#Or do another poll to let you guys vote on who goes second and then after that who goes third

[somegrumpynerd]

I'm down for any option honestly, just whatever you guys think would be fun!

...Hypothetically

[amakumos]

twizzle into my heart — nishimura riki (teaser)

twizzle into my heart is out now! read here ^_^

synopsis. Falling in love when your sport is your top priority is hard, and nobody knows this better than you and Nishimura Riki. You two tried to make it work, but things didn't end up like you both wanted it to. But, when you and Riki cross paths again 4 years later at 4 Continents, old feelings resurface, and you find that Nishimura Riki comes twizzling straight into your heart once again.

genre. angst, fluff, exes to friends to lovers, slowburn (?), figure skating au

pairing. figure skater! riki x pairs figure skater fem! reader

warnings. swearing, mentions of injury, riki is 21, reader is 21, and both compete for japan. set during the 2026/2027 figure skating season.

word count. 20-30k (est.) teaser is 1.6k words

author’s note. yun comes back again with another! figure skating fic. r we surprised… no because i already teased this😭😭 anyways this was the one that was voted the most on the poll so here it is!! i hope u guys enjoy this little teaser and if you’re interested the taglist is open so just shoot me an ask ^_^

Riki puts his skate guards on, sitting down on the bench next to Taki. “Oh, and before I forget to ask you, do you wanna go to lunch with the rest of us? The whole 4CC team is going, with the exception of Sakura and Fuma, ‘cause they’re practising.”

Riki shrugs, taking off his skates to change into his regular sports shoes. “Sure. Where are we going?”

“Kazuha found this nice restaurant nearby the arena,” Yuma chimes in. He puts his skates into his bag, standing up to wait for the two other boys to finish putting their skates away. “Let’s leave our bags in the locker room and go. I think Kazuha, Mina and Yuta are already there.”

“I’m going to get changed.” Riki says, getting up from the bench and heading towards the changing room. He’s sweating after practice, and he’d much rather go out in fresh clothes than wear what he’s got on now. Taki and Yuma follow him not long after, and Riki changes into a black hoodie and a pair of jeans, spraying some cologne on as well.

He brushes his bangs out of his eyes as he takes his wallet and phone out of his bag, shoving them into his pockets. “You ready?” he asks Yuma and Taki, who have also changed. The two boys nod, and they all head out of the changing room.

“Where’s the restaurant again?” Taki asks Yuma, who’s got the location entered into the GPS on his phone. “A five minute walk from here.” Taki replies, and he walks in the direction of where the GPS tells him to go, and the two boys follow him.

Soon enough, the three boys arrive at the restaurant, telling the front of house staff Kazuha’s name, since she was the one who booked. The staff member takes them to their table, and Riki greets everyone before sitting down next to Taki.

But, when he turns his head, he sees Keiji sitting just one seat away from him, with the one next to Riki being empty.

“Hey, who joined us?”

Riki knows exactly who that voice belongs to, and he turns his head slowly to meet eyes with you.

Everyone at the table immediately goes silent as you and Riki stare at each other for a few seconds, neither of you moving. Riki lets out a shaky breath as he looks at you — he hasn’t really seen you at all since the breakup.

“Hey.” You’re the first to speak.

Riki gulps. “Hey.”

You awkwardly slide into your seat next to Riki, and he sees Yuta wiggling his eyebrows at him, and Riki makes a mental note to send him a text message with many middle finger emojis later.

You haven’t seen Riki in a long time. He’s grown taller, way taller than you last saw him, and he’s now got dyed blonde streaks in his dark hair. It looks good on him — he looks good. As Riki talks to the others, you can’t help but stare at him. There’s a couple silver necklaces he’s wearing around his neck, and you’re sitting close enough to him to realise that he’s still wearing the cologne that you had recommended to him years ago.

“So…” Kazuha starts. “How’s Bisco?”

Riki’s eyes light up at the mention of his dog, and Hitomi notices that there’s a fond smile on your lips when you hear him talk about Bisco. After all, you did frequent Riki’s house when you two were together, and had formed a close bond with Bisco.

Riki never told you (and doesn’t plan on telling you) but after your breakup, Bisco would often sit by the door, waiting to see if you’d show up.

And you never did.

“Good,” Riki says. “I’ll go back home to see him after the competition. I try to go back as much as I can since it’s only a 4 hour train ride from Nagoya to Okayama, but — training kinda steals most of the time I have.”

“Oh, so you found out Bisco’s gender now?” you ask, absentmindedly — you don’t realise the words slip past your lips until Riki replies. “Uh, yeah. Konon told me, actually.” he chuckles awkwardly.

The tension between you and Riki is so thick that you could cut it with a knife. You didn’t think that seeing him would be this awkward, since you two had ended things amicably — but now that you’re seeing him for the first time after the breakup, you really don’t know what to say to him.

“Awks.” Taki whispers into Riki’s ear, and Riki rolls his eyes, nudging him on the arm. “Ow,” Taki says dramatically, clutching the spot where Riki had elbowed him. “That really hurt.”

“Sure it did.”

The lunch goes well for the most part, with Mina catching you and Riki sneaking glances at each other when one of you isn’t looking. There’s a sneaky grin on her lips as she watches the scene play out before her. You’re awkwardly taking a sip of your tea, whilst Riki is trying to do everything in his power to stop himself from trying to steal another glance at you. “They should talk.” Mina whispers into Kazuha’s ear.

“Keiji, practice is in an hour.” you tell your partner, and he checks the time. “Shit, right. Um, guys, we’ll have to leave soon for the official practice.” Keiji announces to the group, and Yuma nods.

“Let’s just all leave, then. We’re all done with eating.” Yuma says, and Riki nods. Riki stands up, looking at the time on his phone as you catch a glimpse of his lockscreen, and it’s of Bisco having Riki’s Worlds gold medal hung around his neck.

A smile spreads across your lips as you catch sight of the photo. “That’s cute.”

Once again, the words slip out before you realise you say them. “Sorry. Caught sight of your lockscreen.” you say, and Riki shrugs.

“It’s alright.” he says, and you two just stand there awkwardly, looking at each other — you both don’t even realise that everyone’s gone to the cashier to pay (even if they all did it purposely just to get you two to talk in private.)

“So… how have you been?” you ask, attempting to start a conversation. “I’m good. Just training a lot… you know how I am,” Riki says, and you nod. “How about you? How’s Canada?”

“Oh, it’s nice there. Really cold in the winter.” you say. “Colder than Japan?” he asks, and you nod. “Sometimes. Oh, and I forgot to say — congrats on gold at Worlds last year. You did really great.”

Riki smiles at you. It’s a smile that you didn’t know you missed until you saw it again. “Thanks. I saw you there, I think — just didn’t get a chance to say hi. I’ve seen you at many competitions, briefly, actually. Just… the opportunity never came up.”

“Yeah. I saw you too. I was in the bleachers, actually. Umm… yeah, you did really great. You’ve come so far. Super proud of you.” you say, offering him a smile. “We haven’t talked in so long. How long has it been?”

“4 years, I think.” Riki replies.

“Right. 4 years… 4 Continents.” you quip, and Riki tilts his head, looking at you with an amused smile.

“Good one.”

You know it wasn’t really a good one. More of a lame joke, compared to the ones that you had told him before when you two were dating.

“Thanks.” you say, shoving your hands into the pockets of your jacket. “We should probably… go. They’re all gone.” you say, and Riki nods.

“Right. Yeah. Don't leave anything behind.” he says, not forgetting about your terrible habit of losing things often. He’ll never forget the day when you nearly forgot your skate bag in the bus that you two were riding on to get to the rink — thank god he was there to remind you to pick it up.

“Yeah. I won’t.” you say, checking the table once more. Riki remembering that about you makes you feel a little bit happy, somehow. To you, it shows that he didn’t really forget about you, despite not having seen or talked to you for 4 years.

You follow Riki as you two both make your way towards the cashier, Taki looking at Riki expectantly. “So… did you guys kiss?”

“What the fuck?” Riki asks his friend. “You think I’m going to see my ex girlfriend after 4 years and after maybe a… 5 minute conversation, we’re going to kiss?”

“You’re unpredictable. And you two also broke up in less than 5 minutes, so… yeah. Maybe.”

“You’re insane, Taki.”

“Are you guys going to go back to the hotel?” Sakura asks Riki, Yuma and Taki. The men’s single skating practices were officially done for the day — meaning Riki could just go back to his hotel room, flop onto the bed and sleep.

“Uh… yeah. Probably.” Yuma says. “Do you guys have any plans?”

“I’m going to watch the pairs practice.” Kazuha pipes up. “You guys are more than welcome to tag along so we can watch (Name), Keiji, Mina and Yuta if you’d like.”

“Might go take a shower before I come join you.” Taki says, and Yuma nods in agreement. “Yeah. And I’m sure Riki would love to tag along as well.” he says, and Riki knows that Yuma’s just enunciating the word ‘love’ to piss him off.

“Yeah, I’ll come.” he says.

“Nice,” Keiji says. “See you later.”

The group splits up, with Riki, Taki and Yuma walking back to the hotel, and Kazuha, Mina, Yuta, Keiji and you heading to the arena. But before Riki gets far away enough, you call out his name.

“Hey, Riki?”

The boy turns his head to look at you.

“It was nice seeing you again.”

You leave before he can respond.

[ontheoddoccasioniwritestuff]

Relief (Johnny "Soap" MacTavish x Reader) Smut

Summary: It's the end of another mission, and you're ready to unwind with your new favourite destresser - casual sex with Soap.

AN: Thanks again to everyone who voted in the poll. I'm tempted to do another for the fics I've got drafted. My third favourite white guy on COD is finally on my blog ayyy.

If you wanna request a fic, check out my guidelines before sending one in! Also, if you wanna be tagged in any future fics, let me know!

Content warnings: Smut (18+ only, minors DNI), fuck-buddies in love trope, Reader is AFAB and gender neutral

Masterlist // AO3 Version

With a sigh, your head tilted back against the door you were pressed into. A half-surprised huff escaped next, since your body hadn’t left an impression in the wood – not unlike how Soap’s fingers were likely etched in bruises on your thighs from where he was holding you. He didn’t normally hold onto you so tightly, so desperately. But you let him anyway.

His nose leant above your shoulder. His chest caught its breath in deep sluggish drags, the glow of his skin pressed to yours whilst you did the same.

“You gonna put me down?” You huffed.

“Maybe. Quite like you like this.”

Of course he did. That’s why you’d barely made it out of briefing and not at all on his bed. Soap adjusted his grip and lifted your legs’ grip a little higher up his waist, which caught you off-guard and a moan slipped out.

You gave him a little taunt: “I know sex is a work-out but that doesn’t mean you can start deadlifting me whilst your cock’s still inside me.”

“Damn,” and Soap lifted his head up to look in your eyes with that laddish smirk and smug stare, “There goes my routine I was planning for tomorrow. Hey-” His brow creased as you attempted to lower one of your legs, his hand squeezing the meat of your thigh, “- I meant it. I like you like this.”

“This isn’t exactly helping the pain,” You said, referring to the mildest of injuries you’d ever gotten on a mission – a massive bruise behind your left shoulder.

Instantly, and with you still in his arms, Soap walked you over to his bed. His open hand cradled your hair as he lowered himself onto the sheets, then flopped back ungracefully. You on the other hand remained sat upright on his cock; your head tilted to the side as you watched Soap fidget against the pillow.

“You alright down there?”

Putting his hands behind his head, Soap winked, “Perfect. The view’s fantastic.”

Those random “clench to the music” videos on TikTok had been preparing you for this moment. You squeezed around his cock and Soap’s self-assured chuckles were stolen away. Tilting your head playfully at him, you watched him grunting beneath you.

Soap’s brows shot up his forehead as he opened up those bashful blue eyes, “Oh, that’s how you wanna play?”

His body beneath you shuffled as he planted his heels besides his buttocks. Your grin remained etched on your face as he thrust up into you. The first time, you could hold in your groans. The second time, your lips were pressed together as you lowered your elbows either side of his head.

“One Earthshattering Soap Special coming up?”

“Fuckin’ minx.”

It was so hard to kiss him properly when he wouldn’t stop making you smile, moan, whisper how good he made you feel. His shameless stare flitted between your face twisted in overstimulation and your hand rubbing at yourself to chase down your next orgasm. Each thrust was bordering on painful, the perfect distraction for your greedy body.

At the moment your orgasm wiped across you, you didn’t have to hold back a scream. All energy left was trained on those laboured breaths snatched between your mouth and Soap’s, both agape and brushing awkwardly as you greedily rutted into one another for more until the waves faded to ripples then to contented hums. His nose slotted to yours as you lifted your chest an inch from him.

“Was it intentional?”

“What’d’you mean?”

“Soap Special. Coming up,” you repeated, your laughter coming out hushed as you grappled with Soap’s shoulders to stay vertical.

“No, can’t be on my a-game with dirty jokes whilst your cunt squeezing the life out of me,” and Soap gripped your hips tighter. “And I can’t have done a good enough job if you can still think properly.”

“I recover fast. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

And you fell over into his chest, flopping your entire weight on him as you copied how he’d squashed you between himself and the door – but at least he had the luxury of it being a mattress on his back this time.

His arms curled protectively around you, keeping you pressed to him whilst he kissed you stupid, quite literally. You sighed dreamily; your hand tangled in his mohawk.

“You need a haircut,” you mumbled into his mouth. “Just a trim. Sides are getting long.”

“Warmin’ up to it, are you?”

“I will say it’s convenient for holding onto.”

Soap snorted, half your body sinking on his chest’s sudden exhale. Your fist squeezed in his hair once more before freeing him and pushing you away from him. When a flash of bliss from your cunt caught you off guard, and a short moan shot out of you, you waited for Soap to tease you about it. But he did no such thing whilst you climbed off his cock. Just looked at you with a close-lipped smile and his hand stroked up and down your bicep.

“Stay,” He hummed as you twisted around and swung your legs off the edge of his bunk.

“I can’t.”

“You can.” It was said with sincerity, not his usual sarcasm.

So you tried to include a sense of warning in your retort, “Soap.” But it just came across as sardonic and you waited for Soap to take advantage of it.

Instead, he sat up and wrapped himself against you. Feigning annoyance, you pushed his rising torso down into the bed.

You tried again, “We do this routine every time. It’s getting boring.”

Soap bounced right back up, “Boring’s not how I’d describe it.” To support his point, you endured listening to his kisses smacking against your skin, sending light-headed chills with each new contact. Soft vibrations from his throat tickled your shoulder’s slope.  

“You’re practically purring,” You said, hiding how uneven your words were in a half-laugh.

“Course. I’m the cat who got the cream.”

“Fucking hell,” You huffed, still smiling as you pulled up your underwear.

Your trousers were halfway up your legs when you pushed him away again but, this time, Soap stayed firm. He didn’t even move an inch under the light pressure of your palm.

“Don’t go. Please, Y/N.”

“First name basis when you’re not inside me? Must be real serious,” you parroted with a half-decent Scottish accent, though you didn’t miss how his begging affected you.

You turned to him now your trousers were done up. Your smile dropped; the “but” lingered on your lips as it saw Soap’s expression. You’d seen this man in pain, furious, over the moon, in bliss. But this was the most open, the most vulnerable, you’d seen him. Wide eyes peered at you in the low-lit room, letting you see directly through into his mind and its unsettled state, framed in that five o’clock shadow that had sprouted on his cheeks during the mission. It aged him. It made him look as weary as he felt.

