#unrelated but I’m not sure how much sense this actually makes (I’ve had a high grade fever all week and know I’ve been out of it) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

electric-indigo0913 · 2 months

Text

I am having many thoughts. Here’s a ramble.

I’ve never really thought that monogamy was a thing for me. I sure did do it, for a long time, but I always felt bad that I would think about other people (not in like a damn, they’re cute way. Because that’s super normal I think. In a desiring a whole Thing way, which feels objectively less “normal” if that makes sense). But that thing I said earlier, about there not being other girlfriends and that there aren’t going to be. That’s a specific feeling I’ve never had before. And it’s really interesting for my brain. Because right now, I can’t stand the thought of another human being touching me, kissing me, or loving me. It’s only you. And I really think it might only ever be you.

You’re helping me remember myself a lot. I’ve spent so much more time with my mask down recently. You make that so easy for me.

I’ve spent a whole lot of time trying to figure out what boxes to put myself in when it comes to gender and sexuality. Also, for reference, I’ll probably one day be comfortable having a whole vocal conversation about more things. So many things have such a weird impact on me to talk about. That’s somehow related to trauma in a way that I could dive super deep into but don’t exactly have the desire to. But there’s been a lot of shame and the following topics give my heart a weird sinking feeling to talk about out loud: periods, sex, sexual identity, gender identity, PCOS facial hair, body image related things, the word vagina as a whole. Anyway, just figured I should let you know I have thoughts about these things a lot but have trouble using voice words for those topics so you might just stumble upon them here sometime.

At some point, probably before I was like 8, I remember crying hysterically if I had to wear a dress. That continued for so long and still kinda does. I wore a dress for my 8th grade dance (and cried about it because the concept of doing that made me want to rip my skin off my body). I had to go dress shopping for my sisters wedding and cried again. I cried way more when I had to do her actual wedding. It didn’t help that my mom made some shitty comments about the way I looked in it that I can’t actually type up without getting nauseous, so I won’t. I wore a dress to your wedding, and to mine. Those last two were my choice though, I think something in my brain shifted in between there. And that’s why it’s so hard to pick a box, I think. That one picture of me from high school with my hair pulled back, a binder on and a flannel really felt the most like me I ever was. But that was very rapidly ruined by many things and I forget what that feels like now. Somewhere in the past ten years I just came to terms with the fact that being female isn’t the worst thing on the planet and sometimes being female presenting is just easier. There’s just so many less voices in your head. And now I’m wondering if the way I’m presenting myself now is because it’s what I want or because it’s convenient. I have a lot of complex thoughts regarding what I want, because some days I want to chop my hair off and get a new binder and go out how I feel, but other days I want to walk around with my tits out and be called a princess.

Also to make it more interesting, I directly enjoy being a girl for you, specifically. I love being your girl, and your girlfriend, and your good girl, and when you give me compliments using words that are historically “female coded”. I love feeling feminine and soft and all of the other bits too. Which is why I think there is no box for me to check at all if I can feel absolute gender euphoria presenting both ways at different moments. I think it’s all about the environment, how I feel. I’m not really sure.

Unrelated but kinda related. My mom used to make so much fun of my aunt Evelyn for having facial hair. And I never really realized how fucked up it was, and how fucked up it was that I participated, until I started growing it. And I go through really interesting phases of not being able to stand it and shaving it every day, to phases where I want nothing more than to let it grow and enjoy how soft it feels when it’s growing in. But I think that one is always going to be something I deal with because I can’t stand the thought of people talking about me like my mom talked and talks about my aunt.

Also unrelated but kinda related. I’m way more gay than I remembered. I think it’s interesting because I’ve buried so much of myself for so long. But Jesus Christ. I think that sex is fun generally with whatever parts people are working with, but the concept of putting another dick in my mouth sounds so entirely off putting right now. I’m not sure if that has any relevance to anything in my life but I thought about it and I was like, well that’s a new feeling I’m remembering.

Anyway. If you do read this, I hope you enjoyed the deep dive into my brain. Sometimes it’s a lot easier to use a keyboard than my voice. I love you very much.

1 note · View note

perpetual-fool · 1 year

Text

This is stupid. And evil, I'm sure.

I was letting my mind wander through a weird fantasy. I was imagining we did have some chance meeting, and then she dragged me off somewhere remote to kill me. And I try just going over everything again, trying to explain. No affective empathy and all that. But she doesn't believe a word I say anymore. And I knew she wouldn't, but might as well try, ya' know. I'm tied up sitting on the ground, she's about to shoot me. I say, "Despite everything, it was nice to see you again. I'm sorry I caused you trouble." Then she points her little .380 at my head, but hesitates. Not because of anything I said, just because killing is hard. I say, "Is it hard to pull the trigger when it's someone else too? If you're not ready we could just talk or something. It's not like I have anywhere to be." She lowers the gun but doesn't say anything. So I just continue and start talking about mundane things. I tell her how I ended up with fretless bass, how I feel mine needs some work, that I need to be able to play and sing for music to be engaging enough for me. All the while wandering down numerous tangents, like how 'Diary of Jane' sounds much better with all the instruments ripped out. But it's not like there's a point, so whatever. I tell her that I've heard singing while playing bass is incredibly hard, supposedly, but lack of ability has never been a serious roadblock for me. "Although I know you have some reason to think otherwise. Actually, maybe you could believe it: orchestra. I hadn't practiced at home since elementary school, but I was perpetually first chair. The problem is will, motivation. I just never had a reason to care ..before you." And then, for some reason, she decides she wants to see what I can do, and asks me to sing something. But I don't really have anything I've really learned, and it's kind of a big decision. Like, there are some songs that better showcase melody, and some rhythm, and some technique. And thematically, what would fit?

So I started thinking about that. I don't have a favorite song or anything. Of the ones I just like listening to, maybe 'Potions' or 'Weak and Powerless' would work, but they really don't showcase technique or melody very well. Alternatively, maybe Lost by Linkin Park, or Missing by Evanescence. But each of those is lacking what the other one has. And I don't really resonate well with any of these. Like, "though I'd die to know you love me, I'm all alone" resonates well enough, and I listened to it on loop in high school, but the rest of the song really doesn't fit my circumstances. Aside, maybe people who've lost their battles don't make music. But, whatever it is, it should be one of mine. show her what it's like.

(*ah, or One Thousand Apologies would be decent, but again, doesn’t really fit. It suits my range, but doesn’t really showcase vocal technique. And most significantly, lying would have defeated the purpose. I was full of shit but I never lied to her.)

I almost feel like that means something.

And I know all of this is far too generous. I would be so lucky if she just wanted vengeance. The real thing wouldn't make any sense. The complete disconnect stings so much more than if she understood and wanted to kill me. And it hurts so much knowing there's nothing I can ever do to make things right. Not like, having some kind of relationship again, just fixing whatever damage I've caused. But I'm a fucking freak and anything I could say would only make things worse.

(*and unrelated, I regret I was never able to find a non-Christian analogue to Demon Hunter. I like the heavy/melodic mix. I would have to be that myself, I guess.)

0 notes

tarysande · 3 years

Text

Oh no, I've been thinking.

Okay, I can't stop thinking about something ending-related. I don't know this for certain, but based on previous statements and such, it feels like the writers were always aiming for a bittersweet ending. Like, no matter what else happened or how the story evolved, come hell (lol) or high water, that ending couldn't just be happy. For reasons. I guess.

Now, I don't mind a bittersweet ending ... if it makes sense for the ending to be bittersweet.

I critique stories for a living. I'm literally taking a break from the developmental edit of someone's novel to write this post. And the persistent thought that bugs me about the Rory setup is that it is so artificial. Time travel is a pain in the narrative ass. Time travel suddenly introduced in the sixth season of a show that has never touched on time travel? As an editor, I probably would've pointed out that time travel for the purpose of angst, especially time travel without rules that make sense ("I don't know anything about time travel! Except I do know you have to take the most painful path!"), seemingly introduced as a final ploy to make that bittersweet ending work ... well, to me, it breaks the narrative contract they established with the audience. Your audience is going to be confused. An editor's job is to alert the writer to any potential confusion so it can be fixed before the story goes to print, etc. Confused audiences get mad, annoyed, frustrated. They feel hurt. They put down the book and don't pick it up again. Usually, writers don't want that. But they're so close to their work that they need a completely outside perspective to say, "Hey, I'm not sure you realize this, but..."

I mean, I keep referring to Rory as "deus ex daughter" because in literary terms, she is a blatant deus ex machina. Rory is the god in the machine of the Bittersweet Ending.

Now, I loved a lot of S6. I did. My overall feeling about the season is not negative. But ... I can't stop thinking about why the things I didn't like REALLY didn't work for me.

I loved the emotional growth we saw in Lucifer and Chloe facilitated by the question of parenting and parental love. I did. And I would have loved to see a lot of those notes hit not with an angel kid out of nowhere ... but with the daughter already in the picture. Especially because it would have circumvented the icky idea that a child has to be one's flesh and blood to induce such feelings. I also understand that coronavirus and Scarlett's age and schedule made this difficult. But I just can't swallow that the only way to wrap up the story of this show--a show about found family, non-traditional family, friendship, connection, FREE WILL, love in all its many shapes and forms and colors ... was to introduce a brand new character via a device (time travel) that fails to make sense almost every time it's used, no matter the medium. (And then had only that brand new character be there when her mother died. Don't even get me started. Ugh.)

If time travel was always going to be on the table, couldn't we have found a more plausible way to use it with the characters we already knew, loved, and had spent four or five seasons with? A time-travelling older Trixie, say? If you're going to use the impossible device, just ... twist it another way to make it work.

Okay. Okay. So, leaving Trixie aside for now just like the show did, let's say we leave everything about the season the same, even Rory. Do you know what ending makes more narrative sense?

Future Rory sacrificing herself by NOT forcing Lucifer to make a cruel and impossible "choice" so the baby that might have been her grows up with a family that loves her. Chloe's already pregnant. That's not going to be undone. And this nonsense of a "closed time loop" falls apart if you side-eye it for even a few seconds. The Rory who came from the future never exists except in the memories of those she met when she came back from that future. Chloe and Lucifer lose that daughter even as they gain the new one whose existence is not a tool of unrelenting fate because wow this show has always been about free will what the heck happened there yikes. And a choice made under the duress Chloe and Lucifer were under, forced out of them, and forcing them to "choose" a life apart for *handwave* Reasons has nothing to do with free will. A "choice" made at gunpoint is not a real choice. Future Rory basically bullied them into ensuring she got to exist--something, quite frankly, neither her parents would have done.

Instead, how much more appropriately bittersweet is it if Chloe and Lucifer lose that child while gaining one who, because of that angry time-travelling version, will never suffer as she did.

Also as an editor: the groundwork for my version is already laid, by the way. It should have been Rory learning about the importance of free will over fate. The importance of personal sacrifice. The importance of not thinking your young self knows best ... because experience and therapy will help rid you of that self-centered world view. That's the contract the writers made with us with this show. And Chloe and Lucifer have already BEEN THERE AND DONE THAT. (See: the end of S4.)

Furthermore, this season finally HAD Chloe and Lucifer DEAL WITH the only thing that actually would have contributed to a narrative, characterization-based reason for Lucifer to disappear: His history of running and his putting Chloe on a pedestal. Once they really talked that out, his "disappearance" became a Rory-induced trauma of inexplicable fate that flies in the face of all the progress Lucifer made over six seasons. (I would rather have had more of that and less of mysterious disappearing oh no plot.)

And I'm sorry, the "Once you get to Hell you're going to work 24/7" excuse given for why Lucifer won't be around and why he can't make time for Chloe until she's DEAD(????!???) is ... it's lame. If AMENADIEL AS GOD can make time for his kid's birthday party, I refuse to believe Lucifer can't work out some Hell/Earth-work/life balance. Never mind that in the show about partnerships, the Bittersweet Ending just ... destroyed it. Chloe was planning on being God's consultant; she could have helped Lucifer solve Hell's Trauma Mysteries (it's what she did with Jimmy, setting up that yeah, Lucifer could do it alone like he accidentally did with Lee, but doing it with HIS TRUTHSEEKING PARTNER would be more effective). Just as Lucifer could have continued helping HER solve some of the problems within "that corrupt little organization" of hers.

tl;dr: I think the writers fixated so completely on their version of Bittersweet that they missed all the foreshadowing, groundwork, and clues that were right there, already built into the story, poised for a different kind of ending than the one they once imagined. That's why so many parts of it feel almost-but-not-quite right and why these aspects are so off-putting. That's why it's just not ... organic. It's something squeezed into a box it grew out of ages ago.

Ironically, certain elements of this season involved the writers insisting on the FATE they decided long ago instead of letting the story and the characters have the FREE WILL to choose a different, more fitting, more organic ending--one that had long-since evolved past that original flavor of Bittersweet.

#lucifer on netflix #lucifer morningstar #chloe decker #trixie espinoza #aurora morningstar #deckerstar #lucifer meta #lucifer thoughts #lucifer spoilers #lucifer s6 #lucifer s6 spoilers #lucifer critical #i criticize from a place of love #i really do

447 notes · View notes

daturanerium · 3 years

Text

i've been thinking about griddlehark recently, especially since i've listened to the gideon audiobook for the first time. i love them lots! but i had forgotten just how terrible harrow was to gideon in the beginning, and how blindly devoted gideon was to harrow (even when they were mortal enemies). i'm not sure if i'd be happy with them becoming canon without completely addressing that, so i'm going to talk about what i would like to see happen in alecto to deal with the power imbalance.

as someone who's been in a very similar position to gideon (being a punching bag to someone i'm devoted to out of love) i can speak from experience when i say that it sucks. i currently do not have much of a relationship with that person anymore, but gideon clearly wants to pursue one with harrow--whether that be platonic or romantic.

right now griddlehark are suffering from a severe power imbalance with harrow coming out on top. even during htn, harrow made choices for gideon without consulting her first or considering how it would affect her (mainly the lobotomy, which clearly bothered gideon based on how she talked about it in act five--or rather, didnt). harrow tormented gideon for her entire life. i feel like people tend to brush over this or treat it as a child's rivalry instead of treating it as it was (or how i read it to be): constant, unrelenting abuse. harrow canonically tried to kill gideon multiple times throughout their childhood. by the time we reach gtn, it almost seems like tormenting gideon is a game for harrow, considering the way she handled gideon's escape attempt. she pulled it away at the very last second for no other reason (that we know of) than to make gideon feel the worst. obviously we know now that harrow is fucked up in her own way. growing up mostly without parents, with incredibly high expectations based around being a literal war crime and the only surviving necromancer in the royal line, she's desperate to find and cling onto any control she can get over anything and anyone. she's gone through an incredible amount of character development within the last two books. i'm a huge fan of that! i think it's very safe to say that harrow cares about gideon as an equal and wants her friendship--the entirety of htn is basically a tragic love letter to her. but that doesn't make the lasting impact of how she acted go away.

on the other hand, gideon has apparently always been devoted to harrow: on page 332 of gtn she says that she was "hungry for the Reverend Daughter's occupation" in her youth, and strongly implies that she endured harrow's ceaseless beatings and torment because it was the only thing gideon received other than people blindly hating her or ignoring her. harrow was fascinated and obsessed with her in a terrible, violent way, but at least it was something. this is, of course, worsened after gideon walks in on harrow after The Incident. that, mixed with the overhanging inherent power imbalance of gideon being harrow's/the locked tomb's indentured servant since birth, means that gideon has never known a life free of harrow's control over her. being devoted to harrow is gideon's norm--she's literally never known anything different. and, on top of that, she's never expected anything in return. hoped, maybe, but never expected. gideon tries to leave but is stopped every time by harrow; the only way gideon is able to experience her first bout of "independence" is through caanan house, which was an opportunity given to her by harrow. harrowhark has been a constant in gideon's life since she was one year old. gideon relied on her for some semblance of normalcy and a twisted form of recognition. gideon goes through a lot of character development in caanan house as well, and we get to watch her and harrow start to deconstruct their corrupted relationship and reform it into something better and healthier. but even then, gideon still ends up making the ultimate sacrifice for "the Ninth": aka harrow, since she states not five pages before that she doesn't actually care about the Ninth at all and is only doing this for her (that is open to interpretation, but i think it's safe to say that gideon's main reason for jumping was to save harrow regardless of how you interpret her last words). later, at the end of htn, gideon still doesn't expect much from harrow in return. "harrowhark, i gave you my whole life and you didn't even want it." comes to mind. it's not about whether or not the statement is true, it's about what gideon believes based on harrow's past actions. the idea of harrow refusing gideon's sacrifice is more believable to her than harrow succumbing to her grief. i'm not even sure if gideon knows about the lobotomy. if someone told her, would she believe them?

