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Absolute Power: Why Every Power Player Should Embrace Character Defects
🦸♂️ Could your character's flaws be the key to an epic story? Unveil the hidden power of Character Defects in the Absolute Power RPG! Learn how embracing imperfections can lead to unforgettable narratives and deeper gameplay. Don't miss out on transforming your heroes and villains into legends. Watch now and elevate your game! 🎲 #AbsolutePowerRPG #CharacterDevelopment #TabletopGaming
Absolute Power: Book 1: System Absolute Power: Book 2: Essentials Tri-Stat Core Discover how Character Defects can turn ordinary heroes into unforgettable legends in our deep dive into Absolute Power! Watch now to learn how to weave flaws into your characters that enrich your stories and gameplay. In this captivating video, we explore the role of Character Defects in Dyskami Publishing Company’s…
#absolute power game#absolute power rpg#absolute power superhero game#character templates rpg#dyskami publishing#game master tips#legion of myth#roleplaying game#rpg character creation#rpg die gest#RPG Mechanics#superhero adventures#superhero campaign#superhero gaming#superhero powers rpg#superhero roleplaying#superhero roleplaying game#superhero rpg#superhero stories#superhero tabletop rpg#superhero team rpg#superhero universe#tabletop gaming#tabletop RPG#TTRPG
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if we're going to insist on amanda waller as a big bad (ugh) and continue to have cissie here and back in action for some reason because of waller the least i am owed is a campy waller-cissie dynamic along the lines of greta & mr. doug side.
#tragically i am still enjoying absolute power outside of the parts i hate#it would be absolutely awful but also i do think cissie should have been drafted by waller on account of#her wanting to not be superhero anymore. and cissie is begrudgingly drafted a la the baseball game even tho she's retired cassie god!!#possibly she joins waller out of spite after cassie tried to convince her to don the uniform again to help save the world#and then in the end she of course heel turns and let's a bunch of superheroes out because she's gonna do the right thing#and she does help the final fight and then at the end cassie's like omg you want to be a hero again!#and she's like#no! i don't! stop it cassie!!#absolute power young justice
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ok u know what maybe if the world isn't ready for sunrazer post that means that the world IS ready for Amoveous siblings post. This is Milo and Enho and theyre my DARLINGS and i love them SO MUCH. i have. SOOOOOOOO many thoughts abt them but after the previous post massacre i do not really feel like typing all of that xoxo love <3
#THESE DRAWINGS HAVE BEEN SITTING IN MY DRAFTS FOR MONTHS LOL#meart#original character#robot oc#ily enho ily milo my darlings my angels my loves my funny robot guys.#ive posted abt Andromeda on here b4 if u remember her Enho is her best friend !!!!!#Enhos a battle robot who doesnt want 2 fight people..#hes the oldest sibling and theres a lot resting on their shoulders!#shes supposed to be this big metal protector but U.U she just wants to hide in his room.. and make music for the internet..#him and andy have this whole arc abt like. autonomy and identity and junk#being as andy is a government experiment who was raised to be a superhero who. has not yet realized that she HATES being a superhero lol#Enho inspires her!#milo um. does his own thing. he was the second amoveous bot and he is lucky to have been built without the responsibility of a battle bot#which means hes a LOT weaker. doesnt have a million weapons and lasers and such like enho does. no one expects much of him. he HATES IT!!!!#he wants to be POWERFUL! he wants to HURT PEOPLE!! he wants to be USEFUL!!! hes ANGRY ALL THE TIME#its EXSAUSTING.#yk that tinkerbell thing thats like. cuz shes so small she can only feel one emotion at once. and its so big it consumes her entirely?#hes that. he lives entirely in extremes. everything is 100% for him#he jumps to conclusions so quick and so violently.. hes incredibly impulsive and it gets him into a lot of trouble.#hes also a total NERD!!! GOOB!!! says mlady unironically. likes bad computer games. wears a stupid tie everyday. cartoonishly schemes 24/7#enho for the record is also a pretty angry person. they just dont rlly express it. they dont express much of anything lol.#shes semiverbal on a talkative day. he can be REALLY REALLY PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE THO. THAT MF CAN BE SO PETTY. GOOFY ASS#but shes TERRIFIED she'll lose control of her emotions and her body and that shell hurt someone someday. absolutely terrified.#enho is as afraid of his strength as milo is of his weakness. theyre both two ends of the same extremes in a lot of ways.#polar opposites and yet exactly the same. they resent each other a lot. they need to learn to meet each other in the middle.#anyway ''i dont feel like typing all that'' and then i ramble in the tags for ten million years lol ToT I LOVE THESE GUYS#theyre my oldest ocs in this universe and i have so many thoughts if you have any questions feel free to ask me lol
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Would you write anything with/about Spider-man 2099? 👀
This ask made me scroll back in my blog and go, "Wait did I actually write the entire manifesto on why Miguel is a communist icon because I thought I had refrained from that."
I'm 95% sure that I did, in fact, refrain from explaining why there are only two good superhero media (The Incredible Hulk 1977 and Spider-man 2099) because they are the only two truly socialist superhero media. I must have mentioned that I fucking loved Spider-man 2099 somewhere. Because I fucking do. Miguel is THE character of all time. I love Spider-Man, I love characters who are COMPLETE DICKS, I love guys who just kinda wanna go home and sleep.
I absolutely would write something for him, I fucking love that guy. I haven't had a really solid idea yet, one that would make a story that would get off the ground, but if the stars align then hell yeah. Miguel is the perfect superhero because he never once tries to stop anybody from robbing a bank, committing a crime, disturbing the peace, etc. He will only ever do anything helpful if it fucks over Cyberpunk Dystopia Evil Corp, because he hates them, or if his brother nags him to do something about systematic oppression. Over the course of all of Spider-Man 2099 he stops ONE mugging. Because a cop was mugging a woman. So he could beat up the cop. Character of ALL TIME.
....this isn't a story idea but I was absolutely joking about hypothetically:
imagining one of those tepid-ass mcu spider-man fanfic where there's a class field trip to stark industies or something and peter's outed as Tony Stark's Baby Son Boy, of which there are literally 500 and every one is exactly the same I don't read mcu peter fanfic anyway
tropey fic where peter's doing that tropey hijinky runs away from crowd of friends to hide in a broom closet and preserve his secret identity
except he just opens the door to an abandoned wet lab to see miguel electrocuting a rat or something
peter is fucking convinced dr ohara is a mad scientist stealing starktech genetic secrets. tony doesn't listen because he thinks peters feelings are just hurt after miguel called him the saltine cracker of nepotism. miguel is, of course, stealing starktech time travel technology. meanwhile a guy in a black spider suit is firebombing the NYPD
miguel assumes that the richer and more important you are, the more evil you are. faced with involuntary time travel, he is operating under his standard MO of finding the most evil corporation in the tristate area and looking them up on glassdoor. working under this assumption, miguel assumes itll be too much work to go ahead and kill tony stark in the name of the proletariat but he does slowly sabotage their entire genetics division.
MJ threatens to break up with Peter if he tries to stop the NYPD from being firebombed
#I've been saving my communist superhero manifesto for a psychological emergency#“oh mcu spider-man says acab” no mcu spider-man is a tool of the state#miguel beats up cops.#my asks#my writing#miguel fanfic game weak as hell :(#i probably wouldn't write that story idea because i can taste that it would be boring to write#however miguel does absolutely advance genetics by 20 years but inserts a virus into every genome he makes#I do unironically think a time travelling Miguel would just fucking get a job with Oscorp#and do dubiously ethical science as he meanders his way home kind of#green goblins fighting spidey in the break room? none of his business. miguel says in his lane.#mutated animal person destroying town square and challenges miguel to a fight?#he hits da bricks. not 2day he has to be thirty minutes late to a meeting as a power move#this is bolstered by the canon information that when miguel time travels in the comics#he absolutely takes a job at a dubiously ethical company becomes bugfuck rich and goes on american ninja warrior#KING
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Im rewatching The Batman and it reminds me how bizarre the superheros-as-cekebrities trope actually is.
Like, yes, I get it. Superheros are the modern collectives version of Odysseus and Hercules and Achilles. We adore them so the closest equivalent to that adoration must be the other category of human we adore, celebrities and idols! I understand the like.... Impulse behind that?
But I also think it's inherently shallow to understand them through a lens that treats their crime fighting as Their Job. Because with a few exceptions (mostly in Marvel, but not all in Marvel), they're straight up wanted by the police for what they're doing.
#admittedly if you rewrote the boys to be about the actual legitimate version if what superheros do (being cops and politicians) you would#just get the watchmen#admittedly teen titans absolutely works as the pre-deconstructed superheros-as-celebrities type narrative#ADMITTEDLY tony stark himself is a one man version of this trope as well#but so many times i see people try to pull it off and fall flat on their face because they can only succeed at their theme#(conflating superheros and celebrities)#fundamentally ignores the root of superheros (people powerful enough in mind body or soul to exist outside of The System and enforce their#ideals upon it)#this is TOTALLY NOT about a niche text based adventures game i played years ago#but it also TOTALLY IS
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★ 𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐂𝐇-𝐀, 𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐂𝐇-𝐀, 𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐂𝐇 𝐌𝐄. + 𝐌𝐈𝐆𝐔𝐄𝐋 𝐎'𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀
masterlist. / taglist. / tip jar. synopsis. no matter how many times you try to convince yourself that Miguel is the bane of your existence, the way you react during training proves otherwise.
─── ☆ notes. i need fics of miguel being an absolute dick, like a petty bitch just for the hell of it i need more attitude yk? Like if that man isn't calling me a slut it ain't canon! | — feedback is always welcomed & don't forget to reblog 🤍
─── ☆ length. 4.3k (33 min read).
─── ☆ genre and warnings. +18 nsfw under the cut. minors dni | no spoilers | smut, enemies to lovers, maybe mutual pining, fighting and violence, semi public sex, gym sex, mentions of abuse, size difference, pain kink, strength kink, degradation kink, manhandling, power play(?), begging, rough sex, cervix kissing, choking, fangs, biting, marking, cunnilingus, eye contact, hair pulling, creampie, open ended, not an taiyo fic without a few typos.
IF YOU ASKED any of the other Spider-men what they loved so much about being Spider-Man, their answers would all be the same, ranging from "the suit" to "the enhanced abilities." It was a no-brainer that being a superhero came with a few awesome perks.
Which was why your answer was just a bit confusing, "the combat." You would always smile, despite the many eyebrows raises and looks that convinced you you had to be some type of overcover masochist, especially since you would never really go into true detail about why.
Your reasoning behind putting on the mask was similar to all the others: another traumatized kid being thrown into a whole new reality that you never would have dreamed of being possible.
Sadly, you had been raised with the loss of most of your loved ones, and your family was in shambles from the abuse you would go through from them. It was the reason why it was difficult for you to grow up and make many friends, let alone navigate your abilities on your own accord, which was why it was a whole different ball game when you first joined the spider society.
When you first met Miguel O'Hara, you thought he was an overly intimidating man with an even more scary personality. Your aesthetics and morals would clash in the first few run-ins you would have with him.
In all honesty, you first thought him to be a massive dick who surprisingly needed more therapy than you did. From his bored expression to his unnerving glare, it was clear upon the first introduction that you two just would not get along.
Which was why the universe made him the only spider person willing and with enough free time to train you. It came as a surprise to you both, who are usually butting heads. Miguel was adamant about not wanting to waste his time training some little girl who didn't even know how to throw a punch.
