#actually ignore the fact that the camera's different between some panels

[leafuxxtea]

guess who's back 🥺🥺 (and about to go to sleep)

i wanted to apologize quickly for disappearing like that, and i promise ill answer my asks and interact tmr!! 🥹🥹 hope everyone's doing well <33

but before i go, ill just drop this fanart of @lostxmelody 's fanfic (Parts of a Human, I've talked abt it before but it's. such a wild ride that I will absolutely stay on forever.)

(do i now know how to format panels?? hahahhahaahaa. still no.)

[mst3kproject]

The Neanderthal Man

Since I'm taking a break from fishmen, I might as well let Bigfoot catch up a bit.  The Neanderthal Man isn't exactly a Bigfoot movie, but it’s along the same lines and its entire starring cast has MST3K pedigrees.  Robert Shayne was in Indestructible Man and Teenage Caveman. Richard Crane was Rocky Jones, Space Ranger! Beverly Garland was in Swamp Diamonds and Gunslinger. Even the composer, Albert Glasser, wrote music for Invasion USA, Last of the Wild Horses, and almost all of MST3K’s Bert I. Gordon movies.

Some little mountain town in the middle of the Sierras (which the Portentous 50's Narrator takes some trouble to tell us is a primeval place where 'the defacing hand of civilization has fallen but lightly') is having a rash of saber-toothed tiger sightings!  At first these are laughed off, but when the game warden himself sees one cross the road in the middle of the night, it's time to do something about it.  The warden shows a cast pawprint to Dr. Ross Harkness in Los Angeles, who is interested enough to come up and see for himself. Local Mad Scientist Dr. Groves pooh-poohs the whole thing, which is enough to tell me that we're not dealing with a local cryptid here.  Somebody is making prehistoric monsters.

So... I may not have actually run out of movies, but I seem to be running out of plots, because this is a remarkably similar movie to Monster on the Campus. The major difference between the two films is that Dr. Blake turned himself into a caveman by accident, while Dr. Groves here is doing it on purpose.

Another difference is that Monster on the Campus' story, while silly, was linear – events escalated in a way that felt logical, and there were reasons why things happened when and where they did.  By contrast, The Neanderthal Man feels like a first draft.  At the beginning of the film, we're dealing with the saber-toothed tigers that Groves has been creating by injecting cats with his de-evolution serum.  We hear about these slaughtering game and livestock, and it seems like only a matter of time before they move on to human beings.  The beginning of the film is quite upfront about the fact that Groves is responsible, too, as it is only mildly mysterious in its depiction of one of the creatures escaping his lab.

Sometimes the saber-tooths are represented by an actual tiger, usually filmed from behind or at a great distance so nobody has to put the prosthetic teeth on it.  They do have prosthetic teeth, but they're only visible in a couple of shots. Imagine being at a bar and some guy tells you his job is sticking fake fangs on real tigers for a caveman movie!  For close-ups, there's a hilarious puppet head that looks like the sort of thing you'd see mounted on a frat house wall as a joke.  The director had the sense not to linger on this in motion shots, but later we see still photographs Groves has supposedly taken of his experimental subjects and they're even stupider-looking than we imagined.

Anyway, this goes on for a while with rising action, as the game warden goes to get Harkness and they manage to shoot one of the animals, only to have it vanish from the kill site when they try to show it to Groves (the movie never bothers to explain how that happened, incidentally. The ending suggests that the creatures change back when they die, but there's definitely no dead kitty cat at the scene, either).  The whole movie could easily have just had the cats and their creator as the antagonists, perhaps even ending the same way as Dr. Groves proves his work to the other characters by injecting himself. That's not what happens, though.  Instead, the story mostly forgets about the cats one we find out Groves has also been carrying on human experiments.

(Before himself, Groves' first experimental subject was his disabled Latina housekeeper.  Another series of photos show her half-transformed into a cavewoman who for some reason is wearing drag queen false eyelashes.  And as long as I'm talking about the movie being gross and bigoted, there's a bit where a woman is violently raped.  This happens off camera, but the audience is not allowed to entertain any illusions about it.)

The problem is that before we see him give himself an injection in the arm, we have had absolutely no indication that Groves has been giving his serum to anything besides the cats! Cats are stealthy, cryptic creatures and if one of those has been seen wandering around killing things, then surely a full-on caveman beating people to death would not be able to stay out of sight!  If what we were seeing were the first time Groves had tried the formula on himself then that would be an explanation, but his notes reveal that he's been doing it for so long that he's on the verge of losing control of the transformation and permanently reverting to a pre-human status, as indeed he does for the climax.  Much like the stupid dinosaur in The Beast of Hollow Mountain, the movie's main monster is given no build-up whatsoever!

There's worse yet, though.  The main characters, Dr. Harkness and Groves' daughter Jan, are barely involved in the 'caveman' part of the plot. They get phone calls about the various murders that Groves is committing in caveman form, and they snoop around the lab to figure out things the audience already knows.  The same story could have been told without them, perhaps with the game warden and the hunter as protagonists, and it would probably have been more interesting. The script also repeatedly has Dr. Groves wander in and bluster about how the tiger sightings are hallucinations and tall tales, which seems a little unnecessary when we already know he's responsible. The film-makers can't seem to decide whether they want us to know that or not.

Dr. Groves wears glasses.  Maybe the reason his primitive alter-ego is angry and breaking shit (although it does politely open and close the window it climbs out of, which made me laugh) is because it can't see. This is also my theory about why the Hulk smashes, and what do you know?  In Avengers Endgame he's got Hulk-sized spectacles and only smashes when he's told!

The direction of The Neanderthal Man can probably best be described as 'serviceable'.  It shows us what's going on, but doesn't particularly add anything to the proceedings.  The 'Neanderthal' mask is immobile and uninteresting, not much better than somebody's Party City Sasquatch costume.  Even the eyes are just painted on, meaning the poor guy in the costume can’t do much because he can’t see where he’s going.

The dialogue is often very strange, with characters talking like they're in a Jules Verne novel. If only one person did this, it might seem like a character quirk – it works for Dr. Groves, for example – but it's everybody. Seeing the cat carcass is gone, Harkness declares, “I refuse to believe in the supernatural!  There must be some logical cause and effect to this unholy adventure!”  Groves' fiancee Ruth berates him for ignoring her, saying, “I want you, the man I once knew!  The good companion, the cheerful friend.  I want the happiness we once found in each other.”  It's bizarre to listen to, and often audibly awkward for the actors.

Monster on the Campus was kind of trying to be about how humanity must choose to evolve away from our inner savage, although the finale didn't bear that out.  There's a scene in The Neanderthal Man in which this movie seems to be trying to go in the opposite direction, saying that we were never savage to begin with.  Dr. Groves is speaking to a panel of scientists about the size of the brain in various 'primitive' species of human.  He points out that by the time we reached Homo erectus we were already working with four times the cerebral jelly of a chimpanzee, and argues that our ancestors would have been recognizably human in their behaviour and problem-solving capacity.

(Amusingly, his chart of human evolution includes Piltdown Man, which was proven to be a hoax literally a few months after this movie's release.  What makes this even more tragic for the writers is that their list of primitive humans seems to be the only place where they actually did any research.)

The problem with Dr. Groves' theory is that he already knows it's wrong. We soon learn that he's been experimenting on himself with his serum for a while already, and his notes show that he knows very well he regresses into a near-mindless animal.  The movie does not even try to reconcile these ideas.  If Groves were continuing his experiments in the hope that perfecting his serum would give him a more accurate reconstruction of ancient man, that would be one thing, but the script never goes there.

So now that we've had two 'man turns into caveman by injecting science juice' movies, of course I have to ask which one is better.  Monster on the Campus wasn't a good movie but it was definitely an improvement on The Neanderthal Man in several respects, and although I don't have any way to find out for certain, I suspect it was an intentional remake.  It's definitely more entertaining and gets bonus points for including the Meganeura dragonfly, but nothing in it is nearly as funny as The Neanderthal Man's fake tiger head.  I guess if you're gonna watch one or the other, stick to Monster on the Campus, but if you're gonna watch both, start with The Neanderthal Man and do them in chronological order, the better to spot the inspirations and references.

Before I go, a fun paleontology fact: current thinking is that the saber-toothed cat's eponymous fangs actually didn't show when it had its mouth closed!  There are zero cave paintings or ancient sculptures of a saber-tooth cat with teeth visible, and when scientists looked at the structure of the enamel in the canines, it suggested that in life the teeth were hidden by big, fleshy, St Bernard jowls.  Google 'smilodon lips' and behold how this looks fully three hundred percent more ridiculous than you're imagining.  I love nature.

[ectonurites]

Okay, so I kinda wanna know your thoughts about how weird the fandom portrays the bat characters. Canon is ... not my favorite, but it actually offers a lot of nuance to the characters that I think makes them all interesting. Unlikable, but interesting. I noticed fanon tends to boil the batkids all into these superflat caricatures. Like, cereal obsessed manchild Dick Grayson or bad boy who's literal crimes are only because of the lazarus pit Jason Todd. Its not really a major problem, just weird

Oh I have a LOT of thoughts about this. I try so hard not to shit on how other people interact with content because like, it’s comic books! We’re all just here trying to make the best out of a mess of stuff and have fun, but admittedly a lot of fanon stuff drives me fuckin’ nuts as someone who reads a ton of comics.

Like, I like memes, obviously, I draw tons of memes with the batfam (+ yj) characters and make lighthearted jokes etc etc, and honestly if it’s just for jokes then I don’t mind people having whack interpretations of the characters quite as much. The thing that drives me up a wall though is like... when serious works and analysis and discussion are very clearly based on just the fanon interpretations without any bearing on canon aside from what you could skim from a wiki page, and it’s spoken like it’s fact! There’s ‘having fun with jokes that aren’t taking things that seriously’ and then there’s ‘blatantly mischaracterizing based on misinformation’. Way too often I see things fall into that second category.

Now, a lot of people in the batfam fandom don’t... actually read comics (or at least not frequently) and that’s not even a bad thing necessarily, like you’re 100% allowed to enjoy content however you want to! (I don’t wanna be gatekeepey, especially since comics are confusing to get into)

But the problem is that when a lot of people aren’t reading the comics, then the people who do’s opinions have a lot more influence if they’re loud enough. All it takes is one person who read something and interpreted it a specific way that might not even be correct, and then it can echo chamber and suddenly half the fandom thinks it’s 100% canon that way because ‘oh so and so said that and they actually read it’.

I also think that’s a problem with the popularity of out of context panels/blogs, while they are super funny sometimes, when people make assumptions about characters based on just a few things without context... it can lead to problems. If enough people say something enough times people just... start to think it’s true, even if it exists entirely devoid of context which changes the meaning.

Like, for example, according to canon there’s no actual confirmation Tim stalked Batman on foot for an extended period of time! We know from Lonely Place of Dying that he followed him once to get a picture to convince DIck that he still needed a Robin. Otherwise his ‘stalking’ & how he figured out Batman’s identity was more through media appearances (like newspapers and tv). This is wildly different from the common fanon idea that little Timmy was sneaking out regularly to follow Batman & Robin around with his camera.

I primarily blame Geoff Johns for this misconception because of these panels in in tt 2003 (from issue 29)

But like, think about it for a second, literally how would Jason know that? This is one of the first times he’s ever interacting with Tim, and he was dead/catatonic when that would have been happening! He is either making a wild assumption or perhaps Talia told him this when she told him about Tim, whichever of those it was it’s secondhand information not something he witnessed. Taking his word as fact here makes no sense, he was just trying to get under Tim’s skin while fighting him. But seeing those panels out of context if you haven’t actually read Lonely Place of Dying/only read a vague summary of it, and don’t necessarily know the details of the Jason situation, it could absolutely lead you to believe otherwise!

Dick as a cereal manchild is a weird one because like... okay yeah sure he likes cereal, I can think of like two panels I’m too lazy to find right now off the top of my head of him having it, but... that’s not something we see all the time! Its not like Ollie & his chili (which IS a running joke- seriously I have not read that many Green Arrow comics but the amount of times I’ve seen that man bring up chili in just in the few things I have read is wild. there’s even an official recipe. his chili has it’s own dc wiki page). Then, because Dick isn’t quite as emotionally closed off in the same way the rest of the batfam tends to be, people project literally all the pent up feelings onto him, making him this hug-crazy crybaby manchild... again it’s just very clear people who perpetuate those ideas (outside of like, maybe as jokes) haven’t actually fully read that many comics with him. I’d also even blame the Young Justice cartoon version of Dick for some other traits fanon Dick has, bc that version of him is def a bit of a Hot Mess™️ once he’s Nightwing 

Jason I understand misconceptions about probably the most because of how wildly inconsistent his writing was before the new 52 and how consistently Not Great it was once Lobdell took over. Jason’s one of the few characters I have read like, 90% of appearances for so I’m speakin’ from experience here. But still... acting like Jason as Red Hood is just a ‘bad boy rebel’ that could have a relatively happy connection with the whole Batfam is fun but unrealistic. You can not blame everything on the lazarus pit... he still has killed people! Lots of people! Willingly! Yes he has reasons and when he’s being written well it’s clear that he’s not just ‘random murder happy’ but rather ‘I kill when I feel they deserve it and that it’s necessary’ which is what keeps him an anti-hero rather than a full fledged villain most of the time, but that still keeps him so at odds with the rest of the Batfamily! Writers in more current continuity have had him compromise by only using rubber bullets in Gotham so they can have him interact with the family, but he’s still killed and will do it when he deems it necessary.

Also like... at the time of Under The Red Hood in the comics... theoretically... he hadn’t even been in the lazarus pit for well over a year. Go read Lost Days (it’s short! And except for the thing with him & Talia towards the end of the last issue it’s pretty good!), he spends a lot of time traveling the world and learning things/training before the events of UtRH. Yes you could interpret there still being some Lazarus influence going on there but I think the movie version of UtRH especially leads people to believe there’s a lot less time between his dunk in the pit and his first actions as Red Hood.

Fanon also has a lot of ideas about pit madness that vary wildly from what we have seen in canon, like yeah it’s been said to be a thing to some extent, but there’s not really the Danny Phantom Glowing Green Eyes™️ or anything like that... it’s fun to explore cool new ideas for sure but I just think it’s important to recognize the distinction between things that are actually canon and things that are popular fanon. (Also there are things that fall somewhere in between, there’s definitely stuff that isn’t 100% confirmed canon but could still be plausible/has been hinted at by some writers/is only canon in some settings)

Other things that drive me nuts are ‘quiet does-no-wrong angel Cass’ and ‘the Normal One™️ Duke’ because those just make literally no sense if you’ve read any comics with either of them... but fan content either does those versions or just completely ignores their existence a lot of the time! So! That’s a whole bigger problem!

In general though, this is fandom it’s not like this... matters that much on the grand scheme of things in life, we’re just people on social media talkin’ about comics. And this kind of misconception/flattening of characters does happen in literally every fandom ever. But it still does suck to see characters that have a lot of nuance and interesting history to play around with get reduced to a few traits that aren’t even actually that relevant to who they are.

[ordinaryschmuck]

What I Thought About "What If...Captain Carter was the First Avenger" from Marvel Studios' What If...

Salutations, random people on the internet who certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

Back when Marvel Studios announced the new lineup of films and shows, I was admittingly underwhelmed. Nothing we've seen so far has been poorly written, far from it, but during the announcement, nothing really popped out at me as worth getting excited for. That is, except for one series: Marvel Studios' What If... An animated series that changes the canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all through the simple question. The question being, "What if this happened instead of that."

From the get-go, I was sold on this idea. I'm a sucker for hypothetical scenarios, thinking up all the ways of how some of my favorite stories in fiction could be drastically different thanks to one tiny change. Some might call that "Fanfiction the Series," and while you're not wrong, I fail to see how that's a criticism. Because fanfiction can be fun...just as long as you ignore the sick freaks, sure, but it still can be fun! So whether Marvel Studio's What If... is fanfiction or not, it still didn't change how excited I was to watch it. Was it all worth the hype? Well, to answer that question requires spoilers, so keep that in mind as we dive deep into Marvel's most ambitious project yet.

Now, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

The Watcher: Gonna get the generals out of the way before I talk about what I specifically like about this episode. Ok? Ok.

Now, using the Watcher as the narrator for this series is just perfect. What If... already has a similar energy to The Twilight Zone: An anthology series that takes viewers to new and mysterious realities all through the guidance of an omniscient narrator. And using the Watcher as that type of narrator might just be the second-best choice...number one would be Stan Lee, obviously, but...he's dead now. May he rest in peace.

I haven't read that many comics, so there's not much that I know about the Watcher's character aside from a ten-second Google search. But something tells me that a character described as a celestial being that observes and records the events surrounding the galaxy sounds like the exact type of omniscience to guide us through the unknown. All added with Jeffrey Wright's performance, who really does convey a character that sounds like he's as old as time and wise beyond his years. Plus, it's pretty cool that such a seemingly odd character now technically plays a major role in the MCU canon. Comics are weird, and if the Watcher proves anything, it's better to embrace that weirdness than deny it.

The Animation: Looks like someone watched Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.

That really is the feeling I got when watching this. What If... doesn't look as good as Spiderverse (Nothing can be as good as Spiderverse), but the idea is still there as it combines primarily CGI animation with a few hand-drawn elements. It makes certain scenes just pop and, at times, even makes specific shots look like they're straight from panels in a comic book. Besides, while Spiderverse still looks better, that doesn't mean the animation isn't phenomenal in What If... The scenery looks gorgeous, the CGI models moderately match their live-action counterparts, the expressions are fantastic, and movements are as smooth as butter. There was definitely some money that went into this series to make it look as good as it did, and my eyeballs were more than grateful because of it. Especially when it comes to--

The Action: Holy s**t, was it a good thing that this series was animated!

The MCU has had its fair share of great fight scenes in the past, but it always felt restricted to what the big superhero fights could be due to everything needing to look "realistic." That all changes in What If... Because now that this series is animated, we can finally chuck realism out the window and allow these characters to be as epic as they were in the comics. The movements are swift, the blows look like they hurt, and best of all, you actually get to see characters fighting each other! There are no random cuts to hide the stunt doubles or weird camera angles to avoid audiences seeing how ugly the CGIed replacements are. We get to see all of the action with zero restraint, thanks to the fact that animation is limitless and allows writers to get away with literally anything. And shows like this make me wonder, "Why the hell isn't the MCU animated?"

Peggy as Captain Carter: It's here that we get into the specifics, and by golly, do I love me some Peggy Carter making a return. And what a return she made!

Seeing Peggy kick Nazi ass as Captain Carter is as awesome as it sounds as she gives a new definition of a "Strong, independent woman." She took s**t from no one and was more than willing to destroy anybody who said differently. It's a ton of fun for fans (the ones who aren't sexist, at least) and even fun for Peggy as well now that she gets a chance to wreck shop. However, that in itself could cause problems. If you watched Agent Carter (a great show, by the way), then you'll know that Peggy doesn't act as...somewhat meatheaded as she does here. As she said it herself, she's "usually more covert than this." And she is, as she was pretty much the first superspy in the MCU, who's impressive through how she effortlessly infiltrates her way to winning the day with diminutive requirements for fighting. So stripping that away gets rid of a core part of what makes her character so interesting. Although, in fairness, you could blame the fact that the reason she's acting like this is that the super-soldier serum is messing with her brain a bit. We've seen through U.S. Agent the reciprocations of the wrong person taking the serum, and while Peggy is far from the worst pick, there are hints of why Steve Rodgers was the best choice. Still, even though it's not the same Peggy Carter, that doesn't mean Captain Carter is a poor addition to the hero roster in the MCU. She's cool in all the right ways, even though they're drastically different from what made her compelling, to begin with.

Howard Stark: Another character I'm more than happy to see again!

Howard didn't leave that much of a grand of an impression in Captain America: The First Avenger, but in Agent Carter (Seriously, great show), he was a blast. You can just tell he was Tony Stark's father through all the ways he fast-talks in and out of problems and brilliantly comes up with solutions thanks to being tech-savvy. The main difference between Howard and Tony, however, is that Howard prefers to stay on the sidelines, where Tony learned to be more proactive. You get a sense of that in this episode. Because even though he goes to save the day, you can tell that he would rather be anywhere else. And, as a bonus, Howard's just funny. Probably not up there as one of the funniest characters in the franchise (Paul Rudd's Ant-Man reigns supreme), but he still cracks me up more times than not. Howard may be nothing more than a side character, but he'll always win me over no matter how small of a role he has.

Steve Rodgers in the Hydra Stomper: Don't mind me. Just admiring the fact that despite being crippled and skinny, Steve Rodgers still finds a way to fight the good fight, which is who Steve is to me. One of the best things about The First Avenger is that it fully understands the hero that is Captain America. Serum or not, he will do all he can to do the right thing and won't give up despite how many times others tell him he should. So if Steve's going to fly around in a suped-up Iron Man suit that's appropriately named "The Hydra Stomper," then Steve'll f**king soar. Because he is a gosh dang superhero, no matter what name he takes at the end of the day.

Fast-Forwarding Through Events: Some fans might take issues with this. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see all the little changes that Captain Carter makes to the story, but realistically that's not the best choice to make. Let's be honest, there's not that much to show other than what this episode did, and doing a full-on rewrite of Captain America: The First Avenger would have rubbed some fans the wrong way. Besides, from what I can tell, most of the What If... comics are one-shots that very rarely branch out into longer arcs. The primary goal is less to write this large-scale story and more of this self-contained narrative that does what it precisely delivers: Show fans a glimpse of what would happen if this happened instead of that. That's what we were given, and I can't really complain that much. I would have loved to have seen more, but I can learn to be happy with what I got.

Colonel Flynn Taking Credit: This guy is sexist and an idiot, and that's why I hate him...but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't at least chuckle when he said everything was his idea. It's such a scumbag move that I couldn't help but find the humor in it.

(Like, what even was that scene where Peggy was pissed at Steve kissing a girl. THEY WEREN'T EVEN DATING !)nd Steve falling in love inThe First Avenger, which certainly wasn't helped by how they had these dumbass misunderstandings of each thinking the other was dating someone else. Here, they at least get to interact, confiding in one another about their insecurities and offer support when needed. And while it may be a little rushed, I'm more willing to believe their romance in under thirty minutes than I did in over two hours. It could have been better, but it also could have been much, much worse.

(Like, what even was that scene where Peggy was pissed at Steve kissing a girl. THEY WEREN'T EVEN DATING AT THE TIME!)

“I won’t tell you anything.”/”He told me everything.”: That's the Peggy Carter I know and love! Added with a solid joke, too.

Steve’s Pratfall: It's nice to know that no matter what universe we see, Marvel is still funny.

Peggy’s Sacrifice: Much like Peggy and Steve's romance, I buy Peggy's sacrifice way more than Steve's. Several fans already pointed out how it makes no sense for Steve to crash the plane into the icy waters when it seemed like he had enough control to land it or could have easily jumped out after aiming for the crash landing. Here, there's a more legitimate reason why Peggy sacrifices herself. The monster was undefeatable, and the only way to stop it was to push it back through the portal. Peggy, being the only one strong enough to do so at the moment, was the only option, and there was no way where she didn't end up going through with the monster. Even her return makes more sense, as I think her being lost to time and space sounds more believable than Steve surviving being frozen in ice. Something no mortal man should live through. Peggy's sacrifice proves that while the MCU can't change its cannon past, the writers learn from their mistakes and make something better.

WHAT I DISLIKED

The Reasoning Behind Peggy Becoming Captain Carter: So, the idea that one small change can greatly alter the story we knew is a great one, and it's one of the main reasons why I was excited about this series...but how does Peggy staying in the room cause the Hydra agent to detonate the bomb early? I understand the ripples that come from the Butterfly Effect, but I feel like that's too big of a leap to reason how Peggy ends up taking the serum instead.

