#Aaaaaaand a lot of people simply do not want to give it to him.

[luminaryofblood]

"... But it strips him of his autonomy! He's boring now!"

... No he's not! He's still a HIGHLY intriguing character!

[bigskydreaming]

You're asked to choose one and only one or DC's future stops existing immediately. your choices:

1. Jason Todd the anti-hero who seldom works with only a couple of the bats he doesn't hate, for example Dick and Cass VS. Jason Todd who came back with healed body but broken spirit, folded back into the Gotham gang and learns to be part of the society again.

2. Tim Drake who makes all of his mistakes as canon but realizes he's been wrong and apologizes to people VS. Tim Drake back in his first iteration, a cute little brother character who is a reader insert and a fun teenager.

3. JayKyle VS DickKyle.

4. Jason Todd with a sword VS. Damian Wayne with a sword.

5. Chris Kent VS. Jon kent.

Okay but which DC future? Its omniversal future? Its hypertime future? Its multiversal future? Its Elseworlds future? Its dark multiverse future? Mwahahaha your threat is useless because the sheer wtf of DC's continuities, timelines and conflicting declarations of what to even call their multiomnihyperverse makes it impossible to target simply A future! DC's overly unnecessarily complicated nature renders it functionally immortal and impossible to ever truly destroy, take that Darkseid.

I mean. But anyway. Whatevs:

1) I honestly do prefer the idea of Jason someday fully reuniting/reintigrating into the Batfam as a whole, because fuck it, the found family I'm here for is the one where they actually act like a family....I just think it takes actual work to get to that point and I get irey when people are like we're here! We found it! And its like meanwhile, abusive dynamics still abound. Mmm. No thank you. But even though I've been on a huge Jason and Dick and Cass kick for like, forever, I do still aim for him having a dynamic of his own with the rest of the family.

Like the thing is, I hate playing the favorites card in families, and I think the emphasis on so and so being Bruce's favorite child or so and so being this kid's favorite sibling, etc, like it really does feel like to the detriment of the whole family, because once you start validating the idea of favorites, ESPECIALLY in a found family that is CONTINUOUSLY growing....I think you're kinda shooting yourself in the foot because you're kinda creating a situation where either no future new additions to the family can EVER be Bruce or one of the kids' 'favorite' or else you're innately positing that said fave status is conditional and even a current fave of Bruce or a sibling can be bumped down the ladder by the addition of a later arrival....

Which is LITERALLY the entire essence of the eternal conflict between Dick and Damian and Tim fans. Its not even that Damian is Dick's favorite, allegedly, its that prior to Damian's very EXISTENCE, fans felt comfortable declaring Tim unilaterally to be Dick's 'favorite'.....and then all it took was the addition of a single family member who had specific NEEDS in regards to Dick's attention and focus, largely because of his age and needing a legal guardian while Tim was old enough to literally jet set around the world on his own.....and like, everything went up in flames in large corners of fandom.

So I'm just like, death to the fave family member myth, its just incredibly counter productive to the idea of found family as a whole especially when it usually only exists to prop up a preferred character as better than others via the proof of see, these other characters say he's their fave or whatever...but also like, its not even necessary?

Because the thing is, you can have Jason reintegrated into the whole family overall, and still prioritize your personal narrative FOCUS on characters you like more than others, like say Dick and Cass.....because of course its natural for even people in the same family to have entirely different DYNAMICS with different family members....and these dynamics don't have to come with a ranking system in order to prioritize which ones you just focus on more in a story. Because its not necessarily that Dick has to be Jason's fave brother, y'know, just for Jason to prefer spending time with Dick simply because he's more comfortable with him due to knowing him longer or being more secure in the idea that Dick doesn't judge him based on their greater shared history.

This doesn't mean that Jason doesn't care for his other siblings, that he can't have strong dynamics with them as well, its just about finding a reason for why these two specifically might be in a story without the others that doesn't demand putting a definitive ranking on which one Jason considers his FAVE. Just like Damian doesn't have to be Dick's FAVE just for them to have the super close canon relationship they have, even relative to the other siblings, because there's everything needed in canon already to establish that the mere fact of Dick essentially RAISING Damian for a year, and being the first one in the family to really take a chance on Damian, like, this lends itself naturally to them maybe more naturally gravitating towards each other than other siblings due to comfort level and familiarity, etc, but it doesn't have to be like....oh but yeah, I just like Damian more than you, Tim, y'know?

So my answer on this one is a total cop out of both, both is good. Jason totally reintegrated back into the family, but with dynamics that still lend themselves fairly easily towards story lineups where its just him running missions with Dick or Duke or any other one or two specific family members even if for no other reason than they gel together best in the field, y'know?

2) Hmm. I honestly really do love and miss 90s Tim Drake and just....don't see him in a lot of what I read these days. I'm like no, why did he have to go, he was doing so well! BUT I'm also on a big accountability kick, and like, I'm so steeped in fics where Dick GROVELS for forgiveness for every little slight he's ever done real or imagined, with every character but Tim in particular, so its like.....I'm not gonna lie, I really have a preference these days for seeing stuff where its literally anyone actually owning up to shit they've done to Dick and apologizing or groveling or making it to HIM, like, completely unconditionally. In the same manner we usually see Dick apologizing, glossing over any reasons he might have had for doing what he did or feeling the way he did, and saying oh it doesn't matter, putting the entirety of his focus on what HE did and why it was wrong no matter what and he's sorry.....that's what I would kill to see from more fics, just in reverse.

Because so often even in the all too rare fics where we DO see other characters apologizing to Dick for shit, its watered down with Dick volunteering that oh he messed up too, it was a two way street, and its like no! This is Pettiness Hours! I want the unconditional apologies! Give me the groveling! From anyone, I don't care at this point, lol, just show me characters actually PUTTING IN THE WORK to make it up to Dick for harm they've caused him, even if completely unintentionally or via neglecting his feelings or considering the repercussions their actions or words would have on him. Aaaaaaand, frankly, Tim's a good place to start there, because of how one sided all the takes on their conflicts have been for so many years. I mean, if people need a place to start, Batman and Robin Eternal gets enough praise it can't be pretended that people in fandom don't know that story exists, so how about some stories where Tim says he's fucking sorry for punching Dick in issue #4 or #5 of that one, and it was uncalled for and he was clearly just looking for an excuse to unleash some more of his resentment and upset for the Spyral/Forever Evil stuff, and family deciding that its totally okay to punch Dick whenever they're mad at him and need to work off some aggression so they can then finally forgive him (for now) is a trend that needs to die in a fire post-haste? I mean just as an example.

But the thing that kills me about fanfic trends is like....the sameness of so much of it. There's SO much room for variety and diverse takes, and like....I don't actually hate Tim! I'm just cranky because of the imbalanced nature of most content out there for literal years at this point. Push the pendulum BACK in the other direction, create some balance by showing the flip side of things.....and that leaves a lot more room for me and others of like minds to then be more amenable to - and even interested in - other stories that don't scratch this particular itch, but don't need to, because other stories are doing the scratching by then, y'know?

And THEN like, at that point, I would be ALL FOR more stories that are just callbacks to classic 90s Tim who I adore, with his skateboarding and his EARNESTNESS and his go-get-em spirit and also the gumption. All the gumption. I like that Tim. I do miss that Tim. But like, for the moment, like, I want accountable Tim because I am tiiiiiiiired of groveling Dick and tbh at this point its not enough for me to just see people move past putting Dick in that position and just have mutually respective and doting brothers Dick and Tim having adventures together......nah, first I want some reciprocation. Ngl. Gimme the apologies for actual mistakes actually made.

3) DickKyle. Easy question, c'mon, you gotta know that. LOL. ;)

But yeah, I've been shipping these two off their like, two shared pages from way back in the Obsidian Age story years before Jason even returned, let alone was in Countdown together with Kyle, so like, its no contest. I don't mind JayKyle, I certainly prefer it to JayRoy tbh, but there's not a ton of appeal in it for me, particularly in how its usually depicted, because like....the entire basis of JayKyle is that they DO have stories together and spent a whole year worth of weekly issues traveling the multiverse together in Countdown.....but there's like, practically no trace of their actual dynamics from that series or any specifics of literally any issue from that entire comic in most fics I’ve read, so its like.....idk, it tends to come across as more generic, not in the sense that it cant still be interesting, but more in the sense that it feels like just someone paired with Jason just because history between them EXISTS without any interest in exploring what that history actually IS....and at that point, its like, well there's no reason TO prioritize that ship over DickKyle for me personally, when like, I have a shit ton of headcanon reasons for why those two in a pairing specifically. *Shrugs* My logic. Its not for everyone, but it works for me.

4) Jason with a sword or Damian with a sword? I don't understand the question. Both. Both is good. All the characters should have swords. Swords are awesome.

5) Chris Kent vs Jon Kent - oof. I adore Jon, I really do. I love his dynamic with Damian, I love a lot of their specific stories, the parallels between them as friends and Bruce and Clark as friends....its all very bien. But I gotta give this one to Chris, because I'm always gonna have a soft spot for him because I'm a sucker for all abused kid heroes, and I just miss that funky little dude so much. There's so many stories we didn't get with him and were just ripe for the picking, but nooooo, DC's like lol you can't have nice things, here we just rebooted the entire multiverse and now Clark and Lois never adopted the son of Clark's worst Kryptonian rival and raised him with tender love and care awww does that make you sad, were you invested in him, WELL TOO BAD, HE'S GONE NOW AND BASICALLY NEVER EXISTED, NOW GIVE US YOUR MONEY ANYWAY MWAHAHAHAHAH.

Yeah. I'm still not over that. Probably will never be tbh, so I with great grudge-bearing do affirm that I'm gonna go with Chris on this one and like, he is a Priority for me and I'm still very keen on the idea of him and Duke being besties for random reasons that might not make sense to anyone but me, but eh, whatever.

[lucky4in]

Magic Interferes in New Orleans

Prompts from Piccadilly's book #3

Words used: ☆matriarch ☆throat ☆impossible ☆vinegar ☆apology ☆slice ☆microwave ☆raspberry ☆choose ☆snore

God! I can't take it. The dread is killing me. I'm losing all the blood in my fingers with how tight I'm squeezing the steering wheel. The honking around me is not helping. I can feel everyone's fear collectively as we sit in agitated traffic. Stress. Fault. Jitteriness. Indifference. Panic, panic, panic.

God, I hate being an empath. I can't even hear my own thoughts. I need to breath! Yeah. Take deep breaths. I'm not far from the U-turn lane. So what if traffic is moving 1 millimeter a minute? The storm can't be faster.

Hooooonk!

Beepbeep!

I have to get out of this situation before I have a sensory overload.

From my front and my rear, I'm surrounded by vehicles. I can't move back, I'll hit someone. I can't move up, because they'll think there's space to move and I'll be more stuck than before. Looking to my right I realize the road across the gate is fairly empty. That last car I saw go that way was 40 something minutes ago.

I gulp loosening my grip from the wheel but still holding it firmly in my palms. Taking a breath I turn the wheel and step on the gas. My car races through the grass and crashes though the metal gates. With a screech, my tires are finally rolling and I'm off. Towards the dark clouds like a fool running blindly into a lions den.

When I finally catch sight of the curling palm trees and the flying debris, my weariness is replaced by anger. We had a plan. A simple schedule. Prepare emergency food, water, and medicine, flashlights and documents, locate nearest shelters, fill up gas tank, clear the yard, and turn off the power. When the evacuation order is set, I would be too far away at the time, so my husband would get the kids from home and we...would...evecuate.

Evacuate.

We would meet at the nearest shelter with our separate cars...

Unfortunately, my...sweet...dearest mother decided to take it upon herself to pick up the kids herself...and NOT evacuate. Instead, she wanted her grand babies to feel safe during the storm and cook them a nice meal...at her house.

