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reigningqueenofwords · 4 months

Text

Fascinating

Word count: 9,038 A/N: I actually sat down, watched Star Trek (2009), with the transcript open to get those bits right.

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George’s jaw clenched, the direness of the situation truly washing over him.

A large red word flashed on screen: “ terminated ”, causing the crew to panic. “Sir, they’re locked on our signal. They’re launching again!” George Kirk was informed.

George looked around as he gave out orders. “Bravo-six maneuver! Fire full spread!” He called out as their ship was attacked again. Fires were breaking out as wires fell from ceilings. The damage was quick, and it would no doubt be fatal.

“Seventeen more out!” George heard someone say.

He was instantly out of his chair. “I’m initiating General Order 13! We’re evacuating!” He went to help a fallen crew member off the floor.

“Yes, sir!”

Once the man was settled, he was back in his Captain’s chair. “All decks, this is the Captain speaking. Evacuate the ship immediately.” He announced. “Get to your designated shuttlecraft. Repeat. Evacuate.”

Panting, being pushed in a wheelchair, Winona looked around. “That’s George’s voice. What’s happening?” She asked, cradling her large stomach.

“You’ll deliver in the shuttle. Go!” She told Winona, and told the other medical offers to keep moving.

Winona opened her comlink to her husband. “George.”

“You’re okay. Thank God.” He couldn’t lose his wife, and their child. “I have medical shuttle 37 standing by. Get to it now. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Everything’s gonna be okay.” He assured her. “Do exactly as I say. Shuttle 37.”

She held her stomach as she breathed. “George, it’s coming.” She told him. “Our baby, it’s coming now.” Not how she pictured the day that she would give birth, that’s for sure!

“I’m on my way.” He told her before moving to some controls. Autopilot.

His heart sank as the computer spoke up. “Autopilot function has been destroyed.” His eyes were on the screen directly in front of him, the words “ auto pilot malfunction ” in all capital red letters. “Manual operation only.” There was no thinking about the choice he had to make. There was no debating if this was what he had to do or not. The only thing on his mind: his wife and unborn child.

Winona screamed as she was rushed through the ship, fire and chaos around her. “That was a big one.”

“Just keep breathing. You’ll be fine.” She was told by one of the medical crew with her.

“And the baby, too, right?”

“And the baby, too.”

She was helped onto a bed as another contraction hit. “Right here. Go ahead and sit back.” The nurse told her.

As the pilot seat of the shuttle was sat in, Kirk’s voice could be heard. “Captain to shuttle 37. Is my wife on board?”

“Yes, sir, she is.” He told Kirk as he hit the buttons he needed to.

“I need you to go now. Do you hear me?”

“We’re waiting on you, sir.”

“No, just go. Take off immediately.” He ordered, ignoring the heartbreak he could feel in his chest. “That’s an oder.”

“Yes, sir.”

Winona wasn’t having it, hearing the shuttle start to lift its landing gear. “No, wait! We can’t go yet!” She protested. “Please stop! Stop!” She tried.

“George?” Winona’s voice could be heard as Kirk sat in the Captain’s chair. “The shuttle’s leaving. Where are you?” She needed him there, and her voice let that be known.

“Sweetheart, listen to me.” He started. “I’m not gonna be there.”

“No.” She managed, but just barely.

“This is the only way you’ll survive.”

She was sobbing by now. “Are you still on the ship? You have to be here!”

“The shuttles will never make it if I don’t fight them off.”

“George, I can’t do this without you.” She told him before being told to push. A scream ripped from her as she did, the shuttle launching from the Kelvin.

As Kirk worked quickly, he knew his wife was having their baby. He had accepted that he would die, the Captain going down with his ship. But that paled into comparison knowing that the two people he loved most would be alive. He flinched as there were sparks flying around him. The words “ system failing ” flashed on the screen, and a calm washed over him for a moment. With a press of a button, the words changed to “ collision course engaged ”.

As the Kelvin moved forward, the calm vanished. His breathing picked up, the heartbreak tearing him apart. The countdown on the screen let him know that he had less than a minute before it was all over, but he knew it would feel like an eternity. His thoughts were broken by the sound of his newborn crying. It was the most beautiful, and the most painful, sound that he had ever heard in his life. “What is it?”

“It’s a boy.” Winona told him emotionally.

For a moment, he felt joy. “A boy?” He smiled, ever so slightly. He had a son . “Tell me about him.”

“He’s beautiful.” She told him. “George, you should be here.”

Hearing his wife’s pain, he teared up. The computer made it worse. “Impact alert.” The screen read 19 and a half seconds.

“What are we gonna call him?” He’d spend those last 19 seconds as a new father.

She sniffed. “We can name him after your father.” She suggested.

He couldn’t help but chuckle slightly. “Tiberius? You kidding me? No, that’s the worst.” He told her. “Let’s name him after your dad. Let’s call him Jim.” He countered. If naming his son was the last thing that he did, so be it.

“Jim. Okay. Jim it is.” She agreed softly.

“Sweetheart, can you hear me?”

“I hear you!” She sobbed.

“I love you so much! I love you…” He yelled as the timer hit zero, expecting to be blown up.

Groaning, George rolled to his side. Cracking his eyes, he looked around. The last thing that he remembered was helping name his son, telling his wife that he loved her…and then bracing for the explosion. He sat up, in a bed that didn’t look familiar. Nothing around him looked, or felt, familiar.

“Ah, you’re awake.” Came a voice, startling him.

“Where am I?!” He asked, looking towards the door where the voice came from. “How did I get here?” He did his best to control his breathing. Was this heaven?

“Asgard, sir.” They informed him. “You appeared from nowhere, if the rumors are to be believed.” They explained. “I will alert the King that you are awake.”

George tried to remember if he had ever heard of Asgard, but out of all the planets that he had studied- that wasn’t one of them. He furrowed his brows. What was going on?! Would he be able to get home? He tried not to let the hope bubble up, but was failing. It was taking over every other emotion that he was feeling.

“I’ll send in an attendant to help you dress, sir.” They gave him a small bow of the head before stepping back into the hall, shutting the door behind him.

“I don’t need help getting dressed.” He muttered to himself, pushing back the blankets. Not that he knew where any clothes were. Glancing at his body, he wasn’t in his uniform anymore. How long had he been there? How long had he been out?

Hearing the door, he looked back over to see a couple young women come in. “We’re here to help you get ready for the day, sir.” One said softly. “My name is Astrid.” She introduced herself.

“And I am Elli.” Said the other.

He blinked. “I am capable of dressing myself.” He assured them. “I do not need you to fuss over me.”

Astrid shook her head. “It is an honor, sir.” She assured him.

A slightly older man quickly stood when George walked into the hall. The woman by his side did the same, a soft look on her face. “I have been told I’m in a place called Asgard, but not how long I have been here. I’m assuming it’s been a bit, my hair’s grown.” He muttered the last bit to himself, running his hand through his longer blonde hair. “… I am truly grateful, but I have a son. That’s one of the last things I remember.” He looked between them. “I need to get home- to Earth.”

The woman placed her hand gently on the man’s arm before making her way towards him. “You have been with us, in the palace, just under two months. You’d been in the village for some time before that.” She explained to him. “For how long exactly, I’m unsure.” Her voice was a bit comforting to him, if he was being honest.

“Why move me?” He wondered. “From this village…to a…wait. Did you say palace ?” He blinked. It was a lot to take in.

“We had hoped that we could help you wake.” The man spoke. “My name is Odin, this is my wife, Frigga.” He explained. “Let us talk over breakfast, shall we?” He gave George a warm smile.

George hadn’t realized that he was starving until Odin mentioned breakfast. All he could do was nod, looking around. He wasn’t sure what to think, or what to feel.

Once the three of them had their plates, he was thankful that Frigga brought up his questions. He had been slightly worried that they would keep avoiding everything. “So, you were found in a farmer’s field from what we were told. You looked like you’d been through something very serious. Your clothes were singed, and ripped.” She started as he began to eat. “The farmer’s wife quickly tended to your wounds as he fetched a doctor. You were looked after by the doctor, and her team. Odin and myself were visiting and I spotted you. She explained what had happened, and how you had yet to wake up.”

He swallowed. He was a stranger, and they still cared for him. “I need to thank them.” He noted.

She smiled softly at that. “And you can. Soon.” She assured him. “Odin and myself…we had always wanted a son. We had the perfect name picked and everything. However, it wasn’t our destiny.” Her smile turned a bit sad.

Odin watched his wife lovingly. “Instantly, she wanted you moved to the palace.” He spoke up, looking towards George. “We had a room prepared for you, and we’ve made sure that you’ve remained cleaned, and taken care of.”

“That explains no beard.” He mused, rubbing his jaw. He’d been wondering how his hair grew out, but his beard hadn’t.

The two couldn’t help but chuckle. “We had hoped, a bit selfishly, that while we may not have raised you…we could take you in as our son.” She admitted.

He was shocked at that. “I’m sorry, but I need to get back to Earth. I need to make sure my wife and son made it back okay.” His heart ached at that. “I don’t know how I got here, but I hope that I can find a way back.”

Odin seemed to think for a moment. “I will see what can be done, but in the meantime, may we treat you as our son? Train you as such, show you the lands.” He asked, hoping things worked out well, mostly for Frigga.

“One more question. If you’ve always wanted a son, couldn’t you adopt?” He wondered.

“I haven’t heard of any children in need of a home.” Frigga told him. “Or we would have.”

George sipped his drinking, letting everything soak in. Setting his mug down, he sighed. “I will do my best to fit in while I’m here.” He wouldn’t give up hope, however. They had been kind, so he could give them this. A son, for even a short while.

Frigga brightened. “Thank you.” She had worried he would rush right out of there. “Please, tell us all about you!”

He couldn’t help but chuckle lightly, although it pained him. He imagined this would be how Winona would be with Jim as he grew- eager to hear everything. “Well, my name is George Kirk, and the same day that I became Captain of the U.S.S Kelvin, the same day my son was born…is the day that our ship had been attacked.” He began, explaining the day that changed his entire life.

Both Frigga and Odin hung on his every word, thankful that somehow, he had survived. Neither could begin to guess how, or why. They watched him get emotional as he relieved his final minutes, hearing his son be born in such a way, saying his final goodbyes, and hearing his wife cry. Frigga teared up, and Odin clenched his jaw slightly. Both felt for him.

Getting up, Frigga moved towards where he was, offering a hug. He was truly about to embark on the fine line of hope, and mourning. He hesitated a moment, but stood and let himself be comforted by her. “I am sure that your son will turn into a fine young man, and he’ll do his best to make you proud.” She assured him softly.

Jim could just barely see over the steering wheel of his father’s car as he sped along the dirt roads of Iowa. As the speedometer read closer to 90, the cell phone began ringing. His eyes glanced to it before answering. It was his Uncle Frank- who was livid. “Hey, are you out of your mind? That car is an antique.” He snapped, as if Jim didn’t know that. “You think you can get away with this just ‘cause your mother’s off planet? You get your ass back home now! You live in my house, buddy. You live in my house, and that’s my car.” Jim glanced at the screen of the phone. It was only ‘his’ because he had claimed it. Didn’t make it true. “You get one scratch on that car, and I’m gonna whip your a--” Reaching over, Jim disconnected the call. That was enough of that.

In the next moment, he turned on some music for the ride. Glancing up, he spotted the releases for the roof and detached each of them. It sent the roof flying backwards in the wind. He watched it hit the ground behind him before his eyes were on the road in front of him again. “Yeah!” He cheered, loving the rush.

It didn’t take long for him to hear a cop behind him, either. He looked in the rear view mirror, slightly panicked for a moment. The cop sped up, driving alongside Jim. “Citizen! Pull over!” He ordered the boy.

Instead, Jim sped up, taking a sharp turn to his right. The cop easily followed him.

He covered his face on instinct as he drove through a gate. Seeing the quarry ahead didn’t cause him to slow down. Instead, he sped up. Until the last moment. “No!” He yelled, slamming on the breaks and turning the wheel to the left in an attempt to not go over the edge. Knowing that he wouldn’t make it, he leapt from the car, onto the dusty ground. He slid towards the edge, barely holding on. He scrambled back up, the sound of the car hitting the bottom of the quarry behind him. Looking up from the ground, he saw the cop standing there. “Is there a problem, Officer?” Jim asked, breathing heavy as he stood.

“Citizen, what is your name?”

He stood a little straighter. “My name is James Tiberius Kirk.”

Odin watched proudly as Thor- who had once been George Kirk- sparred with some of their warriors. It had been thirty years since he’d sat down for breakfast with the two. Knowing that one day, Frigga would lose him…Odin had found a way to make him into a God. A powerful one, at that. Now Thor looked like a God, had the powers of one, and his beloved wife would never lose her son.

In that time, they also gained another son. Loki. He was much younger when they took him in- far too young to even know him and Thor had been adopted. Loki was now 25, and nothing like his older brother. Where Thor was muscular, Loki was lean. Where Thor was physical, Loki much preferred the strength of his mind. Where Thor was boisterous and outgoing, Loki was more reserved- but far from shy. His boys were yin and yang. While they fought, they were also protective of each other.

“Hello, father!” Thor beamed as he wiped his brow, walking towards Odin. He had pushed out all thoughts of his life before. When he realized there was no going back, he dove headfirst into this life. The first five years were the hardest. Knowing he was missing milestones. Knowing that his wife and son believed him dead. Then, he started to hope that Winona moved on. That maybe she found another to show her the love she deserved, and that Jim was being raised into a strong young man. Finally, he started to block things out. Of course he would dream of his past, but that could easily be brushed aside. Of course, what did dreams matter?

“Hello, my son.” He chuckled. “Shall we try fifteen men next time?” He teased, motioning to the warriors who clearly could not keep up with Thor.

Thor laughed, a sound that he and Frigga adored. “Perhaps.” He nodded. “Was there something you needed, father?” He asked.

“Just came to see how training was going, that is all.” He waved a hand.

“It’s going well, I believe.” He was proud. He had worked hard to get where he was. The first time he’d attempted to spar with one of the men…it hadn’t gone that well. Thankfully, things were very different now. “Is mother in the library?” He asked, as sometimes after he trained he would join her there.

Odin smiled, nodding. “Of course. I believe she is playing some game with Loki until you arrive.” He mused.

Jim had been Captain of the Enterprise for five years, and loved his job…but constantly being reminded that his father had died in space was a bit old. He wouldn’t trade his crew for anything , however a tiny part of him wondered how different life would have been had he had his father there. Would he still have joined StarFleet? Or would he have chosen a different path?

Maybe what he needed was a damn break. They all deserved one, in his mind. “I’m Captain, I can choose that, right?” He muttered to himself one night. “A few days. That’s all.” He thought out loud. But where would be a good place to go? Space was wonderful, but where could begin to compare with space?! He’d find somewhere that stuck out.

Thor rushed towards the throne room, as Asgard was in chaos. No one had attacked, but a large ship had come within their sights. He knew where that ship was from, yet could not begin to fathom how it had found Asgard, or why.

“Father!” He burst through the doors. “That ship is friendly.”

Odin looked towards his son. “How can you be sure?” He asked calmly.

Licking his lips, he took a deep breath. “Because that is just like the ship that I was captain of the day I arrived on Asgard.” He told him, trying to hold back excitement that he may get word of his own son.

Frigga gasped at that. There was no way they could know the truth about Thor, so it wasn’t like they were looking for him. They believed he was dead. “I believe it is fate.” She told her husband. “What else could it be?”

“Bring us the Captain!” Odin ordered. “Assure them that they are not in trouble.” He added, not wanting his guards to put the crew on edge. “Sit, my son.” He motioned to Thor’s throne. “I am sure Loki is out causing havoc somewhere.” He sighed.

It felt like an eternity before the large doors opened. In walked three people, one who was clearly a Vulcan. “My name is Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S Enterprise, this i-.” One began, causing Thor to quickly rise from his throne. “I’m sorry, was I not supposed to introduce us?” He looked between Odin, Frigga, and Thor, his eyes lingering on Thor.

“Thirty years ago, you were born. During a lightning storm in space.” Thor began, making Kirk furrow his brows. “You and your mother were rushed to an escape pod, as there was no hope for the ship.” He went on. Kirk’s companions looked confused, as well. Thor slowly moved down the steps. “Your father, George Kirk…needed to steer that ship. He was on a crash course.”

Kirk clenched his jaw slightly. “He, uh, obviously died.” He pointed out. “How do you know this?” He asked, staring at the man that looked familiar, but he couldn’t pinpoint why.

Odin and Frigga simply watched their son set eyes on his own son for the first time. It was such a bittersweet moment. “No, I did not.” Thor breathed.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Kirk’s female companion asked, looking disgusted.

“It is not. I braced myself for impact, an impact that never came.” Thor told her. “Months later, I woke up here.” He explained, not bothered by her demeanor. “Villagers found me in the fields. They took me in, and cared for me. Yet, I did not wake. My parents, Odin and Frigga, took me in.” He turned to motion to them, letting Kirk see. “They cared for me until I woke.”

“Your parents?” He raised an eyebrow.

“We had always longed for a son.” Frigga finally spoke. “When Thor came, we felt our dreams had been answered.” She smiled softly at the man she saw as her grandson. “He was determined to get back to you, and your mother. He spoke of nothing but that. While we tried to find a way, we treated him as our son. For thirty years we have tried to find a way back for him so he could find out what became of you.” She wanted him to know that Thor didn’t just abandon him.

“But…my father’s name isn’t Thor.”

“It is my given name on Asgard. Should you ask anyone, they will see me as Thor. Only my parents know the story.” Thor pointed out. “I am now what you would call a God.”

Kirk took a deep breath, trying to process everything. The man standing in front of him looked familiar because he had seen pictures of his father. Take away the beard, and that was him. He did not look a day older than he did in his Starfleet picture.

“May I request someplace to sit for the Captain?” Asked the Vulcan. He could tell Kirk was not doing well with this information.

“No, Spock.” Kirk shook his head, his hands on his hips. “I don’t need a damn chair.” His tone was softer than the words aimed at his first officer.

“Sir, you cannot tell me this is not taking its toll on you. After all, you have been under the impression that your father died. Yet, he has been living well, as a God, in some place unknown to us.” He raised an eyebrow.

Uhura shot Spock a look. She knew that likely wasn’t helping.

Frigga felt for him. “Would you like some place to relax until dinner? Or would you prefer to return to your ship? Your entire crew is welcome, of course.” She said gently.

“I do not believe that would be feasible. Not only do we have one thousand and twelve people on board, we do require some to remain on board.” He told her.

“I see.” She mused. “Then, may I ask for my grandson to bring those closest to him?” She gave him a gentle smile.

Kirk couldn’t help but nod. Bones was not going to believe this.

Bones stared at him, blinking. “Okay, so you’re trying to tell me that your father, the late George Kirk, did not die on the U.S.S. Kelvin. He ‘magically’...what, teleported… to Asgard?” He sounded skeptical. “Are we sure it’s him?”

Kirk nodded. “I looked right into his eyes, Bones!” He ran a hand through his hair, pacing back and forth. “He knew things that weren’t in the Starfleet report. I’ve read it. I know what’s missing because my mom told me.” He sighed. “It’s him.” He said quietly. “He’s just a God now, who is named ‘Thor’.”

“You mean ‘God-like’, right?” Bones tried to clarify. “There’s no way he has powers or anything.”

“I didn’t ask. What did you want me to do? Go up to him and be like ‘hey, dad, can I see your powers?’?!”

“Whatever. Who are you bringing to this dinner?” He asked, not sure if he wanted to be picked or not.

He finally stopped pacing and sat down. “You, Uhura, Spock, Chekov, Sulu, and Scotty.” He shrugged. “You guys are basically my family on board.” He sank down a bit in the chair. “How do I even begin wrapping my head around this? My father is technically my age. He was 32 when he ‘died’.” It wasn’t like this was something covered in Starfleet. “I don’t know when they ‘made him a God’, but I can’t see him being older than 35.”

Bones nodded. “I wonder if the way they made him into a God could be modified to cure certain illnesses.” He mused.

“Focus, Bones!” Kirk half whined. “I’m about to go to dinner with my father, and my adopted grandparents.” He had about an hour before they all left the ship. “Oh God. He didn’t mention a wife. What if I have some Godly step-mother?!”

Chuckling, he shook his head. “How about you just work on getting to know him?” He suggested. “Isn’t that what your mom would have wanted?” His tone was gentle. “And maybe stop acting like a 16 year old who got told he can’t use the car to go on a date.” He teased him. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving it. It’s hysterical. However, I don't think your father wants to see the childish side of you right off the bat. Ease the poor man into it.” He smirked.

“He was actually ‘pouting’?” Spock asked McCoy as they made their way to meet Kirk to leave. He sounded slightly amused at the thought.

McCoy nodded, chuckling. “He did! Slouched in the chair and everything.” He told him.

“Can we not tell everyone this story?” Kirk gave the pair a bored look. He didn’t need his crew, but especially Spock, viewing him that way. “Please?” He sighed, thankful when they finally nodded in agreement.

It didn’t take long for the others to arrive, and they all made their way towards the palace. Everyone was excited, and nervous. This was beyond anything they had ever dreamed of before. Not only that, but they had all learned about George Kirk in school. Uhura gave Kirk’s arm a quick squeeze of support as the doors opened. She couldn’t imagine how he was feeling. They had come a long way from the first night they met at the bar.

He gave her a small appreciative smile. If he was honest, part of him was looking forward to getting back into space where she got sassy with him. It was something he was used to, and that was comforting. “Please don’t be afraid to be your usual sarcastic self.” He whispered to her, making her chuckle lightly. “We both know Spock will be, well, Spock.” There was a bit of pride in his voice at that. He wouldn’t have Spock any other way.

“That he will.” She snorted. “We know he will never change.”

“Eh, remember I met old Spock.” He told her. “I think he changes a bit, but not so much that he’s not Spock.” He felt a fondness for older Spock, if he was honest.

Before she could reply, Thor entered. “Welcome!” He beamed. His blonde hair was in a low ponytail, and he had changed into different clothes from earlier.

McCoy felt an instant attraction to him. While, sure, he could see some similarities between him and Kirk…this did not look like the same man from that Starfleet portrait. He had certainly taken care of himself. Where Kirk’s smile was goofy, and charming, Thor’s was warm and inviting. He found himself wanting to hear the man’s entire life story.

“That’s McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Spock, Chekov, and Scotty.” Kirk introduced everyone. There was a tension in the air, and for once he didn’t think his usual tactics would work. No being a smartass for this mission.

“I cannot wait to get to know you all.” He told them. “Especially you, my son.” His voice softened as he spoke to Kirk. “Would you like a tour before dinner?” He offered, hoping that would help them ease into things.

Uhura couldn’t help herself, nodding quickly. “Please, everything here is gorgeous!” She grinned.

“You would be correct.” Thor told her. “Follow me. We shall start in my favorite area- the training area.” He turned to lead them out.

McCoy was thankful no one could see his eyes as he found himself watching how Thor’s pants clung to him. It wouldn’t be good for Kirk to catch him checking out his father. He doubted that his best friend would be too pleased.

“Thor! Come to train again?” A female warrior asked, grinning at him.

Thor laughed, shaking his head. “That eager to lose again, Sif?” He asked playfully. “But, alas, not today. I am simply giving my son and his friends a tour.” He explained, motioning to the small group.

Her face went from playful, to shocked. “Son?!” She asked, blinking up at him. “So the rumors are true?”

“They are. This is James.”

“Jim.” Kirk corrected awkwardly. Was Sif his girlfriend?

She glanced at him, then at Thor, then back to him. Her eyes looked him over, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. “You are clearly not a warrior.” She mused.

“Uh, no.” He chuckled lightly. “I’m Captain.”

Her attention was fully on him now, leaving the others to watch. “Should a captain not be as capable as their men?” She asked.

“We tend not to fight in battles, at least on land.” He shrugged. “And on the off chance that happens, we have phasors.” He explained, making her raise an eyebrow. “We don’t use swords.”

“What honor could be gained from such battles?”

“In our society, honor isn’t given through battles. Or, less than it used to.” He felt the need to defend himself. “It’s through discovery, helping people, and saving lives.” He went on.

“Are you an honorable man, Jim?” She smirked, enjoying this back and forth.

It was Spock that spoke up. “Jim is one of the most honorable men I know.” He told her, praising his captain.

“For all his faults, I’d have to agree.” Bones added. “Don’t let that go to your head.” He teased Kirk. “You’re still a pain.”

Jim winked at his best friend. “You love me.” He chuckled as Bones rolled his eyes. Looking back to Sif, he shrugged. “I don’t act for honor. I do what I feel is right.”

She grinned at that. “I like you, Jim.” She patted his cheek before turning to Thor. “Bring him to training tomorrow. I’d like to see him in action.”

The smile on Jim’s face fell. “I’m sorry, you what?” He blinked.

Uhura snorted. “Oh, this I have to see.” She grinned. “It’ll be like that night in the bar all over.” She laughed as Jim shot her a look. “At least there will be no tables for you to land on this time.”

Thor looked amused. “Are the pair of you together? Your mother must adore her!”

“Nope, we are not together.” Uhura shot that down. “He hit on me that night, but I turned him down.” She explained.

“And mom died.” He sighed. “She would have liked you, though.” He added to Uhura. “He’s not wrong.”

