#also i put the links under the 'comic' for each that leads to their full version

[disastersteps]

coming across two old lyrics comics i made and me thinking of turning the old comics i made into two animatics... its.

uh.

putting readmore bc the two comics were a long-form comic i made years ago and-

a page from 'this is what you came for by calvin harris' lyrics comic

and another page from "bad guy - set it off" lyrics comic-

ive been listening to these songs among others and im like. welp. its on the list to lyrics animatic-

[burstfoot]

Figured I'd make a post outlining Arknights' auxiliary material for those who want to see more of the universe and aren't aware of all that's out there! ANIMATION Arknights Prelude To Dawn (S1) and Perish in Frost (S2, currently airing): [Crunchyroll]

A straight up adapation of the main story, up through Chapter 0 to Chapter 6! It's much more fast-paced than the story, so I wouldn't use it to replace actually reading it, but it's very cool to see some of these scenes in full animation. Lee's Detective Agency: (Youtube)

A mini-series animated in a chibi-style with a comedic tone focused on the adventures of the Kuroblood-illustrated Lee's Detective Agency! Distributed by Crunchyroll globally, but entirely free to watch.

Closure's Secret Files: (Youtube)

A cut-out styled series of shorts hosted by Closure which outlines a lot of the game's basic mechanics!

Holy Knight Light: [Youtube]

A short Youtube OVA focusing around Penguin Logistics delivering a package, celebrating Arknights' first anniversary!

[Upcoming]: Kay's Daily Doodles: (Twitter Annoucement)

Another free youtube mini-series that starts airing December 1st, focused around Ceobe! Here's some additional animations! Each event usually also has a 15 second 2D animated preview of the event, but there's so many of those that I can't list them all. Official Anniversary Event 3D Animations: Lone Trail Where Vernal Winds Will Never Blow Il Siracusano Ideal City Stultifera Navis Invitation To Wine Near Light Dossoles Holiday Under Tides Bonus 3D Animated Shorts: Legend of Chongyue Arknights Special - IL Siracusano Lo Scontro Youtube Shorts: Ch'en and Lin's Watermelon Splitting Game Part 1 Ch'en and Lin's Watermelon Splitting Game Part 2 Amiya's Siracusan Food Guide Part 1 Amiya's Siracusano Food Guide Part 2

Comics, Manga, Manhua

Officially Translated Rhodes Island's Records of Originium: Rhine Lab: (Offical Website)

A canon manhua centered around the circumstances that lead to Silence falling out with Saria and joining Rhodes Island with Ifrit, as well as Ifrit's attempt to save a dying infected stowaway on the landship. Essential reading for understanding the Rhine Lab storyline and characters - read it right after Mansfield! One of the characters, Darya, is mentioned in both Ifrit's module and briefly in Lone Trail.

Rhodes Island's Records of Originium: Blacksteel: (Official Source)

A short story focusing on the lives of the Blacksteel operators aboard the landship. While it often gets overshadowed by the Rhine Lab manga which is bigger in scope, this is a great read especially if you're interested in Franka or Liskarm.

Rhodes Kitchen -TIDBITS-: (Official Source)

An anthology story related to the cuisine that's important to a variety of operators. While it might seem unassuming, the art is gorgeous and it's really well-written. I particularly recommend the Goldenglow (Chapter 4) and Rosa (Chapter 5) chapters.

Unofficially Translated

Arknights Comic Anthology: (Mangadex)

As the title says, a series of non-canon anthology stories regarding the cast of Rhodes' Island! Note that the link provided only has complete translations up to Volume 4 (and Vol. 4 is missing Ch. 7), and most of the chapters avaliable after that point were MTL'd, so I can't vouch for their accuracy. Chapters I'd recommend are: Volume 1: Chapter 12 (focused on Myrrh trying to improve her medicine), Chapter 14 (focused on Saria and Silence trying to put apart their differences to take Ifrit on vacation, afaik the only place where they are directly referred to as her "moms") Volume 2: Chapter 1 (Manticore tries to make friends), Chapter 3 (The LGD gets drunk), Chapter 11 (Texlapp and Mosexu yuribait), Ch. 13 (Magallan tries to find a pet), Chapter 16 (Ethan spies on the interior lives of Rhodes operators) Volume 3: Chapter 6 (Snowsant, Ifrit, Nian and Shaw are forced to make friends), Chapter 7 (Gummy flashes back to Chernobog), Chapter 10 (FEater and Shaw yuribait), Chapter 13 (Blackout on the landship, as well as Ayerscarpe and Leonhardt yaoibait)

Volume 4: Chapter 4 (Thorns tries to make friends with Weedy [this one is my favourite]), Chapter 6 (Tomimi tail spankings), Chapter 9 (Elysium helps Frostleaf get along with Dur-Nar) Volume 6: Ch. 1 (Whisperain opens up to others) [this one isn't MTL'd afaik]

123 Rhodes Island: (Mangadex)

A series of non-canon gag 4komas! Many of the games' offical stickers are done in this series' art style.

Arknights: Operators!: (Mangadex)

A compilation of 4komas posted on the official ArknightsJP twitter account! Thank you to @sleepywoodscans for their work on translating these, please show them some love!!

[Edit: For clarities sake, the only stuff here that has used MTL is later chapters of the Comic Anthology! Sleepywoodscans’ work on Operators! is all done by hand (they’re a native Japanese speaker). Again, I really appreciate their work!]

Arknights: A1 Operations Preparation Detachment: (Mangadex)

Part of the Terra Historicus website and not yet officially translated, focusing on Fang, Kroos and Beagle, and a catastrophe striking the Columbian city of Tkaronto. Unfortunately, only translated up to Chapter 6, but one of the characters (Elba) has a brief cameo in Light Sparks in Darkness! Edit: Chapter 7 has been translated by @pooce-art, and they're working on Chapter 8!

Angelina: Sketches of THIS Messenger's Journey: (Mangadex)

Also published as part of the Terra Historicus website and not yet officially translated, focuses on the adventures of Angelina travelling across Terra as a Messenger! Recent chapters relate to the upcoming Sami event & IS4, as well as the upcoming So Long, Adele.

Prelude Suite: Unrestrained Play: (Wiki)

Unfortunately, I can't find a full translation for this one - an epilogue to Hortus De Esscapismo focusing on Arturia's background. Of course, major spoilers for Hortus apply - if you can find a full translation yourself.

As well, an upcoming manhua focused on the Break the Ice cast was annouced during the 4.5 Anniversary stream. As far as I'm aware, chapters have not begun releasing yet!

Other:

Arknights Ambience Synesthesia: (Youtube)

A series of concerts (3 so far), focusing around Arknights' music! A live performance has been done every year, with skins released in-game for the concert's theme & 3D animations produced featuring the skin's cast in 2022 and 2023.

Monster Siren Records: (Spotify) (Official Website)

Arknights' official (and-in-universe) record label publishing game OSTs, themes for almost every 6 star operator that releases, and occasional bonus songs.

Arknights: Endfield: (Twitter)

An upcoming 3D action gacha game from Hypergryph, set in the far future of Arknights' universe on another planet. Currently in closed beta testing for their CN servers!

Arknights: Nomad City: The Founders: (Youtube)

A to-be-released CN Arknights board game! Unclear of if it will ever be translated or released globally, unfortunately...

Terra: A Journey: (Wiki)

An upcoming CN lore book focused on the intricate details of Terra's worldbuilding. As well, unclear if it will be translated or released globally.

UNOFFICIAL:

Some fandom-developed tools that might be of use to you are the Arknights Terra Wiki - which just transferred from FANDOM to wiki.gg, and has very detailed information on both game mechanics and world-lore.

As well, the Arknights Story Reader can help you catch up on stuff you don't want to or can't read in game!

Finally, Aceship's Toolbox provides access to a variety of tools, including a levelling calculator, a calculator to ensure the best recruitments, and all the CGs, backgrounds and character sprites that are avaliable in-game.

Conclusion:

Thank you for reading! I hope this provided some new information to you or at least provides an easy reference resource in the future. There's a lot to check out even outside of the game, and I hope you find some stuff you enjoy!

[sing-you-fools]

you mentioned your character sheet having the fields "what kind of story do they think they're in" and "what role do they think they're playing in it"

i think this is awesome!

what else is on your character sheet?

oh my gosh. i was in the middle of answering this when i went to check something and clicked a link without realizing it was a tumblr link. it's gone. and. well. i'm sure you were not expecting as MUCH answer as i was putting there, anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

my character and worldbuilding sheets have an unhinged level of detail, because i use them not as a "fill this whole thing out before you get started" tool but as an "organize the information you include and thoughts you have so you can reference them later" tool, because (1) audhd and (2) i'm hoping the book i'm working on is the first in a huge expansive world that i'll still be playing in when i'm 70.

the character sheet is broken down into Basics, Role in the Story, Appearance, Communication, Backstory, Family,* Relationships, Personality and Psychology, Just for Fun, and Other (which is just a spot for if i need it, it doesn’t have any questions or prompts). and each of those has a ton of questions (except Other, as established in the previous parenthetical aside).

it's hard to say what i have in there that's the most important, or my favorite, or whatever, because it all depends very much on the character's answer. for example, most of my characters don't think they're in a story at all, they would say "this is my real life what are you talking about i'm not playing a role i'm trying to get to tomorrow," which means the questions you mentioned aren't all that fun for them, but they become very fun for a couple i'm writing, because Nat thinks he's living his best gay musical romcom life and Zari is convinced down to his bones that he's a lead in a deeply tragic romance - in reality, they're more like Merry and Pippin, and if they'd stop for a brief reality check maybe they'd reconsider picking up the Palantir.

these questions fall under "Role in the Story," which also contains fun gems like: personal goal, interpersonal goal, and team goals, because i get annoyed at character sheets that act like people just have one goal. and the full list of D&D skills and sets, even though i've never played D&D, because they seem useful. it also has "how much do they know about what's happening?" and "are they having a good time?" as some more example questions.

i have a lot in the sheet that would probably seem repetitive, but having similar questions in different categories means i think about them differently. i have "health" under Basics, for example, and that means if someone's using a cane it'll probably get mentioned there. but i also have "medical devices and mobility aids" under Appearance, because it tells me one thing that House has a bad leg because of muscle death and uses a cane, and another thing that the cane has flames up it and a skull handle and he uses it wrong. (if i'm misremembering House's cane please don't come for me it's been over a decade since i saw an episode of that show he's just still the most recognizable character i could think of with a mobility aid which is kind of sad)

possibly my favorite part of my character builder is this:

a cartoon by Tom Gauld (@myjetpack). it's right in the middle of my "personality and psychology" section. it's important for me to define what my characters do and don't know about because otherwise i end up with them knowing everything, and that's so boring. this comic just perfectly broke it down for my brain, so i plopped it in.

and a lot of my favorite questions focus on the contradictions and tensions and perception gaps inherent in being a person. what do they hate about the people they love, or love about the people they hate? what do they bring to their relationships, and what do they think they bring? what do strangers/authority figures/children/etc think of them, and what do they think people think of them? what's their biggest flaw and what do they think is their biggest flaw?

i could honestly go on forever about these; in fact i think this is still shorter than my answer that got deleted. so i'm going to cut myself off, but i'm happy to share more about them, and someday i may even post them for anyone else who might want them. i want to use them a bit first, though, to see what can be fine-tuned. in addition to character sheets, i've got sheets for Setting, Species, Religion, Nation, Magic System, Subculture (any group smaller than religion/nation/species that might have its own culture), and Scene (less worldbuilding, more to keep the details and goal of a scene straight in my own head, but still). these are all significantly less detailed than the Character one, but significantly more detailed than any one site i could find included when i was searching. and all my sheets, questions and prompts are gathered and compiled from all over the internet; i would not be able to provide sources because i did not bother to record them.

[leori-the-unlearned]

Full Tangle AU List (aka the Tangleverse)

Finally it’s compiled!!! I have here for you a list of 22 different Tangles for you to browse and rotate in your brain :3 A bunch of these come with content for other characters, though, so if you’re not as Tangle-focused as I am you could probably find something neat to look at.

Each listing is entered under its designated AU name, if there is a relevant link to the AU’s original source it’ll be linked within the title, and I’ll add a short summary or blurb about the Tangle or AU as a whole. I’ll also make distinctions for if an AU has art.

None of these AUs are my own creations, unless they’ve got a ~Leori signature after them - follow the link to their individual creators! In the case of my own AUs, I usually don’t have much content for them because I don’t know what to say, so feel free to send in asks. Or for the ones with very little content, do whatever you’d like with them, they’re basically open prompts.

The numbers don’t matter, they’re just for tallying up how many there are. I’m not ranking these.

This is long, so I’m putting everything after the table of contents under a ‘read more��. ○ Swap AUs ○ Future AUs ○ General AUs ○ Crossover AUs ○ Jokesy AUs

=:= • Swap AUs Shifts around Tangle’s story role, or shuffles canon aspects together.

   > 1: Sonic Switcharoo AU • Swaps out the roles of various canon characters - Tangle is the protagonist now, Espio takes Jet’s role as her racing rival, and Starline is her Big Bad like Eggman. Has designs for Tangle and a majority of the characters in the pinned google doc!

   > 2: Stella Fulgur / Crash AU • AU of an AU! ParzivalBo uses the setting and dynamics of Pantalion’s Sonic Crash AU and builds Tangle and Whisper their own unique backstories and storylines. Most interestingly... this Tangle is somewhat of a fusion with Surge and Fiona, having a way different (but still recognizably Tangle!) personality! She can’t stretch her tail, instead using electricity powers based on Surge’s lightning and being able to assume control of robots! As far as I know, there’s no art of this Tangle (or Whisper), except my own old interpretation of her design, and a meme I drew for this Tangle’s hatred of Shadow. Also, this Tangle has a motorcycle.

   > 3: Tangle’s Log / Sonic X AU • What if Tangle was in Sonic X..? That’s this fic! A whole 77k+ words following Tangle’s inclusion in Sonic X from the start, stretching into some of the games, like Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, plus an original Tangle backstory also featured in some of 77XFire’s other works! Has some cute slice of life, plus some ludicrous Tangle feats, even if this Tangle is only 12-13. (She punches a boulder in half with her tail. And manages to hold up a collapsing building all alone.) There is also an old interpretation I drew of an alt. outfit she gets later in the fic, as well as a meme of a certain... situation that comes to be.

   > 4: Movieverse Tangle & Jewel • Stick Tangle and Jewel into the movieverse YEEEAAAHH !! Doesn’t change the existing movie plots, and gives the girls their own guardian.

   > 5: Heroswap!Tangle • My own ‘protagonist Tangle’ AU, sort of a ‘what if they settled on Tangle’s design rather than Sonic’s for Sega’s mascot’ while still retaining any games I like, like Unleashed. Includes Metal Tangle and Weretangle... once I design them. Tails is Tangle’s lil buddy. ~Leori

   > 6: Knuckles!Tangle • Swaps Tangle’s and Knuckles’ story roles, with Tangle being the last of her species and at first an antagonist to Sonic - usually tripping him up with her tail - before becoming begrudging friends. Somewhat inspired by this meme... ~Leori

=:= • Future AUs Speculation or just for funsies years-future versions of Tangle (and usually Whisper).

   > 7: Milolunde 10 years AU • I’ve linked right to the Tangle and Whisper designs, but those are a part of their ‘10 years later’ AU as a whole, which also has Sonic and Tails stuff.

   > 8: Arsworld Future AU • The link leads to the one comic I found their designs through, haha. I’m not certain how far in the future this AU is, but it’s at least a few years? The design are really sweet though, I like the biker look for Tangle.

=:= • General AUs The miscellaneous category, usually AUs that stick close to canon with a little change.

   > 9: Red Wisp Buddy • mercyofempty’s ‘tangle gets a Wisp’ AU, which doesn’t seem to have much posted on it but is beloved all the same.

   > 10: Yellow Wisp Buddy • modderkin64/moddersayethstuff’s ‘tangle gets a Wisp’ AU, content in the link!

   > 11: Continuation AU / Jade Wisp Buddy • questionedentity’s AU following Tangle and Whisper tentatively rejoining, despite Whisper’s lingering worries over Mimic’s freedom... and Tangle befriends a Jade Wisp!

   > 12: Emo!Tangle / Lemursib!Tangle • AU where Shadow and Tangle are biological siblings and half-hedgehog, half-lemur, I haven’t figured out how it works. They have a close sibling relationship, and Tangle has chaos powers in addition to her own. This AU started out as just ‘what if Tangle had hair covering her eye also’ (first link) and became the whole thing. ~Leori

   > 13: Zombot!Tangle AU • AU where Tangle isn’t... fully cured of the Metal Virus. She returns to normal, but there’s actually still mutated virus inside of her that remains passive unless its host is threatened, and then just makes her made of goopy metal. Angsty over the visuals of Whisper seeing Tangle looking like a zombot, but she’s a way more silvery color than her copper zombot form, and doesn’t go brainless or bloodthirsty. ~Leori

=:= • Crossover AUs These mix continuities with something non-Sonic.

   > 14: Digimon!Tangle AU • So hey what if Tangle and Whisper were Digimon? Now they are!! Currently only has Champion forms for either of them, but I plan to give them Ultimate forms at least, then mayyyybe Rookie or Mega. ~Leori

   > 15: Ninja!Tangle AU • Tangle is the Ninja of Norrisville Spiral Hill! She spends her days normally, except for when Stanked monsters attack town and she has to fight them to return them to normal civilians... all while keeping her secret identity with only a thin barrier of glamour magic preventing her being immediately recognized. So, just a Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja AU. ~Leori

   > 16: KH Sonic AU Tangle • Basically replacing everyone in KH with Sonic characters, original personalities intact and dynamics changed to reflect the new personalities. I replaced Sora with Sonic and Roxas with Tangle, and if you know KH lore you know that’s not all but that’s all I have figured out to say. Also, Shadow is Vanitas. ~Leori

=:= • Jokesy AUs May not have entire narratives, and may be or start out as a gag... but can still be beloved.

   > 17: Tangoodle • A mod for Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, adding not one but TWO Tangle-themed characters: Tangle herself... and Tangoodle. Look at her, she’s adorable!!

   > 18: Tangle II • Origin post here. Tangle but again and smaller and the Whispangle daughter <3 she’s been confused for canon and is incredibly fierce and beloved. Technically not a Tangle herself, since she has distinct origins and personality - more like Xion or Roxas, to use a KH analogy. However, the Tangle I who takes care of Toongle counts as her own Tangle, since she is a mother who drives Toongle to soccer practice and does mom things like grounding her daughter and baking for her daughter’s bake sale.

   > 19: Speciesswap!Tangle • AU shapeshifter Tangle who can assume the form of any species with a ringed tail - such as raccoons, genets, ringtailed cats, red pandas, and tigers. No art yet... but she’s on the list. ~Leori

   > 20: Paletteswap!Tangle • You’ll want to look at the image before reading the description, otherwise this is incomprehensible. The visual gag is the entirety of the AU, but I like to think the mask on paletteswap!Tangle is some sort of hallucination or vaguely self-recurring illusion that has haunted her all her life, so seeing the real version of the thing that keeps covering half her face for no reason immediately draws her to Whisper... to steal it. They have a kismessitude and this may or may not have inspired a potential fic?? ~Leori

   > 21: Deadpool!Tangle • She’s not actually Deadpool, she’s just borrowing that brand of humor and meta-knowledge. She reaches her tail around comic panels and is hyperaware of the Sega mandates on character writing, even telling Jewel not to mention her parents too often so she can have more ‘screen time’ and be a ‘main character’. Jewel has no idea what that means, but Tangle’s been talking about ‘becoming a main character someday’ their whole lives and the whole switch to ‘finally BEING a main character’ isn’t that much more obnoxious. ~Leori

   > 22: No Tail Tangle • What it says on the tin. :) ~Leori

[dreamylyfe-x]

Your trevor meta is making me realize how weird it is that the writers and cast were so insistent that mickey wasn't coming back, because I don't think theyve ever really known what to do with ian's story without him. They put him in these lukewarm relationships and tell us they're so much better and healthier, but then have ian straight up admit that he still loves mickey and nobody else has made him feel the same way. How do they set that up and then have him go back to trevor? They set up ian moving on with "I'm not that person anymore" and follow up with season 8. It's like okay...who he is now is gay Jesus? Lmao. He's always been the shows forgotten middle child and after they wrote mickey off "for good" they could have taken him in a million directions but they chose one so shitty it basically made cam leave lmao. Sometimes it feels like fan insistence kind of forced mickey back but in actuality, the seasons where he's gone just hammer home that he was always the inevitable end to ian's story. So bizarre how little the showrunners understand their own story sometimes.

Ok. I’m going to be a little more Doylist here than I usually am, because we’re talking about what the writers are thinking. And I’m also going to take this opportunity to share this fascinating article from the AV Club in 2016: When Fan Engagement Goes Wrong. Everyone beware, it contains significant spoilers for The 100. But it’s also largely about Gallavich, the fact that online promotion of Shameless leaned hard into the popularity of the couple, and were up against it when Noel left. I’ll quote: 

“[Supervising Producer Shelia] Callaghan’s choice to be honest and straightforward when engaging with fans is admirable, and yet also on some level futile. She can’t tell them exactly why Fisher chose to leave, she is (logically) unwilling to spoil future storylines outright, and she can only speak her own mind as part of a collaborative process over which she holds only some influence. So while many fans respect her effort to maintain the connection to this now marginalized community, others attack, reinforcing that attempting to manage these situations is a full-time job that no one has been properly trained for.” 

This article links some tweets and the one I find the most interesting is this one:

“But the actor left.  So...what to do? Have them just break up?? Felt way less true to me than a forced separation!” 

That tweet is from Krista Vernoff, who wanted to convey that they tried really hard to come up with what they do with Ian now that he’d lost Mickey. And I’m sure they did try really hard. And.... People hated it. Mostly. 

Here’s what I think, based on what I’ve read and the interviews I’ve seen, on deleted tweets and Tumblr rumours and YouTube clips: The show didn’t want Mickey to leave the canvas. At all. Noel wanted more money. The show could not come up with both that money and the money they needed for everyone else. The show let him go. And hoped they could solve the creative problem their budgetary problem had dumped in their lap. 

I actually think Ian’s story in season six is decent. I miss Mickey, of course. I find the last scene with him really painful -- but it’s not painful because the show is trying to diminish him. They write and then cut together a scene where Mickey is DEMONSTRATIVELY still deeply in love with Ian. He’s carved his name in his chest. He is looking at Ian like he’s the most beautiful creature ever given breath. And Ian can barely meet his gaze. They tell us Mickey is being sent away for 16 years but when we see the last of Mickey Milkovich in season six I think “God, this is so sad. They love each other so much and this is so fucked up.” 

I do NOT think “We are NEVER EVER EVER getting back together.” 

The show always knew what it had with Ian and Mickey. They leaned into it promotionally. They gave meaty storylines to the characters, particularly given that Ian was the fourth lead on a family dramedy built around six children. John Wells replaced Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing. He knows how hard it is to follow a phenomenon. 

The more I think about it, honestly? I don’t think they tried. I think they knew that they couldn’t bring in Mickey Milkovich, the sequel in season six, so they brought in Caleb. And maybe they meant for him to be a LITTLE more viable than he was... but I think there’s a pretty good chance they were just throwing something at the wall to see if it stuck, while being fully aware that the important storyline in season six was getting Ian from despair to a fulfilling career. Caleb was just there as a catalyst. 

Season seven if more interesting, because Trevor is brought on and it’s very much... “Hey, let’s do something new. Let’s bring on a transmasc character and put him into a relationship with Ian and explore those complications.” 

“Great! Put it up on the board!” 

“Also. Let’s call Noel Fisher’s people and see what we can work out because we can do better with Mickey’s send off and people are yelling at me on the street about it.” 

Quite honestly, these are not equal tasks for his writer’s room. You have one story -- Create a whole ass new character. The only thing we know is that he’s trans. Figure out the romance from there. You have six episodes to get them together as an established couple. 

