#blah blah consistency despite them not being here

[zahri-melitor]

Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths:

I finished working my way through this as an event, and I've got to say that DC can't decide what it wants to do with the Multiverse. We've just gone from restoring the 52 Earths (Mostly around Convergence/Multiversity) to discovering the Dark Multiverse (Dark Nights: Metal, 2017), to rebooting the Multiverse at the end of Dark Nights: Death Metal to form the Omniverse (2020), but also restrict things back to 52 Earths only, to rediscovering Infinite Earths in Dark Crisis (2022), to the conclusion of Absolute Power being "we have once again cut off the Multiverse, but now we're going hard for Elseworlds instead" (2024). Make up your minds! Do you want to use the multiverse or not??? Please stop switching it up every 2 years!

Okay that rant aside, this is yet another event that cares very deeply about plot points and characters from COIE that have barely been seen in the intervening 36 years (and generally only in other events that reference COIE heavily). I don't have any emotional attachment to Pariah and the Anti-Monitor.

Structurally, it was an interesting event, in that there were about 4.5 plots going on.

Plot 1: the Justice League get trapped on dreamstate Earths born out of their subconscious wishes. In terms of commentary, Barry trapping himself in a 1950s comic book, Clark wanting to raise Jon (on the farm, with literally no other heroes from the Superfamily around), and J'onn J'onzz creating a future where he's merged humans with cephalopods/octopus so that they're psychic were probably the most interesting of the lot. Barry proves once again he's disconnected from the present, Clark is obsessing over his loss of Jon's childhood at the expense of everyone else, and J'onn...is once again mourning the loss of his culture and looking for a way to feel less disconnected from Earth. Still not quite turning into the sands of Mars tho boyo. Blah blah the League are feeling they're not communicating properly, they need to take a break and focus on themselves.

Plot 1.5: The Flashfam go to extract Barry and work out WTF is going on because they're the most reliable multiverse jumpers, and the Lanterns recruit everyone as bodies are needed (as all the heavy hitters are as stated trapped in dreamstate Earths).

Plot 2: Jon Kent forms the most underskilled novice Justice League since the early 1990s that largely consists of the latest legacies of various families, getting some direction from Black Adam. Their collective experience as superheroes MIGHT total 20 years active, and if it makes that it's because Booster and Ted are supplying most of that experience.

I am underwhelmed by this team, to put it mildly. There's a lot of "I need to be Superman as my father isn't here!" from Jon, and a lot of boring "Damian grows up to be Batman" foreshadowing where Damian outright insults people a lot, and Yara looks confused and irritated over why she's hanging out with them both. Jackson's trying his hardest, bless his heart, but because nobody really cares much about the Aquas they get that bit of the plot out of the way early on. I'm not sold on what this lot were actually trying to accomplish, despite once again being presented at the future of the DCU.

Plot 3: Dick and the Titans realise they have to step up to actually take leadership, because as noted Jon Kent's Justice League is out there competing with Justice League: Task Force days of "there are four warm bodies here, and only half of them are under the age of 18, we're good to go right?" for level of threat defence. Also Slade's busy trying to kill both Dick and Gar because he can something something dark forces corrupting him mad about Grant's death for the 87th time blah.

Plot 4: Young Justice get kidnapped into a further separate reality to keep them out of the way while the two generations on either side of them try to step up to leadership, and have a bunch of angst about being left out/left behind (I am going to discuss this separately. Spoilers: I thought it was one of the most interesting parts of this event).

My general impression of the entire event was the intended purpose was to showcase both Dick and Jon's leadership abilities. I think it achieved this, but not necessarily in the hoped for way. Dick showcased once again why he is the centrally trusted character of the DCU and can convince everyone and anyone to follow him. Jon showcased that he is absolutely not a leader, he needs to stop thinking that he is required to fill Clark's shoes, and DC need to stop trying to make it happen.

The bit where I most started rolling my eyes is when they decided that Jon Kent, half-Kryptonian powered by sunlight, from a species famously incredibly vulnerable to magic, needed to lead the team going into the magical pure darkness/demon dimension that has no sunlight "because his connection to the sun protects him". Jon's biggest weakness not starting with K is magic. So let's put him in a dimension consisting of magic and have him have to survive off the power of his sunlight...which he immediately wastes and burns off a lot of power by trying to fly. Power that he can't recover, because he's in said dark demon dimension with no sunlight.

Jon, sweetheart, you are not the brightest bulb.

My second biggest eyeroll was meeting Red Canary, Sienna, who accomplished exactly nothing when she accidentally got caught up in Damian's strikeforce that otherwise consisted of "a teleporter for travel, Peegee for her experience with the Cosmic Tuning Fork, and Dr Light because Kimiyo is both COIE linked AND has strong light based powers to fix the situation". I am still unsure of what the point of Red Canary being there was, because she mostly just snarked with Damian and got into trouble. Even if she was intended to eventually be revealed to be Sin Lance with memory problems or something she was not a convincing character.

The Flash storyline in and of itself was fun, but I'd actually already read it when I was reading through Adams' Flash run. It worked just fine in context of the event and it worked as a tie-in where you just skimmed over the event. Adams' Flash run is very entertaining.

As far as DC big summer events go, this one felt more about 'we want to reach these end conditions' (Justice League disbanded for a while, Justice Society of America back, Titans to step up as the headline team) than the actual content of the event itself. It was an event for the sake of having an event, you know?

I dunno. Maybe I would have cared more if I'd actually read COIE, but it felt derivative and like there was a lot of time wasting for the sake of referencing specific things that happened in COIE, whether or not they made sense for this storyline.

Oh and as a note, one other useful thing this event did do was specify that Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is supposed to be in continuity for Kara, and basically contemporaneously too.

[arkhamjack]

EDIT: Ok so originally I reblogged this post -> https://www.tumblr.com/madnessmadness/720786271203655680/trigun-like-many-apocalyptic-and-wasteland-epics?source=share

with a very very lengthy response and thought I'd make it a post on its own, so before you read on please read the original post!! Thanks

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I LOVE this analysis and the Mad Max examples! (biased as I am an inhabitant of the cursed land Down Under myself) and I would like to indulge in some further analysis of outfit (or lack thereof) symbolism!

I'll mostly be talking about Knives and there's also some SPOILERS for Trimax Vol. 7 and 13 (discussing the twins' childhood, Elendira's outfits and Legato).

Knives' getup here reflects the fear that drives him. He is completely covered - he is safe and protected from the outside world. There's even spikes protruding if anybody dares get too close. It expresses his need for safety but also reflects his need for control.

His nudity during the Fifth Moon incident is also interesting. If he's so hung up on protecting himself, why is he waving himself around on a mountain butt ass naked in front of his employees? 

(I love the hair flip panel lol) 

It's a display of power. He's just been reborn and he's all giddy. He's putting the fear of his divine angelic form into them. However, Vash is there too.

His nudity is NOT SEXUAL IN ANY WAY - it's a reflection of his plant PURITY. 

Knives makes himself an example to his brother. He's saying, 'Why can't you be like me? Why are you dirtying yourself with human contact?' (Despite Knives' whole thing being, yknow, wanting connection and understanding blah blah blah)(also plantc*st FUCK OFF)

The rest of Knives' wardrobe consists of lost tech exploration era space suits. They're not too bondage adjacent, but still cool and cunty imo. Though why is he hanging onto wearing shit from a very shitty time of his life? Simple: it sustains his drive for vengeance. 

These type of clothes were worn by those in a position of power who abused him, or more accurately, abused and eventually murdered Tesla.

In contrast to Knives' all or nothing approach to power dressing, Vash's underclothes expose his scarred skin, reflecting his willingness to degrade himself so openly to such a degree (remember the shit he pulled as Eriks?). However, the clothing that does restrict his body - his chest, the high collar, his shoulder, his right arm, his pants/boots - look... awkward? Uncomfortable? Idk but it SLAYS. 

My point is, Knives' clothing reflects a need to protect HIMSELF, whereas Vash's odd restrictive gear (particularly looking at the covered angel arm) reflects his need to protect OTHERS at the expense of himself. And of course, the suggestion of deviancy that OP mentioned. To Knives, Vash's deviancy is his love for humanity. It's fascinating visual coding and I love it. 

(This collaged pic from cellois on Pinterest)

On the subject of deviancy/perversion/queerness, I find Nightow's depiction of Elendira pretty well handled. She's trans and a villain yes, and she's a bit flirty with LR, but ultimately, he doesn't lean into portraying the transfem character as deviant/perverted/hypersexualised/fetishised. 

It could've been SO much worse.

We unfortunately don't know much about her backstory, but the fighting outfit she reveals during the fight with LR in volume 13, I believe mirrors the symbolism of Knives' suit. 

She's loyal to Knives (in which she beefs with Legato about lol there's also a lot of BDSM stuff goin on with that guy..(not referring to his SA at all btw)) and his 'all humans are trash' ideology which is so rooted in fear of being hurt, I can't help but see this reflected in her own character, for reasons we may never know. (I have theories) (I'll get to it at some point)

Anyway back to the outfit - it's very armour-like. It's also reminiscent of one of Knives' outfits, and dare I say they're a little yonic near the crotch and lower back. Their clothing expresses a need for self-protection, and by extension a reclaiming of power. 

I started talking about Wolfwood's deal but I think I'll leave it for another day tee hee I LOVE TRIGUN feel free to add ur own thoughts ok bye :))))

[ravensvirginity]

I think that bikini pin up was trying to give rae the billie eilish or carolyn jones eyes, and also show she was looking at the camera with face slightly down, y'know to make it feel like femme fatale. I think it might also be trying to give her greyish eyes that ended up look a bit too white and blended with the eye white.

The face looks okayish to me despite the wrong nose shape and the faulty eyes. I'm more confused about her hair. Where's the volume? Where's the long curls? Why is the top of her head so flat and then hair strands at random lengths are coming out from that flat patch??? Many dc artists have messed up her widow's peak hairline, and this is one of the worst cases (along with the Game issue). Why can't they just take inspiration from monica bellucci's hairline and maybe just accentuate it a bit?

It's like dc is always trying their best to make rae not too beautiful cuz she demon blah blah, either by messing with the eyes or the hair (and now the skin also). Even perez himself already tried to make her look more "demonic" before the plot suggestion was made by that one reader. Why are they afraid of beautiful half-demon huh? And an indian-coded girl too??? Is this subtle racism or something??? Like they think indian-coded girl's beauty is inferior and so unmarketable??? She was based on persis the miss india, she should look like she's gonna win beauty pageant.

I think the answer is just the art was bad. A LOT of the art for late stage New Titans was terrible. That art of Raven in the bikini is actually middle of the road compared to the overall standard of late stage New Titans imo. It definitely wasn't them singling out Raven specifically either, no one looks particularly good in that drawing.

Like Donna and Kory don't look too horrible but I don't even think Raven's face is the worst compared to Lilith and Karen. It was probably just a last minute hastily drawn addition that just kind of failed to be sexy. It happens sometimes.

I have never gotten the impression that DC makes Raven less beautiful than other female superheroes because she's half demon. Her current modern design is a huge flop, but that doesn't come from a place of DC intentionally sabotaging her and trying to make her ugly. It's more that out of touch executives don't actually realize how alternative fashion looks, and just the fact that it doesn't fit her character in general.

The drawing Raven more demonic thing was a plot device born of George Perez's style evolving. When he first started drawing NTT, his art wasn't as developed yet and every female character pretty much had the same face and body. As his style developed and he gave each character unique faces, Raven's naturally grew more angular and harsh. It gave her a more unique look and was still quite beautiful.

The fan question about Raven's face changing because of Trigon's influence is what led to Raven being drawn with even more exaggerated features in the buildup to Terror of Trigon. There is something to be said here about equating beauty with goodness and ugliness with badness, but that problem is by no means exclusive to Raven or comics in general, it's a very common and pervasive trope throughout media in general. At any rate, after Trigon was defeated, Raven was back to being drawn as being a very beautiful woman.

