#Maybe he wears all of them at once joey style

[deadbydangit]

Maybe a super duper fluffy moment between masked killer and S/o? Like they're laying down and they notice S/o is quiet for a second. She then takes their unmasked face and says "You're so pretty. Not sure how I got lucky to have you."

This with Ghostface, Frank, Joey Huntress and Trapper? Thank you!

I'm having a bit of trouble with this prompt, so I changed it a bit. Hope that's okay. Please enjoy.

A Reader with a mask killer s/o who wants to see their face

Ghostface, Legion (Frank), Legion (Joey), Huntress, Trapper

Ghostface

Do. Not. Touch. His. Mask.

Seriously.

Don't.

He won't even let you.

No.

Don't look at him like that.

Come on!

Ugh! Fine!

Count yourself lucky.

He's got to keep his identity hidden!

You should know that!

Only under a few conditions.

One: No one else is around.

And I mean no one but you.

Two: it's only for a second.

Three: you'll have to do something for him at a later time.

If you choose to accept, then be ready.

Cause Danny is a stunner.

Tell him he's gorgeous.

Because, deep down, he isn't the most confident in his looks.

Before he pulls his mask up, pull him in for a real kiss.

After that day, he might leave his mask off once in a while.

Only around you though.

Legion (Frank)

Even though he acts tough, he really doesn't feel that way.

Yes, his mask hides his face.

But it also shields him from the world around him.

He's experienced enough neglect and cruelty at the hand of his foster parents that he wants to hide himself.

Frank will take it off for you.

He just needs a safe space to do so.

He'd prefer if the rest of the Legion was around.

And he's only going to take it off for you when he really trusts you.

It's going to be a spur of the moment thing.

"Hey, S/O. I know you've been asking to see me with my mask on so... Here."

He'll pull it down, but he won't look you in the eye.

Find a way to show him how much this little act means to you and how much you love him.

Legion (Joey)

You want him to take off his mask?

Sure, okay.

Unlike Frank, Joey doesn't really hide behind it for anything.

Okay, he isn't very clean shaven and that's kind of embarrassing.

But other than that, who cares.

He just wears it because the rest of the Legion does.

He just kind of incorporated it into his own style and kept it.

But, yeah.

He doesn't care where you do it.

Although, keeping the other killers and survivors guessing about what he looks like adds a mysterious aura around him.

So maybe just with the other Legion around.

He's a pretty good looking guy.

Make sure to say that.

Because, if you do, he'll have it on a lot less for you.

Not to mention, kisses are just better that way.

Huntress

Has she never taken it off in front of you?

Guess not.

She'll take it off, but she doesn't want the survivors to see.

She likes to keep them scared.

The mask is the only thing she has from her mother.

So, she will take it off.

But don't expect it to leave her hands.

She has a very chiseled face with some hardened features.

But she also has pretty cute rosy cheeks.

Be sure to tell her that.

Because she'll blush and those cheeks will turn even redder.

Since Anna's mask doesn't cover her mouth, kisses are the same.

However, you can kiss her nose and forehead now!

And she loves that.

So make sure to give her plenty.

Trapper

His face?

Yeah, what about it?

You want to see it?

Why?

He doesn't find himself physically attractive and doesn't want to frighten you off.

He'll make himself seem like some monster without it on.

"I have scars and scratches all over."

"My eyes are sunken and have deep bags."

"My-"

Just shut him up.

Tell him that no matter how awful he thinks he looks, that you're always going to love him.

Make sure it's in private.

He wants the survivors and killers to be scared of him.

Or at the very least weary.

He prides himself on being a rough mysterious guy.

Albeit hesitant, Evan will remove his mask.

He does have scars and scratches.

His eyes are sunk and hollow.

But he's handsome in every way.

Tell him that.

Praise every little detail.

Let him know how much you adore him.

Kiss every inch of his face.

Then, maybe, just maybe, he'll take it off around you a bit more.

[siriannatan]

How to get fWhip to dress up - fWhipScott

I have no excuse. An idea along the lines of 'what if fWhip dresses up like stereotypical handsome vampire' came to my brain and this came out of it.

fWhip was fed up with everyone telling him to dress better ever since the stupid crown picked him as the new Lord Emperor. And it was only two months, meaning two dumb monthly meetings he hosted just so he doesn't look bad following Katherine in wearing the damn thing. Meaning Gem and Pearl invading his mansion and trying to force him I to the depths of his close he didn't visit since becoming the Count of Grimlands.

"If I dress up once will you two leave me alone?" He sighed the evening before the third meeting. 

"Fine, but only so you can see that it actually makes a difference with how others talk to you," Gem sighed as Peal almost dragged her out. fWhip just sighed. He loved his dear twin a lot but she could be a bit much. Especially when it came to how rulers from outside WRA saw fWhip.

With another sigh and almost full glass of wine he went deeper into his walk in closet than he did in years. Luckily his staff made sure, against his wishes, that everything in there actually fit him and wasn't from when he was twelve. Meaning he had no trouble finding a sufficiently elegant shirt, pants and fitting vest. Coat seemed like a bit too much. He also dug out shoes more elegant than his usual heavy work boots.

Sitting through having his hair styled properly was instantly worth it as he walked into the meeting room. Putting on his most annoyed expression.

All the jaws hit the floor and Gem beamed with joy at seeing her brother in something that actually fit him properly and looked nice at the same time. And his hair was properly brushed and tied together. And there was a dark purple ribbon in his hair, nicely matching his vest that together with his rather open dark gray shirt showed just enough to remain decet. And he had his nails painted and...

But Gem's unbridled glee wasn't the best reaction. 

The best was Scott freezing in panic as his face got more and more red. Quickly hiding it behind his fan and wafting himself faster as frost formed on his and Jimmy's glasses of water, and the windows behind them. Though that was barely visible wth the shutters closed tightly so fWhip doesn't burn in his own house.

"Don't get too used to this, it's damn uncomfortable," he grumbled while making his way to his seat. His shoes clicking on the floor being the only sound aside from Scott's fan.

Scott had no idea how he managed to get through the meeting. How any of them did quite honestly. Without it devolving into a discussion on where the hell was fWhip hiding this nice clothes and all this sex appeal he was radiating. He was maybe starting to understand all.the trashy vampire romance novels he read when he first realised he maybe liked fWhip a bit more than as just a strong ally.

And... Did his pants have to be so tight? Scott wondered, as Sausage' rattled on about some bandit's. The other members of WRA didn't seem as shocked by fWhip's appearance. But they knew him longer than Scott. He only jointed the alliance when Joey - and by extension Scott's traitorous older brother Xornoth - joined the Cod Alliance. Scott himself could not care less about some fish.

But he did care about the sexy vampire and his darkened, usually sky blue eyes. He had to be hungry. Likely having to sit through hi staff doing his hair and helping him get dressed properly. Fancy really looked good on him.

It looked so good on fWhip, Scott made up some stupid excuse to do with something his council was bothering him about to stay longer. It wasn't really an important or interesting to him matter but it worked. And he was now following a likely at least slightly hungry vampire to his private office where he usually dealt with matters do to with his allies.

"So, that tunnel you mentioned," fWhip started, leaning against his desk instead of sitting in his chair. It meant that there was no desk separating him from Scott.

Scott needed a second to remember what damn tunnel fWhip meant. "Ah. Yes. My council have been bothering me to ask if it'd be possible," he rambled, feeling more and more embarrassed. Avoiding looking directly at fWhip, especially since he decided to ditch his damn vest and indecent amount of his chest were on full view for Scott.

"Your council, you say. So you wanting to talk to me alone has nothing to do with how you were practically drooling over me that whole meeting?" fWhip hummed and suddenly, with far too much fluidity and grace was suddenly very much in Scott's personal space. Knee between the elf's legs. One hand gently guiding Scott to lok at him. Other helping him support himself but Scott was quite sure it was there just to cage him in. "So?" The vampire grinned, barely flashing his fangs.

"I... I tho... You look nice today..." Scott rambled, his gaze shifting to the crossbow mounted behind fWhip's desk. Anywhere that wasn't fWhip's face actually. "Not that you don't usually, you always do but especially today..." Scott mumbled and finally managed to make himself shut up.

"Nice you say?" fWhip hummed, his hand on Scott's chin gently moving to his shoulder but not for a second stopped touching him. "Push me away if it's too much," he said and started leaning in.

Scott was sure he was about to be bitten. And strangely since he's been sheltered his whole life, was excited by the thought. But that wasn't what fWhip had planned. 

He instead kissed Scott. Effectively stealing his first kiss. But the elven prince didn't mind. It felt nice even if he wasn't sure how it was supposed to feel. It certainly didn't feel like he imagined based on his books. No one in the books grabbed other by the shirt and pulled them closer as Scott did with fWhip. There was no sudden explosion of heat or feeling in his stomach. Just light tingling where fangs nicked his lips, not enough to draw blood. And the fWhip's neither cold nor warm lips, and...

And fWhip pulled back far too soon. Pushing Scott into the chair as he tried chasing his lips purely on instinct. "Careful darling, unlike me you need to breathe," fWhip chuckled as Scott realised he did indeed forget about that need of his. As the elf caught his breath he studied the vampire's face. He was as calm and collected as always, and the way he picked his lips had Scott blushing. 

"Can..." Scott started but stopped himself. How does one ask a vampire to bite them? 

"If you want more kisses we'll have to move somewhere else, somewhere where you won't be at risk of neck cramps," fWhip chuckled and to Scott's dismay left his personal space. He did not do anything to fix his shirt though.

"Oh... That was kind of my first kiss... But it's not what I meant to ask... Would you be willing to bite me?" He rambled out on almost single breath. He had no idea what had fWhip looking as shocked as he did and had no idea which would be better for him.

"I almost forgot how sheltered you were your whole life," fWhip groaned, once more leaning against his desk. "Ar you sure you want me to bite you?" Luckily he took a small mercy on Scott and did not mention the first fact...

"Yes," Scott nodded. He was quite curious how it'd feel.

fWhip nodded and led Scott to what turned out to be his bedroom. Or simply a room he rested in since vampires apparently need some rest from time to time...

Waking up in some amount of pain here and there in his body next to fWhip's almost motionless self was almost worth the talking to he got from his council. Or how Sausage and Pearl looked at him at the next WRA meeting. So what if he had to cover his neck from time to time? At least Gem was too happy with her brother dressing up nicer more often to notice...

[nightmare-dreamt]

My name is Joey, im a Aquarius and my other zodiacs are Leo, Sagittarius and Aries, my MBTI is ENTP, im transgender, aromatic and unlabeled, im adhdtistic, i have brown shoulder length hair(which will be cut off soon to more boyish hair), i wear glasses and im pretty much in between skinny but a little bit chubby, also lastly I wear a shit load of styles like goth (trad goth, romantic goth, mall goth and nu goth), gyaru (hime gal, himekaji, agejo, rokku manba and kogal), scenemo/emo, and lastly vkei, ouji and lolita.

this is what I look like ^^

My personality is ENTP but usually I’m a little non-talkative and awkward at first when I meet a new person so it may take me some time to adjust to them before I can be myself, i usually love to ramble my interests to other people and I also enjoy when they talk to me too, im also not afraid to get snarky when someone bothers me to much, im also pretty protective of people and my own interests LMAOO always that’s all I got for his section👍

My hobbies/interests(warning: fun shit ahead⚠️): anime/manga, fashion, art (drawing, painting, pottery, digital art, etc), gaming, cooking, learning new languages (Japanese and Spanish), i also like doing gym, listening to music/making music, musicals, hanging out with my friends, going shopping, cosplaying, social media and more so on

Dislikes: negative mentions of my voice, comparing me to people/saying stuff like “you remind me of ____” ,also spiders.. I scream whenever I see one, fish, sleeping in uncomfortable places

Thanks again!

Matchup For Joey!

This is my second matchup so bare with me if things are wrong. For the most part, I hope you enjoy!

Hacker:Akudama Drive

The two of you met within a group mission, both being crucial parts that needed to work together, but Hacker wasn't for the idea of working along with someone else and worked on his own things in quiet. When the mission began going south, he started to realize that he was going to need to work together even if it was out of his comfort zone.

After a few hours, Hacker began to realize that you were pretty good at what you're doing and that your work was actually useful. Shocking to most, he chooses to stay connected after the mission just in case he needs help with something. But, secretly he wants to hang out more and he thinks that you're cute… you didn't hear that from me though.

Once a year passes by, Hacker finally gets the courage to ask you out on a date, now knowing a lot about you. His preferred date night is inside, maybe watching a movie or playing a new game together. Of course if you're interested in going out somewhere, he would find some way into getting a reservation (likely hacking into the resturants database and adding a reservation in) for an expensive dinner and then taking you out to see the stars.

Hacker's not into PDA, maybe if the two of you are dating for a while he'll start feeling more comfortable but for the most part he's keeping to himself.

I feel like both of your styles would go good together, especially some of the goth ones. Hacker wouldn't be into matching outfits, but he would try and wear something similar whether it be the color or the pattern. The two of you would share music back and forth with each other, possibly even have a shared playlist for all of your guys' music. He would play music and dance around the room when he got finished with a super hard code or mission, almost like a victory dance,

Hacker would act like he didn't care about your interests and the things you ramble about, but deep down he's making sure to hear every word and remember it

An average day between the two of you is hanging out in a dark room and working on things you both enjoy, Hacker would be working on some sort of code and would ask for some advice on how to make it better.

After some time being together, I feel like Hacker would open up about his thoughts about something else being out there and how he dreams of reaching it. From that point forward, he starts opening up more to you about his insecurities and the fear of nothing actually being out there.

Kouichi Shindou: HoriMiya

You met Kouichi from your mutual friend, Miyamura, who introduced the two of you in junior high school. You weren't sure how to feel about him, but that all changed when you got to see the side of him around Miyamura, sticking up for him and helping him become a better person. Some time had gone by and the two of you were now in high school, except the two of you didn't go to the same high school. He went to another school nearby in order to get his life set together, which you're happy about until the news of him repeating his second year went around. You made sure to never let him live it down.

Valentines had rolled around and Miyamura and you were on your way home when the sounds of girls squealing were heard nearby. Across from them, the ginger haired boy tried to leave the big crowds of girls who waited for him to accept their gifts.

Watching the interaction between the two, a new feeling bursted within as you stomped over through the crowd of people. Grabbing Kouichi's arm, you drag him away from the crowd bringing him to your dorm not sure what to do next. Talking, he begins to question why you brought him to your house and away from those people, in which you let split that you felt jealous and didn't want him to receive valentines from other people

Once the secret was revealed, the two of you agreed to go out with each other and soon enough a relationship was born.

Date nights with Kouichi are outside in calming areas where he can feel free to be himself without the screaming girls always behind him. He once took you to a flower field filled with all sorts of flowers, along with your favorite. The two of you then had a picnic and stared at the stars when nightfall hit embracing the comfort of each other.

Takashi Morinozuka: Ouran High School Host Club

You accidentally ran into them when the group was going to the market and Honey-senpal had gotten lost needing help to find his friend. Lucky for him, you happened to be there to help and with a little bit of searching the two of you found his friends who were panically searching for their friends.

Enjoying your company, Honey-senpai wanted to keep in touch and invite you to one of his many tea parties with all of his sweets. Accepting the invite, that was how you met the blonde's best friend, Mori-senpai.

You weren't sure about him not knowing much about him considering that he didn't talk much and preferred to listen, but he won you over when Tamaki was in one of his moods and was throwing pillows around the host club. He got so angry that he threw one extremely hard your way, but before it could hit you Mori-Senpai caught it, saving your life.

From then on, the two of you became closer and soon enough a date is arranged between the two of you, plus honey of course. All of you went to a dessert cafe and had a blast, especially honey who ended up having a stomach ache after leading to Mori carrying him home, but that allowed the two of you to have some time alone.

Your guys' relationship was good besides the constant girls from the host club, but Mori and the host club members always made sure to stick up for you when one of them tried to tear you down.

Your relationship is usually spent with Honey and the host club, but there are some small chances when the two of you get to be alone, but it doesn't happen much. When the two of you are together, Mori-senpai listens about your day and makes sure to note everything that's said when you're rambling. He's a good listener and can memorize anything your saying. You mention something you want? He's already planning to get it. You had a bad day? He's planning to make it better.

Definitely boyfriend material and father material, I mean we have seen the way he acts around Honey.

That's it for the matchup and I hope you enjoyed Joey! Request are open! Feel free to send one in :)

[jedusaur]

good things this week:

my boys took out the defending champs and then took Dallas to game 7 and that... is a good thing I guess :/ no but seriously they did spectacularly well this season and I'm really proud of them and excited to see what happens next year

the Firebirds are still killing it though! my man Joey Daccord! 60 saves in triple OT! Western Conference finals up next! let's go!

hit 6 months with Steph on the same day the Kraken got eliminated so we decided to reschedule date night for a day I was not busy lying on the floor staring at the ceiling in despair, so we did our date last night and it was lovely and I love my girl a lot

UNCLE'S DAY OMFG

my brother wears red/orange/yellow tie-dye shirts pretty much every single day and he also likes Ted Lasso so I decided to get on video chat with the fam in Chicago while they watched this week's ep and it was nice to check in with them (they asked somewhat dubiously if I always watch the episodes more than once lololol)

it was my sister-in-law's birthday this week so a bunch of us filmed tasks for her to judge Taskmaster-style and I maaay have taken it a tad more seriously than some others >.> I have not received the final points breakdown but I did get to see the compilation of videos and I am certainly a contender at least

the temperature hit 90 on Monday so I got rocket bae's air conditioner set up and holy christballs my life is going to be SO much better this summer than it was last summer

made iced tea and stuck in a couple sprigs of mint from the garden and that was very nice on the hot days

one of my closest friends started watching Ted Lasso recently and in S1 she was extremely dubious that she could ever like Jamie and yesterday she got to the Amsterdam ep and messaged me that she now loves "one (1) little asshole" :D :D

had to make an important phone call about my health insurance that could have been massively tedious and difficult but actually went very smoothly and for once nobody fuckin called me ma'am

discovered a local business that looks like a great concept but the website desperately needs a copyedit, so I e-mailed them like "any chance you guys wanna hire me freelance to clean up your site" and they actually seem interested! did not really expect that, maybe I should be cold-contacting more often

made stirfry with peanut sauce and cauliflower curry and creamy fettuccine and a super tasty cheese board and then used the leftover blueberry-lemon-thyme goat cheese on a blueberry bagel with fresh basil from the garden (Mom's suggestion) and Bolivian rose salt, and all of it was delicious good job me

some of my plants are starting to emerge! got tiny lil baby radishes, snap peas, chives, and cantaloupe \o/

painted my nails sparkly gold and they look amazing in the sun

[sothischickshe]

13, 18, 23, anddd 31 (try your best but i don't have high expectations)

Really fighting the urge to just post this ask with no answer...

 13. What are you trying to make fanon through sheer force of will via your writing?

RIO STEALING AND WEARING BETH'S CLOTHES, PARTICULARLY HER ROBES. THAT'S IT, THAT'S THE POST.

 18. Say something mean about hemingway

GLADLY. yknow sometimes I think maybe it wasn't this dumbass' fault and actually I'm angry at like the cult around him, and then I read some of his stoopid macho writing advice about how you have to courageously fight your novel battle and I'm just like ??!?? SHUT THE FUCK UP. SHUT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE FUCKS UP!!!

 23. Do you think you refer to characters by name enough? Too much? Both?? Neither???

Ah, well i don't believe that there's a magical correct amount, and I think it's gonna be different for different ppl and different stories. When I read my earlier stuff I'm just like ok... But you know these characters do have names yea?? You could... Idk just spitballing here mention them outside of dialogue?? I think it's hard to figure out how and how much you wanna do that with fairly tight third person pov though, and you just gotta try things out and see what works.

And then, I think you'd have to try pretty hard to be using characters' names too much TBH.

But then again, in the gg context, the use of names (particularly for beth and rio) is v interesting and it's something that's fun to play with. Like, in the show beth basically doesn't use rio's name (pls pls a scene of her being like wait what IS your name again man??) so depending on the type of story it maybe feels a bit disingenuous to have her using it a lot/it's just fun to play with. (for example, in dirty dirty game, which is from Beth's pov, I wrote it as her being totes comfortable with referring to rio as rio in her internal monologue if it's about worcrime stuff, but all R-HIM if it was about sexy stuff.)