With much shit-talking on your part and a lot of teasing claims of him being afraid that you were going to kick your ass, training had quite literally started in full swing.
It was probably a bad move on your part to push the buttons of the guy who was teaching you how to fight. Miguel was clear with his fight-style techniques. He was nimble with his limbs and swift on his feet. It was hard for anyone to get a hit on him, especially since he wasn't the type to hold back his punches.
His teaching style was the same: your sessions included throwing you around as if you were some ragdoll and picking you up as if you weighed nothing, just to slam you into the ground with full bruising force.
There would be some very rare occasions when you would manage to get the upper hand on him. Miguel was about a foot taller than you, not to mention how pathetically compressed you looked standing next to him. You learned that the only way you could manage to get the upper hand was by using your size difference to your advantage.
All the sessions you won were hosted by you managing to tangle yourself from his claws and climb his towering figure into a headlock, praying that you had enough strength in your legs to make him tap out.
"How is she not dead yet?" Miles would mutter, looking concerned, as he stood from the sidelines of the training room, watching one of your sessions, as the blonde by his side didn't even wince at the sound of Miguel untangling you from the headlock you had him in.
His arms moved faster than you could process as he managed to loosen your hold enough to slam the air from your lungs as you fell back facing against the mat so hard that even Miles was convinced he could feel the blow in the lower spine.
"I mean, at this point, I'm kind of convinced she’s turned into his personal punching bag." Miles strains to watch Miguel not even wipe a sweat as he sprung back on his feet. He stretched out his full body, towering over you, curled flat against the mat, trying to collect your breathing as well as your broken ego.
Gwen nodded in agreement. "I don't even know how someone could hit someone so...squishy? She’s just so cute." She muttered, watching with her arms crossed.
"This punching bag needs to learn that in the real world, people aren't going to go as easy on her just because she’s cute." Miguel, despite glaring at the two bystanders, leaned down and yanked you back onto your stumbling feet.
Your fingers combed through the matted curls now drenched in sweat away from your forehead, using your water break as the perfect excuse to help cover up the reaction to the sudden compliment that came from his lips and the way he had made you feel.
"And her being my personal punching bag is completely at her fault, if you want to learn how to fight, you have to learn how to take a few punches." You couldn't help but roll your eyes and wave your hand out in annoyance at another one of Miguel O’Hara’s famous lectures.
"I’m not a punching bag, did you not see the hold I had on him early?" You huffed, almost choking on your water, trying to protest. Gwen humored your claim, the blonde reaching out and rubbing your shoulder out of support as you continued with your defense. "Any tighter, and I would have easily snapped his neck."
Of course, Miguel only smirked as you continued grasping at straws at the point of trying to prove to your friends your improvement, his eyes flitting back and forth at the exchange, expressionless at the sight of you managing to still joke around as if you weren't about to pass out from fatigue at any second.
"And was that before or after the part where I kicked your ass, little girl?" He shot out, chipping away at the final lock that held back your annoyance, you hadn't even had time to process the insult before he bumped his shoulder into you on his way out of the training room.
His rude exit enticed a round of reactions from Miles and Gwen trying their awkward best to comfort the boiling pot of anger they saw written all over your face, rolling your eyes, you pushed past the two, not without grumbling a string of insults in Miguel’s name to the washrooms.
You blessed the spider lords for somehow having the ability to shower under running water, let alone the unexplainable strange amount of amenities that the spider society dimensions had.
Like a web shooter's wonderland, you quickly shed the sweating clothes you trained in and stepped foot into the cold cubicle shower booth, letting the water run for a bit until enough steam fogged clouded stepping under the stream. Even with the hot water splashing pressure against your aching muscles, no amount of water could manage to wash away the annoying feeling in your legs.
It was enough of a jab at your pride to even find Miguel attractive in the first place, and here your body was betraying you once more, begging, throbbing desperately for his every touch in its every form, and having the nerve to grow more intense during your training.
The feeling had yet to fully disappear the next day, even with your session starting off with you fueled from yesterday's comments. You tried pushing the feeling as you were just ready to have Miguel mutter another word insult with the ass kick you were ready to give him. It was the only possible explanation for why you were so jittery about getting to training on time.
"It took you long enough." Was the first thing you heard Miguel announce throughout the empty room.
He wasn’t wearing his suit—neither of you did while training—instead, he was wearing dark gray sweatpants paired with some random dark red graphic shirt that fit him a bit too snuggly to leave room for imagination around his arms.
"Almost thought you were gonna skip out."
You were aware enough to spot this quick observation of your outfit as well. Keeping it casual and opting for better mobility, you shimmied yourself into plain Nike shorts that stopped higher up than you had expected them to on your thighs with a loose tank top that peeked out the straps of your sports bra.
Nothing about your clothes screamed attention grabbing—at least that's what you thought before you caught Miguel’s red-tinted stare on the way your shorts hugged your thighs.
He glanced away, muttering something in Spanish you couldn't quite translate the moment your fingers fidgeted with the bottom hems of the shorts, tugging them slightly more down while deciding to break the tense silence that had managed to sneak up on you. "So what are we doing today?"
"Huh, I’ve been thinking." He answered, followed by the clearing of his throat, "We try something a little different." You could never get used to the roughness of his voice or the way he spoke with so much arrogance that it reminded just about everyone that he thought he was better than just about everyone.
Even now that you stepped towards the middle of the mat, standing rigidly just a few paces away from him, you could tell from that stupid, cocky expression as he stood looking down at you that there was no possible way that he would ever see you as a real threat. "I want you to try to hit me."
Your brows creased together in confusion.
"What?" was all you asked, which seemed to be the wrong question to ask as Miguel stretched out a sigh from his mouth, his hands coming close to his to pinch the bridge of his nose.
"I said hit me." He speaks more slowly, making sure to mockingly over pronounce every symbol in every word as if you were a child. "Preferably soon and as hard as you can." A grimace finds itself twisting on your lips before you can even process your bubbling annoyance. Your body moved on autopilot because of your keen senses, jumping over the swing of his left leg with ease.
You couldn't say that swift grace stuck with your attempt at a counterattack. Bending your knee just enough to reach out and kick, you were only met with the bottom of your foot stomping flat against the floor mat and Miguel dodging your kick, standing just a few paces away. "Too predictable," he scolded in that annoyingly deep voice you hated oh so much and totally did not turn on you at all. You sprung yourself up by the heels of your feet and charged at him with full determination to land at least one punch on his stupidly chiseled, handsome face.
It had been your second mistake, giving him too much time to brace himself. Already regretting your emotionally impulsive start, resulting in the punch you swung being easily deflected by Miguel.
His hand wrapped entirely around your wrist, bending your arm almost out of your socket and kicking the back of your knee to the mat with his heel. You feel down to a kneel with a hissing pain in your arm threatening to get worse at any wrong twist.
"Lose that fucking attitude, or you’ll get sloppy." As if your body could radiate any more anger, you knew he was just trying to push your buttons, trying to throw you off your game with smack talk that was not working on you or anything.
"Again," he prompted, letting your arm go and stepping back, egging on another attack from you.
"Give me a damn minute." No matter how much you wanted to snap back at him with something snarky, you knew it would only prove his point entirely—not only that but also the fact that he was mentally hitting you in all the places that he knew counted the most to throw you off your game.
Biting back the insult you already had threatened to slip from your tongue instead of making a point by rolling your eyes as you stumbled back to your feet. Rolling your sore shoulder back as your eyes scan over his stance, trying to find the best opening for a better attack, you steady your breath and cloud your mind in thought. "You aren't going to get anywhere but dead standing around like that, you know."
So much for wanting to consider your options. Miguel took the first swing at you and was on the verge of kicking you on your ass if it weren't for your shoddy dodge.
"Didn't you just say I had to be less fucking predictable?" You snarled, lifting your foot with most of your weight pointed in the direction of his jaw. Surprisingly, the kick landed just not in the place you wanted it to; instead, Miguel’s arm blocked the blow, much to your annoyance.
"I also said—" All he was doing was using dodging moves on you, swiping your other foot from under you as he held the other one that you kicked up in his arm, resulting in you landing once again flat on your ass. "to lose that fucking attitude."
You had not gone down without a fight, twisting and kicking, trying to wrestle your limbs free by any means. Miguel had almost embarrassingly quickly ceased your squirming, his palm cuffing your arms and pressing hard against your chest as his other hand pressed tightly into your thighs, folding your legs in place under his hips.
The position was interesting, to say the least, but you still had some fight in you, wiggling against his grip with any strength you had left to break free. It was a useless battle, but the man had his grip around you tight as well as an overpowering size difference that blanketed your entire figure like one big rock.
And that's how you caught yourself in another web of misfortune. Your nerves are surging at the feeling of something—him brushing against your calf. Maybe it was all the adrenaline pumping through your veins or the fact that you were practically being manhandled so easily that did another thing to your body, or maybe it was just pure horny instability that your brain couldn't even process the lewd whine that tugged from your throat after the fact that it had happened.
Watching in pure horror as Miguel loomed on top of you, his mouth slightly agape as his chest heaved and his brows pulled together, the embarrassment from his confused, almost offended looking expression hit you fast. Here your body was betraying you once more, this time going absolutely haywire and melting like a stupid pile of putty at the fact that you were being body pressed against some mat with some guy's hard junk pressed into your leg.
You couldn't bear to even look him in the eye anymore, your head tilting to the side, pressing your cheek into the mat, and squeezing your eyes closed, not suddenly envying the spidermen with teleportation powers. "Fucking Christ, can you get off now?"
A beat of silence hovered between the small distance between you two, neither moving nor talking. It was starting to become unbearable how tightly Miguel had folded your legs against him, in the sense that you could already feel his body heat radiating. The close proximity did not help with how unbearably your heart was beating against your chest. "How do you manage after all of that to still have that shameless fucking attitude?"
You stilled at how his voice had managed to cut through your own thick cloud of betraying thoughts as well as the ringing in your eardrums. "Shameless? As if you don't have your dick pressed against me right now."
"By the sounds of it, you don't seem that bothered at all." Miguel taunted, You thought you were bound to die of embarrassment.
Yeah, this is how you went out—by dying from the sheer effect of your own extremely horny though—not some overpowered supervillain with a vendetta against you but Miguel O'Hara and his dick print.
You could already hear the new taunts that he would use against you, "Not even in your fucking dreams." being the only comeback that you could muster, your limbs tingling with slight pins and needles, threatening to go stiff under his unbound grasp.
"Oh, like you wouldn't love to," he sneered, shifting the weight from his hips flat against your thighs. "Probably thinking about me taking off these tight fucking shorts and having my way with you?" Your body reacted first to the accusation, cursing under your breath as you felt your second heartbeat flutter in between your legs.
His lingering stare hadn't helped one bit, and you watched from the sidelines as his eyes raked over your body with interest.
"I bet this was your plan the entire fucking time, huh?" He asked, leaning in as the distance dwindled until you could feel the brush of his breath against your face. "Put on some sweet naive act in front of everyone, knowing that you're getting yourself off on me throwing you around, touching yourself like some bitch in heat."
You hadn't bothered covering the whine that parted from your lips at the feeling of his erection slowly rutting against your thigh, the cocky smirk on his lips wanting you to melt away against the mat.