His final plea of “I don’t wanna be alone, not tonight” uprooted the core of what this whole deal was about: stress relief. Soap still had stress that needed relieving, only it wasn’t with the usual fuck and funnies that you were used to.

You’d turned to him initially because you wanted to not think. Soap was wonderful at distracting; he always unwound you so easily, grounding you with his quips and that gorgeous drawl he spoke in. Perhaps you’d been neglecting him. Or perhaps you were leaning into this arrangement too much. The latter occupied your mind more. Were you getting in too deep?

“I need the toilet,” you whispered. Your eyes dragged up from the quiver that crossed his bottom lip and you finished buckling your belt on the other side of his bedroom door.

You were somewhat certain of why you were treating Soap’s request like a confession of love, because, in a way, it was. Admitting you need help that can only be given by a certain someone, that’s trust beyond the bond forged on the battlefield. And cuddling? Kissing you goodnight? His open expression you caught him wearing before he snuck in a quip? All things that had come before this night that had added up to support your conclusion.

It wasn’t like you hadn’t thought about it before – leaning into the romantic side you’d already been sharing with each other. In fact, a bystander would probably call out how the only thing missing from your relationship was that very label.

A fear of commitment wasn’t what was preventing you. But the paperwork alone would be a pain in the arse. Then there were the comments other people would make. Although not from Ghost or Gaz, besides some light ribbing. Price probably wouldn’t have much to say either. That risk of getting caught leaving Soap’s room, it hadn’t even crossed your mind as you left him tonight.

You were still silently pondering as you squatted on the toilet, completing your post-hook-up routine. Soap’s forlorn face was one you didn’t think you could recover from with a good night’s sleep. Facing him tomorrow at breakfast, sparring, trusting each other on the job and in the gym, it seemed the longer you left this the worse it would get.

Soap was facing away from the bedroom door for a split second before he sat up to face the sliver of light from the hallway, his body shrouded in your silhouette. He didn’t speak. He just watched as you closed the door, undressed, and returned to his side. There wasn’t a lot of room in the bed, so he turned back on his side and you embraced him around his middle, his soft skin pitted over muscles and under scars.

“I woulda agreed to stay if you removed all your bravado quicker,” you whispered.

“I’ll remember that next time.” And he squeezed your hand in his.

The temptation to joke about his hair again crept in your throat alongside the tickle in your nose that it had caused, but now didn’t feel like the time. You stored it away for next time – there was always a ‘next time’ – and instead, between his shoulder blades, where the muscles folded in a neat crease down his spine, you pressed a kiss.

[eartheats]

TEAM NEO FLARE PLANS PT. 2 (electric mommalu)

HELLO ONCE AGAIN, this is Sable, the player behind Ren and entirely too many others! We're getting closer to the date of the real meat of this plot getting started, so I figured I'd put out some feelers again just to see who still wants to take part/who else would wanna join in! This is a plot that is open to anyone who wants to partake; as long as I don't have you blocked in one manner or another, feel free to jump on in.

This plot is going to be pretty damn high stakes, and while part one of this plot is going to be the worst of it (cws for that: mind control, abusive mother behavior (emotional), murder of an adult, kidnapping of multiple adults, attempted kidnapping of a teenager, violence against a teenager), the second part will be very player determined! Though it will have some cws by default; namely endangerment of a child/teenager, the murder of two adults, the mentioned mind control of one of the admins, and a fair bit of violence. Though if you do wanna do something to your character, ask me first and I'll see what I can do. :|b And as a fair warning: part one has to be at least partially a scripted loss for the good guys, and I'm not willing to budge on this, and I would prefer minimal legendary/overpowered stuff interacting with this plot. I'm going to try not to godmod, and I'm going to ask for the same from y'all.

But anyway! I'm going to put this poll up first, since it'll be the main thing that decides when things are gonna happen. This is for part one of the plot, so feel free to vote which timeframe would be good! Other details below~ (also sorry for the pings in advance! i will need to check with peeps to see statuses on stuff)

Anywho! Let's go into the basics.

Part 1.1 of this plot is going to kickstart with Madison and Jacques being on the blog and leaving some little ciphers that are optional elements to be solved; mostly just letters and the like that Noriko exchanged with Lysandre at one point. The real meat of this will be taking place on one of the dates to be voted on, where Mads/Jacques will be getting kidnapped by Iori, a character who's been spying in Zapapico for Noriko for a while. She'll take over Ren's blog for the day for questioning and the like, and Ren will likely be reacting on Carmine's blog (along with the girl in question) while this all goes down, which is going to prompt Ren to escape BBA to save their friends, with the help of Millie/@porygonlover2009! Carmine will also be fleeing the academy, though shortly after Ren to try and tail them. This IS going to result in Millie herself being a boss encounter to fight against for anyone who wants to tail further, and while no pushover, she will try to prevent anyone from going after them and will need to be beaten. This much can be handwaved if needed!

Part 1.2 is where shit gets SPICY, and will take place on the voted upon date. This'll be taking place at the ruins of Cinnabar Island, where Ren and Carmine are going to meet Noriko, Camille, Iori, and a bunch of Neo Flare grunts. Try as Ren and Carmine might, they're going to get beaten both figuratively and literally, and will need some backup. Keep in mind: this is a scripted loss. If solely for Ren to fall under Noriko's thrall and kick the next leg of the plot under way. Carmine's own kidnapping is influenceable, but if I recall right, this'll be taken care of by the girlfriend, so help here will be appreciated to prevent anything from happening to anyone else who partakes!

From there, part 1 comes to a close, and we enter part 2: Neo Flare tries to end the world. I've actually got a blog getting set up (@team-neo-flare), but I want to encourage people to find them, and y'all are free to bring different skills to the table to do so! While Noriko is an amazing hacker and very good at keeping her location a secret, I fully intend to let people counter hack her or find where she's currently holed up, and this is the part where everyone can go as ham as they want.

There will be a few major fights in part 2: primarily, three against the admins of Team Neo Flare (Camille, Lotus, and Iori), and one final battle against Noriko and the Yveltal that she's kidnapped to do her bidding! I do have ways to help fudge a win for the good guys, but all in all, I'm leaving it very much up to y'all on how the story ends. :3b This leg of the plot will take place anywhere from October to December, depending on how my IRL job affects my energy, and while I'm hoping to get it done before the beginning of the new year, I can extend this out as much as needed.

So anyway! That about covers it. Here, I'll be outlying what I need here, and this'll be where the pings for the previous post will happen:

Part 1.1: Purely optional engagement, but if anyone wants to fuck around and help with the ciphers explicitly! Feel free to let me know and I'll see how I can make this fun. :3b partakers: ???

Part 1.2: This one I'm going to ask to be a smaller group, but I want a small group of people to help try and get Ren/Carmine back! There will be evidence left behind that can be picked up and carried into part 2 of the plan, that can also be used to help investigate matters. partakers: afaik, @elite-amarys is handling Carmine saving, @professor-amaryllis is trying to get their kid back, maybe some others! i would love others. (i think @bee-bee-kyuu too but i've also forgotten guh) also @caoimhe-from-hoenn!

Part 2: I want moles into Noriko's operations, and I'd love to have partakers in all of the fights. These are influenceable, and can even result in the admins defecting, but I wanna see what y'all end up doing! These'll be split up for my own sanity and probably separated out into days/battles handwaved if needed:

moles: Tatiana (npc), @electricalfire (iirc!), others? investigators: ???

vs. Iori: ??? vs. Lotus: professor amaryllis, others? vs. Camille: ???

vs. Noriko/Yveltal: ...probs going to be everyone and their mum but like. iron crown is here for npc backup as well as tatiana.

at any rate!!! that should about cover it, there's one last leg of the plot that'll happen once ren is freed and everything happens that will solely be a brief dive into drama stakes territory, but this is the primary meat of it!

and now comes the pings! i won't be pinging anyone more than once just for courtesy's sake, but! feel free to lemme know if y'all still want involvement or not!

@little-guys-pokemon-central @goindownswingn

aaaaaaand that should about cover it, i will be around to answer questions tonight and tomorrow after work but brainmeats. need a rest. @_@;;

[fandoomrants]

Ok, so as much as the Hunger Games scare and unnerve me as a concept, I really want to learn so many things about how they played out through the years...

Let's start with the first games ever. I wonder how long they took and what happened, who was the victor ofc, I think that in this exact case, all tributes had more or less equal chances as they didn't know what to expect, but most importantly, how did everyone else die? Did anyone actually kill another tribute, or the arena finished them? Because we already saw what's going on in the 10th games and tbh, yes, there was a group that was ready to kill and all but most of them were just scared and didn't want to kill/hurt. But they got to watch 9 games before that and already had an idea what was to be expected. And also, this arena didn't seem that easy to control as the ones in the 74th and 75th so what happened during the first games?

Then there's the First Quarter Quell. It's been a while since I read the books and I don't remember seeing in the movies but it goes around the fandom that the twist there was people from the districts voted for who goes in? How crazy is that? Tbh, if I have to number the wickedness of these quells, I'd say this is the worst, followed by the victors entering again in the 75th, and then maybe the most... Mild would be the Second where it was double tributes. Because yeah, double the trubutes is awful but... they're all endangered and 23 or 47 lost lives is... when it comes to having large number of victims, somewhat not that crazy. And only victors entering again is also so crazy and twisted, like, look at them, they're all mostly mentally or phisically damged but imagine being chosen not in some large poll with numerous other names in it but because people choose you?! Like, neighbours, people that know you actually looked at you and decided "Yes, they'll be the ones doomed this time." How did this one even go?? I've already discussed this with friends and we were trying to decide if some of the districts chose the ones most likely to win, or just the ones they disliked for one reason or another. But come on, it's crazy. Though, this might be eventually how the idea of Careers appeared. But I also wanna know the victor of these games because just imagine winning games in which people you know put you in? How do you get back and live... Not a normal life but some kind of life and you just know people you interract on a daily basis send you to your death.

And then, of course like most people in this fandom, I want to know more about the games of the victors we've seen. We have some of them discussed and shown in bigger details but still, maybe just a little more information and details about how exactly these games played out wouldn't hurt...

I just said earlier how the Second Quarter Quell was maybe the most okay-ish when it comes to the twist but this doesn't make it less tragic. And we first see Haymitch when he's older and he's... Well, a total wreck, dealing with alcoholism and all of that and you just wonder how this guy even won?! And then we later learn how he won and what led him to become the way he is now but still, it's pretty crazy that he won when there were not 23 but 47 other people. And yes, he "cheated the system" but I don't really think he was the first one. As I've seen people pointing out, so did Lucy Gray and so did Katniss and Peeta. And I believe others also found a way to just... Survive. And as I sae in an earlier post, who was his mentor? I think there wasn't one. And there were surely Careers in these games too. Wasn't the last girl he was left with a Career? So, this guy from District 12 managed to win a game where there were double tributes without a mentor even. And then he just keeps suffering and honestly, I absolutely understand him. Honestly, I think for all he went through, alcoholism is an understandable thing, I probably would have just commited a suicide or sth. And the more I think about it, the more I think the real reason he was punished and had his whole family killed wasn't because he "cheated" but because he was someone who was extremely unlikely to win and yet he did and this is what really made lots of people angry. He wasn't an "interesting" tribute.

And speaking of "interesting", here comes Finnick. Yet another victor who we know most of the details about but still. He's famous for winning sg only 14. Was he a Career? Was he just unfortunate? And his whole story with Annie. Did they know each other before her games? Did they fall before or after that? Was she a Career? I've seen lots of people commenting on it and how she might have been, even though she developed problems after that. Likee, it's one thing to prepare for the games and a whole another to actually be there. Yet this only makes me think that if this was the case, they probably became a thing after the games. I just can't imagine him knowing what it means to be a victor (him, of all people!), and actually supporting her decision to take part.

And on the topic of Careers, I really want to know how this became a thing. I have to admit, I somewhat see the logic of children starting to prepare and train for the worst but I can't fully wrap my mind around the idea of someone volunteering for the games knowing fully well that they have a very big chance of dying. No matter what, there's is only one victor always (with one excpetion but we know how bad this played out in the end) so to enter willingly games where you just know there are others who have trained for? And one of them is also from your district and you've most likely trained together?? What's going onn?

And how some of the tributes would form packs. I actually want to see how games like this one played out. Haymitch and the girl from 12 (I know her name but I won't spell it right) broke theirs because they didn't want to kill each other in the end but there surely must have been games where this was the case in the end. A group of people who had been hunting down the others together would have been the only survivors in the end and they must have had to kill each other eventually. How do you even kill someone who was your ally and you had each others' backs until this moment??

And I also wonder how many people had won similarly to how Foxface got close to winning. By just avoiding the others and survivng. And were they punished for it later too?

Also, when and how did the victors become public and famous figures? We saw Lucy Gray after her games back in 12, continuing her life almost as before (though we see this through Snow's eyes so I don't claim she didn't have a hard time, it's just that she was left unbothered, mostly). Then, the 11th Games is when the Victor's Village first became a thing. And the tours? Everything else? The way the victors would be used by the Capitol for the rest of their lives? When did this become a thing? I can't help but think this must be just another form of punishment that was implemented there. They survive yet they suffer for it in other ways.

I just really need answers and these are only some things on top of my head now, I might add to the list later...

If anyone is interested in indulging and discussing these or something else, feel free to DM me..

[acaplaya-musings]

Voiceplay Visuals - Jingle Bell Rock

Voiceplay weren't originally planning to release any proper full-length video for December last year (2023), just a Mini or two, as they were busy in November due to a special performance with the band Chicago. They asked their Patrons for song suggestions for Minis, and then put the three most popular suggestions into a poll for people to vote on. Jingle Bell Rock won out with 55% of the votes, but then a Patron provided a suggestion of doing it "Mean Girls style". Initially the guys were confused, (as was I when I first read the video title when the Premiere appeared) - was there some different musical styling that they weren't aware of? But they soon realised that "Mean Girls style" was referring to the iconic dance scene from the 2004 movie. And so, on the 16th of December, 2023, we got a proper video, not just a Mini, with plenty of absurdity and "Voiceplay brand of dumb", courtesy of Layne! (Layne was in charge of both the arrangement and the video, and is also co-credited for creative direction along with Tony).

Now please don't kill me, but I've never actually watched Mean Girls (*GASP*). However, I know a fair bit about it just from it being popular on Tumblr and the internet in general, and I know this specific scene in the movie quite well, as my dad and I would watch the clip of it every year in December. I have also rewatched the original scene before starting this post, because I'm gonna be doing screenshot comparisons! For one thing, this isn't a super long video, so I'm not worried about image limit, and for another, VoicePlay put a lot of effort into recreating this scene as closely as possible (albeit with some, er, aesthetic alterations 😜), so I wanna prove it, because why not!

Anyway, that's a fair bit of introductory stuff already, so I'll leave my other notes/commentary/thoughts for during the actual video talk bit. Let's get into this!

Making a shot from this little opening bit as the thumbnail was one heck of a choice ngl. Maybe they couldn't be bothered finding a better shot from the video, or maybe they just wanted to keep most of the video as a surprise for viewers, idk, but I was so confused from the thumbnail-title combo when the premiere appeared!😂

Also if you don't already know from the video description, this was all filmed on Tony's iPhone! (Doesn't mean it was all handheld though - tripods/stands for phones exist!). It was because VoicePlay were without a cameraguy for like 2-3 months, because their old one moved states.

