#also; he has a very strained relationship with his brother First Violin

[soundcrusher]

Was sketching a little bit and came up with a first design for Second Fiddle, the pompous and smarmy aft who's Fools Shot co-captain and one of the reasons why Phoenix (no matter the universe/au) had a hard time with his last crew.

[pyropsychiccollector]

Wanna know about Hinanami, Hinazumi & HiNatsumi Fankids... How many are there?

I'll preface these by saying that I'm not going to number how many kids each girl has with Hajime. :P It's not out of laziness - honestly, I just like how Vergil does it in leaving the "numbers" up to the imagination. Plus, people have their own ideas about how many kids Makoto or Hajime would or should have, so in a way, this method can make quite a few people happy.

... Well, unless you think (ex., Hinanami) should have just one kid, and I give them multiple kids... Then you're outta luck. But, I'll try to think these through.

I'mma weak man. These kids will be heavily based off characters from other series - gives me the chance to "show them off" since I don't have sprites. I'll rattle off two of Hinanami's kids. Again, there could be more, but I'll leave that up to the imagination for now.

I went with Mari for this first one. Mari Hinata~... Mari means "truth; reason". I'm sure you all know about the "That's Wrong!" memes from Goodbye Despair, and truth/reason is pretty important for Hajime and Chiaki both. :3 Her hair color probably takes after her mom's, but Mari grows her hair out more like this. She's got her dad's face and/or his eyes. Her smiles are some combination of her parents' smiles. Mari's a bright, mature young girl that studies and practices hard, but also likes having fun with her friends and especially her little brother. ... Oh, she loves little brother. Very, very much. (❋•‿•❋) Mari enjoys hosting picnics with her brother and friends, and while she's open to taking part in video game multiplayer tournaments whenever their friends get into it, she's not an avid gamer like her mother. Aside from the occasional pranks, she normally has more mature tastes and hobbies. I guess you could say she inherited Hajime's determination and tenacity, but Chiaki's... concept of "natural talent". As such, she's a bit of a perfectionist. Hajime and Chiaki don't hold her to standards like that, they'd rather Mari just be happy - but Mari really wants to make her family proud, bring home only the very best grades, be the best in sports, play perfectly in music, bake the very best cookies, etc... Usually she can keep a lid on her emotions and not go too crazy with her perfectionism, but Mari is pretty passionate about it. After all, she's not making the effort for herself, she's doing it for her loved ones, to give them the best experience in everything~ She's a hard little worker, yes she is~ (❋•‿•❋)

This next one (Sunny, in Omori canon) is Mari's little brother. Nikko, which means "sunshine." His hair color is more like his dad's, and he's got softer facial features like his mother, and perhaps her eyes, too. Nikko definitely inherited the more reserved parts of Hajime and Chiaki's personalities - he doesn't have much energy, gets tuckered out easily, but he's got a vivid imagination. He loves to draw, read manga, play video games, and hang out with his friends and especially his big sister. Unfortunately, he inherited a lot of Hajime's self-esteem issues. Basically, he struggles with a lot of things and has a tendency to give up if he becomes too dissatisfied; also, he compares himself with others too much, and has a habit of putting Mari up on this pedestal that he'll never reach. As they get older and Mari starts prepping for college in high school, Nikko really starts missing her company, and that's why he takes up the violin... so that he can hopefully spend time with her in duet practice, but Mari being who she is and holding him to the same grueling standards as her... the practice does put a strain on their relationship.

Hinazumi probably has at least a couple kids like Hinanami, but for right now I'll name just the one. :P

This boy's name is Takato (Omori canon name: Hero). Mahiru and Hajime went for that name because the Kanji used means "treasure" or "precious thing." Takato definitely takes after his dad in his hair, his face, and his height. Though he does have his mom's eyes. Kinda like Mari, Takato is a mature kid that excels because he works and practices hard. Because some of his friends and half-siblings are reckless, he's developed a knack for First-Aid and taking care of others... though his main passion resides in cooking. Together, he and Mari are kinda like the stand-in parents for the siblings and half-siblings whenever the adults aren't around. There's been lots of good times, but there's also been a fair amount of fights and coverups (like when something gets broken in the house). Takato is often the mediator (or tries to be) while Mari is the "inspiration", or the leader that brings everyone together.

Similar to Hinazumi above, I'm gonna just list the one kid for now. There are probably a couple kids for Hinazuryu, though.

This girl's name is Izumi (Omori canon name: Aubrey), which means "spring" or "fountain." Natsumi felt like going for that name out of sentimentality for the place she, Hajime, and Chiaki used to meet up to play video games at Hope's Peak. Izumi's hair color is more like her dad's, grows it out longer than Natsumi's, but she takes after her mom a lot more in face, eyes, and attitude. Izumi's not a yakuza or anything, but she is a tough girl that doesn't take crap from others~ But she also has a vulnerable side, and confides in Nikko a lot while sitting on swings. Izumi's favorite possession is her baseball bat, which she uses for more than just softball; though she also has a fondness for stuffed animals and... bunnies. ... Yes, she has a pet bunny named "Bun-Bun." Don't you judge her! (❋•‿•❋) Izumi's protective of her family and friends, though she does take it personally if you hurt her, emotionally or otherwise. She's not the sharpest tool in the shed on the academic side of things, but that's okay. To her, there's more important stuff than school stuff - although she does idolize Mari a lot because of how smart and kind she is. (❋•‿•❋)

[loorain]

Sims 4 Legacy Challenge - Fontenot Legacy

For funsies (mainly for myself), I thought it would be fun to start making posts about the drama I get my sims into. Right now I’m playing with a legacy save, this is generations 3 and 4 in one picture. 

Long family intro under the cut if you’re interested.

From left to right (using the first photo) I will introduce the family. First is Sabrina, she’s the daughter of Scarlett standing behind the couch. Sabrina was born thanks to IVF. Sabrina is super into sports and being active, but she also has asthma that sometimes makes things difficult for her. Despite this, she plays rough any time she gets. Very soon, Sabrina will age into a teen and I’m not ready for it 😭 The family is not sure if she’ll grow up to pursue a career in sports, but sports will always be a part of her life.

Sitting in the middle is eldest child Anya. Anya was born to Kira. Kira became a teen mom to Anya, and her relationship with her boyfriend (the father of Anya) became strained the moment he found out about it. He decided he did not want to take much of an active role in raising Anya, so Kira took on the responsibility on her own, and she was a devoted and loving mother to her daughter. Eventually, well into her young adult life, she met her husband, got married, and gave Anya a sibling. Unfortunately, Kira died tragically young from anaphylactic shock caused by a bee sting, leaving Anya and her little brother in the care of their aunt and Anya’s step-father. Anya was an incredibly gifted child, maxing out the violin and singing skill before she aged into a teen. She also became a mildly-famous social media star, recording her own videos and posting them to the internet. Her fame has reached the max level now as a teenager. Anya has been struggling a lot as of more recently, rebelling by oftentimes not going to school, getting involved with boys, and experimenting with substances. Unfortunately, her foolish decisions have resulted in her own unwanted pregnancy. Unlike her mother, Anya could not fathom the idea of becoming a mother at a young age, but the father of her child was adamant about wanting to keep the child. They decided that once she gave birth, she would give their child to him to raise, with a substantial amount of money to assist with expenses, earned from her years of royalty payments. These photos were taken previous to those events. Anya now has a toddler-age son named Colt. Anya hopes to become an actress when she ages into a young adult and leave the mistakes of her teenagedom behind, but hopefully with time she will come back to her son and be the mother Kira was to her. Like her mother, Anya is allergic to bees, so the family is extra-careful to keep her safe.

The young boy standing next to Anya is her little brother Robin. Robin is the son of Anya’s mother Kira and her husband Armani. Robin is a bright and vivacious child who lost his mother at a very young age. Unfortunately, because of this he does not remember much of her, but the family photos around the house and the stories his older family members tell him helps him to visualize her. Robin is diabetic and still working on a system to maintain his blood sugar continuously, but in time I believe he’ll get the hang of it. He is also quite active, but also has a very sweet side. The family is still fostering his interests to see which one will take hold as his biggest passion. Maybe in teenagedom we will have our answers. Though he has big shoes to fill in terms of his incredibly gifted older sister, there is no pressure on him to be anything but himself. 

Again, Scarlett is the woman with gray-dyed hair standing behind the couch. Scarlett is asexual and aromantic but always wanted a child or her own, so she got IVF to have Sabrina. Sabrina gets her sporty-ness from her mother. Scarlett was the golden child of her parents, the older of two girls. Scarlett grew up on the heavier side, but was determined to get in shape and really took up working out as a teen. Her body has transformed a lot through the years, from heavier to getting very slim. She is finally at a size she feels comfortable and strong at - somewhere right in the middle. Scarlett grew up with her little sister Kira and their parents, Maisie Tanaka (and then Akiyama) and Taku Akiyama. Scarlett’s mother also died tragically young thanks to a game glitch that had her die from laughter when I wasn’t looking 🙃 Their father took on full responsibility of raising his two girls, heartbroken when Kira fell pregnant, but supportive of her journey as a mother. Scarlett went through her own years of exploration, dabbling in substances for a brief time. Once she really got into fitness though, she cut all of that junk out and committed to living a clean, healthy life. She was the one that caught on to Anya’s own struggles with substances and confronted her on multiple occasions. She is determined to not let Anya take on all of the mistakes of her generation, but her becoming a teen mom makes Scarlett feel like she’s already losing the battle. Scarlett has a comfortable parenting relationship with her brother-in-law, and the two focus on raising the three kids as best they can. Scarlett is very talented, mastering violin and guitar as a well as singing and fitness, she went to college for computer engineering and had a long successful career at the top level, but once she got bored of that went on to pursue a brief career as a professional athlete. She quit her job after feeling unhappy with it for a while, but years of hard work has made sure the family will be perfectly fine without this regular income. For now, she is focused on the kids.

Finally, Armani married into the family when marrying Scarlett’s younger sister Kira. They were deeply in love, and even before engagement he became an important father-figure to Anya and they grew close. He was already a bit older than Kira, who was in her young adulthood while he is a full-fledged adult, but nothing could tear them apart. He was ecstatic to know he would become a father and the two of them happily welcomed Robin into the family. When Kira died, Armani was devastated. He knew he could never love another woman like he loved her. It has taken him a while, but he has casually seen other women for some time. There was one woman he was getting a bit closer to, but the relationship fell apart and they went their separate ways. Armani has recently found out he is a father to a young girl, Matilda, after a casual hookup with her mother Robin (coincidentally the same name as his son, NOT PLANNED). They are not looking for a serious relationship, but he is a committed father to all of his kids and wants to be there for her as much as he can. She lives with her mother and is a young child now, so he does his best to see her regularly. 

And that’s the fam! If anyone is interested I’d be more than happy to give more information of the previous gens, including my legacy starter Alison Fontenot. There’s lots of stories still to be told!  

[itsthenovelteafactor]

Fall of the House of Hargreeves

So I mentioned a while back in my Superhero Gothic meta that there were a number of parallels between the season one finale of The Umbrella Academy and the Edgar Allen Poe short story The Fall of the House of Usher and that I could probably write a whole meta on that if anyone was interested. Shout out and love to the anon who requested that I do that! 

It’s been a minute since I’ve done one of these long form metas, but I am very excited to get back to writing about two of my favorite things: gothic literature and chaotic superheroes. 

Part I: The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher (which I’ll call House of Usher for convenience for the rest of this meta) is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe first published in 1939. It is considered a classic gothic short story, and deals with themes of family, madness, inheritance, and isolation. 

Since it’s in the public domain, I’ll go ahead and link a pdf to the story here. If you aren’t interested in reading, though, or just want a refresher, the story follows an unnamed narrator going to visit his ill friend, a man named Roderick Usher in his isolated (and very spooky) family estate. Upon arrival, he discovers that Roderick’s sister, Madeline Usher, is also ill, and has a tendency to fall into dreamlike trances.

Over the course of the visit, Roderick confesses to the narrator that not only does he believe the house is alive, but that it is connected to the fate of the family which, at this point, only includes Roderick and Madeline. He later comes and tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and enlists his help in order to bury her in the family tomb beneath the house. They do so, but for the next couple of days Roderick is suspiciously...on edge. 

Then, one dark and stormy night, Roderick shows up in the narrator’s room incredibly worked up, and throws open the window, and starts low-key (read: high-key) having a breakdown. The narrator is unsure as to why until he hears ripping and tearing sounds coming from somewhere in the house. These ripping and tearing sounds are revealed to be Madeline whom Roderick and the narrator buried alive whose appearance scares Roderick to death, right before she collapses, also dead from the strain of tearing through the foundations of the house.

The narrator decides this would probably be a good time to leave and is very much right about that because as soon as he leaves, the house (which was already in pretty bad shape) splits in two and collapses into the lake surrounding it. The end.

Part II: Umbrella Academy as Gothic

So, there are probably a couple similarities between House of Usher and The Umbrella Academy season one that stand out right off the bat, but I’d like to start by taking a step back to talk about thematic parallels between the two works. If you’d like to read a very long winded explanation of why I consider The Umbrella Academy to be a modern gothic tale, I have a really long meta about it. 

If not, here’s a quick overview:

Gothic does not have a clearly defined set of requirements as a genre, but its purpose is to explore the contradictions and the failing edifices of convention in a way that is dramatic and often fantastic. 

Gothic fiction plays with reality, but usually in a way that is representative of the characters and story. 

It often situates itself during times of great change, as there is something haunting about the irreversible passage of time, particularly for those that struggle to acknowledge it and hide behind conventions that have grown increasingly irrelevant. 

Poe is considered one of the classic authors of gothic fiction (though the genre significantly predates him), and is decidedly one of the best well-known examples of it. 

The Umbrella Academy is a family drama about former child superheroes dealing with their trauma while trying to prevent an apocalypse that their every move seems to set further in motion. It explores the messy and complicated relationships between siblings who have been abused and pit against each other for years. And yeah, it’s fun with great music and talking gorillas and dance sequences, but the premise is kind of hard for me to read as anything other than gothic.

Part III: Parallels

Like House of Usher, the first season of Umbrella Academy takes place in a massive, largely empty mansion where siblings gather with disastrous consequences. Both works explore a family that is past their prime and disconnected from the present. They also both explore the psychological toll of isolation, the consequences of tyrannical family rules, and why it is a really bad idea to lock your unstable sister in a basement and just leave her there. 

Let’s start with some thematics parallels. Everyone in House of Usher is extremely isolated, and the absence of anything resembling the modern world amongst the house full of relics is part of the horror. All of the siblings in Umbrella Academy are defined by their isolation as well, physically (Luther, Five, and Ben), socially (Vanya, Diego, Klaus, and Allison), and emotionally (legit all of them). It is this isolation that drives the conflict of the story, feeding into every characters’ choices. 

In both House of Usher and Umbrella Academy, the main characters are trapped in this isolated state as a direct result of their familial legacy. In House of Usher, the titular house is a character itself, a manifestations of the obligations Madeline and Roderick hold as members of an aristocratic family that is so far divorced from wealth and status that it keeps them from ever fully moving on and rejoining the real world. In Umbrella Academy, the characters are similarly trapped by their familial legacy, this time in the form of the specter of their abusive father, and the roles he created for them. Like the Usher siblings, the Hargreeves have no way of maintaining the roles their family left out for them – they were never given the tools to function in the real world and it cripples them – but are trapped in them regardless. 

Part IV: The Woman* in White 

*As of the time I am writing this, nothing has been said regarding Vanya’s gender identity being written to match Elliot Page’s. I am using she/her pronouns for Vanya, as that is what has been used for the character thus far. 

Aside from thematic parallels, however, the most direct connection between the short story and series, and in fact the reason I was inspired to write this meta in the first place is the way both of the stories end: with a sister trapped beneath the house clawing her way out to face her brother(s and sister) and creating a disruption of the family legacy so great that the entire estate crumbles.

Madeline Usher is described at this point as wearing a white dress, strained with the injuries she sustained from physically breaking herself out of the basement tomb her brother buried her alive in. Vanya, of course, becomes at this moment the White Violin, and though she has not yet had the epic violin-music-so-powerful-it-changes-the-color-of-her-clothes scene, the principal still stands.

As characters, there are also a couple of noteworthy parallels between Vanya and Madeline. The narrator at one point describes “the illness of the lady Madeline had lone been beyond the help of her doctors. She seemed to care about nothing” (Poe, 27). The reader never knows what illness precisely is the cause of Madeline’s apparent madness, but we see the effects. It dulls her emotional responses to situations and leaves her withdrawn and powerless. Similarly, we learn over the course of the first season of The Umbrella Academy that the medication Reginald Hargreeves prescribed Vanya for her anxiety is actually a power suppressor for her abilities that has much the same effect – because they are strengthened by extreme emotion, the drugs numb Vanya’s emotional responses and deprive her of the ability to access her powers.

Additionally, the final scene of the story story shows Madeline escaping her tomb during a great storm and going to face her brother who put her there, the storm itself being a metaphor for her anguish that tears the house apart. Vanya’s connection to the destruction of the house is a bit more literal, but it is similarly a manifestation of her anguish and trauma. She sees flashbacks of her siblings being distant and rude to her in their childhoods and the anger she feels rips the foundation apart. 

It is not entirely clear in the short story why Roderick buries Madeline alive – there are a lot of theories: he genuinely believed she was dead, he wanted her out of the picture, he himself was succumbing to the madness of the house, etc – but the guilt he feels for doing so manifests as him hearing her scraping her way out for several days preceding her escape. The justification for Vanya’s imprisonment is more clear in text, but the series of flashbacks make it clear that it is not just the imprisonment that has driven her over the edge. It it guilt for her sister, anger at her abusive upbringing that is much more easily directed at her siblings than her father, the newfound emotions experienced by being off her medication for the first time since childhood, Leonard’s manipulations, etc. 

In both cases, amidst a spiral of emotions and experiences folding in on themselves, Vanya and Madeline experience a single, cold moment of clarity that drives them to escape, and it is that moment of clarity that breaks the shadow of the family legacy. They observe the situation as it stands and realize that it is completely unacceptable, and it is the realization that leads everything to crumble. Because gothic literature is focused on the complexities of maintaining that which is out of date, the realization that things must change can break the spell.

Part V: Conclusions 

As per usual, I have no great theories on why this is or what it means. One of the reasons I love gothic literature is that it is rife with meaning that can be more easily felt than deciphered. I welcome any and all interpretations, theories, (politely worded) disagreements, and comments. 