Thor’s amusement quickly dissipated. “Oh.” He said sadly. “I’m sorry.” He told Jim sincerely.

Sif gave Jim a sympathetic look, as he was clearly bothered. “Let’s just move on. What’s next on the tour?” Jim asked, not wanting to dwell on his mother’s death. He’d much rather focus on this weird ‘my dad is alive, and is a God’ thing, honestly.

“Of course.” Thor said somberly before turning to Sif. “We shall see you tomorrow.” He promised her.

With a nod, she went back to her own training.

The tour went much better after that, and soon they were entering the dining hall. “Ah, Loki! There you are!” Thor’s voice boomed. “I have been looking for you. Come! Meet your nephew!” He grinned. Of course there was still this off underlying feeling, but he was doing his best. He wanted to embrace fatherhood while his now grown son was there. The thought of them parting hurt. How would they stay in touch? Would that even happen? Or would these be the only memories he had of him?

Loki rolled his eyes. “Brother, I have no interest in Midgardians.” He told him blandly.

Thor shook his head. “Not even your nephew?” He asked, trying to urge the dark haired man to stop being so stubborn. Even if he felt it likely wouldn’t work.

Sighing, he gave Jim a sarcastic smile. “So lovely to meet you.”

Jim smirked right back, chuckling. “Right back atcha.” He felt he could somewhat get along with him.

That amused Loki, making him step forward a bit. “Is that so?” He asked. “Something tells me you aren’t as stuck up as many Midgardians.”

“Ah, there you are!” Odin’s voice made everyone look away from Kirk and Loki. “Your mother is on her way, and hopes that our dear grandson will sit near her.” He smiled, knowing this was something his wife looked forward to. Granted, she had always assumed that she would be there for her grandchildren from the beginning, but that didn’t change her excitement.

Jim nodded. “Of course, if that’s what she’d like.” He agreed, not wanting to be rude. Although he really didn’t see them as his grandparents. It was a weird thing to wrap his head around. They were Gods, he was mortal for starters.

Finally, they were all sitting, enjoying their meals and mead. “How long have you been captain, James?” Odin asked, curious.

“Almost five years now.” He said happily. “Best job ever.” He told him honestly.

“Tell us how you became captain.” Frigga smiled, wanting to hear as much about his life as she could while he was there.

He chuckled nervously. “Uh, that’s a funny story, actually.” He told her. “I’ll let Uhura over there tell you about the night I met Captain Pike, the captain before me. She loves this story and I can tell she’s just itching to tell you all the details.” He smirked at her.

Laughing, Uhura nodded. “Oh, you have no idea, Captain.” She was amused at this. “Me and a bunch of other Starfleet cadets were at this backwoods bar in Iowa. I went up to get us all some drinks, and he’s already had at least a few.” She went on, sipping her mead before going on.

“Hi, I’d like a Klabnian Fire Tea, three Budweiser Classics, two Cardassian Sunrises and uh…”

“Gotta try the Slusho. It’s good.”

“The Slusho mix. Thank you.” She smiled at the bartender.

“That’s a lot of drinks for one woman.” Kirk spoke up from around an alien that was between them.

Uhura kept her eyes on the bartender. “And a shot of Jack straight up.”

“Make that two, shots on me.” Kirk tried, motioning between the two of them. He would not pass up the chance to hit on a pretty woman.

“Her shots on her.” She told the bartender before looking to Kirk. “Thanks but no thanks.”

“Do you at least want to know my name before you completely reject me?” He asked.

“I’m fine without it.”

Kirk smirked. “You are fine without it.” He told her as she kept her eyes on the bar in front of her, trying to keep a straight face. “It’s Jim, Jim Kirk. If you don’t have to tell me your name, I’m gonna have to make one up.” He flirted.

“It’s Uhura.”

“Uhura, no way. That’s the name I was gonna make up for ya. Uhura what?”

“Just Uhura.” She said simply.

“They don’t have last names on your world?” He asked, completely unbothered if that was the case.

“Uhura is my last name.” She informed him.

“Well then, they don’t have first names on your world?” He wondered, getting up from his barstool to move closer to her. “So you’re a Cadet, you’re studying…what’s your focus?” He leaned his elbow on the bar, enjoying this back and forth they had going.

“Xenolinguistics. You have no idea what that means.”

“The study of alien languages, morphology, phonology, syntax. It means you’ve got a talented tongue.” As he spoke, she turned so that her back was against the bar and leaned her elbows on it.

“I’m impressed. For a moment there, I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.”

Not one to pass up a good joke, Kirk was unphased. “Well, not only.” He said easily, making Uhura laugh.

All eyes went to Jim. While the crew had heard this story before, it never failed to amuse them. “Can you blame me? I was drunk, and Uhura was a babe.” He defended himself.

Odin looked quite amused at the tale so far. “I take it you are quite the lady’s man?” He asked.

“Oh yeah.” Spock, Uhura, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty all answered at once.

“Anyways.” Jim shook his head. “Another cadet came up to ask if I was bothering her. She said I was, but I was nothing she couldn’t handle.”

“At which point you said ‘you could handle me. That’s an invitation’. As I was about to take my shot.” Uhura reminded him. “Don’t skimp on the details.” She smirked.

Sighing, he continued. “The other cadet told me to ‘mind my manners’. I told him ‘relax cupcake, it was a joke’. He didn’t like that. He called me a farmboy and said maybe I couldn’t count. That there were four of them, one of me. I told him to go get more to make it a fair fight. I patted his cheek, went to turn around and bam. I’m getting decked.” He took a bite of his meat as he remembered that night. The night that changed his life.

A fight ensued, no one wanting to back down. Kirk did fairly well holding his own against the Starfleet Cadets, even as Uhura yelled ‘enough!’ He was lifted from the ground and slammed on a table, before being held down and beat some more. After three hard punches, a whistle rang out, causing the fight to cease.

“Outside, all of you. Now.” With that order, the bar began to clear. Kirk remained laying back on the table, his arms hanging off the side. “You alright son?” Pike asked him.

Slurring his words, Kirk spoke up. “You can whistle really loud, you know that?”

Later, Kirk sat at a table, napkin in his nose to stop the bleeding, as Pike sat across from him. “You know, I couldn’t believe it when the bartender told me who you are.” Pike spoke up.

“Who am I, Captain Pike?”

“Your father’s son.” He said simply.

Kirk looked at the bartender, holding up his glass. “Can I get another one?”

Pike remained unphased. “For my dissertation, I was assigned the USS Kelvin. Something I admired about your dad, he didn’t believe in no-win scenarios.”

“Sure learned his lesson.”

“Well, it depends on how you define winning. You’re here, aren’t ya?”

“Thanks.”

“You know, that instinct to leap without looking, that was his nature, too, and in my opinion, it’s something Starfleet’s lost.” Pike went on.

“Why are you talking to me, man?”

“‘Cause I looked up your file while you were drooling on the floor. Your aptitude test is off the charts, so what is it? You like being the only genius-level repeat offender in the midwest?” He wasn’t convinced. He could see a fire in Kirk.

“Maybe I love it.” Kirk said sarcastically.

“Look, so your dad dies. You can settle for less than an ordinary life. Or do you feel like you were meant for something better? Something special? Enlist in Starfleet.”

Kirk actually laughed at that. “Enli-” He couldn’t even finish the word without laughing again. “You guys must be way down on your recruiting quota for the month.”

“If you’re half the man your father was Jim, Starfleet could use you. You could be an officer in four years. You could have your own ship in eight. You understand what the Federation is, don’t you. It’s important. It’s peacekeeping and humanitarian armada.”

He shrugged. “He told me where to find him the next day, and when. I said screw it. I went there, told him I’d do it in three.”

“You did not wish to be a member of Starfleet before then?” Thor asked softly.

Kirk shook his head. “Hadn’t crossed my mind.” He told him honestly. “Or I would have enlisted before then.” He went on to explain how he went from Cadet to Captain in just three years. Including the not so fun details of getting kicked off the Enterprise and finding his way back on it.

“Wow.” Frigga breathed. “So much excitement!” She didn’t say anything about the conversation with Pike, as she couldn’t. The events of that caused the death of George Kirk had brought her her beloved son.

Loki was grinning, and finally spoke up. “I like you.” He was beyond amused at this story. “I bet you have a ton of excellent mischief stories.” He chuckled. “You seem to be nothing like my dear brother.”

Jim sipped his mead, shrugging his shoulder. “I can’t say. Everything I know about him was from Starfleet and Captain Pike.” He said honestly. “And Starfleet only taught us the positives.”

“They teach about me at Starfleet?” Thor sounded surprised.

“Well, yeah. I mean, to them you died saving everyone that was on board the USS Kelvin that day.” Jim nodded. “It makes sense they would teach about you.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “I bet that was a great deal of fun for you, being his son.” He knew being known as “Thor’s brother” was maddening enough. Being the son of someone like that? No thank you!

“Eh.” Jim started. “I mean, it was annoying at first because I got looks, but after being in class with the same people? It kinda died down.” He was thankful for that. “It did make it so the higher ups expected more of me, though. Like I had to try twice as hard to be given the same respect because they wanted more.”

“Which also led to him taking things less seriously.” McCoy noted. “He was hellbent on having a good time.” He explained, no hint of judgment in his voice. Then again, who knows if he would have been the same way had the roles been reversed? If McCoy’s father had died like Kirk’s, would he have had the same back way of looking at life?

After some more talk of Kirk’s life, everyone was led to a lavish room for the night. Kirk was just about to get into bed when there was a knock at the door. Confused, he went to open it to see Thor. “May I speak with you a moment?” Thor asked.

“Yeah, sure.” He nodded, stepping aside. “What’s up?”

“I was contemplating requesting to join you when you leave.” He told him honestly. “However, who knows if you’ll come back here, or if I’ll be able to return.” He went on. “I just know that I do not wish to say goodbye to my son.”

Jim wasn’t entirely sure how to reply to that. “Well, the others seem to be enjoying themselves. I can’t see us leaving right away. Maybe a week or two?” He figured maybe that would help Thor a bit.

Thor nodded. “I look forward to that time with you.” He gave him a small smile. “I believe Sif will, too. She seems to be eager to see you in action.”

Clearing his throat, he looked away at how that could be taken in more than one way. “She is going to be disappointed. I’m trained in hand to hand. Not sword fighting. Sulu is, though.” He noted. “But I think that’s more of a fencing thing? Not entirely sure.”

“I guess we shall see tomorrow. If he is up for that.” He could tell there was a thick tension in the air. He hoped it would pass soon, and let them bond.

Kirk was torn. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been enjoying the time they spent in Asgard, but the Enterprise meant everything to him. They had been there nearly two weeks, longer than they had spent in any one place on their mission before. At the moment, he was sitting under the stars with his crew, enjoying a drink.

“I can see the gears turning in your head, Jim.” McCoy spoke up, making Kirk give him a small smile.

“You okay?” Uhura asked softly. While she loved giving him a hard time, she was also there if he needed to talk.

After a moment, he licked his lips, eyes staying on the stars. “I don’t know if I want to leave.” He said so softly he didn’t know if anyone even heard him. “My mom is gone, and I grew up hearing about what a great guy my dad is.” He sighed. “You guys are my family, and I don’t want to leave you, or the Enterprise, either.” He shook his head.

No one knew what to say, and all eyes went to Spock when he spoke. “What if none of us left?” He mused, shocking them all. Out of everyone, they assumed he would be the one to remind them of their mission, of their orders.

Looking around, everyone tried to read the others. Would that be something that everyone even wanted? McCoy had been getting a bit closer to Thor, and found himself leaning towards staying. If he left, would Thor be his greatest ‘what if’? Before he could stop himself, he agreed with Spock. “I agree with the pointy eared bastard.” He chuckled, smiling at him. “It’s the best mix of having a home and still exploring and learning.” He added.

Kirk was honestly floored that any of his crew wanted to stay, let alone Spock and McCoy. Those were the two that would have been the ones to urge him not to stay. He didn’t hide his surprise, either. “Really?” He blinked. “That was the opposite of that I thought either of you’d say.”

“Same here.” Scotty laughed. “I thought it would be me, Sulu, and Chekov who would want to stay, but McCoy and Spock would have wanted to go. Uhura would have been in the same boat as our Captain.” He shrugged, sipping his mead. “Now we really do have something to think about, though.”

A silence settled over their group as they all looked to the stars, those thoughts weighing on them.

“Can I talk to you?” Kirk asked Thor after breakfast the next day. “Alone?” He specified.

Thor was surprised at that, but not unhappy. “Of course.” He agreed. “Walk with me.”

They walked in silence for a bit, until finally there was no one in ear shot. Finally, Kirk gathered his courage. “Me and the others were talking.” He started, looking around. “About…not leaving.” He told Thor.

“You would wish to stay? All of you?” He asked, truly surprised. There was no way he would have ever expected that to come out of his son’s mouth.

Kirk nodded. “Last night we were sitting around, enjoying some fresh air, and star gazing.” He began. “I told them I didn’t know if I wanted to leave. My mom is gone, and I grew up hearing what a great guy you are. However, they’re my family. We’ve gone through hell and back together. So I don’t want to leave them, or the Enterprise, either.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Spock then asked ‘what if none of us left?’, and Bones agreed. He pointed out it’s the perfect mix of having a home and still getting to explore. I had been thinking he was gonna be the one to call me an idiot.”

Thor couldn’t lie, he loved the idea of all of them staying. “You do not need to rush such a decision.” He assured him. “Should you choose to stay for now, we will not turn you away. If you decide in a year you wish to leave, we will not keep you here.” Although it would be even harder to say goodbye down the line. “What if only some of you wish to remain?” He wondered.

“Then I’d appoint whoever was highest ranking left on the Enterprise as Captain.” He told him. “I love being Captain, and I think I’d miss that.” He admitted. “But if I left, I might miss here.” And you , he thought. He was growing used to having a father, no matter how strange things were.

He could tell it was weighing on him, and decided to lighten the mood. “I’m sure Sif would quite enjoy it if you stayed.” He smirked at his son, making Kirk chuckle. “I think she is growing fond of you.”

Kirk shook his head. “You sure it’s not just because I’m your kid?” He raised an amused eyebrow.

“Unlikely.” He laughed. “She is one of the men to me, and she feels like one of the men, as well.” He explained. “So, I highly doubt that is the case.” He assured him, not being opposed to the pairing. “I am sure she would be pleased to train you to eventually be a captain here, or as close as you can get to it.” Would that help Kirk to want to stay? Thor knew he was being selfish, but he’d already lost so much time with him!

“I hadn’t thought of that.” He mused, intrigued at the idea. “Would…would I eventually be able to be like you?”

“If you were to train enough, work out consistently. I can’t see why not. I can assist with that.” It honestly sounded like a good way to bond.

“Oh, I don’t mean all buff.” He chuckled. “I don’t think that would look good on me. I meant a God.” He sounded almost shy. “I mean, it sounds like it would be a good idea. So you wouldn’t have to watch me die, and we would have more than enough time to make up for the last few decades.” He was clearly nervous about this topic.

Thor thought for a moment. “I am sure that would be easily done in time. I would need to discuss this with my parents, but I cannot see them saying ‘no’. Mother adores you.” He put his hand on his shoulder. “After I speak to them, I shall let you know.”

Kirk smiled. “Thanks. I’ll keep you updated on who wants to stay and go.” He promised.

They’d been in Asgard a month when Thor, Sulu, Kirk, Uhura, Spock, McCoy, Chekov, and Scotty discussed what was going to happen. “I believe I was told a decision has been made?” His eyes scanned the group, locking with McCoy’s for a moment. The pair had been getting closer since Thor spoke with Kirk.

McCoy laughed, far from sober at the moment. Loki was regaling everyone with tails from when he’d pranked Thor over the years. Everyone was greatly amused, and even Thor couldn’t hold back his laughter. “Careful, doctor.” Thor told McCoy, his voice low, as McCoy nearly fell off of his chair. Standing, he helped McCoy up. “I will get Leonard to his room.” He told the others, although only Spock made it known that he’d heard.

Once they were out of ear shot, McCoy felt brave. Looking up at Thor, he licked his lips. “I wouldn’t be opposed to being carried.” He flirted. “I bet I’d weigh nothing to you.” He added.

Thor smirked, not stopping his steps as he easily lifted McCoy bridal style. “Better, doctor?” He flirted back, his eyes darting to the dark haired man in his arms. He was amused to see McCoy’s cheeks a bright pink.

“I bet that comes in super handy in the bedroom.” He breathed before he could stop himself.

“A great deal. Would you care to find out?”

“Fuck yes.”

He was now quite fond of the doctor, and truly hoped that he was one that decided to stay. At least he felt that McCoy felt the same.

Kirk nodded. “Sulu isn’t staying. He has a family back home. He’s taking over the Enterprise. Myself, Uhura, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Chekov have all decided to stay.” He watched Thor’s face light up with excitement at the news. What he wasn’t expecting was to see Thor pull McCoy into a kiss. “Um.” He blinked, looking at the others, confused.

“I was hoping you’d stay.” Thor grinned.

McCoy chuckled at that. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I am so lost.” Kirk muttered.

“I’m sorry, my son!” Thor turned to him. “The doctor and myself have been enjoying each other’s company for the past couple weeks. I had been worried I’d be saying goodbye. I had a ‘gut feeling’ you would be staying, however.” He didn’t want Kirk to think he hadn’t been worried about him leaving. Of course he was, but he had been all but sure he was staying.

“Fascinating.” Spock mused.

#thor oneshot #marvel #star trek

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wolfiemcwolferson · 1 year

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tagged by @duquesademiel to share 7 lines of my WIP’s and oh boy, am I gonna make her regret it!

[redacted] fic for [redacted] - Piarles

It’s not George’s fault work was shit today and the pretty boy doesn’t text him about a second date. (Pierre isn’t picky, he would also take a text about his damned cat.) And it’s not George’s fault that Pierre put off his paperwork for two whole weeks and - Pierre’s phone buzzes against the countertop and then it’s a wrestling match for it. George might be long limbed and ridiculous, but Pierre was the youngest of five and he’s well scrappy. He’s also far more motivated than George is because he comes away victorious, half sitting on George in the floor and half laying underneath one of the rolling chairs, but he doesn’t care because Chatte Charles 🐱 has text him and it’s a good thing he’s out of breath already.

Fantasy Fest fic for CC server - Piarles

And it’s not just the worry. Charles misses Pierre - and maybe that’s not fair either because sometimes he thinks that what he’s missing is…something inside of himself that he can’t name or pinpoint. Something in him when he wasn’t working at a phone company or at an electronics shop or a medical office. Something about how when he was away at university and Pierre was flying across the channel to see him and kiss him and hold him - something about how he misses that… The chicken is finishing off in the oven and Charles flops onto the couch, picking up his book from the coffee table because the news is not his friend right now and his phone is in the kitchen and this is what he needs to be doing anyway, but then the doorknob jiggles and Charles sits straight up, looking behind him at it. Pierre would have left his keys here probably - and yes. Charles can see them in the little bowl by the door. And if he changed at the tower, he wouldn’t have flown home so he would have walked.

BN Drabbles - this one is Lance/my OFC that we all fell in love with

Ariel’s breaths are coming in short little bursts as Lance steps closer to her, holding the wipe up to her face, asking for permission with his long pause. He’s seen her without make-up dozens of times - the two of them curling up in his living room (on separate couches) while they debate things about work or watch old episodes of Star Trek that Ariel seemingly knows every word to or just spend time talking about this yoga retreat Lance went on in Costa Rica or this beer festival in Seattle. He hadn’t understood just how significant that was until they had been out with a bunch of people at work and Ariel had mentioned that she rarely lets people see her dressed down - not unless they’re very close. But, this? Allowing Lance to be the person stripping that layer away from her face? It’s intimate in a way that he’s never been with anyone before. Ariel flutters her eyelids closed and leans into the wipe and Lance very gently runs it over the place where her eyeliner has melted down her cheek.

High tops AU - This is Lancierre and who knows when it will see the light of dayyyyyyyy

The air conditioning is making a whirring noise and he sees another car pull up to the front of the store and he really should be going, except he walks up to the counter and he laughs to himself, pointing behind the man at the wall of cigarettes. He hasn’t bought a pack of cigarettes in nearly ten years and honestly doesn’t even know what to ask for. “Pack of Marlboro’s?” Gas Station Man grunts and gestures like ok, dumbass. “Lights? Uh, the long ones?” Gas Station Man laughs, presses a couple of buttons on the register and scans the packet of cigarettes.

Okay, so that’s all I’m legally allowed to share. I know, you’re screaming WHAT ABOUT ELOPEMENT FIC, WHAT ABOUT WEREWOLFIERRE and to you I say, “um...yeah. I know. I swear it’s happening.” (shaky thumbs up)

#piarles #lancierre #lance stroll #wips

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blast0rama · 1 year

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DSTLRY: A Comic Imprint From Ex-ComiXology Management, With Some Great Talent and New Ideas About Digital Comics

The Beat:

DSTLRY is here.

Since Comixology was folded into Amazon last year, and founder David Steinberger left the company, many have seen him and former Comixology executive Chip Mosher hanging out together quite a bit. Many surmised they were working on a new thing and today we learned what that new thing is: DSTLRY, a new comics publisher that brings together an innovative relationship with creators, and a “StubHub-Style Resellable Digital Marketplace.”

Announced today with a pretty glowing piece in The New York Times, the best breakdown of what and who DSTLRY is comes from The Beat, which is why I’m sourcing — and will be quoting — their article here.

On paper, DSTLRY is saying all of the right things, for example:

Each “Founding Creator” will hold an equity stake in the company, and an additional 3% of DSTLRY’s company equity will be distributed among all creators who release projects during the first three years of DSTLRY’s publishing slate, with money allocated based on title performance.

And the lineup of creators and talent is hard to ignore, e.g.:

The line-up of Founding Creators is loaded: Scott Snyder (Batman, Wytches), Tula Lotay (Barnstormers), James Tynion IV (Something Is Killing the Children, The Joker War), Junko Mizuno (Pure Trance, Ravina the Witch?), Ram V (Detective Comics, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr), Mirka Andolfo (Sweet Paprika, Mercy), Joëlle Jones (Lady Killer, Catwoman), Jock (Batman: One Dark Knight, Wytches), Becky Cloonan (Wonder Woman, Batgirls), Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets, Joker), Elsa Charretier (Love Everlasting, November), Stephanie Phillips (Grim, Harley Quinn), Lee Garbett (Spider-Man, Skyward), Marc Bernardin (Adora and the Distance, Star Trek: Picard), Jamie McKelvie (The Wicked + The Divine, Captain Carter), and Founding Editor Will Dennis (Y: The Last Man, Snow Angels).

But it’s their business plan that has me scratching my head.

Unlike Comixology, DSTLRY will launch with oversized 48-page issues in both print and digital, distributed to comics shops in the usual way. Collected editions will be widely available in print and digital.

That much is like a traditional publisher. But DSTLRY is adding what they bill as “a Stub Hub for digital comics.” Digital drops of individual issues will come with various benefits – special discounts, exclusive drops, and meetups with the creators – and while they are NOT NFTs they will be fully ownable and resellable. Owners will be able to resell their items on the DSTLRY marketplace. Although they can set their own price, a percentage of resale goes back to the creators. Physical issues will be limited-edition collectibles in the traditional sense.

So I’m glad that…

This isn’t NFT-based. 2. Collected editions will be wildely avialable in digital

As a trade-waiter with a massive collection on ComiXology, I feel like this is somewhat being catered to me, even though I’m pretty sure their books won’t be available on Amazon. (Maybe I’m wrong?) This marketplace idea, overall, sounds massively misguided and as if it’s trying to capture a part of the audience that just isn’t there. The idea behind selling digital content is the lack of overhead, the lack of rush, the ease of accessibility. Sure, you can’t “lend” in many traditional senses, or re-sell, but…that’s the compremise made.

This feels like a fools errand that, if the company gets acquired or goes belly up, you’re out the whole shebang.

I appreciate the effort to cut in the creators on the resale, but is that a massive concern? Please, creators, I know I know some of you, and you might be reading this…what does that mean to you? Is it a given of extra funding, or is it sort of a “nice if I get it, but I don’t expect it” scenario?

At the end of the day, like with any new comic company, the core business will rest on if the books are good. We can debate the rest. But right now? I’ve got a very raised eyebrow at their plans. Wish them the best just the same.

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pintobordeaux · 2 years

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10 characters/10 fandoms tag. Thank you @therehavebeenstranger for the tag! I think I know how to play this? Hopefully I got the idea right. So here’s 10 fandoms I’ve fucked with, and one of my favorite peeps from it. In no particular order:

1. DCU - Superman/Clark Kent (i mean Bruce is nice, but ma boi Clark is everything to me)

2. Star Trek - S’Chn T’Gai Spock (my OTP OTP is spirk 100%, isn’t everyone’s?)

3. Fullmetal Alchemist - Roy Mustang (He’s my broken little wet cat of a strong military man. And that uniform mmmmmmmmm)

4. BNHA/MHA - Yagi Toshinori/All Might (that double life trope thooooooo)

5. Sherlock - Sherlock Holmes (This was a toss up between him and John. Honestly its both. Together. Forever. Yes I was deep in the “wholock” parts of superwholock)

6. Legend of Zelda - Shiek (my boi! He works as always male. He works as a trans icon. He’s the whole package 20+ years later)

7. Trigun - Vash the Stampede (this is starting to show a pattern. I have a thing for BAMF sunshine boys who secretly hold in all the pain don’t I? 😅)

8. Harry Potter - Severus Snape (block me if this changes your opinion of me. I’m not here to fight fandom debates. YKINMKATOK. This pathetic meow meow can pack so much angst into such a small amount and I love it.)

