#(even a tiny bit further in '02 movie') | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

periminkle · 4 years ago

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Orphic | 02

After moving into your own place, it seems life is finally going your way; the path to independence leading you to a quaint suburban town where even the grass seems to grow a little greener. Although a shocking encounter leads you to believe that perhaps appearances can be quite deceiving.

pairing: hybrid!jk x reader (first person)

genre: hybrid au, angst, fluff

word count: 7.0k

rating: PG-15

warnings: animal cruelty, death, blood, swearing

author’s note: I cut this chapter into two parts bc it was turning into a monster :((( i did try to research DNA and genes and all that fancy stuff but it was too much for my small brain, so beware of inaccurate facts!!! also wanted to say that my heart hurt writing this </3

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The light breeze fluttering through the back door enveloped the bare skin of my legs, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake.

I couldn’t recall the last time I lounged around the house in the morning—not flurrying around like a chicken with its head cut off, in a rush to catch the bus. If it wasn’t work then it was grocery shopping, borrowing articles and studies from the library or filling my car’s empty gas.

Consequently, I refused to change out of the oversized sweater and the lousy pair of bright yellow shorts that currently adorned my laden figure. With any luck, the comfort from the soft articles of cloth would somehow seep into my mental state as well.

Yet the optimistic notion wasn’t proving its validity thus far, becoming a more of a burden due to the lack of a proper barrier between my humble abode and the wilderness outside.

For the most part, the structure of the door was left unharmed but the handle containing the lock that had been smashed into was another matter completely. Upon further examination, accompanied by an hour of fiddling around with the busted latch, it seemed to be a problem beyond my capabilities. I reluctantly admitted defeat and ordered a replacement.

With nothing to secure the door to the adjacent wall, it remained slightly ajar.

Another hour whizzed by, scouring through the limited resources at my disposal to—at the very least—find a temporary fix. I tried taping it shut, propping a chair, a step stool and a table up against the remainder of the handle to no avail.

A stroke of genius hit when I stuck a command hook on the wall nearby, fastening a broken hairband from the latch to the hook. However, the placement of the hook was a little too close and the hairband a little too loose to keep the occasional draft from finding its way inside. My fluffy pokémon shorts provided meager defence at best, but I could hardly spare a thought to the lower temperature when my mind was fully occupied with more urgent matters.

After the run-in yesterday night, I remained by the fridge, shaken from the events that had transpired for longer than I’d like to admit. I was unsure if the familiar sylvan scent that lingered was a result of the stranger or simply a waft from the forest, which wasn’t unlikely, considering my defective door.

Once I’d finally gotten a hold of myself, I dialled the police, doubting that my shaky limbs could safely carry me to the nearest station at such an hour. Other than an aching wrist and some medical supplies that could be restocked, my physical well-being and that of my house were surprisingly fine.

Excluding my poor back door, of course.

I was rather fortunate that the robbery, if stealing bandages could even be labelled as such, was more mentally taxing than anything. The drops of blood were rather annoying to clean off my tiles too, I guess.

Trying to get any rest that night was fruitless, tossing and turning, worried that the man might return for something more valuable or another fiend finding his way inside to do worse.

It struck me as more than a little odd that he would come to my tiny cottage, of all places, for first aid supplies. If he wasn’t looking for some extra coins to pocket, why wouldn’t he go to the hospital? Where had he gotten a wound that couldn’t be treated by a doctor? Maybe he had partaken in various illegal activities that couldn’t warrant the suspicion of a governmental figure? Ugh, my brain hurt the more I thought about it.

Along with my raging thoughts, the perpetual feeling of being watched disturbed my slumber as well. It was if another set of eyes were locked on my vulnerable form, peering past the closed blinds and under the protective layers of blankets I’d piled on. No matter how many times I peeked into the darkness though, I was only met with the sight of my backyard enshrouded in the night sky.

When the rays of dawn broke through the tenebrosity, I abandoned any notion of sleep and hesitantly called Jin, unsure if the busy man was even conscious yet. His bright and cheery voice quelled my worries and I informed him of what had transpired within the past twelve hours. Relief flooded my lethargic frame as he delved into a crazed panic, which I greatly appreciated, accepting his offer to take a day off.

Jin was excessively sympathetic and compassionate, reminding me of a mother goose with how he squabbled over staying somewhere else for the time being and taking a week-long break. But I didn’t want to be a burden on any of my new friends and going back to the city wasn’t an option at this point. Reflecting on the matter for more than day wasn’t necessary either.

I haughtily believed that the criminal didn’t deserve any more free real estate in my mind than he’d already occupied.

In order to comprehend the situation, as well as the fact that I would be utterly useless if I went to work with my mind engrossed in other matters, I thought one day to digest everything and get it out of my system would suffice. Though I knew it would come more so with time, I also had to work on regaining an impression of security within my own walls.

To take a rest from my turbulent concerns, I made a trip to one of the populated parks within the small town, figuring that I would feel more safety in the numbers that would surround me. Ridiculously, I found myself stumped when I got there, drowning in my own vulnerability, so I promptly headed back.

At nightfall, I skipped out on meeting with the cat yet again. Evidently, I lacked the mental capability to tend to my own needs the day before, never mind another being, thus I didn’t visit the little guy. I felt a wash of regret and worry that I hadn’t even set out some food. As a result of yesterday’s blunder, I put a heaping mass of tuna on the porch this time, hoping the animal would understand my apology.

The hours flew by as I sat there, stirring in my own solitude. In order to bring the negativity of the day to an end, I invited the trio I’d gotten close to as of recent, although Jin adamantly refused due to his papers that, “wouldn’t write themselves.”

I took the steaming pot of ramen off the stovetop right as the clear ring of the doorbell resounded throughout the cramped place. Hastily, I placed the noodles onto the table with careful hands, grimacing as I realized it took up a bit more than a quarter of the surface.

With a brisk shuffle, I pulled open my front door to the sight of a disgruntled Yoongi, hidden behind the towering stature of a rosy-nosed Namjoon. I barely made out the mutterings of, “it’s freezing out here,” and “took you long enough,” before I was being shoved aside.

As they trudged over to the kitchen, following the scent of freshly cooked ramen wafting around the house, Yoongi scoffed at my tiny table. Since I only purchased two chairs for the space, I cracked open the step stool to act as another seat. I honestly wasn’t sure what I would have done if Jin had tagged along too. Maybe pulled out the ladder too?

The shorter man grabbed the handles of the pot, heading over to the direction of the living room as Namjoon and I trailed after him like baby ducks. “If we’re going to eat like poor college students then we might as well keep up the act and sit on the floor.”

Although Yoongi’s cold and distant facade perplexed me as I was getting to know him, eventually I picked up on the hints of affection he’d drop every once in a while. Mostly, I found that I was able to burn time fooling around with Taemin as he completed enough drudgery for the both of us or a piping hot mug of hot chocolate would be waiting for me in the break room after long hours.

Even now, though he acted irritated, I knew Yoongi well enough to decipher his true intentions: that he was trying to be considerate of my humble living conditions and opted to play it off as a joke. At this point, I was even inclined to believe he harboured a soft spot for me.

In response, I pretended to be peeved by his actions as I ambled back to gather the bowls and utensils I placed at the table, carrying them to the spot we’d occupied on the floor. It was difficult to hide the growing smile on my face.

Once I’d gotten a few drinks down my throat, I finally felt the tense muscles between my brows and shoulder blades relax, forgetting about the worries that echoed in my head all day.

The TV screen flashed with the intense scenes of an action movie that Namjoon had picked out. I was only half paying attention to the redundant plot line, more interested in the outrageous story spewing from Namjoon’s lips.

“-and now he’s bragging about how one of his puns got milk spilling out of Yoongi’s nose!”

The tipsy state I was in got me laughing harder than I should have, but with both men around me in a relatively similar state of mind, no one seemed to care.

“That’s literal bullshit, Eunmi told me that I was drinking the milk meant for Taemin right when Jin finished telling his dumb joke,” Yoongi complained despite the gummy smile stretching across his features.

I clutched my chest at the mention of one of the creatures who had stolen my heart, “aw, my pretty little Taem, I miss him so much and it’s only been one day!”

“You’re getting too attached to him Y/N, you know that he’s not gonna stay at the lab forever,” Namjoon lightly warned. I knew he was concerned for my emotional welfare, but even the mention of Taemin being taken away got me stewing in my own misery.

“Joon, why would you say—I don’t even want to think about that!” My inebriated state obviously enjoyed to spill more information than necessary when I stated, “I need to cuddle Taemin enough for the both of them.”

“Both?” The younger man spared a questioning glance at his companion in before turning back to me, “do you have a cat?” The two of them began scoping out the area, trying to locate the nonexistent bundle of fur.

“Oh no, no, I wish I could afford a pet but I think taking care of myself is challenging enough for now.” At their probing eyes, I continued, “I was just talking about a little kitty that visits me every night in my backyard.”

Yoongi’s dark eyebrows scrunched together, a huff escaping him. “If you’re talking about a domestic cat, there’s no way it would be living out there,” he pointed to the forest outside with a tilt of his chin.

With the shake of my head, I felt myself sober up a bit as I explained, “I think it’s just one of my neighbours’ pets.”

Namjoon and Yoongi stared at each other, appearing baffled. “Well, it’s definitely not Eunhyuk, his son is allergic.”

“But you think mean old Sangmin would have a cat? We’re talking about the same guy who refused to have kids because he’s ‘not a bank’ right?”

Namjoon redirected his attention to me. “Are you sure it’s a cat? Maybe you just saw a rat or something.”

“No, it can’t be...” Their insistent refusal planted seeds of doubt that began to fester the longer I thought about it; they both lived here for longer than I had and obviously knew the area much better as well. It wasn’t like I had the best eyesight, anyway. But I remembered the piercing emerald green irises peering back at me, slit pupils honed in on my form with vibrant clarity. “It’s definitely a cat. It has to be a cat.”

A teasing snort came from Yoongi, who was leaning back on his palms with disbelief written all over his face. “You’re just seeing things, Y/N.”

I pouted at their lack of trust in me. An aggressive urge to prove them wrong began bubbling in the pit of my stomach and with a glimpse of the time from the clock above the stove, I noticed that it was well into midnight—around the hour in which I’d meet the kitty.

“Yeah, well, if you don’t believe me you can come see for yourself.”

“Is it outside?” I revelled in the satisfaction Namjoon’s widened eyes brought me and loftily smirked at him.

The plentiful amount of alcohol I’d indulged in forbade my legs from gracefully standing, wobbling like a newborn fawn instead as I fumbled over to the door, slipping the loose hair tie off and yanking the faulty mass open. Strangely, the night air was deathly silent, even the usually chirpy crickets seeming to have migrated to another yard.

“Hey, buddy. You out there?” I mumbled, scanning the bushes nearby, trying to pick up even the faintest flutter. “Bud?”

When I felt two pairs of curious eyes pierce my back, the pressure skyrocketed. I couldn’t let them believe I was spouting utter nonsense earlier, but the lack of response wasn’t proving my case very well.

After a few minutes passed with only the low whistle of the wind to keep us company, I felt a tinge of worry knot itself into my belly. “Okay, that’s enough Y/N. Let’s go back in.”

“No! It’s just scared because there’s a lot of people out now, you two go back in. I’ll call you when it’s out.” Desperately, I examined every inch of the stationary woodlands.

“We believe you, just get back in here! It’s cold and you’re not wearing a jacket, come on.” Namjoon’s long fingers wrapped around my forearm, tugging on my hesitant form.

As the dark-haired male dragged me back, I caught sight of the abundant helping of tuna I’d left on the last step of the porch yesterday. A pang resounded throughout my chest, disquiet settling into the recesses of my mind. Why didn’t the creature eat the offering, was it angry that I hadn’t shown up the last few nights? I couldn’t stop myself from imagining the worst; if it got lost somewhere, collapsed from starvation or was brutally killed by another animal.

If either one of the guys noticed the unusual pile of food, they didn’t comment on it.

Once back inside, tucked into Namjoon’s comforting shoulder and Yoongi’s warm side pressed against mine, I found myself unable to focus on anything of value. It was as if all my senses had dulled to an absolute minimum, barely processing what flashed on the bright TV screen and only picking up bits and pieces of the conversation between the two males. All I could think about was what could have possibly happened to my poor kitty.

My eyelids began to droop, heavy from the weight of the last few days’ events. With my body molding itself into Namjoon’s sturdy torso, I welcomed the peaceful darkness.

Taemin’s entire body shook from the force of his tiny sneeze and I could have sworn that my heart ceased its endless beating right then and there, was I in heaven?

Unaffected by my inner turmoil, the baby jaguar started bouncing around, weaving in and out of my legs as if he was participating in his own agility competition. I crouched down to his level to reach for his lithe body. The little guy always transformed into a flurry of excitement whenever I stopped by his cage, elated that he was free to play around without his constricting muzzle.

Once I’d discovered what a sweet bean he was, I couldn’t help but comply to his wishes. It didn’t take a mind reader to see how he consistently pawed at the contraption, even clawing his face a couple times on accident.

The reasoning behind all the safety measures wasn’t lost on me though, as I had witnessed the terror he instilled in most of the staff. About a week prior, I caught Minzi trying to lure Taemin out of his cage with some treats, but all her attempts proved unsuccessful when he didn’t even spare a glance her way.

With an annoyed sigh, she reached into the pocket within her lab coat, retrieving a syringe that I knew she had filled with telazol, a tranquilizing fluid for small animals. That prompted a reaction out of Taemin, his haunches tensing and lowering towards the ground, mouth peeling back in a snarl. The low growling sound vibrating from his small body instantly put me on edge; it was the first time I’d ever seen or heard the animal’s anger.

Before I could move a muscle, the irate woman stuck the needle into his hind leg. Taemin yowled in pain, but sunk his claws into her arm when he got the chance, only able to exact his revenge for a couple seconds before his body fell limp. Minzi detched his paw to find a stream of crimson red besmirching her white coat.

Now that I thought back to it, his growl eerily reminded me of the night of the break-in. Funnily enough, I thought the criminal had the more menacing vibration between the two—and Taemin was a jaguar for god’s sake.

What I found truly inhumane was the assistant assigned to handing Taemin his meals. The callous woman didn’t have half a mind to remove his muzzle before placing a handful of dog kibble in his cage.

At a glance, Taemin appeared severely underweight for his size, but I could have never chalked it up to his nutrition being fed through the bars around his snout. He struggled to attain such inadequate portions that weren’t even created for his species in mind.

Nevertheless, the instant I’d seen his horrifying feeding conditions, I dismissed the careless assistant and took on the task of keeping Taemin alive, a job that I didn’t think someone could fail so terribly at.

Taemin blindly swiped the air, bringing me out of my reverie. I chuckled as I saw he was a just a couple centimetres off the sleeve of my coat and I brought my hand, palm turned upwards, to meet his paw.

His eyelids were shut closed as tightly as they had been the first day he’d arrived at the lab, a fact that Yoongi informed me of when I’d inquired about Taemin’s lack of sight. Neither him nor Namjoon knew why he refused to, or simply couldn’t, open his eyes and my chest ached thinking about the unfulfilling life he was leading.

The memory crushed the lighthearted atmosphere that had arisen from fooling around with the dark-coloured feline. I rubbed the fur covering his foreleg while stealing a glimpse of Yoongi, seemingly hard at work from his hunched form.

“Hey, Yoongs?”

“I thought I told you not to call me that.” The low murmur was slightly muffled from the microscope covering the entirety of his face.

Disregarding his previous statement, I voiced out my thoughts. “What if Taem can actually see? I mean, we could just check whether the PDE6C gene—”

A lengthy exhale interrupted my speech. “Wow, now I guess I know how Jin feels.”

“Listen, I know what you said before but—”

“Y/N, we have tons of gene sequences to analyze, we don’t have time to waste looking for a faulty PDE6C, okay?” He finally tore his gaze away from his work to peer into my pleading eyes, running his fingers through the strands marring his forehead. “You’re lucky I’m even letting you play around considering the amount of work we have to finish.”

At that, I shut my mouth and concentrated back on Taemin’s restless figure, a much better alternative to the DNA waiting to be analyzed at my desk. Since he was confined within his cage all day, I made it my goal to tire him out enough that he would be forced to rest until the next time I had the chance to abandon work, essentially getting paid to keep him amused.

I gently brought his paw to the floor and scurried away to collect his favourite toy; a fuzzy mouse I’d bought one day after discovering the building was devastatingly unequipped to entertain an extremely bored feline.

Although he whimpered at the loss of contact and the sound of my retreating footsteps, I swiftly grabbed the rodent at the bottom of the drawer, by Yoongi’s legs, and hurried back.

Another half hour passed as I tried to exhaust as much of Taemin’s boundless energy as I could, although my plan backfired when I found that my own strength was depleting just as quickly. His natural hunting instincts were definitely still intact, what with the torn up toy in the corner, held together by mere threads at this point. I made a mental note to go shopping for sturdier prey next time.

Presently, he laid on his side as a content, black loaf, purring from the belly rubs he was receiving. To tease the cub, I would pull away every once in a while only to have his long tail wrap around my wrist, tugging my limb back to action.

“Y/N.” My head turned to meet Namjoon who had wandered over from the assistant researcher’s lab where I’d last seen him. “I finished the sequence for his canines. Do you mind leaving it on Jin’s desk?”

I guiltily stood from my seated position, a sheepish grin plastered on as I gave one last pat to Taemin’s head. “Yeah, of course. Could you lock up Taem for me?”

With his affirmation, I took the papers from his grasp and gave a pat to the crown of Yoongi’s bleached head. He shifted towards me in feigned annoyance, but I was out of his reach before he could get back at me and I celebrated my victory with sticking my tongue out.

I began to make my way upstairs, but not before picking up on Joon’s exasperated remark to Taemin, “I hope you know that I could build you from scratch if I wanted to.”

Once in front of the familiar wood of Jin’s office door, I decided to knock in case he had guests. I restrained the awkward memory of walking in on the whole board of directors from resurfacing and distracted myself by rapping my knuckles with more force when there was no response from within. “Jin? It’s Y/N.” I pushed the handle down and pleasantly found it unlocked. “I’m coming in.”

I waited a couple more seconds before opening the door, meeting the chaos that was the assistant director’s office. As per usual, I winced at the mountain of papers piled upon his desk, astonished that it only seemed to grow since the last time I’d seen it. At this rate, I was just waiting for the day that I’d walk in here to see the towers reaching the ceiling.

Striding over to Jin’s side of the desk, I laid the notes down in the dead centre, resting on top of three separate piles. Sympathy flooded my senses as my gaze roamed across the masses. How could such a hardworking individual accumulate so much work while he was working?

Even staring at the copious amounts of print made me feel queasy, hence I hurried to get out of the nauseating area. But, as I scuttled by, my gaze caught on a file with thick, messy letters scrawled on the front.

Jaguar.

To say my curiosity was piqued whenever Taemin was involved was an understatement. After a glance back to ensure that I was able to safely snoop around until my heart’s content, I reached for the file, making sure to keep my posterior to the camera in the corner, concealing my actions.

Ultimately, I knew Taemin was brought in to make progress on their “top secret, strictly confidential experiment,” which meant that I wasn’t to touch any of his files. At least, according to the brusque Minzi I wasn’t. However, an underlying, devious part of me enjoyed rebelling against her words and I secretly rejoiced as I directly disobeyed her orders, opening the folder.

Basic information was scattered along the first page, his name, birthdate, birthplace, so on and so forth. I casually flipped through the rest, finding the documents we routinely handed off to Jin when we’d written down sequences that brought about certain genes concerning the jaguar. This was probably where Jin would store the note Namjoon had made me deliver.

Losing interest, I flipped the bulk of the papers back to the front and seamlessly slid them into the file. When I unintentionally skimmed the first page once again, my eyes caught on a baffling sentence.

Heightened sense of sight, especially keen night vision.

I wet my suddenly chapped lips in my state of bafflement, double and triple checking that the file was indeed for seemingly blind Taemin; the very same animal that was probably napping downstairs. The statistics even matched up with what little knowledge I had about the animal, sending me into a greater spiral of confusion. They must have accidentally written the observation down on the wrong paper.

Unless...?

I shook my head, trying to dispel the outrageous thoughts swarming my mind.

Heading back down, I caught sight of Yoongi still wrapped around his microscope, jotting notes down with his other hand. My attention shifted to the unconscious feline next, muzzled and locked behind bars.

My fists clenched, fingernails engraving crescents into the palm of my hand as I resolved to finally clear out these murky waters.

An hour passed before I finally located it and then another few hours slipped by as I examined the sequence.

The PDE6C gene on chromosome ten. Perfectly intact and working exceptionally until the halfway point, around the thousandth base. Some of the letters got mixed up, binding with incorrect base pairs and bestowing Taemin with his current lack of vision.

Of course, I was prepared to deal with the repercussions of wasting precious time, examining a sequence that did not correlate to any favourable gene. But after connecting some dots, I recognized the agent that brought about such errors.

Ethyl methanesulfonate, or EMS for short. A chemical mutagenic that induces base substitutions, mutating the DNA molecule as a result. I couldn’t imagine why they’d inject a carcinogenic compound into the mammal, but it obviously had something to do with trying to enhance his natural vision.

Did they think the possibility of disabling him was worth the slim chance that his eyesight could improve? By the bases that were effected, I guessed that they were trying to sharpen his sight when submerged in darkness. If the guanine alkylation hadn’t spread so far, they might have succeeded in their experiment.

Nevertheless, their hypothesis was dreadfully incorrect and Taemin was blind as a result of their recklessness.

My grip on the pencil tightened in pure, white fury. In the fruitless hope that the EMS hadn’t affected his whole body, I took several samples of cells from various areas of his body. Albeit, samplings of his cheeks, ears and legs all provided the same conclusion that I’d reached earlier—deformed DNA from ill-fitting base pairs.

All the blood drained from my face from the appalling notion of just how much EMS they must have injected into his blood stream for it to have tampered with every cell in his body. My jaw clenched as my mouth ran bone dry.

They mutilated him.

Digust washed over me, for the false claims that the lab protected their lab animals, for every ruthless employee that harboured such barbaric morals, for myself, who blindly assisted in the cruel methods of this place. My heart rate picked up at my own helplessness, adrenaline coursing through my veins as I scrambled out of the corner I had holed myself up in.

I didn’t know if it was the bruising despair or the fuming rage that had me stomping my way across the halls, headed for the director’s office. The rational part of me was aware of the fact that I couldn’t do anything, change their twisted morals or bring down that metaphorical sword of justice that I was so fixated on. But that didn’t mean I had to play along as a clueless, complaisant pawn in their gruesome experiments.

Keycard or not, I was determined to wreak havoc until I could properly screech obscenities at one of the incredibly asinine brains that ran this revolting laboratory. Storming past the Namjoon and Yoongi’s office, I picked up on a shrill cry that seemed to douse my whole body in ice water, stopping me in my tracks.

A turn to my right gave me a direct view of Minzi struggling to pull a semi-conscious Taemin out of his cage, arms which he desperately wriggled against, thrashing violently to escape her hold. Now knowing what malicious behaviour deserved such treatment from kind-hearted Taemin, I rushed at her.

“How could you!” I roared, seeing red when she turned, glaring condescendingly.

Her calculated eyes examined my rapidly approaching, ruffled figure. “Oh, good, I needed a coffee. Could you fetch me a tranquilizer while you’re at it? I didn’t think he would wake up.”

I grit my teeth as my temper flared, resentment embedded into each of my features. Stopping a step away from her unbothered form, I seethed out, “you guys claim to look after the lab animals? Then why would you permanently damage his genes!”

“What have you been wasting time on instead of researching what we told you to?”

“Answer the question!”

She sneers. “I thought I warned you to stay out of anything that doesn’t concern you. That includes any testing subjects.”

“Testing subjects? How the hell do you think you can get away with—”

“Woah, what’s all the ruckus here?” Hyunho’s lazy form strolled in with a lax yet domineering countenance. The appearance of the other head researcher made my hair stand on end. “Do we need to put up a sign to remind some people that they’re to use indoor voices inside a laboratory?”

My eyes quickly narrowed at his patronizing remark. “I don’t know what kind of fucked up project you guys are conducting, but if you’re harming innocent animals, I don’t want any part of your imbecilic research.”

“Ooh, it seems that newbie is a feisty one, isn’t she?” He took a step towards me, the scent of a cigarette he probably smoked earlier invading my senses and invoking an appealing urge to regurgitate my dinner all over him. “Listen here girly, I don’t know what you’re trying to accuse us of here, but I’ll be sure to report your unruly behaviour to the director if you keep this shit up.”

“As if I give a flying fu—”

A hand wrapped around my mouth before I could unleash the rest of my resentful spew. “Ah, Dr. Lee.” I recognized the subtle undertone of panic in Namjoon’s deep voice as he addressed the burly man with respect that he didn’t deserve. “You see, Y/N had a pretty rough day, some family matters back home, y’know? I’m just going to take her outside to clear her head a little.”

“Yes, that would be a good idea.” Hyunho stepped back to Minzi’s side.

“If you would excuse us then...” I flailed about in Namjoon’s sturdy hold before he all but manhandled my to the back entrance. The refreshingly cool air grazing my overheated skin quelled some of my fury, although I felt its presence simmering beneath the surface. The tall man released my trembling limbs and I whipped my head over to examine Namjoon’s concerned countenance.

Did he know?

I couldn’t bear the thought of any of the limited friends I’d made in this place willingly taking part in such horrid research. They couldn’t have known. My heavy head fell into my hands, thinking of innocent Taemin who didn’t merit the attention of these corrupt individuals, who had no one to protect him.

If I quit my job here, would anyone care for him? Obviously his basic needs would be met, Namjoon and Yoongi would make sure of that, but were they aware of what exactly that experiment entailed? I’d only scratched the surface, but the prospect of finding out every gritty detail terrified me.

I felt an overwhelming weight crushed me, being helpless beneath it all. “Joon,” I managed to croak out, “I didn’t come here for this.”

With the low volume of my voice, I didn’t know how much he’d heard, but a tug on my wrist enveloped my body into his embrace. As he stroked my head reassuringly, I held onto his thin lab coat with clenched fists.

If it meant I could save Taemin, I would keep my mouth shut. If it meant I could act as some salvation to each animal that came into this wretched place, I would stay.

My disgust for the laboratory only multiplied.

“I didn’t come here for this.”

A pleasant tranquility took shape after a brief greeting had been exchanged, both Jin and I on a well-deserved break after too much time cooped up in our respective offices. Well, even though the assistant researchers’ office wasn’t technically mine in title, the majority of my belongings resided in that space. Namjoon didn’t mind much and Yoongi complained about everything under the sun, so I made myself comfortable there.

The hum of electricity powering the building and the whirr of the coffee maker spurring into action intensified as I closed my eyes, resting my head against the back of the sofa. I stared up at the ceiling with a vacant expression and tried to clear my thoughts for a bit.

A ceramic mug clinked against the surface of the coffee table in front of me. “Drink.” I lifted my head to take in the reassuring crinkle in Jin’s eyes. “You look like you’ll need all the energy you can get right now.”

I scoffed at his statement, the end of my own lips flitting upwards. “Just tell me I look like shit.”

Gratefully accepting the cup of coffee, the bitter taste on my tongue already started to rejuvenate my aching muscles. Jin was aware of my deep-seated aversion to the drink, but I guess my appearance revealed too much of the chaos inside my head. “I was going to, but I had a feeling you might just break down if I did.”

Although the work itself was tedious and relatively tiring on its own, the fact that all my efforts were going to fuel that wretched project made me feel rotten to the core. The knowledge sapped my stamina at an exponential rate that I wasn’t accustomed to.

“How’s baby Yeri doing?” I placed the pungent beverage back down, stroking my chin in faux deliberation. “Or I guess I should ask how Chaeyoung is holding up instead, huh?”

Jin let out a hum of aggravation around his own glass, swallowing the liquid before slapping his unoccupied hand against his thigh. “Don’t even get me started. Chaeyoung keeps telling me to take some time off work to come help, but honestly I would take the peace and quiet of the office over Yeri’s nasty diapers any day.” He shook his head at the thought, repulsed by the dealing with another one of Yeri’s accidents.

I’d heard the story one too many times not to let a giggle slip at his misfortune.

Abruptly, an alarming shriek disturbed the placidity. As my head shot up to identify the source, the sound was muffled, then silence resumed. I scrambled to discern who the perpetrator was when my gaze met Jin’s static form. “Did you hear that?” When his weary eyes met mine, appearing confused, I clarified, “that scream.”

“Oh, they probably just dropped something. Don’t worry too much about it.” But I couldn’t find a trace of compassion in his words, especially with how gut-wrenching the shout sounded. Rather than shock, every note was filled with agony and something felt vaguely off about the whole ordeal.

The look of guilt that Jin sported stopped me from prodding. I refused to believe the stubborn man who was always drowning in papers to complete, shoving fried chicken down his throat like there was no tomorrow, who had the sweetest daughter back at home knew anything about the experiment. Not what was really happening.

That’s why the regret and shame written all over his countenance made me pause.

More shuffling, whimpers and yelps filled my limbs with apprehension, seeping deep into my bones and making me restless. Jin kept his gaze trained on the floor, unable to look me in the eye as he excused each sound with the fault of a clumsy, irresponsible researcher and other rationalizations that I wasn’t sure he, himself, believed.

