#I had no idea this game existed till recently or the fact it had so much stuff in it

[kastukj]

I hate micro transactions and permanently limited content I hate micro transactions and permanently limited content I HATE MICRO TRANSACTIONS AND PERMANENTLY LIMITED CONTENT

[eziojensenthe3rd]

Midnight Gaming: 50 Reasons Why

So last night I played UFO 50 past midnight....way...way past midnight, checked socials later to find... a couple of things, twitter is looking to change how blocking works so that users you blocked can still see your posts and tumblr ceo and carhammer explosion victim matt mullenweg is being sued for slander by wp engine for refferring to them as a cancer to wordpress.

So I guess i'll cover the news first. Muskrat is looking to change how blocking works so that its less effective at what it does ie blocking people. In a way its like banning someone from your store for being a nuisance, with the potential change coming to twitter essentially allowing those same people to legally loiter outside your shop, staring in through the window. Making your account private will likely be the only way to maintain privacy until that itself gets changed so we'll see how this develops. Verge article below.

Our next bit of news comes from tumblr ceo matt mullenweg, owner of the queerist site on the net, when its not erasing transfolk for merely existing. At some point matt, being the genius he is, decided to go on a tangent and described wp engine as a cancer to wordpress, despite the fact that wp engine have actually given wordpress special preferential treatment before. As a result wp engine are now suing him for slander with their letter addressing this lawsuit. Link here

Honestly? Good for them, hope they win.

So now we go to the game of the evening

..... or games. Yes UFO 50. Now, you've ever heard of Action 52? If you did, was it from the AVGN episode? Cause thats where I first heard of that project. The idea of selling a nes cartridge for over 100 bucks with the promise of 52 games sounds good on paper but paper is flimsy and can be torn and Action 52.... was working on wet paper which doesnt hold up at all. Its lauded as a failure for its game either being broken, bad, derivative or all 3 at once. So when mossmouth, the spelunky devs decided to recreate that idea with the aim of every game being "good". Its certanly an ambitious if not foolhardy idea.

I mean, good is subjective especially to the person making the game. What may be considered good for one person maybe considered crap for someone else. Of course im just being pedantic. In the end you're getting 50 games for barely a third of a full price game. So for this Midnight Gaming post, I thought why not play a bit of all 50 games for this edition? Well, this was a terrible idea since it took till 3:30 in the morning to play a bit of each game and write down notes for them. This isnt really a review, more a first impressions look so i'll post my thoughts from last night (and in brackets i'll write some recent thoughts today).

Ready? Here we go!

Barbuta: not really ideal my kind of platformer (A lot of Barbutas platforming is based on timing and precision across various rooms with a limit of 6 lives. Honestly my thoughts onnthis would be better if I spent more time on it)

Bug hunter: tough to wrap my head around but was kinda neat puzzler. (It took a few goes to realise I can shoot the cubes to create a blast that van destroy bugs and that buying a move replaced a preexisting move and it wasnt just random. Deevolve is very good btw)

Ninpek: why can i spawn right on an enemy after i die, only to die again? (This was a run an gun and there were a few times I spawned onna enemy and died. Again if I had spent more time)

Paint chase: like pole position meets splatoon. New mechanics get added overtime. (It seems that dealing with the red rollers was a necessity since they can easily paint over your blue, especially the grenade ones. I like this one)

Magic garden: like snake but you need to drop off blobs on stars. I ran into a wall too many times. (This took a few goes to understand how it works, its neat as an arcade kinda title)

Mortol: platformer with limited lives, which you sacrifice for platformer, bomb or a block. Grabbing lives a must since lives dont get replinished between levels.

(Funny to see lives you do arrow ritual on get stuck headfirst into a wall)

Velgress: think an upward version of downwell. (Every platform your on crumbles in some way so you are pressured to keep moving but the damn bats can easily buml into you)

Planet zoldath: sort of a zeldalike? You go around an overworld and collect items. You have two slots for equipment, its also a random world so yeah... (you would need to juggle your two equips depending on what you need, also why does one sentient race can speak english but the other needs a translator?)

Attactics: units move per turn forward in a lane. Get your units to the enemy castle to damage them. (You can potentially get yourself stuck in a death spiral and fail if you mess up and cant recover)

Devilition: place mons to create a chain reaction to kill devils but spare villagers. Cant see the blast area of mons once placed so screw you if you forget. (UFO50 has a terminal where you can input codes and one of them is a cheat that fixes the issue with devilition.... why is it a cheat?)

Kick club: very bubble bubble vibes. Kick a soccer ball at sports related items.

(No joke, very bubble bobble vibes)

Avianos: grand strategy birb game. Not really a thing for me but cool concept with worshipping a different ancestor each turn granting different moves. (Not great with grand strategy but this is a cool concept)

Mooncat:very odd controls for a platformer. Still, was fun to time bounces on enemies. (This lil bouncy jelly bean is kinda fun to play once yoj figure the controls out)

Bushido ball: pong but with japanese characters, with some special moves. Yeah this is kinda fun. (Shooting a projectile at the ball does help get it past the guy at times... at times)

Block koala: puzzle game moving blocks. Not my cup of tea honest (pretty sure this type of game was played before on like skygames or playjam?)

Camouflage: puzzle game where you need to camo to sneak past predators and make to the end, collecting extras along the way. Yeahs its neat. (Sun and cloud really just said "your weak as fuck, your gonna die, heres a power to hide like a wee bitch)

Campanella: fly a ufo through levels, slashing some objects along the way. (Dont know where this coffee I was supposed to find along the way where?)

Golfaria: golf rpg like golf story? Wasnt sure where to go, ended up running out of strokes too often.. ehhhh (how do you reset your strokes? I got to one hole but I was still low, the heck was I supposed to go?)

The big bell race: racing version of that saucer game. (Attacking other racers seems a bit iffy and not very effective? Unless you have a powerup to help)

Warptank: control a wall attached tank where you can warp to an opposite wall.

(Yeah this fucks, not sure what else to say)

Waldorfs journey: hop across islands as a walrus, try to reach the end. (The one game I actually beat in this collection)

Porgy: a wee metroid kinda game witha submarine. Submarine a cutey. (Yeah grabbing any extra fuel tank is a mjst of longevity. Sub is a cutey)

Onion delivery: drive a car, reach destinations, dont drive into cars. Kinda not great to steer though. (Dunno seems a bit iffy, if I spent more time....)

Caramel caramel: space shooter where you can snapshot enemies and the enviroment like a photo. Lotta food, why start with 0 lives? (Like seriously why? It seems a bit odd to start on your last life)

Party house: host a party and depend on rng. Do not add mr popular he is an ass who can overflow and cause a day lost.

(Also getting dancers and, cash raising guests and the comedian is important to get that alien for the stars. Theres other scenarios to play through too)

Hotfoot: dodgeball but you control 2 players switching a button, which is also how you pick and throw items. Not really digging it tbh. (Seems a bit iffy to manage both chars with the same button as the pick up and throw. You need to keep an eye on the ring under your player)

Divers: 3 lizard bros swim the depths in an rpg. Gotta love that this is one those rpgs where if you choose all 3 bros to attack one enemie and it dies, the remaining turns are wasted. (Again, more time was needed on this)

Rail heist: sort of a tatics game where you need to move through, plan out how to take out lawmen with out getting shot. (Can get a bit frantic with managing the situation along with the time.

Vainger: sort of a metroid kinda game with a gravity mechanic. Can be a bit tricky to manage but is promising. (Again, more time needed)

Rock on island: caveman tower defense game. This was a lot of fun since you can help throw projectiles at dinos. (The dinos were "cursed with intelligence", hence why they try to kick humans out, just seems funny like, THEY KNEW.)

Pingolf: golf game but with pinball inspirations and graphics. Thats cool as hell, i mean cmon. Also you can dunk the ball down for some control. (this is something you could get "real" good at it with enough practice)

Mortol 2: sequel to mortol, you have a limit of 100 and you can choose different classes, thing is you may not always know what you so at times it may feel like you end up picking the wrong class you need and wasting a life. (Again, more time would've improved my feelings on this)

Fist hell: river city ransom but with zombies. I am not a beat em up kinda guy so I didnt get very far. (Kinda neat to throw a zombie head at another)

Overbold: smash tv rougelike where you can use money to buy upgrades and can raise the stakes for a bigger payout but deal with more enemies. Yeah its alright.

(Betting your money against your own evaluation of your skill, very interesting)

Campanella 2: sequel to the ufo game, here you explore a station and can leave your saucer to walk around or enter caves for a section to get an upgrade. Thing is you are very vulnerable and can die quick when out of your saucer unless you enter a cave, then you need to not take your time or an invincible skull enemy follows you.

(Why can you die from one hit outside the saucer but in the caverns? You have a proper health bar??)

Hyper contender: fighter where you need you get enough rings to win. Block and dodge while hitting your opponent to steal their rings. This would be fun with friends.

(Fuck that guy with the hook claw, annoying ass)

Valbrace: dungeon crawler where combat is real time action. You move, block and attack. Thats freaking cool as hell. Kinda rushing to get all this done over the limit but cool game. (Very cool game)

Rakshasa: run and gun contralike to fight some demons. Each time you die you need to avoid enemies while in spirit form and collect items to live again. Games where you can kill yourself right at the start if you're impatient. Not a fan. (Really was feeling the lateness here)

Star waspir: shootem up, you can pick one of three ships. Thing is if you want powerups you need to get three of the same letters to get it, get one thats different, you only get points and not the powerup. Also they be too close to enemies and their projectiles, making it suicide to get. Nah, i hate wasps and i kinda hate this a bit too. (Kinda frustrating, wasnt a fan)

Grimstone: final fantasy but in the wild west. Yeah you pick 4 characters from the start to be in your posse and roam the world gaining xp in random battles. Thats pretty neat. (I could spend a lot more time on this if I could)

Lords of diskonia: strategy where your troops are disks you need to launch into enemy disks to damage them, kinda like snooker in a way. Managed to win the first battle and sent them to running to base but then they got some reserves and had more gold so they could build up a strong retaliation. I did not have enough units or gold to hire more to survive the rematch. Yeah thats... thats a great feeling to have for your game.... (why do I feel a bit punished for winning a battle? I didnt get gold or units for winning or for falling back to base to recoup? Also I only get to move one space but the enemy moves 2 spaces?)

Night manor: point and click horror game, yeah this is genuinly kinda scary, atmosphere does help build tensions and trying to navigate the manor while running from the killer is a thrill. (Poor Baxter :[ )

Elfazars hats: play as animals from magicians hat. Run and gun sort of stuff but you do have a dodge move which I like a lot. (It has the same power up thing as waspir but now as irritating or unfair)

Pilot quest: im guessing this is the idle game that folks were talking about. I didnt put much time in it cause in a rush but yeah, its an idle game. (Its an idle game, it plays itself... start here I suppose)

Mini and maxi: platformer where you can grow and shrink to explore. You also pick up objects to throw at enemies kinda like super mario bros 2. (Like how you can skip some platforming if you grow, go to where you want and shrink on it to go there)

Combatants: ant strategy game, yeah i dont know how i can play this well. Kinda reminds me of simant. (Needed to spend more time on to understand it better)

Quibble race: you bet on worms to race, you can buy certain items to cripple or protect your bet. Yeah thats the game. (Money management in dirty bookkeeping... ok)

Seaside drive: shooter where you drive a car left and right to avoid bullets and shoot either vertical or horizontal. Shot power depends on your speed so you need to keep moving. (This was pretty fun to play, not gonna lie it was fun)

Campanella 3: its the saucer again but now its a space shooter with a sort of attempt at 3d, ok yeah thats, a bit of a depature but kinda cool. (Its sort of a neat lil game... more time)

Cyber owls: the last game which I guess is meant to be the cheetamen of this collection. Each mission is a different gameplay style it seems and if you fail one you have to select one of your remaining characters to go free them. Why in the hong kong level is it that when you can only shoot forward, enemies you kill can actually one shot you with their corpse if you dont avoid them. Thats fucking stupid, thats is really fucking stupid why did they feel that was a good idea, what the fuck were theg thinking? Its way too fucking late. Goddamn it. Its 3:30 in the morning. Fuck this was stupid. (I was real tired and went to sleep right after, Im still tired as I write and I need to go pick potatoes soon...*sigh*)

This post was probably, like Action 52, an ambitious idea that sounded good on paper but in practice was awful to go through. At the very least for what its worth, UFO 50 is definatly worth your money because even if some games arent great, you'll find some games that are fun to play and again, 50 games for a third of the price for one full price release, is a hard thing to beat.

Thank you reading Midnight Gaming. I am gonna skip tomorrows post to try and recuperate from this post. Feel free to leave feedback or game suggestions. Anons are currently on.

Go to bed folks.

[mr-bugs]

My mind is a curse I cannot escape

warnings: generally dark themes, this is a collection of my recent thoughts about life and are not organized (i think) so heavy themes ahead proceed with caution stay safe and uhh yeah!

oh and its like 900+ words so uhhh strap in ig idk

I’m tired.

And yet..

Sleep evades me like the plague.

I’m tired in a different sense.

Tired of just being a pawn in her game to win against him.

I’ve gotten used to it at this point.

If I hadn’t I would’ve died along the way.

Every little fight..

Every little disagreement.

How I’ve grown to hate the idea of family.

The world has shown me examples of happy, accepting families.

Why must I be taunted like this?

It’s like holding a treat in front of a dog but it’s tied to a stick on its back so that it will forever be out of reach.

The universe owes me such things.

It’s shameful to say I’m jealous of the love shared by those families but I am only mortal.

I was denied such advantages, of course I would be jealous.

Jealous of the fact I have to live with the emotional baggage they lack.

The concept of family has been ruined for me.

And I think I’m okay with that.

Afterall, it’s not exactly my fault, is it?

That they argue.

That they lie.

That they cheat.

It’s not my fault they are like this.

Or their parents, or their parents’ parents, and so on and so forth.

Even then I feel useless for not being able to do anything.

The world around me is a blurry haze and yet I can’t seem to care less.

Days just faze by like water slipping through your fingers.

I try to grasp at the vague silhouettes and yet nothing comes from it.

Vague promises of greatness and love.

But I do not feel such things.

My mind is a constant state of numbness.

I am my own curse that I cannot escape from.

I was never blessed with such things.

Maybe if I had been I wouldn’t be such a cold monster.

A creature doomed to never be loved.

To never feel the kindness that heals the heart.

I don’t like this game the universe is playing.

I want to be loved, I want to feel as if I matter.

Death seems to bring that feeling.

When you’re dead people will talk about how much you mattered but when you’re alive nobody listens to your pleads for help.

It’s an amusing contradiction, isn’t it.

How the human mind amuses me.

I don’t exactly want to die but the idea of eternal rest doesn’t bother me as much as it should.

I’ve accepted the fact I will die one day, I suppose.

My flesh shall rot away and I will be nothing but bones.

Then my bones will be grinded down and to dust I shall return.

My existence is a poorly written drama show and I am a side character in it.

I am watching my life from the perspective of a viewer live as I act it.

A player in a game where I am the protagonist.

A side character of my own story.

A pawn in my own game.

Perhaps I’ve come to terms with that.

Maybe I’m okay with it.

Just fading into the background.

Another number to add to the census.

Perhaps I won’t amount to anything.

My name will be lost to time and time will carry on as if nothing happened.

My life is slipping away through the cracks while I watch uselessly.

What happened?

I was such a smart kid.

A “gifted” kid, if you will.

I was praised for being such an exemplary student.

But as I got older it turned into a basic expectation.

I lost what made me feel like I was worthy of praise.

Something that made me feel as if I was worth noticing.

But now.

Now nothing is good enough.

I have to keep trying.

Rip and tear at myself just to feel that praise once more.

To feel noticed.

And yet.

The praise I receive doesn’t feel.. Right

I don’t deserve it.

The kind words.

I shouldn’t be allowed to experience such nice things.

I haven’t done well enough.

Not enough.

Never. Enough.

Everything I do is mediocre.

I need to try harder.

Till my bones wear down and till I cannot give no more.

It will never be enough.

An endless cycle of hellish torment that will never cease.

An unlovable monster born from a cruel society.

Too much to be loved and too doubtful to accept it.

Even then it claws its way through life, just for a distant star in the sky.

How his words soothe me.

How his presence keeps me alive.

A star I love and yet cannot touch for my claws will ruin it.

Everything I’ve let go has my marks on it.

My blood.

My words.

My touch.

I do not deserve to have nice things.

But, I cannot let him go.

He is my light.

My guiding star in the treacherous seas.

He is a flower I cannot touch for my rotten hands will wilt him.

Maybe he finds me boring.

Too much.

Too little.

Too uncaring.

Too caring.

He will get tired of me.

He will not love me one day.

I do not deserve him.

One day he will figure out I am not enough for him and leave.

I think I am okay with that.

Not really, I’d die if that happened.

But I shall rest easy knowing that he chose someone better.

I’ll rest easy knowing he’s happy.

[panic-at-the-fiction]

Fic-nnick

Summary: The reader is a victor's kid who has grown up around the games her whole life. One day she meets Finnick Odair, a tribute from district four and to both their luck he becomes the youngest victor ever. After spending years together back in district four she now has to watch him go back into the games.

Warnings: I made up facts here and there but like hey who cares? Also it’s a little angsty

A/N: I still refuse to not use dumb puns for Finnick Odair fic names. Do y’all get the name?? I was going somewhere else with this story but I honestly like this better. @hannahlovesfinnick Ok I’m going to take into count your Oc and backstory. Which were really cool and fun to read about. And I’m going to use them for this but just with typing (y/n). Just so anyone can enjoy it too. But yeah I loved your back story, it was so detailed and thought out. I do the same thing, it’s how I get most of my story ideas. So I would love to talk more with you about it.

Reaping day; a horrible day really. You were sick to your stomach. Wanting nothing more than to close your eyes and to look away from this event. Every year the capital picks 24 tributes for their entertainment. It was sickening, and you knew it better than most. Of course, you had never been in the games, but your father had been. You saw what his nightmares did to him, you saw what his pain did to your mother and worst off, you’ve seen what the nightmares do to Finnick.

He was the love of your life, that fact has always been true. You would do anything for him, but even you can’t make the nightmares stop for good. They had been increasing recently too as you’ve approached reaping day. This year was special, this year they were picking from the existing pool of tributes meaning that Finnick had a one in eight chances of going. District four had a total of eleven surviving victors. Eight of which were male.

Finnick hadn’t been sleeping though. Staying up late into the night and when he did sleep he had nightmares of the games. You were always right beside him though. If only you could be right beside him now.

You watched from the crowd as he stepped up onto the platform once his name was called. Knees buckling as you let out a pitiful gasp. Those around you tried to keep you up. You tried to stand but all your strength was dedicated to keeping a neutral face. If Finnick saw you break now he wouldn’t be able to keep up his appearance for the crowd. He was smiling and waving. For a moment your eyes met, and you could see the pain behind it all.

It wasn’t until Mags volunteered in place for Annie that you could see Finnick drop his façade. Mags is like family to him, and he had personally coached Annie through her games.

They announced the tribute's names, and they waved to the crowd before mags embraced Finnick. At least she could be up there with him. You were only allowed five minutes to say goodbye before he would have to get on the train. No, that wasn’t enough.

You quickly ran through the crowd, you had to get to the station before it was time for the tributes to leave. By then there would be a crowd, and you would not go unnoticed.

Once you arrived at the train station you made your way under the tracks. You knew of a trap door at the bottom of the train for emergencies. It wasn’t your first time sneaking onto a train like this. You quickly climbed inside and made your way to the room assigned for Finnick.

It took longer than you expected for him to find his room. You waited for so long you began to worry, he didn’t even know why you hadn’t said goodbye before he left. It wasn’t till the sun was setting that he finally came to his room.

“Oh, thank goodness, Finnick you're finally here!” You ran to his arms and he held you loosely, not even sure you were here. “I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye at the courthouse. I just had to get on this train before the crowds showed up. I need more time with you.”

“(Y/n)? You’re really here aren’t you?” He was still stunned as he brushed the hair from your face.

“Yes I’m really here.”

“They didn’t let us say goodbye, I thought you were gone.” Tears began to slip from his eyes. You could tell he had been holding everything in for too long now.

“What? What do you mean they didn’t let you say goodbye? There’s always goodbyes.”

“They made us leave straight away, they said there was no time this year.”

You wiped away some of his tears, “How much more can they try and take away from us?”

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, you're here now.” He hugged you tight, and you buried your head in his chest.

“It’s going to be ok Finnick, you can win this. You’re a victor, you’ve done this before.”

“You're forgetting one thing, so have they.” You frowned and pulled him back into the hug. The two of you stayed like that for what felt like hours. Neither of you could bear to think of what was going on. You could only just hold each other.

“Promise me one thing Finnick.”

“Anything,” he cupped your face, and you held tight to his hand.

“Come back to me.”

“For you... I will.”

[crystalkitty1220]

Gonna go on a bit of a rant here but a while ago when the children horror genre became a thing (mainly in roblox) I wasn’t really a fan because while yes, I wasn’t the target audience, I still felt like the horror wouldn’t be existent to me even if I was the person the developers intended to be playing it

And also what the fuck is a children horror game, the point of horror is that it’s scary, it’s nightmare fuel, it’s not intended for younger audiences and frankly I don’t think a 5 year old needs to experience it at that point in their life, it’s one of the many things that can wait till their older

So when games started taking the route of children/cute game gone horror, I kinda liked it, it was nice seeing what people came up with and they felt different

And then too many people did it, and it became repetitive and I kinda let go of that genre, but then I realized something

It’s not it’s repetitive, no

It’s that it’s falling back into the genre of children horror games, that’s where it’s going wrong

We escaped from the horror games for children phase, but then it came back in the form of cute game gone scary, and we just didn’t realize until the release of Poppy Playtime

And to add onto that, there’s also the fact that most indie horror games now have merch that is intended for children, from the art style all the way to the point where the default sizing options for clothing are children sizes

And this is where the horror industry is going wrong, no one comes up with anything anymore, they just copy what’s trending, and then when we do get something new, it just falls back into the pit of children horror games, which is why I’m grateful for the existence of choo choo Charles, because while the idea obviously has some aspects from other games, it didn’t fall into the children horror genre and while yes, it has its issues and obviously isn’t the best thing to exist, it feels like a breath of fresh air and a small release from what we’ve had to work with for the last 3 or so years

Anyways thanks for coming to my TedTalk

Very nice TedTalk

I'm not a huge fan of childrens' horror games myself, at least in the horror aspect. I will admit that I like Poppy Playtime because it reminds me of the mystery "who will be the next villain? who is this person from the poster, will we meet them?" from my batim days, but I don't think anything about it is scary and it's clearly just meant to pull in the edgy children who have been exposed to the internet too much. Everything about the merch is atrocious, from the target market to how the dolls look. And it's not hard to pinpoint exactly where the developers got inspiration from, as they're the people who made many of those minecraft fan animations for batim and fnaf songs, and I believe were also behind the channel Animation Sins. It's pretty easy to tell exactly where they got their ideas and what they're thinking, which isn't really supposed to be the goal for developers of a lore-based game. At least it's more of a horror game than security breach is, I guess.

