#They are fucking siblings dangit-

[cutesymiga]

They are literally adoptive siblings and no one can or will convince me otherwise-

Like seriously they are absolutely adorable!!! Here's some lore of my au too: Added context and Lore: Tom (After he was adopted by the CPC (Canadian Paralympic committee (Please correct me if I am wrong)) shortly after his break up with Vinicius (In my AU anyways-) was immediately taken under Quatchi's wing and was immediately adopted by him, and the moment he arrived at whistler Miga happily greeted him, and they have been close ever since!

[writingwenches]

Dangit, y'all are going to make me write the fic that explains the scene immediately before Gwayne pulling his sword on Criston...

Those eyes are not the eyes of a man defending his sisters honor, those are the eyes of someone who just got their lil heart broke because his wartime paramour just said his sister's name while they were fucking "relaxing" in his tent

Of the Hightower siblings, his sister came out "on top" once again.

thanks to barbieaemond for the high quality still~

[siriuslysatorusimping]

I read your post about following canon vs not, and I understand all your feelings as I’ve been through them with many fandoms over the years.

I myself have had an evolving relationship with canon, in that some things I will keep close and others will diverge completely. And some will be in between. Canon is there but we’ve branched, baby. I like to think of it as extra sprinkles (unless you are creating a whole ass AU, which those are fun too but requires more cooking 🤔)

In any case, you have done such a wonderful job following canon, but also making it your own. And not just through Rinko. You show it in Gojo, in the kids particularly the Zenin bbs, and especially Nanami (I still maintain that Gege did not give us enough Nanami). So in a way you’ve been canon adjacent the whole time, adding your own sprinkles along the way (which Gojo would definitely appreciate if this was a dessert 😂)

Btw, I personally love that you’ve taken what we know about Gojo from canon (because he is one of the most complex and well written characters in the series to begin with) and you dug deeper. How he’s shouldering all this power and responsibility, when one person (no matter how powerful or god like) should NEVER have to do so alone. You’re letting him have his Ken moment where he realizes (with Rinko’s help and love) that he can just be him in spite of all the toxic expectations placed on him.

I also love what you’ve done with Nanami. He is still him, but you show the playful side of him. How deeply he cares. At the same time, it’s still true to him. He doesn’t let a lot of people get very close. Very true to canon, from his past traumas. But he does let Rinko in, and Gojo as well, just not as much as Rinko. They truly are like siblings.

I didn’t mean for this to be so long! But I really just wanted to say that you do a great job and following canon and making it your own. Your hard work definitely pays off, even if it does give you stress, I hope it makes it less stressful to know that your work is considered pretty much canon my many of your readers.

And I fully support you divergence because why prison realm their story? Let Rinko and Gojo out of the box! They have babies to make and fluffy and happiness to be had 😁

Oh gosh, this is such an amazing message, thank you so much 🥹

I've also absolutely fallen in love with the other characters, especially the Zenins and Yuuta and Toge 🥹 primarily because I got to build out their stories with Rinko so much more. It still makes my heart melt that the flashcards with Toge became a thing that I was able to keep going throughout the series. And the fact that it all fits their characters and what we know of them from canon!

Of course Yuuta would be like a fuckin big brother to Megumi in a sense, and would love food and would just fucking adore Rinko and how much she clearly loves all the kids and how much she clearly loves Gojo even if she doesn't say it out loud. And of fucking course Toge would be super touched by the fact that Rinko cares enough to understand him that she uses the flashcards he gave her 😭😭

And also, of course Gojo would fucking fall in love with her as the only person who has always seen through his facade and literally not given a single fuck that he's the strongest. On top of that, he's always known the things she does to spare his feelings. Like in (Please) Prove Me Wrong when he notes that he knows Rinko hadn't taken the teaching job in Tokyo because she didn't want to take his job even though they both knew he didn't even need it.

I JUST LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH 😭

THEY WILL HAVE A FLUFFY LIFE TOGETHER, GOSH DANGIT 😭🥹💕

thank you again for this amazing message it made my day you are wonderful 💕

[shslpunkartist99]

Ah yes, I was intrigued by your post! What meant before is that I was in the middle of coming up something lighthearted and funny featuring Babi since she's a fav of one of my friends. Basically a little fic gift for them!

As that was still on my mind when I saw the post, I ended up imagining a funny scene with her and Tsuri. Hence why I mentioned it. Didn't mean to imply that I was intrigued by the thought of her getting spooked by him. My bad! 😅

Goodness gracious, though I would have never taken Tsuri for someone born into a rich business! I always felt like he might have come from somewhere unexpected but nothing quite like this!

His parents tho- what the actual fuck is wrong with them?! I knew some rich folks tend to lack even the most basic of morals but this? It takes a special kind of terrible to have your own children "thrown away" simply because they weren't “up to par”!

That goodness that his servants were there to help save him from being so callously disposed of by his parents there. I do hope his maid and butler weren't caught by those uncaring assholes tho.

That poor girl tho asjkakj yes I understand where Tsuri was coming from but uhm I hope she wasn't too traumatized by the sight of her asshole father getting beaten to death there asjkasjk

ALSO GODDAMMIT I WAS HOPING TO SEE TSURI GIVE THOSE ASSHOLES A HORRIBLE DEATH FOR WHAT THEY'VE DONE

IT'S GOOD THEY'RE DEAD

BUT DANGIT I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO TSURI TO GIVING THOSE ABUSIVE PIECES OF SHIT WHAT THEY DESERVED LOL

Goodness. I know you said Tsuri isn't close to his siblings but I couldn't help but feel a little bit of relief to know that he wasn't the only one who managed to escape from those dipshits there. Definitely looking forward to learning more about his sister! C:

Yyyyup, they were the reason why Tsuri does what he does today. He and his siblings went thru a shit life, so he doesn't want anyone to experience that. Fuck abusive parents

Tsuri had a bunch of siblings, but as of now, there's 2 currently alive: Natalia, 23, who also managed to escape later in her life, and a younger brother, 14, who she takes care of and is going thru a conflicted life of regular school.

Also the maid and butler are ok! I haven't figured out how they're living life, but they pop up on occasion to spend time with Tsuri. If he wasn't working a dangerous job, he'd honestly want them to live with him, but he wants them to live a free life (they aren't new nor afraid of killing, but Tsuri always wants others to live a better life than that)

[ads-for-nothing]

I've been trying to get myself to learn Ancient Greek vocabs and translate that damn two texts for days now. I just don't manage to do it. I either just cannot get myself to do it or I'm sitting in front of it and can't just get myself to focus. I sat half an hour staring into the void. Once I had myself so far that I looked up the words and decoded the forms but I was just staring at my notes, blankly, trying to make a sense of all that. I know that I can do it. I know that I should be able to. I've been translating and analyzing texts since 5th grade, first in Latin, then in Greek. Why can't my brain just be normal for once and focus on that text for half an hour? I don't even need more than that. I hate my life.

[houseofdabs]

It's Raining Cats and Dogs Out There

This isn't nothing serious, just wanted to write sumn, might not be too good, I haven't written nothing in years.

warnings: none

---------------------------------------------

Bo had slept in, something that wasn't particularly rare, but something he wasn't too keen on. Maybe it was from the lack of sun in his face, or the comfortable cool that made it so easy to curl into the blankets on his bed, but it was more than likely from the exhaustion he accumulated from so many nights full of work and less of sleeping. Deep down he knew he needed the extra sleep but as quick as the thought came it was just as quickly replaced with the self-degradation that pushed him to work hours on end with little care for himself-- the fuel that worked him near death in order to prove himself. The wind outside began to pick up and Bo peaked out the window to watch the dead leaves that danced within it, the thought that the only movement in the desolate town being dead itself made him frown a little. Gray clouds above covered the usual harsh rays of the Louisiana sun, what was once a vibrant sky was now dull. The blanketed sky looked heavy and with every movement threatened to burst and unleash the gallons of water it held.

Bo weighed his options in his head: he could either hurry up and make his way to the station to work before the rain started or he could stay and spend his day inside. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of rainfall outside the window, mother earth decided for him-- he was spending the day inside.

He made his way downstairs to the kitchen, the weather had him hankering for something warm to combat the chill that the elements brought with it, coffee sounded real good. Bo didn't realize how hungry he was until his stomach announced it's vacant state, he supposed some breakfast wouldn't hurt either, and it wasn't often he had the time or care in mind to make himself an early meal. He just hoped the eggs and bacon hadn't spoiled.

The storm outside had picked up significantly and he didn't hear the small taps from Jonesy coming in from the doggy door in the back, the dog nearly made him drop the egg he was about to crack as she shook the water from her coat, some hitting Bo.

"God damnit, Jonesy, you 'bout scared the mess outta me!" Bo hollered as he watched the dog dry off, "ah, quit that, yer gettin' water everywhere." He grabbed a stray washcloth and wiped her down a bit before he threw it on the ground, an attempt to pick up some of the puddle that accumulated at the pups feet. "What am I gonna do with you?"

After he dealt with Jonesy, Bo turned his attention back to the stove, more focused on his egg sunny side up than the dog at his feet. In the middle of moving the egg around there was a clap of thunder outside that caused him to jolt, the spatula breaking the yolk from Bo's harsh movement. A quick 'fuck' escaped his lips as he watched the runny liquid start to cook in the hot pan, he really wanted them sunny side up. He noticed Jonesy move and watch in interest as he plated the now 'ruined' egg.

"Quit yer beggin', got food in yer bowl, leave me alone." He grumbled as he cracked another egg in the pan before he made his way to start the coffee. Jonesy just sat and watched him before she headed over to lay under the kitchen table and out of Bo's way. Not long after the coffee machine was done rumbling, Bo had him a cup of the steaming liquid with the proper fixings, his plate at his space at the table, and a begging dog at his feet once again. As he brought a bite of egg to his mouth, he watched as Jonesy's interested peaked, she went from laying under the table to sitting upright beside him, her eyes followed the movement of his fork.

"Tsk," Bo sucked his teeth and narrowed his eyes, "now go on somewhere." In no mood to deal with the dog, he dropped his hand to swat her away but Jonesy stood her ground. Her head lolled to the side as she peered up at him with her big puppy dog eyes, a soft whimper leaving her muzzle.

"Nu uh, I'm fixin' to put you out if you don' hush up, don' give me none of that shit, what? Vincent don' feed you none?" He tried his best to ignore her eyes but he couldn't ignore the way she made a noise as he continued to eat. Bo sighed and his eyes fell to the egg that he had messed up earlier. He let out a huff as he fished the food off his plate and looked back at the pup.

"Alright, you wan' it? You gotta work fer it." He lifted the food to show her but as she went to lunge he held his hand up, halting her movements. "What I say? Now," he pointed his pointer and middle finger in the shape of a gun at Jonesy, "BANG!" She stared up at him, tilting her head again and Bo felt a little embarrassed that she didn't respond correctly.

"Damnit, girl," he attempted once more, "BANG! Jonesy play dead gosh-dangit!" Bo's lips curled up a bit as the dog did as told, although not with as much enthusiasm as she would with his other siblings, but he supposed it was enough. Bo plopped the egg down on the ground for her and Jonesy scrambled to eat it the second she heard it hit the ground.

"Actin' like we'on feed you, shameful." He shook his head and sucked his teeth before he finished his plate. He sipped from his mug and peered down at Jonesy from the rim as she stamped her front paws a little, her head jolted as she softly barked at him.

"I'on got nothin' for you, now g'on, get." Bo nudged her out of the way as he got up, piling his dishes in the sink before making his way to the living room, Jonesy followed at his heels.

Bo stood in the middle of room and scanned the contents it held, trying to decide if he wanted to read or watch a movie but he changed his mind the second his eyes fell on his parents old cassette player. His fingers skimmed the cassette holder and stopped on Marty Robbins' "Return of the Gunfighter", nothing too sad and he loved storytelling. The peaceful guitar contrasted the harsh snap of thunder outside; it calmed him.

The tape played as he settled into the couch, his fingers drummed along to 'San Angelo' as it played in the background. While he preferred the twangy sound of Johnny Cash telling the big guys to shove it, he couldn't help but feel something for the expressive guitar, the Tex-Mex style bewitched him. He enjoyed the songs of a lone cowboy who had no time for love, but his favorites were the ones in which an outlaw managed to find a companion despite their wrongs. Love was always described so sickly sweet, and while he was usually put off by it, he couldn't deny he yearned for it, the idea that someone could love a criminal like the outlaws that were sung about, maybe someone like himself.

The once warm cup in his hands was now cold, the liquid inside had cooled while he sat in thought but Bo couldn't bring himself to care. Jonesy stretched as she laid beside him, her head found its way in the man's lap as she nestled in the couch. He bought his hand down to scratch her side, chuckling a bit as her leg kicked before giving her a couple smacks on her side. Her tail drummed wildly against the sofa and she wiggled further into his lap, licking at his hands.

"Alright, now settle down, girl." He smiled and brought his hand up to rub her head, his cup now abandoned on the table beside him. He readjusted himself, careful not to disturb the animal in his lap as he got more comfortable. Bo allowed himself to further sink into the cushions, sighing contently as he laid his head back. He finally relaxed, his eyes closed as he listened to the rainfall's percussive taps as it landed on the earth around him, lulling him to sleep.

Vincent made his way to the house through the tunnels, having finally finished the wax sculpture that kept him up all night. As he made his way from his late father's office, he took notice of how quiet the house was aside from the quiet melody of Marty Robbins that played in the living room. He stopped walking when his gaze fell on his twin and his dog cuddled on the couch, Bo's chest rising in falling as he slept. Vincent watched for a while before he retreated back to the hall closet and retrieved a blanket for them. Carefully as not to wake them, the twin laid it over the two. He grabbed the coffee cup Bo ditched on the table and took it in the kitchen, noticing his brother managed to cook breakfast. Vincent picked up a covered plate that sat on the stove, smiling behind the mask when he realized that his brother fixed him some as well. He retreated to his room with the food, taking one last glance at Bo and Jonesy before ascending the stairs.

[knackfandomarchive]

I shouldn't have written my other reply at 3 am. I read 'human' and thought we were changing the subject slightly. Rereading, I think we're still talking about him being made of metal and stone. I'm still sleepy and rambling.

Intimacy can have some challenges, but the flesh folk are actually pretty durable. I don't think Knack would have to worry about crushing someone in a hug or anything, unless he was so big that positioning becomes difficult.

My sibling tried to bring up that people don't really touch Knack, but I pointed out that he got two out of the three hugs in the second game and both Lucas and the Doctor touch either the back of his head or his shoulder in the first. And that's just what I remember.

But things that you can only do with fleshy organs, he wouldn't be able to do. Kissing would be hard, literally. I think he'd like being petted, and incidentally would be somewhat like a nail file lol. Eating is a thing, too. Food is such a big aspect of many cultures, and it's also part of a common bonding ritual. Knack has a tongue, just as intricately carved as the rest of him, but I don't know if that means he experiences taste. He can see and hear and apparently smell, plus he's powered by vibes and magic, so probably? He'd just make a mess and cleaning himself up would be a pain.

I think I wrote a scene about the food thing, taking place just after defeating the final boss in 2. Because I wanted to play with Ava, dangit! They're having a picnic and Knack grabs himself a paper plate with nothing on it, in the hopes of feeling less out-of-place when he watches his companions eat. A very tired older woman puts a cupcake on his plate, and he's kind of touched by it. He also wears a flower crown made of roses as a flex, because the thorns can't bother him.

Cuddling is a fun one because he doesn't radiate heat, so you can hold his hand or embrace him for a long while without overheating. On the other hand, he can be pretty chilly on cold days, which might again make intimacy difficult. But also, "my hands are cold. See!" is a classic prank.

I think Knack has some fucked up ideas about why he exists or why he is valued, but I'm still trying to figure them out vs. how other characters actually feel about him vs. how they treat him vs. the 'real' reason he was created etc.

Well anyway, thank you for reading and talking to me!

Does Knack have a thing about skin?

I found a poem I wrote two months ago in the middle of the night, where it mentioned warm skin as an important part I think.

There is nothing in either game about Knack's feelings about skin, at least as far as I know of? Not sure why I think it's something to have feelings about.

I'm wondering if he's curious. Not necessarily envious, but maybe, if you want.

It's soft and always warm to him.

I'm wondering if a younger Lucas might need to use lotion to soften a light scab on the back of his hand, where Knack has absentmindedly rubbed his thumb over too much. And while it's just a minor abrasion, Lucas has to decide whether and how to tell him he’s hurting him. Knack would understand, of course, but his solution would be a disinclination to hold hands anymore, or so Lucas worries. That poor boy needs all the attention he can get.

I wonder if Knack would ever try to hold the Doctor's hand, and whether he takes care to be very small when he does. Would the Doctor tell him he's too old?

I dunno where to go from here, so: Posting!

[3wisellamas]

More Boxbot / Voxman Family Headcanons, Jumbo Bonus Edition!

Because I'm still here, dangit!

-Shannon's holographic "phone" is an actual thing that people in the OK KO universe have, but usually it comes built into a watch rather than their wrist. It's a super-expensive model, that she likes to show off to her siblings who are still stuck with regular smartphones.

-Since Ernesto is hollow, he likes to hide things from his siblings inside himself, and forgets about them. It's not an uncommon occurrence for him to split apart during a plaza fight only for confiscated magazines to spill out, or for the Bodegamen to explode him and have snacks fall out like a robot piñata.

-It's also the best hiding place for his diary. Which the Bodegamen always return to him at Boxmore, after reading it cover to cover (and even writing feedback in the margins) of course.