so, right now, we have one person desperate for control and the other hopelessly devoted to a fault. both harrow and gideon are far different women now than they were at the beginning of gtn! they're in the middle of their character arcs right now. here's how i would like to see griddlehark rekindle their relationship in a healthy way:

gideon spends a lot of time harrow-free. she learns what life is like without harrow present. she gets to discover herself without harrow there. gideon still cares about harrow, obviously, and will spend time trying to find and reconnect with her. i hope that in the meantime she gets to find herself as an individual! she needs to see that she is more than just "harrow's mortal enemy" or "harrow's cavalier". she is someone outside of her relationship with harrow, whatever that relationship may be. when she reunites with harrow, i hope that it's a choice that gideon makes, not because harrow asks for her.

when reunited, harrow takes full responsibility and accountability for her past actions against gideon. this has sort of happened, but only in the sense of harrow's self-loathing: she gets angry during the pool scene in gtn, but that's based around "i was awful to you, why are you being kind to me"; not really an apology. later, she asks gideon if she forgives her and gideon says yes--but harrow never apologized. in my opinion, no forgiveness is true if there's no apology. i'd like to see harrow fully recognize her past actions--and, more specifically, how they affected gideon. she's focused a lot on how they impacted herself, but even in the pool scene (as much as i love it) gideon's feelings were mostly sidelined. by harrow taking accountability, both of them can continue their path to healing and growing their relationship. (also, harrow Officially releasing gideon from her duty to the locked tomb as an indentured servant would be really nice. i know with everything going on it's technically moot but i think it would still mean a lot, especially on the road to equalizing their relationship)

gideon and harrow acting as equal partners! we caught the beginnings of this in the second half (especially the end) of gtn, but they haven't really had a chance to flesh (heh) it out since. i'm really looking forward to that!

i really love these characters. they're some of my favorites, ever--and that's saying something, because i've read a lot of books. harrow especially has had some of the most enjoyable character development i've read in a long time. we're in the middle of the series and there's still lots of loose ends to tie up! i just hope this is one of them.

#i'm nervous to post this lollllllll #i'm open to discussion!#also just in case this wasn't clear i LOVE harrow so much. this is definitely not harrow h*te. just ~nuance~.#the locked tomb #griddlehark #harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth spoilers

214 notes · View notes

nevertheless-moving · 3 years

Text

Suicidal Misunderstanding XXIV

Part I - - - - - - - - - - Part XXI - - - - Part XXII - - - - Part XXIII

Star Wars Time Travel AU #27

Ahsoka watched normal space slip away with a numb sort of disbelief.

Somehow she couldn’t quite accept that her Masters would actually—she felt small and selfish to even think that this was them abandoning her, considering Obi-Wan’s life might—but still—she was rapidly exiting the inner-rim and Obi-Wan and Skyguy were...somewhere else. Even after breaking orbit, she had childishly half-expected one of them to jump out with a wild explanation of how the whole thing was a huge misunderstanding, or a crazy scheme—or—some kind of explanation. And now she was back in hyperspace, on her way back to the front, alone. Master Skywalker’s presences felt closed off, and far-away—she hadn’t even sensed Master Kenobi on Coruscant.

She hadn’t even gotten to see him...

She was startled out of her slowly sharpening melancholy by the sudden clasp of a hand on her shoulder.

“You alright there, Commander?” Rex asked softly. Ahsoka stiffened her spine. Right, Obi-Wan and Anakin hadn’t just disappeared on her—she wasn’t actually alone, and she had a duty to the men who were here.

“Just thinking about crushing some Clankers,” she replied over-brightly. “How’s the Resolute holding up?”

“Same hiccup with gravity in the kitchens during the jump—it seems they didn’t have time to actually fix the issue when we were in dock, but we were prepared for it so it wasn’t too messy,” Rex replied, hands falling into a loose grip behind his back as slipped into his ‘Captain Reporting’ voice. “A few odd issues with our communications systems, but I’ve got men on it; I’m told it’s nothing to worry about, and should be back to normal by tomorrow. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

Ahsoka nodded. “And the troops?” she asked lightly.

Rex was silent for a moment. “Perhaps we should speak somewhere more private,” he responded finally.

“Of course.”

She followed him from the observation port to an unused briefing space a few decks down, cheerfully greeting each vod they passed, all of whom radiated relief at the sight of the familiar Jedi commander. Another pang of guilt passed through her. She should have already been greeting the men, not wallowing in self-pity. They knew even less than she did about their missing Generals. She had to be more of Jedi than usual, not less. What would Skyguy think of her moping? What would Master Kenobi—

She smiled at another passing group, one of whom she recognized as a Snow Wolf.

“Commander Tano!” he cried. “We had heard rumors—” Another soldier shut him up with an elbow to the gut.

Ahsoka smiled harder. “At ease, Mit,” she said, relieving him from his hasty salute. “I know there’s rumors flying around about, ah, General Skywalker’s and General Kenobi’s special assignment, but I’m sorry to say that you guys aren’t getting rid of me that easily.”

Mit and the others chuckled briefly at the admittedly weak joke.

“Rex and I have to be off now but It’s a long flight to the Expansion Zone; I’m sure I’ll see your faces again,” she said with a snappy two-fingered salute, striding off before they could work up the courage to ask any follow-up questions.

“As you were,” Rex ordered, and the Captain and Commander continued on their way.

Finally they stepped into the quiet room, door snapping shut. Ahsoka composed herself for a moment, plastering on a confident smile before turning to face Rex.

“What did you want to talk about, Captain?” she asked, falling backwards into a seat and looking up at the Captain with careful casualness.

Rex pulled off his helmet. His expression cracked Ahsoka in half.

“You don’t have to do that with me, Commander Tano. I know General Kenobi’s not on a mission,” he said quietly, voice as sad as his eyes. “Cody and I—and I think Waxer, we’re the only vode who’ve been read in on...what Kenobi tried to do.”

She looked away from that pitying, pitiful gaze, eyes suddenly burning.

“The last direct news I got was more than two days ago,” she finally said, giving up on the act and slumping forward as Rex set his helmet gently on the table. “Skyguy called me to ask a bunch of weird question and told me...you know. I felt Master Kenobi’s presence earlier this—kriff this was just this morning...” she trailed off.

“Language,” he corrected automatically. She chuckled wetly and absently pulled out a chair for him with a wave of her hand. He settled into it stiffly.

“I found out the night of,” Rex admitted. “They called Cody to ask about—about possible toxins. I think they were just searching for any kind of explanation. They let me visit him yesterday—”

Ahsoka hunched further and Rex paused for a moment before continuing awkwardly.

“It just looked like he was sleeping—healers said he was physically doing fine, so. I’m not a medic, but he’s definitely really well cared for.” Rex cleared his throat. “In terms of General Skwalker, I, uh, got a message from him the night before it happened about something completely unrelated, then nothing for three days, then a message before dawn this morning saying he had to ‘step down due to personal failures’ and he ‘trusted me to lead the 501st in his stead.’ Wrote that he needed to ‘earn his current rank.’”

Ahsoka’s head snapped up, intense focus charging the room. Rex let out a frustrated sigh, running a hand through his hair.

“I commed him right back, and he said that it was ‘partially about Obi-Wan, but more about past wrongdoing’. He apologized for abandoning me and the rest of the 501st, but told me he had to work on ‘his judgement’ before he could trust himself to act as General. The official memo about their temporarily absence from the command structure, for ‘undisclosed reasons’ came out about 5 minutes after we talked. Along with the promotion of Krell and General Tiin.”

“He messaged you this morning? He stepped down voluntarily?” she asked, feeling betrayed all-over again. “What the kriff?”

“Did he—he told me he was planning on comming you once you were closer to Coruscant...” he asked, looking at her hesitantly.

She let out a frustrated snarl, chair falling to the ground with a clatter as she began pacing the room. “Well he didn’t!” she ranted, attempting to stalk off her frustration. “Something more must have happened, and the council doesn’t want us to know what! What you saw on the loading dock was all the information anyone gave me! For all I know they’re both dead!”

Rex inhaled sharply and the padawan attempted to backtrack her words. “No, I don’t mean that, I can sense Skyguy he’s just—distant.”

“But you can’t sense General Kenobi,” he said grimly.

“I don’t have a direct training bond with him,” she replied severely. “And he’s good at shielding, and he’s usually—it’s not like he’s the loudest Jedi, you know?”

“You said you felt his presence this morning?” he pressed. “General Tiin and Krell did too, I think. Tiin seemed relieved at first but then—”

“He disappeared,” Ahsoka said quietly. “It’s like he reached out and then—it wasn’t even like letting go he just stopped.”

“Krell said he died,” the Captain reported matter-of-factly.

Ahsoka flinched. “There are—there’s other explanations. He might have just pulled up his shields really abruptly. It—I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I’ve felt Jedi die before and it doesn’t usually feel like that.”

Rex shifted awkwardly. The tortugan padawan paced back and forth, trying to release her helpless uncertainty into the force.

“Do you think it’s possible they might be on a special assignment?” he asked wearily. “I mean, it makes more sense in some ways that General Kenobi was just setting up some really intense cover for himself, and—and—General Skywalker got—accidentally wrapped up in it.”

Commander Tano rubbed her temples. “I wanted to think that too...I mean, it would be a pretty messed up choice of cover story, but...I really don’t think so” she said finally. “Skyguy was trying to put on a brave face when he talked to me but he was pretty—I’ve never seen him so destroyed—I mean getting shot down on the battlefield is one thing, but losing someone because—because you didn’t tell them how much you appreciated them, or because you added to their alright insane workload just through your presence—”

Suddenly Rex was in-front of her, chair scraped back and hands on her shoulders. “I’ve been through this was Cody, and I’ll go through it with you again as many times as it takes—you cannot blame yourself for this.”

She looked away. His hands tightened. “I’m serious,” he said emphatically. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you and Cody are the best of the best—if there was any warning sign to see, any enemy to fight, you would have identified it, fought back, won. I’m sorry, but the whole high council was surprised too, and they see him often enough! It’s—the whole situation’s kriffed up but it’s not your fault.”

“I know,” Ahsoka said quietly. “I’m sorry Skyguy stepped down on you—”

“That’s not your fault either—”

“Yeah, I know, you’re repeating yourself Captain—”

“Well, it’s hard to tell if you’re listening sometimes—”

Ahsoka gasped theatrically. “Is that anti-montral sentiment? I think it might be, after special Kamino sensitivity training too—”

“More like anti-anti-helmet sentiment. Seriously you’d think—”

“I’m a Jedi and I practice ataru. Armor would just—”

“—’slow you down’ I know, I know.”

Ahsoka giggled and the two of them found themselves wandering over to the small viewport, watching stars distort and stretch as they sped along the hyperlane.

“Have you—are you familiar with Krell?” Rex eventually asked.

“Not really,” Ahsoka admitted, wrinkling her brow. “I know he’s a pretty talented duelist—he’s got his own four armed Jar’kai style that’s apparently almost impossible to do anything against, but I’ve never actually gotten to see it in action—I don’t remember him hanging around the temple much growing up, and I’m not really certain where he’s been stationed during the war. I guess Master Windu assigned me to 501st duties so specifically so I wouldn’t bother him too much for sparring practice while he’s figuring out his duties? What’s your read on him?”

Rex radiated discomfort and Ahsoka eyed him cautiously.

“I haven’t—seen him on the battlefield. I’m sure he’s very capable. He’s not the most...respectful Jedi I’ve met.”

Ahskoa smirked. “Well, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, right? If he gets the job done? I mean once you got a jetpack you made it your personal mission to throw Anakin of a cliff as often as possible! And Kix stole all of Anakin’s pants after he kept escaping bacta and messing up Medical.”

“I don’t mean respectful like that, Commander,” Rex said quietly.

“What do you mean, then?” she asked, feeling a prickle of unease.

“It’s nothing to worry about right now, but I’d—appreciate if we could talk about your...impression after our limpet meeting with the Negotiator tomorrow morning.”

“Of course, Captain. We’re—we’re in this together, right?” Ashoka replied hesitantly. For the first time that conversation, she reached out to him, softly placing a hand on his arm and desperately trying to press her tangled feelings of friendship, loyalty, and gratitude through the force.

Rex smiled, seeming to get the message. “Yeah Commander,” he responded hoarsely. “We’re in it this together.”

Part XXV

#star wars #star wars au #ahsoka tano #captain rex #star wars fanfiction #my au #suicidal misunderstanding au #star wars au no 27

178 notes · View notes

five-rivers · 3 years

Text

Danger First

Chapter 10

@pocketramblr :)

One day - and not even a whole day, because of travel time and Inko wanted Izuku home for dinner- simply wasn't enough time to master a quirk. Although he could turn Float on and off, now. So, they made plans to come back next week, and the next, up until the sports festival. Which. Wow. Really was only two weeks away.

Izuku had never realized how close to the beginning of the school year it was.

He was going to die.

"You're not going to die," said Mr. Yagi. "I'm not going to say the sports festival isn't important, because it is, it's one of the best ways to make professional connections for students, but not doing well isn't the end of the world, especially not in your first year. No one expects you to be perfectly polished."

"But," said Izuku, "I'm supposed to be the next you! I've got to stand out, right?"

Mr. Yagi looked very guilty. "I... may have given you that impression when we were first training, yes. But, since then, with all my research into the past holders... few of them were popular, flashy heroes. If you want to walk the same path as me, that's great. But you don't have to. Even I didn't really start that chapter of my life until after college."

Izuku looked down at his hands, letting silence fill the space between them as he contemplated Mr. Yagi's words. "This isn't about me manifesting One for All differently, is it?"

"What? No, no of course not, my boy. I mean, it certainly helped me come to this conclusion, I wouldn't have done so much research without it! But I certainly hope I would have come to the same conclusion eventually, even so."

"Okay..." said Izuku, still dubious.

"I mean it," protested Mr. Yagi. "Most of my work is essentially underground, you know. There's a reason the battle trial was what it was."

"H-huh? You? Underground? But you're so recognizable!"

"Am I? I firmly believe in bringing all my resources to bear in the fight against evil! Ha ha!"

His laugh devolved into a cough, and he fumbled for a handkerchief. But he recovered quickly enough.

"I guess that makes sense," said Izuku, cautiously, once he thought Mr. Yagi wasn't going to start coughing again.

"You didn't think I stayed number one by popularity alone, did you?"

"I- the formulas the Hero Commission uses to determine rankings are secret, and it only includes spotlight heroes, so when I extrapolated the hero billboard rankings, yes, I assigned a high weight to popularity. There were always some discrepancies between my predictions and the end results, but I figured I missed some events, or the commission assigned them different values…"

"That's quite impressive, my boy. But, though popularity is a factor, the HPSC does take unpublicized fights and rescues into account. Assuming you report them…"

That was the second time Mr. Yagi had mentioned not telling the commission something.

"Do you, um, do you do that a lot? Not tell the commission things, I mean."

"Eh? No, no, I try to stay up on my paperwork. I get a lot of help from Naomasa, though. Some heroes, especially independent ones, without an agency, do have trouble keeping up, sometimes."

"It's just… the other day you said something about not telling the commission about All for One."

"Ah," said Mr. Yagi. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "You're quite right. How should I put this… The HPSC knows All for One exists, and I have made them generally aware of his modern exploits. I haven't told them about his ability to give quirks, though they may know through other avenues, there are certain battles I've had with him that I haven't told them about, and they do not know about One for All."

“Why not?”

“Villains aren’t the only ones who seek power,” said Mr. Yagi. “The HPSC provides a vital service, and I think what one does matters more than why one does it, but… it is my observation that many of the people there are more concerned with personal power than doing the right thing. And positions of power and authority tend to draw in those who would abuse those things."

"Even heroics?"