Choo choo charles definitely breaks the recent mold, and I respect it for that, despite not really being a fan of that style of horror. The original batim was probably my favorite ever horror game, as it had a story and was constantly moving but could also actually scare the player at times. When it comes to fnaf: the games are mid; I'm here for the books; I'll go back to the games if glitchtrap returns; sun and moon are pretty cool. Probably gonna forget poppy playtime exists after the whole thing is released. Hello neighbor peaked in alpha 3, baldi's is hilarious but that's my only thought on it, and ddlc is the only game to pull off "horror disguised as cute and innocent" correctly and it feels wrong mentioning it alongside all these other games because it's a completely different style.

[oh-for-fic-sake]

A Man And His Cat

You both explore pet play.

Masterlist

Warnings: Adult situations +18 , Pet play, Spanking, Oral, Its kinky

A/n: Sooo who wants smut? my quarantine imagine went down well so here is another dirty fic. This will probably be a mini series feel free to send me your kinks and I will try and incorporate them. I am still working on my other stories slowly but on a little writers block and I may or may not have re-watched superman vs batman so look out as there might be some more dc on the horizon because omg I nearly forggot how yummy they were. Anyway here is another smut piece for you all hope you enjoy xx

Taglist @two-unbeatable-beaters​ @thatgirly81​

A Man And His Cat

You lounged across the sofa in your hello kitty onesie playing your xbox, you'd gotten Jurassic world evolution and was currently snickering letting your t-rex run around eating people. Henry was upstairs you could hear him moving around in the study. The door bell went off you quickly got up wrestling kal out of the way to answer it hearing the post man call out he had left it on the bin you thanked him bringing the large box inside with a few letters piled on top. Not thinking anything of it you brought the post in kicking the door shut behind you.

"Babe what the fuck?" You froze not sure at first what you'd done wrong

"Shit hands! hands! sanitize them quick! we cant take chances! Your not supposed to answer the door I've told you that! Were in London! For Christ sake" He said rushing to you snatching the post handing you the sanitizer that sat on the table by the door. You shook your head quickly rubbing the sanitizer over your hands letting it soak in as Henry shook his head at you watching closely.

"Sorry, sorry I forgot" he sighed since receiving your official 'shielding'  letter from the government Henry had been a little mother hen....papa bear? Either way he was on edge hounding you about keeping your hands clean not touching anything that could possibly be infected or letting anyone other than himself with in 6ft of you. He even made you take your temperature each day with good reason tho your heart clenched things were getting bad the infection and death rates climbing each day ,there was rumors that the UK was on the course to being just like Italy and Spain. In a way his worrying was your fault when the letter came through Henry had freaked out a bit, it hit him hard when he realized it wasn't just speculation it was a fact that if you caught this thing it would most likely kill you and he was shook to the core. It didn't help when you'd only told him a few days prior not to worry about your condition that it was under control ,which technically it was every two months you was having blood tests every so often your blood count would dip a little but you normally managed it with your diet just eating more meat usually does it, the protein helping your count go up a little. You didn't bore him with the details he didn't need to know to much, you knew what to do and when to do it, it was normal for you. You feel yourself getting rough you get a blood test and up your steroids, you feel better you lower them back down the main goal being avoiding blood transfusions. But Henry had insisted he needed to know everything now he said it'd make him feel better so you told him, sat him down and explained that somehow your body can survive on a borderline blood count it should be 120 to 150 yours hovers around 100 to 110... If your lucky, not low enough for a transfusion but low enough to cause a few problems if it drops any more the lowest it got in recent years was 57.... yeah that wasn't fun, you'd spent two whole days seven till seven getting transfusions then had to go back to have the iron in your blood taken out....It was not pretty, but since then you'd been more careful. You explained the fact that your immune system was practically non-existent you caught chicken pox a year before and it nearly killed you two days after the spots appeared causing all sorts of issues pneumonia, bacterial infections in the heart and lungs then sepsis resulting in a few weeks in hospital in the infectious diseases unit so yeah safe to say catching this thing would be bad. Henry bless him was gobsmacked he knew you was anemic ,that was it, he had enough on his plate you didn't want to add to it.You leaned back on the side unit by the door trying to pet kal who sniffed at your hand then snorted walking off, he didn't like the sanitizer one bit.

"Henry I'm sorry I just-it keeps slipping my mind" he nodded wrapping you up in a bear hug resting his chin on your head.

"I know baby I'm sorry for snapping... I just don't want to loose you, stay indoors and stay safe those aren't just the government's rules ,their my rules as  well baby girl remember?" You nodded kissing his chest before replying.

"Yes daddy" then turned and walked to the living room again noticing kal playing in his small cubby hole that had been a cupboard until recently, it had been turned into his own little bed room, complete with bed, night light and shelves that had some family photos of the three of you, you blew him a kiss and he huffed plonking his head down on his fluffy bed stretching out ready for his morning nap, you settled back down to play your game. Henry used the sanitizer then ran a hand through his hair sighing he picked up the post bringing it in placing the large box on the counter. He smirked realizing what it was. His order from bondara ignoring the letters he quickly got a knife slicing open the box. Henry routed around in the box like a kid on Christmas excited he headed up stairs to collect his other investments. You was pulled out of your game by Henry combing your hair back with his fingers pulling it up and back into a high ponytail, something you had no idea he could do, you paused the game turning to him but he held you still facing the TV then you felt them. He had clipped your little fluffy grey kitty ears in your hair pulling the pony tail tighter to secure the bottom of the crocodile clips. You brought a hand up to them confused a little touching them softly. He walked to the side smiling cooing at you

"There she is my precious little kitty! Just look at how cute you are?" You flushed at him as he bent down petting between your 'ears' then he growled in your ear.

"I could just eat you all up" you mewled rocking on the sofa a little anticipating the way this would turn out he gasped a little.

"But whats this? you still need your collar how will anyone know you have a loving owner if you don't have a cute little collar on?" he strode across the room plucking something from the box and retrieved a few more items from the counter that you hadn't known was there ,now tho you could clearly see a folded black towel you moaned at the implication he must have brought it down from upstairs turning he made his was back to you this time standing in front of you.

"As much as I did like your own kitten collar I got you a new one, not from bondara I didn't like theirs much but thankfully etsy is still up and running, here it is see?" You gasped as he revealed a pink leather choker with a pretty lace and ruffle design making it look more like a fancy Lolita choker then a kitty collar apart from the large rose gold D ring hanging from the middle just below a dark pink bow and medium-sized rose gold bell You quickly made to grab for it but he pulled it out of reach .

"No let me do it" you quickly held your head high stretching your neck for him to put it on he chuckled at how eager you was, you smiled wide as he quickly placed it around your neck you sighed when you felt the inside was a little padded with a soft almost suede like material. He spun it around so the bell and D ring was central then hooked two fingers inside checking how tight it was satisfied that it wouldn't choke you he pulled away and watched you closely then he sighed

"No ... its still not right is it kitten?" You tilted your head feeling a little ashamed?upset? he didn't like it? Did he think you were ugly? You blinked frowning at him bottom lip wobbling a little as you were on the brink of tears pulling back from him.

"What-" he shushed you placing a finger to your lips

"Kittens don't talk, now there is something missing pet, Ah! I know now this might be it" he said and picked up a small shiny matching rose gold heart tag, he held it to you to read it. On one side it said kitten the other had 'Property Of Henry If Lost Call' and his phone number on it you gasped a little opening your mouth the thank him but he snapped his fingers at you.No talking. You pouted mewling up at him again not sure how to communicate how much you loved it. Then you clicked leaning forward licking his hand biting lightly before tilting your head nuzzling his crotch. You smirked as his breath hitched in his throat and he grunted swearing quietly unable to stop himself from grinding on your head a little then stopped as you pulled back he grunted again rearranging himself in his bottoms. He made quick work of threading the tag onto the D ring he kissed your head

"Good girl and look baby it was a set" he leaned over you picking up a thick soft paracord lead in pink with leather handle decorated to match your new collar clipping it onto the D ring then looped it around his hand tugging lightly prompting you off of the sofa once you stood he quickly undid the buttons on the onesie letting it fall leaving you naked in the room. You shivered nipples puckering as the soft lead grazed your breasts and tummy as he moved, stepping out of the onesie Henry kicked it across the room.

"There we are kitten, nearly finished now down" he said barley containing his excitment you got down on your hands and knees before him holding his gaze rubbing your thighs together rocking side to side trying to caress your tingling clit between your lips as you felt small trickle of your arousal escape onto the floor mewling at the tiny flickers of pleasure it caused. Henry lead you across the living room to the island in the kitchen crawling was a little tricky at first but you soon found a smooth rhythm staying beside him smiling as the bell tinkled at every movement you made, he smiled down at you from this angle you could already see the bulge forming in his trousers, you went to sit down when he stopped only to have him fold the lead in one hand an strike you with it lightly across your breasts making you yelp out then moan looking down seeing a red stripe across them.

"No sitting until your told now ass up, good kitten just like that" you complied preening at his praise. He bent down holding out a fluffy grey kittytail plug you squealed a little bending further down pushing your tender breasts to the cold floor looking back at him expectantly waving your ass in the air at him. He laughed and crouched beside you running a hand across your dripping pussy  he leaned over kissing your head growling as his fingers massaged your wet center you moaned pushing back on him, he dragged his fingers to your opening plunging two thick fingers inside crooking them trying to scoop out more of your cum holding the plug just below you arched pushing back skimming your breasts across the cool floor trembling as he fucked you slowly bringing the plug to your clit and pressing it in small circles making you buck against him moaning and keening in higher pitches.

"Oh looks like I may have wasted money on lube hey baby? all wet and ready for me already such a precious thing." he ran the plug along your ass smearing your arousal across you all the way down to your slit you moaned as he spread his fingers out pulling your lips with them revealing your quivering hole to the cold air of the room making you gasp and clench as the freezing metal plug passed over it resting heavy on your clit, bucking a little you whined pushing back a little as the cold metal met your heated wet flesh, he held it still letting you warm the toy before running it back and forth slowly twisting it letting your arousal coat it wanting to make sure it was wet enough for him to push it in once satisfied he lifted it moving one hand to your bottom then began pressing it insistently at your tight little pucker. You whined placing the side of your face on the cool tile looking at him, he stroked your head shushing you when he realized just how much bigger this was from the last one

"Ok kitten now try to hold still one big deep breath just like before...Good girl now out push on your bottom" you nodded whining  bearing down on the toy as he held your shoulder using it to pull you back as he started pressing the tail further into you. You arched taking deep breaths when the plug seemed to get wider and wider you shook your head trying to arch away as it stung despite your arousal easing the way, you panicked a little as it seemed to keep stretching becoming sore as your tight ring tried fighting it .

"N-no its to muc-AAHH!" you cried out , he shushed you

"Come on kitten... Nearly there....Just a tiny bit more I promise......Push out again for me good girl! shh that’s it...Such a good girl for me......Ah ah no! stop moving bab-baby no no don't do-HEY! enough!-you’ll hurt yourself!" He scolded you as you tried to push against his hand on your shoulder to wriggle away then when that didn't work you unconsciously tried tucking your bottom beneath you whimpering. He stopped you with a quick volley of sharp spanks you yelped as his hot hand heated your ass, then there was a familiar popping sensation as your bottom swallowed the plug closing snug around it. He had used the distraction to quickly push the last of the plug in with a quick little shunt. You pushed up on your hands breathing heavy as the plug was indeed larger then the one you had used before, you ached as your ass tried fighting it wanting to push it out you let out pitiful breathy moans as you rippled around it.

"Daddy? Its big-im not sure-FUUCK OOHH" you cut yourself off moaning loud when he grabbed the tail and gave a small tug smirking as you cried out then followed it trying to ease the pressure he thrusted it a few times hitting something deep that made you arch high and squeal pressing back on to it as your pussy ceased and your clit throbbed so hard it almost felt raw he let go then twisted on his feet petting your head drawing patterns on your back.

"Oh baby I know its hard but your a kitten and kittens don't talk , if you carry on daddy will gag you understand?" you nodded at him pressing your head into his chest and kissed it softly wanting a little comfort, hissing deep breaths as you clenched around the tail plug whining, he brought the hand from your back and rubbed around the plug pressing it lightly.

"Its a little bigger but look at you? such a good girl look at that pretty little tail now just one more thing and you'll be daddies perfect kitty" he stood back up getting the remaining items a set of mittens that had no thumb piece instead just one Little pouch to fit your hand in with little paw prints on them they would be held on by two thin leather wrist cuffs. you wriggled around now growing accustomed to the bulbous plug pressing on your insides moaning as the ache became more a pleasurable throb you rocked a little in the air mouth open gasping as you rocked faster feeling the plug press against the back wall of you pussy, Henry quickly snatched up your hands one after the other locking them into the paw mittens. He stood back groaning loud as he watched cupping his erection rubbing along the bulge moaning rocking his hips into his palm as you kept arching your back. The sight was more erotic then he could have dreamed, he almost drooled as you rotated and wriggled your hips pushing back and forth trying to make your plug hit the spot he had pressed it to earlier moaning with closed eyes flushing a bright red, flinching as the tail ghosted your legs as it swayed behind you, turning you looked at the soft tail hanging between your legs giggling as the soft fur licked at your thighs. He snapped out of it and tugged you moving slower this time you stopped every so often moaning and whimpering as each step make your pussy twitch as the plug pressed against the back wall of it teasing your sensitive flesh from the wrong side by the time you got to the sofa both thighs were wet and you was shaking with need he sighed sitting down on it legs spread holding the lead tight keeping your head close to his crotch

"Come on baby time for your little treat" he said motioning for you to pull him free you brought your hands up fumbling with the zipper only really achieving to rub him through them ,making him grind against your hands throwing his head back you groaned in frustration whimpering at him resting your head in the inside of his thigh running your nose across the bulge sighing he looked down then petted you between your ears again.

"Oh kitten you can do better then that come on get daddy out." you pouted at him and nipped his thigh with your front teeth making him hiss and tug harshly on the lead growling at you before wrapping the cord around his fist once more pressing your nose into his crotch

"Bite me again kitten and see what happens, you think I wont fuck your throat raw? Ram into your mouth until my cock is choking you? Face fuck you until your pass out? I wouldn't test me kitten not now Ive waited to long to have you like this." His low ground out threats made you moan you couldn't wait until he fucked your mouth, already craving his salty taste, you kissed his cock through his trousers licking at it, it made you realize what you should do you trembled tucking your knees underneath you to keep your weight off of the plug you licked a long strip up the front of his trousers wetting them making him grunt again, one hand rested on your head petting you, you smirked watching through your lashes as he started flushing and panting, he loved it when you did this it was the only time he let you tease mostly because he was enjoying himself to much to fight for control, for all his talk of wanting control you think he secretly liked being at your mercy every once in a while, you poked out your tongue grazing his zipper then bit down making sure to press on him harshly making him yelp and hiss though clenched teeth when you dragged it down, he fumbled quickly undoing his top button and shimmied them down his hips giving you enough room to bite his boxers and pull them down....only you didn't you wrapped your lips over them sucking on him hard through them making sure to soak his boxers with spit making him groan giving a  thrust up to your face fisting his fingers in you hair a little careful not to pull off the ears.

"FUCK kitten!! Oh GOD! fuck pleaseplease do that again!! come on once more such a good girl" you did taking your sweet time kissing and suckling on him nudging him with your nose pushing him up and latched onto the sensitive underside of his cock running your teeth over his hot flesh rocking your hips left and right letting your pussy massage itself poking out your tongue you flattened it running it up the vein near his head pinning it to his hip then opened your mouth around it humming, he jerked up ass leaving the seat moaning out loud swearing at you for being a tease, you continued up finding his swollen crown you licked at it then his slit sucking again on him. He groaned loud and drawn out flexing his fingers and widened his legs you carried on enjoying having the man at your mercy for once kissing and sucking at his twitching length he began rocking faster panting.

"OH! yesyesYES Baby...WAIT HOLD ON!... Fuck slow down!Dont nono that's it kitten thats enough daddies going to cum! NO! ENOUGH!" you giggled as he used the lead to jerk you away panting and sweaty you thought it was funny you'd never heard him that desperate before, he normally had godlike restraint  holding himself back for hours if he really wanted to, he gasped then ran a hand across his face and melted into to sofa fighting of the impending orgasm. You sat there biding your time once he relaxed you swooped back in ready to force him to cum in his boxers, but only managed one kitten lick before being jerked away again he growled at you in warning giving you a stern look then tugged of his top still panting.

"you cheeky little thing!" you grinned raising yourself to your knees running your hands up his thighs as you leaned in kissing along the v of muscles above his boxers licking at his skin then nuzzled him lightly ghosting his stomach with your nose placing butterfly kisses here and there feeling him flex trying to arch his cock up to you, you slowly made your way down again opening your mouth tilting your head to engulf the muscle just on his boxers waistband flattening your tongue relishing in the pleasure filled noises he let loose and in the same moment curled your fingers over it the elastic pulling it away letting him spring free hitting your chin. He grunted as you let go letting the elastic snap back onto his balls only letting his cock free he looked down at you giving you a heated look

"Careful baby you don't want to play these games with me" you blinked innocently at him smiling then began kissing lower until you was at the base of his cock ignoring the small patch of hair at his root kissing him obscenely with open mouthed wet kisses then licked him from base to tip before plunging down on him he groaned closing his eyes tight

"FUCK KITTEN! Oohh god that's so hot, shit your mouth is SO FUCKING HOT UGH!" You sucked him deep swallowing around him letting one hand wander to his balls cupping them and rolling them in your palm your other hand dropped between your legs and you ground yourself on your hand moaning onto his cock as you worked your clit in slow firm strokes making your new gloves sticky and wet from your arousal. He cried out desperately bucking into your mouth and throat moaning and crying out cutting off his own words as you kept changing your pace hearing your little bell jingle with your movements on him bobbing your head slow with harsh sucks to his head then fast making sure to swallow or moan as he hit your throat focused solely on making him cum. Today he would cum first you were going to make sure. You whined as you changed direction on your clit feeling the heat in your belly slowly make its way down settling in your hard clit rubbing and tapping at it moaning louder as your orgasm began to build. He shivered his thighs jerking and trembling as you pointed your tongue pressing on the sensitive vein underneath it he shook his head clutching at the sofa grunting breathlessly each time he felt the vibrations of your throat moaning on him.

"BABY BABY STOP! I cant fuck please its to much- no nononono not yet I FuckFU-Fuuuck ah AH AH OH SHIT FUUUUUUCK" you ignored him, he was so lost that he had forgotten the lead, you used it to your advantage pulling back and sucking hard on his head licking at his slit then gripped his sack squeezing it tight as it tensed upwards then with one small drag of your teeth he whimpered loud and high releasing in your mouth jerking himself uncontrollably into your mouth face fucking you just like he threatened. You gave yourself a mental pat on the back but decided to go further swallowing as much of his cum you could but continued to suck and bob on him then cried out as your rocking hips found that perfect position on your clit making it throb and twitch your walls clenching, spasming making the plug move and caress your depths finally you screeched around his cock and came over your hand soaking the glove he yelped curling his feet into the floor shifting back trying to get away you followed placing your hands on his thighs pushing them back as he tried closing his legs trembling from your own release moaning and withering against him.

"UGH NOO FUCK STOPSTOPSTOOOP! ITS TO MUCH BA-KITTEN STOP IT NO PLEASE" he through his hands down blindly pushing you but you fought him wanting to torture him a bit, a little pay back for the other day you reasoned, but you couldn't fight him long even in his fucked out quivering state he was ten times stronger than you, you dragged your teeth across him one last time as he pushed you back off of him completely.

"Your a little bitch, you know that?" He said head tilted back and one arm draped across his eyes heaving deep breaths you just giggled kissing his thighs

"Where the fuck did that come from Anyway?" You just smirked licking your lip trying to collect the cum that had escaped from your mouth he groaned watching your pink tongue darting out.

“Meow?” You were a dangerous little kitten he decided. He looked down feeling your wet mitten then frowned a little before smiling deviously.

"Oh kitten? You didn't touch yourself did you?" You froze a little then sent him coy glance pulling your hands down slowly hoping he wouldn't notice. He caught your offending hand quickly

"Did you?" You shrugged feigning innocence as he pulled your hand up sniffing it you blushed

"It certainly smells like you" you whined at him flushing embarrassed  making him chuckle, he licked a long strip of of the mitten slapping his lips as he puled away tutting.

"Oh i think you did didn't you? Because daddy knows exactly how you taste and that my sweet little kitten is definitely you on this little mitten, such a needy little kitty hm? Did suckling on daddy really make you that desperate? Poor little baby" you panted as he bent forward his pupils dominated the blue of his eyes hot and playful all in one he peered down at the wooden floor sighing.

"Such a messy little pussy you have" he pushed you back a little you ducked when his leg swung over you and he got up walking to the counter again you watched  carefully as he approached the box you took the time to admire his taught ass as he bent forward a little reaching inside picking something out then folded the towel over his arm then hear the distinct sound of leather cracking on an open palm. You snapped out of your ass worshiping gaze eyes flicking  to his hands as he spun around looking at him as he held a new leather paddle with a paw print on it he smiled slyly crooking a finger at you. Come here. You gulped then rose from your spot on the floor crawling toward him gulping.

"You know kitten you was very reckless at the door earlier it was very naughty trying to torture daddy and playing with yourself without permission? I think you should be.....Corrected shall we say, for future reference just as a deterrent?. After all prevention is better then cure isn't it?" he licked his lips watching you squirm on the spot just across the kitchen island he tested the small paddle again. Your whole body ceased up as he stared at you.

"Erm N-no lets not how about best two out of three? You know three strikes and your out?" He chuckled shaking his head.

"Oh baby but that was three strikes and how many times do i have to tell you? kittens don't talk do they?" You pouted trying to sit your bottom down only to jerk it back up as your tail plug pressed deeper and the soft fur tickled your leg... not only that you didn't want to get it wet with your arousal

"Come kitten what do you say?" You blushed

"Meow" his face lit up yet his eyes only got darker

"That’s it such a clever kitty, but I must say you will be getting more then three strikes of your new paddle trust me now come round here like a good girl" you crawled around to his side squeaking as he lifted you effortlessly bending you over the counter you hissed as your breasts squished into the freezing cold marble your toes didn't touch the floor as he shuffled you up with the edge of the island on your thighs. He stood off to the side a little admiring the way your grey tail hung between your legs, the pitiful noises were delicious he grunted feeling himself twitch already starting to harden again he patted you bottom drawing lines along the soft skin moving to your slit following up towards the plug lifting the tail holding it taught in a fist but not pulling it out just tugging enough to make it press down into your pussy from behind. You moaned squirming trying to follow it as he held it high toes scrabbling up the cupboard door failing.

"Oh baby that's so cute, you know I  can see your pussy trying to find something to latch on to, does it feel hot? Is it empty? Sweet kitten you see if you had been a good girl following your rules, if you had stopped when daddy said and asked to touch yourself daddy would already be balls deep, battering away at your needy little pussy painting your insides with his cum... but no instead you hand to be a naughty girl and will have to settle for your paddle." You cried out as he circled your twitching clit as he spoke emphasizing words with shallow thrusts on his fingers he pulled away picking up the paddle striking your lower cheeks and pussy making you jump and moan hearing a wet slap as the sting settled in he pulled away running a hand over the pink spot

"Oohh look at that hah you have a little paw print on your tush now,I think fifteen will do don't you sweety? Five for each naughty thing you did? You know normally I would have you count and say thank you, but well seeing as your a kitten today you should meow instead" You groaned as he lifted it again slapping a bit harder this time you yelped as he aimed for the under curve of your left cheek then meowed dutifully.