I almost had a heart attack when my husband said they weren't there. Instead, a note was attached to the fridge reassuring us that my elementary school kids, including a baby, did not infact disappear off the face of the earth. She wants them to feel less threatened and stressed over this "flood nonsense". Make it seem like a regular thunder storm.

Except it's not a thunder storm! It's a hurricane!

I told my husband not to worry about it, I will get the kids and be ok. The hurricane is suppose to be a bad one, the weather man said. Anything left undemolished by the storm by the end of this would be a miracle. Hopefully it won't be my sanity. I swear, she's impossible.

By the time I get to her house, the streets are flowing with water and clawing up her driveway like waves at a beach. I step out and my shoe kerplunks into the water. I groan, feeling my ears eject hot steam. I stomp onto her porch with a squish, squish, squish and jam the key into the lock.

I kick the door open and slam it shut, my anger seeming to accelerate as soon I step inside. I cringe a bit, noticing my youngest asleep on the couch.

"DON'T SLAM MY DO-" my mother sticks her head out through the kitchen doorway and spots me.

"-Oh, hi baby!"

I stretch a tight smile, coaxing my child back to sleep. "Hello, mother."

"You came just in time. I just need to get a few things done before we eat."

And there she is. Like always. Not worrying about a thing while marinating apple cider vinegar on peices of pork. Probably to slice into the-

Sniff, sniff.

-gumbo. Her calm persona was infuriating. Almost insulting.

"Too bad my son in law couldn't be here. He'd love to stuff his face with the beignets" she continues.

"He's at the shelter. Kinda like we're suppose to be" I say, honey tounged and all "which begs the question..." I lean in, my palms face down on the table. "Why aren't we there right now?" I sneer, bringing my voice down.

"Because there's no need to. You know that" she says simply.

"Maybe in your case, but not mine. You just felt entitled to do things your way. Like you always do. I had everything under control and-and you had me worried."

"You know nothing was going to happen to these kids. I knew nothing was really wrong."

"If you really felt so aloof about this, you should have stayed yourself. You can't just up and take my kids like that. We've talked about this."

She finally looks at me, turning away from her task. "I should be free to see my own grand kids whenever I want to."

"I would have probably excepted that, if we weren't in the middle of a god damn hurricane-"

"Momma! Momma look!"

I was interrupted by my two children excitedly telling me that a pie was on the way. All while showing me their hands, proof of a raspberry massacre. Animated. Passion. Triumph. Pleasant. I ruffle their heads with a quick "good job" and they ran off together. Their happiness almost cures my frustration. It does calm me down a bit though.

"Is is so much to want to keep your family safe" my mother asks.

Aaaaaaand its back.

"Is it so much to just listen to me? To just let me do things my way? I am in no less danger than you are just because I dont have the same... tools that you do."

"It looks like it puts you in a lot of danger if you have to evacuate the city. You could simply come here so momma can protect you."

"That makes me look like a normal person, mom. The streets are already flooding and a ton of people just saw me go the opposite direction. I look stupid and suspicious." I'm taken back to my teen years. Having a similar conversation with my mother. "Not everything can be solved with your protection. I can make my own decisions. But instead you undermine me and tamper with everything around you. Just because I dont have it, doesn't mean I cant keep my family safe or simply be a mother. How about, for once, you let mother nature do her job."

"Your father made this house with his bare hands, rehydrating himself with his sweat. No one is touching this house. Not even Cosmo's or Gaia or whatever." She huffs and turn away. A puff of steam emerges over her head, indicating she opened the pot of Gumbo.

"Well, when your the Matriarch, you can start making the rules around here."

Realizing an apology isn't coming, I groan restricting myself from wrapping my hands around her throat. Its silence between us, as there is after every altercation. Especially when the house is mentioned, cause it's always Papa's house. He passed away before I could even learn to speak his name. Mama always told us about Papa. How she met him, how he put her on her feet and built a house for her (it was told he even built the bricks holding this house up), how his devotion to his family and the love of his life lasted until death did them part.

"What makes you think I'm going to be the next Matriarch?" I ask, slipping in the kitchen chair.

"You will. It's a family tradition that you need to uphold. And you are the only girl conceived by me." She answers, this sounds almost rehearsed.

"Why don't the others take your place?" I ask, for the millionth time.

"It's only rare that a boy has ever been in place of a woman. And once a girl was brought in, he was removed immediately."

"If it's that simple then crown them and get it over with."

"Oh, do you think it's that easy"? She quizzes, slowly turning to me.

"Knowing you, probably not."

"Hyde is much more coordinated than that. If they really didn't think you were worthy, we would have known, but I always knew you were special."

Here she goes again. Hyde,, is supposedly the person that gifts the family with magic, life, and girls. It's the spirirt who thrones and dethrones us. No matter who we are. According to mom, the next Matriarch could be good or bad, Hyde has a plan for them in the end.

Along with Papa's stories, Hyde was always directed towards me because I was the only girl, excluding my half sister. Truthfully there was no way to know if Hyde was actually real. I'm not even sure if my parents have seen it. Mom would tell me tales at night of different women throughout our generation, chosen by Hyde and how I would be like them someday.

Perfect.

"Hyde doesn't give you this gift for no reason" mom reassures "they always have a plan. You can't see everything in a negative light. What if Hyde chooses Clio and you-"

I stop her at the mention of my youngest name.

"I'm not putting that responsibility on my kid" I say sternly, though It probably won't matter what I tell her "Especially if, no offense, she ends up like you. Completely dependent on Hyde's gift. IT didn't give me any when I was born, like the rest of you, and I'd like it to stay that way."

Silence once more.

"Perhaps you're afraid-"

"I'm not afraid-"

"-its okay."

"-Of this imaginary ghost."

"Sure, keep believing that. But when it happens~" she sings.

"When it happens to me, pigs will fly" I sneer, memories of that same sing song tone prodding at me.

She says nothing.

"Just let it go mom, it's just not meant to be. I'm not a child that you can hide under your wings when hail comes. However your gifts came to be, Hyde, the house, whatever, it must've skipped a generation."

She continues to stir. She sputters "but-but the family-"

"-The family doesn't know what's best for me and neither do you. I know I'm the only daughter to the Matriarch. I know I wasn't born with any gifts like my siblings. I know refusing my path makes me an ungrateful child and Hyde will handle me" I say reciting what I also heard throughout my life "But that's not my life. And I'm not defenseless."

She freezes. More silence.

"And, I mean, it's not like having voodoo is easy. It consumes you and it messes a lot of things up. This worlds order and the next."

"That's what the council is for" my mom mutters finally.

"Oh, right. The council. The same family who's just as dependent as you. Do you even remeber a time where you haven't used your gift and actually did things yourself?"

...

...

"Don't you ever think of letting go of this life? Doing things for yourself and not the family? Hyde? Papa's house? I notice how this changes you as you age. If this is the answer to our problems I wouldn't mind the sea taking this house away for a while-"

"Mama! Mama!"

"Wow, look."

I follow my kids voices and they seek for me, a glimmer of wonder and awe in there wide pupils. My 2 boys are pointing to the window in the living room. My sleeping child is now up, standing on her toes to see what her brothers are looking at.

As I begin to walk In the living room, they're rushing back to the kitchen. I take a peek and see a part of the lawn, including my rental car but the road and the neighborhood is gone. A large amount of visible debris is covering up the world around-

No.

No.

That's not debris. That's not wind.

I follow my kids. They've opened the screen door and ventured into the back yard. I race after them and stop in my tracks. The water barrier has followed us to the backyard. My kids are screaming and dancing in the sprinklers as the hurricane is trapping us in its second eye. The oceanic barrier is circling around is, refusing to touch the property. With my kids instructions I look up, the sky is dark above us like it's the dead of night, yet inside the barrier, its murky like a cloudy day.

I can't concentrate. Excitment. Curiosity. Shock. Chills.

I sigh as my daughter wobbles to me and I scoop her in my arms. I can see it now, worst hurricane in 6 years and the Crobitt house still stands. This is similar but not related to the instance when a pair of swings at the run down school across the house seemingly froze in the air a few years ago... CIA is currently investigating...

I gather my children inside, they were starting to go towards the rushing ocean and who knows what'll happen. I shut the door with a defeated sigh and sulk at the table. The beneits sit gracefully with their powder sugar and I worship it by stuffing it in my mouth.

"I told you..."

I look up. My mothers eyes are glowing that familiar bright green and she has that devious smirk on her face. She always gave me that look as a child as if she's trying to tell me something. That, or it's to prove something, which I still dont know. I dont think I ever will.

"...you're father built this house. No one is taking it from me..."

...

...

"Now, elbows off the table."

-------

If you like to write or be creative, perhaps you need inspiration, go check out this book! Its the best!

[ironxkid]

why don't you like endgame or civil war

((hoo buddy, idk what brought this up but salt under the cut!! Like... a lot of salt - specifically regarding Endgame lmao

I’m gonna start off with CACW because it’s a short response lol

I don’t like it simply because I was done with the infighting between the Avengers. The found family crumbs we were given in Endgame was something I really wanted to see, and them just... ripping them apart frustrated me lol

honestly, the movie was... fine? Idk, I found it to be a lil slow for my taste (it felt like it just dragged on when I watched it in theaters), and I just don’t care for it in general  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, ngl, I’m really bummed that Captain America: Serpent Society was a joke announcement because that sounds dope as hell and I really wanted to see that before I realized it’d been a joke dfgjhdsfhj

but, yeah, literally just because CACW is specifically an infighting movie annoys me to no end so I just won’t watch it again dgsfjhsfdhj

now, Endgame?

fuck Endgame

I. have a lot of issues with it, all of which are major grievances throughout the fandom. I’m pissed they killed Natasha and didn’t even bother giving her a fucking funeral because, I quote from Joe Russo, “Well, Tony does not have another movie. Tony is done. And Natasha has another film. And Marvel Universe obviously does not have to move forward linearly anymore. But that character still has more screen time coming.” (see here) and that annoys the hell out of me. She’s getting another movie - great! So you killed one of the few characters doing her fucking best to keep everything together at the compound, the one who was taking charge, give her a big role, and then murk her and... give her nothing but a brief mention at the end. Like... what the fuck? Natasha deserved so much better than what she was given. Tony’s funeral could’ve (and, frankly, should’ve) been a funeral for him, Natasha, and Vision because god forbid we see anyone mourn Vision other than Wanda

(actually this post covers how Endgame fucked over the MCU women perfectly, though Wanda’s not mentioned :c )

plus... Tony’s not done lol - he’s still a massive figure in the films/shows despite RDJ not acting in them, so his character has left shockwaves that aren’t dying any time soon. Natasha... basically disappeared, and I believe she would’ve been dropped completely if it wasn’t for the fact she does have a film coming out soon. Which, frankly, seems awesome and all, but it’s a film that goes back to post-CACW pre-IW and... frankly doesn’t give me any reason to understand why that means she didn’t get a funeral. She’s not coming back in future movies/shows that are in present MCU timeline - her movie is set in the past. She could’ve gotten a decent sendoff 

now, Clint’s arc as Ronin rubs me the wrong way. I know it’s a huge thing in the comics, and it’s not him taking a different mantle that I have an issue with. It’s the fact he, a white man, went around murdering people and got off scot-free. Yes, he was targeting genuinely bad people, but... to show that, they specifically singled out Mexican cartels and the yakuza (Japanese mafia, essentially) - so, in other words, the bad guys were people of color! I feel like I don’t need to explain how fucked up that is. And, to clarify, I love Clint! Clint is honestly one of my favorite characters, and the whole thing was just handled... poorly in the film