Thanks for taking the time to read; I have a lot of fun doing these. Enjoy spooky season, y’all. 💛

[tippenfunkaport]

Glimmer & Bow Childhood Headcanons

I just love the idea that Glimmer and Bow have known each other since they were kids, as long as Catra and Adora, so in honor of today's @glimbow-week-2020 prompt, Childhood / Memories, here are my headcanons about their childhood...

(If you vibe with any of these, I have a fic series of Bow and Glimmer as kids called Glowing Up you will probably like because it's based on all of these! AO3 and FF.net links in bio!)

When I was writing Glowing Up, I realized that so much of figuring out the story of Bow and Glimmer as kids is trying to figure out how this little kid from a pacifist family became radicalized as a soldier for the rebellion which sounds really dramatic when you put it that way but that is, very literally, Bow's whole origin story. I think it was a gradual process and a result of the combination of seeing and experiencing some of the things the Horde was doing first hand, realizing that someone had to do something and that his dads were wrong about the war but also grew out of a desire to help / spend more time with Glimmer.

They met around the same age as Catadora, when Glimmer was 6 and Bow was 7 because the show loves parallels like that.

Bow was obsessed with pirates when he was little (which is why Glimmer is surprised when his dads say he wasn’t playing pirates). Hence the whole Sea Hawk situation.

Glimmer's mom used to make her dress really frilly and princess-y and she hated it. All those rompers she wears now are a rebellion against that.

Ditto her hair. Angella used to make her keep her hair longer "because it looks nicer" and she hated it and hacks it all off now at every chance. The first time she got a really short haircut, it was because Bow did it for her, knowing Angella adored him so she wouldn't be able to get that mad about it.

Part of the reason Glimmer had trouble making friends is that, as half-angel and a princess of Bright Moon, her mother both limited her exposure to other kids and, when she did meet other kids her age, they were intimidated / jealous / not all that nice to her.

Bow on the other hand makes friends super easily and could have a ton of friends in the rebellion... but is too loyal to Glimmer to hang out with people who were mean to her so it's always mostly just the two of them.

Glimmer didn't get her powers right away... but she did get them much earlier than Angella wanted her to because she and Bow accidentally-on-purpose snuck up to the moonstone so she could charge that first time.

Once Glimmer learned to teleport, that was when her and Angella's relationship really started to get strained because then she wouldn't listen or stay put ever and it drove Angella nuts.

Glimmer has definitely teleported in on Bow while he was trying to get dressed or do something... private in his room at least once.

Bow's the baby of his family and the rest of his siblings are older and all kind of paired off (esp the twins) so he was often alone. He's actually closest to his oldest brother (yes, Dirk, if you've read An Outside Perspective) because he's usually the one babysitting him (and by that I mean, allegedly babysitting him while Bow snuck off to hang out at Bright Moon). It's when his older brother finally moves out that Bow has to invent the fake school and move to Bright Moon because he no longer has that excuse for going off to the rebellion whenever he wants.

George and Lance never told any of Bow's siblings about the whole soldier for the rebellion thing because they felt it wasn't their place. They are all super surprised when they not only find out he’s nothing like they thought he was but that he’s dating the Queen!

All of Bow's siblings play an instrument. He plays the violin but has a sister who plays the lute and has always liked it and that’s why he wanted to learn that too.

Trans Bow? Trans Glimmer? My take on either is a) any transition would be done with magic b) it's already canon any couples that want them can have biological kids on Etheria regardless of sex or gender and c) there's no bigotry on Etheria anyway so everybody wins!

[samatheia229]

PJO Mortal AU (Solangelo-centric)

 The Olympia Family

(AKA the family with so much chaos and drama, they would have made an even more popular reality TV show than Keeping Up with the Kardashians)

Thalia Grace - 24

An ambassador of the Artemis Foundation

Badass

Won't hesitate to throw hands at anyone who messes with her family.

Very protective of her little brother and cousins.

Not afraid to speak her mind and fight for what she thinks is right.

Has a kind of love-hate relationship with her stepmother Hera. While Thalia respects and acknowledges Hera as her stepmother, she is a free spirit, and hates being chained down by the old-fashioned rules Hera imposes.

Briefly dated Luke Castellan for 2 years, but broke up due to reasons. The break up was mutual and Luke still remains as one of Thalia's closest friends.

Deadly with a bow and arrow (she'd be hunting down hunters like they hunt animals for living if it weren't for the fact that murder is unfortunately illegal).

Jason Grace - 19

Sophomore at Uni (double majors in Management and Aerodynamic Engineering)

Flight school graduate

Heir to Jupiter Airlines (given that his father doesn't plan to retire anytime soon, Jason is considering becoming a pilot in the meantime)

Hera's favourite child since he actually follows her rules (He bends them slightly every now and then, but she doesn't need to know that).

Regular at the Manhattan Chess Club

Has an intense rivalry with his older cousin Percy that's been going on for like 10 years now... (his life goal is to beat Percy. They're currently at a stalemate of 3795 wins each.)

Very protective of Nico. He almost had an aneurysm when he heard that grumpy, little stay-away-or-I’ll-death-glare-you Nico had a boyfriend. A boyfriend.

Has a best friend Leo Valdez who is an engineer student with an eccentric personality and is a mischievous menace. His childhood friend, Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano, is an athlete in javelin-throwing and currently resides in her hometown in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but they still keep in touch. 

Dating Piper McLean, the 19-year-old founder of the Beautifully Imperfect Foundation

Zeus Olympia

CEO of Jupiter Airlines

Drama Queen TM

Favours Thalia more despite Jason being his heir and enables most of her rebellious antics, much to Hera's chagrin.

Can be rather childish and petty ("It's been 43 years, and I've long since given up on expecting him to change," Hades deadpanned.)

As the youngest child of the Olympia family and with his father on Death's doorstep, Zeus was given a lot of free reign, hence his playboy tendencies. He eventually did settle down with Hera Junos, the single daughter of one of the oldest families in Greece. Hera was fond of children but was unable to sire her own due to medical issues, which led to Zeus getting a mistress (with Hera's begrudged consent), Beryl Grace, the daughter of Hera's family chef. Beryl has always had a rather strange personality and an unhealthy obsession with alcohol. A few years after giving birth to Thalia and Jason Grace respectively, her liver gave way and she died before they could find a solution.

Hera Olympia (formerly Junos)

Zeus' wife

The kids call her ‘Aunt Ra’

Jason is her favourite child because he actually listens to her

Coming from both a high-class and old family, Hera was raised to be a perfect lady (a lady should not wear pants or speak out of turn etc. etc.) and has a rather old-fashioned way of thinking, enforcing strict rules in her household.

She still loves Thalia, but because the way Thalia acts goes against everything Hera was taught, her relationship with her stepdaughter is a bit strained. Hera now mostly lets Thalia do her own thing, but every now and then might still be a bit controlling. She's trying, okay?

Bianca di Angelo - 19

Sophomore at Uni (majors in Journalism and English Literature)

Works part-time at the Artemis Foundation

Generally quiet and shy, but has a tendency to fuss over small details.

Very responsible and possibly the only one with a brain cell among the cousins. (Proteus and Triton don’t even live in the same continent half of the time; Kym doesn't give a damn; Thesi is too nice to reprimand them; Ro‘s too busy fawning over her fiancé; Hero is more likely to fan the flames than quell them; Thalia, Jason, Percy and Nico are always either competing against each other or breaking the Internet with their antics again; Hazel is pretty innocent but has a slight vindictive streak so caution must be exercised; and Tyson and Estelle are innocent beans of sunshine that must be protected).

She can be bold when she wants to be, as well as reckless. 

Has her father's habit of gesturing with her hands while talking and when she is on edge.

Ace

Nico di Angelo - 17

High school Senior

Heir to Pluto Corp.

Resident Emo in the family (“I'm not emo!” “Your only-dark-clothing phase says otherwise.” “It's not a phase, Persephone!” “Like father, like son.”)

Stubborn AF

Can't deal with all his overprotective sisters and cousins

Currently pining over William Solace ("Shut up!")

Avid gamer, plays digital games, card games (his childhood and to-this-day favourite is Myth-o-magic, which is one of the reasons he approves of Hazel's boyfriend, Frank) and all games in general (he visits the arcade monthly to make sure he's still 1st place in every game there)

Has a tendency to hold grudges and gestures with his hands while talking or when on edge, a habit he shares with his father and older sister.

Plays the violin (Persephone had introduced him to it, and he'd taken a liking to it)

Hazel Olympia (formerly Levesque) - 14

High school Freshman

Aspiring artist (she’s won thirty different art competitions locally in the span of three years and placed silver last year in the Chelsea International Fine Art Competition under an anonymous name because she wanted to win by her own merit rather than rely on the Olympia name. Hades plans to surprise her by giving her own exhibition hall for her next birthday.)

Regular at the Manhattan Riding Club

Has a bit of a vindictive streak in her that was probably born out of spite due to her upbringing

Exudes a powerful aura of passive aggressiveness, but is also incredibly kind and magnanimous

Has the ability is summon, manipulate and detect precious minerals, as well as the ability to place curses on them. (This knowledge is confidential and hidden from the public)

Loves her family with all her heart, and literally no one is more protective of Nico than she is

She was the first but also last person to know about Nico's boyfriend (First because she goes to the same school and is not dense, thank you very much, but technically last because she was the last person that Nico officially told since Will is terrified of her for some reason, something about her being 'the FINAL BOSS'; this amuses Hazel to no end).

Has a very cute crush on Frank Zhang, a HS Junior who’s an archer and animal lover (it’s mutual, by the way).

Hades Olympia 

CEO of Pluto Corp., one of the largest companies in the mining industry.

#DONE with life and all the people in it, particularly his crazy family

Functions solely on his children, Persephone and caffeine, usually caffeine because the other two are often the cause of his high blood pressure

Broods a lot (”I don’t brood.” “Yes, you do.”)

Deadpan 200% of the time and takes no shit

Loves all his children equally and definitely does not have a favourite (it’s Hazel, in case you’re wondering) 

As the eldest son of the three brothers, Hades was betrothed and wed to his childhood best friend Persephone Terrafield by their fathers in an attempt at a business partnership (Spoiler Alert: It didn’t work out in end). Admittedly, Hades and Persephone did have a small infatuation with each other when they were younger, but it never grew into anything serious, and as they grew older he saw her as more of a sibling than a lover and vice versa. After the inevitable death of his father, Hades and Persephone divorced but literally nothing in their relationship changed since they’d never loved each other romantically in the first place. When Hades decided to court their mutual friend, Italian diplomat Maria di Angelo, Persephone supported both of them wholeheartedly. In the span of the seventeen years they were together, Maria gave Hades two beautiful children, Bianca and Nico. Unfortunately, Maria passed away after being on life support for two years in result of a plane crash when Nico was 6. 

In the two years when Maria was hospitalized, Hades was so desperate to find his beloved a cure that he sought out a witch doctor that was rumoured to be in New Orleans. Marie Levesque, the aforementioned witch, was a greedy, manipulative person with a deluded and unstable mind, who drugged Hades and essentially raped him because she thought his spawn would have the perfect blood for experimenting magic on. She used magic to wipe his memory of the previous night’s events and handed him an ‘antidote’ that was actually just water dyed a milky white. After ten years, Marie finally revealed to Hades a 12-year-old Hazel, who looked miserable, was suffering from malnutrition, wounds, burns etc. and had a supernatural ability which Marie proudly said she had bestowed to her via dark magic. Hades was absolutely mortified, revolted and a bunch of other things. He filed a lawsuit against Marie, charging her for rape, child neglect, child abuse and human experimentation, as well as taking permanent custody over Hazel Levesque (now Hazel Olympia). 

Persephone Terrafield

CEO of jewelry enterprise The Red Pomegranate which was a sub-branch of Pluto Corps. The enterprise has the highest production rate in the US. 

Self-designated matchmaker for Hades (Hades always tells her she should focus on her own love life first, but he’s just an ungrateful brat)

Current life goal is to fulfill Maria di Angelo’s dying wish: help Hades find love again. (Mission status: still at Square 1 because Hades has some trust issues after the Levesque Incident)

The kids all call her ‘Aunt Seph’, but she loves the children as though they were her own

She and Hades often joke that they would totally still be married if they didn’t see each other as siblings and platonic soulmates and she hadn’t had her sexual awakening of being lesbian.

She lives with Hades and the children as she finds it too much of a hassle to move into her own place, not to mention lonely (with the kids at school and doing club activities, someone needs to make sure Hades gets exposure to the sun anyway).

Persephone is the daughter of an unnamed businessman and Demeter Terrafield, an agricultural revolutionist and healthy-cereal-obssessed woman.

Her mother and Hades have this sort of weird rivalry going on whenever Demeter visits; Demeter hates Hades because he hates healthy cereal, and apparently anyone who hates healthy cereal isn’t good enough to be hanging around her daughter, so she always replaces all his coffee with decaf and puts the healthiest cereal she can find on his bedside table every morning; in retaliation, Hades will deliberately eat the most sugary sweets he can find in front of her and locks her out of their personal greenhouse. (The glass walls are made of the strongest glass he could find and the door is locked by multiple manual and digital locks.)

Hestia Olympia

CEO of WarmHearth Interior Design Agency (WHIDA)

Everyone's favourite person, indefinitely

Has the infinite patience of a goddess

Gentle, kind, very wise, gives great advice

The kids call her ‘Aunt Tia’ 

Often fondly exasperated by her younger brothers' antics (because no, just because they’re grown men now does not mean they are going to stop their childhood feuds since despite their protests, they are all petty AF), but once she snaps, they all line up like toy soldiers and behave nicely.

Knits a lot. Most of her carpets, quilts, bags, scarves etc. are handmade.

She looks relatively innocent, but don't be fooled. There's a hidden arsonist in her that is always ready to come out when she's angry.

Hestia has a 'I'm not mad, just extremely disappointed and upset' Mom Look that has sent people bawling their eyes out and begging for her forgiveness with just one glance

She is the oldest of the Olympia siblings, but as a child had a frail and weak body. Kronos wanted to get rid of her since she was 'useless and couldn't be wed off', but Rhea, their mother, begged and pleaded Kronos to let her live. For some unknown reason, Kronos complied.

Her brothers are all very protective of her

YOU DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, MAKE HER ANGRY

[current-mcr-news]

Behind the Scenes: The Umbrella Academy - Episode 1

BRANDON JENKINS: In 1953, a 25 year old director named Phil Tucker had $16,000 and just four days to make his first sci-fi film. The plot? A creature comes to Earth with a death ray and wipes out all of humanity, except for eight people who are immune to the creature’s weapons. He called the film Robot Monster.

Movie clip: With the swiftness of a deadly cosmic ray, the Earth is inundated by indestructible moon monsters. Their ghastly mission? Death for all humans.

B: The film was so low budget, Tucker couldn’t even afford to get alien costumes, so he had the monster in a gorilla suit with a TV for a head.

Movie clip: What astounding technical developments are being made to protect mankind?

B: The release was a disaster. It was widely panned. Its lasting legacy would’ve been that it was one of the worst movies of all time. But in the early 2000s, a kid from New Jersey with a knack for drawing comics saw a picture of the Robot Monster and it stuck with him.

Gerard Way: I’ve never even actually seen the film, but I saw pictures of this creature over the years, and they’ve got a TV set, kind of circular space looking head, and they have a gorilla body, and I was like, “I want a superhero that’s kind of inspired by this.”

B: The kid’s name was Gerard. He’d been writing comics since he was 15 and was on his way to making it as a professional comic book artist.

WAY: I went to art school and I was an illustration and cartooning major, so comics were kind of like my major, and I was like this perpetual intern. I interned at DC, I pitched a cartoon to Cartoon Network, and then I landed a job as a toy designer at this place called FunHaus in Hoboken. But that’s like right when the band took off.

B: That band, Gerard’s side hustle, would become massive alt-punk sensation, My Chemical Romance. Seemingly overnight, My Chemical Romance and Gerard were making some of the most popular music in the world, getting spins on terrestrial radio, dominating music video countdowns, they were even nominated for a Grammy. But while he traveled across the globe leading a rockstar life, Gerard kept up with his first love - drawing.

WAY: So I really missed comics and we were in Japan and we did a signing at a shop, and one of the fans gave me a little marker set and it was Copic markers. They were like the greatest markers that I’d ever used before, and so I started to create Luther.

B: Luther, a superhero with a gorilla body and space helmet who lives on the moon was the very first character Gerard drew in what would become his hit comic The Umbrella Academy. I’m Branden Jenkins and this is Behind the Scenes: The Umbrella Academy. This season, we’re going backstage and inside the making of season 2. The first season of the show, based on Gerard’s comic of the same name, launched in February of last year and quickly became one of the most beloved series on Netflix. Now it’s back for its second season with bigger effects, bigger characters, and bigger drama. We’re going to catch you up on everything that’s gone down in The Umbrella Academy universe so far, and we’ll spend the next five episodes breaking down how the team shot the multi-million dollar superhero production across two countries, and how in the midst of a global pandemic, they managed to finish it from inside their own homes. But first, we wanted to take a look back and dig into the roots of The Umbrella Academy. So today, I’m catching up with the creators of the comic and the guy tasked with making the TV series. We talk about how the graphic novel was adapted for your screens.

B: Alright, so if you haven’t watched season 1, go back and watch season 1 on Netflix. For those of you who just need a quick recap: At 12pm on October 1, 1989, a supernatural event occurred. Forty-three babies across the planet were born to mothers who were not pregnant just seconds before. The world was confused, intrigued, and one eccentric billionaire wanted to find the babies and adopt them. He ended up with seven. Each baby had a superpower, and what do you do when you’re a billionaire with a group of kids with superpowers? You train them to become a crime fighting family.

Reginald: I give you the inaugural class of The Umbrella Academy!

B: When Gerard Way started creating the members of the Academy, he started with the most fundamental material. 

WAY: I created a list of all the things that interested me. It could be anything from ouija board, fortune teller, spaceman, gorilla body, just a list of stuff.

B: Then he drew from that list and started creating these characters. All in all, he would draw seven. The first, Luther, the half-man half-gorilla, was the team’s defective leader. He was also the child closest with their father. 

Luther: Just at Dad’s favorite spot. Allison: Dad had a favorite spot? Luther: Yeah, you know, under the oak tree. We used to sit out there all the time, none of you ever did that?

B: Next, he created Klaus and Allison, the boy who talks to the dead and the girl who can make people bend to her will with just a few words.

WAY: Klaus, he has some pretty serious addiction and addiction is something that I dealt with in my life. He’s also a little bit spooky and supernatural, and my personality in My Chemical Romance was very similar to that.