"Especially heroics. The HPSC Ethics Review Board is supposed to stop that, but no system is perfect." He shook himself. "But look at me! I was trying to give you a pep talk, not saddle you with doubts about the government!"

Izuku laughed, nervously. "I mean, you've definitely distracted me from the sports festival…"

“Yes. The sports festival. Don’t worry about making a big spotlight combat debut. If you want to focus on rescue, or investigation, or the underground, I’ll support you all the way.” He paused. “You do need combat, though, because, because of-”

“All for One?”

“Yes, exactly. All for One.”

“Way to kill the mood, guys,” said Banjo.

“I think the mood was thoroughly dead already,” said Yoichi.

“Unlike your brother,” said En. “Ninth’s father.”

“Come on, it was just a little omission of information. It wasn’t even a lie!”

“It was definitely a lie. You’re so lucky that my relief about you not being a pedophile eclipsed my righteous fury regarding your mendacity.”

“You know, the fact that you’re delivering that completely deadpan gives me doubts about the fury part.”

“I’m mad at you.”

“You love me.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t be mad at you.”

“Hey, hey, wait a minute,” said Nana, making a ‘T’ shape with her hands. “Time out. Ninth’s father is All for One.”

“Yes,” said Yoichi, hanging his head, “I thought that had been established.”

“So, are we… What Toshinori is saying is completely valid, by the way… but, are we expecting this kid to fight his father? Is that a thing we’re doing?”

“Uh,” said Yoichi, “in our defense, we did think he was dead.”

“Maybe Eighth will get ‘im before Ninth has to deal with it,” suggested Banjo. “He’s got to have a better chance of that, now what with Fa Jin and all.” He paused. “But, you know what would give Ninth an even better chance, if he does have to fight his deadbeat dad-”

“He’s not a deadbeat,” interrupted Hikage.

“What?”

“Calling him a deadbeat would imply that he is neither supporting the Midoriyas financially nor regularly in contact with them. He is on both counts.”

“What?” squealed Bango.

“Did you miss his phone call with his father immediately following his return home after the USJ attack?”

“Oh,” said Yoichi, “no, I was very aware of my brother’s evil, evil voice. It’s just that these guys were too focused on scolding me to listen to anything I had to say. I still can’t believe he sent someone like that to attack his own son’s class.”

“Didn’t he, like, kill you?” asked En.

“No, my death was largely unrelated. You’ve got to remember, I was a chronically ill fugitive from the law with no money. Who told you that he killed me?”

Everyone looked at their immediate predecessor. Yoichi tracked the path back to Third, who had gone very stiff.

“What the heck, Third? You were there when I died. Why would you tell Hikage that?”

Third did not answer.

“Actually, what did he tell you, Hikage?

“Oh, it was very moving and heroic. It happened while you were saving a busload of metahuman orphans. You sacrificed yourself to let them get away from All for One. I even cried a little.”

“Is it weird that I’m now disappointed in myself for not dying like that?”

“Very,” said Nana.

“What were we talking about before this?” asked En.

“I have no idea,” said Banjo.

Izuku delayed going to class, nervous about everyone's reactions to his quirk. It wasn't that he thought they'd reject him, but more that he had no answers for the inevitable questions.

But he also didn't want to be late.

"Todoroki was so cool!" Hagakure exclaimed as he opened the classroom door. "He was all like, blam, bam, swish! And- and he checked whether or not I was there first, before attacking, which was super cool of him."

Todoroki's expression was halfway between 'statue' and 'help, I've been hit by a truck.' "Cool?"

"Very cool."

"You've grown since the first day, kero."

"Ah! Midoriya!"

All heads turned towards him. In the next second, he was hugged by several people, which was more friendly skin contact than he'd had since… ever, probably.

"Eep," he said.

"We were so worried about you," said Uraraka. "We made a group chat, after, but since you were unconscious…"

"Hm," said Monoma, "your quirk still is definitely a stockpile…"

"Monoma!" shouted Iida. "Did you join this hug just to copy quirks?"

"And what of it?"

"But speaking of quirks," said Jiro, "you can fly now? We kind of went along with it at the time, but that's kind of different from a sensory quirk."

"I know," said Izuku, "and I have no explanation."

"Maybe your quirk stockpiles danger," said Monoma, contemplatively. He rubbed his chin with one finger. "That could be why you can sense danger- you're stockpiling it. Then, when the danger gets over a certain threshold, you can release it as flight… why are you all looking at me like that?"

"Oh, nothing," drawled Kaminari. "Just that you're more thoughtful than you look, pretty boy."

"I don't want to hear that from you."

"Th-thank you, Monoma! I'll have to mention it when I go to quirk counseling next."

Which may or may not be this afternoon, depending on how Mr. Aizawa felt and- His head snapped to the door. "Mr. Aizawa's coming!"

They all rushed to their seats. The door creaked open.

"Oh my gosh, he's a mummy."

"Iida?"

"What is it, Midoriya?"

They were having a bit of a break during English while Present Mic cycled them through for short sessions with Hound Dog.

"I didn't have a chance to ask you earlier, but how's your brother?"

“He’s alright! It’s the first really major injury of his career, so he’s going to take it easy for the rest of the month, to make sure his engines heal properly. He’d prefer not to of course, but, ah, there is a silver lining.”

“That’s good,” said Izuku, encouragingly.

“I really shouldn’t be happy about it,” said Iida, rubbing the back of his neck, “but he’ll be able to come see me during the sports festival, and he probably would have been too busy if he were active.”

“I think it’s okay to be happy about good things, even if they happen because of bad things,” said Izuku. “It isn’t like we can go back and make the bad things not happen, after all…”

“That’s very true, Midoriya! What a mature way of thinking about things.”

Izuku didn’t know about that, but he was willing to take the compliment.

“Midoriya,” said Shouta, who was absolutely and unquestionably recovered enough to teach. Even if he had zoned out in the corner of the room in his sleeping bag all morning rather than trekking back to the teacher’s lounge… or teaching any of his other classes… shut up. “What are you doing at the window?”

“O-oh. Mr. Aizawa. I didn’t know you were awake?”

It was, maybe, a little unfair to single Midoriya out like that, since the entire class was standing by the window, and the way Uraraka, Sero, and Midoriya were closest to it, with Monoma a close fourth, was concerning, but Midoriya was the first one Shouta saw, and the one most likely to to cave and tell him what was going on.

“Midoriya.”

“R-right. Well, going out the door seems a little unpleasant today, so we thought we’d switch it up?”

What did that even mean?

“We were going to bring you with us, of course,” continued Midoriya.

What did that even mean?

“Out the window.”

“Um. Yes.”

“What kind of unpleasant are we talking about?”

“Battle trial unpleasant?”

Shouta groaned and hauled himself up, walking over to the door. He looked out the window and made note of all the students from other classes standing out there, circling like sharks. Great. Maybe they needed to have an assembly about respecting boundaries or whatever, especially if the people whose boundaries were being crossed were potentially traumatized.

Something to bring up at the next staff meeting he attended. Which… would probably not be soon.

Anyway.

He opened the door.

(“A mummy,” whispered someone.)

(First his kids, then these kids… he wasn’t that wrapped up.)

(Was he?)

“What are you all doing here?” he asked, voice rasping rather more than he wanted it to.

The students didn’t seem inclined to answer. Someone did mutter something about the sports festival, but it was far from the complete answer that Aizawa wanted.

“Right. Whatever. Scoping out the competition is one thing, but you are aware that class 1-A is recovering from a traumatic experience. And you’re blocking traffic. Clear off.”

The crowd slowly dispersed. Shouta sighed. He knew this would only be the first of many such incidents. He made a note to talk to Nemuri about whether or not she’d be willing to donate some of her class time to talk about public relations.

“You know,” said Nemuri, “if you actually rested, Recovery Girl would be able to heal you.”

“I know nothing of the sort,” said Shouta, glaring at his desk in the staff room. “I’m forgetting something.”

All Might walked in. “Er, young Aizawa,” he said. He paused for a painfully long, awkward moment. “Are you still meeting with young Midoriya today?”

“Crap.”

Did Izuku expect Mr. Aizawa to come to their meeting? No. The man had casts on all of his limbs. But, he hadn’t cancelled it either. So, better safe than sorry, right?

But it had been a while, now. Izuku could probably safely assume he wasn't coming after a half hour. He got up, packed his bags, and reached out for the door handle-

Only to freeze as Mr. Aizawa yanked it open and pulled Mr. Yagi into the classroom after him.

Izuku scurried back to his seat.

"Nothing physical today," croaked Mr. Aizawa. "We're going to figure out your quirk."

“O-okay,” said Izuku.

Aizawa collapsed into the seat behind the teacher's desk. “To be short, this quirk, One for All or whatever, is complete nonsense.”

“Uh,” said Mr. Yagi. “Sorry?”

“Sorry,” whispered Izuku.

“You should be. Not you, Midoriya. You’re fine.”

“Okay?”

“Right. So. You’ve got two quirks right now. Danger Sense and Float. Unless something else showed up over the weekend?”

“No, it’s, um, it is just those two right now.”

“And you’ll most likely get Smokescreen, Blackwhip, and that strength enhancement eventually. Plus two mystery quirks.”

“That is what I’ve been able to find out,” said Mr. Yagi.

“So, we have to figure out some way to get all those under a coherent umbrella that can account for the mystery quirks, and before the sports festival, so the evil immortal supervillain doesn’t notice that you have quirks just like a bunch of people he had personal beef with.”

Mr. Yagi cursed in English. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Yeah, I wonder what else you haven’t thought about. Maybe this year I can get Nezu to take my suggestion about doing hero names before the sports festival seriously. You know we’ve had people stalk students before because for some godforsaken reason we use their real names? I need a drink.”

“Ah, water?”

“No.”

“Young Aizawa, you’re a teacher…”

“A career choice I question daily. Midoriya, do you have any thoughts about how to make your quirk make sense in a way that won’t get you killed or abducted by the HPSC?”

“I- Does that happen?” despite his conversation with Mr. Yagi over the weekend, he still had generally positive thoughts about the hero commission.

“I have no idea. Wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Well, um, I was talking to Monoma earlier, and he said something about stockpiling danger, and how it might let out the stockpile as the energy necessary to levitate- which, really, would be a fascinating quirk if it did work that way- but I thought it might also work for Smokescreen and the strength enhancement? I mean, general responses to danger are fight, flight, or hide, so the strength enhancement is fight, Float is flight, and Smokescreen would be hide…”

“That might work. What about Blackwhip.”

“Yeah, that one has kind of stumped me.”

“Blackwhip sure is a problem,” agreed Mr. Aizawa.

The ghosts started laughing. “You’re a problem, Banjo,” chortled Nana.

“Come on, guys, that isn’t funny!”

"It is! It's hilarious!"

"They were just talking about All for One tracking the kid down and killing him!"

The mood sobered quickly.

"Considering that he is Ninth's father," said Hikage, "I suspect it's far too late for that."

"Yeah," said Yoichi. "But, just to be safe, and in case there are other weirdos out there, new rule: no giving him new quirks in public. Not that we can do anything about when he eventually manifests the stockpile…"

"What if he's going to die?" asked Hikage, raising his hand.

"He already got your quirk, why do you care?"

"We'd like to hear it," said Banjo, somewhat forcefully.

"Well, if he looks like he's going to die, do whatever you can to stop that from happening, I guess. But chucking a quirk he doesn't know how to use isn't always going to be the beat answer."

"Wait," said Nana. "Hold up a second. A few days ago we were talking about the potential for multiple quirk brain damage, weren't we?"

"Oh, good catch," said Yoichi. "I guess I forgot to mention it, which means Nana is the only one I'd trust babysitting my nephew in the event a quirk rewound him to elementary school age-"

"That is a suspiciously specific scenario," said En.

"-and all the rest of you are fired. You didn't even question giving him more quirks? Really?"

Hikage raised his hand. "I assumed you had discovered that Ninth had a constitution capable of handling multiple quirks, similar to yourself and your brother."

"That is true. Okay, Hikage would be another exception, but he's disqualified from babysitting for other reasons."

"That's fair."

"So we need something that can do all that, and has tentacles," said Izuku, squeezing his bottom lip in thought.

"Yeah," said Mr. Aizawa. "Honestly, even really dumb ideas would be welcome right now."

"Why are you looking at me?" asked Mr. Yagi.

"You know why."

There was only one creature Izuku could think of that could do all the things Izuku one day might be able to while maintaining room for the two mystery quirks. "Cthulhu."

Mr. Yagi looked mildly scandalized at the suggestion.

"Nah, it'd have to be something like eldritch. Cthulhu's trademarked in Japan, and that can give you aboveground types trouble."

"What is it a trademark for?" asked Mr. Yagi.

"Ask Midnight. I don't want to talk about it."

"Ah," said Mr. Yagi.

"The problem with that is that you currently have no justification to call it that. Now if you already had Smokescreen…"

The adults looked at him.

"... I don't think it's going to just show up like that," said Izuku.

"Why not?" asked Banjo, staring at En. "They practically asked you for it."

"Well, first off, I live for drama, so jot that down."

"Huh? What about me?" asked Yoichi.

"Nothing, it was just an idiom. Second…"

"...Right," said Aizawa. “For now, then, we’ll have to give it a temporary name, because it’s starting to get to the point in time where it’ll actually be illegal for you to not register it.” He shuffled his casts. “Yagi, start filling out those forms with what he can do currently. Midoriya, make sure you check him when he’s done. For now, we’ve got to come up with a name.”

“Um,” said Izuku. “Float’s the only one that’s really visible, so I could just call it Float?”

“Vetoed. You aren’t picking a name that the immortal supervillain knows.”

“He did seem to only refer to people by quirks unless he really hated them,” said Mr. Yagi. “Except his brother, who he always called ‘my foolish brother.’”

“Focus on the paperwork.”

“And he called himself by his quirk name as well,” mused Izuku. “Do you think it was a side effect? Quirks have document impact on people’s personalities-”

“Focus.”

“R-right. Um. Feather Fall? No, that’s part of a game. Flight Reflex?”

“Good enough for now,” said Aizawa. “Flight Reflex it is.”

#bnha #boku no hero academia #danger first #danger first au #fic #fanfic

81 notes · View notes

behindyourbarrette · 3 years

Text

like you a latte - matcha latte

← previous | series masterlist | join my taglist | next part ->

pairing: spencer reid x fem reader

a/n: SURPRISE i felt like dropping this a DAY early!!lololololol but here it is! i appreciate the love on the last two parts so so soooo much :) can’t beliEVE WE ARE HALFWAY DONE!! reblog if u enjoyed

—

Needless to say, Twilight Time isn’t very crowded on Thursday afternoons.

You rarely pick up closing shifts anymore—for reasons totally unrelated to the doctor who almost exclusively arrives in the morning—but you’re covering for Sally, and it’s a nice day out. The rain has let up in favor of mild weather, the sun just barely peeking through the clouds as people drift past the shop. Despite the fact that there’s more foot traffic on the street, not many people come in to order. You don’t blame them. Why have hot coffee on a day like this?

Your back is turned when you hear a group enter, and your heart soars at the prospect of tips. For whatever reason, most people are more inclined to tip when they know their friends are watching. You call out to let them know you’ll be right with them, and after you’re done fidgeting with the settings of the coffee grinder, you turn.

It’s Spencer. But he’s not alone.

There are a total of four people before you, each intimidating you in slightly different ways. They’re all agents, as evidenced by their not-so-concealed carries. You recognize a few of the characters. Spencer’s told you about JJ, who you assume to be the friendly blonde, and Penelope, who is a vision in fuchsia. That leaves Emily, who’s whispering to JJ, eyes fixed on you. You try to absorb the sight, them together. Spencer looks at ease, a wide smile on his face as he looks between you and the group.

“Hey, Spencer. These your coworkers?” You crack a nervous smile, knitting your fingers together. He nods, introducing them each in turn. JJ grins in your direction, and Penelope waves at you with a fingerlessly-gloved hand. Emily reaches across the bar to shake your hand. You get the sense that there’s something Spencer hasn’t told you.

“What can I get you guys?”

Spencer shrugs, defaulting to JJ and Emily. Penelope pipes up, eyes bright as she peers at the menu above you.

“Do you have matcha, sweetheart? I’ve been meaning to try that. It’s great for your skin.” You nod, pulling a cup out and inscribing Penelope’s name on it. JJ and Emily both order americanos, exchanging a sheepish grin. After setting their cups aside, you turn to Spencer.

