#also i might change john's pose back to what it was before... eh.

[enniewritesathing]

[wip]

he has no idea what's going on through his head right now

[possiblyimbiassed]

Ships and Cars - The Sign of Code

There have been lots of discussions about code in BBC Sherlock, and the possible metaphorical meaning of different things that appear frequently in the show, such as coffee/tea, water/fire, dogs/cats and many more. This show indeed seems filled with ciphers, code and secret messages. In this meta (X) I tried to decipher the encrypted name of the fishing boat that Sherlock and John hijacked in TFP, when it was called upon from Sherrinford: “Golf-Whisky-X-ray”. 

The Ship coding

At first I thought this was referring to the international spelling alphabet for wireless communication (X, X) where there’s a word for each letter. “GWX” didn’t make much sense to me, though, until I stumbled upon something deeper: ‘Golf’, ‘Whisky’ and ‘X-ray’ are also part of the marine Code of Signals (X) that was established in Britain around 1850. It’s still used by water vessels to communicate important messages regarding safety of navigation and such, and the signals can be sent by, for example, flaghoist, signal lamp or flag semaphore. Conan Doyle worked on a ship at least in 1880 and 1881, so the signals could totally have been known to him already in Victorian times. And since Sherlock and John are on board a boat in TFP, 

I think it’s reasonable to assume that the marine code is the relevant one here. In this signal code, the flags for “Golf”, Whisky” and “Xray” mean the following:

Golf = “I require a pilot.” 

Whiskey = “I require medical assistance.”

”Xray = “Stop carrying out your intentions and watch for my signals.”

Which in other words could be read as:

I need a pilot (a maritime pilot to help me navigate)

I need a doctor

Pay attention to code

But is this use of marine signals something that only appears in BBC Sherlock? Is it Mofftiss’ own idea to use them, or could there possibly be any canon references to them? In the discussion that followed my meta (X)  @frailtyofgenius​ pointed out to me that ACD’s canon actually does mention “Naval signals” in His Last Bow (LAST), which I think might be very significant. And the one who uses the naval signals is Holmes himself.

Continued under the cut, because this is reeeally a long ‘transport’... ;)

So I took to read LAST and realized that there are several ’naval’ references (my bolding) in this story by Conan Doyle. In the beginning, as a romantic landscape framework, we’re told about the surroundings of the German spy Von Bork’s house:

Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the shipping glimmered in the bay.

LAST takes place on the English east cost, near the port of Harwich. The spy Von Bork is chatting with Baron Von Herling, a German diplomat, bragging about the intelligence he’s gathered for his country, and then he shows the Baron the contents of his safe:

And all in four years, Baron. Not such a bad show for the hard-drinking, hard-riding country squire. But the gem of my collection is coming and there is the setting all ready for it.” He pointed to a space over which “Naval Signals” was printed.

But apparently the naval authorities have changed the code: 

“But you have a good dossier there already.” “Out of date and waste paper. The Admiralty in some way got the alarm and every code has been changed.”

So Holmes, posing as the Irish-American spy Altamont, is supposed to bring new ones. I think the real ‘feature of interest’ in this story, however, is the coding that Holmes/Altamont uses in his telegram to the German spy:

“Will come without fail to-night and bring new sparking plugs. ALTAMONT.”

And the conversation between Van Bork and the Baron continues:

“Sparking plugs, eh?” “You see he poses as a motor expert and I keep a full garage. In our code everything likely to come up is named after some spare part. If he talks of a radiator it is a battleship, of an oil pump a cruiser, and so on. Sparking plugs are naval signals.”

So here in ACD canon we’re explicitly told that the spark plugs, the ignition of the car’s engine (which generates an explosion in the engine’s combustion chamber) actually represents code - marine code. And other car references, according to Van Bork, are also marine code. I can’t help wondering if water was actually meant to represent emotions already in canon? ACD canon is packed with references to water: sea, coast, lakes, ponds, rivers and waterfalls but also ships, steamers, boats, submarines and such. Some of the criminals in canon are seamen and the navy is mentioned in some cases. And in two stories (NAVA and BRUC) the ‘naval’ issues contain secrets of national importance. 

I’d love to try to analyse all the water and boat references in ACD canon and see if/how they tie into emotions, but that’s for another meta. :) But what if something similar is done in BBC Sherlock; what if Mofftiss have used not only canon’s water metaphors for emotions but also the same general secret cipher as Holmes used in LAST? But maybe Mofftiss also took the cipher one step further, interpreting anything car-related not as general metaphors for emotions, but specifically as code for sexuality.

In TFP there’s a great explosion at 221B, and next thing we know, Sherlock and John are aboard a fishing boat, which is called upon with naval signals. But there’s actually very few ships in BBC Sherlock (while canon, as mentioned, is full of them); the fishing boat in TFP is one of very few boats in the show. As for seamen, there’s also very few in the show. Except for the fishing father and son in TFP, there’a also Sherlock’s deductions about the unemployed fisherman and his mother in THoB. @sagestreet​ has written an excellent meta suggesting a significant symbolic meaning of ‘fishing’ in this case (X).

In this self-censored post on John’s blog, however, there’s a cruiser mentioned in the title: Tilly Briggs Cruise of Terror. But we never get to know anything about this case; the post is taken down entirely since, according to John, “the ship’s owners are launching an appeal”. 

Why is this post even there, if no one is allowed to read it? Every other blog post from John has some kind of content in it - at least since he met Sherlock. But this one only has a title (and a teaser in the post before: “I'm going to tell you about a couple of the smaller cases we've been involved in. What really happened on the Tilly Briggs pleasure cruise.” (X))  

So the supposed ‘pleasure cruise’ was turned into a ‘cruise of terror’ and then deleted. Maybe it’s just me, but I strongly suspect this is a clue from the show makers telling us that a certain ‘ship’ is not allowed in BBC Sherlock, for ‘legal’ reasons having to do with the ‘owners of the ship’ (ACD Estate). 

Actually, there’s more info than this about the ship even in ACD canon, although it’s scarce. In The Sussex Vampire (SUSS) “Matilda Briggs” is mentioned in a letter to Holmes from the company Morrison, Morrison, and Dodd: 

“As our firm specializes entirely upon the assessment of machinery the matter hardly comes within our purview, and we have therefore recommended Mr. Ferguson to call upon you and lay the matter before you. We have not forgotten your successful action in the case of Matilda Briggs.” 

After Watson has read it, Holmes explains to him (my bolding): 

“Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson,” said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. “It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.” 

If this is an allusion to a possible relationship between Holmes and Watson, indeed the world would not have been ‘prepared’ in Victorian times, since homophobia was prevalent and same-sex couples illegal. 

Source: (X)

Directly after this, while perusing his lexicon for ‘Vampires’ (the actual topic of the letter), Holmes also mentions another ship that was associated with Victor Trevor’s father’s secret past as a mutinous convict:

“Voyage of the Gloria Scott,” he read. “That was a bad business. I have some recollection that you made a record of it, Watson, though I was unable to congratulate you upon the result.”

Indeed this voyage in GLOR was a ‘bad business’; it ended in mutiny and disaster. The ship Gloria Scott exploded and sunk in the Atlantic, and most of the crew and passengers died.

So, not many ships appear in BBC Sherlock. But instead, there’s plenty of cars in the show. What if all these car references actually somehow actually refer to a ship - a very particular ‘shipping’? ;)

The Cars

So, might these cars code for some hidden secrets? And/or is it possible to tie the car references to ’naval code’, as Holmes claims to do in LAST, assuming that naval = water = emotions but also sexuality? 

Returning to canon, please note that Holmes and Watson (both in disguise) arrive in a car to the scene of this story in LAST. This is one of the very few cars that appear in canon, since they weren’t yet very commonly in use by those times. Holmes’ and Watson’s car is modestly described as “a small car” and “a little Ford” (as opposed to Baron Von Herling’s car, which is a huge limo). But at the end of the story, Holmes says about the little Ford: “Start her up, Watson, for it’s time that we were on our way.” And there they go, happily together, with the criminal tied up in the back seat, heading for Scotland Yard. Sweet, isn’t it? :) This is the very last we see of Holmes and Watson in canon. (Unfortunately, I can’t find any illustration of it).

BBC Sherlock, however, is full of cars. So, if we apply this analogy to BBC Sherlock, what car references can we find that could be translated into marine (= emotional) terms? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is the cab, the taxi, which is Sherlock’s preferred means of transport. 

A taxi has a driver, which is the word that the little girl on the plane in TFP uses instead of ‘pilot’. But we don’t see any taxi boats in the show, do we? In the Unaired Pilot, however, the cabbie drives Sherlock home to Baker Street (not to Roland Kerr’s), and there he tries to ‘kill’ him. One could even assume he makes a kind of sexual innuendo when Sherlock is sprawled face-down on the floor and the cabbie says “I could do anything I wanted to you right now, Mr ’olmes.” 

As I explained in my other meta about marine code (X), a marine pilot is someone who leads a ship through dangerous waters. Mofftiss haven’t included any marine pilots in their show, but they do use aircraft pilots, even if they’re not labelled as such: 

But if ‘driver’ should be read as ‘pilot’, then Jeff Hope - a John mirror - in the Unaired Pilot, the ‘driver’ of the show, guides Sherlock home emotionally and sexually, doesn’t he? ;) 

But there’s more about the signals in LAST. This is what the counter-agent Sherlock ‘Altamont’ Holmes says when he arrives at Von Bork’s place:

“You can give me the glad hand to-night, mister,” he cried. “I’m bringing home the bacon at last.” “The signals?” “Same as I said in my cable. Every last one of them, semaphore, lamp code, Marconi – a copy, mind you, not the original. That was too dangerous.”

This seems very similar to Wikipedia’s explanation of the Marine Code of Signals, as I quoted above: apart from flag hoist, the signals can also be transmitted by, for example, flag semaphores, radio communication or signal lamps. We do have radio communication in TFP, when Sherrinford receives the message from the boat ‘golf-whisky-x-ray’. But are there any signal lamps in BBC Sherlock? Yes, in fact there are - and they’re tied to a car! 

A blinking, grinning Peugeot, no less, in THoB. And it’s definitely connected to sex, because that’s what’s happening inside. ;) Even if we’re lead to believe that this isn’t actually code, John does try (unsuccessfully) to decipher the blinking lights from this car as Morse signals and gets “U M Q R A”.

Apparently this code is not referring to the Marine Code of Signals. But @bug-catcher-in-viridian-forest​ has written an excellent meta (X) deciphering the possible code “UMQRA” as meaning “TORCH”, using the Ceasar cipher, which Sherlock refers to on his website (X) in combination with another cipher. In my opinion this does make a lot of sense. John does indeed use a torch to try to decipher this message, and there are also lots of other possible metaphorical meanings of ‘torch’ in the show. 

So I think it would still be wise to pay attention to code, wouldn’t it?

As for Holmes’ quote from LAST above, “a copy, mind you, not the original”, I’d interpret this at Holmes pointing out that these signals can be copied (’mirrored’?) and also that they can vary in type (I imagine that ‘Marconi’ stands for radio transmission (X)). All in all, these naval signals are of national importance in canon, just like the Bruce Partington Plans and the Naval Treaty. And these are all military top-secrets clearly connected to the British navy. At some point in LAST, believing he has won the spy game, the Baron says:“There may be other lights within the week, and the English coast a less tranquil place!” Seems like the East Wind is coming. ;)

But back to the marine codes and cars: in canon (LAST) the car references hide secrets of national importance, connected to Britain’s naval defense, and some of those secrets, in turn, are encrypted with naval signals. That’s double coding, right? Also: the navy defend British waters and water = emotions.

As for cars, there’s a lot more of them in the show, while canon has very few; cars weren’t in use during most of Holmes’ career. I think LAST is the first time that cars appear in ACD canon? And the spare parts that Holmes/Altamont talks about as code in LAST never actually appear in the story, only the Baron’s limo and Holmes’ little Ford, where Watson is the driver.

But in the modern show there’s plenty of cars, of course; they’re literally everywhere. Many people have long ago pointed out that cars represent transport metaphorically, which is how Sherlock views his bodily needs in the unaired Pilot. Which ties in well with the assumption above that cars also represents sexuality, which is related to emotions even if it’s not the same thing.

But let’s also try to decipher the car references with Holmes’s code in LAST in mind, shall we? Where can we find water and/or possible hints about emotions and/or sexuality?

Apart from the taxis, which run like a red thread through the episodes (ASiP, TBB, TGG, ASiB, TRF, HLV, TST), and the abundance of police cars and ambulances, I can think of the following:

Mycroft’s black governmental car which is used to kidnap John in ASiP (and other episodes).

If Mycroft represents Sherlock’s brain, this might be about Sherlock trying to examine and test John with his intellect, to get an idea of who John is and what to expect from him. But this task is driven by his car - bodily needs - and behind them there’s still emotions, if we apply Sherlock’s code in LAST.

The first hostage’s car in TGG, where she is wrapped up in semtex.

