#Oh yeah Tom does make bombs

[cloudydayjoy]

Quite the look you've got going there Tom.

[deadsetobsessions]

Listen, I know it’s not my usual thing, but I just re-read Dark Matter by mysterycyclone (iconic, so good, incredible, I’ve reread this at least ten times) and this newer work, Help Me, I Don’t Feel Like Myself Anymore by Astra_Nova_Kat (it’s off to a really good and fleshed out, very long start- it’s like 20k for the first chapter omg).

I just. Love?? Them??? They’re both, urg, so good. The writing style, the way the story moves, the natural progression of plot and their usage of tropes are so well done that rarely does it feel awkward. Amazing. Anyways, they inspired me to put my two cents into the proverbial offering hat and while this might not ever be a realized fanfic, here it is? This will have multiple parts.

Uh, I’m basing Peter’s personality off of the really tired millennial energy Tobey Maguire gives, the awkward but well meaning disaster vibes of Andrew Garfield, and the sassy acrobatic chaos gremlin of Tom Holland. All kind of mushed together with the hyper competence and maturity of both the PS4 spidey and pretty much most spider people. He’s 22, or something but that doesn’t really matter?? Background doesn’t really matter because I’m basically making my own spider-verse. Spider… past? Eh. New Peter!

Spider in Gotham AU- Pt.1

[Pt.2]

——

Spider-Man swung through the skyscrapers of his city, enjoying the winds and sounds of New York as he kept a sharp eye out for crime.

He remembered doing this without any of the fancy tech his suit had now, when he was dressed in less protective clothing. God, 100% cotton while crime fighting? The spandex was better but god ugly.

His spider-sense blared. Spider-man quickly shot a web to the top of the building, going towards the danger instead of away from it.

He goes in feet first, years of knocking common thugs to legitimate gods to the ground making short work of the people on the roof top. He flips out of the way, dodging a blast of crackling green energy.

“Heyyyy, common robbers! What’s up with shiny lasers, huh? Breaking and entering not doing enough for ya?”

Spider-Man dodges a couple more shots, flipping again to knee a guy in the face, gently. The man goes down in one shot.

“Stay still, you motherfucker!”

“Does that actually work for you guys?? Like I’m down to get killed but, man, I’m not gonna stay still to get downed by some two bit thugs?” Spider-Man kept his words light and mocking, webbing up a laser gun and yanking it out of the woman’s hands. He punches her in the face and knocks her out, using the laser gun like a mildly bulky baton.

“Eat shit, Spider-bitch!”

“Ouch! Oh no, my feelings! You’ve hurt them!” Spider-Man shoots a web at the lady who’d shouted and yanked, before smacking her straight down to the concrete of the rooftop. His hearing picked up two people coming up the stairway and Spider-Man tossed two web bombs, the metal mechanism attached itself to the wall, waiting for their unknowing victims.

Spider-Man ducked and weaved, downing goons as they piled on him while shooting bullets, lasers, and just charging at him with a bat or a crowbar. After eight years of pretty much this exact thing, Spider-Man had gotten the science of breaking up goon dog piles without hurting them too much to an exact measurement. He quipped at them until they got annoyed, which made them sloppy. Spider-Man sighed as another guy came at him with a crow bar and a gun that he was pretty sure was still stuck on safety. He crouched, kicking out their legs and dodging a swipe of a bat where his ribs would have been and webbed the guy to the floor. Yeah, he’ll wrap this up and end patrol. Maybe he still had Mac n’ Cheese at home, or he could stop by Angelo’s for a sub?

Huh. His options for dinner was limited.

“Take this!”

Even without the forewarning of his spidey-sense, Spider-Man would have ducked out of the way regardless.

“Shouting your sneak attacks isn’t actually all that sneaky, you know!” Spider-Man kept his voice cheery and mocking.

“Get him!”

God, why were there so many people trying to break into an insurance company? This definitely doesn’t smell like a regular B&E. With the shit he’s seen in New York, if it smells like a plot, acts like a plot, then it’s probably a villain with a tragic backstory with big, annoying plans.

Great.

Oh, speak of the devil!

“Spider-Man.” His senses blared.

He couldn’t move out of the way fast enough, not without risking the life of the goon he was currently fighting, so Spider-Man took the blast the punched the breath out of his lungs. The wide eyes of the goon made up for some of the pain.

“Ugh!” Spider-Man slammed into an HVAC, denting the metal. His suit, made special polymer blend from Wakanda that he saved for months to get, absorbed some of the shock. Shit, he hoped it didn’t tear. It would be a bitch and a half to dip into the back up stock he had in his hammer space.

The goons left standing quickly rushed him and held him down to face the new boss.

“You’ve been getting on my nerves, Spider.”

“Yeah,” Spider-Man coughed out, letting the two goons think they could hold him down on his knees as he recovered his breath. “I have that effect on people.”

“But you could be an asset, if you’d join me?”

“Uh, I don’t join or sign things without knowing what I’m joining or signing, my guy. My lawyer said so.”

The villain paused, helmeted head cocking to the side.

“You have a lawyer?”

“Yeah. Kind of? He does pro-bono work for the helpless cases. You know, like, a well meaning, crime fighting vigilante?”

“…Does he do cases against insurance companies?”

“Oh man, you too? Dude, this place sucks,” Spider-Man sighed.

“You’ve had trouble too? Then you must see why I’m doing this!”

This was a bit weird, but if there’s anything that brings people together, it’d be corrupt insurance companies. He’s almost tempted to let them break in, just to be extra petty.

“Nah, my neighbor? Sweet old lady. They’re screwing her out of her entire place. I totally get it, man. Hey, if you need a referral, you can tell my lawyer that Spider sent you. He’s real good.”

“How good?” The goons release him and Spider-Man stood up, stretching his limbs.

“Like, Dare Devil good.”

“You know Matt Murdock??”

“Sure do.”

“He… he’ll take on our cases?”

“Dang, all of you?”

“Yes. We can pool enough money to pay him for one or two.”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure he’ll take you guys on for free. But it wouldn’t hurt if you all went to meet him, just so he can decide which one of you has a higher chance to win in court?”

“We will. Uh.” The villain paused sheepishly. Well, not a villain, more like an unfortunately angry and poor decision making citizen. “Sorry about… you know, the blast.”

“It’s cool. I mean,” Spider-Man gestured to the rooftop, the bodies of unconscious people kind of laying around where he knocked them down. “You guys might wanna check on them, yeah? I’ll let you go for now, but if you commit a B&E again, I’ll leave you webbed up for GCPD to find.”

“Got it. Sorry.”

Feeling good about himself, and plotting corporate espionage, Spider-Man went to help pry some people from his webs.

And of course, because Parker Luck kicks in only when Spider-Man felt like life was looking up for himself, Spider-Man’s senses blared once more as he knelt down to pull at some webbing.

“Oh, shit!” He heard, right before a cold blast of something slammed right into his head, knocking him out.

And Spider-Man

F

E

L

L.

——

Larry looked at the the empty space where Spider-Man, the guy who took a hit from his boss’ blaster so he wouldn’t get hurt, used to be.

He twisted.

“Boss, what the fuck?!”

“Shit! That was accident!” Boss pulled herself up from the concrete, where she just ate dirt.

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know, Larry! That was the experimental warped mode! Crap!” His boss scrambled with the controls, desperately trying to see if the magic gun her magician friend had handed her years ago had a reverse button. It didn’t.

“Why would you bring a test weapon into the field?!”

“I gave you all of my other ones!” She threw up her hands. “Fuck, I feel so bad.”

Larry paled. “Dude, Dare Devil’s gonna kill us.”

“He doesn’t kill!” His boss hesitated. “I think.”

Larry pointed to the empty space. “Yeah? He might start with us. Spidey was a cool guy and you just disappeared him!”

“I know!”

Larry buried his head into his hands and tried not to hate himself for the entire situation.

——

Spider-man woke up, laid flat on the grimy ground of an alleyway.

“Ugh. Just my luck.” He kept his eyes closed for just a beat longer to allow himself time before having to pull his shit together. Why was his voice high? And a bit squeaky? He pulled himself together.

“Okay.” He whispered to himself, before sitting up and taking stock of the situation.

First thing that hit him was that it stunk to high heavens. Gagging, Spider-Man looked to the right and- yeah, that’ll do it. He stood up on wobbly legs to try to move away from the overflowing dumpster.

That’s when the second, more important and decidedly more troublesome, observation hit him.

He’s short. Shorter. And his suit was hanging off of him.

He could tell he still had his normal by now physiology, with the speeding heartbeat and the feeling of super strength. But he’s shorter. With a mounting sense of equal parts dread and resignation, he pulled at the hidden seam by his nape, relying on his both his enhanced senses and spidey-sense to tell if anyone was nearby or looking at him. He pulled the Spider-Man suit off, blankly folding it neatly as he stared dumbly at his hands. They’re small too. Shit. He stumbled to a nearby mud puddle and stared down, seeing his younger face in the contaminated water. Double shit.

He’s starting to loose his composure. He’d gone through a lot of bizarre things over the last eight years. But getting accidentally Detective Conan’ed by a person he just helped was a new low.

The black under layer of his suit, a slash proof and fire resistant polymer Peter had designed himself in MIT’s lab, was in a similar state.

With one hand, Peter Parker numbly rolled up his sleeves and pant hems. Great. Okay. Now what?

Ah. Shoes. He did not want to walk around in his too-big Spider-Man boots. He looked around. Well, there’s the laces of what looked to be like a pair of dumpster shoes. “Yeah, no.”

Shit. Does he still have access to his hammer space?

Peter reached into his pocket, and tried to reach for a pair of normal sneakers. His shoulder slumped as he produced a pair. Fuck yes. He still has access! And shoes! They’re ones he took off of a power line for a well off kid who didn’t want it anymore. He was going to donate them to F. E. A. S. T. but he’s thanking the stars he procrastinated a bit on swinging by the center. He put them on. They’re a bit big, but it’s better than the giant-in-comparison ones he normally wears. You know, as an adult.

He hesitated with his mask. He should at least figure out where he is. He hoped it was still in the states. His mask blinked, the HUD in his lenses informing him that it was trying to find a connection. “That’s weird.” He paused, grimacing at the sound of his voice. But it is weird, because he had his mask automatically connected to the world wide satellites Tony Stark had sent circling the globe for citizens without internet access as a back up option. So either he was somewhere even the Stark Satellites couldn’t reach or…

Peter swallowed, his mask pinging as it found a connection to piggy back on. He clicked his tongue twice to activate the voice controls.

“Connect to the local maps. Where am I?”

His masked followed the order. [Gotham. New Jersey.]

Peter stared at the words, gut churning.

Good news, he was still in the States. Bad news? He’s shrunk, in a totally different state, and possibly in a different world because he’s not connected to the Stark Satellites he knew operated in New Jersey.

Peter Parker tilted his head back and allowed himself one verbal, panic level six and up, curse word.

“Fuck.”

He took off his mask and leaned against a slightly cleaner part of the wall before hyperventilating.

——

Half an hour later, Peter smacked himself on the cheeks and pulled himself together.

“You’re Spider-Man,” he hissed to himself. “Have a mental breakdown somewhere warm, you dumbass.”

Peter Parker was a champion, world class expert at compartmentalization.

He slipped his mask back on, and pulled up his “So You’re Stuck in an Alternate Universe” list he had made with Ned so many years ago when they were high school kids and going through comic books to make contingencies because Peter was a little idiot vigilante hero.

“I didn’t think I’d actually ever need this kind of thing.” Peter muttered. He slipped his black back up gloves on to connect to his mask’s display in order to type.

“Okay,” he glanced at the side by side screens in his lenses. “Money.”

Five things.

1) The emergency cash he’d stashed on him thankfull matched the pictures of cash he’d found on this world’s internet. Yay!

2) He had $1000 tucked away. Not yay. Not if this might be a long term stay before he got back to his own dimension. Not if he wanted a place to sleep.

3) Luckily, thanks to his earlier search of where the hell he was, Peter figured out that due to the high crime rates- “Dang, that’s worse than New York on New Year’s Eve,” he had marveled- Gotham was dirt cheap and that that meant 1k dollars could actually last him a while and he could afford a room for a month on $250. A whole ass apartment for $550. Peter seriously considered staying in this universe just for the rent prices. So what if there’s rampant crimes? He’d deal with it if the rent was that cheap.

4) Problem? He’s fucking tiny. Who would rent to a person that looked like child? Not anyone upstanding, that’s for sure. He’s more likely to get mugged. Counterpoint: he’s in a city where apparently shady people are all around. Also? He doesn’t have an identity.

5) If the fact that he couldn’t connect to the Stark Satellites didn’t convince him he was either in another universe or an alternate dimension, the visual graphics of the websites he visited would. It was like looking at Windows in the early way before Stark Co. bought them out and improved the design. Nauseating.

Okay, so, money’s not too urgent of an issue. Next on Ned’s list: Places of Interest.

Namely, libraries, homeless shelters, crime hotspots, and the like.

Peter snorted when he came across an opinions article talking about how Park Row became Crime Alley. And then he frowned, because that story was not painting this place to be even remotely nice. Then again, considering the crime rates and the various Rogues this place seemed to have in spades, that wasn’t much of a surprise. Peter marks the place in his new mental map of Gotham as a potential area he could either disappear to or get a new identity at. He then marked the libraries, Gotham City Public Library and its many branches all funded by generous donations from a Bruce Wayne, the Martha Wayne foundations’ shelters and charities, two supermarkets near the library, and a coffee shop he thought looked warm and cozy from the shitty pictures they have uploaded online. He needed coffee, dammit, and he needed it hours ago. Alas, he probably wouldn’t get to go to one until he secured his finances.

Well, it’s not like he doesn’t have practice being poor.

3) Which brings him up to Ned’s next, surprisingly reasonable for a teenager hoped up on a mountain load of sugar, point. Level of Tech.

Peter hid next to the dumpster, melding in with the shadows, as he continued his research.

Tech here was… well, he probably wouldn’t have to worry. The thought of not having a Starkphone, even his older model, was painful considering the new versions of these WaynePhones were really… behind. Peter doesn’t remember the last time he had buttons on his phone or let alone a touch screen that didn’t use facial tracking and biometrics or even have a holographic display mode.

“Ugh. Okay. Not the end of the world, Parker.” Peter muttered.