Colonel Flynn: How is it possible that this guy is somehow even more of a pain in the ass than the general he replaced? At least Chester Phillips had the decency to respect Agent Carter!

Red Skull is Still on the Dull Side: Red Skull isn't an awful villain, but he wasn't really a great one. It's the same here, as he's just as forgettable and wooden an episode of television as he was in a full-length movie. But at least he had a cooler death this time.

Sebastian Stan is Not a Great Voice Actor: He's not awful, but his talent really doesn't shine in this regard. Some people think that being an actor and a voice actor is the same thing, but it's not always the case. Through live-action, actors are given a chance to express emotion through their expressions, movement, and voice. With voice acting, actors still have to convey emotions, but strictly through their voice. Meaning that actors like Sebastian Stan are limited to what they're used to and can stumble a bit when trying to perform in a field of acting they're unfamiliar with. You can tell he was trying his best, but this type of thing can take far more practice for others to perfect.

“Whew. Thanks. You almost ripped my arm off.”: ...hhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHA! HA HA! Ah...oh man...I, uh...I felt the internal bleeding with that one. Wow. Just...wow.

Bucky Leaving After Steve “Died”: Ok, now that's the biggest bout of bulls**t I've ever heard. BUCKY WOULD BE WITH STEVE 'TILL THE END OF THE LINE AND WOULD NOT HAVE LEFT THAT QUICKLY!

...This episode did Bucky dirty, didn't it?

IN CONCLUSION

I'd say that "What If...Captain Carter was the First Avenger" is an A-. It's still a solid start of what I can already tell will be a great series, but some elements could have used some polishing out. I loved it, but it wasn't as bloody brilliant as it could have been.

(And I meant it: WATCH AGENT CARTER! It's pleasantly surprising!)

[imaginesmai]

Sebastian Stan- Wired Autocomplete Interview

Requested by anon. I know this is not exactly what you asked for, but since I saw your request I had this idea, I’m sorry! I couldn’t really write it any other way... I hope you like it! Besides, it wouldn’t be my blog with a tiny bit of angst.

Plot: fans watching your interview with Sebastian are going to get more than what they bargained for.

“Hello! This is Y/N Y/L/N, from Capitan America: Winter Soldier”

“And this is Sebastian Stan, doing the wired autocomplete interview!”

The bright white light that was in front of you was turned off, and you heard someone from behind the cameras to cut for a few minutes. The introduction was done, and they wanted to make sure it looked good before going on with the main part of the interview. Whispers started filling the room and you dropped the happy fake smiled you had on your face.

Sebastian’s arm, that had been sprawled on the backrest of your chair, fell down, and he moved a few inches to his left. Your stylist gave you thumbs up from the other side of the room, signalling that he didn’t need to redo your hair or make up. So you got stuck those five minutes before the interview with the person who you didn’t want to talk.

Your happy and cheerful attitude had already disappeared, and you decided that your shoes were the most interesting thing in that room. More interesting than your boyfriend, who was sat beside you and didn’t have the courage to look at you in the eye. Not after that the previous night argument.

“Hey, um, h-hi Y/N”

You looked up to see a teenage girl with big helmets on, her hair up in a small ponytail. She was wearing the identification of the interview, so you guessed she was part of the crew. Smiling sweetly at her, you nodded.

“So, uh, could we take a picture?” she asked, fingers playing with cords of the headphones. “Or not! I don’t want to invade you, I-I know this is not exactly professional but, I’m such a big-“

“Of course!” you interrupted her rambling and got up. For the occasion, you had chosen a beautiful blue dress with white flowers, and you were glad you did. Because your other option was the old pyjamas bottoms and torn t-shirt from your best friend.

“That’s-That’s so cool” she giggled, taking her phone out of her pocket. “Thank you so much, this-this is the best day of my life.”

“Don’t worry” you said, smiling at her. “Maybe we could ask my manager to take the photo”

“I’ll do it”

You turned on your heels to see Sebastian with a tight smile, offering a hand to the girl. He got to his feet too, and took a few steps backwards to take a good photo. It was the first time you really looked at him since last night, and he looked awful. Tired eyes, bags under them and chopped lips. He seemed more like a homeless man than a famous actor. All of it because the stupid argument.

You had had it before. Actually, you had had the same arguments since the second month of your relationship, and you had been dating for two years already. Neither of you liked to argue about it, but you couldn’t reach an ending point. While you said it was time to make public your relationship, he was against it. Bad publicity for you, too much stress, the press being too pushy or not being ready for it. You had heard all type of excuses by then, and none of them convinced you that what you had with Sebastian had to stay hidden.

The flash hitting your eyes made you blink in surprise, and Sebastian lowered the phone with a small smile on his face. He looked at the photo for a few seconds, and then gave the phone to the girl. She melted in ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re so cool’s before leaving giggling and jumping a little.

Back in your seat, you folded your hands in your lap and fidgeting with the ring. As if he was testing the water, his hand itched closer to you. It was his fingers moving a little; up and down, as if he was tapping in a table, only that each time they moved closer to your leg. You were almost touching, so in a few seconds, his hand was resting on your knee, and you took that as a peace offering. Sure, you would have to talk about it later, but for the interview it was alright.

You put one of your hands on top of his, feeling how they were much colder than yours. On the contrary of what people used to think, his hands were as cold as ice. You put your fingers in between his, and he had to swallow down a smile. For the first time since he met you, he didn’t care about people watching you linking hands. Last night he had been too close to lose you.

“We start in five!”

Some people started running behind the cameras, trying to get everything under control so that the interview could start. The girl who had asked for the photo had the white tabloids in her hands, ready to be handed out to you.

“Five!”

You squeezed his hand one last time and gifted him with a small smile, letting him know that it would be alright.

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

Sebastian’s laugh filled the room when the next question was revealed; what does he uses on his hair? Your face as you read the question changed from happiness and joy to complete horror. You looked at him with wide eyes, wondering why someone would wake up and ask themselves what does he do with his hair. Joking for a few minutes about how his hair should be something protected at all cost, you continued with the next question.

If you were being honest, you were having a good time. Interviews usually got boring after the third in a row, since all of them asked the same. You liked doing them, though, but that one was being your favourite so far. And Sebastian, without a doubt, your favourite partner.

“What… God, why are this things so difficult to peel off?” you whined, trying to get a grip on the white cover.

“To answer the question, is Y/N Y/L/N a diva? Yes, she is. She needs someone to peel off this things because she doesn’t want to mess up her nails” Sebastian teased, looking straight into the camera, and you slapped his shoulder playfully.

“I can’t stand you”

“You love me”

Yeah, you loved him. You wanted nothing more to than to kiss him right there, and to stop the gossiping about him dating fans who he took photos with or his cousin that came to visit once a year. You forced the thoughts out of your head, not wanting to be seen annoyed or disappointed in the interview.

“Finally” you chuckled, when the paper came off. “What was Sebastian’s first film?”

“Oh, God” he closed his eyes and a faint blush covered his cheeks. Sebastian laughed and looked at you briefly. “You know it?”

“What? It was some teenager shameful comedy?”

“No, I-“ he cut himself before saying the name of the film, and you looked at you with raised brows. “You know it! I told you the last time we were playing Mario Kart!”

A few laughs were heard from the crew behind the camera, but you didn’t mind them. Playing Mario Kart with Sebastian could end in two ways. First one, each one of you in either side of the couch with scowls in your face and aggressively sneaking glances. The other one, video game long forgotten in TV and you riding him in the couch. You rarely payed attention to what he talked about.

Blinking confused, you tried to remember what his first film could had been.

“That-That one with the witches, and so?”

“W-What? What witches?” Sebastian laughed, not bothering to hide the way he was starting at your thoughtful face. You scrunched your nose and resisted the urge to nip at your finger.

“You know, that one where you’re the bad guy. With, with spells and black eyes and those things. There is also, like, a scene with a pool? That’s the only thing I remember, you were shirtless.”

“The Covenant?” Sebastian asked, as if he was not entirely sure what you were talking about. It was common of you to gush ramble about his ‘shirtless scenes’, saying that they were worthy of an Oscar. “I can’t believe you actually said witches.”

“What? I thought you were one! All black, mean.”

“I’m, I’m gonna ignore that” he turned his face towards the camera, his smile not disappearing. “Actually, that was the second. First one was Tony and Tina’s wedding. Small role, nothing important.”

“Nothing that you do is small” you looked at the camera with a small scowl. “He’s the diva”

Two questions later and you had finished his third panel. Sebastian had moved slowly from his seat and had wrapped his arm around your shoulder once more. His arm was touching your back, nothing that the camera could see, but enough to set you in a comfortable state where could set the anxiety and nervousness of being in an interview aside.

His head was in a slightly lower position than yours, and while you waited for your third panel, he propped it on your shoulder and left a quick kiss there. Even though there wasn’t skin, showing, you stuttered with what you were saying and almost dropped the car to the ground. Giving him a pointed look, you placed the panel your lap, and waited for him to start peeling the white papers.

As the rest of them, the first ones was innocent. That type were covered completely asking mostly about your whereabout in that moment. If your best friend lived with you, your next projects and how many pets you had had.

“Alright, next one” Sebastian said, bending forwards to rip the cover. He was, by then, resting his head on your shoulder, and the blush was permanent in your cheeks.

“I’ve seen grandpas faster than you”

“Whatever you say, kid”

The age different was not much. Only a few years, but enough reason to tease each other endlessly. Something changed on Sebastian’s face, as if he had just remembered an important fact. Quickly, he recovered and threw the paper to the side.

“How to seduce Y/N Y/L/N?” Sebastian frowned as soon as the words left his lips. “What kind of freak as that? Who still use ‘seduce’?”

You let out an awkward laugh at the question, uncrossing and crossing your legs. Your fingers tapped on the white board as Sebastian kept talking.

“And-how many people ask this to become trending?”

“Seb, maybe you should-“

“Here is a tip for that”

A small sigh left your lips, knowing that he would say something sassy. Sebastian was not the jealous one; you had to admit you were a little bit more jealous of him. He trusted you and knew you could handle yourself, that you were loyal to him. Still, there were special occasion, like that one, where he didn’t like that fans thought you were available and tried so hard to get you. Then, Sebastian would come up with a sassy comment, making everyone go wide eyed and leave the topic, him looking just like a protective friend.

Certainly, you didn’t expect his next words.

“Just find another one, cause she’s actually taken. And I don’t like sharing.”

The remark that you were going to make died in your tongue, and you looked at Sebastian surprised. Behind the camera, they didn’t hide their shock; they whispered, giggled and you swore you heard someone curse. But you were too busy looking at Sebastian with a open mouth, that he quickly sealed with a small kiss.

His lips closed around you and, after being hit by a sudden wave of cockiness, he even bit your lower one while he tore away. The only laugh that was heard came from you stylist, who you had tired out too many times with talks about Sebastian and your hidden relationship.

“Yeah, so” Sebastian said, his face still close to you. “Y/N Y/N/L can’t be seduced because she’s already with me”

He turned back to his seat and, with a sweet and innocent smile, told the camera that ‘that was all’, saying goodbye for the both of you, since you were too busy staring at him with wide eyes and shaky smile.

That’s how you seduce Y/N Y/L/N.

Want to know more about me? Here is my Masterlist! Feedback is always appreciated!!

[cilldaracailin]

The Show Must Go On

Hello my Tumblr Lovelys!

Random thing today but it was on the news that the dolphin I saw in Kerry last week was missing for two days and they presumed he had died... Turns out he hadn’t and was spotted this morning by a fisherman. Glad to hear he is still around! 

Anywhoo, I am back with the next story in the Robyn and Taron series.

Hope you all enjoy this one!

Suze x

*Disclaimer - I don’t know Taron and this is just fiction and for the purpose of the story, anything medical related, I research thoroughly before using*

1

“There is a great difference between worry and concern. A worried person sees a problem, and a concerned person solves a problem.”

Robyn was worried. When she stepped off the podium after giving her presentation on the Irish curriculum for Early Years Education at the childcare conference in Paris, she automatically checked her phone to see if Taron had messaged her about their possible dinner plans for the evening but instead of a message from him, she had five missed calls from Lyndsey and immediately rang her back. Once Robyn managed to talk to Lyndsey after her third attempt to call her, she heard the anxious tones of his publicist’s voice.

“He is hiding it from me Robyn but I know him too well and he has been burying it for at least two if not three days.”

Taken aback by how troubled Lyndsay was, begging Robyn to come and see Taron for herself, as he refused to listen to anything Lyndsey had to say, getting nothing but angry at her for even suggesting that he was sick. Robyn had apologised to Emma, explaining that something was wrong with Taron and she had to go. Thankfully Robyn knew once she had completed her obligatory presentation, she wasn’t really needed for the rest of the afternoon and Emma had told her to go, her manager knowing she wouldn’t have been able to stop her work colleague when it came down to anything to do with the Welshman and satisfied she had fulfilled her obligations for the Saturday conference, Emma was happy to let Robyn go.

Robyn wished she had worn her converse and not heels as she sat in the taxi on her way to the hotel where Taron’s current interviews were taking place as she had literally run from the conference centre to a main road in Paris to try and hail a taxi and now her feet were killing her and with her knees shaking with nervous anticipation, it wasn’t helping her poor feet. Neither was the dark navy pinstripe suit she wore and she was feeling warm and overheated in the back of the car, the Spring weather in Paris warm and muggy but the formal wear was necessary for the presentation she had been a part of and she wasn’t taking a detour to get to her hotel first so had to make do with the warm suit and high heels to go and see Taron.

She had followed Taron’s travels and promotion very closely through social media but also by talking with him as often as they could. The time difference when he arrived in Japan, had woken her during the middle of the night twice, Taron apologising profusely when he realised she had been sleeping but Robyn was happy to talk to him, listening to his excited tones which only increased as he finally got his hands on some fried chicken from Korea when his tour moved there.

He was even more elated when they visited China and the movie had received a wonderous reception from the critics and fans, telling tales of more food he had tired, hilarious games he had taken part in and staying up drinking sake and singing karaoke, which he paid dearly for the next day.

He was just as excited when he got to visit Sydney again and had filled Robyn in on all of the antics himself and Matthew got up to, even Colin joining in with the laughter during the trio’s day of interviews, Robyn smiling as she heard the happiness in his voice. Sure, he sounded a little tired but he was always in good form and full of animated chat, not even noticing at one point that once again he had woken Robyn up with the time difference until half way through their call.

She had watched every interview that had surfaced and laughed at his escapade’s with Colin, the older man rolling his eyes as the younger made a few jokes at his expense and frowned when some interviews focused on her relationship with Taron. During one particular table panel in L.A as a question was asked about them, she saw his eyes change colour so quickly and the pure annoyance he was feeling clearly on his face, she thought he was going to storm off the stage. It was a horrendous and inappropriate question he was asked about their sexual involvement and if the CPR was just an act to cover for their long-term hidden personal relationship. With the way the panel had been cut together, Robyn was sure it was Lyndsey or Taron himself who put a halt to the questions immediately, the person who had asked the question completely over stepping their boundaries, as in the next part of the interview, Taron had taken his jacket off whereas before he was still wearing it. Robyn knew Taron was more than willing to talk about their relationship, even telling him to do it herself and not avoid the question but there was a point where even Taron felt under attack with questions he was asked and when he had spoken to her on the phone once they figured the time difference out, she could hear the frustration and irritation in his voice. She managed to get his mind off it by talking about her impromptu flour fight in work with the children, making him giggle and talk about the one they had had together which completely lifted his mood by the time they ended the call.

Naturally the travelling and constant working showed on his face and once the tour had moved to America, she could also hear the strain in his voice at one point ending the phone call she had with him because his voice sounded overworked and extremely tired and it wasn’t long before that over tiredness appeared on his face and although he tried to hide a yawn behind a cup in one interview for Good Morning America, Robyn easily caught it. It was his traveling around Europe during the end of his second week of promoting the movie that his change in mood and persona really and obviously transformed.

It was easy to know which interviews happened on the same day, Robyn using Taron’s clothes to judge which ones happened one after the other and the day he wore his blue cardigan and white t-shirt was the beginning of his complete personality turn around. It was before they had travelled to France, the tour stopping in Germany for a night. The once happy Taron became withdrawn and quiet, the dark circles under his eyes which were expected, now deep crevices on his cheeks making his whole face look hollow and almost sickly looking. Robyn knew Taron still gave his all even when he was thoroughly exhausted and always managed to keep smiling or make a smart remake, a laugh or a joke but he was giving nothing except robotic like answers, leaving a lot of the talking to Matthew as they sat together and he was constantly drinking from a bottle of water. Nothing new for Taron, the endless talking easily dried out his throat but the fact that he wasn’t talking and still milling the water into him was out of character for him. When Robyn had tried to call him, he didn’t answer the phone but text her back explaining he was completely caught up with interviews and promised to call her back when he could, though he never did, another text coming through apologising saying he fell asleep or got caught up with a photoshoot or question and answer session. Even their contact that day had been through text although it was pretty one sided as Taron had yet to answer her back about their dinner that evening. It had been three days since she had actually spoken to him and heard his voice.

So when Lyndsey had contacted her to tell her that Taron was sickest she had ever seen him, to the point where he was almost keeling over with a cough and not eating or drinking, Robyn didn’t hesitate to get into a taxi to go to him.

“He is cranky as fuck, refusing to listen to me and pretending everything is ok and while he acts like it is for the camera, off camera I can see how he is lying to me. He won’t listen to me, won’t stop to take a break, insists on ploughing through but his whole body is held in this stiff position where it looks like if he even moves an inch, he will crumble. I have seen Taron go through a lot, but I am really worried Robyn. He is pale, sweating, breathing hard and his voice is desperately hoarse.” Lyndsey took a quick breath. “There is only one person in this world who Taron will listen too and that is you.”

Robyn could hear the desperation in Lyndsey’s voice and the not so subtle hint that she really needed her to go and see Taron because he was being stubborn and surly and a typical man. When Robyn told Lyndsey that she would be there within the next forty-five minutes, Lyndsey was silent in shock for a few seconds before she thanked her profusely, telling Robyn she would be waiting outside the hotel for her and to ignore the fans outside.

Robyn had never even factored in the possibility of fans or the media waiting outside the hotel and as the taxi pulled up to the hotel, Robyn had no idea how she was going to pick Taron’s publicist from the crowd or even see her over all the heads in front of her. After paying the taxi driver, Robyn got out of the car and stood back allowing it to leave before she figured out her next move. There were security guards positioned at the doors to the hotel and the black cars out the front were obviously the ones laid out for the cast but as far as Robyn was aware this hotel was actually the same one that Taron was staying in that night, Lyndsey taking away some travelling for him by booking him into the same hotel where the interviews were taking place, even though it might not be the most luxurious one, it gave him more time to rest up after a full day of press.

As Robyn stood behind the crowd, she took a breath and walked around to the left edge of the footpath and gathering of people, hoping to find a gap that she could get through so she could try and get a glimpse of Lyndsey but she was having no luck and as she manoeuvred through the fans and group standing outside the hotel, even though she didn’t speak French, she could understand the points and stares that were coming her way and was starting to feeling slightly uncomfortable at being noticed, really feeling at a loss of not seeing Lyndsey immediately and becoming more desperate to get to Taron. She was normally comforted by his hand when she was in a crowd like this, especially a crowd that was becoming more aware of what she looked like and who she was and the fact that she was standing there in the open made her heart flutter a little with nerves and she could definitely hear her name echo through the all the people standing around her. It was only when she blinked as a flash went off that she realised not only was the assembly of people filled with fans but with some press and media and another blinding flash went off in her direction. That flutter soon became a harder thump and she could feel herself getting uneasy as more people started to recognise her and whispered her name, more photo’s being taken of her as she stood frozen on the footpath.

She jumped a little as her phone rang. She pulled it from her large handbag and was glad to see it was Lyndsey.

“Hey I am outside.”

“Me too. I can’t see you.” Taron’s publicist still sounded distressed; her words spoken fast.

“I am behind the crowd.”

“Come around to the right side of the fans and media and I will get you through.”

Robyn listened to the end call tone and with Lyndsey ending the call so quickly, Robyn was beginning to fret now too. Lyndsey always appeared with a calm and collected persona, her focus on her job but now she sounded completely frazzled. Robyn made herself walk calmly around to the right side of the crowd again and managed to squeeze herself in through the people, ignoring the looks of animosity she was receiving from the young girls and the whispered of French around her, standing right in front of the barrier that blocked everyone from the hotel entrance.

“Robyn! There you are!” She looked up to see Lyndsey practically running towards her with a security guard on her heels.

He got the crowd to move back quickly, speaking rapid French and once there was enough room, opened the barrier to let Robyn in, Lyndsey grabbing her hand and pulling her hard away from the crowd and towards the hotel, without even a hello or hug as she normally greeted Robyn with. Even with her back turned to the throng of media and press, Robyn could see the flare from a camera flash roll over her and hated that her picture was being taken in such an underhand way but as Lyndsey had a very tight grip on her hand she didn’t really have a lot of time to think about it too much, especially when Lyndsey started to speak in hurried words to her.

“I have never seen him like this. Sure, I have seen him run down and ill. Always comes with the promotion but he is just so withdrawn into himself, almost forcing himself to hold in how shit he feels. I couldn’t tell you the last time he ate something and in-between interviews, his whole body is completely consumed by this horrible cough. He won’t listen to me and actually bit my head off this morning when I told him he needed to skip today and rest up but he was having none of it.”

Lyndsey was still pulling on Robyn’s hand as she spoke and Robyn was finding it hard to keep up with the pace, her heels clip clopping loudly as they rushed in through the doors of the hotel, past the reception and towards the lifts.

“Ok Lyndsey, slow down.”

“He is really sick Robyn and I am so worried about him.”

“I know that but you need to take a breath for a second. You are starting to panic.”

“He won’t let me help him. Taron always lets me help him. Always.”

Robyn turned to face the older lady and placed her hands on her shoulders, seeing in her eyes the concern as clear as day. “And you know how stubborn he can be especially when it comes to his work and please take a breath for me.” When Lyndsey gave her an exasperated sigh, Robyn frowned. “Do it.” She said a bit more sternly, glad to feel her shoulders rise under her hands. “One more.” Robyn insisted and when the lift doors opened, Lyndsey had calmed down considerably.

“Sorry.” Said Lyndsey as they stepped into the lift and she pushed four on the keypad.

“You don’t have to apologise.” Robyn moved to stand beside her in the lift. “I know how much you care about him, so naturally when he acts out of character you are going to worry about him.”

“He normally listens to me.”

“What about Matthew?”

“No luck either. Got the same very angry and irate answers back. I am hoping maybe you can get through to him. You don’t know how glad I am that you were able to come, that you are here at the same time as he is. You were ok to leave work?”

“Yeah it is fine. I was finished my presentation so I could leave.”

Once the doors of the lift opened, they were met with another three security guards but as Lyndsey flashed her pass their way, the two were let through and Robyn followed the publicist down the carpeted hallway following the signs for conference room four.

“They are in the middle of an interview but due a break afterwards for some food before they continue again.”

“How long has he been working today?”

“Since six this morning.”

“Six this morning?” Exclaimed Robyn. “It’s nearly five in the afternoon. Please tell me it’s not been constant!”

“Mostly. They had an early morning TV show followed by interviews, then a photoshoot for a magazine and then himself and Matthew have been here since eleven going through the French press one by one. There are others here from other European countries too so it is pretty full on for him.”

“What time is he due to finish?”

