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batsplat · 6 months ago

Note

do you have any random early 00’s motogp era hot takes you want to share? literally any thing

I do feel like 'hot take' implies that I know what people's takes about this era even ARE, but sure I always have a few!

according to mat oxley's reference book, in 2005 at the sachsenring valentino was planning to make a move at the penultimate corner on the final lap to take the win from sete. now, this didn't end up happening, because poor old thoroughly broken sete crumbled to the pressure from valentino at the start of the final lap, which let valentino through and let him take the victory. so I'd actually had this reference book for a while and flicked through the 2005 pages quite a few times before I realised something. the penultimate corner? that's where valentino took the lead from sete at sachsenring 2003 - you know, the race where he'd been lurking and leaving it until almost the last moment, before taking too much of a defensive line into the final corner and allowing sete to just beat him to the line. the race that made him go off and dye his hair and have a bit of a crisis before showing up at brno and beating sete on the final lap. from here:

I double checked, and he definitely gets the lead into the penultimate corner in 2003. for 2005, the reference book says this: "vale planned to attack into the downhill run to the penultimate corner, leaving his rivals no time counter-attack". which, if this is true, let's just sit with that for a moment. we happen to know for a fact that a counter-attack is possible if you don't get the last corner right since we saw it in 2003. so what valentino was planning to do in 2005 was overtake sete in precisely the same place he had overtaken him two years earlier, and this time make no mistake to take the win. to reverse what had been sete's greatest ever victory over him. can you imagine? isn't that kind of funny? isn't that kind of fucked? valentino can you let this man BREATHE jesus christ

my hot take is that valentino popping his champagne right in front of sete's salad at jerez 2005 was unfortunately pretty fucking funny

the hands on hips when the spaniards were booing?? also incredibly funny

walking out onto the podium like this when the spaniards booed him really does make me think how fucking tragic it is he didn't get booed more often. there are few things I enjoy more in sports than athletes being cunts when crowds are booing them. like it just slaps, what can you say. this slaps. look at how delighted he is to rub it in their faces. valentino rossi EYE will boo you

some other under appreciated bad vibes 2005 photos:

catalunya 2004 is a bizarrely underrated valentino duel, and I cannot for the life of me understand why it's not mentioned in the same breath as the other ones (actually I can, it's because a) people don't rate sete and b) it was twenty years ago)

quick catalunya 2005 tangent: I kind of get 2005 not being discussed so much, even though to me it's an integral part of the season and I think it really works in narrative purposes because it's just like? such a specifically cruel way for the whole race to play out? 2005 as a season is kind of about figuring out every single cruel way you can win a race against a rival and trying them all out one by one. if you're into that sort of thing, like a sicko

but anyway catalunya 2004 is just unequivocally a banger of a race if you love one-on-one duels - from right to the start to the very end (which btw you cannot say of either 2007 or 2016, as fond as I am of them) (I cannot stress enough how much I love 2007 but obviously it does also tell you something about that particular era of racing that we still think of it as one of the two valentino/casey duels). my point is that this race slaps, it's part of one of the best series of three races you'll ever come across, and the way 2004 just gradually ramps up the stakes and tension of the sete/valentino rivalry is ridiculously cinematic

let's go back a few years and talk about alex barros

alex barros was valentino's most significant on-track rival in 2002, not biaggi. and, listen, I'm not saying he's on the level of the five feuds TM, but people do completely forget that rivalry, and, like, they had a bunch of fun battles!

this isn't as much a hot take as just a...? point of curiosity. I feel like by the late noughties, everyone was always talking about how all this in-race pressure he'd exert would break biaggi and gibernau. but relatively speaking, he really doesn't do this that much with biaggi - the main way he 'breaks' him is just like... being way better than him. on-track, relatively speaking he's not spending all that much time sitting on biaggi's rear tyre... of course it happens, but extended duels between the pair are pretty rare. he's using that tactic more often on, well, alex barros. plus, barros had a reputation for being evil on the brakes and he was someone who valentino had a healthy respect of in last laps! helps make it more interesting

I know 'why don't people talk about valencia 2002' is a question that can be answered with 'because it was 22 years ago', and I left out the race from my vale race recs list because... okay, look, I had to draw the line somewhere and felt like 'getting people into a bunch of 2002 races without commentary against a rival a lot of new-ish fans haven't even heard of' was very much where that line should be drawn. but I don't know! it's still weird they fought that much on-track and it just sort of gets ignored, including some notable valentino defeats (or, well, two defeats, that's something)

also flattens perception of valentino I reckon, if looking back your understanding of valentino's prime is 'well his two rivals were biaggi and gibernau and he hated them both' makes it easy to forget that at age 25, he really wasn't seen as like... a nasty competitor, somebody who was constantly picking fights... by this point he's won three premier class championships, and he's really only beefed with the guy basically everyone beefed with. that particular perception really stuck to him post-gibernau! it's casey + jorge who are the first ones to kinda be primed for conflict (especially jorge)

anyway, assen + sachsenring 2002 are both available on youtube, and I did include those in the recs lists in large part because they have commentary... personally, I would've made different choices here from the motogp website, but what can you do. they're both fun races though, I promise! it's really interesting that barros is still riding a 500cc machine at this point, so you kinda get that neat contrast between bikes... it's fun how much you can actually see it, like imagine if you got that with all major technical regulations - and with something this radical even the layperson gets to appreciate it

shout out to alex barros' weird and quirky 2002 season... I won't forget u buddy

also, this is a bugbear in general when people talk about title rivals - but it's not always the runner-up who was the title rival! you have to remember how the season actually unfolded in real time, y'know... events happen in a linear order. if you have stronger results towards the end of the season after you realistically no longer had a shot at the championship, then that's very good for you but you are not the title rival. biaggi isn't the title rival in 2002, ukawa is. dani isn't the title rival in 2007, valentino is. dovi isn't the title rival in 2018, valentino is. unless you are able to mount such a dramatic comeback that you have literally gotten it to a title decider (cf 2006 and 2022) then I will check the standings at the halfway point and listen to what they tell me like a sensible person

come on! this isn't even particularly marginal! some title fights can be described as three way like 2003 2004 2008 2013 and some are five way like 2006 2017 and some occur in the year 2020. some involve the eventual runner up never having really been in championship contention and as a society we just have to accept that

(obviously, only one of these things can really be described as 'a title fight', and even that one is a snapshot at a time that happens to be pretty flattering toward valentino right before it all really goes downhill. but anyways it's the principle of the matter, it's just an inaccurate description of what actually happened that season)

biaggi is more of a title contender in 2004 (and even 2003) than he is in 2002... I do feel like sometimes people act like biaggi disappeared when sete showed up. final results aren't everything - mind you at the halfway point in 2004, biaggi was one point off the championship lead, with sete a few more points off... also biaggi was p3 in both of those seasons. he only dropped off when he got the repsol honda seat in 2005 lol

unfortunately, and with all respect to barros who I've been hyping up a lot recently, the lack of a clear narrative hook and indeed a feud makes 2002 the least interesting of the early noughties seasons. you can't even say it's really that much less 'polished' than valentino's 2005 season... like no offence but this is kind of disgusting, even the dnf was mechanical:

thing is valentino also has the clearest machinery advantage over all his major rivals here, it's more fun if you make these guys suffer a bit imo

that being said, I do find it charming and kinda endearing valentino also found this season boring as shit and desperately needed to change things up. he's so real for that, a true warrior against single athlete domination

btw in 2005 the narrative hook is that he's tormenting sete basically the whole year. that one's also way more impressive since the yamaha is still on balance the worse bike than the honda

like I said here:

I don't necessarily think that sete approaching that valentino rivalry differently would've helped him so much in 2005 (though maybe in 2004), but he could have perhaps preserved some of his dignity. there's something about how valentino really makes sure these feuds are conducted interpersonally on his own terms... and his approach is very much conditioned on whether he's operating from a place of strength or not

I've obviously talked about this more elsewhere, but you've got a real shamelessness differential. and sete continually is too concerned with managing perception of that rivalry. whereas valentino, y'know - I reckon he's quite comfortable with people perceiving him as ruthless. first of all, obviously it works out in his favour more often than not because of the intimidation factor... and secondly, from how he's talked about it over the years, he does know that the rivalries are part of the show and also are something he really does consciously enjoy (obvious exceptions apply). he does like playing the arsehole, and he's happy to do it in front of the cameras... that's really where it falls apart for sete, because it almost feels like presenting this as a very 'respectful' and non-biaggi/vale rivalry was a bit of a group project, something they'd both been invested in during 2003 and much of 2004. and valentino just... throws it away. zero hesitation. such a key turning point in that season and that rivalry but also kinda valentino's career? in a way, it's the natural culmination of how he's taken ownership of his own narrative... from the start of 2003, when he was chafing against the constraints set by honda and is searching to reestablish individuality, to then forging his own destiny at yamaha in 2004 - and now he's even stage managing his own feuds. it's all so much more sudden and deliberate and self-assured than anything with biaggi or his earlier rivals. he's ensuring that this whole story is to be told on his own terms. what a spectacle and all that

whereas something like jerez 2005... obviously you have the spontaneity of the move itself - nothing premeditated about that, which you can tell because he fails to make a move two corners earlier (after having made the mistake to let sete past in the first place earlier that lap). so of course the performance in front of the booing spaniards is also completely spontaneous... dealing such a decisive psychological blow on sete was mostly happenstance, though of course valentino did well to take advantage of the hand he was dealt (setting aside moral qualms for a moment). still, it's revealing in itself that it's a victory he enjoyed so much... at the end of the day, there's no way in which he'd rather win a race, the more brutal for the opponent the better. it's something all his big wins have in common

including welkom 2004 btw!! feel like that's sometimes a bit under-discussed with that race - like, sure, it's switching to the yamaha and winning when nobody else could bla bla, but the fact that his two major rivals had been complaining for the whole last year (and in biaggi's case an awful lot longer than that) about how valentino had the best bike and then he goes out and wins with a fucking yamaha first time of asking??? that's got to STING. the more you can make the opponent suffer, the more fun it is lbr

back to 2005 (you can tell these are real 'hot takes' because none of these are in chronological order and only loosely thematically related)

the valentino/melandri rivalry is weirdly flat given the set-up is perfectly compelling? you've got childhood friends and rivals who used to be a lot closer, and then valentino is super successful and melandri is also there, and then at some point melandri is complaining valentino has switched up towards him and seems kinda resentful towards him? and then a few years down the line he's saying valentino's rivals are using yellow chairs as mind games. which, again, I'm writing it out and I can see the narrative appeal, but somehow it never quite comes together. I don't even mind that melandri isn't that competitive in the rivalry, plenty of fun rivalries are like that, but... y'know. not for me

I do have a theory for why this is but it's a bit rude and quite possibly unfair so let's keep it moving

which is why the main rivalry in 2005 as far as I'm concerned is still valentino/sete... but it's important that rivalry exists, because otherwise it'd be another relative dud of a season. as it stands, it slaps!! prime yamaha valentino is great to watch, and there's like half a dozen performances of his that season I'm super fond of. admittedly most of them are the ones where he's ragging on sete, but donington also slaps!!

I know it's mean, but I just have to say again the bit of the brno 2005 commentary where they go (paraphrasing, can't be bothered to dig up my notes) 'it's almost like rossi has a radio with which to talk into gibernau's ear - remember sachsenring, remember how long you led there, remember how you made that final lap mistake' is so wild?? I genuinely don't get how people aren't all over this rivalry (beyond how it's twenty years old, yes yes), like the psychology of this shit is fascinating, the symbolism is incredible... commentators bringing up the idea that valentino can essentially whisper into his enemies' heads, the way they discuss the curse more and more that year... and inevitably, it always does fall apart for sete - remember, brno is the race where his engine!! cuts out!! on the last lap!! that is SO cursed! all kind of creepy, no? in a lot of ways, late 2004 and 2005 is basically an extended horror film. isn't that what everyone wants from their sports...

here's sete after starting on pole at valencia 2005 and suffering a mechanical dnf on lap 3:

#//#brr brr #batsplat responds #hot take compilation in the truest sense that I didn't put much thought into any of these and there's zero order #curse tag

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bittybattybunny · 4 years ago

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Soooo since I hadn’t gotten many suggestions for Eclipse I wound up thinking “let’s turn her into a frog” cuz a friend sent me a frog video and I felt like it.

Also played with lineart a bit. I changed the tool I used for it to play around some since my headache meds kicked in finally.

fic time! (btw fic takes place in May!)

She put her little hands on her cheeks with a whine. She hopped around the pool and peeked to look again and it was still true. She opened her mouth and looked at the odd blue color and sighed heavily.

“Great. I’m a frog,” she mumbled and sat there, staring at her reflection. “Good job Eclipse. You’ve been a professional treasure hunter for most your life. But these past few months have triggered more curses than you care to count. Why did this one even affect me? It’s water-based.” she lamented and hopped through the old shrine. She sighed as she moved and thought about what could have done it. She paused and looked back. She jumped over rubble and found her discarded clothing.

With a lot of effort, the frog managed to move the garments and bags and pushed her nose against the shiny ball of metal.

“You.” she hissed, “you must have done this!!” she pouted.

Of all days to be hunting alone too. She sighed. At least Snatcher had Hattie. It’d be no big deal if she never came home. She could hope the curse would wear off but as a small hand-sized frog she was more in danger of birds and predators.

She sniffled and sighed. She rested her head down tiredly as she made a nest in her clothing and pulled it over her.

-------

“She’s not answering her phone.” Snatcher chewed his lip. He looked at Hattie who held an equal worry, “I-I’m sure she’s fine but.” he frowned and called his brother.

“Hey---”

“Is Eclipse with you?” Snatcher tapped his foot on the kitchen tile, “I can’t get her to answer her phone. She said she’d only be gone a few days and normally she calls to wish Hattie a good night.”

“I haven’t seen or heard from her since last moon.” Marcus admitted, “Hold on I can check threads see if it says anything.” the ghost shifted to levitate his phone with a few threads as his eyes turned black and he looked. He frowned and took the phone, “I can’t tell from my location. Sorry. Worth a shot if she was near me I’d see.”

“Thanks…” Snatcher hung up and chewed his lip until it bled. He looked at Hattie and sighed. He picked her up and grabbed his bag as he left the house.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m dropping you with your grandfather’s then I’m going to ask Kaya if she’s seen Eclipse.”

“Okay…” Hattie frowned, “mom’s okay… right?”

“Yes she has to be okay.” he smiled gently as he knocked on the door.

------

“Soooo you haven’t heard from her and she’s not answering her phone.” the demoness asked as she worked on some papers. She leaned on her hand with a large double mouthed yawn. She rubbed her eye, “Marcus can’t find her so you’re asking me.”

“I-I don’t know how to contact her if she doesn’t answer her phone! You’re a demigod can’t you---” he begged.

She sighed, “I’m a demi-god sure but I’m not omnipotent you know. I just know about curses and monsters.” she stood up and cracked her back. She looked at her shelf as she frowned in thought. Her fingers tracing the spines.

“Hey you have a big crush on her right?” she asked rather bluntly. She watched his face flush and snickered, “Okay that actually can help.”

“Can it?” he frowned and got up, looking at the books.

“Mmhm.” she pulled a dusty rose-colored book down and set it on her desk. She began to flip through the pages until she found the one she wanted, “I’m going to basically teleport you to where ever she is. I’m going to use the fact you’re infatuated with her as the locator.”

He gulped, “D-Does that really work?”

“Yeah, it’d be better if the feeling is mutual but I kinda think it’s not a problem.” the teenager snickered as she looked at the page. She moved away from the desk and pushed the chair out of the way. She pricked her left thumb on her fangs and began to scrawl symbols in black blood on the floor. She huffed and double checked the book. She moved out of the way.

“Come stand here.” she ordered.

He grabbed his bag with a pale expression, “W-what do I do if she’s hurt?”

“Call me. I can easily jump to your shadow as long as I know in advance. Ready?” she asked as a circle of runes glowed around her hand.

He nodded and gripped his bag’s strap tightly, “A-as I can be.” he shut his eyes as the spell trigger and he was hurtled rapidly through the temple into a wall with a crash.

The frog jumped from the water in shock as she heard the noise. She looked around and gasped seeing him. Her heart raced, “S-Snatcher!” she panicked and jumped over to the man as he rubbed his bleeding and broken nose. Her eyes wide as she put little froggy hands on his thigh as he sat there.

He paused and looked around. He heard her. I definitely heard her.

“Eclipse?” he asked as he looked before realizing the frog. He blinked and reached a hand. She timidly hopped on and looked at the palm of his hand instead of his face. He stared and frowned, “Eclipse?”

She looked up and he couldn’t mistake those dual-toned eyes. He gave a sigh of relief. She croaked a little.

“Thank god you’re okay.” he brought her to his face and rested his forehead against her.

“H-How did you get here?!” she asked worried, “S-Snatcher why---”

“I was worried about you.” he admitted softly. He smiled as he moved her away from his face so he could look at her as he talked. He used his free hand to stroke the top of her head gently, “So you’re a little frog. So much for curse resistant.”

She huffed, “I-It had to be part of a fairy curse is all. I-I hoped it would just wear off and I could go home but…” she looked at her hands sadly.

He frowned, “how can I help?” he frowned in thought. His face turned red. He gulped, “S-Should we try our classic curse breaker?”

She felt her heart pounding, “N-No you don’t have to! I-It’s fine you don’t want to kiss a frog a-and I-I’ll be naked!”

He sighed and smiled at her, “I’ll kiss a frog. I mean you’ve kissed a curse high merman, a leviathan, even letting yourself get cursed in your willingness to help me.” he set her down and started to remove his overshirt. She watched and gasped when he dropped it on her. She wiggled in the fabric as he moved to lift her, her head in the neck hole.

She blinked as he chuckled and winked.

“I know not the best solution, but you wouldn’t be naked right? My shirt should be long enough to maintain your dignity.” he offered, his voice never ceasing to raise from the calming tone he used.

She frowned and nodded, “O-Okay…”

He lifted her gently and placed a small kiss on the front of her mouth. He heard a small popping and felt the cold frog flesh grow warmer and softer. He smiled as she sheepishly pulled away, her silver hair falling as she sat in front of him in his shirt. Her face was bright red as she couldn’t meet his eyes. He smirked and leaned over, kissing her cheek gently making her squeak.

She covered her mouth with her hand as she looked at the floor, “T-thank you for c-coming to help me…” she paused, “W-wait you never explained! H-how did you get here?!” She panicked and leaned over, hands to either side of his lap.

His heart moved faster as she got closer, his shirt doing its best to cover her. He looked away ashamed. He didn’t want to admit how.

“K-Kaya used a spell to teleport me.” It wasn’t a lie. But he elected to not mention she used his crush to locate the werewolf.

She blinked and sighed, sitting down in relief, “Oh. I thought you did something stupid to get here.” she laughed and he tried to calm down with a big cheesy grin.

“Well, I’m still shocked you could locate me to teleport! How’d you get the destination?” she stood up. He tried to not look up from where he sat. He watched her move to find her clothing and she began to put it back on, carefully so she’d not expose herself to him.

“O-oh um.. Just. things. N-nothing to worry about.” He mumbled, “S-She just used a um.. Special connection of sorts… to locate you.”

“Connection? Threads? Cuz we’re friends and co-parents?” she asked as her face turned pink.

“S-Sure.” he chuckled as she pulled his shirt off and he sighed inwardly as he’d been rather pleased about it. She smoothed her hair and grabbed her bag. She looked to find a broken piece of rubble and used it to push the golden orb as she scowled.

“Is that?” he asked walking over as she pushed it to sink into the pond.

She glared as it slowly faded into the water. “Mmhm.” she sighed, “Stupid thing.” she huffed.

He chuckled and wrapped an arm around her side and pulled her close. She felt her face heat up as he nuzzled her.

“H-Hey now.” she mumbled as he grinned. He stuck his tongue out.

“I missed you.” he pressed his cheek to hers.

She frowned and smiled gently. She leaned against him as he chuckled, “I missed you too. Thank you for coming to get me…”

#the little contractor #ahit au #ahit prince #ahit snatcher #ahit fan character #Eclipse Guardian #Prince Arulius #i want it known i have time lined these fics into the actual fic's timeline #just putting it out there these technically occur in TLC #i am a sucker for timing things out cuz Im so poor at time recogniztion irl #like if you wonder why i make them mention dates or passage of time #Its cuz i have to do it irl

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waywardnerd67 · 4 years ago

Text

Starving Affection

Summary: It had been five years since (Y/N) had any physical contact with another person. When she starts talking with a man online who reads her fanfics, a battle of her mind and body begins. When the time comes to meet him, she finds that there are still decent human beings in the world. Characters: Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Sami (OFC), Plus Size!Reader Pairing: Jensen x Plus Size!Reader Warnings: Angst/Fluff/Smut/Body Image Distortion Word Count: 9256 A/N: Again, me working through my feels. Thank you for allowing me to do so.

My chest tightened. Jaw clenched until my teeth hurt. My body rigid and frozen as panic flowed through my veins. The overly friendly, new teacher had her arms outstretched towards me. If I had been a normal person, I would gladly hold my arms out as well embracing her kindness and affection.

I was not normal.

“Hey Katy!” My partner teacher and best friend, Sami, headed her off by stepping in front of me and taking the hit of affection.

There was a special place in Heaven for Sami and if not, I would fight God themselves to make it so. I could see Sami whispering to Katy and a nod of acknowledgement told me I would not have to worry about her advancements again.

“Sorry (Y/N), I didn’t know you weren’t a hugger. How about a high five?” Her sweet gesture had my trembling hand stretching out to her as she quickly slapped it with her own.

Only Sami could see my flinch from the physical touch of someone. Everyone else summed it up to my quirky personality and weird aversion to being touched. Thankfully our English department meeting was over and I could escape to the safe haven of my car. Sami was close behind me waving goodbye to everyone.

I bumped my shoulder to hers as she was the only one I had no problem with minor touching, “Thank you for taking that hug for me.”

She laughed, “You’re lucky I’m a friendly and huggy person. Hey, I meant to ask you before school today, but how is counseling going?”

I cringed, averting my gaze from her, “It’s… going fine.”

She stopped me with a tap on my shoulder, “The truth, please.”

I sighed as my shoulders slumped in defeat, “I stopped going,” I saw the incoming assault in her narrowing sky colored eyes.

“(Y/N)! You were making such good progress with this counselor. I was even able to give you a one arm hug.” The disappointment in her voice weighed my shoulders down even more.