The idea that DC is deliberately sabotaging Raven and drawing her as ugly really doesn't make any sense to me. Female superheroes are always beautiful and sexy. It's what people want to see. Ignoring the past few years of her character where they've tried too hard to make the toon inspired alt look work for her, she's been consistently drawn as a beautiful woman. And even in her era of bad designs, she's still drawn with a nice body and facial features. Deliberately drawing Raven as ugly would just be DC shooting themselves in the foot.

[haysprite]

Yippee, Susie Headcanon time! This isn't even close to all of the HCs I have for her, just like with the other three, but some of em are like super specific or are Joey/Susie related (which I'm saving for later teehee), but this'll have to do! As per usual, this is my interpretation of her character, blah blah blah, whatever, let's get to em <3

• AuDHD REAL (y’all should expect this by now)

• Has a special interest in plushies/stuffed animals and the 80s/90s My Little Pony shows/toys

• Is really quiet and shy when you first meet her, but once she grows to like and trust you, her personality shines a lot more! She’s a lot more talkative, bubbly, and loves to mess around with you!

• It takes her a while to warm up to people, though, and often finds it hard to trust others unless Julie or Joey are already friends with the person

• Looks up to Julie big time, who’s always been her cool, older role model

• She’s a BITER lmfao, it's her main way of showing affection as off putting as it can be for some people. It’s also a great way for her to get people to back off, since who tf wants to get bit. Tries not to do it as much since she got her braces, but sometimes she just can’t help herself

• Will hide her hands in her hoodie sleeves and whack the hell out of people

• Was really insecure about her braces at first, and got teased about them quite a bit at school. She still gets insecure about em every once in a while, but Julie, Joey, and Frank all make her feel a lot better about having them, so she tries to have fun with them by choosing fun colors every time she gets her bands replaced

• Has an extensive plushie collection! Her favorites consist of a lil black n white cat, a seal, and a worn out teddy bear

• Also has a collection of MLP merch, most of which were gifts from Julie

• Rarely ever seen without a hoodie or some sort of jacket on, both out of comfort and cause she gets cold very easily

• Her room is covered in random art supplies just laying about, and her desk is stained with a shit ton of paint

• Rarely ever stood up for herself when she got bullied, she just had a really hard time with this, so most of the time Julie or Joey would come help her out. Being a part of The Legion helped her gain a bit more confidence outside the mask, however, so she started standing up for herself more often

• Has the most energy of the group, and is practically always bouncing in her seat wanting to do something, whether it's just talking to her friends or going out and actually doing something

• Despite all her energy, though, she will CRASH at the end of the night, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to wake her up until morning, as she’s a very heavy sleeper and will sleep through just about anything

• Owns a lot of clothes with cats on em :3c She just really loves cats

• She’s a nail biter, so Julie started painting Susie’s nails so that she’d stop biting them as much

• Heavily dislikes the holidays, since they tended to feel super lonely and depressing for her growing up. She just felt like she got jipped for most of them, and got pretty jealous seeing how happy other people compared to her.

   • Struggles a lot in school, so she tends to get Julie’s and Joey’s help a lot, and sometimes they’ll have little study sessions just to help her out. She excels in her art and English classes though

• She knows a little bit of French! She’s not at ALL fluent, but she can read, speak, and understand some here and there

• Either has to work in dead silence or with her favorite music on, there is no in-between

   • Whenever she’s not at school or out n about with her friends, she loves to spend time alone in her room working on her art 

   • Has a little diary that she writes EVERYTHING down in, including some of the most insignificant details about her day. Nobody’s allowed to look inside it, not even Julie. She made the mistake of bringing it to school once, and just barely managed to grab it back from some girl who snatched it from her before the girl got to read any of it

 • Hates coffee with the PASSION, she thinks it's absolutely disgusting. She’s not a big fan of tea, either, but she does enjoy milk tea

• She enjoys reading, and has a few books that she loves to reread over and over again

• Loves to bug her friends a lot, and will find little things to do that’ll annoy them without making them upset at her

• She tries REALLY hard to fit in, especially within The Legion, and wants to prove to her friends how cool she actually is. Of course, the other three already love her dearly, but sometimes she doubts herself and thinks she has to try harder despite not even needing to try at all in the first place

• After finding out that Julie liked Frank, she bugged Joey to get him to tell her if Frank liked Julie back. After getting this confirmation, Susie annoyed the HELL out of Frank nonstop about this, and always called him out whenever she caught him staring at Julie or somethin, much to Frank’s annoyance

• She was the one who made the friendship bracelets for the group, and she was SOOOO excited to give them to everyone, since she spent quite some time making them

[dangermousie]

Of course Ming Ye’s plan to save Sang Jiu involves gruesomely dying in her stead. If aesthetically suffering was an Olympic sport, the man would be going for a gold medal.

I have my issues with this portion of the story (not the way it’s written, it’s done well, but with my liking or lack thereof for this couple, about which more below) but this is the important point! Yes, the tears are important blah blah but this is a lesson about how to swap someone’s demonic stuff without, you know, driving nails into them like they are evil Jesus. 

By now, I am quite done with these two boneheads, but I confess that made even my cold black shriveled heart hurt.

(I guess they had a starter marriage :P)

Ummmm, honey! She just massacred 10K people! I am sure they had old and kids among them. Like...by now I want to smack both of them with a shovel, tbh.

Awwww. Even with my annoyance at these two, this once again made me :(

Sang Jiu being her charming self. Let the man die in peace (or, since you yourself are about to keel over), let him survive in peace. 

OK, OK, Mousie, stop being irritated and concentrate on how pretty LYX looks here.

And then she’s all “psych! I can’t be undevilized or even survive because my normal body is dead.” You couldn’t have let him know BEFORE he got repeatedly flambeed for you?

It’s OK, hot dimbulb, there are many many fangirls who will gladly accept your...ahem...divine essence. All night long.

What the hell! Now that she’s dying, she still wants to do her best so he’d not have any peace. No dissipating before a final twist of the knife. WTF! By now, any shred of sympathy I had for her (and to a large degree MY) has disappeared utterly. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s bad writing - just as MY is terrible at communicating and prone to dramatic gestures over common sense functioning, Sang Jiu is incredibly self-absorbed and immature from beginning to end. She was someone who thought it was a great idea to marry a guy who did not know her at all because he was hot. She also thought it was a great idea to force him into sex right after they got divorced. She didn’t wait to find out whether the method she came up with would result in divine punishment or whether it was still worth it to use the crystal chalice despite where it came from or or or or or really anything. It’s just before she went powerful and evil, Ming Ye and the viewer could ignore the red flags (which got redder and redder; I mean much as fictional dubcon in 14 was hot, it WAS 100% dubcon/sexual assault; no nice sweet good selfless well-adjusted person does that) but once she got power into her hands and trauma really shoved her further, it became really clear. It’s kind of like Tantai Jin. If he has no status and no power, does it matter in terms of its effect on the world if he would love revenge or is cold or has trauma or w/e? No, of course not because whether he’s a well-adjusted sweetheart or dysfunctional psycho, he has no power to carry out anything, whether it’s to open a puppy shelter or to carry out a wholesale slaughter. But once he gets power, his traumas and quirks become everyone else’s concern and one must deal with them somehow because he makes it everyone’s business. Same here.

What. The. Fuck. That is not romantic, this is UGH. Honestly, I am glad MY and SJ found each other because they should not inflict themselves on other partners. It’s kind of amazing that I started out liking them and by now I am all “thanks divine lightning, hurry it up with your barbeque.” 

He ultimately does not but by then I stopped caring. I am so so so happy we are back to our headcases Tantai Jin and Susu.

The thing is - my ranting does not mean I did not enjoy this portion of the story (unlike in the novel where I skimmed it since I dngaf about it at all.) The acting is great, the visuals are nuts, and the characters, including MY and SJ are completely internally consistent and their actions make total sense for what and who they are - their arcs are logical. I strongly dislike both of them by the end, but that does not mean it was not a well-done story.

[insertsickusername13]

this is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever written (not self-deprecating, just objective, I'm awesome, I love myself, blah, blah blah) but I'm sharing it bc the richjake fandom needs to be fed.

inspired by this post (link may or may not work, I'm bad at tech, it's by @theabyssgazesalsointoyou and the gist is rich wearing jake's clothes and jake loving it but I like...twisted the idea. a lot. for my own purposes.) and one of my headcanons that I can't say without spoiling the whole thing. kinda. whatever.

anywho here is this fic. i wanted it to be like 700 words but it's 2611 and I'm not giving you any hints as to what it's about, just read it!! for me!! anywho enjoy

Before moving in with Jake, Rich had spent almost every night at Michael’s house. Despite being hesitant to let a scarred arsonist sleep at their house, Michael's parents had grown to accept him as almost a son within days. He did chores, went to family events, he even started to rival Jeremy’s title as their favorite friend of Michael’s. He didn’t quite snatch the spot before Jake invited him over for dinner one night and, instead of just cooking Rich pasta, gifted him an entire bedroom and house key. (To please Michael’s parents, Rich had always called that night ‘the great kidnapping’)

Rich was endlessly grateful to Jake for letting him move in, happy to not only have his own space but also to get the privilege of waking up to see that gorgeous face in his kitchen every morning. He wouldn’t have it any other way, really.

But there was still that small part of him that was only sixteen, and though Jake gave him independence and a new type of love Rich had never thought would be directed his way (it couldn’t be romantic, Jake was straight, but there was this glowing adoration in Jake’s eyes whenever he looked in Rich’s direction that made Rich forget about the SQUIP and fire), he couldn’t offer the same familial love Michael’s household could. 

So, no more than once a month, Rich would spend the night at Michael’s. It wasn’t the same as it had been before—Rich was a guest this time around rather than a resident—but Michael’s parents still lit up at the sight of him and spent the entire night feeding him and playing board games in the living room. They asked about school, girls, boys—all the things Jake subconsciously knew and didn’t need to ask about. Rich, grinning, would happily answer all their questions while Michael (sometimes with Jeremy, sometimes alone) would do something or other in the background, completely unentertained. 

Rich looked forward to those nights. Jake knew he looked forward to those nights. Which was probably why he decided not to tell Rich he had a 101.8 degree fucking fever.

“Since when?!” he whisper-yelled into his phone speaker, holding it close to his mouth to keep as quiet as possible. He was hiding in Michael’s bathroom, sitting on the edge of the bathtub while Michael and his family ate dinner. He was supposed to be with them, but Brooke had been texting him non-stop for the past ten minutes, and considering their friendship mostly consisted of group events and choosing each other for group projects in classes they had together, he decided it was probably urgent enough to sneak away from dinner to see what the hell was going on. 

“I don’t know!!” Brooke whisper-yelled back, mimicking Rich even though she had no reason to keep quiet, “He was complaining about having a headache earlier?”

Rich ran a stressed hand through his hair. He could hear his heel tapping against the tile floor, though he was completely unaware of the motion. He wasn’t—he wasn’t that overprotective, okay? He knew Jake could handle himself in almost any situation. But he also knew Jake was probably the most independent person he’d ever met, and if he texted Brooke asking for help (technically he’d asked for, quote, ‘love and affection’, but for him, that was practically the same thing), then he was probably on the verge of death. So yes. He was stressed. Not panic-attack-break-down kind of stress, but reaching not-abiding-to-speed-limits-on-the-way-home levels.

“Is he gonna be okay on his own?” he asked, knowing full well that whether or not Brooke said no, he’d probably still end up going home anyway. He thought mournfully back to the wonderful meal Michael’s parents had prepared for him. Honestly, with the image of Jake all alone at home, it suddenly didn’t seem that appetizing. 

“I don’t know, probably. He said he threw up.”

“Fuck. Okay. You don’t need to go over, it’s fine. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Are you sure? I can probably—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. He’ll probably be embarrassed as fuck if he finds out you had to come over and take care of him.”

“He literally asked me to.”

“He’s not mentally stable right now, it doesn’t count,” Rich replied, already getting up and opening the bathroom door. 