And I think in the original draft of climbing up the walls (which is from rio's pov and post s2 and he's in a Mood) I had him barely referring to eliza/beth by name in the narration (it was all like that bitch, this moron, that fucking maniac, the insane kook, MY MORTAL ENEMY THAT I AM PLAGUED BY DESPITE DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT woe is me woe is me woe is me etc etc etc) for the bulk of it, with it softening throughout. but then I was like idk is this dumb?? And changed it. (I think the affectation might still be thinly there but def not how it was originally.) I think if I was writing it now I'd have more confidence in it and stick to it.

 31. Are there any clichés you love to include in your writing? Any you don't like to? Elaborate!

Well to quote one of the most irritating characters of all time, clichés are clichés for a reason.

Plus, a cliché isn't always cliché?? Yknow, San junipero woulda maybe felt more cliché if it wasn't about two ladies etc.

AND I think you can involve something tropey/typical, but if it's not in the usual way, maybe that doesn't come across as cliché?

Idk if there's any in particular that I strive to include (well beyond the tropes of like brio, and my own personal fanon tics: RIO STEALS BETH'S ROBES AND TRASHTALKS HER COFFEE, RUBY WILL MOCK BAD SPELLING/GRAMMAR MERCILESSLY, BETH MAKES WEIRD PUNS ON HER NAME AND IS VERY PROUD OF THEM etc etc).

And idk if there are any im against, beyond... I guess I don't come at stories with a very tropey lens? I'm not like: OK I am going to write an angst now, or a bed sharing with no sexy times. I don't think it's an endeavour to avoid clichés, but I suppose it's also not an attempt to grasp them?

And I do think that clichés can overlap with stereotypes and I have, for example, no desire to write beth as meek or incapable or entirely submissive

[hawkwing-03]

A Cloak of Distinguished Design

I wrote this thanks to a prompt given to me by my friend!

It’s the night of House Blossom’s annual ball, and because Katherine is allied with every empire on the continent, every ruler is there, dressed in their best, most fashionable clothing. Jimmy has fancy clothing, but it doesn’t really line up with what the other empires define as “fashionable”. As opposed to Scott’s tunic and pants made from silk, his cloak made from real animal fur, and his jewels passed down through the generations; Jimmy has a brown tunic, brown dress pants, leather boots, and a gold crown covered in a material that looks like slime, but isn’t slime (Jimmy’s not entirely sure how the smith had managed to do that, but it looks really cool in his opinion).

Lizzie’s tried to tell him many times that it doesn’t matter, and to ignore the looks he gets from Joey, Sausage, Scott, and all the others. Joel’s offered to have his tailor make Jimmy clothes, but Jimmy declined. He doesn’t particularly enjoy the weight of the clothes the other rulers wear, or the style if he’s perfectly honest. At one point, he tried on some of Joel’s clothes and, geez, they were uncomfortable.

So, Jimmy sticks with his clothes and the looks from the others. All it means is that he tends to avoid some of the other rulers when he happens to run into them. Katherine, Shubble, Gem, and fWhip are nice enough (except that fWhip apparently “rescues” salmon).

Scott seems to be nice, too, but he’s a little weird. Not in a bad way or anything. Just that sometimes he’s kind to Jimmy, offers to provide his smaller empire support, agrees with him and defends him in arguments at House Blossom meetings, but sometimes he’s cold. Sometimes he says things that maybe he doesn’t understand hurt, but cuts Jimmy to his core. So, he’s not really sure where he stands with the elven ruler. But he does know where he’d like to stand with Scott.

It was sort of a love at first sight thing for Jimmy. Two years ago, he’d just built his empire back up after the Great War with the salmon and Katherine had approached him with an offer of an alliance. He’d accepted and had been invited to his first House Blossom meeting. Scott had swept in with an angelic fashion, hair flowing in the air as he landed on the ground next to where Jimmy was standing. He was perfect. They’d spoken for only a moment before they’d had to walk in, but Jimmy was already gone, taken by the storm that is Scott. Jimmy had been in love with Scott ever since, but he knew the feeling wasn’t reciprocated. They weren’t even allies, so Jimmy did his best to put it out of his mind.

That ends up being very difficult.

Pushing all thoughts of what the other rulers will think, Jimmy puts on his king’s clothes and makes his way to House Blossom. The area is decorated beautifully with flowers, lanterns, gems, and banners of all the empires hung on the outside of the door. A doorman takes Jimmy’s cloak as he enters. Once inside, he steps out onto a balcony overlooking a dance floor with tables with food and drink on either side. He takes the stairs down until he’s standing next to the dance floor as Katherine runs up to greet him.

They speak for a moment before she’s pulled away to deal with something and Jimmy’s left alone. He looks out over the room. Shubble, Gem, and Pearl are in a group talking. Joey and Sausage are dancing together on the dance floor, as are Lizzie and Joel. fWhip and Pixl are at the food tables, talking together. There’s no sign of Scott. He must not be there yet. Jimmy contemplates adding himself to one of the groups on the edges of the dance floor, but doesn’t really feel like being ignored while the others talk, so he grabs a drink and resigns himself to leaning on a wall, just watching the others enjoy themselves. He just needs to be there a respectable amount of time, and then he can excuse himself.

About half an hour later, the door slams open and, as all heads shoot up to look, Scott strides inside the room with an obvious smirk on his face, and goddamn he is hot. Scott is dressed in the Rivendell colors; cyan, gold, and white; wearing a cyan tunic, a white vest decorated with golden antlers stitched all along it, white pants, black boots, a fluffy white cloak made out of real fur, a necklace covered in jewels, two rings, and a golden bracelet; paired with his typical Rivendell crown are the golden antlers Jimmy understands are a gift from Aeor, his god. Needless to say, Scott is stunning.

The elven ruler strides down the staircase and into the group of rulers on the edge of the dancefloor. Though, on the way, Jimmy swears Scott’s eyes lock onto his for just a moment before turning away. Jimmy has to shake his head to get his eyes to stop staring at Scott. In doing so, he looks down at his own clothes and feels considerably underdressed for about the fifth time that day, but especially after seeing what Scott is decked out in. Nothing Jimmy has ever owned could even compare to Scott’s outfit. Jimmy considers leaving even though he’s only been there around forty-five minutes.

No. He can do this. A respectable time to remain at the party is an hour. Then he can come up with some excuse to leave and he can change into his regular clothes and forget about all of this. When he looks up again, his eyes lock with Scott’s who is staring at him from across the dance floor. Heat flushes Jimmy’s cheeks as he quickly looks down again. Scott isn’t staring at him. Surely not. Unless he’s judging Jimmy’s clothes, which is not a pleasant thought.

Jimmy looks up again to find that while Scott is still watching him, so is another emperor. While Scott’s expression is unreadable, Joey’s is perfectly full of disgust. The emperor of the Lost Empire has always been one to poke fun at the limited resources of the Cod Empire, and the more “basic” clothes Jimmy wears.

Jimmy lets out a sigh as Joey approaches. “You do realize this is a formal event, right?” Joey sneers.

Joey is wearing an outfit of gold, jewels, and feathers. It’s… a lot. Way more extravagant than an event like this requires, but Joey’s always been one to go extra.

“I’m not really in the mood, Joey,” Jimmy replies, looking past Joey to where Scott stands, still staring directly at Jimmy, expression unreadable. What is happening?

“Well, I don’t want my night ruined every time I look over here and see you in your basic brown leather and crown. You’re an emperor. You should look better than a common street fish,” Joey shoots back. For some reason, this breaks Jimmy. Maybe it’s Scott staring at them, watching his every move, but he’s just done with Joey making his life hell every time he joins a social event with the other rulers.

“Alright, Joey. You know what?” Jimmy pushes off the wall he’d been leaning against and moves into Joey’s space. LIke his sister, Jimmy is quite tall. Not as tall as her, but taller than all the other rulers by at least six inches. “I built my empire up from the ground. Not even five years ago, most of my people were dead or dying because of the salmon. I had to care for my people, defeat the salmon, and nurse my empire back to life! Because of that, I do not care about fashion or fancy clothes or jewels! And I certainly do not care about how your night is affected by my clothing choices. So, kindly, get away from me!” He hadn’t noticed that he was shouting, but as he looks around the room, every head is turned to look at him, and is that a smile on Scott’s face?

Jimmy doesn’t like getting angry in front of other people, though he does tend to become loudly passionate about certain topics, but he rarely shows his true anger around others. He feels shame for having lost his temper, green rushing to his cheeks. He grunts and stalks towards the stairs as quickly as he could, giving a slight bow to Katherine and a word of thanks for the wonderful party. Not really paying attention, he grabs his cloak from the closet the doorman had placed it in and leaves the building, taking off into the night on his electra.

The image of Scott’s smile plays in his mind during the flight back and as he lands outside his hut on the water. Why had he been smiling? Did he find Jimmy’s anger amusing? Was he proud of Jimmy for standing up to Joey? Had Jimmy imagined it entirely?

Now that the anger and adrenaline is abating, Jimmy feels quite exhausted. As soon as he enters the shack, he pulls his cloak off - had it always been that heavy? - placed his crown inside a chest, climbed into bed, and promptly fell asleep.

--------

When Jimmy wakes up the next morning, the sun is drifting through the windows, lighting up the room. He sits up and stretches, joints popping, before getting out of bed with the plan to put away his clothes from the night before since he’d ended up sleeping in them. That’s when he notices something. Where he’d placed his cloak the night before is… Scott’s cloak. How did Scott’s cloak get there? Wait.. no. No, he did not take Scott’s cloak when he stormed out of the party.

So, not only did he make a giant scene by yelling at Joey, but he stole the king of Rivendell’s very expensive looking cloak. A buzzing sound comes from the inside pocket of the cloak and, upon investigation, it came from Scott’s communicator. Great, just another thing he stole from Scott. But Jimmy had put his own communicator in his cloak, so if either it was still at Katherine’s or Scott had taken it.

Another buzz comes through, so Jimmy opens it to see a private chat between Scott and… himself? So, Scott does have his things.

SolidarityGaming: Hello, Jimmy. It seems you took my cloak and communicator, so I believe it’s fair that I took yours.

SolidarityGaming: Let’s meet to swap them back. My house in Rivendell in, say, two hours?

Smajor1995: i’m so sorry. i didnt mean to take your things. i’ll be there.

Jimmy waits anxiously for the next two hours. He’d feel horrible for taking anyone’s property, but for some reason the thought of it being Scott makes him feel worse… and better at the same time. It’s weird. He feels bad for taking it, but it also gives him a reason to see Scott. Though, Scott will surely want him to leave as soon as they make the trade.

By the time he needs to head to Rivendell, he’s already come to the decision that this will be a quick trade and then Scott will want him to leave. He arrives in front of Scott’s house just slightly late, and the elf king is already waiting for him. Surprisingly, Scott isn’t dressed in his normal Rivendell kingly attire, but instead in a simple cyan shirt and white pants. To be fair, Jimmy is similarly dressed with a green, slime covered shirt, green pants, leather boots, and the cod on his head like a hat. Upon landing, Jimmy gives Scott a polite bow.

“King Smajor. I would like to start by saying I am so sorry for taking your cloak last night. I was leaving in a hurry and I wasn’t thinking and I didn’t even realize until this morning or I would’ve brought it back-” Jimmy stops rambling at the sound of a chuckle coming from Scott.

“Jimmy, it’s fine. But, I do believe you owe me for taking my things.” A smile tugs at Scott’s lips and suddenly Jimmy doesn’t feel nearly as nervous.

“Of course,” Jimmy agrees. “What do I owe you? I could get you slime, or berries, or salmon. I have a lot of salmon corpses and I know humanoids tend to enjoy seafood.” He cuts himself off again when Scott chuckles, shaking his head endearingly.

“I don’t want any of that, Jimmy,” Scott replies simply. Jimmy does find it a little odd that he’s calling Jimmy by his name and not his title, especially considering this is their first real interaction outside of formal situations.

Jimmy tilts his head. “What do I owe you then?”

Scott shrugs, soft smile still playing on his lips. “A date.”

Jimmy blinks. A what? Since when has Scott wanted to court him? Since when has Scott wanted to be allies with him? In the silent moments that follow, Scott doesn’t look nervous in the slightest. In fact, his confidence only seems to grow.

“Not what you were expecting,” Scott asks with a smirk. “I know you feel the same about me Jimmy.” He steps closer, not close enough to crowd Jimmy, but enough to make him the good kind of nervous. “You think I haven’t noticed you staring at me during meetings, the adorable blushes when I catch you, your eyes following me when I fly back to Rivendell. You are helplessly adorable, but I wasn’t going to say anything until you did first since it was clear you were nervous, and your empire is so new that I didn’t want to add any extra stress. But last night…” Scott exhales sharply and reaches out to adjust Jimmy’s shirt gently. “Last night you were so incredibly hot. The way you stood up to Joey, finally told him off for messing with you, it was definitely the hottest you’ve ever been. I was quite pleased to find that you’d taken my cloak because it gave me an excuse to get you here, and now I believe I will keep your cloak and communicator hostage until you go on a date with me.”

Jimmy is in shock, face flushed a deep green as he watches Scott carefully take his own cloak from Jimmy’s hands, handing both off to an elf who takes them into Scott’s house. Had he really been that obvious? He’d thought he’d done a better job at hiding his feelings, but if Scott had known this whole time and had just been respectfully waiting, what does that mean? Does that mean that Scott has been watching him as much as he’s been watching Scott? Does that mean he hasn’t been imagining the looks the elf king gives him? Does that mean that this whole time all he’s had to do is ask Scott out on a date?!

While he contemplates this, Scott giggles, holding his hand out to Jimmy. “Come on, fish boy. I have everything set up this way.” Still in shock, Jimmy takes Scott’s hand and allows the elf to lead him up the cliffs towards rails that are set up like a rollercoaster.

Scott gets into a minecart and gestures for Jimmy to get in as well. Once they’re both safely inside, Scott pulls a lever that sends the minecart rolling down the rails, taking twists and turns that has Jimmy whooping and laughing excitedly. Then, they arrive at an entrance into a cave that’s shaped like a heart. Jimmy blushes brightly, glancing at Scott to see the elf smiling at him. A matching smile tugs at Jimmy’s lips and, in a moment of confidence, he slips his hand gently into Scott’s. That’s the first time Jimmy has seen the elf ruler blush, and it is quite a lovely sight.

The ride ends at the bottom of a little alcove covered in flowers and an azalea tree. One side of the room is filled by a pond with cod swimming around happily. A picnic has been set up on the opposite side, the blanket made with the colors of their nations, and their banners hanging up on the wall above. It’s gorgeous, much more stunning than Jimmy could’ve ever predicted. He steps out of the minecart, offering his hand to help Scott out as well. Jimmy moves around the room, looking at everything, but stopping at the cod pond to greet them with a soft gurgle. They seem happy to see him. When he looks up, Scott is watching him with a soft smile, much more domestic than Jimmy would’ve predicted.

“This is beautiful, Scott. It’s perfect, and the cod seem very happy to be here. Thank you.” Jimmy hugs Scott tightly, pressing his face into Scott’s gorgeous cyan hair that somehow smells like freshly fallen snow. It only takes a moment before Scott hugs Jimmy back. After a moment, they part, both with smiles on their faces.

“I’m very glad you like it, Jimmy. Should we eat?” Scott gestures to the picnic waiting for them on the other side of the cave.

With a nod from Jimmy, they make their way to the picnic blanket, sitting side by side as Scott pulls out all sorts of food that Rivendell and the Cod Empire are known for along with a cake that he sets on top of the basket. Jimmy tries everything that Scott has provided, finding himself melting at the precision that has gone into making each dish perfect. Scott watches him, eating much more primly than the Codfather ever has. After a few minutes, Scott finishes eating and begins to pick some of the blue cornflowers from around the grove, weaving them into a beautiful crown. Gently, he places it around the cod still adorning Jimmy’s head, a green blush rising to the cod-hybrid’s cheeks.

“The blue suits you,” Scott observes with a smile.

“Thank you,” Jimmy replies, one webbed hand rising to touch the flowers. Scott shifts closer to Jimmy and leans against him, head resting on the taller man’s shoulder as Jimmy’s arm goes to wrap around Scott’s middle. A sense of peace flows over them as they sit there; the sound of the cod swimming, the smell of the flowers around them, the gorgeous green sight around them. It’s perfect. This is nothing like what Jimmy had expected this day to turn into.

When Jimmy finishes eating, he sets the plate aside and lays down, pulling Scott down with him so the cyan-haired elf lays curled up against Jimmy’s side. Time no longer matters as they lay there together. They could be laying there for a few minutes or a few hours, but neither of them care. They’re there together, the serenity filling both of them to the brim. Jimmy slowly runs his fingers through Scott’s hair while the elf traces random patterns along Jimmy’s chest.

Eventually, Scott whispers, “There’s more to this date if you’d like to see it.”

Jimmy hums, wondering what could possibly be better than this. “Okay.” They slowly sit up and reluctantly detach themselves from each other. Jimmy stands, holding his hand out to Scott who takes it with a smile, leading them from the blanket to a hidden door.

“I wasn’t entirely sure if this would go well so I didn’t want this part to be exposed if you really wanted to leave,” Scott explains as he pushes the door open to reveal another hallway.

They walk down it hand in hand into an aquarium filled with cod. Jimmy looks around in amazement at the water that fills both walls and the ceiling. The cod swim excitedly at the sight of the Codfather, gurgling at him happily while he gurgles back, asking how they’ve been with the transition from the ocean to the aquarium. Apparently, Scott has been quite kind and taking very good care of them since they’ve been brought here. Speaking of Scott, the elf has been watching him with a smile while he’s been talking with the cod. Jimmy wonders if Scott knew he can speak with fish before bringing him here.

Down the hall, there’s another door that leads out onto a balcony that looks out over Rivendale. It’s a wonderful sight full of beauty and life. Jimmy walks past the table and chairs to grip the railing, looking to see how far the city goes.

“Oh my gosh! Look at this place! It’s beautiful!” Jimmy gushes.

“I built it just for you,” Scott replies, leaning on the railing next to Jimmy. Jimmy suddenly turns serious and turns to take Scott’s hands.

“I don’t want to see any other people here.” The thought of Scott sharing this area with anyone else fills Jimmy with a feeling akin to nausea.

Scott looks surprised, but easily nods, smile returning to his face. “No one else. Only you.” Jimmy smiles again and raises Scott’s knuckles to his lips, placing a soft kiss to them before going to sit in one of the chairs.

Scott sits across from Jimmy, keeping one hand linked with Jimmy’s. “So, are we going to be an alliance now?” Jimmy asks. He figures that’s the next logical step now that they’ve gone on a date. Maybe courting will come along with the alliance, but he figures getting that part out of the way first makes the most sense.

“If you want.” Scott reaches behind him to where an envelope is sitting on a table. Opening it, he reveals two sets of papers; alliance papers. “My advisors have already drawn everything up, so all we need to do is sign them. You’re welcome to take them to have your own advisors look over, but I promise it’s all above bar.”

Jimmy doesn’t really have advisors. There’s not enough people in his empire to have a group whose only job is to help him. Sometimes Lizzie and Joel will help him make sure everything is as Scott said “above bar”, but he generally does everything himself. As he reads through the documents, everything looks good. It mostly just outlines trade deals, meetings to discuss how everything is going, and another thing at the end that dictates Scott’s request to court Jimmy.

“You really- you really want to court me?” Jimmy asks, still slightly in shock that Scott has any interest in him at all.

Scott laughs, bright as a bell. “Jimmy, we just went on a date. Courting is the most logical next step. This will just make it official and then I’ll send another copy of the request to the Ocean Queen seeing as she’s your sister and then it’ll be done.”

Jimmy blinks, looking back at the document, then up at Scott. A relieved smile rises to his lips. “You never cease to surprise me, Scott.” He takes a quill from one of the tables and signs his name with the scribble of a fish next to it; he doesn’t technically have a seal at this point, so on official documents that’s good enough for now.

Scott smiles, bright and buttery, and signs next to Jimmy, placing a seal on a necklace he keeps under his shirt next to his signature. “Now we’re officially allies.”

They spend the rest of the day on the balcony, relaxing and talking. There’s so much about Scott that Jimmy doesn’t know, but every new thing Jimmy learns just makes him love Scott even more. When the sun begins to dip behind the horizon, it’s the single most beautiful thing Jimmy has ever seen; the way the sunset illuminates the snow covering the mountains is incredible. When the sun is gone and the moon high in the sky, Jimmy knows he needs to head home. Together, the pair fly back to Scott’s house where Jimmy is presented with his cloak and communicator.

Jimmy hugs Scott, thanking him for the incredible day and plants a marshmallow kiss to the elf’s cheek before flying back to the Cod Empire. He would’ve missed the way Scott’s hand rises to his cheek and the adorable blush that spreads across his face if he hadn’t turned back to look at the elf one last time.

