#but I was plauged by the story the entire day so to bad for me

[apples-of-apples]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 剣と魔法と学園モノ | Ken to Mahou to Gakuen Mono | Class of Heroes (Video Games) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Celestian/Drake (Class of Heroes) Characters: Dwarf (Class of Heroes), Elf (Class of Heroes), Erdgeist (Class of Heroes), Halfling (Class of Heroes), Celestrian (Class of Heroes), Drake (Class of Heroes), Human (Class of Heroes)

@fragmentofmemories look what you’ve done

[system-of-alya-vore-blog]

You never figured this was gonna be a thing, you assumed once those gates closed, the technology of your time would never reach what was needed for him to consider it appropriate to return. Yet here you are, your catboyfriend and you cuddling up together long past your adverturing days atleast for now. You're both always sure to keep your skills honed incase one of you needs to defend the other or yourselves, generally you've prefered the art of being a dragoon to his bowmanship, it's complimented eachother in a way. He can handle from afar what you cannot reach, and if things get up close and personal you're sure to be at his side to make sure he's safe. But that isn't what this story is about, it's about how you're about to end up in his gut as a replacement for your own bed, how often this will be is determined by tonight.

G'raha looked at you as your head lie against his belly. "So are you sure you want to do this, Y/N? I get I won't digest you and I can just spit you back out if you start panicing but still I don't want to hurt you..." You look up at him, he looks nervous but also excited, a look you're familiar with after all of what you've done together. "I'm positive, love. It'll just be for one night, and if it's too much for you, you can let me out at any time and we don't have to do this or ever talk about it again. Promise." "Alright... are you ready?" You give the boy one of your stoic smiling nods.

The miqo'te hands you a flask of a teal blue fluid, a potion he commissioned specifically for this moment, as otherwise his large cat teeth would risk snagging on your clothes and tearing it to shreds, or possibly even you if you two weren't careful. "It should last long enough for you to sleep inside, and if it doesn't well, we can find out how to fix that... somehow." G'raha looks once more at the flask before handing it to you, what if you grow back to full size inside of him? How will he get you out? Will he be able to? All these questions plauged his mind as his ears fold back, you two were told it was meant to last 15 hours and worst case scenerio only 10. You both had friends who knew the kind of magic to grow you back once you're out if needs be. "Is everything alright?" you ask to make sure he's still willing to go through with this, and isn't forcing himself to do it just for you. His ears perk back up as he looks back at your face, the sight of you giving him the confidence he needs because after all if you aren't worried he has no reason to be either. "What? Oh, right sorry, yeah everything is fine." He says with his ears perking right back up before handing you the potion. "You don't need to drin-" he's interrupted by you already downing the entire thing in your excitement, your body begins to feel tingly as you slowly start to shrink, you were already one of the shortest of most people you'd come across but before you know it you're shorter than a lalafell. In what felt like not even time to blink you were small enough for G'raha's fingers look like towers that could pierce the heavens, and his bellybutton a bottomless pit deeper than the oceans. "I assume that means you're ready then. Always one to lead the charge, befitting someone ready to lie down their own life for strangers you've never even seen." G'raha lifts you up, his hands seeming like sky high islands, or airships able to hold all of the scions in them. "You're so cute when you're tiny like this."

G'raha opened his mouth for you to see into, looking like a cave befit for even the greatest of dragons his breath warms the air around you. You can't help but admire his teeth, they're even prettier at this size, and his tongue looking like it's more ready to taste you than G'raha is. He brings his hands up to his mouth. "Just climb in whenever you're ready." He whispered it but even then his voice was booming, catching you off guard but not in a bad way. You place your hands on his lips, warm as ever, you begin to make your way inside. You slightly slip as you try to climb. He catches you, you shortly after are finally able make your way into his mouth and rest atop his tongue that's now as big as you are. He closes his mouth and his tongue begins to make sure to taste every bit of you, to see if your personality matched how you tasted (it did). For someone so nervous just moments ago he seems to be more than willing to enjoy it, you lie down facing his throat to signal to him that you're ready.

He swallows, and you begin to slowly make your way down. He feels the bulge you make in his throat with his finger sliding down before stopping, he then swallows once more and poof, you dissappear near his chest. Now making your way to his belly you feel the vibrations of his steady heartbeat, and can hear the air entering and leaving his lungs. If you listen close enough you can even hear the impatient rumbles of his belly, awaiting it's newest occupant. "You... you taste really good, and... you feel even better going down." His voice still seems a bit nervous; the end of his sentence also marks the end of your journey as you plop into his belly. Slightly contracting every now and then before the roof is met with a fwomp from the outside, knocking you on your ass. G'raha is resting his hand on his belly. "I can feel you in there, and sorry for knocking you over, but I was surprised and assumed I wouldn't know you were inside.... thank you for this. I know I sound nervous but I'm really enjoying it." You lie down and yawn stretching and feeling the moist walls of G'raha's stomach, your daring new adventure into your boyfriend's gut has tired you out.

You finally break the silence on your end. "You're welcome, it feels really nice inside you too. I think I'm gonna sleep now, though. Goodnight, I love you." G'raha barely hears you resulting in him taking a bit to respond. "You're welcome, and.. I love you too. Maybe we can do this some more?" You think for a bit, he didn't seem nervous but it's as if it was transfered to you however you refuse to let him know that, you don't want him to start panicing and fling you around like a ragdoll. Will you make it back out? Will G'raha wake up soon enough to let you out before you regrow? Will you wake up soon enough? All of these questions are racing in your mind but it's too late now to worry, best enjoy this moment between you two.

"Yeah... definitially." You fall asleep shortly after to the sounds of his body surrounding you, like a siren's song you just can't resist.

[popculturebuffet]

The Proud Family: Seven Days of Kwanzaa Review (Commission For Weirdkev27)

Happy Kwanzaa all you happy people! Yeah the holiday celebrations aren't done JUST yet as we have one more for you, as it's Kwanza time. Now some of you may be asking…

And i'ts simple: it's an african american holiday created by Maulana Karenga as a way to give the black community an alternative to christmas that wasn't as entrenched in white tradition, though eventually he relaxed things to allow one to celebrate both, the spirit of it, celebrating black culture and history, has remained.

Like Hannukah Kwanzaa hasn't gottne nearly as many specials as Christmas, but it makes what's there stand out all the more. It also makes this episode a bit of a disapointment. See it does show off the holiday well, so even white dumbasses like me can undrestand it. The problem is the rest of the story well….

Yeah while the special does seem to represent Kwanzaa well, as far as I can tell, like with Festival of LIghts i'm an outsider looking in and I know it and am trying my best to be respectful and not act like I thoughly know a holiday that I don't participate in and is very important to a community I don't know all that well, everything else.. isn't very good. It also has one of the most out of nowhere batshit endings i've seen in a long time. Like ti's somehwat set up but man oh man does this one take a weird swerve. So let's look at all this shall we.

The episode follows the Prouds on a typical Christmas where they do the tried and true plot device of shopping on Christmas Eve when hardly anyone does that.. they all do it the days before. What changes though is our proud family runs into a homeless family: Joseph< Margaret and Stephanie. And the show pulled out all the stops as despite being only 11 episodes in, they got Samuel L. Jackson, Vivica A Fox and Raven-Simone, all big names at the time and now, with Raven in paticualr being heavily pushed by the network. I fondly remember her cover of grazing in the grass from the LIon King 1 and 1/2 which I somehow didn't get around to mentoning during my review of that trainwreck earlier this year.

All talented people who naturally do wonderfully. Trudy tries to give to them, while Oscar is a dick about it, assuming jospeh trying to help him with a dropped package is just the man trying to get at ip, making a crack about how we'll be homeless after all these gift, and generally trying to be unpleasant as possible.

I get what the episode is trying to do: They built oscar into a strawman , but one you see all the time: the kind of dickhead who assumes being homeless is a choice, that the homeless are lazy, and that homeless are a plauge to be gotten rid of instead of people who may of lost jobs, not be able to afford housing, or were thrown out by their families for being LBGTQ+, having a mental illness or any number of understandable reasons. It's why I can't fault the episode for wanting to tackle the subject nor using Oscar as the bad guy as with his knee jerk reactions to most things, quick temper and generally douchsiness, it's not a stretch to say this character dosen't respect the homeless. It's why having him be bigoted towards homosexuals in Louder and Prouder also wasn't a huge shock, as Oscar easily strikes me as the kind of guy who while he can be convinced to not be a dickhead about something that really shodun't be that hard to put yoru head around like Gay people have a right ot exist or homeless people need love and empathy not to be shamed for something that's not remotely their fault, and given both things are STILL stuff people need convincing on in 2022, it works. I admire the team for creating an everyman who can be an unlikeable dick one minute and entirely sympathetic the next, and thus is fairly maliable for stories.. while still being a very distinct and hilarious character. You woudln't mistake oscar proud for anyone else but he has many traits both good and bad of a man of his time… and sadly often of a man now.

The problem is they lean on it a bit too hard as they have a scene of him PUTTING A DOLLAR ON A STRING AND YANKING IT FORM CHARITIES. I'm all for cartoony shenanigans, it's one of the things this show really does best, but this stretches it a bit too far. Having Oscar just.. glefully not give to charity is too low even for him. Him being homophobic is defintely lower than this, but at least he gets called out on it by more than one person and got constantly humaited for it till his eventgual ephinay. Here he just gets mildly called out by penny and.. gives to charity later. it dosen't change the fact he was this bad. Oh and he gets a bit muddy and mistaken for homeless. BECAUSE IT'S SO BAD TO GET MISTKAEN FOR HOMELESS WHEN YOUR NOT HOMELESS AND SUCH AH IGH CRIME A YUK YUK YUK.

While this episode TRIES to be empathetic to the homeless it stumbles pretty bad in how it treats them. See there ar epeople who choose not to have a home, who live inc ampers or what have you and want to live the van or rv life. And tha'ts fine: if i't sfinacially sound for you or just th eoption you have, nothing worng with that. The film Nomadland outlines this wohle life style lovingly while not skimping on it's hardships or what would make people choose this. I highly recommend it, true masterpiece.

The problem is the episode comes off really confused as a result as it conflates the kind of people you see on the street begging just to survivie.. with someone who for their own reasons choose. The episode conflates being homeless with some higher calling, as if it's better than having possesions or being chained to the corprations that love our lives. And i'mnot saying living in an rv by choice or what have you isn't. I'm throughly aware captalisim is throughly broken. Wanting to break from it for something diffrent isn't a shame.

The shame.. is assuming all people living on the streets are doing so voluntarily. I dont' think that was the writers intent, but it's the way the episode comes off. The Angel Adults come off very preachy, with Joseph's response to getting christmas gifts, a well meaning gesture by trudy to make sure they too can celebrate by saying he isn't part of the corprations "end of the year selling scheme". or something to that effect. Basically

See it's one thing to me to critcize the captatlist nature of america: the system is often broken, we do often fill our needs with stuff, and we do often put too much importance on having stuff. I agree with it that far. But shaming someone for trying to give you a gift or invite you into their home comes off gross. Am I saying the Prouds are on some higher plane devoid of critcisim of their lifestyles because they were nice enough (or rather everyone but oscar were nice enough), to invite some people needing a warm meal into their home? Fuck no. While what Trudy and Penny are doing is noble, and Oscar is a butt for not going along with it, they can still be flawed> Trudy herself is pretty awful this episode: She gets oscar a nice watch, which itself isn't bad, she said they weren't doing gifts but does something nice fo rhim anyway.. but her expecting a gift RIGHT AFTER both telling oscar they didn't have to and having himn bring that up is shitty. Now granted him trying to cover with a fruit cake the Angels just gave him IN FRONT OF HER was bad and her trying to give his watch to joseph was fair enough as a result, but it's still shitty to give a gift just to expect someone to give it to you in return. That's .. not what christmas is about. I gave kev a gift soley beacuse he's a good friend, and he gave me one back soley to be nice and in the spirit of things. I got Digimon Cookie Cutters because Kev was being enerous and decided to return the sentiment, not because I was expecting him to give me anything. That's how Christmas should work. It's in the good spirit to return a gift with a gift, but it's not why you do it.

The problem is Joesph criticizes their whole middle class life style and won't shut up about it for a chunk of the episode: he outright says the corprate scheme thign while his wife and daughter understandably feel a tad akward not celebrating the holiday, but are polite about it. It's fine to crticize the worse aspects of christmas, MANY a work has crictized how commerical it is all the way back to charlie brown over 40 years ago. But to do so to someone whose welcomed you into their home for the nobelest of reasons, made sure you got a nice gift, and has been NOTHIGN but kind to you isn't right. He coudl've just said "i'm sorry we don't celebrate christmas, but we aprpicate the gesture" There, done. He also does needle oscar later about his materliasim.. but at least there he has what SEEMS to be the high ground and the poitn he makes is a very good one for any holiday: that the family you have is yoru true home, not the stuff.