“It should be seven but everything is running behind because some of the interviewers needed help with translation and they are taking up extra time.”

“Did he sleep last night?”

“My gut feeling is no but of course he told he me did.”

“Of course he did.”

Lyndsey stopped outside a pair of double doors, another security guard standing outside on watch. “She is with me.” Once they were through the door, Lyndsey gestured to Robyn to keep quiet and they walked to a screen behind which they could stand to watch Taron and Matthew who were sitting in the middle of an interview.

Even though Robyn knew she had to keep a low profile and not be seen, she still side stepped a little so she could see him better and immediately her heart dropped out of her stomach. It was the worst she had ever seen Taron look and that was including the first time she met him. He looked thoroughly exhausted, his face completely miserable even though he was trying to hide it with the fakest smile she had ever seen on his lips and the laugh he gave was so forced, it made Robyn cringe. She had never heard him laugh like that before and as he lifted the bottle from between his legs to take a sip of water it was either to avoid answering the question that was asked or as Lyndsey had said, to hold in the cough that was desperate to leave his body and his shoulders shook with the struggle of keeping the cough in. She could also see how Lyndsay had explained how he was holding himself too and Taron sat so straight in the chair, it looked so unnatural and uncomfortable. After holding the bottle to his lips but obviously not drinking, Taron eventually took his turn to answer the question, his voice quiet and Robyn could hear the scratchiness with which he spoke and how gravelly he sounded.

“See what I mean?” Lyndsey whispered to her. “Not himself at all.”

Robyn nodded. “But is doing a very good job of trying not to show how shit he actually feels.” Her eyes were glued to Taron. She knew the tour was going to be tiring on him but she couldn’t get over how wretched he looked, incredible black rings under his eyes, eyes which normally had a little sparkle, were dull and lifeless and she could see the effort it took him to answer an easy question, the short breathes he took to counter the cough he was covering. His cheeks were not the rosy red she loved to see when he was slightly embarrassed but more red raw from a high temperature which she was sure he had as along with his red face, there was a clear and obvious sheen of perspiration of his skin. Robyn wasn’t surprised to see the heat on his skin as he was dressed in a leather jacket, jumper and she could also see the collar of a shirt peeking through.

“How long until they are finished?” Robyn turned to Lyndsey.

“About another five minutes or so.”

“Anyway I can interrupt it and stop it?”

Lyndsey smiled sadly. “Wish you could and would love to let you but it’s best we let them finish. He is already going to be mad at me for ringing you to come over.”

“Let him be mad. I can handle him.”

“And that is why I knew I could call you. He needs you Robyn. He will always need you.”

Robyn didn’t answer but turned back to Taron and just wanted to walk over and hug him tightly against her until he gave in and accepted that he was quite obviously ill, just as Robyn predicted he was going to get back on St Patrick’s Day and it hurt her so much that he felt he had to hide how crappy he felt and put up a front for work, to keep working and not even attempt to take a break, to give himself a break, only working himself past the point of exhaustion and pure illness putting his body completely to test.

As Taron sat in the chair half listening to the questions he was being asked by an interviewer from somewhere in Europe, he couldn’t quite remember where, he shivered violently. He had been feeling cold all morning and even after he had pulled on his jacket, he was still frozen. He had been desperate for a coffee to try and not only wake himself up but warm his body up but he couldn’t stomach it or even attempt to swallow it. His throat felt like it was covered in razor blades and every swallow was painful. He had been feeling a bit rough since Wednesday and he woke up with a headache and scratchy throat and although he had been eating paracetamol to try and lift his cold, it hadn’t been helping and now he felt ten times worse, his whole body filled with aches and pains and what was making everything hurt even more was the horrible chesty cough he had been cursed with. He hadn’t slept a wink the night before, up most of the time coughing uncontrollably and every time he lay his head down on the pillow to try and sleep, his whole chest seized up once more and he had to physically get out of the bed and stand up, hoping it would help ease his cough but it never did and at one point he was holding onto the desk in the room as he tried to catch his breath, his whole body convulsing painfully. In the end he had to sit up in the bed and sit up straight and it was uncomfortable for sleeping. During the day he had tried his best to hide the cough, swallowing it down or making an excuse to go to the bathroom where he hid in the cubicle until his fit of coughing was done but it left a sting in his ribs and any deep breathe only brought the cough on so he did his best to avoid any movement that would rustle his upper body, keeping his posture held tight and firm.

He knew he had been a rotten mood since yesterday and felt awful for taking his sulkily temperament out on Lyndsey but the tour was so important to him even more so because the filming had to be halted due to what had happened to him in Florida in the first place and he wasn’t going to miss any interviews because of a small cold. Lyndsey had been on his case since that morning about taking the day off and staying in bed but he couldn’t do that. He had too many responsibilities to follow through with and after he had taken more pain killers, which scraped and burned his throat horribly, he put on a brave face and used his best acting skills to hide how rotten he was truly feeling.

He had such an amazing time on his promotional tour before he started to feel sick and had enjoyed every moment, even the travelling which would normally bring him down when he was over tired and severely jet-lagged didn’t bother him as before. He was putting it down to the fact that every day, even if he got the time difference wrong, he spoke to Robyn and filled her in on the excitement of the day or his annoyance at the nerve of some of the interviewers asking certain questions about their relationship, really overstepping their privacy boundaries. He had laughed and joked and been as proud as punch promoting his new movie, both himself and Matthew bouncing off each other as they sat on early morning TV shows and Q&A sessions and panels and the whole tour had been absolutely perfect.

That was until he started to feel absolutely shit and the more he sat on the chair under the heat of the lights which normally made him sweat, he felt bitterly cold and found it more difficult to concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing as he worked on repressing the need to cough.

“What would you do Taron?”

He had been focused on trying to rub some heat into his frozen hands, he missed the question asked to him and looked up.

“Sorry?”

“If you were faced with the same situation liked Eggsy where he had to shoot his dog? Do you think you could do it?”

While Taron’s mind cursed the question, he forced himself to smile and try to be good natured with his answer. “Definitely not but if it was a life or death situation or to save a family member or a friend, then I guess I would.”

“Even Robyn’s?”

“Sorry?” Taron couldn’t help the edge to his voice, his pounding head and pain behind his eyes not helping him even try to act professional as her name was mentioned.

“If Robyn’s life was in danger, would you shoot the dog.”

“What kind of a stupid fucking question is that?” He spat angrily, taking both Matthew and the interviewer by surprise. “What do you think? She saved my life but I would give up hers for a dogs? Fucking bollocks.”

“And that is time on the interview.” Lyndsey walked over to stand in front of Taron. As soon as she heard the complete change in Taron’s voice, she knew he had had enough of the interview and needed to see a friendly face in the form of Robyn, Lyndsey praying the Irish woman could help him see sense. “You did get the little memo beforehand about the questions about Robyn.” She said to the interviewer. “And your time is actually up. Thank you very much.” Lyndsey turned to look at Taron and he was scowling at her. “Get that look from your face Taron. I know you feel like shit but there is no need for the attitude you are giving me.”

“I am fine.” Taron retorted, his blocked nose making it hard for him to fully pronounce the word ‘fine’. “And if they are going to talk about Robyn like that, I am going to react.”

“First off Taron, you are not fine and secondly you cannot get up on your high horse and go off on one whenever her name is mentioned. You know this.”

“Fuck off Lyndsey. I am fine. Just need some air from all of this shit.”

“Taron!” Robyn had been listening behind the screen and nodded to Lyndsey when she walked away to quickly to put an end to the interview. Inside her heart had soared to hear him talk so protectively about her even though she knew she probably should have been mad at him for his reaction and how he responded to the question but when she heard his angry words to Lyndsey, she wouldn’t have him treat his publicist in such a way and Robyn being Robyn couldn’t help herself and had to interfere, marching around the screen and over to where he was sitting, standing right in front of him. She immediately saw the surprise look in his tired and blood shot eyes, his features changing quicker than a finger click from infuriated to disbelief. “You do not talk to Lyndsey like that.”

Everyone in the room froze, when the young woman walked with purpose right onto the make-shift interview set up and stood in front of the lead actor with her hands on her hips, a definite scowl on her face and not only because of her sudden appearance but because they knew who she was.

“Robyn!” She could hear the pain it took him to exclaim her name and how gruff it sounded, his voice completely losing its tone before he had finished speaking.

Taron’s whole face switched from anger to surprise to relief as Robyn stood in front of him, dressed in another stunning fitted pants suit and he suddenly forgot what he was angry for but seeing the look of disappointment on her face, his head hung to his chest, remembering how he had spoken to Lyndsey feeling completely ashamed with himself. As he let his body flop a little back in the chair, he wasn’t holding himself as he had been and the strength at which he had been using to cover the cough left him and his whole body crumbled forward with fatigue as he was hit with a severe and brutal fit of a burning cough from his chest and as he over balanced on his chair, finally fully giving into how he truly felt, he expected to hit the floor but instead a strong pair of arms caught his left arm while a very familiar pair went to his shoulders to help keep him upright.

Robyn knew her sudden presence had the people in the conference room talking to each other in quiet French but when she dropped to her knees to catch Taron before he fell forward off the chair, she had definitely heard the gasp from those around her, glad Matthew had also reacted quickly grabbing Taron’s left arm to keep him upright too.

“I’m sorry.” Taron spluttered through painful spasms of coughing. “Lyndsey I am so sorry.”

“Shhh don’t talk.” Robyn gave his shoulders a slight rub, feeling them violently shake under her hands as he coughed. She thanked Matthew as he helped to make sure Taron was sitting by himself and she knelt up, in-between Taron’s legs putting her right hand straight onto his forehead and immediately became more concerned than she already was. As she predicted he had a temperature and as she moved her hand around to the back of his neck, Taron’s skin was on fire with an obvious fever and not only was his skin over heated, it was definitely covered in a layer of perspiration and Robyn wasn’t surprised as he was dressed in more layers of clothes than she had ever seen him wear.

“Robyn?” Lyndsey came to hunch down beside her, so glad that Taron already seemed to be admitting defeat to how he was feeling, immediately letting Robyn in to help him but she saw the look of worry increase on her face.

“I need help to get this jacket off him.” She answered moving her hand from his neck and as she went to slide the leather off his shoulders, Taron’s whole body was stricken with another horrible wave of coughing and within seconds, his face had turned red and Robyn could see the pain in his shattered facial features. “Shh Taron shh.” Instead of trying to take his jacket off, Robyn wrapped her arms around his body and pulled him to her, taking all of his weight as he slumped against her, his arms by his side, as she gently rubbed his back round and round in soothing circles. “Shh Taron.”

Matthew had stood up and was standing behind Robyn, ready to catch her in-case she lost her balance as she held Taron but she looked extremely steady on her knees, so he moved to stand beside Lyndsey.

“She came.” He said to the woman who stood with her eyes glued to Taron and Robyn. Lyndsey had told Matthew in-between their interviews that she as going to call Robyn and although he couldn’t say he was surprised to see her, the woman having flown to New York for Taron, he was definitely relieved. He had watched Taron suffer in silence over the last three days and though had tried to talk to the younger man and help him, he was being his usual stubborn self and refusing to listen. Thankfully there was one person, apart from his mother, who Taron listened too and she was currently holding him tight in her arms, whispering to him.

“Of course she did.” Lyndsey confirmed. “She would do anything for him and I knew as soon as he saw her, he would do this.” Lyndsey didn’t really know what to do as she looked at the two in front of her, if she should go and help Robyn but with the two locked in a tight embrace, more so Robyn holding Taron, she didn’t want to move them until Robyn was ready to.

They both watched as Taron finally let go of everything he had been holding in and he sounded terrible, even worse than Lyndsey had imagined. She had never known Taron to be so secretive about his health before, always being open with her if he had a headache or needed an extra shot of expresso to keep him awake because he had slept badly the night before but for some reason he felt the need to keep it to himself how sick he was really was and as she watched Robyn whisper to him, Lyndsey was so thankful for the Irish women who held Taron’s heart in her hands.

Taron felt like he was dreaming and found it so hard to believe that his wonderful Robyn was in front of him. He literally collapsed into her arms and had nothing but trust for her to catch him and she did and he clung to Robyn, his head on her shoulder and he couldn’t even bury his face in his usual comforting spot on her neck as he was consumed by the pain in his chest and ribs from coughing and he was so caught up in how dizzy and poorly he felt that he hadn’t even properly processed how she was in front of him holding him but there she was, rubbing his back with one hand, her other at the base of his neck.

Robyn could feel her legs shaking as she took all of Taron’s weight but she didn’t dare let him go or ask him to move. As he leant against her she could feel how the horrendous cough travelled through his whole body and not only feel it but hear it too and the rattle in his chest was worrying to her, especially at how long it took for the current bout of coughing to end. Once he had caught his breath, she felt him almost throw his face into her neck and she could feel the laboured gasps for air he made against her skin. She moved her right hand into his hair and cupped the back of his head. “Don’t take deep breathes Taron. Just little shallower ones. Too deep and you will cough all over again.”

Taron always trusted Robyn and followed her advice, concentrated on doing the opposite of what he was used too when he was feeling panicky or his anxiety rise and the quick little intakes of air helped him a lot. As he closed his eyes and breathed Robyn in, he felt her hands move from the outside of his jacket and right under his clothes, her hands on the bare skin of his lower back above the waistband of his jeans and belt and the cold of her hands felt so wonderful on his skin and he moaned when she took them away.

“I need to get you out of this coat.” Robyn pushed her hands up and under his clothes as far as she could and once on his bare skin was met with a little dribble of sweat that dripped down his spine and his body was over heated and temperature ridden as it fought whatever bacterial virus it had picked up.

“I am freezing.” He whispered hoarsely into her neck.

“You have a temperature Taron so while you feel cold, your body is on fire. I need to get some of these layers off.”

Robyn looked to Lyndsey who was standing to her left and nodded with her head, glad that Lyndsey understood that she needed some help. Together, with Matthew helping too, they managed to slide Taron’s jacket down his shoulders and off his body, Robyn feeling a shiver run through him as he still leant against her.

“And jumper. Hun, I am going to have to get you to sit back on the chair.”

Taron moaned in protest at being moved but with no energy at the moment, he couldn’t object as he felt his body being gently moved back in the seat. He looked up to see Lyndsey beside him and he reached over to grab her hand. “I am sorry.” He croaked.

“You can make it up to me when you are not a pathetic sweaty mess and I can say I told you so.” Lyndsey gave his hand a squeeze. “You are bloody lucky to have Robyn in your life and I am glad you listen to her. You are never to let yourself feel this ill again Taron, do you hear me? This could have been sorted three days ago if you had of just been honest with me. You are so much more important to me rather than the bloody promotion and your health comes first before anything.”

With a pitiful nod, Taron brought his hands to cover his mouth as he took another fit of coughing and as his cheeks turned red once more, Robyn could feel his friends starting to panic. Without a doubt, Taron was very ill but he didn’t need to see those around him with worried faces.

“Lyndsey does he have a spare t-shirt or shirt?” Robyn was glad to see her nod. “Can you get it for me please.” Once Lyndsey had walked back behind the screen, she turned to Matthew. “Any cold water around?”

“Cold bottles ok?”

“Perfect.”

Once Robyn was sure Lyndsey and Matthew were distracted for a few minutes, she turned her attention back to Taron who was sitting slightly hunched forward with his eyes squinted closed. Now that he was finally given a break from coughing, she could hear once more how laboured his breathing was and the raspy rattle that was coming from his chest.

“You are a disaster,” She said to him, smiling slightly as he managed the tiniest of nods. “Do you know how mad I am at you?” He nodded again. “Is this why you haven’t actually called me since Thursday?” Another miserable nod came her way. Robyn shook her head. “Can I take this jumper off now?” Taking his next nod as permission, Robyn reached forward and holding the bottom of his jumper started to pull it up his body. “Arms up.” She instructed him, Taron listening to her and lifted his arms up above his head, giving Robyn the space she needed to get the jumper off him. Throwing it to the side, she couldn’t help the sigh that came from her lips. “And the shirt too.” He wore a light blue shirt under his jumper and Robyn deftly opened the buttons and pulled it down his arms and threw it to the side with the rest of his clothes. “Jesus Christ Taron. I am fit to kill you.” Robyn’s eyes glanced over his white t-shirt, sighing at the wet patches from where he had been sweating in his layers. She brought her hands to his face and once her hands touched his cheeks, he immediately leaned into them. “I am glad your mother can’t see you like this.”

Taron groaned, cringing as another cough filled his lungs, his throat on fire, his head feeling like it was going to burst. He could feel his body being guided into Robyn’s again and he couldn’t help but lean against her once more, relishing in the coolness of her neck against his right warm cheek but he shivered, feeling cold in the large conference room. He could feel Robyn’s hands running up and down his back and he felt too unwell to even care that the back of his t-shirt was soaked with perspiration or to even feel embarrassed when her fingers creeped under his top and ran in such delicate circles down his spine. He was exhausted in every possible way and his body was making it very clear that he had taken hiding how ill he was too far.

“Here Robyn.”

Matthew walked back over with two cold bottles of water.

“Thanks so much. You can just leave them on the ground beside me.”

“Here is a clean shirt for him too.” Lyndsey knelt beside Robyn with a fresh crisp black shirt in her hands. “What can I do for you.”

“I would really like to try and cool him down a bit. He is running a desperately high temperature.”

Lyndsey looked to her. “You can tell that just by holding him?”

Robyn smiled a little. “Kinda but if you feel his forehead, the back of his neck and then feel your own you will feel the difference immediately.” When Lyndsey hesitated, Robyn encouraged her by taking her hand and guiding it to the back of Taron’s neck, both Taron and Lyndsey reacting to the difference in temperature that they felt. “Now feel the back of my neck.” Robyn bent her head forwards a little and with her hair twisted up in a plait, Lyndsey had easy access to her skin.

“Jesus Taron is so hot.”

“I knew you always had a thing for me.”

It was a laughter that broke up some of the tense atmosphere around them but unfortunately the laughter turned silent as Taron was consumed by another round of coughing, moving completely away from Robyn and back into the chair as he brought one hand to his ribs and one to his mouth. He could feel Robyn’s hands on his knees which he was very thankful for.

“Robyn what can we do for you?” Asked Matthew.

“He really needs a doctor.” Robyn summarised quickly.

“No.” Taron spoke through a rough cough.

“Taron…” Warned Robyn.

“No doctor. I will be ok. Just need to…” He never got to finish his sentence and bent over with his head in his hands as a sharp pain pricked him behind his eyes and once again, he was catching his breath, rasping sounds coming from his chest. “No.” He said as firmly as he could manage. “I just need to sleep it off.”

The three stared at him before Lyndsey and Matthew turned to Robyn. In her heart, she knew he needed to see a doctor, the intensity of the cough she was sure would only be helped with an antibiotic but if Taron was already refusing to even talk about going to see a doctor, Robyn wasn’t going to waste time to convince him, Taron needing to accept that fact for himself.

“Right ok then well let’s get this t-shirt off.” Robyn had lifted her hands to the hem of his top but stalled and looked around the room to the crowd who had gathered around them. She hadn’t really noticed them before but now as she went to physically strip Taron, she could feel every pair of eyes staring at them. “Any chance we can have the room to ourselves for ten or fifteen minutes? Just to make a start on cooling him down? He doesn’t need a crowd around him.”

Lyndsey got to her feet and walked straight over to the event managers to have a quick word, while Matthew knelt beside Robyn, as Taron sat back in the chair again, taking some shallow breathes with his eyes closed.

“Do you have some magic or something? Maybe some fairy dust from the leprechauns? Can I borrow some for when we film the new movie?”

Robyn looked to him. “Magic leprechaun dust?” She questioned, reaching forward to hold Taron’s hands in hers. “What on earth are you on about?”

“You have this way about you when it comes to Taron, I am wondering if you give him something when he goes to visit you.”

“I do have a fairy fort in my back garden so I have access to fairy dust and magic mushrooms whenever I want. I slip some into the cookies I bake for Taron when he comes to see me.”

Robyn grinned when she saw confusion cross Matthew’s face and feeling a squeeze on her hands, turned to look at Taron who had a small smile on his too.

“Really?”

“Sure Matthew.” Robyn shook her head. “Fairy dust in the cookies,” She turned back to Taron as he cleared his throat a few times, watching as his eyes creased at the side. “Can you take a drink for me?” She asked him, frowning as he shook his head a little. “If you are going to refuse to drink anything for me, this is not going to work and I will be calling for an ambulance, never mind a doctor.”

Taron didn’t even need to look at Robyn to know how serious she was about calling the ambulance. “My throat is so sore.” He winced.

Robyn let go of his hands and placing her thumbs on his jaw, moved her fingers to his neck, feeling the swollen glands of an obvious sore throat. “Of course it is and yet you still won’t go and see a doctor.” Robyn picked up one of the bottles of water Matthew had brought her. “Small sips. You don’t take any water in; you end up in hospital.”

Reluctantly, Taron took the bottle from her which she had opened for him and bringing it to his lips, took the smallest of sips, his throat painfully dry.

“Is there anything other than water around?” Robyn asked, knowing the water probably tasted horrible to Taron at the moment. “Anything like a Lucozade?”

“I think they have something like that, hold on.”

While Matthew stood up and walked over to the refreshment table, Robyn took the bottle of water from Taron, much to his delight and as she screwed the lid back on, Lyndsey walked over.

“We have twenty minutes to ourselves. They are asking when the interviews are going to continue.” She spat shaking her head. “Absolute nerve of them.”

“And you did tell them they aren’t right?”

“I told them as politely as I could that these interviews would not be going ahead with Taron, today or tomorrow.”

“What?” Croaked Taron. “Lyndsey no. I have to do them. I need to promote the movie. Especially after the rush to get it finished on time.” The more Taron spoke, the more awful he sounded and Robyn could hear the ache in his voice. “I will change my shirt and continue on.”

Robyn knelt back on her heels, staring at him. “Are you actually serious?” She questioned him.

“What?” He asked, looking to her, wide troubled eyes looking back at him.

The extreme tiredness was so evident on his face and his scowl made it look so much worse. “You want to sit through another five hours of interviews when you feel like complete and utter shit, can barely talk, are crippled with a horrendous cough and have a banging headache?”

“The movie needs to be promoted.” He insisted, trying to hold in another cough that wrecked his chest.

“Taron you’re about this close to collapsing on the floor from exhaustion and how ill you are.”

“I have managed so far today without anybody’s help. I can keep going.” He insisted.

“I give up.” Robyn stood up.

“Robyn?” Taron asked, his voice breaking as he said her name.

“You know I love you and will always support you, but not this. I can’t watch you sit here hunched over in agony, barely able to drink anything or talk. You are sick Taron and incredibly sick with a stupidly high temperature that could easily become very serious but if you want to put your body through more interviews and answering questions by all means go ahead and do it, but I won’t stand or sit here and watch you do it.” With a quick turn, Robyn walked away from him and headed back towards the door she came through with Lyndsey.

“Robyn!” Taron got to his feet and though he was very shaky as he stood, walked after her as she strolled away from him, pushing past Matthew and Lyndsey who tried to stop him. “Please don’t go. Not again.” He took to a quick jog, every movement hurting him. He caught up with her and grabbed her hand. “You can’t leave me, not like this.” He coughed.

Robyn shook his hand away. “When you are finished the interviews, call me and I will come back.” Robyn picked up her bag from where she had left it on the floor. “I am going to sit downstairs in the bar until you are done.”

“You are serious about leaving me again.” Taron rasped.