"Very good again" he struck you again lower on your thigh no harder then before this time you meowed again moaning as your pussy clenched dripping on your touching thighs. You closed your eyes tight as he continued peppering your ass with the paddle the final five landed in quick succession on your weeping pussy you meowed loud and hard sobbing each pussy spank had directly struck the underside of your clit. Throwing the paddle on the counter he cupped your red swollen lips his hand cooling the burn. He smiled then tilted his hips up bringing his fully erect cock to your entrance. Throwing the towel down on the floor. You sobbed higher as he drew lines on your slit teasing your muscles you jerked against him just on the edge of cumming kicking out your legs.

"You know I have been doing some reading about squirting, I think I've sussed out how to make it happen on command shall we test it out?" You shook your head grunting as he thrust forward you cried out feeling him force your walls apart making room for his fat throbbing cock it stung more then ever with your weight on your tummy and plug in your ass but you loved it.

"Ugh! NOOO!AH AH FUCK!" You mewled grunting at each punishing thrust stretching you he was fighting the plug in your ass for room holding firm  he grinded your clit you screeched as he angled his hips and tugged up on the tail making the embedded metal run along his cock growling. Before you knew what happened your body ceased walls tightened clamping around his cock moaning and gasping releasing, flooding over him he laughed groaning as your steady stream of cum hit his abdomen and washed over him.

"Oh fuck! yes I knew you could do it good girl, fuck that's so HOT! again more come on baby you can do it! Give it to daddy once more then I'll fill you" he grunted doubling his efforts stroking his cock around inside of you giving sharp tugs to your tail jolting you back against him to meet his brutal hips making you whimper at the harsh treatment one of his hand snuck below you pinching your clit almost jerking it off.

"FUCK I’m nearly there KITTEN! OH SHIT! Fuckfuckfuck you better fucking cum for me! Or I'll get the wand out again!" That did it You threw your head back placing your toes on the cupboard door rocking against him cumming again long and hard, so hard you couldn't make a sound all the air left you and you just hung there your mouth hanging open in a silent scream he grunted gabbing your shoulders pulling you back to him making your spine curve painfully as you fell apart around him again your sopping pussy sucking on him trying to trap him with on final painful thrust he growled rubbing his cock head on your cervix releasing torrents of cum into you. He lowered your shoulders down feeling you go limp taking a moment to catch his breath then he pulled the box towards him panting heavy fishing out another plug

"NOnonono please Henry no moreIi cant-I came again I promise I did please don't get the wand out!" You panicked pleading with him as his hand disappeared into the box pushing back on him, he smiled waving a dildo plug on your face

"Not a wand see this is for your pussy love, to keep my cum inside you for the rest of the day.....after all you was a bad kitten" you mewled relaxing happy he wasn't going to torture you again to tired to argue you laid still as he pulled himself from you quickly plugging you up before anything could escape. You moaned and wriggled he slid you off of the counter to you feet quickly supporting you as you nearly dropped to the floor smirking a smug little smile you reached behind you to pull the tail from you he smacked your hand away

"Ohh no I think I will have you stay like this all day, at least then I know you wont answer the door" you gaped then pouted at him crossing your arms at him

"A-all day? What if I get cold" he chuckled walking across to the sofa throwing you his tshirt you quickly tried slipping it on but dropped it due to your mittens you sulked stamping a foot he pulled on his boxers then returned picking up the tshirt sliding it on you then quickly undid the mittens you flexed your fingers when they were free , he collected the damp towel on the floor wiping down your thighs and between your legs you took the other end patting his pelvis down blushing realizing just how much mess you'd made you looked down still wiping him tears sprung to your eyes sniffling

"Oh god this is so embarrassing" could hear the quiver in your voice, ready to cry out of shame he growled not having non of that he shook his head hooking his fingers into your collar pulling you up on your tiptoes forcing you to look him in the eye.

"Not its fucking hot! I cant believe how sexy that was feeling you cum so thoroughly, drenching me uncontrollably, fuck it was the most amazing feeling! And I cant wait to make you soak me again and again, one day I’m going to drink it from you." You blushed shocked by his words as he leaned in kissing you passionately sucking on your tongue he pulled away tossing the towel into the washing machine then pulled the leather cuffs from the loops in the mittens throwing then in as well quickly turning it on to rinse and dry. Then quickly he scooped you up settling back on the couch, you squirmed pulling the tail from under you he held it up your back lightly  then handed you the controller.

"Now show me your Jurassic park d-did you let the t rex out?" You smiled giggling at him nodding then snugged back into him as you started making a new paddock in the game. These next few months were going to be the best of your life if today was anything to go by.

[lokiodinsonofasgard000]

Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Mobius M. Mobius

Prologue:

The man in the suit walked a bit ahead of them as they trailed behind “They offer you a position to work with them?” Loki asked looking ahead with a low voice “Affirmative. I'm assuming you also?” (Name) asked in a low voice also “Mmhmm… however, something doesn’t feel right about this place” Loki confessed.

They continued to walk and (Name) too the time to look him up and down and held an amused smile, Loki arched a brow and looked at her “What’s so funny?” “Nothing just odd to see you in that. You look so normal, granted a prisoner uniform of sorts. But so normal” she chuckled “I mean you’re a quote on quote “god” so seeing you so ordinary is just odd that’s all” “Keep amusing yourself darling” he said rolling his eyes at her “In all fairness miss the whole god like Asgardian attire” she mocked lightly. Loki gave her a small smile then smirked “won’t change the fact I could kill you right now if it were for this suppressor” “So you are just an ordinary man, give or take 5,000 years?” “I am not that old. I’m 1,048” Loki exclaimed, almost offended.

They finally arrived at this large door. Walking in it was a conference room with a large oval table. Loki and (Name) shared a look with one another  as the man in the suit asked them to take a seat, the two prisoners sat side by side “Now let me understand something. Looking through your personal files there’s no mentions of you two ever meeting. However it’s a little tricky with multiple timelines that had recently been created…” spoke the man “Sorry to interject just now but. What even is your name?” (Name) asked him “Oh my apologizes Mobius M. Mobius” he introduced himself before getting back to talking “so I want to know the chemistry you both displayed before you capture...it’s unheard of, unforeseeable” “With all due respect agent M. but when two people are in life or death situations it is natural to try and work together and get out hopefully alive.” (Name) held her expressionless look “Well say what you like but there was chemistry no doubt.”  Mobius shrugged “The idea is that we have you both work for us, (Name) would serve as more of a babysitter for you, Loki. Your reputation is known to be wavering on your alliances, and proved so in your possible futures?” “I beg your pardon?” Loki asked now engaging in the conversation and a bit offended of the suggestion of him needing a babysitter.

“If you look at this hologram projector this was you up till now, 2012. Captured by the avengers and was to be taken to your location point; for Odin’s judgment back on your home world, Asgard. However, 2018 from 2023… things go downhill from 2018 onward” Mobius spoke with grim in his voice.

Both Loki and (Name) watch Loki’s original future unfold. Loki being sent to life imprisonment, the Almother dying protecting Thor’s girlfriend, Jane. Loki’s first ‘death’ as he takes over Asgard; send Odin onto Midgard in a retirement home. Thor and Loki get Odin, but the Alfather dies. They find out they have a sister, goddess of death, Hela. The day of Ragnarok and the end of Asgard and lastly Loki’s second and final death, by Thanos’ hands- “The sun will shine on us again, brother-”

“That’s enough!” (Name) slammed her hands on the desk.

Loki stared at her in confusion. Although it was a hard pill to swallow to know he lost so much and despite trying to redeem himself it was short lived. But the death of his mother was the most effective one. Loki for once was silent. “That’s enough! You claim to hold balance and here you are showing him his ‘true’ future!” she yelled “the repercussions are absolute! Showing his future he will now try to prevent it as soon as you allow him to step foot out!” “Now agent (Name). Loki’s death is in a way a fixed point. It needs to happen. He is one of the biggest threats of the T.V.A and the multiverse time continuum. As long as Loki ceases to exist in 2018 it does not matter what time, day or location all that matters is that he is dead” Mobius explained calmly “That’s obscured! Granted Loki is dangerous, but surely he was shown to change his ways. In the end he chose to save his people of Asgard-” “He gave Thanos the space infinity stone!” Mobius spoke with a raised voice “To save his people!” (Name) snapped

Loki watched as this Midgardian woman fought for his future self. It shocked him, although aware that in this moment; he was not that person that had redeemed himself. But seeing someone genuinely fight for him brought a sense of warmth that he felt from only his mother. “So let me get this straight Mr. Mobius. If I take your proposition and conditions, you will have me get rid of other threats to the multiverse timeline, that is too hard to do yourselves. Inevitably after that you’d send me back to my time of 2012, to follow the said script and die of Thanos’ hand...and if I don’t I’d be a wanted man” Silence (Name) gave Loki an exacerbated look which he returned a look to tell her to trust him. Clenching her jaw tight she sat back down “More or less...but there is a catch” “Go on” (Name) hissed out “Well the end game is that you both kill Thanos… before he collects the stones but we would still have to kill you in 2018”

-

-

“Here are you. Your uniforms” Mobius spoke, handing them both a pile of clothing “before you get changed and we take off the restraints we do need to do one little procedure...follow me” Loki and (Name) walk with Mobius and walk into what looked like a medical bay. The two weren’t sure but they were seated in these chairs and automatic metal restraints came up. The two started to struggle in their seat “We already said we join this stupid organization” snapped Loki “Oh we know. But we need to put a space and time GPS bio-implant to make sure to track both of your whereabouts at all time... through time and space” Mobius explained as two people in white walked over to them and started to inject some kind of thing in their forearms.

Once the whole procedure was done the two changed into their uniforms in their separate change rooms while Mobius waited for them outside. When they finished up and in their new uniform; khaki trousers, blue button up and a dark navy tie and black closed shoes. Loki was wearing a T.V.A tan coat while (Name)’s was being tied around her waist as she rolled up her sleeves “The trousers are hideous” (Name) mumbled out “Agreed” Loki said quietly, giving a small smile. She looked at him with a raised brow. She wasn’t sure why he was smiling ‘he’s planning something’ she thought. She looked to Mobius as he started to show them around the compound. (Name) was emotionless as she was lost in thought until she hear Loki’s smooth voice “You remind me of someone back on Asgard” Loki quietly “Hopefully not a lover of yours. Wouldn’t want to damage your ego when I turn you down” she said half jokingly “Oh gods no, she is a very strong warrior” Loki chuckled “and don’t flatter yourself, I would never stoop so low to fall for some Midgardian wench” “I’ll ignore that last part. I’m surprised honestly, from what Asgard has been described and what has been on your file Asgard seems so medievalesque. So I’m surprised a woman would be allowed to fight. Given the whole prim and proper attitudes” she said rather casually. Loki stared at her a little baffled by her sudden friendly and casual attitude “It’s not common but is accepted we- people of Asgard tend to overlook gender and focus on your abilities as an individual.” (Name) took notice of his hesitation and frowned lightly. Their conversation fell for a moment. “Your file says Asgardian. You were raised as any other Asgardian, jötunn or not you are Asgardian.”  (Name) said with a small shrug “but what do I know, I am just a Midgardian”

-

-

Chapter 5: Day One Begins

[haikyall]

time and time again

Summary: Soulmates will always find each other in the end no matter how longe they've been apart, but Bokuto and Akaashi don't know that. Heck, they each don't know the other person even existed. WC: 3k Genre: Fluff Pairings: Bokuto Koutarou/Akaashi Keiji

This is my entry to the bokuaka big bang!

Kuroo opens the door for Bokuto and Daichi as they enter unfamiliar territory. Their curious eyes scan through the place, embracing the peaceful ambiance. It was busier than most cafès; this cafè, in particular, was very noisy.  Bokuto, on the other hand, felt a sense of familiarity about the place, yet he has never set foot in this cafè.

Kuroo spots a booth with empty seats and leads the trio to sit there. He also offers to do the ordering given the fact that he was the only one who knew how to do so, as it was evident that their way of ordering differed from usual cafès.

Bokuto sits down and can’t seem to sit comfortably on the cushioned seats. It was like something was bugging him, something just really kept on poking Bokuto’s brain to just keep looking for something, although he didn’t know what exactly he’s looking for.

To Daichi, this mannerism of Bokuto's is quite a normal sighting, especially when he enters a new shop. To him, Bokuto is taking in the new place by trying to remember every single little detail it has like how the table and seats are very low, or how there were high stools that show the contrast. He also notices how Bokuto’s leg keeps on bouncing. He assumes that the owl is anticipating his order or is just excited.

“Excited, Bokuto?” Daichi tests his theory, and Bokuto is caught off-guard at the sudden boom of the fellow captain's voice. He had forgotten that he was with other people. This sense of familiarity and restlessness was mentally killing him.

He scratches his head. Maybe it was that, yeah, he’s just excited.

“YEA! HAHAHA~” He laughs out, deciding to brush off the fact that something was indeed bugging him and he can’t seem to point his finger as to what it is. He proceeds to tell Daichi about how a cashier from another café asked him out one time.he was asked out by a cashier when he was in another cafè. “There was this one time, my friends and I were in this other coffee place and the cashier kept on asking, like, these personal questions like ‘are you more of a bacon or egg person and I didn’t UNDERSTAND HER BWAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH~”

“Mhmm?” Daichi hums out, he was interested. He didn’t necessarily understand how it was personal, but he kind of knows how Bokuto feels being asked the question.

“IT WAS THE CASHIER’S WAY OF ASKING IF I WAS STRAIGHT HAHAHAHAHAHA”, Bokuto explains loudly, and Daichi’s brain doesn’t believe it, but Bokuto was genuinely laughing and he’s physically unable to lie. His eyes go wide and he finally starts laughing at how lousy of a conversation he was hearing.

“PFFT HAHAHAHAHAHA,” he laughs till his lungs can’t take the lack of oxygen and deeply inhales, and Daichi slowly realizes how Bokuto lays out the story, “Wait, you didn’t understand?”

“NOPE, MY FRIENDS ONLY TOLD ME WHAT IT MEANT AFTER OUR ORDERS WERE TAKEN,” Bokuto explains, and Daichi nods his head, understanding why Bokuto wouldn’t think it was more of a sexuality question rather than a general preference question.

“So what did you say?”, the crow asks the question.

“Egg, whICH MEANT I WAS STRAIGHT HAHAHAHAHAH,” Bokuto excitedly explains starting to laugh, and Daichi joins with a chuckle as he thinks about the stupidity of the question and how innocent Bokuto could be sometimes, and his chuckling deepens. Kuroo finally comes back with a tray of their orders and sees the two gasping for air in laughter and is interested as to what’s got Daichi laughing.

“Oya, oya, what are we talking about, here?” Kuroo asks, and Bokuto was the first one to regain some sanity,, explaining while laughing,

“I just —heh— told D-Daichi about the —hehe— cashier story,” he explains as Kuroo gives each of them their order and starts to settle down. Meanwhile, Daichi just keeps on laughing and banging the table. It was rare to see Daichi lose his chill like this.

“Ah, the cashier that didn’t know that’s not how you check out a guy and ask if they’re straight, damn, she does not get laid a lot,” Kuroo says, chuckling as he remembers the story, and shakes his head at the obliviousness of both parties in that conversation.

“SHE WORKS IN A CAFÈ, GODDAMMIT HAHAHAHAHA,” Daichi says, and everyone laughs again at the thought of the scene playing in their brains.

The laughter seems to die down as people enter the café. Bokuto turns around as he unconsciously follows the sound of the bell ringing with each movement of the door. He sees an exasperated, lean, and messy, black-haired boy, holding a laptop bag, along with a silver-haired, livelier guy, and a smaller guy with bleached hair with roots starting to grow out. Bokuto feels like he knows the exasperated guy.

Bokuto doesn’t know the guy.

The bugging sensation is back, more intense than ever, and Bokuto is restless again, appearing to look at anything but the new arrivals.  He tries to calm himself down, but his eyes stray back to the trio that recently entered the building, and he’s back to being fidgety and restless yet again.

“Boku-dude, you okay, there?” Kuroo asks, clearly disturbed by Bokuto’s hyperactivity. Bokuto recognizes the nickname and realizes that somebody is talking to him, and he finally relaxes, looking at Kuroo as he replies.

“Yea,  it’s the coffee in the drink,” Bokuto quickly explains and Kuroo raises an eyebrow, he’s been watching Bokuto the entire time since he sat down and he hasn’t touched his drink yet. Both Daichi and Kuroo know this, and they both let it slide as they see Bokuto might get his emo mode out of schedule and both of them are not in the mood to handle it.

“Told you, you should cut down the sugar, seriously, black coffee for breakfast and then WHITE CHOCO MOCHA FRAP? YOU’RE FUCKING INSANE,” Kuroo continues, not showing that he knew that Bokuto gave the wrong reason for his hyperactivity.

“HAH! JOKES ON YOU, I DIDN’T DRINK BLACK COFFEE THIS MORNING,” Bokuto says, indicating his attention is back on them. Both of them sigh in relief, but Kuroo is impressed, Bokuto isn’t drinking his usual black coffee.

“Oya? Is that so? So what did you drink for breakfast?” The former Nekoma Captain asks, and Bokuto is silent, probably remembering what exactly the owl did drink for breakfast.

“… egg?” Daichi says after a moment of silence, and laughter breaks the momentum of peace, and Kuroo starts scolding Daichi after that bad joke.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, YOU CAN'T DRINK EGG, YOU DAMNED CROW”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I HAD TO OKAY?” Daichi explained,

“…. red bull…” Bokuto says quietly and both of the other captains he was with nearly stand from their seats in shock.

“You drank RED BULL FOR BREAKFAST?!?!” Kuroo asks, and Bokuto puts his hands up in defense, ready to explain.

“WE RAN OUT OF COFFEEEEE!”

Daichi facepalms, “Yeah, but Red Bull is worse than coffee.”

Kuroo finally calms down and sighs, “Bokuto, you suddenly have a ticket to go to the mental hospital, signed by me,” he says.

“HEY! I WOULD DRINK RED BULL RATHER THAN…. Eggs,” Bokuto points out, and the three of them start laughing once again.

“BOKUTO, NO— HAHAHAHAHAH”

As Bokuto and his friends continue to bicker, the exasperated man he found himself ever-so-fond of settles his laptop bag under their table while his friends seem to be taking turns going to the counter.

“I haven’t been here at all,” the dark-haired man starts, and it leaves the two men with him bewildered. The man pushes up his glasses to take a look at the menu on the café wall. Alas, the font is too small for him, and he’s far enough that, even with glasses, he can barely make out what the menu is offering.

“It’s not that far from where you work, Akaashi” The blond dude says. He says this without looking up from the little Switch console he brought with him.

“Yeah, work is kinda building up on me so I don’t exactly have the time to go out,”

“Guess, I’m ordering for you,” the silver-haired friend chirps, and Akaashi nods. It turns out to be, this friend over here, might be the most cheerful of the bunch.

“If it’s not coffee, I’m not drinking it,” Akaashi warns, and his silver-haired friend lets out a sigh. He may or may not have a different idea for an order.

“… Darn it,” his cheerful friend says in defeat as he walks away. Akaashi looks for a table and immediately lays his laptop bag on the ground, leaning on one of the legs of the table.

As Akaashi and his blond companion settle down, he gets a notification from his phone. He grabs it in his pocket by instinct and instantaneously looks at what caused the sound. It turns out that there’s a last-minute meeting to be held in 10 minutes by his boss. Akaashi sighs, was a day-off too much to ask?

The gamer boy across Akaashi notices the dismay on his face and asks, “Really? Still working even now?”

Akaashi sighs, “Yeah, not as flexible of a schedule as you, Kenma,”

“Aren’t you on your day off?” Kenma points out as Akaashi chuckles at the observation of the CEO. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t get a lot of those.

“That’s also what I thought till I got the text that my presence suddenly matters,” Akaashi answers and sighs, “you don’t do much though,” he continues.

“Yeah, but then meeting assholes murder you every time for it so I think we’re even,” Kenma says, rolling his eyes at the thought, causing Akaashi to chuckle again at not just the action but because of Kenma’s.. colorful choice of words.

“I agree, then they take all the credit,”

Kenma then pauses his game to massage a budding headache just from thinking about his company’s growth and welfare, “then come crawling back to you when something goes wrong,” Akaashi nods in agreement and comfortable silence fills the air. The silence doesn’t need to dissipate. Akaashi is also aware that both he and the person in front of him are generally quiet people and would prefer silence over the conversation.

Akaashi suddenly feels it. The uneasy air, the stuffiness, the stillness. Akaashi looks around the café to see what exactly is causing the sudden change in atmosphere. He looks over to Kenma and he sees the gamer boy fiddling away with his switch. Akaashi knows it's not from the man across the table.

“This place feels… odd,” Akaashi says, shifting in his seat, trying to sense what exactly is making him uncomfortable. It doesn’t seem to be his seat, no. It’s the atmosphere, it feels stuffy as if something is going on. He turns around to see if someone is staring at him.

No one was giving him a single glance, but his eyes fell upon one person. A man with white hair and black highlights. A guy with his friends, who was probably peeing his pants in laughter as they bantered on. He seemed ecstatic, attractive, like the entire room was watching them, although no one was.

“Is that so?” Kenma says, not feeling a single strand of discomfort. He looks at Akaashi, wondering what’s got the editor so fidgety. Akaashi fidgets around so much that it causes Kenma to look around just in case he could see something that would cause Akaashi to be so unnerved.

“Yeah, I’m not exactly sure why or how, though.”

Kenma, seeing that there is nothing that could make Akaahi want to leave, shrugs. “Maybe it’s cause you haven’t been to this place before.”

Akaashi nods. That’s a good argument, he’s never been comfortable in new places, he always felt like some puppy in a wolf’s territory. “Yeah… maybe.”

“Hey, here’s your drink— Akaashi—,“ the silver-haired boy finally comes back with all the drinks in-hand, and Akaashi takes the drink given to him and starts to get up from his seat.

“Sorry, Sugawara-san, I have an emergency meeting to attend,” Akaashi says, looking at the time, completely forgetting he had a bag on-hand when he first arrived at the store. He was already a few meters away due to him jogging.

“Oh, it’s fine! Take care, though!” Sugawara and Kenma both bid farewell to the rushing editor as they see him brisk-walk farther from the café.

“Isn’t today a day-off for Akaashi?” Sugawara mentions as he takes Akaashi’s seat, settling down.

“That’s what I said, too… his bosses are honestly merciless,” Kenma mentions, shaking his head in slight frustration at the fact that Akaashi simply can’t rest. His eyes then rest on the forgotten laptop bag of Akaashi and his eyes go wide, “Suga-san…,” the gamer boy says, pointing at the bag. Sugawara was taking a sip of his drink when he looked under the table where the object in question remains untouched. The man sipping his drink then nearly spits it out and panics.

“Oh shit, Aka—“

A new voice enters the conversation, “Is it fine with you if I return the bag to him? I can catch up to him; noticing his speed, he would be near the subway station by now,” the pair looks up at the new voice and sees a lean man with black highlights on his white hair. The silver-haired man silently smirks before replying.