It also helsp that only oscar.. acts matierlizstic. When Martha does the same to trudy, saying they got tired of captalistic society in so many words, Trudy has again DONE nothing. When Jospeh talks abotu the proceeses turkey goes through, NO ONE had done anything. I get ther'es a lot to critcisie, and i'm not of the shut up and take it school of thought myself.. but when no one is actively being a dick about these topics, maybe just.. let it go. I get not backing down with politics, as some issues like trans rights, gay rights, and black lives mattering.. are all things that shouldn't be talked down and if someone says somnething stupid about them, I get fighting for it. Because it's not a two sided issue at all. Here though.. I coudl see the prouds getting a modified turkey because it's what they coudl find or afford or doing christmas because they enjoy the spirit of giving and family instead of JUST for the shit they get. Someone can be wrong and it be more complicated than that… having the Angels protrayed as entirely right just feels.. off. They feel smug. The end reveal, that in a way they AREN'T homeless, doesn't help that but we'll get to it. It feels like a very tonedeaf privlaged way to write a homeless person: not as a person but some crticising morallly righteous pillar.

The next part does work better, as they come back the next day to celebrate Kwanzaa.. by just.. manefesting into the house.

SO we get a nice education on Kwanzaa, how i'ts more abotu the spirit of family and community, how it's celebrated, and going over the 7 nights, mostly through montage. And this is where the episode honestly shines: Kwanzaa is underrepsrented and not knowing it well myself it was nice to learn what each nigh twas about. it's only real flaw.. is that it's too little of the episode. The setup for this could've been done much faster. I do say a scene with Penny's friends being standoffish with her new friend for being homeless, and her admitting she's fine with it and that her parents are so close their her best friends and she likes reading, is nice: ther'es no stigma for her nor is she a lesson for them to learn, as NONE of those entitled shits learn it. She's just how she is and if they dont' accept it it's on them.

But otherwise.. it w oudl've been nicer to have more of the 7 nights and to show oscar's character growth more convincingly as by the end he likes them. This special.. really needed to be an hour or at least be more about this. Instead they tack on christmas just to get both holidays out of the way and tack on oscar being a douche so he can learn a lesson I guess> the only bit they coudln't of cut out is bobby. Seeing him come down the chimeny was a late christmas present as I had no idea he was in this one. Any episode with Bobby is a good time, and the fact he knows Kwanzaa the best out of the prouds made me smile.

But the spirit of family and community, of them singing songs, giving to charity, just basking in each others togetherness.. that really moved me and made me want to learn more about the holiday. It's a well constructed beautiful holiday not based on getting, but on simply togetherness and ones roots and I admire it for that. I just wish the episode was more about celebrating that and less about a half assed homelesness aseop that woudl've been better served not being shoved into this episode.

The episode also would've worked better.. if the ending wasn't so baffling. Felix returns early needing a forman and since Joesph worked in construction Oscar goes lookign for him.. only for the shelter lady to have no recelction of them visting. The prouds are happy for what the Angels brought them.. only to return home to find their fruitcake has turned into a cool tehcncolor tree.. and the angels are above it, apparenlty being spirits or something having come to teach them about kwanzaa before returning to I guess.. heaven?

This is easily the most baffling ending to a work i've reviewed.. and keep in mind i've reviewed "Scrooge buys an island and pays actors just to teach louie a lesson". The threshold is pretty vast but "Kwanzaa angels" kinda tops it. Not only does it DEMOLISH the homelessness aseop, as they arne't homeless and don't seem to be the ghosts of a homeless family, but it makes all the "their world is better " posteruting that was already packed with unforunate impilcations even worse. Their just beign condescnding.. for no reason. Joesph is a dick because he's an angel. He dosen't have to actually life without food or running water and thus really can't back up his claims. It's heaven. They've got all you can eat and free every media you can imagine and rideable giant pigs. You can't critcize someone for living in a captalist society when you live in heaven, where captalism is dead and you can have whatever you want and party with Leslie Jordan , Prince, David BOwie, Ed Asner , Betty White, Jesus himself…

This episode meant well.. but sometimes meaning well only gets you so far in my good graces. This episode woudl've been better off as one episode about homelessness and another about Kwanzaa angels, which is a sentence I was indeed paid to write but really wish hadn't happened. I really wish this was a better episode, this holiday deserves better and so does the proud family. Maybe they can try again in a future season of Louder and Prouder. one.. can certainly hope.

[doopy-n-loopy]

Yandere prompt: Yan!Yamato/Tenzō x reader

This story is related to my Yamato headcannons, so the reader is a female medic nin

// Yandere themes, toxic relationship, mentions of violence

(key: y/n = your name)

"It's for your saftey, you'll see"

Yamato said from across the dark room he kept you in. Your entire body was shaking due to exahaustion and your pants filled the air. It has been the second time you've tried to escape, it's surprising that you we're even able to get out of your room by yourself. Even with all the effort put in, all the sweat shed from your skin, it all went to waste as you were curled up below Yamato, looking like a sick dog while he seemed unfazed. As if he wasn't just chasing you from across the forest.

Earlier that day...

Yamato had left the house he made in the forest to keep you in, it was another normal day for him. Go out, do some minor task that should take about a few hours, and come back home so he can watch over you.

"I'm gonna be back in about 4-8 hours, I love you, y/n-chan "

He said to you sweetly. Showing that he wasn't expecting you to have made a makeshift lockpick out of the silverware he gave to you. He wasn't even sure how you got past the paper seals which would activate if you stepped over them.

Yet you did, you surprised the ninja once again with your stealth and agility. You would have gotten away, but the universe wasn't in your favor.

Unfortunately for you, Yamato overestimated the time it would take to finish the quick job and came back earlier than expected. He knew something wasn't right when he touched the door handle. Something just felt different.

As he walked into the house, he could definitely tell something was wrong. The doorhandle seemed to have been tampered with.

"y/n-chan, I'm home!"

He called out to you. No response but that was to be expected, you didn't like talking to him. He set his bag down onto the dinner table and walked over to the door leading to the basement where you were kept. He went to go take the key out of his pocket when the door shifted open slightly. Yamato stopped midway through rummaging in his pocket for the key and stared at the door for a second.

"y/n?"

He called out downstairs again, this time with a hint of worry in his voice. All he heard was his own voice slightly echoing off the stone walls. He then raced downstairs after no response and looked into your cage, stunned at the sight.

You were gone.

Yamato's disbelief was soon followed up by fear. He dashed upstairs, grabbing his ninja tools and running outside, not even caring to close the door behind him.

You've been running for a minute but to your bare feet it felt like days. Splinters and stones made its way under your fragile skin however you didn't have time to think about that. All you were thinking of was getting as far away from the house before your legs gave out. Hopefully finding a cave on your way.

Being a medic nin means you can't fight. So hiding and running are your best skills, you can hide your chakra and scent as well as use that chakra to propel yourself forward to stretch longer distances faster. Even though your stealthiness has been praised throughout Konoha, almost no one can hide the scent that comes from blood, and your foot was bleeding. That was your biggest mistake.

The sun was setting and you were running out of breath, stopping momentarily to catch yourself. As you leaned against a tree you felt the sharp pains in your foot that came from random things being lodged in there, and winced, immediately sitting down against the tree.

You began working on your foot to get the sticks and stones out as well as patch yourself up, while you were doing that, Yamato was getting closer and closer.

The brunet was running in the direction where you left clues behind- broken sticks, light footprints, sqaushed greenery, and the most noticable: blood. There wasn't much blood but enough to notice right away due to it reflecting the soft orange glow the setting sun had. His mind was racing with horrible thoughts

What if y/n was hurt?

What if someone took her?

Many "what if's" plauged the wood man's mind, he shook himself out of his thoughts after he slowed down for a moment to peer at the tracks, they seemed more recent, the blood wasn't completely dried up. He smiled to himself as he continued running, knowing he was gonna find you and be reuinited with you again.

You took out the last branch, feeling the pain ease a bit. You quickly put your hands over your feet and a soft green glow appeared between your soles and the palms of your hands, sighing in relief as you regenerated the missing skin cells on your feet. You didn't have much time to relax though as you felt your captor's chakra nearing you. You quickly finished up and ran off in the direction you were originally going. If you were wiser, you would have taken a turn.

Yamato came to the tree you sat on, kneeling down to pick up the bloodied wood chips that were just lodged in your feet. He threw them down and continued following your tracks, hoping that it wouldn't get too dark before he found you. It would be a pain to track someone like you in the dark.

You were getting extremely tired and your legs were burning, you reached a small cave and stopped running, deciding to just walk in it. You could still faintly feel Yamato's chakra from afar but you didn't care at this point. You needed to sleep.

Yamato arrived at a cave awhile after you, he looked around to make sure your footprints really ended there, and made his way inside.

There, you were peacefully asleep. You had collapsed shortly after you entered the cave. Yamato's footsteps echoed across the cave walls, waking you up immediately. You saw his shadow that was cast from the light outside sliding along the stone wall of the cave. Quickly scrambling to your feet, you ran deeper into the cave, deep enough to where you couldn't see. Hitting your face against something hard, you realized you've ran into a stalagmite and quickly ran behind it and crouched down, steadying your breathing.

You focused in on Yamato's footsteps, making sure to keep track of his position at all times.

"y/n-chan, I know you're here"

The wood ninja said in a slow, smooth voice which seemed a bit deranged. This made your heart beat faster in fear. As you constantly heard him call out your name, your heart basically jumped out of your chest, you've never been this afraid before.

Then, he went silent. Your heartbeat slowed down and you focused your hearing to try and find him, but to no avail. Until you heard a voice right beside you, which sent shivers down your spine.

"Found you"

The taller man whispered into your ear. You shrieked in terror and jumped about 7 feet back and continued to bavk up. All while Yamato was slowly approaching you.

"Y/N-chan, why did you run from me?"

Yamato said with the same slick tone of voice, continuing to approach you. You stood there in terror before you decided to turn and run away. You yelped as your hips and chest was grabbed by something, quickly restraining your movement. It was wooden beams coming out from Yamato's arms. The wooden beams then swung to the side, hitting you against the cave wall. Yamato walked towards you until his chest was pressed up against your back, the wood he used to restrain you receeded back into his arm and now he was pinning you using his body.

"y/n-chan, why? You know I love you, more than anyone in the world"

His creepy voice was now burned into your memory as his warm breath could be felt against your ear. You moaned uncomfortably but that only got a chuckle out of him.

"p-please"

You begged, choking back a sob. He responded by setting his chin onto your shoulder. You looked up towards the ceiling and clenched your teeth.

"'Please' what, my sapling?"

He responded, planting soft kisses onto the nape and side of your neck.

"l-leave me alone...why are you doing this to me?!?"

Yamato went silent at your response. He didn't like your answer. Before you could react, he quickly took ahold of your weists and turned you around so that you were facing him and he had your arms pinned above you against the cave wall. He had a sadistic look planted onto his face as he pinned you down, his smile was wide and his eyes were fixed on your face.

"Why, my sapling? Why do I do this?"

He said with psychopathic tone

"because we belong together... You and I were meant to be, you know that, my little sapling"

His right hand let go of one of your wrists but he quickly took ahold of it with his left hand so you don't struggle. He brushed the back of his fingers on your cheek. You began struggling about and yamato attenpted to hold you down, but you broke free and hit him with a chakra infused punch, sending him flying to the other side of the cave with a loud crash.

You booked it for your life once again only to be stopped in your tracks by the more experienced man with a wall of wood.

"tsk tsk tsk, that won't work on me"

He groaned, obviously winded from the punch. He watched as you slashed at the wall of wood he created, only strong enough to chip off a chunk at a time. It wouldn't be so bad if the wall didn't regenerate itself.

Yamato snickered at your struggling, it was cute to him. After some time you began to slow down until you dropped to your knees on the cold cave floor. Yamato walked over to you and kneeled down, taking in the sight before him.

"Let's go home, my little sapling"

Yamato said sweetly as he lifted your chin up with one of his fingers so he could look into your dead eyes. The wall lowered down into the ground until it disappeared entirely. Yamato picked you up bridal style and whispered sweet words into your ears. At home, the locks were strengthened and the security was much tighter than before. Yamato was now right on top of you, snuggling with you in your bed. You've gottwn accustomed to his affection. To the point where you now crave it. You no longer want to leave, he's successfully manipulated you into loving him.

