#We’re kinda at a stage where we’ve got some information but clearly not all of it and it leaves a lot of openings

[honorthysalad]

the sins of the father and the duty of the son are pretty prominent themes in hgsn. After all, Hikaru only died because of his duty as an Indoh: apologizing for a crime he never committed that happened long before he was even born, just like his father did, and his father’s father before him did and so on. None of them ever met Hichi-San who (assumedly) made the original wish, but they’re still paying for his crime only for their blood association.

(The other part of his duty being to marry the first person he ‘falls in love with’ I think is pretty reflective. It doesn’t matter if they love him, only that he wants them, and he should take them and force them into his family for ‘their own safety’. But as Hikaru’s dad says, his prior girlfriends are all alive and well, so why does this rule still get propagated if it’s demonstrably untrue? It’s to make them start a family as soon as possible, to create that next link in a chain. If he cares for someone, he has to marry them immediately and marriages are to be consummated. Have a son, continue your family duty, and pass that duty onto your son when he comes of age. [if the basis of the rule is true though then it’s to keep them reproducing anyway. when a person is pregnant, there’s a fetomaternal transfer of cells, and I feel that’s when the protection would be ‘ensured’ because the person would have Indoh cells inside them. But that’s my rationalization for what can be answered with ‘ghost bullshit’. The Nounuki might just know they’re married because it’s a ghost or whatever.] Is ‘Hikaru’ so possessive over Yoshiki because it’s a spirit, or is it because that’s what Hikaru thought being a lover was supposed to be? That romantic love is ensuring protection over another person even if they don’t understand what you’re protecting them from because you know best. They have to stay by your side because you love them and your love is dangerous, but you can protect them from that danger by tying them to you. Then you won’t be dangerous anymore. [the answer is probably because ‘Hikaru’ is a ghost but eh]. I guess this makes Hikaru seem a lot more sinister than he’s portrayed but I don’t think he has like bad intentions- he’s just a product of his society that’s been grooming him to think these things and to fulfill these roles. ‘Hikaru’ being a monster is the natural outcome of society so flawed. It’s just finally coming to light.)

So yeah the Indoh family duty and rules are a bunch of patriarchal bullshit, but that’s kind of obvious.

somehow despite the Indohs being a mystery to be solved later in the plot, we know more about them then we do Yoshiki’s own family. The only things I can offer on this for him is that he’s shown to have a lot of stress and anxiety related to his father. From what we saw during the brain penis scene (…hopefully I’m not the only one who calls it that… it’s when he’s getting smooshed by brains or whatever), a few of the comments are related to his father: that Yoshiki looks more and more like him every passing day, that his father is awful, and that he’ll have to take over the family business [which apparently is a logging business? Guess he can’t take over as a hairdresser like his mom because… I mean well look at his hair]. Yoshiki doesn’t want to be like his dad [reason unknown. Toshi is possibly an alcoholic?] and so being compared to his dad causes him anxiety. He also seems to avoid his dad side of the family despite them interacting with him (gave him a watermelon one time. I don’t think his mom’s side of the family all the way in Tokyo could give him a watermelon) because we’ve never seen them once despite them being mentioned. Correct me if I’m wrong but from what I know a few traditional expectations for an eldest son are taking care of the parents, staying in the household and taking over the family business, and when the parents pass, to assume management of the household and property. All of that directly conflicts with his desire to leave the village and move to Tokyo. (I think I also read that the eldest son helps manage marriages which would explain why someone asked him about marrying off Kaoru. But I’m even less sure about that one)

Hikaru and Yoshiki take after their dads. Hikaru has a snaggle tooth like his dad and Yoshiki has moles on his face like his dad.

[stellocchia]

Alright, now that I got some sleep, time for an overly long analysis on Tommy’s second prison visit!

I’m only talking about character in the rp from here on out, not the cc’s unless explicitly stating otherwise

-

First of all, a clarification is in order: was it Dream’s plan from the very start to get put in prison to end up in this situation? No. Does this mean he couldn’t have caused this to turn things in his favour? Also no.

Dream has proven before that he’s a rather flexible character (kinda has to be with a nemesis like Tommy), he’s been put multiple times in unexpected situations and managed to come out of top. We don’t know if he expected L’Manburg to be reborn after the 16th, and yet he managed to have the whole cabinet wrapped around his fingers. He didn’t expect Tommy to threaten him with Spirit, and yet he spun it around on him. We also know he didn’t expect Tommy to leave Logsteshire (he was talking about it with Punz, it’s the reason he went to check on him shortly after because he realized he may have stepped too far and broken Tommy out of his manipulation there) which offered him the opportunity to frame him for the community house disaster later on.

He is nothing if not resorceful.

Another thing we have to discuss when talking about the visit is the themes of their relationship:

- Dream’s possessiveness/obsession

- The whole Dream finding Tommy “fun”

- Their “game”

More under the cut

- For the first point, when I say “possessivness” I mean that Dream literally regards himself almost as Tommy’s owner. Don’t believe me? Let’s talk about how he treats Tommy’s canon life then!

Remember all the way back during exile? To keep Tommy in line Dream consistently threatened to take his last life, implying that he would have been fine with Tommy dying, yet, as soon as Tommy showed signs of wanting to take his own life, Dream bust out the line “it’s not your time to die yet”, 2 times in fact. Why? Well, Dream wants control in all things, not only that, but he clearly thinks he’s in the right in wanting it. Of course the life of his favourite toy is no exception. Also let’s not forget about the terrifying scene on top of the obsidian grid where, when Tommy said that their story would be over soon, Dream immediately took control again assuring him it would never be over.

There is also Tommy explicitly stating that Dream was “borderline his owner”, in case we needed an additional affirmation, in the stream where Mexican Dream made an appearance in exile. 

Also, I have to mention that during the first Prison visit Dream, when talking about what he missed, grouped Tommy together with “his stuff”... can’t get much clearer then that

- Dream’s describing Tommy as “Fun” has been a reoccurring creepy theme between them. But is it soley done out of manipulation or does Dream actually feel that way in his twisted world view? I’d say a bit of both to be honest. 

Clearly there is a level of gaslighting with it were he used to say it at the very start of Tommy’s exile to get him in the frame of mind of considering Dream his friend and trying to convince him that they always had fun together (trying to get him to switch his anger from being directed at Dream to being directed at his old friends), but that’s not all. 

Dream, in cutting all his known attachments, is left with only Tommy as an attachment, Jack is right on that one, which is the rason why his obsession seems so extreme. That said, it’s pretty obvious that he does sort of find his relationship with Tommy “fun”. It’s the reson why literally everyone else is a replaceable pawn, but Tommy isn’t. Don’t get me wrong here: he doesn’t see him as a human and, despite him “caring” in his twisted way, there is NOTHING healthy about their relationship. But it is still important to point out that Tommy is extremely important to Dream.

- Their game is something we’re all well aware of. They are regarded by so many people as the hero and the villain of the server, even though neither of them accepts their assigned role. That said they both view the other in the role assigned to them. Dream doesn’t see himself as a villain, but he does see Tommy as a hero and vice-versa. And, just like that, the stage for their “game” is set.

Only problem? Only one of them is playing the game. We know this from the season 2 finale: the reason Dream kept coming down and trusting Tommy was because he thought Tommy was as attached to their “game” as he was, but he was wrong. Tommy HAS other attachments, plenty of them, he’s not dependent on Dream and that’s also probably why Dream is so obsessed with him in the first place: everyone else is predictable, easy to use. They aren’t surprising, they aren’t “fun” (remember that? Remember Dream goning “Tubbo isn’t fun” when Tommy said he had as much value as himself? Because I sure do) they are boring pawns. 

You’d think he may think differently of someone like Techno but, despite him acknowledging his strenght, he has no reason to think he won’t be able to use him every time at the smallest promise of violence as it worked every time before. George and Sapnap? When’s the last time Dream showed them he cared in any way? He used them time and time again and then left them behind when the relationships required work on his side to mantain. He didn’t even speak to Sapnap during his visit! He regards Quackity as barely an annoyance (remember what history left on him in the Lost City of Mizu? Just a Fool). Punz and Sam were both people he paid, only means to an end. They ALL played his game and followed his rules, which is what made them predictable. It's what makes them so replaceable.

-

Now that the themes are established, let’s move on to the analysis of the visit itself!

First of all: big foreshadowing from Sam with the missing books (which Tommy admitted to not remembering the content of) and from Tommy saying how much he trusted and appreciated Sam. It doesn’t have much to do with the analysis, but we all pointed it out.

That said, what was Tommy’s objective with this visit? Closure. Tommy wanted to make their game finally stop for good, he wanted to reclaim the control over his life that he hasn’t had for a while now. Not over his literal last life nor over hid day to day life. Both used to be controlled by Dream. 

Dream “loosing” his clock is the first information we learn. But, remember during Bad’s visit when Bad convinced Sam to give Dream one last chance to get his clock back if he behaved? And then again with Sapnap? Dream wanted the clock to go, that’s why he kept burning it despite the warnings. Why? Could it be that he was planning to get someone to stay with him in there? Isolation affects you much harder when you’re not aware of the passage of time after all...

“That’s the Tommy I know!” from the start of the visit Dream is trying to re-establish their “bond” and get Tommy in the mindset of them being “friends” again. I mean, it’s not a coincidence that he’s never been this talkative or friendly in any of the visits from other people. 

Other point in favour of Dream having planned this long stay is the sheer number of potatoes he had stored. Also, may I add that he immediately started giving them to Tommy? He started before the tnt and explosions, before he should have known Tommy was gonna stay. He never did this before during any of the visits we’ve seen. Establishing his role as provider again like back in exile I see...

Dream also started immediately demanding for Tommy to visit him more, but Tommy does turn it down just as quickly by explaining that that would be the last visit (if Dream wasn’t planning to act this time, he changed his mind in this moment. He’s very adaptable remember? And his main accomplice was online...). Of course, Dream isn’t happy about it. 

We already established that Tommy is the only one he finds “fun” (as far as we know), having him stopping visitations entirely wouldn’t be good for Dream. There is also the fact that Tommy is deciding to move on on his own. It’s Tommy’s choice under Tommy’s complete control and Dream has already shown he’s not too kin on that being a thing.

“Anything you want to say to me now, you have to say to me now, because I’m not visiting you again” “Why?” I’m highlighting this piece of dialogue because I think it’s pretty indicative of Dream still being convinced that they’re both still playing the game. Sure, Tommy outplayed him for now, but the game is not over, is it? Tommy can’t just decide to drop him can he? They both have so much “fun” after all... 

Of course though, to Tommy the “why” should be obvious. Because of Dream he’s struggling with severe ptsd. He’s afraid of plains biomes, of lava, of heights to a certain degree, of black stone (both because of the Attachments vault and the Final Control Room on this one), of tnt, of small holes (big enough to drop your items in as he said), of giving up his stuff and of Dream acting Friendly. Dream hurt him a great deal to the point were he’s not managing to settle down even now, he’s still afraid. How can Dream not see how he hurt him? How can he not understand? In Tommy's mind it just doesn't make sense.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES (had to add this because it was just funny... why are there always bloopers with this 2?)

Potatoes again. Again the tnt had not started to go off yet. And Tommy eats them again immediately, of course. I can’t stress this enough, but this is done again to re-establish the dependency tommy had on Drem during exile. While he didn’t entirely depend on dream for food (he barely ate and he had Mushroom Henry), he used to be entirely dependent on him for protection, getting to the point where he would hardly defend himself from the mobs when they attacked him even when Dream wasn't around. Of course Dream can’t provide “safety” while he’s in prison, so he has to find something else.

“You had all this shit coming” “I did but... you know... maybe one day” “No! Have you seen this prison? It’s kind of the most secure thing ever” They are talking about two different things here. Dream is implying that, maybe, they’ll let him out in the future while Tommy, having already decided to move on and not worry about Dream anymore, is implying that the only way Dream is getting out is if he manages to escape, which he won’t. Quite different from the first visit were Tommy showed quite a bit of hesitance when asked if he would ever let Dream out.

“Unless you have extreme therapy” Tommy recognizing the importance of therapy I see! No, but, more importantly, this goes to show that Tommy is moving on from his exclusively vengful mindset he had at the start (which was more then understandable, btw). At the start of this visit he said he didn’t think that Dream deserved to die anymore and now he’s recognizing that he needs help, Tommy however also knows he’s not the one who should be helping him, he can’t. Still, he’s empathizing with him, because he can’t help doing so. Despite everything, Tommy always tends to see others as their own individuals, even when the same is often not true in reverse. 

“I mean exile wasn’t that bad... right? I mean, we hung out” again, tying it back to the themes in their relationship, this fits so well. Of course exile wasn’t that bad, right? After all: why would Tommy have needed anyone else when he had his Best Pal Dream? And here’s the thing: we can’t know how much of what Dream says is just manipulation and how much of it he believes, but Dream has shown enough signs of being dependent on Tommy as his only attachment that we can assume there is, at the very least, some level of truth in this. I mean, if you remember back when he blew up Logstedshire, he didn’t even wanna believe that Tommy was suicidal. Tommy told him directly, but was dismissed. Why? Not because Dream wasn’t extremely opposed to him taking his own life, he’d already shown that not to be the case. Perhaps because he actually didn’t think it was that bad? Maybe he didn't want to admit he pushed him too far? Did he actually view himself and Tommy to be Dream’s own twisted version of “friends”? It’s a possibility and it’s what this visit seems to imply. 

“When I’m around you I feel like my brain is conditioned to be your friend, but also when I have a knife I wanna just plunge it into your heart... you don’t make me a good person!” This seems to be a rather recurrent theme with Tommy and the mentor figures in his life. Wilbur trying to convince him (albeit not managing to) to just blow it all up and give in to his aggressive nature. Techno wanting to “bring him to the side of evil” and making him more violent in the process. Now we have confirmation that Dream himself makes him lash out more (though we could see this already when he was in exile in how he lashed out at Jack Manifold without the latter having done anything to deserve it). There is also the confusion to point out. While Tommy is trying to move on he’s clearly in no way “healed”, he’s still very much suffering from the consequences of Dream’s abuse and manipulation. He still doesn’t know exactly how to feel about him because, despite everything, he feels compelled not to hate him entirely. 

“You’re a bad guy” “Well I did bad things, but everyone thinks they’re right from their perspective” “That’s not true” I haven’t seen almost anyone talk about this exchange, but it’s such an important one! As we said, Tommy views Dream as a villain, Dream doesn’t (he admits to having done bad things, but not to being bad because of them). Dream also sees Tommy as a hero, but Tommy doesn’t (Tommy doesn’t even view himself as “the good guy” in his own story, which ties in to his big self worth problems). It’s an interesting dynamic to be sure. 

“Well I think I’m right. I did bad things, but I did them for good reasons” “What good reasons?” “I wanted to bring the server together you know? Make it a big happy family” This is the second time Dream brings up unity as his ultimate goal (the first being with Punz). Of course we know that the “unity” he wants it’s under his complete control. It’s not an objective that we can see as positive, but he does, or, at least, if he’s telling the truth about it, he may actually believe in it. Now, while this is the second time he brought up “unity” directly he did also strongly imply in the season 2 finale that that was his intention when explaining he was doing everything to get the server to “how it used to be”, back in the idealized past with no conflicts that never existed. Dream is deluded in the literal sense of the word, I would say it’s pretty probable there is at least some truth in his declared objective (truth in the form of him actually believing the bs he spews).

At this point Tommy is done. He’s drawing an end to the visit and Dream started getting more frantic. He started insisting on how he’s “changing” and insisting for Tommy to go visit him again. Ngl, I think this was probably to buy time for his accomplice (who is very possibly enderwalk!Ranboo) to get there. Because, if he let Tommy go, their game would truly be over, and Dream can’t stand that.

And cue the explosions! 

So: Dream managed to buy enough time and, by the prison's protocols, Tommy is now stuck with him up to 7 days. He can’t leave which means Dream gets another chance to force him into continuing their game. 

Quite a few people pointed it out, but, from this point onwards, Dream gets much more assertive and controlling in his demeanor. He drops the whole “insecure” act that he had going on in his enunciation and general behaviour and goes back to being like the old Dream (you would almost think that all that talk about “having changed” was just absolute bs, though he keeps insisting on it throughout) 

Tommy’s behaviour also changes. He gets much more paniked (no doubt a combination of way too many of his triggers being present at once) and pliant. He starts calling out for Sam and asking to be let out but, of course, that doesn’t happen as Sam has to take care of the security breach first and foremost. 

Dream starts immediately harping on Tommy being stuck there (probably to increase his panic, as he's easier to influence when he's distressed), first pointing out how “Sam can’t hear him” and then that the tnt must indicate a “security problem” (which he then explains he knows the consequences of because he wrote the book). By now he’s dropped his meek act entirely and he’s showing to be much more smug and self assured (a big contrast with Tommy having a very obvious panic attack). As we already said: he got what he wanted, he basically won already. All he needs to do now is get Tommy back to how he used to be in exile (”when they had fun” in Dream’s words...). 

At this point there is only one question left to be answered: Why did he do all of this? How does this benefits dream?

Clearly this didn’t help him to get out. The security may actually increase because of it. Right? Well...

“I mean... if you want a way to get out, let’s get out together! We can work it out, we can-” “Fuck off” “Then there is no way out” I’m going out on a limb here and saying that, perhaps, Dream may know a way to get out provided 2 people cooperate on it. Tommy wouldn’t help him yet, but, who knows what he may do after spending way too much time locked in a small room, with a lava fall on the side and Dream to top off the list of his worst nightmares... 

“Are you trying to get out?” “I’m not trying to get out, I’m not trying to get out!” a bit of a contradiction here, considering he proposed getting out together like 2 minutes before (coupled with his insistence on “one day...”)... however “I’m not trying to get out (yet)” may be a way to interpret his words more truthfully. If he just needed an accomplice to get out, he would have probably used Ranboo, but there is something else he wants as well... 

(btw, potatoes AGAIN multiple times, especially every time Tommy is particularly distressed, and Dream also brings up Tommy being on his last canon life again in the context of this being “just like exile”... man do be trying hard with those parallels...)

You see, he already told us that he still sees his objective as good. He still wants control. He still wants his game to go on. And there is one person he elected to be the key to everything...

“I’m telling you you’re stuck in here for a little while with me, were we can bond, we can talk, just like old times, right? You know... just like exile” “Tommy this is the best thing that’s happened to me since I got in this prison, because now we can be company, we can stay together!” “Fine, fine, you’re done with me in a couple days, when you get out of here” “Tommy it’s not that bad! We can- we have lot’s of time to bond” Ngl... something tells me his other objective is very obvious... and we talked about it to death by now. But, in case it wasn't clear to someone, he wants to get back what (or who in his case) he considers to be his most cherished possession (again, do NOT interpret this as a "good" thing. It isn't. Dream literally treats Tommy as his toy, it isn't healthy and I've seen way too many people in chat trying to imply otherwise and calling it "cute". It's not cute, it's abuse)

“Tommy you’re stuck in here with me wether you like it or not, ok?! Wether you like it or not you’re in here with me for a WHILE, we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna have lot’s of fun” I just wanted to point out again how much Dream’s demeanor changed from the start now that he’s back in control. He’s not asking Tommy to talk to him, he’s not giving him a choice in it. Tommy already said how he doesn’t wanna talk and “get to know him better”, but that doesn’t matter. He has no power anymore. He doesn’t have the power to leave NOR the power to ignore Dream, as much as he wants to. Also, after this, Dream seriously ramps up the whole “We’re gonna have so much fun!” shtick...

And you want to know the saddest part of the ending? Tommy is already cracking (honestly, not surprising. He’s been through WAY too much by now...) 

He started asking Dream for confirmation of whether all of this was “serious” (just like he needed to ask if things were real back in exile... or generally Dream’s opinion on everything). He also asked for more potatoes in a dejected tone (I know it may not seem that serious, but, as I said, it is just another way to create the dependency that Dream wants), showing a beginning of acceptance for Dream’s role as provider once again. Together with the very obvious “I can’t do this” and the black screen right after it creates a very worrying picture.

In conclusion: Dream is already dependant on Tommy, but the opposite not being true was a big part of his downfall. So, before he can get out, he has to work on getting Tommy back to exile!Tommy only this time he’ll be even more careful not to do some dumb mistake probably... 

-

As anxious as I am to see how this will develop I do also think it’s one of the most interesting outcomes they could have had!

Also can we please take a moment to appreciate how WELL cc!Dream anc cc!Tommy manage to handle this incredibly serious scenes? Like, they bounce off of each other perfectly and, as someone who’s done theater themselves, I cannot commend them for managing to do so well in IMPROV enough!

They are honestly so great! Let’s get some serious love and appreciation for them to close on a positive note!

Also @mysweatymakerstudentworld

[rhys-writes-sometimes]

Music Worth Making Part 1: Bright Forever

Requested: nope!

Warnings: abuse, child neglect, shitty parents, death, food, terrible writing

Series Summery: When the reader’s life is ripped away from them, they’re distraught. But with her two best friends and three certain ghosts, maybe the afterlife isn’t so bad after all. 

Chapter Summery: The band Sunset Curve was about to have a life-changing concert when they ate some bad hotdogs and died. 25 years later, you’re best friends with the girl who discovers them. 

Words: 3,026 

A/N: This is pretty much just introducing the characters and their relationships to one another. Things will get more interesting in the next few chapters.Also, the reader is non-binary! <3 lyrics are italicized Part 2 ______________________________________________________

Hollywood 1995

“Don’t look down, ‘cause we’re still rising up right now, and even if we hit the ground we’ll still fly, keep dreaming like we’ll live forever, but live it like it’s now or never.”