Tony’s arc genuinely hurts. This is a man who has suffered for years and has tried to make things right, and finally got a chance to settle down. He finally retired from the Avengers, finally settled down, and had a fucking life he could enjoy despite his ghosts, and yet... His arc ends with a message of “tortured soul finally gets rest by dying”. Because, y’know, it’s great seeing yet another long-suffering character only reaching peace through death, because god forbid they let characters heal! He could’ve still caused the second Snap, and he could’ve survived. He could’ve finally been able to step away for good and focus on his family, focus on recovering, and be truly happy. What’s so wrong with letting him stay alive so he can rest and be with his family? What’s so wrong with letting a long-suffering character finally find peace after one last bang? 

plus it pisses me off that they’re now using him as a reasoning as to why bad things are still happening. Why is this person the bad guy? Because Tony Stark somehow may or may not have done something that hurt them! Even though most of that really stems from Howard or Obadiah. Tony just ends up getting the blame in their place. He’s just an easy target to use, much like the tesseract seems to be the go-to answer for why things go wrong. But this is a different train of thought

Steve’s ending pisses me off just as much as the next person lmao. You take a character who has acknowledged he no longer belongs in the past (which, funnily enough, was written by the Russos), aaaaaaand have him go back to the past while ignoring two important people in his life that were still right there. He got Bucky and Sam back, and he leaves them. His arc is ruined within a matter of minutes, and it paints a hella bad picture of him in the process. He goes back in time to stay with Peggy (which ultimately destroys her own arc, and the fact she’s a person outside of her relationship (or lack thereof) with him because, y’know, why have her be able to move on and be her own person?), and we’re supposed to believe he’s fine with everything he knows from the future? Fine with knowing Bucky’s trapped with HYDRA and is suffering as the Winter Soldier? Fine with knowing HYDRA has infested SHIELD from day one? Fine with knowing Howard and Maria are going to die? Fine with royally fucking up the timelines? We’re supposed to believe he sat back and did nothing with all of that? They could’ve had him still hand the shield over to Sam - they could’ve let Steve stay an Avenger without the mantle

also the fact the Russos said he didn’t recognize Red Skull when he returned to Vormir to return the soul stone? Like... what the fuck?? Not to mention he literally returns the stone to Vormir, which “soul for a soul”, and they didn’t bring Nat back that way??

and now onto Thor. Thor... holy fuck is this hitting something personal for me. Thor was ridden with guilt - he was furious with himself, hated himself, and blamed himself for failing to stop the Snap. He fell into a massive depression, and... was promptly danced around as laughing stock. Like, “oh! look at Thor! he’s fat and drunk because he’s depressed haha!” - like fuck off. It’s not funny in any form. His suffering was made into a joke and it pisses me off because I suffer from depression. A lot of people suffer from depression. It’s not funny. It’s fucking terrifying at times. I wasted a shit ton of money on a stupid online sim game because it was a distraction - it gave me... god, I wouldn’t even say temporary happiness, but it gave me something to temporarily help, and I still hate myself for doing it. It was a poor decision on my part, and I wish I could change it. And, during that time, I was scared because I couldn’t see myself pulling out of it. I thought I was gonna feel that way forever. I called out of work multiple times because there were days I couldn’t stop crying (something I still feel horrible for doing), I couldn’t get myself to contact any of my friends for months, and it was all because the medication I was on at the time... stopped working. Thankfully, my depression doesn’t work in a way that makes me a danger to myself, so that wasn’t an issue, but it still fucking sucked. And to see a character that I could relate to on such a personal level treated as laughing stock fucking hurt. I’m not sharing this for sympathy - I’m sharing this because it Thor’s arc hit home and it’s literally the main reason why I will not watch Endgame again

this is more of a nitpick than anything else, but... I didn’t really care for Carol in it tbh? Which is unfortunately because Captain Marvel is one of my absolute favorite movies! And I’m well aware she was introduced in Endgame while CM was being drafted, but that in itself is annoying?? Because Carol was originally going to be introduced in AoU, but was cut because it wasn’t going to introduce her character properly. And yet they decide to introduce her character in a clusterfuck of a movie before her movie is in the final stages, and proceed to release her movie first and then give a complete different characterization in her following appearance

honestly I just wanna cover this now to clarify some things regarding Carter and her backstory: the only reason I keep Endgame as is is because it felt easier for me to do so for the purpose of bending canon for specific threads. I wanted to stay as true to the given plots as possible to help with fudging of both the movies and her background, and also because I didn’t want anyone to feel like I was trying to force my own headcanons onto them, y’know? 

I’m just gonna plug this here because fuck it lol, but I did start a fix-it fic regarding Endgame that you can read here! I... probably won’t finish it tbh, and I haven’t gone over it in a hot minute so it might be riddled with errors ahah - plus I’m not sure about how I wrote the characters! I get nervous when writing canon characters because I feel like I’ll miss their characterization completely, which is actually why I,,, rarely rp canon characters dgfjhgsfdhj

also the image in the doc was created by @/archervale!! 

[beyscape]

Under the Moonlight

Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: Your brother Tony threw the best parties; they just weren’t your thing. Steve knew of this, and decided to check up on you.

Requested by: @franciose18xx​

Word Count: 2172

Warnings: some swearing. Steve wouldn’t approve lol

A/N: I had a dumb smile on while writing this, I love Steve too much.

  Being Tony Stark’s little sister had a lot of benefits. His love for throwing huge parties, however, was one of the few downsides you could think of.

  The music was loud in the “party floor” as Tony liked to call it, and the crazy amount of people around you kept getting drunker and drunker as the party progressed. You smiled and nodded at the occasional faces you recognized, but otherwise you kept to yourself, swirling the drink glass in your hands and watching the ice slowly melt. Yes, watching the ice melt was much more interesting than the party surrounding you. Suffocating you.

  It wasn’t like you were particularly introverted, in fact, with those you were close with you could be described as loud, as wild. After all, you were related to Tony Stark. In these types of parties though, there simply were too many strange faces, and you couldn’t deny that it made you uncomfortable. Your eyes trailed over the scene unfolding around you as you wondered when was acceptable for you to sneak back to the lab upstairs. You were thinking of the latest project you were working on with Tony  when your gaze focused on the far end of the room.

  A small smile appeared on your face as you watched Steve laugh at the antics of Thor. Another benefit of being Tony’s sister. If it wasn’t for your brother going and getting mixed with super hero stuff, you never would have met Steve Rogers.

Noticing your stare even with the great distance laying between you, Steve raised his head to meet your eyes. He simply smiled at you, giving you a slow nod before turning back to face the God of Thunder beside him. You averted your eyes quickly, too quickly, and cursed. You hadn’t meant to get caught staring at him, and now he probably thought you were a creep. What a great party.

You liked Steve, even that fact had taken way too long to admit to yourself, but you could never tell if he had the same feelings. He was such a gentleman that it was so hard to decipher whether he was  just being nice or he nursed the same feelings as you. Things would have been much easier if he was a program you could run through a decoder and figure out his codes. Humans were too messy, too complicated.

“Aaaaaaand there is the smartest Stark!” An arm hung around your shoulders, the smell of alcohol hitting you before you turned to face the person intruding your deep thoughts.

“You really need to stop drinking more than you can handle.” You shook your head as your brother gave you the stupid grin that was his trademark when drunk.

“You really need to fix your attitude and mingle with people.” He retorted before sticking his tongue out.

“Such a child,” you muttered under your breath, “Let’s go get you some coffee. You don’t wanna get shitfaced so early in your own damn party.” You mirrored his look, sticking a tongue out back.

“What did you just call me? Smartass. YOU are the child.” He hiccupped, swaying on his feet. You let him lean on you.

“Am I a child or a smartass, make up your mind.” Leading him through the sea of people towards the bar area proved to be more difficult than you originally anticipated. “When the hell did you get so heavy? One would think the whole superhero stuff would keep you fit.” You grunted as he fully put his weight on you, almost as if doing it on purpose to mess with you. You wouldn’t put it past Tony.

“Smartass.” Tony ruffled your hair with his free hand.

“See, you’re so drunk you can’t think of new stuff to call me. No fun.” You could see the bar now, just a few more feet and you could dump your potato sack of a brother on one of the stools. Just then, you felt the weight raised off of you.

“Hi Y/N.” Pepper smiled at you before shaking her head at Tony’s state.

“Pepper! My savior!” You breathed a sigh of relief.

“He drank more than he could handle, didn’t he? Can’t believe he keeps doing this. You go, I’ll take care of him.” Pepper gave you a reassuring nod.

“Did I ever tell you that I love you? Cause I do.” You thanked her, honestly happy that she would be taking care of Tony’s drunk ass, you made a mental note to lecture him the next morning. Or when he recovered from the wicked hangover waiting for him. What made you even happier though was the fact that Pepper pretty much gave you the green light to leave. You merrily obliged.

Before making your way back up to the lab and working until ungodly hours of the night, you decided getting some fresh air would be the best to clear your head. You didn’t have much to drink, certainly not as much as your brother, but the two and a half glasses of whiskey still made you feel tipsy enough.

You pushed the glass doors of the balcony on the other end of the floor open, letting the cool air wash over you. The chill of the night was a welcome sensation on your skin, you leaned your arms on the metal railing. The moon was close to turning full, but it was big enough that there was no need for lighting as you stood on the balcony. The pale light of the moon washed everything gently.

“Hey.” A voice called out from behind you, you turned to see Steve leaning against the doorway with his hands in his pockets. A dashing smile was on his face, the kind that made you spend way too long thinking about.

“Hey.” You replied, tucking your hair behind your ear.

“Why are you not at the party?”

“You’re not at the party either.”

 He chuckled, nodding. He took a step, then two towards you. Your breath hitched as he closed the distance. You didn’t know what you were expecting, or better yet, hoping to happen, but it definitely wasn’t this. Steve mirrored your previous position, leaning over the railing. You turned back.

“I saw you practically run out, figured I’d come and check up on you.” He was facing the nearly-full moon, its kind light illuminating his beautiful face. You wished you could capture this moment and forever keep it.

“I just,” you licked your lips, “I’m not great with parties.”

“I know. Honestly, me neither. I much prefer being here.” See, this was the thing about Steve. You never ran out of things to say, you were never speechless. Your brother often teasingly complained about you being too sassy for your own good, but being with Steve pretty much flicked a switch and suddenly you found with a slightly open mouth and nothing to say. No cheeky remarks.

“You must be the first person that prefers my company over one of Tony’s epic parties.”

“You thought I would rather watch people get drunk and do stupid things instead of  being on a balcony with the smartest, funniest and the most gorgeous woman in the whole building? I may not be a genius like you but I’m not a fool either, Y/N.”

Your mouth fell open. Never in a million years did you expect those words to spill out of Steve’s mouth. Was he really flirting with you just now? He raised his eyebrows at your expression.

“Was that too much? I’m sorry, I’m about ninety years behind on this whole flirting thing.” He grimaced slightly.

“No! I mean, no.” You shook your head, surpassing a delighted laughter. “You were doing great, grandpa.”

“See, now you’re teasing me. Just tell me it was too cheesy. Come on, I can take it.”

“Okay it was a little cheesy.”

“I knew it!”

“You didn’t let me finish. It was a little cheesy, but frankly, I like cheese.”

 He laughed, and your heart leapt as you couldn’t help but join him. You wished he would always laugh like he had just now. Silence fell as you both faced the moon once more, shy smiles dancing on your faces as you both stole tiny glances at each other. Finally, Steve broke the silence.

“Y/N.” Your name rolled off of his tongue, his voice now more serious. You stared into his blue eyes, captivated.

“Steve.” He moved closer. You gulped.

“May I kiss you?” He asked, and of course he did, and you exhaled slowly. You managed to give him a small nod.

