#the fact that its diner themed is destroying me

[plangentlyre]

thinking thoughts about sakimizu/mizusaki diner au wherein mizuki, local absentee of their school and a lover of all cute things, finds themself frequenting a particular diner a couple blocks away when they discover their idol, minori hanasato, was working there part time.

Too nervous to speak up to them and ask her for a picture, Mizuki accidentally bumps into another waitress, Saki Tenma, and gets spilled on by ice cold water. Saki startles at this and profusely apologizes to them to which Mizuki brushes her off with "it's okay, it's okay," admitting that it was also their fault for not paying attention as well.

This only seems to worsen the waitress's worried state as Saki nearly devolves into a meltdown which is where Mizuki decides to compliment her hair and comments how cute her hairstyle and pink dye was. Their diversion works as Saki jumps to say that Mizuki's hair looks even cuter, saying how the shade of their pink is so pretty to asking where they bought their clothes from so that she could wear it.

Just as Mizuki is about to say they were handmade, someone who they recognize to be Airi Momoi calls out to Saki for another order to deliver. Saki blushes when she realizes her negligence and promptly excuses herself, rushing off to the other side of the diner in a speed of light.

Dumbfounded but intrigued, Mizuki visits the diner again in hopes of attaining their idol's attention without coming off as too rude and creepy. This time, they pick out a nice table and orders for a simple burger and smoothie. Instead of Minori, however, Saki was the one who came up to them, carrying a notepad while sporting a rather cute gobsmacked expression when she notices Mizuki.

She tells them how sorry she was the other day and says that she'll even bring her an extra dish as compensation. Mizuki simply laughs at the girl's offer and stubbornness to continue apologizing and declines seeing as it was only an accident. Saki, this time, calms down and asks for their name. Realizing that they haven't properly introduced themselves, Mizuki tells her and redirects the question back to which she exclaims with a cheerful tone.

It was at this point that Mizuki notices a familiar figure running around the diner, seemingly getting chased at by a small dog. It was Minori, they conclude as soon as the girl turns toward their direction. Saki watches Mizuki's gaze glitter in that same awed manner as she does with her own idol and asks, "Oh! Are you by chance a fan?"

Mizuki becomes embarrassed at the question and fumbles to form a response before Saki giggles, also confessing that she, too, is a fan of Airi who's also in the same group as Minori. She also says that she was one of the reasons she decided to work here. "If you want, I can ask her to come over! She doesn't mind spending time with her fans. After all, she's very cool!"

Mizuki panics, flustered as they stop her. "There's no need! I feel like it would be more appropriate for me to ask her myself anyway. But at the same time... I..."

Saki smiles encouragingly at them, understanding of their predicament. "Alright! I'm sure you'll gather enough courage to come up to her!" She clears her throat. "Then, shall I take your order?"

It eventually becomes a routine. Mizuki wakes up, skips school whenever they want and comes into the diner, hyping themself up to talk to Minori before backpedaling at the last second. If not to uselessly waste their time staring longingly at the other girl, Saki would often come up to them for a nice chat. They would even pair up together to admire their respective idols.

Basing off from their previous meetings, Mizuki quickly learns how similar the two of them were. From their incredible taste of fashion to their obsession with cute things, it is an undeniable fact that Mizuki enjoys being with Saki. It's almost as if they were close friends.

Saki was too much of a great friend to have and though Mizuki has other friends who have known them since their darkest moments, something about the excitable and cute waitress has drawn them in with her charm. If not for their classmates' offhand comment about them smiling and laughing a lot lately, especially since they never come into school that often, Mizuki fails to stop that odd, bubbly feeling burning in their chest at the prospect of feeling welcomed and noticed. Unknowingly, that feeling continues to grow.

"You mean, you're also familiar with Shizuku Hinomori? I really envy you now, Saki-chan. How does it feel to be so lucky..." It was evening and Mizuki insisted on helping out Saki with cleaning the leftovers from the tables. They were, once more, chatting about idols most specifically the ones that they admire.

"Ehehe~ My brother is much more familiar with her but I do know her sister! We're childhood friends so that's probably why... We also attend the same school and I see her often too." Saki clinks two stacks of glasses together, carrying them gracefully to the kitchen with ease. When she returns, she sees Mizuki arranging the different sauces on the table.

She bursts into a smile. "I really appreciate you for helping me out, Mizuki! Airi-senpai would usually stay back for closing time to help me but it seems that they have an urgent meeting today, so-"

"Saki..." Mizuki cuts her off, their expression turning slightly sour. "How do you know if you admire someone?"

"Admire... someone?" Saki tilts her head, pondering. "Well, I can't really explain it well. But in Emu-chan's words, your heart would be all, "Wow!!!" and "Sparkly, sparkly!" when you're around them. And that, you also feel really really happy just being around in their presence! Like they're a very special person to you. Why do you ask?"

It was silent but then: "Do you... perhaps admire someone, Saki-chan?"

"Um, well... You know how I usually am when I talk about Airi-senpai ahaha. She is, after all, the one who made me really happy while I was still in the hospital. Even as her kouhai, she's still so amazing and very reliable whenever I'm in trouble. I really aspire to spread happiness like her someday..." Saki clutches the end of her skirt tightly, fighting off the urge to smile too giddily in front of Mizuki.

Saki dearly treasures her friends, and among them was Airi who she was fortunate to befriend at school. It was her that made her realize how precious it was to have so many people supporting her and Saki was all the more grateful to have them in her life. Even though at times, several things may be difficult with her condition, Saki fully intends on smiling through them and enjoying her youth to the fullest.

Besides, she sneaks a bashful peek at her pink-haired friend, it seems that she was experiencing another type of admiration. But she can't bear to admit it. Mizuki liked Minori, after all.

Unbeknownst to Saki's inner monologue, Mizuki deflates, a familiar feeling of pain twisting within them. "Ah... I see. Thank you for sharing to me, Saki."

The odd tone within their voice strikes Saki and before she can ask if there was something bothering them, Mizuki swings their bag over their shoulder and rushes out to the door. The sound of the bell rings across the silent diner, leaving a shocked Saki standing amidst its emptiness.

Mizuki doesn't visit the diner the next day nor did they come to another. Two days became four and soon a week has already passed since Saki had their fight. At least, that was what she believed it to be as Mizuki seems intent on ignoring her phone calls. Airi notices her distress and lack of energy, carefully asking her if everything's alright. Saki shakes her head and explains the situation to her.

Like a reliable senpai, Airi immediately catches on to the problem and tells Saki that there might have been a misunderstanding.

"They asked you if you admired someone, right?"

Saki forlornly wipes the grease off the counter with a frown. "That's right... they even looked a bit serious too..."

"I see, then when you answered, they seemed sad?"

"I guess," Saki purses her lips. "I-I don't understand, what are you implying, Airi-senpai?"

Airi looks at her patiently, "I don't want to assume... but it's likely that they mean a different type of admiration, you know..."

"You mean...?!" Saki widens her eyes with shock, her voice getting stuck in her throat.

It can't be true. Saki has seen the way Mizuki stares at her coworker. Obviously the glittery yearn in their eyes weren't hers to claim. And even if Mizuki told her she was cute, idols were much more cuter than some random waitress still trying to find her feet in the world.

She chews on her lips anxiously. "No way..."

Mizuki... likes me?

#this card set has been rotting my brain with ideas #i cant believe sega just dropped a mizusaki event on my face like that #time has really passed ;> #remember when the only mizusaki interaction there was was from the anthology #oh man #the fact that its diner themed is destroying me #and the way they switched their hairstyles #BOYYYY OHMYGOD #and sakis untrained #BRUHHH #I CANT #they make me so happy #these two were literally the first characters that caught my interest when i first played pjsk in 2021 #and i shipped them!!! #anyways i will continue this when i have enough brain juice #i will even make this into an entire fic so their ship tag won't become so dry #its what the mizusaki fans deserve ueueueue #mizusaki #sakimizu #mizuki akiyama #akiyama mizuki #tenma saki #saki tenma #project sekai #puroseka #prsk #pjsk #pjsekai #aster's writing

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom season 2, episode 17-20 thoughts! finishing up season two! the finale is the THIRD 2-PARTER OF SEASON 2. that's so many! I wonder how many season 3 will have?

see prev episode thoughts in this tag <3

-UERGH WHY DOES VLAD HAVE AN AI WITH MADDIE'S FACE ON IT. SOOO CREEPY. AND MORE 'CREATIONS' waiiiit. vlad is Dr. Frankenstein! (despite his ghost design obviously referencing vampires) HE HAS 'CREATIONS' HE MAKES THEN WONT TAKE REAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR!!! this bitch.

-danny was late and his friends immediately start going off about how hes inconsiderate, and has been treating them like sidekicks??? he just overslept, my god. chill. even if he has, be nicer about talking about it with him?? he really can't help that he sometimes has to chase the ghosts, or has a secret identity to protect...

-'what kind of ghost haunts a miniature golf course' umm. me as a ghost. next question

-imagine going home and theres a tiny child on your bed claiming to be your cousin. with as many cousins I have, I would probably believe her. but the 'ran away from home' BIT....SHES 12?? SHES SO TINY. I hate that they have her belly out in her ghost form, but I like how her colors are asymmetrical. something about her design...maybe the proportions?? are weird to me...anyway danny was good to feed her, but he shouldve taken her to his parents FIRST. or, tbh, probably jazz. (JAZZ DIDNT EVEN GET TO MEET HER!!! NOOO. I mean she said she'll be BACK BUT STILL)

-ANYWAY. shes voiced by AnnaSophia Robb, the girl who was in because of winn dixie, played as violet from charlie and the chocolate factory, and was the girl from bridge to terrabithia. (the movie that made me cry hysterically when I was 12 and I never watched it again because it Broke Me!) thats super cool.

-vlad sucks: the episode, basically. what's new!! I love how he's like, I'm Not A Villain. *immediately cuts to him torturing danny to make him transform, to get mid-transformation DNA, to perfect a Clone.* *immediately shows that he doesnt give a shit about his new daughter Dani and just wants a ''more perfect clone'' and will put her in danger to get that. will let her DIE to get that*

-Dani is danny's clone and is a girl? transgenderism....one of them has to be trans. or they both are.

-dani just. leaving at the end. WHAT? SHES 12. DONT JUST. NO!!! SHE WAS PROBABLY JUST BORN, A MONTH AGO AT MOST, RIGHT?? SHE NEEDS...SOMEWHERE TO LIVE. MONEY? FOOD?? A FAMILY?? AN EDUCATION???! WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE'S LEAVING!!! OKAY BYE I GUESS!!! D: concern!!!

-the next ep opens with skulker chasing a ghost down. ...does skulker count as a ghost hunter in the way valerie and danny do? I mean, sure, he hunts the good guys too, but he. he hunts ghosts...also, we haven't seen his Real Form since his debut episode! tiny...

-the guys in white are back! ngl, I assumed they were a gag for that one episode. you're telling me they might actually be a threat? ok.

-valerie in her lil nasty burger uniform looks so cute!! glad shes not in that mascot uniform this time. I guess she stopped hiding that she's working there now?

-gregor having white hair, dressed in black and white...and green eyes...sam has a Type, I guess.

-danny being unnecessarily hostile about gregor. danny!!! hes been nice so far. he looks a little...tall to be 14, but. danny doesnt know anything about him! (he does Suspect, but...you cant just spy on people and be rude to them from a hunch.) also, gregor kissed her, and when she freaked out, he was like 'oh no!! sorry, we can take it slow! I understand!' which was NICE. I hate jealousy plots still tho.

-altho. umm. tucker, being concerned about danny spying on them??? SAM AND YOU WERE SPYING ON DANNY AND VALERIE A FEW EPISODES AGO!!!!! im not saying its RIGHT, but dont be a hypocrite!!! AND THEN SAM BEING MAD ABOUT IT, TOO.

-DANNY IS A 7 ON THE SCALE OF ECTOPLASMIC POWER!!! out of 10? so I want to know where the other ghosts rank...I mean it's a list from the guys in white, so, it may not even be accurate, like, they havent seen ALL of his powers, have they?

-Lancer being like 'im not cooperating with the FEDS' until they said they could access his tax records. they already did that joke with jack, but like, its still funny. kings of tax evasion.

-tucker's aggressive third-wheeling. but gregor being super into it. gregor/tucker is the real ship here. then gregor kissing danny on both cheeks after hugging him. bi poly king gregor. (he does turn out to be a liar with a phoney accent. unsurprising, BUT THE CONCEPT OF HIM BEING GENUINE AND THEM ALL DATING IS FUN)

-THE...GUYS IN WHITE THINKING GREGOR IS DANNY PHANTOM. LMAOOO. GET HIS ASS. or,, Elliot. lmfao

-sam saying tucker is part of the package because theyre friends was super sweet <3 but also 'part of the package'...polyships are obviously the solution to these dumb jealousy/love triangle plots.

-danny crashed a whole plane. the collateral damage...

-is he....

-you know....

.... (ITS NOT GAY IF YOU'RE DOING IT TO PRETEND TO BE SOMEONE YOU'RE NOT, AND LIE TO A GIRL. RIGHT? he was getting a little too into pretending to enjoy tucker's company, and the above...c'mon, guy.)

-lmao, freakshow is in actual prison. I didn't expect a follow up, or for him to show back up! in the finale of this season, too!

-THE SICK TATTOO GHOST IS NAMED LYDIA!!! more Lore On her. freakshow seemed genuinely concerned about her. also, is she mute? I don't think she talked the first time we saw her, either. and we didn't know freakshow 'envied' ghosts, either, the first time, we just knew he was controlling them. interesting!

-...they literally stole the infinity gauntlet from marvel and called it the reality gauntlet. is that legal. what the fuck. even with the gems in the lil slots, having different powers...they had freakshow in jail, but didnt check his pockets??! hes just still in his lil outfit??? what kind of ...oh, its in amity park. yeah, all of the adults are idiots, okay, sure.

-'freakshow!' 'in the anemic flesh!' dude take some iron pills then. also, sure, the red eyes could be contacts for his aesthetic, but the whites of his eyes are yellow! does he have jaundice?! he severely needs more...like, every kind of vitamin. (this is what im worried about as freakshow attacks danny with giant robots)

-again, goth circus is a sick theme, and I love his goth train.

-oh FUCK every single person saw danny transform. on a stage. including his parents via TV. oh god. the guys in white and immediately like 'youre coming in for experiments!' SCARY. at least the crowd is willing to help him to escape...perks of now being a local celeb! even the kids at school are accepting :) this is what, the third time his family has found out? its always been an alt timeline tho. and danny fully intending to just rewrite things again instead of...I dunno, trying to roll with it this time? hes really worried his family won't accept him, huh...