“You seriously want to sit through another five hours of this feeling like you do?” Robyn turned sharply to him and gestured to the set up for the interview. He didn’t answer her, his eyes going to the floor. “I know how much this movie means to you and I understand how much pressure you felt for this promotion, how important it was for you to get it perfect. The filming was halted because of Florida but something happened that you had no control over and yet you feel so guilty over that and getting through these three weeks and doing it thoroughly and properly is everything to you at the moment.” Robyn took his hands. “I understand it Taron but it doesn’t mean that I can watch you do it, not when you are this sick and ill and I care about you way too much to watch you suffer through it. Another five hours of this and I guarantee that you will be in a hospital bed, on an IV line. You know where I will be if you change your mind.”

Robyn let go of his hands and turned on her heels away from him. It was a drastic and very unfair move to make on him but her reaction needed to be severe for Taron to see that she was deadly serious about walking away from him when he needed her. She had her hand on the door ready to push it open when he called for her.

“Robyn please.”

It was the hopeless and grave voice with the deep broken tone she had expected to hear and she quickly turned around to face him and dropped her bag onto the floor, her arms out to catch him as he stepped over to her and crippled over from tiredness. This time Robyn wasn’t able to keep herself and Taron standing and she didn’t know how she managed but eased the two of them to the floor, Taron’s face buried under her chin as they sat in a ball together on the floor, Taron’s hands gripping her arm tight.

“Don’t leave me.” He cried unhappily as he dug his face into her shoulder.

“I am not going anywhere.” She assured him as she stroked his left cheek. “Except to get you to bed.”

It was a tight cuddle, one that Taron needed desperately and as his body was crippled with another cough, Robyn laid her cheek on his head, feeling Matthew and Lyndsey stand close by waiting and watching for what was going to happen next. Robyn continued to soothe Taron with hushed words and feather light caresses on his cheek as he held her tightly. It was an awkward and uncomfortable position for both as Robyn knelt and Taron was half sitting and half kneeling against her and once Taron caught his breath, Robyn nodded to his director and publicist and the three got the exhausted Welshman to his feet and back onto the chair.

“Reverse phycology at its best.” Robyn explained to his publicist and director as they questioned her moves and words. “Works like a charm.” She pulled at the hem of his t-shirt and as Taron lifted his arms above his head, finally got the sweat ridden piece of cotton off him.

“Always were good at it.” Taron whispered as he shivered, now in just his jeans, goosebumps covering his upper body. “I am sorry and you are right. I need to go to bed.”

“And you had better remember that and no need to say sorry again. Let me cool you down a bit first before we move you to your room.” Robyn slipped off her own suit jacket and placed it on the ground beside her. She picked up one of the cold bottles of water and poured it over his white t-shirt, squeezing the excess water out so it dribbled onto her jacket and not all over the floor. Once she was satisfied with her home-made cold compress, she knelt up between Taron’s legs. “This is going to be cold Taron but it will immediately help to get this temperature down.”

“You mean how hot I am?” He asked hoarsely.

Robyn grinned at his attempt to smile. “We don’t need to fix that, just your body temperature.” She placed her left hand on his right cheek and placed the folded t-shirt on his forehead, seeing Taron close his eyes at the initial touch, feeling the shiver that ran through him. She moved the t-shirt down to his right cheek and then around to the back of his neck, Taron’s chin moving to his chest to give Robyn more space to cool him down. “You ok?”

“Cold.” He answered.

“Not hot anymore?” Robyn joked.

Taron’s slight laugh turned into a cough and his hands went to his chest and ribs. “Don’t make me laugh. It aches.” He closed his eyes as Robyn moved his wet t-shirt down his back and up to his neck once more before she took the t-shirt way from him. He then lifted his head and looked at her, Robyn’s focus completely on wetting his top again. She was wearing a light blue blouse with a V-neck and if he didn’t feel so rough and rotten, he knew he would be feeling something other than tired and ill. As she knelt in between his legs, once again looking after him, he couldn’t quite believe that she was there for him when he needed her the most and hated her way of making him see that he couldn’t carry on with the interviews and desperately needed to lay down and rest but she did it so well and he knew it was her way of showing she cared. His eyes still did a quite roam over her and his heart jumped as it always did, but he moment of joy was soon overshadowed by his cough and he brought both his hands to mouth. He felt Robyn’s wet hands on his shoulders and as always, he felt comforted by her touch.

“Just let me go over you once more and then we can get you settled in your room.”

Taron wished he had the energy to return a smart comment to her and his chin went back to his chest as she placed the wet t-shirt on the back of his neck again.

“Robyn what do you need?” Asked Lyndsey. Herself and Matthew had been keeping quiet, just watching Robyn look after their friend. Of course, they had heard the stories from Taron about Robyn, about her actions in Florida but to see it first hand, both gave each other a knowing look. There was definitely more than friendship between the two. Lyndsey walked over and crouched beside the Irish woman. “I can make a run to a pharmacy for you.”

“Please.” Robyn gently pushed on Taron’s shoulders, getting him to sit back against the chair and moved the cold compress to his forehead. “Paracetamol and cough bottle for a chesty dry cough and lots of tissues and where the nearest doctor is.”

“No doctors.” Taron murmured.

“And where the nearest doctor is and if they do call outs on the weekend.”

“No doctors.” Taron repeated though he knew he was being ignored as his publicist and best friend spoke in hushed whispers. Through tired eyes, he saw Lyndsey walk away from them.

“I got that drink for you too Robyn.” Matthew now crouched beside her.

“Perfect.” Robyn thanked him. “Not that he is going to drink it.”

Taking the wet t-shirt from his head, Robyn threw it to the side and picked up the black shirt Lyndsey had left on Matthew’s chair for him. She draped it over his shoulders and helped Taron to get his arms in. Once the material was fixed on his frame, she buttoned it for him.

“Best we just get him to his room.” Robyn said to Matthew. “What floor is he on?”

“Seventh.”

Robyn groaned. “Of course, he would be.” She looked at Taron as he sat with his eyes closed, taking short breathes through his open lips. “And how many people would we meet along the way?” She asked herself. “You have a hat?”

Taron shook his head before he started to cough again, the throbbing behind his eyes increasing with each painful cough.

“Ok shh Taron.” Robyn placed her hands on his cheeks, feeling the heat on his skin and left them there until he had stopped coughing. “You poor chicken.” She said quietly. “Really putting yourself through hell.” She turned to look at his director. “Would you help me get him back to his room?”

“Of course.”

Robyn left Taron to grab her handbag and she stuffed her suit jacket and Taron’s clothes into it, actually slipping his leather jacket on herself. “Maybe this is something else I can add to my wardrobe.” She joked but when once again Taron didn’t take to laugh, she knew he was definitely feeling very unwell. She dropped in the bottle of Lucozade type sports drink that Matthew had given her into her bag too, needing something other than water for Taron to drink. “Anything else belonging to you around here?” She asked Taron, who was just sitting in the chair sad and completely deflated.

“No my phone is in my pocket.”

“Ok so let’s go then.”

Robyn looked to Matthew and they nodded to each other and taking an arm each, got Taron to his feet, who was very glad to have the support either side of him, even happier when Robyn slipped her arm around his waist, her grip on him tight and firm. He felt himself leaning more into her than Matthew and once again was so thankful for her in more ways that he could describe.

@fuseburner​ @hitmeonmytspot​ @primaba11erina​ @turkish276​

[asphalt-cocktail]

For the Sake of Content- Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Medici Ivory and Coral Clay

Summary: After walking in on your long-term boyfriend, Harrison, cheating on you and then losing your job the following day; your find yourself broke, jobless, and single for the first time in a long while. In order to make ends meet, your best friend since college, Freddie, suggests you start soliciting explicit photos of yourself, not only to help boost your confidence but to help pay the rent for his band mate’s apartment you just moved into.

A/N: Hey cuties! Back at it again with another chapter! Thank you for your patience! I honestly am so thrilled with all of the lovely comments and likes/reblogs I have been getting. I even go through and read the tags because i crave validation. But for real though, they are all seriously so sweet and I love all of the support and want to thank you all for it! I do have some angst planned for future chapters though, got to make some young discourse to keep thing spicy, but don’t worry, I want to keep this story light and funny so it wont be anything too bad! also PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DM me if I have missed your tag! I feel like I am missing some people in my tag reblogs.

Pairing: Roger Taylor x F!Reader

Warnings: Language, mentions of sex work, smut, fluff, some friendly banter between roger and reader, consensual recording, not proof read

Word Count: 3k 

18+ if you are a minor do NOT interact with this post. This is fictitious content and I own nothing.

Freddie’s dark brown eyes practically gawked at you, “You what!” He grinned. Your face flushed and you swirled around your bottomless mimosa, “I knew you would start doing live streams,” He eagerly stabbed his fork into the yolk of his eggs Benedict, cracking it and causing the yellow liquid to ooze down the sides of the biscuit, “I knew you would; how are your clients? Do you have regulars? Do they ask you to do anything- kinky?”

As Freddie rambled on, your eyes zoned in on his egg yolk, the viscous liquid slowly oozing out of the broken egg and falling down his plate. Should you tell Freddie about Roger? No you couldn’t, that would bring on another series of questions you were definitely not prepared to answer no matter how many bottomless mimosas you had at your biweekly Sunday brunch.

“[Y/N]” Freddie spoke, his tone somewhat sharp, “Are you paying attention? I want to know the details.” The curious glint in his eyes hadn’t dampened.

You gave him a shy smile, “Yeah, I have a few regulars, they’re all nice, some are a little creepy, but I never show my face,” Well, that was a lie. Tonight, was going to be the first night you showed your face on camera and was also the first night you and Roger would film together.

The two of you hadn’t had anything special planned, you were going to change your tips around to reflect different actions people could pay for. It was bound to be fun, right?

You couldn’t shake the nervous jitters from your mind even after your brunch with Freddie and his probing questions. You loved him dearly, but he was often too nosey for his own good. He wouldn’t dare tell a soul the information he knew, but it was as though his very being needed the substance to survive. His head was full of knowledge and he just soaked it up like a delicate sea sponge in an ocean of information.

When you returned to your apartment, you were surprised to see the furniture moved around and a large tarp covering the floor closest to the walls in the living room, “Uh, Roger?” you called out, hanging your keys on the shelf, surely you didn’t drink that much… right?

You closed your eyes for a few long seconds and reopened them, yup, this was real all right, “Roger!” You called louder, “What’s up with the living room?” You kicked your shoes off and walked further into your home before you stopped in the kitchen.

Surprisingly enough, Roger was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and an old faded tee shirt; it was sloppy even for your low standards. Roger looked up at you from his bowl of pasts, mid bite, “What?” He asked with a mouth full of noodles and sauce.

“You’re disgusting.” You mumbled, “What’s up with the living room?” You repeated your question from earlier.

“What do you mean?” He asked, clueless as ever.

You let out a puff of air in frustration, “The living room Roger, everything is all moved around and there’s a tarp on the floor. What are you doing? Opening a mud wrestling pit?” The annoyance in your voice was very evident.

“Oh, I picked up a few buckets of paint so we could finally paint the paneling, the mud wrestling is a good idea though, you think we could charge for it?”

You rolled your eyes at his joke- you hoped it was a joke- and a small smile graced your face, “What colors did you pick out?” You couldn’t help but feel giddy at the prospect of changing the drab, old, and dusty wood paneling that encased your living room walls.

“You know that cream color you were talking about? It turns out it’s actually called Medici Ivory, so I got a few buckets of that and a bucket of this nice red color called Coral Clay.” He finished up the last fork full of his pasta and got up, rinsing it in the sink, “We can paint right now if you go change.”

You looked down, realizing you didn’t want to get your brunch clothes dirty, “Right, I’ll be right back.”

After you quickly changed into some sloppy clothes you and Roger set out to paint the wood paneling, “You know I realized I said you get two walls and I get two, but there are really only three wall in the living room.” Roger pointed out, “I mean, we could paint the little parts of the wall outside of the kitchen, but then I would want to paint the kitchen too.” He thought out, chewing on his plump lower lip.

You swallowed thickly, distracted by the way his pretty pink lips popped out from his mouth after he sucked on it, “Well you can have two and I’ll have the accent wall.” You offered.

Roger looked at you as though you were a moron, “You cant have an accent wall as the lighter color,” He said in a matter of fact tone, “I’ll take it and you can paint the other two cream.”

After a few more minutes of planning, you and Roger finally decided upon who was getting what walls, Roger pointed out it didn’t matter what color the walls were, his decorations were still going to be hung back up. So, he got one wall to paint Coral Clay, and you got the remaining walls to paint Medici Ivory.

You connected your phone to the Bluetooth speaker before Roger could beat you to it and shuffled your favorite playlist on Spotify. Take Me To The River by the Talking Heads began to flood your apartment. You hummed along to the song and began to paint, long even brush strokes on the wall, staining the ugly wood paneling Medici Ivory. As your playlist cycled and paint began to coat the walls you glanced over at Roger’s side of the wall, there were uneven splotches and awkward shapes that coated it. No cohesion at all.

You frowned, “What are you doing to the walls, Roger?” You frowned, “You can’t paint like that.” You scolded him.

Roger pulled away, allowing the brush to loosely hang from his hand, gobs of Medici Ivory dripped onto the tarp making a soft pitter patter noise that blended in with your music, “What? You’re doing better than me?” He asked.

You looked at him in disbelief, “Yeah, I am.” You said pointedly, “This is how you’re supposed to paint,” You said, demonstrating with long even brush strokes, “This isn’t finger painting.”

Roger scoffed and flicked his brush at you, your clothes staining the creamy off-white paint, “I suppose it isn’t.” He responded in a huff.

Your eyes narrowed “Real mature, Roger.” You said going back to painting next to him.

Roger continued to defy you, painting in big circles on the wall and ignoring the clumps and uneven layering that covered the wood panels. You turned towards him and flicked your brush at him, this time little spots of white paint speckled his face causing him to close his eyes and jump, “Oh, you’re going to get it now.” You heard Roger mumble as you turned away from him.

In the blind of an eye you felt cold liquid smearing and staining your skin. A shiver ran through your body feeling Roger’s calloused fingers roughly rub across your cheek “Roger!” You shrilly yelled, bringing your hand up to wipe the paint off, only to smear it.

You swiped your hand across your brush, coating it in the goopy, off white liquid and lunged at him. Roger stumbled backwards and fought your hand as it tried to smear the paint on his face. Your brush had fallen, mushing between your two bodies and covering your shirts in paint. Your legs were firmly planted on either side of Roger’s waist as you straddled and fought against him, still trying to palm the off viscous substance onto his perfectly soft skin.

“Come on, [Y/N],” Roger whined, trying to hide is laughter, “You’re dropping it in my hair!”

“You’re dropping it in my hair!” You mocked in a dopey voice.

Roger gaped at you, “I do not sound like that!” He protested, a shock of laughter rumbling through him and causing his guard to drop.

Your hand came down, smearing Medici Ivory onto his cheek, your hand slickly gliding off his skin. Before you had time to react Roger flipped the two of you over and within a few minutes the two of you were covered in stripes of paint, “You arse!” He was breathless from laughter, still straddling you, “I have to shower now.”

You hummed back laughter of your own and wiggled underneath him in an attempt to break free. Roger wasn’t having it, so you stayed trapped beneath his warm, out of breath body. Suddenly, you were aware of the closeness of your two bodies. His hot breath puffed against the paint that stained your skin causing you to shiver. Roger cleared his throat. The tension in the room was thick. Roger’s erection pressed against your thigh, when did that get there? Your ears felt like they were ringing, the music but a muffled sound that filled them.

“I should get in the shower, the we can do that camera stuff, yeah?” Roger asked, suddenly leaning up. Cool air flooded your clothed chest. It worked in tandem with the paint and caused you to shiver

You swallowed thickly and nodded your head, “Did- uh,” you couldn’t find the proper words to come out of your mouth, “Did you want me to wear anything specific?” you asked.

Roger settled back, his hand tracing soft patterns on your knees, “You could join me, you know, to save on water…” He trailed off, not looking at you.

You shifted and nodded your head, “Yeah, to save water.” You said, suddenly nervous, “Do… Do you want to film it?” You knew very well that the two of you would just be showering.

Roger looked up at you, his typically bright blue eyes now dark and filled with a naughty glint, “Yeah, we can your phone in and see what happens.”

It didn’t take long for you to find yourself pressed against the cold tile of your small steam filled shower. You hissed against Roger’s mouth as the contrasting temperature bit into your skin and arched your back against him. He roughly sucked your lower lip into his mouth, dragging his teeth across it as he pulled away and allowed it to plop back into place.

It was obvious to you that this was going to be different from the first time you and Roger had sex. He was rougher, needier, more dominant with his touches. You didn’t know if it was the amount of steam from the scorching hot water or his touches that caused you to feel dizzy and your brain to spin. Roger quickly turned you over, his hands smoothing over the globes of your ass. You quickly got the message and braced your hands on the wall in front of you.

You swayed your hips from side to side, impatiently waiting for Roger to do something. “Fuck” He silently cursed to himself, “What’s your password?”

Oh right.

You were supposed to be filming this to put on your snapchat. Was your phone waterproof? What if Roger dropped it? How was he going to plow you into next week and hold onto your phone?

The series of questions that flooded your brain was cut short by Roger lightly tapping your cheek, “Come on, before I lose my stiffy.”

“Oh, it’s uh 2580.” You answered, thankful that Roger couldn’t see your embarrassment.

Roger scoffed, “Really? Right down the middle?” He chastised.

“It’s fine- Oh fuck” You hissed out feeling Roger’s thick fingers filling you up, pumping in and out of your throbbing core. You hummed with pleasure and pushed back against his fingers, but as quickly as they filled you, they were gone.

Roger roughly filled you up with his cock, you gasped, feeling him stretch you open. He didn’t leave much time for you to adjust to his still unfamiliar size before he sharply snapped his hips against yours. Your back arched and you kept your hands firmly splayed against the wall. Your legs spread further apart, and your mouth fell open as sinful noises began to spill from it.

“Fuck.” Roger grunted, his hips slapping loudly against yours, “That feel good baby?” He said as he grabbed the meat of your ass and kneaded it in his hand, spreading it apart and getting a perfect view of his cock disappearing into you.

Roger’s calloused hand came down, roughly smacking your cheek. He bit his lip and watched it jiggle under his hand. The water amplified the stinging sensation that rang through your bones. You let out a breathy gasp, “It feels so good,” You slurred. Your mind was drunk with pleasure, “Fuck me harder.” You preened, pushing your hips back against him.

Roger shifted behind you, “You want me to fuck you harder?” He asked, roughly grabbing your hips and pulling you flush against him. Your face now rested against the cool tile as you sat up on an angle. Rogers sharp and methodical thrusts caused you to rhythmically jolt forward, the sensitive skin of your breasts occasionally brushing against the cool tile. The flood of sensations caused every nerve in your body to stand on end.

“Yeah, fuck me harder, Rog.” You practically purred his name, letting it roll off your tongue like honey.

Roger pressed his back against yours. His lips latched onto your shoulder, biting at the soft skin and running his tongue over the teeth marks he pressed into you. One of his hands snuck around to your chest, groping and fondling your painfully ignored tits in his rough palms while the other remained on your hip, pulling you against him at an even pace.

You let out soft breathy moans “Ah, ah, ah” each one getting higher and higher in pitch as the coil in your stomach tightened and threatened to break under the pressure that had begun to build until finally it snapped. You arched your back painfully against him, the muscle in your back cramping from the awkward angle. Your walls, pulsating out of him, coaxing Roger to his own release as he chased it, frantically and unevenly thrusting into you before he pulled out and painted the perfect skin of your plump ass white.

Your chest heaved and your arms shook lightly as you came down from your high. After a few moments to regather your brain you let the water wash you clean of the mess.

After your shower you found yourself curled up in your bed. Without bothering to knock, Roger opened the door to your room, his towel still loosely hanging over his shoulders and a pair of boxers hanging comfortably off his hips. You couldn’t help but lick your lips at the sight of his light blond hair dripping small water droplets and littering his pale skin with moisture. Fuck, you want to lick them off, what the hell was wrong with you?

“Can I help you?” You croaked out. You voice gave away your current struggle.

Roger cluelessly grinned at you, “I want to see what I filmed!” He said plopping down next to you on your bed.

Your face flushed with heat, “You video taped what happened in the shower?” You gaped at him, shifting the blankets so he could get comfortable.

Roger responded with a nod and flatly held his hand out for you to place the phone in his hand, “Yeah, come on we have to pick the best ones to upload.” He responded. Right this was for professional purposes.

When you grabbed and opened your camera roll you saw sure enough, there were several saved short clips and a few pictures in it. Heat began to build in your belly upon seeing the little thumbnail previews. You had to take a moment to remind yourself that watching the sex tape you and your roommate made was strictly for business purposes and not for personal pleasure.

But when you clicked on the first video and caught a perfectly angled shot of Roger entering you, your back arching, the steam of the shower beginning to fog and cloud the camera your mind went blank. You stared at the image before Roger nudged the volume button, turning it up, “We have to make sure it sounds okay.” You almost missed the deviant glint in his eyes that hid behind Roger’s focused features.

The cheeky bastard knew what he was doing.

Your breathy sighs and moans filled your room, Christ, that was what you sounded like? You blinked at the short clip when it was over, “What do you think?” You didn’t dare look at Roger. You didn’t even want to think of what his stupid smug face looked like right now.

“I think it looks even better the second time around.” He confidently retorted back to you.

“Fuck off,” You couldn’t help but smile and let out a little laugh before swiping to the next little clip.

“Fuck” Roger’s husky voice rang against your ears, giving you flash backs to what happened only moments earlier.

SMACK the crisp sound of Roger slapping your ass echoed through your brain just like it did in the bathroom.

“That feel good baby?” Your walls throbbed, hearing Roger’s commanding tone and watching his hand kneading the meat of your ass as it bounced against him.

The tension in the room was beginning to settle and surround the two of you once more. You swallowed thickly almost positive Roger could hear your audible gulp. “That one looks good too.” Your voice sounded shaky. Your skin felt like it was on fire and Roger simply sat next to you, seemingly unfazed.

[shikadainara]

an in-depth breakdown of b*ruto episode 178

sorry i’m late i was lost on the path of life

tl;dr yeah ok i can have my hopes and dreams about what specifically i would want but. BUT. honestly yeah the episode was more or less what i expected would actually be in it from the preview, so i can’t complain. i still sobbed!!! that’s all i really wanted!!

time to rewatch it! (warning: long post. LOL)

obviously this is nothing new but i still can’t get over how nice the exterior to the nara household is, good for them. i don’t think i noticed the solar panel before? good for them!

i’m entertained at how the episode does open with shikadai tying his hair as he walks, i just think it’s neat. i love how the camera frames it like seeing a nara with their hair down is something forbidden we’re not mean to see

temari has purple slippers i dedicate her commitment to her favorite color. (also i am Just Saying... purple........ the bisexual flag--)

yeahhhh ok so. i get the need for wanting to frame the narrative like this, but this really doesn’t make any sense. shikadai is 12, and is also a chuunin, like... he should know by now that his dad is always kinda a mess on this day of the year, and why that is. and even if he honestly really did just forget, the fact that he’s still asking his dad why he’s not at work while looking at the way his parents are dressed... did this not clue you in or what????

the fact that shikamaru’s up and ready (i really don’t think he gets much sleep on this day, every year...), and it’s shikadai who’s just getting up. i do think it’s cute that we do get to see a tiiiiiny bit of temari’s parenting that doesn’t involve being an out of character irrationally angry woman when she tells shikadai to not come crying to her when he’s late in getting ready, yeah that definitely sounds way more like her lol

temari says she told him about all of this the other day (shikadai blatantly forgot, he tries to pretend he didn’t but she doesn’t press him for it)... that does make me emotional thinking like. she is pretty painfully aware of how hard this is on shikamaru, and days in advance told shikadai about it, to try to make sure he understands what his father is going through........ she really does care about him so, so much.

i said this based off the preview, but... i would like to interpret that temari is purposefully doing the dishes(/rest of house chores) to give him space to grieve....... 

the fact that while explaining what today is, shikamaru has to get up, leave the room, and talk while not facing his family, as if he wouldn’t be able to say the words as easily while looking at them........ god. that. that hurts.