I leaned against my car pulling on the sleeves of my hoodie, “I know, I know. She had me go to one of her support groups and everyone had to hug someone. I… I just couldn’t. I tried three or four times going to the group and I failed every time.”

My eyes fell to the ground, disgust filling my mind, “Yes, you really are as pathetic as you’re sounding.” My inner voice snarked.

I heard Sami sigh, “It’s okay. We can work through it together. We can keep doing everything you liked from her and work at your pace.”

Looking up, I forced my lips into a small smile to appease my only real life friend, “That sounds good. Thanks Sami for putting up with me.”

I made my way home to a small ranch style home that was off the beaten path. My grandparents had left it to me knowing I would love the seclusion of it. It was my Fortress of Solitude. The only living thing, other than Sami, to be able to snuggle with me was Charlie the cat. The copper Main Coon was sitting by the door awaiting my arrival.

My evenings were always the same. Check in with my mom for an hour on the phone. Make or order dinner, which tonight was ordering pizza for the leftovers tomorrow. Turning on my favorite TV show, Supernatural, on Netflix and working on one of my millions of fanfics.

“Yes, stay in complete denial by hiding in your fantasy worlds and falling in love with fictional characters. Loser.”

I pushed my inner thoughts to the very back of my mind and focused on my current series I was writing. Pulling up Tumblr, I looked in my notifications seeing someone binge reading my masterlist. My heart always swelled with joy whenever someone took the time to read my writings. This person was also leaving feedback as well.

“ChevyMan67: I love this version of Dean! You truly have captured his personality and sarcasm.”

“ChevyMan67: I can’t get enough of this series! Please tell me there is more to come. I need to know if Dean finally falls in love and gets his apple pie life.”

I read through every comment and looked at every GIF the reader posted. I hit follow on his blog then took a few screenshots from my activity page, pulling up a blank post adding the pictures.

“Thank you to @ChevyMan67 for binging my stories! Your feedback means everything to me!”

As soon as I posted it there was a notification of a reblog from him. He posted a GIF of Dean screaming with #Fangirling flashing underneath. My cheeks ached from the unusual tension of a genuine smile spreading across my face.

Online I could be anyone I wanted. I would virtual hug and blow kisses at my friends. I was able to be more like the woman I was. Social, happy, carefree, open to others. I could be the woman I desperately wanted to be but my mind would not allow.

“Stay guarded. Remember what happened when you trusted him? Trusted his family? Never again. You promised never again.”

My indeed guard held the line at the gate of my mind. She stood in full armor and shield ready to throw off anyone that even attempted to break through to the part of me that desired to be a whole person again. I shook my head with a firm nod and reaffirmed my promise to myself to never let anyone that close to me again.

As I was closing down her computer for the evening, a ding caught my attention as a message came from Tumblr. Opening the window, I saw a DM from my newest follower.

“Hey there, I just wanted to say thank you for following me. Apparently I’m a rarity on here for being male and a fan of Supernatural. I truly love all your writings and can’t wait to read more. Hopefully, we can get to know each other better and become friends. Anyway, I’ll leave you alone. Message me any time. Goodnight.”

I re-read the message several times before closing my computer. Sure I had people message me for small talk and a few close friends I had on there. This felt different. Something deep within me sparked and I did not know how to react. There was only one person I knew I could go to and her reaction was more frightening than the thought of responding to ChevyMan67. That night was the first of many restless nights for me.

A week later, I finally sat down and responded to him.

“Hey, I’m sorry it took me so long to respond. I’m… well, I’m not used to talking to guys here. I think it’s great that you’re on here and reading, BTW. I’m working on a few pieces right now, maybe you could beta for me if you have time. I hope we can be friends as well. Have a good weekend!”

I was nearly hyperventilating when I hit enter sending the message. I tried to work on my newest one shot story and ignore my anxious heart awaiting for the ding. It was not until I was in bed watching my favorite episode of Supernatural that my phone chimed.

“Tumblr: Message from ChevyMan67”

My finger hovered for a moment before opening the app. The message opened and I let out a air I had been holding in my chest.

“No worries. Everyone is busy and has their “real life” to attend too. I work odd hours and days all the time so I get it. I would LOVE to beta for you!!!! Reading your work before it’s posted online? HELL YEAH! I feel honored you asked and I’m fanboying hard right now. Crap… that sounded… I mean. Sorry lol. You can send your fics to [email protected]. Looking forward to hearing from you again.”

Over the next six months, Ross and I talked throughout our days getting to know one another. Three month into Tumblr messenger and dumb updates, he gave me his cell number to text one another. At times, I would have to catch myself from laughing while my students took a test. Everyone around me started to notice the small changes in me. Smiling more, talking more and one student commented on me wearing bright colors.

“You look good in yellow Miss (Y/L/N).”

However it was Sami who demanded to know all about the changes going on with me. We sat at our favorite restaurant, the first round of drinks being set in front of us. After the waiter took our order, Sami began her interrogation.

“Tell. Me. Everything. You’ve been keeping me at bay and I’ve respected your space, but you have seemingly blossomed in the last few months. Spill.”

I bit my lower lip as my phone sounded with an all to familiar chime. I went to grab my phone when Sami placed her hand over it, “Me first. Tumblr second.”

“It’s not Tumblr. Let me reply to him and then I will tell you everything.” I dared to look up to see my best friend’s face frozen in shock.

Her eyes wide and mouth gaping, “Him?!”

I nodded reading Ross’s message, “Hey I know you’re out with Sami and going to tell her about little ole me. I just wanted to make sure you were still thinking about what I asked last night. Can’t wait to hear from you soon. Not now though, have fun with Sami.”

I smiled, locking my phone and putting it in my purse looking back to my ridiculously happy friend, “His name is Ross.”

There was a loud, attention grabbing squeal from her as I shushed her, “Leave out no details…” she rested her perfect chin on her folded hands.

I told her all about Ross and how we began talking. I told her everything I knew about him and what he knew about me. Finally, as our food came out and drinks were refilled, I told her about what he had dropped on me the previous night.

“He asked me to meet him at the Supernatural Convention in Dallas next month. He already has the passes paid for and a few photo ops that we could share.” My heart raced at the thought of meeting Ross and meeting my favorite celebrities all at the same time.

Sami’s smile faded slightly, “Does he know about your struggles with being touched?”

I nodded, “It was one of the first personal things I told him. He’s still talking to me so I took that as a frightening good sign.”

“What are you feeling?” her point blank question shook me for a moment.

My fingers drummed against the table, “I’m nervous, scared, anxious…” I paused for a moment before looking up at her with a smile.

“I’m also excited, hopeful and curious.”

Sami held out her hands to me, palms up and I hesitantly placed my hands in hers. It was something we had been working on for the last couple of months. This was the first time I allowed her to squeeze my hands.

“You really like him.” She whispered smiling like a fool.

I felt my own smile mirroring hers, “Yes I do and that scares me shitless.”

The rest of the evening felt like the old days before my life fell apart. When I got home, I decided to test my luck. Pulling up Ross’s number, my thumb hovered over it until I smashed it hearing it ringing.

“Well hello, this is a surprise.” His velvety smooth voice sent shivers down my body, “Take a deep breath and know it’s okay if you hang up to just text me.”

“N-No, I’ll be okay.” I stammered as he let out a low chuckle.

I could hear him moving away from other voices around him, “I interrupted something…” Guilt and shame weighing my shoulders down.

“Not at all. They can wait, you calling me is an important moment. Not everyday, I get to speak to my favorite writer on the phone.” His compliments calmed my queasy stomach, “Could I be so hopeful that this phone call is working up to a good answer?”

I took a deep breath in and let out slowly, “Yes.” The word seems foregin to her as it left my lips.

“Yes I can be hopeful or yes to my question?” His jovial banter eased the tension in my shoulders.

“Yes.” I tried to sound a little more confident, my heart beating against my chest.

There was a moment of silence before loud cheering and yelling came through her speaker. His excitement was silenced by my own unfamiliar laughter. Suddenly I was hyper aware that he was no longer making any noises. Panic and fear swelling inside me.

A soft sigh came from him, “You have a beautiful laugh. I can’t wait to hear it again.”

My cheeks burned, “Thank you.”

Ross told me he would send all the details for our trip and that I was not to worry about money of any kind. Mentally, I began planning out how to save as much money as I could in the next four weeks. Thankfully, my savings was built up enough to take a small hit and not dip into her emergency fund. Over the next several weeks, I began to prepare for my first convention, first time meeting an online friend, first time traveling by myself, first time facing the unknown in five years.

The morning of my travel day, I went over to Sami’s house with Charlie. I was surprised to see her sister sitting there. She waved to me before taking Charlie’s crate.

“What’s going on?” I looked around seeing Sami’s suitcase packed by the door.

She smiled, “Your friend Ross, reached out to me.”

The color from my face drained for a moment, “H-He did… How?”

“He found me on your Instagram page. DM me asking me to join you on your trip. Stating and I quote, ‘I know you being there with (Y/N) will make her more comfortable. I want this weekend to go as comfortably as possible for her. I know it’s a big step and I want her to be taken care of.’”

She smiled softly as my vision blurred from tears slipping down my face, “Oh… wow.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty amazing (Y/N/N). If you were ever going to work on overcoming your touch aversion this would be the man to do it for.” Sami turned around to help her sister, leaving me to my own thoughts.

“Absolutely not! There is no way he is getting through my defenses. I have held strong for five years. Your heart and mind are safe within my holds.”

“Do you really think he’s going to want to touch you? Look at yourself. Lumpy. Chunky. Squishy. Dull (Y/C/H) hair. Boring (Y/C/E) eyes. Not even a decent pair of boobs or ass. You’re nothing special. Always remember that you’re nothing special.”

“(Y/N)? (Y/N) stop it.” Sami’s voice rang clear bringing me back to the present.

I nodded slowly, “Sorry. I zoned out.”

“Freaked out. We will work through it. Sara is gonna drive us to the airport and we have an hour to chat. Okay?”

It was in the moment that I noticed my best friend had absentmindedly placed her hand on my shoulder and I did not flinch. My eyes looked to her hand and back to her, “You’re touching my shoulder.”

“Crap, I’m so sor…” she started to say but my bright smile stopped her, “What?”

I placed my hand on top of hers, “I didn’t flinch or move or even notice you did it.”

Now her smile was matching mine and we had a moment of pure excitement jumping around each other. True to her word, we spent the hour on the plane doing some meditative exercises. I thanked every high power who would listen for my best friend getting her psychology degree.

There was a man waiting with our names on a piece of paper. He took our bags and drove us to a hotel near where the convention was being held. Sami checked us in since there were so many people inside and my anxiety started to flare up.

Breathe in counting to six. Breathe out counting to six.

I repeated my breathing exercise until Sami returned her brow furrowed, “What is it?”

“I don’t know who Ross knows, but he must be connected in some way. We have a suite on the fourteenth floor.”

My jaw dropped slightly before I stood up bracing myself for the next hurdle of getting through the elevator ride. Luckily, there were only two other girls in the car and I could safely keep my distance from them.

“I heard that Jensen is staying at this hotel.” One mentioned as the other rolled her eyes.

“Yeah right. This is Dallas, I’m sure he’s probably staying with his family or something.”

The girls exit on the eighth floor and before the doors could close Sami and I were chuckling to ourselves. The chances of Jensen Ackles staying at this hotel would be astronomical. The car dinged for the top floor and opened to a small hallway. When we opened the door to our suite neither of us spoke.

Sami walked throughout the entire room before I could even move from the entryway, “This room is amazing! Check out the view we have (Y/N).”

“Hold on. Having a moment.” I breathed as Sami came to my side and I held my hand out, “I’m fine. Just need a moment to make sure this is real and not a dream.”

I watched as she walked over to the coffee table where there was a gift basket and she held up a small notecard, “Oh it’s real.”

“(Y/N) and Sami, I hope you love your room. Enjoy your night and order anything you want. The front desk knows it’s all on my tab. I’m hoping you both will join me for dinner tomorrow night after registration. Sadly, my job won’t let me leave before then. I look forward to meeting you both. -R PS: I highly recommend the spa and they have a large private jacuzzi just for you, (Y/N).”

Sami sighed, “I really hope he has a single brother, cousin, friend that is like him for me.”

I rolled my eyes walking over to the large windows looking out. Flashes of the last time I was in Dallas popping into my mind. I shivered as the one voice I hated yelled loudly in my ears. My hands covered them and I felt Sami tap my shoulder twice. For the first time, in several years, I reached out to her and gripped her arms.

“(Y/N) remember why we’re here. Remember talking with Ross on the phone. The tone of Ross’s voice. His laughter.” Her calm tone eased me out of the wretched memory.

She guided me over to the couch and went to get me a glass of water. I sipped it slowly before squeezing her hand, “Thank you.”

“You know, I can get used to you reaching out to me. Feels like the (Y/N) I knew coming back.” Sami squeezed my hand back before I let slip from her grasp.

She was right, the woman I once was before my ex was fighting her way to get out again. Still, my guard was up standing fortified at the gate.

That evening was a girls’ night of epic proportions. They went to the spa where (Y/N) sat in her private jacuzzi while Sami received the best massage of her life. Afterwards, we ordered our dinner from room service making moderate choices since neither of us were paying. When our food came there was a special dessert also with another note.

“A little birdy told me that your favorite dessert was French Silk pie. I wanted you to have a slice and some New York Style cheesecake for Sami. Have a wonderful night.”

Sami whistled, “Man, he has it bad for you.”

“Shut up.” I muttered lifting the dome to see a delicious slice of pie.

As they ate and talked, Sami took my phone taking pictures of them enjoying a very Sam and Dean style dinner. Sami having a Chef’s salad with honey mustard dressing. I took a picture of my dinner sending it to Ross with a text saying thank you.

“Dean would be proud! That bacon cheeseburger looks good. Enjoy!”

I smiled the entire time I ate my burger. Finishing out meals, Sami hooked up her laptop putting on Supernatural. I decided to try and work on some stories when a terrifying thought crossed my mind. I looked up to the screen as Dean began to talk. I closed my eyes listening carefully to his voice. The low tone and smoothness of it. It was the way he said the word writer that had my eyes snapping open and a gasp escaping my lips.

“What? What is it?” Sami sat up concerning filling her eyes.

Like pieces to a puzzle everything snapped into place. All the small details that would go unnoticed by someone who would never expect it. Sami tapped my shoulder and I turned to her with wide eyes.

“Ross… that’s Jensen’s middle name.” I mumbled reaching for my phone.

Sami stood up pausing the episode, “Okay… what are you getting at.”

“Listen.” I played for her the voicemail he had left a few days earlier, “Now play the episode.”

Sami’s eyes connected to her, “No way.”

“Ross is Jensen Ackles.”

That night my dreams were filled with my ex yelling at me. Fat shaming me. Calling me a loser. Calling me useless for not being able to bear children. His looming form made me coward into a ball on the floor. I woke up several times during the night, the final time close to six in the morning. Sami was peacefully sleeping on her side of the bed.

I picked up my phone going into the living area and dialing the all too familiar number. On the third ring she was going to hang up, but then his groggy voice pierced my ears.

“(Y/N), is everything alright?” All I could hear was Dean, which meant that it was truly Jensen on the other side.

“You tell me, Jensen.” I heard him sit up as I began to pace near the window.

A long sigh came from him, “I knew you would figure it out before meeting me.”

I scoffed, “Is this some kind of celebrity joke or prank? Pretend to be someone’s friend and embarrass them when they meet you.”

My guard was shaking her head muttering, “Told you so…”

“No, (Y/N) it’s nothing like that. Misha had read some of your stories and suggested I should read them. At first, I thought it would be weird because I’ve never read fanfiction before, but your writing… it drew me in.” His words came out all in one breath.

I froze, “M-Misha read my stories? Oh god…” My body burned from embarrassment.

“Honestly, there’s not a person on our crew that hasn’t read at least one of your stories. You’re talented and the way you write for the boys is amazing. Our own writer’s are impressed with your talent.”

I groaned slumping down to the floor, “This was all a mistake.” The last thing I heard before ending the call was rustling around as if Jensen was moving from his bed.

My phone slipped from my hand as tears streamed down my face. I closed my eyes allowing my inner voices to consume me. Dragging me down into the darkness.

“You fool! Here I stood guarding you from this and still you allowed someone in. You deserve what is coming to you!”

“You useless piece of nothing! You’re the biggest joke this world ever created. Fat, ugly, even your body can’t do the one basic thing god made it to do. You’re worthless. Sucking up air that could be used on someone contributing to the world. No matter what anyone says you will always be the biggest failure in this world. You. Are. Nothing.”

I felt someone tapping on my shoulder and I tightened myself into a ball, “Go away Sami.”

The tapping continued and I reached out grasping an unfamiliar hand. My eyes snapped open and were met with concerning, piercing olive eyes. The eyes I stared at for hours on my TV. The eyes I wrote about in hundreds of thousands of words online.

As soon as my eyes opened he withdrew his hand and my heart sank further into darkness, “I told you. He will never want to touch your disgusting body.” The snide voice of my inner self whispered.

“(Y/N), please hear me out. Please for five minutes just listen to my side.” He sat across from me leaving a foot of distance between us.

I nodded looking up as Sami gently touched his shoulder, “I will be just outside if you need me.”

He waited for the door to close to start talking. His large hands rubbing against his cotton covered thighs.

“I started reading your masterlist on Tumblr and couldn’t get enough of your stories. I didn’t know exactly how to work Tumblr so Misha showed me how. I noticed you don’t get a lot of notes and I wanted everyone to notice you. I started sharing your work with everyone after sending you that message.”

He paused for a moment as I fidget with the hem of my shirt, “Why did you message me?”

His smile was more radiant in person, “It’s just as I said. I loved your work and I wanted to be friends. However, the more I got to know you… the more I wanted to meet you in person. I knew that would be problematic.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” I scoffed looking down to my hands.

He inhaled a deep breath, “You connect with Dean Winchester the same way I do. To find someone like that is a once in a lifetime chance. I want someone who I can gush over Dean with because soon I won’t be hanging out with him as much and he’s the best imaginary friend I’ve ever had.”

Seeing Jensen open himself up to me was creating a battle of mind and body within me. He was just as nervous as I was to open up to someone else. Suddenly, I did not feel so alone in my isolation. My hand trembled as I reached over placing it atop of his.

“Dean Winchester saved my life and I don’t mean that figuratively. I was on the verge of leaping into darkness when I found him getting Sammy to find their dad. I found the strength to carry on because I knew that was what Dean would do. I found that being broken wasn’t a bad thing but something that could drive you to keep working. Dean helped me to feel again when I had become numb to the world around me.”

His eyes shined as I spoke trying to hold back his own tears, “I’m glad he could be there for you when you needed him the most.”

“Then you came into my life when I least expected it.” I whispered as I squeezed his hand.

My mind was screaming at me to get as far away from him as I possibly could. To call out to Sami to make him leave and move out of the state disappearing from the world. However, my body was urging me to jump into his arms. To open myself up to him as he had done with me. I felt like a spring coil ready to snap. My mind was holding my body back waiting for my consciousness to make a decision.

And she did.

I launched myself into his arms startling him as we crashed to the floor. His arms instinctively wrapped around me as mine encircled his neck. The door flew open as Sami came rushing in as Jensen’s laughter filled the room. I hugged him tighter to me as he tightened his grip around me.

“Oh my god… (Y/N), you’re hugging him.”

I did not need to open my eyes to know tears were slipping down my best friend’s cheeks. Her voice was thick with utter joy and amazement.

“Does this hug mean that you don’t hate me?” His question caught me off guard.

Jensen’s hands kept me in place as he sat up swinging my legs across his. My arms are still around his neck not wanting to lose the connection. Now that my body was against his, it flooded with the strange feeling of desire. Sami joined them on the floor sitting cross legged in front of them.

“I don’t think I could ever hate you. Though I’m still upset you lied to me.” I rested my head on my arm and against the side of his neck.

Feeling him sigh and seeing Sami grinning, I knew this was a big moment for all of us. We sat on the floor for another hour talking before Jensen had to go back to his room to get ready for the day. Neither of us wanted to let go of the other. He hugged me one last time before walking out of the suite. When I turned around I was immediately engulfed into another hug.

“I’m so proud of you!” Sami squealed.

“Thanks, I think…” My sentence drifted and she pulled away from me.

I walked back toward the bed and flopped face first onto it. I felt her crawl up on the bed beside me knowing me well enough to give me space.

“Talk it out, (Y/N). What are you feeling?”

My cheeks burned from the first feeling to pop into my head, “I feel warm, anxious, happy...” I paused gathering the courage to say the last word, “desire.”

“I’m sorry, what was that last one?” Sami eagerly asked.

I sat up, “Desire.” Saying the very word felt weird.

She began to clap and raised her hands in the air, “Praise the lord!”

“Don’t get all weird about it. I don’t know what any of this means. My body is tingling…”

Sami interrupted, “I bet it does…”

“Shut up, mostly not in that way. I don’t know how to act around other people anymore. What is too much touching? What is too little? What does a hug mean? I have too many questions and all the answers just walked out the door.”

I looked over as my phone chimed seeing a message from Ross, “I guess I need to change that now.” I murmured as I pulled up his message.

“First, thank you for trusting me with a hug. It means the world to me. I wanted to know if you wanted to have an early lunch with me? We could eat in my room or restaurant or your room with Sami. Whatever you are most comfortable with. Let me know.”

I held my phone up for Sami to read and she jumped off the bed, “You can have our room. I will go entertain myself by the pool.”

I texted him back that he could come to my room as Sami began tossing clothes out on the bed, “What are you doing?”

“Finding you the perfect outfit. Now go shower so I can play dress up with you.” She clapped her hands excitedly as I groaned loudly.

Looking in the mirror again, I pulled at the shirt clingy to every soft, round surface of my waist. I pushed my stomach watching as it bounced back into place like jello. Turning to the side, I sucked as many rolls as I could inward, holding my breath. The air rushed from my lips as a knock came from the door. Making my way towards it, I grabbed my zip-up hoodie slipping my arms in it quickly.

“Hi.” The word came out more breathlessly than I wanted.

My inner voice whispering, “Yeah fatty, let him know that walking across the room makes you lose your breath.”

“Hey there, I hope you don’t mind that I went ahead and grabbed lunch for us.” Jensen held up a paper bag from a local sandwich spot.

As he walked in, I took a moment to truly admire him. He looked like a male model in his tight dark jeans, black boots, dark olive Henley and sunglasses resting on top of his unruly, sandy brown hair. His smooth voice caught my attention.

“You could take a picture and it would last longer.” He chuckled sitting down on the couch and laying out their lunch.