At this point, the raucous was becoming increasingly bestial and I couldn’t decipher the species that was belting out the miserable noises. I tried to grit my teeth and ignore them, distracting myself with Jin’s moronic cover-ups to keep me glued to my spot. Without a keycard, I had no access to the upstairs lab anyway, it was out of my hands for now.

When my thoughts strayed to Taemin though, I felt my heart drop to the pit of my stomach, recalling how I had been dragged away before I could stop Minzi from taking him. Suddenly, I lost the ability to think logically, fixated on Taemin’s well-being. I had to know if it was him.

Hastily, I jumped out of my seat, coffee long forgotten as I sprinted down the hall. Jin’s pounding footsteps followed after me, though I gave them no mind.

Once I reached the first floor, the sight of two unfamiliar men dressed in heavy gear greeted me. The bulkier of the two lifted the cage as if it were as light as a feather and I noticed how unusually clean it was. “No, you can’t take it upstairs!” I grabbed onto the bars, halting him in his tracks. “Where is he? Tell them to bring him back here!”

“Sorry, no can do miss,” he drawled out. “We were asked to—”

“I don’t care what you were asked to do! Tell them to bring him back!” He rolled his eyes at my accusatory tone and yanked the cage out of my grasp. As I reached out again in a frenzy, the other man blocked my path. The odds weren’t looking too great for me.

I saw Jin emerge from the staircase, following the ruckus I’d created. Relief flooded my veins as I sought his backup. “Jin, they want to take his cage.” Pursing my lips, I pointed to said object. “Could you tell them to leave it here?”

“No, Y/N. Get out of the way.” My breath hitched at Jin’s steely tone, locking onto his fatigued gaze. I tried to remind myself that he was oblivious to the horrors that they’d already inflicted upon Taemin, but the back of my eyes still burned at the betrayal I felt. “Come on, let them do their job.”

Though I refused to show how dismayed I’d become, I couldn’t bear the idea of Taemin residing upstairs, where they could inject anything without suspicion. “Please, Jin. Please. Believe me when I say that he won’t last a day up there.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, let’s go finish our coffee, hm?” I huffed out through my nostrils in frustration, wringing my fingers together as I debated whether or not to tell him the truth I discovered for myself not too long ago.

“Oh, my. What’s this? I believe I told you what would happen if you caused a commotion again, didn’t I?” Feeling defeated already, I didn’t even turn to meet Hyunho’s form as I heard him approach. “I’ll need you to get out of the way now, girly.”

“It’s Y/N.”

His fake grin put his crooked teeth on full display. “Yes, yes. Scurry along now.”

“No.” With a hardened resolve, I glared back at him. “Bring Taemin back. Let him stay on this floor.” Hesitant but desperate, I added a barely audible, “please.”

At my plea, he brightened up, utterly pleased with watching me grovel at his feet. “You should use that tone more often, newbie, it could really get you places.” The stealthy once-over of my chest didn’t go unnoticed by me and I wrapped the lab coat around me tighter. He pulled back a little, satisfied with my discomfort. "You didn’t hear? He died of natural causes, so we have to clean up this mess for the new tiger cub coming in. Don’t worry though, he’ll be staying on this floor when he gets here.”

I took a step back, skin stinging as if he’d slapped me across the face, feeling my blood run cold. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted the bewilderment reflected on Jin’s features, as well as the sudden appearance of Namjoon and Yoongi, both looking as distressed as I felt.

When my breaths came in heavier and burning droplets rolled down my cheeks, I knew the dam had broken. “Don’t feed me that bullshit... You monsters.” I felt my bottom lip quiver as my voice cracked. “Killed him.”

One of Hyunho’s thick eyebrows raised in amusement at my shattered state. “Haven’t you been taught not to mess with fire, girly?” He crossed his arms after giving a flick of dismissal to the man still carrying the cage. “You could get burned.”

A pair of arms wrapped around my torso and dragged me away before I could wail anything out. Through the blurry mess of tears, I made out a discarded, mangled mouse toy by the corner.

tags: @aurorakingsley @bubbletae7 @iamunrecognized @bangtanloverrrrr @walkingdeadfan25

#jungkook fanfic #jungkook scenarios #jungkook imagine #jungkook x reader #jungkook au #jungkook hybrid au #bts fanfic #bts scenarios #bts imagine

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hgfstreamchats · 3 years ago

Text

Alien

highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:43 PM Well, how is everyone else's evening treating them so far? Also, how is the picture, the audio? Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:44 PM Not too horribly. Audio is good, picture seems fairly good. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:44 PM That's something. There we go. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:46 PM Perfect. I think a little horror is a good compliment to today. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:47 PM Agreed. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:47 PM You yourself are doing well? highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:47 PM Never peachier. You? Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:48 PM As well as can be expected. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:48 PM I think we're all in the same boat. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:48 PM So it seems.

How fortunate that we can traverse space without the horrible space garments. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:51 PM In the comfort of knowing organic parasites want nothing to do with us. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:52 PM Though it might be interesting to encounter one, one day. Just to see how they react to a species they cannot eat nor inhabit. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:54 PM You just know there's someone out there who'd leap at the chance to keep a few as pets. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:55 PM I feel as though I know several Soundwaves who would deeply enjoy keeping them. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:56 PM Soundwaves are to xenomorphs as variants of me are to automobiles. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:57 PM There are worse things to enjoy, I suppose. They take up less room than Shockwave's drillers. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:57 PM Better personalities, too. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:57 PM Indeed... highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:58 PM I always forget how slowly this movie begins. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:59 PM Yes, quite a bit more scene setting than the subsequent ones. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:01 PM Yes, we certainly are in space. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:01 PM Their drop ship is pretty delicate if they cannot land in a wind without getting a hull breech. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:02 PM Isn't it though? Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:04 PM Ah yes, their very futuristic readouts that make absolutely no sense at all. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:05 PM I love human notions of how space works. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:08 PM It's remarkably silly. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:09 PM "Let's walk heedlessly onto it." Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:09 PM Even without knowing that the ship is full of parasites, they should probably know better than to go in there. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:10 PM Always better to err on the side of caution and avoid ships surrounded by dramatic music and ominous mist. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:11 PM 'I don't know what it is, let's all crawl right in'. If they could have, the humans would have crawled right into the wreck of the Nemesis, I wager. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:12 PM And stood around gaping, slack-jawed. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:13 PM Poking at the dead. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:14 PM "Mangled corpses, warning signals? Let's not leave!" Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:15 PM No, they surely must investigate further! Curiousity never comes back to bite humans. Oh yes. Touch it. No one could have seen that coming. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:18 PM Shock. Shock. Aghast. There's no better time to take risks and indulge curiosities than the nakedness of space, with a damaged ship. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:19 PM The only one with sense. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:20 PM "We could all die." "That probably won't happen." Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:21 PM They are not even trying to prevent catching every weird alien disease there might be. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:22 PM They're doing everything shy of licking it. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:23 PM If only this could have been prevented. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:25 PM If only, if only. If only there were some interval where someone might have made a different choice. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:27 PM Alas, there was nothing else that could have been done. They had to crawl into the derelict ship, and play with the room full of obviously dangerous eggs, and then break quarantine procedure. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:28 PM "Oh well, too late to pop him out the airlock now." "Also too late to freeze him. Quarantine him. Really, anything that might contain whatever's coming next." Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:29 PM No no, they have to leave him out. Unattended. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:30 PM Unrestrained, obviously incubating something. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:31 PM Leave the door open while you look, that's always good form. No chance a creature could escape further into the ship. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:31 PM Might want to take all your guns and weapons and throw them into the waste disposal units, just for good measure. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:32 PM Because he knows so much about it, to know it's dead now. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:33 PM "Let's hover with our faces directly over it." Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:34 PM I would be entirely unsurprised if they decided to lick it. For 'science'. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:34 PM Concurred. A very sensible suggestion, better to ignore it for the second time. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:37 PM If they don't ignore it, then more bad things cannot happen. And who wants that? Sure, let him cough on you. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:38 PM Cough on you, breathe on you, share food with you. Why not let him spit in your mouths just to see what will happen? Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:39 PM And why not freeze him? From the perspective of the company who wants the xenomorph, it would be much neater if they froze him with the embryo, rather than lose the whole ship and payload, and still fail to get their prize. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:39 PM Listen I'm not subjecting myself to what would surely give me nightmares, but I need y'all to know that from where I sit it looks like you're discussing last year. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:40 PM We very well could be. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:40 PM ....or. at least. Where I am. I certainly hope you're not bothered with similar problems wherever you are. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:41 PM Of all the issues I am plagued with, fortunately respiratory viruses are not one of them. Or hostile aliens, as the case may be. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:42 PM None of the problems that plague organic chests. From viruses to this. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:42 PM Should we question why they have a cattle prod aboard their mining hauler? Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:50 PM ...Huh. I wonder if they're endangered. They certainly seem good at endangering jsjgjjsf Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:51 PM There was still a whole host of eggs back on the original ship. So, likely not endangered at this point. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:52 PM Oh! There are eggs that don't need a host? Ohhhhhh wait Are the hosts like Incubators basically highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:52 PM Exactly. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:52 PM Yes, precisely. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:52 PM Makes sense ....oh ew, now I'm thinking of that very specific wasp I had managed to block from my memory. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:53 PM Egg hatches facehugger that impregnates host that incubates tiny alien. That bursts out of chest. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:54 PM If I recall correctly, the shape of the host does influence the shape of the final creature. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:54 PM Okay, so is the facehugger, like, a separate living organism? Something in the egg that has only the purpose to leap, lay eggs, and die? Is that the baby parasite's true mother? It can't be, it was inside an egg with the baby... remind me not to become a xenobiologist, my head would explode. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:55 PM In a philosophical sense, maybe, but for all practical purposes the true mother is the creature that laid the eggs. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:56 PM I am still extremely baffled by the existence of this terrible turducken of eat-your-insides. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:56 PM Organic biology is messy like that. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:56 PM They can tell the difference between a host that's resisting and one that isn't. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:57 PM Wh-- how do you resist THAT?? Do you mean the facehugger part, or the growing baby highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:57 PM Facehugger. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:57 PM Oh well yeah you can resist that Do they leave if you try to pull it off? highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:57 PM You can certainly try. No, they tighten their tails around the host's neck and if you try to cut them, they spray acidic blood every which way. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:58 PM They do not abandon an attempt at a host unless slain. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:58 PM And they're very strong. And fast. And if you manage to take out one, there's usually an entire room full of backup eggs. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:59 PM Well That's Gross. What does it matter if they can tell the difference between a resistant host and a (placid? dead?) one? Only that they won't spray things or tighten, or does it effect how they reproduce? ...I can see why most of them died tbh. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:59 PM They need the host alive. Otherwise it makes a poor incubator. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:00 PM So it's definitely a warmth thing then? Why exactly could they not just find somewhere warm that ISN'T a person Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:00 PM They do seem to have a preference for mammals as hosts... But the embryo is taking nutrients from the host body, as well as heat. A warm, moist room would not suffice. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:01 PM Ohhh... like... like an egg sac highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:01 PM The egg sac in this case is a live organic. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:02 PM As a live organic, I feel the only appropriate response to that is :( Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:02 PM Such is the nature of parasites. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:03 PM Fair Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:03 PM And you are unlikely to encounter this variety. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:03 PM Now I just need to avoid every variety in my vicinity, thank you very much highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:03 PM You don't have to worry about scraplets. It all balances out in the end. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:04 PM Ok GOOD POINT I can't imagine if termites liked to eat people. uggghh Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:04 PM In the interest of not traumatizing you, I will not elaborate on the many common parasitic species humans do encounter. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:05 PM We're all made of something someone eats. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:05 PM I'm aware of several and have had nightmares about nonexistent ones. That's mostly why I'm not actually watching this movie. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:05 PM And in the end, Unicron may get us all, metal or meat. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:06 PM Time to hang that on a wall at the newbuild complex. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:06 PM That's true... it's just that I might prefer to be eaten from the outside than the inside, if I had to choose... maybe. Which would be quicker? Do i really want to know? I'm sure there are ghost stories scarier than the passage of time and encroaching entropy. Maybe. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:08 PM It is usually the size of who is doing the eating that determines quickness, rather than the direction they eat you from. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:08 PM If I could get philosophical, most stories about immediate personal danger are more frightening to me, because then there's still things left to do, y'know? I'm leaving things behind if I go! If we're all going via Unicron, at least I know I made it as far as I could. Ahh, good point, good point. Though numbers do come into account. I've heard things about ants. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:10 PM ... Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:11 PM Waste of fuel and oxygen they cannot afford to spare. As for ants, much like scraplets, they are too small to efficiently eat you. Which is why it is unpleasant. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:12 PM It's the venom, too... highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:12 PM At least scraplets in large numbers do the job quickly. No more than a few blindingly excruciating seconds. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:12 PM Ants would not. Thankfully they don't take on humans much. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:14 PM What little I have seen of scraplets, they did not do a quick enough job on a decently armored mech. If given the choice, I would prefer something quicker. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:14 PM Understandable Hey how bad are the humans onscreen screwing up? Or are they mostly dead by now Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:15 PM There are only three left, one is looking for a cat, and the other two are making enough racket to attract any predator on the ship. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:16 PM Oh, I've heard about the cat! Glad it didn't get facehugged highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:16 PM It's the survivors of scraplet attacks that keep me up at night. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:17 PM ... Yes, just stand there while it menaces you. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:17 PM Lot of standing still and letting things happen in this movie. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:17 PM .....I get the feeling they're, ah. Not all there. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:18 PM Well, now they are there... and there, and over there... highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:18 PM Hah! Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:18 PM I want to laugh but I feel like that would be mean of me:laughing: Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:18 PM Ah, but it is fun to be mean. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:19 PM Well, whatever floats your goat *boat Please don't float any goats Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:20 PM I will not make a habit of it. And of course the cat is unafraid of it. Their ship is just the worst. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:23 PM If the creature didn't get it, something else would have. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:26 PM One minute for pre-flight systems checks... That would be pushing it. If only their space ships did not include so much tubing, the creatures would not be able to so easily hide. Pity she would immediately be suspected of murdering everyone on board, and blowing the main ship to cover her actions. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:38 PM And the company would be only too eager to push this narrative. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:38 PM Of course! Now then, what horror of gaming do you have in mind? How every automobile drive goes. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:44 PM Every automobile drive worth having. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:47 PM Glorious. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:50 PM I tried joining-- is the sound skippy/staticky to you, or is that on my end? I believe Discord calls on my phone have given me trouble before, so I have a hunch it's on my end. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:52 PM The sound is fine for me. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:52 PM ...and now I have almost no sound at all oh no:joy: Ah, well. I tried. It was fun to be here in text form, anyway :blush: Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:55 PM Mammal liquid... Jazz blend... Oh dear. I cannot have a stroke.. but I feel like these commercials are what having a stroke is like. highglossfinish — Today at 12:00 AM It certainly is a feeling. Of some description. And that's all I've got for tonight. Starscreamapillar — Today at 12:01 AM Thank you for the high quality entertainment Knock Out. I always enjoy the nonsense and Bad Decisions you choose to stream. highglossfinish — Today at 12:01 AM And you always make them enjoyable/bearable! Starscreamapillar — Today at 12:02 AM Until next time, farewell! highglossfinish — Today at 12:02 AM Farewell and good night! Sharpwing — Today at 12:04 AM Goodnight! I hope the future treats you both gently♡ highglossfinish — Today at 12:04 AM Here's to that.

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aslightstep · 6 years ago

Text

some other ending begins

(This is trash but it's my trash. Post endgame fic crash. Messy, nothing makes sense, but behold my catharsis.)

He sees Rhodey, smiling but wrong, tears in his eyes. Peter is saying “we won,” he says it again and again but each time his voice shakes more. He is splitting apart at the seams and Tony wants to hold him together, can’t lose him again, but he can’t move.

His arm is so heavy.

Pepper is there. Pepper is there and she is smiling and oh, Tony has seen this smile before.

Oh, Tony is dying.

Morgan.

“We’ll be okay,” Pepper promises. His love, honey, all his darlings here together, everyone but Morgan, and she’ll be safe. She’ll be okay. Pepper promises.

“You can rest.”

There is Steve in the distance, Thor at his shoulder. There is Bruce, bounding through the air, closer every second. There is Clint, and T'Challa, and Scott, shaking the dust off. There is Nebula, and she isn’t alone.

There are the Avengers, and they are alive, and Tony has won.

Tony rests.

***

He does not die.

His body does, dies and calcifies where the gauntlet reached, withers before they can get him into a coffin. He watches, from green eyes and yellow, purple, blue, orange, red.

He never wished for this, but the stones take him anyway.

He drifts and he watches. Mostly Morgan and Pepper, sometimes Peter.

Steve leaves, and Tony follows for a time. He drops off one stone, then another, scattering Tony across time and space. He leaves the tesseract for last, and Tony knows before Steve does what’s going to happen.

“Live your life, Steve,” he whispers, and Steve shudders. Sighs. Hunches over and something inhuman wrenches out of his throat.

“None of that,” Tony chides. He takes a chance, reaches through the tesseract to nudge at Steve’s hand til it lands on his opposite wrist. “Be happy.”

09-02-1945, Steve presses in, and then he is gone.

Tony waits until Steve knocks on Peggy’s door, and then he lets go, drifting back to his daughter.

***

He is not always with Morgan. She’s strong like her mother and twice as clever as her father ever was. She’ll always need him, Tony knows that. He always needed Howard, too, even when he hated him. And he is there, in the smile on her face in the morning after a good dream, in the moments she wants to live in forever, in the perfect words that come to her mouth when the school bully gets a bit too mean.

She needs him, but she is strong without him, too. He trusts her, and he trusts Pepper’s promise. He drifts away sometimes, to the places Steve scattered him and further. Time ripples outward, branches begetting branches. He sees so much.

He tilts the Winter Soldier’s head in 1967 so he notices the Northern Lights so bright above him. He lives in the lights above Sam Wilsons bunk in 2011 so he and Riley can play one more round of cards. He whispers to Loki take a left, take a left and watches the god as he’s swallowed in his father and brother’s hugs as they return from their travels. Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are starving in 2007, and it is nothing to make then piece of bread they share fill them as much as an entire loaf.

He cannot do much. He doesn’t want to, either. But this is how he rests: he fixes.

***

Gamora is made of sterner stuff, and does not die immediately when she hits the ground on Vormir in 2018. Natasha is human, and does.

He holds their hands and pushes back their hair, and thinks of the two little girls he can hear sometimes, playing in the water. Thinks of Natasha’s soul brushing his.

Shellhead.

“You did it, you know,” he tells her body, their bodies. “You saved us.”

***

He goes back to check on Steve and his perfect world.

But Steve is not there.

***

Steve would take lifetimes to find, in this ever spreading tree their timeline has grown. Tiny changes upon tiny changes, too many to count, the farthest tips nigh unrecognizable from what he knew.

Back there, Morgan is grown. Peter is married. Harley is Iron Man, at Carol Danvers right hand, and the world moves on. Tony is gone, from legend to memory, at rest.

He wraps the covers a little tighter around Pepper and Morgan that night as they watch a movie on the couch, and then he lets go.

He will take lifetimes if it means Steve is alright.

It is not his Steve in the world where he never goes into the ice. His Steve is not the several happily, madly in love with Sharon Carter. He is not in the first reality that Tony encounters where he and Janet van Dyne are somehow contemporaries, nor the thirty third, by which point Hank Pym has been added to their numbers.

There are blue eyed Tonys, Tonys who are brothers, Tonys who are not really Starks at all. There is a Tony, young and bright eyed, on the edge of a time vortex he not dare approach. A Tony dying of cancer with a stone inside his head. A Tony standing tall in black and gold armor.

Steve is at his side. Steve is at every Tony’s side. But none are his.

***

(It is on his thirtieth world that Gamora slips away. At first he panics, wonders if he’s gone too far, until he looks down at the Gamora of this time, who had sacrificed her essence so her team may live. She takes a harsh breath in, color returning to her cheeks, and she is not quite the Gamora they lost, but…that Gamora is no longer lost, either.

On another, Wanda Maximoff cries out in loneliness to a world that won’t listen, and Tony feels as a piece of the mind stone breaks free, and Vision returns to his love.

He is cautious in the next world, and many after. Scared to lose Natasha. But when they encounter a world where Natasha Romanoff lives but isn’t whole, the red room gone terrifyingly wrong, he knows what she must do.

Don’t work too hard, Tony, she tells him, clearer than ever, a bell across the cosmos.

I’m resting, didn’t you hear, Romanoff?

Yeah, she says, and he can see her smile so clearly. You’re rested.

And then she’s gone from him. The Natasha of this timeline stands, stiff and ungainly, and the guards are screaming, but she’s already escaping. Heading to find her family.

Tony moves on.)

***

I’m not half as good as anything as when I’m doing it next to you, a Tony tells his Steve.

Every Tony needs a Steve.

***

You gave me a home, that same Steve chokes out.

You lead, I’ll follow, another tells his Tony.

Every Steve, apparently, needs a Tony, too.

***

Every Steve – oh.

***

He traces back, close to the roots. There is a reality, too similar to their own for his initial search. Steve, in the ice, then awakened 70 years later. Tony, vain and selfish until his own missile blows him up. Steve would never come here. There was nothing here he was missing.

But this world’s Steve goes down with the helicarriers. He is not the Steve that swims to the surface.

“Oh god Steve,” Tony whispers as he watches. A Tony – who looks like him, moves like him, jokes like him, is him – smiles as he sets down his tools, accepting the sandwich Steve has brought down to the workshop and the kiss that follows.

He never said-

He never did-

But he’s happy, Tony can see. They both are.

He traces their time forward. The civil war that never happens. The snap that never comes. There is a rather large blow up when Tony Stark meddles with his own DNA to stay a little longer, but a wedding soon follows. There are battles and anniversaries and celebrations and funerals. There is Tony’s funeral. Then there is Steve, opening an old drawer and making one last jump.

Their timeline in 2023 is a sharp shock. He feels Morgan and Pepper and Rhodey and Peter, but he isn’t sad. Pepper was right, as she always is. They’re okay, and Tony can rest.

Tony has rested.

Steve gives the shield to Sam and sits back. He rubs at his wedding ring. He’s dying very soon, Tony knows.

“Don’t you worry, Cap,” Tony says. “I’ll take it from here. You. You made me proud.”

Steve smiles.

***

There is a world, a reality at the far reaches, where Tony Stark is stillborn.

Tony watches as the doctors work over him, as Maria cries, as Howard paces in the hall.

This Tony Stark slips away, and for a moment he almost envies him. It was hard work. It had broken him more times than he could count, in more realities than he could count.

But no Tony Stark would have it any other way.

And there is a Steve here, resting in the ice. A Natasha, her soul as vibrant as before. Bruce and Thor. Clint, not born yet here. Pepper and Rhodey. And he’s not so arrogant to believe this reality needs him.

But the Avengers do.

(Steve does.)

He snags at Anthony Stark's fading soul. He wraps time and power and space and reality around him, holds on tight, and pushes. In the room, a baby breathes.

***

Tony Stark wakes up.

#tony stark #endgame spoilers #alanna writes #avengers endgame #slight stevetony

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alexanderessex3dstoryart · 4 years ago

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Film Language - 01/11/20 - Steven Spielberg’s Approach to Both Films

Today with my approach to the research for the essay, I decided I would focus on Steven Spielberg and his look on my two films as the title I currently have for the essay is ‘How does Steven Spielberg tackle film language in a chase scene in ‘Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn’ and ‘Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark’. Because of this, I wanted to look at interviews both video and text to see if there was any reflection or film-making that Steven wanted to achieve in those films and how I feel add to the chase scenes for my essay.

I started with watching interviews on him discussing ‘Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark’ where the AFI interview has him talk about the Indiana Jones character being this vulnerable guy that’s tough as nails on the outside but is incredibly soft-hearted inside which I feel is communicated in his chase scene as there’s a bit where him and a Nazi are laughing over a guy that landed on the hood of the tuck and got flinged away only for that laughter to lead to Indy throwing him out of the truck. To me, that communicates his softer side as he would of continued to attack the Nazi in the truck if he was so persistent on trying to get rid of him but more so uses that softness to his own advantage. Continuing on with the Indiana Jones character, the actor ‘Harrison Ford’ apparently wanted to punished as much as possible in the movie to show he wasn’t this unstoppable force in the film and he’s only human which I feel Steven took advantage of when it came to the chase scene as you have him injured in the truck from gun fire as well as having to be dragged across the ground to get back onto the truck which Steven uses the composition and music of those scenes to highlight this.

With the Tintin video interview research, there wasn’t too much I could find on the film as it doesn’t have the same cult following compared to ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. However in one of the interviews I watched, Steven mentions how much so he respects any opinion on his films which is why he doesn’t give too much input on the film language he’s trying to convey in his films. This is probably why it’s so challenging to find him openly speak out about film language in his films because of this fact which I genuinely like as it allows us to openly think about his movies without him saying this is meant to represent this.

Steven Spielberg on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

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Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark - Interview by TheaterLive

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Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson 'The Adventures of Tintin' Full Interview

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Steven Spielberg Interview for THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

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After the video interviews I found, I looked more into some more written interviews if there was anything else he may of added to the films just in case. Reading the vanity Fair interview with Steven Spielberg on his films (inculding ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark), he further speaks about the Indiana Jones character and essentially re-confirms what I’ve been saying above in this post.

‘...the willingness to allow our leading man to get hurt and to express his pain and to get his mad out and to take pratfalls and sometimes be the butt of his own jokes. I mean, Indiana Jones is not a perfect hero, and his imperfections, I think, make the audience feel that, with a little more exercise and a little more courage, they could be just like him. So he’s not the Terminator’.

But something new that I found in the interview was how Steven goes about giving clarity with his action sequences which I found to be so useful towards the chases scene in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ as he talks about getting the geography of the area make it as clear as possible where everything is in that scene so your not lost in the audience and it isn’t a series of quick cuts which is exactly what I’ve been looking at.

‘No, I don’t go for that. I go for geography. I want the audience to know not only which side the good guy’s on and the bad guy’s on, but which side of the screen they’re in, and I want the audience to be able to edit as quickly as they want in a shot that I am loath to cut away from. And that’s been my style with all four of these Indiana Jones pictures’

With Tintin, I found actually one helpful source of info that I could use towards my chase scene where Steven takes a large amount of inspiration from classic film noir films as he goes on to say how lighting ‘Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn’ was done to give it mystery and adventure to the story which is why it isn’t camera lit and more tingy lit around the environment. This is definitely evident in my chase scene as a lot of the times there isn’t a direct source of lighting in the chase and rather it’s lit just briefly around the scenery to make the film almost more real and Indiana Jones feeling.

‘It gives a better sense of mystery to the adventure,” the director said. “There’s a little bit of that in the ‘Indiana Jones‘ movies. I just thought this movie could not all be lit from the camera — we couldn’t just front-light it. Even Herge, in his artwork, attempted to suggest film noir. He would tincture the scenes at night, almost like the great Freddie Young‘s day-for-night cinematography from ‘Doctor Zhivago’.

Overall whilst I couldn’t find too much research on Tintin, I have more than enough background research into Indiana Jones and the intentions that Steven had with the film language and the characters that I feel very confident talking about the chase scene in the essay. Whilst it may be a bit harder to do, I might for next time look into a tiny bit more into Tintin if there's anything else I find but because it doesn’t have the same cult status as Indiana, I think I’m definitely happy of what I’ve manged to find today. In addition, I think i’ll need to go more into researching about chase scene theory just a tiny bit more as well as establishing what I want to cover in my essay for points to talk about and research for those prompts in the my scenes.

Links I looked at today:

Steven Spielberg Interview - Vanity Fair - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/02/spielberg_qanda200802

Steven Spielberg on making 'The Adventures of Tintin’ - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmmakersonfilm/8825003/Steven-Spielberg-on-making-The-Adventures-of-Tintin.html

Steven Spielberg Says ‘The Adventures Of Tintin’ Is “85% Animation, 15% Live Action” - https://www.indiewire.com/2011/10/steven-spielberg-says-the-adventures-of-tintin-is-85-animation-15-live-action-115766/

#lectureba2a

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irinapaleolog · 5 years ago

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As we head toward the conclusion of the Skywalker saga with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s Dec. 20 release, one of the big unresolved questions is the fate of Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Will he, like his grandfather before him, redeem himself and resume his former identity as Ben Solo? Or will he, mask newly reformed, remain on the Dark Side to be defeated by Rey (Daisy Ridley) and the rest of the Resistance?

For such a major character in the series, Kylo remains somewhat mysterious, masked or not. When his parentage was first revealed in The Force Awakens, the biggest question was how exactly did Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford), our heroes of the Rebellion, wind up with this petulant mini-Vader as a son? We saw that Kylo idolized his grandfather but had none of his cool-tempered menace, hacking away at ship consoles with such abandon that you wondered if the First Order had a permanent Kylo Ren repair line in the budget. At first, his brattiness seemed almost comical until he killed his father in a mistaken attempt to drown the light in himself. For anyone who ever thought Leia and Han would be cool parents — and that certainly includes the parentally neglected Rey — Kylo’s presence was a bit of a head-scratcher. How exactly did the former Ben Solo turn into this destructive and emotionally turbocharged Dark Sider?

