#Because if you look at our history we’ve had way bigger assholes than this guy and come out surviving

[unsurebazookacore]

welp… guess I’m not coming out for the next four years either :)

[popculturebuffet]

Star Vs The Forces of Evil: Is Another Mystery (Prince of Wishful Thinking) or Wasted Potetial

Happy Valentine’s Day Lucifans! And while I originally intended to cover this along with the much worse Booth Buddies I had too much to say about both to try and clown car both together so here we are. And just in times for V-Day we have a StarTom episode.. that isn’t as focused on thier relationship as I thought because I hadn’t seen this in a while because every time I think of things in this series I think of all the wasted potetial and it gives me a migrane. I’d also like to thank @jess-the-vampire for talking this one over with me as usual, and helping me think through some stuff. And as with last time we’re picking up about where we left off, so no real exposition to get through. Join me under the cut as we solve a mystery and marvel at HOW much potential from this episode the show squandered. 

We open with Marco chasing Glossaryck.. and it’s only now I realize I have not talked about this subplot at all. Or Glossaryck really. As you probably know Glossaryck is the tiny man who lives in the big book of spells, created the magical high comission and is a colossasl assshat whose likeablity plumted this season. For starters his voice actor Jeffery Tambour was outed as a massive creep, making him harder to stomach even if the show had reduced him to stock footage of one line. Speaking of which he came back from the dead... and despite it being revealed he was fully sapient the whole time and just saying Eclipsa’s husbands name without context a twist coming up int he finale that i’ll give out about here as while clever when you first hear it. makes NO sense in hindsight, as Eclipsa might of mentioned it before now especially since Glossaryck was around her quite a few times, had no reason not to, and you’d THINK Star, Marco or Moon, especially the latter two, would be curious why he can only say that and has seemingly been reduced to an infant. It’s an annoying subplot tha’ts just casually part of the series and no one seems to care about despite Glossaryck being a big deal and the spellbook revealing there IS a way to make copies, one that would be used next season. 

But what really just made me HATE him.. is how he contributed to how bad things on Mewni are, by doing nothing. Being omnicent and powerful does not mean you do nothing.. it just means you have to be VERY careful. Power is a responsivity not an excuse to say “Wheelp my kids were a mistake going to just let them overthrow the government, become far more entriched in mewni politics, and boss me around without EVER questioning them or trying to replace them”. His apathy is never really called out by anyone but Marco, and he’s treated with all this undue importance despite not doing anything but train the queens, which even then i’ts questionable how good he was at that. Just an asshole, not the worst character in the series, he’s coming up in a few episodes, but just wholly unlikeable. And I get he’s supposed to be comically douchey but after what we learn about eclipsa it just passes into unforgivable and it’s never brought up or talked about. Which is a trend for this series and I don’t know why i’m even bothering being annoyed at this point when I could easily COUNT the number of potential plot threads the series half finished, dropped or wasted and it’d probably hit 50+. 

So Marco is chasing after Glossarcyk and ends up in Buff Frog’s office. Buff Frog was Ludo’s former second in command, who reformed, and became close with Star and Marco, and who Star gave a position as Royal Monster Expert in order to have an ACTUAL MONSTER doing their job since the previous person was a crazy lady who thought of htem as less than sapient and tried to drown them all for reasons I don’t quite remember. This.. has not come up since and this is the first time we’ve seen his office since and it’s empty. 

Marco finds a note for star but accidently reads it before he can get it to her, and we do get a glimpse of the old Marco as he’s disgraught over “reading someone’s mail without their permission!” I missed this.. I think I blocked out the GOOD times with marco in my brain behind a butter-like wall of all the stupid shit he did this season and the next and the whole resolution to the starco thing that left a taste in my mouth not unlike sardine juice mixed with vinegar, aka what causes Mitch Mconnel’s face to look like delfated and to sound like the ghost of Michgian J Frogs Condederate Uncle. 

Meanwhile Star is with Tom and is distruaght after finding our her life is a lie and feels there’s no one she feels she can talk to about this, and Tom’s face when she says this just...

You can tell the poor guy is just hurt. HIs girlfirend is hurting.. and she dosen’t even CONSIDER talking to him about this or think she can trust him despite him being RIGHT THERE. This expression is only on screen for half a second but it says so much. And another thing it says is that he dosen’t know HOW to help her, as evidenced by the fact his offering to is very awkward and sitlted, that he’s clearly HURT she dosen’t think she can confide in him, but is so awkward in general and out of his depth her ehe dosen’t know how to help he just wants to.  But while Star eventually seems receptive.. Marco busts in and we get a seen of EVERYONE involved being a canoe filed with dicks and old vhs copies of biodome. After of course Marco tells Star, Buff Frog is gone. To wit

Star: Immediately plans to take off with Marco and only Marco despite tom being right there, that he could help even if he has no stake in it, and the fact that cloudy can both grow, and Tom can you know.. FLY. That’s a thing we’ve seen him do a lot. So space isn’t an issue, sh’es just forgetting tom exists. Which WOULD work if it was an intentional issue but is sadly the beggining of Star being a pretty terrible girlfriend to tom. This example is lighter since you know , one of her closest friends and his small children are missing, and this is the day after her entire world got flip turned upside down, so I can forgive her a bit since she’s probably not thinking clearly.. but it’s the start of a LONG pattern fo her forgetting tom exists when it’s not coinvent and not thinking about his feelings.

Marco: When Tom asks to take Marco’s place, Marco says, not that he’s buff frog’s friend or he’s worried again about the fact he has kids that could be in danger but “I’m her squire it’s my job”... BEFORE you know the fact his friend WITH YOUNG CHLIDRNE WHO COULD BE DEAD VIA HATE CRIME, is missing. 

Seriously it says something about how far Marco has fallen by this ponit that even in an episode wher eh’es largely his old self.. he STILL make this about him and star to her boyfriend’s face. HiS FRIEND’S FACE. There will be worse from Marco soon enough, and far worse we won’t be covering, but it does say something that they did him so wrong this season that THIS is minor in comparison to some of the other shit he pulls. 

Tom: The only INTEITONAL one of these, as Star’s neglect feels like it was an accident, as he insists on coming along as her boyfriend despite this being a fairly serious situation and him clearly just wanting alone time. 

OH and if you thought the writers you know ACTUALLY cared about STar’s anguish over finding out her whole life was a lie, her newly found grandma who actually relates to her and treats her with respect unlike her mother isn’t biologically related (Not that blood relation matters but I can see why finding out the one family member besides your dad who was anything like you in recent memory.. isn’t related to you would hurt).. 

This highlights the show’s biggest flaw, and yes folks it’s bigger than the ending with the accidental genocide and the horrible implications. That was bad.. but what really tripped the show up long before that.. is the lack of payoff. Now sure some plots get payoffs, especially the Metora one, it’s one of the series best arcs.. but TONS of other threads are just outright ignored, casually dropped or never really pulled.  Look I know that every show has things we wished they’d done more with, and most of the greats of this generation have stuff they dropped the ball on by dropping it or never really getting into it: She Ra never really had any closure with Catra and Scorpia, despite Catra hurting her the most out of anyone and that could’ve been a good thing for her character developent and Scorpia’s own character development. Ducktales had NO intention of going into Della’s reaction to Scrooge and Donald’s feud and quitely ignored or retconned the fact Scrooge clearly erased Della’s long history from the web and wherever else he could, as why else would the kids have never known. Did they just not use google? Steven Universe, if partially by design as it turns out, skipped over a LOT of things and ignored a lot of intresting characters human and gem. It’s the nature of writing seralized teleivsion: Sometimes you just forget to take care of something or simply don’t have the space to. That is fine.  The problem is star does this.. for major plot points that really CAN’T be ignored. Starting with this season they flat out ignore Star telling Marco how she felt for pretty much the entire season. They only deal with it in booth buddies.... THREE EPISODES before the season finale two parter. Despite it having massive impliciations, doing so IN FRONT OF JACKIE, who was her friend, and Jann who is both Jackie and Star’s friend and is not subtle.  We never get any fallout from this and the show weirdly acts like Marco can’t easily visit home. I mean yes he’s star’s squire but she’s not a heartless monster> The DIazes were her parents for a while too. And that’s not even getting into Marco Junior... “Shudders”. But that part of the cliffhanger was just the start after that the pile just kept getting larger. Before it was basically JUST the monster arm and it possibly being involved with the blood moon. So to prove my point i’m making a list of EVERY dropped plot point or storyline from the series, most of which are from season 3 onward. And naturally I asked jess for help with this after the first 25.. and the list DOUBLED. One or two of these are nitpicky.. but the fact the vast majority AREN’T .. yeah.

1. Jackie’s reactoin to Star’s feelings for Marco 2. Janna’s Reaction to Star’s feelings for Marco 3. Buff Frog being head monster expert 4. Buff Frog and Co fleeing this dimension and where they WENT exactly 5. Tom being a Monster 6. Star not being a Butterfly by blood 7. Moon’s reaction to not being a butterfly by blood 8. Rhombulus feeling guilty 9. Marco’s reaction to hekapoo being a terrible person 10. Marco and Kelly’s Relationship (Technically resovled but done poorly) 11. Tad not being over Kelly 12. Hornanne never getting a horn (I know minor but it bothers me a lot) 13. Eclipsa having to win over the other kingdoms 14. Related, the Johnasons being the hardest one of those to overcome 15. Related to 13 again: Why Tom’s Parent’s didn’t suppport eclipsa 16. What the Jaggy Mountains are or are like at all 17. WHy Glossaryck was worried about Globgor 18. Why Glossaryck faked being feral for a season 19. How Star had a piece of the spell book 20. What Mr. Candle’s Deal is 21. The Pie Folk knowing the true lineage of the queen 22. Was the commission conspiracy ever made public.  23. Meteora possibly having memories from her previous self 24. Lobster Claws 25. River’s reaction to moon’s betrayal 26. Toffee’s Past  and Motivations 27. Marco’s Cheekmarks 28. Any reaction by Star and Janna to said cheekmarks 29. The kingdom’s reaction to the book being stolen is never brought up again 30. The Past Queens (Never brought up in show itself, but Jess feels there was supposed to be more there and I agree) 31. The Septarian Painting in ST.O’s (While i’ts a hint at who meteora is WHY it’s there and why ST. O would even allow it and why it’s of septarians is never explained) 32. Monster Arm 33. Relicor’s Wife 34. Why the dance memory was different 35. How do people in other dimensions get dimensional scissors? 36. How Did Toffee Know of the Whipsering Spell? 37. Where did Toffe, Ludo and Rasticore’s dimensonal scissors/chainsaw come from? 38. Toffee’s Damage to Mewni (Never gets brought up aagain after silver bell) 39. Why Globgor eating Shastacan was “Complicated” 40. Upwards Waterfall Unicorn 41. Star spying on Marco and Jackie 42. Any Explination for Green Magic 43. The photo’s of star and marco’s kiss (To quote jess, into the void they go) 44. How Metora Learned Soulsucking and why she can do that 45. Metora taking Rasticores arm with her.  46. The Neverzone’s weird time dialation 47. Star’s Neglect of Tom 48. The Spiderbites reaction to globgor being freed 49. The “Big Surge of Dark Magic” 50. Eclipsa “gets into your head 51. Star learning wandless magic with no effort 52. Where did Brian Go? 53. Star and Marco Never apologize for the kiss on screen 54. “I know how this all ends 55. Why Lekmet was never Replaced and why reynadlo didsn’t replace him

55 in the span of an hour.. and that’s not even getting into the fact Jess was thinking these up off the top of her head and probbaly coudl’ve kept going, but I didn’t want to overtax her since I was asking a favor of her, and  fifty goddamn three is more than enough to say ya done fucked up. Just.. holy shit. MARVEL has less dropped plotlines than this, and that at least has the caveat of changing writers and some writers being dipshits who don’t CARE about resolving what happened before. The Star team has an excuse for maybe 10 or 20 of these.. but 55! Fifty Goddamn five! And that’s stopping as we could probably have found more and just tying this paragraph we did, hence 55. How much do you have to NOT care about your audience, your plots and your characters to miss this much? The three I mentioned before all have understandable explinations behind them: She-Ra had a set episode count and only so much space and it made more sense story wise to have scorpia be taken over by the horde. Ducktales is on a kids network and Disney isn’t at all supportive of adult plots to the point a courtroom episode was deemd too confusing for kids... which first off , no, and secondly you see what they were dealing with. and Steven Universe again did this slightly intentionally, with things happening offscreen because that’s how life works, sometimes it worked sometimes it didn’t. 

This is just incompetence on a MASSIVE scale that boggles the goddamn mind. I have seen shows do worse, but i’ve never seen a show flush most of i’t spoteital drama nad character development down a goddamn hole again, and again and again in such a consitent manner. There’s no wonder I didn’t see this at the time. This is a level of messed up you have to see from helicopter view! The show just stopped carring about finishing most of it’s storylines and just brought shit up when it was convient and threw it out on a scale that just... just.. 

It sucks. It sucks to see a show that had so much potetial squander it, it sucks the show ended up like this, as only a handful of those are from pre season 3, and it sucks that the clock is ticking on how much good I have to say about the show without having to add the button “And then this was never properly resolved.” Good. Fucking. Grief. And Jess wanted to find MORE, and probably could, but I didn’t want her to dedicate her life to this. It’s monuentally frustrating, and saddening to see waht a waste of potetial this series was by the end. All of this is one big list of what if and most of it shoudl’ve been resolved in some way. “Sigh”.... let’s move on.. for my sanity’s sake. I made myself very sad. 

So with Marco out of the way Tom and Star start investigating and Tom is a bit of a dick about it, suggesting they abandon the search for her friend and his CHLDREN to go get a corn shake and that the monsters just went out grocery shopping.. the former is just horribly out of character, as even if he would WANT to leave he woudln’t be so cavialer about it when sh’es this upset just a few episodes AFTER monster bash, where he learned you know.. not to do that. The other is just ehhh... like you think he’d react to an entire town being missing and Star’s JUSTIFIED fear mina did it , after she easily swatted both of them aside, with more than “eh maybe their doing pesant stuff I don’t know” Thankfully the “Tom is a huge dick and also star is grossed out by him liking monster food revealing she might still be a touch racist without realizing it, which itself is nver touched on, let’s call that number 54″, portion of the episode ends when dark gets a little something on him

Star gets one in her arm, and the two pass out and wake up with sacks over them. We do get the best part of the episdoe where both try to run around blind, and Tom realizes he’s claustrophbic and starts panicking, which results in him falling around and kicking in a circle, while Star takes a guy out and while she can’t see assumes she did something cool. Eventually we find out their kidnappers are related to the buff frog thing and tell her to stop looking and just to be serious are going to break tom’s horns... before Buff Frog arrives wondering what the fuck their thinking and stopping them, and he and his kids are fine. Turns out he’s leaving Mewni and Katrina, his oldest daughter who has giant legs now, wanted to make sure they got to say goodbye, so she left the note in his name knowing Star would come and find them. Before we get into all of that, just a quick aside.. okay so baiscally these monsters who threatened are either fleeing mewni or running some sort of underground railroad to cover up the monster exodus. Which begs the question... why did they tihnk breaking the horns of a crowned prince of one of their allied states and kidnapping and threatning the princess of mewni, who is PUBLICLY pro monster and thus only makes them look worse, was at all a good idea. I get wanting to hdie this but breaking Tom’s horns is only going to lead to a fight at best and two kingdoms coming down at them with their full might, putting innocent people in the crossfire at worst and most likely

But yes the Monsters are leaving.. and this is part of where the episode misteps as the scale is kind of hard to figure in hindsight. On one hand the montser villiage is abandoned , meaning that the episode implies ALL the monsters are leaving.. but not only are some left, once Eclipsa takes over plenty of monsters come back or may of never left, making nit very vauge just how many actually left, especially since the party leaving that we see is just about 10 monsters not including buff frog’s babies.. where did they come from by the way? Ludo just kinda stole them but from where? Jess brought that up but i’m not sure I got it on the list so 55. The show is entirely too vauge on if this is a mass exodus of eveyr monster at long last or just a large migration of them wanting a better life. Instead of explaining any of this when it’s a very intresting and engrossing idea, the monsters leaving the predjuicde outright, the possible hateful reactoins of the commission given how paranoid they are, how star would combat this, a possible divide in monsterkind with one half going back and the other staying put, WHERE they went exactly.. there’s a lot of great questions and stories here.. but as the list the size of my gut should make clear, none of them get answere dbecause this series just didn’t care about it.. and if so then WHY bring it up. That’s why I brought up the list in the first place.. because this is one of MANY times they bring something up and just.. do nothing with it. Then why did you bring it up in the first fucking place?! As I said I can abide by dropping a plot point for time or beacause Disney is kinda dumb or you just want to get to other good stuff and you had to make a cut. And while a portion of the list is that. i’ts mostly things like this: really fascenating stuff.. that’s ignored because htey just stopped caring. 

So before they all can leave despite Star’s best efforts, TOM steps up and calls them cowards.. and admit’s he’s a monster too. And while one.. WEIRD looking guy points out he’s rich, so should he count, Tom counters with the fact that sure he’s rich.. but when he gets in an elevator he’s a monster. He may be part of a diffrent “catageory”.. but to a stranger he’s just the same as them. While it dosen’t feel quite earned by the episode, it is a moral that needs to be taught: prilvage dosen’t insulate you completely from prejudice. You can still be discrminated against no matter how much money you have or how far you get because the system sucks.  And once again this is a waste of potetial: tom technically being a monster and being the son of a human and a demon is never brought up again.. despite you know also being a massively powerful monster child of a monster and a mewman.. like a certain someone who’se the big bad for this half of the season. It just never comes up... and I get it’s a categorical bullshit thing, that the comission werne’t worried about a lucitor doing any of this because “Well demons are okay and we have a treaty and stuff”, but the show had no trouble pointing out categorical bullshit before.. why not now? 

The ending however is good as Buff Frog.. isn’t convinced. HE admit’s tom’s speech is good.. but he’s been dealing with this stuff for too long. It also works because him leaving the job they never focused on.. isn’t framed as him being ungreatful or anything. He’s genuinely appricative of what Star is trying to do and gets her heart is in the right place.. but she doesn’t have the power to fix this. She’s just a kid, and while she has some power her mother has no real intention of making things better for them. And he has to think of a better life for his kids.. so we get some tearful goodbyes as Buff Frog promises to return when she’s in charge.. even though he does because she’s in charge in the season finale and we never see him , 56, and he has to be talked into coming back in the last season... so they leave but Tom promises her it can work out because their a monster and a mewman and they hug and I sigh a little knowing how this relationship ends and the accidental message it sends. 

Final Thoughts: This episode is DECENT on it’s own but in hindsight.. it’s just depressing, bringing up some good ideas.. that end up going nowhere and the ending REALLY isn’t great in hindsight when he leaves star so she can be with another human-type person. Also tom’s charcterization is a bit lopsided starting off worse than ever and being fine in the end, and while that COULD just be that he felt he coudln’t admit he was a monster... it honestly just feels liked they wanted the moral without having to work for it as him being a monster has nothing to do with how he acted earlier. Till the next rainbow... UUGGGGHHHh. 

[peanutbutterjelly-pie]

prompt: Undercover

hosts: @bend-me-shape-me, @helianthus21, @pray4jensen

Dean has been undercover for many times in his life.

FBI agent, Homeland Security officer, reporter, janitor, gym teacher, lunch lady, maintenance guy, minister, private detective, and so on and so on. The list is so long that he's actually more familiar with playing a role when interacting with strangers than being himself.

So when they're on yet another case again and Sam calls him from the local library and tells him to dress up Dean doesn't even think about questioning it.

“Your fanciest clothes,” Sam orders, making it pretty clear there should be no discussion about it. “Designer suit, shiny shoes. And a shave because you're starting to look like a hobo.”

Dean barely lifts an eyebrow. “What do you need me to be? A snobby multimillionaire too good for this world.”

“The snobbiest,” Sam agrees. “It needs to look like the stench of money is following you everywhere.”

And so Dean does as he's told.

A while ago he got himself one of those super expensive Armani or whatever outfits for a case (thanks to Charlie's unlimited credit card no problem at all) and has it stashed in the depths of Baby's trunk ever since. It's only been used once so far considering fake FBI agents or journalists are rarely dressed in designer suits. At least not if they don't want to draw too much unwanted attention to them.

Dean isn't exactly sure the damned thing still fits after all that time, but after a quick shower and shave he gives it a try and finds himself pleasantly surprised when the suit still wraps itself over his body like a glove. Only around the hips it got a bit tight, but if he'd refrain from bending over it should be fine.

And it actually makes his ass look extra great, Dean has to admit. He snaps a quick picture of it and sends it to Cas because he can't help himself. Cas answers immediately with a long string of enthusiastic emojis that are both incredibly sweet, involving lots of hearts, as well as highly inappropriate and Dean loves him even more for it.

He makes a mental note to wear that suit the next time they'll be alone to see how fast the angel would be able to rip the clothes off his body and then he heads out to meet with Sam.

Soon enough he finds himself in front of a jewelry store, with his tall mountain of a brother waiting at the entrance. He is dressed in fancy clothes as well and considering he left their motel room a few hours ago just with his usual plaid attire he obviously went shopping in the meantime. The suit doesn't fit a hundred percent in some places, making it obvious this was a rather quick shopping trip with no time for a proper fitting, but it makes him nonetheless look extra posh too.

“We look good,” Dean remarks with a grin as he stops next to Sam. “Like we could buy all of the world in a heartbeat and still have a couple of millions left as pocket money.”

Sam merely huffs with a fond smile. “If you say so.”

“So what is the situation?” Dean asks, pointing at the store.

“I just got a lead that our annoying spirit might have a connection to a wristband that's on display here,” Sam tells him. “It had belonged to her before she died. And I know it's not much, but I wanna check it out anyway.”

That specific spirit had been annoying them for days now because they were unable to figure out what kept her here in the first place. So Dean will take any lead they can get, no matter how small.

“I'm actually not very optimistic,” Sam explains with a sigh. “But our ghost is showing up here in the area, so it's not a total longshot. We just need to get inside and distract the employees a little.”

“Hence the fancy clothes.” Dean nods in understanding. He highly doubts they would've even gotten past the security guard on the door in their usual jeans. Most likely even their regular FBI suits wouldn't have been good enough.

“So we just go inside and one of us pretends to be a customer while the other subtly checks out that wristband?” Dean asks nonetheless.

Sam nods. “Don't worry, I have a plan.”

Dean blinks, but has no time for further questioning since Sam's already shoving him through the gigantic front door. He's instantly greeted with lots of bling and bright lights and the absolute perfect room temperature (like seriously, did they hire a guy just to keep a close eye on that the entire time?) before getting pushed to the main counter where a blonde woman with a way too wide smile happily waits to bury her flawlessly manicured nails into those new  potential buyers.

“Welcome,” she says, her voice as melodic and perfect as the air in the store. “How can I be of assistance?”

“Well, we've got an important purchase to make,” Sam announces, sounding all kinds of pompous. “Because you see, my brother here,” he grabs Dean's shoulders and grins at him with such an intensity Dean can't help feeling wary all of a sudden, “he intends to propose to his boyfriend.”

Dean blinks rapidly.

What?

Okay, Dean certainly didn't expect that.

The woman – Marlene, as her name tag tells them – seems taken aback by that for a moment as well, but she picks herself up much quicker than Dean. Her smile increases a few thousand watt while she turns toward the groom-to-be. “This is wonderful. Congratulations!”

Dean feels a bit like he's been hit right in the face, out of nowhere.

Thankfully he is actually used to unexpected violent attacks and has learned fairly early to deal with them.

“Um … thanks,” he mumbles, feeling his cheeks heating up.

Marlene apparently misinterprets his awkward fumbling for adorable shyness or whatever and looks at him like she's ready to adopt him right here on the spot.

“You have to excuse him, this is still a bit much for him,” Sam leaps back into the conversation. “He's been thinking about this moment for years and I guess it might be a tad surreal that it's finally happening.”

“Really?” Marlene seems truly intrigued hearing that.

“Yeah,” Sam sighs way too dramatically, “Dean's basically been thinking about marrying Cas since the first moment they met.”

Well.

Actually his first meeting with Cas was more like Dean having a sudden realization á la, “Wow, he's hot!” and then stabbing the guy in the chest.

But Dean refrains from pointing that one out.

It might have ended in those people declaring them insane and kicking them out of the store. And though Dean is used to the first, he doesn't need the latter right now.

“Dean just wants everything to be perfect,” Sam points out, sounding exactly like a guy who is used to getting what he wants. “It's a big day.”

“It most certainly is,” Marlene agrees, dollar signs already flashing up in her eyes. “We have a vast collection of engagement rings and I'm sure we will find something to your liking.”

“Money is not the issue,” Sam says those magic words that make Marlene even more excited, so it seems. “The bigger and more extravagant, the better.”

Marlene smiles widens, appearing incredibly sweet and harmless on the surface. But Dean knows a predator focusing on its prey when he sees it.

On instinct he actually wants to take a step back and hide, but instead he gathers enough courage to meet her smile. It's still somewhat wobbly, but she probably blames it on his alleged nervousness about that big change in his life.

“Why don't you tell me a little bit about your Cas?” she prods him. “What is he like?”

Dean shoots a quick glance at his brother, cursing him for having to endure this in the first place, before clearing his throat and responding, “He's … um, awesome.”

Way to go, Winchester.

She is certainly swooning on the spot.

Dean winces inwardly and forces himself to get a little bit more into his role. After all, he is used to the undercover life, so this shouldn't be too hard.

For a minute there he even considers to lie about Cas' personality, wondering whether that would make it easier to talk about him to a total stranger, but as he's just about to come up with some made-up character traits, he hears himself saying, “Well, to be fair, he's an asshole.”