-'maybe our son IS THE GHOST BOY, but its not as if our family's ghostly activities have EVER PUT YOUR FAMILIES IN DANGER' maddie. mmmmmmmmmmmm. okay.

-danny 100% prepared to run away from home because of this :( oh :( and saying his parents are 'looking for him, or a scalpel to dissect him with' ouch...

-THE GUYS IN WHITE TRYING TO ARREST A 14 YEAR OLD. fuck da feds.

-side note (another one about voice actors...) freakshow's voice actor, Jon Cryer, was lex luthor in pretty much every DC tv show, which is why I recognized his voice, because my dad loves those shows so I've seen a good bit of them without seeking them out...)

-the old man saying 'hey, i still had minutes left!' and danny saying 'you gotta watch those roaming charges!' about danny destroying the people in the diner's phones so no one could report seeing him...would kids today understand these things. can you even BUY minutes anymore...I remember my first phone being a flip phone, and the fact I always had minutes when my sister ran out super fast, because I didnt have friends calling or texting me like she did...:/

-the fentons being genuinely like 'why didnt danny trust us and tell us this, we love him :(' and JAZZ LAYING INTO THEM WITH THE 'DISSECTION/MOLECULE BY MOLECULE' LINES. LITERALLLLY. they need to apologize

-technically, lydias stronger than you! -jazz lesbianism moments! when did you even learn her name!!! but also get freakshows ass. lydia is also cooler looking. looove her design sm still.

-jazz psychoanalyzing freakshow... (also, her also having ghost envy? au where jazz is a ghost!! id like to see it)

-im glad the kids still got to go to their respective vacation things, even if they cant really stick around and enjoy them much...

-furry: confirmed. (also tucker calling her hot. tucker is a furry confirmed)

-danny being mad someone at the comic con is selling comics of him without permission, lmfao. give him his royalties!

-freakshow > thanos because hes a drama clown and does use his gauntlet to be FLASHY AND DRAMATIC.

-jazz's 'USE PYSCOLOGY' to danny about freakshow LMAOO. AND THEN IT WORKING. but, oh, freakshow's ghost form sucks. I like him as a clown better tbh. good thing danny took away his ghost powers!

-his parents hugging him and saying theyre proud :"( and saying 'of course you lied to us, we never gave you a reason not to!' and saying they were in the wrong basically for always talking about hurting ghosts aaaa :""(

-then he WIPED THEIR MEMORIES AGAIN!!! FUCK. I can understand him wiping the goverments/student bodies' memories, but why his parents?? they were being accepting!! ARGHHH. season 3 couldve been them all trying to adjust to them knowing!

-I know, on a meta level the showrunners probably wanted to just reset things to the status quo of him having a secret identity. But. We've been doing that for (2) seasons, I'd love if season 3 could be like, his parents adjusting to this and trying way harder to learn more and accept it (and the shenanigans that could come from that) and for fun, if he didn't wipe the students memories, it could be him being popular for a while, then everyone slowly realizing, oh, he's still Danny. Like. he might have ghost powers but hes Just The Same Guy instead of putting him on a pedestal (and seeing them all try and help him hide it from the giw/people who don't know!!)

-fuck they didn't even explain WHY he wiped everyone except sam, tucker and jazz's memories. he just Did It right when his parents were saying they loved/accepted him!! and sam and tucker didnt question it at all!!! HELLO??? very annoyed about this turn of events.

-anyway. onto season 3! I know its shorter than the first two seasons, and is the last season... I might just do it in 2 bursts if I can... :3c depends on the episodes' content and how much I want to say about each!

#sanchoyorambles #danny phantom #dp thoughts

[thwip--thwip]

Hey, I was looking for some new reading material and wondered if you could give me some recs? Please and thank you sm!

ho BOY anon, COULD I! I’ve got over 2,000 bookmarks on AO3 - what are we looking for? I’m going to assume IronDad, or at the very least Peter Parker-centric; short or long? MJ or Gwen Stacy? Angst, fluff, whump? Sorry this took a minute; I went into the vault for you and pulled out some rare gems:

LONG FICS

In the Home by @captainkirkk | 68k

The Avengers have been infected, turned violent and aggressive against their will. And Peter, the only one unaffected, is trapped inside the Tower with six feral teammates.

“Natasha,” Peter says cautiously, “what happened here? Steve attacked me, and if there was ever a sign that something was wrong, it’s having the embodiment of Truth, Justice, and the American Way throw you across the room—”

Natasha comes closer, her stride controlled. Nothing necessarily out of the ordinary, but there’s something in her face, in her eyes—

Natasha lunges across the space, and slams into Peter, hard.

This just…hoo. A classic if I’ve ever seen one. There’s going to be plenty of aloneintherain on this list because she’s the bomb dot com and its no secret I’m in love. we Stan in this house; this might be my favorite Spidey fic ever written.

POW Avengers by Punny_Puck |122k

Tony Stark is thrown into a new Nazi POW camp. It’s his fifth–or sixth–and he’d really like to make it to his fiftieth escape attempt this time. But Stalag III isn’t like any of the other POW camps he’s been in. He suddenly finds himself facing an impossible task: Getting two-hundred and fifty men out of the camp in one massive escape attempt. And dammit if he’s not going to make it work.

Very impressive, very lengthy and detailed historical AU set in WWII. This one is more Tony than Peter, and quite a fair bit of Loki (this author does a great job with all the different POV’s, that’s why it’s so long!). Nice and juicy!

5 Times Peter Fell & Tony Caught Him, and The 1 Time He Didn’t by eva7673 | 35k

Peter has a nasty habit of falling. And Tony, bless him, will catch him every. single. time. Until the day he can’t.

I love this series with all of my heart, but especially this first fic! It’s the perfect amount of whump and IronDad, and oh man, that last time? GETS me. Eva definitely put in so much work on this series, and it SHOWS!

Twelve Days of Peter Parker by @upcamethesun | 27k

In each of the twelve days leading up to Christmas, Tony runs into one Peter Parker — for better or for worse.

In other words, an excuse for this author to write gratuitous Peter fluff/angst/nonsense with a Christmas theme, because ‘tis the season.

This fic is so cute I Die. Perfect bit of holiday nonsense! I read it every year lol. It’s got everything you’re looking for and more, to scratch the itch you didn’t know you had. 

ever in your favor by @iron–spider | 153k

Peter startles awake when someone shakes him.

“Sorry, honey,” May says. Peter blinks a couple times and she comes into focus, her hair pulled back from her face. She’s trying not to look a certain way, but he can see it in her eyes anyway. She clears her throat, keeps talking. “But it’s…” She glances away, wets her lips. “You gotta get ready.”

He remembers what day it is, and his heart beats like a drum at someone’s execution. But he tries to put on a mask, make it all seem normal. It’s everything but, despite the fact that he’s been dealing with reaping day since he was born, between himself, Ben and May. That fear that one of them could be taken away. Sent to surefire slaughter. But now Ben is gone, taken despite never having his name drawn from a bowl, and May’s finally safe. Now Peter’s name is in there alone. The last Parker sitting on the chopping block. He doesn’t know how to be. He doesn’t know what normal is, when the Hunger Games are looming on the horizon.

I mean…how could I possibly do a fic rec list without this on it? Iron–spider’s latest masterwork, and it truly is a masterwork. The Hunger Games AU your soul has been crying out for, and quite possibly the greatest AU to ever live. Do yourself a favor and get settled in - you’re in for a ride.

Magazineverse by @copperbadge | 56k

Heroes In Manhattan: From Captain America’s Hidden Talents To The Truth About The Hulk, We Debunk The Myths And Expose The Daily Lives Of The Avengers.

Avengers-centric, takes place post-2012. The Avengers team we deserve! The whole series is amazing, and I definitely didn’t see the twist coming (SO original, and you totally got me. Well played.)

MEDIUM FICS

devil in a sunday hat by @captainkirkk | 14k

Peter wishes he hadn’t gotten out of bed that morning. Then, maybe, he wouldn’t be reduced to this—limp-crawling through the rabbit burrows that is Oscorp Tower, a monster of a man on his heels, bloody and bruised and choking on a panic attack.

This series really speaks to Peter, and his experience as a street-level hero. I don’t think I’ve ever not cried reading this series - it’s really beautiful. Aloneintherain always manages to capture how much weight and anxiety sits on Peter’s shoulders - and how dire his consequences can really be.

5 things that change for Peter after the end of the world by @iron–spider | 14k

…and one thing that always remains the same.

(SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR)

Peter knows he’s different now.

The first three months were like a bubble. He didn’t think about the newness of his old life, he didn’t think about the state of the world now that it had been saved—he just worried. Worried about Tony and Steve recovering. Worried about May worrying about him. Worried about everything in general—he didn’t allow himself specifics because specifics didn’t make sense, not yet. He just focused on his routine, kept it normal, the same schedule every day so he didn’t throw himself off.

It felt like the bubble popped when the party ended, and everything became clearer. The differences in who he is now were highlighted, like there was a spotlight on his every move, like everybody could see the invisible scars the world-ending experience left on him.

The first thing he notices is the sleeping. Or lack thereof.

(a follow up to my story “the rattle of their hearts” from Peter’s POV. You can read this one without having read the original, but it would make more sense if you have read it!)

Everyone knows Rattle, and if you don’t, definitely read the first fic in this series! But this second one is really special to me (and MJ never fails to make me laugh out loud, every time). Peter’s PTSD is dealt with intimately in this fic, and I love it to bits.

the conspiracy kids by @tempestaurora | 13k

WHO IS SPIDER-MAN?

The screen showed Peter Parker, sixteen years old and determined to prove the identity of Spider-Man over the course of the three-part documentary he was making, unknowing that it would become viral within days of the first part being released. Behind the camera, way off screen, was Harley Keener, Tony Stark’s other prodigy child, grinning like crazy as Peter started the documentary. Only a few people knew what was to come, and those few people were about to have a great few weeks.

“My name is Peter Parker, and with the help of my friends, Ned Leeds, Harley Keener, and my Aunt, May Parker, who provided me with a lot of red yarn for this project, we’re going to uncover the identity of Spider-Man.”

OR

“what if peter just decided to fuck with everyone who didn’t know he was spider man and make a documentary about him trying to uncover the Truth.”

Looking for a fun, Peter-and-Harley-being-ridiculous-teenagers fic? This is the One For You. I can see it all in my head, and it never fails to make me laugh. Delightful piece of fluff and probably the best social-media-esque fic I’ve read.

Primary Reason Tony Stark Would Throw Down With An Anti-Vaxxer In The Street by @caraminha | 12k

Prompt from my Tumblr: Have you heard of tetanus? I’m studying it for school and it’s got lots of angst potential - it causes severe, seizure like muscle spasms which can break the patient’s bones, but they’re conscious and fully aware of what’s happening. It also causes fever and lockjaw, and difficulty breathing. I’d love to see an angst fic where Peter has bad tetanus and Tony and co are looking after him whilst his symptoms get worse and worse.

Looking for some Peter!whump? This fic is so sweet. Tony is Dad. What more do you need?

SHORT FICS

Come Together by @captainkirkk | 1.8k

From the ground, Tony squints at Thanos and the young heroes the villain is chasing through the city. “Are they…” Tony begins.

Steve, being lifted onto a gurney by starstruck paramedics, laughs a little. “Leading the man who almost destroyed the Earth in a wild goose chase?” In the sky, Johnny Storm sticks his tongue out at Thanos, ducking and weaving out of the villain’s grasp. “Yeah. I think they are.”

Didn’t I promise she’d be on here a billion and one times? All of her stuff is so good, for every fandom. Go READ this queen who’s been killing the game for years. This fic is such a sweet one, an Endgame fic before Peter was even in the MCU. It’s perfect.

Only Road by @garamonder | 2.8k

A rare breather between fighting should have been a relief for the Avengers. Instead, one small comment triggers a confrontation Peter had been avoiding for months.

Oh wow this one…this dialogue between Peter and Tony is incredible. One of my favorite things in a fic is a good argument, especially one where Peter has a distinct and mature point. 

Every Penny and More by Princessfbi | 1.2k

She forced herself to inhale air and hold it before releasing it from her lips. She grounded herself in the cheap vinyl in a crappy diner that she wasn’t sure she was ever going to be able to look at the same way again. She thought of the life Peter would have if she said yes because she knew that’s what all of this was about: Tony asking her permission to let him do this.

May and Tony co-parenting Peter is…oh, be still my heart. This is such a sweet little fic of something that definitely happened off-screen :’)

5 Times Spider-Man Saved An Avengers’ Ass (and the 1 Time They Saved Him) by TunaFishChris | 7.2k

What it says on the tin.

Going through an angsty Spider-Man phase. I regret nothing.

YES give me Peter x Avengers team! Peter gets a great moment with each of the Avengers, proving himself a capable hero (and getting assistance when he needs it the most :’) baby makes some friends!). Really cute, a fun little romp.

unbearable loss by @iron–spider | 1.6k

“Peter…he was so afraid, Pep,” Tony says, his voice breaking. “He…he just lunged for me, he was so afraid, he wanted—he needed someone to be there for him. And I tried, I tried—I held him, I told him he was alright, which was a—goddamn lie, and the only fucking thing that came out of my mouth. The last thing I said to him.” He shakes his head, swallowing hard. “The last thing I said to him was a lie.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Pepper says, quietly.

“I do,” Tony says. “He trusted me. That kid trusted me, and I failed him every possible way I could have. I couldn’t save him, I couldn’t—he died in my arms and I couldn’t do one single solitary thing about it. And I couldn’t—me, the human fucking chatterbox—I just stared at him. He was dying, turning to fucking dust and apologizing to me and I just stared at him, like a moron.”

This fic Fucks. Me. Up. Iron–spider’s Tony angst is unparalleled. It hurts me every time, and the dialogue between him and Pepper is just…it’ll get you. 

yesterday, I saw a change by @captainkirkk | 6.8k

Inspired by prompt: ‘Peter is unmasked on live television, and everyone goes berserk—you’ve already heard this one but here’s the twist—he’s wide-eyed, staring into the camera, frightened, but not because of his own safety. The first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Someone please, please protect my Aunt May.” And the entirety of New York cries out simultaneously. Heroes and neighbours and fellow students rain down on the Parker house, ready to defend her.’

This is - surprise! - a May Parker fic. This fic will move you. You will probably cry. I love it with all my heart. If I ever need a refresher on who May is and how she feels - how New York feels, about Spiderman - this is my go-to.

Hope that gave you some new stuff to check out! I have more, do I ever have more. Enjoy & remember to leave comments for all of these wonderful writers!!!