Boy, is he glad he took Scott’s cloak from Katherine’s party.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S5 Ep 19: Yugi and the Only Neck Accessory He Didn’t Really Want to Wear

Been busy! Hopefully stuff will open up soon as I’m taking a hiatus on a different quarantine project and will be finishing painting the entire roof of my car this week? One can hope. Sanding the rust off the whole top of a car takes a long time it turns out?

Also, fun Yugioh fact, I recently painted a book cover for an author who is older so she’s never seen the show, and she looked at my tumblr, saw my Duke Devlin fanart and was like “That’s him. That’s my main character. OMG. You captured him perfectly!” and I was like “Ma’am that is Duke Devlin, hence the single dice earring on his lobes there, but we can work with this.” and now a spiritual Duke Devlin is on the cover of a Wuxia-style fantasy trilogy on the Vella. Had to give him a top knot and delete the eyeliner for Wuxia reasons but uh, that’s just Duke.

So long story short, fanart can get you work, don’t even worry about posting that stuff online because most people don’t even know it’s fanart anyway and older ladies freakin love it.

Back in Yugioh, the team was doing their best to navigate a map through the woods and they do about as well as they normally do.

And inside Tristan lifted up the floorboards and was like “I found the only way out, this is it, this is the only way.”

And they ended up in something that has a color scheme I would actually associate with a jungle. Finally. We have finally left California (in order to go to another Hell.)

Youknow, when we went to California, we visited Hell, and when we went to India, we also took a stop at the nearest death destination. There’s just so much death on this show and sometimes I forget because there’s been a ghost in our party for so freakin long it’s been normalized.

(read more death imagery under the cut)

Joey freaks out at a flock of crows and reveals in this episode something I never realized about him before.

Like I’m not always the perfect observer as I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I love that this is canon for probably only this episode, but I will never forget it for the entirety of this series.

You go on hating birds, Joey.

Bro was like “Maybe it’s a deep cut about Mai Valentine because she’s a harpy lady” but eh...pretty sure we spent like an entire season of Joey telling us that Mai was a good experience? Would be incredibly funny if immediately after all of S4, Joey was like “You know what? Screw Mai, guys.”

So my thoughts...it’s probably just a literal bird experience. Like I had a friend who hated deer because once she went to a petting zoo, got some pellets to feed the deer, but her finger was sticking up, so when the deer came over to nibble on some pellets her finger went up it’s nose by accident. She was so disgusted by this event that was entirely her fault, that she brought up how much she hated deer basically whenever we saw one.

So like...maybe Joey fed a bird wrong at a petting zoo. I can see him getting bit by a parrot because he was too Joey Wheeler.

But now that we’re in a graveyard neighborhood, Pharaoh decides to hop out because there’s a lot of ghosts here and he needs to practice socializing with his peers.

So that’s just a Yugioh monster doing the ostrich dance, right? Like this is a meme from like 2010 but on Yugioh in 2003(4?)

Good to see the Ostrich dance here in the land before Vine.

So they pull out their Pokemon to do some antics, Tea looked like she was about to do something useful, and Yami does a yump across time and space to get her as far away from playing (not)cards as quickly as possible and y’all...sure was a position these animators animated.

Holy crap.

And I was going off about that scene last season where they woke up in the same bed like...

...have these two been together this entire time? Like together together?

They’re like...way more comfortable than you’d figure they’d be considering Yugi nearly passes out every time he gets a hug. But Yami just like....How long has this been going on? As long as Joey’s fear of birds?

Like obviously this show would never cover what the hell Yugi may be thinking about this overreaching move here, because we’re gonna gloss right over that, and just run away up a flight of stairs. No one mentions this ever again. Which is mind blowing for an anime to do. I think in most anime I watch, the kids would be like “ahh ahhhh I bumped into a booooob!” like it does for I want to say every other episode of My Hero Academia. But in Yugioh, they saw that low hanging fruit and they were like “we expect a higher level of maturity out of our audience. Now here’s a fleet of ostrich dancing tree monsters with faces for crotches.”

They decided to sprint up this flight of stairs, and it enough of a slope to deter the monsters who are only unbalanced weird legs.

I want us to take a moment and admire this background painting. I can’t unsee the rocks that are all the same size, just piled on top of eachother. Did Alexander the Great just plop rocks here--or was the mountain made up of tons of similarly shaped boulders?

Like there’s a lot of nice bg’s in this arc, don’t get me wrong, but this one...I’m just trying to wrap my head around the logic of it.

At the top, they meet a pantheon, that is immediately blocked by this wall, because if this arc had a tagline, it’s “Yugi gets inconvenienced every 4 seconds.”

Bro was like “Clearly they would have pushed it over if Tea wasn’t slacking off” and like...she is actually. Look at her. Only used one hand? Slacker.

Joey was disappointed he couldn’t push over a massive wall, and the team decided not to analyze how much Joey Wheeler thinks of his own strength and instead fixate on these statues.

Usually in anthro characters they kinda look birdlike but act human. But what about an anthro that’s just a bird? Like human torso, but can turn his head 180 degrees? Yugioh made me ask this question.

And then Joey was like “wait, there may be a solution that isn’t just to use brute strength!”

Youknow it is a bummer that Kaiba couldn’t witness Joey own a dragon while he himself only has a robot jet dragon. Although, the jet is probably faster, stronger and overall...better than this baby dragon. It would have been great for Kaiba to witness Joey under-utilize this dragon and forget he has it for like huge swatches of the episode.

And then Grandpa pulled some body horror out of nowhere.

Wow.

I mean that is really gross.

I guess Grandpa can’t use Blue eyes, because Kaiba ripped it up, Grandpa can’t use Exodia because Weevil tossed it off a boat, and grandpa can’t use the card that’s just a building because...it’s a building.

So instead Grandpa has a bunch of meat and bones that look like something out of Doom. It’s probably from a more obscure Konami property, but I forget which.

I’ve seen Tristan hold back Joey in this hold, first time it’s been Tea.

So much shipping in this episode, it’s wild.

It’s also wild how low my standards are for what could possibly be shipping when it comes to Yugioh because of how freakin tepid all of these characters are, which as I’ve brought up before, I really don’t mind.

So Yugi decides that because Grandpa was folding his arms like one monster and it made a gem light up or something, to just do the video game thing and use the giant ass statues as clues.

Why was this arc not a video game? Like parts of it really feel like it was meant to be.

So Yugi falls down a hole, where the walls cave in like it’s that dumpster in Star Wars but like...it barely phases him.

Also...Yugi might be able to see in the dark. It’s never been brought up but like...the more I think about it...has Yugi ever struggled to see without the lights on?

After Joey disappoints everyone, he confronts death.

And Pharaoh and Yugi decide to solve the puzzle of “how do I get out of this trap dungeon room” which, honestly, is probably what they’re doing every time they hang out in the brain pyramid.

So they summon their mascot monster, and surprisingly the show decided its ability to fly cannot help them out here.

Kuriboh manages to become enough of a doormat to push Yami up to the stone and they end up in a set of weird cuts that ended in this?

Like seriously it was like flashes of light and then they were just...up here like this.

Hey like...

Alexander the Great, my man...

Were you planning to put that stone in the middle of a exhaust vent hoping someone would touch it? Because there’s no way anyone would rationally have done that. You would need to fly to do it. This is the world’s worst DM.

Like Yugioh pulls a lot of fantasy nonsense but this arc is a lot more like a “it’s a kid’s show, just go with it.” arc than most of them. It’s not a bad vibe, necessarily, it’s just not the vibe I’m used to.

So once I witnessed maybe the most boring conversation I’ve ever witnessed about corn (this was on a twitch stream, by the way, a guy was playing an interesting game, and then a guest came on and started talking about corn and plants for 2 hours) and they would not shut up about how all taxonomy is wrong because there are no such thing as trees and how all animals are labelled incorrectly, and then they started comparing it to like all sorts of mushrooms and phytoplankton as you would if you clearly got a little bit high before dumping your corn knowledge on a twitch stream.

Anyway, after that bizarre experience I suffered so I could learn how to play an obscure video game, I think I can safely say, that while I know everyone here thinks a bird can’t be a dog. If you’re a high biologist: a bird is absolutely a dog. Apparently you can just do that if you’re the most boring biologist alive and no one will argue with you because to do that would involve talking to you. We’ll just say a bird is a dog and no one can fight me or I will talk about the corn book that this guest on this twitch chat was thinking about renting from the library about the different types of corn mutations inherent in freakin Indiana. Therefore, Joey’s fear of birds and dogs is same.

So they use Dark Magician to save them from the statues, and Yugi busts into the pantheon again because they got to open this casket before a time limit that I kind of forgot about, tbh.

And inside the casket, is...this thing!

(enjoy this line on the bottom of the image I don’t feel like fixing it)

And you may say to yourself...it looks like it’s just floating in mid-air, that’s silly, and so I want to introduce you to the next panel where you can see that it is...quite literally...just floating in the air like a video game.

and it just slurps itself onto Yugi before he can be like “nonono.”

Wasn’t there some horror movie where you were stuck in some sort of body brace that slowly tortures you (was that Saw?) This has that vibes. Like man that looks uncomfortable to wear over a jacket and two belts and a collar that is another belt.

That and I...I gotta appreciate that Yugi popped his collar while wearing body armor and chunky necklace. What 00′s fashion appreciation right there.

Bit like...this isn’t breathable, right? Like Yugi’s gonna finally take this thing off and his jacket will just be completely soaked in sweat?

Anyway, that’s it for this post, next week we’ll see if Yugi can walk through a doorway in that thing.

Also, I can’t bring up the ostrich dance without sharing the vines of my generation

[youllallriseintheink]

Put in his Place

Here is a one-off of Bertrum and Nathan playing a prank on Joey. This is going to be really goofy.

After this, I’m doing the two-part Lacie x Abby story. That’ll be a lot more serious. So if this kind of thing isn’t your cup of tea, stay tuned!

—-

Bertrum’s visits to oversee the construction of Bendyland were rarely eventful. Lacie generally had everything under control, as she did now. Seeing all his men (and women) constructing the rides that he’d designed was like watching the coming together of a masterpiece, or the precise work of a machine.

“You there!” he boomed at one of his men, who turned to him, terrified. “Those bolts need to be tighter. Keep up like that and you’ll get someone killed!”

“O-okay, sir!” The young man replied. Bertrum smiled and nodded to let him know it was okay. And it was- Lacie would have caught the mistake.

Despite the client, coming out of retirement had not been a mistake.

“Oooh, Beertiee!” came a voice.

Oh, the client. Joey Drew. The young man turned to look at the unfolding scene, but immediately turned back to his work once he caught Bertrum’s glare. Bertrum took a deep breath, and turned to the most loathsome part of his job. “Yes, Mr. Drew?”

“A very important person is coming to the studio. I was just wondering if you could make it look... I don’t know... better in here? I mean, the air is just thick with sawdust, and the lighting conditions aren’t exactly the best... and maybe you could have at least a few rides up and going for tomorrow afternoon?”

Bertrum clenched his jaw, took a deep breath, and managed to answer this callow excuse for a business owner in a dignified manner. “Mr. Drew, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a warehouse. There is going to be sawdust everywhere no matter how often we sweep because people are cutting pieces of wood. The lighting conditions of the warehouse you rented are not in my control. As for getting the rides up and going, no, I cannot do that three months before our negotiated deadline. Do you understand?”

“Oh, but I thought you could do it. With all your experience and competence... I kind of thought I’d show it off to my good pal Mr. Arch! He’s coming for a tour tomorrow and I want to impress him. And I mean, what does it say if you can’t pull it off?”

Bertrum was unphased by Joey’s attempt at manipulation. “You do not judge a chef by how a meal looks when it is half-cooked. Wait, did you say ‘Mr. Arch?’” Nathan Arch supplied Bertrum with the steel for his rides, and Bertrum had met him a few times at business conventions and fancy parties and the like. They’d gotten along well enough.

Joey nodded.

“Trust me, Mr. Drew- Nathan knows what a construction site looks like. Because he’s a business man who has overseen a few of them in his lifetime. He won’t see this as a mess but as a well-functioning machine.”

The condesension Joey was used to, but he was stunned as soon as he heard the word, “Nathan” from Bertrum’s lips.

“Yes, Joey, we've met. Perhaps the three of us should do this little tour together.”

“Sounds like a great idea, Bertie! Meet me in my office at nine tomorrow!”

---

Joey was on cloud nine. Nathan had been letting Joey take him on these annual (well, aside from the ones Nathan missed, which was most of them) tours for a decade, and each time Joey had done his best to impress him. This year, he’d wanted to show Nathan some Bendyland attractions, but this was even better! What better way to show Nathan that he was in the big leagues than to have this tour alongside the industry legend he’d befriended. On his way to his office, Joey checked his suit and hair for the millionth time- which was really unnecessary, since he’d decided on black everything to avoid ink stains, but one couldn’t be too careful.

Joey opened his office door to find that Nathan and Bertrum were already there, sitting in chairs facing the door and smiling at him. Suddenly, Joey felt a lot less confident. And he should have- Berturm had been pleased to find out that Nathan thought of Joey as just as much of a try-hard nouveau-riche as he did, and they had made a plan to put him in his place.

“Nathan. Hi. I see you’re already acquainted with my business partner, Bertie. How was your flight from New Orleans?” In hindsight, the fact that Bertrum didn’t react to his nickname should have been the first sign.

“Wonderful. Joey, Bertrum and I were just talking about how you’ve bloomed as a businessman since he started working with you. He’s very proud. I never realized that you were real deal until now, but, well! I have to apologize. All this time I was refusing to treat you like a rich man. Are you ready to be treated like a rich man, Joey?”

Joey was stunned and ecstatic. He’d been vying for Nathan’s respect since they’d met, and he’d finally done it! “I- I- yes! Thank you for finally realizing how brilliant I am, Nathan, old buddy! Now, are you ready for a tour?”

“I am.”

With that, they went. Joey took Nathan on a tour of the animation department and showed off his fancy new technology, the toy department complete with waterfall, the plans for Bendyland (but not the dirty, dusty warehouse), and even snuck in a tour of the music department while Sammy was on lunch- he wasn’t about to let Nathan know that he let Sammy call shots on when he could visit his own music department! Today, he was to be large and in charge.

At fair amount of time into the tour, as the trio overlooked the toy department, Nathan spoke up. “It seems like your company is growing, Joey! When did you start investing in the steel wool of this place?”

There was a pause as Joey tried to figure out how to respond.

“Oh come on, Joey. Steel wool. The thing that all successful businessmen know about. The measurement by which other high-class men will know to judge your business’ future chances of success. When did you start investing in it?”

Joey’s face was beginning to flush with embarrassment as he looked into Bertrum and Nathan’s completely calm, understanding faces. “Um, I, started investing in it in 1936. Can we take a little detour, boys? My company is just doing so well that I think I should go order more steel wool right now. Nathan, how much would you suggest?”

“Hmm... about seventy or eighty tons should do it.”

“Great! Follow me.”

Joey led the two of them to the accounting and finance department and knocked on the door of their director of finance. The door opened to a weary-looking man who did not seem at all happy to see them.

“Grant- I’d like you to increase our stockpile of steel wool. Increase it to ninety tons!”

Grant nodded slowly, trying to work out how much that would cost. When one’s boss regularly asks you to account for items such as coffins and electric chairs, one learns not to ask unnecessary questions.

Bertrum, not wanting his financially precarious client to throw out so much money over a prank, shoved Joey aside and whispered something in Grant’s ear.

Whatever it was, it put a coy smile on Grant’s face. “Wow. Ninety tons of steel wool this year. Well, Joey, it sure is good to work under such a rich man, and with such a promising company.”

Joey beamed. Thank God Grant was playing along with him having bought it previously. But soon, he’d have that important status symbol, and respect amongst his peers.

The door closed, and (over the faint sound of snickering) Bertrum spoke up. “You know, Mr. Drew, steel wool isn’t just an item. It’s also in one’s personal style.”

“Oh? And how would you rate mine, Bertie?”

“Hmm... middling,” Nathan replied.

“Yes, ‘middling’ is a good word for it.”

Joey’s face fell. “Oh. Well, I was about to update my wardrobe. Maybe you could help me find something better?” God, he hated asking for help, but clearly he didn’t know much about being a rich man yet.

“We’d be pleased to!” Bertrum beamed, putting an arm around Joey’s shoulders. “It’s been so long since I had a young, inexperienced, callow little business boy under my wing!”

Given the circumstances, all Joey could do was smile and fantasize about rearranging Bertrum’s anatomy.

Soon, they were in a high-end tailor shop. “Just tell him what you want,” Nathan advised, “he’s a rich man, he’ll know what to do.”

Joey nodded and rang the bell on the front desk. The tailor, who had been at the other side of the room at his sewing machine, came right over.

“Hello, I’d like to buy an outfit that lets people know that my company has a lot of steel wool.”

The shopkeeper squinted at Joey like he was an alien.

“Why don’t we help you find the style he’s looking for while he takes his measurements?” Nathan suggested.

As soon as Joey getting his measurements in the changing room, Bertrum and Nathan explained the situation to the tailor, and by the time Joey came out, they’d selected the perfect outfit for him. It was a glittering silver suit with a purple tie. The light from an open window hit it and nearly blinded Joey.

“What... is that?” Joey asked, starting to wonder if he was being messed with.

“I believe we have found your new outfit,” Bertrum asserted, “the perfect embodiment of steel wool.”

“Cutting edge- in a few months, everyone will be wearing them, but you’ll be among the first,” Nathan added.

“No, it can’t be. I mean, you’re saying this, but the two of you are wearing plainly coloured stuff...”

“No, they’re right,” the shopkeeper interjected, “I’ve actually received many, many orders of these from wealthy business owners. In fact, this is the last one I have!”

Joey grumbled, but he put on the suit, which was stiff and uncomfortable and was shedding glitter into his hair and leaving a trail behind him. He paid the shopkeeper a sizable amount of money and left in a huff.

The shopkeeper stuck his head out the door. “Remember- we do exchanges, but no refunds!” he called.

The summer sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. Bertrum and and Nathan had talked about taking Joey to a party to be laughed at, but Bertrum had decided it would make it too obvious that this was a prank. And anyhow, they’d come up with a better idea.

“Well, Joey, I think I should be getting back to my hotel room. But, maybe you could come with me, and I could show you one more aspect of what it means to be higher class. It’s obvious that you could use the help.”

“I- fine. Whatever. I don’t care.”

“Wonderful idea,” Bertrum said, “and on the cab ride over, I could give you some pointers of my own.”

“Oh, and Joey? Step into the shade, please. It seems that that suit turns you into a blinding hazard when the sun is low.”

After a miserable cab trip listening to Bertrum ramble incoherently about things Joey barely understood and using terms he’d never heard of (which made Joey feel simultaneously even more like he knew nothing and even more like he was being toyed with), the trio pulled up to the hotel that Nathan was staying at. Once they were in Nathan’s hotel room, Nathan kicked off his shoes and socks and laid on the bed with his feet hanging off of it. Normally, Joey would have some sort of teasing quip for him, but he was feeling a little worn down and just wanted to get the rest of the visit over with.

“So, Joey, the last thing we’re going to teach you about acting like you’ve got it, is how to give a good foot massage.”

Joey flinched in disgust. Then, he stopped. “Actually, I think it’s time I taught the two of you a lesson- this one on storytelling. You see, there’s this thing called the suspension of disbelief- and you just broke it. There is no ‘steel wool,’ this suit is a crime against humanity, and there is no way that it’s custom for rich men rub each others’ feet.”

Nathan laughed, and Bertrum laughed with him, doubling over in laughter and using Nathan’s shoulder to steady him once he collected himself. “Mr. Drew, you do realize that the only way you could believe that is if no other rich man had ever offered you a foot massage, right?”

“Humiliating.”

“You really told on yourself there.”

Tears were forming in Joey’s eyes- which was ridiculous because he was still sure that this was fake. He also knew that surviving two plagues had left Bertrum a considerable germaphobe. “Alright then, Bertie, show me your technique! Show me how a rich man does it!” he took off his shoes and threw them one at a time into Nathan’s arms.

“Okay, okay, we were joking!” Bertrum admitted before Joey could remove any more clothing.

“But... I think we made our point.”

“What point could you have possibly made except that you’re a bunch of assholes?!” Joey yelled.

“That compared to us, you’re new. We know it, you know it, stop trying to convince us or yourself otherwise. You wouldn’t have fallen for any of that unless some part of you realized that we know better than you on some things. And disrespecting Mr. Piedmont isn’t going to change that.”