Marlene looks at him in surprise while Sam in the background rolls his eyes.

“Uh … okay?” Marlene answers, clearly not sure how to reply to that.

“Cas is grumpy,” Dean goes on, now a fond smile flickering over his features. “I'm quite certain he is the biggest grump in the history of mankind, to be honest. And he's way too sassy for his own good. Also he has no idea how to clean up after himself and he always hums those annoying jingles he heard on the radio or whatever. All day. I'm actually surprised I haven't gone mad many years ago.”

Or maybe he has.

With his life, who could tell?

“But he's also a badass,” Dean continues, registering the only other employee who's been lacking any customers at the moment sliding closer with clear interest in her eyes. “No one should dare to screw around with him. And the few that actually did regretted it pretty quickly.”

That's, of course, an understatement actually, but he won't go into much detail now. For those poor women's sanity.

“And he cares, so much,” Dean goes on, an affectionate smile settling on his face when his thoughts drift closer to Cas. It's an automatic response at this point and he's pretty sure it'll stay like that for the rest of his life. “Even about that stupid little fly that got lost into our room a couple of weeks ago. It feels like we spent hours catching that thing and releasing it back into the wild. But what could you have done, you know? Cas would've been miserable if that fly would've died inside and that's something nobody wants to see. Believe me. He looks like a kicked puppy when he's sad.”

The salesladies scoots even closer, captivated by Dean gushing over his boyfriend. While Sam subtly starts to step back a little and check out the rest of the display, trying to locate the wristband of their obnoxious ghost.

Dean clears his throat, despite still feeling like he's been thrown into icy water without any warning whatsoever by his traitorous brother more than determined to play this role like their lives depend on it. After all, there here and they might not get a second chance.

So Dean gives it all he's got.

“So yes, Cas, he's great,” he says. “He's been my best friend for such a long time now and I … I guess I want him at my side for the rest of my life. And even beyond that.”

Dean smiles at the image of sharing his Heaven with Cas one day. It might be a hassle to get there at first – after all, Cas' relationship with his brethren is still not the best –, but Dean has no doubt that it'll come true eventually. Cas is way too much of a stubborn son of a bitch to not see this through.

Dean blinks as he suddenly realizes that he is in fact beginning to fantasize about Cas by his side forever as a real possibility.

Huh.

“As mentioned, we have a vast collection of engagement rings to help you start this new chapter of your life,” Marlene says with a happy sigh. “We would be more than happy to help you with your endeavor.”

Dean stares at her for a moment.

Oh right. Rings. The case.

“Yes, right,” he mutters, a slight blush on his face now. “It … it needs to be perfect.”

Marlene and her colleague – Amanda, as her name tag tells him – immediately spur into action and for the next ten minutes Dean sees himself confronted with a huge variety of different rings in all shapes and forms. A few are actually quite simple and elegant – silver bands with a couple of nice highlights – and some are seriously so over-the-top pompous and big Dean has no idea how a normal human being should be able to wear that on their hand.

But he smiles at them all and fakes such exaggerated interest both Marlene and Amanda seem to believe they're in Heaven themselves.

And it seems like a freaking eternity until Sam pops up next to him again.

“I'm so sorry to interrupt, ladies,” he jumps right into their enthusiastic conversation. “My girlfriend just texted me. Her doctor's appointment ended way earlier than expected and I need to pick her up.”

A blatant lie, of course, considering Eileen is back at the bunker with Cas, probably getting her ass beaten in every single board game invented by the best of all strategists Heaven has ever produced.

“But don't worry, Dean will be back shortly,” Sam promises right away as both Marlene and Amanda look rather crestfallen at those news. “After all, Dean can't wait to get married.”

They bid hasty goodbyes and are soon enough back on the streets again.

“So, any luck?” Dean asks when he's starting to remember the real reason why they went into the store in the first place.

“I found the wristband,” Sam admits. “But there's no suspicious energy to it. It's just jewelry.”

“Damn,” Dean sighs. “Well, it was worth a shot, at least.”

“Yeah …”

“And that was one hell of a cover story, Sammy,” Dean can't help pointing out for some reason.

Sam shoots him a quick glance, something intense flickering over his features.

“It wasn't though, right?” he asks in the end. “A cover story, I mean. Not really, at least.”

Dean frowns. On first instinct he wants to deny that, just wants to scoff at his brother's face and get on with his life, but then he thinks about Cas and how nice he would look with a ring on his finger and he finds himself lowering his gaze to cover up the flush on his cheeks.

“Uh … well, maybe it wasn't really a cover story after all,” he admits, his voice low, yet steady.

“So you want to go back?” Sam wonders, a smile on his lips. “ Look at those rings again? When this case is over and everything.”

Dean blinks. A few of those rings actually did look kind of awesome, if he's honest with himself. And sure, they're pretty expensive, but also very durable (an important feature in their line of work), and Dean surely didn't lie when he said that Cas only deserves the best.

So he finds himself muttering, “Yeah, I guess I wouldn't mind going back” and feels rather good about it.

Seems like Dean seriously has an important purchase to make after all.

[t0sshii]

ginhiji hospital au??

I needed to get this off of my brain and I can’t draw or write so here it goes... Ginhiji but Hijikata is a nurse working in a hospital and Gintoki is the new resident who comes off as lazy but is actually a really good doctor (which surprises our boy Toushi)

More thoughts under the cut? (I have more thoughts about hijikata because.... i have more experience there LOL)

I’ve been a working nurse for more than half a year now so I kind of know what I’m talking about? (but not really because i’m definitely still a baby nurse that’s still learning OTL) but really im a baby don’t ask me specifics

I got into Gintama super late and I have so many regrets because it’s taken over my life. 

hijikata working in either medsurg, ICU, or emergency because it’s not slow, needs great time management skills and working under pressure /but i have a bias for medsurg because that’s where i am right now... but i feel like he would definitely be the same kind of intense that some ICU nurses i know are... 

he’s definitely the type to not take a proper break at work... would probably eat saltines from the nutrition room 

reason 1: he’s too busy

reason 2: hates to go on break if he has to leave hella shit for the person covering him (so he give all his meds, clean his patients, give pain meds...make sure they NEVER call the person covering him on break) but that also means when things don’t calm down he feels like there’s never an opening for one

meanwhile he will give meds, clean patients, and do everything for whoever he covers for break 

when this happens kondo sends yamazaki to cover him for breaks because you can’t tell patients to eat their food when you haven’t eaten toushi 

is really good at putting in IVs, nobody on the unit even tries to put them in when he’s working they’ll just ask him to do it for them

a charting superuser lol

his brain... impeccable. a work of art. a pinnacle of organization. made his own because the hospital issued one doesn’t work for him

probably looks something like this

note: allows you do just quickly circle things during shift change instead of writing it all down...i would probably make past medical history section bigger though (do i use a sheet like this? no because i am... organized chaos and writing it down helps ME--but toushi probably wants to take as little time possible writing shit down) 

reads his work e-mail, even the newsletters from the hospital

kondo is nurse manager and is a very supportive one (the potlucks!!! tries his best to make sure everyone feels supported at work ; w ;) hired hijikata..

when hijikata is charge, the work is distributed evenly thank god 

also “it’s an hour until shift change and if this patient doesn’t come up in 10 minutes they’re not coming until after shift change” 

everyone asks him for help because he knows all the hospital policies

what nurse isn’t frustrated with doctors lets be real 

exhibit A: “my patient is in TEARS with 10/10 pain and the doctors have the audacity to ask if THEY TRIED TO DISTRACT THEMSELVES WITH ART?” (this is a literal conversation I’ve had with a resident before) 

hates talking to interns because he ends up having to teach them how to do their job 

hates talking to jaded attendings

only attending he likes is shouyo

used to have long hair in nursing school but cut it after his ponytail got into some shit during a bed bath 

still smokes.. kondo hates it because we’ve all seen what it’s done to our patients and you still smoke?

has tried to quit but never works out

gintoki also gets on his case about it

just imagine hijikata in those black figs joggers scrubs UGH 

in this universe they’re called digs because copyright and this is still gintama we’re talking about

these scrubs are unnecessarily expensive so he didn’t actually buy them himself ( “why the fuck would i buy expensive scrubs if i am going to get literal shit on it”).. if left to his own devices he will wear those ugly ass hospital issued scrubs

Kondo and his other friends split the price for the black joggers and a 3 pocket scrub top -- because we all know hijikata puts ALL his supplies in his pockets. he NEEDS pockets

Gintoki thinks his ass looks good in those joggers UGH 

Hijikata won’t admit it but the digs are his favorite pair they are so comfortable. still won’t buy them with his own money though

student nurses are scared of him because he’s intense and asks hard questions, really strict... doesn’t bully but pushes students and orientees really hard

but also any one who can survive being trained by him becomes an excellent nurse

that nurse that’s on top of their shit and THINKS instead of just following orders

“saw his potassium is high. can we do something about that?”

“there wasn’t continuous oxygen monitoring ordered but i put them on because it doesn’t look good. can we get an order for that” 

all the doctors trust him because he’s just so goOD

gets on gintoki’s case about looking like a bum at the hospital all the time

if he EVER catches wind of doctors talking down to his nurses or older nurses bullying the newer ones (which never really happens because kondo is a great manager who fosters a very nontoxic work culture) they will...FEEL. HIS. WRATH. 

also will not tolerate patients treating him (or his coworkers) like shit. will be more professional dealing with patients tho than with the MDs. but if it’s an MD berating a nurse, they better be ready to get their ass KICKED

Gintoki is the new resident along with katsura and takasugi in.... internal medicine? surgery? idk? 

i mostly just wanted write this one: hijikata has a patient in a pain crisis 10/10 pain, given all available pain meds, tried everything possible but still no relief. paged the new resident working with this patient 

hijikata fully expects either a call saying “sorry i can’t order any more pain medicine for this patient” or just another IV medicine ordered with no communication at all 

but gintoki comes into the patient’s room (first thing hijikata notices is unprofessional hair, wrinkled jacket, mismatching socks and thinks this doctor is going to be lazy AF), speaks to the patient with great bedside manner, talks to the patient about pain management strategies and WORKS WITH THEM for a better plan for medication. walks with the patient in the hall and even takes them to the bathroom 

hijikata is FLOORED. because this never happens with MDs.

(this has actually happened and me and all my coworkers were SO PLEASANTLY SURPRISED)

hijikata once sent gintoki a message asking if he wanted to lower the dose for a medication because the lab for it was high 

gintoki thought he was the pharmacist because hijikata is just that good

likes the sound of hijikata’s voice on the phone so he always returns his pages even if it’s just to say “ok i’ll put the order in” 

secretly gets excited when he sees hijikata’s name on the chart under the care team 

one because he’s hot

two because he’s a good nurse

actually learns a lot from hijikata

gets to know hijikata’s bad break habits and gives him a coffee whenever he notices he’s working (but is absolutely disgusted when he brings out the mayonnaise)

“how can you tell your patients to be healthy when you put that shit in everything you eat?” 

hijikata counters with “you can’t tell me what to eat when you’re on your way to diabetes asshole” 

tries to be the kind of MD shouyo is 

being in healthcare is hard so the two of them do drink together if their days off line up to vent....

hijikata complains about dumb MDs (gintoki makes mental notes on how to not be an annoying MD), how busy his days are, and why are we always understaffed... how can we run out of IVs? 

gintoki complains about all the calls he gets, how stressful residency is, why are rounds so early, that midget takasugi, the long ass working hours, being on call fuckin sucks

both bond over sharing crazy stories about patients or how their day went....also hospital complaints because what healthcare worker doesn’t complain about their hospital 

get into “who’s job is more stressful” arguments a lot

on particularly hard (emotionally, physically, mentally) days the other would show up with a bag of food and drinks? 

when the two start dating, it’s usually just... hanging out at work? 

if somehow by some miracle, they get their breaks together (if at all) they eat together

if they do have days off together they usually spend it sleeping (literally you guys) or relaxing at one of their apartments

sleep deprived healthcare workers lead to many....petty...arguments but they make up by the end 

it’s late and i have more thoughts? but i have work tomorrow. but i needed to get this OUT OF MY BRAIN.

also feel free to message me about any of this!! :) asks are always open hehe

[glitterdreamsz]

A Penny For Your Thoughts (part 6)

Roger Taylor x Reader

Summary: Reader and Roger have been a couple since they were sixteen. But what would happen to their relationship now that Roger’s dream of being a rock star is becoming reality? (whole series here)

A/N: I’m fucking back! Did you miss me? (let’s all thank the quarantine that gave me the possibility of going back to write this chapter. I hope you will like it and don’t be afraid of letting me know what you think! Thank you for sticking up with me. Also i’ve decided to switch this fic from BoRhap!roger to the real roger cause i find myself more willing to write for him. But, of course, you can imagine him in any way you prefer him.

Words count: 2,9+k

Warnings :english isn’t my first language so grammar errors, and SMUT (18+)

10th October 1974

“Okay” Roger panted laying the box on the floor “That was the last box.” He put his hands on his hips and took a look at the empty living room that was almost twice bigger than your old one. “I guess that’s it then.” You smiled widely at him “We finally moved into our new flat” you wrapped your arms around Roger’s waist and your hands wandered on his naked torso “It’s October, you shouldn’t go around with your shirt completely open.” You mumbled as your lips were pressed against his back leaving some tender kisses. “I’ve been carrying boxes and furniture for a whole hour, I’m hot even though it’s October.” He argued back, taking your hand and jokingly biting the tips of your fingers. “You’re sweaty and stinky even though it’s October” you chuckled looking up at him and Roger immediately turned around with a smirk on his face. “I guess that it’s time to try our new shower.” “Our new big shower.” You added smiling and already walking to the bathroom. “Who told you you were invited too?” Roger asked following you. But you didn’t argue back and just poked your tongue out at him while starting to undress yourself.

******************

24th October 1974 “And when I told him that I was quitting my job he was so surprised” you explained to Roger while clearing the table “As if it wasn’t clear enough that I hated working for him.” The drummer chuckled softly shaking his head “Did you tell him that now you’ll be Queen’s photographer?” He asked while putting the dishes in the sink. “Hmh” you nodded as you made Roger move away and you started to wash the tableware. “And his response was -you?- as if I wasn’t good enough” you scoffed and gave a wet glass to Roger who started drying it “That asshole” you kept talking “Well, I bet he will change his mind soon. I mean look at me now. I live in a fucking big apartment in central London, soon I’ll be touring the world with my boyfriend and I’ll be the photographer of his band that will surely become the most famous band in the history of rock. What else should happen?” There was silence then, out of nowhere, Roger said it. “Marry me.” You turned around laughing softly, thinking that it was another joke of his. But in front of you there was Roger, serious as ever, and he was looking at you waiting for an answer. “What?” you managed to ask, and suddenly forgot how to breathe. “Marry me (Y/N)” “Roger” it came out almost as a whisper “We…we always talked about how we both didn’t want to get married, how we thought it was just a stupid sign on a stupid paper. That we didn’t need it, that we were happy just like that.” “I know I know everything we said but those were just things we said as teenagers coming out of broken families. We both were afraid of marriage because we saw what it did to our parents. But I’m not afraid anymore, I know I want you and I’ve known it for a long time.” his eyes were watery just like yours, his hands were on your cheeks making you look at him as he was talking “We don’t have to prove anything to anybody. We don’t need a big ceremony. Let’s just get married today, let’s go to the city hall, we’ll have the guys as witnesses and then we can go get drunk at a pub. I just want to spend the rest of my life calling you my wife.” “Yes” you nodded, wiping away the tears that were running down your face. “Yes?” Roger was as surprised as you were with that answer, he thought that he would have had to argue more, that you would have told him to wait. But he was right, you were just afraid of marriage because of your mom. But then you found Roger, and you knew that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him. No one else could ever compare to the love of your life. So why not do that madness with him? “Yes” you confirmed once again and to make it even more clear you wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him passionately, with all the love you had in your body “I will marry you today Roger Meddows Taylor.” “I…I just don’t have an engagement ring” he said, almost embarrassed to you. “Who gives a damn about engagement rings.” You chuckled reassuring him “Now go call the guys”

*****

“You guys are completely out of your minds” Freddie stormed inside your apartment gesticulating “You can’t call me and tell me that you’re getting married with such a short notification. It takes time to make the perfect outfit.” “Sorry Freddie” you giggled “The next time we’ll get married you’ll know it with more notice” “That’s not funny” the singer mumbled “Now, to the most important thing. Where’s your dress?” “Actually, I was thinking about wearing a white blouse and some trousers or a skirt, something easy.” “Are you insane? You are the bride, you can’t go dressed like that. Come on, let’s go.” He said taking your hand and pulling you towards the door. “Where are you taking me?” “To buy you a decent dress” he stated as if it was the most obvious thing. “But I want something simple.” “Fine then we’ll go to biba. Mary will help us.” He was already at the door but you stopped him. You couldn’t leave the house without seeing Roger first. You walked to your bedroom where you knew he would be with Brian and John. “I’m going out with Fred, he wants to buy a dress for me.” You said as you peeked your head on the bedroom door. Rog was talking with his mates while buttoning up the shirt he would be later wearing. “Oh.. ok” he said almost nervously “I thought we would go there together but I guess we’d meet there.” “Hmh” you nodded smiling “I’ll see you at the altar” “I’ll see you at the altar” he repeated and quickly pecked your lips “Now go before the whole building will hear Freddie’s screams.

********

“Do you think we’re doing a stupid thing?” You asked Freddie while flattening the hem of your dress with your hands. “Well, usually people don’t decide to get married all of a sudden and tie the knot the same day.” He answered chuckling “But it’s you and Roger, you are not ordinary and you are made to be together for life so why not?” he shrugged “Do you think you’re doing a stupid thing?” he asked back. You shrugged “Am I afraid? Yes, my hands are fucking sweaty and my heart is beating as fast as ever. Did we take this decision too fast? Yes. But I know that in the other room there’s the love of my life, we’ve been together for nine years and I know that marrying him is the right decision.” “So don’t make him wait.” Freddie pecked your cheek and then walked to his mates in the other room, you took a deep breath and once you opened the door you saw him. Roger immediately turned around facing you, a big smile on his face as you walked toward him “You look amazing, you’re so gorgeous” he whispered as he took your hand and kissed it. “I love your jacket” you smiled looking at his white jacket with birds printed on it “And you’re handsome” “Do you have the rings?” the man in front of you asked “No” “Yes” you and Roger answered in unison. “Yes?” you whispered looking at Roger. “You weren’t the only one who went shopping before coming here” He smiled taking two gold wedding bands. “Hope you like them.” “They’re perfect” you smiled squeezing his hand that never left yours since the beginning of the ceremony. “Will you, Roger Meddows Taylor, take (Y/N) as your wife?” “I do” Roger said with watery eyes as he slid the ring on your finger. “And will you, (Y/N), take Roger Meddows Taylor as your husband?” “I do” your eyes didn’t leave Roger’s gaze as you put the ring on his finger and then held his hand tight. The rings touched, a new sensation, a new feeling that you already loved. “I now pronounce you husband and wife” Roger wasted no time in cupping your cheeks and kissing you, leaving you out of your breath as you wrapped your arms around his waist and held him close to you. As background you could hear Fred, Bri and Deaky, with their respective wives, whistling and clapping their hands making you smile widely against your husband’s lips.

******* “I may now introduce you the newly Mr. and Mrs. Taylor” Freddie screamed as he walked into the pub. “Fred, keep it quiet” Roger told his friend as he wrapped his arm around your shoulders. “I don’t want to draw any attention on us.” The drummer wanted to spend the best day of his life signing autographs or taking pictures with girls who were too touchy. “Sorry if I’m happy that my best friends just got married.” “God, it sounds so weird. Roger and (Y/N) just got married.” Brian said while walking toward the counter. “I actually love how it sounds” You told looking at Roger who looked back at you smiling and kissed you softly. “Okay, too much sugar for today, let’s drink.” John joked sitting on a stool. “I want to propose a toast” Roger announced lifting his beer bottle. “To my wife” his arm was around your waist and his blue eyes never left yours. “I knew you were the one from the first time I met you and you had that Who vinyl on your bike basket. We’ve been together for nine years but they’re not enough for me, I want the rest of my life with you. We’ve had our ups and our downs but we never let them break us. You know me like no one else does, you’ve always been my rock and you have always believed in me when the rest of the World didn’t. And I don’t need the whole World to believe in me or to love me, I only need one person to love me, and that person is you. To my beautiful wife (Y/N)” Everyone cheered clicking their glasses and you had tears streaming down your cheeks as you cuddled to your husband “I love you Roger, I always had and I always will”

****

“Wait” Roger said as you opened your flat door “The bride can’t walk inside the house by herself” and saying so he picked you up in his arms making you life. “You, Roger Taylor, are completely crazy.” “Crazy about you” “So cheesy” you wrinkled your nose and pecked his lips “But you’re excused since we just got married.” “Right answer” he smiled while walking towards your bedroom. “Where is my husband taking me?” you joked already knowing his intention, which were the same as yours. “I bet you already know where we’re going” he said as he put you back on your feet once you got in your room and then whispered in your ear “I’ll make you lose your innocence tonight” “I’m sorry to inform you that I already lost it to a rock star” you whispered back grinning. “Did you?” he started leaving kisses down your neck “Is him in a famous band?” You nodded running a hand through his hair “He’s in Queen” “Is he John Deacon?” You both laughed at his question. “Can you please help me out of this dress instead of talking about your bandmates as we’re about to have sex?” “Your wish is my command” Roger joked and then the atmosphere got serious all of a sudden. You could feel his fingers unzipping your dress till your lower back and his lips left kisses all along your spine any time a piece of your bare back was shown. “You weren’t wearing a bra underneath your dress?” he asked as he pulled down one of your straps. “Such a naughty bride” he smirked pulling down also the other one revealing your bare breast. He lowered down, his lips on your nipple and your hands through his hair. Even though at the beginning you wanted it to take it slow, now you couldn’t wait anymore and you started to undress Roger. Your naked bodies moved together toward the bed and you pulled him down with you on the mattress. Just as if he could read your mind your husband asked you “How turned on are you?” “Very much” you replied as you cupped his cheeks and kissed him. “So no fore-” “Yes, let’s just go straight to it” you cut him off. “Okay, we can do it later. I mean, I bet there will be more rounds tonight.” You chuckled nodding “Yeah, there will surely be more rounds.” “Good” he smiled and just wanted to hold him tight to you cause now that you had him over you, now that those blue eyes were lost in yours, you could feel that your heart could burst for how much you loved him. And that’s what you did that night, you made love to each other. There was no lust in your actions. Roger took his time and moved his hips slowly, feeling every inch of you taking him so well “God, (Y/N) you feel so good” he cried out. His forehead was hidden in the crook of your neck as his fingers were intertwined with yours. Then his hands were wandering all over your body, he wanted to feel you, feel your skin under his hands, his lips on your torso wanting to savour you. And you were completely lost in full bliss, feeling loved and wanted by the man you adored. “Let me be on top” you managed to say. Roger didn’t say anything, too lost in you to be able to speak, and helped you switch position. “Sit up, I want to feel you close.” You instructed him. That was your favourite position, because like that you could have him closer to you, his skin on yours, your chest pressed against his. You wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him deeply before starting to move your hips on his shaft, taking him again in you “I love you so much Roger” you moaned against his lips. The room was filled with your praises and the sound of your skin colliding together. “L-love, I-I need to go faster” Roger mumble “w-we have to switch” You nodded laying on your back and opening your legs for him. Rog held himself on the headboard with his hand as he slid one more time inside you. He didn’t waste any time and immediately moved his hips quickly and firmly. “God Roger” you moaned loud. By his cries you could tell that he was close so were you , you squeezed your walls against him and that made him lose all his strength making cum moaning your name. Your husband collapsed on you, still moving his hips to help you reach your high and his fingers run down your body drawing circles on your clid. “I’m close” you cried. “Come for me love” and as if those words were a spell for you, you reached your high moaning and holding close to Roger. Your naked bodies were tangled under the covers, your head laid on your Roger’s chest. You were playing with his hand as your fingertip traced his wedding ring. “A penny for your thoughts?” he asked, kissing your head tenderly. You chuckled looking up at him “You used to say that when we were still teenagers” a smile formed on your face at the memory “I found a new meaning for Penny, A penny for your thoughts, cause you’re all I think about.” “You still didn’t tell me what you were thinking of” Roger said as his hand ran up and down your spine, caressing your back. “I never thought that we would be here, as a married couple. But I don’t regret it at all. I love you Roger, more than anyone else in the World. And it doesn’t matter all the difficulties we will find down the road. I will be by your side, I will always choose you.” Roger smiled fondly and you could feel his heart beating fast against your ear. “You know what Bukowski says?” he asked, putting a lock of hair behind your ear. “Is this an intellectual moment?” you chuckled softly. “I’m trying to be romantic here, telling you what I feel and you are mocking me?” he pretended to be offended. “Sorry, I didn’t want to ruin the moment” you kissed him softly and encouraged him to go on.“ “Well, he always talks about how men are always late and how they can’t keep promises.” You nodded listening to him and wondering what was his point of those words. “(Y/N), I can’t assure you that I’ll always be on time, but I promise you that even if late, I’ll always be here for you.” *****

reader’s wedding outfit:

and roger’s iconic wedding outfit

taglist:

@heda-mikaelson @deakyspuff​ @espresso-and-a-cig @everybodyplaythegame​ @oxuminaa​ @heartsforhoran​ @thewinchesterchronicles​ @hissom1933​ @johnricharddeacon​ @allornone​ @lokilaufcvson @langdonzvoid​ @vanitysfairr​ @mcrmarvelloki​ @lady1505​ @belenportal @rogxrtaylxr @queenrrogertaylor @spideyyypeter​​ @the-galaxy-witch​​ @rockyroadthepastryarchy​​ @borhapqueen92​​ @jennyggggrrr​​ @queen-crue​ @deaconsposts​​

[grasslandgirl]

im distracting myself from the impending doom of a six month hiatus and everything that... happened in MAG160 by thinking about all the Wonderful possibilities for jonmartin dynamics post-159 because I’m a sucker for pining and minor miscommunications and dumb fanfic tropes and I’m dragging all of you along on this ride with me!

