#and apparently there are people mad at this because the alien looks alien???

[gelu-the-babosa-multiversal]

AJKSDjhjkafhAKSFJALFJ Thank you Marvel!

aparently in the latest fantastic 4 comics johnny storm has been in a relationship with an alien, and that would be pretty standard affair for marvel heroes, right.

except someone at marvel with fucking balls of steel and the biggest brain in the known universe made the alien look... actually alien

this is the greatest thing ive seen in my life, is almost enough to make me want to read the comic

[corkinavoid]

I just found this in my notes

Apparently, I woke up at 5:23 in the morning, wrote it down, and went straight back to sleep. Trust my hyperfixated ass to still be making content even as I'm unconscious.

Anyways, yes,

DPxDC Trust Me, I'm an Engineer

Danny is half-ghost, but he is also a child of two mad scientists who spent the better part of their lives elbow deep in building all kinds of stuff out of all kinds of junk. Imagine what their kid, who loves science and engineering as much as they do, if not more, can accomplish?

When he moves to Gotham, he decides to leave all the heroics behind, hanging up his cape. Surely, he will be fine - Gotham has, like, what, six? seven? ten? vigilantes of its own. They don't need any more, and, besides, Danny is fairly certain he doesn't work that great in teams.

But there's just... so much crime happening.

Danny doesn't want to get involved, not really. He's retired. But he wants to help somehow!

So, he starts building unconventional devices for self-defense. A rubber duck that shoots lasers out of its eyes? A fork that turns into a shocker? A rice cooker that defends your home in case of an attack? A pen that transforms into a gas mask? You name it, he can build it.

It escalates quickly. Someone asks him to upgrade a baby carriage to a full impenetrable robot that will protect the baby inside it, and Danny decides why not. It's for safety. He installs countless safety measures so nothing could be triggered by mistake, and even though by the end the carriage doesn't look that much different, it proves effective in the first serious accident. In fact, it is so effective that it saves a total of five hostages, including the baby inside it, who didn't even cry because there are soundproof shields inside and recordings of the baby mother's voice.

Danny builds more of those carriages. Then he switches to home defenses. Then someone asks him to make brass knuckles that turn into a gauntlet shield in case of attack. Danny does a thorough check to make sure it won't fall into the wrong hands, but he ends up making it.

It doesn't take too much time for him to start making full-on robotic suits for people. Bulletproof, running on clean energy - Gotham has plenty of residue ectoplasm - with built-in defense mechanisms and stuff.

It is at this point that the Bats start taking a closer look at his inventions. Before that, they thought it was just some Rogue in the making, and they kept an eye on Danny, but never once has he created anything with the purpose of offense instead of defence, so they let it slide. But then Tim gets his hands on one of the suits and comes back to Bruce, nearly salivating over it.

A few weeks later, Danny gets an internship at WE. A year later, he is invited to work with the JL.

And that's when it hits him.

M e c h a s.

He can do real, actual mecha-suits for heroes. He can make them fit those heroes perfectly, enhancing their strengths and negating the weaknesses.

No alien invasion fucks with Earth anymore, because when they do, the JL just grabs their Danny Fenton Suits and whatever evil aliens were aiming to take control are annihilated in no time.

Maybe Tucker joins him along the way. Maybe Danny has an arms race with Lex Luthor, maybe Cyborg bonds with him over the mechanical rambling. What I'm saying is, cool robots for everyone!

[evilminji]

Oh... my god? Ghost Reporters.

Imagine it. Their office is in the Zone. They literally FEED of hunting for The Next Big Scoop! And Revealing The Truth! Every honest reporter that got silenced for getting a little too close to the facts. The bloody, beating, heart of societies underbelly.

Every Lois Lane that had no Kryptonian to stop some rich and powerful jackals putting them in the ground.

Well Death sure didn't stop THEM! They STILL want answers! But now they have co-wokers. Oh~ and SUPERPOWERS! And best part?

The newly appointed KING is going too and from the living world. That must mean it's okay now, RIGHT? Your majesty? You're not a RAGING HYPOCRITE, aaaaare you? :) 🎤

And... look. Danny knows full well what these piranhas are up too. He's not stupid. But Madeline Fenton raised a lot of things. Fool? Not one of um. That a LOT of reporters with sharp, sharp teeth and bloodlust in their eyes. He wants to half-live.

He compromises. Illusion of control and all that. Yeah, yeah, they all tooootally respect his authority etc. Give them Them Scoop! He, wisely, gets the fuck out of the way. Whoosh! Off they go!

Thats.... probably gonna be a problem. *siiiiiips his morning coffee* But it's not HIS problem. Not right now.

And? Suddenly all these politicians and business leaders are getting fucking AMBUSHED. Oh? You thought you'd get soft ball "aren't I a man of the people. Buy oil!" Bullshit questions? HA! Where were you on June 27th, 1978, at-

And "according to YOUR words, exact quote as follows-"

Just? They BEAT the leader with the STICK. "Oh but you'll lose access". They'd love to see HOW! They can go through WALLS! Answer the question, coward. "Your gonna make powerful enemies!" Oh nooooo, what are they gonna DO?

Shoot us TWICE?

Hey Mr. Family Values! How's the three mistresses your wife doesn't know about?? "No comment"? That's fine. We already have THEIRS. >:D Good luck with your upcoming election!

And like? As newspapers are shutting down and turning clickbait all across the country? This ONE(1) tiny, middle of nowhere town? Somehow has a horrid, horrid, ARMY of Satan's own Reporters. All apparently willing to die for the News. Throwing themselves at dictators and Supervillians alike.

"We see no God here but the Truth" is literally their papers MOTTO.

The damn thing is basicly a BRICK. You get a paperback of news. Entire planet AND THEN SOME. How?! How are they reporting, IN DETAIL, on the break down of talks between two planets 16 galaxies over? Hal says it's accurate. But what Earth paper would even HAVE that information?

And?? The whole town treats this as normal? There are human children, complaining about the weight of papers, because it makes their paper routes a pain in the ass. Soccer moms discussing alien celebrity drama. Farmers muttering over foreign unrest and how it will impact their corn harvest.

Fucking Lex Luthor, clearly deciding to roll with it, coming to sign himself up for a paper. Gaining a new life long Nemesis upon meeting Vladimir Master, whom he decides is both hot and unbearable. Someone is heard shouting "oh god, there's TWO OF THEM!"

And?? Look. Clark isn't MAD. Or JEALOUS. Nor is he in a secret Reporting War with Jerry from the Amity Chronicle. Because that would be petty and childish. He's just SAYING, maybe they should check the place out!

Maybe Jerry is a DICK and deserves it, is all. (Lois stop laughing.)

@hypewinter @hdgnj @ailithnight

[witchofthesouls]

You know the film Who Framed Rodger Rabbit where humans and Toons live there together?

Imagine the sheer chaos to occur if any Transformers iterations landed on that type of Earth. No one knows who the fuck these giant robots are as they definitely aren't Toons. Meanwhile the bots can't help but be confused by these strange creatures living alongside the organics.

The Toons however see both factions as perfect targets for mischief. Starscream crashing into a wall via a super realistic painting, poor Optimus getting flowers full of dynamite or Bumblebee having multiple 'Kick Me I'm Fake' signs plaster on his bumper by Toon cars. Megatron feels like they landed in a looney bin as he fails to intimidate the 50th cartoon rat on the ship.

This probably lead to kidnapping a human cause no one is making progress when they're constantly getting menaced by law defying entities.

Oh man, the childhood nostalgia is so real here 🤣🤣

Look, the Toons would break the Autobots and the Decepticons. Cybertronians are not strangers to special powers, but beings that regularly defy all sense of laws in such a blase, hilarious manner without one ounce of logic yet yield so much damage?

The factions' respective medbays will be constantly full of mecha with processor crashes and circuit burnout. Soundwave, Prowl, and Red Alert will have to be put into long-term stasis for their mental and emotional health.

You want peace? Or a long-term armistice? Send in Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck as Trojan Horses.

There is no escape from their antics. Those creatures are everywhere.

Land. Sea. Air. Fucking space in a random astro-suit.

(Mechs would be driven mad trying to find who the hell is Marvin the Martian in any database. Including the Galactic Alliance.)

Even Megatron will break.

He will become hollow mech, desperate for respite, and beg for mercy. A new phobia for the fear of the sound of carrots being crunched and chewed would be implemented in their disorders. As well as Daffy's crazed laughter once they can reliably track it.

But the biggest kicker? All the humans would just chuckle or outright laugh at their declarations. Aliens? Really? Are you sure? What's the gimmick?

Many humans shake their heads, elbowing people around them because there's a new joke going around. Apparently, the Toons caught into the mecha anime explosion, so now they have sentient Gundams walking around with an epic battle of good versus evil.

(Que some Americans shouting things in Japanese. Some want to improve or keep up their language skills. Others just want to be dicks. It would be funnier if humans had so much experience picking out the robots in disguise from the Toons' general mayhem and shenanigans.)

The Toons know that those are real aliens but are too delighted by the sheer potential chaos of having fresh meat, ahem, new neighbors.

[veliseraptor]

July Reading Recap

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. I can see why people said this one had Adrian Tchaikovsky vibes because in terms of the worldbuilding and the alien species involved it absolutely did. I was not super enamored of the part of the plot that wasn't on the Tines' world (which was...an important part of the plot), but my investment in the politics of the Tines and the worldbuilding around them made up for it. I'm curious about the apparent sequel and whether it's worth reading - does anybody know?

Thousand Autumns: vol. 5 by Meng Xi Shi. I have finished Thousand Autumns and my verdict on it mostly hasn't changed from what it's been throughout: enjoyable but not really fully clicking for me. I liked it! But I didn't love it, and I don't know that it'll stick with me the way other books have, or compel me to do a reread.