This woman is literally trapped inside her car and metaphorically trapped inside her bodily needs, which are threatening to explode (remember Holmes’ ’sparking plugs’ in LAST?) if Sherlock doesn’t solve the puzzle about Carl Powers. And in this screen cap she is literally juxtaposed to Sherlock:

So it seems like Sherlock is now trapped inside his ‘transport’, yes? Still driven by emotions rather than intellect. And he probably sees this as very dangerous.

The finding of The ’dead’ man’s car with (fake) blood in TGG.

This ill-treated transport device (John calls it ”an abandoned sports car” on his blog X) leeds to more cars - Janus cars - and it turns out that the driver - Ian Monkford - isn’t dead; he’s just on ’vacation’ in Colombia (with the real purpose of cashing in his life insurance money). Sherlock figures this puzzle out and the poor fellow wrapped in semtex can breathe out; he’s not going to explode, either physically or emotionally. And no-one is dead in this case, but the driver faked his own death to avoid exposure and get his ‘security’.

The car with a dead body in the boot in ASiB

Licence plate: PYO3 HYN. The dead man in this car was destined for Germany according to his tickets - another ‘vacation’? But he never reached there; his plane crashed but he wasn’t in it, because he was already dead - trapped in his transport a car. Now, this case seems intimately connected with Sherlock in the boot of Mrs Hudson’s Aston Martin in TLD (see below). Except that Sherlock was being transported alive in that boot, but this guy is dead.

The client’s back-firing old SAAB in ASiB

The client stops near a wetland area and a stream because of problems with his engine. The driver - a John mirror? - tries to fix his ‘engine’, but the old car just won’t start. Sherlock analyses this case in his (drugged) Mind Palace together with his libido Irene Adler.

People have pointed out long ago (sorry for not remembering who - was it LSiT?) that the back-firing SAAB engine in the hiker case in ASiB might represent John’s dysfunctional sexlife with women; Sarah in specific and probably their trip to New Zeeland after TGG. (Maybe this is also why Sherlock in TSoT, when John has just been married to Mary, deduces that one of the wedding guests - a doctor - has ‘erectile dysfunction’?)

Irene’s black car in ASiB

Licence plate: SKO8 ZYL. This black car, which has a private driver, is used to transport John to the Battersea station on New Year’s Eve in ASiB. In spite of being in midwinter, Battersea seems to be flooded with water. And this is the place where Irene exposes John’s sexual relationship with (or at least interest in) Sherlock while Sherlock is listening to the conversation from another room, but John declares that “I’m not actually gay”. This car is so similar to Mycroft’s black car (see above) that John thinks this is Mycroft who kidnaps him again. If Irene represents Sherlock’s libido, what does her black car stand for?

Sherlock’s and John’s hired Land Rover in THoB

Licence plate: OEI0 HFK. The Land Rover is a British car, known for its four-wheel drive and vast off-road capacity. Sherlock drives this car to “deepest, darkest Devon” with John in the passenger seat, so it seems like they were prepared for a ‘bumpy ride’. And this car actually has a visible spare part; an extra wheel in case of emergency:

And their journey really became ‘bumpy’ - at least on an emotional level, since they were both dosed with a fear-inducing gas, had a quarrel, and the gay couple who were running the Inn where they were staying took for granted that they were indeed a couple too.

John’s and Mary’s car in HLV and in TST

Licence plate: SP56 LJY, black Audi. Mary is the driver in HLV. (By the way, why has this car the steering wheel to the left, in a country with left-hand traffic?). Here we’re presented with the interesting idea from the billboard that “Information is the power to change 1895″. In HLV we actually do see something like a spare part for this car; John’s tyre lever. ;) (which looks more like some sort of pipe key, if you ask me, but whatever; it’s still a spare part - or at least a ‘tool’ - associated with John’s transport car):

So this would be consistent with Holmes’ cipher in LAST. And this spare part is treated with very sexual overtones in HLV, so I think the influence of Sentiment and Sex is pretty clear here.

Mrs Hudson’s red Aston Martin in TLD

License plate: APIS CXJ. Now, this is a really interesting and beautiful car I think, and it shows its capacity when it goes speeding in TLD. Mrs Hudson has more resources than some people might believe. But John is only allowed to use her sports car - the ultimate symbol of male virility - when he’s off to rescue Sherlock. ;) 

The license plate reads APIS, which I’m sure is a reference to bees and bee keeping, because Apis mellifera is the scientific name of the honey bee. Holmes’ main occupation as retired in ACD canon is bee keeping, which is shown in LAST, where his secret ‘sparking plugs’ turn out to be the Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. ;)) So Holmes stood by his words in his telegram to Van Bork; he did “come without fail to-night” (he came together with Watson) and he did “bring new sparking plugs”. It’s just that the ‘spark’ wasn’t maybe of the sort that Van Bork had expected... 

Anyway, in this scene in TLD, Sherlock is being kidnapped and handcuffed by Mrs Hudson and transported in the boot of that sports car; he’s literally trapped inside the rear end of his transport, which has John as its direct destination. 

Sadly for all of us, however, John refuses to ‘examine this body’, and this is instead done by the John mirror Molly (inside an ambulance), who tells Sherlock that he’s dying and that “it’s not a game”. 

The next time we see this red sports car, however, John is the driver, and he’s using its great capacity as it should be used: to come to Sherlock’s rescue. ;)

Come to think of it, there’s actually at least one more car spare part mentioned in the show, even if it might not be meant as this specific part:

This car has a steering wheel nevertheless, and Sherlock is sitting in the car while saying this. And yes; this show is indeed repetitive when it comes to certain topics. Like ‘transport’, emotions and bodily needs. But I do hope we’ll finally see some new turns on this topic in the next series. ;)

Thanks for your patience in following this marathon meta to its end! Tagging some people who might be interested (please alert me if you don’t want to be tagged):

@raggedyblue​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @gosherlocked​ @sarahthecoat​ @lukessense​ @therealsaintscully​ @thewatsonbeekeepers​ @sagestreet​ @tjlcisthenewsexy​ @thepersianslipper​ @loveismyrevolution​ @shylockgnomes​ @frailtyofgenius​

Screencaps in this meta are in some cases borrowed from this site (X). 

[gumnut-logic]

We’ll Be Home For Christmas 1.2

Title: We’ll be home for Christmas

Day One – A Tale of a Fateful Trip – Part 2 Prologue | 1.1

Author: Gumnut

8 - 14 Dec 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: The boys can’t fly home for Christmas, so they have to find another way.

Word count: 2701

Spoilers & warnings: language and so, so much fluff. Science!Gordon. Minor various ships, mostly background.

Timeline: Christmas Season 3, I have also kinda ignored the main storyline of Season 3. The boys needed a break, so I gave them one. Post season 3B, before Season 3C cos we haven’t seen it yet.

Author’s note:  For @scattergraph This is my 2019 TAG Secret Santa fic and it is a big one ::headdesk:: I hope you enjoy it. I know I have thoroughly enjoyed researching a gorgeous corner of this planet.

Many thanks to @vegetacide and @scribbles97 for cheering me on and their wonderful support through this craziness. And to @onereyofstarlight for geeking out with me over the setting.

And as always, thank you all for creating such a fantastic fandom. Thundernerds rock! I hope you all have a wonderful festive season. Thank you all so much for everything.

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

 The sunset that night was as good as any they had ever seen on Tracy Island. The ocean swell was minimal as predicted and Gordon threw out a sea anchor to hold them tight while they ate dinner. They could have kept going, but instead chose a moment of quiet and together.

The meal was a lazy affair out on the boat deck consisting of burgers assembled by John and Alan.

For a change the conversation was light. A voyage down memory lane, Dad, the saga of FAB2 and Parker’s, uh, misfortune with it, and an incident in WASP training that Alan literally had to drag out of Gordon with threats of revealing something worse that the three other brothers were still in the dark about.

The glare sent Alan’s way promised some serious dunking at some point. Alan’s grin in return clearly said it was worth it.

While they were sitting still, Gordon threw out a sensory buoy. Apparently, the aquanaut had gone all out and stocked the yacht with all his marine biology equipment. No doubt, Scott had been back and forth between Tracy Island with his brother at least once. It wasn’t often the scientist in Gordon got a chance to play in his environment.

Sure, Tracy Industries had made some major ecological investments in the area, including the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary which protected a whole swath of ocean between Tracy Island and New Zealand. Gordon had worked with his father early on in that project and advised that as much as possible should be protected. Their proximity to the island group and the purpose of International Rescue hadn’t always coincided and it was Gordon, young though he was, who made it work.

And besides, Tracy Island was outside New Zealand’s and their other nearby neighbour, Tonga’s control and their security system didn’t let anyone near them anyway.

But Gordon had always been conscious of the greater good beyond human matters and their family as a whole kept their Island as ecologically isolated as possible to protect its non-human inhabitants. If anything, it was proof that humans could exist within an established ecosystem and impact it minimally as long as due care was taken.

The sensor buoy he threw off the side of their boat sunk into the depths somewhat and sharpened their sensory net to activity underwater including sounds and movement. The holographic interface threw up a three-dimensional display of the water under and around the boat up to a kilometre across.

The aquanaut placed the projector in the middle of the table. “Would you look at that.”

Vigil stared at the somewhat blurry dots and shapes moving across the display. “What?”

Gordon rolled his eyes and, reaching into the hologram, zoomed in on one spot teeming with dots of movement. The middle of the table was suddenly full of a school of large fish.

Virgil shifted back and he wasn’t the only one.

“A little warning next time, bro.” Alan was frowning at Gordon.

“Eh.” And no, their aquanaut did not care, his eyes latched on the fish. “A school of tuna, southern bluefin, in fact. Good to see, though they are at the edge of their range.” He grabbed his tablet and, while four other brothers stared at him, he entered some data, his eyes dancing between the two displays.

Virgil couldn’t help but smile. Scott caught his eye and did the same. Virgil’s smile became a grin.

Gordon didn’t notice. His fingers darted into the hologram again and minimised the tuna only to bring up another school of fish on the other side of the display. More notes were made on the tablet.

The silence around the table was profound. Even John had a small smile on his face as he watched Gordon.

A dark shape moved amongst the fish. It was much larger and it wasn’t until it slid into the centre of the school that it became clear exactly what it was.

“Wow.” Alan voiced the awe for all of them. Well, except Gordon who was still staring at the fish.

Virgil resisted the urge to reach out and touch the hologram of the shark cruising through scattering fish. He wasn’t sure what type it was, but it was big.

A moment later Gordon realised they were all staring. A glance at the shark and he punched at his tablet. “Bonus! She’s tagged!” Another stab or two. “Hilda? Oh my god, it’s Hilda.”

Hilda?

“Who’s Hilda?” Virgil asked the question, but Gordon was absorbed in what he was doing.

“I did not expect to find her this far south.”

“You know this shark?” Alan’s voice was small.

“What? Oh, yeah, Hilda likes to feed in our lagoon.”

“What?” Scott’s deeper voice cut through the stunned silence. “That shark was in our lagoon?”

Gordon blinked up at him. “Well, yeah, how do you think I tagged her? Been following her movements for the last two years. She loves some of the smaller fish that feed in the coral reefs. She can’t quite fit into all of them, but she enjoys herself in any case. Caught herself a couple of seabirds from the colony on Mateo a few months back. It was awesome.” Not once did his eyes leave the display and the shark swimming across their dinner table.

“I am never going swimming again.” Alan’s voice was tiny.

Gordon finally looked up and his eyebrows shot up. “Hey, she’s cool. You lot aren’t tasty enough anyway.”

Scott sighed and dropped his head into his hand. “Why do I bother?”

Something flashed in the corner of the display and Gordon immediately minimised it back to a sea of floating dots. “Hey, we’ve got a big one coming into range. Oooh, no, two....yes!”

Virgil jumped as the display flickered and zoomed in again, this time bringing up another large shape. His fish brother was literally bouncing in his seat. “Ooooh, she’s a mama.” And there beside the humpback whale appeared a young calf.

Virgil stared.

“And they are talking. Listen to this.” Gordon grinned as he punched his tablet with an eager finger. Suddenly the room was full of grunting and clicking sounds and the occasional moan.

God.

Virgil reached behind him, fingers grabbing for the sketchbook he had thrown there earlier while still fighting with his pencil. Within moments both pad and pencil were in hand and he was drawing. Fast. The pencil scraping across the page. Curves, bumps waves of lines. On the table the two whales flew through the phantom water. On the paper, Virgil’s fingers lost themselves in the art. Graphite formed the whales’ flanks, the sharpness of the pencil lead compensated where the display could not provide clarity. But most of all he drew fast. He did not know how long they would be there, or how long he would have the privilege of seeing them.

He disappeared into the page, finding that zone he had been so seeking the last few days, and it wasn’t until the display flickered off and he found all four brothers staring at him that he snapped out of it.

A glance at Gordon. “They’ve left the area, bro. I held them in range as long as I could.” Brown eyes were apologetic.

Virgil blinked and looked down at what he had been drawing.

Two whales leapt off the page in front of him, silver and grey graphite shone, caught by the cartridge paper tooth. Tilted in pose, they were turned just slightly towards each other, so obviously parent and child, it touched his heart.