Now… People of Interest.

This was underlined three times with Ned’s red pens, with extensive subcategories.

Subcategory A? Villains, because “what if they put out a warning for a known villain and you get your butt kicked because you didn’t know about them, Peter? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?”

He had replied, half focused on the list and the other on savoring the Millennium Falcon Lego set May had saved up for months to get him for his birthday, “I feel like if I was getting my butt kicked by a villain, I’d probably have better things to worry about than my utter humiliation, Ned.”

“True that,” Ned had snicked and jotted it down anyways.

And… well, Gotham had a lot of villains. The Joker (ew, that’s a crusty man in crustier face paint. This guy could learn so much from the cool mimes busking in Central Park. Like, how to do face paint. Or how not to be a massive murderous jerk. There’s Clayface, Two-Face, a bald guy in “Metropolis” (a name Peter couldn’t help but snort at because a city named city? That’s like na’an bread being bread bread. Or chai tea being tea tea) named Lex Luthor, and Scarecrow. He tabbed all of them and marked them for further perusal at a later date. From experience, he knew villains with a prominent M.O. and themes usually did more damage. Case in point: Rhino, and the million dollars of property damage the guy did everytime he escaped the Raft. Peter was seriously considering petitioning for the Raft to be placed further out just so he could have more warning the next time some assholes decided to free the prisoners and helped them escape.

He narrowed his eyes at the screen, his mask’s lenses following the movement. He’ll have to pick up a gas mask. Apparently bio-weapons are just a regular thing here and he really didn’t want to get dosed with this “fear toxin.” It’d be dangerous for everyone involved. Maybe if he gets his hands on a sample, he could build up tolerance and see how his immune system and metabolic rates affected the normal progression of the toxin. Ah, off topic. He’s gotta focus.

Subcategory B: Local celebrities.

“Why would I need to know local celebrities?” He’d asked.

“If someone came up to you and asked “Who’s Tony Stark?”, wouldn’t you clock that as super weird? You gotta blend in, Peter. Plus, you gotta keep up with the pop culture, dude. It’s important.”

“You just want alternate universe memes,” Peter grinned.

“That too. If you ever go to an alternate universe and come back, you’d better bring me a truckload of memes or I’ll never forgive you.”

Yeah. So. Wayne? Super important. Like Tony Stark levels of important. He found threads about them and the local vigilantes and their charity works. Peter’s brain instantly catalogued the info, all but memorizing the deluge of pictures he found of Bruce Wayne and his kids. Maybe the man had an adoption problem? Conspiracy threads and memes popped up alongside his research. He tabbed one on secret societies, because as Spiderman, he had fought a disturbing amount of secret societies that, on hindsight, had been theorized about on threads he’s read on his free time. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, a conspiracy theorist could be right. Peter’s not about to dismiss that. He also saved like thirty different memes to send to Ned when he got back. If he got back.

Peter smacked that thought away. He’ll get back to his city or die trying.

Subcategory C, underlined and starred: Other Superheroes and Vigilantes.

Yeah, Peter’s excited about this one too. After Matt stopped being Dare Devil (but did he actually ever stop?) and Wade dipping in and out of NY, Peter’s gotten lonely as Spider-Man. He missed training with them. Of course, the fantastic four were still operating, but he doesn’t actually interact with them or the Avengers at all. Miles hasn’t been cleared (by his mom) to go out as Spiderman with near as many hours as Peter cleared a night. Peter stood behind that because he remembered how horrible it was to work as Spiderman and try to balance school on top of it. Also, he was terrified of Mrs. Morales and would never endanger her son more than he already does. He did wave to Black Widow from a rooftop once, spider to spider, and that was pretty much the coolest moment of his life.

So. Uh. The amount of vigilantes and heroes in this world? Amazing. In Gotham? There’s like, a whole team of them.

Batman, Nightwing (who, Username: Draken Draken had theorized, was the first iteration of Batman’s sidekick Robin), Red Hood, Black Canary, Huntress, Red Robin, Spoiler, the “day vigilante” Signal, the current Robin, and whispers of a “Black Bat.”

And their unfortunate “No Meta” rule with the singular exception of Signal. Peter figured their term of Meta was essentially the same thing as his world’s mutants. He’s not sure which term he liked more. Eh, he’ll worry about that later.

And there’s a Justice League! Which, to Peter, is just a bigger Avengers. There’s aliens on this world too. Superman. Martian Manhunter.

Peter grinned from his place crouched next to the dumpster. Yeah, this is awesome. He quickly memorized everything he could find, cross referencing posts and picking out the nuggets of truth or at least popular truth from the posts he viewed. Like, Red Hood operated in Crime Alley and was a crime boss with morals. Cool.

He’ll go down the spiral later. He mentally thanked Ned who was the best guy in the chair a teenage vigilante could ask for. He should really text his friend when he got back.

For now, he’ll head to the library and see if he could use their computers. He might need a card though… Peter quickly pulled up the search engine and found an Internet cafe. Ah, 24 hour internet cafes, the savior of his college days. There first, and then library, Peter decided. He memorized the instructions and pulled his mask off, tucking it away in the hammer space.

He walked out the alley and turned left, only to double take at his reflection in a shop window that was partially boarded up. Holy shit, he’s a baby. He’s like. 10!

Oh my god.

Peter twitched, tearing himself away from the window before the shop owner decided he was less curious and more potential mugger before promptly remembering that he looked less of a threat than ever. Mixed feelings.

Peter hurried his way to the internet cafe, paying the guy at the front a little extra so he’d ignore the obvious minor without a guardian thing Peter hasn’t gotten used to. Ugh. That was going to be annoying. He only paid for two hours and pulled up as many listings for a room as possible. By the end of it, he came out with $1 worth of fliers printed out and having funneled some billionaire’s offshore accounts into a new bank account he’d made by hacking into the bank servers. Does he feel bad about stealing? Yeah. But Peter’s a vigilante. He’s done worse than nabbing a monthly sum of a couple of hundreds from Lex Luthor’s off shore accounts. He’s not gonna get caught, and considering the guy’s rants on meta humans, Peter’s not feeling particularly guilty about it. He’ll do something good later to make up for it. Once he gets his footholds and can prepare his way back, he’ll even return to the rest of the money. Probably.

Peter left the cafe with his sheaf of flyers, stopping by an informational stand with free tourist maps and plucked one quickly from its plastic holder. He’ll pick something up from the food vendors on his way to the apartments. Peter began walking, taking in the sights of the gargoyles and-

“Nope!” He caught the wrist of a pickpocket. It’s a kid and he immediately felt bad.

“Lemme go. I ain’t done nothing to ya, ya Yorker tourist.”

“Okay,” Peter shrugged. “Don’t get caught the next time?”

The kid gaped at him. “Shi’, you must be really good at it. I’ve never been caught before.”

Peter wisely refrained from telling the kid it was due to his spidey-sense. He let go of the kid’s wrist and let a bit more of his accent out. “Why’d you need money anyways?”

“Food, duh.”

“Dude, I’m starving. Tell you what. You show me the best sub shop nearby and I’ll pay for your food. Deal?”

The kid stared at him, wide eyed. “You’re fuckin’ nuts. Why’re you being nice?”

“I’m hungry? Do we have a deal, kid?”

“… Fuck it. Fine. And don’t call me kid, shrimp. You’re like what, eight?”

Oh. Yeah. Peter’s a kid now. He shrugged.

“I’m older than you. I’m twelve.”

Peter blinked, frowning at how thin the kid’s wrists were.

“I’m Peter!”

“… Frank.”

He let Frank lead the way. Stranger danger doesn’t apply to him, he’s a grown ass man. In the body of a ten year old him, but still. A couple of minutes, four sandwiches and a load of chips later, Frank was watching wide eyed as he demolished three four dollar subs.

“Holy shit. Where are you packing that away? You’re a stick!”

Peter took a big bite of the sandwich as an answer. Frank looked down at his meal.

“Uh. Hey.”

Peter made a muffled noise of question, mouth stuffed full of steak and cheese.

“Sorry about. Uh. Trynna nick from ya.”

Peter chewed faster.

Frank continued, looking like he hated himself. “I wouldn’t… normally steal from shrimps like you but I was desperate and… really hungry, so. My bad.”

Peter finished chewing. “All good, dude. Eat your sandwich.”

Peter had the sudden urge to adopt Frank. Unlike Wayne, he’s not a billionaire, so he smacked that urge down. He could use a friend though. Now… how to be friends with a literal child!

“If you feel that bad about it, you could… be my friend?”

Peter took in the wide eyed gaze from the twelve year old in front of him. Abort! Abort! That was too direct!

“You’re fucking weird. But… okay.”

“That was easy.”

Frank scowled, kicking Peter’s shin.

“Ow!”

“Whatever, shrimp.”

Peter scowled. On his baby face, it came out as a pout.

Do not start beef with a twelve year old, Peter. You’re a grown ass adult.

“Hey, you know I’m new here, right?”

“Duh.” Frank took a bite of his food.

“Can you tell me which one of these are legit?” Peter handed Frank the flyers. He took them, an odd look passing his face.

“You’re looking for a place?”

“Yeah? Why?”

Frank stared at him. Looked back down. He instantly got rid of four listings out of the ten. “These are too close to the Alley. They’re probably traffickers.”

Peter hummed in agreement. Frank paused.

“You’re just gonna trust me on that?”

“Yeah? I can tell when people are lying.” Well, his spidey sense could, when he cared enough about the subject.

“What the fuck.” Frank shoved the rest the papers at him and guiltily munched on his food. “Are Yorkers all just like you?”

“Dunno? Probably not.”

“… Whatever. The rest of the places should work. They probably won’t ask questions.” Frank flapped a hand at Peter’s new situation. Yeah, the shortness was getting to him too.

Peter nodded. Obviously, they were the more expensive places, but considering the new found resources he’d… acquired during his time at the cafe, it doesn’t really matter.

“Cool! Wanna go see it with me?”

Frank immediately took on a suspicious glare. “Why?”

“I dunno? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought since you know your way around…”

“Ugh. Fine. But if there’s anything shady, I’m fucking dipping out.”

“Okay!” Peter grinned for the first time the couple of hours he’d been trapped in this new world.

——

They’d found an apartment with a landlord that got a weird, sad face when she was talking to them about the apartment. After like, an hour of walking around and Peter’s spidey sense screaming at him not to even go near the places Frank had left in the pile of maybe’s.

“We walked all the way here. Ya not even gonna go in?”

“The vibes are off. It’s a no.”

And because Peter’s a genius idiot with no self preservation, he’d marked the places to investigate later.

Frank had blinked at him, mildly offended and nonplussed. After a while of spluttering, he just gave up. Eventually, they got here.

“I don’t normally rent to kids,” the landlord lady said. Peter immediately liked her. “But I’ll make an exception if you’ve got the cash.”

“I’d like to see the unit first, please” Peter said. He’s not stupid, and Gotham’s renting scene is both easier and harder than New York.

They toured it. Peter? He’d seen worse. He’d lived worse. Also, it had two bedroom and was $620. Yeah, Peter was really considering just staying here full time and commuting to his New York when he wanted to be a vigilante.

“I’ll take it, ma’am.” The landlord and Frank both snorted, sharing a Gothamite look.

“It’s Georgie, to you, brat. You just need the first month’s rent, since I’ll wave the deposit for you shrimps. Utilities included. Your friend stayin’?”

“No-” Frank had started.

“Yep!” Peter beamed, interrupting his new friend.

“What?” Frank turned, gaping again at this weird little kid who had enough money to rent a place and then invited a whole ass street kid he just met to live with him. “Are you stupid?! What if I rob you? Huh? I don’t need charity!”

Peter slowly looked around the empty unit.

“Uh.”

“No, that’s not the point!” Frank pointed a finger at Peter. “That’s how you get yourself killed!”

“But that’s why you should stay! I don’t know my way around Gotham so…”

Peter looked up at Frank, using his shortness for maximum devastation. “Please?”

Georgie leaned back on the heels of her feet, silently laughing. It’s not every day she sees a Gothamite street kid get out stubborned by an outsider, but she knows better than anyone that Gotham is weak to genuine kindness. And this Peter kid, the one that reminds her so much of her own? He’s practically filled with it.

“Yeah, kid,” she said to Frank, snickering. “Look at him. He’s gonna get mugged two steps into the Alley. Or anywhere.”

Frank flailed, but eventually, Peter handed over the money to an amused Georgie who gave them two keys in return and a move in gift of a pot pie.

“I gotta. Uh. Go get my stuff.” Frank had mumbled, dazed at whatever the hell just happened.

“Okay! I’ll see if I can go get furniture!”

“And lift them with your shrimpy arm? You wish.”

“I can use a cart.”

And really, he could, because Gotham had a lot of abandoned carts laying around. Like a concerning amount.

“Can you even reach the handle?”

“I’m not that short!”

Frank snorted, Georgie’s own chuckles following a beat after. Peter scowled at them.

“Be right back,” Frank promised, holding the key like it was treasure. He had been homeless for two and a half years now, so in his eyes, that key was as good as gold. He had somewhere warm to stay. Trying to pickpocket Peter was the best mistake he’s ever made in his short life. But he didn’t want to take advantage of that, well, no, he did want to, but he doesn’t want to take the genuine kindness for granted so he’ll see if there’s any street furniture he could haul back on his way.

“Okay!”

Georgie watched him go and turned to Peter.

“If you need stuff, there’s a thrift store and a grocery store that way.” She gave him the directions.

——

As soon as Frank and Georgie left, Peter immediately left his new place (and holy shit, he really didn’t expect things to be this easy. In New York, he had to spend at least a week checking out places because he had to figure out whether the problem that cause subtle twinges with his spider sense was worth living with. Here? It’s too obvious.) to buy supplies. He had $400. Until his new card came in, at least. He’d put his new address into that bank account addressed to a “Anthony Benjamin” before ordering a “replacement card.”

Peter ran to the thrift store, hurrying before the last traces of the sun dipped below the smog of Gotham. A frankly absurd amount of blankets, towels, pillows, clothes, packaged boxers, socks and shoes around his size went into the cart. To his chagrin, Peter couldn’t actually see much over the cart. Why the hell was he such a short ten year old? He blasted through the store, also guesstimating Frank’s sizes. He tossed in curtains, a used set of glow in the dark stars, and a lamp.