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon. Maybe I just don't have a sense of humor, but I felt like this book was trying too hard to be funny/clever and it landed wrong for me. It was interesting, certainly! And I learned some new things from it, and probably will go on to read the author's other book (about women in Ancient Rome), but this one tonally was not a winner, for me personally.

Ballad of Sword and Wine: vol. 1 by Tang Jiu Qing. Rereading this one (Qiang Jin Jiu, they're really going off in their own direction title translation-wise there) with the official published translation even though I am also binding it, because I can, I guess. And I still deeply appreciate how unhinged Shen Zechuan is, but in, like, mostly a way where it's not obvious to most people until they've known him for a little while. Also the sheer amount of politics, which I'm following better on this second readthrough. I think it'll be rewarding to reread.

The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan. One of two Jewish fantasy books I read this month, just by chance (I wasn't intending on a theme, they'd both been on my to-read list for a while). I liked it a lot! I thought it was going to be a stand alone and feel a little funny about it being a series (I'm always looking for more stand alones), but I am also looking forward to more of it.

The Devil & Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann. I've really enjoyed the other David Grann books I've read/listened to (The Lost City of Z, Killers of the Flower Moon) but found myself fairly underwhelmed by most of the essays here. It's not that they weren't good (they were) or interesting (most of them were), it just didn't feel like they were that good or that interesting. Maybe I just like his full-length books better.

Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland. It was fine? Not as good as I'd hoped. I called the twist which was satisfying for me personally. I don't know if I'm going to be reading the sequel. Most of the POV characters I liked fairly well, which is the main thing this book had going for it, but one of them bored me to tears and that inflected my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. This book earned its five stars by making me cry in the last 20%. Overall a beautiful book, though, relatively quiet; I wasn't sure about it early on but then it hit a turn that really got me. Makes me want to read his other book. The summary on the back really does not do the book justice but I don't actually know how I would explain it better, and I recognize that makes it a difficult recommendation.

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb. This one was really good and a lot of fun. Very Jewish, too, which was enjoyable and not something I run into all that often in fantasy books. Just...very charming, entertaining, a joy to read.

I'm currently reading Godkiller by Hannah Kaner though I should be reading Edenville since I have it checked out from the library (I'll get to it!). I keep meaning to get back to reading more nonfiction (or realistic fiction) and then getting distracted. My plan for upcoming books, though, includes The Ratline, To Shape a Dragon's Breath, and (after years of having it sit on my shelf) Beauty Is a Wound. We'll see how on task I stay or if I end up wandering off to other stuff.

I'm currently looking for horror and mystery/thriller recommendations, though, so if anyone has any of those I will take them.

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[3mcwriting]

Any Fan's Dream, Part 25

Any Fan's Dream Masterlist

Synopsis:

When you look around and see Avengers Tower in front of you and Peter Parker beside you, you wonder how the hell you managed to get into the MCU.Keep reading

Sorry this chapter is a day late, I was remaking the taglist and that took a lot longer than expected so I just passed out after lol

Taglist: @secretly-sirens, @zeeader, @imdoingathingmom, @x-theolivia, @ainsley-official, @ourgoddessathena, @vine-enthusiast, @hoohoohope, @myfturn, @mjaudrey, @igotthisasajokeyetimstillhere, @starr60, @lauraashley93, @coldmermaidhologram, @daenerysluvrr, @viperchick47, @im-better-than-your-newborn, @mynightandstars, @qvnthesia, @liallerr, @cypherverze, @afraidofshrimp, @alexsmonstercan, @huntress-artemiss, @im-better-than-your-newborn, @marvelwomen-arehot, @benzinaa, @maxinehufflepuffprincess

After your interaction with Steve, you managed to find your way back to the entryway you had come in through. It was just a large rectangular living room with an open style kitchen in one corner and large ground-to-ceiling windows spanning two of the walls. There was a large television in front of the plush couches and one person pacing in front of them. 

Your eyebrows raised. 

For some reason, you hadn't really expected to see him.

The clearly stressed man raised his head when he heard your footsteps, freezing the moment he saw you.

"What's up, Mr. Stank?" you asked. "Sorry for disappearing and everything..." You rubbed the back of your neck sheepishly, hoping he wasn't mad at you. Especially since you would've done it again without hesitation. You weren't really sorry for leaving but more so for betraying his trust.

He looked shell-shocked, completely speechless for once. Well, how was he supposed to react when someone who he thought of as one of his own was standing right in front of him mere days after being stabbed? He had heard the guilt in Steve's voice, felt panic rise in himself at the thought of how badly you'd been injured. The idea that you were only inches from death and that your only chance to live depended on the technology of aliens did nothing to ease his worry. He knew Thor cared about you, but what if the people there didn't want to help you? 

He didn't want to lose another person he cared about.

And wasn't that what every single one of them felt at the thought of you dying?

You weren't really sure what to do with his silence, but hugs had been working for everyone else, so you figured you might as well try it. Besides, in your experience, hugs almost always helped you, even if it was just a little. Obviously, they couldn't really fix your problems but they helped to ground you and remind you that you weren't alone in them.

"Can I give you a hug, Mr. Stank?" 

His expression changed, relief softening his features. "Yeah, of course, kid."

You moved forward, hugging him happily. As you'd said before, you truly were a hoe for hugs. There was something just so comforting about them to you. You knew some people didn't really like hugs though so you always made sure to ask before you did so. After all, if the point was to comfort a person, why would you do something that would make them uncomfortable?

Luckily, with Mr. Stank he seemed to be grateful for the hug. 

When the hug ended, he patted your shoulder. "I'm real glad you're alright, kid." His voice was a little choked up, but you didn't bother to point it out. 

"Thanks," you grinned. "I'm glad you are too, Mr. Stank."

He smiled at your attitude, glad to see you could still smile the same. "What do you say to working in the lab for a while?"

"Ooh! Yes!" You loved all the time you spent in his labs, there was so much cool stuff in there and even more cool stuff that you could build!

~~

A couple hours later (it was only around noon, but it felt later to you because apparently there was a time zone difference from Asgard and earth), Nat came into the lab while you and Tony were drinking juice packets. 

"C'mon, (y/n)," she said as she pulled you out of the room. "You need to have something other than juice."

"Sounds good," you nodded, your stomach agreeing immensely. "See ya later, Mr. Stank!" You waved to the man as you got pulled out of the room, missing the fond grin on his face. You walked beside Nat as she led you to the main living room you had been in earlier. 

As the two of you got closer to the room, a delicious smell began to waft through your nostrils--a delicious, familiar smell. You understood all those dogs you'd ever seen that would sniff the air greedily, behaving much too similarly at that moment. You couldn't help it, though! It smelled so. Damn. Good. And you hadn't eaten in hours and during those hours you had napped, comforted people, and began building a pear cannon for Peter! You were only human! You needed that delicious food that was giving off that heavenly smell.

As the two of you stepped into the living room, you glanced to the kitchen side of the room, your eyes set on the woman who was sitting at the counter of the island. She looked up from her phone when she heard the two of you enter, smiling at you in a way that made your breath catch a little. It wasn't your fault! Wanda's smile was too damn pretty for your weak heart!

"Hey, (y/n)," Wanda greeted. "Nat and I thought we could celebrate you being all healed, so I made your favorite foods and Nat bought your favorite snacks!"

You felt your jaw drop, but couldn't register much else. 

Wanda grinned at your expression, before setting out dishes laden with your favorite food on the low table in front of the TV while Natasha grabbed a bag from the corner of the counter and placed it beside the table.

"This is..." your brain was refusing to work, "I mean—you two didn't have to do all this. It must've taken a while." Your too-slow brain wasn't allowing you to properly process the situation. You couldn't really blame it, though. How—in any dimension—were you to believe that Natasha Romanoff and Wanda Maximoff would know your favorite foods? Or even more ridiculous, how were you to believe that they would take the time to make it for you when they were incredibly busy people themselves? Like, they were literally Avengers.

"We wanted to," Natasha smiled. "Although, I can't say I made much of the food. That was Wanda. I just got snacks." She held up the bag.

"Well, I think of you as a friend, and you were just healed from an almost fatal wound, so I thought it was well-deserved." Wanda's voice was sincere enough that you were almost distracted from what she'd said. 

"You think of me as a friend?" you asked incredulously.

"Of course," Wanda reassured. "Am I not a friend to you?"

"No! I mean—no as in you're not not a friend to me—like, you are a friend to me, ya know?" you tried to explain, losing respect in yourself with every word you said.

Natasha laughed. "Calm down there, babe. We got you."

You let loose a relieved laugh. "Anyway, thank you for everything." You looked to both of them, hoping they knew just how sincere you were being. "I don't think I ever could've imagined having such wonderful people being my friends."

Wanda hugged you, making your brain short-circuit yet again, and laughed. "I think I should be the one saying that." 

"You both deserve friends as wonderful as each other," Natasha said, joining in on the little hug. 

When the hug was over, Natasha grabbed the TV remote as you grabbed your food. She turned on the TV, a familiar movie ready as the screen turned on.

They had set up your favorite movie.

~~

You got to watch two of your favorite movies with Natasha and Wanda, munching on the food Wanda had made and the snacks Nat had brought. Overall, it was practically heaven. To be honest, you were a little disappointed when they got a call and were forced to leave. 

Both of them gave you a hug goodbye which reminded you that you were being stupid getting disappointed because you had still spent four hours with both of them. You were lucky that they had the time to do such considerate things for you. Once they were gone though, you were completely lost as to what you should do for the remainder of your time there. 

You couldn't call anyone because you had broken the phone Tony gave you a while ago so you were just stuck on the couch scrolling through channels--that is, until Scott and Sam arrived in the room and Scott began pulling things out from the cabinets. 

"Dude, how do you know where everything is? You've been here like...2 days." Sam said, confused at the confidence with which Scott was pulling everything he needed out.

"What can I say? I'm a quick study." Scott pulled out a metal bowl and baking sheet. "Besides, if I don't know where something is, that's what looking is for."