-ALL of the robots have issues sometimes with thinking out loud, and even blurting out embarrassing things or straight-up Boxmore corporate secrets -- the bigger the hivemind, the more likely this is to happen, with Darrell and Ernesto being the worst offenders. With hundreds of mouths to keep shut, sometimes they just miss one.

-Things the Boxbots are forbidden from eating/drinking, since they can melt, get stuck in their inner workings, or otherwise cause serious malfunctions: Marshmallows, chocolate, peanut butter, all varieties of cheese, WD-40, lit matches, dish soap, gummy worms, live worms (Raymond found this one out the hard way on a dare), live birds (ditto for Mikayla), glue, wet cement, broken glass, water.

-Things the Boxbots will eat/drink anyway, and just reboot themselves right after: All of the above.

-The main exception to this is the peanut butter -- Professor Venomous is allergic to peanuts, just like his son, and Boxman threw out everything in the factory containing them the day he moved in. The bots all miss their peanut butter and (petroleum) jelly sandwiches, but not enough to potentially hurt their stepdaddy!

-(They do still keep one last jar of the stuff hidden in their playroom, however, just in case. And so does Boxman, in his office.)

-Also, Mikayla doesn't care what it does to her, she LOVES chocolate -- it's her catnip.

-Mr Logic likes hip hop, and will actually get up on stage and freestyle sometimes when he and Gar go to open mic nights together. He's surprisingly good at it!

-Since he's just as embarrassed about his human feet as Shannon, if not more so, Darrell's got an extensive collection of cute patterned socks to cover them up, and wears a different pair underneath his boots every day that NO ONE is allowed to see but him. His favorite pair have tiny horses on them.

-The robots all wake up at 6AM, on the dot. They have to, in fact, since it's programmed into them -- they're physically incapable of sleeping in, though they can take short naps in the afternoon. They're also programmed to start feeling sleepy at 10PM, though their bedtime is a couple of hours earlier, and they are able to stay up if needed (for instance, if Boxman decides to do a late-night plaza attack...)

-And that line about having to "recharge every night" was accurate -- glorbs naturally replenish their spent energy when not in use, so the robots need to get a full nights' sleep every night or their glorbs could eventually burn out on them!

-Boxman also gets up at 6, or around there, because he MUST crow at the sunrise, every morning. Raymond sometimes joins him.

-Darrell gets migraines, a side effect of having to convert and process all of his electronic thoughts on an organic brain. There's an entire protocol to swap him out for Shannons and Raymonds on the factory floor so he can shut down his hivemind and rest -- however, it can be tough to get him to admit he's in pain and to stop trying to work through it. (He hates the idea of his family having to go through so much trouble for him...)

-When PV found out, as a fellow migraine sufferer, he and Darrell actually bonded over it, and he got a little less resistant to taking "sick days" with his stepdaddy's encouragement.

-After he was upgraded to a robo-adult, Ernesto started refusing to celebrate his birthday, so that the other three quadruplets could have it all to themselves. However, they'll always throw him a small surprise party of his own a week later.

-For their dad's birthday one year, the bots got him a pet goldfish, since he used to be so into aquatic creatures. Boxman ADORED that fish, even if he claimed otherwise, and gave it the prettiest tank decor and fanciest fishy flakes he could. However, sadly, it didn't last long, with the robots doing the cleaning and water changes for him -- fish and rust don't mix. ;-;

-Though it's INCREDIBLY humiliating for them, you can in fact plug all six of the bots into a wall outlet if there aren't any glorbs available for them to run off of. Except for Mikayla, their AC adaptors are sold separately.

-Fink keeps trying to flush cherry bombs down the Boxmore toilets, Bart Simpson-style. It helps that she can just escape down them into the pipes if she gets caught (though, she's also blown herself up this way once or twice...)

-Leggy Jethro did eventually trust all his siblings enough to let them know he was still around, and they helped hide him from Boxman, reattached his limbs, invited him to their dance parties (the one in The KO Trap was him), and even got him out of there when things started getting bad with Shadowy -- though, since all they did was shove him into a waste pipe during one of their stepdaddy's and stepbrother's rampages, they never were sure if he made it or not until he showed up with Boxman at the Plaza Tournament.

-Post-reset, he's allowed to openly be himself as a member of the family! No labor uprisings or union talk at the dinner table, though.

-This was originally posted by someone else, but I love it so I'm stealing it: "Deathro" from Thank You For Watching the Show is actually just Jethro's edgy robo-teen phase. It lasted only a week before everyone else got sick of it, just like Ernesto's.

-The Boxman family is Corn-tholic (Corn Catholic), though Boxman himself doesn't really practice it too seriously. In fact, he didn't practice at all until the kids came along, and he started going to Corn Church again for them.

-He dragged PV along with the rest of the family one week, but the whole "corn-fessing your sins" aspect didn't go too well for our favorite professor, who already has problems facing and dealing with his checkered past...

-The robots are EXTREMELY multilingual, since they can just switch their language settings. However, Shannon and Raymond did try to legitimately learn French together once, though they eventually gave up. The only thing they can really say is "omelette du fromage."

-Sadly, this does not include sign language for the four original bots, though Raymond and Mikayla were updated to include it, and they'll sign to each other to in order to speak privately or hide things from / trash-talk their older siblings.

-Lord Boxman has no idea where Darrell got the Daddy belt, and it haunts him, as does whether his innocent baby boy knows the full meaning behind it. Darrell actually pulled it out of Boxman's old college stuff -- there may or may not have been a LOT of alcohol consumed the night he procured that belt, and he'd long since forgotten it.

-And Darrell does know exactly what it means. The fact that everyone, especially his dad, expects Darrell to act an innocent baby boy forever due to his personality, and expresses shock whenever he displays knowledge or behavior more appropriate to the teenager/young adult he is, really annoys him sometimes. Not that he'll voice his complaints, especially not to his father, but he does rebel in small ways, like his graffiti habit, and brute-forcing his way past the parental block on the TV to watch the PG-13 movie channels. (He absolutely can say fuck, and in fact has done so in private, he just chooses not to.)

-After he and Boxman reconnected, Mr Logic did eventually start visiting his family at Boxmore again, though only on rare/special occasions. And after a LOT of time and consideration, he agreed to let Boxman perform a few upgrades, and bring his construction more in line with the newer robots.

-Logic refuses to have a hivemind set up, though, or any copies of himself made, not even just as a safety precaution in case he's ever damaged or destroyed.

-Boxman made a copy of Logic anyway, and a backup of his memory during one upgrade, and just never told him about it. It's set to activate if something ever does happen to the original Mr Logic, even long after Boxman retires.

-Shannon LOVES roller blading, but is banned from every skating rink in the Neutral Zone, since she keeps trying to use her saws instead of actual skates.

-There's a villain-oriented equivalent to Sidekick Scouts, for minions-in-training, that PV took Fink to a few times, before she decided her own style of minion-ing was superior.

-She first learned how to blackmail people from their annual cookie drives, and even got a badge for it!

-In addition to robots, Boxman is a HUGE car guy, and can give you engine specs on any make/model from memory, as well as ways to tweak them for maximum horsepower. He originally went to Evil Engineering College for automotive stuff, but switched to robotics instead.

-He's actually trying to pass on his mechanic skills to Darrell, who he trusts to do all his own car's upkeep as well as that of the Boxmore trucks, and Raymond, who...can barely change a tire. (He tries, he really does, but it's just not going well in his case)

-Raymond actually does have his motorcycle from that one mobile game, and enjoys riding around the Danger Zone! However, since he stinks at maintaining it, it's almost always breaking down, and he keeps having to go to either his dad or Darrell to fix it.

-He passes it down to Robbie later on, who thankfully DID get the Mechanic Skills. ;v;

-Ernesto once tried to teach PV how to make a spreadsheet in Excel. He somehow managed to crash the entire factory computer system, including poor Ernesto's hivemind server, while trying to add two cells together.

[thelastspeecher]

Halloween prompt, thinking waay back to the Bakery AU. Angie, Stan, and Lute make a bet, winner gets to pick Halloween costumes for the others

Thank you for the Bakery AU prompt!  I love that AU, it’s so Wholesome.  So here’s some more Wholesome content.  Enjoy!

——————————————————————————————

              “That’s not enough punkin.”

              “Not-”  Stan sighed and looked over at Lute, who was watching him make pumpkin cheesecake cookies. “You told me to always follow the recipe after I fucked up that cake.”

              “Yes.”

              “I’m following the recipe.”

              “Hmm.”  Lute squinted at the recipe taped to the wall in front of Stan.  “Oh, I see.  We need to update the recipe.  Last time we made it, it wasn’t punkiny enough.”

              “Why do you pronounce ‘pumpkin’ like that?” Stan muttered.  Lute shrugged.  “Anyways, there’s no pumpkin left.  I just dumped the last of it into the bowl.”

              “That ain’t a problem.”  Lute reached under the counter and pulled out a pumpkin, then plopped it onto the counter.  Stan stared at it.  “Chop it in half, scoop out the guts, roast it in the oven, then ya can use the flesh. Oh, and don’t forget to save the seeds. We roast ‘em fer use in other things.”

              “You’re joking,” Stan said flatly.

              “You were there when we bought a bunch of sugar punkins.  What did ya think we got ‘em for?” Lute teased.  Stan groaned loudly.

              “Angie, your twin is torturing me!” he called to Angie, who was a few feet away.  Angie didn’t respond.  Stan turned. “Angie?”

              “Mm-hmm,” Angie mumbled, clearly intensely focused on decorating cupcakes.

              “Lute is torturing me,” he repeated.

              “That’s nice,” Angie said.  Lute snickered.

              “Whine to her after she’s done,” Lute suggested. Stan scowled at Lute.  “Finish up those cookies, feller.”

----- 

              Stan had begun the next batch of cookies, salted caramel, when Angie finally finished decorating.  She stretched, working out the kinks from standing in the same position for so long.

              “All right, what were ya tryin’ to talk at me about?” she asked, turning to face Stan.

              “Oh, I was just saying that Lute was torturing me,” Stan said with a shrug.  He cracked an egg into the mixing bowl.  “We ran out of pumpkin, and he made me make more.”

              “That ain’t torture.  That’s teachin’ ya some more cookin’,” Angie said dismissively. Stan rolled his eyes.

              “Shoulda figured you’d side with him.”  He looked over at the cupcakes Angie had been decorating. “You spent a lot of time on those.”

              “You really want to win the contest, huh?” Lute asked, walking over to look at the cupcakes.  Stan followed.  He looked over the cupcakes, smiling faintly.  They had been decorated with cutesy, cartoonish versions of mummies, ghosts, vampires, zombies, and other classic Halloween monsters.

              And she tries to say she sucks at decorating. She’s way too hard on herself. What Lute had said registered.

              “Wait, what contest?” he asked.  Lute raised an eyebrow.

              “Ya don’t recall?  You agreed to participate in it, Stanley.  Y’know, the person who wins gets to choose what we wear fer Halloween.”

              “Oh, right, that,” Stan said.  “We’re selling things at that fair tomorrow.”  Lute and Angie nodded.  “The person who sells the most wins.  But why does Angie’s decorating have anything to do with that?”

              “We changed the rules a bit,” Angie said, beginning to carefully put her cupcakes into containers for transportation.  “Now, ya get a point fer each item you sell, and an additional point fer each item sold that you made, even if you didn’t sell that item yourself.”

              “That’s why you’re going hard with the decorating.”

              “Yep!”  Angie grinned.  “Don’t worry, we took into account the fact that yer still new to bakin’ and decoratin’. The cookies are bestsellers.”

              “But they have to be made to be sold,” Lute said, elbowing Stan.  “So ya best get back to work!  You’ve still got chocolate chip, peanut butter, snickerdoodle, and sugar cookies to make.”

              “…And decorate,” Stan groaned.

              “If ya want, I can make some royal icing fer ya,” Angie offered.  Stan shook his head.

              “No, I want a fair fight,” he said.  Lute and Angie beamed.  Lute clapped a hand on Stan’s shoulder.

              “That’s the spirit!”

----- 

              “I fucked up,” Stan said, staring at the pastries laid out before him.  They’d set up their stand at the fair, and now that Stan saw his decorations next to the McGuckets’, he had some regrets.  Lute had taken a route similar to Angie.  His treats – the square-shaped ones like brownies, blondies, marshmallow rice bars, and pumpkin bars – had been decorated with adorable symbols of Halloween, like bats and pumpkins.

              Stan, however, had gone the other direction. His cookies were decorated with bloodshot eyeballs, severed fingers, and brains.  Even compared to the things sold by other stands, his realistic, gory decorations stuck out.

              “I don’t know,” Angie said, picking up a cookie to look at it thoughtfully.  Her nose wrinkled.  “There’s prob’ly a market fer decorated goodies like this.”

              “You did a really good job,” Lute said.  “I have no clue how ya got ‘em to be so realistic. You have quite a talent fer artwork.”

              “Yeah, but that’s not gonna help me win the competition,” Stan groaned.  “Guess I’ll just have to make sure I sell as much as possible.  Speaking of, when’s my shift?”

              “Yer last,” Lute said.

              “What?  But there won’t be anyone here to sell to!”

              “Yer the best at selling,” Angie explained.  “We had to take the edge off that skill by givin’ ya the worst shift.  Lute’s the worst at sellin’, so he’s got the best shift.”  Stan squinted at her.

              “Why’d you make this so complicated?”

              “We’re rather competitive,” Angie said, leaning against the stand.  “It can get…nasty.  The more rules we have in place, the more methods we have fer reducin’ potential bias, the less likely we’ll be sore losers at the end.”

              “…Fair,” Stan said, thinking back to the first time he’d played a board game with the siblings.  By the end of it, the normally amicable brother and sister had been at each other’s throats.  Lute put an arm around Stan’s shoulders.

              “Let’s go goof off a bit while Angie takes up the first shift.”

              “Yes, please leave,” Angie said.  She made a shooing motion.  “You two ‘re scarin’ off customers!”

----- 

              Stan adjusted his eyepatch and grinned at his reflection.  Being pirates for Halloween was the right choice.

              Stan and Lute waited for Angie to finish adding up all the points.  She let out a loud groan.

              “Dangit!”

              “Who won?” Lute asked. Angie scowled.

              “Stan.”

              “Wait, what?” Stan asked, startled.  “But there weren’t any people around to sell to during my shift.”

              “No, but yer cookies were a huge success.  People loved the spooky decorations,” Angie sighed.  She tucked the pencil she’d been using to add up the points behind one ear. “Ya took a risk that ended up payin’ off.”

              “Great,” Lute muttered, slumping against the pickup truck.  “I had a splendid idea fer costumes.”  He eyed Stan. “Don’t pick anything sexy, okay? I don’t want Angie to be dressed in some short skirt ‘n skintight shirt.”

              “I also would not like to see my sibling in a sexy costume,” Angie said.  “And ya best not wear a sexy costume neither.  We have pastries to sell on Halloween.”  Stan rolled his eyes.

              “There goes my plan.”

              “Halloween ain’t until next week, so’s ya have a little while to come up with somethin’,” Lute said.  “Just make it appropriate.”

              There was a knock on the bathroom door.

              “Come in,” Stan said, messing with his shirt. Lute opened the door.  He frowned.

              “Really?  An eyepatch?” he asked.  Stan looked over.

              “You have a parrot,” he pointed out.  Lute flushed slightly and adjusted the stuffed animal parrot affixed to his shoulder.

              “Shut up,” Lute mumbled.  Angie appeared behind Lute.  Stan nodded approvingly at her pirate costume, particularly her tall, dark brown boots.

              “Looking nice, Angie,” he commented.  Angie grinned and adjusted her tricorn hat.  “But, uh, the gun?”  Angie looked down at the shotgun she was holding.

              “Delilah can be part of my costume,” she argued.  “Pirates had guns.”

              “I don’t think they had shotguns,” Lute said. “And also, ya prob’ly shouldn’t bring a weapon into the bakery.”  Angie sighed.

              “Fine,” she groaned.  She stalked away, then returned a few moments later, without her gun. “Come on, fellers, we best open up fer the day.”

              “I’ll be down in a minute,” Stan promised.  Angie and Lute left.  Stan looked at his reflection again.  This time last year, he’d been homeless, living out of his car, on the run from loan sharks.  Now, he had a steady job and a place to stay, even if he and Lute did share a bedroom. He tightened his ponytail and winked at his reflection.

              Not to mention, I make a damn fine pirate.

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Reviews: The Trickening!

Halloween Havoc continues! Louie’s greed and lack of concern for his brother’s feelings or well thought out schedule leads them to a real life haunted house with vampire clowns, dummies, a scary well lady and a gelatinous cube. Because there’s’es always room for gelatinous cube. Meanwhile Della wants to use Launchpad’s dangerous misconceptions about halloween to traumatize children for funzies and Donald had a problem with that for some reason. Also Scrooge is kind of an asshole on Halloween it turns out. No one is suprised. Ghosts, goblins, and full review with spoilers under the cut. 

Happy halloween month everybody! Halloween Havoc, aka my spate of halloween reviews continues as I roll into my first actual halloween episode review of the season! Yeah weird but so far we’ve covered demons getting exorcisims, little girls thinking they can raise the dead, and a horrifying plauge guided by the human incarnation of all that is evil, but not the actual holliday itself. Weird ain’t it? Well that changes with this so as always pitter patter. 