“Genius, you should really try the matcha. It’ll give you brain power. Not that you need any more.” Penelope does jazz hands to emphasize her excitement, and Spencer shrugs. You watch them interact for a moment before you realize he’s turned to you for your approval.

“Oh. I really like matcha. It’s green tea, and a matcha latte tastes light and sweet. I think you’d like it.” He nods, and orders it hot. Penelope orders iced; you smile as you consider that they compliment each other, eventually turning away to prepare everyone’s drinks. They’re all relatively simple, and you manage to include latte art in the hot drinks. Spencer’s is last, and you flick your wrist to finish the design. Crossing the bar, you hand each agent their drink in turn.

Penelope sips at her drink first, the bright green matching one of her rings perfectly. Spencer eyes his dubiously, poking at it with a wooden stirring stick.

“It’s very green.” He whispers to Penelope, who cackles in response.

JJ catches your eye as you watch, lingering between the bar and their seats. With a smile, she waves you over.

“You’ve totally ruined other coffee for Spence. We had to come try it for ourselves.” She whispers, leaning down. You aren’t sure how to feel about her tone; there’s a glint of something in her eye, something playfully secretive. You’re not sure what part of this you’re not in on.The idea of Spencer mentioning you at all is foreign—sure, you’ve told your roommates, and your coworkers found out that you do, in fact, have a favorite regular. Still, you never considered the idea that you bleed into other parts of his life. You steal a glance at him while JJ compliments her americano. He’s sipping at his matcha, a green mustache left behind.

“You have a magic touch, Y/N. I don’t think I’ve ever had coffee this good in the states.” Emily flashes you a grin as if she can sense your nervousness. You relax a little, asking her about her work abroad instead of getting lost in your head. She strikes you as a diplomat, and a compliment from her feels like something to be savored. Penelope raves to you about the health benefits of matcha, and you immediately feel welcomed by her. If you were to run a study comparing the approachability between pink polka dots and pantsuits, you're sure that polka dots would win.

“Are you an agent, too?” You ask, stirring your own iced coffee with a straw. Eyeing the clock, you’ve decided that this counts as your break. Tyler be damned. Penelope giggles, shaking her head.

“Oh God no. Well, technically. I’m a technical analyst, so I work on the computer and tech end of things.” She explains, and you nod. It makes a lot of sense. While both JJ and Emily exude the energy of most cops—authoritative, with a critical eye—Garcia does’t fit that mold. It’s this that draws you to her.

You learn that JJ has a son named Henry, a surprisingly Southern boyfriend to match, and that Emily has a cat named Sergio. Despite their highbrow titles, you don’t feel out of place. It’s easy to sip at your coffee, the cup cool against your fingertips, and listen.

“Are you in school? Spence mentioned that you majored in literature.” JJ sets her cup down, flexing her fingers against the air. You feel yourself flush now that the attention is on you. The fact that he chose this detail to divulge sticks between your ribs. You haven't told him much about your work—he insisted on reading your thesis, and even reread the source material to better discuss it with you—but apparently, what you have discussed has made an impression.

“Yeah, actually. I’m in my second year of law school.” You admit. Emily nods in approval, reaching out to high five you.

“Damn. With all the assholes you deal with in customer service, you’ll make a great attorney.” You high five her with a small smile on your face, stealing a glance at Spencer. He seems elated, clearly enjoying the dynamic he’s observing.

“Do you want to go into criminal law?”

JJ asks, eyes wide with curiosity. You shake your head ruefully. They take it well, shrugging their shoulders. To their credit, their branch of law enforcement deals with the process prior to prosecution. You shudder at the idea of what happens after they catch the bad guys.

“No, not really. I’m looking at either the entertainment or environmental sector.”

The group murmurs, and the conversation devolves into small talk about law. You look to Spencer for an escape, and he suggests that they take a walk. Once the girls have trickled out of the room, each hugging you goodbye, you’re left alone with Spencer.

“Hey.”

You laugh at the simplicity of his greeting, turning to toss your empty coffee cup into the trash. Spencer flushes a deep shade of red, raking his hands through his hair.

“Your friends aren’t how I expected. Really cool, though. Especially for like, Quantico professionals.” You wipe the counter down, and the reality that you’re on the clock hits you, a little dizzily. Did his coworkers really just want to meet Spencer’s barista? The realization tastes a little bitter, and you bite back any further questioning in favor of looking up at him.

“Yeah. They’re like family.” He looks out the window, hands deep in his pockets. His whole demeanor is stiff, and you resist the urge to reach out and force his shoulders down from his ears.

“Did you like the matcha? I wasn’t sure you would. I used the oat milk you like.” Slowly, he relaxes. With a small smile, he nods.

“It was good. I like most teas, I’m finding. It wasn’t too sweet.” You add matcha to the mental list you keep, of drinks he likes. It’s become your mission to expand it. In the months since he started branching out, you’ve managed to add a few drinks to his core rotation.

“You know you’re one of my friends too, right?”

This catches you off guard. You pause in the motion of sweeping the floor, carefully raising your eyes to meet his. While nervous, he sounds sincere. When met with your silence, he continues.

“I just wanted you to know.”

You nod carefully. The implications of this are something you’ll consider later, when you’re alone. He’s only confirming something you’ve already known, but something about it stings. The word crosses your mind briefly, but it sticks. It’s bittersweet.

“I know.” Your voice is low, soft against the din of the coffee shop. Spencer doesn’t look satisfied, opening his mouth to say something then closing it again. He glances between you and the window.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

taglist:

@everyonesfavoritepipecleaner @coldlilheart @idonotexiste @aberrant-annie @onyourfingertips @bakugouswh0r3 @uptowngotmedown @infinite-tides @chaosconcerns @littlewritersinspace @okivia @forever-not-gonna-sink @insert-gay-here @just-another-persona123 @winniemjf **if tags don’t work, check your visibility settings

140 notes · View notes

slugtranslation-hypmic · 3 years

Note

Hey slug, thanks for the hard work you and your team do for the fandom!! me and some friends were discussing this and i thought it would be nice to see ur answer to this (only if it doesn't bother u, of course!!): what characters do you think parents would give a big thumbs up if you introduced them as your partner (in terms of personality and traits)? I personally think Hifumi or Ichiro would be the best son-in-law...

What an entertaining question. Believe it or not, I’ve given the matter some thought before for reasons entirely unrelated to this, so presenting: Hypnosis Microphone Men and Whether or Not You Should Bring Them Home to Your Parents.

Since there’s a wide age range among the cast members, assume that the “you” in question is roughly each character’s age.

Ichirou: Absolutely. This man is objectively a dream boat. Runs his own successful business? Check. Respectful to people of all ages? Check. Cooks? Check. Cleans? Check. Good with kids? Check. Take Ichirou and marry him before your parents marry him themselves.

Jirou: As far as high school boyfriends go, Jirou’s not a bad choice. He’s a sweetheart, popular, plays music. Doesn’t do drugs in the school bathroom. Could have better grades, but hey, you can’t win them all. He seems like he’d have you home by 8 pm. You know what? Sure. Why not? You could do worse.

Saburou: Saburou is the kind of middle school boyfriend that your parents openly like and privately dislike. What I mean is that he’s very polite to most elders and super smart, so he’s the kind of kid who is entirely unobjectionable, but he’s also the kind of kid who would try to mansplain your parents’ jobs to them. Worst of all, he would be entirely correct in what he’s saying. Your parents probably want to punch him, but they don’t because assaulting children is illegal, not to mention immoral. They will breathe a collective sigh of relief when he finally breaks up with you so he can focus on studying for the Science Bowl nationals.

Samatoki: I am so torn on this one. On the one hand, he’s every parent’s worst nightmare. He smokes indoors, has an awful temper, and is a fucking gangster, for pete’s sake. Yet he can also be a sweetheart who cooks for you and does everything to treat you right. I’m really stumped. Probably the best solution, if you’re really wanting to get in on that Aohitsugi ass, is to cut out the middle man and date Nemu instead. She is perfect in every way, so your parents will love her.

Juuto: If your parents watch Antiques Roadshow, then he will have a lot to bond with them about. Otherwise I think he’d be that kind of person who tells stories about himself way too loudly at family dinners, and after he leaves, one of your parents pulls you aside to say, “Your boyfriend’s really kind of an asshole, don’t you think?” I guess date him if you’re okay with your parents thinking you have cruddy taste.

Riou: I feel like the hard part here is luring him out of the woods and into a family dinner, but from there, it should go great. He’s over 6 feet tall. He can cook well. He has a strong sense of purpose and knows what he wants to do in life. Most importantly, he has a wonderful heart AND every survival skill known to man. He will change the oil in your parents’ car, fix the leaky pipe you’ve been meaning to get around to for six months now, clean the hood above the stove, and then swap recipes and heartfelt compliments with whichever parent does the cooking. Who cares if he doesn’t have a stable income? You don’t need that with guns like those. (insert flexing Riou image here)

Ramuda: I’m trying to think about the concept of a) dating Ramuda and b) introducing him to a set of parents, and I’m drawing an utter blank. There is nothing but “???” in my mind. I’m going to hazard a guess that this one would be a terrible idea.

Gentarou: Wow, your parents had no idea you were dating a prince of a tiny little kingdom in the Mediterranean AND a Harvard law graduate AND the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize AND the man who discovered a cure for cancer in an expedition deep into the heart of the Amazon rain forest. Look at you! What a catch. Only attempt this if your parents are gullible.

Dice: As much as I love Dice to death, this one is a no. Your parents do not want you dating a homeless man with a gambling addiction and bad table manners. Plus, the MIL here seems hard to get along with. Nuh-uh.

Jakurai: Absolutely. You’re in your 30s, so your parents are at least middle-aged. Probably they have some joint problems or some back pain. Jakurai can let them kiss that pain goodbye, and in return, they can let him kiss you! A win-win. He also boasts a handsome salary, has a lovely house, and seems like he’d be super respectful in a relationship. Yes. Go. Marry him.

Hifumi: If you’re a girl, you’re probably going to have to sit this round out. If you’re a guy or nonbinary... yeah, you’re probably going to have to sit this round out too. See, if you have a mom, how is Hifumi supposed to meet her? I guess you could... idk... stick a lampshade on her head and expect him not to notice. That could potentially work, but it’d raise a few awkward questions. If you do happen to live in a female-free household, though, you’ve hit upon the golden opportunity to make this man yours. You can replace every instance of the word “wife” in Judy Brady Syfer’s famous essay “I Want a Wife” with the word “Hifumi” and still have it make perfect sense, and it shows.

Doppo: I can’t in good conscience recommend this one. Sure, he’s hardworking and certainly polite enough, but does he have the time to respond to your emotional needs? Hell, does he have the time to respond to his own? If you invited him to family dinner, there’s a good chance that he’d need to work overtime and miss it. He’d apologize and buy you flowers to make up for it, but you know he’d also be worrying about the cost of those flowers, so... is it really worth it?

Kuukou: For some reason, my parents actually like Kuukou (although I think he’s also the only character they know besides Ichijiku), but I don’t think this would hold true for most parents. He sounds good on paper, but he’d probably make a disparaging comment about someone’s ass in the first five minutes. Perhaps if you tape his mouth shut and tell your parents he’s doing a vow of silence, then yes.

Juushi: As far as high school (is he still in high school?) boyfriends go, Juushi’s not that bad either. He’s shy but sweet. Respectful. In a band, but the kind that makes money and doesn’t operate out of someone’s garage. Yeah, you know what? Go for it. You could do worse. Just scroll up on this list if you need proof of that.

Hitoya: Yeah, absolutely. Hitoya has a great career and a fantastic attitude. He doesn’t take shit from anyone but can still be polite in the correct contexts. He also seems like the type who would get into a serious relationship and treat his partner right. Fuck it up. I support your love.

Sasara: Yes. He has the exact type of humor favored by parents of the father variety. Plus, he’s a famous comedian. There is good money to be had right there.

Roshou: Absolutely. Rather shy but very talented, hardworking teacher who obviously puts his heart and soul into his job? Of course. As long as he doesn’t death glare your parents, it will work out fantastically. Plus, he can talk about sports! That’s a thing that parents like, right?

Rei: Absolutely not. You remember last May when your parents answered a call from the IRS telling them they were about to lose all their money unless they gave the nice man on the phone their bank account password right at that very instant? He was the nice man on the phone. Why the hell would you bring this threat into your parents’ home? Look, you’re in your mid-40s. Your parents are getting up in years, and they want to see you settle down and be happy with someone. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is not it. Why are you with Rei in the first place? Is it the fur coat? Listen, you are a grown-ass adult, and you can buy yourself as many fur coats as you want. I believe in you. It doesn’t have to be this way - you deserve better.

#not a translation #asks

407 notes · View notes

pappydaddy · 3 years

Text

Mashed Potatoes and Joel Hoekstra (b.h.)

A/N: This is for the lovely anon who wanted a Billy x Byers!Reader. I was so excited to write this one, I loved this request (I am loving ALL requests, but I’ve been loving these Billy ones lately!). Definitely very fun to write this one so thank you so much for requesting doll! Hope you love it lovely anon💛!

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x Fem!Byers!Reader

Show/Movie: Stranger Things

Requested

Warnings: Mean people, bullying, prejudice, the shits of the teenage years, but fluff in the end!

Remember guys! Your family name does not define you or someone else! It’s who they are that defines them, it’s who you are that defines you. It’s how you act, how you treat people, etc. Just like you don’t judge a book by it’s cover, you don’t judge a person by their name. If anyone tries to put you in a box simply because of a prejudice with your name, ignore them. I know it’s hard, I know - trust me, but they really don’t deserve your time. And if you feel trapped in a box because of your name, just know that you can break free from that box. My DMs are ALWAYS open if you lovelies need to talk💛!

masterlist | taglist | wips | navigation - not my gif -

“Billy,” Y/N’s soft voice broke the tranquil silence that had settled over the room. Her finger that had been tracing random shapes on his chest stopped moving, her eyes flicking around the darkroom as she waited for him to respond in some way. She knew he wasn’t asleep by the lack of snores lowly rumbling in his chest (which she also laid her head upon) and his breathing pattern. He hummed, the sound reverberating in his chest, his hand still stroking up and down along the dip in her back where her spine was. “We’ve been dating for a few months now-”

“Six months.” He interjected, pressing a warm kiss to the top of her head.

“Right, yeah, we’ve been dating for six months,” She nodded, her already tangled hair tangling a bit more. Her voice was nervous, not knowing how he would react to her bringing this up. “And I was just thinking that maybe it would be time for you to meet my family,” She asked, her voice pitching up towards the end. “Maybe. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it’s just everyone else I’ve dated has met them by now, but then again, everyone else I’ve ever dated left a few weeks after meeting them so-”

“You’re rambling again, Bug.” Billy cut her off gently, knowing that she rambled and rants when she’s nervous and scared. Her cheeks heated up, burning as she settled back down to cuddle into Billy’s bare chest.

“Sorry.” She whispered.

Billy pressed another kiss to her hair, knowing that her ex’s all harped on her about her nervous rambles, making her snap her mouth shut and sink into herself. “Nothing to be sorry for, Bug, you’re nervous.” He reassured her.

She took a deep breath, calming herself as Billy gave her the silent support she needed. “Back on track,” She nodded her tone calm once again. “I still think you should meet my family because they are really important to me and you’re really important to me and I just really would like it if you guys got along,” She expressed nervously. The room was silent as she waited impatiently for his response, her breath was hitched, her mind automatically assuming that he was going to leave her right here, right now because he didn’t want to meet her family or worse, not feel the same about her. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to; if you’re not there in the relationship, that’s fine, we can take a few steps back if you’d like-” She started to shrink away from him, her mind panicking as it continued to imagine him leaving her like the rest - like her father.

“No-” Billy interjected softly, gently pulling her back to be flush against him. “I’ll meet your family only if you get some sleep, it’s late and you’re exhausted. He bargained, suddenly feeling nervous and wanting her to go to sleep for her sake and his.

“Okay, deal.” She yawned, closing her eyes, snuggling her cheek farther into his chest, listening to the beating of his heart. Billy squeezed his eyes closed as he tried to control his heartbeat so he didn’t alert her to his sudden nervousness.

