown over them and they were hauled aboard the Phoenix.

As Charlie had feared, the name “Weasley” made everyone on the Phoenix tense up with suspicion. Charlie’s “twin,” it turned out, had been swept up by Cutler Beckett, who was now flaunting the fact that the famous, brilliant young Commodore Carey Weasley was answering to him and helping him with his new anti-piracy campaign. Charlie knew full well the only reason Carewyn could be associating with Beckett was to try to sabotage him, but the Phoenix’s Captain Moody seemed doubtful of that explanation. His First Mate, Barnaby Lee -- the young man who had first demanded Charlie’s name -- seemed noticeably less suspicious, but wasn’t half as assertive or articulate as Moody, so the Captain’s conclusion won out among the crew.

Charlie and Chia were soon hauled down to the brig with the thought that once the fleet arrived in Shipwreck Cove, Moody’s superior, Black Jack Roberts -- were he still alive -- would be able to discern how best to deal with them. Charlie hadn’t been too surprised that Jacob hadn’t told everyone in his fleet that “Carey Weasley” was really his sister, but he couldn’t help but curse the fact that Jacob had merely ordered that his men not “damage anyone with the name ‘Weasley’ and immediately bring them to him to deal with.” Even if he had to keep up a “tough guy” image, it would’ve been nice if Jacob had factored in the possibility that he wouldn’t be leading his fleet.

Unfortunately Moody’s suspicion had a real cost. Because of his focus on Charlie and Chia Dalma, he wasn’t focusing on the turbulence of the seas and skies that Chia picked up on -- and so had no warning whatsoever when the Flying Dutchman attacked. Soon the entire fleet of ships that once sailed under the Tower Raven was hotly engaged in battle with the infamous ship of the damned, pirates facing off against both cursed sailors and Navy officers.

While Davy Jones, his crew, and the Navy’s officers were fighting on the upper deck, Carewyn had stowed away below deck to where the Dead Man’s Chest had been left. After sending the remainder of the patrol above deck to help with the sea battle, Carewyn immediately got to work picking the lock on the Chest. Although it was a bit trickier to do it on her own than it had been with Percy, that hindrance was counteracted somewhat by her having unlocked the Chest once before. Within fifteen minutes, Carewyn had unlocked the two-sided lock and opened the Chest.

But when she opened it, she found it completely empty.

“It seems we truly are as alike as I thought.”

Carewyn whirled around.

Rakepick was leaning her shoulder against the door frame. She’d discarded her tricorn hat just as Carewyn had since they were no longer on deck, and her dark blue eyes were locked on the Commodore’s face as though it were a target.

Carewyn immediately pulled out her pistol, pointing it right at Rakepick.

“Where is the heart?” she said very coldly.

“I confiscated it,” said Rakepick simply, “back when I checked to make sure Jones’s key works.”

“On Beckett’s orders?” asked Carewyn.

Had she truly not fooled Beckett, after all? Had Rakepick been sent to watch her as well as Jones? Her face blanched at this thought.

“For my own benefit,” said Rakepick. “Just as I daresay your attempt to steal the heart also was.”

Carewyn’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not stealing anything.”

”I don’t know what else you’d call picking the lock on a Chest that’s in the custody of the British Navy,” said Rakepick with a rather cool smile.

Carewyn clicked her pistol and pointed it right at Rakepick’s head.

“Hand over the heart,” she murmured, “now.”

Rather than looking the least bit intimidated, however, Rakepick almost looked more pleased. She eased herself off the door frame and took a few steps closer to Carewyn.

“You intend to kill me, Commodore?” she said.

“I would prefer not to,” Carewyn answered icily. “But I suggest you don’t push me -- I can still shoot you in plenty of places that would be extremely painful or deadly, if left untreated. And no one would come to help you with your wounds -- there’s more than enough noise above deck to muffle any gun shots that might come from down here.”

Rakepick’s lips spread into an even fuller, satisfied smile as she came to a halt just a foot from Carewyn. “I see. If I’m dead, you won’t learn where the heart is. Very astute, Miss Weasley.”

Carewyn stiffened sharply.

“I knew it as soon as I saw you,” said Rakepick softly. “I daresay because your family is poor, you didn’t have enough prospects to just marry into money. Probably were too independent and self-sufficient to settle for that, as well....so you joined your brothers in the Navy by dressing as another son. I suppose ‘Carey’ is just a play on your real name -- is it Cara? Or Carina?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carewyn whispered.

She tried to obscure her fear with anger, but it was proving difficult -- her face was as white as a sheet.

Rakepick couldn’t fight back a scoff. “Now, really, Commodore -- do you truly think you’re the only woman who realized how few opportunities there are, for us to get ahead in this world run by men? I dressed as a man and joined the Navy myself during the War, fighting the French off the coast of Africa as a privateer for his Majesty’s Navy.”

She started striding in a leisurely circle around Carewyn, even as the Commodore kept a beady eye on her.

“‘Patrick Rakepick,’ I was called then. I probably would’ve continued that way too, had privateering not been outlawed with the end of the War. Suddenly all of the skills I had learned -- just as with all privateers -- became illegal and therefore useless. I was at the bottom once again, even worse off than before, thanks to the time lost and the injuries suffered. So I did what many other privateers did -- I became a pirate, so I could continue using those skills the Crown had taught me to support myself -- ”

“By pillaging merchant ships and attacking innocent people,” Carewyn spat. She wished she’d been able to keep her temper, but the mental image of this woman shooting Jacob in the back and pushing him overboard had rippled through her mind and it was a knife to her heart she couldn’t bear.

“We all have to do things we’re not proud of in order to survive, Miss Weasley,” said Rakepick very quietly. “That’s the reason you’ve stayed in line with Beckett yourself, is it not?”

Carewyn’s eyes narrowed. Rakepick took her silence as an excuse to press further.

“I saw the way you treated the prisoners from Tortuga. You did not treat them as Jones would, or even as any other officer would. You insisted they be fed and watered consistently, despite their large numbers and their shortened lifespans. You gave one a Bible, on request. You even moved a woman into a different cell so she could be with her husband for the rest of the voyage back to Port Royal, without even being asked.”

Rakepick’s dark blue eyes surveyed Carewyn with something interested, almost admiring, as she came to a halt just behind the shorter young woman.

“You have the heart of a guardian, Miss Weasley. Something not frequently seen in any line of work I’ve ever been part of -- privateering, piracy, or pirate hunting...and something never found among men like Cutler Beckett. It makes you want to protect others as well as yourself. It makes you a natural leader -- one that anyone would be foolish to deny their proper place.”

“I don’t need your flattery, Rakepick,” Carewyn said coldly, turning on her heel to face the older woman once again.

“This is not flattery,” Rakepick answered just as coldly. “It’s advice from someone who has been in your shoes. It’s not easy for anyone without money and status to get ahead in this world, but it’s even harder for a woman. Even when she’s able to acquire those things, there’ll always be a man attempting to clip her wings, so as to make him feel more powerful -- more in control. Even the tale of the goddess Calypso herself proves this. She ruled the seas, until the Pirate King and his Brethren Court ‘bound her’ into human form and stole control for themselves. They were powerless in the face of the Crowns of Europe...and so they exerted power over someone they could hurt.”

“Yet Cutler Beckett hired you, regardless of your sex,” said Carewyn, raising her eyebrows.

Rakepick crossed her arms over his chest. “Cutler Beckett will clip anyone’s wings, female or otherwise, if it benefits himself. Hence why I need this leverage over him.”

“Seems like the leverage is much more over Jones, considering you hold his life in your hands,” Carewyn cut her off harshly. “Now enough stalling -- give me Jones’s heart.”

Rakepick gave a half-frustrated, half-exhausted sigh. “Miss Weasley, do you truly think I wouldn’t have handed the heart over to you already, if I could? I’ve already made it more than clear I trust Beckett as little as you do. I’m not in this fight for him. I have no more love for either the Navy or the pirates than you do. I assure you -- we’re on the same side in this.”

‘Doubtful,’ Carewyn thought spitefully.

Nonetheless she could tell that she’d been outmaneuvered. Rakepick wasn’t going to hand over Jones’s heart, whether because it wasn’t on the ship or Rakepick was just too brave to give in to any threats she might make. She’d lost the element of surprise completely...and if force wasn’t going to work, then a new strategy was clearly needed. She needed to find out the heart’s new location. So, very reluctantly, she tucked her pistol back into its holster.

“If you’re so out for yourself,” said Carewyn coldly, “and you believe me to be just as out for myself...then we can’t be on the same side, Rakepick.”

Rakepick’s eyebrows rose over her narrowing dark blue eyes.

“I never said you were out for yourself, Miss Weasley -- merely that we are alike.”

She swept past Carewyn and headed for the door. When she reached the door frame, however, she paused. Turning her head back toward Carewyn, she spoke a bit more seriously.

“The battle between the Navy and the Pirate Brethren Court is going to be a fierce one. It would truly be in your best interest to get and stay off the Dutchman, before that fight begins.”

Carewyn shot a suspicious look over her shoulder without turning around.

“What battle?” she asked lowly.

“The place where all pirates will have to make their final stand.”

“You’re so assured of that? We haven’t even found Shipwreck Cove,” Carewyn pointed out. “Come to think of it...shouldn’t you know where Shipwreck Cove is, since you were a pirate yourself?”

Rakepick’s eyes flashed.

“I’m afraid not,” she said, her voice noticeably icier than it had been previously.

The question seemed to have gotten under Rakepick’s skin, and Carewyn suspected she knew exactly why. Only pirate captains were generally told the the location of Shipwreck Cove -- since she hadn’t assumed captainship through “Code-sanctioned” means, Rakepick couldn’t have been told by anyone else on the crew of Howell Davis’s ship where Shipwreck Cove was.

‘Serves you right, for what you did to Jacob,’ Carewyn thought, and she couldn’t completely fight back a small smirk.

“Regardless,” said Rakepick, “it won’t take long to find it. You saw the map Beckett designed, in your office -- it’s been finished, since you last saw it. The world’s edges have been drawn and charted, and so too have all of the places pirates could’ve once hidden. Now that they’ve been fenced in and the British Crown has allocated its Navy to the East India Trading Company’s war on piracy...it’s only a matter of time before all pirates face extinction. Those in power will not surrender it peacefully...least of all to those they’ve decided to treat as inferiors...so they’ll use every bit of that power they’ve accrued to try to quash any resistance. Those remaining pirates will have to either adapt to this terrifying new world their rebellion has molded...or perish.”

Rakepick turned away.

“And you, Miss Weasley...should not remain on the Dutchman. You don’t belong on a ship like this.”

Even as Rakepick left, Carewyn remained where she was, standing straight-backed in the center of the room with her fists clenched. Then, after a long moment, she brought a hand up to the lid of the empty Dead Man’s Chest and shut it with a harsh SNAP.

The sea battle up above raged. Captain Moody, it seemed, was truly a force to be reckoned with, despite his age and wooden limbs. When Navy officers and Dutchman pirates found their way onto the Phoenix, he fought four of them off single-handed, even going so far as to yank a blunderbuss out of his pants and shoot one of them right in the head before smacking two of the others with it as if it were a club. It was just fortunate that Charlie -- newly escaped from the brig thanks to a charm of Chia Dalma’s -- was able to block the sword belonging to the last of them with his own dragon-hilted blade.

Despite this, the Phoenix and the rest of the Tower Raven’s old fleet was severely outmatched, since Jones’s crew couldn’t die. Many ships had already started to flee, only for the Flying Dutchman to cut them down with cannon fire. Even though the Dutchman was no larger than the pirate galleons, it seemed to have the supernatural ability to heal any damage dealt to it within the span of a few minutes -- an ability not shared by Captain Moody, when he swung over to the Dutchman and pursued Jones with singular, irrational focus, only to finally be overpowered and killed by Jones himself.

“NO!” bellowed Barnaby.

Charlie straightened up sharply, his eyes widening in horror, at the sight of Moody falling to his knees, Jones’s blade stuck right through his chest.

Jones regarded the old man with a grim expression.

“Alastor Moody,” he murmured, “do you fear death?”

Moody glared up at Jones with his one good eye, but was clearly too badly injured to speak. So instead he spat at his feet.

Jones looked almost jaded by the reaction -- the way any embodiment of Death would likely be, whenever anyone got mad at them for doing their job.

“Clearly not.”

With this, he rather callously tossed Moody back over onto the deck of the Phoenix and whirled back to his crew.

“Ready the cannons!”

Barnaby immediately rushed to his captain’s side to help him up.

“Captain -- Captain, are you -- ?”

Alas, Moody was still too injured to speak clearly. When he opened his mouth, all he could do was cough up blood. Charlie rushed over too.

“He’s hurt bad,” he muttered. He turned to Chia. “Is there anything you -- ?”

Chia shook her head, her gray eyes very solemn. “I’m sorry, Charles Weasley. There’s no more time I can give him.”

Charlie was startled by the sensation of someone grabbing the collar of his shirt. Moody pulled him down closer to him, trying to whisper into his ear.

"You -- ” he choked through the blood in his mouth, “ -- have the Pacific Ocean’s Piece of Eight -- ?”

Charlie blinked in surprise. He glanced down at the anchor-trimmed “S” button Chia gave him, which he’d pinned to his vest for safe keeping until he could properly sew it somewhere more secure.

“...Yeah,” said Charlie. “Chia Dalma gave it to me.”

Moody squinted up at Charlie.

“...Shipwreck Cove -- is due west, of here. Fifty miles -- through the D-Devil’s -- Throat. Take -- the crew there.”

Charlie was completely blind-sided. “What?”

“Lead them. Take them to -- Shipwreck Cove. To the rest of the Court. To -- Black Jack.”

Charlie’s brown eyes rippled with sadness, seeing how much difficulty Moody was having talking. He was out of time, as Chia had said -- and yet, here he was, putting his crew first.

‘For all of his faults,’ thought Charlie, ‘Mad-Eye Moody is a good captain.’

The second-eldest Weasley took Moody’s wizened hand in both of his and gave it a squeeze.

“I will,” he said firmly. “I promise.”

Blood streamed from Moody’s lips as they curled up in a pained smile. “That’s a good lad...”

He coughed, trying hard to take another breath. This time, however, the blood blocked his throat enough that no oxygen could reach him. And so Moody, in the last shreds of his life, bravely raised his eyes to the sky with a smile.