So instead of doing any sort of "sexy santa/santa's helper" costumes like in the original, Layne decided that he and the others would be dressing up as characters from Christmas movies! Cesar as Buddy The Elf (perfect casting and also gets off easiest in the outfit department, lol), Layne as The Grinch, Geoff as Oogie Boogie (duh), and Eli as Santa/Sandy

(Also fun fact: the Oogie Boogie costume is the same one that Tony wore for his very brief appearance in VoicePlay's Kidnap The Sandy Claws video! (Also it's pretty hot to wear apparently, and Geoff had to tie his hair back to get the head/hood fitted properly, before he ended up asking for a wig cap, rip))

Also if you don't know the original scene, the original line after "but I'm always on your left!" is "that was when there were three of us, and now the tallest go in the middle", but here, the tallest (Layne/Grinchy and Geoff/Oogie Boogie) already are in the middle, so it's switched out for "now the fat one goes in the middle" (also watch for Eli's/Santa's quick surprised reaction to that line, lol)

(Also not a visual thing, but if you haven't picked up on it already, the announcer doing the "please welcome to the stage" bit is also Layne)

I know I didn't mention it in all my rambling at the start, but yes, shoutout to Adriana Arellano who is also in this video! (And blonde now!). This is her fifth full-length collaboration with the group, and second for a Christmas video! (Third if you count the Frozen 2 Medley).

Also do you recognise the set? Again? I'll say more later, but those curtains were almost definitely added in post-production I'll tell ya that!

Can't recreate the OG scene without an audience, and so we haveone! That just happens to also include the VoicePlay guys themselves! (Geoff must've been sharing his cloning machine around! 😜😆

Huldra has a video on her channel I believe saying who's who in the audience here, but they're also all credited in the description, so I'll list them here for you!

Standing up at the back: Michelle Arellano (Adriana's mum)

Back row: Eli, Ashley Jacobson (Eli's wife), Asher Jacobson (the baby that Ashley is holding; Eli's new son who was born in November last year!), Eileen McCarthy (don't know who she is), and Gayle Stein (Layne's mum).

Middle row: Franchezca Buiser (in shadow behind Cesar) (production assistant for Kathy/VoicePlay), Cyndi Stein (the blonde one behind Layne) (Layne's wife), Christina Arellano (Adriana's sister), and Adriana

And of course in the front row: Cesar, Layne, Kathy, and Geoff!

(Oh and "The Grinch" waving to Layne and him waving back (in the O.G. scene it's Gretchen waving to Jason) was definitely a cute touch)

Cyndi absolutely killed it playing Amy Poehler's part in the scene here, but wow already the similarities are stronger than I realized!

Totally the same picture! 🤣

So long as everyone had a good time, amirite? 😁

Pfft, Geoff acting shocked/scandalised, as if he hasn't done more than that in his Way Down video! 😆

Cesar is having the best time, and we love that for him honestly <3

Cyndi also really got into it! Stan! (She and Layne really are perfect for each other huh - same energies!)

Not a recreation of any bit in the original, but I love the little moment of Eileen and Gayle looking at each other in what can at best be called "great shock/surprise" 😂

Firstly, I love how they managed to include Ariana as a lead singer while still keeping with the original "plotline", by having a 'reveal' that Adriana was just lip-syncing to the boombox track, (still her vocals of course), which is revealed when it gets kicked and starts glitching.

Second of all, I love Cesar's attitude of "when in doubt, Remain Cute". Iconic 😂👌

Lol rip, had to happen! (And in the BTS video, they actually kinda show how this bit was done!)

Somehow I feel like Cyndi had the most fun out of anyone in this video shoot 😝

At this point I might as well make note of something you'd be forgiven for not immediately realizing - or perhaps not at all! And that is the fact that they're not actually on a stage! They made it look like one with the use of clever directions and camera anglings for the audience shots, but yeah no that's the same set VoicePlay used in 2022 for Christmas Don't Be Late, and the same set Geoff used that same year for Way Down, and it's totally flat! No stage!

And that's about all I have to say for Jingle Bell Rock actually! (No I'm not including the end bit - I do have some standards! 😂). That brings us up to date with VoicePlay's Christmas videos, but we're not even halfway into my 12 Days of Christmas In July miniseries! Next up, a couple of bonus VoicePlay Visuals posts, and then we'll be jumping over to Geoff's solo stuff! See you again soon!

[nani-nonny]

Between You and Me and Him (BYMH) - Peepaw Babygirl Ultimate edition

Let’s drag DMD back in here again, same setup and everything, the kids are being distracted with some number coloring sheets, but let’s also drag in the other Nonny Peepaws. Everyone can stand but let’s give the man of the hour the same metal chair, solely because we don’t have the money to give everyone a seat. (We blame DMD because he doesn’t bring in money due to losing just about every poll he’s in.)

So, DMD, welcome back! How does it feel to be back on the chair?

DMD:

He settles into his seat, the metal groaning under his weight as he tries to get comfortable. He rubs his carapace as he asks, “When will we get better chairs?”

When you bring home a win—now, answer the question.

DMD:

He raises a brow but answers nonetheless, an unamused tone to his voice, “I don’t know why or how I keep getting pulled into these polls—or tournaments? Are the kids up to this? Well, whatever these polls are the kids keep getting disappointed, but they don’t stop cheering me on.”

Do you know what this poll is about?

DMD:

He leans to the side, a curious expression growing on his face before he answers, “Not really, no. I asked the kids what it is but they just laughed—except for Leon. The little guy seems to be embarrassed, so I’m not counting on getting answers from him. I asked Junior, but the kids won’t tell him either.”

Great, let’s ask the other F!Leos what they think about the poll!

DMD:

He unclips the microphone and hands it to the nearest Leo, which happens to be Reunion, but asks, “Aren’t you going to tell me what is a babyg—?”

So, thoughts about the poll?

Reunion:

Reunion rubs his chin as he thinks to himself and says, “I think it’s hilarious, but I’m only laughing because the kids are laughing. I have a hunch on what a babygirl is, but I don’t think I’m right. That, and I don’t want to tell DMD if what I think it’s about is right.” He leans over and hands the mic to LCD who backs away. Reunion grabs LCD by the carapace and shoves the mic in LCD’s hand.

LCD:

LCD looks between the mic in his hand and DMD whose eyes narrow when they make eye contact. He quickly looks away, his eyes avoiding contact with anyone and says, “I’m leaving.”

DMD, stop threatening LCD we need the content. You promised a temporary truce.

WDS:

“If it helps, DMD wears aprons in the kitchen and writes a message for each of his kids,” WDS mentions after snatching the microphone from LCD who scurries to the back corner.

DMD:

His face flushes for a brief second before it goes away and he asks, “I only did that one time, and how do you know that?”

Anymore?

WDS:

“He doesn’t wear the same apron every time, he has seven he switches for everyday of the week and some extra for different holidays.”

DMD jumps from his seat, arm aiming for WDS’s hand who dodged and hands the mic to the kids.

Mikey grabs the mic and holds it close to every kid on the ground coloring. A smile crawls on his face seeing Lil Leon’s embarrassed expression but the kids all say (except Lil Leon):

“Vote DMD on the Peepaw Babygirl Ultimate!”

DMD doesn’t know what’s going on but he’s got some spirit.

Don’t upset the kids by giving DMD another loss, lol. They’re trying their damnedest and made cute paper fans with DMD’s face.

[queer-book-character-tournament]

I understand what you’re trying to do with quality control, but it is starting to feel weird when you clearly have characters who a significant minority are voting up as queer and you’re questioning if the characters are queer enough.

I know that characters and people are two different cases, and I can quietly remove myself here, but I’m having a lot of fun when I’m not being ambushed with more arbitrary standards about what queer can and can’t look like, so I wanted to try an ask first.

I understand not wanting a character who isn’t explicitly queer to win, but it’s honestly upsetting to have my dash keep being interrupted with rules lawyering about what counts as queer and what doesn’t. Do you think you could maybe make note of the possible issues and just discuss them together if they win instead of discussing it every time another character turns up “questionable”? I’m otherwise really enjoying your tournament

I mean that is what I’m trying to do? Like there’s only two characters so far (out of 204 in the competition) who have been brought up after the polls went live, and like … four total posts I’ve made about it tops? Five, I guess, including this one. One asking for clarification on the question being asked in the first place, one kind of agreeing to that because again I haven’t read, and then one for each character saying it’s just something we will come back to as needed because there was some push back and I don’t really want to debate it before it’s even an actual issue as I can’t do anything during the first round anyway since it's already up. I don’t want the people pointing it out to feel ignored and for it to evolve into a discourse in the notes because it goes unaddressed. So I answered them on the second character same as the first to say let’s come back to this if it progresses past round one.

I’m questioning not if they’re “queer enough” though. We've got a wide variety of character from all over the gender/sexuality/romantic orientation spectrum. I'm not trying to gatekeep what counts as queerness. But when I do ask for quality control I am asking if it’s even canon at all that they are queer inside the text of the book. Not 'queer enough', just are they queer in canon, point blank. The rules did state canon is a requirement, but I can’t read every book submitted to check that. Sometimes I’ll know things aren’t correct, like in the ship tournament someone submitted Sam/Frodo (which is an example of what I mean. It’s not that they “aren’t queer enough” it’s that they just straight up are not stated to be queer, as much as we as fans might enjoy the idea that they are and there might be some subtext we can take from their devotion, it’s not in the pages so it does not count), but if I don’t know I have to pitch it towards you guys. And I let A Lot of characters in, so I won’t know a lot of them. For these two characters in particular I can’t make a judgement call on my own as I haven’t read the book, which is why it's getting talked about. (Although again, as I said, I'm really not trying to debate their eligibility at this time. If they win it'll be something to bring up before round two, but as of now we aren't debating it) I put up a list ahead of the polls of the characters submitted that I had already thinned out a bit with characters I knew didn't qualify and passed the question off to my followers to try and get all of that out of the way before the actual competition starts to avoid things like this, (because as you said, now that the competition is started people are voting for them, because people like these characters, so it's obviously not ideal for a debate to be breaking out now after it's up about their eligibility in the competition) but the polls are obvi getting more attention than a long list so I’m getting some new questions now.

I want everyone to be having fun, and i'm sorry if this is detracting from that for you, but again when it's characters I don't know that people are bringing up I have to actually ask about it or else it doesn't really seem fair

[soothinglee]

PART TWO | JEALOUSY IN BEDWARS

warning: poop jokes, cursing, alot of twiiter + imessage pics, bad writing.

suv3 or suve is y/ns' online name! you can change it :) (sue-vay)

a/n: I'm slowly finding a good and intriguing way to write this, bare with me. Next chapter will be longer, more speaking with quackity/other members of the smp, its not planned out but time will tell. let me know how I did!

series m.list | previous - next

A couple more minutes go by without a response, suve rolls their eyes, looks at their camera and shrugs. "I tried chat," they leaned over to the open refrigerator to get a monster. "he's grumpy in the morning, its like getting a toddler out of bed. But I offered him a tenner and he took it so we'll see."

she returned back to their game, running around the hypixel lobby trying to choose what they wanted to play. "prop hunt or bed wars?" they ask, moving their icon to both games.

"um mods, could you run a poll-?" the sound of their phone ringing cuts them off. "what?"

they pick it up and the name at the top reads 'cream'. without thinking any further they press answer.

"suve what the hell do you want?" a rough voice answers.

"I wanted you to join-" she looks down from the computer screen to see dreams nose in the camera, "WHY DID YOU FACETIME ME?" she shouts covering up the phone camera.

he laughs, "you wanted me to join stream, so I did." he responds nonchalantly.

"I could've been showing chat my phone and they would've seen your ginormous snout."

his eyes widen "oh, 'gi-nor-mous'," he breaks it up, singing the word. "that's a big word, even for you."

they roll their eyes and flip him off under the table so the stream wouldn't see, "shut up, join discord."

he pouts, his morning voice gruff and muffled "do I have too?"

"do you still want that gifted young man?"

he nods and salutes, "sir yes sir." and hangs up.

"freaking nerd." on their stream she tries to keep the cursing to a minimum after a angry parent @'d them on twitter saying that their child shouldn't be watching something so profound. They were a grown ass adult, it wasn't her fault that the kid was watching them. But for the sake of any of her younger viewers they thought it would be best to just stop.

"you never offered me a 'tenner', to join vc." a voice rang out, but it wasn't dreams.

"hello..?" she replied unsure of who had joined. Opening up discord the only other person in vc besides her was quackity.

"hello suve!" the chat gets faster. "I just wanted to tell you that you should check twitter."

"oh god, what happened now?"

"two words, dream. beef."

she chuckles and opens her notifications, dream had tagged her in a post. "I swear one day this man is going to make me go crazy."

“I tried defending you, did’ya see?” He comments after a couple of seconds, watching her face contort through the stream.

“yeah…” she mumbles liking a couple more tweets before yelling at dream to join vc through text. “my knight in shinning..Twitter.” She giggles and brushes the loose strand of hair from her face. "what the hell is wrong with calla..?"

he laughs and on the poll he votes ‘bedwars’, “if you end up playing bedwars could I join?”

she looks up for a second, “yeah of course, you don’t have to ask.” the poll had been finalized and bedwars won by 30%. “you guys love to see me suffer,” they sigh. “alright q join, I’ll add you to my party. I just messaged Dream to hurry up.”

“okay! what is he doing anyway? taking a dump?”

the ‘user joined’ sound goes off and dream coughs, “sorry I had to use the bathroom.”

Quackity pauses and y/n snickers, “quackity don’t.”

“..it was a two, wasn’t it?”

“QUACKITY!”

“YOU ARE DIGUSTING,” dream shouts “that is none of your concern!”

“WASN’T IT.” He repeats slapping the arm rest of his chair, y/n shouts a ‘I can’t breathe!’ and dream curses under his breath.

“yeah.”

Quackity laughs so hard that he falls out of his chair and shouts “oh shit!” and it sends y/n into another fit of laughter.

“Oh my god!” She gasps grasping onto the desk, “I can’t breathe, I need my inhaler!”

“okay calm down,” dream chuckles shaking his head “it’s not that funny,”

y/n lets out a breath and sighs, wiping the tears from their eyes. “it kinda is.”

“ANYWAY,” dream starts changing the subject “what are you doing?”

“me and quackity were planning on playing bedwars, wanna join?”

quackity grunts “I kinda just wanted to play with just the two of us.”

y/n raises a brow “oh?”

“okay, I can wait a couple of rounds.”

“no.”

“no?”

“quackity, me and you can play together later, Dream can play with us for right now.”

“but-“ quackity pouts, he closes out of the stream and gets out of the waiting room on hypixel.

“but nothing, Dream accept my invite.”

➳✎➳➳✎➳➳✎➳➳✎➳➳✎➳➳✎➳➳✎➳➳✎➳➳✎➳➳✎➳

taglist;

@kusuinko

@angelicaschuyler-church

lmk if you want to be added to the taglist!

[greaterspawnislands]

lead me into the light | emerald duo platonic soulmates

For all the years he has lived, Phil has lived without a soulmate, and as a result, without color. And he's perfectly fine with that.

Then he touches down on a battlefield for fun, and meets the eyes of a total stranger.

And as the world goes from monochromatic to full of color and more beauty than he had ever imagined, Phil knows that everything is going to change.