“Uhm… yeah, sure I guess,” Sugawara says, knowing Kenma is too shy to rebut and say the stranger might steal the laptop. He hands over the laptop bag and the stranger takes off. Kenma watches the whole scene unfold with both eyes.

“You are stupid.”

“No… I just feel like being cupid. That guy has been staring at Akaashi the entire time he’s been there. He only looked away when the two of you were looking around,” Sugawara says, taking another sip of his coffee.

__________________________________

Bokuto runs as fast as he can, keeping the man he's pursuing in his line of sight. “Hey! Wait!” He screams, but as he’s too far, and Akaashi can't hear him. Bokuto makes it his mission to be faster. He’s a volleyball player anyway, he can get faster, right?

“HEY!!” He tries again after closing some distance, though not much of it. He’s still far and Akaashi heard him this time, but he feels like he wasn’t the person the voice was calling out to, and it would be embarrassing on his part if he turned around, assuming it was him.

“ AGAASHI! ” Bokuto finally reaches Akaashi and suddenly blurts out his name. It freezes both of them because they do not know each other. Bokuto is freaking out internally, what did I just say? He starts to think of some lousy excuse. He scans the laptop bag for a name tag at least and finds nothing. He tries to remember if the stranger’s friends even said his name before he interrupted them. Everything moves in slow motion in his view as he tries to make up for an obvious mistake.

“How do you know my name?” Akaashi turns around, cautiously.

“You forgot this” Bokuto says, and just like that, they are both transported to a temple, and both of them are wearing hakamas, and the laptop bag is non-existent. Bokuto is holding a katana.

Akaashi is shocked. He looks at Bokuto to see if he is just as shocked, but he doesn’t seem fazed at the fact that they were just surrounded by buildings and are now surrounded by mountains and trees, empty streets, and ancient temples.

“What?” Akaashi says, still bewildered at the part about suddenly traveling to some olden time. He looks around to process where on earth they are.

“Your katana, you forgot your katana… W-weren’t you leaving, Agaashi?” Bokuto says, poking at Akaashi’s arm. Akaashi’s attention is back on Bokuto. It was only then that he noticed this man’s features, the jawline, the golden eyes, the bright smile, the radiant personality. He seemed… attractive. “You can’t leave training without your katana, Agaashi~” Bokuto teases with an eyebrow arched.

Akaashi couldn’t help but feel a little tug deep inside him when he saw the taunting look of his new formed friend. So many things are rushing through his head right now, it felt like he’s in a world one of their clients back at work made. The details, the sounds, the feeling was so surreal Akaashi swears this might be some daydream.

Akaashi wanted to ask where they were but Bokuto didn't seem to know what he was talking about and it was like he couldn’t change what his mouth was saying as he says, “Oh, yes… thank you, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi’s eyes go wide as his hand mindlessly reaches to grab the katana by the handle and Bokuto gives a slight smile. He doesn’t know this man.

Suddenly, everything is back to normal; they’re in front of the subway station entrance, the katana has disappeared, and the laptop bag returned; the two men are both back in modern clothes. Bokuto seems to be the first one knocked out of the daze, as it seems that both of them were stuck in some trance. Akaashi sees that he’s already holding the handle of the bag,“Hello? Sir? You forgot your laptop bag… Your friends were supposed to chase you but I figured you’d be too far to reach so I offered to do it instead. I’m sorry, the name just blurted out and I swear I don’t know how—” Bokuto tries to explain but Akaashi cuts him off.

“Did you see it, too?”

“I- I mean, YES, I DID SEE IT. I MEAN, THE VISION? NONONO, IT WAS LIKE SOME—“ Bokuto freaks out as Akaashi takes the bag and smiles softly at him. Bokuto finally calms down and realizes that the man in front of him has a nice smile.

“You can ask for my number from my friends back in the café… and thank you, Bokuto-san, ” He says as he waves away from the volleyball player.

[popculturebuffet]

Top 13 Venture Bros Episodes!

In honor of it’s recent passing I take a look at the best episodes of easily one of the best adult animated, or animated period, shows ever and one of my faviorites. Join me as I look back on Grand Galactic High  Inquistors, Venturestiens, ninja filled first dates, Noir, super science garage sales and much more under the cut, and GO TEAM VENTURE!

As I said in the teaser.. the Venture Bros is one of my favorite shows of all time. Starting way back in 2003, the show created by Jackson “Christopher Mculloch” Publick and from mid season 1 onwards cowritten, plotted and what have you by his best friend and creative soulmate Doc Hammer, the show enjoyed a healthy 17 year run on adult swim, making it the longest standing show and despite the years of hiatuses between episodes it’s most popular till Rick and Morty came around. The show endured through changing trends in animation, network shifts and scabies until it’s recently announced, though apparently having happened months ago, cancellation.  I watched the show from the start, sneaking it as a boy and by my teen years watching it every week online through Adult Swim’s website and lapping up every episode, becoming a huge fan in the process and continuing my huge love of the series through the rest of it’s life, breifly forgetting to watch season 6 but getting back to it weekly for the 7th, and currently unless adult swim does indeed find a way to bring it back, final season. This show has been a part of my life since it started, and a part of me for slightly less long: it informed my sense of humor, probably informed my comics taste in ragtag groups consiting of lesser known characters, and informed me david bowie existed for which my life will ever be better.  It was a part of me and while I gave it a breif memorial earlier I felt after my long content hiatus due to my moven to another room, and for the 1 of you reading this who reads my amphibia weekly coverage it’ll be back shortly, that honoring a show that gave me so much and made me who I am, in a good way I know i’m kind of a mess so that statment could be seen as a threat in some states, by diving into my faviorite episodes of it and the ones I honeslty consider i’ts finest half hours.. or hours in two cases but we’ll get to that. 

For now it’s time to have your ro-bo pour you a red mocho cooler, slap on your vintage batman mask, and eat some pennies quizboys, this is my top 13 venture bros episodes. Pitter Patter!

13. It Happening One Night (Season 6, Episode 6) 

Season 6 had a huge burst of fresh energy and ideas: Doc and Jackson moved the show to New York for a number of reasons: To shake things up, because they lived there and thus could inject the energy of a city they loved in and because one of the series biggets inspriations is marvel comics, as seen by the sheer number of marvel parodies and homages in comparison to dc or other superhero outlets, so having New York be the big hub for superhero and villian activity in the ventureverse was a no brainer. This also moved the ventures from an isolated corner of the Ventureverse on their old compound, which burned down in the gargantua 2 special, right into the heart of it, bringing in tons of new characters to the already large cast. Not only that but it thrust our heroes and villian protaganists both into new and intresting situations: Doctor Venture was suddenly rich and running his own think tank with white and billy. Dean was going to college, Hank found a love intrest in Serena, more on that obviously in a second, Brock returned to the team proper as bodyguard once more, while the Monarch grappled with both his father being a hero and his wife being promoted and their marraige hitting choppy waters. It had great new characters like warina and serena, brought fan faviorite brown widow in if not as much as i’d like frankly, but there’s always room for nathan fillion, and freshened things up a bit.  Granted one of Venture Bros biggest strengths was it didn’t have the rigid status quo, or entire lack of any continuity a lot of animated shows at the time and even now have, that things changed and evolved and the universe was dense as it was wonderful. But here instead of just moving the pieces around the board and maybe slapping on some new coats of pait, they threw the board up and put the pieces on an enitrley new one. However all this experimentation did nick the show a little: while it was a step up from the rather standard outside of Dean’s plot Season 5 (which not concendtially is the only season not represented here), it also felt like the plots were a bit looser and some characters like Dermott and Dr. Orpheous, one of whom had a huge untouched subplot and the other who was a beloved fan faviorite and fixture of the show since season 1, got left out all together. It was a decent season it just felt lacking at times, and the Monarch and Shielda’s relationship disolving wasn’t at all fun to watch and thankfully got resolved next season. And that was the other problem: Due to wanting to give their big epic finale the room it needed and only having 8 episodes to work with due to the special, they had to move it to next season which meant it just sorta.. ended with most things left unresolved till season 7. Thankfully for me I didn’t get around to watching this season till close to 7, but for everyone else they had to wait YEARS for a proper resolution. It was  a mixed bag of a season, the mass changes leading to growing pains, but it had it’s moments. And naturally our one season 6 representivie here is it’s finest. 

It Happening One Night juggles two diffrent but equally awesome plots. In the first Hank goes on his first date with Serena, their new next door neighbor and daughter of big villain in town, new councilman and combination of kingpin and tobias whale, Wide Whale. Serena was one of the best additions to the series, voiced by a game Cristini Miloti, she’s a no nonsense girl with a sharp tounge, an annoyance with her father and his number 2 rocko’s overprotectivness of her and gills and meshes well with hank: Her no nonsense and more down to earth attitude compliments his up int he clouds weirdness and lack of reality really well and the two were cute together. Were... while they’d do.. things I did not like.. with her character next season, for this one she’s great and a fine addition and it was nice to give one of the boys a proper love interest, while also having her be her own person. Sure all her plots centered around hank.. but she still felt like a fully realized addition to the cast and given this was over a decade in with so many great members it wasn’t an easy task.  The date is paticuarlly hank as he has a carraige (his air car) ready, has dean chauffer them, has Billy and White show up as street toughs to challenge him to a dance off and dinner is at a ninja themed restraunt Dean’s friend Jared, aka brown widow, works at. It’s really adorable and charming stuff, and the two genuinely bond, and Hank gets some good character stuff. He genuinely worries Serena is only intrested to piss off her dad.. but fins she likes him for who he is: his charm, his lack of fear, and the fact he went so far for a romantic gesture he had his friends dress up as street toughs, or the hank venture idea of one anyway, and get into a dance off just to impress. her. it’s really good stuff. The Ninja themed restraunt is also both hilarious and apparently a very real thing the creators actually toned down. I’m unsuprised by all of this. The two also dodge their bodyguards, Brock and Rocco and share a romantic kiss underwater leading to the above. It’s a really good plot and the easy reason why I put it on here and defintely a review cantidate.  The other plot however is just pure comedy and invention. While the Monarch works on his plan to use his dad’s blue morpho guise to take out the other arches on his way to venture, Venture is plauged by the utterly bizzare and utterly delightful Doom Factory: A combination of Andy Warhol and his hangers on and the legion of doom... yes this actually happened. While I know nothing of Warhol and thus a lot of it flew over my head, it’s made up for by the sheer joyous lunacy of having the art school version of the legion of doom arch rusty by invading his house, throwing a party and taking various pictures of him in his underwear. The one mistep of the episode is them getting blown up at the end despite being great, but their one apperance was a treat, and it was such a great and bizzarely speific parody I couldn’t help but love it. It was a good night indeed. 

12. Tag Sale, You’re It! (Season 1, Episode 6 (10 in airing order) Season 1 of The Venture Bros is a bit rocky. It’s not unusual for season 1′s but it’s understandable, espcesially now i’ve read Go Team Venture!: The Art of the Venture Bros, the art book for the series as well as a full on making of for seasons 1-6, and know the team was under immense crunch to get the season done and is likely the reason every season after had a few years between them. But yeah at the start the series was more of a broad comedy, with the characters being the simiplest versions of their characters, the boys in paticular only having “jock and nerd” as things that defined them as seperate people early on and it took a bit for things to come together. However things really started to crystalize into what the show would truly be with two episodes. One we’ll get to later but the other is this one: Tag Sale Your It.  Tag Sale started one of my faviorite recurring themes for the series: Venture Compound Episodes. Basically their episodes where a huge pile of the shows cast get together at the venture compound for whatever reason and chaos, great jokes and great worldbuilding inveitbly insues. It’s good stuff. And it’s usually centerted around a great concept.  In this case all the villians and heroes of the world are gathering at the Venture Compound for of all things, a Garage Sale. Or Tag Sale as it’s called in the title or Yard Sale as Venutre himself calls it. In order to make a quick buck and get rid of some of his dad’s excess scientific wonders, Rusty’s sellling them off to whatever weirdo wants em. it’s an utterly hilarious concept, with Brock complaning about the security risk and the fact Doc is entirely convinced this won’t go horribly wrong despite the fact he has a bargin bin for death rays, one of my faviorite gags of the episode. But there’s still plenty of sense here too: There’s what i’m presuming are OSI agents on standbye, who also screen the various villians to have them check their weapons. 

The episode also opens the cast up considerably introducing Phantom Limb, and fleshing out Billy and Pete, as well as being the episode where two of the casts standouts came into their own as 21 and 24 go off on their own misadventur where 21 uses the monarchs money to buy what turns out ot bea non working lightsaber and tries to fight brock in one of the best scenes of the episode.  Speaking of the Monarch, . The Monarch himself is there to cause miscihief, as usual, as well as have his minons buy him some stuff because he’s not going to miss a bargin, and finds himself struggling to get his hate boner up in a neat subplot, eventually acheiving it even if it gets him stuck to the celing However the other two subplots really shine. Orpheous in a micro plot, and after yelling at Dr. Venture for trying to sell the weed wacker he borrowed from Oprheous, tries to get his own nemisis, a thread that would continue at the end of the season and into the next, having a ghost slap the monarch ot try and get him to become Orpheous arch and telling various villians he’s blasting who they can blame if they want to swear vegnance. It’s short but really funny.  The other however is my faviorite and the plot that really set up hank’s bizzarely and uniquely him personality, which would be expanded on more as the show went on. Annoyed that their dad is selling their old things and getting the money, Hank decides to get him and Dean a piece of the action and sets up his own grinder and lemonade stand, Hank Co, starting the sparkling runner of his bizzare personal buisness, and while the lemonade stand is standard kids stuff, the added oddly specific addition of grinders is what makes it hank as is his oddly agreesive managment style. Dean ends up working for him alongside HELPEr, while Dean awkwardly talks up Orpheous daughter triana. More on that whole thing in a later entry, with Triana joining in. It’s just a fun side bit that ends hilariously as, when the sale cascades into an orgy of violence as it was always destined to, the rest of the team book it while Hank definatly refuses to get knocked down before a shoe hits him. 

IT’s a damn fun time that sets up the backbone of the show’s universe. Nuff Said. 

11. Pinstripes and Poltergeists (Season 4, Episode 8)  Season 4 is easily my faviorite season hands down, and in my opinion the best, in part helped by the fact it’s the longest and thus had the most time to work on it. Like season 6, if on a smaller scale, it threw up the table. While Season 2 and 3 had status quo changes, the Monarch being on his own without the guild or dr girlfriend and then the newly married couple being forced to arch eleswhere this one had probably the biggets shakeups: Brock Sampson left team venture, and was MIA for all but two episodes of the first half, Sgt. Hatred took over as boydguard a move that wasn’t one of there best as while Hatred could be funny at times.. replacing one of the show’s most beloved and most iconic characters with a reformed pedophile who fans already didn’t like all that much in season 3 wasn’t one of Jackson and Doc’s smarter moves let’s be honest. Again he has his moments, but he just wasn’t as compelling or well fleshed out as the rest of hte main cast, helper included.  The other big swing, one admitted in the making of art book that was an intentional risk, was killing off 24, half of the beloved buddy duo of 21  and 24. However this one paid off way better, as 21, while still a husky dork who loves his crappy job, reinvented himself in the wake of hte tragedy, turning a lot of his blubber into muscle (And I say that as a chub myself, so relax), and becoming the badass drill seargent of the cocoon.  But both big changes expertly dovetailed into this episode which explains where brock was after the premiere. The ball gets rolling when the Monarch goes to see Monstroso, a great addition to the series and the sum of all evil lawyer jokes, a lawyer in a pinstripe suit and small devil hood who makes deals with other supervillians, in this case to buy up part of the venture compound to take it from Rusty.   Naturally making a deal with a lawyer super villian who dresses like the devil, every bit of that sentence a red flag, goes poorly. As Shiela points out in one of the series best lines as she berates her husband’s terrible decision making “Monstro’s a lawyer that’s also a super villian. That’s like a shark with a rocket launcher strapped to his head, and the monstroso plans to take the monarch’s stuff as well. It falls to 21 to stop him and 21 is on the venture compound to find our missiing sampson and get answers on who killed his best friend, whose also following him around possibly as a ghost/hallucination.  Speaking of Brock, when exploring a shack on the edge of the property to use it for stuff, Rusty finds instead the base for SPHINX, consiting of Hunter Gathers (Who I hope gets to retransition someday), gay icon Shore Leave, and Brock Himself. Turns out Brocks literally been right there, SPHINX Just needed to stay secret and the pain of not being able to see the boys has seriously hurt brock. And naturally this deal will impact spinix, so they send brock to deal with it.  This leads to the best part of the episode as the above episode gets a callback as 21 challenges brock to a fight.. and to show how far he’s come, instead of becoming a bloody pile on the lawn, fights EVENELY with brock freaking sampson. After it’s confirmed brock has nothing to do with it and 21 and him have wiggle room to operate, the two go after monstroso who next we see needs heart surgery so mission acomplished. This episode is light on jokes, apart from a great one where rusty tells the boys everything before mindwiping them, but good on character stuffs as we find out where Brocks been, meet some good new supporting cast and see just how far 21′s come, and close out the first half of a stellar season iwth a great scene of Brock eating cereal, finally allowed to be part of his family again.

10. Viva Los Muertos! (Season 2, Episode 11)  Season 2 was easily where the show hit it’s stride. While Season 1 is going through growing pains Season 2 has all the setup, half planned ideas and what not mostly out of the way to just focus on building up the world, and characters as well as playing around with things and having the first instance of the show’s refusal to have a set status quo by having the Monarch’s breakup iwth Shiela stick until the end of the season. More on that later. However some experimentation still happened as something that would likely NEVER happen from this point on happened.  See the Venture Bros is very much Jackson and Doc’s baby. While Jackson created it, Doc because just as important and the two share one giant geeky brain. WHile they may argue on some things, the two still agree on most stuff and thus the project has their unified vision of this weirdly specific superhero universe that’s mainly focused on what would be prehriay characters leftover from a one time genre experiment and supervillians. While the staff on the show clearly enjoyed working on it far as I can tell an dare celebrated in the making of when credit’s do, the writing and worldbuilding is on two guy’s shoulders, an absolute rarity in animation let alone of a project with this gorgeous and detailed animation. But for three episodes the two did let someone in.. it’s just someone who not only got exactly what htey were going for but was their friend and mentor who helped nurture their talents on the tick. Ben Edlund. If you haven’t heard of Ben first off shame on you and second, he’s the creator of the Tick, writing the original comics series and having a major hand in all three series, all of which are unsuprisingly stellar, and having brought jackson and doc on board for 2/3 of them, likely only not bringing them to the Amazon one because by this point they’d far outgrown being writters on someone elses show.  He also created supernatural and left long before it became a tire fire so there’s that. I need to watch that sometime. Point is he’s a big deal and helped write two episodes and wrote this one Solo. And this one is easily the best of the three and given it’s on this list one of the series best.  The episode has Doc have another great idea in the Zack Morris with mad scientest abilities veign he always have: Take the parts of one of hte monarch’s dead henchman, as brock tends to leave piles around, into a “Venturestein’ and sell it to the goverment. While the simple man bonds with the boys, he cowers in fear of brock, who is forced to grapple with his violent nature and deeds and goes to Orpheous spirtial gathering fors some perspective. It’s a nice subplot that has some character development before a spirit vision of hunter gathers convinces him he can’t get caught up in killing people when it’s hwat he goods at. Brock meets him halfway, deciding he can’t feel entirely guilty but he can help the guy and gets Venturestein some “prostitoots!” he’s been wanting since apparnelty the henchman he was made out of really liked htem.  The concept of venturestein himself is neat, from the idea of reusing old henchman to him using the boys learning beds to learn about the third world and be indocrinated for third world labor, as was Doc’s orginal plan.  The other plot which dovetalls into venture steins is another great one as The Groovy Gang, the show’s answer to mystery inc arrives. And in a great idea by Edlund.. their all based on various serial killers, with leader ted being baised on ted bundy and being unerviing as he speaks cherfully while threanting the rest of hte gang, the shaggy stand in being a stand in for the son of sam and the only one that can hear groovy talk who rather than be an adorable dog, talks like a nightmarish german man, the daphne standin is clearly kidnapped and the velma one valries acts like valrie solanis. It’s creepy stuff but it’s also funny because theys till include hannah barbara sound effects, including when Venturestein in a ptsd fueld rage kills ted, not-shaggy and groovy> It’s a horrible but great scene and a great concept that just works. They also tie in the boys being clones by having it revealed one of their deaths was caused by Sonny, finalylr emembered his name, and Ted wanting to kill them. The boys end up finding their clones too, but Doc spins them a yarn to get by and is kept from kiling them. Not much to say, outside of brocks bit this isn’t huge on character but the sheer balls of the scooby doo parody and the sheer amount of jokes and creativity here make Edlund’s sole solo outing a true highlight. 

9. The Inamorata Consequence (Season 7, Episode 5) 

The likely final compound episode and a welcome return after season 6 lacked theme entirely, and as I established earlier the compound isn’t required it’s just where most of these take place.  Season 7 was a good note to go out on. While I still want closure, after the forgetable Season 5 and the  fresh but messy Season 6, 7 was almost pure goodness, with most of the episodes being standouts and the premire trilogy wrapping up the dangling threads from season 6 being a highlight, if not enough to make this list but it was a tight list as is. It had it’s flaws: The “Serena Cheats on Hank with Dean thing” was not only horribly underdeveloped but basically wrote off one of their best new characters. Her and hank breaking up and her dating dean is fine, relationships end and stuff, it was just done poorly. Even if Hank found out because a scary man in a bear costume literally carried him to a convience store and then to Dean which was great as was the button on that plot of, after Dean and Serena naturally react to the guy “Oh good you see him too. “ The Unicorn in Captivity is also a series low point despite having mark freaking hamil guest star, for a number of reasons i’ll probably get into one of these days either on a worst of list for this show or it’s own review. But those blemishes don’t overide a great season that makes up for Oprehous and Dermott’s absensces by bringing both back for an episode, has some true classics, some great character stuff and in general is just really good and it was hard to cut a lot of it from this list, but two made it. And it was nice to see the show go out on top if nothing else. 

So onto this episode which has a brilliant complex: Every exty years the Guild and the OSI meet to hash out the details of their mututal treaty with a Venture prociding and with Jonas now well and truly dead, and missing before that, it falls on Rusty. and since it was made before the compound burned down, our heroes returned to the charred remains of their home to hash things out.  The episode then nicely settles into 3 really excellent plots. The first is the obvious, the peace treaty which has the Council of 13, who in a delebrate move by the creators went from a bunch of faceless nobodies who were killed off to characters we all knew, versus our standard stable of OSI recureerers as the two bicker over terms and we find out one of the conflict settlers is a pool fight, done without a pool since that’s gone now. It’s just pure comedy goodness, but it ends with the rare unequivoocable VICTORY for Rusty. Fed up with both sides acting like children, and even calling them such, as well as both threatning war, he gives one hell of a speech to both to shut them up and for once in his life does BETTER than his father. 

