#dude worked literally to death chasing that bank

[arkadarp]

yo Scrooge really be working that sigma grindset back in Victorian times huh

[judasgot-it]

I’m in love with your writing like omg🩷could i request what kind of lovers are Dazai, tecchou and Nikolai?

(english is not my mother tongue so i dont mean cheat btw…)

IVE BEEN WANTING TO GET TO THIS ASK FOR A WHILE BUT I HAD TO TAKE A BREAK AND AAAAAA

I have SO many headcannons about these fools oh lord. Also hoping I got what you meant cuz I won't lie I am a bit SILLY.

Headcannons: what kind of lovers are they? Dazai, Tecchou, Nikolai

Dazai

He sees his own misery inside of you, which he thinks is romantic. He thinks its beautiful that the two of you can understand each other's suffering in a way no one else can.

I don't think I need to state that while this is romantic in a literary sense, it's a major red flag

Dude would 100% want to do things that he thinks are "romantic" for couples to do together.

For example - murder-suicide, robbing stores together, double-suicide, arson, planning each other's funerals-

Man has a sick sense of romance and death

But he can be romantic!! Sometimes.

Despite being young he knows how to actually take care of his lover - at least in technicality

What he really enjoys, however, he has to suppress

That cold cold sick heart of his wants to isolate them, keep them away from everyone - but he knows that isn't really a human thing to do

So the type of lover he really is the kind of guy who can really only bond over either sex or when you're drunk/sad over the past

dude wouldn't even be able to have sex without crying or would have to do it in the dark, like he just gets too emotional and insecure

100% obsesses over your own trauma and will take any time he can to talk about it - but never his own

sorry dude has red flags ALL over in my mind, I just don't think he would do happy stuff because he would think it's very fake

He can't enjoy any happy occasion, especially dates

definitely thinks weed, deftones, and sex is a good date

Don't date this man if you try to break up with him he will come to your doorstep whimpering and crying telling you that he's gonna kill himself and that you're the only one for him even though he cheated on you

he just strikes me as a messy kind of person

Tecchou

Wants to be your hero. He knows your strong - but he wants to be strong for you. You deserve to be protected from the dangers of the world.

He believes in justice and is a MASSIVE dweeb for "playing the hero"

Man has good intentions that are EXTREME

So yea, he is a bit of an extreme lover

If he can, he'll protect you from anything. It's just his thing

He will try to eradicate all of your fears. Scared of the dark? Your house is brighter than the sun. Scared of bugs? sad, but he will chase them away.

Does this mean he's good at romance? Not really. He'll do anything you tell him too though

Literally anything. Almost. He wouldn't kill someone, but yea that man would 100% try a lot of weird and freaky shit.

would also not care if you weren't into sex. pretty sure that if he likes someone he is just LOYAL lol

although tbh he doesn't strike me as the horny type he just is too dedicated to his job like I'd give it 20/80

idk if he's a freak either like he's probably seen some weird nasty shit so he either is the most vanilla man to walk this earth or is into some weird ass shit.

(I bet it's cake sitting or some food shit. He and Ranpo are too similar, they would both be into weird food shit)

ANYWAY Tecchou is one of those guys who would do cute shit like open the door for his partner everywhere and hold their bags

It's very sweet. Bro 100% lifts.

probably calls while at work which is terrifying and horrible cause you'll hear gunfire but he'll pretend it's normal

Man is also technically property of the state so just know that if you're in a relationship with him you will always have someone stalking you, as you are now a threat to national security

but it's worth it for Tecchou <3

also, he has a huge bank account I bet but would buy either useless gifts or upgrade everything his partner owns cuz he probably only wears his military uniforms and compression shirts.

What's he gonna spend his money on, really?

Nikolai

The world is cruel and predictable, especially with people like him. He hates someone having control over him, so he would only love someone if he chose to - which is fickle at best.