The teenaged boys finished their soundcheck, earning scattered applause and even a “whoo!” from the employees working at The Orpheum that night. The band didn’t try to hide their smiles as they took a bow. 

“Thank you, we’re Sunset Curve!” one called out.

“Tell your friends!” another added. 

“Too bad we wasted the tightest we’ve ever played on a soundcheck,” one said as they set down their instruments. 

“Wait until tonight man, when this place gets packed with record execs.”

The boys all nodded, thinking of all the chances of fame they would have after that night.

“Okay, well, I’m thinking we fuel up before the show. I’m thinking street dogs?”

Two of the other boys liked that idea, but the other one had other plans.

Jumping off the stage, he started to make his way over to a young woman who was wiping down tables.

“Hey Bobby, where you going?” the one who had suggested they go get street dogs called out.

“I’m good!” he called out to his bandmates, then said to the girl: “Vegetarian. I could never hurt an animal.” 

“You guys are really good,” she said with a smile as the other three guys joined their band member at her table. “I see a lot of bands. Been in a couple myself. I was really feeling it.”

The guys all smiled. 

“That’s what we do this for,” one of them said. The tips of his chestnut colored hair almost reached the top of his shirt with cut off sleeves. “I’m Luke, by the way.”

“Hi, I’m Reggie.” Reggie had black hair and was wearing a leather jacket with a red flannel tied around his waist. An interesting combination, but somehow the outfit worked. 

“Alex.” A boy with blond hair spoke up from where he was hovering just to the side of the group, wearing a pale pink t-shirt.

“Bobby.” The boy who had first walked over to the girl had brown hair and a sleeveless jacket over a t-shirt. 

“Nice meeting you guys. I’m Rose.” The girl smiled at all of them again as Luke licked his finger and stuck it in Bobby’s ear. 

“Oh uh, here’s our demo, and a t-shirt, size beautiful.” Reggie handed Rose a CD and a t-shirt, earning a small groan from Alex. 

“Thanks. I’ll make sure not to wipe the tables down with this one.” 

“Oh, good call. Whenever they get wet, they just kinda fall apart in your hands,” Alex informed her.

“Don’t you guys have to go get hot dogs?” Bobby asked, clearly wanting to talk to Rose without the other three around. 

“Yeah.” Luke leaned closer to Rose, as if to tell her a secret. “He had a hamburger for lunch.”

-----

“Man, I can’t wait until we eat someplace where the condiments aren’t served out of the back of an Oldsmobile,” Alex grumbled as he put a pickle on his hot dog. “Hey, sorry, I got some pickle juice on your battery cables.”

“No problem. It’ll help with the rust,” the man cooking hot dogs said with a slight chuckle.

“That can’t….okay.”

The three made their way over to a couch to eat. Before they could dig in, however, Luke started speaking. 

“This is awesome, you guys. We’re playing The Orpheum! I can’t even count how many bands have played here and then ended up being huge,” he said with a slight chuckle. “Eat up, boys. ‘Cause after tonight, everything changes.”

They all bit down hungerly into their street dogs.

Alex was the first to notice that something was off. “That’s a new flavor,” he said, a small amount of worry creeping into his tone.

“Chill man. Street dogs haven’t killed us yet.” Reggie tried to calm down his friend.

Luke hesitated for a moment, then took another huge bite.

-----

Los Angeles 2020

You made your way through the hallway, walking fast, faces pass, weaving around people as you tried to reach your locker. You smiled as you saw your two best friends waiting for you.

“Hey, underacheiver,” Flynn said in greeting.

“Hey, disappointments,” you joked back to them. “Okay, Julie, I know you don’t want me to ask, but have you figured out what you’re gonna do today?”

“I’ll know in the moment.” The frizzy-haired girl fiddled with her bracelets as she spoke, the only clue that she was nervous for her proformance later.

“Really, Jules? That’s all your giving us? Mrs. Harrison said-” Flynn was cut off from scolding one of her best friends.

“This is my last chance, I know, I was there,” Julie finished. Flynn smiled softly for a moment, but it turned to a grimace of disgust as she noticed a girl handing out flyers. 

“Ugh, what is she handing out?” she questioned.

“Desperation?” you said, only half joking. Julie and Flynn snickered. 

However, you put on a smile as the girl walked up to the three of you. 

“Here you go. My group’s performing at the spirit rally tomorrow. I’m sure you guys have nothing better to do,” she said, her eyes sweeping over you critically as she handed the flyer to Flynn. 

Flynn put on a bright, sarcastic smile. “Oh my gosh, Carrie, thanks!”

“Oh my gosh, Flynn, don’t bother coming!”

The three of you rolled your eyes at Carries retreating back. However, someone else caught Julie’s eye. 

“Nick?” you asked, looking between Julie and the blond-haired boy she was staring at.

“Still?” Flynn asked. “You know they’re gonna get married and have a bunch of unholy babies.”

“Nick’s a sweetheart.”

“Yeah, you’d actually have to talk to him to know that,” Flynn said with a small smile. “And only one of them has to be a demon to make a demon baby.” 

You nodded your approval of this statement as Flynn called out “Demon!” in Carrie’s direction.

The three of you turned towards the lockers and laughed quietly. 

“There’s that smile,” Flynn said, lightly poking both you and Julie’s face. “Now come on, let’s go prove everybody wrong.”

You flinched slightly as she put her arm around you, but tried not to show it.

-----

“Okay, we have one last proformance,” Mrs. Harrison called out. “Julie.”

You squeezed her hand slightly as she stood up and walked over to the piano. 

She sat in silence for a moment, before saying “I’m sorry,” and running out of the room, with you and Flynn not far behind. 

-----

“I’ll be back to pick you up at 5:30. Have fun at practice, Danny!” you called out after your little brother as he ran to join the baseball team. This was a daily routine for you; drop Danny off at practice, go to Julie’s to study and eat, pick up Danny, go home and endure torture. 

You let your mind wander as you walked to Julie’s house, which luckily wasn’t very far from the sports fields. Walking through the front door, you let your bag fall to the ground as you went to go get something to eat. 

-----

A few hours later, you were walking back to the sports fields. 

“Hey, Danny,” you said once you saw him, ruffling the boy’s hair. “How was practice?”

You paid attention as best you could as he rambled on about what had happened that day, but if you were honest, you didn’t understand a thing about sports. You were just glad your brother had found something that made him happy.

You closed the front door as quietly as you could, not wanting to wake your father. You tip-toed into the kitchen to start making dinner, as you did every night.

“Olivia, is that you?” you mother asked. You winced. 

“Yes, mother,” you sighed slightly, afraid to tell her that you had changed your name to Y/N.

“Hurry up and get dinner started. My feet are tired from cleaning all day.”

You wanted to roll your eyes at the excuse that was very obviously a lie, your house was a mess and you knew you would be expected to clean it later, but you didn’t want to get in trouble. So you fell into a robotic sort-of motion that you had developed as a way of hiding your emotions and thoughts from your parents. 

Thirty minutes and one burnt fingertip later, dinner was ready and waiting on the table. 

“Wake up, Harold, dinner is ready.” Your mother shook your father awake. You knew if you tried that, you would be slapped across the face. By both of them. 

However, your father just sat up sleepily and lumbered over to the table. You stood over to the side as your family ate, not being allowed to join them. 

“Goddamned roast beef is overcooked again,” he grumbled. You blinked back tears. Such a small thing shouldn’t upset you, you knew, but it did. 

You endured the criticism on the meal you had worked hard to make from your mother and father for the next half-hour. Your father declared himself full and snapped his fingers at you. You whisked his plate away before taking your mother’s, too. She never ate after he finished. You took Danny’s too, but only because you knew that your parents disapproved of him still eating. 

“Hey,” your father said, his voice already low and dangerous. “Give your brother back his plate. He wasn’t finished yet.”

You set the plate back down, nodding and shaking slightly. “My apologies, father.”

“Don’t appologize to your father, appologize to your brother!” your mother exclaimed, grabbing Danny’s hand from across the table and giving it a squeeze. 

“It’s okay, really, I was done,” he hurried to say.

Your mother frowned at him. “Are you sure, darling?”

He nodded. 

“Well, okay then…” she said, still frowning slightly. “You may be excused.” 

He ran off to his room. You took his plate. 

Heading back to the kitchen with a small sigh, you started making a meal for yourself out of what was left, leaving enough so that your family would have leftovers. 

You ate silently, thinking about how nice it would be to have a caring family. Of course, Danny cared, but he was too young to stand up to your parents, and you never wanted him to have to. You would protect that boy at all costs.

Holding in a sigh, you cleaned up from dinner, and then pulled out the duster to start to clean the house. You were stopped, however, by your mother. 

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I- I’m cleaning the house…”

“Didn’t you hear me say earlier that I cleaned it? Are you insulting my cleaning job?”

“N-no, I-”

“You what?” Without waiting for an answer, she slapped you across the face. You struggled to remain emotionless; your face stung. 

You thought it was over, but then your father joined in.

“What’s this Jennifer? Is Olivia insulting your hard work?”

“It’s Y/N…” you muttered quietly. Your father overheard and put his face uncomfortably close to yours.

“As long as you’re living under my roof it will always be Olivia. And even if you could change your name, that doesn’t change your gender, freak,” he spat. 

“I know,” you whispered. 

He slapped you.

“Don’t talk back to me.”

Blinking back tears, you stood still as they walked away. Eventually, you remembered the duster in your hand. Placing it back on the shelf, you walked back up to your room, hoping you would be able to escape them for the rest of the night.

-----

The next morning as you and Danny were walking to Julie’s house to go to school, you heard something you hadn’t heard in a long time: music. Julie was singing. 

“Wake up, wake up, if it’s all you do, look out, look inside of you, it’s not what you lost, it’s what you’ll gain raising your voice to the rain.” You smiled. It had been so long since you last heard her voice, and her music was a gift to the world. 

You walked into the studio alone, Danny having gone to talk to Carlos. Julie looked up with small tears in her eyes, seeing you standing there, smiling. She smiled back. 

“It’s so nice to hear you play again.”

Julie smiled wider. “Thanks.”

Just then, Flynn burst in. 

“Carlos told me you’d be out here. We need to talk.” She crossed the room to where the two of you stood by the piano. 

“Are you okay?” you asked, noticing the tears running down her face. 

“No, I’m not okay! One of my best friends just got kicked out of music! I’ve been up all night thinking about what I was gonna say. Might’ve drank seven sodas, but I need to get this out.”

“Wait, I have something to tell you-”

“No. It’s my turn to talk.” Flynn took a deep breath. “You can’t give up music. You’re music’s like a gift, that would be a tragedy. So you’re basically, like, cancelling Christmas, and I love Christmas!”

“Flynn-” you started to say, but she cut you off. 

“Uh-uh! I don’t know why you’re siding with her, Y/N. I know you like hearing her play.”

You knew Flynn didn’t mean to hurt you, but her words stung a little. You nodded once and retreated back into yourself slightly. Flynn was too emotional (and sleep deprived) to notice. 

“When we were six, we promised to be in a band together. Double Trouble!”

“I never agreed to that name,” Julie said, laughing slightly.

“That’s not the point. Jules, if you leave the music program, we’ll be apart forever. That’s just what happens. Sure, we’ll see each other in the hall sometimes, but we’ll have different lives, make new friends…” Flynn said the last part quieter. You could tell she hated the thought of losing one of her best friends.

“That’s not true,” Julie reassured her, but Flynn wasn’t finished.

“You’re right. I won’t be making any new friends. I’ll only have Y/N, and they’re amazing but I’d miss you Jules! And the only time we’ll contact each other is when we’re liking each other’s posts on Instagram. Every time I’ll be hitting that little heart, my heart will be breaking because one of my best friend’s left me, and… do you have any soda? My head hurts.” 

“Can I talk now?” Julie asked tentatively. 

“Fine.”

“I just played the piano and sang again. Y/N can confirm it.” You nodded when Flynn looked at you excitedly. 

“What? Why didn’t you just say so?” She asked, practically bouncing with joy. 

“She was trying to, but then your seven soda’s kicked in,” you answered with a small laugh. 

Flynn was grinning from ear to ear now. “I’m so happy for you! And me! And Y/N!”

You all hugged, but Flynn pulled away quickly, gasping. “We need to tell Mrs. Harrison that you can play so you can stay in school and my life won’t be that sad picture I just painted for you!”

You giggled as Flynn put her arms around both of you. “Y/N, our girl’s back. Double Trouble lives again!”

“Still not our band name,” giggled Julie. 

-----

“Did you end up getting back into the music program?” you asked Julie at the end of your study session for the day. She looked down at her shoes, and you knew what the answer would be before she said it:

“No. No I didn’t.”

You tried not to look too disappointed for her sake. “Oh. I’m really sorry, Jules.”

“It’s…” she sighed. “It’s okay. I can reapply next semester.”

You hugged her. 

“Oh hey, I almost forgot to tell you,” she said right as you were about to walk out of the door. “We decided not to move.”

Despite the news that one of your best friends was no longer in the music program, a smile lit up your face. “That’s great!” you said, pulling her in for another quick hug. Then you walked out the door, not wanting to be late to pick up Danny. 

-----

“Check it out, yeah we make ‘em say Wow!” Carrie bowed as her band, Dirty Candi, finished their dance number. You were at the spirit rally, saving a seat for Julie and Flynn, who were nowhere to be found. 

Suddenly Flynn plopped down beside you. 

“Oh hey, where were you?” you asked the girl.

She tried to blow a piece of hair out of her face, frowning slightly when it wouldn’t move. “I was in the band room. I wasn’t feeling very… spirt-y.” You both chuckled slightly. 

“Where’s Jules?” You looked around for the other girl, but couldn’t see her. 

As if in response to your question, music filled the gym as someone started to play the piano on the stage. You looked up to see Julie, alone on stage, with a spotlight on her. 

“Sometime’s I think I’m falling down, I wanna cry, I’m calling out, for one more try, to feel alive,” she sang, her voice echoing slightly as it filled the room. You smiled, happy she was singing again. 

Then suddenly, there were three boys on stage with her. 

“Whoa!” Flynn exclaimed.

“Where did those boys come from?” you asked in amazement. Julie seemed a little shocked that they were there too. One of them, the lead guitarist you guessed, started singing the second verse. 

“In times that I doubted myself, I felt like I needed some help,” he sang. 

“Whoa, he has a really good voice,” you said, your mouth hanging open slightly. 

You found yourself staring at him as the song went on. You could tell that he really enjoyed playing, and found yourself getting caught up in the music. 

“And rise, through the night, you and I, we will fight to shine together, bright forever!” Julie harmonized with the boys, finishing the song. You started clapping with the rest of the crowd that had gathered to watch, proud of your friend.

Then, as suddenly as they appeared, the boys were gone.  

[ravenoftheskyes]

Dear Evan Hansen, We’ve been way too out of touch. (Yes, this is a persona fanfic)

(AN: @yusuke-of-valla’s blog, PQ2 but they’re doing DEH.)

“Cmon, Mona! Swallow your pride for me, just nod yes! Act like a mascot for once! For Ann?” Ren says, laughing.

“And prepare, cause something’s in the air!~” quite a few voices speak up.

“I’ve found my people!” Ren screams out, seeking out the voices.

The rest of the sidequest involved Ren, Makoto, Haru, Yusuke, Ann, Goro, Futaba, Yosuke, Rise, Minato, and Minako singing a bunch of musical songs.

Everyone threw Minato and Minako a heathers preformance because Heathers wasn’t out yet in their time.

And then...

“A preformance!” Ren says, flourishing a script.

“A what?” Minako said to him.

“We’re going to preform Dear Evan Hansen!” Futaba says, with an excited look on her face.

“What’s that?” Rise asks, confusedly.

“A musical! It’s kinda dark, but it’s got some killer songs and some hilarious moments!” Ann says, quickly.

“Okay, so who do you want us to be?” Minato asks, immediately bringing everyone on board.

“Okay, I was thinking that Yosuke could be Jared, Haru could be Alana, Yusuke could be Connor, Makoto could be Heidi, and Minato could be Zoe. But there’s are three roles that I have no idea who could be them.” Ren explains.

“Well, what are the characters?”

“Evan, our protag is depressed, oblivious, and ridiculously in love with Zoe. Larry and Cynthia are Connor and Zoe’s parents. They need to be able to argue at a moment’s notice.”

Minato and Minako share a look.

“We might know some people who could fill those roles.” Minako says, a smirk playing at her lips.

And they leave the room.

Twenty minutes later, they drag in Akihiko, Mitsuru, and Yu.

“If I’m Zoe, then my husband should be Evan, shouldn’t he?”

“And you haven’t seen these two really get into an argument.”

Ren smiles.

“Looks like we have our cast!”

And rehearsals begin immediately, with scripts and listens of the songs.

Finally, Makoto and Mitsuru start off “Anybody have a map?”

“Connor finished the-” Minato starts, swinging the milk carton behind him and accidentally hitting Akihiko, who was standing behind him.

“Shit, you alright?” Minato says, basically carrying Akihiko at this point.

“Yeah, fine.” He says, clearly with a broken nose.

Mitsuru sighs and pulls out her evoker.

“Diarahan” she says, with a tight-lipped frown.

And that was only the start.

“Life without you has been rough” Yu starts

“Kin-HAHAHAHAHA” Yosuke tries to say.

He ended up laughing for a full minute.

Ren, Minako, and Hikari hold back snickers.

Requiem comes along.

“Why should I play the grieving gir-”

Minato tries to sing, and ends up yawning.

“Wow, you can’t even stop yawning during a preformance?” Yu quips.

And Minato, deadpan as always, says this.

“I want a divorce.”

Minako and Ren try so, so hard to not die of laughter.

And when they finally get to the end of act 1...

“Even when the dark comes crashing through, you will be found. When you need someone to carry you, you will be found! You will be found!”

Minato and Yu lean in for the kiss.

“Haha!” Futaba yells out, just as their lips are about to meet.

“Futaba! You killed the moment!” Ren yells back to her.

“S-Sorry! It’s just that Hikari told me something hilarious!”

Minako whispers something under her breath.

“Take two!” Hikari says.

“Say darling, hey maybe, fancy a movie night with us?” The wildcards say in sync.

“You guys really need to stop that.”

“No!”

There was somewhat smooth sailing until Good for You.

“And you say what you need to say, and you play who you need to play, and If somebody’s in your way crush them and leave them behind!”

Yu breaks down in tears.

“Cut the music!” Someone screams out.

“Yu, it’s all an act. Please calm down.” Makoto says, with her head in her hands

“Yeah, partner.” Yosuke says, touching Yu’s arm.

“I’m sorry! I’m not a theater kid! I don’t know how to do this!” Yu cry-yells

“Yu, seriously? This is why you join the drama club.” Minato chimes in.

“Oh, and I suppose you’re a part of yours?!”

“...We don’t have a drama club.”

“Technically, we do.” Mitsuru chimes in.

“We have one?!” Minako yells out.

“Well, on paper at least, SEES is the drama club.”

“We’re the WHAT NOW?!”

“...It’s not important, anyhow. The true purpose is to fight shadows, is it not?”

“Is that why Ms. Toriumi sometimes asks me to do dramatic readings in class?” Minato asked, with a degree of uncertainty.

“Most likely, yes.”

“Revelations aside, let’s try again. We need to get this perfectly!” Hikari says, cutting off the conversation.

So they stumble through the rest of the songs, and start with the dialogue.

“You went lurching from one miracle cure to the next.” Akihiko yells.

“Miracle cure? Is that really what you call it?!” Mitsuru says, with all the emotion of a grieving mother.

And then sparks and ice start surrounding them.

“Oh, no-” Minato says out, just as Mitsuru accidentally freezes Akihiko.

“Akihiko!” Mitsuru says as she snaps out of her stupor and catches her frozen best friend.

Shinjiro runs in. “WHAT’S GOING ON MY IDIOT-FRIEND-SENSES ARE TINGLING!”

After they thaw out Akihiko and try again, a similar thing happens. Akihiko shocks her.

Shinjiro has to start sitting in because otherwise his friends are going to kill each other.

Finally, dress rehearsals. Akihiko borrows Yu’s glasses, Yosuke wears his, and everyone dresses a bit more casually. Yusuke’s hair gets poofed up by Ren and Ann.

“Why am I lowkey weak for Inari?! I shouldn’t be lowkey weak for Inari!” Futaba yells out.

Everyone else, is of course, also lowkey weak.

Songs start again.

“Oh, damn!” Minato says as he watches the milk carton fly into the ceiling. “I’ll get it!”

“I’m gonna say the M word!” Futaba yells out, suddenly.

“NO!” Half the team screams.

“Macbeth!” She yells out.

“AAAAAAAA” Minato yells, as he falls off the ladder.

“...Countercurse time?”

“YEAH!”

“What happened??” Minato questions.

“Futaba said the M word!” Minako tells him.

“WHY WOULD YOU SAY THE M WORD IN A THEATER?!”

“If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here, whilst these visions did appear.” Futaba recites.

“Thank you!” Ren told her.

“What’s this superstition? Why shouldn’t you say M-” Yu questions.

“NO!” Once again, half the cast yells.

“Call it ‘The Scottish Play’ or ‘The Bard’s Play’ in a theater” Minako starts.