“That’s awesome, Virgil!” Alan was all jubilation and eagerness.

A glance at Scott and Virgil found something akin to pride in his eyes. John was smiling. Gordon stood up and walked behind Virgil, peering over his shoulder. “Can I have it? Or a print?”

“Uh...”

Gordon’s hand landed on his shoulder. You don’t have to answer now. Just know that that is a damn good drawing, bro, and I like it.”

Virgil grabbed his arm before he could move away. “How often do you see whales?”

A shrug. “It is late in the season, but we might see a few this time of year. The humpbacks migrate through here. I’ve certainly seen enough from home.”

“They come near Tracy Island?”

Gordon frowned at him. “I thought you were in touch with the world around you, Virg. All that artistic standing in the wind stuff. Of course, they do. I’m taking you whale watching as soon as possible. You don’t need to swim to see whales. God, guys, we live on an island in the middle of thousands of miles of ocean. Pay more attention. Yeesh.”

Okay, perhaps he had a point. Gordon had always loved the ocean and the worlds beneath it. Scott always loved the sky, John and Alan adored space. Virgil...was about how those worlds worked. Perhaps he needed to pay more attention to the ones underwater. “It appears I need to.”

Those familiar brown eyes blinked at him before a hand covered the one Virgil had on his arm. “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” He slipped free of his hold and grabbed his tablet again. “Just need to log into my home server...” The tablet took a royal stabbing with his finger. A moment and he set the device down on the table, poked it a couple more times until it projected up another underwater scene.

Five fully grown humpback whales and two calves frolicked in the holographic water. “There you go. Last year, not two hundred metres from our front door.”

Virgil just stared. His fingers itched to capture the scene. He hadn’t felt so inspired in months. “C-can you send me a copy?”

Gordon stared at him a moment, something in his eyes. “Sure. Tell you what. I’ll copy a bunch of these recordings onto the family server and you can do with them what you like.”

He couldn’t look away from the whales. “Thank you, Gordon.” He needed some colours. Phthalo blue. Payne’s grey. Phthalo turquoise. Cadmium yellow and possibly orange to up the contrast. White and maybe some Alizarin Crimson.

“Virgil, you okay?” Scott.

“Huh?” He shot a glance in his brother’s direction. Scott was frowning at him. “Uh, yeah. Did you bring any of my paints?”

Scott looked at John and his younger brother answered. “Your travel kit is in your cabin.”

“Great! Thank you.” He grinned at John and stood up...slowly as his body reminded him he wasn’t running at one hundred percent. A step and he hugged a stunned Gordon. “Thank you, Gordon. Thank you.”

“Uh, you’re welcome?”

Virgil stepped back and grinned at him. Gordon was staring at him as if he’d lost a marble or two. His expression only made Virgil laugh. A pat on his arm and Virgil grabbed his sketchbook and with another grin headed off towards his cabin.

He had it. All he needed was his tablet and a network connection and he had stock to paint to his heart’s content.

“Don’t you stay up painting all night!” It was Scott, yelling the length of the boat, but it only made Virgil’s grin wider.

-o-o-o-

Shit. The idiot was likely to exhaust himself at his easel. He would have to make sure he checked on him later, make sure he was sitting, not standing. Wouldn’t help for his brother to exacerbate his injury just because he zombified when painting.

John was staring at him.

“What?”

A soft smile. “Nothing.”

Scott eyed him, but John was his usual calm self, refusing to reveal any hint to his thoughts.

Lips thinning, he shot his brother a glare, which was ignored, and turned back to Gordon...only to find the table now covered in what appeared to be densely packed sardines of some kind.

Okay, he’d had enough of fish. He pushed himself to his feet. Gordon didn’t notice.

Scott had been hoping to sit down with Virgil and just have a little one on one bro time, but he had to admit that seeing it all come together for his arty brother like that had been pretty amazing and there was no way he was going to deny him the moment.

He would likely emerge from his room sometime tomorrow with a new masterpiece in his hands that Scott would, as usual, be totally stunned and blindsided as to how he managed it. Hell, that whale took all of fifteen minutes and it literally leapt off the page.

Stepping back from the table, he brushed a hand across John’s shoulders as he passed behind him and slipped inside. There was a bar in the corner of the lounge. He grabbed the whisky he had bought that morning and poured himself just a smidgen. He didn’t want to get drunk. He just wanted something to line his mouth, give him the taste.

Tumbler in hand he made his way through the main cabin and up onto the bow where they had stood for a good part of the voyage earlier in the day.

The sun was only a memory of the far side of the horizon, the sky darkening quickly and the ocean that gently rocked the boat, and no doubt Virgil’s easel, was becoming blacker than the sky above it.

The moon hadn’t risen yet, but the stars were breaking through the remnant light, and combined with the faint breeze, night was setting in.

Scott let a breath out.

In its own way it was beautiful. He wasn’t one for waxing poetic, but the sky was his home. He breathed it in with every breath and out here away from the lights of life, he could almost hear it.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

Despite himself, he jumped.

“Woah, big bro, just come up to share a drink with you. Spock and McCoy killed all the rear lights so they can stare at their distant balls of gas and talk the hard sciences.” His brother rolled his eyes. “They’ve obviously never attempted to collect samples from a hydrothermal vent several kilometres down. ‘Hard’ would be the least of the terms used.”

His brother’s verbal diarrhoea came to a sudden halt and Scott took the moment to let his shoulders drop.

“You okay?” Gordon looked up at him and Scott realised he had a tumbler in his hand similar to the one in his own.

A half smile. “I’m good.” And he returned to looking out at the black hole of an ocean. “Thank you for coming up with this idea.” He rolled his shoulders just a little and took another sip of his drink. “I think we all need it.”

“Not a problem.” Gordon moved up to stand beside him and sipped his own whisky. “Not often I get a chance to get out here for a good stretch of time. I’m enjoying myself.”

“I noticed.” He twisted his lips. “Hilda?”

Gordon grinned. “My senior year French teacher. The woman was all bite and no bark.”

Scott frowned. “Miss Schwank? I thought you liked her?” One handed air quotes. “‘I’d like to go all Jacques Cousteau on her.’ I think I actually have that in writing somewhere.”

Another grin. “I did. She was gorgeous. Blonde with all the right measurements and a tongue that could do all the right things, no matter the language.” The smile vanished and he looked down at the tumbler in his hand. “She was one of the Lost in the 2060 Tsunami Disaster. Found her name on the nets.” The stars lit his brother’s eyes as they looked up at him. “On her honeymoon, apparently.”

Scott swallowed. He remembered the vivacious woman, all sharp words and determination. “Sorry to hear that.”

Gordon sighed. “So, now we have a great white shark with the same attitude. Just as beautiful, just as determined, just as likely to bite my head off if I go anywhere near her.” The grin was back. Another sip and his brother’s expression was all fondness.

A smile crept onto Scott’s face. He reached up and dropped his hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed gently. Another taste of whisky and he turned back to stare into the darkness.

-o-o-o-

End Day One

Day Two, Part One

[believerindaydreams]

el trío

good lord it’s done

I mean, there’s some cleaning up to do, and A03 rewrites and things, and who knows what else, but the story as it stands is now done, and I can actually breathe again and get my life back

this is it

trigger warnings for- racism like fuck. 

I’m assuming, if you’re reading, that you’ve seen “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” and know what happens at the end. Blondie riding off, to let his partner lynch himself on his own noose. 

We get a rewrite of that scene here. It’s traumatic. 

(there is also sex. The sex is, more or less, consensual, but being juxtaposed the way it is I’ll warn for that as well.)

Today’s Holy Wednesday: the day before the Last Supper and the betrayal and the arrests and all the rest. Penultimate. Tasting rain on the wind. 

Today is also Wednesday, and there’s a brand-new John Wayne film about to open in the morning, and Tuco has a perfect idea how to cheer up his partner when he wakes up, if only Wallace would give him his damn pack back. 

“Now the way I see it, Father Paul entrusted this into my keeping until Lent’s over,” Wallace says, slinging it over his back. “Or anyway, not yours. It’s only twelve miles walk back to the monastery, I’ll be doing you a favour by carrying it all the way. All you have to do is walk.”

“But I can’t leave Blondie alone...”

“You heard what the doctor said, he’s basically fine and he’ll be discharged tomorrow. I’ll bring the car around to pick him up tomorrow evening. If you think you’d rather stay out in the world until then, that’s your decision.”

“But you have all of my-” Tuco says, gesturing. “Everything, okay? I need it back.” 

“Then you won’t need to face the temptation of resisting any cigarettes, if you can’t buy any,” Wallace says phlegmatically. “A little Lenten restraint for a change will do you good, I think.”

He doesn’t know about Lent; but he’s certainly made this man’s Christmas. And there’s not very much fuss he can make about it, without drawing unnecessary attention to the three of them; he’s not willing to make his brother’s life any harder than it needs to be. “You could at least give me money for breakfast.”

“I could,“ Wallace agrees, and bangs his way out the door without further ado. 

Okay. Problems: he’s covered in mud, he’s hungry, he needs somewhere to sleep tonight, and he needs to figure out how to scrape up the money for two theatre tickets before matinee tomorrow. Saint Blondie probably won’t be too excited about sneaking in, like they usually would. 

Tuco sighs, rubs his temples. This is going to be a fun one. 

***********

...too bad you weren’t here, Angel Eyes. Would have saved me a lot of trouble. 

“I don’t know whether we should have done that,” Blondie says, almost meekly, as they leave the movie theatre. He’s being unusually terse, even by his standards; and that’s not like him after a movie. 

“You know, I liked that one,” Tuco says. “I didn’t fall asleep once.”

They haven’t missed a single John Wayne film, but it’s a running joke between them that he can always be counted upon to sleep through them- even “The Green Berets”, he hadn’t thought much of that. “Brannigan,” though, that’d been funny. Wayne as a cop in London, lots of jokes, the worst assassin in cinema- he finds himself looking forward to seeing it with Angel Eyes.

“It was a disgrace. Man whoring himself out like that....doesn’t he have any more self-respect than that?”

Yeah, yeah. If Blondie’s not going to chat about the movie, he has a story that’s more than worth telling. “At least we got in. You know what a time I had, getting us to see it? First I had to go and steal a pack, smuggle it out-”

“You did what?” Blondie asks, stopping cold. 

“A little hustle,” Tuco says, casually. “Don’t worry. I paid them, when I got my pack back- you remember, Wallace made off with mine. Had to think pretty fast on my feet. But what I did, I went and found a department store where they sold bags just like mine, and I smuggled it out of there. Under your coat.”

“My coat?” 

“Yeah, your coat, I borrowed it. It wouldn’t have fit under mine.” He gently wraps Blondie on the shoulder, to get him moving again. “And then I went down to the police station, told them that I’d met this good old priest, walking all the way back to his monastery in the dark, and he’d taken my old battered bag instead of his new one by mistake. You never saw such a helpful police officer in your life. Drove down the road until we found him, even gave him a lift back to the monastery. But I came back to town to look after you.”

“...it’s Lent. It’s Holy Week,” Blondie says. “You stole a bag, lied to a police officer, swindled a priest-”

“Hey, he started it. If he’d given me my pack back in the first place, I wouldn’t have needed to do any of this- besides, he gets a brand new pack out of it, I don’t see why he should complain. It was funny, though, seeing his face when we pulled up with the sirens and the lights-” Tuco laughs. “Guess he thought I’d called him out for stealing. It’ll be good for him, to know what it’s like being on the run- pretty clever, Blondie, eh?”

Blondie stops and swings at him; and the only thing that stops him going sprawling is the way the blow’s misjudged; it goes right over his head. So it’s Blondie who goes flat instead, now his weight’s unbalanced. Aided by a swift kick in the pants. 

“Sorry,” Tuco says, a little awkwardly. “I didn’t meant to do that, you know how it is.”

“That was the worst movie I have ever seen in my life,” Blondie says; and it’s not really an apology but Tuco knows how to take it. He puts out his hand and helps Blondie up. 

“You know what you need, eh? A little dose of el trio.”

“Trinity,” Blondie repeats, irritably. “Which one’s this, your joke about food or sleep or worry?” 

“That’s a good one,” Tuco says fondly: his formulation for when not to play poker, if you’re having trouble with more than one you should call it a night. “But that’s not the trinity I meant-”

“You mean, us three?”

“Yes- no, not right this minute I wasn’t. El trio, remember? First the movie, then...” 

He lets it trail off delicately. Next the sex, then a meal afterwards. Whenever he’s with a woman they always seem to want it in the wrong order, but that’s how he and Blondie have thrashed it out. 

“Not in the mood- let’s just go back to the monastery. We can walk it.”

“No exertion,” Tuco reminds him. “The doctor said that you were okay, not that you should go walking a marathon.”

Blondie doesn’t say anything; but his hands are clenched tight, and he’s sweating. He smells like desperation. 

“See, you’re tense,” Tuco coaxes. “We should do something about that.”

“All you want is a fuck.”

“Sure. Got a problem with that?”

“Find us an alley, then,” Blondie says. “I know you scoped out the town in advance. And give me a goddamn cigarette.” 