Anger built up in Joey’s chest. He screamed in rage, punched a wall, and left, slamming the door on his way out. Then, less than a minute later, he knocked on the door. Bertrum opened it.

“Uh, could I use the phone? I need to call my accountant so he won’t buy dozens of tons of cleaning supplies.”

“Oh, we explained it to him. He won’t be ordering a thing. See you at our next weekly meeting.”

Without another word, Joey left. He could never look Bertrum or Nathan straight in the eye again.

[ireadyabooks]

Books to Read in 2021

It’s a NEW YEAR, everyone! 

We made it through 2020, and whether or not you hit your reading goal this past year, don’t worry! 2021 is a new year for your TBR, and we have an AMAZING line-up of books you should add to your reading list ASAP.

THE LIFE I’M IN 

This story of the power of forgiveness and second chances presents the unflinching story of a young woman trapped in the underworld of human trafficking. In Sharon G. Flake's latest and unflinching novel, we follow Charlese Jones, who, with her raw, blistering voice speaks the truths many girls face, offering insight to some of the causes and conditions that make a bully. Turned out of the only home she has known, Char boards a bus to nowhere where she is lured into the dangerous web of human trafficking.

HOLD BACK THE TIDE

A darkly seductive story of murder, betrayal, love, and family secrets in a small town in the Scottish Highlands. Alva knows that her father killed her mother, but she can’t prove it. The more she investigates though, the more she realizes that the truth can be more monstrous than lies/ And while you might be able to outrun anything that emerges from the dark water, you can never escape your past . . .

MUTED 

Denver is more than ready on the day she and her best friends Dali and Shak sing their way into the orbit of the biggest R&B star in the world, Sean "Mercury" Ellis. Merc gives them everything: parties, perks, wild nights -- plus hours and hours in the recording studio. Even the painful sacrifices and the lies the girls have to tell are all worth it. Until they're not. Denver begins to realize that she's trapped in Merc's world, struggling to hold on to her own voice. As the dream turns into a nightmare, she must make a choice: lose her big break, or get broken.

THE POETRY OF SECRETS

A lyrical portrait of hidden identities and forbidden love set against the harrowing backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition. Isabel’s dreams to pursue poetry and a partner of her own choosing are thrown into jeopardy when the Spanish Inquisition reaches her small town. 

SHURI #2: THE VANISHED 

Shuri, the Princess of Wakanda (and sister to the Black Panther), sets out to save a group of kidnapped girls in this all-new, original novel by New York Times bestselling author Nic Stone!

BRIDGE OF SOULS

Where there are ghosts, Cassidy Blake follows . . .unless it's the other way around? Cass thinks she might have this ghost-hunting thing down. But nothing can prepare Cass for New Orleans, which wears all of its hauntings on its sleeve. And the city's biggest surprise is a foe Cass never expected to face: a servant of Death itself.

FOLLOW YOUR ARROW

When bisexual influencer CeCe breaks up with her girlfriend, Silvie, she’s devastated. But then she starts falling for a new guy who has no idea she’s internet famous...and CeCe wants to keep it that way. But as her secrets catch up to her, she finds herself in the middle of an online storm, where she'll have to confront the blurriness of public vs. private life, and figure out what it really means to speak her truth.   

MIRROR’S EDGE

The danger rises and the deception grows in the heart-stopping third book in the New York Times bestselling Impostors series! Are twins Frey and Rafi on the same side . . . or are they playing to their own agendas? If their father is deposed from Shreve, who will take control? And what other forces may be waiting in the wings?

ZARA HOSSAIN IS HERE

Zara's family has waited years for their visa process to be finalized so that they can officially become US citizens. While dealing with the Islamophobia that she faces at school, Zara has to lay low. But when her tormentor vandalizes her house with racist graffiti, a violent crime puts Zara’s entire future at risk. Now she must pay the ultimate price and choose between fighting to stay in the only place she's ever called home or losing the life she loves and everyone in it.

REMEDY

It's a mystery - why is Cara so sick? It feels like she's been sick all her life . . . but she and her mom have never stayed in one place long enough for doctors to really understand what's happening to her. Now, at fourteen, Cara is tired of being tired, and sick of being sick. Unable to afford the care she needs, Cara's mom starts a Caring for Cara campaign online. The money starts pouring in. But something's not right to Cara. And the harder she looks, the less she understands.

HEARTSTOPPER VOLUME 3

The third volume in the poignant and sweet Heartstopper series, featuring beautiful two-color artwork! Charlie didn't think Nick could ever like him back, but now they're officially boyfriends. Nick has even found the courage to come out to his mom. But coming out isn't something that happens just once, and Nick and Charlie try to figure out when to tell their friends that they're dating. Not being out to their classmates gets even harder during a school trip to Paris. As Nick and Charlie's feelings get more serious, they'll need each other more than ever.

THE BLOCK

In the second book of The Loop trilogy, Luka is trapped in a fate worse than death. But now that he knows the truth about what he and his fellow inmates are being used for, it's more important than ever that he not only escapes, but that he builds an army.

ON THE HOOK

Hector has always minded his own business while he works towards a better life. Until Joey, whose older brother, Chavo, is head of the Discípulos gang, tells Hector that he's going to kill him: maybe not today, or tomorrow, but someday. And Hector, frozen with fear, does nothing. From that day forward, Hector's death is hanging over his head every time he leaves the house. But when a fight between Chavo and Hector's brother escalates, Hector is left with no choice but to take a stand. It's up to Hector to choose whether he's going to lose himself to revenge or get back to the hard work of living.

MISTER IMPOSSIBLE

Do the dreamers need the ley lines to save the world . . . or will their actions end up dooming the world? As Ronan, Hennessy, and Bryde try to make dreamers more powerful, the Moderators are closing in, sure that this power will bring about disaster. In the remarkable second book of The Dreamer Trilogy, Maggie Stiefvater pushes her characters to their limits – and shows what happens to them and others when they start to break.

THE GHOSTS WE KEEP 

Everything happens for a reason.At least that's what everyone keeps telling Liam Cooper after his older brother Ethan is killed suddenly in a hit-and-run. Feeling more alone and isolated than ever, Liam has to not only learn to face the world without one of the people he loved the most, but also face the fading relationships of his two best friends in the process. Soon, Liam finds themself spending time with Ethan's best friend, Marcus, who might just be the only person that seems to know exactly what they're going through - for better and for worse.

SIMONE BREAKS ALL THE RULES

Simone is shaking things up by making a bucket list of everything she hasn’t been able to do thanks to her strict Haitian immigrant parents. But as the list takes on a life of its own, things get much more complicated than Simone expected. She'll have to discover which rules are worth breaking, and which might save her from heartbreak.

SPEAK FOR YOURSELF

Skylar is ready to show everyone that her latest app is brilliant by winning an academic competition. To do that, she's going to use it to win State at the Scholastic Exposition, the nerdiest academic competition around. But when she falls for one of her team members and things get complicated, is her path to greatness over before it begins?

THE GIRL FROM THE SEA

A graphic novel about family, romance, and first love! Morgan's biggest secret is that she has a lot of secrets, including the one about wanting to kiss another girl. Then one night, Morgan is saved from drowning by a mysterious girl named Keltie. The two become friends and suddenly life on the island doesn't seem so stifling anymore. But Keltie has some secrets of her own. And as the girls start to fall in love, everything they're each trying to hide will find its way to the surface...whether Morgan is ready or not.

RISE TO THE SUN

Three days. Two girls. One life-changing music festival. Toni is reeling in the wake of the loss of her roadie father and desperate to figure out where her life will go from here. Olivia is a hopeless romantic whose heart has just taken a beating (again). When the two collide at the Farmland Music and Arts Festival, it feels like kismet. But when something goes wrong and the festival is sent into a panic, Toni and Olivia find that they need each other, and the music, more than they ever imagined.

YOU & ME AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Hannah Ashton wakes up to silence. The entire city around her is empty, except for one other person: Leo Sterling. Leo might be the hottest boy ever (and not just because he's the only one left), but he's also too charming, too selfish, and too devastating for his own good, let alone Hannah's. Together, they search for answers amid crushing isolation. But while their empty world may appear harmless . . . it's not. Because nothing is quite as it seems, and if Hannah and Leo don't figure out what's going on, they might just be torn apart forever.

IN THE SAME BOAT 

Sadie is ready for the race of a lifetime: The Texas River Odyssey. But then her brother ditches her and she has to pair up with her former best friend, Cully. It's irritating enough that he grew up to be so attractive, but once they're on the river it turns out he's ill-prepared for such a dangerous race. But as the miles pass, the pain of the race builds, they uncover the truth about their feuding families, and Sadie's feelings for Cully begin to shift. Could this race change her life more than she ever could have imagined?

THE GREAT DESTROYERS 

In this alternate-history novel, Jo joins the Pax Games: an Olympics-style competition that pits pilots of mechas against each other. But when fighters start dying in the arena, Jo is drawn into a deadly political plot. In a global arms race between superpowers, playing out in violent games that only humanity could create, comes a chilling story of clashing titans, ruthless competition, freedom, and the girl caught in the middle of it all.

[undinoble]

Crazy long text ahead i warn you, just explaining some process I went through while drawing this Frank and Julie low light dying thingie, probably gonna drop some wips along the way, you may want to see… idk, dealer’s choice

!TRIGGER WARNING! Violence, death, suicide. Proceed with caution.

Well where do we begin? The inspiration maybe?

Exploring the magical world of Spotify when a band came in, one of the first songs (if not the first one) of theirs I heard was Partners in Crime by Set It Off, you know, love at first sight, love for their voices, their music style, aaand the lyrics, OH BOI the lyrics, check it out:

“You’ll never takes us alive We swore that death will do us part They’ll call our crimes a work of art You’ll never takes us alive We’ll live like spoiled royalty, lovers and partners”

Dunno, for two passionate juvenil delinquents that just wants trouble this line really fits to me, the dreamy couple feels invencible.

“Everybody freeze Nobody move Put the money in the bag Or we will shoot Empty out the vault And me and my doll will be on our way”

It’s actually interesting to think of the Legion robbing a bank, it’s not like troublesome teens didn’t do that in movies c’mon, it’s a small city, they wear masks, ez!

“Our paper faces flood the streets And if the heat comes close enough to burn Then we’ll play with fire ‘cause

You’ll never takes us alive”

THIS. This is so a Legion thing to say. Can you imagine their masks all around the streets as a warning like “HEY, WE ARE HERE, FEAR US” I love this

“Here we find our omnipotent outlaws Fall behind the grind tonight Left unaware that the lone store owner Won’t go down without a fight Where we gonna go He’s got us pinned Baby I’m a little scared Now, don’t you quit He’s sounded the alarm I hear the sirens closing in”

The second big moment, the adrenaline along with the instrumental is crazy for real

“The skies are black with lead-filled rain A morbid painting on display This is the night the young love died Buried at each others side”

THIS. (again) is the main theme of the drawing, it’s where the inspiration flood over me, the scene was clear in my mind, c’mon if you read till here there’s absolutely no reason not to listen to the song you won’t regret im not even getting payed to show it off

ACTUALLY FORGET IT- i just won a sub on Cody Carson’s stream WHAT IS LIFE??????? Thanks Max!!!

I totally didn’t draw this while listening to the music when i should be working what are you talking about??

Hold the sketch, focus on the gun. It’s dope aint it?

Anyways, here goes the lore, along with the music lyrics I filled up the gaps, well, Suz and Joey are not around, maybe doing school stuff Julie didn’t feel like doing so she decides to hang out with Frank in the meanwhile, they’re on the lodge, bored, upset about the world cause it’s what teens do in their free time, listening to one of their mixtapes, probably Frank’s, the more hardcore one when the idea hit: what if they try some good mischief? “There’s a small banks a mile from here, want some adrenaline babe?” And oh of course she does, grab your mask, here we go

Sorry, not a big legs-drawing fan…

They grab their knives, put on the masks, get ready, drive to the bank. I didnt really think this part through, the song says it all. Long story short - they rob the bank, the police arrives, the action begins.

They brought their knives, didn’t expect the cops to show up with guns, damn they didnt even know little Ormond cops had actual guns. After long minutes of hiding on the bank safe the couple decides to fight their way out, they would be more useful alive than dead so laws could apply, but that went out of question once Frank stabbed the first bank employee on his triumphal way out, the police don’t think twice before shooting to protect the citizens inside.

Frank and Julie have too little time to react, the stress and anxiety kicks in, they go feral, crazy cinematic bullet avoids, for a moment it’s possible to get away. It all happened too quick, but in Julie’s vision it went slow motion. She just saw a cop leaning behind a car, aiming directly at Frank, even her fastest reaction wasn’t fast enough to stop the trigger from popping. With tears in her eyes she watches as the bullet hits her boyfriend right in the chest. 

She snaps. One target in mind, she sprints to the cop and stabs him over and over until she’s sure he won’t see the sun set ever again. She takes his gun and rushes towards Frank who is kneeling against a taxi holding his torax, she screams that they must go to the hospital immediately but he refuses, hospital would be just a quick stop on his way to jail. No fucking way. 

He demands to go back to the lodge, the cops are too busy helping their wounded partner to look for them, they think Frank may be dropped dead somewhere on the street after multiple shots, the two of them must flee before the cops realize the mistake and go hunting for them. NOW.

Julie side-carries Frank back to their car, the lack of a license of her own won’t stop her from driving as fast as the car can. Breathing heavily while constantly telling Frank to hold on, they will find a way out, they must do. Oh what a fucking stupid idea holy SHIT. 

The travel takes half the time it usually does and still feels like hours. The car gets all red with Frank’s blood that keeps leaking. Once they arrive, Frank wants to go upstair, Julie shouts at him to keep next the central campfire once he should grab some heat (and for god’s sake why is he still carrying the money bag they stole????), anyway he gets the last word and they climb the stairs up and lay on the bed, Frank hisses from the pain but also sighs in relief for the soft spot under him, ignoring Julie cursing besides him, saying she can still call an ambulance, she doesnt want to lose him, Suz and Joey will be devastated, although he just replies with the phrase they were saying sooner that day “They’ll never take us alive”.

After 20 minutes of agony, low whispers of memories of how they met, what they had been through together and a huge amount of blood moisturing the covers, Frank says he’s feeling light-headed, Julie looks at him and he’s paper white, the blood loss is finally getting to him, she wants to cry, scream, curse and stab that damn cop a hundred times again, but all she does is cuddle her head harder against his shoulder and tell him she loves him, that she will keep his legacy alive, with Joey and Susie, she will revenge him. He chuckles and slowly feels the life being drained from his weaked body until everything goes black.

Julie need a few seconds to process. Frank died. For real. He was good a few hours ago, he was right. They would never take them alive. Death could do them apart, but, he never said for how long they would be apart.

She reaches for the gun on the hand under Frank’s body. THAT DAMN GUN. She aims it to the side of her head, never leaving Frank’s side on the bed. Triggers it.

“Partners in crime”

Damn did I just write a fucking fanfiction? This shit is way longer than I expected, did anybody even get down here?

Well, this is the part of the drawing where i left cause I just couldn’t afford to work on it, have in mind everytime the file were opened the whole lore came in my head, and fuck did i feel dizzy writing it all down. Hell the bloody details get me, seeing Frank so white with a blue undertone simulating the lifeless body gave me headaches fr. My escape was drawing other things until the courage to finish it came back. It was easier because the story kinda faded away from my mind, the drawing became “lighter” to deal with.

Well, guess that’s it. I hardly have this big insight while drawing, to visualize the finished piece on my brain and it’s just so fucking cool, making art with so many mixed feelings along, and overall pride, cause i feel so proud with the result you have no idea. It isn’t perfect tho, but i like it anyway. So, thank you so much if you made it all the way here. gonna sleep now for fucks sake im gonna pass out bye

[welcome-to-green-hills]

Have any headcanons on Sonic and the wild? Like during his survival in the woods, did he communicate or befriend other animals if he can understand Ozzie? Raccoons... ducks... turtles maybe?

Hmm, you would like to see some Feral Space Hog headcanons? Aww! I love it! Yes, I think that I can arrange something like that for you all for today/tonight...

Sonic is a top-notch forager. He is excellent in knowing  what roots, tree nuts, herbs, berries, and insects are good to eat. Once collected, he would sort his items out and keep them stored in various containers and other shelves in his cave. He didn’t discover human food until a family left their picnic basket unattended at their camping site and ate all the contents inside. Since then, he would rise early, or leave in the middle of the night, and rummage through alleyways and corner stores at top speeds to take food.

Our lovable Space Hog learned how to communicate with the Animals in the forest way before he learned how to speak English and communicate with the humans.

Thanks to Longclaw’s teachings, Sonic was able to recall and categorize all the natural herbs, roots, and other essentials needed in case he came down with any sort of illnesses and injuries. He used to doubt himself for thinking that he would never use them, but Longclaw’s voice always nagged him in the back of the head to collect them just in case. Sonic was always quick to thank his lucky stars for having them on hand during harsh winters--especially cold and flu seasons.

Sonic Wachowski also loved to collect comic books from store fronts when no one was watching--he relates to The Flash and Captain America to most. Comic books are one of two main sources of how he learned to read and write, the other was eavesdropping on an elementary school where some classroom windows were opened. He frequented them every day for a couple of years and learned some basic human history.

Before discovering his cave, Sonic would build small shrubbery caves and dig holes to sleep in them for the night. He didn’t discover his cave until falling into it taking a late morning stroll in search of food.

The forest that surrounds the town of Green Hills is called The Great Forest, Knothole Village is a national park’s name that preserved chunk of land to honor the first settlers of the town while migrating up the state’s borders.

All of the items that he has in his cave were found along sides of streets, abandoned buildings, dumpsters, store fronts, stolen from Crazy Carl, or he was able to take a thing or two from the Donut Lord and Pretzel Lady when they weren’t looking.

Sonic is best friends with Harry T. Bigfoot. Harry is a chill hippie that always greets Sonic with a smile and makes him flower crowns. No one in town believes Sonic when he says that he knows Harry... not even Crazy Carl!

Sonic still has an enemy on Earth--those stupid squirrels. Evil squirrels. Never trust them.

Sonic did not sleep much while living in the cave. He had spent lots of hours trying to disguise it with moss, leaves, vines, and anything that he could find to make sure that it didn’t look like a cave. but he’s had many nights where he did not sleep. On average, he would sleep every other day and sleep a total of six hours... just enough to help him feel like he was secure in his cave.

He does contain many Earth hedgehog traits, such as a strong sense of smell and hearing. While tracking animals and humans, he often relies on his hearing and sense of smell to help him pinpoint if and where danger is around him. Sonic was trained how to do this by Longclaw--just a safety precaution she advised him to learn to help him track a certain clan if they’re near.

Growing up, Sonic had a rock pet named “Rocky.” Rocky went everywhere with Sonic, he still does. Sonic keeps Rocky in his backpack and takes him out to engage with Fred.

He does has a second cave that he’ prepared for himself in case he chose not to warp to the Mushroom Planet. He’s got a second one prepped with canned foods, some basic entertainment, and other essentials there to hide out in until he felt like it was safe for him to return to his true cave.

The hole above his cave is a newer edition. He added that feature himself one night hoping to see if he could spot his planet in the sky. The stars appeared the same, so did the sky and the moon... he does wonder just how far his planet was from Earth if Longclaw claimed that it was on the farthest side of the universe.

He loved the Summer and Fall months of the year. Those were the easiest seasons to live in as he stayed isolated in the forest. Sonic loves snow and rain, he loves the cooler air and the sun’s rays on his fur, but the changes of the seasons always caused problems for him living in his cave. Some days there would always be rain puddles in it, others snow or fallen leaves.Sometimes there were days where he couldn’t leave his cave due to the weather’s conditions outside. Fall and Summer were much easier to manage due to the weather patterns being predictable.

Sonic has no idea where Toby the Turtle is. Last when he saw Tony was when the USA Military apprehended him in the forest and Dr. Robotnik wanted to take him in for questioning.

Sonic has made friends with the animals in the forest, such as the birds and the bears, they all taught him at a young age how to find food in every nook and cranny, as well as let him stay in their burrows to keep him warm at night. Many animals also taught him what the humans were and told them to stay away due to them fearing that they’ll lose their homes from deforestation. Sonic vowed to each animal present that they wouldn’t lose their homes from the humans wanting to expand their town. He often tells Tom of the forest critters concerns and they’ve arranged something with the Mayor of Green Hills to keep the land sacred and replenished with new trees.