"What are you guys doing?" you asked.

"Oh, hey, (y/n)," Scott greeted cheerfully. "We're baking cookies for my daughter, wanna help?"

"Sure," you smiled at him, thoughts flashing to the scenes with Cassie in them.

Huh. Since Steve and Tony hadn't really ended up fighting, Scott never got arrested. 

He wouldn't have to be put under house arrest and his relationship with Hope wouldn't end up horrible. 

Your smile got a little wider.

"Awesome!" Scott said. "Her favorite are snickerdoodles."

~~

"I don't think we followed the directions right," you proclaimed, looking down at the sad little heaps of dough that Scott had just pulled out of the oven.

"My nephews can bake better than you, Scott." Sam laughed, hitting Scott on the back jokingly. "I don't see a future in baking for you, my man."

"They can't be that bad," Scott protested, reaching to grab one only for it to start oozing when he did so.

Cue screeching from the three of you--screeching that ended up bringing Steve and Bucky into the room tensed and ready to fight. 

"What's wrong?" Steve asked, searching the room.

You were too busy laughing on the floor at the look on Sam's face to answer so Scott had to. 

"I'm afraid our cookies are alive, Captain." Scott answered, the serious expression on his face only making you laugh harder. 

"Oh," Steve didn't seem to know how to handle the situation. 

Bucky peered at the lumps of goo on the baking sheet and winced. "Those look disgusting."

"I didn't know we had two Captains in the room." Sam said, not taking his comment too kindly. "Captain America and Captain Obvious."

"I mean, we could always remake them," you piped up, finally recovering from your laughing fit. "It's only like five."

"You're right, (y/n)!" Scott gave you an appreciative look. "Let's get cracking!"

"Are you gonna join us?" you asked Steve and Bucky. 

Sam looked to Bucky. "Yeah. You gonna join us instead of just judging us silently, ya weirdo?"

"I don't know how much help we'll be." Steve answered. "But I don't see how we could make it any worse."

"Damn!" you put a hand over your heart. "That was uncalled for, old man."

~~

Contrary to what Steve had said, it could get worse.

In fact, the five of you didn't even get any cookies into the oven before a towel lit on fire and flour ended up on Steve's face.

You were almost crying from laughter at the look on Steve's face, clutching your stomach while he looked confused. You were forced into shocked silence when Steve threw a handful of flour at you. 

You gaped at him, looking like you had taken a dive into cocaine with how much flour was covering you. 

"What was that for?" you demanded.

"Stop laughing at me."

"Oh, you petty-" you threw a handful at him, hitting Scott on accident when Steve moved. 

Scott turned to look at you.

"I didn't mean it! I swear!" 

~~

With the kitchen covered in enough flour to bake a life-size cake statue of Thor, you were lucky to be pulled out before cleanup time. You would've felt guilty if not for the fact that everyone in that room had hit you at least once with a handful of flour. Even Bucky!

Either way, you didn't regret anything about that day--it was the most fun you'd had in a while. 

But now you were going home.

[diamondperfumes]

The assertions that Dany will "succumb" to her family's allegedly "evil legacy" or the "taint" in her blood require pathologizing her for being an abuse victim borne of rape and incest, buying into bioessentialist "genetics is destiny" argument, and decontextualizing most of the passages from her book arc. This post, with a song juxtaposed with out-of-context quotes from Dany's chapters, is an excellent example.

"Every child knows the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness." The only "mad" Targaryens were Rhaegel, Aerion, Aerys II, and Viserys III. If you want to stretch it, you can include Baelor, though he was more pious and fanatic than mad. Maegor was cruel but lucid. Rhaegar was not mad, despite being Aerys II's son. And the narrative has distanced Dany from Aerys II several times, because one of ASOIAF's central theses is not "you are your father's child," but "you can overcome your father."

"She could not look behind her, must not look behind her" is not Dany "refusing to look at her family's history." This is taken from her fever dreams in AGOT Dany IX, and what she can't look back at is an icy breath that would cause her a "death worse than death, howling forever alone in the darkness." It's the first time Dany sees the Others in her dreams, and she is the only other character in AGOT to dream of them, the other character being Bran.

"I made a horror just as great, but surely they deserved it. Harsh justice is still justice." This is Dany feeling guilty for crucifying 163 slavers. How is that a sign of madness or refusal to confront her family legacy? It's actually a sign that Dany has empathy even for the worst of humanity, even for her enemies. Also, crucifying slavers isn't evil. It's odd that the same fandom that calls Dany a slaver, slave trader, slave profiteer, and slavery enabler, also calls her a tyrant or mad for crucifying slavers. What is she supposed to do with slavers? What is the "proper" way to handle them?

The mother of monsters passage is more proof that Dany is introspective and self-critical. In children's media, shounen anime, and Marvel movies, a villain may unironically call themselves a monster, but in more complicated, nuanced, adult literature, characters who call themselves monsters usually aren't bad people. They're the self-deprecating, humble, and thoughtful characters who are reflecting on their flaws and mistakes. Again, if Dany is someone who refuses to think about the dark side of her family, she would not agonize over the consequences of using her power. Monstrosity is associated with being stigmatized, ostracized, and alienated by hegemonic forces in society, and those characters who identify with monstrosity often have something to reveal about the violence of the status quo and the normalization of oppression.

George is deconstructing the coin quote, not reinforcing it. Madness/greatness, ice/fire, east/west, north/south, sun/moon, pain/pleasure, love/hate, are all dichotomies in the novel that George sets out to show can unite in some way. As I said, most Targaryens were not "mad," and I find it odd that for a fandom as progressive as it frames itself to be, the ableist stereotyping of "foreign otherized race from the East is genetically predisposed toward madness" isn't something fans problematize more.

Dany longing for the house with the red door and wanting to rest, laugh, plant trees and see them grow, are also seen as signs of madness because of her statelessness and homelessness. If a teenage girl has been raped and abused, and is herself a product of rape and abuse, and comes from an exotic Eastern family, then apparently her longing for home is actually a bomb waiting to detonate inside her, because she's unfit to belong anywhere. It's shocking that this mentality is seen as media literate or subversive.

"Dragons plant no trees" has already been disproven by Dany's arc itself. Dany reclaims fire and blood by the end of ADWD because she realizes the peace in Meereen is false (which it is). Jon Snow goes from wanting to hire glassblowing apprentices to plant crops in greenhouses to grow food, to abandoning his vows and declaring war to save his sister, and then dies. Why is that not seen as a sign of "succumbing to madness?" The acts are narratively paralleled. Perhaps––and this may be crazy, but stay with me––the thesis of FeastDance is that you cannot grow, build, and heal a nation in soil watered with blood. No such rebuilding or regrowing is possible unless and until real change occurs, and for real change to happen, the corrupt old guard cannot stay alive.

Certainly TWOW will be a darker book for every viewpoint character, but it's interesting to see how a combination of pathologizing Dany for her gender, ethnicity, genes/biology, trauma, and stateless/rootless/homeless status as an exile/diaspora, with decontextualizing her chapters, quotes, and passages, and an overall misunderstanding of the themes of ASOIAF, to single Dany out as a "dark" character who won't be able to "outrun" her "negative family history."

[foone]

OK so you know what's a good horror trope? The reveal of the previously invisible/camouflaged interloper. We've all got this instinct from back when we were little mammals living in a jungle full of tigers, where being watched is a bad thing. We want to know who can see us, because they might be seeing us and planning to pounce. So the idea that someone has secretly been watching us and we never knew? Obviously scary, in a very primal way.

There's plenty of examples. Most "Invisible Guy" movies, that clothesline scene from The Conjuring, the pool monster from Are You Afraid of the Dark becoming visible when they dump dye in the pool... But I'm gonna give a detailed example from the most unlikely of horror sources... Star Trek: The Next Generation!

So in season 4, the episode Identity Crisis focuses on Geordi. He meets up with an old friend, who he had served with on another ship, prior to coming to the Enterprise. She, Geordi, and three other people had gone on a mission to investigate a spooky colony where everyone had disappeared. They found nothing, and returned with no answers.

But now, many years later, it's getting weirder. Two of the other guys have apparently gone mad and fled back to the Spooky Colony, and the episode opens with the third guy dying on his way to the Spooky Colony. Everyone else on the mission to the Spooky Colony those years ago has either returned & vanished, or died trying to. So it's not looking good for Geordi and his friend, Leijten. They do some investigating, don't find much, and Leijten starts falling ill. She's in sick bay, apparently turning into an alien, and Geordi decides to go visit the video footage of that mission they went on all these years ago (since it's the future, this is fancy 3D video that he's looking at in a fully immersice holodeck environment).

He's watching it, and sees nothing weird. Except at the last moment, when they go to turn off the camera, there's a shadow. An odd shadow. He asks the computer to alter the footage, deleting characters and their shadows from the video, and one by one the shadows vanish... Except this one. He asks the computer to assume it's being cast by a person about his size, and where would that person be if it was?

And a humanoid figure appears into the footage.

Someone had been standing there along with those 5 visible people, all those years ago. They were being watched. And they never knew.

And this is just one of my favorite spooks! It's such a good innate fear. Something is there and it can see you but you can't see it.

(As for the episode? Geordi has been feeling sicker and sicker the whole time he's doing this footage investigation. He ends up turning invisible and running out, and transporting himself down to the planet. We see as he transports that he's turned all blue and translucent. Down on the planet, Leijten beams down, feeling better. Dr. Crusher cured her parasite. Apparently this planet is full of some kind of microorganism that infects you, lays dormant for years, then makes you come back and turn into a spooky invisible guy. That's what happened to their crewmates, that's what happened to the whole colony, and it's happening to Geordi. She's able to talk him down, since he's only recently transformed and she knows what it's like, and he's cured. Everyone else, the colony and the former crewmates? They're gone for good. They're not human anymore, and haven't been for a long time.)