9. The Expanse - Amos Burton (Listen. LISTEN. The expanse series is amazing and the fact that there are under 250 fics for the books and under 800 total for the show is a travesty)

10. MCU - Bruce Banner (I just love me a tortured genius. He needs soft things and to be treated to kindness)

Gonna tag uhhhhh @superbatlvr1, @lament-of-0rpheus, and @januariat. No pressure to do it or ignore if you already have and I missed it!

#10 characters/10 fandoms #ask game

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muffinlance · 4 years

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Newish reader but I've been loving your work SO MUCH, and subsequently craving more of that brand of story-feels. So a) THANK YOU for writing and for sharing your work, it is SO LOVELY, and b) do you uh... do you have any random book recs? (Already looked through your list of fic bookmarks on ao3.) (P.S. Thank you again, your found family feels are so *chef's kiss* good, and your reluctant or not-so-reluctant dad!characters are all SUCH GOOD DADS.)

Do I have book recs

DO I EVER

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell: we pick up an alien song coming from a nearby star. While governments debate what to do, the Jesuits fund an expedition. Do NOT look up plot summaries, it is way too easy to get spoiled on this one. Beautiful writing, vividly human humans, alien-yet-understandable aliens. Trigger warning: rape.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff: 1960s America. A black family deals with racism and Eldritch horrors, and fucking kills it. Sometimes literally. Trigger warning: people being racist assholes. Author is African American themselves, and the black characters have hella agency. Also Lovecraft-typical horror.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: who wants to read about a plague apocalypse during a plague apocalypse? THIS GIRL. Trigger warnings: implied rape, some underage, and lots of death. NOT a grimdark apocalypse though.

Everything by Ted Chiang. Short story writer, most famous for "Story of your life", which the movie Arrival is based on. "Understand" and "Exhalation" are also amazing, and his work is pretty easy to find online. This dude. This dude is my role model. No particular trigger warnings.

Anything by Neil Gaiman, he's famous enough I doubt I need to elaborate. No particular trigger warnings unless you pick up the Sandman graphic novels (highly recommended), and then All The Trigger Warnings, especially in volume one.

Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker: who likes novels about dinosaurs written by actual paleontologists? DEFINITELY THIS GIRL. I went through a phase in childhood where I read this thing pretty much everyday. Still holds up as an adult. Trigger Warnings: it's about nature, things die and/or get eaten lots.

The Last Whales by Lloyd Abbey: another childhood favorite that in retrospect was Not For Children. The apocalypse, from the point of view of whales. Trigger warning: hopeful ending, but RL-typical Humans Being Awful To Oceans. And it is an apocalypse story, plus a nature story, so. Things die. Things get eaten. Orcas are dicks.

The Mote in God's Eye by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven: ridiculously engaging first contact book. Also who the heck was letting me pick books as a child? (No one, that's who. I was an INDEPENDENT THIRD GRADER and you COULDN'T STOP ME. ...Except from reading Moby Dick, which definitely got me mocked too much in the classroom so I didn't get past chapter one until adulthood.) I read this in like, sixth grade, I do not accurately recall trigger warnings.

Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals: autobiography of one of the Little Rock Nine. Trigger Warnings: All The Racism. That's kind of the point.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates: short story, easy to find, had a ridiculous impact upon my childhood and writing for a story I didn't read until adulthood (my mom read it long ago in college, and told me of a man in ill-fitting boots that might or might not have been hiding cloven hooves. This was a Very Influential Image.) Recommender Chose Not To Apply Trigger Warnings. Nothing graphic.

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu: another short story that you can have LeVar Fucking Burton read to you, it is so soothing. PS LeVar Burton (of Star Trek TNG and Reading Rainbow fame) has a podcast. He reads you stories. You should be listening. Trigger warnings: racism and assimilationist themes.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle: in which a black writer has WAY too much fun deconstructing the magical negro trope and the inherent racism in Lovecraft's writing and I am HERE for it. The malicious glee in this book is top notch. Same warnings as for Lovecraft Country.

Ursula K. Le Guin, everything. My first intro to her was Earthsea, she's also quite famous for The Left Hand of Darkness. Google by book for warnings.

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle: had your heart broken by the movie as a child? Prepare to be good-hurt in EVEN MORE WAYS! No particular warnings.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill: it's just nice and I like it okay? No particular warnings.

My wrist hurts from swiping and I'm at the end of my history in Libby and there is a baby sleeping on me so I can't go upstairs and look at my bookshelf, so this list is complete. Return to me when you need more.

#book recs #I has them #trigger warnings are as I remember #and I suck at remembering #so

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gar-trek · 3 years

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As per tradition, here is my thoughts on TNG season three (I just realized I finished a whole season in like 10 days wtf)

Well, as you may have guessed that shit was like crack cocaine to me. For comparison, it took me almost 2 months to finish season 2. But season 3... oh man that shit just hit different 😳Finally, finally they have started hitting their stride. I feel like a big problem in season 2 was they had a lot of episodes that had completely unrelated A and B plots. I didn’t really like this because it would sometimes feel awkward jumping around plots in the same episode. I felt like the episodes in this season were a lot more cohesive. Everything just flowed together really nicely and kept me really engaged. Also they are a lot better at keeping characters consistent and likable... I don’t hate Picard anymore, friendship regain with Picard. They stopped writing him as an asshole and made his motivations more clear. Also, I am now in love with Riker, just am. Okay, here are some more specific thoughts on episodes:

Ones that were meh:

Manage a Troi: Idk why but Lwaxana Troi episodes just haven’t hit since her first appearance. Like I say her episode in season 1 was one of the best, but then her season 2 episode was soooo bad. This one was a little better but it was just a little boring and awkward. AND PLEASE! what is the nature of Riker and Troi’s relationship ??? are the exs? are they casually dating?? do they just bone every now and then? I’m so confused cuz like I thought they just had a crush on each other but didn’t wanna pursue a relationship, but then in this episode its just understood they are going to go to Betazoid and fuck. WHAT IS GOING ON!!!

Sins of the Father: I didn’t really like Worf’s brother or the fact they introduced a secret brother. Star Trek, that trope is so tired now. Stop with the secret sibling bullshit. Also I get it’s different for Klingons but I didn’t like that Worf was okay answering for things his biological dad did when he has two adopted parents who love him very much. Also, I have no idea what happened at the end of this episode. Was anyone else confused or was it just because I may or may not have been under the influence of legal substances? I was confused the whole episode.

My favs!!:

The Ensigns of Command: I loooovvveeee episodes were they test Data and he struggles a bit but of course ends up saving the day!!! Very good with tension all throughout and like even the plot on the enterprise was interesting. Also... Data got a little kissy :3

The Enemy: Centurion Bochra!!! CENTURION BOCHRA!!!! Who the fuck doesn’t love a redemption arc for an unhinged boy? I’d say its the backbone of this fucking website. ALSO!! a fucking GEORDI CENTRIC episode ???? we get to see my best friend Geordi save the day and work hard and use his kindness and good attitude and determination and smarts to do it?? I LOVE GEORDI!!!! also i just love Romulans, I think they are my fav evil race (Ferengi very close second)

Offspring: Let me tell you guys, I NEVER EVER cry and media ever, I don’t even cry at ANYTHING!! but.... certain scenes here... may have got me a little choked up... ngl. This episode was so funny but also so heart wrenching, that’s all I’ll say.

Hollow Pursuits: I don’t know, I just really like that they gave us a character centric episode that wasn’t one of the main cast. It was just a super interesting story. The whole time you are kinda tore between routing for Barclay and feeling like he’s a massive creep. Also, it shows the main cast an imperfect and not always accepting, as even the captain is a little mean to Barclay at one point and Riker kinda turns into a Chad bully. Idk it was an episode I would never expect from this show but very much enjoyed.

The Most Toys: yes Three out of five of my favorite episodes were Data centric ones, fucking sue me. I’m a basic Data loving bitch I will fully admit to that. I have a lot to say about this episode and what I wish they would have done different, but i think I’m going to post about that separately. But anyway, when Data went against his own will and sat in the chair to save that women's life... that shit got to me. I think about that scene daily

Okay, that’s all for now folks!! feel free to debate me in the comments and what not

#star trek #I read my season 1 reflection again #man it's so crazy #how man opinions are sooo different now #tng #the next generation #this was a ramble afffffffff

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per-ineptia-ad-astra · 4 years

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Star Trek Episode 1.24: This Side of Paradise

AKA Yet Another Creepy Utopia Planet

Our episode begins with the Enterprise heading in to orbit around an Earthy-looking planet named Omicron Ceti 3. Omicon Ceti is a real star, by the way—also known as Mira or Mira A, it’s a red giant and part of a binary star system with its sister Mira B. It’s not a real likely place to go looking for such a nice homey sort of planet, though, because Mira is a pulsating variable star, which means its size and brightness is constantly fluctuating, and it’s hard to evolve life when your sun keeps flickering like a neon sign in a noir movie all the time.

Uhura reports to Kirk that she’s been transmitting a contact signal every five minutes just as he ordered, but she’s only getting dead air in response. Kirk tells her to keep it up until they get into orbit, then moves on to talk to Spock. “There were one hundred fifty men, women and children in that colony,” he says. “What are the chances of survivors?”

Looks like the chances are, uh...not great. And by ‘not great’ I mean ‘nonexistent’. Spock explains that ‘Bertold rays’ are a recent enough discovery that there’s still a lot not known about them, but one thing that is for sure known is that exposure to these rays causes living animal tissue to disintegrate. Nasty. Evidently this planet is heavily exposed to these rays, because a group of colonists-- “Sandoval’s group”-- came here only three years ago and Spock says there’s no possibility they could have survived. Well why the heck would anyone build a colony in such a place? All Spock can say is “They knew there was a risk.”

Kirk questions whether they can risk sending a landing party down under such conditions, but Spock says the disintegration doesn’t start immediately, so they’ll be alright if they don’t stick around too long. The helmsman reports that they’ve successfully established orbit, and he’s found a settlement—or at least, something that was a settlement at one point. Kirk tells Spock to equip a landing party of five to accompany him down there, including a biologist and McCoy. That’s gonna be a fun mission briefing. “Yes, we're beaming down to a planet bombarded with deadly radiation, but no need to worry, crew, your tissues will probably only disintegrate a little bit."

Sometime later, the landing party—Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, a blueshirt and a goldshirt—materialize into a meadow near a dirt path and a picket fence. They’ve thoughtfully arranged themselves into a nice alternating pattern.

[ID: A shot of a sunny meadow with a dirt road, a few trees and a white picket fence in the background. Newly beamed down are six Enterprise crewmembers standing in two rows: in the front are Kirk and Spock, in the back are McCoy, a goldshirt, a blueshirt, and Sulu.]

The goldshirt, incidentally, is DeSalle, who we last saw back in The Squire of Gothos. The character was originally written for this story as Lt. Timothy Fletcher, but was changed to DeSalle after the production crew realized they’d cast an actor who had already appeared in the series. Yes, really. AGAIN. The blueshirt is Kelowitz, who showed up briefly in The Galileo Seven and Arena, and likewise started out as another character but was renamed after being cast. I don’t know how this situation managed to happen so often on TOS, but apparently it did. At least they both seem to have managed to hold onto more or less the same positions that they had the last time we saw them, a rare feat for any minor TOS crewmember.

The group walks forward towards some nearby farm buildings arranged around a dirt yard, with a horse-drawn cart sitting out in front of one of them. But there’s no horse to be seen, and no people either. They wander through the yard and over toward what looks like a paddock, but without any animals in it. Everything seems quite thoroughly deserted.

Kirk leans on the paddock fence and glumly muses, “Another dream that failed. There’s nothing sadder. It took these people a year to make the trip from Earth. They came all that way...and died.” Hold on, it took them a year? What, do they not give colony ships warp drives? Did they have to hitchhike here?

“Hardly that, sir,” someone says, and suddenly we see three men in green jumpsuits standing at the edge of the yard, looking very relaxed and also very not dead.

As the landing party all turn around to stare in shock the man in front strides forward and says, “Welcome to Omicron Ceti 3. I’m Elias Sandoval.” McCoy looks like he’s getting ready to spray the dude with holy water.

After the titles, we get a brief captain’s log to sum things up, just in case everyone forgot what happened during the commercial break:

“Captain’s Log, Stardate 3417.3. We thought our mission to Omicron Ceti 3 would be an unhappy one. We had expected to find no survivors of the agricultural colony there. Apparently, our information was incorrect.”

The colonists start happily shaking hands with the landing party—but happily as in “oh, it’s so nice to meet you” not “oh thank god you came to rescue us we’re all on the brink of death”. Sandoval says they haven’t seen anyone outside the colony since they left Earth four years ago, although they’ve been expecting someone to come by for a while. Apparently their subspace radio didn’t work right and they don’t have anyone who could “master its intricacies”. Now, I’m no expert on establishing colonies on alien planets, but ‘person who can work our only communication device’ does rather seem like a position you would want to make sure was filled before you left.

Kirk has to explain that they haven’t come to visit because of the dead radio. He does not explain why they did decide to come when they did. Spock’s comment about the colonists knowing there was a risk indicates that whether or not Bertold rays specifically were known about before the colonists left, they at least had reason to believe there was something dangerous about the planet. So why’d the Federation let them go and then wait another three years before sending anyone to check up on them? Eh, probably just another failing of twenty-third century space bureaucracy.

Sandoval’s not bothered about it, though. He tells Kirk that it doesn’t make much difference—the important thing is the party is here now and the colonists are happy to see them. Then he invites them on a tour of the settlement and casually strolls off, leaving the landing party to stand there and try to process what the hell they just witnessed.

“Pure speculation, just an educated guess...I’d say that man is alive,” McCoy says. Thanks Bones.

Spock says that his scans show that the planet is getting ray’d just as their reports indicated, so that’s not the issue. Under this intensity, the landing party could safely hang out here for a week if necessary, as per the usual Star Trek rule that you can be exposed to a deadly thing and be just fine up until the exact moment it kills you, but there’s a mighty big difference between a week and three years. Or as Kirk succinctly puts it, “These people shouldn’t be alive.”

“Is it possible they’re not?” Sulu asks. Great out of the box thinking there Sulu, love it.

Kirk takes a moment to consider that, which is fair—compared to the kind of weird shit they’ve encountered so far, the walking dead wouldn’t even stand out that much. But McCoy points out that when they shook hands with Sandoval, “His flesh was warm. He’s alive. There’s no doubt about that.” Spock fires back with a reminder that, “There’s no miracle connected with [Bertold rays], doctor, you know that. No cures, no serums, no antidotes. If a man is exposed long enough, he dies.” Okay dude, calm down, all McCoy said was “he’s alive” not “my god! Bertold rays have been fake all along! wake up sheeple!"

As Kirk points out, this whole debate is pretty pointless anyway for the moment—they’re arguing in a vacuum, and they’ll need more answers if they want to get anywhere. So they go to follow Sandoval, who leads them towards a nearby farm house, while a few colonists do various farm chores nearby. Sandoval explains that the colonists split into three groups, with forty-five people at this settlement and two more settlements elsewhere on the planet. Apparently they thought that arrangement would give each group a better chance for growth, since if some disaster struck one group the other two would probably still be alright.

“Omicron is an ideal agricultural planet,” he says. “We determined not to suffer the fate of the expeditions that went before us.” It’s rather vague what expeditions he’s referring to here, since at no other point in the episode are any previous attempts at settling Omicron Ceti 3 mentioned. But given that Sandoval specifically mentions the possibility of disease afflicting one group as a reason to split up, and Spock earlier said that Bertold rays were a recent discovery—and that the colonists knew coming to Omicron Ceti 3 was risky-- it seems possible that previous groups tried to settle the planet and, without knowing about the Bertold rays, mistook their effects for some kind of disease native to the planet. Of course that doesn’t explain why this group of colonists decided it would be a good idea to try to settle here again anyway, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few months, it’s that not everyone sees the possibility of dying to a terrible disease as a compelling reason to change their plans in any way.

As they stand in the farmhouse talking about this, a woman steps forward from another room in the house. She’s in soft focus, just in case we might forget she’s a woman, and instead of the green jumpsuit all the male colonists are wearing, she’s wearing green overalls over a lavender shirt, a combination that somehow manages to be an even worse fashion disaster than the jumpsuits themselves. She starts to say something to Sandoval, then stops in surprise as she sees the landing party. But for once the romance-o-vision isn’t for Kirk—it’s Spock that the camera zooms in on as the woman stares at him.

“Layla, come meet our guests,” Sandoval says cheerfully, oblivious to the wistfully romantic background music. He introduces her as Layla Colomi, their botanist. Layla says that she and Spock have met before, but “It’s been a long time.” Kirk gives Spock a bit of a side-eye for that, but Spock offers no details.

Well, all romantic tension aside, they do still have a mission to attend to here, as Kirk reminds Sandoval. Sandoval tells them to go ahead with any examinations or tests they want. “I think you’ll find our settlement an interesting one. Our philosophy is a simple one: that men should return to a less complicated life. We have few mechanical things here, no vehicles, no weapons. We have harmony here. Complete peace.” Oh yeah, that bodes well. Remember the last place we saw complete harmony and peace? At least that explains why everyone on this farm is using equipment straight out of Stardew Valley, which is presumably not the most advanced agricultural technology available by the twenty-third century. I’m not sure why Sandoval’s idea of a simpler lifestyle excludes vehicles, though. They’re not exactly the most recent thing on the timeline of human technological advancements.

Sandoval tells the landing party to make themselves at home, and they all head off. All except for Spock, who lingers just a few seconds more to give Layla a completely neutral look before walking away as well.

Everyone goes off to conduct their respective investigations. Sulu and Kelowitz wander through a yard over towards another farm building. Kelowitz isn’t sure what exactly they should be looking for, though. “Whatever doesn’t look right—whatever that is,” Sulu replies, climbing up to sit on a railing on the building’s porch. “When it comes to farms, I wouldn’t know what looked right or wrong if it were two feet from me.” I hope you enjoyed that line, because “didn’t grow up on a farm” is about all the backstory TOS is going to give us for Sulu until the movies.

[ID: Three screenshots showing Sulu pulling himself up to sit on the railing of an old-fashioned farmhouse as he says, "When it comes to farms, I wouldn't know what looked right or wrong if it were two feet from me." Growing up from the ground nearby are two large plants with thick brownish-purple stems and large pink flowers on top.]

Hey Sulu, what's that about two feet from you? Oh well, I'm sure it's not important.

Kelowitz opens up a nearby barn and notes that there’s no cows there—in fact, the barn isn’t even built for cows, just for storage, and indeed it only looks big enough to be useful for holding cow, singular. Having a storage barn isn’t itself that weird, although the fact that there is nothing currently stored in the storage barn is a bit strange. But also, as Sulu points out, come to think of it, they haven’t seen any animals here, native or imported. No cows, no horses, no pigs, not even a dog. Which is a bit odd for an agricultural colony. They must have had or expected to have animals at some point—otherwise what was pulling that cart?

Back in the house, Sandoval is asking Layla about Spock (once again referred to as a ‘Vulcanian’). She says that she knew Spock on Earth, six years ago. Sandoval, apparently having noticed the dreamy background music by now, asks if Layla loved Spock. She says that if she did, “it was important only to myself...Mr. Spock’s feelings were never expressed to me. It is said he has none to give.”

“Would you like him to stay with us now? To be one of us?” Sandoval asks. Layla smiles at him. “There is no choice, Elias,” she says. “He will stay.”

Elsewhere in the house, McCoy is scanning a colonist. He doesn’t look exactly happy with the tricorder result he gets, but all he says is, “That’ll be all, thank you very much,” and the colonist leaves, passing Kirk coming in. Incidentally, I can’t help but note that this room contains two paintings on the wall and what appears to be a cabinet full of china. I suppose the paintings could have been done by a colonist, but the china could surely only have been brought there. Who decided to pack fancy china on a year-long space voyage to an agricultural colony?

[ID: A shot of the interior of a farmhouse with blue walls, with a large wooden table in the middle of the room, a cabinet with china and glassware in the corner, a wooden desk with a copper tea kettle and some other kitchen items on it against the back wall, and a painting hanging on the wall showing some blurry trees. Sandoval, a middle-aged white man with short brown hair wearing a green jumpsuit, walks past the camera as he says, "Oh, captain, I've been looking for you."]

Kirk asks if McCoy’s found anything yet. McCoy replies that he’s surveyed nine men so far, ranging in age from twenty-three to fifty-nine. And they’re all in perfect condition. Not just healthy—perfect. Textbook responses across the board, from all of them. “If there are many more of them,” McCoy muses, “I can throw away my shingle.”

At that point Kirk’s communicator goes off. It’s Spock, calling in from one of the crop fields. He’s made the same observation as Sulu—there’s no life on the planet aside from the colonists and the plants. No animals, no insects. Spock doesn’t have any explanation yet, so Kirk tells him to carry on with his investigation and hangs up.

McCoy notes the absence of animals as peculiar, and Kirk says it’s especially so because the expedition records show that they did bring animals with them to raise for food. And pull their carts, presumably. But it seems none of them are still around. McCoy says he’d like to see the expedition’s medical records, a request Kirk has apparently anticipated because he’s got the floppy disc on hand with him.

Sandoval comes in and says that he’d like to take the two of them on a tour of the fields, to show off what the colony’s accomplished. McCoy says he’ll have to bow out, since he’s still working on the medical examinations. “However, if I find everyone else’s health to be as perfect as yours...”

“You’ll find no weaklings here,” Sandoval says, which uh, sure is a hell of a way to phrase that. “No weaklings! None of those miserable, pathetic sods with imperfect health! Only the strong survive! THE SLIGHTEST BLEMISH SHALL BE CAUSE FOR EXILE!”

Leaving McCoy behind, Kirk and Sandoval head out to the fields, where Sandoval gushes to Kirk about how great this place is: they’ve got moderate climate, moderate rains all year round, and the soil will grow anything they stick in it. Which is pretty miraculous, considering there’s no such thing as growing conditions that are perfect for every plant. But as we’re about to see, that’s not the only weird thing going on with their farming practices.

The conversation is interrupted by DeSalle arriving to give Kirk the biology report. Sandoval excuses himself to attend to work elsewhere, leaving Kirk and DeSalle alone to discuss the report. At first, it seems to be just as Sandoval said: they’ve got a variety of crops growing here successfully. The weird thing is that they don’t actually have very many of those crops. There’s enough to keep the colony going at the size it currently is, but barely more than that. Which tracks with what we’ve seen of the place so far: a couple of tiny fields that look more about the size for someone’s backyard garden than for a prosperous farm, tended by the occasional person idly scratching at the ground with a hoe. For a supposedly bounteous agricultural colony, that’s pretty weird. What have they been doing all this time?

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle all one color,” Kirk muses, taking a moment to stroll a few steps away so he can say this dramatically in the distance instead of actually talking to DeSalle. “No key to where the pieces fit in. Why?”

Kirk’s communicator goes off. It’s McCoy, saying Kirk had better get back over there. “Trouble?” “No, but I’d like you to see this for yourself.” Of course. No one can ever just explain something over the phone, can they.

So Kirk heads back to the house, where the thing that Kirk just absolutely has to see for himself turns out to be McCoy just telling him what he’s found out, but he definitely couldn't do that over the communicator for, uh, reasons. What he’s found out is pretty interesting, though: McCoy checked up on Sandoval’s medical records from right before the colonists had left, which said that Sandoval had had an appendectomy, and had scar tissue on his lungs from childhood pneumonia (the weakling!). Yet when McCoy scanned Sandoval himself today, the results came back just as perfect as all the other colonists’. Kirk’s first thought is instrument failure, but McCoy says no, he thought of that and tested it by scanning himself, and it recorded him just fine, down to “those two broken ribs I had once.” Which sounds like an interesting story. But Sandoval’s scan? No scar tissue, and one healthy appendix. That’s right, Sandoval’s apparently managed to regrow an entire organ. Do you think you would notice that happening? Like, would it itch?

While Kirk and McCoy try to figure that out, Spock is hanging out in a field scanning with his own tricorder, while Layla stands nearby smiling ominously at him. Spock muses that there’s “Nothing. Not even insects. Yet your plants grow, and you’ve survived exposure to Bertold rays.” Yeah, how are those plants growing without insects? Presumably the native plants have evolved some way around that, but the ones the colonists have brought from Earth would need some help. Are the colonists just manually pollinating everything? Maybe that’s why they haven’t grown very much.

Layla says this can be explained, but when asked to do so, she just says, “Later.” Spock looks annoyed and remarks, “I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question.” Hey! Cut that bullshit out. No one on this colony has directly answered a question since you got here, there’s no call to go ragging on a whole gender for it. Besides, just saying “Later,” is hardly a stunningly deft diversion, it’s not like she threw a smoke bomb down and disappeared.

“And I never understood you,” Layla says, walking over and placing a hand on his chest. “Until now. There was always a place in here where no one could come. There was only the face you allow people to see. Only one side you’d allow them to know.”

