#<- tag too long but had to close the parenthetical

[mittensmorgul]

The Tumblr Beta Version: an objective analysis

I was tempted to just type “it sucks.” And while that is an objective analysis, it’s not exactly helpful. I’ve sent several requests to @staff and @support to restore my account to the old tumblr dashboard format, and received the same automated reply twice now. I’ll copy/paste it here so everyone is on the same page:

(lol, I had to go back and edit this, because apparently the beta version doesn’t display block quotes on the dash. So I’ve also put the block quotes in italics... hopefully it’ll display properly... note after editing: nope, it doesn’t display italics either... how the heck am I supposed to differentiate quoted text? I’ll start each quoted bit with an asterisk, I guess...)

*Thanks for reaching out about the beta dashboard.

*We're currently testing it out, and your account seems to have been selected to take part in the test. Thanks for your patience while we work on it! At this time there is not a way to opt out of testing. You may see your Tumblr experience return to normal as we continue testing.

WE CAN ONLY HOPE.

*In the meantime, check out some of the new features available only in the beta dashboard:

OKAY TUMBLR, IF YOU INSIST, though I would MUCH rather have back all the functionality I personally invested into this website through xkit... you know... making the site ACTUALLY FUNCTIONAL. Let’s see what this beta version has given me instead of functionality:

*Change Palettes: Go to the person icon, then click "Change Palette." You'll find the classic Tumblr blue, dark mode, and a few other color palettes for your dash.

So I tried out all the color palettes. In addition to the ones mentioned here, there’s one that’s trying to look like a green screen terminal that gives me flashbacks to the early 80′s. There’s a reason we stopped using green screen terminals... Another one is “canary yellow.” It’s very yellow. The “classic tumblr” isn’t actually classic tumblr... all the post boxes are dark blue with grey type, not white with black type. And all the other colors are the insanely bright fluorescent of the new Dark Blue standard tumblr scheme. Which means links are practically invisible unless I highlight them. It’s migraine inducing. The one theme with a light colored background is called “Concrete” or “Cement” or something like that and even that only works for about half an hour before the migraine aura really kicks in. I just want my Old Blue via xkit back. You know, what tumblr actually used to look like. I don’t want any of these horrible color palettes. None of them work for me.

*The new "meatballs" menu: This is where you can copy the post link, unfollow the Tumblr who made or reblogged the post, or report a violation to our Community Guidelines.

I could do all of this from the user menus with xkit, too. I don’t regularly report violations or have the urge to block people I have chosen to follow. Why on earth would I want to do any of this? And why would I want these features located directly beside the post link copy feature? 

You know what I do miss? I miss the xkit timestamps feature. I didn’t have to hover dangerously close to the KILL IT WITH FIRE meatballs menu in order to see when a post was made, and in this era of disinformation and misinformation spreading around this site faster than Covid-19, being able to see when a post was ORIGINALLY created is a far more useful feature than an easier way to block people. For reference: I currently have three blogs blocked. Two of them are pornbots. One is a nazi. If I don’t want someone’s content on my dash, I don’t follow them. This “feature” is entirely useless to me.

*A quick note: Pagination is not supported in this beta test, but we're collecting feedback to send to our engineers.

THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST. This beta test might actually be tolerable if I wasn’t trapped into endless scrolling. If I could page through my dash, refreshing it every ten posts or so. You know why? Because once I scroll about 30 posts down my dash, tumblr starts overheating my laptop under the load of ALL THOSE POSTS. Things start malfunctioning-- it takes longer and longer to load new posts the farther I scroll. And the keyboard navigation (both page down and hitting J to advance to the next post, and even just using the down arrow to scroll as I read a long post) freeze and stop functioning. One of my laptop fans has actually begun to malfunction.

You know why this wasn’t a problem on the old version? If the data load got to heavy, I could open a post in a new tab, click view on dash with xkit, and voila! Brand new tab! I could close the malfunctioning tab and everything would be refreshed to normal! But without pagination, THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

Also, after reblogging a few posts, the beta version of this site breaks, and doesn’t open a post tab to add commentary or even tags. It just... reblogs the untagged post with no warning whatsoever. You know... that’s really really not cool. I tag EVERYTHING. Well, almost everything. The tags are the only way to keep track of the 40k+ posts on my blog. And warn people that I am posting potential spoilers, or other specific content. It’s REALLY inconvenient to have to either immediately go to my blog to edit the post and add tags, or even comments. The alternative is to scroll up to open individual posts I want to reblog in a new tab, and then reblog directly there. Ironically enough, THOSE pages actually open with xkit installed, and everything (surprise!) functions perfectly there.

It’s perfectly reasonable to understand why this specific issue has limited the number of posts I reblog. Reblogging content should not be this much of a hassle. Creators have been complaining for a while that reblogs have drastically slowed down, and I think making it even more annoying and difficult to reblog posts will not help this problem.

Also, with xkit enabled, there’s a function that auto-loads images as you scroll, so the images are always visible BEFORE they appear on screen. I don’t have to look at the colored boxes and wonder if this is a post I’ve already seen or something I should sit and wait for. Don’t even think about watching tumblr videos. Loading priority is given to the ads that you cannot pause or dismiss, so that video loads and plays in choppy two second bursts instead of being given priority. Since that’s the content I am actually here to consume, it kinda makes me want to do the opposite of patronizing anyone who advertises here with graphically intense ads. And then when you scroll away, with xkit, gifs and videos you’ve scrolled past STOP loading and playing, which I think might be contributing to the intensity of the resource hogging that’s literally melting down my laptop.

And for reference, I have a pretty decent little gaming laptop. A blogging platform shouldn’t be driving it to the brink of frying itself. I didn’t realize just how much xkit worked to streamline this and provide basic functionality to this site.

*And lastly, if you're an XKit user, know that the XKit team is working hard to update things on their end to make it compatible with the beta dashboard.

And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what I’ve lost without xkit. And this is a really REALLY garbage response to user complaints. “Oh, yeah, sorry we made our site suck even worse, but those nice people who do our jobs for free will surely fix our garbage soon!”

Dear wonderful people at @new-xkit-extension, I love you, and I miss you, and while I wish xkit worked with this beta version I’ve been forced into living with, I truly feel for y’all who are trying to deal with this nonsense on behalf of all of us.

And to the folks at Tumblr... maybe try to just... make your site actually more like xkit. You know, actually functional. None of these special new features are useful or functional to me. I respectfully request for a fourth time to be removed from this inane beta test.

Give us OPTIONS. Let us display ALL THE TAGS without having to click a button. Let me have back my Activity+ that actually allowed me to interact with people from my dash! That showed me real-time inline notifications in a way that I could reply to with a single click! Bring me back to my column of open messaging conversation icons so I have easy access to the people I talk with throughout the day instead of closing them all every time I refresh the page. I already feel socially isolated in freaking quarantine, please stop shutting off all my avenues of communication!

Let us have pagination! I mean, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to force heavy users of this site into a beta version that doesn’t allow us to opt out until your engineers had actually figured out how to make it work in a very basic way.

*Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with!

YES. PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM THIS BETA TEST NOW. I have let you know exactly what I want from this site. I just want it to ACTUALLY WORK. For someone who spends 12+ hours a day on this site, this beta test version is NONFUNCTIONAL. PLEASE ALLOW ME TO OPT OUT. I AM LITERALLY BEGGING YOU. I WILL ACTUALLY PAY YOU CASH MONEY TO ALLOW ME TO OPT OUT OF THIS AND GO BACK TO HAVING A FUNCTIONAL BLOG AGAIN. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!

PLEASE! 

I AM OFFICIALLY AT THE END OF MY PATIENCE FOR ENDURING THIS NIGHTMARE.

(one final quick note... I’ve only been back on my dash long enough to make the parenthetical edits-- i.e. adding italics that don’t display and then adding the asterisks at the beginning of each section of quoted text, and already my laptop is overheating again. For reference, I originally typed this entire post from within my tumblr inbox page-- which still functions normally with xkit-- and spent over an hour on it. My laptop was fine the entire time. Clearly the issue is this beta version of the website. I will never forgive tumblr if y’all fry my literal only portal to the outside world at this time. PUT ME BACK TO NORMAL NOW. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING AND ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE. Thanks)

(oops apparently i lied... when the asterisks and the previous final note failed to display, I thought that seemed suspicious, and realized that I literally needed to refresh my entire dash in order to see edited changes. Funny how xkit enabled me to do that in real time, which is just another bit of functionality I’ve lost with this beta program. Please guys, this is really, really not working for me at all, just put it back.)

[crystalninjaphoenix]

The Sixth Crossover Episode

Septics Inverted

A JSE Fanfic

I’m still finishing up the plot of the next Inverted arc, but I also didn’t want to be away from my boys for another week so I decided to work on this ^-^ So you get two crossover episodes in a row for Inverted content! There might only be one or two more parts after this, which is crazy to think about. Anyway, in this part, Magnificent is a bitch and a hypnotist, and the Inverted boys are honestly kind of unprepared for that. Things go downhill for them while the Swaps recuperate and Anti searches. Have fun!

You can find Swap Boys content on @huffle-dork​​​​​‘s blog! And the other crossovers: First | Second | Third | Fourth | Fifth

Taglist I guess. If you don’t want to be tagged in the crossovers please let me know! | @watermelonsinmyattic @asunachinadoll @a-humble-narcissus @odysseus-is-best-boi @acuriousquail @beerecordings @human-being-kinda @romanticslimecreature @bloodygoldensam @rachelclutch @septic-nebula-art @toboboby @the-parentheticals @rammypaige @jc-pavanne @amyxmiaplay @rats-this-username-is-taken @immabethehero @eridangan @bupine @violet--majesty

It was a slow night at the clinic. Nobody had knocked on the door asking for help, and there were no older patients currently in the operating rooms. Schneep had been finishing up some paperwork for the last hour and a half, logging patients and the procedures he’d used on them. But he had finished those up five minutes ago, and now he was very, very bored. It was a rare day that he didn’t have any patients. Maybe he should go out and find someone in need of help. Or convince that doppelganger of him to let him check out his hearing.

Luckily, someone rang the doorbell at that very minute. Schneep sighed in relief, and stood up from where he’d been sitting on the main room’s operating table. He entered the reception area. The bell by the front door rang again. “I am coming, stop ringing!” Schneep shouted. He crossed the room to the front door and opened it.

Jackie stood in the entrance. He smiled and waved. “Hi, Henrik. I was—”

Schneep immediately shut the door.

He was no fool; he could tell something was wrong. Jackie had gone out wearing his red hoodie over his supersuit, and now he was just wearing the suit. And the suit had noticeable tears on one of the sleeves, edged with crusted red. This probably wouldn’t be suspicious at all. If Jackie hadn’t called him ‘Henrik.’ He only did that when he was being serious, but why would he be smiling if he was being serious? And there was something wrong with his eyes, something he couldn’t quite place...

On the other side of the door, Jackie started knocking. “C’mon, dude, that’s just rude. I know you’re not busy or anything. This is important.”

“Where is Chase?” Schneep asked.

“He went home.”

“After this show you went to see?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you here, then?” Schneep demanded.

“Things didn’t exactly go smoothly. I need your help. If you’d just let me in.” Jackie pounded on the door a couple more times, and then Schneep spotted the door handle starting to shake. He quickly reached over and locked the door with an audible chink! The handle rattled a bit longer before Jackie gave up. “C’mon, doc, you’re just being paranoid.”

“I would rather be paranoid than in danger,” Schneep muttered. The way Jackie was speaking was a little...off. “What do you need my help with?”

“It’s easier if you just see it.” The door handle shook a bit more. “Henrik, please just let me in. It’s really important.”

If it actually was very important, Schneep knew Jackie wouldn’t sound this calm. Without another word, he left the reception room, returning to the main operating room. He could hold out here. Or, if needed, he could access the back door from here. But maybe he should wait, just in case he was misjudging Jackie—

CRASH!

That was the sound of the front window breaking. While that was something Jackie might do, Schneep didn’t trust it when it was preceded by that conversation. He jumped into action, pushing the nearest table over to block the door connecting the operating room and reception. Just in time, too. The door tried to open, just to bang against the table. Fingers appeared in the small gap. “Henrik, let me in,” Jackie hissed. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” Schneep muttered. “Have fun with that.” He turned and rushed into the back. The sound of the door banging against the table followed him.

Alright, back door time. Schneep quickly headed in that direction, turning down the hallway. He soon reached the door, and opened it, walking out of the building and into a small alley that ran along the back of the building, separating it from the building behind it. Schneep exhaled slowly, relieved.

He started to walk down the alley, but he only took a few steps before he noticed there was something...there. Was that an animal? Some kind of extra-large dog? He couldn’t quite make it out in the shadows of the alley, but it didn’t quite look like a dog. Schneep squinted. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say it looked like some kind of big cat.

And then the animal started to growl. And it hissed. And all of a sudden it was charging down the alley right at him—!

“Heilige Scheiße!” Schneep yelled, and spun around, running back into the building. He slammed the door closed and immediately the big cat was scratching at the wood. He twisted the lock on the knob, but he didn’t think that would hold for long. The door was already shuddering on its hinges.

What was going on?! Schneep backed up, mind racing. This had to do with the show that Jackie and Chase went to. It really must’ve gone wrong. The only reason Jackie would suddenly be after him would be if there was some sort of hypnotism involved.

The door shook again and the cat hissed. Schneep jumped, taking a few more steps back. Okay, time to make a plan. He looked around the hallway. There were a few room attached. His eyes landed on a thick metal one. He darted toward it, heaving it open and disappearing inside. This was cold storage. Inside were shelves of boxes and hooks hanging from the ceiling. Shivering in the cold, Schneep grabbed one of the boxes, pulling it off the shelf and standing on top of it so he could reach the ceiling. With some effort, he managed to pull one of the hooks down, leaving him with a length of chain and a large, sharp weapon.

Outside the door there were quick footsteps. Schneep paused to listen to them go past. Then he eased the door open to see Jackie, having gotten inside now, walking towards the back door. He unlocked it, and the big cat from outside burst in, growling. Yellow fur with black spots—what the hell was a cheetah doing in the city?

Another man walked into the building shortly after the cheetah. A man wearing a cape and a mask shaped like half a cat’s face. Schneep inhaled sharply. This man looked like Marvin, but obviously he wasn’t, which meant...this was the one from the other world. Marvin had a run-in with him the first night the doppelgangers had shown up, and he’d complained about it at length. This guy was dangerous.