#fic rec #i speaketh #thwippity thwip #anon #ask #aloneintherain #iron--spider #punny_puck #eva7673 #upcamethesun #copperbadge #tempestaurora #caraminha #garamonder #princessfbi #tunafishchris #irondad #spideyson #irondad and spiderson #peter parker #spiderman #tony stark #may parker #aunt may #avengers #marvel #mcu #fic #fanfic #fanfiction

[womenandfilm5]

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) is a dynamic, true crime, avante garde film that explores the history and complexity of the relationship between famous artist Andy Warhol and radical feminist Valerie Solonas. The true events depicted in this film are told through a mixture of narratives that both highlight the socio-political climate of the 1960s and the struggle for female identifying empowerment. I thought it was particularly interesting that the film was first intended to be a documentary about Valerie Solonas, but the filmmakers could not find enough footage of her, nor any individuals to speak about her. Throughout the film, the various narrative perspectives mirror a documentary styled memoir. Mary Harron tells Valerie’s narrative using a combination of flashback narratives, self recorded home videos of ‘Valerie’ reading from her own Manifesto as it pertains to the current storyline, and an unnamed character reading Valerie’s file referring to her as ‘the patient’. The last narrative technique allows the viewers to gain some context surrounding both Valerie’s intentions and behaviors. The unnamed narrator discloses Valerie’s history with being molested, prostitution, homosexual activity, and ultimately her belief in ‘the natural superiortiy of women over men’. These biographical narratives ultimately illustrate a much bigger picture than just the relationship between the two.  . The key themes highlighted in I Shot Andy Warhol include superiority, ironic male validation, radical feminism + matriarchy, mental illness, revolution, lesbianism, and revenge.  . Valerie’s detrimental motives as a protagonist in this film are driven by her attitudes toward female superiority over men. Valerie’s constant push to educate the masses on her S.C.U.M Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men) is bound by the idea that women are biologically superior. Within this superiority complex is a duality of anti-man rhetoric, paired with using men for her advantage when she needs to. I found it ironic that while Valerie is so anti man, a recurrent theme in the film is the chase for male validation; especially Andy. From the first time Andy Warhol’s name is mentioned in the film, Valerie is desperate to get Andy’s attention in hopes that his connections and artistry will help her spread her radical views through media. Valerie constantly pushes her beliefs onto Andy and even gives him the only other copy she has of her screenplay for him to read. Even after begging Andy to read it, he dodges Valerie’s push for production but still holds onto her beloved copy. This stands as a symbol of  Andy still holding a piece of ownership over her but refusing to give her the validation she is chasing. As mentioned in the original report, Valerie’s erratic behavior and radical beliefs stem from a comorbidity of mental illness, likely OCD and Schizophrenia. It is revealed at the end that Valerie is sent to a ‘Hospital for the Criminally Insane’ following the shooting. While it is unclear to the audience whether or not Valerie realizes her diagnosis, Valerie’s mental health is obvious to the other characters. Valerie sees herself as a revolutionary, while others (specifically men) consistently label Valerie as a ‘lunatic’ and insane for her beliefs. There is a wide gap in perspective from Valerie’s view of herself versus other’s interpretation of her.  . The cinematic aspects of the film were what captivated me the most while watching. One recurrent technique throughout the film was the specific and deliberate use of the color red, red lighting in particular.  The first time Valerie visits The Factory trying to find Andy, the lighting surrounding her is a shadowy, transparent red glimmer focused on her face. When Valerie goes to meet with the publisher to sign her book contract, she specifically picks out and wears a red dress. After being ‘excommunicated’ from Andy and his group and going to confront him, there is dark red light surrounding the group as they walk out of a tunnel. However, when Valerie’s face enters the frame to speak to Andy, the red light behind the group disappears and the light shown on Valerie’s face is harsh and bright white. The repetitive incorporation of the color red stands in as a symbol for many emotions and moods, such as: embarrassment, frustration, humiliation, bloodlust, romance, need for validation, and superiority.  . The visual techniques during the party scene at The Factory were especially noticeable. The bright, saturated, revolving and color changing lights stood to amplify the mood of the party for those in attendance. The mixture of light movement paired with diverse colors and patterns added a layer of intoxication to the scene and reflected how the party-goers were feeling under the influence.  . I think the most important cinematic aspect in this film were the deliberate mirroring shots to tell different aspects of the same narrative. During the scene of the party at The Factory, both Andy and Valerie are surrounded by people but standing alone. They both slowly look up and make eye contact with one another from across the room as the camera pans in on each individual. The last scene of the film depicts Andy standing in a crowd surrounded by others, when he hears a popping sound reminiscent of a gunshot. This triggers Andy to turn around as he sees Valerie standing alone directly across the street. The two once again make eye contact, and in the same angle as before, the camera pans into both individuals’ reactions. Andy stares nervously and Valerie disappears after a car passes by. While both shots mirror one another in technique, the emotion and context behind both are drastically different. The first implicates admiration and need for validation, while the final shot indicates fear from Andy and accomplishment from Valerie. . Many aspects of the film are reflective of the time period being portrayed in the film. As mentioned in the original report, this film took place during the Vietnam War in the 1960s, where the socio-political climate was extremely volatile and filled with protest and anti-government and anti-war sentiments. While I do not think anti-war attitudes were presented at the forefront of this film, or even mentioned more than once, I do think that Valerie’s passionate and revolutionary motives were inspired from the political climate during this time period.  . The set design and costumes were also extremely reflective of the 1960s. The ‘retro’ aesthetic of this time period can be found within sets such as the old fashioned classic diner and especially The Factory. A ‘cinema fact’ on the back of the DVD case revealed that Harron and the filmmakers were given permission to reproduce some of Andy Warhol’s paintings and silk screen for the set, but they had to destroy them after filming.  One could argue that the set of The Factory is more reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s artistry, which is ultimately a reflection of his peak during this time period.  . Even attitudes of the characters were reflective of the oppression of certain identities during this time, especially lesbians and trans people. Valerie is consistently degraded by the men around her for being a lesbian, most harshly insulted when she was the only woman in the room. Feminine heterosexual women portrayed in the film were also degraded and stereotyped, but in a hypersexualized way that the men validated as attraction. Degradation towards Valerie came from a homophobic standpoint that was not based on attraction. For example, when Valerie appeared on the television interview, the man rudely demeaning her while discussing the ‘controversial’ topic of homosexuality cited the Kinsey Reports. Debuted in the late 1950s, the Kinsey Reports introduced the concept of sexuality as a spectrum and changed the way a lot of people viewed homosexuality in general, for better or worse.  . I think one thing that stuck out to me the most throughout the course of the film was that it seemed as if S.C.U.M. and its manifesto was inclusive of all womxn identities. Even the ad in the newspaper seeking actors to audition for the screenplay ��Up Your Ass” directly welcomed ‘butch dyke lesbians’ and queer people. However, towards the end of the film when Valerie was convinced that Candy had worked with Andy to set her up, Valerie cruelly invalidated Candy’s identity as a transwoman and called her a man. This invalidation is not only misogynistic and exclusive to trans people but is especially demeaning to say to a friend who originally brought you into the scene. At first I was excited and even surprised to see trans representation within the film. Although it was disappointing to see transphobia shine through, especially from Valerie, this type of fear and intolerance was common and is still common surrounding trans identities. . It was fairly hard for me to actually get a physical copy of and view this film, and I believe it was well worth the difficulty. This film is an intimate storyline of a historic and iconic incident that stands to narrate more than just a dynamic relationship. – ECo

[lokiofnone]

Burning Bush

It had been quite some time - about three years, in fact - since Loki had last talked to their adopted mother, Freyja, queen of Asgard, et cetera, more fancy titles. Still longer had it been since she last manifested before them to issue orders not as a mother to her child, but as an All-Mother to her agent. The missions that she delivered had once been Loki’s sole responsibility, perhaps even their sole reason for living. They were a chance to do good in the service of a good monarch, the chance to right the many wrongs they had committed, and the chance to write a new story as a beloved citizen of Asgard and not its most sinister enemy. That is, they had hoped it would be, until Freyja sold their future in a contract with the very evil they hoped to be rid of, damning them to a fate that they would have, and in fact had, died to avoid.

Let's not stray too far from the topic at hand, though that is an undoubtedly fantastic story. It's not the one being told at present. Rather, it's merely a bit of backstory to assist in understanding what follows. The information to be gleaned here is that Loki was woefully unprepared to receive a missive from the spiritual visage of the All-Mother, as due to extenuating circumstances they had renounced the title of agent of Asgard and been banished there from.

In fact, they could expect few things less when cracking an egg into a hot pan to prepare breakfast on this particular morning. Still blinking sleep from their eyes, they watched the egg sizzle and spread, quite meticulously, into an eggy approximation of their mother’s face.

“Loki,” Said the Egg-Mother.

Loki barely waited to hear those two syllables before channelling flame into the pan, effectively turning it into a fireball on the stove, and then chucking the still flaming wreckage perfectly into the garbage can.

“On second thought, I’ll go to a diner,” They told the empty room as they made their way out of the kitchen.

“Where do you think you're going, young man?” Came the voice of persistence behind them, in a very distinct tone that they had grown all too familiar with in their youth. “Listen when your queenmother speaks.”

The trickster god knew that she would continue to manifest elsewhere if they didn't at least acknowledge her presence. Blast it all. With a beleaguered sigh, they turned back to see the plastic bin now fully ablaze and melting, the face of Freyja being portrayed by the crackling flames. Queenmother of all garbage fires, they thought, and it managed to bring a smirk to their lips.

“Fine. What does the queen of Asgard want with me, a mere outcast, banished for crimes that none noticed he committed?”

That stung her and they knew it, despite her impassive expression. Their last conversation hadn't exactly gone well, in case anyone hasn’t picked up on the running theme of Loki’s interactions with their parents.

“You and I both know that your banishment was lifted when you ceased to exist on this physical plane,” The tartness of her voice made them want to vomit, and they expressed that quite clearly by mocking her words by miming a hand puppet. “We must speak of urgent matters.”

They snapped back a swift retort, “Then speak, before my home is burned to a crisp for the second time.”

“I’m afraid not. This matter requires a bit more care. We must meet at a separate location and time, which I will send with a bird. Stay vigilant.”

Without allowing an answer, the flames wavered and died down, retreating back into the thoroughly destroyed garbage can. Loki clenched their jaw and made about ten different kinds of displeased expressions before finally retrieving the fire extinguisher from beneath their sink and snuffing out the vestiges of the fire that had, admittedly, been entirely their fault.

This was so typical. Very in character for her, isn’t it? To just show up suddenly and make demands without bothering to ask if they wanted to participate, let alone offer a “How do you do?”

Loki eyed the melted ball of plastic with more than a little spite before finally moving on. They felt like eating their weight in pancakes as a reward for putting up with this experience. And as for the meeting, well. That would require some contemplation.

#prose tag

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #167: Tomorrow Dies Today!

January, 1978

Oh hey the Guardians of the Galaxy! Not the ones more known these days and never at the same level of popularity but an interesting bunch just the same!

I’ve been actually thinking of going and reading some of the original team original run.

On this cover, Beast punches a guy in the face and the rest of the Avengers are like hey slow your roll this is a crossover not a hero vs hero event.

Anyway, we start off killing tomorrow today with a priority communications alarm interrupting him from his shower.

You’d think that since its a communications alarm and not necessarily an emergency, he could continue showering and let someone else take the call and if it is an emergency then someone can knock on the door and let him know.

Like, I understand that with the stuff the Avengers deal with its good to stay on your toes but Beast is completely covered in hair. When he starts a shower, its a long, inevitable process that should be seen to until the end.

Otherwise he’s going to drip everywhere and probably smell like dog.

He’s not even the only one who is not ready. Scarlet Witch is half dressed.

And Steve “I probably go on a ten mile run every morning for fun” Rogers criticizes Beast for not getting up to shower at 0600.

Beast, Cap, and Scarlet Witch arrive at the communications center to find Vision already there.

Also, why do they have so many chairs in here? This is more chairs than they have in their living room.

A lot of the Avengers equipment is a mystery to me. They seem like they have a lot of the typical superhero headquarters monitoring equipment but also they so often wait for problems to happen on the news before they notice them.

Anyway, it actually is an emergency so Beast would have had to interrupt his shower anyway.

Nick Fury is on the horn and he tells them to turn on the feed from the Avengers’ monitoring satellite because of course they have one of those and need to watch the news anyway.

Per Fury’s request, they focus the Avengers satellite on the SHIELD space station. Weirdly they can’t see any stars behind the station. Just an endless wall of white.

Beast zooms out and-

AHHHHHHHHHH UNICRON HAS COME AT LAST TO DEVOUR OUR WORLD!

Galactus is going to be miffed.

Except no. This looks like a double Unicron. Which is possibly twice as bad.

Apparently this giant structure popped out of nowhere and its orbit is going to smash the SHIELD station all over it in a couple hours.

So the Avengers assemble to finish getting dressed and also to go check out a mysterious huge space thing.

Like I said, this is the huge space thing portion of their lives.

On the station, playboy industrialist Tony Stark claims he has urgent business on Earth.

Nick Fury is like no shit of course I’m not letting you get smashed with the rest of us you dink, get on a shuttle and go.

Fun fact: the SHIELD space station is where Steven Lang’s Project: Armageddon set up shop. And coming up to space to stop him is what led to Jean Grey becoming the Phoenix.

Secretly, Tony Stark has to get back to Earth so he can change into Iron Man and lead the Avengers back up here.

Double lives are hard.

Meanwhile, Thor and Wonder Man are enjoying some bonding time in a diner.

Thor confesses that some mysterious force has been transporting him back to Earth every time the Avengers need his help. Which has to be every couple of days. Its almost as if he’s being displaced through time.

Wonder Man goes wow cool uh I’ll be no help figuring that out but as long as we’re here maybe you can give me some advice.

Wonder Man: “You see... sometimes I -- I feel as though I’m not man enough to be a super man!”

-interrupting Avengers beeper says no time for feels, time for punches-

So Wonder Man and Thor fly back to Avengers’ Mansion.

But they have to wait because Iron Man still hasn’t joined them.

And when he does show up, Cap goes off on him.

Iron Man: “Sorry I’m late, group!”

Captain America: “You’re sorry you’re late? A hundred men might die up there, and --”

Iron Man: “Then shut up and get into the ship!”

Also, new Quinjet! Space Quinjet!

Only minutes later, the Avengers have arrived on the SHIELD station. Which is... really impressive.

But since it took them so long (because of Iron Man), there’s no time left for anything fancy. The big double Unicron is only half a mile away.

Now the only option is to spacesuit up (except for Thor and Vision), rocket across to an opening that the station’s brand new Stark computer pinpointed, and find a way to redirect or destroy the giant space thing in... fifteen minutes.

Geez.

I’m pretty sure fifteen minutes wouldn’t even get you from one side to the other of that thing.