(But a mortal's life is only so short, after all.)

|||

My twitter account voted a series of polls to decide what fic I was gonna write, and they decided on an emerald duo platonic soulmates au fic that was angst with a happy ending ! Link will be in the notes, but here’s a bit of the start to get you into it!

|||

There are a few constants that Phil holds in his life, has always held, and will always hold.

The first, the most glaring, is the centuries that stretch far back in his past and the ones that he approaches in the present. It is the fact that he cannot die from old age or from hunger or from thirst, that it is only by injury that he could possibly be taken down for good.

The second is his lifestyle. Always a traveler, never with a permanent home. For fear of being targeted, or not wanting to cause that kind of disturbance, and because Phil truly desires to wander the world on his own terms, he travels. Visits every city and explores every nook and cranny of it as it changes over the months and years and decades. He visits fields where he spilled blood and watches others spill blood in that very spot a few years later. He carves out temporary places, favored nooks to fish in and well-loved corners of libraries or especially nice inns, but he never lingers around others who might question his unaging face.

And the third is the grayscale in which he sees the world, shades of black and white and everything in between, the only hues he’ll ever lay eyes upon.

(Soulmates are rare. They are not a common thing, they are often considered blessings by the gods to live your life devoid of color, the trials and tribulations to find your other half.)

(Phil has met quite a few gods, in his time of wandering. That’s just straight bullshit.)

He’s lived decades upon decades without a soulmate, and is perfectly content to keep living without one. Where others find agony in not being able to separate the color of the leaves in autumn, Phil has long since made his peace in seeking out the beauty of the world in other ways. The speckled patterns of a newborn fawn in spring. Waves darkening the shade of the sand upon an ocean. The way his lover’s hair seemed to melt into the endless night sky.

(Gods are exempt from the concept of soulmates, and Death had no answers for Phil when he asked her why he had been cursed to live like this, nor could she bring his sight into full color, even with all her otherworldly abilities.)

(“Maybe there is someone out there,” she said to him one night as he rested against her shoulder, looking up at the star-studded sky from where they sat within the earth. “And you just haven’t found them yet.”)

(“I don’t think I need to find anyone else, honestly,” he replied, turning to look at her. She was a thousand times more dazzling than any sky could behold on its own. “You’re all I need, I’m not letting this kind of stuff stop me from living my life any longer.”)

Their visits were infrequent, but time means nothing to a god and a human whose chances of death are slim as long as he keeps himself out of trouble.

Phil’s wings flare out as he touches down on a battlefield stained with darker shades of gray, determined to find go and find some trouble, if only because this past year has been incredibly boring otherwise.

“My name is Philza,” he introduces himself to the general of the army, hand raising in a salute that had definitely been appropriate last time he was on a battlefield, and he doesn’t really care much whether it still holds up. He takes his hat off as well, holding the striped material against his chest. “And I’m here to help, if you’ll have me.”

His reputation, that of the Angel of Death, precedes him. For all his intentions to keep away from sticking around civilians as they aged, wars and skirmishes would always be an exception.

It was a secret sort of thrill, to throw himself into the fray of a conflict he would hardly remember by the next one. To release the fearlity that he kept tightly wound up inside him, to splatter blood on a blade and sink arrow after arrow through the eyes of assailants. Nevertheless, the legends of his help follow him wherever he goes, and the look of relief on the general’s face says enough on that matter.

A night’s rest later, he’s led across the loosely set up encampment to one of the larger tents. As he walks, Phil tips his head up to gaze at the sky. There was no smooth texture, instead fuzzy clouds crowd the sky, and Phil tilts his head, noting the approaching rain.

Once inside the tent, the general nods at him, speaking before Phil can even courteously extend a greeting.

“We’re going to have you take command of the Red Snakes force, over here.” The general indicates to the map spread out on the table between them, pointing to a marker that Phil notices has a small symbol carved into it. It’s a small squiggle, barely noticeable, but it stands out against the other symbols carved into the various markers that Phil gathers to represent the different sub-forces that this general is commanding.

It’s helpful primarily, though no one knows of his own color-absence, he does appreciate the carved symbols. As an afterthought, it’s interesting. He wonders who else is color-absent this high up in the commanding forces. A rare thing, to be sure, not that he’ll bother to interact with them for that reason. He’s here to help spill some blood, not hear some poor sap moan about how they feel they’ll die on the battlefield before meeting their soulmate.

Phil’s eyes snap from the squiggly symbol back to the general’s words, tuning in mid-sentence. He’s definitely missed some information that was probably crucial, but he’ll get somebody else to relay it to him later. For now—

“Your co-commander already knows this, of course, but I figured I would inform you separately so you were up to date on our intel before you began discussing the best course of action.”

“Sorry, my who?” Phil blurts, brow furrowing, heart sinking a little.

“You’ll be co-leading this group, at least for now.”

Phil lightly bites the inside of his cheek to keep his face schooled appropriately. He knows what this is. It’s a nicely phrased term to cover up the fact that he’s being babysat because they don’t trust him with their armies, so they’ve appointed another commander to watch over him.

On one hand, it’s fucking annoying to be watched like that. On the other hand, that does mean Phil can totally push all the actual commanding duties off to the other guy while he buggers off to do what he pleases. Maybe this won’t be too bad after all, honestly, it depends whether he gets some kind of suck up as a co-commander or not.

“Commander Technoblade has shown great leadership prowess in recent skirmishes, so it was determined that he could take up control of a new force until your support and guidance,” the general continues, and Phil’s heart sinks further.

Oh, gods, they think he’s some kind of trainer, some kind of mentor to a kid who’s been handed too much responsibility for his age and will die in a week. Not this shit again. “Sounds great,” he lies through his teeth. “When do I meet him?”

There’s a soft knocking against the flap of the tent, and the general lifts a hand. “That’ll be him. You can come in, Technoblade.”

“Yes sir,” a deep voice intones. There a shuffling of fabric just as Phil turns to greet whoever this guy is, and—

And his vision explodes with—

Everything is so bright, even brighter than the white gleam of the sun in his eyes. Phil blinks furiously as what he’s certain is color blooms across his vision, spreading outward until there’s nowhere he can look to escape from the blinding, unfamiliar hues. Gone is the subtle change of shade between the grass at his feet and the canvas walls of the tent. They’re two entirely different colors now, unrecognizable in this state.

[popculturebuffet]

Reviewcaps: X-Men Evolution: Strategy X

I take my first look at X-Men Evolution the second and less famous, but no less loved, cartoon about everyones faviorite mutant outcasts. In our first episode Scott blows up a gas station, Nightcrawler finds what it feels like to have a home, Toad tries to join the x-men and both of the latter two end up nearly dying because Chuck forgot to teleport proof the one room in the house with deadly lasers. All this and football under the cut. 

A few days ago I realized something weird: I hadn’t reviewed any superhero cartoons on here. What makes that weird to me, is that I realized when writing this that Superhero cartoons are what MADE me a superhero fan in the first place. I grew up as a little kid watching the spider-man and x-men animated series, and watched most marvel shows that came about as I grew, and became a lifelong fan of Green Lantern and the Flash thanks to Justice League , the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thanks to the 2003 cartoon (another franchise I absolutley adore I haven’t covered on here for some reason) and the Teen Titans thanks to well.. Teen Titans, not to mention all the great original superhero shows at the time like the legendary Danny Phantom (even if butch heartman can take a short walk into a cave full of bears lately), My Life as a Teenage Robot, El Tigre.. the list of good shit goes on. So being on an X-Men kick again lately, I decided to revisit what turned out to be one of the first of this wave, and a show I’d had the opporoutnity to binge for a while , first on hulu and then on D+, and wanted to revisit to see how it holds up, while, if not as fast as I watch them, reviewing them here to combine my two intrests. And it probably wont’ be the last marvel animated series I binge or cover here, nor the last superhero show I cover so if you have any, Marvel, DC, from other companies or completely original, shoot me an ask or reply to this and i’ll see if I can get to it. For now we’re starting the evolution.  Evolution was the first X-Men cartoon, and somehow one of 5 overall not counting the hulk vs wolverine movie, pryde of the x-men pilot and various crossover apperances in other cartoons, to follow the 90′s one, which as you probably know was a huge hit that defined the x-men for a generation of young fans, was a huge sucess and launched the mostly great sorta shared cartoon universe with classics like Spider-Man the Animated Series (Which not concidentally is what made me a lifelong fan of the webslinger), The Incredible Hulk, and the second season of Iron Man and Fantastic Four.. and yes only the second as the first seasons were both by entirely diffrent creative teams and gave us things like this. 

Yes that is Johnny Storm doing an objetivley terrible hip hop song, no it dind’t cause that building to sink into the earth, and yes it is so bad it’s delcioius. Sadly the rest of hte series is more flat and boring than “bwahahahaha” but my point is made. The point is Evolution had a steep hill to climb, and with the previous cartoon compressing most of the decades long Chris Claremont era and some of what came after into 5 seasons of good if cheesy stuff, the creators clearly, if only because Ic an’t find a making of, decided to go in a diffrent route, making their own unique take on the characters and world of the x-men instead.  For starters rather than being vetrans with years of experince, either from being an x-man or just from general life experince like the comics were since the 70′s aside from the ocasinal exception like Kitty Pryde and Jubilee, they’d be teens, grappling with hormones alongside blue fur, head lasers and not being able to touch anyone. This wasn’t something x-men had shied away from, New Mutants and Generation X existed, but it was the first time in decades the X-Men themselves were kids. Sure Storm and Wolverine weren’t aged down, but there were just as many missions that were just these teenagers hoping to surivive the experince and keep mutants a secret till the world was ready.. and then dealing with the fallout when an unready and hateful world found out anyway. And I honeslty like the direction: The previous series had done the mostly straight adaptation bit, there wasn’t anywhere to go and aging scott and jean back to teens, and having nightcrawler and rouge get to be ones for the first time though, was an intresting idea, as was having Kitty Pryde be a teen alongside them instead of their plucky teenage member  Another intresting direction was, while Xavier’s still existed and was where the cast lived and learned to use their powers, the X-Men also went to regular high school. While it’d take till season 3 for them to actually have to deal with being out mutants in the setting, it was still an intresting tactic: The X-school in the comics, while no less studious is still an isoalted boarding school and when the New Mutants met some friends in town, most had only heard whispers about the old Xavier Mansion and were delighted to visit for a slumber party.. granted this being an x-men schindig our heroes ended up having to deal with an alien who eventually became one of their closest friends that night but still, for the x-men having the robot, or technoorganic in this case, NOT try to murder them on purpose and be a loveable 80′s sidekick instead is an easy night. While i’ts not done perfectly here from what I can remember, the main human characters we see are nightcrawlers love intrest amanda (who is thankfully NOT his adopted sister this time around thank christ), local stock blond football bully and flash thompson impersonator Duncan, and Scott’s nondiscript friend paul, who I can’t think of without thinking two things; one , what do you WANT paul: 

I mean a man so vauge just can’t be trusted. The second is that paul looks a lot like Doug Ramsey and i’m suprised they didn’t just.. make him Doug and have him go through a similar arc from the comics:A crush on kitty and the rest of the team finding out he’s a mutant and eventually bringing him into their world. For those unaware Doug Ramsey is a mutant with the ablility to translate any languge, including computer code from the get go and body laungage when he came back, an easy fix to him being the non-combatant of the group no one thought of, who died tragically in story sacrifcing himself to save his girlfriend’s life and out of story because the artist tricked the writer into killing him off. Thankfully he did come back about two decades later, took a level in badass thanks to a combination of the body language thing above meaning he could anticipate moves and dodge and computers having advanced to the point that part of his powers was now 80 times more useful, and has recently become a key part of the dawn of x relaunch. He’s also a faviorite of mine as you can probably tell and given how much the early 2000′s loved their computers, it’s weird to me they didn’t think of this and it’s even weirder he didn’t show up with the lions share of the other new mutants next season, along with Karma and Warlock which somehow has become a recurring theme thanks to the movie saving them for sequels that ended up not happening because fox stupidly put the movie in Limbo where it remains until maybe next month.  But yeah even if muted a bit the idea of the x-men going to a public school alongside their training is a decent one.. sure a hero going through high school is again a cliche, but it’s a thing the x-men hadn’t done in this way before or sense, and was intresting to see in action. Most high school scnees in x-comics are usually some poor mutant having their powers manifest and either hurting someone by accident, being treated like crap for it by their class or hunted down for accidently hurting someone before the x-men show up to kick their asses and welcome this youngster. Or getting rejected by family and friends then coming to the x-men.. there’s a lot of angst directions to go in. My point is we’d never seen the x-men try to blend in and have a more standard school experince, and combining that with them hiding their powers instead of being out in the open at first made for a unique dynamic for the x-men that makes well tread ground nice nad fresh even 20 years later. 

So that’s our basic setup going in: The X-men wake up, go to school, then save the world or train to save the world while harnesing wonderful and dangerous powers and protecting the helpless agaist less charitable mutants. The basic x-setup with a 2000′s era superhero high school show flavor. Good stuff. But we’ll see what it does with this premise, how good it holds up and what’s still delightfuly cheesy about it as I take a nice look at the first episode Strategy X