He also grabbed mismatched mugs, bowls, a bundle of cutlery, and a dented microwave he casually pretended to struggle getting onto the bottom part of the cart. It’s like lifting grapes for him, but he looks like a ten year old so…

He, guiltily, bought a mildly fancy camera in a set, with two separate lenses, even if one was cracked.

Not bad, for $150 total. Peter is going to definitely seriously consider commuting to New York. They didn’t even care when he walked out with the cart! Well, that might be because of the cashier who gave him a pitying glance.

He stopped by a general store on the way back, parking his cart in a rapidly shadowy alleyway. He swung by the new section of the store that reminded him of a Dollar Tree and got cleaning supplies, toiletries, and two pans and a pot. He grabbed some canned food and a couple of frozen meals in the back. Seasonings, ramen, general pantry staples went in. A role of paper towel. Nice. Venom would have loved this store. With half of his budget blown for essentials, Peter quickly cut his spending off and

He quickly gathered his stuff and went back to the apartment, using his strength a bit to lift the full cart up the stairs at the front doors and into the elevator. It creaked like the first time they used it to go see the apartment, but it worked. Peter set everything up in the living room, pillow and blanket wise, and put everything in its proper place. The lamp was put up, giving more light than the old bulb in the ceiling light.

All Peter wanted to do was pass out, but since his dumbass took in a child, he couldn’t sleep until this place was relatively fit for a kid to live in. He also wanted to wait for

So, that’s what he did. Taking a sponge and the cleaning supplies he’d picked up earlier, Peter tackled the living room, scrubbing away at old stains and spraying mildew. He marked trouble spots- like that splinter worthy piece of floor next to the doorway leading to the hall between the bedrooms. Then the kitchen. By the time Frank cautiously peeked his head in from the front door, Peter had already finished scrubbing the over.

“Hey.”

Peter turned, grime on his face but grinning. “Hey!” I bought some stuff!”

Frank snorted at his face before glancing around the living room, eyeing the cart parked neatly on the side.

“So you did. Didn’t get mugged, did ya?”

“Rude. No, of course not.”

Frank gave him a… frankly… unimpressed look and dumped his bag next to the pile of blankets and pillows Peter had piled onto the floor. Sue hi’, they didn’t have beds yet.

“Got somethin’ for ya,” Frank said neutrally before dragging in…

“A coffee table!” Peter bounced towards Frank, hugging him before lugging in the heavy wooden table in. “You’re the best! Where’d you find it?!”

The tension, anxiety about Peter’s reaction, in Frank’s shoulders relaxed and the kid grinned. “Alley. Some asshole just left it there for anyone to hit with their car so I took it.”

“Nice! We can eat on this!”

——

When they were getting ready for bed, Peter insisting on showers for both of them, Frank had reared up at the clothes Peter bought for him. Peter pretended like he didn’t see anything and shove a whole tube of toothpaste and a new toothbrush at him.

“Ew. Do I have to?” Frank asked, wrinkling his nose but taking the items anyways.

“Yeah.” Peter said seriously. Frank gave a moment to wonder why he was taking orders from an eight year old before shrugging. He could brush his teeth in exchange for a roof over his head, food, and clothes. It’s not even a fair trade, for Peter, anyways. Frank was enough of an alley rat to take advantage of that.

——

When Frank passed out, Peter couldn’t sleep. He’s exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep.

So he took his new camera and climbed the fire escape to the roof top.

An hour later, he met his first vigilante.

“Hey, kiddo. I’m gonna need you to back away from the edge.”

“Woah!” Peter startled, jolting slightly off of the ledge he was balanced on. He twisted around to see Red Robin, hand outstretched and panicked look in his eyes.

“Dude. Warn a guy!” Peter said, even though his spider sense warned him of an approaching person that was actively watching him.

Red Robin held his hands up. “My bad. Would you- uh, not be on that ledge?”

“Yeah, sure. My bad, bro.” Peter obligingly stood up and stepped away from the ledge. Red Robin relaxed then did a double take. Peter frowned. Is there something on his face?

“What are you doing up here, kiddo? It’s late.”

Peter decided to scope out the vigilante. “Couldn’t sleep,” he held up his camera. “I’m taking pictures.”

“Oh. That’s cool! Can I see?” Red Robin approached warily, but relaxed when Peter didn’t spook and try to take a shortcut to ground floor.

“Sure! It’s a new, well, not new but new to me, camera so I haven’t had all that time to mess with the specs but the pictures turned out pretty good-”

“Oh, woah. This one’s great. That composition? Amazing. You caught the light perfectly,” Red Robin complimented. Peter brightened, knowing a photography fan when he hears one.

“Photography buddy!” He cheered.

They talked for an hour after that, but Red Robin quickly sent him to bed once he remembered the time.

“Ah, shi- crap. It’s like 2AM. You’ve gotta go to bed.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry if I interrupted your patrol, Mr. Red Robin!”

“No problem, kid.” Peter slipped back down the fire escape, not caring if the vigilante saw where he lived.

——

Up on the rooftop, Red Robin pressed a hand to his comm.

“Red Robin to Nightwing.”

“What’s up, Red?”

“Do you have a kid you don’t know about?” Tim said, bluntly.

“… What?”

“Oracle, can you share my cowl footage?”

“Copy. Oh, that kid…”

“Looks exactly like Wing?” Tim said, peering down at the empty fire escape. “Yeah. Talked like him too.”

“Oh my god, he’s adorable.” Oracle said. Tim agreed. That curly hair? Baby face? Adorable. A bean. “Did you get DNA?”

“Ah, shit, I knew I forgot something.”

“Do not break into his place and nab a hair,” Nightwing reprimanded, but his voice sounded distracted.

“Holy shit, you guys nerded out about camera placement and lighting for an hour?” Hood piped up.

“Get some rest, Red Robin. You’ve been working too hard,” Batman grunted through the comms. Awkward… but he’s been getting better at communicating his worry for his kids.

“Sure thing, B. Heading back to the main cave. Red Robin out.

——

Peter: lay low and get home

Also Peter: talks to a vigilante

None of them think Peter’s Nightwing’s yet. Peter will know before them… eventually. Once this world’s version of him gives up his memories to be absorbed by AU Peter.

[sky-marbles]

I desperately need a scene in sonic 3 where Maddie and Tom are discussing how Sonic and knuckles have struggled a bit to adjust to earth life (especially knuckles) and Tom is like “at least Tails adjusted fairly quickly” and Maddie just gives him a deadpan stare and says “Tom last week we found out that Tails has been building weapons and a BOMB in our garage!” And Tom’s like “ehhhh yeah true BUT after we told him that he can’t do that without permission he hasn’t built anymore!” And then the scene ends with Sonic showing up or whatever.

I just absolutely adore the moments where Tails does some crazy shit and then other people are like “oh he’s a lil fucked up ain’t he” and it’s like YEAH he is and I love him and want him to be his full crazy self. He’s banned from the casino for counting cards, he swindled a guy during a game of billiards, he broke Sonic out of prison, he had a WANTED poster, he uses bombs on the reg in his games, in IDW HE CRASHED A SHIP INTO NEO METAL SONIC AND DIDNT EVEN INFORM ANYONE ELSE HE WAS GOING TO DO THAT?!!?!?

Tails will pull reckless unhinged shit at the most random times and i desperately need that energy back. To be clear it’s not 24/7, but that’s what makes it so funny. He has these moments that make you say “woah wait a second!” And it’s been too long since we’ve had one and I NEED one in the movie universe so badly.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

[suzie-shooter]

Alex Rider season 3 unhinged liveblog ramblings scribbled during first watch. Spoilers, obvs. (also fair warning, I am not particularly a fan of Tom or Kyra lol)

Episode 1 - Widow

S2 recap trivia - Alex's therapist is Molly Doran from Slow Horses and married to Alan Blunt IRL

Malta: Ok, so we're not just going to pretend it's Venice lol.

Creepy old men already hitting on Alex. Standard.

"After this we're out of leads." How do you even have any leads in the first place? Oh ok, Smithers' phone. Terrible security protocols from him, leaving that much historical classified data on it.

"Find the Widow - surely he could have given you an address?" First thing Tom's ever said I've agreed with lmao

Aaaand within a second he's back to being deeply irritating, okay.

Yassen living rent free in Alex's head, you love to see it.

"They've got this picture of me being the responsible one." Have Tom's parents actually met him?

Ooh Razim mention.

You maybe want to clean that wound before whacking a dressing on it Alex?

"Do you think you'll ever lose your appetite Nile?" Spat my drink.

Damn, no harem pants then. Scrubs up well tho.

Listing Levin in the opening credits than having him be only a S2 flashback should be a warcrime.

Episode 2 - Lab

"This weapon is called pork sword, wait, no, shit, wrong USB."

"Julia Rothman. Definitely a wrong un." Spat my drink again.

Do Crawley and Pritchard not warrant helmets and visors? Are they somehow immune to shrapnel?

So, room 6, wired to blow, yes? It's what I'd do…

Oh yeah sure guys, they're going to still be sitting there, all unmoving in the dark, for sure that's a person, and not a Massive Trap.

Thereeeee we go. Agent mince. Top of your class huh, well you're certainly at the top now, and down the sides and partially out of the window.

I know there's the whole 'characters don't know what genre they're in' thing but you are literally in the 'working for MI6 genre', you are up against people notorious for booby traps and blowing shit up, why the fuck would you touch something that hadn't been declared safe first? Apart from anything else you're fucking up the scene before forensics get there.

"I love you man." Vom.

Alex: breaks into super sekkrit lab. Also Alex: doesn't have the faintest fucking idea what he's looking at, so not really helpful.

COMICALLY LARGE BOMB KLAXON.

Episode 3 - Enemy

"Welcome to Malagosto." OooOOooh.

Maybe I'm just looking at it from a fic writer's perspective but it does seem a massive anticlimax to immediately let Tom and Kyra know Alex is okay? Like, you could have got a good couple of episodes of angst out of that uncertainty.

"Do you want me to kill them?" Oh God yes please.

Why the fuck have they plugged the USB directly into the network rather than an isolated PC? 'Hur dur we checked it first', you literally believe Scorpia are smart enough to not be bluffing about the nebulous death threat but you don't think they could hide something on the hardware? Fuck's sake lads. Amateur hour.

Is this Home Secretary meant to be Suella Braverman? Or Priti Patel maybe lol. (Equal rights and all that, and if it had been a white male character I don't think I would have thought twice about the dialogue but having both your two new female characters be immediately proved wrong/ massively patronised/ blown up ain't hugely comfortable viewing tbh).

HOW MANY FICS INVOLVING ALEX GETTING FUCKED ON THAT BED HAVE JUST BEEN BORN?

"Are you suggesting we break into a dead man's house?" "It's not like he's going to be there." 😂

"He became a very close friend of mine." Fnar.

Omg making Alex read his father's love letters is hilarious.

Alex: you could have faked that news report Also Alex: handwriting can definitely never be faked (how is Alex even familiar with his dead father's handwriting? wouldn't recognise mine)

Ugh please stop trying to make Alex/Kyra happen.

Alex up the vent shaft. I hope they're sitting casually at the top going - you could have just taken the stairs love.

If he's climbing upwards, why is his hair dangling like he's upside down? Have they filmed this like 60's Batman, and he's just crawling along a horizontal set lol.

Alex never once asks about his mother does he. Given the shagger-John route they seem to have gone down you almost think Julia would be in a better shout of getting Alex to switch sides by claiming to be his mother.

And - yeah, Alex's recruitment just doesn't feel that convincing here. Adding Tom/Kyra/Jack so much to the mix has changed the feel of his life a lot, and TV verse Alex has had a lot less fucking over by the Department by this point too. And Rothman feels too creepy to be effectively convincing him of anything.

"I want you to meet your tutor." FUCK YES FINALLY 🙌 (may have rewound that part several times lol)

Episode 4 - Recruit

Nicaragua: 18 years ago OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING

Baby Yassen is adorable, I'm in love.

OH MY GOD THAT'S SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE FUCKIN SPIDER THING

OH MY GOD THE REVEAL OF HIM STANDING OVER THE SLEEPING ALEX I'M DEAD

(Ok, I'm calm again. For now. We continue.)

"You killed my uncle" - all the hundreds of ways this conversation has been written over the years and Yassen's just like lol get over it 😂 (here for it tbh)

Rothman: He's one of our best Yassen: One of? Bitch.

Yassen watching Alex train like 👀👀

"Did he ever tell you you're no fun?" Oh you want to have FUN with Yassen do you?

Yassen bitchslapping Alex to fuck, both hilarious and hot.

Oh, you want to be WET wet.

"Matteo's the guy with the blanket." Why is that so funny.

Omg Yassen stepping in to protect his boy and humiliating Nile in the process lol. And Alex doing what Yassen tells him, because of course he does 🥰

"This one is my responsibility" 🥰🥰

"What about love, friendship?" Alex has only known Yassen five minutes and is already down bad.

"Kind of lonely though, right?" Yeah, Yassen needs you at his side Alex, so step up and stop being a whiny little bitch about killing people.

Never get in the first taxi, rule one of espionage.

Yep, called it. Tom's like: I'll have my fucking tip back in that case.

This scene is so dark I have no fucking idea what's going on, I thought Nile had attacked Alex, but apparently not. Is Nile officially part of this exercise or not, it seems really unclear lol.

The power of friendship and sparklerabbits saves the day, apparently. Yawn.

Jesus, we really ATE with this ep, huh.

Episode 5 - Revenge

"Would you rather your arms around me, or my arms around you?" Way to make it creepy Tom you skeevy fuck.

"Can we focus please?" "We're multi-tasking."

Sure Grendel, rock up to the super sekkrit spy base in a massively conspicuous car why don't you?

"Yassen will give you everything you need." Oh I BET he will.

Feels sloppy them not removing the diffuser from the vent tbh.

"What does this say?" Alex hasn't inherited John's neat handwriting then lol. Alex leaning into him like that > me making noises only dogs can hear.

"You've put lockpick?" "I left my last one in Nile."

Ooh, suicide pill, nasty. Kind've pointless though, given they've been left with the evidence anyway.

Yassen in Alex's bedroom again, likely place for him to be.

"I don't want you to fail. I don't want you to die." 🥹💕🥰

Yalex roadtrip, let's goooo.