The Last Jedi went a bit further in explaining Ben’s turn to Ren as his uncle, the legendary Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), revealed that one fateful night a terrifying Force vision got the best of him and sent his nephew hurtling down toward the Dark Side. It was this betrayal that haunted Kylo and left him both vulnerable and achingly lonely as his Force bond with Rey revealed. And despite the murder of his father, he still remained conflicted and couldn’t do the same to his mother when he had the chance, her love for him staying his hand. Even though he refused to rejoin Rey on the Light Side, Kylo turned out to be far more complicated than he initially seemed when he descended as the masked and hooded villain in The Force Awakens.

While the films have sketched the broad outlines of Ben’s fall and Driver has done fantastic work in suggesting the turmoil roiling under Kylo’s mask, there is a lot more we’ve learned about Ben Solo/Kylo Ren’s past from the various novels and comic books that make up the current Star Wars canon. If you are not familiar with them, read ahead to get a fuller picture of the character and what his past may portend for his future.

In Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath trilogy, which takes place in the year after the Battle of Endor, we discover that not only are Han and Leia now married, but that Leia is already pregnant with Ben. While we saw that Leia definitely had Force powers in The Last Jedi, it’s during her pregnancy that she really starts to explore her abilities. She can feel Ben’s Force presence in the womb, and that it’s mostly light but shot through with veins of darkness. She worries about that darkness but takes comfort when Luke tells her all people have that. It’s poignant to think how the darkness eventually overwhelmed that child, but the fact that there was so much light to start with shows he can turn back to it if he wants and that the Dark Side was not his destiny, but a choice he made. While the Empire is in its last gasps during Leia’s pregnancy, Ben is born on Chandrila the same day that the Empire formally surrenders and the war ends. In fact, his mother is already in labor as the peace treaty is being signed. Because of his family’s fame, his birth was accompanied by a flood of rumors, everything from being born with a full head of black hair, to a full set of teeth, to Luke attending the birth himself. For a child with so many expectations placed on his tiny shoulders, Ben just seems to be a normal, if somewhat fussy, baby, though one his mother seems much more comfortable tending to than his father.

On that note, Aftermath: Empire’s End, the final book in the trilogy, establishes the difficulty Han has adjusting to fatherhood and how that foreshadows the gap that will grow between father and son despite Han’s deep love for the boy and the boy’s deep love for his father. Han’s usual cocksure confidence is shaken by the helpless baby before him and he feels insecure that he doesn’t have the same Force connection to Ben that Leia has, thinking that’s the only way his son can be soothed. Leia, to her credit, thinks that their son just needs to feel his father’s presence to feel comforted.

But Han’s insecurity continues in Last Shot, by Daniel José Older. While the book is mostly about an adventure between Han and Lando in the early years of Han and Leia’s marriage, Ben makes an appearance as a 2-year-old toddler, one that Han is still a little baffled by. Here we see how Han’s restless spirit will eventually cause a problem in his relationship with his son. Ben idolizes his father and “Wanwo” (fingers crossed someone gives Kylo and Uncle Lando a scene in the new movie) and misses his father terribly when he’s gone on his mission. While his mother works to build the New Republic, Ben is in the care of droids and in what might be a key moment for a person with a lifelong abandonment complex, a malfunctioning kitchen droid almost kills him. Ben survives, but Han continues to struggle with being a parent and the responsibilities that come with it.

There isn’t a ton of information about Ben’s late childhood and teenage years, but The Last Jedi novel details that Ben’s epic temper tantrums and growing Force powers left many objects in the Organa-Solo household destroyed. Kylo recalls with bitterness an incident overhearing his frightened parents talk about him as if he was a monster and it’s obvious that his anger became such an issue that Leia felt it necessary to send him to Luke in the hopes that training to be a Jedi would help tame his darker instincts. Neither his parents nor his uncle realized that Snoke had gotten his claws into Ben at some point during this time. As the films and comics like Star Wars: Age of Resistance — Supreme Leader Snoke #1 make clear, Snoke abused and manipulated Kylo for years, twisting the young man’s feelings toward his family and nurturing those resentments until Kylo finally took his revenge upon his Master in the throne room.

We get a little more information about Ben before his fall from the novel Bloodline, by Claudia Gray, which moves the story forward to six years before the events of The Force Awakens. There are no direct scenes with Ben, who is about 23 years old in the book, but he is often on his mother’s mind as she works as a senator living on the not-yet-destroyed Hosnian Prime while Han is off sponsoring various racing championships across the galaxy and running a shipping company. Ben is traveling around the galaxy with Luke, still training to be a Jedi. Han and Leia seem to have a warm marriage but one that is marked by long absences from each other as Leia understands that Han’s restlessness would make him a miserable Senate husband and Leia’s duty to the faltering New Republic comes before even her personal preference to be with her family. The book suggests that Han and Ben have a strained relationship at this point, in that Han does not understand his son and that Ben’s Force abilities have created a wedge between them. Frustrated by not being able to parent their son, both Han and Leia mentor many of the young people in the orbit, a desire we see reflected in the films as Han mentors Rey and Finn (John Boyega) and Leia treats Poe (Oscar Isaac) as almost a surrogate son, the three seeming more like their spiritual children than their actual son.

Though Ben does not appear in the novel, the book contains a key event that dramatically shapes his life to come. Over the course of the novel, we learn that no one outside of Leia, Luke, and Han ever learned that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker and also the true birth father of Luke and Leia. While Luke had witnessed Anakin’s redemption personally, Leia did not, and to her, Vader remained the monster that tortured her and helped destroy her beloved Alderaan. She had kept the secret that Vader was her father for decades and was still coming to terms with her true parentage, never finding the right time to tell Ben who his grandfather really was. Unfortunately, the knowledge fell into the hands of a political rival who outed her to the whole Senate before she had time to tell Ben first. We don’t learn what Ben’s immediate reaction to this news was, but considering he must have learned this information shortly before his turn to the Dark Side, it must have cracked the already shaky trust in his family that Snoke had help splinter, a trust that would be completely shattered by that fateful night with Luke in his hut.

Looking over these parts of his past, Kylo just didn’t inherit great Force power and Leia’s fabulous hair from his powerful bloodline but everything else that went with it, good and bad. That meant Han and Leia’s mutual hotheadness, Luke’s impulsiveness, Anakin’s brattiness, and Padme’s penchant for falling for the wrong people — though that last one might wind up saving him in the end depending on how his complicated relationship with Rey works out.

As we move closer to The Rise of Skywalker, we will be getting a few more missing pieces to the puzzle when the first issue of The Rise of Kylo Ren, by Charles Soule, is released Dec. 18. Though the project has been mostly kept under wraps, one tantalizing cover revealed that Ben Solo and Luke Skywalker actually battled the Knights of Ren at some point, so Ben Solo’s past might be even more complex than we expected.

All this leads back to what will become of the Skywalker heir? Will the Bendemption, as some fans have taken to calling it, actually happen? Will Rey’s vision of Ben’s future, that solid and clear picture that convinced her he would turn back to the light, finally come to pass? And if he does turn back, what will be the trigger? Repentance? His mother’s love? His own? Although it would be quite bold to leave Kylo on the Dark Side, it does seem unlikely that a saga that deals so much about redemption would end on a sour note and leave the once and maybe future Ben Solo unredeemed. Let’s hope the Skywalker saga gets a happier ending than that and that this tortured figure finally turns back to the light.

#the rise of skywalker #kylo ren #star wars #leia organa #han solo #luke skywalker

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popatochisssp · 6 years ago

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Make Your Mark, 2/10

Series: Undertale Relationship(s): Papyrus/Reader, Annoying Dog/Being Annoying Chapter Warnings: none

AO3 Link

In a world where soulmates exist, monsters and humans have one thing in common: the first time two soulmates touch, a mark randomly appears somewhere–anywhere– on their bodies to represent their match.

It still doesn’t make relationships easier…but maybe it does make them a little more interesting!

You were just getting breakfast to go.

It was supposed to be a very boring, typical day for you, just like any other boring, typical day, with absolutely nothing outside the ordinary to befall you��because nothing like that ever happened to you.

But you supposed in retrospect that there really is no way to expect the unexpected because as you step outside the café with your coffee and your muffin, you’re nearly knocked onto your ass by a supersonic blur of white.

Heart pounding in your chest, you clutch your breakfast protectively and watch the retreating form of the…dog? sprinting down the street.

Whose dog is that? you wonder to yourself. And how is it so fast on such short legs?!

And it’s probably wondering these questions that keeps you from noticing the skeleton racing down the street after it until he collides with you.

You stumble with a wordless cry of dismay as your poor coffee flies out of your hands, more concerned about it than the fact that you were about to hit the pavement yourself.

Luckily for you, it seemed you didn’t have to worry about either.

A scarlet glove whips forward and catches your cup one-handed, not even spilling a single drop, and a bony arm curls around your body, stopping your fall.

On this supposed-to-be-boring day, you find yourself being dipped like a damsel in a movie, staring up at the most handsome skull you’ve ever seen.

“FORGIVE ME, HUMAN,” he says, “THAT SURE WAS CARELESS OF ME! ARE YOU ALRIGHT?”

You gape at him for a moment, stunned. “Uh…I…you…”

The small part of you that isn’t starstruck screams, Get it together, dummy! and you shake your head.

“No, I’m! I’m fine, really, I wasn’t… I should’ve been paying more attention!” you assure him. “You’re…very fast!”

‘You’re fast’? Ugh! Stupid! That’s not—

The skeleton seems to smile, his chest puffing out a little. “OH, THANK YOU!” he replies, sounding pleased as punch.

…Oh. Huh.

He straightens you back on your feet with ease and passes you your coffee.

“UNFORTUNATELY, AS CUTE AS YOU ARE AND AS MUCH AS I’D LOVE TO STAND HERE AND TALK ABOUT MY UNPARALLELED SPEED, EVERY SECOND I WASTE TALKING IS A SECOND THAT BASTARD DOG GETS FURTHER AWAY FROM ME AND I CAN’T ALLOW THAT! YOU UNDERSTAND, OF COURSE?”

S…sorta?

Still, you nod emphatically and say, “Yeah, of course, you…go get ‘im!”

“I WILL! AND OBVIOUSLY, CALL ME IF ANYTHING…UH, WELL, YOU KNOW!”

And with that, the skeleton took off down the street again—at impressive speeds—yelling some words you’d have to look up later at the nearly-invisible speck of dog on the horizon.

Leaving you the literal definition of dazed and confused.

What did he mean, ‘if anything…’? And…how could you call him? You didn’t even know his name, much less his number!

And…had he called you ‘cute’ somewhere in there?

You’re so confused.

So frazzled.

You need your coffee.

You don’t put it together until halfway through your cup, when your sleeve rides up a little and…

There’s a…shape…there, on your wrist. A shape that definitely wasn’t there this morning—your brand new soulmark.

You were so flustered and tunnel-visioned at the time, but you must’ve touched somewhere, skin-on-bone, when that skeleton had almost bowled you over. There was no other explanation for the mark on your wrist now and your chest tightens.

You don’t know your own soulmate’s name. You don’t know his number or, or where he lives, or anything at all, and…!

Instinctively, you grab at your warm cup for comfort against the devastating thought of having met and lost your soulmate in the space of a few harried sentences, anxiously twisting the paper coffee-sleeve.

A tiny click against your desk makes you jump.

You look down, finding that there’s something sticking out of the coffee-sleeve, sliding out of it.

A mere second of fiddling frees it, only for you to realize you’re holding a business card, glossy black with gold edging and flames on the sides.

And a name.

‘THE GREAT PAPYRUS – PERSONAL TRAINER,’ it read above a phone number, email address, and skull emoji.

“…Holy shit,” you breathe aloud after a moment.

Your soulmate was smooth as hell.

You can’t wait to see him again.

It’s the work of a few phone calls to set up a date in between introductions, pleasantries, and inquiring after the well-being of the apparently kleptomaniacal dog that wasn’t even Papyrus’.

He wanted to meet you at the park at noon, and at precisely 12:02 PM, you watch Papyrus stroll up to you with a smile on his skull.

He’s wearing nice slacks and a sweater vest…but also a spiked leather jacket and combat boots. He has a cute little bunch of tulips in his gloved hands and a pair of red mirrored sunglasses taped to his skull.

You are so happy to see him.

“Hi, Papyrus!” you say. “You look great!”

“OF COURSE I DO!” he proclaims, passing you the tiny bouquet. “MY DATECLOTHES STRIKE THE PERFECT BALANCE BETWEEN ‘APPROACHABLE SKELETON-NEXT-DOOR’ AND ‘ENTICINGLY DANGEROUS BAD BOY’—NOTHING BUT THE BEST FOR THE FIRST PROPER MEETING OF MY SOULMATE!”

He leans toward you a little, pushing down his sunglasses and confiding in what you’re certain he believes to be a whisper, “IT’S ACTUALLY THE REASON I’M SO FASHIONABLY LATE…”

You are…halfway in love with this guy already.

“BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME FOR NOW! YOU LOOK WONDERFUL, TOO! EVERY BIT DESERVING OF THE MARK YOU LEFT ME!”

You’re far too curious not to ask.

“Oh, can I…can I see it, or…?”

Papyrus is all too delighted to show you.

He rolls up his sleeve and pushes back his glove—you spare a second to marvel at the rarity, two people with soulmarks in nearly-matching spots—and your heart thumps a little harder at the sight of the colorful bow looped over the cluster of his carpals, flourishing ribbons twisting down around his ulna and radius.

You can hardly believe you left such a pretty thing on him.

“I THINK IT MEANS YOU’RE A GIFT!” he tells you. “YOU CERTAINLY FEEL LIKE ONE SO FAR, NYEH-HEH-HEH!”

Your face feels a little hot and you hasten to show him his mark in return.

“Here’s yours,” you say, holding out your wrist for his riveted inspection. “I, uh, I wasn’t sure what it was at first so I looked it up. I think it’s an…interlocking puzzle?” You laugh, a little sheepishly. “I can’t…really guess what that means…”

Far from disappointed by your lack of imagination, Papyrus looks excited.

“WELL, ISN’T THAT THE GREATEST JOY OF PUZZLES?” he asks, grinning eagerly. “SOLVING THEM?”

He’s so earnest— so positive and charming and delightfully offbeat.

You couldn’t have asked for a better soulmate.

“You’re absolutely right,” you say, holding out your hand to him.

Papyrus’ eye-sockets go wide behind his sunglasses, color dusting along his cheekbones.

“O-OH! HAND-HOLDING? ON THE FIRST DATE???” He looks around as if to make sure the coast is clear before slowly placing his hand into yours. “I…! I LIKE YOUR STYLE, SOULMATE! SO DARING AND EDGY!”

And with your bow and his puzzle-box side-by-side, the two of you head off to enjoy the park.

#undertale #fanfiction #papyrus #papyrus/reader #make your mark #myfic

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ikonislife · 6 years ago

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To Raise A Star 02.

-Junhoe x Female reader

-Parents au, angst + fluff.

-A/n: Sooooo... I’ve never give birth before so please excuse my description of contraction and the entire process. I tried to research and did my best to describe it. I know it’s probably is a shit and inaccurate description and I’m so sorry!!!

-Part 1

“Let’s break up.” Those three words you’ve never imagined yourself saying even in your wildest nightmare, let alone while carrying his child, had just left your lips. It wasn’t an angry word vomit nor was it a beg of desperation. It was just is.

“Are you insane? Do you even hear yourself, Y/l/n Y/n.” Hands thrown in the air, Junhoe just about has it with your insane antics. Having him going out in the middle of the night braving the cold rain to get honey because what sane person could eat French fries without dipping it in some delicious bee’s backwash? That was fine, he totally, 100% would go out in a middle of a hurricane if you had asked because at the very least he feels helpful in this insane journey of you morphing into “a giant baby carrier and delivery system”, your words not his. There are a million and one things he would say to describe you other than “a giant baby carrier and delivery system” but he learned it’s not wise as of late to argue with you, even if he wholeheartedly disagreed because you’ve only gotten more beautiful. But this, breaking up? You might as well had just asked him to jump off a cliff into treacherous sea and jagged shore. “We’ve been through this, you and the little star in your belly are stuck with me for the rest of your life. Stop this insanity. It’s been months since the company announced our pregnancy and our plan to get married.” Exhausted from a long day of practice, Junhoe his weary body crashes atop your shared bed, a hand resting atop his forehead. “You don’t understand, that’s the only way I can protect you from being impale by hate. Why won’t you just let me do this?” Your exasperation is as real as the nonstop trip to the restroom because apparently peeing every 3 seconds is normal when one’s pregnant. “Because you, miss, is completely out of your mind bat shit crazy. I am not leaving my pregnant girlfriend because a few fake fans can’t handle the fact that I am a grown man and we’ve been dating for five years. Why can’t you see that the rest of the fans are happy for us.” Just as he knows all your favorite things, Junhoe is well aware of your biggest vice of all, your borderline unhealthy obsession with him and how the simplest action from him could melt you, leave your breathless even after all this time. Pulling you as far as he could into his chest, his arms woven themselves around your growing body as if this was the last time he’d ever see you. “Please, I just want to be happy. For just one second, can we just be happy about our child without all the bullshit and heartbreak?” A ragged yes was all that choked out from your lips as Junhoe digs his face further into the crook of your neck, soft sniffles betrays his stoic appearance as you gently cards through his soft locks. When adversity dealt its card, one person will always take the heavier hit out of the two… In this case, that person is most definitely not you. He had been so brave, for you, and for the little star. You knew the hates, the spites ate at his heart, even if it’s just a little bit… It still does and that breaks your heart. He never once complains, not a single word and even though you could see the exhaustion so clearly behind the haggard features and tired eyes, Junhoe was still smiling so brightly, just as he had always been. As soft kisses rain down on your tired soul, you lean further into his touches, solace returning to your little growing family.

Safe to say no one had ever gone through life without a few moments when the wings of butterflies so great, vomiting seem to be the only viable option, no one understood this more than Junhoe himself. From the moment he had set out with the dream of becoming a star, it was audition after audition, survival show after survival show, there wasn’t a moment since Junhoe had set off to achieve his dream that anxiety hadn’t been a friend. Time and place might be different but in the end the feeling remains the same, more so now than ever. The thought of you being alone, of the long sleepless nights, and days will be spent away from home had twisted his guts into pieces as if the once docile butterflies’ wings now equipped with blades. A night away feels like a year, and this week-long concert feels much like eternity. All the practice, the sound checks, all the prep, nothing could ease his heart of the anxiety, of being away from you. No matter how many times you had laughed off his worries and the smile seemingly always on your lips, Junhoe see right through your façade but he won’t show. Because he knows the moment he crumbles, so will you and if the only good thing he could do to ease the mind of his seven months pregnant fiancée is to pretend then by hell he will. The last few nights had been… Restless to say the least and the butterflies had grown into full fledge storms, twisting up inside his chest. The itching so deep within his bones to be by your side, to feel the light kicking of the little star, it ran so deep he suddenly found himself weak, clawing at the nonexistent burn on his skin. Not a second gone by that he didn’t think about the exhaustion so evident in your starlit eyes despite the warm smile, vigor on your lips. It’s funny really, he’s been your partner in crime for five damn years, five good damn years of the greatest hits and worst punches, ‘bout to get the promotion of his life yet you still got it in your head that you could lie to him. Junhoe knows all too well the moment he turns his back, your hand would be at your back, little circles rub in haste to alleviate whatever pain it could before his attention return. If he could have the world his way, you’d be right here with him but that was no longer even an option as your bump grows heavier each day. Even your weekly date night had turned into take-outs and watch movie at home on the couch night. Needless to say, you flying to every single concert to see him, well that was completely out of the question. He was sure by now too, you’ve grown tired of his endless calls and texts even if you had just picked up his call with the loudest, brightest greeting known to mankind. “How are my babies doing tonight?” Nothing, he swears, nothing makes him happier than the sight of you enjoying your food, more so now that that you were eating for two. “So good! Can you tell Yunhyeong the little one loves his soup? And I super appreciate that he took time to cook for me!” You gushed, dribbling a bit of soup down your chin and was rewarded with the best sound in the world – his laughter. Junhoe has the best laugh in the world, anyone who has a problem can come fight you. The night could be weary and day, hell. Just one smile and a bit of laugh, it was like none of the adversity you had faced matter. He lights up your days the way no one else could and you are so incredibly lucky to have him by your side through thicks and thins. “I will let him know. I miss you guys so much.” Laughter gone, leaving a heavy sigh mingling in the silent of the night. “I know, but only one more night!” You cheer, “One more night and you’re home!” Your cheer seems to lift his spirit. Even if it was only a tiny bit, it was enough to tug that handsome smile back onto his lips. It was hard to grumble and mumble when you insist upon showing him endless pictures and videos of your doctor appointment just that morning. Junhoe’s completely moonstruck, gushing and aweing the entire two hours he manages to get in before you scold him to go to sleep. Even then, good nights and love wishes taken nearly another half hour before a grumpy man finally hangs up the call. For the first time in months, Junhoe truly feel prepare, that nothing in this world could get him down as long as you and the little one were there with him. For the first time since he reluctantly packed his bags and left, the sandman finally graces him with a peaceful sleep.

Even as the blaring of his alarm piercing through his ear drums, Junhoe awaken with a smile on his lips. The hours to come fill with endless schedule but his heart knows, once midnight rings through, once more he’ll be on his way back to you. Yet all the happiness bubbling so close to the surface, the excitement, all that was shattered the second he realizes the 15 miss calls from both your parents and his. Fear wrecking through his body, the world that had seemed so bright and happy just a second ago begins to crumble beneath his feet as each dial tone tears away another piece of his heart. Calls after calls went unanswered, contact list runs short as panic engulfs his soul. It couldn’t be, he laughs in complete disbelief, you were still nearly two months away. This body had taken him through the highest and lowest, endured endless hours of practice as trainee with barely enough food, dosing him with the adrenaline of standing on the big stage of their first concert, supported him through the tears shed when iKON had their first win. Yet the moment he needed for it to work, to do its job just as it had for so long, his body left him to dry, frozen in shock. There wasn’t a thing he could do, not even the worst-case scenario creeping up in the back of his mind could get it to move. So, he stands there screaming, letting the tears stream endlessly down his cheeks, praying for someone to come help him… Help you. Yet just when he had thought all hope was lost, his managers along with the rest of the boys barge into his room, a commotion follows. His mind in a blur and the next moment he comes to, Hanbin was shoving his phone against his ears and the sound to spew from the speaker was one that left him in excruciating pain. You’re crying, calling for him. And all he could do was utters over and over again, “I’m coming home.” The taxi barely has time to halt its speed before Junhoe already diving out the door, sprinting toward the white glow of the hospital, never mind that his manager was scrambling to pay the poor driver, shocked from the young man suddenly sprinting off. He didn’t know where, or how he could even reach you but he knows time was of the essence. He runs and runs until the call for his name echoes through the empty hallway filled with the scent of disinfectant and beeping of machines. “Junhoe, hurry.” His father calls for him, not too far behind was yours, wearing the most painful expression on his features. His chest burning and legs failing but not now, he can’t stop now, not when you were so close, not when you were fighting so hard. So he follows the two men he had spent so much time looking up to as they lead him up the stair, no time waiting for the elevator. Almost immediately, his mom pulls him into a hug and your mom too, crying but she did the same. “What happened? Where’s Y/n?” He rushes out, terrifies that he was too late. There had been a time when the fear of failing his members, the fear of not being able to make his parents proud was atop the list of things that would crush his heart and soul. Now, as panic and trepidation slowly wrecking every fiber of his being, your cries and screams echoing through his mind, Junhoe was sure nothing else could rattle distress through his bone as much as this. The thought of losing you, losing the little star… It wasn’t one he could fathom in his heart as his exhausted body collapses to the floor. Yet immediately, he pushes himself up, fighting the many hands doing their best to ease his mind, to help him. “Junhoe, sit down. You’ll do her no good if you black out now.” Your mom protests when he springs to his feet, not knowing where to go or even what to do. At the tugging of the dads, he finally settles onto the cold plastic chair lining by the window to your room, curtain drawn, offering him no solace, no sight of you. Even now, the eerie silent that had replaced your cries for him strikes horror in his heart. “She’s in there, the doctor doesn’t know why she went into labor early but…” “What about the little star?” It was now that the implication of early labor had hit him, Junhoe nearly send the worried parents onto the floor when he suddenly propels upward, anxiety laces with every word, every stare he shares. “Healthy, no worry.” Once more under the guide of his mom, he settles into his seats, stilling himself before lips parting once more. But of course, his mom knows just exactly the question about to fall from his lips. “But Y/n is having a hard time delivering, they’re considering surgery now.” “Can I, can I see her? Please?” He begs as if his parents and yours hold the power, but to his dismay they only shake their head, expressing the doctor’s strict instruction to wait. Unable to keep still, not when you had been so silent, hidden away from his arms, surrounding by complete strangers. He should be in there, be right by your side, holding your hands. He had assured you times and times again that he’d be there no matter what, even if you cuss at him, even if you hit him. He’ll be there despite you insisting he didn’t have to, and that birth was a horrific mess of blood and guts. Junhoe had always just laughed it off, if you could push an entire tiny person out of you, he could handle a bit of blood. So he paces, pressing his ears close to the door hoping for even just a single sound but none came. It must have been half an hour before that door he had been ready to kick down swing open, a nurse slowly emerging before calling for family member. “I’m here, I’m her husband.” Junhoe jumps from his seat, rushing over even before the nurse had time to finish her question, not caring that your plan of getting marry was one for the future. “Good news, her blood pressure had decreased quite a bit, so baby is no longer in any harm. But if we can’t get it to normal level, I’m afraid surgery will be required.” “Please, can I see her. I can calm her down…” Junhoe begs once more, praying silently that he’d be allow to see you, to be there for you. He watches impatiently as the nurse disappears once more behind the door, leaning just to steal a peek but he saw nothing but white curtains. “Doctor approves, but only one person can come in. Please take time to decide-“ “I’ll go in.” The kind nurse once more emerges, but before she could get to finish her sentence, Junhoe had already decided. Any other day and he’d be respectful, giving your parents the choice but not today, and he hopes they’ll forgive him for needing to see his wife and baby. At once, he tails the nurse who then instructs for him to clean up, completing the look with a blue paper gown and hat. Another five minutes of instruction before the white curtain hiding you away finally lift, the sight of you so tired and worn steals a sharp gasp from his lungs. Junhoe sighs, wondering just what hell you had gone through while he was so peacefully asleep in luxury, away in another country. Tears begin pricking at the corners of his eyes but not now, he can’t cry now because you need him to be strong. With one sniffle, he forces them away even if you’ll be able to tell, you can always tell when something was bothering him. “Junhoe…” You sigh, a smile blossoms on your lips the second that sniffle tears through the disgusting silent of the room. There was no word that could express the relief washing over your heart and soul the second he hobbles in, redden eyes and sniffles telling you he had been crying. But that smile, the way he was doing so much just to steady his breathing. You adore him so much for trying his best to stay calm for you even though inside, a raging storm of worries was probably tearing him apart. You can’t even begin to imagine the pain of not knowing, of being so far away from you at the most critical moment… you know he blames himself. He couldn’t utter a single word, not one but a tight embrace wrapped your body in solace and love. “I’m sorry for taking so long…”The sentence choked out from his heart, but you only shake your head with an understanding smile. “I should be the one to say sorry, for worrying you like that. I guess the little one is on a different schedule than us, hmm?” You joked and it lifted his spirit to see you smiling so brightly still despite the messy, sweat dampen locks. Junhoe winces at the endless wires and chords coming from your body, and though he couldn’t lay right beside you and wrap you in his arms, he does his best to lean in close, let you nuzzle under his arm. “So, doctor tells me you’ve been doing great so far.” A soft kiss flutters its wings on your dry, chapped lips. “But we got a little more to go, okay?” He mused so gently, if wasn’t for the way his fingers delicately toying with yours, you wouldn’t even know that his nerve was so close to failing. “Okay…” You sigh, shifting uncomfortably around, feeling another round of contraction reigning upon your body. “Are you hurting a lot?” His arm only constricts tighter around your shoulder the second he saw the discomfort painting so clearly over your features. He got his hand gently rubbing at your back, spreading warmth and comfort into your aching back, though you could no longer feel anything below your waist. “No, just uncomfortable.” You tried to heave laugh to ease his mind but all that comes out were small gasps of discomfort, feeling your entire body constricting. “Uh, baby is definitely coming.” You sigh, contractions no longer ease, not even when you let your body fall into the most comfortable position you could manage. Like waves crashing the shore that was your body, though these waves were nothing to remind you of bright summer days spent frolicking by the beach, your contraction worsen with each tick of the clock. With each wave crashed, its intensity on grow and you could do nothing else but grab onto Junhoe as if he was your last life line in the middle of a stormy ocean. The tears he had hidden come crashing in like a broken dam, rushing down his cheeks as he watches on helplessly. Though you insist times and times again, as with the doctor reassurance every time Junhoe winces aloud that you were not in pain, there was no helping his feeble heart from shedding tears. That fear still of the complication, the reason why you had gone into labor early, they hang over his head like a dark cloud ready to storm any second. His mind blank, for every time your face contorted under a push, a soft kiss pressed upon your sweaty skin. He knows full well that this very moment neither his kisses nor hugs could help, but that was the only thing he could do as the doctor and nurses tend to your need. It had been 8 hours, 8 excruciating hours since he first awaken to your frantic voicemails and endless miss calls. His mind weary but it was nothing compare to the stress your body and soul had been under. As the nurses cheer you on, doctor calling for one last push, this adventure share between you and him flashes before his eyes. From the moment he had laid his eyes on you, just an intern doing the grunt work for a big company that had hosted the launch party iKON attended. You were getting bossed by nearly everyone, yet the smile so bright on your lips mesmerized him in ways no one ever had before. He watched you grew from the shy intern to the confident, independent woman that can hold her own in this world. There will never be enough words to describe just what you mean to him, to be there in his lowest moments, to give him a life that he thought was just a dream being an idol, consumed with work. Till now, giving him a child that although neither of you had planned for, it’s the greatest moment of his life, no contest. As the first cry of the little star echoes through the empty room, tears stream down his cheeks, and the biggest smile blooms on his lips. Junhoe watches as you sigh a breath of relief, falling back into his arms with a smile too that very much mirrors his. For just a second, the entire world, the entire crew of nurses and doctor huddling over your still raw wound melts away. It’s just you and him, exhausted and worn, but ready to take on the world with hearts beating as one. For the first time in nearly 12 hours, you both share a laugh, letting the crisp sound welcomes in your little star. “It’s a little boy.” The kind nurse that had put up with much of Junhoe’s impatient self just earlier coos gently, handing over the little bundle of joy all wrapped up and clean. She smiles, congratulation fills the air as she places your brand-new baby in your arms. “We have a son…” He sighs, a moonstruck smile spreads on his lips, completely in awe at the little star. “Nice to meet you, baby. I’m your dad.” Junhoe experiments, letting the new title falls from his lips with a chuckle, joy surging through his every vein when the little fingers wrap tightly around his own. He’s tiny, far tinier than what had predicted at the many doctor visits but he’s still so perfect. Tousles of soft hair swaying gently as you press a tiny kiss onto the crown of his head, admiring just how much he looks like Junhoe… Though your man insists that the little one very much looks like his mom. “I think it’s time you meet the grandparents, little one.” You coo, gently petting his pudgy cheek. Though you weren’t ready to let go just yet, you know just on the other side of the door, your parents and his anxiously await. So you nudge Junhoe on, a soft smile to let him know it was okay to take the tyke away. Wide eyes, Junhoe stares back as if you had just grown a second head before hopping off the bed. For a second, confusion plague your heart as you watch him twisting and patting himself, reaching out his arms only to retrieve them back at lightning speed. “Honey, what on earth are you doing?” You question, wondering if the doctor had given him drug on accident. “Preparing myself. Don’t wanna drop our baby.” He mutters, this time shedding the bulky jacket from his body, grumbling about not wanting the zipper to hurt the little one. “Definitely, do not drop our baby.” Your little tease clearly did not amuse the new dad as he sighs mournfully, no doubt wondering if he’ll ever be ready to hold his new son. “I’m just joking, Junhoe. Come here.” You call for him, pulling him right beside you before letting a small kiss flutters against his lips. “You’re doing great, stop worrying so much. You’ll be the best dad ever, so stop questioning yourself with everything.” “Can you blame me? He’s so tiny… and I’m just scare. I don’t know what to do… I’ve never been a dad before.” Pressing a delicate kiss upon the tiny hand, Junhoe let himself lost in the small nose and rosy cheeks. “I am too, but we got this. And our parents are here for us, the guys are here for us. We’ll take it one hour at a time, okay? Plus, we haven’t even named the little star yet, so it’s not time to have a meltdown just yet.” You muse gently, placing the tiny baby into his arms before waving him off. As Junhoe takes his first step ever into fatherhood with the little star snoozing so peacefully in his arms, a wave of bliss washes over his soul and suddenly everything was right in the world. Junhoe’s so certain that he was always meant to be here, with you, with the little baby. Even if the road had been a rough one till the very last second, it was one he’d take time and time again if it meant always ending up here. Even now, as he carefully hands over the tiny one to the doting grandparents, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the adorable tiny fingers and toes, still in awe that just days ago he was still in your belly, peacefully resting, awaiting his days in the sun. But now, all the things he wanted to do, to kiss, to love, to take the little star on the best adventures ever, or even just to the grocery store… All that was possible and there was no word to express how thankful Junhoe was to you, and to his parents. There was so much he doesn’t know and future so uncertain. Hell, neither you nor him even have a single clue as to what to name your tiny son. There’ll be hardship, he doesn’t doubt that for one second but hand in hand, this little family of his will be virtually indestructible so long as he has you, and his little star.