Barnaby had brought his two large fists up to obscure his face as he started to cry. Charlie hung his head respectfully over the fallen captain of the Phoenix. After a moment, he brought up a hand to close Moody’s eyes and then rose to his feet, his eyes blazing with determination.

“ALL HANDS, PREPARE THE CANNONS!” he bellowed. “We need all the explosives and smoke bombs we have -- we’re getting the Hell out of here!”

Charlie’s strategy was to assault the Flying Dutchman with two waves of attack. The first would be to damage the ship enough that it would need a few minutes to repair itself -- the second would be a smokescreen, so as to hopefully put enough distance between the Phoenix and the Flying Dutchman that the second couldn’t actively take down the first with its cannon fire. When Charlie ran to the edge of the Phoenix beside Chia Dalma to make the order to fire, he was startled momentarily by who he saw coming up onto the deck of the Dutchman.

It was Carewyn.

Jones confronted her immediately, his eyes narrowed sharply as he barked something to her -- Carewyn looked rather frustrated herself, but Charlie couldn’t make out what they were saying. Within seconds, however, both Jones and Carewyn turned their focus to the battle -- and they both caught sight of the two people at the railing.

Jones’s eyes flickered with shock, disbelief, and something oddly more vulnerable. He’d never seen the human woman on that ship’s railing in his life...but he knew those gray eyes...

“Ca...lypso...?”

Chia Dalma’s hands clutched the railing as her eyes filled with tears and a weak smile prickled at her features.

“Finn,” she breathed.

Carewyn, meanwhile, had met Charlie’s gaze straight on. Her eyes were very wide at the sight of him, just as much as Charlie’s was at the sight of her.

“Carey!” cried Charlie.

His heart felt like it was fit to burst, seeing his surrogate twin again. Part of him just wanted to throw himself over his ship’s railing over to her and pull her into the biggest hug, and yet --

She was on the Dutchman -- the Flying Dutchman, the ship of the damned --

Carewyn’s eyes flooded with fear as she shot her head around, taking in her soldiers fighting off pirates from the rest of the Tower Raven’s fleet on the deck of her ship and the Phoenix’s cannons being turned into the proper position.

Her gaze then shot back to Charlie’s face with urgency.

“BECKETT IS COMING!” she mouthed to him desperately. “BECKETT IS COMING! GO!”

She then yanked her pistol out of her belt and purposefully shot right over Charlie’s head, to make her point. Clenching his jaw, Charlie nonetheless nodded firmly, blinking back some traces of tears as he whirled on his crew.

“FIRST WAVE, FIRE ALL!” he roared.

With the Dutchman effectively hampered by both waves of attack, the Phoenix was able to successfully put a respectable distance between it and the Flying Dutchman. Carewyn tried to keep their focus on the rest of the fleet and on capturing prisoners from those vessels, but Rakepick contradicted her, ordering the Dutchman to shadow the Phoenix in case it was heading to Shipwreck Cove. What Carewyn did not expect was Jones agreeing with Rakepick.

“I want everyone on board the Phoenix locked in my brig,” said the captain of the damned icily, his gaze flaring with raw emotion as he glared at Carewyn. “I will not let them escape me.”

Carewyn knew she’d been outmaneuvered again. There was nothing more she could do, to protect everyone now. It was all up to Charlie now, to warn Bill, Jules, and Jacob...to warn Orion...

The memory of the pirate captain’s calm, dark eyes made Carewyn’s heart clench with longing and pain. He’d always made her feel so much stronger, whenever she felt most useless and hopeless...but right now, more than anything, she longed to have him at her side -- to feel his shoulder resting against hers and see his soft smile once more...

Rakepick was right -- the final battle was coming, sooner than anyone could’ve ever predicted. It was all up to Charlie to warn the Brethren Court now.

#potc au #au #pirates of the caribbean #my art #my writing #charlie weasley #carewyn cromwell #chiara lobosca #Mad-Eye Moody #barnaby lee #finn mcgarry #jules farrier #bill weasley #patricia rakepick #damn it rakepick! #sadly we couldn't afford to set finn free just yet though #gotta get closer to shipwreck cove and reunite him with chia :3 #but yay captain charlie weasley of the phoenix! #he may or may not change the name to something more dragon-like later XD #but yeah technically you gotta be a captain to be a pirate lord #one reason moody gave charlie captainship #and also because as great as barnaby is I think he makes a better First Mate than a Captain #just like bill does XDD #I love putting rakepick and carey in a room together #wonder if you guys can guess who the brethren court members are... #hint: two of them are mc's who have done content for the au #(another mc is the keeper of the code >:3) #four are hphm canon characters #(one of those is charlie of course) #and the last is one of my kiddos >:3

[peppersonironi]

Batfam/Avengers Crossover Chapter Six: Blooming Bromance

Tagging (Let me know if you want to be tagged): @the-fair-maiden-of-fandom

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Category: Gen

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types

Relationships: Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne, Natasha Romanov & Damian Wayne, Clint Barton & Cassandra Cain, Tim Drake & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tim Drake & Duke Thomas, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Dick Grayson/Wally West, Roy Harper/Koriand'r/Jason Todd,

Characters: Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Barbara Gordon, Justice League (DCU), Alfred Pennyworth, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton, Thor (Marvel), Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Alfred the Cat (DCU), Bat-Cow (DCU), Goliath (DCU), Selina Kyle’s Cat Isis, Kate Kane (DCU), Duke Thomas,

Additional Tags: Batbrothers (DCU), Avengers Meet The Batfam, MCU/Batfam crossover, Crossover, no beta we die like robins, rated T for Jason’s language, I bleeped it out though. Just to be safe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, canon? What’s canon?, Deaf Clint Barton,Deaf Character, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Happy Batfamily (DCU), Birdflash and joyfire are implied/referenced,

Summary: Tim hangs out with the youngest Avenger. A bromance is blooming.

Tim sighed into his mug of coffee. Everyone in his family - minus Stephanie and Babs, since they didn’t live at the manor -  had been gathered in the cave to discuss the ongoing conversation between some of the interdimensional visitors. They - consisting of Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, and Tony Stark - seemed to have been really freaked out by some of Jason’s snide comments, and were now discussing if the bats were in fact trustworthy.

Tim blamed Jason for this whole mess. Jason couldn’t hold his stupid tounge, so now Bruce had called everyone - after Cass told him what was happening -  together to spy on their guests and work out a plan.

Their conversation wasn’t that interesting either. It was everyone going back and forth, never changing their own arguments. The most interesting thing that happened was when Stark hopped on a computer and started to do research on them. Not that they found much.

“No way in f*** are we amicable!” Jason exclaimed when the article was brought up and read aloud.

“Aw, you sure little wing?” Dick asked, elbowing Jason.

“T-t,” Damian said, rolling his eyes. “Will you two imbeciles shut up? I’m trying to listen.”

Turns out there wasn’t much more. As soon as the Avengers dispersed, Tim turned off the computer. “Now what?”

Cass frowned. “They need trust. Show them.”

Bruce nodded. “Yes, it would be best if they trust us, as we are the ones sending them home. Lack of trust might provoke unnecessary responses from them. It would be best if we can work well together.”

“Show them.” Cass repeated vehemitaly.

“I agree with Cass,” Tim replied. “We shouldn’t just tell them to trust us. That could be taken quite badly. We need to show them.”

“How?” Duke asked. “I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but you are definitely not good at showing your emotions well.”

Bruce sighed heavily. “Yes, Duke, you have made that abundantly clear in the past.” Duke smiled at that, looking rather sheepish. Bruce frowned in concentration. “Let them make the first move. If they try to question you, don’t hold anything back. Try to be friendly.” Tim noticed he directed that last part at Damian and Jason.

“Don’t hold anything back?” Jason asked, an evil smirk growing on his face. Tim shuddered inwardly at whatever gruesome tale Jason was planning on sharing.

“Within reason,” Bruce growled.

Duke stood up. “Well, that sounds good for you guys, but I have Gotham to patrol.” Duke strolled off with a decidedly self satisfied smile on his face. He clearly thought that he was getting out of sharing his life story.

Bruce sighed once more. “Very well, Duke. Good luck.”

Duke nodded his thanks as he made his way to the changing rooms to get ready for his patrol.

*****

“Dude, this is incredible!” Peter had given Tim a chance to look at his web-shooters, and Tim was being a total fangirl over it.

“Thanks,” Peter replied, seeming quite proud. “The basic design is mine, Mr. Stark supplied some improvements though.”

Tim nodded as he continued to examine the device. “Are these veins turbine pumps?”

Peter grinned. “Yup! They compress the web fluid before shooting it out through the spinneret holes which cold-draws the solution and extrudes it through the air, where it solidifies.”

“And during the process the  nylon gains a four-fold increase in tensile strength?”

“Exactly!”

Tim shook his head at the brilliance. “Wow, this is utterly brilliant!”

“Thanks! Do you want to see the chemical formula?” Peter asked. He seemed really eager to talk about it with someone his own age.

“Of course!” Tim hit his forehead. “Gosh, I’m sorry! I completely forgot you came to me to see if we could make more.”

Peter shrugged, “no worries. I’m glad you like the devices.”

Tim reached over to one of the coffee tables in the sitting room they were occupying and handing it to Peter, who promptly began to write down the formula.

Upon seeing it, Tim gasped uncontrollably. “Oh my god, this is the greatest thing I have seen in a long time!” Peter had to be a genius to come up with this, Tim decided.

Peter grinned at Tim. “Really?”

“Totally!”

“You guys done fangirling?” A voice came from the door. “ ‘cause we have some people to decimate!”

Tim looked over to find Jason leaning against the doorframe, two nerf guns in hand.

“Decimate?” Peter asked.

Jason rolled his eyes. “Capture the flag on the back lawn in five. Bring whatever non-lethal weapons you want. You can get ‘em approved before the game starts.” And with that, he strolled off.

“You guys play Capture The Flag?” Peter looked excited.

Tim stood up, organizing the notes, then setting them aside. “Yup! It can get pretty wild though. Think you can handle it?”

Peter grinned. “I think so.”

*****

“Welcome to the 67th annual Bat Fa-”

“It's not annual and you know it Dick.”

Dick pouted as he looked over at Tim. “Come on, Timbo, let me have this!”

“Drake is correct, Grayson. You are acting idiotically.”

Tim glanced over at Damian. “You’re admitting I’m right?”

Damian glowered at his brother. “Of course not.” “But you jus-”

“Are we playing or not?” Someone had managed to rope Bruce into the game, but he was being pretty snippy about it.

Dick sighed, looking defeated. “Fine. Capture the flag. You all know how to play?” Everyone nodded, except Thor.

“I am unfamiliar with this specific midgardian game.”

Dick nodded. “Ok, that’s fine. Good chance to go over the rules anyway. There are two teams, each take one side of the playing area. So each team has a flag, or item of some sort that they each place in a visible yet defendable position. Part of the team defends their flag, while the other part attempts to steal their opponents’. If you get caught on the opposite team's territory, they put you in jail. Only one of your teammates can get you out, by tapping you. Get it?”

Everyone nodded. “Good. A few extra rules that must be followed,” Dick looked pointedly at Jason and Damian as he continued, “ include: no maiming. Serious injuries of most kinds are off limits. Lethal weapons are also out, unless you know how to use them nonlethally. You are also not allowed to leave the playing area at any point. Nor are you allowed to use cookies as bait in any traps. Especially Alfred’s cookies.”

Dick looked pointedly at Tim during the last rule, much to Tim’s chagrin. It had been one time!

“And finally, no touching Alfred’s shrubbery.” Everyone with the exception of the Avengers cringed at that. “Everyone understand?”

There was a chorus of “Yups” “Yes’s” and “f*** yeah, b****!” Tim didn’t need to be the world’s second greatest detective to guess where that last one came from.

“Good,” Dick said, grinning. “We’ll have two teams. Captains are Bruce and me. Let’s get into a line and start dividing.”

Tim got in line, grumbling slightly. A few of the Avengers had also joined, specifically Peter, Thor, and Banner. Tim wasn’t sure how much of a help Banner could be without “Hulking out” as Peter put it, but the guy seemed smart. It seemed like it would be an interesting game.

“Lil’ D!” Dick called, quite predictably. Damian grumbled and walked over to Dick’s side.

Bruce took longer to choose. He examined the faces of each person, one by one. “Tim.” Tim smiled, he had been expecting Dick to choose him, but with Bruce, Tim didn’t have to deal with the demon brat.

Dick chose Thor next, then Bruce chose Jason. They continued back and forth till Dick’s team consisted of Damian, Thor, and Banner. Bruce had chosen Tim, Jason, and Peter. Cassandra had opted to Referee the game, much to everyone’s relief. They could play everyone against Cass, and his sister would still win.

“Flags?” Cass asked once everyone had assembled with their teams.

“I got these from Alfred!” Dick said as he grabbed two large banners from beside a tree. One was Green, the other Blue.

Cass nodded. “You get Blue. Bruce, green.” Once Dick had handed the other banner to Bruce, Cass continued. “Ten minutes to plan and hide flags. Then go.”

They split up, Tim following right behind Bruce. “Ideas?” he asked when they were all in the cover of the trees that they had chosen for their side.

“The flag will go up in the old oak tree, as high as you can get it, Peter. I want Jason on Guard Duty near the tree, I’ll be farther out doing a border patrol. Tim and Peter, you’re both on infiltration duty. Skirt the sides as much as possible. Dick will most likely be trying to cross over, avoid him if you can. Watch out for Damian, too. He'll be joining Dick. Thor will most likely be guarding their flag along with Banner. He won’t be able to resist the pun. They should be pretty easy to take down.” Bruce paused for a moment, thinking. “Dick will probably place his banner somewhere near the westward fountain. Use the ivy wall to the east as cover.”

Everyone nodded, and separated. Peter scrambled up the oak tree with ease, and placed the banner at the literal top. It’d be almost impossible for anyone to reach it, but Tim knew Dick would love the challenge.

A couple minutes later, the guard routes were established, and Tim had shown Peter the way to the flag by drawing a diagram in the dirt. Tim quickly wiped it away, however, when Cass sounded an Airhorn. Tim had no idea where she had gotten it, but didn’t bother trying to figure it out. Tim sprinted to the side almost immediately, Peter right behind them. They wove through the trees, keeping to the shadows. Peter wasn’t nearly as stealthy as Tim, but they both kept out of sight.

Right as they were about to cross over the border, Tim stopped them. “Let’s get an aerial view before we proceed.”