Klaus: I can’t just call Dad in the afterlife and be like, “Dad, could you just stop playing tennis with Hitler for a moment and take a quick call?” Luther: Since when? That’s your thing. Klaus: I’m not in the right frame of mind! Allison: You’re high? Klaus: Yeah yeah! I mean, how are you not listening to this nonsense?

WAY: He was kind of my version of Doctor Strange. I find Allison to be the one that is easiest to write and I put the most of myself into Allison.

B: Her superpower is that she can make you do pretty much anything she tells you with a few magic words.

Allison: I heard a rumor you want to be my friend. I heard a rumor that you like Bradley. I heard a rumor that you left me alone. I heard a rumor that you stop crying.

WAY: There’s a bit of a tragic nature that comes with her power.

B: Allison, out of all of her super powered siblings, is the only one grasping for a normal life - career, husband, children. In a way, she’s the most human. The fourth character Gerard created is Diego, a guy with an uncanny ability to throw knives. He’s also stubborn as hell.

WAY: I knew early on he was gonna be the one that was gonna be really difficult with the leader. I figured that.

Diego: You know, you of all people should be on my side here, Number One. Luther: I am warning you. Diego: After everything he did to you, he had to ship you a million miles away. Luther: Diego, stop talking! Diego: That’s how much he couldn’t stand the sight of you!

B: The fifth character, a kid who can travel through time and space, who simply goes by Five. Despite the other character growing up into adults, he has remained a teenager, sort of.

WAY: He was a time traveler who then got stuck in his young body when he traveled back in time because time travel is complicated. 

Klaus: Where are you going? Five: To get a decent cup of coffee. Allison: Do you even know how to drive? Five: I know how to do everything.

WAY: So then came The Horror.

B: The Horror, aka Ben, aka the dead sibling who only Klaus can see.

WAY: I imagined this character that had all these monsters living under his skin that came from another dimension. And he was very tortured to me. It actually kind of hurts him and it’s scary to him.

Ben: Do I really have to do this? Klaus: Come on, Ben. There’s more guys in the vault. Ben: I didn’t sign up for this.

B: And then finally, Number Seven, Vanya, who seemingly has no powers besides playing the violin.

WAY: I was at this cafe in Manhattan when I was living in Brooklyn, and it was called The Sidewalk Cafe I believe, and on the wall they had a white violin just as decoration. And I remember looking at that and thinking to myself, “That would be a cool superhero.” And Vanya was always kind of designed to be a character who wasn’t special, that was going to transform into that.

Vanya: Look, if I was special I would’ve been in The Umbrella Academy. I’m so sorry you got stuck with the ordinary one.

B: These seven adopted siblings forced together by supernatural events formed The Umbrella Academy. Both the original comic and season 1 of the show start at the funeral for the Academy’s patriarch, the eccentric Sir Reginald Hargreeves. We learn that while the siblings ventured away from home as teenagers, after years of fighting and a toxic upbringing, they’ve returned home, back together for the first time in years, and all their dysfunctions and old conflicts come bubbling to the surface.

Diego: He was a bad person and a worse father. The world’s better off without him. Allison: Diego! Diego: My name is Number Two.

B: When he started writing the comic, Gerard was focused on his own strained relationships. He saw his band as his own dysfunctional family at the time.

WAY: When you’re a baby band, you’re in this van and it’s like a submarine but it’s smaller. It’s like a closet that you're all living in and sometimes you’re going on seventeen hour drives, and you have very strong personalities. This dynamic starts to develop between all of the members and you really do kind of become a dysfunctional family. Like, there’s times where I felt like I was the mom.

GABRIEL BA: They know each other’s weaknesses.

B: Turns out, family dynamics was a theme with everyone who joined the Umbrella team, including the illustrator and Umbrella’s co-creator, a Brazilian artist named Gabriel Ba.

BA: And sometimes they say it to hurt the other intentionally and they do that a lot in Umbrella because they’re all angry at each other all the time. And even though I have a great relationship with my brother, I have that. We have a younger sister as well, so she’s very opinionated and she’s strong. I wouldn’t say we fight a lot, but sometimes we- I just know how to hurt her if I want to say something.

B: Family is present in Gabriel’s life more than for most people. He works every day with his twin brother, fellow comic book artist, Fabio Moon. But his work made him an unconventional choice for Umbrella.

BA: In the mid 90s, we moved away from superheroes. We, my brother and I, we figured the type of story that we liked to tell and wanted to tell was more real life, day by day life relationship, this kind of stuff. 

B: Gabriel grew up in Brazil and now lives in Sao Paulo. His brother had been making experimental comics for well over a decade.

BA: But The Umbrella Academy was a superhero book with this day by day life relationship drama, and that was really interesting for me.

B: What excited Gerard about Gabriel was his style. His characters weren’t macho. They didn’t have big ripped muscles. They’re the kind of comics you could imagine being drawn in the margins of a notebook. There's nothing stereotypically super about them.

BA: It was not a straightforward American superhero artstyle. It was a mix of European and more fluid, but also could handle action and crazy stuff. And also, I can’t deny The Umbrella Academy was my first paid job in the U.S.

B: Wow.

BA: For the first ten years of our career, my brother and I were making comics for free. Just for ourselves, just getting [?], if there were any. So when I got the invitation to get involved with The Umbrella Academy it was this whole package of factors.

WAY: Gabriel climbing on board was a huge thing for us because he’s such a fantastic artist. He brought these characters to life. The interesting thing about Gabriel,  he didn’t have to make Umbrella Academy. He was doing really well on his own and making really experimental artistic comics, but he liked the idea so much that he said, “I’m gonna do superheroes.”

BA: The superhero aspect of The Umbrella Academy is really just a layer in the story. I like the development of these characters, their struggles, their relationships, there’s romance, there’s deception.

Vanya: You are unbelievable, you’re trying to dig up dirt on a guy I like? Who does that? Allison: Look, I’ve had my fair share of stalkers and creeps, I don’t trust him! Vanya: You mean you don’t trust me.

BA: And it had the fun explosions and action scenes. So that’s the good mix.

B: The first book of the comic is called Apocalypse Suite. After their father’s death, The Umbrella Academy gets a warning from their time traveling brother that the world is going to end in 10 days. They don’t know how, they just know that it will. And now, back together for the first time, they’ve got to figure out how to save the planet and learn how to look past their differences. Which sounds dope, right? But when it first published back in 2007, it wasn’t immediately clear that people would dig it.

WAY: So one of the things I was dealing with when Umbrella Academy came out was a lot of people in the press before the comic came out saying things like, “Here’s a musician and he’s writing a comic.” They didn’t really know my background, they didn’t know that I’d written at 15, they didn’t know I went to art school. All they knew was that I was the singer in this rock band that a lot of teenagers liked. So, all I really wanted was a fair shake. I didn’t write The Umbrella Academy to become a TV show or a film. I wrote it to be an amazing comic. But we knew that first issue, and we knew it was good, and we knew that if you didn't get it by the first seven pages you just weren’t gonna like it, and I was totally fine with that. But then it came out and then the response started to happen and then reviewers loved it and people loved it.

B: The comic went on to win an Eisner award, which is like the Oscar of comics, and pretty quickly, Gerard gets an offer to turn the comic into a full length movie.

WAY: I got swept up in the Hollywood thing.

B: But it doesn’t pan out.

WAY: That’s actually one of the reasons why there was such a big gap between comics, is because I was really, you know, I was trying- at the end of the day, I was trying to be helpful. If this was gonna be a movie version of what Gabriel and I had made, I wanted it to be great so I put in a lot of time and it kept me away from the comics.

B: But then Netflix hits you up and is interested in making this into a series.

WAY: Right.

B: I guess I'm curious, as someone who just initially wanted to make just a really good comic, what about turning that project into a television show was interesting?

WAY: Straight up, I want to make a great comic and that’s all I’m really interested in. If I can write great comics, you’ll have great material to make TV shows. So let me focus on that.

B: In other words, Gerard wanted to focus on the comics and let someone else adapt it.

WAY: And that’s when Steve came in and he changed things and he ran with it. 

STEVE BLACKMAN: I’m Steve Blackman, I’m the showrunner and I’m executive producer.

B: Steve is a master at adapting books, comics, and film into television. Before The Umbrella Academy, he’d worked on shows like Fargo, Legion, and Altered Carbon, all of which originated from other sources. So he knew coming in that adaptation can be tricky work.

BLACKMAN: At first, I think Gerard and Gabriel, who co-did this with him, were very protective of the work like parents of their baby. And I think I had to prove to them initially that I would love and protect this child that they had worked on for so many years, so here I am, an outsider coming in and they were very nice to me, but I could see there was like, “Is this guy gonna totally screw up our baby here?”

B: Is it something that you can come to the table with Gerard and be like, “Hey, here’s my arsenal of adaptations, this is why it will work.”

BLACKMAN: Yeah, I worked on the show Fargo for three years. Fargo was obviously based on the Joel and Ethan Coen movie from 1996. I don’t think Gerard had ever seen my shows, I don’t think he watches a lot of television, so for him, it didn’t matter what I’d done before. It’s just what I was gonna do in the here and now on this show. I wasn’t intimidated by the challenge but I really did sort of have a sense of I know which direction I’m going.

B: What was your first initial reaction? Were you sort of like, “Oh, maybe I’ve never done anything like this, or this does feel familiar to other work  that I’ve done.” Or, “I can do this, this is right up my alley.”

BLACKMAN: Well, what I liked about it from the beginning was what I saw in the subject matter and I saw a dysfunctional family. But right away, I was very inspired by Wes Anderson’s work. The Royal Tenenbaums is one of those movies that really was always something I truly loved. So, I saw that in this show.

Five: An entire square block, 42 bedrooms, 19 bathrooms, but not a single drop of coffee. Vanya: Dad hated caffeine.  Klaus: Well he hated children too and he had plenty of us.

BLACKMAN: It was a family show, it was a very relatable dysfunctional family show that I wanted to tell.

WAY: Steve’s a great collaborator. Steve Blackman, the showrunner, he had a vision. I respected him and his vision. I realized it was gonna be different from the comic, and I let him run with it because he cared deeply about it.

BLACKMAN: My first conversation with Gerard over the phone, I said to him, I told him one of the words was subversive, we wanted to subvert the expectation of what a superhero show could be because there were many other shows, either on the air or coming down the pipe to be next, and we wanted this to stand out. And that was sort of the first hurdle with me, was to say to Gerard that I could do that and I could definitely make this thing feel special. And right away he said, “Okay, yeah. You get it.”

B: You’ve adapted something like Fargo which is a unique adaptation, right? You’re adapting from a different medium, like a feature film. Does that change the way you understand adaptation?

BLACKMAN: At a story point of view, no, I don’t think they’re that different. I think adapting a story, whether it's a graphic novel or the source material comes from a movie, a book, there’s a lot of care into doing it that the tricky thing is, I need to put my creative spin on it. I had Gerard and Gabriel, who lived with this for ten years, and then I have to come in and say, “Look, I’m going to honor you. At the same time, what is the Steve Blackman part of the show? How can I add my spin to it?”

B: For fans of the comic who’ve seen season 1 of the show, you’ll recognize some of that Steve Blackman spin. For example, the group who governs the laws of time in the comics, the Temps Aeternalis, in the TV show they become the Commission, an entire bureaucratic system running and adjusting linear time. Steve made some other changes too. 

WAY: One of the things that I thought was an ingenious idea was making Ben a ghost that Klaus could communicate with. I was most impressed by that change.

Ben: You know what the worst part of being dead is? You’re stuck. Nowhere to go, nowhere to change, that’s the real torture if you gotta know. Watching your brother take for granted everything you lost, and pissing it all away.

B: Perhaps the biggest change from the comic to the show is the diversity of the characters. Diverse in race, diverse in region, diverse in sexual orientation, these characters on screen look a lot more like what the world actually looks like.

WAY: It’s built into it. They’re all from different places, they’re all from different countries, so I think that’s really the biggest improvement on the source material, is how diverse it is.

B: Steve felt the pressure of both fan expectations, and Gerard and Gabriel’s trust in him.

BLACKMAN: There’s nothing worse than having pre-existing source material and having the fans dislike it. You want to make the fans feel honored and respected, at the same time I felt it was incredibly important that Gerard and Gabriel walked out of this thinking, “He did a good job.” If they hated it, I would’ve been crushed. If the fans hated it, I think I’d also be crushed. I knew I couldn’t make everybody happy, but I wasn’t doing a page for page translation. My adaptation wasn’t gonna be that.

B: The adaption worked. Season 1 was a massive success. In the finale of the first season, the Academy thinks they’ve managed to stop the end of the world from happening, but unintentionally, they’ve actually just initiated it. The moon has been destroyed and its remnants are now heading directly for Earth.

Five: We might as well accept our fate because in less than a minute we’re gonna be vaporized.  Diego: What’s your idea then? Five: We use my ability to time travel, but this time I’ll take you with me. Luther: You can do that?

B: The family, latching onto their time traveling brother Five, manage to escape the chaos. But we’re left to wonder where and when they’ll turn up, and that’s where season 2 begins.

Five: We brought the end of the world back here with us. Klaus: Oh my god, again?

BLACKMAN: It’s a pretty crazy journey this year and I think people will be hooked. I hope they binge the hell out of it and love every second of it.

B: Coming up in this season of Behind the Scenes, we’ll be taking you on that crazy journey with the people who make it happen.

“We hired meteorologists, we knew that snow was gonna come, but we had planned it. We went away for a day, we came back, and there was four feet of snow on the ground.”

“It’s 60s Dallas. Okay, so that’s a very different story for Allison. We have to talk about this somehow. Her experience is just different from her siblings.”

EMMY LAMPMAN: And a lot of people would come up to me and apologize for doing their job and I was like, “Please stop apologizing.”

“That was a wishlist fight scene that Steve had always wanted to do.”

“So we actually had our guys throwing plates up in the air and taking photos of them to try to get these UFO imageries.”

“You know, we have a new point in our resume: Can produce and deliver a show during a pandemic.”

B: Behind the Scenes of The Umbrella Academy is a Netflix and Pineapple Street Studios Production. I’m your host, Brandon Jenkins. Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. It really does help other people find it. Thank you all for listening. 

[tardytothepardy]

Fruits Basket - Vol.13

So this one started off pretty emotionally turbulent. I did not like the energies created in this studio today whatsoever. Yuki's mom is not that great.

Right off the bat, this book continues with the parent-teacher conferences, specifically with Yuki. He's been anxious about his for a while, because of the way his mom behaves. Up until this book, I don't remember there being much depth into why he has a bad relationship with his mom, but now it's very clear: she decides things for him, and willfully ignores him. When he fights back, she takes it as a personal insult, "how dare you do/say such a thing, I'm your mother! I've done so much for you!", but you've never once listened to what I wanted. That's the sort of dynamic that Yuki and his mother have. Personally, I don't blame him in the slightest for not wanting to be around her. And I also don't blame him for struggling to say anything against her, even as she's blatantly insulting and degrading him in front of the teacher. That shit's really hard, and you get pretty used to keeping all those thoughts in your head, because only trouble comes if you respond. Because, of course, it's not a response, it's "talking back", which will end up with you being in even bigger trouble, and something tells me that happened a lot to Yuki when he was younger.

There were a few glimpses into a few of their interactions, and it was made obvious that she really doesn't care about his well-being, she cares about hers. She forced him to be around Akito, despite him repeatedly saying that he doesn't like Akito. Her logic seemed to be that Akito is the most powerful person here, if you're in his good graces, how could you possibly be unhappy?

She also doesn't seem to have the best relationship with Ayame, who burst into the meeting fashionably late. He managed to steal the attention away from Yuki long enough for Yuki to collect his thoughts better, but his mother was so riled up by the both of them that she stormed out of the room. Yuki was able to tell his mother that he doesn't want her deciding what he should do with his life, that those are important that he will make on his own, which honestly, good for him, man. I doubt I could have that kind of strength.

After the meeting, Yuki is whisked away into the crazed shenanigans of the student council, where many conflicting personalities seem to explode against each other constantly. The guy who chose all these people clearly did not choose well, as far as how they would all work together. The white board that Kimi managed to snag from one of the teachers quickly got covered in meaningless color-coordinated titles that Kakeru came up with, as if they're all a part of the Power Rangers or something. Yuki says that, as members of the student council, it is their job to meet with the other clubs and access thingies with them, but Kakeru doesn't really see the point. They're all the head honchos, or something, so shouldn't people come to them? Ooh, disagreements. Surely this, with the additional stress and strain of the conference, won't lead to an outburst??

An outburst totally happens. Despite being the class president or whatever, Yuki feels he remains in the shadows, especially with a person as bubbly and energetic like Kakeru running the show. And given Kakeru's tendency to sort of pop labels on things, he says that Yuki seems "kinda unhappy". This falls ever so neatly into Yuki's problem with people talking over him or deciding for themselves how he is, and so he gets properly riled up. It calms down quickly, but he's still caught up in his own thoughts, which make it very easy to lead him to thinking that he should give up, and go back to the way he was before, reclusive and quiet.

In the end, it seems that Yuki might be able to have a friend in Kakeru, which is great. We all know how much the world loves the dynamic of "loud eccentric extroverted person" being friends with "quiet soft spoken(or softer spoken, at least) introverted person". That dynamic is the shit, and we live for it. I live on it, anyway. It's a classic.

After that, we see Tohru standing at the gates of the Sohma estate, and hooo boy is she noirvous. She's there to confirm that the Kureno that Uotani liked is the same Kureno that she met while at the summer house. It's difficult though, because Akito really didn't make it seem that Tohru would be welcome, given what he said to her last they talked. So while Tohru paced and fretted, she ran into a little girl who turned out to be Momiji's younger sister. She was standing outside the gate, listening to the violin music that Momiji was making. She tells Tohru that she knows that Momiji is her older brother (both Momiji and Tohru thought that since their mom doesn't remember Momiji as her son, Momo wouldn't remember Momiji as being her older brother), and that she even took up violin in hopes that she could play with Momiji. She helped Tohru sneak into the estate to visit Momiji, where Tohru told Momiji all that had happened. This made Momiji very excited, because he really wanted to be close with Momo, but never has been able because their father distances them. He also says that he would like to get better at playing the violin, so that one day he can hold a small concert for his family. It's overall a very touching scene, and I liked it a lot.

Tohru then tells Momiji that she was looking for Kureno, and, after following a map Momiji made, kinda found him. She asked him about Uotani, and whether he had any intention of seeking her out again (personally, I'm against it, given the fact that she's a high school student, and he's like,, at least 23 years old. It feels icky to me, idk), but he said that he wouldn't. He didn't really explain, and honestly I don't really feel like he had to. It's his own business, never mind the fact that he's usually pretty close to Akito, and since he's Juunishi, Akito has that extra hold over him. I wouldn't want something bad to happen to Uotani just because Akito's being a whiny baby.