Then: Bring back the well-established and beloved character for an epic romantic two-episode arc where he reunites with his true love and they run away together and then ultimately realize it cannot be, and say goodbye and it all feels like I Will Always Love You should be playing in the background. They actors worked together for five years. They have a great professional partnership. They like working together. They have a ton of history so there’s lots of juicy subtext. The longing and sexual tension comes pre-established. See what you can do. 

HOW do you make both those things work out so that they are equal? You need lightening to strike. And that already happened on How I Met Your Mother. They squandered their good luck and now there is none left for Shameless. I do not disparage Elliot Fletcher at all when I say that for Trevor and Ian to really work he’d have had to have come with scorching chemistry with Cam, rich material that really gave them a good opportunity to build rapport between the characters, and A wizard standing by to cast spells in the wings. They had SIX episodes, a pretty average connection between the actors, and the “these are the LGBTQ+ people in your neighbourhood” scene. 

I just can’t believe that someone with as many years of TV writing under his belt as John Wells has expected that to work. He hoped the Trevor story might be good, and was certainly going to break some ground in terms of telling trans stories. And the Mickey story was going to be the highlight, because he knew people wanted it and he also knew that they’d had something pretty special to start with. Which is why people were yelling at him at Comic-Con. I DO think he hoped it might placate fans a bit. But... he wasn’t going to completely close the door on Mickey this time, either. 

So... I don’t really think the show every intended to write Mickey off “for good”. I think they wrote him off “for now, and we’ll see what happens...” -- and they did that with Karen, Shelia, Jody, Steve and Fiona, too. They only brought a few of those people back... They brought Mickey back three times. They ended Gallavich FOUR times. Noel is in ever season except eight. I don’t think they wanted Mickey gone -- but I KNOW the fans also made it pretty hard for them not to know his value, so absolutely I think that played a role. But when you create something people love and you get that lightening in a bottle like they did with this story, I think writers are always going to be excited to get that back. They like praise! They like people to be excited about their show. And Gallavich was always one of the things that got people excited about Shameless. 

I think they also wanted Gay Jesus to be a great story. But that’s why the lightening in the bottle is so valuable. You can’t just get it anywhere. 

[stxleslyds]

I didn't realize how often I thought about this fandom until I started churning out asks on a daily basis.

Knowing DC's creative trends/talent in 1988/89, what do you think would have happened if fans voted for Jason's survival? From released alternative comic pages, Jason still gets blown up but survives.

Do you think they had a plan for him to become Hush (like the Death in the Family interactive "movie" implies)? Would he get a personality change through amnesia? Or would the comics have retired him to fade into obscurity?

WHAT IF…? BUT JASON TODD SURVIVES.

Hi friend! Thank you for the ask! This should be interesting.

But before I give my answer, let’s take a look at those pages where Jason had actually survived Joker’s attack.

From the second page we only can see one panel but some who have seen the entire, unreleased, page have said this about it:

“The full page reveals more, including the arrival of Dick Grayson to Jason’s hospital room, although a pencilled note in the margins says to strike him, and redraw the panels in favour of having Alfred in the scene instead. Dick rushed over as soon as he heard, and offered Bruce his help in tracking down the Joker.

In the published version of Batman #428, the same page depicts Jason’s funeral, where Alfred asks Bruce if he should get in touch with Dick Grayson. In both pages, Batman says roughly the same thing: “I’ll handle this by myself. No help from now on... that’s the way I want it.””

This makes me feel like Jason having survived or not the Joker’s attack would have resulted in the same outcome within Bruce. Dick shows up at the hospital to check on Jason and offers his help in tracking Joker to Bruce but Bruce doesn’t want his help because from that moment on “he works alone”.

That would lead to the same exact actions that happened with Jason dead. Bruce goes after Joker on his own and leaves up to fate if he dies or not (although he said that his issues with Joker never truly end, Batman (1940) #429),

And if Bruce pushes Dick away then we could also be having a scene like the one from The New Titans (1988) #55, where Bruce implies that Jason getting hurt was Dick’s fault for having moved on from Robin himself. If that happens then Dick would blame Bruce for putting Jason in danger way too soon and their fight will end up with Bruce kicking Dick out of the manor.

-

So, to answer your question, what would have happened if fans voted for Jason’s survival?

I think that DC would have turned Jason into another reason why Bruce thinks that all he could ever be is Batman. It would have made Bruce dark, moody and sad just like DC wanted, all darkness and no light.

Jason wouldn’t be dead but he wouldn’t be truly alive and they would use that to fuel the angst that surrounds Batman.

It is a very sad thing, but I actually think that Jason surviving the attack wouldn’t have had any impact on his own story, Jason’s suffering/death were set up to make Batman want to work alone again. I just don’t see DC back in the day working on Jason’s recovery (physical and mental), I see them leaving Jason comatose and as a reminder of one of Batman’s “failures”. Maybe in a distant future Jason could have woken up with amnesia and they could have done something with him then but I really don’t know how they could make that story work or if Jason would end up working as an ally or enemy of Batman.

Much like you said in the ask, I think that DC would have let the character of Jason Todd fade away,

-

Because that is a really sad answer, I decided to come up with other scenarios where I would give ideas of what I would have liked to see DC do, and what I would have done if I had existed back in the day!

What I would have liked to see DC do:

After setting the fact that Jason was left in a coma at the hospital after Joker’s attack, I think DC should have had Bruce making some extreme decisions. With Jason alive but not really there I think that DC could have made work a plot point that they tried to pull off with Jason dead.

In a comic event called ‘Underworld Unleashed’ the demon Neron offered bringing Jason back to life if Bruce gave him his soul in exchange. But with Jason alive I think that Bruce would have actually been even more tempted to take the offer if it meant that by giving his soul away, he could wake Jason up from the coma he was in. Then there could have been an event with magic users that made it possible so Bruce got his soul back or something. DC could have also had Jason have amnesia after Neron wakes him up so we would have a soulless Batman and amnesiac Jason trying to make their father/son relationship work (or not).

Another idea is Bruce making a different extreme decision where he asks Talia to help him find a Lazarus Pit to try his luck with Jason. Because Jason was in a coma and not dead the Pit would have actually worked (the Lazarus Pit cannot bring people back from the dead!). I imagine that if it worked then Bruce would owe Talia or Ra’s a favour, and that could make an interesting story, mostly if Jason Todd ends up mad at Bruce because he didn’t kill the Joker after he tried to kill him. (I do love chaos).

Maybe Jason could even join the LoA to make Bruce’s life difficult. He wouldn’t become the Red Hood but Jason becoming an assassin after all that could have been the perfect recipe for complete chaos and I love that. I think DC could make it work, this last part of the idea is kinda inspired by Young Justice's Jason Todd.

What I would have done if I wrote for DC at the time:

I would have taken Jason away from Bruce! I would have Dick appear out of nowhere and I would have him take Jason with him back to the Titans Tower so they can both be far away from Bruce (at least for a little while).

If this idea sounds familiar it might be because you read another “What if…?” post that I made about what I thought would happen if Jason hadn’t been found by Batman that night when Jason was stealing the Batmobile’s tires. I will link that post here!

This time Dick would obviously be taking Jason with him at a different time and he would actually try to train Jason a little bit more but Dick would also have Jason work on his trauma and then Jason would decide to leave the vigilante/hero life behind. But not completely because I still believe that Jason would still want to save people. He would also be very protective of his brother/best friend Dick Grayson, also known as Nightwing.

I just think that Dick could have handled the situation a lot better than Bruce, he would have made sure that Jason felt like him not being Robin anymore wasn’t because he was a failure but because he can help people in other ways. He would have made him go to therapy and would have been more willing to share his own experiences with him.

I would have Jason studying to become a paramedic again (a different kind of hero) and this time he could also practice on the Titans when they got hurt in battle, if he did that then he could end up being an excellent medic for all superheroes!

I mean, in the Titans there are humans, aliens, metas, amazons and atlanteans. Jason could actually become DC’s very own version of Marvel’s ‘Night Nurse’. I don’t know, I love that idea and I think @hood-ex would like it too!

I just love the idea of Jason and Dick becoming each other's family. The Titans would also become Jason's family but he would be very protective of Dick. I just feel like Jason would have seen the whole thing (of Dick taking him to live together) as a fresh start after such a horrible experience.

I love Red Hood but I also love the idea of Jason becoming something completely different from that and this is one of my favourite ideas!

-

Oh! Before I forget, I think that the idea of Jason becoming Hush in the ‘Death in the Family’ movie comes directly from the fact that Jason “was” Hush for a second in the Batman: Hush comic. That was revealed to us in UtRH, Jason gave the real Hush all the information that he needed to get under Batman’s skin. And then when “Hush” captured Tim and he showed his face that was actually Jason who then changed places with Clayface to confuse Bruce more.

So, yeah, I don’t think DC had planned on making Jason become Hush.

Thank you so much for the ask! I hope the answer was good and that you have a fantastic week!

[animedaddymilkers]

Kinkmas 2020: Day Three

Prompt: Threesome w/ Kiba & Kankuro

Genre: Smut/18+ || Tags: Threesome, Double Penetration, Oral, Anal Fingering || Characters: Kiba Inuzuka, Kankuro, Female Reader || read it on ao3 here

The immense pleasure that wrecked through your body made you briefly wonder how exactly you found yourself in this position. It seemed like just another night of work at your dead end waitress job. Well, it was just another night. Business was slow but it always was during your night shift job. To the point where you wondered why it was worth keeping the ramen restaurant open all night. Though every time a customer came in you were reminded, the night customers were almost always shinobi. Most likely just back from a mission and looking for an actual meal instead of those pills you heard they take. Tonight was no different. You were standing around, nearly twiddling your thumbs until two roughed up looking guys wandered into seats.

"Hey guys! What can I get you tonight?" Your customer service voice wasn't as strong as it was during a day shift, mainly because it didn't need to be. Customers in the dead of night knew the shop being open was a luxury and most were so desperate for a nice, warm meal you could cuss them out and they'd still tip you well.

"Hi sweetheart," a gruff voice responded, belonging to a somewhat regular.

"Oh, Kiba? Gosh I almost didn't recognize you," the man truly looked worse for wear, though you had to admit it was nice he clearly stopped in here before even going home.

"I'll take the special," The other man you didn't recognize spoke up, looking equally as rough.

"Yeah it was a tough mission. I'll take the special too, hun."

You nodded and put the order in, comfortable enough with him to return in front of where they were sitting to chat. Small talk was easy with a person like Kiba, even when he was dead tired. The other man, you learned whose name was Kankuro, occasionally piped in, mainly with sarcastic jabs at Kiba. It made the time pass quicker and you even found yourself cracking up with laughter a few times. After fifteen minutes you served their food and let them eat, recounting the events that happened in the village while Kiba was out on his mission. The two finished their meals and you were quick to clean the bowls up.

"Can I get you guys anything else?"

"How about an evening alone with us?" Kiba grinned confidently.

You shot a smirk back at him and gestured around, "What, this isn't alone enough for you?"

"Not nearly," Kankuro answered your rhetorical question in a voice that was near a grumble.

"You're almost done working, yeah (Y/N)?" Kiba quickly continued, gently pushing his luck.

And lucky for him, he didn't have to push far, after a quick glance to the clock you nodded, "I can leave after cleaning up."

The two men shared a look and nodded at you, sending you twirling around to hurry and finish your closing duties. A record five minutes later, you were saying goodbye to the chef and walking in-between the guys. Normally, you wouldn't do something as brazen as this, but Kiba always made you feel so comfortable around him. He was easy to talk to and even easier to flirt with. His flirting was smooth but the second you returned the sentiment his cheeks reddened almost comically. Even though you've only been working at the ramen shop for a year it feels like the two of you are childhood friends.

As you walked, Kiba's arm slung around your shoulders, warding off the cool night with the heat radiating from his body. Meanwhile, Kankuro's hand kept brushing against yours until you finally made the bold move and linked your fingers into his. The dynamic between your little trio was already interesting and you only just met Kankuro barely an hour ago. Yet it felt so natural to be surrounded by them, it felt like you were all dating already. Though you weren't going to fool yourself, even if this turned out to be just one night, you'd be thankful for it.

By the time you reached Kiba's surprisingly clean apartment, you could barely keep your hands off of them. Kankuro's lips were hot on your neck, spreading purple lipstick marks all over while Kiba tried to close the door. Shirts were discarded quickly, allowing you to take in the chiseled chests of the men sandwiching you in. At some point, you made it to Kiba's bedroom and it didn't take long for you to find his cock inside of your mouth while he used his hands on the other brunet. Your tongue rubbed the underside of him as you took more into your mouth, being careful not to gag. The view above you was gorgeous, as both Kiba and Kankuro were basking in the pleasure they were receiving. But they didn't let it drag on before they laid you back and Kankuro's rough fingers ran up and down your slit.

Kiba was more than happy to slip himself back into your mouth, moaning as he felt you suck around him. Meanwhile, Kankuro planted his head between your thighs, relishing in every purple mark he left as he dove in for his dessert. He went to town, sliding his tongue in and out of you while  those rough fingers rubbed your clit. Neither held back, but Kiba was a bit impatient, his hips thrusting forward accidentally. Before long, he was pulling out of your mouth and bending down to kiss you through your first orgasm of the night. Then, the brunet positioned himself behind Kankuro, sliding his fingers into the other man with a grin. Kankuro gasped around your still quivering pussy before moaning and resting his head against your thigh to pant heavily. You propped yourself up on your elbows to enjoy the sight of Kankuro already falling apart as Kiba curled his fingers while thrusting.

You muttered a curse under your breath and it almost acted as a reminder to Kankuro that you were there as his eyes traveled up to meet yours. Half lidded as they were, you could tell they were full of pleasure and begging for more. Out of desperation, he looked back to Kiba and rocked his hips, pushing the fingers deeper into him. The deep moans he let out vibrated against your leg, running straight to your core.

Dropping your head back to the bed you let out a moan yourself, "Kami, please, one of you fuck me already."

That seemed to get their attention as both looked at you before separating and sitting up, Kankuro grinned, "How about two of us, babygirl?"

"That's fine by me, just get to it already." the confidence the two men let off was contagious and you found yourself having no problem taking the lead.

You sat Kiba down on the bed and slid his cock into you. Giving a few testing bounces before leaning forward slightly, you let Kankuro push his lubed cock into your ass. The pressure of being so full made you sigh and after getting accustomed to it you began to bounce on both of them. They groaned in unison, only egging you on more. Kankuro pressed kisses into your shoulder while Kiba played with your tits, tugging on your nipples. Your own hands found balance by reaching back and steadying yourself on Kank's thighs, the thick muscle underneath your fingertips flexing with each thrust he tried to return.

As you moved your hips up and down both men began to rightfully fall apart. Not to say you were doing much better though, seeing as Kankuro was once again using those roughed up fingers to rub your bundle of nerves. The sensations all over your body made you see stars again, clenching around the two cocks as you came. Had it not been for you warning them of the impending climax, both probably would have followed suit. But thankfully they held on, determined to throw you over the edge again. It wouldn't be hard either, especially not when Kankuro leaned you down to rest your torso on Kiba's and both men began to take over thrusting. The damn teases they were, one would thrust in as the other trusted out.

Somewhere in your lust fogged brain, you made a note to ask them how they knew each other. There was just no way new friends could be this in sync. That, and the way they were kissing over your shoulder seemed much more intimate than a random decision. Either way, they were fucking you good.

Words weren't your best friend right now, but you managed to whine out a, "Fuck, I'm going to cum."

The boys nearly growled together and Kankuro kissed the back of your neck, "Cum for us, babygirl."

"Yeah? Fucking cum on my cock, princess," this time Kiba did growl and it was all you needed to send you over the edge.

The vibration from his words made you shiver and your orgasm shook through every fiber of your being. Your holes squeezed and spasmed around their intruder's and this time the boys didn't bother holding back. The warm sensation spurting into you from both sides was one you'd likely forget the amazingness of. But the moans, groans, and absolute sinful noises they made as they came would be forever etched into your memory. Moans were replaced with heavy pants and all three of your sweaty bodies collided onto the bed. At some point, they slipped their softening cocks out of you and two sets of warm arms surrounded you. They shared a kiss before turning to you and giving you your own share of kisses. The two of them simultaneously holding onto you and the other man in one safe huddle of love. Sure, what you had wasn't exactly labeled, for shit's sake, what you had just started, but you couldn't help but hope it would continue. Even if you'd look at yourself in the morning and find your body not only covered in scratches, fingerprint bruises and hickies, but also purple paint smeared nearly everywhere.

hope you enjoyed! remember likes & reblogs help me reach more people! :)

[megashadowdragon]

Metryllis' Paladin Problems: Valentines by Volume

source : www . reddit . com/r/grandorder/comments/ey7s5b/metryllis_paladin_problems_valentines_by_volume/Commentary:

Just in time for the Month of Love. It’s something horrible!

I guess this is more of a Kiara’s Paladin Problems strip, but I’m on a roll with that “M” theme linking them all together.

Kiara's opening lines were inspired by lyrics from The Rocky Horror Picture Show track "Don't Dream It, Be It". Astolfo speaks for himself.

There’s a reason why only certain Servants (if any) are allowed to accompany you in Singularities/EoRs/Lostbelts. Some would resolve them too easily!

Yes, in addition to being a Prince and a Duke, Astolfo was a King of Lombardy as well!

Like the overview of Durandal’s ownership in a previous comic, Astolfo’s telling of his sordid saga is mostly without embellishments. It only omits that he only became friends with Giocondo (Jocundo, in some translations) when he heard that he was a man whose beauty rivaled his own. To see if the rumors were true, he invited him to his kingdom in Lombardy (Astolfo’s brother had recently died, leaving him to inherit it), but when Giocondo arrived, he was bedraggled and sallow. Astolfo’s would-be competition had recently chanced upon his wife in the arms of another man (a crucifix was involved). Later, through a crack in his guest room, Giocondo spied Astolfo’s queen having an affair with the aforementioned dwarf. And you know the rest. Oh, except the part where Astolfo and Giocondo gave Fiammetta and her third lover their blessing and a large dowry with which they could wed each other. Also, the little wrinkle that the entire tale might be completely fictitious. Even more so than usual, I mean.

Rodomonte, having had his fiancé choose Mandricardo over him, languishes in an inn and bemoans the supposed promiscuity of women, the innkeeper kindly tells him the story of Astolfo’s thousand THOT march to make him feel better. Ariosto, the writer, prefaces the story assuring the reader that it is nonsense and also very offensive and can be skipped. Not that this stopped me.

Of course, this allegedly improbably tale is told a few cantos before Astolfo goes to Hell, Heaven, Eden, and the Moon. Which actually happens. So the milli-mistress misadventure could have also been true.

It’s charming either way, I find. Astolfo is such a ridiculous character that people can just attribute all sorts of deranged deeds to his ledger and they’d suddenly become plausible by association.

After the story is told, some of the bar’s partrons agree with the sentiment that they must be wary of womanly wantonness. Others, surprisingly, side with the women and claim that men are just as likely to be unfaithful and they shouldn’t hold it against each other too brutally if infidelity should occur.

I must stress that whether you believe Astolfo’s story is about letting your freak flag fly or waving away loyalty lapses in non-open relationships, Ariosto has strong moral ideals on romance (even while putting Charlemagne’s own…wanderings…into consideration) to buoy all this crudeness. If not modern, then very far-reaching ones.

Bradamante and Ruggiero’s love, for how much trouble it gets them in and how Ariosto might have been playing to the vanity of his patrons (who believed themselves descended from the pair), is comprehensively portrayed as a very good and very beautiful thing in a tale rife with the mad and the macabre.

The hollowness of Ruggiero’s partially enchanted affair with Alcina regresses his reputable countenance into that of a placid imbecile who’s almost plantlike even before he’s turned into an actual tree.

Roland’s pursuit over a woman who does not love him, transforms him into a monster.

Doralice so swiftly switching affections for Mandricardo to his killer, Ruggiero is depicted negatively.

Paladin Rinaldo, a married man and Bradamante’s brother, temporarily redeems himself for his own pursuit of Angelica by leading the reinforcements he’d collected (a task he was penalized with by a disappointed Charlemagne) to save Paris, his king, and his fellow knights during a terrible siege. Then he greedily goes out to pursue Angelica again, this time under the pretense that he’s actually hunting down Gradasso and the stolen Durandal. He is repaid for his deception by a gorgon attack (yes, really) and his lack of effort in actually finding his purported targets leads to him missing the climactic 3-on-3 duel wherein Roland, Oliver, and Brandimart are grievously harmed by the blade he was supposed to retrieve.

But although Ariosto prizes Love and Loyalty, he’s as mentioned previously, very fond of Mercy. Princess Genevra of Scotland is accused of fornication and is to be sentenced to death. While she is eventually revealed to be innocent, that is a moot point for Rinaldo and her fiancé Ariodantes. Had she been guilty, the two of them would have still viewed her punishment as far too harsh and would have rushed to save her regardless. And they’d have succeeded in that scenario just the same.

Angelica, so frequently accosted and made captive, finds a man of sincere affection in the humble Medoro.

Proud Marfisa, finding the hamlet of the tyrant Marganor’s discarded and dishonored women, might have mocked them for allowing themselves to be victims, for not being as mighty, rich, and unstoppable as she. Instead, the glib cruelty of the Amazons and the vulnerable magnificence of Bradamante & Ruggiero’s bond have made her more worldly and considerate, and she stages a rebellion to not just punish Marganor but to reinstate his mistresses as full citizens of their home village worthy of sympathy, protection, and perhaps even true love rather than leave them ostracized for being made targets for wickedness they had little hope of defying on their own.

By the by, I hope you got a good laugh out of this comic. Cheers

[popculturebuffet]

Scottrospective: Scott Pilgrim Vs the Universe or So Sad So Very Very Sad

Hello all you happy Scottaholics! And welcome back to Scottrospective, my 8 part look at Scott Pilgrim: all 6 volumes of the comic as well as the game and movie just in time for their respective 10th Anniversaries. If your just joining us or needa  quick refresher, here are links to the other four parts, in order: Precious Little Life, Vs The World (Comic), Infinite Sadness, and last month’s look at my favorite volume Gets It Together. And if that’s not enough to fill your belly with Scotty Goodness, hop over to my patreon, patreon.com/popculturebuffet.  There you’ll find reviews of all the content I didn’t have time for in the retrospective proper: Free Scott Pilgrim, The Wonderful World of Kim Pine, Monica Beetle, Style, and the bonus comic strips. It’s only a dollar to get access to the bonus reviews, and every bit you can give not only helps me make these reviews int he first place, but gets me closer to my stretch goals, the 25 and 30 dollar ones including looks at O’Malley’s Other Works: Lost At Sea and Seconds for the former and Snotgirl for the latter. 

But more than plugging my past and paid works, there’s something else far more important I need to get to before I get into this one: Thank You. No Seriously thank all of you who have been reading these, liking them. My Precious Little Life Review is easily one of the most liked things i’ve ever had on this blog, getting more viewers every day, and last month’s look at Gets it Together is STILL racking up likes. Given most of my non-duck reviews, paid for and on my own time, tend to be ignored half the time, this just warms my heart. It shows me two great things: that even after a decade Scott Pilgrim still has a huge following and given how young this platform tends to skew that it’s gaining more fans every day, and that people care about what I have to say about htis wonderful comic. It really touches me to both know my voice matters and that something I truly loved as a teen and still do now is STILL picking up more and more fans. What i’m saying is you guys are the best and I wouldn’t be doing these reviews without your support of my very hard work. These are some of the hardest reviews i’ve done at times, but seeing you all enjoy them makes it all worth it. 

As for the Volume itself there’s something I just gotta get off my chest right away: I HATED this volume when it came out. To understand why you have to consider my mental state: I was a teenager at the time, in my junior year of high school. Scott Pilgrim was my goddamn world: while I was picking up comics monthly at the time this was honestly the first north american comic I loved and obessed over and Scott and friends were like family to me. To an awkward teen who couldn’t talk to girls, struggled to keep the video game club a friend founded together in a way that in hindsight was wholly unecessary, and getting messed with due to my anger issues by friend, foe and frenemy alike, Scott was my port in the storm. A sunny version of Tornoto where I could retreat to to feel at peace.