Kinda short Ik, this is one of my first times doing a one shot so yeah haha

I'm gonna post a yandere prompt list soon, once I do you can suggest characters for me to write fanfic about

[fweasleyswhore]

Showing Fred Adventure Time

Warning: Fluffy Headcannon ahead 

a/n: so I have been rewatching this bc finals are gross but its also really easy watch and gives me that nostalgia so anywho I just thought about how cute this would be if I was watching it with Fred, also warnin probs a few typos 

he would get really divested in the story really fast

and get super confused when the next episode didn't pick up on the plot of the last one

so you just explain to him that sometimes they intertwine but its usually pretty loosely so you can pick up anywhere

it takes him a second to get why you would want to keep watching but he keeps it up

and he does it for the same reason as you, he falls in love with the characters

he really loves finn

will non stop do impressions

his favorite characters are marceline and finn

says he is finn and you are marceline

"fred im not evil"

"i didnt say you were evil, i said you were cool"

"ok whatever"

gets scared when princess bubblegum and marceline get together

like afraid your going to leave him

"are you going to leave me for a pink person?"

"what? no no, wait did you say pink person?"

"a person who wears pink, i can wear pink if you want."

"fred you're an idiot."

"what does that mean? no dont walk away what does that mean?"

likes to call george mrs treetrunks

on bad days you guys like to cuddle up and watch your favorite episodes

mrs weasley doesnt understand why you watch kids shows as you are both grown adults

she uses it as an excuse to push you to have kids

saying you will actually have an excuse to watch kids shows then

fred usually rolls his eyes, and begins to roll around on the floor

"i am just a wee lad, please mother turn on my shows and make me a sandwich with no crusts."

"y/n how do you put up with him?"

"i like the show too molly."

"you two, unbelievable."

for christmas you buy him finns hat and he loses his shit

his family is all like 🧍 'its a hat'

but fred puts it on and REFUSES to take it off for the rest of the holiday

you have to pry it off of him and force him to shower after a day or two

since then he loves to wear it, its his go to hat for winter, walking around diagon alley like a tall marshmallow man

he makes a replica sword and hangs it on your wall

for halloween you dress up as marceline because he likes her so much, and again he loses his shit

he was going to be finn but surprises you when he come out of your bedroom, decked in pink dress and a long pink wig

"you can't be serious."

"as. the. plauge."

george will not stop making fun of him

you and fred vow to get him just as hooked as you

and you are quite successful in that

and the next halloween you go as jake, fred goes as finn, and george goes as mrs treetrunks

eventually you infect the entire family except for mr and mrs weasley

you even get percy on it

and slowly move to other cartoon, regular show, steven universe, rick and morty, they eat it up

mr and mrs weasley love to make fun of you all

and they dont understand how their kids are all grown and still act like they did ten years ago

it makes them both happy and incredibly annoyed

but eventually they accept it, taking it a bigger chance to spend time with you

[definitely-maybe-not-a-cryptid]

Ok so I had a weird ass dream so have this odd story idea that came from it that I can't write because Im low key bad at writing. (Please someone who can write help me make this a book I can read? I think it would be so cool)

"filthy cat you leave my girl out of wonderlands mess!"

"Oh we would, but she is out best option available right now, we tried miss alice lidel first but it would seem being In wonderland broke the poor girls mind, she's locked away as they try to repair the damages. Though we do think we can convince her to help if we restore her memories of the night that she really lost her mind."

-idea is that wonderland had a list of people it sees as possible worthy canadets for their saviours from many a different universe's, [redacted] was once the chosen one. The top of the list until he escaped wonderland and grew up leaving it behind as no more than a nightmareish memory. Now they want to take one of his adopted daughters and he is having none of it. Forming a deal to save her sanity he aggres to return to wonderland to help them resolve their current issues. Along the way he meets others who wonderland has destroyed such as one miss alice lidel, who has returned to help wonderland in order to try restore her memory of the night her family was murdered. (Follow the plot of madness returns) and several other children who were unfortunate enough to fall into wonderlanda clutches. He helps them along the way to the best of his abilities and even helps a few newer 'recruits' escape before it is to late for them.

-ita like a mix of alice in wonderland and coraline, the cheshire cat can travel from world to world to entrap the children but ultima there is a main driving force which tries to hook them from wonderland, coraline was one of the kids who escaped, other mother was originally a recruiter for wonderland much like the white queen but turned to the queen of hearts side once wonderlanda plauge broke her mind and instead she turned to trapping the children and breaking their minds or stealing their souls and spiriting them away from their worlds.

-other victims include the lost boys of neverland, peter pan who similarly to other mother started off trying to help them and resorted to just spiriting them away from their world and saving them from abusive or horrible house holds that way and ignoring wonderlands issues, hook in this instance is actually just trying to free the children to return them home as they clearly can't help wonderland, wendy and the other darling children are some of the only to escape pan.

Izuku midoriya had been considered a candidate but the boy never was able to be convinced to step foot in wonderland and eventually grew to believe the 'imaginary friends' were nothing more than that, imaginary. Thought up by a quirkless boy as a way to deal with a friendless childhood and as a coping mechanism for the mental damage the bullying caused.

Chihero/sen from spirited away was technically one of the wonderland children who escaped but due to that part being so secluded from wonderlands main lands it is considered an entirely different dimension not connected to wonderland and thus she is not taken to wonderland to help them, they know the only reason she helped so much in the first place was she was motivated to save her parents

If wonderland can be saved, then they will return all the children home, thought they made no mention of the fact that some of them have been here so long there isn't much home to return to, while they try and return them to a time as close to when they left It is not always possible, many of them will be considered missing children cold case's in their worlds by now.

The queen of hearts has been defeated many times, but this time is different, if they don't destroy all traces of her, her following and all curruption in wonderland then there is no doubt it will return and they will be needed again, and so the children are bought in, stolen away as to save the day by ridding wonderland of it's curruption. First lidel and [redacted] are sent after the queen while the others go after the likes of other mother, peter pan and her other minions, then once the queen falls they must destroy the jabberwocky and all the rest of her currupted creatures. And finally there is a purge of the curruption. Once that is over they are free to return to their worlds, to their homes and the doors to wonderland are sealed shut and destroyed on both sides to prevent anything unwanted getting in or out of wonderland. (Eg door in coraline, white rabbits hole in alice in wonderland) and now the only ways in and out are through being lead and taken by a creature of wonderland who can naturally transport/teleport/travel from dimension to dimension. Such as cheshire cat or before he was defeated pan, now cheshire is the only one Left (they is known of)

Most of the children return and assume it was all a dream or something their minds made to deal with the trauma of what they went through (many believe they were kidnapped and forgot about it due to truma?) Most stay quiet about it those who speak end up in hospitals labeled and completely insane.

[storiesofsass]

Warning: somewhat incoherent rambling

So I posted a reply to @marinaredwixi post about Obey Me.

But I don't think Solomon, Diavolo or even God himself is going to be the bad guy here.

Sure they all have a hand in the mess that's going on for their own interests and that's quite important and I have a theory about it but they aren't the ultimate villain here.

Then who is? And my answer is Lilith.

Now, why Lilith? If anything, she's been nothing but nice to us when we do interact with her, she's placed on a pedestal and from what we know of her, she's pretty great.

Now, I've spent too many sleepless nights playing MM and other otome/games but there's one thing I know and it's never to trust anything that sounds too good to be true.

All the information we have about Lilith comes from naturally biased sources. We actually know nothing about the true Lilith outside of the rose colored glasses of the brothers.

What we do know however, is that she's connected to us somehow either by ancestry or something else. (Personally, I think it's both)

She's dead and a ghost

She's kinda the reason for the war as far as we currently know. (She isn't however, the reason for Satan's birth and I stand by that. Lilith's sentence was the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak or not since there's something that brothers me about a certain Devilgram's story)

Everything else just sounds way too good to be true. I've read Belphie's Hatred Devilgram too many times and during the game of Guess Who her description read too much like a Mary Sue's

Someone who can say things that could surprise Asmo, gets along with everyone.

Someone who is kind and loves humans

But also a little mischievous

I rolled my eyes so hard at it but something jumped out at me during my 100th reread of the Devilgram.

Every description given except Belphie's to a point was more or less nothing but praise.

There's nothing that they mentioned that could be a negative trait.

Not even Lucifer, everything shown was practically laden with icing and sugar.

Now within the context of the Devilgram, it makes sense, as it was a dream of a memory Belphie had while talking to MC while he was still in the attic. A happy memory of a time where he actually used to get along with Lucifer.

Now, we are going to talk about an entirely different event, I'm getting somewhere ok. I have to discuss this before I can move on to the big picture.

Belphie as we know, is an unreliable narrator, mostly because of the rose colored glasses, mostly because he's manipulative.

So the whole argument with Lucifer and how Belphie got in the attic can only be told by one other person.

Lucifer.

But he's also an unreliable narrator.

Pride isn't going to let him tell the version of the story that makes him look bad and he didn't, maybe it was because I read the Unspoken Feelings Devilgram before reaching that chapter but Belphie's behavior in both stories don't match up with each other.

In Lucifer's story, Belphie is confrontational and looking for a fight

In the Devilgram, while initially confrontational, Belphie cools off by the end.

Let's say he gets locked up in the attic the next day, he wouldn't have gone in guns blazing like that.

That isn't Belphie's personality and as we saw in the Devilgram, he wasn't in any state of rage.

He only goes into a state of rage when he believes that Lucifer betrayed him by placing Diavolo over him (Belphegor).

Now this creates an interesting plot point.

The betrayal in itself.

We know that Lucifer's loyalty is because of the deal he made with Diavolo, the reason for his response is because Diavolo could and would do much worse and his hands would honestly be tied in that situation.

For many reasons but also for an important one.

The brothers, despite all the arguments, fights etc would always put each other over everything.

After all doing so is the reason they fell from heaven.

We see this in action when Beel finds out about Belphie being in the attic. When Lucifer attacks Beelzebub, Asmodues asks Lucifer why would he intentionally hurt his brother like that while looking hurt.

Beel also sees what Lucifer did as a betrayal, as he locked up Belphie against his will and lied to everyone.

It's essentially an unwritten rule that guides them.

So what happens when one of them is clearly the bad guy?

So about Lilith.

I believe that Lilith had a hand in manipulating Belphegor.

We had seen that she could

1. Interact with the brothers in their dreams (ie. Telling Beel in his sleep to save Belphie)

2. Manipulate reality or people to a degree (whatever she did in chapter 16)

Now, we know that she has been waiting for us, she tells us that, but for how long?

If she knew that we were special, what's stopping her from knowing what could possibly happen as well and pushing for a series of events that benefits her.

Belphie, already plauged with thoughts and a very rapidly degrading mental health status, edged on by Lilith to talk to Lucifer would lash out like that.

Something else to note is that Belphie is a night owl and Lucifer is an insomniac, that conversation could have happened mere hours after the first confrontation while everyone would be dead asleep. Explains why no one heard or knew anything. And the ending of Unspoken Feelings Devilgram being a discussion between Beel and Belphie before they go to bed.

Let's think of a timeline or reality where Belphie didn't go in the attic.

For starters, he wouldn't have made a pact with us. Being attracted to us is a bit uncertain tbh.

We won't have made the bonds with the brothers that allowed us to make the pacts either, outside of Mammon.

Every pact (except Mammon) we have made was a direct cause of Belphie being in the attic.

Levi's was because we needed the CD so we could distract Lucifer to be able to head into the attic

Beel, Asmo, Satan happened because we were actively looking for pacts with the brothers so we could free Belphie

Belphie did it as a love confession and you can't convince me otherwise.

Lucifer's was because of everything that happened, you had singlehandedly repaired a lot of the damage between the relationships of the brothers, you are essentially a replacement for Lilith and his pride hates feeling left out as much as it hates feeling like he's giving up control.

You would have had a mundane year and left provided that dear ol Belphie didn't use the opportunity to show his brothers how awful humans are and make your life hell.

Lilith would have known this and would have gotten him temporarily out of the way, not only saving him from Diavolo but grooming MC to take her place.

MC is currently the new Lilith among the brothers but instead of being a cute little sister, they are the person everyone wants to fuck.

This creates a strange balance among the brothers.

Sure they are all competing for your affections but the unspoken rule among them keeps them all in check as to how far they are willing to go to get it.

Great, now MC is the one thing that brings them together, wouldn't it be funny if something were to happen to them?

Let's go to Lilith's conversation with MC.

She mentions that she had lost her path back to the Celestial Realm and implies that she wishes to go back.

We know this is a bad idea as mere moments before Levi was talking about how pissed the Celestial Realm would be if they would found out Lilith lived and MC, now her closest desendant in terms of connection would have to answer the call.