He placed a gentle hand on your cheek, smiling down at you in a way of softness you never witnessed before. He closed the distance. It was a delicate kiss; his lips were warm on yours that were cold with the chilly air and it was everything you dreamt of. You sighed as it ended way too soon for your liking. He peered at your face, searching, this time it was you who leaned in.

The kiss initiated by you was deeper as your lips crashed, Steve’s hands sneaking down to your waist as he pressed your bodies closer. One of your hands rested on his well-toned chest while the other ran through his blonde hair, something you found yourself wanting to do for so very long. He was a much better kisser for someone who admitted to having little to none experience, you thought, as electric waves were sent down your spine. You pulled away for breath, reluctant in doing so.

“I would like to take you on a date, some dinner and maybe movies.” He raised his eyebrows, more of a statement than a question.

“I think that would be very nice.” You pecked his lips, his grip tightening slightly.

“What do we have here?” A slurring voice interrupted the intimate moment, sending you and Steve flying to different ends of the too-small balcony. Tony appeared in the doorway, scowling. “Capsicle, that better not be my baby sister you were kissing just now.”

Steve took a step towards him, ready to explain, only to be cut by Pepper.

“Sorry guys, I turned away for one second and he managed to get away.” She noted the blush on both you and Steve’s cheeks, as well as the look of annoyance on Tony’s. She gave you a sly wink. “Don’t let us interrupt.” She linked her arm with his.

“Pepper, I—we–” You looked at the woman with wide eyes as she held up a hand.

 “I didn’t see anything, and this one,” she patted Tony’s arm, “will be lucky if he remembers his name in the morning.” She winked at you before leading a protesting Tony away.

 You looked at Steve, who shared your mortified expression at the close call.

“Pepper’s right. He won’t remember, we’re safe for now.” A breathy laugh escaped your lips, Steve pulling you in. You rested your forehead on his shoulder.

“I cannot believe we almost got caught this soon.” Steve shook his head.

“So, dinner, you said?” You muttered into his shoulder.

 ------------

 It was some time past afternoon when Tony finally sauntered into the kitchen area, where you were perched on one of the stools. Steve was seated across you, focused on the newspaper in his hands.

“You look like hell.” You stated matter-of-factly.

“Love you too.” He groaned before coming to a halt. He squinted his eyes at you and Steve. You forced yourself to look bored, trying your best to not look at Steve.

“I didn’t see you two kiss last night, did I? Because that would be crazy. Right?” His gaze drifted between you and the soldier.

“What? No. Do you even know how drunk you were? It’s no surprise you imagined things.” You shot back, slightly too defensive. Tony, on a regular day, would pick up on it immediately. He was, however, so damn hangover at the time that he didn’t notice it. Or the pointed looks shared between you and Steve.

“Yeah, it would be crazy.” He muttered as he grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and made his way back to presumably his room. You exhaled sharply as Steve put down the newspaper.

“This is too stressful, should we just tell him?” He reached over and grabbed your hand, placing a kiss on your knuckles.

“And have him die from a heart attack? No way.” You got up, and gingerly walked towards Steve. The look of fondness sending the butterflies in your stomach in a frenzy. You placed a soft kiss on his temple. “He’ll figure it out on his own soon enough. I for one don’t wanna deal with his dramatic ass right now.

“Language.” Steve tilted his head, grinning.

You rolled your eyes at him. “Alright, grandpa.” You pecked him on the lips before running off, not giving him a chance to reply.

Steve shook his head as he laughed to himself. This would be interesting.

----------------------------

this was written very late into the night and i’m too impulsive to not post it before sleep, so i apologize for any mistakes!!

------------

CHRIS EVANS TAGLIST @marvelouspottering

let me know if anyone else is interested in taglists! 😊

[keichanz]

Possession

Okay so I stayed up super late last night to try and get this out, but I couldn’t do it because i was so tired lol and now I’m kicking myself because I could have posted the first half of it because honestly the last five pages aren't even that relevant but eh whatever. 

This came out a lot longer than I anticipated, but only because I wanted to have the argument between Inuyasha and Izayoi resolved and that will be posted later today, but not as an official Spooktober prompt. It’ll be more like a bonus chapter. 

and once more, the prompt has nothing at all to do with anything spooky or Halloween related lmao oh well there's no rules saying that is has to XD

Spooktober Day 25: Possession

Izayoi stared at the festive and brightly decorated door of her locker, feeling oddly detached as she took in all the well wishes and brief, personal messages from her friends. As was a custom whenever someone in their tightly knit group of friends had a birthday, they always arrived early to decorate their locker with homemade cards, cut out stars, dollar store cheap decorations and silly little messages.

Rin’s was, of course, front and center, her handwriting big, bold, and loud, just like the girl herself was. Kohaku’s messy scrawl was just beneath hers, and she’d spotted a few other birthday wishes from people she knew of, but didn’t talk to that much, probably just sparing a second to write down a quick happy b-day as they passed by.

Seeing Kohaku’s had made her think that maybe someone else had taken the time to write something too, but upon realizing that his name was missing from all the rest, the disappointment had been swift and stinging.

Thinking on it now, however, Izayoi grudgingly admitted that it made sense; being two grades above her, Raiden was in a different part of the school where his own classes were located. She hadn’t seen him all day and didn’t know if he was even here today and if he was, certainly he had no reason to venture this far out of his way just to write a silly little message for a silly little girl with a not so little crush on her birthday.

And why would he, Izayoi thought bitterly, features twisting into a pout as she put in the combination and roughly yanked open her locker door. Probably wants nothing to do with me now, the girl with the crazy overprotective jerkface of a father. Not after Friday.

She knew it wasn’t the end of the world or anything. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that. She was young, blah blah blah.

Didn’t stop it from hurting, though.

Sighing, Izayoi carelessly tossed her bag on top of her texts and her eyes landed on the sleek device sitting quietly on the top shelf. She hesitated for a fleeting moment – it was lunch period so she was allowed to have it – then gave in and reached up to grab it. It was cool against her skin as she brought it down and her face was reflected in the dark, smooth glass of the screen.

Despite her current mood she had to smile a little. She’d found the cell phone in her backpack that morning when exchanging her books for first period and she’d been so surprised she’d nearly dropped it. The note taped to the box it was in had nearly made her cry on the spot, and thinking of it now Izayoi once more felt her throat tighten and her eyes to feel hot.

The note had simply said “Happy birthday, babygirl. Love, Mom and Dad” and it had been in her dad’s handwriting.

She still hadn’t spoken to him since their argument Friday. All weekend she’d actively avoided him and though it was clear her mom disapproved, she hadn’t stopped her either, and Izayoi was grateful. She was still angry, still hurt from what he’d said and done and she wasn’t ready to talk to him yet.

Surprisingly her mom wasn’t trying to play mediator like she usually did, and even more surprisingly, her dad hadn’t tried to approach and talk things over. He was giving her the space she wanted, respecting her silent wish to leave her be until she was ready.

The fact that he was letting her come to him made her feel a guilty, and that just made her feel even worse, and round and round the vicious cycle went.

God. Here it finally was, her thirteen birthday, making her an official teenager, and here she was, absolutely and completely miserable.

Izayoi closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and once she felt like she wasn’t about to break apart, she tucked the phone away in the back pocket of her jeans and swung the door to her locker closed.

“Hey, pretty puppy.”

The breath left her lungs in a deep, aggravated sigh and she grumbled, “Leave me alone, Daisuke. I’m in no mood to deal with you right now.” Or ever.

“C’mon,” he crooned and swiftly stepped in front of her when she moved to walk away. “You’re not still mad about what happened, are you? It was an accident.”

Izayoi snorted. “Maybe on your end,” she mumbled under her breath, not really caring if he heard her. Because breaking his nose had definitely not been an accident.

“Look, it’s your birthday, right? So lemme make it up to you. Let’s do something after school, my treat.” He grinned charmingly down at her, probably thinking it was actually going to be that easy.

“No thanks,” Izayoi said and moved to step around him. “Rin and the girls already promised to take me out and I’m doing something with my family afterward.”

Lies, but he didn’t need to know that. Or at least the first part was; she was pretty sure her parents wanted her home at some point so they could have a small celebration with family, cake, and ice cream and embarrass her by singing “happy birthday” horribly off key. And normally that would have appealed to her, but right now all it did was remind her of the plans she used to have today, and her chest ached.

“So they can come with us,” Daisuke said with a shrug, frowning when she went to step around him. Once more he intercepted her, using his longer legs to his advantage. “The more the merrier, right?”

Izayoi set her jaw and pegged him with a peeved glare.

“No,” she said firmly and again went to brush past him, their less than stimulating conversation over as far as she was concerned.

Daisuke darted a hand out and caught her arm, preventing her from leaving.

“Alright, I get it,” he said, ignoring her annoyed growl as she yanked at her arm. He held fast and continued with a smirk, “My pretty puppy’s playing hard to get. Fine, if you won’t go out with me tonight, then go with me to your parents’ Halloween party.”

He paused, and then frowned. “Wait, you can still go with me even though you live there, right—”

“I’m not your anything, Daisuke,” Izayoi hissed, ears pinned against her head and amber eyes snapping fire at him. “Let me go. Now.”

“We can meet somewhere and go together,” he said, completely ignoring her. “It’ll be like a real date.”

Amber eyes narrowed as she said through gritted teeth, “You want me to break your nose again?”

Daisuke blinked and frowned, however he did loosen his hold enough for her to jerk her arm free.

Glowering at him, her patience for his idiocy worn out, she snapped, “I’m not going with you to the party. I’m already going with somebody else.”

As soon as the words left her mouth Izayoi wanted to take them back. Oh, why did I say that? It’s not true. At least, not any more.

Aaaaaaand she wanted to cry again. Great.

Daisuke blinked and he proved that he was capable of feeling more than just arrogance as confusion crossed his features.

“Wait, you are? With who?”

Izayoi merely crossed her arms and looked away. She would have left already, but she knew he would just stop her again so there was no point.

Daisuke’s face darkened and he scowled a little, jealousy flashing in midnight eyes.

“Who the hell is it?” he demanded in a low, dangerous voice, not wanting to believe someone had gotten to his pretty puppy before he did. She was supposed to be with him, dammit!

Izayoi cut her eyes to his briefly and muttered, “None of your business.”

He growled and stepped forward. “Dammit, who—”

“She’s going with me, dickless,” a voice interrupted from behind her and as Daisuke whipped his head up to level a glare at the intruder, Izayoi fought against the urge to weep in relief because one, he had perfect timing, and two, he still wanted to go with her to the party. A part of her also wanted to laugh because he’d called Daisuke dickless, but that was easily suppressed.

Daisuke scoffed and with his attention on the other demon he didn’t notice Izayoi take a step back to put some distance between them.

“You can’t be serious,” the wolf said with a derisive snort and crossed his arms, lifting his chin haughtily as he stared down his nose at the dark-haired dog demon. “It’s you?”

Standing just a few feet away with his arms crossed and an unreadable look on his face, Raiden regarded Daisuke mutely for another minute before crossing the distance between them. With Izayoi’s back facing him he couldn’t see her face but he didn’t need to; her scent told him everything he needed to know.

He purposely positioned himself in front of her and crossed his arms again, unaffected by the snarl Daisuke was currently aiming at him.

“I’m completely serious,” Raiden finally answered and he heard Izayoi inhale sharply behind him. “I’m her date, she’s not available, so you can go now. I can take it from here.”

Then he actually smirked and Izayoi bit back a snicker.

Daisuke snorted again and mirrored the dog demon’s pose, crossing his arms and giving him a once over, his expression suggestion that he was not impressed.

“Please,” he scoffed. “Inuyasha Taisho would chew you up and spit you out barely breathing if a pathetic weakling like you ever came near his precious daughter.” Then he returned the smirk and added, “And you’d go running with your tail between your legs so you can lick your wounded ego.”