Which meant that he had to get out of here now. Schneep waited until all three of them were looking away, then he threw open the door and ran down the hall. He heard one of them shout, but he didn’t look back.

The cheetah growled. Schneep was almost back to the operating room when he was tackled to the floor. There was a heavy weight pressing down on his back. He cried out, slashing with the hook and hitting something. The cheetah yowled, right next to his ear, and the weight lifted. Schneep scrambled away, glancing over his shoulder to see the cheetah backing up. It shook its head as a new wound on its side bled onto its fur.

Jackie ran forward, passing the cheetah. Schneep got to his feet just in time to dodge a punch from Jackie. “Hey, doc,” Jackie said, smiling. His eyes were glowing bright green.

Schneep yelped. He ducked as Jackie threw another punch aimed for his head, and then immediately turned and ran. He reached the operating room door and threw it open, ready to sprint all the way to the front entrance.

Then the magician in the half mask appeared in front of him. Schneep skidded to a halt and slashed out with the hook. It glanced off the shield the magician summoned. The swing had put him off balance, and the magician reached out, strings flying forward from his fingers to wrap around Schneep’s arms.

“I’ll admit, that was a much better fight than I was expecting,” the magician said, grinning. “But no use in the end.”

Schneep glared at him, pulling at the strings. He tried to angle the hook so that it would catch on the strings and tear them, but it was no use. They were tight, cutting off his circulation. “What do you want?” he growled.

The magician raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it obvious?” Jackie and the cheetah walked into the room, going to stand on either side of the magician. “I want a nice set of puppets.” The magician reached down with one hand and started petting the cheetah’s head. The cat started to purr happily and made a small chirping sound. “Your Jackie and Chase here have already proved their worth.”

“Jackie and...?” Schneep looked down at the cheetah. His eyes widened. He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a strangled sort of squeak.

“You catch on quickly, doctor, I’m impressed,” the magician chuckled. “That will be most useful.” Schneep intensified his efforts to pull away from the strings. The magician made a tsk tsk sound, and more strings appeared, wrapping around Schneep’s torso. “None of that.” 

“Fick dich, du Sohn einer Hauskatze!” Schneep yelled. “Verdammter Bösewicht art von—haben Sie Ihren Dialog aus einer Kindershow gestohlen?!”

“You seem to have some anger issues there, doctor,” the magician said, smirking. He waved his hand, and a spiral of multicolored light appeared in front of Schneep’s eyes. “Maybe it would be better for everyone if you just relaxed...”

——————

“God, how much longer do we have to wait?!” Alt paced the length of the hotel room, glitches buzzing off his arms and shoulders. “I want to get out of here!”

“It’s only been an hour, Alt, please calm down,” Jackie said, sighing.

Alt growled, and punched the nearest wall. “I want to do something!”

“Yeah, I’m with you, but what’re we supposed to do?” Chase asked. “Just walk around the city and get ambushed by Magnificent? If we know someone who can hack into the city security cameras, we should let him do that!” He paused. “You, uh...don’t like these other us, huh?”

“Fuck no!” Alt hoped that his voice wasn’t trembling as much as he thought it was. “They lied to me, tricked me, got i-into my head! I-It’s bad enough that—that Magnificent is still out there, but now we have to deal with them, too!” He whirled around to look at the others. “Do you really think they’ll just give up after we left like that?!”

Chase frowned. “Well...no...”

“Exactly! And we’re just sitting here, waiting for them to come and get us!” Alt shuddered, pixels breaking away. The longer he was here, the more he was glitching. He was actually struggling to hold it together at this point. Why was it like this? Was something going to...happen to him? The thought sent a spike of fear through his nerves. They had to get home soon.

“I don’t think they know that we’ve got a hotel room,” Jackie pointed out. He was lying on one of the beds. Chase was standing in the corner, also fidgeting nervously, Henrik was on the other bed, and JJ was sitting in an armchair. 

“But they could find out!” Alt protested.

“Alt, calm yourself,” Henrik said. He had been lying down with his eyes closed, but he lifted his head and opened his eyes. “We are prepared for anything to happen, on our guard. The other you gave us a phone number to contact, so if worst comes to worst, we can—Jamie, where are you going?”

Everyone looked over to JJ. While they were talking, he’d stood up, and he was now walking towards the hotel door.

“Hey, um...maybe not go outside right now?” Chase said.

JJ ignored him and kept walking.

“Is everything alright? At least tell us,” Chase continued.

Again, no response. And this time, Alt’s eyes widened. A series of thoughts flashed quickly through his head. First, the fact that JJ had disappeared for most of the day. When he’d shown up again, he was with the other Jameson, the hypnotist. Alt had though he’d been acting weird, but hadn’t figured it out. Then a series of memories arose—not his, but the other Anti’s, the remains of the two of them being fused together. The other Anti had seen several people with blank looks like this before. They’d all been under the control of—

“Don’t let him leave!” Alt suddenly shouted. He glitched over to JJ in a split second, grabbing him and pulling him back just as he started to twist the doorknob.

JJ’s expression seemed to darken, though his eyes remained oddly blank. He spun around and immediately began fighting Alt, hitting and scratching his face. Chase jumped into action, grabbing JJ’s arm and pinning them behind his back. JJ tried to kick and stomp at Chase’s feet, but Chase showed no reaction. “What’s going on?!” he asked.

“It’s the other J, he got into his head!” Alt explained.

“Well, what do we do about that?!”

“Hen, try to talk him out of it!” Jackie said. “I’m going to try and call Anti.”

Henrik nodded, and rushed over to the struggling group. He immediately began talking to JJ, reminding him of his job, his friends, his family. All in a gentle tone of voice. Jackie quickly dialed a number, waiting for the other Anti to pick up.

“I don’t know if it’s working,” Chase said. JJ was still struggling. He threw his head back, smashing against Chase’s nose. He yelped, but didn’t let go of him, even as a small trickle of blood came from his nose.

“I’ll ask him!” Jackie said into the phone. He looked over at Alt. “He wants to know if you can get into people’s heads.”

“People’s heads? Like, read minds?” Alt’s eyes went wide, and he shook his head. “I mean like—one time with Magnificent, I—but that wasn’t the same thing, and it was an accident anyway, I—no, I-I don’t think so.”

“He says he doesn’t think so,” Jackie said, turning his attention back to the call. After a moment, he asked, “Are you sure? He’s—” He fell silent. “Okay, okay!” Jackie looked back at the others. “Just knock him out, for now.”

Henrik’s eyes widened. “Are you su—”

Alt glitched around to stand behind JJ and immediately hit him upside the head. JJ went limp.

“Alt!” Henrik protested.

“What, did you have a better idea?!” Alt snapped.

“No, that was good,” Chase said. He walked over to the bed and lay JJ down on top of the covers. “Now what?”

“Anti will be here soon,” Jackie said. “He said he’ll take care of it.”

“Well he better be quick,” Henrik muttered. “You cannot just knock someone out.”

“Well too bad I just did,” Alt said, rolling his eyes. “Now we have to wait. Anyone have a problem with that?”

The others all shook their head in unison. Alt went back to pacing.

——————

Marvin was surprised that there weren’t more books on other universes in their personal library. He’d have to go find some of those. Maybe the ABIM base in the city had a library of their own he could...check out. If not, he knew some places.

But for tonight, he settled down at one of the desks in the library, bent over one of the three books he’d found that did deal with the concept of other universes. Most of what he read spoke about pocket dimensions attached to the main body of the world. Some of them you could just wander into, but others you needed magic or a special procedure to access. For example, apparently there was a nightmare realm that you could trap your enemies’ souls in. Marvin folded over the corner of that page to check out later.

Yet there was almost nothing about entire alternate universes. Some of  the books mentioned that they were a possibility, but that there was no solid proof. Well, that “no solid proof” thing was now total bullshit. They’d seen proof, had proof staying in their house until a couple hours ago. Marvin pushed away the book he’d been reading and grabbed another. There had to be something more to this.

The library door opened and closed. “I’m not going to bed, James,” Marvin said, not looking away from the table of contents on the page. “Don’t say anything, you know I’m not.”

“I was not about to ask you to,” said a voice. “It would be, what is the word? Hyper-critical.”

Marvin frowned, puzzled, and looked up. Schneep was standing against the closed library door, a bag dangling from his shoulder and a ceramic mug in his hand. “What’re you doing here?” Marvin asked. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s not fucking four am for another six hours, why are you home so early?”

“It was a slow day,” Schneep explained, walking over to the desk. “And I have been thinking too much, I think I would not be able to concentrate. Did anything happen while I was gone?”

Marvin snorted, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, shit hit the fan pretty hard. Fucking...glitched-hell fusion...bullshit. We lost all the doppelgangers. And also the word you’re looking for is hypocritical.”

“Ah yes. Critical of the hippos.” Schneep set the mug down on the desk. “Yes, Jameson told me about the loss. That is terrible, imagine what we could have learned.” He shook his head. “Anyway, if you are going to stay up all night, you might as well have something to drink.”

“I don’t like coffee, Schneep,” Marvin muttered, flipping through the pages. In truth, he was okay with it, but it wasn’t his drink of choice.

“Good thing it is not coffee then,” Schneep chuckled. “Just some hot chocolate.”

Marvin eyed the mug. He wouldn’t mind that. For a moment, he ignored it, going back to silently scanning pages. Then he caved, reaching over and grabbing the mug, taking a few quick gulps. “Would’ve preferred a straw,” he muttered.

“Ah, you never say thank you, do you?” Schneep said, clicking his tongue. “That will come back to bite you.”

“Yeah, sure,” Marvin muttered, turning his attention back to the book. “Leave, now.”

Schneep shrugged, and silently turned away, disappearing out the library door. Marvin sighed. Back to doing what he really wanted to: reading about cool magic shit. Time passed silently, with Marvin occasionally reaching over to take another sip of the hot chocolate.

Thirty minutes later, he yawned. Suddenly everything felt...heavier. Marvin blinked slowly. He’d been reading the same sentence over and over for the past minute or so. And now the words were swimming, letters becoming meaningless scribbles. He  was...tired. But he was never this tired this time of night. Something was wrong.

Marvin reached over, trying to grab the mug of hot chocolate. But somehow he ended up knocking it over, liquid spilling over the desk and staining the pages of his book. He made a strangled scream and shot to his feet, but stumbled, his head foggy and heavy. Dimly, he tried to clean up the spilled chocolate with his cape, picking up the book and wiping down the pages.

The library door opened, and Schneep walked back in, looking at the watch on his wrist. “Right on time,” he muttered. “Marvin, I am guessing you do not feel like...yourself.”

Marvin set the book back down, staring at Schneep. Something was different...wait, his eyes were glowing. Bright green light swirling in his irises. Marvin gasped, stumbling backwards. He raised a hand, but the magic wouldn’t come. He couldn’t...couldn’t concentrate on it...

“There will be none of that,” Schneep said, grinning. He walked over to Marvin, who was swaying on his feet. His legs collapsed, and Schneep caught him just in time. “Now, shall we?”

Some sort of words fell out of Marvin’s mouth, slurring together to be completely unrecognizable. It was probably some sort of insult, knowing Marvin. Schneep rolled his eyes, and dragged Marvin out of the library.

He managed to drag him down the basement hall, up the stairs, and into the house’s living room. And once there, he was no longer alone. Magnificent was there, lounging on the sofa like he owned the place. Upon seeing Schneep, the magician grinned, and stood. “Well done, puppet,” he said, clapping. “Give him to me, then go stand with the others.”

Schneep smiled, and dragged Marvin over to Magnificent, dumping him at his feet. Meanwhile, Jackie and the cheetah were standing over by the wall, next to the door, and Schneep went over to join them.

Magnificent rose to his feet, looking down at his counterpart as he struggled to his hands and knees, weighted down by the drug Schneep had put in his system. “I’ll admit you’re powerful, but not the brightest.”

Marvin managed to gather enough energy to flip him off.

Eyes darkening, Magnificent pulled Marvin harshly upwards, claws digging into his shoulders. “You’re going to be trouble,” Magnificent said in a low voice. His head tilted to the side. “I may need your power if I’m to get out of this world, but I don’t need you.” His eyes started to glow green and purple, static electricity darting around his arms and hands. Green lightning began enveloping Marvin’s body, and he shuddered. Behind his mask, Marvin’s eyes turned green, and then milky white. His skin paled to white and veins start to turn dark, bruised purple. Magnificent laughed—

BANG!

—and stumbled back, eyes suddenly wide with shock. He dropped Marvin, who fell to the floor, and clutched at his shoulder, now bleeding.

{Oh dear, it appears I missed.} At the top of the stairs leading into the room stood Jameson, holding a pistol pointed at Magnificent. {I was aiming to go a little bit higher,} he said wryly. His voice was projected to Magnificent alone, echoing in his head. {Well, there’s always another bullet.}

Before Jameson could fire again, Magnificent snarled, and waved his hand. A green shield flickered into existence before him. Behind him, the others tensed. The cheetah growled, ears flattening against his head, and Jackie reached to his side, pulling out a familiar handgun. Magnificent gestured back at them, indicating they should wait. “I was wondering where you were,” he said conversationally. “They say you usually go to bed early, so my plan was to catch you in your sleep. Seems that’s not possible anymore.”

Jameson’s mustache twitched, a slight hint of a smile crossing his face. {Indeed.} He looked over the situation. Marvin was on the floor, pale and not moving. Schneep and Jackie’s eyes were glowing green as they stood at the ready. And he was starting to get a suspicion about that growling cat. {Your raw power is impressive,} Jameson said. He walked down the stairs, keeping the pistol aimed at the magician. {But you have no tact. Your methods are crude and blunt.}

Annoyance flashed over Magnificent’s face. He looked actually offended. “I’ve spent years perfecting my so-called ‘blunt’ methods,” he said in a low voice. His hand traced a circle in the air, leaving a swirl of mesmerizing green magic in its wake. The spiral stayed where it was, spinning invitingly.

{Only years? Oh, you simple child. I’ve had decades to work on mine.} Jameson reached inside his vest and withdrew his watch. He let it dangle from its chain, the ticking sound loud in the near-silent room. {As I said, your power is impressive. But your use of it is like wielding a broadsword: strong but destructive. Mine is like a scalpel: much more precise. It’s no wonder your puppets have such large entryways into their minds. You’ve broken down their walls instead of picking the door’s lock.}

“And yet, it’s so effective” Magnificent flicked his fingers. “Must we really argue over semantics? Let’s cut to the chase. You want your friends back, don’t you?”