Sonic loves to take the time to explore the forest. He’s got a name for every tree, flower, rock, and mountain he sees. He’ll also mark off each familiar site with a piece of cloth he ties to the trunk of a tree... or he’ll put a sticker on it. Sonic will also make maps of the forest as well and likes to mark off what each section has the best food, herbs, and springs to lounge in.

His daily routine—if he slept that day—was wake up, do his morning stretches, take a quick jog around the state of Montana, bathe in the crystal waters of the lake nearby the entrance of town, quickly enter Jellee’s Donut Shoppe to snag a baked good, eat his breakfast on the rooftop of city hall to observe his favorite person work. Sometimes, if he caught Tom at a good time, he’d follow his police cruiser to the speed pit and play a quick game of “why-is-the-speedometer-going-bonkers-today?” with him before the end of his shift. He’s trend quietly to the Wachowski home just in time for movie night and return to his cave in the forest. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are reserved for his afternoon yoga session with Pretzel Lady.

Slugs, worms, flowers, bugs, fruits and veggies? Those are all things that Sonic loves to eat! On some occasion he’ll eat dried cat food, but it always tastes like there’s cat in it. Do not give Sonic catnip.

Although a very rare thing to see in the State of Montana, as well as the western part of the United States, Sonic loves to catch fireflies and play tag with them. He loves how gentle and warm they appear to be when they glow in the night’s sky and he loves how the glow from their body radiates a soft halo. He would never catch them in a Mason jar; he loves to cup them in his paws, make a wish, and set them free.So far, he can confirm that his wish came true...

Flower crowns. Love them. He makes them all the time in the forest and collects them. Give him one of the flowers in the forest and he’ll name every one and wear them in his spines.

Sonic mesures his growth by painting his paws and leaving the prints on the walls. He has no idea of how old he is, but he knows by the paw sizes that he is getting older and loves to see how much he’s grown.

The raccoons by the garage? Yeah, he’s the king of the trash pandas. Each one has a name: Joey, Monica, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, and Phoebe. They all obey Sonic when he asks them not to dig in the trash, they don’t with Tom. Joey likes to break into the house and steal Tom’s cake and watch TV.

Sonic has a soft spot for ducks. He built a small pond in the backyard of the house—with the help of Maddie—and he plays with them daily. They’re not allowed in the house, but he will sneak them in on occasion if it’s a rainy day and let them stay in his room.

Dequilling is a natural thing that Sonic will do. He does lose some of his spines, but he does manage to have them groomed when they start to fall. There is a catch to this, due to cultural beliefs of his species, the right to groom and style his spines must be done by a motherly figure, he always asks Maddie to brush his spines and help him style them up into a ‘do. This is how they’ve started to bond in the past.

Sonic does squeak when he’s excited, he’ll often squeak like an Earth hedgehog when he’s excited, happy, and annoyed. His squeaks and chirps are ways that he used to communicate on his home planet and will frequently use them around Tom and Maddie. Sometimes he forgets that they won’t always understand the exact words that he says, but the two of them know that their son is happy and they’re happy that he’s apart of their lives.

And finally, Sonic likes to take Tom and Maddie to tour the place where he once lived. When they camp out in the mountains, Sonic took it upon himself to fix up his owns cave and catered it to the three of them to spend the nights in. It’s small, but comforting. He figured that since Tom and Maddie made it a point to welcome him into their home and their family, he thought that he would try to do the same by fixing up the cave as a “vacation home” of sorts for them all. He has never been happier.

I’d like to thank @movie-robotnik-positivity for helping me out with some of these for the headcanons. Thank you so, so much! You‘re a very wonderful person and I love you! I love and appreciate you very much, Matt. I think that it would be very cool to see a bit more of Sonic’s past in the second film, don’t you? I would love to see what his life was like growing up in the forest and what he did before meeting Tom and Maddie. Mainly I’d like to see the growth of the character. Sonic’s a special bean and he needs love. Thank you for suggesting it!

Stay safe for me, okay?

You matter❤️

[dontasktheradiodemon]

Ghosts and Guns (4/23/2021)

Alastor a.k.a. Leal @usedhearts and Alastor a.k.a. Astor talk about their experiences seeing ghosts when they were alive, which is a great conversation.

And then they talk about how Astor keeps getting stuck third-wheeling with Leal and Alastor a.k.a. Alexa, which is not a great conversation.

usedhearts

He'd popped around a couple places in the hotel, looking for Astor, and finally found him. Leal stepped out of the shadows into the mini makeshift greenhouse.

"You remember when we talked about ghosts? Back when you taught me about the internet? I've been thinking about that lately!" Yes, no preamble, no hello, just straight into it without announcing himself. But he DOES have two thermoses in his hands, wonder what's in there. Probably something for Astor.

"I brought soup!" Definitely something for Astor.

dontasktheradiodemon

"Oh, delicious!" He held out a hand for a thermos. Who needs a preamble? Clearly this show has been broadcasting all day and he only just tuned into the middle.

Astor himself had been in the turned-sideways ship annexed onto the hotel, where he's been keeping his garden: a grand total of two okra plants and one bell pepper plants. They really don't need a whole lot of fussing at, but he feels neglectful if he doesn't do a bit of fussing anyway.

But it certainly left him time to entertain a guest. "Yes, I vaguely recall! Why?" He opened his thermos to inspect the soup.

usedhearts

Upon inspection he'd find Creole style Yakamein soup, with extra meat. Leal summoned himself a chair, settling into it. He gave his own soup a sip before he started.

"You told me abou your experiences with spirits when you were young and it got me reexamining some of my childhood and I think I may have been seeing ghosts before I was haunted personally!"

dontasktheradiodemon

Ooh, delicious. He sipped at it like it was just a cup of coffee.

"Really!" His brows went up. He wasn't surprised to learn his alternate was more sensitive to spirits than previously thought, but he *was* surprised his alternate was figuring it out so long after the fact. "Well, do tell me about them!"

usedhearts

"I think the reason I never noticed was because I would _see_ them but with my attention span, I wouldn't think anything strange about it. I remember a few incidents clearly though-- like this one time when I was out in the bayou when I was a child, I came across a gentleman who I now know was wearing a confederate uniform. He was just staring off into space. I asked him if he was alright and he didn't respond-- so I just turned and left."

Leal shrugged, taking another sip of his soup. "The things children will overlook, huh?"

dontasktheradiodemon

“The man lost his cause and has been dredging the bayou for it ever since.” He scoffed derisively. “Now, that’s interesting, though! I only rarely ever saw them! I almost always heard them—that was usually how I could tell the living from the dead, I didn’t see them.”

usedhearts

"Yes, that's why I think I mistook them for living people! All the times I remember, before I was being haunted personally, they never spoke. I only saw them." He  shrugged.

"Perhaps that's one of the key differences between us, the way we experienced hauntings."

dontasktheradiodemon

"Perhaps so!" He paused thoughtfully. "Or maybe you were also surrounded by invisible ghosts you couldn't hear and I was surrounded by silent ghosts I couldn't see? Maybe we both had twice as many ghosts as we thought we did! Hah!"

It wasn't easy to drink noodles out of a thermos, but by god he was finding a way. "Did they ever approach you? Interact with you?"

usedhearts

"Hmm..." His head tilted and he took another sip of his soup-- sluuurp there goes a noodle of his own.

"There was one time a woman approached me, and seemed to be trying to ask me something, but she had no voice. I tried to help her and I ran to get a pen and paper, but when I returned she was gone."

dontasktheradiodemon

"Only once? Huh. The rest must have realized you wouldn't be much help to them." Huff. "I wonder if she's one I ever met. Did she look like she might be a relative?"

usedhearts

"Only once that I recall so far, who knows what else my memory will dredge up!" Leal laughed, then tilted his head. "She did look vaguely like Maman, but there were a lot of women in the neighborhood that looked vaguely like Maman, so..." He shrugged.

"Now I'm wondering if I saw any during the war-- one would think that would be a hotspot for hauntings, hm?"

dontasktheradiodemon

"Oh, was it ever! I tried to talk a couple of fellows into spying on Jerry and reporting back! They said they were officially off-duty and they weren't going to fight any German ghosts for me." He laughed. It was the laugh of somebody who had taught himself through deliberate effort to find this funny.

"I had a friend named Joseph who died on the first day of shelling. He stuck it out the week with me before moving on. Now that was a dependable pal."

usedhearts

That caught him off guard, and Leal blinked. "Wait, Joey? Didn't he die on the last day of shelling?"

He was a little shocked that they'd known, possibly, the same man. But they _were_ the same person, he really shouldn't be surprised. "You know, I probably saw tons but never registered it, because anyone covered in blood and staring into a middle distance would've just looked shell shocked to me!"

dontasktheradiodemon

Astor gave him a surprised look. "Joey Landry? Never stopped talking about his fiancée what's-her-name, started with a D? No. First day. At least, in my spin on things." But if Leal knew who he was talking about, Astor doubted it had been different.

"That really was what it was like. I heard so many screams I couldn't locate, I never knew if I was hearing the dying or the dead. Sometimes I had to ask if anyone else heard that scream too, and they'd ask, 'which one?' It's the only time I ever wished I couldn't hear spirits."

usedhearts

Leal snapped his fingers, his brows shooting up as he pointed at Astor. "Yes! That's him, the very one! Joey Landry with the fiancée! Oh, always felt for that poor girl after he died....you SURE it was the first day?"

He stroked his chin as he thought. "I saw him around but he got real quiet after the first day....didn't jabber anymore. I just thought he was shell shocked at the time, not shell _dead_. But then he disappeared."

Leal took a breath and then another sip of his soup. "You know....I think you're right."

dontasktheradiodemon

Astor nodded. Yes, he was sure it was the first day. “He spent the next week grieving for himself. He made me write down a whole list of things he wanted me to do on his behalf. I think I only did three or four of them. He dictated a letter to his girl, I made sure she got that.”

usedhearts

Leal's smile tightened and he looked down, arms crossing over his chest. His thermos floated next to him, as if he never let it go.

"Well, that puts a whole new spin on things. I didn't do anything for him, I didn't even know he was dead until he disappeared at the end of the week. But now I definitely know that I saw ghosts on the front. A lot of them. Maybe I'd repressed some of it before this, but I sure do remember it now."

dontasktheradiodemon

“Well, you didn’t do anything, but on the other hand you didn’t promise him a dozen things and then break three-fourths of your promise, did you?” He laughed ruefully. “Did you repress it or did you just not understand it? Everyone saw hellish things out there, after all—if you don’t have experience with ghosts, how do you sort them out from the rest? I imagine most times they looked better than their corpses.”

usedhearts

"Exactly-- I saw so much horrible shit, how was I to sort through it to find that some of the shit was actually from cows instead of pigs?" That was a messy metaphor, but it had been a messy time.

"I think I'm only able to sort through it now, some hundred years after the fact, because so much time has passed." He took his thermos back from the air and took another drink of soup. That helped, good food always did.

"I think I fired on some German ghosts, too. I remember a couple shots that I _knew_ were dead on, but there wasn't confirmed hits...."

dontasktheradiodemon

He let out a genuine laugh. “Oh! Those fellows were having the worst time out of anyone! Imagine being one of those boys: not only are you on the frontlines, not only are you *dead,* but some stubborn doughboy is *still* shooting at you! Some days you just can’t catch a break!”

usedhearts

Astor's laugh made him laugh too, a surprised noise at first, and then a few more natural noises. "Oh, yes, that would be terrible wouldn't it? They think they're out of it and then ZOOM! There's a bullet whizzing through their ghost-head!"

dontasktheradiodemon

“Just when they start thinking, ‘Well, at least it can’t get any worse’...!”

His laughter slowly petered out. “It’s a pity you didn’t get the nice side of seeing spirits. I’m surprised Ma didn’t raise you with that.”

usedhearts

"Well, it was hardly her fault-- Catholic school does that to a boy." He snorted and shook his head.

"After a year of that, I didn't want to hear anything about _anything_ spiritual. She did teach me things, but I made it clear that I didn't want to hear about that. She, being the loving mother she was, agreed to not talk about it with me." He sighed.

"Nowadays, I wish I had let her."

dontasktheradiodemon

He nodded deeply. “That’s right, I remember you mentioned that. Funny, the big differences little changes can make. Spirits were just a fact of my life long before I started school. Even if I *had* been turned off of religion like you—well, what does religion have to do with the fact that great-grandma sang to me when I couldn’t sleep, or that my father’s kin thought my French sounded funny and old-fashioned because in between visits I practiced with a spirit? To me, the difference between a ghost and the Holy Ghost was as big as the difference between a bite of flesh and a communion wafer. But would that have been the case if I’d only seen them instead of hearing them?” He shrugged.

usedhearts

Leal nodded in turn. "See, I never had that. No one but Maman sang to me, no phantom voices talking French. I had things a child's mind wrote off as 'weird but whatever'. It just goes to show that maybe if I _had_ heard them, I might've trod a path closer to yours."

He sighed, finishing off the last of his soup. The thermos disappeared into a portal as his head cocked.

"I don't think I've shown you the rifle, have I? Not after our...tense chat. Here." He flared a bit of magic, and pushed it into the ring hidden beneath his glove, and-- poof! There it was, a lovely, alien, magic sniper rifle. He held it out to Astor. "Here, hold it, it's got a good weight."

dontasktheradiodemon

Tense chat. His smile wilted slightly. Right. He’d nearly forgotten all about that.

All the same, he accepted the rifle. “Well, now, that’s an interesting contraption, isn’t it?” He hefted it up. “This is one of those ones built to shoot people a mile away, isn’t it?”

usedhearts

Leal noticed that wilt. He made a note of it. "I haven't tried firing it THAT far but it does get good distance! The way you fire is that you charge it up with your magic and then just shoot it out! Makes reloading a hell of a lot easier."

He took a breath. "And, apparently, you _can_ make it non-lethal. I didn't know that at the time, and my magic tends to make the 'bullets' rather explosive. Hence, why I didn't want to fire it at you."

Another breath. "I'm sorry, again, for not being clearer about that. I didn't mean to muck things up, it all just happened so fast. Have you spoken to Alexa about it?"

dontasktheradiodemon

“We’ve talked.” He offered the rifle back. “Magically charged. What do you know, a gun that makes the gunman do all the hard work! Still, interesting concept for a magical focus. And I’m sure you can do some interesting tricks with the ‘bullets’ that way.”

usedhearts

That didn't offer Leal much in the way of _what_ they talked about. "Talked like our talk that happened right after, or a talk like we're talking _now_?" Might as well ask for clarification.

"Yes! I've got the 'explode on contact' thing down, I've been trying to see what else I can do with them." He took the gun back and dismissed it back to the ring.

"I also wanted to apologize if Alexa and I have made you feel...awkward, when around us."

dontasktheradiodemon

“We talked about it the day of.” And Astor didn’t intend to offer Leal much in the way of what they talked about. It wasn’t his business to share if their alternate hadn’t shared it.

His smile thinned further. “Yes, well. Unless being a pest is my goal, I don’t particularly enjoy feeling like my presence is the only thing preventing my current companions from doing whatever it is they’d rather be doing.”

usedhearts

He glanced down, his own smile thinning, his hands folding in his lap. "I know it was never _my_ intent to make you feel like that. And I doubt it was Alexa's either."

Leal took another deep breath. "I like having you around, I like being around you, you're my friend, and Alexa and I should have thought about that before....thermoregulating around you like we do. We're an odd bunch, us Alastors, but I think _that's_ probably a little odd to see, even from us." He laughed humorlessly.

dontasktheradiodemon

A long, slow blink. “‘Thermoregulating’?” Let’s just get that out of the way first.

usedhearts

Oh. Yes, there was that. He hadn't explained it yet, had he?

"I run hot, Alexa is always cold. When we....." God, he didn't want to say the word. "_Cuddle_, it evens us both out. It's nice."

dontasktheradiodemon

Another, slower blink. “And... short sleeves and long johns weren’t solutions you thought to explore first?”

usedhearts

At that, Leal rolled his eyes. "Why do you think I toss off my coat at the drop of a hat? It's not just that, it's...." He huffed a bit.

"You know that feeling, when someone touches you and your skin wants to jump ship? With Alexa, there is no _that_ feeling, at all. It's just....it's nice." And he crossed his arms again. Don't mind that blush dusting his cheeks, he's not embarrassed at all.

dontasktheradiodemon

“So, the ‘thermoregulating’ bit is a convenient excuse to cuddle without openly admitting that you want to cuddle.” He spread his hands and shrugged. “It’s actually very obvious that what you’re doing is cuddling. There’s... I’m afraid there’s really no ambiguity.”

usedhearts

"It's more an excuse for cuddling and the reason we started cuddling in the first place. But that's what we're calling it, our Thing, thermoregulating."

He took a breath. "We've both agreed to stop doing it around others, though. It was--" He gave a brief nod toward Astor. "Making things awkward and neither of us want that. So next time all of us are in a room together, me and he will be on our best behavior, I swear." He held up his hand, the other over his heart.

dontasktheradiodemon

Their *Thing.* Astor nodded. “Well, I’d hate to impose on your Thing! Particularly if this means that you’ll be spending dinner parties wishing you were somewhere else where you felt free to cuddle?”

usedhearts

"No, it's not--" Leal took a breath again. "You're not imposing on us, Alastor. Both of us _like_ spending time with you. We just....got preoccupied. It's our fault, not yours."

dontasktheradiodemon

A nod. “All right.” Like he doesn’t quite buy it. “Whatever you two feel is appropriate.”

usedhearts

Leal stated at him, eyes narrowed just a tad.

"Are we...okay? Do you want to, I don't know, share your feelings, or anything?"

dontasktheradiodemon

His brows knit. “*Share* my *feelings*—? Who in the world have you been talking to?” That was some therapist shit right there. “You’re still invited to the holiday potlucks, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

usedhearts

Oh look at that, the blush is getting worse, his smile twitching.

"Good, good. I'm going to still send you fresh seafood and bug you, too, you know. We're still _friends_."

dontasktheradiodemon

Astor studied his alternate’s face critically. What *was* all this?

He’d always taken it as an unspoken given amongst alternates that getting cagey meant *back off.* They were entertainers, not journalists. If an interviewee balks at a question, a good talk show host redirects the conversation to something more free-flowing that the audience can enjoy; he doesn’t prod deeper and drag out more tight-lipped answers while the audience loses interest. A half-assed answer *is* an answer: it says *change course.*

And any alternate of Alastor’s ought to know that. So why was Leal pushing about Astor’s *feelings*?

Neutrally, he asked, “Would you like to share *yours*?”

usedhearts

Leal's brow furrowed-- he hadn't been expecting that. Share _his_ feelings? There was nothing in the world he wanted to do _less_. He just wanted to be sure that things were alright between him and Astor-- maybe Val was rubbing off on him.

"Not particularly, no," He said, giving a wry chuckle.

"I just...want you to be reassured that you don't have to--" He shrugged. "-- sit out or anything when I invite others into shenanigans. I'll be sure to be clearer about things in the future."

dontasktheradiodemon

He gave Leal a meaningful look—yeah, well, there you go, nobody wants to talk about their feelings.

"Duly noted." Noted and discarded. He couldn't imagine attempting that again.

usedhearts

"Good." He took a breath and stood, his chair disappearing.

"Then I think I'll be on my way. If I remember more ghost encounters I'll be sure to let you know."

dontasktheradiodemon

"Do! I'd be interested to hear more about your experiences." Finally back to a safe topic—but he feared the damage was done.

"Oh! Do you want your—?" Alastor held out the thermos he'd been drinking. About a quarter of the soup was left.

usedhearts

Leal held up his hand, shaking his head. "Oh no! You keep that, it's fine."

Leal gave a little nod. "So long, Alastor! Until next time!" And he melded back into the shadows whence he came.

dontasktheradiodemon

"And to you, Alastor." He tipped his thermos to Leal.

And then he was alone. He sighed and sipped at his soup. He had the sinking feeling that could have gone better.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter one: double deuces

chapter one of book three, of course ;)

"tell me a story (will ya, will ya) a real good story (I won't leave till ya) spill your guts old man; leave out any secrets, hiding in the... any skeletons, and all your other sins any skeletons, in the closet! any skeletons, any misfortunes any skeletons, hiding in the closet! any skeletons, any skeletons in the closet!"

“Happy birthday, my dear friend.”

Aurora had taken Sam out to that Vietnamese restaurant for lunch on her birthday. Twenty two years old and she could feel the very essence of age over her head. In New York for two years and it all felt like a blur and the clear real thing all at the same time. In a year's time, she would be on the brink of her mid twenties: it all felt so ephemeral and so quick at the same time. It felt so odd to think that not even four years ago she was still in high school and she had gone into a strange brand new place in the meantime.