1) They’re Both Just Chill: there’s no miscommunications, no misunderstandings. despite what peter said about them not knowing each other super well (and maybe he raised some valid points, despite being an asshole) they DO know each other well enough and had a deep enough connection during the look at me/ i see you, jon scene that they both just (for lack of a better word) Know. they look into each other’s eyes in the middle of the Lonely and they see the love there, and the hurt and the pain and the anger and everything, but they do see the love. and they recognize that, oh, we’ve been so dumb this entire time. and there’s no big Talk, no awkward stumbling around the question, they just move forward from jon and martin to jon-and-martin because they’ve wasted enough time already, haven’t they? they can’t afford to waste any more time at this point, and hey. they kind of have bigger problems going on, right?

2) I Really Loved You, You Know: ok so this one i’ve seen in quite a few fanfics and speculative posts about this one, and jon misconstruing how martin uses the past tense when talking to him in the Lonely, and can i just say....... it’s very good. you have jon, who’s been desperately trying to reconnect with people, especially martin, this entire season, who dives headfirst into the Lonely after him, and maybe he heard martin’s tape with elias from the end of s3, maybe he knows about martin’s feelings for him, maybe he at least suspects, and maybe he doesn’t; but the point of the matter is that he goes into the Lonely after martin because jon’s in love with him and i think we can mostly all agree that at least by MAG159 (and we can argue about WHEN he realizes it, later) jon is aware of his own feelings for martin. but he follows the man he loves, and he finds him, and he’s begging him to follow him out of the lonely, to come with him, and martin tells him that he loved him. really loved him. loved him, as in past tense. which, like, if you think about it? that’s SO heartbreaking. but jon keeps after him ANYWAY, and he breaks martin out of the Lonely’s grasp and they walk out side by side and then you’re left with jon, who is terrified on SO many different levels, and thinks that he failed, again. that he was too late with martin, too late to be his friend, too late to save him from Peter, and too late to love him, and he saved him, he did it, but it’s still heartbreaking, right? and juxtapose that with martin, who’s just been literally pulled out of his own loneliness by the man he’s been in love with for three years, and he told him he LOVED him and jon Didn’t Respond. and like? all the hurt and the pining and the trying to take care of each other despite everything and despite your own hurt that can happen there? SUPER good

3) Clueless Jon Doesn’t Know He Has A Boyfriend: this one kind of crosses over with #2 but it’s a little lighter and a little more fun. essentially you have martin, who says he loves jon and assumes jon heard his tape with elias where he outed martin entirely and sees jon come into the lonely to save him and hugs jon while crying when he comes to his senses and walks out of the lonely hand in hand with jon and thinks, quite reasonably, that ok, they’re dating now. and you have martin “caretaker” blackwood who’s worrying over jon and taking care of him and letting jon take care of him, and making him eat and they do all this vaguely date-y stuff because the world is kind of maybe ending, but hey! martin’s in love and hes going to enjoy it goddamnit. but then one day our beloved archivist, jon “emotionally obtuse” sims, has nearly a breakdown and he starts rambling on about how he’s in love with martin and he’s sorry and he wants there to be something between them and how he doesn’t want to change anything and this is terrible timing and he doesn’t even Know if martin feels the same way but he needed to get this off his chest etc etc etc and martin’s just like “i thought. i thought we were ALREADY dating.” which is.... hysterical if you ask me

4) Jonathan “Fuck The Lonely” Sims: kind of the opposite of the last two, in which jon is LESS of a moron than anyone expected! jon “the archivist” sims actually... thinks! he listens to the tape of elias and martin from MAG118 and reevaluates every interaction he ever had w martin after he wakes up from his coma and realizes that martin’s in love with him, and not only that, but HE’S in love with MARTIN, but has no way of communicating that to him until 154 and that whole conversation is just jon trying (and failing) to say “i love you. i love you and i know you love me and lets just say fuck this place and go. please lets just go the two of us, say you’ll come with me. i love you.” and martin. doesn’t understand. but then 159 happens and jon follows and they have That Moment and jon thinks that Finally they’re on the same page and meanwhile you have martin, who’s PEAK in his pining time, fresh out of a good year of self isolation and pure loneliness and needs a while to pull away from Forsaken and thinks that he’s alone in his pining after jon, because jon never said anything about the tape with elias, or martin saying he loved him in the lonely, and is completely clueless to the fact that jon thinks theyre straight up dating and are just taking it Slow. and then one day jon is like “hey ready for our date later” (they had dinner plans or smth but this is the first time he outrightly calls it a Date) or he kisses martin briefly on the forehead or cheek or smth and martin is like “WHAT IS GOING ON” and jon is just. baffled cause he’s not used to being the oblivious one in the relationship

5) Just Full On Pining Hours: theres some crossover here with both #2 and #4, but specifically this one is where BOTH jon and martin are full on in love and are idiots and think that the other person Doesn’t Love Them Back :( possibly featuring: jon focusing on the past tense of “i really lovED you, you know,” martin comparing jon going into the lonely to save him to jon going into the buried to save daisy/ cutting the bullet out of her leg to save melanie from the slaughter, jon being dumb and thinking all the statements he’s heard about martin’s “feelings” are elaborations/inaccurate/only in the past/etc, martin being so stuck in the lonely he pulls away from jon on instinct, jon caught up on what peter said about them not really knowing each other and MAD second guessing himself and questioning what his feelings for martin are really based on, both martin and jon throwing themselves MAJOR pity parties about falling to the power of the eye/the lonely respectively, jon going into “im a monster and im the worst and ive lost my humanity” mode and thinking he’s not Worthy of being with martin in the first place, martin being haunted by his time with peter and the lonely and keep falling back into the habit of pushing people (jon) away “for their own good,” etc etc etc etc! just a lot of sad pining hours bc these guys have been through a LOT and it’s hard to just drop straight into a healthy relationship (or Any relationship) when there’s so much baggage and history there in between

6) Run Away With Me, by Carly Rae Jepsen: I said what I said. i want them to be happy and so what if they run away and blind themselves and leave the archives and live in some house in another continent and never think about any of the entities again? i get to make the rules, its my fantasy au world and jonny can’t do anything to hurt them here

[what-is-your-plan-today]

CSI: Rogers and Barnes- The Serious Cereal Serial Killer

Episode 3- Return Ticket

Co written with @icanfeelastormbrewing​

Episode Summary: So Katie’s back, and she’s not happy. Steve’s Ma slaps him, and Bucky makes a new friend in the Morgue… Episode Warnings: Bad Language words. 

Episode Pairings:  Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark (yeah really hates him in this one!)

Song for Episode:  The Man Who Can’t Be Moved- The Script

A/N: This entire series contains dark humour (CSI + Brooklyn 99=CSI Steeb) Avengers and Stark Spangled Banner Easter Eggs and jokes. You don’t need to have read the SSB series to understand or enjoy this, but we’ve used the Universe to spin this off from so somethings might puzzle a few of you if you ain’t, but feel free to ask.

Also, our knowledge of American Policing and Brooklyn is limited, so bear with us if we slip up, but at the end of the day this is a fiction so we’ll claim any mistakes as creative license!!

As always we live for re-blogs and comments.

CSI Rogers and Barnes Master List 

Main Masterlist 

“So Cap’s bringing in a profiler?” Natasha asked, leaning against the counter, smirk curling across her lips. “Anyone we know…”

Bucky looked at her and arched an eyebrow “You tell me Romanoff, you don’t miss a damned thing around here…” He concentrated on adding a spoon of sugar to his coffee.

“Must have been a good trip to DC…” Clint continued. Bucky picked up his mug and was about to reply when Thor’s booming voice sounded out over the small kitchen area

“Little Stark! What are you doing here?” “Ask your Captain.” she sighed

“Wait, you’re the profiler?” Wanda asked, and Bucky didn’t fail to notice that the girl’s previous smile that had been on her face during their discussions about the weekend had lost some of its genuineness.

“Surprise…” Katie shrugged, her voice flat.

“Did you know about this?” Wanda looked at Bucky who hesitated.

“Oh he knew…” Katie narrowed her eyes. “He came to DC with Rogers on Thursday, trying to convince me to come back. I said no. But guess what? They went over my head…” “Woah, woah, woah doll face!” Bucky said, holding his hands up “I told Steve not to do that. Nothing to do with me.” “You’re guilty by association, Barnes.” she snarled. “And don’t call me doll face.”

The look that Clint and Thor shared didn’t pass Bucky by, and he suddenly realised exactly what Steve had said about her being downright scary when she was angry.

“Hey, come on Little Stark…” Thor said, playfulness in his tone “Is it that bad coming back to work with us?”

“You guys ain’t the problem.” She said, turning to look at him. “You know that I love you all. It’s Captain Dickhead that I’m really not enamoured about working with.” “You guys really fell out hard didn’t you?” Thor pressed.

“You could say that, where is he anyway?”

“Right here.” a voice said from the doorway and everyone turned to see Steve dressed in a casual grey t-shirt, leaning on the wooden frame, arms folded. “Wanda, can you set the briefing room up please. Sam and Tony are joining us this morning. Everyone, I want you in there in 15.”

He noticed Katie deliberately looking anywhere but at him, and he took a breath.

“Katie, can I have a word?”

She looked at him, her face stoney “You can have several, don’t think you’re gonna like any of them though.”

He raised his eyebrows at her “Well I wouldn’t expect anything less…” She rolled her eyes and gestured to him with her right hand, silently instructing him to lead the way. He turned and she followed, without so much as a word.

“I would not wanna be in his shoes…” Clint grimaced, and Bucky found himself agreeing.

Steve reached his office and stopped, gesturing for Katie to enter before he did, and once the pair of them were inside he shut the door.

“Look, I know you’re pissed…”

“Pissed doesn’t even come into it Steve.” she glared at him. “How fucking dare you.” Steve simply remained still and silent, he knew he had to let her get this out of her system.

“I told you no.” she said, shaking her head “I told you I didn’t want to come back, that I had a job to do in DC…but you just couldn’t leave it. You couldn’t stand the fact someone for once in your life told you no…” “Katie…”

“No, you don’t talk. You get to listen.” she snarled “Now I’m here, thanks to whatever strings you got Fury and Pierce to pull and more over thanks to you and your inability to simply stay the fuck away, my career on the line…” “Woah, hang on…” Steve frowned, stopping her as he took in what she said “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said!” she looked back at him “It was made perfectly clear to me that if I didn’t do what was asked of me here, I could kiss any further progression goodbye, so thanks for that…”” “I had no idea that’s what Pierce was gonna do.” Steve sighed, shaking his head “he said he’d pull a few strings, call in a few favours that’s all, not threaten you!” “And you believed him?” she snorted “The guy is a bigger asshole than you, and that’s saying something…”

Steve grit his teeth.

“So I behaved, I didn’t kick up a stink about coming for that reason, but that does NOT mean I’m happy about it.” she continued as she looked at him “As far as I’m concerned this changes nothing. I’ll be professional and courteous but the rest of it, forget it. You speak to me about work, and work alone, you got that?”

The hostility she was radiating was scorching into his soul, but he knew this was what he deserved. He’d treated her like shit, and then gone behind her back to pull her onto a case that he could have gotten someone else to do the profiling on. But he hadn’t wanted anyone else, he’d wanted her. And the reason for that hadn’t been entirely selfish. He’d meant it when he’d told Bucky she was the best profiler he’d ever know, and that the team respected her. That said, there was a small part of him that had wanted her back because he missed her. Now, any hope he had that they might be able to work through this, get some version of the friendship they had back had just flown straight out of the window.

“Understood.” he said, his voice quiet and as even as he could get it. She looked at him again, and for a second he thought she was about to say something else about it but she didn’t. Instead she drew herself tall, her chin tipped upwards and she looked at him.

“Will that be all Captain?”

He nodded “Dismissed Sergeant.”

She gave him a curt nod, pulled the door open and walked back into the main office, her question to Wanda about where her desk was cut off as the door shut behind her. Another thing Steve realised he had to sort. With a silent groan he ran his hands over his face and remained frozen, eyes glued to the door that had just hut behind her. He was pissed at Pierce and his bully methods, that’s not what he had wanted to happen at all. But then, deep-down Katie was right, Pierce had always ruthless and from previous history wasn’t too fond of the Starks either. He should have known that he’d pull something like this. That said, they had a job to do now and he was damned if he was going to put up with Katie being a brat and giving everybody hell during the investigation. Even if he deserved being treated like that the rest of the team didn’t.

And he wasn’t looking forward to the first time he had to pull her up on her attitude either…

He rolled his shoulders, his tense muscles stiff, before he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. After a few seconds he let out a deep breath and moved to his desk, gathering the case files which were beginning to pile up. He was checking his phone when the door slammed open and a more than furious Tony came barging in.

"You had to bring her back, huh?" Tony yelled his eyes full with rage.

“Tony..." Steve was about to tell him to calm down but stopped himself. They say the worst thing you can say to a person you want to calm down is just that, "Calm down" and that may or may not be true for everyone, however, if said person happens to be a Stark, it is not only true but it’ like one of the amendments to the Constitution.

"Oh, don't Tony me, Rogers!" Tony hollered back and Steve was very aware the door to his office was open. He shook his head, he was the damned Captain around here and enough was enough.

"Listen, Tony!" Steve raised his voice, his tone authoritative as he spoke. "I know you're upset, but trust me, she's the best for the job, you know that too." he continued. "This has nothing to do with....ummm, with..." ok so now he was struggling for words.

"With nothing, Rogers!" Tony interrupted. "You complete and utter fucking..." he began to rant but was cut off by Steve's stern voice this time.

"Tony! I'm your Captain and won't tolerate anyone, not even you, speaking me in such terms." he said clenching his jaw and looking directly into Stark's dark brown eyes.

Tony hesitated for a moment before shooting back. "Exactly, you're our Captain, nothing more. And don't forget that when you're around her because I swear to God Rogers that if you lay one finger on her...."

Tony threat was interrupted by the sound of Wanda clearing her throat. Steve looked at her over Tony's shoulders and Tony turned around to face the woman who was perched at the open door holding a coffee mug emblazoned with the NYPD coat of arms.

"Sorry, the door was open." she said softly. "Briefing room set, Steve" she announced looking at his boss with a worried look.

"Thanks, Wanda" Steve said. "Tony was just leaving."

Tony shook his head giving a last glance at Steve and walked through the door past Wanda, who handed the coffee mug to Steve with a shy smile on her face "Thought you could use that."

Steve sighed and smiled at her. "Thanks, again.”  he said before asking "Did anybody, errm,..?"

"No." she replied knowing what he wanted to ask. "Everybody was already in the briefing room. They’re waiting for you."

"Ok. Let’s get this over with." Steve said before taking a sip from the mug and gesturing for Wanda to follow him.

Bucky saw Tony enter the briefing room with a sour face, munching blueberries from a foil packet. Tony approached the seat between Sam and his sister, who looked at him with a worried expression.

"Are you ok, Tone?" she asked, and Bucky quietly observed them. Everyone in the 101 knew full well that Tony only devoured snacks at that rate when he was anxious or angry.

Tony dismissed Katie's question with a wave of his hand, plopped on his seat and started revising his notes, the nerve in his jaw ticking. Katie frowned, looked out of the door, clearly contemplating something when she caught Bucky’s eye where he sat on her right. He gave her a sympathetic smile and shook his head.

“I’m sure you know him better than me but I’d leave it for now.” he leaned over and said gently in her ear “This briefing is going to be awkward enough as it is.” “Tell me about it.” she grumbled.

“Look, I know you don’t want to be here but Steve dragging you back has nothing to do with…well, you two…you know…and for the record, he told me exactly what went down. How he left.” At that Katie’s eyes widened slightly “He did?”

Bucky nodded “I told him he was an ass hole.”

He gave her another soft smile and a gentle squeeze on her shoulder. He looked at him and returned his smile with a soft, yet slightly sad one of her own and she reached up and squeezed his hand. 

Steve chose that moment to walk into the room, followed by Wanda who closed the door behind her. He spotted the seemingly intimate moment Bucky and Katie shared and clenched his teeth. With a deep breath he cleared his throat to gain everyone's attention sweeping his eyes around the big glass oval table; Wanda, Rhodey, Thor, Clint, Natasha, Bucky, Katie, Tony and finally Sam who was perched at the end. The Doctor had a tendency to only ever sit on the left to people for some reason.

"Good morning"  Steve said projecting his voice in that authoritative way that only he could make look so casual. "Before we get started..."

"Does anyone wanna get out?" Bucky quipped.

"Out of where?" Clint asked taking his eyes from his phone.

"Brooklyn?” Katie piped up and Steve recognised the sarcastic tone in her voice “Yeah, me I tried..."

Clint gave a huff of a laughter and Steve noticed Wanda rolling her eyes.

"I don't understand that reference." Thor said looking round at everybody like he was a lost puppy.

“Bungalow…” Bucky mumbled and Katie turned her head to look at him, arching an eyebrow at the insult, trying to fight the smirk tugging on the side of her lips.

"Alright..." Steve sighed, wanting to gain control before they descended into a complete rabble "settle down." he said putting his mug on the table before continuing. "I was gonna introduce Katie as the team’s surprise new asset ...."

"On this particular case." Katie cut him off.

"Yeah, on this particular case." Steve said hastily placating her as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The team in front of him were already as hard to manage as a bunch of playground kids on a sugar rush so the last thing he needed was a pissed Katie Stark adding to the equation. "So Stark and Barnes, will work together..."

"Cool" Bucky said while fist bumping with Katie who grinned at him.

"Wanda I want you to clear the spare desk in front of Sergeant Barnes' so that Katie can use it." Steve looked at Wanda trying to ignore just another sign of complicity between the pair of Sergeants.

"But, that's not my job..." Wanda started to say startled at what Steve was asking.

"Wanda, your job is what I tell you to do, and I'm telling you to clear that damn desk." Steve said glaring at Wanda who only nodded and grabbed a ball-pen to start scribbling something on her notepad, she could feeling everyone's gaze on her.

Everybody was dead silent at the Captain’s outburst. Bucky glanced around quickly as Nat and Clint shared knowing glances, Tony, Sam and Rhodey became suddenly interested in their reports, Thor was examining the label of his plastic water bottle as if it was the latest best-seller and Katie fiddled with her fingers while looking at the notes on the whiteboard behind Steve, a passive expression on her face. Bucky caught Steve’s eye and shook his head with a reprimanding look.

"Alright, shall we focus on the case now?" Steve asked his team in an attempt to redirect the situation. "Let's start with a possible profile, Katie?" Steve encouraged her to speak while he grabbed his mug and drunk from it.

"I've read the details but only briefly" Katie said, shaking her head with a shrug. "It doesn't look like a frenzied attack so I would suggest the killer had planned exactly how and what he wanted to do. Which tallies with the calling card."

"Any thoughts on that?" Steve looked at her.

"Nothing other than what I told you in DC." she shook her head "the whole look how dangerous every day stuff can be, but it's only my theory."

"Isn't profiling all theory anyway?" Wanda asked, her tone a little clipped "I mean it's not exact science, is it?"

Steve held his breath a little and noticed Natasha and Clint exchanging a glance, nothing new there. He grimaced, awaiting the outburst but to Katie's credit she didn't bite. If anything she actually looked a little amused at Wanda's outburst. "You're right, it's not an exact science, it's based on theory and psychology... but then isn't most detective work?" she paused and looked at Tony and Sam before adding. "Along with the evidence and forensics we work off instinct, gut feelings, hunches."

Steve watched Wanda who simply shrugged and sat back.

"So how long will a profile take you?" Bucky turned to look at Katie, gently tapping her shoulder. She pondered for a second and looked back at him.

"I dunno, depends on how much I have to work with. I'll start with the post mortem report, go from there."  with that she turned to Sam. "I'll come by later on to go through it in person if that's ok with you Sam"

"Absolutely fine sugar." Sam smiled “Give me a call on the way and I’ll make sure the coffee is on and the biscoffis are ready.” “I love you.” she said back, blowing him a kiss and he winked at her as a few giggles ran round the briefing room. She turned back to Steve and nodded to him “I’ll keep you updated Captain.”

Steve swallowed at her formality but simply nodded and turned to Sam "Whilst we’re on the subject, do you have any preliminary conclusions we should know about?" he asked the pathologist.

"Death by traumatic brain injury with a blunt object, yet to be determined." he said and looked at Tony.

"Yeah, we're still analysing the processed evidence at the crime scene; fibres, hairs..."  Tony said, looking anywhere but at Steve. "it will take a while, Bruce is on it right now. We're also running some fingerprints we found on Ross' personal effects through AFIS.

“Due to the fact that his wallet still contained his cards and his cash, and his phone was still in his pocket would it be safe to assume that the only dabs we’ll find will be his?” Thor looked at Tony.

“Smart question Blondie…” Tony nodded “I think it’s a safe assumption but one never knows, right?"

Thor nodded.

"Ok. Good job, keep working." Steve said before turning to Natasha and Clint. "What have you got?"

"Not much" Clint said "there's this old lady on Furnam street who has a lot of time to spare in between watching soap operas on TV and feeding her cats, so she spies the neighbourhood through her curtains"

"Talk about Rear Window" Natasha quipped with a side smile.

"Yeah, well she says she saw a fancy black car, tinted glass that night around 2 a.m. She's quite the insomniac." Clint continued.

"Have you checked that out?" Steve asked.

"Yeah, there is an ATM right outside her block, so we're checking the surveillance footage looking for that car." Natasha informed "once we've got it we'll check the license plate with the traffic department and go find the driver."

"Good, let me know if you get something pulling that thread." Steve said, satisfied as usual with Clintasha's procedure. "Let's hope that car is not a false trail..."

"Wait, what car? Were there any vehicle tracks at the crime scene?" Thor asked trying to catch up with the exchange of information. "I thought you said there weren't any." he looked at Clint who was looking at him trying to decipher if he was being serious.

"Are you even listening? Does anybody live up there? Pay attention for fuck's sake!" Tony looked at Thor, shaking his head.

"Ok, Thor" Steve ignored Tony's comment "You're responsible for back up, should any of us need police reinforcements, you're in charge."

"Sure, I'll keep my men ready." he said with a nod "You can't count on us, Captain. Ready to serve and protect."

"Yeah, don't let anyone steal your thunder, buddy" Clint said giggling and patting him on his shoulder.

"Rhodes, I need you to issue an official statement. Usual procedure. We're working on it, we're doing our best, we'll call for a press conference when we reach any solid conclusion." Steve ordered the older man who nodded in agreement.

"Wanda, any call from newspapers or freelance journalists put them on hold or put them through Rhodes." he now said turning to Wanda.

"Oh, I'd put them on hold. I like to watch the light blink." Tony quipped smiling at Wanda.

"I'll tell Lang at the switchboard to filter them out as much as he can." Wanda offered.

"Right! That would be all. Everyone knows where we stand and what to do. That doesn't mean we know what to expect. Go do your work, you're dismissed." the Captain said looking at everyone, standing tall, hands on his belt buckle.

"Always so dramatic." Katie muttered standing up. Bucky smirked and nudged her while everyone else gathered their belongings and began to leave the briefing room.

********

An hour or so later Katie and Bucky were in the main office, Katie was looking at the stuffed animal on Bucky’s desk.

“What’s with the llama?” she asked.

“It’s a goat…” “Looks like a llama…” Katie said, picking it up.

“Dot does not look like a llama.” Bucky said indignantly.

“Dot?” Katie arched an eyebrow at him “Dot the goat.” “It’s as good a name as any, now put her down.” Bucky pointed at Katie with his pen. She looked at him for a moment, smirking, before she placed the stuffed animal on the desk and took her seat at the now no longer spare desk opposite Bucky and sat down.

“I’m gonna pop down and see Sam in a bit.” She looked over at Bucky who glanced up. “You wanna come with me partner?”

Bucky grinned “Partner…I like it. So am I Cagney or Lacey?” Katie gave a bark of a laugh “you know my old sergeant at the 99 named his twin girls Cagney and Lacey.” “Get out of town…” Bucky looked at her.

“Straight up.” “I had a rabbit when I was a kid called Starsky.” Bucky mused, “ Get it?”

“Starsky and Hutch…” Katie groaned “That’s fucking awful Bucky!”

He laughed before he watched her face grow serious for a moment as she picked up the file with the PM report in before she dropped it back on her desk, her eyes flicking behind Bucky to Steve’s office.

“Look, I know you’re pissed at him…” Bucky began.

“Don’t wanna think about it.” she said. “Just wanna get this case sorted then I can go back to DC…” “But are you still mad at me?”

“A little.” she said, a smile threatening to curve across her mouth.

“But not as mad as you are at Steve?” he said playfully.

“No.”

“Ok, that’s good I suppose.” Bucky mused, “If I bought you lunch, Watson, would that stop you being mad at me.”

Katie looked at him “That depends on what it is, Sherlock...”

“Well there’s a nice sushi joint a couple of blocks away…” He watched as Katie contemplated that, and she opened her mouth to answer but was cut off.

“You’ll be better trying your luck with a double cheeseburger, chilli fries and a vanilla shake.” Steve said, looking at Bucky.