[ID: Three screenshots of Spock and Layla, a white woman with a lot of long blonde hair wearing a lilac shirt and green overalls, standing outside in a field with a large tree in the background. Layla, seen from behind, is pressing her hand to Spock's upper chest and saying, "There was always a place in here where no one could come." Spock replies "you know that's not where my heart is right".]

If Layla was hoping this little speech would prompt Spock to cry out that yes, she’s figured him out, he does love her but has never been able to show it! she’s disappointed, because he just looks uncomfortable and steps away. He tries to steer the conversation back onto the mystery of the colonists. “If I tell you how we survive,” she asks, “will you try to understand how we feel about our life here? About each other?”

That’s a pretty vague thing to make a promise about, so Spock deflects by saying that emotions are alien to him; he’s a SCIENTIST. “Someone else might believe that—your shipmates, your captain—but not me,” Layla says. Oh sure! Obviously none of the people who have lived, worked, and risked death alongside Spock can be expected to know anything about Spock. Only you are the Spock Expert, gifted with incredible insight by virtue of having a crush on him.

“Come,” she says, sauntering off through the field with her hand outstretched to him. Spock rather pointedly folds his hands behind his back instead and follows her.

Back in the house, Kirk and McCoy are struggling to have a conversation with Sandoval. Kirk tells Sandoval that he’s received orders from Starfleet Command to evacuate everyone on the colony, since, y’know, deadly rays and all that. He expects Sandoval to start making preparations. But Sandoval, calmly, casually, says, “No.” It’s not necessary, he insists—they’re in no danger.

But...but the Bertold rays. Sandoval is unmoved, pointing out that as McCoy’s own instruments show, the colonists are in perfect health and there have been no deaths. Okay, what about all those animals? What happened to them? “We’re vegetarians,” Sandoval says blithely. Which, as Kirk points out, does absolutely nothing to answer the question. Actually it raises further questions.

Sandoval remains thoroughly unbothered and thoroughly unhelpful. “Captain, you stress very unimportant matters. We will not leave,” he says, and goes back to gazing out the window, evidently considering the conversation over.

Elsewhere, Spock and Layla are still walking, and Spock is getting annoyed that Layla still hasn’t explained just what it is they’re going to see. “Its basic properties and elements are not important,” Layla says helpfully. “What is important is that it gives life, peace, love.” Oh boy.

Spock is dubious, but Layla pulls him forward, over towards another one of those large pink flowers. “I was one of the first to find them,” Layla says. “The spores.”

[ID: A gif of Spock approaching a large pinkish-purple flower and saying, "Spores?" The flower then sprays a cloud of white spores all over his face and torso while Spock recoils.]

For a moment Spock just looks startled, but then he starts clutching his head and falling onto his knees in the grass, dropping his tricorder and gasping, “No--” For the first time all episode, Layla’s absolute serenity starts to fracture slightly. Over Spock’s agonized protests, she insists that it shouldn’t hurt—it didn’t hurt any of them. But, as Spock gasps out, he’s not like them. Whoops, did the biologist forget to account for biological differences before handing out a facefull of spores? I bet you didn’t even check if he had any allergies first, did you?

Just as it’s looking like this might put actually put a crack in Layla’s blissed-out impassivity, Spock stops thrashing about and starts seeming less anguished and more confused. Layla’s concern vanishes once again, and she goes back to smiling happily while stroking his face. “Now...now you belong to all of us...and we to you. There’s no need to hide your inner face any longer. We understand.”

Spock still seems unsure, but then he takes Layla’s hand in his and smiles. Not the slight hint of a smile or sardonic quirk of the lips you’d expect to see from Spock, but a huge, broad grin from ear to ear. “I love you...I can love you,” he says, and then he kisses her.

Hoo boy.

After the break, we get a quick Captain’s Log to recap:

“Captain’s Log, supplemental. We have been ordered by Starfleet Command to evacuate the colony on Omicron 3. However, the colony leader, Elias Sandoval, has refused all cooperation and will not listen to any arguments.”

Sure enough, we see Sandoval exiting the farmhouse, followed by McCoy and an extremely frustrated Kirk. “Captain, your arguments are very valid, but do they not apply to us,” Sandoval says, as calm as ever. He tries to walk off, but Kirk grabs his arm and pulls him back.

“My orders are to remove all the colonists,” he says, “and that’s exactly what I intend to do with or without your help.”

“Without, I should think,” Sandoval says, and strolls off, leaving Kirk standing there fuming.

Sulu and Kelowitz come walking up to report that they’ve checked out everything and it all seems normal, except for the missing animals. Of course, they also both said they had no idea what to look for in the first place, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. Kirk tells them about the evacuation orders, and says he wants landing parties to start gathering the colonists and preparing them to leave. And by the way, where did Spock and DeSalle go? Sulu says they haven’t seen either one in some time, but McCoy says DeSalle was going to examine some native plants he found. Native plants, huh? I think we can guess what happened to DeSalle.

Since Spock still hasn’t reported in, Kirk gives him a call. Or tries to, at least—Spock doesn’t pick up. On the other end of the line, we see why that is: Spock's communicator is laying abandoned on the ground, while Spock himself, now dressed in the same horrible green jumpsuit as the colonists, is stretched out on the grass with Layla, watching clouds. The communicator beeps away while Spock happily describes how one of the clouds looks like a dragon. "I've never seen a dragon," Layla says. BEEP BEEP. "I have." BEEP BEEP. "On Barengarius 7." BEEP BEEP. "But I've never stopped to look at clouds before." BEEP BEEP. "Or rainbows." BEEP BEEP. "You know, I can tell you exactly why one appears in the sky, but considering its beauty has always been out of the question." BEEP BEEP.

"Not here," Layla says (beep beep), and they smile dreamily at each other before going into another makeout session. Meanwhile, Kirk is still on the line, and not getting any happier about it. Layla finally picks up the communicator and holds it up for Spock, who takes a break from kissin' to say, "Yes, what did you want?"

Naturally, this throws both Kirk and McCoy for a loop. While McCoy stands there with a "what the fuck" look on his face, Kirk takes a moment to recover and then demands, "Spock, is that you?"

"Yes, captain, what did you want?"

"Where are you?"

"...I don't believe I want to tell you."

[ID: Three shots of Kirk and McCoy standing in front of the farmhouse, Kirk holding his communicator while McCoy looks on. Kirk has a stunned expression on his face and looks around with his mouth open, trying to figure out what to say.]

Kirk plows on ahead, telling Spock that, whatever the hell he thinks he's doing, he's got orders: they're getting the colonists out, and Spock is to meet back at the settlement in ten minutes.

"No, I don't think so," Spock says casually. "You don't think so, what?" "I don't think so, sir."

Kirk has to take a moment after that one. It's rather amazing that McCoy's made it this far into the conversation without saying anything himself. Presumably he's just in shock. Eventually Kirk tells Spock to report in immediately, but by now Spock and Layla have gone back to kissing, leaving the communicator open but abandoned in the grass once more.

"That didn't sound at all like Spock, Jim," McCoy says, putting in his bid for the Enterprise’s bi-weekly Massive Understatement contest.

"No, it--I thought you said you might like him if he mellowed a little."

"I didn't say that!"

"You said that."

"Not exactly,” McCoy protests, and then somewhat grudgingly adds, “He might be in trouble.”

I'm sure McCoy did say that, or something like it, but "I hope Spock has his brain taken over by alien spores" was presumably not where he was going with it. He obviously sees this sudden change of behavior as something to be concerned about--even moreso than Kirk, who seems more irritated than anything. But then, it's only been a couple episodes since McCoy had his own run-in with an alien influence making people act a lot more mellow than usual, and he didn't enjoy that experience at all, so it's not surprising that "trouble" is his first thought here.

Kirk tells McCoy to take over the landing party detail and start getting the colonists up to the ship, and to make sure the party works in teams of two, with nobody being left alone. Meanwhile, Kirk himself takes Sulu and Kelowitz and heads off to find Spock, using the open frequency from Spock's communicator as a homing signal. They follow a dirt path out of the main settlement and soon find said communicator, laying open and abandoned in the grass just off the path. As Kirk picks it up, they hear laughter nearby, and Sulu points in astonishment further down the path, where Layla is watching Spock dangle upside-down from a tree branch like a kid on a jungle gym.

[ID: A shot of Spock and Layla among some trees at the end of a dirt path. Layla is standing on the ground and holding hands with Spock, who is hanging upside-down by his knees from a large tree branch, laughing.]

For a moment all Kirk can do is stare weakly at this weird spectacle. Then he collects himself with a stern AHEM and marches over like a principal about to deliver some very serious detention.

Meanwhile, back at the main hub of the colony, the landing party seems to have gotten well underway with preparations for departure, with several colonists and crewmen piling up luggage and equipment in the middle of a field while McCoy stands nearby overseeing everything, a job I’m sure he’s enjoying since we all know administrative work is McCoy’s favorite thing. Then DeSalle arrives, carrying a couple of the spore flowers and tells McCoy to take “a good, close look” at them, because they’re very interesting. McCoy steps forward to check them out right before the scene cuts away again, leaving us with little doubt as to what’s about to happen next.

During that little interim, Kirk and his crew have made it over to where Spock and Layla are cavorting. Spock just grins happily at Kirk, clearly not bothered one bit, even as Kirk asks if Spock’s out of his mind. He didn’t report to Kirk, he says, because...he didn’t want to.

Kirk glances back and forth between Spock and Layla, who’s standing there smiling rather smugly, and tells Layla that she’ll need to come get ready to evacuate with the rest of the colonists. Spock cheerfully says that there’s not going to be any evacuation. “But perhaps,” he adds, “we should go and get you straightened out.”

That really doesn’t bode well, but rather than ask just what Spock means by that, Kirk tells Sulu that Spock is under arrest in Sulu’s custody until they get back to the ship. Which will certainly work out well because it’s not like Spock is strong enough to chuck Sulu all the way across the field barehanded or anything. Not that Spock seems especially perturbed about being under arrest; instead he just shrugs, drops down from the tree, and says, “Very well. Come with me,” before heading off across the field, leaving else to follow in confusion. That’s how you arrest someone, right?

Of course, Spock leads them right to another group of spore flowers, which the group stops and stares at obligingly for a moment. Then the flowers explode a bunch of spores at them. Somehow, even though he’s standing right next to Sulu and Kelowitz, Kirk manages to totally avoid getting any spores up his sinuses, while the other two are immediately affected. “Yes...I see now,” Sulu says blissfully, with that trademark Very High grin that George Takei does so well. “Of course we can’t remove the colony. It’d be wrong.”

Kirk grabs him by the shoulders—Kirk’s go-to method for snapping people out of it--but when this somehow fails to bring Sulu back to his right mind, all Kirk can do is say that he doesn’t know what these plants are or how they work, but “you’re all going back to the settlement with me, and those colonists are going aboard the ship.” This stern proclamation has absolutely no effect on anyone. The whole group just stands there happily watching Kirk stomp back toward the colony. “I can see the captain is going to be difficult,” Spock remarks.

Kirk’s day isn’t about to get any better, because upon making it back to the colony he’s greeted by McCoy, who we can immediately tell is under the influence as well because his accent is absolutely out of control. It’s so thick even the subtitles pick up on it.

[ID: A screenshot of McCoy walking through a meadow with his communicator out, saying, "Sho’nuf."]

“Hiya, Jimmy boy!” McCoy very happily says to a very unhappy Kirk. “Hey, I’ve taken care of everything. Now all y’all gotta do is just relax. Doctor’s orders!” With a very resigned look, Kirk asks how many plants McCoy’s beamed up to the ship, and McCoy says it must be going on a hundred by now.

So Kirk beams up to the ship and heads right to the bridge, where he tells Uhura to put him through to Admiral Komak at Starfleet, though what he expects Komak to do about all this I don't know. But it’s too late. Uhura turns around to show that she’s smiling as happily as everyone else, and says, “Oh, I’m sorry Dave, I mean, captain. I can’t do that.” She’s short-circuited all the ship’s communications, except for ship-to-surface, since they’ll need that for a little while yet. Then she leaves, pausing in the door of the lift to tell Kirk that it’s really all for the best.

Kirk stands there seething for a moment, then stomps over to grab a plant that’s been left in Spock’s chair. He throws it across the bridge, and the camera lingers ominously on it as Kirk heads back into the lift.

Things aren’t any better on the rest of the ship. Kirk soon finds a long line of crewmembers of all different shirt colors, patiently waiting to transport down to join the colony. Out of what I can only assume is some desperate futile hope that someone will follow his orders if he just keeps trying, Kirk orders them all to go back to their stations at once. Unsurprisingly, they all ignore him. Kirk points out to one of the redshirts that this is MUTINY! but it doesn't get him very far.

[ID: A gif showing a young white man with brown hair wearing a redshirt as he says, "Yes, sir, it is." The camera then zooms in very dramatically on Kirk's stunned face.]

So...they’re all going down to join the colony? All four hundred thirty of them? Or four hundred twenty-nine, I guess, if Kirk refuses to join the fun. That’s almost ten times the amount of people the colony currently has in it. That seems like it could present a bit of a problem, because if you’ll recall DeSalle told Kirk earlier that right now the colony’s growing enough food to feed their current population, with little left over. How are they going to handle such a large and sudden influx into their population? Do they have housing for all these people? Or are they just all going to eat dirt and sleep on the ground because they’re all too high to notice anyway?

After we’ve had a commercial break to contemplate this shocking turn of events, Kirk takes some time out to give vent to his feelings in a captain’s log:

"Captain's Log, Stardate 3417.5. The pod plants have spread spores throughout the ship, carried by the ventilation system. Under their influence, my crew is deserting to join the Omicron colony, and I can't stop them. I don't know why I have not been infected, nor can I get Doctor McCoy to explain the physical, psychological aspects of the infection."

And indeed, just in case we had any doubt, we then see McCoy strolling through the field and happily telling Kirk, “I’m not interested in any physical, psychological aspects, Jim-boy. We all perfectly healthy down here.” Kirk grumbles about how much he’s been hearing about things being perfect lately. “I bet you’ve even grown your tonsils back.” “Sho’nuf!”

Kirk tries desperately to get McCoy to do something to figure these spores out—run a blood test, take a scan, type the symptoms into WebMD, something, anything—but McCoy is more interested in rambling on about mint juleps. Meanwhile, back in the farmhouse, Sandoval’s having tea with Spock while they talk about how nearly everyone’s beamed down from the ship and things are “proceeding quite well.” Kirk storms in and demands to know where McCoy’s gotten to, and Spock says he went off to make that mint julep. Which could prove quite difficult unless this tiny half-assed farm colony has somehow managed to set up a working distillery around here somewhere, but Kirk’s got bigger concerns right now than where McCoy’s going to get his bourbon.

Sandoval wants to know why Kirk won’t join them in their private, spore-sponsored paradise. Kirk asks where these spores came from, anyway, and Spock exposits that there’s no way to know—they just drifted through space until they arrived at this planet, which is perfect for them because it turns out they actually thrive on Bertold rays. The plants act as a repository for the spores until they can find a human—or half-Vulcan—body to inhabit. No explanation is forthcoming as to how Spock knows any of this.

Spock and Sandoval insist that the planet is “a true Eden” with belonging and love and no needs or wants for anyone, but Kirk is skeptical. “No wants, no needs. We weren’t meant for that. None of us. Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is.” Of all the things wrong with this situation I’m not sure “BEING TOO HAPPY IS BAD FOR YOU” is the take I would go with, but okay. Spock says that Kirk doesn’t understand, but he’ll come around...sooner or later.

Kirk, disgusted with this whole conversation, goes back to the ship. The bridge is dark, silent, and utterly empty. We get a slow pan of the blinking lights and displays of the consoles, with no one left to man them. Kirk walks over to his chair, hits the intercom, and starts calling one part of the ship after another, with no response from any of them. With nothing else left to do, he sits down in his chair and starts glumly recording a captain’s log so angsty it could be a LiveJournal entry:

"Captain's Log, Stardate 3417.7. Except for myself, all crew personnel have transported to the surface of the planet. Mutinied. Lieutenant Uhura has effectively sabotaged the communications station. I can only contact the surface of the planet. The ship...can be maintained in orbit for several months, but even with automatic controls, I cannot pilot her alone. In effect, I am marooned here. I'm beginning to realize...just how big this ship really is, how quiet. I don't know how to get my crew back, how to counteract the effect of the spores. I don't know what I can offer against...paradise."

Hold on hold on HOLD ON what do you MEAN the ship can be maintained in orbit for several months? Every time someone takes their hands off the controls for five seconds we get told that the orbit is decaying and they’re gonna plummet into some hapless planet within a few hours at most but now all of a sudden it’s fine to hang out up there for several months? MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

Kirk gets up to go sit at the helm, just to get a change of scenery mid-mope, and as he finishes his log/rant the camera slowly pans down to reveal the spore flower that he chucked across the bridge earlier. Which is weird because we just got a wide shot of the bridge and that flower definitely wasn’t there then.

[ID: Two shots. The first is a wide shot showing Kirk alone on the empty, darkened bridge, preparing to sit down at the helm. There is nothing in on the floor in front of the helm. The second shot is a closer shot of Kirk sitting at the helm with his chin in one hand, now with a large spore flower poking up in the front of shot.]

The flower promptly shoots Kirk in the face, and for a moment he just continues to sit there with spores in his hair and a “yeah, this might as well happen” expression. But then he slowly starts to smile, suddenly as happy as everyone else. Exactly why Kirk’s been unaffected by the spores up until now, even after hanging out for quite a while on a ship that’s supposedly been thoroughly contaminated by them, is never really explained. Maybe he's just on a lot of Zyrtec. But it seems even Kirk’s determination to not be happy can’t hold out against a point-blank spray in the face. He calls Spock to say that he finally understands now, which Spock is happy to hear. Kirk says he’ll be down just as soon as he packs up a few things, so Spock says he and Layla will wait for him at the beamdown point.

So Kirk goes off to his quarters to pack up a suitcase, the contents of which seem to mostly consist of uniform shirts. Apparently paradise for Kirk does not include one of those green jumpsuits, which, really, who can blame him. He opens a small vault by his bed and pulls out a couple of black cases, one of which he opens to reveal a medal. This seems to stir some sense of conflict because he sits down and stares at it for a long moment, but then puts it aside and heads to the transporter room, where he puts the suitcase on the platform and then prepares to set the controls.

But then Kirk hesitates, and stands there for a moment looking conflicted. Possibly he’s still having feelings about those medals, or maybe he’s having second thoughts about whether he packed enough shirts. In any case, he eventually exclaims, “No...No! I...can’t...LEAVE!” Then he punches the console for good measure.

Apparently this little emotional outburst is all it takes to cure the spores, because Kirk gasps a little, looks momentarily confused, and then seems to be back to his old self. “Emotions...violent emotions. Needs...anger,” he tells the empty room. “Captain’s log, supplemental. I think I’ve discovered the answer...but to carry out my plan entails considerable risk. Mr. Spock is much stronger than the ordinary human being.” Then he treats us to this remarkable line:

[ID: A shot of Kirk in profile at the transporter controls as he says, "Aroused, his great physical strength could kill."]

Down on the planet, Spock and Layla are still waiting at the beamdown point when Kirk calls Spock up and says he’s realized there’s some equipment on the ship that they’ll need for the colony, and he needs Spock’s help to get it all beamed down. Really, you’d think there’d be quite a lot of equipment on the Enterprise that a farming colony could make good use of, but I guess they’re really determined to stick to the whole no-technology approach. Despite this, Spock cheerfully accepts the explanation, gives Layla a quick smooch, and beams up.

But upon materializing, Spock is greeted not with a smiling Kirk ready to go move some equipment with his bro, but Kirk standing there holding some nonspecific heavy metal rod thing that he’s smacking threatening against his hand. “All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerized half-breed,” he says, “we’ll see about you deserting my ship.”

Spock reacts to this bar-brawl-starter with nothing more than a nonplussed expression and polite correcting Kirk on his syntax. Kirk, determination unshaken, continues laying into him with a stream of insults that would have made that fucker from Balance of Terror go, “Whoa, hold on there a minute.” Undeterred by not being able to use any actual expletives, he compares Spock both to a machine and to various fairy-tale creatures, makes fun of his ears, and rounds it all off by having a go at the entire Vulcan race. He even insults Spock’s parents.

[ID: 1. A shot of Spock standing in the transporter room looking perplexed as Kirk, off-camera, says, "Whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia?" 2. A gif from Monty Python and the Holy Grail of John Cleese as the French knight on the battlements yelling, "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"]

Spock stands there taking it all stoically for quite a while, even as the background music gets increasingly tense. He finally starts to crack when Kirk goes after Spock’s relationship with Layla, and when Kirk keeps going despite Spock angrily telling him, “That’s enough,” Spock finally flips out big time. You know what that means, it’s time for a STAR TREK FIGHT SCENE! This one’s got it all: close-up shots of the actors intercut with long shots of very obvious stunt doubles; cardboard props getting punched; even people picking up random unidentifiable bits of starship equipment that may or may not have ever been there before to use as weapons. The only thing we’re missing is Kirk doing some kind of weird wrestling move.

[ID: Three gifs showing a fight scene between Kirk and Spock. First we see a long shot where Kirk and Spock are clearly being played by stunt doubles, as Spock punches a metal rod Kirk is holding, bending it in half. He then punches Kirk in the jaw, sending him careening into the wall. Then a close-up of Nimoy and Shatner as Spock advances on Kirk and throws a punch but misses, denting the control panel in the wall behind Kirk. Kirk dodges out of the way towards the console, and Spock throws another punch that hits the side of the console. Then back to a long view with the stunt doubles as Spock throws Kirk into the opposite wall, which Kirk careens off of, falling on his back on the floor, while Spock picks up something resembling a square metal stool or stepladder and raises it over his head. Finally, we see Nimoy and Shatner again as Kirk lays on the floor looking up at Spock, raising the thing he's carrying over his head.]

We dramatically cut to black as Spock stands poised above Kirk, raising whatever-the-hell-that-thing-is over his head threateningly. Apparently the ad break gives him enough time to cool down, though, because instead of bringing the thing down on Kirk’s skull, he hesitates.

“Had enough?” Kirk asks. “I didn’t realize what it took to get under that thick hide of yours.”

Spock slowly lowers the thing, looking a bit regretful about having to do so. Kirk says he doesn’t know what Spock’s so mad about, anyway. “It isn’t every first officer who gets to belt his captain...several times.” Dude, you just stood there and unleashed a screed of personal and racial insults at your best friend here. A “sorry” probably wouldn’t go amiss here.

“You did that to me deliberately,” Spock realizes, and then realizes that the spores are gone. “I don’t belong anymore.” Kirk explains that since the spores are “benevolent and peaceful,” violent emotions overwhelm and destroy them—that’s the answer. Which...definitely makes sense, chemically speaking. Sure.

Spock, still looking pretty glum about all this, points out that Kirk’s method might have worked out alright for curing one person, but they’ve got over five hundred infected people down there, and trying to pick a fight with all of them probably isn’t going to go so well. But no worries, Kirk’s got another plan. He wants Spock to rig up a subsonic transmitter that they can hook up to the ship’s communications system and then broadcast to all the communicators. Spock says he can do that, but hesitates as Kirk turns to leave. “Captain. Striking a fellow officer is a court martial offense,” he points out.

Kirk mulls over that one for a moment. “We-ll...if we’re both in the brig, who’s gonna build the subsonic transmitter?” he says, and Spock concedes the point. Besides, it’s a bit late to be worrying about striking fellow officers now.

[ID: A gif from The Naked Time of Kirk and Spock standing in an Enterprise conference room. Kirk slaps Spock across the face, and Spock retaliates by backhanding Kirk so hard he is thrown across the table in the center of the room and falls onto the floor on the other side.]

But what with the insults and the punching and de-sporing and everything, it seems that something has clean slipped Spock’s mind: Layla’s still down there waiting for him to come back. As she stands around the field, McCoy wanders over and asks what’s up. When she tells him that she’s been out here for some time now waiting for Spock and Kirk to come back, he gentlemanly offers to fix that for her and calls the ship. Spock picks up, and Layla asks if everything’s okay up there.

With obvious discomfort, Spock tells her that yes, he’s...quite well. Layla, oblivious to anything being wrong, asks if she can come up there, because she wants to talk to him, and besides, “I’ve never seen a starship before.” Wait a minute, never seen a starship before? You’re on a planetary colony! What, did you drive here?

Spock asks if she’s still at the beamdown point, and if McCoy’s there. Layla says yes to both, so Spock tells her to give the communicator back to McCoy, since she won’t need it to transport, and he’ll have her beamed up in a few minutes. One might think that at this point they might take this easy opportunity to also beam up McCoy and get him cured (it shouldn’t be hard, McCoy is already 85% comprised of negative emotions to begin with), so he can start investigating these spores, just in case Operation Go For the Eardrums doesn’t work. But they don’t. Kirk awkwardly asks Spock if he’s sure about talking to Layla while she’s still spore’d, but Spock just nods and heads to the transporter room.

He beams Layla up, and she happily runs over to give him a hug—they’ve been parted ever so long, after all—but when he just stands there stiffly, not reacting at all, she slowly pulls back and says, “You’re no longer with us, are you?”