Disappointed they're not making Alex do the Entrapment infrared acrobatic sequence here lol.

If this is Yassen's idea of a date it definitely needs work.

So no surprise scorpions then? Can't have shit in Detroit Malta.

"Why? Why did she kill him?" Well taking things at face value here he was a highly murderous member of a terrorist organisation, so you know, kind've her job.

Yassen does like a casual lean, doesn't he.

Episode 6 - Target

Alex and Yassen have shacked up in London, hope there's only one bed.

Now they're in the back of a van, SO many opportunities for shagging, they're spoilt for choice.

Yassen's impressed look when Alex reels off all the security details, so proud of his boy.

"What happened to my mum?" Finally he wonders lol.

"And I'm good at it. You could be too." 🥹

"You think Alex killed him?" I mean, he was also there with a notorious assassin, so probably not, y'know.

Domestic Yassen cooking Alex's dinner and also cooking him a gun lol.

Smithers' "How I've missed you" ahahaha. Smithers/Kyra much better pairing tbh.

"He's actually quite good at this stuff." Smithers' little snort lmao

Time for Alex to be blacked up/ dunked in a teabag bath/ gussied up. Although he still looks exactly like Alex afterwards, which feels less useful lol.

"You love him, don't you?" Yassen loves him more. I have to say Alex had far more chemistry with Syl, and frankly for that matter with Tom. I really don't get the Kyra agenda.

"It's a dry hole." Alex's worst nightmare.

Is Alex going to look through Mrs Jones' knicker drawer?

Episode 7 - The Shot

Mrs Jones and her tall murderous hobbit son lol. Otto really looks about 58 here.

Hope they bill him for her fucked up fridge.

Is that Bath? Oh, it is.

Mrs Jones casually throwing Alex back into play lol. Maybe she can have a little revenge for him trying to shoot her.

"Everyone breaks into houses." Jack's face lol

Ewww put him down, you don't know where he's been (Yassen's bed, almost certainly)

"Remember they can't hurt you unless you invite them in." "That's vampires."

Yassen arguing in favour of going to rescue Alex MY HEART

"Sit down. I'm going to tell you a story. About your friend, John Rider." HOLY PLOTHOLE TIMELINE PATCHING BATMAN

"John was embedded inside Scorpia for three years." Not the only thing he was embedded in by the sounds of it.

Alex seems to be hallucinating again lol.

Yassen, maybe psychoanalysing your insane boss isn't the safest thing to be doing?

"It's quite mad Julia." Yassen really gives no shits omfg

"I know my place." Yes, at Alex's side.

I like how Julia thought telling Yassen she'd killed John would do anything other than piss him off lol.

Episode 8 - Invisible Sword

"But you do owe me a new fridge." LOLLLLLL

Crawley feeling like a spare part during this lift convo, hahaha

"Smithers, you can do me some kind of tracker, right?" "Yeah, if you promise to keep it on you this time."

Alex is like ohshit I'm gonna die fr

"Not for the agents. They undid their seatbelts." Eyyyyyyyy 👉

Aww they've given him a little baby assassin outfit, how cute.

Where's Yassen, has he just fucked off to the pub?

"For the head of Scorpia, you're a really bad liar."

Laughing at all the other Scorpia agents having to listen to this convo about their boss like we are not paid enough for this shit 😬

"Everyone else is getting what they want, let me have my cereal."

Protecting his boy to the last. Yassen really is purely on Alex's side, we love to see it.🥰

And OMG HE LIVESSSSSSSS 🙌🙌🙌🙌 (I voted yes in that poll, I had faith lol)

Well that was - far more fanservice than I dared hope for, after the meagre pickings we got in the first two series. Yalex supremacy to the motherfucking end, let's go.

[castillon02]

On the sidewalk outside his apartment, a brown-eyed youth accosted him, saying he looked like the kind of enterprising man who would gladly pay someone to do his laundry. 

In one of those intuitive moments that made him so good at his job, Wade flashed back to Spidey, six months prior, casually asking him what kind of manual labor he’d ever pay someone to do, and Wade confessing that laundry would definitely be it except he’d never trust anyone else to do it. 

Oh-ho-ho. 

(Had Wade silently implied that his laundry suspicions were for Mercenary Reasons and not because he had a specific brand of hypoallergenic detergent that worked for his skin? Yes, yes he had.)

Wade lured the guy in for a “test run” in his “natural habitat” and was 99.9% sure that this was Spidey when he followed Wade into his lair without seeming worried and failed to do a double-take at Wade’s Armchair Throne of Death. 

He was 100% sure when he asked for the guy’s name and the guy said, “Peter Parker.” 

“I FUCKING KNEW IT!” Wade spun and pointed at him. “I told you those camera trajectories were Spidey POV all the fucking way! ‘He just takes the stairs, Deadpool,’” he mimicked. “‘He has a drone, Deadpool.’ You know I spear every drone out of the sky because my body gets temporarily inhabited by the millenia-old spirit of CavePool!”  

Spider-Parker (Sparker? Spiker? Parder?) sighed. “I do know,” he admitted. “And I appreciate it. Times were easier before any Tom, Dick, and Harry could get a bird’s-eye view. Although you making me go fetch your knife kinda makes us even.”

Wade tilted his head. “What are you talking about? You just do the—you know, ‘thwip, thwip, motherfucker,’” he said, gesturing with imaginary web shooters. “It takes like two seconds.” 

“Yeah, now.” 

There was a moment of silence during which Wade, and presumably also Spark-ike-ner, recalled the first time that Wade had thrown a knife at an invasive drone hovering at rooftop level. He had panicked about losing his favorite knife, dived to retrieve it, splatted himself, and woken up to find Spidey autographing the broken drone for a pale-faced twenty-something. Wade had added some bloodstained cash into the bargain, complete with Instagram selfie, just in case the jerk tried to sue later.  

…Cash! Right. Spidey was here for a reason. “So…you’re actually low on dough?” Wade asked. “This wasn’t a weird plot to—” 

“It was a weird plot to earn ramen bucks,” Spidey said with a wry twist of his lips that Wade could actually see because it wasn’t behind a mask, which was. Fantastic, to be honest. That mouth made him wish he could think the word ‘spiffing’ with a straight face. 

“Hang on,” Wade said. “You get money photographing your encounters with villains. You can’t tell me that none of them would side hustle with you. Why haven’t you just, you know, been a little slow to catch one once in a while instead of putting yourself out of a job?” 

“Because that would be morally bankrupt,” Peter said. Then he got a strange look on his face and said, “Shit, sorry, I have to make a call.” 

The lunatic turned away from him, like putting his back to Wade would do literally anything to give him privacy, and pulled his phone out. 

It rang twice before someone picked up. 

“Pete! You know I’m always glad to hear from you, but—” 

“Harry,” Spidey said, his voice dangerously pleasant. “Why does the Green Goblin suddenly ‘break free from his mind prison’ whenever I complain about my bills?”   

“Shit!” someone on the other end of the line said, followed by a clatter of suspiciously metal-sounding objects being dropped onto cement. One of them, clearly round, which was SUSPICIOUSLY THE SAME SHAPE AS A GOBLIN BOMB, rolled audibly and awkwardly across the floor. 

“Harry,” Spidey sighed. “You can’t just—just—I mean, you have gotten pretty non-lethal, at least. What did you even do, last time? That kid’s ice cream? He was six, man.” 

“I mailed him a coupon for a free one after,” Harry said. “Or ten free ones. You know, enough to make up for being mildly traumatized.”  

“God, that was a good photo: I got the dropped ice cream in the foreground since you’d just knocked me on my ass, and you did a great job cackling menacingly in the background. Even the color composition was gold. Strawberry is a strong contrast with your suit.” 

Wade winced at the flattering tone: DANGER, WILL ROBINSON. 

But apparently Harry didn’t get the same signals, because he said, “Yeah, I thought if I went for someone with rum raisin, it wouldn’t—” 

“YOU JERK! You can’t terrorize a six-year-old just because I need to sell photos! Or terrorize a city. No terrorizing!”  

“Peter. Pete. Look. I’m not going to terrorize the city! I’m just going to cause some minor property damage in a way that happens to be photogenic. I had this idea for a thing with some roses—” 

“Cliche,” Peter said immediately. 

“Orchids?” 

“Too sexual. Maybe daisies?” Peter said. “They’d kind of fit your ‘I hate children’ vibe and you could dye them different colors. Uh—IF you did this. Which you won’t. Because that would be bad and wrong.” 

Wade grinned. Spoken like a true artist: starving and with conflicting creative and moral convictions. 

On the other end of the phone, Harry seemed to rally. “Okay, picture this: What if I hired you and a bunch of child actors to do a Green Goblin charity calendar for the benefit of organizations trying to cure genetic diseases?”  

Wade was hit with the sudden realization that he, Deadpool, was like if Peter’s morally dubious and crazypants best Goblin friend fucked his charismatic, award-winning actor best friend and they had Wade as a baby but then left him to be raised by a nanny who was secretly an AK-47. 

That is to say, that Spidey wasn't in this friendship-whatever just because he had a saving-morally-dubious people thing, or a rebellion-against-Iron-Man thing, or even a lookin'-for-some-strange thing. He came by his attraction to Wade honestly. He was just really into semi-competent nutjobs.     

“If it’s for charity, shouldn’t my labor be free?” Peter asked Harry while Wade had his revelation. “I don’t have time to do a free Green Goblin charity calendar for the benefit of organizations trying to cure genetic disease!” 

Harry sighed. “I keep telling you that’s not how nonprofits work,” he said. “All right, wait, let me hit you with this—” 

“Oh my god, Harry, we’re gonna synergize about this never. Bye, talk to you LATER, by which I mean I’m going to need a cool-down of at least three weeks.” Peter ended the call and slipped his phone into his pocket. “Anyway!” he said, springing around with a hopeful, too-big smile on his face. “You were about to pay me for doing your laundry and also promise to keep my identity a secret forever.” 

Wade raised his eyebrows beneath his mask. “Oh, was I?” 

Spidey’s shoulders slumped halfway down his body. “Waaaaaaaaade.”  

“Yeah, I guess I was. But you’ll regret it after I show you Mount Sniff-Test.” 

“You mean Mount Job Security?” 

Wade shook his head. “Always the optimist.” At least Spidey had wall-climbing powers so he could reach the top.

In fact, the odds of Wade's laundry pile reaching zero were astronomically low. Especially because Wade had no problem buying more clothes. And if Spidey stuck around long enough, well...maybe Wade could arrange for two semi-competent nutjobs to enjoy two semi-competent handjobs. Blowjobs. Heartjobs. Something like that.

Wade threw open the door of the room that he had previously told Spidey was full of full-frontal pornography and guns.

"Oh shit," Spidey said, his eyes wide as he tilted his head up to capture the magnificent heights reached in Wade's laundry mausoleum. He swallowed and then clapped his hands together. "Okay," he said. "Okay. We can do this if we work together."

Wade smiled. "The fact that you haven't run away screaming from this abomination of sanitation tells me all I need to know."

[cateyeswrites]

FINALLY 1X07 reaction

-LOVE the gillory/radovic family dynamic

-AVA IS SO PROUD OF HER MOM and loves her so much I WILL DIE

-why is the janitor back *crying* i don't hate him but ugh is this really the LI?? instead of my man karadec?

-OMG KARADEC AND AVAS INTERACTION I WILL CRY

-NOT HER GETTING EXCITED HE REMEBERED HER NAME

-KARADEC JOKING WITH AVA I WILL DIE

-omg nice foreshadowing with the dog barking at the bomb!-

-LOL not everyone second-guessing MELON saying he is the best detective

-WOW THE FACT THEY ARE FROM THE ARMY IS INSANE

-ahhh OZ AND KARADEC

-NOT AVA SNEAKING IN

-I LOVE SOTO

-IS MELON TRYING TO GET MORGAN TO SOLVE THIS WITHOUT PUTTING HER IN DANGER?

-WHY IS THIS SQUAD MAN SO FOCUS IN KILLING THE TWO ARMY PEOPLE

-OMG MORGAN GIRL! DONT STARTLE THE GUN PEOPLE

-OMG MORGAN AND KARADEC WORKING THE CASE AT DIFERENT ENDS??? OMG KARADEC IMMEDIATELY KNOWING WHAT SHE MEANS

-THE STATION FAMILY ( YES I AM NAMING THEM THAT) WORRIED ABOUT AVA?? DEAD THATS A CHOSEN FAMILY

-AVA GIRL!!!!!

-NOT THE JANITOR PLAYING HERO SIR!!

-WHAT IS KARADEC GOING TO DO WHEN HE FINDS OUT AVA IS THEREEEEE

-OH THE DAUGHTER IS SUS

-MORGAN AND AVA IM CRYING

-KARADEC AND MORGAN I LOVE THEM

-OMG DAPHNE AND AVA

-KARADEC IS MAAAD AND I LOVE IT

-IS THE OTHER GUYS THE ONE WHO WAS IN DETOX

-OHHHHH THEY SHOT JEREMY?

-OH NO JANITOR/NURSE IS SHOT?

-KARADEC IS LIKE THAT IS MY FAMILY

-KARADEC REALLY SAID I AM DOING SOMETHING

-IS THE LADY PREGNANT???

-OMG JEREMY DIDN'T KNOW

-IS JEREMY THE ADDICT?? WHAT IS HAPPENING

-WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH JEREMY? DOES HE HAS PTSD??

-his name is TOM?

-IM CRYING WHY IS AVA AND MORGAN MAKING ME SOB

-IS KARADEC GONNA BE THERE TO RECEIVE AVA??

-IF SHE TELLS TOM TO TAKE OF AVA I'M PUKING

-OH MORGAN IS ON, HER BABY GIRL IS OUT OF DANGER

-OH HE KILLED FRANK? JEREMY?

-OH KARADEC BAD ASS MOMENT? OH HELL YEAH

-OH SHIT!!! HE KNOCKED THE PREGNANT LADY

-the bomb was fake, losing it

-daphne MVP LOVE HER

-OMG AVA AND LUDO

-RAIN CHECK ON THE YES DAY

-KARADEC AND MORGAN DEAD

-oh pregnant lady is going to jail?