[drinkpisser]

MY HESITANT ALIEN FIC, HOW IT CAME TO BE CHAPTER 4! :p 🛸

This one shall be quite interesting for sure, dearest readers 😈🙏

Enjoy and thank you sm if you do check it out!!!<3

PREVIOUS CHAPTER/S:

begin reading chapter 4 beneath the cut!

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

CHAPTER 4: DRUGSTORE PERFUME

Ray had been awaiting Gerard's return for a full week now. A week without his best friend, just as glum as you can imagine it. Actually having to take part in a routine, listening in on other people's conversations because you can't have your own, waiting for each day to end so you can be even lonelier at night. He had company, sure, but what's company if you've never felt so isolated?

Desperate to retrace his vacant steps, Ray decided to walk the paths Gerard mentioned he would cycle. This resulted in nothing more than some wheel tracks, yet anything is a clue at this point. He followed, careful to not tamper with the traces left. To his detriment, the woods seemed to be identical with each corner he turned.

Just a mundane old forest, what did Gerard see in it?

Ray pauses. A bike is leant against the stump of a tree, one wheel deflated and the other poorly attempting to keep its balance. He was here. Transfixed on the plethora of predatory situations he could have been in, Ray loses focus on his main objective- to gather clues. Does he go back and tell someone he could be in danger? Would they even believe him? The staff questioned him harshly enough already, accusing him of assisting Gerard in running away and covering his back so he wouldn't get in trouble. He feels like nothing but a nervous wreck, struggling to keep up with the rushing turmoil in his head.

"Ray?" an unsuspecting voice asks.

His heart palpitates, startled. His neck recoils so quickly that it could have snapped off his body. It was only a rugged, exhausted Gerard stood in front of him, sporting a clueless expression on his face and scratching his head like nothing ever happened.

"What're you doing here? It's super early, right?" he repeats.

"You-" Ray struggles to find an adequate response in disbelief, "You've been gone for fucking days, dude!"

"I was just getting a pump for the tyres, they busted on me whilst I was biking. I couldnt have been too long- maybe a half hour?" he responds, dismissing the claim. To Gerard's dismay, he wasn't fully aware that the passage of time is extremely warped in different realities. A few harmless hours to him was more than likely a week and a half for Ray.

"You're serious- you're serious! You don't know how long you've been!?" Ray disputes. Gerard was blank as a sheet, giving in to a defeated shrug.

Nope, he doesn't know. Idiot.

"You dont even have- where were you, Gee? At least answer me that. My bare ass has been on the stove for you over here. And you look like shit!"

...

"I- I don't know." Growing more disoriented, he finds it increasingly difficult to come up with a realistic answer. It had already been a confusing time for Gerard, and all these questions weren't helping his case even if they were reasonable enough.

Ray sighs, "I can't stay mad at you. Just take me with you next time, at least. Wherever you were it couldn't have been that fun on your own."

Gerard resorts to a hug in order to comfort Ray's visually apparent distress. He wishes he could tell him the truth with his entire soul, but he couldn't bare to see what could happen if he did. More than anything, he was afraid. That's why he needed to start creating art as soon as possible, to save everyone.

"If you need to talk about anything- you know I'm here, yeah?" Ray adds.

"Yeah." Gerard smiles mildly.

Ray pats his back, and they get to walking back to the main area of camp, almost clinging onto eachother. As Gerard reconciles with familiar faces, Ray awkwardly clenches his teeth in a feeble attempt to smile. Spotting Frank, they head in the direction of the bench he's sat on.

Frank raises an eyebrow, dropping the nachos he was just snacking on, a baffled "That's Gerard?" exiting his mouth.

"Sorry, I don't recognise you-" Gerard discloses.

"This is Frank," Ray chirps once again, "he bought me cookies and now we're pals. He likes Iron Maiden and plays guitar too!"

Affectionately, Ray slaps Frank on the back of his shoulders, causing him to eject a sheepish "owch!".

"Awh, cool! Nice to meetchya Frankie." Gerard grins, awkwardly shaking his dorito dusted hand.

"Gerard Arthur Way! There you are!" a disciplinary voice hollers.

"Well shit." Gerard mutters, the boys snickering slightly at his remark. Almost dragged by the hood, Gerard is indefinitely sent off to a questioning of some sort.

The staff member escorts him to an important looking room, featuring an even more important looking name tag on the desk: 'Principal'. Surrounding it, there are small, framed photographs of staff members and past campers, who seem tremendously happier than anybody here currently.

Just gotta survive this interrogation without giving everything away, he monologues in his doomed brain. So doomed... So fucked.

A stern looking woman clicks her heels as she enters the secluded room, taking a seat as she glares intensely into Gerard's entire existence.

"Where were you? Is everything okay? Were you hurt?" Just as he'd anticipated, the questions came flooding insufferably in.

"Hey, listen..." Gerard pinches the bridge of his nose as if he's in excruciatingly dire pain, "I just got back and i ain't feelin' well. I fell over and busted my lip, see? Can I please go to the nurse instead?" He believes that reverse psychology is effective, and that his injuries from over a week ago look fresh. Oh, dear. Maybe save the big ideas for when you turn 25 next time.

She grumbles, shaking her head.

"Not yet. You can afterwards, however."

She begins jotting down notes. Following this, she looks at Gerard expectingly, despite his nervous silence.

"So?" she suggests, tapping her pen against the clipboard she's writing on.

"So, what?" Gerard backchats, crossing his arms and deciding to play smartass.

"So, what were you doing outside campus, unauthorised for a fortnight?" she demands the question.

He tuts, rolling his eyes. A surpisingly bold move for him, but a typical one. He grows cockier, due to the hindrance and his heightening feelings of annoyance towards having to answer for himself.

"I like, ran off for a week, 'cause I'm bored shitless of this place..." he smirks, "In other words, I skipped. What're you gonna do about it, kick me out? I already left once."

The principal lets out a diabolical gasp.

Gerard knew from that alone, he was not going to get away from this any easier than before he opened his mouth.

"What I can do is expel you, young man! That won't be a laugh to explain to your parents, will it?" she exclaims at the top of her lungs.

"Do it! I don't fuckin' care. I'm worth more than this place anyways, and so is Ray. If you're gonna kick me out, at least do the same for him. Leaving him alone in this dump was the mistake i made, not skipping." he rants.

"You're really about to do this?" she lowers her voice in concern.

Gerard glances around in hesitation before doubling down on his claim, his eyes lighting up slightly.

"Yeah."

That felt like a strangely refreshing moment for Gerard, as though being argumentative with higherups was the epitome of being punk and an absolutely rock solid act on his behalf.

"Alright, we'll call your parents to pick you up. And Ray can go with you, he's in deep trouble because of you now. I hope you understand that." she lectures.

"Aight," he scoffs, getting up out of the chair he'd slumped in.

"I'm out."

He storms out of the office desperately searching for Ray and Frank, not realising they had snook off and waited outside right next to him.

"Hm, I heard yelling." Frank observes, pursing his lips.

Gerard turns to each of them almost instantly.

"Oh, thank god-" Gerard clutches onto both Ray and Frank's arms with an underlying agression.

"We gotta go, like, now! I am so serious!" he blurts out obsessively.

"Dude, wh-" Ray begins, interrupted by the snatch of Gerard's run. He drags them behind a bush, heavily encouraging them to be silent with a desperate "shh!".

Several staff members rush past the glorified pile of leaves shielding the three.

"Can someone please tell me what is going on?!" Ray hisses through a whisper.

"Okay, okay! I will. I spewed bullshit to the principal lady. Told 'er I skipped on purpose. She threatened to expel me so I humoured 'er and said you shouldn't be left here alone and-"

"Sorry, the fuck do I have to do with this?" Frank interrupts.

"Just sit and look pretty or somethin' whilst I explain the goddamned situation! You're involved 'cause you are. I wasn't about to just leave ya." Gerard groans.

Frank huffs.

"So... You sold me out and lied?" Ray disputes in confusion, a slight look of upset on his face.

"No- I just thought if I said that as a bluff I could get us out of here quicker. You want to leave, right?" Gerard defends.

Ray remains silent for a few seconds, considering it.

"Screw it." Ray beams.

A feeling of relief washes over Gerard's sweaty face, glad that his stupidity didn't get taken the wrong way.

Two staff members park themselves not too far away, beginning to discuss.

"Ray is now gone, they must have been planning some kind of rebellion from the beginning." One starts.

Frank raises an eyebrow.

"Hey, seeing as I'm the pretty one I could go ask what they're gonna do to ya."

He rolls his eyes with a pinch of salt, getting up on his own accord. Gerard knew it was best to not crush Frank's withering dignity any further, so he let him get on with it. Ray watched closely in slight suspense. Frank hunches over, approaching the two staff members all whilst kicking some gravel and looking down inside of himself.

"Mcscuse me, what's goin on?" he asks with innocent eyes.

"Do you have any idea where your accomplices are? Ray Toro and Gerard Way?" the staff's dialect felt restrictive.

"Can't say I do. Why's the matter?" Frank asks further, intentionally using poor phrasing for cool effect.

"They are to be arrested, and cannot leave the premises under any circumstance."

Gerard chokes. Ray's jaw is almost touching the grass. Frank elongates a whistle. He pauses, before then intelligently throwing a right hook towards the man's face.

"WE NEED TO GO!" He screams at the top of his lungs to the once concealed duo, snatching a plank of wood lying around and hoisting it underneath his greasy armpit.

Ray and Gerard chase behind him in desperation, quickly noticing the upcoming dead end. It would be futile to look back now, they're already being ambushed!

"Oh, Frank! What the fuck were you thinking runnin' this way?!" Gerard cusses.

Frank briefly catches his breath, before screeching at the barbed wire fence.

"There's a reason I stole a plank of wood, jackass! We're gonna use it to cross the old river behind this fence!" Frank begins climbing with a hint of pain from the spiky material separating the boys from freedom.