____

The next day was relaxed other than Billy’s increasing nervousness. He loved Y/N, he was at that place in the relationship where the only logical step would be to meet each other’s family, but he couldn’t help but feel a sense of doom. For one, meeting her family meant she would have to meet his family and he wanted to keep her as far away from Neil as possible. Secondly, the Byers family had a certain reputation around Hawkins High and Middle and Billy had heard all about it from his friends. Of course, he was stand-off-ish of Y/N before they started dating because of this reputation, but everything turned out fine with her so why wouldn’t her family be the same?

“What’s got you so quiet, Hargrove?” Tommy asked aggressively as they mulled around the locker room, changing after gym class. Billy jolted out of his thoughts as he just stood, staring into his locker. Looking back at Tommy, he blinked at him for a second before comprehending what his question was.

“Uh, nothing,” Billy shook his head, grabbing his shirt from his locker, slipping it on. “It’s just that Y/N invited me over to meet her family.” He had no idea why he was confessing this to Tommy and his other friends of all people, knowing how they feel about Y/N and the rest of her family. The words had tumbled out before he could even think about stopping them.

“Woah,” Tommy exclaimed, laughing as he pretended to back away from Billy as if he were carrying some sort of contagious disease. “Boys! Say good-bye to the Billy we all know because soon, he’s gonna be infected by the Weird-os.” His statement earned a chorus of laughs from the boys huddled around.

“Buzz off Tommy, they can’t be that bad. I mean, Y/N is great!” Billy said mostly to himself, closing his locker.

“Sure, she’s the most normal one,” Tommy shrugged. “But the rest of them man,” He shook his head as if telling some old wise tale. “They are complete basket cases. Completely messed in the head. Look at Jonathan for an example,” Tommy paused, walking over to Billy and slinging his arm over his shoulder. “Nobody talks to him, he sits in the back of the classes or in that stupid dark room, playing with his stupid little camera.”

“Y/N says that he’s quiet and works most of the time so he doesn’t have much time to hang out and the time he does have, he chooses to practice photography.” Billy pointed out, pushing Tommy’s arm off him. Tommy remained unfazed, leaning against the lockers as he continued.

“Alright, if not Jonathan, then the younger one,” He paused, using his hands to set the scene. “He died, okay? Died and came back to life like in one of his freaky little movies he and his dork friends watch,” Billy glared at him, knowing full well that Max was one of his friends. “Much like his brother, he just sits there and colours and colours and colours. He’s in middle school and still colours like a pre-schooler.”

“He’s pretty talented, I’ve seen some of his pictures in the car when Y/N has it.”

“Now, let’s talk about the mother. She works at a general store, she dated that geek from Radio Shack, her husband left her, she had a meltdown in the middle of the street, she bought all the fucking lights in Hawkins because she thought her dead son was talking to her through them,” He paused. Billy opened his mouth to defend Joyce, but Tommy cut him off. “They are weird, Hargrove. They are completely nuts and you better prepare to be just as nuts because I am pretty sure it’s contagious.”

“Just look at Harrington and Wheeler,” Another guy piped up, making Billy look towards him. “They started to hang around with the Byers and look at them, they turned just as crazy. Constantly looking over their shoulders, Harrington only hangs around kids now, always having hushed conversations with them and Wheeler only talks to Jonathan now.”

“That’s not-”

‘That’s not the same,” Tommy cut Billy off with a question. “It is exactly the same. Meeting the Byers is like the kiss of death. Kills your social life and makes you crazy-”

“Billy,” Y/N’s voice called into the locker room from the door she held slightly open. “Are you in here, we should really be getting to lunch, I’m starving!”

“Yeah, be out in a second!” He called to her, the door softly closing in response. He nervously looked at the door as Tommy clicked his tongue.

“It’s your choice, Hargrove, it’s your grave you’re digging.” Billy glared at him, shrugging on his jean jacket and leaving the locker room. His eyes met Y/N easily, seeing her talking to Steve excitedly. Though Billy still didn’t like Steve, he didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity at that given time to deal with his fluffy-haired nemesis, too busy fretting about what to do about meeting Y/N’s family.

“There you are, I was worried that you accidentally slammed your head in the locker or something,” She joked, not realizing that Billy was actually considering it. He didn’t want to make her think that he wasn’t ready to take the next step in the relationship, but I also was scared now. As much as he wanted to admit that he didn’t trust Tommy H and all the other guys, he really did want to say that he let their warnings roll off his back, but he couldn’t. “Come on, I want to eat, see you, Steve!” She grabbed Billy’s hand, pulling him out of the gym and into the halls.

“What were you talking to Harrington about?” He asked, hoping that it was completely unrelated to her having him over for dinner.

“About you meeting my family,” She chirped happily. Billy wanted to deflate right there. Of course it had to be about that. It couldn’t have been about anything else. Anything to take his mind off something so anxiety inducing. “He thinks it’s a great idea! He said that you would love my family and I really hope he’s right.”

“I really hope so too-” He muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” She asked, her brows furrowing as she leaned in closer.

“Nothing, Bug.” He told her, hoping she would buy it. She pulled a face, shrugging before regaining her giddy mood.

“Must have just been hearing things,” She chalked it up. “Anyway, I was thinking that you should come round to my place at seven? My mom is off today so she’s been prepping for this since nine this morning!”

“Yeah, about that,” Billy spoke slowly, dreading what he was about to do. He really didn’t want to do it, but he needed to buy himself sometime so he could figure out his next move. Find a way to keep Y/N while not having to meet her family. “I’m feeling a little sick to my stomach, Bug. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to go tonight.”

“Oh no,” She gasped, her hand squeezing his affectionately as she stopped in the hallway. “You might have overdone it in gym today, especially when I accidentally kicked that soccer ball right into your stomach, sorry about that by the way.”

“No, it wasn’t that, but you do have one hell of a kick on you,” He shook his head, not wanting her to blame herself. “I just think I’m coming down with something and I really don’t want to infect your family.” He lied through his teeth.

She awed, her hand coming up to cup his cheek sweetly. “That’s so sweet,” She cooed. Her hand slid from his face as disappointment flashed across her face, but it was gone as soon as it came, or at least she tried to fake it. Billy could see the disappointment she tried to bury, his heart pulling at the sight of it, knowing that he was the one who caused it. “It’s alright, I want you to worry about your health first. I’ll just go call my mom and tell her that there was a change of plans-” She paused, looking for a quarter as she tried to ignore the worry bubbling up once again. “Could I borrow a quarter? I think I spent mine calling her earlier to check up.” She asked, extending her flat palm, waiting for him to drop a quarter in it.

Billy tucked his bottom lip between his teeth. He could tell she was thinking that he was trying to avoid meeting her family because he just didn’t want to. While there was some truth to that, he couldn’t let her feel like he was pulling away from her. “You know what,” He pushed her hand back down to her side. “I’m going to go to the nurse and see if she can help me. I’ll see you before next period and update you, Bug.” He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before running off down the hall.

“Okay-” She breathed out, shocked. She watched him run past Tommy and his gaggle of idiots, the group watching him run - laughing.

“Oh, the crazy is already starting to rub off on you, Hargrove!” Tommy yelled, but Billy either ignored it or didn’t hear it. Y/N eyed Tommy oddly before eyeing Billy’s retreating form.

____

The fact that Billy stood at the front door of the Byers’ house was a miracle in itself, considering how many times Billy considered swerving hard right into a tree in order to escape this night, but he pushed forward, knowing that Y/N was worth it. He tightened his grip on the bouquet of flowers, the thorns digging into his hand making him wince. Groaning, he switched holds, shaking his stinging hand out. He felt constricted in his clean cut clothes, his button-up buttoned more than usual, only the first two buttons being undone. The slacks itched his legs and made him feel like he was heading to a Sunday service.

Taking a deep breath, he raised his close fist, hitting his knuckles against the door twice in rapid succession. He could hear a scuffle from behind the door and Y/N’s distinctive voice pleading with her mother to let her answer it. The door was jerked open, revealing a breathless woman and a blushing Y/N standing in the back looking defeated. “You must be Y/N’s sister.” Billy used his normal line that worked wonders on mothers, but he was so off his game that he sounded a bit nervous, spitting the line out a few moments too late. The woman didn’t seem to mind, taking the compliment easily.

“Oh, stop it,” She flicked her hand, a wide smile nearly breaking her face as she laughed. “You must be Billy,” She continued to giggle, the laughter making her look youthful. If Billy hadn’t known that she had two teenagers and a pre-teen, then Billy would have thought she was much younger. “I’m Joyce, come on in, you must be cold,” She ushered him in hurriedly, her hand guiding him into the warm, cozy house as it rested on his upper back. “Standing out there in only a shirt in this fall weather.” She shook her head, closing the door behind him.

“Mom-” Y/N whined, embarrassed by her mother’s fussing. Joyce gave her a look, silencing the whine.

“You stop that and get this poor boy a drink,” Joyce insisted, leading Billy over to one of the couches. With a small groan in protest, Y/N ducked into the kitchen and out of Billy’s sight, sending him right on edge again. He sat on the couch, his clammy hands running over his slacks as his eyes watched Joyce. She was fairly gentle and normal looking for someone everyone called insane. “Will, go grab Jonathan from the shed, supper is going to be in a few minutes.” Joyce told the small looking boy who worked at setting the table for five, a mismatched chair added to the four that looked like they normally surround the table.

“You have a lovely home Ms. Byers, thank you for having me.” He extended the pleasantry, seeing Y/N coming into the room with a glass of water.

“Please, call me Joyce,” She told him, waving him off once again. “And it’s no problem, Hunny. We’re glad to have you. You’re welcome anytime!” She reassured him, thinking that his nerves were from the donating task of meeting the family for the first time.

“Will do.” Billy nodded, gulping down his water. Y/N sat next to him on the couch, her hand naturally falling to his knee. Though his nerves lifted with each passing second he spends with them, he couldn’t seem to get Tommy’s warnings out of his head.

“You know, my mom was so excited for you to get here, she side-checked me out of the way to get the door,” Y/N told him, giggling. That seemed normal enough, they all seemed to have a good relationship with each other. It was more functional than his family and they were deemed normal. “And I definitely think you made her entire night with your comment.”

“Kids, dinner is ready,” Joyce called from the kitchen. Y/N patted Billy’s leg, standing up. Billy swallowed thickly, feeling like he was walking to his death as he neared the table filled with loads of dishes full of a beautiful home-cooked meal. “Billy, dear, you’re the guest so you can sit here,” Joyce patted the chair at the head of the table, before pointing to the chair next to it that sat between the wall and the table. “Y/N, you sit there.” She instructed her daughter.

“So, Billy,” Will spoke up, taking his place beside Y/N, looking directly at the blonde as he scooted his chair in. “Max tells me you like rock music. What’s your favourite band?” He posed the question, grabbing the pitcher of water and filling his glass up.

“Uh- I’ve been listening to a lot of Whitesnake lately, but I would say the Scorpions are my favourite band I guess.” Billy answered him, his hands nervously hovering over his plate, not sure what he should be doing.

“That’s cool, I like The Clash the most personally, but I like watching the Whitesnake videos, their hair is really cool-” Will nodded, accepting Billy’s answer.

“And where have you been watching Whitesnake videos, young man?“ Joyce perked in eyebrow at the youngest, making him shrink back slightly, but Billy could tell it was all playful banter.

“At Dustin’s.” He admitted, making Y/N laugh and nod as if it were to suspected.

“That was probably Steve’s doing, no doubt.” Y/N pointed out, filling up her own water before filling Billy’s glass automatically.

“Yeah, it was Steve, he turned MTV on while he was watching us play D&D,” Will perked up at the mention of Steve. Looking right at Billy, he excitedly spoke. “I drew Joel Hoekstra a few months ago, but I made fire shoot out the end of the neck of his guitar. It’s insanely cool.”

“Billy, you haven’t gotten any food yet! Go on, you get some first.” Joyce noticed, holding a bowl of mashed potatoes to him. He looked at the bowl of potatoes, perfectly whipped. To anyone else at the table, it was just a bowl of starch and butter, but to Billy, it was the sign that they weren’t crazy. They were just not fitting into the box that everyone says you have to fit in. Looking at the bowl, he felt every bit of nervousness and apprehensiveness leave his body. Smiling, he gently took the bowl, scooping some out onto his plate, causing everyone to start putting food on their plates.

“Hey, Will,” Billy spoke up, causing everyone to look at him nervously. Jonathan eyed him, not trusting him yet. “Maybe after dinner, you could show me that drawing? Joel Hoekstra is my favourite member of Whitesnake.” He suggested, causing the boy to light up. Y/N smiled gently, her hand laying over Billy’s gratefully. Who knew that some mashed potatoes and Joel Hoekstra was all it took to see the Byers for who they were.

378 notes · View notes

jupitermelichios · 3 years

Text

So I decided to try watching Riverdale, and I have... thoughts. And also the words ‘holy homoeroticism batman’ written several times in increasingly large letters.

I started on season 2, because everything i read suggested that was when the show went off the rails, and i am here exclusively for the batshit weirdness. but it’s fine, because the show decided to fill me in on what i missed during the two consecutive 'previously on' sequences. was one not enough? was there an ad break between them? did they think people would forget what show they were watching if there wasn’t a little break and a logo splash halfway through?

we open on archie rushing his dad into the worlds most empty emergency room. there’s no one, no patients, no doctors, not even a receptionist, just a big empty room, right until the extras smell the blood of a protagonist and all converge. i assume they’re just desperate for something to do, working in the world’s least used hospital.

does snake pliskin exist in this universe? betty makes a reference that doesn’t really make any sense otherwise and given what i know about where the show goes eventually, it feels like a very real possibility. is this the escape from new york universe?

jingle jangle. they called the drug jingle jangle. honestly no criticism, amazing job everyone on the writing team, keep it up!

“dropping vintage bon-mot like vintage bon-bons” is a hell of a line that only works if you have no idea how bon-mot is said (and no idea what one does with a bon-bon. why are you dropping your candy on the floor veronica). fortunately neither the writers or the actress delivering it do, so it’s fine.

getting into the shower with someone without asking is a risky proposition. You have to be really sure they want it. there’s normal ‘i thought you were into it but you’re not’ awkwardness, and then there’s ‘i thought you were into it but you’re not and also i’m standing here wet and naked now’ awkwardness.

how many gangs are opperating in riverdale? I count three so far. riverdale is not that big, is it?

Actually for real, how big is riverdale? I have absolutely no idea. it’s a local small town with exactly one place to eat but it supports two highschools and three gangs. do we know where riverdale is, and is it anywhere near smallville?

cheryl sure knows how to dress for maximum drama. in general i’m basically neutral on the costumes, but everything cheryl has worn has been a Look and i am here for it. sexy runway victorian ghost aesthetic, yes, amazing, no criticisms.

define hood, because i’m not sure you know what it means. that’s a mask. i get that the comics character is called the black hood, but the costume team could have put him in a hood, why was their solution ‘ski mask but no one in town will admit it’s a ski mask’

half the high school is in this fucking hospital to support archie’s dad, good thing there’s zero other patients or staff or it would be getting crazy crowded

what riots, pop? you can’t just drop in ‘someone threw a brick through our window during the riots’ with no further explanation. what fucking riots?!

wise old spiritual black man, but he's just some dude is a take honestly. does he have some kind of special knowledge or divine connection? nope, he’s just a dude who likes being extremely cryptic in service of absolutely nothing

is cheryl magic? does she think she's magic? what does she think the kiss of life is? i was under the impression that magic wasn’t going to be real in this show for another season or two, but cheryl apparently does not agree!

the problem with every actor playing a kid in this show being in their mid twenties (insert KennieJD ‘brooding hot 25 year old teenager’ jingle) is that then they show a music teacher kissing a student and i have absolutely no context for how creepy it’s supposed to be. like, she’s twenty, he’s twenty, we’re not in a school setting, I have no idea how i’m supposed to be reacting. he might be an adult who’s decided to take up piano, or she might be a straight up paedophile, and i have literally no idea which. am i supposed to be sad she’s dead?

headmaster is weirdly supportive of his students becoming armed vigilantes. i feel like every teacher i’ve ever had would have had more questions than that.

as the grandchild of a silversmith, i have to say, veronica polishing the silver cutlery as one of her chores is a weirdly believable detail for a show this unhinged. that was one of my chores as a teenager, and still is when i stay with my mum for more than a couple of days. pros of your grandad knowing how to silver-plate: pretty. cons: absolutely everything that stood still long enough eventually got silver plated and it all needs polishing.