I sat on the opposite side of him as far away as I could. Even though my body desperately wanted to be closer to him, I kept my distance not pushing my mental capacity. He glanced over a hint of disappointment in his eyes seeing me so far away.

Jensen slid a sandwich towards me, “I remember you telling me that you love ham and swiss with tomato.”

“Thank you.” I unwrapped the sandwich and grabbed a bag of chips.

We ate in silence as a strange tension built between us. My stomach churning to the point I could no longer eat. I would look over to him out of the corner of my eye to find his eyes drifting over me. I wrapped my hoodie around me instinctively trying to hide the imperfections.

“There’s no hoodie big enough to hide your ugliness.” The familiar voice whispered.

I shook my head when I heard music playing, looking back to Jensen. He smiled sheepishly as he set his phone on the table.

“I thought maybe some background noise would help,” He stood up clearing the food from the table then stood in front of me with his hand out, “Trust me?”

His eyes were shining from the afternoon rays of sun coming from the window and his lips were spread in a gentle smile. I exhaled slowly allowing all the tension to leave my body and placed my hand in his. He pulled me up from the couch taking my hands and placing them behind his neck. His large hands slid down my sides to my hips and I flinched.

“You do know that you’re beautiful, right?” He whispered swaying my body with the music.

I shook my head, “I’m really not. Ordinary at best.”

Jensen lifted my chin, piercing (Y/C/E) meeting , “You are far from ordinary, (Y/N).”

“You’re just being kind.” I looked away as he slowly turned us in a circle.

The music continued but Jensen stopped moving, “I have so many questions but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or have you running to the hills.”

“Questions for me? Surely, you have better things to do with your time other than sitting inside with me. Don’t you have fans to entertain?” I smirked.

He chuckled, “Lucky for you, I happen to have the day off. I normally spend the day with my family. However this year they all ditched me.”

I mockingly acted shocked, “Oh no! You poor thing.”

His eyes narrowed in on me before laughing, “My mom and dad are somewhere in Spain enjoying their anniversary gift. My sister decided a girls trip with her best friends was better than hanging with me for the day. My brother is always busy with his family. You’re stuck with me.”

“I guess there’s worse ways to spend my day. Okay, ask away but I’m not promising I’ll answer them all.”

Jensen led me back to the couch, but kept ahold of my hand as we sat back down. He laced his long fingers with mine. His thumb brushing over my knuckle. I settled back against the couch once again wrapping my hoodie around me.

“What were you thinking when I put my hands on your hips earlier?”

I bit my lower lip, “I was mortified that you were touching my squish rolls of skin. I was thinking you must be disgusted by it.”

“Wow…” He squeezed my hand, “Whoever he was he really did a number on you. If I ask his name and address would you be against me and Jared beating the crap out of him?”

A genuine burst of laughter echoed in the room, “He’s really not worth it. Plus, he is much happier with his life now and that’s all that matters. He deserves to be happy.”

I was surprised to see Jensen face scrunched up in anger, “But you don’t?” He leaned in slightly, his features softening.

“No, I don’t.” The words came out without even a second thought and seeing Jensen recoil from them as if they had slapped him in the face twisted my heart.

His tongue darted out over his lips and the electrical energy between us sparked wildly, “You’re wrong. You deserve all the happiness in the world. Any man who told you otherwise is no man at all.”

He was leaning in closer, his eyes never leaving mine. My heart pounding in my ears and my body urging me to meet him in the middle. His forehead pressed against mine and his nose caressed mine.

“I’m going to kiss you.” he whispered.

“I don’t think I remember how to kiss back.” The pathetic confession was followed by a wayward tear slipping down my cheek.

His soft, full lips pressed gently against mine. My mind searched for the file within the long abandoned cabinets for how to kiss someone. He pulled away for a split second only to return his lips to mine. I found my lips pushing against his out of basic instinct. Our lips melded together for a moment before I felt him smile against mine.

His hands cupping my face, “I think it will all come back to you easier than you may think.”

I took in a deep breath letting it out in a short burst, “I think you believe in me too much for only meeting me a few hours ago.”

Jensen was still holding my face as he leaned back, “Other than Jared and Mish, I have never felt closer to anyone, but you.”

“You have your work cut out for you then,” I pointed to my head, “because it’s a nightmarish mess up in here.”

He leaned in kissing me once again, “You are worth every second of being with you because you’re stunning, smart, talented, caring and most of all you’re beautiful inside and out.”

I stared up at him speechless as my inner guard laid down her shield, “I like this one.”

“No… no one has ever said that about me. I-I don’t know what to say or how to react.” I stammered, unable to comprehend what he said.

He smiled widely, “Get used to that feeling because I’m preparing for you to feel that way a lot. Now, I don’t want to test your boundaries too much so I think we should hang out here and watch a movie.”

Jensen moved to the end of the couch resting his arm along the back of it and propping his feet on the table. For the first time in forever, there were no inner voices to keep me from doing what I desperately wanted. I moved over next to him resting my back into his side and stretching my legs out to the other end of the couch. His arm draped over the front of my chest and his fingertips brushed against my side.

This time there was no flinching and I smiled at the small victory.

The rest of the weekend was like a dream. Seeing the convention backstage, meeting all the rest of the other actors on the show and most of all Jensen’s constant touch comforted me throughout it all. Sami beaming with pride as I pushed myself to be in the crowd for the concert on Saturday. When Sunday came, I found myself riddled with sadness knowing I would have to leave this magical weekend behind.

Sami had decided to go back to the hotel while I waited for Jensen to finish his autographs. I had noticed Clif, the boys’ friend and bodyguard, staying close by me. When the last fan left the autograph room, he motioned for me to follow him. Entering the room, I found Jensen with his head down on his table while Jared and Misha were fooling around at theirs.

Walking up, I slid my hands over his shoulders and began rubbing the knots out of them. A small groan escaping his lips sent a wave of desire over my body. I moved my hands down his back eagerly wanting to hear him again.

“Hey, if you’re giving free massages away I’ll take one!” Jared called out.

Jensen’s head snapped up, “Don’t even think about it Padalecki. Her hands are too precious for your sweaty self.”

I chuckled as he stood up letting my hands drift down his back. I knew he was fit but his body was firm and lean in all the right spots. As he moved away I found my fingers stretching out to touch him again. All weekend I had found myself craving his touch. My mind was obsessively thinking about his hand in mine or my arms around his waist or his hands gripping my hips. My cheeks felt like they were on fire and I heard him chuckle.

“You okay? You kind of spaced out for a moment.”

I nodded smiling, “I’m great. Just thinking was all.”

“Well come on, you and I can grab something to eat then hang out in my room.” His arm slipped around my shoulders and instantly I relaxed into his embrace.

Dinner was unexpectedly crashed by Jared and Misha tagging along. We found a twenty-four hours diner near the hotel that was nearly empty and we all spent a few hours talking, laughing. I could not help the sadness creeping over me as the minutes passed by. Minutes I was losing to have Jensen to myself. As if he read my mind he excused us to head back to the hotel.

We walked in silence, hand in hand. Stepping into the elevator, he pulled me into his side and I wrapped my arms around his waist. His room was on the opposite end of the same hall as mine. Stepping inside, the door clicking shut as we stood across from one another. It was like a shotgun going off as Jensen closed the distance between us. His hands sliding down my body as his mouth crashed to mine.

As suddenly as it happened, it was over.

“I’m sorry… shit. (Y/N) I’m really sorry.” His pleads confused me for a moment.

Breathing heavily as he stepped back further from me I blurted out, “W-Why are you apologizing? D-Did I do something wrong?”

His dark forest eyes snapped up, “You do something… you didn’t do anything but be you, (Y/N). I just couldn’t stop myself. This weekend has been the best one in my life. Being around you, holding your hand, kissing you has rejuvenated me. I just want more of you, all of you. Simple looks you give, the way you hold yourself and the moment you open yourself up to reach out to me. I just found myself unable to hold back anymore. I know…”

This time it was me who closed the distance between us. My lips crashing into his. My hands running up his broad chest and into his soft hair. The soft moan escaping my lips as we parted.

“I want you to have me…” I whispered in between breaths, “I’m nervous with a bunch of what ifs running in my head.”

“Do you trust me?” The corner of his lip curling upward.

“Yes.”

Jensen took my hand leading me into the bedroom of his suite. He gently picked me up and sat me on the bed. He knelt in front of me, slipping my shoes from my feet then pulling my socks off. His thumbs pressing into the bottom of my feet as I began to giggle.

“Oh… now that is an amazing sound. I must hear that again.” He smirked, tickling my feet.

I fell back in a fit of giggles as Jensen’s laughter joined mine. I leaned up on my elbows looking down at Jensen resting his chin on my knee. He lifted his brows asking permission and I nodded. His hands drifted over my calves, up to my knees and over my thighs.

“You have incredible legs. I found myself staring at them as you would walk in front of me with Sami. Wondering how they would feel beneath my hands.” He gently squeezed them near my hips.

His knee pressed into the mattress between my legs as his firm body hovered over mine. My fingers brushed against the hem of his shirt pushing it up and hesitantly touching his stomach. Jensen sucked in a quick breath as his hands paused on his hips. I focused on the feeling of his smooth, warm skin beneath my fingertips. His flat stomach is surprisingly soft.

I grasped the end of his shirt pulling it towards his head as he pulled back allowing it over his head. Taking it from my hands, he tossed it on the floor. I took in every inch of his skin from his muscles flexing to the freckles decorating it.

“You beautiful, you know that?” I did not think he heard me until I saw the smug smirk on his face.

He leaned down kissing me, “Stealing my lines, sweetheart.”

His hands went back to my hips as his lips left a trail of kisses down my neck, “You think that your softness is revolting, but I find it inviting.”

I froze as his hand pushed up into my shirt touching my stomach. I squirmed as he pushed my shirt up just under my bra. My hands threading through his hair as his lips pressed small kisses against my stomach.

“Jensen…” The tension in my tone caught his attention.

His eyes filled with worry, “Too much?”

I took a few deep breaths and shook my head, “I’m fine, promise.”

“See there you go, being brave and pushing yourself. You have no idea how sexy that is.” He murmured against my skin.

As Jensen’s mouth neared the waistband of my jeans, I tugged his hair motioning for him to come back up to her. He smiled randomly kissing spots along my body. His lips finally met mine as I slid my arms around him. His tongue swiped across my bottom lip as they parted for him. His gentleness and care to make me comfortable broke down the last existing wall of defense.

Their kiss deepened. My body burned with a need to feel Jensen’s skin against mine and to be close to him in every way physically possible. Foreign pressure began to simmer deep within me and I lifted my hips pressing them against his thigh.

He pulled away his eyes blown with passion searching mine for an answer to a silent question.

“Please… take away everything he did. I want to feel whole again.” I pleaded just above a whisper.

His lips were on mine again as he gently lifted me up further onto his bed. Sitting up, I pulled my shirt over my head holding it in front of me for a brief moment. His eyes watching my every move as I tossed it over the side. He reached behind me with one hand unclasping my bra in one swift movement.

I kissed his collarbone as he leaned in to do so, “Show off.”

He chuckled before leaning back and allowing me at my pace to unveiling my bare chest to him. I slid the straps down my arms holding it in place before playfully tossing it at him chuckling. Joking had always been my way of dealing with uncomfortable moments. When I looked up his eyes were drifting down my bare upper body.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” He smirked as I rolled my eyes at him, “Seriously, (Y/N)... you’re absolutely stunning.”

He ran his hand down my chest, between my breasts and down to my jeans. He undid the button and slowly drew down the zipper. Hooking his fingers with a belt loops dragging my jeans down my legs. I shivered as the cool air hit my skin. Jensen tossed them off to the side then began to place gentle, open mouth kisses up my leg.

My breaths were coming out in small little puffs the further up my leg he got. His mouth hovered over her cotton cover mound inching closer to it. My teeth dug into my lip desperately wanting him to press them against me. Instead he kept his path up my body stopping at my breasts. He cupped the side of one running his thumb over my nipple.

A long sigh escaping my lips from just the slightest touch from him, “O-Oh… Jensen…” His mouth had gently suckled my other nipple, the pressure turning to an ache between my legs.

“You have no idea hearing my name from your lips does to me.” He softly said before circling my nipple with his tongue.

Feeling bold, I slid my hand down between us running it along the hard bulge being restrained by denim. Jensen sucked in a sharp breath dropping his head between my breasts, “Shit…”

“I believe I have some kind of an idea.” I smiled as he grinded himself against my palm.

He stood up at the edge of the bed, his intense stare making me tremble with anticipation. Leaning forward, his fingers hooked the sides of her cotton panties and pulled them down until they were on the floor.

“Exquisite, flawless, perfect.”

“As are you.” I sat up until I was sitting on the edge in front of him.

My hands trembled as I unbuttoned his jeans and carefully unzipped them. Jensen let out a soft hiss as I brushed against his length. His hands cupped my face pulling my lips to his urgently kissing me. I pushed his jeans and boxers down as far as I could before he pushed me back onto the mattress. His hand drifting down my body until his fingers pressed against my folds.

“Jensen, please…” I begged needing to feel any kind of relief from the pressure pulsating from between my legs, “Ohhh… god.”

Jensen began to rub lazy circles against my clit. My hips grinding against his hand as his lips pressed just below my ear, “Are you okay?”

His question sober me from the drunken stupor of desire and I placed my hand over his pushing down further, “More than okay.”

Jensen pushed one long finger deep inside me with a hiss, “Fuck pretty girl, your so tight.” He slowly pushed a second finger inside.

My head pressed against the mattress, my back arching as he pumped his thick fingers in me, “More, oh please Jensen, I need more.”

His pace picked up and I looked up to his face. His eyes wide and dark watching me come undone as his thumb rubbed harshly against my throbbing clit, “Jensen!” I cried out overwhelming pleasure wrecked through my body.

Breathing heavily, my body shaking slightly as he pulled his fingers from me, “Now that was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

A slow grin spread across my face as I pulled his mouth to mine. He positioned himself between my legs pulling away slightly, his lips grazing against mine.

“Are you sure? We can stop if you want.” Jensen’s tone was tense as I felt his length resting against my folds.

I kissed him, “I need you. All of you.”

He braced himself up with one arm as his hand slipped between us. Jensen ran the swollen head along my slickness before nudging it against my entrance. The room filled with groans and heavy breaths as Jensen slowly sheathed himself within me. There was a singe of pain as I stretched taking him his thick length but quickly was replaced with immense pleasure as he thrusted gently into me.

“So. Tight.” He panted against my cheek.

I wrapped my arms and legs around him digging my heels into him. Each stroke pushing me further to the edge. Feeling every muscle straining along his back and arms. His head buried in the crook of my neck grunting almost painfully. I knew then he was holding back.

I pressed my lips to his ear, “Jensen, I won’t break. You’re making me feel incredible, but I want you to let go. Show me how I make you feel.”

A low growl rumbled from his chest as he nipped at my neck and his hips snapped against me. The echoes of our skin meeting, loving praises and the headboard against the wall filled the room. I started to meet each thrust of his, the coil within me ready to snap. His hands were gripping my shoulders holding me against his burning body. I clung to him scraping my nails against his back making him growl again.

“Shit Jensen, I’m so close. Just a little more, oh god please!” I beg as he thrusted into me feverishly small grunts coming from him, “Yes, yes, oh… Jensen!”

My whole body was shaking as an intense wave of euphoria covered me. Pulsating around him, he abandoned all control chasing his own release.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He gritted his teeth as his body went rigid before slamming into me his length twitching deep within me, “Holy shit…”

Jensen rode out his release, his arms shaking to the point he could not hold himself up anymore. I groaned as he pulled out leaving me empty. He rolled onto his back breathing heavily as I curled into his side burying my head into his chest.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” His concern only made me cling to him more.

I shook my head, “No, I’m just overwhelmed. Too many feelings at once.”

“Talk it out. Tell me what you’re feeling.” Jensen wrapped his arms around me holding me close.

I took a deep breath, “I’m feeling exhilaration, bliss, pleasure. Right now, I’m feeling empty and it’s almost like I can’t breath. I feel scared by how much I need to feel your touch.”

His fingers were drawing small circles against my bare back, “If that’s your way of asking for round two, you’re going to have to wait for a little bit. I haven’t come like that since I was a teenager.”

There was a brief moment of silence before I started to laugh. My body shaking from the laughter pouring from my lips. I kissed his chest, “Thank you.”

“You never need to thank me. It’s my honor to make you laugh. Bring your pleasure. Praise you for your beautifulness. More importantly, always holding you close to me.”

I entwined my legs with his as he pulled the sheet over our naked bodies. Just when I thought he was about to fall asleep, I slipped my hand over his soft member then pressed my lips just under his chin.

“Round two?”

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#jensen ackles fanfiction #jensen ackles fanfic #jensen ackles x plus size!reader #jensen ackles #angst #fluff #smut

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paperbagpetrichor · 5 years ago

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Aaah I'm sorry, I'm not sure how far you're into jjba. Only if it's okay with you, would it be okay to request Josuke and a fem s/o hanging out outside until it starts to rain? btw your writing is amazing! 💜 😭

[ You’re all good! I’m in the process of finishing DIU and love it ahh <3 Josuke is precious. Thank you for requesting and being so kind and considerate! I swear, I have the best anons, you’re all so sweet and caring and ohmygoodness?? I don’t deserve that love but I cherish it nonetheless ♥(ˆ⌣ˆԅ) ]

The bright sunlight of the day seemed a bit out of place. Not to say Morioh wasn’t usually a nice place - quite the opposite, in fact. Almost every day you awoke to rays of illumination filtering through your curtains, warming your sleep-ridden body as you stretched and grabbed your caffeinated drink of choice for the day, heading out for school and always someone winding up alert even when you hadn’t finished your coffee or tea. Luminescence was enough of a wake-up call, and even if the warmth was enough to comfort you, it wasn’t exactly putting you to sleep any time soon.

Except for last week.

Of course, why wouldn’t last week have made you incredibly tired? When did finals ever make someone feel rejuvenated? Right, never. After a draining period of nothing but homework atop assignments and projects atop tests, a full year’s load of work piled upon one final exam with questions ranging from day one to the night before scattered haphazardly throughout page after page of the assessment packets, bubbling answer after answer only to erase or curse yourself as graphite clung to the edge of your hand, painting the entire answer document an unpleasant swath of gray, you could barely drag your body to the park. Not even the gorgeous morning could restore the liveliness to your eyes.

Not to say that nothing could, however, because as you yawned and closed your eyes for a moment you opened them at the exact moment your feet were lifted off the ground, strong arms embracing you in a tight hug and practically crushing your body between them, eliciting a smile and a laugh from the both of you as you returned his gesture of affection. After awhile of peaceful silence laced itself between the two of you, still melded into one, you managed to tease, “You’re going to suffocate me, Josuke.”

He gave you a snort before setting you down, looking you over for the first time since you’d arrived. So overwhelmed at seeing you again after almost three weeks of physical separation and only sparse phone calls here and there, with both of you preparing for exams, he’d hardly wasted a moment to take you in before hugging the life out of you just to feel you, to know you were really there, and that he was, too, beside you once again after what seemed like decades. Bags had sprouted beneath your eyes, and your skin was paler than usual, but somehow you still managed a smile. Your presence would always bring a grin to his face, and even in your stressed state you were just as beautiful as the day he’d met you. He took your hand in his and guided you to one of the multitudes of park benches, sitting down beside you before shaking his head and blinking. Still expecting you to disappear the moment he opened his eyes, much to his joy, he found you, still there, smiling up at him. “You look like you could use a rest,” he thought aloud, tucking a stray strand of your hair behind your ear. “I could’ve just dropped by your place, you didn’t have to come all the way here…”

“‘All the way here’ is two blocks,” you giggled, playfully flicking his pompadour. If you were anyone else, he probably would’ve killed you on the spot. But you weren’t ‘anyone else,’ you were [y/n] [l/n], the girl who somehow took the time out of her schedule to defend his most prized possession (besides you, of course): his hair. You thought it was unique, to say the least. It fit him. Just the right amount of craziness coupled with the attempted calmness he tried to keep around you: practically his personality, physically manifested. “Though I have to say that needing a rest is an understatement. Feels like I could sleep for years.”

“I know the feeling,” he chuckled, resting an arm around your shoulders and pulling you to him, gently and wordlessly easing your head onto his chest for comfort, his body like a big, strong pillow against your fatigued body. “But that’s what we’ve got break for.” With a pause, he suddenly opened his mouth to speak once again the moment he saw the same action reflected across your face, both accompanied by a look of concern, albeit for different reasons. “And before you even think about it, you did fine, [y/n]. I know you did.” Much to his relief, he felt you relax, even if only slightly, against him, sighing away whatever feeble protests you had to offer.

You closed your eyes for a moment. His faith in you was unshakable, and sometimes it felt like an excess of stupid stubbornness, but at that time you couldn’t have been more grateful for it. If all that work had resulted in nothing...no, you couldn’t think like that. Not when he was so sure of you. Not when he cared enough to reassure you. “Thank you. Same goes for you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he replied with a small, muted snort.

Rolling your eyes, you tilted your head back to face him, taking his hand in yours and giving it a comforting squeeze. “Oh, please,” you began, “I know you worked just as hard as anyone else. I believe in you - I know you did fine, too.”

Ah, jeez. What would he do without you? As much as he tried to remain himself externally, if only as a reassurance to you, he was still a bit shaken from the weeks himself. Finals would take a toll on anyone, he supposed, but he hadn’t really thought much of it until he’d gone through them himself. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t the slightest bit nervous. But your words were like honey, dripping with sentiment and coating him in confidence, and that statement - I believe in you - was enough to send his heart racing.

“So, we both get some sleep, because we both need it -” Josuke’s eyes widened, since when were you telepathic? “- don’t even try to hide it, I know you too well. Besides, I’d be more concerned if you weren’t tired.” The two of you let out a soft laugh, sounding off a gentle melody of tranquility that you both needed more than you knew before you continued, “And then we start break. Any plans yet?”

You felt him shrug against you. “Nothing much, but I’ve got one thing I definitely want to do,” he replied nonchalantly.

“Which is?”

“Spend it all with you.”

You broke out into a mess of laughter. “Oh my god, you’re so cheesy,” you managed between wheezes, taking the moment once you’d gotten enough air back into you to steal a kiss, sealing the deal. “But I’ve gotta say, I love it. And you.”

“Who’s the cheesy one now?” he chuckled, running a hand through your hair. You stuck your tongue out like a young child after losing an argument, ultimately throwing your head back with defeat against his chest, allowing him to take the win for whatever it was worth. It sounded lovely. Really and truly, it did. There wasn’t anything more you could’ve wanted to do during your break than catch up on all the time you’d missed with your boyfriend.