Gerard gulps in realisation. He can't swim, and his phobia of drowning doesn't make the idea of a flimsy bridge any better.

"Huh, now that's a funny joke, Frank-Anthony." he crosses his arms sarcastically.

"Does it look like he's joking!?" Ray complains, already up and over the fence. They're getting closer as Gerard grows in hesitation. In a fit of panic, Gerard snatches the plank of wood through a gap in the wall. The two teens shriek in annoyance.

"What the fuck!" Ray exclaims.

"Make your own way, I'll catch up!" Gerard blurts out. He'd honestly would rather them stay, he was consumed by fear. Ray denies before getting dragged away by an eager Frank, turning back in instant regret.

By now, Gerard had no coherent thoughts. The only energy coursing through his body was the adrenaline of facing danger head-on. He takes a swing at the current enemies, whacking the woodplank in half off of the now hostile janitor's head. Once his only weapon had shattered into shambles, he looted an unconscious park officer for any useful self defence. He manages to find a sharply ended hammer. Ooh, goody! A hammer! This will certainly end well.

Gerard suddenly feels a strange sensation of electricity within his weaponised palms. Visions of the mothership come lurking into his mind, clouding his perception of reality. Almost as though he was possessed, his scleras glow an iridescent white. All that was visible to his half-naked eyes we're the similar enhanced surroundings he'd witnessed before finding Lola. Nothing seemed quite right, not even the concept of nothing. His actions didn't feel like his own, as though the control room in his brain hit autopilot.

The rest of the committee come dashing in, and, as promised, Gerard begins bashing in, gushing the brains of old acquaintances onto the forest floor. He couldn't stop himself, no matter how hard he tried. Decrepit thoughts invade his mind- the deformed extraterrestrials, the secrecy, the defenselessness. The yearning to escape is too much for him; he can't take the strangeness anymore, and whatever can't make it stop in the moment should be destroyed. Or, maybe, was it that anything obstructing Gerard from the prophecised future was to be eliminated by an external force?

The hammer pierced the skin of its victim, critically damaging whatever it hit. As the bodies fell more and more, the static inflicting pain up Gerard's psyche faded.

Akin to the flicker of a light switch, he drops the bloodstained hammer in disbelief. As his pupils dilate, Gerard runs his red smothered fingers through his hair in distress and backs away from the remains he'd just bludgeoned. He can feel every erratic beat in his heart, one after the other, aching in dismal harmony.

Meanwhile, the others had crossed the unanticipatedly wide abandoned river using a derelict canoe. Still sailing, Ray's worries were still with Gerard.

"Don't you think staying with him would have been a better idea? I mean, I know him and he's not really a violent person. What if something's wrong?" he suggests.

"Try to relax. You're rambling," Frank comments, "He'll be okay, I promise. He surely must be if he didn't wanna go with us." he adds, troubled.

"Are- are you mad at him or something?" Ray enquires, perking his head up.

"No, just confused. I could've sworn he was acting off. There was this look in his face when he told us to run, and I'll be honest, it scared me." Frank speculates.

"Oh..." Ray frowns,

"I really do regret leaving him, though..." his words trail off in apprehension as he slowly taps Frank's shoulder to look in the same direction as him.

"Is that?-" Frank questions in a mildly bewildered state.

Gerard sat slumped on the grass awaiting the pair on the successful side of the river, his head askew in fatigue and his eyes swelled up with dainty tears.

"How did he get there so fast?" Frank asks in pure disdain.

Upon noticing the pair, Gerard gets up once again, debating on running away- only in fear of hurting who he cares about the most. He doesn't know how he even did that to those adults, he doesn't want to know. He wants to forget it. He wants to forget all of it. Even from afar, his shaking became exceedingly evident.

"Gee, it's gonna be fine! Just stay there, alright?" Ray attempts to comfort, shouting as softly as possible.

Gerard glances around himself once more, itching with a sense of paranoia. The two eventually head over to him, seeing through the bloodily drenched killer and envisioning a vunerable friend, allowing time for a group embrace. Gerard softens up, losing tension, and begins to sob like never before- he'd never felt fear like this before. It was a classic sense of dehumanisation, as though his pacifism had been violated.

After all, he wanted to save lives, not take them.

The miserable moon grows in exhaustion from lighting up the night, and gingerly begins to set. As the sun rose curiously, dawn declared a new muse for the trio. The feeling of comfort needed after a rough night, even if it was by their own hand. But they're merely teenagers, incapable of living those years entirely scuff free. Mistakes were bound to be made, even gorefilled ones. It just took a group hug for Gerard to realise it.

The trio begin to drift further away from the campsite, utilising the apricity shielding the cool morning breeze as a blanket of safety, following the light. They were about to go home, or maybe they'd already found it within eachother. Regardless, it was irrelevant how bad it was where they stayed anymore because, at the very least,

they were free from dreary old summer camp.

[electronickingdomfox]

"Devil World" review

Novel from 1979, by Gordon Eklund (same author of previous TOS novel "The Starless World"). It's a very short novel, and could have been an episode of the series. Well-written, and the central mystery is interesting enough, but the story isn't anything special as a whole. In fact, at core is a very similar story to that of the previous novel. Kirk's characterization is also off, specially at the end.

But at least Chekov tells a funny bullshit story about why there are no Russian bears in Russian zoos. In the other novel from Eklund, it was McCoy who told a story to Spock, so it seems to be a thing with this author.

Spoilers under the cut:

Kirk, Spock and McCoy are watching a magician's show while in shore-leave. Spock is like "this is crap". And I don't know why Kirk and McCoy (who regularly get disintegrated in a transporter) are so excited about that old trick where a woman is apparently sawed in half, but they are (maybe they drank too much). Then, the magician starts conjuring some devil creatures that seem all too real. And the beautiful, beautiful woman who was sitting in the table next to them, starts screaming suddenly, accusing the devils of taking her father away. Then she faints.

It turns out, the woman is the famous artist Gilla Dupree, whose father (Jacob Kell) is missing. As Kell is a suspected traitor to the Federation, and presumably hiding in a quarantined planet named Heartland, (and as Gilla is so pretty), Kirk is authorized to use the Enterprise as a taxi for Gilla to reunite with her father. Gilla is a Jain, though I don't know enough about that religion to judge whether her depiction is accurate or not. She can only eat a few vegetables, since all life is sacred for her, and blames malnourishment for her frequent faints. An insipid romance develops then between Kirk and her, and it takes too many pages of an already short book. I mean, there's nothing essentially bad about Gilla as a character; she's just so... boring? The romance is also a clear indication that Gilla's doomed by the narrative.

Once in Heartland, the crew plus Gilla meet a hermit man who's been living alone for forty years. He's the last of the human colonists, who was left behind when they evacuated and quarantined the planet years ago. The other colonists had all gone mad, but not this one. He doesn't want to get any close to the native aliens of Heartland, the Danons, but says that Kell lives among them. The Danon village has a compelling eerie atmosphere, and there's something Lovecraftian about the great stone tower in the middle of the central square. Kirk and the others find themselves suddenly surrounded by all the Danons of the village, and Kell is among them. The Danons look exactly like naked Christian devils, so the crew is really xenophobic towards them (haven't they seen stranger creatures in the galaxy? oh well). Kell is very unfriendly, and orders them to leave Heartland at once. Nonetheless, the Danons allow the crew to spend the night in their village. And one of them even plays poker with the redshirts (Spock doesn't want to play poker since he's too good at it, because Vulcans have the perfect "poker face", yeah). But the next morning, the redshirt who got too close to the Danon during poker is missing. They find him naked and completely mad, his mind as if it was wiped clean. They leave McCoy with crazy, naked dude, but he can't do anything for him.

Then Kirk and Gilla run to Kell, to demand answers from him, and at last he explains what's happening. It turns out the Danons are all part of a single mental entity, which can claim people as part of the whole. But only the strongest ones can become assimilated; those that aren't ready, simply lose their minds. Kell was a deeply broken man ever since he spent a month alone in space, drifting with just his spacesuit after an accident. He couldn't live with people anymore, nor did he find help among the Klingons (the reason why he was branded as a traitor by the Federation). Only in Heartland, after uniting with the mental presence, he found some relief. And I don't know why, at this point, they can't just leave this poor old man alone. But Kirk still insists on taking Kell to the Enterprise. Only that now, they discover that the entity just won't let them leave the planet. Spock does his Spock thing, and tries to mind-meld with the mental presence. And then we get crazy Spock (but he's no redshirt, so McCoy says he'll recover in time).

In the end, the hermit reveals the whole truth. The entity is actually a super-computer that fills the whole core of the planet, and the entrance is located under the mysterious tower of the village. The Danons built the machine as a planetary defense long ago. But their species is dying now, so the computer wants to assimilate humans to have some company, once the Danons disappear. The hermit convinced the other colonists to try and fuse with the machine, but he was too cowardly to follow them. Gilla disappears, and soon Kirk suspects what she's doing. She has exchanged herself for her father, and Kirk finds her, too late, connected to the computer.

Back in the ship, Kirk is totally depressed and neglects his duties after losing Gilla. And this is quite out-of-character for him, since duty always comes before love for Kirk (save in the case of Spock in the third movie). McCoy comforts him, revealing that Gilla was actually dying from a tumor, so she had nothing to lose anyway (and maybe, McCoy, you should have told this to Kirk before, since he was so emotionally involved and all...). I was left wondering what was the deal with that magician at the beginning and his devils, and why Gilla knew about them. But that's never addressed (an abandoned plot line?).

Spirk Meter: 1/10*. It's almost nothing, but at one point Kirk reflects about how comfortable he is in Spock's presence. So comfortable than they can both be in silence without it being awkward.

Also, this author seems to have something for Kirk/Scotty, as it happened in the other novel. Kirk compares him to an angel, says that he's looking forward to see Scotty's smiling face again... And Scotty gets super-protective of Kirk when he wants to beam up the last, even though there's no immediate danger in the planet. ????