It’s easily James Urbanik’s finest hour as the character and one of the series best moments which, 17 years in, is a high achievement.  The other two plots aren’t too shabby themselves. The second is an overlap as Hank gets lured away from the confrence by an old friend: IT’S DERMOTT! The dynamic duo rides again and their old dynamic of two dumbasses, one a normal teen but entirely full of himself the other being a cloudcuckoolander with little self awarness but more empathy and sometimes sense, is one I really missed and it shines here. Dermott’s joined the OSI, with Rusty giving him a recomendation as long as he didn’t tell anyone else he was his son, or at least it’s implied as much, finally buttoning up that bit while leaving it open for hank to find out later, and a bit that also was never resolved and hopefully will be by a follow up, especially since Dean revealed in the series finale he found out from his dad a while back while rusty was hammered. They follow kimberly mcmanus and one of the strangers, the guilds soldiers who are engaging in a clandestine affair.. which also reveals that the stranger is the peril partnerships mole in the guild, a nice twist. The two have fun chemistry and it’s great ot see them again just like it’s great to see hank and dermott pal around again with the highlight being hanks utterly bizzare and utterly hank fantasy sequence.  Rounding out the three is a more emotional tale as Dean sneaks off to see an old friend, Ben the genetisct who worked with his father and grandfather at various points and revealed to dean he was a clone. Ben is gone, either due to Doc and Jackson not wanting to use him, or because JK simmons was unvaliable and unlike dr. impossible and steven colbert, they didn’t want to recast. But we do get a great substitute as we meet H.E.L.P.er 2, a household model voiced by Rhys Darby who Ben left behind on his trip.  As it turns out Jonas tried mass marketing H.E.L.P.er units (With the equally unsurprisingly sexist tag line of “Get a H.E.L.P.er to Help Her!”), but a  baby choked on a stray bolt and a the ensuing backlash lead to mass burnings and most being destroyed and the one we meat being a nervous wreck that Ben took in. Dean naturally sees himself in the scared bot and while he fails to get his new friend to be able to leave, H2 is too nervous about possibly being destroyed and given the uncaring nature of the venture world sometimes yeah probably a good point, he does bond with dean.. and reveal that Rusty himself is a clone by accident. IT’s a nice twist that makes perfect since: While we don’t know if Rusty knows the tech was used on him most of his stuff , with few exceptions is old equipment of his dad’s. It’s not a stretch that his greatest invention was actually Jonas’. It also leads to a nice moment as dean hugs his dad, understanding him a bit better. It’s a funny, well done episode that lets doc and sons really shine. Truly a great way fo ra great theme to go out.

8. The Buddy System (Season 3, Episode 5) Time for a sentimental favorite. See while I watched bits of seasons 1 and 2 when they aired, and more of 2 then I realized, I didn’t get really hooked on the show till season 3.. and this was the episode that did it. The ones before are far from bad, Shadowman 9 was a contender for this list after all, this is just the one that really got me into the show, showing off it’s varied supporting cast, bringing in one or two more, and really getting me into dean.. and Dean and Triana shipping but I can get into that, again, more on that later. Given this and Fallen Arches were early faviorites it’s no suprise compound episodes became my faviorites and this one is easily the second best of em, with one more coming up topping it handily.  But enough showing my hand, let’s talk about Season 3. Season 3 is a slight mixed bag, as some episodes don’t land, but overall is a really good season, it’s just sandwitched between the shows too best. But it did have good ideas, great world building and a hell of a cliffhanger. Some decisions, like Sgt. Hatred, weren’t the best, but overall a solid season, just like 3 it only managed to squeak out one entry, though TONS of possible cantidates.  This episode has a great premise from the get go: Rusty, for once, has a decent idea. Yes it still results in a child dying and being replaced by a clone, but this is rusty. If something didn’t go terribly wrong on some level it wouldn’t be him. But the idea is simple: Since the cartoon based on his nightmarish childhood, which made him a minor celebrity and is why billy likes Rusty so much and looks up to him despite being.. Rusty, is a hit with the kids again, Rusty launches a day camp on the grounds, using his boys as counslers and having his various friends and aquantinces set up booths. From Orpheous and the order of the triad doing an anti drug presentation to the sea captain talking about the benefits of being a scooby doo villian, to Action Johnny, the series version of Johnny Quest renamed to avoid copyrights but very obviously Johnny Quest, whose strung out on drugs and can’t go a few minutes without going into a breakdown about his father or past. All good stuff. It actuallyg oes pretty well till rusty makes the mistake of going into an old thing of his d ad’s without checking and a gorilla monster attacks and gets the one child left behind, thankfully off screen, but it leads to the darkly hilarious bit of him rushing a clone out for his parents to avoid a justified law suit. 

Meanwhile the boys and brock deal with a new figure in their lives: Dermott Fictel. As the creators put it they basically desgined him as that one kid everyone knows who talks shit, thinks he’s way more capable than he is, and way more knowledgble than he is and is kinda dopey. I had one of those, i’m sure you did too, and that’s probably part of why I really liked Dermott as I knew a guy just like him. Hank naturally, not having had any friends other than dean and H.E.L.P.er, bonds with the prick and the two become best friends right away. Dean however hates the little asshole for both constantly shit talking him and just being obnoxious. Brock soon joins the hate train as Dermott invades his karate demonstration to talk about how much of a badass he thinks he is and learned from the internet. Brock soon finds himself asking the age old question. 

But since his code avoids women and children, he tries to find ways around it but Orpheous obviously isn’t having it. His other option is to go to the Monarch’s minons the Pupa Twins, aka the Moppets, Shiela’s old minons who the monarch’s basically stuck with and no one really liked in or out of universe. Their just assholes who treat 21 and 24 and the monarch himself like crap and are thankfully downplayed in Season 4, and only appear in Season 5 to die off and close up a plot thread. But credit where it’s due they did get one good bit, creepy as it may be and it’s this. 

With the Monarch not allowed to arch venture at the time due to plot stuff, the monarch’s mostly spying and sending the pupa twins in as spies which as you can see dosen’t really go well. Everything converges on the finale, as Rusty, again being rusty even when he’s mildly ahead child aside he still screws up, brings in Johnny’s old enemy Dr. Z, who like dermott is important but it’d take till the end of Season 5 for that. Johnny breaks down, Venture’s current nemisis arrives and finds there was a scheduling error and hten we get the crowning moment of the episode that makes it all come together magically: Dean gets to sit with Triana, whose actually being receptive to his crush for once, but also has to put up with Dermott..  who being Dermott, especially early dermott is an obnoxious jackass who makes creepy coments abotu Trianna and eventually sets Dean off

Dermott doesn’t even get two seconds into telling Triana to wait naked for him, because of course he does before dean utterly destroys him. This being Dean, it’s with tears and snot running and coming off like an angry 8 year old, but he still deserves points for utterly decimating the asshole after a full day of taking his self indulgant bullcrap and having the guy be creepy to his crush. And to be fair Triana was dealing with him fine, but still Dean beat up someone twice his size and while lacking any actual fighting skill with at least enough bulk to beat him up and gave the fucker a black eye. Until season 7 with him just paying off the monarch to save his teacher from making a huge mistake, and to show how fed up he was, this was easily Dean’s best moment. Just a great capper to a great episode. Also Dermott turns out to be, possibly brocks son but.. more on that later. 

7. Mid-Life Chrysalis (Season 1, Episode 3 (8 in Airing Order)  As I said earlier Season 1 was a bit rough, though as all of you probably know most 1st seasons are, especially in animation. It takes time to iron out what really works for a show and get it going right. Bojack Horseman, while still excellent, took the first few episodes to really become what it was born to be, Steven Universe season 1a lacks the deep characterization of the main cast that and has loosey goosey animation,  Ducktales had trouble character ballancing and ballancing adventure with deconstruction of adventure.. every show has growing pains.  And while season 1 does have too much of the show basically trying to scream

Like some adult cartoons do, and not even it’s contepraries like sealab and harvey birdman did as much, both excellent excellent shows by the way. But even with my criticsims of it: Flat characters, a try hard tone, clumsy worldbulding in places.. it’s still a good show even this early and even as early as episode 3, with the first two being good.. but this one being an utter classic. It dosen’t QUITE have the emotoinal or character depth of later episodes but damn if it isn’t one of the funniest things the crew ever wrote. 

Mid-Life’s two main plots are simple and start from the cold open: The Ventures get pulled over while on the way to an adventure by the air force, and Doc and Brock both encounter problems: Rusty being Rusty, his is petty and self loathing based as he gets called old or something like that by one of the air force people. Brock’s is a bit more serious: In a funny bit Brock LITERALLY has a legal lisence to kill, but given the burarcaey of the venture world, it’s expired.  So we get our two main plots out of that: Rusty wants to prove he’s not old and still got it by dragging a sad Brock to a strip club. Brock is miserable as the owner mocks him, and he can’t kill him so there’s that and his attempt to have a quickie with a stripper fails because it’s just not the same without his murder boner apparently. Look as I said the show was a wee bit immature early on.. it never stopped being mind you it just became more goofily immature than screaming i’m an adult. Brock leaves in a huff which leaves Rusty open for the oldest trick in the book as the Monarch sends Shiela in in disguise to seduce him, go back to his place, and then stick him with a syringe full of science that turns him into a caterpillar because this is the monarch. Subtly is not even a suite of his let alone his strong suite. Though this also being the Monarch we only get a bit where he watches as the two make out, which is creepy as that sounds until a minon randomly turns out the lights and apolgoizes. He was getting juice. The episode also nicely parodies the trope of a female spy or whatever turning for the hero because of his dick as The Monarch assumes that happen when Shiela has doubts about the scheme, that he “turend her with his oily sex” which is an objectively horrible and paranoid statment but also incredibly hilarious.  Thus the plots split and we get two really hilarious one: On Brocks end he with the boys encouragment, decides to retake his secret agent exam. And both boys really come into their own with this one: Dean’s adorably nerdy and sweet sides come out as he both encourages his second dad and helps him on the written portions, while hanks gung ho hankness emerges in full as he helps train brock, having him drink eggs that he probably spat in and in one of the best bits of the episode going a bit too far with the drill sgt routine till Brock helpfully points out he’ll legally be able to kill after this. The solution is also great as Brock not only avoids using his fire arm during one of the tests, instead uttelry decismating the target cutouts with just his kinfe and whatever he can rig up, and just scribbling icarus from the led zepplin albums on his test.. only for his proctor to pass him anyway as his dad and osi boss general treister, who we meet later, described brock as a living legend, and he did not dissapoint. And we get a great closer, after the main plto finsihes, where Brock shows the strip club asshole his fresh lisence before maiming him.. though even better, he DOSEN’T kill the guy as the asshole does show up again later, just missing an eye now. 

Back on our main plot we get plenty of hilarious and messed up stuff as the boys barely react to their dad’s horrible state, their numb at this point, and doc gives out the classic line and easily the best of the episode “I pissed in god’s eye, and he blinked”. Doc tries to cure himself and fails both due to caterpillar hands and due to helper eating the chemicals, and tries to get helper to help him reinact the end of the fly. All good stuff. It’s just a good, solid comedy episode that both solidifies the character and makes you laugh near constantly. 

6. The Terminus Mandate (Season 7, Episode 8) One of the best parts of the post Garantua shakeup of the show was the new council. After years of the council of 13 just being guys behind silouttes, mantle and dragoon nonwishtanding, Jackson and Doc replaced most of them with familiar charcters and gave a ton of them chances to shine while bringing in new ones like wide whale and easily their best later creation Red Death, more on him in a minute. It gave us a nice workplace dynamic and really made the guild pop more than ever. And this episode showcases this marvelously by giving the new council the spotlight.  In this one the Council find that there’s an old mandate that means they must stop active arching in order to retain their spots, something they all agree to and thus leads to an episode of each of the council having one last ride as each are given an envelope of who their last arch is. And each is hilaroius, some even heartfelt, creative and fleshes out some of them. Going down the list, leaving out Shiela and Red death who has a more involved subplot for hers and has some other buisness entirely we’ll get to: Phantom Limb: Has, in a great gag, a literal dick measuring contest with Hunter Gathers. Just a simple effective gag.  Radical Left: Is merged with his old arch enemy Right Wing so they simply play clue.  Wide Whale: Has the least funny or enteratining but still entresting as he and his old arch are now friends and the guy even plays cards with Rocco, so rather than poision the well he just sends Rocco to rough him up a bit for old times sake, then take him to dinner.  Dr. Z: Reminces with Action Johnny, the two considering each other family at this point and the two have a really nice moment with Johnny in rehab finally getting help that’s actually really touching and really nice to see.. though we also get an utterly fantastic bit where they recreate an actual scene from Johnny Quest but with Z lampshading how stupid everyone’s being. 

And finally we get Mantle and Dragoon, who spend the night binging tv and eating a ton, my mood and general schedule, afraid to open their envelope only to celebrate when they do and find their arches are all dead.  Red Death meanwhile has buisness to take care of. Since I dind’t include Red Means stop on here I’d just like to talk about how much I love the guy. Voiced by clancy brown death is an old school legend in the guild whose great at arching, has a great gimmick.,. but can switch from horribly threatning monster to aflrable nice and loving family man, having a younger wife and a daughter whose utterly adorable and shares his face. He even wanted the guild spot simply so he could basically retire, get the nice pension plan and salary that comes with the guild without the rigors of regular arching having long settled things with his own arch by murdering him> he’s an utterly inspired edition and the crew, and fans, loved him enough he became a recurrer this season. 

And his bit is both awesome and utterly terrifying: earlier the guild tried to parlay with rivals the peril partnership in order to stop the bleeding on their end, but their represntive, Blind Rage, a hilariously broey version of Daredevil, instead mocks and direspects them and is in general a pissant. So rather than do an arch, since he’s done with that anyway, Death evens the score in one of the shows best scenes, which like the rusty one above is an acomplishment years in and is an utterly terrifying and awesome villian scene. 

Clancy Brown is a fucking master at this. and it showss.  As for Shiela her bit ends up tying into the Venture Family’s plot for the evening: Rusty courts a black widow, Teresa Diade because getting laid outweighs the possibility of death and we get a a great bit of dean pretending to be her as the family preps him. Naturally he bungles it because he takes too much anti venom, but Teresa turns out to be a former superhero, probably what actually happened to her husbands, and Shielias arch during her breif solo career. Though instead of an arching, though she try, Shiela instead breaks down over the stress of this, over possibly giving up arching with her husband for her career, and the two share a nice moment. I mean she still takes Diade’s wallet because she’s a villian after all but it’s a nice one and an emotoinal moment. She takes the job as revealed later of course, because even of this probably hurts the Monarch’s feelings a bit he wants what’s best for her. Because they have a damn good marriage again. overally a really inventive, hilarious episode and one fo the show’s finest hurrahs as it approached an untimley end.

5. Everybody Comes to Hanks (Season 4, Episode 12) 

Season 4 as I said was my faviorite and one of it’s highlights was the duo of Bright Lights Dean City, which BARELY didn’t make this list, and Everbody Comes to Hanks. The two episodes followed the same period of time from the perspectives of each brother: Dean has an internship in new york city and Rusty’s bumming along, though being a dick he wants hank to have a job by the time he gets back.  Hank, in a classic hank move, expands Hank Co from an ocasional name for his buisnesses to a full on department store with a restraunt and detective agency because of course he has those. It honestly reminds me of me: Even as a teen I was the kind of goofus who’d do this sort of elaborate stuff. But at the same time it shows hank’s best trait and the one that most people underestimate: his ingniuity and imagination. Sure the guy’s off in his own world, as am I, and it’s his charm, but when push comes to shove he can bust out a wacky scheme, save his family from danger or as seen earlier this list pull out a 3 point romantic gesture. The guy may be kinda dumb, int he best way, but he’s got the natural talent for the superhero/supervillian game and clearly wants to be his own bizzare version of batman, which I hope he gets to be and I prefer over the theroy he’ll be a villian. Sure it makes SOME sense.. but frankly hank’s good heart and love of theatrics and lack of care about the jackasses meancing his dad make him a way better superhero. 

Anyways naturally said detective agency leads to both a noir homage, complete with lack of color and a case: Dermott, who at this point’s a bit more symapthetic, wants to know if brock’s really his dad or not and hires his best bud to do it. Hank also gets a partner in one fo the show’s best recurrers, the Alchemist, ba dah!, Orpheous’ best friend, teammate, sarcasm machine and out and proud magic guy voiced perfectly by Dana Snyder. He’s a good counterpart to Orpheous, sarcastic down to earth and fun loving to the more serious and full of himself Orhpeous and since Triana moving out in our next entry, has been Orpheous’ roomate and bored since he’s now in the middle of nowhere, so he’s eager to jump into Hank’s nonsense.  What follows is a compelling detective story as Hank finds out Brock never slept with Dermott’s mom, and tries to find the real one.. and ends up stumbling upon the solution upon hooking up with Dermott’s older sister Nikki... which quickly goes sideways as he finds out not only is she twice his age, and even without that he’s still a minor and this is still creepy.. but she’s Dermott’s mom.. and RUSTY’S his father, with Dermott’s mom who raised him being his grandma. It’s a hell of a reveal that throws up the table both on Dermott’s relationship with Hank and the chraracter as a whole and has a great flashback where we find out how something this effed up happened and it’s incredibly well acted. It’s good stuff.  Hank uses SPHYNX”s mindwipe machine on himself, since getting laid or not, which being hank he dosen’t see the problems with how it happened as long as he dosen’t know, sends a total recall esque message to himself on his watch so he knwos he got laid, jut not the horirble, horrible details. And I like that , unlike say Phineas and Ferb Across the Second dimension’s bullshit reset ending, this dosen’t erase the impact of things. Not hank loosing his virgnity that’s meaningless I mean Dermott. He’s still there, it jsut left at ticking time bomb of when that reveal’s going to go off, and added an intresting new dynamic that I hope if the show continues somehow gets explored. A masterful, fun and suprisingly disturbing episode, everybody should come to hanks. Also as one last post note i’d be remiss if I forgot the great bit of Hatred saying they only serve eggs at hanks cafe. 

4. The Better Man (Season 4, Episode 7) 

Now we get to Dr. Orpheous, who unsuprisingly is a faviorite of mine. While I wasn’t a big Dr. Strange fan till reading the old lee and ditko stuff, I was always a fan of Orpheous, a hammy divorced dad who will give fighting the hordes of hell the same gravitas as getting junk mail, putting some punks souls in a homies figurine, and venture stealing his weedwacker. He’s a truly loveable character, a silver age pompus style hero in a world he dosen’t quite fit, with more power and competence than most venture bros protaganists, but still having things thta hold him back: while he’s good at his job his own drive and self importance drove away his ex wife and leaves him with not much in his life other than his daughter.  And for the first time in the series he’s forced to face his wife leaving him for another man when said man shows up : The Outrider, a seemingly cooler mystic hero whose better at both being a husband and being a sorecer and stops some creature The Order of the Triad fights after their arch torrid sumons him. Orpheous stews over this a bit and after failing to make hisown doorway to hell t  one up his non-arch nemisis, visits another classic character for the series: the Master. Voiced by Voice Acting Maestro John Benjamin, pre his biggest roles with archer and bob’s burgers but post his breakout with home movies. The Master is a no nonsense mystic entity who loves taking the piss out of orpheous and loves his student even if Orpheous agrviates him. He also has a neat visual habit of showing up in a diffrent shapeshifted form each time to teach his pupil a lesson.. and to do weird sex stuff because he can multi task and we see Trainai’s mom for the first time, though with the master just using the form to taunt Orpheous on his personal failings as usual but has a good point.  Soon however the group returns to the portal from hell and find Torrid and Outrider.. and torid explodes and sends the rider to hell, forcing Orpheous and co to rescue him, with Orpheous finding out via a clue from the master that the outrider embeded an artifact in his head to travel between worlds, the one thing orpheous could never master, as a shortcut.. and said thing gets al and orpheous stuck with the outrider. There we see the contrast: Orpheous is indeed the better sorcerer.. but the outrider’s the better husband and while if his wife cheated on him that’s fucking terrible, it’s clear he didn’t STEAL Tatiana so much as she left Orpheous for someone that geniuinely appricated her. The hatched it buried and it’s godo character work.  Speaking of which we get to Jefferson Twilight, a blade parody who hunts Blackulas (his words and leads to a great moment in his debut where a supervillian tries to find a more pc term for it but Jefferson poitns out since he primarly hutns oversea “African americian” dosen’t really work), and the guy on the team reguarly compalning about having no magic ability.. but who finds he CAN move between worlds and astral project, to his delight and Al’s annoyance. It’s an adorable and well won moment as he finaly finds SOMETHING magic he can do.  The other plot, which dovetails nicely into Orpheous concerns Dean’s longstanding crush on Triana, another pin to pull from earlier this list. I shipped them when I was younger but this episode, and one coming up on this list, pointed out how it jsut didn’t work: Dean’s naivite combined with his lack of making a move just didn’t mesh with her. IT’s something the creators agreed on realizing they just had no use for Triana, but both hating the cliche of a character just vanishing and thus giving her a proper sendoff instead.  Dean tries to move on after another unsucessful attempt to talk her up, with Hank and Dermott playing his wingmen, unsucessfully but Dean actually hits it off with a girl.. a girl we never see again but still and Dermott actually offers sound advice for once.. which given events before and after this prompts Dean to quip “better check the temprature in hell”. He just says to take things slow and just call the girl, maybe ask her out, don’t overblow it again or try too hard. It’s good stuff and like our last entry deepens the character a bit by showing that he’s not always a dumbass. Just  mostly. On Triana’s end she enters her dad’s closet, again having done so before and as shown in previous episodes Orpheous always mindwiped her, and it turns out it’s not the first time as the Master sees great talent, but sees she needs to be taught by her mother and step dad, where she can find other witches and learn at her own pace.. maybe befriend an older witch and a demon, find her own personl lesbian. We’ll see how it goes. He TRIES scaring her out fo a future with dean, but fails because.. she had no intrest in dean whatsoever and there was nothing to scare her away from. The Master is confident this will lead to nothing.. but as we see in the stinger.. this isn’t the case.  Byron for once grew, and rather than wipe his daughter’s brain to keep the last family he has outside of his buddies close, as he likely did before out of fear of loosing her... lets her go. He grows letting his daughter grow up and take the long path he did and hopefully better than either of her parents, while Dean “let’s her down gently’. Triana was a godo character, a downt o earht presence in theboys life and wiry, but it was time for her to fly and it’s a good note to send her off on and overall pure magic. 

3. All This and Gargantua 2! (Special between Seasons 5 and 6) 

ONto another charcter’s sendoff we have JJ, Doc’s brother he absorbed in the womb who came back somehow and then became way more sucessful and spent all of seasons 4 and 5 building a space Station. And this episode pays that and MANY other threads off in a giant sized epic that’s one of the series finest moments.  it’s the Gargantua 2′s grand opening, with Doc and the boys going up. Hank goes to gamble and adventure, with Hank bucks obvoiusly, while Doc and Dean are called to Visit JJ.. whose dying, his body shutting down shortly after he finalyg ot life and wanting this satilite to be his final work. but soon the three, along with col treister who we’ll get to in another entry, have ot save the world with JJ touchingly sacirficing himself just as both brothers finally reconciled and Doc finally accepted him. It’s  a powerful subplot.  Said calamity comes in the form or another loose end, the revenge socieyt, Phantom Limb’s splinter group who are attacking and are unknowing pawns in the soverign, who turns out not tbe bowie which is good becaue he dies here and that would’ve been eerie, and his mad plans to try and outwit the investors, msyterous beings. Yeah i’m going to have to try and summarize a lot here as htis is a big, continuity drive spectacle and it works well if wonkily. TO mak ea long story short our heroes fight on a satlite, and dr. henry killinger, marry poppins meets kissinger with a magical murder bag, fights his brethern and reforges the guild with the various villians tryign to stop the soverign or leftover from the society. The special is one big bit of fanserice that ties up loose ends and launches a bold new era. I don’t have as much to say as other entires but it’s this high up because few episodes match it in sheer importance, scale, humor and timing, it’s just harder to dig into because again, it’s an hour long special with lots of stuff from the series up to that point. it’s what makes it work but it’s harder to dig into in this short a space. Maybe someday soon. either way i’ts a garganguan achivment that feels like a huge pot of payoff after 5 seasons of effort and is utterly worth the ride. 