It’s HALLOWEEN here in duckberg, and the mansion kids are planning Trick or Treating. Natural given Huey’s OCD, he has everything planned out a and naturally the kids all have unique and adorable costumes. Huey is gizmoduck, though with a GK instead of  GD, a nice nod to “New Gizmokids on the BLock’ From the original series, an episode I haven’t seen but have heard of so theres that. It’s also because he likely wants to be Fenton’s kid sidekick which.. yeah please do that show. It’d be so fucking adorable. Plus Huey needs to be happy for once without having to go through a gauntlet of misery first. Let my boy be happy. +

Anyways Dewey’s is rather disapointing as it’s a “pirate on vacation” which while hilarious and very dewey, is kind of an anti-climax after months of speculation. Webby is some kind of ancient demon king as apparently in the duckverse the origins of halloween are based on appeasing various monsters, and this is so she can hide from them effectively. And Louie.. is Huey. Which means putting on Huey’s hat and a terribly insulting impression of him. 

Meanwhile Donald and Della are an angel and a devil, with, which I didn’t realize until a tumblr post, Della’s costume being the one one of the boys wore in the classic disney trick or treat short. So that’s a nice nod. Donald wants to nicely give out candy while Della wants to terrify the children. Both end up disapointed as Scrooge instead boots everyone from the house and locks the mansion gates, as he doesn’t like giving out handouts which.. yeah that tracks. 

As it turns out Scrooge also has his own plans.. which are gloriously ludicrous, sounding like something Glomgold would do: He’s going to go trick or treating himself, as when he was a boy, this was the one time of year a poor lad like him could get treats and he worked his tail off to do so and wants to prove he’s still got it. And as we see later SOMEHOW he still gets candy. It’s like if THIS was actually sucessful. 

I would genuinely not be suprised if Scrooge too hadn’t tried to get an oil well from an elementary school this way. As for leaving candy out he leaves out an empty take one bowl which is as clever as it is douchey. So in other words Scrooge in a nutshell. So with handing out treats and scares at the house a non-option, Della and Donald go to see what Launchpad’s doing since Beakly.. is.. I have no fucking idea. NO I really don’t, she shows up for the ending, but before that? If they mentioned where she was I clearly missed it because she’s just.. missing for most of the episode and given every other member of the main cast is accounted for this episode, it’s VERY noticable. Give her more to do dangit!

So yeah we get our two plots, which i’ll cover seperately, then cover the ending where they dovetail together. Kay? Kay. 

The Kid’s Plot centers around Huey and Louie.. specifically Louie wanting to go to a real life haunted house while Huey, as mentinoed has heavily established plans for their night. As for why Louie would go into danger, well as usual for when he does that theirs something in it for him: Rumor has it no kid has ever made it out with their candy.. thus leaving decades worth of candy just waiting to be nabbed and thus never having to trick or treat again. One big score for a payoff.. which didn’t make a lot of sense on first thought and my best guest is whatever preservative Gyro used for Oxy Chew, since it was still edible decades later, was probably spread to other candies since there’s no way in hell Scrooge would pass up a zillion dollar invention like that. Either way works.  Huey is outvoted as Dewey naturally wants the excitment and Webby wants to see if her demon costume works on actual demons. However things quicklky go wrong as they ecoounter a dewey dummy and a killer dummy, as well as a monster clown and a gelatonous cube, which yes. I may not play DnD but I love these things. 

The kids escape the house by accident while tryign to escape and Louie, still being a dick about things, finds out Huey DID know abotu the stash btu avoided it and Louie lays into Huey.. a bit much honestly, feeling he was agaisnt it purely because it wasn’t on schedule.. when you know, Louie could’ve asked to put it on schedule or actually given a damn about this, especially since Huey’s planned their trick or treats EVERY YEAR, so he’s had a full year to ask for this insane idea, or even the short time he’s known about it if shorter. Sure huey might of sputtered a bit, but Louie knows his other siblings, Webby and Dewey could convince him to loosen up and include the house. Louie’s just being kind fo a selfish dick here.. however i’ts not so overwhelming as to overpower the episode, as he has been before and while he should know better about risking his family’s lives after “Timephoon!” it is in character for him to protiize a big score like this over other people’s feelings and it’s not even the first time this season he’s done that. So fair enough. 

But we soon get the second best reveal of the episode: As the kids are backed into a corner by monsters.. they grumble theres no candy and it turns out the monsters.. ARE REAL.. but their traditional monsters like frankenstein, dracula, and the bride of frankenstein, just dressed up like this to scare kids. As it turns out the WHOLE THING is an elaborate yearly scooby doo hoax to get kids candy, with the brilliant twist it’s done by actual monsters> As the vampire points out they can’t exactly shop during the day.. or he can’t at least, so this is how they get candy for the year.. at tribute if you will. Also the Gelationous Cube gets a nice hat as you see above. It’s a REALLY clever twist and I absolutely love it. I DID NOT see it coming and even with some spoiler screenshots I thankfully did not have it spoiled for me. REALLY good stuff. 

As for why Huey’s been so obessed with his planning.. it’s actually really clever and really good character stuff: Huey simply got really into it because back when they were with donald this WAS their adventure for the year: the one time he let them cut loose and have fun, and he got a real kick out of it.. and Louie getting candy for life kind of destroys that. And that’s why Louie still works here.. because he instnatly realizes from this that was the problem and apologizes in his own way. It’s a nice bit of character from both: We’ve rarely had their pre-mansion lives factor in and it’s nice to see it for a change, and it’s nice to see Louie isn’t all dick, just like 20% dick. Unforutnately having no candy dosen’t appease the monsters who are pissed and descend on the kids.. until.. well for the until we have to back up a bit.  So onto the adult plot we go! Della and Donald go to Launchpad whose dressed in a jason mask and ash williams/jason coveralls, weilding a power sander and having barricaded his place. After he scares some children, a bit too much, and Della and Donald are reallyd amn confused, he explains.. and we get the best reveal of the episode.. which given the above is saying something but it’s clear like the “blath” gag in “Astro BOYD” and the non-anthro ducks gag last week, this is one of those things Frank has been keeping under his hat all series.  So as a boy Launchpad crashed his tryke into the mansion, ran into the monsters after reading off a candy wrapper.. and now assumes he unleashed a horde of monsters onto the world every halloween.. and tha’ts what he assumes the trick or treaters are. I just .. dont’ have a lto of words. This is pure comedy gold and easily the best gag of the episode and oen fo the best of the series. It’s clever, fresh, and really fits the character. Naturally Della wants to exploit this to terrify children ebcause she has underlying issues to adress while Donald tries to stop her. Thankfully before Della can get launchpad to scar children for life, Scrooge shows up and fights launchpad.. it’s part of why I also find scrooge’s dickery acceptable as launchpad beats the shit out of him.. it’s still an even fight, as not to suspend disbelief, but Scrooge still looses. I mean he gets out of being trapped in his candy bag easily because scrooge btu still, props to launchpad. So Launchpad decides to go face his fears and Donald and Della decide to stop him before he doesd a muder on a child.  Which leads to an AMAZING climax as Launchpad scooby doo chases the scared monsters around as they have no idea what the fuck’s going on and hte monsters end up really enjoying his scar eof htem and bowing to the master. It’s a good way to end it. After Della explains what’s going on, Louie and Huey decide to explain halloween to Launchpad by taking him to the once house he hasn’t been: the Manor. Scrogoe has finally opened it up, with a line of kids no less, the monsters bond with some kids in line. As for why.. as Webby sadly figures out Scrooge is charging admission, thakns to dewey who thought an all night candy store was a good idea which.. yeah it is. So everyone gets a happye ending and the monsters hang a photo of hte night up in the mansion. A really sweet ending, pun uintended but eh it’s welcome. 

Final Thoughts.  Easily one fo the series best. While the characters are a bit exagerated in places, i.e. della, launchpad , scrooge and louie, it works for the plot well enough and the jokes well enough to make it okay. My only real complaint is a lack of even a cameo from Lena and Violet, as it feels weird to not even have htem in the ending, much less trick or treating with their friends. It just feels odd and could’ve used a throaway line. I get WHY not , as Lena even pre-blue would’ve destoryed the tension with the monsters, but it still feeels really weird to not have them. But it’s a minor quibble in an otherwise REALLY funny and creative episode and a fun halloween treat to revist every year from now on. Really good work.  That does it for this week. For more halloween treats, follow this blog throughout october. So far i’ve done reviews of Demonicsim from Star Vs The Forces of Evil for Tomtober, Croaked, the Casagrandes day of the dead Special and the first of Marvel’s mini-series adapting Stephen’ King’s epic novel The Stand. And until next monday, or sooner if you decide to check any of that out, happy halloween!

[cometcrystal]

I watched my sibling play dangit grandpa the other night for about an hour and how the fuck does anyone like this series. The gameplay is incomprehensible and the trials are 30 minutes longer than they need to be and the executions even existing is so fucking upsetting like. No i do not want to watch teenagers be murdered in remarkably cruel fashions

[halorocks1214]

the law of action

AO3 Link

Word Count: 10100

Summary: The Law of Action must be applied in order for us to manifest things on earth. Therefore, we must engage in actions that support our thoughts, dreams, emotions, and words

Previous Parts (in order): Alan | You are here! | Virgil | Scott | Gordon

these just keep getting longer fellas i dont understand how thats possible but it is. ALSO: REMEMBER IN ATTRACTION WHEN I MENTIONED THAT THESE WERE BEING WRITTEN OUT OF ORDER. HA, UH, KIND OF AN UNDERSTATEMENT I GUESS. but its here! johns pov chapter! im pretty satisfied with it, albeit a few kinks i wasnt really able to work out, so i hope you enjoy it too!

thanks again to @gumnut-logic for the prompts! "Where?" and lightning were this fic's choices. sad to see the last ones go away, but this was still a blast so thank you once more! also, just because the prompts are gone doesnt mean this series will be too ;3

Anger was a rare emotion for John Tracy.

It had to be. When dealing with the cold hard truth of data telling them something wasn't possible or dealing with annoying people who thought they knew better than him or dealing with people panicking in his ear because nobody expected the aftershock of an earthquake to be that bad, he didn’t have a choice. There were a lot of deals in life that had to be made and someone needed to play peacemaker, even if it wasn’t deserved.

It was true that he got the least angry out of his siblings, even compared to Virgil. Virgil might not get necessarily violent like Scott did, or threw caution to the wind like Gordon, or, hell, pulled off whatever John does when someone somehow manages puts him in a bad mood, but Virgil did get angry quite a lot. He just didn’t have as many blatant ways of showing it. John, on the other hand, didn’t have a lot of ticks. Pet peeves, definitely, John was no stranger to annoyance (especially with siblings like his), but not outright anger.

That didn’t mean he never got angry. He was Tracy born and bred, so that meant one the few ticks he did have surrounded the topic of family.

Specifically, his family being threatened.

John wished he was the youngest sometimes. That meant he could say things like let Scott punch the idiot already, he’d be doing the world a favor, and not get lambasted for the immature response. It also meant he could throw tantrums to hell and back and not feel like a total loser.

Like right now for example.

“EOS, I swear, if you don’t open the elevator door for me--”

“No, I won’t.”

Unbelievable.

Groaning and rubbing his face, his hands found their way up to his forehead and through his hair, holding his bangs out of his eyes for a moment. His eyes had many emotions in them, the most blatant being this shit cannot be happening right now, “EOS, do you know you’re amazing? I don’t think I’ve said that enough.”

EOS whirled for a moment, “John, I’ve seen that grin on Gordon. I cannot believe you would stoop that low.”

The grin she pointed out fell flat off his face, “Yeah, okay, you’re right about that--”

“Like I always am.”

“--So thank you,” John was going to strangle whoever defined sass so thoroughly in the dictionary. It left a bad example, “For the reminder, but seriously, I need to get up to ‘Five. It’s… important.”

It’s been a week since Alan was taken.

They’ve exhausted all options.

The only thing that could possibly get him back to them had to be International Rescue’s resources.

But EOS over here wasn’t getting the memo. Her words had that hint of childish innocence behind it. In that way that said there was no innocence whatsoever and she knew exactly what she was doing, the little shit, “John, do you really need to, or do you want to?”

There’s the inflection that John taught her. An inhale through the nose and… Uuuugghh, “EOS, I know the difference between needs and wants, this is definitely a need.”

Another lens blink, another moment of disbelief, “It seems like you have a lot of needs, John Tracy.”

John grimaced and ground his jaw together, mumbling his grievances with the current situation, “Yeah, well, if there’s any trait I truly share with my siblings, it’s that we’re all high maintenance.” His next words were more clear and designed to get the point across, “EOS, I’m not kidding, unlock the door.”

EOS stood her ground, “John, you going up there is one of the most detrimental things to you’re health at the current moment. I won’t let you.”

John threw his hands into the air, “EOS, there’s are whole lotta things that are currently detrimental to my health currently happening, one more thing won’t hurt.”

EOS lens shuttered again and John felt like it was nails on a chalkboard, “You have a point, but I’ve seen you with Scott when he’s in a similar mood. Don’t you tell him he needs to take a moment and think when he gets like this?”

John groaned as quietly as possible. Not too loud, but loud enough that EOS hopefully got the point, “Yes, I do, but I’m not Scott. We are two very different people, you have pointed this out numerous times. We have different ways of handling things, this, and ‘Five is exactly how I can fix this problem.”

That was not how he should’ve worded that. Her lights flickered in sympathy, sympathy, and he knew she finally figured out what John was trying to get at, “John, there may still be a lot I have to learn, but at least I understand--”

“No, EOS!” John snapped before he could help himself. Before she could finish explaining her point of view that was most likely right, but his desperate brain didn’t want to hear it. His brain that was running on zero energy telling him this was taking too long, fix that, “You can’t understand!”

Just like that, John was reminded of why he hated getting angry.

As soon as the words left his mouth, so did the air in his lungs. Through sheer will and determination, the only thing that didn’t leave his body was the little amounts of food he ate over the past seven days, though it really wanted to. He became very pale, and EOS could detect the not-so-trace amounts of fear that fell over his eyes.

Dammit, you idiot. Months upon that past year of work were now going to go down the drain because you blew your lid just this once! First, the call with Alan, now telling the one thing that could kill you in your sleep she’ll never essentially be good enough was--

“I know, John.”

His food came back with a vengeance, but he was bullheaded as hell, and he already caused enough damage. The last thing anyone needed was to clean up vomit. It would’ve been nicer if she got angry at him. He could handle being thrown out into space. He couldn’t handle EOS admitting he was right, least of all over blatantly cruel words.

He channeled the energy his stomach wanted to use into weak words, “E-EOS, I…” What the hell was he supposed to say? Sorry surely wasn’t going to fucking cut it.

Well, whatever he wanted to cut didn’t come up, as EOS continued as if John wasn’t the worst thing on the planet, “I’ve been doing some reading. I understand that I’ll never really understand certain human-based things like you do. You, humans, have gotten close, me being one of the better examples, as long as that’s not considered bragging, but even I’m not at that level yet. But I do at least know you and your habits. I put up with them on a daily basis.”

Because if there’s anything else John needed to fail this week, it was the one promise he made to her. His promise to keep her safe, to make sure she wasn’t treated like a mindless robot by some crazy scientists ready and willing to cut her circuitry wide open like a middle-school science project. While he would never even get close to being a quote-on-quote crazy scientist, never in a million light-years, he surely didn’t follow that middle part of his promise, “EOS, listen, I--”

“Please, John,” and now she was pleading, thinking he was going to ask to use the elevator again. Thinking he wasn’t going to give up, even after all of that. John might’ve laughed if it wasn’t his fucking fault, “I’ll help look for more options if it means you’ll stay here for a little while longer. You should stay with your family. I know how they affect you in those positive ways that you currently need.”

John was abruptly aware of his heavy, almost wheeze-like breathing. If he wasn’t careful, it could delve into one whopper panic attack, which would be so great right now, “Y-Yeah, okay. They probably won’t understand the effects of gravity over an elongated period of time like I do, so I can stay and help with that, at least. Thank you.”

As John turned around, he heard EOS whisper to herself. He could blearily tell it was actually fondness that filled her vocal waves for once, but it still stung regardless, “Idiot.”

Yeah, he really was, wasn’t he.

As he helped look over his Dad’s med-scan with Virgil, when Virgil went looking for something on the other side of the room, his father whispered, “I know this is a bad question right about now, but, is there anything we can do for you? Maybe even I? You look dead on your feet.”

John could only reply to the first half of his father’s statement with a meek, “I don’t know anymore.”

---

16-year-old John Tracy was seated atop his roof, making sure he got the perfect view of the Big-Dipper.

He was hoping to spot a more exciting constellation when he first used his new telescope, but dangit! He was just so excited to get cracking right away! He just got back from his birthday party, Alan and Gordon snoozing in their rooms while Scott and Virgil secretly finished off the cake. That was okay. John was too busy focusing on his new expensive toy to worry about having any more sweets.

His dad could pull some strings when it counted.

Newest model. The only other people who have this baby are scientists at NASA. Happy birthday, John. Sorry I didn’t get you a car like Scott.

Fuck cool cars. John would be on cloud 9 for days with this thing. Scott would call him a nerd for it. Jokes on Scott, he couldn’t zoom about 10 thousand miles into space now, could he?

Right as he nailed it, the world shook. Large arms snaked around his waist and he involuntarily found himself giggling at the contact. As soon as those limbs let go, he blushed at his reaction and cleared his throat. Suddenly, the arms were an entire body sitting down right next to him, speaking with their ever-comforting burly voice, “Hiya, son, I see you just couldn’t wait, huh?”