Miguel practically growled at the pathetic sounds that parted from your lips, tugging your legs apart to rut his hips down against your core. You shivered at the intrusion of his bulge pressed against your eagerness, the foreign feeling of him grinding against you left your thoughts in a dizzy fog.
"What? Can’t fucking speak now," he said as if he were dangling your most prized possession in front of your face, his fingers creeping into dangerous territory, making it a point for his fingertips to drag down your lower torso only to halt right above the elastic waistband of your shorts. "Go on, use your words."
"...fuck you."
The small amount of distance made the space between you two fall tensely thick, and the words spoken from your lips were different from the feelings that made your heart thud against your ribs. You weren't stupid, you knew Miguel could sense it, he could sense just about everything about your body from how close he kneeled on top of you.
Maybe that was why he had closed the distance so quickly after, letting the tight grip around your wrists give way to his hand finding a new objective, wrapping his fingers around your neck, not bothering to be gentle as he guided your lips towards his. The kiss was as rough as you had dreamed it to be. Eager for each other's kiss, you couldn't even process the noise that vibrated sharply from your throat before Miguel could pull away first, leaving you panting for more of his touch.
"First time I've ever seen you so quiet," his deep taunts were starting to grow unbearable, shifting your hips at the brush of his fangs against the jugular of your neck with every word, "who knew all you needed was some dick?" The harsh kisses he left trailing down to your collarbone made you feel like a hot, needy mess of putty. If it weren't for the tight grasp he had on your body, you were convinced that you would feel like you'd melt into some type of puddle. The growing frustration had only started to build up more as Miguel let go of your thighs, his hand trailing between your legs ruthlessly as the bud of his fingers rubbed against your clothed pussy.
As for why you shifted your hips up and let him impatiently tug and yank at the bow knotted around the waist of your shorts, breaking away from the red splotching light bruises already forming against your brown skin and wiggling you out of your shorts, Miguel thought it was quite the image, his eyes were fixated on the drooling sight of you under him, so vulnerable with your thighs hugging to your chest, spread open, revealing yourself in your pants.
All sanity was thrown out the window the moment he tugged you closer by your knees, your lower half lifted in his arms just enough for him to sit face to face with your cunt. His eyes darkened, his pupils blown as his tongue lapped over his lips, leaving you feeling restless. It was a slow and almost painful battle of trying to reach down and shove his face closer or buck your hips as his fingers sheathed and explored themselves against the fabric of your underwear.
As if Miguel could read your mind, his fingers hooked the fabric under the bend of his finger, followed by a quick tearing sound. "I’ll get you new ones," the comfort emitting a whine from your throat as you couldn't even scowl at him for ruining your underwear because you were too busy admiring the work his fingers were doing. Without warning, Miguel leans in closer, the warmth of his mouth almost sending you into a frenzy as his fingers spread open your lips, his lips sucking at your clitoral area, prompting you to let out a very lewd moan.
"Too loud," Miguel mumbled against your pussy, too busy webbed up in your own pleasure to even notice how every embarrassedly sloppy wet noise had seemed to perfectly echo throughout the empty room. You couldn't even explain the number of emotions that were flowing through you, from shame from being tongue fucked and fingered against the floor about the one man you hated so much to bashfulness from holding eye contact with him as he lay between your legs and ate your pussy like he was starving for you.
"I can't help it," you whined, shivering at the string of spit that contacted Miguel as he lifted his head in an idea. It took a second to process Miguel picking you up and turning you on your stomach, his hands guiding your hips up and stripping your torn panties down your legs to stuff them in your mouth.
Without a word, Miguel grabbed your ass with another hand, guiding your lower back into an arch as the other made small indents from his nail bearing into your cheeks as he spread them apart.
Before you could even feel embarrassed at the new position, he shoved his face between them, your moan being muffled by your makeshift cloth gag that worked a bit too well in lowering your whines as Miguel’s mouth sought his tongue out for your pussy once more.
"You're close I can smell it," you almost missed Miguel's groan over your building ecstasy, "just let it go, baby, let me take care of you. That's what you want, right?" His voice is drastically different from his usual rough, rude tone, softened to something of a coo that has managed to unknot your pleasure with his tongue. Your body tensed against his mouth for a moment as he had the nerve to suck his fingers clean. No grace period was given before he could lift you once more with a grunt, laying you flat on your back.
Slotting himself back between his legs, Miguel chuckled at the dazed look on your face. "It's alright, baby, I can take it from here." taking the balled up drool covered panties from your mouth and instead replaced them with his lips. The sensual change of pace wasn't enough to stop the shiver that rid your nerves of the feeling of his bare cock rutting against your slit, using his thumb to spread your lips apart to sink his tip inside of you with a low hiss against your mouth.
A gasp left yours as his girthy length intruded deeper inside of you, the burying stretch of his dick having your nails roughly grasping at the nape neck of his hair tugging a handful as his pace hadn't bothered to even get familiar already. Miguel’s hips weren't letting out as he fucked you almost animalistic against the floor. You were convinced he was trying to fuck you into the mat, to be one with the floor, which would perfectly explain the rough pace that left you breathless with each piston of his hips.
The graphically lewd sounds of your weak groans were nothing compared to the pornographic sound of your skin meeting his, your brain empty with nothing but greed, wanting to take everything and more of what Miguel was giving you. His fingers reach to unwrap your fingers tangled in his hair to intertwine them in his. "That's it, mama, that's it," he whispers against the shell of your ear, earning a whimpering reply from you, almost close to spilling the tears clouding your waterline.
Your mind couldn't process anything other than how good Miguel’s dick felt being shoved inside of you, his cock dragging against your tight, flustering walls with each shaky breath brushed against your ear. Your cunt seemed to react to Miguel’s lashes tickling against your neck as his eyes screwed tightly shut, muttering a string of compliments in his mother tongue.
You weren't lucky enough to be more stable, surprised that your throat hasn't gone horse with how ruined your vocal cords sounded in the pace of his pistoning hips. Only going up an octave higher as one of Miguel’s hands reaches down to pay attention to your clit, he doesn't stop even when your limbs start to tremble from your climax.
With one last hard thrust, he finally stills, your name being the only thing you could make out through his mumbling as his unfamiliar warm sensation welcomed itself inside of you.
Groaning right in your ear, he cums inside of you with his entire dead weight pressed against you, caging you against the floor. "Alright," Miguel sighs, settling on top of you once more with his arms holding himself just a few inches away from your face. "Again."
🔖 @adonis-is-dead-lmaoo @thesebitcheslovesosadotcom @inumakiiz @iheartlinds @creamyarishi @marzipaanz
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#[ ⇢ ˗ˏˋ ★ — t.wrks. ]#miguel o'hara#miguel o'hara x reader#miguel o'hara smut#spiderman across the spiderverse#spiderman 2099#spiderman#spiderman smut#marvel#into the spider verse
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pretty boy earth 1610 miles 745 words
Three gentle taps to the glass pane of your bedroom window alerted you of your frequent nighttime visitor, ten minutes to midnight, like always. Nose abruptly lifting from the book it was tucked in, you quickly set it off to the side on your duvet and smiled at the sight of Miles—still fully suited up where he stood on your fire escape as he gave you an excited wave. Seeing Spider-Man randomly pop up where you live would probably scare the life out of anyone, but you weren’t just ‘anyone’.
With a small grunt and an upwards pull of your window, you were soon face to face with the netted nylon mask of your city’s secret superhero—who wasn’t much of secret to you and your small room.
Miles immediately pulled his mask off so your lips could meet faster: his main focus, aside from the fact that it was thirty degrees out and he was losing feeling in his toes.
“Hey,” he pulled away from you with a smile that nearly rivaled yours, ducking down and climbing through to escape the prickly chill of the November night.
“Hi pretty boy, I missed you.”
He already had his hands on the bottom, ready to shut it when it’d rolled off your tongue like the simplest thing as you pounced back onto your bed. The window came to a screeching halt, literally, when he looked over his shoulder, eyes widened and blinking as if he’d misheard you. Seemingly unaware of the years you just shaved off his lifespan with those two little words, you glanced down at your book that’d flopped closed due to the movement of your mattress. “Damn, I lost my page.” you muttered with a frown.
“H-What?” Miles blinked, eyes remaining on you until he finally remembered to shut the window, softly, and quietly. “What’d you say?”
“I lost my page?” you repeated.
“Before that.”
You tilted your head at him, brows creased to match the confused look you wore. “I…missed you?” you laughed uncertainly, thumb and pointer finger riffling through the pages of your well-loved copy of Hunger Games: Catching Fire. It was a desperate attempt, really, trying to find where you’d left off. You were never one to dog-ear your pages.
“No, no,” He was facing you fully now, the small two strand twists he had in his hair shaking with his head when it moved from side to side. “The other thing.”
You looked away and at your poster clad wall, eyes squinted as they slowly landed on him again. Your voice, quieter than it was before, had a confused lilt to it when you answered again.
“…Hello?”
“Jesus fuc—” Miles nearly smacked his forehead, hands clasping together and pointing towards you instead. “Baby. What did you say after ‘hello’?”
You thought on it for a moment, relaying through the brief interaction. “Oh!” You sat up, calves tucked beneath your thighs and face brightened with an oncoming grin. “Pretty boy?”
“Yeah,” he scratched his head, eyes bouncing on and off your face and canines showing when his top lip raised into something of a shy smile. “You think I’m pretty?”
“Duh.” You scoffed, as if the answer were beyond obvious. Miles shook his head at you, a puff of air sounding from his nose in the form of amusement.
“Don’t think I’ve heard that one before. Boys aren’t usually called pretty, but I’ll take it.”
Slowly lowering himself, Miles let out an unpleasant groan when his hip touched the ground, far too young to have his joints aching the way they did. Laying down on your sherpa rug, he sprawled out on his back and let his eyes close, like he always did during his night visits. He’d stay for an hour or so, talk with you, get patched up if needed (which was rare), or sometimes take a power nap so he could swing the rest of the way back. And after surveying the city he knew better than to even think about touching your bed. In his outside clothes was bad enough, now his suit? Absolutely not. He was more than satisfied with the floor.
“Yeah, well I think you are.” Laying flat on your stomach, you pressed your cheek to your folded arms and marveled down at your exhausted boyfriend from the height of your bed. “Everything about you is pretty. Like your eyelashes? They’re gorgeous, and for what? It’s lowkey unfair.”
“Aight you’re draggin’ it.” he laughed.
“I’m serious!”
a/n: pretty boys >>>
#junie’s works ᥫ᭡#three fics in one week?? 😦#miles morales x reader#across the spiderverse fanfiction#miles morales x fem!reader#miles morales fanfiction#earth 1610 miles x you#miles morales fluff#1610!miles x reader#earth 1610 miles x reader#1610 miles morales x reader#miles 1610 x reader
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It is so buckwild to me what Insomniac did with Harry Osborn and Venom.
In the vast majority of Spider-Media, Venom's defining character trait is his hatred of Spider-Man, and at first, it looks like Insomniac might be going that route. They give Harry ample reason to be absolutely furious with Peter, to resent him, resent the life he gets to live, a beloved superhero with a girlfriend, healthy and strong, a genius of such caliber that even his own father seems to prefer him to Harry. His supposed "best friend" who seems to be withholding lifesaving medical treatment just because he likes how it feels on him, because it's not enough that he be better and stronger and smarter than poor, sickly, doomed Harry, no, he has to be stronger than himself, stronger than the old Spider-Man could ever hope to be. It's not enough for Peter to have his own powers, he has to have Harry's as well, and if that comes at the cost of Harry's life? Well, that's just the cost of doing business. As long as it makes him a better Spider-Man, that's all that matters, right?