But the Avengers do rocket across. And the opening that the computer found was an airlock. And interestingly, they find that the atmosphere inside the station is breathable and even chemically perfect for humans!

Now that is interesting. Does that mean that this is a human construction?

Not necessarily. The Avengers never had trouble breathing on Skrull ships or Thanos’ giant H, or even on the Kree homeworld.

I mean maybe the chemically perfect line signifies that even beyond everyone in space breathing the same thing except that one group of aliens that kidnapped that lung expert, that this construct has a human friendly atmosphere.

Iron Man weighs in. Atmosphere or not, whether the occupants are humanoid or not, this construct is far beyond the capabilities of any Earthly power.

Boring and also a waste of time says Cap.

And he steps up and takes charge, giving everyone a directive.

They should split up to cover more ground.

And while that would usually be a bad idea on a space station that appeared out of nowhere and could contain any number of alien nasties, the simple fact is that they have a vanishingly small amount of time.

Splitting up is the only way to cover any significant amount of territory.

So Vision and Wanda are one team. Wonder Man and Cap another. Thor and Iron Man another. And Beast is on his own because they have an odd number of people.

Although Beast wonders why he’s the one without a partner. He used mouthwash that morning!

Meanwhile, while Iron Man dismisses Thor’s concern that Iron Man might be troubled over Cap taking charge, in reality he is troubled.

Iron Man: “On the other hand it’s no secret what Cap thinks of my leadership! I suspect his resentment is growing and getting personal! With the stakes the team is playing for, that kind of dissension can lead to sudden death!”

Maybe its time to consider whether someone without their own book should lead the team then.

Meanwhile elsewhere, Beast is climbing through the air ducts or perhaps Jefferies tubes. And actually Cap had a point splitting him off like this. Beast is the only one who has the agility to crawl through tubes like this.

Good call, Cap!

But when he pokes his head out of the Jefferies air duct, someone grabs him and yanks him out like a radish.

Hey, its Charlie-27! From a race engineered to live on Jupiter, he’s about 11 times stronger and denser than a normal human being.

Also, its Nikki Gold! Raised on Mercury, she has high resistance to heat and most radiation and also HER HAIR IS FIRE.

And the thing is, they don’t think Beast is an enemy. They think he’s some kind of ugly alien space monkey that can also parrot words like a raven.

Beast refuses to put up with that sitting down dangling by his scruff so he kicks Charlie-27 in the face and starts bouncing all over the room.

Nikki tries to shoot Beast because, hey, he’s a rude monkey. But he’s bouncing so fast she can’t get a bead on him despite having aim adjacent to Annie Oakley’s.

But then Beast tries to tackle Charlie-27 and just bounces off. Because dang. Remember? Eleven times more massive than a normal person? Its rather like Beast just tried to jump kick a brick wall.

Before possibly breaking a toe kicking a guy built like a brick house, Beast also muses on the weirdery of the two of them speaking English.

Which again isn’t so odd. Universal translators exist. And a lot of aliens speak English.

But all these things like the atmosphere and aliens speaking English? This time they signify something other than narrative convenience.

Nikki jumps to confront the dazed Beast but with a RRRAK! a coherent light burst separates the two.

The rest of the Guardians have shown up, specifically Starhawk who tells Charlie-27 and Nikki to stand down.

Starhawk: “This fighting must cease! I sense that he is not evil! Accept the word of one who knows!”

Lets run up the line.

Blue guy red fin is Yondu Udonta and he is absolutely familiar if you only know Guardians from the movies. Like in the movies, he has special arrows that he can control through whistling. But in the comics he also uses a bow. He is from Alpha Centauri which kind of breaks the theme of the Guardians all being humans but adapted for life on different planets of the solar system.

Unlike the movies, Yondu is portrayed as noble savage IN SPACE. Going with that he has an intuitive and mystical rapport with nature. IN SPACE! Making him a space Alabaman was probably a better idea.

Next there is Starhawk. In the movie he was Sylvester Stallone and very disappointed in Yondu. In the comics, he’s just weird. He was conceived on Earth, was born on Vesper, and was raised on Arcturus IV. He has a grab bag of powers like flight, super strength, light manipulation and being the one who knows thanks to being empowered by the Hawk God. He’s also in an on-again off-again fusion with an Aleta Ogord. He’s basically weird.

Next is Martinex. His people were genetically-engineered to colonize Pluto so he’s made of silicon crystal instead of meat. He can also siphon heat out of the environment or vent it. Which lets him shoot heat rays or cold beams somehow.

And finally we have Vance Astro, Major Victory. He’s another weird one. He was sent on a mission to help colonize Centauri IV, put in cryogenic hibernation, and woke up to find that he wasted his damn time because faster travel had been invented and people got there before him. And now he has to stay in his astronaut suit or age rapidly. Also also, he has psychokinesis. And also his younger self became New Warrior Marvel Boy and probably ruined his chances of becoming an astronaut by killing his abusive dad.

Comics are weird.

Beast doesn’t know this though. He just sees a bunch of asshole aliens who are still calling him monkey so he jumps to attack Charlie-27′s face.

But is interrupted when Mjolnir flies by, snags him in its loop and drags him away. Which is damn good trajectory control.

Anyway, despite split up gang we’ll cover more ground, the Avengers have reassembled off-screen and apparently recognize the Guardians from prior team-ups. With Cap in Marvel Two-in-One #5 and with Thor in Thor Annual #6.

And now Major Victory recognizes the Avengers. Because he is from this time period and oh man oh geez the Avengers are his heroes! He used to dream of meeting them!

So a potential misunderstanding fight cut off before it began and the teams introduce themselves.

And no worry about the SHIELD station. The Guardian’s meteor deflectors will gently shove it out of the way instead of running into it. This whole mission was pointless!

Except as set-up. And honestly, even if the Guardian’s station wasn’t going to run into the SHIELD station, I’d hope that they’d be interested in why a giant space thing appeared.

Thor recaps his crossover with the Guardians because it happened so recently he hadn’t had a chance to put it in the Avengers files yet and also because the details are relevant.

He teamed up with the Guardians to invade Korvac’s Wonderworld. Who is Korvac?

He was a collaborator with the Badoon when they conquered the Sol System IN THE FUTURE. But they caught him napping at work one day so they grafted his upper body to his work station because the Badoon are dicks.

So obviously he turned on them and started a plan to conquer the cosmos by trying to make Earth’s Sun go nova.

Aw dangit, Thanos, you trendsetter!

The Guardians plus Thor were able to thwart Korvac’s plan and minions but Korvac escaped by traveling back in time to the year this year.

They’re not sure what he’s planning but when a guy who tried to blow up the Sun goes back in time you just have to kind of assume its nothing good. For instance, Major Victory’s past self is currently a child on Earth. If Korvac kills young Vance Astro, then Major Victory never gets frozen like a space Captain America and never goes on to form the Guardians.

So they have to stop him. Except if its on Earth, Major Victory can’t get involved. Two Vance Astros on Earth would mess up the time stream.

(Beast you were right there for this conversation, why did you think bringing the original X-Men into the present from the past was a good idea??)

Meanwhile, on Earth, Janet Van Dyne makes her debut as a fashion designer.

I had been wondering where she and Hank (Pym) were. Sort of weird that they didn’t get paged about this though. There’s a giant thing in space and they buzz Thor and Wonder Man away from dinner but Jan doesn’t get called away from her fashion show.

Maybe she left her bleeper at home.

Anyway, also in the crowd is Kyle Richmond, aka Nighthawk, aka Not-Batman. He’s usually on the Defenders, being a jerk, but Yellowjacket is sometimes doing stuff with the Defenders so maybe that’s why he’s here.

He does comment to himself that it’s weird for him to sit through a fashion show.

Kyle Richmond also notices a weirdo sitting next to him in the crowd. Wearing a tux in this day and age and sitting like a statue. He doesn’t react to anything until a model named Carina Walters takes a turn down the catwalk in a sultry summer jumpsuit.

Kyle being the kind of person he is, sees that this weirdo stranger reacts to Carina and thinks “Forget it, pal! You’re not her type!”

You’re a gem, Kyle.

And then Porcupine busts in to rob the place.

Just his luck that he chose to rob a place where three superheroes were chilling. Porcupines are seriously unlucky.

Hank Pym and Janet waste no time shrinking down to shoot the robbers with tiny blasts.

Janet was also far-thinking enough to have her dress made from unstable molecule cloth so she wouldn’t have to fly around naked just in case a supervillain tried to rob her fashion show.

Its this kind of forethought that made her one of the better chairpeople that the Avengers ever had.

Just saying. Civil Wars don’t happen when Jan runs the show.

And while the rest of the audience panics and flees and screams, the mysterious tux weirdo continues to calmly sit in his seat.

Kyle Richmond managed to sneak off and change into his costume and I don’t even know where he managed to hide the wings because they would not fit under his civilian clothes.

But anyways, he helps punch people that dare ruin Jan’s big debut.

Including a guy that hesitates from shooting at Nighthawk because he doesn’t want to go up on a murder rap. Nighthawk makes the very valid argument that not making a decision is a way of making a decision and unnamed robber made the right decision.

What a weird segment. I hope no-shoot criminal turns his life around.

Anyway, the tuxedo weirdo shows up where Carina is tending to a fainted Mrs. Lichterdale. And he silently offers her a hand.

And without a word spoken she feels his desire but also his offer and without a word spoken she departs with him.

And they seem to teleport or something from the scene while the heroes are distracted shooting Porcupine with pink and yellow zaps until he finally falls down.

Only after the villains are all unconscious does Mrs. Licherterdale inform Jan that Carina is missing along with Jan’s sultry summer jumpsuit.

Hank is sure that she just got frightened and ran off somewhere. She’ll turn up!

Jan: “I hope! That was my favorite outfit!”

Oh Jan!

So here we go again. Once again we take our first step into a run defining story arc. It was only back in May that I started the Celestial Madonna Saga and now here we are once again on the front porch of a long saga I have mixed feelings about.

The Korvac Saga.

The Shooteriest part of Shooter’s run on Avengers.

At the least, we’re going to get some more time with the Guardians. The downside to not having a misunderstanding fight is that if you’re solely following Avengers, we haven’t really seen what they can do yet.

And they have some good batshit stuff that they get up to. Like the giant double Unicron station? Its called Drydock. It was a, well, drydock and training facility. When the Badoon invaded, the commander used its experimental warp drive to keep the station out of Badoon hands. But warp radiation killed the entire crew.

In an almost Red Dwarfian move, the computer needed people to give it orders. So it created a simulated crew to tell it what to do. Except the simulated commander went insane and captured the Guardians of the Galaxy to create a clone army of friends. So Charlie-27 had to run the gauntlet of the station’s security and shut down the computer.

That stuff right there? That’s amazing. And I don’t mind at all if the Guardians are hanging around bringing that kind of craziness to the Avengers.

Oh and also, I guess there’s the mystery of what Korvac is up to and whether the tuxedo weirdo is related. I already know the answer but what are you going to do? Google information?

Pssah.

#Essential Avengers #korvac saga #Avengers #Guardians of the Galaxy #Iron Man #Captain America #Yellowjacket #the Wasp #the Vision #Scarlet Witch #Thor #Wonder Man #Beast #Charlie 27 #Nikki Gold #Vance Astro #Starhawk #Yondu #Martinex #Nighthawk #Porcupine #I guess he's technically the antagonist of this issue but eh he goes on the end of the cast list #two superhero teams meet up and barely fight at all #good job avengers and guardians #just another giant space thing in the lives of the Avengers #Essential marvel liveblogging

[mbaljeetsingh]

The 9 Best Coding Games Online for Adults to Learn How to Code

Most coding games are aimed at children. But there are also some great coding games aimed at adults who want to learn to code.

Don't get me wrong – there's nothing wrong with using the games on Code.org or Khan Academy. You can learn Scratch, which is a programming language designed to help kids learn concepts like loops and variables. Some of those games even teach basic Python or JavaScript.

But if you're a fully-grown adult, it may be harder to get excited about a kid-themed game like Minecraft or Disney's Frozen. You may instead want to find more serious games that can keep you engaged while you learn.

If this describes you, well I've got good news. This list is chock-full of games where you'll make meaningful strategic decisions, then execute them through code.

Note that all of the games on this list are fine for kids, too. But their primary audience is adult learners.

Let's dive in.

Best Coding Games Pick #1: SQL Murder Mystery

Upon starting SQL Murder Mystery, you receive some basic instructions:

"A crime has taken place and the detective needs your help. You vaguely remember that the crime was a ​murder​ that occurred sometime on ​Jan.15, 2018​ and that it took place in ​SQL City​. Start by retrieving the corresponding crime scene report from the police department’s database."

From there, you have to use your SQL query skills to find the killer.

If you're experienced with SQL, you may be able to solve the mystery in a single sitting. If not, there is a nice walkthrough to show you some querying tips.

SQL Murder Mystery will help you understand and apply database concepts such as:

Primary and Foreign Keys

Aggregate Functions

Table Joins

and even Wildcards

You can play SQL Murder Mystery for free right in your browser here.

Best Coding Games Pick #2: Elevator Saga

Elevator Function's minimalistic graphics, stats, and code editor

In Elevator Saga, you program a series of elevators to handle increasingly large loads of passengers.

Through its 19 challenges, you'll adapt your algorithm to minimize the amount of time passengers have to wait to move from floor to floor.

This game will give you a lot of JavaScript practice. It will also force you to get creative and experiment with optimization approaches.

Here's a 30-second demo video that will give you an idea of what the elevator programming gameplay looks like:

You can play Elevator Saga for free in your browser here.

Best Coding Games Pick #3: Screeps

Screeps Gameplay. Image Credit: Goto64

Screeps bills itself as an "MMO Sandbox Strategy Game for Programmers."

This is a serious programming game that assumes you already know some basic programming.

You can control your units using real-life programming languages like JavaScript. You can even compile languages like C++ and run them through WebAssembly.

Screeps came out back in 2017, and is still actively maintained. It's currently sitting at an 89% positive rating on Steam with more than 1,000 reviews, which makes it one of the more acclaimed games on the entire Steam platform.

Here's the full trailer:

Screeps Trailer

Note that Screeps is a paid game. But there's a free demo that runs right in your browser here.

If you want to get the full game, you can buy Screeps from the Steam Shop here.

Best Coding Games Pick #4: Untrusted

The minimalist ASCII interface of Untrusted

Untrusted is a browser-based rogue-like game that uses real-world JavaScript as the main gameplay input.

In the game's own words, "You must literally edit and re-execute the very JavaScript running the game in your browser to save Dr. Eval from this dark and confusing reality!"

You can play Untrusted right in your browser here.