Raiden merely cocked a brow and drawled, “And yet, here I am.”

Izayoi slapped hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh.

That particular implication wiped the smirk right off of his face and Daisuke scared incredulously at him before narrowing his eyes in disbelief.

“You mean you actually faced off against her old man and came back in one piece?” he asked, the idea clearly ludicrous to him.

Raiden stared at him before slowly looking down at himself, as if to check that he was, indeed, all there.

“Seems like it,” he said and this time had to grin when Izayoi failed that time in smothering her laugh.

Daisuke scowled, not amused by his show of nonchalance and cockiness. He’d had enough of this wise guy and his holier than thou attitude and it was time to end this pointless conversation.

“Listen here, smartass—”

“No, you listen,” Raiden interrupted and Izayoi watched in fascination as his face twisted into scowl, something she’d never seen on him before. “I’ve seen the way you act toward her, like she’s some kind of possession, a thing to claim, and I’m sick of it. She’s not your ‘pretty puppy’ or your anything; she’s Izayoi, she’s cute, funny, smart, and she’s my date, so do both of us a favor and back off, Matsuno.  Your advances are clearly unwanted, and maybe you’re too dense to understand that, but I’m more than happy to demonstrate in a much more physical way if you continue to bother her. And by physical I mean my fist to your face, just in case you need that clarification.”

Daisuke surprisingly had nothing to say to that, his face flushed in anger, jaw clenched, and blue eyes swimming with all the loathing he had for the dog demon in front of him. Raiden was unmoved, staring steadily back at him, an unmovable object against an unstoppable force.

Gritting his teeth, the wolf shifted his gaze to the hanyou standing silently behind his advisory, seeking some kind of sing that the dog was wrong, but Izayoi wasn’t even looking at him. Her golden gaze was trained solely on the damned dog and he could have sworn there were goddamn hearts in her eyes.

He blinked and his shoulders slumped in defeat. Well. That was his answer, wasn’t it.

Straightening his back and turning his eyes back toward Raiden, Daisuke set his jaw, glared into eyes that were the weirdest freaking shade of blue-green he’d ever seen, then with a barely perceptible nod, he turned and wordlessly stalked away.

The second he rounded the corner and disappeared from sight, Raiden exhaled loudly and turned around to face the pretty silver-haired hanyou he was starting to develop some serious feelings for. Feelings that he maybe, sort of, wanted to explore, but first he had to get passed the fair lady’s guard and protector.

Easier said than done, as he’d found out first hand, but he was sure as hell going to try.

Realizing that he may have overstepped his boundaries a bit, Raiden grimaced and cautiously peeked at her face. He was met with the smiling countenance of said fair lady, her pretty golden eyes soft, and slowly he relaxed.

“Hi,” he said lamely. You know, like a dumbass.

Her smile widened. “Hi,” she breathed, eyes suspiciously bright. “Thank you. For saying all that. You didn’t have to, and...” she trailed off, shrugging and shifted her gaze to the side, her face flushed.

Raiden frowned. “I did have to,” he said firmly. “Otherwise I don’t think he would have ever left you alone. I’m sorry, I...probably shouldn’t have said some of it—”

“Did you mean it?” she asked him, voice serious, eyes searching his own.

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

Her smile was bright and beautiful and, yep he was a goner. Shit.

“Then don’t be sorry. I’m not.”

His eyes widened.

...Oh.

Oh.

Ridiculously Raiden felt his face heat and he coughed into his hand, looking away briefly to regain his bearings.

“Jeez, woman, warn a guy,” he grumbled and was rewarded with her soft giggle. Sneaking a glance, he saw her looking away too, but she was still smiling with a soft blush on her cheeks, and oddly that helped to regain his scattered nerves and he sighed before reaching into his pack pocket to pull out his reason for seeking her out.

“I wanted to give you this,” he stated, holding it out and Izayoi blinked in surprise, her smile never fading as she reached out and took it. “I waited for you at the cafeteria but when you didn’t show, I got worried. Now I’m glad I went looking for you.”

Izayoi turned her smile on him. “Me, too,” she whispered, her gratitude obvious in her eyes and voice.

With a small grin Raiden watched her open the simple card he’d gotten her and had to admit, he was very satisfied with the way her flush deepened and her smile became positively radiant. It wasn’t much, but he’d thought of her when he saw them, and knew he had to get them.

The card read, “Happy birthday, buttercup. —Rai” and tucked inside was an artificial stem of golden buttercup blossoms.

It was so simple, a little cheesy, and Izayoi absolutely adored it.

“I love it,” she said honestly, lifting her golden gaze to meet his own blue-green depths. “Thank you so much, Raiden. It...it means a lot.”

Raiden grinned and innocently turned his head, lifting a hand to not so subtly scratch his cheek as he rolled his eyes heavenward, waiting.

Izayoi immediately caught on and laughing, strangely not at all shy or embarrassed, she stepped in close and leaned up to brush a kiss across his cheek. When she leaned back he was as smug as can be with the biggest shit-eating grin on his face and once more she had to laugh. What a goober!

“Score,” he said proudly, taking the fake flower from her hand and carefully tucking it behind her ear.

The soft flesh flicked against his fingers and he had the insane urge to grab the appendage to see how soft it really was, but he refrained and dropped his hand, admiring the splash of golden color amidst the sterling silver of her hair.

When he flicked his gaze back to her face, he was amused to see that it had gone red again and her bright amber eyes were wide as she gazed at him. Her fingers brushed the delicate faux petals and her pleasure from the simple act was obvious in her brilliant smile.

Raiden was momentarily struck stupid but got ahold of himself quickly and stepped back to give her some space. He tried not to read too much into the flash of disappointment he saw on her face before it disappeared.

“So, uh,” he said, clearing his throat. “We’re still on, right? For the party I mean.” He gave an easy smile and shoved his hands into his pockets, his posture relaxed.

The happiest she’d been all day, Izayoi eagerly nodded, relieved that he still wanted to go with her.

“Definitely!” she answered and then suddenly remembered the phone in her back pocket and with a little sound of exclamation, Izayoi reached back to fish it out and proudly present it to him.

“And look!” she gushed, grinning as she woke up the screen. “Birthday present from my parents. I found it this morning in my bag, those sneaks.”

Raiden positively lit up and he took it from her, unlocking the screen and nodding in approval.

“Wicked,” he praised, going into her message app. “I’m sending myself a message so I can have your number.” He paused and glanced at her. “If...that’s okay—”

“Yes!” Izayoi immediately answered, then blushed at her enthusiasm and cleared her throat. “Um, yeah. That’s fine.” She smiled and tried to act cool.

He grinned, secretly pleased and shot himself a quick text with the peace sign emoji. He politely didn’t mention the heart eyes emoji next to his contact info as he handed the mobile back, trying not to smirk proudly.

Izayoi secured her new phone back into her pocket and beamed at him, clasping her hands behind her back.

“So we’re still going to the store after school, right? I’ve been browsing the website and I think I have a few ideas,” she stated, bounding a little on the balls of her feet in excitement. She suddenly couldn’t wait for Halloween!

The grimace that crossed Raiden’s face, however, was not encouraging and Izayoi blinked, her brow furrowing slightly. His next words had a ball of dread forming in her stomach and her ears wilted atop her head.

“Listen, buttercup,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking to the side. “I don’t think that’d be such a good idea after...well. You know.” He shrugged and dared a peek at her face. Her completely dejected expression threw him for a loop and his eyes widened in horror.

“Oh,” she whispered, biting down on her lip and blinking rapidly to stave off the tears. She’d thought...did he change his mind? Did he not really...want to be with her...?

“Wait,” Raiden said suddenly, urgently, and his hands landed on her shoulders, prompting to her lift her wide-eyed gaze. “Hear me out, okay?”

Swallowing thickly, Izayoi nodded, desperately hoping she was wrong.

Squeezing her shoulders, Raiden began, “Rin told me about the blow out you had with your dad after I left Friday and I feel...well, I feel pretty damn horrible about it.”

Izayoi winced and looked to the side. With a wry smile, he continued, “It’s my fault you got into an argument, and I wouldn’t feel right whiling you away to look at costumes while you guys are at such odds with each other. I think you should go home and talk this out with him, buttercup. I don’t want to be the cause of a rift between you two. Family is important, and if we...well.”

He cleared his throat and flushed slightly. “If things...uh, go any further and your dad doesn’t trust me, I don’t want you to have to choose between them or me. Because it should always be them, buttercup. So before we go gallivanting off into the sunset”—he was rewarded with a watery giggle at that and he grinned—“I need you to make up with your old man so you can stop him from ‘chewing me up and spitting me out’ when I come face to face with him again. I sorta like all my limbs attached to my body, you know.”

Izayoi released another wispy laugh and wiped at her eyes, heaving a sigh. He was right. Of course he was right. And anyway it wasn’t like she didn’t want to make up with her dad. It had been eating at her all day and the phone was a burning reminder of it. She needed to stop being a baby and make things right. He’d already demonstrated that he wasn’t going to start anything, so it had to be her, didn’t it? Just like she wanted.

Izayoi released another wispy laugh and wiped at her eyes, heaving a sigh. He was right. Of course he was right. And anyway it wasn’t like she didn’t want to make up with her dad. It had been eating at her all day and the phone was a burning reminder of it. She needed to stop being a baby and make things right. He’d already demonstrated that he wasn’t going to start anything, so it had to be her, didn’t it? Just like she wanted.

Ugh. Easier said than done.

“Okay,” Izayoi agreed at length, nodding and offering a small but genuine smile. “I will. But...tomorrow, though?”

Golden eyes, like rich honey, pleaded with him and damn, how could he possibly say no to that?

Expression softening, Raiden grinned and couldn’t stop himself from gently tugging on a lock of sterling hair.

“Tomorrow,” he promised. “And I’m already looking forward to it.”

Izayoi’s smile was genuine, her eyes were soft, and her voice was fond as she replied, “Me too.”

Nodding in satisfaction, Raiden dropped his hand only to wrap his arm around her shoulders and steered her down the hallway. Izayoi blushed but leaned into him. Damn, she was cute.

“So,” he said conversationally as he lead her toward the cafeteria. He glanced down at her with a cheeky grin and asked, “Did you really break his nose?”

“Ohmigawd,” Izayoi groaned as she buried her face in her hands while Raiden, the brat, threw his head back and cackled gleefully.

[internetstorytime]

When someone unexpectedly disappears online it can leave a lot of questions in the wake; what happened? Where’d they go? Will they be back? Luckily a paper trail isn’t as easy to pick up as it is to place down.

Long ago there was a person called “Meow” that was established in multiple social circles and numerous friendships. One day though they up and vanished.  Nearly half a decade after their disappearance a group of past friends set out to discover what happened, where’d Meow go? Through multiple clues, look ups, and dot connecting the end result would lead to an unexpected but conclusive ending. So buckle up and get ready to chase a phantom with many faces.

Let’s go through some oddities and characteristics before we hop on the trail.

Meow’s Characteristics:

-was a fan of the Dark Souls series

-stayed up extremely late very often

-claimed to have residence in Ohio

-claimed to be mute and never spoke

-claimed to be female

-very into role playing

After the disappearance Meow’s a peculiar thing started to occur, some of Meow’s accounts started to delete. But not all accounts are deletable, like STEAM accounts. When Meow disappeared a new person claimed to have been the original owner that was lending it to Meow. They said Meow was doing other things now in life, that she was great and considering college again, and so on. That’s a nice ending to this all, perhaps Meow just was tired of the internet for whatever reason, left all her friends behind and is now socializing and partaking in greater activities. Aaaaaaand then the “original” owner removes all friends, privatizes profile and changes URL’s.

All’s well that ends well…

So let’s get started.