It seems like they are going down the route where Harry gives into his anger and resentment, the symbiote whispering in his ear and exacerbating his worst aspects until there is nothing left of the sweet boy that Emily Osborn raised to be so deeply good, only a supervillain hellbent on revenge and world domination.
But that's not what happens.
Instead, almost everything Harry does after the Venom symbiote takes over is framed as helping. As a genuine, if twisted belief that the world he is making is a better world. Instead of seeking revenge against Peter, Harry/Venom wants to convert him. Wants him to stand beside him as they "heal the world" together. And the odd thing is, this only becomes more true with time. At first, Harry/Venom seems almost indifferent to Peter, and angers quickly when Peter calls them a "thing." But we see that the idea of Peter doing this with him, the need for his best friend to be beside him at the end of all things, eventually becomes so important to him that it is ultimately a weakness the heroes exploit.
Think about that; Harry Osborn's love for Peter Parker is so powerful that it almost seems to be corrupting the Venom symbiote, infecting it and twisting its mind as surely as it twisted Peter's, but in the opposite direction. It's so wild to watch the scenes at the end of the game and hear Tony Todd, in his deep-ass Venom voice, read lines like "Thanks for coming, Pete 😊" with the same casual inflection and tone as Harry would. Saying "This is where we became best friends. Now it's where we become brothers!" and sounding so pleased and excited that you'd think he was talking about Pete's mom marrying his dad and not infecting him with alien mind goop.
It's so incredible to me that the defining trait of Insomniac's Venom isn't hate; it's love. A twisted, warped love that doesn't fully understand itself, but a sincere and true love nonetheless, one that holds to the very end.
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Heroify: Kingpin
Compared to some of the other characters people have sent in today this is like shooting monkeys in a barrel!
Part of the reason Fisk is such a good Daredevil villain is that he's already got a lot of the basic elements you need to make a street-level hero work- the will, the drive, the protectiveness, the territoriality, and the quote-unquote "badass normal" peak human fighting ability that, let's not fuck around here, is absolutely a superpower even if the chickenshit writers won't directly admit to that. It's just that he uses those abilities to be a crime boss rather than to fight crime bosses. To put himself in charge of his childhood bullies instead of fighting his bullies. A classic case of "If only he'd used his immense capacity for interpersonal violence for good." What would make him stand out from all the other heroes in his niche is his propensity for Empire-building, his complete inability not to build up some kind of organization from scratch, and what that impulse might look like in a superheroic context.
I'm imagining that his initial schtick is that of a Bully Hunter. After getting ripped and wiping the floor with his childhood bullies-or maybe this is one of the versions who offed his own father for beating on his Mother- he embraces the specific high of the "pick on someone your own size" routine, and he becomes The Big Man, the guy you go to when you need somebody who's been getting away with something for a while cut down to size. Upstairs neighbor is beating his wife and kid senseless, and nobody does anything because his brother's a cop? Call The Big Man. Real Estate Baron's using his connections to try to muscle out the residents of a tenement? The Big Man's gonna pay them a visit. Boss at the diner's withholding your paychecks and getting away with it because you're undocumented? You get where this is going. He usually doesn't kill people- not out of any particular code, but out of a combination of pragmatism and sadism. He's smart enough to engineer situations in a way that he can claim self-defense or frame someone's tumble down the stairs as an unfortunate accident or rely on the unexamined illegality of whatever his target was doing to prevent them from getting the police involved. He's got a bit of a financial cushion, as well, because all of this is actually his side gig- he's still a very successful, if not as cutthroat, local businessman, because hospitalizing domestic abusers doesn't pay the bills. As a power move, he does most of this under his own name- he's got a "costume" in the form of the distinct suit, and a nominal codename, but part of the bit, part of the point he's making, is that he's slightly better at weaseling out of the consequences of his actions than the people he targets. Always a bigger fish, after all. Power is relative. His thematic niche is distinct from Daredevil's abstract sense of idealized justice. It's not Frank Castles mechanical eye-for-an-eye approach. It's about the satisfaction of leaving a certain category of wrongdoer alive, so that they can remain very, very afraid.
Of course, since his entire bit is that he keeps putting untouchable assholes in fullbody casts, the attempts on his life start stacking up- First it's Ed the domestic abuser and his buddies from the bar coming around for a rematch, and then goon squads, then hand ninjas, then low-rent supervillains- and because The Big Man toes the line of being an actual superhuman, he's usually winning these things, and coming out ahead in the PR game for beating down a bunch of costumed thugs attacking his Perfectly Legitimate Art Gallery- but it's a pain that his office keeps getting firebombed. And this is where you start to reap the benefits of having done under-the-table favors for hundreds of people all over New York- The Big Man has a network now. The Big Man knows guys who knows guys, some of whom owe him favors, some of whom are just really afraid of him coming back for round two. The Big Man can pull together a hundred guys with crowbars and hammers on a day's notice, if he happens to need something like that. If he doesn't know someone with a backdoor into Tombstone's fortified penthouse or Hammerhead's mansion, if he doesn't know someone with incriminating information on Silvermane or Norman Osborn, well. He knows their cousin. And once he thinks to begin leveraging this? If the people escalating things have specific addresses, by the end of the week they very likely don't.
It's not as if he eliminates all criminal activity. He's not even interested in doing so. Like half the painting's he's selling are really convincing forgeries. But things hit a point where there's simply a hard practical limit on how imperial a supercriminal's ambitions in New York can become, how domineering, how visible to the man on the street, before The Big Man decides it's time to make a point and starts calling people, who in turn start calling people.
#thoughts#asks#meta#wilson fisk#man this one got away from me#crucial to this dynamic is that he's still on pretty bad terms with most of the other street level heroes
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there was a period of time during which the members of the Batfamily would only communicate with each other during superhero shit.
somewhere around the time where angst was just high on all ends.
Jason was going through another bout of feeling like a man out of time.
Tim's abandonment issues were kicking up again.
Dick felt even more pressure to always keep the smile on his face.
Damian was struggling with being allowed to just be a kid for the first time.
Steph kept biting off more than she can chew in an effort to prove her worth.
Cass kept having to drag herself out of a constant state of auto-pilot and being on high-alert 24/7.
Duke still felt hesitant about exploring his powers freely, especially in front of his family members.
Bruce was struggling to get through to any of his kids while also failing to acknowledge that he himself had his own shit to work through.
and poor Alfred was just trying to hold it all together.
and, as usually happens when you're going through shit, each member of the family felt so overwhelmed and suffocated by their own struggles that they failed to notice that the person down the hall, across the dinner table, or sitting beside them on the couch was also suffering in silence.
then, there was a massive breakout from Arkham, or some extraterrestrial bullshit, or some new hotshot who thinks they're going to be the one to finally destroy Gotham.
either way, for the first time, the ENTIRE family went out.
and the thing about fighting villains is that even after years of training, it still requires almost all of your focus and concentration.
so yes, Dick and Jason were too focused on kicking ass to notice that they'd fallen back into their old banter patterns from years ago.
and yes, Damian and Cass—the two kids trained from birth to be a weapon—made a game out of trying to one-up each other, combining their discipline and competitiveness into entertainment.
and you know Steph and Tim were absolute menaces, feeding off of each other's energy and bouncing jokes and ideas off of each other that got every person on coms to crack at one point or another.
as for Duke, well ... let's just say he was surprised by how much Bruce asked him to take the lead with his abilities.
for all of Gotham's faults, it had a few redeemable qualities, Alfred admitted to himself the next morning, while he served breakfast to a tired but satisfied family.
#dick grayson#nightwing#jason todd#red hood#tim drake#red robin#damian wayne#robin#cassandra cain#orphan#stephanie brown#spoiler#duke thomas#the signal#bruce wayne#batman#alfred pennyworth#dc#dcu#dc universe#dc comics#batfam#batfamily
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WIP guessing game: help
"I know about Billy, Marvel," Batman says, and Billy . . . blinks.
"You know?!" he sputters. Okay, so apparently his secret identity was just . . . literally never a secret at all, then. Which, well–Batman, so that just figures, really. So actually this is kind of a relief and might even mean that he's fine with–
"Yes," Batman confirms with a nod. "So I understand your current reservations about parenthood."
. . . wait what.
"Huh?" Billy says, blinking stupidly at him.
"I don't know how much of you is still C.C. Batson or what you do or don't remember about being him," Batman says. "But the resemblance is undeniable, if nothing else. Certainly your and your wife's deaths were . . . well, suspicious. And you're hardly the first archeologists to dig up a god or six."
Oh, okay. Well.
This is apparently what Billy gets for his personal mental image of a "hero" being his dad, then, isn't it.
Crap.
"To be honest I've been looking for Billy for a while now, I just didn't want to bring it up before I found him," Batman admits, looking dissatisfied with himself. "My most recent reliable intel puts him in Fawcett City, but I assume you're aware of that, given your evident attachment to the place."
"You're looking for Billy?" Billy asks incredulously. "Why?"
"Because he's your son," Batman says. "And because he's a homeless child who's been abused and neglected and needs help. I honestly don't know where you go when you're not being Captain Marvel–frankly I'm not sure if you even exist when you're not being Captain Marvel, given what little I actually know about your powers and your death and your role as the Champion of Magic and just how damn impossible you are to find when you're off-duty–but I'm assuming that wherever it happens to be is not necessarily conducive to providing a stable home environment and being legally dead certainly can't be helping with that, so my original intention was to find the boy and help you arrange some manner of care for and visitation with him. And given the revelation of your relation to Robin, well . . . I'd like to take Billy in myself, if you'd both be comfortable with that. It seems . . . appropriate, under the circumstances."
"You want to foster Billy because I'm Robin's soulmate?" Billy says, absolutely positive that he's misunderstood literally every single word that just came out of Batman's mouth. There is no possible way that he did not.
"It's not exactly out of my wheelhouse," Batman replies wryly. "Although I'll be keeping this one out of the tights, ideally. Though I make no long-term promises about that because quite frankly at this point I'm spoiled for soulmates who insist on wearing capes and I wouldn't really be surprised to turn up another one, especially given that Robin is yours and your own involvement in the superhero community."
Billy stares at him.
"Wait, are all the Gotham vigilantes your soulkids?" he blurts unthinkingly.
"Not all," Batman says. "But, well . . . probably more of them than you'd expect."
"Oh my god," Billy says in disbelief. "And you're just telling me that?! You don't tell people things, you're Batman!"
"I haven't always been the father I should have been," Batman says, and then he pulls down his cowl. Billy chokes, and then chokes again because apparently Batman is Bruce freaking Wayne and his brain just . . . just needs a moment to process that fact, like there is literally any way whatsoever that he could ever actually process that fact. He would've been less surprised to see a Kardashian under that mask, he's pretty sure. At least they've got athletes in the family, technically! "So I'm not going to make things difficult for you with Robin. Clearly he needs more than I'm capable of providing, and I'm perfectly willing to be transparent and to co-parent with you as much as possible. I want Robin to be safe and content and grow up well, and frankly put, Batson, you've proven yourself to be a good man time and again and I trust you to do what's best by our son."
Okay, well, now Billy just feels like dirt.
"You do know what happened to Billy, don't you?" he asks just a little bit desperately, because there is literally no way that this conversation is a real and actual thing that's really and actually happening. "Like, just–everything that happened there? There's a reason he's not in school or the system or with a relative or anything like that."