We open at night and

Yup Scott and Jean are at the football team where the aforementioned Duncan, guy voted most likely to peak in high school in last year’s yearbook poll, is playing some foot ball and trying to flit with Jean Grey whose the first X-Man we meet and is somehow receptive to this despite his radaiating douche and is lucky this Jean’ , unlike say the time transfered one from the comics who thought the best approach to helping Bobby Drake come out of the closet so he could help his older self do the same and be his best self, was to just blunty say he’s gay and refuse to let him explore thtt for himself or get someone more quliafied to help her. And yes that did indeed happen and yes the original x-men were brought into the present for a while and yes it was weird Moving on. Still i’m pretty sure duncan’s thoughts would read like  “Man she looks good.. I want to bang her so hard she uh.. wakes up sideways.. yeah that’s it. Your a legend duncan, a total legend. “.  As you can probably tell I don’t have fond memories of this character or this sorta but not really love triangle, and question why they couldn’t of just had spyke be the other man in the triangle if they wanted to do this. Granted Spyke himself is kinda annoying, but it still makes more sense to have him fill in for angel or wolverine in a jean-scott love triangle than this walking burnt end. The warren, scott one worked, as much as a 60′s love triangle could because warren was conventionally handsome and had angel wings while scott has to keep glasses on just to not murder anyone he looks at, so there’s a bit of contrast there, while with WOlverine it’s straight laced dependeble scott versus unhinged manly man Logan. You know before recently where they just decided to all bone in a pile and wolverine even goes on vacation with them. And that’s not a joke I made up, that’s actual canon. Both make logical sense while Jean would be intrested in both in the former case, as Scott was still a kind and dependable leader, and tempted in the latter case if never acting on it before recently and with her husband’s full consent and either watching from the closet or taking one up the ass for jean to watch. Duncan in contrast is just wholly unlikeable and it makes me question why use him as the third in this love triangle, ESPECIALLY since the show would later introduce another scott and jean based love triangle with Rogue wanting scott that’s way more intresting, and even people wanting those two to hook up don’t want Jean with Duncan! Instead of creating a vitable alternative to make a later love triangle more intresting or create some shipping wars or anything of value any hint jean may be intrested just wastes screentime and tests my patience and is thankfully breif here.  As for why Jean’s here sh’es taking pictures for the school paper since the Daily Bugle wasn’t intrested in photos that weren’t of spider-man and they already had a teen photographer for that. Porker or something. Anyways this episode ofa low rent friday night lights knockoff is interuptted when one of duncan’s buddies on the team spots local trouble maker and ,judging by context, bully punching bag Todd Tolansky, aka Toad which is a cruel nickname turned slightly lesss cruel code name here, pick pocketing the people in the stands, and sensing a flimsy context to punch a nerd, Duncan goes to tell the coah he’ll be busy for a moment totally not carving someone’s face in again. Coach says as long as he leaves him breathing, and through a straw still counts and since their so far ahead as long as he’s back for the celebratory rampage anything goes.  Also spotting Toad’s stan pines approved sticky fingers is Scott Summers, leader of x-men and all around cool guy. Scott here is a bit more emotive than he was int he comics at a time, a trait he’d have later on in the late 2000′s and even currently and a version I prefer to the “has something shoved so far up his ass you can see it when he opens his mouth” boring straightman of the 90′s cartoon. He’s a bit more impulsive, a bit more emotivie but still a good and well thought out leader and the tactical genius, at least as far as I can remember, that he’s known for being. IT’s a good portayal so far, it reminds me of 2k12 leonardo: he’s still growing into being a leader in some way but clearly has the talent and drive for it and a deep sense of heroism> That deep sense is shown here as Scott leaves to go confront toad.. and then confronts Duncan and buds when he finds them about to squish Toad. Unlike Duncan, whose “heroism” consits of a filmy excuse to beat a third hole into todd’s head, Scott wanted to stop Toad because it’s the right thing to do, and wants to stop Duncan because his actions are just as wrong: Sure Toad is stealing stuff, but it’s clear from the way he and his buddies grin widlly at seieng toad pick pocket that they just want an excuse to pummel the kid and not get in trouble for it. It’s confirmed when Scott makes a resonable offer: Since Toad still has the money and most of the lifted wallets, he can return what he stole, which Toad not wanting to die today agrees to, but Duncan refuses. Scott however gets the three thrown to the ground and while Toad escapes, with the two other idiots in persuit, an enraged duncan attacks. But since Scott Summers, even teen scott summers has batman level judo, it’s an even fight despite Duncan being bigger and more muscular.. until Jean runs in shouts scott no.. despite you know Duncan starting this and Scott merley defending himself, distracts Scott long enough for him to get shoved to the ground.. and loose his googles, sending an optic blast out before he can clamp his eyes shut, knocking duncan over and igniting a nearbye propane tank. Toasty! Also yikes.  Cue the opening theme and credits. While the opening Creidts are very 2000′s, they aren’t half bad but the main draw is the theme song which.. honestly I feel is great and very close to the 90′s x-men theme in quality, only not being AS good because that one’s one of the best theme songs period. but this one’s no slouch as it’s fun, energetic and will get stuck in your head. Good stuff.  After the theme we cut back to the credits where Scott is closing his eyes despeartly holding his powers in. It was a good opening and a great way to show off the premise of the show and just how dangerous mutant powers can be even accidnetally, with this followup showing it’s not inetentional. it was even shown before as while scott’s eyes flash, he notably never uses his powers in the fight and they only came about accidnetally. We also get some JeanScott ship tease as she finds his glasses ,and with Duncan having a concusion and not remembering anything, a bit that hasn’t aged well, things seem well.. except the cop seems to notice something supscious.. before help arrives in a rolls royce. Charles Xavier, voiced by the icomprable David Kaye who I feel is one of the best daviers and does a great job here and quickly makes the guy see nothing supscious, a classic use of his powers and an understdanable one: while yea going into someone’s mind isn’t a great tihng to do.. scott being possibly outed as a mutant this way would only land the poor boy in a jail cell, as it did for Bobby Drake in the comics when his own powers activated and hurt someone. We also meet storm who unlike the others isn’ aged downa nd is one of two senior staffers for the school, a touch I like as she was a great mentor figure to kitty pryde and the comics and the roll suits her, while evolution also tones down the ham 80 degrees so she’s even more like the comics; reserved but utterly confident and badass and a good #2 to xavier. Xavier also likely wiped Duncan’s memory of scott’s power triggering I figure.. I mean he could’ve got concussed but I wouldn’t be suprised if chuck manipualted that too. Jean comforts Duncan for.. again some reason. Like he was just in a fight with her best friend and she’s a telepath.. I get she’s being respectful but time and place. Scott is naturally Jelly, but Toad.. genuinely thanks Scott for the help while Scott brushes it off. It was the right thing to do and Toad is still a creep, but it’s still a nice gesture. Also toad eats a fly to show that yep he too is  a mutant.  Xavier and Storm go to the train station and pick up a mysterious teen clad all in robes. Ohohoo hominus.  Meanwhile somewhere in the westchester area, Wolverine comes in! Snkity sknikty snoik. He’s voiced by, and dresses exactly like, Scott McNeil, a vetran and awesome voice actor who I honestly think does a better job than his prdecessor. Not that 90′s wolverine is bad, it’s just McNeil has more of a range even while keeping the gutteral growl of hte former and can tur it off at times while his previous acto rwas pretty much on snarl mode constantly. He wasn’t bad, all the 90′s voice actors were at 100 most of the time and undersndably given the hamm nature of that cartoon, but its’ still a ncie change of pace and one we’d see again with steve blum in the next cartoon. More on that obviously when i inevitably cover Wolverine and the X-Men He picks up a paper about the explosion, and sensing he must go his people need him, cuts the top off the water he ordered, because you can’t get beer on a childrens cartoon, and thanks the clerk who wonders what the fuck just happened. And it’s a weird ass scene especially because in this series the x-men are trying to keep a lid on mutants and Logan’s just .. causally cutting off a water bottle because fuck it. It fits the character a LITTLE but it’s still just weird and out of place. Speaking of weird and out of place sabertooth is stalking logan on a mountaintop because.. 

Thank you wrestlecrap. He dosen’t show up again and is apparently introduced several episodes from now, and sports a design similar to the 2000 movie which isn’t a terrible look apart from the long lead singer from Creed haircut. The next morning at Xavier’s scott’s annoyed at jean taking her time in the bathroom because “women amirite?”.. yeah... 

On that gag. Before the two dart off for school Xavier calls them in to meet the new kid: Kurt Wagner, aka Nightcrawler, whose blue and fuzzy as ever, though without the fully yellow eyes he usually sports, though I figure it’s less because they wanted to make him more humanoid, though his Kelso from that 70′s show hair certainly helps with that too, and more because that way his human disguise he’ll get in a bit can just be an easily just recolor and redres his civlilan design. Though why he couldn’t just have the yellow eyes in elf form and give him regular ones in transducer form, epsecially since they had to make a whole new outfit and ears for his non elf form anyway is beyond me, but whatever. At least he’s a full part of the team here and oh so adorkable.  As you can probably wager by the fact there’s only 3 x-men and one asshole here, Evolution takes it’s time introducing everybody, the first few episodes using the debut queue style of storytelling and introducing the main cast about one or two per episode.. which I like a lot as it gives each of the x-men room to breathe and get a proper introduction, while usually doing the same for the latest addition to the brotherhood. IT’s a godo way to ease us into a decently sized main cast and let each get their own origin story of sorts. Good stuff. 

Jean and Scott are shocked by the poor boys three fingers, but Charles helps asuage kurt.. by pointing out scott’s fuckup then berating him. Both don’t come off great: Scot whines about having two cannonballs under his eyes, which while fair is something he knew going into a situation where they might get knocked off and didn’t prepare for, while Charles lambasts him for “not having more control”.. and his tone implies it’s more about his POWERS. If it was about self control fine, that’d be godo character stuff but if it’s of his powers..  Scott didn’t use his powers at all during the breif scuffle and was only let loose by pure shock, and something you easily covered for minus the explosion part. It could just be both having a point but I dunno. But with that Xavier does show kurt that even human passing mutants like Scott have huge struggles and he no longer is alone. Jean is curious what his power is and Kurt demonstrates his teleporting, impressing both and bonding the three a bit. Xavier sends them off to school, and they’ll talk more about kurt tonight.  At school Toad is getting dressed down by principle darkholme, aka mistque whose apparently also his boss.. yes while the founding x-men are two upstanding well trained, if one a bit hot headed youths, Mystque got.. a guy who pick pockets because as we later see the house she got for them looks like the ghosts of the frat who used to live there did a number on the place. Yeah easy to see why your guys later become the comic relief villians Raven. Anyways she plans to have Toad use his newfound leverage with scott to try and sneak in with the x-men before shapeshifting into a knockoff brood to scare him because she’s a dick. Also how the hell would she explain that if someone walked in and DIDN’T comically walk right back out and just explose her posing as a monster for the student body to see. Not a bad show of her powers but a really goofy and nonsenical one. Also yeah unlike the comics raven can change her shape further than just humanoid.

Back at the school Kurt is excited to see his spacious and luxrious room, his parents, whoever they were, having sent him here, and is even more excited when Xavier gives him a gift; an image inducer. This is something that actually comes from the comic: it’s a device disgused as a watch that holographically makes Kurt look like your standard human. Kurt in the comics of course used it to look like errol flynn.  Naturally Chris Claremont eventually realized the implications of a person of a minority who looks diffrent masquerading as someone else to blend in and Kurt later decided to go without it, as he shoudln’t have to hide himself. Evolution does use it better though: For starters when Kurt says he’s finally normal, Ororo assures him he always was, this is just to help a bit and the idea of him needing to blend in makes sense since the x-kids are going to public high school and mutantkind is more hidden to avoid prosecution. It’s sitll a BIT shaky, but it’s at least trying to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of the concept and modernizie it a bit and I can give them credit for that. 

Back at School scott’s preparing to lunch, telling paul to save him a seat. Good old Paul, when Toad comes up to him thanking him again and revealing his own mutant powers and stealing Scott’s glasses because that’s how you charm someone. Toad offers to hang but Scott wisely refuses and moves on though he does use the cafeteria pay phone to call Charles, who already found out about todd via Cerebro and despite Scott’s understandable reservations about letting a literally slimy pick pocket who talks like goddamn j-roc , know what i’m sayin, into the team, Charles in a very charles xavier move says they can’t turn their back on ANY mutant, even the assholes. Now read that in a patrick stewart voice. Your welcome. Scott wonders if he should ask Todd over to play fooseball and ask about joining his teen militia but Chalres said no need, he’ll take care of the audition himself. He then explains Cerebro to a curious kurt, global telepathic mutant tracker basically, and prepares for the audition. 

That night Toad goes to the mansion.. with a costume already. And rather than evaluate all the costumes up front i’m going to do so as they show up in series. As such.. toad’s is REALLY good, a nice armor look with a small part peaking up resembling a collar of some sort , a nice update of his silver age costume’s collar. It really feels frog like and really is neat. Storm, who is watering her garden a detail I like, heads out and rains on his parade. Her costume is fine, a standard storm outfit, nothing really outstanding but still not bad. Storm then sends lighting at him to see what happens when a Toad is struck by lighting.. probably the same as everything else before he runs inside and runs into kurt. 

Kurt then shows up, and while I’d forgottten this, he was already in costume from earlier having gotten his at the same time as the inducer. His costume.. is about the same as the comics except hte gloves and boots are yellow, i’m somehwat eh on it but I get doing so to have him fit with the black and yellow color scheme of most of the other x-men in some way. Though i’d love to see a black and yellow redesign of his classic oufit someday that’d look spiffy. But yeah it’s pretty good and one of the standouts of the evolution costumes. The two trade barbs thanks to toad being kind of a dick about nightcrawler and end up having a petty squabble and tussle for a bit around the mansion. Xavier still considers Toad x-men material while Storm considers not missing with lightning this time. In all seriousnes this is more good character stuff for Charles, as it shows that no matter how troublesome, he’ll welcome any mutant child in with open arms. Though I question why neither questions the fact that a mutant they just met somehow brought his own top of the line uniform, but I chalk it up to that probably not having been written into the episode and either being an error or execs wnating to show off his battle suit to have a proper superhero tussle to close out the episode.  However said tussle, which is really more a hilarious fight between an asshole and a dork, is interupted when Kurt accidnetly ports them into the danger room, an x-men staple.. no really “new mutant accidently enters or finds the danger room” is old hat at this point, most iconically with Kitty in the comics shortly after she joined. 

Naturally not wanting to have to clean up another set of teen corpses, he just got the Vulcan smell out of there, Xavier dispatches Cyclops and Jean to go deal with it.. since Jean dosen’t have a code name here since marvel forgets to try and get her a non phonenix one better than marvel girl and it annoys me. Anyways fashion show time again, and yes i’m aware these aren’t from strategy x, but I didn’t want to just use hte model sheet shots from the wiki so I combed for decent action shots. Scotty’s costume is decent, a bit bulky with the very 90′s shoulder pads and boots, but otherwise looks pretty good, a nice combination of his 90′s uniform and his second x-factor uniform. Even with the bulk it looks really good. On the oppsite end.. we have Jean, who easily has the worst outfit of the main x-men by a mile, with a weird lime green stripe for some reason. Maybe they were going for phonenix colors I dunno, but it just looks half assed in comparison to the rest of the gangs outfit. The gold rings and fingerless gloves are a nice touch, but this one’s still just bland in comparison. Like they couldn’t figure out how to update jeans 90′s outfit so they put her in a jassercise outfit instead. 

Scott and Jean arrive with Jean saving nightcrawler, Kurt asking if sh’es an angel, she asking if he’s a demon and me asking if I can get a trashcan to vomit in. It didn’t work for George Lucas a year before this why did you think it’d work here? Anyways Kurt realizes their not in xavier’s snuff dungeon, as far as he knows and it’s simply a trianing room and tries to disarm it, but it instead nearly blasts toad who nopes outta htere, scott too injured to follow. And while when watching the episode yesterday It hought it was a bit abrubt.. it really fits. Toad is a bit of a coward from memory, bosatful and cocky.. till reality reminds him he’s freaking toad as seen with the bullies earlier and mystique after that. So of course he’d run the minute things looked dicey and it looked like xavier reguarlly put his students through the hunger games to thint he herd. Xavier bemoans that Toad simply isn’t ready.. sure he’s a mutant and xavier likely senses mistque’s involement.. but he genuilly WANTED to help todd and give him a real home and support.. its just Toad/Todd dosen’t WANT it or to put in any real work to be better, and you have to WANT help to get it.  Kurt blames himself and ports out feeling he dosen’t deserve to be there and Scott goes after him while out front Toad runs into a returning Logan, whose ready to add another dead teen to the pile out back when Xavier insists he let him go... he’s not an actual threat, and as we find out later Xavier removed the schools location from his mind and probably gave it to toad in the first place, so while Logan says he’ll be back.. he has no way of coming back and there’s no sense roughing up a teenager, when that’d just draw more attention to them and give Toad an angle to work. That being said Charlie still gladly welcomes Logan back though both smell trouble on the horizon.. and also toad. He tends to leave a scent that one. 

We then get what I feel is the best scene in the episode: Cyclops finds Kurt in the room with the blackbird, which this show remembers is an actual type of plane and that the x-mens is simply a souped up version of , though I can’t tell you what version he’s saying it’s superior to because I don’t know planes THAT well. But Scott comforts Kurt, saying it’s OKAY to fuck up: the entire point of this place is so they can afford to make the mistakes they can’t make out there and learn and grow as people. Everyone screws up, as Scott himself did rushing in without a plan at the start, but the point is you learn from it and do better next time and Kurt decides to stay. Welcome to the X-Men Kurt, hope you surivive the experince. Also Scott decides to show him where they hide the sodas.. which either Chuck is a dick about their pop or that’s code for booze.. or possibly both. I could see Logan really liking root beer alongisde his nightly 6 pack. 