{What makes you think that?}

“Well you cared enough to put a trigger in their minds to snap them out of hypnosis. Don’t think I didn’t notice that.” Magnificent’s eyes narrowed. “You caused quite a bit of trouble for me.”

{Good,} Jameson said, smugly. {That was the point. Well, actually the point was to prevent hypnosis altogether, but trouble is good enough.}

Magnificent sneered, but said nothing. Jameson didn’t continue either. The two of them locked their eyes with each other. The watch was still swaying back and forth, the spiral of magic was still swirling inward. For a moment, everything remained still. Then in unison, the two of them glanced down at the other’s chosen tool of hypnosis.

The struggle began, like a mental tug of war. Each trying to pull the other to their side while resisting the pull themselves. One moment, the spiral of lights was glowing strong...the next, they were sputtering as the ticking of the clock grew louder. Then the watch’s steady rhythm would falter, and the lights would flare anew. Magnificent’s eyes would dull, then he’d blink furiously and scowl. Jameson’s expression would go slack, then sharpen. They were chipping away at the other’s defenses while trying to maintain their own.

Memories drifted forward, like bubbles rising to the surface of a lake. With a little effort, the bubbles could be popped, their contents revealed.

Magnificent chuckled. {You had one friend in the world, and you didn’t even listen to him. It’s no wonder he left,} he projected.

Jameson raised an eyebrow. {At least I know it was him who left, and not me who left because I couldn’t stand the idea of him spending time with someone else.}

{Well I’m not the one who cut my heart out because I was so paralyzed at the thought of dying.}

{Well I’m not the one who scarred my face and permanently changed my eyes in search of more power.}

{You’re only so desperate to be in control because you spent so long with no control at all.}

{You’re only so eager for puppets because they provide the illusion of companionship.}

They must’ve stood there for ten minutes straight, but eventually someone had to slip up. The ticking of the clock faltered further, like a pulse beating irregularly. The spiraling lights grew stronger, colors becoming more vivid, mixing together enticingly. Jameson gasped softly, and dropped his own hypnosis efforts to concentrate on standing his ground. Magnificent grinned. Without having to worry about resisting the pull of the watch, he intensified his efforts, eyes starting to glow and swirl as well. Jameson physically took a step back as he mentally retreated. He’d said earlier that Magnificent’s raw power was impressive, and now it was proving to be greater than his own. Like a fire eating away at the structures of a wooden house, he felt his defenses collapsing but couldn’t do anything more to prop them up. The lights were just...so...beautiful...

Jameson’s eyes flared a bright green, the same as the others’ glowed, and he fell to his knees.

Magnificent laughed triumphantly and called off the lights. “Now, this is better, isn’t it?” He took a few deep breaths, trying not to show how truly rattled he was. He’d never met anyone with powers similar to his, and the new experience was...well, it was new. But now he’d be prepared for it. “I’d tell you to say ‘Yes, Magnificent,’ but obviously that isn’t an option for you. So just stand up, and pick up your little friend here.” He kicked Marvin’s leg where he was still laying, unmoving.

Jameson climbed to his feet jerkily, like a real puppet on a string. He picked up Marvin with shaking hands, holding him close to his chest and trembling slightly.

“Good boy.” Magnificent looked around the living room. “We’ve been here long enough. All of you, follow me. We might as well finish this back at the tent before going to pick up my other set of puppets.” Magnificent chuckled to himself. It was starting to look as though being sucked into another dimension was the best thing to happen to him in a while.

——————

Back in a hotel room elsewhere in the city, a group of four men were huddling around a bed where another man was laying. Suddenly, the air around them started to glitch and they surged backwards. Another figure appeared next to the bed, arms folded and glaring even as pixels drifted away from his skin. “There, is that good for you?” Anti grumbled.

“Depends. What did you do?” Alt asked warily. “Why’d it take so long?”

Anti rolled his eye. “Well, I had to go inside and rummage around, looking for the magick Jackson was using. Then I had to very carefully dismantle it in order to not cause damage. That’s why it took so long, dick. Do you want your friend to be a vegetable?”

Alt looked like he wanted to say something else, but Henrik interrupted him before he could. “Thank you, Anti,” he said. “I understand this was difficult.”

“Eh.” Anti waved away the comment. “I did what I had to. Alt might learn how to do this on his own someday.”

Alt bristled, static pulling off his shoulders. “Well I guess we can’t all be—”

“Can we not do this right now, Alt? Please?” Chase asked. “This isn’t the time.”

He didn’t look happy about it, but Alt closed his mouth, glaring at Anti. He glitched away, now leaning against the wall.

Jackie shook his head. “God, these guys...they got inside so quickly...”

“Don’t any of you blame yourself,” Anti said firmly. “Jameson has had a lot of time to practice. And, well...” He looked away. “It seems your JJ friend had...a backdoor in his mind. I’m guessing you all know what that’s about.” The others exchanged glances. “Well, Jameson just took advantage of that. It’s nobody’s fault.” He turned away. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to keep looking for your furry bitch.”

“Wait!” Alt suddenly blurted out.

Anti stared at him. “Yes?”

Alt hesitated. For a moment, something...scared flashed across his face. But it was quickly buried. “So you haven’t found anything, then?”

“No.” Anti’s voice was somewhat softer than it might’ve been. “I know you’re sick of waiting, but I’ll find something soon, and then you can help.”

“...fine,” Alt muttered, settling back into his lean. “Hurry off, then.”

“I will.” And with that, Anti glitched away.

Back in his hub, Anti searched the city’s security cameras one more time. He’d seen glimpses of this other Marvin, this Magnificent, but that’s all they were—glimpses. The magician was fond of teleportation, it seemed. And he’d disappeared lately. He had to be somewhere...maybe somewhere the city didn’t have cameras.

Anti sighed, and glitched into another room. He might as well check on his version of these boys while he was here. Flicking through the cameras he’d hidden in the house, he saw that only Marvin and Jameson were home. Marvin was in the basement library and Jameson was in the kitchen with a cup of tea.

Something was...off about that. True, Marvin often stayed in the library for long periods of time, studying his black magic, but...he had a hard time believing that Jameson would still be drinking tea at nearly ten at night. Anti leaned closer to the monitor, sinking his hand into the screen. Yes, he could tell something was wrong. And if he stared at the footage long enough, he noticed a slight jump—

“N̷̷̢o͟͝!̡” Anti cried, loud enough to startle Sam in the other area. “It’s a loop!” He looked backwards to see Sam flying closer, curious. “Someone’s h͏a̢c͢k̵e̢d̴͏ my fucking cameras!”

He fizzled into pixels and disappeared. Static consumed the security monitors, and when Anti reappeared, they were clear. “Shit!” He shouted, staring at the monitor connected to the living room. On the screen, he watched Jameson, eyes glowing green, pick up Marvin. Magnificent said something about them going back to a tent before picking up another set of puppets. “Oh you fucking bastard. You fucking—fuck, you’re going on my list. Hope you’re proud of yourself.”

Another monitor flickered to life, displaying lines of binary code. Anti turned to look at it, and the monitor scrolled down. A new string of binary appeared at the bottom. Anti growled, clutching his eye-patch, scrunching the material in his fist.

Sam flew over and bumped Anti’s arm. They pointed at the monitor with binary, curious. “That’s my list,” Anti emphasized. “Not a lot of people go on there. Mostly me’s from other dimensions, fuck, you seen some of those guys?” Sam nodded. “Yeah, I know you have. Fucking...bad ends and corrupted brothers and patients and fuck.” Anti shook his head. “What am I doing?! This isn’t the time!”

His mind returned to what he’d overheard Magnificent say. Something about a tent...he burst into pixels. All monitors went crazy, switching rapidly between footage and still images from CCTV cameras all around the city. Until one froze on an image of a green circus tent in the middle of an empty lot. The footage from that camera rewound rapidly, until it showed a familiar pair walking into the tent. Jackie and Chase, the ones from this world. Anti reformed in front of this monitor. The footage fast-forwarded again. Was there movement in the shadows? He switched to infrared video feed and reexamined it. There were some cats waiting in the deep shadows of the area, where their black fur would blend into the darkness.

Anti’s eyes narrowed. “Where’d you get all those cats? And why? Furry bitch.” He laughed to himself. “Well, now I know where...” He trailed off. “But there won’t be just him. He’ll have all the rest of them, too.” As much as he would love to charge in guns blazing, he didn’t want the boys from his world dead. Or, well, killed. Which could happen in the crossfire. No, he’d need help.

“Alright, you otherworlders, you better be good at fighting,” Anti said to himself. “Sam, you good still holding down the fort?” The little eyeball, now hovering in the gap between CPUs, bobbed once. “Great. I’ll be back in...a few hours, maybe. By morning, at worst.”

Before glitching away again, Anti loosened the knot on the strings securing his eye-patch. 

This Magnificent guy had managed to take down five people who Anti hadn’t taken down in two years; he was a force to be reckoned with. From his actions, it was clear he was efficient and ruthless. Well fine then. He’d get what was coming to him.

[hazinhoodies]

No Love Lost (Part 1)

Harrison Osterfield x CF!Reader

A/N: uh hi. so this is a lot. this was going to be a one-shot originally but then it hit 15k words so here’s some of that. I did as much research into cystic fibrosis as i could (thats what cf means btw). Thanks to @loverholland who helped me edit this (and future parts). Also this is my submission for @starksparker summer writing challenge. I had the prompt of “I know you. What’s wrong” and its used pretty bad but this will make up for it hopefully. its a whole mess of aus. there some fuck boy in there, some best friend. brace for impact.

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: talk of death, talk of hospitals, talk of sickness, swearing,  messing with tenses, a ridiculous amount of parentheticals (yes they’re supposed to be there), cheesy writing

Harrison was sweet. You had to admit it. One of the nicest people you’d ever come by. He was your best friend all throughout school, he stuck by you through all the coughing fits, your plethora of medicines, and the multiple times you’d caught bronchitis or something along those lines, not to mention all the other things that come with being a teen in high school; drama, puberty, stress. You were insanely thankful that he put up with all his own problems as well as yours, health or otherwise, and everything that came with having cystic fibrosis.

You were diagnosed at five, after the third time you’d caught pneumonia. Most people are diagnosed before the age of two but either a) you weren’t screened for it at birth or b) your doctors missed something. Just your luck.

You didn’t really know what it meant at first. Just that now you had to take these medicines, pills, and use inhalers (which hurt on bad days). Your favourite part was always the gummy vitamin that you had to -no, got to- take. You heard your mom talking about how important it was that you cleared your airway every day and that you did some of, if not all, the exercise the doctors wanted you to take. They made your lungs burn.

Your mother, however, felt guilty. She blamed herself for your sickness, but her guilt was helping no one affected. She should’ve known that you were growing too slowly and that your breathing problems weren’t normal. She feels horrible.

But if she had and you’d been diagnosed earlier or later or exactly when you were, you would still have cystic fibrosis.

You started to understand what it was at the age of eleven after you’d decided to research it yourself. You knew better than to WebMD it. Long since being diagnosed, you weren’t looking for a cure, just an understanding of what this meant for you.

You found out too much. Things that you were certain a normal 11 year old wouldn’t know about. But you weren’t normal. Anything but.

You found out that the average person with cystic fibrosis died at the age of 37, it’s most common in Northern Europe and least common in Africans and Asians. Although not recognized until the 1930s, certain aspects of cystic fibrosis were identified as early as 3,000 BC, likely due to the migration of people, gene mutations and nourishment. One in Four people have cystic fibrosis. About eighty percent of people with cystic fibrosis die from it. There’s no known cure, if there is one at all.

Your first (and only, so far) double lung transplant happened about a year later. You remember the feeling of knowing something was wrong too vividly. Headed down the stairs, your twelve year old self had already run through your extensive morning routine but you couldn’t shake the feeling of something caught in your lungs. You had to breathe through your mouth to feel like you were getting anywhere near enough oxygen.

“Have you cleared your airways yet” Your mother had asked upon hearing how rough your voice sounded when combined with how much your chest heaved when you breathed. You nodded and she asked you to go to it again. It was on your way back down the steps when it had become instantly more difficult to breathe. Calling for your mom, your voice was weak and wheezed its way through the words. It felt like you were suffocating. You gripped the stair railing tight in your hand as you felt your vision start to tunnel. With whatever luck you still had, you made it to the bottom of the stairs without collapsing and she rushed you to the hospital.

You don’t know what they did to make it better temporarily but you remember being hooked up to all sorts of antibiotics to slow the mucus build up while they found a pair of lungs for you. A month later and they had found a pair. You spent the next while in the hospital from the surgery while the doctors monitored you.

Lung transplants either work or they don’t. There’s no in between. No ‘it works but could be better’. They do, or they don’t.

Your mother would tell you when you were older that yours almost didn’t work. You almost didn’t wake up, but you wouldn’t remember any of it when she told you so.

You were overjoyed when you got to go back to school, you knew you weren’t healed, you still had cystic fibrosis, but you were doing better. That’s when you met Harrison.

With Harrison, you felt like you could be somewhat. He didn’t know about your CF at the time, you held it back to not drive him away. You suppressed coughs as much as you could. He was good though. A good person, a kind soul. So good that when you were with him, you were normal. You felt like a normal kid. You forgot about the multiple inhalers that sat on the bathroom counter and the bottles of pills next to them. You forgot about the doctors, and your enzymes or lack thereof. With Harrison, you forgot you were dying.

He started to get curious when you were missing school a lot and played it off as a cold when you would cough a lot at one time, but Harrison isn’t an idiot and you’re his friend; he knew something was up.

So you told him. You told him you had cystic fibrosis. He seemed confused so you continued on. You explained that while it also affects your pancreas, intestines, and kidneys, it meant your lungs were weak and prone to infection. Mucus builds up inside your lungs and other parts of your respiratory system. You told him that if your lungs get worse then you’ll likely need a transplant.

He nodded along and promised that he understood but you knew he didn’t fully understand what it meant, just as you had.

You didn’t tell him you were dying.

Not then. Not at all.

He’d found out on his own that it meant you were dying. You never asked how. The pair of you were in your living room at the age of fourteen, in the middle of a game of Mario Party. The computer Boo was winning. You could tell that something was bothering him but weren’t sure if it was something to ask about, you did anyway.

“Haz? What’s bothering you?” You spoke as the Luigi on the screen moved 6 spaces.