Four years felt like a lifetime ago, especially since she looked on at her black hair and she swore it was growing lighter over her temples. It could have just been the reflection of the glass in the mirror for all she knew, but when she went to brush her hair, she swore there were some light tendrils near the crown. As long as it didn't turn into a striking pearly white silver color, she knew she would be fine.

Aurora raised her white china tea cup for a toast to her. The soft aroma of the green tea comforted her, and she followed suit with her own cup.

Ever since she and Emile had gotten together, and ever since she had gotten that dress for Kirk's wedding the next weekend, Aurora had been dressing up more nicely: at the moment, she had a rich deep purple velvet sweater wrapped around her body and a little red rose tucked behind her ear. Despite the bitter New York cold, she started wearing more floral print tights to go with her skirts; Sam had to take a second look at her face to make out the sight of the black eye liner about the smooth edges of her eyes.

Sam herself meanwhile found herself drawn more to black—Aurora said it was because of her hanging out with Testament the past couple of weekends as well as Joey on certain days after school.

“I think it could also be because I'm in the arts,” she told her the day before. “Marla wears a bunch of black and Belinda has been wearing a lot of it, too.”

“Hangin' around the arts and hangin' out with a bunch of heavy metal dudes,” Aurora chuckled.

The art scene seemed so far away from her given she was a student and she even began to struggle with classes in recent days. Indeed, the thought of forfeiting college itself to live down in the real bohemian side of New York City was more tempting than ever to her. But she had nestled in the Bronx, three floors over Frank and down the block from Charlie and Marla. It was either pick up and go live alone in another part of town or stay there and continue to do what felt like spinning her wheels day in, day out. Sam tried to not let her thoughts cast a shadow on her own birthday, but she couldn't help but look at her own reflection in her tea cup and frown.

“Maybe it's all the doing stuff after school that's getting to you,” Aurora told her. “We haven't really seen Marla in the past few weeks.”

“No, we haven't,” Sam confessed as she gazed out the window at the snow drifts along the sidewalk.

“Well, if it's any comfort, I've been getting antsy myself,” Aurora said. “Emile wants me to move in with him but it's gonna be hard to do it especially if it's just him who's helping me with the move.”

“And you're going from Long Island up to the Bronx, too,” Sam added, “it was bad enough for me to get my bed up the stairs in that building.”

“It was tricky for me, too,” Aurora continued. “And you and I also moved across country, too.”

“And how—from around the same area, no less. Well, San Diego is way further south in comparison to Lake Elsinore, but it's near the same range, though.”

“It's all within range of L.A., that's for sure. L.A. and Riverside.”

“Hey, if Greg, Eric, and Louie can talk nonsense while they're in the studio, we can, too,” Sam pointed.

“Makes sense—Southern California exiles, the both of us.” Aurora raised her cup again to her and they clinked them together before they took a sip in unison.

“When's your birthday, by the way?” Sam asked her as she held her cup close to her mouth. “I can't remember if you told me or not.”

“May twenty ninth.”

“Oh, I see. I kept thinking it was in October for some reason.”

Aurora chuckled at that. “Well, I haven't really made it much of a point because my parents always treated birthdays different in comparison to that of American culture. I always wanted an American style birthday party growing up in San Diego but that's probably the one thing they brought over from the Korean peninsula is the way birthdays are treated.”

“And how's that?”

“When we reach a certain age, they have different celebrations for them. Like your first birthday is 'dol' or three hundred sixty five days since you were born, and that came from the fact Korea didn't have as good of protection on their newborns as we do here: so when you made it to your first birthday, it was significant. The family says a prayer for the kid and then they eat rice, seaweed soup, and rice cakes—my mom has a photo of me from my 'dol', I'll have to show it to you if and when we go out to San Diego together. They have cake and candles just like Americans, but the cake is far different—it's a lot more savory than it is sweet. And on New Year's, they eat a soup so they can finish up the age they are for the certain year. So you're actually considerably older on the peninsula than you are here. If you're ten years old, in Korea, you're considered eleven or twelve.”

“Wow.”

“And when you reach fifteen years of age, and you're female, you're considered an adult. That said, I'm glad I'm a born American because I can't imagine coming to New York City as a fifteen year old.”

“I can,” Sam said.

“You can?”

“As a boy.” She thought about Alex right then.

“Now, boys have to wait 'til they're twenty before they're considered adults.”

“So Alex would still be considered a boy right now?” she asked her. “Being eighteen?”

“Yes!” Aurora then burst out laughing and clapped her hands at that. “Oh, god, I just pictured him in the traditional horse hair hat that boys have to wear on their twentieth birthday, and I also just pictured him picking up a giant rock and lifting it over his head, too.”

“How giant are we talking, exactly?”

“One that dwarfs his entire body.” Aurora raised an eyebrow at that.

“I dunno, Aurora,” Sam confessed with a shake of her head, “—he's pretty thin but he's also got that little bit of baby fat left on him. He looks pretty soft.”

“Bet you he's way stronger than he looks.”

“Joey is,” Sam continued as she brought her cup back up to her lips.

“Joey is!”

“Mr. Hockey Player—yeah, that boy's tougher than nails.”

“Well—we are going to be in the Bay Area next weekend,” Aurora pointed out. “A whole weekend of doing stuff while Kirk and—Rebecca, I think is his fiancée's name?—while they're getting married. We all can just hang out and be a bunch of genuine friends together for a couple of days.”

Sam squinted her eyes at that.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked her in a low voice.

“You'll see. And maybe Exodus and Death Angel will want in on the fun, too. Fun with the 'little four'.” She flashed Sam a wink as she sipped from her tea once again. Right then, the sole waitress in the restaurant showed up at their table with their bowls of pho: chicken for Sam, vegetarian for Aurora. One more toast and they both dipped into their bowls of fresh hot soup.

At least that night she was to have cupcakes courtesy of Marla, forty dollars courtesy of Belinda, and a jovial phone call from her parents that night. Nothing more, nothing less, but at the same time, she wished for more and she knew that her flight back out to California that next Friday was the start of something for her. Something big and grand, like that next weekend in the Bay Area. It would take place on a day that wasn't her birthday, but it would be something.

Since it was Wednesday, after lunch, she headed back to school for the rest of the day and then back to her place in the Bronx. She stepped in through the front door: the first thing she noticed was the vase of yellow tulips on the table. They had lasted so long, and for so long in the heart of the first winter following Cliff's passing, but she noticed the wilt as it began to settle in on the yellow petals.

She would keep them there on the table until the pure yellow color vanished and they lost their smell, much like with the black hat Cliff had given her.

Sam took her seat on the couch with her drawing pad rested upon her lap. She was an artist in New York City, and yet she lived so far from the actual art scene. The boots still on her feet and yet she had no means as to how to look for it outside of her school work. Marla and Belinda had their way, for sure, but there had to be something more. There had to be, especially since she began to put her head down and put more work into her art for her classes. The struggle still came down on her, even as she gave her fish tails more scales and her humans more of a shading around their heads. It all seemed to slip away from the in between her fingers.

Everyone seemed to be doing better: her classmates received more praise, even Belinda who, at one point, admitted that graphites were a challenge for her as well. And yet, when Sam drew a self portrait surrounded by roses and water lilies, one of the comments Miss Estes left for her on the back side of the heavy grained paper was “lots of effort.”

She was eager for the flight out to the Bay Area by the time that early Friday morning rolled around, and she and Zelda were seated next to each other. She had packed that copy of Siddhartha with her but she had no idea as to when she would get to crack it open over the weekend.

Zelda had put on a plain white T shirt and fitted black jeans, and she had combed her short bob of black hair back for the flight. Apparently all she had packed with her were white shirts and black jeans.

“Don't you wanna look nice like at Cliff's memorial?” Sam asked her with a chuckle.

“I've got some suspenders and a tie to go with them,” Zelda replied. “It's a wedding for a friend of ours, and he said that we can wear whatever we like. So I told him that I'm gonna be full punk chick there. I'm guessing you'll be the artist?”

“Of course,” Sam replied, “the full black, baby.”

Zelda raised a hand to her for a high five and the light for the seat belts flickered on right then.

“I'll tell you this, Zelda,” Sam began.

“What's that?”

She peered over her shoulder to make sure Marla and Charlie paid no attention to them, given they were right across the aisle from them. Sam then gestured for Zelda to move in closer to her: beyond her and outside the window, she noticed the first few flurries of snow against the pane. She hoped they would take off soon.

“I'm getting kind of bored of New York,” she whispered to her.

“Really?” Zelda raised her eyebrows at her.

“Yeah. It's just—falling into the whole 'same old, same old' thing. I'm an artist, I should be able to go places with it all.”

“Absolutely, absolutely.”

“And I just—” Sam shook her head. “It's a great big city but I feel like there's nothing for me there anymore. Two years there and I'm not feeling it anymore. I'm glad we're going back out to the Bay Area for just this one weekend because I feel myself slowly going insane.”

“And why are you telling me this in a whisper?” Zelda asked her in a soft voice.

“Because—I don't know how to break it to Marla yet, or Belinda for that matter. Aurora kind of knows, but not in that sense, though. I made note of it to her but she didn't really suggest anything to me.”

“You can come to Providence,” Zelda suggested, “there's tons to do in Providence. Narragansett and Natick, too.”

“I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel trapped. Two years ago, I came here to the Northeast for a change of pace and it feels like it's trapped me sideways. There's no way out unless I really genuinely leave. The downside of course is—leaving you ladies behind and leaving Anthrax behind.”

“Yeah, and—we kinda like you, Sam. I do, especially. And I know Aurora does, too. And Marla.”

“Aurora is one of my best friends. Her and Frankie. They're my best friends. I don't know how I would handle leaving them both behind for a change of pace. I feel me and Marla drifting, if I'm honest. Can't really blame her, though—school's getting hard on her.”

“Well—whatever you do, Sam,” Zelda started again, “I'll support you on it. If nothing, you'll get the full support from me.”

“Thank you, Zelda. That—that means a lot to me.” Sam showed her a friendly smile.

Zelda shrugged. “I'm from Rhode Island,” she replied. “Moreover, I'm a punk rocker from Rhode Island. We look out for each other more so than these metal boys.”

They touched down in the Bay Area at five in the morning, and right as the sun began to rise right behind them. The thick fog surrounded the airport and Sam thought about the one and only Christmas she and Cliff spent together.

“Looks like San Francisco,” she muttered. “Feels like it, too.” She closed her eyes as they rolled up to the gate. She and Zelda stepped out of the airport first and she breathed in that marine air. She swore that New York was in fact her one true home, but there was just something about California that brought her more so into that feeling. That feeling that she needed to be there. All the fleeting thoughts led up to that moment there on the sidewalk.

Cliff's remains were not very far away from there, either.

She, Zelda, Marla, Aurora, and Belinda all stood at the curb as Charlie and Emile fetched their rental cars. All those men awaited them not too far from there, and Sam was eager to see Joey again given he flew in from Syracuse. That morning in which he and Belinda woke up before her and flirted with each other went through her mind every now and again. She never realized how much she wanted him until he put his arms around her and they locked eyes with each other. She needed to at the very least see him again: he also promised her a birthday gift.

Within time, Emile showed up with the little black car for himself and Aurora, while Charlie rolled up to the curb in a short dark green van. The four remaining girls piled inside away from the damp cold; Sam wanted to refer to him and Marla in the front seat as “Mom and Dad” again but she decided not to as she shivered under her jacket.

It wasn't New York, but Sam had forgotten how cold San Francisco could feel once the winter time set in.

“Okay, so we're going to a place called Marin Heights,” Charlie told them. “I think that's where the guys—Metallica—got the loft for us.”

“I've heard of it,” said Belinda from the middle seat.

“Me, too,” Sam added from the way back; Zelda huddled next to her and shook her head about. Sam had no idea as to why she didn't bring a jacket with her given it was winter in California. But instead, she peered out the small notch of a window to the Bay itself. She remembered that Testament were to film a music video out in Alcatraz, and those cold yellow lights from the island itself pierced through the foggy darkness. She wondered if they had finally wrapped up the recording of their first album since she wasn't able to sit in with them over the past couple of weeks because of school. She also wondered if she would receive any credit on it like with Stormtroopers of Death.

Charlie wound through the city until they reached the freeway, which in turn brought them up to Marin Heights, nestled back in the hills on the north side of town: they reached a switch back on the hillside so Sam was able to see the very top of the Golden Gate Bridge as it rose through the fog. The clouds themselves split apart so as to let the first rays of sunlight through and the metal of the bridge shone that bright amber color with the sunrise.

No wonder Cliff loved it there.

She sighed through her nose and turned her attention back to the road ahead of her as it turned away into the hills. Within time, they reached the top, and a small villa of little brick two story houses nestled back in the trees. She wondered if the wedding was going to be there as Charlie pulled up to the gravel driveway and stopped before the one closest to the street.

“I think this is us,” he informed them. “Or it might just be check in, I dunno.” He climbed out and then Sam and Zelda followed suit. The latter raised her lanky arms over her head and closed her eyes. Meanwhile, the former spotted a tall lanky boy with long black hair perched on a stone post on the other side of the driveway. He faced the other way but she knew those rich jet black curls anywhere.

“Joey?” she called out.

“Hm?” Zelda asked.

“Joey's over there.”

Zelda peeked around the rear end of the van and she nodded at her.

“Yeah, he is! Go get 'em!”

Sam then ducked around the end of the van and hurried over to him.

“Joey!” she called out. “Joey!”

He turned to face her with his eyebrows raised. He had lost a little weight so his waist was rather slim like Joey's, and the black hair dye held up, but she knew those deep eyes anywhere.

“Oh, hi,” she greeted him as she skidded to a stop before him.

“Hi,” Alex replied back to her with a thoughtful look on his face. “What's happening?”

“I thought you were Joey for a second.”

“You thought I was Joey?” he laughed at that.

“You have similar hair to each other.”

“His has more of a pile, though. Like right on top of his head. That big pile of ringlets atop his head.” He gestured to the crown of his head. “Even though I'm sitting down, I think he's a little bit shorter than me, too?”

“I think so?” Sam shifted her weight right there. Stray strands of his black hair lifted off of his shoulders in the wind and he ran his hand over the back of his head. He shivered from the feeling over his skin.

“God, it's cold out here,” he muttered as he adjusted his jacket.

“Yeah, it's pretty nippy. Not New York, but it's that California cold, though.”

“You know, both my parents are from New York,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Both obscenely smart Ivy League professors. They came out here before I was born to teach over at Berkeley.”

“Is that why you had the gray streak?” she asked him.

“Nah, I have no idea where that came from.” He shifted his weight yet again on that post. He seemed uncomfortable sitting there but Sam had no idea where to go right then. Charlie's voice behind her caught her ear and she peered over her shoulder at his talking to James.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” Alex told her as he shifted his weight a fourth time. “Aurora told the five of us last week that it was her assistant's birthday and she didn't know what to get you.”

“Aw, thank you—it was back on the twenty first, though.”

“Happy belated,” he corrected himself, and she swore he winked at her. Someone called his name and he looked off to the distance.

“Hang on—” he said, and he darted past her towards Charlie.

“Sam?” Zelda called out to her, and she jogged back to her. Aurora had climbed out of Emile's car right next to them and she shivered inside of her windbreaker.

“What's up?”

“Apparently the wedding is today,” Aurora announced.

“Today?” Sam was stunned.

“Yeah. Three o'clock. I guess Kirk's lady couldn't wait for it a second longer so they're doing it today.”

“So we get a full weekend of good ol' fun,” Zelda added as she clasped her hands to her upper arms.

“Exactly!”

Sam turned her attention to Alex, who was talking to Charlie about something. His black hair twirled in the cold winter winds. Even from a distance, he had such a grave expression on his face that it made Sam think he was much older than in reality.

Belinda had the right idea: he was very precocious. But now she had a little bit of insight into the boy in that he was raised by intelligent parents. It was a start with Alex and she could only wonder from that point onward.

Aurora and Emile led her, Zelda, and Belinda into the cabin behind Charlie and Alex, and once they stepped inside of the cozy foyer, Zelda was eager to turn on the heater.

“Terrible idea not to pack a coat,” she muttered as she hurried down the front foyer in search of the thermostat, “terrible idea not to pack a coat!”

Sam and Belinda meanwhile took to the narrow stairwell in front of them, and they made their way up to that second level: to the right stood a couple of rooms, while to the left was the bathroom and two more rooms. The door at the far end stood slightly ajar, such that when they reached the top, they spotted that head of black curls outside the doorway.

“Hey, Joey,” Belinda greeted him. That lopsided grin and those big brown eyes returned the favor, and Sam's heart skipped a couple of beats at the sight of him. He didn't appear to be ready for a wedding at all with his plain white shirt, extra tight blue jeans, and ragged white socks.

“There are my girls,” he said as he padded closer to them.

“Oh deary me, you're gonna be down the hall from us?” Sam teased him.

“Yup, me, Frankie, and Charlie and Marla. We're gonna be all here at the end of the hall if you need anything.”

“You know the wedding is today right?” Belinda told him.

“Oh, shit, is it really?” Joey raised his eyebrows at that.

“Yeah, Aurora just told us,” Sam added, and her heart sank at the thought of him barely being in the know of these things. “Three o'clock. So Bel and I are gonna get settled in and get dressed.”

“Oh, damn, thank you,” he told her, and his brown eyes sparkled at the sight of her. Cold as the earth and as engulfing as venom. He doubled back to his room and Sam pushed open the door in front of her. Inside stood a small bunk bed and a heavy wooden dresser underneath the window.

“Top or bottom?” she asked Belinda.

“You're older and got way more inside, so top,” she replied as she lay her purse down on the faded blue comforter upon the bottom bed. Even though they had plenty of time before the wedding, Sam wanted to clean up, and change her clothes and look her best. She hadn't been to a wedding in what felt like forever: there was one from when she was three years old, but she had no memory of it and she had no clue as to who even got eloped then, either.

Belinda offered to curl her hair and do it up extra nice, but she promised her there was very little to actually do up given her hair sat flat on her head. If only she could make curls into a crown like with Joey, but she had what she had in the form of a red wine colored dress and a thin black sweater over the top: the dress was a bit snug around her hips but she need not obsess over something as trivial as that when she remembered what Joey wanted to give her.

She was about to head on back inside of their room when she spotted him on the other side of the hallway with the five men from Death Angel, if she recalled correctly. Once again with the quintets and she would learn all of their names in the meantime. But he had a box wrapped in old faded red wrapping paper tucked under his arm and she hoped it wasn't just a wedding gift, especially since he still hadn't gotten dressed.

He laughed at something one of them said and he turned around.

“Oh, there you are!” he called out to her, and he scurried towards her. The tape on the edges of the box and the crooked look of the paper itself told her he wrapped it in a hurry, but she didn't mind at all once she slid her fingers under the edge of the paper closest to her. Careful not to tear it, she unwrapped it and lifted the lid. Inside was a pair of black leather gloves and a red and white knit scarf, the latter of which she ran her fingers over to find it softer than anything she had felt before. It was as soft as a cat.

“It's your own pair of gloves plus a scarf,” he declared. “I just think about how cold you always get upstate.” He shrugged at that.

“I love it, Joey! It's so soft.”

“It's cashmere.”

Sam gaped at him. “Cashmere,” she echoed him.

“Yeah—it was marked down, though. But it's cashmere. I wanted to give you something nice and good and good and nice.”

She slipped the gloves on and they fit around her fingers as if they were made for her. Joey offered to put the scarf around her neck; he stood before her, a country boy in a plain white shirt before a California girl in a dark red dress, and he wrapped the scarf around her.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered to her. “Happy birthday. Double deuces as of ten days ago!”

“Thank you—” She put her arms around him and she held him close. His slender little body was as soft as that scarf, and he smelled of fresh baked bread, something she would be willing to experience as long as he didn't have a drop of alcohol on hand.

Maybe there was in fact something more to life than being in that groove all the time. Maybe she could find a way to break out of her shell, and she could owe it all to him.

And she still hadn't told her parents about him.

[platedgolds]

𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆: 𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐎.

hi,   friends   !   i’m   admin   fox   (   23.   she/they.   brt.   )   and   i’m   so   excited   to   get   this   going   !   it’s   been   a   wild   journey   to   make   this   group   happen   but   everyone   seems   so   nice   and   all   of   your   muses   are   so   interesting   it’s   def   all   worth   it   !   this   is   romeo   dubois,   my   himbo   baby   and   all   around   hot   mess.   if   you’d   like   to   plot   with   him,   please   feel   free   to   message   me   on   discord   at   pedro pascal stan blog#9349   or   send   me   your   discord   @   and   i’ll   message   you   there   !

