#but I've had so many thoughts about this toon | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sneverussape · 6 months ago

Text

many the miles, 1/2

evans!severus au

the one where 13yo severus sneaks off to cokeworth and unwittingly gets caught by his older sister, and they both end up on a train to the midlands OR a long meandering sibling-focused two-shot that i've been dying to write because these two wouldn't stop arguing in my head and it was driving me NUTS

wc: 6866 (more or less)

cw: mentions of epilepsy, growing up in the 90s/2000s, discmans, Fruit Polos (rip), being yelled at by older siblings in public places, 2000s eyebrows, swearing, whatever else

for @greens-your-color :)

“Severus!”

Severus froze mid-step at the sound of his name being called among the crowded orange halls of St. Pancras. It had been faint, as though coming from a distance or a fading dream, and his first thought was to consider whether his new potions regimen included late-onset hallucinations.

Fantastic, he thought grimly, but proceeded to steel himself to accept the possibility with reluctant grace. When his name was called out loud again, however, and this time with a hard edge, he frowned and quickly reconsidered the odds, deciding that hallucinations didn’t normally grow louder or fiercer as time went on. Besides…hallucinations didn’t tend to make Mercutio react, and as it was, he had already turned to face the opposite way, his massive tail thumping hard against Severus’ leg.

“Severus!”

There was something in the way his name was said that instinctively made him spin on his heel so fast that he nearly got whiplash. At first there wasn’t anything worth noting, but soon enough his eyes focussed beyond the crowd and he was met with the sight of a rather familiar blur of wild blonde hair and clenched teeth running towards him with all the speed and rage of a charging Erumpet…if said Erumpet was just over five feet and wore paint-stained overalls with their mother’s soiled red wellies (exactly the ones she usually wore when mucking about the garden and which he knew a fox had pissed on just days before).

His jaw seemed to unhinge, and he felt himself gaping in disbelief. Alarm flared hot and heavy in the pits of his stomach.

“Petunia…?!” Severus said with no small amount of trepidation. Between the possibility of being subjected to medication-induced hallucinations or his indignant older sister, he much preferred the former than the latter. Hell, death would be the preferred option to Petunia in a massive strop. His instincts screamed at him to run and find a dark corner to hide, but his trainers stayed firmly glued to the spot as he watched the figure approach.

Please don’t be her…please don’t be her, he found himself wishing, though he knew it was futile. The figure had already stopped in front of him, red-faced and breathless from the run, with the look of a creature possessed. Their chest heaved and their eyes flashed, and within the stuttering silence, there was a brief moment when Severus still held out the hope that this could all be a dream—

“You little…shit.”

A manicured nail poked him in the chest. Hard. Severus winced. Definitely (and unfortunately) not a hallucination then. Mercutio yipped again, happily. The traitor.

Severus held up his hands as though he was under arrest. Well, he technically was.

“Hang on—ow! Hang on, I can explain…” Raw fear made his words skitter and stumble past his teeth. His tongue had gone dry and suddenly wanted to make a home for itself on the roof of his mouth. “Listen, Toons, it’s not what you think—”

“No, no, no, you listen! Just what do you think you’re doing, Severus Tobias Evans?!” As though on cue, Petunia exploded, and Severus was suddenly awash in a tirade that rang and echoed across the station’s stone walls in a manner that would rival any well-placed Sonorous. “Do you know how worried I was?! I took my eyes off you for one hour and I came back to find your room empty with nothing but a cryptic note on your desk and the last redialed number on the phone one to a cab company leading here! It cost me sixty quid to get here, mind! Sixty! I’ve not washed my hair and I’m supposed to be revising for my exam! I only agreed to watch you for Mum and Dad since they said you were ill and not having lessons today. You’ve no business to be here. WHY ARE YOU HERE?”

Severus grimaced as Petunia shouted the final question, his ears burning something fierce. He hadn’t seen or heard her that furious in ages. The last time he could remember that she had exploded the same way was when he and Lily had been experimenting with their magic a year or so before they got their Hogwarts letters: they had ended up lopping the tip of Lily’s finger clean off and had attempted, quite unsuccessfully, to fix it themselves. Petunia had reached a similar volume then (possibly due to the amount of blood on the kitchen floor), but that one at least hadn’t been a public bollocking – she had calmed down enough by the time they had run over to Andi and Ted to ask for help, and had subsequently handed the reins off to the Tonkses for a second dressing-down; the memory of a particularly potent stinging hex against his palm wasn’t something Severus would soon forget.

This time it was different. They were out in the open and Lily wasn’t available for him to tag team with. If Lily had been there, she’d have likely covered for him so this entire situation wouldn’t even be happening. But as it stood, he now had to deal with an irate Petunia all on his own where strangers could ogle at them, and wasn’t that a treat?

“It isn’t what you think it is.” Severus forced himself to speak, although his voice was higher than he’d like. “It really isn’t.”

“Oh it isn’t? Because what I think is that you’re in heaps of trouble and that’s not even the whole of it.” Petunia spoke in a tone that eerily sounded like their mother’s and it made Severus’ skin crawl.“This really has to be the most idiotic thing you’ve done, Severus. Congratulations, you’ve exceeded expectations entirely with this act. What on earth could possibly justify your being here—”

She stopped mid-rant and Severus saw as she focused on the rucksack he was carrying, her eyes wide as they traveled up to his face. “Hang on, what is that?” She gasped, looking genuinely aghast. “Severus, are you running away?”

Severus groaned, resisting the urge to slap his forehead with his palm. Of course his sister would jump to that conclusion. “I just told you it isn’t what you think it is! I’m not running away.”

“Well, I don’t know what you want me to think given that we’re in a bloody train station and you’ve a bag with you! It’s not like I’ve caught you lollygagging at the corner store!”

“Toons, just—” He was getting equally frustrated and had to resist with his entire being from telling Petunia to just shut up for a bloody minute to make his ears stop ringing and from bringing them further embarrassment. God, he hoped none of the people around them knew who they were. “It really is going to be fine, just let me…” His words were starting to fail him again, and Severus clenched his fists at his sides. “Look. It’s only a daytrip, I promise. I’ll be back even before Mum and Dad get home, but you have to let me do this, Toons. Trust me.”

The shade of red Petunia’s face turned into wasn’t one he had ever seen on any living person before.

“Trust you—?! Severus, you’re thirteen! I can’t even trust you with a pocketbook of matches! And a daytrip? Are you mad?! Are you playing hookey just to go on holiday? Are you…” And this time, Petunia was mindful enough to look round and lower her voice before speaking the next sentence: “Are you going to Hogwarts, because I swear if you are—”

“What? No!” Severus frowned. “Why would I go to Hogwarts?” The first term for that year had barely started, and besides, he had already gotten approval to have several Advanced lessons that wouldn’t be taught to Lily and the rest of their class until later in the year. Apart from wanting to visit his sister, Hogwarts held very little appeal for him.

“How am I supposed to know what goes on in your head?” Petunia fumed. “Mum and Dad gave me specific instructions to keep an eye on you today because they said you were ill.” She peered closer at his face. “But you’re not, are you? You’re sneaking off to God knows where while they’re away!”

Severus felt himself flush. He hadn’t needed any of Lily’s Fever Fudge to fool his parents earlier that morning before they had left for their outing, but being called out on it now made him feel several levels of shame that he didn’t think he was capable of feeling. Petunia hadn’t even tried to see if he had a temperature; she had already cottoned on.

“Technically,” he muttered, “I am ill…with a chronic condition…”

“Oh, Severus!” Petunia exclaimed, and she really did sound like their Mum when she was at the end of her tether. It was freakishly uncanny. “How could you lie to them about this? Do you know how worried they constantly are about you? How I—” She stopped herself mid-sentence before consciously attempting to regain her composure. After a few uneven breaths, she leveled a glare at him.

“Right, you are going to explain now,” she ordered, her voice now deadly calm. “Or I’m phoning Mum and Dad, and you will be in so much trouble I doubt you’ll even be let out until you’re eighty.”

“You wouldn’t! That’s not fair!” Severus gasped. The worst possibility he’d considered in his plan was having his parents overly worry, causing them to stay behind. Careless as he was with many others’ feelings (his sisters sometimes included), his parents were the utmost exception and he took great care of theirs above all else, since he often despised how much they had to pause their own lives for his sake. The thought of his plan unraveling in such a way that it would make them cancel their holiday altogether made him sick to his stomach. Mum had even bought an entirely new wardrobe for it even though they were only going to be gone for the day. “They’ve been looking forward to this outing for months!”

“Well bully for you, I guess you should have stayed home like you were supposed to, then.” Petunia crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head. “Talk,” she commanded.

Oh, Petunia was a tough nut to crack. If it came down to it, he knew she’d force the answers out of him somehow. Sometimes, Severus was glad his older sister wasn’t magical at all; he was sure she’d end up an Unspeakable, and the thought itself was enough to make him shudder.