A little while after that, there's a school field trip that Tohru, Hanajima, Uotani, Kyo, Yuki, and others go on, and there seems to be a weird expectation for love confessions to pop up? Shigure mentioned it before they left, but you'd kinda figure that's just Shigure being Shigure, right? Apparently not. Tohru feels bad for Uotani, to be seeing all these people grouping up, but Uotani says for her to not worry about it. She's decided to not tell Uotani that she found Kureno and talked to him, because she figured that could do more harm than good.

In the meantime though, it seems that Kyo was pulled aside, and a girl basically asked him to be her boyfriend, despite him not knowing who she is at all. She says that they can get to know each other during the relationship, but in general, that seems like a bad idea. If it were me, I'd like to get to know the person before then, but I suppose there's a chance I'd be locked away forever in the friendzone (which honestly I'd be fine with, because at least I'd have a friend lmao ;-;), but maybe that's just me.

Kyo rejects her pretty roughly, which makes sense for two reasons: we already know that he loves Tohru, and so in that respect, it's a done deal, but there's also that whole "he'd change into a cat if they hugged" thing, which would be,,, awkward, to say the least.

(It still doesn't fail to crack me up that the girl was like "I like you a lot, and think we should be together 🥺🥰" and he's literally like that one vine, "Wait a minute, who are you??")

Tohru doesn't really catch wind of the whole thing, but I think she pieced something together? Idk. She was preoccupied by thinking of souvenirs (just say gift shop shit that's all it is ahhh), and she didn't seem to be there in the first place.

When they all come home, we find out that Yuki got a leaf for the one chick in the student council who seems really quiet and is talked over constantly, and that Tohru is making her own little set of the zodiac animals, not unlike the set that she first saw alllllll the way back in the first book, except this time, it looks as if she's making a cat. Now, idk about you, but that's some cute shit. A tiny cat statue. I love it. I love tiny cat statues, but mostly all they make me want to do is pet one of my cats. Cats are great. Absolutely the best. You could fight me on it, I might cry, but I'll still think cats are great. This has nothing to do with Fruits Basket at all anymore lmao.

oh yeah I think Kyo saw the cat statue. And, if you'll remember back to that first book, where Tohru's mom was telling Tohru about the zodiac story, Tohru said that she wanted to be a cat, so, this isn't completely out of nowhere.

[in-tua-deep]

What are your thoughts on Vanya’s book? I’m torn between knowing it was an empowering thing for her and being like damn girl, you were all abused, not cool putting that out there without their consent. The lines I’ve seen from it were about how Vanya’s siblings treated her but I don’t see how she can talk about their childhood without the abuse coming up. Do you think Vanya would have to apologize for the book as part of improving the siblings relationships?

I think that Vanya’s book was very important for her to write - for herself. I don’t think she should have published it without the consent of her siblings, because Vanya does not exist in a vacuum. If you think Allison was not absolutely grilled over the contents of that book in interviews and it didn’t continuously pop up in her world you’re wrong. And anyone who both knew the other siblings and read the book might make comments or ask questions or make assumptions. Vanya wrote an entire book about how terribly she was treated and then pointed the finger at her siblings.

Because the issue is this: Vanya was abused. Horrifically and terribly abused and neglected. She was drugged for the majority of her life against her consent, frequently emotionally abused and belittled, and isolated from the rest of her siblings. She has a right to be angry. BUT. That does not erase the fact that her siblings were all also abused and victims. And Vanya was so wrapped up in her own pain she couldn’t really see that. 

Of course, the reverse is also true. The others were all wrapped up in their own trauma to the extent that they never considered Vanya’s point of view or the ways that Vanya was being abused.

But imagine for a moment that you father raises you as a child soldier. You and all your siblings except one. While you’re running drills and learning to fight and gathering bruises and the only time you’re allowed to yourself is half an hour during the weekend - the life of the one sibling who is allowed to pursue her own passions (violin) and is generally ignored by your drill sergeant father seems to have it pretty darn good wouldn’t you think? You’d give your left leg to be invisible or not be forced to do the training. You’d give your left leg to have her freedom.

And then she publishes an entire book painting you the bad guy because, what, you didn’t include her in your half an hour of freetime? You had better things to do trying to survive your father’s regime than take a few to play happy family with her? You look at this book and ignore all the emotional abuse and gaslighting that she’s highlighting because you think she had it easy, and she’s saying in here that she was jealous of the attention your father gave you. Jealous. As if gaining your dad’s attention was ever a good thing. 

She spills a whole bunch of family secrets. Discusses your brother’s death, something you find very private (maybe you even witnessed it and she didn’t), with the entire world. She drags up all the shitty things you did as a child. A child raised in an emotionally and honestly probably physically abusive household from which your only adult human role model was your asshole father. He built you a robotic mother who obeys his orders and parrots his words. The only other person is a chimpanzee who also only ever seems to regurgitate Reginald’s ideas and always defended him even though he was hurting you. Abusing you.

Vanya deserved to write down those thoughts and discuss them. With a therapist. Or friends. Or anonymously!  Maybe a blog and give everyone pseudonyms and work through it that way. Because like it or not, her siblings did hurt her. They probably gaslit her about how bad things were, blowing her off because clearly her life wasn’t that bad. And they’d probably roll their eyes and call her lucky that she wasn’t included in training anyway. And Vanya would have to grit her teeth and smile and agree because it’s six against one.

Vanya was abused. But that doesn’t mean her siblings weren’t equally abused. Honestly I bet if Vanya had called up Diego and was like “hey I’m writing a whole book about how much growing up with old Reggie fucking sucked, thinking about publishing, wanna help?” Diego would be the first one on board like “HELL YEAH let’s ruin dad’s whole career I have like, seven stories about child endangerment off the top of my head let’s go”

the book we deserved to have was a collab by the whole family offering different points of views and discussing the trauma their siblings didn’t get to see - like private training. 

So what I’m saying is that Vanya does write a sequel to her book. Except this time it’s with everyone sharing. That’s the apology. The opportunity to set the record straight with what they’re comfortable sharing with the world. 

Luther can talk about never feeling good enough, can talk about his isolation at the top of the pyramid and his relationship with Allison who was also there. He can talk about impossible standards and his father never using his name. Strained muscles and terrible testing. The nonconsensual body modification and the isolation on the moon. The realization that four years of his life had been wasted because his dad never even bothered to read the reports - he didn’t even care enough to try. He can talk about the fact that he was so raised up as a child that he feels like a failure at everything he does now. 

Allison can talk about her father forcing her to rumor her sister when they were both four years old. She can talk about the training, having to rumor her siblings and then later the random people Reginald would bring to her. Delivery men and door to door salesmen and girlscouts who were always rumored to forget after. (And then the homeless people, the people no one would miss. The ones who weren’t rumored to forget after because they didn’t go home. She doesn’t write about them though). She can talk about rumoring her way through life and never learning how to get anything without forcing people to give it to her. Constantly on the offensive. The way that’s impacted her career, her relationships.

Diego can talk about never being good enough. His stutter that Reginald had no patience with. The training, being forced to throw knives at the one person in the world he really truly cares about as she smiles at him with her plastic smile. Trying desperately to keep Klaus from drowning under the weight of Reginald’s expectations when he was barely treading water himself after Ben’s death. Leaving the first chance he did and never looking back. The way he still tried to prove himself by joining the police academy, and when he failed at that by becoming a vigilante. 

Klaus can talk about his father throwing him in a fucking mausoleum. Being scared of the dark and claustrophobic. The ghosts he sees screaming behind his eyelids and sometimes even when his eyes are open. The one escape that he found being looked down on by everyone around him when he was only doing his very best to survive because the sad truth is that he could not live that way. Not how it was. He can talk about Ben showing up after his death, and nobody believing him. Being homeless. Living on the streets with no one but a ghostly follower for company. Every moment of sobriety in that house was one of fear - and Klaus is just so very tired of being afraid. (Maybe he can bring himself to talk about Dave, the one person that made him feel safe and protected and loved and how he lost him. Maybe he can’t.)

Ben can talk through Klaus about his own life. He was forced to kill people against his will with a power he couldn’t really control and that he was afraid of. He ended missions covered in blood that he never wanted to shed. Then his death which was reportedly very bad. Then showing up again and only being able to talk to Klaus. Not being able to hug him or stop him or intervene - forced to become a spectator to his brother overdosing over and over again. Loving him but being so angry that he’s squandering the chances Ben wishes he could once again have. 

Five can talk about growing up pushing the boundaries and the way the others only seemed to notice when Reginald praised him and never when he was punished. And he was punished. Reginald tried over and over again to get Number Five to come to heel and never quite succeeded. Every point Five gained in his own personal score was gained through blood and bruises and willpower. There’s all that to talk about, and then there’s the time travel and forty years of isolation and Dolores and becoming an assassin and his plethora of issues regarding that he doesn’t even need to get into to make a whole book of his own. Coming back and seeing that cold portrait sitting on the mantle and knowing that Reginald used his presumed death in order to further control his siblings. 

And they write it together, sitting in the living room and contradicting each other’s memories of events (”No, Dad caught us because you tripped on the table!” “Nuh uh! It was because Klaus was whispering too loudly!” “Actually guys looking back I’m pretty sure Dad just checked the cameras and noticed us leaving.”) and maybe they don’t publish it! They don’t have to! Or maybe they do, taking out all the bits about, you know, murder and all of that sorry Ben they could probably just downgrade the language to ‘hurting a lot of people’ though I mean. He’s dead it’s not like they can charge him with excessive use of force at this point. 

And it’s a bonding experience. And they all come out of it better understanding that they were all traumatized and abused and groomed and gaslighted and neglected and just overall their childhoods were shit. Five will defend Vanya’s book with his fucking life and probably is instrumental in making the others see that just because her abuse looked different doesn’t make it less valid. And he’s also instrumental in making Vanya see that just because the others abuse looked different doesn’t make it any less valid, either. 

Do yeah, have enough material for a sequel? There’s enough material for a fucking series. 

Honestly though genuinely do you know what I think would have been a way better and more empowering move on Vanya’s part? Writing a fiction novel about an ordinary child in a world of magic and superpowers who saves the world. Writing about her own life through the lens of fiction. Basing her characters on real people, yeah, but not writing a tell all book about people whose lives it would very much still affect. Plus, I bet the others would actually read the book at least and recognize it. 

I mean, if they read an entire book about a character who was excluded and belittled and ignored and told she wasn’t worth anything because she wasn’t special in the context of this fictional world, I think they would sympathize. And then if Vanya told them hey, actually this is me projecting and I really did feel this way a lot then it might go over a sight better than hey I’m writing about our childhoods and all your friends are going to read about it

and honestly?? I think that’s a story that needs to be told to other little girls as well. Maybe they aren’t literally being told they’re ordinary because they don’t have superpowers, but there’s a lot of girls who are told they aren’t special and can’t do things and having an ordinary character save the world is an important and inspiring narrative. And it might help Vanya get some closure, because she gets to come up with an end to the story. Wish fulfillment. She gets to write about an ordinary little girl who saved the world. Or maybe she didn’t save the world. Maybe she saved her piece of the world and left the rest up to the people with powers. Small acts of kindness that change everything, for some people.

(and it would reach more people than whoever reads autobiographies and memoirs)

I have a lot of feelings about the book as you can probably tell lmao

I just think the book could have been handled better on Vanya’s part. But I also think she had a right to write it because she had a LOT of stuff to work through. Honestly I think the book originally began from an exercise her therapist gave her and took on a life of its own until it reached the publisher. But like I said, she doesn’t exist in a vacuum and her actions have effects on other people - specifically her family. 

Granted, it’s not like I’ve read the book in its entirety and can’t judge it because of that. But the others had a right to their privacy and I don’t blame them for feeling angry and betrayed because of that invasion of privacy I mean damn. And I doubt Vanya put any of the good stuff in there really, mostly bad. Because that’s how she was feeling.

(If I wrote a book about my childhood with my brother - I could talk about how he sold our joint runescape account without consultation despite all the hours I put in. I could talk about him chasing me through the house or eating my chocolate that I was saving. I could talk about some of his shitty views and his self-isolation, how he would call me stupid and never let me play with him. When he purposefully ditched me in Mini-Amsterdam when I was six and I had to find someone to call my mum for me. Maybe the time he left me on the school bus when I fell asleep next to him. When he pushed me into a bank of nettles, ouch. Or I could talk about how when my balloon popped when I was seven, he gave me his balloon. Or the time he won me a toy starfish on a crane machine. Or when he took me to school after my surgery so I could pick up my homework and when I went back before I was ready he was the one to pick me up again. Or the time when my sister and her friend were being horrible and he let me hang out with him and his friend in their secret base even though he usually didn’t give me the time of day.)

At the end of the day, you can frame people any way you want, and Vanya was going for the bad stuff. Because she was hurting. And she hurt them. And she needs to acknowledge that, so yeah I do think she needs to apologize for writing the book without asking or consulting in order to improve their relationship. I think the others need to apologize to her as well for what little shits they were as kids, because their own abuse is a reason but it doesn’t excuse what they did, either. Vanya was abused and they hurt her and they need to apologize for that. But that didn’t give Vanya the right to hurt them back, so she has to apologize as well if that makes sense??

I dunno this ended up longer than I thought it would oof but I hope it answers your question!!

[hs-devote]

14. O L D   M E M O R I E S 

Moodboard // Content // Masterlist

Disclaimer:

All characters and situation in this story are fictitious. Resemblance to any person living or dead is only God knows.

Previous chapter ;

“I’ve been received some unknown messages in the last few days.” Harry showed his phone to his lawyer, “And I’m sure its Dale. Who else if not him? He’s the one who currently starting a war with me. The messages always come from different numbers. I didn’t delete them. Every time I tried to call, it would pass through voice mail or the number is no longer active.”

14. OLD MEMORIES

“Is this the restaurant that they mean? We didn't get the wrong address, right?”

Brenda murmured, “Of course not, honey. They said a french restaurant in The Dorchester. And this is the only french in here.”

Calvin and Brenda, Y/N's parents, were in London to visit their daughter. Before they return to Swansea tomorrow, Harry invited them to a dinner at a fancy restaurant in Mayfair. It would be the first time they meet – especially for Calvin, and maybe get to know each other more closely. For the past three days they had stayed at Y/N's apartment, Harry didn't have the chance to meet them since he was busy with work.

“This looks so expensive,” Calvin murmured, his eyes looked around. The restaurant interior was dominated by silver and golden colour creating a rich impression. The glimmering dangling chandelier and crystal caught his attention, with the strains of the melodious violin, everything was lavish.

The waiters looked professionally with their uniform, back and forth serving their guests, making sure everything was served perfectly. The delicious aroma of food was very tempting, made them almost drool. Everything looked perfect. No wonder this restaurant collected Michelin stars.

“I know.” Brenda smiled, “Don't worry, I'm sure they will pay the bills if that's what you're worried about.”

“We can also have a nice lunch or dinner here but you won't get any gift for your birthday.”

Brenda just rolled her eyes, before pulling her husband's wrist looking for a private section. Since the couple told her their table was separated from the public one, Brenda had a little trouble to find them. Fortunately, a staff came approached them politely and offered help to escort them to the private area.

Harry was the first one who noticed their arrival. He rose from his chair to greet them first, and politely accepted a hug from his girlfriend's mother, before shaking Calvin's hand afterwards. Y/N introduced them all then let Harry pulled the chairs for both of her parents.

“You look handsome as always, Harry.” Brenda winked, “It's nice to meet you again.”

Harry smiled softly, “Thank you. I was ecstatic when I heard you and Mr Y/L/N would come to visit Y/N.”

“Calvin took his leave for a few days and I told him why we don't visit Y/N? And maybe visit her brother too. So, here we are.” Brenda waved her hand playfully, “This place is amazing, anyway.”

In the beginning, Calvin didn't talk much. He let his wife talk with his daughter's boyfriend. Meanwhile, Y/N was rather anxious because Calvin was pretty hard to start a conversation if people didn't know him well. Just like when she brought Elliott, her previous boyfriend, home and introduced them both.

It was obvious for everyone that Harry was charming and easy to talk to. And that was he used. Slowly but careful, he started having a conversation with Calvin. Looking for topics that could keep them in talk. Capturing a mother's heart was an easy task for him, but when it came to a father, he must be careful.

The conversation kept going until the waiters came to bring their dinner. From that time he knew the bond between his girlfriend and her parents was very strong and they had a healthy relationship. It's nice to see the parents were so supportive of their children. Harry was a little jealous for a slight moment because they both were so lovingly towards his lover, unlike him who was hated by his own biological father. But, he was grateful because that was the way it made him now. He wouldn't know if he would meet his Y/N if he wasn't a Styles.

While enjoying the food, Harry and her parents were more engaging in the conversation since Y/N allowed them to get to know Harry better. She knew her mother love him already, but it was a bit difficult when coming from her father.

She was quite surprised. Because in the end, her father seemed impressed with Harry.  She could tell from the first her father had a conversation with him. She didn't know why but Calvin always gave a hard impression when meeting his children's lovers and wasn't easy to impress him. And Harry was the first who could make him soft in one meeting. Not because he treated them in an expensive restaurant, her father wasn't that kind of person. She admitted Harry had the charisma and this charm that people easily melted with.

“I remember Brenda said that you're more handsome than me when I was young. And she never shut her mouth close for that.” Calvin said after sipping his wine, “And I can see, why.”

“You're embarrassing me.” Brenda laughed, “But, it's true! If you want to visit us someday, Harry. I'll show you a photo of him when he was a teenager!”

“I would love to.” Harry smiled, “I ber they’re lovely.”

“Swansea may not be as fancy as London but you'll love it. Trust me.” Calvin nodded, “Have you ever been to Wales before?”

“I've been there a couples time for business.” Harry answered, “Next time I'll try to visit as a tourist.”

Y/N couldn't remember the last time she had a long conversation with her parents. She loved the way Harry kept the conversation going among them. Being the person who easily started the talk, made her parents – especially Calvin, engaging effortlessly. They called it a day when she realised it was getting late and her parents had to leave early in the morning. Being the gentlemen he was, Harry offered a ride for them. There was no way he could take Y/N home while her parents left alone.

It was half the ride when Calvin had been watching Y/N sitting in the passenger seat next to Harry who was driving. Maybe the two of them forgot her parents were in the back and they were in their own conversation. Neither Calvin nor Brenda spoke, leaving the young couple preoccupied with themselves. Chuckles and giggles were here and there when Y/N played with Harry's free hand, spinning his rings there or tried to peeling Harry's coated nails. Calvin didn't even aware Harry was wearing nail polish during the dinner.