Let's go back a bit more to when Luke was staying in HoL.

How did Luke know how to find the grimmore? We never got the answer from him and I have reason to believe that Lilith is the reason.

Timeline of events is as follows, MC and Beel put Luke in the closet but he disappears, when they find him again it's because Lucifer is pissed because Luke found the Grimmore.

My theory is that when they put Luke in the closet, Lilith took him to the coffin and with it the grimmore.

I mean both just so happens to be connected to our dear ol Lilith.

Lucifer would have killed Luke if Beel and MC didn't step in thanks to Mammon.

That would lead to the Celestial Realm not being very happy about it and would definitely lead to either a power struggle or worst case scenario, all out war.

So does our current scenario with MC becoming the new Lilith and the Celestial Realm and by extension the brothers in another case oh so finding out that Lilith is alive.

Case 1. The Celestial Realm after Luke and Simeon inevitably report back to Michael about their experience in the Devildom, does their own investigation on MC and somehow finds out they're the desendant of Lilith, they'll want answers and the brothers would now be threatened by any move the Celestial Realm takes against the MC and would react to anything they consider a threat.

Case 2. MC helps Lilith get back to the Celestial Realm. Again, the Celestial Realm wants answers but this time the brothers get to know that Lilith was alive as a ghost among them for so long. Now that they have Lilith back, they aren't letting her go again not matter what anyone says. MC may or may not be shoved out of the picture except to or especially by their chosen love interest.

Either way, same thing happens. A worse case scenario of war between the two realms.

While Belphie blamed humans for what happened to Lilith, Lilith blames the Celestial Realm and wants to have her revenge.

Note in both cases, the brothers would have no reason to drag humans into it and even have more of a reason to protect humans from being collateral damage.

But Niko, wouldn't that destroy the Devildom too?

Yeah. Remember the memory Lilith keeps showing us? The one where Lucifer makes the deal with Diavolo?

Everything is framed to make it seem like a really sweet moment. But I think otherwise, mostly anyway.

It is a sweet moment that also foreshadows what Lilith is using to manipulate her brothers 'I will do anything to make you happy'

And Lilith's reason for destroying the Devildom as collateral damage.

We all know Lucifer, he hates being controlled. And despite of the cute friendship that he has with Diavolo, Diavolo has all of the control between himself and Lucifer.

Lilith wants to save her brothers. Or rather that's what she thinks she's doing.

The destruction of the Devildom to her would mean freeing them from RAD, from Diavolo.

Then they would all be happy with her or her chosen replacement in MC. Even though Diavolo's plan in having all three realms together would be the kind of thing Lilith would have loved before the war.

Though one of the main themes of the game is about moving on from tragedy.

In order for them to truly move on from Lilith, they need to shatter the rose colored glasses they have on her.

What better way to do that than for her to be the villain?

[webkinzareus]

Okay - Very Personal Story time.

So the lockdown has started.  I have 3 weeks off.  I find out webkinz is doing something, I dont remember what, because of the plauge.  I find out because Tasha, my cousin/best friend that works for The Verge (or maybe she was working for Polygon by then) wound up editing the Play Webkinz While You Are In Lockdown article.

So I managed to get into 3 of the 5 accounts we had made - and made a lot more because every time you made a new account it was a Deluxe Account for 7 days.  

I made a LOT of accounts.  I made two school accounts on the very off chance that, next year, the kids could play on them.  I made an account called “The Post Office” to use because you can only send one mail package a day.  I made 3 farm accounts to do nothing but generate money.  Then the last 3 accounts, SophicPercipient, HomesickForIlion and IrenauesvsTertullian were all made to take notes on.  

NOW HERE IS THE THING.

In the beginning, when I was playing and decorating, I noticed that the pets would ask me random questions and I completely ignored them.  It was so obviously a computer suggesting I do OTHER things than decorate, and I didn’t think twice about ignoring it.  In particular I wasn’t going to BUY them anything, when I was only interested in generating money to do more deorating.

Then, once, on a whim, I did what they asked and notice that the heart was filling up.  I had never really noticed the heart before (I’m REALLY bad at video games beause of this.  I NEVER notice what is going on in the corners or in the background.)

Then I won something - and I saw all the prizes I could win by making the pets happy.

THEN, and only then, did I realize that making the pets happy WOULD MAKE ME MONEY so I started paying attention to it, whereas I had always ignored it before then.

So then I REALLY got into making the pets happy.

Now here is the personal part.

This was more than a year ago.  Von  was unhappy a lot - I didn’t know, yet, that he was very sick.  I just found myself in a constant state of trying to keep him happy so we could keep writing - and THEN I found myself just hoping we could keep it together to get the whole Message series published.  (and we didn’t - not the entire series.  He saw a place where we could end it, and I jumped on it.  There were MANY times, especially when we were writing “Tomorrow” that I wasn’t sure that it would ever get done.

He was just really, really unhappy.  And instead of saying “this is a problem for me, can we change it?” he would say “Take my name off it” or say he was going to delete it.  

I think the main problem was that he was in serious Seretonin-crash.  I understood, later, what that was like.  You feel cold and bad, and then you reach for the one thing that makes you feel Warm and Good.  But it doesn’t make you feel either, and it pisses you off.  So you get angry.  And no one can really make you feel better because there’s no seretonin in your brain to MAKE you feel better.

And those sighing webkinz?  They sounded exactly like him.

So that’s when I realize HOLY CRAP THESE GUYS CAN BE MY THERAPY.

So I dedicated myself to fullfilling their every random wish.

And it REALLY STRESSED ME OUT when they asked me for things I COULDN’T get them because they weren’t physically possible.

Nowdays, I find it MORE thereaputic to say “No, I’m not going to do that, because THAT’S NOT RESONABLE.”

[str-spangled-banner]

I’m Sorry - Loki X Reader

MASTERLIST  -  ASK/REQUEST  -  FAQ’s

Summary: You and Loki were a couple, but he left you in fear for that your life would be nothing but worse with him in it. When he finds himself watching over you six months later, you have to remind him that you can protect yourself from whatever “bad” he might bring into your life.

Warnings: Okay... There are some serious feels ahead. This is probably the most emotional and sad thing I’ve ever written. Also, there is a brief mention of a kiss.

Words: 4 402 (longest thing I’ve written!)

A/N: Okay wtf... I’m “dead” for like 2 months and then I come back and post two things in the span of 3 days, both of which are my first Loki X Reader’s, and one which is the longest and most emotional thing I’ve ever written???? Shit’s crazy, man...

Anyway, please tell me what you think! I would actually like to write a side-story to this about that camping trip to Washington, so tell me if you’d like that!

He watched her from the balcony, hiding behind a column to keep his presence unknown. She was smiling, brighter than ever. Never had he seen her so happy, and his heart broke at the sight. She sat laughing with a few of the Avengers, their humorous conversations going in on the early hours of the morning. With tears burning his eyes, he smiled at her. She was so beautiful. He could bare believe she was no more than a mortal. She was so ethereal, so bright... She seemed far more a god than he did.

"She misses you." Thor unveiled, startling Loki with his presence. Loki stared at his brother with big eyes and clear embarrassment from having been caught in such a fragile state. He wiped his eyes to rid of any tears that threatened to spill, doing his best to hide his face.

"And what difference does that make?" Loki spat, instantly becoming defensive, subsequently being surprised by how unbothered Thor seemed to be by Loki roaming the balcony of the Stark Tower. Until just moments prior, Thor had been under the belief that Loki was in Asgard, but even when that was proven to not be the case did the God of Thunder as much as flinch. To get away from his frustratingly, calm, brother, Loki walked away from the pillar and to a part of the balcony where Y/N would not be able to see him, even if he was not deliberately hiding.

"I will not argue with you why you should be with the woman that you love." Thor explained, looking Loki in the eyes boldly before beginning to make his way for the door inside.

Loki watched Thor leave, and as the door opened, the sounds from inside were let out and Loki was given just a moment of hearing Y/N's laughter. It cut through him like a dull dagger, slashing brutally through his heart without mercy. Never had he thought someone's laughter could hurt a person so much, but it pained him to the brink of where his knees grew so weak that they threatened to fold right beneath him.

He remembered every detail of the night he left her as if he was still in the moment. They were stood in the living room of her apartment when he said he had to leave, but it had all begun a few blocks away from her building. Loki had been recognized by a couple of pedestrians, and it had only taken moments until a crowd had gathered with red in sight and a hunger for revenge for all the terror Loki had brought them. He had been forced to teleport both himself and Y/N to her apartment to get away from them, but he hadn't been quick enough. Someone with bad aim had thrown a brick for Loki's head, but it had struck Y/N just an inch under her eye as she had cradled to his side for safety. She had been bleeding quite a bit, even if the wound was far from lethal. She had repeatedly kept reassuring him that she was okay and had instead attempted to ask him if he was alright, but he had blocked out practically every word she had said. All he could think about was how she would never be able to live the kind of life that she wanted — that she deserved — if he was part of it. She would either get hurt physically, or she would have to completely adapt to Loki and his need to stay out of the public eye.

Her place was on earth. Even if she had never said no to living in Asgard, Loki already knew that there was nothing for her there. He just wished she could have seen how she was the only thing keeping him on earth, and he wished she could have seen how he could never live there after all he had done. Unfortunately, she couldn't see it, and he couldn't let her believe that the two of them could ever be with one another. In his eyes, he only had one choice, and that was to leave her. The longer he would have been with her, the more painful it would have been for both of them when a time came and it was physically impossible for him to stay. So, he ended it quickly, and prayed that their feelings for one another would subside as painlessly as possible.

They had stood in her living room, she had blood streaming down her cheek, and he had told her he was leaving. He had never been good at dealing with his own emotions, let alone express them, and so his words had been stone cold. Y/N had laughed at first, her mind not possibly being able to grasp such an absurd thing considering their relationship was so good and stable. It wasn't until his eyes had gone empty and started to water — looking anywhere but in hers — that she realized he was not joking at all. She hadn't been able to help the tears which bursted almost instantly with her realization, and Loki had been forced to do everything in his power to keep his own tears under control.

He had never seen her cry until that moment, it hurt him more than anything he had ever felt in his entire life. More than when hearing her laughter on the balcony of the Stark Tower, more than when finding out that his father had lied about his his very being for as long as he could remember, and more than the death of the woman he had once called mother. Seeing Y/N completely break right in front of him and knowing he was the cause for it was enough to let a single, cold, tear fall from his eye.

She had been crying out so many words, trying to convince him to stay and how things weren't so bad, and he had been stood in silence. Even when she begged him to speak he had not made as much as a sound. Even when she began to hit his chest in a sorrowful rage, he had stood still, and even when she fell into his chest — sobbing pleads of him to stay with her — he had remained staring emptily into the air of her apartment. It wasn't until she with a quiet voice whispered a heartbroken 'I love you', that he could not endure it anymore. He had left her in that moment, clinging to his chest with tears stinging the wound on her cheek as she wanted nothing more but for him to stay and speak to her, that he had in the blink of an eye traveled all the way back to Asgard.

He had fled to an isolated forest of his home world and spent hours slashing and hammering at everything within reach, screaming so loudly that it ripped through his throat to the point where his lips were stained with blood. He had hurt himself far more than he had hurt the things he had hit. He had desperately been trying to think of anything but Y/N, but his mind had not cared for what he wanted. He had been left with nothing but memories which he shared with her, and they had kept him on his destructive frenzy for hours upon hours with a single memory in particular to fuel his berserk rage.

The memory of their first kiss. If he focused hard enough, he could almost still feel her lips on his. They had been standing on a riverbed in a more than desolated area in the state of Washington, a place Y/N had always wanted to visit ever since seeing images of its breathtaking nature in a travel guide she accidentally stumbled upon. She had been able to convince Loki to follow her on a hike across a minor chian of mountains and spend a weekend camping along a nearly overgrown trail. It had sounded dreadful at first, but once the cities disappeared behind them and they came into territory where life was still nearly untouched by man, it was everything but dreadful.

Y/N's smile as they had encountered wildlife, or managed to find a waterfall, was enough to keep him happily going. He had never seen such joy in a being before. She was so innocent and pure, the exact opposite of himself, and he had absolutely no choice when it came to falling in love with her. He could have done nothing but resist the feeling and fight against the urge, but he would have fallen just as hard anyway.

They had set their camp for the night on a dried riverbed of round rocks just as the sun set on the horizon, their tent at their backs and a campfire before them. In the distance came the sound owls and wolves, and close by was the sound of calmly flowing water and the loud cracks of damp firewood heated by flames. The sky was still light peach from dusk, but the brightest stars had been able to be spotted. It had been there, sharing a seat on a large piece of driftwood, that they had first kissed.