“Basically, there are multiple stories. Some say it’s because the first ‘Lady’ died and Shakespeare had to go on in her place. There was also the one where the prop daggers were switched for real ones and Duncan was murdered live on stage. There’s also the one that says the spells in the play are actual spells and Witches cursed it because of that.” Ren informed Yu.

“...Oh”

“Yeah. So never say the M-word in a theater.”

“Okay.”

Finally, the preformance.

...You think everything ended here? Oh no, mistakes always happen.

“Dear Evan Hansen, thanks for every note you send!”

“Dear Connor Murphy, I’m just glad to be your friend!”

“Our friendship goes beyond...”

Yu dips Yusuke.

“Your average kind of bond!”

They lean in.

“But not because we’re gay!”

Yu drops Yusuke.

“No, not because we’re gay!”

Yusuke says, as he jumps up. Everyone laughs.

“Did you plan that?! Did you?!” Ann whisper-screams to Ren.

“No! Not at all!” He whispers back.

And then the “You Will Be Found” situation.

The company starts singing. And then we get to Zoe’s part.

Yu trips Minato. Minato is literally pinning Yu to the floor. Minato keeps singing, and then leans in for the kiss when it’s time.

All the other theater kids beg for Yu not to mess up with Akihiko and Mitsuru.

The rest of the show goes without incident.

The finale comes in, and the curtain goes down.

Raucous applause follows it.

...It was hard, but they did it.

[mobius-prime]

159. Sonic Super Special #15

Welcome to the final Sonic Super Special ever! Here's my opinion on it. Past Super Specials have ranged from okay to amazing, depending on the writer and the subject matter, and their long length has usually, if you ask me, worked in their favor, as it meant more time and space to tell a compelling story. This is not true of this one. Unfortunately, the last super special of the comic is utterly awful, with two stories that do absolutely nothing to grip my attention, one of which ends in a status quo with a net gain of absolutely nothing, and the other of which is cringeworthy and isn't even very clear on when, where or how it takes place. Let's just get this over with, shall we?

Naugus Games

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Many Hands Colors: Josh and Aimeee Ray

This first story is far, far longer than it has any right to be - it really feels like they were trying to find ways to pad it out it to take up the full 48 pages of the special. Furthermore, you might notice some oddities about the credits above. First of all, Aimee's name is misspelled with three E's for both stories for some reason, indicating some lazy copy-and-pasting as well as a lack of care from the editors. Even more frustratingly, no one is actually credited directly for the pencils (or inks), with the art instead just being credited to "many hands." Remember how I said the comic was getting annoyingly bad about properly crediting people? Now, in case you're confused, there's not just some artist out there literally named Many Hands; instead, that's the comic's way of sidestepping actually bothering to credit any individuals for their work. It just means "eh, a lot of people worked on this I guess, but we don't care enough to actually tell you who." Unfortunately, unlike a few issues ago where the art style was immediately recognizable as Steven Butler's, the art style for this story is foreign to me, suggesting they got some people who weren't their usual artists to work on this one, so I can't even take an educated guess here. All I know is that both the art style in general and the quality of the inks are very poor, and as we'll see, the art gets unforgivably lazy at times. Perhaps best of all, this story was later retconned into a much more interesting and concise version of itself at a later date, with better storytelling and artwork to boot. The only reason, then, that I'm covering it at all, is honestly as a demonstration of just how lazy the comic could get at times, as well as due to the fact that this is the first appearance of "Many Hands," who later pencilled one other issue for the comic that was of equally poor quality.

So this story takes place at an unspecified time in the recent past. It seems to be sometime after Eggman's return, judging by some of the lines of dialogue within the story, but the actual timeframe is pretty vague. Sonic has returned to the Southern Tundra to pay his respects to Eddy, recalling how Eddy sacrificed himself when he, Tails, and Nate all fought Naugus here some time ago. He's brought a single rose to lay on the site of the wreckage, but the ground isn't quite stable…

And here we have the first instance of a truly terrible art decision. Sonic falls into a pitch black cave system, but instead of representing this with maybe one page max of blackness or darker lighting, we're treated to nearly four pages straight of nothing but this:

He blindly stumbles around for a while, informing us of this fact through dialogue bubbles because everyone knows that telling is better than showing in fiction, right? He finally hits a wall and sees a glow through a crack in it, so he tunnels his way into the next room only to find it full of glowing rings - apparently, either he, Tails and Naugus somehow didn't use up all the rings when they fought, or these one have just auto-generated themselves somehow down here. Sonic recalls memories of the previous battle when Nate sealed Naugus away with a wish from a ring, and then decides to try to use one to get out of the cave system.

Wonderful! Apparently, a "wish" as defined by the magic of the rings just means that you think of someone's name while touching a ring, and so with a flash, Naugus is back from his imprisonment in the zone that Nate sealed him into! But how is this possible?

That explanation makes… basically no sense, dude. Naugus was definitely sealed away in another zone, he didn't just get turned into a pile of telepathic rings. But whatever. He and Sonic start battling it out, and somehow make it outside, where Naugus conjures up a snowstorm that consistently stays centered on Sonic no matter where he runs. Time for the second awful art choice of the issue - now instead of four pages of pure blackness, we get six whole pages of this:

I think the best thing about this is that the blizzard backgrounds are clearly not even hand drawn like the rest of the comic is - there's only two types of snowflakes up there, and they're consistently just copied and pasted in that same repetitive swirl pattern on every single page. I get that drawing for a big story in a super special like this can be long and tedious work, but this is why you don't try to find a way to artificially elongate a story like this which could easily be told in the span of a normal issue length. It just ends up making the audience feel like their time is being wasted. Anyway, the blizzard finally ends when Sonic pulls out a ring from his jacket and wishes for Naugus to be sealed away in his previous zone once more, and thus, Naugus is out of our hair again, with absolutely nothing to show for it. Man, if it's this easy to defeat people in this universe, why hasn't anyone tried this on Eggman yet?

Sonic then leaves back for home, thinking one last time of Eddy, who is shown looking down on him from the heavens above. And thank god that story is over.

Sonic Spin City

Writer/Pencils: Michael Gallagher Colors: Josh and Aimeee Ray

Michael Gallagher, over the course of the comics, has gone from one of the series' main writers to basically a guest writer who's brought on every once in a while for special occasions. In this case, he even makes his return as a penciller! Unfortunately, his goofy writing style has begun to clash with the much more serious plots of these later issues, and this story is no exception. It's entirely unclear about whether we're supposed to take this story as actual canon, as a story from an alternate zone, or as just a silly joke story that doesn’t mean anything - and while I tend to try to avoid looking at non-canon materials in this review series (I've already skipped a few stories and issues for exactly this reason), the ambiguity of this one forces me to cover it. In addition, I don't even know why Josh and "Aimeee" were credited as colorists for this story, considering the entire thing is black and white with no color to be found.

Much like the first story of StH#52, this story has the flair of an old detective serial. Sonic is wandering the streets on a rainy night when two swatbots ambush him. Of course, two swatbots are no match.

What does a swatbot need matches for? Eh, whatever. Sonic races over to Rusty's, a hangout for abandoned badniks, and orders himself a "chili dog float," which in addition to sounding absolutely disgusting doesn't even seem like something a bar for robots would serve in the first place. As he takes his seat, the lights go out, and… this abomination emerges onto the stage.

Yes. The badniks are going wild for a swatbot with tits dancing seductively on a stage for them. What is she gonna do, plug them into a wall outlet? They even start screaming out for "the stretch," and appear to get even hornier as she massively elongates her legs for them. I mean, just, what? I swear, Michael, if we get one more weird borderline-sex thing like this from you in this comic, my eyes are gonna pop out of my head like Natsuki. A bot grabs the dancer's ankle, and she's thrown off balance and crashes down, with the head popping off to reveal that underneath, it's Bunnie in disguise.

You know, after her claim all those issues back that she's a "sax cymbal," I'm not even gonna contest the idea that she'd do a sexy dance during infiltration for a mission. Hell, I get the impression she'd do one anyway just for fun back in Knothole if she got the chance. You might also notice her arm is the arm from her old design, and that coupled with Sonic's own design seems to indicate that if this took place at all in actual canon, it was before Eggman's return, though I'm immensely skeptical that this is supposed to be canon at all. Sonic and Bunnie take out the rest of Rusty's customer base, and then evacuate before the last swatbot activates its self-destruct chip, blowing the place sky high. Congratulations, nothing important was accomplished in this issue and nobody cares!

It's kinda sad that the final Sonic Super Special turned out to be so low-quality, honestly. However, this marks a bit of a turning point in the comic. For the first time in its entire run, from now on, there are no more special issues, no sister series, no miniseries, nothing. From the next issue, all the way to almost the 200th, with one exception in the form of a Free Comic Book Day issue, there are absolutely no interruptions from issue to issue. While this may not seem too notable at first, since we've just been reading everything in mostly-chronological order anyway, keep in mind that as far as the comic is concerned we're still in the year 2000, with a mere seven years having passed from the beginning of the comic all the way to now over the course of 159 issues. Over the course of the next 106 issues, we're going to blaze through nine years of comic history, meaning that the story is going to flow a lot faster, with more plot points being covered in a shorter amount of time. While this does make the order of issues a lot easier to follow, since there's no questions about which issue fits in where or anything, I am sad to see all the special issues go, as I quite enjoyed how they served to break up the flow of the comic as a whole with special stories and side content. Though we're still in the middle of our current plot era, we're entering into a new era of the comic as a whole, where we've got a straight shot through the next hundred issues. So I say - let's do it to it!

[shadowsndaisies]

Carrie: The Musical

a/n: okay so kind of excited for this one! this is my first Riverdale piece, and in honor of the 2nd musical episode, I just watched. I wrote this for Carrie from last year, and I’m planning to do another one based off of Heathers now that we’ve seen that beautiful fit. This piece is broken in sections as you’ll see, be aware of the warnings before you read!

Fandom: Riverdale

Pairing: Sweet Pea (kinda)

WC:  4297

Synopsis: Carrie episode from season 2 re-write

WARNINGS: character death, panic/anxiety attack (more so at the very end)

masterlist

Pre-Show: Rehearsals Begin

“I can’t believe you’re doing the musical,” Sweet Pea grumbled as you got off your bike.

“Good morning to you too, Pea,” you sighed.

“First Topaz ditches us because of the Blossom chick, then Fangs dips because of Keller, Jughead joined yesterday, and now you, what the hell am I supposed to do?” SP ranted and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes.

“First off I’m not actually performing and neither is Fangs and secondly you could always join the production,” you offer as the two of you enter Riverdale High.

Sweet Pea scoffed at that, “please tell me you’re joking,” he added a deadpan as his eyes slid to you.

“Not exactly, Pea, if we’re all in the musical, don’t you think you should probably come to see why?” you say as the two of you approach your locker.

“Hell no,” he stated simply, crossing his arms and leaning down to be closer to your eye level.

“Okay, well, enjoy being on your own for a bit Pea, because the rest of us have rehearsals today, I’ll see you later,” you nodded, after exchanging your books.

You tap Pea’s shoulder twice before walking away, shaking your head as his grumbles about enjoying the time off would suit him just fine.

After class you found yourself sitting in the circle with the rest of the main cast Kevin was giving a basic intro when Fangs finally showed, he slid into the circle between you and Kevin.

“Nice of you to show Fogarty,” you whispered to him, a playful look on your face.

“I’m a busy man, (y/n) you know that,” he winked slinging his arm on the back of your chair causing you to chuckle softly and shake your head.

You would’ve continued your conversation too if Cheryl hadn’t begun to sing. You had to give the redhead props, as she sang Carrie you could totally see her embodying the role of Carrie White. Although when she was done the smile that had come to your lips during her performance disappeared as soon as the thud that sounded with the falling of the sandbag was heard. You had physically jumped and Fangs’ arms had instinctively gone to pull you back, just in case.

Sweet Pea and Fangs were the same in that sense, the two of them had consistently been putting themselves in the line of danger to save you for years. A fight breaks out, the boys immediately push you behind them or one of them gets you out. For Fangs the reasoning was easy, he was your best friend, the flirting was all for fun and just a part of both of your natural natures. With Pea, the relationship was a bit different as often times he got a little too protective but at the same time would never give the honest answer, he was one of your closest friends and god were you grateful for him.

When rehearsals ended, shortly after the Cheryl and the sandbag fiasco Fangs walked you back outside to your bike, except when you got there you saw Sweet Pea waiting, leaning against his own Harley.

“Hey Sweets, what are you doing here?” you asked slowly as you and Fangs approached your bikes.

“Fangs texted me about the sandbag,” he stated and you rolled your eyes before glaring at your other friend.

“Seriously? I wasn’t even close to it, Cheryl’s the one who could’ve gotten hurt. Hell, I’m not even actually in the musical, I’m helping with costumes and filling in as an ensemble dancer and voice,” you clarify.

“Dead, she could’ve gotten dead,” Fangs argued.

“You’re not helping, Fogarty,” you squint at him.

“From now on, if you’re going to insist on doing this stupid musical because it is stupid, then I’m there, every time,” Sweet Pea decided.

“Fangs is going to be there constantly, and I don’t need a babysitter, I’m a big girl, Pea,” you attempted to object.

“You know this doesn’t really seem like you need me for this argument, so I'm just going to head out, I’ll see you guys back at Sunnyside,” Fangs managed to get out as you glared at Pea and he stared back.

It was once the roar of Fangs bike could no longer be heard did Sweet Pea speak up, “I know you’re a big girl, okay. Trust me I’m well aware, but here’s how it’s going to go down, I’m going to be there, end of story,” he stated.

You couldn’t help but scoff, “look Sweet Pea, I’m grateful for the fact that I have you and Fangs always looking out for me, but this time I have to say no. If something’s going on we’ll figure it out, okay? I’ve got Jughead and Toni and Fangs all in the musical. Not to mention I’m actually friends with Betty and Archie and Cheryl and pretty much everyone else, if anything happens I’m protected. And you’ll be the first to know. But you gotta give me space this time,” you sigh before starting your engine, revving it so that Sweet Pea wouldn’t be able to get another word in.

Act 1: B & V

Days began to go by without another incident, Jughead told you he’s looking into the whole sandbag incident and that he’s got his eyes open,  Cheryl and Josie seemed to have made up, or gotten to the in the works stage of the process and your costume game was going strong, so was your ensemble voice. However, the tension between Veronica and Betty was beginning to become even more palpable. Though things did come to a peak during Veronica’s The World According to Chris number.

“Okay, Veronica I am obsessed with everything that just happened,” Kevin praised as those of us, not in the number clapped from our seats in the audience.

“Thank you,” Veronica smiled, her hands clasped together and a gleeful smile splayed on her lips, “it helps to be off-book and in full costume,” Veronica sent you a silent thank you which caused you to smile back.

The dry laugh from Betty drew all of your attention though, “don’t be so modest. You are the literal embodiment of Chris,” she began and you couldn’t help but send Jughead who was a few seats to your left a look of worry. “Never had a role been so perfectly type-cast.”

“Oh no…” you mumbled a hand already coming up to pinch the bridge of your nose.

“Betty…” Archie began but stopped himself when Veronica raised her hand, you also didn't miss the sigh that Kevin let out, one very similar to the one you let out as everyone straightened in their seats, the drama something they craved.

“What was that, Betty?” Veronica asked, walking closer to the girl who was once her best friend.

“I mean, think about it,” Betty began again, her tone flat as if this were boring her and were completely obvious. “Spoiled rich girl, check. Major daddy issues, check. Bad to the bone, trying to control everyone around her, including her boyfriend and best friend, check, check, check,” Betty finished taking a few steps closer to Veronica as well.

Fangs let out a sigh before turning to you, your fingers still pinching the bridge of your nose, trying to fight an oncoming headache.

“What do we do?” Fangs mouthed, looking straight at you.

“Nothing,” you shook your head and mouthed back, this was one argument where you all had to keep your mouths shut until there was more information.

Intermission #1: a conversation

“Yo, Red,” I need to talk to you,” you shouted through the halls of Riverdale High School when spotted the familiar flob of red hair by his locker.

“Hey, (y/n), what’s up?” Archie nodded, switching out some of his books.

“How are Veronica and Betty? I mean I like them, really I do, but the tension with the musical, and the incident that happened after the Chris number, I’m a little worried,” you explained.

“Don’t worry about it, they’re sorting it out, but trust me, it’s getting better,” he promised before shutting his locker and reattaching the lock. “All you need to focus on is making sure that we look like we’re from Carrie, yeah?” he nodded before walking away.

“Sure thing, Andrews,” you sighed before heading off to your next class as well.

Act 2: Cheryl Blossom

Some more time went by and the cast was becoming stronger and stronger and then Kevin got another note, of course, you weren’t supposed to know. But you were a Serpent and that meant you and Jughead were family. When Kevin decided to talk to Cheryl things turned out very different than how you all were expecting them too.

“Due to some unforeseen circumstances...” Kevin began, clearly upset. Fangs had moved his hand to hold Kevin’s shoulder soothingly, though, Kevin had pushed it away. “...Cheryl will no longer be playing the role of Carrie White,” your eyes widened.

Sure Cheryl was being targeted but Cherry Bombshell never backs down from a fight, ever. Clearly, you weren’t the only one to be surprised as everybody immediately began asking “What?” and “Why?”. As your eyes danced around looking carefully at everyone sitting in the circle they couldn’t help but fixate on Ethel Muggs for a moment, she seemed to be fighting a proud little smirk and failing.

“Let’s just say Penelope Blossom isn’t much of a stage mom,” Kevin announced to everyone before leaning towards Toni, she was sitting on the other side of you while Fangs was to your right.

Toni gave a quick nod before grabbing her stuff and walking away, you shared another look with Fangs, there was some weird shit going down in this musical.

“In the meantime, Cheryl’s understudy will assume the role,” Kevin concluded with a curt nod.

“Understudy?” Ethel asked the smirk had been wiped away by the new information.

“I appointed one after the sandbag incident,” Kevin explained and your eyes narrowed on Ethel as she let out what seemed like an irritated sigh, “Midge Klump.”

Applause erupted from all of us as our attention went to Midge who’s smile brightened and cheeks flushed just enough for us to notice.

Intermission #2: Sweet Pea Returns

“Fangs mentioned things have been getting kind of intense over at the musical,” Sweet Pea noted as casually as he could while the two of you were playing a game of pool in the nearly empty Whyte Wyrm.

“Yeah, figured you must be the soul that Fogarty cries his sweet little heart out to,” you snorted, taking a sip of your water and lining up for your shot.

“Just wanted to check in, see how you were doing,” he continued.

Your eyes squinted slightly as you adjusted your angle before taking your shot, another of the striped balls landing in a hole, a smile on your lips you turned back to your giant of a friend. “Careful Sweets, almost sounds like you care,” you laugh.

You were about to place your hand down to continue your turn but Sweets pulled you back by your wrist, forcing you to turn to him, “Damn straight I care, you tell me what’s going on,” he said seriously, eyebrows furrowed, gaze focused on yours.

And your mouth went dry, suddenly all words taken from you, the look on his face was serious, deadly serious.

“Fangs told you about the second note, didn’t he?” you whispered, you were just so close, a whisper was all you needed.

“You tell me, okay,” he repeated, his voice still low and still serious.

Your hand came up to grab the one he had on your other wrist, “I promise, Sweets. I’ll tell you,” you nodded and he let you go.

“Good, now finish your shot so I can mop the floor with you,” he said, clearing his throat, and that soft look, one that almost looked like fear was gone, and his normal hardened by the world facade was back.

“It’s not nice to tell lies,” you shot back, sparing him another careful glance before turning back to the table.

Act 3: The Cooper Drama

As soon as we started working with Midge as Carrie we had to do a full breakdown of the new dynamic, so we finally let Alice Cooper take the stage, it was going really well and then Betty’s name slipped her mouth. Your head dropped at the realization of what was coming next, Fang's hand came down on my shoulders, his thumb rubbing slightly soothing circles into the blade.

“Mom?” Betty’s voice was soft as she called out to her mother after the older Cooper finished her lines form the song.

“Don’t leave me, Betty,” Alice begged, a soft hiccup in between. “Don’t leave me like all the others,” she added before rushing off stage, Betty got up and followed right after her.

“Am I directing a train wreck?” Kevin asked and that caused me to sit up straight. Fangs shrugged his shoulders before lifting a cup. “And where’s my tea?” Kevin added causing Fangs’ arm to freeze.

“Alright that’s enough drama for me, I’m heading home. Fangs, you good or you need a ride?” you asked standing up and grabbing your bag.

“Rehearsals aren’t done yet!” Kevin interjected.

“Guess it’s a good thing I’m not on stage then,” you sighed, offering the group a peace sign before walking out of the auditorium and to your bike.

Intermission #3: your interview

“Why are we in the music room, Jones?” you asked, a bored expression over your face as you sat down on one of the stools.

“It’s your turn for confession,” Jughead jokes.

“Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” you shot back sarcastically.

“No, but really, this is your time to talk about what it’s been like working behind the scenes and with the cast,” Jughead prodded.

“Kevin’s my friend Jughead. And he asked me to help with costumes. I agreed. The cast is just more of my friends, so it’s been cool. I mean I’m not really one for people’s drama so that’s been a bit much but I don’t know. Fangs is breathing down my neck constantly because Sweet Pea’s doing the same to him. Oh! I just finished the digital file for the program mock-up, I sent it to Kevin so he could make some final adjustments before sending them to print,” you offer.

“This is lame, you know that? You’re giving me lame stuff to film, boo,” Jughead shook his head and you laughed.