“Fair point. Don’t tell him I told you, by the way, he doesn’t want you to know.”

“Seriously?! That ass—” he glanced down the hall to see Mrs. Mell looking at him curiously. “ —jerk,” he amended.

“Shut up. He was being nice, wanted you to enjoy Michael’s house and all.”

“Of course. I hate him. I’m gonna go now, I’ll text you when I get there. Bye.”

“B—” her voice cut off before she could finish. By the time she’d realized he’d hung up, his phone was already in his pocket as he walked back into the dining room. 

Mrs. Mell was giving him an innocently hurt expression, clearly confused as to why he left dinner just to take a phone call in the bathroom. Rich felt guilt well up in his throat—-this house was quite possibly the closest thing he had to a real family—but Jake. Jake took priority over every other thing on this planet, no matter how loving or kind.

“I’m really sorry,” Rich said, walking back to his seat only to stand behind his chair rather than sit down. “Jake’s got a fever and I can’t—I gotta go make sure he’s okay.”

Mrs. Mell #2 (not Rich’s least favorite, just the second one he was introduced to) frowned. 

“Aww, sweetie,” she said, “Are you sure you have to go?”

“Yeahh,” Michael said, voice drawn out by the excesses of weed he’d done before Rich arrived (Jeremy had been over, Rich didn’t want to know what they’d been doing in that basement), “Are you sureee?” 

Rich was positive Michael’s parents didn’t notice his sarcasm.

“Yeah, I know, it’s terrible,” Rich said, deadpan just to piss Michael off, before turning to his parents. “Seriously, I would love to stay, but he’s a total mess. Can we reschedule for next weekend?”

Even as he said it, even as they were offering to let him take leftovers home with him, Rich was drifting towards the door, mind already focused completely on Jake. He slipped his shoes on as quickly as he could and left, offering goodbye smiles and adult-leaving-an-adult-party waves (since moving in with Jake, a lot of the things he did seemed a lot more adult now. Small talk with strangers, paying bills, going grocery shopping—growing up wasn’t nearly as life-changing as he thought it was going to be. Most of the time, it just consisted of snuggling with Jake on the couch as they did homework together).

He didn’t let his fake smile falter until he was pulling out of their driveway messily, hitting the brakes too hard when he realized he was going too fast and forgetting to switch on his turn signal until he was already rounding the corner out of their neighborhood. He considered texting Jake, but he didn’t find the time to pick up his phone between buying cold medicine from CVS and searching the isles for Jake’s favorite snacks and an herbal tea that was advertised to reduce congestion. With no update as to how Jake was doing, he ran a few red lights and ignored a few laws that were probably important for the safety of everyone on the roads on the way home.

“Jake?” he called the second he opened the door. The whole house reeked of sickness, the blinds pulled down, the lights off, and the kitchen messy. There was a pot on the stove with ramen still in it, a half-eaten pop tart on the island, and a couple of bowls on the counter. Rich cringed. Jake was a neat freak. Not a good sign. 

Rich dropped his bag of stuff on the counter and cast a glance at the living room as he passed, just in case Jake was on the couch. He wasn’t.

“Jakey?” he called again, this time a bit gentler. He knocked on Jake’s bedroom door, not waiting for an answer before opening it. 

Empty. Jake’s bed was a mess, the covers pulled off and all the pillows gone, but there was no Jake. Rich went as far as to check the floor on the far side of the bedroom, but that was as spotless as it had been this morning. 

Okay. That was fine. This was totally fine. Stress level: phone-in-hand-to-call-the-police. Slowly reaching the-love-of-my-life-died-and-I’m-going-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-mourning. 

“Jakey? Where are you, bro?”

The bro felt heavy in his mouth, mixed dangerously with the pure, soft, obviously romantic concern.

“R’ch?” Jake called, voice so hoarse it gave up on the ‘i’ in Rich’s name and slipped right into the ‘ch’ that sounded more like a ‘k’. Rich, previously unaware that one person could sound so completely helpless, stumbled from Jake’s room and into his own, drawn to Jake’s voice like a fucking cliche, metaphorical magnet. 

“Jesus Christ,” Rich breathed. Jake was on his side, piled under both Rich’s comforter and his own. He was shivering, his face both pale and flushed with sickness. Alone. The fact he hadn’t called Rich—he’d just planned on staying here by himself—

Rich, who’d dedicated months to undoing all the damage Jake’s parents had done, sent up a curse directed both at himself for failing to notice Jake was sick earlier and Jake’s parents for leading him to believe he couldn’t ask for help when he was like this.

At least Jake had found comfort in Rich’s clothes, apparently. Four of Rich’s shirts were strewn across the bed and one of his favorite hoodies was being used as a pillow. Another was being used as a stuffed animal, Jake snuggling it with his mouth and nose burrowed in the fabric. Rich, for the life of him, could not figure out why Jake would do such a thing, considering he could hear his rattling breathing from here.

“‘M not feelin’ good,” Jake said, muffled by the shirt. Rich laughed incredulously as he knelt next to the bed and pressed the back of his hand against Jake’s forehead. 

“Yeah, buddy, I can tell. What’re you doing in my bed? You trying to get me sick too?”

For some reason, that seemed to upset Jake. His breathing quickened without deepening, and Rich could practically hear Jake’s snot leaking onto Rich’s hoodie. Disgusting. 

“No,” Jake whispered, his voice cracking, “No, Richie, I’d never, I swear, I—”

“I know, I know, it was a joke,” he replied quietly, making a small ‘shh’ing sound to try and soothe him.

Rich could see Jake frowning even behind his sweatshirt. As gently as he could, he reached for the fabric to take it away from Jake’s mouth, hoping it could help him breathe easier. The second he tried, though, Jake made a whining sound and shuffled away, hugging it closer and letting out a tiny sob. 

“No.”

“No? Okay, that’s okay. But don’t you think moving it will help you breathe?”

Jake shook his head ‘no.’ Rich frowned. Okay, different approach then.

“You’re getting snot all over my sweatshirt,” he said, plain and simple if not a bit accusatory. He sounded so much more apathetic than he felt. He was playing this ‘straight boy who doesn’t care that you look so small and helpless and oh my god I want to kiss you,  wait, no I don’t, I’m straight’ character really well.

That, unsurprisingly, got Jake to let go of it long enough for Rich to pull the sweatshirt away and add it to his growing pile of laundry. There was shuffling behind him as Jake tried to sit up. 

“Do you need anything?” Rich asked, turning back to Jake, “Soup? Medicine? A… Jake?”

Jake was upright and crying. Straight-up tears pouring down his face, eyes red and lips pursed pathetically. He was clenching the comforter against his chest and trying to hide his face behind it without getting snot on it as Rich had previously complained about. 

‘What’s—holy shit, what’s wrong?” 

Rich shot across the room, searching Jake for some injury that could cause him to fucking—

Rich had never seen Jake cry before. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to run and hide, to protect himself from such an unholy sight, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave Jake here. Alone.

“‘M sorry,” Jake sobbed, collapsing forward onto Rich’s shoulder. Rich could feel Jake’s fever through his shirt and, not caring if he got sick, wrapped his arms around Jake and pulled him closer. “I didn’t wanna—I just missed you so much, and you were so so far away and you’re so tiny—”

Instinctively, in a desperate attempt to return some normalcy, Rich squeaked out, “I’m not that short!!”

Jake shook his head and cried harder. Rich ran a soothing hand through his hair. 

“You’re so short your stupid sweatshirt doesn’t fit—”

Rich paused. 

“I’m—what?”

“You—” Jake rasped through tears, “—you always wear my stupid sweatshirt when you’re sad and… and I thought it might make me happy if I could smell you, or pretend you’re here and not at stupid Michael’s, but—but you’re so small it doesn’t fit, and I tried to hug it but it wasn’t enough because I was cold and you’re warm and if you were with me I would never ever be cold, so—so I came here and I didn’t mean to mess up your clothes ‘nd make you angry.”

If Jake continued like this, Rich’s heart was going to erode away into nothing but Jake Jake Jake. He was going to get a false sense of hope that nothing could break. The world was already more golden than it had been before, already so much brighter despite the fact Jake was crying. 

“I’m not angry, idiot. I just wanted you to be able to breathe.”

Jake’s sobbing ceased. Nuzzling deeper against Rich, he whispered, sounding childish, “Are you sure?”

“Of course. Of course, dumbass.”

Jake tried to laugh with relief, but all that came out was a coarse groan and unhappy sigh. Rich kissed Jake’s forehead as he untangled himself and laid Jake back down on the bed, ignoring Jake’s protests. 

“I’m not letting myself get sick, but I promise you, you can have my entire closet until you're better, yeah?” Rich said, unable to stop his giddy smile.

Jake gave him a sleepy but content sound of agreement.

“I wan' that stupid shirt with the nerdy science pun on it," Jake breathed, already drifting off to sleep.

If any other sick person in the universe was asking, Rich would flip them off and tell them it was his favorite shirt and no one could touch it. No one was even allowed to eat spaghetti at the same table as him while he was wearing it. 

But it was pretty, smart, perfect Jake, so Rich took it off its hanger and gave it to the poor guy to snuggle with for the next three days. 

(And if, while Jake was still delirious with fever and sound asleep, Rich snuck from the house and to Target just to get a sweatshirt for himself in Jake’s size, then no one needed to know. If he had to hide his smile behind his hand when he walked into their apartment a week and a half later to find Jake cooking dinner in that same sweatshirt, then only God was his witness. If he was so overwhelmed at the sight that he grabbed the drawstrings and dragged Jake down to his height to kiss him, then that was between him and Jake. 

And everyone else. Because Jake, apparently, felt the immediate need to brag about getting ‘Rich fucking Goranski, like the hottest guy fucking EVER to kiss me, Jenna, he kissed me. Me!!')

[silver-crowned-riders]

Caring for my clothes/fabric-wearing Pokémon!

ALRIGHT! I suppose Rotomblr is a good place to share information like this and, heh, I'm pretty knowledgeable on the topic if I do say so myself.

I train a bunch of Pokémon that wear clothes or fabrics. It's such a weird and freaky thing to a bunch of people for some reason, oooh where do they come from do they ever take it off so weird blah blah blah. Most people just get distracted being weirded out insteada learning anything! SO! I wrote about what I do for my team! Here it goes!! - J

Ribombee

These dudes make scarves out of wild materials, they're super crafty and can work well with their tiny hands and nature skills. Thin and lightweight is what they'd want, and they wouldn't mind a somewhat scratchy texture either. They enjoy the details (it's not about a perfect ~soft~ consistency just cause they're fairy types!! Arceus on Spear Pillar you guys' fairy type stereotypes give me a headache. AHEM!) and they can really tell when love's been put into it. Gifting eachother scarves can sometimes be part of how some Ribombee find mates too, along with making the most impressive pollen puffs!

My Ribombee had an old and plain scarf it wasn't all that attatched to. What I did was take the cotton left behind by a fleeing Whimsicott me and Ribombee went up against, did some minimal processing of the cotton with what I had at the base, dyed it brown and suprised her with it! She's never taken it off.

Oh, and I came up with a method to make that spike thing, but it's kinda hard to explain and pull off... there's Mewtube and Bulba-How tutorials, and if you can't pull it off you can get help from your Ribombee! Again, it's a social thing for them, they don't mind.

You don't really need to worry about cleaning a Ribombee's scarf. Most of what they make would kinda just fall apart if washed, so they've learned to use their hands very delicately to do the job themselves! They're probably better at it than you, so just back off for these ones. Plus, like touching a Skitty while it's licking itself, it's just kinda rude. Don't be rude!

Mimikyu

OOH OOH, OK THIS ONE'S SUPER INTERESTING! So ghost Pokémon's bodies work different from usual ones as you all probably know. The reason why Mimikyu hatch wearing a rag despite there clearly being a face drawn on the fabric is that over time a rag becomes bonded to one's body and essentially becomes a part of the Mimikyu! Hah, I get the feeling, like my gloves I made that feel like a part of me too, or like, my sweatpants when I was a teen.