Best Coding Games Pick #5: Duskers

A screenshot of Dusker's unique graphical style and command line interface

Whereas the previous 4 games all involved using real programming languages, Duskers more closely resembles shell scripting.

You play as a programmer who is stranded in space and running low on supplies. You have to dock with abandoned space vessels and then scavenge them.

But you can't interact with these ships directly. Instead, you control a team of drones – each with their own abilities – and tell them how to explore these ships.

But look out – there are monsters on these ships that will destroy your drones if you're not careful.

This game is controlled entirely by typing into a command line interface. Because the game is real-time in nature, this can lead to some intense moments of rapidly typing commands as you try to save your drones from danger.

Here is the command-line themed trailer from Duskers' launch:

The Duskers launch trailer

And here's a more in-depth overview of the gameplay and its programming roots (17 minute watch):

Best Coding Games Pick #7: Flexbox Defense (Browser)

The main Flexbox Defense gameplay loop: programming your towers to defend against invaders.

This is a Tower Defense Game that involves you protecting yourself using Flexbox-based commands.

By using real-life CSS Flexbox code, you'll adjust the position of your turrets to shoot invading enemies before they can overrun you.

Fun fact: this game was designed by Channing Allen, the brother of Indie Hackers founder Courtland Allen. The two brothers are both excellent programmers with a passion for teaching.

You can play Flexbox Defense in your browser here.

Best Coding Games Pick #8: CSS Diner

CSS Diner is browser game that will help you learn CSS selectors. Over the course of 32 levels, you'll learn a how to select DOM elements using a variety of different attributes:

id

classname

nth-of-type

nth-child

not(x)

[attribute="value"]

and a whole lot more

This is a breezy playthrough, and you may want to beat it several times just to tighten up your CSS Selector muscle memory.

You can play CSS Diner for free in your browser here.

Best Coding Games Pick #9: CodinGame

CodinGame is actually a collection of several coding minigames.

And the best part is that you can code in any language you like. Their editor supports a ton of languages and compiles these on a server for you somewhere.

Some of the languages CodinGame supports for its programming games

CodinGame has built-in leaderboards and other features to give you plenty of motivation to keep practicing your coding. Even though the platform was launched way back in 2012, there is still nothing else quite like it.

If you're looking for a programming game to stream while live coding on Twitch or YouTube, look no further. There is plenty of fun to be had here.

You can explore CodinGame for free in your browser here.

Bonus Coding Game: VIM Adventures

VIM Adventures teaches you how to use VIM by navigating mazes and gathering items.

OK – so this isn't a coding game, but rather a game that teaches you a powerful coding tool: the VIM code editor.

You will learn VIM keyboard shortcuts and essential VIM concepts in a fun way. This is way less frustrating than thrashing about, trying to remember, for example, how to quit VIM.

You can play VIM Adventures for free in your browser here.

Gotta Play 'Em All

I hope this list has given you plenty of adult-oriented programming games to practice your coding skills with.

If I missed any good ones, let me know by tweeting at me.

Happy coding.

#IFTTT #Feedly

[mst3kproject]

Frankenstein meets the Space Monster

What have we here?  Marylin Hanold from The Brain that Wouldn't Die and James Karen from Being from Another Planet in a stupid alien invasion movie that doesn't actually have Frankenstein (the doctor or the monster) in it?  Sounds like MST3K to me.

NASA has plans for advanced space exploration without risking any more lives: they've invented a robot astronaut, designated Colonel Frank Saunders, to do all the dangerous stuff!  On Saunders' first mission, he is shot down by a ship from Mars and lands in Puerto Rico.  The Martians also land, looking to finish the job they started, and their weapons damage Saunders' positronic brain, leading him to go on a berserk rampage!  Meanwhile, the Martians are afraid that NASA is aware of them now, and accordingly step up their invasion plans.  A recent nuclear war has left Mars uninhabitable, and the Princess is currently the last woman on the planet.  In order to survive, they must get breeding stock from Earth!

Yep, it's Mars Needs Women meets The Astro-Zombies! The closest thing the movie has to Frankenstein is a brief and totally useless remark from one of the scientists about Saunders' malfunctioning state: “you mean he'll become some kind of... Frankenstein?”  Frankenstein's monster normally has connotations of something pieced together from bits, whereas Saunders at this point has been broken down from a whole, so I don't see how it's equivalent.  I think they only put the line in so they could call the movie Frankenstein meets the Space Monster. There is a space monster in the movie, which the Martians have apparently brought along to punish disobedient crewmen by eating them.  It's... you know what?  I'll get back to the space monster.

The summary makes it sound like there's a lot going on in this movie, but when I think back to what I actually saw in it, I'm pretty sure Frankenstein meets the Space Monster is mostly montages.  The first one is characters driving to a press conference at Cape Kennedy, past all kinds of space-themed diners and motels in the town.  This one is kind of cool, as it gives an impression of what living there would have been like during the space race, with the whole population caught up in it.  Then there's a montage of preparing for launch.  Then the two scientists drive around San Juan to another montage.  The troops are called in, with a montage.  Jets are scrambled in a montange.  Is anybody counting? Because that's five montages in a seventy-five minute movie, and I don't think that was all of them.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that these montages are mostly made of stock footage.  The massive military force mobilized against the Martians is pretty much entirely stock footage, because there's no way this movie could have afforded helicopters and tanks. Assorted space launches and the view from the Martian ship in orbit are provided by stock rocket footage we've all seen before, much of it considerably lower-quality than the stuff filmed for the movie. The Cape Kennedy footage is probably all stock, as is all the aerial footage (of which there is a surprising amount).  I can imagine Joel and the Bots paying tribute to this by mustering stock footage to make it look like the SOL is in command of a huge army – the Martians trying to invade are convinced by it and run off.

A movie designed around the available stock footage is not going to be a masterpiece, and the storyline of Frankenstein meets the Space Monster is pretty messy.  There are times when it almost feels like they're trying to make two different movies at once: the one about the out-of-control robot astronaut, and the one about the Martian invasion.  The movies overlap at several points, but characters from the Robot movie don't actually interact with characters from the Martian movie until around fifty minutes in, when the female scientist Dr. Karen Grant is captured and interrogated by the Martians.  Because so much of the preceding time has been spent on setups and montages, we feel like the story is only just getting started at this point, and it's something of a shock to find things building to the climax only minutes later.

Where no stock footage was available, or where the characters needed to be in the same shot as something fantastical, the movie had to come up with special effects, and these are mostly pretty sorry.  The Martians, typified by the Princess' advisor Dr. Nadir, look like Dr. Evil in Vulcan ears.  Keeping helmets on them most of them (and covering the Princess' head with her silly pseudo-Egyptian headdress-tiara-thing) saved money on bald wigs.  We do see some exposed circuitry on Saunders as he wanders the countryside, but the closer we look, the more obviously it's just a couple of computer parts stuck in bad burn makeup.  His glowing eye is particularly pathetic.  The Martian saucer is a geodesic dome made of cardboard, and then there's the titular Space Monster, which looks kind of like Trumpy as the Colossal Beast.  It's all very cheap and shoddy, but usually in a funny sort of way.

There actually is one quite interesting idea in Frankenstein meets the Space Monster, and that's in the character – or not quite a character – of Frank Saunders and his relationship of sorts with his creators, Dr. Karen Grant and Dr. Adam Steele.  Saunders is designed to be the perfect astronaut, both in functionality and for PR purposes.  The personality he shows at the press conference is that of the clean-cut, all-American overachiever, accomplished but humble, trusting in his superiors to make the right decisions.  Although Steele chides Grant for talking about Saunders as if he is a person, it is clear that both of them are very attached to him emotionally as well as in their work.  Grant cannot help anthropomorphizing him even when she is told not to, and Steele refuses to abandon him even when it would be easier to do so.

Saunders is also very attached to them. We are told that he is wandering around Puerto Rico with his memory destroyed, lashing out because he does not know what else to do – the first human-shaped being he encountered after landing attacked him, so he believes he must defend himself.  When he encounters Grant and Steele in the cave, however, he recognizes them as people he must take orders from.  When he finds Grant captive on board the Martian ship, he makes a decision to save her without being given any orders at all.  In fact, Grant must stop him from saving her and leaving the other women behind!  Some form of emotional bond clearly exists on both sides, here.

It would be fair to call Saunders a major protagonist of this movie.  We are invited to like him right away when we meet him at the press conference, and later to sympathize with him both in his confused wanderings and through the bond he shares with his 'parents'.  He selflessly rescues the captured women and destroys the saucer, saving the world at the cost of his own life.  I really wish the movie treated him more as a character and less as a plot device.  Does he know what he is, or does he believe what he told the reporters, that he's an Air Force test pilot?  Does he believe, as is somewhat implied, that he is in love with Dr. Grant?  What is he thinking upon finding himself in Puerto Rico with amnesia?  Maybe I'm the one anthropomorphizing him now... I wish I could tell if the movie wants me to do that.

If there really are two movies, perhaps with their scripts crossbred in order to make one long story out of two that fell short of feature length, then the Berserk Robot Astronaut one is by far the better. The Martian Invasion one is basically here to show us women in bikinis being abducted by aliens, where they are laid out on a table and covered with a piece of somebody's wedding dress to be 'electronically purified', whatever that means.  There are a couple in there that the Princess doesn't like and I think she orders them disintegrated.  A scene in which the Princess 'inspects' the first captive is all about the objectification of this woman, conveniently blamed on another woman.

The most interesting thing in this movie is the relationship between the Princess (according to the credits her name is Marcuzan, but it is never used) and her advisor, Dr. Nadir.  Nadir often seems to believe he's calling the shots, and he certainly has a much wider knowledge base than the Princess – but every so often she puts him in his place and does something he does not approve of, and when this happens the other Martians obey her without question.  She does ask questions when she doesn't understand something, but she makes her own decisions rather than relying on Nadir to do things for her.  Her people clearly have great respect for her, and it's somewhat impressive that the idea of her as 'breeding stock' for the Martian race never even comes up.  She can't sit around having babies – she has a civilization to rule! – and it's quite clear that none of her subjects would dare think of forcing her.

As usual in crummy movies, these good ideas are at best a very minor part of the movie they appear in.  The main narrative chugs away with its bikini babes and stock footage, wasting our time with montages and carefully avoiding anything that might make the audience think. The result is a mess that takes forever to get started, but there's just enough amusement here to be worth a watch.  It would definitely make for a classic episode, and since it's widescreen, maybe we'll see it in Season 12.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #frankenstein meets the space monster #60s

[bibhabmishra]

Ghostbusters

I’ve read a lot of film books and they’ve taught me a few things about how film books should be written if they are to be taken seriously, and these are lessons that I feel are as useful in life:  1. Drop in random French phrases wherever possible so it looks like you’re quoting from the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, because even if you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, nobody will be able to tell; 2. When in doubt, start waffling on about Godard; 3. Never describe a film as your “favorite film.” This looks unprofessional and childish. Instead, claim—in ringing tones comme les écrivains de Cahiers du Cinéma—that it is the Greatest Film.  Zut alors! Malheureusement, not all the French in the world could convince any- one that I am more interested in Godard than The Goonies, so that’s a non- starter. But I shall make use of one of these handy life lessons and state that the best, most brilliant, most extraordinary, the most deftly created piece of au- teur film work of all time is Ghostbusters. For pretty much most of my life, I’d assumed that this was a fact accepted by everybody: Ghostbusters is the greatest movie ever made. Sure, people tend to say random words like “Citizen Kane!” and “Vertigo!” when asked by Cahiers du Cinéma for their favorite film.

But I thought they did this just as, when asked who they’d like to have at their dream dinner party, they say, “Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela!” as opposed to who everybody would actually like, which is, obviously, Madonna and Bill Murray. Now, one could take my massive assumption that my tastes reflect those of everyone else on the planet two ways:  1. I have an ego the size of Asia coupled with a narcissist’s complex and incipient sociopathic tendencies; 2. Ghostbusters is so good that even if it’s not everyone’s FAVORITE movie, it is probably in their top ten and so whenever I mention my love of Ghostbusters people say, “Oh yeah, everyone loves Ghostbusters.”  For the purposes of this chapter, we will go with option 2. I never thought of my Ghostbusters obsession—and it is, I fully admit, an obsession—as remarkable. If anything, I saw it as a perfectly natural response to a great work of art. Devoting an entire shelf to books and articles by or about the people involved, however tangentially, in the making of this movie? Com- mendable intellectual curiosity. Spending two hundred dollars on a book about Ghostbusters that came out the year the film was released, just because it finally explains why the character of Winston is squeezed out of the movie? Hey, that’s an investment piece! Refusing to go on a second date with someone be- cause they failed to recognize a completely random (and not, to be honest, wildly relevant) Ghostbusters quote over dinner?I Well, why waste time with losers? It wasn’t until I found myself awake at 2 a.m. at the age of thirty-three on a Tuesday scrolling through eBay in search of a rumored copy of Bill Mur- ray’s original Ghostbusters script, which obviously was not going to be on eBay, that I felt it might be time to look at what, precisely, was going on here and why, after all this time, Ghostbusters still feels so special, maybe even more spe- cial, to me. There is sentimentality, for sure, not exactly for my childhood but for the city of my childhood. Ghostbusters is as much a love letter to New York as any- thing by Woody Allen, and a less self-conscious one at that, showing New Yorkers reacting with relative normality to an invasion of the undead.II Many of the jokes in Ghostbusters stem from the idea that, ghosts aside, Manhattan it- self is an out-of-control Wild West place, a Gotham city where a man could collapse against the windows of the Tavern on the Green, the ritzy restaurant that used to be in Central Park, and the diners would simply ignore him. Trash is piled on the sidewalks and Checker cabs whizz around corners: this re- creation of New York, 1984—the New York of my childhood—is still how I think of the city, even though it has, for better or worse, changed a lot since then. Even the hilarious anachronisms give me a sentimental frisson: Louis being mocked for his love of vitamins and mineral water; Ray and Peter snarfing down cigarettes while toting nuclear reactors on their backs; Larry King in a cloud of cigarette smoke while chatting drily on the radio; the bad guy being the man from the Environmental Protection Agency. These all look particularly out of date in the Manhattan of today, and I can’t help but feel the city is a little poorer for it. But my absolute favorite New Yorky moment in the film is at the end, when a doorman brings Ecto1 round after the Ghostbusters have saved the world—or at least Central Park West—from destruction. Despite having battled a giant marshmallow man, Dan Aykroyd still has a couple of dollar bills in the pocket of his ghost uniform with which to tip the doorman. You cannot get more New York than that. But there is something else in Ghostbusters that makes me sentimental, something else that I love in it that doesn’t exist anymore. That is, its depiction of how a man should be.  •  •  •  Just in terms of sheer variety, one could do a lot worse than turn to eighties movies for lessons in how to be a man. When most people think of mas- culinity in eighties movies, they probably think of that strange genre that sprouted and bulged up in that decade like Popeye’s biceps after eating spinach, consisting of men who look like condoms stuffed with walnutsIII speaking their lines in confused accents and emphasizing random syllables, strongly suggesting they’d learned the words phonetically: Schwarzenegger, Lundgren, Stallone,IV and, toward the end of the decade, Van Damme. Chuck Norris, too, can be included here, despite his lack of walnutness, but he earns membership in this group with his similar lack of obvious acting talent and strong fondness for right-wing messages in his films.V But there is more to eighties men than that. For a start, there are the men who raise babies and children (Mr. Mom, Three Men and a Baby, Uncle Buck), which some feminist critics argued at the time was a backlash against femi- nism because the films seemed to mock the idea of feminized men. In fact, in retrospect, these films look more like movies awkwardly coming to grips with feminism (Tootsie, too, can be included here, with a man pre- tending to be a woman, and occasionally looking after a child, and becoming a better person for it). Mr. Mom (1983), in which Michael Keaton loses his job and looks after the kids while his wife works, is clearly none too sure what to make of this “feminist” thing: the movie’s message is that the swapping of traditional gender roles will probably destroy the marriage and almost certainly the house (somewhat dismayingly, the film was written by John Hughes). But by 1987, Three Men and a Baby was getting much more of a handle on things. The men (Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson) are unex- pectedly lumbered with a baby girl and, by the end of the film, very much want her to stay with them in their bachelor shag pad, even after the baby’s dippy English (foreigners—tchuh!) mother turns back up. It turns out that, unlike Mr. Mom, they are capable of looking after a baby without causing havoc to domestic appliances (men—amirite??). The men in Three Men and a Baby are