“Nothing, I’m fine” He stared distantly towards the screen, it’s more likely he’s looking past it.

“And lying. I know you. What's wrong?" No response. "Harrison, tell me” You refused to press any buttons, letting the die on the screen roll above your characters head until he gave you an answer.

Harrison looked down into his lap, fumbling with some of the buttons on the remote. His voice comes out small and meek, “You’re dying”

“No, I’m not,” Some weird instinct told you to lie about it and protect his feelings, but the glimmer of hope he had when he looked at you made you wish that you hadn’t said that. “I mean, I am. But I’m not bad” You hesitate on ‘bad’, unsure of how you want to phrase things. You knew you had to be careful of what you say. “I’m not even on a transplant list yet,” His expression shifted to worry, “It’s a good thing” He somewhat relaxed. “It means that I’m managing it well. And I am. I take care of myself, take all the medication I need to. It’s a lot but I do it”

The look on his face made your heart go soft. Somewhere between worry and relief, happy and sad.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner” You whispered, your gaze falling to the floor. You felt bad about telling him, that’s for sure. But for once you wanted to be normal.

“It’s okay,” Harrison’s voice was almost as quiet as yours, the overly happy game music playing in the background (it really didn’t help with the mood). He looked over at you and your expression made his heartbreak. “Hey,” he grabbed your attention, “This doesn’t change anything. No love lost, yeah?”

You nodded. “What I meant is that you don’t have to worry about me” That was the end of it. You rolled a five.

The next few months saw a shift in your relationship. It’s not that you spent any less time together, quite the opposite actually. Harrison wanted to spend so much time with you, most of which consisted of the two of you doing anything either of you could think of. More games of Mario Party (you won more often, he’d say he let you but he definitely didn’t), going out for food, bowling, laser tag, you name it.

He also took care of you. No matter how much you said you didn’t need it and you didn’t want to bother him, you’d get text messages at the same time every day asking if you’d taken your enzymes, or cleared your airways, or if you were close to running out of anything.

Harrison was sweet. He was sweet to you and you couldn’t be more thankful.

High school came and the world watched on as the two of you grew closer than ever. He was there as soon as he could be whenever you were in the hospital and even if you weren’t, he was at your house or you were at his as much as you could be.

Looking back, you weren’t sure how you didn’t see it.

While you were still Harrison’s best friend, he spent time with a lot of other girls. You weren’t dumb. You saw the way they looked at him. Their looks were anything from ogling or as if he was the moon. Their never-ending night light. The one that lit up the dark for them.

It was cheesy and sometimes (usually) gross, but he never looked at them that way. Even while his arm was wrapped around them in the halls he was either making some joke towards you (you’d say he was bullying you, but you weren’t that hurt) or laughing at something someone else had said or done.

Every two weeks there was a different girl on his arm. It didn’t really make sense to you. He was so nice and caring towards you but then these girls that he claimed to have feelings for barely got a second glance from him.  Even still, part of you wanted to be in their position, if only for the title that came with it.

You fell in love with Harrison slowly. Like when you come home late and don’t want to wake anyone, so you shut the door precariously, even the small click after it’s shut is too loud. Or like waiting for a flower to grow. Checking on it until you saw the first sprout and then the first leaf.

Your sudden realization, your ‘click’, was when you’d heard one of the girls talking about him after they’d ended things. You weren't sure if you could call it a breakup, we’re they even official? Who knows.

Water ran from the tap in the bathroom as you washed your hands, you couldn’t help but listen to the conversation she was having on the far side of the room. It was whispered and sobbed but you still managed.

“What’d he say?” Her friend, you thought her name was Olivia, places a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“He just said he didn’t feel anything for me anymore” Harrison ex-thing, her name was Erica, (she was one of the “you are the moon” starers) barely got out the last word before sobs racked her body, her upper body and torso shook forcefully with each one. She was really hurt. “Said that there was something about someone else. I don’t get it. It was three weeks how could there be someone else”.

If it was three weeks then why are you so worked up over it? You fought not to roll your eyes.

“Erica, I told you that he was a bad idea. I told you that he’d hurt you. And you still…” Olivia trailed off with a sigh. Some best friend.

“I don’t know. Maybe I thought I could change him or something. Fuck, I don’t know. He’ll always be a fuckboy I guess. Can’t wait to see who he’s got next week” Sarcasm drenched her words. She sniffled, wiping her eyes.

You dried off your hands and left the bathroom.

It hurts to hear people talk so horrendously about your best friend. That wasn’t the Harrison that you knew, the Harrison you knew was gentle and caring and wore his heart on his sleeve. What about you made him that different?

Harrison came over that night, you helped him with his English paper and then the two of you retreated to doing your own things on your phones. He laid on your bed and you used his stomach as a pillow, lying perpendicular to him. Your legs hung off the bed a little, but you didn’t care.

The room was silent for at least fifteen minutes with the exception of the odd chuckle followed by the other asking to look at whatever it was they laughed at. That was until you piped up. Your mindless scrolling only lasts so long before you fall into your own thoughts.

“Heard Erica talking about you in the bathroom today” You let your hand fall to your chest, phone facedown against your sternum. Harrison didn’t really talk about the girls he was involved with. At least not with you. You weren’t sure why but never pressed.

“Yeah? What’d she say?” His eyes didn’t leave his phone.

“She was talking to Olivia, I think it was Olivia. The one who sits next to Tom in English”

“Yeah, Olivia” Harrison confirmed.

“Yeah her. And she -Erica-  was saying about how you broke up with her and said that there was someone else. And then Olivia said something about how she warned her not to go for you because you’re a bad idea and you’d only hurt her and shit like that”  

“Sounds like Liv” Harrison chimes in.

“Then Erica said that she thought she could change you or something like that? I don’t know. It was just weird to hear them talk so bad about you when what I see is the polar opposite” You started your scrolling again.

“People talk Y/N. She was just upset I guess. That’s okay” You nodded and there was a moment of silence

“Just out of curiosity. Why do you go through girls so fast?”

“I just don’t feel anything with them really. I know what I want, and sadly it’s things that I don’t think they’d ever be able to give, or have, or be”

“What do you want?” Your question threw him off guard and he had to pause for a second.

“I want pure love. It’s not driven by lust. A kind of love where I don’t have to worry about what I look like or how I act around them because I know they’ll love me just the same. One where we have electric conversations one moment and then the next we’re in silence but it’s fine. Because it’s comfortable. I want to have a connection. I want the kind of love where you’d die for the other person. I’d die for a love like that. And it’s something that I don’t think I could get from Erica or Megan or Hannah. No matter how long we’re together”

“But you’re not even going to stick around long enough to see if there is all that with them?”

“No. I know it makes me sound like an asshole but I know what I want. I just have to wait until that love realizes what they want”

You thought for a moment. Maybe it made sense? In some weird, twisted, ‘i’m an asshole but don’t want you to think so’ sort of way. “Okay” You trailed off.

“Also we were only a thing for like three weeks why is she this upset”

“That’s what I thought!” The two of you laughed and settled back into a comfortable silence.

You’d since learned to trust what you knew about Harrison, disregarding parts of what was said that night. He was kind, and took care of you, and cared deeply about so many things. You knew about his reputation, but you didn’t care. He was your best friend, and what kind of friend would you be if you changed your opinion based on what other people said. Certainly better than ones who date the guy who broke your heart (*cough* Olivia, *cough cough*) The same one who warned you not to date him.

And sure enough, the following week, Olivia and Harrison were together.

Olivia was the longest he’d been with someone that you knew about. A whole eight weeks was a record for Harrison. It almost made you think that maybe he was capable of finding love on his own. And that made you happy. Happy for him.

Then there was that damn click. That fucking leaf. The one that made you sad when you saw them in the halls, her hand in his. The same one that made your stomach drop when he'd kiss her cheek before class.

Although his time never wavered with you, you couldn't help but wish it was you under his arm. With his lips against your skin.

High school ended, Harrison went on to drama school. It fit, he’d always been dramatic (haha very funny Y/N) but you were proud of him for pursuing his dream of acting. You’d gone onto university as well. Although the two of you didn’t see each other nearly as much, you were still his best friend, and him yours. The texts to take your meds had changed from whenever you had to take one to only every morning, and the two of you would talk that night.

June Twenty-Second. You’d finished all your exams two months ago. Still riding on the high of being a university graduate, you didn’t expect for it to drop so fast.

You were put on the transplant list your sophomore year of university. But you were getting worse, you’d moved up significantly since being put on. June Twenty-Second is when your doctor told you that if you couldn’t get one of the next few lungs, you’d be out of time.

When you’d discovered that you were dying when you were eleven, you struggled to cope with it. Slowly but surely, you’d learned to accept that you couldn’t live forever, and if you’d been asked a month ago how you felt about death, you know how you would have answered. You would have said that it’s a part of life. That every journey has its end. You would have said that no matter what you did you couldn’t change anything and you were okay with dying. Maybe it was your time.

But when your doctor finally, officially tells you that they don’t know if they'll get you a pair of lungs in time, one thing comes to mind.

I’m not ready for this.

Immediately followed by another thought.

Harrison

Tags:

haz tags:

@summernykole @hjosterfield @imagines-andshizz @thequeensardine @artemisiaarm @sincerelymlg @butithasntkilledyouyet @bitchymathematician @ixchel-9275 @honeyyhuggs @nedthegay @ohyouremymedicine @awkwardfangirl2014 @parkerpeterholland @screeching-student-unknown

@osterfieldholland01 @happymagicbee @headsup-itsmostlypeter @starlightfound @spideyyypeter @empressdreams @isabellyduh

Others who i think might enjoy or hate me for it (or already do)

@wazzupmrstark @parkerpuffwrites @parrkerspeters @nnatasha @lamptracker (really i just want you to read this)

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

Fic: Come As You Are (1/11)

THIS IS FINALLY HERE OH MY GOD. 

Summary: A series of codas/tags/missing scenes to every episode of the first season of TItans. In the first episode, our protagonists are moving towards each other, but first, they each navigate the existential nightmare that is their own mind.

Warnings: SPOILERS for the whole series, some swearing, lot of dense parenthetical nonsense and fancy formatting. Dick and Rachel marinate in their own anxiety. I’ve also taken the liberty to fill in some gaps that were left by canon.

this is meant to be a companion series to my episode recap series. i’m in the midst of my worst writer’s block ever--it took two whole months just to write this chapter; i’m still far from happy with it, but if i looked at it anymore i was going to scream--but i hope to finish both the recap series and this fic series before s2 airs this fall. 

(s/o to @cautiousamber whose continued love for the show and for what it's doing delights me always)

Come As You Are

1.01

Strange things live inside Rachel’s head.

When she was little, people around her would come to her in her dreams in coloured silhouettes, glowing and wailing, ripped into pieces by monsters that lurked in the shadowy corners of her mind. As she grew, the figures grew more refined, more recognisable, but they never stopped screaming; when she heard words, it was only the monster that spoke.

I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU, RACHEL

The years passed, and the dreams started to leak into the real world: she would see strange, fresh scars on Melissa’s arms while trembling in her arms after another DREAM; hazy, coloured halos followed people she knew and horrible things happened to people she hated; the monster would stare back at her in the mirror now, eyes inky black, leaking venom into her veins. TRUST ME, the monster would say, calm while everybody else screamed, and Rachel, well. After a point, she forgot to scream, too.

Then one night, she dreams of a little boy on the trapeze who watches his parents fall to their deaths, and the monster does something it has never done before: it laughs.

-

“Master Dick, I trust you received the package I sent you last week?”

Dick idly doodles a large ‘R’ on his notepad while wedging his phone between his shoulder and his ear. “I did, Alfred, it came in just this morning. Thanks. I, uh,” he makes the edges sharper, the ends like knife blades, “I should’ve called to let you know earlier.”

“Yes,” Alfred says crisply, “You should have.”

He twists the pad until it looks like the R is in motion, bounding across the page. Two tables over, Detective Oyode flings a casefile onto his desk in disgust. Across the room, Johnson is eyeing Dick with suspicious disdain. The air is heavy with the smell of stale coffee; there’s a lingering whiff of cigarette smoke from the balcony where Carter, Takashi and Mulligan take smoke breaks twice every hour, on the dot. The floor buzzes with steady chatter, the clicking of computer keys and ringing phones. Dick’s active cases tray is screamingly empty.

“I’ve been busy,” he says. “Settling in, and all that.”

“I see.” A pregnant pause. “And I suppose your new responsibilities as a police detective is the only reason you requested that I send over your modified batarangs?”

“Birdarangs,” Dick says, without thinking.

“Ah. Yes.” Alfred’s voice turns fond. “It’s been well over a decade since you came up with that convention, Master Dick; I must confess that it is good to hear it again. More than anything… it is reassuring to see that you haven’t decided to retire Robin altogether.”

A knot of anxiety tightens somewhere behind Dick’s sternum. This is about as secure a line as he can get without actually using the comms in his Robin suit, but it’s still jarring to hear someone just—just say it aloud like that. Especially after—

Dick’s grip on his pen tightens and he scores across the ‘R’ with such ferocity that the nib tears through the paper. Johnson’s put his coffee mug aside and is starting to walk in his direction and if Dick tenses any more he’s sure he’s going to do something he’ll regret. “Sorry, Alfred,” he says. “Something’s come up; I gotta go.”

“Very well, Master Dick. I hope that you will continue to keep in touch.”

“Bye.” He slips the phone in his pocket, gets up, and tosses his ruined pad in the wastebin. He neatly sidesteps Johnson, swipes the abandoned casefile from Oyode’s desk, and hurries out of the precinct.

-

(it’s all right. you’re beautiful.)

Now that (she’s) put some distance between (her) and (her) attackers (hot metal projectiles where there should be nothing but fire, but she can’t—she can’t—), the molten panic that’s been fuelling (her) escape abates, just a little. (She) slows to a walk, pulling (her) coat close.

(it’s cold, but she’s known colder.)

The further (she) walks from the woods, the less desolate it is. There are more buildings here and more people, turning to look at (her) as (she) walks by them. Almost on instinct, (she) turns into a gas station and makes (her) way into the bathroom, coming to a stop in front of a grimy mirror. (She) is all edge and glorious skin, shining and sharp.

(beautiful. you will know it. and more importantly, they will too.)

(She) empties her purse to find documents and keys and a dozen little opaque clues as to (her) identity. (She) is Kory Anders, and the name is both everything and nothing at all. It is everything because it fits, slots into place effortlessly in her mind like she’s known it all along, but doesn’t trigger a cascade of memories, or anything other than flashes of light and bone-deep cold (and unimaginable pain).