Spock says it was necessary. Layla begs him to come back to the planet and belong again, but he says he can’t. She starts crying and saying she loves him. "I said that six years ago, and I can't seem to stop repeating myself. On Earth, you couldn't give anything of yourself. You couldn't even put your arms around me. We couldn't have anything together there. We couldn't have anything together anyplace else. But we're happy here. I can't lose you now, Mr. Spock, I can't." Look, if the only time the relationship you want can possibly work out is when the other person is being mind-controlled by alien spores, I think it may be time to consider whether this is really a relationship you should be pursuing in the first place.

“I have a responsibility to this ship...to that man on the bridge,” Spock gently tells her. “I am what I am, Layla. And if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else’s.”

Layla soon realizes that all this anguish has resulted in her getting de-spore’d as well, and she’s not happy about it. “And this is for my own good?” she demands angrily. Well...yes, I mean, it is, but Spock doesn’t say that. Nor does he respond when she asks, “Do you mind if I say I still love you?” but she hugs him again anyway.

[ID: Layla tearfully embraces Spock and says, "You never told me if you had another name, Mr. Spock." Spock replies, "You couldn't pronounce it."]

ROMANCE

We’re obviously supposed to read this little story arc as the tragic tale of true love destined never to be, because Spock is only able to express his feelings for Layla under the influence of the spores. He has experienced paradise, but alas, he cannot linger there, and so on. It’s never set all that well with me, though. The problem is we never really get Spock’s side of the story and so it leaves open the question of how much he actually did want this relationship in the first place. Layla said earlier that “Mr. Spock’s feelings were never expressed to me” so evidently he never outright said “I love you but I can’t be with you” or anything of that sort to her. When they’re alone in the field before Spock gets spore’d he seems stiff, standoffish, awkward, and deflects all of her overtures with what appears to be discomfort, even annoyance. He clearly has no interest in talking about whatever history they had together, even when they’re all alone. For all that Layla goes on about how she can see a side of Spock that his crewmates don’t, we see interactions with those crewmates multiple times throughout the show that prove that Spock is perfectly capable of showing people that he cares about them, even if the ways he does it are usually a bit atypical. We don’t see any of that in his initial interactions with Layla.

If we accept the premise that the spores only make people act as they would if they had no inhibitions or fears holding them back, then yes, Spock saying he loves Layla after he’s been spore’d would indicate that he did secretly love her all along. The problem is that we know the spores make people do things that they would not ordinarily want to do. You think all of those four hundred thirty people on the Enterprise secretly longed for a quiet life among the soil but all chose to instead join the space navy for some reason? Should we believe Scotty is actually deep down perfectly okay with abandoning his beloved ship to a slowly decaying orbit? I doubt that Kirk has always harbored a subconscious desire to give up exploring the final frontier to pursue a peaceful agrarian lifestyle, but he very nearly does do just that. So the question of how much a relationship with Layla is what Spock “really” wanted seems to be a bit hazy.

Mind, I’m not saying this makes Layla an evil person who deliberately drugged Spock so she could have a relationship with him or anything like that. It’s clear throughout the episode that the spores induce those who are infected by them to spread them around to anyone nearby who’s not in the spore fandom yet, so there’s no reason to believe Layla would act as she did if she wasn’t under the influence herself. I just personally find it hard to buy into the tragic romance of a star-crossed relationship when the thing crossing the stars is that one of the participants is only enthusiastic about the whole thing when they’re not fully sober. It makes me question how much of their previous relationship really was Spock having feelings for Layla but being unable to express them, versus Layla projecting a lot of feelings onto him and writing off his disinterest or discomfort as denial.

Kirk and Spock go back to working on the signal, while Layla deals with her heartbreak by disappearing into thin air for the rest of the episode. Spock says that the sound they’re going to send out is on a frequency that won’t be heard so much as felt, but apparently it will be felt quite emphatically. Kirk compares it to putting itching powder on someone. Which may seem like another silly technobabble deus ex machina, but speaking from personal experience, driving someone into a frantic frustrated fit by playing an obnoxious noise just on the edge of hearing sounds totally legit. All they need to complete the sensory overload meltdown experience is find a way to simulate some flickering florescent lights and put tags on the backs of the uniform shirts.

And indeed, as the device starts to work, we see Sulu and DeSalle working in one of the fields—for a certain value of ‘working,’ anyway, they’re kind of just digging around aimlessly—when Sulu accidentally elbows DeSalle in the back. He apologizes, but DeSalle shoves him back, and before long they’re having a full-on brawl right there in the field, which can't be good for the crops. As the device on the ship hums away, two more crewmembers start their own fight over by the farmhouse, and when a third tries to break them up he promptly gets dragged into it as well.

The effects haven’t quite reached everyone just yet, though, as we see McCoy chillaxing under a tree with some unspecified concoction. Sandoval strolls up and says that he’s been thinking about what sort of work he could assign McCoy to. When McCoy protests that he does one kind of work and that’s doctorin’, Sandoval says that he’s not a doctor anymore—they don’t need any doctors here.

This does not go over well.

[ID: A gif showing McCoy reclining against a tree in a grassy meadow, a stalk of grass in one hand and a grass of something brown with several leafy stalks in it. Sandoval is standing over him. McCoy says, "Oh, no?" and then slowly stands up, tosses his grass stalk aside, looks Sandoval in the eye and says, "Would you like to see just how fast I can put you in a hospital?"]

Undeterred, Sandoval says that he’s the leader and he’ll be assigning McCoy whatever work he wants to, but when he tries to walk away McCoy pulls him back and snarls, “You’d better make me a mechanic. Then I can treat little tin gods like you.” Sandoval throws a punch at him, but McCoy dodges and whacks Sandoval in the stomach, putting him out flat on the ground. See, I told you it wouldn’t be hard to cure McCoy. Everyone else on the Enterprise was perfectly happy to give up their careers to go do a bit of light farming, but tell McCoy he can’t be a doctor anymore and no amount of spores are going to save you.

While Sandoval is busy rolling around on the ground, McCoy stands there looking confused for a moment, then—presumably having only just now noticed that instead of a mint julep he’s actually been drinking a coke with a bunch of cilantro in it—throws his drink aside and admits that he’s not sure why he just clobbered Sandoval. But Sandoval has other concerns for the moment. With a look of dawning horror familiar to all us chronic procrastinators, he abruptly realizes that they haven’t actually been doing anything all this time. “No accomplishments, no progress. Three years wasted. We wanted to make this planet a garden...”

McCoy points out that the colonists really will have to leave—they can’t survive here without the spores handling all that radiation for them. But the dream’s not over; the colonists could be relocated to start again somewhere a bit less deadly, if that’s what they want.

“I think I’d...I think we’d like to get some work done,” Sandoval muses. “The work we set out to do.”

McCoy calls Spock and says that Sandoval wants to talk to Kirk. Spock notes to Kirk that the crew are all starting to rather sheepishly call in by now. Sandoval tells Kirk that the colonists will fully cooperate with the evacuation now, and Kirk tells him to start making the preparations. Real ones, this time.

Sometime later, everyone’s back on the bridge getting ready to head out. McCoy reports that he’s examined all the colonists and they all remain in perfect health. “A fringe benefit left over by the spores.”

One would think that this would have been quite the eventful afternoon for the medical sciences, given that they just discovered spores with such incredible healing powers that they can make people regrow organs, and McCoy just confirmed that anything healed by the spores stays healed after the spores are gone. Sure, they’ve got some side effects, but Kirk’s already discovered a simple way to get rid of the things once they’re no longer needed. Strap someone to a bed, give em a facemask full of spores, let them lay there for a while having a nice buzz while they heal their cancer or whatever, then play an irritating noise at them until they sneeze the spores back out again. Boom. Done. You’ve solved medicine. Or, y’know, we could vacate the planet and never speak of it ever again, that works too.

Notably unmentioned by anybody during this little denouement is the fate of the other two settlements on the planet that Sandoval mentioned back near the beginning of the episode. The length of the timeskip isn’t specified, so it’s possible that the crew went and collected them as well in the interim, but we never get any details as to how that little adventure went, assuming that it did happen and that the Enterprise isn’t about to get halfway to the next starbase before Kirk realizes he forgot something.

As they watch the planet diminish behind them on the viewscreen, McCoy muses that this was “the second time man’s been thrown out of paradise.” Kirk disagrees. "No, no, Bones, this time we walked out on our own. Maybe we weren't meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through--struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums."

Spock remains unimpressed by this bit of philosophizing. “Poetry, Captain. Nonregulation.” Kirk notes that they haven’t heard anything from Spock about this whole ordeal, since, y’know, that definitely seems like something Spock would want to talk about. He says he’s got little to say about Omicron Ceti 3.

[ID: A close-up of Spock on the bridge as he says, "Except that for the first time in my life...I was happy."]

oh my god someone needs therapy

On that INCREDIBLY CHEERFUL note, the Enterprise flies away and the episode ends.

It’s somewhat baffling to me that of all the quite reasonable objections available to the whole situation with the spores, the main problem that Kirk—and by extension, the episode—seems to have is that “the spores make things too EASY and mankind was meant to STRUGGLE!!!” I mean, effectively what we had going on here was people being drugged without their consent into a state that overwrote their own desires, ambitions, emotions and much of their individual personalities and replaced them with bland, happy conformity to a goal and lifestyle none of them actually chose. That seems a bit worse to me than “people weren’t working hard enough.” Kirk goes on and on about how the spores made things too easy, but what they really did was make people apathetic to whether they succeeded at anything or not. Sandoval’s horrified when he’s cured of the spores because the colonists had much different plans for their colony; far from making those plans easier, the spores made them impossible. The dreams and desires of the Enterprise crew for a life of exploration among the stars would have been forever unmet if they had permanently joined the colony, they just wouldn’t have been able to care. Kirk seems to believe that the ultimate evil of the spores is that they deprive people of ambition; to me it seems that the worse evil is that they deprive people of their individuality and their autonomy.

Then there’s the fact that while the spores make people happy and friendly, they also make them remarkably blasé about the well-being of anyone who isn’t part of their collective. They have to be—caring about whether someone else is upset or hurt would make them unhappy, after all. Spock and McCoy are completely unconcerned with the mounting distress of their best friend, and beyond peer pressuring him to get with the program and take the spores like everyone else, they don’t seem to much care if he remains the only unhappy person on the planet. The colonists seem completely unbothered by the fact that all the animals they brought with them died a rather grueling death by radiation poisoning. Everyone on the Enterprise is happy to abandon the ship and join the colony with no message left behind for Starfleet, with apparently not a thought to spare for any friends and family back home, who would only ever know that their loved ones disappeared into space never to be seen again.

Or at least, they would if things actually went according to plan, which they probably wouldn’t, because the spores also made everyone cheerfully oblivious to the idea that anything could potentially cause a problem or pose a threat to them. After all, if Kirk hadn’t had a recovery at the last minute, the Enterprise would have been left unmanned in orbit around the planet, with no way for anyone in the colony to get back onboard. Uhura also goes out of her way to make sure that they no longer have any off-planet communication. So it’s probably not going to be long before Starfleet notices that one of their prize starships has abruptly gone incommunicado, and I’m willing to bet they’d be a bit quicker on that investigation than they were about checking on a tiny backwater colony (although it is Starfleet, so who knows, really). And since they know exactly where the ship was headed on its last recorded mission, it probably won’t take them long to find it. If Starfleet sends another ship along to investigate quickly enough, they’ll find the abandoned Enterprise hanging out in orbit around the planet, and Kirk’s log clearly lays out what happened, so all the other ship has to do is figure out how to neutralize the spores and everyone’s going to get rescued from Omicron Ceti 3 pretty quickly whether they want to be or not.

If Starfleet doesn’t show up in time...Kirk says the ship can be “maintained in orbit” for several months, but then what? It can’t stay up there forever. Sooner or later, the orbit will decay and the ship’s going to crash into the planet, and if it crashes anywhere near one of the colonies, their magic healing powers are going to be put to the test. Also their magic agriculture powers--rich soil and mild weather is all well and good, but is that going to be enough to carry all those crops through the ensuing environmental effects of an impact that big? Especially since, as already mentioned, the colony has enough to feed them and that’s about it—so they really can’t afford to lose any crops for very long.

Sure, maybe the Enterprise wouldn’t crash close enough to any of the colonies to ruin them, but why take the risk? All they had to do was have a helmsman set it on a course out of orbit, then take a shuttlecraft back to the planet. Doesn’t occur to anyone, evidently. Nor do we see anyone bothering to bring any supplies or equipment from the ship to the colony, even though there’s gotta be lots of stuff up there that would be useful. All in all, it seems quite likely that Paradise would have eventually collapsed in on itself simply because the spores make people unable to pay attention to any potential threats or obstacles long enough to do anything about them.

So what’s the moral here? ‘Society can’t survive if everyone is stoned all of the time’? I mean, okay? Sure? Cool? Glad we sorted all that out.

That said, despite having ranted for the past nine hundred words about the weird moral, I’m not saying this episode is bad. As a serious point about human nature I don’t find it especially compelling—YMMV, but I just personally tend to side-eye stories that center around the idea of “wouldn’t it be awful if we all had it too easy??”--but as fifty minutes of extremely Star Trek-y silliness it’s glorious. We’ve got Spock hanging from a tree and talking about dragons while making out in the grass, McCoy going full Georgia and wandering about with something he thinks is a mint julep, Kirk stomping around in increasing agitation as he tries to get some sense out of somebody and then making emo log entries while he sits on the bridge alone...it’s great.

The original draft of this episode apparently had the romantic subplot be for Sulu, who would have been motivated to stay with Layla after having been diagnosed with a serious medical condition that was cured by the spores, kind of like the eventual plot with McCoy in For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky. D.C. Fontana rewrote the story to focus on Spock, since if you have an episode about something that causes a strong emotional reaction, throwing Spock and his ever-present internal conflict into the mix is kind of the most immediately obvious way to generate some pathos and drama. The spores originally granted those affected with them telepathic abilities, enabling them to link with everyone else who’d been spore’d and form a hivemind. There are some traces of this in the final episode with spore’d people talking about “joining us” and “being one of us” and so on, but without the telepathy part it just kind of makes it sound like they’re in a cult. Also, the cure for the spores would have been consuming alcohol, so presumably in that draft McCoy never got infected.

For the purposes of the Trek Tally I’m going to count the spores as a Space Disease, which might be broadening the umbrella of that term a bit but hey, close enough. Next time we’ll be looking for life, Jim, but not as we know it, in The Devil in the Dark.

#star trek #star trek TOS #star trek TOS season one #recap tag #star trek TOS recaps #1.24 This Side of Paradise #1.24 This Side of Paradise recap

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demonfox38 · 3 years

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Okay. Made it through the last season of Netflix's "Castlevania" interpretation. Thoughts are below the cut.

I've often thought of this series as the exploitation version of "Castlevania," and hiring Malcom McDowell confirms that.

Although, I find it hilarious that both Malcolm McDowell and Patrick Stewart have ended up voicing the same character. I'm sure there's a "Star Trek Generations" joke to be made in there, but I'm not Mike Stoklasa.

Also, I was cracking up a bit when Varney's plot twist happened. Mostly, because it came off a bit Skeletor-esque in vocal performance.

Also, also—laughing that the final boss went the "Castlevania: Lament of Innocence" route despite barely touching on that game's plot.

Animation had its ups and downs with this season. It seemed like there were some frame issues (not enough inbetweening.) I do appreciate how they incorporated more of Alucard's SOTN animations into his fights, however.

Additionally, some of the fight scenes' pacing seemed to have issues, particularly regarding weapon recovery.

The whole bit with St. Germain was off. Like, he's a weird asshole in "Castlevania: Curse of Darkness", but he's more of a weird asshole there in the same way that casually encountering "Doctor Who"'s Doctor would also be strange. Not a straight up villainous boob. Kinda makes sense thematically to have another character who is willing to do horrible shit for their lost loved one, but the series honestly did not do a good job establishing her. Like, did she even have a voice actor? Or a name? All I'm saying is it was much easier for outsiders to get the Lisa revenge thing Dracula had going.

Also, how dare you joke about not being deaf and then have a villainous monologue, TV show.

Greta's a good girl. Well, outside of being an occasional homewrecker. Point is, she's competent and trying her best to save people in a bad situation, and anyone having issues with her is not to be trusted in the same way that you don't trust people who don't like Rochelle from "Left 4 Dead 2."

Look at me. Do not trust people who do not like Rochelle from "Left 4 Dead 2." Yes, her writing could have been better, but she's still a viable character. Let people Thunder Child their ships on the rocks of your better self. Got me?

Also, y'all really need to embrace more polyamory. Or understand the fact that Alucard's not going to love just one person in his life. Dude lives to be at least 600 in the game's timeline. For a dude who loves humans, constricting him to just one who may live to be 100 at best is cruel.

There are some interesting philosophical dialogues going on here, but I can see where some people may lose their patience for them. Considering one of Castlevania's most popular memes is a philosophy debate, you're just gonna have to suck that up. My personal favorites included the topic of acting versus reacting, as well as having agency in one's story.

Striga's battle theme was cool, but otherwise, the music was forgettable. Yes, that is a sin. Punishable by Death? In this series, maybe!

The gore's still over the top. Which, okay, fine. There's a bit of that in game. It's just generally a bit more reserved with it or uses it in crucial boss fights.

RIP doggie.

The Targoviste plot's a bit of a wash, but it doesn't feel as useless as Trevor and Sypha's previous plot predicament. It's just nothing of a surprise, considering how many times the writing has played the "authority figures are useless" and "dark secret surprise" tropes in this series. Like, Greta being reliable is actually more surprising than anything with this plot.

I cannot emphasize enough how boring I found Carmilla's interpretation and plot arc. You guys could have had a giant, naked lesbian riding a skull and spewing magic at people while her cat-eared girlfriend jumped them for extra damage. But no. Vanilla lady with a scarlet sword for you. So long. Farewell. Auf Wiedersehen. Good night.

Gotta say, as much of a deviation from his source character as he is, Isaac really turned out well in this series. He's definitely evidence that you don't always need to stick to source material.

His Abel is fucking sick, dude. Way to go, king.

Also, I was expecting more violence from Hector this season. Oh, well. At least he got a teeny bit of a spine.

Look. I'm not an alchemist by any means. I'm just a bit baffled by this season's emphasis of obtaining a Rebis. Like, any time the game series has talked about the Magnum Opus of Alchemy, it's more been in pursuit of making a Philosopher's Stone (or at the very least, a Crimson Stone, as seen in "Castlevania: Lament of Innocence.") Pulling a Rebis out of the aether is…well. Could have been more interesting than it was. I mean, it was a bit nightmarish, but it really didn't do much.

Sypha's really never getting back to her family, is she?

Love the idea that the cross subweapon is basically a fancy chakram.

GERGOTH. BUDDY. FRIENDO.

Really appreciating the monster variety in these last two seasons. I mean, that's a big selling point of the "Castlevania" games. Not so much vampires standing around and bickering in dick-waving contests.

Breaking out of the bullet points to hit on the big subject of this season—that is, the ending being surprisingly happy.

There's been a lot of shit that's happened over the last few years. Obviously, a pandemic. Konami's run by pricks. Then, there's the situation with the allegations of sexual coercion with Warren Ellis. Additionally, the terrible ending of "Game of Thrones" likely impacted how this season was developed, considering it seemed to be chasing its progression in construction. (I mean, look at Carmilla and Daenerys.) I don't know how many people were happy with the last season of "Castlevania," but from my POV, it double-tapped itself in the foot with the way it pushed simultaneous sex and violence in its last two episodes. My point is, there was little taste for additional darkness, considering everything that has been happening. Society is drained.

A happy ending was what people really wanted. And man, did this pull through, in that regard. But, there's a conversation to be had in if this swerved too far or if it violates some artistic integrity to give people what they want. So, let's have it.

Look. Man. Have you seen a "Castlevania" ending? When you do it right, it's crumbled castles and rainbow-colored skies. If you do it really right, it results in a pretty girl holding the main character's hand. There is happiness in these games. Hope. Forgiveness and redemption. If this is supposed to be any bit an accurate interpretation of these games, it absolutely should end in such a joyful fashion. (Okay, maybe giving Dracula and Lisa a second honeymoon at the end was a bit much, but I get where people would want that.)

Did some items need to be addressed more? Absolutely. Alucard staking people and Hector getting sexually coerced into servitude are some pretty big topics to just wave away. (Oh, shit. That second part is even worse now with what Ellis was allegedly doing, isn't it?) I suppose I'm just glad the series didn't go full Sephiroth with Alucard. And at least Hector finally took some stand in his situation, even if it wasn't the bombastic, hateful revenge I'm used to seeing from this character in other stories.

I think the creators of this series were trying to save this show from the fate of "Game of Thrones." (To some extent, perhaps the "Voltron" re-interpretation as well.) There's so much media out there anymore that if a production team doesn't nail the ending, their creation gets wiped out of the collective consciousness. To that extent, I think the creators were successful in saving their series. Did it do damage to itself in yanking out of its construction and themes? A bit. But, in doing so, it pivoted back to being more like a proper "Castlevania" product. (And of course, by proper, I mean anything ignoring "Lords of Shadows." God, people need to stop chasing other products when developing "Castlevania" stuff and just let the series be as it is.)

I am very curious as to how much of this season was part of an original draft and how much was revised in backlash to everything that has happened. It doesn't seem like Trevor was intended to survive, but to some extent, Sypha had to. (I mean, until she has a kid, anyway. See "Lords of Shadows" series for dickery regarding that.) I'm also wondering if there was more intended for the Carmilla subplot, as much as the series was banging on about her invading locations. I'm not even sure St. Germain was intended to be a villain all along. Getting into a bitchfight with Death? Sure. Doing what he did here? That's a weird arc, dude.

If you come away from my POV with anything, it should be this: GO PLAY THE GAMES.

Do it. Do it, you ghouls. Go to the Steam store and download the "Castlevania Anniversary Collection." Boot up your PS3 or 4 or 18 or whatever and get "Symphony of the Night." Throttle Nintendo's stores until "Aria of Sorrow" or "Dawn of Sorrow" or "Harmony of Dissonance" or whatever rattles out of their moldy pockets. Find a ROM. Find an ISO. Just play a game. Especially, one of the ones made before 2010.

"Castlevania" as a game series isn't about hordes of vampires dick-waving at each other or edgy swearing or being grim and dark. Some of that stuff's there, sure. But, at its core, it's what game developers created when they looked at Universal Monster Movie creations and went "That's cool. Let's fight that!" It's a series about pushing technology in MMC chips to make rich, vibrant music. It's about flourishing artwork and layers of sprites dripping particles and gore onto players. It's sober and goofy and very pro curry.

The thing is, "Castlevania" players have their own unique connection to the series. We're the weirdos you see clapping their hands when a mutilated dinosaur shows up on screen. It's not because the monster alone is cool. It's that we've fought and struggled and bodied that thing through several floors like a goddamn "X-Men: Children of the Atom" stage. It's kicked our asses. We've kicked its ass. We've got a connection to it that you just don't get from passively watching it barf lasers through a computer monitor or TV screen. Like, you know how people go, "Well, the movie wasn't as good as the book?" It's obnoxious, sure. But, those who read the source materials have to go to the effort of constructing their own sets and people to understand what's happening. In a similar fashion, game players build up their own skill set to reach that next rung.

Maybe you don't always get a payout when you invest your resources into something. But, there is a sense of accomplishment, seeing what you can do.

There's a reason this series got an adaptation. I mean, outside of Konami's head executives wanting easy money. "Castlevania" is a fantastic video game series. Has it got a few problems? Oh yeah. Especially after outsourcing and pachislot machines became all the rage. But, there's a reason Simon and Richter Belmont are playable in "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate." There's a reason I spent a significant amount of time playing these games and writing or drawing fanworks for it. These games are wonderful. Beautiful. Difficult, but inspiring. Reasons I will still bang on about them decades years down the road.

When I get exasperated by layers of angst and edge lord content this Netflix series generated, I want you to know why. The roots of this show are good games held captive under poor management. Some people on staff know this. I wish they had more scenario and writing control. But mostly, I don't want to shit on them or their work. (Well, other than perhaps the obvious target.) I just want you to see what I love in these games.

And also to watch Crashervania. Because that's legit.

#castlevania #netflix castlevania #spoilers #tl;dr play ball or SOTN or a Sorrow game or something

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advoirsmovies · 1 year

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I love Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)! I love the story (especially Spock’s arc). I love the spaceship porn (especially THAT scene). I love the V’ger psychedelia (especially when I’m stoned!). I’m sure an unbiased viewer would consider this film merely average among its contemporaries… but I’m a Trekkie, so I don’t care! 😁

2023 06 22

#film #movies #sci fi #star trek #the motion picture #star trek tmp #spock #vger #william shatner is actually a good actor #the odd numbered movies are good too #anti tmp exclusion #haters piss off #seriously though i will block you #but i’d rather not have to #I’m not here to debate man i just love all star trek

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temilyrights · 4 years

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Miscommunication

Summary: Jack Sloane x Reader. You accidently mistake a dinner invitation from Jack as a date.

A/N: Exam season has had me in zombie mode but I'm almost alive again! I started writing this in like September and completely forgot about it until I picked it up again a few weeks ago. Pretty light angst considering my work. I wanted a better title but I couldn’t think of one and wanted to upload. Anyway, as always, feedback is welcome and appreciated :) Enjoy!