Apart from this, Kirk gets crushed by a horde of naked (mostly male) devils, that tear his clothes as usual.

*A 10 in this scale is the most obvious spirk moments in TOS. Think of the back massage, "You make me believe in miracles", or "Amok Time" for example.

[stitchlingbelle]

Watching Halo, episode 1

Things I Know About Halo:

The Master Chief is a badass supersoldier who Doesn't Take Off His Helmet.* (I thought it had turned out he was a woman and the fan base rioted but apparently I mixed him up with Samus Aran?) There's a couple AI people, Roland the orange dude and Cortana the hot chick. There's a guy named Arbiter, I think he's an alien? Aliens destroy a lot of planets. There's some sort of mystical Old Ones leftover tech? (Is that the Halo part?) Names I have heard: Miranda Keyes, Dr. Halsey, Makee, Thomas Lasky, Chyler Silva**

That established, let's give this thing a go!

Nice opening scene. The costuming and set design are good, definitely have that Star Wars-esque vibe but are doing some of their own specific things that ground the world. The characters definitely gave you that lived-in-universe feel of established relationships and community right away. (Also I'm delighted by their use of Korean and their made-up alien language. Again, nice worldbuilding.) I am, however, confused. There's also an entire rebelling against the galactic empire thing going on? No one told me this. How do these people find the time with all the aliens?

Oh shit, THEY DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE ALIENS. Oh noooo.

The violence is really well done. The explosion plus blood splatter shot was great. Good use of camera work to minimize the more difficult to pull off FX shots while still getting the brutality across. The helmet-cam shots are a good storytelling choice while also being a fun nod to the games. I do not envy the stunt people fighting in these suits, though. They made them look powerful. They did not make them look dexterous, graceful or effectively designed for hand-to-hand combat.

Noooo they killed the little kid! ...and everybody else. Man, I liked those guys. Poor Kwan. (Is she in the games? Is she this ineffective? She was like, I'm going to help! and then just... didn't.) And then the Spartans just... walk off?

DO NOT TOUCH THE WEIRD ALIEN TECH. You're a Master Chief! I have it on good authority that keeping people from touching things they shouldn't is a major part of your job! Set a good example for your troops! Also, check your six.

It's Dr. Halsey! Mad scientist alert, this woman does NOT seem to adhere to ethical guidelines. Nice lab coat. I don't trust you. Why do you have a person in a pod? (Why do you have them right where your boss can see them if they're not supposed to exist?) Who's Miranda Keyes and why do you have beef with her? Departmental rivalry?

Wow, Miranda is a lot younger than I expected. Also, that was terrible. Take care of the girl, butter her up, THEN ask her for shit. And do it in person, the hologram thing was weird and off-putting. Not sure that Kwan thought this through-- there's a happy medium between agreeing to be their propaganda mouthpiece and openly threatening to lie and say they caused the massacre, sweetie.

Alien homeworld (or homebase, idk)-- very cool design, good effects-- why is there a human here? Oh, THIS is Makee? What is her deal? Great costuming.

HALSEY IS MIRANDA'S MOM??? Wtf. Also I like Miranda, I don't think she knows what she's doing outside of her (own) lab but it sounds like her heart's in the right place. Great parting shot at dad, but also, maybe that's why your parents worked (for however long. Are they still together or not?)

Great scene with Kwan and Master Chief over the meal. Humanize him with a joke and then WHAM, dead mom story. I like how they're not letting you assume that Madrigal's people were just wrong about the Spartans. Nope, straight up, this guy commits atrocities because he never questions his orders. (She implied that she was there? How did that part go down?) Fortunately teenagers question everything, especially orders! Just in time to make you question this one...

From here on out it's action action action, with a lot of quick character bits mixed in (Halsey and Captain Keyes exchanging looks, the Spartans all listening to Halsey above their orders, high command doesn't trust their own creations-- how many different ways of monitoring their own ships do they have? This is taking surveillance state to a whole new level.)

YAY for Kwan getting a useful moment! If human strength does not avail, use guns tools, that's what we invented them for. No, Kwan, this man does not have a plan. I'm kinda sad the alien artifact activated, it would have been entertaining to watch the other Spartans get involved. (John: "This is our new pet. No, we will not be handing her over to be executed. Yes, she hates us all for very specific valid personal reasons. Roll with it.") Aaaand off they go, escaping to where? Not sure they know and I, with approximately 1% knowledge of this universe, certainly do not.

Finally, hopping back to address the One True Issue that divides the fandom: the helmet scene. It depends on how much the Never Remove the Helmet thing is an irl game artistic choice vs an in-universe character choice. If it's not an actual THING for John-117 himself, then I don't have any problem with it. Different mediums and all that. If it's like the Mandalorian thing, then yeah, it felt a little rushed, but still a necessary moment for humanizing him and building trust ASAP with a hostile teenage girl with a gun.

In conclusion: this was much better than I was expecting! I really enjoyed it and will probably watch the rest of the season while I bake today. And honestly it's been so long since I watched scifi on TV that it was sort of nostalgic? I was just ridiculously pleased by things like establishing shots of Reach and futuristic teenager haircuts.

Thanks so much to ATBNL and @sarnakhwritesthings for talking me into this!

*Has anyone done a 'John-117 is a Mandalorian' crossover yet? Someone definitely has, right?

**The last two do not appear in the TV show and also one is dead, except they're actually alive and married because @authortobenamedlater is in charge here.

[evilminji]

Okay, you know how City Spirits are a thing?

And Superheros both Die, Un-Die, Re-Die, Dimensionally Sorta Maybe Die But Then Don't, and also never Died in the first place? And probably do at least a portion of that in Medical? While ALSO hanging out, quantumly maybe Dead, maybe alive, in their Super Cool Clubhouse?

Which is ALSO exposed to space rays, the entirety of The Magic Club, weird alien Technology, aaaaand whatever they decide to store on it??

:T

I'm just SAYING...

For as long as dwellings Of Significance have existed, there have been house spirits. They are the IDEA of the house. The SIGNIFICANCE of it. What makes it HOME. The weight of the halls that turn into Halls. And The Watchtower? Is KNOWN to enough people, to have SIGNIFICANCE.

It's a HALL where Heros Live. A Place Of Safety. It GAURDS.

It is also inanimate. Steeped heavily in every sort of energy, be it magic or science, and multidimensional fuckery imaginable. But? Not SENTIENT. Yet.

Until of course... this new fangled Anti-Ghost Shield comes out. By the new and recently no-longer on the run (from the Goverment they're at war with) Dr.'s Fenton! Why were they are war? Don't worry about it!

They Won.

:)

Unrelated! Never threaten their kids. They WILL find you. Not a threat, just informing!

:) :)

The security guy they sent to the expo was from Gotham, unfortunately. So he found the couple to be completely normal. They? Should not have sent Thomas. He was hired BECAUSE his parents were Mad Scientists in the making. Batman was steering him away from a life of crime. Thomas could judge "normal" from "deeply unhinged" if it belly danced infront of him, in the seduction dance of a thousand, deep fried, mackerel.

It's his version of face blindness. Great with technology though! And the shield worked a treat. Even promised to be both ethical AND programmable! Not harming the ghosts it pushed out unless they try to force entry AND allowing them to program in exceptions. Allowing Heros such as Deadman to freely enter!

Is it a little janky looking? Yeah. But if it works, it works. They add it to the systems and flip it on.

One small and immediate problem. There is now a small knight shaped child in the engine room. She was NOT there a second ago. She has controlo of the ENTIRE Watchtower, claims to BE the Watchtower, and knows all their names. Knows a disturbing level of information about every employee on the Tower.

Oh and apparently "No one is leaving."

No one panic! Just unplug the... she has swallowed the ghost shielding unit into a wall. Slightly panic.

Panic lite.

Luckily, no one is willing to throw the first punch at what appears to be a small child. So the JLA Dark have a chance to literally run over.

They demand to know who's bright idea it was to add... "ectoplasm"? Was THAT the energy source? Oooh. Their departments probably in trouble. Later though, the hero's are trying to negotiate with a small child. Who is apparently a ghost.

It's not SAFE, she's insisting. Everyone has to stay HERE where she can protect them. From the nebulous threat of Bad Guys. They LEAVE and come back HURT. She is UPSET and everyone is going to STAY! Forever!

Not good.

Then Thomas pipes up, like the oblivious asshole he is, that he should PROBABLY call the engines makers. They did mention something a long these lines might happen.

WHAT.

You think, Thomas? Might be a good idea, maybe? Just a bit? YES FUCKING CALL THEM!

(All right, all right! No need to YELL! *ring ring* 'Ello? Maddie? Sorry to catch you at dinner-)

So now? There is a glowing college student, who was escorted here by a WEREWOLF, who just? Tore open reality? To some green, swirling hellscape? And popped through like "sup, sorry I'm late. Was in a council meeting!" And judging by the ficking CROWN and the various quietly panicking magic users, he probably didn't mean student council, and just?

Guess he's hear to talk to their newly sentient Tower.

Question! Asks Thomas, of the fucking Ghost King because of course he does, are they Dads now? Or if they already have kids, Dads AGAIN? Do they have to come up with a baby name?

.......oh dear lord, the Ghost King looks like he has to think about it.

What are we gonna tell our SPOUSES!? "Hey honey, guess what I got at work today! A NEW CHILD. They're a space station!"

@hdgnj @nerdpoe @ailithnight @the-witchhunter @hypewinter @mutable-manifestation

[bottomoftheriverbed]

Get to know me tag game. Tagged by @kitkatt0430!

1. Do you make your bed?

Not really. I spend most of my time in bed so there's no point really.

2. Favourite number?

I don't really have one but probably 22 if pressed because it's my birthday.

3. What's your job?

I don't have one. I'm a student and I'm disabled so I'm not really able to work. I might try and do some tutoring next year but it depends how my health is. Eventually I want to work in heritage.