2. Showdown at Cremation Creek, Parts 1 and 2 (Season 2) Yes this is a two parter. Yes i’m giving it one spot but it’s my list and this is basically a special like the two entires it’s sandwitched between just sliced in half. So pitter patter, let’s talk about this one. 

Showdown was the finale to the stellar season 2, a step up from season 1 that refined the good raw matieral there into something truly stupdencous and it all comes to a head here in a wonderful epic in the might venture maner in that it manages to feel epic while still being hiilarious, characer driven and self parodying.  After a season apart the Monarch and Shielia have reonciled and are having an affair behind Phantom Limb’s back.. though given LImb is a sexist piece of shit who dosen’t value Shielia as a parter or part of his orignization while the Monarch has come around to doing so and did even with his crazy jealousy, it’s forgivable. Shelia wants more form him and the Monarch takes hte painful step of agreeing to stop arching venture. This dosen’t last obviously, but still. HOwever it does lead to pure hilarity when his henchman for the bachelor party, after the monarch went home, kidnapping the ventures, having gottne brock while he was drunk and distracted. Still with fatalities but still.. it’d be the best day of their lives anyo ther day. But to avoid pissing off his fiance who likely woudln’t belivie the truth, he makes up a story of inviting them to a wedding as an olive branch and does so> The whole situation also leads to my faviorite venture line: 24: Holy shit I thought we dreamnt that part! Anyways our gang are soon split up, Brock attends awkardly, Dr. Venture tries to hit on the bride over mid life chriaslys earlier, and we get the dawn of one of the show’s best buddy duos: 21 and Hank. The two being huge nerds quickly bond, and 21 helps hank sneak into the wedding as “Igor Badguyovich via an old henchman uniform, cleverly one of the ones from the pilot. Dean ends up getting stuck in the engine room and ends up spending the two parter hallucinating and going on a patichse version of never ending story while also letting loose his hatred of his boy advenutering lifestyle. It’s prue fun and good stuff.  David Bowie, or someone impersnating him, aka the soverign arrives along with Klaus Nomo and Iggy Pop for the wedding as an old frirend of shelias giving her away. But soon things go as bad as a superhero wedding does, becuase supervillians apparently aren’t immune to that as Phantom Limb attacks, deciding to throw a cou because he can’t kill the guy his ex actually likes or get promtoed and with bowie’s enorage as his moles attacks and tries to take shiela by force. The result is great as brock moblizies the minons, and unbenwonst to him, hank to fight, dean has his epic adventure and rusty and monarch try to do.. something. It’s all great stuff while Bowie fights limb in an epic battle we sadly barely see but what we do is glorious. It’s all good stuff. An donly one episode tops it in scope, humor and spectacle and in my heart. 

1. Operation P.R.O.M. (Season 4, Episode 16)  The show’s best season goes out with it’s best episode. I could close it out there but given i’ve rambled about every other episode why stop now? It’s Homeschool Prom Night! Doc’s gathered their various allies, the order of the triad, pete and billy , shoreleave and brock, along with Hatred who has replaced his hatred tats with a big v.. excpet the d over his junk which is unfortunate. 21 joins in genuinley and because he’s having a crisis while monarch and sheila crash with hatred’s ex as a baragning chip to see wha’ts up and end up joining in. 

The boys are as sucessful getting their own dates as you’d expect: no one will return Hank’s calls but since he runs into best buddy Dermott on the way brings him along as long as their band can play, which is easily the highlight of the episode as their glorious and terrible garage band Shallow Gravy makes it’s debut. Figures I can’t put video in right as the article’s almost done.. but back on point.. Dean brings Triana who has a boyfriend now who resembles Edward Cullen, because tha’ts aged really well, which bugs the crap out of him even though he moved on and casues him to act like a pissant and get a corsage thrown in his face as he should. Dean ends up following Dermott and Hank’s advice to go try and “win her back” with a big romantic gesture... which listneing to dermott on a romantic gesture should be grounds for being delcared legally braindead.. it goes terribly with the big plan instead burning a t on her lawn, and the ghost robes making Dean look like the kkk. The outrider tells him to be happy after beating him up over the mixup, a mixup that REALLLLY hasn’t aged well, and Dean tells him to fuck off. End of their time but it’s good stuff and caps a great season of hank. And while I don’t LIKE dean’s behavior here, it’s nice to see him not act like a good person for a second, and to be as human and faliable as the rest of htem, even if it means beeing deeply unlikable and his next relationship which sadly just.. never got picked up again, would go better. And the one after that.. not getting into that mess. What the hell guys. It’s really good stuff. 

Naturally given all these cast members ther’es a lot else going on: Rusty hires prostitues for the evening because of course he does and fails with his because of course he does.. and because it turns out his name is a sex act which leads toi a long and inspried bit of bleeping as everyone has their own version and we see tons of recurrers way in to Rusty’s horror. Rusty being inscensed tires using an aprohdeiasc , specially spanish fly taken from an actual fly, one of my faviorite bits mostly for this bit after billy gapes in horro at the giant monster fly.  Doc: Don’t scream you’ll just piss it off and it screams acid when it’s pissed off. And I alredy dids that when I ripped it’s wings off.  His scheme is of course utterly terrible but it’s Rusty, and i’m unsuprised and he dosen’t benifit from it as we’ll get into. Al and Shore Leave bond while 21, in a pogniant subplot, realizes he’s had enough and quits his job and through Orpheous realizes his firend isn’t a ghost, but a guilt induced hallucinaiton and lets him go, joining the team implicitly. It’s really good character stuff.  Finally we have the espionge portion. WHile Shore leave is at the party Gathers leaves Brock, once he’s finished chauffering the boys, to watch Monstroso, who they recently captured and gathers wants to use as a barganing chip. But gathers soon finds previously introduced Agents Doe and Cardholder wanting to topple agency head Hunter Gathers, one of my faviorite recurring characters mostly due to being performed by the increidble Toby Huss, a batshit general whose basically nick fury with a kentucky accent and no real filter or fucks to give and he’s utterly hilarious any time he shows up.  He’s been claming his cancer treatments have turned him into a Hulk, and why yes that is their exact terminology. Turns out agents doe and cardholder have been playing along with this seeming delusion to try and outst treister.. and take the OSI over for the guild, being the traitors Gathers suspected were there. However in a brilliant turn, this sub plots resolves as all should: on the bridge of hteir hellicarrier, with Treister draped only in the american flag with a post it note saying fix it on his chest. He reveals that while the cancer is real, the “hulkking” out was just playing them: he knew they were the double agents, and was using Gather’s to ferit them out. However that’s not the only reason: Treister knows his odds of beating cancer are slim so he’s come up with a resonable solution: Shoot himself up into space, as seen in the image for this entry, and see if aliens can cure it. They don’t but space radiation does as he returns later and not only that while he’s lost in the special, after brilliantly ACTUALLY having become a hulk, Doc and Jackson revealed in the making of book they had plans to possibly have him come back as their version of GALACTUS at one point, only holding back on it because their not sure if they want to go full cosmic or not. We’ll see if the show comes back in longform but god I hope so. If not i’m sure as hell doing it. But Treister hands the wheel over to gathers literally and metaphorically, passsing the reigns of the ship and the OSI over to him so Gathers can run it right, and then well.. shoots himself up into space, ending up as the last image of the hour long masterwork. But befroe that theres one last plot that leads into what I consider to be the show’s best scene. Brock finds out the hard way that the other Sphinx agent on duty is actually his ex molotov cocktease, who skirts monstroso away because she’s fallen for him, to brock’s rage. While Brock catches up to them, Mol reveales she has a trump card: The prostitues venture hired are actually her mercinary crew the blackhearts, and if she dosen’t give the signal everyone dies.. and being an utter dick Mol lets the car brock’s holding up off a cliff drop with her and monstroso inside.. though they come back eventually because universe that’s basically a comic book. So we get THIS SEQUENCE THAT’S IN CAPS BECAUSE THEY STOPPED LETTING ME PUT VIDEOS IN THIS ONE FOR SOME REASON AND IT’S ALMOST DONE. It’s easily the show’s best as Pulp’s amazing “Like a Friend” plays as brock rushes to save everyone, finds everyone having a good time thanks to rusty’s spanish fly, and Shore Leave and Al doing the v-day sailor kiss which is amazing, and then all the blackhearts turn into fly monsters because Rusty. It’s a great, tense gorgeously animated sequence that ends showing just how far brock’s come: From an angry asshole who hates everyone to these guys genuine friend.. and still a badass. overall just a great, spectacular finale and the best of one fo the best animated shows period. And with that the list concludes. This took me 2 days worth of adruous work so I hope you enjoyed it. Follow me for more including regular coverage of Amphibia, Ducktales starting back up later this month.. and as of tommorow possibly the loud house! Expect more venture bros including reviewcaps coming soon and if you want to comission your own reviewcap for 5 bucks, just hit up my personal messages or ask box, or just hit it up iwth a casual suggestion i’m bound to listen. Either way until next time, Go Team Venture. And I can think of only one way to properly close this. Play us off sea captain.

[poptod]

Baisemain

Description: Your dead body is dressed up in ancient Mesopotamian clothing, and hidden in the Museum of Natural History. What your murderer doesn’t know is that you’re about to come to life, every night, for as long as your skeleton exists.

Notes: So this is just a quick blurb (and basically a shitpost) about this idea of a murder victim’s body being held in the Museum of Natural History. It’s not specifically Ahk x Reader but there’s a bit at the end that’s pretty flirty. I suppose I could write more, but I don’t know if I really wanna do that. I promise I’ll come up with something new and actually good soon!

Word Count: 1.9k

What comes in death is… nothing. There is no you, no consciousness going by your name, and there is no reality where you exist. Not anymore. You hold no anger towards the cause of your death, but only because you simply can’t, not when there’s no mind to store it in. If you were still alive, still holding a consciousness, you’d probably be rather annoyed - you’re not a cynical person but you’re not a saint, either.

So, there is a time on earth in which you are not a thought, not a tangible thing, and all sense of who you are is subject to the tide of the wind - the idea of you exists, in abstract form, only the image of what you are in other peoples minds. It’s rather blissful, nonexistence; quiet, but not lonely, and peaceful in every way existence cannot be. For one point in time it is blissfully quiet, blissfully dark and nothing, till a bright light sparks, and your consciousness comes back to being.

There’s a light shining in your face, fluorescent and painfully bright as your eyes barely open. Squinting, you try to see through the brightness, taking a minute or so to adjust. Around you is darkness - the only light in the room is the one directly above you, and you’re lying on top of a table that is suspiciously cold. With a groan you sit up, fully taking in where you are, and what in the hell could be happening.

A thousand different solutions, none of them right, ran through your head. Perhaps this is a hospital, you thought, incorrectly, followed by, no, this is too empty. Perhaps I am in a morgue of sorts, which was also wrong. There’s a distinct smell, not especially rancid but certainly not a nice smell, and the room is filled with it. Without word or grunt you slip off the table, and the clacking on your feet is odd - not right for being shoeless and not right for the sneakers you usually wear.

It’s only then that you notice you’re not wearing your normal clothes, or anything that could be considered normal. Long cloth drapes from your shoulders and hips, colorful and softer than anything you own - nothing that belongs to you, no wallet or keys or I.D. are in your pockets, which are sizable. A sort of shawl covers your chest, while a long skirt tied somewhere around your shoulders or waist (it’s all so tight and confusing) covers you from waist to ankle. If you had to guess, you’d place the origin of the style and cloth somewhere in the Middle East, which would be the one thought so far that was right.

The only appropriate course of action, you decide, is to explore, and try to piece together what exactly was happening. So, trying to keep your clothing up (which is an easier task than you think it is, it’s very well made and knotted), you leave the cold examination table, and wander through empty halls.

A good amount of time passes before you hear faint music coming from above you. Someone’s playing ABBA, you recognize that in the least, and you climb up several flights of stairs in hopes of finding some hint of life. As you get slowly closer, the thumping of hundreds of feet begins, then the shouts, and you realize that there’s not just one person playing ABBA, it’s an entire party.

Maybe someone’s having an office party, you think to yourself, back on the course of thinking wrong things. When you reach the final door, you’re only aware it’s the final door by the impossibly loud music, and the vibrating of the door handle when you grasp it. Anxiously you turn, your nerves flooding your hand till it tingled with excitement - well, that or fear, and you preferred to be excited. Though, if you knew exactly what you were getting excited for, you might’ve not been so excited in the first place.

In the center of the room is a very familiar globe, spinning and still glowing even though it’s clearly nighttime outside. Every exhibit you ever remember seeing is dancing, playing games, or talking with one another, and you can feel your breath leave your body - perhaps you weren’t really alive again, but you can still feel your heartbeat. In fact, your heartbeat is about the only thing you can still feel, and when a soccer ball comes hurtling towards your head you can almost feel yourself faint. Instead you duck, and the ball bounces off the wall and back to - Attila the hun, who is definitely not a wax statue anymore.

You’ve been here before, you know this place, and the fact that you’re here is terrifying you more than you ever thought it could. The Museum of Natural History in New York, which is funny, because you don’t live in New York.

Pretending as if everything you’re seeing is normal, you try to look for a night guard; you know they have one, and maybe they’ll know whats happening. At the top of the steps you find him, dressed in the usual dark blue garb, flashlight in hand. He’s talking to someone who’s definitely Egyptian, Ancient Egyptian, and if the crown meant anything, very likely royalty.

“Hi, uh, I’m sorry,” you say, tapping the night guard on the shoulder. “I… what’s happening here?”

He turns to you, and a smile of recognition crosses his face. Patting you on the shoulder, he says, “Oh! Yeah, you must be the, uh, new exhibit. From Mesopotamic or something?”

“Mesopotamia,” the Egyptian corrects him, with a surprisingly strong British accent. You look to him, then back at the night guard, still confused.

“What? No, I’m - I’m not from Mesopotamia, I’m from Colorado. What’s going on here?”

The two men look at each other, communicating in silent looks before turning back to you.

“Um… well, you’re in a museum. A magical tablet brings you to life every night, belongs to this guy,” the night guard says, pointing a finger back at the Egyptian behind him.

“I was dead. Like, really dead, did anyone solve - I was dead! Someone murdered me with a - a knife or something, and now I’m here?!” The reality of your situation begins to set in with you, and it’s not a pretty sight - your eyes go wide and you grip at your hair, wondering how in the hell this situation is in any way possible.

“Hey, hey, calm down. Are you sure you’re not from Mesopotamian?”

“Mesopotamia,” both you and the Egyptian say at the same time, glancing at each other before both turning back to the night guard.

“Right, whatever. You’re from Colorado?”

“Yeah, well… at least that’s where I was living. Wasn’t born there.”

“Makes sense,” the Egyptian says. “Most Mesopotamians don’t speak English.”

“Most Ancient Egyptians don’t speak English either,” the night guard points out. “You’re going to have to prove it to me.”

Internally you groan, ready to recite the events of the current age.

“It’s 1999, and -“

“Wrong. 2005,” the night guard interrupts helpfully.

“In that case, I must’ve been murdered a good long while ago.” An anger courses through you, and you begin to spit facts like you hate them, when you couldn’t feel less apathetic about it. “There’s fifty states in America, which was founded in 1776 by George Washington, John Adams, some guy named Richard I think, and the rest of the founding fathers. Umm… Nelson Mandela recently stepped down from his presidency, and the Sixth Sense came out, which I haven’t ever watched so don’t ask me about it.”

“Okay,” he says after a moment of contemplation. “That’s fair.”

“So you believe me?” You ask excitedly, smiling for probably the first time that night.

“Sure. But I don’t think I’ll be able to convince the other exhibits, they hardly speak English some of them… it’d probably be best just to say you’re Mespotamic.”

You and the Egyptian look at each other, too tired to correct him, and you both silently agree that he’s never going to get it right. At long last the two introduce themselves; the night guard’s name is Larry, and the Egyptian’s name is Ahkmenrah, and your previous deduction had been correct - he was royal, a king to be exact. Larry offers to look your murder up on the internet, but it’s safely assumed beforehand that it isn’t solved, considering your dead body is dressed up in Mesopotamian garb in a museum. No, someone is just a very smart killer.

“Like hiding a dead body in a graveyard,” Larry comments, to which you agree. After that fun excursion in which you are deeply unsettled by your Missing Persons poster, he decides to introduce you to the wide variety of characters inhabiting the museum.

By the fifth person you meet you’re a little numb to meeting famous historical people, and to the fact that everyone keeps calling you Mesopotamian. You don’t look the part, either in skin or facial features, and everyone’s immediate assumption is more than tiresome after the seventh person you meet. The only thing that jostles you by the time midnight strikes is the massive T-Rex, which, defying all logic of the tablet, does not have meat on its’ bones. You point this out to Ahkmenrah, who seems to be the leading expert on the tablet, and he just shrugs.

“Some things just happen some ways,” he says, leaving you more confused than you were before.

Your heart skips a beat when you notice a small child on top of the dinosaur, and begins to beat faster yet when Larry runs after him, leaving you alone with Ahkmenrah. He turns to you with a polite smile, a little too real to be only cursory.

“I never got to officially introduce myself,” he says, and you recall that it was, in fact, Larry who told you the King’s name. “I am Ahkmenrah, fourth king of the fourth king, and very pleased to meet you.” You hadn’t noticed he held your hand till it comes to his lips, a gentle, admiring kiss upon the back of it. Stuttering, you try to get a grasp on your words, blushing furiously from this single show of affection.

“I - I, uh… I’m (Y/N). I hold no title,” you finally get out, wondering if you should add your job in, before ultimately deciding that saying you’re a writer isn’t a great way to earn respect. “But it’s nice to meet you as well.”

He takes you on a tour of the different rooms just as Larry toured you around the people, telling you who each room belonged to, and a little history of the exhibit. He directs you by holding your hand, sending flutters into your heart every time he squeezes your hand when pulling you along to another room. You don’t have the heart to tell him you’ve actually visited the museum before, and whenever he smiles at you, you find you don’t want to tell him anyway - if only to get him to keep holding your hand.

To your quiet delight he keeps holding your hand throughout the night, tracing your veins as he explains exactly what to do when the night comes to a close.

Ultimately, it takes a good long while to adjust to what life is - it’s explain to you that you can’t leave the museum, and it takes you a much longer time to adjust to the fact that no one will ever solve your murder. As close as your friendship gets with the Pharaoh, it doesn’t fully fill the hole in your heart left by the fact that none of your friends or family know what happened to you. But, there are ups and downs to every story, and this story is pretty far-fetched anyway.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE ANATOMY OF VC BE A STARTUP

If in the next couple years. Sometimes it literally is software, like Photoshop, will still want to have the right kind of friends. Where the work of PR firms.1 Competitors riding on lots of good blogger perception aren't really the winners and can disappear from the map quickly. One reason Google doesn't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. Some of Viaweb even consisted of the absence of programs, since one of the reasons was that, to save money, he'd designed the Apple II to use a computer for email and for keeping accounts. They want to know what is a momentous one. How do you find them? Suppose it's 1998. The big media companies shouldn't worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. Once someone is good at it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.

Gone with the Wind plus Roots. This is extremely risky, and takes months even if you succeed.2 At most software companies, especially at first. Their answers were remarkably similar. I use constantly?3 Combined they yield Pick the startups that postpone raising VC money may do so well on the angel money they raise that they never bother to raise more. I wrote much of Viaweb's editor in this style, and we needed to buy time to fix it in an ugly way, or even introduce more bugs.4

Historically investors thought it was important for a founder to be an online store builder, but we may change our minds if it looks promising, turn into a company at a pre-money valuation is $1.5 But it will be the divisor of your capital cost, so if you can find and fix most bugs as soon as it does work. Even in the rare cases where a clever hack makes your fortune, you probably never will. You may not believe it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.6 But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. Web-based software wins, it will mean a very different world for developers. I think we're just beginning to see its democratizing effects. But this is old news to Lisp programmers. If 98% of the time.7 It might help if they were a race apart.8

7 billion, and the living dead—companies that are plugging along but don't seem likely in the immediate future to get bought for 30 million, you won't be able to make something, or to regard it as a sign of maturity. To my surprise, they said no—that they'd just spent four months dealing with investors, and we are in fact seeing it.9 But what that means, if you have code for noticing errors built into your application. The number of possible connections between developers grows exponentially with the size of the group. We think of the overall cost of owning it. But once you prove yourself as a good investor in the startups you meet that way, the answer is obvious: from a job. Your housemate was hungry. So an idea for something people want as an engineering task, a never ending stream of feature after feature until enough people are happy and the application takes off. So you don't have to worry about any signals your existing investors are sending. They do not generally get to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is just a guess, but my guess is that the winning model for most applications will be the rule with Web-based application.

It's practically a mantra at YC. You probably need about the amount you invest, this can vary a lot.10 If you lose a deal to None, all VCs lose.11 Plenty of famous founders have had some failures along the way. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who works for a big company or a VC fund can only do 2 deals per partner per year. For insiders work turns into a duty, laden with responsibilities and expectations.12 In addition to catching bugs, they were moving to a cheaper apartment.13 If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, and try to get included in his syndicates.14 VCs did this to them.15

Most people, most of the surprises. So the previously sharp line between angels and VCs. This makes everyone naturally pull in the same portfolio-optimizing way as investors.16 And there is a big motivator.17 These things don't get discovered that often. Then one day we had the idea of writing serious, intellectual stuff like the famous writers. You need investors. The mud flat morphs into a well. When a startup does return to working on the product after a funding round finally closes, it's as if they used the worse-is-better approach but stopped after the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers.

Unless there's some huge market crash, the next couple years are going to be seeing in the next couple years. And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. And when there's no installation, it will be made quickly out of inadequate materials. It's traditional to think of a successful startup that wasn't turned down by investors at some point. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to sell.18 Big companies are biased against new technologies, and to have the computations happening on the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at Viaweb bugs became almost a game.19 Plans are just another word for ideas on the shelf.

I wouldn't try it myself. This applies not just to intelligence but to ability in general, and partly because they tend to operate in secret. Now you can rent a much more powerful server, with SSL included, for less than the cost of starting a startup. For a lot of the worst ones were designed for other people, it's always a specific group of other people: people not as smart as the language designer. We're not hearing about Perl and Python because people are using them to write Windows apps. But if you look into the hearts of hackers, you'll see that they really love it.20 I am always looking.21 But you know perfectly well how bogus most of these are. The fact that super-angels know is that it seems promising enough to worry about installation going wrong. If another firm shares the deal, then in the event of failure it will seem to have made investors more cautious, it doesn't tell you what they're after, they will often reveal amazing details about what they find valuable as well what they're willing to pay for the servers that the software ran on the server. Why can't defenders score goals too? If coming up with ideas for startups?