-BADASS MORGAN

-HER WALK AWAY

-UGH NOT TOM AND MORGAN * CIRNGE* I DON'T DISLIKE HIM I JUST PREFER KAREDEC

-she got applauses I am crying this is so cute

-THEY GOT HER A DESK? I AM CRYING

-not melon giving her a desk i am crying this is so cute

-they truly are a family

-he knows she is never using it because she sits down on his desk

[slocumjoe]

Would you be interested in writing companions react to the random event where a ufo crashes nearby and the subsequent alien discovery? Thank you for all the fun headcanons

Companions and the Literal Alien Thats Just Chilling Down The Road From Oberland Station Like Its Waiting For Its DoorDasher

Cait; This, like...takes a nuke to her very soul. It wipes everything she is, knows, thinks, away, and Cait becomes clay in that moment, a wealth of possibilities. She might turn to religion, she might become a cannibal. This is a lot to process...Cait's usual method of processing Significant Shit is chems. Can't do that anymore...cult it is.

Codsworth; So long as the alien doesn't die...will politely ignore its existence, feign ignorance. If it dies/is killed, Earth is doomed and the Martians are coming for us all to avenge their kin.

Curie; GET THAT GREEN BITCH IN A LAB IMMEDIATELY. Curie, sweet little Curie, throws all compassion to the ground and grinds it beneath her heel, before lunging at any opportunity to study this thing. She'd put it in a potato sack and drag it if she had to. "But she's a soft uwu baby!" Curie likes Covenant, motherfucker, E.T over here is done for.

Danse; It's big, it's green. He thinks it's a Super Mutant and shoots on sight. Just as he sees what he's shooting at, sees that no, this is nothing from Earth, nothing from the Wasteland, and realizes this thing needs to be communicated with, studied, understood...his laser rifle turns the alien to ash, effectively destroying any evidence of its existence. Crumples to the ground and screams.

DEACON; GET THAT GREEN BITCH AWAY FROM TINKER TOM IMMEDIATELY. Tom would never function right, again. Deacon isn't even freaking out about the alien, he's thinking of Tom, poor Tom, who they all spent years teasing for being a tinfoil wearing nutcase. But he was right, he's always been right, what else is he right about? What would he do, knowing that, yeah, there just might be a ghost haunting his one good sock? Tom can't know.

Gage; Turns around, never reacts, never speaks of it, will try to gaslight any other witnesses and he'll fucking succeed. You could have had that thing suck your dick, Gage will gaslight you until you think you just got real intimate with Oberland Station's melon patch. Doesn't want to fuck with that in any capacity. Didn't happen, doesn't exist. Gets a fear of shooting stars.

Hancock; Freezes. If he's alone, will likely unmoving until the alien has moved on or died of its injuries. If with someone else, looks back and forth between them and the honest to God fucking...that thing. What...what does he do here? Walk away? Walk away sounds great. He'd like to, but unfortunately, his knees have locked up like a Whole Foods when there's a gluten containment breach. Later, it hits and...kinda slides off. Oh. Aliens. I'm going to...not think about that.

MacCready; Kid on Christmas. He remembers what he saw and heard of in the Capital Wasteland, and now there's a smoking gun right in front of him. Will gauge if it looks friendly, tries to approach, gets shot at, has to kill it. If MacCready finds this thing, he's parading the corpse around the wasteland like a circus freak show. Fuck secrecy, what are the wastelanders gonna do, build a rocket and colonize Mars? The rich people probably already did that just before the bombs, anyway.

Nick; Ping-pongs between "get the fuck out of here" and "...seems hurt, don't he?" Like MacCready, would want to try and make peace, if only to give it a stimpak, but...it has some kind of gun. It's probably not friendly. Okay. We're gonna leave, and not talk about this, but we'll check back to see what happens. The alien isn't there. Nick now has to hunt this thing down before it starts freaking people out, because people can't be trusted to behave around something out of the ordinary. As for the realization that aliens are real? Eh...space is so big, they had to be, right?

Piper; Torn between her reporter instincts and her desire to not be the one to deal with this. Aliens are real. Do I have a duty to tell people? They wouldn't believe me, it'd be a waste of time. Do I have a duty to bring this thing back, at any cost, just to prove that it exists? That's not fair to the alien. Does that matter? By the time she's made her decision, the alien has already ran off.

Preston; Chalks it up to sleep deprivation. If there isn't another person with him who sees it, straight up thinks he's seeing things and goes back to doing whatever he was doing. The power of denial cannot be underestimated. If he is with another witness...goes the route of trying to offer it a stimpak, gets shot at, and...much like Danse...his laser musket makes it all go poof. Turns around, claps the other witness on the shoulder. Declares that they're both seeing things. It's clearly not a suggestion.

X6-88; Tackles it and hauls it back to the Institute, no matter the cost. Doesn't even blink. If there's no Institute...curses whatever else might be Up There that the one organization that could have gotten answers got pancaked. No, the Brotherhood isn't a viable solution, they'd just kill it for being an abomination and throw it in a ditch somewhere. As for aliens being real...okay? There are immortals (ghouls) and immortals who can bring other immortals back from the dead (glowing ghouls). That's weirder to him.

[icebluecyanide]

Alex Rider S03E04 Reaction

My unspoiled reactions to episode four, aka TUTOR YASSEN LET'S GOOOO

Liveblog

Oh okay so they are blaming Blunt in this, even if I think the trap was actually the Malta operation to bring him in.

Omg John/Yassen flashback!!! Yassen was so nervous!! I love how calm John stays throughout it all. And gosh the way Yassen closed his eyes when John told him to does things to me. I assume John saved him but gave him the scar in the process much like in canon

Yassen watching him sleep!!!

I was so ready to go noooo when Yassen said they had to leave their past behind them but apparently it was about Ian and not John lol. Love Yassen calling himself a professional

Twenty years ago 🤔 So with John being at Scorpia for three years that means Alex is canonically seventeen now

Alex stop questioning them in front of other people ahsldfhs

Tutor Yassen!!! Lmao ‘faster! This is slow’ I love how him having high standards is canon

SPARRING omg their faces

“He was kind to me” 👀 yesssss

How did they not realise yet that Scorpia went after Consanto when the woman literally said Julia Rothman was going to finish with Consanto lol

Lmao the awkward silence when Alex fails to hit the more human like targets, and they’re not even pictures

Yassen telling Alex how to kill someone 👀

The idea of them being allowed to keep their phones as they are training in the super secret training facility is just wild lol. Like yeah I’d make the signal bad too, what if people connect to their fitbit or something

Well this isn’t love bombing lol

Ahsldfh Alex is literally missing and you could tell the authorities Jack

Alex lying about the beating is big SAS training in the books vibes

Lmao Alex comparing Blunt and Mrs Rothman

Ahhhh so that’s the show equivalent of the vaccine!!

Gosh Alex forced to hit her as she’s held down

Does Yassen outrank Nile? 👀 omg Yassen/Nile showdown

“This one is my responsibility” 🥰

Love Yassen going ‘yeah you sadists are letting it cloud your judgement’

“What are you doing?” “Filming this?” “Why?” “Because it’s evidence” “Yeah of me committing a crime” ahsldfhsh yeah Tom!!

Yassen just. Refusing to talk about John is so funny to me

John saving Yassen <333 And gosh Yassen thinking of himself as expendable kills me

Exceptional agents <333 Though really there was no need to hit his cheek here lmao

Just let Yassen have his little speech about how emotions distract you, Alex 😭

Oh damn the taxi driver is Scorpia too, creeeeepy

“If he slips up just once, they are gonna kill him” yeah… unlike that other mission you were pretty casual about in s1… how is this a surprise??

Ahsdlfhs is Alex really gonna change their mind on weakness

Overall

Loved it!!! Really enjoyed the Yassen/Alex training scenes, though I kind of miss the love bombing from the book. Loved the John/Yassen flashbacks and I’m very excited to see more Alex & Yassen stuff!

Thoughts/Predictions

‘Kind of lonely though, right?’ I gotta be honest, the whole story with Alex challenging their notions of weakness and stuff really wasn’t doing it for me, but I feel like it sort of develops from Alex not being as isolated as he is in the books. Like yeah, it’s lonely, but Alex in the books is also lonely a lot of the time and it’s something that kind of goes with being in this world. But I do love Alex saying John saved Yassen out of friendship because it reminds me of his thoughts in Snakehead.

Some really interesting differences with the other students here, firstly in that the love bombing aspect isn’t there and they actually seem pretty antagonistic to Alex, while in the book they are all very friendly, in huge contrast to Alex’s earlier experiences with the SAS and MI6. It’s honestly kind of ironic that here it’s the exact opposite, because Alex lying about how he got beaten up is basically what happened with the SAS.

Second point about them is that they are all orphans and seem to be younger than in the book, so it seems the students are different? Are they teenagers like Alex? I honestly can’t tell, what with them casting adults, but I guess maybe Alex isn’t meant to be such an outlier in terms of age, which makes sense with the actors, but is interesting in terms of story because it means Alex isn’t exceptional for being young. I guess that’s also why it’s not made a big deal that he’s a teenager (also since it would seem unbelievable). But now John Rider joining at 30 seems like an outlier, since none of these kids actually had any experience haha.

Invisible sword seems to come from the gas and maybe still the nano particles, but how do all the people in London get hit by it? Just a cloud of gas? The football team probably got it in their system before the match with some excuse.

Nile’s so angry at Alex most of the time gosh. I guess Yassen took over the nice mentor role from Nile here.

Also real convenient that Mrs Jones and Jack don’t actually want to tell each other the truth lmao. I guess here the Department has no idea about who joins Scorpia since they have no eye on them like MI6 has in the book. But that also means there will be no all ports warning to arrest Alex.

Questions

Does Yassen know about John being a spy???

Did Tom and Kyra just… forget about Alex supposedly getting killed if they don’t do as told? Like do they really think Scorpia isn’t going to notice them not getting off the plane in London? The flight isn’t that long… 

[thetistaboveall]

The Voice Interview Part 2: Tom Hardy Interview

After the frankly spectacular interview I had with Chris Evans in typical media response they went wild.

I mean comments online from fans, criticism from daytime talk shows and many miles of magazine articles galore.

I could not have ask for a better outcome of course none of this phase Chris who scoffs all of it off.

It’s two weeks exactly from the days of Chris descent I book Tom Hardy to enter the chat of my programming web.

It is interesting the level of masculine he is so good at exuding is all fake because we know the truth.

He does have self confidence issues i know many don’t find him appealing but I do for real.

His body guards stand outside of the door per my order closing the door behind them and he sits.

Everything is perfectly set up for the special nights episode and he seems to be in a very cheerful mood.

As greed prior he is handed a glass of rare champagne per instructions but I had other plans.

I lace his champagnes glass with specific type of coding to help ease his troubles and induce him.

I can see him Ingest it while I prepare to go live for the audience, I flip a few switches and jump on.

He is so happy for someone reason, the odd nerves he felt are gone and replace with a flutter.

“Ok Mr. Hardy!” I state to him speaking into the microphone with certainty.

“Hello mates” he chimes in his distinctive ole British accent.

“Everyone! It’s time” I say celebrating with a horn loudly.

“Time for…” he begins then the trigger I hid in his contract goes in to affect.

“Perfect! Address the crowd Tom” I boldly command.

“Here to entertain Master Lawrence “ he quips.

“His eyes are glazed over and no one is home “

“Once more with feeling “

“I AM HERE TO ENTERTAIN MASTER Lawrence “

“Good boi”

“Mmmmm”

“Dumb fuck”

“Me Dumbfuck”

“Oh My God!”

“Yyyyeeessssss”

“You are a now toilet ”

“Make a toilet noise”

“Qqqqqaaaaaauuuusssssshhhhh”

“Open your receptacle”

“I need to urinate”

“Bombs away”

“Mmmmmm”

“Ugh! You are hard “

“You enjoy being debased “

Jumping on my cue I snap my fingers and he instantly falls into trance and his body

sinks to the floor.

I laugh cruelly at his downfall knowing full well he has no idea that soon I will be all he knows.

Standup and instruct him as he rises to his feet in total obedience to my power, and an inner acceptance of his defeat.

Looking back at my screen, I can see all sorts of comments, elaborating how juicy and funny this is.

Overtime I mix in some of his fans over the top suggestions per request and watch him squirm.

I get bored very quickly forming the idea in his head that every time he feels relax, he will remove the piece of clothing.

Every piece of clothing, will take him to two deeper and deeper heights of submission as he falters.

His strong will power crumbles with every bit of effort to resist. His fighting is futile, for not because I will win him over.

His downfall be twice as sweet once I claim victory over his mind, body, life, and soul forever.

“ Everyone log online and we will begin streaming.”

“ In… five… four… three… two… one”

“Hello everyone”

“ Tommy boy”

“ Hell yeah, fuck yeah”

“ You are a stripper”

“ Show them some moves”

“ Hey Mister”

“ You go, Tom”

“ My name is not Tom”

“ It’s party hardy”

“Oh My God”

“Close”

“ Let me show you”

“What?”

“ Heaven”

“Only for you “

“Oh yeah !”

“Definitely babe”

“Commence “

“Oh yeah!”

“Lover”

“What do you want?”

“Use my pussy “

“Fuck me hard “

The end

[compacflt]

Watching battleship right now and it got me thinking about ur post wondering how maverick and ice would react to current recruitment methods like e-girls and I just have to wonder what their thoughts would have been about this movie. It's more focused on the ships and not so much the fighter jets, obviously, but still...just a giant ad for the Navy. Also Rihanna which is perhaps the most important part of it all.

im no whitemanologist but if ice & mav are anything like my dad theyd probably think it’s some pretty sick shit

full disclosure: had not seen battleship until just now, when i watched it so i could answer this ask. thoughts: man, what a waste of jesse plemons! actually the whole cast is kinda stacked: liam neeson COMPACFLT (fuck yeah), Rihanna, alexander skarsgard….. woof. and yeah, it’s a gigantic fuck-you ad for the navy, but even i got a freedom boner when they hopped on *that ship* at the very end (70-year-old ordnance notwithstanding). like, i get it. that kinda whipped ass actually.

as recruitment material it’s very interesting. *guy who has only ever seen top gun watching any other movie* WOW JUST LIKE TOP GUN!!! no, but seriously, all these pro-Navy pro-mil movies are pushing a characterization of the military & the people in it that is laughably absurd. Our main character is always some guy who’s quietly very talented but outwardly a huge asshole who never plays by the rules & stays in the institution that gives him power only by the skin of his teeth. These movies are about *belonging* and push a message that even the most screwy of screw-ups can find their place in the military with a little patriotism and perseverance (maverick voice: “just wanna serve my country and be the best fighter pilot in the Navy, SIR”)—when that’s clearly not true. so, yes, in Battleship hopper is our asshole persevering main character who does everything (EVERYTHING) wrong until he just happens to do one thing right (read sun tzu I guess?) & gets a command of his own. The message is, join the navy, doesn’t matter how much of a fuck-up you are in real life, you too can excel & be recognized & get the outrageously hot chick & lead other men & have immense power….