It honestly didn’t matter whatever the two of you did, as long as you were together. A soft “It’s so good to see you again” escaped from your lips, but you didn’t try to hide it, leaning into him even more and savoring his touch.

He felt you surrender against him, and after he repeated the words back to you with equal truthfulness, he fell quiet, enjoying the serene blanket that had fallen atop the both of you after an insane week of work and woe. It was exactly what the two of you needed. Enjoying another’s company in silence was sometimes all it took, and thus it was precisely what the two of you did. Every now and then you’d reposition yourself, taking his hand or giving him a gentle hug, and he’d offer the same, holding you closer and helping you both find the most pleasant positions, no longer two separate individuals but a unit of soft hearts and loving eyes.

A few dark clouds had begun to roll in, but neither of you paid them much attention. The darkening of the sky only let you unwind further, and as Josuke rested his head atop yours, the same was evident for him. It wasn’t sleep, but it was something better, more calming: feeling one another against yourselves, worries fleeting with your touch and a steady lull hanging around you. It didn’t take much more than a few minutes for that to change, however. Just as you had begun to nod off in the comfort of your boyfriend’s arms, something cold and wet hit your forehead.

Your eyes snapped open just as Josuke brought you to your feet, the both of you realizing the sudden rainfall at the same time, stunned into stillness as the gentle pitter-patter began to turn into a torrential downpour. With a start as you regained control of your body you reached in your purse for your umbrella. You came up empty-handed. “Ah, crap, I left my umbrella at home,” you muttered to yourself bitterly, only to feel something soft and warm being draped across your head and shoulders like a makeshift hoodie. With a glance up you found Josuke, who had taken your hand in his and begun to guide you out to the exit of the park, confusion rising in your throat as you realized he wasn’t wearing his jacket - oh.

So that’s what that was. Despite it you felt yourself sink into its comfortable softness, pulling it down over you as best a makeshift shield against the torrents as you could, following his footsteps but nevertheless calling out, “Hey, you’re gonna catch a cold -”

“- ‘All the way here’ is two blocks,” he retorted, casting a glance over his shoulder and shooting you a smile with a wink that was enough to melt your heart regardless of your concern and begrudgingly letting him continue, “I’ll be fine.”

You kept pace with him, and sure enough, faster than you expected, the two of you found yourselves on your front porch as you frantically unlocked the door, practically shoving Josuke inside as you followed, shutting the door behind you and draining out the sloshing of the rain. You were both breathless, but nevertheless, as you offered his coat back to him, you couldn’t help but smile. “Well, that’s one way to start break.”

“Wouldn’t change it for the world. Except, you know, the sudden torrential downpour part.”

#fanfic #fanfiction #jjba #jojo's bizzare adventure x reader #jojo’s bizzare adventure #jjba x reader #jojo part 4 #jojo diamond is unbreakable #diamond is unbreakable #josuke higashitaka #josuke #higashitaka #jjba oneshot #jjba scenarios #jjba headcanon #oneshot

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jeanjauthor · 4 years ago

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Death is a result of story, writers.

Death is a really powerful story-beat.

Give your other characters--and most importantly, your readers--a moment to absorb what just happened in that story.

It does not have to be at the moment of that death, however.

Famous example? Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

Specifically, when they have to leave Gandalf behind; the characters cannot stop to mourn. They have to keep running. It is only when they get all the way outside that they can take a few moments to absorb and reflect upon the impact of Gandalf’s actions, and having to leave immediately, with an unknown but most likely not super-short span of time passing before they finally get free and clear of immediate danger.

This is not to say that all such moments need to be put off! If your characters have the time to realize what has happened, absorb it, react to it, internalize it, and realize they need to carry on to the next moment in the story, let them do so.

But even if they (and your readers) have to “wait a few pages first”...let them still have that moment to absorb that story-beat.

Because death and devastation are powerful things, and we need to show the humanity of our characters in reacting to it...and teach our readers it’s okay to care for these characters, and to mourn them.

Spoiler Cut for one of my book series:

The first series in my IaVerse (pronounced ee-yah-verse, not Lah-verse), Theirs Not To Reason Why, deals with this in a couple different places.

In A Soldier’s Duty, we see the main character, Ia, having to end the lives of not only raiders, but the life of a woman in their less than merciful/civilized grasp. Not because she wants to, but because she has to preserve the future timeline that will save the most number of people possible. It’s a case of “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” in a very brutal way.

I wrote in that scene that Ia wanted to take the time to mourn, to regret, but could not. The clock was ticking for her. specifically for her. The reader got that pause in the way Ia, in her internal monologue, regretted not being able to pause. No one else needed that pause, however. Ia needed, but could not have it. The reader needed it as well, and got a little glimpse of it.

In Hellfire, we see Sung firing his gunnery turrets against orders, and we go through Ia’s strong reaction, her utter shock as all her efforts to direct the future explode and shatter. She cannot take the time to react to this shock, but she does anyway--and we see her backup pilot taking the helm to save the ship from a collision that should have been avoided, if Ia hadn’t gone into shock.

This is another beat wherein the reader gets to absorb what just happened, and realize that time is still progressing. Pausing for a death isn’t always an option, not just for the point-of-view character (throughout that series, it was always Ia), but for the other characters as well.

Ia paused, swept up in the horror of realizing everything--including the deaths mentioned a couple paragraphs above--had just been rendered pointless and wasteful. That pause almost got her ship & crew killed. Though only Ia knew the full scope of the problem, felt the full breadth of terror that accompanied it, the other characters felt some concern, some consternation--and then had to go right back to work, because there was no way to stop the battle still surging around them.

(Btw, in real life situations, you don’t get to stop and drop to your knees on the battlefield, clutching at your slain mentor, your dying king, if the battle is still engaged. Someone will come up to you to stab you while you’re preoccupied with your grief, if there are any enemies anywhere near you.).

At the end of Damnation...yeah, Ia told her crew that if they go on that last mission with her, the odds are extremely high they won’t be coming back. But we learn about this days before the actual final scene. And we get multiple moment, not just one or two or three, multiple story-beats to absorb the impact of that sacrifice.

The first one is when Ia demands to know if her chaplain wants to die, and her entire crew jumps to their feet, At Attention, to give her their unified, assertive reply. We, the readers (hey, I’m a reader, too!), weep along with Ia when she reacts to that unified Sir, yes, sir!

We get an entire scene of Ia presenting Black Hearts to her crew--normally not given to anyone still alive--to shove in their faces just how deadly the upcoming battle will be, if they stubbornly stick with her to the end. We even get a follow-up conversation between Ia and the Admiral-General about the presentation of those Black Hearts (given post-mortem to the family of soldiers who died in combat), to absorb that story-beat.

We also get two more moments:

We get the recorded speech of Young Ia, a day or two before entering the military in the first place, explaining that she knows she is going to have to kill to save the future, to fight in combat, to murder in secret, and to commit to the xenocidal destruction of the entire Salik race (with a token attempt to warn them and get them to change their minds, which she knows precognitively they will not do). That speech is intermingled with scenes from the real-time combat taking place, of Harper telling Ia he tried to get Feyori help for that teeny-tiny-sliver-of-a-speck-of-a-chance that they might somehow survive, but could not, plus the subtext of how he (standing in for the whole of the crew) accepts their rapidly approaching fate.

And...we get that last epigraph, which also serves as the epilogue closing the story, and serves as the link tying the theme found in the very first eponymous book, A Soldier’s Duty, to every other book in the series, An Officer’s Duty (with its expanded corollaries), Hellfire, Hardship, and Damnation, because the theme of a soldier’s duty--and an officer is a soldier in the end--all the way through the hellfires, hardships, and final damnation of war.

With that last epigraph, a quote from her interviews, Ia clearly accepted her highly probable death a long, long time ago, and has just as clearly stayed at her post, kept to her watch, and faced down all her foes, physical and metaphorical...because doing so was her duty as a soldier.

...No, some might say that using that many story beats just to impact on the readers one (final) death scene miiiiight be a bit much... But consider these thoughts instead: it was a scene involving over a hundred and fifty brave souls, all of whom chose to participate in that story-beat. It was a moment that included all the other deaths along the way. It was a moment acknowledging that there are still deaths awaiting up ahead, via Ia’s prophecies, deaths that must happen if the greater good of the many is to be preserved in any way.

In my opinion...it isn’t the moment when the Damnation vanishes from existence, the actual moment of sacrifice, that has the most impact. It’s the moment when that last line in the epigraph reminds everyone of just how important all such sacrifices are. Not just the characters in that book, but of the sacrifices found in every story in every culture that every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, coast guard, fireman, EMT, etc, have ever made. All in the goal of saving the lives of not just the people they already know, but the people they may never know, and all the people they could ever, never know.

The impact of a great story is found in the absorption of its great moments. Those great moments can be terrible, horrible, and even sublime-in-the-original-sense, as well as being silly, hopeful, or even blissful (such as the Happily Ever After of a romance story, as well as the belly laughs found throughout a comedic tale). It’s in how we, as writers, connect our readers not only to the events, but to the emotions, reactions, and consequences of those events.

Find ways within the story’s context to give your readers those moments of absorption, reflection, and emotional connection to the actions and consequences of what all just happened.

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hellyeahheroes · 5 years ago

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Post-OMD/Slott’s unused Spidey characters: Alpha a.k.a Andrew Maguire

So there was an ask about Alpha and it was about what happened to him, and yeah, it was just as @filipfatalattractionrblog, otherwise known as the admin, said, Slott got tired of him and dumped him on someone else where they got written into obscurity. And that is like a thing Slott or the writers of Post Brand New Day did constantly. He did it with Cindy Moon, he did it with a bunch of Spider-verse characters, he did it with Yuri Watanabe, he did it with Mr. Negative, Screwball, he did it with the entirety of Parker Industries and Horizon Labs. He even did it with Superior Spider-man. The moment Brand New Day started, Spider-man was tossed around a bunch of writers where they all started trying to race to create the next MJ love interest replacement. So there are even more characters that Slott didn’t create that are very under utilized. Not to mention characters created prior to One More Day/Brand New Day didn’t have much fucking screen time during this and thus did not receive any development. So characters like Liz Allen, Phillip Chang, Betty Brant, Flash Thompson(although he got to be Agent Venom), Randy Robertson, Glory Grant, Mary Jane Watson until fans complained, and even Aunt May which made the whole One More Day deal redundant.

Old school Spider-man constantly hung out with his clique. Post One More Day Spider-man didn’t seem to have many friends outside of his Spider-man persona. And the partnerships that he did make didn’t last.

So, this is where I will go back and detail those lost characters starting with Andy because he is the most egregious. Then I speculate if they can come back, what role should they have.

I fucking hate Andrew Maguire. And apparently, I am supposed to hate him according to Slott, but I believe that is a cop out. He wanted this character to work. Regardless, Andrew Maguire serves as the Peter Parker without any of the selflessness and virtue. “So...Eddie Brock?” No, not as cool as Eddie or as well written.

And subtlety is not a thing for Slott. If you noticed, the character is named after the two Spider-man actors at the time, Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield. People say it is a tribute, I personally think he was mocking them. My opinion, but you already know that.As you can see that the origin is pretty much a This Loser Is You trope which is weird because it’s insulting for fans of Spider-man, a character that is renown for being a superhero with everyman problems, to have a character who exists to say Peter is exceptional and you are not.

Andy goes on a Field Trip to Horizon Labs and meets Peter Parker who is about to unleash his newest discovery, Parker Particles. Which by the way, feels like an accomplishment for Peter, but Slott just had to twist the knife on that and have Reed casually say that he discovered it first and decided to leave Pandora’s Box be. Fuck Reed Richards. Anyways, as expected, Parker’s experiment went to shit and Andy decides to to perform his one solo act.

And Alpha is born.

Okay well, first, Horizon had to settle with Maguire’s parents to avoid lawsuits and Any became the mascot for Horizon labs and then Alpha is born. So they do a check on his powers to see what the kid’s got.

He has the strength to lift a ton which is weaker than any Spider-man, he is bulletproof, has enhanced speed,has energy projection. So if you are following those useless ass stat charts on Marvel wiki, his chart would be...

Intelligence: 2 Normal

Strength: 4 One Ton is his max

Speed: 3 It just says enhanced speed so I am going to assume he can’t break the sound barrier

Durability 5 Bulletproof

Energy Projection: 5 Long Range single energy type blasts

Fighting Ability 2 Normal

What we have here is a powerhouse. Oh and he has a caveat. He can only use one power at a time at the moment. And he is only growing more powerful because Mr. Fantastic points out, Andy is embedded with Parker Particles which are tied to the expansion of the universe. His powers are only going to grow. So Mr. Fantastic decides to place Andy Maguire under Peter Parker’s care. Thus making Alpha Spider-man’s sidekick.

Alpha because no one else in the world has self-control without an Uncle Ben dying decides to market himself as the next best superhero. He gets marketing deal with Horizon to market their inventions, and he also becomes a pop sensation and media darling. Gets the girl that he was pawning after, Chrissy Chen, who I do like btw. I mean he is living the life, amigo.

His new girlfriend even makes him a fan page.

And this is where there is some credence to the idea that Andy was meant to be hated because the comment section tears him apart with meta commentary. He is called a poochie which is a synonym for Scrappy, a term tor fan hated characters. Which, again, what is the point of a character that we, the fans, are meant to hate? It is counter intuitive and a waste of time. I mean people like Golden Booster, Slott. I just don’t get why bother with this? Of course, Andy’s set up in his origin follows the same beats as Slott’s other creation, Cindy Moon, who he wanted to be liked and cried racism when fans hated her as well.

This is endemic to Slott’s run as a whole. He doesn’t get Spider-man. He wanted to create Iron Man instead of making Spider-man stories. And when he introduces new characters, he doesn’t properly want to build them. Like Kamala Khan had 3 issues of character development before she became a superhero. Her origin was fleshed out. Miles had 5 issues and 14 issues to have a proper origin. Andy literally has just 1 issue that can’t even be considered an origin. It is not his origin story. It is just another problem for Peter to solve and that was the problem with Cindy Moon. She wasn’t a character but a replacement to Felicia Hardy who Slott went and tarnished to begin with.

So Alpha gets annoyed with those comments and decides to prove the haters wrong. Peter has been keeping track of Alpha the entire time so he intercepts him before he does anything wrong. Spider-man takes him under his wing and makes him his side-kick.

First, no. Spider-man has turned down sidekicks from Black Cat without super powers, Ollie Osnick, Sally Avril, and a few others. Miles’ isn’t his sidekick, student, or anything. Miles is his own hero who Peter feels responsible for and he sort of hangs out with.Spider-man doesn’t do sidekicks nor would he take them on if offered. He barely does team-ups and only out of propriety and necessity. So him donning Andy as such is out of character and kind against theme.

Second, the dialogue here does not match Peter’s tone.He is too sarcastic and cavalier about things. Peter is one of the most restrained heroes in Marvel in terms of his power usage. He knows what Andy is capable of. He wouldn’t be so casual. He would be on him like white on rice. He knows the seriousness of Andy’s situation. If he teaching Andy, he would refrain from fighting unless he has to. Peter was a teacher. He should know how teenagers are because he has dealt with them. It is like....okay.

Anyways, Andy being the ambitious little scamp decides to take over and do his own thing.

Okay, this is when I kind of knew that Slott would be an okay Fantastic Four writer.And he doesn’t waste any time reminding people that he is the most powerful hero of all time.

Ben is beside himself because the little shit used his catchphrase in public, Johnny is ribbing on Spidey because he created a monster, Sue is trying to keep the peace, and Reed is annoyed because of Parker’s terrible decision of telling a teenager that he is the most powerful being in the universe.

Reed tries again, and reminds Peter that Alpha is his responsibility. He has to essentially babysit Alpha for free. Meanwhile Alpha is letting his newfound success go to his head. He decides to two-time the girl that he was pining for...or he only liked because he felt that she was the best that he can get. You see, Andy is the guy who thinks as people as material to gain. He doesn’t mind using them, but once he outgrows them, he dumps them.

It is like Slott just wants to create the biggest asshole in Spider-man. And I guess that’s okay, but again, to what end? Is Andi going to be a bad guy? No. Is he going to be a reoccurring character? No. So why bother creating him if other writers won’t bother and fans hate him?

After this, Miles Warren aka the Jackal captures Andy easily and Peter has to find the little fuck because he is ,”Peter Parker’s responsibility.” Yeah, I am tired of that too.The Jackal wants to clone Alpha and repopulate the world with his own Alpha Males. No I am not kidding, that is what he calls them. Anyways, Peter tries to stop him but not before Miles Warren congratulates him of “out mad sciencing” him and creating Alpha.

....I am already bored with this comic so I will speed it up. Jackal unleashes the clones, clones don’t have the Alpha powers because the power is not tied to Alpha’s genetics, Alpha breaks free of the harnesses and kills all of the clones, and saves himself sort of. Well not before saying even more alarming shit.

This is it. This is where he will learn, right? This is where Alpha makes a turn and become the little scamp that we hope for.

Well...can’t say that I am surprised.

Peter gets fed up and conspires to take his power away from Alpha because the kid just can’t be trusted with them anymore. He is far too dangerous and honestly, Peter was right, but he was wrong the rest of the time.

Here is the thing: Alpha should have never been given these powers and allowed to keep them in any capacity.Peter should have suggested of taking them away from the very beginning and so should’ve Reed Richards and every hero who tested Andy. And I get it, it’s a little hypocritical of a blog about teenaged superheroes to say this, but there is a difference between the teens we usually cover and characters like Alpha. Alpha is in it for the glory and fame. He never has a redeeming moment. He is never humbled and is too self-centered to be humbled.Making him the strongest teen ever without proper guidance and knowing his parents were trying to mooch off of him and didn’t give a shit how much it effected his son, and only cared because of a profit margin should have been a dead giveaway. Someone should have spoken to his therapists or teachers and figured what kind of kid Andy was. It shouldn’t have taken issues of Spider-man testing it out because it was a bad idea from the start.

Alpha continues to use his power irresponsibly until the Avengers demand that Spider-man call him in to deal with Terminus. Alpha does so as he travels from Japan to Manhattan to deal a huge blow.

So good news is that Alpha got stronger. Bad news is that Alpha took out all of the airplane controllers in the vicinity so all planes are about to crash all over the New York area. So think 9/11 except on 30 buildings or so. The Avengers go into scramble mode and try to immediately rescue the civilians which by the way was the first rule Spider-man told Alpha. Guess who isn’t trying to save any civilians?

So Alpha utterly failed this day. He made a bad situation worse and it shouldn’t have taken this to finally bench Alpha. The moment he disobeyed Peter, was the moment he should have been stripped of his power. I am being serious. But whatever, Alpha gets stripped by Spider-man.

So Alpha got powered down and is normal again.

But wait, there is more. Otto took over Peter’s body and preceded to give Andy his power back, but only a little of it this time. Andy moves to Pittsburgh, his parents divorced, and becomes the new hero of the Burgh. But he accidentally kills someone using his Alpha power, his power has been shown to be cancerous and he unknowingly gave his mom cancer and he doesn’t know it, the person he supposedly killed comes back and becomes this huge cancerous alpha powered villain named Zeta, Alpha stopped Zeta, and then another criminal blackmailed him to stop Andy from fighting crime or he will kill his whole family. And that was it for Alpha.

Can this character be redeemed?

Yes.

Honestly, Alpha was saved in his mini in my opinion. I know, I didn’t post any pictures because that mini looked like shit. Again, however, the story wasn’t bad and did redeem him a little. He should have been in Miles Morales spot when it came to Marvel’s PS4. He was more suited for it and most of Marvel’s PS4 was Slott’s Spider-man run anyways. It had Yuri, Screwball, Mr. Negative, a sympathetic Doc Ock, and shit. All of these are hallmarks of Slott’s writing.

What would I do to introduce him back to the Marvel fold?

First, Alpha isn’t Godly anymore. He is like a low rent Nova. That stat chart that you saw in the beginning is where he is at now. So as long as he stays at that level, we are good. Second, his new predicament of being blackmailed by a criminal creates an interesting scenario. I would think a criminal would love having a bad guy under his thumb. So I suspect this bad guy, Boss Jimmy Cohen might think of expanding with his brand new super pet.Let’s say Alpha becomes his own enforcer and forces him to. Alpha’s mom dies of the cancer that he accidentally gave him and becomes Zeta 2.0.

So Andy after dealing with a ton of despair decides to come back and help Boss Cohen expand his empire in New York. He starts in Brooklyn, and you know where I am going with this. Andy meets Miles, Spider-man II. I am against having Miles inherent Peter’s characters, but Andy is basically an unused character. He might as well go somewhere so why not with Miles Morales who is getting an expanding list of rogues anyways. A reluctant fallen hero would be an interesting addition.

As for Chrissy Chen, I don’t like wasting characters at all, especially one that is just off the edge of Spider-man mythos. Chrissy still goes to Midtown High. And so does Lana Baumgartner. Instead of creating another character, just have her be Lana’s confidant just like Miles has with Ganke.

And that is all folks. Now I will be doing a bit more on the forgotten characters of Post OMD Spider-man. A lot of them aren’t teens, so I will cover them on my other blog. I hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading.

@ubernegro

#alpha #andrew maguire #spider-man #peter parker #dan slott #marvel #Marvel Comics #long post

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years ago

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Infinity Thoughts

So I have something of a tradition of reading comics that will in some way tie into upcoming Marvel live action films. To this end with Avengers: Endgame approaching I read through, among other things, the TPBs ‘Avengers vs. Thanos’. ‘Rebirth of Thanos’, ‘Infinity Gauntlet’ and ‘Infinity’ volumes 1-2.

For the most part I rather enjoyed them. My respect for Jim Stalin grew and I’d argue Infinity Gauntlet may well be Marvel’s finest ever crossover event story of all time...Then I got to Infinity.

Hooooooooo-boy.

This was a lame story.

To be crystal clear the trades I read through collected the main issues of the event plus the tie-in issues of Avengers and New Avengers. Since all were written by Jonathan Hickman the tie-ins are actually essential to the reading experience and I was never exactly lost reading the story. There was a brief but well done reference to the Guardians of the Galaxy tie in issues that weren’t collected but that was it.

You know how I said my respect for Stalin grew through reading this stuff? Ell my respect for Hickman sunk...even lower than it already was.