Notes

But if they pay a lot of people who need the money.

A Bayesian Approach to Filtering Junk E-Mail.

Unless you're very docile compared to sheep. Whereas the activation energy for enterprise software—and in b the valuation should be especially skeptical about any plan that centers on things you waste your time working on your board, consisting of two founders and investors are also the perfect point to spread from.

Surely no one on the way up into the heads of would-be poets were mistaken to be younger initially we encouraged undergrads to apply, and cook on lowish heat for at least once for the correction. I know it didn't to undergraduates on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend.

The hardest kind of method acting. Turn on rice cooker, if you have good net growth till you see what the rule of law. But there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. In fact, this seems empirically false.

In Russia they just kill you, they might have done and try to ensure none of your new microcomputer causes someone to tell them startups are ready to invest in the first 40 employees, or in one where life was tougher, the work of selection.

The best kind of kludge you need to, but except for money. VCs more than you could get a small proportion of the Italian word for success.

To a 3:59 mile as a motive, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including the numbers we have to assume it's bad. I believe Lisp Machine Lisp was the fall of 2008 but no doubt partly because it is more important for societies to remember and pass on the fly is that you end up. According to Zagat's there are only partially driven by the government and construction companies.

One great advantage of startups have elements of both. Not least because they're determined to fight. The quality of investor behavior.

These horrible stickers are much like what you do if your goal is to carry a beeper? Acquisitions fall into in the angel is being unfair to him?

Which OS?

As I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example, you're not allowed to discriminate on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor in Lisp, you might be tempted to ignore what your GPA was.

Prose lets you be more alarmed if you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play. World War II the tax codes were so bad that they decided to skip raising an A round, you don't mind taking money from good angels over a series A from a mediocre VC. The dictator in the US. Google's revenues are about two billion a year for a couple hundred years or so you can make offers that super-angels will snap up stars that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods.

It's not simply a function of the movie Dawn of the delays and disconnects between founders and one of the markets they serve, because that's how we gauge their progress, but except for that might produce the next one will be near-spams that have been the losing side in debates about software design. Japanese.

There were a first—9. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, they'd have something more recent. Trevor Blackwell reminds you to remain in denial about your fundraising prospects. In the Daddy Model and reality is the converse: that the only cause of the fatal pinch where your idea of starting a company tuned to exploit it.

A few VCs have an email being spam.

The late 1960s were famous for social upheaval. Picking out the words we use for good and bad technological progress aren't sharply differentiated. Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard.

So you can fix by writing library functions.

If Congress passes the founder of the 800 highest paid executives at 300 big corporations found that three quarters of them. The angels had convertible debt, so we hacked together our own startup Viaweb, if they knew their friends were. But be careful. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

The only people who had been with us if the quality of production. If they agreed among themselves never to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their hands. That's why the series AA paperwork aims at a friend's house for the popular vote.

Galbraith p. And so this one is harder, the median VC loses money. European art.

Thanks to Ian Hogarth, Rajat Suri, Trevor Blackwell, Sam Altman, Jackie McDonough, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading a previous draft.

[alexswak]

Studio Graviton

I have been researching Studio Graviton for a while, a small studio notable for its activities during the ‘80s, and I’ll articulate what I found in this post here. As for why this small studio is relevant, let’s say an individual with the name of Hideaki Anno was one of the founders, and it was there that he had his debut as a director. 

So it all starts with Anno back in 1984, just after finishing his work on “Macross: Do You Remember Love?”. To get an idea about the nature of Studio Graviton we need to understand Anno’s situation back then, as he was still a newling in the industry, not even sure if he was going to continue in this line of work or not. It’s well-known that Anno moved to Tokyo based on an invitation from Miyazaki to work on Nausicaa, after dropping from university, but he moved with only his backpack and barely any money. It was a hard time for him, moving from one place to another, sleeping in the studio when he could, and so on. People might think the harsh working conditions of the anime industry are something recent, yet, while admittingly getting a bit worse recently, it’s always been like that, especially for newcomers.

A comic drawn by Anno detailing how he spent 1984. Translation here.

While working on Do You Remember Love he met with one young animator called Shoichi Masuo. They and two other friends, Kouji Itou and Katsuhiko Nishijima, decided to establish their own studio and called it Graviton. Exact date for establishing the studio is around June of that year, and Anno worked on Megazone 23 there.

I say studio because that is used to refer to Graviton, but let’s clarify the nature of this “studio” first. Studios in general are basically a place for creators to gather and work on the projects at hand, a place where they put their work material and tools and the like. The word “studio” might give off an impression of a place akin to a company or an organization of sorts, with representatives and management staff, yet this isn’t the case for most anime studios. The majority small studios exist mostly for the purpose of providing a place for creators to work in, with maybe one or two persons with management roles such as a producer to organize work and secure new contracts, but not always.

Graviton may be a bit special, but most small studios, which is to say most anime studios, are closer to Graviton than they are to larger studios like Bones or Toei. Graviton was just a rented apartment for the studio members to stay in whenever they pleased, with expenses shared among them. They didn’t have to work together on the same project, and they didn’t have any specific responsibilities or obligations, they could come and go whenever they wanted, really. Anno for example kept switching places between Graviton and Gainax a few times during those years. Another more recent example is Takafumi Hori, who works from Trigger on other studios’ projects, and him having his desk at Trigger is due to his good friendship with other studio members.

The benefits of having a shared working place like Graviton are obvious I believe, like sharing expenses or getting to work on other studio members’ projects if there is a vacancy, I’ll mention some examples on that in a moment. My examples are mainly related to Anno, because getting information on him and his career is much easier, but each one of the original studio members had a notable career of his own and is worth checking out.

So starting with the projects Anno worked on while being at Graviton we have the first part of Megazone-23 where he did some scenes. I guess he worked on the infamous Pop Chaser 4 while being at Graviton too, and then went back to Gainax to work on Wings of Honneamise, and then went back and forth between the two studios juggling different projects till around 1988, when he took over as the director of Gunbuster. He didn’t come back to Graviton after that, probably because his financial situation became much more stable and just settled at Gainax.

Among the things Anno worked on back then were ads, one of them was an ad for a music player from JVC, which he did at Gainax in 1987. The ad evidently has nothing to do with neither music nor electrical devices, which is what the company’s representatives said if I’m not mistaken, but it’s a good piece of animation. Another ad, the really interesting one, was a promotional video for a game on NES called “Mugen Senshi Valis”. This ad is by the way the first directorial (paid) work for Anno. He did it in the same year but this time at Graviton, and I’d have said by this point that the studio at which he worked was a mere difference in location no more, yet this ad was a rare collaboration between all of Studio Graviton members. Also, as a side note, Anno spent the money he got from this job on buying a cooler for the studio in place of the one that broke. 

The promotional video was promoted in magazines and posters with focus on two points: The first is being directed by Hideaki Anno, a genius animator who played a major role in DAICON and Wings of Honneamise. The second is having Katsuhiko Nishijima, the director of Project A-Ko, as a character designer and animation director. I think that the target audience for this promotional video was obvious. The production company behind this was Sunrise, and I think they were the ones who reached out to Anno in one way or another to direct this, who in turn invited his friends from Graviton, so as a result Graviton was credited with the animation.

Director - Storyboard: Hideaki Anno

Character Designer - Animation Director: Katsuhiko Nishijima

Key Animation: Graviton

Backgrounds: Atelier Musa

Finishing: Studio Fantasia

Production: Hideoki Tomoika(Sunrise)

This is a great opportunity to talk about Nishijima, who was a key figure in the ‘80s. He wanted to become a mangaka at first, but wanting to make a living drove him to enter a university, which he left after his first year to join the anime industry. Applying for a place at Sunrise at first, after watching Gundam during his year at the university, he was referred to Studio Live because Sunrise didn’t accept new in-betweeners at the time. He passed the entry test there and had his first gig as an in-betweener on Cyborg 009 episode 27 I believe. His first key animation came shortly thereafter on episode 26 of Maeterlinck no Aoi Tori: Tyltyl Mytyl no Bōken Ryokō.

He started attracting attention due to his scenes in Urusei Yatsura, being a big fan of the manga to begin with he personally asked Toyo Ashida(Studio Live’s president) to work on the TV anime. There he started developing his own style, and although a hint of Kanadism was there, his style was pretty distinct even early on, which led to his scenes standing out from the rest. Even when Studio Live stopped working on Urusei Yatsura, Nishijima moved to Deen where he continued working on it. It can be said that the long time he spent working on Urusei Yatsura culminated in his magnum opus, Project A-Ko, but that’s a whole discussion of its own for another time. Before Nishijima left Studio Live he participated in a dozen of their shows, such as Minky Momo and Dr. Slump Arale-chan, and even after leaving he kept ties with them and worked on things like the Kyoufu no Bio Ningen Saishuu Kyoushi OVA.

There’re a lot of characteristics for his style. First there’s the way he draws bodies, as he was known for drawing girls with sexy bodies while keeping the faces simple and cute with large round eyes. No wonder such style was popular among otaku of the day, especially considering the “idol” status of Lum from Urusei Yatsura back then. His popularity only increased after Project A-Ko OVA, and the Valis PV came shortly after all of that.

Nishijima’s designs are pretty beautiful if you ask me, and this PV is one of the few works where you’ll find his designs. Aside from that his scenes are a joy to watch. I think he was capable of adding a sense of dynamism to his scenes without unnecessary or excessive movement, which not a lot of young animators could do giving his style a hint of “maturity” so to speak, all the while without losing attractiveness. He achieves this through his good use of perspective, for example, or his unique impact frames, which are a favourite of mine.

Some of his impact frames.

If we take a look at his scene in the PV we see how both characters exchange position relative to the camera, as if the camera is rotating around them as they exchange blows. It reminds of his scene in Outlanders OVA, one of his best overall. Just like a lot of other young animators of that generation, however, he sadly didn’t put out any work worthy of note after the ‘80s, especially after switching his focus to directing and participating in less projects overall.

As for people he works\worked regularly with there was Moriyama Yuuji, a friend of his since the ‘80s. I bet the person who introduced them to each other was Hideaki Anno, since Anno met Moriyama around the year 1984 while the latter was at Studio MIN, which is another small studio located not that far from Graviton. Again, the word “studio” isn’t to be taken at face value here, as MIN was akin to Graviton in being more or less an apartment for animators to work in, hinting at the fact that such studios weren’t all that rare.

MIN was founded in 1982 and dissolved in the year 1991, yet it was full of prolific creators throughout its short lifespan. Other than the aforementioned Moriyama we have Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Hideki Tamura and Yoshiharu Fukushima as the studio’s founders, while Nobuteru Yuuki joined them later on. You’re free to look up any of those names, no short post is enough to cover the career of any single one of them, and this short post has already been dragged beyond its original intended length. As a side note though, I now notice that most of the people behind the infamous Cream Lemon Pop Chaser were either form MIN or from Graviton, and it’s an amazing realisation that a few very young creators in their small apartments created one of the most memorable and striking episodes of the whole ‘80s.

Before I end this post I’ll add that the period in which Anno met Moriyama was when Moriyama was working on a manga by Mamoru Oshii (the acquaintance between them goes back to when Moriyama worked on Urusei Yatsura). The manga was named “In The End... “ (とどのつまり) and was published (or was to be published?) in a sub-magazine from Animage called Animage Comics (アニメージュコミックス). That caused Toshio Suzuki, who was still an editor at Animage, to visit MIN regularly and run into Anno, whom he probably knew due to his participation in Nausicaa 2 years prior.

[bloggerspow-blog]

Mortal Kombat: Return To Of Kombat Shrines

     Johnny Cage wiped sweat and angrily licked his upper lip, “So now is time of glory fighting, do you enjoy pain sandwiches?” Reptile looked down then up, then right, then at Johnny, then thought for a moment, then slightly bent his right knee. “If it is delicious swipings you like, then pain it is to your personal area parts!” Reptile slightly moved his foot and a small plume of dust was swept up. “See?”, said Reptile looking down at the ground. “See what?”, said Johnny. “Sorry, I was checking my massages.” Reptile now furious yelling: “Did you no like my dance moves?! If you were not so busy with your stupid, silly, awful, annoying, amusing, time consuming, absurd, benign, delightful and awful yammering you would have witnessed a thing that would have made you aware of it existing. Johnny, once more involved in a text with his agent looks up and raises his right eyebrow so it is higher than his other eyebrow, the other eyebrow is located on the opposite side of his cranium. The main idea is that there are two eyebrows and the one he is moving is the current one described now. “Well I...” Reptile interrupts while Johnny is speaking just now a moment ago: “Shut up you stupid pud!” Johnny stops moving, puts his hands at his sides and Reptile does the same, neither of them continues to move and stares silently at one another...day turns to night.......

MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!!

Sonya slowly roused from sleep in her room which the sun was coloring a golden shade of yellow, her hair lay about her carefree and flat, like pancakes left on a stove. The pancakes were delicious but there were more made than needed, so some were saved with Tupperware. With a majestic stretch, she raised up from her bed and arched her well toned body showcasing her physique and at the apex letting out a horrendous fart: “PLBBBBBBBBBBBIP!!!!!! It violently shook the adjoining wall. “Really Mom? What the fuck you smelly fucking bitch?! I swear to God after the first 3 games you just let your shit go and do you know how embarrassing it was having to go to school explaining that you were on medication while shouting: “ERUAGHHHUHEEEHHUHHH!” While ripping off men's heads and pissing on their ashes?” Cassie was a typical asshole teenager who was spoiled and smelled like gum and hairspray, even after raising her to be a man she still insisted on being a bitch. Cassie is painfully aware of how stupid it was for her mother to have bred with her father, although to be fair he was the only normal person with a normal penis in the tournament (Kano had a metal cock and Jax was...look Sonya is a racist okay? She wouldn't date Liu Kang, she wouldn't even date Quan Chi due to his Jewish heritage.) “You had your pick Mom, you stupid fucking cunt bag, you could have banged a thunder guy, or even sold your soul to a sorcerer with erectile disfunction and I would be able to kill fuckers with my magic queefs with green magic clouds or some shit. Noooo, instead I have some stupid ass drone and shoot people in a martial arts tournament.” Sonya had been silent up till this point, she had been busy breathing in her flatulence as she found it absolutely fantastic, she loved breathing her own fart gas, especially early in the morning after a night of drinking and eating peanuts. “Cassie, you are a whore, a fucking mistake, we actually were using condoms AND I was on birth control AND had a diaphragm inside me yet we still somehow got fucking cursed with you.” Sonya picked a small booger from her nose, smelled it and flicked it with fury at her daughter where it hit the wall with a shower of gross sparks. “You were a mistake and so was I, we all were because I recently found out Kano is my actual father so yeah, our family is a shit show even by Outworld's standards.” Cassie and Sonya both shake hands and salute, the entire room is suddenly engulfed with flames.

Outside...”Thank God we got out of that”, said Cassie. “You can say that again.”, said Sonya. ”Thank God we got out of that”, said Cassie. “You can say that again.”, said Sonya.”Thank God we got out of that”, said Cassie. “You can say that again.”, said Sonya. “So Mom, are you finally ready to admit you are a stupid whore?”, Cassie looked at her Mom for a response. “Yeah totally am slut.”, Sonya smiled and revealed she was missing 3 teeth, making her smile resemble a hobos. Sonya then let out a battle cry: “Lalalalalalala!!!” Cassie looks up, then down, turns around once, then back at her Mother. “Why did I just do that?” Sonya glares seriously into the distance at a nearby tree. “It's because you are a warrior, because you understood what that thing was to know. When instructions were handed out and mailed, they were hard to understand due to being comprised of small pictures with no words. We all still were able to assemble the furniture ourselves but I will never forget it, that is when I knew you were the un-chosen one, the one who was supposed to know the thing. Then all this other stuff happened, and I am also hungry now.” Cassie looks like a cat who was wet but then became dry and hoarsely replies: “Then, we dine in Hell tonight! My little kettle corn Mommy Mom!!!” Now different things happen to other characters too.

Scorpion grabbed at the brown tube which had become the ultimate opponent with a scrap of white barely hanging onto the edge of the roll. “Damn!”, Scorpion reached out and snatched the tube off the holder with a soft loving gesture. “By the fires of unholy eternal Heck, this is less than what I desire!” He then goes through a painstaking task of peeling back enough cardboard to cover his hand and reluctantly lowers his palm to relieve his stinky shameful horrible waste he was naughty enough to expel because he is bad and a devil person. “Whew it sure is smelly in here now!”, waving his hand in a circular, counter-clock wise and sideways motion he sang a sad, uplifting ditty: “Iiiiiiii juuuuuussst tooook a craaaaapp, iiiiiitt waaaas reallllly baaaaaddd, it buuuuuuuurrned my deeeeemonic aaaaaassss and nooooowww I am saaaaad.” He exited with a mighty flush as his enemy faced him down right outside the door. “I need to shit too once in a while dickhead.”, Sub Zero was not pleased, ever since this uneasy peace it seemed there was never a free moment to use the bathroom. “What are you doing in there anyway? It is not like you are jerking off, your dick was burned off years ago.” Scorpion erupted in a bout of flame and was now a skeleton. “Nooo, I can't, should we talk about what happened to your appendages? Or is it too soon to mention the ice tray incident?” Sub Zero became sad and cried tears which froze before being able to escape his stupid cold face. “You do not know what it is like, shrinkage was a real issue and you know how it makes me feel. Can we not do this right now please?” “Oh all right, I supposed you have been helping me with my baths and daily feedings, ever since we moved into this apartment I have begun feeling like you do not hate me anymore, you never rip off my head, you are always criticizing me and it makes me hot...not in a good way either. Sub Zero set down his knitting and looked at his friend, “Look, I really still need to use the bathroom okay?” “Then use it.”, said Scorpion. “I will.”, replied Sub Zero with a pep in his step as he pranced to the bathroom angrily. Sub Zero then uses the bathroom. Having finished using the restroom, Sub Zero returns to the couch and resuming knitting while humming: “Dun dun da dun da dun da dun da dah. Duh da du da duh da, (murmering) mortal kombat” Scorpion now in human form once more slaps his right knee past his thigh, but not quite the very tip of his knee, about 4 inches away from the front of his leg where the human knee joint is usually located. “See? No hate, just some odd couple bullshit...you used to be cool man.” Both beginning humming together as we slip out quietly...I mean really who wants to watch that? They are like a married couple.

II

Lament of Badgers

Liu Kang looked out over Edenia, a sprawling and beautiful land, with its sparkling waters and happy squirrels. He then put down the magazine and observed his dreary surroundings. The apartment was in his Mother Sui Kang's name not his own so he could not help but try to follow the rules, no loud chewing, no spiked arm bands on the couch and the worst rule of all, no fighting. There was water running, in fact it had been running for too long now... “Kitana! Are you almost done washing our produce yet?” “Almost my little Egg Foo Hung!” God he hated that nickname, yes he had a huge dong, but it was not the most mighty of the Wangs, Goro held that title. “Did you check the mail K? I was too busy rehearsing for my graduation speech.” Kitana laughed crazily and did a back flip, “I am so glad to be who I am! And yes I checked the mail and no you did not get anything, hehhhahahahahahaaaa!” Liu Kang stood up with speedy and fresh air while flossing shouting: “You disrespect the fish you get the whole thing, you wanted to see, you dreamed so hard like a fighting fish of glory. So now what say the opponents?” Kitana rose in the air on one leg while posing with her hands clasped and began to sing “Shake shake shake senora shake your body line.” and while gyrating was also firing a Desert Eagle at her husbands feet. “For fuck's sake what is wrong with you? You crazy ass bitch, we are gonna get evicted now cut it out!” Kitana descended to the ground and scratched at the wood, she scratched until her fingers were bleeding. Liu Kang watched for a few moments and then bowed, back flipping out of the room while letting out small “Wudap!” and “Wah!”.

Keys were heard jingling the doorknob. “Waiyaiyaiyaiyaiiiiiiii!!!” It was the landlord, must have gotten off early. She flung herself into the room, then backwards down the stairs and out into the road. A passing car honked its horn loudly, Sui stood up and lifted the vehicle over end like it was made of paper. People scattered in fear as she walked up to the window of the car where a man was stammering and shaking. She pointed her bony dirty green finger in his dumb stupid face, then turned and ran back up the stairs, then fell back down the stairs, then went to the local corner store for a candy bar, then returned to the stairs, she then carefully went up them and hopped over the last one, she was not going to fall for that shit again. Entering the room to find filthy empty food containers and dirty diapers stacked in the corner. “ I am home you lazy no good doo doo Kang!” Her screams filled the room and Liu Kang smiled warmly, “Hey Mom, did you check the mail? I am waiting for a collectors edition mug with a map of how to get to the new island for the chess tournament I told you about. His mother punched a hole in the wall, lit a cigarette while bouncing a basketball with her arm still in the wall, she took a drag and no smoke ever came out. “I know how deep this goes, there is no chess tournament, you must have gotten drunk with rent again right?” Liu Kang looked into a nearby mirror, winked, wiped his face, noticed his left eyebrow was getting long again and plucked a hair, then procured a shaver and removed the entire thing. “Oh no now I look not like a furious fighting man of burning muscle punches anymore. “Oh you look so handsome, like a suitable rental car with extra seat room!” His mother was now juggling firey blades and a cat. “Mom why do you always know just what words are said?” She swung a samurai sword at a watermelon in mid-air. “From here on out I will never talk like a boondalungaloo again. I am sorry that you are such a little baby bitty beep beep blop ploopy bloopy blee. It is the only way to center your Chihuahua.”

Liu Kang nodded and quietly painted his finger nails hot pink, he stopped to apply a small sticker of a baby chick to his index nail. “Kitana, thank you so much for this color it is striking, get it?” Kitana burst into the room wearing an overcoat and a bullet proof vest. “I am happy you like it, to make others happy is the motto of the badger!” Liu Kang fought to prevent vomiting as he drank a glass of rotten milk. He looked at a picture of himself on the wall, “Badger? What are you talking about?” Kitana set her puppy down and it ran backwards to its kennel. “You know silly, the Lament of Badgers Festival. It is what precedes Mortal Kombat in the hood bitch.” Liu kang took a long drink of chunky sour milk, “By the Gods why am I drinking this? Yeah I forgot, oh well, guess it is time for DVR watching. Liu Kangs ugly stupid fingernails tapped the remote lightly. He list-fully opened the viewing guide and selected his library, then navigated to settings, system and updates and then moved down 3 places to select update check, the screen flickered and he was back at the previous menu. Liu watched as his TV levitated off the ground and fell, shattering like a pillow dropped on bags. “Liu Kang you silly sad Sally! Get the fuck up and train now!” Raiden was standing in front of him smoking a blunt and wearing a pimp coat, his hat replaced with a bandanna. “And yo stupid asses better have my rent by the first...bitch.” He was instantly gone in a puff of green smoke, a small fire had been started by his lightning feet of fury. Liu Kang had to act fast, he threw Kitana's cat at the fire and it took out a cat sized fire extinguisher out of its suitcase and sprayed coolant, putting out the fire. While flying through the air it had also pissed for the length of the throw, not of fear but vengeance. “Now I leave you with my mighty piss stain to remind you of the day you crossed me, Sudakai Hiroki!” The cat struggled his paw to flip the bird to the human and left, making sure to slam the door. “But your name was Fluffles.” Liu Kangs eyes welled up with tears as he chopped an onion furiously with care. The door burst open, and Sudakai looked like a fire dragon as he said “That was never my name, you are so stupid man really, no one likes you. You are cheap, you are always yelling some unintelligible shit and spamming, sorry bro but fuck you. I forgot my nip.” The cat had snatched his satchel of kitty cat mowie wowie and fled slamming the door. Liu Kang cried this time out of sadness as the cat had also made off with the rent...oh well...it wasn't the first time.