…when we get invaded by aliens. cause that’s always the other part of these movies that kinda confuses me: unless it’s a historical movie (black Hawk down, american sniper, SPR, hacksaw ridge etc) in the modern age of pro-mil movies we have to make up an enemy to propagandize. TGM’s “fifth-gen fighter” advanced nation, for instance. Not Russia and not Iran and not DPRK, some other shitholistan that isn’t made of real people so we can drop fictional bombs on them without feeling bad. And these fictional enemies are always more advanced than us, because we are perpetual underdogs (& have been since the AmRev war, it’s part of our historical DNA). But… that discrepancy doesn’t reflect reality, obvi. If Tom Cruise hadn’t wanted to film inside real planes, TGM could’ve been a 5-minute short film of an F-35 dropping a precision guided bunker buster from 40,000 feet. like, we have the logistical/materiel capability to execute pretty much any mission we want with little to no actual struggle. But that makes for poor propaganda storytelling. So… aliens it is

It is also worth engaging with Top Gun: Maverick as a recruitment text in and of itself, and I don’t mean like “oh planes cool = people want to join the navy” I mean, this is a movie where the CORE EMOTIONAL TENET is that a kid who wanted to be in the navy got shut out & is still pissed about it. The central emotional tenet of TGM is Rooster trying to finally prove to Maverick that he IS ready to join the Navy. The whole movie is built upon the assumption that the Navy is someplace You Want To Be. It’s not just a recruitment text, it’s a recruitment story. And again, it’s asshole-rule-breaker Maverick who juuuuust manages to stay in because he’s actually super talented all along and not actually a fuck-up, and the Navy legitimizes him as a person (in my reading, as a man) at the end… warlock voice: “You’re where you belong.” Is he, though? All the evidence seems to suggest otherwise!

[thelongestway]

It's finally Thursday! So: Lower Decks Liveblog time!!

Who is the narrator's voice this time? The director, perhaps? :P Starfleet Academy!! That moment when you know it before the text comes on. And Sito!! Aw, Wesley!!! Aw, baby Mariner, kiddo!!! And the one name nobody remembers. :P Also god, those kids and the four-way friendship... Back in the present, Locarno, so much bullshit, considering how you've treated her before... Oh you fucking asshole, 'junior member'?!?! Soo, how the fuck did you steal all those ships. A fucking D'Deridex, those are HUGE. Tell us about V'ger. C'mon. Oh god please tell me Freeman is trusting Mariner on this. Please tell me this is what last season's finale was the set up for. The Tom Paris line is a bit much, esp. 2 times in a row; "the Maquis would like a word" is great though! Holy shit, Mariner, way to go!!! Aw, T'Lyn! Good anthropologist!! And the depts checking in! Annnd we're pirating, right, Tendi? :P U.S.S. Passaro, stealing your mom's command codes, Beckett? :P Barter by combat, hehehe ^^ And Migleemo, I KNEW IT, he was so out of place in that lineup and had like exactly one moment to shine all season! MARINER DIPLOMANCY FOR THE WIN OFC YOU KNOW THE FERENGI! Like even with the fail, legit good try!

also damn, the "one weakness" plan failing? :P And way to raise the stakes, writers. The ship can't stay in Orion hands, but Tendi?.. Y'know, if any Trek could pull this off well, it's yours. Also not too extremely likely, but hell, who knows? ...The D'Deridex in hiding, you can always count on cloaks! Ooh, Livik comeback, and T'Lyn, lol! ...how long did that LARP take? also Boimler must've told her? Ah, Nova 1, enjoy the ion storm. What chain of command? Holy shit, that's a good excuse for putting Boimler in the captain's chair. The senior staff is making that destroyer battle-worthy; the Cerritos has glorified tractor beam duty... But MAN does it make for a good moment. (yeah, yeah, there's tons of people in the chain of command before him; I imagine he volunteered and Freeman let him because it's his best friend they're saving). OHH even better. Full command away team. AHAHAA the Captain's yacht!!! Someone knows their STO. :P PAYWALL BOMB. Which lieutenant, I wonder... I'm wondering if Starfleet won't want to give up D'Vana and are planning some other sort of barter now that relations are open? "Everyone, shut up, myself included" is one of my favorite turns of phrase. <3 Also "ohh there you are", Boimler, way to go! And Boimler and Mariner ribbing each other in the honest-to-goodness most affectionate way possible! Yeah, T'Lyn, maybe outright ghosting Sokel wasn't the best way of handling it. :P Also, science besties? Why the change of heart?

...yyyeah I was thinking that might have been a warning on a private channel.

But no, that's just D'Erika. And oh man, Tendi's face in the window. That's the face of someone who is code switching into "I am going to have to thoroughly break some bones around here, aren't I." Tl;dr: dammit, Lower Decks team, well done and thank you for doing this, you're amazing! I goddamn cannot wait for season 5, and like for the first time in a while - if I can get my hands on merch, I will buy it to support y'all. Like, you're getting priority in my "life across multiple countries" situation, that's how good y'all did.

[sunny6677]

ALRIGHT SO CAMS KINDA UPDATED BACKSTORY FOR HIS WTFUTURE VERSION!

@mayisgoingnuts

TWS FOR ENEMIES TO LOVERS TYPE STUFF, TOXIC RELATIONSHIPS, KNIVES, MURDER, ATTEMPTED MURDER, ETC

Basically, after a mysterious incident in the past, and Tord eventually taking over the world, Cam fled from the entirety of London to hide somewhere just to get away from everything Tord had very much destroyed. With his friends either taken by Tord or driven absolutely mad (like Edd), there wasn't much he could do, so all he did was hide inside a sewer for years kind of pretending like the mice down there were his friends and treating them the same way he treated his own friends before. Oh yeah and also out of spite for Cam, Tord literally banned platinum blonde hair dye and made it illegal across the world lmao. Which like mildly pissed off Cam at best, but he is still able to somehow illegally get his hair dyed anyway.

After years and years though, an incident with Tord fucking destroying a building for absolutely no reason kind of sets Cam off—especially when he sees Edd up on the screen running from all the robots and also Tom & Matt chasing him down. And though he hasn't seen his friends in years, it does somehow manage to finally break Cam a bit. And the only way he thinks he can possibly end all this and get things back to how they were is.. to literally kill Tord or somehow overthrow him. To convince himself to kill Tord though, he tries his best to pretend like he still doesn't see him as a friend—since that makes things easier for himself. He grabs his knife that he's had for years as self defense, and dyes his hair platinum blonde again as a small act of rebellion against Tord.

He heads all the way into London—destroying a bunch of robots with a gun he stole from a guard he killed, and walking past into the shadows of the city once he does. Cam is still the same calm guy he was before, except it's on a more bitter level of numbness now and he's basically kinda just worse with his issues in general. But he does show more emotion since he's been away from people for so long he hasn't really felt the need to act all chill.

He probably ends up going into a bar at some point—his first method of killing Tord being to literally spray a bunch of mind-numbing gas into the place that will make those effected do whatever they're asked. And once he sprays it, he just calmly gives one of them his knife and tells them all to storm Tords lair and kill him. So they listen, all collectively running off as he sits on a nearby chair and watches the chaos unfold on the TV that shows little live shots of Tords lair every now and then. They do rather quickly get up there but are immediately shot down, soooo.. Cam just sets down a drink he stole with a sigh and decides he'll have to resort to other measures.

He tries hiring a really fucking desperate hitman—that fails obviously. He tried spraying poisonous gas into the lair itself, and that doesn't work either. He tries setting it on fire, that doesn't work. And he even tries getting help from Edd himself when he finally encounters him, or at least when Edd encounters him.. and after a reunion, it.. actually kind of works because Edd is so desperate to get cola back that he agrees.

So they go to Tords lair by sneaking into there as guards, and after thinking he sees Tord, Edd tries stabbing what he thinks is Tord from behind. Only for the lights to turn on by Tom who just walked in—and Edd realizes he was just stabbing a bag. But Edd ends up being dragged out of the lair, with Cam not being caught yet, so he either decides to do the rest of the mission on his own or he tries to find some way to get Edd back in.

He is kinda forced into escaping the lair at some point though since the guards catch him while he's trying to set an absurd amount of bombs up—and all of them get blown up as a chase scene ensues. Tord ends up overhearing about the whole thing though, and his interest is peaked since they weren't able to catch whoever did it. So he sets out a search party. But Cam, being slightly unhinged, takes that as somehow an opportunity to kill him.

So while Tord is out and about searching with his guards, Cam grabs a gun he stole again and starts trying to shoot Tord down as it rains. It misses, which leads to Tord sending the guards after whoever it is and even chasing after them himself though. Cam is somehow able to take down the guards and robots though, and ends up shooting Tord pretty bad. Tord tries to hide in an alleyway, but Cam walks in with his gun pointed straight at Tord. Realizing it's Cam, Tord gains a grin on his face, a mix of smugness and actual slight happiness since he hasn't seen him in years and also insanity. After some taunting and bickering, Cam tries to finally shoot Tord—only to be suddenly shot from behind or shot with a dart. Cam falls to the ground and passes out. However.. Tord doesn't leave him there just to die. In fact, he tells the remaining guard that shot at him to take him back to the lair.

So, they do, and Cam awakes in Tords lair with his wounds all healed. Tord appears to be standing right next to the bed he's on though, and gives him a smug greeting. Cam tries getting up, but he is apparently restrained because Tord doesn't trust him enough after that whole thing. After some bickering, Tord briefly leaves to go tell the robot nurses. Cam also tries to escape during this scene, but isn't able to.

After being checked on further by the robots, they let him go, and Tord leads Cam to a cell where he'll be staying until he decides what to do about him. He's a little vague about whether or not Cam will still be staying in the cell even after though. And leaves Cam be. Cam tried to escape again, but that doesn't work. He also possibly reunites with Tom and Matt during this but it isn't a very happy one and their interactions are very bitter. Cam overhears Tord discussing what to do with Cam with his robots at night though, and he swears as Tord passes by he can almost see him looking over to his cell or noticing Cams awake. But even with that, Tord walks straight past and ignores him. So Cam decides to go to sleep.

The next day, Cam is practically dragged out of his cell to Tords office, where he personally walks Cam to somewhere to talk with him further. He talks with Cam on the elevator, having a bitter but.. almost nostalgic conversation? It's hard for Cam to tell if Tords happy to see him again genuinely in his own twisted little way or if he's just messing with him.

Once they get there, Cam finds that they're for some reason in his bedroom. It turns out Tord wasn't gonna show him anything exactly. But he ends up pulling out a pair of handcuffs, and Cam doesn't resist as they're attached just cuz he doesn't know what's gonna happen if he does. And.. well, nothing happens once they're cuffed on. But it turns out Tord is so untrusting of Cam he literally decided to cuff him to him so he'd never once be out of his sight (and yes this also means Cam is gonna sleep in the same bed as him/lh). This deeply upsets Cam since it's gonna make killing him harder, but he quickly calms down internally. Cam is determined to find a way to kill him no matter what and get things back to the way they were, no matter what circumstances they're in. So Cam spends the rest of the story trying to kill Tord, encountering his old pals several times and having bitter interactions in the process, and also having old feelings get in the way of what he 'needs to do'. Which perhaps leads to him deciding not to kill Tord after all or Tord finally realizing he's wrong and shutting down everything for good.. or Cam ends up dying and this breaks Tord because he never wanted him to die—leading to Tord being forced to live with the knowledge that he let someone he loved go through all of this pain and die because of it.

[halidaia]

Do video games cause violence?

Boomers love to say that video games cause violence. But in my experience, the younger generations haven’t had any wars. All the ongoing wars were started by middle-aged men. And if you look on the App Store, most of the popular games aren’t violent. So I’d like to turn the question around on the boomers and say that, actually, cartoons cause violence. We’re talking about the Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, and Walt Disney cartoons that existed in the early and mid 1900s. I’m isolating those because the newer versions of those cartoons, the ones that came out in the 2010s, aren’t as violent

Think about them. Chip and Dale destroyed Donald Duck’s house with a mountain-sized snowball in one episode. In another, they broke into his house and shot him with his own Christmas presents until he let them steal his walnuts. Many times have Tom & Jerry burned eachother to a crisp, sliced eachother in half, stabbed eachother, flattened eachother, and other things I can’t even remember. The hijinks of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd all gave the impression that guns were completely harmless toys, and not actually dangerous hunting tools. I can’t even count the amount of times Elmer shot Bugs or Daffy and the two were completely fine. If you’re watching that, and this is the first time you’ve ever seen a gun, you’ll think “oh so they’re harmless and don’t work”. You’ll also be desensitized to violence at a very early age, which is a problem later in life

This point is driven home by Wile E Coyote, which takes the cake for the most violent cartoon series. Wile used guns, catapults, giant rocks, trucks, grenades, bombs, poison, and anything else he somehow got his paws on to try and kill some stupid bird. And it never worked. Wile would get injured in the most horrific and gruesome of ways, and his body would literally be flat or an accordion. Nothing could kill him. If that doesn’t desensitize you to violence and make such harmful activities funny, then no video game has a prayer of being able to do so

GTA doesn’t hold a candle to Looney Tunes. Just because something self-reports to be “safe for kids” does not mean it actually is. And just because a violent video game has the integrity to be honest and say “yeah, we’re probably a little too graphic for young eyes” does not automatically make that game evil and all video games bad

This is my opinion piece. Feel free to copy it, if you need. In 8th grade, my English class was forced to research statistics and write about whether or not we thought violent video games cause violence. If you are being forced to do that, and you need inspiration, or are even just looking for a perspective that’ll piss off your boomer teacher, you can use this

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 10 February 1955

A most unusual week, with two of the same song charting at the same time in very similar positions. This is the kind of content you're just not going to get in the 21st century, for better or (for the sake of writing about them) for worse. Oh well, at least they look interesting...