“Sounds good,” Peter replied as they started to climb a nearby tree. Turns out it was the right choice, because they were awarded front row seats to Bruce grabbing Damian by his collar.

“Not today, Damian. You’re going to jail.” Bruce smiled fondly as he carried his youngest son away from the border and off to the previously chosen prison.

“Grayson!” Damian shreeked. “How dare you abandon me! Unhand me this instant, Father! Grayson! You shall rue the day I make my escape! This insult has not gone unnoticed! I refuse to be kept against my will by plebeians! You had better drop everything to assist me Grayson, or -”

Damian’s outraged voice slowly faded away as he was hauled off.

“Oof,” Peter said. “Think Dick will get him out?”

Tim snorted before shaking his head. “Knowing Dick, he’ll be remorseful for a bit before completely forgetting about the kid.”

Peter nodded. “Well, one less person we have to deal with, right?”

Tim grinned. “Yup! We should probably get going.”

*****

“Mmff! Mfffff-mmmf!”

“I think we did a good job, whattaya say, bug-boy?” Tim and Peter grinned down at a bound and gagged Thor and Banner. Both trying and failing to escape their bonds.

“I think we did quite well, bird-boy.” Peter replied. “But we should probably get going.”

Tim nodded as he plucked the banner from atop the fountain, right where Bruce said it would be.

“Let’s go!” they race off towards the border.

It didn’t take them long for them to reach the wide patch of grass marked with a hastily placed length of rope, but their path was blocked. Thor had managed to get out of Peter’s webs, and chased after them. He stood  facing them, his hammer out, pointing at their chests.

“Halt! I must not allow you any further.”

Tim grinned. “Bet I can take him down first.”

Peter grinned right back. “You’re on!”

Togather, they charged the norse god. Peter was flipped over Thor’s shoulder, shooting his webs out and pulling Thor’s helmet over his eyes, though he quickly pulled it up again. Tim unleashed a flurry of batarangs, which Thor dodged. This, however, set him off balance. Tim activated a smoke bomb, and expertly navigated the limited visuals to attack Thor, who was in the process of throwing Peter to the ground.

When the smoke cleared, Thor was once again on his back, taken down by Tim. Peter was also on his back.

“You okay there, Peter?”

Peter groaned and rolled over. “Yup. You won, though.”

Tim crowed. “Hah! Yeah, I did!” He offered his hand to his downed companion. You did a good job too though. We make a great team.”

Peter stood, and together they crossed over the border holding the banner just as Dick came out of the trees being chased by both Jason and Bruce.

“Aw, crap.” Dick said upon seeing Peter and Tim already back on their own territory.

Almost immediately, Cass appeared. A newly freed Banner also appeared. Well, he limped out of the trees.

“Team Grumpy Wins,” Cass says triumphantly. It took a moment for Tim to realise what she had said.

“Wait, I thought we didn’t use team names?”

Cass smiled and pointed at Bruce. “Grumpy.” She then turned to Dick. “Happy.”

Jason smirked. “That’s an accurate assessment.”

He and Cass high-fived.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dick said good naturedly. “Good job guys. You up for another round?”

“Different teams this time,” Tim replied.

Dick smiled, “Sounds good! Maybe Dami should lead this time.” Dick’s eyes widened. “Crap! Damian!”

Everyone burst into laughter as Dick sprinted towards Team Grumpy’s jail.

#Avengers Meet The Batfam #dc/marvel crossover #batfam #avengers #batfam shenanigans #tim drake #peter parker #capture the flag #bruce wayne #dick grayson #alfred pennyworth #jason todd #duke thomas #damian wayne #natasha romanoff #cassandra cain #bruce banner #thor odinson

[somuchfuckingsalt]

Percy Earned his leadership

Okay, the thing is I get almost personally offended when the fandom tries to write off Percy’s leadership because that boy earned the right to be CHB’s leader.

First off, the way that RR wrote the first five books was in a way where when you combine them together, you can track one cohesive story the same way you’d do with a single story.

TLT is Act 1. It establishes the setting, the characters, and the story. While there aren’t a lot of leadership moments for Percy, because it’s the first act Percy has a lot of moments where you can see his various skills that will lead him to becoming a good leader coming through. This includes his ability to think on his feet (how he dealt with the love ride), manipulate (Crusty), and make the necessary calls needed for the good of the world (sacrificing Sally to return to the surface and stop the war).

There isn’t a lot that happens in this book that happens that changes Percy’s internally and turns him into more of a leader. Aside from the decision to leave his mom behind, every moment of ‘leadership’ that he has are small, baby step versions of leadership. This book is mainly just getting Percy accustomed to being in the situations where a leader is needed while not necessarily pushing him into a leadership position (while Percy was technically the leader of the quest he relied heavily on Grover, Annabeth, and Chiron since he was so new to the world).

SoM is Act 2. Since we know who Percy is and we don’t need to be coaxed into loving him like the first book, this book is the one where Percy probably receives the most help. This is also the ‘training montage’ portion of the story and likely the reason that the Sea of Monsters was chosen as the setting.

There are a few moments in the book where Percy takes the necessary steps to become a leader but most notably are.

Making the decision to send Clarisse on ahead.

Stepping up and confronting Luke on behalf of all four of them.

The beginning of the book where the campers poorly treat him and Tyson is also important for two reasons. The first being that Percy sticking by Tyson despite the poor treatment shows what a good person he is, even though we know he’s resentful of the situation and Tyson. The second is that part of the reason Percy is so resentful is because the last time he was at camp he was Hot Shit. Everyone thought he was the bees knees because he had completed a quest and prevented a war. By having Percy be ostracized for his association with a “monster” Rick not only prevented Percy from developing an ego but it also teaches him something all leaders need to know - which is that public opinion is extremely fickle. 

This is also the book where we first hear that Percy is an ‘unreliable weapon’. Kronos specifically does not want Percy to be the prophecy child because he knows that Percy is difficult to predict, manipulate, and control. The gods themselves would be way less scared about how powerful Percy is if he was easier to control. By Percy being difficult to manipulate, that means he’s not going to wind up pulling all the people he’s leading in the wrong direction because someone else is pulling his strings. 

TTC is Act 3 and the mid-story low-point. This is the book where Percy fucks up the most.

He lets his jealousy of Thalia cloud his judgement, which directly leads to Annabeth getting captured.

He again lets his jealousy and pride cloud his judgement which causes the campers to lose to the Hunters.

A tiny moment but he’s so upset over Annabeth possibly becoming a hunter that he nearly kills an Ares camper with a javelin.

He’s so pissed at Mr. D he almost lets his anger prevent them from getting help, which would have led to all of them dying.

All of Percy’s fuck ups teach him that he needs to not let his emotions cloud his judgement and clearly see in BotL and TLO that Percy has learned his lesson. Even when his parents are in danger or he has his own personal drama with Annabeth and Rachel, he’s able to focus on the task at hand.

(The one time that Percy lets his emotions take control is when he takes off in the Labyrinth alone because he thinks Nico is nearby and he’s extremely worried about Nico because he cares a lot about him despite what Rick and his ghost writers say).

They also serve as a humbling experience to keep his ego in check, because at the beginning of the book we’re told that Percy had become accustomed to campers looking to him and up to him after having completed two dangerous quests. His issue with Thalia is that he feels she gets all the attention because Zeus is her father (whether that’s a justified feeling or not). This shows us that not only does Percy have some sort of expectation of leadership but also that as someone who spent his whole life either in the corner or in bad light, he has enjoyed being in the spotlight even if only a little bit, and now he’s missing it. 

This is also the book where Percy accepts the prophecy and basically puts himself in a leadership position for the sake of protecting Nico. However, for me, this isn’t the most meaningful leadership moment.

Percy’s big leadership moment in this book for me is when he takes the sky from Artemis and this is the big moment for many reasons.

For one, it shows that he has learned from his past mistakes of wanting to be the one to turn to. He acknowledges he’s not going to defeat Atlas and takes himself out of the fight so Artemis can fight instead. This is a great juxtaposition to the beginning of the story when he wanted to be on the front lines during capture the flag and have Thalia instead guard the flag (even though Thalia was right about the river).

For two, it shows his ability to make sacrifices because he knows very well that he can die.

And for three, it is his idea, his decision, and he has to convince Artemis it’s also a good idea.

BotL is Act IV, the rising action. The stakes are higher, the situation is more dangerous than ever, and our protagonist is digging himself out from under his mistakes of the previous act.

This is the book that while Percy has learned most of what he needs to in order to become a leader and has even chosen a leadership role, he’s not the one in charge. Annabeth is.

This book is literally Percy being Annabeth’s second-in-command because before you can lead, you need to learn how to follow. This is important to happen here because in the previous three books Percy either didn’t want to be a leader and/or he was fucking it up and had a lot to learn.

This is the book that shows us two things: 1) Percy's ability to sacrifice his personal wants and desires for the greater good and 2) why he is the best option to lead.

He does #1 first at Mt. St. Helens when he sends Annabeth away, because in the situation she’s the one that needs to get back for the greater good. Then the second time was when he sacrificed a peaceful eternity with Calypso for the greater good (not Annabeth, which the fandom, Rick, and his ghost writers seem to have forgotten).

Everyone is going to hate me for what I’m about to say next but bear with me. The BotL is showing us why Annabeth, the daughter of war and battle strategy, is not going to be the leader of their army in the series climax. To be clear, Annabeth is not a bad leader, in fact she is a good one, my point for the next bit here is why she’s not the best option. Throughout the book we see Annabeth repeatedly making the same mistakes that Percy made in the previous book; she lets her emotions get the better of her and cloud her judgement. 

The Sphynx moment is her letting her pride overtake her better judgement and she puts everyone at risk by refusing to answer the questions over an insult to her intelligence.

Absolutely everything with Rachel is an issue. From the first moment Annabeth sees Rachel and Percy together she is jealous and she treats Rachel terribly. First off, this is poor behaviour in general (and it should have been addressed in series and apologized for) but as a leader it’s poor for a few reasons.

Firstly, that as a leader she needs to know how to put her emotions aside in order to work with everyone, regardless of her personal feelings towards them. By not being able to be at least polite to Rachel, she risked Rachel saying fuck this, I’m out (probably the only reason Rachel didn’t is because she’s chill and she knew it was a world ending problem they were dealing with).

Secondly, it shows a certain amount of immaturity. The thing with jealousy is that although it’s not a reasonable emotion, how you handle it shows how mature you are. The fact that when Annabeth becomes petty and vindictive when she’s jealous shows a lot of emotional immaturity. 

Thirdly, she doesn’t fucking learn anything as we see her behaving the same way towards Rachel in TLO, made worse by the fact that she’s also attacking Percy. This isn’t entirely her fault because these actions don’t have any consequences that make her want to change her behaviour. Leaders need to be able to learn and adapt and check their own behaviour.

(honestly, the fact that Annabeth ended the series without at least trying to get over her pride and abandonment issues makes me feel like her character arc is incomplete).

TLO is Act V and the grand finale. It’s the book where Percy is 100% the Boss. It is the culmination of everything that he’s learned and shows off all the things he has that makes him a good leader.

Leaders need to know when to make sacrifices, evident by when he leaves Beckendorf and when he takes a million-to-one chance by dipping in the Styx in order to gain a chance at winning this war.

He’s cunning and manipulative, shown when he bribes the river gods into playing for his team.

He’s incredibly good at battle strategy, shown when he manages to make a plan that allows 70ish campers/hunters to defend the entire island of Manhattan from hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers from Kronos’s army.

He’s well spoken, shown when he’s able to get the campers pumped before the first battle.

He cares about the people that he’s leading. In the previous book he didn’t know Castor’s name before he died and he felt bad about that, so in this book every time he mentions a demigod it’s by name.

He’s clever, shown when he’s able to figure out literally on the fly how to kill the pig and that the hero that dies in the prophecy is Luke. He also figures out that Typhon won’t be defeated without Poseidon and knows what to say in order to get Poseidon to abandon the ocean battle and help the rest of the gods.

(Lowkey-highkey Percy is the reason that Typhon was defeated at all, because without him Poseidon would have never joined the fight and the gods would have failed, which would have meant that regardless of Kronos dying they would have been fucked)

He’s able to focus on the task at hand despite his emotional problems. This includes the times that his parents are put in the line of fire, both when they’re asleep and awake and when the Annabeth/Rachel drama is making him all kinds of angry and upset. In all those situations he’s able to carry on and largely ignore them in order to focus on the war.

To me, his deference to Chiron before the war officially begins is Percy a) being so used to following Chiron in everything and respecting the centaur as a leader and b) not entirely confident in himself and needing that confirmation that he’s in charge. While it’s never stated in the books that Percy enjoys being a leader, we never really see Percy lamenting that he wishes someone else was in charge even when he was neck deep in danger and death and stress.

No one ever questions the fact that Percy’s in charge. There isn’t ever a power struggle. Even with Thalia and Annabeth - both of whom have their own merits to make them leaders and the ambition/pride to make them chafe under the leadership of someone else. Everyone easily accepts and looks to Percy to be their leader.

I’m sorry if this comes off as rant-y and I’m likely going to piss a bunch of people off with my opinion on Annabeth’s faults, but Percy literally went through so much shit and learned and changed in order to be a good leader that it honestly makes me angry when people write him off for the sake of uplifting someone else. 

#percy jackson is a leader #percy jackson #pjo #if you've noticed i have entirely ignored everything that happens in hoo

[sunnomnoms]

[originally requested by @teerama ]

[sorry to tag you again, I transferred blogs right quick! I hope you don’t mind!]

Yes you may! I hope you enjoy this! :)

Shoto Todoroki

Todoroki had found you on his way down to the common room in the middle of the night. He had no particular reason to go, but it was late and he had woken up and couldn’t fall back asleep. Considering the dorms had elevators, not many people took the stairs, but he liked to take them from time to time to avoid social interaction sometimes. Not that he minded his dorm/class mates, there were just times he wasn’t up for chatting. This night in particular, he was feeling restless anyway, so he took the walk down the stairs to just have more time to think as he walked.

As Todoroki continued down the stairs, he heard what sounded like… music? He stopped for a second to listen. What he heard was muffled music coming from what sounded like headphones. Was someone in the stairwell?

