#you can’t tell me he wasn’t nerfed by his morals

[right-brain-of-froggy2]

Christmas in July Day 20

Another late post, sorry y'all! Tomorrow there will be two posts to make up for it ;) I've never written text conversations beyond a few short blurbs so I hope this writing style wasn't too odd or OOC for the bros. Here is Text Me Merry Christmas!

A little key for names:

The Child = Alan Squid Games but better = Gordon Sister = Kayo Man Scented Candle = Virgil EOS’s dad = John OG G.O.A.T. = Scott

AO3 link here!

Squid Games but better changed “family #blessed” group chat name to “ho-ho-hoes”

Squid Games but better changed the group photo

O.G. GOAT: Why do you do these things Gordon?

Squid Games but better: I think the question is rather why not?

O.G. GOAT: Because board members are nosy and look at phones whenever a notification pops up

Sister: Well better they know now you’re a hoe than find out later

O.G. GOAT: Kayo no

The Child: How much longer will you be in New York? The cookies are getting stale and Virgil won’t let me eat them until you’re back :(

Squid Games but better: DIBS ON ALL THE REINDEER SUGAR COOKIES

Sister: Didn’t you guys just make them an hour ago? No way are they stale

O.G. GOAT: I meant to tell you guys this morning, the board meetings aren’t going to be done before Christmas. Amelia is saying that I’ll have meetings with TI shareholders until the 26th since the last quarter got pushed back

The Child: That’s during all of Christmas! So not fair!

EOS’s Dad: You do know you’re the CEO right?

The Child: I just might cry

Squid Games but better: HE SPEAKS. JOHN SPEAKS.

O.G. GOAT: It’s not up to me, it’s the ones investing in TI that are insisting we get this done now. Amelia tried but her hands are tied too

Man Scented Candle: Sorry bro :/

O.G. GOAT: Me too, I know how much you guys look forward to Christmas

Sister: It’s not your fault

Sister: Seriously, we get it. We’ll manage somehow! Tracy power!

Man Scented Candle: No we won’t. You’re the only sane one in this whole family

Squid Games but better: Keep your phone charged Scotty me boy

O.G. GOAT: I will. I probably should go back out there. They think I’ve been in the bathroom this whole time

Man Scented Candle: Simple but effective excuse. I approve

Squid Games but better: *photo*

Squid Games but better: *photo*

Squid Games but better: *photo*

Squid Games but better: *photo*

Man Scented Candle: okay Gordon I think he gets the point

The Child: *photo*

The Child: *photo*

Sister: Gordon I can see you on Alan’s phone

The Child: but Allie can’t see me

The Child: so

The Child: *photo*

The Child: *photo*

Squid Games but better: He took his phone back :(

EOS’s Dad: Do I still have to come down if Scott’s not there?

Sister: You make it sound like you don’t want to see us

Squid Games but better: Don’t be freaking *rude*

EOS’s Dad: But he gets an excuse to not be an active member of family activities and I already have a headache

Squid Games but better: I’ll make EOS make you come down

EOS’s Dad: She wouldn’t betray me

Squid Games but better: I’ve got some prime blackmail that she’s keen to

Squid Games but better: Don’t tempt me

O.G. GOAT: Oh my god Gordon why do you need to document every single minute of wrapping presents

O.G. GOAT: Who even did you buy nerf guns and a llama sweater for?

O.G. GOAT: And no blackmail. We’re a family with morals

Sister: I was very concerned about that too

Sister: *the llama I mean

The Child: Literally none of us have any connection to llamas

Squid Games but better: It’s a surprise!

Squid Games but better: But the llama is for Jason Panes. We’re doing a mailing Secret Santa with the ol’ WASP Squad 40

The Child: Gordo has friends??

EOS’s Dad: I think he’s lying

Squid Games but better: I will hunt you down. I will haunt your dreams. I will make you regret ever being a dick to me.

The Child: Ooh scary. Scary Gordon! I’m afraid!

Man Scented Candle: Scott, we need you to mediate. I don’t want to

Man Scented Candle: Scott

Man Scented Candle: Scott

Man Scented Candle: Scotty

Man Scented Candle: Scotty

Man Scented Candle: Scotty

Man Scented Candle: Scooter

Man Scented Candle: Scooter

Man Scented Candle: Scooter

Man Scented Candle: Mr. Tracy

Man Scented Candle: Mr. Tracy

Sister: I’m going out on a limb here, but I think he’s back in a meeting.

Squid Games but better created the group “Renegades”

Squid Games but better changed the group photo

Squid Games but better: We’re totally flying out to NYC right?? I don’t want that idiot to be alone on Christmas

Sister: Yes

The Child: Yes

Man Scented Candle: Yes

EOS’s Dad: I guess

Sister: Okay team we’ve got an hour to load Tracy One. Gordon and Alan, load all the presents and decorations. Virgil, pack clothes for everyone. I’ll do pre-flight checks and call ahead to the airstrip. John take the space elevator down and don’t rush because we don’t need another incident

Squid Games but better: You get bossy when you’re put in charge

Squid Games but better: This is why I think we should go with my idea of loading Tracy One in an hour, me and Allie will load all the presents and decorations. Virgil, pack clothes for everyone. Kayo will do pre-flight checks and call ahead to the airstrip. John, take the space elevator down and you can rush because you’ll have time to pass out and drink orange juice on the flight over

Sister: thanks gordon

The Child: Let’s do this!

Group chat: “ho-ho-hoes”

Man Scented Candle: How much longer until they’re gonna let you out of jail?

O.G. GOAT: Hopefully before I actually have to go to jail for murder with these stupid people

Man Scented Candle: Language! There are children present!

EOS’s Dad: EOS says she won’t let you go to jail

O.G. GOAT: Is that a threat?

EOS’s Dad: She says it’s a promise for her “favorite of John’s older brothers”

O.G. GOAT: I’m your only older brother

The Child: That’s what the government wants you to think…

Man Scented Candle: But ETA?

O.G. GOAT: Probably not until nine so I’ll get takeout from somewhere

O.G. GOAT: That’s around noon on the Island I think

O.G. GOAT: I can video call you guys? It won’t quite be as fun in person but it’s the best we can do

Squid Games but better: Aww Scotty misses his siblings

Sister: Gross

The Child: Let us know when you’re done!

Scott checks his phone for any new messages. There aren’t any and he can’t help but feel a little twinge of jealousy. His siblings are probably enjoying Christmas dinner after opening presents this morning. Free time is rare meaning if one brother is missing, then too bad for them. It just so happened to be Scott this time. On Christmas.

He gathers up his briefcase and suit jacket as the automatic taxi slows. The door slides open with a recorded message to be careful exiting. Scott steps out into the cold street. A few other people are on the street, similarly dressed in business attire with no holiday spirit. Scott kicks away a chunk of snow before entering into the penthouse lobby. He greets Donald at the front desk before heading up to the top floor.

The elevator dings on his floor. The top penthouse suite. Scott finds himself standing outside of his solid black door. It’s the only unit on the top floor so even here in the hallway, Scott is isolated. Scott’s stomach turns with something sadly bitter. He types in the key code for the door.

“Merry Christmas Scotty!”

Scott stumbles back into the hallway as his arms fill with Alan and Gordon.

“What-?”

The two pull back as Scott finds himself wrapped in tinsel and a sticky bow in his hair. He looks around his penthouse as he takes off the ribbons. What was once simple grays and blues is now hidden by tinsel, twinkling lights, and everything sparkling red and green. There’s a decorated tree in the center of the lounge with presents. His siblings are scattered across the room in holiday themed pajamas. Gordon is clicking through the streaming services on the TV to find a Christmas movie. Alan and Virgil are fixing a few ornaments on the Christmas tree. Even John is down from orbit. He’s curled on the couch with his anti- motion sickness patch behind his ear and a box of crackers in his lap.

“You didn’t really think we’d leave you alone on Christmas, did you?” Kayo asks, coming out of the kitchen with a steaming mug of hot chocolate. “Now get into your outfit!”

In conjunction with Kayo, Virgil tosses him a wrapped gift. Scott tears into the paper to find his new pajamas- a soft cotton set with Rudolph print. He laughs, smiling genuinely for the first time since coming to New York. “I love you all so much!” A pause. “Most of the time.”

“That’s all we ask for bro.”

“Sappy! John was just worried he would actually have to bail you out,” Gordon teases. “Now sit down before you collapse from exhaustion! We flew all the way out here and I’m not letting this chance to relax go to waste.”

“Relax? Oh no,” Kayo warns.

Scott hears the cocking of an airsoft gun. Turning around, he finds the gun aimed right at his chest. Gordon passes him a Nerf handgun- cocked and loaded- under the blanket.

“Your move.”

#thunderbirds #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds 2015 #thunderbirds fanfiction #scott tracy #john tracy #virgil tracy #kayo kyrano #gordon tracy #alan tracy #christmas #christmas in july

[ajax1230]

MHA Seasons: 1, 2, 3&4.

MHA Seasons if Snipe had no morals: 1

#mha #bnha #bnha fandom #mha snipe #you can’t tell me he wasn’t nerfed by his morals #season 1 USJ attack would’ve been IT #y’all telling me Snipe couldn’t have sent Shiggy on the express train to God with his honing bullets?! #as Eminem would have said: one shot #damn these heroic morals! #Jesus himself was holding our boy back #Snipe appreciation but damn

[ganymedesclock]

Tangenting off the last post, basically what I dislike about power fantasies is that I think it can be really tempting to give your favorite character / the main character in a story a bunch of advantages, and I won't deny anybody can have their power fantasy and eat it too- it's an old staple for a reason and it'll probably long outlast me. We all, sometimes, want to see a character we love do something really cool.

But.

For me, personally, I think a lot of the stories I'm drawn to or try to recreate work better by having dense ensemble casts who are kind of in lockstep with each other- not all on the same page or powers, but I've never liked contexts that rely too heavily on Stormtrooper Marksmanship or other ways where the 'extras' have to take an unrealistic competence nerf to make the heroes stand out.

I like the unpredictable factor that even if you're the chosen hero of some-or-such, and frighteningly overpowered, raiding a base with ten Ordinary Guys, that each of those ordinary guys can be a threat to you, especially if they gang up- that there's no level of power that outright trivializes the Little Guys. To me, I think this makes it feel more earned if and when the hero does something cool, because you know it wasn't effortless.

In general, as a writer and as a reader, I like stories where people don't necessarily all feel idealized, but everyone comes off like they have a realistic amount of capability to find their butt in a dark room. Even if a character is being highly ineffectual, if they actually have a character reason for it, it sticks what point I'm actually trying to make about them clearer. 

In the short-term, it might feel satisfying if a pompous noble who's suspicious of a main character is just a complete idiot who doesn't know what's going on because he's stupid, and he's surrounded by people who flatter a wholly imagined intellect- but I think it's a lot more realistic and speaks more to his actual character flaws if the noble is genuinely intelligent and perceptive- just self-satisfied and vain.

And this kind of stuff can turn malicious fast, or feel like it’s in bad taste. The attitude of “yes, you’re RIGHT, every person who doesn’t immediately flatter your sensibilities about what’s important is actually a vapid idiot who’ll never have any insight or perception you need to care about” is a very bad way to manage your bit part characters. It cheapens your hero, no matter how cool, to being the lowest common denominator- is this guy actually worth respecting or is he just the only guy who isn’t “weird”, “gross”, “stupid” or all of the above? If Our Hero is worth telling a story about, they would remain worth it if everybody else also had interest and depth, right?

I’m certainly not saying everybody else has a moral imperative to give every bit part character an internal plot and characterization and history that may never see the light of day because they’re ultimately here to tell somebody the baker was attacked by the troll mafia or something, but it’s important to check yourself on how and in what ways you signal this character is “nobody important”.

If for nothing else, making your side characters and extras not at-a-glance distinguishable from your main characters due to giving everybody a general level of nuance and detail makes it that much easier to set up twists by putting important characters in a crowd and not having them all immediately stand out. You can’t play spot-the-protagonist if everyone has crazy yugioh hair!

#writing ruminations

[stxleslyds]

MY TOUGHTS ON PART THREE OF RED HOOD BY CHIP ZDARSKY :)

A DC RENDITION OF THE SONG “MOTHER KNOWS BEST” FROM TANGLED.

Here I will leave the links to my reviews of Part 1 and Part 2

Well, here we are, three issues in this story of only six parts and i still cant tell if i like it or not. What i know for sure tho is that Zdarsky never read any Red Hood books, i had my suspicions but now i am at least 95% sure.

This Jason has been nerfed. We had a perfectly balanced Jason back in 2005 he was smart, skilled, confident and strategic. Then from 2011 to 2020 (let’s put the fact that Lobdell is trash aside for a moment) Jason was skilled, he had the whole “chosen one” thing going on with the all-castle, and in some moments you could even see him being quick witted and confident. But now in this first half of this story he is extremely insecure, his skill set and expertise is barely there and is presented as just reckless. 

The other day i was talking about how DC treats Jason, how they just can’t decide on who he is, what motivates him or what he wants. His personality is a whole ass mess, it was fine in 2005 and 2010 when Winick wrote him but then Lobdell from years 2011 to 2020 just couldn't decide what he wanted to do with Jason or his relationship with Batman and his rules. After Lobdell finally left Jason was passed around people who either only read Lobdell's work, or didn't read anything from him or didn't take into account Jason's life because their book was set in a future that may never happen. 

What i am trying to say is that Jason doesn't have a personality, and writers don't really add things to the Jason that we “know”, what they do is start his story from zero over and over again. There is no consistency to Jason's character and while you could argue that maybe this new start could be the definite version of Jason Todd/Red Hood i will point out that this nerfed version of him is a major disservice to the character that he was when he was brought back to DC.

It’s simply not nice. 

And in this particular issue the “Jason isn't that good at this whole vigilante gig” is even more pushed because of the whole “batman knows best” bullshit. I am not getting this (anthologies) book with a Red Hood story just for Batman to come in and be like “I am actually good at this job, you know nothing AND i have the moral high-ground”, this is NOT it.

If you are reading a Red Hood story chances are that you will be interested in Red Hood not Batman. 

Oh one more thing, Jason was an excellent Robin. He was kind, smart and skilled. I liked the flashbacks in UtRH because it showed Jason being all that but he also understood a couple of things about the kind of criminals that Gotham had, your common thug is easily scared of the concept of Batman but the dress-ups knew that no matter what they did the Bat would never kill them, that’s what Jason thought about criminals there.

This Robin Jason is treated rather poorly by Zdarsky at times, he feels insecure and inferior to Dick but he is also dismissive of him and the Robin mantle in the first issue, now in this one he is shown as way too reckless (which is kinda bad because it feeds into DCs favorite trope of “Jason’s death was Jason’s fault”) and his stance on “low level” criminals is weird, like it was made clear that drug related criminals are Jason’s biggest issue, thieves were not. 

Those are my general thoughts on this issue and the current state of Jason’s characterization. I have some panels from this issue that i want to talk about in more depth tho, so here we go. 

The issue stars were we left off once more, Tyler defends Jason and when Batman asks who he is Tyler says that he is the Blue Hood, that was really sweet of him, that child is adorable and he needs to be protected. 

Once the Bat distracts Tyler Jason tells the Bat that the man he killed was Tyler’s dad. 

There are a couple of things i want to point out from these panels, Jason feels incredibly guilty, not about killing Andy but about leaving Tyler in a situation that is similar to the one he was left in when his own mother died. He still believes that Andy was not a good man and deserved to be dead, after all he was drugging his own son and was the reason Tyler’s mom overdosed and is now in the hospital. It just hits incredibly close to home for Jason and i understand completely. 

The other thing i want to point out is that Jason says “I know your rules. No killing in Gotham” so, this is (to me) confirmation that Jason hasn’t killed in a long time and that he has been sticking to the Bat's rules (at least in Gotham). Andy (a drug-dealer) is the only person that Jason has killed since the events of UtRH (that are apparently canon in this story because it was mentioned in the first issue). 

Following this conversation the Bat says that he will take care of Tyler’s mother (yikes, i really thought in my last post that Jason was the one who would have tried to get her the help she needed, to me it seems more appropriate if Jason does it given that this is his story but what do I know) 

This is where this Red Hood story transforms into the Batman show.

Not only will Bruce take care of Tyler's mom but he will clean up the mess and shut down the making of the drug all by himself. Jason tells him that he will do it but the Bat tells Jason that if he wants to do it they will have to do it together because there is no way he is letting Jason out of his sight, he made a mess!

Yes, nothing like making the lead character look incompetent at his job. Love that for Jason.

Before the team up starts Batman and Red Hood go to Leslie's place to leave Tyler with her. This is a good moment only because there is a dog involved, well…Tyler, Jason and a dog are involved, best panel in the whole issue? I think yes.

Maybe I have a couple more panels that are my favs in this issue, here they are, a lil bit of positivity in this extra bitter post.

Now I will be honest, I hate Batman (Bruce’s Batman, love Dick Bats he was the MVP) so him saying that he is helping a Robin makes me want to shoot him. You are not helping; you are overtaking, as you do. Never a team player, the Batgod must always be the center of the show.

Back in the new cave Bruce talks to Jason about the drug and who he thinks might be behind it's production. He also makes sure to let Jason know that he is very smart and might be the only person outside of Crane's circle that knows how analyze a very unstable compound…weird flex but okay. He also teases Jason about his detective skills. Yay.

Flashback time! Get ready!

Robin Jason and Batman are at a crime scene and Jason doesn’t seem to be in the mood to play CSI: Gotham with Bruce.

At one moment Jason says “and then we will stomp the guy who did this” (“this” being murder), which makes Jim Gordon (who came to see if batman was done playing Sherlock Holmes) uncomfortable, so Batman tells Jason to wait for him. As Jason is going he sees someone acting suspicious.

Back to present day Batman and Red Hood are visiting the woman that created the compound that makes Fear Gas, the interrogation starts well but because this is the Batman show and Jason is bad at reading people and asking questions we have a scene that shows Jason being a bit too much.

I honestly thought that the first question was fair, but then after they leave the office they were in Batman basically goes on a rant about the things that Jason missed.

Ok, I get it Batman = good vigilante. Red Hood = Incompetent.