No matter. She is Kory Anders, and this is as good a starting point as any. Besides, she is sure that the real her has a taste for adventure.

-

When the fight’s over, Dick changes into regular clothes a couple of dead-end alleyways over and limps back to his car, trying very hard not to think about Batmobiles, or Batcaves, or anything bat-related whatsoever. His shoulders ache with tension and his knuckles feel pulverised—he isn’t quite used to being the ones delivering all the punches yet. There’s blood and glass in his hair and the acrid stench of used smoke pellets lingers around him like a miasma; he’s stuffed his costume and weapons back in the case, but there are still red smears around the lock and—

—he’s not even entirely sure he’s managed to leave the site of the fight clean; or if he’s gotten all the security cams in the alley; it’s been so long since he’s done this and even longer since he’s done it alone—

(All right. Deep breath. Deep breath. Another one. And another one.)

Everything feels even more absurd when, later in the night, he’s stuck in downtown traffic, trying to breathe past bruised ribs and the bite of glass shards in his fingers. It wasn’t supposed to be like this; moving this far from Gotham was supposed to be the start of a clean break. He’d been slowly working up to visiting Wayne Manor one more time (one last time, but he can’t—he can’t bring himself to—) to return the Robin costume, trying to reconcile the memories of safety and comfort he had under Bruce and Alfred’s care with yawning isolation of that gigantic mansion, the stomach-dropping terror that he would be abandoned (again) if he failed (again), and the anger that never seemed to stop simmering regardless of how much he punched, how much he cried, how much he laughed.

Being Robin without Batman feels like something vital’s been cut out of him, but just being Dick Grayson isn’t enough for all the evil in the world.

Dick stumbles into his apartment building, trying very hard not to make carrying a giant silver briefcase in the dark seem suspicious. He enters his apartment—dangerously open to the world but devoid of shadows—and lets himself slump onto the sofa. He’s going to (clean his costume and equipment, scrub the security cam feeds, clean the car of bloodstains and evidence, destroy the copy of Oyode’s file that he’d made, type up a report for his personal log) but for now he closes his eyes and—breathes.

Just—

Just for a minute.

-

The city is drab and cold in ways Rachel is entirely unused to; for some reason, she thinks of old white bedsheets turned grey from use and wear and repeated washing over years and years. Melissa ripped one of them into rags the last time Rachel DID SOMETHING STUPID, knocked over a vase, cut her hand on the shattered pieces, and dripped blood all over the kitchen floor. Melissa’d spent an entire afternoon scrubbing at bloodstains, refusing to answer to Rachel’s tearful apologies. (The voice told her to break the next vase over Melissa’s head, which made Rachel want to vomit.)

Melissa had washed the blood out of those rags as thoroughly as she could, leaving them even more dirty-grey than they were. That’s what the city looks like: wrung of colour, washed and washed again into grey submission—

“We’re here,” the officer in the front seat of the car says, dropping Rachel abruptly out of her thoughts. She’s taken into the precinct and asked to sit inside a windowless room; it isn’t until the officer that’s trying to get her attention touches her shoulder and she flinches, light and sound and terror rushing in, that the numbness abates and the voice snarls KILL HIM!

can’twon’tdon’t—

The officer looks shocked for a moment before his expression softens and he backs away. “Somebody will come talk to you now, okay?” he says, and leaves. Rachel waits and picks at the fraying edges of her sleeves, wishing—not for the first time—that she’d brought her phone along. It’s not like she has anybody to call, really; she just wants something to do that’s not staring at the walls (of an interrogation room, this is an interrogation room) and trying not to think about how desperately alone she is right now.

A few minutes later, Detective Dick Grayson walks in and introduces himself. Rachel jolts at the sight of him; she can hardly hear what he’s saying over the chorus of holy shit! holy shit! that’s taken over her mind, because holy shit—this is the little boy on the trapeze. He glows blood-red, and every movement of his leaves behind smudges of light and colour and life in this otherwise cement-grey room.

She holds his hands, tells him, you’re the boy from the circus; he frowns, but doesn’t tell her she’s crazy, or stupid, or BADWRONGEVIL. Dick Grayson promises to help her, and for the first time since watching her mother fall to the floor with a bullet hole through her head, Rachel feels hope.

-

Kory Anders is on a plane to the United States.

Twelve hours ago, she didn’t know her name; now she not only has an identity, but a destination, a purpose (a mission). Everything from swiping cards to speaking a dozen different tongues to summoning fire to her fingertips to the clean, beautiful effortlessness of throwing an asshole across a hotel room has been… intuitive; she thinks as she does, moves as she feels, learns as she touches. She doesn’t know what she will find when she lands (knows without really knowing that where she is going is both impossibly vast and comically small) but she’s going to start with looking for the girl in the photo and see where that leads her.

(--to a bubble suspended in infinite nothingness, shackles around her wrists and feet—)

And if that means burning up a few more entitled assholes along the way, so be it.

[kadoodles-on-ao3]

It's been a while since my last aside so I felt like sharing what I've been working on in my free time! I promise I'm not lazy, I'm just busy and also really like starting new projects halfway through working on 8 other projects for some reason haha

Speaking of starting something new when I haven't finished something I started previously, Minh and I were planning on making a collab Shulkelia one shot for Valentine's Day! Obviously that didn't pan out haha but it's still being worked on and it's extremely cute and fun :) Hopefully it will be ready to post sooner than later! And I also will hopefully be able to work on Constellations soon as well!! (Seriously I feel. SO. bad about my hiatus, especially since I know how many interesting and fun rough-draft ideas we brainstormed up for it that are just waiting to be finalized and shared with the world!!)

Another thing I wanted to do for Valentine's Day but extremely missed the boat on was mass dumping the few good NSFW Shulkelia pieces on here (with a planned warning ahead of time as well as copious tagging and hiding under readmores, of course!), including a full translation of a doujin! However, it being a nearly 20-page comic with dialogue and onomatopoeia all over the place meant I couldn't go the normal route of putting the translation below the art, it would just be way too messy and confusing. So, I decided to open up Photopea and replace the Japanese text with my translation! I felt bad about editing someone else's work (still do haha) but there was just no other way to do it, there is. SO so much onomatopoeia in there that it would be a nightmare to do it any other way. But that fact also contributed to why I still have yet to finish the translation: I got wayyy too ambitious in my typical perfectionist way, and decided to use the clone tool to edit out the hiragana and katakana handwriting for the onomatopoeia and place English text in their places, rather than just put it in small, parenthetical text next to the original writing like manga translations typically do. And oh my GOD I should never have done that there are literal HUNDREDS of characters I had to painstakingly edit out and I'm STILL not even done yet no no no... But I'm so close to finishing it!! I have only a couple pages left and then it's good to go!! Expect to see it along with the other NSFW art of them (again, with multiple warnings far ahead of time plus careful tagging to make sure you won't see it if you don't want to!!) in the near future!

Not XC related at all, but my most recent project has been making an Ao3 site skin (and, in the process, learning how CSS works) and it's been really satisfying! It's nothing super fancy, but it does create a noticeable improvement from the default (in terms of clarity/organization/readability, no offense intended at all of course!) and I'm very pleased with it so far! Once it's done I'll share it here, complete with notes on what each piece is doing to the layout and how, so anyone can use it and tweak it how they like! :)

I unfortunately haven't made any more progress on Xenoblade 3, sorry to say. And actually... it's partially because I'm worried that I'll end up liking Noah so much that I'll get even more distracted from writing Shulkelia or Xenoblade 1 in general haha... Like I'd never give up on that of course, 1 and its characters will always have a special place in my heart! But I can see myself getting swept away by The New Guy TM, much like I do with new project ideas popping into my head...

My FFXIV x Xenoblade 1 crossover has made some good progress! I've now finalized the outfits for over half of the characters I plan on making, after hours and hours of trying different chestpieces and dyes to get them as close to their canon outfits as possible! In fact, maybe I could share a little more about what exactly I'm doing, to show how I was having too much fun and made it a bigger thing than it had to be, to help explain why it's taking so long haha:

So originally the idea started out as "what FFXIV job best suits the playstyle/archetype of each of XC's playable characters?" (and I have a whole host of notes in my head about why that is from both a gameplay/kit perspective and a fandom-y General Vibes/Aesthetic perspective, which I will for sure post along with the pics). And if I could draw well, it probably would've ended there: I'd just have made some art of the cast posing with their weapons and call it done. But since 1) I can't draw the things I see in my head like I want to and 2) I like to over-complicate things for fun, I decided to pile onto this idea by not only adding more characters of (XC SPOILERS!!!) Alvis, Egil, Meyneth, and Zanza to the roster (including in terms of what jobs suit them each and why!) but also recreate everyone in-game! (I really wanted to do Dickson as well, but unfortunately there are absolutely zero mustache options that look like his :< There's only one that's even remotely similar, but the face is completely wrong for him (what facial features look like are tied to faces, for some reason; the Mustache Facial Feature creates a different type of mustache depending on which Face option you pick) so there's no way to make a character that looks sufficiently like him, at least to my standards. Maybe one day they'll add one that fits...? If they do I will for sure make Gunbreaker Dickson a reality!) This resulted in me needing to not only sit down for hours in XIV's character creator ensuring every detail was as close a match to their designs as possible, but also opening up 8000 tabs in Eorzea Collection and looking through every. single. last. glamour option. in the game for each. and. every. slot. for each. and. every. character. to find out how closely I could translate their weird (affectionate) XC clothes into weird (affectionate) FF clothes. Combine that with my stubbornness in wanting them to look as accurate as possible resulting in making two different outfits per character based on whether or not they can equip/glam the gear as the job that suits them most, (plus the fact that I'm doing [again, SPOILERS!!!] Mecha-Fiora in addition to Homs!Fiora as well as having three [three!] different job options for Shulk based on varying levels of both XC and XIV spoilers to avoid ruining twists for either game), and the fact that I went a step further and decided to also make alternate-race versions for the main party (that sounds... bad lmao. fantasy races, like elves and catboys and such) like half if-these-characters-were-instead-created-by-the-XIV-designers-in-an-alternate-timeline-what-race-would-they-probably-make-them-judged-by-me-like-their-jobs-on-both-lore-and-Vibes-TM and half if-the-XC-gang-existed-irl-and-played-XIV-what-would-they-make-their-characters-look-like, and reminder that each of these versions have two different outfit variants and each outfit needs a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 7 separate pieces each that also need to be dyed and have multiple different options to try on for every character and... it took a teeeeny bit longer than I was expecting to get through haha. But that's not at all to say it's a chore to get through; it's certainly been a process yes, but I've been having a lot of fun the whole time :) Finally getting every element just right, from all the details in character creation down to their eyebrow shape to finding the best option for every armor slot dyed just the right color, seeing it all come together and actually look quite a bit like the character is so satisfying! I can't wait to share them all, I hope someone out there enjoys the results as much as I did creating them! :) Oh, and I also will be making a glam list for each outfit as well as sharing my notes on what I picked in the character creator, so if you want to do an in-game/WoL cosplay as someone or maybe even make an alt named after one based on my recreation of them then it'll be easy for you! :)

Even though I haven't been keeping up with my fanfic writing as much lately, I do still get little ideas for things quite often and am typing them down in my doc for later! I have a gigantic backlog of things I could write: fanfics long and short, Shulkelia fics and Genfics, non-fanfic concepts both XC-related and not... rest assured, even if I'm not posting on here or Ao3 my mind is always buzzing with something and I'm always wanting to create more!

[yaz-the-spaz]

Last Line Tag

I was tagged by the absolutely lovely @empty-altars to post the last line written of a wip, of which i currently have like 8 and y’all know my indecisive ass can’t ever pick one thing for shit (@heather why did you even tag me for this you know i can’t ever pick just one thing lmao) anyway i managed to narrow it down to 4 so without further ado:

“What if we had a fivesome?” Niall says.

- From my ot5 roadies au (fun fact this fic has literally been like 95% done for months, it really only needs like one or two more scenes, it’s just a matter of when i’m gonna get up off my lazy ass and work up the energy to actually finish it smh)

Fuck the ice lolly, Liam thinks, dropping it to the rocks.

- From my peter pan ziam/ot5 au (that’s actually the second to last line but the last one was kind of boring so i went with that one instead lol, also i feel like i’m never gonna be finished with this fic cause i have like close to 45k written at this point and still have no fucking clue where it’s going @self: binch wtf r u doing)

The skin is still so raw and it stings when Zayn’s warm hand grazes against him, but in a good way.

-From my ziam bdsm kink fic (that i’ll also probably never finish at this rate cause it’s been like 54390583497 years but then again it was the same with the roadies fic and i finally managed to get off my ass long enough to nearly finish that a few months back so who knows maybe one day this will be finished too or at least almost finished like that one lol) 

Niall sighs, a sulky expression on his face. “Not that either of you’ll believe me, but I’ve seen things, yes. And not just here either.” “Things?” Louis repeats, eyes sparkling curiously. “Things like what?”

-From my mermaid ziam au (i don’t actually have anything to add here i just wanted this to have a parenthetical statement to match all the rest lmao bye) (actually wait i just remembered this is two lines not one but the second line’s only interesting when put together with the first one so yeah, in case y’all didn’t already i’m a mess double bye)

Tagging @ohthathurt @somewhereisaplacethatziamknow and idk whoever else who writes sorry i’ve been working on the 2.0 fic for like two days straight and my brain is fried and i can’t remember anything rn and i know i’m probs forgetting a shit ton of people but if you wanna do this feel free :) (and as always feel free to ignore if you want)

[krixwell-liveblogs]

Arc Thoughts: Infestation

(Mid-Arc Thoughts)

So! That’s all the members of the Slaughterhouse Nine accounted for!

Let’s take a look at the second half of Infestation, as well as Infestation as a whole!

A jumble of recap (part 2) and predictions, whoops

Part 2 of Infestation has been significantly less continuous than part 1, consisting of eight largely separate chapters following roughly the same format - a POV character is approached by a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine, the Fellowship member in most cases wanting the POV character to join the team.

Besides the introductions of upcoming antagonists, the most important chapters for the main perspective of the story outside the Interludes are definitely 11a and 11g. Because of the events of these chapters - or rather, the nominations leading to them - Rachel and Alec will both be targeted by the Slaughterhouse Nine in upcoming chapters, something that will likely cause all of the Undersiders to get involved even though they’ve been divided into their own territories. Notably, Rachel is willing to “see what this test is all about”, and is probably the Undersider most fit to actually succeed without help, so there is genuinely a risk that she might end up joining the enemy.