Tuco’s about to say he doesn’t have any, but he checks the bag just on the off-chance, pries out a lost stray from where it was jammed in the lining. He lights it, sucks in a few grateful breaths, then passes it to Blondie. 

His partner takes it, with a kind of nonchalance that it’s a relief to see; Blondie slipping back into the pose, cool under pressure. Looks good. Looks damned good, and he wants it bad. 

Tuco reaches out, to take the cigarette back; Blondie gently raps his knuckles away, keeps on smoking. 

Tease.

***********

Normally, they don’t do this in public. Too risky. 

The thing about Blondie is, for whatever reason he just can’t get one off without a noose involved- which, whatever, he’s heard of weirder kinks- only it’s not real safe for either of them to be caught out, one of them apparently trying to murder the other. Especially when one of them is him. 

So there’s always a frisson to this, the way they’re breaking every taboo in the book, and if it was up to him they’d never do this anywhere they could possibly be seen- but Blondie has a taste for it. And Tuco can’t help but get an extra kick out of it, going just that little bit too far, the relief afterwards burning through him with genuine giddy amazement, because the danger’s just as real. 

“That was good,” he says, glancing up. Nobody inside seems to have noticed the sounds, or the rope they’ve looped over the fire escape. Probably nobody will. 

“Damn good,” Blondie says; and there’s still light in his eyes, like he’s still hungry. “How about the other way now, eh? Just for once in a way?”

Blondie always asks this; and he always says no, because he’s not stupid enough to put his head in a noose. 

Because it’s fucking screwed up, is what it is, this being 1975 and a white boy hot to get his coloured squeeze into a noose. Because it’s not quite so good for Blondie to be in it himself, but it does the job and that ought to be good enough. Because it’s not his kink, not in the slightest. 

Because he doesn’t trust, maybe, what happens after this part. 

“This itches,” Tuco complains. It does. The hemp’s harsh against his skin, rough the way Blondie likes it. “What you get out of this, I don’t understand.”

“Hush,” Blondie says; but the word’s tranquil, relaxed. There’s so much grace about his motions, as he starts pulling the rope. “It’s like a taste of what’s to come, Tuco. Your future, mine, everybody’s, this is what it’ll be. When that rope tightens around you, you can feel the devil coming...”

The noose goes tight and high, so he has to stand on his toes to breathe, and suddenly- 

and suddenly it doesn’t feel like anything, nothing erotic or special about it, just another damned Wednesday, because if he wants to know what it’s like thinking he might die any second, all he needs to do is walk down a bad street talking Spanish- 

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Blondie whispers. “Like nothing else.” 

Tuco whimpers, wonders how long it’ll take his partner to finish again- he should talk, say something to speed this up, but for once every last hustle’s deserted him. Blondie’s tied his hands to his belt, with the usual cowboy bandanas; those wouldn’t break in a month of Sundays. 

This man’s your partner, he reminds himself. Blondie. You trust Blondie. 

Maybe he did, maybe he should- all he knows now is that every instinct he has, the instinct that’s carried him through his whole life, is screaming at him to get out of this now. Before the stranger in front of him kills him like a pig and runs away whistling. 

“Blondie- Blondie, let me out of this.” He can see the damp pouring down Blondie’s cock; the man’s come already, in a dripping mess. “Please let me out.”

“I don’t get the chance, to enjoy this too often,” Blondie says. “You stay in there just a little longer, why don’t you? Maybe I’ll just pull a little more...”

His boots are still on the ground, just. If he goes an inch higher he starts choking. He’s starting to breathe too fast, with too much oxygen- hyperventilation, that’s the word. 

You can trust your partner, whatever happens. 

Maybe he’s never had a partner, then; and Blondie always knew that, brooded over it, resented it...

“Say,” Tuco says; his voice steady, quiet, the way he sounds when he’s not pulling anything. “Even a condemned man ought to have a last request...bring the Duluth over here, I want something.” 

“Another cigarette?” Blondie’s tutting. “You greedy little pig.”

He catches a strap with the point of his toe, drags it carelessly across the ground. Kneels down to pick it up with one hand, while Tuco stares at the rope in the other. It’s not a complicated arrangement. The moment Blondie lets go, he’s free. 

“Go on, root around in there,” Blondie says pleasantly. “Oink oink.”

Tuco’s not really sure how he manages a laugh, there (he knows, because it covers for what happens next)- 

he whips out the revolver and shoots, and nothing happens. The pack drops to the ground between them. 

“You fucker,” Blondie says, with slow admiration, genuine respect; and that’s when Tuco knows he’s going to die. 

(the rope breaks)

(a gun fires)

(he falls on Blondie)

(that doesn’t seem like the right order?)

“You goddamn, cheese-eating, flop-haired excuse for a no-account Midwestern layabout,” Angel Eyes says, driving his boot hard into Blondie’s thigh, where the wound is; his victim shrieks, childishly, rolls away best he can. 

“Every word,” Tuco says, a bit dazed. “I didn’t think you’d remember every word when I told you all that.”

“Unlike some people, I listen to my partners,” Angel Eyes says. He’s straddling Blondie now, gun pointing squarely down at heart. “Count yourself lucky that I shot the rope instead of you. I might still do it.”

Blondie’s crying, bubbling over with wet tears; and it’s something that should offend or please him, Tuco thinks, but he’s feeling too empty to be either. He crawls over to the wall, to sit up straight and wait to stop shaking. 

(His body’s enjoying very much, not being dead. It’s like orgasm overkill.)

“You know what a kink is,” Blondie says wetly. “That’s all it was. Dangerplay, you do this stuff yourself.”

“Tuco doesn’t look like he thought so. Did you?”

“I’m your partner,” Blondie says. “He knew, Angel, he knew.”

“...I couldn’t tell,” Tuco says after a while. “I didn’t, I tried to shoot him. What happened to my gun?”

“I emptied it the other night,” Angel Eyes says. “On the presumption that somebody was going to get killed if I didn’t take precautions. Looks like I was right about that.”

He feels dizzy, but maybe not so dizzy he can’t stand. He pulls his weight up, grabs his pack. “Fairy tales, huh? Here’s one for you, Angel, maybe it’s about Bluebeard or somebody...a man and a wife, and she can do anything she wants, except walk into one room. So of course she has to do it. And I have to leave.”

Angel Eyes frowns at him. “What are you talking about?”

“That he’s throwing both of us over, the bastard,” Blondie says, wiping muck off his face; and that’s when it starts to hurt, knowing all this has happened and Blondie’s still the one who knows how to read his tells. “You went into his Duluth? Fuck, if he thought he could take you you’d be on the ground now, and I’d be joining in.“

“I saved you,“ Angel Eyes says. “Tuco, I saved all three of us. You can see that.”

“I know...I know, but it doesn’t matter,” The Duluth settles into its usual place, with comforting weight; if he has that, he has everything he needs. “You two look after each other, okay?”

“Don’t you dare,” Angel Eyes says, to Blondie’s “We need you.”

“Maybe,” Tuco says, managing a shrug; he’s alive, and his blood’s humming, and he’d like to tell them he’s sorry, but he’s not feeling it. “Truth is, I need not to be around you two bastards for a little while, and that’s all there is to it. Que sera...I know you saw that movie,” he adds, for Blondie’s benefit; and his partner scowls at him. 

“Do you even know,” Angel Eyes says, with a measure of concern in his voice, “how you’ll manage? Where you’re going to go?”

“Sure I do,” Tuco says. “I’ll send you a postcard from Sonora.”

Blondie’s still on the ground, when he turns for one last look; but he thinks they’ll make it up. Maybe all three of them will, one of these days. 

But right now...

right now, he’s going south. 

[le-sejour]

Folly

Words: 1383

Pairing: some very slight Thomas Jefferson x Reader

World: Modern/College AU

Warning: cursing, mentions of furry porn, seductive turtle, Theatre Kid! Alexander, vague to no plotline: just actual stupidity w some romance if you squint

Prompt: Inspired by real chats and true events. One of my greatest friends seriously makes me think of a modern day Alexander Hamilton... Also, he’s a gold mine of hilarious fuck ups and I’m glad I’m there to witness it.

A/N: sweats I’M WORKING ON THE ORGY FIC, ASSUMPTIONS PT2 aND UNDER ARREST I SWEAR I JUST NEEDED TO GET THIS OUT OF MY SYSTEM and also to let u know i’m still alive LMAO

Enjoy~

MacNCheezy: Hey, doll

You: Yes, T?

MacNCheezy: You wanna make $10?

You: I’m not selling drugs for you, Thomas.

MacNCheezy is typing…

Pulling your [h/l] [h/c] hair into a low ponytail, you laughed as the chat window informed you that Thomas was writing and rewriting his response. It was amusing to see him flustered, even if you couldn’t actually see him. The thought of his indignant huffing and puffing was enough to brighten the already shitty day you’ve just had.

Thomas stared into his phone with disbelief. Here he was, genuinely trying to help a friend out (he’ll end up benefiting from this anyway, but, shh) and you were being impudent! The nerve of some people, honestly.

You: Oh, you would know a lot about the drug market, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?

He considers on sending the message then and there, but knew you would jump at the opportunity to Fight™ so he quickly types in his initial intentions.

But your connection to sketchy trades is not why I’m here. I have a commission for you.

ItsKittenBitch: Oh? Yknow I’d rather fuck a cactus than get into bed w you, baby boo.❤️ 

ItsKittenBitch: Besides, $10 is cheap, even for a corner street hooker. 

ItsKittenBitch: Up your game, Teej, and I’ll maybe consider holding ur hand. 😘

The mocaccino incarnate drags his hand over his face in irritation. Why was he asking you again? Oh, right, you were actually more tolerable than the squad you liked to hang around. And also Jemmy was still too sick to help him out.

You: Will you be serious for once, [F/Name]? I’m in a tight spot.

You rolled your eyes as your fluffy haired friend described the situation to you. He lamented over how he had to take care of James while he was swamped with papers for his major and his part-time gig at a local online publication.  

You: So you’re basically asking me to be a ghostwriter for a ghostwriter? 👀 👀

MacNCheezy: Yes, [F/Name], that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do.

You: What do I get out of it?

MacNCheezy is typing...

You: I’m kidding, Thomas. Don’t get your hair curlers in a notch. 

You: I know I get $10 for 500 words. I’ll do it. 

You:  But I’m also expecting ice cream and mac and cheese for this.

MacNCheezy: If you wanted a date that badly, you should’ve just asked, sugar. 😏

You: e w, can you not with the emojis, old man? 😩 You trying to be cool is just... sad. 😔

MacNCheezy: Just give the article to me in 3 or so hours, or you’re not getting ice cream. 

MacNCheezy: I hear the parlor down the street is having two-scoop Tuesday and it would be a terrible shame for us to miss it.

You: I can get ice cream on my own, ya kno

MacNCheezy: I know for a fact you like being treated to free ice cream because you’re broke, [F/Name].

You: di s gu st i ng. You exploit my weakness for free food.

MacNCheezy: See you in 3 or so hours, sweetheart. 😀 😃 😄 😁 😆 😅 😂 ☺️ 😊 😇 🙂 🙃 😉 😌 😍 😘 😗 😙 😚 😋 😜 😝 😛🤑 🤗  😎 🤡 🤠 😏 

You: s T O p 😫😤

It’s been two hours since you’ve been click-clacking away on your laptop, and after agreeing with yourself that you’ve written a decent first draft, you decided to take a break. Drawing one knee up to your chest, you pulled up your web browser and logged onto your Facebook.

Alenhamner Cameltoe: yo [N/Name]!

You: sup non stop kids bop

Alenhamner Cameltoe: I just thought of something

You: wooooah there slow down don’t hurt urself Alex

Alenhamner Cameltoe: Blatantly ignoring that comment fueled by self-hate

I realized why they changed the plot of Anastasia for the stage play.

You: Uh... they did?

Alenhamner Cameltoe: They did.

Rasputin isn't the villain. It's Ramin Karimloo as a violent Bolchevik.

You: huh. Why’d they do that?

Alenhamner Cameltoe: Because...

In the animation, and this was okay for the 90s, right?

Rasputin hates the Tzar over a power struggle so he casts some magic to make the people unhappy and revolt so they kill the Romanovs.

Basically the entire Russian Revolution is because a wizard got mad.

Not because of oppression. Not because of Imperialism..

But because a wizard got mad.

You stared at the screen in slight amusement. Looks like Alex was in his rant days. (You also suspected he was hopped up on several cups of coffee, but you’d let John worry about that.) You shook your head and clicked back to your word document to begin proofreading your piece. You’ll just let him continue to flood your inbox and read over it when he’s done.

After a few minutes of complete silence sans the clacking of your keyboard, you finally realized Alexander had finished telling his story. You read over your piece to make sure it was to your satisfaction before maneuvering back to Facebook.

Alenhamner Cameltoe: So it paints the Romanovs as the heroic victims of this story.

Nowhere does it mention why they were killed and what atrocities were comitted by the aristocracy on the Russian working class.

The plot actually won't hold up today.

Today's audiences wouldn't actually approve of a story like that.

... also you get awesome historical reference lyrics like this.