\

tsunade being the one to give this speech kinda feels random? like yeah she was the one that was kage during the war but...? i do feel like it would have been more fitting to have naruto say the speech since the whole entire point of the war was to protect him (and bee) but ????? ok

no one in the uzumaki family talks during this episode which is fine by me LOL. i would assume the memorial is on the day the war ended (which would also make it naruto’s birthday/memorial of the kyuubi invasion) but if it is, it’s never stated. maybe it’s the day the war started, idk

the collection of people up front feels pretty random??? kakashi as the previous hokage, sure, guy i guess because of how important his contribution the war against madara was and also because he is kakashi’s husband, shizune kinda has to be there if tusnade is, but... iruka? like yeah he is vital to the narrative, but to konoha? he is the headmaster of the academy i think now so i guess...? but then? ibiki??? anko??? i say this as someone that REALLY loves anko, she was my favorite character as a kid and i still love her but,,, huh? SHE WAS KNOCKED OUT DURNG THE WHOLE WAR!!??!?

then you see everyone that was in naruto’s class + team guy + sai except hinata is in the crowd. which of course to the narrative, to us the readers, those are the main characters (if you ignore how more or less everyone was super shafted throughout all of part 2) but!!! team guy’s only real connection to the rest of them is that they took the chuunin exams together, and neji and hinata were are cousins. that’s about it. was it that specifically all of these characters made such a contribution to the war compared to every other single shinobi from konoha that lived ??????

shikamaru staring up to the sky did made my heart clench... no matter how different he is now than he was when he was a 12 year old genin...... i do feel like he’s never entirely ditched his true self of just wanting to stare at the clouds all day.... i’m not entirely sure what the intent was here, but i’m sure there’s supposed to be some symbolism here. the sky is actually nearly entirely clear (the way is framed, there’s only a tiny cloud in the corner,) and then he closes his eyes and hums. maybe it’s supposed to be about the closure he gets in this episode...

\

ok and then here’s ao cool whatever. since i only skim through b*ruto for the characters that i care about i do not really careeeee since i won’t watch again until something interesting happens to said characters that i care about LOL

?? who voiced the receptionist they sound familiar but i can’t place it at all

katasuke is the bitch that made the scientific ninja tool for b*ruto so he could cheat in the exam right

what is ao doing here. is he supposed to be doing something evil. it sure looks that way

... who is the glasses orange scarf guy??? he kinda looks like a mix between udon and ebisu and aoba but i know he’s not any one of them lol

\

TEMARI AND KARUI STANDING NEXT TO EACH OTHER... i don’t think in any media they’ve ever??? ACTUALLY TALKED TO EACH OTHER???? BUT THEY SHOULD BE CLOSE FOR THE OBVIOUS REASON....... I’LL TAKE THESE CRUMBS THOUGH THANK YOU

OKKKKK admittedly like. in terms of Pleasing Me, Personally, it’s a damned if you do, dammed if you don’t situation like.... they do kinda HAVE to acknowledge that neji died during the war so. i appreciate that hinata like........ cares. i guess. i’ll try to not post the whole rant about why neji’s death was (logistically how he died aside) narratively and thematically absolute bullshit, kishi (i believe) saying that neji died so he could play cupid for naruto and hinata like!!! fuck off with that shit!!! maybe if it wasn’t for the goddamn “naruto-kun’s big warm manly hand” line i would feel a little bit actual sad but no.

WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOSHINO AND CHOUZA HELLO!?!?!?!? COULD YOU REALLY NOT HAVE PUT THEM IN THE CROWD??

ino also has an unnamed mother that the anime made up that i believe was only in like a single episode (and was cameoed in RtN i think?) but she should still be like. Alive. so her too.

MITSUKI PLACING FLOWERS IS SO FUNNY TO ME LIKE YOU DO KNOW YOUR PARENT’S SUBORDINATE/DOUBLE CROSS TRAITOR WHATEVER DID CAUSE THE WAR RIGHT BFIOBU*EHW$

\

aaand. here’s shikamaru and ino’s conversation. i’m not sure if i can put this into words, but... just... the way that they talk to each other, the weight of 15+ years of sadness about this, the way that they just!! fully know what the other is going through, the way that they’ve known each other for their whole lives and survived through everything together, the way i feel like they’ve avoided talking about this topic as much as possible over the years, hell even during this conversation the way they’re almost bickering to avoid having to directly confront their feelings, but it is unavoidable....... 

i also do wonder what their relationship with each other’s parents were while growing up: shikamaru does refer to inoichi as “inoichi-san” here, contrast to how their kids all call each other’s parents just “uncle” or “aunt”

siri play sad naruto flute.

ok since i did go back to rewatch the episode from shippuden right before watching this one for the first time i do wish a liiiittle less of the episode was about this flashback with the same reused footage like i get that they do have to put it in here but Still.

THE FACT THAT SHIKAMARU IS SMILING WHILE RECALLING WHAT HAPPENED, AND THAT THERE’S A LAUGH IN HIS VOICE........ I WANT TO CRY AGAIN

ino saying that it was so unfair how cool they looked in the end, and then giggles...... ino............. this must be so, so painful for her to recall, and yet.........

IT IS SO FUNNY HOW THEY SKIP OVER THE IMAGE OF SASUKE THERE AHAHAHAHA god i hated that so so much i can’t believe that’s manga canon. the line is perfectly fine and makes me cry just DO NOT RELATE IT TO SASUKE!!!! literally the only time they “”interact”” is when ino is introduced and ino just, for lack of a better word, glomps him???? THAT’S IT??? i feel like they might’ve changed it just because, well, you know the endgame pairings. but still. bye sasuke

damn you know what i do kinda wish they didn’t skip over the “get rid of that box before your mother finds it” part i AM curious as to what it was i mean it’s implied it’s something adult related so SP probably couldn’t show that on TV BUT!!!

ok ok all week i tried to not imagine what shikamaru and ino’s conversation would be since i wanted to go all “surprise me!!” BUT??? BUT. SHIKAMARU ASKING INO IF SHE THINKS THAT THEIR FATHERS HONESTLY, TRULY BELIEVED IN THEM?? HE’S BEEN THINKING ABOUT THAT ON EVERY SINGLE DAY THIS YEAR THESE PAST 15+ YEARS, AND SURELY IT’S ALWAYS BEEN AT THE BACK OF HIS MIND ALL THIS TIME!?!?! of course. OF COURSE HE WOULD FEEL THIS WAY!!! HE’D HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING FOR SURE OR EVER FINDING OUT!!! like of course we as the readers know that shikaku and inoichi absolutely 200% felt that way but... from his perspective... you know what i don’t even think this idea ever crossed my mind HOLD ON THAT IS THE SOUND OF MY HEART SHATTERING--

and then he just... smiles. says that he won’t let that get him down, since it’s not like they’ll ever find out anyways. sure, it’s been 15+ years, he has had to have largely come to terms with everything by now, but...... still....

then he talks about the idea that the day will come and leave everything in the hands of their sons (now looking over at team 10′s turn to place flowers) just like their dads did... it is worded like a question, but showtaro morikubo’s absolute masterful performance does. it does portray a tone like he is absolutely 100% sure that it’ll happen, one day...

i’ve said this before but. i KNOW shikamaru has definitely spent so much time thinking about this. sure it hasn’t ever really been brought up on-screen (yet), but....... i want to see him talking about a direct contrast on what his grand plan through life he thought of by age 12, ending with him passing away by old age. obviously he did a complete 180 on they type of person he wanted as a wife LOL. it is kinda brought up at the start of shikamaru hiden while he visits the grave, says he hasn’t found anyone he’d give his life to protect... (well. now he has a son where if you see the recent chapters he is very, VERY protective of.) but i would like to see this change in his character be directly be brought up and examined

........ that being SAID. i sure hope neither of them actually like. die. i’m GOOD, thank you. they sure as hell can’t until they’re ready to pass things down to their sons, at least. until then, absolutely zero narrative reason to do so, but...... still. we don’t need to make everything an EXACT copy of what happened in naruto you can let them live kthx

they both say “what kind of half-baked response is that!” and then laugh just. I LOVE THEM SO SO MUCH TEAM 10 IS FOREVER

/

there is some symbolism in how ao walks over from a really dark shadowy area into the light when he decides that he has to pay his respects...

i do like how he does reflect on how he really should have come here earlier, but better late than never i suppose

i was expecting a... more elaborate explanation for how he lived??? especially since he was standing RIGHT NEXT to shikaku and inoichi... he just. happened to survive for whatever reason while every single other person died on impact

that survivor’s guilt does hurt to see

i do like seeing how he chooses to do something with his life, aside from being a shinobi, and live it to the fullest for the sake of everyone that died in the explosion. that’s nice

/

ino saying “i’m sure are fathers are happy!” AAAAAAAAAAA

IN HINDSIGHT....... I ABSOLUTELY SOULD’VE PREDICTED SOMEONE WOULD DROP A “YOU LOOK SO MUCH LIKE YOUR FATHER” AT SOME POINT IN THE EPISODE...... and. i did kinda chuckle, because like, no shit duh lmao. i’m sure shikamaru heard that all the time as a kid!!! and hell, i’m sure he still gets it from time to time over the years up to this day. BUT LIKE... SHIKAMARU’S FACE. HE LOOKS LIKE THAT, RIGHT NOW, IT’S ACTUALLY SOMETHING HE REALLY, REALLY NEEDED TO HEAR. LET ME CRY

hearing shikamaru say oyaji, and then the way his tone suddenly shifts to something very... quiet and somber? when he says “nara shikaku”..... something about that. man.... also it’s hard to see but there is a sweat drop on his face as he says all of this...

“sometimes, i end up wondering...” don’t lie to yourself. you think about this so, so much........

the flashback where ao says “listen to me calmly” when he says the bomb is coming this way sure reminds me of ino telling shikamaru to stay calm as she tells him that his son has a bomb around his neck

THE ADDED PART OF THE FLASHBACK WITH THEIR VERY LAST MOMENTS...... THE WAY THEY’RE SMILING AND JUST??? BELIEVE IN THEIR KIDS IN THE VERY END. just like how it’s described in shikamaru hiden where the narrative says that shikaku was a shinobi until his very last breaths-- actually, no. in the very end he was a father.......

“THEY BELIEVED IN YOU, WITHOUT A HINT OF DOUBT.”

AAA?A?AAAAAAAAA?A?A?A??A!??!!??!!

INO STARTS TEARING UP BUT I CALL ABSOLUTE BS THAT SHIKAMARU WOULDN’T ALSO JUST BURST ONTO TEARS ON THE SPOT, HE MAY BE 32 WHATEVER YEARS OLD NOW BUT... HE IS STILL SUCH A CRYBABY AT HEART, HIS ENTIRE CIRCLE OF LOVED ONES KNOW THIS.

you know who DID start crying though??? ME

/

i do wonder, is this the same hillside that shikamaru went to after asuma’s death...? (only in the manga tho, the anime had him on a rooftop instead)

is that??? someone watching them in the back left?? when shikadai finds him? i cannot tell what that is

i am. trying to follow temari’s logic of telling shikadai to go find shikamaru and... not also going with him?? i mean i figured from the preview that, yeah it does look like it’s only the two of them, but... i can’t come up with a reason. not a super big deal but. obviously my heart yearns for that shikatema content that’s ok i can write my own fanfic i guess!!!!

also like...... i imagine it can’t be THAT hard to find him, i’m sure that he only has a small handful of Spots Good For Coping(™) when he just needs to be by himself, that i would Think his wife would know where they are. and said wife would tell shikadai. but idk

after all of this, shikamaru wants to just treat his son to go eat out whatever he wants...!! what a good father

....... now like. the logic of “temari is currently making dinner and that’s why she’s a) not there and b) told shikadai to go fetch is father” would make perfect sense. but... if they’re going out to get food then... no?? shikadai would interject to say so if that was the case..... that makes this all make no sense seriously what the hell is she doing

i do wish that like. shikadai like.... uh. actually learned about more shikaku?? this scene is more brief than i thought it would be idk i felt like it would be part of the middle of the episode and not at the end, oh well. he’ll find out in due time

THAT BEING SAID...  STILL. THE ENDING WHERE HE JUST CARES SO SO SO SO MUCH ABOUT SHIKADAI!!!! WONDERING IF HE’S WATCHING HIS BACK!!! I LOVE THEM I LOVE THEMMMMM

/

not quite sure whatever ao is doing at the end of the episode???? IS IT EVIL??? i mean like that it’s him catching a leaf seems like he’s going against konoha but i mean konoha fucking sucks so. that is not evil i guess LOL

whatever not like i’ll care to actually find out!!!!! anyways let me know when the nara family (or anyone adjacent to them) does anything so i can care LOL

in conclusion. good shit.

[thequirkdetective]

Investigation 6 (10/7/2020): Hardening – Eijiro Kirishima

This time, we’re going to be tackling a quirk I have been thinking about for a while now; Hardening. This allows Kirishima to “make his entire body [as] hard as a rock”[1]. The quirk is mainly used for defence but does also make Kirishima’s body rough and sharp, which causes his attacks to be more dangerous to opponents. We’ll look at the exact composition of Kirishima’s hardened body, as well as the systems that allow the body parts to both harden and soften.

Firstly, we need to know what Kirishima’s hardened skin is made of, and to do this we need to know how much force it can withstand.

The largest easily measurable force Kirishima withstands is when he is crushed underneath a few robots in the sports festival [1]. It is difficult to tell how many robots of which type(s) he is caught under, but we can do the maths on both types, and see how they compare, starting with the largest robots. These are in fact the same model as the one Deku punched in the entrance exam due to it nearly crushing and killing Uraraka[2] (I’m not sure how UA spun that one in the risk assessment to allow them to make a reappearance). In any case, whatever fate would have befallen Uraraka instead turns its gaze to Kirishima in season 2, but rather than being steamrolled Kirishima instead undergoes the more abrupt and deadly force of a robot in freefall. He survives (unsurprisingly, or this investigation wouldn’t have much data to work with), due to his quirk.

The whole scene plays out with the contestants of the obstacle course race coming across a group of the aforementioned giant robots. Todoroki (no doubt fuelled by chronic daddy issues) freezes the robots and gets through, but makes the decision to freeze them in such positions as to cause them to fall over. Ignoring the rather worrying possibility of Todoroki deliberately killing the entire student body of UA (get mad in the notes), only two people are caught underneath the ensuing pile: Kirishima and Tetsutetsu. The actual moment of impact isn’t shown, but a few seconds afterwards, an unnamed student declares that they see someone trapped in the rubble, and Kirishima bursts upwards in a shower of metal and testosterone, followed closely by Tetsutetsu.

This shows, in the most basic interpretation, that quirked-up Kirishima is harder than a UA robot, since if he were less hard he would be immediately crushed. Sadly, material science is a little more nuanced than that. The exact definition of ‘hardness’ is difficult to pin down, and the stresses would not be equal across Kirishima’s whole body. This blog doesn’t have access to laboratory grade material simulation software (yet), so we can’t see the exact forces involved in a student-robot collision. We can, however, estimate the rough pressures Kirishima’s body withstood after being mercilessly crushed by Todoroki.

There are no viable references for discerning the height of the robots in season 2, so let’s go back to their first appearance in the entrance exam [2]. The scene where Deku punches on of the robots in the face gives us a nice tall building in the background, which we know from earlier is about 15 storeys high (50m or 164ft). Deku jumps upwards until he is level with the robot, and gives the robot a good whack. It topples backwards, his bones shatter, and he is accepted into UA, all due to his incredible feat of self-sacrifice for his love interest. However, in the many, many different shots between the jump and the impact, the height of both the boy and the robot’s head varies from level with the roof to well above any of the surrounding buildings. This is in part due to camera angles and fisheye effects, but whatever the reason it is difficult to say for certain how tall the robot is. Let’s approximate between the two extremes, and say it’s around 55m tall (180ft). The area of the base of the robot is, you guessed it, difficult to get a proper estimate of. This is mostly due to it being framed close-up or surrounded by clouds of ice and dust. Taking this into account, along with the fact that I have strayed way too deep down this rabbit hole, allows us to approximate the robot’s base size as the same as the surrounding buildings’, since it is shown in front of one and nearly blocks it from view. This means the robot is around 15m x 15m x 55m (49ft x 49ft x 180ft). Piling on another wild guesstimate of average density gives us a robot with a mass of ~4000 tonnes (~4400 tons). Now, we can use a bit of physics to figure out the force the robot exerts on Kirishima.

We now need to use what is fast becoming the most useful equation in these investigations: F = ma. We now know m, but we have yet to find a. Fortunately, it has an equation: ΔV/t, or the change in velocity over time. Unfortunately, since the robot topples sideways, we cannot use simple acceleration due to gravity. We have to get velocity in a slightly more roundabout way.

The velocity can be found with two equations, using the principle of conservation of energy (we’re ignoring air resistance, as is traditional in physics). In the process of falling, the robot’s gravitational potential energy gets converted into kinetic energy, and so if we know the amount of energy converted, we can find out the resultant speed. Gravitational potential energy is given by , or mass x gravitational field strength x change in height, all relative to the centre of mass. Pairing this with the kinetic energy equation ( ½mv2, or ½ x mass x velocity squared), and using conservation of energy, we see , so . Rearrange, and voilà: sqrt(2gΔh) (a very nice equation that serendipitously does not contain mass). The robot has a large, heavy base, so lets say the centre of mass starts 20m (66ft) up. Then, the robot falls and the centre of mass ends ~5m (16ft) from the ground. Now we know is 15m (49ft), and is, at least around sea level, 9.8m/s2. Therefore, if a 0-point robot toppled over, it would hit the ground with an average speed of 17m/s (38mph).

Now we can work out , if we approximate the distance it took for the robot to stop. It fell onto soil and kicked up quite a dust cloud, so lets say it embedded 1m down. Assuming uniform deceleration across the 1m of distance, comes to 144.5m/s2, and is a whopping 5.78×108 N, spread over ~750m2 (8073ft2), giving 770667 Pa (112 PSI), or 7.5x atmospheric pressure.

The smaller robots seem to be no more than 10m tall, so the force of their fall is only 10m/s (22mph). This means the force is a measly 50N, and the pressure 0.5Pa (7×10−5 PSI). Now, finally, we can find out what these numbers mean in terms of Kirishima’s quirk.

The pressure would be spread over ~1m2 of Kirishima, meaning the force on him is anywhere from 0.5N to 770667N depending on the type of the robot. The issue with this calculation is that it assumes the fall of both robots is distributed evenly between the ground and Kirishima, so the forces would actually be more in the range of 50N-770667N, the equivalent of balancing a weight on your head with a mass of 5-80000kg (11-176370lbs). A force of 770667N is about the force a house exerts on its foundations, but the shock needs to be taken into account. It’s the difference between having a house resting on concrete, and dropping half the house from 10m onto the same concrete. From this example it becomes rather clear which one does more damage.

Due to this, as well as the sheer magnitude of the resultant forces, we can rule out Kirishima being crushed by the largest robots. Such a robot would flatten almost anything in its path, including Kirishima, no matter what his quirk made his body into. This also explains his quick escape; he was underneath a small robot and only had to dig through a metre (3ft) or so of robot wiring and metal panels.

Kirishima’s quirk is continually compared to rock [1], which to me says silicates. Silicates are the predominant compounds in the earth’s crust, and are mostly responsible for giving rocks their hardness (sorry geologists and material scientists, but I do have to end this somewhere). The question now, as with many other investigations, is where the silicates originate. Many health food such as spinach, soy, and bananas contain high amounts of silicon dioxide, also known as silica or quartz. However, a much more efficient way to increase silica intake is sand. Sand is mostly silicon dioxide, and is also fairly easy to ingest, making it very useful for such purposes as turning into rock at will. We’ll figure out which one Kirishima employs later on.

In the Shie Hassaikai raid, Kirishima’s quirk is shown to deflect a quirk-destroying bullet[3]. These bullets are hollow, and do not cause nearly as much damage as a standard metal bullet so it may not be the case that Kirishima is fully bulletproof. This does make sense; granite shatters easily upon contact with a bullet and the quirk-destroying bullets did not give Mirio an injury comparable to a bullet wound. The ‘bullets’ instead act more like flying syringes. However, Kirishima does also defend against a rapid succession of punches from Kendo Rappa[4] using his quirk. This is again feasible, since it is akin to Rappa successively punching a brick or granite wall. Therefore, Kirishima’s hardened body is made of some silicate, most likely akin to quartz – the primary compound in both granite and sand, with trace amounts present in food.

This means that Kirishima’s body can in some way store silica, and then reconstruct it onto or into the surface of the skin. Silica is notoriously insoluble, only trace amounts dissolving in water or acids, and the main viable solvents for dissolving it being hydrofluoric acid or hot alkaline solutions. It’s the same story  for pure silicon. However, if Kirishima’s body were to absorb silicon as an ion (a common way to absorb minerals) then the compound could be made soluble in some interesting ways.

Detergents are used to make oil and grease soluble in water, by having a hydrophobic end that binds to dirt, and a hydrophilic end that is attracted to water. The detergent molecules then surround dirt particles and make them hydrophilic, forcing them into suspension (not technically solution). A similar mechanism could be used to lift silicate ions into suspension in Kirishima’s bloodstream. These would collect in Kirishima’s cells. Then, all it takes is the degradation of the ‘detergent’ molecules to force the silicates out of suspension, where they then crystallise. This essentially turns the inside of Kirishima’s cells into rock, if given a few tweaks.

The first main problem is that the silicate ions would not necessarily create silica unless they were introduced to oxygen ions. This can be fixed by the other chemical required – one to denature the detergent molecules. The whole process involves ionised molecules that bind to silicon ions and bring them into suspension in Kirishima’s blood. They travel to his cells, and collect there. The activation of the quirk is in fact the release of a specialised chemical which breaks down the ionised molecules, releasing the silicon ions. This chemical could then also contains oxygen ions which bond to the silicon, creating silica within Kirishima’s skin cells. Then, when the quirk is deactivated, the silica is broken down and more ionised molecules are released to bring the silicon back into suspension.

The only remaining problem with this system is movement. Turning all of Kirishima’s skin into rock would lock up his joints and prevent him from moving his limbs. The solution to this is leaving some of the skin cells at points of motion un-hardened, allowing certain areas of skin to stretch and flex whilst still gaining some defensive advantages. This does leave Kirishima with a few relative weak points at his shoulders, elbows, knees, and hands, but overall, this mechanism fulfils the brief almost to the letter: turning his body into rock. It also means that it simply strengthens his skin, and does not create a new layer of rock. This has the added benefit of transferring any damage to his hardened form onto his normal body, for example a large chunk of rock being blasted off would leave a large chunk of his flesh missing once the quirk was deactivated.

Finally, we need to establish the source of the silicate ions. It is most likely diet, but is eating silicon-rich foods enough to provide the amount of silicate required? 

Kirishima’s quirk manifested when he was quite young [4] , let’s say 3 years old since he can’t remember the event very clearly. At this point just his hand and arm could harden. The amount of silicate required can be calculated by the surface area of the affected area multiplied by the thickness of Kirishima’s skin.