She had leaned towards him and begged to steal some warmth by borrowing the cape he was wearing. He had begun to remove it so that she could wear it — which was what he believed she had asked for — but she had moved even closer and draped the fabric around her, sharing the large cloth like a blanket between them. At a loss of words by the intimacy of their sudden position, he had found himself simply staring down at her head as she sat slightly leaning towards him on his right, eyes watching the fire. After a few moments, she had noticed. She had spotted him in the corner of her eye and had glanced up, chuckling in amusement and asking him what was wrong.

It had taken him less than a second to bring his hands to her cheeks and press his lips against hers. In that very moment, she became the light that was able to light up the darkness which plauged him. She made him a better man, a better everything. Simply by being around her, he saw certain actions of his pasts as mistakes, actions which he had never seen that way before. Whenever she would speak of New York, his heart would sink upon remembering the alien army which he had led straight towards it, but she would lift his heart right back up. She saw the bad in him, but she chose to look past it too. She did not live in denial of what he had done, but she focused on Loki in the moment and what she could do to make him into the man she knew him to be.

A tear fell, landing on the railing of the balcony. If he was not so heartless, he would have allowed himself to sink to the ground and cry himself dry. Every part of his body wanted to give in to the urge of doing just that, but he sought support from the railing and kept himself standing, his bruised knuckles turning white from his harsh grip.

Then came a sound, the turning of a handle and a dragging against the balcony floor. The door was open, but there was no sound from inside, and the light footsteps that followed were certainly not those of his brother.

It seemed as if all of New York went quiet in that moment. He couldn't find words, but he wasn't alone that time. Y/N stood in silence too, staring at Loki's back whilst fiddling with her shaking, fingers. She wanted to say something — she really did — but her mind was nothing but blank. It had been nearly half a year since Loki vanished right in front of her, and whilst her checks were free of tears and the wound under her eye was just a light pink scar, she was no less shattered. If anything, she was worse than the first couple of weeks after he left. Then, she had still had hope for that he would come back. She kept telling herself that he would, that even though he had his struggles on earth, he would realize they could make it work and return to her.

Eventually, weeks turned into months, which turned into half a year. The grief she should have dealt with right after he left, built up as time passed, and as her hope faded, her grief came crashing down at a faster rate than she could get over it. It led to depression, or what she self-diagnosed as it, anyway. She wasn't a cry-baby, wasn't as emotional and typically feminine as a lot of women often are patronizingly portrayed, yet she still cried every day for months. That she was a woman had nothing to do with it. Her heart was broken, and that heart could have been inside of anyone.

The few times she slept, she rarely got more than three or four ours worth of sleep. The first month she had kept turning to Thor for help, and she had felt pathetic for doing it, but she really hadn’t had any control of herself and her emotions at the time. Whilst Loki had been in a frenzy of destruction, she had been in a frenzy of desperation. She kept coming to Thor with ideas of how they could reach Loki, how Thor could help her to at least talk to Loki, but she had had no right to crave that help from him.

Thor had tried. He had gone to Asgard, he had searched for Loki, and he had found him, or at least what was left. Thor had found that Loki had ordered the guards to lock him up in the dungeons and not release him no matter what he said. To Thor's surprise — as well as the guard's — Loki had not made a single attempt to escape. He hadn't even attempted to make them free him. He had wanted to stay locked up, and most importantly, he had made it clear to Thor that he did not want Y/N to know anything about him in any way. Thor was left in the middle of a good friend and his own brother, and he had to ignore both of their wishes and do what he saw to be, if not the best, then at least the most pain-free.

He had returned to Y/N to let her know he couldn't find Loki, and when Loki asked Thor how she was doing, Thor said she had left the Avengers shortly after he had left her. Thor did not want Loki to know that Y/N forced herself to come into work every day with bloodshot eyes and socialize with the team bearing a fake smile. He did not want Y/N to know that Loki constantly had bruises and cuts on his fists from punching whatever he could find, or that he did not go a single day without screaming so loudly that the dungeon walls seemed to tremble. It is what Thor saw would do both of them the least harm, and if both Y/N and Loki could step out of the picture for a moment, they would both agree.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, her voice quiet. Loki flinched slightly at the sound, hearing the sorrow laced in the voice that was once filled with pure joy.

His eyelids fluttered as his eyes kept stinging with tears wanting to spill, staring out over nighttime Manhattan and its millions of lights. He had asked himself the same thing for nearly an hour and hadn't thought of an answer, so he was left without words once more. He wanted to turn around and look at her, let her know he was alive at least as he couldn't speak to make that clear, but he didn't have the strength in him. It had been hard enough to see her inside with the other before when she hadn't known he was there. He couldn't stand the thought of seeing her so devastated once more, and mostly it was because he couldn't promise he wouldn't leave if she came crashing into his chest again.

"I don't know." He somehow managed to croak out, his voice breaking halfway through the three-worded sentence. Y/N kept looking at the back of his head, noting how messy his long hair was, as if he hadn't taken touched it since they last saw one another.

"Were you going to come inside?" She questioned, not at all prepared for if the answer was 'no'. "Or were you hoping to just stand out here and not have me know?"

He didn't have an answer to that either. He had gone to the balcony completely blind, without a single clue of what he was doing or why he was doing it. He wished he had the answers to her questions, if not for her sake, than for his own, but he had nothing.

"I don't know." He repeated, still refusing to even turn in her direction, let alone look at her.

She wanted to move closer to him, but she felt like a deer caught in lights. Her body was frozen in place. All she could do was stand there and try to process the situation in a way which wouldn't end with her completely breaking down like she had often found herself doing in the safety of her own home after Loki left.

"Can you just say something?" She felt the familiar lump in her throat that formed whilst she cried. She tried to swallow it down, but it stayed in place, only hurting her whenever she tried to push it down.

"I..." Loki began, letting out sigh as he seemed incapable of speaking properly. "I don't know."

"You don't know if you can say anything?" She questioned, a short laugh erupting from her mouth before she could contain it. She was far from amused, and she had no desire to laugh at him in mockery, but it had been coughed out almost as on reflex. She was so lost in her own emotions that her body no longer knew how to react accordingly to them.

"No." He admitted, which was the truth and nothing but it. He didn't have the slightest clue of what he was doing. All he knew was that the months without Y/N had been far worse than any hell he could imagine, and he dared almost promise that he wouldn't live for much longer if things kept on going the same way they had. He had tried his very best to stay away from her, to let her live a life free of him on earth and not have all of their suffering be in vein, yet he found himself sharing the space of the balcony with her.

"So... Am I supposed to just walk away now and leave you? What- what's happening, and don't you dare say that you don't know." She demanded, her voice still calm but judging by the slight change in her tone, her emotions seemed to be getting the best of her.

"I don't know." Loki — who refused to stay silent — gave her the only answer he had, even if it wasn't the one she wanted.

"No. You can't say that. You can't." She refused, becoming more upset by each second. He could hear her take a few step in his direction and he watched a vague, yellow, light flash across his clutched hands before disappearing. He was just as out of control as she was, and the fact that he realized that made things even worse. He couldn't understand how someone could effect him as much as she effected him. He had always been careless in his life and had never experienced love until he met her, and love changed him so drastically that he became defensive — nearly hostile — towards those changes.

"I don't have answers..." He explained, the longest sentence he had given her that night.

"Please think of them, then..." She took a few more steps forward, her tone back to broken. Loki let his eyes close, his jaw clenched tightly in anger as he was unable to contain yet another tear.

He didn't understand how someone could be so calm after being left the way he had left Y/N. If she would have been furious — tried to punch him in the face as soon as she had laid eyes on him — it would have hurt less for him, but it was painfully obvious how much she still loved him, and he knew he would never deserve that kind of unconditional love.

"I can't..." His voice cracked again from the same kind of lump in his throat that she was dealing with.

"Please..." She yet a few more steps forward and bluntly began to reach her arm out for him when suddenly, he vanished, leaving a short trail of yellow light. Her chest felt hollow, her lips hanging parted. She watched the empty air where he had just stood, the feeling of deja vu crushing her like an ant under a boot.

"What I did was unforgivable." His voice came from behind her and her entire body shuddered in relief at the sound of it, her first tear of the evening slipping from her eye and running over the light scar on her cheekbone. "I had no right to come here. I should have stayed away, I should have kept you safe and fulfilled the whole purpose of why I left you, but I... I can't. No matter what reason I think I have for coming here, they don't make it even remotely alright."

Suddenly, the words seemed to be pouring out of him like running water, which was ten times better than the 'I don't know's' she had received before.

"Why can't you understand that I never wanted you to stay away, that I still don't?" She questioned, glancing over her shoulder to the point where she could see his legs. In one, swift, move — hoping he would not teleport again — she turned around and faced him fully.

She let out a shaky breath upon seeing his face for the first time in over six months, watching him squint his eyes shut excessively hard to not be able to see her. Under them were dark circles from his lack of sleep, and she spotted the bruises and cuts on his knuckles as she let her eyes roam across his body for a brief look. His hair was partially hanging in front of his face and a deep crease was settled between his eyebrows.

"You deserve to be happy, Y/N..."

Hearing him say her name was like music to her ears. Nothing had made her feel as good for the past, half, year than hearing that.

"I was happy." She took a slow step closer to him, considering no magic as a victory. "Before you left, I felt like the happiest person alive..."

He didn't want to believe that, even if he could confirm that sheerly from his own perspective. The amount of happiness he had seen in her on their one camping trip over a year ago was enough to confirm it.

"Loki..." She began when she saw the flash of pain strike his features upon hearing his name in her voice. "Please look at me."

"I can't." He said once again, exhaling sharply and keeping his eyes tightly shut.

"Look at me." She repeated, feeling her eyes burn for a moment. "See that you don't need to leave me to keep me safe..."

There was something in her voice, something about how she had slightly changed her tone, which led Loki's eyes to soften. The creases around them became smooth and — slowly — they began to flutter open.

Before him stood Y/N, eyes glowing vividly blue from the power which the Tesseract had granted her in an accident during her time as a SHIELD agent years prior. They were locked right onto his, and seeing her look at him for the first time since he left felt like a cure to his self-caused torment. After he let out a sigh of relief, Y/N's lips quickly stretched into a smile.

"You see that?" She asked with an airy laugh, her smile and glowing eyes still on display, another tear slipping from her waterline. "I can protect myself. You should have known that I could, even if I got hurt just once."

He was breathing heavily, his words gone again. He didn't understand how he could have ever been so ignorant. Y/N was more than capable of taking care of herself, he should haven known that, just like she had said. Perhaps it had all just been too much for him and his poor skill in emotion-management, and it pained him to think he might could have spared the months upon months of torture had he just stopped to think for a moment.

"I'm sorry." He stammered, his tears building up until he couldn't stop them anymore. They fell from both eyes and kept coming from time to time, but he wasn't alone with that either. Y/N began to cry right along with him, covering her mouth with her hand to quiet her sobs. "I'm so sorry."

Simultaneously they closed the space between them. She snaked her arms around his back and hid in the crook of his neck whilst he covered his arms over her protectively, his head resting on her just as hers did on him. His tears stained her grey shirt with dark spots, and for the first time in his life, he felt as though he didn't care about showing his emotions. Y/N deserved to see them. He was the reason for her depression, for letting her cry herself to sleep the few nights she slept at all. He was the reason he had spent months inside of a prison cell, punching the walls until his hands were soaked in his own blood, and screaming until his voice was gone. Keeping his thoughts and emotions from her was a mistake he would never make again.

Thor stood on the ledge of the rooftop, three floors above the balcony where his brother kept Y/N in a strong embrace, smiling down at the couple who seemed to have finally found their way back to one another, taking some credit to himself for the heartfelt reunion.

Hey, if you missed my A/N at the top, please tell me what you think, and tell me if you’d like a side-story about that trip to Washington! ^^

// L

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[darklingichor]

Fool, The Serpent of Venice, Shakespeare for Squirrels by Christopher Moore *Spoilers*

I wrote about the last book in this trilogy not too long ago, but the first two have been in my regular rotation for years. There isn't a great way to examine books I have read time and time again without spoilers so spoilers will have to happen. When in the realm of my repeaters, you'll likely see Christopher Moore pop up more than once this year as he as written five of the books I would take to a desert island with me.

For some reason, with the exception of last year, I always seem to start my new year reading the Pocket books. I'll admit, this is a bit of a cheat, since I started these right after I finished Minimum Wage Magic, on Christmas Day, but fuck it.

There's something about the character Pocket that calls out to be the usher into a new year.