“I really am not running away...” Severus said, and it took all his willpower to not allow his voice to tremble. He wasn't afraid, how could he be? Petunia was the height of a Christmas elf. But his knees felt weak all the same. And did his voice just break? Merlin. “Everything was all planned out. I put out a note just in case, but I wasn’t really expecting you or anyone else to find it.” He felt very much like a child as Petunia raised a razor-thin eyebrow at him (it looked so awful, why was this a fad? But both his sisters would kill him if he ever so much as breathed his opinion about them), but somehow managed to ramble on. “Anyway, I was going to go and be back before anyone could find out.”

“How could you think I wouldn’t check on you at any point?” Petunia looked deeply unimpressed which, honestly, was her default expression, but this time it seemed more pointed. “I would have had to make sure you hadn’t died before Mum and Dad came home…” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Severus, did you ward your room?”

Bleeding buggering hell, his sister should have really just joined the police force. An economics degree or whatever it was she was in uni for would be far too dull for her. Having Petunia as a copper would lower the crime rate in Britain to single digits, he reckoned. Between him and Lily, she had already garnered enough practice.

As in that moment, when the stilted silence between them already gave her the confirmation she needed.

“Severus Tobias Evans!” Petunia thundered, anger flooding her features once more. “How could you do such a reckless thing! You know Mum and Dad specifically told you to not put any kind of ward or charm on your room…it’s not safe!”

This time it was Severus’ turn to glare. Although he knew his family’s rules and their protectiveness always meant well, he couldn’t help but feel suffocated when they insisted on his safety as though he was made of spun glass.

“It was just the one time and you broke through well enough!” He said hotly. “That shouldn’t have even been possible with the Notice-Me-Not up!”

He was equally annoyed and perplexed at having been caught, especially knowing that it was due to Petunia being unaffected by the charm enough to enter his room. His sister was notoriously averse to magic, and simple charms usually worked on her effortlessly. To his surprise, Petunia scoffed at his statement. She raised her wrist and showed the bright green bracelet clasped around it. The same bracelets their parents wore, all of which were in the same fluorescent color as Mercutio’s enchanted emergency collar. Severus groaned, recognizing it right away.

“You’re bloody joking! How do you have one?” Part of him wanted to throw a tantrum, as pointless as it was. The bracelet would make Petunia the third person to have the ability to know of his general well-being whether he wanted them to or not. The very thought made him want to snap it off and chuck it into the Thames. “St. Mungo’s said it was only for parents and guardians!”

“I asked, and they gave me one when I came of age,” Petunia said snootily. “Your little tricks don’t work when your safety is concerned. The bracelet started growing warm all of a sudden this morning and I knew you were up to something. Now here I am, and my toast has been abandoned and is growing cold in the kitchen as we speak.”

“You were supposed to be revising for exams. I checked your timetable and everything and Mum had left me sandwiches in my room so you wouldn’t need to bother.” Severus was fuming. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Don’t even think of giving me lip,” Petunia snapped at him with a warning tone that instantly made him internally recoil, although he continued to glare at her. “And of course you went through my things even though I’ve told you a million times not to! And…hang on…if you bunked off your tutors today then even Andi doesn’t know your little scheme, whatever it is. She wouldn’t have expected you at her house today for lessons.”

It was more a statement than a question and Severus flinched. He had been avoiding trying to think of what Andi would do to him once – if – she found out.

“It would have been fine…” he said as he unconsciously rubbed his palm where Andi’s stinging hex had last been cast.

“Oh fine, he says!” Petunia’s sudden outburst earned them a few startled glances. “This is not fine, Severus, if you still haven’t noticed. You’ve told no one? Are you daft? If anything happened to you whilst you were out…we wouldn’t even know where to start!”

“I was only going to be gone for a couple of hours.” Severus couldn’t understand what she was so worked up about. In his mind, his plan made perfect sense. “I’ve been gone for longer to the library.”

“You’re comparing this to a trip the library, really? Have you utterly lost all sense? Do you truly not understand the danger…?!” At Severus’ defiant expression, Petunia groaned. “Seriously, I am going to end up tearing my hair out…what if you had gotten kidnapped? Mugged? What if you had become seriously ill at any point?”

Her eyes flashed at the words, although he needed no cues, verbal or otherwise, to understand what it was she was referring to. He crossed his own arms, mirroring his sister’s defensive pose.

“I wouldn’t have,” he said with full confidence. “But even if I had a fit, it would be fine. I’ve been taking my po—medicines, and Mercutio’s here—”

“Mercutio wouldn’t have been able to protect the people with you, you absolute numpty!” This time, Petunia didn’t look angry but terrified. “Did you not consider that in your grand plan? Mercutio could get you to hospital but someone apart from you could get seriously hurt with your…abilities…and then where will we all be? I don’t fancy being in prison—in either world! Mum and Dad either, mind!”

Severus felt the blood drain from his face at her words. The image of a train suddenly exploding mid-track and people losing assorted limbs due to his accidental magic ran unbidden through his mind’s eye and made him wince. It was true that he had only considered what would happen to him if he had gotten a fit at any point during the trip; he had forgotten about its effects on other people entirely. His family and the Tonkses and his tutors always seemed to know what to do…but he hadn’t planned on them being with him, had he?

Suddenly, Petunia being so spitting angry no longer seemed as ridiculous given that perspective.

Merlin’s bloody bollocks, he was a knob.

“I…” he licked his lips. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean…Look. Toons.” He attempted to placate his sister by being entirely upfront. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“That much is obvious.” Petunia snapped, before releasing what sounded like a pent-up sigh. She took a long pause before she reached for his hand. Her fingers were cold as she squeezed his.

“Listen, Severus, you honestly frightened me to death. Now…I won’t tell Mum and Dad, but let’s just go home, all right? Let this be the end of the adventure. We’ll forget about this and maybe I won’t use it as leverage against you in the future. All right? Let's just go.”

She tugged him in the direction of the exits, but he resolutely stayed put. Grateful as he was for his sister’s reprieve (a rare treat as far as he was concerned), he knew he couldn’t go. This had taken months of planning and he had already come so far.

“No,” he shook off Petunia’s hold. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t. I have to go today. It’s my only chance.”

“To do what?” Petunia, bless her, looked as though he’d hit her with an extremely powerful Confundus but was expending all her energy to fight it off. She pressed her palms against her eyes. “Go where? Severus, are you actually delirious? I don’t understand—”

“Cokeworth.”

“WHAT?” Petunia dropped her hands to gawk at him, her eyes nearly bugging out of her head. Her lips moved almost involuntarily although no further sounds came out. When her vocal chords seemed to have caught up with her, it was for high-pitched hissing and sputtering, making her sound rather like an anaphylactic snake, or an irate tea kettle.

“I’m sorry, you were planning to go where? The Midlands? NOW?”

“Yes.” Severus fished around in his pocket and produced the tickets he’d already bought. He’d saved his pocket money for weeks for this trip, and he’d even had to do some odd jobs around the house and for some of the neighbours. “The train is leaving in half an hour. You can go home and wait for me there, or just wait for me to come back here. But either way…I’m going.” He licked his lips nervously. He’d never stood up to Petunia this determinedly before and he was terrified of the possible consequences (Petunia could be quite vengeful, even for the pettiest things) but he didn’t want to mull over it now. Thankfully she seemed too distracted by the current circumstances to even ponder on future punishments.

“Are you even allowed to go?! As a child?? With a dog?? The police are going to be notified!”

It was a valid concern, but one that Severus had already covered. “I’m thirteen, it’s allowed, I checked,” he said, by means of explanation. He pulled Mercutio closer to him, who happily nuzzled his face into his hip. “Mercutio too. We’re not going to make trouble so there won’t be any reason for the police to come.”

This time, Petunia really did look as though she was about to murder him, and Severus was glad they were surrounded by people on all sides. She threw him a pointed glare before shifting her attentions to the clock on the wall, then the signboard, then her (well, their mother’s) shoes in movements so rapid Severus was wondering how it didn’t hurt her neck. It was a long minute before she started muttering a string of curse words that he was sure would have earned her a mouthful of soap if Mum had heard her.

“Bloody hell, I’m not even wearing socks.” Petunia whined as she tugged at the ends of her hair. “And…what am I wearing…fuck fuck fuck. I look properly mad.”

“Just stay here then…do a bit of shopping,” Severus offered, hoping his sister would take the bait. Petunia was as vain as the day was long, and he was sure the prospect of her getting a new wardrobe in case she met any of her many exes on the street was more enticing than tagging along with him to their old hometown while wearing mismatched clothing. “I’ll keep mum about the bills to Mum and Dad. And there’s…ah…a makeup store down the street, I think. I won’t be gone long—"

He made to already turn and walk away but was held fast by a tight grip on his collar. He yelped and when he looked up and there was only familiar determination in Petunia’s eyes, one he would normally associate with tyrannical despots or Andromeda Tonks whenever she requested audience with Headmaster Dumbledore for his ever-changing homeschooling curriculum.