Friend#1              - Friend of Meow

Friend #2             - Friend of Meow

Friend #3             - Friend of Meow

Meow                   - A Ghost Themself

True Meow        - ???

It started when Friend#1 and Friend #2 were discussing past times, past groups, past people… Meow? You remember that person? What do you think happened to them? And so curiosity was sparked.

Friend#2 remembers that when you gift someone on steam a gift a receipt of sorts is sent to the person being gifted. This receipt happens to include the email address of the person who sent the gift. Niiiice. It’s a start. The email address itself is a little odd, it is seemingly a random name with no numbers.

Googling the email gets nothing, well, almost nothing. Turns out the email address is 1 letter off from being a street name in Ohio, the state Meow had claimed to live. Alright, so why would you make an email after a street let alone use it to create a steam account?

Since googling the email wasn’t getting anywhere Friend#1 was about to give up on the search but a day later recalled that reverse email search engines exist.

Bazinga, a match.

 There was an issue though. The site wouldn’t offer any more information than it had in the picture; a blurred photo and some odd censored name… Thanks too lazy programming though, we could go further. The blur filter over the image was only weakly applied. Right-clicking the image and opening it in another tab alone brought up the image without the blur filter. Google reverse image searching that picture also happened to result in a limited pool of unique hits, great. 3 out of 4 of the hits were from 4chan and the other was from a YouTube page, excellent.

Boy do things start getting wonky here.

The Youtube page had the exact same profile picture that the reverse email search had found so seemingly, this was the person except… the entire Youtube page was the polar opposite personality you’d expect Meow to have. Where Meow was known to be out spoken and kind, this profile was full of vulgarity and racism and bad memes, a huge contrast. To further add to the mystery, they had a Robloxs account linked to their profile.

 What the fuck was going on, is this even the right person? How old are they? I had to make sure this reverse email search was accurate. I searched myself, I was found. I searched a friend, they were found. I searched another friend, they were found. Alright, three is enough. This search engine *seems* to work, unfortunately.

 Looking past the /pol/ “humor” the Youtube profile’s “About” section had some further information. Supposedly they were from Greece and had a link to their Google+ account. And here’s where some connections start to be made. The Google+ account shows they’re not just into role playing themselves, it’s a huge past time to them! They’re a part of 5 role playing groups, from Five Nights at Freddy’s to Undertale to Half-Life, they’re all over. They’re even an admin of one of the role playing groups! They also happen to be into Dark Souls, so much so they’ve uploaded their own videos on it. What a coincidence.  

 Scrolling down the Google+ account, past the cringy roleplaying, past the racism, past the 12 year old humor and past the fucking Roblox we get a hit. A steam library screenshot and what lovely information we get.

Cue Friend#3!

Friend#3 enters the fray when I tell them of the search and how far I am. And they get down to business and get results fast. Friend#3 realizes the screenshot shows they use the Euro, it also shows their steam account’s username *which happens to be unique and very searchable* in the top right.

To try and cut a very, very long story short, this steam account username was the key that helped find nearly everything pertaining to this person;

-Facebook

-Soundcloud

-Flickr

-TripAdvisor

-Newgrounds

-Minecraft account

-Multiple rp forum accounts

-A Greek city public forum records

 After we sifted through all of this we felt pretty confident this person was in fact “Meow”. Lets just label them “True Meow” for simplicity. True Meow likes to role play, maybe a little too much as he has at least 5 accounts all dedicated to different characters, he also tends to delete past accounts and history as we found out. Was it mentioned they’re a “he”? Well True Meow is a “he”. We never found pictures of specifically him but his sound cloud has very low view count songs of a male character with avatars he’s used on other sites. Presumably it’s him singing. He’s went to large extents to conceal his voice on his role playing accounts (unlike his Greek accounts), as in one of his Google+ posts he mentions he talks funny or sounds off. But this is likely just a ruse to hide his Greek accent and allow him to stay immersed as his, often female, characters. Even videos titled “Reading of xxx….” He specifically deleted as they probably contained his voice while keeping up non-voice related videos. We should also throw in he claims to be 26 two years ago but who really knows. 

This Greek, role play loving, Dark Souls playing character seems to be the True Meow. But wait, there’s a cherry on top.

Googling Meow’s original alias long enough you’ll stumble onto an IRC log for UNIX support. Guess who is posting in the IRC asking for help? Someone under the alias “Meow”. They also happened to link a German language photo. (In case you’re worried that the photo is German and True Meow is Greek, True Meow’s TripAdvisor showed one logged trip, to Germany.) Why is this the cherry on top though? Because we had no hard similar links between Meow and True Meow, it was all relying on the reverse email search and common hobbies between the two. Thanks to Friend#3 though we found our True Meow posting a UNIX bug report on the same site but this time under his exact Greek name, True Meow.

“Coincidence? I think not!”

 Now we had a connection that both Meow and True Meow were caught related to other than the email. With that I think we found what happened to Meow and ultimately one of the oddest cat fishing experiences.

Did we get the wrong person?

There was some things that favored Meow’s outrageous vanishing story, even with all this evidence:

1.       Meow gave all of us a handful of free games over time while we gave nothing. Talk about a poor cat fisher if the goal was to get expensive things in return.

2.       Keeping up appearances wasn’t cheap. Not mentioning the other games, Meow gave us all a Starbound key before the game released. That’s about $50 alone just to keep up kind appearances.

3.       A point Friend#2 likes to argue, the contrast is simply too great. The belligerent, racist, unfunny True Meow is so unlike Meow that it’s unbelievable, even if it was a catfish that went on for months.

Was this just a dude that wanted to, for whatever reason, role play as a female was willing to lose money to do it? Or is this the wrong person? Won’t ever truly know for sure but I’m going with the strong evidence and multiple coincidences that Meow has indeed been found and the disappearance solved.

[zeltricstudio]

'LUNCH TIME SPECIAL'

HAPPYVILE

MARCH 2014

Happyvile High has been without a chef for an awfully long time but finally managed to hire someone. Abraham Cook, despite his family’s reputation he was a competent cook and could actually make some decent meals for the students. It was around this time that students started to go missing. At first it was 1 student a month, then a couple before eventually the school looked into it. Of course, the teachers and police did nothing to investigate the matter, instead just saying “they ran away” or “ditched school”. Sarah, however was not happy with how poorly this was being dealt with. Many students would simply shrug their shoulders, but not her. “The special for today is lasagna” Sarah scoffs. “How can they just go on and not give a damn that students are disappearing almost on a weekly basis?” Sarah asked, feeling angry.

“I’m sure the police are doing everything they can” Sarah���s best friend, Jessica, replied, not paying much attention except for the food in front of her.

“You should eat, all this pointless wondering is going to make you hungry” Jessica moved her food towards Sarah

“Hell no. For all I know, they probably put their disgusting, unwashed hand in that food before they served it” Sarah replied, pushing the food back to Jessica.

“As long as it tastes good, I don’t mind”

“Your standards are very low”

“Eh” Jessica said and continued digging into her food.

“Fuck it. If the teachers and police are not going to do anything, then I will” Sarah said with extreme confidence

“What are you going to do?” Jessica asked, not seriously

“I… I don’t know” Sarah replied, slinking back into her seat.

“Again, just let it go. I’m sure they will all turn up eventually, probably” Jessica replied with a mouthful.

That night, Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about the missing people. Sarah had read all papers and news reports about the disappearances, but they were all the same, ‘this student was staying late and never returned home. Parents didn’t find out till the next morning and no one saw a thing’. Personally, Sarah didn’t much care for the students as all of them were the absolute worst but the latest victim Kate was a close classmate she really liked and was baffled at how little her own teachers cared about a Grade-A kid. Sarah began documenting all the missing kids, but she couldn’t find a pattern due to how little the police cared. Some kids were not even reported missing until weeks later. Feeling defeated for the night, Sarah went to bed.

The next morning, during their lunch break, Sarah decided to buy a drink. It wasn’t until now that Sarah got an up-close look at Abraham. Like most of the males, he was very tall and noticeably huge. Not fat, but very built. He had an untrimmed beard that had little strands sticking upright, his eyes had bags underneath bags underneath bags and his skin was covered in bruises and scars all around. Despite his bodily appearance, he was surprisingly clean. His apron, clothes and even body odor were insanely neat and smelt like he dumped a load of perfume onto himself. After Sarah bought her drink, she went and sat down next to Jessica.

“I’ve noticed something” Sarah immediately said as he sat down.

“Aaaaaaand her comes the conspiracy theories” Jessica said, not even phased.

“Abraham is insanely clean”

“Well yeah. I know Happyvile isn’t the cleanest place, but we gotta have SOME standards”

“No, I mean like he is overly clean. Like not even a dirt or smudge anywhere, his clothes are pure white”

“Maybe he is a clean freak? Oddly, the dirtiest people are the cleanest”

“Perhaps. I just have an off feeling about him”

“You have an off feeling about everyone”

“That’s not true” Sarah points to Jessica

“Fair point. How’s your investigation coming along?” Jessica pondered, not really caring

“I got nowhere. This town’s not-giving-a-shit makes it almost impossible to even find out when they went missing”

“Uh-huh”

“What are you eating?”

“Spaghetti. It’s the new Lunch special” Jessica said, with added fake enthusiasm

“I still don’t know how you can eat that. It doesn’t even look like spaghetti”

“Maybe it’s a family recipe. Do I care? Nope” Jessica said and continued eating.

As the two continued chatting, they were approached by a classmate of theirs

“Have any of you two seen Adrian?” Sally asked

“Uh no, he was absent from first and second period” Sarah replied

“I haven’t heard from him since yesterday. If you do see him, please let me know” Sally said and walked off to a nearby table and asking them.

“Here we go” Jessica said, knowing what was about to come

“Another person to the list” Sarah replied, sounding smug.

Later that night, Sarah did a lot more studying and came across a status post a student had made. “It has been 2 months and my friend Alice is still missing! The police aren’t doing shit! Please if anyone knows anything, message me!”. Sarah finally had something to go on. Even though Sarah wasn’t close with most people, she at least knew of Alice who was one of the very first people to go missing. Sarah was able to begin a timeline. As Sarah began writing names, she had a curious thought.

The next day, early in the morning Sarah caught up to Principal Hayford.

“Principal Hayford” Sarah said, to get his attention

“Oh, hello Sarah” Hayford replied, looking slightly annoyed

“May I ask you a question?”

“That depends, is it about the missing kids?” Hayford said with a slight irritation in his voice

“No. I was wondering when you hired Abraham, the new cook?”

“Oh, about a couple months back” Hayford’s tone immediately changed

“Do you know the exact date?”

“Not right now, but I can look it up and e-mail you it. Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious. So far he is already the best cook we’ve gotten for this school”

“I agree. And he was cheap too. I feel like I got a good deal” Hayford chuckled

“Well thanks, I got to go now” and Sarah ran off before Hayford could trap her in a conversation.

“The day Abraham was hired, Alice went missing the same week!” Sarah said as she said down next to Jessica

“Good morning to you too” Jessica replied, preparing herself for another one of Sarah’s rants.

“Think about it. We’ve had cooks come and go with no problems and then when we got Abraham BOOM 16 students and counting have gone missing”

“That is pretty damning evidence, but you ever consider it could be the Happyvile Slasher behind this?”

“No, The Happyvile Slasher has been gone for a year now. And if it was him, we would definitely know”

“Yeah, I guess”

“How can you just sit there, eating and not give a single fuck?” “What can I do? I’m not the police. I don’t have any skills to do anything. I mean it sucks, but what can you do?”

“I guess” Sarah replied, feeling tired she wasn’t getting anywhere. “What is the lunch special for today?”

“Homemade pizza, with cheese, pepperoni and shredded meat” Jessica said as she took a huge bite

“Looks appetizing” Sarah said, with extreme sarcasm.