However, the fabrics do get old and do need a wash. Not cause your Mimikyu, like, sweats or anything, it's less an odor issue and more that they can feel the fabric and old ones can get uncomfortable over time. Gyeuh, can you imagine something scratchy and full of dirt being bound to your body? Makes me squirm a little.

It's important to get a whitish fabric and a black, brown and yellow/orange marker or paints depending on which would work on your fabric, plus a little string and stuffing for them to make the head with. I don't think they have individual preferences for how the rag looks, they wanna look like Pikachu and they have a specific idea for how to go about that.

I took my little guy to the fabric store only cause I'd need something blank to work with (plus I don't dig the vibe of those places! There's people who don't know what they're talking about everywhere and the smell of a hundred different detergents and marker inks following you around! I always have to bring Swirlix along there to get myself through it.) I let them feel out whichever one they like the most and I let them run wild with it. Then, I let them go into the closet to change, and out they come a new man!

When it comes to cleaning, wild Mimikyu would just take a dip in a pond or whatever, or just... not wash. Eh, can't judge. However for my guy I follow whatever is needed for their specific fabric at the time. In the meantime they hide under a mattress while I leave Clementine there (my Scrafty) to make sure no one tries to take a peek at them.

Shuppet

Shuppet is really interesting because yeah, it looks like it's kinda just the sheet... and that's because it is! It's not like Mimikyu, that's just it's body. You can't replace the sheet, but it can still get dirty, so you can bathe a Shuppet the same way you'd clean a fabric! Unfortunately the one thing about being a Rider who's into clothes stuff is that there isn't really a "punk" detergent out there, and no one who like. Wants to make a small business around detergent or whatever. So I just get some (groan) Baby Smoochum's Laundry Detergent since I've found its what works best.

(I would shoplift it, but like. The cashier at the store I go to is really nice and I don't wanna get into an argument with him...)

Oh yeah, and if you use something else, make sure it's NON-TOXIC! Shuppets ain't immune to poison, remember! It won't really care if you use something scented or not, it's senses are specialized towards emotion, so it has a dulled sense for taste and smell of real food.

You don't need to do dry clean or anything for these guys. You'd normally want to do the wash on low for the sake of the Shuppet, but mine is a CERTIFIED DUDE who likes swirling around inside the laundry machine at HIGH, ADRENALINE-PUMPING WASH CYCLE SPEEDS!! It looks really fun tbh. So that's how I do it!

I don't think I'd be able to do the washing machine method when (or if, at this rate,) he evolves though. Stronger ghost Pokémon easily curse things if you're not careful, and I'm not going through all this effort just to end up with haunted ghost clothes!

Scraggy and Scrafty

Common misconception that these are another clothes-wearing one. From what I've heard usually only Scrafty's dex entry clarifies it, but that's thick shed skin, not actual clothes! And SOOOO many people treat that like such a freaky, world destroying fact when they learn it! GAH! Arceus forbid nature isn't perfectly pretty by human standards all of the time!!

But yeah, for Scraggys and Scraftys (or... Scraggies and Scrafties?) you just keep an eye on areas where dirt can get stuck under the shed skin like around the feet or in the tail and let them soak in the bathtup (or a lake if you're on the road) every now and then.

That's what I got for my team! They're the ones I'm most knowledgeable on, but I'm knowledgeable on the topic and can give pointers for other Pokémon too if you have questions!

[m-ilkiee]

can you please stop playing the racism card every time you get hate ?because if you do some self reflection , the hate that you get is not because you're black , it's because you're rude , ill-mannered and despite having an education you behave like you're savage. even though no one , yeah no one gives a hang about what you say for some reason you always have to give your unsolicited advice or opinion on random people's post in the most abusive way and when you get the hate back you start crying out that "oh because I'm black you all hate". you are bully who'll go around saying that you're a mean girl but the second people retaliate and give you the taste of your own medicine you start whining , playing the victim card about how you're targeted , how you're hated , how you have chronic depression and blah blah blah instead of acknowledging how you overreact. maybe learn how to be nice and not always play the racism card when you get hate. I know black women are not safe on tumblr but the reason you get hate is because of your own insolent behavior and not your race.

well if you say something bad about someone be ready to hear it back too. this was the reason why you had to shift blogs. you bully people online , abuse them , make a mountain of a mole hill by dragging people who chose to ignore a fool like you even though you continuously blabber about them on your blog and just keep stretching things that should be let go. stop being tumblr police and just randomly reblogging people's posts in the most despicable language because your vocabulary only consists of three words , fuck , shit and bitch. and you also know that you have gone on certain blogs as hate annons but you just don't admit it. you and your minion mutuals just want to police everyone here without even thinking twice how you affect other people

"You're a bully and a mean girl." Of course I am. Cry about it bitch 😘

[jujurose222]

blah blah blah

For a long time I felt like that one episode of Malcolm in the middle where he keeps his mouth shut for so long he gets an ulcer... Like bro I didn't even realize how important my words actually are... Now I don't shut up and manage to make everyone uncomfortable, quite consistently. Not to mention my family doesn't even fuck with me like that and has claimed that I am now the meanest. It is only because I read them to filth, but like it is so easy. I have been trying to be nicer and stop being Kourtney Kardashian when she was like, "No I am gonna tell you what your problem is." My Aries queen, only kardash I love til death. But if I see the problem I have to say something, it is literally not okay how much I do it. But I am sick of mother fuckers just pretending everything is fine, when it is clearly not. Like my mother, do not even get me started. Miss drink til I can't think about the hell I live in. Miss only two bottles of Hershey syrup and mustard in our fridge, but "Oh no, I don't have an eating disorder." Miss "I love you so much," but I literally cannot keep up with you Julia, and it is making me kind of jealous. I love my mother so fucking much, but I cannot keep sitting here in this house ruminating in her misery. As an empath it literally makes me so sad to be anywhere near my mother. I don't want to say this but the exact vibe my mother radiates is pathetic, like I feel like she feels she is pathetic. She literally said, "What does your sister even do on nights she is alone? she doesn't have any friends or hobbies." Bitch you don't have any real friends or any hobbies. Like why are you projecting onto your oldest daughter who literally runs a fucking business? Because you are jealous, and all your parents ever said you were good for was lookin pretty and getting married off. Too damn bad, you chose the worst man you could've married. It makes me sad, but I cannot keep sitting here in her misery it is making me sick. She got jealous of both my sisters because they had a conversation with her little "not" boyfriend at the bar. I cannot deal with this buffoonery. Thank god she is going on vacation this week, again by the way, she just got back yesterday from Nashville and now she is leaving for Florida. I had the ability to go to Florida with her and my cousin, but fuck that. Y'all can have fun at her cheer competition, I cannot deal with my mothers vibration. And then I will be out this house next month, finally alone. Been waiting since I was fucking 13 to be out this ho. I love my mom, but sorry, she is not a good role model, and I am the only one who cleans this goddamn house. I honestly am scared to leave her alone. Obvi a little dramatic but it will become a dust bunny in here.

Anyways I am grateful for my mother and everything she has done for me. She has made me the woman I am today, and at least she loved herself enough to leave my father. She was the path forger in her family with that action. She got my Aunt Kate to leave her husband who cheated on her 15 years of their marriage. I am so grateful my mom is brave in that sense, and she is good at her job, she is in HR. Surprise surprise, I am just like her in that sense, because I would succeed in HR so well. I get my loving light from her. She always loves despite anything, she just does not always have a full cup to love from.

[earthflaxmachina]

1 dere(k)volution

P: heres to the first of the second try at ramble posting on tumblr. instead of random rants, these posts will be centered around some kind of oc meta. also this time i have a co-host of sorts to keep it interesting because i am a dull turd.

D: It’s Derek.

P: cool. the topic for discussion today is the evolution of derek. but like the concept of derek. not this derek’s canon character development or whatever. to start by looking at the first ever image of derek that i scrolled through my camera for 10 minutes to find.

(from 2/2019)

if you didnt know already, his name was Dolan at first. the name Derek is fairly recent.

D: Dolan. What an ugly nerd name.

P: right. also. his design was based off a bottle of water i found at the grocery store. back then i had a weird tendency to draw very thin necks for some reason. along with very short torsos and long legs. so thats why the proportions look really weird.

D: That explains why you draw really thick necks now to compensate. Hahaha.

P: basically the beta concept for his story was that he lived in Hell and had an incredibly powerful wand that he inherited by accident after getting lost in the snowy woods or something. (Dolan) didnt really know what kind of responsibilities came with the wand and consistently wanted to become a magician (not fantasy kinda magic... like card tricks kind of magic) and misused the wand for trivial things such as taking a shortcut to the grocery store.

D: So I’ve been a amateur magician since birth!

P: yes. its incredible how youve stayed an amateur for this long. fun fact: harlow was also created at a similar time and was exes with one of luciano’s brothers. wow. the prosciuttoverse was a cesspool back then. a furry world PLUS heaven/hell setting? get outta here.

D: Harlow was also my love interest for quite some time!

(from 4/2019)

P: yeah. maybe we’ll do a commentary on harlow’s evolution at some point.

D: God I had such a weirdly-shaped head.

P: lets look at some other pics of dolan.

(renewed ref, from 5/2019)

(from 1/2020)

P: nothing more to note other than the fact that i remember writing a lot about you having a nice butt on your charahub/toyhouse profiles. despite the fact that your butt is pretty mundane in the evidence provided. god what the hell is that shading.

D: Ah I look so young and happy.

P: right i think dolan was meant to be in his early 20s. like literally every other oc i had at the time. next, the start of 2021 was when i revamped/redesigned dolan.

(from 2/2021 and 3/2021 respectively)

P: theres the first ever image of human derek and harlow. not much has changed tbh

D: We look like a lesbian couple.

P: the story concept was also pretty different from the original. basically i made a whole hierarchy for both heaven and hell and the world was completely extinct so everyone was either in heaven or hell. the world itself was the wence boys’ world. so the story wouldve taken place way way in the future. blah blah blah something about heaven being evil or corrupt or something corny like that, and dolan (being half devil/angel what a cliche) wanted to change The System (tm). also he was running a campaign 2 be ruler of hell or something as part of his plan. maybe he was evil maybe he wasnt idk. its old corny stuff.

D: Sounds like boring philosophical politics. Bluh bluh.

P: yeah. anyways timeskip to later in the year when i completely revamped your story AGAIN! ill try to limit the pictures from now on because im almost at the max 10.

(from 7/2021)

D: Look at me and my pronounce!

P: so at this point. there was a heaven/hell but it wasnt the main setting it just existed. there was an office kinda deal going on for the admin stuff. a dead persons soul could either be reincarnated in heaven/hell or destroyed iirc. there were 4 different departments because people die all the time so they categorized them. dolan had the biggest department because it was Death by natural causes/accidents. the 3 other were Pestilence (disease), War (conflict or generally murder), Famine. at this time i changed dolan’s name to Death because he was literally the grim reaper. he also wasnt God at this time. there was still some kind of higher power i think it was Stig. harlow was human and also lesbian now. nothing else interesting.

D: So when did I become Derek?

P: I dunno. some time after my birthday? when i started the storyline where you became human for a bit and needed a human name for Death. then i just got tired of calling you Death and stuck with Derek because it is better in every way.

D: Excellent judgement.

(from 28/10/2021)

P: this was probably the start of the all New and Improved derek storyline. the rest is pretty streamline from here and doesnt really need a recap.

D: Woof look how sweet and well-adjusted I looked back then! And that tiny nose.

P: yeah you still had some humanity (pupils) in your eyes. and still had the square glasses thing going on. eugh. waitwaitwait lets look at the first time i drew you and rumi lol

(from 11/2021)

D: We were so in love.

P: wow you guys have changed a LOT since then. for one: you were probably never that sweet to her. and she hates your guts now. 

D: If I had any!