“Right, you little miscreant. Listen here and listen well.” Petunia held him in place with an iron grip to his shoulder, bending a little so she could hiss straight at his face. All previous traces of amicability had been wiped away from her features. “Since you obviously won’t be dissuaded from your insane plan, I have no other choice but to fall in line with it. But let it not be said that I agreed with this! No, not at all! Because the second, and I swear, the second anything goes wrong, Severus Evans, I am taking you back home, kicking, crying and/or screaming, and Mum and Dad are going to hear all of it, you understand?”

“Hang on, you mean you’re coming?” It was Severus’ turn to sputter in shock. He had not, in the thousands of possibilities considered in his plan, anticipated either of his sisters coming with him. Lily had of course been removed from the equation at the onset, but Petunia, of all people?! No amount of Divination could have predicted this sorry lot. Forget the exploding train, there was going to be blood on their seats before they could even leave Kings Cross.

“But…your exam!” He finished lamely, his brain unable to think of any other valid excuse that could keep his sister in London.

“Sod the exam. I’m not going to fail that class. But Mum and Dad will have my head if I let you go off alone and something happens to you.” Petunia had a dangerous gleam in her eye. “You will owe me for a thousand years for this, whether or not we get out of this unscathed. Now come on. Let’s get this over and done with. I need to buy a ticket.”

Dumbfounded, Severus followed his sister as she stalked towards the ticketing booth, wild hair, dirty wellies, and all.

Merlin’s pants, what had he gotten himself into?

The train that would be taking them back to the Midlands (back home, a voice in his head said experimentally, but his stomach clenched painfully at the words) was nothing like the Hogwarts train. The Midland Mainline train was long and boxy, painted a dull green all throughout and covered liberally in a speckled coating of soot. Severus caught Petunia’s sneer when she first laid eyes on it, and she had automatically held out a hand as though to keep him back. Severus rolled his eyes before grasping her wrist and pulling her forward, ignoring the squeak that left his sister’s mouth as soon as they crossed from the platform to enter the compartment. He led them both to their seats, Mercutio at a leisurely pace beside them. It wasn’t a peak hour, thank Merlin, so locating their spot was simple enough, and he and Petunia both settled in rather quickly.

“How long was it again?” Petunia had chosen the seat adjacent from his, so he had full view of her sour expression.

“Two hours.”

A groan then a loud thump as she leaned hard against the window. “Bloody hell.”

“Shouldn’t you remember?” Severus barely remembered his life in Cokeworth but had counted that more as a boon than anything. He realized that although he had asked his parents more than once about their previous lives there, he had never thought to ask his sister. Trying to remember himself was a bit like wading through scenes being played on moth-eaten video tapes. “You were old enough when we moved, weren’t you?”

Petunia threw him a withering look. “We had a car, Severus, if you don’t remember being squished to within an inch of our lives at the back. We never took the—what the hell are you doing?”

Severus looked up from the small mountain of items that he had dumped from his rucksack onto the foldaway vinyl table that sat between them.

“Precautions,” he said, waving his sunglasses at her before putting them on. Even from behind the dark lenses, he saw as Petunia considerably paled at his response.

“You said you had taken your…your medicine.” Petunia’s wariness about magic extended to even their terms, and referring to his medication as potions was not something she could do even on a good day. At the moment, she looked as though she completely regretted being in an enclosed space with him; she looked fit to bolt. “Do you feel a fit coming on now? And don’t even think about lying!”

“Oh, will you relax,” Severus chided her as he untangled his headphones before putting them on his head. “I told you; I took my medicine already. This is just to…not tempt fate so to speak.” Pet Shop Boys on low was somehow effective at keeping fits at bay, and he had bought several CD sleeves with him in case.

“Severus…see here.” Petunia rapped at the tabletop, causing him to raise an eyebrow at her. “Swear to me.”

“What?”

“Swear to me that the second you start to feel something off, you’re telling me and we’re getting off this train. I don’t know how exactly, but we’re getting off.”

Severus rolled his eyes for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Toons, we’ve barely made it out of London…”

“I don’t care. Swear it, Severus!”

“Fine, yes, I promise to tell you,” Severus grumbled.

“Also I’m calling the shots. When I tell you we’re going, we’re going. There will be no ifs and buts, I am responsible for you during this trip and so help me, if you fight me, you are going to sorely regret it.”

Her directives made him clench his teeth, but there really was little he could do. Petunia’s presence already granted her default authority, and though Severus was loathe to do so, he knew agreeing to the path of least resistance was the most efficient way of getting through the trip with his sanity intact at the end. He could plot his revenge later.

“Fine,” he fought the urge to stick out his tongue, “but I don’t have to like it.”

“Good.” Petunia sat back in her seat, looking just a smidge bit relieved. “All we have to do is ride this out and hope your brain is calm enough the entire time.”

“I’ve told you though, the potions—” Severus stopped when Petunia hissed loudly, and begrudgingly corrected himself, “I mean, the medicine…it’s working this time around, believe it or not.”

“Working in what sense?” Petunia’s lips pursed. “It never does, or else Mum and Dad would have been crying in relief.”

“This batch works well enough. No fits so far while I’ve been on it, and it’s already been a fortnight.”

Petunia frowned skeptically. “But…? There’s always a ‘but’.”

Severus sighed. They had been battling his condition collectively for so long that none of them ever accepted any easy answers; doubt and anxiety always shadowed any sort of hope.

“There are some side effects. I didn’t really lie about being ill. The medicine makes me ill, but it’s just…fevers and headaches. Usually late in the afternoon then it lasts until early morning the next day.”

Petunia groaned. “You sod. And this is part of your plan too, I suppose? You’d taken into account that you’d be gallivanting off in the morning to the Midlands and coming back into London later in the day with a raging fever, is that it?”

“It’s hardly raging; it’s more annoying than anything.”He had debated not telling Petunia about the symptoms but had already learned from experience that it wasn’t wise. Besides, she already had the medi-bracelet from St. Mungo’s; she would know at any rate. “And a fever is child’s play. I’d take that over having a fit any day.”

“It’s hardly healthy to be getting those every day, Severus.”

Severus shrugged as he sucked on a Fruit Polo. The train was wobbling a bit even at the speed it was going, and it was already giving him a bit of a headache. “Well, if you’ve noticed, I’m not exactly the poster boy of health anyway.” He would have scrapped the entire plan if the new potions mix had had a worse effect, but since it hadn’t, the point was moot. He just had to do his utmost best to not be triggered into a fit which was, quite honestly, easier said than done, but Dad always quoted about boats being in harbors and their not being made for that, so Severus figured this was something along those lines. “I can take it. I know my limits.”

“Oh, please.” Petunia scoffed, but said nothing more on the matter. She glared stormily out the window as the train sped past Greater London, as if the view was a personal affront. “This is insanity,” he heard her mutter to herself.

Her eyes flitted across the aisle to the other seats of the train, and Severus knew she was imagining the worst-case scenario and figuring out an exit strategy (or several). Petunia had always been a bundle of nerves and paranoia, and it had only seemed to grow worse as they got older. He watched as her fingers knotted and unknotted themselves on the table before they were clasped against the sides of her head.

“Ugh, I can’t believe we’re doing this. Mum and Dad are going to kill me.” She groaned into the tabletop, and Severus wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I am going to kill you.”

Severus scoffed. “I’m sure if you wait long enough, the epilepsy will do it for you. That way, you don’t have to get your hands dirty—what?” He was startled as Petunia gasped, lifting her head so suddenly that it nearly sent her toppling backwards into her seat. “What?”

“That isn’t funny! Severus, you mustn’t say things like that!” She had paled so much her freckles stood out in contrast. “Take that back!”

“Oh, so you can threaten me but I can’t say the truth? It is funny. Dad calls it gallows humour.” He left out the bit where Dad didn’t like him making jokes about his illness either, but he didn’t often tell Severus off for it. “You just said it yourself: it’s hardly healthy to be ill this much. And at some point you’re going to have to accept—”

“Oh, just shut it,” Petunia snapped, and this time, there was real heat in her words. “Shut up right now. We’re not discussing this, not now, not ever.”

“What? You were the one who started—”

“Shut it, Severus!”

Severus bristled at being scolded and dismissed. It had been a while since he’d been alone with Petunia in such close quarters, and he’d forgotten how maddening it could be. While both his sisters had the habit of yo-yoing through emotional extremes, Petunia’s mood swings carried with her the weight of her authority as oldest and made it near impossible to defy her lest she follow through on any hidden or implied threats. Plus she could be downright nasty without trying.

“I didn’t ask you to come along,” Severus said. He felt so cross with his sister at that moment that felt compelled to goad her into an argument, consequences be damned. “You decided that all on your own, so don’t take it out on me. I didn’t want you here.”

“Well that makes two of us,” Petunia glared at him. “This isn’t exactly how I pictured my free day would be.”

“You can leave anytime, you know. The next station is in twenty minutes.”

“And that’s how we solve this, you reckon? I don’t have a choice, Severus!”

“Yes, you do because I don’t want you here! Look, I’ll pay you to go back.”

“Are you being serious right now? You realise I can put a stop to this merry jaunt of ours in a snap if you push me to it?”

“Do it then,” Severus was tired of her holding her authority over him. This trip shouldn’t have been that difficult but with Petunia there it was starting to feel like pulling teeth. “Do it already. You keep threatening to so just do it. I don’t care. I don’t.”