He continued walking, to find a figure sitting on one of the steps, their head in their arms. The figure looked frustrated, they leg bouncing slightly and their foot tapping. Todoroki took it upon himself to approach the figure. Because you had your headphones in, you couldn’t hear the sound of Todoroki’s cautious steps behind you. You felt a hand touch your shoulder.

you let out a small shriek, jumping up and nearly tumbling down the stairs as you did. Your reaction caused Todoroki to let out a small yelp as well, stumbling back a little. The two of you stared at each other for a second, before Todoroki had spoken up.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He said, rubbing the back of his neck. You sighed a sigh of relief, it was just a classmate, not a stairwell ghost.

“It’s fine.” You said, offering him a small, half hearted smile.

“What are you doing in the stairwell at this time?” He had asked you, taking a few more steps towards you. He watched your smile drop, as a look of shame fell on your face.

“I… I couldn’t sleep. In training today, I got completely knocked out cold. If I wouldn’t have tried to push Denki out of the way of Kirishima’s attack, I wouldn’t have gotten hit. If I would have been awake, I could have helped our team win. But… I was just on the ground and unconscious for most of the time. It’s… pathetic really.” You admitted. You hung your head a little, your feeling of shame returning to your body.

“Kirishima hit you hard enough to knock you out? Are you okay?” Todoroki had asked. You pointed to the bandage wrapped around your head.

“Minor concussion. I haven’t heard Kirishima say anything to me besides apologies. You know how the guy is, haha..” You joked lightly.

Todoroki gave a small chuckle, much to your surprise. He sat down on the steps, and patted the spot next to him. You walked up a few steps, and seated yourself next to him. You looked at him confused. What did he want?

“You do realize it’s not just your job to keep your teammates in check, right? They should have done their absolute best to succeed as well.” He spoke softly. You cocked your head slightly.

“Well, what do you mean?” You questioned.

“You didn’t fail them. You were heroic enough to save one of them from their own stupidity. If anyone has failed another, they had failed you.”

The words were soothing in a sense, but also cold. Sure, you didn’t want to put the blame on them for what happened but… at the same time, Todoroki had a point. Denki should have taken measures to get himself out of the way instead of standing like a deer in headlights. Guilt was still heavy in your chest, but… maybe a little less heavy now.

“I… thank you, Todoroki. I um.. I really needed to hear that.” You said softly. Todoroki shook his head.

“You don’t need to thank me for telling you the truth.”

There was a silence between you two for a second.

“Would you like to go back to my dorm? I’m sure it’s much more comfortable than a stairwell.” Todoroki offered, as he stood up. You felt your face heat up.

“W-what? I don’t wanna disturb you trying to sleep or whatever-”

“I couldn’t sleep anyway, and as you said, you can’t either. It’s okay if you don’t want to, but I figured you didn’t want to be alone right now.”

You looked up at him, your faces burning at the idea of being in Todoroki’s room at such an hour. If Aizawa caught you two even outside of your dorms he would be pissed, but in his dorm? Alone? Just the two of you? At this hour? It wasn’t hard to see what could go wrong.

But you decided to live a little, and took him up on his offer. The two of you ended up staying up to around 4 am, talking about random things and watching movies. You had fallen asleep in his bed while Todoroki occupied himself with other things. When he took notice to your sleeping form, he figured it’d be best if he slept as well, considering the time. He crawled under the covers next to you, and the two of you slept peacefully.

And that’s the story of how everyone thought you two were dating, as Mina had busted open Todoroki’s door wondering why he was sleeping in so late only to find the two of you in bed together.

-

Katsuki Bakugo

Bakugo couldn’t sleep that night and was headed down to the kitchen area when he found you. He wasn’t one to stay up late, but tonight just felt weird for some reason. He couldn’t shake the feeling, and his body just seemed to refuse the idea of sleeping. Frustrated, he figured he’d kill time by maybe making a late night snack or something. Not wanting to make too much sound, he headed down the steps instead of the elevator.

He heard the sounds of sniffles and immediately stopped. They continued, on, seemingly unaware of his presence.

“Hello?” He called. He heard a small ‘eep!’ In response. Bakugo turned the corner of the stairwell to find you, curled up on one of the steps. You had tears in your eyes and looked at him with a bit of fear in your features. A heavy silence hung over the two of you for a few seconds.

“Are you… okay?” You jolted at the sound of Bakugo’s voice. It was… softer, hushed even. You weren’t sure if you had ever seen this guy show sympathy before, was this really Bakugo? Or was the darkness in the stairwell playing tricks on your eyes?

“I-I’m- uh, I’m fine.” You muttered out, wiping a tear from your eye.

“No, you’re not.” Bakugo had said. He wasn’t wrong, that’s for sure. He knew he wasn’t wrong either. He let out a small huff.

“Come on, get up.” He said as he walked towards you, holding a hand out for you. You looked at his hand, and at his face, trying to see if there was any sort of joke here. He raised an eyebrow at your hesitation. You gently took his hand, and he helped you stand up. There was a second of him holding your hand a bit longer than what was probably expected, but you didn’t think much of it at the time.

“Come on.” Bakugo ordered, motioning him to follow you. You didn’t get it, what did he want? You had expected him to make some sort of snarky comment towards you showing weakness or something. But.. here you were. Following him up the stairs and back into the hallway.

“U-um… where are we…” You went to ask him just as he stopped at a door. Oh… it was his dorm. He motioned you inside, and you obliged.

“So, are you gonna tell me why you were crying in the stairwell?” Bakugo asks, still in a tone more polite than usual. It still had that underlying annoyed sound to it but… You think that might just be how his voice sounds. Oh wait, he asked a question, shoot.

“U-um, well… I’m just a little… upset over something, that’s all.” You stammer out. You knew how Bakugo was, and had seen how he perceived others showing weakness before. You didn’t exactly want to be a laughing stock for him. You gently sat down on the edge of his bed, your hands in your lap.

“Clearly so. I got that much.” He replied, sarcasm lacing his voice. “What is making you upset?”

You swallowed thickly. Well, hear goes nothing.

“I… well, today in training my team failed… and I kinda feel it might have been my fault. Sero had bound me up with tape before I could do much to turn the tables for my team. I was hoping during capture the flag I could go unnoticed as the other team tried to fight of the rest of my team, but… turns out I’m not as sneaky as I thought.”

You said, hanging your head a little as you twiddled your thumbs. You heard him let out a small scoff.

“Well, first of all, it was dumb of them to expect you to be the stealthy one. That’s not how your quirk works and I’m sure there were other people on your team more qualified for that.”

You froze for a second.

“What?”

“Second of all, they shouldn’t have sent you alone. If they actually took the training seriously they should have sent you with someone else to ensure you would be able to carry out the plan. From what it sounds like they only had Soy Sauce Face defending the flag. If they send you with someone else instead of expecting you to carry their asses to victory on your own, you guys probably wouldn’t have lost.”

You blinked, offering Bakugo a confused look. Why… was he giving you game strategies? He looked at you, rolling his eyes and sighing.

“In other words, they were idiots to expect you to do that on your own. It’s not your fault. You did what you could.” It was… a surprisingly sweet thing of him to say. You looked down at your lap again, a bit embarrassed by his reassurance. You didn’t think there’d be a day, or night, where Bakugo would lighten your mood, but… here you were.

“I.. thank you, Bakugou…” you said softly to him. He shook his head as he walked towards his bed, crawling into it.

“It’s whatever, I don’t care.” He said, trying to regain his cold tone again. It didn’t seem to work for you though, as you were already fully aware that he did care enough to ease your nerves.

“If you want to stay, I’ll listen to you talk about your feelings or whatever. If you want to go back to your room, I don’t care.” Bakugo had said, trying (and failing) to subtly hint that you could stay the night.

You took him up on his offer, and spent the night taking about random things, venting about things that upset you and having Bakugo back take your side on things you were angry about. you don’t exactly remember when you had fallen asleep, but you remembered the morning after. There was a knocking on his door, and a whine on the other side.

“Bakugooooo!! Wake up man!!! You said we’d hang out today and it’s already like noon!!!” Denki’s voice called. You froze in your place.

“Oh shut up! I’ll get up when I want to, go away!” Bakugo yelled back.

“But Bakugooooo!”

“Ugh, give me thirty minutes!”

“Okaaaaay!! Thirty minutes and counting!!!”

You two heard foot steps walk away from the door. You sighed a sigh of relief. Getting out of his bed, you shot him an apologetic look. But before you could apologize, he shook his head.

“I’ll talk to you later. Make sure he, or none of those other dumbasses see you. You won’t hear the end of it.” Bakugo said. You gave him a nod.

“Talk to you later then.” You said, as you snuck out of his room. This time, you were stealthy enough to not get caught.

#bakugo katsuki #shoto todoroki #katsuki bakugo #todoroki shoto #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #shoto todoroki x reader #todoroki shoto x reader #bakugo x reader #todoroki x reader #mha x reader #mha reader insert #mha x you #mha x y/n #bnha x you #bnha x y/n #bnha requests #bnha reader insert #bnha x reader #request #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #my hero academia x reader #boku no hero academia x reader #katsuki x reader #shoto x reader #I am tagging the frick outta this #ryu bnha tag

[recentanimenews]

OPINION: How Black Clover Revitalized a Tired Trope

  A few weeks ago, I read a piece on Slate lamenting the fact that a huge number of onscreen magical battles end up just being people dueling with the same basic laser beams. And honestly, I agree with this take. Magic in fiction is often treated with a kind of boundless abandon, something free to be explored and wielded in a way that's only limited by the creator's imagination. And then, for some reason, when it comes time for the REALLY important moments, it's two people standing about 20 feet apart, aiming their hands and staffs and wands at one another until one of them falls down. Or disintegrates. Whichever comes first.

  Luckily, we have Black Clover. I've written before that series creator Yuki Tabata obviously enjoys mixing and matching magical powers, seeing which ones work well together and which ones clash in interesting ways. It's likely why he decided to have Asta use anti-magic. That kind of power would play off the other characters' abilities better in the long run, more so than if he'd just given Asta a few vague, RPG-friendly spells and let 'im loose.

    This feature becomes an obvious asset for the series from the onset, with the first appearance of Asta's powers against Revchi's chains lending him to a sort of horrific mystery (not to mention that displaying "chains" as the ability of the first bad guy is an immediately refreshing decision when so much offensive magic in fiction strictly revolves around more elemental things). However, it takes center stage when the Black Bulls debut in full and we see them team up to take on villains. These duels only get more interesting with time as well, with early battles like Noelle's Water Magic defending people from Heath's Ice Magic evolving to Asta using Gauche's Mirror Magic for help with Baro and Sally, to the undersea fight where various mini-teams of Black Bulls take on Vetto.

  Of course, it doesn't hurt that there's an ever-expanding amount of specific types of magic that warriors can use. From the aforementioned Chains Magic to Ash Magic to Beast Magic to Wing Magic to Wraith Magic (which reanimates corpses), it ensures that the battles, while often escalating in stakes, don't follow a general pattern of anime power scaling. Depending on the magic at play, the latest fight won't necessarily have the biggest explosions. Thus the climaxes of battles are often built around wrapping up the specific arcs of the characters involved, with their control over their magic abilities at the time representing their growth. This is by no means a new thing in storytelling or anime, but it does ensure that a Yami fight doesn't feel like an Asta fight, and a Yuno fight doesn't ever feel like a Noelle fight. 

    The best example of this? The Magic Knights Captains' Capture the Flag game episode is an anime installment that I've refused to shut up for months about:

  What helps this battle is that it's a contest rather than powerful characters attempting to maim or kill one another. This means that they have to inherently use their powers in a way that plays the game and provides obstacles. They can't just launch their most deadly attacks to win. They gotta be smart and (relatively) subtle, because otherwise who's gonna defend the Clover Kingdom?

  However, I think the peak of it probably remains Licht's battle with Julius Novachrono, with the former's Light Magic taking on the Wizard King's Time Magic. Not only is the general arc of the battle interesting — Licht's cockiness quickly turns to panic as he realizes that Novachrono's far too fast for him, leading him to slow Julius down enough for the killing blow by diverting his focus toward the lives of everyone in the Clover Kingdom. The way the two powers collide is both visually dynamic and clever, proving that moving at the speed of light gets you nowhere if your opponent can dictate how fast that light is. 

    Again, this is not the first anime to approach magical systems this way, even if it's not called "magic." Fullmetal Alchemist's "alchemy" is similarly interesting. As is the Nen system from Hunter X Hunter. If you want more great magic, check out something like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which is fantastic and absolutely won't make you feel terrible sometimes. I simply point out Black Clover because I'm glad to see another example of interesting magic at work, something that thrives on creative settings and match-ups and keeps each battle and character feeling distinct. Gimme as much of that as you've got. 

  What do you think makes Black Clover so special? Let us know in the comments!

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Daniel Dockery

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

[anythingbutmyname00]

solangelo + "you're trembling"?

Solageno for prompt #23: “You’re trembling.” This one was asked by two different people!! 

I’ve never written Solangelo before so be kind!! I also...haven’t read past the first half of the first Trials of Apollo book so I apologize if I get something or the dynamic wrong. I set this between Blood of Olympus and Trials of Apollo.

—

Despite his best efforts and most stubborn arguments, Nico was confined to resting at Camp Half-Blood for the foreseeable future. He had no issues with the camp itself, he actually rather liked it there.

He had an issue with how he felt when he was there. Some people are just outsiders, it happens. The thing is that they’re usually outsiders because they don’t like how being a part of things makes them feel.

Everyone wants to belong somewhere, right?

Despite himself, Nico actually loved Camp Half-Blood, and he wished he could stay.

Since the war ended, he thought he might actually have a reason to try harder this time, but Nico wasn’t one to get his hopes up.

Though, the son of the sun god made a pretty compelling argument. Nico had wondered if he might just consider-

“Nico!”

Nico snapped to attention towards his left side and saw Annabeth with a desperate look on her eyes.

“Gods, I called your name twice I said ‘do you understand what you have to do?’”

“Ye-yeah.” Nico said and shook his head a little, clearing it up.

“Yeah?” Annabeth said. She lowered her head a little and her gray eyes bore into him. He suppressed a shudder, the stare was oddly chilling.

“Yes,” he said, with much more confidence.

“Yeah Annie we got it don’t you even worry.” Connor Stoll jumped in. She glared at the nickname but he ignored it. He threw his hand on Nico’s shoulder and Nico promptly picked it up without looking and dropped it, letting it fall back to Connor’s side.

“See? We’re so in sync. I totally knew he would do that! Don’t worry about us!” Connor added, which, if anything, made Annabeth’s stare turn from commanding more towards distressing.