LINK

The original animation, if released today would be criticized for historical revisionism.

The link opened to another site. You didn’t bother checking the url because it was probably a lyric site or youtube, so you casually scrolled through your newsfeed while it loaded.

A couple of cat videos and a bunch of overused memes later, you found yourself switching to the fully loaded tab.

Boy, you wish you hadn’t because what the fuck.

On your screen sat an anthropomorphic t u r t l e in a very suggestive pose giving you very real, very unnerving bedroom eyes. Chills ran up and down your spine as you checked the url, horrified at learning it was a fucking furry site. 

What the fuck, Alexander.

Hastily, you clicked out of that website before going back to your chatbox. You rechecked the site he gave you, wondering if you somehow misclicked. But no, there the link was, bright as day. To a fucking porn site for furries.

You: WhaT thE fU c K, Ha  mi lt o n

Alenhamner Cameltoe: I KNOW RIGHT?! 

The play might be even better than the animation! 

Wait, what am I talking about? Of course the play is already better by comparison because it plays to a more historically accurate context.

You stared at the screen in confusion. Wait, so... he wasn’t pranking you...? Then that meant...

You: yo if yall wanna be furries das fine w me

Alenhamner Cameltoe: Huh?

You: but keep your porn away from me

Alenhamner Cameltoe: ???

!!!!!!!!!

WAIT NO

THAT’S FURRY PORN

REAL LINK

THIS IS ANASTASIA

You: yo I won’t judge ur weird sexual fetishes, boi. Just make sure it’s safe, sane, and consensual.

Alenhamner Cameltoe: NO!!!

NO THAT’S NOT MINE!

THAT’S A PRANK I PLAYED ON JOHN

GOD DAMN IT I RUINED MY HISTORICAL REVISIONISM RANT

You: L M A O

Greatest fails

Alenhamner Cameltoe: I was trying to gross him out for leaving his goddamned turtles out of the cage again.

You: congrats. you only played yourself. 😂 

Anyway I gotta go furry boi, Thomas owes me ice cream and mac and cheez

Alenhamner Cameltoe: I’M NOT A FURRY

THAT WAS FOR JOHN!

FOR JO H N !

Cackling madly, you logged off of Facebook. You pulled up your email account and forwarded your finished article to Thomas. Eh, you didn’t bother to proofread it a last time because you knew Thomas would be anal enough to go through it and edit it himself.

ItsKittenBitch: It is I, your savior, telling you that I have sent the feature to your email and demand compensation.

ItsKittenBitch: Now get off your ass and get ready for our date before I change my mind, old man. JemBuns will understand.

Thomas’ triumphant smirk melted into a fond smile as he pocketed his phone, handing James a fresh box of kleenex before getting ready.

[lsdandkizuki]

In The Eye of the Storm

New John Lennon fic, this time featuring Paul and John’s love of Paul! Can also be found on my AO3 account here.

Summary: While sailing to Bermuda, John has a transformative experience. Summer, 1980.

The weather was just right for a seaside holiday. The stars guided him in a South-Easterly direction, which took him to the sparkling shores of Bermuda. His father was a sailor; he was born to be a sailor.

Of course, these were not really the reasons he took to the ocean on that sunny June day. The true reason was that the sea was the absolute opposite of everything he’d seen for the past five years: blank, featureless and fucking claustrophobic white walls now gave way to blank, featureless, never-ending water-surface.

“But it’s not really blank,” John whispered, “That’s what’s so great.” Because there were always things, terrifying beings lurking in the dark under-surface – it was blank in the way a facial expression may be blank, concealing a raging soul. There was no more soul in his white apartment than in an empty record sleeve. Yoko squeezed his arm, and wished him silently to be safe. John kissed her forehead in response, buzzing with the excitement of leaving, praying for an adventure.

When the adventure arrived, it landed squarely in John’s lap. It was a storybook tempest: a crack of thunder exploding like shells overhead, the monochrome strobe effect caused by the lightning. The yacht rolled sickeningly, taking John by surprise as he was rocked about along with it. Tyler Coneys was laid low by the storm; John watched his white and greenish face as he staggered below deck. His two cousins followed close behind. There was sickness rising in John too, but there was always a sickness inside. This was a different kind of sick, something closer to the amphetamine rush he got all those years ago in Hamburg. Damned if he was going to hide in the galley through this.

Grabbing the mast, he stayed up, and proudly relished the sprays from all sides. He screamed to the skipper over the roar, “nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

The skipper briefly looked back at him from the helm to reply, and John saw that he too was becoming affected by such heavy boat-lurching. John couldn’t resist a little scoff – and he was the amateur here! “You got some balls, man,” the skipper yelled back, his cap flapping uselessly around his head, “this is the worst squall I’ve weathered in years. And Tyler’s a tough bastard, too.”

I’m tougher. “You alright over there?” John headed towards him, and found himself catapulted to the helm with a particularly forceful buck. “Want me to take over?”

The skipper was clearly more than willing to hide his head in the cosy cabins, and John enjoyed watching his conflicted expression. “Well, that is, I mean… If you feel you can… Christ, your first sailing trip… I shouldn’t, I really… Go ahead.”

Any sounds that may have come from the skipper, or Coneys, or any other human other than the voice in his own head, were killed by the waves. John found that a prospect equal parts terrifying and fantastic. He was alone, truly alone. Time to face the music. The yacht bucked again, horribly, John’s hands found the cool metal of the helm, and he gripped with all of his might. “Way, haul away,” he began to sing, raucously and joyously, “We’ll haul away Joe. The cook is in the galley, making duff so handy…” Here he was, the lowly cook, saving them from all from a storm only he could handle. He felt he had a right to be smug.

Fuck smug, he was on fire. He was soaking wet, but he felt completely alight, afraid to touch something lest it burn up in his presence. There was a groan from the yacht, a groan from the ocean. “The captain’s in his cabin, drinking wine and brandy,” John sang to them. “Away, haul away, we’ll haul away Joe!” The sky crackled, like something substantial, and suddenly John changed his tune to a wordless scream. He could not tell if it was a scream of euphoria or sheer terror, and this fact alone drew another yell from him. It was nearly lost in the wind, but he could hear it fine.

He continued to shout, and soon he realised he was shouting words after all: come on, come on, come on.

John had always been a believer in the here and now, but never had his life seemed quite so here and now as this exact moment. These last years, particularly, he’d been drifting in an aimless, placeless stasis, and it was difficult to enjoy the moment when every moment was identical to the one preceding and the one following. Now, though – truly, truly now – every potential sensation inside him was on its highest setting, and there was no sense of before or after. There was just him, whoever he was, and the moment. And, he realised, without the slightest glimmer of fear, this was a life-or-death moment. He had started sailing with this very trip, and here he was trying to weather the worst storm Tyler’s crew had seen in years. It was a recipe for disaster.

Sod that. Everything in his life until this point had been a recipe for disaster. He gripped the helm harder, and pulled it firmly to one direction. It was one-on-one now, Lennon versus Storm, and it was a fight he had no intention of losing. Now that, he thought, rather gleefully in the midst of it all, is what I call “Primal Scream.”

He was still screaming, but now the words were different, they sounded more like coming, coming, coming. Well, this was certainly an orgasm, if that word meant anything real.

The word brought something into his head. A clanging guitar riff, fast and clever, and distorted voice singing the confident words, you want a love that’ll last forever, one that will never fade away…

“Paul!” John cried, delirious, “What’re you doing here, you little bastard?”

Coming up, Paul replied, cheekily and tunefully, coming up, like a flower.

His hands loosened some. The storm was beating so hard on his ears, and Paul’s song was climbing up inside him, getting louder and louder, uncontrollably so, the dial on his internal amp ticking steadily up, and up, and up. He was not so much in the here and now anymore. Now more familiar feelings of the then and there, and the when and where, were beginning to creep in. Ah, friendly old doubt. How nice to see you. Do settle in.

Christ, what was he doing? He didn’t know how to sail. He didn’t know how to write songs, he hadn’t done for years. He could barely look after a single beautiful child like Sean, what was he thinking stepping out like this? His hands seized in horror on the helm. He could not move them. The sea seemed to laugh at him; he frantically remembered his battle with a surge of pride, then a surge of panic as he realised that this was no game, he could truly die here. But his hands, they still would not move. His mouth too was locked open in a silent cry, filling with salt and freshwater from the sky of blue and sea of green. What was he crying for? Was it help? Deliverance? It was certainly not joy, not anymore. Before he could examine the thought, a blinding flash of light assaulted him, and everything – the helm, the ocean, Coming Up – disappeared.

There was a moment of blackness, and with it silence, but Paul’s words still seemed to shape the air, making it vibrate with frequencies too high for his hearing. Coming up… Coming up… Up… Up… Get up… Get up, John!

“Eh?” The pillow on which John’s head had been peacefully resting was yanked out and promptly used as weapon. John groaned as it smacked him upside the head, but still he did not open his eyes.

“Come on, you lazy arse, it’s past noon!” John opened his eyes, finally. The world was a mess of blurs, with a splash of black on white, which he imagined was Paul. He fumbled around for his glasses, had a split-second of panic when he did not feel them on the bedside, until smooth fingers slid them delicately up the bridge of his nose.

“Thanks.” He shook the sleep out of his head, blinked twice, and there he was: sitting in his Weybridge bedroom, with all of its useless trinkets cluttered about in perfect focus, and there was Paul, with a hand on one hip and a pillow in the other. A magazine pose, really. His eyebrow was quirked at John; John grinned back. “What’re you doing here, anyway?”

“Getting you out of bed, clearly. Can’t have you snoozing all our precious time away. I want to show you something.”

“And here it is,” John smiled, “the great Paul McCartney’s newest masterpiece must have an audience, and all. It simply can’t wait for next rehearsal session, can it?”

Paul scowled, but John felt none of its annoyance. After all, Paul had specifically felt the need to come to his house, on a weekend, just to show him his work. It was as normal an event as it had been five years ago; still it brightened the day up a little. “Asshole,” Paul said, in a perfect East-coast accent. Who’s Kojack now? John suddenly found himself thinking. What a strange thought to have.

Paul’s hands had spirited up a guitar, and looking down with that irresistible concentrated-yet-effortless expression, he strummed a G, a healthy little chord. “To lead a better life,” he sang, “to B-minor, and then, interestingly, to B-flat, “I need my love to be here…”

It was a delicate, wistful tune, perfectly suited to Paul’s choirboy vocal cords. Like much of Paul’s work, though John had yet to tell him this, it was an eternal melody, one which seemed to have existed dormant in John’s mind already, until Paul had woken it up. It was painfully, shamefully good, and John felt two simultaneous pricks of pride and jealousy. The words were simple, and lovely. A love that was omnipresent and God-like – only rooted in the earth, hands in the hair, and all that. It sounded familiar to John. Even when Paul was not with him, he seemed to be, always here, there and everywhere. That was how he liked it. “It’s alright,” John told Paul.

Paul grinned at him, a completely sincere and proud smile, which caused John to crumble inside a little. “You love it.” A movement in the clouds outside caused the sun to stream hurriedly into the open room. It flushed Paul’s hair with brightness, and in that moment he became a figure burning with youthful potential, casual and elegant in his affluent talent, and of course John fell in love with him all over again. It was too unnerving a situation to address. John did not tend to waste time finding his female lovers beautiful, or mystical, in the way he found Paul. Their appeals were all ordinary, like the luxuries he now took for granted. Paul had something awe-inspiring mixed up in all that, which frightened him. “You written anything new?” He asked.

It was like a knife sliding into his back in another dimension. “Not for a few weeks, no.” Not for a few years. You knew that, Paul. Is it bad enough to torment me with your constant talent, now you have to remind me of my failures? Again, John was surprised by his own thoughts, sounding so bitter. He felt an uncomfortable nausea, as if the room were softly swinging in a breeze. He had not been that drunk the night before, had he? “I’ve hit a brick wall.”

“Don’t be silly. You’ve been lazy, is all. Sleeping ‘til noon is hardly good song-writing form, is it?”

It was not an entirely genuine chide. But the words hit home, because he was right. Cooped up in these white walls and the baby – hang on, though, that wasn’t right. He closed his eyes. Clearly remnants of his dream had spilt into the day. “Maybe there’s a song in that,” he mused. “Sleeping through the day.”  

“There you go,” Paul said, “write that down, then.”

The doubt and nervousness that took hold of him at this point briefly starved him of words. Paul tilted his head at him. “I do try to write,” he murmured. “Really I do. I’ve thrown away more scraps of lyrics than I can count.”

Paul put down his guitar, and sat next to John on his bed. “Why’d’ya do that?” he asked. “You could just come to me with it. We haven’t worked on a bit together in ages…”

John shrugged. “It’s crap, that’s why. I don’t like writing stuff that’s no good.” Since Yesterday. Since you flowered into a genius, and I didn’t even realise.

“So what? It’s got to be better than nothing, hasn’t it?” He was looking earnestly at John now, his playfulness vanished. They were sitting close together, and their hands brushed as Paul lifted a finger to scratch the side of his nose.