Somehow, he was close to tears although he couldn’t understand why. His head felt hot and heavy and his eyes stung. Petunia looked at him incredulously.

“The only reason I’m here,” she said slowly, “is I know…I can see how much this means to you. I wouldn’t have agreed otherwise. But even without your condition, you’re still only thirteen. I don’t care how grown-up or invincible you think you are. You aren’t going across the country alone with only your service dog for company.”

Severus’ face burned. “You think I’m too weak.”

“I think you’re a child.” Petunia said exasperatedly. “A rather reckless and stupid one, I might add.”

“You realize you being here with me makes you rather reckless and stupid too? You’re in as much danger being here with me than if you’d just stayed behind.”

“Yes, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take! That’s my business, not yours. Besides, there’s no way I could have made any other decision.”

“Why? You clearly have more important things to do and I’m always bothering you and everyone else. I would’ve thought you’d have liked a day off to yourself without being shackled into taking care of someone else—”

“You’re not ‘someone else’, you’re my brother, you idiot, and I’m not leaving you alone!”

The statement halted their argument in its tracks. Severus had already been close to being properly angry but found that he couldn’t think of a rebuttal to Petunia’s claim. He shut his mouth with a snap of his teeth and glared at his sister instead. Their small corner was quickly plunged into a filled silence and for a moment, they stared at each other, unyielding, but then Petunia’s gaze softened, and she sighed.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you an idiot. But you are a child, literally, and that’s not something you can use as a defensive argument. You are also being an utter pain in the arse right now but that’s also because you’re my little brother and that’s part of your job description. Now, look…I really don’t want to argue on a train of all places. Let’s just agree that this entire situation is mad and be done with it. We’ve already paid for the bloody tickets so we should at least see it through.”

Severus glowered, not wanting her to get the last word in. “You’re being a right tit too and I hadn’t even wanted you here.”

Petunia nodded sagely. “Touche.”

She held out her hand for a Fruit Polo and Severus grudgingly gave her one. It was as good a peace offering as any. They sat and sucked on their sweets in silence for a long while, listening to the clacking and rumbling of the train on the tracks and each other’s slowing breathing. It was just calm enough to lull him into a stupor, which felt rather nice, given that his headache had persisted throughout their fight and had steadily grown to a dull throb.

“Why are you doing this anyway?” Petunia’s voice floated over to him in the haze. “Why go back to Cokeworth at all? Didn’t we already do well leaving all that behind?”

Severus opened his eyes, not even realizing he had closed them. He frowned at being caught off-guard. “I’m not playing Twenty Questions.”

“It’s a simple enough question seeing as we’ve already had a hundred arguments and I’ve already lost at least a hundred quid to this madness.” Petunia’s words were harsh, but her tone was mild. She wasn’t picking a fight; she was genuinely curious. “We’ve not even been back in Cokeworth since we left and now, all of a sudden, you skip your beloved lessons and lie to our parents in a fit of inspiration? The least you can do is tell me why.”

Severus bit his lip, unsure of his desire to share any more than he had to. His chest felt tight around the memory of the day he saw Tobias, larger than life but washed out and faded, standing on the street where they lived. It was his closest-guarded secret and one he hadn’t even breathed a mention of to anyone, not even to Lily. The conversation he’d had with him hadn’t even lasted five minutes, but Severus recounted it almost obsessively, picking through his father’s words and expressions, the small movements of his hands and the slump of his shoulders. He’d known then that he had to go back to Cokeworth, but the exact reasons were lost even to him.

“Ghosts,” he said simply, and Petunia frowned.

“Ghosts,” she repeated. She studied his face, worry pinching her features. “Severus…” and now her voice was gentle, “…did something happen?”

“No.” Severus said, the lie rolling easily from his tongue.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” Severus breathed. “I just need to see it again, I think.”

Petunia’s face took on a strange expression. “Listen, I know we hardly talk about it but you have to know that it may not be what you expect or remember. I just want you to realise that. You were very young…and things…things were very very different.”

“I know,” Severus had already considered the possibility that what his glitchy memories could recall was far from reality, and the few photos they had at home didn’t really do it justice, “but it’s still worth seeing for myself.”

Petunia looked unconvinced, in fact she looked ready to put a stop to the trip once and for all, but she didn’t. She crossed her arms again unhappily but leaned further back in her seat as though in resignation.

“We’ll stay an hour and a half at the most. And we’re getting lunch first. You’ve gone all pale so I don’t care what you say, you’re drinking your second set of medicines where I can see you. Any arguments and I’m taking all of us back. I don’t care if we would have to get a cab all the way back to London. Clear?”

Severus gave her a grateful nod, glad to obey her orders for once. Bossy as she was, having Petunia there meant that he wasn’t required to think of the menial things, which was nice. He also realised that as badly as he had wanted to go back to Cokeworth, he also didn’t want to dwell too much on the matter. The memory of town itself felt like an old wound that still ached when touched or jostled, and he didn’t really want to figure out why that was until he had to, until he was there. If he had been alone, he wouldn’t have been able to help himself from picking at it his thoughts until they rattled about his head, unanswered. It would have eventually driven him mad. Arguing with Petunia and generally having her there had quieted them down somewhat, and for that he was relieved.

“Right, I’m just going to ignore you for the next hour then. I’m knackered and I don’t want another fight. Count sheep in the meadow and don’t bother me unless it’s an emergency.”

Not that he would have ever told her though.

“Crystal,” Severus said, before rolling over in his seat and shutting his eyes, soothed by the rhythmic clacking that surrounded them and warm in the knowledge that he wasn’t alone.

tbc

the story about tobias' unexpected visit to severus is here.

#my fic #evans!severus #au #snape #hp

30 notes · View notes

fizzypopsoda-comics · 1 year ago

Text

Here's my entry for "The Missing Co-workers" Event by @springbon-t-art! My Cuphead Oc, Elliot, AKA Employee #193, is one of the many new employees to work here in the office. She's very anxious when it comes to working at a new place like this, especially with how big it is, but she makes sure to follow the dress code and do whatever assignments that's given to her by the other coworkers. One day, when she found that she was the only known employee here with none of the other coworkers to be found, Elliot started becoming more and more nervous, and began sweating a lot. Eventually, she notices her ink sweat was dripping all over the place and staining everything it touches, and so she found an empty bucket lying around to bring along with her to keep her ink from dripping everywhere. But as time goes by, her ink sweat started nearly filling up her bucket, and out of pure Toon Logic, has given her bucket pure sentients. Although surprised, Elliot was also relieved that she had a little companion with her to cope with her loneliness it this empty office. And so now, out of worry and desperation, Elliot, along with her little Ink Bucket friend, has set off to search for her fellow missing co-workers to find out where everyone has disappeared to!

In case you couldn't tell, my favorite ending is The Confusion Ending! From the many endings that I've seen or know about, this one I really enjoy, I just really enjoyed how we, as well as the Narrator, ended up lost from the story, and so we end up venturing together to find it and continuously getting lost as a result. The whole Adventure Line was so all over the place with this fun music playing in the background, I just can't help but had fun with it! Thought I give a little background info into how Elliot found herself in this predicament, I hope you like it! ^^

#fizzypopsoda comics #springbon t art #the stanley parable #the missing coworkers #cuphead ocs #my ocs #my art #Elliot

78 notes · View notes

alanshee-keeper-of-realms · 3 months ago

Note

Mickey being a feral little guy in his early days fits so well with this one detail I learned from so long ago that I think would be super funny to write.

Mickey likes to eat cash. Like dollar bills. He even has a favourite and defined taste (he thinks one of the bills is chewy)

And I'm just imagining Walt handing Mickey money and being like "Try not to spend it all in one-" and then Mickey eats the money, "-bite..."

Mind you, this is likely happening during the Depression as well. Walt is on the floor, going through the motions after just watching his new toon eat the pocket money he had just given him.

Mickey is a menace. Dare I say, a problem child.

Oh he was absolutely a menace and problem child 1000%, this is the greatest bit of knowledge I've learned about Mickey yet.

Walt is going through the 5 stages of grief over here while Mickeys cleaning his paws and scampering off to the nearest alleyway with absolutely no cares in the world,

Tbh Ub would probably be somewhere in the background laughing his butt off because he knew this would happen (hes the one who ACTUALLY watches and cares for Mickey). He was just waiting for Walt to find out on his own.