The only other nominees we saw who accepted the offer of becoming Slaughterhouse members were Oni Lee and Hookwolf. Oni didn’t work out, but I could see Hookwolf actually successfully becoming a member and then backstabbing the rest of the team.

Meanwhile, however, the Slaughterhouse Nine apparently don’t give a shit about whether you want to join them, even though they have a habit of showing enough courtesy to ask/warn the nominees. If you’ve been nominated, they’ll test you, no matter what, so Colin, Amy and Noelle (and by extension Coil) need to watch out as well.

Judgment

I think I was right to do Mid-Arc Thoughts. Part 2 of Infestation, the Interludes, could very easily have been a separate Arc. Sentinel and Parasite are more interconnected than Infestation proper and its Interludes. As a result, Arc 11 as a whole feels quite bisected, and it’s hard for me to think of it as a whole at all.

Part 1 was a pretty decent Taylor story about bystanderism and dealing with the infestation that was the Merchants, with the looming threat of the Slaughterhouse Nine being very much in the background. It had solid throughlines, bookends (Taylor waking up from a nightmare at the beginning, feeling optimistic about the same things at the end), and worldbuilding re: the Dandelions and Cauldron, and generally works excellently as a standalone Arc.

Part 2 was more formulaic, in a sense, but in a good way. It let me loosely know what to expect but still left room for each Interlude to do its own thing, and what they did was usually pretty good. There were some fantastic chapters in there, most notably Interlude 11h.

And while the Interludes were largely separate from each other, the formula and the minor pieces of continuity connecting the chapters - from small details like Coil acknowledging Leah’s death to bigger things like 11a and 11h taking place at the same time, or the mystery of the Newbie and what happened to Hatchet Face, or Oni Lee being taken in 11b and showing up again as part of Hack Job in 11h - made the sequence of Interludes feel like a whole rather than just... a set of events.

Overall, Arc 11 is very good, but I do feel it works better seen as two stories, two Arcs.

The Arc title

I don’t think this has changed much since the Mid-Arc Thoughts. Infestation still refers primarily to the Merchants. You could argue that it also covers the Slaughterhouse Nine, but I don’t think that fits anywhere near as well.

Prediction review

From Arc Thoughts: Parasite:

So what do we have coming up?

As mentioned earlier in the post, this Arc ended with Dragon finding out Taylor’s identity and starting a search for her. I don’t think that’s a plot that’s going to be left dormant for too long, so there’s a good chance Dragon will play a role in Arc 11, or maybe Arc 12.

She did appear, but not for this particular plotline.

Meanwhile, the Undersiders will need to try to stay away from the Slaughterhouse Nine. They will fail, that much I’m certain of, but whether they’ll fail in the next Arc or later remains to be seen.

Two of them were specifically sought out by Slaughterhouse Nine members, and the rest are coming after those Undersiders to test them.

So yeah. They absolutely failed to stay away from the Slaughterhouse Nine, and it’s gonna get worse. :P

When it happens, though… well, there’s little reason to hold back against Jack Slash in particular. But even if someone does try to kill him, I think they’ll fail. I could see the story’s climax happening in two years, but I highly doubt we’ll be skipping ahead enough for it to happen in fifteen.

We didn’t quite get to this point yet. This prediction’s gonna have to carry over to Arc 12.

We might also learn more about Imp/Aisha (though with the reveal that Imp was Aisha, that’s become less of pressing matter since we’ve had a chapter getting to know Aisha as a civilian before) and how she ended up on the team… I wish I could see Brian’s face the moment Aisha probably told him straight that she has powers now and she knows about the Undersiders. :P

No luck there. Aisha is the one Undersider we didn’t see in this Arc at some point or other - almost like Wildbow forgot to include her... ;)

And now, predictions from the Mid-Arc Thoughts:

Given the number of Interludes, my main prediction is that these Interludes are for the Slaughterhouse Nine, starting or more likely ending with Jack Slash. Eight members, eight Interludes.

Correct, besides the part about Jack Slash. Though he did show up in the first one to start after the gimmick of the Interludes had been confirmed.

Knowing that the Interludes were done for the purpose of celebrating the anniversary of Gestation 1.1, the number might just be the result of 1 regular Interlude plus 7 bonus Interludes for the week of celebration, but that seems too perfect for Wildbow not to use that for the Fellowship even if that was the case. (If this is how it shook out, I do feel like that slightly increases the chances of Jack Slash going first, though that depends on when Wildbow got the idea for the week-long marathon of Interludes.)

I don’t know if this was the case - though the lack of “(Anniversary Bonus)” on Interlude 11a suggests it might’ve been, that tag was also missing from 11d and 11h. (I don’t know if that was by accident or to indicate that he would’ve done them even if he hadn’t decided to do an Interlude marathon to celebrate the anniversary. If it’s the latter, then why 11h rather than 11g?)

But if it was that way, it still makes a lot of sense that Siberian went first, with 11a being one of the two most important Interludes in the Arc. The parenthetical comment was caused by the assumption that Jack Slash’s Interlude would be most important, so while I was wrong about which one it’d be, I was correct about the underlying idea - that one of the most important Interludes would come first.

That said, I could still be wrong. If the Interludes aren’t for the Slaughterhouse Nine, I don’t have a clue who they’d be for. Maybe some of the other villains in town? Maybe one of the Wards or Protectorate members as they learn of the Merchants’ collapse? Perhaps even a short check-in on Dragon’s progress in finding Taylor?

Nope.

Also, given the marathon, I suspect these Interludes might each be a bit shorter than the average recent chapter.

I don’t know. They didn’t feel any shorter, at least. Maybe he wrote them in advance?

So yeah, whatever Wildbow has in store for me, I’m sure it’ll be good. If perhaps brutal. :)

That it was!

Predictions for Arc 12

I’ve kind of accidentally covered just about everything already, but let’s summarize:

We know that Bitch, Armmaster, Hookwolf, Noelle, Regent and Panacea are all now targets for Slaughterhouse testing. This might be lethal for some of them, as I doubt the Slaughterhouse members will hold back. However, I doubt we’re losing Bitch, Hookwolf or Regent - Bitch and Regent because plot armor and Hookwolf because he’s probably the most competent fighter out of all of them, besides maybe Armmaster, and better equipped defensively than anyone except maybe Noelle. Besides plot armor, it would be more interesting to have Bitch actually join the Slaughterhouse Nine and become an antagonist - at least temporarily - than to have her just die.

Other than that, a couple predictions from the end of Arc 10 remain active:

Dragon’s attempts to locate Taylor and communicate with her may come back in Arc 12. However, it might end up being a bit much to have that on top of the Slaughterhouse plot (though that didn’t stop us from learning about Dandelions in the middle of a Merchant brawl), so it’s possible that gets pushed back to Arc 13.

And, if someone attempts to kill Jack Slash, they will either fail, or do it too late.

But yeah, if I were to describe what I think Arc 12 will be like in one word, it’d have to be intense.

I am pretty curious to see how the Arc deals with the fact that there are other characters we care about who are going through the same thing as two of the Undersiders. Maybe we’ll have some Interludes to help out with that? Though it is worth noting that Wildbow seems to have a rule against using the same POV character for two Interludes (which is probably part of why Alec wasn’t the POV in 11g, besides Cherish’s power and personality being better illustrated from within her own head), so he’d have to show us the perspective of someone else close to the action. Perhaps even one of the attacking Slaughterhouse members, though that might be a tad redundant.

Primarily, though, I think we’ll be focusing on Taylor and the other Undersiders doing what they can to protect Alec, and maybe Rachel if she does eventually decide to tell the others anything.

So yeah. See you soon, as I dive into Arc 12!

[snihplod]

get to know me tag.

Tagged by @pine-apple-chan​ ily bro

Rule one: tag nine people you want to get to know better.

I am lazy and have been sitting on this for too long so if you see this consider yourself tagged pffft also the parentheticals are me being me

Rule two: bold the true statements:

I am 5'7 or taller

I wear glasses (only at home)

I have at least one tattoo

I have at least one piercing

I have blonde hair 

My abs are somewhat defined

I have or had braces

I love meeting new people

People tell me I’m funny (idk why though)

Helping people with their problems is a big priority to me

I enjoy physical challenges

I enjoy mental challenges

I’m playfully rude to people I know well

I started to say something ironically, now I can’t stop saying it

There is something I would change about my personality

I can play an instrument

I can sing well

I can do 30 push-ups without stopping

I’m a fast runner

I can draw well (?!?!???)

I have a good memory

I’m good at doing Maths in my head

I can hold my breath underwater for over a minute

I have beaten at least two people in an arm wrestle

I know how to cook at least three meals from scratch

I can throw a punch

I enjoy sports

I have learned a new song in the past week

I’ve gone running at least once a week in summer

I work out at least once a week

I have drawn something in the last month

I enjoy writing

I have done martial arts

I have had my first kiss

I have had alcohol

I have scored a winning goal in sports

I have watched an entire season of a TV show in one sitting

I have been to an overnight event

I have been in a taxi

I have been in a hospital/er in the past year

I have beaten a video game in one day

I have visited another country

I have been to one of my favourite band’s concerts

I have at least one person I consider a best friend

I live close to my school/university/college

My parents are still together

I have at least one sibling

I live in the US

There is snow right now where I live

I have hung out with friends in the past month

I have a smartphone

I have at least 15 CDs

I share my room with somebody

I have a crush on a celebrity

I have a crush on someone I know

I have been in at least three relationships

I have asked someone out or admitted my feelings to them

I get crushes easily

I have had a crush for over a year

I have been in a relationship for more than a year

I have had feelings for a friend

I have break danced

I know a person called Jamie

I have had a teacher with a last name hard to pronounce

I have dyed my hair

I am listening to a song on repeat right now

I have punched someone in the past week

I have known someone who has gone to jail

I have broken a bone

I have eaten a waffle today

I know what to do with my life

I speak at least 2 languages

I have made a new friend in the last year

[ricardosousalemos]

Massive Attack: Mezzanine

“Trip-hop” eventually became a ’90s punchline, a music-press shorthand for “overhyped hotel lounge music.” But today, the much-maligned subgenre almost feels secret precedent. Listen to any of the canonical Bristol-scene albums of the mid-late ’90s, when the genre was starting to chafe against its boundaries, and you’d think the claustrophobic, anxious 21st century started a few years ahead of schedule. Looked at from the right angle, trip-hop is part of an unbroken chain that runs from the abrasion of ’80s post-punk to the ruminative pop-R&B-dance fusion of the moment. 

The best of it has aged far more gracefully (and forcefully) than anything recorded in the waning days of the record industry’s pre-filesharing monomania has any right to. Tricky rebelled against being attached at the hip to a scene he was already looking to shed and decamped for Jamaica to record a more aggressive, bristling-energy mutation of his style in ’96; the name Pre-Millennium Tension is the only obvious thing that tells you it’s two decades old rather than two weeks. And Portishead’s ’97 self-titled saw the stress-fractured voice of Beth Gibbons envisioning romance as codependent, mutually assured destruction while Geoff Barrow sunk into his RZA-noir beats like The Conversation’s Gene Hackman ruminating over his surveillance tapes. This was raw-nerved music, too single-minded and intense to carry an obvious timestamp. 

But Massive Attack were the origin point of the trip-hop movement they and their peers were striving to escape the orbit of, and they nearly tore themselves to shreds in the process. Instead— or maybe as a result—they laid down their going-nova genre's definitive paranoia statement with Mezzanine. The band's third album (not counting the Mad Professor-remixed No Protection) completes the last in a sort of de facto Bristol trilogy, where Tricky’s youthful iconoclasm and Portishead’s deep-focus emotional intensity set the scene for Massive Attack’s sense of near-suffocating dread. The album corroded their tendencies to make big-wheel hymnals of interconnected lives where hope and despair trade precedent—on Mezzanine, it’s alienation all the way down. There’s no safety from harm here, nothing you’ve got to be thankful for, nobody to take the force of the blow: what Mezzanine provides instead is a succession of parties and relationships and panopticons where the walls won’t stop closing in.

The lyrics establish this atmosphere all on their own. Sex, in “Inertia Creeps,” is reduced to a meeting of “two undernourished egos, four rotating hips,” the focus of a failing relationship that's left its participants too numbed with their own routine dishonesty to break it off. The voice singing it—Massive Attack's cornerstone co-writer/producer Robert “3D” Del Naja—is raspy from exhaustion. “Dissolved Girl” reiterates this theme from the perspective of guest vocalist Sarah Jay Hawley (“Passion’s overrated anyway”). On “Risingson,” Grant “Daddy G” Marshall nails the boredom and anxiety of being stuck somewhere you can’t stand with someone you’re starting to feel the same way about (“Why you want to take me to this party and breathe/I’m dying to leave/Every time we grind you know we severed lines”).

But Mezzanine’s defining moments come from guest vocalists who were famous long before Massive Attack even released their first album. Horace Andy was already a legend in reggae circles, but his collaborations with Massive Attack gave him a wider crossover exposure, and all three of his appearances on Mezzanine are homages or nods to songs he'd charted with in his early-’70s come-up. “Angel” is a loose rewrite of his 1973 single “You Are My Angel,” but it’s a fakeout after the first verse—originally a vision of beauty (“Come from way above/To bring me love”), transformed into an Old Testament avenger: “On the dark side/Neutralize every man in sight.” The parenthetically titled, album-closing reprise of “(Exchange)” is a ghostly invocation of Andy’s “See A Man's Face” cleverly disguised as a comedown track. And then there’s “Man Next Door,” the John Holt standard that Andy had previously recorded as “Quiet Place”—on Mezzanine, it sounds less like an overheard argument from the next apartment over and more like a close-quarters reckoning with violence heard through thin walls ready to break. It’s Andy at his emotionally nuanced and evocative best.