P: alright. that concludes this ramble on THE EVOLUTION OF DEREK

D: DERE(K)VOLUTION

P: that sounds stupid. welp. i will probably make a poll on whose meta we should recap next - because i am always looking for an excuse to make a google form. or just send smth to the askbox. i dont care. bye

D: Goodbye friends!

[hellofastudysession]

actually Augh i'm going to talk about the setter again. the slider. the white castle burger

they are so nice i will cry

canon points to it being the very opposite of this (employee number 432 being referred to with he/him pronouns) BUT. mariella as the settings person rights

the character development there is sorta interesting to me because mariella's fixated on work and being a "normal" person with a "boss" and an "office" and then 432's thing is about wait. wait. wait. none of this is normal actually. why am i here. why is everyone acting so strange and yet so normal at the same time

so 432 searching for pencils for their sharpener with added mariella context? cool cool cool cool!!

mariella and the curator know each other because i say so. the curator's like do you see this shit employee number 432 and mariella's in the corner like why don't you have eyes

i imagine they went through the same thing stanley and the narrator are now

the curator's like our story is done. and mariella is like then we need to find niches in this one so we don't dissolve!! we're not going to move on! we're going to beat our lives into the ground to keep being! and curator's like i hella agree with you. that's why i'm going to make this museum that focuses on the past. and i'm going to make sure these characters don't go through the same thing we did. mariella's like i'm so glad we get along so well. this is the best ending. the curator's like yeah :) the best ending :)

the slider person is so polite and nice and Unsettling and Bad and You Need To Get Out Of There Too and Do You UNderstand Why I'M not Visiting

just. the only way i can help you is by letting you move on and doing the same

the epilogue crushes my heart in certain ways but mostly because- well despite how tragic it is, or maybe because of it, the skip ending is the "best" sort of ending for stanley and the narrator??? or it could be interpreted that way?? by me, who was freaking out over the skip ending the whole time i watched it, so my memory might be tainted by time????????

like we know from the epilogue that that ending CONTINUES. and the world is empty but it is liveable and stanley no longer has the narrator There. when the game resets it SEEMS like the narrator doesn't remember the skip button at all specifically. he remembers other things though. plot holes like these have consistently been necessary for the stanley parable's story. my point is that due to that ending being such a lifetime that shouldn't have been lived, stanley and the narrator are forced to move on Without each other and Without the parable

we see stanley go through a desert presumably from somewhere else- presumably adventuring back to the ruins of the parable. he's going back to it. He's going Back to it. the epilogue is supposed to be an ending and we don't know WHy stanley went back to it but maybe it was a way for him to move on? or maybe it was the only thing he had left??? since the world is so empty????????

the point is that this ending could ahve stayed ambiguous because the narrator wasn't there, but white castle burger IS there!!! and slider is the one who wants this to continue!!!!! and blah blah obvious things happen adventure line gjinka.

my point is. settings person is cool and lovely and they're funny and i love them. i like how they're set up as a breath of fresh air from the existential comedic horror that's the game, and specifically as a contrast to the narrator, but then, no. they're not free from it either, even if we're here. and they're messed up because who wouldn't be???

they're another reason to bond with ultra deluxe, they're something new, but they're not a way out of this. they're just a way further in. no part of the story is a way out of this

fuck. that's a lot of yelling from me

last thing to say the way their dialogue was written really reminded me of how the beginner's guide is narrated. so that was super fun. i thought they were a representation of the game devs at first and was bracing myself for a love letter to the game and to the player

oh god in a twisted way that sort of was what it was!!!!!

okay this is really the end for now

[omegawolverine]

Plesse tell me about queerness in the get down!!

okay okay queerness in the get down let's fuckn goooo

disclaimer: I havent watched this show in full for like 5 months at least, probably gonna get something wrong and/or forget some more important bits. also this wasnt proof read I just word vomited

tws: period typical homophobia, abuse mention, f slur use, bury your gays trope, overdose mention, mention of a creepy possible age gap (the age gap hasnt been confirmed so that's why its possible), cops

going from least to most prominent queer characters, let's start with mylene cruz!

so, from the beginning of this show she has an established romantic relationship with ezekiel (although the status of their actual relationship changes frequently throughout the show) and though this was a relationship she was hesitant to pursue, it is clear that she does have romantic feelings for him and if not for them both having growing careers in very different music genres (zeke specifically working in a genre that she repeatedly labels as bad because she thinks they're ruining records + that it isnt real music because they're using someone elses piece and rapping over it, that's not really important here tho lol) they probably wouldve had a much healthier, smooth sailing romance. that being said theres a few things that happen in the show that, while not explicitly clear, or even really good coding at that—to the point where you wont catch if you really arent looking for it (and trust me, I always look for coding, hers was just so little that it flew over my head until I saw someone else mention it)—are still cool to think about!

so, for starters, I wanna mention the toy box performance, which was performed by mylene and regina, who are best friends. that's all cool and shit, and you dont really think much about it...until you hear about the fact that the show runners purposely colored a lot of the scenes in that performance with the bi colors. like. the writers after the show ended basically said "oh yeah there was plans to make her coding more explicit, but our shit got cancelled soooo" and then dropped the fact that she was gonna be bi (or at least implies bi) in the series, which puts a new twist on a few things.

now, besides the bi coloring in the background of the toy box performance (which was mostly on scenes with her and regina, which involved a lot of uh,, lowkey lewd dancing. with each other. in very revealing outfits. wooooo), there's her music! I dont tend to read too much into this one bc, like I said before, her coding is fucking light and the writers themselves said they didnt really get to do much with it, but I think some stuff with her music is interesting. specifically how her, yolanda and regina's song set me free blew up because dizzee, resident (lowkey enby coded) bicon, got their song played in a queer club. also that the song was majorly important to dizzee and started playing literally right as he kissed a boy for the first time and realized "oh shit I like boys that's bonkers". also that the song can be taken in a gay way since literally the entire thing is about becoming your true self, fully and unapologetically, which is what both dizzee and mylene's entire character arcs are about. dizzee (and a lot of other queer people, apparently), heard this song about being set free and it resonated with them so much that they got that shit most of its popularity.

speaking of dizzee and mylene, they parallel each other a lot in the way that their arcs are about them realizing who they are, coming into themselves and no longer just letting people treat them like shit in a sense (dizzee starting to tell people essentially that they can call him weird all they want, they can make fun of how he acts, what he likes, how he dresses, etc. but he likes how he is and quite literally saying "it's okay to be an alien" as he has consistently compared himself to one throughout the show vs mylene learning that if she wants to be a disco singer she needs to put her foot down, not let anyone, not even the love of her life, not even her abusive father, stop her from achieving her dreams, etc. and continuing to pursue her career with or without their support). one more little parallel that I think is interesting is during I think s2 towards the end of the show is when dizzee and thor are shown together having fun with each other, painting all over the building and each other and are basically just being happy and in love together and then they have these clips of them being interspersed with clips of mylene at a party where she is starting to realize that if she wants to get anywhere she needs to be her own main priority and that she needs to put her career and her dream, which is what makes her the happiest, above all else if she wants to succeed. idk I just think how the show made these two into a weird parallel, accidental or not, is neat. maybe not an explicitly queer parallel, but I think at least how her music and whatnot helped dizzee, the main queer character in this show, blossom, is important.

moving on we got shaolin fantastic also known as "oh no your internalized homophobia is showing-"

so, heres a quick list of...interesting shao facts:

Consistently referred to as fag/faggot (shaolin fanfaggot is my personal favorite); he gets really defensive about this despite nobody actually thinking he's queer, it's just people being assholes to be assholes, and he is the only character consistently referred to using a slur, especially a homophobic one, especially for a "straight" character. dizzee, a canonically queer character, is called a fag less than shaolin is even though dizzee actively goes to gay clubs, has a not so secret dude he "hangs out with" and wont let anyone properly meet, paints his nails, wears less than straight clothes even by the 70s standards and is just all around the definition of fucking queer (and I mean like in the weird way, not the gay way). in fact theres only like once I can remember him being called a fag and it had nothing to do with him actually being gay it was literally just like thrown out there the same way you would call someone a bitch.

Has only shown sexual interest in women, yet refuses to have deeper relationships with women in general (possibly because of trauma but who knows) but takes his relationships with his "brothers", specifically zeke, very seriously

Tells zeke and zeke ONLY his real name when zeke was planning to stop being his friend bc shao more or less got boo boo, a like 14 year old black kid, arrested for selling hard drugs; he was clearly scared and trying to do anything to keep zeke around, literally chasing him down the street and hounding him until he got zeke to stop and argue with him

Kept threatening to beat up zeke in the end but couldn't actually bring himself to do so, instead saying that zeke is "fucking lucky" before walking away

Let's zeke get away with things that nobody else can, in general just has a weird soft spot for ezekiel that he shows with nobody else

when shao found dizzee with thor in a vaguely compromising situation (like they were just shirtless covered in paint sleeping next to each other but shao had also seen everything they painted on the walls ((which some of it was sus)), it was clear they had painted on each others bodies and dizzee had been routinely disappearing with this guy for weeks now yet not producing nearly as much art, at least, as far as we audience members know) he didnt judge him but instead, waited for him to get cleaned up and then told him something along the lines of "theres a reason why im so secretive blah blah blah [not everyone needs to know everything about me]", which, in context, kinda implies that he might be a lil. a lil homiesexual. jus a lil.

whenever even the possibility of zeke leaving him comes up he absolutely loses it. he has literally cost ezekiel life changing opportunities because he thought zeke would just up and leave him for them. this could be abandonment issues bc he's a severely traumatized character, and that probably does contribute to it, but it also is just not a reaction he has to any of their other friends just randomly dipping in and out of his life soooooo

generally speaking, this mfer has got either bisexual with a big hard on for zeke coding or homosexual with terrible internalized homophobia and still a hard on for zeke coding. either fucking way, that nigga gay. he gay as hell. gay as fuck man. there wasn't really much to analyze here tbh bc the coding is just so fucking obvious if you look for it or you are/have been a gay person who's dealt with at least a little bit of internalized homophobia.

also, just a sidenote, idk how fucking old shao, but I'm praying hes like at max 19 bc I'm pretty sure zeke is a minor in this show and shao definetly is not so the whole him being heavily implied to have a crush on ezekiel thing is kinda. oof. not oof if zeke is like 17 but any younger than that? OOF.

edit: apparently the characters are only supposed to be a year apart in age but i had no clue about that before writing this post and since shaos age was never actually stated in the show i naturally assumed he was an adult since his actor Looks Like An Adult. this is definetly on me to a certain extent, but i also never saw anything about this when trying to find our their ages so 🤷‍♀️ maybe i just didnt look deep enough, sorry!

now moving on to the main event...marcus dizzee kipling :]

so, first things first, let's talk enby coding bc him being bisexual was already confirmed!

um, to start off, I just wanna say I dont think this enby coding was intentional or even really coding, it's just moreso me being a dizzee kin on main and knowing as a transmasc enby he has very transmasc enby vibes. for example:

cool, gender neutral nickname that everyone calls him

paints nails various different colors

the whole wardrobe is just a transmasc enby heaven...fishnet shirts, jean overalls, jackets and cuffed pants galore, the big colorful pins, etc

gender neutral hairstyle (when I had my fro it was very sexy and made it easy to transition between hyper masc and vaguely fem, which is pog)

comparing himself to/representing himself consistently with an alien character (though this is meant to represent his sexuality, it could also double as a gender thing too, not neccesarily bc of the whole nonbinary alien trope but bc an enby who likes aliens might heavily identify or compare themselves to whatever their idea of an alien is, whether that just be a genderless entity or a motherfucker with fly style and no need to be perceived as anything other Wacky As Hell)

moving on from there, let's talk about how his queerness is presented to us and how, while it may be a really good piece of representation, especially coming from netflix, it still lacks in A Lot of places.

so, let's start with good things!