4. If you could go back to school would you?

I'm at university doing my undergrad right now. I probably want to continue on and do a masters at least. Maybe a PhD as well.

5. Can you parallel park?

My wheelchair? Just about. But not anything else

6. Do you think aliens are real?

I think the universe is so big that it's more probable that there is some form of life out there then not.

7. Can you drive a manual car?

I cannot drive any car. I keep thinking I ought to try and learn but it's very intimidating

8. Guilty pleasure?

Naps. Pretty books. Mumford and sons.

9. Tattoos?

None yet. I'm thinking of getting one over the summer it's just whether or not I can get round to it. I'd have to not swim for a little bit and now I'm swimming regularly again I get antsy if I don't for a few weeks so it's psyching myself up for that.

10. Favourite colour?

Blue probably. Maybe green. I'm not very good at picking favourites but I generally prefer blues, greens and purples.

11. Favourite type of music?

It tends to depend on my mood but if I had to pick I'd probably go folk rock/indie folk that type of thing.

12. Do you like puzzles?

Yes although I do have to be in the right sort of mood.

13. Any phobias?

For all I'm an anxious person and a bit of a scaredy cat I can't actually think of any specific phobias.

14. Favourite childhood sport?

Swimming/artistic (synchronised) swimming. Swimming is the only sport I've ever been even remotely good at. It was very satisfying seeing the look on the face of my dickhead year 4 teacher who choose his favourites based on athletic ability when I was one of the best in the class at it. I ended up doing synchro after I reached the highest level of swimming lessons and wasn't really quick enough for speed swimming. I had to quit when I got sick but I've started up again at uni. I also had a tennis phase (my Opa did it because apparently my grandmother was good at it)

15. Do you talk to yourself?

Yes and I was very offended as a child when people said it was the first sign of madness.

16. What movies do you adore?

Pan's labyrinth, the grand Budapest hotel, 1996 Romeo and Juliet. Sound of music is very nostalgic for me and I do love it very much. The inkheart film is objectively a bit shit but I kind of love it anyway. The paddington films are also up there.

17. Tea or coffee?

I don't drink either.

18. First thing you wanted to be growing up?

An author. I wanted to be a doctor for most of my childhood as well.

Tagging @steeple-sinderby-wanderers @heffer-wen @ontargetmadders

[eelhound]

"Being scandalized by Republican hypocrisy sort of feels like getting mad at a dog for peeing on your carpet. If anything, you’re the chump for having any sort of expectations for them.

The far more perverse thing, to me, is the way the idea of 'political violence' has been invoked in the aftermath of [the attempted Trump assassination] as something totally alien and un-American. 'There’s no place in America for this kind of violence,' said President Joe Biden. 'It’s sick,' he continued, saying that this kind of political violence was 'just unheard of.' He later said the violence was 'contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.' Former President Obama shared similar sentiments, saying, 'There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,' urging Americans to 'use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.' The headline for the New York Times Editorial Board’s take on events was that 'The Attack on Donald Trump Is Antithetical to America.'

I’m sorry, but what country do these people think they live in? We’ve just spent the last nine months being blasted in the face with images and videos of some of the most unspeakable carnage imaginable coming out of Gaza. Most of it has been carried out using U.S.-made weapons. Political violence is so 'antithetical to America' that on the very same evening that the op-ed was penned, the Israeli military dropped eight massive American-made bombs on the al-Mawasi refugee camp, an area that the Israel Defense Force had previously designated a 'safe zone' for civilians to flee. Israel claimed that two senior members of Hamas may have been hiding among the 80,000 civilians sheltering there. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 90 people are dead and 300 are wounded. One of the survivors described the scene to Reuters: 'I left the tent and looked around, all the tents were knocked down, body parts, bodies everywhere, elderly women thrown on the floor, young children in pieces.' Not long before reports of this massacre rolled in, Israel Katz, the foreign affairs minister of Israel, issued a condemnation of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, saying 'Violence can never ever be part of politics.' The irony was apparently lost on him.

Many of the people currently condemning political violence don’t actually hate political violence. What they really condemn is violence against politicians. But there is no act of violence more political than dropping bombs on a city of defenseless people because you want their land. Massacres like the one carried out Saturday have been going on for nine months, and, among the political class, they have rarely been condemned with anything nearing the force of the Trump assassination. In fact, the student protesters who spoke out against the war in Gaza — condemning political violence, in other words — were met with state violence themselves, which was cheered on by these same politicians. 

On the contrary, the people right now who are dismayed at political violence are some of its foremost perpetrators. Biden is, of course, selling Israel the weapons they’re using to destroy Gaza and kill scores of its people. Beyond that, President Obama authorized so many drone strikes during his term of office that if he were to apologize to one innocent civilian killed by them each day, it would take him more than three years. Trump, today’s brave victim of political violence, not only expanded those drone assassinations and spoke openly about 'taking out terrorists’ families' but even bragged about ordering the assassination of an American citizen in an act of 'retribution.' 

Even when they’re not directly ordering acts of what we might think of as 'political violence, U.S. leaders oversee a system that inflicts violence on both a national and global scale.

At home, both parties support a for-profit healthcare system that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year who can’t afford medical care. Each week, nearly 150 people (and nearly 1,500 in the wintertime!) still die of COVID-19, in part because treatments for the illness are so unaffordable. The Biden administration has abandoned most efforts to mitigate the virus, including workplace protections, and ended the public health emergency in 2023, which transferred costs of testing, vaccination, and care from government to health insurance companies and individuals. The CDC now tells workers that they no longer need to stay home from work for five days if they catch the illness, and only one state, New York, still requires businesses to pay leave for employees who are sick with COVID. And some state governments have even criminalized wearing masks in public.

The Supreme Court just made it legal for states and cities to jail homeless people sleeping outside. Police, whose departments both parties have showered with increasing amounts of funding, killed more people last year than at any point in the previous decade. The U.S. has so many mass shootings that it averages out to more than one a day, but our leaders have failed to pass even the most basic gun control laws, like an assault weapons ban or universal background checks at the federal level. And after mass shootings, Republican-led state legislators in particular have been more likely to loosen gun restrictions rather than tighten them.

When migrants flee poverty and war to seek relative safety in the United States, they are met with razor wire and buoys with blades affixed in order to maim them. Since the U.S. Border Patrol began its Prevention Through Deterrence program in 1994, the agency reports that 10,000 people have been killed while attempting to cross. Other aid organizations estimate the number to be as high as 80,000. Even those who reach the U.S. safely are often subject to inhumane conditions in immigration detention centers.

The United States provides military support to a majority of the globe’s dictators, which allows them to carry out their own acts of political violence. The U.S. has provided arms to Saudi Arabia as it has carried out a monstrous military campaign in Yemen that has killed more than 150,000 people, including tens of thousands of civilians. U.S. sanctions have inflicted collective punishment on the people living in enemy nations, like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, in an effort to foment regime change. One study found that U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, which deprived its people of food and medical supplies, contributed to as many as 40,000 deaths from 2017-2018 within the country. 

Each act of violence described above is a consequence of political actions or political inactions. And I could go on with more examples, going all the way back to the founding of the nation and the genocide of Native Americans. As former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner wrote in Newsweek yesterday, 'America was founded on violence. [...] A nation founded in violence, whose economy is rooted in violence, will have a society that is violent.'  And yet, most of this violence is inflicted on average people, not politicians — which may be one reason our policies are rarely conceived of as 'violent.'

To be clear, I don’t intend to diminish the significance of the attempt on Donald Trump’s life. It was indeed a destructive act of political violence that should be opposed. But the very same people who treat an attack on Trump as some horrifying anomaly — including Trump himself — are perpetrators of vastly greater violence than what occurred on Saturday.

 In response to the assassination attempt against Trump, in an effort to 'lower the temperature,' the Biden campaign pulled its advertisements criticizing Trump from the air. And on condition of anonymity, campaign officials reportedly told Reuters that 'Rather than verbally attacking Trump in the coming days, the White House and the Biden campaign will draw on the president's history of condemning all sorts of political violence including his sharp criticism of the ‘disorder’ created by campus protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict.' (Reuters has since quietly removed this paragraph from the story, though they did not issue a correction or retraction, so the reason is unclear.) Apparently, now that Trump has been shot, he’s no longer a 'threat to democracy,' and they’re instead going to spend precious time bashing voters that Biden already desperately needs to support him. 

This was an election where, in the words of President Biden, 'Personal freedoms are on the ballot.  The right to privacy, liberty, equality, they’re all on the ballot.' But after the assassination attempt, according to Axios, a 'senior House Democrat' says 'We've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.' Two days ago, Trump was Hitler Jr. Now, the party that has spent the last nine years claiming to be the only bulwark against fascism is throwing in the towel with fascism on the doorstep. 

It could not be clearer that, to the people in charge, all of this is a game and a joke. But seen from their perspective, the decision of Democratic elites to essentially throw the election in an act of decorum does make a sort of sense. Writer and attorney Dylan Saba put it quite well on X: 'Truly beautiful to see the ruling class come together like this… What’s most important is their personal safety — and the love they have for one another.' 

He’s right! People in Biden’s position will be insulated, more than most, from the consequences of a potential Trump victory. They will not be deported if he wins the election. They’ll be able to pay to get their loved one an abortion if they need one. None of them are transgender and at risk of having their legal personhood revoked. Most of them would probably benefit from Trump’s plan to get rid of the federal income tax in favor of a regressive tariff. 

To the extent that the members of the ruling class care about any of this, it’s only insofar as it affects their personal power and well-being. Just look at how Joe Biden has been acting in the past few weeks as he’s clung to the nomination. When asked how he’d feel if his decision to stay in the race results in Trump returning to power, he said: 'I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that's what this is about.'