#junhoe #junhoe scenarios #ikon junhoe #koo junhoe #ikon june #junhoe imagine #ikon imagine #ikon scenarios #ikon scenario #fanfic #ikonic #ikon fanfic.

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writing-in-the-tiny-house · 3 years ago

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Plotting, but Upside Down

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The following is a transcription to this episode. The complete transcription is on the show’s website.

Devin Davis: Do you have the most awesome character in all of fiction and you have wonderful plans for this character, but you just don't dare to put those plans into action? Well, I am here to tell you to dare to dream. Well, in ways. Today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello, hello! And welcome back to the show. Welcome back to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and we are here together for another wonderful episode of writing in the tiny house. I am the guy living in a tiny house in Northern Utah, who is here to show you how to fit in writing a book, even in the most busy of schedules. So that's what we're doing.

[00:01:09] That's what we do here. Sometimes we have interviews of professionals in the field. Sometimes we have me talking about different writing advice. Last week, we talked about plotting from the inside out, from finding an event that would happen in your plot and in your book and finding ways to entangle that with all of the different subplots and then working backward so that you can find out how everybody got there.

[00:01:41] This week, we are going to be talking about characters and the awesome things we want them to do. So this is still plotting. This is still doing the plot structure stuff. But I warn you: what I'm about to talk about can be dangerous. But first I want to do a quick shout out. You know, that in these episodes I sometimes have announcements.

[00:02:06] One of the podcasts that I just stumbled upon is called Writing Roots by Aspen House Publishing. They release episodes twice a week and they are great. And I highly recommend that you guys search them out and have a good time with that. It's been fun exploring some of these other writing podcasts and just building a community like that.

[00:02:27] So that's it for announcements. Let's just get in to the nitty gritty of this. Let me first share with you the warning. Let me first set the stage. This stage is: you have this wonderful character, and because I am a fantasy genre author, we're going to keep things kind of fantasy.

[00:02:50] If you do any other type of fiction though, this totally applies. So with fantasy, anything can happen. There's magic. I appreciate a really good magic system. I appreciate believable characters. I appreciate human characters that I can relate too. So we have this character who is becoming more and more powerful in magic, and we imagine this wonderful big finale or this wonderful big spell or this wonderful big situation that this character really should be put into.

[00:03:31] If the character were in that situation, the entire plot would be more exciting. And that particular scene that you are imagining would be fun to write. It would be fun to envision. It is fun to daydream about. If it were a movie, you know all of the camera angles, you know all of the pictures, you know all of the special effects that it would have.

[00:03:54] And so we get to ask ourselves, "How did we get our character to do that? How do we get our character to get there?" We need to include these exciting moments because it's fun. And that's what makes some of this literature really fun is really big magic, really big high stakes things.

[00:04:18] We like the fights. We like the battles, at least in fantasy we usually do. And so it's important to include those things. However, when it comes to this specific character, doing this specific thing or developing in this specific way or having this or that specific backstory, it is important to step back and ask yourself why.

[00:04:49]And this is the reason why I say things like this. If you do not step back and ask yourself why it can lead to problems with your writing. It can lead to problems with your story. When you have a character who needs, in your opinion-- and it truly is in your opinion, none of this is real. And so you are in charge of everything in this writing process. But if you have this woman who needs to learn a specific spell or needs to do a specific fight, then you need to find a believable way to get her there. It is important to write down the different things that you want this character to have, and that you want this character to do.

[00:05:42] It's important to write all those things down for all of the main characters. But, you need to cross reference all of that with the previous stuff that I said in the previous episode. You need to make sure that you're getting your character from this stage to this other stage in a believable way. It needs to be something that is organic.

[00:06:10] It needs to be something that is real. It needs to be something that we can believe. And so what the pitfall is, is plot devices. Sometimes plot armor. If you're familiar with that term, that is when the character doesn't die or doesn't really get hurt just because they are the main character.

[00:06:32] Not because they are otherwise special in any other way. But just because they're the main character we protect them, or we have our main character or our main crew of characters, and we need to get them from here to there, but we have written them into this corner. And so how do we get them out of this corner?

[00:06:53] Well, the problem is the unbelievable solution or the convenient thing that comes by. I spoke about plot conveniences earlier when I spoke about Santa Claus showing up in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in the Chronicles of Narnia and Santa Claus brought deadly weapons, which the children would be needing at the end of the book, and that is all very convenient. And this way of plotting can lead to these plot conveniences. However, I'm going to tell you that if your character absolutely needs to do a specific thing, what I invite you to do is write down what that specific thing is, and then sit on it for a while.

[00:07:42]Have it in the back of your mind. If everything in the story already makes sense and leads up to that, and this would be just a natural progression along the way, then absolutely stick it into your story. If not, pay attention to your gut feeling. If it ends up being extra or stupid, or unbelievable, or just too much, or it ends up affecting the pacing-- like things get really slow and boring now that we have this thing in there-- then I invite you to step back and to perhaps revisit it or to throw it away entirely. There have been many wonderful ideas that I have thought of in my own stories that simply did not survive just because there was no organic way to include them in the story.

[00:08:40] So in instances like this, sometimes sometimes, and I absolutely give you every excuse to do this if you feel you need to. Sometimes you simply must sit down and write it anyway, knowing that it is going to be modified later. And you could write thousands of words just because you need to write that. You need this particular scene or event to exist for you, for you as the storyteller. In writing that scene, it brings you a little bit closer to your character. It lets you get to know the character and the dynamics of the environment that they're in, the stakes that they have and many more things. But it is okay to then turn around and rip it out of your manuscript.

[00:09:36]If you are the type of person who has heart failure over deleting things in their manuscript, it's okay to cut them from the manuscript that you are working on and paste them into another file that you can title your graveyard and to have those ideas continue on in the graveyard for either further inspiration or just reminiscing about what might've been. When I wrote my first book As Magic Shifts, the prologue was the longest chapter in the entire book by far, and it was the prologue. And if you do any type of Googling or just a quick search in YouTube, you can discover that prologues are kind of on the hot plate right now.

[00:10:34] They're kind of a debatable subject. Do you need a prologue? Do you not need a prologue? And there are a million different things to say about that subject. But in my book As Magic Shifts, when I wrote that 13 years ago, I simply needed to write this battle scene. And in the prologue, I wrote the battle scene from start to finish.

[00:11:00] It was the entire battle. And it had characters in it that had not been introduced in any other aspect. It had events in it that were confusing. It had multiple points of view. It was a mess. It was also 45 pages long. Which is too long for a prologue. You want your prologue to be shorter than the average length of your chapters.

[00:11:26] And so it was a problem and I sat back and I recognize that. And so what I did instead was after I wrote the entire prologue, I took just a single scene from it, the most important scene, and I made that become the prologue. And had I not done it that way, at least that's how it became for the second draft.

[00:11:52] Had I not done it that way-- had I not sat down and written out this entire battle-- I wouldn't have arrived at that scene that worked for the second draft. And that's okay. What I did later was I had a way to understand the characters backstory, and as a way to understand just some of the magic and some of the effects that were happening in a really negative way. I had flashbacks of sorts to that war, to that battle that happened years and years ago, as a way to explain to the reader and to actually some of the other characters, what was actually going on and why it was happening in this way. And so I never forgot that battle.

[00:12:45]Again, this is the thing. If you have main characters that you really, really, really want them to do specific things or act in a specific way, make sure you reference your overall story and pay attention to your gut. It has also been my experience that if I let things marinate for long enough, I will be able to come to a very logical conclusion about those things, whether or not to put them in the book. Or I can find the absolute perfect way to include them. And sometimes that takes time. Sometimes that just takes that patience, that ability to sit back and allow the forces at work to just kind of figure out this aspect of the story that you didn't understand before.

[00:13:45] For me, I daydream about my books all day, every day. And so sometimes I get fixated on the really exciting things on the good things that I find in the storyline. And because I'm the storyteller and because I'm the author, they all make perfect sense to me. And then sometimes when I draft, I don't see that they don't make sense yet, or that they need more or that it's too much, whatever.

[00:14:15]But in the times that I do see that this doesn't work right now, or that this character doesn't get to act in this way right now, or this event doesn't get to happen right now, but I still allow myself to daydream and I still allow myself to think about it, I have found that for the really important events in my entire overall story, even though some of the context might change, I have found there is always a creative and beautiful way to approach those events every time. And that moment is so exciting when, when I come to realize, oh, it gets to happen this way. So the event is still there! And I still get to be excited about what is about to happen and the magic and the action, and you know, what the characters are going to learn and grow from or whatever, if that's even in the scene.

[00:15:17] And even though the context may be different and sometimes the secondary characters might be different or the setting might be a little different. I have found that there are creative ways to find the perfect place for those exciting moments. And for those important moments, sometimes it requires a bit of ju from your manuscript, but it can happen.

[00:15:42] Sometimes you get to be prepared to put them on the back burner so that you can give it more time to marinate and let your creative brain find the most perfect way to include that important scene.

[00:15:58] So that is it for today. Thank you so much for joining me. And a special thanks to my patrons: without my patrons, this podcast would not be possible. If you are interested in joining the patron gang, go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse. You would be getting early access to these episodes. You would be getting an additional episode every month and an opportunity to spend private time with me.

[00:16:24] So again, that is patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse. Also be sure to follow me on Instagram. My handle is @authordevindavis and on Twitter my handle is @authordevind. Again, thank you so much for joining me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

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verdigrisprowl · 7 years ago

Text

Feb 26 Dancitron Movie Night - The Dark Night Rises

Prowl was bored out of his mind.

Swoop was, as usual, a pest. Prowl’s beginning to get fed up with it. ... More than he already is.

(He only said two words to Tarantulas. But he’s still trying to be mildly protective of him. From a distance. Because that’s how Prowl do.)

Yesterday Specs 7:56 pm *here comes a dragon! she brings gifts of silver drops, mercury rolls, and energon gummis* Smokescreen 7:56 pm MAGNUM MAGNUM SPECS SOUNDBABE HEY! ItsyBitsySpyers 7:57 pm [[Soundwave.]] ((one sec audio issues)) Smokescreen 7:59 pm That's what I said, right? Soundbabe? Magnum Ace 7:59 pm ((not here right now, kinda distracted with rl stuffs ItsyBitsySpyers 8:00 pm [[Don't start. He doesn't want a new helm ache.]] *Soundwave bobs at the dragon. He's going to snatch those silver drops - and then, remembering himself in public, tuck them next to the couch. Damn.* Smokescreen 8:01 pm A new helmache? Did you already have one? How come? ItsyBitsySpyers 8:01 pm [[Meteorite to the helm. He is better now.]] Smokescreen 8:01 pm Wait what Seriously? How did that happen? Are you sure you're okay? Prowl 8:02 pm *appears; takes seat; greeting ping.* @S «How's your helm today?» ItsyBitsySpyers 8:02 pm [[He heard a whistling noise, turned around, looked up, and there it was. And shortly after that, there he was not.]]

@P: [[Fine, thank you. He apologizes for Saturday's... wandering.]] *Greeting ping return and small affectionate nudge.*

@P: [[The care was appreciated.]] Smokescreen 8:02 pm Primus, that's some really bad luck. If there's anything you need help with, I'd be happy to get you energon or something. ItsyBitsySpyers 8:03 pm *Lifts a hand.* [[Thank you, but he is well now.]] *Minus the data he can't recover, but he's not going to be bitter about that where others can hear.* Prowl 8:03 pm @S «It's fine. It was... an interesting conversation.» *Returns nudge. He hadn't even realized until later that the wandering was probably due to the injury.* Windchill 8:03 pm *Windchill appears, clutching a worm to his chest, who is in turn clutching a stuffed unicorn.* *She puts her mouth on it grossly* Specs 8:04 pm *the dragon chirps delightedly at the worm* Is that her friend? Does it have a name? ItsyBitsySpyers 8:04 pm @P: [[It -is- true, though. He will have to show you some time soon.]]

[[Greetings Windchill, Blue. If she is hungry, you are welcome to take some of the energon on offer for her.]] Bevel 8:04 pm *has arrived* Windchill 8:05 pm *His brows furrow in a moment of confusion, and he looks down to see.* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:05 pm *Bobs to Bevel.* Windchill 8:05 pm *Oh, the unicorn, Duh.* Smokescreen 8:05 pm Really? Well, if you say so. Still, if you start feeling bad, don't be afraid to ask for some help. I don't want my frie- my acquaintances to be in trouble! Windchill 8:05 pm It's just 'unicorn.' She doesn't talk enough yet to name things. Besides Wub. Bevel 8:05 pm *waves to Soundwave and looks to see which minis around around tonight* Smokescreen 8:05 pm /Waving to Bevel!/ Specs 8:06 pm Fair enough. It's good to have a friend, anyways. Windchill 8:06 pm It used to be mine. I tried to convince her to leave it at home, but she refused. Hasn't left it alone much since I gave it to her. Bevel 8:06 pm *grins at Smokescreen and waves back* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:06 pm *Gives Smokescreen a brief look... decides acquaintances is acceptable and nods.*

*The only mini around is Ravage and he is pulling a Snoopy on the back of Soundwave's couch. His tail might flick and bop Prowl in the nose.* Windchill 8:06 pm *This is his life now.* Bevel 8:07 pm *disappointed at the lack of minis, was hoping she could coax Chimera into sitting with her* Prowl 8:07 pm *starts in surprise.* ... Hello. Smokescreen 8:07 pm /MORE EXCITED WAVING AT BEVEL and also singing along/ Windchill 8:07 pm *Nods at Soundwave. He always makes sure to feed the brat beforehand, but the thought is appreciated. She always wants MORE food.* Bevel 8:07 pm *but Ravage gets a greeting ping and a request to pet* Windchill 8:08 pm *Finds a spot to sit on the floor and crosses his legs.* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:08 pm =Greetings.= *Swish swish.*

*He twists his head just enough to squint at Bevel... one scratch beneath chin. No extended petting. No belly rubs.* *Soundwave lives with Laserbeak. He understands the bottomless pits.* Windchill 8:09 pm *This is a fun song, in his opinion. He bounces his spawn to the beat, someone's gotta teach this kid some rhythm.* Prowl 8:10 pm *... Prowl leans over slightly, trying to get out of the tail's path.* Bevel 8:10 pm *one scratch given, along with a chirped greeting before she wanders over to get some energon and then go sit by Smokescreen* Windchill 8:10 pm *Windchill is, himself, a bottomless pit. Unlike his offspring, he's able to show some restraint.* Windchill 8:12 pm *More baby bouncing. He might not be able to dance, but there's no need to pass this flaw onto his worm.* Smokescreen 8:13 pm !! /Grinning at Bevel./ It's nice to see you again! ItsyBitsySpyers 8:13 pm *Soundwave huffs softly and leans back. He knows what Ravage is doing and he won't chastise -too- hard.*

[[You could use the arm like a reasonable mech, you know.]]

*To which Ravage just stretches further.* Windchill 8:14 pm *Blue, for her part, kicks her stubby legs and chews on her fluffy toy.* Bevel 8:14 pm *drops down into her seat and checks to see who else is here besides SW and crew* You too, Smokescreen! Prowl 8:15 pm *at this point he's sort of leaning on soundwave. he tries to balance minimizing the amount of leaning he's doing and avoiding ravage's tail as much as possible.* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:16 pm ((ten minute warning)) Swoop 8:16 pm *bounces through the door and flips up to stand on the nearest piece of furniture* Windchill 8:18 pm Swoop! Smokescreen 8:18 pm !! SWOOP Swoop 8:18 pm *holds his arms up cause he stuck the landing* Windchill 8:18 pm *Would applaud, but his hands are full.* Bevel 8:18 pm *claps* Swoop 8:19 pm *BOWS and laughs* Windchill 8:19 pm That was cool. You should teach me. *You shouldn't.* Swoop 8:19 pm YAH! Me Swoop am very good at AIR stuff. *bends down just enough to get a good LAUNCH up into a backflip onto the ground* Windchill 8:20 pm *Whistles his approval.* Swoop 8:21 pm *rocks from his heels to toes, heels to toes* Where is Bird? Windchill 8:21 pm I...ate her. Ratchet 8:21 pm * oh dear what is Swoop getting up to* Windchill 8:21 pm *Smacks his lips.* Specs 8:21 pm *blinks at Windchill* Swoop 8:21 pm Kahah! NO! You eat Bird, Him Soundwave kill you! Dead. ItsyBitsySpyers 8:22 pm [[How do you know Windchill isn't.]] Windchill 8:22 pm I'm dead on the inside. Smokescreen 8:22 pm Oooh- Swoop, you know, I bet I could show you something cool later! Swoop 8:22 pm *is getting talked at by a lot of people and responds just by getting more bouncy, fidgety and excited* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:22 pm *Ravage is still in the mood to be a little slagger. He ohhhhh soooooo slooooowly reaches out with a trembly paw to ever so lightly tap the very tip of Prowl's chevron.* Aegis 8:23 pm *Aegis is fascinated with this music and the vast amounts of hair* Windchill 8:23 pm I don't know where Laserbeak is. But!!! Swoop 8:23 pm *jumps up here and there, using his wings to get more air* BUT! Kehhehh. Magnum Ace 8:23 pm -pings Soundwave, movie night, right?- Windchill 8:23 pm There is good news. Swoop. I have a song for you. ItsyBitsySpyers 8:23 pm *Soundwave glances to the new person.* [[Who might you be?]] *Pause.* [[And Laserbeak is patrolling.]] *Yep, movie night. Bridge!* Magnum Ace 8:24 pm -and it's just him today, Bull's sleeping, like he should be- Swoop 8:24 pm *looks from Windchill to Soundwave to Smokescreen and back again in rapid succession* Windchill 8:24 pm *Brace yourself.* Love...is a burning thing... Smokescreen 8:25 pm /Smokescreen's standing up. staring at Swoop./ Aegis 8:25 pm *Aegis freezes a little bit* I'm... the one who brought candied high grade? *smiles hopefully* Ratchet 8:25 pm *is not here for long tonight. decides maybe he'll just sit by himself while he's here.* Smokescreen 8:25 pm /And he's going to do a flip!/ Swoop 8:25 pm *throws himself onto a couch hard enough to get a bit of bounce and pushes off with his wings to fling himself over the back of teh couch* Windchill 8:25 pm And it makes...a fiery ring... BOUND, BY WILD DESIREEEEE. Prowl 8:25 pm *STARTS AT THE TAP* Ratchet 8:26 pm Johnny Cash! Good choice. Prowl 8:26 pm *turns to look at Ravage. Very calmly and politely,* ... Please don't touch me. Windchill 8:26 pm *This is a rare baritone performance Swoop, you had better appreciate it because it won't be happening again.* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:26 pm *Nods to Ratchet. He knows he won't get much of a cordial greeting, but that's no excuse to be a poor host.*

[[...On the bar, then. Ravage, if you'll scan it?]] Windchill 8:26 pm I FELL IN, TO A RING OF FIRE. Swoop 8:26 pm that a SONG! *is legitimately excited by this observation* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:27 pm *Ravage sniffs at Prowl's helm, looks at Soundwave, looks to Prowl, rumbles acknowledgment of both comments, and goes to handle the bar.* Swoop 8:27 pm *can't NOT headbang to this song* Windchill 8:27 pm I FELL IN TO A BURNING RING OF FIRE, I FELL DOWN DOWN DOWN, AND THE FLAMES WENT HIGHER. Ratchet 8:28 pm *tiny nod back to Soundwave* Bevel 8:28 pm *she left payment for the energon she took while Ravage was playing with Prowl* Magnum Ace 8:28 pm -what is going on in this song?- Smokescreen 8:28 pm why did the teacher have a grenade Windchill 8:28 pm *It's at this point that Blue starts protesting with a howl of rage. She drops her unicorn to deliver an aghast scream at Dad's chin.* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:28 pm ((WARNINGS: Needles, violence and blood, implied rape, death, Bane's horrible horrible voice, standard Batman mythos stuff.)) Aegis 8:28 pm Because he doesn't know how to deal with children properly? Smokescreen 8:29 pm But how can a teacher afford a grenade Specs 8:29 pm Explosions are NOT a substitute for an effective docent. Swoop 8:29 pm *is absolutely bouncing off the walls with the combo of hair metal, other people's backflips, loud singing, howling bugs, and impeding puns* Windchill 8:30 pm *He looks down to see what the fuss is about.* What, you don't like my singing? Aegis 8:30 pm *Pauses, about to bite into his rust stick* That... is a better question! Swoop 8:30 pm *leaps onto the bar* Tarantulas 8:30 pm *slides in the back of the room, scanning who's already here* Windchill 8:30 pm *He is rewarded with a palm to the eyeball. He endures.* Ratchet 8:30 pm *raises hand* I liked your singing. Swoop 8:31 pm *spots Tarantulas from his new vantage point, SHRIEKS with joy and LAUNCHES himself at the back of the room* Specs 8:31 pm *the dragon chirps at Tara cheerfully* Windchill 8:31 pm Yeah, well...*he needs a comeback to his own spawn complaining about his song choices.* ..You're smelly. Smokescreen 8:31 pm !! /Staring as Swoop shrieks, and then sees Messy and beeps in excitement, running over to him!/ Ratchet 8:31 pm *and lowers hand again. hi hello Ratchet does not even know you but Johnny Cash can't go wrong.* Aegis 8:31 pm *Looks at Windchill* You sing like my Carri *refuses to say if that's a good thing or not* Magnum Ace 8:31 pm -up on a table, out of the way, thankfully- Windchill 8:32 pm *Turns enough to see who was speaking to him.* You're welcome. Tarantulas 8:32 pm *is TACKLED, but manages to catch swoop instead of being completely toppled over. he uses his HANDS* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:32 pm *Nods to Tarantul... well, he's dead.* Prowl 8:32 pm *oh! hey! Ratchet is here. who is he sitting with, if anyone?* Windchill 8:32 pm *Maybe he'll finish his song about fire later. Maybe not.* Ratchet 8:32 pm *no one. he is sitting by himself.* Aegis 8:32 pm *Is very glad to be out of the excitement* Ratchet 8:32 pm [[ is that littlefinger ]] Smokescreen 8:32 pm Messy! I'm so glad you're okay! What happened earlier? Was everything okay? I asked my Dad to check on you in case something strong was causing you problems, but he seemed pretty sure you were okay. Swoop 8:33 pm *SCRAMBLES up to sit on Tarantulas' chest (if he can) paying no mind to where his scratchy baby fingers or toes go* Prowl 8:33 pm *... tarantulas is here too! ......... goes to sit with ratchet.* Tarantulas 8:33 pm Swoop, WATCH it, Primus - what's all the fuss about? Swoop 8:33 pm HI!! It me SWOOP Magnum Ace 8:34 pm .......... Specs 8:34 pm ((fsgjkhafh BANE'S VOICE)) ItsyBitsySpyers 8:34 pm ((I WARNED FOR IT FOR A REASON)) Specs 8:34 pm ((god I've never actually heard the movie I didn't KNOW)) Swoop 8:34 pm ((literally sounwave)) Tarantulas 8:34 pm *exasperated sigh* Yes, I know it's you. Swoop 8:34 pm ((it would be extremely painful.....................................for you)) ItsyBitsySpyers 8:34 pm ((SOUNDWAVE'S VOICE IS NOT THAT SILLY)) Tarantulas 8:34 pm *very forcefully and deliberately trying to put swoop down* Swoop 8:34 pm ((YOU CAN'T CONTROL WHAAT SWOOP IMAGINES)) Windchill 8:35 pm *Sets his worm down before she knocks his eye out.* Magnum Ace 8:35 pm ((HAH Aegis 8:35 pm ((I'm glad for emotional support while I listen to this voice for the first time omg lol)) Specs 8:35 pm ((soundwave's voice is wonderful. this scrapes against my ears like bees in my skull)) Swoop 8:35 pm *grabs hold of Tarantulas' wrists and SQUEAKS* Bevel 8:35 pm *mimic's Bane's voice and then giggles to herself* Ratchet 8:35 pm *nods to Prowl* Tarantulas 8:35 pm Smokescreen, I - as you can tell, I'm perfectly - agh. Well, mostly fine. Prowl 8:35 pm *nods to Ratchet* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:35 pm *Soundwave will take this temporary seat vacation to stretch his legs across his couch and watch with his arms folded in his lap. A rare publicly cozy Slend.* Magnum Ace 8:36 pm .............................. Ratchet 8:36 pm Evening. ItsyBitsySpyers 8:36 pm [[That looks painful.]] Tarantulas 8:36 pm *nooooooo swoop has possession of the HANDS* Prowl 8:36 pm @S «We have an altercation. Perhaps you should do something about the instigator.» Smokescreen 8:36 pm I know now- but I was worried. You're one of my best friends, and I wouldn't want to lose you! Ratchet 8:36 pm Could've stayed there, I won't be here long. Swoop 8:36 pm *would have comments about this plane getting its BUTT ripped off but he is WAY more interested in being a wiggle AT Tarantulas* HI!!!! Magnum Ace 8:36 pm -slowly sinks where he's sitting- Ratchet 8:36 pm *but he's leaning on Prowl anyway* Windchill 8:36 pm *Blue picks up her unicorn again to put her mouth on it.* Prowl 8:36 pm I'll sit with you while you are here. ItsyBitsySpyers 8:37 pm @T: [[Do you need assistance?]] Bevel 8:37 pm The fire rises~ Tarantulas 8:37 pm Hello. Whatever it is you want, I'm not giving it to you until you let. Me. Go. *pings sw a negative* Swoop 8:37 pm Me Swoop want to MOVIE!!!!! Bevel 8:37 pm *she's going to talk like Bane for a while and no one can stop her* Swoop 8:37 pm Kehehehh It ALREADY movie : > Specs 8:37 pm *the dragon's skin twitches like a nervous horse's each time Bevel does the Thing* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:37 pm *Nods then. Forwards the negative to Prowl so he can see that Soundwave is not ignoring the spide.* Ratchet 8:37 pm [[ ...... am i crazy i don't hear anything wrong with bane's voice ]] ItsyBitsySpyers 8:38 pm *Stares at Bevel.* [[...Is that truly necessary.]] Windchill 8:38 pm *Cranes his neck around to see what the heckie Swoop is actually doing.* Bevel 8:38 pm *grins* Yes Specs 8:38 pm ((I'm autistic- sound and texture are two of the worst sensory hells to me)) Tarantulas 8:38 pm (( bane's voice sounds like someone scrubbing real hard on wet plastic Specs 8:38 pm ((some things kick me more than others- this is one of them)) Prowl 8:38 pm *prowl is Not Happy with that.* Windchill 8:38 pm (( It just sounds fake and silly to me. )) Prowl 8:38 pm ((it just sounds like a dumb accent to me)) Swoop 8:39 pm ((I enjoy his voice but I have an ironic enjoyment of things that circumnavigates the globe and returns back to genuine enjoyment some time.)) ItsyBitsySpyers 8:39 pm *Vents.*