i personally really like the get down's queer rep with dizzee bc it's (for the most part) nonsexualized and very very soft, about dizzee figuring himself out and realizing there is a place where he fits in, and about two teenagers in the 70s falling in love over their shared passion for street art. it also features an interracial couple where both boys challenge stereotypes both about queer men and men of color, which is epic poggers and very sexy. this piece of rep specifically is very important to me bc I am a queer black person and even tho interracial relationships are mostly normalized now, I've still had people give me shit for primarily dating white people in a town that is...primarily white lol

mm anyways, I can also appreciate how in the get down, dizzee being represented by rumi the alien is not a thing specifically related to gender (as it often is) and instead is about his sexuality and just in general weirdness and how it has led to him being alienated amongst his peers, poc or otherwise. him seeing himself as an alien is not about just his queerness, which is important, it is about him being a queer black man who talks different, acts different, dresses different and is "soft"—he isnt a walking black male stereotype and he wouldnt have been seen as masculine back in the 70s by any stretch of the imagination. this can be relatable to a wide spectrum of queer poc, from queer black men currently who still have to deal with this shit or to people like myself who are afab neurodivergent mixed race enbies that have always been signaled out as weird and alienated for it. dizzee is god rep bc while he has a small part in this show, his parts are very impactful, hard hitting and show queer poc of all ages that they arent alone and that it's okay to "weird", you just need to embrace it because somebody will love you for you, as thor did for dizzee.

that being said theres um. some minor problemas here,,,

namely:

dizzee and thors first kiss

the lack of development this pairing got

the way dizzee was confirmed bisexual off screen, he never said the words himself, just showed interest in both genders

the way dizzee and thor were never even confirmed boyfriends or just fwb so most of the fandom just calls them boyfriends bc Why Not

dizzee was implied fucking DEAD??? AT THE END OF THE SERIES?????? AND THOR WAS IMPLIED ARRESTED?????????????

now, these might have been things that wouldve been fine had the show been given it's full run but it wasnt which is why we are now left with probelms.

so, from the top, let's go over these: dizzee and thor's first (and only "on screen") kiss was one that was shown in a montage of other queer people making over and doing other vaguely romantic/sexual things, one of those things being a whole ass naked titty being mouthed at, but the actual kiss...was just not shown? like they really did just say "yes they kissed <3 you know this from the context clues of it being in a montage with kissing, hickey giving and titty sucking <3 but no we will not show it <3" LIKE HELLO? I SAW A NAKED BOOBIE BUT NOT TWO MEN KISS??? HUH????????

also, dizzee and thor were both fucking high as hell during this bit like this isnt a terrible thing but it's also like sometimes you do shit when you're high that you wouldnt do sober and they just never kissed again on screen so like?? like idk that's not that bad but it does kinda irk me since they deadass got no other on screen intimacy after that unless you including painting on eacher other or sleeping next to each other on a shitty mattress but not touching at all during it bc they were both at opposite ends of the mattress like half way off it

so yeah, that was trash. then we got lack of development, which kinda goes with the "dizzee being a bisexual but he never says it in canon" thing cause like...okay dizzee was already sort of a side character from the get go like he wasnt the mc by any means, but he became way more of a background character as things continued until we basically only saw him for performances or when he was with thor, yet they got no fucking development as a pairing other than "dizzee realize he gay, he like thor, he and thor spend time together and ig probably do some gay stuff but we dont really know bc we only ever see them do graffiti together now" like?? tf am I supposed to do with that shit. answer. quickly. and then theres dizzee not being confirmed bisexual, which is just a running problem with shows literally doing everything to say a character is bi except for having the character just...say they're bi? which would be so easy? like a good way dizzee and thor couldve had some development is by thor teaching dizzee things about the queer community that he didnt even know existed, thor couldve helped him understand what being bi meant and helped him label himself and whatnot but instead we got an off screen confirmation that the writers had bisexual in mind when writing him. which is garbagé.

the whole thor and dizzee never having a confirmed relationship status is also a development problem cause like literally nobody knows if they were just friends who made out, maybe fucked, who knows, or if they were dating bc dizzee does give a love confession but a love confession doesn't mean there is a relationship, especially since thor didn't say he was in love either (as far as I remember, I could be wrong, plus whether or not that really happened or was apart of dizzee literally overdosing during a performance is unclear so 🤪)

and now for the biggest issue...bury your gays trope.

during the season 2 finale, dizzee and thor are chased by cops after they are found doing graffiti, one of the cops is able to catch thor while the other chases dizzee into a train tunnel and there is a train seen headed straight for him before the show cuts to black on a train horn. the show writers claim that if they had gotten another season, dizzee wouldve been alive but since they didnt and since that's essentially super fan trivia knowledge, most people dont fucking know that and instead had to watch a black queer teenager chose death over being fucking arrested by a white cop. on top of that, thor didnt see any of that shit because he was caught and the cop started hauling him off while dizzee was still being chased so thor literally has no clue where his friend/possible boyfriend fucking is or that he's likely dead in a goddamn tunnel all alone, unless you count the fucking pig that chased him in there who wouldve died too. this shows rep was so fucking good as far as most shows go on not having major fucking problems, on not being toxic and over sexualized, etc, etc. and then they just. killed a black queer teenager for no fucking reason. like it was literally the last episode ever, it would add nothing to the plot, it would just devastate fans and devastate it fucking did. I dont cry easy but seeing a character I identified with, who I had hyperfixated on, die because he'd rather that than be arrested is terrible. it fucking sucked.

so yeah. that's my all too extensive thoughts/analysis on the get down's queerness. theres definitely stuff I missed, or misinterpreted, or looked too much into, etc, etc., but this was a fun thing to spend time writing sooo yeah!! thanks for the ask anon, sorry this was just a big rambley info dump, but hopefully you get some enjoyment out of it since it took like 3 hours at least 😭😭 feel free to ask clarifying questions lol

[carol-effing-danvers]

Steve Rogers is a Monster

Yeah, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it? Strap in, it only gets worse from here. 

(click here if you’d prefer to read this on AO3)

Forewarning, if you enjoyed the epilogue for Endgame, this particular essay is not for you - and no, I am not bashing the Steve/Peggy shippers, you are beautiful human beings who make the fandom brighter and I’m happy that at least someone in this fandom got the ending they wanted.

Additional warning: if you expect this to be another Civil War debate, you will also be disappointed. There has never been a measurement invented that can adequately describe how much I loathe the verbal dick measuring contest that seems to pass for human interaction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in this franchise. It’s not funny or entertaining - it’s exhausting, uncomfortable, and frankly it’s rather lazy writing.

This is about the very specific way that the epilogue in Endgame completely changed the way the character of Steve Rogers can be interpreted, and I don’t just mean the very illogical and contradictory way that time travel is explained, both in the movie itself and the fact that the writers and directors have two completely different views on how that worked out. 

I mean that the choice made by Steve Rogers in the very last minutes of that movie alters the way I view each and every one of his actions starting from The First Avenger and that alteration is exactly what I want to talk about, because whether you view it as deserving or not, what Steve does at the conclusion of Endgame was the most selfish thing humanly possible. Time is a thief, but somehow Steve managed to steal even more than Time.

Side note here: I understand that I am a completely biased Stucky shipper, a friend to Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks aficionado - sorry. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Steve and Bucky were destined blah blah blah, but I was never expecting a Stucky ending. Disney wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that, I wasn’t bothered that Steve and Bucky weren’t doing the smoochies by the end. But Bucky’s facial expression during those last minutes was gut-wrenching. Like...I have no idea what kind of cues the script and directors gave him, but in the future, please don’t ask Sebastian Stan to look sad unless you want soul-crushing devastation. It’s not Seb’s fault, his features are just arranged that way - but the fact that the editing staff allowed Sam to be sad though elated to be entrusted with the Shield and Bucky looked like his soul was being physically torn out of his body was an… interesting choice. 

Other side note: if you’re writing about time travel, I’m begging y’all to get your facts straight. Or just don’t write about time travel. It almost always sounds better on paper than it does on screen and it means that you’ve opened doors to more questions than you’ve probably got the answers for. I know this was about trying to set up the idea of the multiverse, I get that, but there were better and less messy ways to do that, and I know that because I’ve done it before. @Marvel: Let me write you a six-way orgy you fucking cowards~

By going back in time, Steve robbed Peggy of the future that would have been hers - not only that, he’s robbed her of even the chance of making the choice between those futures, because you honestly could not tell me with a straight face that Steve told her the complete truth of what he had done and she would be okay with him alternating the very course of the future. It doesn’t help his case that he has a history of not disclosing truths that he knows will be painful or inconvenient for other people in his life.

He robbed his loved ones - Sam, Bucky, Wanda - of the years they would have spent with him. Sure, he ‘came back’ after Peggy passed away, but they are adults in the prime of youth who knew him sixty years ago in his own time and he is an old, old man who has lived an entire life completely separated from them. He is practically a stranger with a name they know, but a history that no longer belongs to any of them - not even his oldest friend. They have him back, but judging from his age, they’ll be lucky to get even ten more years with him. Assuming of course, that any of them can stand to speak to him - I certainly couldn’t blame them if they tell him to go to hell and take his dad jokes with him. 

Steve has stolen away their friend and dropped off an elderly and dying near-stranger in his place, and this is treated by the writing (and the majority of the acting) as a wild and unexpected but not tragic event. 

Is it really that unexpected, though?

I recall seeing a Game of Thrones essay on Daenerys across my dash (I’m sorry, love, I don’t recall who you are since it’s not a fandom I’m in, but if someone knows who wrote that, please post the link!) which detailed how her ending in the series was foreshadowed many times by her penchant for bloody killings and her habit of surrounding herself with her own fawning friends.

Months after reading that, I had the thought: though Steve is never really shown thinking about Peggy after Civil War, except in a few scattered scenes in Endgame, was this foreshadowed? Whether you believe that his actions are justified or not, what Steve does is still, in the end, selfish at its very heart, and Steve Rogers is not a selfish person. 

Oh no, my dear friends and readers. Because taking this action has solidified and clarified Steve Rogers as the biggest and most selfish asshole in this whole universe.

Steve does not do the right thing, Steve does the thing that will most make him feel better. The fact that this often happens to be the right thing in the end is more the result of happy coincidence than any special sort of moral authority that the man holds. 

Rescuing Bucky Barnes and his fellow captives in a prisoner of war camp from being experimented on by an insane Nazi eugenicist? That was not a moral stand, that was endangering himself, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark because he couldn’t handle the reality of his best friend being killed in war.

Sacrificing himself by putting the Valkyrie down in the Arctic Circle? That was not about sparing human lives, that was about Steve seeing his friend die right in front of him and not being able to deal with the grief. There were ways he could’ve prevented the plane from killing people without killing himself.

Trying to make Bucky remember who he was? And later on, saving him from the government agencies who wanted to hunt him down? Although, arguably, that last one is also just good common sense - Steve was already shown that government agencies could and were corrupted by HYDRA and he’d also seen how dangerous the Winter Soldier could be when unleashed. 

Steve did, I think, truly believe that this was the right thing to do, but it was also about keeping his connection - his very last, since Peggy had descended into dementia caused by Alzheimer’s before she ultimately died - to a past that for him, was only months or years ago, rather than decades. In some ways, this is completely understandable - Bucky might be the very last person left alive who truly knows who the real Steve Rogers is, because the rest of these people only know Captain America and we are consistently shown through multiple movies how uncomfortable this makes him.

This gets...considerably less and less understandable as we are shown Steve’s growing relationships with Natasha, Sam, Wanda - even Sharon, though she barely gets any screen time and they share the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen - and indeed, what might be the most uncomfortable kiss in cinema history.

Side Note 3: This is made even more awkward by the director’s choice to have two of Steve’s friends watching them the whole time - seriously, who even does that? Why would you make them do that? Only sociopaths make out with their friends staring at them like that. It’s so fucking creepy - and don’t even get me fucking started on the fact that she’s also apparently his own niece. AHHHHH!

But we are shown, over and over again, that Steve is capable of building close meaningful relationships with people in the present. They don’t know his whole history, but they do know Steve Rogers rather than Captain America and they care about him deeply. 