First off reading Infinity seems to have been a waste of time for my personal purposes. Whilst I do not know what Endgame has in store Infinity War took precious little from this story. It just borrowed 4/5 of Thanos’ inner circle of henchmen (Corvus Glaive, Prixima Midnight, Ebony Maw) and also the Outriders, those four limbed footsoldiers Thanos uses to invade Wakanda. Speakin of which the mere idea of Thanos invading Wakanda was also borrowed from this story but it plays out drastically differently.

That’s not really a problem with the story just a personal complaint I had.

On the flipside something I can’t really complain about but will point to as a problem is that to follow the main story of Infinity you HAD to pick up the tie-ins I mentioned. A well written event shouldn’t price gouge you like that. Noticeably Infinity Gauntlet didn’t. Reading all 6 issues was a satisfying experience unto itself, I never felt like I was missing anything.

But saying Stalin is a better cosmic writer than Hickman would be redundant.

Another problem I discovered after the fact with this story was how the first 15 pages of Infinity #1 are literally just reprints of New Avengers #6 and the Free Comic book day Infinity issue. So 15/54 pages were stuff you’d either read before or could read for free.

This isn’t even getting into the writing problems in general. First of all Hickman had this insufferable habit of within issues themselves having like chapter breaks in the for of entirely blank pages with a grey title and symbol at the top. So you know...nice that you are paying for nearly blank pages amidst your £4+ comic books.

Second of all Hickman has this habit of like throwing meaningless lore at you.

In Infinity #1 for example he throws at you the brief backstory of this planet you have never seen before nor will see again as though it means something, complete with flashbacks and exposition about this planet’s great champion who’s already dead courtesy of the guy delivering the narration. And when I say it’s meaningless lore I mean Hickman has the guy say “Whatever happened to your proud champion to won the Water Wars and untied the tribes by defeating the Great Beast of Pol?”

Like...who gives a shit no one knows where or what Pol is or what the Water Wars were. The best part is that this is all adding up to this planet giving Thanos’ henchmen a tribute of several dead people.

Basically it stretched out 11 pages with meaningless lore to communicate Thanos is bad, Thanos has bad henchmen, Thanos’ demands defeated planets pay him tribute in dead people. Seems like you could accomplish that in maybe 4 pages at a push, especially for a villain everyone knows about already.

What makes this all the more confusing is that Thanos isn’t even really the central plot or threat in the story. This is in spite of being on the covers, mentioned in the solicits, the story’s name referencing stories that explicitly involve him and the story frankly existing because of his post-credits scene in Avengers 2012.

The story’s central conceit I guess is that it’s a war on two fronts.

Captain America leads most of the Avengers into space to join the Kree, Shi’ar, Skrulls, Annihilus and other alien races in a war against the army of the Builders. Meanwhile the remaining heroes (including Iron Man and the Illuminati) have to contend with Thanos who has invaded Earth looking for the sole remaining Infinity Gem and the last of his children, the half-Inhuman Thane.*

Essentially in spite of the advertisement Thanos is really just one of two antagonists in this story. And frankly clearly the one Hickman is less interested in compared to the Builders, whom shockingly, just so happen to be his own creations.

What follows is essentially a cosmic war story all about military strategy and game theory and so on, with very smart people doing very smart things.

Now in fairness conceptually this isn’t a bad idea whatsoever.

So what if Thanos is just one of two antagonistic forces. So what if it’s a war story. Those are ideas that can be done great right?

Yep...except...they aren’t.

Let’s talk about Thanos first.

His central motivation to kill his half Inhuman son is contrived and whilst it COULD have worked it just doesn’t.

As the lead in issues to Infinity Gauntlet make clear with Nebula, who claimed to be Thanos’ granddaughter, Thanos finds the idea of reproducing an affront to his nihilistic beliefs.

Thnos of course is in love with Death. As in he sees Death as a woman he’d like to make out with. To this end he committed his life to mass slaughter to win her love.

Thus entirely logically his creator Jim Stalin established that Thanos would not seek to have any offspring because, duh, if your goal is to kill as many people as possible you aren’t going to create MORE life.

So on the most basic of levels, Thanos even having any children seems out of character.

But it could have worked because the story does establish Thanos has killed his other children too. So it is entirely possible to argue that Thanos, whilst no celibate, made a point of killing his off spring to balance the scales, possibly even seeing his kids as mistakes of his youth before he’d entirely committed himself to Death.

Except the story doesn’t say anything like that. Thanos simply states the idea of Thane existing keeps him awake at night. In other words one of the 2 central antagonists has at best vague motivations.

To make matters worse Thanos is defeated via a total dues ex machina. Basically Thane undergoes a mutation as a result of Black Bolt unleashing a Terrigen mist throughout Earth, this causes him to inadvertently and instantly murder everyone within a certain radius by waving his left hand. He can only control this with the help of a containment suit one of Thanos’ inner circle, Ebony Maw provides. Maw acts as a kind of evil mentor/advisor to Thane, think Wormtongue from the Two Towers but more powerful and sinister, but we’ll get to him in a minute.

Anyway Thane is captured by Maw and presented to Thanos and whilst Thanos and his last surviving inner circle (they’re called the Black Order btw) Proxima Midnight are beating the shit out of the Avengers. Maw then says some shit about wanting to see if Thane has evolved and how he’s the only one who can beat Thanos. So Thane waves his right hand and encases Thanos and Proxima in a great big amber cube.

Oh and this comes out of exactly nowhere!

That’s the resolution to the final issue by the way. THAT is how this 2 volume event friggin ends. Pathetic.

More pathetic even than the already pretty pathetic motives and characterization given over to Ebony Maw and the entirety of the Black Order.

Look, the idea of Thanos having an elite entourage as opposed to just hordes of gneric nameless thralls** is a good one.

The idea of them worshipping him and/or Death is fine.

But beyond their looks we get little characterization from any of them. Glaive and Midnight are offhandily established as married. Black Dwarf is just a big dumb warrior thug. We get a mini-monologue about Supergiant’s childhood and why she follows Thanos in the pages just prior to hear death towards the end of the story. And Ebony Maw...nothing. We have no reason for why he acts against his master or what the fuck his agenda is.

What little we know of the Black Order comes from I kid you not a mini Marvel Handbook segment randomly inserted into the story that gives you like a short paragraph on each member and their abilities.

So you know...literally telling us instead of showing us who these people are and to boot it’s not even actually part of the story.

Then the story has the audacity to say that Thane, Hickman’s new underdeveloped character has and will become even worse than his Dad. His Dad who I will remind you literally caused universal genocide when he snapped his fingers and killed half the universe’s population...and THEN murdered all the cosmic beings. Oh but Thane is worse because he...can trap people in amber...?????

There is also precious little characterization or development lent to Thanos in the entire story, whereas the events its trading off of (Infinity Gauntlet, etc) absolutely did. Here Thanos is the big bad villain and little else. He isn’t even the biggest threat nor does he comprise the majority of the panel time.

That distinction goes to the Builders.

Oh lord...the builders. Who also count among their ranks the Gardners known as the Ex Nihili, the Alephs robot soldiers and exist in the superflow of the multiverse having created the Starbrand and other cosmic tools to shape the evolution of species across the universe.

Did any of that sound bland, boring, meaningless and simply pretentious mastabatory science fiction talk?

Well that’s only because it is.

Marvel has a robust cosmic lore to them. The first generation of that was really installed by Lee and Steve Ditko in Doctor Strange and to a much greater extent Lee and Jack Kirby in Thor, Fantastic Four, Avengers and other titles. That’s where we of course get guys like Galactus.

The second generation I’d argue was Jim Stalin who set up Thanos, Drax the Destroyer Adam Warlock, the Infinity Gems and also Chris Claremont along with his collaborators who birthed the Phoenix Force and the Shi’ar and so on.

The third generation was Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Keith Giffen. These guys added a few things to Marvel Cosmic but really their forte was more adopting stuff already in the Marvel universe and expanding it or using it in interesting ways. The best examples of this being their Magnum Opus, Annihilation which made Annihilus a Big Bad for the Marvel Universe, and ESTABLISHING the Guardians of the Galaxy that the movies took inspiration from. Whilst they didn’t necessarily create any of the Guardians they were the guys who essentially made them the space Avengers.

Hickman is essentially the headliner for the fourth generation and by far and away the most creative.

And by creative I mean he is very good at dreaming up ideas. He’s a classic ‘Big Concepts’ science fiction writer.

Where he falls down is in executing said concepts.

Whilst the past generation of Marvel Cosmic creators vacillated between going for something sweepingly epic or else fun and bombastic or something in between, Hickman’s work is devoid of the fun bombast of a Silver dude riding a surfboard in space but is also if anything trying way too hard to be ‘Epic Cosmic’ than anything the older creators did. And they at least were doing it at a different time when standards for comics were different.

Let’s take the Galactus Trilogy and Infinity Gauntlet as an example. In the 1960s presenting us a science fiction comic book antagonist who was an allegory for God was really impressive and him engaging in a debate with the Watcher about the nature of humanity was deep stuff.***

Similarly the Infinity Gauntlet was concerned with the burden of Godhood and acted as something of a bizarre love story between Thanos and death, the ultimate character study of the Mad Titan.

Hickman in Infinity though mostly just throws Big Science Fiction Concepts (tm) at you and expects you to be impressed by their mere existence, as though ‘the Avengers fight a big space war’ is something to be impressed by in 2013 when we’ve had how many stories like that?

Worse his Big Concepts aren’t just expected to be impressive via their mere existence but are also just...rather dull. There is little personality to the boringly named Builders and only slightly more in the pretentiously named Ex Nihili (Hickman loves throwing around very impressive big nonsense words for his science fiction crap, God forbid they be something simple and/or silly but memorable like ‘Galactus’, ‘the Infinity Gauntlet’, ‘Annihilus’, etc). The Gardners/Ex Nihili kind of look interesting but the Builders themselves are just the most boringly designed aliens ever.

When you see the Watchers or the Celestials you BUY that they are the oldest race in the universe, you buy they are cosmic beings on a higher plane than mere mortals. The Builders are just grey vaguely buggish dudes. Their footsoldiers the Alephs are worse. They’re generic Terminator rip off robots.

The art throughout the story looks pretty but it’s design sense is lame at best and it has the eternal problem of so many 2000s/early 2010s comics that the art looks beautiful panel to panel but is also stiff and looks like a series of very pretty portraits that lack life or the illusion of movement. Comic book art shouldn’t be a series if paintings next to one another conveying the highlights of a scene but an organic flow from one panel to the next creating the illusion of movement. Want to see this done well in a big event story? Check out Mike Zeck on Secret Wars or Perez/Lim on Infinity Gauntlet. Or hell anything Ron Frenz draws.

Okay, they look boring, they sound boring, their concepts aren’t used that effectively BUT...surely the Builders storyline has merit? Surely this cosmic war story is at least a good war story.

Well...yes and no.

The military strategy used in the story is pretty realistic and well thought out, speaking as someone who isn’t familiar with military strategy history or stories rooted in that stuff.

If nothing else the core concept of Thanos attacking Earth whilst the Avengers are off fighting on another front and the X-Men are divided (because of Schism) is basic and interesting use of strategy.

And the space warfare for the most part seemed reminiscent of Star Trek, speaking as someone who’s got novice knowledge at best of that franchise.

Here is the problem though...it’s also painfully dull for anyone who isn’t hyper into that stuff.

Which would be fine...if the story was solely contained within the main Infinity book.

I’ve long defended Secret Wars 1984 on the grounds that as it’s own mini-series it wasn’t obliged to follow thematic conventions or writing conventions of the solo or team titles, it could be it’s own sandbox. So if it wanted to be a light war story/series of fun action set pieces, fine.

So if Infinity wanted to be an Avengers space military strategy comic book for 6 issues okay fine. Except it wasn’t, it roped in Avengers and New Avengers into it too.

And at that point the tie-ins at the very least needed to have something more. You know like...personality.

The single biggest problem with pretty much any Hickman story I’ve read is that far too often the characters talk stiffly and unrealistically, with a coldness to them, a functionality. There is precious little personality or emotion to them. Even when the art is showing us emotion you simply see it as opposed to actually connecting with it.

There are only the briefest of smatterings of truly emotional or personable moments in the entire story and as a consequence they kind of stick out like a sore thumb. Smasher and Cannonball hooking up (out of nowhere in the story like there was no inclination they had the hots for one another earlier) and Sunspot quipping about it is the most human moment in the entire story closely followed by Manifold expressing exhaustion over constantly fighting.

The closest thing to a charismatic character in the entire story is friggin Maximus the Mad!

How do you do that in a story with Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Panther, Reed Richards, Namor and friggin Thanos!!!!

All this and the story exists for anything but a genuine creative drive. It exists because

a) Marvel needed to make bank off of Thanos’ cameo in Avengers 2012

b) Marvel needed to remind people Thanos exists after his cameo

c) Marvel needed to workshop some possible concepts for the then inevitable Thanos movie on the horizon

d) Marvel needed to amp up the Inhumans via their stupid cloud unleashed in this story so they could begin their dastardly master plan to supplant the X-Men with them

Ugh. I recommend you simply skip this story wholesale.

*The other 5 Infinity Gems were destroyed

**By the way in Stalin’s stories Thanos’ armies comprised of a diverse group of alien baddies. Here...there are different kinds of aliens but they seem to be a few species who all look the same. Hardly what Stalin and other artists rendered, which gave you an idea of the scope of Thanos’ travels.

If we’re going to be paying more money for comics nowdays could they maybe put in at minimum the same effort as cheaper comics from 40 years ago!

***The Watchers and Celestials by the way, Jack Kirby creations, get supplanted by Hickman as the oldest and most powerful race in the universe for the sake of his boringly named ‘Builders’

#Thanos #Infinity #Marvel Infinity #Avengers #The Avengers #Jonathan Hickman #jim stalin #Jack Kirby #black order

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theonyxpath · 5 years ago

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The Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter launched last Thursday and we would have loved it to fund in 24 hours, but it was actually closer to 25. Possibly every backer was pranking us, but in the end it’s cool- we did fund, we’re gonna get this newest Chronicles of Darkness game into retail stores, and we’re moving into building additional books with the Stretch Goals!

So basically, the Deviant KS is doing great! Come join us!

Links for the Deviant: The Renegades and the Creature Collection for Scarred Lands 5e Kickstarters are below in the Blurbs! section.

We have had some folks, who I’m guessing have not backed any of our last few KSs, write to tell us that they’re taken aback by the listed international shipping costs. Yep, we are as miffed at those costs as you, and as I posted here a month or so back, we have chosen to go ahead and still ship internationally and post the costs, rather than stop shipping internationally as quite a few of our fellow TTRPG publishing have chosen for their KSs.

I figure it’s better to let prospective international backers know the cost upfront so they can make the informed choice that makes the most sense to them.

Usually when I explain this, I also let folks know that behind the scenes we have tried and are continuing to explore alternative shipping options. With Deviant‘s KS, we are still using our previous methodology, but with the concurrently running Creature Collection for Scarred Lands 5e Kickstarter (also doing nicely, thank you!) you can see one of the options we’re exploring.

In CC’s case, we’re working with Handiworks Games not just on the art and writing and design and Kickstarter for the book, but also with printers and fulfillment based in the EU. We’ll have a bunch of books sent over to the US for those backers, and then we hope that costs to ship from the EU for our international backers will be more reasonable.

Like I say, it’s an experiment that we think will work in a good way, but that’s never a guarantee in the rapidly shifting cost-structures of international shipping. And we’ll have to see if it is repeatable for other projects, too.

VtR2 Spilled Blood art by Michele Giorgi

But enough about Kickstarter, let’s talk about me.

Well, pretty much about how I spent my weekend, but it will circle back around to general topics about our hobby.

Have you ever had one of those time-frames where it seems that everybody you haven’t been able to get together with all want to hang out at essentially the same time? Well, that’s what happened to me, and for a twenty-four hour period I had three get-togethers (one was virtual) with old gaming buddies.

The first was an invitation from two high-school friends for dinner on Friday night which of course turned into talking about how my one buddy Johnny, aka Shithead the Dwarf, and I first met during our first D&D games as sophomores in HS. That’s the gaming club where when we started, we had the first four little D&D booklets and were waiting for the fifth booklet, Blackmoor, to be released.

It just so happened that my English class (that’s what we called Language Arts then, kids) had assigned me a journal to write, and in it I chronicled those first D&D adventures, so even now through the mists of time I can read all about how we’d stir through piles of mud with 10′ poles, and get attacked by 11 Stirges, and lose our Cleric to being swallowed by a Giant Frog.

The first few months we played with our very first DM, Robert, but then he had to get ready to graduate, and both Johnny and I stepped up as DMs. Johnny continued to run and play games until he graduated, and I did same but returned to our HS to run games for a couple of years since my art college wasn’t that far away.

When Johnny came home for break, and later when he was on leave from the Navy, there was always a seat at our gaming table for him, and some of his “temp” characters lived on as famous NPCs. Which was easier because my setting, my D&D “world”, has been the same since I first stepped up to DM as a sophomore.

(I share all this about my friend both for context and because I’ve known this guy for over 40 freaking years and that amount of time boggles my mind.)

And we weren’t the only players who ran games too, most of our players did both – which makes me wonder what we could have done with Community Content sites for all of our many worlds? Getting into Dragon Magazine was some folk’s goals, but if we could have published our stuff? Wow!

Of course, we probably would have needed the internet to make it happen, and we were just getting desk-top computers at that time!

BTW I just listened to the recording of our “What’s Up With Onyx Path Community Content?” panel from Gen Con on the Onyx Pathcast from last Friday, so Community Content might be on my mind. It’s a good panel if you’re interested in exploring publishing your own material for our games, so check it out on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue.

Dark Eras 2 art by Alex Sheikman

Then, Saturday all day was board games with the old gaming crew from both HS and the college years: Elmer the Troll, Thock the four-armed well, Thock, D’Gr’Gr the Duergar, and Ish, the gender-neutral Deep Gnome jester.

Obviously, those are their character names (from one campaign I ran), but in real life they are old friends and we’ve tried to get together once a quarter to play games, or go to the movies, or whatever, and this was one of those occasions.

We played Terraforming Mars and Blackbeard, and had a fun time learning the former while grinding our teeth trying to figure out what the hell the rules were so desperately trying to say with Blackbeard. Granted, it was an old Avalon Hill game, but seriously, these things were contradictory in the same paragraph.

This is one of the reasons I take the errata phase of our Onyx Path games seriously – can the audience understand and implement your text in the way you intended when publishing it? It’s sometimes hard to tell until you get it in front of that audience, so that phase for us gives us that feedback.

Then Saturday night, after our guests left, I raced upstairs to join our ongoing D&D 5e game on Roll20. It had been quite a while since we could get our schedules to line up (and of course it had to be this self-same day), and we were shifting from Justin running it to Oscar. So big change, although they had decided to keep our current characters and storyline with Oscar stepping in to add to our ongoing saga, and Justin could join in as a player.

So I had to play if I could swing it timing-wise. Turns out I could, and did, and a good time was had by all. What’s really interesting is the contrast as I look at the playing experience Johnny and I were reminiscing about, and the one I had on Saturday night.

Still playing D&D (from 1e to 5e!), but there’s our group doing collaborative world building as DMs. Not done by me and my HS friends in those early days; everybody was more about presenting THEIR world, that melange of influences and tropes that they wanted everyone to play in. The chance to tell the stories they wanted to tell. In a way, it was very personal, and it was how we all expected was just how it was done.

I do think part of opening up how and why we create and run our settings is the ensuing decades of game design that have experimented with more innovative ways to play. Not all the avenues that have been explored have worked long-term, but the accumulation of trying different things has enriched our hobby overall.

And, of course, there’s the huge difference that we played on Roll20. We had players on the West Coast US and on the East Coast, and we’ve had players coming in from London, places in Canada, the EU, and Micronesia previously. Being able to pull your group together from all over the world is such a boon when I remember worrying if all of our group would make it just from all over Philadelphia for our weekly session.

What I’m saying with these comparisons, is it’s a great time to be a table-top RPGamer!

DR:E Jumpstart art by Sam Denmark

Final thing about me – I’m going to do Inktober again this year. That’s the challenge to do one drawing in ink every day for the entire month. Any kind of ink. Last year I depicted characters that were all from the MithraukoQuest storyline of my old game world. This time around I’ll be doing characters and creatures that are part of the world, and from different gaming groups’ adventures, that weren’t part of the years the players fought against Count Mithrauko – so look out for my drawrings on social media.

All this, all these years of playing, and the years of reading genre fiction and comic books, the years of TV and movies, of studying fine art and graphics, all go together so I can decide what games we’re publishing, and what seems like it’ll play well at the table, be characterful and immersive, will look really cool, and have visual hooks like page layout and symbols – all of it comes to together and powers up my ability to make sure you have:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

Our Creature Collection Kickstarter for Scarred Lands 5e is skittering on creepy-crawly legs towards the next Stretch Goal to add more monsters – that the backers vote on – to the book! The first group of creatures to be added by backer voting are:

Flay Beast

Fleshcrawler

Gray Lancer

Hellfire Bloodshark

Iron Tusker

Love-Scorned Soul

Mist Murderer

Night Tyrant

This book was designed with amazing art by our friends at Handiwork Games, and they’re running the Kickstarter for us on our brand-new Onyx Path Kickstarter page! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/scarred-lands-creature-collection-for-5th-edition-rpg

And, we’re running this Kickstarter, too!

The Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter launched last Thursday and we funded in just a tad over 24 hours and are vengefully slamming through Stretch Goals now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deviant-the-renegades-a-tabletop-roleplaying-game

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features an interview with Red Moon Rising, one of our favorite actual play groups! Go to https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/ or to your favorite podcast venue!

This week should be the last one where the Onyx Path News goes directly onto YouTube, as soon, Matthew will be streaming directly to Twitch! In this week’s news, Matthew discusses Deviant: The Renegades, Scarred Lands, Vengeance of the Shunned, freelance writer tips, and more! Check out this week’s news here: https://youtu.be/Zf-YB2drW54

Speaking of Twitch, please follow our channel if you haven’t already done so! Our schedule is filled with games including Vampire, Scarred Lands, TC: Aberrant, Pugmire, Scion, Mage: The Awakening, and Hunter: The Vigil, as well as videos on Storytelling advice! Visit www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath and give us a follow, and if you have an Amazon Prime membership and haven’t already subscribed to a Twitch channel for free using it, just type Amazon Prime Twitch into Google and please use it on our channel! The first season of our Scion story is coming to a close this weekend, so thank you to David for running it, and please check out any parts you missed on our YouTube channel

Look forward to October, because we’re going for a special Character Creation Month, where every Saturday we create characters for different games, including Scarred Lands, Deviant, Scion, and more! Remember to find us on Twitch!