That really is 'what this is about.' This is about them, their comfort, their egos, and their personal glory — all of it completely divorced from the reality of life for the vast majority of people on this planet. And that’s why an assassination attempt disturbs these people so much more than all the death and destruction that is inflicted on the world each day as a result of their actions. We must remember: the fights that matter are not theirs, they’re ours."

- Stephen Prager, from "'Political Violence' is All Around Us." Current Affairs, 16 July 2024.

[aparticularbandit]

Just A Jump To The Left (III)

Chapter Summary: Haruhi club hops like she's searching for someone, and Junko Enoshima follows.

Brought to you by a discussion @tobiasdrake and I had about what it would look like if Junko and Haruhi ever met.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

Haruhi club hops like she’s searching for someone.

If asked, she would say that she’s searching for something, which is a completely different matter.  That thing is much more nebulous – aliens, time travelers, espers, Santa Claus, something that proves the paranormal or the supernatural exists! Something interesting!

Not pictures of little floating balls of light.  Most of those are fake.  Unfortunately.

But there’s a little niggling in the back of her mind.  Like someone else is supposed to be here.

Okay, so it’s not a little thing; she’s very aware of who she expects to be here, but that’s not even a secondary thing.  She’s just aware of that missing piece.  But she’s aware of so many missing pieces that this is just one more in a puzzle for which she has the box and the final image and she bought this box new, all of the pieces should still be here but apparently—

Maybe it’s because she’s here during the day.

Maybe that really was a little ghost girl.  Maybe she only shows up when it’s dark out.  Maybe she expects her to come by later and find her then.

….

Ghosts don’t bleed!

Which means she has to be…to be something that could show up.  She said she would!  It was fate!

That would be proof of the supernatural, too!

Not really anything she could quantifiably show anyone, not that that matters, and it’s not nearly as interesting as, say, someone from Asteroid B-612 dropping to Earth and asking her to draw them a sheep or a muzzle before discarding their body and spirit-traveling back to their technically not a planet, but it’s close enough!  It counts!

Of course, the aliens who live on Asteroid B-612 look like either a normal human child or a normal everyday rose, so no one would believe her anyway.  And it’s not like the talking rose could show up.  It’s planted.  Rip it out by its roots, and it’ll just die.

There should be talking roses here, too.  And talking animals!  The fact that they exist and simply will not talk to her—

~

Haruhi club hops like she’s searching for someone, and Junko Enoshima follows.

~

Now, Junko is smart about this the same way that she’s smart about everything else she does.

She doesn’t join the same club as Haruhi on the first day.  That would be a little too much.  She’s already given Haruhi more than enough to chew on – for now – and adding anything more on top of that would just make her mad enough to not pay attention to the truth that is literally right in front of her eyes if she would just look at it and pay attention to literally anyone other than herself.

(Haruhi would say that she is paying attention, but it’s not the sort of attention that normal people pay.  She looks at things like a scientist coming up with a thesis, like a writer collecting all the archetypal characters for her epic fantasy so that readers have something to hang their hat on before she starts subverting all of their tropes.

Normal people don’t look at the world that way.  They don’t look at the world as a story.

Junko does, but it’s not like it’s an active choice.  And unlike some people, Junko still looks at the world the way normal people do, too.

Sort of.

People are still people and not just, you know, things.)

In fact, Junko waits a few days.  She sits in one club – the writing club, ironically enough (which is an entirely separate thing from the literature club, which would be like a book club if it had more than one boring old member) – for almost a week before Haruhi shows up.  Of course, Haruhi sees her immediately and scowls, brow furrowing, arms crossing, before she stalks off to the exact opposite side of the classroom and does….

Nothing much, really.

Junko sidles up to her, slides into the desk just next to her, and grins.  “Funny seeing you in my little neck of the woods.”

“Hmph.”  Haruhi turns away from her, arms still crossed, and otherwise spends the rest of the club activities ignoring her.

Which, to be fair, is quite the effort, given just how much time Junko spends talking.  She knows a fair few things about writing tragedies, and a good chunk of the other students are all about writing angst (and sometimes hurt/comfort, but mostly angst), and she’s very good at writing angst.

(She’s better at writing horror, but the one kid who’s fascinated with the different kinds of torture isn’t there today.  This is probably for the best.  Haruhi doesn’t seem like the sort of person who wants to hear about all the different ways a person can be killed in a way that is thematically appropriate with the character archetypes they set up.

…to be fair, neither does the kid who’s fascinated with horror.  He’s just there for the gore.)

~

This time, when Haruhi visits a different club, Junko is already there, waiting for her.  She sits with one leg crossed over the other, leans back against the wall, and then pats the seat next to her when Haruhi enters the room.  “Saved a seat for you, bestie!”

Haruhi immediately turns on her heel and leaves.

~

Sometimes, Junko lets Haruhi get there first.

She walks in, yawns, stretches her arms above her head, and then notices Haruhi with big, round eyes, her mouth dropping in a silent oh.  She blinks twice.  “Haruhi, are you following me?”

“I got here first!”

It’s cute when Haruhi stomps her foot.  Cuter than when she crosses her arms, mostly because she spends most of the time doing that anyway.  She has to be really getting under her shirt for Haruhi to stomp her foot.

“I…I didn’t realize it was a race.”  Junko flushes a bright red.  She clasps her hands together behind her back, lowers her head, and twists back and forth on one heel.  “I thought we were just friends trying to find the one cool club in the entire—”

“Shut up!”

Junko nods.  Sniffles.  Sits in one corner – far away from Haruhi – and looks up at the club president through long lashes.

(This will be useful later.  The computer club president may or may not like Haruhi, but he falls hard for this entire act.  He would give Junko anything she wants.  Without blackmail!)

((Well.  Blackmail is just another form of manipulation anyway, and it’s not like Junko is above that.  But why stoop to that sort of thing when she can use other forms?  It isn’t like she’s going to blackmail Haruhi.  She’s kind of above that sort of thing anyway.  Blackmail requires shame.

Haruhi has no shame.))

~

The next day, they both join the track team.

(Junko seeded this, of course.  I didn’t realize it was a race.  Of course, Haruhi would immediately go to the track team.  Not consciously, not at all.  But she hasn’t tried it out yet, so it has to still be on her list of clubs to try, so it was more likely after that comment than not.

Just a little nudge.  That’s all.)

Haruhi’s already stretching when Junko shows up, and while everyone else’s eyes turn to Junko (it’s just one of the normal school girls’ track outfits, but it doesn’t matter when she is wearing it), her eyes remain trained straight ahead.

Junko’s eyes focus on Haruhi, and she grins, wolfish.  “So it is a race.”  She pushes her sleeves up and doesn’t stretch.  (This would be a bad idea, if she hadn’t done so on the way out, if that wasn’t, in fact, why she got here later than Haruhi in the first place.)  “Think you can beat me?”

“I already did.”

“Only ‘cause I let you.”

When Haruhi glares up at her, Junko winks, and when Haruhi pushes past her, she skips along behind.

~

No one wins.

It’s a draw.

They kick up so much smoke behind them that no one can catch up, that the others are still coughing on the sidelines when they make their next lap.

Haruhi’s so focused, but Junko just yawns again.

“Aren’t you getting tired of this yet?”

Haruhi doesn’t say anything at all.

~

The next week is the riskiest part of Junko’s plan.

She leaves.

Now, it’s not really just about letting Haruhi stew over everything.  That’s just an additional bonus.  Really, Junko has to fly elsewhere for a magazine spotlight.  Photos.  New outfits.  Interviews.  The whole she-bang.  It’s swimsuit season, so there has to be a full spread of Junko Enoshima in her favorite, super revealing swimsuit.  The amount of photos they need for that one is criminal.  Normally these things don’t take that long, and even with all of that, this one doesn’t either, but while she’s there, Junko takes some time sightseeing.

(Haruhi isn’t the only one searching for someone.)

It would be better if Yasuke came with her, but Hope’s Peak won’t let their Ultimate Neurologist take a week off to go gallivanting about with his girlfriend.  That’s to be expected, of course, but it’s so boring without him here.

(Boring is not the word.

Junko isn’t scared, or anything, but she is still a high school girl – an internationally known model – alone here.

But here’s the thing: Junko knows that if something were to happen to her, then….

Well, let’s just say that maybe she wouldn’t have to search anymore.)

~

She won’t pretend that nothing happens while she’s there.

It’s just not bad enough to get anyone to show up.

~

When Junko walks into class a little late the following Monday morning, there are bags under her eyes.  She yawns and slumps into her chair, crosses her arms atop her desk, and then leans forward, burying her head in her arms.  Her eyes flutter closed.

Only a few minutes pass before someone jabs their finger harsh into her shoulder.

Junko smiles to herself before forcing the expression to fade as she sits up, rubbing her eyes with one fist.  “Huh?  Who’s that?”

“Where were you?”

Hook, line, and sinker.

“I had a—”  Junko yawns, covers her mouth, and gives a shake of her head.  “Sorry.  Jet lag.”  There’s no response, but she didn’t really expect that either.  “Interview.  For a magazine.  One of those boring ones.  Should be out in a month or something.  After all the….”  She trails off, waves a hand in the air, and yawns again.  “Photoshop.”  As Haruhi plops into the chair behind her, she turns, paints a curious expression on her face, and then tilts her head to one side.  “Why do you care?  You want the swimsuit edition or something?  There’s going to be a nice full spread—”

“I don’t!”

But Haruhi flushes a bright red and meets her eyes – hers all golden and brown and something like caramel.

(Junko never liked caramel.  It’s not that the taste is bad or anything like that; it’s the texture of it.  All sticky and stringy and getting stuck in her teeth.  Like taffy, only not nearly as bright.)

Still.

It’s a start.

~

At the end of the day, Haruhi slams a hand on Junko’s desk – rousing her from the feigned napping she’s been doing on and off all throughout class.  “Jet lag is no excuse to miss out on club activities.”  Then she stalks out as though she hasn’t said anything at all.

Junko hums a little smile.

More than a start.