The other outside vocalist was even more of a coup: Liz Fraser, the singer and songwriter of Cocteau Twins, lends her virtuoso soprano to three songs that feel like exorcisms of the personal strife accompanying her band’s breakup. Her voice serves as an ethereal counterpoint to speaker-rattling production around it. “Black Milk” contains the album’s most spiritually unnerving words (“Eat me/In the space/Within my heart/Love you for God/Love you for the Mother”), even as her lead and the elegiac beat make for some of its most beautiful sounds. She provides the wistful counterpoint to the night-shift alienation of “Group Four.” And then there's “Teardrop,” her finest moment on the album. Legend has it the song was briefly considered for Madonna; Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles sent the demo to her, but was overruled by Daddy G and 3D, who both wanted Fraser. Democracy thankfully worked this time around, as Fraser’s performance—recorded in part on the day she discovered that Jeff Buckley, who she’d had an estranged working relationship and friendship with, had drowned in Memphis’ Wolf River—was a heart-rending performance that gave Massive Attack their first (and so far only) UK Top 10 hit.

Originally set for a late ’97 release, Mezzanine got pushed back four months because Del Naja refused to stop reworking the tracks, tearing them apart and rebuilding them until they’re so polished they gleam. It sure sounds like the product of bloody-knuckled labor, all that empty-space reverb and melted-together multitrack vocals and oppressive low-end. (The first sound you hear on the album, that lead-jointed bassline on “Angel,” is to subwoofers what “Planet Earth” is to high-def television.) But it also groans with the burden of creative conflict, a working process that created rifts between Del Naja and Vowles, who left shortly after Mezzanine dropped following nearly 15 years of collaboration.

Mezzanine began the band’s relationship with producer Neil Davidge, who’d known Vowles dating back to the early ’90s and met the rest of the band after the completion of Protection. He picked a chaotic time to jump in, but Davidge and 3D forged a creative bond working through that pressure. Mezzanine was a document of unity, not fragmentation. Despite their rifts, they were a post-genre outfit, one that couldn’t separate dub from punk from hip-hop from R&B because the basslines all worked together and because classifications are for toe tags. All their acknowledged samples—including the joy-buzzer synths from Ultravox’s “Rockwrok” (“Inertia Creeps”), the opulent ache of Isaac Hayes’ celestial-soul take on “Our Day Will Come” (“Exchange”), Robert Smith’s nervous “tick tick tick” from the Cure’s “10:15 Saturday Night,” and the most concrete-crumbling throwdown of the Led Zep “Levee” break ever deployed (the latter two on “Man Next Door”)—were sourced from  1968 and 1978, well-traveled crate-digging territory. But what they build from that is its own beast.  

Their working method never got any faster. The four-year gap between Protection and Mezzanine became a five-year gap until 2003’s 100th Window, then another seven years between that record and 2010’s Heligoland, plus another seven years and counting with no full-lengths to show for it. Not that they've been slacking: we've gotten a multimedia film/music collaboration with Adam Curtis, the respectable but underrated Ritual Spirit EP, and Del Naja’s notoriously rumored side gig as Banksy. (Hey, 3D does have a background in graffiti art.) But the ordeal of both recording and touring Mezzanine took its own toll. A late ’98 interview with Del Naja saw him optimistic about its reputation-shedding style: “I always said it was for the greater good of the fucking project because if this album was a bit different from the last two, the next one would be even freer to be whatever it wants to be.” But fatigue and restlessness rarely make for a productive mixture, and that same spark of tension which carried Mezzanine over the threshold proved unsustainable, not just for Massive Attack’s creativity but their continued existence.

Still, it’s hard not to feel the album’s legacy resonating elsewhere—and not just in “Teardrop” becoming the cue for millions of TV viewers to brace themselves for Hugh Laurie’s cranky-genius-doctor schtick. Graft its tense feelings of nervy isolation and late-night melancholy onto two-step, and you’re partway to the blueprint for Plastician and Burial. You can hear flashes of that mournful romantic alienation in James Blake, the graceful, bass-riddled emotional abrasion in FKA twigs, the all-absorbing post-genre rock/soul ambitions in Young Fathers or Algiers. Mezzanine stands as an album built around echoes of the ’70s, wrestled through the immediacy of its creators' tumultuous late ’90s, and fearless enough that it still sounds like it belongs in whatever timeframe you're playing it.

[crystalninjaphoenix]

The Fourth Crossover Episode

Septics Inverted

A JSE Fanfic

Thought it would be a good idea to come back to this before the next arc of the AU starts. (Also probably a good idea to link the First, Second, and Third crossovers, now that this has gotten this long.) Now, on the bright side, we have some of the Swaps meeting up! But in direct opposite of that, they don’t meet up in the best place, and, uh, let’s just say one of the Inverted boys ends up not much liking his Swap counterpart.

Again, you can find Swap Boys content on @huffle-dork​​​​​‘s blog!

Taglist I guess. If you dont want to be tagged in the crossovers please let me know! | @awkward-bullshit @watermelonsinmyattic @asunachinadoll @a-humble-narcissus @odysseus-is-best-boi @acuriousquail @beerecordings @human-being-kinda @romanticslimecreature @bloodygoldensam @rachelclutch @septic-nebula-art @toboboby @the-parentheticals @rammypaige @jc-pavanne @amyxmiaplay @rats-this-username-is-taken @immabethehero @eridangan @bupine

“Look, we have to do something about him. I think what Jameson’s already doing is working for now, but if we’re going to keep him here, we need something more permanent.”

Jackie didn’t answer Chase for a while, pretending to be looking through the hall closet for the broom. “You know, last time you said that, we went out to hire a hypnotist. And I’d say we’re in a bit of a...situation, about...that.”

Chase rolled his eyes. “Okay, yeah, but this isn’t just me being selfish, this could actually be helpful. You know, since Alt is a glitch, and I know he’s not exactly the same as our local bitch, but we could still find out a lot.”

“You’ve been talking with Schneep, I see.” Jackie gave up on pretending he couldn’t see the broom right in front of his face. He grabbed it and the dustpan as well. Yes, technically, Jameson had people who’d clean the house, but sometimes Jackie liked to be productive.

“Hey!...yeah. But he’s right this time!” Chase insisted. He followed Jackie down the hall. “And if we’re going to have to keep Alt here, we need something stronger.”

Jackie whirled on him. “Chase, I don’t care. I mean, I do, but what I’m trying to say is, if you want to do something about that, then you need to talk to Jameson about it. Do whatever you want.” He was not going to get involved in the  ‘situation’ this time. Nope. No way. Which was why he was currently shoving the internal debate he was having about the merits of learning more about Anti versus the moral rightness of keeping someone from another universe here and doing who knows what. His decision to sweep totally wasn’t planned as a distraction from that.

“Okay, okay.” Chase raised his hands like he was being arrested. “Just thought it was a good idea to ask. I mean, if you want to be literal about it, this is your house. You bought it first. Thought you’d like to know.”

“Well...thanks for that.” They emerged from the hall by the stairs, coming out into the living room. “Where is Mr. Earth-2 anyway?”

“I dunno. Probably hanging out in my room, since I told him he could use it.” Chase bit his lip, looking up the staircase. “I should probably check on him...”

“Then go do it. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

——————

Alt was indeed in his borrowed room, pacing the floor. There was a storm brewing in his mind, thoughts spinning in cyclones.

He wasn’t in the habit of relying on strangers for things. He didn’t need anyone; he never had. The option of just leaving, going out to find a way back home on his own, was very tempting. But on the other hand, this wasn’t just a different city, it was a whole other dimension. Who knows what could be different between here and there? He could get overwhelmed easily. Not to mention Magnificent was still out there, as well as this other version of himself who was apparently {just as bad} as the evil cat magician himself. It {was probably} dangerous to go out. {And besides,} these guys, these other versions of his friends, they were...a little weird, {but alright. What was the rush?}

There was a knock at the door, and Alt jumped, a tiny glitch running through his body. He sighed internally. He was glitching a lot more than usual, ever since arriving in this universe. Maybe there was some kind of scientific or magical reason for that, but Alt wasn’t too concerned with it. Yet. He made sure it was under control before walking over to the door and opening it.

“Hey.” It was the other Chase. “Just wanted to check on you, see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? You must be confused.”

Alt scowled. “Yes, I’m ‘sure’ I’m not confused, now that you’ve finished checking on me, you can go.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Chase hurried to say. “Just that, like, if I was suddenly in a different universe I would be kinda thrown off. I’d miss these guys, you know?”

Alt sighed. He really needed to {stop} being such an asshole to these guys, they were only trying to help. “Yeah, I get it.” He paused. “Guess I’m kinda worried about my cat.”

“You have a cat?!” Chase’s face suddenly lit up. “Aw, sweet!”

Alt couldn’t stop a grin. “Yeah, her name’s Glitches. She’s a tough little kitty, but I still can’t stop thinking about it, you know?”

“Well, you have friends who’ll feed her, right?”

“Yeah...” If his version of Chase and the others even went to check on her. They might if they realized he was gone, but then again, they might’ve thought he just left.

Chase seemed to pick up on the sudden downward swing of Alt’s mood. “Hey, as Jackie keeps telling me, it’s not good to stay in your room all day. You want to come downstairs? We have a bunch of video games.”

Alt shrugged. “Why not?” Might as well distract himself from the fact that he’s as far from home as he could possibly get.

“Great. C’mon, I’ll help you set up whatever console you want.”

Alt followed Chase down the hall towards the stairs. On the way, they passed a closed door, behind which Alt could hear someone yelling enthusiastically, the way you do when you’re caught up in the excitement of a sport or game. That must have been the missing sixth roommate, Jack, who Alt still hadn’t seen. It was a bit...odd, that he hadn’t left that room at any point during the day, so far. It was nearly noon. Well, {the others had warned him he was a bit of a hermit.} If this was bad, {surely they would’ve done something?} Probably {nothing to worry about.}

Alt was caught up in wondering about Jack and the closed door that he didn’t even notice the voices coming from down the stairs. He realized something was up when he finally looked around the living room and saw Schneep and Jameson standing around the sitting area. And then before he could take in anything else, something tackled him.

“Alt! You are really here! And you are okay, that is relieving! We were so worried!”

“Ack—!” Alt pulled away from the enthusiastic arms wrapped around him, just enough to get a good look at who was hugging him. He blinked a couple times. No, there was no way. “Hen?”

Henrik grinned. “Yes, in the flesh and blood!”

“How—why—how did you get here?”

“Well, if we’re being honest, we were hoping you could help explain that.”

Alt’s head whipped toward the other voice. “Dr. J? You too?”

“Henrik, give him some space,” JJ said, and Henrik hurriedly backed off, walking back but remaining in arm’s length. “Yes, me too. It’s so good to see you, Alt. You’re alright?”

“I’m alr—how are you here?!” Alt was on a pivot, looking between the two of them. It was good to see some familiar faces—who were actually friends and not just alternate versions of them, that is—but that didn’t explain how they’d got to an entire other dimension.

“Well, let’s start from the beginning, then,” JJ said. Nearby, the other versions of Schneep and Jameson, as well as Chase, were edging close, listening as well. “After you vanished, Chase went looking for you, of course. But we all knew there was only one person who could be involved. So we all gathered together to go after Magnificent. Strength in numbers, you know? We were getting close, but before we could even see you, or him, there was this...flash of colorful light.”

Henrik jumped in. “And the next thing we knew, the two of us were in an entirely new city together! We spent so long last night trying to find where we were, and then this morning we ran into those other us, and they told us you were here and explained what happened. A different world, it was hard to imagine.”

“Wait...” Alt got stuck on one fact from that story. “You were going to come find me? All of you?”

“Of course we were, did you think we’d leave you to that monster?” JJ sounded exasperated, but there was an affectionate tone to his voice.

“I...don’t know what I was thinking.”

There was a cough. “I hate to ruin this emotional reunion,” Schneep said, drawing the attention of the other three. “But if I am understanding you correctly, there were more of you who might have gotten caught up in that...that whatever brought you here?”

“Oh yes, there were Chase and Jackie as well,” Henrik explained. “You know, like him, and I assume you have another one somewhere.” He pointed to the version of Chase currently in the room. “Though they almost seem switched around.”

“Yeah, I think that’s just how it is in this dimension,” Alt said. “You two haven’t even met the other version of me.”

JJ frowned. “What do you mean?”

“He’s an asshole, to put it lightly.”

The three boys from this universe muttered agreements.

JJ shook his head. “Well, regardless, now that we’ve found you, we have to find a way home. And find our Jackie and Chase, too, maybe we should start looking—”

“We can’t leave,” Alt suddenly interrupted.

JJ blinked, and looked at Henrik, who seemed confused as well. “Why not?”

“Well, for starters, Magnificent came along for the ride, too,” Alt explained. “I saw him. He’s probably trying to track us down right now. But these guys—” He waved towards the other three “—have put up some magic shit that’ll make it hard for people to track us while we’re inside. And, yeah, there’s that other version of me. From what they’ve told me about him, he’s pretty bad news, too, and he’ll probably be looking for me too, after I ran into him.”

“Hmm...” Henrik pursed his lips. “Those are very good points. But then we cannot leave Chase and Jackie out there, Magnificent could find them just as easily.”

Alt considered this. “That’s true...”

“Hey, uh, can I make a suggestion?” Chase spoke up, drawing the other’s attention. “So, you’re worried about this Magnificent finding you. Guess he’s the other version of Marvin, then? Well, he’s not going to be looking for any of us, will he? And we know how to deal with our glitch, too. We can go look for your friends while you guys stay here.”

“Huh...” Alt wasn’t too keen on letting almost-strangers lead the search for his friends, {but it seemed like the best option.} “I guess you could.”

“Great.” Chase gave a thumbs up. “I don’t have anything going on today, I could get started right now—”

“Just a minute!” JJ interrupted. “Alt, if you want to stay behind, you’re free too. But perhaps Henrik and I can go. Just give the others a familiar face to latch onto.”

Someone clapped. After a moment, Alt realized it was the other Jameson. That’s a good idea in principle, he signed, but in reality, it has some flaws.

“Like what?” JJ asked.

“You know sign?!” Alt said, shocked. “Why didn’t you use that earlier?”

Well, I didn’t know if you knew sign as well, Jameson explained. But anyways. A fair idea to start with, but you don’t know our Anti the way we do. He’s not like your Alt, he’s much worse. For example, he’s constantly monitoring the city through the cameras the city council installed. He’d know our every move. If he sees any of you, that would attract his attention, and that’s not something you want to catch.

And these cameras are all over the city? Henrik asked, signing fast.

Jameson nodded. They’re really everywhere. He might let us slip by, but seeing new people who look so similar to our group would be unusual enough to peak his interest.

Henrik’s eyes widened. “Jamie, perhaps it would be a good idea for us to stay here. At least for today. Maybe later, once there’s less chance of attention, we can go out.”