"What happened to Billy wasn't your fault," Batman tells him, meeting his eyes all quiet and intent and sincere. "And I will do everything in my power to help you make it right."
"Oh no, you're actually like . . . just genuinely a really good person, aren't you," Billy says despairingly, staring at him all over again and really, really wishing he could swear right now.
Maybe he'll just go throw himself into the sun. Maybe that's what he'll just go and do.
The corner of Batman's mouth quirks up wryly. His eyes even crinkle a little, which Billy can see on account of his total lack of cowl right now, oh god.
Billy despairs.
"I mean it," Batman says gently. "It wasn't your fault, and it doesn't mean you can't be a good father now."
"I need to talk to Robin," Billy says, because he definitely, definitely needs to talk to Robin. Batman inclines his head in an accepting nod, because Batman is probably under the impression that Billy wants to go give Robin a good ol' traditional "I know I'm not your biodad but I'm here for you, champ!" kind of speech, and Billy just . . . really cannot explain the real situation to him right now. Or ever.
Can he just lie to Batman for the rest of their lives, maybe? He can just pretend to be his own dad for the Justice League and keep dodging whatever Bat-surveillance happens to be in Fawcett and parent his older-than-he-is soulmate, right? That's a thing that he can do?
That's probably not a thing that he can do.
Although he might be willing to try, at this point.
#billy batson#bruce wayne#shazam#batman#chromatographic#rinfic#wip: billy and damian and the whole soulmate thing
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Absolute Power: Unlock Hidden Potential and Master Your Attributes
🚀 Ever wondered if you're unlocking your character's full potential in the Absolute Power RPG? Dive into the secrets of Attribute Enhancements and Limiters that could revolutionize your gameplay! Don't let untapped abilities hold you back—discover how to make your heroes truly extraordinary. Level up your tabletop experience now! 🎲 #AbsolutePowerRPG #TabletopRPG #GamingCommunity
Absolute Power: Book 1: System Absolute Power: Book 2: Essentials Tri-Stat Core Unlock the full potential of your heroes and villains with our deep dive into Attribute Enhancements and Limiters in Absolute Power! Join us as we explore how to customize your characters like never before. In this exciting episode, we delve into the mechanics of Dyskami Publishing Company’s Absolute Power RPG,…
#absolute power game#absolute power rpg#absolute power superhero game#character templates rpg#dyskami publishing#game master tips#legion of myth#roleplaying game#rpg character creation#rpg die gest#RPG Mechanics#superhero adventures#superhero campaign#superhero gaming#superhero powers rpg#superhero roleplaying#superhero roleplaying game#superhero rpg#superhero stories#superhero tabletop rpg#superhero team rpg#superhero universe#tabletop gaming#tabletop RPG#TTRPG
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Supercharged | JJK
Chapter 4: We Aren't Heroes, Honey
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🗲summary: It starts with a blow to the chest that changes your life. When your city’s most celebrated hero pays a visit, it turns out the noble Bolt has no trouble tossing lives aside. Lives that won't be missed. Lives like yours. Seven mysterious and powerful men give you another chance – one that starts to feel more like a curse the moment you meet golden boy Jungkook. The boy who wants you as far from his brothers as he can get you. Is it you he hates, or the blue lightning that now runs through your veins? And could it be his golden light that illuminates your heart when darkness threatens?~ 🗲this chapter: A chaotic arrival turns everything on its head, and the boys are ready to let you in on their real game.
🗲pairing: jungkook x female reader, side established vmin 🗲word count: 5.9k 🗲genre: angst, action, eventual fluff, enemies to lovers, slow burn, superheroes/villains au, found family 🗲rating: pg15 🗲warnings: violence with superpowers, injury, blood, weapons
a/n: if you hadn't already noticed, vmin is a side pairing in this fic! I probably won't add that in every chapter description tho, since they don't really have a plot revolving around them, but they are together as side characters because I love them mwahahaha🤩while we will learn more about them, they have an entire backstory, one of the many things I know about this universe that never made it "on screen"👀 I also just want to say how thrilled I am that people are enjoying this fic! To those of you who have left me comments, reblogged with sweet and supportive tags or sent in asks, it means the absolute world and I love you all💜💜
(previously)
“I did exactly what I’m training to do.”
“Like scare him half to death?”
Dropping your head, you gazed at your hands, wishing anew that you didn’t have this complicated curse that drove people away. That made you into a danger.
But you didn’t have the words or the will to explain this to the obstinate Jungkook.
“See you at training,” you spoke flatly, and stepped away.
See him at training you did. Not that he was any more helpful than normal.
As always, you gritted your teeth and tried to run through the same actions, still getting used to them. Over the course of the next few sessions, you certainly noticed an improvement, your powers coming more and more naturally to you than you had thought possible at first.
Still, Jungkook clearly disagreed.
You stood in the centre of the training space, arm raised. Just as you had been doing for the past half hour, you shot a bolt, expecting to hear the rattle of the target when you met it. And beyond that, the same heavy silence that always filled your practises.
Instead, your training ‘partner’ stepped nonchalantly in front of the shot.
Eyes widening, you closed your fist, shutting off the flow of power as fast as possible. But as you gawped in outrage, Jungkook raised a hand, easily deflecting the jet of blue electricity that had escaped with a quick burst of his own gold lightning.
Lowering his hand as if he hadn’t just placed himself in front of something deadly, he stuffed it into his pocket and smirked.
“What are you-” you spluttered, “you- you should be careful!”
“If I’m really expected to babysit you, I would hope to see more improvement than that,” he replied easily, “I mean, great, you can shoot, but attacking isn’t what this is all about.”
You raised an eyebrow, watching as he slowly walked towards you.
“Imagine I was someone else,” he continued.
“I wish,” you muttered, adding in an exaggerated eye roll. Jungkook didn’t comment on that, but you saw his gaze harden.
“Someone without my powers,” he drawled, “I would be dead.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to walk across while I was training!”
“You’re not supposed to expect it,” he shot back.
“And when exactly do you forsee me shooting lightning bolts out in public?”
At last, he seemed surprised by your response. Really, he thought you were raring to go out and terrorise the streets? You scoffed, ready to return to your usual mutual silence, but he recovered himself.
“You should control them in here as well,” he spoke, though there was less malice behind it this time. “You’ve already scared V shitless once.”
Arms folded, he turned his back on you, abandoning the conversation.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” you muttered, not really caring whether he decided to pay attention or not, “I’m trying.”
But if his step faltered a little, you didn’t notice. He kept his back to you and walked away.
You had been doing a steady amount of work each day with your powers. It didn’t take long for the others to be proven right as you noticed it got easier both in and out of the training rooms as time stretched on. With your powers in use so frequently, they didn’t often try to break out when you least expected it anymore.
And though it hadn’t been long, you were getting a sense of the motions of this unconventional household.
On your way to training, you would pass the others at work, with or without their powers. It made sense that superheroes (it felt strange thinking of them as superheroes, but you supposed that was what you all were, in a way) needed to work out physically as well, to give them the upper hand in any fights.
Not that you could imagine them fighting... Most of the time. Sometimes you would see the power inherent in Jimin’s stance when he threw weights heavier than you could lift across the room with a flick of a finger. Or the deadly speed and precision as Hoseok darted around impossible obstacles.
But then they would huddle around the tv with you in the evening, cradling steaming bowls of food prepared by Jin or Yoongi, usually. The sight of V bundled in a fluffy blanket, laughing at Jimin more than the film, made it hard to believe he was some supernatural force of nature.
Namjoon, though. That, you could believe. He was the rarest sight in the house, even above the enigmatically quiet V.
However, if he caught you and Jungkook on your way out of practise, he would always beam like you were his children, ignoring the scowls that no doubt adorned your faces. Jin did the same, always clapping Jungkook on the shoulder in praise.
If only the others knew how Jungkook neglected the job they believed he was doing.
But as much as you wondered how different it would be if Namjoon had continued teaching you, you understood it couldn’t be that way. Not when he was constantly holed up in his office, or staring at a tablet and tugging his hands through his hair. His job seemed to be important, always moving with hurried purpose.
So then, with all the people and noise you were surrounded by now, it was a shock when things turned quiet.
Before this, you had lived on your own. Woken up each day just to head to work, Kuyang and the lab workers the only faces you saw before returning back to empty space.
So why was it this hard to get used to again?
Sometimes, the house emptied. Not totally, but since it was usually Jungkook that remained with you, it may as well have been. Each time you came from practice to find the house deserted, a scowl would etch itself into his face and he would retreat back to the gym, or somewhere. You never bothered to follow him.
When this happened, you kept your eyes on the news. If they were superheroes – which they must be, what other job could a bunch of powered people have? – then surely they would show up?
But without fail, the news stayed quiet. Either that, or heroes like Bolt or Monsoon (another worshipped figure in your city) instead had stamped out some threat and were being celebrated as always.
You weren’t sure what it was, but something made you shut off the tv when the rest returned, not wanting them to see what you had been looking for.
Generally, though, they didn’t leave you alone for too long, which was nice. You were nearly always in the communal spaces, since you had nothing to do in your room, bare as it was.
So it was when you heard hissed voices that you realised maybe you should let them have more time without you.
“She’s not more important! I don’t get why I have to, of all of us-“
Still hidden in the corridor, you froze when you heard Jungkook’s hushed voice in the living room.
“We’re fine to be down one, it’s not particularly risky,” someone replied.
“Please, can’t one of you stay for once? I already have to spend half my time with her!”
Gulping, you retreated the way you had come. You shouldn’t be hearing this, you knew that. Above all, you couldn’t stand the flicker of hurt that bled through you at the venomous words, though you ought to be used to them by now.
Sitting in your room, you idly played around, forming a ball of blue static that hovered above your palm. You sighed as you tossed it from hand to hand. This should be impressive, but you knew you were still incredibly clumsy with your powers compared to the others: Jungkook made sure you knew it.
But you stayed there, enjoying being able to use your powers without purpose or judgment.
After a while, a tap on your door heralded Yoongi calling you for dinner. Any tension you had sensed earlier when they didn’t know you were listening had dissipated.
Of course, Jungkook was ignoring you, but it was better that way. He was battling Hobi with chopsticks instead, trying to score a piece of meat from his plate as his opponent shrieked in protest. Jimin was falling onto the table with laughter, Yoongi groaning as he took a seat and slid a bowl to you.
Quietly thanking him, you began to eat without trying to muscle into the conversation. It was clear how comfortable these boys were together, having been arguing not long before and now joking around with the air free of bad feelings.
Even though you had never predicted your life going in this direction, you found yourself grateful. Despite the obvious Jungkook issue, having these vibrant people around you was such a stark contrast to your lonely state before Bolt had tried to kill you.
You were only reminded of the frosty conversation you had accidentally eavesdropped when, a few days later, you got the afternoon free of Jungkook.
As usual, that morning the two of you occupied the same room, training by yourselves. Today, Jungkook never offered so much as a word, and almost sprinted away after the hour was up. You couldn’t bring yourself to complain, instead taking the time to rest and return lazily upstairs at your own pace.
When you arrived, the unfortunately familiar sight of an empty apartment waited for you.
Funny, though. You hadn’t seen Jungkook come back downstairs as he normally did when the others went out.
Shrugging it off, you headed for the shower. It had almost slipped your mind by the time you emerged, but confusion instantly resurfaced when you were faced with the back of Jin’s head.