“Great.” She said and immediately turned to give out the next order.

Nico sighed and turned his head away from the intense blonde back towards the tree line again. He didn’t know why she was talking this so seriously anyway.

It was just capture the flag.

Apparently, Nico’s “doctor” was okay with—no, extremely vocally supportive of—his participation in capture the flag, but allowed no child of Hades demi-godly power drawing at all, much to Nico’s complaint.

Nico thought his “doctor” was a little too partial, but that was an opinion ruled irrelevant.

Somewhere in the distance, a horn blew signaling the beginning of the game.

Connor tapped Nico on the shoulder again and said “come on, we’re off.”

“Man, don’t touch me.” Nico said, but started a slow jog behind the son of Hermes in the direction of the tree-line closest to the beach.

Annabeth had strategized for two days leading up to this game. Nico had to sit through her run down at the beginning of the war games counsel as to every possible place the flag could be hiding and which was the most likely.

Zeus’ fist was overplayed. The field where the council of cloven elders met was too visible. It could’ve been at any random point in the woods—no landmark to draw the enemy to—but Annabeth doubted it, or so she told Nico and the other bored demi-gods waiting to here their strategy.

She had decided the other team would go for the far corner of the woods where there was only one possible path towards the flag. The Long Island Sound guarding one side of the flag left less ground for necessary defenders. It also would provide a pretty unmatched advantage for the captain of the other team—Percy Jackson.

Yeah, Nico had thought it was a bad idea for Chiron to captain the opposing capture the flag teams with Percy and Annabeth, but everyone else seemed to have a good laugh about it. Within days of the announcement, a betting ring had circulated camp, led by the Stoll brothers of course.

Nico didn’t participate in that either, he didn’t trust the Stolls not to pocket his money.

Outsider, right?

His and Connor’s job was to be the runners. They were to scout ahead and try and tell early on if the flag was in the aforementioned proposed area. If they had a chance, they should try for it, but most likely they were just ensuring the strategy would work as it was supposed to and no last minute adjustments needed making.

Connor was by far one of the fastest people at camp, which is clearly how he ended up with the job. Nico, on the other hand, was chosen because he could blend in and run by without people taking too much time to look, or notice for that matter.

He repeats: outsider.

Him and Connor had a nice pace going, they knew their path and they followed it easily enough. They didn’t pass many campers as they ran along, and if they did they were sure to keep their distance.

They arrived to the general area in which Annabeth suspected the flag would be located. Nico could hear the waves of sound. It was a nice day, the water sounded calm.

This is when Nico realized Connor had been talking to him.

“What?” Nico said.

Connor rolled his eyes “Dude, I said, ‘look, it’s almost too easy.’” and Nico followed where his finger pointed which was towards a little cluster of trees where the foliage was a more dense. the flag stood right in front of them. It followed the rule that the flag had to be in plain sight, but it was cleverly placed so that if you scanned the area quickly, you might just miss it.

Percy was on guard to the side closest to the Sound, for obvious reasons. There was Mark, son of Ares in the middle, and Clarisse guarding the other side farthest from the water.

Nico could hear Clarisse grumbling about something and Percy giving her shit about whatever it was. Mark looked extremely uncomfortable standing between them.

Connor and Nico made eye contact, and Connor nodded his head a few times towards the way they’d come from. He was clearly saying ‘come on! the plan! We go back!’

Nico was a little shocked at Connor’s insistence to follow the plan, but he didn’t think even he would pull some shit to screw up the plan lest he would have to face Annabeth’s wrath.

Nico held up a hand to say hold on, and then looked back towards the scene in front of them.

Percy had clearly thought two of the best fighters should be guarding the flag, but he hadn’t considered how him and Clarisse in close quarters would cause obvious distraction and arguing.

They were clearly not paying as much attention as they should be. They thought no one could get behind the flag with the Sound and the vegetation, but Nico had a way. The plant life created the perfect shadows for shadow travel.

He could easily get in and out with the flag, and then all they’d have to do is cross back over the creek.

It would save everyone a lot of trouble, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to be the hero just this once.

He looked back at Connor. “I can get the flag.”

“What! are you crazy?” He jerked again in the direction back towards base. They could hear the distant sounds of a makeshift battle now as the game got more intense. “What are you gonna d-”

He looked at the flag, and then at Nico.

“Uh-oh.” he said with a smirk. “Somebody want’s to disobey doctors orders.” Nico blinked, clearly bored by the joke. “He won’t be happy.” Connor chuckled.

“Does it look like i’m concerned?” Nico asked.

It was hypothetical, but Connor responded anyway. “No,” he said “but I heard that you care a bit more than you let on am I ri-”

Nico closed his eyes and jumped into the shadow of the tree he was hiding behind before Connor could finish the sentence and “jokingly” jab him with his elbow in a “see-what-I-did-there” kind of way.

He felt the shadows mold around him, and he admits, he got a little nauseous at first—more than usual. He took his time and uprighted himself before going towards the shadows of the foliage behind the flag.

He took a step forward but his foot never connected with the ground, it kept going down as if he were, well, as if he were walking on a shadow. He “woah-ed” and pushed himself forward, unbalanced and unstable.

This was nothing like what shadow travel was supposed to be like.

Instead of gliding, Nico was dipping and spinning. He couldn’t keep his eyes trained straight towards where he wanted to jump.

Get a grip, he thought, and for a moment, he thought it worked and he’d jarred out of it. He saw the green of the trees getting clearer and thought he was almost to the flag.

Instead, what he was seeing was the ground coming quickly towards his face as he fell out the other end of the shadow he had entered. He was but maybe 6 feet closer to the flag, and unfortunately was deposited directly in front of a bickering Percy and Clarisse, whom were now standing in front of each other with Mark clearly trying to mediate a sort of peace.

Nico made to speak, but shadows swallowed him once again. He wasn’t in control of his limbs this time. In fact, he wasn’t even sure they were there. He felt like he was swimming in tar. The shadows that surrounded him were becoming ghosts now, faces bleeding out of their dark ambiguous shapes. They grabbed at Nico, and he couldn’t move or speak to stop them.

He watched them mentally grab a hold of him, and then like someone clicked the button on a TV remote, he flickered out and went black.

—

“I told him, no, I told him that this was a bad idea he doesn’t listen.”

“Give him time, he will listen now I’m sure. He will have to.”

“Gods, no that isn’t good enough, he should have understood the first time I told him.”

“Go easy on him, he is still weak.”

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t be if he just li-”

Nico groaned. He hadn’t been eavesdropping on purpose. He had gained his consciousness a moment before the ability to open his eyes.

The people who had been talking before had stopped and Nico, using so much more effort than it should have, tried to focus on who was standing at the edge of his bed.

It was Will Solace and Chiron. Nico’s mind was still really foggy, but he could make out some things. He was in the infirmary. He felt like ice cream that was left out on the counter to melt and then thrusted back into a freezer and starting to refreeze.

His eyes focused a little more. Both Will and Chiron were staring at him. Chiron didn’t look disappointed, which was a good sign. He looked more...worried. Worried for him, he guessed, but also Nico caught a slight glance at Will and then back to him. That couldn’t be good.

Nico then decided to look at Will. He still looked like walking sunshine despite the fact that he had a deep scowl on his face. Nico had never seen him look so angry. It took a lot to make Will properly angry, and Nico hadn’t found that breaking point yet, until now he guessed. His eyes blue eyes usually shone like the clear sky on a summer day. Right now, they looked like the middle of a summer heat rain. It looked unnatural. Nico looked him up and down again and noticed—

“You’re trembling.” he said. Will was shaking head to toe like someone turned a dial in him up to a level he almost couldn’t handle.

“I’ll leave you two to discuss. Glad to see you’re okay, Nico.” Chiron left the infirmary, and Nico kind of hoped he would stay seeing the way Will was looking at him.

They were alone. Nico thought maybe it’d be best if he started.

“Okay, I was stupid, I know, but I-”

“Stupid?” Will exclaimed incredulously. “You almost died, Nico. Died.” he said, his arms no longer crossed but thrown out to his sides.

“Okay,” Nico said, a little exasperated. He didn’t understand. He specialized in this sort of thing. Did he know it was stupid? Yes. But did Will reprimanding him about it help him want to follow his instructions? not at all. He opened his mouth to continue but—

“No!” Will continued “No ‘okay.’ You almost died, you don’t listen. I told you how dangerous it was. I said you needed to slow down.” He looked like he was about to start steaming. He still hadn’t stopped shaking.

“No,” Nico said. “I might have struggled a bit, but I wasn’t in any real danger I would’ve felt it.”

“Your heart stopped, Nico.” Will yelled. “For 20 seconds your heart stopped. They got you. Whatever is in the shadow realm, it got you. We did CPR and it didn’t help. We had to send Clovis in through his dream space or whatever. He had to pull you out and then we could save you.”

Nico was stunned. “My heart stopped?” He asked.

“Yes.” Will said, much more choked up and quieter this time. Nico didn’t buy that he was over being angry though.

Shouldn’t he have been able to tell his heart had stopped, even momentarily?

“How could you be so selfish?” Will said next. Nico thought the yelling was done but he almost missed it. Will being angry-sad was worse. Nico hated that he did that, but he was stubborn.

“Selfish?”

“Yes, selfish. Don’t you get it? You’re decisions don’t just affect you. Gods, if you had died...” he trailed off. “Don’t you see?”

Nico didn’t answer. He didn’t see, no. What was Will trying to say?

“Is this just a joke to you? Something to tide you over until you feel good enough to leave again, and then I’m still stuck, just, here?” The shaking had stopped. Will stood miraculously still; which was shocking for someone with both ADHD and the energy of one Will Solace.

“No.” Nico said. He wasn’t sure what else he could say. He’d been sort of seeing Will he guessed for some time. They never really talked about it though. Nico hadn’t thought this was why. He assumed that’s just how Will was. He was a go-with-the-flow sort of guy. “You’re not a joke to me.” Nico said, and then immediately cleared his throat, hoping to move a little further past that now.

“okay.” Will said, quiet as a mouse. That didn’t seem like he was pleased.

Nico sighed, “Will, look,” he said to begin with. “I know I should have listened to you. I know it was stupid. I can be a little...” He choked on the word, swallowed, and said “stubborn.’

“No kidding,” Will said, his arms once again crossed. His face set.

“I didn’t think that,” Nico thought for a second, “I didn’t think that if anything happened to me it would...matter.” It sounded like crap, he knew that, but he wasn’t kidding either.

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Will deadpanned.

Nico raised his eyebrows and looked away, nodding a little. Will reeled himself back in a little.

“It’d matter to me a lot.” He said. “But I can’t do you not even trying to stay safe. You’ve gotta listen, Nico, really listen. You were lucky this time, but next time...”

Nico got the gist. He wouldn’t come back next time, at least yet.

“Okay.” Nico said. This time it was enough.

Will smiled, the sky in his eyes cleared and summer returned. Nico suspected they were okay again. Like he said, Will angry was unnatural, he couldn’t hold it long.

“Now,” Will said, “your doctor recommends tons of bed rest for at least a few days. Can you handle that? Or should I strap you down now and save myself the trouble?”

Nico rolled his eyes and sighed. “Whatever you say, doc.”

“Good!” Will said and climbed onto the bed with Nico. He rolled into Nico’s side. lifted up his arm, and draped it around himself.

Nico didn’t fight it but he gasped “Now, what would my doctor say about this? I don’t know, I was told to get a lot of rest...”

“Shut up.” Will said, “Human contact is good for convalescence.”

Nico didn’t argue, he wouldn't have wanted to anyway; even if he hadn’t used up his reserve of energy for the time being fighting a losing argument. He supposed some arguments were worth losing.

—

Ran a little long, lol hope you enjoyed!! I have 4 more prompts to write but I am still accepting! just know I am still in class right now and am pretty busy, so I can really only write one a night! If you submit one please be patient :) Thanks!

#nico di angelo #will solace #solagnelo #percy jackson #annabeth chase #pjo #hoo #heroes of olympus #prompts #dialogue prompts #submit a prompt to me #submit a prompt #anythingbutmyname00fic #percabeth #connor stoll #camp half-blood #rick riordan

[littlemisssquiggles]

Hello! Long time no see! I read your Cinder the Red Queen theory, and it's really cool! Cinder is one of my favorite characters (even if I don't watch RWBY anymore) and it would be really awesome to see Cinder play a really big role, besides "revenge on Ruby". Although, I am personally more of a Cinder Redemption Arc fan. So, hypothetically, if Cinder were to get one such redemption arc, how do you think it would play out?

Hiya Yellow! Yeah it has been a while. Sorry I took so long to get back to you. Slowly working through my backlog of posts inside my inbox. Anyways, how have you been fam? And in the literal immortal words of one Oscar Pine, wait…WHAT! When did you stop watching RWBY? ! D8

What happened? If you don’t mind me asking, how come you’re not watching anymore? Is it because you just fell out of love with the series as a whole after being disappointed with its current direction or did all the discourse surrounding the show (and by extension RT as well) drive you to stop?

Sad to hear you’re no longer in the FNDM man. But on a different note, allow me to say thank you! Knowing that you’re a Cinder fan, I’m happy to hear that you liked my Red Queen headcanon for her. Much appreciated.

And yes, I do remember you being an advocate for Cinder’s redemption as well. In response to writing a Cinder redemption arc, I’m gonna be frank. 

Given the way the canon has portrayed Cinder’s character, both in previous seasons and currently, redemption is still the last thing I can envision for your favourite Fall Maiden m’dude. I’ve never seen Cinder getting redeemed as a possibility since to me, the show hasn’t shown enough evidence of her being empathetic to anyone else other than herself to make me believe there’s a chance for her to change for the greater good.

The only way I can picture Cinder going is either she is given the Adam Taurus treatment---unceremoniously killed off despite the series keeping her relevant to the story for so long or…Cinder survives long enough to rise up and see herself becoming the all-powerful entity she desires to be---ultimately walking out of Salem’s shadow to overthrow her and replace her as the Red Queen and succeeding within a short time what Salem has failed to do for centuries---thrusting Remnant into utter anarchy in the form of a second Great  War sparked by one of the kingdoms (possibly Mistral) declaring war against the remaining three kingdoms hoping to conquer them all after learning that the great Atlas Kingdom has fallen along with the former Mantle.