Zdarsky is honestly trying to make us believe that Jason hasn’t picked up any of those things, in his years as Robin with Batman AND Nightwing? They both taught him, there is no way Jason doesn’t know the basics of how to read people. Also do you guys remember Jason in UtRH and Lost Days? That guy read people perfectly, how is UtRH canon in this story, did Jason lose his skills in the explosion when he blew up the Joker?

As if that wasn’t enough Batman calls Red Hood reckless after they don’t agree on what to do next.

To this I say the following: Never again make me believe that Jason will willingly work with Batman. They don’t work together and neither are willing to meet each other halfway, even less let the other lead. This makes the idea of Jason following the Bat’s rules and him being part of the “Batfamily” the joke that it actually is.

They don’t work well together anymore; bring duality back to Gotham 2021.

Back in the past where the previous flashback is resumed we have Jim telling Batman that the new Robin seems a bit too rough around the edges. Did Jim ever meet Dick as Robin? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Dick was a sweetheart but he also beat criminals alongside batman every night. It just doesn’t feel like what Jason said was that much of a violent statement or anything, maybe I just don’t get it.

But don’t worry if you don’t get it, because we are shown Robin Jason going after that suspicious man, he is beating him asking if he knows anything about the murder or what exactly he was doing so close to the crime scene when Batman arrives. Through Batman we are told that that man was no longer a criminal, to which Jason says this, “…The guy is a jewel thief! He will always be a thief” and Batman responds “I refuse to believe that. Didn’t I meet you in the middle of stealing the Batmobile’s tires?”

I can’t believe Bruce went full “It’s over Jason. I have the moral high ground” on Robin Jason.

I mean Jason is OOC, we know this, but he has to be that way in order to make Batman look better when compared to a child. DC hates Jason Todd #Confirmed.

It kinda reminds me of that thing DC does with Dick and Barbara, Dick is skilled and smart as long as Barbara isn’t in the room, if she is then Dick will forget to check if there is someone inside his apartment and then be thrown across the room by her and then be told that he sucks at putting security in his living space.

Moving on...back to the present one last time Jason is interrogating a man while he dangles him from the edge of a building (did Dick teach him that? I bet he did.) After getting some information he calls Oracle so he can make sure that the place he is going to is safe. Oracle tells him the she will help him but she did not like the fact that the last time she helped him someone ended up dead.

Now, fair warning, Barbara and Jason big NO for me and after Geoff Johns and his antics in Three Jokers I have zero love for their “team-ups”.

Jason says this, 

Believing in him? Excuse me? Chonky, baby, she only helped you find a building.

All I can do at this point is pray to whichever god or whoever hears that this does not lead to Jason pinning for Barbara. We don’t need it (Barbara doesnt need it), I might be overreacting, I hope I am, but nobody wants that kind of drama right now, thanks.

When he arrives to the place he was looking for I think everyone can tell that it’s a trap, everyone but Jason apparently. 

How on earth does Jason not realize it’s a trap up until it’s too late? Are you joking? Is this a Red Hood story? Are we really doing this? Just how incompetent is Jason in Zdarsky’s eyes?

Freeze…is it Freeze? I don’t care but he is there, he freezes Jason and that’s the end of the issue.

Listen, I wish I could say that this is the worst Jason has been treated and that this book is horrible, I wish but I can’t. I can’t do it because this isn’t the worst characterization or book of Jason, this is still a pretty good story, could it be better? Yes.

I mean this story is written by someone who obviously doesn’t know Jason and that sucks but it still isnt the worst characterization and it messes me up. Three Jokers was worse than this, certain plot decisions in Future State: Red Hood were worse than this (in my opinion) and Lobdell’s New52 RHatO was pure trash (that is the worst book, just horrible please dont read it). 

I am saying this only to make it clear that even tho this issue was painful (mostly if you don’t like Batman) I still have hope that it can turn out to be good. I cant help it, i want and need this story to be good and there is still time for it to get better. 

Alright thats all i have to say, let me know what you thought about this issue and my review, bye!

#jason todd #red hood #batman urban legends #urban legends red hood #dc comics #red hood outlaw #robin jason todd

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on Even More Games

[vague, unspecific spoilers for Heaven’s Vault, Later Alligator, and Life is Strange 2]

Thoughts on Heaven’s Vault

Heaven’s Vault is a game about archeology, which means it’s also a game about incompleteness. This is very clever. Inkle - also the developers of 80 Days, which I will play someday! - specialize in deep narratives that can be explored many, many ways, allowing for a lot of player choice. You make a lot of small decisions - do you share a discovery with the trader in exchange for a valuable item, or hide it so he doesn’t plunder it? do you go looking for your missing friend, or let her stay missing in case there are people trying to follow you to her? These all have their own little arcs and resolutions, and there are so many of them, and so many ways they can play out, that the game can never be played the same way twice. The overall story begins and ends in the same place and theoretically hits the same major beats, but the journey is tailored broadly and finely to each player; it’s a style of design Aaron A. Reed refers to as “not... a branching tree but a braided rope.”

Making a narrative about archeology is how you dodge the exponentially complicated nature of that design: if there are dozens of locations, characters, plot threads, bits of color, which can be engaged with at many points in time, or ignored, or dropped by the player halfway through, how do you avoid telling a story full of gaps and dead ends? Well... you don’t. Having only partial information and having to infer the rest is what archeology is.

The protagonist of Heaven’s Vault, Aliya, is digging up the secrets of an ancient civilization, having been sent by her academy to find a researcher who’s gone missing, and stumbling into his incredible discovery. Everywhere she goes, there are holes: she has partial understanding of the researcher’s journey and motives; he, in turn, had partial understanding of the mystery he was uncovering, and Aliya has only fragments of his knowledge; the ancient texts she translates are usually fragments of larger works, and she is guessing at the meanings of many of the words; the game’s constantly updating historical timeline has entire centuries with nothing but question marks. Aliya arrives in a new location and wonders aloud to her robot companion about what this place was, when it was founded, when it was abandoned, how her predecessor found his way her and where he went next and what he took with him.

The constant feeling of discovery - of unearthing - is magnificent. Site after site, I asked, “What is this place?” Always thinking, if the eventual answer is any good, this is going to be one of the best games I’ve ever played. And, in the end, it doesn’t give you an answer, it just give you enough to make the story feel complete. It answers by not answering.

Also, translating alien texts is just extremely my jam. I’m the weirdo who enjoyed the ending of Arrival but secretly wished the whole movie had been about xenolinguistics like the first half. I guess Inkle felt similar.

The game’s by no means perfect. I think I enjoyed the sailing between worlds more than most - it’s slow, but very pretty - but it’s going to discourage a replay. I don’t think the relationship between Aliya and her robot, Six, ever gets terribly interesting. Some of the archeology is a little too obviously game-y - sail around, wait to find a random ruin, beam Six down to grab an ancient doodad, translate a bit of text, lo and behold it’s from one of the sites you’re looking for and it’s narrowed your search radius somehow. (It gives Star Trek explanations the first few times - e.g. “it has radiation that only exists in one part of the nebula” - and then stops bothering.) And the game sags a little in the middle; it could’ve hacked out 3 or 4 dig sites and still given me the same experience.

But, all told, there’s magic in it, and it just feels good to be there. Do not sleep on this one.

Thoughts on Later Alligator

There’s not a ton to say about this game except that is charming as hell. Lindsay and Alex Small-Butera have build a beautifully animated world of cute alligators, one of whom is having a birthday party where he’s convinced he’s going to be murdered. He wants you to run around getting information out of everyone who’s going to be there, which you get by completing minigames. It’s a cast of weird and funny characters with weird and funny dialogue and there’s not much more to it than that.

The design can be a little frustrating. Some minigames, if you lose, you don’t get to try again. Some are annoyingly finicky. You need to complete them all to get the true ending, which means, in my case, playing the game three times to complete all the bits you missed or got locked out of. The ending was a little different each time, so it wasn’t a total wash, but the game’s on a timer that only advances when you play a game or take the bus, and once you’ve completed most of the games there’s a lot of traveling back and forth from one nowhere to another just to advance time to the next unskippable plot beat.

(It’s also a little unclear what you’re missing as you try to get the final ending, as some of the ongoing puzzle are optional.)

But I can’t get mad. The game is too damn cute! Each character is lively and unique, with tons of personality, and the dialogue is just clever enough not to fall into empty adorkability.

It good.

Thoughts on Life is Strange 2

Somewhere, early in the development of Life is Strange 2, some Dontnod employee wrote in a design document “Episode 4 - cult?” (but in French) and nobody told them “no.”

I will not forgive them for this,

After twenty minutes of LiS2, I was ready to yell at everyone who had reported it was boring. It has one of the most powerful, gut-punching openings of any game I’ve played in recent memory. And all through the first, second, and third episodes, I was in love. Unlike Before the Storm, this was its own creature, willing to make dramatic departures from the original game’s template. Instead of controlling a character with supernatural powers, you play as the superpowered character’s older brother. The one with the magic is a 9-year-old, unable to fully understand or control his abilities, suffering a recent trauma, and needing to be guided through a dangerous and racist world. All the ambition missing from Before the Storm is back, and this time the animation isn’t creepy and the writing is wildly improved (thanks to some journeyman script work from Fullbright’s Steve Gaynor) and I even have a computer able to play it on higher graphical settings.

But nothing good lasts.

Everything good about the series screeches to a halt in Episode 4, the one where some asshole said “cult?” and didn’t get a Nerf football thrown at their head. And it’s not just that it’s a terrible idea; it’s actually sort of amazing how much the game relies on an alchemy of plot, tone, theme, and writing, and how a slight imbalance can throw the whole thing off. Episode 4 has scene after scene that are powerful in their conception - brothers reunited after a violent rift; a boy having his first conversation with his estranged mother in nearly a decade; getting interrogated by the feds for a crime that can’t even be explained by physics - fall flat because the writers can’t think of anything interesting for the characters to say. (Steve Gaynor’s name stops appearing in the credits as of this episode.)

And here the game’s rickety bits, kept delicately together for three episodes, start to shake apart. Dontnod’s overly-earnest voice direction, which I didn’t notice in the early episodes, started to wear me down. (”Could you sigh mid-syllable, like you’re slightly overwhelmed with emotion?” “Sure, on which line?” “All of them.”) The thinness of the secondary characters, most of whom pop up for one episode and disappear, became more noticeable. The lack of a mechanical hook like the time rewinding of the original game, and the attendant commentary on choice-based games and power fantasies, made the game feel less substantial. The surreal imagery of the original, obligatorily evoked in the prequel, is sensibly absent, but there’s nothing equally striking that replaces it. Even the branching path decisions become less clear: the end-of-episode stat screens for the final episodes mentioned at least a dozen choices I didn’t even know I’d made, some of which were critical in shaping my younger brother’s morality and were not necessarily the choices I’d have made if I’d known I was making a choice at all.

Come the final episode, I got An Ending that seemed right for the way I’d played, but much of the way I’d played felt accidental.

So what are we to make of this? Life is Strange is a beautiful disaster, an ambitious disaster, where Life is Strange 2 is almost less interesting for being  more competent. It has a huge mess of charged topics - American racism, teens losing their virginity, raising a child outside the nuclear family, grief and trauma - and, while it handles them without the gracelessness and sledgehammer subtlety of the original, it doesn’t come to any conclusions about any of them. LiS1, for all its jank, had some opinions, where LiS2 falls into the category of “this sure is some shit, innit?” games.

It starts with a powerful premise, deeply relatable characters, fine writing, beautiful art, but can’t even manage, in the end, to be a disaster. It is the only game in the series so far to be forgettable.

#Adventure Games #capsule review #heaven's vault #life is strange 2 #later alligator

[twoidiotwriters1]

Starcrossed Losers XVI (Josh Wheeler xReader)

A/N: This is when I tell you to be ready to get a tad sad.

Words: 5,605

Warnings: None!

Previous chapter // Next chapter

KJ is a fucking genius. 

She knows things I didn’t even know were a thing, the info currency? Why would someone need those?

Then I thought about our situation and I went ‘Oh, that’s why’.

We have to cross half of the town to get to where we could find someone who could talk to a member of Turbo’s tribe. You better be sure I brought my skates and Katie with me (I named my hammer after my sister, you know, it helps me cope... sort of). 

That also means we have to cross different tribe’s territories. The shortest road is through the uh, cowboys tribe thing... 4-H? I just realized how I said I know every inch of the city, I do, but the people in it? Not so much.

Tribes have expanded, I know the basic ones: Cheeramazons, Jocks, and the derivatives of the jocks. I know somewhere there are gamers, the cowboys and Kardashian... I know I’m missing lots and lots but is not really a big deal, I’m just a girl, I don’t have to know everything.

Anyway, 4-H accepts the food and allow us to go through their territory, fifteen minutes later we found ourselves on a narrow alley, in front of us there’s a big trailer box with videogames characters drawn all over it.

KJ knocks on it with a rock and a small compartment opens, a crossbow points directly to KJ’s head and we jump back. 

The person inside speaks but I don’t understand what they say, KJ answers back and after a few, scary seconds, the crossbow disappears.

“That wasn’t Chinese,” says Josh.

“It’s Dothraki,” She answers simply, “I also know Na’vi, Elvish and a little Hebrew.”

She looks over her shoulder and shrugs.

“The JCC had a good preschool.”

Josh grins, clearly impressed by the girl’s abilities. I'm... astonished, to say the least. This girl is a box of surprises all around.

So the gate opens and KJ is the first one to enter, then me, then Josh. The room is dark and we can only see the helmet of the person in front of us. They slap KJ across the face and I gasp.

“You’ve got some nerve KJ, after the shit you pulled in Frogtown,” Says the person in a somehow robotic voice.

When they take off the helmet, I recognize the girl.

There’s a silence before KJ and her laugh, high fiving each other.

“Meet Aria Killigan and her elite strikeforce, The Game Overs.”

“I know who she is,” I tilt my head, smirking, “this is what you ended up doing after leaving?”

“Y/N?” Aria gives me a half-smile, “What are you doing with KJ?”

Aria and I weren’t the closest friends, but she used to sit with us during lunch and she’d spend the whole time fighting with Alex about crazy Star Wars theories. She was the one who introduced Stuart to us. 

I remember her as a sharp, fun person. When the apocalypse happened she stayed with us a few days and one morning she was gone without explanation, I never heard from her again. 

Until now, of course.

Inside there are three kids that were usually with her during free hours, playing on their phones. Unfortunately, I never learned any of their names, I don’t think they care, though. They didn’t even turn to look at us as we got in.

“These are assassins?” I hear Josh behind me, asking in what it sounds a skeptical tone, “You play videogames”

“We’re combat-ready unit. Check out our Ghoulie kill-count,” She points to a bunch of pictures of celebrities.

“Jonah Hill’s kind of an easy target,” Josh says.

“Fat Jonah Hill sure, but skinny Jonah Hill is agile AF”

“What were his last words?” Asks KJ.

“I’m friends with Brad Pitt,” Answers Aria.

“Of course,” KJ nods along.

“Can we focus on the plan for a moment?” I ask.

“You can’t be for real,” My friend scoffs, “this is like a ten-year-old’s birthday party playing games on Nerf mode.” 

“We’re online in elite arenas,” Replies Aria, “the bombs didn’t knock out satellites. We’re playing across the globe: Korea, Norway, Brazil...”

“We’re not the only ones left,” KJ adds, “there’s a whole wide world”

“Is it... Is it the same everywhere?” Josh asks, “Like, just kids no adults or do they have adults like Baron Triumph and the Witch? Are there animals mutating? Do they know why this happened? Why the bombs went off of why we survived?”

I was expecting this to be everywhere, not gonna lie. Adults wouldn’t just give up California so easily to kids if that wasn’t the case.

Still, it breaks my heart. I feel like they’ve taken away all the possibilities I had to build my own life how I wanted, now the only thing I can aspire to have is enough food for the month and don’t get my scalp burnt with acid rain. Oh yeah, we have those now more than ever.

Aria rolls her eyes and looks at KJ and me.

“What’s the mission?”

“Liquidate Turbo Bro-Jock,” says KJ.

“Fuck off,” scoffs Aria, going back to her chair.

“Don’t get shook!” KJ exclaims.

“No,” She replies, “Highschool taught us one thing: there are winners and there are losers. The best way to live: don’t pick sides. That’s why gamers are anonymous.”

I used to agree with that philosophy. I was a loner with no strings attached that would stop me from survival. The thing is that I can’t stay away from the problem when the problem is after my head, specifically. 

I can’t afford to step back and hope for forgiveness. I have to act.

“Don’t forget who pulled you out of the shit in Encino,” Huffs KJ, “you owe me. If you do this, you’re off my books”

“Listen, Aria, I know it sounds crazy but you wouldn’t be doing this on your own. I spent time with the jocks, I was their cleaning lady before Owen appeared and I know everything about the traps and secrets entrances but I can’t do it without someone helping us from inside. You think you can find one?”

Aria takes a moment to think, then sighs.

“Fine. We’ll help you,” She scoffs, Aria turns on her screen and we step closer, “we’ve been playing Overwatch with a Jock. His username is 5318008. This dude wants to kill Turbo for real.”

“He’s the one that’s gonna help us?” Asks Josh, looking at the screen.

“That’s the plan,” Aria shrugs, “our inside man should be online soon.”

“Okay,” I nod, “tell him that I’ll help. I mean, don’t tell him my name cause they surely won’t remember me but do tell him that there’s someone who knows their way in and only needs someone to make sure the hall will be empty when we get in”

“Sure,” Aria looks at me for a second, “I’m glad you’re alive, Y/N. Is Alex still with you?”

“He came back like a week ago, he’s fine,” I smile, “as annoying as ever... you know anything about Stuart?”

“I don’t know where he is,” She shrugs, “sorry I bailed on you, I simply didn’t feel like that was my place.”

“I understand, we weren’t perfect,” I sigh.

She leans her back against the seat and turns aggressively towards Josh.

“Hey, quit fogging up my screen, mouth breather!”

“Come,” Grumbles KJ, standing up and pulling Josh with her.

“I’ll leave you to it,” I tell her, “thank you, seriously.”

Aria has her eyes fixed on the screen. 

When I get to where Josh and KJ are, I hear them arguing in hurried whispers.

“I had no idea any of this was here”

“Because you’re an epic noob.”