We close out with Mystque berating toad for running the hell away and for you know, getting mindwiped.. the latter is far from his fault, but the first part.. yeah Toad kinda sucks at this and Raven screams for him to get out, with her turning back into her natural form for the first time.. and then being confronted with HER boss with Magneto, from.. somewhere.. he appearas as a spooky projection but I don’t know if he’s using a device to amplfy himself or he just hides in the closet of her office all day for when he needs to consult her on their evil schemes. Probably the latter. Anyways Erik wisely consults her to be a bit easier..while toad is a bit of a dipweasel.. they can’t afford their ranks being thinned.. and really he’s not wrong. The x-men currently have them 6 to 3. Even if he’s the weakest of the three of them, they can’t afford to spare him. He then ominously says htis is only... THE BEGINING.

FINAL THOUGHTS:  Strategy X is a decent start for the series but not without it’s problems, with one or two questionsable moments like the whole angel and devil exhcange or the entire “Storm stalks toad as he goes to the mansion” scene as a way of testing him, which makes both her and charles come off bad and makes me wonder how the hell that was an actual test of anything. But it’s held up by good character: While Jeans kind of a bit of wallpaper here, the rest of the x-men and our three villians are all given great character moments that show them off to the audience well and really show the writers get the characters while taking their own spins on the younger ones: Nightcrawler, who could be a bit of a dork in the comics, see here his seduction tequnique. 

I mean damn if that shit isn’t still Sexy but still. They just ramped it up a bit since this version is younger and more naive, while Scott is likewise a bit more rambunctious and likely to question Xavier, while still being a good hearted guy who knows how to lead. It’s good stuff. While the quality isn’t PERFECT, it’s a good start and I look forward to watching more and EVENTUALLY reviewing more on here. If you liked this be sure to let me know and like I said above if there’s any other marvel show or any dc ones you want me to cover, and any specific episodes at that, lemme know. Comics too. And until we meet again, courage.  PS.. what the hell is up with the title of this episode? No really it has nothing to do with anything. Is it Mystuues’ inflitration plan? 

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

13 Keys to the White House: UPDATE

The original post can be read here, I wrote it a day before George Floyd was murdered, and the political landscape has shifted SO MUCH since then.

There are 13 questions that define which party will win the presidential election based on how well the incumbent and challenging parties have fared over the last four years.  The incumbent party needs 8 out of 13 to be true to win, while the challengers need 6 or more to be false.  As of May 25, it stood, in order of severity

FALSE

FALSE

FALSE

Almost certainly false

Probably false

Maybe false

Unclear

Maybe

Maybe true

True as of right now

TRUE

TRUE

TRUE

Biden and Trump both has 3 solid keys in their field, with three more teetering on either side, and one tossup in the middle.  It was anybody’s game, though Biden had a slight edge because he only needs 6 to Trump’s 8.

Not everything has changed in the last week, but just enough to solidify some of the less certain keys

Party Mandate:  After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.  FALSE (Democrats won more in 2018 than Republicans won in 2014)

Contest:  There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. TRUE (Donald Trump faces no real challengers)

Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.  TRUE (barring the coronavirus, or a heart attack brought on by all the fast food he eats, Donald Trump will be the nominee this November)

Third party:  There is no significant third party or independent campaign. TRUE (Amash has dropped out, and the Libertarians have nominated a nobody who chose an even smaller nobody as her running mate.  But then again, the election is 5 months away, which in 2020-months is approximately 9000 years away; a lot can change between now and then.  I mean, just 5 months ago the coronavirus hadn’t spread outside of China yet.  Maybe a conservative spoiler will gain traction.  Maybe some disillusioned republicans will rally behind a write-in candidate.  Maybe an asteroid hits and we all have to move underground and evolve into C.H.U.D.s to survive.  Anything goes in 2020.  Blow on them dice, LUCK BE A LADY)

Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.  FALSE (The Great Shutdown, the second once-in-a-lifetime economic collapse in less than 15 years. We’re only four months into it right now; things are going to get so much worse before they get better.)

Long-term economy:  Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.  Almost Certainly False (Unemployment continues to rise at record breaking levels. Civil unrest is widespread in all 50 states, several territories, and even international cities in solidarity with the cause.  The pandemic is far from over, and we are on the verge of a second wave..  There’s no chance in hell the economy will grow this year.  2020 is the Spiders Georg of years; it is a statistical outlier, it’s so low it’ll bring down the rest of the whole term, wiping out all growth since 2017.  I mean, Republicans wanted trump to run the country like one of his businesses, and he’s giving them exactly what they wanted.  This is his MO; run it into the ground, declare bankruptcy, don’t pay anyone, move onto your next failed project.  Same shit as always)

Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.Unclear  (He hasn’t kept many of his campaign promies, but he has enriched himself and his colleagues, abusing the power of the executive for personal gain, which is a pretty major change.  This key will come down to the Supreme Court decisions on his tax returns; if they decide in favor of the president, they are saying that he doesn’t have to obey subpoenas anymore, expanding the powers of the president and getting rid of legislative oversight, checks and balances; this would be a HUGE policy change akin to declaring him a king, as it would mean he is no long capable of being held accountable for anything.  If they decide against him though, a lot of skeletons will come bursting out of his closet, which may or may not damage him politically.  Let’s be honest, they won’t.   Nothing ever does.  The tax returns could reveal that he has been paying a Russian company called “WE MEDDLE, YOU WIN, GUARANTEE” for thirty years, and he and his cronies will still spin it as a positive thing.  Nothing ever hurts this guy, so I wonder why he even gives a shit about hiding his taxes anymore.  All we know is that he has to be hiding something BIG if he’s going this far to try and cover it up,  Could this take him down?  Probably not, but fingers crossed.)

Social unrest:  There is no sustained social unrest during the term.  FALSE  (I made this post before the George Floyd protests began, but there’s no ambiguity about it now.   The cracks in the system have been expanding for years, and now the dam has finally burst.  And rightfully so; riots are the language of the unheard.  My only concerns are that if the protests continue into November, a bunch of republican lawmakers are gonna use it as an excuse to stop people from voting. ”Curfew begins at 8PM, anyone still in line at their polling places will be arrested and/or shot”)

Scandal:  The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.  FALSE (there’s only so much you an handle before you drop all pretenses and say “this is no longer subjective, this is objectively scandalous.”  Everything they do is designed to get as big a reaction as possible, they pick the objectively worst people and take the objectively worst positions on everything because they’re trying to stoke controversy.  Russia, Ukraine, carrots and potatoes.  The real meat are all the domestic scandal.  Turning off the White House lights and hunkering in a safe space underneath it like  PUNK ASS BITCH?  Mobilizing the National Guard around the country?  Teargassing protestors so he can pose with a Bible he’s never read in front of a church he’s never attended, holding it up like it’s some annoying obligation of his, “see? See, I like the Bible. Look, I’m holding it up.  Why would I be holding it up if I didn’t just LOOOOOVE it?  Can everybody see?  I’m holding it out at arms length and waving it back and forth just to make sure all the cameras know, I want then to get a good shot of it. I will shortly give it to an aide and be taken home in my limo, at which point I will forget the Bible exists because my brain is turning to jelly and I’ve lost the concept of object permanence.”)

Foreign/military failure:  The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. Maybe (on the one hand, Iran didn’t retaliate when we killed their general, but on the other hand we retreated out of Syria, let thousands of ISIS fighters go, and aided the Turks in a Kurdish genocide.  The tit-for-tat sanctions against China threatened to crash the global economy, but then the coronavirus came in and did that all by itself, so it’s unclear whether we’ve “failed” or simply “not succeeded.”)

Foreign/military success:  The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. Maybe false? (for the same reason as above, it is hard to judge what is or isn’t a success.  USMCA is unpopular and small potatoes.  The North Korean talks are all show with no substance; Kim will never get rid of his nukes.   We’re still caught up in W’s endless wars, and I don’t see an end in sight, so I’d say this is definitely not a success. I have no doubt in my mind the October Surprise is gonna be another bombing in Iran to kill the ayatollah. The Iran War will start on November 3, same day as the election, there will be the first draft since Vietnam, a bunch of POCs will be forced into the military as cannon fodder; it’ll be a bloodbath for both sides)

Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.  FALSE (Trump is revered as the Second Coming of Christ by his base, but they make up less than 40% of the total country; other Republicans tolerate him at best, and all Democrats hate him. He has never had majority approval, he will never go down with the likes of the universally beloved Washington, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts.  The most surprising thing of the last six months has got to be the emergence of the Lincoln Project, a coalition of Republicans who have finally grown spines, guts, and balls to stand up against trump and actively campaign against him.  He doesn’t have total party control anymore, the Republicans are eroding, though to be fair the Democrats eroded a long time ago; the Republicans are a crumbling cairn, longstanding but now weakened and in danger of falling over, while the Democrats are a nice gravel walkway that everyone steps on and complains about even though the walkway is a nice addition to the park; it really ties the negative space together, linking the tennis courts with the pull-up bars.  I’ve lost the thread of this analogy)

Challenger charisma:  The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.  TRUE (Joe Biden is the Walter Mondale of Al Gores.  Republicans hate him,  even though he’s a moderate an would almost certainly try to reach across the aisle to compromise with them.  Which is exactly why about half of Democrats don’t really like him; he’s too moderate and would work with Republicans.  He’s old and senile, he keeps making gaffe after gaffe after gaffe, and doesn’t seem to know how the game is played anymore.  Someone needs to find Grampa a nice home so he can retire and talk to his nurse about how he used to get into fist fights with ne’er-do-wells, “buncha malarkey, I tell ya”)

This gives us, from best to worst:

FALSE

FALSE

FALSE

FALSE

FALSE

Almost Certainly False

Maybe false

unclear

Maybe

TRUE

TRUE

TRUE

TRUE

Incumbent Trumps needs 8 true to win.  Challenger Biden needs 6 false to win.

Biden definitely has 5, he only needs 1 more to claim it, and there are two good keys that are leaning heavily in his favor; trump’s long-term economy is in the tank, and he hasn’t had any victories overseas.  Biden has this one in the bag [don’t grow complacent, there’s still plenty of fuckery to be had from here to November]

Trumps would need to flip four keys to win, only one of which leans in his favor, one is unclear, and two are in Biden’s court.  The economy is in ruins, he hasn’t set up any real domestic Trump Doctrine, and the military has neither succeeded nor failed in any meaningful way these last four years.  He’s going into November with a major disadvantage, perhaps the only time in his life he has ever not had an advantage.

But then again, there’s always the possibility that it could be a 2000/2016 repeat, where Biden wins the popular vote but Trump ekes by with the electoral college victory yet again.  This model doesn’t take that into account because the popular vote winner almost always wins the EC too.

Trump is not more popular today than he was 4 years ago.  He’s never had majority approval.  While his base loves him more now than ever, they represent a minority of voters, and pretty much everyone else hates him.  Anyone who was on the fence in 2016 is definitively over the fence in 2020.  If he “wins,” it’s not going to be a 1972/1984 blowout, that’s just not gonna happen, too many states hate him too much.  It will be very close; I will not rule out the possibility of a 269-269 tie in the electoral college, triggering a contingent election where the House of Representatives has to pick the president.  Democrats have a majority in the House right now, but in contingent elections they don’t vote as 435 individuals, they vote as 50 state blocs; even though there are more Democrats than Republicans, they’re packed together into as few states as possible, giving Republicans over 26 stateside majorities, enough to ensure they would pick Trump in a contingent election.

It’s a bullshit system, and I pray it doesn’t come to that.

[thelazyhermits]

New Test Subjects

After seeing how many votes the Kirishima & Tetsutetsu pair got in the poll, I decided to write a drabble with the pair. I’m gonna tag @mandsand whose idea inspired me to write this. Thank you for your help! <3 Also, there are references here to another drabble which you can find here, but you don’t have to read it for this one to make sense. 

I hope y’all enjoy it! ^-^

I think I just made a grave mistake.

In your defense, this wasn’t your idea. You even tried to avoid this outcome, but unfortunately, it was completely out of your hands.

It all started when Hatsume called you over to the support studio one day after school, requesting that you help her try out some of her babies. Naturally, you were reluctant considering your past experiences with trial runs of her inventions, but telling her no has always been a hard thing for you.

As a result, after making sure the 1-A students would look after Eri while you were gone, you soon found yourself heading to the support studio. On the way there, you passed Kirishima and Tetsutetsu who were having some kind of manliness training. Honestly, you had no idea what exactly that meant, but since they looked like they were enjoying themselves, you decided not to question it. 

Your original intention was to greet the boys before resuming your trek to the support studio. However, your plans quickly changed once the boys found out where you were heading.

After hearing that you were going to help Hatsume with her inventions, the two hero course students immediately volunteered to come along to help much to your surprise. Apparently, after hearing about Hatsume’s past trial runs, the boys thought it would be great training to help her test out her inventions.

Naturally, you were hesitant to go along with the idea since you knew they’d basically be volunteering themselves to be Hatsume’s test subjects. While it’s true they have the perfect Quirks to protect themselves from the usual explosions caused by her inventions, you still couldn’t help but worry about them.

Still, in the end, you allowed Kirishima and Tetsutetsu to tag along, knowing they’d eventually come see Hatsume anyway. You figured you might as well make sure you were there for the first meeting to make sure the pink haired girl didn’t get too crazy with her trial runs.

Unsurprisingly, Hatsume was absolutely ecstatic about having new test subjects. She immediately began pulling out more inventions to test since her original goal was just to get you to work with one invention.

Just as you feared, the support student didn’t hesitate to pull out the more combat-oriented inventions. It was obvious she wanted to test the fire power of her babies against the hero course students’ Quirks. 

That’s why you’re currently on the sidelines watching the boys enthusiastically take on the attacks from all of Hatsume’s inventions head on. You make a mental reminder to question Power Loader later about the large amount of dangerous weapons the support student currently has at her disposal. You were understandably concerned when she said she made them for fun when you questioned her about them earlier. 

At this point, considering how much the three students are enjoying themselves, the only thing you can really do is make sure things don’t go too far. That’s why you make sure they take breaks in between trial runs so the boys don’t needlessly wear themselves out. 

It’s near the end of one of those breaks that Hatsume brings out a familiar-looking drone which immediately puts you on edge. Seeing your tense expression, the pink haired girl grins, “Don’t worry, Fortune Teller-san! What happened last time won’t happen again since it’s programmed to just attack you. I won’t be losing control of it, I promise!”

You give her a deadpan look. “If you think I’m going to relax after hearing that it’ll only target me, you’re wrong. I’d rather not have to deal with being chased by that thing again. It was not at all fun the first time.”

Kirishima hits his fist against his open palm. “I got an idea! Just leave everything to me and Tetsutetsu, Sensei! We’ll protect you!”

Tetsutetsu rams his fists together. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m with you, bro! Let’s do this!”

As the boys share a manly fist bump, you stare at them with obvious confusion. “Hold on. What are you-”

Before you can finish that sentence, Kirishima suddenly pulls you into a bridal carry, surprising you. Seeing your wide eyed expression, he grins, “Be sure to keep your head down, Sensei!”

After saying that, the redhead takes off into a sprint while a laughing Tetsutetsu runs after him. Hatsume grins as she quickly sends the drone after them.