“I don’t know about that.” John squeezed a patch of the bedclothes in his fist, and found that they had a strangely stiff quality. Metallic, almost. “It seems a lot of things might be better off if I didn’t do them at all.” His son for instance – no. His sons. “I don’t believe in meself.”

Paul seemed to be about to contradict this, but he stopped himself. “I believe in you,” he said finally. Then he smiled again. “Here, don’t get teary on me now.”

John wiped his face, though he was not sure it was wet with tears, or something else. “How could I lose you, Paul?” He’d take it all back, just for one more wake-up call like this. “I can’t do it without you.”

Paul’s hand was warm and solid, a splendid impossibility in the wet and biting wind. John leaned into the touch. “I never left. I’m still waiting for you.” Something John had not felt since the summer of 1964 began to simmer inside, something good.

“Don’t go now, then,” he gasped. “I’m coming.” And then Paul laughed, a windy laugh, full of the wide expanse of the oceans.

“Steer your boat, Johnny.”

The squall was still raging, and John was still alone at the front of the yacht, still facing it down. With aching friction, his hands turned the helm. His feet skidded in the pools of water between the planks, but the doubt was completely gone. He had duties to fulfil, and he was believed in.

When Hamilton harbour bobbed into sight a week later, John was called by Tyler from the galley, up to deck. He blinked in the sunlight. “We did it.”

“Yeah,” Tyler’s hands were relaxed and practised on the helm, a world away from John’s chaotic tactics. “You got us through the worst of it.” He whistled. “This is your first sailing trip, isn’t it? How d’ya like the wind in your face?”

“It’s great,” John replied. The wind was low now, and the yacht moved almost imperceptibly through clam waters. But the adventure was not over, not by a long shot. Going by his blood bubbling with words and music, and the itch in his fingers to strum them out, it was only just beginning. “We’ve all got to step out once in a while.”

[superman86to99]

Adventures of Superman #500 (June 1993)

OVERSIZED ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! Featuring the return of Superman! And Superman! And Superman, and also, Superman! But first: The Badass Adventures of Pa Kent in Hell. The last time we saw ol’ Pa, he’d just had a heart attack and seen a ghostly vision of his dead son (that’s Superman, for those joining us), who grabbed his hand and pulled Pa towards him. Now Ghost Superman is like, “Whelp, nice seeing you dad, gotta go.”

Superman is taken “into the light” by a couple of demons disguised as robed Kryptonian ladies. However, Pa refuses to give up on his son and follows them, only to find himself in a battlefield covered with corpses -- those of his Korean War buddies. Pa is (understandably) confused and thinks he’s back in the war, carrying out a mission to rescue some captured “airman”. Private Pa then comes across a farm littered with more dead people, including one that reminds him of his brother Harry... mainly because that’s exactly who it is.

In case you hadn’t noticed, something fishy is going on here. A demonic-looking enemy soldier tries to kick Pa out of wherever the hell this is (get it? hell?), but Pa just punches him into oblivion and soldiers on. Sometimes you just gotta punch some Nazis, folks.

Next up, Pa runs into Lady Blaze, the satanic mistress/recurring Superman baddie. Blaze generously offers to help Pa find his son in exchange for one million do-- I mean, his soul. Pa apparently thinks “eh, I don’t love him that much” and prefers to jump into the void beneath him.

At this point, Pa is saved from pinballing from sad memory to sad memory for all eternity by Kismet, the nice cosmic entity Superman met a while back (“our favourite naked outer space lady in a cape”, as Don Sparrow puts it). With Kismet’s guidance, Pa finally finds Superman, but he’s in the middle of some sort of weird funeral procession carried out by more demons disguised as Kryptonians (and Superman’s old furry friend, the Cleric).

Superman has completely fallen for the show these guys put on, and is prepared to let them take him to the “Kryptonian afterlife”, but Pa eventually breaks the spell with his hollering. More punching ensues!

Superman gets rid of the demons, but he still thinks that Pa should go back to the land of living without him. He’s been gone for too long, and it’s not his place to deny death. Superman’s Kryptonian father Jor-El suddenly shows up to reinforce this notion, telling Superman to join him and his biological mother, Lara, in the afterlife. It is the natural way of things.

Naturally, Pa Kent ain’t having any of that.

Pa practically carries Superman through the portal in front of them. Cut to: Pa waking up in a hospital bed in Smallville, whispering “Clark is back” to a freaked out Ma Kent and Lois Lane.

Suddenly, Superman sightings are reported all over Metropolis -- it’s like he’s in four places at once! Lois refuses to give herself any false hopes, but just to make double-sure her fiancee is still dead, she decides to take a peek inside his tomb. Inspector Henderson opens the casket for her, and it’s... empty?!

TO BE CONTINUED! But first...

Epilogue 1: Two rival gangs are fighting over turf when one pulls out some futuristic super-weapons that literally blow the other guys to pieces. As the cops roll in, out of the rubble emerges a hulking figure saying “DOOMSDAY! GOTTA STOP DOOMSDAY!” Holy shit, it’s Superman! He’s back! Also, black!

Epilogue 2: As an evildoer tries to carjack an innocent citizen, a caped figure flies to the rescue... and blasts the absolute crap out of the would-be thief with some energy blasts, throwing him off the roof of a building. The familiar figure explains that he’s “risen from the dead” and been changed by “the fire and darkness” -- OK, that has to be Superman. There’s no other explanation.

Epilogue 3: There’s an emergency at Project Cadmus, the genetic experimentation facility that recently held Superman’s corpse: some type of secret cloning experiment has broken out before it/he was ready. We see this brash young clone being led to the outside world by the Newsboy Legion, and upon hearing the way they refer to him, he exclaims: “DON’T EVER CALL ME SUPERBOY!” Because he’s actually Superman! Oh my God!

Epilogue 4: A tourist family stops in front of the Daily Planet and reflects solemnly on the plaque marking the spot where Superman died... until a man in blue tights lands from the sky, rips out the plaque, and burns it with his heat vision. We then see that he’s got robot parts all over his body; you know, as if he’d been brought back to life after being pummelled to death by a monster. Whelp, that’s it. That’s Superman, right there.

Character-Watch:

First appearance of these four mysterious Supermen: Black Superman, Blind Superman, Brat Superman, and Beep-Bop-I’m-a-Robot Superman. Or is it?!

Creator-Watch:

This is a suitably epic finale for Jerry Ordway’s original Superman run, which started way back in 1987. Ordway went from artist to co-plotter to writer/artist to just writer, along the way pioneering the house style that all Superman series will use throughout the ‘90s. This is often called the “Byrne” and/or “Jurgens” era, but I’d argue that Ordway was the single most influential creator involved in this period, and although what comes directly after his departure is cool as hell, we’ll definitely miss the heart, humor and realism he brought to even the most obscure background characters.

Speaking of which, this wouldn’t be an Ordway comic without a shit-ton of subplots, so here we go...

Plotline-Watch:

One detail I never caught as a kid: one of the “Superman sightings” at the end of the issue is clearly a drunken Bibbo in a Superman shirt.

The Final Misadventure of Jose Degaldo: He’s been beaten, burned, broken (literally), had buildings dropped on him, and dumped by both Lois Lane and Cat Grant, but Jose “Gangbuster” Delgado has finally had enough -- he’s ditching Metropolis. A regular crime-punching adventure goes wrong when Jose accidentally beats up an undercover cop posing as a drug dealer. Upon learning there’s a warrant for his ass and getting shot by another cop, Jose decides to call it quits and leave town (using the bus ticket Inspector Henderson recently gave him). He’s actually going to Fawcett City along with his creator -- he’ll show up again in Jerry Ordway’s Power of Shazam, but that’s it for Jose in these pages! Goodbye, Suicide Slum’s rose.

Incidentally, Cat Grant is feeling rather down since she split with Jose, and her boss Vinnie Edge uses the opportunity to invite her to dinner. She agrees, even though A) her relationship with Vinnie’s son did not end well, and B) he’s a disgusting perv who just grabbed her butt. Don Sparrow says: “The interplay between Cat Grant and Vinnie Edge hasn’t aged well -- though in some ways it seems timelier than ever.”

The “favor” Vinnie mentions above is not what you might think: he wants Cat to talk to Jimmy Olsen, who has neglected his duties as star of the hit Turtle Boy TV series ever since a certain pal of Jimmy’s was violently killed. Jimmy isn’t in the mood for light-hearted TMNT copyright infringement, though, so the series is currently on reruns.

Those Turtle Boy reruns are watched by the cellmate of Oswald Loomis -- aka Superman’s least intimidating rogue, The Prankster. Loomis, once a children’s entertainer himself, doesn’t appreciate ‘90s television and tries to electrocute said cellmate (who, in my memory, was Vinnie’s son Morgan Edge, making this scene slightly less random).

Pa Kent smashing the ghostly Jor-El with a shovel that materializes out of nowhere is, of course, a shout out to John Byrne’s classic Man of Steel #6, when he does the same thing. I want a full series about Pa dispatching Kryptonian ghosts the same way. His maligned brother Harry was also mentioned in a Byrne comic, World of Smallville #1.

As usual, I’m forgetting or lazily leaving out plenty of important details, so check out Don Sparrow’s section after the jump for way more!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

Even more than Superman #75, it’s this issue (and the storyline that follows) that most define this, my most beloved era of Superman comics for me.  Perhaps it’s because I was actually opposed to Superman’s death, rather than excited about it, whereas with this issue, I was only completely excited, and totally curious about how they’d bring Superman back.

Still more nerdy background:  as we’ve mentioned in previous blogposts, I live in the same city as Super-teamster Tom Grummett, so the fact that he drew this comic was big, big deal in my hometown.  Our local comic store (which sat below Tom Grummett’s art studio upstairs) had Tom in on the day it was released to sign copies, so it was a major event.  Though I was only a lad of 13 at the time, both that day, and in the years since, I bought enough copies of Adventures of Superman #500 to insulate my house with them (and so did the rest of the world, making the resale value not quite what Superman #75 was). How big of a deal was Superman’s return in my hometown?  Well, we made the evening news…

The direct market edition cover features a stunner of a painting by the great Jerry Ordway, of a ghostly Superman reaching out to Pa Kent from beyond the void.  It was billed as being a removable translucent screen, but I don’t know anyone who was successfully able to remove the vellum without ruining their cover, but the softening of the add-on is very effective.  The newsstand edition (remember when comics could be purchased on newsstands?) has a decidedly story-driven cover, which must have perplexed the many non-regular Superman readers who came out in droves for this big issue.  It features Superman and Pa Kent floating over a background of enemies (including the demonic Blaze, which, to the uninitiated, must have been pretty spooky) with Pa Kent inexplicably in a Challengers of the Unknown looking jumpsuit.   Confusion aside, it’s still a great cover, and a nice hint at all the zip-a-tone goodness we’ll find inside.

Throughout the issue, the real world and the afterlife are given very distinct visual styles, with the ‘real’ world being inked and coloured normally, and the spirit world with lots of zip-a-tone shadows and gleaming bright colours.  It’s such an effective way to delineate the storylines, and man, I love how the extra shading looks on the afterlife pages.  It’ll be hard to single out only a few pages, because, honestly, this is one of the best drawn comics of the era.    

In the first few pages, I was struck that, despite seeing Superman in full uniform at the end of Superman #77, the Superman Jonathan Kent sees on the ‘other’ side is Clark Kent, which is a telling note about how he sees his identity.  The image of Pa stripping away his Clark garb is a great one, with the mist and swirling clouds establishing we are indeed, not in Kansas anymore.

The direct market edition also has some differences within the book, in addition to the difference in cover—it has a number of full page splashes inserted into the storyline, which are missing from the newsstand edition, and each one is a stunner.  The first one is Gangbuster descending a fire escape on page 6, having ignored the warnings he got from Inspector Henderson in the Superman specials that preceded this issue. 

The most interesting thing about these splashes, aside from how just about every one of them would have made for some killer poster art, is how seamlessly Jerry Ordway matches the scripts.  Many of the splashes contain dialogue, but if those sentences are removed (as they are in the newsstand edition) the story still makes sense, which must have been a real challenge. [Max: Oddly enough, the one flaw I’ve found in my giant Death and Return of Superman omnibus so far is that some of the dialogue from these pages is duplicated, presumably from combining pages from both editions.]

Page 9 features another great Gangbuster image, and the fight choreography in the pages that follow has a real sense of place and pace.

As we return to Pa Kent’s near death experience, the visuals go a good job of selling the story’s dreamlike conceit—“reality” is pretty flexible where he is, so as Jonathan spends time there, his thoughts get muddled in with memory, and he can lose his purpose.  It really feels like a dream in that way. Also, having heard about Jonathan’s brother previously, I thought he’d look a lot worse. There’s a strange cutaway to the Prankster in these pages, and while it’s a funny little scene, it has no bearing on the story, and Prankster doesn’t pop up again in these pages for a very long time---if memory serves, until the ill-fitting reboot of his look some 80 issues later. [Max: We saw him during the Dominus storyline, but I’m not sure if that counts.]