The average surface area of a man’s hand is ~0.1m2 (1sq. ft). Kirishima is a toddler at this point, so a 0.1m2 area would cover his upper arm too, as shown. Skin is around 1mm thick on average, so the volume of silicate required for the first manifestation of his quirk is ~0.26g (0.009oz) of silica, the same amount as present in 40 bananas. This is a very feasible amount of silica to have ingested in three years, and if Kirishima made a habit of eating silica rich foods he could have enough silicon ions to harden his whole body in 10-15 years, depending on the thickness of the hardened skin. This matches with the anime, because his quirk was not very strong and could not activate across his entire body when he was in middle school [4] . In fact, the quirk could even manifest throughout most of Kirishima’s cells, leaving a few un-hardened for movement, and the amount of silica needed would still be plausible to intake over such a time period provided his body’s ability to absorb it.

Another fun effect that corroborates with the source material is silicon-rich foods like spinach being prone to wearing teeth down, possibly leading to the strange, sharp teeth Kirishima possesses. Most likely he has them filed due to their continual wearing.

In summary, Kirishima’s body can absorb silicon ions, using detergent-like ionised molecules to force the ions into suspension. Then, the silicon is carried through the bloodstream to Kirishima’s cells. When his quirk is activated, a molecule, most likely some kind of enzyme, is released that destroys the ions responsible for keeping the silicon atoms in suspension. This causes them to react with the oxygen ions present in the cells and enzyme, creating silicate crystals within Kirishima’s cells. Some muscle cells are left without crystals in order to preserve movement, and some skin cells are kept softened for the same purposes. When the quirk is deactivated, more ionic molecules are released which bring the silicate back into suspension, softening the cells again.

[1] Season 2 Episode 16: In Their Own Quirky Ways

[2] Season 1 Episode 4: Start Line

[3] Season 4 Episode 68: Let’s Go, Gutsy Red Riot

[4] Season 4 Episode 72: Red Riot

 If you liked this investigation and want to have a say in the next one, then make sure to send a recommendation for which quirk I should investigate!

[roswelldetails]

Episode 203:  Good Mother

Sorry so late this week!! I had a deadline for work that kept me away from this early in the week, and Tumblr has been mean tonight. Kudos to @tasyfa for helping me with some of the transcripts while I was stuck working!!

EPISODE SUMMARY:

Determined to regain control of her life in the aftermath of Noah’s death, Isobel (Lily Cowles) makes a risky choice despite its potential consequences.  Meanwhile, Alex (Tyler Blackburn) and Michael (Michael Vlamis) work together to unravel the mystery surrounding the night Nora’s (guest star Kayla Ewell) spaceship crashed in 1947. Elsewhere, Liz (Jeanine Mason) makes a surprising confession when Cameron (guest star Riley Voelkel) shows up looking for answers about Max (Nathan Dean).  Heather Hemmens, Amber Midthunder and Trevor St. John also star. Jeffrey Hunt directed the episode written by Deirdre Mangan & Carina Adly MacKenzie (#203.) Original airdate 3/30/2020.

DETAILS:

Aliens in the crash are always portrayed as wearing all white.  

There's also a silvery gleam on the faces of Nora and Louise following the crash.

Harlan Manes (first introduced in the alien autopsy scene in 1x07) and Hector Valenti (first mentioned in the pilot by Jesse Manes, but visually introduced here) are shown as having both a partnership and a difference in perspective, with Hector being more sympathetic to the aliens from the start - it mirrors what we know about Jim and Jesse's relationship.

Mysterious alien figure in white hood (probably played by Nathan Parsons, but unlikely to actually be Max (see @latessitrice meta) touches Nora's shoulder and she looks pained, then attacks and burns Hector alive, before disappearing into thin air.

Nora is shot in her shoulder.

Liz sent Alex to find Michael at the cave. 

The pods "regenerate cells at the same rate as they degrade" keeping them in stasis.  The theory of the electrical current is that it will speed up the regeneration so instead of stasis, Max might improve.

Searching for info about Nora led Alex to a sophisticated firewall, which meant that someone was trying to hide information about her.

Jenna's fake energy drinks are called "Speed Demon"

Mimi DeLuca says she was "nowhere" (and then she looks up at the stars). She was wearing the same nightgown and robe as when she disappeared (white...like the aliens in 1947), but instead of bare feet, she had on a pair of elaborate blue and white cowboy boots 

Jenna told Sheriff Valenti that Mimi recited the plot from the film Starship Troopers during the car ride into town "like she lived it", with all the voices, but did not provide any information about where she’d been.  Sheriff Valenti implies that this is typical behavior from Mimi.

Michael says he's been parked at the pony for a few weeks.  Maria says that Mimi was gone for a month. That means that another 2 weeks have passed. (I.e., Max has been dead for 6 weeks now.)

Maria says that they found her mom on I-40 (by the Roswell sign).  Also in 2x01 Rosa indicated that she and Liz were on I-40 when they saw Flint - Rosa put together that it was the most direct route to Area 51...however, I-40 does not go through Roswell.  In fact, it is over 100 miles from Roswell to I-40 (north on 285).  However, it is the most direct route to Area 51 from Roswell.

Isobel points out that Mimi DeLuca waking up in the desert with no memory is similar to what happened to her when Noah took over her body.  Michael doesn't believe that they are the same situation though.

Rosa is about to drink spiked coffee when Liz brings her the art supplies.  After Liz leaves, she pours it out without drinking it.

Isobel is packing up all of the photos of her and Noah (most look like vacation photos).  She hesitates on the photo of them with Max at the wedding that we previously saw in 2x01 at Noah's funeral.

Isobel's baby is now 7 weeks (consistent with the other time frames) and is now the size of a blueberry.

Isobel drinks the rest of the alien death serum and immediately gets cramps/pain in her womb.  And then Max's hallucination appears.

Isobel tells not!Max that she has been microdosing with the serum for weeks (2 weeks, based on the timeline) and it hasn't worked.

Not!Max does tell her to call Kyle (i.e, her subconscious knows she should, but she's not listening).

Michael tells Jenna that Max is in Mexico (at first).

Mimi is "hydrated and healthy" and she never felt unsafe.

She thinks she was only gone for a night, coming to see Maria when Jenna found her.

Maria asked Mimi whether Jenna lent the boots to her and Mimi declared they were hers

Liz is surrounded by monitors with alienesque symbols on them (or maybe just The Science!) See photo:

When the alarm sounds Liz looks at her computer screen and reacts - likely a security camera.

When Alex arrives at the Bunker and sees the binder left for him, the computers are on and there is a map showing.  See photo: 

I tried to figure out what city it is on his computer screen, but no luck. If anyone figures it out, send me an ask & let me know & I'll blast it out!

The 3-ring binder left for Alex, which looked approx. ¾ full with paper documents, was marked on the front:

CAULFIELD * A4N

352-6553 NMG

The text was white on a dark green background that appeared to be a printed label that had been affixed to the front of the binder. The body of the binder was light grey, with a partially shaded circular diagram in the lower center of the front that appeared to be part of the binder itself rather than a later addition like the label.

The Post-It note left on the binder for Alex said, "What side of history do you want to be on?"

There was also a marking on the spine of the binder: CF-143-3453-C78. This is probably a file or record reference, with CF standing for Caulfield. The reference would be visible when the binder was housed on a shelf, allowing easy identification.

When Alex flipped open the binder, the visible portion of the top page read as follows:

HEADQUARTERS

509th BOMB GP (NH)

ROSWELL ARMY AIR FIELD

ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Forwarded.

A07-06 (95)                                8 JULY 1947

AFTER ACTION REPORT

Serial

[blacked out text with underscoring] [TOP SECRET stamp]

From:        Lt. Colonel Payne Jennings, Roswell Army Air Field

Subject:    Engagement with enemy combatants, recovery of unidentified craft, night of 14-15 June, 1947, twelve casualties.

[offscreen] is a fine that concerns the events and

[offscreen] following the discovery of a flying saucer,

To:        Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force

[offscreen] dentified rancher notified

[offscreen] [blacked out text] that he found the instrument on

[offscreen] operations were coordinated with

[offscreen] with the intent of detaining or

[offscreen] while assisting in the inves-

[offscreen] reached the crash site

[offscreen] ing object’s entan-

[offscreen] balloon. Ship

[offscreen] of foreign

[offscreen] place

Liz explains The Science to Jenna:

"3 years ago I hypothesized that if I introduced a rare protein to destroyed stem cells they'd regenerate.  And I was right. My team in Denver brought dead cells back to life. Rat cells, but, I mean, still, the applications are immeasurable… until our study got shut down.  They said it's for ethics reasons, but I think it's because it threatened big pharma. Then a few weeks ago, Kyle found that the pods contain a sort of alien cousin to my regenerative protein.  When Max healed Rosa, his electric charge amplified the process. If we can replicate that, then, we can accelerate his recovery, so, I am testing out pig hearts to see…" discussion about pig hearts/human hearts/different kinds of smart…

Liz says she has a few hours before she has to "record the electromagnetic charge interval"

Jenna says that Liz reminds her of Charlie.

Charlie used to rant about gene therapy

Jesse says he requested no visitors until "his brain starts to follow his orders".

He keeps periodically hitting the morphine drip with Alex in the room, though he was ignoring it before Alex got there.

Jesse describes the opening scene of the episode. And then tells Alex "Tripp was never the same".

Rosa's art:

Among the quotes on her collage are:

Body drie up from ...

What did she say

You're no listening

Control her Take her power

I am the Mesa the mighty

Nothing but a muddy trickle

You can't hold us

Sandia

Between them... Damn... One day she'll…

East

Rosa hears Max call out to her (while awake) "Rosa! Help! You're the only one!"

Jenna says that her dad brought her and Charlie to Roswell when they were kids.  That they were obsessed with the crash and aliens and the X-Files and it was the perfect trip.  It's why she came to Roswell after leaving the military.   "It was like trying to go back in time, somehow."

"Time Travel really messed with you.  I am eight years older than my older sister.  She used to be my hero. She was kinetic, disruptive, cool.  Now that I'm an adult I'm pretty sure she's bipolar, and she needs help.  And if I try to save Max I'm letting Rosa twist in the wind, so, hence the wine ready in my drawer."

Maria is going through a box labeled "Mom's Stuff" in the Pony when she sees Rosa.

"I'm turning into my mom.  I lost time at the gala...Michael's hand...I'm seeing things!"

What Valenti says about Noah's death:

"The M.E., Dr. Holden, listed Noah's cause of death as cardiac arrest due to lightning strike. (note: cardiac arrest = heart attack.  Same way Max died.). No other abnormalities were listed. But that's not consistent with the crime scene photos. You see these ligature marks on his wrists and ankles. …. These marks are consistent with zip ties.  And these with struggling against police-issue handcuffs. Like Max's.".

Isobel blames it on their sex toys.

What Max said to the grocery clerk "¿Tienes carne sin preservativos?" (Meat without a condom).

About Max's nightmare:

"You remember when I used to come in and sleep on your floor?"

"You used to have a nightmare.  You were alone in a cold, dark room and there was something… You couldn't get up.  You were…"

"Chained to the floor.  I'd wake up all freaked out and run to your room."

Rosa's nightmare:

"I need your help, Rosa."

"Look, I'm not gonna help you die.  I have been drinking so that I don't dream."

"I know that."

"It's like you're getting stronger. I hear you now when I'm awake."

"You're right.  Something is making me stronger. I feel things. That's why I'm calling for you.  Something is wrong with Isobel. Even in the pod I sense it. She's dying. Please."

Liz thinks that Max was able to reach out to save Isobel because the electricity is making him stronger in the pod.

Maria confessed to her mother that she had thought she might be getting sick too, Mimi said Maria would not get lost because she was protected, and reached for the resin pendant with the anti-alien pollen flower that Maria was wearing as usual. When Mimi seemed to go to sleep, Maria removed the necklace and placed it on her mother. 

Flashing back to the night of the crash, Nora seems to be tying down the tarp on the back of the truck when Tripp approaches her.  He feigns an offer to assist her and then grabs her and orders his men to move in so that they can take her and the truck back to base.  Louise appears and black-canary-screams to push them away (sound waves, I presume). She is shot in the stomach/chest. Nora pulls her into the truck and drives them away.

The newspaper clip Michael found is dated October 12, 1948, two days before Nora was captured. 

Newspaper transcript:

Last scene - Nora is clearly driving the truck with her powers, as she has both her arms around Louise. They approach a cabin and we're introduced to Roy Bronson, who offers to help.

Roswell Town Fair Charms Locals and Tourists

Photo caption: Smiles abound demonstrate a good time had by all.

Saturday Festivities Drew Healthy Crowds

Second column under photo:

...well as celebrated hometown war heroes, and, of course, Mrs. Benjamin Booker (Carol) whose strawberry Chile pie has won the Roswell Pie Contest four seasons in a row.

Children delighted in activities such as sack races.......

Top of 3rd column:

...ice creams.

Meanwhile the annual pumpkin chunking contest was the main attraction as expected! Pumpkin chunkers arrived from far and wide with their pumpkins and their pumpkin-lurching apparatuses. The prize for best pumpkin chunked went to the Long Family. Their farm foreman Roy Bronson credited his friend and neighbor, a young woman who declined to be named, for the Long's pumpkin chunking victory.

When asked what he'd do with the prize money, Bronson declared that he would "purchase ingredients (for his lady friend) to cook up a nice pumpkin pie".

MUSIC:

Dame - Holy Moly

Tommee Profitt feat. Fleurie - Hurricane

[sibyl-of-space]

Do you ever set out to write a blog post about why you like OoT3D so much and accidentally write a stupidly long think piece about your feelings on growing up? well i did. Behold,

A word of warning: this piece starts off on a heck of a tangent getting into my personal history with the game, as I don't think it's possible to talk about how I feel about it without that context. This isn't a review so much as an essay, and it's as far from impartial as one can get. I don't think I would be very good at writing an impartial review if I tried. So I didn't try.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the first video games I recall finishing on my own as a child. I grew up with two older siblings and would often play multiplayer games with them, or start (and not actually finish) other single-player games; generally if anyone actually BEAT a game it was one of the older siblings, and I would be either spectator or 2nd player. Which I thoroughly enjoyed, but taking the agency of gaming into my own hands was an experience of its own, and for that reason Ocarina of Time was very special to me.

As a child with undiagnosed ADHD I relied on familiarity for comfort. I only played this game in the first place because I'd seen my sibling do it first, and after I did beat it once, I kept coming back to it because I recognized it. I played it over, and over, and over. I talked to the same NPC's each time until I had most of their dialogue memorized. I put off the same dungeons I didn't like by doing the same sidequests. I jumped off random cliffs and tried to get the camera to look through walls when I got bored of the game, because it was familiar and I liked it, but I was tired of playing it properly. My brain became its own personalized wiki around the pieces of this game I knew... not that "game wikis" existed at the time.

Playing it in this particular way, I had a very specific opinion of it.

It was my first Zelda, so to me, it defined what "Zelda" was. Zelda was a set of goalposts provided that I was free to follow or ignore as I saw fit. Zelda was being Blank Slate McProtag with a grand, magical destiny to claim, not a grounded character with a personal story to tell. Zelda was using the power of music and a Big F*cking Sword to smite evil and save the world. Zelda was growing from fairy boy to Hero of Time and riding around a big field on a horse. Zelda had a lot of NPC's telling me what to do, and Zelda let me just completely ignore all of them until I felt like following directions.

And I spent a lot of my time completely ignoring directions. I didn't actually like any of the dungeons. I just hated some more than others. I hated the water temple because it was confusing to me and it was very punishing if you make a misstep (whoops, shouldn't have raised the water level? time to re-change it 2 more times to fix that). I hated the shadow temple because it was scary (DISEMBODIED HANDS FALLING FROM THE CEILING THIS IS THE MOST TERRIFYING THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES). I could easily list dozens of things that I hated about every dungeon. So I never went straight to them when I was supposed to.

Dungeons--you know, the bulk of the gameplay in an action-adventure game--were these annoying things I had to trudge through to play the game, and it was the game that I liked. Which sounds counter-intuitive as an adult, but it was absolutely how I felt as a child.

But, begrudgingly, I did them anyway... sooner or later. I did the water temple because I felt sad for the Zoras frozen in ice and wanted to save them. I did the fire temple because I felt sad for the imprisoned Gorons and wanted to save them. I did the shadow temple because I missed the music in Kakariko Village and the rain felt depressing. The game told me what was wrong, and what I had to do to fix it, so I eventually did the dungeons I hated because there were fictional people counting on me.

(I also did a lot of NOT fixing things, and instead picking up random rocks on the overworld looking for grottos, and throwing bombs at random walls, and harassing cuccos from my invincible horse. Don't get me wrong, the people could wait, it's not like the game punishes you for taking your sweet time. But... well, at some point I would get bored of my procrastination, and do what I had to do to save the world or whatever.)

It's entirely possible that this game was my Favorite Zelda for a very long time simply because it was the first one I played. My inclination toward the familiar was an ENORMOUS bias in its favor, so other Zeldas that were different in... virtually any respect, were obviously worse and un-Zelda-like.

But there were definitely things I loved about it, things that made it my favorite, other than its familiarity. Maybe this game shaped my tastes to suit it; maybe I was drawn to it because of these preferences. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. Whatever the case, I played the game repeatedly for years despite hating its dungeons because there was so much else about it I was wholly obsessed with.

I loved the way it brought attention to its music. I was already taking music lessons from a young age so I was developing an ear for it, and being able to hear the link (lololol) between "Saria's Song" and the background music you hear in the Lost Woods... it gave that music a very special identity, a context and meaning. These melodies were simple for my young ear to reproduce on cello or piano if I wanted to, and I could even play them in the game on its own digital instrument. (Don't tell my cello teacher this, but I probably spent significantly longer learning how to tilt the control stick to play songs on the virtual ocarina than I spent practicing cello scales.)

A decade or so later, I gained the vocabulary to describe what I loved so much about the music in Ocarina of Time. The term is "diegetic music," music that is audible and perceivable as music within the context of a work. This game gave me a magical musical instrument and let me use the power of music to do magical things. I was a magical musician in this game! AND I had a sword!!! Literally the perfect video game.

It was more than just the music, of course. I loved the visuals as well. I would sit in the middle of Lon Lon Ranch in first-person view staring at Malon for hours so I could draw her and her stupid hairline on binder paper leftover from school. (I would sing along to her awful voice, too, but only when no one was around to overhear.) I liked the interesting patterns at the hem of her dress, the design on the panel hanging from her belt as an adult. After obtaining a spiritual stone or a temple medallion I would leave it on screen, with Link standing there holding it up long enough for his arms to get quite tired, so I could trace down its design. I took personal offense when people drew the Kokiri Emerald backwards. I felt like a genius when I realized the pattern on the back of the Deku Shield matched the golden part of the emerald. The game had an entire language of images that I was completely enamored with, and it was all so bright and colorful.

I guess I liked the story, too? It's hard to say definitively because I don't have any specific memories about that. I definitely enjoyed the writing, though. I liked the unique dialogue telling me about the relationship between the bald guy, the carpenter, the potion grandma, and the cucco lady ("her name is NOT Anju, she's DIFFERENT from the character in Majora's Mask, YOU WOULDN'T CALL MALON "CREMIA" - me). I liked talking to people and learning about the world. It gave me the chance to feel like I was really experiencing a whole, more fantastic world than the real one, where magic is real and a horse teleports to you if you play a song on your magic wind instrument. Among other things.

I was engaging with this game more as a multimedia artwork than as a game, but I was having a very good time, so what does it matter if maybe that wasn't supposed to be the point? I loved the music and the visuals and the worldbuilding, and I learned how to play it so I could experience these. That is what I meant, as a kid, when I would say that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was my favorite Zelda game. I didn't give too much of a hoot about Ganondorf's characterization or the temple design of the Bottom of the Well, I just thought Hyrule seemed pretty dang neat and I wanted to live in it for a while.

Unfortunately, at some point or another, I started to do this very hard thing called Growing Up. I resisted this thing for as long as I could, and to an extent I am still resisting it, but over time it did start winning the battle. As it did so, my perspective on gaming and other media began to evolve.

I won't do a disservice to my younger self by pretending to remember all of my different opinions and the various justifications for them over the course of my life so far. Ocarina of Time fluctuated between my favorite, to my second-favorite just under Majora's Mask, to my favorite, to "I love it but it's not the best", to favorite again, etc. I think it spent most of its time just under Majora's Mask, because there reached a point where I'd played Ocarina of Time so much that no amount of love for its visuals and sound and world could make up for the fact that it was getting stale. Majora's Mask felt much more rewarding for me when I would replay it over and over again and people moved and said different things and time really passed. I wanted a world that felt alive, and there was no question to me that Majora's Mask felt more alive.

So I gradually fell away from Ocarina of Time. I had it basically memorized anyway, and the NPC's never moved like they do in Majora's Mask, so what was the point? When Ocarina of Time 3D came out I was briefly very excited for it, but I wanted it to feel new again so I did a 3-hearts no-lens-of-truth "challenge run" off and on over the course of a few years, and that was as much as I played it again for a long time. Sure, the visuals were nice by comparison, but I still knew the game by heart.

That was in 2015. The next time I picked up Ocarina of Time 3D was last year, in 2020, over 5 years later, and probably double that many since the last time I'd played it all the way through in one go. So at age 27, I played a video game that had been everything to me as a kid, a game that I once knew better than the back of my hand, but now with only a vague recollection of its contents and an entirely different perspective.

It was the freshest eyes I've had on it since the first time I ever played it. It is probably the freshest eyes I'll ever have on it again.

Currently, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (3D) is without a doubt my favorite Legend of Zelda game, and one of my favorite video games I've ever played. This playthrough convinced me. I know that opinion may fluctuate again in the future, but that matters a lot less to me than expressing how much I love it right now, in this moment.

A side-effect of my Growing Up is that I don't get immersed in video game worlds like I used to. I'm unable to pass hours at a time just walking around a fictional town and pretending I live there. I place a lot more weight on gameplay, because if a game isn't fun, I am not going to spend much time playing it. I'm not scared of polygonal hands falling from the ceiling, especially given that they're extremely easy to dodge and easier to kill. Lastly, I've developed a habit of over-analyzing media in a way that prooobably hinges on "total bullsh*t" to others, but is significant to me.

So I was playing Ocarina of Time decidedly differently. I was actually following the directions given to me in the game, taking note of dungeon design elements that impressed or interested me, and deriving my own interpretation of the narrative as conveyed by story, gameplay, music, and visuals. One could probably say I was playing it "as intended" for the first time, but honestly, who even cares about intention.

I found myself really invested in the story. I like how there is a narrative implied for Link, not necessarily through the game telling me about his backstory with X and Y characters (the game tries that with Saria, but it falls a bit flat), but through his growth in terms of capability over the course of the game. Starting out as a kid who can only roll, getting a dinky sword and a shield that burns away, turning into an adult and using a bow with better control than the slingshot, etc until you are obtaining gauntlets that let you suplex massive boulders 20 times your size. I felt like I, as the player, experienced the transition from "I'm playing Adult Link the same as Young Link but taller," to "my moveset is completely different and I'm basically a god now," and it gave me a different kind of immersion from what I experienced when I was a kid. I was immersed in Link's growth because I felt like I transformed from being a kid to a total f*cking badass by the end of the game. I was projecting my own thoughts of whether he is a "child" or "adult" based on my own experiences and thoughts while playing.

And that narrative, that commentary on what it means to be a "child" and grow into an "adult", hits entirely differently when playing a game that I saw one way as a kid and now see another way as an adult. The game was commenting on how different the world looks to a child versus to an adult, and at the same time I'm noticing how different the game itself looks to me now, as an adult, versus when I was a child.