[[They have kept up this charade for that long?]] Ratchet 8:39 pm [[ yeah i'm hearing the dumb accent but that's it ]] Tarantulas 8:39 pm Then what ELSE do you want, Swoop? Why are you holding - ggh. Aegis 8:39 pm ((It sounds like he's trying to be James Bond while having a plunger stuck on his face)) Windchill 8:39 pm (( That's exactly it. )) Prowl 8:39 pm ((i can't hear any strange tones to his voice or anything? but i also don't have the highest sound quality)) Swoop 8:39 pm *hopes from ONE FOOT to the OTHER FOOT and back and forth and back...* Me Swoop want to say HI to You Spiderbot! Ratchet 8:39 pm [[ but i've also watched this movie before and honestly could not understand a word of what he said that time because no subtitles so idk ]] ItsyBitsySpyers 8:40 pm [[...Nobody in the crowd finds this interesting? That he said he had the truth about Dent and then put the paper away again?]] Tarantulas 8:40 pm *is trying to have two conversations at once, leans to smokescreen* If I'm ever in trouble, rest assured, I'd let you know. Specs 8:40 pm ((the singer for the mountain goats also gets me bad. I generally assume that it's me until someone says otherwise)) Tarantulas 8:40 pm (( omg i know what you mean (( i <3 the mountain goats but i absolutely understand, there's a quality to his voice ItsyBitsySpyers 8:41 pm [[...He likes her, though.]] Tarantulas 8:41 pm *squints at Swoop* ...You've accomplished that. Swoop 8:41 pm ME!!! Magnum Ace 8:41 pm -he's settling down now, thankfully- Smokescreen 8:41 pm /Coming closer to lean against Tarantulas/ Thank you, Messy- were you just doing some science experiments? Aegis 8:42 pm Why is she apologizing when he came near to shooting her in the head? ItsyBitsySpyers 8:42 pm [[She is where she should not be.]] Tarantulas 8:43 pm Not experiments. Modifications. *that's the half-truth he's sticking with for now* Swoop 8:43 pm *steps his birdy feet on top of Tarantulas' feet* Aegis 8:43 pm He still almost shot her... And apparently he should have tried harder... ItsyBitsySpyers 8:43 pm *...Soundwave sits up slightly. What an interesting thief.* Smokescreen 8:43 pm Modifications? Wait- wait, modifications? What'd you do? Tarantulas 8:44 pm *is swoop still holding onto tarantulas's wrists?* Swoop 8:44 pm *dinobots NEVER quit thx* Prowl 8:44 pm She "apologized" as part of her cover, apparently. That's the act she was putting on. Tarantulas 8:44 pm *tugs one of his hands over, against swoop's pulling, to show smokescreen his new servos* Smokescreen 8:44 pm !!!!! /Immediately grabbing the hand!/ Swoop 8:45 pm *laughs and lets himself get yanked without letting go* Specs 8:45 pm *the dragon stretches, and looks over at Tarantulas. what's going on there?* Windchill 8:45 pm *Blue chews on the unicorn's head and examines a seam with her chubby fingers.* Aegis 8:45 pm *looks over to see the fuss as Swoop gets handsy* Swoop 8:45 pm *is ALWAYS handsy thx* Tarantulas 8:45 pm You two, will you PLEASE let me sit down first before you assault me? *more exasperated than angry, for sure* Swoop 8:46 pm NO! kehehehhehhehheh Smokescreen 8:46 pm /Droopy droopy doorwings/ But Messy- Messy, it's been so long since I've seen you! Aegis 8:46 pm But if he sits down, you can sit on him ItsyBitsySpyers 8:46 pm [[...How does one wear someone else's fingerprints?]] Windchill 8:46 pm *Tarantulas is on his own so far as Windchill is concerned.* Specs 8:46 pm ((our lord and savior nugget is chewing my laptop screen)) Aegis 8:46 pm *Aeis is never helpful* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:46 pm [[Are those not part of the human hand skin?]] Smokescreen 8:46 pm Maybe she stole someone's skin? Windchill 8:46 pm (( Good job Nugget.)) Tarantulas 8:47 pm *since swoop is on his feet, tara will literally walk himself and swoop over to the nearest chair and take a seat* Swoop 8:47 pm *loves LITERALLY EVERY SECOND of getting walked across the room and makes high pitch noises to confirm this* Tarantulas 8:47 pm Has it really been that long, Smokescreen? Smokescreen 8:47 pm Well... No, but I missed you still! Prowl 8:47 pm *winces at the noises* Smokescreen 8:47 pm /Following along and is playing with Tarantulas' servo- it's a HAND!/ Tarantulas 8:48 pm *pats smokey on the head with his hand, scritching with the clawed fingers* Specs 8:48 pm *okay, the dragon's too curious. she's flying over to take a look* Swoop 8:48 pm *GASP* *wants scritches* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:48 pm [[...He does not see why that is required to be happy.]] Windchill 8:48 pm *Shrugs.* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:48 pm [[Not that the Wayne human is happy now.]] Swoop 8:48 pm *leans over to Tarantulas' other hand and tries to bring it to his helm for scritches* Smokescreen 8:49 pm /Excited doorwing bobbing, squeezing Messy!/ Windchill 8:49 pm *Having a bugwife and bugkids makes him happy enough.* Bevel 8:49 pm Meh meh meh. *annoyed noises at the lecture at Bruce about needing to get married* Tarantulas 8:49 pm *begrudgingly scritches swoop as well* Swoop 8:49 pm *VICTORY* Specs 8:50 pm *the dragon chooses to land on smokescreen, rather than swoop. safer that way* Tarantulas 8:50 pm *look prowl look, tarantulas is being a Nice Good Person* Ratchet 8:50 pm [[ is that the pacific rim scientist ]] ItsyBitsySpyers 8:50 pm ((yes)) Ratchet 8:50 pm [[ damn. everyone in this movie is recognizable from something else ]] Windchill 8:51 pm That's more than I can do, heh. Prowl 8:51 pm Humans tend to think that way. I wonder if the compulsion to, specifically, marry-and-breed is biological or cultural. ItsyBitsySpyers 8:51 pm *A deal gone sour. He hopes she gets away from it. All that talent.* Prowl 8:52 pm Not just get in a relationship of some sort. Not just breed. Marry-and-breed. Windchill 8:52 pm Nice. ItsyBitsySpyers 8:52 pm *...Oh, how clever!*

[[He doesn't suppose one could simply... poll the humans, somehow.]] Magnum Ace 8:52 pm .............. Swoop 8:52 pm *reaches over with his wing aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand POKES Smokescreen's doorwing* Tarantulas 8:52 pm *overhears and blurts before he can stop himself* It's cultural. ItsyBitsySpyers 8:52 pm [[Where did you acquire this idea?]] Smokescreen 8:53 pm /BEEPS as his doorwing's poked, reaching to poke Swoop's face!/ Prowl 8:53 pm *Nods. Mystery solved. Tarantulas would know.* Swoop 8:53 pm *CHIRPS* Prowl 8:53 pm ... Is it one culture or a few or all of them? Specs 8:53 pm *the dragon is too busy perching on Smokescreen's head and staring at the spidepaws to ask questions* Swoop 8:53 pm *and then attempts to bite Smokescreen's hand before it can escape* Tarantulas 8:53 pm They vary. *succinct* Magnum Ace 8:53 pm -sinking down again- Prowl 8:53 pm Hm. Not where I've had an opportunity to witness them. Tarantulas 8:53 pm *meanwhile is trying to keep swoop and smokescreen from fighting on top of him* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:53 pm *Glances over. He'll take Tarantulas' word on it, but he -would- like more details some time.* Aegis 8:53 pm Got any datapads I could borrow about those cultures? Smokescreen 8:53 pm /FRAG he's now kinda stuck with one servo on Messy, and one stuck in Swoop's mouth./ Swoop swoop swoop- come on! Prowl 8:54 pm ... Soundwave please, he's biting people. Bevel 8:54 pm *thinks next time she goes to Earth she's gonna find a human culture that doesn't make them all marriage and breeding obsessed* Windchill 8:54 pm *Give 'im to Windchill.* Swoop 8:54 pm *doesn't bite down, just holds Smokescreen's hand firmly and chatters, narrowing his optics to try to get him to playfight* Tarantulas 8:54 pm *picks swoop up* *that should do the trick* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:54 pm [[Very well.]] *If it's gotten out of Tarantulas' control. He'll stand and start to move over.* Swoop 8:54 pm *HAPPY SQUEAKS* YAHH! Smokescreen 8:55 pm Hmmmm- /other servo is reaching to tickle Swoop!/ Aegis 8:55 pm *nibbling his candy happily. The movie is better than he thought it would be* ItsyBitsySpyers 8:55 pm [[Smokescreen. Desist. You are encouraging this.]] Swoop 8:55 pm *isn't ticklish but lets the servo go because of Tara's quick thinking* Smokescreen 8:55 pm Aw- fine. /He's going to take the chance to hug Tarantulas, if nothing else./ Tarantulas 8:55 pm Swoop, would you like for me to make you a hammock as I did before? *is hugged* Specs 8:56 pm *considers the paws* How did you do that? Swoop 8:56 pm NO! Me Swoop want to JUMPING! Windchill 8:56 pm You Swoop go outside for jumping. Swoop 8:56 pm *kicks his feet in the air but doesn't try to escape* Keheheh INSIDE jumping Aegis 8:56 pm Huh... he pulled a Sherlock ItsyBitsySpyers 8:56 pm [[No inside jumping. Outside or sit down.]] Tarantulas 8:57 pm *attempts to deposit swoop off to the side of himself* Swoop 8:57 pm *keeps bending his knees unti he can't avoid being put down any longer* Inside jumping : > Windchill 8:58 pm You Swoop being very naughty. Swoop 8:58 pm YAH Windchill 8:58 pm If you Swoop don't behave you'll get kicked out and you can't watch the movie or see your friends. Tarantulas 8:58 pm No helm-scritches, either. Swoop 8:58 pm Me Swoop have Ark friends : > *leans back until he can see Soundwave upside down* Soundwave mad? ItsyBitsySpyers 8:59 pm [[He is about to be if you do not calm down and watch the movie in peace.]] [[And then you will not be allowed to see Laserbeak for another week.]] Swoop 8:59 pm *HASN'T BEEN CALM A DAY IN HIS LIFE* Tarantulas 8:59 pm *exvents and slumps into his seat now that he doesn't have swoop on him* Swoop 9:00 pm WHY?!?!?! Tarantulas 9:00 pm *he can deal with smokey hugs, that's fine* Smokescreen 9:00 pm /He's still holding onto Messy, climbing up so he can hang on like a koala/ Specs 9:00 pm *and now the dragon is clambering down onto the back of tara's seat to peer at the CLAWS* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:00 pm [[He does not want bad influences in her life. You must be very good to be her friend.]] *She has enough bad influences.* Tarantulas 9:01 pm *pets smokescreen's helm again to give the dragon a good view of the three-fingered hand* Swoop 9:01 pm Me Swoop NEVER good! Us Dinobots always TROUBLE! Always always! Windchill 9:01 pm Why? Swoop 9:02 pm ????? Specs 9:02 pm 😮 *the dragon peers at it* You do these to yourself? Smokescreen 9:02 pm /Nuzzling Tarantulas./ How'd you do these mods, Messy? They're awesome! Windchill 9:02 pm *Squints an eye at Swoop.* Aegis 9:02 pm *Offers Tara a candied high grade treat* You can have these, right? Ratchet 9:02 pm *nudges Prowl and slides down off the couch* Have a good night, hey? ItsyBitsySpyers 9:03 pm *...He wants that device.* Swoop 9:03 pm *bounces and makes whiny, upset noises* Prowl 9:03 pm *Nods.* You too. Tarantulas 9:03 pm *fiddling his fingers around* Designed them myself, yes. How do you THINK I did it, Smokescreen? One hand at a time, hyeh. ItsyBitsySpyers 9:03 pm *Pings Ratchet goodnight.* Windchill 9:04 pm You Swoop big baby. Swoop 9:04 pm nnoooOooOOOO Windchill 9:04 pm Yes you areeee. Swoop 9:04 pm NOOOOOOO Smokescreen 9:04 pm You can really just- design these things just like that? ItsyBitsySpyers 9:04 pm =At last. Another cat.= Windchill 9:05 pm *shakes his head. Nope. Acting like a BABY.* Swoop 9:05 pm *THROWS himself on the floor* Tarantulas 9:05 pm *takes treat from aegis but doesn't eat it yet* Depends on what this is. Windchill 9:05 pm *He doesn't understand why him Swoop is over there after he sang him a song and EVERYTHING.* Smokescreen 9:05 pm Messymessymessy have you ever done this kinda ballroom dancing? ItsyBitsySpyers 9:06 pm *Soundwave vents. He's going to just. Try pushing Swoop out the door.* Swoop 9:06 pm *CLAMPS on to whatever part of Soundwave touches him* Tarantulas 9:06 pm *to smokey* What kind of inventor would I be if I couldn't actually make things? And - hyeh. Well. Not this sort. ItsyBitsySpyers 9:06 pm *SHAKE* *Oh, he DOES like her.* Swoop 9:06 pm *gets shook and giggles the tiniest bit* *okay this is better* Prowl 9:07 pm *surprised glance at Soundwave* Smokescreen 9:07 pm But- make HANDS? That is so cool and awesome and- oooh, I could teach you if you want! ItsyBitsySpyers 9:07 pm *Still pushing Swoop. He'll keep his feeler out the door all night if need be.* Specs 9:07 pm *HAH* Magnum Ace 9:07 pm ((HAH Swoop 9:07 pm *takes a nip at the feeler* Aegis 9:07 pm solid high grade center coated in crystal and tin. Very tasty. ItsyBitsySpyers 9:08 pm *NOPE no biting. FLICK Swoop.* Swoop 9:08 pm ((flick into a space bridge? XD)) ItsyBitsySpyers 9:08 pm *Yep.* Windchill 9:08 pm *sighs.* Swoop 9:08 pm *PCHOO* Tarantulas 9:08 pm You have experience with ballroom dance? *baffled, then turns to aegis* Ah, I see. My thanks, then. *pops treat in mandible-chelicerae-fang-ish monstrosity of a mouth* Swoop 9:08 pm *is gone* Bevel 9:08 pm *welp so much for tonight's entertainment* Magnum Ace 9:09 pm -and there went Swoop- Aegis 9:09 pm *Pauses to watch the mandibles moving, fascinated by how it crunches down on the treat* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:09 pm *Curls his feeler close to himself and rubs the nip spot. These are SENSITIVE IMPLEMENTS. And back to the couch.* Smokescreen 9:09 pm Is that really all that surprising? I've got experience with tons of dancing- mostly Cybertronian, and then mostly Praxian, but I know how to ballroom dance! Prowl 9:09 pm *... As long as Ratchet's gone, gets up and heads back toward Soundwave's seat.* Tarantulas 9:09 pm I never figured you'd have taken up human dancing, that's all. Specs 9:10 pm ((hey, where the FUCK do I get one of those)) Smokescreen 9:10 pm Well, yeah! It's interesting learning about other kinds of dance. It's better than the dancing I used to have to study. Prowl 9:10 pm *has to pass Tarantulas's couch. Is tempted to mention that he has experience with ballroom dancing as well. ... Decides against it.* Tarantulas 9:11 pm *follows prowl with optics unseen under his visor* Prowl 9:11 pm *reclaims his seat.* Aegis 9:11 pm What kind of dancing have you studied? *Curious about the different types* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:11 pm *Soundwave wraps the feeler around the back of the couch. He might keep it nudged up close to Prowl's side.*

*...Is sort of surprised Smokescreen does such dancing but does not want a demonstration right now. Too busy trying to follow this story.* Windchill 9:12 pm *Ew, crowds of shouting people. His plating lifts.* Bevel 9:12 pm Uh-oh. Specs 9:12 pm *the dragon very gently reaches out, but doesn't dare tap the spide paw* Where do you make these? You have a lab? ItsyBitsySpyers 9:13 pm [[...Oh. He knows what kind of center this is.]] Bevel 9:13 pm What is it? Prowl 9:13 pm *starts at the nudge, immediately turns around to give Ravage an accusing look. Ravage is not there. Looks down. Oh. ... This is acceptable.* Magnum Ace 9:13 pm -okay, he's out!- Smokescreen 9:13 pm Well- it was kinda a mix- I moved a lot, and had different IDs- but there was a historical dancing class- a lot of culture that was with that class I really wish I could've done more- and, and- more formal dancing than I'd really like. And I did some dancing for some class productions! ItsyBitsySpyers 9:13 pm *Soundwave will have a bridge ready for poor Ace.* Tarantulas 9:13 pm *to the dragon* Yes, of course I do. ItsyBitsySpyers 9:14 pm [[It is a place where vast amounts of currency are speculated on and exchanged at rapid speeds. Much of human wealth is concentrated in them, in a sense.]] Bevel 9:14 pm Oh, data currency! Magnum Ace 9:14 pm -Don't worry, only outside for air, he actually wanted to talk to Soundwave after this- ItsyBitsySpyers 9:15 pm [[He has occasionally toyed with the thought of trying it out himself. He would have an unfair processing advantage, however. And he does not need]] more [[human wealth.]] Aegis 9:15 pm Fancy dancing... *Smiles a little* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:15 pm *In that case, Soundwave will be available afterward.* Specs 9:15 pm *the dragon hesitates, humming indecisively. how to ask her question? more small talk, maybe* So, you have a lab in your universe, then. You're from Prowl's section, right? Magnum Ace 9:16 pm -good, it involves a few things that have been going on recently- Windchill 9:16 pm *Maybe they're just no good at shooting, then.* Tarantulas 9:17 pm *squints curiously at the dragon* Yyyes. Same cluster. Why do you ask? Smokescreen 9:17 pm BAMAN Bevel 9:17 pm *nods, she has some human currency herself, not much, but it's all in data, maybe she should take it out of that universe and put it in this one. just in case* Specs 9:17 pm But your lab isn't in THAT particular universe, right? You've got a pocket dimension? Aegis 9:17 pm Oh Primus that is a sexy bike... Prowl 9:17 pm *hears his name, nearly turns in that direction; but turns back to the movie.* Tarantulas 9:18 pm *narrowed squint* How do you know that? Windchill 9:18 pm *The only thing he uses human currency for is to buy aluminum straws and stickers for Swoop.* Prowl 9:18 pm *... not sure WHY he turns back. it's not exactly holding his attention.* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:18 pm [[...There is a human making off with -that much currency- and the fool wants to destroy the helpful vigilante?]] Swoop 9:18 pm *hasn't BOUGHT a single thing in his life* Smokescreen 9:18 pm Sounds- have you noticed humans aren't that smart sometimes? ItsyBitsySpyers 9:18 pm [[Many, many, many times.]] Windchill 9:18 pm *Shame on you, Swoop.* Prowl 9:19 pm He's the "helpful vigilante" that they believe terrorized the police, murdered Gotham's biggest hope, and disappeared for eight years. Prowl 9:19 pm From their perspective, he ISN'T a "helpful vigilante." Specs 9:19 pm *the dragon sighs. whatever* Because I live in one. And I need to figure out if the Eaten left behind any way to automatically shut one down because I don't want everyone to DIE. *whoops, that was a little overstressed* Tarantulas 9:20 pm Yes, very well - but how did you KNOW I live in one? Bevel 9:20 pm *has used hers for various earth alloys and in dealings with humans* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:20 pm [[He supposes that is true.]] *And he's not against seeing the wealth redistributed, but if these are police, they probably should have some sense of priority. One murder versus an economy?* Smokescreen 9:21 pm WHOA THAT WAS SO COOL Messy messy messy do you think my tires could do that? Windchill 9:21 pm *Points* Dogs. Tarantulas 9:22 pm *is completely focused on the dragon, sorry for ignoring you smokey* Aegis 9:22 pm Might be easier on the frame to have spherical tires and a magnetic system worked up for it rather than making your body bounce with them as they rotate. Magnum Ace 9:22 pm -peers back in- -nope- Smokescreen 9:22 pm I guess so.... but still. It looks so cool Bevel 9:23 pm *laughs* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:23 pm *Harsh huff.* Smokescreen 9:23 pm /He's going to reach to pet Messy's face./ Bevel 9:24 pm Oh. Oh, she wants to start really fresh. Aegis 9:24 pm Did he think maybe it's a bad idea to lie to a master thief? Tarantulas 9:24 pm *gently grasps smokey's hand and pushes down* Smokescreen 9:24 pm /Awww- will hold Messy's hand, then./ Windchill 9:25 pm Cool, maybe we'll get some flying. Specs 9:26 pm *the dragon shifts uncomfortably* I've been scanning for similar dimensions to mine. I... I wanted to know how you make them, how you destroy them. I noticed some patterns. I didn't realize it was a secret, I wouldn't have said anything if I'd known... *she looks guilty about it* Windchill 9:26 pm *Glances down to check on his spawn, who's still sliming her unicorn.* Tarantulas 9:26 pm *dragon's getting pinned with the keenest pointiest stare* ...Do you have any sort of communications unit on your person? Magnum Ace 9:27 pm -peers back in again- Prowl 9:28 pm @T «Better find out what equipment she's been using to scan with, too, and how it works.» Specs 9:28 pm *flat dragon* ...No. The bridge I use has one attached. There may be others in the dimension with multiverse access, but I wouldn't know. Tarantulas 9:29 pm ...We'll talk later, then. Specs 9:29 pm That's fair. I'm sorry. Smokescreen 9:29 pm no no no no no Magnum Ace 9:30 pm .... Smokescreen 9:30 pm /Dangit this scene is painful and he's squeezing Tarantulas/ Windchill 9:30 pm *Huffs.* Tarantulas 9:30 pm @P: ::I don't have to be told how to manage affairs like this.:: Magnum Ace 9:30 pm -he's staying by the door, thanks- Aegis 9:30 pm *Looks at Smokey worriedly* Tarantulas 9:30 pm *uugghhhh* Smmmokescreen, please loosen up a tad. Prowl 9:31 pm @T «Just suggesting.» Smokescreen 9:31 pm /squeezesqueeze loosen sliiiightly/ but alfred! Alfred just Tarantulas 9:31 pm *ping back at prowl. tarantulas is a bit bristly rn* Windchill 9:32 pm Ew, underground. *Gagging sounds.* Tarantulas 9:32 pm *at smokey* What did he? Aegis 9:32 pm Underground isn't bad Tarantulas 9:32 pm *has no fricken idea what's been going on in the movie* Windchill 9:32 pm Underground is bad to me. Smokescreen 9:32 pm He left! And he cared so much for Bruce but he had to leave because he cared about Bruce so much and Tarantulas 9:33 pm Oh, oh, I see. It'll work itself out. *dismissive petting* Aegis 9:34 pm *lightly pats Smokey* sometimes guardians have to let go. Besides, its not as if this Bruce character is a youngling Smokescreen 9:34 pm But it hurts to see- and it hurts because he didn't want to leave but Windchill 9:34 pm *Snorts.* Swoop 9:35 pm ((lolololol)) ItsyBitsySpyers 9:35 pm *...What a wonderfully effective threat.* Windchill 9:35 pm *Nice.* Aegis 9:35 pm This man is decidedly unintelligent Tarantulas 9:35 pm *sinks even more into his chair, vaguely rubbing at his helm* Magnum Ace 9:36 pm -....yikes- Windchill 9:37 pm *Blue takes the toy out of her mouth to stare at the ceiling.* Aegis 9:38 pm *snorts quietly, eating his treats* They put the trash in the garbage ItsyBitsySpyers 9:38 pm [[Ha.]] Windchill 9:38 pm Can't even afford an umbrella. Smokescreen 9:38 pm Is this stuff what it's actually like to do detective work? Windchill 9:39 pm *Really?* Aegis 9:40 pm ...oh god, why are their clothes gone? Windchill 9:40 pm Probably post-fuckin'. Aegis 9:40 pm *Very softly but with much enthusiasm* Ew ItsyBitsySpyers 9:41 pm [[Ah, yes. Leave someone unguarded in the house where all your secrets are.]] Smokescreen 9:41 pm Wait they were what Aegis 9:41 pm They were doing the clang clang Smokescreen 9:41 pm : ( Windchill 9:41 pm That's how you make...babies. *He would know.* Smokescreen 9:42 pm is this how we're going to get all the robins Aegis 9:42 pm *mutters into his drink* Not if you pull out in time Bevel 9:42 pm *Bane voice* Clang clang. *laughs* Windchill 9:42 pm *Didn't pull out in time.* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:42 pm [[-Please,- Bevel.]] Magnum Ace 9:42 pm ....... Smokescreen 9:43 pm why does he sound kinda like yoda ItsyBitsySpyers 9:43 pm [[He has forgotten how to fight someone who is physically superior to him. This cannot end well.]] Windchill 9:43 pm Nope. Smokescreen 9:43 pm rip baman Windchill 9:44 pm This is a very wet fight scene. *Brilliant observation time.* Bevel 9:45 pm He is really dramatic. Windchill 9:45 pm I love it. Aegis 9:46 pm Oh no.... ItsyBitsySpyers 9:46 pm *Light wince.* Bevel 9:46 pm *cringes* Windchill 9:46 pm *Speaking of dramatic, Blue chooses this moment to use her insectoid strength to HURL her toy across the room.* Aegis 9:47 pm Well. That happened. Windchill 9:47 pm *Windchill watches it go, powerless.* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:47 pm *He saw plenty of gladiators get their spinal struts severed, but they were Cybertronians. Humans are so much more fr-- SNAP out goes the feeler.* *...Disgusting. A drool doll. He's just. Gonna. Hand this back. Slowly.* [[Please... no projectile weapons.]] Windchill 9:48 pm *He'll accept it back. Drool doesn't bother him.* Thanks. ItsyBitsySpyers 9:49 pm [[You are welcome.]] Windchill 9:49 pm *He gives it back to his spawn, and shakes his finger at her. She looks quite pleased with herself as she puts her mouth on it once more.* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:49 pm *Shakes off his feeler a bit. He's gonna grab a cleaning rag from the bar and rub the claws all over it.* Tarantulas 9:50 pm *shifting in his seat, absentmindedly petting smokescreen. hrm. thinking. then a sudden mental lurch* Smokescreen 9:50 pm /Petting Messy in return, very very comfy right now!/ ItsyBitsySpyers 9:51 pm [[Rather good with speeches, isn't he.]] [[He oughtn't monologue so much, but he does have a flair.]] Windchill 9:52 pm Monologues are the fun part. Prowl 9:52 pm *mumbles something that includes the word "tedious"* Tarantulas 9:52 pm @P: ::I - I apologize for being terse, you - didn't deserve that.:: Prowl 9:53 pm @T «S'fine. ... Appreciated.» ItsyBitsySpyers 9:53 pm *Puffs quietly and gently pats Prowl. He's no Megatron, for sure. But the occasional line does impress. Or would, if this plan didn't spit on all the poor and beaten down he is using to fulfill it.* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:54 pm [[...They cannot possibly be so foolish.]] [[Unless that human]] *point* [[is the one in charge. Then, evidently, they can.]] Aegis 9:55 pm Sure they can, they're humans Windchill 9:55 pm *Blue drops her unicorn in Chill's lap and rolls. She's making a break for it.* Aegis 9:56 pm *Watches Blue, ready to snag her if she comes by him* Smokescreen 9:57 pm you can't interrogate a corpse Windchill 9:57 pm *She takes a moment to gather her bearings, staring about the room. Chill allows this, for now.* ItsyBitsySpyers 9:58 pm *Watches Blue briefly. As long as she doesn't get anywhere she can hurt herself.* Magnum Ace 9:58 pm ................ Magnum Ace 9:58 pm -ducks back out before this can go down- Windchill 9:59 pm *She heads off to explore and investigate all of the feet.* Tarantulas 9:59 pm *whose feet she gettin first* Smokescreen 9:59 pm ((dasbmcxfxvc i cant hear this withouot thinking of a very very very specific thing Tarantulas 10:00 pm (( tell tell tell Smokescreen 10:00 pm ((4kids fourth of july Aegis 10:00 pm ((The one episode of South Park with the dude trying to hit a high note to blow up a donkey?)) Windchill 10:00 pm *Chill summons his holoform to follow her.* Smokescreen 10:00 pm (( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pcPo16QJHg HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!! FROM ALL OF US AT 4KIDS!! HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!! FROM ALL OF US AT 4KIDS!! Lol Aegis 10:00 pm ((omfg)) Tarantulas 10:00 pm (( sdkfjghsdfg Magnum Ace 10:01 pm ((holy shit Tarantulas 10:01 pm *what holoform is this? is it a unicorn?* Windchill 10:01 pm *Naturally.* Tarantulas 10:01 pm *fantastic* Windchill 10:01 pm *It's basically useless.* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:02 pm *Folds his hands and rests his chin on them. Where is this going.* Bevel 10:02 pm *Bevel fails to notice the baby but she definitely notices the unicorn* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:02 pm *Glance in Prowl's direction.* [[Have you ever needed to borrow another Cybertronian's car mode.]] Prowl 10:02 pm *extremely confused look.* Windchill 10:02 pm *Blue worms her way across the floor like a worm. She can't see a whole lot from down there so the direction is random.* *The unicorn follows some distance behind.* Tarantulas 10:03 pm *tarantulas may or may not be wiggling the two toes on one pede toward blue* Windchill 10:03 pm *The worm sees...MOVEMENT.* Smokescreen 10:04 pm /Hearing that and is giving the most concerned look at Prowl- he wouldn't right/ Windchill 10:04 pm Predictable. Magnum Ace 10:04 pm -peers back in- Prowl 10:04 pm ... I am a car. ItsyBitsySpyers 10:04 pm [[Yes. He knows. That is why he wonders if you have ever run into trouble and needed to borrow someone else. Blown-out tires, perhaps.]] [[Human police borrow cars quite often. It amuses him.]] Tarantulas 10:05 pm *will do everything in his power to keep blue's attention. he'd very much like a cute distraction yes thank you* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:05 pm *Nods to Ace.* Windchill 10:05 pm *She's going for it.* Prowl 10:06 pm ... No. I haven't. Smokescreen 10:06 pm /A relieved sigh and is back to watching the movie and petting Tarantulas./ Magnum Ace 10:06 pm ......... Smokescreen 10:06 pm why do they want to offline all the humans in gotham anyway Magnum Ace 10:06 pm -small wave to Soundwave- Smokescreen 10:06 pm why do they keep doing this ItsyBitsySpyers 10:07 pm [[He hopes you never need to, then.]]