Stepping around the sofa and into the main space, you caught his attention.
“Ah, Y/N,” he greeted, turning away from the tv show he had quietly in the background.
“Jin,” you smiled, “where’s Jungkook?”
A smirk bloomed on his face before you had the chance to realise how that might have sounded.
“I didn’t realise you would miss him,” he teased.
Rolling your eyes, you sunk onto the other sofa.
“I’m not sorry to see him gone,” you quickly backpedalled, “but I just… thought you had all gone out again.”
“Well, Kook was feeling left out,” Jin explained, “I know you two aren’t exactly the best of friends but he’s still been helping you out, so we thought it was fair he doesn’t have to do that all the time and miss out on our… stuff.”
You nodded along as you understood the situation. As if to distract from his strangely vague ending statement, Jin jumped straight in again with a chipper voice.
“But I heard you’re getting much better! Jungkook says he can trust you to work independently, so maybe you won’t have to endure each other’s company as much!”
Now that made you laugh. Loudly. Jungkook had better trust you to work independently – he forced you to do it half the time anyway with his reluctance to teach you.
Jin seemed pleased with your reaction, and you two carried on chatting. It took you a while to even notice his quick glances at the door, the slight jittering leg, the distracted way he watched the show with glazed eyes, not fully taking it in.
When he suggested dinner, he all but sprang from the sofa. With a light frown, you followed him. What was giving him so much nervous energy?
Outside was dark by now, but that didn’t stop Jin’s eyes straying to the black sky visible through the window.
For once, you actually acquiesced to him rejecting your offer to help in the kitchen. He seemed pleased to have his hands busy, even if his knife occasionally clattered too loudly on the counter or oil splatted out of the slightly too-hot pan.
But all that was forgotten when a commotion suddenly shocked the air. The main door must be fully soundproof: that was the only explanation for the way it was silent one second, and the next raised voices were almost at the top of the stairs.
Whipping around to face the sudden interruption, Jin brandished his spatula in panic for a moment. You jumped from your seat.
Then Namjoon swept into the room, long coat swishing as he marched across the room, face set. Looking first at him in panic, your eyes returned to the others following him in and your jaw dropped.
Between Jimin and Jungkook, they were supporting V, whose head drooped alarmingly, legs barely making purchase on the floor. You were frozen on the spot as they hauled him past you. You hadn’t even noticed Yoongi come in until items were being shoved roughly from the counter to the floor to make space to lay V down there.
Swallowing, you staggered back a step, watching with wide eyes at his collapsed form. Sweat beaded on his furrowed brow, feverish spasms weakly shaking his body.
“What happened?” Jin exclaimed, panic shaking his voice.
A storminess brewed in Namjoon’s eyes, which glowed a little red though you weren’t sure if he noticed he was doing that. Turning to Jin with a serious expression, all he said was:
“Our suspicions were true.”
His words meant nothing to you, but the way Jin’s face paled struck fear through you.
Closest to the table, Jimin’s eyes glistened with tears as he clutched V’s hand, murmuring to him. You couldn’t hear him, but you had the feeling it wasn’t for you to hear and turned your eyes away.
Not a moment later, a harsh shove had you stumbling to the side, Jungkook barging past. You couldn’t even spite him for it. The panic spiralling through you at the state of your friend was painful enough, but these boys were his family. You couldn’t imagine the depth of their worry right now.
“What do we do?” Jungkook demanded, stopping in front of Namjoon and Jin. His frame was taught, nearly shaking as he looked to his hyungs for answers.
They always seemed to know what to do, but the uncertainty on Jin’s face as he stepped closer to the unconscious V was concerning.
“W-what happened?” he asked.
Hope was wringing his hands beside him, but spoke up.
“It was like we thought, when we showed up. We knew we had to get out, but B- he caught us, right at the end. We were just going, but V freaked, and-and then he- then- I don’t know what it was hyung, but he shot something…”
Hobi’s voice was bordering on hysterical, and as he trailed away, he leant forwards to pull V’s jacket aside. Jimin whimpered, turning his face away to bury it further against V’s arm.
There, on V’s torso, a section of his shirt was mangled, a bloodied shape seemingly etched into his side. Though the bloodstained shirt made it difficult to see, you couldn’t mistake that. It was no gunshot wound – you had seen something like this before.
The injury was fairly large, shaped something like a star. A familiar shape instantly sprung into your imagination, metal that spit sparks as it flew across the room, latching onto the wall at the other end.
Except, this time it had certainly not been used in lab conditions.
“I- I don’t know,” Jin was stuttering, “I’ve never seen something like this before…”
The silence was totally stifling, Jin’s admission met with disbelief. Namjoon ran hands roughly through his hair, biting at his cheek.
“We have to DO SOMETHING!”
Jungkook’s yell made you flinch a little. He moved forcefully, returning to the table with a handful of tea towels and thrusting one at Hope.
“Let’s just- stop the bleeding, at least-”
“He has powers, the bleeding isn’t the issue, Jungkook-”
“Do you have any better ideas?!”
His eyes flickered a blazing gold as he spun to yell at Jin, something he would never normally do. But right now, that was the least of his worries. He trembled from head to toe with tension, and you could see the shine of tears he was unable to will away from his eyes.
“Right, yes,” Jin swallowed, taking the towel and pressing it to the wound, as Hobi was already doing.
At the no doubt painful contact, though, V jerked a little, purple flame shooting from his hands. It was brief, but you all jumped back from the sudden heat.
“Why’s he doing that?” Jimin’s voice thrummed with underlying fear, “he hasn’t had an outburst in…”
The others only looked between themselves, equally lost.
After a moment, V hadn’t moved again, and Jimin was the first to gravitate back to his side.
Frowning at the ground, you willed your memory to work faster. Jimin’s heartbreaking calls for V, hand pressed desperately to his cheek though he was met with no response, had you racing through your memories.
Kuyang had had you in charge of all his safety files back at the lab, but right now you didn’t have access to the computer with them all stored on. It was at the tip of your tongue, just out of reach. You frantically grasped for any hint of memory about this particular weapon.
“Iodine,” you muttered. Your eyes widened as it dawned on you.
No one heard.
“Iodine,” you repeated, louder this time, “do you have iodine?”
Heads turned towards you, as if they had forgotten you were there at all. Jimin’s tearful face emerged, tentatively hopeful as you spoke.
“That wound is radioactive, it’s what’s messing with his powers. We need to give him some before it gets too far into his bloodstream.”
You spoke with a calm urgency, grateful you could keep your voice from wavering. Trusting your firm tone, Jin hurriedly nodded, darting away down the corridor without a look back.
As you watched him go, you caught Namjoon’s gaze. You stood awkwardly, not knowing what to do with yourself, and his piercing stare startled you. A frown tightened his features and you had the odd sensation that he was calculating you.
Still, he said nothing. But it seemed someone else was less afraid to breach the silence.
“Who put you in charge?”
Only Jungkook had the sense to question you, glaring from where he had taken over pressing on V’s wound.
“This weapon, it uses radiation-“ you began.
“How do you know?” He cut you off. “Isn’t iodine toxic? You’re trying to kill him-”
“It’s the only way-”
“I won’t let you touch him!”
Tentatively stepping forward, you fixed Jungkook with a level gaze. His eyes narrowed, distrustful.
“It’s only toxic if we give too much,” you explained, forcing your voice to stay calm, “he has powers, he should be able to take it. Like Jin said, with powers, you can withstand more bleeding than others. It’s the radiation poisoning that’s hurting him, not the wound.”
Though his teeth were gritted and his glare lost none of its ferocity, he kept quiet.
“We need to stop it,” you spoke with finality.
Just then, Jin dashed back into the room, bottles and packets nearly spilling from his arms before he deposited them on the counter. Rushing forwards to meet him, you spotted some other bottles too.
“Pentetic acid? Where did you get-“
“It helps, doesn’t it?” Jin supplied, and you left it at that. It was another agent Kuyang had had on the safety files as a radiation blocker, but you had never expected to see it outside a lab.
You didn’t complain, though. V needed all the help he could get.
Jin’s fingers fumbled with a small needle as he pulled it out and filled it, looking to you for confirmation.
Nodding, you hastily stepped out of his way, planting yourself beside Jungkook. He watched warily, though you were sure it helped that it was Jin applying the remedy and not you.
A stony silence fell once Jin pulled away. Of course, it wouldn’t work instantly, but you hoped with all your might that some change would be visible. These chemicals were dangerous, the cure to this weapon difficult to apply for good reason. It was a weapon after all.
The bin opened and closed, the room so quiet you could hear the used needle falling inside it.
Hope sunk weakly into a chair, eyes still fixed on his injured brother. Jimin remained close to V, gripping his hand despite the threat of the fire that could burst from them at any moment.
Your eyes slid to Jungkook at your side. Of course he didn’t look away from V.
It felt as if your heart was squeezing its way up your throat, the longer V remained motionless. He had been seriously hurt, and though you were confident in your cure, having learned it from the weapon’s creator, the nagging worry that you might have made it worse refused to go away.
V could be hurt. He could – you didn’t even dare to think it.
The others would never forgive you. Jungkook would never forgive you. You would never be able to forgive yourself if you caused something like this.
And beyond all that, your mind was running frantic laps trying to figure out how Kuyang’s prototypes had ended up being fired at your new friends. Kuyang may have been unhinged, and more than a little shady, but to commit such violence?
But there must have been a reason for him making the things he did in that lab…
The memory of his face the last time you saw him assaulted you then; the way his normally pleasant demeanour left no trace on his fearsome expression when he had found Bolt inside his lab.
Guilt sat heavily inside you as you gazed down at V.
“Taetae?”
Jimin’s voice was quiet, nervous, but still sweet. Despite the low volume, as the only sound in the room it caught everyone’s attention.
A laugh bubbled out of Jimin as the younger boy stirred with a low groan.
“Hey, can you hear me?” Jimin cooed, “you’re okay, we’re home, I’m here.”
Gently, him and Jin helped the boy to sit, and though he seemed tired, the flush had faded from his cheeks. He was no longer sweating and his breathing was even, but his hair was left sticking in places to his forehead.
Jimin took his hands.
“Can you feel your powers, baby? Are-are they there?”
Slowly, V nodded. Turning a hand over, he summoned a single flame, livid purple, to dance on his palm.
“Okay, okay,” Jin closed his fist, “don’t tire yourself out.”
But you could tell he was as relieved as the others that V could still control his powers. Even if you had only just learned what they were, you now understood Jungkook’s outburst when you had come across V at night before. If not controlled, fire was certainly a lethal force to have at your fingertips.
They left, disappearing to get V settled and cleaned up. Even though having powers gave you higher tolerance to injuries, it was still unwise to leave them untreated.
Casting your eyes across the rest of the room, you saw Jungkook duck away from your gaze.
You let him.
The remnants of adrenaline in your body were fizzling out and you understood the temptation to collapse into a seat.
However, as Yoongi moved across to the stove, you joined him without a word needing to be exchanged. The cold beginnings of Jin’s meal from earlier were sitting in pans and chopping boards, and you simply picked up where he left off.
The two of you cooked with minimal movement and noise, not disrupting the stillness of the kitchen as everyone soaked in what had just happened. At some point Namjoon had disappeared.