“Sorry, did someone say something?” Katie looked around, avoiding looking at Steve. The display of utter childishness made Bucky want to snort but he didn’t, instead he glanced down at his desk awaiting Steve’s response.

Steve felt the nerve in his jaw twitch. He knew she’d said no conversation other than regarding work matters but really? As she continued to avoid his gaze he felt his temper starting to fray a little.

Fine, that’s the way you wanna play…

“When are you going to see Sam?” he asked her. She turned her head to him.

“Me and Bucky were just talking about that…” “Well can you make it a priority please?” he cut her off.

She looked at Steve, then to Bucky, and then back to Steve. Bucky saw her entire body language shift from being relatively relaxed to tense and he let out an inward groan. All his progress from the last 5 minutes or so of banter slipped down the drain.

“Once I’ve finished my coffee.” she replied, her voice dangerously flat. Bucky knew it carried a level of threat, and he could tell immediately she was doing this to wind Steve up, and from the look on the Captain’s face it was working.

“What?” she asked.

“I asked you to do something.” Steve replied, his tone brisk.

“Steve…” Bucky started but Katie continued to talk.

“And I’m gonna.” she frowned “I just told you once I’ve drunk this I’ll head over…”

“When I ask someone on my team to do something, if they’re not busy, I expect it them to do it, not simply delay until they can be bothered.”

Bucky grimaced and he saw the woman sit up, her nostrils flaring. She got to her feet slowly, her eyes never once leaving Steve’s and after a pause she gave him a salute.

“Yes Captain, I’ll get right onto it Captain, immediately Captain…”

She grabbed the file off her desk and stalked towards the double doors. Clint jumped out of her way as she pushed through them, turning to watch her for a moment before he headed towards his desk, shrugging.

“Well handled punk…” Bucky turned to look at Steve as he stood up, grabbing his wallet and car keys. “I expect them to do it…” he mimicked a deep voice “way to really try and make things better between the pair of you.” “Shut up Bucky.” Steve said, turning back to his office, the door slamming behind him.

Bucky watched him go, before he headed after Katie, finally catching up with her just as she was about to get in the elevator.

"Wait for me, doll face." Bucky said while putting his phone in the back pocket of this dark denim trousers.

"I told you not to call me that, Barnes." she retorted as they both entered and she pressed the button that led to the parking lot.

Bucky leaned on the back wall of the elevator and crossed his arms over his chest casually.

"So, chilli fries and vanilla shake, huh?" he asked with a side smile.

Katie who was standing facing the door turned to look at him and replied "What's it to you? Are you buying me lunch, goat herder?"

"Hmmm, on second thoughts not sure I'll be able to keep something down after being at the morgue." he said with a shrug.

“Yeah well I wasn’t planning on going quite yet but Captain Dickhead put paid to that.” she frowned, the scowl crossing her face once more. It was silent for a few more minutes before she groaned “Shit…” “What?” “My car keys are on the desk…” “I got ya covered.” he said, patting his pocket.

The two of them made simple chit-chat on the drive to the morgue, he told her a little about his time in Russia, Katie discussed a few cases in DC she had worked on. The 20 minute drive passed quickly and before long they were walking the corridor that led to Sam’s office and as the unnatural chill of being in an area surrounded by dead people washed over them, Bucky instinctively wrapped his arms around his chest.

"What? Are you cold? I thought you were a tough guy, Bucky bee." Katie joked at Bucky’s groan and change of mood due to the low temperature of the premises.

"I don't like cold.” “You spent like 5 years in Russia.” “Exactly” Bucky nodded “Should have brought my jacket with me."

"You wear jackets in July?" Katie laughed "Wait for the winter, soldier!" she said amused as she opened the door to the examination part of the morgue and headed for Sam's office where she knocked on his door.aw

It opened after a few seconds and Sam looked at them both, and Bucky didn’t miss the fact his eyes lingered slightly longer on his own and he raised an eyebrow slightly, drawing a cheeky grin from the pathologist as he stepped back to let them in.

"Hey, take a sit.” he said, turning to Katie “You didn't call so coffee isn't ready yet, give me a minute"

"Well we would have done but someone was too busy squabbling with Steve, you know." Bucky said as he walked to the far end of Sam's office. Katie just sat down on one of the chairs and stuck her tongue at Bucky.

"Well, what's new?”  Sam said giving an amused glance at Bucky while he tinkered with the coffee pot.

"Hello there" Bucky said grinning at a worn colour looking skeleton which was on display against the back wall. "What's your name, buddy?" he asked playfully and Katie couldn't help but roll her eyes.

“And I thought working at the 99 was weird.” she muttered. Bucky flashed her a smile.

Sam who was putting some biscotti on a tray looked up towards Bucky and said "His name is Frank."

"Nice to meet you Frank." Bucky said grabbing the skeleton hand and shaking it. "You could do with a shower, pal."

"Don't touch Frankie." Sam hollered

Bucky dropped the skeleton’s hand and looked at Sam who was smirking again.

"And he's not dirty, he's tanned, he's from Florida." he said, dropping the plate of biscuits onto the desk in front of Katie.

Bucky gave a bark of a laugh and Katie groaned, reaching towards the snacks.

"Are we going to go through the PM report or are we playing house with Jack Skellington?" she added before biting one of the cookies.

"Right, sorry." Bucky said and went to sit on the chair beside Katie in front of Sam's desk.

Sam placed three paper cups filled with coffee on his desk and sat on his office chair as he reached for the Post Mortem report on Ross' case.

"Uh, oh" Sam said waving his hand at Bucky who was grabbing one of the coffee cups. "That's hers, milk and one sugar, right?" he asked Katie with a smile.

"Yes, glad you remember." Katie answered taking the cup and sipping from it.

Bucky made a mental note, first Steve and her favourite food, now Sam and her choice of coffee. Everyone seemed to have a soft spot for this woman and he was beginning to understand why, she was pretty, intelligent, caring and determined, the whole package if that was what you were looking for. Actually, no, maybe not quite everyone. Wanda clearly wasn’t that keen but Bucky suspected that was down to her having her own soft spot on a certain blonde haired captain. Another mental note, he'll pry it out of Romanoff later…

"Barnes, are you listening?" a slap on his arm pulled him out of his thoughts. He stirred in his seat and looked at Katie.

"Yeah, yeah." he cleared his throat. "Sorry, you were saying..."

Sam raised an eyebrow at him before resuming his report on the situation.

"I was saying..." he said in a sarcastic tone "that by the shape and depth of the indentation in the victim's skull, we can conclude it was the trauma what killed him. No other signs of violence on the body, no bullet wounds, no signs of strangulation. And what's more important, no foreign tissue under the victim's nails."

"So he didn't get to defend himself…" Katie stated, glancing down at the file as she read the notes she’d made briefly. “Killer hit him from behind.”

"That's our conclusion. One blunt blow behind his back." Sam nodded at Katie's words. “The toxicology screening was also pretty much clear. No drugs, negligible amount of alcohol in blood…”

“Ok so he wasn’t drugged…” Katie muttered, making another note on the file.

"Any idea about what the murder weapon might be?" Bucky asked.

"Not yet" Sam answered "but it was a blunt object as I said before, that's for sure. No knives or any kind of bladed weapon." Sam drank from his cup before continuing "I've sent the pictures of the wound to Bruce, he’ll measure it and tell us what he finds."

Sam was about to continue his explanation when he was suddenly interrupted by Bucky spitting his coffee and yelling.

"What the fuck is this shit? Man, it's unsweetened!"

Katie started laughing while Sam leaned on his desk and glared at Bucky before saying. "Why would I know how you take your coffee? You've never been here before, dude. Not even once!" and he offered him a sugar sachet he had taken out from one his desk drawers.

"You couldn't have done that earlier?" Bucky deadpanned.

"I hate you" Sam muttered under his breath.

"Ok guys. Can we continue? We all have places to be." Katie said wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes.

"Sure." Sam said looking at her and trying to avoid eye contact with Bucky "The fingerprints we found on Ross' phone and wallet are his own. That was the easiest and fastest part. But Tony says they found hairs on Ross trousers and they don't match his DNA so they are running some more tests. We'll have to wait some more days for the results."

"And the cereal…" Katie said, “Before or after death?”

"Empty stomach, his system had already digested whatever he had had for dinner and there was no evidence of it in his lungs so he hadn’t inhaled any. With that I conclude it must have been post mortem. The suspected killer must have shoved them down his throat when he was dead.” “Pure calling card then…” Katie said, scribbling away “Not meant as a weapon.” “That’s for you to decide. All I can give you is the facts.” Sam smiled, holding up a finger and pointing at Barnes “And before you ask he was wearing a glove, no DNA."

"What type of cereal was it?" Katie asked.

"Does that matter?" Sam asked squinting his eyes

"It could matter." Katie shrugged.

It was Bucky that answered, he knew that from his conversations the other day with Romanoff. 

“Puffed rice…” Bucky said. “Hmmmm.” Katie said, “Paul Ross, Puffed Rice… PR…”

Bucky grinned and nodded “I thought the same.”

Katie mused again before she scribbled another note and looked up “Ok, I’ve nothing else I need to know…not yet anyway.” “Good because I'm afraid that's all I've got for now. I'll call or pass by when I have something more to offer."

"I can work with what I’ve got, thanks Sam." Katie said as she and Bucky stood up and she rounded the table to give the doctor a hug.

"I'm not hugging you." Sam said glaring at Bucky who was approaching the man wriggling his eyebrows.

"Your loss." Bucky simply said as he hold the door open for Katie on their way out.

As they both went through the corridor of the morgue Bucky noticed Katie was biting her thumb nail lost in her thoughts.

"What is going through that pretty head of yours?" he looked at her.

"I was thinking..." she trailed and stop to look at Bucky "I think Ross knew his attacker. Something drew him there so he was meeting someone…why else would he be in the park. And there were no restraint marks or signs of a struggle, so he wasn’t bundled into a car and taken…"

"Yeah, you're possibly right. Want to discuss it over a hamburger?" Bucky asked.

"Nah, I'm going back to the station, need to rearrange all this information in my head, get started on the profile." she said.

"You need to eat something. Your brain needs sugar to function properly, you know?"

"You should know it. You ate almost every cookie in there. By my reckoning you should have discovered the elixir of youth by now." she quipped "I'll grab something from the vending machine. Don’t worry about me.”

“I like to make sure my friends eat.” “Is that what we are?” she looked at him, smiling.

“Well, I’m kinda hoping so.” he watched her carefully.

She looked at her feet before she glanced back up at him, her face soft “So then, friend..what are you doing this evening?”

"Don't know. Have no plans yet. Maybe see what Steve’s up to, see if he fancies hanging out.” he said giving a side glance to Katie, but she didn't bite.

"Cool.” she shrugged “Erm, would you mind dropping me at the station before you head out to get whatever lunch you’re getting?" she asked.

"Sure thing, doll..." he was about to finish the sentence when she slapped the back of his head and couldn't help but laugh and wrap his right arm around her shoulder.

********

“Hey ma…” Steve called as he opened the door to his mother’s house and stepped inside, wiping his shoes.

“I’m in the kitchen, pet!” She called back, her Irish accent drifting softly through the hallway.

Bucky followed Steve in, shutting the door behind him as he wandered into the hallway and followed Steve down to the kitchen, the smell of Sarah Rogers’ famous apple pie hitting his nostrils as he walked along with a subtle hint of roast chicken.

“Sorry but I picked up a tag along.” Steve said as his ma gave a shriek when Bucky walked into the kitchen and took her face in his hands pressing a sloppy kiss to her cheek

“Away with you James Buchanan Barnes!” she said, swatting him with a dish towel. He laughed and stepped back.

“Steve mentioned you were making a roast and then dropped your pie into the equation and you know I’m a sucker that pie ma’am!”

“I tried shaking him but he’s like an annoying smell…” Steve rolled his eyes, sticking his hand into the bowl of sliced veg his mother was preparing to snaffle a piece of carrot. She slapped his hand and he jerked it away, grinning as he shoved his stolen prize into his mouth.

“Hey, I traded in an evening with my hot new partner for you and your ma, show some respect.” Bucky said and Steve rolled his eyes, ignoring the deliberate dig.

“Hot new partner?”  Sarah looked up arching an eyebrow.

“Well maybe not so new…” Bucky grinned and Steve shot him a look which he ignored and continued “I believe you already know her…” Sarah frowned. “I’m not-“

“It’s Katie, Ma.” Steve cut her off, deciding to break the news before Bucky got chance.

“Katie’s back?” Sarah looked at her son, her frown deepening. “For how long?” “She’s helping us on a case.” Steve shrugged “So as long as it takes.”

There was a pause before his mother shook her head “Why didn’t you tell me she was back in town?”

“Oh there’s a lot he don’t tell you Mrs R.” Bucky quipped and Steve glared at him.

“Shut up.”

“Oh I don’t doubt it.” Sarah’s eyes twinkled as she looked at Bucky then to her son. “Well go and make yourself useful boys, set another place at the table. Dinner won’t be long, another 15 minutes or so.” Steve bustled around his mother grabbing cutlery out of drawers and handing it to Bucky who made his way over to the table that was at the other side of the kitchen and laid the cutlery down at one of the spare seats. Whilst he was doing that Steve grabbed a jug, filled it with water and then along with 3 glasses set it down in the middle of the table.

Through their dinner the 3 of them continued to make idle chit chat, Steve steering the conversation into other direction whenever his Ma mentioned Katie. Something that Bucky could see wasn’t passing the woman by. And like anything else, his Ma wasn’t letting it go.

“So this case that Katie’s helping on…” Sarah said, placing her spoon back on the plate as Steve helped himself to another slice of apple pie, offering one to Bucky who nodded eagerly. “Can you tell me anything about it?” “Sorry Ma, you know the rules.” he said, “But it’s an odd one. Hence why she’s come back.” “And that’s the only reason?” she asked, tucking a strand of grey hair which had escaped her bun behind her ears.

“Ma…” Steve sighed with a groan “Yes.” “Shame.” Sarah sighed “You know I always hoped that one day the pair of you would wake up and see what was right in front of yo’ eyes…” “Oh they saw it.” Bucky swallowed his pie “3 times in fact” “I swear to God, Bucky I’m gonna kick your…” Steve snarled and was cut off by his mother placing her hand on his arms.

“Son, what is wrong with you?” she asked, her blue eyes locking onto his “You’ve been so jumpy and snarky lately.”

“Loaded plums” Bucky mumbled before he stood up as Steve shot him another death stare “I’m gonna nip to the bathroom…”

Once he was gone Sarah turned to her son and leaned back in her chair, folding her arms “So I take it from Bucky’s comments then that the pair of you…”

She gestured with her hands and Steve groaned. He had always been close to his ma, there was hardly anything about his life she didn’t know. But he hadn’t given her any reason as to why Katie had left, which was another mistake on his behalf. His mother had been close to Katie, more so after Katie’s parents had died. She’d been like a second mother to her, and he knew that his Mother was bound to have been upset at the way she left.

“So you…slept together.” Sarah pressed and Steve pinched the bridge of his nose “What went wrong?” “I screwed up.” Steve sighed, his eyes fixed on the table “I panicked and…”

“So you left…” Sarah groaned and Steve’s head dropped further “You did a runner.”

Steve nodded. There was a pause and then he felt a stinging slap on the back of his head. “Shit ma!” he exclaimed, reaching up to rub at the point where her palm had connected with his skull. “I brought you up better than that Steven Grant Rogers…” she glared at him.

“I know and I didn’t plan on it happening like that I just...” he shrugged. “I just suddenly started worrying about being her boss and what happened if she took the job to DC. I guess I tried to go into self-preservation mode, but hit the self-destruct button instead…”

“Have you tried talking to her?” Sarah said, her tone a little gentler this time.

“She hates me” Steve shrugged, “And I get it, it’s my fault ma.” he swallowed “I hurt her and now I don’t know how to make it better, or even if I can.”

Sarah leaned closer to him, her hand back on his arm and she gave it a squeeze “Well I tell you what you don’t do…you don’t give up.”

Steve looked at his mother, blinking back the tears that were threatening to fill his eyes.

“Look, I’ve watched the pair of you over the past 10 years…both of you with other people…but you were always better together. Even when you had a girlfriend you couldn’t live without her, not even when Peggy asked you to! So what does that tell you?”

Steve licked his lips, his mother was right. Even when Peggy had tried to get him to put some distance between him and Katie he couldn’t. He’d tried and lasted 2 weeks but it had made him miserable.

At that point he was jolted as his phone began to ring. Apologising to his mother he pulled it out of his pocket and frowned. It was Katie.

“Err, Katie, hi…” he said gently, standing up and moving from the table. 

“Sorry to disturb your evening but, well, dispatch called through on the radio. Couple of kids found a body behind the Le Frak Centre in Prospect Park.” “Shit.” Steve said, “Another Cereal Killing?” “According to Thor yeah.” She said “He went down to answer the initial call and when he realised it was another one for us he called through to the office.”

Steve glanced at his watch, it was almost half 7. Clint was on the late shift for the evening, but what Katie was still doing there he had no idea.

“Ok…tell Clint I’ll meet him down there.”

“I sent him home” Katie said, “I was still here working on this profile so seemed pointless him being here when he didn’t need to be. I’ve told Thor to secure the area and called Bruce. I’m gonna head down there now.” Steve paused. He hadn’t asked her to swap with Clint, and he was about to question why she had done it but he stopped himself. At the end of the day she was a Sergeant, it was up to her to run her troops as she thought fit.

“Ok, we’ll meet you there.”

With that she hung up. He put the phone back in his pocket and turned to Bucky who was stood in the doorway. 

“Another one?” Bucky asked.

“Looks like it.” Steve said. He turned to his mother and sighed “Sorry Ma, duty calls.” “Ok, just give me a second…” She said, picking up the pie dish. She cut the remainder up quickly into 3 pieces and wrapped them in foil, handing them to Steve.

“You make sure my little Star gets one of those.” she said, and Steve’s heart gave another twinge at her nickname for Katie “And think on what I said.” “Thanks Ma.” he said softly, dropping a kiss to her cheek. Bucky gave her a hug goodbye and the two men left.

@the-omni-princess​​  @momobaby227​​ @geekofmanythings16​​ @angelofhell-666​​ @thewackywriter​​ @marvelfansworld​​​  @cobalt-gear​​  @asgardlover75​​ @jennmurawski13​​​​  @jtargaryen18​​​ @saiyanprincessswanie​​​  @navispalace​​​ @patzammit​​​  @joannaliceevans-fanficblog​​​ ​​ @djeniiscorner​​​  @ayamenimthiriel​​​  @coldmuffinbanditshoe​​​  @disneylovingal​​​ @madzmilllz​​  @sgtjaamesbaarnes​​ @sweater-daddiesdumbdork​​ @southerngracela​ @goldenfightergir​ @kellymat​ @official-and-unstable-satan​ @charmed-asylum​

[kob131]

https://sssn-neptune-vasilias.tumblr.com/post/620377137095049216/blakes-honestly-just-a-bad-mouthpiece-for-this

https://sssn-neptune-vasilias.tumblr.com/post/620375255340466176/blake-belladonna-as-shes-been-written-in-the

Remember when I said that RWBY tends to get bitched out by people for basically not adhering to their political views?

Well, who’d like to see some examples?

Blake’s honestly just a bad mouthpiece for this story. She’s a bad vehicle for this entire subplot. She wrapped up her ears for a whole year, knowing that she didn’t want to deal with the consequences of being a Faunus in a human academy. She didn’t want the dirty looks, or the racism, the anger, the resentment, so, like Ilia did initially, she hid. She hid and let Velvet and Sun be victims of racism, because arguing that someone else doesn’t deserve to be called dirty names was easier than arguing about herself. But Blake doesn’t get to come down from her ivory tower, and her giant mega-mansion on an island where “space is a commodity” and tell people who’ve been orphaned from Dust Mine collapses, who’ve had friends and families lynched by angry mobs, who’ve actually experienced the worst that racism has to offer, that their anger is wrong. She doesn’t get to use her privilege to silence those who don’t have any. And I refuse to listen to her for as long as she tries to. Someone who shucks and jives and apologizes to some drunk racist asshole spew his hate and lets a Schnee- another daughter of privilege- stand up for her, is someone who’s story I’ve heard too many times, who I’m too tired to listen to. Where’s my Sienna book, because as far as I’m concerned she’s the only one who ever actually stood for something 

... So?

So what Blake hide her ears? No rational person wouldn’t try to hide something that they think would land them in serious trouble? Not to mention it has nothing to do with what Blake fights for (equality for her people.)

She never ‘let’ anyone be victims of racism. She was openly hostile to Cardin and went out of her way to humiliate him. She fought with Weiss because of her racism towards Sun. Nobody got away with it. Unless you mean ‘Blake should have physically assaulted these people’ in which case: that’s illegal for good reason, Cardin could just use it to get Blake in trouble, it would have REINFORCED Weiss’ racism and Velvet and Sun are their own people, who can decide to confront them or not. Just because you’re a violent idiot doesn’t make it right or smart.

And guess what? Not only did Blake never actually say their anger was wrong, their ACTIONS were. (You know, like mass destruction).

Not only does Blake NOT have more privilage than these people (her family being well off doesn’t matter here).

This was Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth home. ... Pretty fucking good, especially for his time huh? 

You don’t refuse to listen to Blake because of ‘privilege’: You refuse to listen because you’re a violent idiot, thinking that ignoring some random drunk guy being racist is bad even though he’s fucking drunk and random, why the hell would Blake CARE about him? Reminder that Blake WAS NOT HAPPY that Weiss did that. 

Blake was being the bigger person: something you, a real person, failed to be.

P.S. Funny you don’t mention Adam here. What’s wrong, did you figure out Sienna basically MADE Adam?

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

Blake Belladonna, as she’s been written in the series so far, would see what’s going on in America right now, and would leave her gated community to perform a citizen’s arrest on some rioters who were looting an insured Target to show that “we need to hold each other accountable before we can expect the police to stop murdering us in the streets” and that’s exactly the problem with this show right now. The entire racism subplot of this show focuses so heavily on weeding out the “few bad apples” from the White Fang to ensure that it remains completely peaceful to the point of impotency, but refuses to show- let alone prosecute- the racism and racists that TWF were rallying against in the first place.

“Peaceful to the point of impotency-”

You know SSSN, I know you’re conflating “Peaceful” to “Impotent���. I don’t know why you think trying to avoid that is helping anything.

And yes, you should be doing that. You should’ve been rooting out the bad dapples in your fucking movement. Because otherwise you get shit like this, where people of all races are flipping the rioters the bird (including other black people) because they hate the violence and destruction. To say nothing of how white supremacist rhetoric was all but DEAD before this shit started years ago and is now rising up. Almost like being a violent jackass to everyone creates wounded people racist prey upon.

P.S. I guess Jacques Schnee doesn’t exist since apparent there’s no racism. Funny, I swore I could have remembered him being in about 80% of the last Volume.

RoosterTeeth has been targeted for a LOT of issues the past couple of weeks, and have come out and actively apologized for their tonedeafness and their inaction and their compliance. But if RT really wants me to believe that they’re trying to change- besides standing up for their black employees first and foremost- they NEED to take a closer look at this show and realize that the message they’ve been sending isn’t a good one. It’s the message of people who see any disruption of “peace” as more egregious than the racism that’s gotten more people killed than the rioting or looting ever could.

Yeah, I don’t know what happened there so I don’t care.

And that wasn’t the message. Disruptions of peace that didn’t involve harming the innocents was shown as good and progressive. It was the massive amount of violence that was shown to be the problem. It was made pretty fucking clear, they’re not masters of subtly here. You’re just violent.

I was willing to come on this journey while Blake was leaving the White Fang behind because she couldn’t agree with their methods.

Proof.

I was hurt when the show kept using TWF as base level grunts for nearly every major altercation that we’d seen up to season 3.

If I said “I’m hurt when they portrayed all the humans in this conflict as racists with no redeeming qualities”- Guess what you’re reaction would be? because I’m pretty sure it’d be what I’m thinking here.

I still hugely disagree with the “reveal” of Adam’s character, and I’m still extremely upset that they would choose to write someone like Adam as not only a high ranking lieutenant, but then the LEADER of the White Fang with nearly ZERO dissent from the rest of the group.

*points to the riots* Is it really that hard to believe?

Murdering Sienna Khan before she’d even gotten to explain her stance on violence was a godawful choice.

SHE DID.

Sienna: I was one of the first to suggest violence where violence was necessary. Peace bred complacency and acceptance of our place in the world. I will not allow humanity to push us down without pushing them back. But the destruction of the Huntsman Academies crosses a line! The loss of the CCT has brought global communication to a crawl! And the White Fang is more of a target now than ever before! You have justified humanity's campaign against us, and for what?! Empty promises from a group of humans? Humans we still know nothing about, and come and go as they please! These are not examples of strength, Adam. They are examples of your talents being diminished by shortsightedness!

Finding out just how privileged Blake actually is due to her family’s status was my final nail in the coffin for Blake’s roll as a mouthpiece in this story. 

It’s almost like standing against racism has nothing to do with privilege, it has to do with making things better for other people and empathy.

Blake’s conversion of Ilia to her “peaceful to the point of impotence” stance on this issue despite Ilia’s very real and valid reasoning for being THROUGH with peaceful protesting was TIRING.

That being she thought there was no other way even though it doesn’t seem like it was active for very long. 

Having characters like Marrow and Sun and Neon and Velvet and all the other Faunus we’ve seen thus far who aren’t a part of TWF be completely silent or dismissive of the issues they’re facing- as if they couldn’t give half a shit, as if it was all happening to other people so standing up for their community isn’t a top priority- is really getting tired.

Because it was. They're not a collective, they’re individual people with their own lives and shit to deal with. 

And Sun wasn’t dismissive: he was hostile towards the White Fang. Probably because they were violent and cult-like.