Rolling his eyes, John turned back into his serious, analytical self once more, “Yup, this thing’s crazy. I’m glad I got out here as quickly as I did.”

Jeff simply grinned. John was always reserved, but Jeff was a good translator for all of his sons, and he could tell that John meant this is one of the best things in my life holy crap, “That’s great to hear. The look on your face when I brought this out of the closet was certainly good enough to last me a few lifetimes.”

John snorted, “I bet it was. I heard Gordon joking about it with Alan. I don’t think I need to see any pictures anymore. I have a pretty good mental image of what I looked like.”

Jeff smiled and sighed, “No kidding. “Like a goldfish with a broken jaw.” Not the most eloquent, that Gordon is.”

Laughter rang out throughout the roof, followed by a few moments of silence. Not awkward, but not really welcomed on John’s part either, “Do you…” Stop it, John, you’re asking for too much, “Nevermind, it’s dumb.”

Jeff tilted an eyebrow, “Oh, is it? I guess you would know if something were smart or dumb, so I trust your judgment.”

Dangit, Dad, why are you so manipulative, and why are you so good at it, “I don’t know. I’ve established I wanted to be an astronaut, right?”

Jeff nodded, “Mmhmm.”

John, for some reason, felt like he needed to tread carefully, “You are also an astronaut. If there was any way for you to be able to… could you… could you come up with me the first time?”

Jeff blinked in shock, and before his son could register that as disapproval, “Huh, well, that’s certainly wasn’t what I was expecting. Sure, I don’t see why not.”

Now it was John’s turn to blink, his mouth gaped, “Wait, what? Are you serious? Aren’t there rules for this kind of stuff?”

Jeff shrugged, his shoulders clearly saying rules shmules, “I’m also one of the biggest entrepreneurs on the planet itself, and one of the most renowned ex-astronauts there are. You would not believe the lengths people are willing to go to kiss my ass. Would you feel better if I pinky promised?”

John’s nose scrunched, “You can never truly promise anything, you know.”

His father chuckled, used to his son’s antics. John was reserved, remember, “Well, you boys always credited me with doing the impossible.”

John continued challenging him, “When we were all less than 10, yeah, sure. I think Alan still thinks you can breathe in space. You. Specifically. No one else. I think he said you only wore the helmet to “protect your secret so the evil movie scientists don’t take you away.””

Chuckles turned into laughter and a clap on John’s shoulder, “Well, glad to see I still got the magic touch at least.” That same arm that playfully smacked him was now wrapped around his shoulders, “Just you wait, Johnny boy, if I can’t get on that ship with you, then you bet your ass I’ll at least be the loudest one cheering in the crowd.”

Then, suddenly, John was right, like he always was.

A promise that never should have been made: broken. A wish never fulfilled.

Dad was swallowed up by the very thing John loved.

No more space stories, no more fun moon facts, there was a void in John’s life as big as the galaxy itself, and he wasn’t sure how to walk around it, or God forbid even into it.

He tried to be the healthy sibling about it. He tried so hard. Getting through high school quicker than most so he could just worry about his family. Scott and Grandma were doing their best, and in so many ways, it was enough, but even they couldn’t bear all of the stress themselves.

But then his high school graduation came and Grandma gave him one of the biggest hugs of his and her life and he realized that he would never get one from his father again. His mom leaving this world was already bad enough, but at least his dad was there and knew how to fill in the gap after years and years of his marriage with her. You didn’t marry a woman like Lucille Tracy and not fundamentally understand how the gears in her brain turned lest you were truly insane. Maybe Dad was. Certainly would explain a lot of things from John’s perspective. Certainly would explain why she married him in the first place. Crazy attracts crazy.

Regardless, the one thing closest to his mom’s warmth and care was gone, and if he spent the night of his graduation party quietly sobbing his eyes out while the others slept, well, then he was glad they kept snoring.

Try as he might, he became just as unhealthy and unbalanced as the rest of his family, but he was more subtle about it. His self-destructive ways weren’t bad if other people had them, but when it came to him, oh, he knew it was the worst thing he could do in terms of recovery. That’s probably why the rest of the family didn’t notice (Good). John was smart, he would know better. Yes, he did, which is exactly why he dived headfirst right into it all.

Focusing on college, getting up into the star-filled void closer to his dead relatives as quickly as possible, focusing on the here-and-now to make sure this shit didn’t happen again. Making sure no family went through what theirs did.

And maybe that’s why, why he couldn’t handle the touch of others wanting to comfort him. Because it reminded him too much of what they used to have, of what they used to be. Too many hugs and kisses from others might wash away what his mom’s and dad’s felt like, and out of all the things they could potentially lose from this, those were the worst possible ones.

John was a Tracy, which meant he was stubborn.

He wasn’t going to lose the last few things he remembered about his parents if he could help it.

---

It had been just under a month, and John finally got what he wanted.

And it wasn’t working like he thought it would, if at all.

He’s been on ‘Five for three days, and for just a fleeting moment, it washed away any uncertainty. He felt back in control, if only minorly, and he held the world at his fingertips once more. Too bad the world he wanted to fix was so far away it felt like it was on the other side of the frickin solar system itself.

He promised his family four days at most. Please, just one chance. We won’t know unless we try. He wasn’t sure what cracked them first, them coming upon dead end after dead end, them finally seeing reason behind John’s argument, or if they just got annoyed with the space monitor after endless nagging and relented like tired parents.

The tiny part of John’s mind that still allowed him to joke kinda hoped it was the third option. “Easy child”, pfft. John’ll show them.

Right, right, a clear head, the most focused of IR, he can’t get unfocused or go too far off track. He’s saved many lives throughout his life, all of them thanks to his level head, but right now, he was arguably saving the most important life of all, so that meant he had even more incentive to stay focused.

In fact, he was so focused, he jumped at the sudden, feminine voice filling the room, “John, I found another article I think you would like to see about most common places criminals… John?”

Crap, he was halfway into the fetal position. Slowly uncurling, John nodded, “Oh, thank you, EOS. I’ll start reading it shortly.”

The noise of her lens adjusting sounded throughout ‘Five again, “Of course. Let me know if you would like me to start searching for a different topic, though. There has to be a limit to how many “You wouldn’t believe this” articles one can take, and I think I’m finding it really quickly.”

For the next few seconds, John was suddenly filled with a rush of determination he had been trying to get after their little confrontation in front of a locked elevator door to ‘Five.

She had been helping him out so much the past couple of weeks. Running unnecessary tests for him, searching parts of the web only she could search without getting tracked by some secret mafia, letting him know it was okay if he couldn’t get everything right the first time when two months ago she snapped at him for getting a simple algebra equation wrong due to lack of sleep. She had been especially patient with him recently, even after their little spat in the hangar, and John wasn’t sure how to process it. A tiny part wanted to resort to anger again because he clearly didn’t deserve her, but the more prevalent parts preferred something like depression or even apathy.

She had been making sure his world didn’t spin off its axis, and John couldn’t even tell her sorry until now.

“EOS, I’m sorry.”

She stopped moving, turned around and let her lights blink yellow for only a moment, “For what, John?”

The man in question waved his hands around in front of his face, lost, confusing her more. With a sigh, he explained, “For a lot of things, but mainly from a few weeks back when we had that argument. I said something that wasn’t okay, and I didn’t have the balls to own up to it until now. So, I’m sorry. I crossed a line I shouldn’t have even been near.”

For a little bit, it was quiet. John waited as the A.I. contemplated his words. Then, she spoke her judgment, “Well, I know you are. You haven’t exactly been working off your butt over nothing, right? Plus, reliable sources say one of the ways guilt manifests is anger. I’ve seen that with the rest of your family. It would make sense yours would too.”

John blinked. Part of him was expecting her to not fully understand why he was apologizing, but the other wanted her to just so he could get over this, just so he could let go of even just the teeniest amount of guilt he had, “EOS, anger isn’t a valid excuse. What I said was wrong. I don’t believe those words and you shouldn’t either. The whole point of this partnership is to show you that there’s more to life than just calculations and probabilities. It’s kind of hard to see that when the one person who promised to be different went and screwed it up anyway.”

John hoped EOS was at least questioning things now instead of letting his words go in one ear and out the other. Her next words said she was doing exactly the latter, “Okay. I don’t disagree with you, John, but I don’t know why you’re so hooked on this. I understand. We don’t have to worry about this unnecessarily anymore.”

Yes, you do understand. That’s the fucking point.

They weren’t getting anywhere, yet John didn’t even have the energy to groan in annoyance. He could even get his eyebrow to twitch.

All he could do was simply lean his head back against the wall and let his hair stick up against it like static electricity was flowing through it. The real reason it was sticking up was probably due to a mixture of Zero-Gs and grease from all of the showering he hasn’t been doing, however. His eyes had deep rings around them, and for a second, EOS thought about how relative age could be as a number while John softly spoke, “The Hood was an angry man, too, you know. He felt slighted by our family and wanted us to feel the same. It still doesn’t make what he did right.”

EOS thought about his words before coming to a logical conclusion, “Well, that’s certainly a leap in logic. There’s a big gap between simply yelling because you’re annoyed and literal kidnapping. One gives people a sour mood, the other gives them a significant amount of jail--”

“Yes, EOS, I’m aware of that,” John brought his hand to his face, but underneath it was a grin, telling the world that he was feeling fond exasperation more than anything. EOS was more obtuse than him sometimes. It was one of the few things of himself he wished she didn’t copy so easily. He sighed and brought his hand back down, “I’m just... putting things into perspective. I want you to see why my words were wrong. It would make me feel better if you did.”

EOS hung still, letting John’s admission roll over her wiring like a wave of electricity, “You have a lot of needs and wants. What takes precedent?”

More inflection. This time, John welcomed it. It gave him something to stand on. John wanted a lot of things. Alan to be home safe and sound, Dad to have not disappeared for nearly a decade, for his brothers to stop slowly killing themselves, for himself to stop, but the needs of the many, even the needs of one, outweigh the wants of a singular man like him, but, “Well, needs obviously, they’re necessary, however… it’s okay to be selfish every once in a blue moon. It doesn’t make you inherently bad.”

It was advice he parroted many-a-times to his family, some of them more often than others, seldom to himself if at all.

Scott, it’s okay if you have to tell them you can’t make this business conference.

Virgil, you can count inventory in the morning. You didn’t get any sleep last night either.

Gordon, if you can’t smile for a day or two, that doesn’t make you a bad person.

Kayo, you don’t have to patrol every night. We have security cams for a reason.

Alan, I know we tease you, but you missing a chore or two isn’t the end of the world.

Grandma, you already do enough for us, you barely cooking for us is the least of our worries.

That last one might be more for the rest of his family than not, but hey, two birds and one stone. Keeping his back against the wall, John stood up straighter against it, face suddenly serious, “In fact, wanting to be selfish is one of the best ways to tell that you’re human. You can’t escape it. It only becomes bad when you end up only being that.”

EOS sat in silence, her lens flickering in that way it always does when she was signifying she was about to pass judgment like a Goddess, which she seemed to be doing a lot more recently, “Well then… If I’m allowed one moment of self-reprieve, I suppose I should say that those words did… hurt.”

John grimaced despite very much understanding that he deserved it. The return of the inflection didn’t exactly help. Pushing himself away from the wall, he felt the metaphorical weight fall off his shoulders, “Yes, they did, and while they weren’t okay, it is okay to say that they weren’t. I still am very sorry.”

EOS adjusted her camera, probably to stall for time, “I know you are, John. I still forgive you, but am I correct in assuming I’m allowed some time to… recover isn’t the word I’m looking for, but--”

“Yes, EOS,” John helped her explain her own point, “Recover is a good word. You’re allowed that if you want it.”

John wasn’t sure how, but it seemed like EOS visibly relaxed, “Thank you, then, for letting me do that. This.”

For some reason, John did too, “Of course.”

It was a soft kind of awkward silence, where both parties had something on their mind but they weren’t entirely sure if they wanted to say it out loud. This is why EOS appreciated John more than the others, he simply let silence be silence. It allowed her time to think, unlike how Scott and Virgil kept asking questions, or how that awful duo made noises and messes only to have a chance at making people laugh. As if that was the most important thing they needed to do.

The nights the youngest called John were endless with his constant babbling that tended to grate her circuit boards. The only reason she let it happen was that John seemed to loosen up at the interaction. He became less weary, less worried-filled. He seemed to greatly enjoy the audial presence of Alan Tracy, let alone the way he lit up when the youngest actually showed up in person. It was just unfortunate that it seemed like the kid could never keep his mouth shut.

Then again… from what John said, the whole reason there wasn’t any more Alan was because he did keep it shut. At the worst moment possible. Now there wouldn’t be any more babbling period. Alan was gone, and the whole family was suffering from the new silence. EOS reasoned it was from the general idea of forced silence instead of just freely being able to leave the room or being able to tell him to quiet down, but maybe it was more than that. She could make another list of options to consider.

Plus, it was weird to think about a future where all of those video game walkthroughs she was forced to save would never be used again. John insisted that they weren’t just wastes of megabytes, so...

Hmm.

“Could you…” EOS trailed off, and before John could comprehend the unusual behavior of the A.I., she started speaking again, “Could you tell me more about Alan? I’m starting to think I judged him rather harshly.”

John took a moment to register her words and promptly snorted, “Well, most of your assumptions about him aren’t entirely unfounded, but that’s one of the joys of being an older sibling, I guess. Surprises around every corner,” there was regret in her voice and John knew he had to treat this as gently as he would a newborn child otherwise he would never hear it again.

EOS flickered, “I thought you didn’t like surprises.”

Uh, “Well, not usually, but there are a few from time to time that I could look back on and call them… quaint, in a sense.” Suddenly, a memory resurfaced, and John found himself grinning like he was doped up on nitrous oxide, “Yeah, they can have good surprises occasionally…”

It was a week before his next rotation. Scott would be back home in about three days, which allowed the second born to actually have a few moments with his only older brother. He was looking forward to it just as much as Scott was. Right now, though, he had to make sure he got the right angle.

Right as he did, he heard the soft pitter-patter of footsteps come up the ladder, and when he turned around, he was met with a bundle of freckles, “Oh, hey Alan.”

Hi, Johnny, the kid squirmed out, Is it okay if I sit next to you?

At first, a list of things wanted to fill John’s head. You look dead on your feet, you should be asleep, you have a lot going on this week so why are you wasting sleep? but instead of any of those filling the void that was his brain, John simply nodded, “Yeah, sure, come pop a squat, Sprout.”

John looked away right before he could watch Alan’s nose wrinkle in displeasure. Despite the usage of the nickname (that Alan secretly liked, don’t think you could pull that wool over our eyes, little bro), the kid still toddled over and flopped himself down right next to his older brother. Sighing, the kid leaned his head on John’s arm and absentmindedly stared out into space, both figuratively and literally. Satisfied his brother was comfy, John went back to his current objective.

As John examined the night sky, he also carefully looked over Alan out of the corner of his eye. Every bruise that John could see was finally dulling out into that familiar greyish-yellow as bruises do, and the sight was enough to calm any negative emotion being created from the reminder. John refocused on his telescope to help as well.

The kid had been through one hell of a week, bullies being their typical selves. Every Tracy outside of Scott and Gordon had their fair share of their own experiences with nasty people, and it wasn’t even the first time they’ve left their special kind of blue-and-black marks, but seeing it on Alan was… worse, somehow. Virgil had unsavory anonymous notes at ‘best’, and John knew first hand that their hits bruised more than just physical skin. So to see Alan get the same treatment and not say anything...

John was starting to understand why his older brother greyed so easily.

Speaking of which, Scott was pretty peeved at the idea of not being there for Alan. Because of this, John made sure to be the sole one to call him and inform him of the awful news while the older brother was out at his designated Air Force base. John wanted to see with his own two eyes that Scott wouldn’t do anything rash and made himself liable to be put on some kind of list.

You would think he wouldn’t be that stupid, but the Tracys are known for breaking expectations over their sweet, sweet kneecaps.

(“Scott, you’re not going to steal an Air Force jet just to come and beat up some dumb kids.”

“Watch me.”

“They’re only a year older than Alan.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

John pinched the bridge of his nose, “Listen, we already scarred them enough as it is, let alone their expulsions. Grandma’s threats to the adults were liable for a government-mandated therapist, Virgil just being there had them running for the hills, the computer I was sporting sent chills down their spines and throughout the hallways, and that’s not even to mention Gordon’s threats to the kids themselves. Seriously, where would a 15-year-old even get the tools to do that?”

Scott visibly relaxed at John’s point, but he still sat a little taut, not fully accepting the idea of people being cruel enough to hurt a literal ray of sunshine, “Fine, fine, I still want to talk to the kid over a call at some point. He was the one who dealt with those idiots.”

John’s shoulders deflated, “Yeah, you got me there. He’ll be back with Virgil and Gordon soon enough, you can see him then.”

Scott smiled in a way that washed away the greys in his hair, if only for a moment, “Awesome, I--”

John wasn’t completely done, “But I’m going to be with Alan while you talk to him. I don’t trust you to not be in search-and-destroy mode, and the last thing Alan needs is an angry you with no buffer. Besides, I’m pretty sure we have the same questions. I can play the angsty-Scott translator tonight. Usual fee, 10 bucks each word.”

The groan that managed to fill the whole house despite the tiny speakers was one John would never forget.)

Too lost in thought, John didn’t catch Alan’s movements at first. Leaning away from his telescope, John focused on Alan, “Sorry, Allie, did you say something?”