Maybe because he reinvents himself all the time, or maybe because I can see him waxing philosophical about the absurdities

Like for 2020 I can see him saying

"For fuck sake what was that? Not enough to incrementally burn the world, had to have a nice plauge too? Trying to call down the four horsemen one at a time, eh? If you have to go biblical, sodam and gamorrah at least had a fair few orgies before things went tits up."

Anyway, I adore these books. A quick run down.

Fool is mostly a play on King Lear, but borrows from many of The Bard's plays.

Pocket is the diminutive court jester. He is all at once at the bottom of the peaking order and in the thick of the intrigue and has a front row seat for the drama that plays out between Lear and his daughters. It's all done with an homage to British humor in mind and Moore's hilarious style.

I always expect to laugh when reading this book, and I do! The audio version is amazing but the word on the page book has footnotes that make me giggle every time. Christopher Moore always has a lot of heart in his stories. If you don't feel like crying at least once a book, you haven't been paying attention.

I know this, it's one of the reasons he is one of my favorite authors. But I always forget just how many times Fool tugs at the heartstrings. Sometimes a gentle one like when Pocket says to Cordelia "Now and forever, Milady."

Sometimes a great wrenching yank like when a particular history is uncovered. It's damn near a perfect book,in my opinion.

The next one, The Serpent of Venice... When I first read it, I didn't like it as much. Without getting too far into spoilers, a lot had changed for Pocket, he was sadder and one of the best characters wasn't in this book as much. But, this one grew on me. The story is a blend of The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Poe's story The Cast of Amantiano, but again, borrows from many of Shakespeare's plays.

This one, once you get over the character changes (which are completely nessessary) is freaking hilarious. Yes, it still hits you where you live, but Pocket is specifically sent to Venice to annoy everyone. A task he takes up with vigor! When this mission is put to the side, he weaves his way though knots of villains and new friends all the while, as Othello puts it, being "A deeply silly man."

Serpent differs from Fool, mainly, in that Fool is told entirely in the first person, but Serpent, because of its more complex plot, switches between Pocket and the third person, following other characters. That might have been why I didn't like it as much, at first. I use to have a big problem with perspective changes.

Some of the third person stuff is the funniest sections in the book. For example, Iago, being yelled at by his wife Emilia in front of two superiors:

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much," said Iago.

"Methinks the lady protests just the right amount," said Emilia. "Methinks the lady is just getting fucking started protesting!"

Anyway, that, I think, is what I noticed about this book this time. It's funnier, and depending on my mood, I even like it more. For all that Pocket is sadder, the tone of this book is lighter.

King Lear is heavy stuff, as is Othello, but throwing Merchant into the mix gives the characters some room. All but a few people in Fool are not fully evil but not fully good guys either. The story plays with their personalities having them fall into a grey area, even if that grey is pretty dark.

In Serpent, the comedic tone means that the characters could play their good guy or bad guy note a little harder. Meaning that people are planning hanious fuckery right out in the open and Iago is plain batshit.

The Chorus character is the cherry on top. He "Narrates" but often at the wrong times, and the characters can hear him, see him, and are generally annoyed by him.

A great follow up to Fool!

Squirrels is next. The second read through got me thinking about something I noticed the first time. This is where I'll get a bit spoiler-y.

This one is a take on A Midsummer Night's Dream. Not going to do a run down as, I already did one in entry twenty-six of last year. It's a fun read and really good. But on with the thing that I noticed:

I think that Pocket, in this book might be dead and having a weird perimortum dream

Some things that suggest this are phrases and themes that play as off kilter mirrors to events that happen in the other books.

Such as when, in Serpent, Jessica asks Pocket if the reason people want to kill him, is because he's a shit.

A very similar conversation occars between Pocket and a fairy.

There's a point in Squirrels where reference is made to characters having their eye gouged out. This happens in Fool.

Then there is a big part of the story where things are very much parallel to Pocket that ultimately ends in a death. But, a big reason actually comes from a scene in Serpent. A ghost ("There's always a bloody ghost.") Comes to Pocket wearing the shirt from his fool's motley. When he comments on it the ghost says: "The implications are bloody ominous, aren't they?"

So... Yeah. Then again though, this could be a fan theory in the realm of Angelica from Rugrats is in a mental hospital.

On the one hand, it would be a dark, yet cool way to end the Pocket books. On the other I sort of like the idea that Pocket just had a strange encounter with a bunch of fairies and he's off to his next adventure. I think it will depend on my mood which I subscribe to.

All in all, I think this read though have me a good amount of insight I didn't have before.

[popculturebuffet]

Reviewcaps: Mega Man: Fully Charged (BOOM!) #1

After 5 long years the Blue Bomber returns to comics and to the Fully Charged Universe! Things get a lot more grim as Aki grapples with a new robot army under actual robots, his buried past, and the fact Mega Mini is still around for some reason. Cracked skulls and dead cells under the cut. 

So i’m a huge mega man fan. I haven’t really talked about video games here because this is my first video game adaptation, but yeah, I love em and Capcom’s vast and awesome franchise of robots and humanoids in blue, and in one case red, is one of my faviorites. From children blowing up tons of robots from a balding man who dosen’t get the hint already, to the pacifist soldier forced to fight in a war against robot whales, buffalo, mammoths, and other bizzare robot animals, to his best friend who has amnesia for some reason fighting more robot animals because capcom ran out, to his human sucessors wearing him like a hat, to some guy who turns out to be a war machine I haven’t played yet because I haven’t gotten the chance to and is the only part of the franchise I haven’t, to another universe where he’s the ai versoin of a dead child whose now a teenager mentally, to that ai’s sucessor a shy child whose dad was kidnapped by a space monster and fuses reguarly with a much cooler space monster. What i’m saying Is I deeply love this franchise, this franchise is complicated iwth all the branches, and it’s also full of lovely nonsense. 

So naturally with that many versions and a decades long history Mega Man’s had a healthy life in one of my other faviorite meddieums: Comics. Over in his home country of Japan Mega Man’s had tons of Manga: The biggest and one of the few to make it here is Mega Man Megamix, a bunch of stories that, after the first two adapted the first two games in their own rough way, took place after each of the various games, and is pretty damn good. Others off the top of my head include a Mega Man x adaptation where X dates a mermaid, a weird mega man zero adaptation, and a longrunning adaptation of Mega Man Battle Network, all ones I need to read. 

Even Brazil had a Mega Man Manga... which I need to cover too.. less because it’s actually good or notable, and more because it’s BATSHIT INSANE, and you can read about it here. But the cliffs notes: Roll is an adult woman who goes around naked half hte time and is the most importnat character, X is master roshi with all the restraint and panty snatching that implies, and ther’es a character that one writer tried to have kill everyone and take over the comic.. yes really. I go most of this .l from that page but it’s documented on various wikis that this did actually happen. Just.. why. All of it.  Meanwhile in the US.. we didn’t get that many. No nintendo power adaptations despite being a huge franchise, no horrible malibu comics like street fighter got. There was one attempt by Dreamwave comics in the early 2000′s a series that only lasted 5 issues, and had mega man trying to go to school and some intresting if loose takes ont he franchise.. but the company bottomed out due to horirble mismanagment soon after and mega man sat ont he shelf for a while until the early 2010′s. At a time when Capcom had given up on the franchise, which has thankfully changed dramatically with the release of 11 and the various mega collections, they still gave the liscence to Archie comics, who, wanting some more of that sweet money they were getting off of sonic, gladly took the lisence and gave it to  Sonic Scribe and easily the best one the comic had during it’s long run, Ian Flynn, who set about adapting mega man from day 1, while incorperating nods and call forwards to the various other versions of the blue bomber, and adding his own nice touches. What i’ve read is really damn good and it’s a shame it got cut off right before the adaptation for mega man 4. I’m only being so brief as .. I intend to cover it like i’ve been saying. I love the character, Flynn’s comic was one of the best versions of him bar none, and I could use more comics content on here too. It’s a win win, smiles all around.  But yeah sadly Archie lost intrest in doing non-Archie stuff, with the Archie Horror Line proving a sucess and a reboot on the horizon. While I do LOVE Archie Comics, this edotiral decision still leaves a bad taste in my mouth and left fans without any mega man till 11 came out and any comics till this year, when the rights apparently lapsed and Boom! Studios, home of such great comics as the mighty morphing power rangers ongoing and JOhn Allison’s wonderful Giant Days, swept it up. Hopefully Boom! will reprint the archie comics eventually, but until then they decided to do a softish reboot of another version of the franchise, another one that like Archie had been given a raw deal.. but unlike Archie had issues: Mega Man; Fully Charged

While most of you probably know this as a refrsher Mega Man: Fully Charged was a cartoon from a few years back, a CGI adatpation of the games in an attempt to get in on that market by Ben 10 and Generator Rex maestro’s Man of Action. Like the Dreamwave comics it followed Mega Man, now Aki LIght as he went to school, did school stuff, and also fought rouge robots after school with secret powers he unlocked before the pilot and were never elaborated on in show.  The show kept Dr. Light, Mega Man’s creator and dad, and his dog Rush who while at first looking nothing like the games was later upgraded to resemble his game counterpart more from what i’ve heard and what’s present in this comic. Replacing Mega’s sister Roll, as his real name was Rock because the Mega Man staff loved musical puns, was Suna.. whos basically the same character but human and with an entirely diffrent design.  The show also, for whatever fucking reason, added... Mega Mini.. a tiny robot with a brooklyn accent who lived inside Aki, Mega Man’s regular name in this series which i’m fine with as while I do lik ehim going by Rock, I get that’s not really a name. Mini also manages his powers, makes stupid jokes and makes me pray for death but death won’t come. As you can tell I hate the little bugger from the handful of episodes i’ve watched. Rounding out our main heroes is Aki’s best friend Bert Wily, whose likely related to the canon wily and is your standard dorky best friend, but his roll as an inventor does come in handy since Mega hasn’t told his dad he’s a superhero, though it’s revealed in the end that he knows.. I did do my homework, even if i’ve only seen a handful of the series. More on that in a minute.  Opposing Mega Man were various robots from the games, adapted with varying degrees of design, from the good. 

To the okay if a bit weird. 

To the how the fuck is this airman. This is airman

Really good basic design. This is what fully charged calls airman, 

Why.. why not just make him Wind Man. He looks more like Wind Man.. why did ... I can bitch about this later when I cover the series, which, yes AGAIN I intend to. BUt seriously he has an awesome looking fan for a face. How do you screw that up. 

Behind the robot masters was Sgt. Night. See in a nice twist, and one of the things I like about the series, the world of Fully Charaged already had the kind of robot on human war that would plauge the main mega man timeline for centuries in the backstory, with LIght and Night being vetrans. Night being a racisit moron, wanted to keep robots apart and set up a false flag operation do do so as Commander Night. He however.. wasn’t a compelling vilian and apparnetly dosen’t really get better, not having any depth to his operations or actoins and his basic plan turns out to be, thank you research, to wipe all robots minds to be subservient.. he’s just.. bland compared to wily who while not complex in his motives, he just wants to take over the world, still has style and in some cases,real thought to his plans. Sure the vast majority are “blame it on someone else” but in a LOT of those cases, there’s still thorught and effort put into who he’s blaming to take doubt away from him. IN universe at least.  Helping night, is Namagem... yes Mega Man..spelled backwards and this series protoman, but hte character suprisingly DOES sound intresting... he just has one of the worst names in human history. Like my god, in god we trust why not just use proto man. the Character is basically proto man, with the interesting backstory of night kidnapping him, and apparently the series gets loads better once he arrives, so i’m not going to be too hard on the name, as the writers were likely stuck with it.    But as i’ve made apparent.. I haven’t watched much of the series. I do want to watch it all and i’m aware the second half is much better, but when trying to binge watch it at a friends house I only got about halfway through season 1, and then just forgot to keep going. And the series does have good pieces: a compelling background of a brutal war, mysteries to unlock, and a steady supply of new villians via the games long history and the series own original, and honestly intresting sounding and looking, robot masters... but it stapled all this to a “cocky hero fights vilians” every week setup we’ve seen a million times and didn’t grab me, but the intresting worldbuildnig and original bits do have me wanting to give it another try so look forward to that.  And with all the intresting bits i was truly invested to see a comic make more out of this part of the franchise,a nd was utterly excited, as it could be what the series could’ve been with less hampering by the various parties involved, as fully charged felt like it had a lot of executive madates slapped on. So free of those and free to be whatever it wants with Joe Kelly advising, what has fully charged become? let’s take a look. 