We’ve had more “racism” aimed at Penny for being a robot than we’ve had aimed at all of our Faunus characters since this show started

Number of times penny has been discriminated: ... Uh... Zero.

It’s officialy: SSSN doesn’t watch the show.

And if RT really wants me to believe they’re trying to change, they need to look at these issues and decide where on the side of history they want their story to end up; because right now, it’s on the same side as the people who just wanted MLK to stop marching because he was “upsetting the peace.” 

As opposed to you, who would call his movement ‘impotent’ and become a walking example for the KKK to use to make black people look like thugs?

This shit is why I hate you: you only defend Sienna because she’s the closest to your position, never realizing how close Sienna and Adam really were. Reminder that Adam became the way he was because SIENNA USED HIM to push her methods, YOUR methods, forward. Adam becoming a racial supremacist and radicalizing the orgnazation towards endless violence? That happened in the real world, with it becoming a belief that everything in US is racist, causing people to lash out, making the government stop them and using that as proof that the US is racist. 

Instead of becoming better people, both the fictional White Fang and the real life movements became walking cesspools.

And before you try calling racism: One look through my blog shows I’m against the police in this issue and I recently tried talking down one of my friends who tried to imply white people have it worse. Face facts: you’re an entitled brat, thinking that reform should be immediate despite how unrealistic and dangerous that is and you think your media is owed to be on your side.

Grow the fuck up.

[tessatechaitea]

The Invisibles #3

This is exactly what taking drugs isn't.

Our world is composed of geniuses and not-geniuses. That's the kind of statement a not-genius makes because it's so fucking obvious. Do you ever have to say anything that pretty much says "All of the people on the world are either this or that"? Anyway, the point I was making wasn't that I'm one of the not-geniuses even though it's the point I accidentally made. The point was that in the non-genius camp, we have those who are smart enough to recognize genius and those who sit grumpily in their pee-puddles whining about how the high-falutin' elites are trying to make things different. Different, in this case, generally means better but if you're a non-genius who can't recognize geniuses, you're just mad that somebody said french fries might not be the most nutritional side dish (even though you could still live in a world where you acknowledge that french fries are both not even close to nutritional and also the best food on the planet. I mean, you have that choice. But I guess the pee-puddle you're sitting in (which is slowly leaking into your gun cabinet) has probably distracted you from rational thought). Again, that wasn't the point I was going to make (about the french fries!) but I have a problem staying on topic. Partly it's because I've never been able to stay on topic (you should read some of my college essays which I'm not going to release to the public so even though I suggested you should read them, you won't be reading them. Ever) and partly it's because of another reason that I forgot while typing the college paper parenthetical statement. My point might have been that you can recognize a genius because they can state plain what other people are obfuscating in their pronouncements. If you're not smart enough to recognize the genius, you might think the genius is spreading propaganda, mostly because you really want to believe the thing that isn't true because it shields you from guilt or blame or repercussions stemming from following your own selfish desires at any cost. The genius is reviled by people who can't recognize genius and viled by people who can. Or unviled? Previled? Maybe I should have just gone with lauded. You might think I'm saying all of this in regards to Grant Morrison but you'd be wrong. I'm actually saying this about A.R. Moxon, the author of The Revisionaries, whose Twitter handle is @JuliusGoat. He did not pay me to point out that he's a genius although he probably should have. I suppose it's not too late. Being that he's a genius and knows the smart thing to do, I'm sure he'll buy my RPG when he Googles his name and/or Twitter handle and finds me sticking my tongue way up his asshole in this post. I mean, I'm basically saying he's smarter than Grant Morrison! Getting back to Grant Morrison, is he really a genius? I'm not so sure. I think maybe he's just a libertine who did a lot of drugs and traveled to a lot of sort-of-spiritual places (not to be more spiritual but to get his hot genius take on spirituality in a place that smells of burning corpses and goat semen while he shits his guts out back at the hotel high on hashish). Sometimes when you've done acid and other illicit substances, you feel the need to think you've risen above the flock by doing a thing most people will never consider doing. Maybe Grant doesn't exactly feel this way but some of his stuff sometimes comes across as that. I mean, sure, if you've ever done LSD or the like, you've definitely experienced a sort of melding of yourself with the profound and the mundane and the timeless in a way that usually only schizophrenics experience. You have done something that has changed you from the person you were before. But thinking that it has somehow made you different or better than those who haven't done it just means that you've never talked to people who went to high school in the flyover states. I've known some really boring and backwards people who did a lot of acid simply because there wasn't anything else to do out in the cornfields. It really did surprise me, a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, to discover how prevalent psychoactive drugs were in the Midwest and Plains states. I thought that was just the hippies and children of hippies! What I didn't think, though, was that it made me a non-sheep (like the guy in my San Jose State creative writing class who once wrote a story about how he had broken from the flock because he dared to try LSD. The teacher loved his take and luckily for me, she was blind so she didn't see me rolling my eyes and making jerk-off motions from the back of the class. I mean, wow, dude. You dared to try LSD. I was probably on LSD while listening to the teacher read that stupid ass story!). Okay, maybe my whole take on "Grant Morrison thinks he's better than everybody else" stems from my envy of the idiot jock who wrote a stupid story that the teacher loved while she mostly just reacted to my stuff with "WTF? I guess I see how nostalgia can seem like a dream and the pop culture death of Superman can sometimes be more powerful than the death of a close family member but why did you choose to make none of this linear and what the hell do your Star Wars figures have to do with your future death? Also, the baseball game between Heaven and Hell where Heaven wins because Hitler snarls 'Jew' and then beans Jesus with the pitch to push in the last run was decent." Now that we've resolved some of my issues (I mean, maybe not "resolved" but at the very least "put out there in the open so you know where my biases are coming from"), let's get on with The Invisibles #3. When we last left our homophobic pouting white suburban "my mother doesn't hug me enough" anarchist protagonist, he was about to be hunted to death by a mystical group of human fox hunters in the secret London hidden beneath the one everybody thinks of as the "real London." I sort of hope the kid gets murdered. But then we won't get to see him learn his lesson which allows viewers to also maybe a learn a lesson. It's sometimes why you need characters like Mrs. Oleson from Little House on the Prairie. Although it was kind of enough to have Laura Ingalls who was a selfish devil child who was always learning lessons from humble and righteous Pa (who probably only killed one or two Native Americans, making him a stalwart saint of the frontier). I suppose the audience didn't need an over-the-top scurrilous villain like Mrs. Oleson. Although without Mrs. Oleson, how could the show have glorified the true saint of the frontier, Nells Oleson? The patience and kindness of that man were a testament to, um, patience and kindness!

I'm assuming Dane spends the next twenty pages snot-crying into a used coffee filter.

Dane continues to hang out with Tom of Bedlam because Dane can't survive on the street on his own and he knows it. He's not hard at all. He's a little wanna-be suburban gangster who read half of a book on anarchy and now thinks he's better than the slack-eyed populace going about their normal day-to-day bullshit. But he also thinks he still needs money and a place to live. He's not really great at the anarchy thing. But maybe if he listens to Tom, he'll learn a little bit about life and his heart will grow three sizes. Not because he suddenly cares more about everybody; it'll be a side-effect from learning the Dark Arts. Tom casts a spell so that Dane can look through the eyes of a pigeon as it flies about London. While Dane is seeing the hidden, creepy monsters lurking behind reality that pigeons can see (just as Pigeons can enter the afterlife in Moore's Jerusalem. I'm sure there are other urban horror stories that tell of the magic of pigeon vision. Did Lovecraft ever right any pigeon poems?), Tom tells Dane the secret history of cities. They're a virus that has propelled man from small villages which barely change across the centuries into huge population centers that use up the life force of the hosts as they build more and more and more, bigger and bigger, until, one day, they can build a rocket to propel the city virus into space and onto a new planet. Tom has seen, in visions, other planets affected by the virus, dead planets where the buildings stand as gravestones for the previous used-up races that contracted the virus. It's all very Lovecraftian. Not in the racist way but in the visions of other realities that change the nature of your own reality once you realize their existence. Hmm, that can actually kind of describe racism. I suppose Lovecraft's xenophobia was what made his stories about strange, unknown terrors so compelling. After teaching him loads of magic, Tom decides to teach Dane the most important lesson:

It's a really good lesson but also it's just Tom's attempt to get Jack Frost to appear.

Tom teaches Dane not to be a sheep or, in Tom's words, a robot. It's one of those weird lessons that everybody thinks they learn but nobody really learns it. Like when people read just that one Frost stanza on some poster in their English Lit class from "The Road Not Taken". Everybody gasps in air as the profundity of that single stanza (extracted from the context of the larger poem, much to the detriment of all of us) washes over them and they suddenly believe they've seen what life really is. Life isn't doing the thing you're supposed to do! Life is living to the fullest! Carpe diem! But the feeling of that moment erodes. It is eroded by the path we all take as we pretend we've taken the other path. We stop seeing that their weren't just two paths but many. And we get a job and we get a spouse and we get a house and we get a child and we occasionally think of Frost's single stanza and we decide, "You know what? I'm going to find the time to jump out of a plane!" or "I'm going to climb Everest!" or "I'm going to sleep with somebody of my same sex because I've always wanted to and hopefully my wife won't find out!" And sometimes we do and sometimes we don't; it doesn't really matter. Because the thing about taking the path less traveled is that it's still a path and it still represents the path you took and, you know what, there's that other path over there that I never got to experience and it's just shitting all over the path I'm currently on. Some people somehow block out the phantom possibilities and they're the lucky ones. The ones you can claim they have no regrets and maybe they're speaking truth when they say it. But mostly they just try not to think about it. Because once you start peeling at the wallpaper of your current life because the wallpaper, which others upon first glimpsing might think is beautiful and extraordinary, but which you've looked at every day for thirty years, you're done for. And you don't do it to find the beauty of what's underneath; you simply do it to see something different. And the new thing hasn't been scrutinized and deconstructed and critiqued; there's been no time to obsess over it. It's imaginary and if you happen to be like most people, imaginary must be better because why imagine the worst?! Okay, okay. I've just outed myself as not an anxious or depressive person! But I also don't go peeling at the wallpaper, so who knows? Maybe I do imagine the path less traveled was an intense tragedy?! The Invisibles #3 Rating: A. It's still pretty good and I'm still upset that I only have a few issues. Recently, I was thinking of writing an essay about how the worst thing about growing up is how you stop feeling things. Not that you stop feeling anything at all! Just that you stop feeling feelings that were once overwhelming and all-important. Like the crush you had in junior high. Can you imagine if, at forty, you still felt those feelings so intensely (among all the other ones you've felt across your life)? I understand that feelings must abate over time or we'd all be fucked up from not being able to get over our first crush while simultaneously not moving past the death of our closest grandparents. I get it. And some would say it's a mercy. But lately I've been wondering, "Is it?" Maybe I want to still feel those seemingly inexhaustible passions. I was reminded of wanting to discuss this because Tom says in this issue, "They made you forget how to feel, eh? Remember it now? Like everything new and the sun itself spinning behind your ribs, filling you up with silver. Like the way it was before they made robots of us, sentenced to a life behind bars we're trained to set in place ourselves." Now, that Tom speech was more about the whole "we're the shepherd of our own sheepdom" thing but in a robot and prison analogy. But the other thing about feelings made me remember how I was recently lamenting not feeling all of the things I once felt. Like the basket case from The Breakfast Club says, "When you grow up, your heart dies." And while you can argue whether that's true in the sense that you just stop caring about things, I think it's absolutely true in that it just slowly winds down and isn't capable of feeling how it used to. It's like a rechargeable battery that can no longer keep a charge. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, every single one of my friends, at one time or another, wound up weeping in my basement apartment about something in their lives (usually a woman!). I can't even fucking imagine that now. Maybe they'd be a bit upset or hurt or depressed but hardly disconsolate. I thought I would never get over the sadness at the loss of my grandfather or (and this might sound ridiculous to some but others will understand) the loss of my first cat as an adult, my precious little Judas. And while I obviously won't ever "get over" them (my eyes tear as I write this), I am no longer destroyed by the mere thought of their non-existence. A week after my Judas died, I saw Guardians of the Galaxy in the theater. Judas was always my Raccoon Boy so I almost broke down near the end when one of the characters put their arm around Rocket to console him. I made it out of the theater before absolutely losing it and snot-crying all the way back to the car. And so I can see how retaining that level of feeling over anything would be counterproductive to actually living, I absolutely miss it. I profoundly miss it. I want to be kicked in the stomach until I can't breathe by my feelings. I want this every day even if I know it's the cursed wish of a Monkey's Paw. How can anybody feel everything so palpably for their entire lives? And yet, how can we not?!

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 227: Basically Just Me Saying “Holy Shit” a Bunch

Previously on BnHA: We went on a semi-enlightening romp into Toga’s past. Basically she was an adorable child who just so happened to have a taste for blood. And whoever’s job is was to explain to her, “hey Toga, I know you like blood, but other people like being alive, so, you know. Let’s explore some other options for you,” they basically dropped the ball there. So after she murdered her hapless Deku-looking classmate in middle school, she went on the run, and we basically know the rest. Back in the present, Toga had just been blown up from the inside out as you may recall, so she spent most of the chapter kind of out of it. At one point Kizuki even started talking about her like she was already dead, reassuring her that she’d become a martyr for the Army’s cause (which, no thanks). But then Toga managed to stumble to her feet and transform into Ochako as she tried to flee. It was revealed that while transformed, she can use the quirk of whoever she’s turned into, and she proceeded to demonstrate this by floating Kizuki (and half her redshirt goons) a hundred feet into the air before dropping her back down to the pavement. Yeah. So I’m pretty sure she’s dead now. Ah well.

Today on BnHA: Toga passes out in a shed after a job well done. We learn that the MLA is recording all of the fighting, most likely for propaganda purposes because as we have previously established they’re a bunch of dicks. Hanabata confirms that Kizuki is dead and gets the Army all fired up. They charge at Tomura, who is really fucking sleep-deprived you guys, and as he stands there blinking at them he has another flashback. Turns out the little girl from the previous flashback was his sister, and back when they were cute lil munchkins and she was still alive (sob), she showed him a picture of Nana and told him that their grandma was a hero. Tomura doesn’t remember this clearly, but he remembers the accompanying emotions, which is enough to get me hyped out of my mind fyi. Back in the present, Tomura disintegrates I’m-gonna-go-with-about-200 Army henchpeople basically instantaneously without even touching some of them, which, oh shit. And then Dabi is all “oh cool I want to do some mass murder too” but before he can let loose, some dude with fucking ice powers shows up to challenge him. I guess this means we’re never going to get Touya VS Shouto, or if we do it’s going to be very repetitive. But it’s not like I’m complaining either way. Here’s hoping the villain flashback trend continues next week because omfg.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter like an hour ago lol. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity, but aside from that this is as close to a live liveblog as I’m going to get. It took two-thirds of a year, but these recaps are finally caught up.)

this is so exciting guys. I mean, for me the reading process is basically the same, but the posting process is going to be a new one since I’ll be trying to get this up the same day once I’ve read it! so you can expect many exciting errors and brain farts! prepare for the full brunt of my unpolished rough draft thoughts!

so anyway, here’s Toga

lol so much to analyze here. real quick:

“sleepy.” if that isn’t the most relatable chapter title in the history of time, though

loving the “my villain academia” logo in the background! as far as I’m concerned that’s the official title of this arc

“the conclusion of the battles” y’all I read this and I was like “what?! already!?!” but then I realized they’re talking about volume 23, which features the conclusion of the joint training battle arc. so who knows how many more villain battlin’ chapters we’ve still got ahead. I have a feeling we’re already winding down, though

note how all of the stuffed animals are stabbed. ah this girl

it’s 2214, who the fuck still uses polaroid cameras. that would be like someone in our time using a [googles inventions from 200 years ago] modern suspension bridge. ...wait

anyway you guys maybe I should start reading the actual chapter already if I want any hope of actually getting this posted before fucking midnight though

oh hey, so Toga is dying in a shed you guys. fun

I’m not really thrilled about this! to be honest! I mean for fuck’s sake she’s only 17. she was blown up from the inside out. and although the consequences initially seemed to have possibly been handwaved, it appears that no one can escape BnHA’s realistic injury clause for long! so. yeah

I get why she hid, because it’s not like the others are just gonna drop everything to come help her (although Twice, though...), and there are enemies everywhere so this is probably safer. but it also means that if she passes out here there’s a good chance she’s not going to wake up again! and that is bad! that is very much not good

what she really needs to do is call Ujiko! hitch a ride out of there while you still can! he is a doctor, right? even if it is the questionable mad scientist type! worst case, you end up as a Noumu. actually, wait a sec, maybe we should think this through

and yet the fact that she’s still laughing, though. just. goddammit. I love her so much. I swear to god Toga if you fucking die...!!

so now she’s curling up in the fetal position and thinking “once again I’ve gotten closer to you”

yeah, Deku really does do this every other week. or he did for a little while at least sob

and now we are cutting to ReDestro who for some reason is monologuing about Toga!

oh right, because he had the cameras and shit set up to livestream that shit

okay but is it just me or is he not looking at any cameras. he’s just enjoying the view from his little observation tower same as before. does his quirk allow him to see everywhere at once or what

is it bad that I barely even paid attention to the actual content of his ramblings lol. it’s just the same old same old. blah blah society rejects anyone who’s different, it’s so unfair, blah blah

it’s not a bad point, mind you; it’s just that RD and his army are completely full of shit and acting like they’re so much better even though they’re just a bunch of mur-diddly-urderers. it’s like how PETA acts like they’re champions of animal rights when really they mostly just kill shelter animals, insult Steve Irwin, and claim that milk causes autism. but I digress sob

oh shit I forgot about this dude

here I was thinking there was only the one other miniboss to go before the big bad. silly me. how could I have forgotten that two page spread and our friend here with the Gorillaz mouth and the Beatles haircut

wow are you serious?

Giran sitting there with one skeptical eyebrow raised thinking about how these guys threatened to kill him in order to lure his friends out so that they could, you guessed it, kill them!

and also, way to completely disregard the dozens of other minions who already bit the dust before Kizuki. like, your entire town is basically doomed, guy. but sure let’s cry for the one dead villain who actually had a name though

holy shit you guys

are you telling me that’s why you were recording the whole thing? is that why you invited the League here in the first place?? for the fucking publicity? kill the bad guys and earn the public’s good will? did I miss that part of the planning sesh, or was this objective already painfully obvious and I somehow either missed it or forgot all about it?

either way it’s amazing how these guys become bigger assholes with each progressive chapter

oh now he’s explaining it all on the next page lol. so I guess I didn’t miss the memo, good

okay but first he’s getting real physical with my boy Giran here though

okay first of all, all he did was say “footage...?” like wth was so fucking impolite about that. and second, why do I get the feeling that there’s probably a fair percentage of people who read this chapter and got to this panel and now suddenly ship it sob

I mean, he just got so up close and personal though. all up in his face. this guy has such a weird energy and it’s really creeping me out now ngl

anyway so here we go with the explanations

holy shit you guyssssssssss

when did Giran get so fucking hot?? and is he single?! asking for a friend???!

anyway so now RD is wiping away his crocodile tears and says Giran is lacking in imagination

oh hey

what an interesting segue back to Tomura!

wow, Spinner’s asking how much longer until Big G wakes up, and Compress says one hour and twenty minutes. so that means they’ve already been at it for like an hour and fifteen minutes! minus however much time it took to warp over and then follow Back-Stab n’ Go out to the center of town for the ambush. even if that took a whole half hour they’ve still been fighting for a long time! but I guess they’re more than used to that by this point, thank you so much Ujiko and your six weeks of brutal endurance training

Spinner’s all “no matter how many we defeat, they just keep on coming!” and I know, dude, it’s almost like there’s over one hundred thousand of them or something dfskdj

although to be fair, probably not every last one of them is actually there. can you imagine. it might take a whole nother hour to beat them all

now Hanabata is driving in on the back of an election van. because apparently he just fucked right off in the middle of his fight with the League, and then came back. with a van

so he’s all “EVERYONE I HAVE SOME DEEPLY SADDENING NEWS” and oh my gosh what is it

oh

yeah dude we already been knew. RIP and all that

so the crowd is all distressed and asking what the Supreme Leader said

really?? that’s what they call him?? yeah you guys aren’t evil at all

and Hana quotes, “‘do not let her sacrifice be in vain’“

sorry bruh. but. it’s gonna be in vain. hate to break it to you

right??

GASP

TWICE STOP BEING AWED AT HANABATA’S INFLUENTIAL AURA AND START PAYING ATTENTION TO THE DUDE WHO’S SNEAKING UP BEHIND YOU AND TRYING TO SNATCH YOUR MASK OFF

anyway so in the meantime this is happening

maybe there are 100k of them. seems like there’s a lot. I do like that from this angle it appears that Tomura and the others have holed up in a relatively narrow alley, thus creating a choke point and limiting the number of enemies who can attack them all at once. although this panel does make it look like there’s just a big ol’ wave of bad guys surfing their way towards them though, so it remains to be seen how effective this strategy will actually be lol

eh?

yeah no shit boy you’ve been fighting Daruk from BotW for the last month and a half

anyway so apparently he’s feeling ~weird~ though

I shit you not guys, my sister was hospitalized a couple months back (she’s fine now) because she started hallucinating after a three-day bout of insomnia. shit is no joke. don’t be like Tomura. go to bed and don’t stay up all night fighting villains

-- OH SHIT!?!

ASDFALSDFHLKSDHLFKJHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT’S A LITTLE GIRL!! AND SHE’ S OPENING A SECRET DRAWER!!

SHE’S ALL “IT’S OUR LITTLE SECRET!” OH MY GOD

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

SWEET JESUS MARY JOSEPH!? HORIKOSHI DO YOU FUCKING READ THE THEORY POSTS ON TUMBLR JUST SO YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY SHIT ON THEM TWO DAYS AFTER?? HOW THE FUCK

AND IS NANA’S SON WEARING DEKU SHOES?? OH MY GOD PLEASE

AND THIS MEANS THE LITTLE GIRL IS ACTUALLY TENKO’S SISTER SOBBBBBBBBB NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

BUT ON THE PLUS SIDE THIS MAKES TOMURA MUCH MORE LIKELY TO GO APESHIT ON AFO’S ASS IF HE COMES TO REALIZE THAT AFO INDIRECTLY MURDERED HIS SISTER OH SHIT

BUT SHIT YOU GUYS, SHE’S SO CUTE AND SHE’S FUCKING DEAD NOW SOB THAT’S SO FUCKING HORRIBLE I MEAN IT I’M REALLY UPSET THOUGH

BUT LET’S CONTINUE WITH THE FLASHBACK TO SEE IF HORIKOSHI WANTS TO TOY WITH MY EMOTIONS ANYMORE!!

NANA DIDN’T DO A GOOD ENOUGH JOB ERASING ALL TRACES OF HER CONNECTION TO HER CHILD AND IT EVENTUALLY RESULTED IN HIS DEATH OH SHIT. I’M SERIOUSLY SO UPSET ABOUT THIS??

NOTE HOW BABY TENKO’S FACE IS PURPOSELY BLACKED OUT EVEN THOUGH (A) HIS SISTER’S IS NOT, AND (B) WE SHOULD, IN THEORY, ALREADY KNOW WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE! IT’S BECAUSE HE DOESN’T HAVE THE SCARS OR THE WHITE HAIR YET CUZ AFO HASN’T WIPED HIS MEMORIES. [nods sagely as though I have any sort of proof of this whatsoever and it’s not all just wild speculation and conjecture]

HANAAAAAAAA oh shit I better come up with another nickname for Hanabata then. looks like it’s Back To The Full Name for you mister

!!?!?!?

okay you guys I think this is intentional misdirection. we’re meant to believe that Tenko’s dad was perhaps abusive and that his behavior toward his son ultimately triggered the awakening of his quirk and led to all of the subsequent Horrible Things happening

but I think what it actually is is that Tenko’s dad probably resents Nana for giving him up. and maybe Tenko wanted to know more about her and maybe he got in trouble for it? because now Hana is showing him the picture, and then talking about this mysterious conversation with their dad and saying she’s on Tenko’s side. so that’s my bet

anyway! but this means Tomura might not need as much convincing as I previously speculated! I figured he probably wouldn’t know much, if anything, about his grandma even if he did somehow get his memories back, because he was only four when all that shit went down, and Nana had parted ways with Tomura’s dad years ago. but if he actually did know a bit about her and even possibly felt a connection with her, as this flashback suggests, that could go a long way towards fueling his eventual breakaway from AFO’s side once All Might is able to explain the truth

ahhhhh you guys this is exciting I’m excited. though also still very sad though because wtf seriously

so Tomura’s tiredly thinking that the least his stupid memories could do is show him the whole picture instead of these fragments. “it’s like a broken tape recording or something”

HOLY SHIT

...I have no words. holy shit

anyone else getting flashbacks to the Highway to Hell though? what is it with Tomura and periodically pulling off the most badass stunts in the whole fucking manga. all because he didn’t get his nap dsflkjlk

ReDestro look at this loss of life. are you crying again. no, I can’t imagine that you are. you ass

you guys are probably getting tired of me just going “holy shit” over and over, but

hooooooooooooly shit

guys, if Tomura can dust people without even touching them he might as well just change his name to fucking Thanos and we’d better start praying this kid gets redeemed and soon

so now there’s a panel of Tomura being all drooly, and honestly he looks like he’s about to pass out. not sure if this is intended to be a glam shot or what lol

ohhhhSHIT

YESSSSSSSSSSS DABI. DRACARYS

!LKJDSLFKJLSDKJF!!