So yeah this shattered the fuck out of that peace and was essentially one long slow motion kick to the balls to a younger me: Hollie gets derailed and horribly betrays Kim, runing my faviorite characters life and leading to her LEAVING, Scott and Ramona’s relationship crumbles, the band breaks up , and the volume ends with Gideon still gunning for our hero because life hadn’t punched him in the face enough for one month. I was livid, not stopping the series, obviously, but upset that everything i’d grown to care about was basically gone in a flash and couldn’t understand WHY O’Malley would fucking do this to me. This volume was also what kept me from re-reading the books for as long as I did as while the rest had fond memories all the ones I had of this one were pure misery.

But by the time i re-read it in december of last year I had two important things in my hands that helped me truly enjoy this one: The first was Volume 6 itself: knowing things would work out, that most of the bad stuff would be undone and in a truly awesome and satisfying way helped.

The other thing was the perspective that came with growing older: For one as an adult while I still like Scott as a character and find him intresting I no longer look up to him, nor put stock in his hapiness for his own. Sure I still care about characters and relate to some, but Bojack Horseman taught me the hard way you CAN’T put all your hopes in a character’s fate or them getting better for you to get better. 

The other is that while this volume again is pretty bleak after a while.. it’s also NECESSARY. Part of the series charm is i’ts realisim and a sad part of real life is people can drift apart from you, and things can change seemingly all at once. And things moving the way they do is necessary for the ending: every step and move here puts things where they need to be for the final chapter.  The pain our heroes go through is necessary so they can all grow.. except Stephen and Wallace. Stephen sucks and Wallace dosen’t need to change. He does need his own spinoff. But for Scott, Ramona and Kim the trials to come are necessary to make them into their best selves by series end. 

So join me under the cut as we get sad so very very sad, this is Scott Pilgrim vs the Universe. 

Precious Little Life:  We open with Scott’s Birthday! Hit it MC Chris!

But yes it’s septmeber and Scott is now 24 years old. Also Julie is there because presumibly Stephen dredged her out of her swamp for the evening despite Julie likely not wanting to be there and Scott sure a shell not wanting her there.  He vows that he will be the best 24 year old ever...... yeah let’s take a brief look into the future to see how that pans out

But we have a full volume and more metaphorical rakes to whack Scott in the face before that paticular one. 

A MONTH AND A FEW DAYS LATER

It’s the day of the dead, whoa ho way down in Tornoto. It’s hosted by Satan Herself, who dosen’t realize the holiday for hags was yesterday. This is for remembering the dead and rising out of the grave to go resuce your young wards by ramming a bunch of guys in butterfly costumes with your car or stealing your children’s kidneys.  This is Rat Girl’s new place, a fancy loft she and 3 other girls went on to throw the best parties beaause of course. She’s also a bitch to our hero and heroine because of course. 

But Scott soon has more important things to worry about: Ramona spots his next two opponents.. the twins hinted at last time, Kyle and Ken Kataynagi, Perfect Jerk and Handsome Asshat respectively.

Kyle and Ken are easily the least intresting of the 7 exes. With the other 4 so far having been a loveable ham, a stoic movie star whose suprisingly nice and dies via skateboard, a gloriously douchey and dumb psychic evil version of our much more loverable dumb douche with personal connections to both him and Ramona, and Roxy who was genuinely sympathetic, held back by her own selfishness and anger.. we get.. two smug assholes who use robots. Their not UNINTRESTING, the robots have cool designs and the fight with them is genuinely exciting.. but they just don’t have the charisma or personal factor. Their jsut two assholes ramona dated at the same time who happen to know more about her well guarded past than the other exes and are more liable to bring it up.. and even then it’s not anything new as Envy pulled similar tactics far more intrestingly in volume 3. THey don’t ruin the volume or anything, thier fine, but I just wish O’Malley had done more. Especially since he clealry had more intresting ideas with them: the sound battle we saw in the movie was an early draft of this and one early draft had Scott’s previously unseen brother Laurence working with them. I don’t knowWHY he scrapped that as it raises the stakes and makes this far more personal for Scott. Which at this point is what the exes SHOULD be: Todd and Roxy BOTH were more personal threats, Todd being his ex’s boyfriend and first love and Roxy being a genuine competior for Ramona. These guys again are just two douchers who show up because we need 7 douchers to complete the doucher circle. 

So the twins declare their not going to fight scott.. and instead send a tiny robot to fight him. Awww. But for this fight O”Malley does something really intresting and creative.. he dosen’t focus on it. No really Ken and Kyle are dicks to Ramona so Kim wisely gets her out of there, and the two have a casual talk on the balcony while Ramona smokes. It’s some fun banter between the two that both shows why their shipped to all hell. The two just play off each other really damn well. Though we also get Craphole asking people if they want to come watch Scott get beat up because the worst. 

Something important character stuff comes up though: As was shown last time at her rightful rage that Stephen HAD an opportunity to book a gig and kept refusing it for his fecking album, Kim is still fairly salty about the whole recording an album bullshit. The biggest part of it..

It’s something you really DON’T expect to here coming out of kim: that she really LIKED the band. But beneath the pillar of salt she puts out daily... these were her friends, this was getting to do something creative and passionate, and it was a break from the daily grind. Even if her job isn’t TERRIBLE, getting to watch movies and hang out with her best friend Clerks style.. it’s still a retail job and those still weigh on you.. though frankly i’d take one of those over food service but sadly tha’ts what i get most of the time. This was fun.. and Stephen ripped that away from her for his own selfish reasons. No one else in the band really cared about making an album.. if Stephen REALLY wanted to find a more professional band.. then he should’ve just told them so Scott and Kim could find someone else to do guitars for them. Instead he forced them into doing something they don’t want to do and refuses to actually play shows, which COULD help both perfect songs for the album version and get them new fans for said upcoming album and provide them recurring venues to SELL said album,  because he really just wants to be with Joseph and fuck anyone else. Stephen is really just an inhernetly selfish git and i’ll get more into that in a bit. But first Wallace has a text for Scott. 

Now I COULD have just skipped over this.. but I didn’t want to. Plus we dont’ se Wallace for a while in this story so i’m taking what I can get. 

So back to Stephen being a repugnant ass. I’ve been waiting for this scene for the entire retrospective. I”ve hinted at it, and largely blamed it for why I hate him so damn much. The time is nigh to explain WHY. 

Stephen is with Knives, as the two are close friends and such. Stephen expalins Sex Bomb-Omb isn’t playing because he and the personfication of bitchiness broke up. Which knives points out is for...

But it’s clear from context this was the LAST time. Why he still got invited I dunno, plot convience. So far so normal.. until Stephen picks up that Knives is STILL hung up on Scott. Which is understandable crushes can last a while but i’ts equally understandable that Stephen is utterly baffled by it. Which I get,  I didn’t make an entire tom lucitor retropsecitve because I liked that his relationship with Star ended with him stepping aside due to what the show thought was “true wuv” but what comes off instead as his self loathing casuing him to blame himself for a realtionship that’s crumbling for reasons that aren’t his fault. 

And his actions here are incredibly well meant: He bluntly gives Knives the wake up call she DOES need: Scott cheated on her, he dated her because she was easy to date, strung her along for a bit while seeing someone else, then dumped her with not one care for her well being. That is stuff she NEEDS to get into her head so she can move on. She needs to see him for what he IS and not for what she’s built him up as in her head. And while yeah his rant DOSNE’T take into account the fact Scott geninely tried to make up for his actions in volume 3, Stephen wasn’t there for that and Knives probbably didn’t tell him about it.  So from his point of view scott broke her heart and did nothing.. and evne IF he knew that, Scott still hasn’t tried to do anything since despite Knives still being obessed with him nor come clean to her or Ramona at any point. Scott deserves this call out and the consequences that come with it. 

So your probably wondering WHY I hate Stephen because of this scene when he’s you know, RIGHT. Well it’s simple: being right dosen’t save you from being a MASSIVE hypcorite. He’s railing on Scott for cheating and hurting someone.. when he cheated on Julie and would’ve hurt her if she had the capacity for human emotion, empathy, or self awarness. The ending of the last volume and how bad, even for them, their relationship was implied the hell out of it, with him nervous when she brings up being paranoid over knives.. as if he WAS cheating. on One Face just not with a teenage girl but a grown ass man who hates everyone as much as BLARARARGAGAG does. 

Not only that.. but he was with Julie for the SAME DAMN reasons Scott was with Knives: it was easy. Now I WILL grant Stephen some sympathy: he’s a queer man and as one myself, bi for the record, I GET how fucking hard it is to come to terms with that, that what you thought you were isn’t ENITRELY true or, if Stephen is gay and not bi or pan, ENIRELY FALSE. So I do have some care that it was hard for him to sort all this out. I do and that Jospeh could’ve seduced him or what not. We don’t have all the context here. But he STILL cheated at the end of the day instead of telling her he was queer until MONTHS later.  And why yes the fact I have to feel bad for JULIE does make it that much worse. And yes their relationsihp COULD simply be that toxic or she could’ve gaslit him, but it seemed more like their relationship was messy breakups and getting back together over and over. While Julie IS vile, she’s not a domestic abuser mental or physical as far as I can tell. She’s a bitch and their relatioship is unehlathy but there was no indication their relationship involved gaslighting or evne phsyical violence: it was just fucked from minute one. So yeah he stayed in an awful relationship beacuse it was easier than coming out, when he should’ve broken it off as soon as it was clear he and Joseph were actually going somewhere. Waiting while he figured out who he was is one thing, tha’ts fiar, but cheating on someone just because you don’t have the nerve to break it off with them when their genuinely awful to you and your only hurting them as much as they can be hurt by dragging this out... yeah that just makes you an ass. 

Another point of contention is that he NEVER called Scott out on this. Never. Not even after this scene. Never encouraged him to tell Ramona or apologize to Knives, again he didn’t know Scott already had tried that. Never gets on him.. he just ignores Scott’s shitty behavior like eveyrone else and unlike Kim, whose still got unresolved feelings and is at the very least clearly bothered by his shitty behavior, and Neil, whose young and thus like me likely looked up to Scott at the time, he dosen’t have an excuse other than “Well I don’t want to ruin our friendship by actually calling him out when he does something objectivionally awful.” Especially since Wallace DID actually take action: he didn’t break up the relationship or say anythign to Ramona, which is wrong... but he did tell scott flat out after his first date with Ramona to break up with Knives. And when Scott chickned out of that, Wallace gave him the ultimatium, may it live in empathy, to do so or he WOULD tell Ramona. And at least Wallace has a motive for not telling Ramona other than “I don’t want to risk my friendship with a guy I really don’t care about and think is shitty”. He wanted to see Scott recover from Envy, something Stephen never gave ONE. SHIT. ABOUT. He saw Ramona was good for him and knew telling her, while the RIGHT thing to do, would severely harm Scott, and by volume 4 leave him homeless. Plus Wallace frankly enabled him for some time anyway, letting him live at their place rent free and paying for all his food and frequently letting Scott steal his credit card. WIth Wallace at least while it’s not the RIGHT move, it’s understandable and complicated vs Stephen who really dosen’t seem to like or get along with Scott after volume 1, suddenly cares what happens to his relationship. 

And what proves this... is this little exchange that ends the conversation. 

Knives despite her issues, despite blinding herself to how Scott treated her, despite everything... thinks Ramona should know. And she’s right. And Stephen KNOWS THIS. He knows it was the right thing to do and just.. takes a swig instead of admitting he’s a fucking hypocrite or explaining himself in any way.  He NEVER cared about Ramona’s feelings or how this would effect her or saw her as important in any way shape or form. Kim at least clearly feels guilty. Wallace clearly is only doing so because it’s better for both her and Scott that their together and is a flawed human being. Stephen.. just dosen’t do so out of some masculine bullshit code of not ratting out your friend and his own cowardace. He clearly COULD go walk up to Ramona right now and tell her, but he won’t. And again I don’t buy he honeslty cares enough about Scott for their friendship to TRULY be enough of a factor to stop that. Fuck. Stephen. Stills. 

So Scott wins naturally, but is bummed there’s no reward.. but Stephen points out there’s tons of free food over yonder so he noms before he and Ramona leave. 

We get some cute domestic bits with Scott and ramona: Scott playing games on her phone all day, the two cooking dinner, and Scott admititng he hasn’t thought of envy at all. “I have you now”. Though through it there are some signs of unease: Scott finds a letter to Gideon, and Ramona asks about her hair and stares out into the window. Nice little hints that even before the big bomb abotu to drop she’s not at ease.. she loves Scott.. but it’s hard for her to let herself BE happy. It’s easy to wager she wasn’t for most of her life. 

Can’t Face Up

So next we find Sex Bomb-Omb working on the album. Or rather Stephen and Joseph are. Scott and Kim are praying for death but death won’t come and Kim wonders why the fuck this isn’t finished. Joseph wants her out of his house... forgetting that Kim lives in said house. 

Still his expressoin implies he’s going to do a murder on her if she stays in the room and since Drummers are hard to come by Stephen spirits them to kim’s room for a band meeting. Turns out they do have a gig but naturally Rosemary’s Baby booked it... and they haven’t practiced in months because Stephen’s a moron. He theorizes it’s Freddy’s Revenge, which is admitely probably valid though Kim can TELL something worse happened Stephen won’t cop to because he’s a piece of shit. I spent several paragraph’s establishing that. They try blaying and two sucktacular minutes i’ts clear their fucked sunday. 

So after a scene of Knives trying HARD to justify Scott’s actions and blame htem on Ramona, to no success, we get one of my faviorite parts of this book: Scott rambling on for god knows how long about the x-men while Ramona gets dressed and is presumibly barely listneing. 

I relate so hard to this it hurts. While not this era I wll GLADLY go on and on about X-Men and anything X-Adjacent at any goddamn opportunity and anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis and you know this. I need to tlak more x-men outside of my slowly failing New X-Men retrospective (Which is on the back burner because no one seeems to genuinely care after chapter one). If I did have a signifgant other, they would probably end up in a situation like this quite a lot and i’d have no shame about it. 

I also love this scene even more as while I DID love x-men at the time, I wasn’t quite the mega fan I was, nor as familiar with Claremont’s long, epic and often fucking weird in the special wonderful way only comics can run. Given I OWN over half his run at this point, that has changed. Though oddly not this part. So not only do I get Scott’s talking about x-men I Know what SPECIFICALLY. 

And for the unitatied, a quick explination of what the fuck Scott’s going on and on about: In the late 80′s, the x-men fought a reality warping malevolent trickster god named the Adversary. IN order to beat him their friend forget had to perform a cermony to lock his ass away that required willingly given life forces. The X-Men did REALLY fucking die.. but the Goddess Roma, daughter of Merlin and enemy of the advesary brought them back to life. With their deaths having been broadcast on live tv, and with tons of dangerous enemies at their heels, the X-Men choose to let the world continue to think they were dead so they could hit said enemies where it hurt.

SO this is where Scott’s story comes in:The X-Men’s first mission was clearing out the reavers, a bunch of racist cyborgs, from a ghost town which they took over as their base. As Scotty said they traveled all over the world, fought aliens, more racists, and then went to New York as it literally went ot hell. it’s a LOT and I haven’t read most of that era. I just know about it. I have read that last part though: the x-men were ambushed while wolveirne was away by said racist cyborgs so Psylocke shoved them through the siege perilous, a gate thingy romana gave them that would give them a new life and amnesia and such, leaving wolveirne to get crucified till Jubilee, who’d been hiding in their base gary busey style, freed him. The two would travel the world, find psylocke body swapped which is why she was asian for several decades, and get into general stuff for a few years real time till the X-Men slowly reunited. And you probbaly dind’t need to hear all of that but your life is better for knowing it. 

As you can tell Ramona’s discontent is mounting. And probably not because of Scott rambling about x-men. Last night he told her about the time Magneto beat them all because they stupidly rushed him one at a time then forced them into high tech chairs while a robotic nanny babbied them and then esecaped because shut up before fighting magneto, getting surrounded by lava and having beast ASSUME they were dead because fuck actually coming back and searching just in case like a rational human being because magma or no the x-men have surivived worse, including the depths of space, and restoring all of reality from scratch.  I may of just read those issues tonight. 

She procedes to make things worse for our hero as when he asks fo rher advice.. she reveals she dosen’t like his band.. and while she means nothing BY that, she’s nice about it, telling him his band sucks days before a sudden show where you guys eat a lot isn’t something you do. Wallace is naturally even less helpful and maybe his not liking the band is why we barely see him interact. Maybe he just figured Stepheen was on the fence sexuality wise but wasn’t willing to put up with Julie to test that. I dunno. 

So at the restraunt Stephen’s a dick, refusing to help Scott with his problems. WHich for once are legitamte as he worries abotu Ramona keeping secrets. He just wants to talk about hte band.. but 48 or something hours after this he has no real plan. 

Scott mopes to Kim about Ramona and she has some sage advice for him...

Also thing one and thing two are at the bar with a remote. This cannot end well... granted givne our heroes are not at all prepared and are playing two diffrent songs, this was never going to end well. 

And things only get worse for Scott in the bathroom.. he’s not there.. but his girlfriend and his ex are. Knives tries to work it out.. but Ramona being a bit short with her, which is fair given Knives tried to stab her a bunch a few months back and never apologized, leading to a quick fight.. but with Knives heart not in it this time and Ramona pissed and this time NOT confsued as to what the hell ihs going on, it ends with Ramona slamming knives into a wall... and Knives sadly revealing the truth to Ramona...

The scene hits like a truck with both devistated.. Ramona not having realized Scott with this shitty.. and Knives FINALLY accepting that he is. Finally letting her obession with him drop and realize what he was and what he did and let the full impact hit. The last part also hits hard “No One Else Would’ve Told You’.  It’s a sad hard truth and it’s CLEARLY something that hits both women hard.  For Knives it’s realizing Kim and Stephen, who she’s increidbly close to at this point, both don’t have the stomach to do the right thing, and thus hid this from her and Ramona. Stephen DID tell her.. but he still didn’t have the guts to tell RAMONA nor the actual care. It’s the realization the people she looked up to truly let her down and that she had to do what they couldn’t, even if it tore her apart to do it. For Ramona it’s realizing her closest friends outside of Scott could’ve told her and never did. No matter how close she’s gotten to Kim and Wallace, neither gave a fuck about her rights or her need to know. 

So Ramona is rattled and barely speaks while Scott has been fighting anothe rrobot and ends the gig accidnetly smashing his bass. Stephen is pissy with him and blames hi mfor runing the gig, which turned out to be a trap anyway complete with fliers. 

Ramona decides to gently throw him out as he forgot his keys while his other friends won’t house him leaving him with the one friend he has who dosen’t hate him right now. WALLACE!

The Glow:

So at Casa De Welles, Wallace has some buddy time, not making any bones about the fact Ramona clearly threw Scott out for the night and wearing a neat robe. Scott mopes about the fact he hasn’t met mobile whose apparenlty on the astral plane. I wonder if he has any buisness with Emma.. I mean the x-men did live in san fran sicsio but given decimation didn’t have many psychics. Might’ve been tryign to get another one. THey didn’t have a whole island that walks like a man yet.  And while Wallace wasn’t in much of a coaching mood last time he is willing to help. He couldn’t get bupkiss on the twins since Scott can’t even remember their names, but he did pull off a miracle. Despite their being a million Gideons in New York.. Wallace found THE Gideon. Granted all he got was his full name, Gideon Gordon Graves, and a few burry photos, one with Ramona confirming this is our douche, but given he had only a first name and an ex to work with this is some damn fine work. Wallace asks scott about his future with Ramona but he just.. has no earthly idea because of course he dosen’t. He hasn’t REALLY thought about what comes after beating the exes because he never thinks anything through. Interesting stuff The next day Scott meets up with Kim at No Account Video and we get our first, and I mean literally first, indiciation things are falling apart with her and Hollie. Scott wants to say hi, Kim refuses him and gives a smart ass comment when he asks if them being roomates isn’t working out. He wasn’t even being a dick it’s just clear SOMETHING bad’s going on she won’t talk about because she puts up walls around hrself on a GOOD day and this clearly isn’t one.

It gets worse when they stop by Stephen’s place only to find Neil whose both taken up a combination of smoking and moping in a dark room. Never a good sign. Nor is Stephen apparenlty being at band practice.. meaning either he lied to Neil about where he went.. or he already started the band we’ll see him with next volume and is already stabbing his friends in the back. There wasn’t much to like about the guy to BEGIN with, but his behavior just gets worse with every volume and it’s reached it’s apex here. The speech was shitty enough, I spent several paragraphs explaning why, but the rest of his behavior isn’t much better. He abandoned two people who were, for god knows what reason loyal to him and abandoned the band because of some bearded asshole probably encouraging him to. 

We also get some telling behavior on Kim’s part. Whlie she’s usually morose around Scott in the face of this both just hang out, it’s plesant. She even smiles when she asks if it’s going to be a regular occurance when he stays with her that night. Granted she brings back her frown soon after, but as has been clear her feelings for him never really went away entirely, and this is the closest the two have been in volumes, just enjoying each others company. It’s also telling that Scott trusts kim with a favor.

We see the favor the next page: Kim hangs out with Ramona.. and Scott marchs in completely on purpose soon after. Granted Kim probably didn’t know THIS was part of the plan, and it’s mildly stupid.. but it DOES show progress for Scott. Keep in mind his usual tactic is “avoid the fuck out of it and hope it goes away’ So ACTUALLY wanting to talk about things and find her again, and not doing it in a creepy way but simply drawing her out with a friend, shows SOME maturlity. It’s still not the most mature.. but with Ramona clearly not wanting him at their place, her work not having a set location as she just picks stuff up and drops it off (And even if she’s picking up packages at the post office we don’t know which one or if there’s multiple and even if we did scott sure as hel l does not), he was out of options. It also WORKS, with Ramona breaking her mopeynesss to laugh and Kim stunned it didn’t just piss her off further. 

So we find out what happened with Hollie when Scott brings up jason. She points out they were dating but... welllllllll

Yeah... as you could probably tell I do not like this plot point at all. For one thing we never really got to KNOW Jason, and with him and Hollie getting a little too cozy at the end of the last volume...

It’s clear his ONLY roll in the story was to be there so Hollie could betray Kim in some way. And look I get a LOT in this series happens while we’re not looking, ti’s part of it’s charm. Things not pausing for the side cast is a trope I enjoy: it allows some things to progress faster and allows for some intresting stories when the main cast catches up. Steven Unvierse and Ducktales both used this well as does Scott Pilgrim but all three weren’t immune to someitnes goofing up and taking it too far. 

This whole situation is that: Hollie is a character I got attached to: She had a great report with kim, they were really close and she offered her a place to stay when it was clear she was miserable with the four horseman of the bitchpocalypse she lived with. So while having her suddenly heel turn is realistic... it just feels thorughly unsatisfying. We do not see Hollie again after she’s sudeenly derailed, so we never get to see what she’s apparenlty REALLY like or get any explination why this happened. Suddenly Kim’s best friend is a douchebag even though it makes no sense for her character. Just because in real life people can turn out to be really shitty on a dime dosen’t mean it’s a neat thing to READ in a story and it feels like a waste of what was one of the series best side characters. And granted i’ve been through FAR worse treatment of side characters, trust me but this one still blows to this day and if there is a netflix adaptation this either needs to not happen or have actual depth. Seriously Netflix your adapting everything else, get on the bus already. 

Scott is GENUINELY apologetic, we’ve rarely seen him this nice but he genuinely feels bad for her.. and unlike Stephen’s thing it’s okay to feel shitty someone got cheated on even if you were a cheater in the past. As I said Stephen wasn’t wrong about how Scott treeted knives.. he just also was trying to take moral high ground which Knives proved he absolutely did not have in seconds.