The child simply shrugged and smushed his chubby cheeks against John’s side, shaking his head, followed by his hands, I just wanted to see what you were doing.

Ah, that made sense. Alan had been continuously signing for the past year because of the obvious, so John rolled with the punches. It was always funny when they talked about these years in the future. Alan talked, Alan said, Alan brought up: it was always metaphorical, and nobody could believe them when they said Alan was fluent in ASL, let alone because he could actually go half a day without talking.

It was ironic because even with no words, Alan still managed to be the loudest thing on the planet. His hands always screamed with excitement whenever he felt like ‘talking’, and no brother ever felt like shutting him up. Especially when it was so easy for Alan to simply not shake his hands to hide the fact that he was in trouble--

Right, don’t go there. John shook his head to bring himself out of his thoughts and replied to the non-verbal admission, “Just looking at the stars. Recording their coordinates and whatnot.”

A small gasp had John jerking immediately away from his scope to see Alan suddenly very worried, maybe even fearful, But won’t you lose your eyes?!

Aha, what? “Allie, you’re going to have to give me more than that.”

John almost didn’t catch what Alan was trying to explain with the way he frantically shook his hands even faster than before, Mrs. Gatsen explained to us that the sun was a star too, but we’re not allowed to look at it for too long because it’ll steal our eyes! I don’t want you to lose your eyes, Johnny!

Ohoho, the part of John’s brain that was all about the smartsy stuff was gearing up to have a full-blown seminar of sorts, but the way the kid seemed so sincere in his worry, in his fear, John felt partially bad for giggling instead, “Oh, Allie, no. Here,” John was activating his inner Virgil and Scott with the way he grabbed the youngster and placed him in his lap, “Yes, the sun is a star, but there are many kinds of stars. Most of which don’t hurt your eyes. Take a look.”

Alan gave one last sentimental look at John, who nodded again just to reassure the blonde before the boy gulped and put his eye against the tool like Johnny did. This time, the gasp that came from him was more magical, more child-like, as it always should be. John watched on as the kid became stuck to his telescope like glue.

Suddenly, Alan leaned back into John, somewhat knocking the wind out of him. Honestly, now that he was thinking about it, John realized he was pushing it by letting Alan sit next to him in terms of his personal comfort zone. He loved Allie just as much as the rest of the family, but letting them in, letting them get close, was veering dangerously close to that specific ‘hug’ territory like he and his parents had.

Before John could explain that in a child-friendly way, and hopefully in a way where the too-smart-for-his-own-good kid couldn’t pick up on the hidden message, Alan looked him directly in the eyes and confidently signed his wants, Can we do this more often? Can we?

Just like that, John’s mind blanked. Alan wanted to do something with him. Not swim with Gordon, not music with Virgil, not do, well, anything with Scott, Allie found something that he would like to do with John.

Huh, interesting, “Yeah, sure. If we can’t do it in the next week, then the first thing we’ll do when I come down is stargaze, because that’s what it’s called: stargazing.”

Alan started gripping his arm tighter and leaned more into his chest, nodding vigorously at the news and looking back to the sky with newfound wonder. Letting Alan be, abruptly forgetting his grievances with things like touch, John went back to his telescope. After another minute or so, John reached a point where he needed both sides of his body, except it looked like one of them was going to be kept immobile unless the spaceman said something to Alan.

John tried doing just that, just without looking away from his device, “Hey, Allie, I don’t mind the sitting-in-my-lap and stuff, but I do need my arm back to--”

Snoring.

Oh.

Jerking his head to physically look at his sibling, John found Alan passed out and squeezing his arm like a freckled koala bear. The ginger flinched a little bit at the drool dripping onto his sleeve, but the way Allie melted into him made him-- actually, he was very suddenly aware that this whole night he hadn’t really been thinking at all, and that thought made him continue to stare mindlessly at the dozing brother.

He always thought about, well, everything. What he was going to say, what he planned to do tomorrow, about what the future held now that they were down their second and last parent. If he didn’t think about it beforehand, he rarely did it. He had to make sure he went through all of his options before haphazardly jumping into the pits of hell.

Yet the way his younger brother looked at him like he was the world himself tonight made John throw all of his training to be as cautious as possible out the window in a need to comfort and care for the small thing in front of him.

It was shocking to his mind, yet he didn’t resent just being able to do without worrying too much. Was this how smother complexes started? Did he ever drool on Scott’s arm? Still staring at Alan, John’s mind continued to be robotic as he simply let his younger brother be and went back to his telescope. Alan had been needing to get a little more sleep lately anyway.

Yeah, it was fine. He could figure out how to follow up on his words later. It wouldn’t be that hard to figure out a way to squeeze Alan into some of his already-planned stargazing nights while making sure the kid still got sleep. Also, John’s used telescopes wearing a cast and sling before, he might prefer two arms, but he has been okay with only one.

If Grandma yelled at John for spending too much time on the roof again, well, she would have to get over it. Alan got an extra hour of sleep and that was all that mattered.

EOS watched as John finished the story. Once he was done, he continued to be quiet while grinning at nothing. All he was doing was simply staring at the floor… It was slightly creepy, and EOS cleared her nonexistent throat, “Huh, I didn’t realize he got a lot of his interests from you. Maybe… maybe you could show me why he did. He can too. More perspectives always get more data.”

John blinked and was immediately taken out of his trance. He brought his hand to his mouth and cleared his throat, “Yeah, he-- wait, what?”

EOS sighed. This is another reason why she snapped him out of it; his inability to listen to someone right in front of him. She simplified her words, “If Alan comes back, can you two take me stargazing? I don’t think I’ve ever seen what the stars look like down there, or, at least, I never looked at them long enough to understand what you all find to be so fascinating about them.”

John blinked a few more times with his mouth slightly gaped. He looked around nervously before bringing his turquoise eyes to look EOS directly in the middle of her camera, “Yeah, sure, EOS. When Alan gets back, that’s the first thing we’ll do.”

EOS didn’t mention anything about the correction of if to when, “Thank you, John, I would like that very much.”

John nodded and floated back to his tech, “Of course. Now then, we’ve got work to do. I’ve been meaning to stargaze recently anyway.”

He still had one more day up here.

And a baby brother who needed saving.

How hard could it be?

---

Very.

Growling in frustration, he thumped his fist against the wall next to him rather harshly.

Not enough to leave any kind of mark or dent, but enough for him to focus on the tiny amount of pain it gave him. He vaguely heard EOS’s lens flare at the sudden noise, but he was a little too focused on why he felt the need to hit his girl.

It was the end of the last day, and he didn’t make it any further like he thought he would.

Some bleak part of his mind was hoped, prayed that his girl would have the tools to find their baby brother. He was willing to bend her entire satellite to be able to reach the far ends of the galaxy if he had to, but even he had to concede that she wasn’t enough. The Hood wasn’t dumb, unfortunately, and he wasn’t going to go easy on them. That is if he was even going “to go” on them to start with.

While it wasn’t the first time he failed spectacularly, this failure certainly hurt the worst.

Half of him wanted to curl up into a ball and forget everything for a moment (or maybe forever), but the other half won out in terms of what his body contorted into. Instead of curling up like a prickly hedgehog, he leaned backward to be floating with his back to the ground and his face to the ceiling with his face in his hands. Meanwhile, EOS silently gazed from her camera in the corner. Watching John struggle this way was… new, and it twisted her wires in a way she wasn’t sure she could describe.

EOS watched him mumble something. Huh, peculiar as ever. Adjusting her camera, she tried small talk, “What was that, John?”

Still mumbles, but more intelligible, “... I need to drop the ‘s’.”

A flicker of yellow, nothing but pure confusion for once in her robotic life, “The ‘s’ of what?”

Suddenly, the astronaut was standing (well, floating) upright with a look of disdain, but EOS could see that it wasn’t meant for her, “Of ‘she’. It’s not ‘Five’s fault, God, it never is, but maybe… maybe it’s mine.”

All of her programs should allow her to say something. Anything, sugarcoated or not, would be beneficial to this seemingly one-sided conversation, but this was the moment she learned that humans could be faster than computers since John steamrolled right to the point without hesitation, “He wasn’t good enough sounds better. Nothing I’m doing is getting any results. I gave my family false hope that I would find something and now I have to go to them and essentially break them. They were already barely holding it together as it was, but when the “smart one” in their family says there’s nothing he can do…”

She found herself going against the logical part of her program-- because despite the idiot John Tracy could be, when he made an argument that had any kind of evidence you never could go against it-- the first time in, well, ever, in an attempt to comfort her partner, “John… I think you’re grasping at straws here.”

He looked up from the floor, and EOS had to shrink her lens at the sight of unshed tears in his eyes, “Who was the one that called him?! Me! He was standing there only a few rooms over, probably terrified out of his mind, and I didn’t know. I let him slip between our fingers because I was so caught up in the moment and I hate myself for it.”

EOS found herself speechless for once, and the few droplets of tears that floated in front of John’s face didn’t help. She had been trying her best recently, especially recently, to understand the fluctuations of human emotion, and she was pretty sure she had decent tabs on at least John nowadays, but this was something unexpected, a thing her programming never really liked to deal with. It involved lots of new calculations and new sims, why, it made things seconds longer when they didn’t have the time to deal with it!

Her electronic voice box made a noise with the intent to say something, as she thought she finally had the time to deal with it, but just her luck, more unexpected things made her reapproach the issue at hand, “John, look out! The Chaos Crew!”

Blinking out of his self-deprecation train, John was uncharacteristically panicking, “What, where?” After doing a full 180, John eventually saw one of his comm radios with the familiar pink symbol floating above it.

John’s pupils shrunk and his eyebrows tilted downward in that unfamiliar emotion: anger.

Fuck this.

The mood change was as fast as the speed of lightning. John practically flung himself to the communication device on something akin to a warpath. No longer regretful or depressed, John was filled to the brim with fury at the sight of one of the men that was a constant thorn in the Tracy family’s side, “What the hell are you doing here? How the hell did you--”

“Wait wait wait!” Fuse pleaded, making John momentarily pause enough to listen, “I’m not good at this like my sister is, so this connection is going to drop soon. I need you to reopen the line yourself so I can explain what I’m here for! Trust me, I swear I’m not--”

Zip.

Blinking at the lack of noise, John slowly turned his head to look at his A.I. to get her opinion on the matter. It wasn’t a positive one, that’s for sure. Her dots were bright red, and for the first time in a while, he found himself flinching at the sight and sound of her, “It wouldn’t take much of me to get rid of the nuisance, you know.”

Taking a few deep breaths, John shook his head, “No, EOS, give me a sec. Don’t send him careening into space.”

Yet.

With shaky hands, John did as Fuse begged and found the comm line the guy haphazardly threw together. Right as Fuse jumped at the sight of one of the Tracys actually hearing him out, John’s voice spoke coldly, “You have five minutes. Go.”

Fuse gulped, “W-Well, I suppose the first thing to do would be to apologize. I’ve caused a lot of messes for you and your family-- heh, ‘messes’ probably doesn’t even come close to explaining what I did-- and I realize that now, so I want to--”

Ah, that tactic. The one where they try so desperately to seem like they were repentant. John wasn’t familiar with it, but Scott sure was. Shady business owners trying to shy away from their consequences made the eldest very aware of how slimy those in power could be. Scott complained about it a lot, so John made sure to always remember it just in case he ever ran into it himself.

Preplanning wins again in the Tracy household. You should listen to John’s advice more, Gordon, “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.” John muttered mostly to himself and moved in a way that signified something was going to happen.

Fuse sputtered and stopped immediately. Crap, he was going about this wrong. These were all things he was suddenly genuine about, he really was, but the Tracys didn’t want useless apologies at the moment, and he understood that. Hopefully, he didn’t understand it too late. Right before John could do anything to him or give any kind of command to his satellite, Fuse blurted the information he should’ve said the first place, “I know where he is!”

John felt like the Earth flew right off its axis.

Everything froze, including EOS. His hand was out in front of him for some reason, probably subconsciously reaching for some kind of button, as he absentmindedly listened to the whirl of ‘Five and his brain fully processed what Fuse was promising, “... What?”

John was keenly aware that sounding so weak, so hopeful, was something that Fuse could spinelessly abuse if the man wanted to, but John had a good lie detector. The words that fumbled out of half The Chaos Crew’s mouth were sounding good, great, and John could tell that he wasn’t bullshitting anything, “I know where he’s keeping your bro. I mean… shit, what The Hood did wasn’t right, maybe it never was, but I know this specifically is--” a break in his speech in an attempt to words things better. Fuse failed, “Bad. I just…”

John’s head involuntarily tilted at the way Fuse trailed off. For once in his life, John was at a loss. This was highly uncharacteristic from what John had seen of The Chaos Crew, and the astronaut was so flabbergasted he couldn’t even begin to come up with any possible ulterior motive behind Fuse’s actions at the moment.

Suddenly, Fuse looked back up with big eyes, almost reminding John of Alan a little bit. Not in the obvious ways, because Fuse was on the verge of seven feet tall and built like a truck whereas Alan was the teeniest thing on the planet, but… John could see similar traits of innocence in them. The eyes of someone desperately clinging onto the last few shreds of hope they had, but still ready to do what's right because of it. Because even if the light at the end of the tunnel was small it was still worth fighting for.

Fuse, seeing that John wasn’t going to say anything, bit the bullet, “I don’t know, call it selfish, call it smart, but if The Hood is willing to do something like this to someone so young, I… I don’t want to be apart of it. I can’t give any information about my sister, I’m no snitch, but I want out, even if it means spending the rest of my days in a GDF cell.”

John was suddenly aware of a burning question, “Wait, how old are you, Fuse?”

A tired sigh, aging Fuse to something that was probably three times what he was going to say, “I turn 20 in two weeks.”

John sharply inhaled, “Jesus, I… I didn’t realize you were that young.”

A lot of things made sense quickly and abruptly like they always do for the ginger.

If The Hood was willing to do this to someone so young, that didn’t stop him from doing this to someone like Fuse. The logical conclusion the now ‘ex-villain’ made probably danced the wildest jig in his head, and before anyone could clap their hands, he got as far away as possible. John wouldn’t be surprised if The Hood made idle threats for not following orders or for “being stupid”, so Fuse had every right to feel threatened.

Jeez, he was probably terrified at the implication. A dark, buried part of John selfishly thought good, it sucks you had to learn the hard way, but now you see why we all hate him, but the first thing that came to his mind was something unexpected yet expected all the same.

John was reminded of Alan again.

Except Alan had four older brothers to run to when the monsters got too big or too frightening.

…

Scott was going to kill him, “Park her over on the left and come in. We’ve got a lot to talk about. Bring inside whatever you think will help.”

EOS’s shrill John! ringed throughout the room, yet it was overruled swiftly. Fuse’s mouth was wide open, “For real?”

John couldn’t tell if he was losing the knots in his stomach or forming completely new ones, “Yes. Don’t do anything funny, though. I have eyes everywhere.”

Fuse gulped again, yet he was very business-like with his next words, “Of course.”

The line cut a millisecond before John wanted it to. John knew exactly why, “Listen, EOS--”

EOS was suddenly in his face, and it spoke miles at how far she’s come that she wasn’t blaring any alarms in anger, “No, you listen, John Tracy. I cannot believe the level of ignorance you are displaying!”

Gordon always joked about her being his daughter, but right now, John’s eyebrow twitched in annoyance at the feeling of being scolded by an overbearing mother, “I get this may seem like I’ve lost it--” jokes on EOS, who says he hasn’t at this point? “Listen, there’s nothing else left to go off of, and I know this makes me look like a crazy man desperate for information that might not even be there, but--”

“No buts!” EOS shrieked, “You told me that if you followed a sentence with a “but” that what you were about to say shouldn’t even be considered an option! What is making you throw all of my training out the window?!”

John’s mouth became very dry. This conversation was taking a very different turn, “Wait, EOS, why is this all about you suddenly--”

John was starting to regret giving her more mobility at the sight of her jamming her camera directly in his face even more, “It’s not just about me! This affects you too! You said you always based your decisions on the here-and-now, so I should too, so why am I the only one doing so?! You’ve seen what he’s capable of!”

John’s mind tended to be made of gears, and all of them began spinning at the same time. Dammit, he didn’t pick up on this because he didn’t even consider it a factor: EOS being scared. Hell, it wasn't even considered because the last time he remembered her being this scared was when she thought he was a threat during the first time they met (was it really that long ago?). She was scared that Fuse was going to hurt John like he hurt the rest of the astronaut’s family. Like he hurt Gordon.

The only difference is that nobody could get to John like they did Gordon, so that left the ginger at an impasse if the small chance that Fuse was here to hurt him came true.

John found it very hard to breathe all of a sudden. Closing his eyes and struggling to get enough air in, he realized a fundamental problem. EOS was based on data and things that have been recorded, and so far, the only things recorded about Fuse was that he was hellbent on hurting the Tracy family, a family that John was apart of.

She didn’t know any other way to feel about the guy, she didn’t have any other example.

John would love to be that way too, honestly, to just focus on the data. Numbers never tended to be wrong, and the idea of being a simple number-crunching bot would make life a shit-ton easier, but he can’t. He’s human. One that’s very much willing to go against the numbers and probabilities if it meant helping his family.

A rarity for John, to follow his gut and nothing else, but at the end of the day, he was a Tracy, and following his gut was as familiar to him as it was to name all of the immediate constellations in the summer’s nighttime sky, “EOS, I know it’ll be hard to believe me, hell, I’m having trouble believing myself, but Fuse isn’t here to hurt me. The here-and-now is different for reasons I don’t have enough time to properly explain, okay? If there’s anything to believe, believe in the trust you have in me to make the right decision like I always do.”