OH SHIT YOU GUYS, IT LOOKS LIKE WE’RE ABOUT TO GET ALL A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE UP IN THIS BITCH

who is this weird little black mage. I’ll tell you one thing, he’s the only guy I’ve seen so far who’s actually dressed appropriately for fucking December weather, though, so good on him

will he defeat our boy Touya (spoilers, he won’t)? will Touya have some flashbacks of his own (TOUYA PLEASE), since that seems to be what all the cool kids are doing these days? will I lose my fucking shit all over again next week? stay tuned! but yes I absolutely will, oh jesus this is awesome

[spacecadetcity]

fictober two + three.

fictober two: ‘just follow me, i know the area’ farmer amber + farmer micheal. words: 563. micheal and amber are owned by @crlven and @goldgreenie .

    “are you sure we should go deeper? we’ve already gone pretty low, and my bag’s getting pretty low,” micheal asked hesitantly as he followed them down another ledge and dropped the last few inches to the cave ground. he carefully fastened another torch to the wall, muttering, “i feel like i’m in fucking minecraft. aww man.”

    “it’s fine! don’t worry, we got this. just some more iron and junk and we’ll head back,” amber replied, stopping and listening into the darkness. when no sounds came, they started picking at the rocks and boulders and examining them for any ores or sparkles. “or this can be the last floor. your choice, mickey-d.”

    “that’s me, the ronnie mcdonnie. have some fucking nuggies,” micheal replied, shoving a quartz gem in his back and examining the wall, “i’m going to go around and just mark up the wall to mine out later, you can pick at them if you want.” amber gave him a thumbs up and continued picking at the boulders as micheal wandered the cave area.

    “i’m glad we didn’t run into any of those little squishy dudes. really make me feel like i’m playing minecraft,” micheal said, drawing a big arrow to a rock by the wall with iron deposits on it. the cave was quiet for a few more moments before micheal glanced over at amber and opened his mouth to speak.

    “if you start singing the creeper meme, i will debone you like the fish i gave elliot,” amber threatened, pausing in their mining efforts to glare at the other farmer. micheal threw his hands up in the air and returned to marking up the wall, muttering about fish and flowers under his breath. they continued for another few moments before micheal started complaining again.

    “alright, alright, we’re done. jeez, you can spend three weeks just planning out how you want the crops set up but a day in the mine turns you into the biggest baby,” amber started packing away their tools as micheal let out a whoop of celebration. “do you even know the way back up?”

    “amber, my friend. the one who gives me aerodactyl. if i knew the way back up, i would have ditched your ass five minutes into this adventure! so no, i do not know the way back. i don’t know anything! all i do is eat hot chip and be homosexual,” micheal replied, following amber as they made their way towards a opening with a glow-in-the-dark fourty-three on it, scrabbling up the ledge they had dropped down.

    “just follow me, i know the way out, you over-dramatic baby. you shoulda been a theatre kid,” amber rolled their eyes as they helped him up and as they continued to ascend, passing numbers scribbled onto the wall until they returned to one of the mining elevators.

    “i could not have been a theatre kid, i was a weird art kid, do not ever disrespect the sonic ocs i made in middle school ever again,” micheal huffed as the elevator began creaking upwards, and amber snorted.

    “micheal the hedgehog.”

    “i am warning you. i will go into this and i will not stop.”

    “look, what a coincidence! we’re at the top, bye mikey-wikey!” amber shouted, sprinting out the doors as soon as they opened, micheal chasing after them.

    “fuck you!”

    “i can’t, you’re gay dumbass!”

    “fuck off!”

fictober three: “now? now you listen to me?” 881st. words: 687.

hotwire stumbled through the brush, fists clenched at his side. behind him, he could hear kicker following, stomping through the woods behind him. the two were beat up, bruised, and frankly apart from kicker and fourty, probably the worst two to get stuck together.

“stop fucking stomping about like a whiny little padawan, hotty-totty, you’ll alert all the droids in a fuckin’ sixty-mile radius to our position,” he heard kicker snarl at him as the other medic shoved past, and hotwire barely managed to keep himself from tripping into a painful looking bush. the other medic growled, but kicker didn’t even look back.

“yeah, cos’ you’re so much more sneaky, screaming around like the unhinged bastard you are,” hotwire muttered before following after, “don’t fucking call me hotty-totty, or i’ll call you something stupid. kicksy-sticks,” he said louder, and kicker turned and gave him a withering look.

“do i fucking look like that dipshit from the five-oh-first? you’re such a fucking pain in the ass.”

hotwire’s fists shook, and for a moment he really wanted to clock the other in the jaw, just wail on him. from the look kicker was giving him, the other medic felt the same. instead, hotwire stopped and took a deep breath, imagining the look ghost would give him if he returned and kicker was a fucking mess.

“i’d just have to fix you up anyway,” hotwire muttered as he started walking again, kicker having vanished in the thick underbrush. he shoved past a particularly thick thorned-bramble bush, wincing as it cut at his unprotected face. gingerly, he touched his cheek and groaned when it came away with blood on his fingers.

“where’s that from?” kicker materialized at his side, and hotwire yelped in surprise. they had just been at each others throats, and suddenly kicker seemed to be concerned over a tiny scratch. “just my cheek. nothing to worry about,” hotwire replied, feeling oddly defensive, and kicker groaned.

“you ever fuckin’ read the shit we get? like how the fuckin’ plantlife here is fucking crazy as shit and it eats shit? now we’re going to get some fucking big-ass flower hunting us down because you’re bleeding all over the place,” kicker grabbed hotwire by the arm and started moving quicker, dragging the other medic behind him. hotwire spent a few moments stumbling over his feet while he tried to keep up with kicker, finally catching his step and keeping up.

“i forgot, okay? kind of got my mind busy- look, you lead, i’ll follow, okay?” hotwire tried to sound apologetic even though he wasn’t really sure he had anything to be sorry for, and kicker squeezed his arm tighter until hotwire was pretty sure he’d have an indent in the armor.

“now? now you fuckin’ listen to me? not before when i said, ‘hey, dipshit, don’t go that way because there are bugs bigger than your fuckin’ attitude?’ and got the two of us in this mess?” kicker snarled, yanking hotwire by the arm, “no, that’s just kicker being the pissy guy he is, why would he ever say anything that isn’t purposefully argumentative!”

“i’m pretty sure you’re doing that right now-”

“hotwire, the only person i have ever genuinely tried to kill is fourty. you do not want yourself on that list. trust me.”

hotwire felt a chill run up his back at kickers’ tone, not a hint of joking present. he closed his mouth, instead focusing on keeping up with kicker’s pace. the two travelled in silence for several minutes before hotwire couldn’t help it.

“why do you hate fourty so much? like you seem to really take it past giving someone grief, and especially given what you just said, you really seem to have it out for him… why?”

kicker didn’t stop moving, but his grip loosened on hotwire.

“we have history. shitty history. i’ve always been an asshole, and one day he said that he wished kamino would’ve just-” kicker cut himself off, jaw clenched. “he wished kamino would have just fixed me.”

hotwire fell silent, the implication of what kicker meant sinking in.

“oh.”

“yeah. oh.”

[shellheadtmarc]

(Gimme 616 Tony) "What is this, Tony?" The papers were tossed down in front of the other, files he had found perhaps when snooping for something else. He had heard of something similar being thought but it was just that; a thought so he ignored it. Yet, here was the proof and instead of jumping straight down the man's throat for thinking such a disgusting idea he was going to at least listen. "The Superhuman registration act? You're just feeding into the public's fear."

“Stamford.”  He glanced up, from where he’d been holding his head, rubbing at his temples to ease the headache that had been near constant for days now, elbows braced on his knees.  He looked rumpled.  He felt rumpled.  He was sober, thank God, but it was a near thing, touch and go at times.  And now here came Stephen Strange, repeating the same thing he’d heard from plenty over the last few days.  People that were his friends.  People that he cared about.  People that he loved.  

“Have you…Have you paid attention to any of it, Stephen?”  He straightened in his chair, rubbing a hand through his messy hair.  “Or are you here to tell me I’m on the wrong side of history, too.  You won’t be the first, so don’t feel like you’ve got some moral leg up here.”

He groped along his desk, found the handle of his coffee mug, and dragged it to himself.  It was cold, but it was caffeine, and maybe that would help ease the headache a little.  “We need reigning in.  We need this.  People are already scared of us, Stephen.  Sue’s brother’s in the hospital because of it.  Some…Assholes jumped him outside of a club.  Reed’s with me on this, his family’s already felt the shockwaves.  Hank, too.”

The coffee cup was placed back on the desk, and his fingers strayed to the faceplate of a suit sitting there.  “I would prefer…If you were, too.”  

He looked up at Stephen then, his face betraying exactly how exhausted he was.  No chipper public Anthony Stark face here, no laser-precision facial hair, no hair styled exactly so, no bespoke suit and flashy persona.  Just Tony.  Tony who hadn’t slept in a few days.  Tony who definitely needed to see the sharp end of a razor.  Tony who could use a change of clothes and some fresh air and a solid warm meal and wouldn’t get any of that for now because he had bigger problems and bigger concerns.

“All those kids are dead because some D-listers wanted to catch some big name baddies for a stupid reality show.”  His fingers curled over the faceplate, nails scratching against the metal.  “This is our make or break moment.  If we don’t…If we don’t act, if we don’t do something, we’re going to find ourselves in a whole lot more trouble than just having to have a little extra training and a fancy id that says we’re superheroing with a license.  I’m trying to make sure we can still do what it is we do, that we can help people.  That we have a way to remind people that we are the good guys.  Because right now, people are scared shitless of us and I can’t really blame them.”

He held up a hand, indicating he wasn’t finished.  “I know, it’s easy for me to say, right?  Everyone knows who I am.  Knows I’m the Iron Man.  That I don’t have any…Any powers outside of this.”  He tapped his temple.  “But we’ve had a good run, like we have.  We’ve done a lot of good.  The problem is, there are more of us now than ever.  We’ve got kids in spandex just deciding they’re going to do this with no training, no discipline.  Sound familiar?”

His smile was small.  Self-depreciating.

“But the problem is, it’s these kids in spandex that are getting hurt.  As it is��The Avengers are already big.  Too big, maybe.  We can’t take in everyone all at once, we’d be overwhelmed, and every last one of them needs training.  This…”  He tapped the papers.  “This would let us organize.  Spread crosscountry.  Standard training for everyone on the list.  Accountability, Stephen, because we don’t really have any except policing among ourselves, and to the people we’re supposed to protect, that’s not good enough anymore.”

@ssprxmx is poking a big ol’ sleeping bear

[comic-critic-squad]

NaCl 001: The Meteor Tribe

Welcome to the first post in what I hope to turn into a semi-regular thing.

These may come in two types—individual examinations of certain things in individual comics. For now, Home is easy as hell to do this with (and there is a lot to say), but I’d love to take a deeper look at comics I like (I have a tiny few criticisms of Scurry, but there’s obviously way more things I think Mac did well; I’m an enormous fan of Ghost of the Gulag), comics I’m so-so on (AFRICA, Frostbite; Off-White), and comics I think are total trash (Home, obviously; Legacy; The Flightless Bird).

Without further ado, welcome to my thoughts on why the Meteor Tribe is poorly written and not all that well thought out, beginning with the dude right at the top: the jarl.

1. There's no reason to respect/follow the jarl—especially Ranach.

Rulers rule through two means: love or fear. Hate doesn't work, and we have evidence none of the members liked Ranach: Fuss says he was mocked in his absence and told Ulfr he would make a worse leader than Ranach (implying they saw Ranach as a terrible ruler), Vigr showed their feelings toward him when Ranach was denied entry and said Ranach had lost his mind during Three Ranach Moon, obviously none of the female dogs cared for him, and so on. 

While we're given the impression Brodir and Arenak were genuine tyrants (and the MT had more members then, but since we know nothing about Brodir and barely more than nothing about Arenak, they’re mostly irrelevant), Ranach was pathetic. It’s amazing anyone actually listened to him post-Arenak since he wasn’t really liked...not that he did much anyway.

The most evil thing he did as ruler? Tell someone else to kill his father...a worse character. Outside of that, he ordered Rogio killed for betrayal—which would be in-character had Kique not suddenly sprung that bullshit "THIS HURTS ME MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU I LOVE YOU SO MUCH ROGIO" and then make Ranach completely pathetic afterward.

(Also—Ranach does not have NPD. Even if he did, congratulations for playing right into ableism. Characters are never assholes on their own, but this is also coming from a guy who thinks the only requirement to be a villain is being a rapist.)

He got pissed at Galti, ordered his papa killed, conned Ronja into joining, captured Ferah and Kargo, ordered the death fakeout of Rogio, and...oh. That's it. All he’s done recently is give evil looks.

He didn't even let the spirit take his pups. 

Damn, wouldn't that have really shown his supposed NPD and "he really misses the way Rogio made him feel" we've had hammered down our throats? Wouldn't that have actually been a good way to subvert the whole "everyone fucking survives and this story is goddamn predictable and there's no need for three additional characters that are all obviously going to get their own POVs/screentime." 

Nope. Instead Ranach doesn't go through with it...you know, a good thing. It's not like he could've been really shown to be heartless if he'd been like "lol take 'em gimme back my Rogiboy."

Anyway, back on topic.

Essentially, Ranach was hated (even though he didn’t really...do much...) by the members, and they had no reason to follow him. Dogs like Fuss (oh, good ol’ Good Guy Fuss) could have led a coup or something. (I mean...Fuss loved the MT’s broodmare so much. I’m sure he would’ve done anything to free his love.)

We’re not given much about the MT’s culture and history, and I’m not going to give any “well maybe years ago...” credit. As far as we know, all these dogs have been 100% fine listening to a jarl who treats them like shit and abuses them. We’re not given any indication of severe brainwashing or cult-like indoctrination, and so while one or two (like Ulfr) may be in it to get their kicks, all of them are okay with that way of life? (Of course, until they weren’t okay with it--like when they suddenly get screentime and need to be a good guy.)

Regardless, even if all those dogs magically follow the same hivemind despite zero indoctrination and are a-okay listening to someone who abuses them, there’s an even bigger issue: the Meteor Tribe is small.

2. The Meteor Tribe isn't large.

We're given the impression early in the comic that the MT has numbers. Well, that's quickly ruined—and no, Kargo the Killer and retcon "actually, x number died before the story" are excuses.

They’re not a threat, and it’s amazing everyone is oh-so terrified of them considering they don’t really do shit. (Let. Me. Repeat: FOH with “it happened before the story.” There has been AMPLE TIME to flesh out the MT, explain their past, or even just imply how it used to be, because right now, the only difference seems to be they were starved in the past.)

Something else that goes with the MT being small? Their ranks spread them too thinly, and some of them ranks are fairly arbitrary. Why are hunter and warrior separate? What is the obscure difference between healer and herbalist? Artisan and caretaker really need to be separate—or a thing to begin with?

a. Hunters/warriors. They're not constantly at war. Actually, we haven’t been given any indication these dogs ever fight—check out the allies list on the wiki—and while Vigr says they’d face an attack if they didn’t meet the Guild…what? The wiki itself tells us no one actually has to listen to the Matriarch:

Throughout the years, the Matriarch has set out a set of guidelines, to keep life in Aedra as peaceful as possible. No tribe has to follow these guidelines, but doing so will grant them access to get more help from the capital if needed, and ally bonds with other tribes can be created.

Even if they were out and about, it'd be a bit essential, don'tcha think, for warriors to know how to hunt. Otherwise they'd have to bring hunters with them...and that's just extra weight. Or are hunters meant to stay at the tribe and bring food there? Well, in that case, then the warriors HAVE to do their own hunting—and if the answer is that they already do, why have a separate hunters rank?

b. Herbalist/healer. Let's get one thing out of the way: the limits on healing bark haven't been established, and apparently that shit can heal everything from falling off a fucking waterfall to decades-old scars. It's Applied Phlebotium. That said, it really ignores how primitive the rest of their medicine is. Herbs are not that simple...nor are they always strong/effective. In real life, holistic/herbal remedies are trashed for a reason.

This could've been a really interesting point to expand on. I would even accept Aedra has stronger herbs, like an opium-like plant the dogs use as a painkiller. Eat too much of it, it'll kill you. Of course, I'd lean toward "well, we hope these herbs will work, but there's a 40% chance you'll live. Cross your tail!" (Or toes, since they can probably do that.)

Another thing—you know how people say you shouldn't guess if wild mushrooms are edible? That's because many of them look nearly identical. And one is edible, and the other will cause violent stomach cramps. Or kill you. Give me a dog who's a healer and fucks up herb identification and kills a packmate. Makes skilled herbalist-healers valued. Since Aedra’s as dangerous as a stapler, though, there’s really no use for them either.

More on topic, why are healer and herbalist separate ranks anyway? The healer would just need the herbalist right beside them saying what to do and use. Doctors still know about medicine. They're not pharmacists, of course, but this is a primitive medical system in Home. They’re not messing with fentanyl.

Combine the damn ranks. Maybe make herbalists the healer’s apprentice and they gain that rank once they’ve mastered herb identification and can move on to putting the herbs to use.

Hilariously, this is what the wiki has to say about it:

Both the Herbalist and Healer will have about the same knowledge when it comes to herbs, but the Healer will always stay with the tribe while the Herbalist will go out on long travels to collect the various herbs the tribe is in need of. Healers are often well rounded when it comes to healing the sick and wounded, while Herbalists may also know what herbs can be used to keep meat stored and fresh for a long period of time, how to craft poison and even how to summon malevolent spirits.

So basically, “Basically these ranks are the same.”

c. Artisan/caretaker.

Couldn't be more useless.

Akleja and Ronja's WIP pups weren't in the story at the time those ranks were conceived (no pups at all, actually), and the MT hasn’t had pups in a while...so clearly the caretaker has fuck-all to do most of the time. Mothers would be the caretakers, and during the moments they want to get away from the pups, someone else could watch them for a bit—does there really need to be an entirely separate role for something so brief and rare?

A Caretaker will be in charge of taking care of the young in the tribe. They will stay with newly born offspring and help the mother out if needed. If the parent is absent, the Caretaker will teach the young how to read and write, the laws of the tribe and everything else there is to know.

Oh, silly me. They also teach the young how to fucking read and write.

And artisan? Christ. Worst rank, hands down. Apparently tribes living in the harsh world of Aedra have enough resources to waste on a rank devoted to painting markings for an hour (and how long does this shit last anyway?) and then clocking out. See ya at the timeclock tomorrow, Alva.

According to the wiki, this is what they do:

An Artisan is in charge of keeping the huts strong, re-applying paint to the members and repairing clothing.

Yeah, guys—these dogs can repair clothing. Kique even says they could mend clothing by attaching a tough thread to a piece of bone. Fuck the fact threading a needle requires tying it.

Then again, given we have a tribe whose leader says they need to hunt frequently—yet his tribe regularly holds community LARPing—is anyone surprised no intra-tribe resource/energy economy is taken into account?

d. Gendered rank pairs

Why do we need a male/female pair for lead hunter and lead huntress? Whoever’s best at the job, give it to them. Hunter is gender neutral, for fuck’s sake. Adding –ress/-ess to words that are otherwise neutral is unnecessary.

(But speaking of painting…)

3. The paint is useless.

Okay, two questions:

1.) How are these dogs deft enough to apply paint? In Fjordor’s case, how the fuck is his paint applied? HE LITERALLY LIVED ALONE. (Don't @ me with "it's long-lasting" or "he's been alone for a week." Then again, that last explanation actually works considering how these characters face major life events and fall in love within days. Remember: 100 pages = two hours.)

2.) Why is the paint even necessary? It'd be one thing if they had a splash of color to mark them out to other tribes, but differentiation within? The tribes aren't large enough to need rank-identifying paint. They would know each other by sight. If the tribe was so massive it’d be impossible to know all packmates intimately, sure. In that case, it would be necessary to know someone's rank by sight, especially if the system were based off a strict hierarchy, like passage keepers being the lowest of the low or warriors honored like deities when they stride into camp.  

4. All tribes follow the same hierarchy. Even when they have no reason to.

All the tribes follow the same ranking system, apparently no dogs live as loners or in tribeless family units, everyone is allied sans the MT, a jarl always leads, they use identifying paint within their own tribe—not paint that would mark them out to other tribes—and so on. What kind of networking is going on that makes all these tribes—all of whom seem to inhabit different biomes—follow the same system even when the standard tribe setting may not be beneficial to their culture/survival?

But more on that latter point, the MT was characterized as problematic rebels with no allies, yet they still listen to the Guild...even though they don't respect Axilyah and her group...and while it was said they'd face attack if they refused, we were later told ACTUALLY…—no one has to listen to the Guild! Fjordor even tells Axilyah she's in no place to question him...so exactly what authority does the Guild have? 

Oh, right.

None at all.

Maybe “no one actually has to listen to them” shouldn’t have been created after the pages where Vigr expressed fear of the Guild’s arrival. (Also, so much for the Guild anyway if everyone else turns a blind eye to what goes on in the MT yet still demands those arbitrary scrolls. “We need to know your population but fuck the suffering going on within.”)

5. None of the female MT dogs have lasting trauma.

If there's one things fans on DA loved screaming anytime anyone criticized the female MT dogs' lack of trauma, it was "Not all victims act the same!"

Well, they're right. Not all victims act the same...yet that same exact logic can be applied to Home, where all victims act the same. Literally no one is traumatized. It's obvious they're trying any argument they can (without thinking about what they're actually saying. Congratulations, you played yourself.) to get the opposition to shut up.

This point alone could turn into it’s own thing, but its better lumped under the much larger discussion surrounding sexism and the female characters.

6. Productivity and unnecessary brutality.

The Meteor Tribe: *complains about infertility and health problems* Also the Meteor Tribe: *abuses their members capable of furthering the population*

So who wants to tell me why abuse even goes in the MT? The answer can't be "because they're just assholes." I'm looking for something along the lines of "cheap drama and the creator is as unimaginative as every other male creator out there with a rape fetish." Really, I’m curious—give me a good reason they abuse their female members, especially the ones capable of reproduction.

Abused creatures aren't productive creatures, and we were shown the mothers starving and skinny in flashbacks, yet...

1.) …none of the current members are in an emaciated state.

2.) …why would you abuse members who've proven they can reproduce? You think you'd want to treat them like royalty.

7. The tribe isn't really that inbred.

Yeah, this is another one of those things we've been given the impression is happening but...isn't. If you’ve seen one of the various fan-made family trees, you’ll notice there sure is a lot of outside blood. The inbreeding happens in really only one line—Ranach’s family.

Maybe it's just the science/genetics nerd in me, but this could've opened a lot of interesting and unique plot points—someone's condition starts acting up at the wrong moment or it has dire consequences on themselves or those around them—and it would add an actual sense of urgency to the tribe. As it is, they've been living...just fine and dandy. Ranach says they've been plagued by infertility and inbreeding, yet the tribe isn't actually experiencing any negative effects. Supposedly they have an issue with infertility, yet the tribe is full of outside blood (Fuss, Rogio, and other dogs shown on the chart to have come from outside the tribe)...and their numbers looked fairly large before Kargo the Killer singlehandedly decimated them.

8. Ferah and Kargo were involved in and led the only escape attempt.

Don’t come at me with “we don’t know that!” because nothing implies otherwise. “Actually, there were ten attempts at liberation before Home started” is meaningless. You can pull any explanation on the spot when your story is so shallow. What was it about Kargo and Ferah—both of whom grew up in the same environment as all the others—that made them have the guts to escape?

Aside from being the protagonists.

9. M-m-m-missed opportunities to make the MT threatening.

This story had the potential to be so much deeper had anything been put into it. The MT doesn’t really do much except take others captive…but with so many surrounding tribes, all it’d take is one war to get rid of them. While the MT would have the defense advantage due to their wall, the dogs have fire. Burn that shit down and kill they asses. Everyone else is allied anyway, for fuck’s sake.

Cannibalism. Worshiping dark spirits. Sacrificing caught outsiders. Ambitious for more territory. Rumors they’re not fully canine. Maybe Aedra dogs are very suspicious. Who the fuck knows.

We do know the MT sucks.

10. Ulfr and Ranach pose no threat.

So...why are Fuss and the others afraid to go outside? Because of Ranach and Ulfr?

Okay, they could be a threat...if it weren't for a few things.

1.) Ulfr and Ranach are two dogs.

2.) The tribe has Rogio, Roamer, Vigr, Javo, Galti, Fuss, Fremja, Inna, Alva, Vandi, Ronja, and Jonna. Even if you argue "but the female dogs can't fight!", that's bullshit for two reasons:

a. Rogio, Roamer, Galti, Vigr, Fuss, and Javo still outnumber Ulfr and Ranach.

b. Goddamnit, they're dogs. They know how to fight. It's not like Inna suddenly doesn't know how to use her teeth. It’s not like they’re even traumatized, either, and would freeze up when faced with one of their abusers.

3.) Even if they wouldn't fight well as individuals—and that’s a mighty big “if” since Rogio, Roamer, and Ronja have killed motherfuckers—there's goddamn six times more MT members than Ranach and Ulfr. They could overwhelm them by sheer number.

11. Ulfr's personal code of conduct.

I have one thing to say about this: it was done to avoid drawing a fight scene between Fuss and Ulfr. Like the recent bullshit with Roamer the Mature & Wise and Kargo.

Okay, I have a bit more than one thing to say about this, but it’s not restricted to Ulfr and this sudden character revelation.

12. There’s no depth to the MT characters.

See, the issue with Kique waiting so long to show us individual characterization for the various MT members is that so much of it comes as an ass pull, and we’ve known these characters since the early comic, but they were just background fodder and existed to waste space. 

I can’t even give thumbs up to Jonna since she was shown to be bubbly and peppy and switched to demon overlord in a second…and then that was also forgotten, and now she’s against the guys. Or is she? We saw it with only Ulfr.