notably much less obnoxious than les mecs in the original French version, Trois Hommes et un Couffin, who have a pact never to let a woman stay more than one night in their flat and have a tendency to call the baby “a swine” when it has an accident on the sofa. Ahh, les Français—ils sont tres masculins, ooh la la!VI Which is not to say that the American version is without its anxieties. Three Men and a Baby goes to such lengths in order to reassure audiences of the übermasculinity of the three guys, despite their TERRIFYINGLY FEMINIZED baby-raising skills, that they become hilariously camp. Peak camp is reached, for me, when Selleck goes out jogging wearing little more than a tiny pair of shorts and an enormous mustache, and he picks up a sports magazine full of photos of muscled-up half-naked men. Now, if that isn’t the definition of throbbing heterosexual masculinity, I don’t know what is. Yes, the eighties were a different time and American movies in that era seemed to think that homosexual was merely Latin for “psycho killer or flouncy interior decorator.” But nonetheless, whenever I watch this movie (which is more often than I’m going to commit to print) I think it’s a shame the director (who was the late Leonard Nimoy, very pleasingly) didn’t just go with the obvi- ous option here and make the guys gay, living in a happy yuppie ménage à trois. After all, this would explain why three apparently very solvent guys in high- flying careersVII in their thirties would choose to share an apartment in mid- town Manhattan as opposed to getting their own American Psycho–style bach- elor pads. And for heaven’s sake, have you looked at that Broadway-themed mural Steve Guttenberg paints of the three of them in the atrium of their apart- ment? No amount of references from Selleck to his love of sport can obscure the fact he and his two friends are living in the campiest New York apartment north of Fourteenth Street. These guys—the actor! the architect! the car- toonist!—are basically the eighties yuppie version of the Village People. And let’s talk about that homoeroticism! Accidental homoeroticism is yet another one of the great joys of eighties movies, and it was the last decade that would be blessed with the pleasure because from the nineties onward, gay cul- ture and references would be too mainstream and recognizable to slip past studios unnoticed. The plethora of eighties buddy movies easily and frequently tip into acci- dental homoeroticism, with the female characters being explicitly excluded from pretty much the whole film and all sorts of intense emotion between the two male leads. Lethal Weapon is one example and an even more obvious one is Stakeout, in which Emilio Estevez and Richard Dreyfuss spend an entire movie living together in faux domesticity and, in the case of Estevez, voyeuris- tically spying on his male partner’s sexual encounters. The Lost Boys is the most blatantly homoerotic mainstream movie ever made for teenage boys. In this film, young Michael (charisma vortex Jason Patric) is initiated into the manly life of a new town by going into a cave with Kiefer Sutherland and his male buddies (none of whom seems the least bit interested in the fact that a half-naked Jami Gertz is wandering around drunk- enly in front of them) and drinking their body fluids. Sure, why not, right? Vam- pires are inherently homoerotic and the director Joel Schumacher (who later homoeroticized Batman—not difficult, admittedly—by sticking nipples on the batsuit) revels in the connection in this movie in a way Twilight later deter- minedly, somewhat dismayingly avoids. Michael does at some point have what looks like deeply unsatisfying sex with Jami Gertz, but the person he gazes at with the most intensity is young Jack Bauer. And I haven’t even mentioned that Michael’s little brother Sam (Corey Haim), who dresses like he’s trying out for Wham!, has a poster on the door of his closet of Rob Lowe lifting up his shirt. Because sure, why not, right?

[chadbourn]

#TwinPeaks – What Does It All Mean?

“We’re like the dreamer who dreams and lives inside the dream. But who is the dreamer?” we are asked in David Lynch and Mark Frost’s TV masterpiece, Twin Peaks The Return. And waking from that mesmerizing, baffling, inspiring, terrifying, amusing, irritating dream of a series, we understand that is the key question. For the series. For life.

When the finale aired, in the US on Sunday and in the UK on Monday, the internet was awash with outrage and bewilderment: “He didn’t explain ANYTHING.” I think Lynch and Frost gave us plenty to find understanding, and I’m going to put down some of my thoughts here. It shouldn’t need to be said that there are SPOILERS aplenty beyond, not just for Twin Peaks but many other things too.

The lazy analysis of most of Lynch’s works is that his films “are like dreams”, with the unspoken opinion that they make no sense and are not supposed to make sense, a swirl of symbolism that you can only give yourself up to. But like all great art – and Twin Peaks The Return is art, make no mistake, just like the anguished paintings and sketches and sculptures Lynch labours over in his LA studio, and bearing much of a resemblance to them – his work makes perfect sense. All you need is The Key.

In past works, Lynch has always placed something – a line of dialogue, an image or collection of images – that unlocks the whole puzzle of his art and reveals meaning and structure and the hidden narrative.

At its heart, Twin Peaks – and nearly all Lynch’s work – has been about trauma. How it shapes and breaks lives. How it infects the world around us. If there is any hope for redemption, personal or societal. The devastating sexual abuse of Laura Palmer by her father, and her subsequent murder at his hand, rippled out to alter an entire town and the lives of everyone who lived there. It’s there in his very first theatre-released movie, Eraserhead, in Lost Highway, in Mulholland Drive. Lynch makes the claim time and again that how we deal with trauma is a fundamental part of living.

The key to unlocking Twin Peaks The Return is his Oscar-nominated movie Mulholland Drive. That film is a part of the Twin Peaks “universe” – it was originally designed as a TV spinoff featuring Audrey Horne’s adventures in LA – as is Lost Highway, and Eraserhead.

Mulholland Drive seems to tell one story, but in the last few scenes we learn it’s telling another story entirely, that of an actress who committed a terrible crime that has destroyed her, and that all that has gone before is her attempt – her dream – to make it right.

And so with Twin Peaks. There is ample evidence – in dialogue, in the timelessness of the town, indeed in the time loops which show the normal rules don’t apply, in the characters themselves – that Twin Peaks is not of this world.

Another film you might like to consider in relation to these thoughts is this:

The abiding mythology that Lynch has constructed across many of his works is of a place of, perhaps, collective unconscious that we visit in dreams and where idealized versions of ourselves try to work through our traumas and the problems we face in our waking world.

The primary way in which we make sense of the world, and ourselves, is Story. A problem is established, obstacles stand in the way, and a solution is found. That applies to a murder mystery and to how we cope with the abuses of the real world. And so our dreamers enter the dream-world of Twin Peaks and find the story that is pertinent to them.

In Twin Peaks The Return, Audrey Horne is terrified of being forced into the story titled The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane. Because that is the name of Laura Palmer’s (or rather Carrie Page’s) story, and we all know what happens in that one.

In the same way that Dom Cobb tries to resolve his trauma in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, through various forms of the real world, which may all in fact be dreams.

In the same way that Christopher Hadley “Pincher” Martin tries to make sense of his life’s traumas with his dying dream in William Golding’s brilliant third novel, Pincher Martin.

At the very end of Twin Peaks The Return, Kyle MacLachlan’s character wakes in a motel that we haven’t seen before, with a car we don’t recognize, with a new name – Richard – and in a world that has the gritty, mundane appearance of our own, far, far removed from the wonders and terrors of Twin Peaks. In Judy’s Diner, in miserable Odessa, he takes down three rednecks, not as the bright-eyed Coop we know, or the brutalist Mr C, but as some amalgam of the two, the real-world coming together of his fragmented dream personas.

There is no Coop, that idealized, Buddhist, decent-hearted knight. There is no Mr C, that epitome of evil. There is only Richard, who dreams a dream to solve the mystery of his own trauma and through it, hopefully, find some redemption. Does this trauma involve Linda, or Diane, as we know her from the Twin Peaks collective unconscious? Possibly. And we could dig into the story Cooper is involved in in that dream to find those real-world origins.

And in a fantastic piece of Meta imagining by Lynch, we are told that this end sequence is our own world because the woman who answers the door at the Palmer house, is the person who really owns that home in Washington State: Mary Reber.

And what of poor, bewildered Audrey Horne? We never got a resolution to her story, the internet cried as one. But we did. After her dreamy dance at the Roadhouse was interrupted by a brawl, Audrey runs to her partner-tormentor and cries, “Get me out of here!” Cue: jump cut to the person we know as Audrey staring into a mirror in a white room, perhaps a hospital.

She woke up.

Who is the dreamer? In this story, it’s mainly Richard. Lynch lets us know by superimposing Kyle MacLachlan’s face over the final part of the meeting in the Twin Peaks Sheriffs’ Department. It’s also all those we see manifesting in that collective unconscious.

But in the end, it’s all of us. We go into our fictions – our Twin Peaks, our books – to make sense of the horrors of our world, and through them find some way to survive.

Lynch layers his worlds, and his themes, to make his point. In the first season, the characters who exist in Twin Peaks are obsessed with a soap opera, Invitation to Love. They are drawn to that story filled with the characters’ trials, triumphs and torments as a way to make sense of their own lives. Just as their real selves are doing with that dream. Just as we do with our own stories.

There’s still so much more to glean from this tremendous work. So much to turn over and debate and sift for meaning. The original series changed the landscape of TV by showing us what was possible from that medium, and through that helped prepare the ground for the golden age of TV we’re living through now.

And with Twin Peaks The Return, Lynch and Frost have done it all over again.

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[casfallsinlove]

when the light came through (r, 2.5k)

[ao3] for grace ❤️

They leave the bunker just as dawn begins to ease over the horizon, until the sky above the Kansas plains is smudged with pale rose-gold. A soft mist hangs low, catching on the bare, bristly grass poking through the thin smattering of snow. Castiel has seen many sunrises in his time, but he thinks this is the most beautiful. Perhaps because of where he's going, or who he's going there with.

The Impala purrs as they breeze along the highway, a quick burst of the rumble strip when Dean takes his eyes off the empty road for a second too long, and the radio murmuring quietly. Some talk show or shipping forecast or something--they just wanted the background noise, really.

Castiel feels at peace. With Lucifer locked up and the Angels back in Heaven, there's little to be at war with these days. Occasionally a haunting pings up on their radar, or Sam will call them with news of a suspected vamp nest or rampant werewolf that he and Eileen are too busy to handle, but things are mostly quiet. Settled. Comfortable.

Of course Dean and Castiel don't know how to deal with comfortable very well. So here they are, driving with no endgame in sight, just them and the car and the wide open road. Twin duffel bags sit on the backseat; Castiel’s has clothes spilling out of it where the zipper broke, the corner of a book getting bent out of shape. A plant is wedged against the door, fastened securely with the seat belt; a philodendron, one that Castiel bought for 75 cents from a stall at the side of the road because it was brown and dying. Dean had told him to throw it on the compost heap at the time but then the plant started growing again, its leaves getting greener and smoother as it stood proud in its little yellow pot.

“You're like the Doctor Doolittle of flowers,” Dean said one day, when he caught Castiel gently stroking the leaves.

Castiel replied, “I think it’s found some trace energy left in me, some small part of what I used to be. It's feeding from me.”

“Gross.” Dean had pulled a face, but his fingers were affectionate, playful at the back of Castiel’s neck.

He couldn't leave the plant behind.

Now, Dean’s humming something tuneless as he drives, his fingers tapping a restless rhythm on the wheel. He glances over, once, twice. The Colorado state line looms in the distance.

“You're sure about this, huh?” he asks, anxiety barely hidden just below the surface of him. It ripples there, faint blotches of purple-blue and gray bleeding into Dean’s usual bright gold and green. Castiel takes Dean’s hand, runs the pad of his thumb over the small mountain ridge of knuckles. The gray starts to fade.

“I'm sure,” he says.

Dean looks at him again. The corner of his mouth quirks.

“Okay then.” He squeezes Castiel’s fingers and puts his foot down on the accelerator a little heavier.

The Impala roars. The road whips past, endless and full of potential.

     “No fucking way.”

Castiel scowls. “Yes way.”

Dean scrutinizes him across the sticky tabletop, like he wants to call bullshit. His burger, poised in midair, is slowly dripping sauce down his wrist.

“You're telling me aliens are real.”

“Yes.” Castiel slurps his Coke from a bright green twisty straw. It fizzes, makes his nose burn. “I've met them.”

“Yeah, okay, Mulder,” Dean shakes his head, his burger back on its trajectory to his mouth. He takes a huge bite and adds with his mouth full, “Little green men in silver suits? Impossible.”

They've been having this argument since they crossed the border into Nevada and saw a sign at the side of the road telling them to watch out for low-flying UFOs. Now they're in an alien-themed diner and Dean's stubbornness is back in full-force.

“Dean, you've met vampires and angels and God Himself, and yet you refuse to admit that there's life out there other than what's on this earth? There is more to the universe than humans can possibly imagine or ever hope to see. There are planets out there which hold life, intelligent life, surviving just as humanity survives. I'm several millennia old, I've met more than one species of extraterrestrial.” He shrugs. “But if you think you're right, go ahead and think you're right.”

Dean flicks a ketchup-dipped fry at him. “You're such an asshole.”