Why do I picture now though in order to get Mickey to act I normally have him bribed by cheese but now literal cash could also entice him to act lmao

So I'm picturing a scene of Walt kneeling down do you want the cheese or the cash LMAO

And here I will share some from the list of WIP Stories to add to the hilarity of Mickey the Menace of Disney,

Mickey tearing up animation cells because now like cash they're chewy lmao, also animators reactions are just entertaining to him,

( Mickey of the future would come to regret this after the archival people figured out why there's not very many animation cells remaining of the very early shorts lol don't piss off the keepers of History)

Knawing on Walts pant legs, the man began wearing armor around his ankles to deter Mickey from chewing on him,

Anyone remember that taking my duck out for his first swim meme? That was Walt with Mickey, the mouse gave Walt a free heart attack after he ran off while the man was trying to allow Mickey to walk to get energy out, yeah he got his energy out after a week of roaming the streets like a feral cat while Disney Animators played chase,

Walt holding Mickey for promotional photo stuff, Mickey was not having this and like a toddler decided peeing on the man was the answer to getting away,

Mickey going after Donald to get a reaction out of the duck, he would purposely yank out feathers

By the way if you thought Walt found any of this actually troublesome except for when it affected him that's laughable, he'd either find it adorable or shake a finger at the mouse,

Extra

Ub deciding to keep a scoreboard of how many times Mickeys beat Walt at his own games just being an absolute menace,

This board is forever preserved in Walts Office, a humorous reminder of Mickeys Menace Days,

#mickey mouse #he was not the golden child #he was oh shit Mickeys done something again #walt disney #ub iwerks #answered asks

19 notes · View notes

sqarletsworldlesswandering · 6 months ago

Text

Swap-Climbing

Okay I gotta ramble about this, because apparently I'm not the only one who did it and I find it amusing:

Apparently, I've been watching too many platformers with extremely hard movement gimmicks, because for the life of me I keep overcomplicating movement in Worldless waaaay too much. Case in point - climbing long walls. I didn't realize you could sprint out of a wall jump. I thought the wall had to be attached to the ground. Enter a very perplexed Sqarlet trying to scale the main ascent in the Golden Spire using "swap climbing" - wall jump with Edda, double jump with Aven, wall jump, double jump, repeat ad infinitum et insanum. It worked, technically. Same thing for a couple other particularly pesky platforming sections.

It worked for the first couple things, but there's a timed gate in the Spire that I realized wasn't possible using a swap-climb. By this point, I had also attempted the Path of Determination a few times, and while the swap-climb never directly caused me any deaths, it sure made it hard to get over the barrier after the first wall climb. Cue the eventual epiphany, happiness and rejoicing, everything is fine now.

On to the bit I'm still actively cackling at: I'm contemplating what that would feel like to Edda and Aven, trying to execute this on their end. I can only assume it'd be... absolutely awful. Just... dizzying, disorienting, an even greater trial of patience than necessary, just all around awful. Aven is this close to walking away when Edda pauses, then says "I want to try one more thing." Wall jump, sprint, she lands, and 10 seconds of dead silence follows, shattered by Aven calmly sitting down, burying his face in a sand dune, and screaming into it for another 10 seconds. He spends the subsequent sprints upwards pouting, and initially refuses to snag the first grapple and lets them fall, so he can continue his sulk faceplanted in the ground like a Looney Toons character.

#worldless headcanons #worldless #worldless game #SqarletTalks #worldless aven #worldless edda #worldless au: eclipsed

19 notes · View notes

ananicoleta · 6 months ago

Note

hiii! character ask questions here! 6 and 25 for bugs bunny (*￣︶￣*)

Hiiii! Thanks for the ask! 🫶

6. What is something you have in commom with this character?

Hmm. Not many things actually. Bugs and I aren't really alike if I think about it. I guess I can relate to the fact that he's a simple guy who just wants to live and enjoy a simple life, to just have fun. That's how I am too for the most part. I don't want a luxorious life, I just want a nice one. The difference between my life and Bugs' is that he somehow always manages to get into the most absurd and tangled situations whereas my existence remains pretty uneventful for the most part.😂

(I would also maybe, MAYBE say that, just like Bugs, I get angry whenever I witness an injustice. The reason I am hesitant to say this is because I don't see Bugs as necessarily being justice-driven. He is a nice guy who sometimes feels bad about others and will try to help them, especially if he percieves them as being more helpless than he is. I identify with that. But he is also very quick to get revenge and very ruthless when he does so, sometimes going to far, so I'm kinda meh about this. Bugs, like I said before, just wants to live his life and doesn't go out of his way to bring justice or fight corrupt systems or whatever. I see myself as more of an activist, more outspoken about these issues and more driven to fix them than him.)

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

At first, I really saw Bugs as this untouchable really cool guy, who never took anyone's bullshit, was perfectly capable of defending himself and of making a complete fool out of anyone who crossed him because he was always ten steps ahead of them. At the same time, he wasn't an asshole because he had a strict sense of morality, an intolerance for injustice and corruption and a tendency to help others in need. Basically, in my eyes he was almost perfect, his only flaw in my view being his slightly inflated ego (but I saw that ego as being sort of justified seeing as he was Bugs freaking Bunny).

Now my view of him is much more nuanced. I certainly don't see him as being almost perfect. He is actually, from what I've noticed, deeply flawed.

A lot of Bugs' power rests in his image and the way he crafts it. He is not as untouchable as he claims to be. He actually fears being alone and forgotten. In Space Jam 2 we can see this fear. He can't function without other toons to engage with, without an audience to applaud him, without someone to laugh at his jokes and humour him. He needs that validation because deep down he's actually very afraid and not at all as confident as he seems (this can be a result from his rocky beginning as a character aka the trauma he suffered in the first years of his creation, with him being a copy of Daffy at first, not being liked by the audience, almost being scrapped away and finally, being redesigned and starring in 'A Wild Hare' in 1940 -- which is considered to be his actual debut -- and being a huge hit).

Secondly, Bugs has a really elevated view of himself. At first, I thought that he truly was a "noble" character, but that doesn't really apply to him. He thinks of himself as being a nice guy -- which to an extent he is -- but he is actually much more selfish that he likes to admit and can be very ruthless when he wants too. This can be seen especially in his earlier shorts when he was a literal menace to society. Then in his later cartoons he became calmer, more contained, more calculated. He began thinking about his image more and how he can manipulate it in order to make himself seem the best and the coolest in the room. Not to say that Bugs doesn't have morals, that his values are inconsistent or flighty. He deffinetly has a moral system and he sticks by it. However, he thinks he is a much better person than he is, which makes him feel justified whenever he gets revenge.

Not to mention how emotionally constipated he is. Look at 'Looney Tunes: Back in Action', where this is shown very well. Daffy means the world to him, that's clear, and he would literaly realign the stars for him -- except he can't say that out loud. He has to act like he doesn't car, like he's too cool to care (nit to memtion tbat everything with Daffy is a power game, a competition and he can't risk losing it by being vulerable, open and sincere). He himself doesn't even know/can't articulate what he's feeling because, if we look past his ability to read people very well, then Bugs isn't really good with feelings. (This movie also ephasizes his selfishness once again -- he wants Daffy back because he misses him, but he dpesm't really consider the duck's demands of an improvement)

Wow, I really went off om that last one huh? Go figure. My point: at first, my perception of Bugs was more simple and it reduced him to a seemingly flawless but, at the same time, one-dimentional character. Now, however, I see him for the flawed but not dislikable character that he is: a huge ego but no aspiration for fame or fortune, a well-defined set of morals that he truly believes in but a manipulative and vindictive nature, an unbelievable calmness that restrains the mischiveous soul of a prankster, an almost perfect image that hides a lot of secret fears, insecurities and feelings. He is a very complex character indeed and I love him for it. :)

#ask #ask game #looney tunes #bugs bunny

11 notes · View notes

thebananwithaplan · 8 months ago

Text

It wasn't long after that the show just wrapped up the last round for the day. Seeing the audience attendance dwindle due to their fears meant they couldn't do as many recordings as they normally would in a day, which was not what Banana was used to (for the rest of the staff, it was both a relief and a concern.)

The good thing about being in the Hollywood industry and already feeling like eyes are constantly on him and his actions for long enough is knowing how to act the way the audience want him to. Can't show fear, can't show regret , can't show that the stress of recent thoughts and events was getting to him, either. Showbiz, amirite? Stupid Fake Noise making his audience be wary of gameshows with toon-heavy gimmicks, juice blenders, and the feeling of constantly being watched...

"Well. It's better than no-shows for no shows. I better go find Dandie and the boys to head back home, then-"

The sound of the gameshow stage's main doors abruptly opening took him out of his thoughts.

What's that big red blur heading his way? Apple-?

@scriptdeviant asked:

Pepperman BURSTS through the studio, in typical Pepperman fashion, skidding to a stop before the Dancing Banana. Is. Is he even aware of the happenings right now? Before there's even time to question him, the pepper gave a dramatic bow - With glittering teeth included. My GOD. He isn't aware, is he? Once opened, the letter of recommendation would read: "Don't change your expression or react strongly when you read this. Don't say anything about this message, and don't tell anyone where you're going. Any of the camera feeds I have set up are now his. I've thought this through, and you're the only one that can reach me without being spotted. See me as soon as possible. Attached are the coordinates. Oh! And offer the pepper a job painting something, I guess. -PH." ❝ I keep my portfolio on me at all times, if it helps. ❞ He continued to grin. Just as instructed, he hadn't peeked. Blissfully unaware of the letter's actual contents...

...Oh. Nope. Just another pompous pepper.

DB couldn't even get a word in before being given the envelope. A 'letter of recommendation'? He was surprised anybody was still willing to ask for work with the way things are at.