But according to Vandi, Javo, Vigr, and Fuss are totally good guys. Once again, none of that was shown. Let’s look at a few things first:

·        Vigr

With Vigr, actually, we got the opposite of what Vandi said. He was among the dogs who roped Ronja, and he was specifically the one who held her down for Arenak—held her down to be raped.

“He was scared of Arenak” doesn’t fly. While we know little of Arenak (and this is something I consider a massive failure, too; we didn’t need tons of screentime—or really any screentime at all—to know he was a super feared guy), and these dogs were all too eager to follow along. 

When Ronja was coming into the tribe to be roped, there was no moment of hesitation on Vigr’s part—even a brief moment of him being reluctant and the other dog telling him to do it would’ve shown not all of them were comfortable.

But that didn’t happen.

·        Fuss

Good ol’ Fuss. Another we’re-told good guy…yet he joined a rapist cult, had ample opportunity (just like Rogio) to leave and didn’t, and rather than busting out his woman, he impregnated her. All while under Arenak’s rule. So he knew from the beginning what environment his offspring would grow up in: the boys would become rapist murderers, and the girls would be sex slaves.

You think his priority would be freeing Vandi rather than fucking her.

·        Rogio

Oh, Rogio, Saint Rogio. He’s going to get his own post probably, but I’ll sum up his being a good dude: 

Rogio was retconned into not having a choice to join the MT even though he had opportunity after opportunity to escape with others or even by himself but he didn’t because his love for Raniboy overpowered his horror at what went on in the tribe so he stayed and led the patrol that fully intended to capture Alva’s sister and said sister’s pups and he was mad at Ronja being made viscountess because that meant Raniboy wasn’t solely his anymore and then he left the tribe and fucked Roamer who was fresh out of a relationship after they had a long retconversation about who was the bigger saint and then he went back to the tribe and is now back at his baron position and no one has any lasting bitterness toward him and Ronja even apologized to him for treating him badly even though she never did.

Yay for Rogio! Such a great guy.

·        Inna, Fremja, Jonna, Alva, and Vandi

They were a hivemind. Not a single one of them wanted to leave during the second freedom run—and Jonna flip-flops on characterization depending on how much Kique needs his fans to say some gross shit—yet now Fremja is having an orgasm over the wilderness, and Vandi, who could’ve been portrayed as a mentor/motherly figure from the beginning, is now doing it. Alva is still pure background fodder and seems to exist just to stare around and be the resident Golden Retriever.

Inna needs to stay off-screen since she has a nice design and I don’t want her to be ruined once she says more than ten words.

 Anyway, I can’t talk about this anymore and am now actively aware of how shitty Rogio is so I’d rather scream about him. If there’s something obvious I missed, let me know. Thinking about that half-assed comic has me braindead. 

Or even if anyone just wants to comment/discuss it, go ahead.

[agentelmo]

The X-Files MSR Analysis Series: Season 1 Episode 7

“Ghost in the Machine”

Previous episode analysis - 1x06 Shadows.

This episode is another that is quite light on the MSR, although there are a few little moments that bring a smile to my shipper face, it’s an episode that both gives as well as takes away in terms of the MSR.  There’s a disappointing moment or two between them, but it’s balanced out by some instances which point to the future depth of their relationship.  

It’s unfortunate that two weeks in a row now we’ve had pretty paltry episodes, BUT I HEAR THE NEXT ONE IS GOOD THOUGH. HUR HUR HUR.

So the first thing we see in this episode is Mulder and Scully buying lunch which is freakin’ weird to see them doing something so normal.  I mean, it makes sense for them to be doing that, but the series gets so fantastical and overwrought with it’s own premise and mythology that the mundane aspects of normal life are often skipped over in later seasons.  Seems season 1 is truly a season that worked to ground the X-Files in some modicum of reality, making it oddly surreal to go back to a time when “Mulder and Scully buy sandwiches for lunch” was an actual scene.

Enter Jerry Lamana, an old FBI buddy of Mulder’s who is seeking him out.  There’s a really sweet moment here, where Jerry goes up to Mulder and just hugs him straight off without any awkwardness and Mulder seems genuinely surprised and happy to see him.

Look at that goofy little smile.  Nawww.  I think Mulder probably forgot what it’s like to have friends at work after leaving the Violent Crimes Section.

I thought this was a lovely little detail, because up until this point, we’ve been led to believe that Mulder is a pariah to most everyone at the FBI.  That since he started work on the X-Files, no one takes him seriously nor do they want him around.  But it wasn’t always that way.  

We know little of his FBI career before the X-Files, other than what we learn in the Pilot, which is that he was once a highly successful criminal profiler with the VCS and rose to prominence very quickly.  This is our first glimpse into what kind of man Mulder was back then, and how others saw him and interacted with him.

Scully, bless her, can’t help but smile at this display of male bonding.  She clearly finds it pleasantly surprising to see Mulder be this friendly with someone.  She’s used to people treating him like a social leper.

Then this peculiar moment happens.

What is that look Mulder gives Scully?  A look of guilt, perhaps?  You can read the words “oh shit” all over his face.  He seems to be genuinely concerned for how she will react; just realising he’s never told Scully he had a partner before her.  

But is that something he should feel guilty for, like it’s some kind of betrayal?  Does he imagine she might think “wait, I’m not your first?!”  After all, Mulder is the only partner Scully has ever had, having become an FBI instructor straight out of the academy.  

It’s highly indicative of how blurred the boundaries are in their working partnership, even at this early stage.  It’s honestly reminiscent of a guy bumping into his ex while being out with his new girlfriend.  Realising oh shit, I never told her about The One Who Came Before™.

On a professional level, Mulder having had a partner before Scully should be insignificant.  Look at Jerry, he seems to think this is a perfectly normal thing to discuss and that it wouldn’t be an issue - and it shouldn’t be!  It’s just the truth.  It’s not a big deal, but for some reason it’s a big deal to Mulder.  And seemingly Scully too because she definitely gives him a look back.

A kind of look that belies an irrational pang of insecurity, maybe?  But only a pang, it’s gone as quickly as it arrives.

It’s utterly fascinating because of it’s inappropriateness.  They’re both feeling something beyond what is appropriate between professionals about the fact Mulder had a partner before Scully.  But as to the why - why does this matter to them?  It’s brushed aside in literally the blink of an eye and will not be revisited until another previous “partner" of Mulder’s arrives on the scene.

Yeah.  

In a way, this brief moment that I have over analysed to within an inch of its life, is a prelude to the drama that accompanies the arrival of Diana Fowley.  With the passing of 5 years and all that goes on between Mulder and Scully in that time, the feelings that are being expressed here intensify to the point they can no longer be ignored by the time we get to season 5′s The End.  

But here and now, in Ghost in the Machine, they are very much ignored.  These feelings are merely sparks of something bigger between them.  There is something deeper going on - undefined - that is beyond the professional, but at this stage in their relationship, neither are prepared to acknowledge it, and in Mulder’s case I still believe he’s not even aware of it, so onwards we go!

The next scene shifts to the basement as Jerry reveals why he was looking for Mulder.  He has a case he wants Mulder’s help with, but Mulder isn’t interested.

There’s a brief moment where you can see some history between Jerry and Mulder in these two lines of dialogue.

Do you get the feeling that this is an old, tired, conversation that they’ve had in the past?  The X-Files appears to be a sore subject between the two of them.  I get the sense that Jerry is still a touch resentful of Mulder for choosing the X-Files over him.  

Sooooo you might ask yourself, why is this relevant to the MSR?  Well it shows to what extent Mulder is willing to burn bridges and sever ties with people in pursuit of his goals.  We see from their friendly greeting that they were once friends, not just partners.  But Mulder was willing to sacrifice that.  

We’ve spent a good couple of episodes thus far examining what Scully is sacrificing by sticking with the X-Files, but this is the first time we ever touch on what Mulder has had to give up.  It’s clear he has sacrificed much for this personal mission of his; as he said in the Pilot - nothing else matters to him.  Jerry was just another casualty.  For Mulder the sacrifice is worth it, if in doing so he can get closer to the elusive Truth™.

However, what he didn’t count on was meeting Scully.  

His ability to discard any and every personal comfort; friendships, a career, a personal life - all of it - is a pretty significant aspect of his character.  But one thing he isn’t prepared to live without is Scully.

It might sound strange to say this so early in their relationship, but how Mulder behaves in Jersey Devil - his impotency without her presence - says to me, that this aspect of their relationship has already begun to manifest for Mulder; almost certainly without him even realising it.  She’s become incredibly important to him already and if he doesn’t realise it now, he will - very soon. 

*cough* Season 2 *cough*

So that’s the MSR significance for me.  His discarded partnership with Jerry serves to highlight the significance of his partnership with Scully.

Sorry Jezza... you’re basically chopped liver.

Something else of note that I thought was quite interesting here, is how Mulder behaves around Jerry compared with how he is around Scully.

With Jerry, Mulder appears to be a sanitised ‘version’ of himself - a personable, polite, encouraging friend - he appears subdued.  I get the sense that Mulder is falling into a familiar rhythm with Jerry where, oddly, Jerry was the more dominant personality of the pair.  

Now I say “oddly” because when Mulder is with Scully, that’s not the role he takes at all.  Mulder seems to have a bit of swagger, a bit of charm that vanishes when Jerry is around.  With Scully the real Mulder comes out - the cocky, deadpan SnarkMaster 5000 we know and love.

Even his tone of voice dramatically changes, it’s worth a rewatch to listen out for it.

But observe when Mulder is with Jerry and shows his characteristic deadpan humour, Jerry doesn’t allow him to have the moment.

Wait, sorry... just a second... The hair wiggle, guys...

I... want to... touch it... just a little... please??

Uhhh... 

Yeah so, Jerry.  He has an ego, an image he wants to maintain - he competes with Mulder, and I think sometimes even unconsciously, like in the moment above.  Whereas Mulder has enough self-confidence and self-esteem that he can fall back when that kind of dominant personality is in the room and not feel emasculated.  It seems Jerry is the opposite.  He is threatened by Mulder - his brilliance, his charm, his sense of humour, probably even his looks.  It’s almost certainly a good thing they went their separate ways because I think Jerry is harbouring a lot of resentment towards Mulder.  Which we indeed see come out later.

Also, going back to this moment just a sec...

I like how Mulder uses his humour to deflect Scully, but she persists and he -  trusting her with the truth of it - relents.  This is such a familiar dynamic between them now that it’s almost cliche.

Ok fast forward again, Mulder and Scully get in the politically correct lift.  

I mean, elevator.   ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

#IDoNotGazeAtScully

How cute is it that they both look away at the same moment.  It’s like a fucking romantic comedy up in here.

But then HAL9000 reminds us it’s the X-Files, and poor Scully hits the deck.

I mean, Mulder would be an asshole not to help her up, but any time he puts his arms around her is a time to rejoice, amirite?

#CasualTouching

The next day, Mulder is in his office looking for the profile notes he had written on the killer.  But he can’t seem to find them, and Scully, never missing the opportunity, gives Mulder a good sassing. 

She so sassy.

Guys, guys... cute!Mulder hath returneth.

Look at him, getting flustered looking for his jacket because he just lost his notes, you can almost see the thoughts in his brain, like... 

“Not my jacket too... what the hell is goin--oh.  There it is.”

The fact that she doesn’t say anything; just lets him have a mini panic haha... I luffs her.

Also the rolled up sleeves... I know I’m not the only one who finds rolled up shirt sleeves hot.  Like, dayum... Mulder knows how to rock the white collar aesthetic.

So despite not finding his notes, they hot step-it to the meeting anyway.  But hey, not to worry - turns out the notes found their way to the meeting without him!

Jerry is presenting “his” profile to the task force, and Mulder realises pretty quickly that it’s actually his own missing profile that Jerry is reading from.  Mulder has an interesting reaction to this - he’s visibly annoyed, but makes no move to stop Jerry - Mulder is loyal to a fault.

What I love about this scene though is that Scully realises it’s Mulder’s profile too and seems ready to fight his corner, and he knows it - which is probably why he lies and says it isn’t.  

How did she know, though?  It’s possible Mulder talked to her about it before the meeting, but I’m a shipper schmuck, so I choose to believe she has become so familiar with his work that she was able to recognise it as his, even when being palmed off by someone else as their own.  Like, when you know an author so well that you can recognise their writing.  I think Scully could recognise Mulder’s profile in a similar fashion..  

Anyway, Mulder then confronts Jerry, but Jerry brushes him off and doesn’t take Mulder’s grievance seriously at all, in fact, I’m fairly certain Jerry knows he can push Mulder around and he knows Mulder won’t react.  

Which is exactly what happens, Jerry doesn’t apologise, acts like Mulder is being an unreasonable dick, and takes off.  Mulder does absolutely nothing about this.

Scully, who clearly did not believe a word of Mulder’s denial - because bae knows her man’s work when she hears it - asks what Jerry said about being a filthy plagiarising snot bucket, but Mulder covers for him - again.

This is what I mean by Jerry being the dominant personality, he seemingly walks all over Mulder and Mulder lets him.  I think that’s probably a little taster of what it was like between them in the past too.

Which inadvertently puts a spotlight on how different Mulder and Scully’s dynamic is.  Mulder is comfortable with Scully for one - he is pretty unfiltered a lot of the time.  He’s just himself.  Snark and all.  

But there is also the intellectual balance that Mulder and Scully share - she is his intellectual equal.  I never really felt that Mulder was more intelligent than Scully; Mulder is simply more open to the extreme possibilities and looks for answers there first.  Scully looks for answers there only when all other explanations have been exhausted.  In a sense, she’s simply more thorough than him.  There are plenty of times when she out smarts him too, but they’re never threatened by each other - they stand on equal footing and respect one another enough that something like what happened between Mulder and Jerry - stealing his work for Chrissakes - is inconceivable between Mulder and Scully.  She’d have more self respect, for one.

Makes you realise how lucky Mulder was to have Scully assigned to him when you see how his abilities can potentially alienate his colleagues, and even his friends.

Last bit about this scene - this made me chuckle, Scully low key slipping Mulder a backhanded compliment.  

The irony of all of this though, is that the behavioural profile is utterly wrong and the killer is the machine but shhh... let’s not dwell on the details.

So Mulder and Scully head off to chat with Brad Wilczek, the guy who created the machine... and Oh my God, my baby agents... look at them!

Ugh... my heart.  They’re so sickeningly cute.

There’s an interesting conversation here with Brad, where he talks about how in the world of computer science there are “scruffy” minds and “neat” minds.  The neat deal with what he describes as “surface phenomena” things they can understand... hmm.  Sounds like someone we know, doesn’t it?

He then describes scruffy minds as puzzle solvers; people who enjoy “walking down unpredictable avenues of thought” to see where they end up.  Another way of describing someone who is open-minded?  

I don’t know if the parallel was intended, but it feels like the implication is that Mulder is a scruffy mind, and Scully is a neat mind.   Also, perhaps a tiny bit of foreshadowing was made to this point with Mulder’s messy desk and Scully’s jab about him never tidying it.

But if these two work so well together; if their scruffiness and neatness compliment one other to maintain some kind of equilibrium, then what might that mean for Brad Wilczek and his machine?  Perhaps that’s another aspect of the MSR that’s being expressed here - that an unchecked scruffy mind can lead to its own self-destruction, and that an unchallenged neat mind can stifle progress.  

Yep, I can find MSR in aaaaaaanything.

Now what happens next is that Mulder and Jerry finally have it out, and he admits in not so many words that he is jealous of Mulder.  But we move past this as Scully - despite not knowing how monitors work...

...cracks the case using voice recognition software and confirms that the murderer was Brad Wilczek. At least, that’s what they think.

Jerry, feeling his career is going down the pan unless he can “dazzle the higher ups” himself, wants to bring Wilczek in alone.  To take all the credit, basically.  To which Mulder agrees - as before, Mulder always does what Jerry wants.

The next scene I am certain is responsible for giving me a lifelong fear of lifts.  The scene where we say farewell to Jerry Lamana.

I used to be fine as a very young child - I remember liking them in fact, but at some point in my childhood I became very fearful of them, particularly if I was going in one alone.  I was certain the cables would snap and I would fall to my death.  I feared them so much, I stopped using them.  I would always take the stairs - always.  I still have the strong compulsion to avoid lifts even today, but I am a lot better than I was.

Watching this scene again, I had a visceral reaction of fear and realised it probably started for me when I saw this episode as an 11 year-old girl.  Weird.

It’s quite disturbing to me, watching Mulder review the tape of his friend fall to his death.  

The way Mulder shakes his head watching him die... it’s very unsettling but also morbidly voyeuristic - he watches it blank faced, on repeat.  For some reason it reminds me of times I’ve seen footage of people dying in real life tragedies.  That is traumatic enough, without actually knowing and caring about the people meeting their ends in the footage.

Scully then comes in and interrupts his self-torture.

This little moment is very touching, the way she slows everything down, speaking slowly and knees at his level.  Her right elbow is bent, does she have her hand on his leg??

Ahem... anyway.  Scully is right.  So right.  Mulder has been through a lot, and it goes deep.  It’s exactly the right thing for her to do - to try and slow him down and get him to acknowledge that what happened has affected him.  Because there is no way that it wouldn’t have.  The guilt of letting Jerry go alone would be crushing enough.

Mulder cannot do that though, he needs more than ever now to solve this case; to get justice for Jerry, but also to avoid acknowledging what he is feeling.  

We know Mulder is a pro at that.  

As mentioned in my Conduit analysis, Mulder’s experience of people getting close to him is that they always leave.  They’re always taken away from him... I don’t think he wants to listen to Scully because he has become very good at keeping his feelings at arms length when he needs to protect himself from them and get shit done.  

After Scully tells Mulder that Wilczek has confessed to the murders, Mulder refuses to accept that - he is convinced Wilczek is innocent, so he goes for a chat with Deep Throat to find out why the government are getting involved.

#I’mSexyAndIKnowIt  

Deep Throat basically connects all the dots for Mulder #cheating and leaves him convinced that not only is Wilczek innocent, but that it’s his machine that killed Jerry and the previous victim.  So he goes to visit him in jail.

Mulder isn’t interested in examining the fantastical in this scenario - which is this incredibly advanced A.I.  No, he wants to straight up ALT+F4 spam it’s ass.  Then go to the Add/Remove programs section of the Control Panel and ANGRILY CLICK UNINSTALL!

Basically, he wants to destroy it.  Destroy the thing that took something precious away from him.

It’s not Mulder’s usual M.O., is it.

Think about how, as recently as Shadows, Mulder was willing to risk lives in order to examine paranormal phenomenon.  The ghost in that episode had killed many more people than this machine too.  He didn’t bat an eyelid then.  But this is personal, and Mulder isn’t interested in investigating this incredible A.I. - he just wants to make sure it gets what it deserves.

We get another opportunity here for Scully to show how well she has got to know Mulder in such a short time.  She picks up on the fact he isn’t quite being himself.  She can see straight away that something else is going on for him, even if she can’t quite see clearly what it is.

At a guess, I’d say she thinks Mulder is feeling guilty for Jerry’s death.  Which I think is exactly right and probably what drives him to want to destroy the machine rather than try to understand it.  The threat of the government getting hold of it feels like more of an afterthought than a primary motivation, but maybe that’s just me.

Also, it’s not made especially clear whether Mulder shared that he got all of this information from Deep Throat.  So Scully has nothing to go on here.  It’s no wonder she doesn’t believe what he’s saying - he’s giving her very little to work with.  It’s not that she refuses to believe it, it’s that his argument isn’t credible enough, he needs to give her more.  But he doesn’t.

Scully, bless her, is just trying to take care of her friend and partner, but is pushed away.  Mulder isn’t wholly heartless, he can see what’s motivating her resistance is concern for him.  There is a brief moment where Mulder visibly softens hearing her words.

When he says “you’re probably right” I think he is genuinely agreeing with her, it’s not a brush off.  She is probably right that he isn’t being himself, that he is being driven by what happened to Jerry - he recognises that.  But he still can’t stop - he has to do what he has to do.  He understands that while Scully is more concerned for him than the case, he won’t get through to her.  So he gives up.

That’s the disappointing part of the MSR here for me. The way Mulder gives in and stops trying to get Scully on side - that’s not their way, they’re always weaker when they’re apart.  Normally he rises to her challenges and fights tooth and nail to bring her on board... but he just nopes out of this one.

Then, as if to prove that all Scully needed was something a bit more substantial to go on than “the machine did it!” and she would have helped Mulder, she witnesses her home computer being hacked into.

A trace on her phone line reveals the hacker is at the Eurisko building - where Wilczek’s machine is located. 

She arrives to find Mulder about to 007 his way inside, and tells him what happened.  He again asserts that it’s the machine behind it all, but this time she’s open to it - now she has some actual evidence to work with.  

And the team is back!

Isn’t Mulder having way too much fun for a guy about to face a murderous HAL9000-wannabe?  When Scully is there with him, he just enjoys it so much more.   Look at him, within minutes of Scully being back on side he’s quipping and smiling again.  I love the look she gives him, because she notices it too.

This offered hand makes me happier than it should.  I need help, really.  But the touching!

Oh the touching!

It’s so subconscious for Mulder to do that, it’s gotta be a protective thing, I’m sure of it.  When he’s feeling protective of her out comes the guiding hands.  Also when he wants to create a barrier between the two of them and someone else - hello handy hands!  

I mean, not always... I think sometimes it’s just force of habit.  But I do wonder if it’s comforting for him, to feel he’s connected to her - we already know that he finds her presence reassuring.  Maybe I am, again, looking too much into it, but that’s why you read this crap, right?  You want me to look too far into it!

Welp, can do!

Seriously, he’s just enjoying himself, isn’t he.

They eventually come to a locked door that they can’t get past, so Mulder has the bright idea of shoving Scully into the air ducts.  

#FeetTouching!

It goes about as well as you would expect.

Of course there’s a giant fan with exposed blades.

Mulder in the meantime has been let in the door by the far-too-helpful-to-not-be-suspicious buildings super.  But works out too late that he’s actually working for the government.

So what exactly does Mulder think has happened to Scully at this point?  They were both almost electrocuted by the machine trying to open a door earlier - this murderous computer is trying every trick in the book to kill them both, and yet he doesn’t seem too concerned that Scully has disappeared.

Wanker.

Who needs Mulder anyway.  The shit is hitting the fan for Scully at the moment OH HO HO HO... but she is being a complete bad ass, hanging from 1 hand whilst trying to shoot out the fan’s power supply.  

Seriously, Scully is such a fucking BAMF.  It takes Mulder until season 10′s My Struggle II to get a moment where he even comes close to being as cool as Scully.

Which makes it all the more vindicating when - after saving her own ass - she shows up later to save Mulder’s as well.

Fucking yeah you do.

Mulder is like, “I know this is totally inappropriate but I’m so turned on right now.”

Just as an aside... Why didn’t Mulder ask her if she was okay?  Seriously, look at her - she’s covered in cuts and bruises and clearly traumatised.  

She’s been through some shit since he last saw her.  Who gives a fuck about this guy, ask if your partner is okay, Mulder!

I was genuinely disappointed in him for not asking.

Ok, enough of that - time for some good old MSR.  So, Scully has a choice here.  

Believe the government spy who says that this is a sensitive operation that she and Mulder are trespassing in on, that she is betraying her sworn duty as a government agent by interfering, and that she will be held personally responsible for the destruction of the machine if she allows Mulder to use Wilczek’s virus to destroy it.

Or believe in her crackpot, albeit brilliant, partner about the machine being a super intelligent A.I. that can kill for self-preservation, and that the technology is so dangerous that the government should not be trusted with it.

Like there was ever a choice.

Of course she sides with Mulder and holds the government goon at gunpoint while Mulder does what he came to do.

I like this scene, because even though she’s not sure if she fully believes what Mulder is saying about the machine is true, she will always have his back.  No matter what.

Scully really was the MVP of this episode.

Sadly, there’s nothing after this; for me it feels oddly unfinished.  There’s no feeling of resolution to the Jerry stuff earlier in the episode which I thought was a shame, especially since Mulder was definitely driven to this by what happened to Jerry.  It could have done with one more scene with Mulder and Scully - maybe at Jerry’s funeral - acknowledging that he did what he did, at least in part, for Jerry.

But nope, the episode ends with Mulder meeting with Deep Throat who tells Mulder that his actions have led to Wilczek being detained by the government indefinitely as there is now no proof that he was innocent of the murders.

We know that he was definitely not prepared to let the thing live.  But turns out it might not have mattered anyway, the final scene shows the machine briefly flicker back to life from the wreckage.  DUN DUN DUN!

Don’t worry, we never see it again.  Like, ever.

And that, as they say, is that.  The end of another episode! 

Next up... 1x08 - Ice.

It’s a biggie next week - Ice is an interesting episode, the MSR gets tested to it’s limits.  Should be a good one - so see you then, guys!