“I do fine, thank you,” Josh frowns.

“Doing fine is why you’re a noob,” She replies, “that goes for the both of you”

“Not fair,” I reply in a grumble, “I know how to defend myself”

“By hiding inside trash containers?”

“Better to be a liar, like you?” Josh is quick to ask.

“Don’t you get it?” She scoffs, “Moral codes are worth less than stale Cheetos.”

That I don’t agree. We don’t have any rules but it doesn’t mean I’ll be going full savage on people. I’m a good person! Adults fucked up the world because they were too busy ‘trying to survive’ on their cruel society by cheating and stepping on others, can’t they see how this is exactly the same shit?

“If you’re such a ninja then how come you were caught by Triumph?”

“First, that’s racist. And second, you were caught too.”

“It wasn’t our fault! The jocks had cornered us into an alley.”

“And I got us free,” Adds Josh.

“Because of me,” KJ scoffs.

“Why are you even helping us?” He frowns, “You don’t seem like the type who’d do something for nothing”

“I don’t,” She responds coldly.

That sends a shiver up my spine and causes me to stop their arguing.

“I get that you’ve been surviving on some kind of trading favors and collecting debts but can’t you see that’s the kind of issue that ended the world in the first place? I’m not saying we should form a circle and tell our biggest insecurities but maybe cut us some fucking slack, it’s us the ones that have been getting death threats”

“Turbo throws death threats to everyone. If you can’t handle it, maybe you shouldn’t be the leaders”

“You shouldn’t be threatening us with that,” I reply, now upset, “I don’t look like the killing type, but I assure you, I can get rid of nuisances. I have.”

KJ glares at me, for a second I think she’s gonna kick us out, tell us that she’s changed her mind and she’ll tell Aria to stop her search. Luckily for me, Aria speaks up.

“Yes!” She exclaims, “All right. 5318008 is on board. He’ll help us get inside the school. We move at 1700, full battle rattle. Tonight, we squelch Turbo Pokaski.”

“Cool,” I feel my hands getting colder, “nice! I need a moment.”

I get out, the skates don’t make it easier, so I step on a few feet by accident. I manage to leave the room and walk out to the narrow alley. I sit on an old tire and lean my face against my good hand.

Going back to school wasn’t on my plans for the summer, let alone killing Turbo. I know I kinda threatened KJ with killing her is she tries to kick us out of the mall but that was me trying to sound scary. I don’t kill people! I swore off killing after smashing my sister’s head, which sounds horrid enough.

Ghoulies don’t count, they don’t really feel and they’re no longer people. Turbo? That’s a whole different thing.

I need to calm myself down cause either if I want it or not it’s gonna happen, so my mind needs to be clear when the time comes. 

Songs always calm me down. I try to think of one and my brain runs hurriedly through the folders and folders of songs I’ve learned through the years. 

I’m a good person, so I’ll share the song with you.

“I wanna be a great one I wanna make a million dollars Making all my days count Clowning with my day ones...”

I slowly start to sing under my breath, my eyes tightly closed and my hands still cold as ice. 

I don’t want to do this. This is all the adults’ fault. If it wasn’t because of their stupid nuclear war and their thirst for power I would still be going to school, normal as ever, spending time with my friends and planning my future.

I had a plan, you know? I was going to study to become an artist. I wanted to be rich and live in a small house in Europe where everyday the mornings would be soft and the nights cold but cozy. I was going to be the best of... of whatever I was supposed to be. Now I don’t have a plan. 

Well, I do. 

I’m about to kill a kid.

“You have a nice voice”

I jump and cut my singing instantly, looking over my shoulder with wide eyes.

“Josh, could you not do that when I’m on the verge of a breakdown?”

“A breakdown?” He raises a brow, “You know, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to”

“I have to,” I shake my head, “I’m the only one who knows the way in, I can’t let them down. Aria agreed to this only cause I’m taking the risk too.”

“I’m sure she’ll understand”

“They’ll understand shit,” I frown, “didn’t you hear KJ? As soon as we show weakness they’ll eat us. I can’t have that after all I’ve been through.”

“KJ was just bluffing, I’m sure she doesn’t have what it takes to lead the kids”

“And we do?” I huff, “Josh look at us, we’re unknown children. The only reason they respect and ‘trust us’ is because they think that what you did back with Triumph is what we do on the daily”

“You think they’ll turn on us?”

“If what KJ said is true and they have no morals, yes.”

Josh sits beside me, now he looks as affected as me.

“That’s why I have to go,” I continue, “if I take direct part on Turbo’s death, you and I will seem bulletproof. The guy that beat Triumph and the girl that killed Turbo? We’ll be safe for the rest of our lives... that’s something, considering I’ll have to stay here for the rest of my fucking existence.”

I see how he turns to look at me by the corner of my eye.

“I think that going over to kill Turbo is not the real reason why you’re upset.”

“This is not how I was planning to spend my teenage years,” I reply, “I feel like I’m the only person alive with common sense on the area and that means I’ll have to spend the rest of my life hiding from people if I don’t want to get killed for something as stupid as fake power.”

“That’s a bit unfair on the rest of us,” Josh scoffs, “what about Angelica and Alex? They’re good people. Alex came back because he cares about you and Angelica adores you and would do anything for you, even if she’s too stubborn to admit it. That’s the reason why she didn’t light Maya on fire, she has a flexible moral, but she’s loyal. Don’t listen to KJ. You’re not alone.”

“Can’t you see that’s exactly the problem?” I ask in exasperation, “If I were alone I could just disappear and try in a different city, I could move away”

“So you’re saying we’re stopping you from being happy?”

“I’m saying that I would give zero shits to loyalty and morals if I hadn’t met you in the first place. You ruined everything.”

This is the reason why I keep my mouth shut when I’m angry.

Josh looks at me in stunned silence, his face is one of innocent surprise at first, then he looks pissed.

“Let me make things easier for you,” He stands up and leaves.

No song can fix this now.

I stand up again, easing my breathing and checking my phone. It’s a quarter ‘til five, time to leave.

The Game Overs get out of their cave and Aria gives me a small mike.

“What’s this?”

“We have to be connected while we walk around the school looking for Turbo.”

“We’re gonna break the group?”

“We cover more areas like that”

“We’ll die faster like that”

“Just do as she says,” KJ interrupts me, “Aria knows what she’s doing.”

I look at Josh, searching for a sign that he supports me. He ignores me, arms crossed and avoiding my eyes.

I don’t have time for boy’s tantrums. What I said was wrong and it hurt him and I will apologize, but right now I just don’t have the time.

“Alright,” I say, putting the microphone on, “let’s go.”

“Good luck,” Says KJ.

It takes us exactly half an hour to arrive at the limits of the school. Aria stands next to me.

“Very well, Vinchi,” Aria tells me, “lead the way.” 

“Please, don’t call me Vinchi,” I say, “what did the jock tell you?”

“He’s waiting for the lights to drop,” She says, “so you better tell us how to do that”

“Here,” I walk over to where the parking lot is, we have to move quietly, my skates are certainly loud but it looks like they’re on lockdown and no one’s outside.

It takes us a few minutes, but I manage to find the main power source and they’re quick to cut it. We walk over to the cafeteria’s back entrance and we enter quietly through the kitchen. I hear Aria talking through her microphone.

“Power is cut, username 5318008 said that we could find Turbo in Mrs. Fitz old class”

I stop moving.

“That’s not where he is”

“Everyone move into kill positions,” Aria ignores me.

They scatter around me.

“Aria!” I whisper-yell, “Aria, listen to me! Turbo’s room is the principal’s office, not Mrs. Fitz classroom! I cleaned it a thousand times-”

“Y/N, stop talking or they’ll find us!” Aria tells me through the mike, “Move!”

I have a bad feeling about this, but I can’t leave them alone.

“Shit,” I whisper once I’m out of the cafeteria, “Where are you?”

They’re really good, fast. I can’t see where they went.

Everyone tells me their positions, then Styx gets deadly quiet.

“Styx is fragged,” I hear Josh say.

“I knew it!” I respond, “Aria, this was a fucking trap.”

“Everyone hold their position,” She insists, “Y/N, don’t you dare try something outside the plan”

“Sorry, Aria,” I reply.

Of course, the next thing I do is quit the plan.

“Bronyboy is offline,” KJ says.

Okay, what the fuck do I do now? It looks like my fate is to fail forever in every plan I’ve ever made. So new plan: Improvise.

I hated when characters used to do that in movies or tv shows, like ‘Oh sure I’ll improvise and then everything will miraculously turn out better than expected’ cause you know that’s not true. You know as soon as you try to improvise, shit blows up and you end up losing. We are not good at improvising. That’s a recipe for disaster.

So I might as well try it, am I right? My life is a fucking mess already and Josh hates me, let’s go and die.

As I move through the halls my brain is almost melting, desperately trying to find a sort of plan B that could get us out. 

“Something is wrong here, something is really fucking wrong.”

“I told you five minutes ago, this was a trap,” I growl, “User five-six-whatever lied to us. Now we have to get our asses outside!”

“You’re the last ones standing, guys,” Says Josh, referring to me and Killigan.

“Fuck! Turbo isn’t in Mrs. Fitz class, there’s just some scared kids in here...”

I hear hurried steps on my right and I move as fast as I can to the closest door... a janitor’s closet. I open it silently, closing the door behind me.

“Y/N, where are you?” Asks KJ.

Her voice comes out too loud and I rip the microphone away from my face, turning it off. This will surely make them think that I got caught, it doesn’t matter. It’s safer.

I hear Turbo’s grunts and hurried footsteps going to Mrs. Fitz classroom. I wait until I hear total silence again and get out of my hiding spot. I have my hammer with me, but I can’t take Turbo on my own. 

I skate fast through the halls, I run into the room where they keep the unused weapons and an idea pops into my brain. If they don’t have spare weapons, they can’t fight as long.

When I enter everything is dark, but it’s empty. I knew it would be empty, I lived here you know, and they don’t really watch over unused things.

There’s a big bag where they put all the balls when they’re not playing. I empty it by throwing the balls away as fast as I can and I grab every crossbow, machete, and bats that crosses my way. When I feel like I have enough (and that is not too heavy for me to flee the scene) I turn around to leave.

I'm met with the point of a dart gun.

“Stay where you are,” The boy holding it warns me.

Apparently, today is the day I get to reunite with old acquaintances.

I recognize the voice immediately.

“Nathan?”

“Y/N?” He lowers the gun, “Holy shit, I thought you were dead!”

“I’m about to die,” I try to look as innocent as possible, “but if you so kindly let me get out...”

Nathan and I know each other since freshman year. We had a nice relationship while it lasted. He was the first guy to quit our group after the nuke, never actually joined our group. The first loner I met.

Nathan frowns, pointing the gun at me again.

“You know I can’t do that. If Turbo or Mona find out-”

“They don’t have to,” I say calmly, “you got here recently, didn’t you? I never saw you while I was here...”

“Uh, yeah that’s-that’s a fun story-”

“You’ll have to save it for later,” I cut him off, “let me go.”

“Y/N...”

“I can’t explain it right now, but I’m one of the mall kids and I need to put a stop to this stupid fight,” I say, now a bit more stressed, “please Nathan, if you ever actually liked me as a person you will let me go.”

I see him struggle with his own thoughts and for a moment I think, ‘There, that’s a guy that’s loyal to his tribe’ but it also makes me feel terrible cause if that’s true that means I’m dead.

Then he says:

“Follow me. Don’t make any sudden moves or noises, they’re about to turn on the power again so we have to get you out before that”

There, that’s a guy with good morals.

“You’re the best,” I sigh.

Now, I don’t have any reason to trust him, besides the fact that we used to be friends. According to KJ that’s all baby food now, if he’s bad he’ll give me away.

But he doesn’t. Nathan guides me to a back entrance, close to the basketball court and helps me carry the bag so we can move faster.

“If you’re trying to avoid a fight why are you stealing weapons?” He asks me.

“If he doesn’t have enough weapons he can’t send his tribe to war.”

“Yeah but... well, what are you gonna do with them?”

“We don’t have weapons back at the mall, we need to be prepared, to be fair your tribe attacked us first.”

“I wasn’t there during the fight. I stayed to look over the school”

“Well, you avoided an obvious defeat”

“You’re avoiding one now”

“No, I’m about to go back with a half-win. Turbo won’t even know who took the stuff.”

We stop close to the limits of the parking lot, here I can move on my own, it will take me a while since I’m only one tiny person carrying a huge bag with weapons but I’m outside. I made it out and I feel extremely guilty cause I left Aria behind.

“Nathan... Aria was part of the group that came with me, would you..? Could you make sure they don’t hurt her?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Nathan frowns, “don’t think I’ll make it, though. I’m just a nobody and it will look suspicious if I insist.”

“I understand. Thank you anyway,” I give him a quick hug before turning away.

“Y/N?” He asks once I’m halfway gone.

“Yes?” I look over my shoulder.

He gives me a small smile.

“It was nice seeing you again.”

Should I... no. We don’t need to go there tonight. Maybe one day, but not tonight.

“Yeah, I liked seeing you too,” I nod, turning back and skating away as fast as my legs allow.

Something feels different inside me. After being this close to dying cause I trusted in the words of a person I didn’t really know right away. Why did I trust them so easily? 

More importantly, how can’t I trust Josh after all he’s done and after all we’ve been through? He’s good. He has nothing but good intentions with me, or at least that’s what I think.

Somehow during my way back, I realize it’s not about trust, nor about how many lies has he said during his life. It’s about how much I want to help him and how much that upsets me.

The stupid loyalty.

“What is life? What is love? What are lies? What is trust? What is everything?”

But does it really matter? Is it really worth it to live without a care in the world if that means I can’t be with Josh? If it means I have to stay alone when all I want to do is to hold his stupid hand, then I don’t think I want to keep my morals intact.

“Everything is nothing without you”

I want to worry, I want to build a tribe that I can rely on. I want to feel alive again, almost as if I had a plan for the rest of my life.

I have a plan.

“Running, I'm running I'm running outta patience I wanna be a great one”

Everything I knew about the apocalypse and its rules was wrong.

Sacrifices must be made when facing the end of the world. 

But in my case, it’s not about abandoning relationships.

I have to let go of every fear I’ve ever had, I have to face them and say straight to their faces: I won’t indulge you anymore. 

I'll think about Katie and look up to the sky, screaming that I’m sorry and that there’s no one in this world that I love as much as I loved her. That I was there to save my sister and I saved her the best way I could. 

That everything I’ve done after the apocalypse would’ve made my parents proud because I never stopped being a good person, they raised me well. I’m the best healer in town. 

And I must sacrifice my rough attitude for a second, and find someone to listen to how my day went, I’d like to be the lady in distress, one can admit she’s done all she can. I want to be able to ask for help with the certainty that people won’t stab me in the back for doing so.

When I reach the narrow alley my breathing is uneven and the bag feels heavier than before. I can barely hold it on my shoulder, my wrist is surely not happy about it.

“Who is that?!” KJ’s little head appears on the roof of the trailer, I can barely see. The nights are darker now.

“It’s me,” I gasp, desperately trying to catch my breath, “I made it out!”

“Y/N?!” I hear a second voice. Josh’s voice.

His head appears also in the roof.

“What the fuck are you doing up there?”

“I thought you had been killed!” He exclaims, ignoring my question, “What happened?”

“I cut communication so Turbo wouldn’t find me. I also stole his spare weapons so now we have our own arsenal, I guess...”

I hear someone jumping from the roof. I see Josh standing in front of me, no longer upset he stands there, avoiding any sort of contact. Five feet apart.

“I wanna throw my hands up Ready to be saved, yeah”

“I’ve had a really long day, Josh.” 

“I know.”

“I’m ready to have a break,” I continue.

“You deserve it.”

I’ve never been good with this, I know words aren’t my best weapon, speeches aren’t my thing. Lately, though, actions have worked for me just fine (kicking out people, healing severed fingers, escaping from Highschools). I guess my best choice is to follow Josh’s advice and just... do it.

“What is life? What is love? (tell me, tell me, tell) What is time? What is choice? (I don't know) What is everything? Everything is nothing without you”

I move forward until I’m standing right in front of Josh, we stare at each other for a second and I don’t know what he’s thinking. Nonetheless, I have a plan.

I kiss him. 

And he kisses back.

Even if you’re terrified cause things might go wrong, it’s hard to worry when the person you’re crushing on has his hands on your waist and he’s kissing you.

“I hope I am enough (I hope I am enough, oh) What is everything? Everything is nothing without you”

It feels like ages when we break apart, I’m still tired from the walk but I think I can manage a little weariness if Josh keeps hugging me like that.

“You stole all his spare weapons?” KJ asks suddenly, she’s walked up to where I dropped the bag and is looking at it.

Oh my god, I forgot she was here too, fuck, she’s gonna tell everyone about this now.

“Not all of them, I’m only one person and the bag could carry only like, half of the things in that room. But trust me, after a while it feels like you are carrying the whole room,” I move away from Josh, flushed red and feeling my heart going at a thousand per hour.

“Still, that’s impressive,” KJ nods, “I’m sorry I thought you weren’t good enough, it’s clear that you know what you’re doing.”

“Only half of the time,” I smiled awkwardly, “someone from inside did help me escape... an old friend.”

“I’ll put these inside,” She says. I can’t tell if she’s uncomfortable after what just happened or is genuinely just trying to help, “we’ll have to sleep here and then go back to the mall in the morning”

“Sounds good to me.”

KJ goes into the cave (as I’m now calling the Game Over’s place) and doesn’t come back out.

Josh softly grabs my forearm and pulls me close to him again, a sly smile on his face.

“She’s right, stealing their spare weapons was a smart move.”

“I was just trying to feel like it wasn’t a complete waste of time... the gamers are in danger because of us-”

“I know,” Josh sighs, affected by the results of our quest, “after you disconnected your camera Turbo caught Killigan. He said I had lost”

“We lost,” I shake my head, “we can’t put more people in danger, Josh. What are we going to do?”

“For now, the weapons you brought from the school will be useful,” He assures me, “they won’t give us advantaged but it will give us a chance to defend our place”

“I like the sound of that,” I smile, “not the possibility of a war, but the idea of having a place...”

“I thought you didn’t like having strings attached,” Josh mentions, in the most ‘innocent’ way.