“Sorry, my life isn’t some telenovela-like some of our other friends,” you scoff.

“Such a shame too, you could’ve been a star, kid, a star,” jughead trailed with a slight accent, causing you to roll your eyes.

“You’re something else, Jones, you know that?” you laugh as the bell rings.

Act 4: The Show Begins

On the night of the show, I arrived with a bag in hand, inside was my best dress. I wasn’t going on stage but I had been a lot of help and so Kevin had asked me to dress nice. When I walked into the dressing rooms everyone was preparing themselves.

As the curtain call drew closer and closer I had already changed and now was running around to make sure everyone looked perfect. We were all singing You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet as we went.

“You ain't seen nothin' yet. It's gonna be a night you'll never forget. You ain't seen nothin' yet. It's gonna be a night we'll never forget,” everyone was singing

“This will be just great,” Archie sang before I pulled him away from Veronica and to his costume.

“Oh, my life is gonna take flight. Can't wait till Saturday night, yeah…”

Sheriff Keller came in to take a picture of Kevin, and then they ushered you into the photo too.

“Eighty bucks for a tux?” Kevin sang the next line, gesturing to his own clothes, causing me to laugh.

“Damn, we better get laid,” Moose cut in.

“You've been prayin' for that since the seventh grade,” you sang back causing Moose to snort in return.

“It's the least we deserve after everything we've paid,” Alice added from where she was curling her hair.

“Got the food,” Archie.

“Got the drinks,” Chuck.

“Got the limo for ten,” Veronica.

“And we won't get a chance like this again,” everyone.

“We'll be leaving as boys but we're coming home as men,” boys.

“This will be just great! Yeah, my life is gonna take flight,” Chuck.

“Can't wait till Saturday night,” Ethel.

I walked out into the hall to hand costumes out to everyone as they passed.

Toni came first, “You ain't seen nothin' yet. It's gonna be a night we'll never forget.”

Then the rest, “You ain't seen nothin' yet. It's gonna be a night we'll never forget. You ain't seen nothin' yet. It's gonna be a night we'll never forget. You ain't seen nothin' yet. It's gonna be a night we'll never forget. You ain't seen nothin' yet. It's gonna be a night we'll never forget. You ain't seen nothin' yet. It's gonna be a night we'll never, no, never, we'll never forget. A night we'll never forget,” then they were ready.

Intermission #4: 10 minutes til places

“Ten minutes till places! Where is Fangs?” Kevin announced before looking to you.

“I don’t know, Kevin. I’ve been trying to find him myself,” you shook your head.

Sweet Pea hadn’t told you if he was coming tonight but you knew Fangs would know.

“Okay, you know what? You!” Kevin pointed at one of the many co-stage managers he had gotten to help with the musical, “give (y/n) your headset. I need to be able to talk to her in case we have a costume malfunction.”

The girl handed it to you with a smile before walking away to help finish final touches.

“Why’d you really give it to me?” You asked, your friend as you adjusted the headset.

“Keep your eyes open, I’ve got this queasy feeling,” he mumbled before walking away.

“(Y/n)!” Jughead called out to you from where he was behind the camera.

“Yeah, what’s up, Jughead?” you asked.

“When we find Fangs, stick with him, okay? Or find Sweet Pea and sit with him,” Jughead told you.

“Jug! Are you serious? I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” you grumbled before walking away.

Not even five minutes passed before you saw Jughead again, this time he was being thrown out of Ethel’s dressing room, “Really, Jones?” you asked.

“I think Ethel’s the one who wrote the notes, sounded like a guilty conscious to me,” Jughead responded, turning the camera towards me, and then to the side again, “Hey Moose!”

“Out of my way, Jones,” Moose spit back, a hand to Jughead’s chest for good measure.

Your eyes met Jug’s over the top of the camera, you were vaguely aware that he was filming you again, “What is going on with this musical, man?” you muttered.

“Something, diabolical,” Jughead answered, squinting his eyes slightly as he looked after the direction in which Moose had gone.

Act 5: The Final Act

The musical had been going well, you were sitting next to Jughead and Kevin in the middle of the front row, watching Alice Cooper sing before it all went to hell.

“All right, Carrietta, it’s time to come out of your closet,” Alice announced and the stagehands took their queue to raise the closet set.

We were supposed to see Midge, on her knees and she should’ve been singing, instead, your hands began to sweat and your heart began to move much more rapidly and you felt something sour rise up your throat. Midge was on stage, but not how it should’ve been.

“Uh, Kevin, did you reblock this scene? Why isn’t she on her knees singing?” Cheryl’s voice had an edge to it, the same edge that had made it slightly more difficult for you to breath.

Kevin could only stutter and my hand came up over my mouth, the feeling as if I were about to cry, or faint, or vomit all swirling through me. Because on stage was Midge, she was on the wall, suspended in place by multiple daggers in her body and around her, was bloody letters, “I AM BACK FROM THE DEAD ALL THOSE WHO ESCAPED ME BEFORE WILL DIE... B.H.”

“Oh god, no,” you muttered.

“I don’t think that’s part of the show,” Jughead murmured.

“Oh my god,” Kevin was finally able to spit some words out.

“Somebody should help her, for god's sake help her!” Cheryl screamed, and that caused Alice to turn around.

When Alice Cooper let out a scream of pure fear everyone began to move, but you were frozen the panic of the situation was getting to you, everyone seemed to close and the room felt like there wasn’t enough air and everything was too loud.

“(Y/n)!” Jughead shouted from where he was beside you.

“I-I can-can’t-” you shook your head violently and your body began to shake.

You were so focused on how your hands were shaking you didn’t realize when someone else came to stand before you, allowing Jughead to go run after his girlfriend.

“(Y/n),” his voice was stern and low and had an edge to it that made you look up.

There was Sweet Pea, he was staring at you so carefully but also with what looked like relief, then he notices your hands.

“Hey, just breath, okay, you’re going to be fine,” he attempted to soothe.

“Fine!” you shot back between ragged breaths. “She-she’s dead…” you tried to gasp for air and then Sweet Pea made a decision, he slipped his arms around you from where you were sitting, and with a small grunt lifted you into his arms.

His giant stature allowed him to move through the crowd relatively easily and he didn’t stop until he got you outside.

“Hey, I’ve got you, you’re going to be okay” he whispered a few minutes after he had set you on one of the picnic tables outside in the back, it was quieter there and the cold air helped to get you to calm down, his arms were on both sides of you and then you were hugging him.

He froze this time, surprised at how you had basically latched your arms around him, but his arms moved to wrap around you, and he squeezed you just enough to remind you he was here.

“You’re freezing,” he noted, his voice a soft whisper, just like it was that day at the Wyrm. He pulled away from you for a moment to slip his jacket off, he was wearing the leather one today, and then it was enveloping you.

“C’mon let’s get you home,” he said softly.

“I don’t want to go home, Pea. I don’t want to go back to an empty trailer, not tonight,” you whispered.

“Then you’ll come to mine, I told you I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he nodded, offering you his hand.

You nodded before grabbing it.

The Curtain Call

You were sitting on Sweet Pea’s bed, staring at a picture on the wall.

“That was a good day,” Sweet Pea said, his voice soft as he set some stuff to the side of you on the bed.

You didn’t respond and your hands were tucked under your legs to keep them from shaking.

“I got some clothes for you to change into,” he continued, but your eyes stayed focused on the photo. “(Y/n).... C'mon, work with me, tell me something,” he asked and you slowly turned to him.

He sighed and grabbed a wipe as he took in your disheveled face, makeup smudged and streaked over your face. “C’mere,” he said as he tilted your face up to him, tucking your hair back and slowly wiping at your face.

Your lips parted as he swiped the wipe by your chin, “I’m terrified,” you admit to him, voice cracking.

Sweet Pea kept one hand gently on your face as he threw the wipe into the trash bin, “Nothing’s going to happen to you, while I’m here, okay? I’ve got you. All the serpents do,” he promised, but it did little to soothe your nerves.

“That’s not the reason,” you breathed as one of your shaky hands came up to grip onto Pea’s wrist.

He stays silent, eyes flicking to yours as he grabbed your scrunchie from your wrist, his hands moving to your hair.

“I’m terrified for who’s next,” you continued and your eyes watered. “I don’t want to watch another person die.”

He tied your hair in a half bun and swept a few of your baby hairs from your face before crouching down to be eye level with you, “They’re gonna get this guy,” he said seriously.

“You don’t know that,” your voice cracked as you met his eyes.

“I don’t have to. Because what I do know, is that no one is going to touch you, because I’m here, always,” he reminded. “Here, these should sort of fit, get comfy, we can watch a movie or something,” he nodded to the clothes on the bed.

He walked out to go and change himself and carefully you unzipped your dress and changed into the black boxer shorts and grey t-shirt he had left for you.

When he came back he laid on his bed and you fell in beside him. With one arm over your waist, he started the movie. You fell asleep before the halfway mark, and his grip on you tightened slightly. There was no way in hell he was going to just let you go.

[knock-me-out]

panic! in the hallway

genre - big phat mess tbh I dunno

characters - p much everyone + some random girl 

word count - 1748 words of sheer garbage

requested - nope ! request stuff tho, guys !!

summary - hyun gets cornered by a pretty girl, the other members are shook, ryeo’s possessive and jealous...ki gets hit a lot. it’s a mess.  not proofread, some references to shit we haven’t really posted about but there’s enough there that everything should be kinda self explanatory anyways? we’ll get to it.

there’s some crass language and sexual innuendos, keep that in mind.

“It’s Hyunseok-sunbae, right?”

He’d be lying if he claimed he didn’t physically jolt outright, the unfamiliar let liltingly melodic tone catching the leader unawares as he exited the bathroom, blinking vapidly at the owner of the voice for a few ticks longer than appropriate before recognizing, yes, a very attractive girl was looking at him expectantly, and no, it didn’t seem she was being bribed to approach him. He didn’t recognize her, but that was nothing new, Hyun was normally about as clueless about new groups and their debuts as he was when it came to biomechanical engineering, but it didn’t take recognition to acknowledge visuals. She was shorter than he was by quite a bit, petal lips glossy and rose-tinted, a stray speck of glitter from her eyeshadow adorning a high cheekbone, her hair dyed cherry red. He hadn’t said a thing yet, shit, he hadn’t said a thing.

“Yes!” Too enthusiastic, too pressured, and Hyunseok backtracked rapidly, stumbling over his words for a moment, hurriedly bowing briefly in greeting and using the opportunity to clandestinely wipe the palms of his hands on his pants, having already nervously started sweating despite the fact that he’d washed his hands not even two minutes before. “Yes, that’s me. I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met before?” It was hard to make the question sound as polite as it should have been, but the simple fact of the matter was that he didn’t know this girl, and it wasn’t altogether too normal for her to approach him the way she had...especially considering their location. The SBS Open Hall was teeming with idols, certainly, but normally groups tended to stick to their own unless absolutely necessary.

“No, we haven’t. I’m Eunmi, I...your sister and I went to international school together? I didn’t hear about what happened until recently, I’m so sorry.” Hyun’s smile faltered at that, but only momentarily, and he cast a somewhat panicked glance over her shoulder to where his members were clustered obnoxiously in the middle of the corridor and diverting the flow of other people, meeting Remi’s eyes and being graced with an inquisitive raise of the brows from the oldest member.

“Ah, I...appreciate that.” What was someone supposed to say to that, now of all times? He’d hardly managed to process through any of it himself, and he wondered for a moment how the information might have gotten out if W.C. insisted on keeping it all so tightly under wraps, at least until they finished promotions.

“Your stage tonight was incredible, by the way! You really are topping the charts right now, especially after such a long hiatus…” Eunmi’s lips pursed, her affect just screaming that she wanted more information on that nebulous ten-month break, but Hyunseok wouldn’t bite. He was far too caught up on the shift in topic; how could someone go from expressing condolences for the loss of a supposed school friend to what seemed like….it couldn’t be. She couldn’t be trying to flirt with him, could she? Hyunseok felt heat crawl to his face within milliseconds of the notion, and he curled his fingers into his palms momentarily. It was ridiculous to even consider; the girls tended to flock towards Dohwan and Remi before himself, even Kiyong when he seemed in an approachable mood...Hyunseok was an afterthought, usually too busy looking nauseated with anxiety at large-scale events to receive more than a perfunctory nod in his direction or a friendly but distracted greeting.

“Everyone’s been working hard, we’re lucky to have such loyal fans, that’s all.” The compliment was brushed off instinctively, but he couldn’t fight back a nervous laugh that was more of an excuse to exhale a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding up until that point...a breath that devolved quickly into a somewhat undignified cough as she reached out.

“Give yourself more credit!” Her hand was on his shoulder, she was touching him, and the heat of her palm was like a brand through the thin and silky material of his shirt. Thank God for makeup, otherwise he was sure anyone within a ten mile radius would have been able to register the cerise hue of his face. Hyunseok shifted his weight, another anxious laugh passing between them until she lowered her hand, ghosting long fingernails maybe just a bit more directly than necessary along his upper arm as she did so. Or was he just imagining that?

No, he couldn’t possibly be imagining the obvious interest in her gaze, the way she flicked her hair over one shoulder, the tilt of her hips.

“With a leader like you, it’s no wonder you guys are right back to your old success, right?”

Yep, he was screwed.

--

“Is she being paid to talk to him, or what?” Kiyong was bored, and had been announcing it every ten minutes like clockwork, but the introduction of a new potential topic had piqued his interest the moment he witnessed what was occuring. When Hyunseok had been stopped outside the bathroom, it was almost comical how the conversations amongst the remaining eleven members had ceased to spy on the leader maybe a bit less inconspicuously than could be hoped.

“Oh boy, she wants a piece of that.” It was Dohwan’s turn to interject as the mysterious redhead put her hand on Hyunseok’s shoulder, letting it fall only mere seconds after, but it was a touch nonetheless. “Her name’s Eunmi, her group debuted just a few months ago.”

“And how would you know?” Ki snapped immediately, and even though it was more than plausible that Dohwan knew what he was talking about, he’d take any excuse he could to push back when the other knew something he didn’t.

“The leader of her group and I, uh…long story short, they all hate me now, I’m surprised Eunmi’s talking to Hyunseok-hyung at all. She’s gorgeous, though, I’ll tap that if he doesn’t.”

“We aren’t talking about mom’s sex life right now. Or ever, thanks.” Owen spoke up for the first time in a while, having been too distracted by his side conversation with Dae, the latter of which looking as confused as he always did.

“Who are we talking about?”

“Dae-yah, you’re like ninety feet tall, how are you still that unaware of what’s going on?”

“Wait, where’s--”

“Oh my God.” Kiyong’s sharp tone cut through Daesung’s question, and he spoke in English this time around and continued to do as he kept going. Whether or not he was aware of it was unclear, and he grabbed onto Remi’s arm and leaned heavily into him. “She definitely just hit him with the ‘ooh shouldn’t you go back to your members?’ He waved her off, he waved her off. Is it just me or does he look less like he wants to fling himself out a window, now? Ooh, boy, there’s that posture shift -- he’s going for it. It’s like watching some weird exotic bird doing a mating dance.”

Owen and Remi were clearly the only two to pick up on the majority what he’d said, but Dohwan’s brows drew together at the word mating, at least he knew that one.

“Guys, leave him alone.” Seungjae didn’t bother glancing up from his phone as he spoke, thumbs a blur on the screen as he typed out what looked like an aggressively long-winded rant in Japanese. “He’s an adult and can make his own stupid decisions.”

“Your mom’s a stupid decision.”

“Ki, that doesn’t even make sense.”

“Neither does your face.”

Both Jui and Seungjae raised a hand to hit him at that, but only Jui followed through, landing a heavy smack between Kiyong’s shoulder blades that was forceful enough that he choked on the water he had brought to his lips, spitting the majority back out into the bottle and unceremoniously onto his own hand...a hand he subsequently wiped on Dohwan’s jacket.

“She just gave him her number, I think, lady, there are sandwiches for a reason. Good thing hyung's always too nervous to eat during these things or he would have thrown up all over her by now.”

Owen had a point. It was curious, however, that Hyunseok’s affect seem to have shifted in only a few minutes. He’d gone from standing stiffly, face a lot redder than he probably thought it was, and expression akin to being confronted with a dead baby bunny to...confident, at least in Kiyong’s opinion. Hyun was laughing, genuinely laughing at something she said, when Ryeokwon suddenly removed himself from the group and approached Hyunseok and Eunmi without having said a single word.

“Well, shit.”

For once, Ki had to agree with Dohwan.

--

“No, no, it was the second time he got caught with a girl that--” Hyunseok’s anecdote was cut off succinctly by the approach of Ryeokwon, and he watched as a hardened expression only worsened as the blond reached out for Hyunseok.

“Hyung, we need to go.” He was used that tone again, the ‘I’m going to seem borderline casual but you know I mean it’ sort of inflection Ryeo liked to adopt in public, but it was apparent that Hyun’s hesitation wasn’t good enough for him. Hyunseok’s attention was diverted not only by the dancer now holding his hand, but also by a yell from the direction of the others, to see Jui repeatedly swatting Kiyong upside the head with what looked like an empty and half-crushed water bottle. He didn’t notice the caustic and possessive glare Ryeokwon shot at Eunmi, nor did he witness the nervous manner in which she shied back half a step. When he returned his attention to the blond and the redhead now picking uncomfortably at one of the many bracelets adorning her slim wrists, it was only to concede.

“I, ah, should get back to…”

He couldn’t hide the disappointment in his tone. Eunmi was trying hard to look nonplussed, but there was a tenseness to her jaw that he interpreted only as regret.

“That’s alright...I should get going too anyways, yeah? Well...you know how to reach me.”

Hyunseok wasn’t given an opportunity to respond properly beyond an awkward half-wave before she turned and he allowed himself to be half-dragged somewhat barbarically back to the others, where he was met by an enthusiastic clap on the back from Dohwan and a look of unguarded confusion from just about everyone else.

Seungjae only had one thing to say.

“Your fly was halfway undone the whole time, by the way.”

[hati-skoll]

Punch

AO3

Prequel: Slick

It's Friday night, the perfect night to let loose after three mid-semester tests and Steve is hiding behind a punch bowl feeling entirely out of place. The music is soft and tasteful, and so are the conversations – now that the highlight of the evening has come to a close. Obviously, when Billy invited Steve to litsoc's 'wild night out at the club', he’d meant they were having a strongly worded debate on the ABO dynamics underpinning Edgar Allan Poe’s works, while sipping red wine and dining on hors d'oeuvres. Not getting drunk on cheap beer and smoking weed in dark corners. Steve thinks he ought to be forgiven for his misinterpretation.

Very unfortunately, Billy is also running late. So Steve is left alone to fend off questions like, "So what did you think of the orangutan in Rue Morgue?" Nothing. That's exactly what Steve thinks of it, and he somehow manages to set the person off when he hesitantly says, "It's an ape, right?" Litsoc students are fucking terrifying.

There aren't many familiar faces here either. Nancy's in litsoc too – it's been a running joke amongst them that Steve fancies literature types to make up for his remarkable ineptitude – and she's promised to attend with Jonathan in tow, but that's before she caught that nasty flu bug, so now they're clearly a no-show. Then there's Zack from Intro Psych, who waved a greeting earlier in the evening. Steve doesn't mind hanging with Zack, but he's standing beside this guy who looks like he could be a model or a hired killer. And Steve definitely prefers to stay off his hit list.

So Steve is camping by the punch bowl, attempting to properly affect a sense of 'please don't talk to me about ravens or orangutans', when a cheerful alpha who introduces himself as 'Kunsel, like Hansel in Hansel and Gretel but cooler' bumps his shoulder. Steve is just grateful that he doesn't seem to be interested in Steve's opinion on the lack of beta representation in gothic literature - which litsoc's president, Genesis, rattled on about for thirty minutes, after finding Steve woefully uninformed on the subject.

"So you like the punch, huh?" Kunsel asks.

Steve frowns at the bowl in front of him, he doesn't know if he's touched it. "Uh, yeah, it's… not bad?"

"You've been guarding it the entire night. I figured it's gotta be liquid gold or something."

"Oh, sorry, did you want some of it?" Steve asks, gesturing for the guy to go ahead.

"Well, don't mind if I do," Kunsel says.

Steve watches as Kunsel gulps down half a cup, then makes a face. He tries very hard not to snigger at the look of disgruntled distaste – aha, he made an alliteration, maybe litsoc's rubbing off him – on Kunsel's face. "Might be an acquired taste," Steve offers.

"Might be," Kunsel agrees dubiously, discreetly pouring what's left of his cup into a nearby trash bin. "Say, I bet I could break out a bottle of wine for us, I know Genesis likes to keep a few spare bottles on hand. You in?"

Steve doesn't want to get into trouble – he's here as Billy's guest after all. On the other hand, more alcohol sounds extremely tempting. "I don't know, you think he'll be alright with it?"

"Genesis? Oh, he'll throw a horrible fit. We're good as long as he never finds out we did it."

"Okay. Yeah. Maybe we shouldn't steal his wine," Steve says.

Kunsel throws an arm around Steve's shoulders and starts steering him away to… wherever Genesis keeps the spare bottles of wine, probably. "It'll be fine! C'mon, where's your sense of adventure?"

Buried under the legion of demon dogs which attempted to take over my hometown, but let's not go there, Steve doesn't say. Instead, he tries to politely shrug off Kunsel's hand, which is lingering a little too near his nape for fifteen-minute acquaintances. "Something tells me it's not a good idea to get on Genesis' bad side."