*                     SEBASTIAN   STAN   +   CIS   MALE   +   HE/HIM   ——   have   you   seen   ROMEO   DUBOIS   around?   they’re   a   THIRTY-SIX   year   old   PHYSICAL   EDUCATION   TEACHER   known   around   town   as   the   LOOSE   CANON.   not   only   are   they   broke   af,   but   they’ve   been   in   town   for   SIX   YEARS.   they’re   LOYAL   +   LAID-BACK,   as   well   as   CHILDISH   +   UNHINGED,   but   what   else   would   you   expect   from   an   ARIES?   low-hanging   grey   sweatpants.   back   muscles.   a   beer   bottled   tucked   on   the   back   pocket   of   a   pair   of   jeans.

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘.

romeo   was   born   in   eldora   to   two   very   absent   parents;   they   were   one   of   the   few   middle   class   families   in   town,   with   his   mother   always   traveling   for   work   and   his   father   at   home,   drowning   himself   in   alcohol.   from   an   early   age,   romeo   was   left   to   his   own   devices;   he   was   the   one   who   raised   his   brother   even   though   he   was   still   just   a   child   himself   when   cain   was   born,   with   no   skill   or   mental   capacity   to   take   care   of   himself   let   alone   an   infant. 

his   parents’   marriage   was   in   shambles;   the   whole   town   often   spoke   about   how   unfaithful   mrs.   dubois   was,   and   how   her   husband   only   stood   by   her   side   because   of   the   money   she   made.   romeo   was   too   young   to   understand   what   ‘cheating’   meant   when   the   rumors   first   started,   but   he   still   got   into   plenty   of   fights   by   the   time   he   entered   his   teens   and   the   infamy   of   his   mother’s   choices   were   echoed   throughout   high   school   bleachers

it   didn’t   take   long   before   people   started   recognizing   romeo   as   one   of   the   trouble   makers   in   town;   his   anger   against   his   parents   and   the   horrible   situation   they   forced   upon   him   made   its   way   out   of   his   chest   with   the   blink   of   an   eye,   lashing   out   at   everyone   and   anyone   he   could.   in   the   height   of   his   teenagehood,   romeo   knew   the   name   of   every   single   cop   in   eldora’s   precinct.   he   got   into   so   many   fights   it   was   hard   to   see   romeo   without   a   bruise   on   his   face,   got   drunk   and   wrecked   his   car   more   times   than   anyone   could   ever   count,   and   he   even   spent   a   few   nights   in   a   cell   after   a   particular   incident   involving   the   break   in   of   several   homes   around   town.   still,   people   pitied   the   kid,   and   many   would   leave   him   off   the   hook   no   matter   what   kind   of   bad   trouble   he   got   into.

despite   his   bad   manners   and   constant   anger,   romeo   excelled   in   sports.   more   specifically   ice   hockey,   which   he   had   to   take   a   bus   three   towns   over   to   be   able   to   practice   every   week;   he   loved   the   freedom   of   the   skates,   and   he   was   large   and   violent   enough   to   be   unstoppable   in   the   rink.   his   prowess   caught   the   eye   of   many,   and   by   the   time   romeo   was   legal   to   drink   he   was   shoved   in   an   airplane   and   taken   to   canada   where   he   could   practice   and   properly   excel   in   his   craft.

by   the   age   of   twenty-three,   romeo   was   back   in   the   united   states   playing   for   the   jersey   devils,   a   team   he   wasn’t   too   proud   of,   but   it   paid   the   bills   and   it   brought   him   the   notoriety   he   felt   like   he   truly   deserved.

by   the   age   of   twenty-seven,   romeo   dubois   was   captain   of   the   chicago   blackhawks   and   making   more   money   than   he   could   ever   know   what   to   do   with   it.   twenty-seven   was   also   the   year   he   got   married   to   the   victoria’s   secret   angel   he’d   met   just   eight   months   prior;   anyone   that   has   ever   met   romeo   will   say   he   peaked   in   his   late   20s,   though   he   would   say   they   were   the   most   miserable   years   he’s   ever   had.

it   all   came   crumbling   down   on   his   29th   birthday,   when   romeo   was   arrested   in   chicago   for   a   car   accident   that   nearly   took   the   life   of   a   young   mother;   he   had   two   male   escorts   and   over   a   pound   of   cocaine   in   his   car,   and   even   though   his   lawyers   managed   to   bribe   his   way   into   a   short   six   months   prison   sentence,   the   media   wasn’t   so   kind.   romeo   lost   his   job,   lost   his   reputation   and   managed   to   lose   every   single   penny   he   had   once   his   wife   divorced   him.

once   romeo   was   out   of   jail,   he   had   no   place   to   go   other   than   eldora.   he’s   been   back   into   town   for   six   years,   working   as   a   p.e.   teacher   at   the   local   high   school   solely   because   the   principal   was   a   family   friend   that   pulled   many   strings   to   get   him   the   position.   he   currently   lives   in   the   dingy   motel   in   the   outskirts   of   town,   spending   most   of   his   time   drunk   and   high---   and   for   a   man   who   swore   he’d   never   be   like   his   father,   romeo’s   had   never   been   more   wrong. 

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄.

literal   himbo.   that’s   it,   that’s   his   personality.   hot   &   stupid,   absolutely   joey   tribbiani   kinda   guy--   you   know,   if   joey   was   an   asshole   and   not   the   absolute   sweetheart   he   is.

v   selfish,   will   do   whatever   it   takes   to   make   sure   he   comes   out   on   top   of   every   situation.   still,   if   he   thinks   someone   is   worthy   of   his   loyalty,   he’ll   stick   by   them   no   matter   what.

big   liar.   seriously.   has   no   qualms   about   making   shit   up   on   the   spot   so   that   his   narrative   is   the   one   being   told;   damn   good   actor,   too.

big   hoe   (   it   runs   in   the   family,   the   bad   tongues   would   say.   ),   will   sleep   with   anyone   as   long   as   they’re   paying   attention   to   him   for   long   enough.

he   was   in   the   closet   his   entire   career,   and   now   that   he’s   been   shoved   out   of   it   romeo   has   no   intention   of   going   back---   calls   himself   gay   as   hell   way   too   much   for   someone   who’s   actually   bi.

6′3,   broad   shoulders   and   still   with   an   athletic   build   even   if   he   doesn’t   play   anymore;   romeo’s   far   too   shallow   to   let   himself   go,   even   if   working   out   nowadays   kills   a   little   bit   of   his   soul   every   time.

covered   in   tattoos,   with   a   well   trimmed   beard   and   hair   styled   perfectly   so   that   it   looks   messy   enough;   romeo   has   the   ‘i   look   like   i   just   woke   up   and   yet   it   took   me   three   hours   to   get   ready’   nonchalant   look   down   to   the   t.

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒.

a   party   friend   ---   romeo’s   only   likable   when   he’s   drunk;   thankfully,   that   seems   to   be   the   case   most   of   the   time.   this   person   only   comes   around   when   they   want   to   get   drunk   or   high,   and   of   course   romeo’s   always   ready   to   take   it   up   a   notch.

a   best   friend   ---   they   are   always   on   each   other’s   corner;      this   is   someone   that   sees   romeo   for   who   he   really   is   instead   of   the   bad   guy   façade   he   wears,   and   loves   him   despite   his   flaws;   maybe   they   even   lived   together   for   a   while   when   romeo   first   came   back   into   town?   could   be   a   childhood   friendship   or   something   new.

a   protege   ---   for   one   reason   or   another,   romeo   has   deemed   this   person   worthy   of   caring   for   and   protecting   with   his   life.   like   a   momma   bear,   except   you’re   not   a   bear   cub   and   he   certainly   doesn’t   know   how   to   care   for   anyone.   could   be   funny   if   this   was   clearly   someone   that   doesn’t   need   protecting.

a   one   night   stand   ---   like   a   said,   big   hoe.   maybe   romeo   and   this   person   that   a   night   together   (   or   more   than   one   )   and   he   simply   never   called   back   ?   probably   doesn’t   even   remember   about   it,   acts   as   if   it   never   happened;   could   be   fun   if   they   had   been   friends   beforehand.

an   ex   ---   they   were   pretty   serious   at   one   point,   maybe   even   lived   together   ?   and   then   romeo   fucked   things   up;   it   was   definitely   a   self-sabotaging   thing,   where   he   felt   like   he   was   too   close   to   happiness   and   subconsciously   couldn’t   allow   himself   such   a   thing.   maybe   he   cheated,   or   maybe   he   started   picking   fights   for   every   single   small   thing,   or   hell,   maybe   he   even   started   ghosting   them   and   spending   the   nights   away   from   home.   whatever   he   needed   to   do   to   get   them   to   break   up   with   him.

a   hate   fuck   ---   they   hate   each   other,   but   they   can’t   keep   their   clothes   on   around   each   other   either;   every   argument   ends   up   in   heated   sex,   and   at   this   point   they   aren’t   sure   if   they’re   fighting   because   they   can’t   stand   the   other,   or   if   they’re   doing   it   because   they   know   where   it’ll   end. 

a   fan   ---   someone   that   knew   him   from   his   time   as   a   hockey   player   !   romeo   def   feels   very   uncomfortable   around   them,   a   constant   reminder   of   the   good   life   he’s   lost.

friends   of   all   kinds   ---   romeo’s   a   social   butterfly   on   his   good   days,   so   give   him   all   sorts   of   friends   !   co-workers,   old   friends,   some   new.   anything   !

[rawiswhore]

Raven x Fem Reader- "I Need a Lap Dance"

In the 1990's, ECW was a professional wrestling company known for doing things that other wrestling companies, especially mainstream ones like the WWF and WCW, didn't do.

What was that?

Being excessively very violent, serious and not very cartoonish and childish, using profanity, sexualized and even shocking.

After all, ECW stands for Extreme Championship Wrestling.

Granted, the WWF by the end of the 1990's did get edgier, more violent, more sexualized and added some shock value with their Attitude era, but the Attitude era really didn't come about until the end of the 1990's.

Some people could even say the Attitude era was just a rip-off of ECW; even some Attitude era icons like Mick Foley, the Dudley Boyz and even Stone Cold got their starts in ECW.

There were 2 kinds of women in ECW: women who were legitimate wrestlers that did try to do wrestling matches (i.e. Luna Vachon, Miss Congeniality/Angelica who would later on become Lita in the WWE, and Jazz) and women that were just there to be valets and fap material (Beulah McGillicutty, Francine, Missy Hyatt, Kimona Wanalaya).

You were the latter.

But...there's a positive to that.

Why? Because there were a few men in ECW who were hot and sexy, and you wanted to arouse these sexy men in ECW and be with them.

One of ECW's most famous alumni was Raven, a depressed, nihilistic grunge rocker with an abusive, troubled childhood.

Raven was perfect for the 1990's considering the grunge movement was at the height of its popularity and he was a wrestler many people could relate to.

Raven was probably one of the few men in ECW who actually was nice to look at, when his hair wasn't wet and covering his face and not drenched in blood.

One of Raven's signatures is that he sits on the ring's floor in the corner, he did that in ECW, WCW and even in the WWF/E.

Hmmm...sitting down, does that give you an idea?

It did, and you were gonna share and explain that idea with your body.

During Raven's arguable heyday in ECW, circa 1995 to 1997, he was sitting in the corner of the ring, resting his arms on the ropes.

His thick hair was dry, this is how you like the way he looks, and he was dressed in his signature black leather jacket, 90's rock band T-shirt and denim jeans cut at his knees with a flannel tied at his waist.

Several people were in the audience watching him as well as you, and this ECW moment was filmed on television.

You were dressed in micro-mini acid wash denim shorts that were cut off so short, they may as well be underwear and your ass cheeks were exposed, and your shorts were both unbuttoned and unzipped all the way down.

By the way, you didn't wear any underwear under those shorts, but your vagina was completely shaven without the slightest bit of pubic hair.

And luckily, you didn't have any red bumps, stubble and shaving cuts on your vulva, so above your twat was as smooth as the skin of a mannequin.

You also wore a makeshift crop top that tied a knot in between your breasts.

The men in the audience absolutely adored your outfit, some of them were reaching their arms and hands out trying to touch you and were making catcalls and wolf whistles at you.

What you did is that you slowly walked behind Raven, your index finger tracing and sliding across his back, which made Raven turn his head and look at you.

Blood was swelling his penis underneath his denim shorts, his shorts feeling tighter on his thighs, and he was already getting an erection seeing you in that outfit.

When you reached Raven's other shoulder, you lifted one of your legs off of the floor and placed it under the ropes, showing your long, smooth, hairless, Stacy Keibler-esque leg in front of him, and placed one of your hands on that leg, that hand caressing up your leg.

Your hand tried to not rub your leg too hard and make it red, that would be unsexy.

That hand that caressed your leg lifted off of your leg and grabbed onto one of the ropes, and your hand behind Raven's back moved to one of the ropes, wrapping your fingers around a rope, where you carefully slid yourself under the ropes and entered the ring.

You were hoping that the shorts you were wearing wouldn't fall off of your ass, but they were snug around your rear.

Now that you were in the ring, with your legs spread apart horizontally and the upper half of your body bent over, showing Raven some of your cleavage, your other hand grabbed onto one of the ropes across from the ones you were currently holding onto, where you pulled yourself up from the ring's floor.

"Oh mi God!!" Joey Styles on commentary shrieked, and the men in the audience were still cheering you on, making all kinds of obscene catcalls and silly wolf whistles at you.

Raven, meanwhile, his eyes were staring at you in front of him, his face was completely straight and devoid of showing any emotion, although his eyes were looking at you in front of him.

When you were standing in front of Raven, you slightly bent your body over and still showed him your cleavage, while you stuck your ass out and slowly waved it back and forth horizontally, showing him your rear end despite your torso being in front of him instead of your back.

You smiled as you horizontally waved your ass back and forth, though you look a little corny smiling at him.

You then rotated your body around, where now your back was in front of Raven instead of your torso, and you showed Raven your denim clad ass cheeks, where you continued to horizontally wave your ass back and forth in front of him.

Your fingers were still wrapped around opposite ropes across from each other.

"Maybe we could get some music on!" Joey Styles exclaimed.

Indeed, music could set the mood, what's a lapdance without some music?

But what song would they play?

And while this will be an eventual lapdance, did you really need to stand up in front of Raven and shake your ass?

That's not technically a lapdance; which is when you dance on someone's lap.

The audience must think Raven must be gay since he isn't reacting to you being practically naked shaking your ass in front of him.

It's a good thing Raven wears those flannels tied around his waist to hide his erection.

You then dropped yourself down to the ring on your knees, your fingers letting go of the ropes and you sat on your knees, only for you to roll yourself over and rotate until your face was looking at Raven's face.

You rotated your body using your knees to spin yourself around.

With your hands on top of your thighs, you spread your thighs out and show him your denim clad crotch, only for you to lift your hands and place them on the ring.

You proceeded to crawl up to Raven like Shakira in the "Whenever, Wherever" video where she's crawling in the mud, looking like a panther on the prowl.

As you crawled up to Raven, you were looking at him quite ravenously (and no, that wasn't a pun), grinning from ear to ear whilst you crawled up to him, looking at him like you wanted to pounce on him.

Your ass was sticking out as you crawled to him, the audience knew what was probably gonna come next.

When you had approached Raven, with you now being in between his legs, you lifted your legs and sat your thighs on top of his thighs, you straddled your lap on his crotch.

You could feel his erection hiding inside of his denim shorts that just kept growing and growing while you tried sexually arousing him.

First, you thrust your pelvis out and nudged it on his lap, then you began to grind and gyrate your hips and lap forward on his lap, rolling your lap and crotch forward onto his erection.

This got a massive pop from the males in the audience, you could play a drinking game with how many wolf whistles the men in the audience made at you and end up with alcohol poisoning.

"Oh mi God!!" Joey Styles exclaimed. "She-she's givin' him a lapdance!"

No duh.

As you rolled your pelvis on Raven's lap, you placed your hands on top of your head and ran your fingers through your hair, as well as swung your head back like this:

You were trying to look sexy and turn Raven on, which is what you were doing.

Raven, meanwhile, sat there with a straight face, and surprisingly didn't try pushing you off of him.

Again, the males in the audience probably think Raven's gay since he isn't cracking even the slightest of smiles with a sexy, beautiful half naked woman grinding her pelvis on his lap, giving him a lapdance.

Although, one man in the audience chanted "Raven's got a wood-y!", which ended up spreading to the other men in the audience, chanting along with that guy.

Why didn't they chant that when you waved your ass in front of him?

As you were giving Raven this lapdance, you moved your hands to his leather jacket and slightly pulled his jacket sleeves down his arms.

His eyes looked at your hands sliding his sleeves down his arms, but he didn't have much of a reaction.

Your fingers let go of his jacket and moved to his chest, where your hands proceeded to caress up and down his chest, and not just that, but one of your hands slipped under his shirt and elevated up his bare torso, where that hand caressed and stroked up and down his chest.

His eyes darted to his chest with your hands caressing him, but he didn't even have the slightest smile when you caressed him.

Deep down inside, he loves this.

Oh yeah, he loves this.

You could see a bump underneath Raven's shirt, which was your hand under his shirt caressing his chest.

Your other hand, specifically your index finger, moved to one of the strands of his hair, where your index finger twirled one of his curls (that rhymed).

You leaned your face closer and further into his face until you sunk your teeth into his bottom lip, placing his bottom lip in between your teeth, and you tugged and stretched his bottom lip out.

You didn't bite into his bottom lip too hard, but you did stretch it a bit.

The camera was zooming in on your face stretching his bottom lip out, his lower lip stretching like taffy.

"Oh mi God!!" Joey Styles exclaimed and repeated once more, and some people in the audience could see that you were stretching his bottom lip out.

Your teeth let go of his lip, his bottom lip returning to his face.

After a while, you exited your hand out of Raven's shirt through the bottom of it and lifted your hand off of his chest, only for your hands to form knuckles at your breasts.

Your knuckles pushed and raised your cleavage in front of him, and his eyes stared at your cleavage.

Some men in the audience can see that you're pushing your tits out, and they're wolf whistling at you, some men are even chanting "take it off! take it off!" and "show us your tits!".

You're tempted to untie your top and show him your breasts, but...maybe not. Sadly.

However, your hands pulled away from your chest, but you lifted one of your legs off of his thighs and moved your ass to one of his thighs, where you now straddled his thigh.

You proceeded to start rolling and gyrating hips forward on his thigh, like how you rolled your hips on his groin.

You rode his thigh like you were riding a mechanical bull, brushing your lap back and forth on his thigh.

Raven's eyes stared at you giving him this lapdance, but he isn't even cracking a smile.

You then lifted one of your legs over his thigh and turned your body around, where your ass was now nudging his groin and your back was in front of him.

You started to vertically roll your ass up on Raven's crotch, sometimes your ass brushed up and down his ass like a paintbrush painting a picket fence.

Sometimes, your hips and ass gyrated and writhed around in a 360 degree angle on his crotch.

"Raven's one lucky guy!" Joey Styles mentioned.

Is he Joey Styles or Jerry Lawler?

(Author's note: I haven't watched a lot of ECW, but apparently Joey Styles is ECW's most iconic commentator)

Surprisingly, during this lapdance, your shorts haven't slid and fallen off of your ass, you didn't even wear a belt to hold your shorts, but that's a good thing they didn't fall off.

Raven could've gotten this lapdance anywhere else, whether sitting on the floor of a locker room or janitor's closet, but you gave him a lapdance in the ring.

You giving Raven this lapdance as he sits in the corner and you're dressed in denim shorts resembling underwear seems like something Kimona Wanalaya would do, and she was a former stripper that Raven discovered at a strip club.

Kimona was also Raven's valet/girlfriend in ECW and she did a few stripteases in the company.

(Rumor has it is that the man who played Raven worked as a male stripper when he was a struggling wrestler just so he could pay the bills)

_____________________________________________________________

I haven't seen a lot of ECW footage, but I have seen some of Raven and I know he's an icon in that company.

There were moments where he tried grabbing Beulah McGillicutty only for her to give him a low blow in the nuts, and his moments with a scantily clad Kimona Wanalaya.

He didn't seem to really move that much when Sandman's wife was writhing all over him, though he did react when Kimona flashed her tits at him.

Wonder how Raven's character would react to a lapdance?

[popculturebuffet]

Tom and Jerry 2021 Review: It’s Almost Adequate!