@P: [[Though he would not be averse to flying you somewhere. Provided you were not sitting on him in vehicle mode again.]] Prowl 10:07 pm Hff—! @S «I meant to transform.» Aegis 10:07 pm *Looks over at Smokescreen* Because the writers couldn't think of anything new? ItsyBitsySpyers 10:08 pm @P: [[He knows.]]

[[And they do it because the League insists that Gotham must be wiped away to start a clean slate.]] Tarantulas 10:08 pm *wiggly worm, meet wiggly toes. tarantulas will even scoop and lift blue with his pede if she/windchill lets him* Magnum Ace 10:08 pm -curious if he wants to come back in or not- ItsyBitsySpyers 10:08 pm *It's probably not going to get any less bleak, Ace.*

[[...Oh dear.]] Aegis 10:08 pm Funny how he calls Gotham corrupt and yet the League of Shadows cast him out? Magnum Ace 10:09 pm ............... Windchill 10:09 pm *Blue isn't going to notice, she's too busy swatting at toes.* Smokescreen 10:10 pm ... Megabane Banetron ItsyBitsySpyers 10:10 pm [[Practically.]] Windchill 10:10 pm *The unicorn notices, though, and begins to pace.* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:11 pm *This must be some kind of nightmare scenario for his seatmate.* Magnum Ace 10:11 pm -ducks back out- Prowl 10:11 pm *he's kind of bored, honestly.* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:11 pm *That, too, is fair.* Aegis 10:12 pm I'd be curious to know more about this so called Dent act Prowl 10:13 pm *he's already seen one madman turn a civilization over into anarchy by shouting lies that contain the words "justice" and "freedom." this one just isn't as convincing.* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:13 pm [[...That is hardly justice.]] Tarantulas 10:14 pm *then up blue goes. she's lifted a few feet off the ground, not much, mostly just for fun and if she wants to climb the spiky leg* Magnum Ace 10:14 pm -pokes his head back in again- Smokescreen 10:14 pm ...... ItsyBitsySpyers 10:15 pm [][][]I don't believe that man's ever been to medical school.[][][] Smokescreen 10:15 pm /Squeezing Tarantulas- Primus this is painful to watch/ Aegis 10:15 pm Wow that is... medieval Smokescreen 10:15 pm PFPFFF- Tarantulas 10:15 pm *pets smokey. sweet sensitive little thing* Aegis 10:15 pm There's some merit to what he's doing. Magnum Ace 10:15 pm -wow, that looked painful- Windchill 10:16 pm *She perches sedately, not the slightest bit concerned with this situation. Her tiny fingers prod at the toes curiously.* Aegis 10:16 pm *Looks over at the toe picker* Smokescreen 10:16 pm /Hey little's a bit much but the petting is appreciated, and Smokescreen is squeezing Tarantulas/ Tarantulas 10:17 pm *wiggles his toes in funny rhythms, gently poking back at bluebottle* Windchill 10:18 pm *Puts her mouth on a toe.* *The unicorn snorts nervously.* Aegis 10:18 pm How much time is passing anyways.... Windchill 10:18 pm She bites. Tarantulas 10:18 pm *chuckles* And what are her teeth composed of, ununtrium? Specs 10:19 pm ((...pasta. pasta. this is pasta. pasta.)) ItsyBitsySpyers 10:19 pm ((LMAO)) Windchill 10:19 pm (( HELP. )) Specs 10:19 pm ((help me I'm dying)) Windchill 10:19 pm I have no idea. Magnum Ace 10:20 pm ..... Windchill 10:20 pm *So far, no biting, only curious jaw tensing. She's like a shark, she investigates things with her teeth.* Tarantulas 10:21 pm *tarantulas doesn't seem to mind* *toe goes wiggle wiggle* Magnum Ace 10:21 pm -three months huh?- Tarantulas 10:21 pm *probably tastes unusual, he made them of some weird mad science alloy* Aegis 10:22 pm three months and his back has healed enough to try rock climbing. Windchill 10:22 pm *She lifts her head to smack her lips.* Aegis 10:22 pm *This little medic smells bullshit on the part of the movie plot* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:23 pm [[So much for that.]] Smokescreen 10:23 pm 😧 Windchill 10:23 pm *The unicorn watches its spawn, unmoving.* Smokescreen 10:23 pm sounds next week will the movie be less miserable : ( ItsyBitsySpyers 10:24 pm [[Next week the films will be documentaries about cats - Ravage's request - and spiders.]] Tarantulas 10:24 pm *chuckles more. adorable little spawn* Smokescreen 10:24 pm : O Specs 10:24 pm ((PASTA THIS IS PASTA PASTA)) Magnum Ace 10:24 pm -huffs and shakes off the last scene with gunfire- ItsyBitsySpyers 10:25 pm [[Why does he not just... climb the rope?]] Aegis 10:26 pm I'm a bit curious why the have captions for everything but that chanting. Smokescreen 10:26 pm That'd be smart ItsyBitsySpyers 10:26 pm [[It is clearly strong enough to support him. It supports him when he falls.]] Windchill 10:26 pm *These toes are not tasty.* Tarantulas 10:27 pm *how big is the wormchild?* Smokescreen 10:27 pm : O Windchill 10:27 pm *About 20 feet long at this point, give or take a little.* Aegis 10:28 pm Not going to lie, I was waiting for that rock to crack under his weight because he's more than a child. Tarantulas 10:28 pm (( oh my god the wormchild is NOT small, wow ItsyBitsySpyers 10:28 pm [[Very versatile in the career department, that human.]] Magnum Ace 10:29 pm ............ Windchill 10:29 pm (( Nope, her parents are huge. )) Tarantulas 10:30 pm *tarantulas only has half of blue lifted off the ground then, his whole leg isn't quite 20 ft* Windchill 10:30 pm *Fair.* Bevel 10:31 pm *she's a little more than twice as tall as that baby geez* Aegis 10:32 pm *Suddenly feels small because he's only 20 feet tall* Windchill 10:33 pm *The worm puts a toe back in her mouth, just to be sure it is not in fact tasty.* Magnum Ace 10:33 pm -he's not even that, so hush- Smokescreen 10:33 pm /He's... One foot taller than a baby dangit/ Tarantulas 10:33 pm *wiggly toe* Magnum Ace 10:33 pm -he's human sized- Windchill 10:35 pm *Nope, still not tasty. She looks up at its owner to cheep and fuss and complain about it.* Tarantulas 10:36 pm *chuckles and chitters right back at her, wonders if there are linguistic patterns to her noises* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:38 pm [[...He had nothing better to do with the time?]] Prowl 10:38 pm So much for the element of surprise. Windchill 10:38 pm *She speaks limited Insecticon.* Aegis 10:38 pm So extra. ItsyBitsySpyers 10:38 pm [[Now he has announced his presence to someone who has already proven not to fear him.]] Windchill 10:39 pm *Still, much of it is simply gibberish.* Tarantulas 10:39 pm *oho! so tarantulas might pick up a smidge of chatter from the chitter* Prowl 10:39 pm Unless his strategy requires them knowing. Which, so far, I doubt. ItsyBitsySpyers 10:39 pm [["Strategy". He's lost much of that in the eight years.]] Magnum Ace 10:40 pm .... Prowl 10:40 pm Clearly. ItsyBitsySpyers 10:40 pm [[A clear point in favor of staying in practice in one's chosen field.]] Aegis 10:40 pm He could have at least been playing RTS games... Windchill 10:41 pm *These toes are not tasty and she's filing a complaint.* *She swats the toes in question to make her point.* Smokescreen 10:41 pm He's just not very good at this Tarantulas 10:41 pm *ok, whew. leg is getting sore, gotta lower it* Prowl 10:42 pm *mutter mutter you don't save people out of a debt to them.* Windchill 10:42 pm *She's free.* Magnum Ace 10:42 pm ...... -he doesn't like where this is going- Tarantulas 10:42 pm *not if tarantulas can manage to pick her up with the other foot, she's not free* Aegis 10:43 pm Walking or running in a straight line directly towards the people with guns. Smart. Windchill 10:43 pm *Her butt end is free, and she stomps her feet.* Magnum Ace 10:45 pm -he's about to duck out again- Aegis 10:45 pm *Sees there's still half an hour left* what are the chances that Tate was in on this f too? Tarantulas 10:45 pm *glances over at windchill. he's amused he's let this go on, but pleased* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:46 pm [[Listened closely to the stories, did you?]] Windchill 10:46 pm *She hasn't been picked up or otherwise majorly interfered with.* Aegis 10:46 pm Kind of. Other things are interesting here. *looks over at Blue and Tara* Windchill 10:47 pm *Here we go.* ((His ducklip yelling, help me.)) Smokescreen 10:48 pm !!!! SHE WAS ItsyBitsySpyers 10:48 pm [[Of course she was. They told us so in the stories. Bane could not simultaneously be the protector with the damaged face and the child he was protecting.]] Tarantulas 10:49 pm *is wholly focused on blue, extends a hand toward her, a few feet away, palm up, as if to say hello* Smokescreen 10:49 pm Well, yes- but I couldn't be sure Magnum Ace 10:49 pm ..... Windchill 10:50 pm *Blue stares at the hand. It might be tasty.* Tarantulas 10:50 pm *it's a different alloy, go for it* Smokescreen 10:51 pm Man, if she didn't do this exposition, she'd have done her thing already Aegis 10:51 pm *Definitely wasn't paying attention because he didn't catch that Bane was the protector* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:51 pm [[The slow knife that gets nothing done.]] Smokescreen 10:51 pm The slow knife that misses the chance to win ItsyBitsySpyers 10:51 pm [[Moderate knives are best.]] Magnum Ace 10:51 pm -phew- Smokescreen 10:51 pm As the humans say! Early knife gets the bird ItsyBitsySpyers 10:51 pm [[...No human says that.]] Magnum Ace 10:51 pm -ooooor not- Smokescreen 10:52 pm ...... They don't? Omicron 10:52 pm *Ice Queen hops as gently as she can out of her bridge. looking around wary and blinks around* Windchill 10:52 pm *Hand goes in mouth.* Aegis 10:52 pm That's not how it goes Smokescreen 10:52 pm Oh yeah! It's early knife gets the worm Magnum Ace 10:52 pm ....still wrong Aegis 10:52 pm It's, "You have to burn down the kitchen to make an omlette" Smokescreen 10:52 pm I guess- why would you get a worm by stabbing it? Magnum Ace 10:52 pm ...no Smokescreen 10:52 pm Early knife gets the knife Magnum Ace 10:52 pm Still no Aegis 10:53 pm Wait, she's leaving him there to die..? Smokescreen 10:53 pm Early knife gets the swipe? Magnum Ace 10:53 pm It's 'the early bird gets the worm' Smokescreen 10:53 pm .... birds get worms? Windchill 10:53 pm *He's not going to assist with the human idioms.* Omicron 10:53 pm whaat? *surpized she made the movie, looks for a spot to lay down with Racer* Magnum Ace 10:53 pm Yeah Smokescreen 10:54 pm Wow- what else do they get? Early bird gets the knife? Magnum Ace 10:54 pm No Prowl 10:54 pm *prowl still doesn't like those vehicles.* Smokescreen 10:54 pm 😔 Tarantulas 10:54 pm *wiggles his fingers around, poking at her teeth and mouthparts* Bevel 10:54 pm *waves to Omicron* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:54 pm *They do look much worse not in black.* Magnum Ace 10:54 pm No knives Prowl 10:54 pm *he didn't like them in black, either.* Omicron 10:54 pm *gives a rumbling purr at Bevel as she lays down* Magnum Ace 10:55 pm They don't eat knives ItsyBitsySpyers 10:55 pm *Shakes his helm.* Smokescreen 10:55 pm /Also going to try to put a finger in Tarantulas' mouth. He's curious!/ Tarantulas 10:55 pm (( smokey what sgfdgh Magnum Ace 10:55 pm ....Earth birds don't, I mean. Windchill 10:55 pm *Her mandibles twitch, feeling of the hand while her teeth go nom-nom.* Tarantulas 10:56 pm *is it a dent-y nom nom* Windchill 10:56 pm *Not really.* Smokescreen 10:56 pm ((smokey doesnt know if he could or how messy's mouth works Aegis 10:56 pm *Looks at Tara* You used to getting pawed at, or do you just have a lot of patience? Omicron 10:56 pm Racer: *chirps from icy's back, trying to mimic her pose there, though eyeing smokescreen, remembers him...and peded* Prowl 10:56 pm They have ten minutes. A handful of children at the bridge wouldn't have been able to escape the blast radius anyway. The people at the bridge killed nobody by preventing them from crossing. Tarantulas 10:57 pm *nips smokey's finger with his mandibles, then snorts at aegis* Neither, actually. Aegis 10:57 pm *eyes him up and down* ...surprising.... Magnum Ace 10:58 pm -back to trying to ignore the firefight on screen- Smokescreen 10:58 pm !! /Whoa, that was cool! Smokescreen's poking at Messy's mandibles now./ Windchill 10:58 pm *Blue spits out the fingers. She's had tastier.* ItsyBitsySpyers 10:58 pm [[He assumes there are cars bringing the police to the other side. They ought have let the children over, packed as many as possible in, and driven away as fast as they could. Human cars do go over 60 miles per hour.]] [[If nothing else, the children needn't have seen the blast coming, that way.]] Tarantulas 10:59 pm *boops her nonexistent nose-area with a spat-out finger* Windchill 10:59 pm *She makes an OFFENDED >: O face, despite lacking any eyebrows or two eyes.* Smokescreen 10:59 pm uh yu guys ItsyBitsySpyers 11:00 pm [[They do not have -time- for that, Primus below.]] Smokescreen 11:00 pm there's a bomb Aegis 11:00 pm There is literally no time for you to be kissing! Omicron 11:00 pm *Icy grins, glances at her sparkling eeeeyyyeing Prowl and Soundwave, waiting* Tarantulas 11:00 pm *and also solidly blocks smokey from poking between the mandibles. no dice* Aegis 11:00 pm *So glad someone else is offended with him* Omicron 11:00 pm Its organics, there's always time to kiss Windchill 11:00 pm I always make time to kiss. Smokescreen 11:00 pm /Awww- fair enough. Smokescreen's just going to lean against Tarantulas, getting pretty tired./ Magnum Ace 11:00 pm ........ ItsyBitsySpyers 11:01 pm [[Focus and do the job in time and there will be plenty of time to have superior kisses afterward. Celebratory ones.]] Magnum Ace 11:01 pm -he's got this...right?- Smokescreen 11:01 pm Isn't that gonna pollute the water though or destroy everything in it godzilla style Prowl 11:01 pm Far be it for me to say that saving two dozen lives out of twelve million isn't better than saving zero lives out of twelve million—but it's not a lot better, and they would still have had to negotiate with the police on the bridge, navigate a massive buss through the barricade, and THEN start driving away from the blast radius. There odds were incredibly low even wiht the bridge intact. ItsyBitsySpyers 11:01 pm [[The sort that tell someone how glad you are to see them returned.]] Windchill 11:01 pm Fish lives matter. Aegis 11:02 pm Fish are friends, not food? Prowl 11:02 pm "No autopilot." He's not planning to come back. No, he didn't have an option for celebratory kisses when he got back. Omicron 11:02 pm Fish are snacks n.n Smokescreen 11:02 pm ... Aren't you in trouble if you see the cloud that close ItsyBitsySpyers 11:02 pm [[Hm. That is right. Still. He hadn't the time either way.]] Prowl 11:02 pm Agreed. Aegis 11:02 pm Okay, but why was he kissing her when she wasn't the one he had a romantic interest in? ItsyBitsySpyers 11:03 pm *And he supposes Prowl has a point. But damn it, they could have tried.* Omicron 11:03 pm they may not be able to reproduce but they can live longer? ....ish Tarantulas 11:03 pm *kissing? bombs? what? tarantulas is going to let blue down again, he's got no idea what's going on* Smokescreen 11:03 pm .... ItsyBitsySpyers 11:03 pm *...He liked it better when Kirk said that passage about Spock.* Smokescreen 11:03 pm ALFRED. h no oh no oh no Windchill 11:03 pm *Nothing important, just fiction.* Bevel 11:03 pm All these human documentaries have humans all obsessed with kissing at the worst time. Smokescreen 11:03 pm /Smokescreen's clinging to Tarantulas now/ Prowl 11:03 pm *he called Spock human.* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:04 pm *Not that part. The reading of the same text.* *That part, he has since decided, was unbearably rude.* Aegis 11:04 pm *Spock is half human, it counts right?* Prowl 11:04 pm *Yeah, all right. The same text was fine.* Tarantulas 11:04 pm *patpat smokey* Smokescreen 11:04 pm /clingclingcling/ ItsyBitsySpyers 11:04 pm *...Hmm. A statue.* Smokescreen 11:05 pm !! Omicron 11:05 pm Racer: *inching down, eyeing smokescreen or nearest mech's pedes* Windchill 11:06 pm *The worm is free for real this time. She shakes herself.* Smokescreen 11:06 pm SERIOUSLY WAYNE why do you gotta make everyone think you're dead haven't you caused alfred ENOUGH pain Aegis 11:06 pm Maybe it'll be less than eight years this time? Omicron 11:06 pm drama reasons? Smokescreen 11:06 pm frag him Aegis 11:06 pm Too small Smokescreen 11:06 pm No!! Aegis 11:06 pm *snickers* Windchill 11:07 pm *It's not real.* Prowl 11:07 pm Well. That was tedious. Windchill 11:08 pm *Stretches a little.* Aegis 11:08 pm I've seen worse. It's not bad for passing the time ItsyBitsySpyers 11:08 pm [[May you enjoy next week's better, then.]] *He's sure you will. All those spiders.* Prowl 11:08 pm *prowl's only a fan of one spider* Smokescreen 11:08 pm Sounds can we watch the Batman movie or show from the 1960's Omicron 11:08 pm Spiders? ItsyBitsySpyers 11:08 pm [[We have seen that one. Jet pack umbrellas.]] Smokescreen 11:08 pm wait we have Bevel 11:08 pm *has no feelings about spiders tbh* Omicron 11:08 pm ((silver age batman!)) Prowl 11:09 pm *......... jet pack umbrellas ...... ... . .. . .* Windchill 11:09 pm *Windchill turns, making distinctly Insecticon chirps to summon his spawn back to him.* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:09 pm *He can practically FEEL those dots* Windchill 11:09 pm *She stares back at her creator imperiously.* Smokescreen 11:10 pm oceanic repellent bat spray Omicron 11:10 pm *Ice Queen looks over at Soundwave, is it okay if her hatchling scoots around?* Tarantulas 11:10 pm *cute!!! oh no windchill is kind of a good dad shit what* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:10 pm *It is absolutely okay.* Windchill 11:10 pm *Blue wiggles her butt.* Smokescreen 11:11 pm Oh yeah- Messy, have you seen my Dad at all? I haven't gotten the chance to check on him- I figured seeing him yesterday would've been a bad idea. With, you know. His old eating habits. Tarantulas 11:11 pm *is it possible tarantulas can churr goodbye to, as he says, "little blue" before she leaves hearing range. he's enamored* Omicron 11:11 pm Racer: *hatchling hops down after getting an chirp from Icy, he looks around and gives dragonic grin. Pedes of everyone beware of ponces* Windchill 11:13 pm *Blue looks back at the noise, her head craned back in a way that suggests she doesn't know how her neck is supposed to work yet, and YELLS incoherently.* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:13 pm *Soundwave settles in properly at last and motions for Ravage to come over. Ravage does so without complaint, smushing his face into Soundwave's shin before flopping across his feet and staring at the room through half-shuttered optics.*

@P: [[Perhaps he should consider opening a daycare branch.]] Specs 11:13 pm ((I would die for blue ngl)) Tarantulas 11:13 pm *bursts out laughing* Windchill 11:13 pm (( So would Windchill. )) Tarantulas 11:13 pm (( such a Good Dad Aegis 11:14 pm Why are buglets so cute.... Prowl 11:14 pm @S «I'd agree, but then you'd be leaving Swoop alone in there to kill all the far more fragile newbuilds.» Omicron 11:14 pm RAcer: *Chitters back at Blue's yelling from his spot, what the heck was that?* Tarantulas 11:14 pm (( RATTY (( there was a rat beb ItsyBitsySpyers 11:14 pm @P: [[That Dinobot will be the end of him.]] ((RATTIES)) *Glance to Bevel.* [[Have you got that voice out of your system?]] Tarantulas 11:15 pm *looks down at Smokescreen, he'd said something right* What? Windchill 11:15 pm *Blue yells at the room at large, now.* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:15 pm [[Or should he warn your creator?]] Prowl 11:15 pm @S «Why do you let him come back, then. He's out of control and demonstrating absolutely no signs of maturing or changing his behavior.» Omicron 11:16 pm *Icy face palms with a forepaw, knows her hatchling might yell back soon* Bevel 11:16 pm Yeah, he was boring anyway. Windchill 11:16 pm *The unicorn trots over to, maybe, herd her back in the right direction. It's much smaller than she is though, wish it luck.* Tarantulas 11:16 pm (( RATTIES SO MANY Prowl 11:16 pm @S «When he makes it through a whole movie night without being ejected, it's not because his behavior has improved, it's because it didn't strike his fancy to do something that happens to be disruptive.» Smokescreen 11:16 pm Have you seen him at all recently? I was gonna check up on him, but it might've been bad while I was like that- Has he been taking care of himself? He hasn't been eating stuff he shouldn't right? Windchill 11:17 pm *Windchill chirrups again, regaining his spawn's attention.* Get back here, young lady. *Blue appears to think about this.* Tarantulas 11:19 pm *impulse to lie is strong, must resist* I - have seen him, but I can't discern his diet from merely crossing paths with him, you know. Magnum Ace 11:19 pm ((MY INTERNET DIED Aegis 11:19 pm *Perks up, this band is nice* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:19 pm @P: [[...Laserbeak does not like that the Autobots keep him locked inside of a cave until they require his services. She believes he will eventually come to question why he is welcome elsewhere and not at his own home.]] *Tiny puff.* [[He cannot say he has much faith left in that. And he does not know the slightest thing about training Dinobots.]] Windchill 11:20 pm *The worm hesitates. Music is playing and Dad might burst into song at any moment.* Smokescreen 11:20 pm ... That's fair, that's fair, Messy. Anyway- I can check up on him myself later! Maybe I can just... phase into him and check? But we should just cuddle and stuff for now, right? Tarantulas 11:20 pm You and I, or you and him? Omicron 11:20 pm *icy crosses forelegs and watches her hatchling sniff his way to where snacks are* Aegis 11:21 pm *Very confused, Tara looks neat so why is he being called Messy?* Prowl 11:21 pm @S «He's NOT welcome here. He's tolerated until he becomes too destructive. What you are describing is a case for putting all of the Autobots in his universe on trial for severe civil rights violations and getting Swoop to a competent therapist—but it's NOT a case for allowing Swoop to terrorize and attempt to harm strangers from different universes.» Smokescreen 11:21 pm You and me should cuddle together- I can checkup on him myself later. Magnum Ace 11:21 pm -okay, so that's all over, but...- Windchill 11:21 pm *She makes up her mind, cheeping and wiggling her way across the floor and back to dad.* *The unicorn will follow at a safe distance, in case she gets distracted.* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:22 pm *Ace can speak to Soundwave. He can hold multiple conversations. It's sort of his job.* Prowl 11:22 pm @S «If Laserbeak wants to show him he's welcome somewhere, then he should be with her, where he's welcome. Not harassing Tarantulas until he decides it's less of a personal burden to serve as Swoop's personal entertainment.» @S «Or the OTHER guests, for that matter.» Magnum Ace 11:23 pm -maybe, but the problem is...a bit personal- Windchill 11:24 pm *Chill waits for his worm with open arms, and scoops her up the moment she's within range. The unicorn, rare creature that it is, vanishes.* Tarantulas 11:24 pm Fair - I've got to leave soon, so the cuddling won't last much longer. Might as well appreciate it, hyeh. Bevel 11:24 pm I like your avatar, Windchill. Magnum Ace 11:24 pm -still, he's at least back in the room- Bevel 11:25 pm *one day she will have a holoavatar to call her own and it'll be amazing* Windchill 11:25 pm *His head turns a little, but he's too busy smooching his wayward worm to respond at first.* Smokescreen 11:25 pm /Clinging to Messy!/ Aww- I'll be able to see you later, right? Tarantulas 11:25 pm Later, yes. Omicron 11:25 pm RAcer: *sitting under a table maybe, sniffing upwards, thinking really hard. were are the yummies he smells?* Windchill 11:25 pm Eh. *Another smooch, which elicits some bug yelling.* Thanks. ItsyBitsySpyers 11:26 pm *Another, longer vent.*