"Well, well, well. Let's see what we have, here." Eh, what the heck, he'll see what it had to say. Would be rude to send him off without at least giving it a quick read...

..............

.............. And boy, was he right on the mark with his earlier instinct on this one.

Remember when we said at the top of this post that the Dancing Banana was really good at acting? Well, here comes another example of that.

"...Hmm. We could use some much needed Artistic Integrity." Wasting no time to place that letter in his Hammerspace Inventory, DB gave Pepperman the good ol' 'CEO-Approved Handshake'.

"Tell you what - we are kinda closing up shop for the day, but I can assure ya that the next time I need a paint job done, you'll be the first I'll go to ask. I can also assure ya that any of your work done for Shovelware Studios property will be credited in full and paid accordingly. How's that sound?"

At least he finally has somewhere to work with.

The question now is WHEN to do so.

#where he at (ic update)#appeeling show host (dancing banana)#scriptdeviant #pizzatrocious #with a baseball bat (inventory)#((meant to post this earlier but i had a busy day at work))#ask

7 notes · View notes

divinemissem13 · 8 months ago

Text

20 questions for fic writers

thanks for the tag @ussjellyfish!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 76

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 216,156

3. What fandoms do you write for? Various Star Treks (mostly Voyager, but also Prodigy, TNG, Picard, SNW) The Closer/ Major Crimes Doctor Who

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Gotta Start Somewhere (Trektober 2022) - first thing I ever posted, Trektober prompts for J/C

Rotund - another early one, one shot where pregnant Kathryn messes with Tom and Harry in order to get their table in the mess hall

Kitchen Confidential - one shot where Kathryn is secretly an excellent cook

Aftermath - J/C one shot set immediately post Resolutions (ANGST/ comfort)

Postlude to a Kiss - Part of my 'How Chakotay Met Kathryn' series, set during and after the Vis a Vis body swap incident

5. Do you respond to comments? I try! Often just a ❤️ or a 'Thank you'

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Honey, maybe?

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Send in the Clowns is not necessarily happier than any of my other endings, but because it's the end of a long and angsty series, I think the payoff is the best.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Not really

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I will write flirting and a little foreplay, but ultimately, I love a good fade to black.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? So many. Mostly Voyager & TNG/Picard for Beverly/Kathryn fics

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Not that I know of

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? A short one with @magdalenejaneway from a flash fic prompt. It was fun. I'd do it again.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? I've never written for it, but I'm actually gonna say Adama/Roslin because I've shipped them the longest.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I have a few abandoned WIP one shots that I'll probably never return to... but I also have three multi-chapter WIPs that I still have very high hopes of finishing. I wrote a chapter on one today!

16. What are your writing strengths? Finding character's voices

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I'm trying to get better at describing things (I have aphantasia and so picturing stuff is really hard but if I can find a good image to base things off of, it goes ok.)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? Phrases here and there, but I don't know any other language well enough to write a real conversation.

19. First fandom you wrote for? When I was in elementary school, I hand wrote a Muppet Babies and Tiny Toons fic. I did not know what fanfic was at the time and I do not remember anything else about it. I only realized it was technically fanfic many many years later when I started intentionally writing fic (for Voyager, which is probably my actual first fandom)

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? All Things Bright and Beautiful. Beverly/ Kathryn set after Picard S3. Writing it was super easy and it still makes me smile to go back and read it.

tagging @curator-on-ao3, @elephant-in-the-pride-parade, @coffee-in-that-nebula, @madamairlock, @caitylove, @holy-ships-x-red-lips, and anyone else who wants to give it a whirl!

#fanfic #20 questions #writer asks

7 notes · View notes

maxwell-grant · 2 years ago

Note

pizza tower is out! have you played it already ? if so, thoughts?

OF COURSE and, man it feels weird that the game is finally out officially. The demos for it have been probably my most played “game” over the past years, and I’ve played all of the demos available to Patreon backers plus some of the old public ones. I've been following for a long time through countless refinements and changes and do-overs and now it’s finally out, for good. I donated to this some years ago and now my name is in the credits of this thing! Feels pretty great!

I'm as biased as it gets in regards to it. It plays marvelously, it has one of the most fun characters to control ever made, endlessly replayable on the basis of that alone. The soundtrack is self-evidently kickass and has always been one of the biggest draws this game’s had to pull people in, the artstyle and animation being the other massive draw. Most of the big virtues of Pizza Tower are very self-evident, so instead I wanna talk a little on it's story and characters, because now that the game is out, it finally has a proper "canon' of sorts, in the sense that a lot of this stuff is no longer going to be rewritten or changed based on demos. Now Pizza Tower’s finally set-in-stone, of sorts, and that end result is what I wanna talk about:

I think Pizza Tower kind of had an uphill battle at first making sure it had an audience besides people who just showed up for the Wario Land-fix. Initially, that was the promise, it was designed to give people that fix that they weren’t gonna get from Nintendo themselves, and the game’s initial success in it’s demos kicked off that rise in what people now call Wario-likes, some of which are more blatant about it. The game initially played pretty much exactly as you’d expect a Wario Land fangame to be like and was set apart mainly by it’s distinct animation and catchy music, and maybe that could have been enough, but it evidently wasn’t, given how many undercooked demos it took for it to reach it’s current distinctive gameplay and appeal.

Of course, the Wario Land vibe may still be a big part of what people talk about in regards to Pizza Tower, but there was a very substantial shift over the years that I saw in real time, as the conversation around it shifted from “If you like Wario Land you should look into this new Pizza Tower thing, it seems like basically that with the serial numbers filed off”, to “Hey Pizza Tower rules, the music is kickass and the protagonist is very fast and the animation is super funny, you should play these demos, also it’s inspired by Wario games if you’re into those”. I actually didn’t even see Wario Land get brought up much at all in the last days since it’s launch, partially because Wario’s had his own comeback since 2018 (although just for the Ware games) but mainly because Pizza Tower succeeded in setting itself apart from it’s inspiration. It got people wanting the Pizza Tower-fix, and not just the bootleg-Wario-fix, if that makes sense.

And of course part of that comes from how Pizza Tower didn’t stick to just Wario games, but gradually took bits and pieces from stuff like Sonic, Earthworm Jim, Looney Tunes and Tiny Toons, some otherobscure defunct games that got brought up on occasion and etc, and then just kept throwing these gimmicks at a wall of beta testers and Patreon backers it accumulated to see what stuck and what didn’t. The game had a very small development team, and gradually acquired more and more of a following, and it made the most out of both.

I think a rather underrated aspect of the game is how Pizza Tower works at squeezing blood from stone in regards to it’s narrative and characters. The game follows in that platforming tradition of stock excuse plots that are as least obtrusive to the gameplay as they can possibly be, and for the longest time the demos and game didn’t even have one of those because no reason was settled (or needed) on why Peppino had to trek through these blasted towers fighting monsters while scared shitless the whole time, and a couple of different lore motivations were tried out over the years to explain some aspects (if anyone reading this is also in the PT Discord, you guys remember when Noise was some kind of weird shadow mirror self of Peppino? That was a thing for a bit, glad it got canned early). I want to emphasize how the trial and error approach of the development applied to Peppino’s character and the game’s story because I’m very much of a fan of what the game finally settled on: Peppino fighting to save his business from being destroyed.

Peppino is a miserable man who owns a failing pizza business and is struggling to make ends meet, who one day gets cornered by a giant pizza monster who lives on the tower across his shop, who tells him that he’s going to blow up and destroy his pizzeria, and so Peppino has no choice but to race against the clock to stop this from happening. Prior motivations tried out concepts like he destroyed “evil towers” as a job or was looking for secret ingredients to bake better pizzas, but the finished game cuts the filler and instead puts a giant bomb hanging over everything Peppino has, which is a shitty pizzeria, and sets him on collision course to cathartically smash the bomb.

The game chooses to emphasize Peppino’s poverty and struggles followed by blistering rage at the injustice he’s being inflicted with, and this is something that works better even just reflecting his basic design: though he is a chef, though he may put up ads of himself as a jolly cartoon, he cannot act like one to save his life, and if you look closer he’s actually just wearing a sleeveless shirt over black clothing: he can’t even afford an actual apron. He’s a failure who has very little to call his own, and he’s about to lose even that because some assface sitting high and mighty deemed it so: he’s a walking embodiment of an incredibly relatable frustration, and he’s going to smash the source of that frustration right in the fucking face.

You get this entire deal in the frames of animation Peppino goes through just before he faces down the final boss: he spots his place in the distance and looks dejectedly at it, gets scared when the boss looms down before him, and that fear gives way to shrieking rage as he prepares to throw down not just to save his business but as payback for all the shit he’s put up with the whole game, and MAN does the final fight make it all worth it

Because the game has basically no dialogue outside of in-game hints and flavor text, it has to put a lot of effort in making it’s cast shine non-verbally. Right from the start it was pitched as having a strong Earthworm Jim and Courage the Cowardly Dog influence, it was always playing around with as many cartoon tropes and gags as it could, and the end result in-game is that Pizza Tower does succeed big time in feeling like a cartoon show that could have been.