As laser beams rain down on you and the boys, you immediately realize what your student’s plan is. Since the drone is programmed to chase you, you need to be on the move for it to be tested.

However, since you were reluctant to test out the device considering what happened last time, Kirishima thought it’d be good training to have him and Tetsutetsu use their Quirks to protect you from the drone’s laser beam attacks. Either the redhead will use his Quirk to shield you, or the grey haired boy will use his so he can intercept the attacks.

All in all, it’s a pretty solid training session for them since they have to constantly use their Quirks. Not only that, they get to practice using their Quirks to protect someone else which is always beneficial for a hero.

Of course, that doesn’t make this situation any less crazy. The fact that the boys keep grinning and laughing while releasing loud battle cries makes it even more ridiculous. 

Well, at least, they’re having a good time, and thanks to them, you don’t have to worry about running for your life from the crazy drone which is another bonus. So, it’s hard for you to criticize your student’s idea since you definitely prefer this trial run over the one you had with Hatsume last time.

Just as you think that, Hatsume cheerfully shouts, “Phase One complete! Now, let’s head to Phase Two!”

You immediately get a bad feeling after hearing those words. “What is Phase Two?”

Your question is soon answered when several drones identical to the first one appear in the air, completely surrounding you and the hero course students. When you see them, your jaw drops. “Hatsume, what the hell?! Are you trying to kill us?!”

Tetsutetsu grins as he sizes up his new opponents. “Don’t worry, Sensei! We totally got this! Right, Kirishima?!”

Kirishima dons a similar grin. “Right! We won’t let any attacks hit you, Sensei!”

True to their word, the boys manage to continuously block all the attacks aimed your way despite how numerous they are. The redhead takes the job of shielding you with his body while the grey haired student starts punching as many laser beam attacks as he can in order to deflect them.

It’s honestly really impressive how well they’re doing. Even though you’re sure they must be exhausted, considering how long this trial run has been going on, they’re just as enthusiastic as ever. Their grins haven’t faltered one bit--a fact that you greatly admire since you’ve always thought that a hero’s smile was one of their most important features. 

The one downside of this situation is that you’re not really contributing to this situation. It doesn’t seem right for you to allow your students to do all the work, so you decide to lend a hand and put an end to this crazy trial run.

Grinning, you activate your Quirk, allowing you to foresee the drones’ movements. Once you see how they’ll react, you pull out your water gun and fire at some of the drones during the brief moment they stop their attacks so they can recharge. 

As you predicted, the drones are able to dodge like the original one. However, it looks like Hatsume hasn’t had the drones practice this feature while in a group since, when they attempt to move out of the way, the drones end up crashing into other drones, causing several of them to explode upon contact.

While Hatsume cries out in dismay, Tetsutetsu pumps his fist into the air. “That was so awesome! Nice shot, Sensei!”

Your grin grows as you repeat your earlier actions and successfully take out more of the drones. Meanwhile, Kirishima’s eyes sparkle with admiration. “So manly!”

After ruffling his hair, you pull out your sunglasses and put them on before deactivating your Quirk. Thankfully, the headache isn’t too bad since you weren’t using your Quirk for very long. “Couldn’t let you boys have all the fun. I left you guys some drones if you wanna take a crack at them.”

Both boys exchange a look before grinning. “Hell yeah!”

Since there are only a few drones left, protecting you becomes much less difficult for the hero course students. As a result, Kirishima is free to set you down, so he and Tetsutetsu can take turns playing offense and defense.

While they’re having fun with the remaining drones, you look over at Hatsume and see her pouting. “Sorry, Hatsume, but you brought this upon yourself. You were just asking for us to fight back.”

A few seconds later, the pink haired girl’s pout fades, replaced with a bright grin. “It’s fine! This just proves that my babies still have room for improvement! Thank you for pointing out what I still need to work on, Fortune Teller-san!”

As expected of Hatsume, she bounces back quickly. It’ll take a lot to keep her down. At least, the trial run was successful in showing her what she needed to work on. 

The sounds of two loud battle cries have you returning your attention to the hero course students who are cheering after having taken out the last of the drones. You smile as you clap your hands. “Good job, boys. Very well done.”

Kirishima beams as he walks over to where you’re currently standing. “Thanks, Sensei! I’m really glad me and Tetsutetsu decided to come along today! This was great training! I hope you’ll take us along the next time Hatsume invites you over for more trial runs!”

Tetsutetsu nods as he grins, “I feel the same way as Kirishima! It’s been awhile since I last got this excited about after school training! My heart’s totally on fire right now!”

A grinning Hatsume gives them a thumbs-up. “Just come to the support studio whenever you want more training! I’ll be happy to put you to work for the sake of my babies!”

Shaking your head, you give the students an amused look. “Well, considering how today’s training went, I think things should be fine. Just be sure to not overdo it and don’t get too crazy, alright?”

Both boys quickly nod their heads while Hatsume excitedly rubs her hands together. “This is going to be great! Now, I have a good reason to start building the robots I recently finished blueprints for!”

While Kirishima and Tetsutetsu cheer at the news, obviously excited about their future opponents, your face pales. 

Yeah, this was definitely a mistake.

[currantlee]

German Postillon articles about the US Election translated

@theeeveetamer sent me this post in which someone translated German Postillon headlines about the US Election. Der Postillon is a German satire website disguised as a newspaper, kind of the German equivalent to The Onion.

So, I translated one of the articles for her and it was really, really fun. So I thought I might do more and share it on my blog so hopefully more people can have a laugh!

But first of all...

Gotta keep the American Spirit on this blog everyone!

Before I continue though: Please keep in mind that the Postillon is a satire website! None of the news in this post are actually true, it’s just meant to have a good laugh. I am repeating this again: none of these are actually real! I also want to make clear that none of those were written by me, I merely translated them! Credit to all the original texts and pictures goes to the Postillon. Except for the American flag. Credit to flickr for that one.

Anyways, let’s go and hopefully have some laughs.

Experts are certain that Donald Trump is going to win the Election because 2020 has been a shitty year so far anyways

Washington D.C. – Joe Biden hopes to put an end to Trump’s presidency after four years: he is clearly ahead in the polls on this Election Day. Despite that, most experts are sure that Trump will win – because so far, 2020 has been a shitty year anyways!

“If you look at the average of the national polls, Joe Biden is currently more than 8% ahead of Trump,” politic scientist Marianne Waters from the renowned Princeton University explains. “This means that his lead is way greater than Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. Under normal circumstances, you’d say that he’s already won the Election.”

She pauses for a second. “But now, please think about what a fucked up mess of a year 2020 has been so far! And then, think again about whether or not the American people are that fucked up in their brains to elect this human catastrophic failure for four more years! We’re talking about a year in which a global pandemic is going rampant across the planet anyways, we’re seeing islamistic and nazi terror attacks at the daily and entire havens are exploding ‘completely by accident’! Is there anybody who seriously believes in a sensible result of this election?!”

At least, scientists aren’t fully ruling out the possibility of Biden winning the Election. However, because this is 2020, the chance of an asteroid hitting the earth five minutes after this has happened is nothing but small.

– Der Postillon, 3rd of November 2020 (Original title: Experten sicher, dass Trump gewinnen wird, weil 2020 eh schon ein Scheißjahr ist). Translated by Seaberry Siren

“Oh Shit!”  – Putin completely forgot to manipulate the US Election

Moskow – How can one be so scatterbrained! Wladimir Putin just realized to his very own horror that he completely forgot to manipulate the US Election. Now, his candidate Donald Trump is in trouble.

“Bljad! {T/N: Russian for “crap”} I knew I forgot something really important!”, Putin says. “But due to all the inner politics, the corona virus and all the other countries our hackers need to manipulate elections in, I totally forgot about the United States! This is just great!”

He turns to his assistant. “Dima! USA! Can we turn something around there? ... No? ... Really?! And if we deliver arms to the... How are those guys called again... Proud Boys? WHAT?! They already have enough of those?!? Oh well.”

However, in the end, Putin puts up with the situation after all: “Ah, we’ll see. Maybe everything will turn out fine one way or another.” He turns to his assistant again: “Dima, make an appointment with Donald Trump jr. as soon as possible! I heard he is is just as dumb as his father and has political ambitions as well. We’ll survive Biden until 2024.”

– Der Postillon, 4th of November 2020 (Original title: “Ach Kacke!” – Putin hat völlig vergessen, US-Wahlen zu manipulieren). Translated by Seaberry Siren with help from Theeeveetamer

Employees of the Oval Office try to stop Trump from tweeting “CIVIL WAR!!!! Kill all Democrats!”

Washington D.C. – While votes are still being counted all over the USA, dramatic scenes start to unfold in the White House. Currently multiple employees are trying to prevent President Donald Trump from grabbing his smartphone in order to tweet the words “CIVIL WAR!!!! Kill all Democrats!”.

“No Mr. President!”, an assistant shouts as she holds Trump’s arm. “Don’t do this! I have a family! I don’t want a civil war! Jack, restrain him, damnit! Anna, don’t stand there and stare so stupidly, help us! Ian, put his smartphone as far away as you can!”

In the meantime, countless citizens of the USA are wondering why Trump didn’t tweet anything for more than seven hours.

“Leave me alone!”, Trump cries as he desperately tries to reach his smartphone. “They want to steal my election by letting every vote count! Even those of the Democrats! I WANT TO SEE BLOOD!!!”

Meanwhile, outside of the White House, more and more people are speculating that Trump could accept a possible loss due to his silence on Twitter.

– Der Postillon, 4th of November 2020 (Original title: Mitarbeiter versuchen Trump davon abzuhalten, "CIVIL WAR!!!! Kill all Democrats!" zu twittern). Translated by Seaberry Siren

Not that as well! Half-Blind 100-year-old man who counts all the votes by his own dies of old age

Harrisburg – Oh no! Everything is going to take even longer now! James Reed, the 100-year-old man tasked with counting all the votes of the US Election surprisingly just died.

“Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to task one man of his age with the counting of millions of votes,” the chief of the Electoral Office stated. “Unfortunately, he was the only one with a license for this important job.”

After the closing of the polling stations, Reed, who was responsible for counting the votes since the 1970s, traveled from state to state in order to count all the votes.

“He took his job very seriously. He’d often take 20 minutes in order to count a single vote,” an election assistant recalls as tears of gried run over her cheeks. “But just after he counted 92% of the votes at Michigan, he suddenly fell from his chair.”

The doctor who was called immediately could only confirm the death of the 100-year-old man.

The worst part is that Reed didn’t get to name a successor before his passing. This is why the authorities are desperately searching for a new person able to lift sheets of paper, read printed letters, ánd count one by one at the same time. Due to the American education system, this is going to be a challenge {T/N: Germans throwing a bit of shade here when their own education system isn’t something to be proud on either}.

– Der Postillon, 4th of November 2020 (Original title: Auch das noch! Halbblinder 100-Jähriger, der allein alle US-Stimmen auszählt, an Altersschwäche gestorben). Translated by Seaberry Siren

US Election: Trump lies way out in front

Washington D.C. – A good chunk of the votes of the US Election have been counted by now and there seems to be a trend: Donald Trump clearly lies way out in front! As expected, the President of the United States is taking the lead in the traditionally Republican states. But even in the Swing States, he already sees himself as the winner, even if it’s only with very little sanity.

“Trump clearly lies way out in front,” the politics expert Dean Jefferson affirms. “As in: he stands in front of an audience and lies their heads off!”

Many didn’t expect that Trump could lie way out in front this comfortably at this point of the cote count. Other less optimistic individuals had predicted a neck-and-airhead race {T/N: in German that’s Kopf-an-Hohlkopf-Rennen, literally head-on-airhead race} from the beginning.

– Der Postillon, 5th of November 2020 (Original title: US-Wahl: Trump lügt vorne). Translated by Seaberry Siren

Damned mess of a US Election STILL isn’t over!

Washington D.C. – FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!!! At some point, enough is enough, isn’t it? The damned mess of a US Election STILL isn’t over after three days of counting the votes because the people in some Federal States apparently can’t manage to count the ballots!

Seriously: can they even count at all? Didn’t they know that the voters like to turn their ballots in with a vote on them and that you have to count these votes in order to determine a winner?!?

An average election of the Federal Congress {T/N: they mean the German Federal Congress, also known as the Bundestag} is finished, predicted and decided one second after closing the polling stations {T/N: Yes, German elections are that boring}. An official end result is provided in the next morning at the latest! How in the world can the Americans be trundle as fuck like this?!?

Suggestion: we ignore the entire shitshow over there for the next few weeks until those idiots have punched their faces in and once the victor is clear, there is one short headline: “Winner of the US Election: [insert winner’s name here]”. Then this whole crap would... WHAT?? Biden takes the lead at Georgia by 900 votes? Wowowowow! Just a moment please, I’ll have a look at the livetracker. Did CNN already comment on this? Nate Silver already tweeted as well... This has to be it for Biden! Now it can’t take much longer!

OH MY GOD, HOW EXITING!!!

– Der Postillon, 6th of November 2020 (Original title: Verdammte Drecks-US-Wahl immer noch nicht zu Ende!). Translated by Seaberry Siren

“If I can’t have it, then nobody will!” – Trump sets the White House on fire

Washington D.C. – A victory of Joe Biden in the US election is becoming more and more likely. But the answer to the question whether the Democrat is really going to move into the White House could be decided by a completely different factor than the votes – because apparently, Donald Trump is trying to burn the White House down now.

“If I can't have it, then nobody will!”, the US President says as he spreads gasoline at strategic points while he starts laughing manically: “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Shortly after, the Oval Office is up in flames. “Let’s see how Sleepy Joe will rule from a burned-down ruin!”, Trump exclaims with a shrill voice as he adds more fuel to the fire. “AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Burn, my little fire, burn!”

Directly before publishing this article, Trump realized that this wasn’t the best idea as he cut off his own escape route with the last bits of the fuel. “Oh! So this wasn’t very clever... IVANKAAAAAAA!! The Democrats set me on fire! Rescue the best president of all time!!!”

– Der Postillon, 6th of November 2020 (Original title: “Wenn ich es nicht haben kann, soll es keiner haben! – Trump setzt Weißes Haus in Brand). Translated by Seaberry Siren

"Enough!” – The Queen reclaims the United States for the British Empire

London – She’s got enough of this nonsense! Queen Elizabeth II. announced the return of the United States to the British Empire. A new, freshly assigned gouverneur will arrive in Washington shortly and take over the government business.

“We have been watching this unworthy ham without doing anything for far too long,” the Queen declared in a fiery speech. “It is time to return the colony where it belongs: into the lap of the United Kingdom. The experiment is hereby ended.”

Shortly after, the British Navy occupied important havens at the East Coast. On friday afternoon, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and Miami had already been seized.

Apparently months of the global pandemic, national economic instability and a tiring election campaign did the trick: a wide range of the US population greeted the British soldiers euphorically and vowed to be loyal to the British Crown. “Long live the Queen!”-chants echoed through the streets.

Washington D.C. is still in the hands of the rebels lead by Donald Trump. However, observers believe that the British troops will seize the capital next week. According to the Queen’s orders, Trump will be put into chains and brought to Great Britain by ship in order to spend the rest of his days in the Tower of London by water and bread.