One kingdom to rule them all and this was all done through Cinder puppeteering her pawns in the Mistral Council through her newly awakened abilities after finally succumbing to the Geist Grimm and becoming something more than human--- a Grimm with a soul and a conscience. A Grimm-human hybrid or Grimmoire as I’d like to say.

Instead of being redeemed, I more favour the idea Cinder becoming a bigger threat to Remnant than Salem who I peg would be defeated, purified of her darkness (courtesy of Ruby’s silver eyes) and stripped of any magic that she had, courtesy of Cinder betraying her.

Cinder’s whole “…Without you, I am nothing” statement from the trailer is just giving me huge red flags for her to eventually realize that she can probably do better than Salem without her holding her back. The student does eventually become the master, right? So why not expect Cinder to replace Salem as the main big antagonist of RWBY with her reign being the true threat of Remnant in a time of war?

I really, really like the idea of the main conflict of RWBY not being the war with Salem but the rise of Cinder Fall and the second Great War of Remnant. I think such a plotline would be cool especially looking back on the fact that Oz had told General Ironwood that he prayed that his students---the children whose futures and development were entrusted to him---would never have to face the pains and strife of war like his predecessor: King Phadrig of Vale, once did long ago.

It would actually be very compelling to watch our heroes attempting to survive a dire time when the world was divided with two of its founding kingdoms in shambles while one tried to conquer them all (Mistral) and another daring to defend them all (Vacuo). The first Great War lasted ten years. Imagine if…it were the same for the second with time fast-forwarding to another period ten years later when all of our young heroes were now grown adults. No longer naïve children enamoured by the huntsmen lifestyle but seasoned warriors doing what they could to help the people in a dark world where war raged, humanity pleaded for their salivation and the Grimm feasted.

That could’ve been nice. But…I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’m not sure if anything like that will actually happen in the show. Still it’s good to share the idea around.

Going back to Cinder, like I said---right now I can’t see a redemption arc for Cinder.

As I said, the core reason why I’ve never been for Cinder being a redeemable character is due to the fact that up until this point, the series has done very little to establish her having any positive qualities. Cinder has sadly been selfish through and through making it very clear multiple occasions that she’s only out for herself. For me to have pictured Cinder to be a redeemable character, the series would’ve need to introduce a sort of “buffer character”---for lack of a better term. Basically when I say a buffer character, I mean in terms of a character who could’ve acted as a sort of foil to Cinder---seeing through her power-hungry nature and faults and thus revealing to the audience a much more relatable, sympathetic and emotionally vulnerable side to her through her relationship with said buffer.

The best example of this type of dynamic for me in an animated media is the relationship between Prince Zuko and his Uncle Iroh from Avatar the Last Airbender. In that series, Iroh was Zuko’s buffer character---the one person who saw through Zuko’s acts of aggression and appealed to the side of him that was just a insecure young man lacking any real support in his life and wanting nothing more than to do his best to appease an abusive father just so that he can feel a sense of belonging in the world.

It was through his bond with his uncle that I, as a viewer, was able to believe in Zuko’s redemption arc since it was only with Iroh did we see a more open side to Zuko---the side that reminded us that outside of his status as Prince of the Fire Nation leading the charge to capture the Avatar---outside of that, Zuko was only a boy in need of guidance. Guidance that Iroh attempted to provide him on multiple occasions.

Going back to Cinder, this is what I would have needed to make her redeemable. Give her a character who is the only one to see her more vulnerable side. Using what we know about the series, I’d say Emerald Sustrai could’ve easily been Cinder’s buffer. In the show, RWBY already established Cinder as a sort of motherly/sister figure based on Emerald’s perception of her.

Through Emerald, the show could’ve used her close ties with Cinder to show a side to her that we often don’t see. A side that actually cares for Emerald or at least better fools Emerald (and by extension us as the audience) into thinking that she cares. Ironically enough, the show could’ve had Cinder mirror Salem in this regard.

The reason why I’m more of an advocate for Salem’s redemption over Cinder is because UNLIKE Cinder, the show has given me moments of Salem being genuinely kind and caring to others. We saw this with the way she loved Ozma and would’ve done anything to get him back before her self-interest and hatred toward the Brother Gods consumed her.

We saw this in the Lost Fable and to some degree, even though she is another pawn to her, I’d like to think that the way Salem treats Cinder is akin to a mother. My issue with Salem isn’t that she is incapable of caring about others, it’s that no matter what, she will never put them before herself. It will always be her first and others second. At least that’s what I interpreted and it for this reason while her curse will remain.

However at least the show has shown examples of Salem showing compassion towards other. This is something I have yet to see from Cinder Fall. To me, Cinder is lacking that side of her.

Salem is selfish but as strange as this for me to say, I don’t think she’s entirely heartless. It’s kind of complicated when it comes to Salem but this just adds onto why I find her character fascinating. This is what makes the difference for me between her and Cinder and separates the two.

Salem is selfish but is capable of empathy and a surprising amount of mercy in unexpected moments (like in the way she treats Cinder for example. Salem could’ve easily offed Cinder for her failures like how she ended Lionheart but instead she left her be. And judging from the V8 trailer, even as Cinder came grovelling back to her, Salem still seemed to mostly react to Cinder’s return with an air of a strict parent who isn’t angry at their child but more disappointed. And oddly enough she did the same thing with Tyrian back in V4)

Cinder, on the other hand, shares in Salem’s self-centred nature but lacks any kind of compassion. Cinder is heartless.

Sorry Yellow, picturing a redemption arc for Cinder Fall is tough for me, even hypothetically speaking. I mean, if the show had done something with Cinder akin to Zuko---having her gain the power and status she’s always wanted only to have it result in her losing the only good relationship she had in Emerald thus leading to her falling from grace again after realizing her mistakes---then I could see it.

Or…perhaps the show could’ve pulled an Azula type of redemption for Cinder. Have her gain the power she desired at the cost of her own humanity and she loses herself in the process, becoming a monster and realizing her mistakes too late. And in the end, despite everything she’s been through and in spite of all that she put her through, the only person to appear before Cinder in her time of death after falling from her mistakes is Emerald.

I like the irony of Emerald cradling a dying Cinder Fall, choosing even then not to hate her and remain with her until her last dying breathe as her way of finally paying her back for saving her from her former life of poverty; giving her a new sense purpose in life outside of being a street rat.

That could’ve worked, at least me. But again, this is only if the show had further developed Emerald and Cinder’s bond. I genuinely wished the show had explored more of Cinder’s ties to Emerald. This is why I wanted Emerald to be Cinder’s accomplice for Atlas instead of Neopolitan. We could’ve watched Emerald’s character grow further through her separating herself from Salem’s legion and devoting herself entirely to Cinder. We could’ve watched Cinder even entice Emerald with the prospect of her ruling beside Cinder in the new world she would’ve aided her to build for Salem.

At the end of the day, as Emerald implied back in V5, she doesn’t care that much for Salem. The only person of interest to Emerald Sustrai is Cinder so this makes me curious to see what their reunion would be like for V8. I highly doubt Salem just ups and left Emerald, Mercury and Hazel back in the Dark Domain. Unless they were sent off to Vacuo to retrieve the Sword of Destruction, they’re bound to be there with Salem inside of Grimm Monstro so I’m looking forward to seeing the look on Emerald’s face when she realizes to her dismay that in her absence, she had been replaced with Neo.

It would be interesting watching how Emerald deals with this development in addition to seeing where her story goes from here now that her beloved Cinder Fall is back with her but not really with HER, y’know what I’m saying? Perhaps this could lead to Emerald going out of her way to get back onto Cinder’s good side mirroring Cinder attempting to return to Salem’s.

“…Without you, I am NOTHING!” “…I don’t care about Salem but I owe Cinder for EVERYTHING!”

It’ll be a game of watching apprentices regain the faith of their masters as Emerald is Cinder’s apprentice while Cinder is Salem’s. This should be a fun development to observe for next season

…Sorry if I haven’t exactly answered your question Yellow. Truth be told, I don’t have much ideas for how Cinder could be redeemed. However I do stand by my points about Emerald being used to show a different side to Cinder. It’s a shame this wasn’t done much in the canon. But who knows? Maybe something might be done to change that for V8.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

#squiggles anwers: rwby #cinder fall #emerald sustrai #rwby salem #rwby theories #rwby volume 8 theories #yellow-eyed-green-crocodile #squiggles answers

[alexeiadrae]

Thoughts on Evil

I finished watching Evil. For reference, I am an atheist and was raised in a secular household and I am a skeptic who loves folklore and scary stories and who also loves debunking paranormal claims. My husband is Catholic and believes in demonic possession and the end of days stuff, and somehow we work, just like Kristen and David somehow work. I am also a counselor so I am familiar with the mental health aspects that Kristen deals with, and since she was the skeptic and the atheist related to her on those levels, as well as balancing motherhood with a professional career even though I have a private practice and do not testify in court, and my husband is not an adventurer in any sense of the word and has been in the trenches with me for years.

That said, I wasn’t sure if I would finish it. One thing I have noticed about atheists who were raised in secular homes is that we tend to not find the demonic possession end of day stuff scary, and if anything we find it overacted to the point of ludicrousness if it isn’t boring as hell (can’t speak for all of us, but the overwhelming majority that I have talked to about it feel that way). My parents were both raised Methodist and found The Exorcist scary even though they had been atheists for years, so I think if you are raised Christian it is still scary even if you leave the faith, but if you are never raised to believe in it then it’s silly. Both my sister and I found it silly, even though other people our age who were Christian thought it was terrifying. And it extends to other movies and shows that feature demon possession and end of day stuff. While I love horror, it’s not a subset of horror that works for me.

So I don’t know if people raised in other belief systems like Islam or Buddhism find it scary (but would be interested in finding out!), but lifelong atheists tend not to. So for those reasons I wasn’t sure if I would finish it, and for the first few episodes I still wasn’t sure because, bluntly, the demon possession stuff just has me rolling my eyes with how over the top it is if I wasn’t laughing at how preposterous it was. So those elements definitely dragged it down for me. Yet there were elements that I really appreciated, and it did have one episode that terrified and disturbed me. So I finished it. Do I want to watch the second season? Not sure. Spoilery thoughts below.

-I did appreciate how at the beginning it illustrated how someone like Kristen would have a massive amounts of student loan debt and would be working her ass off to pay it. They sort of drifted from this. But at the beginning there was the sense of how it is hard juggling career and kids and paying the bills.

-While I did like some of the psychological aspects, there was some stuff that fell victim to me knowing the ins and outs of Kristen’s profession. Most counselors and psychologists, or the good ones at least, do see a therapist of their own to work on their own issues, get what they need to off their chest and ensure that they are in a good emotional state to practice, so I am glad that they showed Kristen going to therapy and working on her issues. That said, if someone stole a therapist’s client files, that would be a BFD, for both the practitioner and the thief. A practitioner could lose their license if they were shown to be negligent in handling the files. They could have also filed a lawsuit against Leland for stealing the files. And if I was a practitioner, I would want to know how the files were stolen. 

-Which is one of the weak points of the show. Why did Kristen feel like she had to take on Leland and LeRoux on her own? She hardly exhausted her options. She didn’t even tell her mother that Leland had threatened to kill her daughters, much less document the threat and work to get a restraining order against him (yes, I know, those don’t always work well but they give her a legal recourse). Ditto with LeRoux. One of my specialties is domestic violence and harassment so I am very familiar with the steps you would take to document all of that and get help before abandoning the idea, but Kristen didn’t try any of those. And while domestic violence and the like doesn’t appear to be her specialty it pops up frequently enough that it would be alarming if she didn’t know that. It took away a bit from me. Also, if someone had threatened my children, I would tell my children. Yes, I get you wouldn’t want your kids to be anxious, but in a case like that they would need to know. I would tell my husband. I would tell the police. In fact, as a mandatory reporter, Kristen would be legally obligated to call the police if someone made threats on someone else’s life, especially a child’s life. It blew my mind that she just kept it to herself. Especially as Leland did it in a public courthouse surrounded by people. I would find someone to corroborate.

Now a problem in these cases is someone making threats to harm or kill someone, being reported, and then denying it to the police and leaving them unable to do much. They could have written that in, but they didn’t, and it did not reflect well on Kristen IMO.

-Another counselor nitpick, a good counselor/psychologist would not start out by challenging a client’s beliefs but take time exploring them and mapping out how they think. This is two fold, helping the client to trust the counselor and feel validated by them while it helps the psychologist understand how they see the world and build a map of their thoughts process and belief system and give them clues to how to utilize it to help them get better. Basically if someone came into my office and said they were possessed by a demon I would go with it even though I don’t believe them because understanding how they think is more important than challenging everything right off the bat. 

-There were a few episodes that were very effective. The Halloween episode with the masked girl was chilling. The episode that really did it for me was when David was in the hospital and subjected to the whims of a sadistic, racist nurse. And what is interesting is what made is so chilling is that none of it was supernatural. But that thought of being held captive, drugged to the point of being unable to advocate for yourself and ask for help and at the mercy of someone who wants to hurt you was terrifying (and not to mention hard to watch). I also have a history of sleep paralysis, and the thing that would terrify me most when I was paralyzed was the thought that someone was in the room or outside my home wanting to hurt me and I couldn’t defend myself or even call 911. So David being medically paralyzed captured that feeling. I also hate IVs, absolutely hate them and have this fear that they will tear my veins out, so there were several scenes I could not watch. Finally, this happens. There have been nurses who have tormented and killed patients and they got away with it for years because they were able to cover it up. And my husband, who is mixed Pacific Islander, Asian and European but appears a racially ambiguous brown, is nervous about hospitals for that same reasons and because of mistreatment his father received when he was treated for lung cancer (they broke a mercury thermometer in his lungs) that likely contributed to his death. So that episode chilled me to the core for a number of reasons.

-That said, Kristen’s sleep paralysis stuff was not an accurate depiction of how it works at all. You can’t even talk when you have sleep paralysis. I was usually laughing at the scenes with George. George. I mean, how the fuck can you take a demon named George seriously? I laughed my head off when he said his name was George and wondered if I was suddenly watching a comedy. If I had sleep paralysis and a demon came in and said his name was George I would laugh myself out of it. 