Side Note 4: Notice that I don’t count Tony Stark among those people - despite this strangely persistent narrative that the various writers and directors tried to sell to the audience, Tony and Steve were not friends. They were never friends. They were colleagues at best, but these were two men who neither liked nor understood each other very well, but had to work together. And sometimes that’s okay, too. (Oh dear, I just gave the Stony fans a fit too, didn’t I? Sorry, guys. Enemies to Lovers is a great trope, I support you!)

But let’s set aside Steve’s gross betrayal of the people who loved him. We’ll also ignore the question of whether the motive for these good actions has tainted the actions themselves. Because even without questioning these, the conclusion of this story arc still transforms Steve into the biggest monster this franchise has. 

The very fundamental way that the writers and directors can’t agree on how the time travel mechanics in their own story work mean that Steve has just done one of two things and they range from shady and very questionable to absolutely fucking horrific. 

The first, that he’s created his own alternate universe to exist in, is morally dubious at best. Even the people who support this theory and liked the ending seem to feel that it wasn’t necessarily a ten out of ten on the moral goodness spectrum. They’ll say things like ‘he deserved to have his happy ending’. Even that phrasing seems to acknowledge that doing this was the opposite of the right thing. It just considers doing the wrong thing as being justified rather than horrifying. 

But let’s examine this first idea for a minute - even this, the more innocent of the two implications, means that rather than really processing his grief or dealing with the repeated tragedies and losses that have occured in his life, even as he was running group therapy sessions and grief counseling, Steve Rogers chose to escape his current life by creating an alternate universe that specifically allows he himself to live out his own fucking fantasies of the way his life should have turned out. 

That, in case you are not aware, is wildly fucked up. I thought I was playing pretty fast and loose with Steve’s characterization when I turned him into an extremely polite serial killer but as it turns out, I clearly just wasn’t setting the bar high enough, because that’s somehow even more fucked up than being an undercover child soldier with a small sadistic streak. 

Hm, and now I feel I should have been more creative there...

The second, and even more horrifying option, is that this older Steve Rogers has been in this world the whole time, watching as things unfolded just as we’ve seen over the past decade, taking ‘the slow way’ through time. 

Side Note 5: I do kind of understand why you would do it this way, because that’s really cool and shocking when you say that! Until you think about it for longer than three seconds and suddenly you realize…

Everything that has happened here, every tragedy and downfall these people experienced, happened because Steve Rogers lived his happily ever after with his beautiful wife and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He got to fuck Peggy Carter and watched as his wife built an empire of intelligence networks, knowing that her efforts were completely in vain because her agency was rotten to the core and he never told her.

Every horrifying act committed by HYDRA under the guise of SHIELD was permitted through Steve Rogers’ negligence. And that’s just the wider big-picture worldview, large and shocking, but not personal. 

What about the people that Steve claims to actually care about? 

This means that Steve lived his whole life in contentment with his wife and children while his best friend was physically and psychologically tortured for over seventy years and just...let that go. 

He allowed one friend to murder another in the nineties, when the Winter Soldier was sent after Howard and Maria Stark. Then their child was being advised by a greedy self-interested warmonger who paid terrorists to drag him off to be tortured and slaughtered, and Steve did nothing about that, either. 

Bruce Banner was exploited, experimented on, and made into a monster against his will in the failed pursuit of recreating what was done to Steve, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and dozens or even hundreds of lives lost, and Steve allowed that to happen, too. 

Like Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov was physically and psychologically tortured for others to use her as a living weapon - except that this was probably happening to her since early childhood, and a man her future self loved and trusted implicitly did nothing to save her from this upbringing. 

The Maximoff twins are shown to have not wealthy but loving parents who are murdered in front of them and they both endure days of laying in the rubble of their ruined apartment, wondering if the bomb in their living room would go off and kill them. Later, they are taken in by HYDRA, experimented on, and recruited as child soldiers to the cause when they show signs of having supernatural powers. They start a series of events that result in the destruction of a major city and the loss of what is probably thousands of lives. Pietro is murdered while trying to help the Avengers to stop this, and Wanda suffers the loss of the very last living person she loved. None of these things seem to have bothered Future Steve. 

Steve “I can’t sit on the sidelines when I see a situation go sideways” Rogers, planted himself on that fucking sideline and observed for nearly eighty years as friends, colleagues, and his own wife were lied to, brainwashed, tortured, vilified, and hunted down like animals.

And then there Steve Rogers himself - not the Endgame Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers who brought down a Nazi plane and will lie beneath the ice for seventy years while everything he knows disappear (mostly) innocent of these horrors, the life he would’ve lived stolen from him by a stranger with his name and his face from another universe.

What I’m saying here is that if you consider this idea for any amount of time, it took Steve Rogers less than ten minutes to become the most evil and disturbing figure in the entire MCU, only (not really tho) contested by Thanos himself. 

Gross and poorly reasoned libertarian ethics aside, Thanos genuinely believes that he did what he did for the sake of the entire population. It’s made fairly explicitly clear that Steve didn’t do this for anyone but himself. 

Call me crazy, but if everyone you know needs to suffer and multiple planet-wide devestations have to happen in order for you to get your happy ending, you might be the bad guy. 

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned?

[river-bottom-nightmare]

Damijon Secret Santa

@woahjaybird happy holidays ris!!!!!!!!!! i admit, i was a bit confused, bc you signed up for a ship fic exchange and requested platonic bros, but whatever. i hope you like it!

To be honest, it was something Damian said a lot. 

Jon heard those words practically every time Damian opened his mouth: in the middle of a mission, when they were baking pies with Ma Kent, during a stakeout, on a rooftop eating takeout. 

They used to be annoying. God, sometimes Jon just wanted to drop his restraint and punch Damian in the face, full-force. Especially when he said those words, again and again and again. Over time, though, Jon grew used to them, and after a while, they just began to amused him.

You should be afraid of me.

Because Jon never understood those words. What was there to be scared of?

The two of them were sitting on a rooftop in Metropolis, Jon with his long legs dangling over the side of the building, Damian cross-legged next to him. Taking a long slurp of his smoothie, Jon glanced over at Damian, who was outlining their plan of attack for tomorrow-- a mission to take down an arms dealer who had been working out of Metropolis for months. With Dad stretched thin over League, international, and intergalactic affairs, criminals were becoming a little less hesitant to step foot into the city. Superboy and Robin would be taking care of that soon.

Jon was listening, he really was. The battle plans were definitely lodging themselves somewhere in Jon’s subconsciousness. But he had to admit, most of his attention was fixed firmly on Damian himself.

Jon remembered the days the prickly young boy would throw his nose up haughtily in the air, state he’d been intelligent enough to have a doctorate at seven years old, and miff at anyone who insinuated otherwise. It was a far sight from when Damian had  curled himself up on Jon’s bed, and under the guise of watching a movie, told Jon about his acceptance into the most prestigious art schools in Gotham. 

And that was the reason behind Jon’s inattention, wasn’t it? Damian was eighteen, now. Their age difference didn’t seem like much when they were ten and thirteen and going against the world with all the confidence of a couple boys playing pretend. Now, Damian had a weariness in his shoulders, but lips that quirked up into a smile far too often, skin layered in scars but hands gentler than Jon ever thought he was capable of. Jon himself was a fumbling, awkward fifteen year old with jeans that were always too short, hair that was always too messy. And Jon used to think he was over feeling inferior to his best friend.

He’d miss him. Jon would miss Damian so much. Sure, Damian would probably try and keep their visits somewhat consistent, but work would pile up, and a curator would probably see Damian’s talents and whisk him away to the world of the famous artists, and Damian would forget he ever had a friend named Jon and would go on to become a household name while Jon spent the rest of his life living in his parents’ house and updating his mediocre blog that he started because of a dare.

No, he wasn’t being dramatic, thank you very much.

Unfortunately, Damian seemed to catch onto his lack of attention and snapped his fingers underneath Jon’s nose, startling him back to focus.

Never one to sugarcoat, Damian said, “You look miserable.”

“What? No, I’m fine!” Jon didn’t know why he even tried to play it off, he’d never been able to lie to Damian.

“Right. My mistake. Someone who was fine would definitely spend the past hour drinking out of a smoothie cup that’s already empty.”

Huh. Jon hadn’t even realized he’d finished the drink. He put it to the side and shook his head. “Really, it’s not a pro-oblem.” Oh, goddamnit.

“Your voice cracks are ridiculous,” Damian informed him. Why had Jon ever thought he’d changed? That smug voice was as irritating as ever.

“Yeah, they’re hilarious, thanks.”

“I don’t understand why you’re upset.” Apparently, this matter was serious enough for Damian to put his map down. Wasn’t that comforting?

But Jon had never liked to keep things from his best friend. “That. That’s what’s bothering me.”

“Your voice cracks?” Now Damian just sounded confused.

“Yes! No, I don’t know. I just don’t like them.” Jon crossed his arms in frustration.

When he looked over at Damian, the other boy’s eyes were wide, and in that stupidly deep and non-cracking voice, he said, “This conversation has gone well past the point of understanding and I’m going to continue with the plan now.”

Jon sighed. “No, Damian, it’s not that.”

“Then?”

Searching for the right words, Jon drummed his fingers together. “You...you’re going off to that fancy art school soon. You’re all grown up. And here I am with my stupid video games and voice cracks.”

Jon wasn’t exactly sure what he was expecting. Damian could never be called a master of social interaction, and his basic settings were sarcastic, condescending, or incredulous. Still, Jon expected something a bit kinder than:

“You’re such a moron, Jonathan.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Jon stared at Damian for a moment, blinking stupidly. “So I tell you about the problem that’s been eating me up for weeks, and all you say is that I’m a moron? Thank you so much for that.”

“I’m telling you you’re a moron because you’re worrying about something so inconsequential.”

“Oh please, do elaborate.”

Damian paused, then let out a tired sigh, turning to face Jon. This was going to be a serious conversation, then.

“Jonathan. I have told you time and time again. You should be scared of me-”

“Oh my god,” Jon interrupted. “This stuff, again?” He was laughing now. “I know, I know. You should be horrified, cower in terror underneath my ruthlessness, blah blah blah. You say it all the time, I get it. I should be scared of you.”

Damian stared at him. “Are you done?” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m tired of you bringing up the same thing over and over, Damian.”

“And in saying that, you just proved my point.”

Jon frowned in confusion. “What?”

“I’ve always said that you should be afraid of me. But you never have been, not since the moment we met.”

“Like there’s anything to be scared of.”

“Yes, Jonathan. There is.” Damian looked Jon in the eye, his gaze sharp and serious.

Damian’s honesty was strange, something Jon wasn’t used to, so he tried to play it off with a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, assassin training’s tough-”

“When I was six years old, I murdered a man in front of his daughter.”

Jon fell silent.

“I used to command an entire legion in my grandfather’s army. We completely destroyed and took down three different countries.”

“Damian, I-” 

“Once, Grandfather put me in a straightjacket and wrapped me in chains, surrounded by trained guards, with no instruction other than to escape. And I did.”

Hesitantly, Jon said, “I never knew.”

“Because I never told you. That, and so much more, is why everybody I ever know has been scared of me.”

“Even Nightwing?”

“Nightwing grew out of it eventually,” Damian admitted. “But everyone else. The rest of the bats. Father. Even Mother. There’s fear in their eyes when they look at me.”

“Oh. Uh,” Jon shrugged. “That sucks.”

“That sucks?” Damian said, dry but amused.

“I didn’t know what else to say!” Jon defended.

“See? That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Jon furrowed his eyebrows. “You’ve been trying to tell me it sucks? Because I already knew it sucks.”

“Jonathan…” Damian trailed off, then grabbed Jon’s wrists with his own hands.

“Hey!” Jon protested, though only out of surprise. Because Damain’s hands were warm and his thumb was pressing down on Jon’s pulse point and Jon could honestly say he had no objection to this.