Love that everyone still has archie comics names. the mob lawyer is called penny peabody. amazing.

maybe it's the fact that i'm in my 30s but archie's dad is the only attractive person on this show

ebony dark'ness dementia raven way would be very disappointed by how milktoast the goths in this show are. try harder, CW wardrobe department.

oh man, the lighting team absolutely went off for this show, and i kind of love that it's in service of absolutely nothing

holy homoeroticism batman

i’m in this weird place where objectively bonkers things have happened, but not as much or in the way that i want them to, and i can’t decide if it’s worth sticking with it to get to the later more bonkers seasons.

on an unrelated note though, this is the creative team i would choose for a nailbiter adaptation. the weird lighting and colour pallettes, the time displaced americana vibe, honestly even some of the writing, exactly what i would want from a nailbiter tv show.

#maybe when the teen wolf movie comes out i'll actually finish that nailbiter x teen wolf fic i've been thinking about writing for the last 5 #riverdale #jupiter watches a thing #nailbiter #fr tho go read nailbiter #it's one of my favourite creator owned comics ever

31 notes · View notes

ms-demeanor · 4 years

Note

You are the one who reblogged a post with a bunch of resources about treating wounds and foraging and using a rifle. You, other anarchists, are where I’m getting the sense of the “life” I’m supposed to look forward to. Not movies.

You know how I know you’re not talking about me?

Because I’m actually really, really fucking cautious about not reblogging information about foraging because I literally know someone who poisoned his dumb ass foraging and died and I would not share that kind of resource with someone who I’m not 100% sure is excellent at woodcraft and has a shitload of outdoor experience. I actually pretty stridently recommend that you DON’T learn how to forage from online resources.

Juuuuuust in case I double checked my blog back through august.

What are you talking about? No forage resources or rifle resources here, at least not for the last 22 days. The one wound treatment thing I’ve reblogged this month is a link to CERT classes, which are community emergency response classes.

I don’t make a secret of the fact that I am pro gun ownership but I also don’t make a secret of the fact that I think if people are pro gun they also need to be pro gun safety education - there are way too many firearms in the US for us to *not* teach kids how to handle them safely. But I sure do NOT talk about having gun battles on this blog because I think that’s glorifying a fantasy version of a fast, easy revolution that I don’t believe in.

(however, as always, if you’re in my general area, don’t know how to use guns, and would like to learn I am available to teach you the basics, as much as social distancing and global pandemics allow anyway)

But. Also.

Buddy, let’s pretend it’s four years ago, or nine years ago, or twenty years ago. Let’s pretend that whatever party is in office doesn’t matter and is totally unrelated to everything.

Have you ever lived through a large earthquake?

A tornado?

A hurricane?

Sometimes infrastructure fails and knowing how to treat wounds is a very, very, very good idea.

Everyone should take a first aid class. I think first aid classes should be a requirement for graduating high school. I first got CPR certified with my girl scout troop when I was 12 and my mom took me to a mobile morgue class when I was 7 because my mom was the department safety coordinator for the DWP in Los Angeles and she was in charge of earthquake drills and first aid training and disaster preparedness and the Northridge quake had just happened.

I grew up taking first aid incredibly seriously, reading “Hatchet,” and my idea of fun is getting a vehicle stuck in an inland sea or going backpacking and encountering a bear. Learning woundcare and treatment for heatstroke and hypothermia is. Like. It’s a pretty big part of making sure I’m doing stupid bullshit as safely as possible.

Also, yeah, I’ve totally superglued my finger closed and used fishing finger wraps to seal a cut and used coffee stir sticks and electrical tape to make finger splint. Even with insurance it still costs me a couple hundred dollars to go to the ER or several hours to go to an urgent care, and that’s when I’ve HAD insurance. Knowing how to safely treat non-life-threatening injuries is just something you should know how to do if you’re broke in America; I’m lucky that I can afford to go to the ER now; that has not always been the case for me.

You ever hung out with really drunk friends? Do you know how to check eye tracking? Do you know how to put someone in the recovery position?

You ever had a friend get clocked with a boot in the pit? Do you know how to check pupil dilation to see if you need to get to a hospital ASAP?

Buddy, you don’t have to be worried about the end of the world to want to get prepared to handle an injury while camping and you don’t have to be an anarchist to think it’s a good idea to know how to treat heatstroke.

ANYWAY there’s this flaw in the human brain called negativity bias, which is where we remember negative, scary stuff more than we remember good, positive stuff.

I’m generally a pretty positive blogger, the resource lists I reblog tend to be things like “here are mutual aid groups” and “learn how to be a hacker” and “here’s how to support people who lose access to abortion.” If you’re getting primarily negativity out of the stuff that I’m reblogging I believe you’re missing the forest for the trees, bud.

The way to handle and cope with negativity bias is to be aware of it! If you’re sitting there going “everything is terrible!” ask yourself “is everything actually really terrible or am I only remembering terrible things?”

2020 is actually a fucking FANTASTIC example of that because there has been a lot of bad shit going on but there have also been really great examples of humans helping each other and people working to take care of each other and apparently Venus might have aliens and that’s just really fucking cool. There is a BUNCH of negative shit out there and we do hear about it all the time but don’t let that bury the positive shit.

You know what I want people to take away from that resource post? That you can and should protect your community from speed traps by reporting cops on traffic apps, and that by reporting cops on traffic apps you are doing a tangibly good thing to prevent marginalized groups from being targeted by police.

That’s a real, simple, easy thing that you can do to actually help people - speed traps don’t work if people don’t know about them and it’s why cops have tried to make it illegal for drivers to warn each other about them.

The idea that the government of the United States is going to collapse tomorrow and things will devolve into gun battles in the streets and foraging to keep from starving seems fairly farfetched but even if that does happen you know that mutual aid helped people survive the great depression, right?

And I don’t want to do the “you should feel #blessed that you’re better off than those people in POOR, UNDEVELOPED countries” thing but people get up and live their lives every day in conditions that require them to forage and navigate violent areas.

It’s shitty that people have to live like that, I wish they didn’t have to and I don’t want more people to have to live in extreme poverty in places that are violent, but it seems kind of. I don’t know. Arrogant? To decide you’re better than that so you might as well lay down and die.

“What do I have to look forward to” - buddy, the world doesn’t owe you a happy ending. You have the rest of your life to look forward to. You have friendships and laughter and cool projects and the people you’ll help someday and the people who will help you someday and sunsets and ripe fruit and meteor showers to look forward to.

Nearly everywhere in the world, through all of history, even peasants danced.

You’ve got the world to look forward to.

And if everything does go to hell in a handbasket and there are gun battles in the streets and you’re trying to make sure you’re gathering morels and not deathcaps then you’ve STILL got the world to look forward to and how you go into it is going to be up to you no matter how a fucking election turns out.

443 notes · View notes

a-shakespearean-in-paris · 3 years

Text

Why Cullen?

Today I bring you a post I’ve been in the process of mentally drafting for a while, a post that essentially analyzes the age old question in the Dragon Age fandom: Why is there always something with Cullen?

To do this, I am going to go through different “phases” of Cullen discourse. My thesis and answering the titular question: It’s complicated, and I don’t think I can answer “Why Cullen,” but “there’s sometimes recycled discourses made about his character through the years, maybe there’s a pattern.” When it comes to Cullen’s detractors, I understand the fact that it might be frustrating to see much content for someone so “boring” when there’s more “interesting” and “well done” characters (though interest is of course relevant) so it leads to a lot of vitriol from both new and old fans who think the man had too much screen time already. Furthermore, he is highly complicated man dressed as a Disney prince, and the “Disney-esque” feel of his romance creates a dissonance between coming to terms with his problematic past and reveling in the romanticism. We can have a happy medium everyone, but because of what I can only describe as “tik tok thought” it’s become looked down upon to have problematic favorites, which leads to guilt in liking something problematic, or outright revisionism.

But liking things with problematic elements doesn’t make you a bad person.

Alright, let’s begin:

The first phase truly began of course with DAO with Cullen’s crush on the female Circle Mage Warden. Some were endeared, others not so much. I cannot speak to this phase too much as I was around 15-16 and pretty preoccupied with my high school drama instead of fandom, though I played both DAO and DA2 upon it’s release and followed updates for DA2 before it came out. Despite not being an active fandom member I was what they would call, a lurker. I knew some people liked Cullen and thought he was cute, wishing for more screen time after the game and hoping he’d be in DAI through IMDB message boards (remember those?) and YoutTube comments. When news broke he’d be an advisor in DAI and a romance option, I remember seeing a lot of people in those same spaces rejoice. I’m sure there were also people who weren’t so pleased, but from what I saw, people were happy. When Inquisition did release, I actually did quite a bit more lurking on tumblr despite the fact I didn’t have a blog, because I played the romance route, really gravitated toward it, and wanted to see fanart and such. People liked the romance, liked his arc and how Bioware handled his struggles with lyrium; and found it realistic. Even in my lurking days I did see some blowback on Cullen from detractors, those who didn’t think he should have been the military advisor (which canonically it makes total sense to me why he’s where he’s at, but I won’t get into it here however.) But likely because I wasn’t fully “in fandom,” my surface level understanding of how tumblr felt about Cullen was relatively positive and there was only standard fare discourse.

Phase 2: I can speak about this phase better because I established this blog in 2017. Two years after DAI was released, you still had a lot of fans who loved his romance and character, but you also saw a lot of those fans really dive into his flaws, insisting even that just focusing on the Disney Prince aspects of him reduced his character. There were also more internal debates. Would realistically Cullen be a good father was one. One thing however was for sure, there was a strange them and us line between detractors and fans, and to many fans, myself included, oftentimes the Cullen blowback would extend beyond the valid, “hey I don’t think his characterization was handled well” or “his redemption arc isn’t that great” to outright vitriolic hate that blatantly ignored his PTSD and lyrium addiction, and even sometimes “you just like Cullen because he’s white.” As a POC fan it was a fantastic thing to be accused of. I used to be more involved with discord during this period and I remember a few discussions about this as well. Even those indifferent to Cullen didn’t get it.

Overall, I have to say the air was one where people in Cullen fandom enjoyed all aspects of him, from delving into this troubled past to indulging in the Disney prince aspects of him. It was a happy medium I think, even if occasionally I would see a Cullen fan feel bad for liking him, and feel like they needed to justify it. Heck I even did and still do feel that way sometimes, like I need to justify what I like. But we all come into fandom for different reasons. I come into fandom some days for different things. Sometimes I want smut with my favorite character, other times I want more intense thought pieces and challenging fics. Great thing about fandom is that it’s a bakery that has cherry tarts, cinnamon rolls, or all kinds of pie depending on your mood. Craving a different sweet treat, you can make your own. Or you can commission an artist or writer for something you fancy.

*(sexual assault mentions here late in the paragraph****)And now I’ve been warped back into Cullen/DA fandom through what I am calling phase three, where the general air on Cullen reads as….very different. After having one foot outside DA fandom for a while coming back and reading the air has been different. There was the bizarre nuggetgate and other things with Cullen. Now, instead of accepting his flaws and exploring him there seems to be a lot of revisionism going on, as if his past never happened or we’re supposed to ignore he was a templar. A sexually active Cullen is looked down upon but in a different way from before. Instead of smut works with him “reducing his complicated character.” it’s distasteful to write smut with him where he’s sexually dominant or even just a lot of smut because he was sexually assaulted. (***Now, it is implied that he was, if you are a female Circle mage in DAO, with “sifting through my thoughts, tempting me with the one thing I always wanted but could never have” but this is an implication. I will be honest, it is what I have implied. However, it’s not there if you’re not a female Mage. He was however canonically sexually harassed in the Winter Palace, something I will always argue, even if canon treats it like a joke, even if Leliana tells him to “just look pretty.” Just because he is a man doesn’t make it funny that someone grabbed his bottom, and if you take Cole he flat out says “Cullen is afraid.”***)

So here I am, wondering what changed and what’s going on. Here’s what I believe: Cullen is a complicated character and his flaws and his past make him interesting to me, and they are interesting to explore. However there is nothing wrong with wanting to just explore a romantic, sexual Cullen. He’s a character with many facets. He’s romantic, determined, nostalgic, stubborn, unrelenting, loyal, driven, all things that made him seem so real. Here we get to my theory: in today’s media “criticisms” I see people—particularly younger people—beat themselves up for liking something problematic. It’s like every time you engage with media that’s potentially problematic you have to write essays to yourself why it is so and hold yourself accountable. I see this on tik-tok a lot and why I refer to it as “tik tok thought.” Look at the way some young Hamilton fans talk about the musical, or heck even here, and you may see what I mean. It’s like if you don’t acknowledge the problematic aspects of the historical figures behind their fictional portrayals in the show you’re a bad person. Same thing with nostalgic Disney fans my age in younger, if you don’t clown on Ariel for “choosing a man over anything” (SHE LIKED THE SURFACE WORLD BEFORE SHE MET ERIC) you don’t get your brownie points.

I want to make it clear: being critical of media is good. I am glad I see young people and people my age think about the messages we are given in media, but somehow this is turned into ANALYZE EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME. Ya’ll I’m a grad student. I’m critical most of the time, when I come to my tumblr blog’s lawn I’m here mostly to have some fun, and hey sometimes my fun is being critical. But sometimes it isn’t. You do not have to always be critical. You do not have to beat yourself up for liking something that’s problematic or write an essay about why it is as if that’s your due diligence in stanning a fictional character. I’m going to be honest I used to kind of think I had to justify my likes once, especially because of the Cullen vitriol on tumblr. I worked overtime in my early fanfic efforts to try to prove to the world I knew Cullen was problematic for fear I’d be perceived as just an idiot horny fangirl. Well, let me tell you: I largely don’t think that way anymore. If I want to just enjoy writing some smut or reading some smut with him, I am. But I think there is a second part of this in Cullen fandom currently, a revisionism of his problematic elements. Now, if you have to do mental gymnastics with a character in an effort to ignore problematic elements, perhaps you don’t like the character that much. That’s totally okay. DA has many awesome characters to write about and stan.

So, why Cullen? For so many reasons a bit of a shit show has always followed this character. There’s a divide between fans and his detractors and sometimes there’s a divide within the Cullen fandom. What I can extrapolate for now is the need to keep him squeaky clean and safe and away from anything “problematic” because his of past, his templar roots, or the fact that he’s white when there are POC characters with less content. It reads as a guilt associated with liking him. But please, do not be guilty. He’s not real. Templars aren’t real, mages aren’t real, Cullen isn’t real. Here’s my advice, something I learned while in my directing class in college. What my teacher always said was direct what turns you on, direct a story that gets you thinking, gets you excited. What gets you thinking and excited in a fictional world may be tons of conflict and dramatics, or it may be peace and love. Sometimes it can be both or more. Don’t shame others for coming to a bakery and wanting blueberry when you want cherry, and the baker has both, especially if the baker labels each pie, especially if the recipe for the pie has some salt in it and people like the salt. We can have it all and enjoy it all. What we want in our fiction doesn’t always align with something we may want real life. Lots of people write Modern girl in Thedas stories. Ya’ll if that actually happened to one of us it would probably suck. I’d probably get killed and not even get to meet Cullen and pose around the desk to get things going, so I’d rather it not happen. However, it is fun to read about.

Again, don’t be guilty for liking Cullen, please. But if you have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to like Cullen, maybe you don’t like him at all. To that I say, there are many other amazing characters, or perhaps you could write your own.

#fandom critical #I spent too long on this #deleted a lot #but now it's written and I can move on #Cullen rutherford

263 notes · View notes

doakaptan · 3 years

Text

code lyoko: a hidden gem of early 2000s cartoons

pov: the year is 2009, every day you come home from school to watch an unidentified cartoon on channel JoJo; only for it to disappear and never come back to tv ever again.

Hello, it is that time of the week again. I will cut the chase for you so- Basically, this semester greatly tired me and in order to go along until the school year ends, I watch shows that evoke nostalgia to get high on the feeling of temporary happiness and dissociate for a while. I am not even addressing the monstrosity that is the midterm, father-son and the holy spirit help a bro out, please. And well, Code Lyoko is exactly that show.