EOS made no noise, not even a flicker of her lens. He expected her usual sass, something along the lines of, Who says I trust you, moron? but what he got punched away what little air he managed to collect, “... Do you promise?”

That was the million-dollar question. Of course, he couldn’t. He didn’t like making promises after the age of 12. Too many probabilities, too many what-ifs, made promises somewhat of a theoretical impossibility. But just like that night on the roof with Alan, John was able to not think, “I promise, EOS. You wanted to go stargazing with me and Alan, right? Fuse might be able to let us do that again.”

‘Family’ was a Wild Card. Nothing was possible, yet everything was at the same time when it came down to it. ‘Family’ was what made Scott go from day to day without keeling over. ‘Family’ was what got Virgil to sleep at night when he just couldn’t by himself. ‘Family’ was how Gordon managed to keep smiling and joking despite everything in the world trying to make him stop. Hell, ‘Family’ was how their father kicked the word impossible right in the groin and live.

‘Family’ might have been why Alan was stuck in such a shitty situation, but it was also the reason the kid was willing and able to go that far in the first place. He learned that selflessness from his ‘Family’, after all.

John was intent to use that fact to the fullest.

EOS’s lights blinked in contemplation before she quietly spoke once more, “Do I have permission to shock him if he makes even the slightest suspicious movement?”

John rolled his eyes yet grinned all the same, “Sure, only just a little voltage, though. Right in the ass. Would be a nice pick-me-up after all of this.”

Well, despite the year they’ve had, John wasn’t aware EOS could snort. Another sign things might be going right for once.

The door swwwshed open and Fuse floated into where the two hyper-intelligent beings were hanging about and got straight to the point, “Thank you. I hope… I hope I don’t let you down.”

John found himself light as air, and it wasn’t just the zero-gravity this time, “Sounds good. Let’s get cracking.”

While the first thing he did back on Earth was scare his father and his immediate younger brother shitless, the way they and the rest of the family lit up at the plan he and Fuse came up with (after making sure nobody killed the dude, which was surprisingly more difficult than expected, and boy was it expected) made it all worth it.

Well, maybe the sight of Fuse occasionally jumping and yelping at a strange pinch in his bottom with no known cause was worth it too. John wouldn’t tell his brothers that, though, he was the responsible one, remember?

You always made me look at things differently, EOS. Thank you.

[langwrites]

Lang Plays Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I’m playing them in this order: Blue Lions, Black Eagles, Church of Seiros, and then Golden Deer. (I organized them by how likely it is to have a true final boss who is actually as relevant to the lore as the opening cutscene. And also because I thoroughly spoiled myself about that.)

So, after sinking what the game tells me was eighty hours into a single playthrough, here’s my thoughts on the first thing I tackled.

Spoilers below the cut.

Very Early Game (Blue Lions):

It’s the Fire Emblem Dad! (I played Path of Radiance. I’ve seen this dude before.)

Hi Claude. Sorry, I’m gonna steal every single one of your peers I can catch. Same to you, Edelgard.

Dimitri is so awkward it’s almost palpable.

Aww, Ashe and Annette are adorable. Mercedes has that dead anime mom hairstyle that sets my teeth on edge, but she’s super nice. It’ll take me longer to warm up to the boys, I think.

Felix is the token “I MUST BECOME STRONGER” myrmidon character. Gotta have at least one per game, apparently.

Sylvain = Sain. Token womanizer cavalier. His support list is pretty odd, though.

Dedue = the guy who done punch things. And he *has* to punch things, because he’s slow as hell and his speed growth isn’t great.

What the fuck is that strength growth, Dimitri. What the fuck is that Charm growth.

I was so close to making him my team’s designated Dancer unit, you guys.

Beleth is gonna be their teacher and somehow I don’t imagine this going super well.

Pre-Timeskip School Life:

Once again, I regret not being able to support with characters who’ve firmly attached themselves to the other two houses. (Which is only like three people in my “gotta catch ‘em all” playthrough, but whatever.)

But I can support all the recruitables, which is...something that took me a long while to do.

The first person I stole for the Blue Lions was Caspar. The first person who straight-up joined was Flayn. Yay, auxiliary punchers and auxiliary-auxiliary healers!

Ashe, your adoptive father really didn’t need to die. You were right. It was all bad all the way down.

Flayn gets kidnapped and I fuck around for a month raising everyone else’s supports and realizing Seteth’s too distraught to train my Lance level. Dangit.

I missed the opportunity to support with Leonie entirely because her personality put me off for the first few in-game months, and it turns out you can only start her support chain while Jeralt is alive.

Dammit. Now I’ve gotta train with lances.

What’s-his-fuck over at the village sure did do a thing, didn’t he. And if he hadn’t dropped his disguise just then he could have gotten away with it.

Their scheme would’ve failed faster if anybody around this fucking monastery could apply logic to shapeshifter shenanigans.

Seriously, no one should have trusted Monica.

You vanish over the course of a year, and come back with your personality totally inverted.

Tomas/Solon had just demonstrated what it looks like when these dickbags drop cover, and then everyone subsequently failed to make the correct deduction. If they hadn’t, Jeralt would’ve lived.

Dad-stabbing: A theme of Fire Emblem games. Seriously. Check out the huge list of dead dads (which goes all the way back to the first game in the series.)

Also dead moms, but for some reason moms are less prominent in the series as a whole.

For the purposes of this analysis, we are also including every single boss who had kids. Which isn’t most of them, but god damn there are still a lot of dead dads.

Dorotheaaaaaa be my frieeeeeeend

Yoinked Linhardt after finally showering him in enough gifts to get his sleepy ass to sign transfer papers.

Swiped Marianne, Bernadetta, Petra, Ignatz, Alois (kinda), Shamir (sorta), Manuela (iffy), Hanneman (yoink), Catherine (see previous), Hilda (how), Lorenz (woop woop), and Leonie (sigh).

The Death Knight remains, for the moment, unpillaged for his Dark Seal drops. This time it was an accident: I killed everyone else in the room except for him and a priest/mage, but then that last dude squared up with Felix and died.

All the points I poured into their associated skills and their supports, however, left one big gap:

DAMMIT FERDINAND, I’M TRYING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE. WHY DO YOU CARE SO MUCH ABOUT HEAVY ARMOR. RAPHAEL JOINED UP DESPITE THAT.

(I got a B-rank support with him and he popped into my office to say he was transferring, nbd. Ferdinand’s B-rank is locked until after the timeskip.)

tl;dr: The only recruitable character I missed was Ferdinand.

Seteth and Gilbert don’t do shit until post-timeskip and Rhea isn’t playable, so w/e.

As soon as I say that, Seteth and Flayn have a paralogue. It’s a beach level. I hate beach levels and desert levels. Seteth gets to be MVP because he’s the only jerk who can fly.

They have a little speech after the paralogue level that reveals that they’re actually father and daughter, not siblings. And the whole story of this little subplot basically confirms that they’re dragons.

Neither of them transform over the course of the game, and that’s okay.

Ruh-roh, Raggy. Let’s see who’s really under the Flame Emperor’s mask--

“AND I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT TOO, IF NOT FOR--oh wait teleportation exists. BYE!”

Dimitri proceeds to thoroughly lose any chill he ever pretended to have, and I’m 99% sure the villain in question isn’t actually old enough to have caused the Tragedy of Duscur. Unless the biographies in the notes were lying.

Now, the backup dancers over there sure as shit are, but logical reasoning has its time and place.

Whatever. Time for stabbing.

WE ALREADY KNOW THESE PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF MAKING THEMSELVES LOOK LIKE ANYONE, MASKS TOTALLY UNNECESSARY. THE VICTIM ONLY HAS TO DISAPPEAR FOR A WHILE.

WHY AREN’T WE CHECKING THAT AS A BASIC PRECAUTION.

THERE HAVE BEEN THREE OF THESE CREEPS ALREADY.

Their name is too long and I should call them Morlocks.

But seriously, check for infiltrators.

What passes for strategy around here: Take Paladin Dimitri, plunk his overleveled ass down on a corner where all the enemies’ targeting reticles converge, and wait five minutes for all the counterkill animations to play out.

If I wanna try the same with Sylvain, he needs to be backed up by at least Annette and probably Felix. Maybe even Mercedes if she’s not already busy slinging Physics around.

Dimitri’s fine with just sitting around with a forged Steel Lance and poking holes in everything.

Beleth can do the same, but is much more reliant on dodging and not just facetanking axes.

The little “no damage!” sound effect is still very satisfying. Yes, game, my Defense/Resistance has escaped the bounds of your damage curve.

Dorothea became my Dancer unit, because despite Dimitri having twenty-eight Charm to her nineteen, he begged me not to and also is better sitting on a corner and killing everything.

Huh, the monastery is sure being invad--you know, Edelgard, if it wasn’t already really obvious that your faction is basically the “villain route” in Samurai Warriors parlance, using giant mop-headed demonic beasts as shock troops would probably give it away to observers. If they weren’t already running away in abject terror.

The principle from How to Train Your Dragon still applies: A downed dragon is a dead dragon. If Rhea didn’t want to basically get mobbed, she should’ve stayed in the air and acted as flying artillery for the Knights of Seiros with her mouth laser. She could’ve sat on top of a wall and fired with relative impunity.

Sure, some demonic beasts can fly, but there weren’t any in that cutscene and the flying ones have, mechanically, one less health meter than the landbound ones.

Also, they’re pushovers.

And there’s the washed-out creep brigade! They look like the Grimleal, but with more feathers and less of a tan.

...And there goes Beleth, off to have a five-year nap.

Welp.

Post Timeskip:

Oh good, it’s been five years. Beleth, I hate to break it to you, but you’re probably at least slightly dragon at this point. Check your ears if you have a chance.

Tiki canonically napped for like 99% of her three thousand years in Awakening, ironically enough, so it’s not like dragon-people are exactly early risers.

Poor rando gets asked “what year is it” like that question is ever used outside of fiction. Beleth doesn’t read time travel books, I take it.

“oh you probably shouldn’t go to the monastery, it’s like super haunted and shit”

“sorry what was that i couldn’t hear you over the sound of me climbing up to the monastery”

Eyyyy, it’s a lance-wielding pirate.

...Hi, Dimitri. Where’d your macaroni hair go.

You know, it’s not surprising that Dimitri would think Beleth was a hallucination. He spent a lot of time yelling at his inner demons even pre-timeskip, after taking a couple of severe psychological shocks.

But he absolutely should have walked into her and been surprised when he knocked them both on their asses.

He’s been spending the last five years stabbing people, hasn’t he.

Yep.

He looks like he fell out of Game of Thrones.

Blue Lions! Rah rah something team chant. Rah rah Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen~

None of you people trained any of your skills. In five years. Dimitri you were a paladin. Did you eat your horse.

You are all getting sent to boot camp.

Hi, Gilbert. Why are you playable now all of a sudden. Why is your speed a fucking two.

THIS IS WHY MIKLAN HANDED YOU YOUR ASS.

Once again, the “plunk Dimitri’s overleveled ass down on a corner and watch people die” plan is still a valid strategy. I still don’t know where he gets all this strength (and charm). Like, goddamn.

Annette got cornered for like five turns because I was too cowardly to put her in range of a Brawler.

Then she killed him with a critical Fire.

So, I guess Felix’s remarks about Dimitri’s issues make some sense now, but he should still stop making them. I know he’s a tsundere par excellence, but still.

STop TalKing AboUT KilLing PeoPle

Warning: Sympathetic Boss Approaching.

Look, most “sympathetic” bosses in Fire Emblem kinda fall flat. The better ones are placed in the way of the player characters while they’re in the middle of a low point in the emotional arc and get utterly wrecked in a flurry of misdirected fury. Sometimes the characters even feel bad about it afterward. The worst ones are the ones who are just utterly devoted to someone who’s earned everyone’s ire by being a utter fucking asshole.

Good: Mustafa from Awakening and Shiharam from Path of Radiance. Good people forced into bad situations. Or just cornered. Henry talked up the former long after he got a Chrom to the face, and the latter was probably the best-written of the “aw, I wish I didn’t have to kill him” bosses I’ve run across.

Bad: Levail from Radiant Dawn. There is no getting around the fact that General Zelgius was a bad dude. Levail holding him up as a paragon of knightliness and swearing to serve him out of sheer admiration did not make him even marginally better.

We sure did kill Caspar’s uncle, didn’t we. I’m sure that won’t come back to bite us square in the ass. Not after he had that “this guy is a person who cares about stuff” cutscene to remind us of his pixel humanity.

I’m sure it’s fine.

Bwoop, bwoop, everyone say hello to Ferdinand and Lorenz! And say goodbye to Ferdinand, because he didn’t allow himself to be recruited pre-timeskip, isn’t recruitable post-timeskip, and then I had Felix kill him with Thoron.

Lorenz can rejoin us, though. He doesn’t count as an enemy commander once he’s been smacked down to 0 hp.

HI, DEDUE. WHY ARE YOU ONLY LEVEL TWENTY. GET IN THE BACKLINES AND DON’T TALK TO ME UNTIL YOU CAN ACTUALLY DAMAGE ANYTHING.

(Seriously, tho, I was waiting for Dedue to come back for two reasons. One: I did that paralogue of his way back in Part One and he did not get to die after all that. Two: Part of Dimitri’s epic slide into “spear-wielding mountain man who runs around killing people with his bare hands” had to do with Dedue “dying” during the timeskip. That jackass cracked a smile for the first time in ingame years thanks to the world’s punchiest bodyguard coming back alive.)

(Fortress Knight is still the worst class.)

I totally didn’t pay any attention to what, if anything, actually separated Master classes from Advanced classes other than my inability to get my hands on Master Seals. So Ashe is a Bow Knight now, while Felix made it to Mortal Savant (wtf is that name and why is the class model basically a samurai) and I spent a very long time level-grinding Sylvain’s Reason skill to make him a Dark Knight. I aimed for Gremory with all my spellcaster girls, but I admit to not really paying attention to specifics.

(I ended up with five Gremories: Annette, Flayn, Mercedes, Lysithea, and Dorothea. Bernadetta became a Bow Knight and Marianne promoted eventually to a Holy Knight. Dorothea also ended up taking Mortal Savant, which she didn’t ever use.)

(Seteth became a Wyvern Lord and Dedue eventually made it to Warrior.)

(Byleth qualified for Mortal Savant and used it precisely no times.)

(It became pretty clear that I just threw Master Seals at people whenever the possibility of promoting them came up.)

(Certification is a weird system.)

I stopped paying a ton of attention to supports around the time I realized that Ferdinand wasn’t going to be recruited no matter what I did in the final month before Shit Went Down.

Then I started paying attention again like two chapters from endgame, because I remembered some A-ranked supports meant that the characters could get paired endings.

I also stopped ignoring Cyril and started using him as an adjutant, though his stats never quite caught up to Seteth (also known as the only instructor unit I ever consistently used).

Cornelia is absolutely a Morlock plant. That is a face she just made, even in flashback.

I wish we could've seen Dimitri’s now-dead uncle, if only because I’m curious. Also, what did Edelgard’s mom/Dimitri’s stepmom look like?

Why is there always a fire level. I saw it earlier thanks to doing Ingrid and Dorothea’s paralogue, but it’s a Fire Emblem stock level type and I hate it.

Okay, yeah, this area totally got nuked. Magitech nukes, but still. It’s still on fire centuries later? Why??

Felix’s dad is a Holy Knight. Why do I have to keep his ass alive on a field when half the enemies are barely Advanced classes, never mind Master classes.

Oh right, because I want the exp for myself.

Rodrigue is possibly the single person here who can make Dimitri’s murder-bender change direction even slightly. He also gets along with his actual son so much worse than that. He’s like Annette’s dad, but with actual verbal confrontations.

There’s Caspar’s not-exactly-forgotten aunt, here to “secretly” avenge her dead brother. Dude, could you say something about that?

Three levels later: I thought we were done with the dad-stabbing. 

Felix has officially lost Too Many People in pursuit of keeping Dimitri alive. As has everyone else, frankly.

In other routes, Dimitri absolutely runs his campaign off a cliff.

Here, he turns his life around. More or less. Gotta make the choice to get better.

Time to take back the Kingdom’s capital, like we’ve not been doing for four chapters now. Finally.

Cornelia is absolutely a Morlock plant. This is like the fourth character who supposedly did a complete characterization 180 after a period of being actually useful to other people. Goodbye, civil engineer we never knew.

I think the only infiltrator who did things properly was Solon, but he still dropped his disguise for no good reason early in the game. That operatic level of drama is not a trait that helps him survive a month later. Just goes to show that the Morlocks don’t have more than one type of good judgment at a time, I guess.

I know I’m supposed to avoid the giant doom robots, but...

No, it turns out I can just have Dimitri and Beleth stand in the middle of the killzone and destroy them for fun and profit.

Ding dong the witch is dead.

Welp, time to go save the Alliance, which is getting schooled by the Empire.

HI CLAUDE.

I MISSED YOU AND YOUR FAITH IN HUMANITY. And specifically in Dimitri, for some reason? I think he kinda stabbed your soldiers a lot the last time you two met, but feel free to keep being the Best Character.

Your bodyguards are top-notch, man. One of them got hit with anything over the course of the entire battle.

Your general Judith, however, necessitates Flayn using ALL of her Rescue spells just to keep her alive.