I currently interpret it as one of the most well-told coming of age stories I've ever experienced.

I also have a newfound appreciation for Ocarina of Time's iteration of Zelda, the character. When I was a kid, even though I knew Zelda and Sheik were the same person (sorry for spoilers but it's true), I still didn't really perceive them that way. I didn't even really perceive the adult and young versions of characters as the same person, because they look different and act different. I was a kid, I didn't have life experience and context to think of them in those terms yet.

I do now, and I'd like to go on the record stating Ocarina of Time Zelda is cool as f*ck. She spends 7 years in hiding undergoing secret ninja training, can somehow make an entire orchestra accompany her when she plays harp, has extremely dramatic entrances and exits for literally no reason except for the production of it... by the time the Nocturne of Shadow cutscene comes along there's an interesting and compelling camaraderie between Link and Sheik-Zelda, even though they've only had like 5 cutscenes together where all Sheik does is recite heavily pointed poetry. When Zelda reveals her identity at the end, it's a really powerful moment that sells the same "fate brought us together" feeling you get from the very first meeting with her in the courtyard, and again at the final reunion at the very end.

I'm repeating myself here, but I really have to emphasize: this game is most successful in what it conveys narratively without saying it. Sure, it tries to explain to me that Link is Saria's long time BFF or whatever, but that's mostly offscreen, and when you have Sheik show up and teach you magical songs at key plot beats and then reveal herself to be the princess who has dictated your journey from the start, that relationship starts coming off as a lot more meaningful. No offense Saria. Sorry about your ocarina.

This narrative-via-gameplay that I am probably heavily exaggerating from the text wouldn't be very successful if the gameplay weren't good. Fortunately, I'm quite pleased to announce that the dungeon design in Ocarina of Time (3D) is largely really solid. The Shadow Temple and Ice Cavern are the only real drags, the former because Bottom of the Well already did what it tries to do but better, and the latter because it's just boring bottle management when blue fire could have been so much cooler. Other than that? I had a BLAST. Puzzles are fun and interesting, enemies are diverse to suit their environments, I was totally RPing as mr. hero guy going on an adventure and exploring interesting places with distinct designs and great vibes. Turns out I actually love the water temple! Who knew? (Color-coded doors signaling water level changes helped a LOT.) And collecting magical artifacts along the way was just... fun. No better word for it. The game is fun!

There are, however, two things I completely agree with my younger self on.

The visuals and music in this game. Are awesome.

Ocarina of Time 3D looks, visually, the way I always wanted Ocarina of Time to look on the Nintendo 64. It's the same but more vibrant, rounded, colorful, detailed; but, the same. It's just brought to life. Even as a kid playing the 64 version with nothing to compare it to I wished the models were less pointy and ugly, and now I have a version where it looks the way I always dreamed it could, and I'm never going back. I have visual nitpicks with the 3DS version I can count on one hand and a mountain of things I love about it. The trade-off is nowhere near equal.

As for music? I stand firmly with child-me. Wielding a magic ocarina that you can play whatever you want on is unmatched, and weaving melodies for gameplay purposes that also match iconic BGM pieces is brilliant. I don't spend hours on end playing Rick Astley on it anymore (...but maybe I did spend fifteen minutes or so, for old times' sake), but I am ever a sucker for media in which music is a vessel for magic, especially when I'm allowed to play that music myself.

Everything I now love about this game, all of my take-aways from it, are perfectly encapsulated by the last scene as an adult, after defeating Ganon, when Link and Zelda have a conversation floating in the sky because Magic. (I don't need an explanation for why they're in the sky, they're in the sky because Magic, and because it's a gorgeous setting that fits the mood.) And after an entire game in which the Song of Time is emphasized as an important piece associated with traveling 7 years through time from the Temple of Time, Zelda tells you that she is going to send you back, and brings the ocarina to her lips. Zelda, who taught you the Song of Time in the first place.

And she plays Zelda's Lullaby.

Her performance hesitates, just slightly, before the last couple notes, and she opens her eyes to see you disappear, never to meet again in this future, but perhaps to meet again in another one.

It's absolutely perfect. That musical decision is one I never even noticed as a kid, but it is absolutely everything to me now. I don't necessarily know that I have the words to explain what about it is so perfect to me, other than "literally everything." Ocarina of Time's dynamic between Link and Zelda is simply poetic. It's a dynamic that is less about them feeling like real people and more about this sense that they are part of a greater destiny, two of the most important figures in the universe, souls whose combined story transcends time.

Maybe those kinds of stories aren't as impactful to some. But to me, there is nothing more deserving of a title like "The Legend of Zelda" than a game where, at the end of it, I truly feel as though I've been a part of something legendary.

[mappinglasirena]

Set Trouble in the Captain’s Quarters

I was working on my first deep-dive, a post about the trouble of locating the holodeck and anything on the upper deck, really, when I realized I needed to split it up and do this bit first.

So, today in “Mapping La Sirena”: Why it’s so tough to try and make a layout of a place that is, in fact, a tv set bound by all the constraints of budget, time, and practicality that implies - and why there might only be one functioning door on Sirena’s upper deck.

[very long post with a bunch of pictures after the cut ;) ]

Technically, there are two rooms that have been reliably established to be on the upper deck of La Sirena, and two that are very likely but a little bit speculative. The ones we know for sure are Raffi’s quarters (because we see Picard knock on her door and get a good glimpse of the background as she walks in several times)....

... and the “conference room” in episode 10 (you can see the floor plating and structures of the upper deck through the open door).

The two rooms we can

assume

to be on the upper deck are the captain’s quarters and the holodeck. I’m gonna talk about the holodeck more next time, so we’re ignoring it for now, but let’s take a look at the captain’s quarters.

I’m very far from the first person to point out that the conference room in episode 10 is with 98% probability just the set of the captain’s quarters with different furniture. Look at the slatted light source (what looks like a window) in the back, the wall panels next to it, the ceiling (construction and slope), and compare it with this:

Some more detail:

So this is very likely the same set, only with different furniture. The only difference I could spot is this bit of the wall where one of the support beams sits:

This clearly looks different when Raffi enters the captain’s quarters in ep. 8 (left) and when we see it again in the conference room in ep. 10 (right). I do have a theory as to why this is though: The production team moved the wall to the other side of the door to film the inside of Raffi’s quarters and then moved it back for the conference room - except not all of it, apparently.

Clues for the Moving Wall

First of all, I’ve thrown together a couple very rough sketches of the layout of Raffi’s and Rios’s rooms. More detailed & accurate ones will follow when I do a deep dive on the quarters at some point ;) (Raffi’s room ended up a little bit too wide but not by much. It’s larger than it seems on camera!)

Now, there are several clues that these two rooms are not two separarte, fully existing sets but that they share some of their space and, especially, a door.

First and most obvious: The door for each of these rooms is in the same place in relation to the rest of the deck. If you count the support beams that run the length of the ship, starting with the two red ones at the back, the door in question is on the port sight (right side on picture below) between numbers 3 & 4. That’s parallel to the back third of the “holodeck” (the large alcove with the door in the middle on the left below).

It’s pretty difficult to get a good shot of the entirety of the upper deck, so I hope this is helpful enough. If you look at the floor plates as orientation, they give you a very good guide about where things are located, since they always lie neatly in between the support beams. Now, if you check the view through the doors in question...

left: Raffi entering her quarters (ep.8); middle: the “holodeck”; right: view from the conference room (ep.10) (which, as established, is identical to the captain’s quarters). I know it’s a bit tricky in the last one, but if you check the lines on the floor, you can tell it’s in the same position as the door in the first picture.

The second clue is the shape of the rooms. If you look at the corner in the captain’s quarters where Rios has his armchairs, you can see that the corner has this diagonal bit with the horizontal light across it (top right and bottom picture below). That corresponds to the little bit with diagonal walls in Raffi’s room (top left; check the layout sketch above if you’re unsure what diagonal bits I’m talking about ;] )

It’s a little difficult to see in Raffi’s room, with Rios and a cupboard in front of it, but I'm pretty certain that bit of wall is identical.

Last but not least, I got so incredibly frustrated by trying to figure out what was going on here that i started paying way too much attention to silly little details and lo and behold: The scratches in the doorframe of the door to Raffi’s quarters (left) and Rios‘s quarters (right) appear to be identical.

What does it all mean?

This is one of the main points where the set design is just not going to line up with any “real" floor plan for La Sirena. One physical space was used with some modifications to act as at least four different locations on the ship: the captain’s quarters, the conference room, and the crew quarters (both Raffi’s and Agnes’s, details when I get there ;] ).

There are a number of those incongruities throughout Sirena’s design (just wait until we get to the size discussion, good grief!), but for me, this one jumped out from the start. Now, I don’t know how you all feel about these kinds of issues, where filming realities conflict with in-world-continuity to a certain degree, but my opinion is mostly: So what.

It’s neat to know that this is what happened and to realize what the actual, physical set probably looks like, and as you can see, I'm more than happy to obsess over it and discuss it ad nauseam. But for me at least, it doesn’t lessen my enjoyment of figuring out what a “real” Sirena might look like and how we can use her as a setting for fanworks. It basically means that we officially have creative license to design the “real” floor plan for ourselves. You just need to be aware that any solution you come up with to sort out this paradox is only your interpretation of imperfect source material ;)

With that said: I actually think there is a pretty easy solution to this particular conundrum. There are two doors on the port side of the upper deck. In the set, the front one is apparently a false door and only the back door leads into a real room. On the “real” ship, we can just move the captain’s quarters one door further to the front, as I already did on my first attempt at a layout, before I realized there was a moving-wall-issue.

Now, this post is already way too long and the door will become important again for the question “where the frick is that holodeck supposed to be?”, so I’ll leave it at that for the day. I think I’ll return to the upper deck some time next week to point out more set-confusion and hopefully end up with an improved sketch of the mid-section of that part of the ship. Stay tuned ;)

I would love to read what you guys think about these kinds of discrepancies and how you might handle them in your Sirena headcanons!

[deltaengineering]

Fall Anime 2019 Part 4: also, he has a gun for a head

Beastars

So here’s the CG anime that everyone for some reason decided way in advance would be the best show of the season, more or less by default. I was very skeptical of this for a multitude of reasons. First of all, that is a bad name for a show and you can’t convince me otherwise. It’s actually even worse because you’re supposed to write it in all caps, but I refuse. Second, it has a terribly on the nose conceit in which all sorts of animals live together in a high school setting and it’s all metaphorical ‘n shit. The main character is a wolf but get this, he’s actually all sensitive and quiet! Yeah, this is definitely rated D for Deep. And finally it’s by Orange, the CG studio that got an inordinate amount of acclaim for making Houseki no Kuni, the show that everyone thinks looks great and finally made CG anime worthwhile (actual real fact: HnK does not look great most of the time and CG anime was worthwhile well before it). 

But enough about my preconceptions since Beastars is... pretty good, actually. If you ignore the setting, which is indeed terribly on the nose. And there’s not much else to say about the story so far besides it. However, it looks significantly better than Houseki no Kuni because it actually has really good character animation throughout instead of a one-minute action scene with flashy spinny camera tricks every other episode. The directing’s strong too, even if the show conspicuously mainly consists of obvious manga panels. I’m still not too hot on the animal stuff but the general writing seems to be sufficiently competent it would work simply on a character level. So I don’t love it, but it seems solid enough to see if it goes somewhere with its “Zootopia but also Beverly Hills 90210 but also they eat each other sometimes″ plot.

Rifle is Beautiful

Remember the whole “anime about some assorted anime girls joining a club doing an oddly specific activity” thing? This is another one of those, and now it’s about air rifle sports shooting. Except it’s not about air rifle sports shooting because that’s apparently way too violent, so they use rifles that look like exactly like air rifles but are actually based on lasers or really bright flashlights (they can’t keep their bullshit straight between scenes, sorry) instead. I just don’t think “girls doing activities” anime should blatantly misrepresent their subject matter like that, you know? With the possible exception of idol anime that is, ain’t nobody who wants to hear about that shit. Apart from that it’s nothing special, so if you are really into air rifles and wish to watch an anime that’s not about those, knock yourself out. It goes through a whole “club needs 5 members” arc in the first half of the first episode, so I really can’t say where it goes next. Nowhere much, I would guess.

Oh right, there’s one more thing: They frequently render the bodies in CG and the heads in traditional drawings, and they do it every time when they’d actually have to draw a rifle otherwise. It’s a weird effect that I think I haven’t seen anywhere else before, and it’s not great but also not terrible. And it’s the most interesting thing about the entire show.

Kabukicho Sherlock

“Let’s take a bunch of public domain characters and put them into a hip modern setting” seems to be its own genre at the moment, and not only because the BBC did that with S. Holmes, Esq. already. Obviously this show is influenced by that (besides other public domain namedroppers like Bungou Stray Dogs), mostly in Watson and his relationship with Sherlock, but Sherlock-san is rather different here; he’s neither the classic Victorian bohemian nor the abrasive sociopath of the BBC version, and tends more towards a bumbling 90s pop culture version of autism and/or general wackiness here. These two are surrounded by a bunch of campy transvestites for some reason, and I’m not quite sure whether I’m supposed to find this particular stereotype offensive or empowering this week, but it sure is annoying. And it has the same character designer as Joker Game, so if you like chiseled, angular anime men, you’re in for a treat here - even if they tend to wear a lot of makeup and dresses sometimes. I don’t know man, it seems sort of okay-ish for the most part but it’s neither as funny as they think, nor as weird as they think, nor is the murder of the week intriguing at all. Oh yeah, he’s hunting noted public domain character Jack the Ripper. Because of course he is.

 Shin Chuuka Ichiban!

I am told this is the sequel to episode 19 of a 52-episode anime TV show from 1997. Okay. I am also told to not dare watch this without the important setup therein, which makes me think I should pay less attention to what I’m told because understanding Shin Chuuka Ichiban and its backstory is not hard at all. Kid is superawesome cooking champion in ancient China and goes around clowning on lesser cooks, got it. It’s not a complicated setup and it’s not a complicated genre either: This seems to be mostly about sick shounen cooking duels. Besides the setting, the main difference between this and Shokugeki no Soma seems to be that SnS goes for ridiculous and Chuuka Ichiban goes for epic - which is to say that it fancies itself emotional as well. Apart from that it’s what you’d expect from a cooking shounen, big moves, big reactions, huge twists and so on. One notable thing is that this show looks really, really nice. Production I.G seems to be establishing a sideline in taking stuff from the 90s and updating it with smoother animation and shinier lighting, while keeping the overall look intact; They did it for Mahoujin Guru Guru, and this looks much the same. Still, I’m just fundamentally not really interested in what appears to be a very straightforward cooking shounen from the 90s.

Assassins Pride

Straight from the Department of Chuuni, we have this light novel masterpiece about a cool as fuck teenage assassin who teleports behind u and nothin personells fools all day. He then meets a princess he’s supposed to off but just kinda decides not to, probably because she seems to be smitten by his m’lady act. Now he has to use his sick skillz to keep them both alive. It’s awful and terrible and no good and also kind of adorable. This truly is the most 13 AND A HALF MOM years old anime in a while, and it’s not even isekai! The writing’s just so amateurish and corny you can’t help but smile when princesses exposit their backstory for no reason while being accosted by pumpkin monsters (without knowing that Awessassin McCooldude happens to be listening in, which is certainly convenient). Or when the episode ends with the man just reading the synopsis of the show out again, in case you were too fascinated by this plot to pay attention to what it’s about. Yeah I’m not going to watch this in a thousand years, but it sure made me chuckle. Your mileage may vary.

Mugen no Juunin - Immortal

Speaking of 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔢𝔱𝔦𝔢𝔰 𝔢𝔡𝔤𝔢, another anime adaptation of Blade of the Immortal appeared! You know, the manga for the cultured and historically minded guro fan. The first episode of Blade of the Immortal runs with this and is an arthouse production that someone most definitely directed the shit out of. I don’t think I’ve seen this much directing since, well, Sarazanmai, but “Ikuhara amounts of directing” is pretty much the idea here. And most of the time it even works! The quickly edited, disorienting style gives episode 1 a feeling closer to horror than to a cool swordmen action show, and that really brings out the best in the material, which is grotesque splatter bordering on the comical - It’s somehow a better Junji Ito anime than the actual Junji Ito anime. I think it tries too hard in a few places, but at least it does try.

But then I watched the second episode and that one’s a fairly conventional splatter-comedy swordin’ anime. I am not at all pleased with this development. The third episode was better again and seemed to split the difference between 1 and 2, even if it mostly uses the tricky editing to save on effort in the action –  I would much prefer actually readable fights and the wacky mannerisms in the more psychological stuff, thank you very much. Based on episode 1 I thought we might have something special here, but as of episode 3 I’d already merely call it pretty decent. I guess I’ll still stick with it but man, that’s a real bummer.

No Guns Life

No Guns Life is a neo-noir thriller about a guy who has a gun for a head. That’s fuckin rad and exactly the kind of silliness I am totally down for. He also has a gun for a hand, and there’s also some battle nun’s who carry revolvers with two cylinders, so in short I think the title is false advertising. This sounds very wacky (and it is), but it also takes its noir very seriously, down to details more wannabe neo-noirs tend to neglect (like being set right after a big war). The look and feel is pretty excellent, with sharp design and high-contrast artwork, and the music goes all in on the moody saxophone as you’d expect. And there’s some really adorable “look mom, I’m writing” stuff about how Man With Gun For A Head really “needs someone to pull his trigger” and so on (which is, as the astute reader might remember, at the back of his head). It feels like a throwback but then I can’t really think of many 80s/90s shows like this, so it’s actually more like the sort of faux-retro idea Trigger/Imaishi would come up with on a lark. Trigger/Imaishi would, of course, make a far worse anime out of it, so it’s all good. Well, it has some pacing problems and as always it’s a fine line between amusingly camp and not so amusingly camp anymore, but No Guns Life seems to have enough real qualities that it can probably stand on its own even when its conceptual gimmick eventually doesn’t suffice anymore. I give it a two gun’s up.

Hoshiai no Sora / Stars Align

And finally, here’s an anime about middle schooler softboys playing a tennis just as soft as themselves, while being henpecked by the elites on the girl’s team. This is not an “actual” sports anime though: for starters, it’s not based on some shounen manga and is an anime original with quite some staff pedigree instead. It’s also more of a character drama that already goes to some surprisingly real places by the end of episode 1, reminiscent of the recent and quite good Run with the Wind. Furthermore, it looks delicious, with minimalist but distinctive and varied character designs and animation that’s both extremely detailed for a TV anime and also not trying to shove that fact into your face with flashy stunt cuts. In short, this show seems very simple at first glance but every aspect of it just oozes quality. If nothing else, it’s already worth watching just for the excellent ending sequence where the characters show off their “best” dance moves and the chunky student council president dunks on everyone. This one caught me by surprise and it’s an easy pick for most promising show of the season.

[sugamoonv]

Eyes Off

Hi, can i requesting a Taehyung scenario? you Taehyung's girlfriend and a worldwide supermodel that is gonna walk in a Victoria Secret fashion show. Everyone is jealous because you look really sexy/hot and how will the other members react, especially Tae? 

Parings: Model!Reader x Idol!Taehyung

Word Count: 1,812

Warnings: implied smut

A.N: As always, let me know what you think!

Sweat dripped down your face as your feet slowed to a stop. The bottom of your sneakers were warm from the treadmill. The sound of moving belts and the occasional clunk of weights filled the gym. You gave a quick glance to your co-workers next to you in the row of treadmills before stepping down and wiping your face with a small towel.

Your wrist vibrated as your phone received a call and sent it to your fit-bit via bluetooth and with a tap, you answered.

“Hello?” you spoke into your headphones.

“Are you at the gym?” your boyfriend, Taehyung’s voice fills your ears.

“That obvious, huh?” you panted out and Taehyung chuckled into the receiver. You sniffled and wiped your upper lip with the towel. “I’m just finishing though so I’ll be over soon for lunch.”

“Okay, good because I refuse to eat without you and everyone’s getting mad at me.”

You laugh out loud and gather your belongings from the public cubbies by the entrance. You wave goodbye to the other women as you exit the door.

--

You pull your shirt away from your shoulders. The damp spot from your freshly-washed hair made it stick to your skin. The rest of the shirt was baggy on you along with the sweatpants you borrowed from Taehyung and your socks that constantly slipped down to your ankles. It didn’t make sense to you to dress up if you were going to be changing later on for another run through.

You cover your mouth to laugh at something Jimin says before taking a sip of your water and reaching forward to your plate. Jungkook insisted on lettuce wraps so you had a napkin or your hand in front of your face each time you shoved a whole wrap in your mouth.

Taehyung leans against you and pats your stomach as you finish chewing your third wrap.

“Mmm, I can’t eat anymore.” You brush your hands on your pants. Jungkook leans forward and steals the last wrap from your plate with his chopsticks and pours sauce on top before pushing the whole thing in his mouth. None of you pay any mind to the way his cheeks puff out.

“Are you gonna’ be late tonight?”

Taehyung drowsily nods into your neck.

“What do you want for dinner then?”

“Bulgogi…..and noodles,” he kisses your neck.

“Alright. I have to go,” you stand up from your place at the table and lean down to peck Taehyung’s lips, “I’ll leave a take-out container in the fridge for when you’re done.”

“Thank you. I love you.”

“Love you too.” You give hugs to the rest of the boys and sling your bag over your shoulder before heading out of the restaurant.

--

Taehyung ignores the flashing cameras as he sits in the first row with his members. He pushes the thin, designer frames up his nose and glances at the people still filing in. He kept his face neutral at the presence of some major icons in the fashion industry and politely waved to the few people he recognized rather than excitedly sparking a conversation with them. He was here for you so he was going to make sure he kept the attention off of him and his members as much as possible.

In fact, part of him was annoyed that his members were here because he knew he himself would draw enough attention. But nearly the entirety of BTS?

Taehyung had had no say in the matter though. After finally being lucky and touring in the same city you had to fly out to for a fashion show, he asked to attend. And thinking of the publicity, BigHit had made Taehyung agree to take Namjoon, Jin, Hoseok, Jimin, and Jungkook. Yoongi had decided to stay back.

Taehyung was not only nervous for himself but for how you would react. Because not only was this the first fashion show he’s attended, it’s the first time he’ll be seeing you actually work. Sure, he’s heard you talk about your job and has seen you playfully model for him, but this was different. This wasn’t a half-naked picture of you on some advertisement in a magazine he hides from the others like some horny teenage boy. This wasn’t going to be like one of the rare nights you were both free and spent it ruining the lingerie he bought you or you were allowed to keep from previous shows or shoots. There were dozens of eyes on him tonight and hundreds were going to be on you and that made his heart beat a little faster.

At long last, when everyone’s finished taking their seats, the lights dim and the anticipation in Taehyung’s stomach heightens. A spotlight flickers on and points at the base of the runway where the designer walks out from behind a large panel. Flashes blind Taehyung’s peripheral vision but he remains apt on listening to the inspiration and meaning behind the woman’s collection. With a bow and a round of applause, the music sounds and the show begins.

The first model comes out fully dressed but as the show goes on, the models become more and more scantily clad until they’re fully on to the lingerie line of the collection. That is when you first make your appearance of the night. Your gaze is focused and face void of any emotion as you strut down the walkway in what has to be ten inch heels. Taehyung can see the muscles in your calves flexing to keep you stable as you walk.

Taehyung swallows heavily at the first piece you’re wearing and he’s not sure if this is some messed up version of heaven to be seeing you in your element yet not be able to put your hands on you. The duality of power and grace in the way you move has Taehyung admiring you and squirming in his seat. Not many realize the physical and mental labor it takes to succeed in your career, but watching you, Taehyung found that he was no longer upset for all the times you blew him off to work with your trainer.