All of it’s levels are accompanied by title cards that present said stages as “episodes”, and all of them have built-in gimmicks with implied narratives like picking fights with pirates, taking a trip to space and back, going to jail and needing your friend to bail you out, getting stalked and hunted by monstrous animatronics until you get a shotgun that lets you hunt them back, and etc. There’s a level where you can surf through graveyards on the back of a corpse while looking scared shitless, and the Achievements later reveal Peppino used to know the dead guy when he was still alive, and so on. The core story is just there enough to make the final fight feel narratively satisfying, and along the way you get all these little bits and pieces that make this world richer and it’s characters more lively, enough that we can fill in the blanks and see how they would fit if they were part of a long-running franchise or some kind of wacko world with off-screen adventures before or after the game.

Gustavo wound up being one of the more pleasant surprises in the game. And not just gameplay-wise, since I honestly found playing Gustavo in the demos a chore but they buffed his moveset a lot in the game proper and made him a lot more fun to mess around with, but even character-wise. Ever since his planned spin-off didn’t take off Gustavo was kind of a throwaway character for the longest time without much of anything going on for him, with his in-game role as someone you'd deliver pizzas for and would beat you up if you failed (and was apparently your boss).

In-game, Gustavo is no longer your boss, in fact apparently he no longer knew Peppino before the game, he's just a guy who is going into the tower at the same time as you (and clearly more prepared since he’s got a map), tangled up in his own side-adventures taming and befriending a giant rat, who’s taking the time to help you out anyway. In-game he’s this nice, friendly character who is straightforward in a way Peppino can't be, he's got a kind of beady-eyed cuteness to him that Mario used to have in the old 2D titles (and a super deep smoker voice for contrast), and he winds up becoming your Luigi (...or maybe it’s the other way around and you’re his Luigi) in the sense that he complements and contrasts you as the secondary lead (and you sorta do Bro Attacks together at the end).

The game gets a lot of mileage out of the Gustavo and Brick dynamic as is in a way that makes it so Gustavo on his own doesn’t have to be as extravagant as Peppino or Noise, but still be funny and endearing enough as a protagonist that we can put Peppino aside to enjoy him just as much, maybe even more so depending on your preference. Gustavo is obviously very silly but silly in a lot of ways that Peppino can’t be, and I think the way the game treats him goes a long way towards lending Pizza Tower some more versatility in terms of humor and characterization.

I'm glad Mr Stick didn't wind up as a boss as planned. He's not terribly interesting or funny enough to be one, he isn't really anyone's favorite and I think McPig got more mileage out of him as an ally to you, and considering Peppino is inspired by Courage the Cowardly Dog, I think having a Eustace type character among your allies works pretty allright. He's not a character you would really see in a Wario game, Wario would never put up with being bossed around or scammed by some greedy jackass (that's his job), but Peppino is not Wario, he's got bills to pay and bigger issues to work through via violence and he can't really pick or choose his allies so, he's stuck with Mr Stick, the piece of shit landlord who rips you off constantly and you have no choice but to pay him, but who does help you progress at least so, eh.

(Art by @ketrindarkdragon)

I frankly loved Pepperman as is back when he was just the default boss / a stage hazard purely on the basis of his design and attack animation and of course his kickass theme, but his reinvention into a pretentious artist who sounds like Comic Book Guy was a pretty wonderful way to make a character out of him, not exactly what you’d expect out of the game’s Musclebound Bully boss character. He’s got that Squidward gag where he’s actually remarkably skilled at several different kinds of art, and going by the credits he’s apparently well-off for it, but he’s a self-obsessed prick who only makes self-portraits, and nobody in the cast thinks much of him as is (if you beat him without taking damage, you get an achievement called “The Critic”). He’s probably the character I would most enjoy playing as even though those plans were scrapped for good reason.

I’m glad that The Noise got a somewhat reduced role in-game as just a boss fight, I think this was the smart choice. For the longest time, Noise was the only other character in the game besides Peppino and he’s always been fairly popular, and he’s going to be made playable since he’s got most of his animations finished as is, so I think downplaying The Noise was a good call to make all the other elements stand out more. I’m not super into how his boss fight ends (I do like Noisette quite a bit actually, I just don’t think that bit was particularly funny) but I otherwise really like it, the fucker keeps opening himself up for beatings because he cannot stop literally giving you the middle finger, I like how well his fight emphasizes just how much Peppino and Noise hate each other, and I can’t wait to see what else is he gonna bring once made playable.

I’ll miss playable Vigilante, it was for the better yes but I’ll miss it. Still, he does make a better Boss, and obviously since his role is to be the Meta Knight of the game he does have to be the Cool Boss Who Hands You a Weapon. I’m glad that the game plays him straightforward, I’ve always loved the contrast of our Actual Cowboy Badass character being essentially a Goomba, a sentient pile of cheese with a cowboy hat and spurs (in concept there’s also a bit of Bandana Dee in him). He’s just gross and uncool enough on the basic concept that he can get away with being the coolest character in a way nobody else can be and in some ways only makes him more of a genuine badass, after you’ve steamrolled and gotten used to the game’s Goombas and then one of them fights back big time. I love the bit of him staring into the broken John at the final floor and quietly having a moment of concern he’s not allowing you to notice, I love him teaching the Toppins to shoot in the credits in preparation for the main villain’s next move, I really love this guy.

I fucking KNEW IT that Pizza Boy was gonna turn out to be a secret villain at some point, I fucking called it, as soon as they gave him a theme park in a now scrapped version of Pig City I knew that he was gonna be more than just a running gag. I actually didn’t expect Pizzaface to be fake, but I knew Pizza Boy was gonna show his true colors at some point. I however certainly did not expect for him to be basically Ronald McDonald, which is a choice that makes the most sense for the food mascot-themed villain who’s gonna boss around all the others and be the Punchable Face of Evil for a struggling chef and business owner to be set against.

Of course the real Pizza Boy is a scuzzy freak who’s nothing like the mascot he plasters around, that’s pretty much a running theme in the game at this point. He has perfectly deranged music completely unlike anything else in the game’s soundtrack, his boss section is wonderfully obnoxious, he’s a great final twist villain to have at a point in the game where you absolutely need the most punchable character of all time to take out Peppino’s frustrations in.

I didn’t expect the Pillar Johns to wind up having a mini-story in their own right depending on how you complete the game, where it does the Wario thing where the amount of treasures and loot you collect determines the ending. Except here instead of loot, collecting all the secret treasures determines whether or not John the pillar monster comes back to life after being broken and beaten into countless pieces and having his consciousness scattered into a hivemind across the entire tower, to the point where you are basically doing him a favor by smashing him at the end of every level. I didn’t expect the game to bother explaining why Gerome the janitor is following or helping you, let alone for the explanation to be so goddamn dark.

(You guys remember way waaay back in the earliest demos when John used to be this invincible thing you fed Toppins to so it would grant you passage? That was overhauled completely but turns out in the end, you still need to feed Pillar John to finish the game)

I find it funny how Peppino winds up incidentally rescuing the Tower from the Pizza, and that’s not even a funny overstatement, the game’s progression really does show how the Pizza was the bad guy in this scenario and the Tower was just corrupted along the way. It’s Pizza Tower, a game that has pizzas and towers, and you play as a pizza chef who’s threatened by a giant pizza (hiding another pizza) atop a giant tower, and so you smash the giant pizza and escape the tower and wind up saving the tower from the pizza while trying to save the pizza from the tower.

...I killed Snotty, I’m sorry you guys, I’ll do better next time.

Did I tell you guys about the soundtrack already? Because good God it has never stopped getting better and better, it alone is worth the price you pay for the game, and there’s a LOT of music in this thing even without counting the tracks that didn’t make it into release.

I think it's great that the game assembled it's core cast piecemeal over the development cycle from all these unlikely places over the years, it’s come such a long way from the days when it was just Peppino and Noise. I adored how the game’s ending and subsequent promos show how the Bosses stick around as cast members and showing snapshots of further adventures and mishaps for them. They all come back for the finale so Peppino can reach his breaking point, and they all escape together, and they all settle a truce over free pizza at Peppino’s place, still not much but still intact, still in one piece, after everything Peppino put up with to save it.

None of these characters belong together but they clearly don't belong anywhere else either, they're all a part of the "Receding Hairline Celebration Party" as the credits theme puts it, all these weird greasy knock-offs stuck together in the dumps, getting into trouble and duking it out, and playing cards together after it all quiets down and there’s some time to breathe, or dance.

....

Five years, man, that celebration party is definitely well deserved.