Hello you happy people, and welcome to a surprise review! While this was on my schedule, I moved it out to make room for my new Patreon Sponsored review. Yes at the 5 dollar tier you too can get a review a month.. but enough shilling. Point is I had some thoughts on the film, and felt I could squeeze a review of it into the schedule since my review for yesterday, the 90′s Tom and Jerry movie, got canceled as I both had to finish up my tex avery birthday review and hadn’t noticed it wasn’t on HBO Max like I thought. I could’ve sworn it was once but not anymore. Gee it’s almost like they removed their overtly awful Tom and Jerry movie from the service so people woudln’t be reminded of it when they watched the mediocre  new one. Or it was never on there because HBO wants to bury that mistake in a hole. You make the call. 

Point is I had some room in my schedule, so if I can’t cover the 1990 movie this weekend, though I FULLY intend to still do that at some point as it still fascinates me, might as well cover the one everyone’s actually watching. So join me under the cut with spoilers to go into why this film is .. ehhhh. under the cut

Tom and Jerry follows, as you’d expect, our working boys up to their ass in shit, what is this buisness. In this case Tom literally rides in on a rail with his keyboard wanting to be a big musician one day, while Jerry is shopping around for a home but can’t find any in his bracket. The two end up fighting, as you’d expect, when Tom performs as a blind cat in a park, a great gag, and Jerry first steals his customers by dancing to his music, but then when Tom tries to stop him, not only exposes his scam, but gets Tom’s beloved Keyboard broken. 

In the process of Tom trying to get Jerry back for runing his day, Tom ruins the day of Kayla, a cynical young lady played by Chole Grace Moretz who like Robin in the last theatrical film, is a blonde girl who takes up way more screen time than our heroes for some reason. Tom accidently destroys the clothes she was sent to deliver, and she gets fired from her Task Rabbit esque job... despite the fact that TaskRabbit is app based, entirely built around how you do jobs for hire as needed, and that at most she’d get a bad review and that the app dosen’t actually hire people. I know this both because i’ve seen the apps and parodies of it show up on tv shows I watch, most recently Close Enough, and because I took the 2 minutes it took to google it , read some of the Wikipedia article and do the bare minimum that me, a paid only by commissions and patreons reviewer, did to prove a point, and that the writers of this film, who likely got paid at least 10000 for a rewrite, and more for whoever wrote the treatment, which is about 30,000 at lowest as told to me by this article on what screenwriters get paid I looked up solely to prove a point. So they got paid tens of thousands of dollars, probably more than standard... to not spend 5 minutes looking up what task rabbit is, becuase they wanted to give her a “hip” job instead of just having her work for a dry cleaner. Then again they got thousands upon thousands to half ass it and i’m getting paid nothing to go on a rant about how they half assed it, so maybe i’m the dumbass, I dunno, but at least I take pride in my work. And i’ve had trouble spellchecking at times so take that as you will. 

But so far the film is not bad: the slapstick is blended really well, the action is pitch perfect and our heroes are given good motivations: Kayla’s to find a job, Tom to play piano professionally and Jerry to find a proper home. You ready for some letdown?!

 All three of our heroes converge at the Royal Gate Hotel, a prestigious hotel that’s been host to popes, dignitaries and Drake. Jerry sneaks inside, and soon finds himself at home and making himself home, Tom TRIES to and ends up getting on the wrong side of Butch, the black cat from the shorts played in this film by reggaton performer Nicky Jam. Why they choose him over a comedian or anyone who could actually act, especially since Butch dosen’t have a musical number or anything, is a riddle for the ages. My best guest, as it always is, is that Tim Story owes him a Wookie-Style life debt. Not only that but even more bafflingly Butch’s gang, who to the films credit like him are all his gang of cats from the classic shorts, are played by Kevin Hart’s Improve Troop, The Plastic Cup Boyz. I got a preview for what passing a kidney stone’s going to feel like just typing that name. I thought I had no explanation for this, not even a wookie life debt can explain how Kevin Hart’s posse, because he has one for some reason but at least unlike Adam Sandler he’s helping his smaller named friends get big instead of just promoting guys who really shouldn’t have a career or dragging poor guys like Shaq or Terry Crews into your bullcrap because they like you., can explain how this happened. But I forgot I looked up Tim Story’s filmography when I first found out he was director here, more on him later, and found out he directed both Ride Along films, both think like a man films, and one of Kevin Hart’s specials, so the two presumably are friends or at least have a solid working relationship, and given how successful the first Ride Along was for both men, I doubt Tim would turn down a favor from him and vice versa. 

And while I find the Plastic Cup Boyz inclusion in this film bizzare and wish it was fellow comedy troupe and starkid adjacent wonderkinds the Tin Can Bros so I could get Joey Richter voicing an animated cat, they at least try their best, their just not given much to do and I don’t get casting them in these side rolls or not giving the butch role to one of them as Nicky Jam just sucks in the role. And I get Butch isn’t the most solid or complex character, but it still isn’t THAT hard, with the 80 drumloads of great comedians out there, to find SOMEONE better, and it’s weird Kevin Hart himself isn’t in the roll. If it wasn’t a wookie life debt i’m betting Hart was going to play Butch, had to back out due to scheduling conflicts or whatever, and Tim found the first guy he could who’d take almost nothing instead of an actual actor. 

Kayla meanwhile somehow takes herself from sympathetic to wholly unlikeable in the span of the scene by maniuplating and terrifying a poor woman into not taking the job, outright STEALING HER RESUME, meaning if she screwed up this might go on the poor woman’s record, and lying her way into the job. And if the woman had been you know a classist dick or something, i’d understand but this is a perfectly nice lady who worked really hard, and who looses out on a job because some little bitch talked her out of it and then stole her identity. This one act really just makes me not care: It’s one thing to do what you gotta to get a job, I myself have never lied on an application but I get new york’s insanely expensive. Even if she presumibly lives in a hole that’s cramped, has roaches or rats, who given this unvierse probably have tiny tv’s that are still way too loud and binge watch way too much Jersey Shore at 2 in the morning, and is probably haunted, probably by Droopy wearing a bedsheet going boo but still, and yes he’s also alive here but he has identical cousins. Not the point. Point is even if she has sympathetic motives.. what she did is not okay and when she get flashes of guilt throughtout hte film it’s never long enough to feel like it’s not her simply feeling bad she didn’t get this herself and not that she STOLE IT FROM ANOTHER PERSON. Again if she’d FAKED her resume, this would’ve been fine, simply set up some websites, and it would’ve worked so why they went with this elaborate setup that takes her into outright crimes is beyond me. 

Point is she gets hired by the manager/owner, Mr. Dubrois, played by Rob Delany, but since his name isn’t used enough i’m just going to call him Mustache Manager. Her direct superior whose against her being hired is Terrance, the Gate’s Event Manager played by a way too good for this film Micheal Pena, who sadly is given nothing to work with. Terrance.. is supposed to be the bad guy because he distrusts kayla. And while one of those reasons is stupid, she makes a joke about the goldfish being an aquatics manger and he takes it dead seriously, he’s rightfully supscious she’s not who she says she is, since one of the places on her resume is a place he knows people from. The only way the film manages to make him the bad guy is he is COMICALLY out of touch: he dosen’t get sarcasm, as seen before, dosen’t want people posting jerry to “snapgram or instaface”, and seems to have trouble relating to his guests. What makes this not work is that he’s manger at a ludicrously expensive hotel. As such a good chunk of his events would be for Celebrties, since New York’s a big hub for them, having tons living there and visiting for films, apperances on late night talk shows, SNL and what have you and being a prime spot for events and it’s clear part of his job is talking to the guests as the two the film focuses on, more on that in a minute, know him and have met him before. He also mentions Drake having stayed there... he would NOT have kept this job. 

You’d need to do through research on these kinds of celebrates and social media is the easiest way to do that, to get what they like, what they don’t, what they don’t want to talk about, what scandals or gos might be going on to keep paparazzi out. I don’t even know how this business works nor did I google it.. and I didn’t to prove a point.. that even with no real idea how this works.. I still get what you’d probably need to know to make events for rich famous people. I’m not convinced Terrance knows how an internet works.  And given writer Kevin Costello wrote the well received and weird film I still want to see Brigbsby Bear, I get the sense a lot of this nonsense was added in rewrites demanded by executives and credit him more for what works in the film. More on that in a moment. 

Kayla is hired on because the Royal Gate has it’s biggest event ever, the wedding of Ben, played by Colin Jost, and Preeta, played by Pallavi Sharda. Why is it big? What do they do exactly? Are they trust fund babies? Did Ben invent an app? Did Preeta cure global warming? Did they both help defeat Galactus DEVOURER OF WORLDS?!... I dont’ know. If the film told me at all why their big names, even if it’s just because their famous for being famous which would be fine, why this is bigger than a fucking pope visiting, I missed it and I actually went back to their first scene and the scene where Mustache Manager brings up the wedding in the first place to Kayla, and found nothing. We just know their rich, their getting married, Ben doesn’t listen to Preeta and is insufferable, and that they own two classic Tom and Jerry characters: Ben owns spike whose played by Bobby Canavale who isn’t bad but dosen’t try to sound like spike at all and that annoys me given unlike Tom and Jerry, the former of whom’s signature noises from the cartoon were used archivally and otherwise dosen’t talk and only sings on occasion or does that wonderfully weird “don’t you belivie it” thing., has a distinct voice they could’ve got someone to imitate. The other is Preeya’s cat toodles, that white cat Tom is always trying to bang, who got a neat less anthro redesign. 

Toots, Toodles whatever you call her the redesign works, making her more of a cat, and only speaking in meows for some reason, and combinging the two female cats tom’s liked, but while still being just funny animal enough that him wanting some pussy, so to speak, isn’t too creepy. 

And this is where the film undergoes a bit of a shift. While the 20 or so minutes are rightfully focused on our boys with a bit of focus on Kayla, from here on out she’s our defacto lead. Given the last film did the same damn thing of making Tom and Jerry not the main leads in their own movie, you can see the problem.  I will say to the film’s credit it is still LEAGUES better in a lot of other ways than the 90′s film in that the plot is actually centered around them: Jerry, when stealing some cheese, and runs afoul of the tempermental Chef Jackie played by Kim Jeong. Though i’m 100% not convinced Ben Chang didn’t just lie on his resume at some place and has now somehow become a michline star canditate. He finds Jerry, and Kayla volunteers to catch him to help her own career and validly points out her doing this discreetly with only the staff knowing about the mouse will keep it from becoming a social media nightmare. 

The 90′s film could work without them, replacing them with any animal sidekick for Robin, since nit’s so far removed from Tom and Jerry their really an afterthought. Here the film DOES feel like a tom and jerry plot at it’s core, Jerry’s somewhere he shoudln’t be, Tom wants to chase him either due to personal greivance or his job depending on it, in this case both. The small side cast are all involved, and given decent if thin justifications for being there: Butch is an ally cat and Spike and Tootles are the pets of the happy couple. 

And honestly the slapstick portions, the portions that are tom and jerry focused or use the humans well, are BRILLIANT. No really, it’s good stuff once in a while using a bit from the classics but mostly coming up with new gags and the animation is gorgeous. I won’t lie and say it’s always perfect, sometimes the models are a bit off and look unfinished and that’s not forgivable when you delay your film two months, and thus have extra time to work on that. But that’s a few shots here and there versus the majority of hte film where the various animals all blend perfectly. Unlike most Live Action adaptations of an old cartoon, this one actually seemed to have good reason, as they’ve taken the basic roger rabbit tech of decades ago and expanded on it well. Just like that classic you often wonder how the hell they pulled this off, and outside of one egregrous sequence where tom sets up an elaborate trap we spend far too much time on, when they do use CG for any props, you can’t tell. This is best highlighted by what I consdier to be the film’s best sequence and what brings Tom into the plot proper after lurking on the fringes for a good 15 minutes: Tom, miserable in the rain, finds jerry living it up in an empty room, and after some fun shenanigans trying to get in, finally succeds leading to a good 2-3 minute sequence of the two chasing after each other in the room. There are no actors, no one else and the room is empty, but perfectly gimmicked to time with thier movments. Wether they used cg and I couldn’t tell or just simply timed things great, it’s utterly fantastic and shows why this film is live action: while i’td be fine animated they cleary ahd the tech and ideas to do it live and thus did it this way. Naturally Kayla meets Tom again, and after finding out the room was trashed by both him and Jerry gets Mustache Manager to hire him. 

But this is the problem: While there are great set pieces like this, or a REALLY damn impressive one later where Terrance gets dragged into a ball of violence while walking Spike for Ben and we see INSIDE IT, with Terrance not moving as fast but that being okay. And I love the movie’s commitment that ALL animals are animated. So it has it’s charms and gets a LOT right.

It’s clear to me from this strong core that the script was messed with, either by director Tim Story or the execs. Some misguided and stupid bits I get even if it was a bad idea: Tom does do the piano at one point, after he thinks he’s gotten rid of Jerry thanks to again an unwieldy overly long bit of CGI that’s a down spot on the usually good just tom and jerry stuff. And he STARTS singing a 40′s jazz song, and I thought “Okay they really got this and are doing something like is you is or is you ain’t my baby this will be fun”. Then T-Pain started using autotune, because of course, and Tom’s shoulder devil started scratching next to him...

By the way Tom’s Shoulder Devil and Angel are played very well by Lil Rel Howrey , aka Rod from Get Out. So good on you man, one bit of non miscasting.  There’s one or two cringe inducing moment of trying to be hip here or there though for a film like this it isn’t nearly as bad as you’d expect. Still bad but i’ve seen so much worse at this point i’m not going to bother getting mad or upset over it. I’m used to this kind of thing from kids movies. 

But while the film dosen’t really lack Tom and Jerry, it sidelines them way too often> There’s just too many scenes  just about Kayla, whose not only not a great character despite Chole trying her absolute hardest god bless her. Her hitting it off with the bartender, her arguing with Terrance whose even more insufferable and her bonding with Preeta and Ben being annoying, we’ll get to him.. WE’LL GET TO HIM. But they aren’t funny or interesting, there’s nothing THERE to really get me interested, nothing new or fresh that we haven’t seen done better before. There’s just nothing, it feels like large parts of blank space. And to illustrate this my Niece, who I watched the film with and really loves Tom and Jerry after I showed it to her... played with other stuff during most of those scenes. And she’s young, her attention span is not great.. but noticably during the actual scenes of slapstick she was glued to the tv, just like she was when I showed her the classic shorts. It’s not just old farts like me who remember tom and jerry from their youth.. it’s the kids your TRYING to appeal to that don’t want this. If you can’t get kids, who in general and speaking from my own personal experience will watch just about anything, to pay attention YOU. HAVE. FAILED. 

Okay took a second to compose myself, let’s move on to the rest of the movie. So after T-Pain stabbed music in the throat, we get to the worst section of the film as Kayla brokers peace between the two to get Preeta’s ring back after the three end up in the aformnetioned violence ball with Terrance, who she ducks his claims that she didn’t catch the mouse.. which she did not but for once she’s sympathetic as Terrance is much more likeable either, though gaslighting him and getting him put on leave is a bit extreme. Bafflingly, Kayla gets his job as event cordinator for now, and thus has to broker peace between the two warring factions.. and does so in the strangest way possible: by booking a day for them in new york to hang out and be BUDDIES!. This isn’t bad as the last film as it dosen’t last, but it is just.. surreal seeing the two having a hanging out montage around new york. Like the film just took a really weird turn with this, the montage itself isn’t weird, it’s standard shenanigans minus the fighting but still good stuff. Unlike the 90′s movie instead of singing about being palls or helping a small child, they just get into cartoony shenanigans together. More proof the film could’ve been so much better just with them. 

Speaking of proof the film would’ve been better without them , Ben fucks around with a drone for the wedding, after Preeta confided in Kayla the wedding’s getting to be a bit much. So let’s talk about Ben shall we? While Preeta is just nice, friendly and down to earth, Ben... is a dumbass, a jackass and just an ass. His whole schtick is that he keeps escalting the wedding despite her wishing he’d stop, and i’ts just.. not funny. A guy ignoring his partner’s wishes, constnatly doing big gestures in large part to try and win over her dad who RIGHTFULLY hates, and in general just sucks. I do not blame this on Colin Jost: He’s perfectly charming on SNL, and Weekend Update is usually damn fun under him and Micheal Che. But like with Pena and Mortez, he’s given NOTHING to work with, and furthe rmore can’t improvise.. aka the skill most SNL cast and almnus walk away with. So it’s no suprise he instead comes off like an anoying plank of wood you want to see fall down a manhole and never return so Preeta can marry someone else. I dunno the Doorman’s a pretty cool guy, and if he’s taken or something there’s always Droopy. Droopy’s the smoothest motherfucker and we all know. And if HE’S taken there’s mustache man. The point is we have a Dating Game’s worth of elligble bachelors and the film tries to sell a plank of wood who clearly wants to bang Preeta’s dad more than he wants a genuine equal relationship with Preeta. 

So that dosen’t help the final act.. which is started with something REALLY weird to round off tom and jerry’s day as Tom catches a ball, interupts a play and get.s. thrown in the pound for it?

I don’t know how tha’ts a crime, I don’t get it either, point is the animal control guy is a creep who shows them off as they pass some angry dogs.. and.. 

MY BOY. There was an earlier joke with him taking the place of The Joker, and I thought that was it sadly but nope there he is! While, given they don’t really have much to do with each other, it is a tad weird he’s been grafted onto the tom and jerry legacy.. I really don’t care because it means Droopy gets to show up every so often in other stuff like this.. And hopefully the spinoff series coming in the summer. I”ve talked before about how much I love this dog so having him show up here was a HUGE delight and easily the higlihgt of the film and the gag is perfect. WHy is he in prison? I don’t know. But given who we’re dealing with I also assume he just disappeared later and showed up at the Wolf’s place again to get the evidence to clear his name and to help a young brodway hopeful played by Peyton R LIst get to her audition in time. And yes I just imagined another live action film with a classic character.. but admit it you’d rather be watching that one. They also run into butch who tries to force him to eat Jerry or they’ll kill him. 

Terence saw the arrest on the tv though, so he bails the two out, pits them against each other, and sets them loose at the wedding. This goes how you’d expect. the two cause chaos and thanks to Weekend UpDumbass there’s pecocks, tigers and elephants, and Jerry naturally spooks the elephants, Spike, who has it in for tom as usual, goes after tom the tiger goes after him and the wedding is destroyed. Preeta breaks up with Ben and leaves, and Kayla is fired.

Less good is that Tom gets thrown out because Terrance backed out on his deal because he’s a fucking asshole. So while Kayla gripes to her sorta loveintrest bartender man, and wishes she could fix things, T and J show up, both realizing it’s their fault and both with a plan to fix things leading to our climax. Kayla goes back to the hotel, and while Terrance tries to boject she rightfully blackmails him. Sadly neither get their commupance and while Mustache Manager puts two and two together, he’s all for ending this PR Nightmare and helping with Kayla’s plan to get ben to stage a wedding in central park that Preeta actually wants while our two actual heroes go to stop her and do some light kidnapping of toodles to get Preeta to stop. 

So it ends how you’d expect: Preeta makes a huge mistake, seriously Droopy go to their honemoon I guarantee Ben will wonder off into the ocean because he thought it looked sick bro, Kayla gets her job back and in a move that makes her almost tolerable hires the woman she stole from who Terrance clearly wants to bang, and Tom actually catches Toot’s eye, but then Jerry mucks it up because cockblocking tom has been his job since the 40′s, they fight, Kayla tells them to cut it out, they put an the end thing over it. Roll credits. 

As you could tell I had issues with this film and had more the more I thought about it. So it’s not very good.. but I still recommend watching it if you have Max right now. Yes really. While the human parts are pretty awful as you could tell, you can have some fun mocking them, and it’s worth suffering through them for the bits with our boys, as those bits are geneuinely energetic, fun and what you came for. If you like tom and Jerry, you probably won’t like this movie.. but you’ll enjoy those bits. Hopefully if there’s a sequel, and this film was a suprise hit so their probably will be, they’ll learn their lesson from this one and focus less on the humans and more on the hyjinks but overall this is just a medicore waste of some really great technology and slapstick. This is just one huge ball of dispaointment instead of cartoon violence and i’m sorry it ended this way.  If you liked this review, you can follow me on my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. Even 1 dollar a month helps and my next stretch goal nets a Darkwing Duck episode a month, so if that excites you, please sign up. And if you can’t afford to that’s fine and feel free to stick around anyway. Times are hard and I get that. And I will see you at the next rainbow.