This triggers Ramona’s glow, the squggly line thing that shows up over her head ocasoinally.. and while Ramona grills Scott... Kim just finally asks what the hells up with her head. Scott’s reaction is “OH good you guys see it too”. Kim does try to show it to ramona but it’s gone by then and she drops it for now and outside encourages her to come to Julie’s latest shitty party.. I mean their miserable but at least it gives thems omething to do

So we get another instalment of “Scott rambles about the X-Men” or New Mutants in this case as we’re talking about Magik, Aka Illyana Rasputin 

So for the long version: The X-Men were staying at a creepy temple that Magneto had been working out of beause the mansion was being repaired. Colossus, everyone’s favorite Russian and Deadpool co-star, had his kid sister Illyana with him as Arcade, a ginger maniac assasian whose gimmick is creating elaborate murder theme parks, kidnapped her in a plot to get the x-men to fight Dr. Doom for him. Given this was during the Cold War they coudln’t exactly take her back, so she stayed with the X-Men and her beloved big brother. 

So naturlaly the spooky temple decorated in Cthulu’s had a portal to hell in it and  an evil and genirc looking fucker named Belasco kidnapped her to a hell dimension known as Limbo>  the X-Men went after her as you’d expect and things got WEIRD as due to some complicated and weird time dialition stuff I sitll don’t quite understand there ended up being two copies of the x-men: ours who came in right after, and a second batch who stayed there for about 7-8 years and got warped by Bellsaco’s magic as he killed or changed most of them. As a result Storm became a sorcerer to fight back, Kitty Pryde became some sort of cat creature and Kurt became a creepy evil version of himself. Illyana stayed htere, learned magics from both storm and asshole, learned to fight from cat kitty, and eventually escaped after a lot of horrible bullshit, hardnered and with her soul scarred from it, now a teenager. She joined the New Mutants, the training class of x-men in the comics, soon after. She’s a member agian in present day, one of the great captains of Krakoa, and one of the two co-leaders of Krakoa’s younger mutants, i.e. 20 something to teens and kids. 

This is the best of the two scenes as the narrative , or at least Scott’s versions parallels Ramona’s own; Getting taken in by an evil man and feeling tainted by that. 

So at the party Ramona runs into Neil whose a dick about it and with some girl. She WAS going to be fleshed out more in the original draft but Brian ended up scrapping it for time, but does regret it. It’s here we get Neil’s face punchingly dickish comment that’s also a massive hint as to Stephen’s sexuality. 

Yeah even if Stephen’s been an UTTERLY shitty friend to him.. this was uncalled for even for the late 2000′s. What a prick. I do like the arc of Neil slowly falling apart though getting more and more bitter as his old friends abandoned him casually, especailly Stephen. While his comment was still HORRIBLY unwarranted even with Stephen being a dipshit. 

Speaking of assholes we get our last major with Julie who berates Scott for grabbing some booze and brings in the twist. I’m.. i’m not even bothering to give her an insluting and weird nickname. She’s still a HORRIBLE piece of shit, as she brought Scott’s enemies there to try and beat him to death for her own amusment and berated him for getting booze at a party she CLEARLY expected him to come to, but she’s ALMOST gone. Seriously after this she’s GONE for the volume and barely in the rest of the series. So i’d rather celebrate FINALLY having earned my freedom over worrying about her any more than i have to. Cue the music!

So with that Kyle.. or is it Ken. 

But the blonde one needles ramona, giving her her faviorite booze and telling her “this is all just temproary”

So Ramona gets all glowy.. and Kim gets her phone out....

The Universe Fights Back So in a random bedroom Ramona gives up the ghost: SHe DOES know what that is she just can’t tell Kim. Kim accepts it and they share some drinks. Scott, after beheading the douche bros latest science project, joins them and we get a lovely scene of the three drinking and bonding and geneuinely just having a good time. Though Kim DOES mention that she wants to go back to school.. This will naturally be very important. 

What’s more important is this scene is ENITRELY while I poly ship these three dum dums. I mean while part of thier hapiness here is their blasted out of hteir heads, it’s also just Kim’s wall sbeing down. She tells the two she loves them, and I think MEANS IT. Not to mention this...

Okay maybe it’s just the two of them but they also love Scott. And again I get htier VERY obviously drunk.. but given Kim and Ramona are clearly actively supressing any bi parts of themselves most of hte time this is telling. The fact Ramona asks kim to sleep in THIER bed, likely with them, is ALSO very telling and Kim only dosen’t because their using sub space. No really that’s the only reason this volume didn’t end VERY diffrently with the three of htem having a three way before the argument coming up.. and possibly fixing said argument by having kim to mediate. I mean I get Scott’s not a big part of this so if you don’t want to ship him with them and just leave them alone that’s fine, ut I like the idea of them as a throuple: they ballance each other out.. and frakly with Scott’s irresponsblity and Ramona’s emotoinal issues they need someone to call them b oth out in the relationship, while these two are two of the only three people in the work i’ve seen Kim take her walls down for. Not even Jason got that, but Jason was also a carboard cutout. 

Things take a turn from Kim.. from an almost threesome where she CLEARLY would be getting most of the attention... to two assholes kidnapping her. Now while I don’t like the twins that much their plan for the final act IS actually clever: their the first ones to think to actually use the people Scott cares about.. or anything resembling strategy really. Matt just charged int here, Lucas coudln’t give less of a fuck, Todd just used brute strength like a teletkentic juggernaught, and Roxy DID use some but it was less to actually fight scott and more to get into ramona’s pants again. The twins see Kim clearly still loves Scott, and that while he acts aloff to her sometimes she really is one of his best friends. No really, think about it. Wallace is his BEST friend.. but Kim sticks by him even when he’s shitty, calls him out when needed, and despite her grumpiness is the one who has the most faith in him out of ANYONE. It’s a large point of the volume: she dosen’t bother watching the fights.. because she belivies he’ll win simply because he’s Scott. That’s love right there. The kind of love that gets you kidnapped as part of an elaborate scheme but love nonetheless. 

So we then get the scene that’s been coming for five volumes... after having sex, Ramona confronts Scott. While Scott admits he didn’t cheat on her with knvies, the other way around, that’s not better. He admits he’s been trying to forget about it.. and she calls him a bad person. And that. .hits him hard. While he DESERVES scorn for what he did... as he puts it next he’s been trying to change for her. To BE better. And all she sees, and outright confirms is another evil ex in waiting with Scott DESPERATE to prove her wrong and wrongly thinking beating the next three exes will fix this. It’s a VERY hard sceen to watch as while Scott does deserve this.. it’s also hard not to feel bad for him too. It really sums up the character: He is a dick.. but he’s TRYING to be better. He WANTS to be, he just dosen’t know how. And MAN can I relate to that.  It dosen’t help that Ramona is clearly projecting her own insecurties about this lasting, about actually being happy and about this really being her life onto him, using this as an easy out after having a month of doubt. Yes Scott did something unbelivibely shitty.. but both are trying to take the easy way out of it instead of genuinely discussing why it’s shitty, what he did was wrong and geniuinely unpacking if this is the end. Ramona clearly wants to bail, and Scott clearly just wants to punch a few guys to make it better. Neither thing will work. They need to work thorugh their issues to work... but neither is capable of that right now. They both want to run from the problem. 

This volume is in part about Ramona herself.. and showcasing her OWN flaws.. and like Scott her biggest is that she runs. She wants to escape her past too and both assumed the other would be an easy fix, that by having a good partner they’d be better.. when really their both mildly shitty people who need to make peace with their past and repair the bridges they’ve burnt and flip off the ones not worht reparing instead of running from it all the time. But sadly before both can.. their just gonna run again. Because sometimes fixing yourself is just not that easy. 

So the next morning Scott’s heart stops fo ra second when Ramona is seemingly gone.. only for her to instead be in teh shower. But Scott gets a text telling him the twins have Kim and TRIES to tell Ramona.. but she’s in the shower. As a result she’s worried he just ran off... and makes a decision , her hair cut back down after growing it out this volume, a sign of her hapiness.. now gone. 

The Glow Part 2 So at an abandoned wherehouse the fight is on. The twins have the advantage in part because Scott is hung over.. something they take offense to.. even though they were THERE last night. He was at a party. They don’t know he teatotles. What state did they THINK he’d be in this morning?

We also find out their origin: as Scott correctly guessed at the end of last volume, Ramona dated them both at the same time and pit them against each other. They found out and vowed to always fight as one.. which means Scott is not only fighting two equally powerful opponents at once, but two who work as a perfct team and double hurricane kick him. They also mentally break him down, pointing out her previous job and how she’s a runner and she’s here to run from her past working for Gideon.

They aren’t but I already went into that so let’s get onto more pressing issues: Scott is not only hung over but now doubting himself and his dumbass plan to beat gideon and magically fix things, while Kim is naturally not happy about being stuck in a cage all night. And while at first she’s genuinely just grumpy as always as it becomes clear Scott has lost hope and the twins are going to win this one her expression is heartbreaking...

After EVERYTHING she still loves him and can’t bear to see him in so much pain... and can’t loose him.. so she gets desperate and claims Ramona texted him to give him hope. 

This is one of Kim’s definting moments, the other coming next month. When faced with the person she loves possibly dying.. she lies to him.. so he can surivive. So he can have hope and make it through this.. despite how much it’s CLEARLY KILLING HER to not only tell him someone else loves him but to clealry lie that person loves him, knowing it’ll hurt him more.. but knowing if she DOSEN’T he’ll die. It’s one of the most painful, heartbreaking and beautiful moments in the entire series. It’s why I said earlier while I don’t like the brothers their climactic fight his excellent.. because it is. Their verbal breaking down of Scott is hearbreaking and Kim’s sacrifice equally so. 

And before stomping them into coins SCott shows further growth.. by showing he CAN give off a good one liner now...

So Scott beats them and gets Kim out of the cage, worried about her.. but despite having a chance, Kim lets him get on his way to ramona and morsoely wlaks off... while ominously the sign points out this will soon be the Chaos Theater. There’s still one left to go. 

But.. it’s sadly not enough. While Scott gives her a heartfelt speech... even if he quotes the song as long as you love me... he dosen’t care who she is.. but Ramona does.. calling herself a bad person.. as she vanishes.... and I cry my eyes out again. God two really heartbreaking scenes in a row sweet jesus this volume will be the death of me.. and not just because i’ts taken so damn long to write this review. And on top of tha the looses the cat and ends up locked out. 

World of Ruin:

So yeah if you thought those bits weren’t easy.. it only gets roughter as we see Scott in the aftermath of the breakup. His dream world is now desolate and he’s alone. Now to his creidt as much shit as i’ve given him Stephen didn’t ENTIRELY abandon Scott: he put him up fo rth enight (though he kicks him out after work) and offers to take him to after work drinks. We also see a nice side of Scott’s intimdating boss as she offers her symaptheties at him crying... while he says it’s the onions... he’s transparenlty lying. 

Next up is Kim. Though she dosen’t have a couch because Hollie sold it.. which as dickish as she suddenly is it IS her couch as Kim points out.. so yeah Kim and Scott end up sleeping awkardly in the same bed facing away from each other.. and to add another emotional guttpunch at the worst possible time: She’s going back home. 

Stacey is even lesss helpful as SCott continues to ask about cats and is unsypantethic about her leaving despite you know,  him REALLY not being at the shit talking her stage yet bud. At least we do get to see Stacey in this one I genuinely forgot she was in it. 

So at Wallace’s he’s no help either pointing out she might be with someone else because he’s wallace and we meet a guy with Glases.. and in his bad state Scott assumes i’ts gideon. it’s not though. WE finally meet Mobile!

He’s exactly what wallace needs.. a fellow sarcastic asshole. 

So next up is Kim’s goodbye.. which once again is really emotinal..a nd not just because  my faviorite character is leaving and again, younger me didn’t know this wasn’t forever.. or that she’d be back for a rather huge role next time. But still it’s a damn good scene that shows how far Scott’s come...

While the first part is standard... the second is Scott realizing that she still had feelings for him, clearly given her actions during the fight, and he’d been a right dick this whole time never dealing with it or apolgoizing for his past. Granted he still has a way to go to REALLY apologize for it... but he’s trying and means it. And with her possibly never seeing again.. she needed that. Also her coat is damn cool. I’d say I want one like that btu i’d really prefer one like Scotts complete with x-men patch. Pax Krakoa bitches. 

We get a really nice scene after where we meet Scott’s parents! Their also really kind helping him get a new place and move on... and runs into another glasses guy. But this time it’s Laurence! Who he drop kicks.. and then gives a broken bass back to. Eh... i’ve seen worse relationship with siblings honestly. He didn’t murder scott’s friend or plunge a whole galaxy into war or try and murder his daughter. Other Scott’s weren’t so lucky. 

So after that awkardness SCott finds the note to gideon which is a break up letter... she never sent. However there’s something more pressing as he gets a call... and you can probably guess given his luck lately who that’s from. 

Eh it’s not that murderoius creep but another one. 

The end.. is in a few weeks.

Final Thoughts: 

As I said I hated Vs the Universe on first read but re-reading it with hindsight and maturity.. it’s damn good. It’s depressing as hell.. but the things it does need to happen to push scott into a bad enough place for the next volume to work, and are natural: Ramona and Kim leaving, The band  breaking up, Scott kicking his brother in the face.. all natural things. It hurts, this was a HARD one to write and I only feel the next one will be harder because it’s way longer with less slice of lifey stuff to skim through in my recapping. 

But it’s a damn good one, with fantastic art, really gripping scenes, x-men refrenes and a spotlight shone on my girl kim. Even it’s weak spots dont’ hurt it: the twins are only weak by comparison, and still work well enough for the story, pushing ramona into the bad mental place she needs to be for the story to work. Hollie’s thing DID Need to be written way fucking better... but it does push kim into leaving which is CRITICAL for next time. So they aren’t GREAT elements, but they work. The only real other problem I have is knives just.. vanishes after her scene outside of one bit with Stephen, but that I can understand as the book is pretty tightly packed and she gets a fitting sendoff next time anyway. All in all another amazing entry and the perfect warm up for one of the best endings in comics history

Next Time: I said it and I meant it: one of the best endings in comics history as Scott hits on some exes, fights himself and betters himself as he prepares for his finest hour! Will Ramona Come back? Will Kim? Will Julie?... to answer your questions yes yes, and god dammit. Thank you all for reading, see you at the next rainbow. 

[fictionplumis]

A Lambert/Aiden Thing

Okay, bear with me here, this might be long. And maybe at one point I'm gonna try to RP this but unfortunately there's no one on the Lambert/Aiden RP tags on the site I use. So I'm just gonna put this here for now. And if anyone wants to, oh I don't know, write a fic or whatever based on this, PLEASE link me 'cause I wanna read it but anyway. 

Set after the Wild Hunt, one of those rare AUs where Aiden genuinely did not survive.

While traveling together as super cool witchers, Geralt ends up telling Ciri all about helping Lambert get revenge for his Cat friend, right? 

Time passes, and Ciri starts trying to really solidify her control with her ability. Geralt ends up spending more and more time at Corvo Bianco and Ciri is out on the Path, but every so often a girl needs a break, y'know? So sometimes she'll disappear for a couple days, maybe a few weeks, just off in another world. It's a good way to practice. 

In one world, she ends up running into this man named Aiden. (This world being our world. Not a modern Continent thing, not some point in the future, I mean OUR world.) They talk, and he ends up mentioning his roommate Lambert, and the more he says about Lambert, the more it becomes obvious that it's LAMBERT. 

Now Ciri has absolutely no intention of doing anything about this. It's not her place, telling Lambert would be an AWFUL idea, and going to meet that world's version of her uncle just seems like a bad idea. But she is curious about what kind of man can inspire such a strong sense of friendship in Lambert, so she decides to pop into that world every so often, "accidentally" find Aiden, and just kind of get to know him a little bit. Plus it's another way to practice her abilities, not just pin-pointing and traveling to a specific world, but to where a specific person is. 

She does that on and off a few times, enough where her and Aiden are sort of acquaintances. 

Now in this world Aiden isn't a saint, okay? This boy pretty much grew up on the streets. He has a past that he's trying to get away from. He knows his way around a knife fight, has ample experience running from the cops, and has been through so much therapy. (I don’t get into detail here but any kind of modern Aiden I usually have some kind of neurotypical. Might be something as simple as ADHD, though I do love bipolar!Aiden and psychotic!Aiden as well. I’d imagine at this point he’s good at managing it, with the help of therapy and medication. Now the therapy wouldn’t be all that accessible with where this is going, but Ciri could help him make sure he has his medications. Hell, if wanted to have him keep things consistent with his therapy too, he could move down to appointments maybe once a month and Ciri could make sure he could get to them, the same way she helps attain other things later on in this snippet. I absolutely support positive and accurate depictions of mental illness, I’m not just using the terms bipolar or psychotic lightly.) And unfortunately his past ends up catching up with him. 

Ciri happens to get there just in time. Before Aiden can end up with a bullet in his eye, she's teleporting him to the first safe place that comes to her mind: Corvo Bianca.

Now poor Aiden has no fucking idea what happened. One second his old "friends" have him backed into a corner with a gun to his face and the next he's experiencing the worst motion sickness of his life and throwing up in a pot that smells like shit. He spends the next two days sleeping off some major jet lag and when he comes to, he had no fucking idea where he is. 

Then comes Geralt and Ciri having to awkwardly explain the whole witcher thing to him, the Continent in general, the time period, the fact that monsters and sorceresses and magic exists in this world, all that happy shit. And it's a lot to process. Before they can even get to the whole "do you want to go back to your world and handle the deal with people trying to kill you thing" Lambert shows up. 

At first Aiden doesn't even think, he's just like oh thank fuck a familiar face, I know you hate hugs but I think this can be forgiven because I've had the weirdest most stressful week of my life.

And then he's like, wait a second. Lambert is... Thicker. 

Like Lambert's always been a very physically active guy, he's a mechanic or whatever you want a modern day Lambert to do, but his shoulders weren't THAT broad before and under those spiky metal arm things are some impressive biceps. Also what are those spiky metal arm things? Lambert, what are you wearing? How the fuck did you get here? Holy shit your eyes--

He puts two and two together. Right, the name Geralt sounded familiar because Lambert's mentioned the name. That's his adopted brother. So if this Geralt is a witcher, then Lambert in this world is a witcher. And Lambert is also having a minor breakdown because, y'know, AIDEN. 

Let's just say Geralt warned him. Explained the whole situation and asked Lambert to come back to help with this, and Lambert was very torn because it's not HIS Aiden. It'll hurt too much, to see someone so much like Aiden but just slightly to the left. He knew it would. He just didn’t expect this Aiden to be SO MUCH like his Aiden. By this point Aiden has had to change his clothes into some of Geralt's trousers with a belt to hold them up and a loose tunic, but it's fucking him. 

They all talk a bit. Aiden pretty much admits that yeah, there are people after him. And they probably won't stop until he's dead. That's how gangs work, y'know? You can't really... Get out. He tried, he really fucking did, but even if it's not the ones that cornered him before, it'll be someone else. So yeah, Ciri saved his life and going back is probably not the best idea. 

Now I absolutely don't want to fuck over another world's Lambert just to make Continent!Lambert happy, so we're gonna say the two were really good friends. They were roommates, they were close, Lambert was pretty much Aiden's only friend, but they weren't lovers. Lambert was with a woman named Keira. A doctor. They were good for each other, y'know? When Lambert first started dating her, Aiden thought she was kind of a bitch but as time went on she kind of mellowed out. It wasn't that she became less full of herself, but more that she actually felt confident enough that she didn't feel the need to try to take on the world anymore. And Lambert's happy with her. So leaving Lambert behind in that world kind of sucks, yeah, but he'll be okay. And this Lambert is so similar that to Aiden, it doesn't feel like he's losing someone. 

Now we have Aiden getting to experience the Continent for the first time. Getting to experience witchers for the first time. 

Lambert. Sword fighting. 

And that's so fucking cool. Can you please teach me that?

Which of course has Lambert a little iffy, because this Aiden is human and no fucking away is he letting this Aiden anywhere near a monster, but Aiden is like, nah, relax, I just want to learn because sword fighting is really cool. Look, I'm really good with a knife, teach me some cool sword stuff. 

So Lambert gets to teach Aiden some cool sword stuff. And how to make bombs, which Aiden LOVES. And maybe some alchemy, too, because Aiden asks about the potions and Lambert is very adamant that he never drinks any but Aiden likes at least knowing how to make them. It's fascinating. You all fucking know you would love to make potions out of gross monster parts and herbs if you had the chance, don't even lie. Lambert even shows off some signs and Aiden is delighted. 

This eventually leads to one of those serious conversations about what it takes to become a witcher, and what all Lambert went through, and how people view witchers. And Aiden gets it, maybe not completely, but he gets the just of it. Because he knows about the other Lambert's past, and his shitty father, and all that stuff. And Aiden's brown, and people don't like that. And he's gay, and people don't like that either. Lambert's whole thing kind of reminds him of the X-men. 

And Lambert doesn't know what the fuck that is so Aiden explains comics and superheroes and the X-men to him. 

Because in his world they don't have witchers or magic, so they make up stories that have people like witchers, that have magic, and in those stories, those people sometimes face very similar prejudices. So to Aiden, Lambert is a lot like a superhero. 

And Lambert's like uh huh, no way, definitely not any kind of hero, that's pretty boy's job. 

To which Aiden responds, no, I definitely think you're a hero, even if you don't, so suck it up. 

And they probably kiss and stuff. 

Eventually Aiden gets restless and he's curious about the rest of the Continent, and he's tired of wearing Geralt's ill-fitting clothes because he's used to skinny jeans and shit so he gets Lambert to take him into Beauclaire for clothes. 

And Beauclaire is fucking beautiful, he loves it. 

The clothes are okay. Eventually he just asks Lambert what he used to wear and they go see the armorer instead. Aiden's not entirely sure about it, because Lambert looks like he's swallowed a mouthful of tacks when he sees Aiden in the Cat armor, even without the chest piece or the gauntlets, but Lambert assures him that he's fine. 

It just doesn't quite ease the restlessness. So the next time Ciri pops in, Aiden asks for her help and together they scheme. The next day, Aiden tells Lambert to go find something to entertain himself with for awhile because he needs to spend some quality time with his BFF. 

A few hours later they find Lambert sulking out in the vineyard, Aiden looking fine and fresh in a brand new pair of skinny jeans that show off his very nice ass, and some well-fitting combat boots that aren't nearly as durable as actual leather boots on the Continent but they have studs and buckles and look really cool.

Lambert is torn between thinking Aiden looks like a fucking idiot and thinking that he's never wanted to fuck Aiden more in his life.

Then Aiden drops the news that he also put together an outfit for Lambert because in his world, when you're interested in courting someone, the first thing you do is take them on a date. And he wants to take Lambert on the most stereotypical first date. What's that? Why the movies, of course! There's an X-men movie that just came out (I don't know which one, okay? I don't watch the X-men. You figure it out.) and he thought, maybe, he could show Lambert a little bit of the world he came from. They wouldn't be there for long, and they wouldn't be going to a theater anywhere near where Aiden's old gang would be. Nothing would be tied to Aiden's name, and he would be with Lambert, so he would be safe. 

It's a big change from the Continent. 

Lambert's never seen so many fucking people in his LIFE. Aiden had warned him about cars and technology and Lambert is pretty quick witted so while he's absolutely amazed, he manages to take it in stride pretty well. The thing that throws him off the most is when they go to buy popcorn and the girl at the counter goes, "Oh my god, I love your contacts! Where did you get them? They look so real!" 

Lambert doesn't know what the fuck contacts are, but Aiden steps in all smooth-like, "Fuck, Lamb, you've had those forever, haven't you? I think he got 'em off some cosplay site." 

Then he has to explain later that sometimes people put these little discs in their eye to help them see better or to change the color of their eyes for costume purposes. To which Lambert has the understandable reaction of, "Who in their right fucking mind would CHOOSE to do this to their fucking eyes?" 

Well, y'know, they can take contacts out whenever they want. It's a cosmetic thing. They don't know what you had to go through to get your eyes to look like that. You'll probably have some old conservative people eyeing you weird, thinking you're some Satanist or whatever, but most other people will just think it's a cool choice you made, to put those in to go to the movies.

The world is weird. Lambert can't decide if he likes it or hates it. 