I also love how Grummett seems to draw Prankster as looking like UK comedian Terry Thomas, which is a great fit.  It’s always tricky to translate such goofy-looking characters into real people, and here, perhaps for the first time, Prankster looks like a human being and not a doughier Alfred E Neuman.  (Do prisoners really get their own portable TVs? Surely this scene demonstrates the danger of such a luxury!)

The scenes of Pa Kent falling into a pit and being pulled out by Blaze are chilling, but, like the rest of the issue, doesn’t it just make you fall in love with tough, no nonsense Jonathan Kent?  It’s a mini-Godwatch when he pulls a Luke Skywalker and choose oblivion over joining forces with Blaze. (Extra points for Jonathan asking the question on the minds of a lot of Superman readers—is Blaze the devil or what?)

Next up is an appearance by what would seem to be Blaze’s opposite number, Kismet, our favourite naked outer space lady in a cape.  Both sides of the two-page splash are pretty stunning here. 

The ersatz Kryptonian funeral is pretty interesting too.  Here, Grummett walks a fine line, having the Kryptonian stuff accurate enough that we know what it’s supposed to be, but just off enough that we know something strange is going on.

Once Clark figures out that the wraiths mean him harm (has there ever been a nice wraith?) it’s so, so great to see him back in action after all these months without him.  Major kudos to the colourist, here especially, but throughout the book, for the unique colours which look great here on Superman’s uniform.  Plus, I always like the times when Superman loses his cape.

The visual effect of the portal back to reality is just amazing, and from their perspective, probably pretty accurate. Next to the blinding light of the afterlife, earthly life would probably seem pretty dark. That last image from the direct edition, of Superman flying through the void with Pa Kent is just such a stunner. And from a story standpoint, this is just so definitive of the Super-team.  That a story about bringing back Superman is told in the most personal, meaningful way, with a chubby, balding old farmer as more or less the lead character.  It’s a total rejection of the grit teeth and substance-less Image comics trend of the era in its’ wholesomeness.  And I love this is how they chose to bring him back.  My very favourite detail, that I came back to again and again was that the heartbeat that returns to Pa Kent’s monitor goes across his panel, into the panel of Superman’s tomb.  So subtle, and so, so awesome.

The four page previews kicking off the Reign storyline are almost an issue unto themselves, but I love how all the eye-witness accounts from page 45 are later seen within issues, and give clues to very different Supermen.

If you’ll allow me just a little more nerdiness, DC sent comic shops some previews of this issue to create excitement, and these pages included scans of the end section with the new Supermen.  The only catch was, on these previews the figures were totally whited out, so you couldn’t see what he looked like.  So having read those short previews, I thought they were all referring to ONE new Superman, who I assumed had been changed by his experience with Doomsday.  It wasn’t until I got the issue home that I realized they were launching four different storylines.

The art on these is pretty interesting.  This is really the point where Jon Bogdanove shifts into a really loose, less constrained style, which honestly works quite well for the larger than life character of John Henry Irons. And that first look at him—you can definitely see why they thought that Shaquille O’Neal would work for this character.

Next is a spooky look at the Last Son of Krypton, who I 100% believed was the real Superman, mainly because of his appearance.  The panel of Superman lowering to finish off the thug is a great, eerie look, and I dig the Gandalf the White style dialogue here, too.

I love everything about the “Metropolis Kid” section, because it’s all built-in, and even gives us hints of this character’s “tactile telekinesis” with the grating not being damaged from his blow.  Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but man, it’s a great costume too.

Lastly, the Man of Tomorrow segment, which is such great, great storytelling, as, until the very last second, you don’t realize anything is amiss, in spite of the facial expressions of the tourists. [Max: This guy freaked me out even before I saw his full face, and I just realized why: the panel of him turning to face the family reminds me the end of this traumatizing BTAS episode.]

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

It’s interesting to me that this issue establishes that Jonathan Kent fought in the Korean conflict, and not, as was established in the World of Smallville mini-series, World War II. It’s amazing that enough time had passed by this point, that they had to move the timeline up.  I suppose if Pa Kent were still in modern stories, he’d have been a Vietnam veteran by now.  I’ll admit being surprised watching Smallville that Jonathan Kent had never been in any war—I thought for sure they’d have made him a Gulf War veteran or something.

Even completely in shock and grief and confusion, Lois Lane really rocks those stretchpants. 

GODWATCH: This is the big one, where, as hinted to in past issues, the belief system that the Kents raised Clark within is made explicit.  First on page 22, in a moment of despair, Lois admits she wishes her faith were stronger, and Martha relates that their beliefs included Heaven, and that Clark himself, to her knowledge, subscribed to those beliefs. Finally, when Pa stabilizes, Ma Kent thanks the Lord, on page 42. [Max: I also find Pa’s theory that Clark only ended up in this limbo because he’d been raised as a mortal pretty interesting.]

“Sure—have some of my hootch, why don’tcha?” A very funny exchange. [Max: I forgot to mention High Pocket’s essential contribution to this issue, when he fishes Jose out of the river, gives him booze, and tries to recruit him for some larceny! Shame on me.]

[doomsteady]

I thought I might start sharing new fic chapters here before they get posted on ao3, while I wait for beta-reader feedback. If you’ve not already caught up on The Cat & The Fox, you might want to skip these posts. But if you’re a reader of that fic and can’t wait for more updates, then these posts are specially for you. <3

Some additional editing may occur before they get officially posted. But by and large, what you see is what you’ll get.

Also, I’ll keep it mostly under the cut. I don’t want to flood your dashes. Ta!

Chapter 30

25 years ago

“Mikey! You forgot your lunch!” Sherlock waves the brown paper bag aloft as he runs to catch up with his big brother. Mycroft hauls his suitcase up the steps of the coach before turning to meet him.

Mycroft smiles down at him, taking the bag from his hands and wrapping his arms around Sherlock’s shoulders in a tight hug.

“I’ll miss you, Bumblebee. Be good for Mummy and Daddy while I’m away, won’t you?”

Sherlock huffs into Mycroft’s coat collar, beating a small fist on his back. “I’m nine. Stop calling me that stupid baby name.”

“You still are a baby,” Mycroft says fondly, grinning over his brother’s shoulder when Sherlock gives him another answering punch in the arm and wriggles out of his grasp. “And don’t go into my room while I’m gone. I’ll know if you do.”

“No you won’t.” Sherlock pouts, but his ire is quickly forgotten. “Will you write to me?”

“Of course. Every day, if I’m able.”

“Mycroft, dear, don’t promise him such things. Imagine the temper if a letter arrives late?” Mummy steps forward to encircle Mycroft in her arms, speaking quietly in his ear. “He’s going to miss you too, very much. We all will.”

“I will write, Mum. I promise.”

She squeezes him for a moment before stepping back, her eyes shining with tears. Daddy approaches then, taking Mycroft’s hand in a gentlemanly shake. “Good luck, my boy. Knock their socks off, eh? We’re proud of you.”

Mycroft promises to do his very best.

In the Holmes family tradition, all boys strive for a career at MI5 from an early age. At sixteen years old, they’re taken into London for their introductory application. It has always been this way. His father worked for the government, as did his grandfather and great-grandfather, all the way back to the very formation of the Secret Service Bureau.

Even before then, there has always been a Holmes involved in the country’s governmental operations. It is a closely held family secret that during the Revolution of 1688, it was a Holmes ancestor that convinced the Commons to allow both William and Mary to take the throne of England after the defeat of King James II, despite opposition within Parliament. It was the result of King William III’s subsequent governance that directly influenced the drawing up of the United States Constitution 100 years later.

This lofty legacy should be intimidating, but Mycroft has embraced it with zeal and ambition. He dreams of a position of power and authority, and a responsibility to his country, to protect and serve her from all who would do her harm. Of all the careers a boy of his sharp intellect might have chosen, this offers everything he could ever desire.

As he looks over at his family’s tearful smiles one last time, he wishes he could stay with them just a little longer. Especially Sherlock. Mycroft worries so much for him. His little brother has never shown any interest in his world of kings and spies, and the only knights that inspire his imagination are those who ride into the hills to challenge mythical beasts atop their piles of gold. He has already set out on a different path, and it will take more than gentle coaxing to bring him back. Perhaps, after Mycroft’s training, he will be better equipped to change Sherlock’s mind about what future he would rather pursue.

A sharp tap on the shoulder tells him it’s time to leave, and Mycroft boards the coach. He finds an unoccupied seat next to the window, and waves as his family recede into the distance.

At last; this is the beginning of a new life. He can feel it. He’s not there yet, but it won’t be long now. Everything he’s worked for, everything he’s studied towards. It all comes down to this.

The trials ahead will be difficult. They will test his mental acuity, which won’t pose a problem, he is certain. But the physical training might require him to dig deep into his reserves. No matter. He is officially one step closer to his dreams. Whatever it takes, he is ready and eager to begin.

Across the aisle, a boy leans over and taps him on the shoulder, interrupting his reverie.

“Hullo. Mikey, is it? Sorry, overheard the kid say it.”

“Mycroft. Hello.”

“Jim.” The boy extends his hand. Mycroft takes it cordially. He seems young, several years younger than Mycroft, at least. “Brother of yours?”

“Hm? Oh, yes. His name’s Sherlock.”

“And he’s James,” Jim says, jerking his head at the identical twin in the seat next to him. James nods once before turning away, visibly disinterested. Jim’s enthusiasm seems unaffected. “Brothers, eh?” He grins toothily.

Mycroft thinks he spots a missing molar. He returns a polite smile, but can’t think of much else to say. Socialising with other children has never been one of his stronger suits. Jim releases their handshake and relaxes back in his seat, throwing his arms over the backrest.

“Well, pleased to meet ya, Mikey. Don’t confuse us like the rest of these idiots do, and we’ll get along famously.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you,” Mycroft replies. He glances furtively at the other one before turning his gaze back to the window. Some discreet minutes later, he rubs his hand on the seat beside him.

Mental note: Jim is the one with sweaty palms.

——

Four months ago

“John, wake up. We have a case!”

It startles him awake, one hand already scrambling behind the headboard. For a blind second his mind is operating on pure instinct, a soldier’s training, lingering PTSD and an unfortunate array of half-obscured memories of being kidnapped at night. In a hot second, John is staring down the sights of his handgun at a very surprised looking Sherlock. His mind catches up a moment later.

“Jesus Christ, Sherlock.” The stiffness in his arm melts, falling to the pillow with a soft thud. John rubs the sleep from his eyes and peers over to squint at the alarm clock. He groans. “Do you have any idea what time it is.”

“Yes! It’s exactly the perfect time to catch him in the act,” Sherlock says, his eyes already lighting back up with excitement. “I’ve been tracking his movements all week. I know exactly where he is at this very moment, and this time, he won’t be getting away.” Sherlock straightens, lifts his weight off the mattress with aplomb and claps his hands together. “Come on, hurry up. Get dressed. We need to get downtown before he’s done looting the exhibit.”

John has no idea who Sherlock is talking about. It’s a feeling he’s been growing used to, being left behind, mentally speaking. Moments like this, Sherlock tends to skip over the necessary step of filling him in on the basics, his mind ever locked ten steps ahead of everybody else in its obsession with the intricate details of his deductions. It leaves him virtually incapable of conceiving of the idea that John doesn’t just already know everything he needs to.

It can get a little annoying. And more than a little dangerous, when he decides to spring into the room like an over-excitable greyhound and nearly give John a heart-attack in the process. As John sees it, when they work together from the beginning they automatically fall into sync. He may not have the deductive powers of his genius lover, but he can usually keep up with him as he explains how his mad version of logic leaps from point-A to point-B. But sometimes he wonders if Sherlock doesn’t even realise it when he starts a new case without him. He has caught him, on more than one occasion, carrying on a conversation with himself as if John was already in the room.

Sherlock had been out all day today, and yesterday. The house was still empty when John came home from his shift that evening. An abandoned mug of tea sat on the kitchen counter, the only evidence of Sherlock’s presence there for breakfast that morning, however fleeting his appearance. That night John waited up, just in case, but Sherlock often got too caught up in his own little world and was still offering unsure, one-word answers to John’s texts by the time he gave up and turned in at around midnight.

It hadn’t been more than a couple of hours since John had climbed into his side of a cold bed. Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise, then, that Sherlock chose the exact moment he entered his first REM cycle to magically reappear and summon him up for an adventure.

John presses his head into the pillow and scrunches the sides up to his ears with both arms. “You know I’d love to. But I have an early shift tomorrow. Can’t the police handle a simple break-in?”

Sherlock scoffs. “There’s nothing simple about it. That’s why it’s so interesting. None of the thefts appeared connected, until last Wednesday when he made one of the most elementary errors you could imagine—”

“That’s great, Sherlock. Really, I’m happy for you, but that doesn’t explain why you can’t just call the police. You’ve done your bit, yeah? It’s their job to catch the guy now.”

“But… Where’s the fun in that?” John opens his eyes again. He recognises that tone. ‘But Jooohhhn,’ whenever Sherlock feigns utter ignorance of why he isn’t getting what he wants at any given moment. Sherlock stands rigid and buzzing with energy next to the bed, already dressed up in his Sherrinford clothes for the world beyond their front door. Seeing him like that, looking so different and yet still so quintessentially Sherlock, is another thing he’s slowly getting used to. Though, the hair is still a little weird for his tastes.