Remember, if you miss any content on our Twitch channel, some of it finds its way to our YouTube channel here: www.youtube.com/user/theonyxpath Don’t forget though, that some of that content is Twitch exclusive or belongs to the Storytellers running their games, so don’t miss out and remember to follow us!

The ENnie award winning Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual play of The Sacrifice, from V5 Chicago by Night, with Klara Herbol as the Storyteller and Matthew Dawkins as a player! Please check them out on www.redmoonroleplaying.com

This week, the Story Told Podcast have created a Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition primer: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-36-geist-the-sin-eaters-2nd-edition-primer

And here’s the newest Occultists Anonymous content right here, for you Mage: The Awakening fans: Episode 45: Get Out Within the lair of the Seers, the cabal strikes while they still have an advantage. Mage-on-Mage combat! The most harrowing experience the cabal has had yet, threatening mind and body. https://youtu.be/kvTU3Wp8KEs

Episode 46: A Deal Is Struck The cabal recovers from battle and deals with the decision Wyrd made without consulting Songbird or Atratus. Emotions are ragged but there is still Mysteries residing in Lynnewood Hall.https://youtu.be/o5HR_Oj3cjk

If you’ve not been keeping up with our TC: Aberrant actual play, please do give it a look here on our YouTube channel! Collateral Damage is a superb way to introduce yourself to the Trinity Universe through an Aberrant lens: https://youtu.be/WFBBZrUZVkE

And here’s Paws & Claws, our Pugmire actual play! Lots of content for you to watch and interact with: https://youtu.be/ga7wb3ESdEA

It’s been a while since we last promoted them, but Devil’s Luck Gaming are embarking on Season 3 of their Scarred Lands pirates campaign. As one of the best actual play shows around, do yourself a favour and start watching from Season 3. You will not regret it: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we’re releasing the EX3 Dragon-Blooded Screen PDF and two more of our monthly Adversaries of the Righteous!

Conventions!

Save Against Fear: October 12th – 14th GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Redlines

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Manuscript Approval

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Post-Approval Development

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

W20 Art Book (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Indexing

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution core (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e – Sam on the fulls.

Ex3 Lunars – Contracted. More sketches coming in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – LeBlanc on this.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Trinity RMCs – Contracted.

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Contracted.

Chicago Folio – Sending contracts and art notes out.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Characters being worked on, fulls next.

Memento Mori – Contracted.

City of the Towered Tombs – Contracted.

In Layout

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

Dark Eras 2 – Files with Aileen

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood – In progress.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

W20 Art Book

DRE Screen

Geist 2e Screen

Proofing

C20 Cup of Dreams

M20 Book of the Fallen – PDF back to Phil for review.

DR:E Jumpstart – Sent to Eschaton for approval.

At Press

Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2.

TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2.

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

Trinity Core – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

Trinity Aeon – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

V5: Chicago – Files sent to printer.

Aeon Aexpansion – Backer PDFs out, errata.

CoM – Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel – Backer PDF out to backers, errata gathering.

Signs of Sorcery – PoD proofs ordered.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

And so we now are in Autumn! Falling into fall! Let’s celebrate the season that starts today where things get really colorful and then die! (OK, nature is just sleeping…really.) And Saturday was, I hear, Batman Day, which works well, especially if you recall the first drive in the Batmobile to the Batcave in Tim Burton’s Batman with the low angle shot up the road with swirling dead autumn leaves in the car’s wake. Lovely, just like the season.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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themyskira · 6 years ago

Text

The Life of Captain Marvel - issue #5

This is it; the final part of this embarrassment of a comic.

Through sheer incompetence, Carol and Marie have set a Kree cyborg assassin on an unsuspecting town.

This issue they face off against the attacker and, through sheer incompetence, are soundly defeated.

Along the way, Margaret Stohl also manages to retcon the 1960s Captain Marvel continuity to give Carol even less agency.

The issue opens on a flashback. Carol is an Air Force Colonel and she’s finally where she always wanted to be: flying spacecraft for NASA. Well, technically she’s there on loaner from the Air Force to test pilot a new prototype, but that doesn’t stop her disobeying direct orders by refusing to slow down, thus jeopardising a billion-dollar spacecraft and everything she’s worked her entire life for.

Carol: You getting this, NASA? NASA officer: Affirmative. Now slow it down, Danvers. Carol: Speed is all relative, Doc. Relative to the Earth, I’m going fast. But relative to… a quasar? I’m wastin’ time. NASA officer: Just don’t waste that billion-dollar prototype. You’re burning up fuel. Carol: Just a little higher. NASA officer: Direct order, Colonel. Carol: Just to the other side of those clouds. NASA officer: Do they not do direct orders where you come from Air Force? Carol: With respect, NASA, I’m a loaner. Until they stamp the paperwork, you’re not even in my chain of command…

(To be fair, Carol is a speed-jockey, and her pushing a prototype beyond the original test parameters is very much in character. But written poorly, a hotshot pilot can become a reckless jerk, and this is how she comes across here. A smug asshole who’s made it to NASA and thinks she can now do whatever the hell she wants.)

Page two delivers an abrupt right turn. A second spacecraft appears in frame; its pilot, we discover, is the NASA officer Carol has been speaking to. He keeps telling her to turn back and Carol becomes increasingly insubordinate and unprofessional, challenging him to race her. Again: this is the only job she’s ever wanted, and now she has it, she’s behaving like a friggin cowboy?!

Fortunately for Carol’s career, it turns out that NASA guy’s commands to slow down were all some convoluted form of flirtation, and he leaps at the challenge.

Later, Carol and NASA guy get cosy with each other on the bonnet of a convertible. And now we learn NASA guy’s name: Doctor Walt Lawson.

Otherwise known as Mar-Vell.

Carol: It’s… it’s like I’m waiting for the universe to show its face… or show up and… I dunno… Mar-Vell: …recognise you? Carol: Sounds crazy, I know. Mar-Vell: No. Sounds familiar.

oh, you fuckers.

I talked a lot in the issue four recap about Carol’s lack of agency in the 1960s Captain Marvel, the series in which she originally (albeit via retcon) got her powers. About how the creators of The Life of Captain Marvel recognise this lack of agency, but attribute it to the maleness of her legacy rather than the fact that her role in her own origin is entirely passive.

Given that, I was surprised Stohl decided to include Mar-Vell in the story at all — she’s been working hard up till this point to distance Carol from him — but not surprised at all by the way these flashbacks play out: with a passive Carol who does nothing to further her own story. A Carol who, in fact, does even less than the Carol Danvers of the original 1960s Captain Marvel comic.

What do I mean by that?

This is Carol in her first-ever comic appearance in Marvel Super-Heroes #13:

Mar-Vell: By the way, Miss Danvers… Just why did you oppose my seeing the robot? Carol: Nothing personal, Dr Lawson… but your dossier is still being examined by my security division! If you must know, you’ve always had a reputation as a recluse… even an eccentric! And frankly, after seeing that strange briefcase of yours…! Well… General Bridges: That’s enough, Miss Danvers! Coming, Lawson? Mar-Vell: Yes, sir! Mar-Vell [thinking]: An eccentric! If only that’s all she suspects! Carol: I’ll see you both later! Carol [thinking]: Somehow I can’t help feeling… that Walter Lawson is hiding something! If he is, I won’t rest till I find out what… and why!

This is characteristic of Carol’s early appearances in Captain Marvel. She distrusts “Walter Lawson” from the start, suspecting him of hiding something even as her superiors welcome him, and she goes to great lengths to try and uncover his true identity and intentions. The writers never allow her to get very far, but it’s an early indication of her intelligence and tenacity.

As Stohl tells it, though, Carol suspects nothing. She’s too busy swooning over his chiselled jaw to notice anything else.

Back in the present, thanks to Carol and Marie’s incompetence, Blue, Busty and Naked is holding JJ hostage. It’s surrounded by murderdrones and also flying, which is new (were we supposed to know it could fly?).

Tide Pod informs Marie that she has been tried in absentia, found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. Evidently the Kree assassin units were programmed to respond to Marie’s locator beacon, and when Carol inadvertently switched it on, Kleenex was automatically deployed. Well done, Carol.

Carol goes to deck Dishwasher, before Marie points out that maybe attacking the being currently holding her brother by the throat isn’t the greatest idea.

Bargain Basement Mystique flies off with JJ, leaving its drones to rain down destruction.

The two women fly into action. Marie is struggling a little, being out of practice.

“Look at that. I’m the worst thing that ever happened to this town. This is all my fault…”

Aw, don’t be so hard on yourself, Carol. This is at least fifty percent Marie’s fault.

They split up. Carol finds JJ in town, hanging from a burning building. She flies to his aid, but Joe yells out, “No no no, Carol, it’s—“

Klinger: —A TRAPPPPPP!

What is this?! How shitty an assassin do you have to be to announce your own ambushes?

So Admiral bloody Ackbar lands on Carol and starts beating up on her, while she starts having a panic attack because who the fuck knows anymore.

Carol: Get— [wheeze] offa— [wheeze]

Marie, who last we saw was zooming off to the other side of town, is inexplicably on the scene. She flies up to rescue JJ, scooping him into her arms just as the burning building collapses.

Before I move onto the next page, I want to just take note of everybody’s positions. Carol is lying on her back, hyperventilating, as Janitor holds her down and beats her. Marie is in the air, cradling JJ in her arms.

Because this is the next thing we see.

Marie, hovering alone in the sky, is struck by some kind of beam.

Carol flies up from behind to catch her.

What happened to JJ?! What happened to the blue fucker?! What happened to the goddamn panic attack?!

Anyway then Carol is like LET OUR POWERS COMBINE and she and Marie go full Care Bear Stare, and I know I’m mixing my early nineties cartoon metaphors, but it is what it is.

I mean, it’s supposed to be a photon blast, but what else would you call this?

[Carol and Marie sparkle furiously] Marie: It’s working… keep it up!!! Carol: Ugly Space Face… is falling back!!! …with the power of all Hala… Marie: …with your strength, and with mine…

(btw, somebody needs to ban this woman from using exclamation marks.)

But oh no! Something goes wrong! Carol manages to sparkle too hard!

Carol and Marie, in unison for some reason: Don’t… let… up!!! Carol: Wait— Ma, it’s— it’s too much! Can’t… control… Pull back!

They sparkle so hard they make an explosion!

They sparkle so hard they get thrown up into the air!

They sparkle so hard that Carol sees her life pass before her eyes!

I wish I was even partially kidding.

We flashback to Carol and “Walt”, aka Mar-Vell, in full astronaut gear on the outside of a space station. Mar-Vell says there’s something he’s been trying to tell her for a while, and then takes off his helmet.

(For those keeping score: Yes, this is one of Mar-Vell’s powers, but it’s not a universal Kree power. Neither is half the stuff Stohl attributes to Carol and Marie’s “natural” Kree abilities.)

Mar-Vell: You want to know the truth about starstuff, Carol? We’re all made of stars… just not the same stars. Carol: I… I can’t believe it… Mar-Vell: You have to. Because I’m not the only one. We’re in danger, Carol, and if they come for me, I’m afraid I won’t be able to protect you…

In the original Captain Marvel, Carol never quite manages to uncover Walter Lawson’s true identity. It’s Mar-Vell’s show, she’s just the love interest, and he always outsmarts her in the end.

In this version of events, she never even suspects him of duplicity. She just stands there gawping while he tells her everything, because he’s afraid his enemies will target him through her.

Which they do.

“Mar-Vell was right. The enemy struck. And when Yon-Rogg couldn’t get to him… he got to me.”

You fuckers. You had the power to change this. You had in your hands the opportunity to give Carol an origin story that was actually about Carol and not a just dick-measuring contest between two super-powered men.

You could have done so much, and what you decided on was ‘yep, that’s exactly how it played out, except Carol was less capable and intelligent and active and also she already had superpowers to begin with.’

You. mother. fuckers.

“[E]ven then, the Kree didn’t see me as a threat. I was just a weak human. And when the Psyche-Magnitron hit, it was easy to believe the powers I gained were Mar-Vell’s. Nobody knew the truth… my secret birthright. Not even me. […] Just as nobody ever knew the reason I’d always flown higher or pushed further or run faster or given more: to let flow the awakening stars beneath my skin, though I didn’t know why I craved them, or what they were.”

So again, all of Carol’s dreams and ambitions? All her drive and grit and perseverance? Her hunger for speed and flight, pushing herself to go higher, further, faster?

None of it’s hers. All of it, all of it, is explicitly attributed to her alien blood. Not her accumulation of experiences, relationships, successes and failures. It’s simple genetics. Base instinct.

Fuck you, Margaret Stohl. Fuck everybody who had a hand in this colonoscopy of a miniseries. Carol deserves better.

Meanwhile, the Khambermaid has decided that it might have an easier time killing somebody if it’s wearing clothes.

Janitor: Upgrading combat suit… [manifests armour] Carol: Coming, Ma! Janitor: …and weaponry! [manifests a giant spear]

Why did you not start with this, then?

For that matter, why did you not just send your drones to bomb the Danvers house rather than theatrically announce your presence, take JJ hostage and formally announce Marie’s death-sentence-in-absentia?

So of course Mopster throws the spear at Carol, and of course Marie throws herself in front of it, and of course Carol cradles Marie in her arms and begs her to go because “I just got you back”, and of course she dies while telling Carol how proud she is.

Carol asks Marie what her missions was, why she came to Earth from Hala. And Marie, the woman who as we have established has made her daughter feel alienated and neglected and undervalued for her entire life says “It was… you. My mission was always… you.”

(The Karpet Kleaner has already fucked off back to space at this point, btw.)

Two weeks later, this is how Carol reflects on her feelings about her mother:

“When I look for Ma in our family albums, I don’t even see her face anymore… now she just looks like some kind of bright star to me. Captain Mari-Ell, daughter of Hala. A ball of cosmic dust and burning light… But as much as her light hurts my eyes, I can’t look away, and I can’t outrun her or even outfly her… because nothing’s faster than light.”

what.

Marie has done nothing to earn this mythic status. She’s a terrible parent who, as best I can tell, had two real conversations with her daughter in Carol’s entire life, and both of them happened in the last six hours of her life. She’s not a ball of radiant light or whatever, she’s a snazzy costume with all the personality and heroism of a potato.

What are you doing chucking perfectly good photos into the void of space? There’s no logical symbolism to it. You scatter her ashes in space, you’re returning her to the stars, taking her on one last flight, etc. You scatter family photos in space, you’re just littering.

You already did the crying-tears-that-turn-to-ice-in-the-vacuum-of-space. Just because you wasted it on a hacky moon tantrum back in issue two, doesn’t mean you get a second go at it.

Carol meets Tony on the Moon and tells him she needs to get back to work.

Carol: I feel closer to her when I’m Captain Marvel than when I’m… not. Tony: You know what you are, Care Bear? You’re hers. Maybe that’s the thing about all this ‘daughter of light’ stuff. That light is in you and she’s in you— Car-Ell, daughter of Mari-Ell— yadda yadda yadda mumbo midichlorians jumbo— you catch my drift.

what ‘daughter of light’ stuff? NOBODY HAS MENTIONED ANY ‘DAUGHTER OF LIGHT’ STUFF.

Then it’s back to Maine to farewell JJ and Nice Guy Louis — who finally gets his kiss, though not without passing up the opportunity to complain that he’s been waiting fourteen years for it. I cannot believe this fucko was the love interest.

Finally, Carol flies off amid more wanky narration about how she is truly her mother’s daughter and her story will live in Marie’s legend (what legend? Marie only did two things in her life, become a Kree military officer and have a daughter, and she couldn’t be bothered following through on either one of them) and Marie will live in her heart.

Writing tip from Margaret Stohl: Having trouble building a believable relationship between your characters? Try not doing it and saying you did! Marie may be an empty shirt of a character, and her neglect may have caused Carol lasting scars into adulthood, but the important thing is, Carol tells us that they had a rich and meaningful relationship. That means it must be true!

#comics talk #carol danvers #the days of our lives of captain marvel

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bamiiib · 6 years ago

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my first and last | nct dream

genre: fluff, students!nct dream

pairing: none, really?

warnings: lots of uwu moments

a/n: not really nct dream x reader, this is mainly based off of their ‘my first and last’ music video because i love it so much, it’s so cute, and yeah! hope you enjoy! (ps. this is pretty long so sit back and eat a snacc) (pps. as i was writing this i had noticed how its a bit tooo long, so i will seperate this into two parts! enjoy and stick around for part two!) -bambi

alright... let’s gET IT

btw this is more in the point of view of the dreamies rather than yours so yee

the dreamies were always known to be this lil mischievous group ever since elementary

literally, nothing could separate these kids, like, they stuck to each other like glue!

students found them funny, and some found them cute

teachers on the other hand, weren’t big fans of the dreamies

these kids... they liked to pull pranks on the teachers

sometimes students too, but teachers were their favorite victims

needless to say, they’ve been in detention COUNTLESS of times in their middle school days, and honestly they didn’t care and would find a way to get out

anywayyyy

it’s now highschool. the dreamies are sophomores now

oh boi here we go with the puberty and lil crushes now

awww :( UWU—

you were a new teacher who just got transferred to neo high

you taught freshman and sophomore english

with that though, you remember one of the teachers(mr. moon aka taeil, remember that kids) said that the “initiation” for new teachers would be that they would be on detention duty for a full semester

at first, you didn’t care, and you didn’t think it’d be that hard

it was until mr. moon told you to watch out for a certain lil group who clearly made the detention classroom their home last year

they called themselves the “dreamies”

when he told you that though, you just laughed it off

boi was that a big mistake

skipping into a few weeks of school, you walked into the detention classroom, as it had been empty for a while

everything seemed calm, so you didn’t really seem to worry much and usually spent the time in detention drinking coffee and grading papers

no biggie, right?

it was until six boys barged into the doors, laughing their lil booties off as they sat on their chairs

ooh boi is this going to be a longgg hour

thankfully, detention happened after school, so you were already planning on what to do once you finished “babysitting” these kids

towards the dreamies now

they stumbled into the classroom, all laughing as they walked towards their chairs as if they were assigned to them

“man, you should’ve seen the look on mr. nakamoto’s face when the slime just exploded!” —mark

“dang, that isn’t gonna come off easy when he takes a shower!” —haechan says with a wide, proud grin

at this moment, a lil light bulb just went off in your head and you immediately snickered

so these were the notorious ‘dreamies’ you thought

for a bunch of little “demons” as mr. moon likes to describe them, they looked like a bunch of innocent children

nonetheless, that didn’t stop you from clearing your throat, arms crossed as you walked towards the chalkboard

“boys, welcome to detention. based on the conversation you were having, i don’t really need an explanation as to why you’re here so just sit down and stay silent until the end.” you instructed like mr. moon told you

once you said what you needed to say, you sat back down on your desk without a sparing glance at the boys

little did you know, that as they turned their head to look up at you speak, it was at that moment when literally time stopped for all six of them

their eyes practically POPPED wide open

their hearts were all doing big ‘ol BOOM BOOMS and hearts were jumping out of their eyes like those old cartoons do

they all turned to look at each other, still with them wide eyes, kind of like they’re just saying “b r o”

so like the little lovestruck ducks they are, they listened to you and remained silent

you continued to work, but from the corner of your eye, you can see all six of them staring at you as if you were the last piece of candy in a candy shop

a sigh escaped your lips, brushing it off as you reached for your mug, taking a sip of it and when you looked down, you saw a little lipstick mark staining the white glass

placing it down, the boys were basically just watching your every move

their eyes followed the mug, and some even moved their heads in rhythm to the cup

the lil phone that are placed in every classroom rung right next to your desk, making the dreamies all flinch as you turned to grab it, placing it against your ear as you then curled your lips

“yes, mr. nakamoto?”

“can you really not take off that slime?”

“can’t you just ask mr. moon to help you?!”

“oh... he is? alright, alright, i’ll be there in a bit.” you rolled your eyes, hanging up and looked at the boys who were quick to change their stares at you to somewhere else

as you sighed, you got up and began walking towards the door

“i’ll be back in a bit. don’t do anything bad, in the meantime you can grab some cleaning supplies and clean the classroom up a bit.” you instructed with a stern voice, pointing to the brooms, mops, and dusters that stood in the corner of the class, and walked away

remember when i said that the dreamies were quick to move their stares from you to somewhere else?

yeah, well, almost all of them

haechan kept his eyes glued onto you, watching you as you walked away from the classroom

he turned his head and leaned his chair back just so he can get a good look at you once more before you go away and then

‘SLAM’

“ow.” —haechan as he falls on his chair, wincing as the rest of the dreamies looked at each other

they all huddled up in a quick second, jisung wrapping his arm around chenle as jeno looked at mark with wide eyes

mark looked at haechan as he quickly got up, dusting himself off and joined the huddle

“alright bois... what are we going to do?” - mark

“well idk about y’all but i really like her.’ -chenle

“you’re right... I CALL DIBS!” -haechan

“no wait! maybe i wanna call dibs on her too!” -jeno

“back off, she likes her bois mature, and there’s only one guy who fits that description, me!” -renjun

“that’s not fair, what if i want her attention too? :((” -jisung

it was when it hit the boys, they slowly turned their heads towards the desk you sat on and saw the little white mug that rested on the corner

already they saw the pink lipstick mark you left

and like wild animals, they cHARGED towards it, jumping on top of the other, jisung fell while chenle got pushed to the side

then it was left with the ‘00 line to fend for themselves

it all happened like a blur, and next thing that the dreamies saw was your mug flying in the air towards their own desks and shattering onto the floor

“way to go jeno!” -renjun

“don’t look at me! it’s all haechan’s fault!” -jeno

“my fault?!” -haechan

bois start arguing while mark looks over at the direction where the mug fell

“now wait a second guys!” -mark as he walks towards the desks, seeing some pieces of the mug that landed onto chenle’s desk

on chenle’s desk they saw a lil sports magazine

“really chenle? you try basketball once, suddenly you think you’re in the NBA!” -haechan

“leave me alone, i like reading them!” -chenle

“you guys are absolute idiots, look at the page where the glass landed on!” -mark

“sports cars?” -jeno

“this is it guys! this is how we’ll impress her!” -mark

“buying her a sports car will impress Ms. Y/L/N?” -haechan

cue mark hitting haechan’s head

“no you dingus! we’ll impress her with our own cars!” -mark

“how the heck are we going to get sports cars? we’re still kids, we don’t know how to drive, and most of our parents would rather die than buy us a sports car!” -jisung

mark face palms

sighhhhh

“we’re the dreamies, we’re known for being little geniuses! we’ll make our own cars. once we make them, we’ll take them to the top of the school roof, and like proper gentleman... we’ll race and the first one to make it to Ms. Y/L/N’s car will win and have her heart!” -mark

“and you all call me the idiot.” -haechan

oh boy is this going to be a mess

TO BE CONTINUED!