The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane - The Ames Brothers (6)

Immediately I'm imagining all sorts of sauciness, merely based on that title. By which I mean, if our naughty lady isn't a prostitute, I'll be very disappointed.

Things start promising with a slightly tango-ish rhythm and some deep, slinky "boom boom boom boom boom boom boom" bits and all these dramatic guitar and brass licks. It sounds dangerous and slightly sexy, and definitely a bit disreptuable.

And then we learn that "The naughty lady of shady lane has hit the town like a bomb / The back fence gossip ain't been this good since Mabel ran off with Tom". It's a picture-perfect glimpse into a catty 1950s suburban word, where everyone pretends to disapprove while secretly enjoying the hottest gossip. Seriously, somehow referencing Mabel and Tom and gossiping over back fences just makes it so good!

Then we get a shift to a marimba (?) and a more major tone as we get the chorus, all about how the titular naughy lady "has the town in a whirl". It's enough to create interest and create a brief and vaguely calypso-esque vibe. And then we're back to the tango atmosphere for the verses, which all describe our lady in increasingly suggestive ways.

To my delight, she really does seem to be a prostitute, too! She has a whole string of visitors, we learn, and we are told that "She must be givin' them quite a thrill / The way they flock to her door". Worse, she's giving "come hither glances" to every Tom, Dick and Harry, and offered some liquid refreshment "the lady never says no".

It comes close to being a bit gross, in its judgey attitude, except for all that the song's narrator disapproves, it never quite outright condemns her. In fact, the overall impression I got at this point was essentially of our shady lady as a sit-com character. This whole song, in fact, could be the theme to a WandaVision-type classic sit-com with a twist, all about a modern, sexually emancipated woman who suddenly appears in a 1950s suburban world. It's all in good fun, you get the impression!

As such, our main character isn't so much a real person as an assemblage of tropes. She exists so you can make assumptions about her and slot her into pre-existing narratives. Seriously, a lot of the fun of this song is trying to figure out just what kind of story we're in. At first, she's a "overdramatic town floozy" kind of figure, then at times she's more of a "disruptive femme fatale", and finally, she's suggestsed to be more of a "hooker with a heart of gold". All stereotypes, and the fun's just in figuring out that "She just needs / Someone to change her". We're doing that story, guys, case closed...

Except - last line twist alert! - she's not a prostitute at all, and all this play was just that, play! The real clue is in the mention of "powder / And fancy lace" and in the double meaning of "Someone to change her". Because, drum roll please... our lady is "only nine days old"! Yeah, that's right, it's a song about everybody liking a baby! And so you become the dirty-minded one for thinking it's about anything else - honestly, what else could this be about?!

It makes the song scan entirely differently on a second listen, as you realise why she's "delectable to hold" and what kind of "liquid refreshment" she's probably consuming. But I maintain that it doesn't quite work, even then - there's just too many lines that don't quite scan as being about a baby. I don't find myself minding, much. But also, nobody is seriously playing the "haha, but we made it about a baby" game here. We all know what this song is about - and it's all the better for its brazenness.

The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane - Dean Martin (5)

To state the obvious: this is the exact same song as above. Fortunately, there are still some things to note about it, not least beacuse Dean's approach is considerably different to the Ames Brothers.

Immediately what jumps out is the backing singers' "papaya-paya" backing. Which was apparently a thing, as I've heard it in other songs, but it still just makes me think of the fruit, and not in a good way. It's distracting, to be honest, and it's not like the backing singers otherwise improve this version of the song. They don't have much to do, really - you could absolutely replace them with trumpets for the intro and the song would do just fine.

Getting past this, Dean's version also is a lot lighter, texturally. Part of this is the fact that there's only one of him, as opposed to four Ames Brothers. Still, you've also got a slightly thinner sound in the instruments, from the guitar and the other string instrument (no idea what it actually is), to the castanets and the faint plinking noises that replace the marimba sounds. It's a lot more Spanish-sounding, leaning on the tango aspects of the original and less on the more calypso elements. Which works just fine, no objections here, but it definitely gives a different feel. I also kind of miss the fullness you get from having multiple voices.

Apart from all that, the song really is the same song as above. I get less "sitcom theme" vibes, and the punchline feels a little more low-key, perhaps, but that could also just be because I know the joke. Hard to tell.

Well, those are the same song. I liked them, though I can see why they don't get much airtime nowadays. In fact, I think they probably suffer from the same issue that a lot of joke or novelty songs have, which is that they never work as well as the first time you heard them. This one has the "re-listen" bonus of spotting all the hints at our lady's age, but that's still only one or two more listens before you can safely consign this to a corner, where it will gather dust forever. A shame, because it is still quite fun!

Favourite song of the bunch: The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane - Ames Brothers' version.

[messenger-of-stupidity]

Oh what's this? Another post about the shaw pack? 

Redacted Masterlist

Here's my own little take on if the Shaw pack were YouTubers. Starting off strong with the alpha himself...-

David - I'm not sure why but he seems kind of like a "How to" youtuber. If someone needs or wants to do something, he's the channel to go to because God damn he's going to do it right and so should you. Does Angel bomb or feature in his videos, usually as an example of what not to do? Absolutely.

"And that's how you fucking do it. Thanks for... Angel what the hell is that?"

"A... pineapple?"

"Angel the point of this video was how to change a tire, how do you have a pineapple?"

Speaking of Angel-

------

Angel- minecraft channel 100%. They also do an 2 ongoing minecraft series. One is just them playing and another one is them trying to convince David to play. Most of their channel is mostly variety if they're being honest since their interest and focus jumps from one thing to another, But they always make a comeback to Minecraft. Sometimes Animal Crossing too. They have a love-hate relationship with Tom nook.

"Listen here you little gerbilfucker, I know your being cheap with those bells. I worked hard to catch this spider and you're going to give me what I'm owed."

"[Animal crossing speak]"

"*gasp* Tom! What would the twins think?"

------

Asher - Are you kidding me? Gaming Channel obviously. Does this even require explanation? As long as it can be competitive, there's going to be videos of it. He tries to get Baabe to join in, but they tend to play for a bit before just attempting to sabotage it. They find it funny.

"Oh come on Baabe! You practically handed the other team that kill. We coulda won."

"Yeah but there's no fun in playing the game."

"Thats like... the entire point though."

-------

Baabe - arts and crafts Channel. Fuck five minutes crafts, theirs actually work. Baabe has a stressful office job that saps at their creativity. They want some time where they can just unwind and let those creative juices flow. Then they get to see some fruit of their labor.

"More glitter. There can never be too much glitter. Unless your partner is around. My boyfriend tried to eat glitter one time. So make sure they won't eat just anything when they're hungry before you pull out the glitter."

-------

Milo - adventure channel. He loves exploring new places, preferably outside, and showing off how fucking awesome forests are. And the tree facts this man has? They're insane. He's the tree man. Sweetheart likes taking him urban exploring (going through abandoned buildings) and scaring the shit out of him though.

"It's kind of cool to see how the architecture can- oh Jesus where did they go now? I swear this is the only reason they would break a law, just to scare me."

"Boo!"

"OH FUCK ME"

Milo also has a permanent collab with Sweetheart about the glory of Aggro.

-------

Sweetheart - ghost channel mostly. They have an ongoing series where they're just scaring people through pranks though. Sometimes they get Angel and Baabe to join in. But they will totally try to find ALL the haunted locations. They'll review scary movies and books too. Anything to do with horror and the paranormal is right up their alley.

"How does David even react to being scared, Angel?"

"You'd think I know? I don't know how to sneak up on him with how good his hearing is."

"Oh God I hope this doesn't break covert. I'm live right now, and my sergeant would be so pissed at me."

They have yet to break covert and everyone has just brushed the weird conversations off as normal. After all what kind of person obsessed with this kind of thing like Sweetheart is can be labeled the typical normal?

------

Sam - Sam can really only do a lot of things at night, so he's more of a comfort channel. He'll just go live with Darlin, Vincent and/or Lovely, and some of the other mates to just chill and talk. He'll sometimes play games but not often since he's not that confident in his ability to play. But he enjoys a good chat and being able to hang out with his friends.

"Vincent. Just admit you can't drive stick and we can move on."

"Sam I will literally break your elbow. I can drive stick, I just prefer not to."

"Right.... because you can't drive it."

"SAM!"

---------

Darlin - quite the opposite to their mate, Darlin is a self defense channel. They don't want other people to get hurt after their friend did. And they can't really help thinking that if their friend knew more moves to fight against Quinn, they would have gotten less injured. It's an irrational thought but they can't see anything wrong with putting the information out there at the very least. David often helps them, or Asher. Milo doesn't have a wish to be put in a chokehold by the nicknamed "Tank".

"Now if some asshat is chasing you with a knife, you should try to figure out if you're faster than them. If you can run, you probably should. Knives are hella sharp and it hurts like a bitch when they stab you. Trust me, I've had my fair share of encounters."

They like the chill streams with Sam though, especially if they can convince him to give them a massage.

---------

Christian - let's be honest, his entire personality is that he's better than Asher. So he's another gaming channel, but he's in a constant beef with Asher about who's the better gamer.

"What? Asher got third place? Of course he did. He's a total noob. I, however, am not and I'm going to get first place. Beta my ass."

--------

Amanda - baking channel. She just wants to be able to chill and make sweet things for her loved ones. Christian will sometimes join her and be her official taste tester. The flirting and sexual tension is noticed by all the viewers, no matter how much the two try to "hide" it.

"Macaroons tend to be kind of difficult, especially for people just starting out. But practice makes perfect. Plus if you like paying attention to little details, I totally recommend making them."

"I like paying attention to every detail of you, Amanda."

"O-oh!"

-------

Arden - while Sweetheart is a sometimes prank channel, Arden is a dedicated prank channel. She gets the Stealth to join them a lot of the time too. But while Sweetheart focuses on pranking someone in real life, the viewers aren't even safe from this evil genius. They will upload "PSA"s made specifically to prank the viewers before most of them realize it. And yes, there is an ongoing series of her bullying Christian.

"Guys! You know how Asher's partner makes cool arts and crafts? Well they showed me this super cool way to get tin foil really shiny. All you need is a microwave!"

[ezlebe]

Prompt (if you are still taking them): Greg actually does go over to Tom’s to get a watch

Greg takes a sip of his drink and catches Shiv staring across the room, as a smile crosses her face, and follows it only to find that guy from the wedding drifting toward her for the second time that night. He glances back and forth between them while something ugly builds in his chest, and he should go over there, do something, but instead his feet stay rooted, as usual, while they start to flirt.

He watches Shiv lean forward, offering her cheek for a whisper in her ear, and feels an abrupt wave of guilt break across his sternum. He finishes the rest of his champagne in a gulp, handing off his glass, and decides that holding his grudge about getting stuck in a stuffy not-office has reached a premature end, considering what’s going on in Tom’s particular corner.

He glances around and spies Kendall on the other side of the room. He’s avoiding Shiv now, after getting in between those two the first time to bomb whatever his pitch was, and Greg finds himself moving with a nervous sense of urgency. It looks like Kendall is still riding the high of his big speech, so he probably won’t be as much of a downer about Greg about to bail for no real reason.

“Hey, Ken,” Greg says, bending a little closer to Kendall while smoothing hair back over his forehead. “I – uh, I think I need to go?”

“What?” Kendall asks, shaking his head with a typically dramatic, affronted blink. “Where?”

“I – uh, I…” Greg says, know that he probably shouldn’t mention Tom, lest any… donut dots get connected; they had been pretty good though, and it sort of felt like, in a weird way, Tom got him breakfast. “I left my oven on?”

“All day,” Kendall mocks, then exhales a low scoff, gesturing with a dismissive turn of his hand. “Do you even know where the oven is in that place?”

“Yeah?” Greg says, as a little irked stab digs into the center of his chest. “It’s where I make, like… pizza rolls.”

Kendall stares for a beat, then snorts while rolling his eyes across the room. “Sure. Whatever, man.”

“So, uh…” Greg takes a step backward, throwing his hand up in an awkward wave. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Hey, wait –” Kendall says, reaching out with a wag of his finger at Greg’s wrist and the timepiece hanging off of it. “Give that back, if you’re not buying it.”

“If I’m not –” Greg repeats, then hastily tugs at the clasp and shakes off the watch, holding it out to Kendall with a firm, “No. Absolutely – n-no way. I thought you were buying –”

“Do I look like a fucking sugar daddy?” Kendall sneers, taking back the watch with a hook of his fingers around the band. “Jesus. Go check on your stove, dude, maybe it gives a shit.”

“Hah,” Greg says, digging a hand up through his hair a second time and scratching harder against his scalp. “Maybe.”

It takes a lot of time, getting another ride, then getting across town, but Greg eventually finds himself in front of Tom’s door. He thinks about sending a warning text, as he hovers outside the door, but then Tom probably would call him, so…

“What the fuck are you doing?” The door says in Tom’s tired voice.

Greg jumps about three meters backward, then feels his ears burn, but the embarrassment just cedes to awkwardness when Tom doesn’t even laugh. The door unlocks a few seconds later, so Greg pushes inside, glancing around to the living room side and waving at Tom hovering at the bar.

“You’re late,” Tom scolds, gesturing hard at Greg with a whiskey glass.

Greg flattens his mouth in an apology. “Sorry, I –”

“Oh, please, you’re not,” Tom mutters, throwing the glass back with a wince and a setting it down with a heavy smack onto the bar. “Why’re you here, Greg?”

“I felt bad,” Greg says, watching Tom pour another few fingers of liquor.

Tom rolls his eyes with a bursting scoff. “And here I thought I polished that out of you.”

Greg smiles, weakly, “Guess not.”

“Well, get comfy, buddy,” Tom says, drifting around the room with an aire of melancholy mania, sort of dancing in a big, lopsided circle.  “I didn’t mention you, specifically, to the guy, but I am no foreplay, no lube, capital-F fucked.”

“Are you sure?” Greg says, taking off his jacket and putting it onto the back of the plush chair. “Maybe he’s just paid to say that? Like, if he talks like that, you – uh, keep using him. He’s like not a lawyer, right?”

“It’s a big deal, Greg,” Tom says, slumping down into the sofa with a drop of his head against the cushions. “You know this. You blackmailed me about it.”