"His bark is worse than his bite, trust me," Kunsel says, "But hey, if it really bothers you, you can tell him it's all my fault – if he catches us, I mean."

"Right, uh. I really, really don't think the reward is worth the risk."

"Good wine is worth any risk. And Genesis has the best wine," Kunsel declares – which makes far too much sense for the sanctity of Steve's short but fairly amicable friendship with litsoc's president. Kunsel leans in close, close enough for Steve to feel the guy's breath at his ear, and smell the familiar-but-not blend of spice and alpha interest. A little too close for comfort.

He's quietly rehearsing the I'm-already-in-a-romantic-partnership-so-I'm-flattered-but-no-thanks speech in his head, when Steve notices Billy trying to inconspicuously edge into the room, only to be waylaid by an irate Genesis. Billy scowls in a manner that's both abashed and indignant as his club's president gives him a real rollicking – aha, another alliteration.

"What are you staring- Oh, awesome, Hargrove's got Genesis distracted, come on!" Then Kunsel is pulling Steve along, weaving through the crowd with practised ease, and it's decidedly difficult to get in a word of 'look, I'm not really interested in you that way'.

They're only interrupted when they're sneaking through an inconspicuous door near the stage, a large hand catching Kunsel by the back of his shirt and drawing him to a halt. "Alright, what are you two up to?"

"Nothing," Steve practically yelps, as Kunsel goes, "Aw, you caught us, Hargrove."

Billy is standing behind them, looking incredibly unimpressed and peeved and also out of breath because clearly he's been running to catch up to them. He pushes his fringe up and out of his eyes, before folding his arms across his chest, trying for the whole you-can't-get-past-me look, which Steve isn't fooled by, because he's seen Billy try that look on Max, and Billy's not once managed to stop his sister from doing whatever the hell she wants.

"It's just some innocent fun, I promise," Kunsel's saying, and Steve belatedly realises how misleading that sounds.

He doesn't get the chance to botch up an explanation though, because Billy immediately raises his brows at both of them, drawling, "Is that so? You making a criminal out of my boyfriend for some innocent fun, Kunsel?"

Kunsel blinks, first at Billy, then at Steve. "Oh. You're Hargrove's boyfriend," if anything, Kunsel seems tickled pink to know that, which isn't quite the reaction Steve's been expecting, "I got to rub shoulders with the princess before everyone else, sweet!"

"The princess!" Steve squawks.

"You're a legend in litsoc," Kunsel informs him, "The mysterious, Schrodinger princess who's got Hargrove on a short leash, whoever could it be? We've all got money on you– well, not you you, princess you. I think I lost ten bucks, actually."

"Billy!" Steve rounds on his smug, chuckling boyfriend, "I'm not your damned princess!"

Billy just wraps his arms around Steve's waist and plants a soppy kiss on his cheek, laughing. "Yeah, yeah. Sorry I'm late. Though I didn't think you'd be roped into one of their alcohol heists so quick. They pull this stunt every single damned time Genesis hosts a soiree."

"We weren't going to take much," Kunsel protests. "Just one bottle. Genesis wouldn't miss it."

"Hah, you're deluding yourself. And I don't recall you ever stopping at just one bottle," Billy scoffs.

"Well, Zack-"

Kunsel cuts himself off, looking very deer-in-headlights and Steve stares at both of them curiously. Billy's got that stupid, predatory, shit-eating light in his ridiculously angelic baby blues, which spells trouble for all parties involved – that usually means Steve, but it's not Steve on the receiving end of that look right now. A welcome change, if anyone asked him. Steve is, however, a little occupied by how, "You know Zack? Zack from Introductory Psych?"

"Uh, I think so," Kunsel says, "Black, spikey hair and kind of muscly? That's the one."

"Also the mastermind for all past alcohol heists, and weirdly absent tonight," Billy adds, "You guys are definitely up to something."

"I saw Zack when I got here, standing in the alcove by the fountain, with uh, this hitman-slash-model-looking guy," Steve says, confused.

"His babysitter. Genesis usually puts one on him, because he knows Zack's trouble," Billy explains, before pinning Kunsel with a rather impressive spill-all-your-secrets look, "Okay, out with it, what's the deal with Zack?"

Kunsel winces and squirms and whimpers, after which he yells, "Death before dishonour!" three seconds before he caves, and bolts like a bat out of hell. Steve blinks, wow, so Billy isn't the only drama queen in litsoc, no wonder he fits right in here.

Billy, for the matter, is shaking his head and clicking his tongue in scathing disappointment, the damned hypocrite – Steve elbows his boyfriend in the ribs, which results in an exaggeratedly hurt, oof and a disgruntled, "This is what I get for saving you from a wine raid. Really, princess?"

"I was a willing participant!" Steve says.

Billy makes a face. "That's only cause you didn't know what you were getting into. You don't wanna cross Genesis, princess. He'll chew you into little mushy bits and spit you back out a hollow version of yourself."

"Oh, like a cow." Billy stares at him wordlessly, and Steve awkwardly shifts his weight from foot to foot. "You know, cause cows kinda regurgitate the grass they eat-"

"Yeah, don't let Genesis hear you say that."

Steve huffs as Billy leads him back towards the punch table with a hand on the small of his back, back to the exact spot where he'd been standing for most of the party- oh wait, soiree. He may as well be a nude model for all the standing around motionless he's been doing tonight, except with clothes on, so maybe a clothed model – which is what he tells Billy.

"I thought you were a party animal back in Hawkins," Billy says.

"Yes. When I'm high on alcohol and, or, weed, none of which are available at the moment," Steve can't quite help the waspish snap to his voice, even though he knows Billy didn't actually mean to have his seminar run overtime – because, seriously, that's every student's nightmare – and abandon Steve to ravens and orangutans.

"Are you pouting?"

"No."

Billy sighs despondently. "I'd asked Genesis to keep you entertained."

"Oh, so you're the reason he was quizzing me on gothic literature for half a goddamned hour."

Billy purses his lips, attempting to look sombre but Steve knows he's really just trying to avoid bursting out laughing, because Steve is this close to setting all of his books on fire – alright, no, he'll never do that, not when Billy treasures his literature collection so much, and his asshat of a father spent his childhood ripping his beloved books to shreds. And it's hard to hold onto his childish, petty anger, Steve realises, when Billy is soulfully making doe eyes at him and caging him against the damned punch table and crooning into his ear, "Aw, I'm sorry for setting Gen on you, princess. Say you forgive me?"

"Children, do keep the rating at General Audiences. Wild sex parties are reserved strictly for Sundays," Genesis interrupts, unrepentantly shattering The Moment, leaving Steve and Billy to groan in frustrated exasperation.

"Gimme a break. You eye-fuck your boyfriends all the time," Billy snorts, turning to face litsoc's president, who was resplendent in red leather and looking entirely too self-satisfied having popped their bubble.

"My club, my rules," Genesis says, "And you've the nerve to complain when you completely missed today's debate. At least Nancy had the good sense to cancel her attendance beforehand. We ended up with Dottie- Dottie, can you believe it- standing in for you, and you know the sort of rubbish that girl spouts."

"I said I was sorry," Billy says, a little defensively.

"As you should be. Poor Steve was hanging around my punch bowl for about an hour."

"Oh, that," Billy eyes the punch bowl with a strange amount of trepidation, "I think your punch bowl's been compromised."

Genesis' eyes narrows immediately. "Zack."

"And Kunsel," Billy nods, "I caught that one trying to lead my princess-" at this point, Steve is a little too tired to protest, so he's letting it slide for now, "-astray. Zack probably needed a distraction to spike the punch."

Genesis gives a heavy, beleaguered, rather resigned sort of sigh, before shouting, "Damn it, Zack Fair, I'm gonna spank your sorry ass raw tonight!" and striding away, cloak flapping behind him and the crowd parting for him like… well, like the red sea, just as a panicked, "Oh, shit!" floats over from the other side of the room.

"Your litsoc's got a real colourful cast of personalities," Steve comments as they watch Zack and Kunsel scramble across the stage with Genesis hot on their heels.

"Some real questionable ones too," Billy snorts, "I leave you alone for what, thirty minutes, and then I find you slumming with our resident troublemakers."

"I thought you were the resident troublemaker."

"Nah, haven't you heard? My princess' got me on a real short leash."

"Oh, shut up," Steve scolds, and tilts his face up for a kiss. Billy enthusiastically acquiesces with a full-on Rated M, porn-worthy lip-lock, all tongues and teeth and groping hands sliding underneath Steve's shirt. He nips on Steve's lips so they're stinging, swollen and squeezes Steve's ass through his jeans, and Steve's come to the sudden epiphany that he doesn't need alcohol or weed to get high at parties, he just needs one really handsy Billy Hargrove. When they pull away from each other, Billy's wild-eyed and slightly red-faced, looking perfectly happy-drunk on Steve, and Steve's mostly pleased about the happy part of the happy-drunkenness.

He runs his hands through Billy's curly hair, and lets Billy kiss him once more, twice more, reverently this time, before laughing breathlessly into Billy's mouth, "So how about some punch?"

[brakken]

On Homecoming

Here’s my stream of consciousness about Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Strap in, there are spoilers and a lot of words ahead.

Right out the gate, I gotta say this:

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is my favourite Spidey film. 

I know it isn’t perfect - I have my own criticisms toward it, but I feel a lot of the hate it gets is undeserved, and I believe my reasons for liking it are valid. I also don’t consider my regard for it to be blind love for anything Spidey-related. I’m not a fan of Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, and I find ASM1 has huge problems. I think Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 is an incredibly well-made movie, and having re-watched it recently, it’s easy to understand why most people (myself included) consider it one of the greatest superhero films ever made. However - I don’t consider it the greatest Spidey film. That title is held by Marc Webb & Co.’s 2014 underperformer, with a current rating of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes. There is an inherent feel in that movie, which for me captures the magic and identity of what I see in Spidey as a character. But, this isn’t about ASM2.

I mention it, because I want to express how difficult it was - how scary - to go into the cinema and watch Homecoming. For most audiences, this was potentially the first good Spidey film since Raimi’s 2. For me, it was following a film that I hold very close to my heart. And it took me two viewings to fully come to terms with my opinion on it:

Spider-Man: Homecoming is pretty good.

It’s not as good as Raimi’s 2, nor ASM2 (for me), but I’ve realised it’s not entirely fair to compare it to the second instalments of those series. Up against Spider-Man 1 and ASM1? It holds its own quite well. It’s pretty good. And if its first go can be pretty good, then the sequel has every opportunity to be pretty great.

While Homecoming has plenty of fun moments - of genuinely good moments… there simply aren’t enough memorable moments. As the sixth Spidey film, and as another episode in the MCU, it doesn’t hold enough of its own iconography to stand above its predecessors and peers. It’s clearly shooting for that ‘neighborhood’ feeling, and succeeds in that – but in doing so sacrifices opportunities for spectacle. And when it does step out into the big time, it’s all too similar to what we’ve seen already. Catching the elevator harkens right back to Raimi’s Spidey 1, with a bit of Gwen’s fall from ASM2 in the mix. When Spidey holds the ferry together, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the train sequence from Raimi 2 (plus Cap w/ the helicopter from Civil War). Nothing about how Spidey moved was overly unique or noteworthy to this iteration.

I have issues with the suit having such advanced tech - and to illustrate my problem I want to lay out the foundations of a general storyline involving the Symbiote: Spidey receives a new suit, it gives him enhanced strength, speed, and stamina. It increases the versatility of his web-shooting and makes his spider-sense react even faster. Beyond even that, the suit can talk to him - offering its own guidance and insight into his life. He begins to rely more and more on it. Becomes addicted to it. Until, he is able to realise it’s doing more harm than good, and ultimately abandons it - returning to his classic costume with a newfound understanding of his own strengths.

 Now, imagine after all that, he puts the black suit on again. And the story ends there. This is Homecoming. Sure, the suit isn’t directly affecting his biology or personality, but it represents newfound ability from a source not his own that he begins to rely too much on. Once it’s taken away from him, he’s back to basics - faced with the reality of hard decisions. He defeats the villain with his own strength, and having reached further clarity, turns down the Avengers position - happy with who he is, and comfortable with where he is. Then Tony gives him the suit back. Yes, he has fulfilled his character arc, and may very well use the suit responsibly in the future. But the suit in this case - is symbolic of him getting in over his head. A return of the suit equates to a return of that trait.

There’s a bit of a ‘wait and see’ that goes along with that (one of the track names on the OST suggests that Tony returned the suit without all the gadgets), but to cap off a movie which took efforts to showcase that relying on the bells and whistles is a bad thing, and handling the costume downgrade in the finale so well, it seems entirely backwards to me to then conclude with ‘yay! the bells and whistles are back!’

Karen presents an additional problem. She is, like J.A.R.V.I.S. in Iron Man 1, a non-character. An implement to give the protagonist and audience information when otherwise we’d be left confused or it would seem contrived to have our hero break into monologue. However, unlike J.A.R.V.I.S., she gives advice to Peter. She compliments him and gives insight into his personal life. To attribute this role to what is naught but a natural language UI is damaging to the actual active players in Peter’s life. It robs opportunity from Aunt May and Peter’s school friends to do the same, people with actual stake in interacting with him and who can experience the good and bad consequences of it.

To be clear, I get all this is purposeful in the context of the story. But it feels like the plot to a second film, mixing things up once we’ve established the characters in the first. Instead, we focus on them only long enough so they can fulfil certain trope moments before Karen, Happy Hogan, and Tony take centre stage in Peter’s life.

The suit’s design itself… I almost love. There are a few small things that bug me when I think of this as his standard get-up, but it has definitely grown on me since Civil War. Vulture’s suit, on the other hand, effing rocks and is the best thing ever and I love it. It’s everything I could have hoped for from a live-action Vulture.

Let’s talk about the opening Civil War vlog. Small inconsistencies in movies are easily forgiven, and it can be considered nit-picking to point them out as flaws or plot-holes of the movie. But the little things can go a long way to keep the audience from asking the wrong questions at the wrong time. Questions like:

Why was Peter shown as only having older tech in Civil War but in the opening vlog of Homecoming he has a modern smartphone? Why does he say ‘Holy shit!’ in Civil War when reacting to Giant-Man but in the opening vlog he says ‘he’s big now, gotta go’? Why does he have a bruise over his eye in the Civil War post-credits scene but looks unwounded in Homecoming while in Tony’s car (a scene which takes place presumably minutes earlier)?

All these questions can be answered. With ‘oh Tony gave him the phone’ or ‘He said “Holy shit” after the camera cut away’ but I think it’s a shame that what should have been a fairly easy and smooth lead-in to this movie is riddled with these little questions.

 On the note of lead-ins, I know we’re meant to be sick of origin stories at this point - particularly Spider-Man’s. Even so, I can’t help but feel like we’ve missed out on seeing this Peter’s beginnings. If the MCU is going to be Spidey’s home for the foreseeable future, I really want it to be the most secure - and having no solid concept of his backstory puts that on shaky ground. There isn’t that much to it. Bitten by spider, yep. Uncle’s dead, probably. But there’s still a lot you can explore surrounding that - so why not give us a bit more insight into how this one is unique? I knew they weren’t going to do an origin, but in doing so it’s created an odd-one-out within the MCU, wherein every titular character has had some level of on-screen genesis. I’m not very keen on prequels and flashbacks, so at least for me, they’ve kinda missed their chance. And that feels unfair.

I want to briefly touch on the scene-to-scene presentation. In my experience, scenes in stories should typically serve two purposes. The first is the subtext; to establish elements of the overarching theme or foreshadow future events. While the second purpose is the literal; to deliver a short yet satisfying arc within the scene itself, masking the subtext with smaller pieces of story. Here’s an example using the pizza delivery scene from Raimi’s Spider-Man 2:

Subtext: Peter struggles with managing his double life. His misfortunes are increasing in severity until finally he quits being Spider-Man.

Literal: Peter fails to deliver the pizza in time, and as a result, is fired from his job.

Compared to the deli scene from Homecoming:

Subtext: Establish the deli and its owner in the story so that when it’s destroyed, both Peter and the audience can witness the danger of the weapons Toomes is making, and witness Peter’s naivety and inexperience as a hero.

Literal: Peter buys a sandwich and pets a cat.

 That’s it. That’s the scene. Yes, he has some playful banter with the deli owner, but it doesn’t affect anything by scene’s end. It’s leaning mostly, if not completely on its overarching purpose, leaving the specifics of the scene in relative unimportance. My immediate reaction after the scene finished was ‘wait, why did we need to see that’? My reaction once I got home was ‘how did this scene end up in a Spider-Man movie’?

The film is rife with these one-track moments. At times, it avoids this, and I feel that’s where it’s at its best. The scene with Aaron Davis is a notable favourite of mine because it succeeds in delivering strongly on both the short and long term. The opening scene beneath Avengers Tower is also a fairly solid miniature arc while setting up the villain’s motivation for the remainder of the movie.

This one-track feeling bleeds into the characters at times, too. Particularly that of Michelle, who as far as the film is concerned is only there to say a witty remark before vanishing from the scene entirely… and then later, be MJ. (note: I actually don’t mind this change. It’s just a weird start for her and an unnecessary twist, that only leads to an unpolished character with the promise of more, rather than someone memorable and important from the get-go. She’s on the poster for gosh sake. I’m open to liking her, there’s just nothing to go on yet. I sure liked the way she… tilted her head up and squinted occasionally?)

I don’t think this makes any of these parts of the film bad. Only, less complete - less functioning as parts of a whole.

A scene that I do consider bad, though, is the death of the first Shocker. It’s a somewhat tropey scene - lackey steps out of line, head villain disposes of him out of spite and necessity, establishing that he can and will commit murder to achieve his goal. But, it doesn’t end there. After Toomes fries Shocker to a crisp with one of the pieces of alien weaponry, he looks surprised, saying ‘I thought this was the anti-gravity gun’. This is played for laughs, but at the expense of a cheap joke, they’ve thrown Toomes’ conviction into question. If he thought it was the anti-grav gun, did he not plan on killing his lackey? Does that mean his threats against Peter later are empty? Or was the plan always to kill the lackey, it’s just that he wanted to use the anti-grav gun to do it? But then why during the climax when he has Spidey defeated, does he go for the cargo instead of finishing him off? I can’t answer any of these questions because his conviction is made unclear, all from a simple, throwaway line. It’s a real shame, because I love pretty much every other scene with Vulture.

 That includes the familial twist. On the outside, it’s a little cheap. But the groundwork is laid from the very first moment of the movie. I wish it had been more original insofar as a villain’s personal connection to Spidey, instead of ‘oh it’s the dad again’ – however, it’s so well-implemented and revealed at just the right time to force Peter into a power/responsibility moment that I can’t help but enjoy it. Toomes driving Peter and Liz to the dance is wonderfully tense (possibly my favourite scene, and it’s just a car ride).

There are some genuinely great scenes beyond that. I actually teared up when Peter tells May he lost the internship, which is a first for me in a Spidey film (yes, even with ASM2 as my favourite in the series, I didn’t tear up at Gwen’s fall). Racing to the top of the monument has excellent pacing and presentation. Being trapped beneath the rubble and finally breaking free was an incredible performance from Tom Holland. As earlier mentioned, interrogating Aaron Davis has plenty of charm.

The score is good. Sometimes, it’s damn good. There are some really stand-out tracks. It just… isn’t on par overall with Elfman’s or Zimmer’s stuff. Raimi’s films and ASM2 come out strong from the beginning with their themes, and continue to play off them in new and interesting ways to cater to the moods of the scenes. Homecoming starts with the 60’s cartoon theme, and proceeds to never use it again. Giacchino’s original theme never steps up to be as memorable, and was only at its best when it wasn’t trying to be the theme. Vulture’s music rocks and is good forever – though I craved more variation to it. It seemed like every time he showed up we were hit with bahhh bwa-bah bah-BWAHHHH. It leaves something to be desired when compared to Electro’s music from ASM2 -  which is a constant in his scenes but always escalating to reflect his development. So, I guess as a character with only a little development, Vulture’s music is acceptable? I dunno, I might have just talked myself around on that one, haha. Nice to have some memorable MCU villain music, anyway. I love it a lot – just wish they’d played around with it more.

Spidey wrecked a lot of stuff in this movie, and it gives me some cause for concern that the filmmakers are going down the ‘everything is his fault’ route. I’ve talked a bit about this before, but I’m not a huge supporter of this concept. I’m fonder of a Spider-Man that takes responsibility, rather than one who’s responsible for everything, if that makes sense. If they’re going more for the ‘clumsy teenager’ route, that’s something I can get behind. But there is a limit. It was effective in the early parts of the film and the high-tension ferry sequence because of what it was saying about Peter and the effect he’s having as Spidey. But the chase through the suburbs, where he smashes or trips over everything he touches, was a little excessive. The last straw for me was when he wrecks Flash’s car. By this point we should start seeing character changes coming into effect, but they insist on presenting him as unable to face a new obstacle without breaking something.

I suppose I could go on and on, but I gotta call it at some point, right? So, I want to round all this off by just talking about some things I really liked.

Making Adrian’s whole deal that he’s a scavenger is such a cool way to get across the ‘vulture’ vibe and a great tie-in to the established MCU framework. The Shocker switcheroo was a fun subversion of expectations. Practical wall-crawling is just getting better and better. Stopping the bike thief and then not knowing where to return it is so ‘Spidey’. May helping Peter get ready for Homecoming is exactly what I could have asked for. The diversity of the cast in an MCU film was surprising and refreshing. Seeing Peter make his web fluid, and change his web cartridges mid-battle is something I’ve hoped to see for a while. Everyone in the cinema was having a great time and it was fun being a part of that.