– Der Postillon, 6th of November 2020 (Original title: “Jetzt reicht’s!” – Queen unterstellt USA wieder der Britischen Krone). Translated by Seaberry Siren

[volturialice]

Spork Haven chapter 23: salt fucking peter

welcome to spork haven, where I spork the EL James fic you’ve never heard of

previous chapter | next chapter | contents

previously on Spork Haven:

actor!Edward got an outlandish fucking award and became Best Actor!Edward! hotel maid murder witness cello prodigy orphaned ““cajun”” heiress!Bella was his date to the awards show! Ed looked into Emmett’s dark burning eyes and had a Moment! Bella felt dizzy and then went missing! will the Volturi mafia succeed in murdering her? let’s hope so stick around and find out!

warning: this chapter is incredibly long. please check the tags for content warnings—there are a lot! it’s eventful, though, so we’ll give it a pass. but settle in and make yourself comfortable. maybe go get a drink or something. I know I needed a drink after I read this garbage.

chapter 23 opens with Edward attempting to process the fact that Bella has disappeared. he does this in what I have to admit is a pretty seamless fusion of el james’s and stephenie meyer’s trademark styles (negative space here preserved for authenticity):

wow. eat your heart out, New Moon.

once we’ve experienced that bit of totally original typesetting magic, Edward leaps into action! 

just kidding. he’s “totally fucking immobilized.” paralyzed with fear, he “stifles a sob” and toys with whether to “wail, scream, and tear his hair out with impotence”

luckily, he’s very good at giving himself pep talks:

this bracing self-administered kick in the pants unfreezes him, allowing him to summon the mental faculties to go get Emmett.

Emmett clears the ladies’ room and calls for backup. He and Edward search the restroom and are joined by a rando Local security guard as they discover—gasp!—a secret second exit to the bathroom (shoutout to the phoenix airport womens’ room, amirite?) leading into a service tunnel.

the Local security guard informs them that the tunnel leads to an alley, but the alley’s only exit is onto Hollywood Boulevard. you know, the street currently clogged with limos, paparazzi, cameras, and fans. idk about y’all but I’m starting to think this kidnap attempt may have been just a tad poorly conceived. why kidnap her at all? they had ample time to kill her, dump her body in the service tunnel, and make their escape unencumbered.

as Ed, Emmett, and Local race down the service tunnel, Emmett radios for Jasper to go around and cut the Bad Guys off in the alley. Edward is the slowest of the bunch

so he quickly falls behind the other two.

he’s trying to catch up when—wait! what’s that on the ground? something...sparkly?

that’s right: he pauses in chasing after Bella and her kidnapper in order to notice “six thousand dollars’ worth of earring” lying on the ground.

then he stops and picks it up.

now, I know what you’re thinking, guys—is he seriously stopping to pick up a lost earring when Bella’s life is in danger?—but keep in mind, these earrings were twelve thousand dollars. also, Edward loves earrings! they make him horny! what else is he supposed to suck on at Bella’s funeral?

I mean, yeah, if your worst fear was that Bella might lose an earring.

what indeed, Edward. what indeed. 

imagine for a second that you’re Emmett in this fic. you’re a law enforcement professional racing to protect your charge’s life, bellowing into your walkie for backup, preparing to apprehend an armed and dangerous suspect in an area full of innocent civilians...when suddenly, from somewhere far behind you in the dingy gloom of the service tunnel, you hear the sniveling, British-accented voice of the bitchass manchild celebrity who’s tagging along:

“I’vE fOuNd hEr eArRiNg!”

jesus.

still ahead of Eddie boy, Emmett and Local burst out into the alley, guns drawn. Edward hears gunfire and is terrified for Bella as he finally catches up and arrives at the scene.

this is about where erika’s writing gets...incredibly confusing. and not in a POV, “we’re in the character’s head experiencing the chaos with him in real time” way. more like in a “several dozen drunk blind amputees playing Twister” way. this is my cute way of saying “it’s bad” and “I had to read it four times before it began to make sense.”

in the alley, all is chaos. a gun has just gone off

I’m sorry. salt...peter? saltpeter? did someone shoot off a Ye Olde Civil War Musket? I know fuckall about firearms and even I know they phased that shit out in the fucking 1880s.

and while we’re here, fun trivia fact about saltpeter: in Olden Times, people would ingest saltpeter in order to nuke their sex drives. silly Olden Times! if it’s a bonerkiller you’re after, all you have to do is read this fic!

ok, back to the alley. security are cordoning it off, keeping the “fucking jackal” paparazzi at bay (already?)

the LAPD are arriving (already??) 

but perhaps most interestingly,

real quick before we get into whose body it is, why we’re sexually objectifying it, and what it’s oozing, I just wanna draw your attention to the construction of that sentence. the artistry, if you will. below, I have replaced some of the nouns so that we may all appreciate the sheer poetry of the syntax:

“there’s a fucking meatball lying prone on the floor, all covered with cheese, a dark cloud oozing under the meatball.”

sitting a few feet away from the Skirt & Heels Body™ is Jasper, cradling the unconscious Bella. you could be forgiven for thinking that first body (you know, the oozing one) was Bella’s, because that’s what the narration wants you to think. the effect is somehow both enhanced and ruined by the fact that Bella’s actual body is mentioned in the next sentence. erika really tried to have her suspense cake and eat it too, with the result that by the time I finished reading this paragraph, I had absolutely no idea how many bodies there were or who they belonged to, which ones had on a skirt and heels, which ones were oozing, and where.

another excerpt I should probably share is the paragraph where we describe Edward reacting to this tragic pietà.

here’s our text, raw and unedited:

I can’t even begin to list all the ways this paragraph makes me uncomfortable, so I won’t attempt to.

anyway. remember how in the last chapter, there was an incredibly gay bit where Edward looked into Emmett’s dark, burning eyes? fasten your seatbelts because we’re about to blow that bit out of the water.

ｌｕｍｉｎｏｕｓ ｈａｚｅｌ ｅｙｅｓ

filled with

𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝑒𝓂𝑜𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝐼 𝒹𝑜𝓃'𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓉𝑜 𝓃𝒶𝓂𝑒

the next sentence tries to take us back into heterosexual territory with

are we meant to understand that Jasper’s luminous hazel eyes are saying “don’t you just wish it was you getting to cradle Bella’s unconscious, injured body?” yes, that is exactly what we’re meant to understand. this attitude continues as Bella is loaded into an ambulance. at first, Jasper tries to stop Edward from coming, then the paramedic says they can both come but only if they sit on opposite sides of the ambulance like kindergarteners in Time Out.

l o n g i n g l y

the paramedics also checked the other body (you know, the oozing skirt and heels body) and Edward made a startling observation:

though oozing, the mystery person is still alive, and a second ambulance hauls off

and here I was thinking all this story needed to make it complete was some veiled transphobia! what a fun new direction for erika.

once at the hospital, Ed is banished to the waiting room with Emmett, Jasper, and Taylor. the doctors won’t let him see Bella, even when he tells them he’s her fiancé.

hmm. is it just me or is there a movie about this exact scenario?

yep, there are at least two movies about this exact scenario.

after the “fiancé” thing, Edward picks up on some bad vibes from Jasper

interesting. can you feel MY animosity hit you like a brick fucking wall? I guess it’s more of a brick fucking skyscraper at this point.

things we learn at the hospital:

Bella was roofied! so if you voted “poisoned” in the poll, I’m gonna give you this one. congrats on your victory.

Bella is fine now

Jasper shot the mysterious kidnapper in the chest. 

that’s right, Jasper is the cause of all the oozing. well done, Jasper. good luminous hazel eye.

finally, Bella wakes up and asks to see Edward. He goes back to see her 

and

she

dumps his ass.

not for any Sane People reasons, of course. having decided she’s “too dangerous to be around,” she breaks up with him in a scene straight out of New Moon, complete with “eyes full of tortured pain” and dialogue like

“You are too precious to me. Please. Go.”

Edward spends the whole scene in panicked denial, to the point where he’s practically gaslighting Bella, telling her she’s just been through a traumatic ordeal and she can’t possibly mean what she’s saying. 

then he interrupts her mid-breakup 

to fucking propose.

🤣🤣🤣 READ THE ROOM, BUDDY. Bella is resolute for the first time in her doormat life, turns down the proposal, and firmly breaks things off with Edward. he returns her earring (you remember, the six thousand dollar earring we paused in the middle of the climactic chase scene to pick up), “inhales her fragrant hair for the last time,” and leaves.

and with that, the chapter is FINALLY over.

possibility.mp3

best “fucks”

“level fucking head”

“a fucking microsecond”

“fucking sirens”

“loud fucking noises”

“enough fucking damage”

“a soothing fucking balm”

“fucking Hale”

“fucking purgatory” (the hospital waiting room)

“pale as fuck” (bella)

“fucking lifeless” (bella)

“non-believing fucking arse” (edward)

“like a fucking idiot” (edward)

best “shits”

next chapter: fucking blinds and curtains

[louiserandom]

The MadaTobi adventure has been chosen...

AND IT’S SOULMATES EXCAHNGING POWERS WOOOHOOOO (purple and green are the same option i just edited the form like a dumbass)

However, I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion THAT I WANNA WRITE ALL THESE FREAKIN PROMPTS or at least a couple more, so after this CYOA ends, I might just tackle the rest :D Thank you ALL so much for voting! I seriously didn’t expect this much feedback and I’ll do my best to deliver :3 *sends you all hugs, positivity and rays of sunshine during these trying times and hopes that each one of you is safe* Hopefully the story will provide some fun and distraction from the grim anxiety <3

Now, I couldn’t resist writing the first part before Camp Nano started so I’ll be posting the chapter a bit later today once I’m all done with work stuff :3 And as always, a few more notes on the rest of the survey questions~ 

Thank you for enabling my thotty side. Again ehehehehe

AND OH LOOK AT THESE VOTES FOR THE ADDITIONAL PROMPTS EH

+ Virgin Tobirama knows everything about sex; semi-feral tobirama who spends too much time with his summons; Hate to Love; A+ banter, maybe 1 combined w/ secret relationship; shameless Izuna - oh, 3 of these are definitely gonna be in the story ;)

Now, fair warning: it will be long because my brain made me add this huge plot and Zetsu’s fuckery to the mix which will result in his gruesome elimination from existence sorry for spoilers lmao and because I’m hopeless, expect some bijuu shenanigans as well👀👀👀 Granted, some of the plot points and tropes are going to be revealed in the story; like, Tobirama’s obliviousness level and the exact level of Hashirama’s over-protectiveness will depend on your choices :3 Hope y’all have fun with me!

And below the cut, comment responses <3 I’ve had to group some because I’ve got so little time right now but will hopefully be able to answer every question separately as time goes. Again, THANK YOU all for voting!!!

I would really like both options two and four, any chance? This all sounds incredible I am super excited thank you!

The third option also sounds good

I like Plot II and III too actually as well

I wish I could pick all of the story options ;)

I love your work and am so excited for this! I had so much trouble choosing answers in the poll because everything sounds so good!

Chose option I but strongly hesitated with option II cause it could be so funny.

All of these plots sound so awesome!!! It was super hard to pick one.

Argh! Why is choosing so hard? I want at least one of every option in every combination imaginable. That said, I chose plot 2 for the hilarious potential of put upon Tobirama with a sharingan but plot 1 was a very close contestant. I can't wait to see what you cook up. It's gonna be so great! - oz

DUDES ALL YOUR COMMENTS AND MY OWN EXCITEMENT ABOUT THESE PROMPTS MADE ME WANNA WRITE THEM ALL, FUCK IT!!! I definitely want option 4, it’s peak hilarity, tho I wonder if it would work more as a story proper, not a CYOA (I can think of a few interesting conflicts and choices in that verse tho, so we’ll see). But I do love option 1 as well; option 3 may be a little overdone? But basically, just lemme finish this one, try my best to deliver and then put the rest of the plots to another vote <3

I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH AND THANK YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!

p.s. Oz, you’re as always too kind <3

It would be funny if Tobirama was hilariously confident and actually decent at flirting with a flailing Madara but was actually a virgin. Like just completely and utterly shamelessly saying something like, 'yh I'm a virgin so you better make this good. I've got a lot to learn ;)' And of course Madara flails :D

THANK YOU. YES. THIS XD (Tobi would, wouldn’t he. And he very likely will, in this fic ;)

He is the dumbest Bitch alive with Tobi and Hashi running for second place. Bitch should have gotten some Senju dick to calm tf down.

No comments, only applause. You know what’s up

The fandom thanks you for doing God's work ;)

My insecure ass thanks you for your kind words <3

Hurt Tobi to show how protective Madara can be

Bold of you to assume I won’t hurt both of them and have them build each other back up again (lmao ignore my dramatic ass, as I said, nothing but light angst haha. But still some pain because plot said so :o)

Both being stupidly weak when it comes to kids

YEPPPPP YOU’RE READING MY MIND :D CAN’T WAIT TO WRITE THOSE SCENES

CLEARLY. Hashirama, Mito, Touka, and Izuna should all be one giant poly pile. 👀 Also it was impossible for me not to pick the option with Kurama. I love that grumpy asshole fox and I have... So many... Headcanons for him.....

HashiMitoTouIzu poly pile *stares* this... this.... MAYBE NOT IN THIS FIC BUT I WOULD LIKE TO TACKLE THIS IDEA AT SOME POINT LMAO THAT WOULD BE AWESOME :D (will maybe try to write a fic with them for camp nano ehehe)

Also, although ultimately, option 2 was chosen…. I couldn’t resist and added the possibility of Kurama appearing, I love his grumpy ass too much :D (Altho this will depend on the votes👀)

Maybe a child, adopted (kagami) or mpreg

Hmmm, no mpreg, just in this particular fic, but lots of interactions with children ;)

Wasn't he already? ://

ALWAYS

Madara is clearly the dumbest (Hashi is a close second)

YOU SPEAK THE TRUTH DEAR READER, I’M GLAD YOU SEE THE LIGHT

(Personally, I think Hashirama is the dumbest founder lol) But could you maybe make Tobirama and Izuna actually get along? They don’t have to be friends but just no active animosity. Maybe. You obviously don’t have to— would probably love it either way— but ‘tis my request

I may have to write that thesis about Madara’s dumbassery after all lol, be sure that I will convince you

And oh yeah, they definitely get along, don’t worry! Writing Tobirama and Izuna’s friendship warms my heart :3

I love flaily Mads and oblivious Tobes

WHO DOESN’T :D

Madara is not dumb, just a dumbass ^^ Also, bringing in Tobi's sensing is always a YES from me!

Nooooo HE DUMB AND A DUMBASS HOW BOUT THAT XD ehehe oh there’s gonna be a lot of sensing fuckery in the chosen option so I hope you enjoy! :3

At some point please let Mito and Tobirama befriend Kurama 'cause they're all powerful sassy bitches that will bitch slap you into your place and they all put the ultimate smack down on meddling Elders who've teamed up with Zetsu?

Although option 2 has been chosen… Kurama may appear in the story *shifty eyes* AND mf Zetsu lmao I need to kill that bitch. He’ll know pain^-^

Hashirama should be a smiling sociopath a la Symbol of Subjugation style. He knows there's something wrong but, hey, he wants to see his precious all happy :)

Oh, I considered that actually, I adore that fic! But imo it works better with a couple of other plots so I may consider writing him that way for a future CYOA :3 

I can already tell that this is gonna be one hell of a ride and I can’t wait!

Hell yeah go forth you funky lil author, you got this :D

Na

Nope nope I have non good luck

Luv ya <3

AHHHHHH YESSS I AM READY

Have fun

Thank you so much guys! <3 I’M EXCITED AS FUCK AND I CANNOT WAIT TO START :D