(from left to right: Yumi, Jeremie, Aelita, Ulrich <3 and Odd) (there is also William in later seasons but I don’t claim him)

Originally released in 2003 but, received international release just as it was canceled in 2007, Code Lyoko is a French cartoon that graced everyone’s televisions at least once before it completely disappeared from it. For my experience, I encountered Code Lyoko on a channel called JoJo while I was waiting for Yugioh GX to start.

At first glance, it honestly looked horrifying with how children had comically big foreheads but, the story and the visuals hooked me right in. First of all, I could look past the giant foreheads because the characters were good-looking for my 8-year-old taste and, the background illustrations are still beautiful regardless. Despite being beautiful, the places didn’t change much and we only saw the school, dorms and the forest that was behind it along with the old factory and the word of Lyoko but, the budget for the show was not the biggest so most of the scenes were used and reused again and again throughout the seasons.

I’m not going to lie the visuals were not as pretty as I make them out to be but, I was 8 years old and it was the first time that I ever saw a cartoon that had both 2d and 3d animation.

Also, I fell in love with Ulrich but I’ll get to that.

No, no I won’t

This is also a call-out post to me because apparently, I love everything that came before the internet and being online 24/7. Just like in How I Met Your Mother, as we are watching the world is introduced to the internet and what being online means so if I were to say that the third season is an inquiry on what the internet is and, how it works, I would not be that far off.

( Also recently Code Lyoko was added to Netflix so yeah go stream it )

To dive right into the plot: a Japanese, and 3 French(???) middle school students walked into an abandoned factory through a sewage canal and discover a supercomputer that had an artificial world (Lyoko) in it with another artificial intelligence in the name of Aelita trapped in it. By contacting Aelita they alerted an evil system that lived within the Lyoko called X.A.N.A that manipulates and hacks electronic devices through the powers of Lyoko. So as any other logical human being would do they materialized Aelita into the real world and created her a fake identity to make her study with them while they fight against X.A.N.A in both the real world and the artificial one, Lyoko. Then the school principal asks, "Why did you do that?" And the overly intelligent 12-year old that somehow hacked into the national security system and created a fake identity for an artificial intelligence replied, "Well I am a classic nerd that fell in love with an artificial intelligence I had to make her real at some point!".

Yeah... that was not funny.....

Anyways, so this is basically the entire plot of the Code Lyoko brought to you by a walked into a bar joke that did not escalate!

4 friends along with their new materialized friend Aelita try to protect the world against X.A.N.A and whatever it is trying to achieve... Is it ever clear what X.A.N.A desires? I’m not sure. I’m currently rewatching the show and I’m on season 3 but I’m kind of lost on the plot since I only care about what’s going to happen between Ulrich and Yumi...

SO, the kids spent most of their time trying to defend their school, friends, or themselves against X.A.N.A and honestly it looks like a tiring job. They miss important days, quizzes, exams... man... I don’t think they are even attending school... But worry not! Lyoko has a program called "Return to the Past" and when they are successful in defending the world against X.A.N.A in Lyoko, they get to return to the past and not miss whatever that they dropped to reach the abandoned factory.

I vividly remember wishing, praying, crying myself to sleep to have a computer like that when I was a child. I still do actually. It would be great if I were to spend the whole day beating up various machines in a virtual world then set back the time to retake an exam that I already know the questions of. Ah, a university student can only wish...

Code Lyoko was mostly sloppy in animation due to the budget cuts that had to be made in order for the show the survive but, it made up with the heart and soul it carried. The characters are all fleshed out, just like the locations and you can sense how much thought went into each and every detail the show carried. I don’t know if it's still available on the internet but I would suggest everyone who read until this point to look into the bible of the show. It is one of the greatest bibles I’ve had the pleasure of reading through.

The show aired in Turkey in 2009 on channel JoJo. The entirety of the first season and a few episodes from the second season were aired but it was pulled from airing shortly after to give Yugioh GX more slots since it entered its final season. One of the reasons was probably because JoJo pulled most of its audience from airing Yugioh. I would not blame them since I discovered Code Lyoko while I was waiting for Yugioh as well.

After Code Lyoko was pulled off from airing I forgot about it and did not think about it until recently. During our first year, while I was talking Asya’s ear off about an unrelated cartoon, I randomly remembered the theme song of Code Lyoko, and all came back to me. The sweet nostalgia. I also remember making my friends at the table watch a few episodes of it during our lunchbreak.

I am honestly glad that Code Lyoko was not one of the cartoons that got away from me. Aside from the addicting nostalgia, it gives me, it holds such a special place in my heart that I don’t think any other show can fill (maybe Yugioh GX can fill it but I will have to debate it with myself for a while).

So please, if you have time give this low-budget french cartoon a chance it will not disappoint you.

(also just a warning ulrich and yumi’s pining is one of the slowest of burns I’ve ever witnessed so be careful while rooting for them)

#man i love code lyoko #with my whole heart #i wish it had more seasons #it left on a cliffhanger jokes on you #ulrich i was in love with you when i was 8 plz call me back #also i still cannot believe this was real #code lyoko #code lyoko come back #ulrich stern #ulrich üzümlü kekim #yumi ishiyama #aelita schaeffer #odd della robbia #franz hopper dalgana bak aslanım #lyoko warriors #william sen de dalgana bak aslanım

70 notes · View notes

steve0discusses · 3 years

Text

S5 Ep12: Brand New Mokuba Just Dropped

My tumblr has decided that it can’t save drafts again. Which sure is a problem I keep having but no one else seems to have...but were back. Back and ready to talk about cards.

First off, lets address the best thing about this episode, it’s the return of The A Team animation team! Dunno if it’s the same ones that did the seasons before, but it is a pretty good team this episode, so there’s lots of that to look forward to. Everyone is now 2 feet taller (Kaiba is 4 feet taller) and there’s just some really nice shots going on. It’s not as shiny as other seasons, which makes me think it might be a different team or a different studio using a different method (you don’t really see them playing with line weights anymore which makes it seem like a different method to me) but still--it’s a nicer looking episode today.

So we start off this episode with Seto begging us all to forget the hell that just happened and just get on with it. Of course, no one’s gonna do that, because yo, what just happened was kind of weird.

And because there’s only like...I dunno...maybe 2 episodes left in this arc? (kind of a quick arc, honestly) Leon decides to do a complete personality reversal. Although, it’s really hard to do a reversal when you didn’t have a personality in the first place...so I guess this more Leon showing us A personality--and I’ll take it.

He’s a little jackass now, but it’s youknow...still Leon so it’s not really that bad. Like we deal with Seto on the reg, so I feel like Leon as a jackass is just like...well that’s just how you play cards in this universe.

Everyone speculates whether or not Seto actually did a crime, and a SURPRISING number of them said he did not! Weird! But hey...I’ve gone over a billion times before, their memory is like when you throw popcorn into the ocean--it just fffzt’s and then it’s gone.

Roland was THIS close to actually saving Kaiba corp a huge hassle for once. This Close, Roland. You almost did it.

(read more under the cut)

I love that Roland has decided to give all these teens maybe the uncoolest nicknames in the entire world, and the teens have not made any indication whether they do or do not appreciate their alliteration nicknames.

But despite the fact that although Roland uses these opportunities behind the microphone to embarrass them just SO MUCH, the Kaibas still persist in having him introduce most of the matches. It makes it feel like the Kaibas freakin love this. They love his Dad jokes. I cannot tell if they are like “yes, please embarrass my friends.” of it they’re like “yes. Roland that was so cool. Yeah Leaping Leon. Good one! You’re so cool!” Because they don’t know what fun is.

Also, look what I see in the sky.

Truly a sign that they have overcome their trauma of seasons 2-3.

Or maybe they had a lot of blimps laying around and this is a completely unrelated blimp? Either way, I’m glad they can still handle the sight of a blimp.

And then, just out of nowhere, Mokuba hit puberty.

Which I mean, it was inevitable. It was going to happen some day. Luckily, we will be getting a new Mokuba this episode to make up for the fact that this one has done A Flirt and it was probably a completely innocent turn of phrase he has no idea is a double entendre but do the writers know that?

And while we ruminate the decisions there, lets bask in the glory of purple staircase.

This is such a purple staircase!

On another, identical staircase walks Leon, who gets to have a discussion with Zigfried, who probably just stood next to the wall and just chameleon’ed in here without getting caught cuz coincidentally this staircase dresses like him.

Freakin Mai?

Anyway, lets start this duel where like...I dunno, it’s a little late to start stealing souls, but maybe Leon will do a stab? (He will not)

So glad the storyboarder is back to kind of flex. I don’t normally see Roland drawn with this much attention. Look at him go. That’s the stance a grown man takes when he’s ready to embarrass a bunch of teens.

Kaiba writes a speech introducing himself, or Roland just kinda made up a speech as if Kaiba hadn’t asked him to do that. Either way it’s kind of a big way to talk yourself up--but he is trying to talk up the theme park so people will actually like...go. So it makes sense.

Also what is this nonsense where people worldwide are watching a theme park opening match? Card culture is so weird because we’ve noticed in other seasons there are people that don’t play cards, and I feel like they’re not watching this for fun. It’s like when I watch news unfold--they’re watching to see if they have to raid the toilet paper aisle and the canned goods again to prepare for yet another onslaught of card nonsense.

Legit Mokuba was like “Look at my bro. Look at how he gave up dueling to throw this nice tourney for everyone!” and it’s like...Mokuba...he just dueled...Mokuba...he’s putting all the profits directly in your pockets this is hardly a martyr up here.

Seto Kaiba decided to inform the world that he would have won if he was actually playing and that was sure a statement he made after losing to Yugi like...3 times now? Several times.

Everyone else converses how Leon’s acting weird. I don’t know why they care all of a sudden, because no one acts normal playing this game, but the plot desires them to care.

Which is when we find out...

...the new Mokuba...

That’s right. He was a Mokuba the whole time. For once we haven’t abducted Mokuba, instead...we have too many Mokubas.

This Mokuba even has hella long hair, too. I imagine if Mokuba proper had a ponytail it would probably look just like this but black. It would have been just--so good if he whipped off that ribbon and shook out his hair and it fluffed into a horrible Mokuba mess, but you know, that’s one of the many reasons why I don’t write for this series. That and I was like in high School when this came out.

(Please admire Kaiba’s head of Security who looks like he’s about to drop a poop out of terror. It’s a really small detail, but I appreciate that the storyboarder had him kind of antsy in the background)

Seto insists that the only one to beat Yugi Muto will be himself and it’s like...I know. That’s why I keep expecting someone to get stabbed by this tiny purple haired Mokuba. But instead, Leon’s too busy feeling mad that he’s not necessarily playing the game for fun.

But he’s still playing the game though? so I feel like Yami doesn’t have many stones to throw here. Leon hasn’t even cheated yet. (As if Yami isn’t cheating basically all the time by being 2 people in one body)

I can’t BELIEVE this show would throw that at me after the number of times I have seen Yami Muto nearly murder other people (and sometimes literally do a murder) out of revenge. Yami is basically a revenge god...like...show...what? It’s season 5, I thought we’ve basically cemented this in. Occasionally the show will just be all “card games are supposed to be fun though!!!” and it’s like...these are the last children on Earth who are playing card games for fun.

If anything, it should be Leon lecturing them on how to have fun. They just murdered a Great Leviathan with cards. Before that they were dealing with Noah, with Marik, with Pegasus, with Bakura. The times that Yugi has just played a game for fun has been...This Arc.

So maybe Yami is just begging himself to have fun for once. Maybe he’s just mad that he can’t play a single tournament without someone getting possessed? Maybe his frustrations really aren’t about little Leaping Leon, and more to do with Yami sick and tired of being a protagonist.

But, youknow, it’s not an anime, unless the protagonist hypocritically can get away with every sin out there and everyone else gets punished for it. So lets find out just how far Leon fell from fun-having grace with a flashback.

This Belle cosplayer went off in like...one of the most hilariously bad accents I’ve heard in a while, it was just so much, I’ll probably cap it because lolol.

But since Leon wasn’t actually in line to inherit the company, he has to sort of hole up in his room for his entire childhood. It’s kinda weird, since we can’t assume that Zigfried will either a.) live forever or b.) have or adopt or raise children in any capacity. But they’re pretty sure Zigfried will live forever, and in this universe--maybe.

Also, I’m really not sure why they have to dress like it’s 1890, but they sure are. The Victorian era just never left the Von Schroeder house. Like these women are wearing corsets to be in that dress, and you can’t BUY a corset to match this type of dress, you have to make your own, and I know, because in Quarantine, I got really into historical sewing videos.

I can’t believe I spent an entire year watching historical sewing videos. Holy crap. I don’t even sew.

But then again...Seto is kind of drawn like he wears a corset...so maybe people are still wearing them in the Yugioh universe? Maybe that’s how their fashion just works?

Guys...I analyze Yugioh fashion a lot but the fact that the Edwardians never freakin left this worldly plane is just...that’s canon to Yugioh. I really just want to sit back and analyze Yugioh fashion with a moodboard and try to connect all the dots logically as if they aren’t just one-off jokes, but I don’t know how I’d fit that on this post.

And like, one of y’all brought up in a comment in the last post that what’s neat about this arc is we are seeing Zigfried as what Seto would have been like if he hadn’t like...gotten cursed by Yugi Muto. So, going off that idea, I think it’s kinda fun that Zigfried’s outfit is a bit of a younger take on Pegasus’ whole look with the wrist lace and a fusion of Gozaburos look of wearing a cravat with a smoking coat. It’s fun to imagine that this is what Seto’s inner gremlin dresses like (which...now I think about it...was a thing from S1 where Yami defeated a Seto gremlin but...I don't remember much about it) Of course, Seto would also be hella dead if he hadn’t gone through the Yugi cycle, but it’s still a fun road to think about.

Plus, when we go down that road, it really makes this arc look even more like it’s just about Seto Kaiba’s therapy sesh to recover from the last several seasons that he’s accidentally (or intentionally??) invited the entire world to watch and that’s very funny to me.

Bro has informed me you can make a deck out of Jerry but could not show me any receipts.

...I mean that is Dartz right?

Like I know all the characters have cards of themselves IRL and all the characters are also based on cards that were made before they were on TV (with the exception of our main cast that was...youknow, a horror manga) but like...

...what’s up, Dartz?

Anyway, our little Mokuba decides to sneak out the house and run around the world at the ripe ol age of ... what I’m guessing is like 10-12, and is pretty sure he can just get away with that. Luckily, the crimes he’s committing are exactly the type of crimes that Zigfried needs.

(Pretty sure their Dad died or is incapacitated but OK, dub, go ahead and pretend that plot point didn’t go down last episode.)

Also, I’m really glad we got a good storyboarder for this part who was like “Zigfried looks...like that?” and still managed to make this character design really work this episode. In some parts they even gave Zigfried those wide Marik Eyes that are kind of ubiquitous with Yugioh. It just needs the right hands to draw it, and then any amount of...this outfit...can work.

So, just like when we met Mokuba in S1, he’s gonna do a duel on Yugi to save his family and probably also like Mokuba, not give a damn for how this game is supposed to be played. Luckily, this time Pharaoh doesn’t have any star chips lying around for this kid to just run around and steal before booking it out the back gate.

Yugi over there with his twitter-brand hot-takes, not knowing the difference between actual brainwashing and blackmail/family pressure.

(WHY IS MAI HERE?)

Look at that hatching!

Ah this is the 00′s content I’m here for! Check out the soft brush! The dodge and burn! Ah! Man this sure was an era of computer art! and stuff like this cost a lot of money to make and it looked ... like this!

Now I’m pretty sure we can make art that looks this dated on like...a free phone app.

PS please do not ever shade your art like this. This is what you don’t do. Do not do this. I will shed a single tear shaped like the Photoshop symbols for dodge and burn.

Also...guys...

next episode is Ep 13. Every season so far this show has been like “we’re normal, everything is normal” getting us complacent until exactly Ep 13, when everything gets really effed up. So...

will that happen? Will they continue this tradition into S5 or has it been a coincidence until now? Excited to find out.