“I changed my mind,” I admit, “I’m sorry for the things I said earlier, I was scared and anxious-”

“I understand, don’t worry,” He puts a strand of hair behind my ear and hugs me, “you don’t have to worry about me judging you for the things you do”

My heart melts at his words, but I have to make sure he knows it wasn’t right.

“Still, it was wrong and I shouldn’t have poured out all my stress onto you. I also lied. I love the fact that you found me cause everything that has happened after it has been amazing.”

“Everything?” He asks with a knowing smile.

“All of it,” I nod, softly touching his cheek, “did I ever tell you that I liked you back?”

“You didn’t. Well, you did mention having a massive crush and that you tried to confess in a song but-”

“I like you,” I interrupt him, smiling like an idiot.

“No shit,” Josh replies, “I never would’ve guessed.”

“Shut up, I know it took me long enough”

“I was willing to wait,” He shrugs, smiling.

I lean in for another kiss (now that I’m allowed to, I should do it as often as I can), he holds my waist a bit more tightly and I put my arms around his neck.

Most people hate when you narrate about ‘tongues battling for dominance’ and hands going up and down. I’ll just say it was a good kiss, it lifted all worries from my shoulders.

Momentarily, though.

KJ runs out of the cave and we jump back.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Didn’t you say Sam Dean was dead?”

“Yeah?” 

“You should come in,” She replies.

Josh and I follow her back inside and I see Turbo’s face on the screen, but is only half of his face, the image it’s zoomed in so we can see the people behind him. I notice at the same time Josh does, and I bring my hands up to cover my mouth in silent horror. 

As the great, classic meme would say:

This is the moment I knew, we fucked up.

“Sam?”

Taglist.

@letsbloodmagic @slythermyg @loving-u-3000​

#twoidiots writing #daybreak fanfic #daybreak #josh wheeler #josh wheeler xreader #wesley fists #kj karen jane #eli cardashyan #angelica green #ms crumble #turbo bro jock

[official-alan-dabiri]

The structure update - which was and still is perfectly fine - needed another extremely minor change. Very small. It was so perfectly fine the first time, such small changes that we’re choosing to make and were completely unnecessary. We are choosing to explore this design space. The structure update had no problems and was fine the first time. We’re making completely negligible changes, that’s all.

The tank meta has proven resistant to our attempts to force shake-ups. As such, rather than try and understand the tank role and fix it, we’re just going to make mindless number changes to Anub’arak and Stitches. And we’re going to keep doing it until they’re meta.

After a long discussion last month about bruiser build Tyrael, we came to the conclusion that it’s a counterproductive playstyle. While it’s interesting, it doesn’t leverage his strongest talent options, and his incredibly high mana tension makes it ridiculous to even attempt. So we’re buffing all the bruiser talents. Just every single one. It’s not going to fix the problem, but it’s going to be hilarious to see people try.

Okay. I have to step outside of character for a second here. This is me, Rob, the guy running this parody blog. Read more link because I think this joke will be funnier if I split it like this.

Which one of you motherfuckers reading this is on the HotS team? Come forward you fucking coward I know you’re there. After I mentioned that if I was making the patch notes up when the game shut down, I joked that you’d know they were fake because TLV would get a change. Well, they put TLV on the next real patch notes. I know you’re there. I know you did this to spite me. I’m not mad I just want to talk.

Everyone - including us - forgot that Morales was supposed to be meta for a while there. She never actually passed into common usage, even though we had cycled the power out of the hero when we did the next arbitrary healer meta shift. As such, we’re taking another pass at her arbitrarily being number buffed into relevance.

So Bloodlust is a thing now? I actually saw someone get flamed for picking Ancestral healing? What? So we’re trying to make Ancestral Healing maybe compete a little. Not with base changes of course. We’re just going to make the level 20 upgrade situationally better.

Tyrande is also on the list to arbitrarily be buffed into the limelight, but before we do that, we need to fix her talent tree. We are once again moving around her entire early tiers, this time swapping level one and level four. We also removed the only weakness of Darnassian Archery at 16. For, uh, talent diversity? I don’t know, we’re just throwing buffs at the wall and seeing what sticks.

We made massive upgrades to Uther’s level 20 talents recently so that they could compete with Redemption. Like, massive buffs. Literally unthinkable. It still wasn’t enough. So we’re buffing his other level 20s again. Please stop picking Redemption.

Whitemane is the last hero on the “to be meta” healer list, and so we’re slapping her with some arbitrary buffs. Now that I’ve said it, maybe putting the word slapping in the same sentence as Whitemane is asking for trouble. I mean... There’s a reason I don’t reblog much Whitemane fanart, and it’s certainly not because I can’t find it. You know what I’m talking about.

So remember when I added a Nexus original hero because we couldn’t get a hero who started with Q from any other franchise? Well, we didn’t. The in-office Assassin Buff dartboard didn’t even have her on it. When we noticed this problem, we decided to slap some arbitrary numbers on her and hope that it makes her meta enough that we won’t forget again.

Why didn’t anyone tell us Zeratul had a level 20 upgrade for Void Prison? We meant to remove that like four years ago. It’s always been awful. Straight downgrade. We’re removing it now and adding some new talents that we think are a lot of fun! We look forward to seeing- Oh wait. Shadow Mending is on this tier. Well, nevermind then. I don’t know why we bothered. We’ll just leave them there because we already did the work.

It turns out that the two worst heroes in the game are Genji and Cassia. Coincidentally, the two ranged heroes with the lowest effective range in the game. I’m sure that’s unrelated. Instead, we’ll just slap around some random changes for them. HP buffs and whatever. Maybe they’ll start to creep back up again. We should also take another pass at Cassia’s Avoidance trait to see if we can make her slightly less unplayable.

Oh wait, did we just buff Genji? Ha ha. No. We have to nerf him at the same time, then. He’s not allowed to be good.

It turns out after the rework, Tracer had a minor bug on her level 13 talent tier. With data from that talent removed, she was one of the worst heroes in the game along with Genji and Cassia. Naturally, we had to resolve the bug. Uh, I mean. There was no bug. No bug at all! We are instead making a change to Untouchable’s functionality. For balance reasons. Not because of the bug. We’re also giving her some nerfs along with the bugfix. Because fuck you, that’s why.

The following heroes have recieved changes purely for the sake of talent diversity: Hanzo Raynor Gul’dan Zagara. I will now say Talent Diversity several times. Talent Diversity. Talent diversity! TaLEnT DiVerSitY. TALENT DIVERSITY. TALENT DIVERSITY. Talent diversity? Talent diversity. Okay, those don’t sound like words to me anymore.

#Heroes of the Storm #Patch Notes #Vikings changes are actually really good #They have talent options for late game teamfight #They might be able to contribute late game to turn a 20 vs 20 game into a win #Also Hanamura Sentinel's AoE marker now matches the actual AoE of the effect #It turns out when AoEs don't match the warning indicator some people get very upset

[the-silentium]

Wait for me to come home Pt.6

Masterlist  Part 5

Pairing: Eddie Brock x Reader, Venom x Reader

Warning: Angst, fluff, swearing

Words: 5560 Words

Your heart squeezes seeing Venom makes his way out of your apartment. Your heart wants him back, but you can't. You need to take care of your brother first and see what to do with your boyfriends afterward. 

You move in front of your brother and tilt his head to assess his injuries. His throat is starting to bruise and you hear him wheeze every time he takes a breath. You can't stop the guilt from consuming you. You know it's not your fault, but you could have done so much so avoid the situation. 

You help Aiden to get on his feet and guide him to your couch. His eyes are glued to the door, watching for Venom's return. But he never did. Instead, you get to the door and close it. You know it is futile, but you put the locks on. You walk to the kitchen, wet a hand towel and apply it on Aiden's throat. He tries to talk, but his voice broke. 

"Stop. Don't try to talk, you'll worsen it." The pain in his face makes you call a friend. Sebastian is a paramedic who lives on the next block. You know him since little school and you always went to him whenever you hurt yourself. "Seb will be here in 5." You tell your twin. You turn the cloth and place it carefully on the purple flesh. He winces at the contact but relax after a couple of seconds. 

The waiting is killing you. You feel useless and your brother knows it. He grabs your hand and squeezes it reassuringly. He smiles at you, his eyes mocking. You know he would have thrown a sarcastic remark at you if he could. Before you can reprimand him for being an idiot, the timer you set for the cake goes off. 

The sound startles you both. The surprise sends Aiden into another coughing fit. "That's what you get for mocking me when I take care of you." You laugh at him. 

You quickly get up to close the oven and save the cake from burning. You take it out and forget it on the counter. Just when you walk back to the couch, someone knocks on your door. You hastily remove the locks and open the door to Sebastian. He has his paramedic bag in hand and follows you in your apartment. 

"Thank you, Sebastian." You tell him, relieved. 

He nods at you and kneels in front of your brother. "No problem Y/N." He helps Aiden to sit and remove the cloth to analyze the injury. He frowns and touches different spots. "Can you explain to me what happened?" He looks at you for a second before returning his attention to his patient. 

Your eyes fall on where Aiden had you pinned to the ground with his Nerf gun in hand. You realize now that your scream must have scarred them and triggered Venom's reaction. It really was your fault. You can't suppress a tear and it leaves a wet trail on your right cheek. When you don't answer, Sebastian lifts his head toward you and mistaken your sad state for one of shock. 

"Hey, take it easy. Take a seat and take all the time you need." He says with a calm voice. His gaze is on you when you make your way on the opposite side of the couch and sit. You focus on your hands, trying to find your words. 

"W-we were playing with the nerf guns. It's a stupid tradition Aiden and I have. When we get to each other house after a long time without seeing each other, we play the game." Your gaze found some bullets scattered on the floor near your bedroom door. "Aiden surprised me from behind and tackled me to the ground. There was a big crash and Aiden was being lifted by his throat by-" You almost said Venom. But the population knows him as the Demon of San Francisco. You hated that denomination, he wasn't a Demon. He did good things. Sure, his methods weren't the best morally speaking, but they were effective. The crime rate in some parts of the city dropped significantly because of him. "the Demon of San Francisco." You finish with a small voice. 

Sebastian's eyes widened and his gaze passes from you to Aiden to you again. 

"And you both survived?!" He states more than asked. "Are you sure it was him?" 

You frown at him. Seriously? "Yeah, I know it was him. There are assessments all over the city of what he looks like and they are all the same: tall, black, white eyes with clawed hands and sharp teeth." Your tone made him lift his hands in the air. 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you. It's just… He never really came in this neighborhood before." He returns to whatever he was doing to your brother's throat. "Now I will think about it twice when I want to get out at night for some snacks." 

You nod just for appearances. You know Venom would not hurt you. At that thought, you remember Venom's clawed hand rushing toward you to grab you like he did to your brother. How he stopped the second he saw you standing there. His shock. No, he would never hurt you. Not on purpose. 

"Aiden, you are very lucky." You see Sebastian puts his stethoscope back in his bag. "A little more pressure and your windpipe would have been crushed." Your blood freeze in your vein. He almost dies. He really almost die. "I'm not a doctor, so I recommend you to go see one. But I can tell you that the less you talk for the next days, the better you'll get." 

You chuckle at that. "Awn. That's going to be tough." Your voice broke at the end. You wanted to cheer yourself up. To distract yourself from the fact that if Venom had squeezed a little tighter, you would be mourning your best friend.

Aiden glares at you in response and punches your shoulder lightly. You can see concern in his eyes but you get up before he can try to comfort you. Sebastian follows your lead with his bag in hand. "Thank you again, Seb. I owe you." You smile at him. 

"You owe me nothing. Just take care of him and you should really consider taking him to a doctor if the wheezing amplifies." You nod and he hugs you goodbye. "Bye Aiden. Take care of yourself." 

Your brother waves at him and Sebastian makes his way to the door. You open it for him and close it behind him. You return to your sibling and found him with his eyes closed, a pillow behind his head to keep it upright. You sit next to him and lean your head on his shoulder. You close your eyes and try to calm your nerves. 

You both stay in silent for a couple of minutes. "I'm sorry." You whisper. You feel him move next to you. A sudden pain shot through your head when Aiden flicks your forehead. Your eyes shot open and your hands grab your head. "Ow! That hurts!" His unimpressed look makes you glare at him. 

That's when you see it. He looks utterly tired. The adrenaline must have drained him. 

"What about I order some food and we watch some movies?" You ask him. 

He smiles and nods. You both agree on some pizza and Aiden falls asleep 20 minutes after the beginning of the first movie. You put the cake in the fridge and get you both to bed.

————————————————————

The next morning, you wake up at your alarm going off. You swipe it off and rub your eyes. Aiden is asleep next to you. You didn't want him to sleep on the couch and aggravate his throat so you both slept next to each other like when you were kids.  

You get out of bed, grab your phone and head to the kitchen. There, you call Sam to take a day off for family emergencies and start yourself a coffee. You prepared a tea bag in a cup for your brother with the honey container near it for when he wakes up. You turn the radio on like every morning. You like a little beat to give you a little push, but your favorite station has a surprise for you today.

Loving can heal, loving can mend your soul

And it's the only thing that I know, know

I swear it will get easier

Remember that with every piece of you

Hm, and it's the only thing we take with us when we die

Obviously, they have to play a song that reminds you of your boyfriends. You remember the night you met Eddie. You sang this song. You thought he was handsome and totally out of your league. Of course, you knew his name even before he presented himself. You two worked in the same field of activity and if you had a dollar for every time you heard his name, you would now have a house. 

Hm, we keep this love in this photograph

We made these memories for ourselves

Where our eyes are never closing

Hearts were never broken

And time's forever frozen still

Your eyes landed on the picture on your fridge. It was your first kiss. The one with a tiny tendril flowing out of Eddie's shirt. You can't help but miss them. You miss this night were everything fell together perfectly. 

So you can keep me

Inside the pocket of your ripped jeans

Holding me closer 'til our eyes meet

You won't ever be alone

Usually, at this hour you would have received a good morning text from your boyfriends. This morning though, there is none and it hurts you. 

And if you hurt me

That's okay baby, only words bleed

Inside these pages you just hold me

And I won't ever let you go

Wait for me to come home

Wait for me to come home

Wait for me to come home

Wait for me to come home

You hesitate to text them. You don't know if they are pissed at you for hurting Venom. Or screaming at them. Or kicking them out of your apartment. Your finger hesitates over Eddie's number. After a minute, you shake your head and put your cell on the counter. 

Oh, you can fit me

Inside the necklace you got when you were sixteen

Next to your heartbeat where I should be

Keep it deep within your soul

You remember the picture they send you yesterday at lunch. They were so happy. And so were you. But you've ruined it. 

And if you hurt me

Well, that's okay baby, only words bleed

Inside these pages you just hold me

And I won't ever let you go

The sound of your phone vibrating on the counter catches your attention. You lazily grab it and turn the screen toward you. Fate really has a grudge against you. A pharmaceutical company replaces its certified medicine by placebos without telling their customers and cause 3 deaths. 

Eddie's article pops on your screen and you have a perfect view of him interviewing a visibly pissed businessman. 

When I'm away, I will remember how you kissed me

Under the lamppost back on Sixth street

Hearing you whisper through the phone

"Wait for me to come home"

When the tears threaten to flood your eyes, you turn off the radio and push your phone on the island. The force of your move is clearly miscalculated and proven by the loud crash of your phone meeting the floor. You take some time to calm yourself and start cooking breakfast. Your phone can stay on the floor where it doesn't disturb you. When you hear movement from the bedroom, you put the kettle on the stove. 

Finally, Aiden makes his way in the kitchen but stops at your poor phone on the floor. He picks it up and frowns at the article on the screen. He takes a seat at the island and puts your phone on it. 

"Good morning." You smile at him. He waves at you in reply and you get to the conclusion that his throat still hurts. "How's the throat?" You ask him anyway. 

He tilts his head from side to side in a "so so" manner. You can see that the deep blue-purple has now some yellowish spots. 

"You know, I can put some makeup to try to hide all that." You tell him smiling. 

His unimpressed look really gives you the urge to try it, but the kettle whistling forces you to drop the project. Instead, you make him a good cup of tea with honey. He thanks you with a smile and you finish cooking the eggs. 

When you two are done with your plates, Aiden steals your computer and open the Notes application. 

So who's the guy? He writes. 

"What guy?" You decided to play dumb for a little while, knowing full well who he is referring to. 

The guy kissing you in a field of fireflies who is also the one who got your phone on the floor. 

Damn, he writes fast. Being a writer really improved his speed at typing. It makes you smile that while reading, you can hear your brother's tone of voice in your head. You know him too well. "Oh. Eddie. We have been together for one month now." But you don't know if you screwed everything up. 

And I learn about it just now?! He glares at you like you just stab him in the back. 

"Hey, I can do what I want. Who are you, my mom?" You really feel like when you were a kid. 

I'm pretty sure mom doesn't even know about it. Your sheepish smile gives him all the answer. I'm going to tell her. 

"And how? You can't talk!" You cross your arms defiantly. He can't tell her. If she doesn't hear it from you, your gonna hear about it forever. 

Aiden types something and throws the laptop on the couch. He runs toward your kitchen but you have no clue why. Maybe he needs some ice. 

I can still text her. The bastard! You jump from the couch and follow his tracks. You are too late. You hear a notification on your phone and you know that this is your doom. On the family group chat appears the picture of you and Eddie. Soon after, your mother sees it. 

"Fuck you!" You scream at your brother. 

He walks back to you and shapes his hand in a heart and points at you. You decide to take care of your mom later. Aiden sits back next to you and you two take the time to think. You hear the keyboard and feel the computer on your lap. 

The Demon called you little one. 

Your brain stopped working. What do you answer? Truth? Lie? Can you trust your brother with Eddie's secret? You trust him, but after what he experienced, would he try to keep him away from you? You take too long to answer and Aiden become suspicious. 

You know him. 

You nod slowly. You decide to tell him the truth.  But not all of it. "He helped me." It was Eddie who helped you at the bar, but hey. They are one. 

Helped you? What happened? His face shows concern and all his attention is on you. 

"I was at Cassie's bar. A random guy tried to hit on me, I told him no and he grabbed me. He got the guy off me." You hope he won't ask Cassandra for the story as well. She will tell him that a normal looking guy intervened. Not the Demon. 