@P: [[He does not know that Swoop will understand the kind of ultimatum he will need to give, but he will try. He does have a business here at other hours. It wouldn't do to have everyone catch wind of this...]] Windchill 11:26 pm I like it too. It's almost useless. Smokescreen 11:26 pm ... Not right afterwards? I won't pry, but I hope it goes well. We should have a sleepover again sometime. Bevel 11:26 pm *grins* But fun. And definitely rememorable. ItsyBitsySpyers 11:26 pm *Personal conversations are also possible. Just buzz him quietly, through the comm, as for the bridge.* Tarantulas 11:26 pm *snrks* As you wish. Not presently, though. Windchill 11:27 pm *Nods. It makes him happy, anyway.* Tarantulas 11:27 pm *streeeetch and starts to remove smokey from him* Smokescreen 11:27 pm /Gently headbutting Tarantulas/ You got some big plans? I'm excited for you! Prowl 11:27 pm @S «Even if he doesn't understand it, you still have the power to enforce it. That might be what's necessary.» Smokescreen 11:27 pm /Reluctantly getting off of Tarantulas, though he's still hanging around him./ Magnum Ace 11:27 pm -give him a moment to gather his courage- Tarantulas 11:28 pm All of my plans are big plans. *pats smokey's helm* Prowl 11:28 pm @S «And it might do some good for him AND everyone around him if he learns that people who say "stop" need to be listened to or else he starts losing things.» Smokescreen 11:28 pm What about your little plans, though? /Petting Tarantulas' helm in return- it feels a little weird doing this!/ Windchill 11:28 pm *He sets Blue down, who immediately picks up her toy and puts it in her mouth with a pleased wiggle. She had an ADVENTURE.* Tarantulas 11:29 pm *stands up straight so smokey can't reach his helm* No such thing. Smokescreen 11:29 pm /He's jumping up and is still trying- ugggggh why does he have to be taller!/ You don't got little plans? What about things like meals? Or plans on recharging? Magnum Ace 11:29 pm -okay, he's going to ping Soundwave for this- ItsyBitsySpyers 11:30 pm @P: [[He suspects you're right. For once, he is not thrilled about that - but, yes. You probably are.]] Aegis 11:30 pm Why did it look like he was trying to eat her face when he kissed her... Tarantulas 11:31 pm *starts to say something silly but shakes his helm* I'll see you soon enough, Smokescreen. Magnum Ace 11:31 pm :: Soundwave? Hey...um...I have a question... :: ItsyBitsySpyers 11:32 pm @A: [[Yes, Ace?]] Prowl 11:32 pm @S «... I don't like the situation Swoop is in, either.» *this is the most he's ever heard about it.* «But, that's... FAR outside my jurisdiction.» Omicron 11:32 pm *ice queen glances over, keeping an eye on her hatchling* eatting a face??? Tarantulas 11:32 pm *is starting to edge. over. to prowl and soundwave. is there any way he can do that without startling them* Smokescreen 11:32 pm I knowww- but you'll be okay until then, right? Don't get into too much trouble! You're one of my more trustworthy friends and I don't want you to get hurt or anything Aegis 11:32 pm He was like parting his lips on her jawline like he was biting her or something Omicron 11:33 pm Was it a mating bite? O,o Prowl 11:33 pm @S «And Swoop—and likely the other Dinobots—are desperately in need of... rrrehabilitation, before they can be trusted not to just walk onto the street and start maiming people.» Aegis 11:33 pm ....do humans do that? ItsyBitsySpyers 11:33 pm [[There is nothing wrong with a little bite from time to time.]] Magnum Ace 11:33 pm :: About...about A.I's. Is it possible for one or more to gain sapience over time? :: ItsyBitsySpyers 11:33 pm *Soundwave is Camera King in The Land of the Bugged, so he won't startle if Tarantulas approaches.* Aegis 11:33 pm bites are fine, yes. But on the -face- Windchill 11:33 pm I bite ALL the time. Prowl 11:33 pm *prowl is startle-able. tarantulas could probably edge over without startling him by approaching like a normal person rather than edging over* Omicron 11:33 pm I have no idea.... the few humans I met, I was not apart of their mating quirks at all Smokescreen 11:34 pm /Well- he's going to the snack table and is more than happy to grab as much as he can before going over to sit with Bevel/ Sorry 'bout disappearing like that! You want a snack? Windchill 11:34 pm *Blue yells, but it's muffled by the unicorn toy.* Tarantulas 11:35 pm *helm tilt back toward smokey before the mech heads for snacks* But of course. You've nothing to worry about. Windchill 11:35 pm *Windchill looks down, brows raised.* Aegis 11:35 pm *looks over and chirps at Blue in response* Omicron 11:35 pm Racer: RAAARFF! *hops out from under snack table, pounces at smokescream but misses him* Smokescreen 11:35 pm /Grinning at Tarantulas- he's glad to hear that!/ Just stay safe, Messy! Bevel 11:35 pm Humans latch their faces together to show affection to sexual partners. Kinda anyway. They do not really have the parts for it. *doesn't find anything remarkable about it* Aegis 11:35 pm *he definitely doesn't have a vocalizer made for Insecticon chatter. it sounds squeaky and weird* Smokescreen 11:36 pm !! /Nearly drops some of his snacks, but stays on his pedes!/ Windchill 11:36 pm *Blue's giant red eye wanders in the direction of the chirping.* Bevel 11:36 pm I am ok, Smokescreen, thanks. *smiles appreciatively* Tarantulas 11:36 pm *tarantulas was only edging so he could get away from smokescreen. now he's free, so he'll walk over as normally as he can manage* Omicron 11:36 pm Racer: 😀 RAWWRF! *POOFS out his wings, standing up on hide legs* PFFFTTT!! Windchill 11:36 pm *She stares. Then SQUEAKS forcefully enough to dislodge the toy.* Smokescreen 11:37 pm Well, in that case... /Smokescreen's stuffing his face with the snacks, he was more hungry than he expected!/ Aegis 11:37 pm *Gets up to pick up the toy and return it to the buglet* Windchill 11:37 pm *Chill's watching his worm, but is a little distracted by the song.* Love, uh...finds a way. Smokescreen 11:38 pm /Though Smokescreen's doorwings will shoot up as Racer yells, acting startled./ Aaaaaa! Terrifying! Aegis 11:38 pm *Mutters something about Love being a ton of slag* Omicron 11:38 pm Racer: *sulks back under snack table, didn't startle Smokesreen to give/drop any goodies* plplplplplplplplplpl Windchill 11:38 pm *She SNATCHES at the air for it, greedily, and sticks it back in her mouth the moment she gets it back.* *Chill snorts.* Aegis 11:38 pm *So glad his hands weren't close enough to get grabbed along with the toy* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:39 pm *Curious about that extended first syllable. He won't poke at it right now though.*

@P: [[And there is a great shortage of mechs performing that role these days. Sometimes, it is difficult not to - intervene, in the old ways. But he has seen what impatience does. ... All right. Next time.]]

@A: [[It is entirely possible. And to be encouraged, he thinks. One of his deployers has done so.]] Windchill 11:39 pm She hasn't learned gratitude yet. Thanks. Aegis 11:39 pm 's okay. She's still young. She'll get around to it. Windchill 11:39 pm *shrugs.* Eventually. *He's not making promises. He tries to teach her, but she's a spoiled little Insecticon Princess. It's tough going.* Prowl 11:40 pm @S «It's... a situation that calls for—for some kind of intervention. But in the long run...» *just, trails off. too many different ways to finish that thought.* Tarantulas 11:40 pm *a digit briefly brushes at the closest bit of soundwave feeler - hello-goodbye. then tarantulas scoots toward prowl* Aegis 11:41 pm *Stretches* I should get going home. Gaius will wanna hear about this movie. ItsyBitsySpyers 11:41 pm *Well! At least he got some sort of polite greeting. Those two have been struggling, anyway; he won't begrudge the focus.*

*He will nod at Prowl, though.* Windchill 11:41 pm Tell your friend about the Buttman. Magnum Ace 11:42 pm :: Okay...even if they're human built and developed? :: Prowl 11:42 pm *oh. tarantulas.* ......... Hi. Tarantulas 11:42 pm *imagine tarantulas is coming around the back of the couch tho, he's deliberately putting a hand on it where those two can see* A bit late for greetings, hyeh. I'm on my way out. Aegis 11:42 pm Pretty sure it was Batman. Have a good night all. ItsyBitsySpyers 11:42 pm @A: [[He has not seen -that- happen, but he does not know why it couldn't, if the AI originator was skilled enough.]] Windchill 11:42 pm Oh, well. He'll always be Buttman to me. Prowl 11:43 pm ..................... Bye. Windchill 11:43 pm *He knows he's saying it wrong, that's the idea.* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:43 pm [[Ah. He hopes you will be able to stay longer next time.]] Prowl 11:43 pm *eyes the hand as it passes. aha. the new thing.* Tarantulas 11:43 pm *one new thing, mind you* Omicron 11:43 pm *Ice Queen chirps a goodbye, echoed automatically by her hatchling under the snack table* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:43 pm *...Has also just noticed the hand.* Magnum Ace 11:43 pm :: Meaning if...the one using the AI or the one who built it? :: -he ItsyBitsySpyers 11:44 pm @A: [[He meant the one who built it.]] Magnum Ace 11:44 pm :: Oh... :: ItsyBitsySpyers 11:44 pm @T: (txt): Within word: impressive. Tarantulas 11:45 pm *light hff at prowl* In a hurry to get rid of me then? Magnum Ace 11:45 pm -he's trying to find answers to a problem, without making Soundwave suspicious. Not sure how well that's going- ItsyBitsySpyers 11:45 pm @A: [[A case could be made for whoever is using it as well. They would be responsible for its progress, after all.]]

*He's suspicious, but he doesn't know about what or anything, so it's pointless.* Magnum Ace 11:46 pm :: So...if it was built to be better than the others...and used for several decades... :: ItsyBitsySpyers 11:46 pm @A: [[Possibly.]] Magnum Ace 11:47 pm :: What about glitches? :: Tarantulas 11:47 pm *@prowl, quickly amends* Rhetorical. I simply wanted to stop by. And - *leans down slightly* - if you don't mind humoring me, allow me a small token of affection? ItsyBitsySpyers 11:47 pm @A: [[Every living thing has them. Perfection is ideal, but impossible. What do you mean in particular?]] Windchill 11:48 pm *It's time to cradle his baby properly, unicorn plush in tow, and stand.* *He's not leaving just yet though, sorry guys.* Prowl 11:48 pm You were the one who said you— *rhetorical he says. prowl abruptly cuts off.* ...... Fine. Windchill 11:48 pm *You're stuck with him for a few more minutes. Tragic.* Magnum Ace 11:49 pm :: Eh...like one that could be used to argue that the sapience is only an error in the code. :: Omicron 11:49 pm Just watch out for my tiny monster under the snack table if you're walking around *looks over at Windchill* Tarantulas 11:50 pm *is internally ecstatic, but contains himself to a simple kiss of his mandibles to prowl's chevron before straightening back up and beginning to retreat* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:50 pm *Soundwave taps his fingers against his leg. Think think.*

@A: [[If he correctly understood a recent musical discovery, most of Earth's life is dependent on errors and unexpected changes in its coding to progress. It should make little difference.]] Prowl 11:50 pm *stoically endures* Windchill 11:50 pm Right. *That's exactly where he's headed, wouldn'tcha know.* I'll be careful. Prowl 11:51 pm *and by "stoically endures" i mean "resists urge to lean into it as tarantulas leans back"* Windchill 11:51 pm *Whispers the lyrics to this song to his spawn. She protests by howling and swatting his long face.* Magnum Ace 11:52 pm :: So, it could be argued that the errors and glitches were building sapience in the ones using the AIs? :: Windchill 11:52 pm *This is distracting enough that he stops moving.* Tarantulas 11:52 pm Good night, you two. *pleased, but leaves now while he's ahead. waves at blue as he goes* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:52 pm [[Goodnight, Tarantulas.]] Omicron 11:52 pm Someone on the ship got him into a bad habit.... *grumble to herself about the insecticon guards spoiling the clutch* he's trying to startle food out of mecha Prowl 11:52 pm *he already said bye. doesn't repeat it.* Tarantulas 11:52 pm *oh and bevel gets a nod too, interestingly* Smokescreen 11:52 pm !! /Waving one last goodbye at Messy!/ Bevel 11:53 pm *perks and waves back* Tarantulas 11:53 pm *whew he's more popular than he thought, pats smokey on the head as he passes. then he's out* Windchill 11:53 pm *So he has getting spooked to look forward to, okay then.* Clever. ItsyBitsySpyers 11:53 pm @A: [[He believes so. It would be a good discovery, and potentially helpful to replicate in other AI... if you were not all under the control of the wretched humans you have told us about.]] Bevel 11:53 pm *gets up and takes her empty cube to the bar to put it into the recycler* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:53 pm @A: [[As it is, he is - somewhat concerned.]] Smokescreen 11:54 pm /Dorky grinning after his helm's pat, finally finishing up his snacks./ ItsyBitsySpyers 11:54 pm [[Thank you, Bevel.]] *If only everyone did.* Windchill 11:54 pm *He's going to shut up and walk properly rather than risk getting swatted again.* Magnum Ace 11:54 pm -whoops- Omicron 11:54 pm Racer: *sitting with loose wings and staring at the underside of the snack table.* Smokescreen 11:55 pm /He's struggling to put his empty cubes back into his subspace- pulling out several other items to stuff them in./ Bevel 11:55 pm *hums you're welcome in response* Windchill 11:55 pm *Blue is still too young to understand discipline in his opinion, and so he endures her dominance over almost everything until then.* Magnum Ace 11:56 pm :: Eh? That's good, I was just curious, it came up earlier with my team, and it was nagging me so I asked :: not exactly lying, but...omission Windchill 11:56 pm *Heads CAREFULLY towards the snack table, Blue wastes no time in noticing and YELLING and pointing with a chub finger at the sight of TREATS.* Omicron 11:57 pm Racer: *CHITTERS back up at the yelling from under the table, something is bouncing under there flapping wings* ItsyBitsySpyers 11:58 pm @A: [[All right.]] *Not exactly believing, but... he doesn't have to say that either.*

*Soundwave will now stand and spread his arms wide.*

[[Unfortunately, he must call an end to the evening. Work waits for no mech.]] [[...Except the lazy, and he is not one of their number.]] Smokescreen 11:59 pm Aww- thank you for having us, Sounds! I'm looking forward to the next documentaries. ... I probably should get to work too. Windchill 11:59 pm *He has long arms, long enough to reach and snag a treat or two before Blue yells his audio receptors off.* Magnum Ace 11:59 pm Thanks Yesterday ItsyBitsySpyers 11:59 pm [[He would recommend it. And you are welcome.]] Windchill 12:00 am *He licks one to test it before offering it to her, and she NATURALLY shoves it in her mouth and chews greedily.* Bevel 12:00 am *message received, she was planning on clearing out anyway, her shift starts in... well, now, so long everybody she's out* Magnum Ace 12:00 am Good night then...? Smokescreen 12:00 am Haha- gotta make sure my home doesn't burn down, too. /He's giving up on fitting the empty cubes in his subspace, and is starting to walk off with a bunch of empty cubes from the snack table./ Windchill 12:00 am This one, *he points a talon at his spawn,* needs a bath. Magnum Ace 12:00 am -he now has some information to help build a case now- ItsyBitsySpyers 12:00 am *Nods.* [[Goodnight. There will be bridges outside for whoever needs th--]] *You know what. He's too tired to chase Smokescreen down.* [[Them.]] Magnum Ace 12:01 am -waves and out he goes- Windchill 12:01 am *Holds his slimy spawn aloft, Simba style.* Okay. So long, suckerrrrrrrs. Smokescreen 12:01 am I'm no sucker! Hey! Omicron 12:01 am Racer: *aborts mid poince seeing windchill- he's way bigger then he though, and skitters back under table* Magnum Ace 12:01 am ((g'night! and thanks for the stream! ItsyBitsySpyers 12:02 am ((night)) Windchill 12:02 am *His ear swivels at the sound, but he doesn't bother looking when he already knows what's up.* Omicron 12:02 am *Ice Queen gets up to get her hatchling, looks around and back to Soundwave* would you like some help cleaning up? ItsyBitsySpyers 12:03 am [[No, thank you. He really must close the building.]] Windchill 12:03 am Time to go, Butthead. *Indeed, off they go.* Omicron 12:03 am *nods, grabs her hatchling and pulls him out, but lets racer grab one treat nom to take with on her way out* ((thank you for the stream)) Windchill 12:04 am (( Goodnight! ))

#chat

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livingmybestfictionallife · 7 years ago

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Proximity (02)-Just My Neighbor

Prompt: Sebastian meets his newest neighbor and immediately finds her to be an interesting and genuine person. Before he knows it, he’s developing feelings for his much younger friend that he tries not to act on because of their age difference, only the proximity of their lives has other things in store for the couple.

Tags: @sebstanwassup, @starkxpotts, @kyleannsmut, @joshuad-n, @bucky-bear-barnes, @camely09, @metal-arm-red-star, @kitty11223, @one-of-the-boys, @dammnnbucky, @crystallimythium

Warnings: some language, a little angst, some fluff

Sebastian decided to stay at the coffee shop for a few more minutes after (Y/N)’s phone call, but a few minutes turned into a few hours of intensive research and pouring over the script while occasionally smiling for fans selfies as they recognized him slumped over in the corner, angrily chewing on a pen cap. Just as he was about to lose all track of time, an older, retired woman who worked as a barista full-time made her way toward the table he sat at.

“I overheard your conversation, honey,” she said while placing a gentle, maternal hand on his shoulder. “It’s five-fifteen. You don’t want to keep your wife waiting.” Sebastian’s throat constricted as he looked at the array of empty cups scattered on the table in front of him. Frantically, he checked his phone, realizing that the woman was right.

“Thank you very much for telling me,” he began while folding his notebook closed, shoved his script inside, and jammed his pen into his back pocket, “but I wasn’t talking to my wife; I’m not married,” he awkwardly explained while showing her his ringless left hand.

“Oh, well then your girlfriend,” she tried again.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Sebastian uneasily laughed. “She lives in my building below me; she’s just my neighbor” he tried to explain.

“Well people don’t talk to one another so domestically with someone who’s ‘just their neighbor,’” the woman smirked before helping him toss the cluttered cups in the trash. Once he finished, Sebastian hurried toward his building, only a couple blocks from the coffee shop, and made his way up to his floor.

Seb Stan: Just got back

He hurried to open the door to his apartment and left it unlocked as he kicked off his shoes and took his belongings into his bedroom. He tossed his notebook on the desk beside his bed and dropped his shoes in the closet before quickly tidying up the few misplaced objects in his living room and kitchen: a few newspapers he picked up, a couple of books left lying about, and the dirty cereal bowls that he intended to wash that morning.

Cute Neighbor: Mind if I show up early?

Sebastian had just finished drying his hands from washing the dishes in the sink and a tiny smile formed in the corner of his mouth without him realizing.

Seb Stan: Fine by me :)

Cute Neighbor: Good, because I’m here

Just after he heard his phone go off, there was a knock at the door. He pulled it open and couldn’t help the soft smirk that rose to his lips as he shook his head at her. “You’re a dork,” he laughed.

“I’m the dork?” she laughed while entering his apartment for what had to be the hundredth time. “You’re asking me what one of the most self-explanatory sports on earth is,” she laughed. “Drive fast, turn left, don’t crash.”

“Thanks for the info, I guess you can leave now,” he teased while pressing himself against (Y/N), pretending to force her out of his apartment.

“Nooo,” she called out. “I walked all the way up the stairs for this, don’t make me leave.”

“Oh my, you took the stairs for me?” Sebastian huffed mockingly.

“The elevator was already on the first floor again,” she grumbled as Sebastian stepped aside and closed the door with both of them inside the apartment.

“Well,” he sighed as he walked into the kitchen, “I guess you can stay.” (Y/N) smirked as Sebastian leaned back against the kitchen counter beside his stove.

“Thanks for making that sacrifice,” she laughed while wandering toward his pantry and scouring for something to cook. “Why do you have a shit-ton of beans?”

“What do you mean ‘a shit-ton of beans?’” he asked while walking toward her. (Y/N) pulled out two massive cans of pinto chili beans and held them up to him, displaying her case. “That is not a shit-ton of beans,” he huffed. “Do you even know what a shit-ton looks like?”

“Well if you eat this many freaking beans, you’re sure to shit a ton,” she explained while setting the cans on the counter and started to rummage through his spices.

“Why do I hang out with you?” he laughed as he started to manually open the chili beans as (Y/N) gathered a huge variety of spices, some of which Sebastian hadn’t even opened yet.

“Who else would tease you about your bean collection?” she laughed while pulling ground turkey meat out of his freezer and beginning to defrost it in the microwave.

“Fucking weirdo,” he laughed while taking a step back and watching her.

“You’re the one with a bean collection, ya fucking weirdo,” she laughed, mimicking Morgan O’Mally’s voice from Good Will Hunting. “Okay, that probably made me weird,” she laughed at her attempt to draw reference to the movie.

“Just a bit,” he laughed in response. “Did you finish all of your homework?” he asked.

“Yes, Mom,” she grumbled at him, rolling her eyes the whole time. She hurried to cut up an onion and threw it and some garlic into the cauldron she had heating up o the stove.

“Sorry I care about your education,” he muttered while smirking at her from across the kitchen.

“You’re forgiven,” (Y/N) laughed and looked over her shoulder toward Sebastian. Again, the smile of admiration and gentle nod of disbelief flooded her sight. Quickly, she turned her face back to the pot of chili, hoping she could play off the blush on her face as the heat coming from the stove.

“Can I help?” Sebastian asked as he made his way closer toward her. Gently his hand traced along her back as he passed her.

“You can brown the meat,” she offered, trying to hide her now red face from him. Glad to help her, he completed his task and then added the meat to the mixture of beans, onions, garlic, tomatoes, green chillies, and spinach. (Y/N) then added the spices as Sebastian handed them to her.

“Cumin? Tumeric? Chili Powder? Cholula? Do you really use all of this?”

“Is it sitting on the counter?” she asked back sassily.

“Did I ask for sass?” he teased, a smirk on his face as he handed her the glass bottle of cumin. (Y/N) finished adding the last bit of spices and grabbed a bag of corn chips from a cupboard as Sebastian starts to dish out their dinners. “I figured we could watch a thematic movie,” he said while settling onto the couch and grabbed the remote that (Y/N) found less than a week after them meeting.

Slowly, she lowered herself beside Sebastian on the couch, feeling his hip against hers as they leaned against one another’s shoulders. Instantly, her head dropped as she saw his choice of movie. “Really, Seb,” she grumbled. “Of all the racing movies in existence you chose this one?”

“What’s wrong with Talledega Nights?” Sebastian asked with a laugh.

“You could have picked one of the eight Fast and the Furious movies, Days of Thunder, I would have even taken freaking Cars over this,” she grumbled.

“I didn’t know you were so picky, (Y/N),” Sebastian smirked while nudging her with his shoulder. (Y/N) laughed as Sebastian put his arm around her shoulder and rested his dinner between his knees.

“I’m not picky,” she groaned while scooping chili with a chip and popping it in her mouth.

“My movie just isn’t good enough for you is it?” he asked while teasing her and scraping the chili from his bowl. “This is really good, (Y/N). Thank you very much,” he added.

“You’re just trying to flatter me so I’ll give in to your stupid movie,” she grumbled. “You can look at me with those big blue eyes all you want, Sebastian, but I’m not going to say this movie isn’t shitty.”

“I wasn’t trying to do anything with my eyes,” he said with a smirk, “but since you’re looking,” he said with a sultrily teasing tone. Suddenly, (Y/N)’s heart pounded in her chest as she realized their proximity to one another. His arm rested across her shoulders, his tight muscles and tender skin grazing the back of her neck as she folded neatly into the side of his body, like two pieces of clay moulding together. Her side was pressed against his and she could feel his obliques tighten with each laugh, and she was certain Sebastian could feel the wire of her bra poking into his ribs. Part of his thigh covered hers as she slumped into the curve of the couch cushions and their legs were twisted together and propped on the coffee table in front of them. Quickly, she pulled herself up onto the cushion and sat on her feet, trying to keep herself from touching him and invading all parts of his personal space. “Is everything okay?” Sebastian quickly asked as (y/N) readjusted her position on the couch.

“Uh, yeah,” she said softly. “I thought I was going to spill,” she tried to laugh through the tension she caused and chastised herself for not being more careful. This had started out as being friends and she had intended for it to not go any further. It didn’t make sense for them to be anything besides neighbors. After all, she was hardly twenty-one and he was almost thirty-five. It wasn’t as though she had an issue with age gaps when it came to love, but she figured it would be easier for her to just be friends with Sebastian. He was more than she could handle in more than one way. She didn’t want to hold him back from anything he hasn’t accomplished and she still had a few years left in her before settling down would become a serious thought and not a ‘maybe someday’ ideology. Quietly, she continued eating until her dinner was almost gone.

“Oh, um okay,” he tried to chuckle. “We, uh...we don’t have to watch this movie if you want to,” Sebastian tried to change the conversation as he wondered what had caused (Y/N) to start acting strangely. The night had been going well and he was excited to get to be spending time with her. He was fascinated with her dry humor and sassy personality and the continual banter kept him on his toes. He liked to listen to her talk even if it was to tease him, and wasn’t quite ready for her to leave him.

“No, it’s fine,” she said as she hurriedly scraped the remainder of food left in the bowl. “I actually forgot I have a group paper due Wednesday and I have to work on my half.”

“Wait, are you leaving?” Sebastian asked, his voice faltering as (Y/N) rose to clean her dish. “(Y/N), what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Seb,” she said softly. “I just forgot I have some work left.”

“(Y/N),” he said in a soft, almost begging tone.

“I promise,” (Y/N) told him, turning back around and flashing him the largest smile she could muster. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Hesitant to believe her, Sebastian agreed halfheartedly.

“Okay,” he managed to say loud enough for her to hear him. Upon leaving Sebastian’s apartment, (Y/N) hurried downstairs and locked herself in her bathroom. After filling the tub with steaming water, she lowered herself in, allowing the water to float along her skin and travel up to her collarbones. Slowly, small tears of frustration trailed down her cheeks, mixing with the beads of sweat formed from the steam. Falling for Sebastian was all too easy and she knew that immense pain would come from forcing herself to deny her heart that happiness, but she would take the pain of denial over the humiliation of rejection any day, and if she continued to pursue Sebastian Stan romantically, she was sure rejection would be all she received.

Continued Installments

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan fanfiction #sebastian stan fluff #sebastian stan fandom #sebastian x reader #bucky barnes #fan fic #fanfic #fanfiction #sebastian stan fanfic #proximity

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megacircuit9universe · 5 years ago

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X-Tech: Never Possible Until it is

THU JAN 02 2020

I just watched the latest video by YouTuber, Isaac Arthur, who I’ve been following for years, and greatly respect, addressing time travel, but while he tried to cover every version of time travel that comes up in science fiction, and in legit scientific discourse... he did not cover the version I talk about in this blog.

I was a bit surprised, but then again, mine (explained in the entry entitled, Time Travel Basics, and fleshed out in some follow ups shortly after it) is basically the John Titor version of time travel.

And over the 13 or so years since I first read the Titor stuff online, I’ve noticed that nobody, either in fiction, or legit discourse, ever does venture anywhere near the Titor model... which is kinda strange, given that so many other, clearly unworkable models pop up all the time.

It’s not as though the Titor model is just so ridiculous that it’s not even worth considering... because, well... plenty of very ridiculous models for time travel are given very serious consideration, in our movies and science fiction novels, if not elsewhere.

Still, the original message boards where Titor appeared, to talk about how he was a time traveler, and explain what he knew about how his military issue time distortion unit worked, were forums for physics students and physics enthusiasts.

And what always struck me reading the back and forth on those forums was that nobody ever challenged his technical explanations. Everybody seemed to agree that the physics part of his story held up.

But that part was way over my head at the time, so I was very curious to understand why the physics seemed to hold up so well.

It took me most of those 13 years, watching recorded lectures and other videos on YouTube, and listening to several audio books on my commutes, dealing with different aspects of both quantum physics and string theory... before it finally clicked in my head, and I could see that Titor’s explanation not only squared with physics, but so did the schematics he’d provided.

Again, go back and read, Time Travel Basics, but, in a nutshell, it’s this idea of using two micro black holes... controlled by manifolds that inject electrons either into them, to increase their spin, or at angles across their event horizons, to slow the spin... to create two nested bubbles of frame-dragged spacetime, the inner one with positive time, and the outer one with negative time.

I won’t get further into it than that here, except to say that the one thing Titor talked about that always stumped me were the gravity sensors.

Inside his two nested bubbles of spacetime, he was essentially in his own tiny universe, outside the main universe, but was able to maintain a lock on the Earth’s movements backward through time (rotating backward and revolving around the sun backward as the whole solar system revolved backward around the center of the galaxy) thanks to gravity sensors that would give feedback to the manifolds, telling them how to maneuver the two micro-singularities to stay with the GPS coordinates on Earth’s surface, from which he had departed.

I finally got my answer one morning in the car on the way to work, listening to an audio book on string theory, when the author explained how, unlike light, gravity could be felt between branes (or membranes) of space time.

It’s one possible explanation for why gravity is such a weak force on our own brane, compared to much stronger forces like electromagnetism... because gravity leaks out into the greater, “bulk,” of the multiverse.

He didn’t know it, but he’d told me that Titor’s gravity sensors could work... which was the final piece of the puzzle.

Everything else, from creating micro-singularities in particle accelerators, and capturing them magnetically, for industrial use... to manipulating their spin, mass, and attitude with a manifold of cathode rays (such manifolds were how old color tube TV sets worked)... to the nuclear powering of the device... to the many worlds theory... all passed, for being physically plausible. So when the gravity sensors checked out too... well, that’s when I knew Titor was probably telling the truth.

So why am I so alone in this belief, in 2020... and why has the whole Titor model pretty much vanished from the conversation?