He definitely likes the movie, though. And the popcorn. Probably finds the soda to be a little too sweet for his taste. There's still a lot of people, which makes him a bit on edge, but they came to the theater at an off time and not many people are actually in the room with them. They sit at the back and hold hands and Lambert decides he loves it. Ciri picks them up like a proud parent driving her kid and her kid's date home, only instead of driving she's teleporting and neither of them are her kids but whatever. 

But Aiden isn't done scheming. When they get back he tells Lambert to stay put and gets Ciri to take him back for one more little errand. 

A couple hours later they clang back into Corvo Bianco. CLANG back because each of them has a weird metal cart piled high with items and they're laughing their asses off. 

So you might be wondering, how did Ciri and Aiden afford clothes? They stole them. How did Aiden afford movie tickets and popcorn? He pick pocketed. Boy grew up on the streets. He knows how to steal wallets. And now they performed the greatest "run out the doors of Walmart with carts full of shit" EVER. Because as soon as they were out of sight, they teleported, no one the wiser. 

Aiden is thrilled with his non-purchases. Firstly, he has about a year's worth of toilet paper. he throws a package at Lambert, who's like, what the fuck is this. Toilet paper. What do you use it for? To wipe your ass after you shit, Lambert. Trust me. Once you use it, you'll never go back. It's a blessing, you'll thank me for it. There might not be indoor plumbing here, but god dammit, I want toilet paper.

He then hands Ciri two boxes of pads. Yeah, she was there shopping with him, but he just kind of dumped stuff in carts without explaining anything, and while Ciri knows what most of the things are, do you really think she's thought about how other worlds deal with menstruation? Because I menstruate, and the thought would genuinely not cross my mind. I would continue using whatever method I used back in my original world. So Aiden leans in to whisper what they are, because he's polite, and he becomes her favorite uncle just like that. And when Geralt and Lambert are like, uh, what? She tells them it's for menstruating and, "Oh, don't make that face at me, Geralt. I bleed, it happens."

Aiden admits that most of the other purchases are for Lambert, and when Lambert tires to protest Aiden makes it very clear that everything he bought is NORMAL in his world. Not even luxury, just NORMAL, so Lambert just needs to shut up and let Aiden make his life a little easier. 

First up, sunglasses. Because Lambert mentioned how painful it can be to take Cat and then step out into sunlight before the potion has run out. He tosses a pair at Lambert, who tries them on with a frown and is like, "Oh. Huh. Alright. These might actually be pretty useful." Aiden got himself a pair too. They match. There's also a tent. It folds up pretty small, but witchers travel, right? And Lambert mentioned how shit it is to camp in the rain, so here's a tent that’s better than the shit you can buy on the Continent. You lay out your bedroll in it, and you don't have to worry about bugs, and it helps protect you against the weather. It's small, but it looks kind of easy to put up, should be durable enough. 

And maybe just big enough for two, because Aiden isn't stupid. Eventually Lambert will need to take to the Path again, and Aiden wants to comes too. He wants to see the Continent. He can't help with the monsters, he knows, but maybe he can do something else to help them earn money. Who knows, right? This world isn't run by capitalism. He could make a living doing nearly anything. He can figure something out. 

He even got a water filter, and a couple filter replacements because witchers can probably drink any kind of stagnant water they want but he would rather not die of dysentery, thanks. And he got himself a sleeping bag. And he got Lambert a very, very soft fleece blanket just because he thought Lambert would like it. (He does.) Oh, also, Lambert, smell this soap. And this shampoo. Using a bar of soap has not done Aiden's hair any favors, he got actual fucking shampoo. The BIG bottle. And now Lambert has some nice pomade to use in his hair instead of bear fat. Won't make his hair greasy plus it smells better. Also there's bubble bath, just because. And beard oil for Lambert. Some moisturizer. Here, Lambert, put on some chap stick. Trust me, you'll love it. 

They set out on the Path and it's not always easy because Aiden worries CONSTANTLY. But Lambert is good at what he does. The few times they're ambushed, Lambert always keeps Aiden safe, because in this household everyone fucking survives. 

Aiden likes seeing Lambert in action. He swoons and calls Lambert his hero. 

There are some stunning places to visit on the Continent. Aiden's favorite are the elven ruins they sometimes come across. Only after Lambert deals with the wraiths, though. 

Aiden learns how to play Gwent. He's not that good at it. Aiden learns how to cheat at Gwent. He's VERY good at it. Lambert teaches him how to fish with bombs. Aiden is fucking delighted. 

Eventually he realizes how he can make money. He copywrites Disney. 

He's no bard. He can't sing or play an instrument. But he CAN tell stories, and no matter how much you hate Disney, there are probably a lot of Disney movies everyone can quote by heart, and they're either already time-period approved, or they can easily be adapted into something time period approved. Lambert comes back from a hunt to find the entire tavern listening to Aiden with rapt attention while he's in the front of the room putting on a one man performance of the whole, "I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die," while jumping back and forth to play each part. He's clearly having a blast with it, because who doesn't love telling other people every little detail about their favorite movie? 

As he's heading upstairs with Lambert, he just keeps raving about how he can't believe he actually made money with that. He hands Lambert a handful of coins, just like, "I don't know how much money this is, but look, it's money!"

Which probably leads to some conversation about capitalism and how easy it was in his world to feel insignificant, to feel like everything is pointless, and how much happier he is with Lambert. How it's even given him a new outlook on the world he came from. He doesn't want to go back, per se, but he doesn't want to completely leave either. He wants to show Lambert the best parts of it, to re-experience his world through Lambert, to really feel the amazement of it all the way he's supposed to, the way that's so easy to stop doing when you're actually living there. It's so easy to take it all for granted, but when you're showing it to someone who's experiencing it for the first time, you can really appreciate it all. 

So every winter they head back to Toussaint and Ciri takes them back long enough for them to do something FUN. They play laser tag. They rope Geralt, Eskel, and Ciri into doing an escape room with them. They go kayaking. They do one of those rope courses and zip-line things. They go to an amusement park. A water park. They walk around a nature trail. They go to a comic convention. (Lambert wears his armor and so many people want pictures with him. He's just sad Aiden wouldn't let him bring his swords, the kids would have fucking loved to see a sword.) They have so much fun. And Aiden stocks up on modern supplies for the year while he's there. Another year's worth of toilet paper, a new tent, another fuzzy blanket, a few pairs of sunglasses because Lambert always ends up breaking his, a nice backpack because Lambert really likes having a bunch of different pockets in his bag for organizing things.

And you know what? Give it ten years, Aiden's bordering on his forties, and he finds some way to make himself functionally immortal. Magic, fairies, a curse, a blessing, I don't know, I don't care. Their plan becomes to live until one of them dies of something--probably Lambert, because he's the one Aiden always has to patch up (he now always buys a very large, well stocked first-aid kit from his world too) what with fighting monsters and all, and the other will follow. It's morbid, sure, but it works for them. With the way things are going, neither of them thinks they'll need to do that anytime soon anyway.

Basically, they live happily ever after, okay? 

HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

[orangedodge]

@dannybagpipesarecalling​ replied to your text post:

I didn't realize those were Destiny's diaries either. If you would be so kind, can you explain how Emma knows? Unfortunately I haven't read enough comics to know this backstory.

I am glad you asked about this, because it gives me an excuse to post about it while hopefully not sounding like a conspiracy blog. I've been slightly obsessed with this idea since Emma first turned up in House of X, so I'm rather excited that “maybe Destiny's Diaries still exist” isn't just my weird crack canon any longer.

Emma was, in short, the last person who can be established to have control over the whereabouts of the diaries. And as one of the top five telepaths in the world, who has expressly defended that secret from the likes of Exodus and Mr. Sinister, she is capable of preventing Professor X from just taking the information from her. So barring new retcons, if Moira has the diaries now, they had to have been obtained directly from Emma.

That's not enough to say that she turned them over to Moira specifically. She could have given them to Charles or Er—okay, no, she wouldn't give them to Charles. There could be a circumstance where she'd trust them to Erik though. But in that contingency, I think there's enough context to support Emma knowing why they'd want them and for who. To be clear though, I would be less confident about making that assertion if Emma hadn't just opened the “Dr. Moira MacTaggert Memorial Public Hospital” expressly to freak out Charles and Erik, and if HoxPox hadn't already linked them by showing Moira to be worried about what Emma was up to.

(This got kind of long so I thought it'd be helpful to say the important part up front before spiraling down the continuity rabbit hole)

The origins and resulting chain of custody for Destiny's Diaries are as follows: One January, decades ago, Destiny began recording visions of the future in a series of diaries. Filling one book per month, she continued writing for thirteen months. This process was described as auto-writing, and Destiny herself did not have a complete memory of what she had written, nor did she understand the meaning of much of what she wrote.

Nonetheless, the July diary contained a recording of the events leading up to the defeat of Apocalypse, and another diary contained information on the life of Hope Summers, so they've been very relevant to the events of the modern era. It's not explicit yet that Krakoa's founding is also in the diaries, but because we know Destiny had at least one separate vision of Krakoa, and because Moira is interested in reading them, it seems fairly likely that whatever Moira, Charles, and Erik have been doing behind the scenes is also in there.

In the decades since Destiny authored them, most of these diaries were lost, except for five that Mystique kept hold of, and a sixth that Irene hid away herself. After Mystique killed 'Moira,' she sent her five diaries to Professor X, hoping that the temptation of using them would consume his life and lead him toward a ruinous fate. Destiny meanwhile had entrusted the sixth diary to Shadowcat (who Destiny met in 1936, while she was time traveling and having an affair with Moira's grandfather don't worry about it), who eventually became so freaked out by something she read in it that she vanished on a mission, let her friends believe her dead for weeks, and had herself deleted from Cerebro, while leaving the diary to Rogue for safekeeping while she was away.

(That last chain of events isn't incredibly important, I just think it becomes kind of lol in light of current canon)

Rogue went on to take that diary and the research that had been done on it to Storm. Storm and Rogue then formed a splinter team of X-Men, to journey the world searching for the lost diaries, believing Professor X could not be trusted. Along the way a seventh book turned up with a treasure hunter named Vargas (don't worry about him), and an eighth was found by Gateway and given to Rogue in a dream. Eventually Storm tried to get Phoenix to collect Professor X's diaries for her, but they discovered that they had already been stolen (Shadowcat did it).

The rest of the diary hunt isn't really important, just that Kitty eventually ended up retrieving the full set, before she rejoined the X-Men, which only happened after Xavier had left Scott and Emma to run the school. This timeline is important for establishing that Xavier has never possessed the full set of diaries himself, and was not involved in collecting the lost books at any point, nor was he present at the time the diaries were brought to the school and fell under Emma's protection. This rules out the possibility that the set of diaries we've previously seen were somehow forged by Xavier.

Xavier would not return to the school until after losing his mutant powers, whereupon he departed for space on an adventure to another galaxy. He was unavailable, therefore, to have undertaken any telepathic shenanigans, so what happens next actually happened, and is not a psychic illusion. While Xavier was gone, Mr. Sinister recruited Exodus and Mystique, and began a campaign of hunting down precognitive psychics, time travelers, and any other sources of information on the future. Scott, Emma, and Kitty meanwhile predicted that they were going to be next, and came up with a bananas plan to keep the books safe.

X-Men volume 2 no. 203 by Mike Carey (Writer), Humberto Ramos (Penciler), Carlos Cuevas (Inker), Studio F’s Edgar Delgado (Colorist), Virtual Calligraphy’s Cory Petit (Letterer), Will Panzo (Assistant Editor), Nick Lowe (Editor), Joe Quesada (Editor in Chief), Dan Buckley (Publisher)

First they hid the diaries somewhere in parts unknown. Emma then altered the minds of “all of us” (everyone who lived at the mansion at that time) to perceive a bunch of decoy books as the real thing. She then erased Kitty's memory, and her own, so that no telepath would be able to extract the information by force, before they gave each other a series of post-hypnotic triggers so they could restore one another's memories if they ever needed the books again. When eventually Exodus attacked the school looking for the books, they restored their memories, and decided to send another team to the hidden location where they'd buried a mystery box. Emma gave this location to Sam and Bobby, who dug up the box, which was never opened, and which was destroyed by Gambit during a firefight with Sinister's forces before anyone could confirm its contents.

This was intended by author Mike Carey to be the end of Destiny's Diaries, a dropped plot from a previous creative run, that was vaguely useful at building up to the Messiah Complex crossover, but was a lot more trouble than it was worth to an author who was writing about the X-Men trying to avert a bad future. But there's a lot of room in the story he wrote for the diaries to have survived after all.

I think it's actually really suspicious that the box was accessible to Bobby and Sam at all. Why not drop it under a mountain? Why not bury it under the ocean? Why not keep it phased in a tree? And it's a big red box with a big red 'X' on it. I know the X-Men love their branding and all, but that's going pretty far.

No one actually opens the box before Gambit blows it up either. It could have contained more decoys, or nothing at all. 

And when talking among themselves, Emma and Kitty never actually say that they're sending the X-Men to retrieve the diaries. They say that they know where the diaries are, and then send the X-Men to a place where they've buried something. The intent of the author is clear, but there's room in the dialogue for a later writer to decide that this just was another plan to keep the books hidden.

So for the entire period of time between assembling the complete collection of thirteen diaries, and their seeming destruction, they are never unaccounted for. Only Emma and Kitty knew the full extent of what they did to hide them, and where they were hidden. If fakes were destroyed instead of the real thing, no one would have known.

We could just be in retcon territory, but I don't think so, because it's fine on its own without any direct changes to canon. And really, faking the destruction of the books to cover up their real location makes a lot more sense than believing Emma Frost actually sent Sam to retrieve the incredibly suspicious looking red box that contained the most important object in the world, while half the super villains on the planet were chasing him.

Believing the diaries weren't really destroyed just requires the reader to accept that Emma would lie to the other X-Men, and keep lying to them for years, and that she'd be willing to put Sam and Bobby's lives at risk to protect that lie. Which she was already doing in that story anyway. She was already lying to everyone when she changed everyone's memories. And she—and Scott and Kitty—was already fine with risking everyone's lives when setting up a decoy trap in a school. So that's why I think this works better as a continuation of the existing, known, story of the diaries, and not a direct retcon to what happened.

In conclusion I think Emma knows about Moira because Moira got the diaries from somewhere, and Emma is the person she could have gotten them from. Nothing proves a direct hand-off in, like, a formal standard of proof or anything, but Emma having access to the diaries for so long, and having been wrapped up in this whole weird plot thread—which involves Moira and most of the Quiet Council—is enough to imply the connection in a story sense.

(ETA - For completion’s sake, there is also a weird story I didn’t go into called Chaos War that was published in 2011 where Moira is resurrected and finds a book in the ruins of the Xavier School that may or may not be one of the diaries, and touching it causes her soul to merge with Destiny’s, who then possesses her and guides her through a quest to destroy an evil god. This was an odd story to place in continuity at the time, and has only gotten stranger, given  1. that couldn’t be the real Moira, 2. Destiny is not merged with her soul. If this is in continuity (it’s been suggested that Moira’s golem was the character in this event), and all of the characters are who they say they are, and if the book in question was actually one of the thirteen diaries (and not some other book that Irene also wrote), then it requires Emma to have deliberately left one of the thirteen books behind for “Moira” to find, which if anything only adds to the likelihood that she knows what’s up)

[vohalika]

The Clitical Discordening

So by basically shitposting vaguely into the wind, I got involved with… something. Oh boy.

What the hell is going on?

Two days ago, a blog called “defenderofcrqueers” run by an 18 year old acequeer French girl called Sofia, calling herself tired of predatory lesbians, started a series of call out posts on a BeauYasha Discord Server which, from what I have been able to gather, is actually called Clitical Hole

The blog and the posts have been deleted

The first post was reblogged 40 times by the person who made it. 40 times. I counted.

In the posts, Sofia made serious accusations of transpbobia, biphobia, and aphobia, which some of the screenshots provided corroborated

There was also a section labelled xenophobia, which contained someone saying “fuck the French”

Put a pin in that

In between that were also “general violent behavior” or “objectifying the cast/each other” and liberate usage of trigger warnings, most memorable being “tw: lesbians”

Those posts very clearly already read as people shooting the shit with each other, making fun of being called predatory lesbians, talking about their personal relationships in sometimes maybe bad phrasing or poor taste, but that’s, you know, a matter of taste

The ratio between benign stuff and serious accusations was roughly 50:50, balanced enough for it to not be clearly discernable whether it was serious or not

Again, the blog itself reblogged this 40. Times. It got maybe 100 notes total.

I found this because a friend linked it in our 4 people discord after she got it from the mod of another discord

This led me to make two posts; one just vaguely making fun of how badly you can fuck up a call out post, and another explaining to an anon what had happened.

I stand by all of the points made in there, under the assumption that this was someone trying to do what has recently been done to a Fjorester discord server and failing miserably, while the members of the server largely treated it as a joke

Parts 2 and 3 were published, too, not reblogged 40 times. They contained more of the same, with some of the usual ace discourse you see all over tumblr in it

You know, claims that aces want to be oppressed to badly, acehets aren’t lgbtq, just the usual stuff you see everywhere which made it look pretty genuine.

Members of the server in question largely considered this a joke and trolled the author of the posts on the blog.

There were hints of a 4th post coming, including racism and antisemitism. You know, things a tad bit more serious than a bunch of lesbians being horny towards each other.

After sleeping on it for another day, I made a third post. Again, everything is now deleted, but keep in mind there were serious accusations and some pretty disgusting things in the screenshots.

This post was updated after the “saviorofcrqueers” blog and everything on it was deleted

Now I’ll have you know that my 3 posts on the subject had maybe 30 notes between them, largely by the same people. That’s fewer times than the blog self-reblogged the first post!

And yet somehow my posts were screenshotted and posted by the server in question, leading to of its members to contact me to clear the air

I will stress that these members have been nothing but polite to me

After talking things over with them and asking a few choice questions I’ll get into later, a new blog, “notallwhatitseems”, which is still up at the time of writing this, reblogged my most current post, owning up to all of this having been a prank to get back at the server for insulting her home country of France

So everything about that server is fake?

Well. Mostly?

For the record, I am not a member, have never been a member, and have no interest in ever being a member. It is not my ship and the general tone is not my vibe. In fact, they are very much against my ship, out of everything the fake call out included the 52 pages of BeauJester hate are probably the least manipulated and the most real, and you know what? That’s their prerogative. As I said in my first post, back in my days, people would raid tags with hate and then get raided back. Making your own community to hate on rival ships to your community is progress here. Godspeed.

(Ship hate, of course, rarely exists in a vacuum and can feature other shit, blah. I’m talking about it in isolation here. This is seriously not the most pressing issue by a long shot.)

The general tone of what I’ve seen from the server, even when it was kinda funny sometimes, is also just, plain and simple, not my cup of tea. Very frequently in what I consider to be poor taste. And that is fine, too. I’m not here to police how anyone talks to their friends in a private space outside of, you know, actual bigotry. To quote one of the people who got in contact with me:

So the two members who got into contact with me after seeing my post on the server. Source S is more of an outsider looking in, source Y is, from what I can tell, very much involved with this and was featured in some of the screenshots.

They both, independently of each other, confirmed to me that the transphobia and biphobia weren’t real, either manipulated or taken out of context, and that there’s actually a lot of trans people on the server. They also both reported that no one knew what the alleged racism and antisemitism would have been; probably members of color or Jewish members making fun of themselves.

So. Is that legit? I’m inclined to say sure. Three people confirmed this. Until anyone else comes forward, this is as far as it goes.

Except for the aphobia.

Source S told me unprovoked that there is indeed very standard aphobia going on in that server. I asked source Y about it, here’s what she said:

However, I would be amiss not to mention that the only person in this situation who identifies as asexual has said the following:

And, like. It is probably not my place to speak over what an actual ace person thinks about this, is it?

Wait, is that?

It sure is! I figured if I was already talking to primary sources here, I could as well talk to the primary primary source. Which I will now post unabridged.

At time of writing, there has been no response to that. And that conveniently also answers the probably most pressing question:

Why are you even posting this?

Or, in the words of an anon I received this morning in Germany and also France:

Anon, I’m not gonna delete shit.

Why? Because I think this is kinda important.

As you can see in the conversation up there, it really, really rubs me the wrong way when you abuse call out posts as a prank. Like, yeah, I am aware the whole concept has been meme’d to death on tumblr anyway and really bad call out posts have a long tradition. However, you kinda gotta put this into context, don’t you?

We’ve had a discord server called out for saying vile shit in this fandom before. First of all, the willingness to even hint at (and then reblog yourself for 40 times) another discord server being similar kinds of bad, toxic, and possibly harmful is pretty callous. Like, yeah, the post got no reach and I have even less, but throwing a community you apparently care about under the bus like that is, you know, not a very nice and actually kinda callous thing to do.

And second, fake accusations of bigotry hurt everyone affected by that bigotry. Yes, even in tumblr call out post format. The comical overuse of trigger warnings, a concept that is wildly mocked and misunderstood in the first place, is already in very poor taste. Manipulating content to believably depict pretty violent transphobia? Crosses a few lines.

Like, if you’re gonna do it for a joke, stick to posting the things that made members of the server celebrate themselves in the comments as “the funniest bitches on the internet”. And maybe don’t reblog it yourself 40 times, that shows a certain kind of conviction, doesn’t it?

I’m not gonna comment any further on the motivation behind this; as I said, my brain does not compute patriotism and I find it equally likely that “Sofia” is fucking with me, as she was with everyone else. I entertained the thought of this post being fake kinda from the beginning because the identities so perfectly fit several things being called out; xenophobia against the French at the forefront, of course.

Like, the only thing that made me believe in this being a genuine but misguided attempt at a legitimate call-out was the apparently manipulated content out of context and the fact that the OP apparently believed in their own post enough to reblog it 40 times.

So what my issue is here comes down to a crying wolf kind of thing: A fear that this goes down as a great prank, and the next time someone comes forward about fucked up things going on in a fandom space, everyone has gotta wonder if the tw: lesbians insulted France again. Something that by my estimation happens about five times an hour on the internet anyway.

Everyone, call out responsibly.

  (Yes I know I am basically contributing to how this incident will be remembered here. But at least it’s, you know, full of a whole lot of context.)

(Also, Sofia has used two throwaways, so at least that’s something she’s smart about. It’s why I don’t feel too bad about not censoring her name here. I expect the “notwhatitlookslike” blog to be gone by morning. Well, maybe afternoon, it is a little late in both Germany and France.)

[imagines-for-the-fangirls-soul]

Return to Me - Chapter Two

Chapter Two: Let Them Try

A/N: Thank you all for the love from chapter one! I’m so glad you’re all liking it. Here’s chapter two! The mission that Leia sent Poe on at the end of the last chapter is the one she sent him on in the Poe Dameron comic (which, god, you should all read) to find Lor San Tekka. Now we’re at the start of The Force Awakens. If you have any questions, let me know! Also, if you want to be tagged, or I missed you somehow, let me know!

Pairing: Poe Dameron x Reader Word Count: 4,784 Synopsis: After securing the map to Luke Skywalker from Lor San Tekka, Poe is captured by the First Order and tortured for what he knows. Meanwhile, the reader tries to find her place between the Resistance and the world of politics as she returns home to ask for aid to the Resistance.

Tag List: @xeniarocks​, @too-many-baes​, @araceli91103​, @holybatflapexpert​, @themihala​, @idocarealot, @treblebeth​, @treestarrrrrrrr​, @thescarletknight2014​, @charlottie2998​, @ibikus​, @mellow-f1​, @mrsdaamneron​, @trustme3-13​ (Some links didn’t work, if this is you, make sure that your settings allow for you to be tagged by people who don’t follow you, so you can still get the tag.)

Previous Chapter - Next Chapter

“I had no idea we had the best pilot in the Resistance on board,” Kylo Ren said, stepping into the torture chamber Poe was now being held in.

“It has been a few years, but I haven’t aged that horribly,” Poe said, tasting blood from his pooling lip. Ren paced behind him, standing where Poe couldn’t see. “Have you had some work done? It’s alright, you never were that good looking, so a few plastic corrections—" Poe groaned as his metal restraints tightened.

“Comfortable?”

“Not really.”

“I’m impressed with you, Commander. No one has been able to get out of you what you have done with the map.”