“You could just join me in here. I’d make sure there’s fun in that.”

In the light of the open doorway, John catches the unguarded smile that slips into place before Sherlock can school himself. He reaches out a hand in silent offering, and watches the internal struggle play out like theatre in Sherlock’s eyes. But eventually he shakes his head slowly, presses his lips in an apologetic smile and employs his most effective puppy-dog eyes. John can already feel his resolve wavering. That really shouldn’t be as effective as it is on him.

“Come on, John. The other day you were saying how much you enjoy it when we’re working cases together. You said we didn’t do it often enough.”

“I did, but—”

“And I agreed with you, and promised that the next time a really big, interesting case came along, we can do it together. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember, but—”

“Well?” He spreads his hands wide. John has visions of sleepwalking through his next surgery and accidentally sewing somebody’s leg to the table. But he is right. These opportunities really don’t come along as often as he would like, they’re always both so busy. He misses Sherlock every moment they aren’t together.

If only it wasn’t the middle of the bloody night. Sherlock’s timing is impeccably awful. But John couldn’t go back to sleep now if he wanted to, knowing that if he let him go alone, Sherlock would be off tackling a potentially dangerous criminal without any backup. There’s no stopping the man once his mind is set.

And it’s just one night, John supposes. He has pulled all-nighters before. He’s not overly keen on coffee, but a few extra cups during the day will keep him going. Sherlock looks ready to bolt out the door.

“Alright,” John sighs, yawning and flinging back the duvet. “You win. Give me a sec to throw on some clothes.”

—

An hour later, the pair of them are pelting down a side-street in pursuit of their fleeing target. John is a few steps behind, keeping pace, his Sig pressing into the small of his back. At Sherlock’s signal, he’ll know when to break off, to duck down an adjacent alleyway and come around the other side of their route, trapping their quarry in a pincer movement. It’s a tactic they’ve already used to great effect in the past, so in-sync with each other’s movements that the coordination comes naturally, works beautifully. They were born to do this.

This was an excellent decision, John thinks. Better than sex, in some ways. Or, perhaps this is sex, just in a different context; he feels alive, every instinct and muscle tuned to the thrill of the chase, and he knows Sherlock must be enjoying this too, just look at him. Flying across the ground on long, powerful legs, black denim jacket flapping its wings behind him like a bat in his wake. The open collar of his shirt revealing a long expanse of creamy neck, tendons thick and straining with effort. Feet thumping rhythmically against concrete as he rounds another corner, lithe as a fox chasing a rabbit through an urban forest. John can’t help stare at him as he follows the thief’s trajectory up onto some bins and vaults over a fence in one graceful movement— a stunning, sensual creature, revelling in his element.

Out of sight, there’s a dull crack and a yelp of surprise, and John’s heart hammers in his chest as he sprints forward, yanking the gun from his waistband and flicking off the safety. He sees the thief disappearing down another alley as he makes it over the fence a little less gracefully than his partner. Sherlock scrambles to pick himself up from the floor a few steps ahead.

“What happened? You okay?” John says, panting to catch his breath. He jogs up to where Sherlock is wobbling to his feet, and has to grab his arm to keep him upright.

“Bastard was waiting for me,” Sherlock says, grimacing, brushing dirt from the back of his thighs. “Slammed my head into the wall. I’m alright, though. Come on. I’ll take that way, you head around—”

“We’re doing nothing of the sort. Come on, let me take a look at you.”

“I said I’m fine,” he insists, but John digs a pocket torch out of his coat and flicks it on, carding his fingers through Sherlock’s dyed-blond hair in search of a wound. Sherlock rants his frustration, his voice echoing off the narrow alley walls. “I should have anticipated it. Stupid! We had him, John. He knew he was about to be cornered.”

“Yeah, he did. Hey, sit down for a minute.”

“There’s no time for that! He can’t be far, we can still—”

“I’m serious, sit down, love. You’re bleeding.” John rubs his wet fingertips together in the light of the torch. Sherlock waves it away.

“It’s just a scratch. Head injuries always look a little over-dramatic, you know that.”

“That’s true, but I still want to be sure. Sit, please?” John puts on his most persuasive smile, urging him gently down with his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders. Reluctantly, Sherlock eases himself down to sit, grumbling and touching the back of his head for personal confirmation. His enthusiasm for the chase gradually deflating.

“Let’s not take any chances with that magnificent brain of yours, eh? I think you should get that looked at down at the A&E. You might have a concussion.”

“Oh for god’s sake, John.”

“Colin,” John corrects, casting a wary look above to the windows overlooking the alley. “Sherry… Please? For me. I’ll worry if you don’t.”

“I don’t need a hospital, I was just dazed. It’s already passing. See? It’s nothing to worry about. I feel fine.”

“Then will you come home, then, and let me dress it? You can’t just leave it like that.”

Sherlock casts a wistful look in the direction of his lost quarry. John crouches by him and squeezes his hand. He understands the sense of loss his mad, brilliant lover must be feeling, to have come so close to the prize only to have it slip through their fingers. Just as Sherlock trusts him to know when to cut their losses and take care of what’s more important at the moment. He eventually nods, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet, and they make their way out into the open streets.

—

John fusses at the tightly wrapped bandage, making doubly sure of the quality of his handiwork as Sherlock stares glumly across the kitchen. Bloodied clothes lie discarded in the laundry basket in favour of a flannel dressing gown and slippers. Satisfied with his work, John steps back and checks his watch.

“Right, you should go get some rest. I’ll check on you every half hour. I need to call into work and tell them I won’t be in today.”

Sherlock brushes shower-damp curls away from his eyes. He looks up at John. “You were right. It would’ve been stupid to keep chasing him. I’m glad you were there to stop me.”

A soft smile crinkles his eyes, and John leans down to press a gentle kiss to his lips. Sherlock hums appreciatively, wrapping his arms around John’s waist and drawing him closer to sit on his lap.

“Me too, love. That was a lot of fun. Much rather be running around Tok Town with you than pulling another TV remote out of someone’s arse, any day of the week.”

Sherlock bursts into giggles. The effect is contagious.

“I’d prefer that too, if we could afford it.”

“I assumed we could, until I saw our bank balance.” John’s eyes fall to the stack of bills on their kitchen counter. “If we ever go back to London, I’ll have a few choice words for that brother of yours. He promised enough to keep us comfortable for at least a year.”

“Well, you know Mycroft,” Sherlock replies, laying his head on John’s chest. John strokes his hair absently. They sit in comfortable silence for a while, holding each other in a moment they recognise has become too rare, too precious.

“Speaking of your brother…” John begins.

“Let’s go to bed,” Sherlock says, lifting his head, and John dearly wishes he could read such guarded expressions.

“Still no word?” he tries, but Sherlock doesn’t say anything else, just kisses him on the lips and slowly lifts them to standing, and John allows himself to be guided back to bed.

—

When John wakes again some time in the early afternoon, Sherlock is already gone, his side of the bed cold once more.

—

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 15 - NYI - Onto Sweden

1-0 New York Islanders Win

I struggle to figure out how much of the 2018-2019 New York Islanders was Robin Lehner just like I now struggle to figure out how much of the 2019-2020 Buffalo Sabres is PDO and shooting percentage. I don’t think I have a conclusion on either yet. Certainly Matt Barzal has something to do with a new Isles core that seems unencumbered in the post-Tavares Era. General Manager Lou Lamoriello making good decisions for the future of the club unlike his predecessor must help too. This was their 9th straight win. We know that ride really well. Go take a Metropolitan spot and take as many points away from the Devils and Rangers for us. We know you’ll like that. I was pompous enough to proclaim the Sabres the best team in New York State. Josh Allen is really in my head now; although these other New York teams actually play in this state. Now both those other clubs have regulation wins over Buffalo. That doesn’t feel right. I am willing to take the blame for that. I’ve been to a lot of Sabres losses in my day, 14 to be exact, and not one of them was a 1-0 loss. I’m not upset… I’m just frustrated... and a little disappointed. My dad was on a three-game winning streak going to games with me dating back to the 2017-2018 season and on the night that reminds him of his teen years, 70s night, he’s got to sit through a neutral zone slap fight without the horn ever going off. You know who this game probably really sucks for? Carter Hutton. He was undefeated in the back halves of back-to-backs and he sees one deflect in behind him off a pissy French Canadian and suddenly they’re down 1-0 never to score again. Shit, did I just summarize this game in one sentence? Sorry. Don’t worry I think there is some more to say here. It would be easy to say this team had their eyes looking past this game to Sweden, but I think that’s missing the point a little bit.

Rasmus Dahlin looked a little better last night. I was sitting in a very belligerent section who made sure to let me know whenever Eichel or Dahlin missed a chance or a pass. I think they require you to get upset at Eichel to get your AARP card because even my dad is one of these guys who just can’t help himself. “I want Eichel to shoot more.” Yeah dad, and I want a Josh Allen jersey. I’m sure we will both get what we want if we bitch hard enough, right? Blood is thicker than water, friends. You take the good with the bad with family. I think Ralph Krueger feels the same way about Jimmy Vesey and Jake McCabe. One win in four games you might think why not try that Jeff Skinner Jack Eichel pairing on the top line? No, last night we got Jimmy Vesey skating on a line with Jack Eichel for the first time since… the Beanpot? Massholes are going to have to correct me on that one, I don’t understand your traditions. You have to have a big hockey tournament before your straight pride parade every Spring, right? Anyway that line didn’t produce, and it didn’t survive the game as far as I could tell. Conor Sheary and Marcus Johansson both ringed slappers off the post and in spite of a slow shooting first period the Sabres outshot their opposition. I don’t think Semyon Varlamov had an easy night in the Isles net at all, I think he got a lucky shutout. He also probably benefited from his defense tying every meaningful chance up in the neutral zone. It felt like the Sabres just could not get any meaningful possession, especially in the offensive zone as this game went on. Buffalo does bad in neutral zone battles and we saw it again last night. That brings me to another bad Jake McCabe performance. It’s time to split up him and Rasmus Ristolainen. I don’t think that pairing has clicked much this year and the last time I recall either guy contributing a noticeable amount of controlled zone entries was last season. Nobody could get the puck across two bluelines last night and McCabe especially seemed to end every stretch of possession with a turnover or at least a dump-in. Excluding line changes dump-ins are never a good idea. Having watched the Rangers teams that made the Cup Final in 2014 and the Eastern Conference Final in 2015 I have PTSD for the dump-in-chase. That strategy for zone entries is the kiss of death. McCabe panicked over and over when he had a pass available and ruined chances to set up in the zone. In a league where most goals are scored off controlled zone entries you have to have defenseman who can carry the puck through the neutral zone.

I don’t think any Sabres players, even the Swedish ones, were looking past this game to Stockholm next weekend. But maybe Krueger is? I know that sounds silly, but I can’t explain why Jeff Skinner of all players got the least time on ice last night. When you’re losing by one goal for a grand total of 54 minutes how is such a creative goal scorer seeing so little of the ice? On the bright side Vladimir Sobotka saw the ice the second least right behind Skinner so maybe our Canadian-German friend behind the bench can learn. Brandon Montour is now officially back so instead of benching John Gilmour and waiting for Lawrence Pilut to force the issue… how about you make a trade? Jason, you’re allowed to do those before the month of the deadline. We could use a winger. All complaining aside I think Sweden does pose a good opportunity to reset. Don’t look at the standings, they don’t matter until Christmas. The Sabres will fly to Sweden Sunday Monday and practice two days in a row Wednesday Thursday before back to back games against the Lightning Friday Saturday. Treat those practices like Training Camp. Get this Play Connected thing up to full strength again. There were at least a dozen times last night when Sabres passed the puck to nobody. The ability to get the puck to guys on the same team, and to get creative with it, was what made the first ten games of this season fun. Get back to that. I’ll even tell you this: I don’t need more than two points out of you in Sweden. Win one of the games or force them both into OT. A five-game losing streak would be rough but this very light stretch over the next ten days can be a refocusing. It’s not going to get easier when y’all get back to American Soil. There’s only one easy opponent and I’m sure the Sens will look to make a game on a Saturday night. Get your shit together because this little cushion you’ve built will dissipate fast as we learned all too quickly last season.

Before we wrap up and go watch the Bills game I want every New York Islander who reads this to know that Johnny left because he thinks you personally are a bad person. You already felt personally insulted? Okay, you probably didn’t read this far anyway. Like this blog and drop a comment before you leave. If you want to be really nice you can share it with someone. I’ll be sharing this with fellow tailgaters today in the ECC lot. Let’s hope the Sabres win again before the Bills catch up to them in wins, eh? I didn’t think it was going to be no win November, geez. If you get bored waiting for next Friday when the Sabres hit the ice again don’t worry, there will be plenty varied content going up on the blog including a Sabres-related list. What is it? Wait and find out next week! In the meantime, Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. I’m not a fan of those Nashville Predators Winter Classic Jerseys. If I’m being honest I think they’re some MS Paint garbage.