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kittyinhighheels · 6 years ago

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Kitty reads: Glass Sword Review

If there’s one thing Mare Barrow knows, it’s that she’s different. Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the color of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control. The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind. Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors. But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat. Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?

Because I need to get this out of my system, let´s start my reviews with the most recent book I´ve read. I´ve read some reviews myself and let it settle before I wanted to give my opinion and here we are. A bit unorganized but oh well, we´ll get to it some day. Not spoiler free btw.

Glass Sword is the second book in the Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard. It was a no brainer for me to read it after I fell in love with Red Queen earlier this year. I couldn´t wait to see what would happen to Cal as a Silver prince in the midst of Reds but most importantly I couldn´t wait to meet more newbloods like Mare.

To give a hint about the quality of Glass Sword, let me just say this: It took me three months to finish this book.

Throughout the 436 pages we follow Mare as her and her group of friends search for the other newbloods, Reds born with Silver power, in a race against time as the evil king Maven and his even worse mother plan to kill each and every one of them. And that´s literally the only thing we do in this book. We get maybe three fights but they are only three or four pages long each and usually so chaotic and quickly resolved that they were almost unnecessary. The rest of the time Mare, Cal, Kilorn, Shade and Farley traveled from one city to another to find the newbloods.

Now like I said, I couldn´t wait for them to appear and I give VAveyard kudos for coming up with all these powers without making them boring. I was prepared that we´d get a bunch of new characters and luckily we didn´t see every single recruitment. But those we did see felt so unnecessary because by the end, almost all of those whose recruitment we got to see not only got maybe one sentence during the end fight (if they got one at all), they also died off-screen. We didn´t get more than a “they weren´t on any of the ships that made it back.” George R R Martin at least got us attached to his characters so we would weep while reading every sentence of them dying. VAveyard completely wasted our time and the opportunity to perfectly gut punch her readers.

Speaking of wasted deaths, let´s talk about the two most important ones in Glass Sword: Shade and Queen Elara.

Starting with Shade, all I can say is that I didn´t see it coming but it also didn´t surprise me. Throughout the entire book I had the feeling that VAveyard had no idea what to do with him. He was important enough as Mare´s link to her old self but too much of an ex machina to give him more screen time. Having him in dangerous situations would have killed suspense; he could have easily escaped. So he was sidelined. And that´s exactly why his death didn´t really faze me. We barely saw him anyways, what did it matter if he was now permanently gone? The only reason I ended up caring was because I loved Farley and it broke her. By the way, her being pregnant from Shade really wasn´t a surprise. I called it the first time they said she had vomited.

Off to Queen Elara: What the fuck was that? What the fuck was VAveyard thinking? How can you set up such a smart, calculated and dangerous villain, someone so vicious that Mare´s biggest fear is being caught by her again, and then not even show her death? I read the last pages of the fight ten times because I couldn´t believe VAveyard would be this stupid. It makes me so mad. How amazing would it have been to see Mare grabbing the queen and then sending the lightning through her body, looking her in the eyes while she´s basically being fried to death. That would have made the next chapter so much more meaningful. Instead, we got nothing. Again, a completely wasted opportunity.

You can´t say much about the plot because, as mentioned before, there barely was any. We saw recruitments and those three chaotic action scenes but around 80% of the book was Mare moping around. Which brings us to her and the other characters.

I liked Mare in Red Queen. An interesting thief who used her street smarts to somehow survive among her enemies. I could emphasize with her feeling of being alone, of not fitting into her family compared to her talented sister and then finding out that she somehow has those amazing powers without having silver blood. Her naivety did annoy me but it was okay because her ideals were understandable and actually noble. She grew up in a poverty stricken town where being older usually meant dying in an endless war. She had already lost at least one of her brothers and was about to lose her best friend. And suddenly she had to live with those causing her loved ones so much pain and suffering. She wanted change and she would fight for it if necessary. In Glass Sword, you barely see any of that. She acts as if she is such a martyr, as if she was the only one who gave up a lot for this fight, the only one knowing loss. She even thought her missing a guy she barely knew for more than a few months was somehow comparable to Cal missing his brother and best friend. And we´re supposed to feel sorry for her when Cal actually points out how ridiculous that is. Mare only feels sorry for herself in the entire book. She pushes everyone back, pretty much insults her best friend as useless because he doesn´t have powers, and is then confused why he wouldn´t talk to her. Her entire thought process is about how oh so dangerous and important she is and how much she suffers and how lonely she feels while lying to everyone and disregarding their feelings. I saw her “sacrificing” herself when I was halfway through. So cliché.

I think I liked Cal the most in this book and I wish we could have gotten a look inside his head instead of Mare´s. His conflict of being a Silver prince being amidst Reds who hate him and everyone he knows and knowing that it´s justified is so interesting. I live for arcs like his. Seeing his internal fight between what he was taught and what he is going through would have made such a great storyline. I would have paid everything to read a novella just about his character growth.

I can´t decide between Kilorn going on my nerves and liking him. He reminds a lot of Sokka from The Last Airbender because everyone underestimates him because he doesn´t have powers but he´s actually really smart and useful in battle (suck it, Mare). I could have lived without the cliché of him obviously being in love with Mare though.

I liked most of the side characters but I´m also not surprised that I barely remember anyone´s names besides Cameron, Jon and Nanny. I hope we get to see more of them in King´s Cage but I don´t want to see Nanny dying T.T

What I missed the most in Glass Sword besides the plot and a likable protagonist was the villains. Maven was merely a mention here and there until the end and even then he isn´t really worth mentioning. Elara died so easily AND SO USELESSLY and god do I miss Evangeline.

I already bought King´s Cage and War Storm so I´m not going to drop the series but Glass Sword was disappointing. I expected more of Victoria Aveyard.

#personal.txt #glass sword #victoria aveyard #review #kitty review #that was long oops #i have a lot of feelings and thoughts about this

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kayasurin · 7 years ago

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A long-time lurker of @suzie-guru, I’m tossing this Strange Magic story idea under the cut. I blame (and thank) Suzie because I might not have found the fandom through her stories, but they are what kept me in the fandom (and inspired me to get the DVD as well as get ideas of my own).

Please find below 10 pages of notes for an idea I’m just calling the Accidental-Marriage-and-Pining AU. If someone decides they want to take it over, just give me a heads up. Otherwise, in my (non-existent) spare time I might take a swing at writing it myself.

· Instead of kidnapping Dawn when the love potion gets stolen, Bog King declares war. Still crashes the elf party, but only to yell at people and tell the king that hey, war.

· Roland is defeated & injured early on (shiny armour! No use! He looks very good in a parade but has never actually, y'know, fought before.) Not even by Bog, just some foot soldier goblin. Maybe Brutus with a backhand.

· Dawn's still hit with a love potion BTW, and falls for a married elf who is devoted to his life-partner and, uh, it's flattering but he likes... guys. (Dawn literally cannot understand the idea right now, when normally she's as passionate about people being able to marry the ones they love as Marianne is passionate for denouncing love, period.) Dawn is kept in her room.

· Sunny gets hold of the love potion and hands it over, along with his guilt - he is able to say it's Roland's idea, since Roland went from "respected" to "ridiculed". The triplets come forward and admit that they may have suggested Roland use a love potion on Marianne (who is very scary and they're very sorry). People remember that Roland's been talking off and on about war with the Dark Forest for a long time.

· Bog is not about to stop the war now, even with the Fairies offering the potion back and they're really sorry - the Elders of the Forest would overthrow him in a heartbeat if he did.

· Sunny is punished, but not as harshly as if he were the sole cause of the war. Basically confined to his rooms helping with the routine paperwork everyone else is too busy with the war to deal with. He might have nightmares about being unable to tell Requisition Form A-7 from Requisition Form A-8.

· The Imp steals the love potion. It was well guarded but not well enough. Marianne hunts the Imp down (while everyone else is on the battlefield - her dad thought it'd be great for keeping her away from the fighting) but not before several fairies, elves, and a sparrow are dusted. Lizard/Lizzy still fixates on Sunny because he got dragged along with. (Everyone knows Marianne asking him what the hell he was thinking about a love potion and her little sister is more punishment than requisition forms.)

· (Sunny is really, really sorry. But at least the lizard fixated on him. Guy who had a sparrow fall in love with him got carried off. No one knows where he is. Everyone is varying degrees of worried)

· (He's okay and shows up later after escaping when the love potion wore off. Maybe, haven't decided yet.)

· The war, meanwhile, has lasted a month so far. The final battle happens.

· Bog goes after Dagda, has to fight his way through the battlefield.

· Marianne, who is not supposed to be there, gets between Bog and Dagda. She is a fresh fighter, compared to Bog who just spent a couple hours beating his way through elves and fairies and Dagda's guards. Also, Marianne is angry someone's threatening her dad. Also-also, there might be some high-pitched and painful-to-goblins screaming going on.

· Marianne wins. Bog's hurt, very badly. (I'm sorry boo!) He's mistaken for dead for a little bit, actually.

· Dagda, trying to signal to the goblins that their king is dead, please stop fighting and go have a civil war on your own side of the border, tries to pick up the Bog King's staff of office. He gets burned. It's wood (or... something?) but it just heated up like a sword fresh from the forge and not yet quenched. Marianne takes the staff, mostly because Dagda drops it, and is perfectly fine.

· Battlefield turns into a different sort of chaos, of course. It's sorted out that Marianne is now Queen of the Dark Forest by right of personal combat with the Bog King - who, it turns out, is still alive. Marianne orders he be taken care of immediately (Maybe she can give this stupid staff thing back? Seriously, it's twice her height or something and really heavy and also she doesn't want to rule the Dark Forest! Heal up so she can give it back, now!)

· Marianne, however, isn't going to be a bad ruler. She's got a bunch of terrified Goblins watching her and a bunch of scheming fairies too. She tells her dad to hand Roland over, since he was the real source of the conflict, but she'll be nice and accept him going to the Stone Reach * for investigation and trial.

· *I envision the Stone Reach to be this rocky outcrop on the south border between the fields and the forest and, possibly a swamp or something. Not associated with anyone, considered perfectly neutral and called on in cases where the royals might have a conflict in sentencing, ect. Since three generations back they've also dealt with passing messages across the field/forest border, because Bog's grandfather refused to talk to Marianne's great-grandfather, and no one's changed the status-quo since. They do other things too for both sides, but the main one is being neutral.

· They also run around fully cloaked, so no one can tell what species/race they are. Other than weird. The head of the group, AKA main investigator, I envision as something like Sam Vimes from Discworld, except covered head to toe so no one can actually see him. The right personality, though.

· Back to the story though - the goblins had expected Marianne to just kill Bog on the battlefield, but weren't complaining when she wanted him healed instead. He's moved to the castle, sort of a prisoner and sort of "the prison cell is the only other place in the castle with beds long enough for this guy, and the Queen's taken over the Royal bedroom, and someone this injured cannot sleep on the floor."

· Marianne also moves to the Dark Forest castle, immediately after telling the fairy council where they can stick their plans for the Dark Forest. (She's going to be a good queen and also hand this nonsense back to the Bog King once he's conscious. She can't hand the place back if the council gets their way.) The goblins are obedient, but not helpful. Griselda spends her entire time watching over Bog in the prison/sick room.

· Griselda and Marianne encounter each other whenever Marianne's down there interrogating Sugarplum about the love potion. Dawn's still dusted after all, never mind everyone else. (Griselda: not impressed with this fairy who nearly killed her baby boy.)

· Some of the goblins start actively plotting against Marianne. They're kinda bad at it because goblins go for "in your face" things like actual challenges, instead of backstabbing and what have you. Most of the plotting, therefore, is "who can we all agree to back and who has a chance of defeating our new Queen - shh she's coming" and not "let's poison her drink."

· Seriously, goblins have standards for overthrowing their monarchs and solving political problems. Who'd be low enough to resort to poison or stabbing someone in the back when these sorts of things are important and should be seen by everyone! (Fairies. Fairies are low enough. Marianne is aware of the plotting but is expecting them to rebel the way fairies would - AKA knives in the dark or poison in the food. The lack of action in that direction is confusing her.)

· The plotting goblins loosely fall into the following categories - those who want to back Bog in taking the throne back, those who want "new blood" on the throne (and if that blood happens to be related to them, so what?) and then there's a very small group of goblins who think Marianne's not the worst thing in the world, but only if she marries a goblin and has goblin babies.

· Around this point (approx 1 month after Marianne takes over) Bog wakes up. It takes him a little while, but he regains his health pretty quickly once he's conscious and isn't being force-fed (or unconscious-fed) broth. He sees Marianne when she visits Sugarplum and gets full reports of everything going on thanks to Griselda, Stuff, and Thang (as the ones most able to visit him without being noticed and what have you). He's annoyed at the plotters manoeuvring and spends his time thinking of how he can possibly get his throne back without relying on those plotters who back him.

· Seriously if he accepts help from any of the plotters he can say hello to a new life as a political puppet. As for anyone else ruling his forest, hah! He dealt with that fly-shit as a kid when someone stole his father's throne (from Griselda, Bog's regent, since Bog's dad kind of died when Bog was a newborn) and then Bog had to kick the imposter off the throne - and not doing that again, thanks.

· Between his informants and reports about captured goblin soldiers, Bog figures out that any rebellion will likely be met with fairy soldiers setting the forest on fire. It's the main stumbling block to his plan of "kill or kick the fairy out and take the throne back" and he and Griselda spend a long time trying to figure out how to prevent the fire happening. At the very least they're expecting Marianne to turn the Forest into a servant-state of the Fields.

· (The fairy council, despite her telling them what to do with their plans, expect the same. And are very annoyed that it hasn't happened yet. It's a temper tantrum, that's what it is. Sure.)

· (There's tension between Marianne and Dagda for this reason, among others, especially since Dagda only "let" Marianne go to the forest to try and get a cure for the love potion.)

· (Marianne is super unhappy at being in the forest, but as long as she doesn't go outside or look out a window she doesn't panic or anything, which is one way to avoid talking face-to-face with her dad.)

· After a while (couple weeks) Bog's judged as healed as he can get just lying around and to start getting up and moving to build his strength back. He and Griselda have no answer to the probable "fairies with fire" thing, so Griselda instead begs Bog to capitulate to Marianne, swear allegiance so she doesn't kill him to strengthen her rule. (They've figured that's why she's having him healed up, so she can execute him in front of the Elders and properly strengthen her claim.) Griselda: "I've buried my husband. Please don't make me bury my son."

· She doesn't fight fair. Bog, meanwhile, might not be king any more but the oaths he swore when taking the throne still count, okay. He still has a responsibility to protect and serve the goblins, and obviously a rebellion isn't the way to go (fairies with fire). If dying keeps them safe (or safer, anyways) he'll do it. He'd rather not, but he will.

· Marianne finally gets the story of Bog using the love potion, and what the antidote actually is, from Sugarplum. Bog is unaware of this, by the way. He is aware that Marianne's yelling at Sugarplum ("What, real love is the only cure? Are people aware that you're peddling something fake? Seriously, all you're doing is making longer-lasting BEER GOGGLES you fraud!") but can't make out the words. Probably for the best.

· Marianne contacts Dagda (those weekly messengers are finally good for something) with the cure - true love - and tells him Sunny can cure Dawn, now stop sending me constant messages telling me to come home, I'm BUSY ruling my new COUNTRY. Dagda obviously does what he's told re: Dawn and Sunny, and keeps sending Marianne messages asking her to come home, the forest is no place for a fairy, ect, ect. They'll set up a subsidiary of the council to take care of the day-to-day humdrum of ruling the forest. (HAH! No.)

· Sugarplum is shipped off to Stone Reach. Her actions are going to be evaluated for treason. No, Marianne's not being petty and it's not revenge for the whole "Dawn got love potioned and Roland was going to use the potion on Marianne" thing. And absolutely nothing about feeling sympathy for a young, love-lorn Bog King who then got his heart broken because Sugarplum was selling lies. No sympathy for the stick-insect-man at all.

· Bog requests an audience with Marianne during her next open court. Either his (horrible) plan will work, or it won't and he'll die. Either way, it'll be over with quick. And he's figuring on the "I'm going to die" side of things, because it's a terrible idea but no one can come up with anything better, and it will hopefully keep the plotting idiots from doing something to bring fire-and-fairies to the forest.

· Oh yeah, little tidbit that this story relies on - there's a second, smaller throne beside Marianne's. The goblins brought it in. When Marianne asked why it hadn't been there to start, they explain that Bog had it taken away, but she hasn't told them the policy about the second throne yet, ect. They do not explain who the second throne is for, figuring it's obvious. It is not. Marianne figures it's for - like in the fairy kingdom - the chief advisor/heir, depending on whether there's an heir or not. The goblins, meanwhile, know it's for the ruler's partner. Both sides think the other side "knows" what the second throne is for.

· Bog shows up in court looking like he's just barely mobile, because he is. He's got some fresh new scars showing. First time for the majority of the goblins to see his wounds. People are either impressed he survived or disappointed he survived. First time Marianne really sees his wounds - or him - as well.

· (This is a slow burn, people. They've finally met properly. That's not the end of it yet though.)

· (Bog's worst wound is, I'm envisioning, a cut high up on the inside of his thigh, in the small area between hip and leg not covered by chitin. Yes, there. A few others include healed cuts on his face and hands, and a crack on his chest, which has healed but won't go away until the next shed or two.)

· Bog explains to Marianne that the goblins don't want to accept her as Queen, that she will face challenges to her rule as long as he lives, even if he is not the one challenging her. (Simplification of all the nonsense the plotters are coming up with, of course.)

· Marianne challenges Bog that he wouldn't be saying that if there wasn't another way, unless he wanted a public execution. (Outwardly calm, inwardly panicked. She hasn't killed anyone yet, not even on the battlefield. She really doesn't want to start by chopping someone's head off.)

· Bog kneels and says he will swear to accept her as the rightful ruler and abide by her rules. He'll even live in the fields if she wants him out of the forest, ect. (Inwardly going "Oh hell no I do not want to live in that horrible place - but I will if I have to and that might help protect my people too, yes self you just volunteered to be a hostage but whatever.)

· After some back and forth, Marianne accepts Bog's oath. The goblin Elders are annoyed because they didn't factor this possibility into their plans at all. Griselda is resigned but relieved that Marianne's not going to kill Bog. The common goblins are confused, but relieved, ect.

· Marianne then announces she has made a decision about Bog. Bog is there expecting to be sent to the fields in exile, maybe with a few goblins. Instead, Marianne tells him to take the lesser throne. (The spouse seat. The Elders are freaking out. They REALLY weren't expecting THIS.)

· Goblins, shocked. Bog, shocked. Marianne, confused and hiding it. She just wants to keep the former ruler as her chief advisor. (Why didn't she just take the chance and shove the throne back at him and flee as fast as she could?! She could've done it but nooooooo...)

· The slow burn BEGINS, MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHA

· Bog is moved into the previously closed spouse-bedroom attached to the royal chambers through the washroom. He's constantly sitting to Marianne's right during dinners and things. He is very confused and bemused and worried, because now he's Marianne's husband? That's literally all it takes for the ruler to decide yup, this is my life-partner, just an announcement and the life-partner sitting in the lesser throne. (Most do throw parties of some sort or other, but that's not required.)

· Marianne does not help by having a discussion with Bog, immediatley after court, about what his duties will be, once he's healed. Advising her about goblin law and customs, primarily. Nothing "active" until he has a clean bill of health. (She's thinking sparring, maybe, or sending Bog out to be the royal face so she doesn't have to fly through the forest - no she's not getting better on her own. Bog's brain maybe shuts down a little, though, because married + active = error does not compute.)

· They set up a routine: breakfast together, usually with a group, very informal. Mornings are spent separate, Bog going to the healer, his mother, dealing with the guards and messengers, ect. Marianne reviews proposed laws/drafting proposals herself, dealing with household complaints, ect. (Marianne asks Bog why the hell he let things get so bad the linens were taken by field mice. Bog is confused they ever HAD linens. There's a reason why Marianne's the one in charge of the household. Mostly because Bog's pants at it.)

· They eat lunch together, then court if it's a court day. Or the library the rest of the time, for Marianne's "how to rule the Dark Forest" lessons. History, politics, who wants to kill who, how property rights are handled, inheritance law, ect.

· Dinner together, and then Bog gives lessons in staff fighting. At the start he gets to sit down and correct Marianne's stances, then as he gets better he starts moving around and eventually they begin, very carefully, sparring.

· Bog, during this part, transitions from hating Marianne with a passion (she beat him and stole his throne!) to respecting-but-disliking her (okay, she stole his throne, but she's not horrible, for a fairy) to respecting and liking her. It helps that she admits she didn't actually want to take his throne, he was going for her dad and she just reacted, and she's really sorry but she's determined to do a good job of it. (She may or may not have started to offer to give the throne back, but it won't work that way, because Bog lost and would need to win a serious fight to get it back. No-go right now, and depending on how that leg heals, maybe never.)

· Marianne, meanwhile, is also transitioning during this part, from distrusting everything and everyone (she's a fairy and fairies are good with backstabbing) to trusting that she's accepted, for now, as the ruler. The plotters have stopped their plotting until they figure out how to handle everything that's happened. She relaxes, trusts Bog but is feeling guilty over stealing his throne, even though she didn't mean to. She also finds herself, by the time they're sparring, admiring Bog's fighting ability (and absolutely not his body. Just the fighting ability. Juuuuuust the fighting ability. Not his hands, or the way he can twirl a staff with just his fingers, or the way his shoulders flex, or that smirk or - just the fighting abilities. Yup. That's her story and she's sticking to it.)

· By this point it's autumn and the harvest starts, so it's all hands on deck. Bog's delegated to the kitchen, because he can be trusted not to chop his own fingers off and he's still only allowed to be only so active. Marianne assists with winterizing the castle and the hidden outbuildings (archives, ect) because she might not know how to hunt and she can't tell the difference between a poisonous berry and a safe one, but by golly she can slap mud and moss over a crack in the wall like a champion.

· Word from the Stone Reach arrives. After the (date to be determined - probably hunter's moon, or maybe harvest moon, before the first frost but only just), Roland and Sugarplum's trials will be held. Marianne can't avoid it, Bog has to go too, ect.