“Might want to rethink your technique.” Ren appeared in front of him again, his facial expressions still impossible to read behind the mask, but Poe could sense his anger. He silently raised his hand in front of Poe’s face, and before Poe knew what was happening, Ren began to open his mind. Poe started to struggle, his head smacking into the back of the hard metal chair he was confined to. He was looking for the memory of what he did to the map, but somewhere in his subconscious, Ren took a turn into more personal matters.

Flashes of you began to appear. Sitting together under a tree a few hundred yards from the old base. Climbing up to his X-Wing to give him a kiss. Swimming in the lakes surrounding Naboo. Laying together in bed.

Poe jerked out of his control, breathing heavy. He looked up weakly at Ren. What must have been a laugh registered from his mask, making Poe feel sicker.

“What nice memories.”

“You’re a pathetic waste of life,” Poe spat, lifting his head up to face Kylo Ren just as he Force pushed Poe’s head back against the metal headrest.

“How do you think Y/N would feel knowing that you are giving away all of the deepest, most intimate details of your relationship?”

“I don’t know.” Poe strained as Ren started invading his mind again. “But I bet she still likes me better than you.”

“When I’m done, you won’t have reason to laugh anymore,” he said, opening Poe’s mind again.

“Where is the map?” he asked as Poe’s face began to redden, the pressure of trying to fight him off becoming too much.

“The Resistance will not be intimidated by you.”

Ren put his full effort into his trick, extracting a scream from the pilot as he searched for his needed information.

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After your trip to the Resistance base, returning home felt like returning to a prison cell. You had only been gone for little more than a day, but short lived freedom was still freedom. You arrived back to Naboo early in the day, and all you wanted to do was crawl in bed, but, as always, you had a full schedule.

“Y/N, please keep your head up,” Loré pleaded for the fourth time.

“Sorry,” you said, straightening yourself in your seat, “I’m just tired.”

“Do you want another cup of tea?” Sondé asked.

“No, I’ll be fine.” You looked into the mirror as Loré tied your hair up in an intricate ponytail and fought off the emotions that were threatening to destroy everything you had built up the last two years. The more time you spent away from the Resistance, the further you felt from who you were back then, and you were starting to wonder if you could ever truly get her back.

“Nové, you’re going down to the military base with Zaisa today, right?” you asked.

“Yes, my lady,” she said, glancing at you with worried eyes, sensing your stress.

“And you’re going to make sure—"

“I know my mission,” she said, nodding. Nové was going down to Naboo’s military base with Captain Zaisa in order to scope out any new recruits who would be a good fit for the Resistance. Nové’s commlink buzzed, and she sighed with a frustrated smile. “The Council is ready.”

“Okay,” you said, looking back at her for an understanding to her frustration.

“Along with Count Lin Ral who just got in from Serenno,” she said. You looked back into the mirror and steeled your demeanor.

“I’ll be right along. Loré, will you go announce my presence? I just need to put my earrings on, and I’ll be right down.”

“Of course, my lady.”

Everyone exited, with Nové bringing up the tail. She gave you a parting look, one last look of encouragement. You clipped on the gigantic earrings to compliment your dress and readied yourself for your council meeting. Although you had already transferred personal credits over to the Resistance, there was still a lot more you wanted to do, which could only be made possible with funds and supplies granted by Naboo’s council. Given that the Resistance wasn’t technically in existence, though, this was going to be a difficult task.

As you stepped into the Grand Council Room, everyone stood. The Royal Advisory Council consisted of five people: headed by Lord Sarsa Broden, with members, Lala Jrul, Rickan Gilkpasc, Sarin Sutaton, and the Gungan representative, Jobee Qod.

Occasionally, your father would sit in on these meetings as he was well versed in all things Naboo politics. Thankfully, though, he was off visiting your mother on Hosnian Prime. If he got wind that you were hoping to aid the Resistance, choosing a definitive side in the cold war between the Resistance and the First Order, when the Senate specifically forbade it, he would personally ask for your dethronement.

“Your Highness,” Broden said, taking your hands in his. “Naboo is once again blessed with your presence.”

“Thank you, Lord Broden,” you said, taking your seat.

“How went your trip to Bith, Your Highness?” Lala Jrul asked with a kind smile.

“Wonderfully well. We have worked out a trades deal that shall be beneficial to both of our planets.” You took a pause, looking at the rest of your council, trying to sense their reaction before they gave it. “My discussion with Bith gave me another idea as well,” you said carefully.

“An idea?” Jobee Qod asked.

“It has been a long time since the building of our Ion Pulse, since any real threat was attempted to our way of life. We have been lucky, but we are not the only ones in the galaxy. Our trades deal with Bith has given me the idea to draft new legislation.” Sondé stepped forward with your plans and projected them on the Holo table. “With our shared commitment to helping others, I have come up with a plan where we can share resources with endangered people and places all over the galaxy. This program would be run by a group of advisors who would decide what issues most need our help and choose the necessary supplies. We’ll make sure to get students and other bright minds from around Naboo to join the program, creating a group of young leaders ready to make a change.”

“Who would you suggest lead this program?” Broden asked after a moment’s thought.

“I don’t have an initial pick right now, but there are a handful of people I would trust as interim until one can be appointed by our council.”

“What about when we need help?” Rickan Gilkpasc asked.

“Of course, the Naboo are our first and most important priority, but with each and every act, we’d be gaining allies who would help us out if we run into trouble. If we ran into a course of action where we needed to step back, then our advisors would decide to do so.”

“Meesa thinks issa splendid idea,” Jobee said.

“Thank you, Councilor.”

“I second that,” Lala added.

“I agree,” Broden said, smiling at you. With his vote, your program would go into action, and you could help the Resistance.

“Thank you for your confidence, and I hope to earn the rest of yours as well once the time comes,” you said, looking to the other council members who looked less ecstatic about your proposed plan.

“You always do eventually,” Sarin said with a smile.

Each of the councilors had their own proposals to discuss, so your meeting lasted for another two hours. Once finished, you were the first to stand and leave. You went out a side exit and waited for everyone else to leave so you could have a word with Broden.

“Your Highness?” a voice asked, making you jump. You slowly stepped away from the pillar you were hiding behind and found Lin Ral standing in front of you. He bowed, making you reluctantly laugh.

“You’ve found me,” you said.

“What is a queen doing hiding in her own palace?”

“Palaces were made for hiding.”

“Is that so?” he asked as he extended his arm to you. With a nod of your head, you took it and allowed him to lead you away from the council chambers.

“When did you arrive?” you asked.

“This morning. A few hours after you did.”

“Yes, the people of Bith kept me for the night,” you said, lying easily. “How are things in Serenno?”

“Wonderful. I wish you would come see it for yourself.”

“Perhaps someday soon,” you said, making him sigh. “What are you doing back?”

“My family sent me to see if we couldn’t tie up the last few strings of our arrangement.”

“Are you here to ask me to marry you?” you asked, looking up at him.

“I am.” You stopped in the middle of the hallway, looking into his eyes to catch a trace of a lie. “But judging by your face, now wouldn’t be a great time.”

“No, I’m sorry, it wouldn’t. I’ve just proposed a lot of new legislation, I have many trips planned in the coming months, this isn’t the time for an engagement.”

“But if it were . . ."

“If you’re asking for an answer, I don’t have one for you. I’m sorry,” you said, unraveling your arm from his.

“Did you meet someone more charming?” he asked. You laughed and shook your head, continuing your walk down the hallway.

“No. I just . . ."

“Can’t marry someone you don’t love,” he finished. You looked back at him, smiling sadly as you carefully nodded. “I didn’t think I could either, but when duty calls—"

“Please, spare me. I’ve heard this from my parents a million times. I have a duty to my people still. I just started campaigning for my next term, if re-elected I will have two more years as queen.”

“Do you want me to wait that long?”

“I can’t tell you to do that.” He nodded and folded his hands behind his back, steeling his demeanor like you had done many times before.

“You’re a very hard person to crack, Your Highness.”

“Years of practice,” you said with a smirk. He bowed his head softly.

“Well, I’ve kept you from your secret rendezvous long enough.”

“Oh, I—"

“There you are, my lady,” Broden said, coming up the hall. Lin smiled at you once more before turning around. “I thought you wished to speak. Did I interrupt?” he asked, glancing down the hall.

“No,” you said, shaking your head to compose yourself. You turned your eyes from the hall and looked up at Broden. “You don’t think they—”

“Suspect anything? Of course not. And why should they? You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re trying to help the right people.”

“The people I think are right.”

“They are. And so are you. You shouldn’t doubt yourself.”

“I try not to,” you said, breathing in.

“Maybe if you delivered the news in person it would put a breath of fresh air in you,” Broden said simply. You looked into his eyes, a smile spreading across your face slowly.

“What?”

“I know you were just there, but I think it’d do you some good to go back to the Resistance base. Perhaps for longer than a night. Sondé can step in for another day or two, but that’s the longest you can stay away. And no more secret missions for quite some time.”

“Absolutely,” you said, quickly hugging him. “Thank you.”

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“Fuck,” Poe groaned, coming to in the torture chamber.

Kylo Ren had collected the information he needed, and once he was done, he pushed Poe’s head one last time against the metal headrest, knocking him out cold. Poe pulled on his restraints, knowing that he needed to warn the Resistance. Ren knew that the map to Luke Skywalker was in BB-8, which meant that everything he had fought for during the last few years was now in jeopardy.

The restraints weren’t budging, and the longer he sat there, the more his mind began to wander. The images that Kylo Ren had managed to salvage from his mind were playing over and over in his mind. He felt like he had betrayed you, showing all of your most intimate moments to that monster.

The doors slid open, taking him from his memories. Poe opened his eyes, unaware he had even shut them, to see another Stormtrooper walk into the room.

“Ren wants the prisoner,” the newcomer instructed. The guard watching over Poe nodded and released him from his restraints. Expecting that he was about to be led to his execution, Poe looked at his guide less than enthusiastically. The new Stormtrooper ripped him down from his shackles, only to handcuff him again

“Come on,” he said, pulling Poe into the hall. He marched him up and down corridors, so much so that Poe couldn’t have found his way back to his cell even if he wanted to. One more twist around a corner and the Stormtrooper commanded him to turn into an abandoned closet.

“Listen carefully. You do exactly as I say, I can get you out of here,” the Stormtrooper said quickly.

“Wh— what?” Poe asked. His mind was still reeling from Ren’s torture, but he thought he just heard the Stormtrooper say that he could help him escape. The Stormtrooper took off his helmet and Poe took him in for a moment.

“This is a rescue. I’m helping you escape. Can you fly a TIE fighter?” he asked.

“Are you with the Resistance?” Poe asked.

“What? No, no, no, I’m breaking you out. Can you fly a TIE fighter?” he asked again.

“I can fly anything,” Poe said confidently. “Why— why are you helping me?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do.” Poe fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“You need a pilot.”

“I need a pilot,” the other man conceded. Poe looked into his eyes, seeing that he was genuine and beamed.

“We’re gonna do this.”

“Yeah?”

They got back into position, the Stormtrooper with his helmet back on, Poe reshackled in his handcuffs. He marched Poe through the halls until reaching the hangar. Stormtroopers were everywhere, but the thought of getting BB-8 back and away from the First Order kept him smooth and steady. His accomplice, however, was anything but relaxed.

“Okay, stay calm, stay calm,” he muttered, glancing around.

“I am calm.”

“I was talking to myself,” the man said. Poe reminded himself that he needed to escape, no matter who with. He readied himself, and at the Stormtrooper’s command, turned to the left and boarded one of the TIE fighters lining the wall.

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You returned to the Resistance base with less decorum than the first time. Sondé was masquerading as you back on Naboo, which meant that you weren’t actually here. You sent Leia a transmission that you were coming, and she met you in the back of the base. There wasn’t a large welcoming committee waiting for you on the base, which was a relief. For the first time in a long time, you weren’t Queen Bhavisama, you were just Y/N.

“Y/N,” Leia said with a smile, taking your hands in hers. She took you in for a moment, your blue dress, and your hair in natural curls down your back.

“Thank you for having me back on such short notice.”

“You don’t need to thank me, this was your home once, too. We’re always glad to have you back. And you’ve come bringing good news, I hope?”

“Yes. The Naboo Royal Advisory Council approved my legislation, which means, through some handiwork of Broden’s, we can transfer credits to the Resistance without anyone taking notice.”

“I don’t know how you managed to pull that off, but all I can say is I’m glad you’re on our side,” Leia said. Smiling, you followed her into the base just as the dark clouds that had threatened to rain all day made good on their promise. You rung out some of the water from your dress and when you looked up, Leia was smiling at you.

“What?”

“It’s just really good to see you. You know, acting like yourself.”

“Well,” you hummed, “I still don’t feel much like myself. It’s been so long since I’ve been anywhere without a trail of people following behind me. I still feel so strange being back here,” you said with a sigh.

“I might have a way to fix that,” Leia said, opening the door to the main, bustling hallway of the base. You looked around the room and saw a group of orange jumpsuits gathered around a Holo table.

“Leia, I’m not sure I’m ready to—”

“Poe’s off on a mission right now,” she said, smiling back at you. “But I thought it would be good for you to see how your donation will be used in our fight.” She led you over to the table and each of the members of Black Squadron looked at her with admiration, and you with anything but.

“General,” Snap said, nodding his head. “Your H—”

“Uh, just Y/N, Snap,” you said with a smile. “Bhavisama is back on Naboo.” He nodded his understanding and even granted you a small smile.

“What brings you here, Y/N?” he asked.

“She comes bearing gifts,” Leia explained.

“My Royal Advisory Council has approved my program to give aid to lifeforms all around the galaxy. Our first donation will be to help the Resistance.”

“That’s wonderful,” Suralinda said. “Thank you.”

“You’re really welcome.”

“We’re supposed to have a strategy meeting about upcoming missions, why don’t you stick around and hear how your contribution will be put to use,” Leia offered.

“Oh, I shouldn’t.”

“I insist,” Leia said, motioning for you to take a seat.

Her debriefing only lasted for a few minutes. She explained to the group vague, but powerful plans for what to do when the credits and supplies started coming in. She spoke about which planets they would start on, where their strongest enemies were, and everything in between until there was nothing else to cover, except one thing.

“Of course,” Leia said, “This all relies on what information Poe is able to gather on his mission.”

“Are you going to tell us where you sent him, yet?” Karé asked. “Or when he’ll be back?”

“No need.” You all turned your head at the sound to see Commander D’Acy walk into the room. “Commander Dameron just returned,” she said. There was a clear look of worry on her face.

“Is he alright?” Suralinda asked, quickly standing. “Can we see him?”

“Of course. He’s in the Medical Wing.” The rest hung around for the rest of the story, but Suralinda took off immediately. As you watched her leave, you felt a twinge of jealousy.

“What happened?” Leia asked.

“He’s fine. Ran into The First Order,” D’Acy replied.

“Did he find the map to Luke?” Leia asked.

“Map to Luke?” you asked in shock. She seemed to remember that you were still here for the first time and immediately stood.

“Y/N, would you excuse us?” she asked, coming over to your side and pulling you up out of your chair.

“What? No. Why? I thought I was supposed to see how my donation was going to help—”

“Yes, but this information is confidential.”

“Are you kidding me? If Poe found information on—”

“Y/N, please understand, now is not the time,” Leia said firmly. You breathed out of your nose, hoping to calm your anger before it boiled over. It felt like you had just been scolded by one of your parents, in front of all of your old friends. You scoffed and looked to them for any needed assistance. They all averted their eyes, frowning sheepishly.

“Fine,” you said, “Let me know when you’d like more than just my money.”

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

Leia sat down again after you had stormed out and explained to Black Squadron the mission on which she had sent Poe. They all agreed that with the severity of Poe’s mission, it was best to be careful about who knew what until they could secure the map to Luke.

All eager to see Poe, they went down to the Medical Wing together. As they walked in, they saw Suralinda’s hand wrapped around Poe’s bandaged bicep, smiling at him. He had a few bandages on the rest of his body and lots of cuts on his face and hands, but he had definitely looked worse. When he saw the rest of his friends, he sat forward and beckoned them forward.

“How are you feeling?” Snap asked, touching his shoulder.

“I’ve been worse. Glad to see you’re all worried about me, though.”

“Worried about you?” Snap asked with a grin, “Never.”

“Yeah, we were actually all hoping that Snap would get your job,” Karé said with a smile, wrapping her hands around her husband’s shoulder.

“Well, I’m not gone yet.”

“Not for a long time,” Snap said, taking his hand in a firm grip.

Poe smiled along with his friends until his eyes found Leia’s. For a moment he forgot the monumental fuck-up he had created by losing the map to Luke. He cleared his throat to keep from laughing at something Jessika said and looked at her seriously.

“I’m sorry, General, I don’t have the map to Luke.”

“Lor San Tekka didn’t have it?”

“No, he did, but I stowed the map inside of BB-8 before the First Order captured me.” They all looked anywhere from mildly surprised to downright outraged that he had been taken by the First Order.

“Alright, so let’s go get BB-8,” Jessika said. “Is he still down on Jakku?”

“I don’t know,” Poe said with a sigh. Leia looked at him curiously, sensing that there was something he was hiding. “When the First Order captured me, Kylo Ren took it upon himself to get the map’s location out of me. I wasn’t able to resist him. He used some kind of mind trick—”

“Did the First Order get to the map already?” Leia asked, cutting him off.

“I don’t know. BB-8 wasn’t on Jakku when we crash-landed.”

“Who’s we?” Suralinda asked.

Poe filled them in on his new friend, Finn. He explained what happened when they landed on Jakku, his rescue by Naka Iit and how he got back to base; the entire time, reading Leia’s face to gauge just how disappointed in him she was.

“Well, we must find BB-8 before the First Order does,” Leia said, standing, “Javos, reach out to your contacts in the Outer Rim and have Threepio do so as well. Black Squadron, suit up. Once we have confirmation of BB-8’s location, we’ll need an immediate rescue mission.”

“Yes, General,” they chorused, making their way towards the door. Poe began to sit up, hoping to join them, as Leia put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down.

“Not you,” she said firmly.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not well, Poe.”

“I’m fine. Quick shower and I’ll be ready to go,” he said, once again trying to get out of bed.

“He was in your mind, Poe. It’s not something you can immediately snap back from.” He thought back to the memories that Ren had extracted from his mind, trying to piece them back together. Leia frowned at him, touching his arm softly.

“I have to do this,” he said softly, looking up at her with wide eyes.

“Why?”

“Because I’m the one who lost the map.” It was difficult for him to admit defeat, especially to his mentor. “He broke me, Leia.”

“Even the strongest person would succumb to his powers.”

“Yeah, not me. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me.”

“You’re not invincible, Poe. No matter what you try to convince yourself. It’s okay to be compromised,” she said. He dropped his head with a sigh. “We can get the map back.”

“I know.”

“Then what’s bothering you?” she asked.

“He didn’t just look for the secrets to the map,” he admitted.

“Y/N?” she asked, already expecting his answer.

“Yeah. He decided to take a detour through our personal memories just to fuck with my mind.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Poe shook his head, looking across the room at nothing in particular. “It’s not your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have let him in,” he said, looking back at her seriously.

“Well, there’s nothing you can do about that now,” she said with a frown. “Except get the map before he does.”

“I thought you said I couldn’t go—”

“I’m not stupid enough to think that you won’t tag along anyways once I leave this room. So, I might as well tell you what you’ve missed before you dash off to save the day.”

“Alright,” Poe said with a laugh.

“Y/N was able to get us the funds we need to keep our fight going.”

“That’s great. Right?” Poe asked, looking at her worried face.

“It is. I just wanted to warn you that she’s here.”

“Here? As in here here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” he asked.

“She wanted to deliver the good news in person.”

“And?”

“And she misses it here just as much as we miss her. She was just giving Black Squadron the good news when Commander D’Acy said you were back. I sent her away when the discussion turned to Luke.”

“Why?”

“Because Y/N isn’t just a member of the Resistance anymore, she’s the queen of a planet. We won’t always be her top priority. I want you leading Black Squadron when we locate BB-8’s location, but only if you’re up for it. I am worried about you, Poe. You’re only to go on this mission if you’re well enough.”

“I am. I won’t let you down again.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” she said, standing. “You’ll be ready soon?”

“Yes, General.”

“Good.” She smiled as she walked to the door and stopped with her hand on the handle as Poe called her name.

“Leia, is Y/N still here?” he asked.

“For the time being. Why?”

“It’s nothing. I’d just like to apologize,” he said weakly. Leia frowned and walked back to him.

“I’m sure you both have a lot to apologize for, but if you’re going to apologize for what Kylo Ren did, save your breath. Y/N knows the power of his control. She wouldn’t hold it against you.”

“It’s not just that,” he said, taking a deep breath, looking at his bandaged arm.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said with a sigh.

“I meant what I said, Poe. I only want you out there if you’re ready.”

“I am ready, General.”

“Good. Get the map.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Poe said with his most charming grin.

[dailymilesmorales]

Thor and Hulk are at it again. The Avengers' helicarrier is under attack by a swarm of robot minions under the command of MODOK, the head of a tech company who became a super-powered Inhuman villain after a catastrophe known as A Day — and still the raging green muscle finds time to hurl a projectile at Thor’s head. “Just like old times,” says the Asgardian, referencing a bit from 2012’s Avengers movie. Only this isn’t their next blockbuster sequel. It’s their first blockbuster video game.

Since the MCU has been put on indefinite hold in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic (see: Black Widow’s release date, production on the next Spider-Man movie), games — and, specifically, Marvel Games — are rising to meet the need for fresh stories. This year alone will see the debut of Marvel’s Avengers (Sept. 4) from the Tomb Raider team at Crystal Dynamics, plus Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (holiday 2020), a separate spin-off of Insomniac Games’ 2018 Spidey adventure that revives the breakout Spider-Verse star.

“We always believed in the power of video games,” says Bill Rosemann, who’s like the Kevin Feige of Marvel’s gaming division. “We’re happy that more people than ever are discovering — even though you may be physically in different areas — [that] games can bring you together and create connections."

This next phase (to use an MCU term), which finally gives fans playable Marvel adventures on large console platforms, began with Spider-Man. Earlier attempts to make games of this scale, like an Avengers project planned to coincide with the original movie, fell apart. Leaked footage of this first-person effort, as well as a canceled Daredevil game, exist on YouTube as a glimpse of what could've been. The 2018 release, Marvel’s Spider-Man, finally webbed a green light because it was “all about timing,” says Rosemann. “It's all about what talent is available? Do they want to work with Marvel? If so, what's their passion? When you have all those things align, that’s when you can create something great.”

Jon Paquette, the lead writer of Marvel's Spider-Man, noted how one of their mantras "was to design an experience that felt like you were playing a Marvel movie." Out of that mission came a story about Peter Parker, a little more experienced in his years as New York's friendly neighborhood... you know, interwoven with a battle against a sinister rogues' gallery. It became the best-selling superhero game of all time, at over 13 million units. “We had a feeling it was gonna do that,” says Bryan Intihar, Insomniac’s creative director. "I mean, you don't [really] know. There’s this ultimate fear of screwing up one of the most popular characters.” When celebrities like Lin-Manuel Miranda and LeBron James began sharing images from the game on social media, they knew it had “reached another level."

They still didn’t know if they could make a sequel. There were two post-credits scenes that teased big things to come — another element borrowed from the movies — but that was them "stacking the deck," as Intihar put it. One stinger revealed that Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino teen from Harlem and a playable side character, also developed powers after a bite from a radioactive spider once held in Norman Osborn's secret lab.

“We knew really early that [Spider-Man] was going to end with him getting the spider bite," Intihar says. “We would tease it during development. I think everybody was focused on, 'Can you make the first one really good and we'll worry about the other stuff later?' But we wanted to have that set up so if it became a reality [to do another game] we could pull it off." At one point during an early workshop session, Miles was going to be a post-credits scene reveal and nothing more, but Intihar says the team determined it was important to "see the roots of him being a hero before he even had spider powers." Intihar adds of the final end-credits tag, "One of the reasons we put that out was to hopefully convince people that ‘He’s a Spider-Man now. Can we have a game with him?‘”

It paid off, partly because Insomniac went from being a partner with game publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment to being an official member of the Sony family once the company acquired Insomniac in fall 2019 for $229 million, per the company's financial statements. After that, "they were fully on board with the idea" for a sequel, Intihar says. Rosemann thinks of that first Spider-Man as "proof of concept." Now, for the holiday 2020 season (COVID-19 willing) Miles’ own game will further expand this virtual world.

In Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, set in winter one year after the events of the previous game, Miles' Harlem home is on the verge of being torn apart by a war between an energy corporation and a criminal organization armed to the teeth with advanced tech. It's not a formal sequel to Spider-Man. That, if the coy responses from the creatives are any sign, may or may not be coming later. It's a shorter spin-off, likened in scope to the Lost Legacy game in the Uncharted series. Nevertheless, Intihar promises "it has a lot of heart."

"This is a full arc for Miles Morales that started in Spider-Man," Brian Horton, the game's creative director, says. "We really are completing this hero's coming of age in our game. It is a complete story."

The choice of a smaller narrative came amid discussions of what that hero's journey looked like for Miles in the context of Insomniac's games. After all, Miles, according to Marvel Comics canon, doesn't typically exist in the same reality as Mr. Parker. "When we started crafting it," Horton recalls, "we realized that, with a little bit more of a compact storytelling style, we could tell a very emotionally impactful story that would fit really well as an experience that would take Spider-Man 1 and [Miles Morales] and do justice to this character."

Miles may be training with Peter to hone his Spidey skills, but Horton and Intihar see him as "his own Spider-Man." The animation, the movements, the mechanics, even his powers (including bioshock and invisibility) aren't just unique tricks for this character, they are metaphors for that hero's journey the pair keep mentioning. Peter's origin "was born out of tragedy" — i.e. the death of his Uncle Ben — but Horton mentions Miles "is more so born out of family. What I think is really compelling about Miles as a character is he has friends that he could actually let into his world — his human world and his Spider world. He's a little different in the way he approaches it."

Despite all this spin-off talk, Rosemann isn’t actively overlapping his universe of interconnected games — at least not yet. It's more like a Spider-Verse. "Each game is in the Marvel universe, but they're in their own reality, if you will," he says. "Currently, our plan is to keep each game set in its own Marvel universe." It's part of his goal to give game-makers as much freedom as possible to craft the stories they want to tell. So, while this year’s Avengers won’t be linked to Spider-Man, it has its own web-slinger. Spider-Man has been confirmed to arrive in Marvel's Avengers as a DLC story sometime after launch. But when the game drops, it will also come with a lead character who maintains certain parallels to Miles.

[..]

[cha-melodius]

The Definition of Madness Chapter 6

Whumptober No. 27: Power Outage

Fandom: The Man from UNCLE (2015)

Pairings: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin, Napoleon Solo & Illya Kuryakin & Gaby Teller

Summary: They say the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Or, Illya gets stuck in a very whumpy time loop.

Ao3 Link

Ahhh I’m late on this one, but it’s double length, so hoepfully that makes up for it.

*****

Previous Chapter

Illya does not immediately act on his newfound knowledge. It’s both difficult and easy to convince himself to focus on the mission, because although he really wants nothing more than to take a break—he’s been running this op for nearly a month at this point, after all—and take some time to think about whatever this thing is between him and Napoelon, he knows the best way to do that is to end this. Taking ‘rest days’ at the safehouse only goes so far when they’re guaranteed to always end in disaster. Most of the loops still feature one or both of his partners’ deaths, and it never gets any easier to deal with.

So he tries to push the feelings back out of his mind and focus on what he needs to do instead of what he wants. What he needs to be doing is learning more about their targets and trying to come up with some way of finally ending all of this. After all, he is still far behind his adversary in the number of loops he’s had to figure this out. As far as he knows, there are at least twenty more traps they haven’t discovered yet. He likes to think that he won’t need that many more loops to gain the upper hand, but after a few more tries, he finally realizes what he’s missing.

The mysterious man in charge said it himself: it was their team that outsmarted him so many times. Illya is good, but the team is better, and he needs his partners if he’s going to do this. Needs them to really understand the problem at hand. Which is, to put it mildly, difficult when they forget everything each reset. He hadn’t really tried to explain the situation past his first attempt, but now he knows he’s going to have to.

It takes another three loops before he hits on the right combination of uncanny knowledge, plausible explanations, and entreaties to just trust him. Even then his partners don’t look totally convinced, but they do become more willing to play along. And then, on the fourth loop, he somewhat accidentally discovers a completely unexpected and surprisingly effective way of convincing Napoleon, at the very least.

“So wait, how many loops has it been? Twenty-five?” Napoleon asks, arms crossed over his chest as he leans back against the counter in the kitchen. He’s wearing a look that’s unmistakably skeptical but also like he’s trying to be open minded, and Illya really does appreciate the effort.

Illya nods. “Approximately.”

“And we never remember anything?” “I think the fact that you are asking that question is answer enough, no?” Illya replies, arcing an eyebrow at him.

“I guess so,” Napoleon allows. He stares at Illya for a long moment, critical and considering, and Illya has a brief uncomfortable feeling that something about his bearing has changed. Honestly he would be surprised if it hadn’t, what with all he’s been through, but now suddenly it feels like Napoleon can sense exactly what it is.

“And all the loops are pretty much the same?” Napoleon asks. Illya hesistates. In his debriefs he tends to talk only about their attempts on the compound, forgoing much information on the days they’ve stayed at the safehouse. Partly because not much of what happened during them is particularly relevant to the mission, and partly because of the can of worms it threatens to open inside him if he spends too much time thinking about them. But this is the first time Napoleon has directly asked, and something in him pushes him to talk about it.

“Not entirely,” he says cagily. “We’ve stayed back here a couple of times, when my lingering injuries were too severe.”

“How did those days end?”

Illya frowns. “Poorly. The oven is somehow rigged to blow, as is the fireplace. Probably more places, too.”

Napoleon is silent again as he seems to absorb this information. “You really die at the end of every day?” “You do too, on most of them.”

Napoleon winces at that, but Illya knows he’s not thinking about his own deaths, not really. He’s putting himself in Illya’s shoes, imagining what it would be like. “I don’t know how you can take it, Peril.”

“No choice,” Illya mutters.

“Yeah, I get that, it’s just… watching you die, over and over again—” Napoleon’s words bite off as he looks at the ground, and it’s clear that the emotions he keeps so carefully guarded are threatening to escape again.

Illya takes a few steps forward, bringing him within arm’s reach of Napoleon, and it makes his partner look up at him with wide eyes. Eyes full of an emotion that Illya can quite easily read, now. Probably he shouldn’t say anything, but then again, why not? Napoleon won’t remember any of it tomorrow. Which is painful in its own way, but at least Illya knows that if things go poorly, he has another shot.

“The day the oven blew,” he says quietly, “you were dying in my arms. You said… you said you wanted to tell me something. Said you were too much of a coward to tell me before.”

“Did I?” Napoleon whispers, looking somewhat stricken. “Did I… tell you?” Illya shakes his head gently. “No. Didn’t get a chance.” “Oh. Good,” he says, breathing out a shaky sigh of relief. “I mean, not good, really, but I don’t know what I was going to say—”

“I know, Cowboy,” Illya interrupts.

He reaches forward to take Napoleon’s hand, lacing their fingers togther like he’s wanted to do for days now, and suddenly trying to suppress this just feels stupid. Napoleon’s palm is sweaty in his panic, but it doesn’t matter, because his hand is so right in Illya’s. He can’t quite stop a tiny smile from curling the corners of his mouth.

“Y–you do?” Napoleon stammers, his blue eyes wide with disbelief and fear and unmistakable hope.

Illya nods and leans forward to press his lips to Napoleon’s. It causes his partner to stiffen in surprise for a fleeting moment, but then he rapidly seems to melt, lips parting when Illya brings his other hand up to cup Napoleon’s jaw and slides his tongue along his bottom lip. With a slight tip of his head, Illya fits their mouths perfectly together, then smiles into the kiss when the movement elicits a tiny noise of pleasure from Napoleon.

The last few days Illya had, perhaps unsurprisingly, imagined various scenerios in which he’d lost his carefully maintained control and ended up kissing Napoleon during a loop, but most of them had been a desperate crush of lips as one of them was dying, tinged with blood and sorrow. Certainly none of them had been like this, gentle and unhurried, Napoleon almost trembling in his arms with the pure emotion of it.

When they eventually part Napoleon is flushed and breathing hard, and who would have believed that, of the two of them, he would be the one so flustered by this development? Illya gives his hand a small squeeze and receives one in return, and then Napoleon’s mouth splits into a wide grin.

“Is that—” he starts, breaking off with a huffed laugh. “Is that the first time we’ve… done that?” “Yes,” Illya answers as he brushes his thumb lightly over Napoleon’s cheek. “First time.” “So, uh, how did you know, if I— if I didn’t say anything that day…” Illya bites his lower lip against the smug smile he knows is fighting its way onto his face. “One loop, I was sick. Recovering from a concussion, actually, but you didn’t know that. You made me your grandmother’s soup.” “Oh,” Napoleon breathes, flushing red again. “I see. Told you all about it, then?” “Mmhm,” Illya hums.

Napoleon drops his eyes again, muttering under his breath. “Real smooth, Napoleon.”

“I’m glad you did,” Illya tells him. He nudges Napoleon’s chin up until his partner meets his eyes. “And not just because the soup was delicious.”

Napoleon laughs, then, and shakes his head lightly. “I gotta tell you, hearing that is almost more convincing than anything else you’ve said today, because there’s no way you could know about that or… or what it means. But you do. It’s insane, but somehow you do.”

“You really believe me now?” “Yeah, Peril,” Napoleons says sincerely. “I believe you.” Then his lips curl into a mischevious grin. “You know, just a suggestion for the future, but you could maybe lead with that—”

Illya cuts him off with another long, lingering kiss before he pulls back again. “You’re just saying that so you get kissed earlier in the day,” he accuses.

“So what if I am? I think I’m allowed to look out for my future self. Or is it past self? I have to say, this is all very confusing, Peril.”

Illya sighs. “Tell me about it.”

Napoleon might have a point, though.

*****

Turns out, the fastest and most convincing way to introduce the concept of his looping days to his partner is to walk into the kitchen, grab Napoleon’s hand before he burns it on the hot pan, and pull him into a vigorous kiss. Every time, Napoleon freezes in pure shock for what should be a surprisingly short amount of time before he just… goes with it, opening up and chasing Illya’s mouth with no small amount of enthusiasm. It would be almost comical, especially after the whole thing has been repeated several times, if it didn’t make Illya’s heart thunder in his chest every. damn. time.

Sure, it confuses the hell out of Napoleon, but he’s far more ready to believe that Illya is actually repeating the day when Illya knows just how to kiss him in a way that makes his toes curl (his words). By the time Gaby is awake, Napoleon is already completely in his corner, which makes convincing her a lot easier too.

And hell, it’s not a bad way to start the day, especially if you’re going to have to start the same one over and over again.

Unfortunately, that is typically where the romance starts and ends for them on any given day. That’s not to say that they don’t steal kisses during the rare quiet moments, and Gaby is pretty much guaranteed to roll her eyes and throw pebbles at them on the hike up the mountain. But the days are still packed with trying to figure out how to evade the traps and take out their targets, and if Illya sometimes feels like taking a break all he has to do is picture any one of his partners’ myriad deaths.

One morning, they’re all hunched around the map of the compound, watching as Illya adds every trap that they’ve managed to trigger so far to it, as he does every day. He talks through everything he knows, and everything they’ve tried. So far the door he’d found on his solo jaunt remains unopened; even when they’ve successfully gotten there a few times, they’ve always been ambushed before Napoleon could figure out how to open it.

“What about the power?” Gaby asks as she stares pensively down the map. “Have we tried taking it out?”

Illya shakes his head. “No. The substation is hidden somewhere else on the mountain, but I’ve never been able to investigate it.”

“You say the lock on the door has some kind of electronic component?” Napoleon asks.

“Correct.”

“Well, it might have a backup power source, but you never know,” Napoleon muses. “I think cutting the electricity should be our next move.”

It’s surprisingly not that hard to follow the electrical lines to a substation sunk into the mountainside. Which, of course, makes Illya immediately think that it is a trap, but he is surprised again. There are only two guards, and the team takes them out quickly and quietly. The real problem comes in the fact that it will take at minimum fifteen minutes to cover the ground between the substation and the main compound, which is too long. They’re going to need to have one person cut the power when the other two are already in place, so that their targets have no chance to mount a response.

They argue about the distribution of labor, but in the end there is only one option: Napoleon has to go to the compound to crack the lock on the door, and Illya needs to be there because he’s the only one who will remember anything, so that leaves Gaby to kill the power. Illya hates the idea of leaving her alone, because he’ll have no idea if she is in trouble or not, but there’s no way around it. She’ll join them as soon as she can after she does it, and he hopes that at least in some loop he’ll get some confirmation that she’s ok.

Killing the power does disable part of the door lock, but it turns out there is a combination lock underneath, and it takes four loops for Napoleon to discover each number in the combination before they’re cut down by guards.

The minute they actually step foot inside the underground facility Illya knows they are in the right place. He can practically feel it, tingling on his skin. There are cells here—this must be where he’d been held, before—and spaces that look more like medical observation rooms. They move quickly and quietly, trying to search as much of the area as they can before the guards catch up with them. When they’ve gone as far as they can they end up in a well-appointed office, and it must belong to the man in charge, but he is frustratingly not in it. Somewhat unfortunately for them, he is nearby.

Normally the guards in the compound tend to be of the shoot-first-ask-questions-later variety, which works in their favor since it means Illya doesn’t have to worry about not dying. Whenever Illya does something truly unexpected, though, something that has the potential to actually work, it seems to tip off the man in charge. And that? Is not a good thing.

Like this time, when the armed guards that bust into the room just stand there with their guns trained on Illya and Napoleon instead of firing, as if waiting for someone to give the order.

“Now this is a surprise,” the now-familiar tenor croons moments before the man walks through the door. “In my very own office, even.”

Illya and Napoleon trade glances and a silent understanding that it might be useful to get the man talking rather than starting to shoot blindly in the hopes of triggering a new loop. This is, as it turns out, their first mistake.

“I take it one of you is resetting the day,” the man says conversationally, looking at both of them critically. “Given that you made it here. I don’t suppose you’d be so kind as to tell me who it is?”

“‘Fraid not,” Napoleon drawls. “Guess you’ll just have to kill us both.” The man laughs at this idea, which of course everyone knows is absurd. Killing them is the last thing he’d want to do, now that he has them cornered. He stares at them both for another moment, and Illya knows that nothing shows on either of their faces to give them away, but the man nods anyway.

“Shoot the American, and bring the Russian here,” he says dismissively.

“No!” Illya shouts involuntarily, because that is the one situation that cannot happen, but even as he does he realizes he played right into the man’s game.

So, he does the only thing he can, and starts shooting anyway.

The scuffle ends relatively quickly. Illya takes down several guards before he’s overwhelmed by the sheer number of them in the small space and they force him to his knees as they tie his hands behind his back. As luck would have it, though, Napoleon’s position nearer to the door means he manages to get a gun on the man in charge. He unfortunately does not look that perturbed by this development, but he waves a hand to signal the guards anyway. Several of them have their guns still trained on Napoleon, but at least for the moment they don’t fire. “Well, you got yourselves a standoff, if that’s what you were hoping for,” the man says. “But I don't think it’s going to work out for you.”

“You think it’s going to work out for you?” Napoleon scoffs. “Your mercenaries are just that loyal, are they? By my reckoning, I take you out and we go scot free.”

“Oh, Mr. Solo, that is an optimistic viewpoint,” the man replies, grinning cruelly. “My men will, in fact, kill you no matter what. The question is, after you die, who will be here to prevent them from giving your partner the antidote and then killing him? By my reckoning… no one. Something tells me that’s not a sacrifice you’re willing to make, even if you are dead.”

Illya can see realization flicker in Napoleon’s eyes at the truth of this assessment. Gaby won’t arrive in time, and there is no way in hell that Illya will allow the final loop to end with Napoleon’s death. There is only one possible scenerio where they both get out of this.

“Cowboy,” Illya says into the tense silence that fills the room. Napoleon doesn’t look at him, but Illya knows he’s listening all the same. “You know what you have to do.”

“Yeah, right, Peril. I don’t think so. He’s bluffing.” “He’s not.”

“Listen to your partner, Mr. Solo,” the man suggests. “Though I don’t think you will.” He pauses, and turns toward Illya, seemingly ignoring the fact there’s still a gun trained on him. “Did I ever tell you how many loops I had to get to know your little team?” Illya says nothing. He’s certainly not going to give this asshole the satisfaction.

“Fifty, at least. And if there’s one thing I know, it is that your partner would rather die than see you die. So he’s certainly never going to be able to kill you himself.”

“Cowboy,” Illya says again, steadfastly ignoring the man.

Napoleon’s jaw clenches and the muscle jumps under his skin. “He’s right,” Napoleon grits out, almost a whisper.

“He’s not.”

He gives a tiny shake of his head, moving only a fraction. “I can’t.” “You can,” Illya insists. “You have to.”

And then, suddenly, the situation becomes a lot more dire, because the guards have returned with what must be the antidote. The syringe is already full of a blue liquid, ready to inject, and the sight sends a bolt of fear through Illya. He tries to struggle out of the grip of the guards and manages to knock two of them over, but there are just too many.

“Napoleon,” Illya says with more urgency as he’s pressed back down to his knees. “Do it!”

“There has to be another way,” Napoleon protests, glancing to Illya for only a moment.

“There isn’t, you know it,” Illya tells him desperately.

The guard carrying the syringe gets closer and closer, until he’s standing over Illya. They are completely out of time.

“Napoleon!” Illya yells, but his partner’s hard gaze doesn’t waver from the man in charge. “Napoleon, SHOOT ME NOW!”

Finally, Napoleon’s eyes flicker down to Illya, and the anguish in them is unbearable. Illya doesn’t look away. He can’t. Not with what he’s asking Napoleon to do. Distantly, he can hear the man laughing, but the world seems to have narrowed down to nothing more than the two of them.

Please, Illya mouths.

In the next moment, Napoleon drops his gun to Illya, squeezes his eyes shut, and fires.

*****

Illya wakes up with a precise, circular gunshot scar exactly over his heart. It aches, and not in the way the lingering wounds usually do. He lies in bed until he hears Napoleon humming and he knows he needs to get up, but facing the day is excruciating with the memory of what happened in the previous one so fresh in his mind.

He makes it to the kitchen just in time to stop Napoleon from burning himself, and he can’t quite keep the desperation from the kiss he pulls his partner into. This time when he breaks away from the kiss he doesn’t let go of Napoleon, wraps him instead in a hug so tight that the man almost squeaks. He can feel the bewilderment in Napoleon’s rigid posture, moreso even than usual, but then his partner’s arms wrap around him, unquestioning, and he feels the ache in his heart slowly abate by small fractions.

There’s no way around telling them what happened; his partners have to know everything about the previous iterations if they’re going to stay ahead of their adversaries. Illya takes them through the power station and getting the door open, all the way up through their search of the underground facility, before he falters.

“They got the drop on us,” he forces himself to say, not looking at either of his partners. His hand goes white around the pencil as he marks out their positions and those of their opponents on the schematic of the underground level. “Managed to take me, but not you. The man in charge was here. You were nearby, with your gun on him. Bunch of guards here and here, guns on you. They were going to give me the antidote, pull me out of the loop.”

“And?” Gaby prompts, when Illya falls silent again. “Obviously they didn’t.”

Illya shakes his head and finally looks up at Napoleon, and he can tell by the uneasy look in his eyes that his partner is starting to put the pieces together. “I… I needed to die, so I told you to—”

“No,” Napoleon interrupts, shaking his head wildly. “No.”

“Cowboy, there was no other option—”

But Napoleon still doesn’t let him continue. “If I was armed, why wouldn’t I just kill the man in charge? That’s what we want, right?” “It wasn’t going to work,” Illya says, trying to keep his voice steady even as Napoleon becomes more and more agitated. “If you had shot him, the guards would have still killed you and pulled me out, and then there would be no resets. Not for us. It was the lesser of two evils.”

“Bullshit!” Napoleon yells, then turns on his heel and storms out of the house.

Illya’s shoulders sag and he leans heavily on the table as the ache in his chest returns in full force. After a moment Gaby’s small hand slides over top of his, warm and grounding.

“There was no other option,” he repeats, and his voice sounds so small and broken even to his own ears.

“I know that,” Gaby says quietly, soothingly. “And he does too, deep down. He’ll come to terms with it, he will. But right now he needs you to go to him.”

She’s right, he knows she is, as painful as the idea of talking about it is. He finds Napoleon standing on the porch of the safehouse, staring out into the forest. There is unmistakable tension in his shoulders and his hands are clenched into fists at his side. Illya steps out until he is side by side with his partner, and they stand there together, in silence, for a long moment.

“How could I do that?” Napoleon asks eventually, his tremulous voice barely more than a whisper. “I just can't see how I could possibly do it, even knowing you would ‘reset’, or whatever the fuck this is.”

“Cowboy,” Illya says, turning toward him, but Napoleon’s gaze remains fixated on the trees. “Napoleon, look at me.”

Finally, Napoleon turns, and Illya is shocked to see tears streaking his cheeks. He’s never seen Napoleon cry, not even when he was dying in the kitchen, and the sight is fairly terrifying. He reaches forward to pull Napoleon into his arms and his partner goes willingly, pressing his face into Illya’s shoulder.

“You did it for me,” Illya murmurs, holding him close. “Because I asked you to. And I shouldn’t have, I know, it’s not fair. I’m sorry, Cowboy.”

Napoleon is quiet for a long moment before he speaks again, pushing his words into Illya’s shirt. “I can’t do it again.”

Yes, you can, Illya thinks sadly, but he doesn’t say it. He knows that if it came down to it, Napoleon would pull the trigger, because he is far stronger than he thinks he is. Because he would always do anything for Illya, even the unthinkable.

“You won’t have to,” he promises instead. It’s a dangerous promise to make, but Illya also knows that he couldn’t ask Napoleon to do it again. Couldn’t take more of this pain. Illya is, in the end, the one that is not strong enough.

He presses a kiss to Napoleon’s temple and buries his face in his partner’s hair, drinking the the scent of his pomade and that thing that is uniquely him. They stand there for a long while, wrapped in each others arms, until Napoleon takes a deep breath that he exhales as a shaky sigh.

“We should go plan,” he says, his voice still muffled by Illya’s shirt.

Illya pulls back slightly and lifts a hand to cup Napoleon’s face, tipping it up toward his. “In a minute,” he murmurs, and then kisses him.

Illya never could have imagined that kissing the man he loves could make his heart ache so intensely. He can taste the sorrow in it, even more than the salt of Napoleon’s tears. Their tracks are drying on his cheeks, and Illya rubs his thumb through them, knowing for certain that this loop cannot end the way the previous one did, because he can never be the cause of these tears ever again.

Gaby is waiting for them when they finally come back inside, and she has put her time to good use. The table is near covered by explosive charges, assembled and ready to go. Illya and Napoleon blink at her in surprise.

“The way I see it,” she says without preamble, “we need the antidote, and then we need to blow the whole place, preferably with that bastard inside it. Make sure any trace of the drug is destroyed. These are for the outer walls,” she says, gesturing to one pile, “and these are for placing in the basement. I’ll kill the power, and then you have 15 minutes to get underground, get the antidote, place the charges, and get out. I’ll place the ones around the outside when I get there. Agreed?”

Illya and Napoleon look at each other, then back at Gaby, and nod. How could they not?

Next Chapter

[harrylee94]

Log Entry XXXXXX - Chapter 3

Summary: A new space station, complete with the most high spec and up to date technology there is to offer, has been set up at the edge of the known universe, a new way point for explorers to keep in contact with the rest of the human race. It has been carefully designed by the best scientists and engineers Earth could offer, and now 7 brave souls are being sent out to ensure everything works perfectly.