Though only four of you remained, you ate nonetheless and boxed the rest up. No one said much, and you didn’t try to change that. In fact, you hardly looked up from your plate, preferring to leave the others to their thoughts. They didn’t need you intruding right now.
Of course, that did nothing to stop the onslaught of questions filling your mind.
You still didn’t really know what the boys got up to on their mysterious excursions, and V coming home so badly injured – by one of your old boss’ experiments, no less – only made you more lost. And intrigued.
Still, you held your tongue.
It was only when you collected everyone’s plates that you caught Jungkook’s eyes boring into the side of your head. Looking up at last, you found him staring at you with a confused frown etched across his brow. He held your gaze though, the ever present intensity of his own making you shrink away towards the basin to distract yourself with washing up.
Just as you thought you would have to endure a silent room without the distraction of food to alleviate the tension, Namjoon returned.
At first, only seeing a shadowy figure in the hall, you thought perhaps V had come back, or at least Jin or Jimin to give an update. Perhaps that was entirely too optimistic. Nonetheless, even the stressed-looking Namjoon was a welcome distraction.
You had begun to scoop some more food into a bowl for him when he spoke. He hadn’t come any further into the room, still hovering in the shadows of the hallway.
“I’m sure you have questions.”
Pausing in your movements, you lifted your head. The others all turned their heads to you as well, leaving you like an animal stuck in headlights.
“Uh-” you stuttered once you eventually caught up with yourself, “I mean, I guess…”
Glancing around you, you found Yoongi and Hope looked a little nervous, some doubt in their faces. Jungkook, on the other hand, was smirking.
Not knowing what to make of that, you decided not to keep Namjoon waiting. He seemed fairly expectant, his not entering the room making it clear that you should follow, so you picked up some chopsticks and brought the food along with you.
Namjoon may have seemed a little surprised when you handed him his dinner, but he took it anyway. Once you were in his office, he started eating without complaint.
“Am I right to presume,” he began between mouthfuls, though he was preparing the next already, “that you knew about the weapon used on V because of your work for Kuyang?”
You quickly confirmed, but you could no longer hold back further questions.
“Yes, but how did it end up- I mean, why was it used? Did Kuyang-?”
Shaking his head, Namjoon cut you off with a wave of his chopsticks. He swallowed and continued perfectly calmly.
“It wasn’t Kuyang that used it.”
Already, your shoulders slumped in relief. But still-
“Then how…?”
Sighing, Namjoon set his cutlery down and sat back.
“Kuyang is one of our… associates,” he began to explain. “After the attack, he escaped, as you know, and went into hiding. Only, we found his lab totally empty soon after.”
At this he sighed, raking a hand through his hair as he always seemed to do without noticing. You could empathise with his stress; the news had you shuffling closer to the edge of your seat. The stuff Kuyang worked with was dangerous, it shouldn’t just… go missing.
“We weren’t sure what to think at first, and we investigated for a while. Other, similar cases have cropped up too, others among our allies being raided. It became too difficult to deny what we feared… Bolt was the only connection.”
Without noticing, your mouth was gaping open, eyes widening. You blinked as Namjoon’s words sunk in. But surely you were misunderstanding? It couldn’t be…
Slowly, you were able to form words.
“Bolt fired at V? At all of you?”
Namjoon nodded.
Shutting your mouth, you swallowed. Your mind may have been whirling at a hundred miles an hour, but nothing made it as far as to form a sentence. Fragments flitted past, telling a story you were afraid to believe.
Bolt was the city’s superhero… a hero… everyone knew that.
He protected the city from harm.
Yet he had shot you… and now V…
The silence stretched out, Namjoon pausing in his meal as he watched you. When you eventually spoke, your voice was small.
“You were fighting… against Bolt?”
A wry chuckle left his lips. Cocking his head, he clasped his hands.
“Villains, one might say. Many do.”
You simply blinked at him. Meanwhile, Namjoon stared evenly at you, gauging your reaction.
“What else has Bolt done?” you ventured.
Namjoon’s eyebrows raised.
“What do you mean?”
Stammering slightly, you tried to explain.
“Well, I already know Bolt isn’t exactly as… innocent, as most people think. He- I mean, at Kuyang’s- when Bolt was there, he had no reason to shoot me? But I hadn’t really thought about… why he was at Kuyang’s lab. What’s going on?”
As you spoke, a faint smile quirked Namjoon’s mouth. As you trailed off, he nodded. It seemed he was finally willing to indulge you.
“It’s true that Kuyang had set his latest experiment on Bolt already. To the media, it would simply seem that Bolt was retaliating, or eradicating the threat they perceive people like Kuyang to be. But today confirmed what we feared. Bolt is collecting.”
“He’s not destroying those weapons?”
Before Namjoon’s confirming shake of the head, you already knew the answer.
Though many of your questions had now been answered, it felt like you had opened up a whole new realm of possibilities that you couldn’t wrap your head around. But Namjoon didn’t allow you time to spiral into further confusion.
“I had hoped this would have to come later,” he spoke carefully, chewing on his cheek as he sat back once more. “we’ve taken in a few people before, helped them control their powers and then proceed to leave this life behind…
“You clearly know that this world isn’t as black and white as the city media wants us to think. But you should also know we aren’t many people’s idea of heroes. We fight against this society. We use violence, we support developers like Kuyang, who are…”
A wave of his hand was all that was needed. You both knew the kind of person it took to create the things Kuyang spent his time working on.
“People don’t agree with us,” he continued seriously, “which is why I’m offering you the chance to leave. As I said, we normally wait until someone has full control of their powers. Out there, the world isn’t exactly… kind to people like us. Bolt, Monsoon, heroes from tv – they’re the exceptions. People don’t like those who are different. They see our powers as a threat, and they do twisted things to gain power over people they fear. If you choose to go, we want you to at least be safe.”
Breathing deeply, you sat reeling.
Everything that had been presented to you should have flipped this whole thing on its head. Your new friends were by no means superheroes, as you previously thought. There was a reason you never saw their names in glowing lights on tv like Bolt.
But really… did it change anything?
Breaking through the silence, the click of the door handle. Since the new arrival hadn’t even knocked, you were certain who it was before they even entered your line of sight.
“Hey,” Jin spoke. Then he paused, looking between the two of you in the sombre silence. Cautiously raising a brow, he turned towards Namjoon. “You told her?”
Namjoon nodded.
“How’s V?” Namjoon then asked nearly straight away. That was a relief; you were wondering the same thing yourself.
Wiping his brow, Jin perched himself against the desk. Though his sigh was tired, he nodded.
“He’ll be fine. He’s already annoying poor Jiminie again, so that should tell you enough.” After a brief hesitation, he continued, eyes shifting to you. “That was a close one though… if Y/N hadn’t been there…”
With the room’s attention on you once again, you gulped. But somehow, what you said next didn’t take you much thought.
“I want to stay.”
Namjoon kept his infuriating poker face on as he appraised you, but Jin cracked a smile.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he grinned, clapping you on the shoulder. Turning to Namjoon, he cried a smug “I told you!”
Encouraged, you nodded with more certainty.
“I agree with you guys – Bolt goes unquestioned, he’s practically worshipped. But whatever he’s doing, I want to help stop him. And he did try to kill me after all – you guys are the ones who've helped me. I trust you.”
“Good,” Namjoon spoke, digging back in to his food, “I wanted to offer you a position in the team, if you said yes. With Bolt on the move like this, we need all the power we can get-”
As a smile was just blooming on your face, it was halted by his next words.
“But. You aren’t ready just yet. I want you out there with us, so I’m willing to send you out sooner than I have with others before. These are unusual times, and you have to understand this will be more dangerous than I normally send rookies to. There’s work to do, with your powers, but also…
“As much as I appreciate your trust in us, I know it doesn’t extend fully. I need my team to be able to trust each other. Every single one.”
Fixing you with a hard stare to accompany his last words, he was effective in making you shrink in your seat. You knew exactly who he was talking about.
And that person was waiting for you right outside.
On leaving the office, you found Jungkook leaning up against the wall. Jin and Namjoon had hung back, leaving you alone as you emerged, and you instantly rolled your eyes. Determined not to be deterred, you kept walking down the corridor, trying to fix your eyes ahead – firmly away from the infuriating man that watched your approach.
“Scared yet?” his smirk bled through his words. You were almost upon him at this point, and he pushed away from the wall, blocking the way with his black-clad body.
Eyes flicking up to him, unimpressed, you tapped your foot.
“Why would I be scared?”
One corner of his mouth curved up, looking you in the eye as he leaned a little closer.
“We aren’t heroes, honey.”
“Thanks for spelling that out, Jungkook,” you drawled, making to step past him.
His laughter followed you while you started walking away.
“Need help packing?” he called.
“Hey, Jungkook,” Jin’s stern voice joined him, “no need. She’s not going anywhere.”
Jungkook’s silence spoke volumes.
Glancing back as you reached the end of the corridor, you were met with the livid expression that seemed so familiar. Jungkook’s eyes bulged with shock. You were sure that Jin’s hand on his shoulder was all that was holding him back.
Making the most of his eyes on you, you flashed a serene smile and walked away.
But though an (admittedly large) part of you took satisfaction in Jungkook’s shock and rage, you knew you would be expected to work with him. Properly work with him, not the frosty silence he currently counted as work.
With the impossibility of this steadily creeping over you, you climbed the stairs heavily.
As you returned to the wary stares of your friends and dispelled their trepidation, assuring them you were staying and trying to settle down to a relatively normal evening, it remained in the back of your mind.
But you could deal with Jungkook tomorrow. For now, you let yourself be reminded of the reasons you wanted to stay here with them.
Thank you for reading!!💜comments, questions etc. are always welcome! Fanfiction is all about community and if you wanted a sign that it's ok to participate, you are invited!!💞
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Have you seen Fami's right ear ? Because I haven't.
The game of interpretation in reverse, or focusing on what seems to be avoided by the chapter, not shown, works! and even if it doesn't work, it's still fun and leads to wild theories, which I love to imagine. And this post is no exception to that rule.
We had chapter 155 where we interpreted backwards to find answers to Denji and Nayuta's existential crises.
We also interpreted backwards to better understand the inconsistencies in Yoshida's behavior and the implications for chapter 156.
In my opinion, chapter 157 is no exception to this rule. Focusing on what the author refuses to show in order to find the answers fits in well with a mangaka fascinated by cinema.
Not convinced? Chapter 156 ended on Asa's legs, like a superhero ready to take on the big bad alone. The next chapter directly contradicts what it had already demonstrated. But why? Because you shouldn't trust either the author or the way the characters present themselves to you. That's what this whole chapter is about.
What matters to you may not necessarily matter to the characters. Our focus on the first page would be on Asa's missing arm. Yet she brushes it aside, as if she were dismissing our concerns with a wave of the hand: what's important to her, strangely enough, is wearing her uniform!
Which raises another question... have you seen much of Asa without her uniform? Yes, we've seen her without it, but more often than not, it's her fetish outfit for readers.
I could tell you that, once again, this is to emphasize the fact that we don't have the same temporality on the characters, and that Fujimoto insists more and more on what he refuses to show, but I'll be accused of over-interpreting, so let's carry on.
Fami's statement that appearing to be a high-school student is the best cover for me immediately brings to mind a specific public hunter, who also appears always dressed in his uniform! But people will tell me that I'm being too defensive of this character, so.... Let's continue even further
Asa manages to turn the guns on those who were going to shoot them, all by imagining that she had been able to redeem them.