#replies tag #pizza tower #videogames #peppino #peppino spaghetti #the noise #vigilante #pepperman #gustavo and brick

118 notes · View notes

cathalbravecog · 1 year ago

Text

long ramble, haven't had one of these in a while! if you read this, have fun. it's headcanons/thoughts on some stuff. i don't talk about my thoughts on story stuff publicly much anymore especially because 1) i'm shy 2) trust issues 3) bad rsd 4) i forgot the last point

i was writing for oNCE yesterday (some headcanon stuff, for myself, won't be posting that unless i change the wording of some of it to make more sense because i ramble a lot and it's a mess. like i am doing right now. also that turned into being mostly about hr in the end because i am ill. now hopefully this motivation will get me to write my mary and archie stuff.)

and when i went to bed i was thinking about some stuff in toontown, mostly the cogs - and how things work. these are things i ponder on very often and have talked about with my friends many time, throwing ideas back and forth and my headcanons for how things work.

though, there's one thing i really wonder about, and that's where cogs come from in ttcc exactly. in 'that' way though of course to keep things on the same rating as the game is i won't discuss anything explicit so don't worry. (besides they're robots and also are sexless to me, anything related to gender is purely cosmetic to them. you are usually assigned a certain expression when built though, but can change that later on. that's how i explain trans cogs.)

i think about how there are canonical families and children, and that they have "built" dates and places where they've been built. it's obvious as they're robots, they're not born they're built and made.

it's a bit difficult to explore with the limited info we have, which is kind of both an hassle to work with, but also beautiful because you can let your creativity go and make up your own headcanons, without things being set in too much canon. it's also difficult due to how different the suit culture is to us humans and also what we see from the toons which is by nature more familiar to us.

we also do not know much about suitopia, or other possible places where cogs live.

(i, personally, imagine suitopia as essentially a big country where most if not all cogs live. it has it's own regions, cities... all that. where as c.o.g.s. inc has built itself to be essentially it's own small country/community, if that makes sense. though cogs don't always only mention suitopia, at least once 'the whole world' is used. this is irrelevant tho so i won't discuss that but it's still a 'core' headcanon i have - as other things i may hc rely on this personal interpretation / headcanon.

but be aware i do not know everything is canon and can discuss things outside my realm of HCs and interpretations, but if i go deeper into like, let's say, analyzing a cog and imagining their backstory, instantly assume i'm using all these things. sorry for the side ramble, i want to make things clear for possible future reference.)

i wish it will be expanded upon slightly in the future, even a slightest crumb of what it's like out there and i can have a field day with it. i do enjoy the vagueness tho, again, as i've said we do not need to have all the information out there and it's not necessary to the main stories that are being told but MAN my brain itches for MORE. i demand EXPLANATIONS. and so i make up my own lol and i love that i can do that /gen (there's some stuff i do have an issue with that it was not explained better, but again, fixed that with hcs. talking abt atticus but im not getting into that rn)

there also may be things i am missing - i have known of ttcc's existence since it's early days, but i wasn't there for it and missed being there in person for any lore until i started playing for real in early 2023 and became a part of the community. like, there ARE things i have missed AND small details i am missing. that's one criticism i have about some info being more difficult to access now, but the main stuff is on the wiki an all luckily.

anyways that ramble out of the way... how the heck are cogs made? there's a few ways, that seem contradictory in some ways at first but i just see it as different methods.

we know cogs can change their appearances (their shell) and be "upgraded". we know cogs can even choose to be just their skelecogs (Atticus) and i suppose every other skelecog we see.) we know cogs have families and have their own kids. (cathal and bobby jr come to mind, and also belle's own kids and grandkids. not to mention, we have siblings too - thomas and robert. and their whole family drama DOES involve their unseen parents.) we know many cogs, mostly the managers, come into the company as their are - but also new parts are built, at least for the employee cogs in sellbot hq. (recently re-read the dialogue which confirmed this - literally as you're building your sellbot suit.)

we know cogs are more than just some working machines and do have deeper lives and desires and even relationships, though all instances of a parent/child relationship in ttcc have only one parent. makes sense after all they don't reproduce sexually to put it that way, again they're built and they're robots.)

it's easy to conclude, that, cogs are just built. which is true. but it just makes me wonder. we know they age. we have at least 1 cog who is a literal child, and bobby, in human years at least, looks no older than like, 8 years old. (we also don't know how cogs age. we also know cog's don't die like that, due to the whole deal with atticus. i will talk about this one day i have so many thoughts on it)

we know they grow up and even have schools - they're not programmed with everything. they earn experience as they live life and even have?? education systems? like they're more like people than we thought. (ttcc does make cogs more easily sympathized with and gives us INDIVIDUAL cogs and not just... 'The Cogs'. cogs are the focus of ttcc so of course they're developed more and are more 'human' despite being machines.)

so clearly, there's cogs like bobby. who are built young and eventually grow up. we have not seen a cog growing up yet, at least i don't think. but i wonder how that works. through cartoon logic, do they just grow up? their skelecog and perhaps their shell, too? or do they periodically get upgraded to be larger - wouldn't it make sense to built a cog as, well, an adult already? to program all these things? there may be more limits to this than we think, but also just... cultural things possibly.

the only cog CHILD (not just the child of someone - cathal's an adult. also, redd mention, but redd's adopted so he doesn't count) we ever see is bobby and, he is the child of robert, who is known to be very short. we don't know if bobby's going to grow up, or if this height is what he's just going to be like. we have one image where he's way smaller than robert, and other, more recent ones, where they're a similar heights. is that just art inconsistency due to the nature of all the (amazing) artwork being, well, volounteer work and that not everything is (or has to be) perfect? or did bobby really grow up. i'm talking about the wallet picture and the comics featuring bobby, by the way.

though, as things are, i'm sort of assuming that bobby's going to grow up or be upgraded in some way to "grow up"? i don't think we need an clear explanation for that, and in a universe like this 'cartoon logic' would be enough, but it's still something to think about.

like...how do cogs go about having kids, anyways? all instances we see are visually similar as well. cathal has the same gear for his neck as allan's body does, and they have the same head lightbulbs and wires. bobby jr and robert are both furniture.

i've always assumed that it's like in robots (the movie, that i havent watched in years which would be helpful for all this, probably.) if you decide to have a child just for the experience of raising a child, to have a legacy, or due to a bond with a partner - you literally just build one. perhaps not in the same way as in the movie - in here it definitely requires more paperwork and blueprints. but again, it's interesting to think about! hey company i want a CHILD. i look like this build them like me thanks here's some blueprints. (this also explains the amount of single parents. though belle has to have been married/is married as her honorific is listed as mrs. hey fun fact, non native english speaker here. i didnt know 'mrs' means a lady is married until like this year. i've been on this earth for 19 years.)

like the concept of family is possibly just more social there than anything. duh... can't exactly have the same oil and wires inside of you as Robots .

anyways, so that explains kids... but what about the others? some cogs don't have any families mentioned but it's not hard to assume they come from families with parents and siblings as well. what about the employee cogs? who are quite literally very disposable in a way?

we do have to take into account that after all, employee cogs we see just on and about on the streets are mostly a game mechanic, and there are some individual cogs who ARE cogs who would typically be employees cogs. (jennifer comes to mind first, she's a micromanager but also a secretary and counts as a manager. same goes for judy and so forth.)

and y'know, the game won't have a personality and backstory for each random flunky on the streets you fight. but with often they get destroyed and repaired and that there's just... so many of them! of the same model and appearance... makes you think. is that why they were made? are they truly more robotic than the others, more devoid of 'humanity'? or were they different cogs, perhaps more lower class, who's appearances were changed entirely to fit into more easily fixable and replaceable shell forms? something that's less expensive for the company and for them? i swear i am missing some details on this, but that's for me to re read the wiki and cogs ink for on my own later. (i need to have full info n everything and if i dont bring up that i know one small detail i will explode bc someone will bring it up and make me feel dumb and that's the rsd part and it's often physically painful!)

very hard to tell, i'm sort of content with my thoughts on how cogs have kids, but i hope we ever get a bit more clarity on employee cogs - though it is a bit problematic as these are the guys you beat up on the daily who don't have individual personalities.

like i'm just rambling as i go here man, it was gonna be cohesive but i'm just spitting thoughts here now. like, we have 3 seperate skelecog types - all cogs come with a skelecog like we have a skeleton so that also comes into play. it can be adjusted in ways, most notably the head and also in size. though we do have a 4 arm cog. jason please i love you /p we need more jason content. it's wacky, it's tacky - it's toontown!

fun stuff to think about but i just deep fried my brain. tdlr i guess.

how cogs made. how cogs have kids. how cogs work in general. very swag very cool. guzma cathal spades spamtongender goes on 1568854 different tangents while saying they wont aka your swagesty your adhd symptoms are showing

that's it fellas enjoy 2k words of incomprehensible rambles that i am happy to finally get out! you see the way i explain things is precisely why i almost never do it publicly and i need practice shortening things.

#long post #rambles #hcs #its very all over the place its not meant to be streamline but if i made a genuine post about this id never get to it #bc its too much effort and id see it as a chore and not me just autistically rambling about toontown stuff #im prolly forgetting stuff but... dont bring it up at least not for now please - maybe later!#or tell me about it phrased as a question! like yes ask me abt stuff but maybe make it smaller questions/one question at a time bc i wont #know where to start #BUT!! theres stuff i know about but just didnt think to mention or i forgot as i got increasingly more tired writing this because yeag

16 notes · View notes