However, when Logan wakes from cryosleep from the journey, he is informed that several things are now in need of repair, though everything had been in perfect working condition when the station had been reconstructed before he and his crew had arrived. They will have to solve the problems they’ve been left with before the station is up and running, and yet Logan can’t help but feel he’s done this before…

Relationships: Intrulogical (Remus/Logan)

Warnings: Blood, Gore, Parasites, Remus having an overactive imagination, It’s an Among Us crossover so there will be bad stuff afoot.

A/N: This was so difficult to write, partly because I got a job, but mostly because it was emotionally draining.

For those of you who don’t know, this story is based off of a comic by @fangirltothefullest which I HIGHLY recommend you check them out on the link above! Their art is AMAZING.

Note to everyone before we begin; there will be graphic descriptions of gore, dismemberment, possibly torture, and any other awful things that come with the territory of writing a story in an Among Us universe.

Link to; Part 1 Part 2

To read it on AO3 please click here.

Chapter 3: Log Entry #3

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 6:02 AM

Logan hit the ground with a pained grunt, his shoulder having hit the ground much too hard, and he pushed and rolled himself across it until he’d plastered himself to Remus’s side. He was warm and real and here and now he was holding him. Logan curled into his chest and gripped at the skin-tight suit that Remus was wearing, stretching the fabric but not bringing himself to care as he listened to the beating of his heart.

“You only get like this after something so shitty happens that you can’t logic your way out of it,” Remus said, his fingers gently rubbing circles into Logan’s scalp.

He hummed.

“... You want to talk about it?”

“Not yet.”

“Sure. Take your time.”

Logan smiled. This is why he loved him. Remus was loud, he was gross and he was strange, his ideas bordered on the demented at times, he was intrusive and annoying… but he was also spontaneous and accepting. He could be quiet when it was needed, and he would listen with his full attention (provided he had something to keep his hands busy). He understood more than his first impression led people to believe, and he would protect Logan with everything he had.

Tears ran down Logan’s cheeks as he thought of his body, shredded and so completely empty on the ground, and he choked on a sob at the thought of him dying alone.

“Hey,” Remus said, his voice soft as he rubbed Logan’s back. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

Logan shook his head. “No. No it’s not.”

“Why not?”

Logan shook his head again, curling further into a ball atop him. “You… I wasn’t there.”

“Weren’t where?”

“With you.” He could remember that focus, running to the reactor, forgetting everything else. Forgetting Remus. “I left you!”

“Hey, no, I’m right here,” Remus said, kissing Logan’s hair, but Logan was all but sobbing now. “It’s okay, Ana-Logie. I’m here now.”

“But you won’t be, because I’ll leave, or I’ll look away for a second, and you’ll… you’ll…”

“Breathe,” Remus told him, pushing them both upright and cradling Logan in his lap. “Like you taught me, remember? In for four. Hold for seven. That’s it. And out for eight.”

Logan shook as he followed Remus’s instructions, struggling against his emotions, but gently, over time, they calmed to a more manageable level and his grip on Remus’s clothes loosened.

“Good,” the moustached man said, continuing to rub circles into his hair and back. “Just keep breathing.”

The scientist nodded numbly against his chest and relaxed into his hands until his shaking ceased. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“But-”

“No buts!” Remus interrupted. “Not unless it’s the sexy kind!”

Logan chuckled and set his head against Remus’s shoulder, looking up at him as he wiped at his eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Remus replied, though he looked a little surprised. He had every right to be, considering Logan didn’t say those three words very often, and to have done so unprompted was unusual. “What is it? What happened?”

“You won’t believe me,” Logan said, running lines down Remus’s cheek with his fingertips.

“Try me.”

Of all the people who were with him on this shuttle, Remus was the one who would be the most likely to believe him. Not that that was any guarantee that he would. He had already wasted time with his emotional state though, so perhaps he should keep the explanation short. “... Groundhog Day meets The Thing and I’m Phil.”

Remus blinked at him a few times before his face fell. “What?”

“This… This is the third time I’ve woken up in that cryopod,” Logan said. “You’ve fallen out of your pod three times. And… and we’ve all…” He stopped, looking away. He shouldn’t have said anything. Remus didn’t believe him, and it would have been better if-

“Died?”

Remus’s soft tone -- no, more than that, it had an edge of anger, and fear -- made him turn back. There was no disbelief in his eyes, no hint of criticism or of simply trying to appease him. It almost made him tear up again, but he kept it down and nodded, not quite trusting his voice.

“... I died.”

Logan nodded again.

“We all died?”

Another nod.

Remus hummed and stroked his cheek. “Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?”

Logan’s hope crumpled and he pulled away, or at least he tried to. “Let me go.”

“No,” Remus said, holding him tighter to his chest.

“Let me go!” he exclaimed, kicking out.

“Logan, stop!” Remus cried, struggling with him. “I believe you!”

He paused. “You think it was a dream.”

“You wouldn’t have reacted like this if you didn’t know that it was real.”

“... You insulted me to check if I was genuine.”

Remus shrugged. “You don’t make up stuff like this, but we did just get out of modified freezers after sleeping for years.”

“A fair point,” Logan granted with a blush. It wasn’t like him to overlook something so simple as proof. He blamed his high emotions. “It could still be affecting me.”

“Might be,” Remus said. “Do you think it is?”

Logan frowned. “It felt so real…”

“Then it’s real until we know it isn’t,” Remus said with a decisive nod. “You said it was like The Thing?”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 6:57 AM

Strangely, Remus’s questioning had actually been quicker than the distractions he usually pulled, the kisses and delaying tactics replaced with hugs and supportive mutterings, and now the two of them were heading into the depressurisation chamber. Remus was holding both of their helmets so Logan could more properly look at his tablet, trying to find any clue in the messages they received from the construction crew of what it was that had caused this loop, or at least what these creatures were, but there had been nothing.

“And our fearless leader arrives!”

Logan looked up from the tablet to find Roman stood in the middle of the room, arms stretched out in a flamboyant and unnecessary manner.

“Aw, bro!” Remus exclaimed in return, stretching his own arms out in a mirror image of his brother. “I never thought you’d admit my superior leading skills.” He grinned as Roman physically stepped away from him with a look of disgust.

“He was talking about Logan, you unhinged octopus,” Virgil said, though he sounded more playful than biting.

Remus gasped dramatically. “How did you know I loved cephalopods?”

Both Logan and Virgil rolled their eyes and Logan nudged his partner with his elbow. “This is not how I was hoping to start the conversation.”

Remus had the courtesy to look at least a little chastised and he stepped back, allowing Logan to take the place of the ‘fearless leader’, as Roman had put it, though he was definitely not fearless so he wasn’t sure why he had said that.

“As we are all here,” he began, looking around at each of them, noting how they were all more or less where they usually were, though he did make a note that Virgil’s previous panic attacks had probably been brought on by his tardiness, “I have some news. Now please keep an open mind as I know that what I am about to say will sound rather fantastical, but I assure you that I am speaking the truth.” The others looked at him in confusion, as he’d expected they would, and he took a stabilising breath. “I have lived through this day twice, and we have all died, both times.”

The air was heavy with the silence that followed, and he tried to hold strong, but he could see the disbelief in their eyes.

“Did Green put you up to this?” Orange asked with a snort.

“That’s not funny,” Virgil muttered, and Patton moved to comfort him, sending Logan a worried look.

“What proof do you have?” Janus asked, looking amused.

“... None,” Logan admitted quietly.

“That’s because this is a useless charade,” Janus said with a wave of his hand, rising to feet. “As entertaining as it is to see you try to make a joke, perhaps next time make it something more believable.”

“I’m telling the truth,” Logan said, but even Roman had turned away. “This is serious!”

“Whatever, Blue,” Orange said, slipping his tablet into its pouch. “Can we just get started?”

Logan’s shoulders fell. He should have known that this would happen. Remus was one thing, but everyone else? He could see them losing their faith in his abilities, in his cognitive functions. His leadership was now under question.

“Are you serious?”

Logan almost jumped when Remus stepped past him, helmets now set aside, and he looked ready to tear someone limb from limb.

“Logan doesn’t lie, not even for jokes,” Remus said, his voice low and dangerous. “He’s trying to warn you guys about something and you just dismiss it outright? What the fuck?”

“Rem, don’t try it, alright?” Roman said, stepping forwards to meet him, eyebrow raised  and arms folded across his chest. “It’s sweet that you’re defending him and all, but we all know the effects of prolonged stasis.”

“We know you probably didn’t mean anything by it, Logan,” Patton said, “but-”

“He’s not lying!” Remus exclaimed, but no one was listening. “Come on! Janus!”

The man in yellow sighed. “Just get your helmet on.”

Their words stung, but Logan knew that if their positions had been reversed he would have thought the same thing. “Remus.” The man turned back to him. “It… It was a dream.”

“Logie…”

“It’s fine,” Logan said with a forced smile. “They’re right. We should just get on with things. We’re on a tight enough schedule as it is.”

Remus gave him a look that should have meant tears, he could see the heartbreak in his eyes, but he stepped closer and took Logan’s face in his hand to press a soft, gentle kiss to his lips. “I believe you,” he whispered, “even if they don’t. I will always believe you.”

Logan smiled, comforted by the support even though he knew it wasn’t enough now. “Let’s get through this.”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 10:15 AM

Virgil, Janus and Orange had all headed off in the same directions they had the previous times they had entered this place, their expertise leading them to very specific locations, but Roman had decided to go to Shields while Patton accompanied Virgil in the Medbay, something that Logan would not have chosen but they had all decided to make the decision themselves, since they ‘wanted Logan to take it easy’. In other words, they had decided that Logan’s skills and intelligence had been compromised.

Remus, who would have usually headed straight to the central control panel in the Weapons room, had been helping Logan sort out the oxygen filter, and they were now sitting side by side, the tasks in the room complete and their helmets resting in their laps.

“They weren’t going to believe us,” Logan was saying. “When it comes to anything outside of my area of expertise they don’t listen. The only reason I was named leader was because I knew so much about the mission. Roman probably would have been chosen otherwise.”

“That princess wouldn’t know the first thing about leading a mission like this,” Remus said with a snort. “He’d have led us all into a black hole to be strung out into wires thinner than a hair, or crashed us into an asteroid, or a planet. Maybe even a star.”

“He’s not quite as bad as that,” Logan said with a chuckle. “He’s actually quite competent, when he needs to be.”

“Well they’re still all a burning bag of dicks for not listening.”

Logan hummed. “We might have scared Virgil enough to keep him from entering, and maybe even Patton, but everyone else… Even proof wouldn’t have made much of a difference.”

Remus looked like he wanted to argue, but instead puffed out his cheeks and slunk further down against the wall, releasing the air as a fart noise. “Our friends suck.”

“They are being practical,” Logan pointed out. “If this were any other situation I would commend them for not trusting my word.”

“But it’s not any other situation.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It fucking sucks worse than an elephant giving you a wet willy.”

“... Elephants don’t have fingers.”

Remus shrugged and leaned into Logan’s side to rest his head on his shoulder, which was enough of an invitation for Logan to rest his own on top.

“You said it was Orange first, right?”

“I did.”

“Do you want to see if we can try and save him?”

Logan turned his head to regard his partner more critically, but, again, he seemed entirely genuine.

“Wouldn’t hurt to try.”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 10:22 AM

“I really don’t need any help,” Orange said as he continued to work on the reactor. “Aren’t there any other tasks that need doing? I’m sure the list was long enough to keep us all busy for several more hours yet.”

“There certainly is an abundance of tasks that need to be done,” Logan agreed, fingers twitching with the need to adjust his glasses but he and Remus had donned their helmets again before they had left the oxygen room. “However, I believe it would be more… socially fulfilling if we completed tasks together.”

“He means it’ll be more fun if we worked together,” Remus said, though why he felt the need to clarify, Logan was unsure.

Orange hummed. “Well, I’ll be needing some fuel soon, and I think I saw the tank in Storage,” he said, closing a panel and pressing a few buttons. “If you get me about ten gallons then I’ll have this done in no time.”

“Great!” Remus exclaimed and grabbed Logan’s hand to pull him away before the scientist had a chance to protest. “We’ll be back before you can say ‘mouldy entrails’!”

“Whatever,” Orange said, still concentrating on the panel before him.

“I thought we were going to stay close to him,” Logan said once they were out of earshot.

Remus shrugged. “You said he always died in Storage.”

“I did.”

“So that means that whatever cuts his chest open does it there.”

“That might be true, but that does not guarantee that it will be the same this time.”

“You said it has the last two.”

They pulled to a stop next to the fuel tank as Logan shook his head.

“Things have already changed,” he said as Remus found an empty fuel container to fill up. “Patton has never gone with Virgil before, Roman hasn’t gone to work on the shields, I’ve never told-”

“Hey, cool your jets, Wall-E,” Remus said, catching Logan’s hands in his before Logan had the chance to pull out his tablet to go over everything he could on there, to find something to try and make some sense out of everything. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll get through this, yeah?”

Logan took a deep breath and nodded.

“Great. Now let’s get this stuff to Orange, yeah?”

“Yes,” Logan agreed and looked around for a second container, only to find the surprising sight of a man in cyan blue stood near the door. “Patton! I thought you were going to stay with Virgil.”

For a moment their navigator said nothing, and Logan started to wonder why he looked so stiff, but then he relaxed, his body language becoming something much more soft and familiar.

“I was, but now we’re waiting for some of the samples to process,” Patton explained. “He’s staying in the Medbay but I wanted to see how everyone was doing! I see you two aren’t fueling around!”

“Yes,” Logan said, unimpressed by the pun, though Remus snickered. “Well, thank you for checking on us.”

“No problem!” Patton said, rocking back on his heels before heading on. “I’ll go check how Janus is doing. See ya!”

“Bye Pat!” Remus called after him with a wave. Logan watched after him with suspicion for a few moments more but still collected the container and brought it back to Remus.

“I think they got him.”

Remus blinked at him. “They who?”

“The… The Things,” Logan replied, unsure what else to call them. He should have thought of it before; it had always been Roman and Virgil, and they had always gone to Medbay. Medbay wasn’t safe, and now Patton had been caught. “I’m such an idiot.”

“Wait, Patton?”

“Yes!”

Remus stared up at him, his eyes growing wide. “Janus.”

They dropped the containers without a second thought and sprinted after Patton, skidding around corners until they reached the Communications room. As luck would have it, Roman had been near the corridor and the commotion had caught his attention.

Patton had turned back to look at them all in surprise, or rather the creature that had taken Patton’s form had, as there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that this wasn’t their lovable father friend anymore. No, this thing’s arms had been buried deep inside of Janus’s chest, one sharp tentacle-like appendage having exited his back with a small number of vertebrae clutched in its grasp, and the other coming out of Janus’s mouth.

Bits of spinal cord dropped to the floor from within the vertebrae, landing with a squelch in a pool of gathering gore, and a few moments later Janus’s limp body joined it. The three of them watched in horrified fascination as the creature’s appendages morphed back into Patton’s suit covered arms, and the blood covering them seeped into the fabric, removing all evidence of the brutal murder it had just commited.

“Whoops,” Thing-Patton said with a shiver inducing smile. “Looks like I should have been more careful!”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 10:35 AM

Patton was struggling in Remus’s grasp, kicking and wiggling and hissing as everyone left alive stood around the table in the cafeteria. Logan’s heart hadn’t stopped racing since Remus had charged towards the creature that had torn through flesh and bone and tackled it to the ground. He was still holding back his panic at the thought that he was holding it with his bare arms with no protection against being slaughtered in front of everyone.

“What the hell is going on?” Orange demanded, as Remus struggled with Not-Patton for a moment and was forced to push him down against the table. “Green!”

“He… It… The thing that looks like Patton killed Janus!” Roman explained, going to join his brother to hold the Thing down. “We saw it!”

“Let me go!” Not-Patton shouted. “You’re hurting me!”

“What do you mean, ‘Patton killed Janus’?” Virgil asked, looking like he wanted to jump in to help, but Logan had set himself between them. He knew what Virgil had become.

"It's not Patton!" Remus exclaimed grunting when Patton swung his head back into his nose but never once losing his grip. Perhaps all those scraps were good for something after all. "Fuck! He killed Janie! He’s dead! He’s dead God damn it! You tore him to fucking shreds!"

Logan so desperately wanted to go to his side, to wipe the tears that were falling down his cheeks, but he had to stay here. He had to protect them from Virgil too, or all of this would have been for nothing.

“He’s not the one with blood all over him!” Virgil declared, waving at Remus’s gore covered suit. “How do we know it wasn’t you?”

“Purple’s got a point,” Orange conceded with a nod, and Not-Patton smiled.

“Yes! Thank you, Orange!” the creature said, still struggling.

“No!” Roman exclaimed. “I don’t know what you are or what you did to Patton, but we saw what you did.”

“But Remus-!” Virgil began but Logan cut him off.

“Do you honestly think that all three of us would lie to you about this?” he asked, waiting for a few moments before continuing when no answer was forthcoming. “I don’t know how, but this… this thing is able to absorb… blood through the suit.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Oh I wish it was.”

Virgil looked between the three of them, looked at Not-Patton who was struggling under the twins’ weight, then over at Orange who was considering Patton with suspicion. “You can’t seriously think they’re telling the truth!”

“All three of them are corroborating the same story,” Orange said.

“Orange, no,” Not-Patton begged, and Logan had to force himself not to look at it when he heard the wetness of its voice. “Please. Please! I didn’t do it!”

Orange’s expression twitched. “What are we supposed to do with him?”

“Orange!” Virgil cried, but Logan couldn’t help but feel relieved.

“We could throw him out the garbage chute,” Remus suggested as he and Roman kept a tighter hold on the squirming body beneath them.

Roman stared at him. “You want to pull a HAL 9000 and vent him into space?”

“He just tore my best friend up from the inside out in front of our eyes!” Remus all but screamed in his face. “He pushed pieces of his spine out through his back! There were pieces of his liver and pancreas all over the floor! He’s got fucking tentacles for arms!”

Roman continued to stare at him in silence for a few seconds, at his red rimmed eyes and wet cheeks, then he nodded slowly.

“I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this,” Orange said, but he also nodded in agreement, though he looked severely conflicted. Not that Logan could blame him; it still looked like Patton after all.

“What?!”

Logan spun around, holding his tablet out in some poor excuse of a shield as Virgil charged at him, only to get pulled to a halt by Orange.

“You’re all crazy!” Virgil screamed at them as Roman and Remus started to drag a wailing Not-Patton towards the garbage chute. “You’re crazy!”

“Logan, the door,” Roman said, and Logan headed to the panel to open it.

The door to the dumping ground hissed open and Not-Patton’s cries only grew in volume as Virgil continued to shout and scream at them to stop. The twins struggled to shove the Thing into the alcove, and it tried to cling onto Roman before Remus batted it away, and then Logan shut the door.

There was a lever that needed to be pulled to activate the venting, one that had to be held down to keep the hatch open, and it burned at Logan’s fingers through the suit. He could hear Not-Patton banging on the doors, Virgil screaming behind him, Roman trying not to throw up as he held back sobs…

“Logan.”

He shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, Remus’s hand falling on his shoulder. “I…”

“Let me.”

He shook his head, but still he couldn’t move. He was frozen, stuck, unable and yet knowing he needed to. “I can’t.”

Remus’s hand covered his, fingers curling slowly through his own. “Let me.”

Logan took a deep, shaking breath, forcing the noises around them away, and swallowed as he let his arm drop, leaving only Remus at the lever. Much as Logan had done, Remus hesitated, but it was only that, a hesitation.

The banging fell into silence as the chute emptied, its contents emptying out into the void of space as Remus held the lever for five seconds, ten, twenty…

“Remus,” Logan said softly as he touched his partner’s arm, then up to his wrist until he could peel his fingers from the lever. Once they had come loose it was like a chord had been cut and he dropped to his knees, clutching at Logan’s hand as he held his head with the other.

“I killed him.”

“No!” Logan insisted, kneeling before him to hold him, even as he kept an eye on Virgil, who looked stunned. “That wasn’t Patton anymore. It wasn’t even human.”

Remus choked on his tears and gripped Logan’s back.

“We did the right thing,” Roman said as he slid closer, sliding his fingers into his brother’s hair.

“The right thing sucks,” Remus said into Logan’s shoulder, but eventually raised his head enough to smile at his twin. “Thanks bro.”

“No problem,” Roman said, and he leaned closer to press his forehead to Remus’s.

It was a beautiful moment, one that didn’t happen nearly enough between the siblings, but in the moment of distraction Logan had taken his eye off of Orange and Virgil. He should have known better. He was doing so many things wrong!

Lights flashed overhead, an alarm blared, and all three of them looked up, drawn from their moment of solidarity.

“The reactor,” Orange said and took off running, Virgil following soon after, and Logan scrambled to his feet.

“Virgil,” he said, pulling Remus up. “He’s the other one.”

“What?” Roman said, only to have to catch up with them as they  headed towards the reactor. “Other one of what? What are you talking about?”

“It’s the Thing, Roman,” Remus explained simply, “except this time there are two, and we only got one of them.”

“That’s-!” Roman started, only to cut himself off, no doubt thinking of what he’d witnessed. “What are we going to do?”

“Stop him.”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 10:51 AM

They had been too late. Orange had been bleeding out on the floor and Virgil nowhere to be seen when they had arrived, the countdown bringing them closer and closer to the end of everything. They had stabilised the core as quickly as possible, but now they were walking around the station like a tiny waddle of emperor penguins in the dead of winter, jumping at every little sound. Logan was disgusted with himself for making so many mistakes, for not being strong enough to do what had to be done. Now there were only three of them left, and he had a feeling that it would only be a matter of time before that number went down to zero.

“He’s got to be in the vents,” Remus said, glaring at the grate in the corner of the cafeteria, shifting the pipe he’d picked up in his hand. “This is turning into an Alien movie.”

“There’s only one or two survivors in most of those!” Roman hissed in complaint. “I’d rather not have that happen. Four is plenty enough already.”

“I don’t think we’ll get much of a choice in that,” Remus said. “Whatever happens, next time, we do something different.”

“Next time?”

Remus looked back at Logan as dread started to build in the scientist’s gut. “Groundhog Day, you said.”

“Remus,” Logan said, reaching for him, and catching his hand.

“If we lose, you have to warn me next time,” he said, only sparing a few moments to watch him before turning back to keep watch. “You have to let me help you, alright? I know what you’re like.” He smirked. “You can be as stubborn as a crocodile chowing down on a wildebeest.”

“This isn’t a game, Remus,” Logan said. “Losing you -- losing any of you -- hurts.”

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Roman asked.

“He already told you, and you called him a liar.”

“He…” Roman blinked. “You can’t have lived through today already. That’s impossible.”

“I know,” Logan agreed, “and if I wasn’t living it I would agree with you.”

“But-”

The lights started flashing again.

“Oxygen,” Logan muttered as he looked at the light. “Two locations. We won’t be able to fix it in time if we don’t split up.”

Remus nodded. “I’ll take the one in Admin, you two take the other.”

No. No, he couldn’t let Remus go on his own. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t let him die alone. He wouldn’t-

All thoughts in Logan’s head screeched to a halt as Remus pulled him in for a deep, needy kiss. A last kiss.

“I love you,” the love of his life said before he pulled away.

Logan didn’t get the chance to call after him, Roman dragging him towards the oxygen room before he could even breathe. He wouldn’t have been able to say anything though; he felt too numb, knowing Remus was doing this, even though he knew the consequences.

As they entered the room he headed over to the panel next to the filter, entering the code to fix it… and the countdown didn’t stop for a moment.

“... He didn’t make it,” Roman murmured, and as the numbers dropped lower and lower Logan took his hand, squeezing tight as the air thinned, as spots appeared in his vision, as he became dizzy and dropped to his knees. Wheezing, he pressed close to the warm body beside him as consciousness finally slipped through his finger.

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 6:00 AM

The light of the cryodeck grew brighter beyond Logan’s closed eyes as he steadily awoke, his fingers curling. He waited in silent hope for several long and dragging seconds until he heard the familiar sound of Remus falling out of the cryotube. He didn’t know whether to laugh in relief or cry, knowing now that he would have to live through everything all over again.