Damian’s face showed nothing but piercing intensity: brows furred and eyes locked on Jon’s own. “Jon. Look me in the eyes, and tell me you’re scared of me.”

“But I’m not?”

“I just told you things that would have grown men running away from me in terror. Tell me at least some of that scares you.”

“No,” Jon shook his head and gripped the other’s boy’s wrists back. “No. I’m not scared of you.”

Letting out a breath, Damian moved away. For a moment, Jon found himself chasing that warmth.

“You are the only person who’s ever thought that.” Damian turned, shifting to mirror Jon’s position. Staring out over the city, a billboard washed colours over Damian’s face. He looked like a work of art, and Jon had no idea how anybody could ever fear him.

“You’re my best friend, Damian.” Jon shrugged, despite the fact that Damian couldn’t see him. “I’ve seen you scream at a machine for losing at Cheese Viking. I’ve seen you befriend a little squirrel you found on Ma’s farm. So how exactly am I supposed to be afraid of you?”

Damian nodded, as if that solidified something. “If you really think that I would leave the only person that isn’t scared of me, if you think that I would stop being friends with someone who has always thought of me as a human first and a weapon second just because I’m going to a university, then you are the biggest moron to ever walk the face of the earth.”

Stunned, Jon moved to sit next to Damian. “Oh.”

Jon had always been aware of their height difference, made plenty of jokes about it, but it really struck him how much smaller Damian was when the older boy turned to look up and smile at him. “So stop worrying, okay Kent? It’s unbecoming.”

“Whatever you say,” Jon acquiesced. 

Damian wasn’t leaving for good. Damian, with his burning green eyes and molten beauty, still wanted to be friends with him. 

With a smile on his face, Jon turned to look out at the city, letting the quiet wash over him. At his side, Damian did the same. A huge thank you to @iamwhelmed for organizing the secret santa this year!!

tag list: @woahjaybird @birdy-bat-writes @elles-shitposts-personified @subtleappreciation  @screennamealreadyused @pricetagofficial @catxsnow  @iconbicon

[charlettebffxiv]

Prompt #8 Adroit

Charlette had not been down in the tunnels beneath the library in a long time. She had almost forgotten how cold the long, stone-tiled hallways of the Archives could be. Despite it being late into the summer season, she already felt the desire to pull her shawl tighter around her shoulders. It was strange to be down here and out of uniform, like she was sneaking into a place forbidden to her. But by now she knew these hallways almost as well as she did the roads and alleys of Willow’s Heart itself. Besides she had permission, how else was she going to deliver the reports Harriette had ordered her to cover? The stack of papers sat neatly in a leather folder held under one arm, the smooth surface feeling a little at odds with the rough-hewn walls and floors of stone that surrounded her. The thick heels of her sandals clacked against them with each step, announcing someone’s approach to anyone sitting yalms away, likely studying or researching the things they had found on their missions. Door after door passed her by, each one containing untold aetherical wonders. There is where the lines were drawn for her. She could enter Harriette, Emille and Aemerics offices when given an appointment, and nowhere else. It was a little ridiculous, since she had already been inside most of the rooms, hells she had helped fill some of them too. But, then again, she was supposed to be marked as ‘potentially untrustworthy’. So it stood to reason.

Harriette’s office stood at the furthest end of the first hallway you stepped into when entering the underground level. A large, dark oak door that had a bouquet of flowers carved into it, and the words ‘Head Librarian’ cut just above them. She always wondered if Harriette had that door designed herself, or if it was always like this. It was oddly fitting, considering how much she loved the Botanical aberrations they brought back or reported on. But that was a question for another sun, Charlette rapped her knuckles against the thick wood, and a muffled voice answered.

“Come in! It’s open! Ah, Charlette!” Harriette stood up from the piece of writing she had been scribbling through to walk around her wide, messy desk and right up to Charlette. Of the three current leaders of the Archive and its Order, Harriette was the one least concerned with decorum and proprietary as dictated by hierarchy. The portly woman placed her hands on Charlette’s upper arms, gave them a welcoming squeeze, then pulled her into a hug. “Ah! It’s so good to have you down here again! Goodness me, I could tell it was you minutes before you arrived. No one has quite such a wide gait that lands with such consistent volume. No thumps and thuds with you, just tips and taps. Come along, sit down, I’ve just made some lemon tea, help yourself to a biscuit if you like as well.” Harriette hurried Charlette over to a chair, all but pushing her down into it. A steaming cup of citrus-smelling tea was sat in front of her before she could refuse, and a tin of biscuits was opened and held out. Charlette was not going to say no to one of Mrs. Nilsen’s shortbread. “Thank you Head Librarian. It’s nice to be back, in a way. I quite enjoy the coolness of the Archives, compared to how sweltering it can be up there.” Harriette was already back behind her desk, only a short distance between the two of them. Whatever she had been working on was hastily stacked and set aside on a precarious looking pile of paperwork. But she paid Charlette full attention as she went, ever the multi-tasker despite how scattered she always looked. Red cheeked with salt-and-pepper flecked hair that was curled, big, and messy. The shock of green though in her eyes let anyone know the infinitely curious woman was focused on them. “I know! I feel like a burrowing badger sometimes, all I want to do is stay down here and remain cool and quiet within my den. But then I do miss the rain when it comes, and I love that smell.” Charlette nodded along, the two seeing eye-to-eye on a fair few things really. Though Charlette would never have been caught dead with an office as chaotic as Harriette’s. If she had ever had one herself. “But it can’t all be bad up there, hmm? You’ve been under Bobocufu’s care, you must be learning a wonderful amount of new and interesting things! And you get far more time inside her Greenhouse too. I wish I had more time for it, she’s planted such interesting and beautiful specimens there. I’ve had the blooming of the corpse flowers on my calendar for almost three twelvemoons now! Excited to find out if they really do smell like carrion? I’ve no reason to doubt Bobocufu, but smelling it yourself is the best and only way to confirm something so fantastically strange.” Harriette took a quick sip of her tea, fingers tip-tapping on her cup. “Yes, the corpse flowers are due to bloom this twelvemoon aren’t they? Should be just as summer is ending, so any sun now. Not sure if I’m excited for the stench, but I am curious to experience it. They are some of the largest blooms we have in the Greenhouse. But, if I’m honest, I think I prefer the saplings most. They feel like an investment, especially when we go out and plant those that are ready for the orchid.” Harriette was watching Charlette, like she was the student having a meeting with her inspiring teacher. The woman really did need to make more time for herself. “We’re going to do another planting next moon. You should come along, I think you would enjoy it.” A chubby hand pressed thick, short fingers against Harriette’s cheek. “Oh, you are sweet Charlette. Tell you what, I’ll mark it on the calendar and do my best. It sounds like a good way to spend a sun, and maybe we can name a few of them too? Perhaps a nice, straight, grumpy looking one we can call Emille the Second?” She tittered into her hand, pulled out a long quill made from a gauche, colourful feather, and scribbled down a note that she stuck to the calendar hanging on the wall behind her. “Something to look forward to! But, onto why you’re actually here. Can’t always just be tea and fun ideas, hmm? How did the reports go?” Charlette pulled the folder out from under her arm, opening it out on the table and spreading the separate papers she had completed for Harriette. Each section was stacked in neat piles, titles and stamps making it clear which was which. Pride welled in Charlette, how can anyone accuse her of something bad, when being a stickler for the rules created such perfect little pieces of parchment? Harriette pulled her glasses up by the string that hung them around her neck, sliding them down her small, pointed nose. It magnified her eyes by triple, her pupils going from black-beetles to button sized. “Mhm! I missed your sense of order and neatness Charlette dear. Not even Aemeric is this careful with his formats, and as you can see I’ve no time to care at all! Hah!” she waved a hand at her office, almost knocking over one of the stacks of papers. It made a little well of anxiety start to stir in Charlette’s belly. “Thank you. But there’s no need to feel bad about your office. I’ve heard it said chaos is sometimes the kiss of the adroit, wherever they decide to be intelligent.” Another titter, the sound of it reminded Charlette of gossiping girls, it made her feel like one for just a moment. “That’s very nice of you to say. But I don’t feel bad at all! Why should I? It’s my office, and I know what is where. I have a system, you see. It’s called ‘remembering where I last put it’.” That titter became a cackle! Charlette braved a smile of her own “Keep laughing like that, Head Librarian, and we might suspect we’ve a Shroud witch in our midst.” Harriette shook her head, and waved a hand with a limp wrist at Charlette. “Please, don’t let Emille hear you say that. He would never let me hear the end of it. ‘I told you! You’re creating a less than professional image for the blah, blah, blah.’ I would have to convince him the town was under attack to get him to focus on something else.” And with a shake of her head, she picked up the first of Charlette’s reports, gave it a flick so they stood straight in her grip, and started to read. Assignment #4762: The Retrieval Section 1: The Ul’dah Situation As Reported by Order Guardian(Currently Suspended) Charlette Bellamy This was going to be a long, long evening. So Charlette poured herself another cup, took another piece of shortbread, and settled in. She was ready to make her case as soon as Harriet spoke “So, tell me about this Q’talhdi woman.”

[sailorstarr-chan4]

I hate being a writer so much. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate that I cannot EVER take a “proper” break. I tell myself, “Okay, I’m burned out, I need to step back and not worry so much on writing. I need to work on my mental health and try to relax,” but noooooo, I am constantly plagued by the urge to write, I feel it as surely as I feel my heart beating, and I hate it so much because I cannot write anything right now. For ten fucking years, I dealt with this shit, but for the last couple of them, it mostly simmered down to barely existing, thanks to fanfiction. Until now. 

I know I should wrap my WIPs and then I’ll feel better. I know that plenty of fic authors bog themselves down with WIPs and they still keep cracking and I shouldn’t feel bad, but here’s the rub: they. still. keep. going!! Meanwhile I’m over here floundering over a handful of oneshots I cannot bring myself to finish. I managed to update my main WIPs this summer, yes, but I have NOTHING planned, nothing plotted out, except vague wisps of ideas. Because I dove into them with a “fuck it, who cares” attitude, but now my brain is convinced that that is not good anymore and I should be ashamed of myself and blah blah blah blahhhhh 

For the past 3 months, every time I try to write, I just agonize some more, over the usual crap but especially the CHARACTERS. It took me 3 years to finally admit that I have not EVER written an Inuyasha fic that was remotely “in-character” except MAYBE in smut (how ironic). My Inuyasha is not canon Inuyasha, or canon “in spirit” Inuyasha. He is too suave, too sweet, too romantic. He is unrecognizable; he is a weird mesh of “fanon” and “canon” Inuyasha. And while that’s all well and fine in my AUs, I’m also guilty of writing him like that in my mostly canon-compliant/post-canon Tied Together collection. After years of claiming I could not “deal” with OOC-ness, I find that that’s all I am capable to producing myself. I can’t stand hypocrites and eating my own words only feeds into my self-loathing I fucking hate this wjhghrsgj And yes, I KNOW that fanfiction/fanon is all about indulging in the alternatives, the what-ifs, the unexplored potential, but my inner demons don’t want to acknowledge that lmao 

On top of alllllll that, I’ve half-convinced myself that most, if not all, of my previously published fics were “forced” by me to please others and not myself. I ... I even half-believe that I never actually LIKED Inuyasha nearly as much as I always acted like I did. Or at the very least, never enough to warrant writing fics for it. I started writing for the fandom because this is a fandom that has given me consistent, enthusiastic feedback and I revel in that. It spoiled me, dare I say deluded me into thinking that I was a hardcore Inuyasha fangirl despite my constant albeit mostly affectionate shit-talking of it. 

Three years ago, I had turned to fanfiction because original writing was too painful; but I guess it was just a bandaid and the proverbial “ripping off” was bound to come sooner or later. >.<

I want to write trash. I want to write crack, smut, fluff, humor, etc, but ever since I started putting in “more effort” into my fics, it’s like its awakened all of my slumbering demons. 

Maybe I’ll eat my words again and end up publishing a 100k fic next month LMAO but right now, that’s not looking remotely possible