I still had to send Ashe to keep a Falcon Knight off you, but no big.

And also had to send Hilda and Petra to kill the Asshole Reinforcements to nick their stuff.

Dimitri sat there and dodge-tanked all of Arundel’s attempts to kill him until the team killed everybody else. Then Dimitri poked him and he died. Dimitri OHKOs everything except monsters now, and that’s only because they have multiple health meters.

And then Claude fucks off to become king somewhere else. Okay then. It was a nice speech, though.

Killing the Death Knight for fun and profit and now Mercedes is crying. Shit.

Doesn’t this place get vaporized in every other route?

Did killing so many Morlocks by accident lock us out of seeing an intercontinental ballistic missile?

(And it is by accident, because this route is like the only one where the Morlocks are incidentals instead of the main problem, partly due to Dimitri’s tunnel vision and partly just because they don’t drop their disguises upon death.)

Well, I guess it’s time to confront Edelgard.

It’s completely valid of her to look at the guy who was threatening to rip her head off with his bare hands and hang it from the gates of the Empire’s capital a little while ago, and then go “Yeah, diplomacy’s shot.” That Dimitri stopped being quite so all-consumingly homicidal a bit ago is not actually reason to try throwing herself on anyone’s mercy. I feel kinda bad for her, since she’s been pushed into this corner and her ace-in-the-hole allies are basically decapitated, and I stole all her potential friends back during the school phase of the game.

Also, sunk cost fallacy.

Still walloped the entire roster of the second-to-last level, down to killing Hubert with Lysithea. Hilda and Cyril killed all the bird demons.

On the final level, which starts immediately after the previous one, three characters got totally destroyed by the sheer number of mages floating around: Dimitri (whose Avoid finally failed him four times in a row), Hilda (same), and Dedue (thirded). Seteth miraculously survived taking 68 points of damage from a single attack, and then later went on to take Edelgard’s last health bar off with a crit.

Weirdly, Beleth’s Avoid was just fine. Finally let her use the Sublime Sword of the Creator and she killed most of the Gremories that took out Dimitri and Hilda.

And everybody we could save per plot constraints got to live! (Except Ferdinand.)

I’m willing to save him on subsequent routes because killing him made Dorothea sad.

Next time: Lang plays the route that screws over most of these people in service of killing the God-Pope.

[brookutoh]

Scenario where kuroo likes the reader but thinks shes out of his league and everyone is telling him that he should go for it but he doesnt and at a Christmas party, they're slightly drunk and end up making out?

This is fantastic because I’ve been craving Kuroo lately, AND I managed to fail at finishing this for long enough that it’s now Kuroo’s birthday, so what better way to celebrate than with 3k words of drunken party shenanigans?

Thanks for the prompt, and enjoy!!

“Kuro, you’re smiling at your phone again.”

The sudden voice of his best friend - despite its usual quietness - caused Kuroo to jump about a foot in the air. Embarrassment at being exposed so openly quickly turned to annoyance at Kenma’s words.

He huffed. “What, am I not allowed to smile at my phone now?”

Kenma granted him a look over the top of his PSP, one that Kuroo could swear he’d seen in a nightmare before. It was the phrase ‘don’t fuck with me’ in its rawest form.

“It’s what you’re smiling at that’s the problem,” Kenma muttered.

Kuroo frowned down at his phone. He was once again texting you, and you were once again causing him to grin like an idiot at your messages. He couldn’t help it; you were just so cute! Kuroo would be the first to admit that he loved talking to you, whether that be via text or face-to-face, he just loved hearing your thoughts and opinions, and when you told him a story - even if it was as simple as how your day went - he would listen with rapt attention as you spoke.

This was where the problem lay: sure, you were a fantastic friend, and Kuroo was thankful every single day that you’d been introduced all those months ago. It just sucked that he wished that you could be more than friends.

Apparently, this thought was written all over his face because he heard Kenma sigh from his spot on Kuroo’s bed. “Just ask her out.”

“Sure, if it were that simple I wo-”

“It is that simple.”

But it wasn’t. At least, not to Kuroo. It was a difficult situation, both because he knew he would be rejected straightaway and because the amazing friendship the two of you shared would be ruined as soon as you found out about his feelings. More than anything, he was terrified of your imminent disgust that someone like him felt that way about you. And that was something he just wouldn’t be able to handle.

Another sigh from Kenma. “She’s not going to reject you.”

Kuroo fixed him with a look. “Not even you’re that observant.”

Saying nothing more, Kenma simply rolled his eyes and went back to his game, ending the conversation then and there. Kuroo finished typing out a text to you, and then your next message caused him to pause.

[13:03] Her : oh yeah!!! are you going to the haiba xmas party??

Kuroo blinked at the screen twice, before looking up to his preoccupied best friend. “Lev’s having a Christmas party?”

“Yeah, this day next week. Thought I told you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Oh.”

Not paying any attention to Kenma’s disinterested tone, Kuroo asked, “Are you going?”

Stupid question, as shown by the sudden grimace on Kenma’s face. Still, he didn’t answer immediately, and Kuroo felt a snippet of pride when the blond answered, “Maybe.”

Probably Lev had pestered him enough about it that Kenma had given in somewhat. If he did end up going at all, it would either be for only a few minutes or he would spend the night in some unoccupied room playing video games.

But if you were inquiring about the party, then did that mean you were going? Kuroo hadn’t been to many of Lev’s parties, but ever since the boy had turned 18 a few years ago his parents had started going on vacation more often and leaving the family’s enormous house (Kuroo would call it a mansion, really) into the hands of Lev and his sister. With little-to-no persuasion from the older Haiba sibling to the younger, they’d started throwing massive parties wherever possible. They were somewhat notorious by now; the last one Kuroo had gone to - before he’d met you - was still a very large black hole in his memory, and the tiny fragments he could actually remember involved dancing on a table, seeing Bokuto naked, and walking in on at least twelve couples in compromising positions throughout the house.

Needless to say, he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about you being involved in all this. Typing out a quick question to ask if you were going - to which you responded with an enthusiastic ‘yes!!!!’ - the decision was made for him.

[13:17] Kuroo: Yeah, I’m definitely going :)

***

You stared at yourself in the mirror. “Isn’t this dress a little… revealing?”

Behind you, Alisa was also staring at your reflection, arms crossed and a smile on her face. “That’s the point! We have to give Kuroo-kun a treat, don’t we?”

Not for the first time tonight, you blushed at the mention of Kuroo. Since she’d discovered your embarrassing crush on one of your closest friends, the gorgeous half-Russian had taken it upon herself to help you ‘break out of your shell’ (her words) and snag him. While you hadn’t exactly taken much of her advice up until this point, the encroaching couple’s holiday of Christmas was making your desire to be more than platonic with Kuroo reach new levels.

Thus, why you were now looking at yourself in Alisa’s full-length mirror while dressed in a very short, very low-cut, and very sexy red dress. Festive though it may be, it was certainly not something you would’ve picked out for yourself to wear, but Alisa had bought it specifically with you in mind, having presented it to you as a Christmas present as soon as you’d stepped foot in the Haiba residence one hour ago.

You had to give her credit though, your self-proclaimed surrogate older sister had taste. And possibly had also taken your measurements without your knowledge, because this was the most well-fitting piece of clothing you’d ever worn in your life. And, okay, the thought of Kuroo seeing you like this almost definitely had you eager for tonight.

“Okay,” you nodded, turning around to face Alisa properly. “I’ll wear it.”

“Great!” She squealed. “Now just let me do your hair and makeup, and there’s no way you’ll leave the party single.”

You rolled your eyes as she got to work, but ultimately you were grateful for all her help. Now all you had to do was talk to Kuroo. That would be easy, right? He was your friend, you talked to him all the time. There wouldn’t be any problems.

***

Kenma walked into the room you were hiding in. He granted you a single glance before wandering over to sit beside you on the bed and pulling a Nintendo Switch from his apparently quite deep jacket pocket. “We could play MarioKart.”

You shook your head. “No, that’s okay. I just… need to talk myself into leaving.”

“No pressure.”

Kenma was a good friend, you’d always thought. Quiet, wickedly clever, and ridiculously observant. So observant, in fact, that he’d discovered your feelings for his best friend before you’d even realised them yourself.

Which is why your next question was, “Is he here?”

A nod. “We came together.” A pause. “He’s looking for you.”

“…Maybe if I hide up here, then-”

“Lev told him you were here. Also, he would come look for me if he couldn’t find you.”

Dangit. Looks like you’d have to face him after all. In this dress. Which, okay, did look fantastic on you and was building confidence where previously you’d had none, but this was Kuroo.

“He likes red,” Kenma hummed, almost inaudible.

The dress was red. The shoes were red. The jewellery you’d borrowed from Alisa all had inlaid rubies. The pins holding your hair in place were red. Your lipstick was blood red.

You shot an accusatory glance towards the boy beside you, who shrugged. “Alisa asked. I answered.”

You couldn’t help it. You laughed. Your friends were simultaneously wonderful and terrible. You caught a small smile on Kenma’s face at your amusement, and only then did you gesture to yourself and ask, “Do you think he’ll like it?”

Kenma gave you a look. “You could wear a trashbag and he’d still want to drag you upstairs.”

Oh. Well. Now your cheeks were red to match the rest of you. Still, you nodded. “I should probably go then, shouldn’t I?”

“Please.”

You stuck your tongue out at him for that but ultimately found yourself leaving the room and standing in one of the many long corridors throughout the house. The floor beneath you was practically pounding with the loud beat of the music pulsating through the building, and you could already hear drunken cheers and what sounded a lot like an owl hooting. Or maybe that was just Bokuto, you weren’t sure.

Not for the first time, you found yourself considering how lucky you were that you actually knew your way around this place, easily finding your way into the secret passage linking this hall to the floor below. Dusty and dark though it may be, it had you emerging into the very crowded kitchen a minute later. A quick glance over the partygoers showed no tall bedheads, but it did show a very exhausted-looking Akaashi.

“I don’t know where he is,” was his greeting to you. “Would you like a drink?”

Well, this was a party. You may as well indulge in some aspects of it in between searching for a certain middle blocker. You nodded and were immediately handed a cup of something bright pink and somewhat ominous.

“It tastes like strawberries,” Akaashi supplied, before knocking back his own cup.

You supposed it could taste like a lot worse, so you mirrored his actions. It did taste like strawberries, but once it had slipped down your throat you were left feeling like you had downed straight vodka. Which, considering you were in the home of two half-Russians, was probably the case. Deciding you needed all the help you could get tonight, you finished off the rest of the drink. Without a word, Akaashi took your now-empty cup and refilled it.

You stayed there for a little while longer, taking note of everybody who entered the room, but failing to find exactly who you were looking for. You kept drinking, and Akaashi kept refilling your cup, until the two of you were flushed and giggling about something Kuroo had said or Bokuto had done.

“Oookay,” you laughed as you calmed your breathing down. “I need to stop drinking.”

Akaashi nodded. “Me too, I think. This stuff is bad.”

“Very,” you agreed, before remembering what your goal for tonight was. “Ugh, I need to go find Kuroo now. How is it so easy to lose him? He’s so tall!”

Akaashi thought for a second. “Mmmaybe he’s with Bokuto?”

That made sense. “But where’s Bokuto?”

From elsewhere in the house, the unmistakable sound of hooting could be heard. Akaashi looked at you with pride. “Found him.”

Grasping onto each other for support since walking in a straight line was difficult, the two of you made your way to the other side of the house. The games room was about as full as the kitchen had been, but almost everyone in here was crowded around the large pool table in the centre, as it was currently being used as a makeshift table by both Bokuto and Iwaizumi to arm-wrestle, although they were currently locked in a stalemate.

Bokuto glanced towards you and Akaashi, face lighting up in a grin at seeing the latter. Before he could call out a greeting, however, his focus was drawn back to his hand as Iwaizumi made an attempt at pushing for the win.

You took this opportunity to glance around the room, feeling yourself deflate ever so slightly when zero bedheads could be found. You were positive he’d be with his best bro, this was just getting ridiculous now.

As you watched Akaashi leave you to go and cheer Bokuto on, you wondered if maybe every part of this was just a sign that things weren’t meant to be. Well, that thought certainly depressed you. Maybe it was best to retreat for now, your head was pretty fuzzy after all.

It took you far longer than usual to climb up the nearest staircase, but you felt an immense amount of pride at yourself for actually making it to the top. Now your next course of action was to find a new hiding place, this time one without any other occupants.

You did feel a semblance of guilt deep inside as you pressed an ear to each bedroom door, like you were ruining everyone’s privacy, but it was far better than actually walking in and seeing something that would give you the urge to gouge out your own eyes.

Finally, you found a quiet door, bursting in none-too-subtly to find that it was not as empty as you’d first assumed.

Kuroo looked over to the door with a jolt from his seat on the bed, before his eyes widened exponentially at seeing you. And then they looked down the length of your body, and then back up to your face. And then, despite the drunken flush on his cheeks and slight glassiness of his eyes, he smirked that ungodly smirk and winked.

“Red looks great on you.”

Well, fuck him. How dare he be that attractive despite being a little blurry around the edges? How dare he beckon you over with an unsteady hand, and how dare you stumble over in record time?

How dare he, you continued to think as you straddled his waist and eagerly planted your mouth onto his own. His hands came up to rest on your hips as he kissed back with the same amount of enthusiasm, and soon you were cursing him once again, this time for almost definitely having smudged your lipstick.

When his tongue made its way into your mouth you tasted strawberries. Your hands making their way up to nestle in his unruly hair, you pulled his head back just enough to disconnect your lips.

“I was looking for you for ages,” you whined breathlessly.

“So was I,” he replied with an overdramatic pout. “Where were you?”

“I was…” Oh yeah. “Hiding in a bedroom. Then Kenma came in.”

“Why were you hiding?”

You looked away. “You.”

“Me?”

“You,” you nodded.

His brow furrowed. “I was hiding from you too.”

Oh. “You were?”

“Yeah. I drank a lot of the pink stuff and then wanted to kiss you real bad.”

You gasped, eyes snapping back to his. “Me too! Maybe it was a love potion.”

“Maybe,” he grinned. “It worked.”

You blinked for a second, before the realisation of where you were and what you’d just done hit you as quickly as your blurry mind would allow. “Hey, it did!”

He laughed. “Maybe we should kiss some more, in case it wears off.”

“Okay!”

And then you dizzily met him again.

“WAKE UP SLEEPYHEADS!”

Oh no. That was way too loud. That was illegally loud. There would be noise complaints. The police would be called. You would all be arrested. What would prison do to you? Would you be the same person afterwards? Would you be able to find yourself a nice prison wife? Would-

“Please let us live,” came a hoarse voice from beside you.

Wait. Beside you? Who was beside you?

You slowly cracked one eye open, every part of your nervous system complaining about the sunlight filtering into the bedroom through the window. It took a few blinks to rid yourself of all residual blurriness, but once that task had been completed your focus zeroed in on the body next to you in bed.

In… bed.

You were in bed, and this person was next to you.

And then said person rolled over to face you and all blood drained from your face.

“Mornin’,” Kuroo whisper-greeted you, a very sleepy - and very attractive - smile on his face.

Suddenly you were very conscious that he was shirtless. And with the hand hidden beneath the duvet, you quickly had an exploratory roam across your body to find that you were wearing your underwear, and nothing else.

“M-Morning,” you replied with all the confidence you could muster. Which was none.

Alisa, still standing at the door after having woken you both up as if she were Satan’s daughter herself, watched your exchange with nothing short of glee.

“Glad to see you two had a good night,” she grinned, pointedly looking down at a heap of red fabric on the floor. With a blush, you realised it was your dress.

Next to you, Kuroo rolled his eyes. “Nothing happened, Alisa.”

She shrugged. “Don’t hate me for assuming. Come downstairs when you’re ready, there’s coffee and bacon in the kitchen.”

She closed the door behind her as she left, and your stomach growled at the mention of food. But before that, you turned to meet Kuroo’s gaze. “Did nothing really happen?”

“Well, we made out for a while and then fell asleep. But other than that, no.”

You nodded, letting out a sigh of relief. “Okay, good.”

When he spoke next, his voice was quiet. “Do you hate the idea of it that much?”

The sudden heartbroken look on his face had you flailing. “N-No! I don’t at all, I’d just prefer if something like that didn’t happen when I was very drunk.”

“So you’d be okay with it if you weren’t drunk?” He asked, a smirk now replacing any sadness that had been on his face.

“Or hungover,” you added, in case he had any ideas about how to spend the morning. “But yes, I’d be fine with it. I kissed you, remember?”

He grinned. “You did. You could do it again if you wanted.”

You really did want to, but a memory from the night before had surfaced. “Did you mean what you said last night?”

“About liking you?” You nodded. “Yeah. I thought you were way out of my league though.”

Your mouth dropped open. “How?! I thought you were out of my league.”

He laughed a little, stopping when it apparently hurt his head. “We’re not very smart.”

“No,” you agreed. “But now we know.”

He stared at you for a long moment, before smiling. “If you were gonna kiss me again, now would be a great time to do it.”

You rolled your eyes but conceded.

Breakfast could wait.

[forte7]

Forte’s Fan Character Flashback Friday - #7

Name:: Valarie Masters Series: Danny Phantom Background: Holey moley guacamole! I missed Fan Character Flashback Friday! I mean... today is a Friday, but I was supposed to post this last week! Dangit! I'm sorry! Things are kinda crazy on my end still and it only dawned on me today that I had forgotten to do something - and it was this.