Read on AO3

You smooth out the wrinkles in your outfit as you make your way down the path to Jack’s house, flowers clenched tightly in one hand, and teeth digging into your lip.

This was actually happening. A date with Jacqueline Sloane. You blow out a breath and knock on the door, trying to keep a calm exterior while your stomach does somersaults.

“You’re here!” Jack cheers as she opens the door, and you’re instantly blown away. She’s wearing a simple white button-down, French tucked into a pair of blue skinny jeans that fit her like a glove. Her feet are bare of shoes and socks, so you can see her freshly painted red nails, and her hair is in its usual beach waves. She’s stunning. “Y/N?”

Your eyes snap up to hers. She’s watching you with amusement. “Sorry, uh, hi.” Your cheeks tinge pink, and in an attempt to hide that fact from Jack you shove the flowers at her. “Uh, I got you these.”

She gracefully accepts the bouquet, her smile turning soft as she looks from the flowers to you. “My favourite. How’d you know?”

You shrug. “You aren’t the only one who notices things.” It hadn’t been too hard to work out, she’d had a bouquet of them in her office a while back and then again in her living room recently. She’d had other types as well, but you noticed the way she always smiled a little brighter when she saw the beautiful arrangement of iris’ and daffodils. It suited her, and coincidentally also portrayed a fitting message. The yellow daffodils represented new beginnings and the blue iris’ hope, which was what tonight felt like.

She drops her head to breath in the flowers, a look of bliss crossing her face before she meets your eyes again. She reaches for your hand and squeezes, rubbing her thumb in circles across your palm. “Thank you. I love them.” She’s closer than before, and your eyes drop to her lips momentarily before you quickly meet her gaze again. Jack clears her throat and steps back, releasing your hand in the process and you try not to miss the contact. She signals down the hallway, “Well, I should go find a vase for these. If you join everyone else in the living room, I’ll be in in a minute.”

“E-everyone else?” You ask as your stomach drops, but Jack is already walking away, nose buried back in the flowers. You force yourself inside, and take your shoes off, leaving them by the door. It’s when you move to hang your jacket in her coat cupboard that you finally hear the sound of Ellie’s distinctive laughter flowing through the house.

You pause, squeezing your eyes shut as you bury down the humiliation and disappointment coursing through you. Of course, you’d misunderstood Jack invite for dinner. Thinking back, she never did specify it was a date, but she hadn’t mentioned other people either, and you’d just assumed, or hoped, or whatever, because it didn’t matter. Of course, Jacqueline Sloane didn’t want to date you and oh no you’d just bought her flowers! Flowers!

You groan and make your way further into the house, forcing a smile on your face as you step into the living room. Ellie, Nick, Tim, and Delilah are all sitting around but are way too consumed in what they’re debating to notice you. You take the opportunity to lean against the door frame and listen.

“Easy. No junk food.” Nick smirks, leaning back into the couch.

Ellie makes a noise of outrage, eyes bulging, “You’re joking, right? That means no chocolate, chips-”

“I’m not seeing a problem.” You smother a chuckle. He thought you didn’t all know about the chip stash he had locked away in his desk that he always ended up inhaling when he thought no one was around.

“-no takeout, and no burgers.”

“What? Burger’s don’t count!”

Delilah laughs, “Yes, they totally do.”

“Fine, whatever, I’m still sticking with my answer.” Nick huffs.

Ellie just rolls her eyes. “Well, obviously I’d choose no TV, how about you Tim?”

“The two don’t correlate, it’s not a fair would you rather.”

“You just can’t decide if you’d rather never watch Star Trek or eat Doritos again,” Delilah smirks.

“No, it’s just not a fair question!”

“Come on Tim, just admit you can’t live without your yearly Star Trek rewatch.”

Ellie hums, “Yeah, but can he live without Domino's stuffed crust pizza either?”

Tim rolls his eyes, “It’s not a fair-” he cuts off when he spots you in the doorway, eyes sparkling with delight at the chance for an escape, “Hey, look it’s Y/N.”

The other’s all swing around to look at you as you smirk. “Would you rather? Really?”

Ellie shrugs, “Need something to pass the time why we waited for you to appear.”

“Wait for me to- I’m early?” You pull your phone from your pocket to double-check, “Yeah. Early. Jack said half six and it’s only 6.27 now.”

They all frown looking between each other, Tim is the one who speaks, “She told us six.”

“What? She told me and Nick five-thirty!”

“Dinner’s basically ready if you all-,” Jack says as she enters the room, her words quickly die off and she comes to a halt as you all snap around to look at her. Her eyes narrow, “Want to move to the dining room...Have I missed something?”

“You gave us all different arrival times?” Nick asks.

“Oh, yes.” Jack nods. Everyone stares at her waiting for her to continue, and she rolls her eyes, “Nick, I knew you and Ellie were coming together and when you do you are almost always at least 45 minutes late to every plan we make. Tim and Delilah, you are usually about 30 minutes late too. Y/N on the other hand is practically always on time. By giving you different arrival slots, I could be sure you’d all be here by 6.40 when dinner would be ready.” She shrugs, signalling to Ellie and Nick, “You two didn’t arrive till six so I wasn’t completely off.”

Tim’s and Ellie’s mouths hang open in shock, while Nick looks mildly annoyed and Delilah is watching Jack with an impressed smirk. You don’t really know how to respond, but when Jack looks at you, her eyes dancing with amusement, you can’t help but chuckle.

“Now, dinner?” She claps her hands together, swinging on her heels and exiting the room before anyone can utter another word.

----

Jack’s outdone herself. The room smells absolutely mouth-watering. And Ellie voices as much when she swallows her first mouthful of food with a moan. “Oh my god, Jack. This is delicious.” Everyone murmurs along in agreement and Jack preens.

The conversation flows easily and as much as you try to keep yourself engaged, laughing and commenting in all the right places, you quickly find yourself retreating. You’d deliberately taken the seat furthest away from where Jack sat at the head of the table, choosing instead to sit beside Ellie. Tim sat the other side of you, at the end of the table. While Delilah was opposite you, and Nick beside her.

Jack's eyes had flicked to you a few times now, she was beginning to notice your odd behaviour. It wasn’t like you to be so silent, but you knew she wouldn’t say anything until she could get you alone, and it wasn’t like that was going to happen any time soon. Delilah was also watching you, and when she caught your eye, she shot you a questioning look. You quickly buried your head in your glass instead of answering it.

“So, how was your date the other night?” Jack smirks at Ellie, eyes teasing as Ellie releases a dramatic groan.

“Oh, don’t. We can’t all have the luck you do. How is the mystery person you won’t tell me about?” Ellie gleams, as Jack’s eyes widen.

Your gaze snaps to her, words spilling forth without thought. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone?” Hurt seeps into your voice and you just hope it’s subtle enough that nobody notices.

“There isn’t anyone!” Panic flashes in her eyes before she looks away and clears her throat, “I mean, there was a couple of dates with a man, but it’s not- we aren’t- I’m not seeing him.”

You drop your head so she can’t see the pain clear in your face, and quickly reach for your wine glass and take a large gulp. Jack does the same as an awkward silence takes over the room until Ellie, thankfully, starts talking again, drawing the attention of everyone and allowing you a moment to compose yourself.

Delilah’s watching you when you look back up and immediately catches your eye. She looks at you like she understands like she sees exactly what you’re so desperately trying to hide, and your emotions come swarming back tangling in your throat. Jack’s eyes bore into the side of your head too, but you refuse to look because you know the second you meet her eyes, she’ll see it all.

“Excuse me,” You cough, pushing yourself up from your chair a little too roughly and knocking the table. It doesn’t slow you down though, and you don’t meet anyone’s eyes as you quickly flee the room.

You lock the bathroom door behind you with a shaky hand and then lean back against it, allowing the cool wood to calm you down as you take deep breaths. Tears burn your eyes, and you so desperately don’t want to let them fall but they do anyway.

A date. You’d thought tonight was a date, and not only had you been wrong, but she plainly wasn’t interested as she was dating other people!

Your mind screams as you curse yourself for being stupid enough to get your hopes up. How many times were you going to have to learn this lesson? When had getting your hopes up ever ended positively for you?

Pushing yourself off the door you sigh, carefully wiping the tears from your face in an effort to not disturb your makeup. You wipe at your slightly smudged mascara with tissue, it’s not perfect but it works enough to hide the evidence of your tears. Pulling yourself together you spare one last glance at yourself and open the door.

Jack’s leaning against the wall outside, biting the hangnail on her thumb. She quickly drops her hand and stands properly the second you step over the threshold of the bathroom. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course. I just needed to pee.” You force a small laugh, hoping to dispel her worry and any questions.

She arches a brow, “Without flushing the toilet?”

“Are you policing my bathroom breaks now?” You laugh as panic clutches at your chest.

She takes a step closer, eliminating most of the space between her and you. Her eyes track your face as her brows furrow, “You’ve been off all evening.”

“I’m just tired.” You shrug and look over her shoulder, “Come on, let’s get back to the others.” You go to step around her, but she grabs your wrist, and you instantly freeze. You close your eyes before looking back to her. She’s watching you so closely and your heart starts thumping in your chest, but you force a small smile anyway, “Jack, I’m fine. It’s just been a long week and I’m just tired.”

“You said that already.”

You roll your eyes and take a step back. Needing to break the contact between your skin and her. “Yeah well, maybe because it’s true.”

“Also, you’re a terrible liar.”

“Can’t be that bad, still managed to beat you at poker more than once.” You tease back, hoping to distract her with jokes instead of letting her push any further.

“I was distracted.”

“Fornell’s chatter annoys you that much?”

“I learnt to tune him out a long time ago.” She hums.

You frown, “Then what was distracting you?”

Jack's eyes flash like she knows she’s been caught out, and she takes another step back and tries to laugh, “Maybe we should go back and join the others.”

“No, wait a minute!” You grab her wrist and pull her back in. She rolls her eyes, but you know it’s a defence to make you believe she’s not bothered when she clearly is. You think over the last poker night you’d won a few months back. You’d been in a great mood because Jack had gotten a little drunk and had been all smiley and touchy. After the game had finished, she had disappeared to Fornell’s kitchen to grab a beer and returned with one for you.

“For our champion.” She’d smirked, leaning down and hanging her hands around your neck as she passed you the drink. Your face had promptly turned scarlet and when you’d looked up at Jack to see her soft eyes and drunken smile the rest of the world had faded away. Your eyes had only been drawn away from her lips when someone coughed loudly.

It’d been Grace who had had a smug smirk on her face and thinking back she’d been shooting Jack that look a lot recently which was almost always returned with a glare from Jack.

“Grace?” You ask.

“What?” Jack frowns.

“She’s been distracting you.”

“Right, yeah. It’s Grace.” She nods along, and it doesn’t take a psychologist to know she’s lying.

“Now who’s the bad liar.”

She arches a brow, “Still you. I should probably be insulted by how much you look like you don’t want to be here tonight.” Her lips pout slightly, proving she is actually upset by it.

“I turned up on time, that’s a good indicator I do.”

“Yeah, with flowers…” Her brows furrow again, her eyes examining your face. You release her wrist and step back, but it only causes her frown to deepen. “You bought me flowers.” She says as if she’s trying to piece a puzzle together aloud. “My favourite flowers and you dressed up more than usual…” Her eyes widen before quickly turning soft, “You thought it was a date.”

“No. No, I didn’t.” You rush out, even as your cheeks turn red and you wish for the ground to swallow you up whole.

Her eyes remain soft, a smile pulling at her lips as she takes a step closer to you. “You thought it was a date.”

“Jack,” You gulp, shaking your head. Her hand brushes against yours.

“You thought it was a date.” She repeats again, and it’s only when she’s this close that you finally realise just how happy she looks. There’s no pity in her eyes, and the tension seeps from your shoulders as you smile hesitantly.

“I may have thought this was a date.”

She grins as her spare hand grips at your waist. “You thought it was a date.”

You roll your eyes, “Do you wanna say anything else other than those five words?”

Her eyebrow arches, a cocky smirk tugging at her lips. “How about you kiss me?”

“What about your guests?”

“I’m sure they can handle a few more minutes without us.” As if on cue a smash sounds from the dining room and Jack sighs, “or not.”

“Sorry, Jack!” Ellie shouts, “I’m cleaning it up, don’t worry!”

“If there’s now red wine over my carpet I’m going to kill her,” Jack grumbles and you’re pretty sure she’s only half-joking.

“Maybe don’t kill our friend. I’d miss her.”

She sighs dramatically as she tries to keep her lips from curling into a smile, “If you insist.”

“I know it’s a huge sacrifice on your part, but I’m sure there’s something I can do to make it worth it.” You smirk.

Her eyes darken as she leans in closer. She’s focused on your lips but at the last second her eyes meet yours, “Before our first date?” She whispers.

You twirl a strand of her hair around your finger, before moving to caress her cheek. Her eyes fall close as she sighs and leans into the touch. “Wouldn’t want you to kill Ellie.”

She hums, “Yes. Might have no choice otherwise.” Her eyes open, sparkling brightly as her lips twitch.

“Yep.” You nod, as your eyes trail across her lips. “It’s all for the greater good. Saving lives. All that jazz.”

“Hey, Jack. Have you got anymore- Oh, oh my god, sorry.” Tim apologises, immediately turning back around as he steps into the hallway. He keeps his back to you. “Sorry. Uh, kitchen roll, dishcloths, if you have any could you bring some when you’re done. Again, sorry.” He quickly hurries off, and even though you can’t see his face you know it’s bright red.

You immediately start laughing, “I swear he’s as bad as Jimmy sometimes.”

Jack hums and then sighs as she steps away, forcing you to drop your hands from her. You can’t help but pout slightly.

“I should go check out this mess.”

“Yeah.” You sigh, and you don’t feel bad for silently wishing everyone else would go home so, you could spend the rest of the evening alone with her.

As if following your thoughts, she smirks. “They can wait a few more minutes.” And in one swoop, she steps forward, her hand sliding around and gripping your neck before pulling you in and kissing you.

Your eyes widen in shock before they quickly fall close. You pull her in closer, matching her hurried, hot kisses. It’s like fireworks, or maybe more just heat shooting straight between your legs, but you could so easily drown in her kisses forever.

She pulls away though, a proud smirk on her face. You must look as dazed as you feel. “You’re definitely staying tonight.” She hums, eyes dark and she’s practically devouring you with them. You gulp slightly, turned on beyond belief and you can’t believe you still have to sit through the rest of dinner and dessert with your friends.

“Any chance we can kick everyone else out now?”

She laughs and pecks your lips, “Don’t think they’d appreciate that.”

“Don’t really care.” You grumble.

Her eyes sparkle and she steps away, despite you trying to keep her close. “I’m going to get dishcloths. The sooner we get back in there the sooner I’ll have you all to myself.” She winks and retreats to the other room before you can utter another word.

You gulp and head back to the dining room in almost a trance. Delilah breaks into laughter the second she sees you; Nick and Ellie are both grinning, and Tim still has a pink tinge to his face.

You clear your throat and take your seat as Jack enters the room.

“Oh, thank god it’s just water.” She sighs in relief as she makes her way to the soaked carpet beside Ellie’s chair.

“Hey, Y/N.” Delilah chuckles again, and you hesitantly meet her eyes. “You’ve got a bit of lipstick…” She points to her own lips.

Your eyes widen in surprise and you swing around to look at Jack whose face is full of faux innocence.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” You whine, trying to rub the pink hue from your mouth.

“Where’s the fun in that?” She smirks.

“Should’ve just let you kill Ellie.” You mumble, using your reflection in your glass to see if you’ve been successful.

“Hey!” Ellie protests, “Why am I dying?”

You don’t answer her question, and Jack just returns to cleaning the mess without responding. Ellie pouts.

The second dessert finished, you not so subtly begin guiding everyone to the door, and the moment it closes behind Ellie (who you know took deliberately longer to leave just to spite you), Jack spins you around and pins you to the wall.

“Now who’s the one that wants to kill Ellie.” She hums as she begins to leave a trail of kisses up your neck.

“Between us, I’m sure we could do it successfully.” You sigh as she hits a particular spot, and you feel her smirk. “But no more Ellie talk. Or murder talk. Or anything talk that isn’t about you getting me in your bed.”

“Agreed.” Jack hums, before finally capturing your lips with hers. Your knees turn weak, and you’re grateful for the wall behind you. Your hands find her hair and her leg slides in between yours. You release a breathy sigh at the pressure, gripping at her hair and causing her to groan and lean harder against you.

“Bed. Now.” You order, and she’s more than happy to comply.

It’s a mission to get to her room because you both refuse to separate, too focused on getting the other out of their clothes.

“I’m going to make you scream,” Jack whispers against your lips, as her hands tease up your now shirtless body.

“Oh, yeah?” You smirk, “Do it then.”

And she does. Multiple times.

#jack sloane x reader #jack sloane #jacqueline sloane #ncis #fanfic #writing #miscommunication #reader-insert #regal-roni

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keelywolfe · 4 years

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FIC: Welcome To Backwater ch.3 (spicyhoney)

Summary: Stretch is getting out and meeting new people, if only things weren’t a little...ominous.

Content: Spicyhoney, Midwest Gothic

~~*~~

Read Chapter Three on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

The thing was, Stretch had never really lived on his own. For most of his life, he’d lived with his brother. Taking care of Blue when he was a kiddo, then sort of swapping roles for a while as they got older. By the time they were on the surface, they had a pretty good give and take going when it came to cohabitation. Living with his bro was never the problem.

It was moving back in with him after everything went down that was the hard part. His sympathy felt more like stifling pity, the relentless cheer Stretch normally adored was grating, and as much as Stretch loved his brother, (and he did, his brother was the coolest and fuck anyone who didn’t see that), he just…he couldn’t. Not right now.

That all came to a head and landed him on the midnight bus to anywhere and living here essentially alone was turning into a balancing act between being necessarily solitary and lonely enough to start befriending the local spooks, and now look at him.

Standing in Red’s living room and armed with a lamp shaped like a flamingo, probably about to be murdered for the hundred bucks in the front register and Red’s shitty microwave, and his first stupid thought was, holy shit, he’s gorgeous.

Not that it wasn’t a valid thought, but it didn’t do much to better the situation. A skeleton Monster (another one? really?) that was almost as tall as he was, but instead of Stretch’s scrawny bod and knobby knees poking out of his cargo shorts, this guy looked like he’d just stepped out of GQ’s leather edition, available only with a valid ID. From those slender hips with all the right curves all the way up to the delicate intricacies of his cervical vertebra, he was like a book written in braille, begging for a touch. Those cheekbones alone were sharp enough to do more damage than any damn lamp, fuck, he should have to carry a weapons license for those things, they were sure as hell giving Stretch a good stab in the libido.

Mystery guy only stood there in Red living room, cool and calm in spite of the fact he was wearing a sleek leather jacket and knee-high damn motorcycle boots, (fuck, those legs), on a sweltering day. Didn’t even bother to pull his hands out of his jeans pockets, like he was hanging around patiently for a fucking takeout order instead of starring in a home invasion.

The guy raised a browbone, and fuck, how did even the scar running through his socket seem sexy? “Well?” Mystery Man said, “Nothing else to say?”

That broke the spell. Well, kinda, holy shit, take two. That voice, it was almost rich enough to pour into a cup, but damn, if Sugar Tongue here dusted Red, what was Stretch gonna tell the cops? That he was too busy getting seduced by those dark molasses wiles to do anything about it?

Stretch brandished the lamp again and blustered out, “i asked you first!”

The guy sighed heavily and for half an idiot second, Stretch felt bad for disappointing him. “If we’re going to continue down this path of childish competition, then I was here first. Would you care to offer a rebuttal? Or is that word too complicated for you, I’d make an attempt to bring it down to your level, but I don’t have the time to journey back out of the realm of stupidity today.”

That was enough to snap him out of this guy’s erotic stupidity spell. Great, he was a murderer and a dick, Stretch should’ve known. No one with hips like that could be on the side of good. He raised the lamp again threateningly, flamingo-beak facing front, “the only butt around here is gonna be yours when i kick it!”

The guy only rolled his eye lights, deep crimson, huh, how about that. “Ah, how refreshing it is to have a chance to engage in such cunning debate,” he drawled. “But as enchanting as this has been, let me interrupt the vigilante plotline you seem to be starting. I’m only here to drop off a package for my brother.”

“brother?” Stretch parroted dumbly. Oh. Ohhhhh, for fuck’s sake he was an idiot. Red eye lights, skeleton monster, all he was missing was a fucking name tag that said, ‘Red’s Tall Brother, Please Do Not Ambush.’

Well, that was one way to make a first impression.

Stretch sheepishly lowered the lamp, rubbing at the back of his neck awkwardly. “oh. uh, sorry about that, i’m a little on edge.”

“On edge, are you,” the guy repeated. One corner of his mouth pulled upward in a sardonic little smile, another sign of the unfairness of life that it only made him look even more appealing, if that were possible. Sex on legs and that voice? Some guys cheated to role for charisma twice was all Stretch was saying. “Ah, aren’t life’s little ironies precious.”

Before Stretch could figure out what the heck that meant, he heard the familiar thump and bump of Red hurrying down the hallway. The door was flung open hard enough to bounce against the opposite wall and Red paused in the doorway, taking in the scene. His brother standing there is all his sexy glory, completely unconcerned and weaponless, and Stretch still sweaty and disheveled from trekking through the heat outside, standing there with a lamp in his hands trying to look like he hadn’t been ready to bonk the guy on the noggin like the first chapter of an Agatha Christie novel.

Red was snickering before Stretch could even scramble for any sort of excuse, “whatcha gonna do with the lamp, armstrong, knock his lights out?”

“i was improvising,” Stretch mumbled. He plunked the hideous thing back on the table, fumbling to plug it back in. "you didn't tell me you had a brother."

"no?” Red set both hands on the top of his cane to lean against it and innocent was not a voice he wore well, nope. “musta slipped my mind."

"Your mind is ever slippery, brother," said brother put forth in a clipped tone, "Somehow, you managed to forget to mention this…person…to me as well."

"and 'cause i did you got to have an excitin' first meeting,” Red said, abandoning innocence for pure mischief. He gave them both a broad wink, “ain't that right?"

About the only thing Stretch and this guy had in common was the mutual dirty looks they gave back to that.

“only if you get your thrills from a criminal sort of meet and greet,” Stretch said.

"Yes," the brother said irritably, "Very exciting. And now that we’ve all confirmed who I am, would you care to explain who this is?”

Red’s grin widened, his gold tooth winking in the mellow sunlight streaming in through the tatty curtains. “my new clerk.”

“Your—” That irritation melted into horror as the guy’s spine went ruler-straight as if someone jammed a yardstick up his ass before he blustered out, “have you lost your tiny little mind?”

Stretch couldn’t help feeling a little insulted. It was a little grocery store, not the Ritz, they didn’t need all their cheese on the crackers to manage selling ‘em, thanks.

Red didn’t seem bothered by his brother’s disbelief, he only shrugged, “nah. don’t think so, anyway.” Then with a touch of acid, “not like you’re around long enough to find out.”

His brother ignored that. Seemed like he was still stuck on Red’s audacity in hiring a clerk. “You have,” he said wonderingly, “You’ve completely lost your mind this time. And you’re keeping him right here in the house?”

“room upstairs, but yeah.” Red sucked on his teeth loudly, grinning his wide, feral grin. “got a problem with that, little brother?”

Conversation briefly ceased as they both seemed to be trying to communicate in glares and Stretch didn’t know enough of the language to interpret, but he didn’t think it was going well. Especially not when the tall drink of brother abruptly turned to him and said, “Go get your things.”

Stretch only gaped at him, too surprised to even protest, of all the fucking arrogance—!

“Go get your things,” he repeated, a touch louder and flavored with a dash of impatience, “and I’ll take you to the bus depot right now.”

“you’re serious,” Stretch said in disbelief. He shook his head with a short laugh, “heh, sorry, champ, not going anywhere on your say-so. besides, i just got here, if i leave now, I’ll never get voted prom queen.”

The other guy’s face didn’t so much as twitch and intensity in that crimson gaze made Stretch want to look away. He resisted, meeting that glare defiantly, even as he said, quietly, “If you stay long enough, leaving won’t be an option.”

Stretch only snorted, seriously, what was with this guy? “and you’re calling your brother a nut?”

He didn’t bother to answer that one, only swung around and pointed an accusing finger in Red’s direction. “This is on you, brother.”

Red only gave him that easy, sharky grin back. “always was.”

Stretch thought that was the end of it. The guy nodded shortly and started towards the door, brushing past Stretch to get to it and that was where he paused. He turned towards Stretch, those red eye lights moving over him searchingly. The end table with its returned lamp was at Stretch’s back, there was nowhere to go as Red’s brother loomed into his personal space, leaning in uncomfortably close, only inches away from Stretch’s collarbone as he sniffed delicately.

“Hm,” he said thoughtfully.

Stretch resisted the urge to give his armpits a testing sniff. “what?”

But he only drew away and gave Red another unreadable look. Red nodded once.

What. The. Fuck?

“Fine,” the guy sighed out. His hands curled into brief fists, sharpened fingertips pressed into his palms. “It’s your problem, brother, you deal with it.”