It's nice, being with Dean like this. Not having to worry about one of their lives being under threat or the next big bad coming to destroy the world. They can just be. And what they are is wonderful. Dean is wonderful, glittering gold, like something precious, something to be treasured.

The paper placemat underneath Castiel’s plate has a press-out alien mask in it. When Dean goes to the bathroom Castiel pops it out and holds it up against his face. He steals one of Dean’s fries, putting it in his mouth so it sticks out like a cigar.

“Hello, Mr. Winchester,” he says in a funny voice when Dean sits back down.

Dean blinks at him then bursts out laughing, throwing his balled-up napkin at his head.

“Oh my god. You're so fuckin’ lucky I love you,” he grins.

Well. Okay then. Dean loves him.

Lucky indeed.

“I love you, too,” Castiel says, still in the stupid alien voice, and at this point they're making complete spectacles of themselves, being far too loud and boisterous for the quiet diner, their feet knocking under the table, but Dean is glowing, beaming, an entire spectrum of colors almost too vibrant to look at. Castiel wouldn't want to dull that for anything.

   They roll into Vegas not long after dusk has fallen. It's warmer here, the desert air dry and dusty and getting caught behind Castiel’s teeth. Lights flicker and splinter in his peripheral vision; amber and red, green and blue and harsh pinks. People are out on the streets, laughing and drinking and flagging down taxis. Night doesn't really seem to make a difference here. Castiel pulls at his shirt, restless, his knees pleading for a break from the car. Dean is yawning, jaw cracked wide.

They head west to avoid the snarl of traffic downtown and end up in Sun City. Dean says it's just so they can find a motel that actually has a vacancy, but he seems relieved to be away from the hustle and bustle. Everything is softer out here, quieter. The set of Dean’s shoulders is more at ease.

The El Camino is a shabby little motel wedged between a Fuel-and-Go and a Denny’s, making the parking lot smell like gasoline and greasy food. Castiel wrinkles his nose as he leaves Dean to get the bags and heads into the lobby, waving away a cloud of cigarette smoke from a man with a beer gut pressing quarters into the vending machine beside the door. Inside, Castiel asks for a king and a wifi pass so he can watch Netflix on Dean’s laptop. The woman behind the counter smiles habitually at him, purple plastic nails clacking on the formica as she slides his key over.

A waft of stale, cold air hits them when they shoulder into the room. Dean sighs and switches the heater on and after a few seconds of clunking protest it huffs to life with a whine and a rattle. Castiel stands by the door and watches Dean for a minute; the tired curve of his spine, the way he toes his boots off and stumbles a bit. He takes his neatly folded pajamas out of the duffel and puts them on the end of the bed then looks at Castiel. An easy grin spreads over his face when he realizes he’s being watched.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Castiel shrugs. A smile sneaks into his lips though and Dean laughs. As he passes to get to the bathroom he brushes the back of his hand over Castiel’s stomach, his fingertips catching lightly on a belt loop, a soft and intimate gesture that leaves Castiel feeling warm all over.

While Dean’s showering he gets changed and climbs into bed. The blankets are scratchy on his arms but he's cold enough that he doesn't care. Dean's laptop sits on his stomach, its cable trailing across the brown, threadbare carpet to the outlet, the plastic casing of which is cracked in one corner and yellowed with age.

Navigating to their shared Netflix profile is easier now than it used to be--practically second nature. They're slowly working their way through several series together; most recently, Parks and Recreation. He pulls up the next episode and then clicks over to his emails while he waits for Dean.

Nothing from Sam, but there is a brief reply from Mary in response to a query Castiel had about the Baku, a monster of dream manipulation that she had mentioned once encountering. Castiel would like to plug all gaps in his knowledge to assist Dean as best as possible now that he's human, or as good as.

He’s typing a reply of thanks and best wishes when Dean appears beside him, freshly showered and in his pajamas, his skin slightly flushed and damp still, his hair towel-dried ruffled.

“What are we watching?” he asks, bouncing down on the bed and jostling Castiel. Rolling his eyes, Castiel presses send and switches tabs back to Netflix.

“Nothing yet, I was waiting for you.”

Dean narrows his eyes at the laptop. “Wait, was that Mom? What were you talking about?”

It's so easy to tease Dean that Castiel can't resist doing so, just a little. “That's for me to know.”

“Ugh, that's not worrying at all,” Dean says, but he actually sounds rather fond. Of Mary’s attempt at conquering modern forms of communication, maybe, or possibly the fact that two of the people he loves most get on so well. That last thought makes Castiel heart swell in his chest.

They burrow in together to watch Parks and Recreation, Dean’s head on Castiel’s chest. His laughter echoes in the space behind Castiel’s ribs, a fierce, lovely thing.

 It’s the early hours of the morning when Castiel stirs. He’s not sure what disturbed him; the blare of a big rig’s horn, or the tipsy giggles of some women outside on the breezeway, or maybe just an instinctive awareness that being awake would be a good thing right now.

He rolls over and into Dean, who grunts and mumbles, “You ‘kay?”

“Yes,” Castiel says, and kisses him.

Dean’s slow, sleepy, but gradually comes to live under Castiel’s touch. The kisses get deeper and more urgent, laced with a faint hint of peppermint toothpaste. Dean shivers when Castiel places his palm on his chest, warm through the thin cotton of his t-shirt, and rolls onto his back, bringing Castiel with him. Soft ultramarine light from the buzzing neon sign outside creeps around the gap in the curtains, highlighting the lines and ridges of Dean’s profile, illuminating a path for Castiel’s lips to follow.

Hands grip his waist tightly, cling there for a moment then slip underneath Castiel’s shirt and skim up and down his sides. Dean’s hands are steady and sure, capable of great destruction but also incredible gentleness. It’s the latter with which he touches Castiel, his fingertips alone making heat pool in Castiel’s gut.

A quiet moan escapes Dean when their cocks brush through their pants so Castiel rocks lazily into a rhythm that leaves them breathless and shaking. Dean’s thighs are trembling either side of Castiel’s waist so he runs his hand down Dean’s arm and threads their fingers together, squeezing, pressing them into the lumpy mattress.

He doesn’t let them go, even as the headboard starts smacking the wall, and their kisses become little more than their mouths sloppily meeting in between gasps, and when Dean comes it’s with a choked mantra of “Cas, Cas, Cas” followed by every muscle in his body contracting, before he goes boneless with a long, contented sigh.

Castiel can feel the wetness, even through two thin layers, and it’s more than enough to tip him over the edge into headless, blissful oblivion. Starbursts explode behind his eyes as he groans into the damp skin at Dean’s shoulder, a hand curled around the back of Castiel’s neck and scratching at the sweaty hair there sending aftershocks of tingling pleasure up his spine.

“I love you,” he tells Dean, like it’s a fundamental truth of the universe, the thing that keeps the stars in the sky and the ocean tides anchored to the moon.

Dean lets out a sob, fractured, bone-tired, and holds Castiel close.

  The end of the line turns out to be San Diego.

Sand tickles Castiel’s bare feet, warm on his soles and gritty between his toes. As an angel he saw oceans being created, beaches unfurling from crystalline waters, plants blossoming and creatures evolving, but in retrospect everything pales in comparison to this: walking down a beach in South California, hand-in-hand with Dean Winchester while the sun sets ahead of them.

The sky is awash with pastels, the sand golden and the water a deep green-blue. Few people are around and those that are don’t pay Dean and Castiel any attention. Which is just as well, as Dean has decided to talk about the time he and Sam hunted a banshee in Florida at the top of his voice, eyes alight and free hand gesturing wildly as he tells Castiel about Sam falling into a swamp and screaming about alligators.

A shiver trickles its way down Castiel’s body; it’s cool out, a cold wind blowing in off the water and whipping at their hair. He presses closer to Dean’s side.

He squeezes Dean’s hand, smiles because Dean’s grin is infectious, pauses to kiss him, sugar-sweet from the ice cream they ate while huddled in hoodies back on the pier. Dean’s arm comes around Castiel’s back, trapping him there. He hums happily into the kiss, then breaks it to rest his forehead against Castiel’s.

“I never thought I’d get to have this,” he whispers, a secret just for them. “I gave up hoping. Every time I reached for it, it just seemed to get further away.”

“I know,” Castiel says, because he does, because it seemed impossible to him too.

“But now--God, me and you, Cas. I feel so…” Dean shakes his head, apparently unable to complete that sentence.

Castiel kisses the bolt of Dean’s jaw. “Yes,” he agrees, because the words won’t come to him either.

The sun continues to fade. Twilight inches in around the edges, painting the water a glossy bruise-black. Castiel doesn’t pay it heed. Dean exudes warmth, happiness, unwavering affection; the sun at the center of Castiel’s universe.

Who knows where they’ll go next. The entire country is spread out before them, theirs for the taking. As long as they’re together, Castiel doesn’t care. 

#leknope #deancas #king and lionheart #fanfiction #spn #fic tag #deancas text

[eclissy]

Papé Satàn, Papé Satàn Aleppe

It’s an interaction fic where I stuffed Sukoi into the universe I wrote up for Nova. Uh lots of walls of description, nothing much happening besides two demon ladies hanging out.

This was a diner the pink lemonade demon had chosen at random to meet and make their deal. Sukoi would rather have had this one vs one in some place like a dark alley, or the woods, even the city’s worst bathroom. But of course, Nova wanted to be in what basically amounted to a sardine can of innocent human beings.

“Tell me when it’s enough, ma’am.” The waitress began grating cheese on Nova’s pasta and the demon quietly watched the mountain of fresh parmesan begin to gather on her plate.

Sukoi could clearly see that the waitress was new and too nervous to stop grating the cheese, running it down nearly to the rind.

“Um—“ The waitress began but Nova twirled her finger, letting the pasta get smothered until Sukoi had enough.

“You don’t have to serve nasty customers.” Sukoi said, startling the waitress. She became pale, pressured by the stagnant air surrounding the booth.

Nova regarded her, wondering why Sukoi was the one with gold eyes and not red like her own.

“Fine,” Nova used a spoon to push the cheese to the side of her plate. She wasn’t a demon from the gluttony level after all. “I just wanted the best bang for my buck but we do have business to get to.”

The waitress scurried off and Sukoi kept her arms crossed, already annoyed.

“And I want to get to the point,” Sukoi tried not to grind her molars. God, her steak wasn’t even that good. “We could have swapped facts on the street.”

“I tend to spill a little more when I’m cushy. And, it’s cold,” Nova stated, actually preferring the cold. Hell was the coldest place in the universe and the holiday seasons were the greediest time of the year. She thrived in this and it was only correct to honor the time by treating this business deal with the respect it deserved.

They were demons, not animals.

Sukoi didn’t see it the same way.

“You first.” Sukoi said, keeping it curt.

The other demon let her gaze drift, as if rolling her eyes. They settled on the salt shaker and she slid it over to Sukoi.

“It’s a well-known fact, though not everyone treats it so seriously,” Nova steepled her fingers, letting her pasta get cold. “Demon 101, a little salt can go a long way.”

“To keep you all out of a house?” Sukoi asked, not including herself in the mix. She sounded unconvinced. “Or do you melt like slugs?”

“Give it a try.” Nova said.

“Pfft.” Sukoi had salt before and it never gave her third degree burns. She shook a few grains on to her palm and ate them. She made a satisfied smirk, unaffected in every single way.

“Think of it like an allergy. Sometimes demons have higher tolerance, or—“ Nova shook her head, pretending to be unconvinced. “They’re good at fibbing.”

Incensed by the accusation, Sukoi shook more of the salt into her hand. She swallowed a whole sheet of it and still, Nova was unimpressed.

“Damn it.” Sukoi muttered, finding the shaking method to slow. An idea came to mind and Sukoi jumped on it too quickly. She unscrewed the shaker’s cap and dumped half of its contents into her mouth.

Sukoi’s tongue dried into plywood and she bit down, forcing herself to swallow without upchucking it all over the black and white tiled floors. The burning was bad and Sukoi was afraid that the salt really did have an effect on her but Nova started laughing.

“And like with an allergy, some demons are immune.” Nova hid her snickers behind her hand. “Feeling salty?” She managed to catch the shaker aimed at her forehead. If she wasn’t a demon, it would have flown clean through her skull. “Relax, it was a joke.”

“You keep playing with me and—“

“Did Primrose tell you that every demon since the fall of Mr. Lulu Lemon have been killed?” Nova asked, letting the red of her irises sharpen into flames. “You better watch out. I suspect that the fact isn’t true and he’s from the first generation.”

The revelation managed to distract Sukoi from the pockets of salt in her cheeks.

“There are two generations? So, demons can have children?” Sukoi lowered her voice.

“Quid pro quo,” Nova spun her fork in her pasta. “It’s my turn to get answers,” She hesitated, weighing which one was the most appropriate. “Where is Primrose?”

“Rosie? I dunno,” Sukoi shrugged before rethinking her answer. Nova might be a bigger ass about answering questions if she didn’t get loosened up with a little leverage. “But, I can call him over whenever I want.”

‘He listens to you?’ Nova thought to ask and then realized that it would technically be another question. Stalling by taking a bite out of her pasta, she realized that the way Primrose was, he would answer a call and decide whether he wants to listen or not. Sukoi was merely a thread to the mysterious figure.

Also, the pasta tasted bland.

“What’s the deal with demons having kids?” Sukoi took her turn.

“When I say generations, I don’t mean demons having children and they take over from there. When that happens, the imps either eat each other, get eaten by their parents, or grow up and eat their parents. It became a mix back in the day,” Nova shared fairly useless information. “The real second generation is a clean new set of demons barely related to the first. All of them, well, nearly all of them were destroyed but power just doesn’t disappear. It flows into something else and with there being so many humans,” She turned her hand over. “-Here we are. The second generation of demons.”

Under the table, Sukoi curled her fingers and tried not to sweat.

She had no idea about this and no idea about her life before Primrose. One day, Sukoi appeared. She was an adult with horns and that was that. There were no memories of being an imp and eating a lousy parent which meant…

“Next question.” Sukoi pushed, impatient to ask her own. She could very well be of the second generation but she needed to know more.

“Hmm,” Nova reached for the salt shaker and sprinkled a few bits on her pasta. “What level of Hell is Primrose from?” She asked, eating a noodle to test the flavor. It turned out she was right, a little salt did go a long way.

“I don’t know that.” Sukoi replied quickly and it was the honest truth. She knew there was a hell or the underworld, the inferno or whatever but had no idea that there were levels. Sukoi had never been there in the first place and the more Nova asked about it, the more she came to understand how little she knew about her benefactor. “Anyways—“

Fire began to crackle and pop somewhere in the diner. This place had neon lights and a fifties theme; who thought it made sense to have a fireplace in here?