Anyway, if you just got here, this is the link to read these from the beginning in chrono order:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#ygo #yugioh #yu gi oh #S5 #Ep12 #yugi muto #leon von schroeder #good because I forgot his other last name #zigfried von schroeder #seto kaiba #mokuba kaiba #roland #joey wheeler #tea gardner #the others who didn't say or do anything so I probably shouldn't tag them #Can't believe how quickly this arc is wrapping up

41 notes · View notes

venialsun · 3 years

Text

to begin with, take warning (2/3)

[read on ao3]

1 | 2 | 3

When Damian found his way to his first class of the day, having missed something called homeroom and the first ten minutes, the instructor shook his head playfully and made Damian introduce himself and explain what he had done over the summer. He could not say he had spent the past few months traipsing across the globe, hanging out with killers and thieves, and dying more often than not as he tried to escape the oppressive feeling that had descended upon Gotham after years of tragedies and increasing catastrophes. So he said he spent some time with his mother’s family on their private island, which was close enough, took a seat at the back of the room, and listened to his classmates reconnect with old friends and talk about their vacations and holidays with an increasing sense of annoyance.

The rest of the morning classes were no better. The teachers would guide the students through introductions and some small talk, go through their syllabus, and sometimes begin a lesson that Damian was entirely bored by. A few of his classmates tried to speak with him, asking him questions about his family, about himself, and smiling welcomingly at him, but the last thing he wanted to do was talk about that can of worms. He was not sure what he would say, how to spin his life into something half-truthful yet still benign. He’d never had to before. The rest of the students ignored him, and he was more than happy to ignore them right back.

By lunchtime, he was contemplating leaving and telling his Father he was done with this whole experiment. But Yanez’s yellow slip burned in his pocket, and Damian was not one to give up so easily. He would make it through the day, if nothing else.

The technology atrium was between the main academic building and the arts auditorium. A squat addition to the main building with walls made of glass and supported by steel beams, it stuck out like a sore thumb against the dark slate stones and high neo-Gothic arches and spires of the rest of Gotham Academy. Damian glowered as he neared and realized this was not only the technology atrium but, according to the placard over the main entrance, the Kenneth H. Wayne Technology Atrium.

Of course.

Inside, rows of computers and long tables encircled a central desk where a young woman sat typing at a laptop. She looked up as Damian approached and asked, “What’s up?”

Damian fished out the yellow slip and showed it to her. “Principal Yanez assigned me community tutoring or whatever.”

She took the slip and scanned it. “Already? Dang, kid, what’d ya do?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say. Hold on. Let me pull her notes.” She busied herself clicking and scrolling, then paused. “Oh, wow. I see. Well, hi, Damian. Glad to have you. I’m Miss Daisy.” She handed him back the slip.

“Daisy?” he repeated, incredulous.

“Well, Miss Daskalakis, but I got tired of all you runts mispronouncing it.”

“Miss Daskalakis,” said Damian, exactly.

Daskalakis smiled. “That was pretty good, actually. Okay, in about ten minutes, we should have some of the PSAT and SAT kids show up for their first prep. Make yourself comfortable at one of the tables, eat some of your lunch, and when they show up I’ll introduce you and explain the rundown.”

“Lunch?”

“You brought something to eat, didn’t you? Or you can go pick something up at the cafeteria.” She glanced at her laptop. “There’s still time, and since it’s the first day, there’s no rush.”

Damian hesitated. “Principal Yanez said I was to report here.”

“We’re not going to make you skip lunch, Damian,” said Daskalakis. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. Here, what do you want?” She pulled out her phone. “I’ll message my assistant to bring you something. He should already be at the cafeteria.”

“Anything vegetarian,” he said.

Daskalakis gave him a thumbs up. “Got it.”

He went to sit at one of the long tables. Surreptitiously, he pulled out his phone to figure out what in the world the PSAT and SAT were supposed to be. He was puzzling his way through the most confusingly worded, backwards maths questions he had ever read, when the door opened. Damian glanced up and froze.

The red-headed boy at the entrance to the atrium also froze, eyes wide like he had seen a ghost.

“Colin!” called Daskalakis. “Hey, this is Damian. Thanks for grabbing lunch.”

“Colin,” Damian said.

“Damian,” said Colin Wilkes. “Oh, my god. Damian. Dude!”

“Do you two know each other?” asked Daskalakis.

“No,” said Damian, at the same time Colin said, “Yes.” Then Colin said, “No,” at the same time Damian said, “Yes.”

“Cool,” said Daskalakis, dragging out the oo. “Cool, cool, cool. Can you guys figure that out? We have, like, five minutes.”

Colin approached and deposited what looked like a rice dish with vegetables in front of him. “Um, this is for you. I didn’t know what you wanted, so I got you a taco bowl minus the taco.”

“Thanks,” said Damian, accepting the not-taco bowl.

“So.” Colin sat across from him. “Long time no see, huh.”

Damian snorted. “I’ve been busy,” he said.

“No shit. Your family has been freaking out for like the past six months, saying you’re missing and Robin went rogue or something. Then the old Robin came back. The Titans restarted. Then there’s video of another Robin sword-fighting crime all over the world. I assume that was you. Dude, I thought you were dead.”

“To be fair,” said Damian as he opened his taco bowl and mixed the ingredients, “I was. A couple of times. Doesn’t seem to stick.”

Colin laughed. “Your mom?”

Damian chuckled, startling himself. “Something like that. Though the first time was a few years back. I was—gone—for nearly a year, and my Father resurrected me with alien magic.”

“Sick. I remember that,” said Colin. “You dropped off the face of the earth. Didn’t come by the orphanage anymore or sneak out with me for patrols. People were saying Batman went crazy. I thought you just decided you didn’t want to hang out anymore.”

“I—” Damian spooned some rice into mouth. Chewed, swallowed. Colin looked at him throughout, unrelenting. “I didn’t ignore you deliberately. And then after I came back, things were so…”

Colin waved a hand and unwrapped a greasy slice of pizza. He took a bite. “It’s cool, man. You literally just told me you’ve died multiple times. Plural. I can get over my hurt feelings. Seems kind of trivial in comparison.”

Damian frowned and ate some more rice. Colin ate his pizza. Then Damian set his fork down, resolute, grip tight on the handle. As evenly as he could, he said, “I apologize for not being a better friend to you.”

“Whoa.” Colin’s eyebrows shot up. His expression pinched with worry as he searched Damian’s face. “What happened, man?”

Damian swallowed.

Then the door opened again, and an older boy—sixteen or seventeen—peaked inside and asked, “Is this SAT prep?”

“Sure is,” said Daskalakis from the central desk. She stood and indicated Damian and Colin to follow her. “Come in, come in, I’ll set you up right over here.”

Damian stood. “Later,” he said in an undertone. “I’ll explain later. I promise.”

“Okay,” Colin agreed. “But if you disappear on me again, this time I know where you go to school, so there’s no use hiding.”

“Have you known me to ever hide from anything?”

Colin smirked and said nothing.

Damian’s face felt suddenly warm. “Shut up,” he said. “We have work to do.”

•

Surprisingly, tutoring his fellow students was not the disaster he thought it would be. There was some initial skepticism from the upperclassmen about being tutored by a fourteen-year-old, but after Daskalakis declared him “a genius prodigy or something, according to Yanez,” that eventually quieted. It helped that though the PSAT and SAT problems and questions were simple enough, the wording and specificity grated on him, and soon he was insulting the intelligence of the College Board and standardized tests in general. That endeared him to the upperclassmen, and afterward the rest of the lunch hour passed without trouble.

Colin sidled up next to Damian as he gathered his materials to leave and showed him a crumpled-up piece of paper. “What’s your next class?” he asked. It was his schedule.

“Physical education,” said Damian. He had already memorized his own.

“Oh, really? Sweet. Me, too. We’ll go to PE together. I met Coach Freeman at the orientation. I think you’ll like her. What about after?”

Damian listed off his afternoon classes: physical education, then biology, then ancient rhetorics, and ending with a free study period. They shared no core classes, only homeroom, lunch, and physical education. Colin teased him for taking the honors track, and Damian started to complain that the classes were not interesting let alone challenging. But then he got sidetracked by wondering why Colin was somehow not in the honors track but still Daskalakis’s assistant for community tutoring (which, Damian insisted, was a dumb idea for punishments and an even dumber name). Colin laughed and explained he mostly helped with the younger kids. He said he was good with them, thanks to all the practice he’d had helping the nuns wrangle traumatized orphans and foster kids while growing up in the orphanage.

“After all that, spoiled rich kids are easy,” Colin said. He nudged Damian in the ribs. “It’s why we’re friends.”

“I thought that was because we both liked beating up on creeps a little too much,” said Damian, wry.

Colin grinned, and for a moment his face seemed to take on the grisly severity of Abuse—Venom-distorted and menacing. “That too.”

Physical education—“Just call it PE, dude,” Colin said—was a bore, more than Damian had anticipated. After changing into their gym uniforms and the requisite round of introductions, Coach Freeman set them on an obstacle course made up of rubber tires and colorful ropes. Damian was not impressed. But he remembered what his Father had said about damaging school property and refrained from destroying the so-called obstacles as he passed his struggling classmates and returned to Coach Freeman.

“What now?” he asked. To his frustration, he had hardly broken a sweat.

“Excuse me,” said Freeman. “Why aren’t you on the course?”

“I’ve finished it.”

“You’ve finished it?” Freeman checked the stopwatch hanging from her neck. “In slightly under six minutes? I don’t think so. Did you take a shortcut?”

“No,” said Damian. “It was easy.”

“Right. Well, if it was so easy, then hop to it. Do it again,” she said. “And this time, I’ll be watching you.”

“Weren’t you already supposed to be doing that?” asked Damian, but he did not argue further and restarted the course. It was better than doing nothing and standing around like an invalid, anyway.

This time he forced himself to go slower, aware he had done something abnormal. But it wasn’t his fault he was above this child’s play. He jogged the 100 meters to the start of course, climbed up the wooden incline, jumped down, belly-crawled under the mesh ropes, alternated jumps between tires then between wooden slats, climbed the rope to ring a bell, balanced across the too-wide beams, swung from bar to bar, and finished off by climbing over three wooden walls of increasing height. At the last wall, he paused and pulled a girl who had been struggling for the last two minutes up and over. Then he jumped down and high-fived Colin, who had finished his first runthrough. Going slower had forced him to focus the strain on his muscles, and the burn in his body and clarity of mind was starting to feel comforting and familiar.

He jogged back to Coach Freeman. “Shall I go again?”

She clicked her stopwatch and stared at it. Then she stared at him. “Slightly under eight minutes,” she said. “What’s your name, son?”

“I’m not your son.” He crossed his arms. “And name’s Damian. Damian Wayne.”

“Wayne, huh?” Freeman grinned. “Well, Mr. Wayne, Gotham Academy’s happy to have you. What’s your poison?”

“Pardon?”

“Your sport, Mr. Wayne. Your sport. Everyone’s got one. And if you don’t, not to worry. The Academy’s got a team for everything. You’ll be attending the end-of-day assembly, correct?”

“It is mandatory,” said Damian.

“Perfect,” said Freeman. “The main teams will be doing showcases there. Scope them out, see what you think. General tryouts are in two weeks, and I expect to see you there.”

Damian grimaced. “Do you now.”

Freeman nodded. “Sure do.” Then her attention drifted; her nose scrunched, she blew her whistle and screamed across the field, “You two, under the mesh! Keep your hands to yourselves! No one needs to see all that!”

•

The rest of the day passed quickly. He ran the course twice more, for the hell of it, alternating between pausing to help a classmate over a particularly difficult hurdle or shouting at them to hurry the hell up so Damian could finish already. He got used to the rhythm of it, the formula of general teacher attention interspersed with student social-play. By Ancient Rhetorics, he was an old hat at describing his incredibly fun island adventure halfway across the world and not scowling whenever anyone bemoaned their envy at the life of a rich socialite without responsibilities or true problems. He had even managed to hold a few short conversations with two or three of his classmates, though for the life of him he could not remember their names. A day of nothing but introductions had thoroughly fried his brain and prevented him from retaining anything more complicated than Jessica—because there did seem to be an awful lot of Jessicas.

His phone buzzed as the early bell rang and he merged into the streaming crowd of students heading for the auditorium for the back-to-school assembly.

It was a message from his Father:

Dinner tonight.

He frowned and tapped out a quick reply.

“Hey, Damian, over here!”

Damian looked up. Across the auditorium, Colin was surrounded by a group of teenagers and waving him over. Damian approached, pocketing his phone as he went. Then he paused and groaned when he recognized the small girl with yellow hair ribbons hovering excitedly between Colin and another group of older-looking students.

Fuck it. Damian ducked behind some large boys in jerseys and helmets—not hiding, per se, just utilizing his extensive array of evasive maneuvers to achieve a desired outcome—but it was too late. She had already spotted him.

“Oh my crap! Damian! You’re here?!”

Damian sighed and accepted his fate. With as much dignity as he had left, he emerged from behind the football team.

“Of course you two know each other,” he muttered.

“Huh?” said Colin.

“It is you!” exclaimed Maps Mizoguchi. “Olive, look who it is!”

From the group of older students, a girl with platinum blonde hair glanced over and, seeing Damian, scowled. “Oh,” said Olive Silverlock. “I did hear a Wayne was coming to Gotham Academy. Weren’t you expelled already?”

“You’ll find I’m hard to get rid of, Silverlock,” said Damian.

“Yanez is a softie, of course she let you back in,” continued Olive, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Hammerhead would’ve rather died.”

“You guys know each other?” asked Colin, looking concerned and glancing between them.

“No,” said Damian and Olive, at the same time Maps said, “Heck yeah! We’re all friends!”

“Doth mine ears deceive me? Did I hear Wayne—as in billionaire, more-money-than-I-would-know-what-to-with, bordering-on-unethical-wealth Wayne?” An older boy with sunglasses popped up behind Damian and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Good sir, might I interest you in—”

“Remove yourself from my person at once before I break your arm.”

The boy held up his hands and stepped away. “Got it, got it. No touchy. I can respect that,” he said. “So, Wayne, how do you feel about acquiring some fireworks for your own personal mischief?” He tilted his sunglasses down, conspiratorially. “At a discounted price, of course. Us trouble-makers have to stick together, y’know.”

“Quit it, Colton,” snapped Olive.

“Yeah,” laughed Colin. “That was Damian being nice.”

“You associate with these people?” Damian asked.

Colin shrugged. “I’m a part-time member of the Detectives Club.”

“Pizza club,” corrected Maps.

“The what.”

“Nerd club that solves school mysteries and shit,” said a girl from Colin’s group of younger students. She waved. “Hey, I’m Jess. Nice to meet you.”

Another fucking Jessica.

“Damian,” said Damian, putting up a hand in greeting.

This started another round of introductions and names he immediately deleted from his memory. Who knew Colin was so popular? It was the first day of school; he had not thought it was possible to align yourself with so many friends so quickly unless your name was Dick Grayson.

Slowly, both groups of younger and older students shuffled forward to their seats, helped along by the half-hearted encouragement of manic-looking adults. Somehow, Damian found himself squished between both groups, Colin on one side and Maps on another, as they chatted across him about summer and clubs and the teachers they already hated. Sensing an opportunity Damian told them of his run-in with Headmaster Hammer that morning, which triggered another round of commiserating laughter and louder complaints about what a hardass Hammerhead was—for they called the headmaster Hammerhead. Olive and Maps were the only ones to defend him, citing his one-man defense of the Academy when Joker had tried to take over the city two years ago.

“So?” said Damian. “Joker’s a bitch. He tries to take over the city all the time. That’s not impressive.”

By which a stuffy-looking blond boy in the row behind them became offended, scoffing, and Damian begrudgingly felt his respect grow for Colin’s friends as they immediately dog-piled on the boy for his shit opinion. Then no one could agree who of the Gotham rogues wasn’t a little bitch. And the argument devolved from there until Olive said Batman was a little bitch, too. Everyone laughed.

The lights dimmed. An off-key note rang out as the school band warmed up, and Headmaster Hammer and Principal Yanez stepped on stage.

Slowly in fits and starts, the auditorium quieted, and the assembly began.

next ->

#spades #fic #damian wayne #colin wilkes #olive silverlock #maps mizoguchi #dc

9 notes · View notes