“Right, but – but I’m not a lawyer, either?” Greg says, shrugging and yanking on his bow tie with a grimace. He thinks he did it wrong – he’s stuck in it forever, or, at least, like during this totally not a bow-tie conversation. “I have like not even half of an English degree.”

“Jesus,” Tom mutters, then pulls himself right back up off the sofa with a groan. He reaches up, suddenly, yanking at Greg’s bow tie. “Stand still.”

Greg is glad that’s all Tom is asking, because he can’t really do anything else, eyes fixed over Tom’s ear while his breath goes so shallow it may as well stop. He does accidentally swallow, feeling his throat brush up against Tom’s yanking fingers, and refuses to examine any shivers or raised hairs too close.

“There we go,” Tom says, voice crooning, pulling the tie from Greg’s neck with a flick. “And look, your head even stayed on.”

Greg answers with a huff and raises a hand to the back of his neck, pretending to loosen his collar rather than rub out the heat.

“Keep that up. Shiv left out some clothes and Mondale ate them,” Tom says, sighing hard and glancing backward where Mondale’s sleeping in his pen.  “Poor guy’s been real down, I just didn’t know why – I thought he was getting old.”

“Oh, that’s not like great – is he okay?” Greg says, hastily shoving the bow tie deep in his pocket. “What was it?”

“Pantyhose,” Tom says, slumping back down onto the sofa with a wretched curve to his shoulders. “I can’t go to jail... she won’t take care of him, Greg? She’ll let him eat anything.”

“I – I don’t think you’re going to jail, but like – but I could help. My mom has had dogs like my whole life,” Greg says, exhaling a laugh and managing to force a grin. “They’re like all she ever took care of.”

Tom grunts a low mumble, taking another sip of his drink, and tilts his head one way, then the other. “Did I get you those suspenders?”

“Yeah,” Greg says, looking down and slipping a thumb through one, then realizes with a start that Tom has the same sort and color hanging off his waistband. “It’s – uh, mostly the same suit I wore to RECNY.”

Tom stares for a few beats, then snorts, “Fitting. Beginning of the end.”

Greg winces and glances toward the liquor cabinet, then decides he better not – he’s pretty sure Tom won’t care what he drinks, he never has, but… He still has Rava’s upset voice ringing in his ears.

“I think it’ll be fine, Tom,” Greg says, uselessly, because despite everything some part of him still likes to think that if he wants something hard enough that it can work out. “People like you don’t really go to jail for these things, you know? I – I think that guy just wants a – like, his fee.”

Tom is silent for a few seconds, then exhales a deep sigh. “Why did you pop in here tonight, Greg?”

“I did feel bad,” Greg says, which is, at least, honest, if still a half-truth.

“Thanks for the pity, I guess,” Tom said, taking another overlong sip from his drink. “I’ll take what I can take.”

“And like I can agree to whatever story you want, too, as long as it –” Greg winces, then shrugs, “I guess, isn’t a better deal for you, you know? And you don’t like ever testify again.”

Tom exhales a wheezy, humorless laugh. “Deal.”

“I’m kind of hungry,” Greg says, walking back across the room with his fingers twisting into his palms. He pauses, nearer the sofa, “Do you still have that fancy bread?”

“Probably,” Tom says, muted, staring hard out the window wall to his right.

“Are you? I’ll make you some, too,” Greg says, fumbling, feeling a flare of mortification against his ears. He doesn’t know what to do and – and he can’t even do what he does what to do, because it just makes everything even worse.

He finds the bread in its usual place carefully hidden inside a Mondale-proof box. He looks for honey, but the little container is gone, so he hesitantly grabs a bottle of agave syrup - it’s not that different, right? It’s not the same, either, like at all, but the sentiment matters.

He wishes Tom had a toaster, too, instead of only a toaster oven. He thinks it would be quicker, maybe, since the smell of fresh bread is all of a sudden making his stomach cramp.

He flinches when Tom greets Shiv in the main room, and his shoulders hunch in mostly reflex. He can just barely hear Tom starting to relay to Shiv the Mondale incident, then the prison-advisor, and tries to concentrate on the glowing heat in the box. He wraps his arms across his waist and swallows hard, thinking about the last time he brought it up, but also… but also.

“ – mean cooperate?” Shiv says, her voice lifting at the end.

Greg drifts closer to the door while furrowing his brow.

“No, not with the DOJ,” Tom says, “Your dad. I go to your dad and I… offer myself up.”

Greg blinks hard and shakes his head to himself, thinking of Tom’s anger and stolen chicken – it feels like forever ago, but it’s only been days. He doesn’t really want to believe Tom could now be willingly stepping onto Kendall’s death march path.

Shiv is quiet for a few tense seconds. “No, no honey, you can’t. You’re drunk.”

Greg feels his shoulders relax slightly, looking up and reaching for a plate from the floating shelf.

“…But it is smart.”

Greg fumbles the plate, slightly, swallowing hard, because she isn’t even… He thought, on the yacht, maybe she said that just for Logan, but – but Logan isn’t here, it’s just Tom, who’s super drunk and already feeling bad.

“It’s kind of a win from a no-win.”

Greg feels his eyes go wide toward the wall – a win for who?

“Yeah, it’s punchy,” Shiv continues, now halfway to actually eager, somehow, “It’s very likely that no one goes to prison, and, either way, you bank gold with my dad. The offer is… kinda genius.”

“What?” Greg mouths, silently, frowning at his own reflection in the kitchen cabinets.

Shiv offers a delayed, pitchy laugh. “But no, no you – ”

The toaster oven interrupts with a few small beeps, and Greg winces hard while hastily reaching out to grab the toast from the oven. He nearly drops the first piece, a burn stinging across his fingers.

“Is someone here?” Shiv says, interrupting herself with sharp surprise.

“Just Greg.”

Shiv raises her voice further, exhaling a pitchy, upset huff. “What – honey, why didn’t you say anything?”

Tom is quiet for a few seconds. “He’s here all the time.”

“Not usually when I’m here, though,” Shiv says, her voice getting louder, so she must be walking toward the kitchen.

Great.

Greg looks up when some chill somehow wafts through the kitchen, looking back over his shoulder to see Shiv in the entry. He nods in some greeting, trying not to feel too aware of his current appearance in comparison to her still-immaculate gala outfit.

“There he is – why the hell are you here?” Shiv asks, cocking her head while raising an incredulous brow. “Weren’t you playing jester to Kendall?”

“Yeah,” Greg shrugs, nodding his head a bit. He lowers his voice, barely above a mutter, but tries to keep it firm. “But then I saw you and, uh,” He shrugs, looking down while dolloping syrup onto the toast. “That guy.”

“Uh, okay? Cousin Greg?”

Greg picks up the knife, looking up while setting the syrup to the side. “The one who was at your wedding.”

Shiv narrows her eyes slightly, then shifts her jaw, now dropping her voice to match. “He told you about that?”

“I told him, really,” Greg says, looking down while gradually spreading the syrup in a thin layer across each slice of crusty toast, then gently setting the knife down with a quiet clink into the sink. “I was going to tonight, too, only he’s like… yeah. But, still, you know – uh, fuck you, I guess?”

Shiv scoffs hard and widens her eyes, taking a half steep forward while a sneer curls across her mouth. “You cannot talk to me that way.”

Greg stares back at her for another silent pair of moments. “I just did, so,” he says, slipping past her to go back toward Tom in the sitting room.

“Hey, here,” Greg says, offering Tom the plate between them, then catching Shiv all but stalking out of the kitchen. He meets her stare, when she pauses, and realizes he might actually do something, if she tries to kick him out.

“What’s on it?” Tom asks, peering down at the plate, thankfully missing the poisonous look that Shiv sends Greg, as she turns up the stairs to the next level.

“Oh, uh,” Greg says, looking over to Tom with a sharp clear of his throat, reaching behind his head with his free hand and scratching at his scalp. “You didn’t have like any honey, so it’s agave syrup.”

Tom barks out a loud laugh, clumsily taking the plate, as abruptly his face crumples. “Thank you, buddy.”

“So, um…” Greg squeezes at both his knees, leaning forward, then back, taking a deep, harsh breath. He takes the slice from the top of the plate. “Look, Tom, remember my – my grandpa took me to that anarchist lawyer?”

“What?” Tom says, blinking, his voice going a little flat. “Your grandpa - Anarchist, really?”

Greg nibbles at the edge of his piece, while he shrugs and pulls out his phone. “And uh, I can give you his number?”

“Greg…” Tom sighs, red eyes dropping toward the plate. “I’ve been thinking, and it’s probably just better, if I –”

“Tom,” Greg interrupts, he glances backward to where Shiv disappeared up toward the bedroom. “It isn’t, like better at all if you volunteer go to jail.”

“That afraid I’ll turn on you, buddy?” Tom says, blinking slow while offering a feeble smile.

“O-or me either, yeah,” Greg agrees, swallowing thickly, “But, no, like…?” He has that recording, yeah, but he – He probably shouldn’t mention that like right now with Tom already talking up a worse case scenario. “But this is sort of about you, right?”

“I don’t want to be on Kendall’s ‘side’,” Tom says, crunching into the toast with a twist at the corner of his mouth. “He’s so… Greg, he’s unwell. Existentially.”

“He gave me an apartment,” Greg says, taking off another edge of the crust.

“So you’re biased,” Tom says, eyes rolling drunkenly wide, as he settles Greg with a flat look. “He probably didn’t – I don’t think anyone in your family is doing stuff to be nice. Including me, including you…”

Greg shifts forward on the sofa, glancing toward the stairs while rubbing a circle at his temple. “…Probably not, yeah. It was after I told him I kept some of the papers at the wedding,”

“My wedding?” Tom clarifies, then laughs, taking another bite of the toast. “God, you’re so sly. Like a big ol’ musky polecat. Sneaky sneak.”

Greg shrugs, halfheartedly, and starts in for real on his own piece of toast.

“And you can’t even blame me for it,” Tom says, spraying crumbs on his lap through a seeming honest grin. “You’re just like that.”

Greg drops his head in a nod, thumbing through his phone with his free hand. “Yeah, you’re… uh, not really subtle.”

“Good lord,” Tom says, tone briefly gaining a pitchy rebuke “Someone’s getting full of himself.”

“Here,” Greg says, swiping on the contact and telling it to send to Tom, then looking for the picture that he took of the business card, too. “That’s the lawyer? You can, uh…” He shakes his head with an awkward shrug. “Think of it as my grandpa’s side?”

Tom stares at the text popping up on his phone. “He doesn’t like me. At all.”

“He doesn’t really like anyone, so,” Greg says, though he does wonder if this is him banking gold, trying to pull someone in like Tom, but, then again, Grandpa Ewan will probably just be annoyed by another fickle variable. “But I-I think… if you wanted to? You could blame Uncle Logan, o-or Gerri, or Kendall?”

Tom rolls his eyes hard, but he doesn’t do anything like make a show of erasing the number. He does drop the phone to his lap, where it slides across his thigh into the seam of the cushion. “Everyone who told me not to, but you, Greg?”

Greg feels his eyes go a bit wide, glancing away and then back to Tom.

Tom blinks placidly and raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t seem angry. “It became obvious after a point.”

“I-In my defense,” Greg says, sweeping hair behind his ears with both hands, “That was like…” He takes a deep breath, exhaling it slow through flat lips. “Way before I cared about you more than them?”

Tom coughs around the toast in his mouth.

“Tom?” Greg asks, wondering if he’s choked – the syrup was pretty tacky.

“Ah, hah – oh,” Tom says, stuffing the last bite between his lips with a hard shake of his head. He takes a particularly long time chewing, then reaches out and taps Greg’s arm while setting the plate to the side. “Weren’t you getting a watch, Gregaroo?”

“Um,” Greg intones, rolling his head to the side with a wince. “No, like I guess I – I would’ve been buying it.”

Tom exhales a low scoff. “See? What a jackass.”

“Yeah, like…” Greg looks down at his bare wrist, circling his fingers around it. “I don’t have $40k like just lying around? I mean, I sorta do, but I would like, uh – rather buy a car, or something, you know?”

Tom hums with a meandering sort of drunkenness. “How do you feel about Jaeger-LeCoultre?”

“I don’t actually like need a watch,” Greg says, ears warming while he shakes his head with a sink into his shoulders. “For coming here.”

“Oh, get over yourself,” Tom says, flopping back on the couch and grasping back for his phone with a furrowed brow. “Answer the question.”

“I mean…” Greg exhales hard through his nose. “I’m not sure what that is?”

Tom tuts harshly, sweeping up his phone screen in a wide gesture. “Oh, Gregory,” He says, as he starts tapping at the browser with his head lolling against a shoulder. “So many big words, so few definitions.”

“It’s not like a real word…” Greg leans forward to look at the picture that Tom offers, then raises his brows; it’s nothing like the one that Kendall’s watch guy brought out, instead it’s sort of normal and rectangular with gold, somewhat bubbly numbers. “It’s like an antique?”

Tom grunts, awfully and maybe melodramatically dejected about it. “You not an art deco guy?”

“No, it’s – I like it, actually?” Greg says, a little surprised that he really does, feeling drawn in by the simple, easy-to-read face and the design like he might see in an old movie. “But what if I broke it?”

“It’s lasted eighty years, bud, it can take you,” Tom says, as he swipes at the screen, showing a few more pictures, then revealing that the face apparently flips around to hide the clock. “See, it’s fiddly. You like fiddly.”

“Yeah,” Greg says, rolling his lips together, then leans in a bit closer to Tom until their shoulders are pressed hard together.

It’s not a screaming posse or a chartered limousine, there’s no man with a case offering up multiple thousands of dollars in a box; it’s somewhat tensely quiet, it smells a little like burnt toast, and none of these watches might ever leave the phone screen. The difference is nothing less than stark. Greg doesn’t exactly regret being part of one or the other, as catching a taste of Kendall’s mania is always exciting and Tom’s attention makes him feel like a – a person, but, sometimes, both are a little intense to the point of exhausting. He’s glad to have, at least, ended the night here, as he tilts his head when Tom angles the screen to share a pocket watch.

“I think you’re just weird enough to pull it off, Alice.”

Greg just huffs quietly and drops his chin, not quite brave enough to set it across Tom’s shoulder. Next time, maybe, if they’re really alone.