“don’t i always?”

“Perhaps with the least amount of property damage possible, if you don’t mind.” He gave Stretch another dismissive half-glance. “Now if you’ll excuse me, brother."

He turned and started to walk off and yeesh, even the way he walked caught the eye, damn, hate to see you leave, love to watch those hips go.

Down boy, Stretch told his libido. There was enough weird shit going on and he really didn’t need to take another hike down that path. Besides, with hot stuff constantly looking at him like something to be scraped off the bottom of his shoe, it wasn’t exactly opening the door for romance. He’d had his fill of assholes, a lifetime’s worth, and just case it might be a question, Stretch proved he was still an enormous idiot by calling to that leather-clad back, “didn’t catch your name.”

The guy didn’t even pause. “Then next time you should be a better hunter.”

With that he was out the apartment door. Stretch and Red stood there and listened to the cow bell jangling loudly, the door slamming, and then the roar of an engine speeding away.

Only then did Red speak again, with laconic ease, “if you’re done staring at my baby bro’s ass, y’can come eat with me.”

“i—" wasn’t, Stretch started to say, then shrugged. Busted. “don’t worry, i don’t think i’m his type.”

“don’t think too hard, gonna hurt yourself,” Red said, dry as a mouthful of sand. “what’s the problem, don’t think you got the right size font?”

“let’s not get into that, it’ll take too long,” Stretch tossed back. “and don’t take this the wrong way but your brother is a dick.”

“yeah,” Red said fondly, “ain’t he great? now, before you tried to light up my bro’s life, i was setting up for dinner. if you grab that bag, you can have some, too.”

Stretch followed where Red pointed with his cane to find an insulated bag sitting by the sofa, black because fuck knew Fonzie’s stunt double needed matching accessories. He lugged the bag along as he followed Red back down the hallway into the store, setting it on the counter while Red struggled into the chair. There were a couple of dusty bowls already sitting there next to the beers and Red gave them a cursory wipe with a rag of dubious cleanliness.

“my bro got his own place a while back,” Red unzipped the bag and pulled out a large ceramic casserole dish. “but he still drops off food for me coupla times a week. says that eating at ‘mama’s’ along with a double daily dose of mac and cheese ain’t healthy.”

Stretch watched, reluctantly intrigued. “he doesn’t stick around for dinner?”

“nah, my bro has kinda a special diet.” Red pulled the lid off and steam rose out, along with the gorgeous, rich smell of sinfully delicious food. Long greenish noodles drenched in some sort of glistening sauce with chunks of more green and purple veggies mixed in, and dusted with a heavy sprinkle of parmesan. Whatever it was, it wasn’t anything like what they brought to the table at Olive Garden.

Stretch inhaled deeply, his mouth already watering. “holy shit, he cooked this?”

“cooked it, hell,” Red spooned out portions, uncaring about the little drips that fell on the counter and pushing the first bowl over to Stretch. “he makes the pasta by hand. planted the veggies, too, like he’s fucking ol’ macdonald on his farm. he made that stew i gave ya the first night, too.”

Stretch barely heard him because he’d already taken his first bite and had he really thought Red’s brother looked sexy? He was wrong, totally wrong, because this was the sexy, this delectably orgasmic taste exploding across his tongue in a blend of garlic and vinaigrette, carried on perfectly al dente noodles mingling with the bright crunch of zucchini and beets. It was hard not to moan aloud as he chewed down that first bite and went back for another.

“is he single? i changed my mind, holy fuck, i’m gonna marry him and chain him to the stove,” Thoughtlessly said around a mouthful of deliciousness and Stretch winced as he realized what he said, “sorry, sorry, bad joke.”

Red only slurped up more noodles, teeth glistening with oil and the long strands flinging droplets of sauce as he sucked them in. “he’s single, but good luck putting a leash on him. go ahead, ask him out next time he stops by. i could use a good laugh, ‘cause, honey, you two hooking up would be a joke.”

Absurdly stung, Stretch shrugged and tried on a laugh, “hey, i’m a hell of a catch. gainfully employed and everything.”

“oh, yeah, you’re the seafood special, all right.” Red’s sharp teeth sheared easily through the noodles as he took another bite. “rebound fucks never work out, kid.”

“how did you—" Stretch stopped with a groan as Red raised both brow bones mockingly. He slumped back over his bowl, twirling up noodles on his fork. “yeah, yeah, handed that over with gift wrap.”

“yep, you did.” Red clapped Stretch on the shoulder with enough force to make him drop his fork. “the list of reasons people end up in the middle of nowhereville is pretty fucking short, kid, an’ you got that look. don’t worry ‘bout it, you got a place to stay here as long as you want.”

The unexpected kindness from Red of all people made him blink hard, but then, that wasn’t really giving him a fair shake, was it, not when he’d given Stretch a job to begin with and kept him semi-fed. “thanks.”

“don’t mention it, to anyone.” Red said dryly. He sucked down the last of the noodles and pushed the bowl away with a sigh. “gonna ruin my rep. make you a deal, air conditioning’s better down here. if you wanna watch tv in my place, y’can go ahead, if,” he stressed, “if ya call your brother. bet he’s out of his mind worried by now.”

“how—” Stretch shut his mouth hard enough for his teeth to click together. Red only looked serenely back, the chair creaking as he leaned back and laced his hands together over his middle. He looked away, not wanting to see what else might shine knowingly in those crimson eye lights. “i’ll text him.”

“good enough,” Red said agreeably. He pulled a can of beer off the plastic ring and popped it open, gulping some down and belching with mellow contentment. “where the fuck did you go earlier, i been waiting on these beers.”

Stretch’s bowl was empty and he ran a finger along the inside of it, licking away the smear of leftover sauce. “to see a movie.”

Red’s mouth opened in a silent ‘ah’. “didja say hi to doris?”

That was not what Stretch expected. “i…yes. you’ve seen her?” Stupid to think Red hadn’t, he’d been here for a long time, hard to believe he’d never stepped into the theater and any Monster with half a gram of sense would’ve noticed her.

“sure, loads of times,” Red said, confirming it. “sweet gal. don’t be offended if she don’t remember you right away, she’s gotta little problem with short term memory.” He pointed a finger at his temple and let his thumb drop like the hammer on a gun. “keep stoppin’ in and eventually you’ll stick. takes her a mo’ when i stop by, but she gets there.”

“good to know.” And it was. Any faint, stupid hurt that he wasn’t the first Monster in Doris’s unlife was a little eased by that tidbit. He probably would’ve been more upset if he went to see her again tomorrow and had to go through the intros again without it.

“okay, g’wan, get outta here,” Red shoved a beer in Stretch’s direction and waved him off. “just remember, wheel of fortune is on at 7.”

Stretch took the dirty bowls with him along with the serving dish, giving them a quick wash and setting them into Red’s already overflowing dish drainer. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the saggy sofa in the living room, watching reruns of ‘MASH’ and ‘Little House On the Prairie’ until Red closed shop for the Wheel.

That night Stretch had a strange dream. Vast trees towering over him and unstable ground beneath his feet. He stood in a puddle of ragged moonlight and when red eyes loomed out of the darkness, he met their stare and didn’t run. Not even when he saw the huge, dark shape that contained them, jagged white teeth in a gaping maw that gnashed and slavered, ready to consume him. The shape leapt at him and he couldn’t move, trapped by that gaze. He woke with a gasp before it landed, waking with a scream tangled up on his throat, clammy sheets sticking to his sweaty bones.

He lay for a moment on the thin mattress, catching his breath. His window was covered, had been since his second night here and he’d found an old blanket in his closet, tacked it up to keep out the blistering heat of the noontime sun. Now it kept out the midnight darkness and he didn’t even glance at it as he rolled to his feet and headed into the bathroom to splash cold water on his sweaty face.

He set both damp hands on the sides of the sink and looked at his dripping reflection. The only shadows in this room were the ones beneath his sockets. His skull was pale, his eye lights pinpricks of diffused white.

“liar,” he whispered to his reflection and watched as it whispered it silently back.

But that was one shipment of guilt he could offload right now.

Stretch shuffled back out and scooped his phone off the nightstand. He ignored the messages, the voicemails, and only tapped out a message of his own, hitting send before he could think of an excuse not to.

i’m okay, little brother, i’m safe. i’ll call soon.

It wasn’t a lie. Soon was relative, just like brothers.

He sank back down on his damp sheets and didn’t bother to turn out the lights.

tbc

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #underfell sans #underswap sans #welcome to backwater

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kinetic-elaboration · 4 years

Text

February 13: Star Trek Beyond

Some attempted thoughts on Star Trek Beyond.

So first it was bad lol. It is the worst. I thought maybe it would be less the worst than I had previously thought but it really, really is just irredeemably bad.

Trying to keep up with what was actually happening and talk in the group chat was too difficult and I now feel very exhausted lol. And I’m not even sure what I watched.

I liked Jaylah a lot, including her back story, characterization, “house,” traps, and cool mirror tricks.

I also like Kirk in that emergency uniform with the jacket unzipped.

That’s it! That’s all I liked.

In the past I’ve also said I liked the Spock and Bones parts but I honestly wasn’t a fan of them either this time around!

None of the characters felt IC and none of the relationships felt true or were compelling. Which is particularly egregious given that the alleged theme was strength in unity.

The movie was especially lacking in K/S content or even K & S interaction, which obviously didn’t please me. And it’s definitely the worst Kirk characterization I’ve ever seen. There’s no excuse for that either because it’s halfway through the 5YM, which means he should be pretty close to TOS Kirk--yes, he has a different set of experiences, so there’s going to be some variation, but there’s comparatively less excuse for a radically different characterization than in STXI and STID. They should have had Shatner read the script and make notes lol because whatever else you might say about him he KNOWS Captain Kirk.

Like, he (Kirk) lacked humor and charm and, often, confidence. He had moments when he was very smart and moments when he had a commanding presence. But he had just as many moments when he was whiny or bored and his Captain’s log??? I deserve financial compensation for every time I’ve listened to that. Bored of space?? No, this man is bored when he’s stuck on Earth. He stagnates in desk jobs. He is an adventurer and explorer before he’s ANYTHING else; if you don’t get that, you don’t need to be writing Star Trek.

Also, as I have frequently complained, I’m tired of him having no internal conflict or emotional complexity past his father issues. First reboot movie: dealing with his dead father’s memory and his step-father’s abuse. Fine, that makes sense for how they set up the AU. Second reboot movie: entirely motivated by the need for Manly Vengeance upon the person who killed his father figure. And for this redundant story line (in many sense) we had to lose Pike? Third reboot movie: you’d think he’d finally be ready to move on to other conflicts but actually no this time he’s sad about his birthday and having a longer life span than his...you guessed it!! father!! Yet again.

What else has ever motivated him? Legitimate question.

The destruction of the Enterprise was truly horrific. Long, boring, unwarranted, and without any emotional punch. As if it were just any ship! No, she’s a character in her own right and she’s not to be sacrificed like that but please tell me again how Simon Pegg is a true fan who brought the franchise back to its roots?

B said he did like that they split up the crew into unusual units but I have mixed feelings about it. I don’t entirely disagree, but I don’t think they did a lot that was interesting with any of those separated units. Uhura and Sulu are a cool pair (but this would have been a good opportunity to include Sulu’s semi-canonical crush on Uhura but whatever... a different rant) and they almost did some interesting stuff with them. There were glimmers of a caper in that story line and times when I could tell they were straining especially hard to make Uhura, their Sole Female Main--now that they cut out Rand, Chapel, and even Carol Marcus--into something Feminist and Interesting. But it didn’t quite gel for me. Like, Uhura would be having almost interesting dialogue with the villain and holding her own...and then she loses track of her colleague and has to watch that person die, thus undercutting everything she just said about unity and seeming to prove the villain’s point. Is she competent or not?

Bones and Spock are a pair I care about and like but again I think their canonical relationship in TOS is more interesting than STB showed. I personally read them as like...reluctant best friends who originally just had one person in common, and then realized they also like each other too, but they’ll never really say it. They understand each other but pretend not to. They have fun with the barbs they throw at each other. They both deeply love Jim but in different ways. They enjoy their intellectual debates. (That’s one thing that was definitely missing from them here! The intellectual debates!) So again, there was something there but not enough.

And Kirk and Chekov just happened to land near each other; nothing was done with that relationship per se. They really aren’t people who have much of a relationship in TOS so there’s not a lot to work off of but then on the other hand there IS an opportunity to create something new. Maybe I’m being too harsh and too vague but it just didn’t gel for me. The only specific K and C moment I remember was that supremely un-funny joke about Kirk’s aim as he sets off the “wery large bomb.”

But like there are possibilities.. they’re both pretty horny and Chekov is a whiz kid and Kirk is also very smart and has always been smart... Like in other words people Chekov’s age don’t end up on the bridge crew, in either ‘verse, without the Captain’s say, so even though he’s TOS!Spock’s and AOS!Scotty’s protege, Kirk is important to his life. Something with that maybe??

I’m upset that Spock’s individual story line was about whether or not he should go off and make baby Vulcans because, again as I have complained many times before, that was a conflict he faced and resolved in ten minutes two movies ago, and it doesn’t make sense to me for him to bring it up again now just because the Ambassador is dead. Like... the Ambassador told him to stay in Starfleet!! “Ah, yes, I will honor him by doing precisely the opposite of what he wanted me to do.”

Also--if they had made his motivation different or gone into it more, I would have been more into it. Make it about New Vulcan! Say there’s news from New Vulcan that it’s not doing well. Or what if T’Pring got in contact with him? Or what if we used this as an excuse to bring in Sarek?

This is part of a larger point for me which is that STXI set up a really cool AU and STID tried to do something with it--a little hit or miss, but it tried--and instead of pushing even more at the AU and developing it more and doing more with it... STB just ignored it! Was that part of what Paramount was warning about with making it “not too Star Trek-y?” Was it SUPPOSED to be a movie you could watch without having seen the last two? If so they did succeed but like.. .why? They made the supremely ballsy move of blowing up a founding Federation planet two movies ago and now they’ve just forgotten about that and all the reverberations that would necessarily have?

But of course we got a call back to Kirk being a Beastie Boys fan so.... Guess it was Deep all along.

We all three agreed that the core story of this film was potentially interesting but could have been done as a 50-some minute episode of a TV series rather than a whole-ass 2 hour movie. First off, cutting or cutting down the action sequences would have shaved off half an hour easily.

I’m frustrated in large part because there are certain things that are interesting here. I do like the concept of the crew being pulled on to an alien planet by a ship of former Federation crew, from the early days of the Federation/deep space flight, who were presumed missing but are somehow still alive because they have turned into aliens/used alien tech to prolong life, and who have also captured other aliens, like Jaylah, for the main crew to interact with. All of that was cool.

I would even be okay with these old Federation crew being villains but I don’t think that’s necessary or even the most interesting take.

But...first of all, as my mom pointed out, Krall was basically Nero in his illogical motivations: feeling aggrieved because someone who couldn’t help him didn’t help him and then just maniacally wanting revenge. It made more sense to me with Nero in a way. Maybe that was because he was better characterized, maybe it was because his anger was more personal (the loss of his wife), maybe--probably--it was because he was angry at Spock and Spock had actually promised to help, so there was some kernel of logic in his sense of betrayal, even if it was out of proportion etc. Also, Nero’s mania was portrayed as mania--we were all supposed to recognize that the strength of his emotion was warranted but his logic was deeply flawed. I think we were supposed to think Krall had some kinda... real criticism of the Federation, but in fact he doesn’t! He’s wrong! So like if he’d been angry with the Federation for abandoning him but the narrative and the other characters explicitly recognize that he’s wrong--the Federation tried but he was just doing something very dangerous and he recognized that danger on signing on--that might have been more palatable to me.

I’m not sure I’m making sense here entirely or explaining myself as well as I could.

I just don’t entirely get Krall’s beef with the Federation. I don’t get that whole “being a soldier and having conflict makes you strong and having people you can rely on and connections and community makes you weak.” That seems pretty obviously false. It also doesn’t really seem, not that I’m an expert, but particularly in line with military ethos either.

BUT the idea that he had a life that was comfortable to him as a soldier and then the Federation comes in and forms Starfleet and says, actually, we’re going to pull back on the soldiering and up the diplomacy and the exploration and the science--yeah, I could see that. I DO think Starfleet is military but even if you must insist it’s not, it’s clearly based on and formed from the military, and it has certain military functions. So obviously the first people to join or be folded into Starfleet probably were more explicitly military.

So he’s one of those people. Now he’s supposed to be a scientist and a diplomat and an explorer and he doesn’t like that. He’s given this very prestigious and interesting mission and jumps at it. Starfleet warns him, you might go beyond where we can reach, we might not be able to help you. That’s fine. But then when his ship is stranded and he is lost, he gets angry--maybe somewhat irrationally, but understandably--why?? Why did the Federation do this to him? What was even the point? When he put himself in danger before, at least he knew why. But just flying around space for the hell of it, and this is the cost? So that’s what creates his anger.

I thin this could be tied into Kirk’s diplomacy at the beginning--if the scene were written to not be a comedy bit where Kirk looks like an incompetent buffoon and is completely disrespectful the whole time. He’s good at this job and we should say it. But we could emphasize that this IS a diplomatic mission often, just as often as it’s a military or scientific mission. Maybe we could include other bits of their missions, too, to play up the variety of things they do and roles they play.

Another thing I think could be interesting, going back to my point about Spock, Vulcan, and using the first two movies and expanding on the world building... what if Spock wanted to leave Starfleet for better, more well-defined reasons, and we used that? Paralleled the two? Connected the two?

Because I think Vulcan in the AOS verse is very interesting and the movies didn’t do nearly enough with it. First, we have the Romulans showing up way earlier, at least visibly: in TOS, no one knew what they looked like or their connection to Vulcans until Spock is in his late 30s. In AOS, it happens not long after he’s born. So he’s growing up probably with more anti-Vulcan racism floating around the Federation. THEN Vulcan is destroyed. Now it has nothing and it needs to rely on the rest of the Federation, which must be both humbling and frustrating to many Vulcans, on top of the extreme tragedy of losing everything. Most of their population, a lot of their history, their manufacturing, their scientific facilities, their resources, their animals, literally whatever else you can think of that a planet has--all gone. Now all of the survivors have lived some period on an alien planet, by definition, and they’re probably very dependent on the Federation not just to set up the new colony, but to replace all of the resources--natural and Vulcan-made--that they lost. And they’re a founding Federation member, Earth’s first contact. They’re especially important. And now they’re weak, and reliant on others.

So maybe Spock, early on, hears from New Vulcan and they’re not doing well. Maybe we hear from Sarek or T’Pring (...I’d just like to see reboot T’Pring). Maybe it’s not about, or just about, having children, but about being from an important and ancient family, and being seen as a hero for his part in the Narada mission, that makes him want to go and help rebuild their government (taking his mother’s place perhaps? she was on the High Council) or their scientific facilities, or the VSA, or their space travel capabilities--you know Vulcan had space ships of their own, outside of Federation ships. This would be the perfect place to showcase that tension between wanting to be independent--out of pride, out of fear, even--and needing help, because Vulcan could not survive without the Federation, probably less than 10 years out from the original planet’s destruction.

And then you feed it back into Krall.

So I could see like... well the tension, and then Krall comes in, and he's angry that the Federation "abandoned" him, but we actually explicitly address this. Maybe Spock gets to interact with him and say "I get it. You had a life and a mission and a purpose that was comfortable for you. Then the Federation came in and changed everything. A lot of my people are also feeling upset for similar reasons. But here's why actually you're wrong."

So anyway as you can see I’m smarter and more interesting than Simon Pegg.

I also hated, speaking of writers of this movie, the gay Sulu thing and HEAR ME OUT on this. It’s homophobic. His husband doesn’t have a name? Might not be his husband at all? Looks like he could be his nanny or his brother? As B said “at least grab his butt or something.” That was the most sanitized, no-homo depiction of a gay person I’ve ever seen. He’s gay (see, progressives and queers! gay! you like that right!) but DON’T WORRY STRAIGHTS--he’s in a monogamous relationship and has a child, he’ll show nothing but the most platonic physical affection with his male significant other, and the plot point will be so minuscule you’ll need a microscope to detect it. Also, we’ll throw in a no homo joke about two male characters not wanting to hug and we’ll make sure Kirk and Spock interact as little as possible, because we know they give off Big Queer Vibes every time they’re together.

Yes the last point is a little unfair but can you blame me for being angry about all the “look how hip to the times we are” back-patting that went on in 2016 when canonical bisexual Kirk is RIGHT THERE and we could have had ex-boyfriend Gary Mitchell instead of Unnamed Nanny??

Also Sulu is a hella random choice because again, like... he may not have had an s.o. in TOS but nor was there any indication he was gay. So it seems a LITTLE like they picked him because (1) his original actor is gay and gay people can’t play straight people duh so probably Sulu was Gay All Along I mean did you not get vibes???; and/or (2) asexual Asian stereotypes preclude giving Sulu any kind of love interest, male or female, that is actually... sexual, outright romantic, anything.

Anyway I can’t remember if I had any other thoughts, but I’ve said quite enough I think.

I miss Kirk so much... real Kirk... even my version of AOS Kirk who is probably not even characterized that well but at least I worked with love!!!

#the year 2021 #2021: star trek #2021: fandom thoughts #star trek aos #anti-beyond

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stereksecretsanta · 4 years

Text

Merry Christmas, obsessedbutonline!

For @obsessedbutonline, who listed fluff, angst, and ‘Derek giving Stiles gift’ as a few ‘Likes’. I hope I did those items justice. Hope you have a wonderful Christmas, Friend!

Read On AO3

*****

The Gift

The gift. He supposed it all started with the gift. Or maybe Star Trek. Derek wasn’t sure. It was Stiles, after all. One day, the younger man had been debating the cuddle rating of a Tribble, before diving into an analysis of The Voyage Home being one of the worst movies in franchise history (except for the whales, of course), and the next thing Derek knew, he’d found himself discussing how Moby Dick was one of his favorite books. The random jumps from one topic to another hadn’t been anything new for Stiles, but that had also been the year they’d legitimately gotten ‘together’ after their contentious circling of each other’s orbits, so when Derek had opened an inelegantly wrapped early edition of the novel on that first Christmas as a couple, he’d been rendered speechless.

He couldn’t remember how long he’d stared at the leather-bound copy exactly, but he did recall feeling a bout of inadequacy. He thought he’d hid it well though. “Stiles – “ he’d started. “I wasn’t expecting…This is too much.”

Stiles had shrugged like it hadn’t been a big deal, an eager grin on his face. “Nah, it wasn’t too bad. A classmate mentioned a prof who needed an assistant to help translate some Latin verses, and I thought I’d check it out. When I went, I noticed a copy of Moby Dick in his office, and you’d mentioned it was one of your favorites, so I offered my translation services for free if he would sell the book for a discounted price.”

Of course, Stiles had remembered that weird detail from a throwaway conversation. And of course, he’d been resourceful in procuring it. That was just who Stiles was. Now, Derek, on the other hand… well, he’d felt completely out of his league when he’d pulled out the gift card he’d picked up a day earlier from a comic book store. He hadn’t even known if that was a store Stiles ever visited. He really sucked at gift-giving. “Sorry, I didn’t …”

Stiles had yanked it out of his hands before he’d even finished. “I love it. Thanks, Derek!” The younger man had beamed excitedly, clutching that cheap piece of plastic in his hands as if he’d just received some personal heirloom. There had been no uptick in the man’s heartrate, so there’d been no lie in those words, but that hadn’t stop Derek from feeling bad.

And it was then that he had resolved to do better, that he would be thoughtful and meticulous in his gift selection the next time Christmas rolled around. Stiles deserved as much.

But he’d mentioned he was bad at gift-giving, right? As in, monumentally bad. Because the next Christmas, when they’d settled down on his couch after an intimate holiday dinner he’d prepared for the two of them, Stiles had presented him with a charmingly wrinkled gift bag. And when he’d pulled out a lovingly restored and framed photograph of his family from before the fire, he’d not only felt a slight lump in his throat at the sentiment, he’d also felt remarkably small and completely lacking in comparison. It was a good thing they’d come to a mutual understanding that their birthdays would be a no-gift zone, because Derek wasn’t sure he could’ve handled double the inferiority complex this time of year.

“I found a copy of the photo from the digital archives of the town newspaper. It was for some fundraiser committee your mom chaired, I think. I saved a copy, and googled around for some pointers on how to increase the resolution so I could print out a decent version of it,” Stiles had explained.

Derek had nodded absently, his fingers lightly tracing the curve of his mother’s face under the cool glass. His whole family had stared back at him, carefree and unburdened in the moment that photo had been taken, eyes all shiny from a sunny afternoon picnic. “Yeah, I remember. It was a Pets in the Park fundraiser for the local animal shelter.” There had been an ache in the pit of his stomach at the reminder of everything he’d lost, but it wasn’t as sharp as it had once been. Now, it had been dulled by time, and tempered by the meaningful relationships he’d found, foremost of which was the one with the man beside him. “Thank you,” he’d said slowly, slightly surprised that his voice hadn’t cracked at the pool of emotion swirling within him.

“Anytime, big guy.” Stiles had leaned in, his weight and warmth freely offered as a source of silent strength.