Aiden hugged you lightly. Then, You know that I know when you lie, right?

Your heart squeeze. Damn twin bond. You two always know went the other lie or hide something. You hoped he would not feel it, but your hopes got crushed. 

You know him more than you say. He said your apartment was his nest. 

Tears start to form in your eyes. You can't lie to him anymore, but the truth hurts you. You don't want him to call your boyfriend a monster. You love Eddie so much, but you could always count on Aiden to help you with everything. He is so dear to you. You lift your legs to put your feet in front of you. You hide your face in your knees and wrap your arms around your legs. 

"I'm sorry." You manage to say without your voice breaking. 

An arm gets around your back and pull you to your brother's chest. Do you know him? You nod. Do you like him? You nod. Don't tell me you love him. 

"I love his host." You say matter of factly. "But I really like Venom." Your arms tighten their grip on your legs to keep yourself from shaking. 

Wait. Host? As in host of a parasite or someone who keep them hidden in their house? 

"He is the host of an alien. It's very different from a parasite." You whisper. 

A strangled sound make your head shot up. Aiden is grabbing his throat and cough a little. 

"Alien?!" His voice is rough and the effort shot him through another coughing fit. 

"Stop talking idiot!" You reprimand him. You run to the kitchen and grab a glass that you fill with water. You take it back to him and he empties it in a second. "Use the laptop." You glare at him. 

Are you crazy?! An alien! He eats people! He could eat you!

"No, he won't. He only eats bad people. Burglar, rapist, killer… He hurts you because he thought you were trying to hurt me." You can see him getting all the information in. 

So it's in Eddie, right? You nod. Well. I know you. You are stupid, but not enough to love a guy who would hurt you. Plus, the alien

"Venom." You cut him while he is typing. 

He erases his last words and continues. Plus, Venom seemed very protective of you. 

"Yeah, he is." You chuckle. Your sweat big guy. Should you call them? You really want to but something stops you from doing it. "I don't-" You sigh. "I don't know if I should call them… What would you do?" You look at him with the hope that he will help you. 

He analyzes you for a long moment and returns to the laptop, writing his answer. 

You have many talents, but between the two of us, I got the baker gene. You are the cook. And you made a cake! A cake! Without burning it! He must be really really special. So call him. But please, tell him to let my throat alone. He massages it slowly. 

You smile, happy that your brother is not rejecting Eddie. You take your phone in hand, unlock it and still hesitate to call. Again. 

You feel your determination deflate with every second and soon, you are ready to throw your phone away. Again. You start to tighten your grip on your phone to alleviate your stress by making it disappear when Aiden get a hold of your wrist and press the call button for you. 

Your eyes widen and your first reaction is to punch him on the shoulder. Unfortunately, he dodges your hit and makes his way to the kitchen to make himself another tea. On his way, he shows you the middle finger with a wink. 

May as well go with it. At the third ring, you think Eddie won't answer. You almost press the end call button when your boyfriend's voice stops you. 

"Y/N?" You can hear the relief in his voice. It hurts you. You should have called sooner. 

"Hi, Eddie." A silence fell on the line. You don't know where to start and you know Aiden is listening to you. That's what brothers do. 

"Y/N, we are so sorry. Really. We were so scared for you that we saw red and… We.. lose control." He stops to take a breath and continues before you get to place a word. "How's your brother?" 

"He's okay. He can't talk, but he is still joking, so he's good." Your tone is lighter now that you know they are not pissed at you. 

"Fuck. We are sor-" 

"Sorry. I know. And I know that you guys wanted to protect me. You both arrived at the worst moment possible." Aiden lets himself falls next to you with his teacup in hand. He hands you one with a wink. Once you take your cup, he starts writing. You smile at his words. "Aiden still wants to meet you both." 

You hear Eddie stutter at the other end of the call. "H-he knows? H-how?" 

"I told him. He wants to meet you two properly and  promises to keep your secret for himself." 

Silence. "Do you want us to come?" He sounds so unsure of himself. 

"Yes. You made a mistake but neither of us are angry at you." You glance at the computer. "He only asks to let his throat alone though." 

"We can do that. We.. em.. We'll be there in 10 minutes." 

"See you both in 10 then." 

"We love you." You bite your bottom lips. Joy fills you. 

You can feel your brother's gaze on you when you answer, "I love you too." You end the call and you turn to his shit-eating grin. "What?"

Nothing. You just look like a schoolgirl. 

You grab your blanket on the backrest of the couch and throw it at him. He manages to save his cup of tea by extending his arm out of the way. You laugh and start to pick up all the nerf bullets off the floor. 

"Wanna play another game?" You ask sarcastically. 

I don't think I'll play that game ever again. 

You feign indignation and continue your task. You put the bullets in their box and put them away along with the plastic guns. The remaining minutes before Eddie knock on your door passes quickly by briefing your brother about your relationship with the journalist. How you two really met, how he got you on an amazing first date and how you finally met Venom. Just when you start to talk about Venom's addiction to chocolate, a knock on your door interrupts you. 

Aiden tries so hard to hide his nervousness. For the outside world, it works perfectly. For you though, it's clear. You are so used to read him that you can almost feel his emotions. Trying to reassure him, you put a hand on his shoulder and offer him a genuine smile. "It's going to be fine."

He nods, knowing that you can read him like a book. He takes a sip from his cup while you reach the door to let Eddie in. 

"Hi." You take a step on the side to invite him inside, but he stays where he stands. His hairs are disheveled and his clothes look like they were put on in a hurry. He looks like he didn't really sleep at all last night and it makes your heart squeeze. 

"Hi." His gaze lightens when he finds yours. He still looks unsure though. You can see the temptation in his eyes to hug you but he restrains himself. His gaze then wanders behind you and search something with anticipation. 

Sighing, you grab his right arm and pull him in. You expected that as soon as your hand touched Eddie, tendrils would have wrapped your hand in a comforting grip. Their absence makes you let go of him pretty quickly. Maybe you were reading the situation wrong and they were still pissed at you. Closing the door, you put your hand behind your back to keep them occupied. 

Aiden straightens himself and comes to meet your boyfriend. Eddie looks awkward whereas your brother looks calm. You know he is not and you are pretty sure Venom can feel his nervousness too. 

"Aiden, this is Eddie, my boyfriend." You see Eddie gaining a little more confidence. His back straightens a little and he seems to come back to life a little. So he is not pissed against you. "Eddie, this is my brother Aiden." 

Your sibling is the first to present his hand. Eddie grabs and shakes it in return, still looking a little stiff. They both let go of each other but you are not finished. 

"Venom, I would like you to meet my brother. Can you come out?" Your voice is soft like you would approach a shy kid. A couple of seconds pass before Eddie answer. 

"He doesn't want to come out. It's radio silence since yesterday." It worries you. Never before did he refuse to talk to you. But you deserve it. You hurt him. 

Nodding, you turn to Eddie. "Did you have breakfast yet?" When he shakes his head, you invite him to take a seat to the island while you prepare him some eggs. You put the kettle back on the stove and when you turn back, your brother had taken the computer to the island next to Eddie. 

"We are really sorry for what we did. We-" Aiden cut him by brushing it off with his hand. His face clearly tells don't worry about that. He writes something and turns the screen toward the brunette. 

"Did you get it examined?" He is genuinely concerned. Probably because he knows how much damage Venom can inflict and the bruise really looks painful. 

Typing. Typing. Typing. 

You know your brother won't tell Eddie that he almost gets his windpipe crushed. It's not his type. His demeanor became calmer the more Eddie talked to him, so there is no way he will put the weight on your boyfriend’s mind.

Eddie sighs and passes a hand in his hair. "Okay. Sorry though. We should have seen that it was a game." 

You put a plate full of eggs in front of him. "It's fine. Now eat and stop apologizing." You retrieve the kettle from the stove and make a new tea for your brother and yourself. You place a coffee in front of Eddie and take out the chocolate cake from the fridge. You cut two pieces and place the rest in front of your boyfriends. 

"Ve, this cake is for you and I want to apologize for hurting you. Can you please come out?" You really don't know if he will come out this time. You just hope that the cake will work in your favor. 

After a minute, you really think that he is still ignoring you. You sigh and push a piece in front of Aiden. You start to dig into yours when a black tendril slowly makes its way to the dessert. It snatches a little piece before disappearing under Eddie's shirt. A low purr resonating through Eddie's chest brings a smile on your lips. Slowly, Venom's head starts to take form from his host shoulder blade. 

"Good." He purrs. 

You laugh. "You are lucky, usually I burn every cake I make." You watch as he eats the cake in three big bites. In the corner of your eyes, you can see your brother shifting uncomfortably on his stool. Even if Venom is definitely less intimidating in this form, his teeth still are imposing. 

When there is no cake left, you extend your hand to gently pet the top of his head. His pearly eyes now focus on you and he approaches himself. Now at eye level, you stop petting him and avert your gaze. 

"I'm sorry Ve for using fire against you." A tendril under your chin brings back your eyes on him. He smiles while other tendrils take hold of your right hand and squeeze it lightly. 

"There is no need to apologize. We are glad our little one did it." He puts his forehead on yours and licks your cheek, letting a wet trail behind. You pull away and kiss the corner of his mouth. You are conscious of your brother watching the whole scene in front of him and you feel like he would have a heart attack if you fully kissed the symbiote. He needs time to adjust as you did. 

The black alien starts to purr even more loudly. It was better than your usual kisses on his forehead and cheeks. 

"He looks like a cat." The raspy voice of your brother startles you. This time he doesn't cough, but the effort looks painful.

"We are not a cat!" Venom growls. He immediately stopped purring and turns his attention on your sibling. You see his brave demeanor crumbles a bit and Eddie comes to his rescue. 

"Venom, don't be mean. He just said that you sound like a cat, not that you are a cat." 

Venom stare at your brother for a moment before extending a tendril toward him. Your brother's jaw clench and you see him freeze. Venom must have seen it because he stops. 

"We are Venom. We are what you humans call a symbiote." He pauses, waiting for your brother to answer. When none is given, he continues. "We want to apologize for hurting you." 

Your twin eyes the tendril cautiously. He slowly extents his hand to meet the black oily string. He jumps a little when the black substance grabs his hand and shakes it. 

"Hi, Venom. I'm sorry for calling you a cat. And it's fine. Continue to protect my sister like that and we will be even." His voice is clearly forced and tears start to form in his eyes because of the pain. 

You hit his shoulder, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to surprise him. "How many times will I have to say it? Don't talk, you idiot! I'll go grab you some Ibuprofen and you will rest your throat." You glare at him and quickly go to the bathroom to grab two tablets. You hand him the medicine and wait until he swallows it. "Now couch and shut up." 

He makes the military salute and grabs the laptop before heading for the couch. You sit at his now empty stool and Eddie turns to face you. He looks definitely better than how he was at your doorstep. The smile on his face is contagious and soon you can't resist the urge. Almost jumping from your stool, you hug your boyfriends. You hide your face in the crook of Eddie's neck, his arms wrapping around your waist. Venom takes hold of your upper body and his disembodied head stroke the top of your head. 

You pull off from your spot and meet Eddie’s lips with yours. The faint sound of the television is now tuned out. The kiss is slow and caring. His thumb strokes your cheek slowly. The kiss stays simple but it still gets you out of breath. When you pull away, Venom's pleased grin catches your attention. You smile at him and gently pull him for a kiss on the forehead. 

You all pass the day watching a new Netflix original serie and eating junk food. Your brother and boyfriends learned more about each other and while you were paying the delivery guy, Aiden had time to write an embarrassing story about you. You send him the middle finger when your boys started teasing you about it. When it was time to go to bed, you met a problem. Aiden wanted to take the couch, but you kicked his ass and forced him to take your bed. You would return with Eddie at his home and come back tomorrow morning. 

You all exchanged good nights while you put your jacket on. Eddie really seems more relaxed around your sibling and it reassures you.

The ride to his apartment was quick. During the whole drive, Venom kept himself wrapped around your waist and didn't even let go when you arrived. Eddie carried you up the stairs bridal style and here you are, in bed with your loves. In the intimacy of Eddie's bedroom, Venom takes control of his host and lie you down on his chest. His low purr makes you smile and soon, you reach up to his head. You tenderly stroke his cheek which causes his tongue to wrap around your wrist. 

You push yourself up a little and bring your legs upward. You are now straddling his chest, but you perfectly know that he is not bothered. He retrieves his tongue when you lean forward slowly. Your hands now at each side of his face, you smile when his eyes close to only form a thin line watching you carefully. Your lips met his and his chest starts undulating in delight. You were truly scared that you would never be able to do it after everything, so you couldn’t suppress the temptation of tasting his lips for the first time.

A big hand position itself at the bottom of your back while the other gets at the back of your neck. He takes care to hide his teeth behind his lips when he moves with you. At first, he follows your rhythm but soon, his emotion overwhelm him and the kiss become more hungry. He moves faster and applies more pressure. His hunger only sends pleasure to your core and his tongue release a moan from you. 

The sound makes him pull off. He grins the widest grin you ever saw him do. "We love hearing you sing for us." 

You feel the heat invading your cheek so you do the only thing you can think of. You kiss him again and lead the way for a night that Venom will cherish forever. 

At least, he would have cherished it, if all of the events were real. Instead, you wake up next to your brother, feeling as exhausted as when you went to bed last night after the disaster between your boyfriends and your brother. You doubted that the day would go as well as in your dreams, so you decided to stay in bed and enjoy the last remnants of your dream.

Tag list: @slither-in-a-half @a-frozen-bag-of-corn  @noshi-chan

#venom #venom x reader #eddie brock #eddie brock x reader #y/n #fanfic #ed sheeran #photograph #happy ending for now

[stardust-inmy-veins]

New Year’s Kisses & Nerf Guns

Day 1 of polyamuary 2019, written for this prompt

Tony Stark’s New Year’s Eve parties are legendary. Pretty much anyone and everyone tries to get an invite and even those who don’t sometimes try to sneak in. Considering who Tony is, though, is it really surprising?

Natasha rarely ever bothers going, finding it to be more of an annoyance than anything else. Clint’s been a few times, but mostly to prank Tony and troll any reporters than manage to make their way in. Bucky and Steve, though, have never been and are curious what all the hype is about so she lets herself be dragged alone, her only complaint expressed as a roll of her eyes.

As soon as they walk into the tower Natasha sees about seven different people zero in on the four of them. Giving Steve a smirk and a two finger salute, she heads off to go find a bar. There are always at least four at any of Tony’s parties. She doesn’t see where the other three go, but she’s sure Clint will be off to go fuck with Tony while Steve politely talks to whoever seeks him out and Bucky offers moral support.

After about an hour of dodging Tony and other various people who want to talk to her, she finally gives in and makes her way over to Steve and Bucky. She has drinks in both hands and offers them to both of her boyfriends. Just because they can’t get drunk doesn’t mean they never drink, although mostly just when their friends are.

Bucky takes his with a smirk while Steve just shakes his head. She shrugs and downs it before sitting the glass down and dragging Steve over to where people are dancing. Bucky leans against a nearby wall and watches them as he drinks and keeps an eye out for Clint.

None of them have seen their boyfriend since they arrived, but they all know he’ll show up eventually.

They eventually settle down on a sofa in one of the many corners of the room most of the party is in. The floor of the tower Tony is holding the party on is large enough that the separate rooms aren’t really walled off and it’s most just empty space with random walls in different places. Lots of hiding places and plenty of opportunities to prank people, but other than that not really good for much.

It isn’t until she hears Tony loudly cursing and sees a foam dart attach itself to Tony’s forehead that Natasha realizes where Clint ran off to. She snorts when Tony turns around and ducks just in time to dodge two more darts. Bucky laughs and Steve rolls his eyes. All three of them are completely unsurprised at this turn of events.

Ever since they decided they’d be going to Tony’s party they had been trying to get Clint to tell them what he had planned, but to no avail. He usually wasn’t very good at keeping secrets from any of them, but he had refused to budge on this. He was surprisingly adept at keeping secrets when he needed to, and usually only to surprise his partners.

Natasha was leaning back against Steve’s chest with her feet in Bucky’s lap when Clint finally decided to join them, plopping down in Natasha’s lap from seemingly out of nowhere. Fortunately, she had seen him coming and braced herself for the chance that he was going to do exactly what he had.

“Having fun?” Steve asks with a smirk. “I don’t think Tony’s enjoying your New Year’s Eve shenanigans.”

“Shenanigans?” Both Natasha and Clint ask at the same time, a hint of sarcasm in her voice and shock in his.

Bucky snorts and gives Steve a “you walked right into that one” look.

Steve opens his mouth to respond, but before he can someone yells something about a countdown. Natasha hadn’t realized it was already that late, but she can’t really find it in her to mind because at least that means they’ll be able to leave soon. This party hasn’t done much to change her mind about attending any of Tony’s parties in the future.

Steve seems excited about midnight approaching, though, and he looks so cute grinning and pulling them all to their feet that she doesn’t have it in her to protest.  

Clint looks almost as excited as Steve, but that could be more about Tony coming back into his line of sight than the idea of the new year approaching. He starts to raise the nerf gun in his hand - and she really wants to know how he snuck it in without any of them noticing, but that question can wait until later - but before he can properly aim and pull the trigger Bucky is leaning close and pulling Clint in by the front of his shirt.

Natasha snickers at the shocked look on Clint’s face, but is quickly silenced by Steve doing almost the exact same thing to her. She rolls her eyes at the smirk on his face when he pulls back before shoving him towards Bucky with a muttered, “What a gigantic dork.”

Clint grins and waggles his eyebrows when she turns towards him. “You gonna let me go after Tony?”

“Sure. I’ll even help.” She grins, stepping forward into his space. “After midnight.” She wraps her arms around his neck and presses her lips against his, silencing any protest he could have made.

He pouts when she pulls back, which earns him a quick kiss on the nose before she’s trading places with Steve and looping her arms around Bucky’s neck this time. “Miss me?”

He snorts, seeming more amused with this whole thing than he probably should be. “Always do, Tasha.”

“Sap.”

“Been accused of much worse in my time.”

Instead of trying to come up with a response to that she kisses him, effectively ending that conversation.

She does end up making good on her promise to help Clint troll Tony and it takes less time than she would have thought to get Steve and Bucky to help.