A thousand apologies for my tardiness, but going on about that still won't get this posted.

I've actually been waiting to post this character because I KNOW I had old art of her SOMEWHERE around and I cannot, for the life of me, find it, and unfortunately, I'm down in Texas right now to help out my aunt and uncle so I can't even continue looking for the physical copies of said old art if it even still exists. I KNOW it exists, because I used to post art for this character on a Danny Phantom fan forum I would RP on and heck, I even found that old forum, managed to log in to see if any of those old links still worked, and NOPE.

Guess I deleted them off the Photobucket I once had them on at some point and where the physical copies are, I'm not sure, because I don't remember seeing them when going through my old drawing binders.

It's really quite frustrating.

Anyway, this is Valarie, who I named forgetting about the actual Valerie Grey character from the series, cause the name fit the general bad fan character naming system of "it starts with the same letter of the character I like and is kinda similar, so I'll go with it".  I kept it anyway, cause little me reasoned, "well, this Valarie spells it with two As while the other is with an A and an E, so it's fine."

Just kinda funny that they're both linked to Vlad though, so yay, I guess? Hahah, I dunno.

Anywho, Valarie was set up/designed to be Vlad's daughter, but not even his biological daughter, though not a clone like some of my other fan characters, though with things that happen later in the actual series, it would actually be... possible/viable. Instead, she was a extraordinary creation of the Ghost Zone and was more or less "born" of the supernatural energies that construct that dimension.

I guess you can kind of compare her existence to that of Maria from Silent Hill 2. The Born from a Wish scenario kind of implies that Maria was manifested by the town using James' subconscious memories and feelings regarding his wife. Valarie, in the same vein, was manifested by the Ghost Zone, for whatever reason, to help placate Vlad's need and want for a family of his own.

Mind you, this entire backstory was cobbled together before Kindred Spirits introduced Dani Phantom and her entire storyline... which... is.... kinda the same, really, to Valarie's, and I remember at the time, was kind of mad about it back in the day.

Speaking of Dani Phantom, I remember how a lot of people were mad about Butch Hartman's apparent laziness in her character design and creation, cause it was pretty akin to many "bad fan characters" that you see out there, which, hey, I won't deny; that's what this whole Flashback thing I do is about, but you know, this just serves as a good example of the fact that pretty much... everyone does this. Everyone makes bad fan characters, even for their own things, so I think it's just more healthy for people to realize this and embrace it, hahaha.

Going back to Valarie - she's more or less a person who exists to help Vlad chill the fuck out and maybe not ruin things for everyone or everything. A more recent reason I came up with for this was that Clockwork and/or The Observants that are seen in the Ultimate Enemy special with Dark Danny foresaw Vlad's ambitions proving to be too troublesome in the future, so to prevent this from causing way more havoc than it's worth, even with Danny around to stop him or whatever, they're like "hey just throw him a kid; that'll keep him busy a little, right?"

Even with her supernatural origins, Valarie is half-human and half-ghost like Vlad and looks much like him thanks to just her being a physical manifestation of one of his subconscious desires. Physically, she’s about seven or eight years old and generally acts playful, though polite, but can occasionally come off as spoiled.

She shares many of her father’s sentiments towards various issues and people, though it’s safe to assume she doesn’t fully understand his reasoning for those feelings due to how young she is. For example, she harbors a dislike for Jack, though finds his clumsiness more amusing than idiotic and only really says she hates him because Vlad does.

In regards to Danny, she likes him and finds him fun to play with, but in her terms, that means toying around with him. Despite her small size, she can hold her own in battle and has a good handle on her ghost powers and won’t hesitate to use them to pull pranks or harass other people, especially if she has or is told to. Her antics can be described as impish while in ghost form, though she likes to feign innocence if caught.

A big point of curiosity with her is her memory; she has no memory of a time before not “being” and has no real answer when asked about her childhood. She doesn’t seem bothered by this lack of knowledge and usually shrugs it off, intent that she exists because she does; she feels no need to question it further. For her things are simple: if her father is happy, she’s happy. Be this just some childish thought process or some more ingrained sense of purpose because of her strange origins is up for debate.

More was actually done with this character than others and like I said, there used to be old sketches of her about. If I ever find them (and I hope I do, really), I’ll be sure to post them.

But aside from that, like I said, I did role play with this character on a Danny Phantom fan thread and boy was that a cringy time. I will admit now, that back then, when I was like 12 or whatever, I was an obnoxious brat who didn’t know how to really socialize or what she was doing on the Internet. Hahaha, when going back there to find the old image links, I ventured onto some of my older posts and…. Whooooo boy, no thank you.

I know at that point I did also write short fanfics from time to time, but I think those might be locked on boot drives from our old computers and don’t have a way of looking for them now either. For those, if I ever do find them, I might also post them, but it all depends on just HOW much cringe I want to trudge up and share, hahaha.

I know I’ve been ranting a lot now and it’s already now past Friday, even for the time zone I’m in, but I’m gonna go on a little side story as… an apology, though it just means a bit more ranting.

When I said I RPed on this site, I can’t actually say a lot of actual character development happened. I don’t remember what the system was for RPing canon show characters and the times they did pop up, it was on a situational basis, because more people were interested in playing their own character and pretty much everyone on that forum had half-ghost, half-human characters that had their powers for one reason or another.

There was one thread that was particularly popular though that I spent a lot of time in with most of the other players, called Halfa High, so it was just kids in high school. Characters, like mine, that were younger than high school age, had various reasons for being there, like they’re super geniuses or they have a sibling there they’ve come to see or something like that; it’s a fandom RP so anything can happen. Most of the stuff in here, because it was 12-14 or whatever year olds, was just characters pairing up with each other, cause I guess that’s just what kids care about, hahaha. I don’t know, I’m just an old lady now.

Anyway, this thread went on for a good number of pages and eventually they started a second one. And then they had one where everyone went to summer camp, so other weird adventures could be had without the confines of going to school.

This was the one I remember doing the most in though frankly, I don’t remember what the overarching storyline was at the time, though I don’t think I knew what was really going on back in the day either.

One of the big points I do remember was the fact that many of the people on this forum looked up to one particular member, who I’ll call Susan, because that was her character’s name. I’m pretty sure she was in her early 20s at this time, so a lot of the younger people gravitated towards her because she was mature and knew how to keep things moving in terms of RP story; she was more or less the main storyteller of the Halfa threads, coming up with a lot of the plot points and twists. She was also just popular cause she had been there for a while, I think, and she was a pretty good artist on the forum.

She wasn’t necessarily a bad person and usually always open to adapting an RP to involve suggested ideas, but I remember at the time, I was super jealous of her. One, because she did have really good art and I felt like a poo-poo artist and two, because she seemed to have a lot of sway in terms of what she wanted to happen in most scenarios, so much so, it was treated as forum canon that her character was married to Dark Danny and had two kids with him.

Nowadays, of course, I don’t give a damn. Whatever. But back then, it was annoying to me. And I guess some part of me wanted to pair my characters with Older Dan. I remember actually being openly mad about it on the forums and to her in private messages about it and did get in trouble for being a salty, little brat for it. One time, I even wrote a bitter fanfic that was less than subtle in regards to it, but I remember cooling my jets enough for them to not just full out ban me.

Like I said, I was obnoxious back then; it’s a phase all kids go through I guess, cause I see it in kids that age even now.

Anyway, this actually developed into a story point in the RP when I agreed to not be such an Angsty Annie about the whole thing and the Halfa Summer Camp thread took some weird turns. Besides the usual pairing of everyone’s characters with one another and other summer camp-y hijinks, it had time travel, an evil group that were named after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and political unrest regarding a ghostly royal family.

The royal family, of course, consisted of Susan and Dan, and their two kids. They had a son and a little girl, who I don’t remember the names of in the slightest. Susan got crowned? Queen of the Ghost Zone after she and some members of some Ghost Council? Were able to seal away Pariah Dark… and in that timeline, Dan was a fugitive, so they got married in secret and still managed to have secret relations enough to have their two kids.

But see, that was in the future of the Ghost Zone, which was like 20-30 years away from the time of the events of the actual RP. Why they were going back in time, I don’t remember, but I think it was something to do with Clockwork sending them back or something, who knows.

Valarie, however, is also technically part of the Ghost Royal Family (cause that’s a thing here…. hahaha), because I guess Susan was… Vlad’s niece? Somehow? So that made her and Valarie cousins, but because Susan was the one who sealed the Big Bad away, that meant she got to be Queen, just… because? There will be a lot of uncertainty with this recollection, cause again, heck if I actually knew or know what happened then.

Anyway, I guess in the uhm… present timeline, Susan was going to summer camp and this was before her and Danny were even a thing, cause doesn’t happen until they’re adults? I think, but she runs into a version of Dan that’s… in between him being a teenage and the future version that’s married to Susan… and… there was some contention with that, but again, I don’t remember what…

But eventually, everyone’s future selves end up appearing at summer camp, again for their own various reasons, along with Susan’s future kids, who get caught up in things, mainly because of misunderstanding and people having grudges and just wanting to kill other people without talking it out.

This loops back to my annoyance with Susan getting her character paired with a major canon character and the aforementioned political unrest, because it led to Older Valarie being a quiet, hardened soldier with a hidden, strong, but deeply unrequited love for Dan, which of course, causes a bit of tension with her and Susan, who is the Queen in the future. Also, apparently, I guess? There was a Ghost War or something? In the future or at some point that they set up a Royal Guard and Army, cause Valarie was more or less the Captain of all that, along with the personal trainer of the eldest son of the Royal Family. Future Susan, of course, is fine with her being in such a position of power cause I guess she’s proved it by this point and she doesn’t know of Valarie’s feelings for her husband, so it’s all right as rain as long as she just… stews about it silently to herself, because that is totally the healthy thing to do.

Older Valarie also goes back in time though, because eventually, people start coming across the aforementioned Four Horsemen, which aren’t really horsemen, because they don’t even have horses, but again, are named after them and are supposed to be the “living embodiments” of their namesake. So we have super powerful characters named War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death running around for… reasons? That I can’t even remember. Certain members’ characters are actually the younger versions of the Four before they’re… corrupted? Or something like that and given those names and most the people who turn into whichever, of course, have to fight their evil, older selves cause that’s cool or whatever.

Younger Valarie, at the time, was just hanging about and I guess fawning over a teenage Danny or the in between Dan (this is just as confusing to remember as it is to read, trust me), and I think makes friends with the Future Prince and Princess, who again are running around. I think the Prince was there to try and find Dan, because he believes he? Killed his father? Even though Dan is his father? And Dan was there anyway to protect the younger version of his future wife…? And the Princess was there just cause she wanted her mom, which is Future Susan, who went back to… do…. Something…?

But anyway, Younger Valarie ends up getting approached by her future self, who had originally come to serve her duty as Captain of the Royal Guard and protect Future Queen Susan, but eventually starts to realize that she could perhaps mess with the past to change things to the way she really wants them (even though I know now that would probably create some annoying paradox but please don’t get me on time paradoxes cause we’ve been here long enough already), so she starts to put it in her younger self’s head that everything going on here isn’t fair and she should do more than just be obedient and trusting and take whatever Susan says without question, because by not being more open and honest about your feelings just leads to a life of misery, pain and loneliness.

However, Younger Valarie just doesn’t get why she would say these things and rejects that line of thinking, which kinda makes Older Valarie snap and be like “okay, fine, I guess I’ll just go kill some peeps and then you’ll see what I mean”... I mean, I think? She does try to stop influencing her younger self and try to take matters into her own hands though.

Because at one point, we did have it where Older Valarie confronts Older Susan about her deep, dark hidden feelings, and they get into a fight over it, especially after Older Valarie threatens to go kill the Prince, but being a trained soldier and the Captain of the Royal Guard, Older Valarie does kick Older Queen Susan’s butt, but I think… is interrupted by one of the Four, that being War.

I think Older Dan also comes in at some point and chides Older Valarie for her actions, but heck if I remember. To be honest, if I fully cared and wanted to really relive some cringe, I could probably go to the forum and just read over the whole thread, but that was like 200+ (if not more) of pages and I…. do not feel like doing that, hahaha.

Anyway, Older Valarie and War end up getting into a fight, because it turns out War himself has some issue with Older Valarie. And it turns out that he used to be like her second in command? Or something? Who disappeared while on a mission and ended up into some spoopy, dark, dangerous, evil place, where he got corrupted and turned into War and it turns out he was okay with it, because he was also angry and bitter, cause surprise! He himself had feelings for Older Valarie, but poor guy got friendzoned and his attempts went unnoticed because she instead had feelings for Older Dan, because love triangles are also a cool plot twist to do, cause why not, I guess.

Uhm… I think during this fight was when Older Valarie started to notice the error? Of her ways? Or something like that after seeing one of her closest subordinates fall into darkness, so her story shifts to trying to get War to remember who he used to be. This character did have an original name, but I totally forget what it was… Anyway, War claims that there’s nothing she can do because he embraced and was more than willing to give up his soul or whatever for the power to actually make Older Valarie notice him or something.

I… actually don’t remember much past this point, though. I want to say she did end up getting through to him, but that might just be me rewriting history. That character, though, was more or less being set up to give someone for Young Valarie to pair with and I do thing there was a present day or at least an uncorrupted version of that character pop up at one point….

But besides that, I don’t even remember if that RP was finished, mainly because I think I started to stop going there as much and lost interest. The RP itself, actually, I think started to slow down, mainly because people got busy with other things, especially Susan and because she was again, more or less the driving force behind most things, it petered out.

I’m actually uncertain how old I was when there, because I will admit, when I was in my first year of college, I toyed around with some of the concepts from this RP and wanted to repurpose it into a story. It was mainly the stuff that took place in the future with the Royal Family and with the Four Horsemen, where basically, it would follow Older Valarie (hell, the “rewrites” character name might have just been Valarie for simplicity sake) as she dealt with her feelings with the Royal family and her relation to it, trying to protect the Kingdom and its people, and eventually deal with the disappearance of her Second in Command and his reappearance as a giant threat later on.

…. Really, I still kinda like the idea…

ANYWAY, I have talked long enough and am tardy enough with just this post as it is, so I’ll leave it at that. According to the Google Doc where I’m writing all this before actually posting, this is six pages long, so even more apologies for my rambling.

Still, hope you liked this month’s look back in time and look forward to the next one!

[6stronghands]

I lost a ton, like a TON of followers yesterday. I’m gonna assume it’s because of my post where I bitch about my personal life, which has been fucking MAGICAL of late. And I assume the specific reason is not that I wanted to kill a frat boy who banged on my car (I wasn’t badly parked btw, I was the only car in the lot till they parked riiiiiight next to me). Or maybe it was the post where I said that I think Millenials and Z’s are gonna be one of the greatest generations. I got a few rude messages about that one. But I’m thinking it’s because I said I was 40. 

So let me come out and just affirm, I am of the tumblr Old Person demographic. I won’t apologize for that. I’m a lot less judgmental than I used to be, and a lot wiser and calmer. I am a better person, period. It’s been work getting here, and I’m proud of that work. I’m not thrilled about my face and body, but on the other hand, that infernal, eternal male gaze mostly passes me by and godDAMM is that a relief. And I myself mostly don’t care about my looks anymore, and that is a miracle. I never used to leave the house without makeup, and I cared so much about all that shit. I still love fashion and makeup but it’s fun now, not about how worthy I am. I don’t confuse attention for love, like I used to. 

What’s more, I’m a mom of two grown kids (I had them very young, I don’t recommend having kids that early, wait till you’re older and smarter, lol). I raised a bunch of siblings before I raised my own kids, so I am very very Mom. If you get close to me, I WILL try to feed you. I don’t even know most of you but now I’m wondering if you’re all eating and sleeping enough, while I’m writing this. I try not to motherhen everyone in the world, I’m aware it’s not a great habit, this uncontrolled Momming. 

I HATE that I would even notice my follower count. I’m not here for that. I have a sister who has made a fortune as a blogger, and tbh she was never very nice, but now that she’s rich and connected, she’s downright unbearable. There are genuinely cool or helpful mom-blogs, and then there are other ones. She’s one of the other ones. 

 I am trying to finish a book; I really care about having some sort of writing career, but I don’t define success the way my sister does. I’ve just always wanted to have a writing life, even a small one. I guess I have a nasty little voice in the back of my head that says, if you have a ton of followers, somehow it will be easier to get published. Which I know is nonsense. And I know getting published guarantees nothing, no sales, etc. I hate that I even noticed the lost followers, yuk. I’m here to connect with people, and cry about Captain America, dangit. I was unaware how insidious that little voice was; gonna work on that.

All of this is just to say: I’m hoping the lost followers were teens. I want any underage kids who still follow me to know: I am an adult. I want you guys to feel safe. The safety of kids is something I take very seriously. If some of you unfollow me now that you know more about me, I want you to know that I’m proud of you for following your instincts and boundaries. 

I never put NSFW stuff on my blog, ever. (I do swear too much, though). If you didn’t know who I was, it’s because I have deliberately not put many personal pics or too much personal info here because there’s a stalker situation, a pretty scary one. The police can’t and won’t do anything about him, and he’s bad enough that I actually have weighed out the pros and cons of dealing with him myself. I have zero faith in the system at this point. I honestly don’t understand how my life got as intense and crazy as it’s been for the past five years, with the stalker, with other life stuff. I really just like to knit and garden and play with The Cutest Dog In The World. All this drama is educational but unseemly, and I am striving for a more copacetic life. Anyway. Thanks for reading.