Well... this is what you might expect to happen when a person with a working model of something tries to explain it to people from the past who just aren’t there yet.

Imagine going back to the year 2000, and explaining on a serious tech forum how a typical smart phone from 2010 works... it’s a got a touch screen, and a bunch of gyros and sensors packed inside, and a lithium battery and... bla bla bla...

Even though they are all well versed on the subject of tech, and are only about seven years away from the first smart phone... it’s likely that nobody will take your strange new idea seriously.

Some will point out how certain features are just too far away... and the internet infrastructure couldn’t support such a thing... and the level of miniaturization isn’t realistic... and the batteries would be volatile and prone to explosions.

Others will argue that even if such a device could be Frankensteined together, nobody would want one device to do everything. Nobody wants to watch TV shows on their alarm clock, that is also their flashlight!

Why would they be like that? Well... you know how people are.. when they consider themselves the experts and the vanguards of a given field.

Who are you anyway? You’re just some rando who claims to own one of these so-called, “smart phones,” and you don’t even know how it works.

You’re just a fanciful futurist describing some fanciful vision for a thing that would be nearly impossible to make, and totally impractical, probably, and that nobody asked for. Get out of here!

My other example would be explaining how a modern airplane works, to scientists in... say... 1875. Even if you were spot on with your description of a typical 737... with its wings, aelerons, flaps, jets, etc... its hydraulic control tubes and its aluminum body... fueled by a petroleum based liquid stored in its wings...

They would counter by explaining to you why none of that would actually work, and even if it could... nobody would ever convince a hundred regular civilians to climb into such a death trap and “fly” from New York to Los Angeles... in “hours.”

Get the fuck out of here!

My argument here, about experts and vanguards rejecting working ideas from the future... is kind of borne out by how far off the mark they always are, when asked to envision future tech.

Such visions are always hilariously wrong, because they are always clearly based on exactly what they know in the moment... plus what little they know about a few experimental things going on.

But they never think about the unforeseen breakthroughs, both large and small, that can help make seemingly ridiculous things like the Boeing 737, or the IPhone 4, possible, practical, and marketable.

The above two analogies are not perfect though, because in John Titor’s case, he was in the military, using a military issue time machine. It wasn’t a tech civilians even knew about, necessarily... and also, as I said earlier, there really wasn’t any push back from the nerds on his forums about the physics.

They agreed it was theoretically sound enough not to bother attacking, and instead focused on his descriptions of the future... his past... all the world events to come later in the 2000s, 20-teens, and beyond.

And, while he answered honestly, he also explained that his appearance in 2000 meant they were all now on a different world line, that would not play out the same way.

His recollections were framed as predictions... and when the predictions didn’t come to pass... Titor was considered by most, debunked.

Some argued for a while... correctly, that they were never predictions, because he explained that we were on a different world line than his. But... others countered, by pointing out how this argument makes his predictions unfalsifiable... which, in logical terms, means they’re garbage.

The whole discussion ended there... without ever really touching the mainstream consciousness. John Titor was considered, by those who knew about him, to be just a fun hoax... and, like any other meme... fell out of fashion and was forgotten.

But my point is... he had schematics! He had sound explanations for how the tech worked! Screw the predictions... or arguments that the predictions are unfalsifiable! The tech holds up! Look at that! Talk about that!

Look at the rather flawless descriptions of how it came to be invented, what it was being used for, and what it was like to operate a time distortion unit, from the perspective of the guy in the driver’s seat.

It really irks me that everybody has both ignored and forgotten about that very tangible, testable part of Titor’s story... and then come back today with those same tired old arguments like, “If time travel were possible, we would have heard from one of them by now!”

Oh, really?

“If it were possible, we would have time tourists all over the place, and always would have, since Ancient Rome.”

Really? Cuz... what if it was just a military tech not available to the public and what if it only had a small practical range of a few decades... as explained both by Titor, and by my Time Travel Basics entry? Huh?

Huh???

Well... I guess I’m just gonna have to be content with being a crackpot, with no audience. :(

Be that as it may, my model predicts that WW2 is the great historical barrier for time travel... with only a few rogue time travelers daring to go even as far back as the late 1940s... where they could still hope to refill their oxygen tanks, and get some kind of crude repairs done to their time distortion units.

Most only go as far back as the mid 1970s, with a few outliers hitting the 60s or 50s, and probably never finding their way back to anything like the home worldline they came from, after straying that far afield with no way to establish their, “divergence” to any useful degree.

But the twenty-teens were (are, will be) a good pit stop... the Denver, or Phoenix of Time Travel... if it were a coast to coast drive across the U.S... because things were (are, will be) just advanced enough to stop and get your bearings, or resupply, or get repairs done... but far enough away from the home time (which is the late 2030s) to bother stopping.

It’s possible that the 2020s will be the same kind of Denver for time travelers of, say, the 2050s... and that the 2030s themselves will be a Denver for time travelers of the 2080s... but if so... these more sophisticated time travelers from further in the future will probably be a lot more careful about the cybernetic impact of their pit stops in these future decades.

In other words, they’ll be more careful not to turn the internet, and therefore the world around them, into a total circus of unreality, in which all the locals question their sanity every day on a regular basis.

Things should calm down for us, in the 2020s, is what I’m saying... at least in the socio-political sphere. The climate’s gonna be something different, but...

...whereas in the twenty-teens you were saying, “I can’t believe so and so is the leader of my country and so many assholes are coming out of the woodwork, and the rest of us feel unmoored from reality, as if we’ve been sucked into a parallel universe!”

In the 2020s you’re more likely to be saying, “I can’t believe we had a thunder snowphoon in July, and that Lake Eerie is on fire, but thank God the world’s leaders are on top of this, and have the support of pretty much everybody, except for the oldest, shittiest cranks who we all ignore.”

And maybe you’ll also be saying, “Thank God, also for [X-tech] without which everybody would be so fucked right now!”

Man, that was a long ramble!

Sorry.

I’m going to bed.

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magistralucis · 7 years ago

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Danger - Taiko [Commentary]

(Disclaimer: I’m terribly sleep deprived and have just finished the 1st full listen of Taiko, and am currently on my second. This is not so much a review as it’s a collection of my thoughts during the playthrough; I’m not knowledgeable re: Danger’s intentions for this album and have put no biographical nor philosophical thought into it yet, because I’m trying to put myself into the mindset of someone entirely new to Danger listening to this. So I’m getting this down before I have a chance to form powerful opinions about which tracks are the highlights of this album and which are worth skipping, which are definitely opinions that might be worth discussing at some other point but aren’t so much helpful when I want to follow the whole album. Reviews are probably best left for someone far more knowledgeable than I am, but well. Two cents and all.)

[1789 Records - 7:17 - 11:02]

This is music that knows that it is being watched.

That is the broadest opinion I can lend to this album as a whole. I bundle those three tracks into one because they flow right into one another; they should be considered collectively as one intro, if I might say so. Taiko starts off slow. But by the time I’m done with 7:17 - when the beats begin to speed up rather abruptly around the 1 min 56 sec mark, I suddenly find my heart is pounding, and that I have been tossed into the midst of all this without quite realizing it. The static that marks off a three-part structure (more on this later) doesn’t help matters. This is, in some way, music that knows and syncs with what you’re feeling.

Then comes 11:02. Holy fuck. Where do I even begin.

Okay well. I go nuts for choral effects. That’s a thing I can confess to. If 7:17 was the introduction to the album, pumping you up for what’s to come, 11:02 is the first story that stands on its own. The first bit introduces the rhythm and choral effects, the beat drops about 30 secs in - there’s a passing resemblance of serenity before we return to the rhythm and chorus - and it gets even more lively about two minutes and a half in. It’s well-structured and fades out very cleanly, completing the marvelous intro to Taiko as a whole.

This is amazingly satisfying. It’s like... it’s boss battle music. I am looking forward to the rest of this.

[11:03]

This is the first track where we begin to understand... well, why Taiko, out of all things. The first minute of this are positively East Asian in tone - sounds comfortingly familiar - then the actual meat of the track begins. It doesn’t return to the starting mood again until halfway through, then again at the end, which gives this track a rough ABABA structure: refrain, verse, refrain. I have come to notice recently that that is not a standard Danger feature, which I may be able to say more about later.

Also: static. Tiny bursts of white noise are present throughout the entirety of this album, not just 11:03, but where static introduced a new track or indicated shifts to a different mood within a track before, this one fades out with it. I note it first here because that’s when I first began paying attention to the role of static in Taiko. One minute’s difference to 11:02. Hmm.

[22:41]

Fuck yeah. I’m seeing a return to some old Danger in this one. The point of this commentary isn’t bringing up old Danger tracks constantly, but fuck it. A similarity is a similarity. A more lively version of ‘22h39′, anyone?

Static governs 22:41 quite heavily, too. The mood shifts ever so slightly with each instance. The instruments at the background during 3 min 50 secs onwards are also notable - if you know much about taiko as in the Japanese art of drumming and performance, this is probably the first track that would speak to you regarding it. There are others that do that with more urgency, so let’s get to them.

[19:00]

I’m spinnin’ in the desert, dyin’ to live, livin’ to die...

This is growing on me. I honestly don’t know what to make of fully sung vocals with Danger music in general, I guess I’m just not used to it or something. Danger hasn’t ever been a songwriter for me. But there’s probably a reason why 19:00 was offered download ahead of all the other tracks in the album - I got my copy through iTunes - in that it’s a fairly apt summary of the mentality behind Taiko in general (as well as a Tupac reference? Possibly?).

I distinctly recall Danger saying that this album is about innocence. Losing it, even. Wondering whether it does any good, even. But wanting it anyway. 19:00 pretty much spells it out for you.

Here I take a break. Six tracks in and Danger has already made the point that the tracks are not simply to be judged separately, but as part of a broader cinematic experience. I’m tired and too dumb to think hard about it at the moment, but I’ll be keeping this in mind as I continue.

Sidenote 01: You know, we actually put a lot of faith in Danger’s titles, when it’s claimed that they reflect the time of day when they were finished. We might not have much reason to question it, but how do we like, know that. What if he just decided that the aesthetics of a number suited a song better and changed it to that instead of the actual finishing hour? We’d never know know, would we? I mean, I don’t know what major incentive he has to be untruthful about this, and even if he were, not titling a song after the exact hour and minute isn’t any skin off our back. It’s not a problem.

But you know... it makes me wonder. What do we really get out of those titles when we see one like ‘4h30′ (for example)? Because for me, it’s definitely not the sentiment that ah yes, that definitely sounds like a song that was finished off to splendid daybreak. Something about the numerical value of the song makes the titles hard to remember, and thus, blur into a false image of equivalence; if Danger announced tomorrow that ‘4h30′ was going to be called ‘16h30′ from now on, would it really change your opinions about the emotions that the song invokes? What about ‘13h09′? ‘3h21′? I doubt it, personally. But I think if SebastiAn, for example, announced tomorrow that ‘So Huge’ was going to be called... I don’t even know... ‘The Metaphysical Impossibility of Death in the Back of a VIP Room’ from now on, I think that would probably shift the way I look at that song, before and after the name change, and potentially my opinion on Sebastian himself. Same thing if the name change was to something more ordinary. Point is, words mean things, yet numbers seem to hold less priority over one’s minds. At least immediately. I don’t know. I’m making too much out of a passing thought.

[9:00]

I’m immensely glad that Danger isn’t an Asian-appropriative musician.

That comes across as a thing I just blurted out from nowhere, but... it does mean a lot to me. Take it from me when I say that this man really understands what taiko drums are about. Writing down what ‘taiko’ means as an art would be a thesis’s worth of work - but I listen to this track, comparing it with the prior 22:41, and I hear what he learnt. Literally. 9:00 is pretty much the encapsulation of what it means to learn, which in the context of taiko (and many other forms of old Japanese art) basically means the search for perfection in the form (kata) that those before you have left behind. These taiko samples scattered within the album are, by definition of being taiko drums, depictions of rhythms and patterns passed down through taiko players through generations at a time. You don’t really improvise or do your own thing when it comes to kata-heavy arts like this. It’s a pretty damned good metaphor for returning continuously to the past, like what Danger said.

Anyway, that is a... strange mood change around 2 min 50 secs...

[6:42]

Okay this is getting long now and Imma put the review under a cut from here. I wasn’t feeling this track until around 45 secs in. I knew that I noted something about this song down before I was just trying to get to where it was making sense sorry about that

The taiko beats are far less pronounced in 6:42. Further apart, very even, singular beats. But for once, it’s not them I’m listening to. On the first listen I jotted down something about mu - in taiko philosophy, the liminal gap that comes between the beats is just as important as the beats and posture - but then I realized I was probably approaching it too seriously. The second half of this track features heavy, even breathing sounds which reflect that we’re now verging onto the second half of the album; there are 15 tracks, this is the eighth, and I feel like what’s taking place is a figurative breather. I need it.

[10:00]

This feels like a lighter and more disturbing version of 9:00. I don’t know what to make of it in all honesty, if Taiko was the soundtrack to an anime or movie this would be like the readying-yourself-for-a-mission BGM.

I don’t even know if this is making sense anymore. Also those whispery samples are kind of disturbing to me ymmv

[0:59]

... Kavinsky is that you?

Forget the taiko drums for a bit. Wow. This is some excellent driving music. Quiet and menacing and subtle, 0:59 is probably the track that does the best job at invoking images (apart from 19:00 and 11:50, which have vocals) out of the entire album.

[11:50]

The same comments I made about vocals in Danger music for 19:00 apply here as well. In a way, I feel that 10:00, 0:59 and 11:50 make up yet another three-parter. The screeching samples used in all three tracks are distinct, and yet close enough to invoke each other (see 1 min 11 sec for the kind of ‘screeching’ I mean).

The heavy autotune kind of threw me off to begin with, but let me tell you, it’s nothing compared to the logical extension of said heavy autotune that takes place from 3 min 44 sec onwards. It needs to be heard to be believed.

Time for another break, I think.

Sidenote 02: This isn’t just a Taiko thing, but... leaving all talk of sound or genre aside, I feel like what really makes Danger tracks stand out is the fact that they follow a narrative. They’re not necessarily a specific narrative of anything - we can’t listen to a song and think wow, that definitely relates to an experience Danger had at the tender age of 23 or that this song is about the eternal struggle between thanatos and eros - but I mean that they follow a structure that’s not unfamiliar for literature. An intro, conflict, and ending, not the verse-and-refrain or theme-and-variations that we might otherwise expect of a lot of music out there. Each section has a different color to them, and it’s not uncommon for Danger tracks to end quite dissimilarly to how they begun or through callbacks to completely different songs altogether. This is completely in line with what he himself said about his creation process in an interview, but right about now is where it really sunk in for me.

[21:10]

The last third of the album. 21:10 is pretty kickin’ to start with, but I’m not sure what else to say about it. And I almost swear to god I have heard this exact melody and beat somewhere else before.

One minute in. Yeah, this track is like recalling a dream that I never actually had in the first place. Danger might have lost me here again. It’s not bad, it’s just... not immensely notable. Moving onto the next

[19:19]

This is more like it!

So far in Taiko, I think three tracks are genuine stand-outs when it comes to actually using the drumbeats in their narrative: 22:41, 9:00, and 19:19. There’s a lot in this one track - old Danger sounds are revisited (I immediately think of ‘4h30′, ‘1h30′, ‘13h12′) as well as woven amidst the drums, which by this point have proved themselves a faithful backbone to the epic experience this album has shaped up to be. Taiko beats literally announce 19:19′s beginning, let alone accompany the other sounds in it; by the end of it you’d have heard a smorgasbord of other noises, such as an actual organ and sirens and whatnot, which sort of speaks to me as Danger hashing out all his influences in one song kind of ‘Giorgio by Moroder’-style.

Also I think the music might be slightly off-tune around the two-minute mark but I can’t tell whether that’s just me or what.

[8:10]

I want to talk about kata in more detail.

I’m so tired atm I’m probably not going to make much sense but. Hear me out. You know how martial arts across the East and West seem to differ greatly on their attitudes to positions, postures, and stuff like that? A lot of Western martial arts focus directly on practical applications - sparring, and whatnot - but it’s not uncommon for a practitioner of kendo or karate or such arts to be focused on the repetitive perfecting of form. You do that on your own for most part; sometimes you need a partner to practice a mutual kata with, but basically the point of kata is like... basically, it’s running a simulation of what the perfect execution of an art would be, with yourself as the subject. Repeated practice of tried-and-tested posture and technique help to discipline you, and allow you to know what is to be expected.

You don’t ever learn a kata-based art like you pick up programming languages or mess around on Photoshop to develop your own fluency. Under a kata philosophy, those techniques are the ones being taught to you in the first place because they are the polished jewels resulting from the efforts of countless masters who have come before you. The focus of those arts is not putting in your 10,000 hours to become a master at it; the form itself is the knowledge, it’s already there for you to come along and get it, and to practice its art is to internalize it until you understand it on your own. Kind of like how if you’re an artist, you’re probably never going to attain perfection in your art and can only get better and better as you go along with no end in sight. It’s the moments where you look back on yourself and see how far you’ve come, or the realizations you get about something you found so hard before but not so much now, that contain the beauty that you seek.

A lot of that is the philosophy behind taiko drumming. It is both the advantage and disadvantage of kata that it cannot help but be ridiculously traditionalist - you’re passing down knowledge and it only gets more powerful the older it is, there is almost no room for the new. And you’re never going to live up to the sheer power of the old forms. But then, trying to equal it isn’t the point of kata-based arts. It’s the acknowledgement that each person’s journey towards the old and powerful forms will be different, and that the satisfaction comes from seeing how you yourself fare in it. If you apply that to Danger’s intentions, it’s like... Danger is not even remotely the first artist, in EDM or otherwise, to have worked with Japanese influences, to have thought about innocence, about his childhood, about the current of violence and resentment in France. These topics will endure forever, but the art based off it may not. We are simply watching Danger’s foray into old thoughts long since crystallized into his being, with a new hint or influence here or there, forever revisiting the past from the new. Like taiko practitioners, as he said.

This is not a commentary on the track 8:10. It is an overall realization. But this is the penultimate track of the album and the realization comes at the right time. As I said, this post isn’t meant to be like a well-thought review or whatever - I am writing down my feelings as they come. I think my attempts have been quite fruitful so far, though.

All right. I’m ready. Let’s end this, M. Rivoire.

[3:00]

...

e h ?

I guess this is the outro to ease you out of the album as much as the intro slowly eased you into it. There are not many surprises in this track and I almost wonder if he could not have ended it with 8:10, but then... I fear that might have been too abrupt for anyone’s liking.

Again, it’s not a bad thing. If anything, Danger bookending this album with slow intros and outros make structural sense holy christ what the fuck is happening at 1 min 20 secs the song’s losing its shit

So okay. There are surprises here and there. There’s nothing hurtling you into the music like 11:02 does, but Danger leaves behind a tone of vital uncertainty for the ending in throwing in strange twists and offbeats.

Is it a satisfying conclusion? Musically not. Logically, and philosophically, yes. Taiko isn’t a ‘Danger is granted serenity to accept the things he cannot change, the courage to change the things he can, and the wisdom to know the difference’ type of album. As far as I can tell, there isn’t any solid conclusive statement he’s making here about what his life has been like and what he wants you to get out of it - no, he leaves behind a reel looping a quiet, unsteady, hopeful song (kind of how life usually is) waiting to paint more things upon that reel from some other future time.

It is as good a final song as it gets. It is now finished. So is this commentary.

What a fantastic album, what an experience! I’ll be thinking heavily on this for the next few weeks or so, no doubt. If anyone kept up with me for all of this so far, thank you very much!

#franck rivoire #danger (dj)#danger (musician)#danger #太鼓 #taiko #edm #essay #commentary #long post #guh i didn't mean it to be this long... please forgive....

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travelworldnetwork · 6 years ago

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By Emma Cooke

1 February 2019

The buildings of Playa d’en Bossa and San Antonio were boarded up, but as we cruised down Ibiza’s pine tree-lined roads in a 1960s Mustang, it didn’t feel like the off-season. Caroline Lilliehook, co-owner of the car and of Mustang Adventures, Ibiza’s first vintage Mustang car-rental business, was in the driver’s seat and we were on our way to discover rock ‘n’ roll in the sleepy, rolling hills of the island. Or rather, unearth it. “Rock ‘n’ roll is how the music scene got going in the first place on Ibiza,” Lilliehook said. “But most people have forgotten that.”

Ibiza has long been an island for the outcast and non-conforming, from a diaspora of creatives first fleeing Francisco Franco’s Spain in 1936, to hippies throughout the ‘60s chasing the magnetic vibrations of Es Vedra island. Intrigued by how this history transformed into Europe’s wildest party scene, I’d badgered Lilliehook for stories over a tapas lunch. Just how did Ibiza become the go-to place for partygoers, I wondered? It turned out the answer is rock ‘n’ roll. “But you’ll have to go to Pikes Hotel to find out more,” she said. “That’s where it started.”

View image of Ibiza has long been an island for the outcast and non-conforming (Credit: Credit: Emma Cooke)

You may also be interested in: • The oldest song in the world • The world’s secret club of explorers • Where head-banging meets tradition

Ibiza’s history is littered with rock-star stories: German singer-songwriter Nina Hagen married here in 1987 in a punk wedding that lasted two days. In 1977, Eric Clapton was rumoured to have almost died in a shipwreck as he was arriving here on his boat with George Harrison. But everything always seems to lead back to Pikes – the hotel nestled in the hills overlooking San Antonio where Wham! recorded their Club Tropicana video; that hosted Freddie Mercury’s infamous 41st birthday party; and where Mercury stayed prior to his iconic Ku Club performance with Montserrat Caballé, the famous Spanish opera singer. Legend has it the performance rehearsal was held there, though, like much of the decade, the details are fuzzy.

The hotel takes its name from Tony Pike, a British-born Australian, former Navy sailor and international playboy who came to Ibiza in 1978 post a 48-hour party. On the recommendation of a friend, Pike boarded a Spanish ferry, got off in Ibiza – and decided to stay. A listing for a 500-year-old finca (estate) near San Antonio soon caught his eye; the name was Can Pep Toniet, meaning ‘the property of little Tony’. Who could resist such obvious fate?

Rock ‘n’ roll is how the music scene got going in the first place on Ibiza

Essentially derelict, with no water, electricity or sanitation, over the next few years Pike built his five-room hotel from the ground up, using a jackhammer to put in the infamous pool and illegally tapping into a government generator for electricity.

As the 1980s began, Ibiza was in the throes of its first flush of tourism. Pacha, Amnesia and Club Ku had opened, and rumours of Ibiza’s uncrowded beaches and rolling hills had spread quickly on the breeze. The former capital of the hippie movement was on the cusp of change. For Pike, that change came in 1983, when Simon Napier-Bell, the manager of Wham!, decided to shoot the group’s new single ‘Club Tropicana’ at the hotel. The video saw Pike making a cameo as a bartender, George Michael floating in the pool, and the cementing of both Ibiza and Pikes Hotel as the party destination to be. For a whole decade, you couldn’t say ‘hedonism’ on Ibiza without including Pikes Hotel in the same breath.

‎Andy McKay and Dawn Hindle, the current owners of Pikes, agree: “There’s not a rock ‘n’ roll hotel in the world that couldn’t say that Pikes competes with them for the top spot.”

View image of For a whole decade, you couldn’t say ‘hedonism’ on Ibiza without including Pikes Hotel in the same breath (Credit: Credit: Emma Cooke)

The pair has been running the hotel for eight years since the legendary Tony Pike passed on the baton to them. Originally, they came to the island in 1994 to set up the fiercely popular Manumission club nights that defined Ibiza’s party scene throughout the ‘90s, ending in 2009. “We knew Tony from back then,” they explained.

“But as we got into the millennium, DJ and club culture was just so boring and the music wasn’t changing. I felt like we were treading water as an industry,” McKay said. So in 2005 they launched Ibiza Rocks, a series of live concerts featuring artists like Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys and The Prodigy, bringing a rush of live acts back to the island for the first time in years.

“Suddenly we were bringing a lot of international bands to the island and a lot of them wanted hotels – we didn’t want to lose the atmosphere we were creating by putting them in some faceless hotel.

“Pikes’ legacy was built around how all the artists used to stay there, and we suddenly went, ‘wait a minute, if we’re bringing all the talent and all the rock stars back, shouldn’t we just rent it?’.”

View image of Pikes Hotel became the go-to spot for rock ‘n’ roll legends like Freddie Mercury and Wham! (Credit: Credit: Emma Cooke)

They cut a deal, and five years later, they bought it. Now, the hotel does its history proud, complete with a flamingo-pink tennis court and decor that includes beds on the front lawns. They’ve even transformed the main suite back into the social area it originally was – although now it’s a tiny, vibrant nightclub rather than an ‘80s restaurant and bar.

“We wanted it to be the best hotel in the world if you’re a rock star,” said McKay. “It was about returning the hotel to the glory of what it was.”

While McKay and Hindle have been reinvigorating Pikes, Ibizan local and hotelier, Diego Calvo has been expanding that spirit across the rest of the island. With slicked-back hair and a private collection of vintage cars, Calvo seems to be the modern-day answer to Pike. “Since I was 17, I’ve been dedicated to two passions: the hotel industry and rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “The things that have influenced my life have also influenced the hotels: ‘80s movies; Route 66 roadside motels; the art deco architecture from South Beach Miami; classic cars. I want to take my hotels to another level, so they’re not just places to sleep in but also spaces to socialise in, places where things happen.”

View image of Since the 1970s, Ibiza has been known for its music and party scene (Credit: Credit: Everynight Images/Alamy)

He’s also well aware of the island’s free spirit: his parents moved here during Franco’s reign, and he grew up in ‘70s Ibiza.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Dorado, one of Calvo’s five Ibizan hotels. A fantasy of teal and white that’s set on the seemingly endless Playa d’en Bossa coastline, it’s entirely themed around the history of rock ‘n’ roll. Each of the hotel’s 14 suites is dedicated to a gold-certified record. As we walked into the Bob Dylan Suite, Blowin’ in the Wind automatically started up on a vinyl player, and a glance in the bathroom turned up retro microphones for showerheads. “Marky Ramone, the Ramones drummer, stayed at Dorado two years ago, and of course, he had to stay in the suite of his good friend Debbie Harry,” Calvo name-dropped.

Ibiza was a live music island long before it was a dance-music island

Just as McKay and Hindle started in the party scene, so does Calvo come from a music background. The same year the pair were setting up Ibiza Rocks, Calvo was launching his own party and promotion business, Rock Nights, focusing on rock ‘n’ roll parties held in small, grassroots venues. All three champion live music, and all three agree it’s forgotten – but far from gone.

“There’s a huge live-music heritage on this island, whether that’s Pink Floyd or Jimi Hendrix,” McKay said. “The idea that it’s just a dance music island is a bit ridiculous. Ibiza was a live music island long before it was a dance-music island. But when dance music broke America, that brought a massive surge for all things electronic. By the mid-2000s, Ibiza had really, really forgotten live music.”

View image of Andy McKay and Dawn Hindle have kept the Pikes Hotel’s music legacy alive with their Ibiza Rocks live concerts (Credit: Credit: Everynight Images/Alamy)

This has been helped along by the surprising fact that, technically, live music has been illegal in parts of the island for some time. Ibizan law states noise limiters must be placed on all sound equipment, something that is difficult to do on live instruments. In early 2018, further legislation added that music must not exceed 65 decibels, a move that brought Ibizan DJs into the firing range, too.

“Musicians could only play through a venue’s PA system resulting in ridiculously low decibel levels,” Calvo said. However, after demonstrations throughout 2018, the law has been recently changed to allow live performance between 13:00 and 23:00. Ibizan rock ‘n’ roll, it seems, is just about ready to be remembered again.

“Ibiza has been invaded over the years by this VIP, global culture and it’s become a very big place in a sort of ubiquitous way that’s not specific to Ibiza. We’re now beginning to see that levelling out and declining, and you are finding different kinds of Ibiza experiences are just exploding. The rock ‘n’ roll spirit of Ibiza is getting stronger again,” McKay enthused.

View image of According to McKay and Hindle, the rock ‘n’ roll attitude is what keeps music scenes like Ibiza’s alive (Credit: Credit: Emma Cooke)

And indeed, clubbing doesn’t have the cache it once had, both on Ibiza and across Europe. Just ask Club 18-30, Thomas Cook’s notorious clubbing package holidays, who found that out last year when the brand was retired. But this doesn’t mean Ibiza’s party is over. Rather, in the face of a growing backlash against mass tourism, partying on Ibiza seems to be reinventing itself again; directing its energy into different channels as old ones close.

For McKay and Hindle this comes close to being a creed: “We don’t follow the money, we follow the energy. There’s usually a moment in this kind of work where the money keeps going up but the energy disappears. When the energy goes, we switch. Too many people on this island forget that the energy is what’s important. In many ways, we’re chasing rock ‘n’ roll. The rock ‘n’ roll attitude is what keeps scenes alive.”

As for the now-84-year-old ‘Tony’, the man who started it all? Grab a drink at Pikes next time you’re in Ibiza and maybe you’ll find him next to you at the bar. “He’s still regularly here too late and up too long,” McKay grinned.

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yourrainycollectorhologram-blog · 6 years ago

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