But when he’d pulled out his gift for Stiles, he had had that sinking feeling of failing an important test. He hadn’t even had time to wrap it properly, opting to place a haphazard bow on it instead. “Sorry, I didn’t know …”

Stiles had grabbed the cellophane-covered box with a puzzled expression. “A bath set?” he’d asked slowly. “Is this your way of telling me I stink?”

There had been amusement in the younger man’s tone, devoid of upset or disappointment, but that hadn’t stopped Derek from feeling upset and disappointed in himself. After Stiles had gone through all the trouble of giving him such a personal and meaningful gift, he’d reciprocated with … soap. “Remember when you were on break during Thanksgiving,” he’d started to explain. “That necromancer problem we had?”

“Oh, damn, do I ever! We spent the whole night trying to wash zombie goo out of bodily crevices I never knew I had!” Then, realization had set in as those rich brown eyes widened. “This is perfect, Derek! Thank you!” And just like that, Stiles had fallen on him with his usual gracelessness, and proceeded to express his ‘gratitude’ properly.

That had been last year. But this time around, right before Stiles had returned to campus for his final two semesters of college, Derek had stumbled upon the ideal Christmas gift, while they were cleaning, of all things. They’d been packing up and storing some of Stiles’ stuff before the younger man headed back to school when they’d gotten diverted by some dusty, old boxes in the Sheriff’s attic. Somehow, in the way of procrastination, they’d ended up flipping through old photo albums when Stiles had paused to tell him about a picture of his mother.

“Oh, there’s the locket my dad helped me buy for Mother’s Day when I was eight,” Stiles had said as he’d pointed to a picture of Claudia Stilinski, vivacious and beaming brightly at the camera. Anyone could see where Stiles had gotten his smile. “I didn’t have the greatest taste in jewelry, so it doesn’t look like much, but she was so excited when she got it. She wore it all the time.”

“It’s nice that you have a memento to remember her by,” Derek had supplied.

Stiles’ shoulders had slumped a little at the comment. “Yeah, I think we accidentally sold it during a garage sale not long after she died. Dad wasn’t exactly in the best place, and he just wanted to get rid of the memories because they hurt so much back then. Lots of regret now. Who knows? It might’ve found another home, or it might be in a garbage dump somewhere.”

And that comment had led him down the winding, convoluted path to where he was now: standing in front of a teenage girl with bright blue hair and an eclectic ensemble of a loose plaid shirt, artfully ripped leggings, and combat boots.

“A hundred bucks,” the girl re-stated, her tone indicating that this wasn’t a negotiation.

“One hundred? The pawn shop owner said you only paid five dollars for it.” He could be stubborn too, though deep down, he knew he wasn’t really in a position of power in this situation, much as that rankled him.

Ms. Blue-hair shrugged. “So? If you want it that bad, then you should be willing to pay for it.”

She had him there. Three months of diligently interviewing the Stilinski neighbors, and following a trail of multiple goodwill and pawn shops had led him to that very locket hanging from the girl’s neck, that very locket Stiles had shown him in that old photo of his mother. He gave the teen what Stiles had laughingly termed his ‘murder-brow’ look and pulled out his wallet. Of course, he would pay, especially after all the work he’d put into tracking it down, and because this was for Stiles. He didn’t have to like being swindled like this though.

“That’s a nice jacket, by the way.”

Derek looked up from pulling out the cash and froze. He glared at the girl, hoping the intensity of his stare would deter whatever she was about to insinuate. It didn’t work.

“No,” he said flatly as she watched him expectantly.

“Okay, I guess we’re done here then. Nice meeting you.” And with that, she turned and started to walk away.

Derek ground his teeth together to keep from outright growling and fought hard to not wolf out. He hated being bested like this. Life would’ve been so much simpler if he could just take the damned piece of jewelry by force and run off with it. Stupid morals.

“Fine,” he conceded with a clenched jaw after she’d managed to walk several feet away.

She turned with a triumphant smile as he started to shrug off his leather jacket. When he held it out with the wad of cash, she unclasped the chain without any further objections and handed it over. “Pleasure doing business with you, sir.”

(***)

Stiles’ name flashed on his lock screen just as he was pulling up to his loft.

“Hey, you back already?” he answered as he shifted his car into park. His regular visits to Stanford notwithstanding, he’d been anticipating Stiles’ winter break for a while, and the timing couldn’t have worked out any better with him finding the locket when he had. “I was going to pick you up tonight after you’ve had a few hours with your dad.”

Several seconds of heavy breathing greeted his words, and almost instantly, he was on alert, muscles tensing and heartrate increasing. “Stiles?”

“Yeah, Derek, I’m here,” a familiar voice sounded through the phone. “Sorry, just had to get around Scott to check something out. But no, I’m not home yet. Got sidetracked on my way into town. Can you come to the preserve right now? The trail just off Parsons. We’ve got, um, a problem.”

Since his return to Beacon Hills, the supernatural activity in the area had decreased significantly, especially with a solid pack established in the area now, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t the occasional run-in with creatures bringing in death and mayhem. This sounded like one of those times. Shifting gears into reverse, he responded without hesitation, “On my way.”

The trip to the preserve was quick, the route having been travelled so many times that he could probably drive it eyes closed. After parking in the lot off Parsons, he picked up Stiles’ scent almost immediately, along with a few others of the pack, and had no problems tracking the source down a few hundred feet off a popular running path.

Not surprisingly, Scott noticed him first, looking up from a patch of tall grass and nodding in greeting as Derek silently approached. Stiles stood more out in the open, back turned and head down as he tapped busily on his phone. Once upon a time, his quiet ‘stalking’ would’ve caused a flailing of limbs and a high-pitched yelp from the younger man, but of the familiarity borne from the years of closeness, Stiles simply turned, smiled, and greeted him with a warm ‘hey’ as if he’d known he was there the whole time. And all things considered, he probably had.

They’d never been a couple for overt displays of affection, but the way Stiles unconsciously leaned toward him, trusting and open, worked just as well in telling Derek how the other man felt. He usually did the same, subtly breathing in the scent of his boyfriend and feeling more settled in his presence. They hadn’t seen each for a couple of weeks, and he’d missed having Stiles near.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking around for the rest of the pack. Their scents were fainter, which meant they had been here recently, but had likely wandered off or left altogether.

“It’s Christmastime in Beacon Hills, so the usual. Y’know, carolers, Santa parades, sleigh rides, tidings of comfort and joy, and oh yeah, witches.”

Derek had never been bothered by Stiles’ sarcasm, though he wouldn’t openly admit that if asked about their first encounters with each other, but now, he found the trait rather endearing. “So, we’re dealing with a witch. How bad?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I was driving back into town when I saw a kid running across the road. Freaked me out, and barely stopped in time. When I went to check on him, he was crying and said an old woman had tried to take him. At first, I thought it was an attempted kidnapping, but then, he said that there was a lot of screaming coming from her big bag, and he was scared of getting stuffed in there with all the other kid. For this town, that triggered alarm bells. Stuffing kids into bags and lugging them around is not your regular run-of-the-mill kidnapper MO. I called my dad, and he came out here with a few units, but is running interference on the supernatural front. He’d mentioned that this was the third attempted kidnapping this month, so the deputies are on high alert. They still think it’s a regular human predator, so they’re canvassing the other side of the preserve right now, which means we can do our own investigation here. I called Scott, and the others are now fanned out, doing a search to see if we can catch a scent.”

“No luck yet,” Scott added as he strode over to join them. “Just a whole bunch of the usual smells, and with the people that use the running trails, it’s hard to pinpoint a specific one. We’re not exactly sure what we’re looking for.”

“I think I have a lead though.” Stiles held out his phone to show an etching of a stooped crone with a large sack. “We might have an Icelandic witch in the area, one that kidnaps and eats children, but I’m not a hundred percent. I hope I’m not right because … well, children! But she’s supposed to be active around Christmas. I need to double-check some books at my house to make sure though.”

Derek nodded, not surprised that Stiles had pretty much figured it out already. As human as Stiles was, he was arguably one of the pack’s most valuable assets, and truth be told, Derek felt quite proud of the other man’s quick wit and life-saving accomplishments. “So, you need to go home then?”

Stiles made a sound of agreement as he tucked his phone away and gave him an apologetic look. No words were needed to communicate how sorry he was that their reunion wasn’t what they’d planned.

“Okay, call us with any info,” Scott chimed in. “Derek and I will probably be more useful if we keep scouting the area. This is children we’re talking about. I don’t want anymore of them put in danger.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Alpha leader, sir,” Stiles replied jokingly, giving his friend a mock salute.

The years had matured Scott somewhat, enough that the erstwhile werewolf took his role and responsibilities somewhat seriously now. And for this, Derek was grateful.

Scott gave Stiles a shove to get him on his way, before shaking his head with a laugh and started to move back to the tall grass he’d been searching through earlier. “Go, you idiot.”

Stiles responded with the very mature gesture of sticking out his tongue. Then, Derek felt the younger man’s arm wrap lightly around his waist and pull him close for a quick kiss. The motion was casual, natural, and one that Derek returned without thought. “Sorry, not what we’d planned when I got back, huh? Let’s catch this witch fast so we can start our Christmas cuddle session, ‘kay?”

Derek raised an eyebrow at the comment. His boyfriend sure did have a way with words sometimes. “Christmas cuddle?”

“Hey, it is what it is.” Stiles shrugged innocently as he started to move away.

“I’m not calling it that.”

“Suit yourself, Sourwolf, but I’ve officially labelled it, and you can’t take that away from me,” Stiles said as he walked backwards toward the nearby trail. Derek half-expected him to trip on some invisible rock in the next few seconds. “Gonna say it all I want!”

He rolled his eyes as the younger man’s antics. “Go.”

“Christmas cuddle! Oh, and far be it for me to complain about seeing you in that t-shirt, but you do know it’s winter, right? We may live in California, and you may have some super-awesome internal wolfy furnace going, but I’m cold just looking at you. Where’s your jacket?”

“Go!” While he didn’t feel the chill as acutely, he didn’t need to be reminded about his fleecing by a greedy, blue-haired teenager.

After Stiles wave his acknowledgement and jogged out of sight, Derek turned back to join Scott. Their relationship may have started out roughly, but they’d fallen into a companionable pattern over the last few years. It was likely because of everything Scott had been through and his maturation, but Derek guessed part of it may have been out of respect for both their relationships with Stiles. Without much preamble, they quickly sectioned off their respective search zones, and fanned out into the thicker parts of the preserve. Derek had grown up here, had run and played amongst the trees and foliage so often that walking through it now stirred a sense of homecoming. Still, sometimes, there were things here that could still surprise him. Like the odd whiff of fear and panic he caught a few minutes after he’d split off from Scott. It was faint, probably non-existent for the newer wolves, but it was there, so out of place with the earthy scent of moss and soil. He started to follow it, his senses sharpening as he homed in on the potential prey. He hadn’t made much progress before he heard a howl off in the distance, and his entire body tensed, ready for action.

They’d found something!

Once he pinpointed the source, he was off, dashing through branches and over roots with a surety of stride that had been acquired from a lifetime of running these woods. He didn’t get very far though. He heard it first, a loud symphony of disembodied laughter all around him. Before he could stop and confront whatever it was, he caught a flutter of movement in his periphery, and then, he was flying, thrown through the air by an impact harder than anything in recent memory. He was out cold before he even landed.

(***)

He wasn’t unconscious for long. At least, he didn’t think he was, given that generations of werewolf evolution had refined his healing abilities to the point where he shouldn’t be. But however long it was, it was enough to find himself strapped to a board – or a crude table, perhaps – staring up at the flickering shadows of a stone ceiling. Or a cave? He honestly hated losing time like this and waking up in unexpected places, which, given who he was and where he lived, was an actual occupational hazard.

A whimper somewhere to his left drew his attention just then, and he tilted his head at an uncomfortable angle to take better stock of where he was, and with whom. Just within his field of vision, he could barely make out a small figure sat huddled inside a primitively constructed cage no higher than his hip. A wood fire burned beneath a big vat just a few feet away, thoroughly heating up whatever was inside if the bubbling sound was any indication.

“Hey,” he said quietly, if a little hoarsely, hoping the hunched figure would shift enough into the firelight for him to make out who it was.

The figure shuffled over, and Derek could see the tear-streaked face of a boy, probably no more than eight or nine years old. Stiles had said there’d been attempted kidnappings. It looked like one had succeeded.

“H-hello? You’re awake.”

“Yeah, I am.” He wasn’t good with children, barring the few cousins he’d played with when he was younger, yet that had been different. They’d been family. He knew this kid was scared, could hear it in the tremor of his voice and smell it in the dankness of the air, but he wasn’t sure what he could say to help with that. “I’m Derek. What’s your name?”

“A-Andy.”

“Well, Andy, if you give me a minute, we can get out of here and I’ll take you back to your parents.” He tried to sound reassuring, though he wasn’t sure it worked as well as he’d intended when he was tugging and testing the thick ropes tied around his chest, waist, and legs. They were tight, but he managed to slide a hand free enough to shift and start slicing away at the restraints with his claw.

“Just Mom,” the boy said quietly. “Dad left.”

“Okay, we’re going to find your mom then. I’m sure she’s really missing you right now.” He figured that keeping a calm tone and easy conversation going was as good a plan as any while he worked on the ropes.

Andy shuffled a little in his cage, his face dipping down again into the shadows cast by the nearby fire. “She’s working. She’s always working. She promised I’d get to see Dad, but she couldn’t take me, so I went to find him myself.”

Which might explain why the boy hadn’t been reported missing yet. There was some give to the rope by his right hip, so he tilted his head and tried to look over at the boy and hoped he properly projected the sincerity of his words. “That doesn’t mean she’s not missing you, Andy. I know she’s probably very worried. She – “

The stench assaulted him first, sour and rancid, before he felt the whole space shake with a reverberating thud. Andy quickly scooted back into the corner of his cage with a scared squeak, leaving Derek to turn and search out the source in the dim light. An old woman came into view near the foot of his table, posture bent and face haggard, each of her steps sending tiny shockwaves through the cave. Her long, gray hair hung in a greasy, unkempt mess, framing a crooked nose and a gap-toothed, mirthless grin. She resembled the picture Stiles had shown him on his phone, but the younger man had neglected to mention one thing. She was a fucking giant!

The whole cave suddenly felt cramped, and her looming presence caused his heartrate to spike. He worked faster on his ropes.

“Good dog. You’re too old and gristly for my liking, but if my lads want a pet, a pet they will get,” she said in a voice deeper than he’d expected. She patted his stomach dismissively as she passed, and he fought hard not cry out at the jarring, painful contact. “Now, where’s my little snack? Little boy for a little snack. Little boy snack.” She cackled at her own wit.

He heard Andy whimper again as the old, giant crone ambled her way over to the cage, and he wanted to tell the boy to be brave, to hold on because he was almost through his rope. Yet, as he was about to do just that, he caught the scent of metal and electricity in the air. It cut through the myriad of other unpleasant smells like an olfactory beacon, clear and crisp and a harbinger of something – or someone – familiar. He couldn’t help but smile a little at the arrival of the calvary, even as Andy shrieked when the witch pulled him roughly from the cage and shuffled over to the boiling pot.

Then, several things happened at once. First, voices that sounded like the disembodied laughter he’d heard earlier came from somewhere outside. This time, however, they were shouting out in distress, intermingled with the familiar voices of his pack. The cries gave the witch pause for a split second, just as he cut through the last of his restraints and pulled free. After that, he was up and leaping through the air, aiming to get Andy free of the old woman’s clutches and away from the fire. And he managed just that, wrapping his arms around the boy as he clawed at the large hand that held him. But he underestimated the reaction speed of the crone, and barely managed to turn his body to shield Andy before her other hand swatted his side. He landed with bone-cracking impact against the boiling pot, adrenalin enhancing his movements as he rolled quickly to avoid landing on the fire or getting splattered by the hot liquid in the toppling vat. He was pretty sure he’d probably cracked a few ribs, but they were already healing. Andy seemed none the worse for wear when he looked down, unhurt and safe in his arms still.

“My boys! What are they doing to my boys?” the witch wailed.

Derek tensed briefly, thinking the giantess would take her surprise and anger out on him. He readied himself for a fight, but instead, she turned and marched the other way, he and Andy seemingly forgotten. He eased himself up with a barely suppressed groan, and let the small body pressed against his chest slide down to his lap. He could hear the pack outside, the growls of the wolves and the foreign-sounding chants from Stiles, and he knew that they had it handled.

“You okay?” he asked as he gave Andy a good once-over.

The boy simply nodded, his whole body still trembling. Then, without a word, he leaned forward and hugged Derek as if his life depended on it. Not sure how else to respond, Derek hugged the child back.

That was how Stiles found them a few minutes later when he stumbled clumsily into the cave. After some coaxing, they both managed to talk Andy into finally letting go. Scott took it from there, coming in to take the boy away to find the Sheriff, who had been called to the area when Stiles had triangulated Derek’s location. Stiles waited a moment after Scott had left before he turned and threw himself into Derek’s arms.

“Oh, thank every deity I just prayed to you’re okay. Had me worried.”

Derek squeezed the warm, lithe body clinging to him like an octopus, and bent down to briefly nuzzle his partner’s neck. He breathed in the fortifying scent that was simply Stiles and used it to ground himself after the crazy events that had just happened. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m fine.”

“I know. You’re one tough son of a bitch, but the uncertainty always gets me.” Stiles pulled away and gave him a look with those ridiculously wide Bambi-like eyes that made Derek’s insides go warm. “And of course, you would go all superhero and save a child while we saved you. With the way the boy was holding on to you, I thought you’d replaced me with a cuter, newer model.”

Derek quirked up his lip into a lopsided, half-smile. “Never,” he returned easily. “If I did, I would at least try to get a good trade-in price for you.”

“Smartass.” As his comeback, Stiles smacked his arm with the back of his hand. He then slipped said hand into Derek’s, intertwined their fingers, and started walking out of the cave. “See if I ever send baddies back through an intercontinental gate for you again.”

“So, she wasn’t a witch?” Derek asked as he followed Stiles’ lead out of the cave

“Oh, no, she was a witch. The giantess witch, Gryla, and her sons, the Yule Lads. I don’t know how they got here, but I was working off of some quick and dirty research, so the best I could do was track down caves in the area, which is what the literature says she tends to favor, and find a spell to send her back to her native Iceland.”

Derek silently listened as Stiles explained what had happened, both grateful and proud – and not for the first or last time either – at the quick wit and resourcefulness of the guy he got to call his. They eventually emerged from the cave, and he immediately felt lighter the moment he could smell the fresh earth and foliage again. The sun was beginning to set, creating lengthening shadows of the redwoods and the oaks that stood like sentinels around them. And with that came a distinct chill in the air. He felt Stiles shiver at the lower temperature, and wished he’d had his jacket around to offer the other man. The jacket that he’d exchanged for …

With his free hand, he reached into his jeans pocket where he’d tucked the locket earlier, and –

Shit!

Without another thought, he turned and sprinted back into the cave. He quickly scanned the area and did not see the locket anywhere. His eyes then fell on the overturned pot and the still-burning embers of the woodfire. A dash of panic began to taint his actions, but he didn’t stop to quell it. Instead, he rushed over to the dying fire and started digging through the ashes. His hands burned and healed almost simultaneously as he dug desperately through the charred wood, an odd combination of frustration and helplessness clouding his judgement.

“Derek?”

He heard Stiles, but didn’t answer, mainly because his fingers wrapped around a clump of metal just then. He looked down at what used to be Stiles’ mother’s locket, the piece now misshapen by the heat and bearing no resemblance to what it used to be. He dropped the thing, both dejected and angry. This was supposed to be the year. This was supposed to be the Christmas where he would show Stiles how much the younger man meant to him by putting the care and thought into his gift that Stiles had always put into his. But everything… everything had been for nothing.

“Derek? What’s wrong? You okay?” Stiles approached and knelt beside him, looking ready to join him in whatever he was searching for.

He brushed the soot and ash off his hands, shook his head, and stood up. “Nothing. I’m good. Just thought I dropped something but I was wrong. C’mon, let’s go home.”

Puzzled, Stiles stood too, though he didn’t pry, and together, they made their way out of the cave once more, but not before Derek threw one last, longing glance at the pile of ashes.

(***)

“Oh, my god, I’m so stuffed,” Stiles said as he plopped down on the couch and rubbed his belly. “I might have to be rolled off to bed later because there’s no way I’m standing up.”

Derek smiled softly at the younger man’s dramatics, and joined him on the sofa. Christmas dinner had been an intimate one again between just the two of them, with Derek doing most of the preparation, while Stiles had ‘helped’. He didn’t mind though. He enjoyed their time together. The way they fit together, their ease with each other … it had all been hard-won, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything. The younger man had chatted animatedly throughout the meal and Derek had let him go on, wanting to prolong the whole thing because, if he was being honest, he was dreading what would happen afterwards: their gift exchange.

“Merry Christmas, Derek,” Stiles said, as if reading his thoughts. He reached over to the end table and grabbed an unevenly wrapped gift.

Derek stared at the thing for a moment, just knowing deep down it would be a typical Stiles present, all special and personal. Why did Stiles even stay with him? He must come across as an unthoughtful, unappreciative jerk. Slowly, he unwrapped the gift, and revealed a collage of artfully arranged photographs. There were trees and flowers and butterflies dancing on sunbeams across open trails. They were beautiful, more so in that Derek recognized where they had been taken: the preserve.

“You sometimes talk about how you grew up in the preserve,” Stiles explained. “How it’s a second home to you, and how you have all those memories with your family there. I know the memories are special, so I went and took some pictures during summer break. I hope these help you remember all those good times.”

Derek blinked away the prickling he felt in his eyes. Stiles may have assumed he was touched by the gift, which was fine. He didn’t need to know what Derek was really feeling. He didn’t need to know that in that moment, he thought Stiles really deserved so much better than him.

“Thank you. It’s perfect,” he choked out. “I – “ He didn’t know how to continue. What else could he say? “My present isn’t –“

He stopped. Stiles looked at him expectantly. Not finding the right words, he leaned over to the coffee table and grabbed the last-minute gift bag he’d filled the day before. “Here.”

He looked away while Stiles eagerly dug into the bag. He knew what was in there, and he didn’t need to see the lackluster reaction the younger man would have at the assortment of Reese’s candies he’d find.

“Oh, this is awesome, Derek!” Stiles exclaimed excitedly. “Holy shit, there’s a half pound peanut butter cup in here! Hello, Heaven!”

Derek felt Stiles’ arms wrap around him in gratitude, but he couldn’t find it in himself to return the gesture. The younger man seemed to notice and pulled back. “Derek?”

He turned and took in Stiles’ questioning gaze. He couldn’t do this. They complemented each other so well in everything, but somehow, in this, they were completely mismatched. “Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked in earnest.

“What?”

“My gifts. Doesn’t it bother you that my gifts are so … so bad. Yours are always so … so perfect.” It felt good to get that off his chest.

Stiles gawked at him as if he was speaking a foreign language. “Huh? But I think your gifts are perfect. And that’s not a lie. You can tell, right?”

True, Derek hadn’t heard any change in the other man’s heartrate to indicate otherwise, but no one could like his choice of gifts that much. “I just ... I wanted to show you how much I appreciate you, how much I care about you, the same way to do for me, especially with the gifts you give me. But I can’t seem to do that.” This was uncharted territory for him, this admission. He wasn’t used to revealing his insecurities like this. Yet, this was Stiles he was talking to, he reminded himself. Stiles, who never had any shame in revealing his every failure and weakness, and who gave his trust without fear of being hurt. Derek owed him the same. “I found your mother’s locket,” he finally said. “The one from the album you showed me. I found it, and was going to give it to you, but I lost it when we fought that witch last week. I’m sorry.”

He stared at the coffee table. He stared at the discard wrapping paper of the collage he’d just received. He started at everything but Stiles.

And then, “That’s what you were worried about? Not being able to show me you loved me?” Stiles’ tone was incredulous, and it was enough for Derek to turn his attention to the younger man again. “You’re an idiot, Derek,” Stiles continued. “For the record, your presents are awesome. But that’s not the point. You drive three hours each way to visit me on campus every other weekend. You cook Christmas dinner for us every year. You help me pack for college each fall. You drop everything and meet me in a forest, no questions asked, when I call. You even spent all night picking zombie guts out of my hair. If that doesn’t say ‘love’, I don’t know what does!”

To put an exclamation to his point, Stiles pulled him in for a long, lingering kiss. “I love you, Derek Hale, and I know you love me. You don’t need to give me things to show me that. You show me every day in the things you do. And that’s more than enough.”

Derek looked at the man sitting beside him, stunned and at a loss. “I –“

“It’s more than enough,” Stiles re-stated firmly. “Now, stop your self-flagellation, and show me how much you appreciate my gift by kissing me.”

Stiles pulled him in again, and this time, Derek did put everything he had into that kiss because the weight of those heartfelt words were slowly sinking in. He loved Stiles. And Stiles … Stiles knew that. He groaned in appreciation at the true gift he’d been given as he pushed the younger man down onto his back, bracing his weight on his arms as he ground their hips together. Fuck it, he felt like he’d really won the lottery in finding Stiles … because Stiles was right, he realized as he deepened their kiss, tasting and teasing the smart, sarcastic, and silly man beneath him.

This … This was more than enough.

#obsessedbutonline #stereksanta20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

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