[littlelovelymemes]

✰ * º ❛   buzzfeed unsolved sentence starters  ( pt. five )   ❜

          (   part of the youtube starter series   )

‘  spoiler alert: it’s probably aliens.  ’ ‘  bad idea.  ’ ‘  i’m considering him a suspect.  ’ ‘  i’m considering him a suspect. her son’s feeding her sedatives. yeah, he was like, ‘go on mother, eat these pills.’  ’ ‘  you just made this go so much more dark than it needed to be.  ’ ‘  well, i just don’t trust this boy.  ’ ‘  yeah, have some pills, smoke this cigarette. goodnight.  ’ ‘  this is a very irresponsible landlady. if your tenant’s apartments smell like smoke, maybe check in on ‘em.  ’ ‘  if your tenant’s apartments smell like smoke, maybe check in on ‘em.  ’ ‘  this is gonna get a little morbid, but who’s to say that a burning body doesn’t small like barbecue?  ’ ‘  no, of course it doesn’t make sense, it’s weird!  ’ ‘  has any skull shrunk at any other point in history?  ’ ‘  now you’re acting like a detective and not like a jackass.  ’ ‘  you don’t think it’s weird that all of her was gone except for a skull, parts of the spine, and a fucking foot that was still completely intact like nothing happened?  ’ ‘  i bet if george clooney was on the tonight show and you set him on fire, one of his feet would burn, and the other one would probably still be planted there on the floor in a very nice shoe. clooney’s flammable.  ’ ‘  clooney is probably flammable, you’re probably right.  ’ ‘  so, a fire that was too hot for firemen did not damage her apartment?  ’ ‘  too much fire here. what do i look like, a fireman?  ’ ‘  soot and a foot. that’s all they got, huh? soot, foot, and a cup skull.  ’ ‘  that’s a bizarro version of a dr. seuss book right there.  ’ ‘  the foot did not catch on fire... one of ‘em anyway. that other one? phew. donezo.  ’ ‘  the first theory... is ridiculous. i’m just gonna say that right now, it’s ridiculous.  ’ ‘  i don’t trust anyone who says, ‘it seen it happen.’ that sounds like a country bumpkin if i’ve ever heard one.  ’ ‘  it seen it! i seen it with my own two eyes!  ’ ‘  i seen it happen while i was playing my banjo!  ’ ‘  yeah-- well, okay... keep going.  ’ ‘  can you imagine just being out, having a good night with your pals, drinkin’? and you know, toward the end of the night when you’re like, ‘yeah, what a fun night this has been,’ can you imagine just exploding? just catching on fire. all your pals would be like, ‘huh?’ not a good night. for him or his friends.  ’ ‘  is it very european to burst into flames?  ’ ‘  put that pen down. you look like a jackass.  ’ ‘  a lot of people explodin’ in europe. something you might wanna look into. this runs deep.  ’ ‘  when i think spontaneous combustion, i think, like, ‘bam!’ like a popped balloon, just shards of person just exploding.  ’ ‘  that asshole in fantastic four? what do you have against him?  ’ ‘  if my clothes are on fire i’ll do a little dance to try and get ‘em out, stop, drop, and roll, what have ya.  ’ ‘  maybe she just passed out or died or something.  ’ ‘  i’ve never had a doctor speak to me like that. i would love it if i showed up and a doctor just started unraveling strange little tales.  ’ ‘  the answer could lie with extraterrestrial origin.  ’ ‘  what if aliens just get drunk and fly around the universe and shrink people’s skulls and turn them into little piles of ash?  ’ ‘  i can see how aliens would be involved in kind of like shenanigans and be hooligans.  ’ ‘  i don’t even smoke, but i would love to have one last cig before i go.  ’ ‘  this is a weird case! this is just sinking in! what are we doing here?!  ’ ‘  what if we’re just lab rats to these aliens?  ’ ‘  they’re gonna shrink her into a little tiny titty.  ’ ‘  no... no. what’s the matter with you?  ’ ‘  if you used voodoo for evil, you would kill me!? you would murder me?!  ’ ‘  it’s a hypothetical, i wasn’t thinking of doing that.  ’ ‘  sometimes we argue, but i don’t want to murder you.  ’ ‘  i never said i wanted to murder you!  ’ ‘  you wanna kill me!  ’ ‘  this is a hypothetical situation!  ’ ‘  alright, yeah, no. continue to tell me about it now that i know you want me dead.  ’ ‘  i think you might intellectualize too much.  ’ ‘  so this is kind of a night out... with spirits.  ’ ‘  wha-- you look so scared already.  ’ ‘  i do find that more compelling than any of the other dumb ‘evidence’ you’ve dug up.  ’ ‘  any time i can get you to do that shrug, it means i make a great point. it’s a great point. it makes me heart warm.  ’ ‘  i’m gonna buy you one of those haunted dolls for christmas.  ’ ‘  put away your fear and just focus on what you feel.  ’ ‘  i’m bad at feeling. i really wanna believe in something outside the norms of, you know, physics.  ’ ‘  i took an improv comedy class once because... well, i’m a white guy.  ’ ‘  so, the takeaway here is... every little sound is a ghost?  ’ ‘  the takeaway here is that sounds that don’t belong in that environment may or may not be ghosts.  ’ ‘  my jacket just moved in a way that it felt like somebody touched me on the shoulder and i think if you had felt it, you would scream.  ’ ‘  wait, what? that was never part of the bargain.  ’ ‘  a lot of times i just do these because i know you’ll hate it.  ’ ‘  i feel like i’m gonna fucking cry.  ’ ‘  i don’t wanna talk about it. i wanna leave.  ’ ‘  i think you need to learn how to shut the hell up.  ’ ‘  i think you need to learn how to shut the fuck up... i stepped it up with the bigger curse word there.  ’ ‘  i’m not even trying to be a jerk about this, i’m just getting tired of you asking me if i get scared about things i don’t believe in.  ’ ‘  it’s like asking me if i’m concerned that, when i fall asleep, the moon turns around and winks at me with a big, evil face and has a boner or something.   ’ ‘  tell me what’s more probable: the moon having a boner or a ghost being real.  ’ ‘  the dark side of the moon just has a giant, dusty boner. that’s about as real as ghosts.  ’ ‘  now we’re heading into the belly of the beast.  ’ ‘  i’m excited. this is maybe he only time i believe in what you’re talking about.   ’ ‘  bigfoot’s meat and bone.  ’ ‘  no, that’s dumb. it’s not supernatural, it’s natural.  ’ ‘  this is the heaviest sandwich i’ve ever embraced.  ’ ‘  my organ’s are starting to shut down. i’ll be dead in five minutes. i think i might need to go to the hospital.  ’ ‘  could you imagine being the guy who coined the phrase ‘bigfoot’?  ’ ‘  ain’t that like a couple of funny brothers... destroying their father’s legacy.  ’ ‘  don’t make bigfoot believe in your little ghostly energies bigfoot is meat and bone.  ’ ‘  i don’t think that’s how bigfoot rolls.  ’ ‘  the vest is gonna make me look more festive... and i won’t get shot, so there’s that. that’s an added bonus. having fun getting shot. i’m not gonna help you.  ’ ‘  having fun getting shot. i’m not gonna help you.  ’ ‘  you honestly think we’re going to encounter a sasquatch, the sasquatch is going to attack you and your life is going to be saved because you’re wearing a helmet? it’s gonna bring a rock down upon your head, we’re gonna get it on film, and we’re gonna say, ‘thank god you had your helmet on your head.’  ’ ‘  i think we’re ready to rock and roll, man.  ’ ‘  you look like an idiot.  ’ ‘  if i see people taller than me i get concerned about them because i think they’re gonna die young.  ’ ‘  i wasn’t fat-shaming bigfoot. i was just mentioning that this is a creature of enormous strength.  ’ ‘  his name is cedric. he struck me as a cedric when i first saw him after i destroyed his apartment.  ’ ‘  well, if it’s any consolation, you look like an idiot.  ’ ‘  i think it’s time for a little beer break.  ’ ‘  if a bigfoot actually walked out right now, this would be the greatest thing ever captured on camera, if we lured out a bigfoot with a beer.  ’ ‘  they said that... i agree, but they meant it more, so hit them!  ’ ‘  nah. this guys inhaling too many... cat... shit... fumes.  ’ ‘  yeah, this is all jolly right now, but can you imagine what this is gonna be like at night?  ’ ‘  it is a very old piece of footage, but so is... die hard. still good.  ’ ‘  i’m saying just ‘cause something’s good doesn’t mean it’s bad, or--  ’ ‘  that’s a completely different train of thought. what the fuck is going on here?  ’ ‘  (wheezing and laughing) it’s been a long day.  ’ ‘  now you look like a man i would never talk to under any circumstance.  ’ ‘  don’t judge a book by it’s cover? it’s a hell of a cover. this place is beautiful!  ’ ‘  i don’t wanna kill the vibe, but we could just turn the lights on, it’s a hotel.  ’ ‘  holy shit! it’s a jacuzzi tub!  ’ ‘  this is the best place we’ve ever ghostbusted.  ’ ‘  like a ghost sitcom? sign me up!  ’ ‘  well, he can go to hell.  ’ ‘  oof. i don’t even wanna talk about that evening.  ’ ‘  i stole this off the woman who died in the titanic!  ’ ‘  ...shadows do tend to follow you, though. that’s sort of how they work.  ’ ‘  you gotta fuckin’ calm down, man!  ’ ‘  ghost 101. week one, knock books off shelf. week two, uhh, hold a candlestick in the middle of a hallway. week three... sheets.  ’ ‘  this is one of the best days of my life.  ’ ‘  i freaked out because i thought something flew in front of me, but come to think of it, it could’ve been the reflection of my light turning off.  ’ ‘  you know, a ghost has probably whispered point blank in your ear, but you’ve probably never heard it because you were too busy going, ‘ugh ugh okay, oh, what did i do? oh, what did i do? i always get myself into these things ooo.’  ’ ‘  are we doing more of this or can i use the jacuzzi hot tub that we’ve been blessed with?  ’ ‘  are we gonna spend the night here and not use the jacuzzi?  ’ ‘  the jacuzzi jets don’t work... we’re just two guys sitting in a tub.  ’ ‘  yeah... it’s daft punk. the dj’s daft punk came into our suite at night and gave me a little diddy, that’s what happened.  ’ ‘  it’s not haunted. i know it’s not haunted. it’s not haunted.  ’ ‘  you’re like a stupid string puppet that i can just bring along with me and i can pull it when i wanna hear something dumb.  ’ ‘  no-- they’re. no. no. nope.   ’ ‘  the ball also stopped at the ‘i love pot’ graffiti, so maybe this ghost just loves to blaze it.  ’ ‘  wha-- what are ya doin’?  ’ ‘  look it up. it’s a thing on the internet.  ’ ‘  who are you pointing to?  ’ ‘  i bet i could squeeze an apple till it exploded.  ’ ‘  you hear that in the distance? it’s the excuse train coming.  ’ ‘  great. that’ll be good. i’m gonna snap that.  ’

[momscookingthebooks]

Chapter Reveal

Title: Payback

Series: Vigilante Justice #1

Author: Kristin Harte

Publication Date: January 25, 2018

#ChapterReveal #Payback #NewRelease #VigilanteJustice #KristinHarte 

Add to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36549869-payback

Synopsis:

In Justice, Colorado, the Kennards run everything, including the only big business in the area. Their sawmill employs most of the town, and the Kennard brothers live up to a long family history of keeping their neighbors and coworkers safe—until a motorcycle club comes to town and starts causing trouble. Big trouble. The kind that ends in funerals. The kind no law enforcement can help them with.  He carries the burden of protecting an entire town Being the oldest Kennard brother, I’ve got a centuries-old promise to uphold—run the family business to give the townspeople jobs and the sort of security they can only find in Justice. When a motorcycle club blows that plan apart, I’ll do anything to make them aware that they picked the wrong town to target. As a former Green Beret, I know just how to sabotage an enemy. The only weakness in my armor is my obsession with a five-foot-nothing blonde who unknowingly holds my heart in her hands. My attraction to her could cost me my life, but I’d sacrifice it all to save hers.  She owes a debt that could cost her life I’ve spent three years hiding out in Justice and paying off a debt to the Soul Suckers, one they’ve decided to collect whether I’m ready to pay or not. When danger lands on my doorstep, one man jumps in to help. Alder Kennard—former Special Forces soldier and current object of all my fantasies. But the Soul Suckers won’t let a debt go unpaid, and with the price on my head rising every day, it’s only a matter of time until they come back for me. Alder would put his life on the line to save mine, which is something I simply can’t afford.  Everyone has a debt to pay, and the only currency I have left is my body. So when the time comes, I’ll trade my life for his.

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Chapter 1

“We’ve got a problem, boss.”

If I hadn’t already been in a foul mood, those words would have gotten me there.

“What is it now?”

“Motorcycle gang up on Widow’s Ridge.” Camden Reese—born and bred in Justice, friend of my youngest brothers, and former Marine sergeant—launched into a speech about his team running into some bikers up by the Hansen property. We’d recently signed a contract with Miss Hansen to harvest eighty acres of dead Ponderosa pine on that hill, so anything getting in our way was definitely a problem. A big one.

As Camden laid out the events of the altercation, I checked over the satellite images of the area on my desk, making notes and marking locations. A star on the house to the west where the elderly Miss Hansen still lived, another to the east on the patch of earth where a trailer sat, all alone. The only two residences up that long, rough stretch of road leading to a drop-off on the far west side.

That rocky piece of land sat just outside the city limits, so things like road maintenance were all but forgotten unless the two residents brought them to my attention. No biker would intentionally ride up such a rutted, gravel road without a reason—too hard on their bike and their face if they were trailing someone else.

“He tried to call out Finn, but I squashed that shit,” Camden said, securing every bit of my attention for the moment. Finn—my second youngest brother, one of a set of twins, and the only Kennard ever to spend time in prison. He was also a recovering addict, and I had vowed to my dad that I’d keep him in recovery and not let him backslide. That had been ten years ago, and I still worried about keeping that vow every fucking day.

“What the fuck was Finn doing on a job?” My brother didn’t work for me except for the occasional project, and I knew for a fact he hadn’t been assigned to the Hansen job.

“He’d driven with me to check in on Miss Hansen. We never made it out there, though, because we ran into the bikers on the way up. One guy said some shit about Finn’s drug days, how they missed him over at the strip club in Rock Falls.”

Jesus. “You get a name?”

“Patch on his vest said Spark.”

“Spark.” I sat back, balancing my chair on two legs. “As in plug?”

Camden blinked, a cocky smile breaking across his face. “Yeah, like plug. I didn’t see the other guy’s name.”

“So Spark knows Finn from what…ten, twelve years ago? He look familiar to you?”

Cam shook his head. “Never seen him in town.”

That caught my attention. Justice was a small town planted squarely between two slightly larger towns, all in the middle of fucking nowhere. People didn’t happen into Justice—they came here for a reason.

And if that reason was named Finn Kennard, Spark and his friend needed to be dealt with and quick. “How’d my brother handle the run-in?”

“Finn ignored the bullshit from Spark. I wasn’t as restrained.”

Not surprising. Cam always did have a bit of a temper. “If the sheriff gets called again on you—”

Camden waved me off. “I knocked his legs out from under him and put him on the ground.

Didn’t even leave a mark, I don’t think. But I made my point.”

“And what point was that?” Not that I needed to ask.

“That Kennard Mills would be harvesting the lumber on that side of the hill, and their club had better not have any business up there. They drove off after Spark picked himself up out of the dirt, the other guy saying something about bigger fish.” Camden frowned. “I recognized the other guy.”

“Local?” I couldn’t think of anyone in Justice who rode with an MC, but I might have missed someone. Three hundred plus people were a lot to keep track of.

“No. He came into the truck stop one night when Leah and I were there for dinner.” He blew out a breath and shifted his weight. An almost unconscious gesture, but one that stood out. Normally almost confident to a fault, Cam suddenly seemed nervous, which meant I wouldn’t like what he had to say.

“Yeah?” I prodded, wondering how a night out with his wife would piss me off.

“Leah noticed something was up when she went to the restroom and came to get me. The asshole had Shye cornered in a back hallway and wasn’t letting her pass.”

The snap of the pencil I’d been holding breaking in two might as well have been a gunshot. “And you let him walk away?”

“I had Leah and Shye looking on. I had to.”

Picturing perfect little Shye—at least ten years my junior and so damn sweet, every one of her smiles would give you a toothache—watching as I kicked the shit of some asshole was about as unappealing as a thought could get. I probably would’ve wanted to do the same as Camden and let the guy walk with a warning if I’d been there. I wouldn’t have, but I’d have wanted to.

Because I wanted her, and the idea of Shye being scared of me made my gut sink like a rock. I needed to stop thinking about Shye Anderson. An impossibility as of late, which directly correlated to why my mood had been so foul all day.

I sighed, rubbing my forehead and sitting deeper into my chair, bringing all four legs back to the floor. “All right. So they rode off after you knocked Spark to the ground. Any indication they’d keep hassling you or come back for Finn?”

He shrugged. “Not really, though you never know with these types of guys.”

Lawless, clan-like, arrogant. Yeah. You never knew a damn thing with them. “Did you recognize the club logo?”

“Definitely the Soul Suckers.”

Of course. I’d heard they’d added a clubhouse not too far over the county line to the west. I probably wouldn’t have thought twice if I’d seen their bikes on the highway through town or heading toward the new restaurant on Main Street. I would now, though.

“Might be time to set the club straight on what they can and can’t do as they ride through Justice. I’ll talk to Deacon, see if he knows anyone. Head back to the ridge, and get the Hansen site plot worked out so we can start cruising and marking trees. This might be our last big harvest before the rains come, and I want to take advantage of the summer weather while we have it.”

“We’ll get it done.”

“Good. And if you see Bishop on the mill floor, have him call me.”

Camden nodded, then left without another word, leaving me to stew over this new mess.

Fucking messes all over the place lately, it seemed.  

I looked over my satellite images again, tracing roads and logging paths I’d known my whole life. Acres of Widow’s Ridge pine forest stared back at me, a mottled brown and green landscape. Half the trees stood dead or dying, a sign of the mountain beetle infestation that had nearly bankrupted my late father and destroyed Kennard Mills. But the bug that had nearly killed us had instead left us flush with jobs and cash. The droughts hadn’t stopped this mill, the industry collapse hadn’t either, and the fucking plague of beetles killing the forests around us had actually been a boon instead of a death knell. Everyone in Justice had enjoyed the bonuses beating our sales plans every month brought, and no fucking bikers would make us end that streak. I had a town to employ.

But Justice, Colorado was more than a town to me—it was my responsibility.

The place my ancestors had set down roots. Where they tended to each and every resident over the years, giving families time to grow good, strong roots. Kennard men had run Justice like a homestead for nearly two centuries with the mill as the central business fueling everything else, and I’d live up to the legacy set before me as the oldest living Kennard. That meant making sure people had jobs, food, shelter, and that they felt safe.

Another thing bikers wouldn’t be taking away from us, even though it seemed as if they were trying just that.

An annoying, robotic song interrupted my thoughts. The words “Bishop Kennard”—name of my closest brother who also happened to be my VP of sales and marketing—flashed on the screen of my phone as it played that stupid song again. I swiped to answer and brought the device to my ear.

“Bishop.”

“Camden said you wanted me,” he said, not bothering with a greeting.

“We’ve got trouble on Widow’s Ridge.”

“I heard. Finn all right?” Because, as the second oldest Kennard brother, our family would be the first thing on Bishop’s mind. As it should be.

“Camden thinks so. Let’s run by the bar tonight and be sure, though. And I’ll need you to check in on Miss Hansen—make sure she’s okay out there.”

“Sounds good. I’ll call as soon as we hang up. Anything else?”

“Sell some fucking lumber, Bishop.”

“On it, boss. I’ll be ready to go at six.”

I tossed the phone back onto my desk, the maps snagging my attention again.

One spot in particular, actually, and not the one belonging to Miss Hansen. I ran a finger over the east side of the hill, circling the little trailer on a barren, flat piece of rock. Just outside the city limits, it technically sat beyond my protective net, but Shye Anderson lived in that trailer. New girl in town at only three years since she moved to the area, waitress at the truck stop over in Rock Falls, and the only woman I’d ever met who could drive me mad with frustration and desire all at once.

I’d been ultra-aware of Shye since I first met her. Slightly obsessed, really. The girl captivated me; stole all my attention with her sweet little smile and never let me go. It didn’t hurt that she looked like a damn angel—long, blond hair and big, dark eyes, a tiny little body that I wanted to get my hands on more than anything else. Sweet as honey, that one, but she lived up to her name. She blushed and stuttered around me, avoided my eyes when I tried to catch her gaze. If I pushed too much, she ran, so I held back. Made myself available but waited for her to come to me.

Which is how I ended up eating at the truck stop five nights a week—all on Shye’s shifts. I’d had to up my workouts to keep from getting soft on all the grease and baked goods, but seeing that smile every night was worth it. The coffee—man, that was a harder pill to swallow. How a restaurant could have such bad coffee—especially one based out of a truck stop—was beyond me. I drank cup after cup of the foul brew so she’d come to my table more often to pour me refills. Without the coffee, I didn’t get much time with Shye, so I suffered.

And when I worked? I sent my guys in there. Shye had no family in Justice, so I made sure everyone understood they were to treat her as they would a Kennard. Making my men see her as mine kept them watchful around her. Hell, I paid Bishop to eat his lunches there so he could keep an eye on her, and everyone on my team headed that way at least once a day if I had to go out of town. They mocked me relentlessly for chasing her around like a damned puppy, but I didn’t give a shit. I needed to know she was happy and safe. That she had everything she needed…even if she wasn’t ready to willingly take things from me yet. We’d get there. Three years I’d waited for her to come around, and she would. Eventually. I just had to figure out the right plan.

As I pondered honey-blond hair, sugary smiles, and how many times I could use the excuse of working on the ridge to stop and see her at her place, my phone rang again—Camden, this time.  

I swiped to answer and hit the button for speakerphone. “If you tell me we have another problem, I’m going to toss a grenade in your truck.”

“So I shouldn’t tell you we’ve got a fire on the mountain?”

Motherfucker. The trouble with harvesting the blue-stained wood left behind by the mountain beetle infestation was the trees needed to cure standing for a number of years. But dead trees meant dry trees, and with the droughts of the past few years and the mild winters we’d had, that meant trouble. Big, dry, tinder-type trouble. A single lightning bolt could ignite an inferno, while a forest fire could destroy the whole damn town.

And apparently, we had one to deal with.

“Where?” I grabbed my keys and pressed the mill-floor alarm to get the team’s attention.

“Eastern slope. Just past the Hansen property.”

My steps stumbled, then sped. “That’s by Shye’s place.”

An engine roared in the background. “I’m already on my way there. Two minutes out.”

She could be hurt in two minutes. Dead. Jesus fuck, I was too far away. “Drive faster.”

I hung up and stormed down onto the mill floor. My team stood ready, looking at me expectantly, ready to fight the fires we knew could ruin everything we’d all built here.

“Fire just east of the Hansen site. Let’s get two water trucks up the eastern side of the ridge and send one up to the west side to be safe.” I met the eyes of Gage Shepherd, former Navy SEAL like Bishop and current heavy machinery engineer of Kennard Mills. “It’s close to Shye’s place.”

Without another word, Gage began issuing orders to the team. He understood the severity of the situation from every angle—the loss of our product, the potential for destruction in the town, and the possibility that the woman I had my eye on could be in danger. He’d get shit done for me.

As Gage loaded the water trucks with oxygen tanks and medical equipment—something that made my gut churn—his dog Rex trotted after him, looking as if he was headed for a joyride instead of into a fire. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d been on site at a fire, though. Gage never went anywhere without Rex.

While Gage made sure the team knew where to go and what to do, I raced to my truck. My heart pounded as I started the engine and peeled out of my spot, heading for the ridge where smoke was beginning to turn the sky black above the tree line. Fuck, if Shye was up there, if she was hurt—

I didn’t get to finish my thought because my phone rang right as I turned onto the highway heading toward the mountain. Camden again.

“Tell me good news.”

“She’s not here,” Camden said, sounding slightly out of breath. “It’s her trailer on fire, though.”

“The water trucks are on the way.”

“Don’t think they’ll do any good for her, to be honest, but we need them for the tree line. It’s so dry up here, a single spark could set the whole mountain on fire.”

Confirming my earlier thoughts. Fuck. I yanked the wheel sideways, making a sharp turn onto the road that would take me up to Shye’s place, looking over all the dead, brown pine on the hillside as I flew over the rutted, gravelly road. “Gage had the team rolling out right behind me. I’m four minutes out, though.”

“Want me to call the fire department in Rock Falls?”

Wouldn’t do any good at that point, which was why Kennard Mills had as many water hauling trucks as we did. “No use, though you’d better call the sheriff.”

“That useless piece of shit? What for?”

Useless wasn’t the term I’d use—corrupt sounded better for the county sheriff we were forced to deal with. I didn’t have time to correct Camden, though. “He’ll throw a tantrum if he’s not informed. Knowing him, he won’t come out to investigate anyway. Just make the call.”

“Yeah, got it…hang on.” Voices yelled in the background, and the sound of Camden moving fast created static on the line.

“Cam?”

“We’ve got a problem.”

That phrase spoken about my girl’s place made me want to growl my frustration to the universe. “What fucking problem?”

“There are motorcycle tracks in the dirt around her property. Lots of them.”

Rage unlike anything I’d felt exploded in my chest. “Call the sheriff and put the word out—anyone sees a fucking Soul Sucker in Justice, I want to know about it.”

I hung up and threw my phone across the bench seat before taking the switchback turn way faster than I should have. Not that the worry burning in my gut had anything to do with me—Shye owned that ache.

Shye may not have known it, but she was mine. I’d do whatever it took to protect her.

And if this fucking motorcycle club had threatened my girl?

I’d gut them and leave their bodies for the predators.

About the Author:

Kristin Harte started off as a chemistry major in college but somehow ended up writing romances featuring ex-military heroes and the women who knock them to their knees…literally and figuratively. She likes drinking in the shade, snuggling under a warm blanket on a cold evening, and researching how to blow things up. Her children know nothing of what she writes, and her husband just hopes he’s not at their Chicago-ish home the day the government shows up to confront Kristin about her Google search history. When not writing good men doing bad things, Kristin can be found writing paranormal romance as Ellis Leigh or co-writing naughty novellas as London Hale.

Author Links:

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