-The episode with the boy who tried to drown his baby sister in the pool brought back memories of working in a children’s mental hospital. I saw something similar with a kid who was even younger. And that kid suffered abuse so horrific that it gave me and one of the other therapists working with them nightmares, and with the knowledge that we don’t have good treatment options for someone who exhibits the symptoms that kid did it was a horrible case. If I wake up one morning and see on the news that they were arrested for a string of murders or killing their kids I will not be surprised. You don’t need possession to explain this stuff. The truth, that someone would be so sadistically abusive to their own child, and that despite all of the red flags that this child’s parents were allowed to raise and abuse them for as long as they did and to the extent that they did, is far more terrifying. I guess that’s another reason I don’t like the demonic possession stuff. It gives abusers a way out. 

-So there were things I liked about it, and there were things I hated about it. I think I’ll see what the plot synopsis and reviews of the second season are like before committing.

#evil #cbs evil #netflix evil #kristen bouchard #david acosta #a counselor watches evil

[jesawyer]

Unsolicited Opinions on Improvements for Mordhau’s Frontline Mode

In spite of not being particularly good at them, I’ve been a fan of competitive team-based, objective-oriented FPSes going back to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Battlefield: 1942.  When they’re good, they’re great.  The thrill of victory/agony of defeat on map like W:ET’s Fuel Dump is hard to match in either a single player game or a standard DM/TDM environment.

When I saw that Mordhau was coming out with a team-based, objective-oriented mode (Frontline), I was thrilled.  Mordhau’s combat is challenging and I always appreciate when something is...

There are problems with balance (HORSES) and, as with any online competitive game, the in-game chat being a vortex of brain-destroying negative energy, but the developers at Triternion have already discussed plans to address those issues.  And while they’ve also discussed plans to look at Frontline, that’s not going to stop me, who has no experience working directly on team-based, objective-oriented FPSes (other than giving advice on Armored Warfare, I guess... ), from giving my unsolicited opinions on how Frontline could be improved as a mode of gameplay.

I’m an RPG designer, so if anyone reading this wants to dismiss these ideas immediately, feel free.  Take ‘em or leave ‘em, baby!

Things I’m not Going to Address (Except Here)

It’s worth saying things that I’m not going to really dive into because I don’t think they’re problems with Frontline as a mode.  First, weapon balance.  I have opinions on how weapons and weapon costs are balanced in Mordhau as a whole, but I don’t think any Frontline map is made or broken because of overall weapon balance.  Horses and firebombs are sort of the exception here, but Triternion has already acknowledged problems with both, so there’s no point to beating on that billhooked horse.

Second, in-game chat being a cesspool of idiocy.  I mean, it absolutely is, but it’s also 100% unnecessary for playing Frontline.  Because Frontline has a single conflict point at any given moment of the game, it’s really rare that any deep team coordination is required.  And if the mode evolves to require better coordination, it would be better served by the existing voiced in-character quick bark system (which is not dissimilar in overall structure to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory’s) than by requiring characters to type in / read text chat.

As a reminder, you can disable the chat log entirely from the options menu.  In my experience, it is only an improvement.

Asymmetry

One of the first enormous hurdles to achieving good gameplay balance on any Frontline map is that every Frontline map has either asymmetrical map layouts, asymmetrical objectives, or asymmetrical map layouts and objectives.

It’s hard to un-ring the bell on these design decisions, but it’s important to recognize that when both the layouts and objectives are asymmetrical, it’s significantly more challenging for designers to achieve what feels like (to players) a fair set of challenges for both teams.

On maps where the layouts are close to symmetrical (e.g. Mountain Peak), it’s important to ensure that the final stage objectives feel like they require a similar amount of time, effort, and focus to complete.  Of course, Mountain Peak’s final stage objectives don’t require a similar amount of time, effort, and focus to complete, so whether your team wins or loses once pushed back to their final spawn can feel like a tooth-and-nail struggle (pushing the ram to red) or like you suddenly lose out of nowhere without even seeing the final objective fall (burning tents in blue).

To compare these two objective types, we can look at how they work in games like Overwatch or W:ET.  The ram at red is like an Overwatch payload and other than the fact that it moves, it’s not much different from flag objectives in Frontline.  Blue players stand around the ram and it moves -- unless red players stand in the area and/or kill the blue players in the area.  Unlike an Overwatch payload (or the train car on W:ET’s Rail Gun), the defending team cannot reverse the direction of the ram once it starts moving.  They can only stop it (reclaiming their nearest flag will also halt forward progress).  The ram is easy to track and players from both teams can try to dogpile onto it (or the nearby flag).

In contrast, the tents that blue has to defend are spread out over a relatively large area.  A single red player can throw a torch and light up a tent and there’s not much blue can do to stop it.  Of course, red can just forget to do it, which is a real and separate problem, but all of these problems contribute to making the final objectives feel massively different in terms of the effort and coordination required to accomplish them.

It would probably be easier to change the objectives on Mountain Peak than to try to use map layout as a balancing factor.  On maps like Grad, where the layout is so totally asymmetrical, making the final objectives more symmetrical could help a lot.  Even if both red and blue had to destroy three carts, the layouts of the final objective zones are so fundamentally different that the experience would be inherently different.  And that’s really the goal, right?  That it feels different winning as blue than it does winning as red?  I believe most players would rather have symmetrical objectives that feel more balanced for each side than to have asymmetrical objectives that feel massively lopsided in execution.

Map Refinement

This is related to asymmetry, but is a separate issue.  There’s a lot that could be edited out or changed on each of the existing Frontline maps to make gameplay more enjoyable.  A relatively minor, but significant, change on Taiga’s layout made a huge impact on the viability of blue taking the central flag.  There are two types of map refinements that are important: large scale and polish.

Large scale issues are things like Grad’s subterranean dungeon.  I would argue it doesn’t need to exist at all, but a reasonable argument could me made that having another path into the castle is valuable for red.  Still, it could be cut in half in terms of overall complexity/size and it would still accomplish the same goal.

Another large scale issue is the distance of blue’s spawn from the center of Crossroads relative to the distance from red’s spawn.  Blue’s is quite a bit farther away and their path is obstructed far more than red’s.  Additionally, red horses can (and do, nonstop, every match) run circles through blue’s spawn.  I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that the base spawn of each team should be blocked from continuous horse access.

In general, looking at each team’s spawns relative to the capture point between them, consider if each team has a similar burden to access the capture circle in terms of distance, obstruction, and vulnerability to enemy harrying tactics (i.e., prior to even entering the circle).  If they don’t, address those as part of large scale map changes.

Polish issues are things like the myriad small collision hangups that exist on almost every map.  E.g. on Crossroads, overhead clearance between the ground and stairs in the central fort, the chunk of debris on the ground just around the NE corner of the base of the central fort, and red’s ramps over the palisade wall.  Making movement collision accurately model every bump and nook and cranny produces frustrating experiences for players.  Smooth out the collision to produce walking surfaces that don’t stop player movement because of minor, almost imperceptible height differences.  If smoothing the collision out makes it differ too much from the world geometry, change them both.

Catapults, Trebs, and Similar Instant Death Machines

Speaking personally, I don’t think these add any value to Frontline.  When I get killed by one of them, 3/4 times I had no indication that danger was imminent and in many situations there was nothing I could to avoid death.  E.g. on Grad, it’s easy for red to launch catapult shot over the wall into the smithy, giving even players who are looking in that direction less than half a second to react (i.e., realize they will die) to the enormous stone sphere as it crests the wall.

If these siege weapons continue to be a part of Grad, Camp, and other maps, please give players an audio/visual cue - regardless of where they’re looking - that death is inbound.

Airstrikes and artillery in W:ET are preceded by colored smoke and distinctive sounds that give players a window of opportunity to get out of the way.  I’m not saying there should be smoke where they will land, but a better audio cue would go a long way to making siege weapon deaths feel less random and arbitrary.  Yes, silent death from a catapult is realistic, but it’s obnoxious from a gameplay perspective and can instantly change an objective from being threatened to being completely cleared.

Better Audio Cues

Players have a difficult time focusing on Frontline.  It’s just human nature.  There’s a reason why Overwatch focuses everyone toward a single payload that they stand on.

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory used voice of god-style announcements to indicate when major map-critical events were occurring and to tell players what they were supposed to be doing.  At the start of Fuel Dump, the Axis announcer says, “Don’t let them construct the bridge! Construct the command post!”  When the Allies construct the bridge, the announcer yells, “Bridge constructed! Destroy it!” The announcer keeps track of every major game state and constantly reminds the players where they stand on the map.  When dynamite is planted on an objective, everyone in the game is made aware of it and it focuses their efforts on defusing it / ensuring it goes off.  Critically, there is a window in which the defending team can rush to the objective and stop / reverse what has been set in motion.  

In Frontline, when enemies are attacking a flag, players on the defending team don’t get an audio cue until the tide has turned in the attackers’ favor.  But by that point, if a player is not already involved in the defense of the flag, it’s unlikely that they can reach the flag in time to make a difference.  Better and more audio cues about the state of an objective would help focus players more on the objectives than they currently do (not much).

Audio cues can also apply to player-initiated barks being broadcast across the team.  Yes, spam can be a problem, but muting players should be an easy process in any competitive online game.  Mordhau already has a robust set of voice barks, but they’re only heard in proximity to the player and most of them aren’t useful in any practical sense.  Being able to yell for help isn’t that appealing when it’s limited to a 15′ radius around you and everyone in that radius can already see someone feint morphing a maul into your face.

However, being able to call for help or reinforcements and having it broadcast to the team with an on-screen indicator of your location or the nearest active objective -- that could be quite helpful.  Arguably one screen of the commands could be reorganized to only and always be team-wide barks: Hold, Follow Me, Help, and Charge.  Need Healing or Need Repairs could also be added to the list.

Point Scoring and Display

Even players who elect to play Frontline are often awful at actually focusing on the objectives.  A lot of players go into it as though it’s TDM.  How many times have you seen Crossroads end and the losing team has a proud player at the top of the leaderboard with a 50:3 K:D due to running down the enemy team’s spawn with a horse for the whole match?

K:D is a fine metric for success in DM or TDM, but it’s not the point of Frontline -- at least, it isn’t when it’s away from the objectives.  I think there are a variety of changes that could be made to scoring and to the display of scores to help focus people on the objectives.

First, killing and, arguably, dying on or near an active objective should be weighted as more valuable than killing random enemies 75m away from an active objective. Players currently accrue points for neutralizing and capturing an objective, but if the needle isn’t moving, they don’t earn any points for fighting on the objective.  This discourages proactive defense and doesn’t motivate attacking players to push fights into the objective unless the odds are already heavily in their favor.

Damaging blockades (with anything other than firebombs, anyway) and repairing them are tedious, often dangerous activities that arguably do more to aid/hinder access to the objective than killing an individual unit.  Since firebomb damage is being tuned, it may be worth considering increasing the score bonus for damaging or repairing blockades to encourage more players to prioritize taking down barriers before entering melee with people in the general vicinity.

For Frontline, consider highlighting score in a lighter color (vs. K/D/A) and either adding additional stats (healing, capture, and repair/destruction score contributions) or only showing the player’s K/D/A (no one else’s) to de-emphasize the importance of K/D/A.  I’ve seen a lot of posts online where players post screenshots of someone “scandalously” at the top of a Frontline scoreboard with a poor or mediocre K/D/A.   Yes, it’s not DM/TDM, it’s Frontline.  The point is ostensibly about pushing objectives and helping your teammates do that.  The way points are scored and displayed should emphasize that, with K/D/A only being one element.

Supply Boxes and Their Placement

I have pretty mixed feelings about deployable objects in games of this type, but rather than advocate removing any of those things, I’m going to suggest rethinking the inclusion of supply boxes and, if they stay in the game, where they are placed.  Supply boxes are the easiest way to build ballistae and for that reason, where they are placed can have a huge impact on the defensive capabilities of the team controlling the space around the supply boxes.

If the developers’ intention is that ballistae should be used mostly defensively, supply boxes should be placed primarily away from central objectives, and not close to lines of sight that point toward central objectives.  This promotes back-and-forth gameplay across the center, rather than entrenching the dominant team’s position at the center.

Transparency and Tuning in Objective Capture Mechanics

It’s not currently obvious to most players how the capture mechanics on an objective work.  What changes the objective from Attacking to Capturing?  What ratio of attackers vs. defenders are required?  Some UI changes could help highlight exactly what’s happening.

Finally, I urge the developers to think about the timing of captures and how that works with spawning mechanics.  It’s common for a defender on an objective to die, be unable to respawn before the objective is considered “Losing” and, after respawning, be able to reach the objective before it is fully captured by the enemy.

Is this the desired pacing of objective captures?  I would guess that something more forgiving is desired.  Once an objective is “Losing”, if it’s technically impossible for respawning defenders to reach the objective in time to prevent it from being fully captured, it can be extremely frustrating.  Tuning the pacing of objective captures can help make the back and forth feel less hopeless, more satisfying.

Thanks for reading.

#video games #game design #mordhau

[navigatorkyle]

A Day in the Life

War has changed. In the 33 years since the first rulebook for Warhammer 40k was released, the rules of engagement have undergone countless iterations of revision and rewriting. Today, players use the 8th edition rulebook: hitherto the most beginner-friendly and accessible version of the game. Simply talking about the game is not enough to capture its appeal, so I decided to venture out and transcribe the events of a game with a friend, in a time-honored tradition of recording the results of matches, called 'battle reports.'

Battle Report: The Ether Conflict

In the Northwestern corner of the galaxy, at the fringes of human space, renegade factions battle each other for resources. Raiders harass supply lines, fortresses are built and destroyed, and fleets slink about, searching for ripe targets. Traitors to the empire of humankind, these lawless vagabonds are collectively known as the followers of Chaos- but they are anything but united. Today, two factions prepare to do battle for one reason or another. Ian Cushman has brought to the table the vile Death Guard, a faction dedicated to the worship of a god of disease, who are just so happy to get the whole galaxy sick. I have decided to command the Gravewalkers, a group of sorcerers with the capacity to raise the dead to serve them.

After a beer and a chat about the backstory of the match, Ian and I set up the table. 40K regulation tables should be 6 feet long by 4 feet wide, and festooned with all sorts of terrain. We use home made cardboard buildings, and various bits of 3d-printed goodies like tank traps, concrete barricades complete with ragged bullet holes, and decrepit squat buildings. A good board will feature lots of large terrain pieces to block line of sight so that armies with a lot of long-range firepower won't dominate the match. The goal is the arrange the board so you can't see from one side to the other. Once the sprawling, ruined cityscape of a board is arranged, the game type can be selected. There are a great many ways to play the game: one can set up objectives that need to be taken and held, points can be gained from destroying enemy units, the list goes on. There are even decks of objective cards for each faction that can be employed to add an element of randomness- high command could issue you an order to hunt down the enemy one , then turn around and tell you to sit tight and hold your gains the next. Ian and I settled for a mission called “The Relic,” which is essentially capture the flag. We set up a little piece of 3d printed plastic in the middle- a miniature arcade cabinet our mutual friend Graham printed for fun. Our armies will battle to get into contact with the arcade cabinet, and whoever is in possession of it by round 5 wins.