“They're so cute,” Brenda leaned in – whispering to her husband's ear, “I remember when we were young, so in love.”

“Do you think so?” he mumbled. His eyes sometimes looking in their direction. When Harry had just released his hand from the gear, Y/N had pulled them back to her. He could hear Harry saying what are you doing while wiggling his hand.

“Of course, they are! You can see from the way they're looking at each other.” She scoffed, “Your daughter has grown up.”

Despite he hated to admit it, Calvin could see it all clearly. When they were staring at each other, he saw the spark between them that was hard to explain, but he knew what it was. He was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn't realise they had arrived in front of her daughter's apartment building.

“You guys can go in first. I want to talk with Harry for a bit.” Y/N said with head turning back to look at her parents. Both of Brenda and Calvin nodded, not forget to thank Harry before getting out of the car.

“Thank you for dinner. I could say that my parents really enjoyed it.” She continued after they were alone, “Connor texted me that he hated me because I didn't invite him tonight.”

Harry cackled, “Maybe one day we should treat him a nice lunch or dinner. I've never met him, anyway.”

“Sure. Or maybe we can surprise him by coming to his birthday. He always had a party with his friends.” Y/N frowned, “Usually in the club or he threw a small party at his apartment like a frat night. But, I never came because it was really a frat party.”

“Sounds fun,” he frowned, “I’m being curious.”

There was a pregnant pause before Harry grabbed her small hands to him, he didn't know what she wanted to talk about because at this time both of them didn't say anything.

His hands played with her dainty fingers, comparing their palms together. He laughed over how her hands were so small to his big one. His fingers pinching every tip of her fingers, his thumb running up and down her knuckles up and down.

“Didn't you say earlier you want to talk to me?” he hummed, “Why are your hands so small?”

Y/N rolled her eyes, “Because you're a giant. And no, I don't really want to talk about something. I just want to enjoy some time with you.”

“Ooh, my girlfriend misses me huh?” he teased, hands still playing with hers. “I'm always here, darling.”

“Yes, I do. Come here, give me a hug!”

Harry grinned before taking his girlfriend to his embrace, wrapping her body with his arms. He didn't know why Y/N had become clingy like this, yet he wasn't lying if he liked it.

“You're so warm,” she snuggled deeper into his neck, “and soft.”

“And you're so small.”

“Because you're a gigantic, H.” She snorted, “You're tall like a giraffe and big like an elephant.”

“Heyy!” he whined, “But, I'm your giraffe.”

Y/N chuckled while her hand gently scratched his ears softly, “Hmm, definitely.”

“Don't squeeze my earlobe!” he warned, his nose stuck to the top of her head, inhaling the remaining fragrance of her shampoo. One that he liked when being close to her was to smell her hair albeit it had been hours since she washed it; still smelt good like she just washed. Not to forget to say her hair and neck were his favourites spot to smell.

“Your hair is getting long.” She spoke while tucking his curls behind his ear, “It's very fluffy.”

“Should I get a haircut?”

Harry felt she was shaking her head, frowning when he didn't catch what Y/N was talking about because she talked in his neck. He could feel her lips move against his skin.

“Louder baby, I can't hear you when you muffled your voice in my neck.”

“It's your hair so it's your choice.” She shrugged, “But, don't trim your curls. I love it against my skin, so soft.”

“I know. You love a little hair touching you down there.”

“Harry!” she swatted his shoulder, detached her body from his. She snorted knowing Harry was holding back his laughter.

“I'm joking, baby.”

“Whatever,” she sighed, “Well, I should get inside before my parents get suspicious. I have to get up early tomorrow to take them to the Paddington.”

“Okay then. Good night, darling.” “Good night, H.”

Both of them leaned into sharing a quick kiss on the lips before Y/N climbed out of the car. Waving to her, Harry watched her get inside before turning the steering wheel to his penthouse. . . . .

It had been two weeks since his lawyer taking care of the unknown messages, and Harry still received the messages every day. Of course, he was pissed why his lawyer couldn't take care of it quickly. The reduction in clients also made his emotions unstable. If in the morning he was so sweet and nice, later in the afternoon he would change drastically. Even the directors were also being his aim if they reported something unpleasant to him. In the end, it was Y/N who tried to intercede for them.

“I'm sorry Maxwell.” Y/N smiled apologetically after one of their directors was scolded by Harry. The man just smiled understandably before excusing himself. She rolled her eyes while closing the door, and turned to face Harry who was staring at her.

She shook her head with her arms folded, “You can't just scold people like that. He did nothing wrong.”

Harry straightened his body, his head tilted to the side while his fingers interlocked on the desk. “I don't like what he just said earlier.”

“Still,” she shook her head, “This world isn't always whatever you like, Marcel.”

“Who?”

“Marcel. You're Marcel.”

Harry arched his eyebrow, “I don't know what you're talking about, darling.”

Y/N stepped closer and slowly pulled the vacant chair in front of Harry's desk. She ventured herself to look into the eyes that had been staring at her. The darker eyes which she didn't recognise, but she had to. She didn't find Harry there. Just someone she didn’t knew, was borrowing her boyfriend’s place and act up at will.

“Don't lie to me.” She deadpanned, “I can recognise you, Marcel.”

She had recognised him since Harry began to raise his tone and speaking much faster. At that moment, she was also aware that the eyes weren't bright like usual. From that moment, she knew that Marcel who was with her.

Harry, or Marcel smiled widely before shaking his head, hands clapping for her. He looked at the woman in front of him while leaning his back against the chair, “No wonder why Harry likes you. You're not easy to be fooled.”

“Well then, smart lady. Now, I'm here. What do you want?” he continued.

“Can you be more civil? No need to scold people if there are a few things you don't like. You make Harry look bad in the eyes of others.”

“But that makes him respected by people, right?” he frowned, his dark eyes stared straight to her. He grinned when Y/N didn't answer him.

“I know you both can't be separated. Does Harry ever bother you? So, please help him.” She sighed, “You can be angry with the right person. But, don't do that to innocent people.”

“Maybe Harry doesn't tell you, darling. But, I'm here to help him become a tougher person. He can't just give up. He can't.. and I won't let him being underestimated by everyone. I won't let people do that to me. You should know that.” Marcel scoffed, “It's enough for us to have a bad past. It's time for the future to bow to me.”

“I understand your feelings, Marcel.” Y/N whispered, “But, please... It won't end if you still like this.”

She flinched when Marcel hit the desk, made it shaking until some books fell. Y/N cursed herself for saying such things like that, and now her guts shrank. Carefully, she peeked at Marcel’s face. The man looked even more furious, his expression was so different. For a second, she couldn’t believe this man was Harry, yet it was the truth.

“Don't dare to talk if you don't know anything, Y/N.” He growled, “You're lucky you have Harry to protect you, if not, you're the one who I'll throw with a book to.”

Her shoulder slumped as she exhaled. With unsteady steps, she left Marcel who was still sitting on in his chair without saying any words. Her steps stopped when she opened the door. She looked back – staring at Marcel from her shoulder.

“Don't forget to take the medicine, Harry.” . . . .

Y/N began to worry because Marcel became more frequent. She had tried to talk with Harry, but it seemed that his emotions were all over the place making it difficult for him to balance himself. There had been small progress regarding the messages although Harry or Marcel was annoyed because the process wasn't fast as he wanted.

Now, seeing Harry bickering all day wasn't strange to her and the employees. They knew their clients were dropping like flies while Y/N  tried to keep Harry from yelling to all employees.

“What is he doing right now?!” he growled while staring at the few people in front of him with a distressed look. Harry was infuriated, but he kept his composure so Marcel wouldn't switch place with him right now. He couldn't let people see Marcel took over his place right in front of their eyes, enough for him to let Marcel use his body to release his anger.

Y/N who sat on his right side could only pinch her temple while shaking her head; exhausted with several cases that hit Erskine and Harry. Later that afternoon, she was told that both Harry's and Erskine's lawyers, would come to the office because there was new news surfaced, and the outcome would be far more critical.

“It’s not about Dale,”  Allen slowly shifting his iPad for Harry to look over the screen, “You won't like this, Harry. This just spread wide this morning. And some online news sites already contained the article.”

Flexing his jaw, his ringed finger taking the iPad unsurely. Exchanging the look with his lawyer, Harry began to look at the screen. First, he didn’t quite understand what was going to unfold before him. After a few seconds, his eyes widened, forehead frowning deeply. Meanwhile, Y/N kept watching Harry's expression while he saw something that she could say; terrible. His face turned pale with lips slightly parted. He quickly pushed back the iPad not long after, both his hands rubbing his face in wroth. He took a deep breath while biting his lips, he wanted to explode right now but he couldn't. Deep down inside his heart, he was trying to calm himself down if he didn't want Marcel yell at them.

“Who spread the video?”

“The Sun, BuzzFeed, and DailyMail so far.”

“Sue them.” Harry ordered after one of Erskine's legal team spoke, “Sue whoever spreads the video, no matter who. And find the woman in the video.”

Y/N furrowed her eyebrows when she heard the word woman came out from his mouth. What happened? What video was that?

“I'll call you later.” He said when both his lawyer and Erskine's said nothing. Both Mr Jones and Mr Darmot who were the legal team of Erskine nodded before excusing themselves. He promised them to send email regarding that matter.

“Is there any progress upon your investigation about the messages?”

“Your assumption is right, Harry. Dale Jespersen indeed is the culprit. We have gathered the evidence and will immediately report this to the police.” Allen answered, “But, he didn't do that alone.”

Harry scoffed, “Of course, he did. I also won't be surprised if he did that with an insider.”

“All right. I'll file the documents tomorrow and I'll tell you afterwards. But, I'm sure he will pay the fines instead of having to make this case running long.”

“Right then, I'll text you later regarding the video.”

Harry let out a huff of air after Allen leaving his office. His head tilted back with eyes looking at the ceiling, his thumb and index finger pinching his nose bridge. If he had aware, Y/N paid attention to every his gestures. She didn't know who was there. He looked calmer and had a balance to control his emotions.

“May I ask you something?”

He lowered his head, didn't aware that his girlfriend had been there the whole time. She made no sound during the meeting making him forget about her presence. Before he answered, he looked at her carefully. He read her facial expression; she looked confused yet curious.

“Why are you being formal like that?”

“Because I don't know who you are.”

Harry chuckled at that, “I'm Harry. Your Harry.”

She squinted her eyes, before pushing her chair closer to Harry. Now, only the two of them in the meeting room that had almost all the walls were glass. She must be careful if anyone passed by. Y/N grabbed his face with her palms, look closer at his face.

“Yes, you're H.” she hummed and let go of his face.

“I'm sorry if Marcel was too often here. I was mad and weak at the same time so he took the opportunity.” He shrugged, “So, what do you want to ask?”

“About what we talked earlier,” she started, “What video were you talking about? You were pale when you saw the video. But, I'm weird seeing you look calmer.”

“I don't know, honestly. I was furious, yes. But, there was a feeling I should try to be calmer. Maybe because I've rested a lot, so I could be stronger to defend myself from Marcel.”

She didn't want to go further than that, who knows Marcel will appear if she kept asking for him. This was quite surprising because it wasn't Marcel there, but Harry. Harry was the one who growled, not Marcel. She was glad, at least he could balance his temper earlier and not let his shadow be there. This was a good step for him, of course.

“You haven't answered my first question, H.” asked her, “What's wrong with the video?”

“Harry?” she demanded when he said nothing. Y/N was getting suspicious that there was something he didn't want to say. She might not ask, yet from the way he reacted earlier, it was something serious.

“I actually don't want to talk about this to you. Yet, I'm sure when you exit this room, you'll know the answer from the internet. And I don't want you to know from others.” He emitted a rough breath, reluctant to talk about this since it was a disgrace of his past.

“Is that.. That bad?”

“Very.”

“Should I be worry?”

“Of course.”

She frowned. What did happen? Was the situation getting worse?

“Allen and the Erskine's legal team came with a video that's now widely spread in the public. If you heard, some online media had to post the video and articles about that. The video happened a long time ago when I was in university for my bachelor's degree.” He sighed, “I don't know what to say at this moment. I'm ashamed and don't know what to do.”

Y/N thought with the worst possibility. What students would do when they were in university and chose to record it? Doing drugs? Made a racist comment? Insulting the government?

“Well, the video is a sex tape of me and my girlfriend at that moment. I think it was in our second year.”

“Pardon?” she frowned deeply when hearing his explanation. She didn't expect that kind of answer to come out from his mouth. A sex tape? Really?

“I know, I know it's bad.” He winced, “The video itself is bad, I admit. But, it's not like the videos in PornHub I swear.”

She was speechless – didn't know how to react. Her brain was thinking hard right now. Her eyes now shifted to the table in front of her, yet the stare was blank. She respired hardly while leaning her back against the leather chair. A sex tape should be personal documentation if they chose to record it, not be a public consumption. But who was spreading it out? Harry couldn't possibly keep that and he wouldn't be that careless. Could it be his ex-girlfriend?

Hold on.

This would be a new problem not only for Harry, but for Erskine too. She couldn’t understand the few problems that he faced now. All started from his arrest some time ago. She hadn’t realised that she had been in reverie too long when Harry called her name several times.

“May I see the video?” her hoarse voice filled with uncertainty. She wanted to see the video but she doubted if she could bear to see it. She wasn’t sure of the request she had just said. Her mind was confused and bothered by the fact that her boyfriend once recorded his sexual activity. In all sudden, she remembered Victoria’s word.

The woman was right. He did record his intercourse with a former girlfriend, yet she didn’t know if he always used to do that. She couldn’t jump into conclusion yet, and she couldn’t prevent what had happened in the past. In his past.

“I don’t have them on me but I can ask Allen to send me right now.” He murmured, “But, are you sure? I can’t even let my eyes to watch them twice.”

Y/N knew his worries. He didn’t want that thing to ruin their relationship – again. Enough for her with Marcel, he didn’t want to drag her to his past problems. But, this was the consequences. If you’ve been dating someone, you would definitely also get into their past. Like it or not.

“I have to see it so I can anticipate the impact that will come, H. The public will know and so with the clients since it has published with some media. At least we have to plan something to overcome it.” She halted, “I won’t judge you, H. I’m not blaming you and your past over the sex tape, which I regret why your ex-girlfriend could be so careless to let it leak to the public.”

“Why do you believe she was the one who leaks it?”

“I just think one of you both kept it and I believe you’re not the one. It could be her, or maybe she shared the video with someone else. I don’t know.”

“And you’re accusing her.”

“Excuse me, Harry?” she stared him in disbelieve. Harry just pointed her of accusing his ex-girlfriend when she didn’t. She just talked about possibilities. She trusted Harry more than anyone. She only remembered the words of Victoria who began to eat her trust.

“First of all, I’m not accusing your ex-girlfriend. And the second, I don’t want to argue with you and make you angry so that Marcel who I’ll face – nope.” Y/N stressed her words, “Just let me watch your sex tape so I know what to do.”

“Because, H. I’m exhausted of Marcel so I want him not to take over your body again at this critical moment.”

Harry didn’t say anything, he just immediately called Allen to send the video. When they received the record, she asked him to watch it together even though Harry quickly refused in the beginning, He felt extremely embarrassed by his behaviour at the time. The tape was five minutes long and it was intense. Harry didn’t show his genital but the woman's bare chest was everywhere. Yes, their entire body wasn’t exposed but it still made her uncomfortable. They seemed to enjoy it very much and no doubt or worry was shown when the recording was made. She could clearly identify Harry right away and the lady was pretty. Y/N felt she had seen the woman somewhere but she couldn't put a finger on it. He was rocking the woman so hard made the headboard banging loudly against the wall. Their naked top was on display but the duvet covered them from his waist until down. They were so loud made she could feel their intensity. It all made sense when Allen muted the sound when Harry watched it because their moans were quite embarrassing. She shoved his mobile phone away when the tape reached its end.

“I don't know what to say.” She shook her head, “Delete that shit right away. We don’t know if someone can hack your phone and make it look like you own that.”

“I’m sorry if you feel uncomfortable. I promise to work it out.” He pledged, “But please don’t think another way on me. I’m already exhausted of all this shit and I want you by my side to support me.”

Harry was scared if she would leave him. Hell, he even worried if she would change the way she looked at him. He was reckless and naughty back in his younger year. He was just like any other teenager who liked to try new things but he hadn’t thought the consequences would go this far. He didn’t expect the sex tape would be a backfire for him.

“That shit is disgusting, I can’t lie.” She squinted her eyes, “It was your past that can’t be changed, H. What we can do is stop the video’s spreading and think of you, and Erskine. I just have this feeling in my guts tomorrow we’ll have some phone calls from the clients.” She paused, then looking at him with inexplicable gaze, “I’m sorry if I sound selfish – always talking about the company. But, that what we must do as soon as possible so all the possibilities that will maybe happen can be prevented. I want us to figure it out together instead of having a screaming Marcel.”

“I understand.” He sighed, “I know Marcel wouldn’t help for any situation like this. All he would do is yelling and blaming everyone.”

She nodded, “Okay then. What should I do?”

For a little awhile, Harry didn’t utter a word. Many things were spinning in his head right now. His soul and mind were torn apart, and it made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t stop thinking about everything. In the silence, he glanced a little at Y/N, seeing his lover seemed busy with her own daydream. Her face looked gloomy and burdened, the twinkle in her eyes dimmed. Harry was sad, it was all caused by him.

When Harry cursed his folly, Y/N was thinking. After all of this, then what would happen?

She won’t lie, she would be reminded of the tape every time she saw Harry albeit it was only a faint memory. She didn’t sure, would this make them stronger? Or?

Her boyfriend had a lot of unexpected things, and Y/N didn’t know if she’d always going to be up for it.

All she knew, her heart would always open to all the flaws that Harry had.

No matter what.

She hoped. . . Please excuse some errors Talk to me :)

[bigskydreaming]

thehollowprince said: And I also stand by the opinion that they could have just done a solo run of the O5 X-Men starting a new timeline with the information they got from the future.

thehollowprince said: Its not like Marvel doesn’t constantly do AUs and retcons

OMG Josh you have no idea how bad I wanted this. They could’ve done SO MUCH with that concept. Letting the 05 keep their foreknowledge and the world they could have created with that?