Clint somehow produces three more nerf guns and it doesn’t take long for them all to find different hiding spots and lure him into various traps. They even get Sam and Wanda to help, the both of them playing innocent any time Tony glances their way. Bruce refuses, but she sees him laughing with Thor at Tony’s expense more than once.

They get Tony annoyed enough that they can tell he’s considering going for his armor and banning all four of them from the tower before they leave, which Natasha takes as a compliment. Clint does, too, if the grin on his face is any indication. Bucky enjoys irritating Tony in any and every way and Steve? Well, even he looks like he’s having fun.

If not for Tony’s boyfriend, Stephen, showing up Natasha’s pretty sure he would have gone for the suit even with all the bystanders. Stephen gives both her and Clint a disapproving look, which earns him a raised eyebrow from her and an unimpressed look from Clint before they finally decided to back off and leave Tony alone.

Maybe these parties aren’t so bad after all.

Read on AO3

#polyamuary2019 #avengers fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #bucky/clint/steve/natasha #mentions of ironstrange #fluff #prompt fill #ryleewrites #bucky/clint/steve/natasha fic

[philipthegirlnickel]

Secret Santa

For @anarchycox. I don’t know what this turned into, but I hope it’s at least half what you wanted. (I’m also super good with titles as you can tell.)

Prompt: shopping

Daisy slips through the door Coulson’s holding open, hands buried deep in her pockets, and shakes off the snow. “So, who’d you get?”

Stomping the excess buildup on his shoes, Coulson trudges forward. “I’m not telling you. It’s called a ‘secret’ santa for a reason.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be lying low?”

“Talbot isn’t happy with us, but we aren’t on house arrest. And this place is practically dead. We can’t possibly get into any trouble here.”

Daisy nods along, eyeing each empty store front as they lazily walk pass them. She agreed though, they’d be hard pressed to find themselves in any kind of trouble here. “So, what are we looking for?”

Shrugging, the corners of his mouth pulling down to a frown. “I don’t know yet.”

“You really think you’re going to find something for her in a dying mall?”

Stopping, Coulson stares, eyes narrowed, wheels turning. And Daisy curses herself a little for that slip, she’d been doing so well.

“Daisy.”

It’s the tone that tells her she’s f-ed up, that he’s on to her. She shakes herself out of it. No, it was one slip. He couldn’t know anything from that, and this plan had been in motion too long for it to go bad now. “Half the people in it are female. It was a 50/50 chance. Besides, you’re not likely to find anything for anyone here.”

He half shrugs in agreement, starting forward again, and Daisy relaxes her shoulders following behind.

They nearly make it to the far side before there’s any sign of life, and Daisy huffs in annoyance. This place is a waste of time, and she’s got other people to harass today. “Can we at least lay low somewhere we might actually find something? Half this place is closed.

Coulson turns without a word, starting the trek back to Lola. “You’re right, we’re never gonna find anything here.”

The drive to their next location is quiet, Daisy fiddling on her phone, but he’s not willing to ask what she doing that has that look of concentration on her face. Pulling in, he manages to find the furthest parking space from the door, but it’s the only one he’s seen in the 15 minutes he’s been crawling around the lot.

Daisy shoves her phone into her back pocket as she gets out, hands digging into her pockets. “This is going to be fun.”

The way she smiles puts him off ease.

The mall is packed, full to the brim. They walk shoulder to shoulder, people running into either side of them. Coulson isn’t much happier with this pick, this crowd, but he can’t ask for much better on the 23rd. Every store is open, hustling and bustling, and there’s at least a chance here. Not much of one, but enough.

—

“What about this?” Daisy asks, holding the offending item up in the palm of her hand, the other waving slowly back and forth modeling it.

He’ll admit, only to himself, if he had a garden, he’d buy the little sculpture. He’s partial to the large eyes, and springy neck, and the way the wings bounce when she gives it a shake. It’s not a bad little bird, but it isn’t right either, not the kind of thing he’s looking for.

His face scrunches, head pulled back. “Just who do you think I have?”

The smile falls from her face at the question, and he watches, amused, as she schools her features into one of innocence, shrugging. “I don’t know. Simmons?”

“This is unhelpful,” he says taking the weird bird statue from her, and setting it back on the shelf.

“Fine. I’m just gonna start grabbing anything I find interesting. You can yea or nay from there.”

As they leave, he gives the bird one last look. He should come back for it later, on day he might have a garden.

Daisy pulls him into the next store before he’s paying attention, and shoves a box into his hands while he’s still processing.

“What is it?”

“It’s an at home foot spa.”

“Are we going to do this at every stop?”

“Come on. We could have a girls night. Pedicures and rom-coms.”

He eyes her skeptically. “Put it back.”

She huffs taking it back from him, stalking off.

—

The other gifts she brings him aren’t much better, and also centered around the team instead of one person. It’s frustrating, half feels like she’s doing it on purpose, half like she’s genuinely trying to help. And now they’ve ending up in a toy store.

He toys with display legos, trying to put it together without the instructions while she wanders up and down the aisles. He’s half done when he catches her in his peripheral, and drops what he’s doing. “You’re supposed to leave those in the box.”

“You’re supposed to, but some kid already liberated this one, so…” She lowers the large Nerf gun, and pulls the trigger. The foam projectile hits him in the chest, bouncing off, and his eyes follow it down to the floor before finding her again, uninterested.

Raising the gun, she pretends to blow smoke from the barrel, then rests it against her shoulder, quite pleased with herself. “We should get one of these for everyone. Christmas Nerf war.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on, Coulson. It’ll be fun. Everyone starts off in a different corner of the base. One gun, and a clip of ammo. Except May. No gun for her. Don’t want to lose in the first five minutes.”

There’s a bark of laughter, and he claps his hands together. “You think it would take five minutes?”

She pulls a foam knife from her pocket, and tosses it to him. “Exactly. She can have one of these. Last man standing wins. Kind of like a Shield Hunger Games. The Spy Games. No, I don’t like that. The–”

“Not what we’re here for.”

“Then what are we here for? You won’t tell me who you have or what you’re looking for. I don’t know how I can help.”

“Let’s just call it a day.”

“But you still don’t have anything, and Christmas is tomorrow.”

“I’ll think of something. Don’t worry about it. What about you? You get your gift yet?’

“Pfft, I’ve had it for weeks. I saw it, and was like ‘I have to have it.’”

“Good. Let’s get out of here. Some of us still have actual work to do.”

Passing by the Commons, Daisy changes direction. Simmons follows her in, but she ignores her for the time being. Target acquired, she pulls a chair out, sitting with a weary huff. “So, who’d you get?”

She waits for May’s answer, but she only continues to sip her tea. “What are you gonna get hi-im?” She catches herself halfway through the word, but it finishes itself anyway, despite her wishes. And the way May tilts her head tells Daisy that’s strike two. She really needs to think before she speaks. They’re so close. “What? Half the people in it are dudes. 50/50 shot.”

May’s apparently unconvinced because her brow raises, and Daisy pushes back in her seat. “I didn’t do anything. Geez, you people, so accusing.”

Simmons reaches for a cup, turning just enough to see May’s back, and Daisy dejectedly leaving. “I wouldn’t worry about it, she’s been asking the rest of us ours also.”

May shrugs, taking another sip. There’s moment of silence when she thinks she’ll be able to finish her tea in peace – Simmons can be a talker, but generally leaves her be – but Daisy hops back through the doorway, humming. And again she plops down in front of May.

“Let’s go to the mall…”

Furrowing her brow, May lowers the mug, holding it between both hands, and Daisy rushes an explanation before she even asks for it.

“It’s that song, you know? ‘Let’s go to the mall,’ by that Canadian singer, Robin–” With no change in expression, Daisy stops herself from going on. “You know what, never mind. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t seen you leave the base in, like, weeks. So, I’m sure you could use a shopping buddy to find that secret santa gift you need.”

“I’ve got it covered.”

“What? Really?” Daisy melts into the table, bummed. “Aww, man. I was looking forward to going with you. I went with Coulson, and let me tell you, that was an experience.”

He comes through the door as she finishes, and shakes his head. “It was an experience because you made it one. You weren’t helpful at all.”

She sits back up, hand hitting the table in emphasis. “Lies. Moral support, and you just want all the credit.”

Grabbing a mug, he fills it to the top. He takes a sip from his coffee, and shrugs off her accusation before taking a sit across from her. “Well, it’s my gift, so…”

Simmons gaze jumps between the pair and Daisy, her expression tight. “Excuse us for a moment.” Weaving around the table, she grabs Daisy by the elbow, and practically yanks her from her chair, tugging her down the hall.

Coulson blows on the hot liquid, but sets it down without a drink. “You know what she’s doing right?”

“I have a vague idea.”

“Good. Good,” he says, picking at the handle of his cup. He’s just as curious as the others, just as nosy as they are, but is better trained in his approach. He taps his fingers along the smooth porcelain. “As long as everyone’s on the same page. So, what route did you go, serious or joke?”

She stands, ignoring his question, and puts her cup in the sink. She leaves without a look back.

—

“You have to stop, you’re going to blow that whole thing.”

Daisy raises a hand to stop her. “Jemma, stop. It’s fine. I’m a trained super spy. I can handle this.”

Pushing Daisy further down the hall, hearing someone leave from behind them, she lowered her voice. “I don’t think that counts. You were trained by them, they know everything, all your moves.”

“Pfft, not all of them, and I can be subtle.”

“You were about as subtle as a fright train back there.”

“Yeah, cause pulling me out of the room like that wasn’t suspicious.”

“Still far less suspicious than you.”

Daisy pauses, head nodding side to side. “All right. All right, I get it. I’ll tone it down.”

“Thank you. It’s just until tomorrow. Then you can spaz out all you want.”

“How are we doing this? Everybody at the same time? One person at a time? What?”

“Let’s do one at a time, that way everybody can see what you got.”

“Oldest to youngest.”

As the rest nod in agreement, Coulson grumbles, standing. Picking though the boxes under their small tree, he searches for the one that is his. After a few minutes of fruitless patting, and no help, he finds a small box in the back corner behind the tree. It’s wrapped in silver and blue, a tiny bow on top. There still isn’t a name on it, but he’s certain it’s his.

Sitting back in his seat, he grabs the corner and rips. The paper pulls away with ease. He expected something…more considering who it was from. A layer of duck tape or the real gift wrapped in multiple boxes, but there’s nothing to indicate that it’s from her.

The paper tears away easily, and his face reflects off the polished protective case. A warmth spreads across his chest. The cards within look fantastic, perfect even. No stretches, no tears, no battered edges. How she’d managed this on such short notice–

Slack-jawed, he repositions to face her as he shuffles through the deck once, seeing what’s there. As he gets to the bottom of the pile, he finds the card of Cap saluting signed by none other than Steve Rogers. All of them are there though, she’d even managed the tricky one he could never find.

She’s smiling when he finally looks up, a bright, blinding smile, eyes crinkled in the corners. “Merry Christmas.”

“Where’d you get these?” he asks, again shuffling through the plastic encased cards.

“I’ve been collecting what I could since Fury told me you where alive.”

He looks up then, grin faltering. That had never occurred to him. That she would even try to replace what he’d lost that day, not all of it, but a small part. He should have, because she does what she can how ever she can, but it’s been years since then. “Oh, I…”

“They weren’t with your things after–” May pauses, pulling herself back slightly. Her eyes shift down and away from him for a moment, lost in a memory he hasn’t heard, doesn’t have the heart to ask about, before finding him again. “I salvaged what I could from your deck when I found it, replaced the rest.”

The room is heavy, the eyes of their team glued squarely on them. He’d change it if he could, make this a private moment, knows how she hates being so scrutinized. How she prefers to stay in the shadows, even with them, and he wants to say something, crack a joke to relieve the tension, but there’s nothing. No way to break this fog. He wishes he could, it was a hard time for her, and being watched remembering isn’t an easy thing. But before he can do anything she clears her throat, and starts again. “Stark was less than pleased. Said something about a long talk after catching up on Super Nanny.”

She cocks an eyebrow at that, the corner of her mouth tugged up, a quip at his expense running through her head, he’s sure. But he can only shrug in response. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Sure you don’t.” That smirk returns to a full-blown smile, and he feels himself deflate a little as the room seems to open up.

He’s reminded of the eyes on them as someone chokes out a small cough, and he almost feels the need to squirm in his seat at the attention, feels like an object on display rather than person opening a present. “Uh, I think you’re next.”

May’s unbothered by the younglings impatient noises to carry on, and her gaze lingers on the curve of his smile a moment longer than necessary before she stands. There’s an envelope in the branches, her name written neatly on the front, in a handwriting she is intimately familiar with, a red ribbon tied around the corner. Ah, Daisy, not half as sly as she thought.

Plucking the gift from it’s spot, she sits back next to Phil, closer than before, knees barely touching, and Daisy’s legs bounce in excitement like she already knows what’s going to happen. May shakes her head at the girl enthusiasm. Ripping along the top, she pulls out a thick piece of paper, and stares at it, reading the information.

And it’s the reaction he’d half been hoping for, that mouth open, floundering for words kind of thing. That kind of shock is a rare thing to see on her, and he wishes he’d thought ahead and brought a camera to capture the moment.

She looks to him, brow furrowing in slight confusion. “This is for the day after tomorrow.”

“I figured the sooner it was the less time you had to try and escape. There’s more also,” he says reaching out for it. Put the paper between his fingers, he rubs until the one piece becomes two.

“Two? Just assumed I’d invite you along.”

“Well, hoped. I mean, you can take whoever, it doesn’t have to be me. I just thought…you know…”

She looks at her gift again, and smiles, a grin full of mischief. “Talbot isn’t going to be happy about this.”

Coulson leans back into the couch, one arm searched along the back. “He never has to know.”

May scoffs at the ridiculousness of his statement. “You think our names aren’t going to be flagged for an international flight?”

Daisy’s head travels back and forth during the exchange, but stops at that. “Wait, what’d you get?”

“We could use false names. Break out Charles and Heidi again.”

“Phil…”

Her shoulders fall at that idea, and he keeps talking, eventually something brilliant will come out his mouth, only a matter of time. “Or I could talk to Stark, get back into his good graces. He’d let us borrow a plane. Or, at least, Pepper will.”

“What’d you get?” Daisy pipes in again, scooting closer to the edge of her seat.

“Tickets.”

“For?” She exaggerates the word for emphasis.

“Things.”

“Oh my g–” She throws her hands, letting them hit her legs. “It’s like pulling teeth.”

Mack nudges her, pushing her into Simmons. “Come on, Daisy, she doesn’t have to tell you.”

“Isn’t that the point of opening them together, to see what everyone got?” No one answers, but she doesn’t need their support to continue forward. “All right, better question: where are you going?”

“Australia,” May finally acknowledges, her fingers running reverently along the front of the tickets.

Coulson perks back up at the answer, jumping in. “There’s this little cabin in the outback. Gonna take a few days.”

Daisy frowns. They had just gone out yesterday because he hadn’t had a gift, but this trip sounded far from last minute. “How long have you had this?”

He looks away, pretending to think. “When did we draw names?”

“What the hell, Coulson? Why did we even go out?”

“Because you were insistent, and it’s hard to say no when you do that thing with your face.”

“What thing?”

“That sad, puppy-dog thing.”

“I don’t do a puppy-dog thing.”

“Oh! Oh, I know the look. Looks something like this,” Simmons says, pulling her brows together and up, eyes sad, lips pouting.

Daisy shakes her head at the imitation, unamused. “I don’t do that.”

“You do.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve all seen it.”

“Traitors.” She glares at the team.

“Speaking of traitors and riggings.”

Jemma fidgets in her seat as Daisy blows the statement off. “No one was talking about rigging anything.”

“Who wants to tell me how she set this up?”

Daisy hold her hands up in surrender, as if it’d help her case. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn’t set anything up. I was just helping. It’s your first Christmas together – and just because you won’t say anything doesn’t mean we don’t know – you guys couldn’t not get each other.”

“I pulled May’s name first, she peeked over my shoulder, stole the paper, and told me to draw again.”

“Jemma!”

“What?”

“Oh my god, you agreed it was a good idea.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Daisy gasps in mock shock. “Lies. It was all her idea. I had nothing to do with it until after it had already been put into place.”

“Now who’s lying?”

Coulson leans forward, waving the five of them off, that ‘slight-disappointed-father-look’ in his eyes. “It doesn’t matter who’s idea it was. We all agreed to secret santa, you should have just let it happen the way it was going to happen. Though I do appreciate the thought. But, we are far too old for this to be our first Christmas together–”

“Speak for yourself.”

He roll his eyes. “Okay. I’m far too old for this to be our first Christmas together–”

“Oh my god, you know what I mean. Seriously, everybody already knows you’re together, just kiss already.” She crosses her arms, mumbling to herself as she rolls her eyes at their behavior. “Ridiculous. Acting like children.”

Sharing a silent look, May and Coulson stand, and approach their young team. Pulling Daisy into a hug as thanks, Coulson waves the others to join in.

It’s more contact than May will want, but while is lasts, it’s nice, warm. The kind of contact Daisy longs for some days, and better than most of the gifts she’s gotten in her life. It ends sooner than she wants it to. And as she clears her throat, blinks back the haziness of her eyes, and straightens her sweater, she spots them quietly trying to escape the common area. “Wait. Where are you going? We aren’t done.”

“You can show us later. After all, this is our first Christmas together, you think we want to spend it with our kids?”

Daisy smirks, shifting her weight to her back leg, and crosses her arms. “You know where you’re standing, right?”

Looking up, Daisy, all of them, can hear May groan from several feet away. “Come on, it’s traditions. You have to kiss under the mistletoe or it’s bad luck.”

“I don’t think that’s part of it.”

“It is, shut up.” She waves Fitz off as the senior agents look up again, then gaze at each other, and she thinks it’s really going to happen this time. May takes a hold of Coulson’s upper arms, pulling herself to her tiptoes. Their movements are slow as they lean in, eyes closed. Daisy almost has to stop herself from giddily clapping, but at the last second her hopes are dashed. May shifts, pulls to the side, and pecks his cheek instead.

“I don’t give shows,” she remarks turning, and heading down the hall, leaving Coulson to grin dopily at them.