Throughout the day, her suspicions of Abraham continued to pursue her, and Sarah knew if she wanted to do something, she was going to have to act. She pretended to stay back at the library, studying and as everyone began leaving except the librarian, Sarah put her plan into motion. Because the school was empty, Sarah could easily slip into the cafeteria and hop the counter. Much like Abraham’s appearance, the kitchen too was spotless. Everything was neatly put away, no dishes in the rack and the floor was clean. Sarah continued looking but aside from basic kitchen items, nothing stood out, until she saw a cardboard box in underneath a table. Inside the box were a few random items and trinkets. Keyrings, badges, pins, hair ties, just a random assortment of items and then Sarah saw it, Kate’s bracelet. She knew it was Kate’s because it had pink nail polish striped onto it, which Sarah had done as a joke. Sarah then heard some heavy footsteps and she immediately put the box back and hopped the counter, pretending to look around. Abraham entered the café and noticed Sarah.

“What are you doing here, child?” Abraham asked, extremely suspiciously.

His voice was a lot deeper when he was angry.

“Oh, I uh dropped something and came back to look for it, but I… uh” Sarah tried to make excuses, but she was bad at it.

“Hold on, I got a box around here”

“A box?”

“Whenever I find stuff students have left, I collect them and hand it to the office’s lost-and-found”

Abraham entered the kitchen area and immediately noticed dirt prints on the floor. He kept this discovery to himself and got the box, all the while eyeing Sarah suspiciously.

“Are any of these yours?”

“Oh there it is, the bracelet. Where did you find this?”

“Over by the back table”

Sarah knew he was lying, Kate would never take off her bracelet unless she had to.

“Thank you” Sarah said and walked off, with fear consuming her.

Abraham watched her walk away and cleaned the kitchen, before closing and heading home. Sarah couldn’t shake the gut feeling she had of Abraham, but she knew he was responsible for this.

“I found Kate’s bracelet in the kitchen! He claims he found it on a table” Sarah exclaimed over the phone to Jessica

“So you broke into a kitchen and found a bracelet in a box”

“I didn’t break in, it was open”

“Sarah, that is a lazy connection and you know it”

“I’m telling you, he is responsible for Kate and maybe the others. I know it!”

“I’m hanging up, call me back when you’ve calmed down”

“Fucking asshole” Sarah muttered and dropped her phone onto her bed. Sarah knew Jessica was right, this evidence was barely anything, and even if it was enough, the cops wouldn’t give enough of a shit to do anything. Sarah knew if she wanted to make a change, she would have to get picture proof.

The next day seemed to drag on as Sarah waited for the end of the day. Knowing Jessica didn’t care, Sarah dropped the conversation and didn’t let Jessica in on her plan. She didn’t need the negativity to pull her down she reasoned. Finally the glorious day came and it was the end of the day. Sarah pretended to be studying and once Abraham was ready to leave, Sarah began tailing him on her bike. The drive lead them out of Happyvile and deep into the country side of things, before eventually into the forest. Abraham stopped his car at an incredibly old looking farmhouse, before getting out and entering a small house near the main house. Sarah noticed she had no signal and planned on a quick in-and-out job. She took pictures of the house and waited. After roughly 20 minutes, Abraham exited the house and drove off, leaving the door unlocked. Sarah took this opportunity and entered.

In a stark contrast to the kitchen, this house was messy. The walls were peeling, the carpet was covered in fur and junk, clothes and items strewn about and an awful stench immediately hit her. As Sarah began probing and poking around, she noticed a downstairs area. Sarah took a quick look outside to make sure he wasn’t back and entered. Any normal person would have immediately left by now, but Sarah was far too invested to give up. The closer she got to the basement, the stronger the smell became. It was very putrid and nearly made her gag. Sarah used her pocket flashlight to illuminate the area and she got a good look at her surroundings. The floors, walls and ceilings were covered in ceramic tiles, with drain holes every 5 feet. Trails of blood were flowing into them. Sarah also noticed there were lots of white, rolled up bags with blood splotches on them. As Sarah continued moving, she heard a light grunt and noticed a person on a table. Sarah rushed over and saw Adrian, except her was naked and had a hook impaled in him.

“Oh fuck” Sarah said, in surprise.

“H-help me” Adrian begged as he raised his hand, which had the index and thumb missing and a giant hole in the palm. Sarah stumbles backwards away from his hand as it drops to the side and hits the tables legs, making a heavy ding sound before passing out. Sarah was too stunned to move, her legs locked in place. After what feels like an eternity, Sarah was able to compose herself and began walking away, planning on calling the cops as soon as she leaves. Before she can reach the stairs, she hears the door lock and footsteps retreating down. Sarah immediately begins running further into the basement as the foot steps get louder. Sarah hides in a side room, surrounded by rolled-up bags. Sarah notices the figure to be Abraham as he makes his way to Adrian. Abraham picks up a hatchet and drives it into Adrian’s face. The impact makes a fleshy noise, as Adrian’s gasps are quickly stifled. Sarah has to bite her hand to stifle her screams, as she watches Abraham continue hacking the body, before putting the hatchet down and wheeling the table to another room. With Abraham gone, Sarah rushes to the stairs, but when she turns the knob, she is terrified to find it is locked.

“I was concerned” Abraham says, his voice echoing around the room. “How was I going to take care of you. Getting the others wasn’t easy, you know. They struggled, they screamed, they put up a fight, but you, you came here”

Sarah immediately ran away from the door, hugging the walls and moving around in the dark as Abraham’s voice came from multiple directions

“I promise you, if you give up I will make it quick” Abraham said, as calm as possible.

“Fuck you!” Sarah screamed in fear. Sarah made her way to the area Adrian was in and picked up the hatchet, arming herself.

“I am warning you” Abraham said, this time more sternly.

Sarah was beyond terrified now. Not only was she locked in a basement with a serial killer, but no one knew where she was.

“You’re not the first person, you know. There were others who came looking, but couldn’t leave well enough alone. I will do whatever it takes to protect my family” Abraham said, this time it sounded much closer.

Sarah jumped backwards and swung, but hit nothing. “Let me go, you fucker!” Sarah screamed, now absolutely petrified and shaking.

“Sorry, but I can’t. You know too much. This is your last warning” Abraham said, now getting angry.

As Sarah began looking around, hatchet ready to swing, she suddenly heard silence. As she began walking, looking for Abraham she felt a sudden pain in her shoulder. Abraham drove a meat hook into her right shoulder, causing her to drop the hatchet. Sarah tried running away, but Abraham drove another hook into her leg, causing her to trip. Sarah fell to the floor, her shoulder and leg in pain, with blood rushing down her back. Sarah continued crawling, before Abraham drove a final hook into the back of her neck, paralyzing her. Sarah wasn’t able to move anymore as Abraham grabbed her foot and dragged her further into the basement, past several rooms until she was in a smaller room. Abraham turned on the light and she noticed it was a make-shift bathroom, with only a tub and several hooks hanging above it.

“I’m sorry it has come to this, but don’t worry, your meat won’t be wasted” Abraham said, trying to calm her.

“Fuck, you!” Sarah screamed, in painful breaths as she couldn’t lift her head. It wasn’t until Abraham began putting on his apron and sharpening his knives, did his words kick in. “What, what are you doing?” Her anger suddenly turned to fear as she looked at Abraham out the corner of her eye.

“My family, my son to be exact, is very particular in he eats. He loves humans, craves it and I love my son, so I get him what he likes. But doesn’t like all parts of them. And I am not a wasteful man” Abraham says, grinding his knives as they make scratching noises.

“Before I begin, any final words?”

“Please, don’t” Sarah begged.

Abraham effortlessly picked up Sarah, before impaling her on a hook. Sarah began screaming, but it was gurgled by the hook. After a grueling 5 seconds, she was finally dead and Abraham got to work.

The next day, Jessica was sitting down, waiting for Sarah to join her like they always do, but she never showed. Jessica texted her and as she waited, she noticed the new Lunch special: this time it was a beef sandwich.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Number 17, The Underground...Aaaaaaand GO!

Short opinion: My hat is off to K.A. Applegate for being maybe the only author on the planet capable of taking a story about teenage superheroes fighting aliens with the power of oatmeal… and making it into a surprisingly serious debate about the morality of chemical warfare.

Long opinion:

As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of what I love about this book is the fact that it refuses to be simple comedy even though it has a nearly-perfect comedy setup.  The idea of super-powerful aliens being taken down by otherwise harmless Earth substances is oftentimes played for laughs in other works of sci fi, and the fact that these are teenagers debating about oatmeal adds a whole other layer of ridiculousness to it… But although Applegate acknowledges the humor of the premise in several moments (Jake bemoaning the fact that this battle was destined to end in silliness, Rachel repeating “it’s oatmeal!” six or seven times in a row, etc.) the implications of the premise are distinctly not funny for large parts of this book.

Because this is one of those moments where the Animorphs have a crystal-clear decision between two choices, one of which is probably the right thing to do and the other of which is definitely the easy thing to do.  The easy decision would be simply to dump oatmeal in their town’s water main or otherwise ensure that most of the humans would end up eating it, and then pick the partially-freed controllers from the people who just had some weird-tasting water and start getting information from them.  Easy would be starting out by poisoning Tom with the oatmeal (since Jake has access to his food supply) and then using whatever advice he can give them to figure out how to poison as many other controllers as possible.  Probably the right thing but honestly we’re not sure is spending A FREAKING WEEK tunneling slowly down to the yeerk pool in order to try and poison the yeerks directly, and even then only doing it as a last resort.  Probably the right thing is doing everything in the Animorphs’ power to avoid harming the hosts, even when doing so nearly gets them killed.  Probably the right thing means continuing to fight back with a minimal possible number of casualties.

Part of what’s so great about the way that the Animorphs reach the decision to go through the huge pain in the butt (and screaming terror, for that matter) of delivering the oatmeal to the yeerk pool in person is the understanding that, no matter how many times Rachel repeats “It’s just oatmeal,” it’s not just oatmeal (#17).  According to Marco, “We have green kryptonite here… They’re yeerks. They’re the enemy.” and therefore the oatmeal is destined to be their super-weapon.  The way Tobias sees it, “A drug is in the eye of the beholder… If you get addicted to the oatmeal and it messes you up…” and they’d be taking away the autonomy of the yeerks through fighting dirty with chemical warfare.  Ax, meanwhile, asks my favorite question: “What about the hosts?”

This debate has a very existential kind of cynicism to it, asking multiple times: if we take oatmeal out of its original context, what does it actually mean?  If we choose to interpret it as a chemical weapon (the way Marco and Ax clearly do) then does that make our decision to use it immoral by default?  If we choose to see it as a drug (the way Tobias does) then what does that make us if we force people to become addicted?  If it is just oatmeal, the way Rachel wants to see it, then does that make using it automatically okay?

Largely unrelated aside: it also fascinates me how much Jake and Cassie aren’t involved in this book.  They both largely abstain from the debate about how and whether to use the oatmeal, which Rachel notes is uncharacteristic for them both, and although everyone respects Jake’s right to make the final call on Tom, the issue of whether to use the oatmeal at all gets made largely without his input.  We also know why they both seem to be largely along for the ride in this book, because #17 repeatedly harkens back to the events of #16.  When they’re all running around as roaches nearly getting squashed after they break out of their banana crate, Jake freaks out more than anyone else and also brings up having been squashed as a fly and mostly-killed in #16.  During the earlier debate about how to get into the mental hospital, they discuss the fact that this should be a piece of cake compared to the disastrophe at Joe Bob Finestre’s house (#16), and they only see poor George Edelman try to kill himself because everyone convinces Jake that after last mission they really really need a vacation.  Cassie pretty much explicitly says that the reason she’s abstaining from the oatmeal-morality discussion is that she’s really not sure what’s right or wrong anymore, given that she not only tried to commit murder in (relatively) cold blood last book, but also tried to use Jake as her means of doing so.  We can see the impact that this war is having on the kids, because both Jake and Cassie have this attitude of not even knowing who they are anymore, much less being able to trust themselves.