They could’ve averted the initial Krakoan mission and saved Darwin, Gabe, Petra and Sway in the first place. They could have all been X-Men from their Day One, Scott and Alex would have actually gotten to KNOW their brother and Gabe quite possibly would never have gone full Dark Side despite the writers apparently now seeming obsessed with the idea there’s just something innately bad within Gabe that’s always destined to bear fruit at some point, ugh, whatever, like who do you think you are, Kant?

They could’ve recruited the Giant Size X-Men lineup earlier, and saved John Proudstar, who side by side with his brother Jamie, are a force to be reckoned with. 

They could have convinced Pietro and Wanda to join them instead of the Avengers and been like no but seriously that way lies nothing but shitty storylines and bad decisions that will be blamed on you by your teammates despite the fact that any and all of the bad decisions that were ACTUALLY yours could have been averted if any of your teammates were capable of functioning as an actual support system. Come join us. We have actual support systems, except for the times when we don’t, but we recruited Deadpool to break the fourth wall and he and Logan are currently cutting through the ranks of every writer who would write as hating and fighting each other instead of being a loving fucking family goddammit.

Jean could have faced the Phoenix head-on when the time for that came, using her knowledge of the future not to fear an inevitable death, but rather to know she had nothing TO fear, that the power to not control this force, but just be ONE with it, with no NEED to control it or be controlled by it, a symbiotic union, two beings in harmony deciding on courses of action together. The Phoenix’s innate powers and prerogative of rebirth and destruction tempered by Jean’s mercy, aimed and focused by Jean’s reason, the double-edged sword that is fire capable of warming homes or destroying them completely combined with Jean’s conscience guiding it to use its power for the former rather than the latter.

They could have stopped the Legacy Virus from getting out and killing millions as well as spared us from migraines induced by an AIDS metaphor so shitty at being a metaphor most people forget it was literally written to be an AIDS metaphor.

The body swap would never have happened and Kwannon could have joined the X-Men as a full member from the time she was introduced, rather than dragged along in the wake of Betsy’s tangled storylines for a couple decades.

They could have stopped Fitzroy from killing the Hellions. Hell, if they train Illyana early enough and have her mentored by Wanda who is perfectly fucking competent when left to her own devices, then like, maybe they can even take a jaunt to the future to save Fitzroy from dying in the first place and being resurrected with no soul. Not gonna lie, ever since then I’ve kinda been seriously interested in what the hell would a hero version of Trevor freaking Fitzroy even BE like, y’know? Call it morbid fascination, but like. I kinda want it, guys. LOL.

Add to that note, they could have taken another jaunt to the future and rescued Rachel from being made into a Hound by Ahab. Through the power of some convoluted plot tangle I just made up for convenience, Scott still ends up in a relationship with Maddy briefly, in one of those self-fulfilling prophecy type things where he went into it with the full intention of just averting the future and saving Maddy from her fate as the Goblyn Queen, but somehow ended up in a love triangle with a very alive Jean and Maddy who is fully informed of Sinister’s shenanigans and quite displeased with that asshole, and look, I don’t know how all of this goes exactly, but let’s cut to the chase, my only real endgame with this is making sure that Nate’s born properly, saved from Apocalypse and the techno-virus by the combined efforts of Scott, Maddy and Jean as well as Uncles Warren, Bobby and Hank, and Jean calls up the Phoenix through some psychic bond or whatever and is like hey girl, can I hit you up for a loan real quick? Got some losers that need toasting. 

And in this AU the Phoenix totally has her back, and one brief cosmic power-up and gratuitous Sailor Moon transformation later, Jean glows and intones some epic one-liners with appropriate gravitas, and then just punts both Apocalypse and Sinister to the far side of the universe, never to be seen or heard from again. They like, hit a black hole on the way there I guess. It was very sad. Violin strings may commence with the requiem. Okay that’s enough, they can stop now.

So then through the plot contrivances of fuck you, I said so, Scott and Maddy ultimately part amicably and Scott and Jean get back together and the three of them civilly co-parent both baby Nate and Rachel, as Maddy keeps the healing powers she gained as Anodine and stays with the X-Men for her own reasons.

The telepaths are all better trained by the expertise Jean gained in her powers while in the future, so the next time the Shadow King comes bumming around looking to cause chaos, Betsy, Emma and Jean just look at each other and laugh and say nuh-uh before psychically squishing him into a marble.

Warren never becomes Archangel. Onslaught isn’t a thing. They make nice with Magneto and say okay you may have a couple points, let’s discuss. Bishop arrives in the past for reasons totally unrelated to his original story, has no traitor to seek out among the X-Men, and thus he and Gambit end up besties in complete defiance of that stupid fucking story and because I just think they’re neat together. Yes I said neat. Gambit and Bishop are just neat. Deal with it. 

Bishop still hates that Fitzroy guy though, he’s like, I don’t even know what it is about that guy, he just rubs me the wrong way, even though Fitzroy is not evil here and has always done good with his powers, which are channeled through a device Forge made him that lets him just absorb life force from a wide range around him, spread out and diluted enough that its like, the grass feels weird for a second, like whoa what even was that, and then its over. Actually, y’know what, scratch that. Fitzroy’s powers are stupid and unnecessary the way they are now anyway, so fuck it, this Fitzroy doesn’t need life force or whatever, he’s just a dude who makes time portals. He’s like Illyana with green hair and that ugly goatee. Hey I said this Fitzroy was non-evil, not that he was perfect.

Bobby’s out and proud since he was sixteen, and with actual competence and proficiency with his powers, which make him a Literal Unkillable Gay Icon, he’s an inspiration to LGBTQ+ teens everywhere and inspires other gay, bi and trans heroes to come out. He’s a big brother figure to all the baby gays that later join the X-Men, like, Rictor comes to him for advice back during the time equivalent to early X-Factor, when Rictor’s a trying-too-hard sixteen year old who thought college age Bobby was like the coolest, which is valid, because X-Factor Bobby was like A+ Bobby characterization and deserves more reads. 

So Rictor comes out earlier as well, and by the time they even meet Shatterstar, instead of a slow burn friends to roommates to lovers scenario, Rictor takes one look at the love of his life and wastes no time coming out swinging with an absolutely terrible pick up line. Look, I said his big brother figure Bobby was out and proud in this AU, not that he magically had a better sense of humor. Some things just don’t change, y’know? Luckily, Shatterstar is a weirdo, and thus he finds terrible pick-up lines charming. At least when its Rictor saying them. They walk off for a first date, already practically hand in hand, voices fading into the distance as Rictor asks “By the way, have you met Dazzler yet? According to Bobby, apparently she’s your mom. That Longshot dude with the mullet over there is your dad I guess. We should go say hi.”

Hank gets an assistant hand-picked by the rest of the original X-Men, and who has one job and one job only. To follow him around and observe all his experiments, and he has veto power over experiments that People With IQs As High As Yours Should Know Better But I Guess You’ve Got Reed Richards Syndrome.

Hank’s like, “Hmm, if I built a time machine I could go back to the Jurassic Period and observe whether my theory of - “

Hank’s assistant: “Veto.”

“Damn. Okay I was also thinking of making a deep space communicator that can reach into the farthest reaches of space beyond any known civilization and just say hi, y’know? See if anyone’s out there.”

“Veto.”

“If I combine these genetically modified antibodies here with this strain of of DNA from - “

“Veto.”

“Well Forge built this device that does this to mutant powers but I think I can make it do - “

“Veto.”

“These nanobots I - “

“VETO,”

“Honestly, at this point I think you’re just saying that just because you like saying it.”

“Dr. McCoy, I promise you, I’m really, really not.”

Logan finds out about his future clan of stabby children, and seeks them out. He rescues Daken from Romulus, somebody stabs that loser with the immortal-killing sword, I don’t even care who, and after a few tense months of Logan trying too hard, he and Daken eventually bond over how hockey just isn’t violent enough. If you’re going to make a sport all about hitting each other, just really go for it or don’t even bother, y’know? Logan claps him on the shoulder and sniffs. That’s my boy. Then they find and rescue Laura and Gabby and take a road trip to Earth 1610 to pick up Jimmy. They have a house on campus, and new students walking by it are used to hearing loud growling and even howls. They were assured during orientation that that’s nothing to worry about, it just means the House of Snikt are watching a game and are rooting for opposing sides. 

Emma’s recruited practically the day they get back. She’s only just started at the Hellfire Club and has only done a tiny bit of Evil when Warren schedules an appointment with her, and then he, Scott and Jean make a better pitch than Shaw and his ilk could ever match. They’ve been to the future. Come join with us and we’ll give you an all access pass to memories detailing exactly what’s going to happen in these particular areas and many more. All you have to do is ask. Oh and also please don’t seduce any married teammates. Its bad form. To be honest, I don’t think it’ll be an issue because Deadpool assures us Morrison has been taken care of, and don’t worry if that makes no sense to you, its a head-scratcher for us to. Just roll with it. 

Nate ages normally here so its not like he ends up besties with forty year old Wade, but the latter having his own plot-contrived knowledge of the future because He’s Just Like That, decides that he won’t be denied at least SOME kind of bond with The Bestie That Wasn’t. He becomes Nate’s official babysitter. Well, not official, seeing as how Scott, Jean and Maddy don’t hire him and are very clear that their son is not to be left alone with this man at any time, he is a terrible influence and he keeps giving our kid guns. But then Wade just shows up anytime they’re out because he just has a sixth sense for Making Trouble, and he terrifies away whatever babysitter’s there and greets the returning and exasperated parents with a cheery wave. 

“I know what you’re going to say, but don’t worry, we didn’t do anything dangerous or against the law. All we did today was I taught him to make bombs, but we were very careful, we wore safety goggles and really, they were very little bombs. Not even anything atomic. I honestly don’t think any of them could have even blown up this whole house, and I’ve been meaning to say, I’m not impressed with the structural integrity of this place. Couldn’t you have picked something with a sturdier foundation? Its like you don’t even expect random space mercenaries to attack your place out of the blue every other month. Have any of you even read a single issue of your own comics?”

Scott’s jaw twitches Ominously. Wade starts gathering up his things. Jean rubs her forehead wearily.

“Wade, what do you even think ‘dangerous’ means?”

Wade pauses and cocks his head. Gives it a solid twenty seconds of thought. Then he shrugs. 

“I don’t know actually. Don’t think I’ve ever really thought about it. I always figured it was just one of those things people just say. Like, ‘oh, it looks like rain today,’ even if they’re not a forecaster and have no real meteorological credentials to speak of. ‘Oh, this mission will be dangerous,’ and I don’t even have to use up all my ammo and I only get shot twice. Y’know?”

“Leave,” Scott says. More like intones. House shakes a little bit but that might just be Wade’s imagination. Its very active.

“Leaving!” He says hastily. He jumps through the closed window and then teleports away amid the falling shower of broken glass. Why didn’t he do that while he was still inside the room? No one knows. Not even Wade knows. Why did the chicken cross the road? Who the fuck cares, now is it Original Recipe or Crispy?

Scott, Jean and Maddy search the house while Nate angelically claims they won’t find anything, Wade doesn’t even bring him cool stuff anymore cuz he knows you’ll just take it.

Maddy finds a high-tech laser space gun under a floorboard in the closet. She holds it up with one eyebrow raised pointedly. Scott and Jean flank her and their own eyebrows raise in solidarity. Well Jean’s does. Scott’s probably does but its hard to tell sometimes. Depends on what glasses or visor he’s wearing.

“That was already there,” Nate tries. Most powerful telepath and telekinetic in the world, but the kid can’t lie for shit. There’s not much point in trying when one of your moms is the freaking Phoenix, and that’s a skill that takes practice he just doesn’t have. 

The three sets of parental eyebrows make a V, judgingly.

“One month of no video games or TV?” Okay, so terrible liar but quick on his feet. At least he knows when he’s beat and jumps straight to trying to shape his own punishment proactively.

“Two months. And no flying lessons either,” Jean says. “And don’t pout at me, young man. You know the rules. No weapons inside the house unless your grandpa Corsair is visitng and we’re too tired to fight him on keeping knives under his pillow. This is a Do As We Say, Not As We Do house. Deal with it. Now, this is going with the others and you can have it back when you’re eighteen.”

It would have been three months, but Jean and Maddy caught a telepathic sniff from Scott. He’s just so proud of his kid thinking so tactically. He’s growing up so fast. Both women mentally roll their eyes. Why is he like this.

“I don’t see what the big deal is anyway,” Nate sulks. “Its just a stupid laser gun. I mean, Uncle Gabe blew up our last house with his brain.” 

“Yes and it was an accident and he feels absolutely terrible about that which is why we’re not going to bring it up when he and Armando come visit this weekend, right?”

“You can have my full compliance for two weeks off my sentence.”

“Or we can have your full compliance or two weeks will be added to your sentence,” Maddy says.

“You guys suck,” declares the ten year old vessel of near unlimited psychic might. He goes to his room, stomping all the way up the stairs so his grievances can be heard even by the House of Snikt next door. Course, they’ve already been listening to the whole thing with their enhanced hearing. There was nothing good on TV. Jimmy made popcorn and chewed with his mouth open just to piss off Daken. 

‘The second Father leaves the room, I am going to stab you in such a slow healing place you’ll still be bleeding at bed time.’ Daken mouths at his little brother from another universe. Jimmy scrunches his face in confusion. 

‘What?’ He mouths back. He’s terrible at reading lips. Or anything that isn’t skateboarding, really. And yet Father’s so happy that ‘at least one of my kids is content with stupid normal stuff and doesn’t go around drawing cover fire just because a mission is going so well its boring and they haven’t even gotten to pop their claws out yet.’

“That’s only because you’ve coddled him. He’s barely ever even been shot at. Just the one time on vacation in Majipoor and he wasn’t even the target, the assassin was aiming for me. If you would just let me take him on a proper outing to gain some real experience - “

“Not gonna happen.” Logan shuts that down real quick.

“Really Father, just look at him. He has zero situational awareness. I’ve been glaring a hole in the back of his head for a full minute now and he has no idea. That could just as easily be an actual laser scope, you know. He’s a disgrace to the whole family.”

“Daken, we’ve been over this,” Logan says firmly. “You have your sisters to bond with over gratuitous violence. Leave your brother alone. I don’t want anyone traumatizing him until trauma finds him all on its own. It’ll happen sooner or later, he’s as much a part of this family as anyone and that means its as good as done already, so there’s no need to hurry it along. If later on he decides he’s got a taste for it, you can take him on all the outings to get shot at that you want. But he’s gotta figure it out for himself first, and he doesn’t need his big brother being the one who introduces him to all that. He idolizes you, you know.”

Daken scoffs. He can’t even get the brat to chew with his mouth closed.

“He cut his hair from that style he liked so much, just because you hated it so much,” Logan says obliviously. Daken nods like he’s conceding the argument and hastens from the room while he can still keep his mouth shut. It won’t benefit anyone at this point to tell their father that Jimmy really only cut his hair because Daken told him he would set it on fire if he didn’t. 

Ugh, families are the worst. Don’t even get him started on Laura stealing some of his clothes to wear without asking. And then has the gall to yell back at him when he yells “Silk! Its the finest cut of silk! Does that mean nothing to you?” at her.

“Oh get over it. Its not like I asked for killer robots to interrupt my date.”

“Of course they were going to interrupt your date with that Julian boy. I keep telling you, he’s a magnet for trouble. I can tell. I’m one too, remember?”

“Fine, whatever, you’re right and I should just expect every date with Julian from now until the end of time to end with fire and disaster.”

“Well now you’re being melodramatic. There’s no way that boy makes it past twenty five. He doesn’t even have a healing factor.”

“Why do you hate him so much anyway? If you’d just give him a chance - “

“What are you talking about? I give him a chance every single time he’s here and I don’t kill him.”

“Ugh, I can’t even talk to you when you’re like this. You always do this, you just decide on something and then you commit to that like the fate of the world depends on you standing firm on what’s usually a completely arbitrary decision in the first place!”

Daken sniffs. “I can assure you, there’s absolutely nothing arbitrary about my disdain for the Keller boy.”

“His name is Julian,” Laura enunciates with a glare.

“I don’t care,” Daken enunciates with an expression of lofty superiority.

“You two are so dumb,” Gabby says from the end of the hallway. They both turn identical glares on her. They’d noticed her arrive several minutes ago but they weren’t about to be distracted from their battle of wills. “Laura, you know Daken isn’t actually going to kill Julian. He doesn’t do that anymore except for really bad people sometimes and he just talks about stabbing people or killing them cuz he thinks he’s funny and then he gets all pissy because nobody ever gets that he doesn’t really mean it. He doesn’t even hate Julian and he used to be fine with him before he started dating you, its just he doesn’t think he’s good enough for you.”

Daken frowns at the petite would-be peacemaker. Meddlesome toddler. “What are you even babbling about? None of that is remotely true.”

Gabby rolls her eyes up at her brother from her much lower height. She taps the side of her nose with emphasis. “You do know we all have the same abilities to smell and analyze scents as you do, right? And you know everything you can tell from peoples’ scent, right? Of course I’m right, I can smell it as clear as anything and so can Jimmy and Dad and we actually all know this and talk about it all the time, and its why Dad never actually gets mad at you for talking about killing people because he can smell you’re saying it just cuz you’re used to saying it but really you’re too marshmallowy on the inside now to do half the stuff you claim you’re gonna do. Hate to break it to you bro, but you’re a closet softie and you’ve been made. The nose doesn’t lie. Only reason Laura doesn’t know it is because you piss her off like its your favorite hobby and its probably impossible for her to smell anything beyond her own scent of Royally Pissed Off.”

Ugh. Meddlesome insightful toddler. Who asked for her intervention anyway? Daken crosses his arms in a way that’s decidedly aloof and not at all sulking.

Laura’s staring at their sister assessingly. “That’s really what you think is going on? And Jimmy and Dad think so too? You’re not just saying all that?”

Gabby bats her eyes up at them. “Would I lie to you?”

“Yes,” Laura says without missing a beat.

“Without a shadow of a doubt,” Daken says dryly, right on her heels.

“For the sake of a candy bar,” Laura adds, because that really did happen.

“Or just boredom, because god forbid you pick up another hobby that isn’t just Chaos.”

“This from the guy who only has fun when there’s blood and bullets flying about,” Gabby fires back from a position of petite petulance.

Daken smirks down at her. “Didn’t you just say I don’t really mean it when I say all of that?”

Gabby narrows her eyes. “Touché. My own words thrown back at me. I am undone.”

“Yes, well - “

Daken’s cut off as Jimmy chooses that moment to walk past them down the hallway to the bathroom. He’s laughing and shaking his head.

“You guys are both so dumb. She plays you like this all the time, and you never see it.”

“Silence, mortal!” Gabby thunders at their brother menacingly. The effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that she can’t hit a baritone note to save her life.