We Open 6 months after the series with the comic helpfully catching us via news broadcast.. and the art being moody with washed out colors the tone having done a 180. Seriously it is kind of weird for this unvierse to go from early generator rex, a dark backstory with a bizzarely cheery tone to full on Blade Runner or to put it in mega man terms, The Megas. Seriously the breif bit of silicon city we see , the constant rain as a mysteroius figure whose revealed at the end of the next page to be Namagem.. I expect that a pretty hologram in a raincoat is going to pop up next to him any moment... what I can pick which blade runner I want to refrence. Shoo. 

Anyways a broadcast debate between a human reporter and her robot coanchor , ron roburgundy as I will call him, fills us in on exposition, while Mega Man himself narrators like this is a noir.. again i’m half expecting harrison ford to show up. Aki muses about how the city, HIS CITY, almost fell.. oh god is frank miller writing this? Are we going to get a middle schooler talking about how much he wants to make love to a city because no one wants that.  Anyways, we get expostion, both for anyone who hadn’t watched the series to give us the cliff notes, and to also catch up returning fans on what they missed. I like it, despite not having watched fully charged to the end, or known exactly what happened until research, this fills it in nicely: At the end of season 1, as I explained earlier Night was arrested, and is thankfully not a part of it nor is his foghorn leghorn attempt at a southren accent. However the remaning Robot Masters are still rioting and a new army of them has started a legit revolution, vandalizing the good guild, which still has that name for some reason despite the tone shift, who are about as compitent as the name implies. Here’s file footage of them fighting Pharoah Man. 

Anyways Dr. Light is going to negotiate peace and as I mentoned earlier nams is watching with a glare on his face. And yeah I .. I can’t keep calling him Namagem. That name is just bad and whoever came up with it is one of the biggest morons in marketing history as is whoever decided to force the poor creative team to use it. However while he is Protoman in ways.. it just dosen’t fit. The two were made together in this unvierse, maybe we’ll see as this comic fills in the blanks, and furthermore he’s a bit of protoman and bass.. and since protobass sounds stupid, and blues dosen’t work without the theme naming.. i’m going with Breakman, protoman’s disgusie from 3. With the heavy scaring, broken past and general state of him it just.. fits and HOPEFULLY the comic will give him a full on rename. If it does i’ll go with that but for now I just want to keep from slamming my head into a keyboard every time I have to type out NAMAGEM... excuse me. 

hgfjnhnghbjnh

That’s better. Okay so moving on from my new headache, we cut to the desert where the good guild, which is somehow even worse than Breakman’s actual name, are escorting light to a bunker in the desert, where the robots outside tell light to leave the good guild inside. Just as well he’d be better protected with a paper mache sword anda  note telling them to go away. 

Naturally, not long inside the robot masters leader forces light to bow and handcuffs him, before revealing himself. 

Skull Man. Who looks really badass in this thought, the skulls themed scrap throne, his regal posture and his speeches about how he feels that the only way things will be right, and settled is not by the fragile peace silicon city has but by humans beneath his rather sizable boots. And honestly.. he was a good choice for the main robot antagonist: Skull Man’s always had a cool look to him and most versions of him have been pretty cool, and the Megas gave him one hell of a theme song. If you haven’t heard of htem the Megas are an indie rock band that do reworkings of the various songs from mega man games, at the time of this recording a full album for 2, two full albums for 3, an ep for 1, and scattered other songs since the second 3 album, with plans to do their next full album on mega man x. Each of the stage themes for the robot masters is from the prosepctive of one of them and are really damn good and I’d recommend thema nd skullman’s.. really fits him here. take a listen. 

But yeah Skull Man feels like a good choice for a menacing revolutionary, as well as a former combat robot as he himself was apparently in the hard wars. He honestly reminds me a lot of more than meets the eye megatron in flashbacks.. just good stuff. But being in the wars, he’s naturally not too fond of repetant vetran light and plans to kill him as an example. Light however.. isn’t an idiot.. a good man who seeks to do his best, who came in good faith.. but just in case he put some sort of device under his skin and presses it, signaling his son to come save his ass. And thus he does come ...

And one of skullman’s minons mistakes him for a bomb.. which light clarifies i’ts a BLUE BOMBER. To skullman’s credit his response is to just order them to go full throttle showing no panic as Mega Man makes his entrance. 

Light thanks him by.. asking what took him so long.. when his son, whose a middle schooler mind you, had to fight through a bunch of armed assholes to get in here most likely. Mini shows up to my annoyance.. though credit where it’s do his zinger of what took so long “some birds, a plane, some guy in a cape” is actually.. really funny. I question why they kept him at ALL, but hey, at least he’s less grating and isn’t around long.. more on that in a minute. 

A really well drawn action scene insues.. while the expressions vary for this comic, I will give the fight scnee, I will give the artist credit for having fluid motion and nice pops of color, most things are kind of blendy into the background other than major character but the color pops where it should.. not exactly my style but it works okay. In a nice change of his character though, Aki offers to spare the various robots there of a fight and possible death, as while he already attacked them it was in self defense.  And while it is a 180 from the show.. it’s not only a welcome change as it’s closer to the games canon and a more intersting personality.. it also still works. Aki went through a LOT at the end of season 1: while he did win, he found out he had a brother, his dad knew who he was but was never honest with him about it and also likely knows where his power came from but hasn’t told him, and has had to deal with 6 months worth of rioting where he’s unsure what side he’s on, machine like he is or man like his family. He’s trying to find the right ballance; be the hero his city needs.. but be the man he needs to be, one who will spare his enemies and won’t fight unless he needs to, for the good fo everyone, His friends, his family, everyone in the city who deserves to sleep soundly. And he’s also starting to wonder, via narration of course, if he’s a hero.. or even a kid.. or a weapon> Which again while a bit of a shift from the series again makes sense: he’s a middle school aged boy who started this jsut fighting random assholes and some idiot racist who was transparently evil and had selfish goals.. now he’s fighting against a revolution who MIGHT have a point. While Silcion city seemd fine and equal.. there wer eplenty of idiot swilling to listen to night. As the real world has proven over the last few months, just because things have gotten better, dosen’t mean that things are 100% or that prejudice is just gone. He’s a 12 year old asked to take a stand in a messy conflict that lead to war in the past with his father offering no answers and growing colder. While I thought his angst was  bit overblown on first reading the more I think about it the more it fits. 

Anyways Mega makes short work of the skull squad after they refuse to back down, but while Mega Man’s ready to ghost.. Skull Man’s not done and drills into mega man’s head... and reveals something. Flashbacks. 

But yeah, Skull Man’s either implanted or restored some memory of Aki fighting in the hard wars.. right alongside dr. light.. with a drill because science. DR. Light then gets REALLY badass, breaking out of the robot restraining him’s grip before fucking UPERCUTTING Skull Man.. jesus christ, Dr.Light clearly traded his empathy for miraclo pills holy balls.  Rush helps him escape and take Aki with him but skull man’s confident, he lost the battle but won Mega’s mind.  On the way home Mega Man tells dr.light what he saw and isn’t sure if it’s the past the future or something else but Dr.Light assures him..

Even though his eyes give away he’s clearly hiding something. Also I haven’t mentioned it yet but Dr.Light looks like santa in this sisue, red shirt, blue pants, big white beard. Just.. why though. Just put him in a suit or something. Also Mini crawls out of Mega’s head and passes out due to the memory restoration.. a nice way to write him out while still giving it weight since while the audience is presumibly cheering his long overdue demise, he is aki’s friend.. why I have no idea but he is.  Back at the lighthouse, the light’s home and home base, which is admitely a really good alternate name for light labs and a better one in my opinon. Light brushes off Suna, telling her to go to bed and avoiding telling her anything. Yeahhh.. while it could be the pressure of the situation I really dont’ like dr.light’s characterization before. Fully Charged, outside of the whole secret identity thing which at least was expalined as Aki not knowing if his dad would let him continue as mega man if he knew, though it extended clearly past the point he was clearly supporting mega man’s actions so I dunno. But he was a compationste scientest, deeply ashamed of his past in the war and wanting to make peace, he was done really well and peformed well by gary chalk. Here? He’s a dick who clearly did something terrible in the past and treats his kids like crap. It’s okay to be suspcious of him given the flashback but he’s given us no reason to like him or want to hear his side eventually, and hopefully that changes. 

Suna talks to Aki who tells her what happened and both side give out good arguments; Suna points out she reallyc an’t trust what some creepy asshole put in his head, as Skull Man could just want to brainwash him.. but Aki counters easily and quietly: How’s he supposed to know what’s real if his dad won’t tell him anything? He took months to tell Aki he knew about his alter ego, and even before his id came out avoided talking about the hard war, which hasn’t changed. He vows to find out though, and Suna naturally is helpful, pointing out there’s more people to ask and since she actually pays attention in school she knwos just who.. Dr. Wily. Yup he’s finally here. dun dun dun. We then close as Breakman watches and tells his brother he can’t stop what’s started. And we’re out.  Mega Final Thoughts: This was a decent issue, doing a fair job of bringing in new readers, and the art was decent and matched the tone.. which If elt was a bit too bleak at times. Better than say a Zack Snyder film at least, but still a bit too close to that form of edgelord for my case. That said it opens up some intresting mysteries and has me at least willing to give it another shot next month and was a solid opener, which while not having the best charcterzation for dr light, vastly improved Aki and Suna’s while giving us a far more intersting villian in Skull Man. If this holds, we’ll see. But until then I plan to cover more mega man comics, as well as my continued weekly coverage of amphibia. Until I see you again, stay safe, wear a mask and later days

[popculturebuffet]

Reviews: The Stand: Captain Trips

Halloween Havoc rambles on!  I decided to read a Stephen King Classic via it’s comic book adaptation from Marvel Knights 4 and Afterlife with Archie scribe and future Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sarcasa. A deadly plauge sweeps across the US that kills in it’s wake while the goverment tries to cover it up. Because that’s not at all terrifingly close to home.  But as this pandemic creeps around the US we meet 5 dispearte people with a part to play in what the world becomes after the end: Stu, a hard nosed man who finds himself imprisoned by the government since he was next to patient zero for the outbreak and lived. Frannie, a young woman who finds herself pregnant and dealing with her disaproving mother and the babie’s less than ideal dad. Larry, a would be one hit wonder whose come home to new york to dry out and to let Stephen King go on for several pages about how much he fucking hates new york, because that was important. Nick, a deaf and mute teen drifter who finds himself subbing for a kind sherieff who sadly got the disease. And Lloyd, a dumb criminal who finds himself in jail after a robbery gone bad. And waiting in their dreams and the shadows for his acendency, the walking dude, Randall Flagg, evil itself. Waiting paitently for the soon dawning time of his ascendency. Spoilers and the review itself under the cut. 

So yeah i’m back to doing some comics reviews and I.. genuinely missed it. I did. I just needed to reajdust from doing one issue at a time to doing full arcs as well as get it in my head to do one.  And while I didn’t INTEND to review these, I ended up liking this series, at least for this mini, so much I couldn’t resist diving into them critically.  As for why I decided to read these comics it’s simple: i’ve never read the Stand but always wanted to. No real complex motives: I’ve liked some adaptations of King’s works with It: Chapter One being the reason I finally started watching horror movies after a good decade or two of avoiding them like the plauge, finally breaking down my squeamish cowardly barrier and opening up a greater world. Granted the sequel was a giant balloon parade of disapointment, but I can get to that some other day. Point is I like Stephen King: he seems like a decent enough guy, has had some good adaptations of his works and even the bad ones have some fun. Like this trailer for maximum overdrive where it’ shard to tell if it’s his tragic drug addiction or just him that’s responsibile for that wonderful delivery. 