Speaking of the impact of war on identity, one of the more fascinating motifs in this story is just how much time Rachel spends interrogating her own roles.  She’s not really one for self-reflection, at least not compared to Tobias or Jake, and so it’s striking that she does stop and take a moment to reflect on her place within her team and within her family at several points in this book.  Just before they’re about to go into the yeerk pool, she thinks “Everyone in a group has a role to play. At least that’s how it always works out. My role was to say, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go. That’s what we came here for.’  But I was tired. And I’d had a really, really bad few days digging down to this stupid cave…  So I said, «Let’s do it. That’s what we came here for.»”  Rachel understands that in many ways the team needs her to be brave and gung-ho, because she’s the force dragging them forward, toward danger and also toward victory.  When none of them want to be the first to tunnel down as moles, she volunteers without (outward) hesitation.  When they reach the cave filled with bats and end up forced to demorph down there, she emphasizes that this is a good thing.  When everyone is exhausted and cornered in the yeerk pool, she becomes the one to get them off their butts and toward an exit plan.  When everyone else is too wiped out and traumatized from the battle to worry about tying up loose ends, she becomes the one to go make sure George Edelman’s still going to be okay.  

Because it’s what she does.  Because she’s Xena.  Because she has to be, even though this book opens up with her looking down at Lucy Lawless and realizing that they’re both just acting as Xena, because there’s no such thing as Xena, because when people look at her and see Xena they’re inevitably projecting something that’s not real.  However, as Rachel says, “sometimes it’s hard to get out of a role once you’ve started playing the part” (#17).  She’s genuinely not sure who she is, if not Xena.

Although that’s not the only role she plays.  This book also has several moments with Rachel at home, where we see her in a different role entirely.  Rachel is not, perhaps, doing as well as Marco or Jake at playing the role of an ordinary civilian.  It’s not often that we see PTSD come out in the form of hypervigilance or impulsivity in fiction, but we do see it a lot in this particular series with Rachel.  She yells at Jordan for throwing out her rotting leftovers, snaps at her mom for expecting her to be an ordinary teenager, and generally behaves as though she doesn’t have time for her family at all.  We as the reader understand why Rachel’s on such a hair-trigger, given the kind of week (month, year) she’s had at the time, but Naomi still has every right to be worried and Jordan still has every right to be annoyed.  They’re not seeing Rachel’s internal justification for her willingness to blow up at anyone who so much as looks at her wrong; they’re just seeing the explosions.  And Rachel understands on some level that she’s failing in the role of sister-and-daughter.  That she should have priorities outside of the war, but that she’s dropping the ball on most of them.

The series seems to have another mini-motif in this cycle of books, given how much role interrogation the other four do in the surrounding novels.  If the early 30’s are all about the Animorphs alone, the late teens are about role-reflection and the realization that the role of Child Whom Parents Care For is now officially out of reach.  #16, as I mentioned, is all about Jake trying to figure out who a leader is, what a leader does, and how he can play the part of The Great Man From History while also being a good friend; the entire book goes back and forth between that idea and the domestic scenes where his family treats him like the baby (since he is) as he comes to the realization that, not only can they not protect him anymore, but he might not be able to protect them.  Before that, #15 gets into Marco’s conflict between being a good son to his dad and being a good son to his mom, which (thanks to Visser One) are mutually oppositional roles and leave him with the conclusion that if he can only save one it’ll have to be his dad.  #18 once again shows an Animorph fleeing into the arms of home and family, only to realize that those aren’t sources of comfort or safety anymore, only in this case it’s Ax coming to realize that he won’t just be going home and rejoining the andalites anytime soon, so he might as well get used to looking to Jake as his prince.  Although #19 ends up focusing on Cassie alone in the woods with Karen and Aftran, a lot of what drives her out there is the scene where she looks at her parents and does the math that she is older and more hardened than they will ever be, and that she has already infected their innocence and goodness with her darkness.

This book and its surrounding fellows are a lot about settling into the war for the long haul.  And that leads to (and from) the question: What are we really doing in this war?  How are we going to fight it?  What compromises are we willing to make, and what ones are we unwilling to touch?  If it’s not “just oatmeal,” then what are we going to do about it?

[peach-cake-slice]

I honestly have many OCs, most part of them might don’t be interesting for most part of you but I guess I’ll talk about one of them anyway xP And for this I’ll use my Yuri on Ice OC, called Max. I made him for a RP with @chubbybloomykitty and @blackcatfishingdreams where all the skaters are judging on a kind of “The Voice” skating version xP And our OCs are competeting on this contest having Yuuri and Viktor as their couchies :) If you want to know more about it send an ask to me or to one of my two friends xP But before I start answering this I’ll talk a little about Max [WARNING: THIS CHARACTHER IS QUEER, IF YOU DON’T SUPPORT IT DON’T SEND ME BULLSHIT TALKING ABOUT HOW BEING QUEER IS WRONG OR ANY “PENIS AND VAGINA” SHIT. THANK YOU? THANK YOU] Max is an 17 years old, AMAB (assigned male at birth) boyflux with a short curly hair (sometimes leave it straight), brown eyes and white skin. He likes to use make up and “girly” clouthes sometimes but usely goes for the most neutral visual they can. You can use whatever pronouns with them (from he to zir) and he won’t feel bad, they just don’t want you to treat them as a cisgender boy xP Ok, I guess it was all I could say before starting (I should really try to draw them -v-’’’) let’s go then <3

1. Their voice

Max’s voice is pretty chill and soft, it’s not so deep but also not so acute but it deppends on their emotions (usually makes a really acute voice when have strong emotions. It’s  unusual from them to make a deep voice, unless they are singing)

2. Their smile

Booooy, he has one of the most beautiful smiles of all my OCs until now. Because of their radiant personality he likes to smile a lot specially close to their friends and loved ones <3 (that doesn’t mean that they can’t be savage or sassy tho (¬ ͜ʖ¬) )

3. Their Greatest Achievement

Welp, that’s a good question... Since we didn’t decided who will win the contest yet I guess their greatest achievement until now was to quit their parents house to pratice their skating and get to be noticed by their idols. It’s something that I didn’t discussed to any of my friends yet but their parents awalys were very queerphobic and never supported their dreams and hobbies. And after their father find out that they had a boyfriend (currently ex bf, but that’s another story...) they reacted very strongly and the only thing that came to Max’s mind was to run away as quick as possible. After this, they made everything they could to be strong and get to an big skating contest despite all prejudice they suffered on the process and show to everyone that queer people (specially nb people) DO exists and can be whatever they want. They never hided their gender identity or their sexuality to anyone since then. So be one of the finalists of a big contest with 2 of their idols was something REALLY important to them.

4. Their insecurities

This is something that Max tries their best to hide from everyone but their past are awalys hunting them. They often gets pretty scared of walking on streets and accidentily meet their parents or their former bf again. Why? Well, since their parents is something obvious let’s just talk about their former bf. Welp, he and Max know each other since they were just children and Max awalys felt something for him. They started dating hided from their parents then ran to live together and help each other with their dreams. He awalys made Max very happy and showed all support in the world with everything Max wanted to do (buy a skirt, learning light make up, change their civil name to their social name, etc...) and Max were very happy thankful for all of this. But then one night, when Max woke up in the middle of night and listened to him talking with someone on the phone about them. When they noticed it, they went to the living room to listen the rest of the conversation he was having and what he heard was “I’m trying what I can to make him realize that this queer thing is bullshit. Even tho *insert Max’s civil name here* seems to want to become a girl he awalys take it back and try to have his maculinity back. Maybe he is just afraid that I broke up with him if he decides to be a girl, or is just confused... I’m trying my best to help him to decide it but he insists on this Non Binary shit”.  Well, short speaking... Max started to cry, slaped his face before he could turn off his phone and ran away one more time. After this all this words kept hunting their mind and sometimes gave him terrible nightmares.

5. Their shortcomings

Max is often very impulsive and don’t think too much before decide something. They never were able to see if they have some depression or anxiety disorder because they never looked for a psychologist or any other specialists to find this out. They are headstrong and don’t give up on one point of view easily (which sometimes is good but sometimes can be really mad).

6. How do they deal with grief.

Skating or simply dancing awalys helped them to deal with anything, specially if this is a happy song, and sometime they just slack off and watch animes or play indie video games <3 (my sweet nerd :’D)

7. How they like to dress

Usually, Max tried to dress as neutral as possible with a large sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers. On special occasions they like to use one of the dress or the skirts their friend usually like to give them <3

8. What they like to eat

*inhales* Ok, we are talking about what they like to eat or what they CAN eat? xP Max usually goes for vegan food not because they are actually vegan, they are more for vegetarian, but because it’s yummy and it helps them to have a good meal and control their weight at the same time (also they LOVE to cook and have a great fun doing all the types of vegan meal by themselve xP)

9. Their theme

Master of Tides - Lindsey Stirling This song was used on their first presentation for the contest and he played as a strong pirate playing with his enemies <3 And this song is the one that I’m planning to use for their final presentation (just thinking tho). And think both fits as their themes because they fit with their strenghtness and their fragility respectively

10. Their fashion sense

They don’t actually have one (?) they just go with the style they are currently into xP They like the punk style and the goth style but it’s awalys that they use it for themselves.

11. Their family life

Max’s family had a rich life and owned a very important executive business company. Lucky for Max, they never got envolved with skating or any kind of  ice sport but it doesn’t make their fear of ocasionally meeting their parents disappear.

12. Their romanticaly life

Max only date once so far and had small relations with some people (usually guys). Max is kinda afraid of seriously moving on and date again and gets really nervous with the idea of falling in love to someone again But to their sadness (or not  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ) they are currently between an amazing bigender person they met on the contest’s cerimonial party, called Gemna, and a boy from his team called Toby.

13. Their embarrassing memory from years ago

Being recorded while performing and singing Steven Universe’s song drunk xP (Specially “Giant Woman” and “Do It for Her”)

14. How they react to burning their tongue with food

Covering their mouth and blow all the heat they can out while sheding some little tears :’)

15. How they react to brainfreeze

Put their hand on their head and curse xD

16. Their dreams

Other than just winning the contest, they want to open a LGBT+ Friendly Dancing School <3

17. Their ambitions

To be an inspiration to all queers and see they saying that they changed their life somehow by giving them the hope that they can fight against all their prejudice and be the heck they want to be and do the heck they want to do

18. How they sleep

19. Their reaction to betrayal

Boy, Max can forgive many things but betrayal is not one of them. If they ever find out that someone is betraying them, they will make sure that the person will be cient that they know it and then will treat them like they never had existed and like an invisible person.

20. Their reaction to a mystery love letter

Blushing (!?!?!?) and get really nervous about who sent this xD

21. How they react to pain

.... You mean physical pain or mental pain (?) If it’s mental they try to make their best to don’t show it to anyone as long as they can and to not cry because someone can come and see it or call him and get worried if they don’t hang up.

22. What they are like on two hours of sleep

They never sleep just two hours if someone try to wake them up like this their reaction is just to say “ok” and sleep again against their own will xP

23. How they act when they are sick

Max becomes an unseless vegetable when they are sick and make everything pretty slow, speacially on understanding things xP

24. What motivates them

Other then all their objectives and stuff? THIS GODDAMN SONG! 

25. Why I enjoy them

Boy... They are my child...I don’t know how to explain this, I just love them so much and I want to protect them with all my powers ;u;Aaaaaaand that’s it :3 I hope you enjoy them <3 Tell me if you did!