JJ looked incredulously between Henrik and Alt. “You do realize that Jackie and Chase are going to be out there, in the midst of this danger we’re trying to avoid?”

“It’ll probably be okay if they’re on their own,” Chase said. “One person isn’t too eye-catching. But if you guys came with us, and I think we’d need to go to help you with navigation and stuff, then you start to get really risky.”

Henrik paused, then nodded. “If things get bad, we can come in as the cavalry.”

Alt shrugged. “Besides, those two can take care of themselves.”

After a moment more, JJ sighed. “Alright, fine. We can stay here. For now.”

“Don’t worry, man,” Chase said with a smile. “We’ll find your friends.” He turned to Schneep and Jameson. “Hey, either of you have anything to do today?”

Schneep shook his head, looking almost excited, but Jameson frowned. I have some files to go through for work, so I’ll stay here. And for you two, you should probably have lunch or a snack before you go out. You’ll be walking a lot, I assume, and need the fuel.

“Not a bad idea. Hey, you three.” Chase looked at Alt, Henrik, and JJ. “You guys want lunch or something? I can introduce you to Jackie—our Jackie, I mean.”

Alt and Henrik looked at each other, then nodded in unison. JJ shifted on his feet. “I suppose that would be a good idea.”

“Great! Let’s go, the kitchen’s just through here.”

Chase led the way, the others quickly following. Except for JJ, who hesitated just the slightest bit. Something felt...off...to him. He quickly got over it, hurrying to catch up, but stumbled a bit as the other Jameson bumped into him. Jameson looked at him, making eye contact for a brief second before flashing a smile. It was probably meant as an apology...but the sense of something off didn’t fade.

——————

Elsewhere in the city, Chase and Jackie—the ones not native to this world—were sitting at a wrought-iron table outside of a small cafe. “We’ve been looking all morning, and we haven’t seen anything,” Jackie groaned. “I’m starting to think this isn’t the most efficient way to search for people.”

Chase sighed. He glanced upward, to the sky. “Maybe it would be easier if I just—ow!” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out Sam. “Did you just poke me?”

Sam bobbed once, then darted back into the pocket.

“They’re right,” Jackie said. “Back home, people are used to seeing Bro Fantastic flying through the skies. Here? I’m pretty sure it’d just cause a scene.”

“I could be subtle about it?” Chase half-suggested. Jackie gave him a look, and he sighed. “Yeah. I guess we just got to think more like Hen and J. Where would they go, if they found themselves in a strange city?”

There was an electric crackling sound, and suddenly there was a third person at the table. “Oh, just to the worst possible place,” Anti said casually.

Jackie almost fell out of his chair. “What the sh—dude, you got to be careful about that!”

“Nobody’s around. Even the staff inside the cafe are all on their phones,” Anti said, leaning onto the table.

“...still.”

Chase frowned. “What do you mean, ‘the worst possible place’?”

Anti stared, eye darting between the two of them. “I have very bad news.”

——————

Something was definitely off here.

JJ couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Maybe it was the fact that Alt was settling into the house after only being there a night, when it had taken him a while to warm up to the ones he now called his friends. Maybe it was the way he’d walked in on Henrik and the other Jameson having a conversation in sign, and he could’ve sworn there was some sort of blankness in Henrik’s stare, similar to ones he’d seen in his client’s eyes. Or maybe it was the closed, hostile-feeling door in the hall by the stairway.

Or maybe it was nothing, and he was just being paranoid. Magnificent was fond of tricks, after all. But there was nothing to suggest one here. At least, not one of Magnificent’s.

Alt was in the living room, playing some unfamiliar video game on the TV. JJ was sitting in a nearby armchair, watching, trying to see if the odd feeling would go away. And then Jackie—so different from the one he knew, yet somehow still the same person—walked in, carrying a backpack on his shoulder. “Hey, you two. I’m going out. Jameson’s downstairs, and your Schneep is upstairs taking a nap. I’ll be back in...I dunno, an hour or two.”

Alt made a noncommittal sound, acknowledging what Jackie said but not taking his eyes away from the game. But JJ looked at Jackie, puzzled. “There’s a downstairs?”

“Yeah, the basement. It’s, uh, storage. Jameson’s sorting it, I think.” Jackie shrugged. “I dunno. Anyway, I’ll be back.”

“What’re you doing?”

“It’s a thing for work. I mean, I don’t start until later tonight, but got to get ready. You guy’ll be fine for a bit.” Jackie didn’t wait for an answer before walking to the front door and opening it. “See you.” And he left, letting the door swing shut behind him.

JJ turned back, watching the TV without really taking it in. A basement, huh? Supposedly for storage, but Jackie hesitated a bit before saying that. Maybe that was behind the door in the first floor hall. “Hey, Alt,” JJ said. “Do you think there’s anything weird about these guys?”

“I mean, what’s not going to be weird about different versions of us that are all switched around?” Alt asked.

“No, I mean...in another way besides just being different from us.”

“...I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

“Nevermind.” JJ sighed. After a few more moments of silence, he asked, “How do you think our Chase and Jackie are doing?”

Quiet. And then: “What?”

JJ’s head whipped toward Alt. His face was calm, and he looked relaxed. Since when was Alt relaxed when in a strange environment? Alt was always on his guard, either looking for threats or getting ready to be a threat...or at the very least a petty criminal. “You know...our Chase and Jackie. From our world. Bro Fantastic and Jackieb01? Your family?”

Alt suddenly jolted, then shook his head. “Sorry, must’ve been spacing out there for a second. They’re probably fine. Those two can take care of themselves.”

“Yes, you said the same thing earlier. The...exact same thing...” JJ trailed off as the realization dawn on him.

“Oh I did? That’s weird. But that’s cause it’s true. I mean, Chase has superpowers. They’ll be fine.”

“If you insist,” JJ said slowly. He stood. “I’m going to go look around.”

“Okay. If you find anything cool, let me know.”

“I will.” 

JJ headed straight for the door to the basement. Or at least, he assumed the door led to the basement. It was giving off an eerie feel, like it was actively attempting to ward people away. But JJ steeled his nerves, took a deep breath, and slowly pulled the door open.

On the other side was actually another hallway, shorter, and dimly lit. There were two closed doors on one side, but at the far end of the hall was an ajar door. JJ stared at it for a moment, then slowly walked down the hall, running a hand over the wall. The open door led to a staircase going downward. There was a lightswitch by the door, but it wasn’t on, so JJ flicked it and lights brightened up the downward slope. 

This might not be the best idea. In fact, if his suspicions were correct, it was probably a very bad idea. So why was he doing this? JJ wasn’t entirely sure, but if forced to choose a reason, he would say that he had to see for himself. He had to know just what he was dealing with, so he could plan his next steps.

Speaking of steps...there was a surprisingly high number of them leading downward into the basement. JJ found himself making a note of that, maybe in case circumstances forced him to run back up. The stairs ended at a hallway, two doors on each side and one at the end, all of them shut. Perhaps this might’ve been a storage area, if it wasn’t for the one at the end. It was made of wood, but a different type than the other doors, and there were strange symbols scribbled around the frame in what might’ve been charcoal. The symbols were large enough that JJ could see them from the other end of the hall, but couldn’t quite make out what they were. He gave the hall one more look. There was no sign of anyone. Taking care to be as quiet as possible, he made his way down the hall to the far door.

The symbols were completely foreign, nothing familiar in their lines and swooping curves. JJ hesitantly reached out to touch one, finding he couldn’t brush it away or smear it like charcoal should. And then, in the silence, he heard something. A very muffled sound...coming from the other side of the door.

After looking around the hallway once more, JJ decided he’d just figure out what that sound was before leaving. He pressed his ear to the wood, listening intently. Was it an animal? An animal in distress? After a moment, the sounds raised in intensity. Animal screams? And then a few seconds later, JJ jerked his head back as he realized they weren’t animal screams.

The fear really kicked in then, and JJ spun around, ready to run to the stairs. But there was someone blocking his way, somehow having got there without making a single sound. The other him.

Jameson tilted his head. Are you lost?

JJ paused. Was he playing with him? “I-I’m sorry, I just got curious—”

Understandable, Jameson signed. But this is no place for stragglers. Come on, let’s go upstairs.

JJ narrowed his eyes. This wasn’t going to be that easy, was it? {Why wouldn’t it be?} There was {nothing down here of note.} After a moment, JJ pushed away from the {not} odd door and started to follow Jameson down the hallway.

This other version of him was so, so strange. {Not in a bad way.} But the response to the {not} strange door was {perfectly rational.} But he wasn’t even saying anything about it {because there wasn’t anything to say.}

But this version of him had {nothing} off about him.

But this other him was {perfectly normal.}

There {was nothing to worry about.}

{Nothing to worry about.}

{Nothing to—}

JJ stopped in his tracks, stumbling and almost losing his balance. He took a deep, shaky breath, watching as the other him also stopped, turning around to look at him. JJ took a few steps back. He knew something was wrong, that there was something influencing the other two, but he expected Magnificent. Not—not himself.

Jameson frowned. {You’ve been through something like this before, haven’t you?}

JJ cried out in surprise at the voice in his head. “You...you—!”

{Me, yes.} Jameson smiled. {They never suspect the quiet ones, do they?}

JJ could only stare. “What do you want with us?”

{With you and the other one? I’m not quite sure yet. I know Henrik wants to take a look at his counterpart’s hearing. But you...well, you’re quite troublesome, even to begin with.} The tone of Jameson’s mental voice soured.

JJ’s mind whirled. Jameson was standing in between him and the stairs, but he didn’t look too strong. And with how invested he was in this mental monologue, he probably wouldn’t be prepared for a rush. JJ didn’t even glance towards the stairs before bolting.

He was right; Jameson did nothing to stop him. JJ was almost to the stairs when he felt something yank him backwards. He cried out, looking down to see something purple wrapped around his waist. He tried to pull it away, only to find strands of violet light branching off and wrapping around his fingers and wrist. What was this?! Heart pounding in his chest, JJ tried to pull against it and keep running, only to trip up over another tendril of purple wrapping around his ankles.  He landed hard on the floor, bones aching where they impacted the surface.

JJ glanced over his shoulder. The door at the end of the hallway was now open, and there was a man standing in the doorway, hand outstretched and wreathed in magic. For a moment, JJ thought it was Magnificent. But Magnificent’s mask didn’t cover both his eyes, and his magic wasn’t purple. Suddenly, he remembered something the other Chase said earlier: “Magnificent? Guess he’s the other version of Marvin, then?” Of course. If they all had alternate versions, Magnificent would have one too.

The other Magnificent—Marvin—looked back and forth between JJ and Jameson. “I think this is weirder than meeting the bitch version of me.”

Jameson smiled. JJ couldn’t hear his mental voice, but he assumed he was talking to Marvin. JJ took the opportunity to try and pull away from the purple magic once again, but they kept branching and wrapping around him wherever he touched. Giving up on that approach, he started to crawl away.

“Well, this doesn’t last long, so you better decide quickly,” Marvin said, still talking to Jameson.

Jameson made a puzzled face, tapping his chin. Then he nodded, and reached into his vest.

“Alright, then. I can do that.” Marvin turned his attention back to JJ. He grinned a bit. “Hey, come back here.” He flicked his wrist and muttered a word under his breath.

The tendrils began to pull, dragging JJ backwards, despite his efforts to continue forward. Once he was within arm’s length, Marvin reached down and pulled JJ back up by the back of his shirt collar. A few more spellwords, and suddenly the tendrils disappeared, only to be replaced with a purple glow surrounding JJ’s body. His eyes widened. Or they tried to. He couldn’t move—couldn’t even twitch. Couldn’t even blink away the gathering wetness in his eyes.

Jameson leaned close, and held up a silver pocket watch. JJ immediately knew what was about to happen. He tried to look somewhere else, anywhere else, but the light bouncing off the swinging silver surface was impossible to avoid. It was...actually kind of pretty...

No! No, he couldn’t! He had to warn Alt, and Henrik, and find some way to get them out of here! They had to find...

The silver was swimming, spiraling, spiraling...

They had to find Chase and Jackie! And get home, they had families left there, he couldn’t...

couldn’t...

....

——————

Jackie was on his way home. That hadn’t taken as long as he thought. Usually replenishing the hidden supplies he kept hidden through the city—in case he needed more while out on patrol—took an hour at the latest, but this had only been half that time. The whole thing had put him in a good mood.

In fact, in such a good mood that he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going until he turned a corner and ran straight into a man going the opposite way. “Ach—!” The man dropped what he was holding, papers scattering against the ground.

“Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” Jackie gasped.

“No, no, it’s fine—”

“It’s not, I totally wasn’t looking—here, I’ll help you.” Jackie knelt down and started gathering up the papers.

“That’s very kind of you.” The man crouched as well, grabbing as many as he could.

“No problem.” Jackie started handing the papers to the man, giving him the opportunity to look him over. Brown hair, blue eyes—and a face that was very familiar. The man’s hair was long enough to be pulled back, and he wore a nice blue and green suit. “I like your outfit,” Jackie said.

“Oh, thank you.” The man smiled. “It’s part of my costume.”

“Costume?”

“Oh yes.” By this time, the two of them had gathered up all the papers, and the man had restacked them. He stood up. “I’m a magician, you see. My act is in town, so I’m handing out flyers. Here.”

The man passed one of the flyers to Jackie, who scanned it. “Nice.” Jackie nodded. “Magic’s cool. I have a friend who does it too, thought not professionally. Between you and me, he sucks at card tricks.”

The man chuckled. “Hey, tell you what. Why don’t you take a flyer? You and a friend can come to my performance. There’s one tonight.”

“Huh. I dunno, I work nights...” Jackie scanned the flyer once more. “Maybe I can squeeze in time, though. It doesn’t look too long.”

“I’d look forward to seeing you there.” The man chuckled. “Tell the admissions gate that you’re a friend of Jack the Magnificent, and they’ll let you in free.”

“Sweet.” Jackie smiled outwardly, but the name rang a bell inside his head. If people were coming over from different dimensions, and this man had that same face they all did, then maybe...?

“I didn’t catch your name.”

“Oh sorry. You’re not going to believe this, it’s Jackie.”

“Really? Interesting. Well, I’ll be seeing you around, then, Jackie?”

“Yep! See you.” Jackie smiled, then hurried past, on his way back home.

“Jack” the Magnificent smiled. There was a flicker of light, and for a moment he looked completely different, a half-mask covering his face and a cape of static behind him. And then the moment passed, and he went on his way.

It seemed that, one way or another, things were coming to a head.