So yeah, with little options to read the stand and the series out of print, I decided to dive into the comics because they seemed accurate enough from the way reviews had them and frankly before horror films, I really got into horror through comics, with my gateway there being Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s afterlife with archie. Many of you may know RAS, as i’m calling him so I don’t horribly mangle his namem, as the guy behind riverdale, sabrina, which is partialy based off his own sabrina comic and kathy keene, but before he became Archie’s golden boy, he was a writer at marvel, hence these mini series, and wrote the wonderful fantastic four series marvel knight’s 4, which I might cover at some point, which followed the four as they lost all their money and had to live like us normal folks. It’s really fucking good stuff and easily one of the best runs on the characters period. Afterlife with Archie is no slouch either so pairing both guys who brought me to the terrordance of horror seemed like a match made in heaven.  So that’s where we Stand, pun intended: I haven’t read the stand or watched the mini series, only know or remember some spoilers, and am walking into this blind but eager to see what happens. So if your willing to join me on the ride and on my fresh perspective, here’s Stephen King’s the stand by RAS and Mike Perkins.  Now since, at least at this early stage, The stand is divided up by the characters and what their going through as the virus hits, i’m going to cover this character by character, with an additional section on the progress of the pandemic itself and the government response.  Before I dig in I will say there is something I really love here: The Pacing. NOw I will grant it’s slow: By the end of this mini we only JUST meet big bad Randall Flag as the pademic and it’s goverment coverup both kick into high gear.  So why does it work? Simple: The characters. By opening up as the end of the world is happening instead of shortly before or after like most post apoclayptic stories, and focusing on each of our surivivors we get a real sense of who our heroes were before society collapsed as it collapses, and get to really care about them and WANT to see how they react to the end of the world and what they become. It justifies the series, and the book’s , massive length by using that giant stretch of time to get us invested in the cast and really want to see where this story goes. It’s really good storytelling and holds up really well. So with that out of the way, we can dive into the meat of the story itself. And before we can get to our protaganists, let’s get to the plauge itself 

THE OUTBREAK

The story starts with a soldier breaking out of quarantine after getting hit with a miltary virus, infecting his wife and child  while trying to go awol and dying.. thus starting the plauge known as Captain Tripps. It crashes into a small town gas station, where we met Stu, one of our heroes, more of him later and starts to slowly grip the nation as the book goes on.  The Goverment handles making a plauge that will end up dooming the human race.. by pretending it dosen’t exist, supressing the media, and cordening off whole cities and taking them over. An early attempt by the media to get the story out get the reporters shot horribly, and we get to see all the gore in this version. it’s not plesant but it’s a well done sequence. We get an even worse sequence where the general in charge of the facility captain tripps came from seeing tons of dead bodies in the cafeteria from their sceintests failed attempts at a cure, one of which is horribly bloated, and then shoots himself..... yeah I got nothing. Just.. wow. Good horrible stuff. 

So yeah tha’ts basically how it goes: the goverment can’t figure out how to stop it and tries desperatley to cover it up or downplay it instead.. and why yes our own goverment’ sbungled handling of coronavirus, with our own PRESIDENT, in the hospital right now, does make this extra chilling to me thanks for asking!  It SOMEHOW gets worse with the final issue as various media outlets rebel against the goverment  supression with tv, newspaper and radio all reporting on this despite the risk.. that comes true as the goverment STILL dosen’t learn their lesson and kills them all and we end as the virus only gets worse and the president urges everyone that it’s all fine despite teh mass bodies dumped into the sea and to just take some juice. Just.... just..... 

Yes exactly thank you Jon. It’s good stark horrible stuff, I just have no more commentary other than please make it stop. I will say however it’s well done stuff that lets the creeping dread seep in until it really hits fever pitch at the end. 

Stu Redman: 

As I mentioned, we meet Stu very early on, as he’s on site when patient zero crashes his car into a gas station.  Unfortuntely for him this gets him and hsi town swept up to a goverment black site where as seen above, he has no time for the bullshit their feeding him and is in no mood to actually cooperate till they actually talk to them. Which.. yeah it’s entirely resonable: the Goverment is holding him here against his will, refusing to tell him anything and asking to get samples from him. How does he know their not just going to shoot him the second their done with him? He dosen’t and given what we’ve seen this version of the goverment, and hell the real goverment do, yeah. Maybe blind trust needs to be earned rather than demanded. Just saying.  Stu gets his answers, that everyone else they brought in and thus his whole town is dead, and they don’t know how to stop the virus.. and that they don’t know where it came from but as the above makes clear, that’s a load of garbage. So Stu relcutantly and grumpliy coperates. He’s basically if Ron Swanson got freaky friday’d into nick millers body. 

Stu eventually gets taken to a diffrent facility after the jounalist thing and becomes even more coperative, as they start bringing in an armed guard every time someone visits him.. and Stu starts to get even more wary of this shit as it’s very obvious he’s become expendable, he uses those exact words, and by the end of this mini is plotting his escape. He also has dreams.. of iowa cornfields.. and a sinster man in black floating above them.  I like stu a lot: A hard nosed down to earth guy who dosen’t take shit, but is clever enough to know when to bite his tounge and bide his time, easily sussing out both why he’d been moved to a new facility and just how disposable he now is: He’s a man who will fight when needed but knows when to hold back and wait for it. He’s also a nice protaganist ot be our main viewpoint in the goverment sections and is easily my second faviorite. My faviorite is coming shortly. 

Frannie Goldsmith: 

Frannie is a college student who just ended up pregnant by her  boyfriend Jesse. She dosen’t want to marry him despite him offering.. and given his reactions to her telling him this are to whine “but you were supposed to be on the pill”, which she was and gave plenty of reasons why that may not have worked, and then give a loud , what was probably groaning “Aw hell” before proposting.. yeah good call. 

Frannie’s dad takes it well as he’s sad, but he understands and loves his daughter and wants to support her. Her mother.. is a selfish nightmare who bearates her for it, berates her husband, who usually backs down as Frannie is used to at this point, for standing up for her and then just for added terrible points physically abuses Frannie, who is PREGNANT, by slapping her hard. I know that can’t hurt the baby but fucking really.  Thankfully Frannie’s father decides even if he wont’ divorce the crone to stand up to her at least, and points out she really hasn’t been the same since Frannie’s brother died, igorning her up until the pregnancy and calling her out. She leaves in a huff defeated, and Frannie leaves to go stay at a hotel for a bit while tryign to find somewhere to stay, with her mom not wanting to talk to her and her dad insiting she come around.  Given her mother had signs of the virus earlier.. she dosen’t. She dies, Frannie, having come home to help her is devistated and we actually get a devistating if confusing bit as she hugs her dad and talks about eating the pie. Something lost in translation but the visuals cover well enough. And that’s where he story ends, though with a montage in the last issue, which is all we get of htem as the issue is focused on Flagg and the pandemic response instead. Not a bad move mind as it’s easily the best issue of the series, just a note.  Frannie is a likeable enough character, a strong woman who knows what she wants, wants to keep her baby and has decent enough family drama.. if well worn at this point but fraknly the book was written all the way back in the late 70′s so this is forgivable as it probably wasn’t AS common as it is now. Frannie has plenty of personality but her plot is one of the less intresting as it’s pretty easy to tell where it’s going in comparison to the other, more intresting plots going on around it. That said you still connect to frannie enough for it to not feel like a drag on the story and to feel important, so it’s not too bad a section. 

Larry Underwood: Larry Underwood is a musician whose also a bit o fa scumbag, using people and drugs like theres no tommorow and riding high, in both senses, off the sucess of his single.. a title that sums up the 70′s in a nutshell “Baby Can You Dig Your Man?”. Just.. it sounds like a parody song from SCTV... so in other words good job on making a goofy 70′s pop hit title stephen. Respect. 

But yeah a friend of Larry’s seeing he’s hit bottom suggets he had back to new york. Larry bunks with his mom who worries it’s too late for him to change from the scumbag he is now and that only a great catstrophe could do that. 

So yeah obviously it’s gonna, but we’ll likely see that as the series goes on. So mostly Larry’s segment is one incident of him having a one night stand that seems a bit overblown.. I mean it is scummy of him but her screaming “your not a good guy and what not as seen above just seems narmy as hell and utterly stephen king in terms of writing.. but the scene of him trying to convince himself she’s wrong after is really strong. Larry’s self doubt, self hate and wondering if he’s that bad is really strong stuff and really godo character stuff showing he is an asshole who uses people including his own mom.. but also genuinely DOSEN’T want to be that person but dosen’t know how. We also get a crushing bit where he calls for his friend who helped him only to find out not only is the guy in the hopstial but it’s getting bad. As the chapter ends larry looses his mom too.  The one real weakness of this bit is King goes on a bit of an author tract that’s kept via larry’s narration, which by the way I love how the books narration is kept REALLY damn well via the caption boxes, it’s really nicely done and a way to help keep some of the bits from the book while still taking bits out where necessary. It’s a nice touch. But back on point yeah.. Larry REALLY hates new york.. which to me translates as Stephen King REALLY hating new york, and wanting you to know how much he hates new york, how much the city was festering back then, how much of a crap hole it is, how it farts turds during thunder storms etc. IT’s likely trimme down from the text but boy does it feel unecessary> We get it, 70′s pre clean-up intiative new york was REALLY fucking awful. You didn’t like it there. But if you want to rant about new york for several paragraphs.. 

Like I get that he’s TRYING to make the point Larry dosen’t like new york and dosen’t fit in at home but instead of trying into his character arc entirely it just feels like an excuse for King to ramble about his hatred of new york. I’ts easily the weakest part of this mini series and I only think it was kept because RAS, as made clear in the question and answer sessions with marvel.com in the back of one of the issues, is a huge king fan and wanted to keep as much as possible. It’s the one time I feel the comic, and the story it’s retelling, really stumbled that bad. Thankfully with that rant over we can get onto my faviorite character

Nick Andros: Nick is easily has both the most unique narriatve and is the most intresting character to me. A mute and deaf teenage drifter, he goes from town to town finding work.. and between towns get beatup by a bunch of local assholes the ringleader of which is your standard Stephen King bully because depending on the kindness of strangers in a stephen king story is just asking for a beating.  Though oddly enough that ends up working as Nick finds himself in a jail cell with the local Sheirff and after getting a pad and paper, not only verifies he was working with someone in town, and who he is , but also who beat him down. And oddly for a king story since while he DOES have a heroic sheirff i’ve heard of, most of his law enformcent seem to be corrupt hicks at best, this one.. is a nice guy who makes sure the assholes that assaulted nick are brought in despite the ringleader being his wife’s nephew and knowing he’ll get no sex for a while because of it.. the narrative points this out because we needed to knwo that apparently. 

But said wife happily takes Nick in along with the Shierff while the sheirff takes 3/4 of the assholes in, with said nephew booking it out of town. But soon our kindly sheiff takes ill from the virus and Nick gladly fills in for him as his new deputy to make sure the idiots at the jail don’t starve. He continues this throught the book even as he looses his new family tragically due to the virus.. and soon his prisoners catch it too and clearly aren’t long for the world.  Nick is a THROUGHly likeable character. Just from body laungage it’s clear there’s a bit of an edge and a bit of harshness to him.. but he’s mostly just a good kid who goes out of his way to make sure three assholes who tried beating him to death get fed and watered, and wants to do the right thing despite the world crappign on him constnatly. He’s throughly intresting and his disablity is nicely portrayed, with him being portrayed as a normal guy who simplyg ot dealt a really crappy hand and does his best with it. Easily the best part of this mini, closely followed by the last issue but we’ll get to that in a second. We have one more character to get through. 

Lloyd Henried This bit will go fast since he’s only in two sections this mini but Lloyd is a dimwitted crminal who clearly gets a thrill from the crime sprees and murders he and his pal have done but also dosen’t murder inscreimatley. Unfortunatley his partner in crime does and Lloyd gets arrested after his first scene and hsi friend gets his face gunned off. Lloyd is last scene with his lawyer teaching him to lie. He’s basically just a dumb criminal at this point who likes thrills. Not a lot to dig into comapred to the other characters soooooo let’s move on to our final focus character and the focus of the final issue only, but hitned at before... 

Randall Flagg The breakout character of the piece, one of king’s most loved and most used villians. The Walking Dude. The Devil HImself. I had high expecations of this character with all that hype and he did NOT disapoint. 

Flagg is a mysterious supernatural drifter who dosen’t even know how long he’s existed but is evil itself. He makes anyone he passes feel nervous, glass crack and everyone uneasy, yet when needed can slip in and out of any extremist or hate group easily and hands out pamphliets for whatever will get people riled up the most, good cause or bad. and easily worms his way in and out of heavily armed groups and into women’s beds. My words do not do kings words put onto the final issue justice. They jsut impart he is evil, he is here, and he is about to RISE. And you’d better be prepared to run. After a few issues of only appearing in one dream.. we meet our antagonist and he is a lot. Throughly engaging, throughly creepy and throughly unesettling we get a full sense of who flagg is a drifter who SEEMS resonable enough when talking but just.. gets under your skin, yhou just feel.. WRONG around him. This one sequence REALLY got me excited to see what this bastard does. Not a lot elsse to say  throughly engaging creepy impressive villian who lived up to the hype and star of one of the best single issues i’ve read. No notes. 

So yeah overall.. I really love this story so far. Obviously I have a LONNNG way to go and 5 more mini series to go so I hope you’ll join me but the art is good, the decisions fantastic and the writing adapted well, clearly compressed but in a way that works. A fantastic way to read the story for a newcomer such as myself and if you can find it somehwer,e read it. Ill continue with it as hte month, or months probably, go on. Until then check back on my blog for regular ducktales coverage and some more halloween fun, hit up my asks if you have some comics you’d like to see me cover, and until next time, happy halloween.