“Tae, are you sure that was Y/N? Because I don’t remember her looking that sexy last time I saw her.” Hoseok leans forward in his seat to talk down the row to Taehyung.

Taehyung can only tear his eyes from the runway after you’ve retreated back behind the panel and once he does, he’s able to address Hoseok. Taehyung brings a hand up to his face and smirks while casting a smug side look to Hoseok. But he has to do a double take as he sees the shocked expressions on his members’ faces. Specifically Jungkook.

Taehyung forgot that before tonight, he’s been the only one to see you dressed the way you are. Namjoon keeps his face as calm as possible, something he’s able to do because of the strong platonic relationship between you two, along with Jin. Taehyung was sure that Jin’s ears were bright red simply from the surprise of seeing his “little sister” in only a bra, panties, and heels. Hoseok was giving Taehyung looks of approval, like a proud father to a son, which boosted his ego and made him protective of you at the same time. It was Jimin’s and Jungkook’s silence however that worried Taehyung.

And so Taehyung found himself gauging Jungkook’s and Jimin’s reactions rather than watching you. Though he could tell whenever you walked out because Jungkook’s eyes would get as wide as saucers and he would guiltily glance at Taehyung and shift in his seat. Jimin would squint as his eyes followed your form and Taehyung saw the way Jimin would tap his fingers before rubbing his thighs until you left.

Taehyung was fuming by the end of the show, causing him to almost miss the final look you were wearing. You appeared on the runway alone for the final time that night wearing the signature piece. It wasn’t the Fantasy Bra, but the gems on it sparkled in the stage lights and camera flashes and made your skin glow. The top and bottom were connected with an open, intricate pattern that barely covered your stomach. And the color of the piece contrasted beautifully with your skin tone and drew the eye to all of your best features.

Taehyung was sure he had actually died and gone to heaven when you came back out at the end of the line up, the designer to your left and a large smile on your face as you made eye contact with him.

Taehyung has to convince his member to leave without him and push past dozens of people before he spots you in the stuffy, open space backstage. The smell of hairspray, makeup, and burnt hair makes his nose twitch. He’s able to properly locate you when you scream his name after seeing the top of his head in the crowd of people. You launch yourself onto him in a full body hug once you’re close enough. You’ve changed into loose sweats and your hair is still is still styled in the complicated up-do.

“You never told me you were coming,” you exclaim into his neck. You hop down and tilt your head up to look at him. “I would have made sure to do better if I’d known you were coming.” Taehyung chuckles at the way you pout at him.

“You did amazing,” Taehyung leans down and kisses your lips, “I’m so proud of you.” You smile into the kiss and snake your arms around his waist.

“Where are the others though? I thought I saw them with you?” you knit your eyebrows.

“They got a head start back to the hotel.”

Disappointment flickers across your face but you nod and begin to make your way outside with Taehyung where your car is waiting for you. You give polite waves to the other models as you leave, ignoring the hard looks they give you and flirty smiles they give Taehyung.

The ride back is quiet and you nearly fall asleep on Taehyung’s shoulder a few times, but every time he wakes you up with a ‘Not yet, babe,” or ‘Don’t fall asleep’ and a small shake. It’s amazing you’re able to keep your eyes open with the gentle lull of the car and Taehyung’s body warmth, the rest of the drive.

You stay a few feet behind as Taehyung checks the both of you in. The lobby of the hotel is dead silent as most people are probably asleep at this hour. You silently walk alongside Taehyung until you get to your shared room. A squeak leaves your lips as Taehyung spins you against the closed door once you’re inside and traps you between his arms.

“I’m gonna’ make sure that everyone on this floor knows you belong to me.”

Tags: @slowlyandrogynouskyrptonite @detectivebourbon @omgsuperstarg @eshika0102

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Ghost Spider #2 Thoughts

Sigh...more of the same...

This premise gets worse the more you think about it.

I mean let’s talk about the most obvious thing that didn’t occur to me before. So Gwen needs to pick her entry points back and forth from Earth 616 carefully because her powers don’t work immediately after exiting a portal. To this end she chooses a spot she knows will lead to a bill board with poles jutting out she can grab onto before her powers kick in again.

...why not just open a portal on the ground?

Then you have the utter lack of world building.

It’s fair enough to presume that audiences are familiar with the world building of Earth 616. It’s been around for donkey’s years and it’s the basis for just about every media adaptation of Marvel ever, including the movies. Even if it’s far from a 1:1 similarity it is close enough that even comic book virgins can jump in and not be at too much of a loss. That’s particularly true for a Spidey series where the premise is to be relatively normal, the only fantastical elements demanding world building being the spider powers (which everyone on earth is aware of) and the villains, who often speak for themselves or are famous enough that you can presume knowledge from the audience.

But when it comes to alternate universes like Earth 65, which are specifically alternative to  Earth 616, you do need to flesh some things out. And so far beyond Gwen is a super hero and not dead, nor is her Dad and Jameson’s son is an evil gangster not much world building going on.

More problematically is the fact that basic questions are never raised nor answered. Gwen says in Earth 65 she’s going to be late for a class in Earth 616. Is time synchronized though between universes? That’s a pretty basic question when dealing with parallel universes. In the Doctor Who episode ‘Rise of the Cybermen’ that question was answered almost immediately upon entry to the parallel Earth of that story, and the series at that time was trying to be baby’s first science fiction!

It’s not an unreasonable question to ask either given how from Spider-Man’s POV Spider-Verse (where he first met Spider-Gwen) was years ago but the first sentence of the recap page of this series states Gwen got her powers mere months ago.

Playing in the same ballpark as the bad world building is the ignoring of established continuity in regards to the Jackal. Now look, I could buy that Warren has gone so far off the deep end that he considers turning Gwen into a furry like him a good idea.

But...doesn’t Warren effectively consider his clones of Gwen as the real thing? Isn’t that the entire reason he cloned Gwen in the first place, why he set up the original clone of Gwen with a clone of himself to in a weird way live out his fantasy?

So why is he obsessed over this new version of Gwen, a version that for all he knows could just be another clone? In fact if you are Miles Warren wouldn’t that be the first thing you presume? It’s not like she has given any genetic samples he can test to confirm if she is a clone or not.

On the other end of this relationship I just realized how asinine it is that no one recognizes Miles Warren, especially at ESU. Sure once upon a time Warren’s identity was secret. Even after his presumed death in the 1970s Clone Saga his identity was a secret. But that all changed in the 1990s Clone Saga when he was arrested and sent to Ravencroft. At that point his identity became public knowledge. There were like SWAT teams after him for god’s sake! And it’s very difficult to believe that ESU, the place where he worked for years and then randomly disappeared from wouldn’t have heard about one of their staff members being a super villain. Especially a super villain who

a)      Became a player in gangland activities

b)      Was targeted by the Punisher...three times!

c)       MURDERED one of their other staff members!

d)      Was majorly complicit in an event that turned everyone in New York into spider monsters!

e)      Attempted global genocide!

f)       Seemingly died very publically

Those last two by the way? They happened on site of the Daily Bugle newspaper!

This isn’t even addressing how he was last seen Marvel Team Up 2019 where he was again arrested at ESU itself! This issue does nothing to explain how he went from that situation to this. Which I’m actually okay with as that was handled by a different editorial office. If you like that was Ms. Marvel continuity and this is Spider continuity.

Normally I’d let the other continuity errors slide but most of them are stories that are major major appearances by the Jackal and define his relationship with Gwen Stacy in the first place, which is the thing this whole arc is built upon.

But no. He changes his last name, and literally nothing else, and he goes unrecognized. Unrecognized in a school where Peter Parker  is a teaching assistant (still don’t know when or where that happened)!!!!!!!!!!!!! How on Earth is he going incognito? Does he just make sure to stay 10 paces behind Peter at all times??????? Hell Curt Connors is working there too and he has to know that, he just saw Connors in Clone Conspiracy! In fact GWEN saw him in Clone Conspiracy, she saw multiple clones of him looking just like he did in issue #1 why was she not reacting to that?

My God it gets dumber the more I think about it because in Clone Conspiracy we last saw Warren blowing himself up and that was 100% confirmed to be the real Warren not another clone so who is this guy? Not to mention that story also depicted Warren wearing a Jackal costume not actually transforming into a human jackal monster.

Now me personally I think nowdays the latter idea should be the norm for the character. It never made sense for a middle aged man to get the better of Spider-Man, but his 90s Joker/Matrix look was just terrible. Having him transform back and forth though is a great compromise. But again how did we get here????????????????

It’s all just so poorly thought through!

Going back to what I said last issue about the lack of information given to new readers, this story goes along with that as far as the Man-Wolf is concerned. His treatment very much plays out as the latest issue in a run which would be fine if this was merely Ghost Spider #51-52 as opposed to ALSO being Ghost Spider #1-2. To treat this character who’s affecting subplots the way he is as though readers should just know who he is doesn’t make sense with a major relaunch. We haven’t even SEEN Man-Wolf in this series but we’ve talked a lot about him.

Remember show don’t tell?????????????

The same applies to the ramifications of his actions. He’s responsible for a bomb. What bomb? He almost killed Harry? Who is Harry? Gwen tells some thugs to leave her friends alone but its not until panels later that we confirm they are Man-wolf’s thugs, played initially as it was that wasn’t clear.

All of this is a non-issue if you read the older run but if you haven’t then it’s confusing and alienating.

And unlike what certain people might say it’s beyond unacceptable to demand that readers do homework to enjoy a comic they already paid for.

Lets change things up and talk about the two positives I have. The art continues to be nice, I especially like Benji’s look because it is very reminiscent of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane! And, as was common back when I was reading Spider-Gwen regularly, George Stacy continues to be the best character in this. The short scene in the kitchen was the best scene of the whole book and was genuinely endearing.

Okay back to the justifiable complaints.

So Gwen comments that she has to be subtle in order to keep her identity on Earth 616...but then towards the end of the book she enters a portal from Earth 65 into Earth 616 unmasked. This is stupid in general but extra stupid considering she knows her powers don’t immediately work upon exiting portals. So even if she wasn’t immediately spotted by someone or a CCTV camera she wouldn’t even have a spider sense to warn her of danger for a few precious seconds! Someone who’s life was upended by her identity being revealed (and was a public enemy before that) would be naturally wary of something like this. This isn’t even accounting for the fact that she knows she DIED in Earth 616 because one lunatic discovered Peter’s identity! Also if she can exits portals on roof tops why does she ever need to risk her neck over at that billboard?

The only other problem I spotted was that the colourist seriously screwed up Peter’s look as he has black hair instead of brown.

Besides all that the inherent problems of the premise from last issue still apply. Peter being a regular character. Gwen endangering her friends on Earth 65. The division between the supporting cast.

Ugh....this is gonna be a slog of a series isn’t it...

[hungergames-fanfic]

41st Annual Hunger Games

Word Count: 2802

I raise my hand and wave it knowing for a fact Ms Weston, my fifth grade teacher sees me. With a loud sigh, she rolls her eyes and puts her hands on her hips. “What is it now, Isadora?”, she snaps.

“The other teachers never made us watch the games.. and I ain’t allowed to watch at home”, I inform. Ms Weston gives me a fake smile. “Well, I ain’t the other teachers and I ain’t gettin’ in trouble ‘cause the Wyetka’s think if they ignore some, it’ll go away. Now shut up or i’ll kick you out of my class”, she says and raises the volume. Just as she does, the classroom doorknob jiggles for a second until it opens and in walks a peacekeeper, only unlike most, this one seems to have more authority.

His uniform is just the same as every other except his armour is thicker over his chest, and has more coverage on his arms and thighs. His helmet looks different too. Usually if I look hard enough, I can see a peacekeeper’s eyes through the tinted section over the face, but not his, it’s shiny and pitch black with a couple of dings on it, like he’s been shot at before. This makes him look intimidating and even though I can’t see him, I feel his eyes on me.

His head faces my direction for a moment. Making a fist he looks up at the television screen, where Caesar Flickerman, Capitol citizen and Hunger Games host excitedly exclaims about the games starting in an hour. His body language.. he’s mad? He turns to look at Ms Watson. She sits at the edge of her table looking at him the way Jenae looks at daddy. Menacingly, he leaves the room. This makes Ms Watson suck her teeth, I’d laugh if I weren’t so sad.

This past week has been hard for me and I can’t imagine how Efrain and his family gotta feel. When we got to say our goodbyes everyone was crying, even Eddy. I hugged him so tight, begging him to not let go. “They can’t take you if i don’t let’em”, I cried. This made him chuckle through his tears, “don’t stop bein’ you, Dora”, he said right before our time was up.

Yesterday, momma Bilmin made a big meal to take to Efrain’s, when we got there, everyone was either crying or their eyes were red and puffy. Mrs Oxoro’s health has gotten real bad too. So much so she ain’t join us in the living room while we watched the interviews. No one really had much to say but when we all saw Eddy come out we were cheering and clapping. He looked so handsome with his new haircut, wearing a shiny tanned suit embroidered with cacti shaped patterns. There was this glow about him too. He was confident and ready to be part of the games. “I’m nervous ‘bout tomorrow, but don’t confuse my jitters for weakness”, he said to Caesar Flickerman, “don’t you worry momma, i’m comin’ home”, were his last works before he stepped offstage.

The Capitol sigil is shown along with a fading black screen. Flickerman excitedly presents this year’s arena. “This year Pompreek Gustav has created an arena specially made for his last year as Gamemaker, and I do say, he has outdone himself. You see, folks, unlike most arena’s this one is our very own Gamemaker’s project home in the middle of Gesler street. Yes, that big mansion you drove past this morning on your way to work is exactly where this years Hunger Games will take place. Isn’t that exciting!”

Flickerman wears his signature navy blue suit with flickering light bulbs. He sits behind a desk while a montage of this year’s tributes play behind him. A glimpse of Eddy standing on the stage, here in District 10, is shown. My heart skips a beat. The thought of having to watch him die makes my eyes watery, my nose ticklish and my throat tight. Last time he talked to me was when he told me it’s okay to like girls. That meant a lot cause momma had me believing I was different in a bad way.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the games will begin in one minute! Ha ha!”, Flickerman yelps showing off his unnaturally white teeth.

The sixty second countdown begins and everyone is elevated into the seventh floor. Boys wear tuxedos. Girls wear elegant red gowns, caked in makeup, their hair up and pretty. All tributes appear separated in small rooms big enough to just stand in. Most are motionless, some are wide eyed and hyperventilate. Ms Weston says they’re standing in the dark cause there’s a green tinge to the imagery and their pupils are big with a white glare in them. The whole class is quiet and when the countdown reaches zero, it feels like time has slowed down.

A door opens in front of them and they stand in separate rooms of their own. For the female career from District 2, she’s been placed in a small library. For the male career from District 1, he’s been placed in a bathroom. For the female tribute from District 12, she’s been placed in a large closet. Eddy has been placed in a study. A clock on the wall is shown giving them the time. It’s 10:01 A.M.

There’s a silence in the school, we all watch curiously, wondering what it is that they’re supposed to do but it’s not long until it turns obvious.

The walls of the small library close in causing books to fall off their shelves. Abruptly, they stop. Startled, the girl from 2 looks around, her eyes wide, her arms extended. I bet none of the careers expected to be treated so equally.

In a bathroom, the shower head, bath, sink, and toilet water start to flow. In a study, a fireplace turns on along with the panels on the walls which turn bright red. In a closet, from vents hidden within the clothes, gray gas leaks. The first to realize what’s going on is a girl from District 3. Water rises to her ankles, she looks all over the room until she notices something on the ceiling. It’s a hatch. Climbing on the sink counter, she grabs the handle only to realize its locked. By now, some of the other tributes are noticing the hatch as well. It seems that every room has one.

The first death happens at 10:08 A.M when the boy from District 5 is electrocuted touching a pipe connected to the wall. He twitches, his hand catches fire and within seconds he’s flung across the bedroom, landing motionless near a wardrobe. The camera zooms on top of a tall dresser near the pipe, there lies a small golden key.

Realizing the hatch needs to be unlocked, the girl from District 8 opens every drawer in the bedroom she’s in. Suddenly, she’s swept off her feet. The floor shifts violently, back and forth, once it stops, it slowly moves upwards and comes to a halt.

The time is 10:22 A.M when the second death occurs. The little boy from District 12 coughs blood, his eyes cry and no matter how hard he tries to cover his face, the gas still gets to him. One last cough and he drops, twitching and foaming at the mouth.

Sweating profusely, Eddy wipes the sweat off his forehead and watches his step on top of a desk. Having tied his bowtie to the latch, he sticks in the golden key being the first to escape. A cheer erupts in class and what sounds like the entire school as well. “Ladies and gentlemen, our first escapee!”, Caesar announces. “But not so fast, he’s been placed in yet another room, this one seems to be some sort of botanist heaven, ha ha!” he fake laughs. Confused and on high alert, Eddy breathes heavily looking all over his surroundings. There’s a smile on my face, but deep down I’m terrified for him.

Second to escape is the girl from District 3, she’s found the key and with her gown heavy from having gotten wet, she rips it up. Flickerman whistles. Ms Weston makes a sound of disgust, “she’s fourteen”, she says.

By 10:48 A.M, bathrooms have been filled almost entirely with water, tributes desperately swimming around. In studies, objects catch fire. In bedrooms, depending on each, emit lightning like surges of electricity creating fires, others have their furniture crushed by walls or floors. Gas fogs up closets. Seven tributes are now dead, the rest, if they haven’t escaped yet then their fate has already been sealed.

A body floats in the water filled bathroom. One is shown as their skin melts from the enferning heat, and another twitches their finger as they are squished between furniture. Eddy is shown again, he’s spitting a chewed up leaf on his burnt finger tips. The female career from District 1, bleeding from her nose, coughing profusely, stumbles out of the room she’s emerged from, into a hallway and is struck in the head by a swift, lethal blow with a pipe. The first to kill is the male tribute from District 7. He searches her, peeks into the room she came from and moves on to try and open other unopened doors.

The lunch bell startles me into a jump. It’s 11:00 A.M. Ms Weston tells us to make a single file line by the door, no one says anything and we silently do as we’re told.

“Now, word is, there are eight floors and no elevators”, Caesar makes a disgruntled sound. “I don’t know about you folks, but I just hate taking the stairs. Ha ha!”, his fake laugh is the last thing I hear when I leave the classroom.

Alone at a table, rubbing the tears out of my eyes, all I can see is the boy from 12 dropping dead and twitching. Any second, it can be Eddy dying like that or in an even more horrible way. The tears keep coming. I don’t like to cry in front of people, I refuse to be a wuss but it’s so hard to swallow. Somebody hugs me from behind. When I look up, my eyesight is too blurry to tell who it is, but the wild shade of red sitting next to me gives herself away. Ari rubs my shoulder.

“I know you ain’t wanna be friends no more”, I don’t let her finish that sentence. “Ari, I missed you so much,'' I say through tears a little too loud for my liking. I’m sure there’s a lot of looks on me right now. She giggles in my ear and hugs me back. Clearly she missed me too.

Lunch with her ain’t the same, but that’s cause of my predicament. According to Ari, Mr Bale actually has them doing school work, he put his sweater over the television. “That ain’t fair, everyone with eyes knows you knew Eddy”, she says with a frown on her face. “I told you Ms Weston don’t like me”, I mumble under my breath handing her an extra piece of honey walnut bread. Even though momma Bilmin heard momma tell me to never talk to Ari again, she still adds one extra. Ari smiles when she takes it, somehow this is enough to cheer me up. I smile back.

For some reason lunch feels like it’s been cut short. I’ve had so much fun talking to her about random things I learned from books. Unlike Efrain, Ari always looks interested and don’t cut me off unless she making a joke or asking questions. It’s like this whole week without her never happened. Back to class, we even hug goodbye.

I was away for thirty minutes, within that time, two more tributes died. Another was heavily injured by a career and Eddy is nowhere to be seen. “It seems that each floor has its own.. Sort of theme, wouldn’t you say?” Flickerman sits behind a desk talking to another man who looks like a founding father. “After his tumble earlier, the tribute from seven, Clarke Hale, has slowed down drastically! But so far, he’s the only one who’s made it to the sixth floor and this one seems to just be one big empty room?”, Flickerman questions. “It’s a tennis court”, the other man adds. Note to self, learn what tennis is.

Clarke is the center of attention. He’s everything the Capitol loves. Tall and visibly strong with pretty green eyes and dirty blonde hair. I think it’s silly how they shaped his mustache, the tips curl. Using the shower pipe, he limps his way into the vast room. A replay shows him running down the stairs. Just as he reaches the seventh floor the dimmed, flickering lights give in and he misses a step. Just as he stumbles down the steps turn smooth and he glides until he hits a wall coming to a full stop. The lights turn back on and he’s only a few feet away from the female tribute from District 4. Not backing down, she jumps on top of him and tries to strangle him with an extension cord. Being bigger than her, Clarke gets the upper hand by punching her square in the face. When she falls back, he pins her down and chokes her with his own hands. A warm sensation covers my whole body. It feels like I just woke up from a nightmare and don’t wanna look anymore but the sound of crackling fire calls my attention.

In the tennis court, he’s found a new weapon, it looks like a big fly swatter made of shiny metal. Without skipping a beat he swings it, hitting the ball of fire headed his way. It lands across the room. Knowing he has to get out of there, with the pole in one hand, fly swatter in other, he limps as fast as he can towards the exit. On his way he manages to swat two more before he makes it out.

My heart skips a beat, the cameras switch to Eddy hiding inside a big wardrobe. He’s sweating and rocking back and forth from exhaustion. His eyes are closed tight and he has a hand over his mouth while the other shakes holding the doors shut. Just outside roams a white figure with no real shape. It hovers from one corner of the room to the other. It’s shape looks like a person walking around with a white sheet over themselves but it’s see through. I’ve never seen a ghost before. Goosebumps form on the back of my neck and shoulders, my heart beats fast. The figure, although not really touching anything manages to open drawers and even hovers back and forth in front of the wardrobe until it disappears completely.

The setting changes and now we follow up on the male tribute from District 2, he’s found the female career from 2 and male from 1, they walk around the halls of the eighth floor looking for who knows what. Probably following up on their bloodlust. Not interesting enough, the camera switches to the female tribute from District 3. Wouldn’t know who any of these people are if it weren’t for the informational panel on the bottom right corner. Here the words that appear are the age, district and names of those shown. Her name is Ada and she’s fourteen years old. Slowly, holding herself back by her back, arms and knees, she crawls downwards inside a vent. This makes me nervous and I'm not the only one. Wendy shakes her hand nervously and whispers to Destiny. Something horrible is bound to happen to Ada here. She’s visibly vulnerable and if something were to happen she’d be forced to let herself fall. The true horror is the underlying question, how far down would she go?

Replays of all the deaths make my stomach churn. Curiosity had me watching the games attentively but now, I don’t wanna open my eyes. I cover my ears and put my head on the desk. I shut my eyes just like Eddy but that look on the choked girl’s face keeps forcing itself in my mind. By the time the school day ends I feel the urge to leave everything behind and run out of class, but I don’t. Calmy, I put on my backpack noticing how shaky I am and silently walk out of the classroom. I’ve forgotten all about Ari until she catches up at the end of the hall. I don’t say much but I do hug her goodbye again before we walk out the building. I ain’t tryna get in trouble for talking to her. It feels like if anyone were to raise their voice at me, I’d drop where I stood, dig a hole to the center of the earth and never resurface. At least Eddy is still alive. For now.