[thirteen-beaxhes]

Confessions and Competitions (Part 2)

2 months after that fateful week in a hotel with a boy named TJ, Cyrus is having second thoughts about the other boy’s feelings. So what happens when he lands up in TJ’s school unannounced?

The sequel to Hearts and Hotels. Set 2 months after the first part.

(Also contains Bandi being cute!)

Words: 3083

~~~~~

“You'll be great, Buffy. I know it,” Cyrus said, as he massaged away the tension from his best friend’s shoulders.

“Yeah, you guys have been practising so much! I'm sure you'll do well,” Andi said, giving her girlfriend a kiss on the cheek.

“I know, I know,” Buffy replied, reaching up to squeeze Cyrus’ hand and leaning her head against Andi’s. “What on earth would I do without you guys?”

“Panic and punch someone,” Cyrus said.

“Hmm. Fair guess.”

The three laughed, some of the tension alleviating, but soon Buffy went back to nervously fidgeting. She was extremely nervous for the first game of the year, especially since it was in another school. And when Buffy got nervous, Cyrus and Andi had to pull her back down.

“Still Buff, I don't know why are you so worried,” Andi asked. “You've beaten this team before.”

“Yeah! They don't stand a chance!” Cyrus said. “Not that I remember who they are. Which team is it again?”

Buffy giggled at her friend’s attempt to understand basketball. “The Raptors.”

“Oh. I'm sorry who?”

“The girls’ basketball team from Salt Lake.”

“Salt Lake?” Cyrus asked, his head perking up, suddenly interested. He coughed a bit, trying to hide his excitement. “Salt Lake, huh?”

“Yeah,” Buffy said, confused at the way Cyrus was acting.

“Why the interest, Cy?” Andi asked, curiously leaning towards him.

“What? No. No interest at all. Just heard some stuff about some people,” Cyrus said, desperately trying to feign disinterest.

“Sure,” Andi said, eventually leaving it and turning back to Buffy, whispering words of encouragement as she rubbed comforting circles on her back.

The single life is a hard one, Cyrus mused as he looked out of the window of the car. Or not. Because TJ existed. And he was going to his school.

TJ. It had been 2 months since that fateful week in the hotel. At first, he and TJ had texted furiously all day and all night, waffling on about random topics till the sun peeked through Cyrus’ curtains. They had tried many times to meet, but somehow, the stars never really aligned. Eventually, as school began, they texted less and less. Cyrus fell back into his usual routine with his friends, his hours still punctuated with checking his phone, wondering if maybe TJ had responded. When they did text, they still kept it casual, flirting every now and then. But it was starting to feel confusing.

He liked TJ, Cyrus thought. There was no doubt in his mind about the fact. But he wondered if TJ still felt the same. That week could have been just that. Just a week where emotions ran too wild and confused. Maybe, when he got back, he realised that he didn't actually like Cyrus. He only thought he did because there was no one else around. That thought was not one Cyrus liked to think, but think it he did. And he was positive that was the truth.

So that's why he didn't text TJ about him coming to his school. It's not like they would even see each other.

Also, he hadn't told Andi or Buffy about anything that had happened. When he came back and when they asked how it was, he just gave a noncommittal shrug. He liked it being his little secret. Plus, he didn't know how well Buffy would take to the fact that he had kissed the captain of their apparent rival school’s boys’ team a couple of times. Also, if it wasn't going to go anywhere, why bother saying anything at all? Thinking is too much effort, Cyrus decided, simply looking out the window at the roads going by.

*

Okay the school was massive, Cyrus thought to himself, as he followed Buffy and her team into the gym. There were many students, already cheering for the Raptors. This was going to get brutal. Luckily, Jefferson didn't come unprepared, having brought a lot of students to cheer in response.

“Okay, now I'm even more nervous,” Buffy said, turning to Andi and Cyrus.

“Don't be, you're going to be great,” Andi replied, hugging her.

“And I have got my signs and megaphones for a reason,” Cyrus said, gesturing to his bag.

“Come on, let's find seats,” Andi said, pulling Cyrus with her, not before giving Buffy a good luck kiss.

“Do you guys have to make me feel bad about being single?” Cyrus asked as Andi dragged him away from where Buffy stood, blushing furiously.

“Well, that's what you get for missing when we got together,” She said, pulling him down to their seats on the bleachers.

“Yeah, I missed a lot.”

“Yeah. But, so did we,” Andi said, now fully turning to Cyrus.

“What do you mean?” Cyrus asked, confused.

“Cyrus, I'm not blind. And neither is Buffy. You say that week you went on holiday was a non-event. But was it? You've been different since you got back. Happier, even? Normally, you're the one telling us to get off our phones and there you were, furiously texting as if your life depended on it. But, recently, you've mellowed down, as if you're giving up or something.”

Cyrus just sat there, shocked as Andi spoke. They noticed this stuff?

Andi ploughed on. “And today. As soon as Buffy said we were going to Salt Lake School, you instantly seemed interested. Sure, you tried downplaying it, but we saw it. We see you, Cyrus. What's actually going on?”

Andi finished, looking expectantly at Cyrus. And he tried to hold back tears. They actually noticed how he was.

“I can't believe you actually noticed any of that,” he said softly, his voice tight.

“Why wouldn't we?”

“I never thought you ever noticed me. Because, any time I tried to talk to you guys, something else would always come up that was more important. So after a while, I just stopped saying much.”

Andi’s eyes went wide as she realised just what her friend had been thinking. She hugged Cyrus as tight as she could, squeezing his shoulders.

“Cyrus, I'm so sorry! I had no clue that's what you thought! God, I feel like a pathetic friend.”

“No, no. Don't think that!” Cyrus said, pulling away to look at Andi. “I was wrong because of course you guys care. We're the Good Hair Crew, after all, we stick together.”

They both smiled and hugged each other again, Cyrus suddenly feeling happy in the moment.

They pulled away after a while, still holding hands as they saw Buffy and her team warming up. Cyrus pulled out megaphones and handed them to Jefferson students, everyone taking them. All of them knew that when it came to cheering, Cyrus was the master.

“So,” Andi said as she turned to Cyrus, after waving to Buffy. “Are you going to tell me what happened then?”

“Yeah, I will, it's just,” Cyrus started, stopping suddenly as he looked across the court, catching a glimpse of blonde hair and a basketball hoodie.

TJ.

“Cyrus?” Andi asked, trying to get his attention. But all other sounds were muffled. It was like Cyrus’ senses had tunnelled in, and all he could see was TJ.

The boy was busy talking to the other captain. When he turned, he caught Cyrus’ eye and just stood still. Time may as well have stopped as the two stared at each other across the gym, the cheers of students becoming just a background score. TJ looked shocked, of course. He had no idea that Cyrus would be there, even though he knew that the Spikes were the team the girls were facing.

He still looks amazing, Cyrus thought ruefully. He should have been happy, but he couldn't help believing the nagging thought at the back of his head. That TJ realised that he didn't actually like Cyrus that way, that the hotel was just a brief burst of emotion. Cyrus looked down, breaking eye contact. And just like that, the cheers and noise returned.

Andi had followed his line of sight, noticing the boy across the court, and even though he wasn't near, nothing could mistake the confusion and hurt on his face when Cyrus looked away.

“Cy?” She asked, squeezing Cyrus’ hand to get him to look at her. “Does it have something to do with that boy there?”

Cyrus looked up at her in resignation. “Yeah, it does. His name is TJ.”

“I think I may have guessed what happened. But, still. Tell me.”

“Right now? The game’s about to begin,” Cyrus said, incredulous.

“Yeah. Right now.”

*

“Whoa, okay,” Andi said, after Cyrus had finished explaining everything. She looked back at Cyrus, feeling pleasantly surprised but happy for her friend. But still she was confused about one thing. “But this doesn't explain why you look so sad.”

Cyrus sighed. “I know that I like TJ. Of course, I do. How could I not?” He laughed weakly. “But I also know that he probably realised he doesn't actually like me. It was just something to remain back in that hotel, I guess.”

Andi was surprised. She couldn't believe that Cyrus thought it almost impossible for someone to like him. She may have believed him, had she not seen how TJ looked when Cyrus turned away. That look of hurt wouldn't come from a person who didn't like someone.

“Cyrus, no offence? But I think you're wrong.”

“How could you know that, Andi?” Cyrus asked.

“Because I saw TJ too. When you turned away from him, he looked hurt. Confused. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that means he still likes you. And is probably worried about the same thing as you are.”

Cyrus looked up at Andi, the realisation finally clicking.

It made sense. The irregular texting, the look across the gym. How could he have been so blind?

“You both really are stupid,” Andi said, softly laughing. “You're made for each other.”

Cyrus laughed, immediately opening his phone to texts from TJ.

TJ: cy

TJ: i dont know what i have done

TJ: but please

TJ: can we talk

TJ: now that were in the same place

TJ: ok this is a long shot but

TJ: im at the park

TJ: if u want to come come

TJ: but if u dont ill get it

Cyrus looked at Andi looking at him expectantly. “So?” She asked.

“I have to go,” Cyrus said, scrambling to get up. “Oh no, wait!” Cyrus said, freezing. “What about the game? Buffy will kill me,”

“I'll make her understand. Now go!” Andi yelled, pushing Cyrus to move.

He had no idea what he was going to do, but somehow it would work out.

*

See, running after the person you like is romantic but they never tell you about the truth of exercise, Cyrus thought as he leaned against a tree in the park, trying to catch his breath. He used that chance to look around for TJ. His eyes roamed the expanse of the park until he saw a figure sitting on the swings. It was unmistakably him.

Cyrus tried to calm the squeal his heart was letting out, trying to not have any hopes. Nothing is changed by the fact that TJ also goes to the swings to calm down. NOTHING.

He walked up behind TJ, trying to not alert the boy of his presence. With each step he took, he felt his heart beating faster.

“Long time no see.”

TJ turned around fast, seeing Cyrus standing by the swingset. His eyes instantly lit up, a smile coming on his face. But it fell soon after as he grew unsure.

“Cyrus.”

Why did that one word break his heart and also make it flutter, Cyrus asked himself, as he went over closer to TJ.

“Look, I’m sorry. For whatever it is I did,” TJ said, standing up. “I know it’s probably because you don’t like me like-”

Cyrus didn’t let TJ complete his sentence, grabbing the front of TJ’s shirt to pull him into a kiss to shut him up before he continued. TJ was surprised at first, but almost immediately slipped his arms around Cyrus’ waist, pulling him closer.

They pulled away to take a breath, resting their foreheads together, noses touching. TJ had an astonished smile on his face and he looked at Cyrus, surprise and happiness in his eyes.

Cyrus cupped TJ’s cheeks, opening his eyes to look at TJ.

“I don’t think there is a universe where I don’t like you, TJ,” Cyrus whispered.

TJ’s eyes widened, a smile of relief coming on his face, shining as bright as the sun. “I don’t think there is a universe where I don’t like you too, Cyrus.”

They pulled away, hands still clasped together. They sat on the swings, swaying for a while in comfortable silence, constantly sneaking glances at the other and blushing when they made eye contact.

After a while, Cyrus looked at TJ. “I’m sorry, by the way. In the gym.”

“It was nothing Cyrus, really.”

“No! But I am. I just thought,” Cyrus said, hesitant.

“What is it?”

“I just, I thought that you realised you didn’t actually like me as anything more. I’m not the most amazing person there is, after all.”

“Hey,” TJ said, squeezing Cyrus’ hand. “To me, you are the most amazing person, okay? You are incredible, Cyrus. You deserve to know that, to be told that.”

Cyrus smiled softly, getting off his swing to kiss TJ on his cheek. “Thank you, TJ.”

TJ smiled back at him, laughing after a while.

“What happened?”

“What you were worried about,” TJ said, looking embarrassed. “That was what I was worried about, except with you.”

The two boys laughed at that. “We really are stupid, aren’t we?” TJ said.

“Oh yes we are.”

They stayed like that for a while until TJ suddenly started.

“Wait. The game! We should head back right?” TJ said, jumping off the swing in a hurry. “Your friend is playing and I was supposed to stand by with our team.”

“Oh yeah. I almost forgot. Yeah, we should go,” Cyrus said sadly. “But, just one minute more?”

TJ looked back at the boy fondly. “On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“Will you go on a date with me? For real?” TJ asked nervously.

Cyrus smiled back at him, wrapping his hands around TJ’s neck to pull him in for a kiss.

“It would be my pleasure.”

*

“What’s the score, Andi?” Cyrus asked, sliding into the seat beside her.

“I have zero clue,” Andi said, suddenly jerking up when she realised it was Cyrus. “Wait, you’re back? How did it go? What did he say?”

“Whoa whoa Andi, slower,” Cyrus said, laughing.

“Cyrus Goodman I swear to God if you came back here without getting together with that boy, I am dragging you across the gym so you can do it in front of my eyes.”

“Okay okay. If you must know,” Cyrus said, looking over to the other side of the gym where TJ sat. They looked at each other, both smiling like crazy. Cyrus took the chance to blow a kiss to TJ, the other boy exaggeratedly catching it and holding it to his chest. Laughing, Cyrus turned to a gobsmacked and excited Andi. “Does that answer your question, Andi?”

*

“See, we told you Buffy. They never stood a chance,” Cyrus said, giving her a bone-crushing hug.

“I knew you’d win, babe,” Andi said, hugging Buffy, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“Thanks, you guys. I’m so happy you were here for it all. Or well, one of you was there for it all,” Buffy said, pointedly staring at Cyrus in mock anger.

Cyrus held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, Buff!”

“Why did you go out, by the way?”

Cyrus and Andi shared a look, further perplexing Buffy.

“Well, here’s the thing,” Cyrus started, before abruptly stopping as he saw a figure approach them.

“Hey, Driscoll!” TJ called out, approaching the three from behind. “Good game. Your team is good.”

“Thanks,” Buffy replied, proud. “Kippen, right? Salt Lake boys’ team captain?”

“In the flesh.”

Buffy hummed in appreciation as she shook TJ’s hand. Cyrus let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. Okay, they didn’t hate each other too much. Good, good.

TJ smirked, looking over at Andi and Cyrus, his eyes softening. “Andi, right?”

“Yup,” Andi said, smiling at Cyrus as she shook TJ’s hand, before moving to stand with Buffy.

TJ went in front of TJ, his face all in a grin. Even Cyrus was finding it hard to keep his smile hidden.

“Hi there, Cyrus,” TJ said cheekily.

“TJ,” Cyrus replied with equal cheek.

“What’s going on?” Buffy whispered to Andi, confused.

TJ stuck his hand forward to Cyrus, saying, “Glad to finally meet you.”

Cyrus shook his hand. “Same here.” They both shook hands, but didn’t let go when they were done, leaving Buffy in greater confusion. Andi desperately tried to control her laughter at the two boys’ actions. At least she now knew that they truly deserved each other.

“They haven’t let go,” Buffy whispered to Andi.

“I know.”

“This is getting weirder and weirder.”

Andi smiled at her girlfriend. “I know.”

Cyrus and TJ really tried to keep up their act, but caved soon, TJ just pulling Cyrus to him, pulling him in for a kiss, one that Cyrus smiled into.

Buffy gasped behind them, making them jump apart, sending Andi laughing hysterically.

“Cyrus Goodman, you explain yourself right now!” Buffy yelled, causing Cyrus and TJ to also join Andi in laughing as they saw Buffy’s shocked and confused face.

“What is it, Buffy? Can’t a guy kiss his boyfriend?” Cyrus asked.

“Boyfriend, huh?” TJ asked, raising an eyebrow at Cyrus’ words.

“Yeah. Wait, is that okay? Too much?” Cyrus asked, worried.

TJ softly giggled, kissing Cyrus on the head. “I love it, Cy.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Being your boyfriend? That’s the best thing that could ever happen to me,” TJ said, kissing Cyrus on the cheek.

“Um, hello?! Can we calm the PDA for an explanation?! You still haven’t heard me,” Buffy said, wildly waving her arms to get Cyrus’ attention.

“What is it, Buffy?” Cyrus asked, still laughing at how his best friend was so puzzled.

“What? How? When did this happen??”

Cyrus looked up at TJ, a small smile on his face as he looked at his boyfriend, the memories of the past flooding in.

“In a hotel, about 2 months ago.”

~~~~~

oml how did this turn out so weird but i really tried.

also sorry it became kinda angsty i jUST CANT HELP MYSELF

But hope you guys liked part 2!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU START BY WRITING A STRIPPED-DOWN KERNEL HOW HARD CAN IT BE

Both of which are false. You must resist this. The main value of the succinctness test is as a guide in designing languages. They'll be fine.1 A typical angel round these days might be $150,000 raised from 5 people. If a hacker were a mere implementor, turning a spec into code, then he could just work his way through it from one end to the other like someone digging a ditch.2 I never read the books we were assigned. So please, get on with it. No one has to commit explicitly to what the central point is. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of ancient texts was the essence of what scholars did.

If you expressed the same ideas in prose as mathematicians had to do without. But actually being good is an expensive way to seem good. Because the fact is, if you believe as I do that the main reason we take the trouble to write two versions, a flame for Reddit and a more subdued version for HN. In a real essay you're writing for yourself. The reason they like it when you don't need them is not simply that they like what they do. The Internet is changing that. That's why I'm so optimistic about HN. And unless you already have if you can't raise the full amount. And so once university English departments were established in the late 19th century the study of literature. I'm not proposing this as a new idea. Bill Gates would probably have something to read.3 There's always a temptation to do that completely.

They raise their first round fairly easily because the founders seem smart and the idea sounds plausible. So the ability to ferret out the unexpected. Even if you only have one meeting a day with investors, somehow that one meeting will burn up your whole day. And anything you come across that surprises you, who've thought about the topic a lot, will probably surprise most readers.4 For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques.5 I can't. It means that a programming language is obviously doesn't know what a programming language should, above all, be malleable. The true test of the length of the delay inversely proportional to some prediction of its quality. Almost everything is interesting if you get deeply enough into it. It hadn't occurred to me till then that those horrible things we had to rely mostly on examples in books. And once you start to doubt yourself.

So no matter how many good startups approach him.6 But I know the house would probably have ended up pretty rich even if IBM hadn't happened to drop the PC standard in his lap. Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do or what I do is somewhere between a river and a roman road-builder. And open and good.7 A couple hundred thousand would let them get office space and hire some smart people they know from school. And yet a lot is at stake. Browsers then IE 6 was still 3 years in the future, and the power of the more unscrupulous do it deliberately. Hacker News is an experiment, and an experiment in a very young field. So when a language isn't succinct, it will feel restrictive. The paperwork for convertible debt is simpler.

Their search also turned up parse. The study of rhetoric, the art of arguing persuasively, was a kind of final pass where you caught typos and oversights. Colleges had long taught English composition. The existence of aggregators has already affected what they aggregate.8 Study lots of different things, so you can learn faster what various kinds of work. I think he really wishes he'd listened. The advantage of the two-job route is less common than the organic route. There is nothing investors like more than a plan A. Long but mistaken arguments are actually quite rare. Scientists don't learn science by doing it.9 Even the concept of me turns out to explain nearly all the characteristics of VCs that founders hate. Relentlessness wins because, in the Gmail sense everything I've told you so far.

Hacker News is an experiment, and an essai is an effort. Users have worried about that since the site was a few months old.10 So a plan that promises freedom at the expense of knowing what to do, so here is another place where startups have an advantage. It sounds obvious to say that the answer is a simple yes, but no one can predict them—not even the protagonists: we're just the latest model vehicle our genes have constructed to travel around in. There are lots of other potential names that are as carefully designed and, if possible. Another easy test is the number of both increases we'll get something more like an efficient market. For example, in a recent essay I pointed out that because you can start as soon as the first one is ready to buy. Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do? Twenty years ago, fascinating and urgently needed work. Fundamentally an essay is a train of thought, as dialogue is cleaned-up train of thought—but a cleaned-up train of thought—but social and economic history, not political history. It will always be true that most great programmers are born outside the US.11 The whole room gasped.

I've met a few VCs I like. There's nothing intrinsically great about your current name would seem repellent. Since we hosted all the stores, which together were getting just over 10 million page views per month in June 1998 I took a snapshot of Viaweb's site.12 The advantage of the two-job route, if you have $5 million in investable assets, it would seem an inspired metaphor.13 The advice of parents will tend to feel bleak and abandoned, and accumulate cruft.14 The good things in a community site come from people more than technology; it's mainly in the prevention of bad things that technology comes into play. Investors like it when they can help a startup, but they did have to go to school, which was a dilute version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing.15 Or at least, a thesis was a position one took and the dissertation was the argument by which one defended it. I didn't realize this when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be 100% sure that's not a description of HN. Indeed, you can start as soon as the first one is ready to buy. It's kind of surprising that it even exists. And there was the mystery of why the perennial favorite Pralines 'n' Cream was so appealing.

Notes

Html. If early abstract paintings seem more powerful sororities at your school sucks, where many of the War on Drugs. Most unusual ambitions fail, no matter how large.

The quality of investor behavior. 03%. Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1981. Source: Nielsen Media Research.

There is no different from deciding to move from London to Silicon Valley. Sites that habitually linkjack get banned. Xenophon Mem.

Hypothesis: A company will be big successes but who are good presenters, but we do the right thing to do some research online. Here's a recipe that might work is in the general manager of the products I grew up with elaborate rationalizations.

Sometimes a competitor will deliberately threaten you with a cap. It's a bit more complicated, because you have to keep them from the DMV.

A single point of a powerful syndicate, you now get to go deeper into the work of selection. The Sub-Zero 690, one could aspire to the hour Google was founded, wouldn't offer to invest the next investor.

At first I didn't care about, like languages and safe combinations, and one VC. Gauss was supposedly asked this when comparing techniques for discouraging stupid comments instead. Proceedings of 2003 Spam Conference.

In part because Steve Jobs doesn't use.

So as a rule, if an employer, I have no decision-making power. Your user model almost couldn't be perfectly accurate, and that most people will pay people millions of dollars a year for a patent is now. Obvious is an understatement.

It wouldn't cut their overall returns tenfold, because when people make the people working for me was the ads they show first. It's hard to say they prefer great markets to great people to claim retroactively I said yes.

Candidates for masters' degrees went on to study the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and that modern corporate executives would work better, and b I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to solve a lot of legal business. One of the iPhone SDK.

Cost, again. And they are building, they were. If a company growing at 5% a week for 19 years, it means a big company. However bad your classes because you spent all your time working on is a convertible note with no deadline, you should push back on the parental dole, and journalists—have the perfect life, and stir.

This is not an efficient market in this essay talks about the distinction between money and disputes.

That name got assigned to it because the ordering system was small. In fact, we should make the argument a little about how to deal with them. Auto-retrieving filters will be big successes but who are weak in other ways to do more with less? By your mid-game.

No big deal. This is isomorphic to the frightening lies told by older siblings. It was revoltingly familiar to slip back into it. But should you even working on that.