· Marianne and Bog have had multiple personal conversations by this point, everything from brief, "this reminds me of" and in-depth, hours-long conversations. However Marianne stops sharing her personal history/views/values/experiences. They had stopped sparring because Super Busy for harvest, but they take it back up again. They still discuss laws and culture, but not as much. They're also still busy doing what they're allowed to do for harvest. (Marianne is too busy to get freaked out bringing stuff to people outside, and anyways everything's changing colours and she's not reminded of things that happened, so it's okay.)

· Harvest festival with the goblins - Dawn and Sunny visit. Most goblins are unaware Sunny was the elf that stole the love potion, so they treat him decently, and Dawn's okay because she's their Queen's sister. Dawn asks Marianne to come back for the fairy's harvest festival. Marianne tries to get out of it (she really doesn't want to talk to Dagda in person by now, she's been avoiding him for most of the year now - Primroses stop blooming around May) by telling Bog if she goes, he goes. By the end of the night Marianne and a small group of goblins, including Bog, have been selected. She's not sure how that happened.

· (Goblins, for the most part, wear jewellery and not clothes. For the most part they're all wildly different in shape anyways, but what one of them can wear as a necklace another can wear as a bracelet, ect. Tasteful bling happens.)

· Bog warns Marianne that he only has his traditional outfit and there's no time to get anything made for his new status. She tells him to wear the traditional. (She's expecting, like, maybe a crown, maybe some armlets or something.)

· Bog's outfit is a royal great kilt. (I put the Scottish-accented Bog in a great kilt, I'm so proud of myself.) Where fairies use magic on flower petals and leaves, goblins have weaving - which takes so much longer, since they spin cattail fluff and thistle-down or tufts of fur into yarn, and then have to do the weaving. Marianne's given a wrap with the same pattern as Bog's kilt and they started making it the moment she was officially Queen - so about the time she sat down on the throne for the first time.

· (Telling Bog to wear the great kilt provided to the forest's king - not the prince, not the consort, but the full king - reinforces the "married" thing. She doesn't know that. Bog assumes he hasn't been asked to 'perform' his 'marital duties' because Marianne doesn't find him attractive, and he is totally 100% relieved about this and not even slightly regretful someone he considers a friend thinks he's too hideous to touch. Yup.)

· (Marianne, meanwhile, is all but punching herself in the face because she's started humming, goddamn it, whenever she and Bog are alone or plausibly alone. She totally has feelings she refuses to examine, mostly because Bog's kind of like her employee now and he probably still hates her for the whole 'stealing the throne' thing.)

· (Bog may or may not have the odd wish that Marianne would sing to him, because fairies sing to the people they lo - like. Right? Right. Yes. Friendship songs, toooootally friendship songs. They'd be nice.)

· Then the fairy harvest festival. Marianne sees Bog in a kilt and nearly walks into a wall, because - clothing. She's seen him naked, technically, but hooooooh boy now that he's wearing clothes, of a sort, all the can think is getting him out of them and there may or may not be some (a lot) of blushing and mental beating herself up going on. (Marianne has read romance novels, of the sort that go into details a young and impressionable and curious thirteen year old was curious about.) (Bog, in contrast, is quite innocent, poor guy. Doesn't know what's going to hit him...)

· The entire festival basically goes as follows: Fairies are polite but condescending to the goblins. Fairies are polite but condescending to Marianne. Goblins get annoyed at the fairies being rude to their Queen - the group was chosen by Bog half because they'd be useful in a fight, half because they happen to genuinely like Marianne by this point. Marianne doesn't notice the fairies being condescending to her but she does notice them being rude to her goblins. Most fairies end up acting like catty brats.

· At least one fairy accuses Marianne of having gone native to the forest. She does not deny it. At least one council member warns (threatens) her that her actions are risking her inheritance of the Fields. Bog overhears the threat, but not Marianne's response of "Dawn would be a good queen (and Sunny, you know, her elf fiancée? Would be king. Won't you enjoy that, you wrinkled old prune?)"

· The trial at Stone Reach is probably immediately after the party, so the goblins ride their dragonflies there and the fairies fly. Marianne spends the entire flight snubbing Dagda who probably spent the entire fairy party trying to ask her who she wants to take over the day-to-day ruling nonsense so she can come home, and also would she please reconsider any of these charming fairy bachelors (who were rude to her goblins so not just no, hell no.)

· (She might be a little a lot protective of the goblins, now. She really likes them and their way of life and sure it's different from what she's used to, but that's hardly a bad thing. Also, Bog. Who has nothing to do with her "hell no" about the fairy bachelors, of course.)

· The trial. Evidence is presented, including Roland cheating on Marianne and how often, her breaking up with him, all because it goes into his motivation for wanting a love potion. (Someone gets to observe if Roland had just kept it in his pants for one more day, he'd have been married and thus the next king... up until Marianne caught him cheating and killed him, anyways.)

· The Stone Reach provides it's judgement of Roland to be treason to the Fair Fields (knowingly and deliberately taking actions that led to the war) and conspiracy to act against the Dark Forest. Roland is sentenced to death.

· Plum is judged to not have committed treason by reason of mental instability. She is to stay at the reach until she is judged sane. Also she is to not make any more love potions, because the spell-masters at the Reach believe creating love potions did not help with the mental stability. (No, that's probably not an excuse to make her stop, they're from the Reach. They certainly wouldn't lie. Tell only part of the truth, sure, but out-and-out lie? Never.)

· Marianne does not stick around for Roland's execution, but instead leaves as soon as she can, taking the goblins with her. She remains distant to everyone - having her blindness to Roland's true character and the many times he cheated on her revealed to everyone hurt - but especially avoids Bog. She does her duties, but without her usual enthusiasm, and doesn't spar.

· Bog ends up confronting Marianne in her bedroom. They fight, both verbal and physical, though not much of the later. Marianne ends up threatening to send Bog to live in the fields if he can't keep his nose out of her business. He retreats after that.

· (I mentioned slow burn, right? Also, threat to the trust they've built up to this point, along with their friendship.)

· Bog goes around snarling at everyone, Marianne is upset with everyone, and it's just in time for the first snow to hit.

· Griselda tries to talk to Bog and gets nowhere, so she ends up confronting Marianne. "I'm a mother and you should fear love me" works where nothing else did, and Marianne ends up confessing about the fight and how bad she's felt since defeating Bog, and taking away his kingdom - and just everything, really. Up to and including how she has 'no right' to feel as she does for Bog, ect.

· Griselda does manage to direct Marianne to talk to Bog. Marianne does, and apologises for what she said, confirms that she'd never ask him to move to the fields, never mind order him there, and that she relies on him more than anyone, ect. Finishes by saying he's her best friend - and apart from Dawn, kind of her only one, really.

· This is the moment Bog falls head over heels out of friendship and into love. He's sunk.

· All the pining happens from this point on. Sparring resumes, the duo begin to notice (and admit) their physical attraction to each other, and their conversations become awkward (but so exhilarating). They have more personal conversations, including Marianne eventually discussing how she felt about Roland, how she felt about being cheated on, ect.

· (Marianne does say, in retrospect, she loved the idea of Roland more than the person, and her upset was as much for losing that 'idea' of him as being cheated on. Also, in hindsight, not that Marianne tells Bog this, but she didn't feel much for Roland, physically. He was too pretty to lust over, or something. She just figured she'd get the physical attraction once they were married.)

· (Of course, Marianne is comparing her memories of how she felt about Roland to how she feels about Bog now, and she is noticing Bog physically a whole lot. Primarily his eyes, hands, wings, that scar high up on his thigh, and how careful he is with his strength. She maybe wants to wreck his self control, which is not something good fairy girls are supposed to want.)

· (Bog, meanwhile, really wants to know what Marianne's hair feels like, and really likes her eyes, and her wings, and her neck keeps catching his attention, and she's so tiny but she's so strong and it's really impressive how she can just, like, go toe to toe with him and even overpower him at times. It gives him fluttery feelings inside.)

· With winter in place, Bog starts taking Marianne out on trips in the forest. Short trips because it's cold, but he gets the chance to show her places he feels are the most beautiful - things like waterfalls where the plants and rocks are coated in ice from the constant spray, or the glow cave, flying through the thorn bushes only this time it's daytime and they look like they're carved from crystal because there's just so much frost everywhere, ect.

· Mutual pining continues. The goblin midwinter ceremony happens - no set details right now, but probably something about staying up all night until dawn, dinner being 'starvation food' (like super-thin soups and salads made out of things you'd only eat if you had no other choice), putting all the fires out and lighting candles, then lighting the fires from the candles, ect. Marianne does the fairy tradition of giving gifts - those closest to her get personal gifts, everyone else gets generic gifts like sweats (or socks - goblins love the idea of socks). She ends up giving Bog a traditional engagement gift - possibly a wire and gemstone bracelet?

· During the first council meeting of the new year, the Elders of the Forest make preliminary noises about potential heirs and merging new Royal blood with the old. (They have finally decided how to handle Bog being married to Marianne.) Marianne finally discovers she and Bog are considered married. The goblins finally discover she had no freaking clue. The goblins are stunned. Bog's heartbroken, because of course there was no chance, Marianne's reaction just proves that out.

· (Bog assumed, his feelings for Marianne aside, she was just making the best of their marriage and doesn't feel anything more than friendship for him. He figures it's a one-sided situation again, only worse, because a) no way he'd ever consider using a love potion again and b) they're married.)

· (Marianne is heartbroken, as she figures this means Bog was just making the best of a bad situation and maybe they are friends, but how the hell can he love her? Not only did she steal his throne but she told him they were married the first day he was barely mobile... ect.)

· More pining! Not helped by the goblin Elders, who are pushing for a proper marriage that both sides know is a marriage.

· Griselda is just so done with everything, from the Elders to the mutually pining idiots giving each other sad, longing looks over the breakfast dishes (and not realizing the person they're sighing over is sighing over them right back. They're sitting right next to each other, how are they this dense?!) She sends messages to Dawn explaining EVERYTHING, especially about the mutually pining idiots. (Griselda may or may not have spent multiple hours with each idiot bemoaning their sad and sorry fate. At least Marianne's honest about wanting to shove Bog against a wall and oh yeah you're his mother, sorry...)

· Dawn sends a letter back saying she won't be much help until the snows help in spring, but be encouraging (and blunt) with the idiots.

· Griselda sets up the romantic dinner from the movie, only the song is "kiss the girl" from The Little Mermaid. The idiotic and pining duo get angry, tear up the decorations, and go off to spar (and pine.)

· After they spar, they go outside to stargaze a little. They grouse about the Elders and the romantic dinner (blaming the Elders, not Griselda). Someone slips - probably Bog - and probably along the lines of "after all, I know you wouldn't - well, I'm me (gestures at self) and you can do better."

· Whoever is self-deprecating is reassured and the initial confessions of feelings happens. They retreat to Marianne's private office to talk in the warm. Further confessions of feelings happens. Kissing happens. Someone (probably Bog) gets shoved against a wall and ravished. There is no complaining.

· Their relationship escalates quickly (probably same day, TBH) to sharing a bed, but no sex. They do end up with lots of heavy petting every night as they figure out what feels good, what doesn't, ect. Marianne discovers Bog's spine thing, Bog discovers Marianne's thing for necks (both hers and his - she's equally enthusiastic having her neck kissed (and nipped) as she is doing the kissing (and nipping) as well as Marianne's ear thing.

· They try to keep it secret from Griselda and the Elders. They are not subtle and they fool no one. The Elders, however, have to shut up about it because Marianne has a sword and tells them what she'll do with it if they don't move on to the next subject, NOW.

· Griselda sends Dawn an update with no reply, but isn't surprised.

· Marianne and Bog end up with smut. Bog is quite happy to be shoved around and Marianne is quite happy do shove him around. They take turns turning each other to mush. Marriage proposal once they're able to do words again afterwards.

· Close out with a wedding under the cut primroses, some combination of goblin and fairy traditions. (Okay, more fairy traditions than not, because fairies actually need a ceremony to be married and goblins don't, but details.)

#Strange Magic #fanfic #a wild plot appears #slow burn #misunderstandings

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fauzhee10069 · 5 years ago

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Caato Higashikata, 34 chapters (8 volumes) MIA and still overhyped

Warning: this post was written when chapter 96 was the latest chapter of JoJolion and edited when chapter 98 got updated, therefore I’m not responsible for the new chapters after ch-98 that potentially be contradicting with this post.

Yeah, there are still many people who believe that she will be the big villain, despite her total absence in 34 chapters (8 volumes) of JJL!! (though she was occasionally mentioned).

I did list some common reasons of how she could be the main villain (see the related post) & put my thought about those, but there is something I had missed, thanks for the discussion with one of the Caatofags. Here is the argument:

About Caato’s past:

It is a backstory for both of them, but when you look at it, it is moreso for Cato. Look at how the chapter is framed and how each character is used. The chapter starts with Tsurugi explaining the dilemma of Higashikata parents and Cato being worried about Jobin, the middle is about Cato healing Jobin by sacrificing the kid, and it ends by focusing on Cato going to jail. You bring up FV's childhood, but 1. I think Diego's backstory is a might have been a better parallel for the point you were trying to make and 2. In that story, the focus is clearly on FV.

But then we look it again, Diego and Valentine didn’t share the same backstory, unlike Jobin and Caato. Sure, obviously it is because the later are family (and I do like that flashback), but it’s still more about the introduction of Jobin’s character development, so that we know him even further even when we already familiar with him. And yeah, both Diego and Valentine’s flashbacks were childhood flashback, like Jobin’s… not the motherhood flashback of Caato.

In this chapter, the focus is almost always on Cato. You bring up Jobin appearing more, but you should be looking at how he is used instead. Whenever Cato is onscreen, she is the one who gets the most focus, with Jobin being used as Cato's motivator. When Jobin takes the focus, it is always to bring focus back onto Cato. He almost kills the bully, causing Cato to act.

The character development of how Jobin is ambitious and justifies any means… is because of this flashback. Yeah, there is also a little character development of Caato as the mom who desperately wanted to save her son, yet she hesitated in the way in which she had to sacrifice herself so when the opportunity came without having sacrificing her own life… she did it… immediately. It’s just by the name of mother’s love.

He is strangely healthy, causing Norisuke to look to Cato.

Norisuke IV’s suspicion of why Jobin healed without anyone in the family dying and the suspicion was confirmed when she was busted by the police.

Speaking of which, even the art supports this by heavily focusing on Cato.

Yeah, this is Caato:

And this is Jobin:

Same screentone btw.

And sorry, that’s the way the fanatic fan would answer.

While this is definitely an important moment for Jobin, he is a passive entity for most of it, with Cato being used to frame and end it, commit the defining action, and receive much of the focus.

Okay, if that is your answer after you compared Jobin’s backstory with Diego's one, then you may say that in Diego's backstory, it’s actually about his mom too (which a shame that she wasn’t named), of what had happened to her and what was her action & reaction, because his mom is the MVP who did most of the action. Look at her (Diego's mom’s) panel, she got some big panels & focus too (though I’m not showing that here, just look at the chapter by yourself).

SBR chapter 30: Scary Monsters - Part 3

Even though the story mostly focused on his mom, the backstory still belongs to Diego. You can say that both little Jobin and Diego were observing their moms’ actions then got inspired, that’s why Jobin becomes ambitious (climbing higher) and justifies any means and Diego maintains his pride and will not let anyone look down on him.

I still see that the flashback for Caato was more to resolve the mystery of her character (of why she was in prison). I hope she gets more flashback if she really has to be the MV, perhaps something outside her identity as the Higashikata ex-matriarch, her childhood perhaps, what was her birth family like or why she got married to the Higashikata, what was her expectation and how she reacted when she discover the hereditary rock disease, did she already know prior to the marriage? Whatever because I still more familiar with Jobin than her.

Clashing motivation with Josuke:

Also, you bring up JJL being about Josuke wanting to heal Holly, but there is a deeper motivation to him. Josuke's goal, at its core, is about wanting to regain the life he lost and find a family. Healing Holly is how he will get there, but taking back his life and finding people to care about him is the heart of his character and his goal. You know who else shares that goal? Not Jobin, he already has all of that. It's Cato, a woman who had her life taken from her and wants what she has lost. But unlike Josuke, she feels it is owed to her, and does not seem to want to earn it, but to take it. Cato works as a much better foil for Josuke than Jobin, who is moreso a foil to Norisuke, because she is like a dark reflection of his goal, which is what all JoJo villains are to their respective JoJo.

When Josuke's identity discovery would make a good parallel with Caato's identity recovery, that still wouldn't make a direct confrontation compared to "saving my mom” (Josuke) and saving my son (Jobin)", because the later requires the same objective to fulfill it (The New Locacaca fruit) and whoever obtains it first could be the winner, thus confrontation would likely happen. Then again, when Josuke's other goal is to discover his identity, didn't he already get that and accept it? Yet last time Caato declared what she really wants (fortune & rights), she doesn't even take a single action yet. Her action & her further background is still in the dark. There are already Josuke & Jobin's clash moments and the closest Caato clashed with Josuke is when she called him freeloader (LOL).

I’m aware that JoJo fan nowadays are too obsessed on the “parallel thingy”, whereas the more important aspect in story-writing (that we should give more attention to) is when the two events/actions collide (regardless of the reasons of why they happened) and makes a great conflict or an impactful event.

I guess with that kind of answer, you prefer anything with deep meaning to structural and impactful events.

I think at this point it's hard to tell what she will do, but there is a lot there that points to her being main villain material. The only thing working against he is the fact that she is barely around, but she'll have to pop up again soon.

At least you admit that she is still lack in action, then keep dreaming LOL (joking). While it becomes a mystery of why Caato is still MIA (missing in action), there is still a bigger mystery of why Kyo (as Holy’s daughter) is still MIA as well. In fact, I think that Kyo should get a greater priority to have any action rather than Caato, due to their relationship with their respective family. There is still zero interaction between Caato and Tsurugi compared to Kyo who clearly showed that she cares about her mother. Why doesn’t she (Kyo) show up at the hospital? Visit Holy? Meet Josuke? Then (perhaps) help him? Where the hell is she right now? We still know nothing about the relationship between Caato and Tsurugi, especially of what Caato thinks about her sickly grandson, in contrast to Kyo’s feeling about her mom, Holy.

Caato is not completely forgotten (or gone... like Kyo), I’m aware. She did get mention sometimes between her last appearance to chapter 98. However, none of the mentions were about her current action or her whereabouts, but rather her as the “cause and reason” (Jobin’s questionable action that is for the good cause he said was based on like she did in the past, the bully of Tsurugi due to Caato’s murderer background and Maako’s interest on that past rumor), all of them are in the past and tied to the same one event: The Backstory of Mother & Child chapter). Although this can still be counted as foreshadowing for Caato to be the big villain, that claim is still weak by the lack of her current action during this climax. Unless if there will be another (one) arc after this Dangerous Pursuit with The Head Doctor and the race for the ultimate Locacaca, where Caato will shine, but I doubt it because JoJolion had already surpassed Steel Ball Run in the chapter length. I am sure we are heading towards the end of JoJolion right now.

Still, my best bet is that Caato will be Jobin's Yoshihiro in a much better way.

Now, this is my hypothetical scenario of how Caato was supposed to be set up as the original ally (or mastermind… whatever) who collaborated with Damo’s group:

Jobin’s involvement with Damo’s group confirmed:

JJL chapter 63: Dolomite's Blue Lagoon - Part 5

The revelation of Jobin as merely a gofer (right after his childhood backstory):

JJL chapter 64: Mother and Child

But then, Dolomite hesitated to say more like… “I know nothing more, in fact I feel safe if I just let myself to be kept in the dark.” So, the real player he meant must be more dangerous than Jobin.

JJL chapter 64: Mother and Child

“This isn’t about Jobin anymore” said Dolomite, “This is about someone more dangerous than him, which actually led to his mom, Caato” said any Caatofags.

Nah, but this weird though, why would Dolomite hesitated (and was afraid) to sell Caato’s name if he felt safe enough to sell Jobin’s name which literally her son. Why would he let Josuke know about Jobin (which might cause Josuke potentially confront him)? Will Caato sacrifice her own son after just a few pages flashback ago she literally saved his life? I’m sure had Caato heard that Dolomite was about to selling Jobin’s name, she would immediately prevent it by killing Dolomite on the spot.

Also, this chapter should be a great timing to reveal her as the true associate of Damo’s group, just after her backstory had just been told, a great momentum to start set up Caato as the big villain like what Caatofags suggest.

The “one group of people” Dolomite was talking just after he said that Jobin was not a real threat, do you seriously believe that the group is the one that is being led by his mommy (Caato)? Nah, I’m sure he was talking about “The Locacaca Organization” led by The Head Doctor. Though of course Caatofags still theorize that HD (and Tooru sometimes) is either part of her disguise or her decoy. Silly...

The introduction of The Head Doctor (mentioned only) after the investigation of the connection with mysterious ambulance during Ozon Baby’s Pressure arc (chapter 76):

JJL chapter 83: The New Locacaca

The Head Doctor’s introduction was 19 chapters (5 volumes) after Dolomite’s confession and 7 chapters (3 volumes) after the ambulance scene, still in a reasonable interval to introduce the big villain. Then after that, the Dangerous Pursuit arc featuring The Head Doctor began.

So much had already happened, but you can’t deny that there is not a single action yet from Caato between those events.

I’m not saying that Caato can’t be… and won’t be the main villain, NO! It is still possible. However, the claim to say that she definitely will be the main villain is too early with pretty weak proofs to back it up (and then they make theory… theory… and theories with revolves around “parallel” shits). What Caatofags got so far is still mainly just clues which are still unconfirmed. While they think that her backstory & personality (then motivation… they say) are legit, her actual action tied to the current climax event is still nonexistent.

This worries me even more of how fanatic Caato’s supporters are. Already gone for 32 chapters (8 volumes), they’re keep saying that she will be The Main Villain, rather than focus on talking about Jobin and The Head Doctor for a while, who currently are very active players or maybe even Caato’s possible action & her role placement. They are only keep saying that “Caato will show up and be the big player, Ha Ha EPIC!” I can’t even imagine what will happen once a single panel of Caato appears in the upcoming chapter.

I hope I don’t end up hating Caato just because how annoying, loud, gullible and delusional her supporters are.

Sister post: Caato Higashikata, 36 chapters (9 volumes) MIA and still overhyped

Related post: JoJolion Cardspiracy: Caato & Damokan group

Related to:

Caato Higashikata, the case of a character getting overhyped

The legit hype Caatofags once had