Daisy holds her body stiffly. “What was that?!”

“You heard the lady, no shows. Have fun. Don’t break anything.”

Groaning, Daisy turns on the ball of her foot, and punches at the air. “So close.” She shrugs then, plopping back down. “There’s always next year.”

As she brings her gift to her lap, Mack leans forward onto his knees, hands clasped in front of him, a look of concentration on his face. “Did they just call us their kids?”

“They did,” Simmons answer, neatly untying the ribbons around her present.

“Yeah, you’ll get use to it.”

#philindasecretsanta2k17 #philinda fanfiction #philinda

[fae-fucker]

Crown of Midnight: Chapter 1-2

Fuck you.

Fuck me.

Fuck this.

Let’s do this.

Chapter 1

We open on Sardines being all assassin-y (took you long enough, you silly blond bitch) and sneaking into some nobleman’s house.

Concealed beneath a black mask and hood, she willed herself to melt into the shadows, to become nothing more than a slip of darkness.

*deep sigh*

I can’t believe I’m doing this shit again. Why do I hate myself this much?

The [servant] hadn’t noticed the wet footprints on the floorboards.

How convenient. 

Lord Nirall was no older than thirty-five, and his wife, dark haired and beautiful, slept soundly in his arms.

Gotta make sure the wife is beautiful!! What else are women good for, right?

Feminism!

Sardines wonders what this man did to offend the king so. But then she doesn’t?

It wasn’t her place to ask questions. Her job was to obey. Her freedom depended on it.

If you wanted freedom so bad, why didn’t you just escape as soon as you found the secret escape route, you dumb bitch?

Her sword slid out of its sheath with barely a whine. She took a shuddering breath, bracing herself for what would come next.

I can’t believe it’s only chapter one and I already have to bust this one out, but damn:

Some assassin.

Chapter 2

Sardines is back in the castle delivering “Lord Nirall’s” severed head and some other goodies.

No one spoke as it bounced, a vulgar thudding of stiff and rotting flesh on marble. It rolled to a stop at the foot of the dais, milky eyes turned toward the ornate glass chandelier overhead.

Mmm, yes, Sarah! Sarah, I just LOOOOVE it when you get so edgy! Look how dark and mature your books are, Sarah! 

The king notes that he can barely recognize him because of all the cuts and slashes on his face. I’m assuming since Jammo can’t actually write a morally grey protagonist, it’s not actually Lord Nirall and Sardines has just been finding coprses that look like her victims or some shit.

Celaena gave him a crooked smile, though her throat tightened.

Yep, ok, that’s exactly what it is. 

Supposedly Sardines is supposed to be this brilliant social strategist, but as soon as somebody even slightly doubts her lies, she just flips her shit and starts getting nervous. 

Some MASTER MANIPULATOR. 

She extended the hand to Chaol, whose bronze eyes were distant as he took it from her and offered it to the king. The king’s lip curled, but he pried the ring off the stiff finger.

Why didn’t you just ... bring the ring. Without any hands.

Is it just to make it more gruesome, Jammo? Is that what it is? You realize it just makes it dumber, yes? 

And why aren’t these chunks of rotting flesh filled with maggots? Would that just be too icky, Jammo? You can only handle Hollywood edginess? PG-13 edginess?

“What of his wife?” the king demanded, turning the ring over in his fingers again and again.

“Chained to what’s left of her husband at the bottom of the sea,” Celaena replied with a wicked grin, and removed the slender, pale hand from her sack.

Why did the king even have to ask this? Didn’t he give the order? Did he just say “uuuhhh kill the guy” and Sardines didn’t even ask what to do with the wife? 

God, these people are so dumb.

The king mentions that there’s a rebellion brewing in Rifthold but he only has one name so far.

On [the paper] was a single name: Archer Finn. 

It took every ounce of will and sense of self-preservation to keep her shock from showing.

1) Someone teach this bitch how to pokerface. 

2) There’s just one name on the piece of paper that Chaol hands to her on the king’s order. Why couldn’t he just SAY THE GODDAMN NAME? With his mouth hole?

Whatever. Sardines recognizes Archer and mentions that he’s hot and she used to have a crush on him, so he’s probably mildly important or his death will be super tragic.

He’d been several years older, already a highly sought-after courtesan … who was in need of some training on how to protect himself from his rather jealous clients. And their husbands.

Uuh ... bonus points for male courtesans, I guess? 

He’d been handsome and kind and jovial, not a traitor to the crown so dangerous that the king would want him dead. 

It was absurd. Whoever was giving the king his information was a damned idiot.

Sardines, the smartest being in this world: UUUUHHH THIS DOESN’T MATCH THE THINGS I KNOW!!! EVERYBODY ELSE IS WRONG!!!

Though that’s probably true, since we all know Smaas could never handle Sardines being anything but absolute perfection. 

“You know Archer? I’m not surprised.” A taunt—a challenge. 

She just stared ahead, willing herself to calm, to breathe. “I used to. He’s an extraordinarily wellguarded man. I’ll need time to get past his defenses.” So carefully said, so casually phrased.

If you say so, curiously crusted book page. I mean it’s an obvious and rather clichéd attempt at making more time for herself, but I guess the king is a dumbass and SJM can’t actually write for shit, so this passes for cleverness. 

It works, too. The king, who’s supposedly a shitty dictator who’s afraid of this rebellion killing him, still gives her an entire month. Yeah, that makes sense. Gotta love it when you have to nerf your villains because your hero is a fucking imbecile. 

Honey, king-boy, the correct response here is: “BITCH, MY ACTUAL LIFE IS ON THE LINE, YOU HAVE TWO DAYS, GET!! ON!! IT!!”

It’s especially stupid when this is happening IN THE TOWN THEY LIVE IN. So the fact that this dumbass lie works is just pathetic, honestly.

“Then you have one month,” the king said. “And if he’s not buried by then, perhaps I shall reconsider your position, girl.”

Wow. Damn. SJM, be nicer to your heroes. We’re on the edge of our seats here. How will they possibly defeat this very intimidating villain.

“Be discreet. Your payment for Nirall is already in your chambers.”

1) Do you really have to tell your stealthy assassin to be discreet? Well, I guess since it’s Sardines, you kinda do. What a nice self-roast there, book.

2) Do you also have to tell her that her payment’s in the chambers? Hasn’t she done this a couple of times already? Shouldn’t she know this?

Smaas, why.

We switch POV to Doriass, who angsts about how edgy and evil Sardines is now and how she maybe doesn’t actually love him and manipulated him to love her!

Yeah, she’s not that smart, Doriass.

Actually, for the two months since she’d been named the King’s Champion, she’d been like this. Her lovely dresses and ornate clothes were gone, replaced by an unforgiving, close-cut black tunic and pants, her hair pulled back in a long braid that fell into the folds of that dark cloak she was always wearing. She was a beautiful wraith—and when she looked at him, it was like she didn’t even know who he was.

1) UNFORGIVING TUNIC.

2) This is the second time she’s described as a wraith in the first two chapters. Who edited this? 

A gibbon.

But he couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever meant anything to Celaena at all.

Cry me a river with your manpain, Doriass.

We switch POV back to Sardines. (Well, that was utterly pointless.) She angsts bout how Chaol hasn’t been looking at her the same way ever since she started with the murder and stuff, and she meets with him in the secret passages of the castle or what-the-fuck-ever-who-gives-a-damn.

“Are you still acting like the King’s Champion, or are you back to being Celaena?” In the torchlight, his bronze eyes glittered.

This is the second time his eyes are described as bronze in this chapter. 

I have a feeling that this book was created and “perfected” by a bunch of horny drunk women throwing their own shit at the walls. 

We get more of Sarah’s trademark tepid banter that the fangirls probably think is super hilarious and SASSILY FEMINIST. 

Chaol tells her that he’s been worried and thought she’d been murdered, so they hug it out.

He hadn’t held her since the day she’d learned she had officially won the competition, though the memory of that embrace often drifted into her thoughts. And as she held him now, the craving for it never to stop roared through her.

ROARED.

He tells her that she smells bad.

She hissed and shoved him, her face burning in earnest now. “Carrying around dead body parts for weeks isn’t exactly conducive to smelling nice! And maybe if I’d been given time for a bath instead of being ordered to report immediately to the king, I might have—” She stopped herself at the sight of his grin and smacked his shoulder. “Idiot.”

This is, like, AT LEAST 10 feminisms.

We get another scene change.

After a joyous Fleetfoot calmed down enough for Celaena to speak without being licked [...]

I’m gonna eat that fucking dog.

Sardines angst some more about Elena and about how ...

Fucking called it.

She’d given Lord Nirall the same choice she’d given Sir Carlin: die right then, or fake his own death and flee—flee far, and never use his given name again. So far, of the four men she’d been assigned to dispatch, all had chosen escape.

Apparently, this LE EPIC ASSASSIN saw that Sir Carlin was a cool dude and just couldn’t put a knife in his throat. She only killed BAD PEOPLE, remember? Which makes no sense, considering how shitty evil her mentor was. Why would he even allow that? Whatever.

God forbid we have an actual female anti-hero, right Smaas? You wouldn’t wanna imply your bitchy little twat princess is anything but a perfect beacon of morality.

Curiously, we don’t find out whether she saw the other men acting as kind and cutesy perfect as Sir Carlin. What if they were assholes? I wouldn’t enjoy Sardines playing god, but the fact that she did it before and doesn’t do it now makes no sense either. 

We find out that she’s been finding corpses from sick-houses to replace the dudes for the crime scenes. 

But with magic gone and those wise healers hanged or burned, people were dying in droves. Dying from stupid, once-curable illnesses.

Alright, here cometh an epic rant:

1) I can maybe buy that the king doesn’t know all of the nobles who live far away, at least not enough to recognize them by appearance. What I can’t buy is the servants not recognizing their masters. That’s just plain dumb. Even if she fucked up their faces or cut their heads off, they’r still recognize the bodies as not theirs. 

2) So, do they not have non-magical healers? Did the king know that the world needed magic to survive and that they had no non-magical medicine and still went “nah, just kill them all”. We never really find out if the king truly killed magic of if it went away, so like ??? What’s the truth here?

3) If they have no non-magical healthcare, WHY THE FUCK DOES THE KING LET HER JUST BRING DEAD THINGS INTO HIS THRONE ROOM AND WHY DOES HE TOUCH THOSE DEAD THINGS. WHAT THE FUCK!!!

4) If Sardines has been stealing corpses and not actually killed any of the dudes, then her little angsty thoughts about how bad she feels about killing this man and how it’s not her job to question but to obey are nothing but misleading bullshit. It doesn’t make any sense for her to be thinking that! WHY DID SHE EVEN UNSHEATHE HER SWORD IF SHE KNEW SHE WASN’T GOING TO KILL HIM?! HE’S MENTIONED TO OPEN HIS EYES SO HE’D JUST SCREAM AND FREAK OUT AND CALL ATTENTION TO HER!!

SJM why. 

Celaena fought a shudder. She was playing a very, very lethal game. And now that her targets were people in Rifthold—now that it was Archer … She’d have to find a way to play it better. Because if the king ever learned the truth, if he found out what she was doing … 

He’d destroy her.

God, I fucking hope.

It’s only been two chapters and I’m already tired.

#eff reads: crown of midnight #book rants #anti tog #anti sjm

[peperoprincess]

Is the key to saving Jack from Anti saving Dr. Schneeplestein?

I forgot to take my phone to work with me last night, and business was absolutely dead. My boss left at 5:30 and I was alone until closing at 9:30 by myself, so for upwards of three hours I spent time ruminating on the whole Anti ordeal and thinking about some of the theories I’d seen. Personally, although I have my own theories and thoughts about what other people are posting, I never really took the time to sit down and actually think through what we already know on my own. But given that I had about four hours last night to do exactly that, and that I’ve been going back and watching old videos featuring the egos, I figured I’d present you guys with my thoughts!! Heads up that this post is going to be a VERY long one, I ended up writing a university-worthy five page essay on what I think is going on behind the scenes, so please stick with it until the end!! I think you might find it interesting if you’re a lore detective like me haha

And who knows, maybe @therealjacksepticeye could share his own thoughts on some of this stuff!

I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO POINT OUT: This theory hinges on the speculation that the good doctor didn’t die at the end of the August 3rd video. I strongly believe he wasn’t killed: there wasn’t any evidence of his dying at the end, and the footage just cuts out. There isn’t any struggle, no signs that there’s anything wrong with Schneeplestein other than losing his patient. So I operate under the assumption that he is still alive.

This whole brainstorm session of mine started with one question: what IS Anti? Some people seem to think he might be a demon, others a sort of computer virus. Considering the fact that, so the story goes, the more you talk about him the stronger he gets, I’d long considered him a sort of ghost/entity. There’s a sort of poltergeist or spirit that functions much the same way, and although the name escapes me, I’d associated him with that sort of thing. But then someone in the tag brought up the RGB lighting, and Anti himself seemed to think that was “clever” (link). I’d been scribbling notes into my sketchbook while writing all these thoughts down, which is what I’m typing up right now into something more cohesive. In my notes, though, I’d written things like “is Anti a separate entity with Jack’s face? Probably not,” or “a (computer) virus? Infection?” I left these thoughts to stew and moved on. Whatever you choose to believe Anti is, the important part is that he is able to do two things, or interact with the other egos (and Jack) in two stages: corruption/control, and possession. Of the two, corrupting or controlling another ego would take the lesser amount of effort. If he acts like a type of virus, for example, corrupting another ego allows him to influence them. However, they still remain in control of their own bodies for the most part. I would like to think that his sort of behaviour manifests in the way the screen glitches when Anti isn’t visible, or when one of the other egos says or does something slightly out of character, reminiscent of Anti (for example, in Dream Daddy when Brian mentions “anti-jokes” and Jack looks at the camera, and deadpan emphasizes Anti, or the recent set of Instagram photos in which Dr. Schneeplestein is featured with a bleeding eye). The second of the two takes significantly more manpower from Anti: possession. Once another ego is corrupted and can be influenced, Anti then shares a link with that ego. Over time, he is able to push his way into the other ego and take control (like we see happen in the August 3rd BIO INC REDEMPTION video, when Dr. Schneeplestein starts to wrap the cord around his own neck, etc. Anti begins taking possession of the Doctor at around 7:45, and becomes increasingly in control. In this case, he was able to fight Anti off temporarily, but in the end Anti pushed through successfully. And of course, the main and most important instance of this type of possession is the SAY GOODBYE video in which Anti makes Jack slit his own throat (and “kills” him).

Now that these main points are established, I’d like to jump a little to another point: Dr. Schneeplestein seems to be a very important lynchpin this time around. Up until this point in time, I never really took Dr. Schneeplestein seriously. Throughout the episodes of Surgeon Simulator, he’s careless and acts unlike any doctor I’ve ever encountered before in my life. His poor patients can’t possibly have ever survived a single one of his operations. Everything is sure to go awry when Schneeplestein enters the room. But then I thought to myself, what if Schneeplestein is, in actuality, much smarter than I’ve given him credit for? What if his interactions with Peter are just plain horsing around? Perhaps we’ve never really seen him take something seriously, which I believe is supported by the way he spoke about his friends in the BIO INC REDEMPTION video. He seemed genuinely distressed to see “Jack’s” systems failing. Seemed pretty serious to me. Now, let’s take for fact, just for the sake of argument, that Schneeplestein is truly a great doctor when it counts. He mentions saving Jack, and gets so incredibly distressed when the systems all start failing: “I will not have you die… not again! I will not lose you. I almost lost you once before” (6:46). We see that he truly cares about Jack and is trying everything in his power to help him, even though clearly we know that this isn’t the real Jack, Schneeplestein gets increasingly agitated and anxious (“Tell me what to do, my friend!” (7:00)). Once Anti starts to take control, it gets increasingly harder and harder for Schneeplestein to fight Anti off, and he goes on to make multiple references to Anti through medications such as antidepressants and anticoagulants as Jack’s systems begin to fail one after another (“Antidepressants… Anti-Anti… we have to get him out of there.” (8:04) and “Yes. ANTI-coagulants.” (8:24))

So, we know that Schneeplestein has saved Jack once before, presumably when Anti slit his throat in the SAY GOODBYE video. I’d like to call to attention the phrasing that Schneeplestein uses. It’s very interesting to note that he says not again, as if implying that Jack died at that time. I’ll address this again in a moment, but there is certainly some ambiguity here. Did Jack really die, or was Schneeplestein over exaggerating? What are the implications if this is true, that Jack was dead and brought back to life? Does he simply mean that Jack flat-lined on the table and that Schneeplestein was able to bring him back? Perhaps the ambiguity is designed to keep us guessing, but based on what I’ve gathered, I’d be more inclined to believe that Jack didn’t actually die after the encounter with Anti, but that he was close to death when Schneeplestein saved him (again, supported by the second half of that quote: “I almost lost you once before!” - Almost).