So, that’s where I’m at. I’m at ‘pretty good’. At first it was hard to accept that. Hard to accept not being absolutely blown away by new Spidey content. But after a second viewing, I’ve come away satisfied, while still a bit sad about ASM2′s undeserved legacy.

If anyone has any thoughts of their own, or different viewpoints on the aspects I talked about, I’m very happy to hear them. I would love to love this film.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): On Wednesday morning we got the latest big development in the still-developing Ukraine story. First there was news of a whistleblower complaint alleging that President Trump pressured Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced plans to open an official impeachment inquiry of the president. And today, the White House released a summary of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky.

At this stage, there’s still a lot we don’t know. We don’t have the full whistleblower complaint (although it is expected to be released this week and the whistleblower may even testify before Congress). And testimony is also expected from acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire tomorrow on the whistleblower’s report. So, again, there are still a lot of moving parts. But let’s take stock of where things stand now that we have the White House’s summary of the phone call:

How bad is this for Trump?

Does the impeachment inquiry announced by Pelosi on Tuesday continue to build?

How have elected Republicans reacted, particularly in the U.S. Senate?

No. 1 first: How bad was the summary for Trump?

micah (Micah Cohen, managing editor): Bad?

Actually, I think the real answer is … “Very, very bad?” And the very’s are important there, but so is the question mark.

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): It’s bad — especially because we haven’t yet seen the whistleblower complaint, which apparently has multiple incidents, not just this call. That is — it’s especially bad if this is the least-bad thing that could have come out.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): This definitely has a lot of momentum — it’s a big deal, even if it doesn’t change a lot of the mechanics of what’s already being done in the House to investigate the president.

And yes, it doesn’t look great for Trump whatsoever.

ameliatd: And the whistleblower is apparently willing to testify, so we’re presumably going to get more information about the circumstances around the call.

The Trump talking point is that there was no explicit quid pro quo, but the call is extremely suggestive. In the summary, Trump starts by talking about aid to Ukraine, then pivots to asking for a “favor.”

And if this was part of a larger pattern where the aid is more explicitly connected to Trump’s requests, that would be really, really bad. That’s what remains to be seen — what made the whistleblower file the report? It wasn’t just this call.

clare.malone: Right, as people have pointed out, this call summary is just one component of a larger report.

So, if this is the part that the White House was comfortable making public, it does lead one to wonder what the part they wanted to suppress has in it.

sarahf: Yeah, and this was something Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen made clear in his testimony before Congress — this is part of how Trump operates. He doesn’t ask for people to outright commit a crime or lie, but he does make it clear what he wants “in his way.”

I guess I’m just unconvinced that this will shift opinions among those who already support the president (or independents).

clare.malone: Well, Sarah, I guess I would agree with you that it probably won’t change the views of his most dyed-in-the-wool supporters, but it could definitely shake the confidence of voters on the fence about him.

Which is the reason why Democrats from moderate districts apparently seem to feel so comfortable coming out in support of impeachment. I think this case (Ukraine) is much more clearly understood by people to be … shady … than the Mueller situation was.

ameliatd: I agree with you on that, Clare. As someone who spent a lot of time explaining the ins and outs of everything Mueller was investigating (and what he found), Ukraine appears to be a much clearer story — even without evidence of explicit quid pro quo.

micah: Well, this sorta gets at what I think is a central question now … politically, at least. We already know that voters have a high bar for impeachment. Will asking a foreign leader to investigate his most likely 2020 opponent clear that bar? Or will voters want evidence of an explicit quid pro quo?

The White House is very clearly trying to draw the conversation around a clear quid pro quo.

Which makes sense — as the call summary already proves Trump asked for the investigation, I’m not sure what other options they have.

clare.malone: Right, and one thing I think we should mention is that the call summary potentially leaves a lot out:

The biggest clue that the Ukraine conversation has been condensed is on the first page: It's a 30 min convo that's been conveyed in just five pages. pic.twitter.com/Ge2WDMJzEv

— Annie Linskey (@AnnieLinskey) September 25, 2019

Per this tweet, the conversation was 30 minutes and the words in the summary don’t necessarily compute with a normally-paced 30 minute call.

ameliatd: Some people are also pointing out the ellipses in the summary, Clare, which are concentrated in the sections where Trump’s talking about what he wants Zelensky to investigate.

micah: Does the fact that the White House is trying to draw the line at quid pro quo make you think there won’t be evidence of that? Or is it just that that’s kinda their only avenue left on this story?

I guess … who knows!?!?!

ameliatd: I wouldn’t be surprised if there was no explicit quid pro quo, just because as Sarah says, that doesn’t seem to be how Trump operates. At least, explicit quid pro quo in the sense of Trump saying, “Kiss your aid from us goodbye unless you investigate the Bidens.”

sarahf: But given that conversations aren’t recorded in the Oval office anymore (thanks, Nixon!) … won’t there always be a question of what was said (or wasn’t said) hanging over the conversation?

micah: Unless … Ukraine made a recording!!!

IDK, even in that call summary there wasn’t a lot of dancing or insinuating!

That’s kinda where I shake out on all this for now in terms of Trump’s political risk: If the call summary represents the lower bound, there’s a LOT of risk to the president.

sarahf: I still think though that there’s a possibility that some dismiss this as, “It sounded like the president,” à la Sen. Shelley Moore Capito here.

ameliatd: Also, Zelensky actually seemed pretty willing on the call to investigate — he talked about his new prosecutor and then told Trump, “He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.” Not sure if/how that changes things, or if he was just saying what he thought Trump wanted to hear, but I wonder if that’s another place where additional context will help clarify.

clare.malone: Though, to that point, Amelia, we have this report: https://twitter.com/RyanLizza/status/1176506530671353857

sarahf: But OK, let’s talk about the *risk* for the president that this all poses. According to the New York Times, 208 Democrats (as of midday Wednesday) support opening an impeachment inquiry. That represents a dramatic uptick in members supporting this move — Democrats need only 218 to actually open a motion.

Do we think that comes next?

Or what are Democrats’ next move?

micah: Just to start, it seems like Democrats will be pretty unified around the impeachment inquiry. I’ve seen some agita around keeping the inquiry focused on Ukraine — rather than folding in other potential transgressions — but I think we can expect the vast majority of Democrats to stay in line. As you said, Sarah, that was the big shift over the last week.

In terms of what comes next …

clare.malone: Testimony from the whistleblower could be really powerful.

ameliatd: Yeah, Democrats will want the whistleblower to testify. And they’ll probably also subpoena Rudy Giuliani, given that he’s all over this call.

The benefit of formally opening an impeachment proceeding is that it gives the House a much stronger legal position in getting documents and testimony.

clare.malone: Yeah, this is a real battle of governmental branches right here!

I bet high school civics teachers are losing their shit this week with the real life examples.

micah: Lots of juicy Constitutional questions!

Anyway, I do think it’ll be crucial to watch how focused Democrats can keep things on this Ukraine story.

If the public thinks Democrats are just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, public opinion probably won’t move much. And Democrats need public opinion to move.

clare.malone: I wonder how much they will be chased by the ghosts of that letter from Attorney General William Barr, the Mueller testimony, etc. Perhaps they’ve learned lessons about how to keep the public focused on the aspects of the narrative that are most beneficial to their impeachment case.

Because as we’ve said before, impeachment is a political act, above all. It’s not frippery to say that the Democrats need to maintain a strong narrative for the public to glom onto. It’s not a lofty thing to say, but a lot of this is PR.

micah: Yeah, to stay on public opinion for a sec …

This is from Nate’s piece yesterday:

Heretofore, quite a lot of voters have both disapproved of Trump’s conduct and disapproved of impeaching him.

Why this gap has persisted isn’t entirely clear. Pelosi’s reluctance on impeachment undoubtedly dissuaded some Democratic voters from getting on board; the most recent Quinnipiac poll found only 61 percent of Democrats in favor of impeachment and 29 percent opposed. Those numbers may increase now that House leadership is coming around to impeachment.

The same poll, however, found independent voters mostly against impeachment — 62 percent opposed it to 28 percent in favor. That’s despite Trump having only a 35 percent approval rating among independents in the poll. So impeachment has given Democrats problems among swing voters as well.

So that, to me, is something to watch:

Do Democrats now rally behind impeachment? (Probably?)

Do Independents move towards impeachment? (

)

sarahf: And on the subject of public opinion, this poll dropped after we published Nate’s piece yesterday, but a new Quinnipiac poll that was in the field from Sept 19-23, captured a 5 percentage point shift in favor of impeachment since it last asked the question in July.

micah: Yeah, there’s some Democratic movement towards impeachment — support among Democrats jumped 12 points, from 61 percent in the Quinnipiac poll Nate referenced (which was the most recent when he wrote that article) to 73 percent now.

And I think that’s where most of the overall shift comes from right now. Support for impeachment among independents crept up 6 points, from 28 percent to 34 percent.

ameliatd: That’s why I think the hearings and testimony that unfold over the next few days/weeks are so, so key. I generally think the comparisons to Watergate wear kind of thin, but public hearings and testimony were crucially important in building the case against Nixon. And the Democrats have basically gotten none of that so far because the Trump administration has so successfully stonewalled them.

sarahf: Which brings me to our third point — for some of the public opinion shift we’re talking about to happen — you need more than just Democrats and independents to say they support impeaching Trump, right?

Because ultimately, we’ve got a divided Congress, which means even if the House votes to open an impeachment inquiry and even passes articles of impeachment, it would still likely die in the Republican-controlled Senate, hurting Democrats’ ability to control some of this narrative, no?

clare.malone: I suppose you need the on-the-bubble Republican voter to find this whole thing distasteful.

Ye olde Reluctant Trump Voter.

sarahf: So far on the GOP side, only Sen. Mitt Romney has spoken out against Trump on the Ukraine story.

No GOP member of the House currently supports an impeachment inquiry. (Although on Tuesday, the Senate did unanimously pass a nonbinding resolution calling on the Trump administration to release the whistleblower complaint — so there’s still the possibility more Republicans come forward.)

micah: But I don’t think it’s particularly telling that elected Republicans are sticking with Trump in the wake of this.

Wherever the goal posts are on this story — asking a foreign leader to interfere in a U.S. election, quid pro quo, etc. — you’d expect Republicans to use the most pro-Trump ones …

Especially in the early days.

clare.malone: Yep. It’s very hard to imagine this Republican Senate, in particular, turning against Trump.

Though, here’s what Sen. Susan Collins has said, FWIW

Susan Collins says the Trump call summary/transcript “raises a number of important questions”

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) September 25, 2019

micah: I mean, that’s pretty weak sauce from Collins.

clare.malone: She, of course, is in her own predicament as an endangered more-moderate member.

micah: Yeah, she’ll be interesting to watch as she’s in a tough re-election fight.

But on the question of if and how Republicans start to move against Trump, I thought this was really smart from FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman:

If you’ve ever been at a dinner party, you’ll understand the following dynamic: It’s late. The conversation is deadly dull. Dessert still hasn’t been served. You’re bored and exhausted and want nothing more than to go home and go to bed. But you don’t want to be the first person to leave.Eventually, somebody decides it’s grown late enough. She makes an excuse to leave. Now there’s safety in numbers. You can leave because other people are leaving. And the dinner party ends. Suddenly.

ameliatd: I do wonder what it would take to get more than your standard “this-is-troubling-I-have-questions” response from congressional Republicans. Does someone like Romney have to go out on a limb to give other people cover?

micah: Amelia, I think Lee’s article speaks to that:

The insight here borrows from political scientist Timur Kuran’s classic work Private Truth, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. The logic is straightforward: In social and political situations, people often have private preferences that are costly to express. So they keep quiet to maintain social status or sometimes personal safety. They say and do what they think they are supposed to say and do to get along. Hence, the “Public Lies” part of the title.

But sometimes the calculus changes. Sometimes a critical mass expresses a dangerous opinion. This empowers others to speak up. Then even more folks feel empowered. And then even more. And then there is a social revolution.

So, in theory, if Republicans reach a critical mass of members who want to defect — and I have no idea if we will reach that mass or how big that mass has to be — GOP defections could sorta happen all at once.

clare.malone: Under that rubric, was Sen. John McCain’s surprise healthcare vote an Irish goodbye?

(I digress)

micah: LOL

Well-played.

On the podcast, our stand-in for the mainstream of the Republican Party has always been Pat Toomey … has he said anything?

Ah, here ya go … the “Full Toomey”!

That was from Sunday — so before the call summary was released, but Toomey said:”It is not appropriate for any candidate for federal office — certainly including the sitting president — to ask for assistance from a foreign country. That’s not appropriate. But I don’t know that that’s what happened here.”

So if Toomey follows through on that line of thinking, maybe there is some room for GOP defection short of quid pro quo.

sarahf: I don’t know. My thought is the more this plays out in the public eye (the whistleblower report, multiple congressional hearings, etc.), the more the issue that Micah and Clare raised of “did Trump fail to uphold his constitutional duties” gets lost in the conversation, and the question of impeachment remains politicized along party lines.

clare.malone: So that goes back to the point about how Democrats will control the narrative. Democrats have to continue to be clear about what the impeachment charges would likely be about — essentially, dereliction of constitutional duty.

ameliatd: I mean, I do wonder if impeachment has become so closely tied in the public eye to criminal activity that it becomes harder for Democrats to make a clear case. That was one of the things I found most interesting about the Mueller investigation — everyone was so focused on whether there was a crime, which then made it harder to pivot to impeachment. So does it help here that there’s no special prosecutor to start dropping indictments? Or does it make it more complicated to build a narrative?

clare.malone: I think it probably makes it easier, Amelia?

sarahf: Ha, I’d say more complicated? Because now you just have partisan actors, whereas Mueller was at least thought of as impartial.

ameliatd: That does actually feel like an important difference here — with the Russia investigation, House Democrats kept leaning on Mueller to dig up some smoking gun. Here they’re clearly on their own, so maybe they’ll actually be more focused and effective in building their case.

clare.malone: Mueller wasn’t in on the PR game, either. He didn’t leak, he didn’t do interviews, etc. So this time around, it might be easier for Democrats to coordinate a strategy and message, especially now that this is all likely to unfold on more of a political battle field.

micah: Yeah, great points. So maybe it is better for Democrats.

But IDK, I feel like Democrats will have a hard time fighting the impression that Amelia mentioned — that there has to be criminal conduct to justify impeachment.

ameliatd: Right, Mueller wasn’t focused on any of these constitutional questions — he was just trying to figure out if crimes had been committed. Whereas a Democratic investigation will be much broader, and it will be public, which means it’s (potentially) easier to build momentum and make a case for unethical or unconstitutional conduct by Trump, rather than illegal conduct.

clare.malone: On-the-fly transparency rather than months of behind the scenes information and fact-gathering!

The thing that was interesting about the Mueller investigation was that so much was built upon reading between the lines on statements from Mueller’s office. I presume it will be much easier this time to build a public narrative, and sustain said narrative while you’re dropping breadcrumbs of stories week by week, day by day.

ameliatd: I do think there are plenty of ways for this to go south for the Democrats, though. If you’re building that narrative in public, it means you actually have to have effective and dramatic testimony. And if they don’t — that’s fodder for Trump and his allies.

sarahf: OK, to wrap …

There’s a lot of moving pieces still and a lot we just don’t know. What are you going to be paying attention to moving forward?

ameliatd: What’s in the whistleblower complaint??

micah: THIS ^^^

sarahf: You think that’s the key piece here, Amelia?

ameliatd: I do, and I am also so curious to know who the whistleblower is.

clare.malone: That!

What Amelia said!

ameliatd: Like, if this is a senior intelligence official — that testimony is going to be bananas.

clare.malone: That’s what I’m most interested in, too.

They’re like the unnamed star of a highly anticipated movie.

ameliatd: Especially since that person allegedly wants to testify. We saw with Mueller what happens when your witness really doesn’t want to be there, but those hearings can actually be pretty

if you’ve got someone who wants to talk.

(I guess

by the standards of congressional hearings — which I will admit is a low bar.)

micah: More generally what I’m looking for …

To what extent does evidence of quid pro quo become the red line in terms of the narrative, especially for the public and elected Republicans. You’re already seeing the White House and congressional Republicans pushing that as the criteria. But will the media buy into that and will the public? Of course, that could also bite Republicans in the end if that evidence does emerge!

Sorta redundant with No. 1, but … POLLS! What do Americans think of all this?

This is all crazy, though!!! There are huge, huge risks for Trump, Republicans and Democrats!

[tialovestelevision]

A Buffy Dialogue - 6:1-8

T: It’s time for A Buffy Dialogue, this one on the opening act of Season 6. I’m joined here by Dragon, because there’s just so very much to talk about in these eight episodes. They’re sort of the establishing shots of this season, which is, oddly, the one with the most… start-to-end… season arc in the show. Like, there aren’t really any one-shot episodes so far. They all build the season’s story and emotional beats. So, Dragon, what shall we talk about first?

{*\../*} : Well, since the big arc of the season thus far has been about our characters and their personal motivations for their thoroughly disastrous choices, let’s do a character-by-character breakdown for the readers on where people are and what we think the writers are trying to tell us (and are actually telling us, not always the same thing). Some people are obviously not going to need much telling - the Trio basically speak for themselves, for instance, and Anya’s not got much going on except taking over the Magic Shop. But everyone else has issues! So let’s talk about them.

T: I think I’d like to start with Giles. His bad decisions are both fairly straightforward and the one whose mistakes are most understandable, I think. He’s not operating under any great trauma like Buffy, or mystical whatsit combined with the way the show metaphorized mundane problems like Willow. So… he seems like the onramp here.

{*\../*} : So at the end of “Tabula Rasa” we have Giles on a plane going to England because he’s spent the time since flying back in “Flooded” feeling like a barrier to Buffy’s recovery (probably best expressed in “I Wish I Could Stay”), and the evidence is fairly clearly on his side about the truth of that. He can’t stand watching her suffer at this stage in her relationship, and he’s making classically bad parenting-with-adult-children decisions like writing checks he can’t afford to write on a regular basis to cover bills and having parenting conversations for them instead of refusing and letting them make their own mistakes. That Dawn is being cast symbolically as Buffy’s kid is a bit of a problem given the realistic implications of having an older sister with no job or stable support system ‘raising’ a sibling only a few years younger, which the show actually talks about briefly in Season 5 and then drops completely for 6, and plays into the show’s overall failure to make a stable decision about how realistic it wants Buffy’s dealings with the ‘real’ world post-death to be. But that IS the symbolism here, and Giles is aware he’s acting an enabler to Buffy avoiding her responsibilities as Dawn’s guardian/parent. Given that he can’t make himself stop enabling her, removing himself is a logical choice. Maybe even a better one than staying. But from what you were writing about “Once More With Feeling,” you don’t seem to think so?

T: I hadn’t really thought about whether Giles could afford the check or not… I figured that, after Buffy got him three years of backpay in “Choices,” he probably had some extra cash lying about. Maybe not, though… he apparently spent his whole time from being fired by the Council in Season 3 to his return to England in “Bargaining” maintaining both a house in Sunnydale (and a nice one! But Angel had a mansion there and no money, and Dracula conjured a castle, and Glory kept a mansion or really lovely condo on a nurse’s salary, so Sunnydale’s real estate market apparently operates in some base-cthulu numerical system), so maybe he was in debt that the back pay paid off? Anyway, the show obviously wants us to think of the check as a bad thing for him to have done, and “he can’t actually afford it” is a better explanation for that than most.

{*\../*} : Especially if it’s “he can afford this one, but what about the next one?” which is actually pretty typical with parents and adult children.

T: That’s true. Anyway… to your point about how realistic Buffy’s post-resurrection mundane life is supposed to be… that’s kind of the key problem with the writing here, isn’t it? If we were going to treat it as realistic, the right answer by Giles would be to call the Council, inform them that they’re about to have one Slayer who’s in jail and another who’s homeless and can’t do any Slaying because she’s too busy working a menial job, and get them to start providing a stipend and maybe even paying for health insurance, then having Buffy set up six months of weekly sessions with a therapist who, living in Sunnydale, has almost certainly Seen Some Shit. If we’re going to treat it as metaphorical, shouldn’t there be a monster in the pipes? How can literal pipes break and cause metaphorical life problems? We have to keep this very careful balance of literal and metaphorical issues and barriers to solutions that the show never really gives us for any of what Giles is doing to make sense.

If there is no support network available for Buffy to draw from, she needs to keep the support network she has, because even if Giles’s current behavior is going to do more harm than good in the long run… well, the tire is flat. Yes, the Fix-A-Flat means it’ll cost more to repair later and might need replacing, but when it’s that or starve to death alone in the desert on the now-abandoned Route 66, you use the goddamn Fix-A-Flat.

{*\../*} : Yeah. A lot of this season really fails to cohere because it’s trying to apply the same making-metaphor-of-life-problems rules it uses in high school to young working adult drama, and that doesn’t really work very well at all. But since we just watched Willow wipe everybody’s memories and then Giles get on a plane anyway, I think we can agree that Giles is making a choice that will End Badly for reasons that have a lot to do with his personal relationship with Buffy and maybe less to do with an objective view of the overall situation.

T: Which one could say about Willow and the others in “Bargaining,” too, come to think of it. Oh, look, shiny transition!