“No, I’m interested in hearing what he has to say,” Daken says coolly. “For once. This is a moment without precedent and one unlikely to occur again, so let’s explore it a bit.”

Jimmy sighs and shakes his head without ever losing that amused smirk. “Had to tack on that last part, didn’t you. Just couldn’t help yourself.”

“I am a faithful student of the Truth,” Daken says, matching his brother smirk for smirk.

“The point, Jimmy?” Laura prods aggressively before that can erupt into a wholly separate thing she wants no part of.

“Oh, right.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “Its kinda her thing with you two when you get like this. You pick a fight with Laura, Laura gets pissed off and succumbs to the family curse of Tunnel Vision at the Worst Possible Time, and you both go back and forth endlessly and like you have all the time in the world for your stupid tete a tete, because on account of you both being practically unkillable and immortal, you kinda do and you know it. And then whenever she gets bored of listening to you two, Gabby swoops in and draws both of your attention until you’re both so focused on being annoyed with her you don’t even realize you’re actually side by side agreeing with each other, and she keeps it up just long enough til she’s sure she can just say she’s bored now and just leave the room, leaving you both annoyed and frustrated by a fight you can’t even claim to have won because she really just kinda...left, in the middle of it, and you’re so focused on that, you’ve totally forgotten to be pissed at each other. And by the time you do remember, like, the moment has passed and peace has been returned to the kingdom. Or at least as peaceful as this place ever gets.”

Daken stares at his mistake of a brother in the hopes that if he stalled long enough, his senses would arrive at a different conclusion. But nope. Scents don’t lie, unlike baby sis, apparently. He’s telling the truth. And Daken really does not....care for that conclusion.

Gabby stamps her foot and glares up at their brother.

“You are such a tattletale. I am providing a service, by keeping this family free of these two constantly at each others throats, and how is that service repaid? With betrayal! I hate you, you’re dead to me. Never speak to me again or at least not until I’ve stopped being mad at you, but that could be like ten years or something, I don’t even know right now.”

She draws up to her full height and squares her shoulders as she thunders this Mighty Mouse style at the still laughing Jimmy. Then, seeing she’d yet to make a dent in his armor of amusement and he was failing to take her pronouncement seriously, she punctuated her declaration by spitting on their brother’s shoe. Daken’s eyebrows shoot up again, this time in amusement of his own. Gabby then spins around on her heel and stalks off down the hallway, muttering more dire threats under her breath as she goes, the sound of them nonetheless carrying clearly to three siblings with enhanced hearing of their own. And apparently, little sis could be quite creative. Who knew she’d been hiding such talent?

Jimmy barely even notices; he’s still staring down at his shoe.

“Dude, you spit on me! That’s so not cool.”

“Some things need to be expressed so strongly, mere words will not suffice,” Daken says loftily, savoring a slightly renewed sense of superiority.

One quickly dashed, of course, because apparently he just can’t have anything.

“Bold words from the seventy year old who needed the sixteen year old to clue him in he’s being regularly manipulated by the twelve year old,” Jimmy fires back. As a return volley, its obnoxiously effective, and Daken’s still grinding his teeth and searching for an adequate rejoinder as Jimmy just grins even wider and then strolls off down the hallway as well. Whistling either an absolutely hideous song or else proof that he’s absolutely hideous at whistling. Tough call. With him it could be either.

Daken and Laura both stare after him in silence as he rounds the corner and disappears, leaving only the lingering scent of smugness in his wake. Daken hates the scent of smugness. It has a particularly....cloying feel to it. Well not his of course. But everyone else’s, especially little brothers? Acrid is the only word adequate for that.

“Sometimes I really do want to stab him. Just a little bit. And I’m not even lying,” Daken says. Laura just nods, her own nose scrunched up in distaste as well.

“Honestly? Me too.”

Brother and sister enjoy the rare moment of solidarity.

“You know what’s really bugging me?” Laura says suddenly, still staring off down the hallway. Daken turns an inquiring eye on her, prompting elucidation. She frowns.

“Where the hell did he learn a phrase like tete a tete? I mean. Its Jimmy.”

Daken does know what she means, and frowns as the nagging awareness of that leaps from his sister to himself like memetic chain lightning.

“And he used it correctly. That’s....unexpected.”

“Sometimes I wonder if maybe he’s not as completely airheaded as he pretends, and the fact that he’s got everyone so convinced of that actually means he’s running circles around the rest of us,” Laura says. She shrugs. “Of course, then I have to question everything and who has that kind of time and also the very idea of genius mastermind Jimmy disturbs me on a deeply visceral level. So then I just. Stop doing that.”

Daken nods and sighs. “Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”

“Okay, this is annoying. I kinda still want to fight, but now fighting with you feels kinda anticlimactic. Ugh, siblings are the worst,” Laura declares with a glower. “They ruin everything.”

“On that, we can agree. With allowances for temporary occasions of some of them being bearable,” Daken says. “Some.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve never said to me, big brother,” Laura says lightly. Daken swiftly scowls but she holds up a hand to forestall any rebuttal. “Sorry, don’t mean to ruin the moment. I’m thinking about how else we can put all that frustrated energy to good use. Wanna go pick a fight with the Summers’ kids?”

A slow smile spreads across Daken’s face. “Well now. Finally, a family outing I can get behind. I believe that’s precisely what we need right now. Care to lead the way?”

He still hates her boyfriend, of course, but he supposes he can let that be. 

For now, at least.

[brw]

Simon Williams

first impression - well, at first i only rlly knew him as the guy who has vision's brainwaves who also dated wanda! so i didn't rlly like him much, because obviously there are. those panels of him hurting her and beyond being a bad actor and also not rlly being great to vision those were. the only personality traits he had. but i got interested one day and decided to search him up and? discovered he had an Interesting Relationship with a certain hank mccoy and this didn't rlly add up to what i knew abt him previously so i was inspired to read some stuff and. then i was hooked hsjsjeje

impression now - honestly he is SO underrated. like he. gets written weirdly... a lot and its very obvious that a lot of writers dont know how to write him outside his relationship w/ wanda but he's honestly cool! he makes a lot of mistakes but he genuinely wants to do good for people and he also sees the best in everyone. like he was vocally in support of wanda, and seemed completely understanding & accepting of hank when he told him all the bad he'd done over the years. he's also canonically a victim of abuse at the hands of his father & elder brother, which still seems to effect him and his relationships even now. and that abuse makes his decision to be a pacifist all the more potent and meaningful. he's also been implied to have suffered from an anxiety disorder & an eating disorder so like. he is genuinely an interesting and compelling character, it's just a shame he so often gets reduced to "guy wanda sometimes dates who doesn't like vision and doesn't know how to act" smh :/

favourite moment - ooo boy... its hard to say. but. probably his arc where he calls the avengers out on their bullshit in what i think was avengers vol 4. and it's a shame they kinda fucked it over and chalked it up to him being unstable because he genuinely had points. he wasn't wrong. like sure i think. threatening to chuck the avengers tower or whatever into the sea was a little extreme but he did genuinely have a point. and also then straight up told hank he loved him so I'm. hsjsjhjehjjrje. this was a good arc anyway and it's a shame they ruined it. special mention though to his talk w/ hank in uncanny avengers vol 2 #28 (i think it was 28 but it could also have been 25 i. can't remember jsjsjej) because that was genuinely also super sweet and shows how he's willing to grow <3 another special mention to his scenes in vision and the scarlet witch because i think we deserve more content of simon and vision being good family members

idea for a story - with our current understanding of child abuse i would LOVE to see him explore his past and actually get help for it. because it did genuinely affect him for some time and while i think him becoming a pacifist did help i also know that. isn't enough to make years of repressed trauma go away lol. i also think were he to meaningfully think about what he went thru w/ his brother eric, he'd be better able to build a stronger and less strained relationship with vision. and i also think it would be helpful if simon, with our current understanding of eating disorders, had that be a canonical part of him. because he doesn't look like someone w/ an ED. and i think it would be important to see a man who looks muscular and healthy struggle w/ that. just generally. character development. i think it would also be good to bring up his issues w/ amora the enchantress (who was implied to have r*ped him) because while his 90s solo series did bring it up it was also. the 90s jajsjsjsjs. i just basically think something similar to his other series but with better writing and a better understanding of what we're talking about.

unpopular opinion - probably that his relationship w/ wanda is um very unhealthy, on both sides. on one hand, when simon was unstable he violently attacked her and tried to kill her. and that is... not good in the slightest, and him being in emotional distress and physically being unstable due to his ions doesn't excuse that in the slightest. simon also had an issue of putting wanda on an unattainable pedestal, which as someone who did that exact thing with a past partner is not healthy at all. you should be able to admit your partner has flaws and is human, and he did not and could not. but also, wanda hasn't been awfully good to simon either. like for a while she refused to be upfront about her feelings to him, and she slept with him while he was still in incredible emotional distress and upset. and imo because of that he. wasn't rlly in a position to meaningfully consent. so yeah. his and wanda's relationship, even without the relation to vision (which makes it worse) has never rlly been healthy.

favourite relationship - his and hank's! tbh it's probably the best one he has. those two. really love each other it is very sweet. they've both obviously grown a lot but i still think they're good/best friends and their relationship, romantic or platonic is obviously very important to the both of them. they're. very close together and i hope that at some point we can. see them be avengers together again because they were so funny sjshwnsnejen. but i also really like his relationship w/ vision when it's written well, because the two of them have. obviously been thru a lot in their own familial relationships so seeing the two of them have some semblance of "normal" with each other is very sweet. i also like the mental relationship of him being viv's uncle a lot. its not canon yet but i have hopes 🤞 he was a good uncle to tommy and billy growing up so by logic he should be a good uncle to viv too!

favourite headcanon - hmmm, probably the one i have now that he is jewish. idk it just. works with him! he is after all a kirby creation. but there's also one i have where he played the violin when he was younger, which also works with him. like idk. it's seems like a thing rich ppl make their kids do and it fits with him 😊

send me a character!

[intothewilde]

⌠ ellie bamber, 20, cis female, she/her ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, GIORGIA WILDE! according to their records, they’re a FIRST year, specializing in UNDECIDED; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (first edition books, walking in the rain, candy-scented lip gloss, getting lost in a museum, millions of twinkling city lights). when it’s the (sagittarius)’s birthday on 12/13/1999, they always request their CHERRY PIE from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. 

she can’t do shit with knives yet but it’s a great gif, don’t @ me) but DO like this if you want me to hit you up for plots

@gallagherintro​

tw: implied neglect, brief mentions of mental illness and addiction

ok! so giorgia was born and raised in new york city. both of her parents came from extremely wealthy families. her mother was a french socialite and her father was the golden boy of a hearst-like (founders/owners of a distinguished publishing conglomerate) family from connecticut. some of his family members claimed to be descendants of one of oscar wilde’s cousins (a rumor that has yet to be confirmed) and he believed he had it in him to become a literary great himself. he seemingly succeeded, having published multiple best sellers popular with young pseudo-intellectuals. 

giorgia was never sure if her mother had wanted a daughter or a life-size doll. from a very young age she was primed to fit into high society and paraded around her parent’s lavish parties. most of her time was spent with nannies and violin tutors, studying her father’s poetic heroes, and dancing ballet. she was taught how to socialize with society’s elite, but she never felt comfortable doing so. she felt safer hiding behind her mother or sitting beneath the stairs with her nose in a book.

while her mother wanted her child to be pretty and proper, her father wanted someone to continue his family’s legacy. she learned to read when she was four, and by the time she was five, gio was forced to write in a diary every. single. day. (over the last fifteen years she’s filled up dozens of notebooks that live on a bookshelf in her childhood bedroom). she didn’t particularly like her father and she didn’t want to want what he wanted for her. (did that sentence make sense? i hope so). but she did like to write and she was damn good at it. her poetry was published in online journals and lit mags, her short stories won young artist awards. on the outside, she was everything her parents wanted.

but like i said before, gio struggled with the social part or being a socialite, and the life of an heiress was never something she wanted. she didn’t seem to have the right attitude - she was demure and diffident, a textbook wallflower. she was never happier than when she was reading a book or roaming a museum, always curious about the world around her. she never misbehaved or did anything wrong, but her parents wanted her to behave differently. 

their tribeca penthouse always had a certain cold air to it and the high ceilings only seemed to add to the lonely feeling that gio couldn’t escape. her relationship with her parents seemed to become more strained with each passing day. the more she learned about them the more gio realized she didn’t know them at all - the spa retreats her mother went on were really trips to psychiatric facilities and rehabs, and the endless slew of young women her father employed as assistants were all lazily hidden affairs. they never talked about it, if she tried to she was shut down or ignored entirely.

gio grew up wanting to go to nyu. she didn’t know where the dream came from (her parents wanted her to go to vassar or dartmouth) but she loved her home city and something about nyu had always called to her. she was accepted early admission to the gallatin school where she planned to major in an individualized study of creative and dramatic writing.

she loved her freshman year of college. she was finally out of her parents’ home and into a postage stamp of an apartment with an eccentric girl studying theater. she was around people from all over the world and all walks of life instead of the tiny bubble of rich snobs and private schools. she was around people she actually had things in common with. she was still shy and she still found it extremely difficult to talk to people. the easiest way for her to interact with people was to overcompensate for her shyness and be excessively friendly. when she was actually able to talk, she found she had many things to say, and once she started talking it was hard for her to stop.

her roommate was a big fan of movie marathons (in october they watched all of the scream movies, and then all of the saw movies, and then all of the children of the corn movies. that’s twenty horror movies. gio still has nightmares from them). for a few weeks in the fall she had a spy movie marathon. mission: impossible and jason bourne movies, mostly. something about them piqued gio’s interest, and she started reading spy novels, which quickly turned into her writing one of her own. she wanted the protagonist to be a woman for once, and one who’s main personality trait wasn’t tits. her novel, at dawn beneath the bridge of sighs, followed a cia operative and an italia aisi agent who are forced to work together to find the kidnapped daughter of an american diplomat along with the priceless jewelry she was wearing at the time of her capture. (do i know what the fuck im talking about? no!!) 

gio comes from a family of publishers so it was fairly easy for her to find someone who wanted to publish it, but the nepotism ended there, the success was all her own. it was lauded as an impressive debut novel and critics praised her subversion of genre tropes and inventive action sequences. but it stuck out to a select few for a different reason - the heroine used tactics uncannily similar to those used by actual spies, and she used them well. some people were curious as to how the character would handle other situations in the spy world, or really how the author would plan it.

so yeah she got a letter from gallagher, and she thought it was a joke at first. she eventually figured out it was very real (how? idk!) and her curiosity got the better of her. she decided it would be good for research, and that she could go back to nyu if she wanted to. once she arrived at gallagher, giorgia... did not know what to do. she had never been so out of her element, and she felt like she was terrible at everything. but that wasn’t really true, all the things you could study for were things she was actually learning. she became determined to actually do well, and as her first year comes to an end, gio still feels extremely unsure of herself, and unsure of where she wants to focus her studies, but she’s starting to feel like gallagher is the right place for her to be.

personality: she’s very sweet, very earnest, sometimes has a tendency to retreat into herself and get quiet, but she still combats her shyness with an outgoing attitude she learned from her mother that takes her far out of her comfort zone. basically as outgoing as an introvert can be. she tries to see the best in everyone and every situation. emphasis on tries, because she’s a total worrier and is often pulled between the desire to find a silver lining and the fear that something horrible will happen. she will give people more chances than they deserve and let them walk all over her. her self esteem can be pretty low, but one thing she is confident about is her writing (although she won’t tell you because she doesn’t want to seem boastful). art and literature in all forms are her favorite things and she could talk about it forever. she’s the kind of person who tries to learn everyone’s names and once she knows it she’ll say hi to you every time she sees you.

other stuff: she’s fluent in french and english and grew up speaking them equally. (she also knows some spanish, italian, german, and russian from her nannies, but she’s not fluent). she has a deep love for photography, usually bringing a camera with her at all times. she can play classic violin and piano, but hasn’t in a while and is probably rusty, she continued to dance until she came to gallagher and no longer had time to practice. she has a cat named pierre (named after pierre-auguste renoir). she's a vegetarian. she’s basically addicted to fruit. she listens to a lot of sad pop music. her favorite colors are blush pink and forest green. she watches a lot jean-luc godard and wes anderson movies. she’s kind of a sad girl/art ho. she gets crushes on people easily and all the time. she is very impressionable, and seems to experience heartbreak often. she just wants someone to lover her for her, you know? 

wanted connections: (im super fucking tired so im just gonna write some really basic shit but hopefully i’ll edit it tomorrow).

a best friend: it’s not easy for her to make friends but i want gio to have one person she can truly be herself around. a platonic soulmate, if you will.

friends: really just anyone who is understanding of how she’s not always comfortable talking but will also listen if she starts ranting about queer representation in 20th century poetry and plays, ya feel?

big brother/big sister: because she hated being an only child and she really needs someone looking out for her

bad influence: its not hard to be a bad influence on her but someones gotta do it!

good influence: someone who lets her baby ways rub off on them

idk what to call this but a sort of mutual respect with someone she’s had a class with?

idk what to call this either but someone she really clashes with, they just don’t understand each other

people she knew in nyc: she was there for the first 19 years of her life so if your character was there in early 2019 or any time before that, they could’ve run into each other

someone from a similar background who she can just be like... felt with?

hookups/flings: she loves love but love does not love her

an ex: could be good or bad terms idk 

crushes, mutual or unrequited

give me literally anything, the more angst the better!!

[pretendingblaine]

☆ did you hear the rumor? BLAINE ANDERSON has been spotted in the big apple! HE is 24 y-o and works as a BROADWAY PERFORMER. some things never change, because HE is still DEDICATED but also DRAMATIC. psst! we did our research and found out that HE is being stalked by a fan. i wonder how long BEE will play pretend! ☆ {darren criss, glee character}. ( @pretendinghq​​ ) 

BASIC INFORMATION.

name: blaine devon anderson

age: 24

date of birth / zodiac: april 5th / aries

hometown: westerville, ohio

occupation: broadway performer (about to start rehearsals for grease)

sexual orientation: homosexual

relationship status: single

positive traits: dedicated, enthusiastic, sympathetic, charming, well-rounded

negative traits: dramatic, stubborn, naïve, vulnerable, impulsive

HEADCANONS.