Next, we also know that Schneeplestein saved Chase. He says as much in BIO INC REDEMPTION: “I saved Peter from the brink. I saved my very good friend Chase, Chase Brody. He went back, saw his family. Did they take him back? We may never know” (4:16). However, I don’t think this is exactly what it seems. When I first heard him say he saved Chase, I immediately thought back to the insanely morbid last few seconds of the Bro Average video, in which Chase seems to shoot himself in the head. Now, I did a little research, and according to this article (link) surviving a bullet to the brain requires a lot of conditions to be met, and even then when the patient survives, it isn’t without a significant amount of damage. According to the article, “a person’s chances of surviving such a trauma to the brain depend on the areas of the brain that are struck, the velocity of the bullet and whether the bullet exits the brain.” Looking at the video, Chase shoots himself at the side of his head, above the ear. The bullet would have passed through both halves of the brain, which would have caused more damage than if the bullet had only affected one of the hemispheres. Not to mention that if the bullet had stayed inside the head, there would again, be a lot more damage done. If he’d hit the thalamus or brainstem, which according to the article “are crucial to consciousness and basic functions such as controlling breathing and the heartbeat,” then his chances of surviving would have been extremely low. So the moral of this little study is this: there is almost no way in hell Schneeplestein could have saved Chase if he’d really shot himself in the head, unless the Doctor was there immediately after the incident and was able to provide a Level 1 Trauma Center’s equipment to deal with the injury. And Schneeplestein isn’t even a neurosurgeon!! And even if we play devil’s advocate and say that Chase did indeed get shot, and Schneeplestein DID save him, then that leads me to question the part of the BIO INC REDEMPTION video in which the good doctor says “I saved Peter from the brink. I saved my very good friend Chase, Chase Brody. He went back, saw his family. Did they take him back? We may never know” (4:16). After a brain injury and subsequent surgery such as this, I’ll be damned if Chase actually went to see his family. We’re talking MAJOR recovery time. I’d also like to point out that just before this point in the video, we see the “Drive-By,” in which Chase seems to be shooting some folks. Are we meant to assume that he shoots at Stacy because she’s divorcing him and taking his kids? Is he shooting at random passers-by? Is it even a real gun? It clearly states “Nerf Edition” below. And if it WAS meant to be a real gun, he went back to see his family so clearly it wasn’t them he shot at, and clearly is wasn’t anyone else since the boy isn’t in jail. Y’know, where he WOULD BE if we took it to be a real drive-by. In either of these cases, his family sure as hell wouldn’t let him come back to see them. Also taking into account that Chase then uses the exact same gun in the “Stacy, I love you, please don’t go” shot. So if it isn’t meant to be a real gun, like I heavily suspect it isn’t, Schneeplestein wouldn’t have any cause to operate or to “save Chase” because nothing happened. So then why does he say he saved Chase? My guess is that something happened off-camera that we didn’t see. The most plausible idea would be that, considering his divorce and his inability to see his kids, Chase fell into a bout of situational depression, which may have hit him hard enough to cause suicidal tendencies. If he mimed killing himself once, he may have actually tried to do so off-camera. If this is where Schneeplestein actually saved him, then perhaps he got Chase the help he needed. Then again, Anti could very well have tried to get to Chase as well, prompting Schneeplestein to have to save him, but we haven’t seen anything like that on screen, or had hints about anything like this dropped. We’d need more video and/or textual proof to really understand why and how Schneeplestein saved Chase. The point of the matter is that, even if Schneeplestein DIDN’T bring the two of them back to life, he’s still a major contender in Anti’s way. The good doctor certain is as his name implies, a good doctor. Just shy of resurrecting egos, he provides them with life-saving medical attention.

Next on the agenda is an interesting little something: Anti needs Dr. Schneeplestein. We saw in Anti’s captions that he was “stitched together,” following a picture posted of the doctor. Clearly Schneeplestein was a necessity, a good choice given the aforementioned detail of administering life-saving medical attention to different egos, as well as the man in charge – Jack. He seems to be the only person who can properly treat Anti. And actually, interestingly, that same photo of the doctor is the one where we see him bleeding from the eye. He’s been corrupted by Anti, influenced by him perhaps, in order for Anti to get him to stitch his neck up. This would explain why Anti hasn’t simply killed the doctor, but instead corrupted him. Also taking into account that Schneeplestein calls Jack his friend on multiple occasions in the BIO INC REDEMPTION video, we know that he would never voluntarily betray Jack. Therefore the only way for Anti to get what he wanted would be to turn Schneeplestein to his side, however briefly. One might argue that this briefness is a result of Schneeplestein’s profession. If, like I mentioned earlier, Anti acts like a disease, an illness, or a virus – computer or otherwise – Schneeplestein has the upper hand. He’s a doctor, and doctors fight viruses and infections. Although Anti eventually manages to take control, Schneeplestein isn’t easily controlled. But then, we also have to take into account that Schneeplestein says “I have never seen something attack a system like this before” (7:30), which would account for how much he has to struggle to keep Anti out (and his subsequent loss of ability to keep Anti from possessing him).

But then it begs the question: why didn’t Anti simply kill the good doctor after having his neck stitched up? My guess is that Anti continuously needs the doctor’s support. If you look back to Anti’s appearance in BIO INC REDEMPTION, his neck is bleeding again. Why would Anti post a photo of a stitched up neck, only to then show up bleeding again? I think that Anti is in constant need of medical attention, and that Schneeplestein is the only one who can give it to him. Perhaps, no matter what he does, the neck wound keeps opening up again and again, time after time. Let’s think about it this way: why does Anti even have that neck wound to begin with? Wasn’t it Jack who slit his own throat? My theory is that any injuries he sustained while inside Jack’s body would remain with him when eventually he came back out of Jack’s body. He tells us in the BIO INC REDEMPTION video that he was in control this entire time, but I’d be willing to bet my left leg that he only said that to make himself sound more powerful than he really is. But in fact, he was not in control the whole time, and he wasn’t in Jack’s body at all. He was weak and suffering and in need of a doctor. Schneeplestein even boasts of his own medical prowess as Anti tries to possess him: “When something gets inside your body and it wants to destroy you from the inside out, there is only one way to deal with it. And that is SCHNEEPLESTEIN” (5:03). Given, he IS talking about expelling Anti from one’s system, and although that would prove to be detrimental to Anti who is trying to take Schneeplestein’s body, it is precisely his skill as a doctor that Anti is in need of.

So then, if Anti is in constant need of medical attention, and has been corrupting Schneeplestein in order to get that medical attention, would it not be detrimental to himself to kill the doctor? So then why would it be our job to save Schneeplestein, if Anti doesn’t even want to kill him? Simple. While it’s true that Anti needs the doctor’s attention to keep stitching up that neck wound of his, it is quite possible that if Jack dies, Anti can simply take over his body permanently and become strong enough to exist on his own without any medical assistance. If he can only corrupt Schneeplestein for short periods of time before the doctor starts to fight back, this means that eventually Schneeplestein will heal whatever harm Anti tries to inflict on Jack. So then, the only way to successfully make the transition from some sort of entity without a body of his own to fully taking over a host body (Jack’s) is to quickly kill the doctor so that he is unable to heal Jack again, and then to deal with Jack before time is up. In this scenario, KILLING THE DOCTOR IS THE CATALYST THAT WOULD LEAD, IN THE END, TO JACK’S (PERMANENT) DEATH.

Given the desperation to Anti’s most recent video appearance, I’d say he’s just desperate enough to go for it. When he first appeared in SAY GOODBYE, Anti was rather calm. Although aggressive with his insistence that we let this happen, he was cocky and self-assured. He was convincing and manipulative. He believed that he was in control, after what he assumed to be a successful attempt to put an end to Jack’s life. He tells us that “his body was weak,” which I could very easily be persuaded to take to mean that Jack was weak, and that with Anti now inhabiting the body, he will be strong. Inside Jack’s body, while possessing him, he forced Jack to slit his own throat (and thus retained the injury when he was pushed from Jack’s body when he was saved by Dr. Schneeplestein). In comparison, this most recent video appearance by Anti is erratic and agitated. Before, he was cocky and comfortable. He thought Jack was dead, defeated, and he was feeling triumphant. But then Schneeplestein fixed Jack and Anti wasn’t able to hold his place in Jack’s body, and was consequently expelled from the body once again. There is significantly more glitching going on, Anti paces back and forth constantly. He seems genuinely angry. He proclaims that we’ve been seeing him all along, that it’s been him in control, when frankly it’s all been a crock of shit. Anti isn’t stronger than ever, he isn’t even in control. He’s desperate, and he knows he’s being pushed aside. He knows we mock him with Glitch Bitch, and it makes him absolutely downright furious. And as a result, he makes bold claims and sweeping grandiose gestures, trying much too aggressively to convince us that he still has the upper hand, to compensate for his uncertainty, when in actuality he’s slipping from his hold more and more.

The long and the short of it is that Anti is weak. He’s getting cagey and we’ve got him on his toes. If we keep Schneeplestein alive, we keep the rest of them alive. It’s quite possible that he keep threatening the other egos, Chase and Marvin, so that the audience is continuously set ablaze. The more agitated we get, the more we talk about Anti, and the stronger he becomes again. Perhaps if we stop reacting, stop giving him the satisfaction, eventually he’ll simply become what he fears the most: nothing.

#antisepticeye #dr. schneeplestein #jacksepticeye #therealjacksepticeye #jacksepticeye theory

[anna-axe]

Confession Time

Everyone has those days where things are just building up and you need to let them out before you die? Here's mine.

There are two men in my life that I like a lot. And I find myself saying this a lot... damn... One is a coworker that I know deep down would never work out. Not because we don't get along, not even because I couldn't see myself happily with him. No, we get along really well, and I really enjoy his company. I also know he has the ability to make me so happy... but shit happens, and I just don't see our stars aligning... He's older, and not that I'm against age differences because as soon as it's legal for both parties age shouldn't matter ever, but because of this I realize our habits are quite different. I can't have dinner before 7 because I get nightmares if I don't have a full stomach when I go to sleep, he can't eat after a certain time or he has some issues that I can only imagine to be unbearable... plus I feel we want different futures, which sucks because I honestly think of him as one of the best matches I've found...

The other is someone who I've known for ages... and I so want to make a move, but so many things are holding me back. The biggest one being my coworker... I don't want to lose him, or hurt him or anything that could even remotely jeapordize the relationship weve built,... I'd honestly say friendship but to me it's more than just a friendship... but there is also my self esteem holding me back. He's good looking, athletic and honestly way too good for me, and I can't see myself having a chance. Finally I tried to get over these guys by dating and ended up miscarying my now exes child.... and who wants to be with someone as damaged as that? Like I fucking failed to stick to my morals of only dating for love, AND got pregnant AND found out I can't carry a baby in a healthy manner...

Plus, I don't want to date for fun, I want to settle down, which I openly deny all the time out of fear. I always tell people I don't want kids, or I don't want to be married because "I can barely take care of myself without adding in another life" and "I'm shitty in relationships" when in reality I know that when I find the one I'll be an amazing wife and mother, no doubt. I love kids, and can not wait to watch my own grow up someday. I want to have one of those cheesy love life's where I can cook dinner with my significant other, have nerf gun wars randomly, build forts, and just wake up next to the person I love everyday... and I wish I wasn't so afraid to embrace that part of me, because that part of me is the part I like best about myself. It's the part of me that's a dreamer. However I taught myself if I don't have hopes and don't give myself expectations, the world doesn't hurt as much... So I continue to pretend I don't want kids, and keep saying I never want to get married, and continue to say I'm a shitty girlfriend...

#crazy #confession #confidence booster #comment #commentary #couple #concept #conversation #conflict #confidence #confused #confessions #daily life #lonely #life #love #long reads #loneliness #long #guidance #guilty #guilt #tumblr #true #trigger warning #trip #tripping #single #seriously #sadness

[talesfromthelighterdarkside-blog]

“Headless Biker: Forbidden Teenage Love, Pissed Cops & My Headless Corpse”

“Nobody gets within 100 yards of our house without me knowing about it. Rusty is the best guard dog around. Better than 10 security systems!” It was obviously a pre-emptive strike to stop me from getting any ideas re; stealth nocturnal visits to his oldest daughter. Little did he know, I was in his daughters bedroom 3 night a week, even before I was shit-listed. There was a reason I called him the Minute Man. Alice’s parents bedroom was right above hers, and we heard more than we’d like to.

A little dog treat bribe on the way in and out, no problem. The arrogance and self-righteousness of my girl’s Dad was off the charts. Being a heart surgeon w/ a puritanical streak a mile wide explained it all. Within days of his comment, he’d forbidden all contact and promised devastating punishments if either of us didn't comply. This wasn't some girl at school. This was first love so powerful it hurt. In a good way most of the time. And the chemistry, damn, threats of hell and damnation couldn’t even slow us down when it came to keeping our paws off each other.

And now? I can’t see, speak, or look her direction. And he had a whole system of narcs all throughout Alice’s life.  The reason for the shit-listing? My parents were divorced. Nothing more. This extremely religious man didn’t see the hypocrisy of damning me because of that. He straight up told Alice, I was destined to follow the path of Ted Bundy or Pablo Escobar, or both. I'd also destroy a family, because my old man did. Me, a 15 yr. old kid.

Of course, there was no way he could stop us from seeing each other. The irony? It meant it was usually in her bedroom at 2 am. It was a little bit like that tractor beam on Star Wars. No matter how late, when the beam called, there was no stopping me. No stopping us.  I carefully crept out of the house and rolled my brand new motorcycle down the street before starting it. This night, thinking I wouldn't stay long, and I made a major strategic mistake. I always parked far away in a cul-de-sac and walked to her house. On this night, I parked in the driveway of a home under construction. Stupid. It was my ability to think a few steps ahead that allowed us to stay out of Roscoe’s(lawman) grasp in those days. I won’t lie, me and my bro’s were wildlings and into some crazy shit. I wouldn't want my daughter dating someone like that. But at the time I saw it different. Because of his reasons. It just pissed me off. It was an example of everything that was wrong w/ my small town, super religious upbringing.

What was to be a talk at her window, turned into entry, which turned into, well, you get it. Within minutes, we see a car slowly prowling down her street. I knew right away, it was a cop. A Roscoe. He lit up my bike, and then did what all small town cops do, went full dick-head overreaction. His comms w/ the dispatcher reverberated around the neighborhood, we could hear every word on this warm summer night. I was screwed. Underage, no license, and now trapped in Alice’s neighborhood. Which was the worst part. Then suddenly, I caught a major break.

Roscoe got in his car and drove away. I gave her a kiss and sprinted toward my bike. Assuming he was blocking the only exit to the hood, I rolled my bike in front of her neighbors big-ass RV parked on the side of the house. Totally hidden from the street. Before I could even investigate Roscoe's whereabouts, 3 sets of headlights almost painted me, and I scurried back in Alice’s window. What happened next was comedy gold.

It quickly became obvious, Roscoe 1 was a rookie, and Roscoe 2 & 3 were not happy. “What the fuck? There’s no bike here!?”  “But, but, but, it was just here. I swear. He must’ve escaped through the forest.” “Shut-up, theres a river and a deep ravine. The only way he got out of this neighborhood is the street. You say you blocked the exit.” “I did. No way he escaped. He’s hiding nearby.”   Alice was major freaked out, I had trouble suppressing the volume on my chuckle of satisfaction. Since a very young age we lured the Roscoes into chasing us by many different means. By snowball or water balloon, illegally riding our MC on the street, or just running when we saw them. On foot, on motorcycles, on BMX bikes, you name it. They were my nemesis, and there wasn’t a single time they caught us. Tonight was a continuation of a long feud. They didn’t like me much either.

Roscoe 2 takes charge. “Call dispatch, call the owner of the bike. Okay, his Mom’s co-owner, you have her on the phone?”  We listened w/ laser focus as Roscoe 2 relayed questions to the dispatcher to ask my Mom. Having been awaken in the middle of the night, she was convinced her sweet angel of a boy was sleeping soundly in his bed. “Well, Ma’am, can you go check please.”  

I fully expected my entire scheme to unravel the second she entered my room. I always employed a few counter-measures. Using a halloween mask w/ dark curly hair, I’d constructed a bitchin’ dummy in my bed that would pass inspection from a distance, but nothing more. “What? He’s in his bed? You're looking at him right now? So there’s no chance he’s in this neighborhood w/ his bike? Did he lend his bike to someone, or is it stolen? You need to wake him up. Ask him. Sorry, but you need to do it right now.”   Just then, all hell broke loose.

Roscoe 2 had a panic in his voice. "Whaddya mean she’s screaming bloody murder? Is she being attacked? Send help immediately! What? Whaddya mean she thinks she’s killed him? Her son? WTF?”

You see, when Mom couldn’t wake me w/ her voice, she gave me a good solid shake. The mask w/ a nerf football inside rolled off the bed and bounced across the floor at her feet. In the mayhem, she thought she’d just decapitated me. For 1.5 seconds anyway. Roscoe’s narration continued, “Ha, that little shit? He’s in big trouble? So he does have the bike up here? She better come up here and meet us. The 3 Roscoes searched high and low for my bike, getting more pissed w/ each passing second. Finally, they went to block the exit and wait for my Mom. I thought of a hundred ways to escape w/ my bike, w/o using the road. No dice. I crept up and looked down the street. There was a major convoy , including my very pissed off Mother. It was 3am, and my time had expired. I was going to have to eat that shit-sandwich.

I began a slow jog, dreading the confrontation that was about to happen. The neighborhood still asleep, the crickets were the only witness to was about to happen. As I approached, all heads turned toward me. The Roscoe triplets were more pissed off than my Mom. My only thought, damage control, and try to minimize the legal consequences. If they didn't see me riding the bike, they couldn’t ticket me. Roscoe 2 was a real dick. “Where’s the bike?” “What bike?” My Mom stepped in. “I have to get up in 2 hours, just tell him the truth.”  “A buddy dropped me off, I don’t have a license. Don’t worry, the bike’s okay. Roscoe 2 looked like his head was going to explode. I refused to answer the question any different than I had over and over. He finally gave up. “who where you visiting?”  He seemed to have a bigger hard on for being the morality police. He knew what I was up to. And he was not gonna stand for immorality in his town. “I was visiting a friend. Doesn’t matter, it’s not illegal to visit a friend. My social activities aren’t public record.”   He freaked.  “Tell me right now. Or you’re going to jail, and we’ll knock on every door in this neighborhood. Dragging you w/ us!”  

I couldn't help being a smart ass. “Jail huh? Like take it in the tailpipe jail?  Guilty of visiting a buddy in the 2nd degree?  Well, we better get knocking, that’s a shit load of houses.”  I could tell Mom didn’t like Roscoe 2, but she liked my cursing less. “Son, watch your language.” Roscoe 2 just stared at me. He wanted to cave my face in. Then he stared some more. More out of sympathy for my Mom, he finally called it. Game over. We all went our separate ways. I thought it was gonna be a long standoff, that continued down at the cop shop. But it was suddenly over.

For a minute. After making sure they really drove away, I had Mom stop. “No way I’m leaving my bike in Alice’s next door neighbors yard. I hid it there. And I’m riding it home, or it's about to get a whole lot uglier when the sun comes up.”  Wanting it to be over, she dropped me off. I kept my head on a swivel on that ride home. I was sure the Roscoe’s had more in store for me. Nope. I felt a rush of exhilaration as I pulled in my driveway. I had my bike, no legal consequences, no Alice’s dickhead Dad consequences, and no headless corpse laying in my bed. Not a real one anyway. Stay Frosty, Stay Aerodynamic, me gone.