{*\../*} : They work better when you don’t point them out, honey.

T: In the spirit of Buffy, I’m going to be impressed with the cleverness of my own writing even if my expressions of being impressed make it less clever.

{*\../*} : Fair play. Yes, the time-bomb we set up in “Bargaining” that finally blows up in “Once More with Feeling” by resurrecting Buffy is absolutely about putting personal emotional stuff above the moral or the practical. We talked about that quite a bit in “Afterlife,” but I think it’s important to pull out two pieces of parallel evidence from the rest of this first third of the season that show nobody has Learned Their Lesson at all. They’re actually not obviously related, because one is played as a gag and one is played as Serious Business complete with a Very Sad Song montage, but I think they are crucially connected: Willow’s stunts with first Tara’s memory and then everyone’s, and the fact that Xander summoned Sweet.

T: They’re both afraid. Willow has more power than Xander by far - I actually agree with Buffy that, by the end of Season 5, Willow has more power than anyone else in the main cast - but neither of them really knows how to prevent loss. I’m not sure if Buffy’s death helped form that fear, but I can pretty much guarantee that it’s on their minds.

{*\../*} : Absolutely. But they have another key commonality. If Buffy is currently the show’s metaphor/punching bag for trying to find your way in a world that’s financially unstable and doesn’t seem to care about your trauma while it’s checking you for credentials and contacts, Xander and Willow are both in the middle of another big life transition: adult relationships. It’s more obvious with Xander, because he and Anya finally come out about being engaged in “All The Way,” but let’s look at Tara and Willow for a minute. They’re living a house together, they’re supporting a household (do either of them have jobs? They seem like they must have jobs of some kind, but that’s never brought up. More realism problems), they’re effectively raising Dawn until Buffy comes back and even then they often seem to be acting as the heads of the household. They’re in a long-term, settled relationship. But they have never once, as far as we can tell, had a real actual fight before. They certainly haven’t learned to fight in a healthy way, which is an absolutely critical skill in a relationship where one partner comes from an abusive background.

So Willow’s on the cusp of having a wonderful adult lesbian family life, but she doesn’t know how to resolve conflict in it and she’s terrified beyond words of losing it. And, as we’ve established with Buffy, she’s got a ton of magical power and isn’t shy about throwing it at problems that scare her (Buffy’s death, Glory, maybe even Joyce’s death before that). Frankly, that she tries to magic her problems with Tara away is almost totally unsurprising in both the realistic and metaphorical senses.

T: True. The precise form of magic she chooses to use is, because Willow has spent most of the show as someone with intense emotional intelligence (Tara has more than her, but Willow spent the time before Tara’s arrival basically second only to Oz in ability to understand people’s needs and feelings) and Tara’s experiences make memory modification even worse than it would normally be, but… well, she has a hammer. Everything from death to life to deities to relationship issues looks like nails. She has a really, really good hammer.

{*\../*} : I think this another of those cases where the writing kinda trips and falls flat trying to get at the metaphor. Because if magic is power, in a different drama setting where power was fame or money Willow would be covering over their relationship problems with a fancy trip or flashy gifts or something of the sort. If magic is lesbian and/or female empowerment, then she'd probably be covering up their fight with really great lesbian sex instead of dealing with the issue. But Willow’s hammer is magic, so that’s where the writers go, and they’re willing to let Willow look either stupid or callous or both for not thinking about the correlation with Glory.

T: She left the Lethe’s bramble in front of the fire. They are obviously willing to make her look both. I don’t think they know how much both they have her looking.

{*\../*} : True facts. But having made that bed, now Willow is crying on the floor in her bathroom while Michelle Branch plays super-sad music and Tara does the I Am Leaving packing montage. Surely she will take this as a chance to sort herself out and learn better conflict management skills, right?

T: Because the next three episodes are called “Coping,” “Adjusting,” and “Living a Healthy Life.” No, wait, the other thing.

{*\../*} : Yeah.....  Anyway, my point from earlier is that Xander doing something extremely similar with Sweet - to try to force a happy ending with Anya - is played for comedy because Xander himself is usually played for comedy, but he’s basically doing the same shit as Willow but with less power and more stupid.

T: And by the by, how did I miss that the singer in the Bronze was Michelle Branch? I called out Hinton Battle over and over and missed Michelle Branch. I am shamed. She doesn’t have three Tony Awards, but she does have a Grammy.

And… yeah. Xander, look back at your life. You’ve lived the life needed to answer this question. “In all of history, how many times has summoning a demon worked out well?”

{*\../*} : Do Wolfram & Hart count?

T: Whenever they summon demons, they have to find more evil lawyers willing to risk being devoured by demons to hire. I imagine that’s a pretty employee-friendly job market from the start.

{*\../*} : So speaking of that ending musical montage, Buffy is doing a dead stare over the bar at the Bronze and then she’s locking mouths with Spike behind the stairs. This does not portend good things. I think your coverage of her in “Once More with Feeling” pretty much sums up the lousy place she’s in, but I thought she was starting to look up before the big whammy spell took her memories away. Is she basically reverting to bad coping because of the opposite of the King Ralph thing (speaking of Xander playing other people’s serious stuff for comedy beats)? The spell took her memory of losing heaven away and then gave it back, and she’s having a meltdown instead of laughing?

T: That seems possible. Alternatively, she was just getting better at putting on a happy face. Or her emotional arc over these episodes makes no sense. The writers certainly aren’t telling us. It would, though, make the King Ralph line contribute more than a quick laugh at an outdated cultural reference, and Buffy loves doing that, so let’s go with that.

{*\../*} : I think there will be more to say about Buffy after the upcoming episodes, but I did want to note one thing that I thought was interesting - she’s in a weird liminal space in these eight episodes in a lot of ways, hanging between the dead-and-complete heroine and the newly arrived, very harried twenty-something with serious trauma, but one that stands out to me in particular is her relationship with Dawn.

When we see her with Dawn in “After Life,” Dawn is acting almost as a surrogate mother to her - cleaning her, bandaging her, trying to get through to her. In “Flooded” and “All the Way,” Buffy is very distinctly acting in the maternal role toward Dawn - trying to provide, trying to hammer out the logistical kinks of life, trying to manage Dawn’s social behavior. She winds up defaulting to getting Giles to help in all three areas, but she takes them on as her job to then press him to help her with in the first place. But in “Tabula Rasa,” memories removed, she and Dawn revert very quickly to a much more natural role as sisters and seem much happier about it.

T: I think Dawn might actually be the only member of the cast to be really aware of how badly off Buffy is in “After Life,” and, to a degree, the episodes after it. Well, her and Spike. This is a Problem for Buffy, since Spike is basically toxic relationship structures given human form then having had that human form’s soul ripped out and body filled with even more toxic ideas about what love means, and Dawn is a teenager who needs a ton of taking care of herself (and is also, I’ll note, the victim of an inordinate amount of trauma - trauma that starts with finding out that she doesn’t, technically, exist and moves on to watching her friends suffer torture and injury and risk death to keep her safe, being betrayed by a trusted ally, and watching two parent figures die within months of each other, one of whom literally flings herself off a tower to keep Dawn safe). Neither is in a position to do much to help Buffy, apart from simple physical and emotional first aid from Dawn in “After Life.”

{*\../*} : Something that literally just occurred to me while I was thinking about the last scene of “Tabula Rasa” earlier - Dawn is, of course, being played in that scene as the teenage daughter reacting with anger when her abused mother moves out of the house. That was obvious from the get-go. But if she’s being played that way in that scene, and Willow and Tara are being played very much as her parents, who does that make Buffy (who is also being played as her parent)?

Crazy theory - someone in the Buffy writing staff was casting Buffy in the role of a biological parent rebuilding a relationship with their teenage child who’s living with a married lesbian couple that doesn’t include that parent.

T: Wouldn’t that make Willow her ex? That… actually makes a ton of sense, given the family and relationship structure here.

{*\../*} : Her ex who’s still pathologically attached to her and literally drags her back into the life of the family? Wow. This reading is seriously gaining steam.

T: And she does that while still in a relationship with her new-ish partner. A relationship that is, on the surface, quite healthy. Yeah… we’ve got a winner here.

{*\../*} : Healthy right up until the point when Willow starts becoming (magically) emotionally abusive and engaging in (magical) gaslighting, which her ex (Buffy) is too busy with her own issues to remark on.... Shit.

T: Hence “on the surface.” But yeah… I think we’ve found a model by which everyone’s behavior, other than Willow being stupid with the Lethe’s bramble, actually makes sense. Buffy is back somewhere she doesn’t want to be but loves the people there too much to tell them she wants to go literally anywhere else, Willow is trying to drag Buffy back into her life, Xander is Xander, Dawn is watching her family disintegrate for the umpteenth time in the last six months. Everything fits. Except the Lethe’s bramble in front of the fire. But the only possible model to explain that is “... and using magic makes you occasionally suffer bouts of extreme stupidity.”

… Or Willow wanting to get caught, because it’ll get Tara out of the way in a way that leaves her with less guilt (because Tara would be doing the leaving) and lets her pursue her ex again unimpeded.

It’s not that I don’t buy this model. It’s that I hate it.

{*\../*} : Season 6 - when it’s not incoherent, the model for coherence sucks. Thanks for listening to us in this little catch-up, y’all, and having a good night. Coming up next, “Coping,” “Adjusting,” and “Living a Healthy Life.” Really. We swear.

T: I want to live in a world where those are the next episodes. It sounds like a better world. A world where there is a kitten on my head right now, and it’s mewing and adorable. There is no kitten on my head.

[junker-town]

Which NFL players are holding out and why?

Aaron Donald, Khalil Mack, and Julio Jones are a few of the players angling for new contracts this summer.

The NFL news cycle grinds slowly in the summer, and nothing causes more hand-wringing than stars skipping practices.

Player asks for more money, player skips practice, radio personality calls them selfish, player does or doesn’t get paid, player reports to camp, everyone forgets about the holdout, player has another good season.

Rinse and repeat.

There’s a handful of high-profile names skipping practices in 2018, all with the goal of receiving lucrative new contracts. For some, it’ll happen soon. Others are just setting the stage for negotiations in 2019.

Here’s a look at the biggest names holding out for more money this offseason:

Aaron Donald, DT, Rams

A year ago, Donald had a lengthy holdout and didn‘t report to the Rams‘ facility until September. He was scratched from the team’s Week 1 game as a consequence, but it didn’t stop him from dominating in 2017.

Donald finished the year with 11 sacks and five forced fumbles to earn NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors for the first time in his career.

Current deal: Donald is still on the rookie deal he received after he was picked No. 13 overall in the 2014 NFL Draft. The Rams picked up his fifth-year option last year, which means he’s due to make a respectable $6.892 million in 2018 — easily the highest salary of his career.

But he received $10,136,500 in the first four years of his career and has played like someone who deserves the biggest contract of any defensive player in the NFL.

What he’s looking for: At age 27, and as destructive as any defensive lineman, Donald will likely be the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL soon. That mark currently belongs to Von Miller, who signed a 6-year, $114.1 million deal in 2016.

Donald is likely looking for a contract that eclipses $20 million per year, and has no reason to accept anything less. If the Rams don’t give it to him this offseason, they’ll be forced to give him the franchise tag or let him walk, where another team will jump at the chance to fork over a huge deal.

What’s the latest: The Rams and Donald seem to be on good terms and NFL Network’s Steve Wyche says there’s been a “lot of positive conversation” regarding a new deal.

Rams head coach Sean McVay said the team doesn’t expect him to show up until a contract resolution is met, but it isn’t a contentious situation at all.

“He and I have had good dialogue. I spoke to him last week,” McVay said in May, via TheRams.com. “Kind of like we’ve talked about, this feels a lot different than last year. Certainly any time you have something where the team comes together, to have a player that’s as important as he is here, you would prefer that. But it is voluntary. We understand that and we have a lot of respect for kinda what’s going on.”

A new deal for Donald seems more a matter of ”when” than ”if.”

Julio Jones, WR, Falcons

Atlanta’s dominant receiver has had reason to hold out in the past, but didn’t. So it’s new territory for Jones, who hasn’t been at offseason practices in Atlanta.

There’s been a mini freakout for some Falcons fans, but the team insists there’s nothing to worry about.

Current deal: Jones signed a five-year deal worth $71.25 million in 2015. At the time, it made him the second-highest paid receiver in the NFL behind only Calvin Johnson.

Johnson has since retired, but seven receivers have signed contracts that average more than the $14.25 million Jones gets. Leading the way is Antonio Brown, who gets an average of $17 million per year.

Jones still has three years left on his contract, so it may be difficult for him to keep up his play long enough to cash in big again. His deal isn’t set to expire until 2021 — just after his 32nd birthday.

What he’s looking for: The list of players who make more than Jones now includes Jarvis Landry, Davante Adams, and Sammy Watkins. None of those players have topped 1,400 receiving yards in a season — something Jones has now done four years in a row. Adams hasn’t even cracked 1,000 yards in a season yet.

Jones isn’t asking for a record-breaking amount, just a little bit more to put him in Brown’s stratosphere instead of Adams’.

The Falcons also have freedom to move on from Jones after getting through the first couple years of a front-loaded contract. It would cost the team just $2.4 million in dead money if he was released after the 2018 season, and he could be cleared from the books entirely after 2019.

That seems unlikely considering Jones is still one of the best receivers in the NFL, but more long-term security is likely the target for Jones.

What’s the latest: A deal for Jones doesn’t look like it’s happening. According to ESPN, the Falcons informed the receiver he wouldn’t be getting a contract extension this offseason.

Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff said in June that the team had productive and constructive talks with Jones.

“We have been in contact with Julio and his representation,” the statement reads. ”We will not discuss those conversations publicly except to say we feel they have been productive and constructive. We understand the concerns and thoughts from their perspective.”

It’s not easy to get a new deal when you’re still on the hook for three more seasons. The solution for the Falcons could’ve been to add a year or two to Jones’ contract that upped his annual average and locked him down for the foreseeable future.

But instead it appears the team is content to wait for its star receiver to end his holdout without a new deal.

Khalil Mack, DE, Raiders

Oakland reshaped its roster in a big way four years ago when Khalil Mack, Derek Carr, and Gabe Jackson were picked by the Raiders in the first three rounds of the 2014 NFL Draft. But for Mack, that meant waiting until the 2018 offseason to get a new contract.

Jackson signed a five-year, $56 million extension in June 2017 less than a week after Carr got a five-year, $125 million extension. That left the Raiders without much room to add money to Mack’s deal.

With deals done for Gabe Jackson/Derek Carr, Khalil Mack will have to wait till 2018 for new deal, per sources. Too big to fit under cap now

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) June 29, 2017

Now it’s Mack’s turn and he’s sitting out until the deal is figured out.

Current deal: Like Donald, Mack played out the first four years of his rookie contract and is set to play in 2018 on a fifth-year option. That means he’s due to receive a sizable $13.846 million before hitting free agency in 2019.

What he’s looking for: In the last three years, Mack has three trips to the Pro Bowl and 36.5 sacks. Only Chandler Jones has more sacks over that span.

Still just 27, Mack will also be looking to receive more than Miller’s $19.02-million average and become the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL. Mack and Donald are likely to get similar amounts.

What’s the latest: Mack is reportedly looking for a huge amount of guaranteed, according to NFL Network’s Steve Wyche.

“He’s expecting to get paid significant money,” Wyche said. “When we’re talking significant money, we’re talking guarantees in excess of $65 million, so he’s in that quarterback contract range when it comes to guarantees.”

Wyche thinks the contract will get done in June — the same time deals for Jackson and Carr got done — and Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie said he anticipates an extension getting signed soon.

Earl Thomas, S, Seahawks

After starting all 96 possible games through the first six seasons of his career with the Seahawks, Thomas missed five games in 2016 due to a hamstring problem and broken leg, and another two games in 2017. He even floated the idea of retiring when he broke his leg.

Thomas is still just 29, but his recent health problems and talk of potentially hanging up his cleats may raise concerns about his long-term future. But when healthy, he’s arguably the best free safety in the NFL.

Current deal: The four-year, $40 million extension Thomas signed in 2014 made him the highest-paid safety in the NFL. He’ll make $8.5 million in base salary in 2018, and has a $1.9 deferred signing bonus on the way.

But Thomas is set to become a free agent in 2019, and five safeties have received deals that average more than $10 million in the four years since he signed his extension.

What he’s looking for: Thomas will have to convince Seattle he still has high-level play ahead of him, which shouldn’t be too difficult considering he’s still under 30. He’ll likely ask for something close to Eric Berry’s $13 million per year average.

“I want to remain a Seahawk for the rest of my career but I also believe that based on my production over the last eight years that I’ve earned the right to have this taken care of as soon as possible,” Thomas tweeted earlier in June. ”I want to have certainty in regards to the upcoming years of my career.”

What’s the latest: In the months before the holdout for Thomas officially began, the Seahawks traded Michael Bennett to the Eagles, cut ties with Richard Sherman, and cut Cliff Avril.

There’s too much talent on the Seattle defense to really call it a rebuild, but there’s clearly a generational shift happening. The Legion of Boom era is over, and Thomas was reportedly shopped by the Seahawks for a second-round pick, although the Cowboys rejected the deal.

It would seem that Thomas isn’t in the team’s long-term plans, although Seahawks coach Pete Carroll told reporters in June that the team will be in contact with the safety‘s reps over the next six weeks.

The storm between Thomas and the Seahawks has been brewing for a long time, and if it doesn’t end with a new contract it could get uglier.

Le’Veon Bell, RB, Steelers

The rift between Bell and the Steelers isn’t anything new. The running back missed all of training camp and preseason in 2017 after he received the franchise tag and couldn’t come to terms on a long-term deal in the summer.

In January, Bell said he’d “definitely consider” retirement if Pittsburgh gave him the franchise tag again. Two months later, he got the tag again.

So it should come as a surprise to no one that he isn’t planning on showing up at team practices any time soon.

Current deal: The franchise tag can be pretty lucrative, especially when a player gets it in consecutive offseasons. Bell is due to make $14.544 million for the 2018 season.

What he’s looking for: Bell hasn’t just been one of the best rushers in the NFL over the past four seasons, he’s also been one of the Steelers’ most productive receivers. In July 2017, he said he wants to be paid like Pittsburgh’s top rusher and No. 2 receiver.

More recently, Bell told ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler that he’s not going to sign a contract that averages less than $14.5 million per year.

That’d be a huge amount for a running back. Devonta Freeman of the Falcons has the second-highest average salary at the position behind Bell, but gets just $8.25 million per year.

What’s the latest: Pittsburgh has until July 16 to reach a long-term deal with Bell. If the Steelers can’t agree to an extension by then, Bell will play the 2018 season on his one-year, $14.544 million franchise tag deal.

According to The Athletic, the Steelers have had no dialogue regarding a new deal so far this offseason.

With Bell’s lofty contract expectations, a fast-approaching deadline, and Pittsburgh’s previous hesitations to give him a huge deal, there isn’t much reason to be optimistic about a contract getting done.

David Johnson, RB, Cardinals

Johnson led the NFL with 2,118 yards from scrimmage and 20 touchdowns in 2016. But his impact was also felt in 2017 when a wrist injury kept him out of the lineup for 15 games.

Without Johnson, the Cardinals were No. 28 in the NFL in rushing touchdowns and No. 31 in yards per carry. The 26-year-old running back was brutally missed and now he’s asking the Cardinals to make sure they’re not without him in the future.

Current deal: Johnson is entering the final year of the four-year, $2,919,373 contract he signed as a third-round rookie in 2015. Unlike the first-round picks on this list of holdouts, there is no fifth-year option on his contract, and Johnson is due to become a free agent in 2019.

What he’s looking for: The standoff between Le’Veon Bell and the Pittsburgh Steelers makes it difficult to gauge how much any running back should get right now. A deal for $14.5 million is so much higher than the rest of the market that it would reshape all future negotiations if Bell finally locks down that number.

Johnson probably won’t wait until Bell finally gets a long-term deal, but the Cardinals running back will provide an interesting standard for what an elite running back is worth.

His next contract will undoubtedly eclipse the five-year, $41.25 million extension that Devonta Freeman received in 2017. By how much is the question.

What’s the latest: If Johnson doesn’t get a contract this offseason, the Cardinals always have the option to use the franchise tag in 2019. But the team has made it clear they want to get something done.

“I don’t think there is any question David is one of our core players and someone we look forward to having a long-term future with,” Cardinals general manager Steve Keim said in June.

“(It’s) no different from in the past, when we’ve rewarded players like Pat Peterson, Chandler Jones, Larry Fitzgerald, Carson Palmer, just to name a few. There’s no doubt in my mind moving forward that we will keep a positive outlook and again, look forward to rewarding him just like we have players in the past.”

According to Mike Garafolo of NFL Network, a deal for Johnson will probably get done before the 2018 season begins. While it hasn’t happened yet, Johnson reported for the beginning of training camp on July 23 after missing minicamp earlier in the offseason.

Taylor Lewan, OT, Titans

The 2014 first-round pick took over as a starter during his rookie year and has become a stalwart on the left side of Tennessee’s offensive line. He earned trips to the Pro Bowl in each of the last two seasons,

Current deal: The Titans picked up the fifth-year option on Lewan’s rookie contract, so he’s due to make $9.341 million in 2018.

What he’s looking for: The New York Giants set the market in March when they signed Nate Solder to a four-year, $62 million deal. Solder is three years older than Lewan and has never made the Pro Bowl, so there’s no reason Lewan shouldn’t get more than $15.5 million per year and become the new highest-paid offensive lineman in the NFL.