Before we settle in for the game, I carefully consider my options. Ian's army is slow and ponderous, but incredibly durable. He has a strong artillery contingent which can hang back and belt out awesome firepower, but if approached at close range it becomes useless. Furthermore, his line infantry consist of mobs of mindless zombies, which excel at distracting and bogging down more important units in fruitless melee. His army, in a nutshell, is an anvil. It relies on absorbing punishment effectively, and wearing the enemy down slowly. My army is quite the opposite. My units lack the resilience of the Death Guard, trading defense for lightning-fast offense. I've forgone artillery in favor of monstrous, close-range cavalry. My infantry are fragile, but pump out a lot of mid-range damage. If I'm to win, I must take care not to let my important units get tied up before they can shut down his artillery, and I should ensure my troops remain intact long enough to make off with the arcade cabinet.

After some more idle chatter, we set up on either of the long table edges, and fetch the only essential tools of the game: dice and measuring tapes. Distance in the game is measured with inches, and so having a measuring device longer than a foot is imperative. Furthermore, everything else is decided with dice rolls, and so having a lot of dice on hand is a good idea. It's bad luck to hold onto a set of dice for longer than one edition of the rules, but they're very cheap and so replacing them isn't bad. Ian and I finish up the first round in short order, and the board changes significantly.

Each player gets one turn per round, and each player turn consists of a movement phase, where you move all your troops, a psychic phase, where all the magic literally happens, a shooting phase, where you can fire any ranged weapons you have, a charge phase, where melee units get to grips with the foe, and a fight phase, where models duke it out in close quarters with sword and rifle butt. I had gone first, as settled by dice roll. Lacking long-range options, my turn was simple- monster and mercenary alike moved as quick as they could, forgoing shooting, toward the enemy. I had to ensure as much of my army as possible closed with the enemy, or I'd be whittled down before I could secure the arcade cabinet. Ian's turn was more lengthy, setting up fields of fire for his artillery, and organizing his cannon fodder to better defend against a charge from my monstrous, beast-like war machines. A few cursory shells were fired off, but my machines shrugged off the damage.

Round two begins, and I'm just able to slip my heavy armor past the tar pit of misshapen zombies, but it'll be a turn yet before Ian's big guns are silenced. My sole sorcerer bolsters the defenses of my infantry, to hopefully prevent them from being removed before they can attain the relic next round. Finally, some firepower is exchanged between my infantry and Ian's, and the number of grunts on the board is shaved down. In his turn, Ian responds with a brutal barrage, his cannons removing one of my three war machines and cutting down a number of fodder infantry, while shuffling closer to the objective. I'll now have to consider spending firepower to delete the zombies before it's safe to move in and snag the arcade machine.

Round three makes things considerably bloodier. My monstrous machine-beasts make contact with the enemy back line, but his heavy infantry are far enough up the board to affect the battle. Troops engage in melee in the center of the board, in between buildings and around the central objective. I'm at a disadvantage here, the enemy should have been cleared from the area. I'd underestimated my opponent's resilience, or overestimated my dice luck. Despite being on the back foot tactically, I'm looking forward to a potentially interesting situation, wherein his commander unit and mine look to be about to brawl on the right flank, between my war engines and the rest of my army. His commander is superior, statistically, and on paper he would win a duel. But I won't back down- fortune favors the bold, and glory isn't earned through cowardice.

Come round four, the game is mostly decided. My war machines managed to bring down the artillery, but the zombies looped around and caught up to them, rendering them too bogged down with fodder to help my main force. Ian's victorious commander and his elite bodyguard rip through my infantry with ease, deleting my sorcerer and neutering my ability to coherently resist. Ian and I shake hands, and we share another beer over discussion of what we could have done differently, or what units might have been better to take. In essence, I'd lost sight of the bigger picture- the objective. I'd been too busy hunting down problem units to protect my own means of securing the victory. Furthermore, I had underestimated the sheer resilience of the Death Guard. A tactical maxim of tabletop wargames goes something like “Shoot what you can kill.” I'd failed to target those units I was likely to remove in one go, and suffered for it.

The depth of strategy for games like this is astounding, and this game could have gone any number of ways had I made a different minute decision for each trooper in my army. The endless replayability of the game draws me back every weekend, to test my mettle against friends in a galaxy rife with conflict.

#warhammer 40k #hobby

[youvebeenlivingfictional]

Will You Give Me Shelter Part Six

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Pairing: Eddie Brock x Reader x Annie Weying

Rated: T (for now; will go up later, probably?)

Notes: Not Beta-Read.  1 light swear

Summary: After that dinner, my relationship with Eddie was better than it had ever been. In the weeks following, Annie and I had started texting daily (which started with an adorably devious ‘I got your number from Eddie’s phone >:)’ ). 

“You two are killing me.” Annie sounded equally amused and bored. I glanced away from my screen, smiling to see her leaning back in Eddie’s usual chair, her arm thrown over the back, head propped on her hand.

“She’s killing you, babe, not me,” Eddie said from where he’d taken to pacing in front of my desk.

“No. No, it’s definitely both of you,” Annie said.  

After that dinner, my relationship with Eddie was better than it had ever been. In the weeks following, Annie and I had started texting daily (which started with an adorably devious ‘I got your number from Eddie’s phone >:)’ ). Neither Eddie nor I brought the incident in the front-hall up, either. Maybe he’d had more to drink than I’d thought and didn’t remember. What was more likely, though, was that we had mutually silently agreed to never bring it up.

I often found myself thinking about it, but I tried not to dwell on it for too long. I liked working with and being around Eddie too much to jeopardize our relationship, and I had never gotten so close to anyone in such a short period of time as I had to Annie.

The truth was, beyond the near-kiss with Eddie, I sometimes thought that Annie was flirting with me.

That made me feel stupid. There was no rhyme or reason as to why she’d be flirting. She had Eddie. And while she had casually dropped into one of our recent conversations that she had dated women in the past, I was sure it didn’t mean anything. I took it as a sign that I had been out of the dating game for too long, and was perceiving the most innocent of comments as something they weren’t.

They had missed their dinner reservation that night-- Annie had been called back to the firm only a few minutes after she’d left, and Eddie had stayed behind to work a little longer. By the time Annie made it to the office, Eddie and I had ordered takeout for the three of us.

It had been almost two hours since then. Annie’s coat had come off, and I’d found out that it was basically twice as attractive to watch women roll their sleeves up as it was to watch a man do it.

“It’s her, I promise,” Eddie said, rounding the desk to crouch behind Annie’s chair and rest his chin on her shoulder.

“Obviously Alvarez hadn’t been expecting the defendant come right out and say that. That clearly wasn’t part of their game plan.” I shook my head, turning back and crossing my arms.

“A good lawyer doesn’t ask a question that they don’t already know the answer to. So either he’s a shitty lawyer or he’s playing up his reaction for effect,” I argued.

“She’s right,” Annie piped up. I smiled at her, mouthing my thanks. My smile widened when she winked at me.

“Oh, no. I can’t have you two ganging up on me,” Eddie whined.

“Now who’s playing up his reaction for effect,” Annie said, lightly flicking the top of Eddie’s head.

——————

“You should come over for brunch this weekend,” Annie said, looping her arm through mine as we headed out of the building. I frowned a little.

“I can’t this weekend.” Annie pouted, and I spotted Eddie’s hand giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Next weekend?” He asked. I nodded, smiling.

“Sounds good.” We said our goodbyes and I turned down the block as the two of them got on Eddie’s motorcycle.

——————

“Another date? What has gotten into you?” Maddy asked, impressed, watching me rifle through my closet. I glanced back at her. I hadn’t told her that last time hadn’t been anything of the sort but felt like at this point, it was too late.

This time, however, it really was a date.

After dinner at Eddie and Annie’s, between Annie’s albeit light interrogation and the stupid thing I’d almost done, I’d made the decision to sign up for a few dating apps.

I hadn’t spoken with most of the people I’d matched with, but most of the ones I had spoken to had either only wanted to hook-up or had barely gotten beyond the small-talk phase.

“So how long have you been talking to this guy anyway?” Maddie asked.

“A couple of weeks. We got coffee last week— I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you getting all excited,” I added quickly. Maddy narrowed her eyes at me.

“Tell me he’s cute, at least. Was he one of my picks?”

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, pulling up Mark’s profile and passing the phone to her. Her irritated gaze disappeared fairly quickly at his profile.

“He’s hot.” I rolled my eyes at her tone.

“What, you don’t think I can pull that kind of action down?” I asked, glancing back at her.

“Oh, you obviously can, this is the proof, wow.” I snorted, pulling a summer dress out of the closet and holding it up to myself, biting my lip. “So did that last date not go anywhere?” Maddy asked. I could feel her watching my face in the mirror, and I was careful not to let my face fall. “Nope. Didn’t go anywhere.”

——————

“Good, you’re up.”

I blinked tiredly, rubbing my eyes.

“Eddie? It’s like two in the morning,” I mumbled, glancing at the clock on the bedside table.

“I need you to come in. Like, now.”

“To work?”

“Yeah. I’m already here. And I have coffee and bagels.”

“Where the hell did you get a bagel at 2 AM?”

“We can talk about that later.” He paused.

“I know, I’m asking a huge favor, but just— come on, this is big.”

I groaned, running my hand through my hair.

“Okay. Okay okay, I’m on my way.” I hung up before he could thank me.

“You okay?” I glanced behind me, smiling a little to see Mark rolling onto his side.

“Got called into work,” I said.

“Well, hey, if you don’t want sleepover, just say so.” I smiled, leaning down and pecking his lips before I got up to hunt for my clothes.

——————

I probably looked like hell, and like I wanted to kill him, but Eddie smiled when he saw me nonetheless.

“One of the overnighters couldn’t handle this?” I asked, sliding into my seat and waiting for my equipment to boot up.

“Not the way I’d want and you know it,” Eddie said, already in his usual spot. I rested my chin on my hand, closing my eyes briefly as opening them again when I felt the coldness of my monitor light flicker on. I sighed, pushing my hair back from my face. I wordlessly held my hand out for Eddie’s drive but got nothing.

I turned my head, brows raising when I saw him staring at me.

“What?” I asked. He cleared his throat.

“You’re uh— I’ve never seen you in glasses before,” he commented.

“Contacts are tricky at 2 AM,” I said.

“And you have a hickey,” he added. I felt myself flush, fighting the urge to reach up and cover it with my hand. What good would that do? He’d already seen it.

“You gonna give me the footage or what?”

“Oh, yeah,” Eddie patted his pockets down before finally locating it and handing it over.

I worked almost on autopilot, letting Eddie tell me what and where to cut. By the time I was really waking up, I realized what it was: a ride along for the capture of Evan Smithson, a man that had escaped prison nearly a month ago.

It was like he’d been waiting for me to realize, and when I turned to him wide-eyed, he was grinning.

“I know,” he said. He slid his arm around my chair, turning us back toward the screen.

“Come on, we need this ready by six and we’re almost done.”

——————

The news of Smithson’s capture was splashed across every major paper and news outlet by ten that morning, but we had gotten it out first. I didn’t even bother asking Eddie who he’d gotten in good with to be allowed to tail them.

Lewis had been so pleased with our work that he’d given the both of us the rest of the day, and Eddie and I had packed up faster than ever before.

I was more than a little clumsy in my sleepiness, but Eddie was as sure-footed as ever. I’d nearly spilled an entire cup of cold coffee on my editing bay, but Eddie had caught it, righting it before any more than a few drops could hit the desk.

“Turn off the fucking sun,” I grumbled as we stepped outside. Eddie snorted, arm sliding around my shoulder and drawing me a little closer as we walked. In another circumstance, I might’ve pulled away or brushed him off, but I was too tired to care.

“We gotta get you home before you totally pass out,” he said. I hummed, agreeing. He let go of me to hail a cab, and I leaned against his back as he flagged one down.

——————

“Up, come on.” I grunted as Eddie lightly shook me. I got out of the car, not bothering to fight him on paying the cab driver. I was surprised to find us outside his and Annie’s place.

“... this is not my house,” I said, watching him find his keys. He looked back at me.

“You know I think you’ve got the makings of an investigative reporter,” he grinned, “I couldn’t remember where you live. If you want I can call you a cab,” he added. I shrugged, stepping inside.

“Sure. I’m just gonna,” I let myself into the living room, sitting in the corner of their couch.

“‘M just gonna rest my eyes,” I mumbled, letting them close for a moment.

——————

“Oh, honey. Eddie really put you through the wringer, didn’t he,” I heard. I hummed, leaning up into the fingers brushing my hair away from my face.

“You with me?” The voice asked. I took a moment to process before I shook my head. I heard a chuckle.

“Alright. You go back to sleep.”

——————

“She up yet?” Eddie asked, setting his coffee mug down as Annie came in. She shook her head, sitting down across from him.

“Out like a light. She must not have been sleeping when you called her.”

“No, don’t think she was,” Eddie agreed. Annie’s lips twisted, remembering the bright hickey she’d spotted.

“Thought she wasn’t seeing anyone,” She said, glancing back into the living room.

“Maybe she wasn’t.”

“Maybe she still isn’t,” Annie offered, “I’ll ask.” Eddie shook his head.

“No reason for you to ask.”

“We’re friends. Friends talk about these things,” Annie said firmly.

“Well, just don’t talk about them when I’m in the room,” Eddie requested. Annie watched as he got up to put his mug in the sink.

“It could work, you know,” She murmured, and frowned as his shoulders went rigid.

“Just leave it alone, babe,” Eddie begged. He turned back to her, tipping her head up for a kiss.

“‘M gonna go get some sleep,” He said, giving her shoulder a squeeze before heading to their room. 

#Eddie Brock #Eddie Brock x Reader #Eddie Brock x Annie Weying #Eddie Brock x Reader x Annie Weying #Eddie Brock/You #Eddie Brock Imagine #Will You Give Me Shelter #Eddie Brock x You x Annie Weying #Eddie Brock/You/Annie Weying #Annie Weying