It's precisely because she's disconnected from reality that she's able to create the illusion that her power works
And I repeat: disconnecting from the events we see in Chainsaw Man helps us too.
Asa is able to create weapons without even needing to touch them, i.e. to touch the concrete, the agent who watches over them is right to recognize her but wrong in believing she's there to help the church members in the basement, when in fact she's there for Chainsaw Man. It's normal for him to think that!
Because that's how she was presented on TV!
Which shows what? That you can't trust everything you see
Just before, we had a focus on Asa's legs, particularly through her walking, the fact that she's almost running
Let's interpret this in reverse again. Did you see Fami's hands? Yes, we see them, but never up close and never open.
What was important was obscured by the fact that, at the end, it was noted that she did have something in her hands, but the chapter focused on Asa's legs, even though she had slipped.
Pay no attention to what was emphasized to guess what happens next
In the title, I'm talking about Fami's right ear, because she is abnormally shown on the same side throughout the chapter.
Because it's hiding an earpiece? I'd have liked to, but I don't think so. As someone pointed out in the previous post: you can still see her ear on page 2.
The point is not to think that Fami is tilting her head to hide something in her ear, but why is she shown so much the same way?
The fact that she's bent over reminded me of chapter 140, when Denji visits the CSM church for the first time. At the end of that chapter, Barem presents an ultimatum: which side is heavier? Chainsaw Man represented by that cable on Denji's torso or his peaceful life with his family?
The chapter 140 is called "Scales", evoking the weighing of these two choices, and Fami, who is supposed to represent the church, is already tipped over.
Why? Because the choice has already been made
Denji chose to be Chainsaw Man, but when he realized it, he was faced with the fire in which he lost his cat and dogs.
When he transformed, he found himself endangering his little sister Nayuta
The scales tipped in Chainsaw Man's favor, to the detriment of his family.
The way Fami was always presented on the same side was to make it clear which way his head was tilting : to the left.
Okay, but how do you explain Fami's head being tilted the other way in other earlier chapters? It's normal, Denji's choice is very recent! He hesitated until now!
All this makes even more sense with her Chainsaw Man earrings, which represent cables.
And then you'll tell me "it would work if she had a cable earring on the same ear, but it's safe on both ears so it doesn't work", yes it does, trust us, we'll carry on.
When does Asa fall in part 2? Often when death is near, almost like a bad omen announcing it. She falls crushing Bucky, she falls with Yuko who later dies prematurely, she almost falls when her mother sacrifices herself...
So death is near.
And two things can explain it :
Fami is bent over to symbolize the fact that Chainsaw Man has been chosen over his peaceful life.
The chapter again emphasizes that Asa can save Chainsaw Man by attacking Chainsaw Man, because Chainsaw Man prevents Denji from having access to his peaceful life, hence the fact that Fami is bent over.
But let's think about it another way: in chapter 155, Denji emphasized the fact that he didn't know what a family was, having committed patricide, how could he possibly understand this notion?
Denji killed his father, his brother, his sister died for him...
So Chainsaw Man has always put his family at risk, which seems logical given everything we've said.
But remember that in this same chapter, we found an answer: Chainsaw Man is an empty shell filled with the people he loves, his family, and his aim is to protect them.
When Denji says he wants to be Chainsaw Man, it's to protect his family, who fill him as an empty shell.
When Fami says we must kill Chainsaw Man to save him, she's right.
Maybe not because there are 2 Chainsaw Man, since Pochita and Denji are inseparable.
But because to protect what has filled Chainsaw Man's heart, you have to kill the source of his misfortune, himself.
And that's why it all works, even if Fami's two earrings are cables, because even killing Chainsaw Man, the empty shell, saves what filled it - his family.
That's why Asa falls, because the end and Denji's sacrifice are close at hand.
But second interpretation.
Remember, when Asa falls, it means that death is near. So.................. who's next to her?
Obviously, this is pure theory, but I find it amusing.
Why does Fami only show one side? Because she didn't present herself well.
If Fami has insisted on anything from the start, it's that we call it Fami, not Famine. Why is that? Because she renamed herself just as quickly as Yoru did, choosing a name that hid her true identity.
Remember how Yoshida told her she was terrible at choosing names, to which Fami retorted that she didn't care if anyone found out who she was?
Is that really the case? Wasn't it to reinforce the fact that she was supposedly the devil of famine?
The first time Fami appears, in Asa's school, she introduces herself as the war devil's big sister (= true), which she does again at the aquarium, introducing herself as the famine demon (= false), called Fami (= true).
But as we've seen, you can lie about a devil's name, just as Fami did with the fire demon, presenting him as the devil of justice.
So what's to stop her from lying about the fear she represents too?
I know it sounds crazy, but what happened when the devil of eternity appeared? People were hungry!
And the first time Fami didn't intervene, the more time passed, the more the hunger grew, the stronger the demon seemed to become.
What's to stop the devil of eternity being the devil of famine?
You : "it's a tactic for Fami to use the power of the demon of eternity to starve them out". Yes it's true! But my theory about the wrong choice of devil names is possible too. The trick is not to say that what's been presented to us doesn't work, but to try and question it.
The famine devil falsely called the devil of eternity could be defeated by Denji twice: in part 1, because he had overcome the famine by becoming a public hunter
In part 2, because he fed Asa!
If Fami has insisted on anything from the start, it's that we call her Fami, not Famine. Why is that? Because she renamed herself just as quickly as Yoru did, choosing a name that hid her true identity : the Death Devil.
So, since the answers lie in what we can't see, what's stopping Fami from tripping Asa?
Which explains Asa's shocked face.
But above all, it implies that his fall was not an unintentional one, as it always is when death is near, but that it was caused by death.
So if we line up the interpretations: death doesn't want mankind to disappear.
How do I know this?
Because she said so! She loves pizzas.
Death wants to kill Chainsaw Man to remain the sole end of beings. To stop it, all you have to do is eat her.
#csm 157#chainsaw man#csm#csm part 2#csm spoilers#denji#asa#asa mitaka#yoru#famine devil#fami#nayuta#yoshida hirofumi#We're moving away from pure analysis I'm trying to theorize because I think it's fun!
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amusement park 𐀔 &team
genre : fluff ⋆ warnings : none? ⋆ word count : 0,9k
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ୨ ✩ ୧
⭒ k
he's the kind of guy who, when he notices you're cold in line for an attraction, will open his coat for you to cuddle up to him for warmth. expect him to place kisses against your forehead and temple, gazing at you with such adoration that the people behind you will watch you with envy. often lures you into hidden corners to steal you a kiss or two, then runs away to avoid you hitting him in embarrassment. he always tries to make you laugh and see you smile, but he also loves to scare you when you're both in the haunted house.
⭒ fuma
makes sure you're not afraid every time. places his hand in front of you on thrill rides, as if to protect you, even if there's a seat belt. do everything in his power to win you a really big plush toy (and to prove to you that he's the best at the same time). he's really your superhero — he guides you around the park like a pro and avoids people pushing you around at all costs. your safety is his top priority.
⭒ nicholas
he's so calm, you're always the one talking and showing him everything that catches your eye around you. he approves and accepts absolutely all your ideas : you want to ride the ghost train three times in a row? no problem. you want to go to the ride with the longest wait? he's already in the queue. leans in to chat with you, your hand always in his, the latter concealed in his coat pocket. at the end of the day, you've spent more time walking around than riding anything, but who cares as long as you're together? (but, all the girls around you are jealous that he only has eyes for you.)
⭒ euijoo
he's such an angel, and you're the one who can't resist him and his pretty smile. he loves doing things with you, and if running around in a crowded amusement park made you happy — then he will follow you to the end of the day, always smiling. but don't worry, he's having fun too, especially when you've bought matching headbands featuring the park's mascot before taking photos together. but his favorite thing to do with you, was the ferris wheel at the beginning of the evening, when the sun begins to set and the sky takes on a rosy hue, and you're snuggled up in his arms, eyes fixed on the same horizon.
⭒ yuma
he absolutely don't want to go, but you ended up convincing him anyway. so at first, he tries to make googly eyes at you to convince you to go back home, but when he realizes he won't be able to change your mind, he decides to put a little more willpower into your date. but you must follow one rule : no thrill rides with him. he's up for the chill rides, the flying chairs and the laser game, but not for rides that go as fast as the speed of light and make him dizzy. in the end, he decides to let you win just to see you smile in victory (or he just sucks but won't admit it).
⭒ jo
if you thought you'd come with jo to the amusement park to ride the rides, you were sorely mistaken. you're here to try out all the sweets and restaurants in the park, one after the other. lucky for him that you like to eat as much as he does — so you don't mind coming to the amusement park to taste the good stuff. nonetheless, you still manage to do a few not-so-sensational attractions — like the little train that circles the park like a guided tour. it's one of your favorite things : eating delicious mochis while observing the surroundings without walking.
⭒ harua
he will acts like a shy child but don't hesitate to do all the attractions with you. at first, he'll be a little reserved, but within an hour, he'll be guiding you through the amusement park and getting you to do exactly what he wants. what he prefers to do is the giant cups spinning at high speed, giving you the impression that the world is spinning around you when you put your foot down again. he always makes sure you're having fun, and if he sees you're not enjoying it, he finds something else to keep you entertained. at the end of the day, he takes you to a nice restaurant where they serve your favorite dishes to thank you for the day.
⭒ taki
he's kinda afraid and didn't want to come in the first place, but when he saw your excited expression, he couldn't resist you. he follows you around the park like a lazy child, walking in slow motion to keep you both as far away as possible to the thrill rides. but he's willing to go to the haunted house with you, promising to protect you even if he's the one who ends up screaming and running away, abandoning you to ghosts and demonic apparitions. but to make up for such a betrayal, he'll always buy you your favorite ice cream, which you'll enjoy while sitting next to each other on one of the many pretty benches.
⭒ maki
too much energy duo : people watch you run around, hand in hand, trying not to get lost, to do as much attraction as possible in as little time as possible. you also battle to prove which of you screams louder in the ghost train and pirate ship. competition is something serious between you two, so much that even the animators of the various attractions take to the game and encourage you both, in their own way. one time, you stood on either side of the pirate ship, challenging the other participants in the attraction to shout along with you, and the one whose side screamed the least, paid the other one a barbapapa. (spoiler alert : your side win.)
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reblogs & feedbacks are highly appreciated !
taglist ౨ৎ @wtfhyuck @yuma-is-mine
#&team#&team imagines#&team scenarios#&team reactions#&team headcanons#&team drabbles#&team timestamps#andteam#andteam imagines#andteam scenarios#andteam drabbles#andteam headcanons#andteam reactions#andteam timestamps#&team maki#&team taki#&team harua#&team yuma#&team ej#&team jo#&team nicholas#&team fuma#&team k#euijoo imagines#nicholas imagines#k imagines#jo imagines#harua imagines#yuma imagines#fuma imagines
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Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final
The first three posts in this series are here.
Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.
George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.
Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.
Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.
The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.
Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.
The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.
Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.
Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.
Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.
Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.
Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.
Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.
Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.
Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.
The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.
The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.
Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.
St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.
After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.
Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.
For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.
"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."
Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.
Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).
Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".
Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.
Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.
Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.
In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.
#queued post#the scrambled timeline#I tinkered around with the ordering of these entries so much that I guess this is a scrambled post for the scrambled timeline#credit to hieronymous-botch for the Alex Hirsch's Sunnydale idea#credit to Lorelei for the Orson Scott Card's Steel Gear idea
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