What’s the latest: Titans general manager Jon Robinson said in a statement in June that the team has had “several constructive conversations” regarding Lewan’s contract.

Statement from #Titans GM Jon Robinson at the start of mandatory veteran mini-camp. pic.twitter.com/WHjg0zEaYl

— Tennessee Titans (@Titans) June 12, 2018

The Titans are among the league leaders in cap space, so it shouldn’t take too long for the team to invest in their left tackle for the future.

[blackstarlinebrewing-blog]

They told us we wouldn’t win...

They told us we wouldn’t win…

Last night and all morning, Ekua and I have been thinking about our experience at #bbsession, Brew Bound’s Startup Brewery Challenge. There’s so much to share and probably many pieces we’ll write about our experience. At the end of the day, we knew we weren’t quite ready to be on the stage. We’re not going to be in bottles or cans anytime soon, so we don’t have marketing that we could display on the stage. We can’t legally sell quite yet, because we don’t have the cash/financing, to get that stuff in place; so we’re in limbo. We can’t get a damn financing or know investors who will take a chance on us. The local CDFI is even like, “nah, we’re gonna have to pass homies.” Ok, that’s not a direct quote, clearly. Then, it’s like there will maybe, kinda be funding for less than what we need and we’re just gonna have to figure it out. No, these aren’t excuses, just the reality.

Going in to the competition, we didn’t have any more beer. Quite frankly, we stopped brewing because we couldn’t afford it. We had to use a store credit we had from past purchases to buy some ingredients. Our flagships, Stokely Stout and Dat Dere, couldn’t make it because we didn’t have the cash to produce. We, as always, transparently let folks know the realities and started to raise funds, but they didn’t come quite quickly enough. Those closest to us were hesitant to support because they felt strongly we would not win. So, we did what we know how to do when we’re up against a wall, undercapitalized, poor, and bootstrapping… we made it work. We turned three batches of beer in 9 days.

As far as we know, there’s never been Black women on the stage. There’s never been queer POC on the stage. We knew, no real start-up had ever won the startup brewery challenge at #bbsession. Most of the winners were fully capitalized, had tap rooms, were in distribution, and at a stage we’ve been trying to grow too. It was a risk.

The folks at the local CDFI talk about how we would make it being undercapitalized… well, as Black folks on this land, we always do. Manning Marable said it was Capitalism that underdeveloped Black America. Right… Undercapitalizing, not funding, holding the purse strings tightly, squashing the economic liberation of a people; is simply called genocide. It is by design that the institutions and systems have “certain rules and limitations” with regards to who has access to capital. Most simply, it is called racism. We know it is patriarchy, white supremacy, and the intersections of all the other interlocking supremacy systems.

Let me be clear: We are so grateful for the funds that were received! We would not have been able to be on the stage had it not been for the widespread community support, #grassrootsreparations, and love offerings. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We’re sorry we only got the silver but know, it was our full intention to come home with the Gold.

No, I know that had we received the full $2000 in advance of our trip, we would have won. Really, we needed $2450. But we would have been victorious - Hands down. Is it worth spending half of the prize to get the W?! Absolutely. Bringing that W home meant we could come back and not have to worry about getting evicted, which is now ever pressing in our minds. It legitimizes our work. It lends us credibility, and perhaps, it would have let the folks at the local CDFIs know that we’re actually worthy. If we had the cash, this is how we would have used it:

·         $150 would have been spent brewing our delicious flagship brews: Stokely Stout and Dat Dere Ginger Beer. These would have impressed both the judges and the crowd. There have been indisputably positive, overwhelming, and enthusiastic reviews for these two delicious brews.

·         $50 would have allowed us to make enough of the Ginger Brew botanicals for all of the conference attendees.

·         $350 would have allowed us to buy a jockey box so that we could have kept the brews fresh and served them fresh to participants, attendees, and judges. Admittedly, our head retention was super low because of the beer being in growlers for days. Since we’re on a budget (what an understatement), we had to pour the beer with us when we left NC on Tuesday morning. Not ideal for a competition where folks wouldn’t be tasting until 48 hours later.

·         $175 would have been enough for us to print our marketing materials, business cards, and make sure that we had them in time for the conference.

·         $250 would have been enough for our much needed logo re-design.

·         $750 would have given us the opportunity to have the mock ups of the bottle labels completed as well as much needed new swag so that we could appropriately represent the brand. Shit, it would have been nice to have some branded growlers instead of print-at-home Avery labels, that didn’t stick, on the growlers. There’s just some marketing stuff we need to tighten up.

·         $500 transportation – So, we needed an oil change, gas, and DAMN – NYC transportation is expensive!

·         $150 for food – We’ve been super frugal and have some “government assistance” that we can use as individuals to help offset our costs. So grateful for this social program right now!

·         $75 for spiritual supplies – Absolutely necessary. We would have loved to be able to build an altar at #bbsession. However, cash was tight and we were a rolling altar.

As is typically the case at things like this where either one or both of us present, they said we were the best. We had the best pitch. They were inspired. Some folks were in tears. They called us the “people’s beer.” Many folks were really apologetic and said that if they could have voted, they would have voted for us. Ekua and I (both collectively and individually) stood by the drinks being poured and listened to folks responses when they tasted our beers. They loved it. We loved the older white dudes saying “wow!” “This is good” “Haven’t had anything like this before.” “What is this? I like this a lot” “Where can I buy it.” Our security guard friend really loved hearing people’s responses and continued to give us encouragement throughout the day. After the pitch, he was very apologetic and encouraged us to keep going. He let us know we were the best and there wasn’t even anyone else who could come close.

 It was so odd to keep hearing these comments throughout the rest of the day and evening. Later, after folks got a bit more liquored up J, we found out we were second place. Some of the judges wish they would have known more information. We wish they would have asked.

 There was a moment on the stage where I was waiting for questions. I grew up in Bel Air, Maryland; in Harford County; in the suburbs. I went to all Blue Ribbon schools. I’m a woman. I’m a Black woman. I was waiting to be asked questions so I could respond. No one ever asked questions, so I sat silent. I feel like, ironically enough, Audre Lorde is kicking me in the ass… They were drinking The Lorde. “My silences never protected me…” FUCK! Then, I watched my male colleagues (mostly white) just start speaking and responding. What the actual fuck? Why didn’t I do that? Oh, right, I was raised to be silent, respect authority, and all that female subjugation bull shit. Wasn’t it the former Sales Manager Dan Dalton who told me not to ask for people’s time, just take it. Fuck, these dudes have grown up like that their whole lives and just created space to talk and interact with the judges. Why didn’t I? Fucking patriarchy. Shit.

 So we won silver. Cool. I’m really excited for all of the collaborations, partnerships, and opportunities that are on the horizon.

However, I can’t stop thinking of other Black women who’ve been in competitions like this. They ended up not winning the competition, were clearly the best, and made great careers. Look at Jennifer Hudson. The most successful American Idol contestant. She lost to a (closeted at the time) gay white man and  super sweet cuddly bear Black dude. Jennifer was clearly the best. J-Hud has gone on to establish herself in the industry and continue to push and inspire. Y’all know I love The Rap Game… Look at Nia Kay. She DEFINITELY should have won over Mediocre Mani (at best) and Keep it Together Key (I love you, Lil Key though). Nevertheless, she kept it pushing and is really becoming solid on the young rap scene. Of course, there’s my home girl: Deetranada. Dee had some challenges but needed the win. Nova, due to skill, arrogances, and his support crew, would have been able to make it in the industry. Deetranada inspires so many, grew so much, and really focused. But damn, she’s still on the So So Def tour.

Of course, there’s always the case of HRC – Hillary Rodham Clinton. After having to concede to the young Barack Obama in ’07, she came back kicking and did great things for our country. SHE WON the popular vote, after it has been confirmed that there has been Russian interference, and still she persists. Fucking badass. They told her she wouldn’t win, she won (but didn’t), and even in the wake of all these haters, including in her party, she continues to work tirelessly for a better place for all of us.

You know, this is not new. Black culture being told its second rate. Let’s look at “Living Single”. The white version of this became wildly popular and created stars. It was called, “Friends.” Or let’s look at “Waiting to Exhale.” I’ve never met a Black woman who hasn’t seen this movie. For us, it was a first. It pretty accurately captured our experiences. Of course, “Sex in the City” was the spin off. Our culture wasn’t enough, it was too different, too unique, and too authentic. But not so much so that white folks wouldn’t want to experiment with it and launch their own.

On the intentional sweetness of our beers: We know our folks. Our folks love sweet drinks: kool-aid, sweet tea, and so forth. How many types of juice or soda (Fuck high fructose corn syrup), do you have in your fridge right now, folks of color? The industry depends on us having this sweet tooth. Folks capitalize on us having it and have made our folks addicted through the harmful additives. We know this and want to queer this a bit. AND, we know folks love smoking and drinking. The bitterness of the cigarettes or other rolled sweets necessitates something sweet and refreshing. But again, it’s not their market or culture to understand UNLESS it can make them money. Here’s the secret: it can and it will. We’ll be the beer pioneers on this front.

This mindset of the liberal whites at this conference helps me to understand the mindset of those who voted for Trump against their best interest, right? They were and are so tied in to the system that they literally cannot conceive another way. The misappropriations of their power were astounding. The cowardice was something I could never truly comprehend. It’s like its easier for them to uphold the system that do something as so radical as voting with what’s in the heart. To contextualize: what’s the worst that could have happened if we won? Empowerment of Black, queer folks living on the margins? Affirming the dignity and value of something that’s unique and distinctive that the industry just spent an entire day saying it needs? Supporting the authenticity that was so vividly described in discussed in the opening? Or perhaps, just taking a chance. Folks take chances all the time, especially as related to our freedom and liberation. Think about the folks that voted for Trump just because they couldn’t vote for a woman. “It just didn’t feel right”, they said. I heard these people say just that as I stood with them for hours outside of Lenoir-Rhyne University waiting to see him.

Look y’all, folks talk the talk about being authentic. But when you’re Black, you can’t be too authentic or too real because you’ll scare whites. Right? The back lash to white folks realizing their privilege and their agency to be change-makers, is and has historically been to uphold the status quo. It’s frightening to be the ones to be change makers and quite frankly, most folks don’t have the courage. It was so fucking awkward to be at the after party and overhear folks talking (in their quiet white circles) about how they thought we should have won, how inspiring we were, what could they do, did they know *insert X fact that we shared*. This happens so frequently in situations like this. Where we could have won, did not, or where we could have received funding, or a place to call home, whatever!... and then folks find out more and are deeply saturated in their white guilt and shame. 5 people literally began to tear up and cry on that roof top. How was I supposed to hold space for their sorrow, guilt, and shame while still processing that we lost, juxtaposed with folks saying we were the best, the best they’ve ever seen, etc.? Uh, what? I think about what my father told me… it is these types of folks who allowed lynchings to happen in his home state of South Carolina. It is these folks who may have voted for Trump. And it is these folks that we’ll continue building with because this is our work and the work of #blackstarlinebrewing. This is the work we’re being called too. This is why its imperative for Black Star Line Brewing to exist now, to radicalize these spaces, and to help us (as our new friends at Good City say) “seek the good”.

And yes, it’s pretty awesome that we cranked out these brews, in 9 days, on our homebrew equipment, and got the silver. That’s fucking badass. So yes, they told us we wouldn’t win. But I’m certain they weren’t expecting us to get the silver!

 All of this to say, hell yes – we are so grateful to have been at the event, make connections, have a platform, and let the industry know we’re on the come up. We’re blessed beyond belief and never imagined even competing in something like this. We’re so grateful for the prayer warriors and those who held us in the light. Grateful for Gma’s prayers with Starla cooking in the background and Jo eating too many cookies. We’re grateful Bishop prayed over us and anointed us. We’re grateful my Pop (Larry) prayed fervently. My family held us in prayer and in the light. The community was on their knees, we felt it. Thank you. We’re so appreciative of all of the affirmations and commitments for collaboration, assistance, mentoring, and support. We’re following up with all of y’all! Black Star Line Brewing Co. is the new kid on the block and we’re changing the scene, y’all.

Well, folks kept asking “What’s next” for Black Star Line Brewing Co. Most immediately, we’re gonna figure out how to get this $ so we can pay rent and not be evicted. We’re gonna figure out how to get out here and start pitching more. We HAVE to figure out where this funding is going to come from so we can actually get out here and start brewing. Where are all these white, liberals, and progressives who voted for Barack Obama and Kamala Harris? Where are these kick ass beer folks who are so interested in transforming the industry and want to talk about diversity? Note: diversity is very different than inclusion or even intersectionality. Diversity is the polite white way to say we have a problem with all the homogeneity, and we don’t know how to fix it, but we’re afraid to do anything other than what we’re doing now, because there might be too much of y’all; what’s the minimal thing that we can do to not get ourselves screwed, sued, and look like white supremacists? And we certainly can’t have more of you than us! So help us diversify, good darkie.

What’s next is that we’re gonna continue to grind. After all, we’re a grassroots, family centered brewery launching a social movement rooted in self-determination, social entrepreneurship, collective economics, and our collective healing and liberation. We’re creating pathways out of poverty for folks, including us. We’re strong. We’re resilient. We are #blackstarline.

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TL;DR -- In prep for my first visit to SaaStr Annual, I binge-listened to all 95 podcasts and wrote down the highlights. In the original blog post we built a simple search app of the data set I created along with images of all the SaaS resources mentioned on the show. The rest of the text is below. Hope some might find it useful....Who needs a #drinkwithharry?Over the past few weeks, I tasked myself with listening to all ~32 hours of the SaaStr podcast, in preparation for the SaaStr Annual conference. Each show is an incredibly dense, 20-minute nugget on the business of SaaS. IMHO, it is totally and completely worthwhile to meander through twice-weekly.However. Powering through them all in one go was the equivalent of a Brain Blaster—more like binge-watching Planet Earth than Portlandia. Do as I say, kids, not as I do.So, what did I learn? Well, a ton. Let’s try to unpack the highlights with the Data, the Recommended Resources, the Words of Wisdom and, finally, the Personal Lessons.To the Data!As part of this journey, I put together a file that combines data from the RSS feed along with my own note-taking on each episode (typos and dirty data notwithstanding).[Note: Due to reddit formatting, here are the details of the data set]:The CSV file is available on GitHub.The Search App is inside the original post.The how-to on getting dynamic data into a static set using our cloud data pipes is in a secondary post.Fun facts:54% of episodes featured a CEO and/or Founder21% of episodes featured a VC or other InvestorThe remaining episodes (with a few exceptions) were with VP of sales, marketing or customer successOf the non-VC interviewees, there was a diversity of SaaS products on display. HR and Marketing companies were most prominent (~30%), but others ranged from security-guards-on-demand to shipping APIs to a Slack bot. It’s a big world out there.There were only two repeat guests (Jason Lemkin and John Barrows)The “60-second SaaStr” was nicknamed “the Churn” for a few early episodes. The “Good, that’s perfect, I think we’re warmed up” audio snippet appeared 43 episodes in. Were these the experiments and casualties of lean podcast methodology? We’ll never know.Recommended SaaS ResourcesThis is probably a good time to note that Harry Stebbings, the wunderkind interviewer, is a natural. In addition to tight, relevant questions, the brilliance of the show really comes down to the editing. 20 minutes is a perfect length and a huge differentiator compared to other tech and startup podcasts.One question Harry often asks (~55% of all interviews) is simply: “What are your favorite SaaS resources?” Interviewees answer with various blogs, books, podcasts, among others. I compiled each resource and grouped them by number of mentions. To make things a little easier to read, I also highlighted the books in blue:[NOTE: All the SaaS resources mentioned I grouped and, due to lazyness, just took a screenshot. Top four were SaaStr, Tomasz Tunguz blog, David Skok blog, & Mark Suster blog, but a long-tail of other interesting reads; for the full list, see the original postThere is a clearly a preference for SaaStr on these Saastr podcasts (weird!), but you clearly don’t want to miss out on Tomasz Tunguz or David Skok either. When you go to google "How to Castrate a Bull" make sure you add "business book" to your search criteria.Words of WisdomAs for actual content, where to begin? It’s an embarrassment of riches. So as not to write a novel, let me give you a taste by simply quoting from a handful of interviews (with gentle editing for clarity):Nick Mehta, Gainsight, Episode #24 on What Companies are Getting Wrong with Customer Success“#1 they think it is just about churn reduction… just the beginning of the story… it’s about upsell, expansion and most importantly about advocacy and getting your customers to be your best sales people…#2 they hire the wrong leader… maybe passionate about the customer and product, but not operationally focused…#3 they put it under another exec… part time responsibility of marketing or sales… #4 they make it all about people and heroics v. process… #5 they think about it as just the CSM team’s responsibility, when in reality that customer success team is the quarterback… but you need the whole company to rally around it.”Aaron Ross, Author, Episode 46 on the Most Common Reason Companies Struggle to Grow“Because they haven’t nailed a niche… you can have a big vision, but it means being very focused—baby steps—around the type of customer segments… who today you can find, talk to and who need you enough to buy from you… so you can double-down and grow fast.An old story, company has a product, anyone in the world can use it and get value from it, but no one is buying it. Where are you a need to have vs. where you are a nice to have? It’s hard to have the internal discipline in the early days to say these customers can all use us, but they don’t need it so much that they’re going to buy… got to focus on these 1-2 very specific areas… maybe not sexy… but enough of a pain there that they’re going to need us and go through all the huge time and energy and effort—the more-than-you-expect-process—to evaluate us, buy us and deploy us.”Russell Glass, LinkedIn, Episode #14 on Marketing within the Customer Lifecycle“At each stage… [customers] have certain information needs… and if you can, as a marketer, help them with those information needs at the right part of the journey of that decision, that is when you are relevant… that is when you are able to transcend being marketing material and move into the information universe.”Seth Besmertnik, Conductor, Episode #79 on Weaponizing Marketing:“Your marketing can be a weapon and core competency and differentiator… [for a crowded market] what ends up discerning the difference is the marketing… are people finding you?… do they know you exist? There are a lot of great software companies that are dead on the side of the road because no one ever found their business, no one found their product and they weren’t good at sales and marketing. So having a great product is the start, but it’s not how you get across the finish line.”Mathilde Collin, Frontapp, Episode #10 on Content Marketing Strategy“We have a process, first try to release at least two posts per month… and then always try to write 1/3 on market we’re in… 1/3 on our journey… and 1/3 about specific use case for customers”Peter Reinhardt, Segment, Episode #80 on Turning Up Product Market Fit to Eleven“[Early on] we managed to convince ourselves that pretty meager levels of customer excitement meant product market fit, which I think is an easy thing to do… I think customers have more dynamic range in their response to a product than most people realize… “oh that seems helpful”… 7 or 8 out of 10… but when you really hit a pain point, the customer’s dynamic range goes up to 11… and their response is totally different… like holy shit, can I get access to it today? I need to call this other person on my team who has been talking about this forever, how ’bout I introduce you? and you’re like “woah, woah” it doesn’t even exist yet, slow down… I think the customer’s dynamic range is much broader than we realized and so we never actually hit that 11 and just convinced ourselves that 7 out of 10 was product-market fit.”Ryan Smith, Qualtrics, Episode #83 on Necessity of Managing Runway“Rome wasn’t built in a day… it’s going to take time, if you can keep your options from a funding or partner standpoint to actually give you a long enough runway, entrepreneurs will figure it out. The problem is when they put a stopwatch on their back… every bet that we’ve made has taken a little longer than we anticipated… you don’t want to limit yourself to one point in time… you gotta play the long game.”Leo Widrich, Buffer, Episode #89 on an Embarrassing MVP“The quote… that you should be embarrassed by your first version gets misinterpreted a lot… you shouldn’t be embarrassed because it completely breaks or is unusable… that’s the wrong type of embarrassment… the type that is good is the embarrassment of richness… like, kinda embarrassed because it’s only this one feature and you wish you had done three more… it is complete unto itself… not the base layer of the cake, but, instead, a cupcake.”Personal Lessons LearnedIf there is one thing I’ve personally learned throughout this process, it’s that the 2x speed on a podcast app is probably the greatest invention of all time.But, as far as SaaS goes, I think what you receive through drowning in all this content is a solid understanding of the conventional wisdom of running a SaaS business, from early days to scale. Things like:Hire athletes in the beginning, specialize later.Initial product market fit is when you have 10 unaffiliated paying customersSales and Customer Success need to be working in tandem, given the necessity of retention in SaaSDon’t spend money on sales until you have a repeatable processFocus early on a single personaGet people to pay you earlyMore mojitos, fasterAnother cool thing about this binge-mission, should one accept it, is that you’ll certainly find a few tidbits that speak directly to your situation. For instance, I almost fell out of my chair when Harry Glaser of Periscope Data (Episode #30) was asked about greenfield opportunities in SaaS and then went on to lay out the problem that our startup, Flex.io, is trying to tackle:“I think one thing we see that maybe other folks don’t see there’s a lot of back end data munging and processing and kinda unsexy data things going on that are really being done with a collection of hacky python scripts right now… copying data from place to place, transforming data, storing data, all that stuff is being done by people writing scripts on the side… so I think there is a big opportunity there…”Let’s hope so, Harry!…Well, I hope this proved to be a useful summary for you, dear reader. May your SaaS companies flourish and may your mojito glasses never be empty! Hope to see you at SaaStr Annual.edit: formatting