“Wow, that bastard sure keeps off the radar,” Nova commented aloud, acrid smoke pouring out of her mouth. Sukoi could see the little blue flames catching on her tongue. “What’s your next question?”

“Weren’t you immune to salt?” Sukoi said, half standing.

“I said some demons were. Definitely not me,” Nova chewed not another forkful of her meal. It melted the roof of her mouth. “Eugh, it’s still cardboard.”

“Why are you eating salt?”

Nova’s face was obscured by smoke and she didn’t see the need to be alarmed, replying “I like food tasting like something and I prefer swimming in the ocean instead of a gross pool. It stings as much as poprocks do,” She coughed, choking on the fumes from her own tongue.

“By the way, that’s two question. I get to ask two now.” Nova noticed Sukoi frantically trying to wave away the smoke, hoping no one noticed this mess. Her plate was knocked to the ground in the effort, smashing but not flying apart thanks to the glue-like gravy.

“You’re right, I don’t like the food here either.” She blew air towards the nearest smoke detector and set off the sprinklers. The alarm began blaring as the fog of smoke spread through the diner like a flood. Water did little to push down the demonic fire, blackening the walls and floors as anguished faces appeared in the murk.

Sukoi reached over the table, grabbed Nova by the collar, and dragged her out of the booth. Water was pouring from the ceiling, turning the screaming floor slippery. Sukoi lost her footing and her nose was speeding towards the nearest crying mouth. She quickly morphed. Her horns grew out of her head and impaled the faces on the floor, keeping her head from hitting the writhing ground.

“Horns?” Nova gaped, pushing herself off the ground.

“Augh, what the fuck?” Sukoi got to her feet and jumped back on the seat, disgusting by the tongues lolling out of the floor tiles. Nova didn’t really care about the teeth nipping at her shoes but followed Sukoi out the window she broke anyways.

The horned demon sprinted down the street, searching for the nearest alley. Nova was right behind her, walking at the same speed with her interest absorbed by Sukoi’s horns.

Once Sukoi came to a stop under a graffiti mural, Nova lit a cigarette. The other demon leered at her, watching to see if the smoke would begin crying too. When the smoke surprisingly acted normal, Sukoi motioned for Nova to give her one too.

“Charity? From me?” Nova laughed out loud, amused by the astounding request enough for her to relent and give her one. “Back to my two questions.”

Sukoi squatted, lighting her cigarette with magic she didn’t think Nova would be impressed by. Her horns, on the other hand, were in danger of getting ripped off. Pink lemonade over there had her hands twitching, dying to get a touch.

“There isn’t much more beyond horns.” Sukoi shrank her horns and Nova clicked her tongue, disappointed. “Can’t you show off your horns?”

Nova knew she had a demon form but could only stomach shifting into the form of a child or a cloud of smoke. She had turned all of once and there were no mirrors around.

“You said it without me asking. I still get two questions,” Nova noticed Sukoi scowl. “They aren’t hard questions,” She ran her fingers through her hair. “How do you manifest the horns?”

“You’re the demon lord. I’m not teaching the 101,” Sukoi blew out a long stream of grey smoke, knowing this wasn’t the answer Nova would take. “I don’t know, I just want it and they come out. It’s like walking; you know that you can do it and um you do it.” She raised her shoulders.

At first, the demon said nothing. Leaning her back on the rain soaked side of the building, Nova crossed her arms and thought. The clouds were spitting lightly over the two demons, gathering in Nova’s hair. Sukoi thought it was frizzing from the moisture but the rain began to sizzle.

Staring straight ahead, Nova wasn’t aware of the flames lighting at the sides of her head. They grew, curling into the shape of golden, fiery ram horns, pulling back around her head like a laurel.

Sukoi whistled, wondering what the rest of a demon lord looked like and that broke Nova’s concentration. She blinked and those horns sparked, crackling loudly. They popped and turned into gold coins, clinking on the uneven cement road.

“Is this going to cost me another question?” Sukoi asked, reaching for one of the coins.

“You can answer that yourself,” Nova patted her head, distracted from the fact that Sukoi had given up a third easy question. “Here’s my second,” She continued, back to business. Nova forced herself to ignore the throbbing from the spots the horns had sprouted from. “What does Primrose want?”

The query was so broad, Sukoi didn’t know where to begin. Not that she knew much in the first place.

“The entire time Hell was restructuring, no one on the ladder knew Primose was alive let alone existed,” Nova elaborated. “With the way things are, Mr. Lulu Lemon in his ice rink would love to know why the wild card hasn’t shown his suit.”

There was Mr. Lulu Lemon again. Hell again. Sukoi had never seen nor truly believed that there was one until around a week ago. There was a lot she hadn’t seen and now that these questions were being brought up, that included what was really going on with Primrose.

To Sukoi, Primrose was well, that guy. Most days she didn’t see him and when they did meet, Sukoi was always an inch from throwing down with him. But, on the rarest of occasions, the only source of familiarity in these long centuries came from the rare friendly mood they could share. Really, Primrose was fine to be around.

Was that worth being kept in the dark?

“Don’t know.” Sukoi answered her own question and Nova’s.

“I don’t like that answer.” Nova said, taking a long drag of her cigarette.

“Too bad, it’s the only one for sale,” Sukoi put out hers on the street.

Nova wasn’t the only one frustrated by that answer. Sukoi wanted there to be a better one too. There were gaps in her memory that she hadn’t noticed were there and there was no good reason to leave them empty.

Today was going to be the start.

“That’s two questions and I don’t have any more either,” Sukoi could sense Nova’s suspicion in the way her eyes darkened on an otherwise stoic face. “What I have is a request.”

“Oh?” Nova dipped her chin, interest mounting. “That’ll be expensive.”

“Hope you want my penny jar,” Sukoi rolled the cigarette butt between her fingers. “I want to see Hell.”

Blinking, Nova lazily incinerated her cigarette. It became dust in her hands.

“Your dad didn’t take you to work?” Nova teased, earning absolutely no give from Sukoi in any form.

“Nope,” Once Sukoi was in Hell, learning more than Primrose was willing to tell her, something was going to happen. She didn’t know what that was yet but something is more than what she had. “Take me there and add a complementary tour. Or I can just shit wherever I want.”

“Some demons would appreciate that,” Nova rested the back of her head on the wall, finding it difficult not to grin at the price she had in mind. “Now, what I want in return.”

Her heels clicked on the gravely alley, dragging deep shadows into the gray. Those streaks widened, spreading through the ground like ink leaking into skin. Sukoi remained composed, watching the darkness crawl up the walls of the building until there was no light.

Only a pulse remained. Sukoi could feel it through the soles of her shoes. Way below in the sea of nothing that had replaced the alley’s road was a long thin line. It wasn’t small, merely far far away. If Sukoi strained her ears, she would be able to hear the river flowing over Limbo.

“Don’t make me beg for it,” Sukoi stayed where she was, defying Nova’s efforts to unnerve her. “What do you want?”

Nova didn’t even know that she was trying to be intimidating. Maybe that was just in a demon’s nature and therein lay her problem.

“Are you free on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday? If you’re free on all of them, you can also just pick one,” She said, checking her silver watch. “That’s for next week and we’ll work the rest of it as time goes on.”

Sukoi squinted.

“I’m fine for any of them. Why though?” Sukoi stood. “What am I doing those days?”

“Christmas is around the corner and I’d like to do some shopping. I need you to come with me, get lunch like today, and whatever comes after.”

The younger demon had no wish to see a restaurant come alive and cry again but this still sounded strange.

“Do you want me to carry things?”

“No,” Nova rolled her sleeve back up. “I’ve got working arms. You just need to come along.”

“What about the other weeks. How come this is going on for so long?”

“Giving you an entrance to Hell, even leading you around is a lifetime benefit. I also want a lifetime benefit,” Nova willed the space they stood to move closer to the river. “As for the other weeks, there was a movie that looked interesting. I want to see it.”

It was almost too dumb to be true.

“Are you paying me to be your friend?”

“That’s an awful nice way to put it.” Nova said.

“Uh-uh, there’s a catch isn’t there.” Sukoi shot back. That left Nova silent for a beat, gazing into the unending space beyond Hell.

“We’re going to the Inferno but did you know there were other Hells?” Nova asked. The Dante to her Vergil stayed silent, unsure of where this was going. “In Zoroastrianism, there’s a bridge that links the world of the living to that of the dead. You pass the bridge if you’re good or it narrows until you fall into the House of Lies.”

Back in the depths of Cocytus, Nova remembered old LuLu chewing on bodies while he read the books she had brought to entertain him. It turned out she was repeating his thoughts to Sukoi.

“It’s a Hell that’s completely dark, smelly, and you’re forced to eat shit, piss and some other stuff forever. That’s not the worst part,” Now listened to the sound of choppy waters grow louder. Eventually they’d be able to see the Castle in Limbo under river’s waves. “It’s crowded; packed to the brim with every sinner that had ever died. And yet, with shoulders, elbows, and knees smothering you to the point of eternal asphyxiation, they all believe that they are completely alone.”

In a strange sort of way, Sukoi with her uncountable years of immortality could understand without having been in Hell.

“There’s no shame in paying for something that makes me happy.” Nova said, finally placing them on the shore of the phantom river Acheron.

“I’m not a guilty pleasure,” Sukoi took off her glove, spat into her palm, and held it out to Nova. “But we can be friends.”  

The other demon stared.

“Don’t be a wuss,” Sukoi had to grin at the first time Nova showed shock. “I don’t like reading contracts so let’s go ahead and streamline it.”

“Huh,” Nova grabbed Sukoi’s hand, giving it a firm shake. “You call me a wuss and you didn’t even make this a blood pact.”

There had been a change the moment the demons’ hands connected. Sukoi could feel it boil in her blood, spreading through her veins. Each individual string of muscle in her body went taut at the thought of standing Nova up during a ‘friend date.’ The same went for Nova except that it was at the prospect of going back on her agreement to chauffer Sukoi through Hell.

Sukoi wanted to say that it felt like an invasion but the danger bubbling under their pact gave her a sort of high. It was like standing on a cliff at the edge of heaven.

If this was what humans felt, no wonder so many went with it. Especially if they thought they could see a loophole like Sukoi did.

“Well? If we’re friends now, take me out for drinks,” She pulled on Pink Lemonde’s hand. “You’re a high-class demon. I’m sure you can show me somewhere swanky.”

“So you can—“ Nova hesitated, the base of her spine tingling with trepidation.

Being “friends” was a two way street. Anyone who’s willing to fry a friend wanted their friendship to end. It was an elementary school saying--

--that wasn’t part of the demons’ deal.

“Haha, nice!” Nova hissed, the pupils of her eyes narrowing into slits. “Oh I can work with this. I’ve been meaning to pay a visit to an old co-worker anyways.”  

Nova backed into the Acheron, tugging Sukoi along with her.

“Papé Satàn, papé Satàn aleppe.”

The sign outside of the bar read “Limbo’s Languish; the only place you’ll find a passable bathroom until you get to the fourth circle of hell. One use equals one drink, don’t fuck with me. Wednesday: Tropical Night.”

After taking a brief skim over it, Sukoi kicked the doors open and barged into the establishment, looking to punch information out of weaker, dumbass demons.

Meanwhile, Nova strolled in and sat herself at the bar to watch Sukoi heckle the booths one by one.

“I busted my ass doing upkeep, Nova. You better pay for the damage that baby does.” The barkeeper cleaned the counter with a duster made of his own feathers.

They were in a cave very close to the hurricanes of the Lust Circle. Besides the counter, the barkeeper had seven tables to clean. The rest of the booths were closed off, hidden behind curtains made of dyed pelts. Sukoi was busy ripping them down.

“Answer a few questions and you can keep your eye.” Sukoi throttled a run-of-the-mill male demon, having smothered the burning candle on his table with his face.

“Or what? You’ll rip my head off and stuff it in my urethra? Oh no! I would hate that!”

Immediately, Sukoi dropped him and moved on to the next booth.

“I like the wallpaper you put up. Very warm and creamy. Classy in a subtle way,” Nova turned back to the bartender. “It’s hard to find anything that can stick to caves when stuff tends to ah seep in from one floor down.”

“If you don’t want to get kicked out, buy a tranquilizer for your baby.”

“A kiwi margarita and a hard orange juice please.” Nova ordered, shaking her pinky.

“YOU-“ Sukoi swung the curtains open on a table of skinless babies who had died before they were baptized. An envy demon was bottle feeding them with her tail. “OH! Oh…uh--” Sukoi stammered. The envy demon tried to shush her but it was too late. The children burst into tears and Sukoi was shooed out of the booth.

Her “friend” waved her over.

“Hurry before the ice melts. It doesn’t get cold till later.” Nova said and Sukoi sauntered over, wondering if she could heckle the bartender into telling her what she wanted.

The bartender turned out to be an owl. Like just a regular barn owl. Both of them stared at each other before Sukoi cleared her throat.

“Hoo! Hoo hoo!” Sukoi hooted at the owl demon.

Then, the owl stood up. He had been kneeling on his long, spindly three legs. The owl used two of them to reach for bottles on an obsidian shelf ten meters above him, setting them down beside a chopping board where he continued to chop kiwis. With his remaining leg, he leaned back over Sukoi’s drink and shat in it.

“Is that an orange juice?” Sukoi asked, dumping it on the floor. “Didn’t expect that. You got any lava up there?”

“Yes. We love drinking red hot dirt,” The owl demon enunciated with his hooked yellow beak. His eyes, which were a little too big even by owl standards, fixed on Sukoi’s horns. “Put those away or I will throw you out, demon lord or not.” He threatened, deseeding the kiwis that were going into Nova’s drink. They turned out to be spider eggs and their tiny ejected bodies were swept into a jar. “You’re scaring my customers.”

Of the booths, several demons peeked out behind the curtains at Sukoi. They were a myriad of shapes, colors, and power, extremely fixated on the anomaly sitting next to a Lord. Smells poured out of those curtains, some smelling of blood, others of fire, and many of curdled rot from the ancient bodies trapped in the lowest catacombs of Dis.

It was only the worst that had the courage to stare at Sukoi.

Sukoi threw a few coins on the table; the same ones that had fallen from Nova’s head. The owl knelt and began eating the gold. He was going to store them in pellets later.

“Is it going to be this bad all the way down?” Sukoi asked.

“Hey, Donny,” Nova got the owl’s attention, letting her finger burn on the salt rimmed glass of her drink.

“Donias.” He corrected.

“What does ‘Sukoi’ sound like?”

“Uh,” He twisted his neck all the way around and a bit to glance at Sukoi. “—a foreign word for a blow job?”

Sukoi grimaced. Apparently, that meant a solid yes.    

#sukoi #nova #my writing #long post