(tw: mentions of homophobia & assault)

blaine grew up in an affluent, upper-class family. his father is a successful neurosurgeon and chairman of a medical foundation, while his mother runs a multi-million makeup company. from a young age, blaine was dragged along to charity events and trips to the country club, and his father always had incredibly high (and sometimes unrealistic) expectations of his sons.

growing up with an older brother like cooper anderson, it was no surprise that blaine started to sing and dance as soon as he learned how to walk and talk. he started piano lessons when he was five, soon followed by acting, dancing and singing lessons, and spent most of his early childhood performing plays and duets with cooper (which usually resulted in blaine being a back-up dancer for his brother). cooper was a strict teacher and blaine knew that there was no way he was ever going be able to live up to his brother’s unrealistic expectations, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. he loved performing and wanted to get a chance to shine too, and he was willing to do whatever it took to make it happen.

blaine came out when he was fourteen, and received mixed reactions. his mother and brother were nothing but supportive, but his father didn’t really respond much at all at first. despite their many attempts at bonding, blaine has never been close to his father. “if we don’t talk about it, it will eventually disappear” seemed to be the words mr. anderson lived by, and as a teenager, blaine often couldn’t help but feel like his father hoped that rebuilding a car with him or taking him to a football game might make him straight. although blaine was always great at pretending to be the perfect son in front of his dad’s friends and colleagues, or at the events the andersons attended, things were strained between the two of them, and they still don’t talk very often. 

things weren’t exactly easier at school. blaine had always been a bit of an outcast ever since junior high, but the bullying only got worse when he came out. halfway through his sophomore year, he ended up in in the hospital after getting attacked at a school dance.

he transferred to a different school, where he joined the glee club and drama club (as well as countless other extracurriculars). he ended up playing the lead in two school musicals, did some community theatre as well, and performed wherever and whenever he could.

blaine moved to nyc right after graduation, where he attended nyada. he had dreamt of getting out of small town, ohio and moving to nyc all his life, but it did take some time to adjust to life in the big city and the big personalities at nyada. standing out in a school full of talented people wasn’t easy, but blaine eventually managed to make a name for himself by putting up flawless performances, getting involved in student government and several curriculum-related clubs and eventually graduating at the top of his class.

after graduating from nyada, blaine immediately threw himself into auditions. he eventually got cast as the link larkin understudy in hairspray on broadway and after that, he landed the lead as tony in west side story (with rachel as maria) and replaced the lead in how to succeed in business without really trying. 

he’s now about to start rehearsals for grease (did anyone notice a hair product pattern), in which he’ll be portraying danny zuko.

blaine hopes he’ll be able to record an album in the future. he plays the piano, guitar & violin and loves to write and compose.

a few more random facts: blaine has a cat named freddie purrcury, loves all kinds of geeky stuff, is a hopeless romantic and boxes. 

CONNECTIONS.

i’ve got some super random connections listed here (i collected these from plot idea posts)

blaine is a total ray of sunshine so friends are always welcome

exes maybe? blaine is a hopeless romantic but he’s only had one or two serious relationships so far. 

broadway friends/costars

i’m honestly open for anything else so please feel free to message me!

[palettepainter]

First drawing - Johnathan’s ref sheet

second drawing - Height chart of the siblings, Jokey and Chloe are fraternal twins

DO NOT REPOST!!!

Name: Johnathan Nicknames: John Gender: Male Occupation: Spear making Demon type/species: Angel of Loyalty Likes: Following the rules, being organised, clean environments, dressing smartly, french culture, music, the violin, reading, the colours red and pink Dislikes: chaos, pranks, messy environments, dirt, rock music, women being treated wrongly, greasy foods (This May be changed) Died in: 2011 Former life: Being the eldest of his siblings Johnathan was expected to be a good role model for his younger siblings, he was polite, mature, well mannered and specialised in many musical instruments and sports. He left home to study further education in France, and Chloe soon followed his lead to study at a private girls school. He is told by his sister of his brothers death and how he got kicked out of the home, when his sister dies of suicide Johnathan is left alone. He looses contact with his family and focuses solidly on his work life, paper after papers - he dies when someone broke into his house and robbed him, Johnathan went down to investigate the noise and was shot five times in the chest. Powers: Is excellent at sword fighting, good at weapon crafting, is very resourceful, tending to wounds, aerodynamics General bio: Everyone was surprised when Jokey introduces Jonathan as his older brother, Willem is still trying to process the fact that they’re related. Jonathan is very different from his two younger siblings, he is much more matured compared to his younger brother Jokey, who is far more extroverted and bouncy then he. Jonathan prefers to keep to himself and his work, he’s very focused on making his time worth while and spending it tending to important things, rather then pulling silly pranks and telling cheesy jokes. Jonathan also leans more towards the french side in the family tree, he along with his little sister Chloe both show interest in french clothing and cooking. When he was alive he left him early to study away in France, after hearing word of his younger brothers death Jonathan trains in fencing in hopes that he can protect his sister. He is a very skilled fighter in swords and spears, but after his little sister committed suicide, he was broken, crushed. He becomes completely focused on work after his siblings deaths, he looses contact with her parents over the time he works and he soon stops talking with any close family. Now in heaven Jonathan is still a bit of a work a holic, he much rather prefers to keep to himself then socialise, he’ll only hold a decent conversation with Chloe. He spends his days crafting swords and exterminator spears along side other angels, he graduated from Charleston’s training lessons as he is fully capable of defending himself and others. Relationship: Out of his two siblings Jonathan is closer to his little sister Chloe, due to them both sharing a love for french culture and fashion. When they where alive Johnathan tried to keep his little sister in the right pathway to becoming a propped young lady, he wasn’t approving of his younger brother Jokey stirring their sister away from that path. It’s probably thanks to Johnathan and their parents that Chloe turned out as polite and generous as she is, the two get along well and Johnathan is willing to be weak around her. Himself and Jokey have a more...strained relationship, being the eldest child Johnathan had a lot of responsibilities pushed onto him by his parents, he grows up viewing his brothers energetic and bouncy behaviour as silly. Hey have there moments when they get along though, deep down Johnathan still loves his little brother. Thinks that Willem’s lazy habits are not a good example for his little sister of a good trait in a lover for his little brother. Johnathan was raised with manners, style, and grew up to be very mature, Willem is lazy, slacks off on work and dresses in baggy clothing - things that Johnathan is not used too. Johnathan is a bit cautious of Willem’s demon side, like most angels, but for now he will allow Willem to be with his brother. He’s learnt that Willem seems far too lazy to cheat on his brother. Johnathan is the type of older brother that would want his siblings to be with someone perfect, someone that could truly love them. As much of a stick in the mud he is, he does care for his siblings happiness....which is why he was very surprised when Jokey just causally brought up that Chloe liked Nathanial. His sister liking that hot headed brute?! Surely not! Haha! How wrong he was, Chloe does indeed have a crush on him...and Johnathan was genuinely at a loss for words. He kinda went ‘Chloe you can’t be serious’ right to her face - Johnathan does NOT think Nathanial is a good role model or lover to his sister, he has promised Nathanial he shall see to it that he will personally snap his wrists and pin them to a door if he makes his sister cry....(But Johnathan is only a wee bit taller then his siblings so Nathanial could defeated him with a gentle hand holding him back-) Johnathan isn’t sure how exactly he ended up being friends with Maylen (also known as Bubbles) of all people. She was so...chatty, all the time. Constantly! At some point Maylen asks him to go to the lake with her, loosen up a bit! Get away from work! Johnathan of course turns down the offer, but oh no it didn’t stop there! Maylen kept on asking and asking and asking until one day Johnathan finally agrees, to make her stop jabbering. And then from that point on the two sorta just stayed close, Johnathan will admit that she her company isn’t entirely unwanted. He begins to maybe enjoy her company just a teenie weenie little bit...maybe Nathanial/Maylen - @cosmic-artzz

[lawful-evil-novelist]

Gotham Rogues Profile #1: Dr. Jonathan Ulysses Crane AKA The Scarecrow

The first part of a rather long series of profiles, both because I wanted to write them out and also because they were requested by @the-mighty-sorceress, @spacetabbi, @hugsforvillains, @michi0no, and @perfunctoryusernamecreation .  I hope you guys like it.

CATEGORY#1: BASIC STATS

Gender: Male

Grammatical Gender (Masculine, Feminine, Androgynous, etc.): Masculine with a very heavy tint of femininity.  His upbringing and appearance had an innate femininity imprinted on him.

Age: 27-30

Race, ethnicity, culture: Mixed race, half Irish, half Native American of the Crow tribe.  Though he was officially made a member of his father’s tribe in his early teens, much of the culture he ascribes to is that of Gotham and the Deep South.  He speaks Crow and attends tribal celebrations when he has the time and isn’t in Arkham.

Height: 6’3”

Body type: tall, long, and wiry.  There’s not much fat to him and while he has muscle, it’s mostly lean

Appearance: Jon is very pretty, in that his features and appearance are rather feminine and doll-like.  There are small “off” things about his features.  When he’s neutral or tired he looks fine, but his expressions can look quite daunting, especially his smile.  He has a gap between his two front teeth.

Jon’s hair is a mop of black curls, a trait he gets from his mother.  In his early years, it was cut rather short and managed, but a lack of care has turned it messy and untamed.

If there’s a defining, terrifying feature of Jon, it’s his eyes, they’re icy blue and piercing, it almost looks like he knows more than he’s been told.

Jon’s skin is copper, you can definitely see his native heritage in his skin color.

Jon has multiple tattoos, the most prominent being a tree growing from a heart on his back, a spade on his left forearm, and a bird behind his right ear.  Others include an octopus over his navel, a cursive note under his collarbone (Reads “Jasper-Maximillian-Zachariah”, the other three boys groomed by his third abuser), and a cross on the side of his right hand.  His childhood has left his body a web of scars, many of which are hidden by tattoos.

Where is he from? Jon was born and raised in a small Southern town in Georgia called Arlen, where he lived until he was 11 when his great-grandmother died. Afterwards, he was placed with his father in Columbia, South Carolina.  He was placed in a mental facility in Columbia when he was 14 after suffering a severe nervous breakdown, but was released at 16, and moved to Gotham to attend Gotham University.

CATEGORY #2: RELATIONSHIPS 

Family: Jonathan’s first known family was his great-grandmother, Mary Keeny. Mary was the product of a very prestigious Southern family and hated her great-grandson, an illegitimate, mixed-race boy.  Mary severely abused her great-grandson until her death when he was 11.

Jonathan’s mother, Karen, is largely uninterested in either of her children, especially not Jon.  Her treatment of him is mostly disgust and fear.  Jon greatly resembles his mother.

Jon’s father Gerald was the one to take him in after Mary’s death.  Though he cared for his son, he was extremely controlling and protective of Jon, not allowing him enough space.  He also ignored that Jon began suffering from bipolar disorder until Jon had a nervous breakdown at 14.  Gerald is currently in prison for child abuse.

Jon has a single half-sister, Adriane Jarvis, who was taken from Karen by their grandmother.  Adriane has a relatively healthy relationship with Jonathan, though it is slightly damaged by their large age gap (Adriane is 10) and Jon’s mental illness.

Jon’s maternal grandmother, Marion Keeny, is the closest thing teenage Jon ever had to a maternal figure.  She and Jonathan have the closest relationship of anyone on his maternal side.

Lyndon Keeny is Jonathan’s great-great-uncle, Mary Keeny’s “wayward” brother.  He and Jon seldom meet face to face because he lives in Europe, but their relationship is healthy enough that they keep in touch.

Jon’s paternal grandfather, Chayton, is the closest thing Jon has to a proper father figure.  He was Jon’s major teacher when it came to learning about Crow culture and language.

Jon’s paternal grandmother, Ruth, is the closest Jon will probably ever get to a proper grandmother.  She’s protective of him but nurturing.  She isn’t controlling and loves cooking for her very thin grandson.  She also has a concealed firearm and has 100% threatened Batman with it.

Friends: Jon’s closest friend is Harley Quinn, they’ve known each other since college and even dated for two years (and then again later while both were dating the Joker).  Their relationship is casual, comfortable, and full of very bad puns, sarcasm, inside jokes (Peach Pie Moonshine is a phrase that will send them both into a laughing fit), and dirty humor.

Jon grew up with Charlie McIntyre and Hartley Rathaway, both are rather close friends and Jon and Hartley briefly dated when both were teenagers.  Jon visits both regularly.

Jon’s closest male friends are Jervis Tetch, Edward Nygma, and Maxwell Mavis.  The three pull regular heists together and Jon has had an on-off romantic relationship with Edward.

Jon’s tensest friendship is with Pamela Isley. The two became friends in college, and even then, were a little at odds.  Pamela’s opinions strain their relationship on occasion, as does Jon’s relationship with Harley, especially before Pamela and Harley begin dating. While not jealous of Jon, Pamela is a little sour that Jon didn’t defend Harley enough while dating Joker.

The three other boys abused with Jon by Hugo Strange, Jasper Curtis (6 years younger), Maximillian Zeus (2 years younger), and Zachariah Bloom (4 years younger), are all still friends with him, they’ve formed a brotherly relationship. Jon, being the eldest, watches all three carefully and does his best to make sure they don’t get hurt or in any danger.

Jon drinks regularly with Waylon Jones and Leonard Snart, he’s also slept with both.

Jon has become good friends with Timothy Drake, but the relationship has become more brotherlike than anything else.  Much of the relationship is Jon keeping Tim from drinking coffee concoctions to stay awake.

Jason Todd has befriended Jon because Jon saved his life at least four times, probably more.

Bane, Angelo Sanchez, has formed a tense sort of friendship with Jonathan while trying to get clean.  Bane refers to Jon alternately as lobo, meaning wolf, or mestizo, referring to Jon’s mixed heritage.  Jon also works for his cartel regularly.

Jon and Selina became friends early in Jon’s criminal career, they’re still rather close.

CATEGORY #3: THE SEXY STUFF

Sexual orientation: Pansexual

What is he attracted to?: Jon has relatively variable preferences, but in general he’s very focused on eyes, he loves them.  Despite his ridiculous height he is extremely attracted to people who are taller than him.  Being shorter clearly isn’t a dealbreaker though.  One of the more interesting notes is that Jon prefers submissive men and dominant women.  He is rather attracted to any kind of intelligence, be it emotional, logical, etc., and likes small traits like, for instance, Edward listing riddles when he’s nervous.  Jon also enjoys people who have a sense of humor.

Sexual experience: While Jon’s initial sexual experience was negative, Jon is very comfortable, perhaps a little too comfortable, with sex.  Jon has had multiple sexual partners of all genders.

Romantic experience: Jon has had a number of romantic relationships alongside sexual partners.  His most prominent and long lasting being with Harley and Edward.  Jon’s romantic experience can be a bit trying though, he has a hard time trusting people because of his past.

CATEGORY #4: SKILLS

Skills: Jon is extremely intelligent and intuitive, being able to read people and situations very easily.  He’s skilled at mimicking voices both speaking and singing, can play violin and piano, and is multilingual (speaks French, Latin, Ancient Greek, Crow, and ASL). Despite being unable to shoot a handgun, Jon has two civilian sharpshooting medals for his ability to shoot a hunting rifle.  He’s also skilled with most knives and, while not strong or disciplined enough to hold his own against a trained opponent, knows enough to overpower larger or stronger opponents in a fight (provided said opponent does not have any other considerable advantage, Jon can’t beat someone who can literally break his arm by biting it), both skills were taught to him by Bane and Selina.  Jon is largely immune to most toxins due to extensive fear toxin testing on himself and regularly being close proximity to Pamela Isley.  As an added note, Jon is hypermobile, making him unusually flexible.

Occupation/schooling: Jon has a PhD in psychology gained at 25 (equaling out to 9 years of schooling).  He also has a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry.  Before becoming a major criminal in Gotham he taught psychology at Gotham University, also acting as a consultant for the GCPD.  Despite regularly being incarcerated at Arkham Mental Facilities, he also consults there as a patient.

Hobbies: Reading is Jon’s main hobby, though he’s obsessed with fear and often studies it whenever he can, he’s fond of cooking, particularly baking, and loves horror and slasher films, Jon also loves playing the violin.

CATEGORY #5: PERSONALITY & CHARACTER

Introvert or extrovert? Definite introvert, though he can occasionally come off as extroverted from his mannerisms.

Strengths: Jonathan is intuitive and has a strong sense of empathy, he can easily connect to people and their emotional state (the problem is he doesn’t give two shits about either, unrelated to the empathy part), and also has a good skill in using both to his advantage.  Jon can come off as misleading, he feigns sympathy well and is skilled at playing the manipulator, making him excellent at drawing people in. He’s also learned how to use his looks as a draw (basically how to use sex appeal as a weapon) and has cultivated this as a strength.  That said, when he comes across a person he cares about, he’ll happily lay his life down for them and is a very loving, while a touch overprotective, friend.

Weaknesses: Jon is reckless, often putting his life in danger for thrills or fun. He can also be very cruel and vindictive.  His lack of sympathy and high empathy makes him a very skilled and calculating manipulator, but makes him less good at being trustworthy or kind to strangers. Jon also lacks much trust in others, being quick to withdraw his trust if it’s broken.  Jon’s near-obsession with control can make him erratic if things aren’t going his way.  Jon also drinks heavily, barely sleeps, and eats sporadically.

Goals/dreams/aspirations: Jonathan’s goal, above all others, is to be able to push past fear, to not be afraid of anything.

Beliefs/affiliations: Jonathan was raised Catholic by his great-grandmother, who was very radical and practiced flagellation.  Jonathan was taught this form of religion, but the flagellation was ended with his father, and the nurses at the Columbia Mental Hospital taught Jonathan a much gentler form of Catholicism to help him cope with his bipolar disorder. Jonathan is still a practicing Catholic.

Beyond his religion, Jonathan values heavily independence and honesty, as well as loyalty.  While he is rather cruel, he has a very high opinion of people who are kind regardless of their circumstances (Jon has a massive amount of respect for Becky Albright for both her kindness and adherence to his other values).

Fears: Jonathan has already confronted many of his fears in the past. His most principle fear is losing his sovereignty and free will.  He’s been exploited, abused, and groomed by a man whose motives were extremely disturbing and never wants to go back to that time again.  He reacts very poorly when people attempt to manipulate him and has been known to stab people who touch him without asking.

Jonathan also fears getting attached to people, mainly because soon after befriending Pamela she was abused by Woodrue.

Insecurities: Though Jonathan is relatively attractive and is aware of this, he is insecure about many aspects of it.  His feminine and often unsettling features were a source of ridicule for him as a child, and he was often the subject of cruel teasing over his resemblance to a doll and his unnerving features, as well as his mixed heritage.

He heavily underestimates his own ability to handle situations, often making him easy to pass over.

What would he die for? People he cares deeply about like Harley, his family (even members he hates like his parents), abuse victims.