AHHHH omg he's so hard to pin down because Nikolai 100% would be the worst person to have as a lover (jk)

Hot and Cold by Katy Perry esq

Like, 100% if he loves them he LOVES them but if he hates them? he HATES them

but I don't think he really changes his emotions that much, he's sensitive but not so drastically

Definitely is an interesting person to love - would do crazy and weird shit for his lover

doesn't do normal dates. he's a magician, everything is a trick with him

probably gives riddles and doesn't wait for them to be solved - they just lead up to silly dates or gifts. The gifts are probably tame like a drink they like or like, flowers. Maybe some random fingers if he saw that a server was rude.

Does the bottle up his ass trick a lot. or says "do you like magic in bed?" and then never pulls his pants down he just shows every single magic trick he knows.

Listen. that man is WAITING for an audience he will take any chance he can. He'll even pull out some tricks while in the middle of doing it. Let him show you his magic tricks, he practices very hard on some of them.

ranking him as the type to be an exhibitionist and a bit of a freak - how much? idk but he has his coat so who knows what kind of stuff he has on him.

also don't get into a philosophical convo with him this guy will start to talk all sorts of crazy

or political

unless ofc there's common ground then CONGRATS

also I feel like he would be a gentleman. Would probably bring his lover flowers and shit.

once brought oranges though. never explained why.

sorry about the NSFW but I needed the giggles. I did in fact giggle

[poisonedapples]

The Core Four

The beginning of the Core Four AU

Summary: There’s trouble going on at Quinn’s Jewelry Store in downtown Midbay. So clearly, the solution is to have a group of four superheroes come to the rescue.

Pairings: Familial LAMP

Trigger Warnings: Guns, shooting (but no one gets shot), injuries (especially burn and head injuries), a car almost crashing, robberies, death talk, unconsciousness, capslock, slight blood mentions

Notes: Remember that project I’ve been mentioning these last few months? With the superheroes? It begins >:P

Also, big thanks to @hanramz-the-fander for editing it but you really didn’t need to do it at midnight dsjkhjkfldskljkfls

Taglist: @romansleftshoulderpad @jynxlovesluck @aro-patton @dr-gloom

Josie Quinn knows the probability of having a store with expensive goods like hers being robbed, but usually when she feels anxious about going to work, the day proves her fears to just be meaningless anxiety. A calm day describing rings to men and women alike possibly looking to have a fiancé soon, people complaining about prices, it’s a routine at this point. Robbery isn’t something she’s experienced before, even on the days a suspecting pit was in her stomach.

But this day, Quinn really wished people in modern times could go back to robbing banks.

She was restocking in the back since the store was empty, doing meaningless tasks just to let the day go by. It took a few seconds after hearing a strange click from the store and a male voice yelling “GET OVER HERE NOW” for her to realize what was happening. Walking slowly out of the storage room with her hands up, Quinn was met with a large man dressed in all black pointing his gun directly at her. The alarms were already blaring loudly in the store from his other men busting the cases and putting anything shiny in the large sacks they were all holding. 

The man aimed his gun closer to her. “Gimme all the money you have in there, now.”

Quinn ignored her shaky hands as she placed everything she could offer right into the bag, the cash adding up to hardly anything considering most people pay with credit cards. When the man realized how little there was in the bag, he scowled and slammed his hand on the counter. Quinn jumped.

“Go in the back,” he growled, “If you bring me everything then you might get out of here alive.”

She wasn’t able to speak, only taking quick but careful steps into the back room again without saying a word. In a frantic haste on deciding how to take all the boxes to the man as quick as possible, Quinn ended up shakily grabbing as many of the padded boxes as she could carry, piling them on top of each other. With a few larger boxes and some small ones previously wrapped neatly for pickup, she walked back to the counter to set them in front of the man.

And when she did, her heart stopped.

The robber was confused and growing impatient at her sudden stop, but Quinn couldn’t help it. Her eyes were blown wide in disbelief when two men suddenly appeared behind the robber out of thin air, both of them wearing similar costumes besides for the different shades of blue, one was obviously more decorated than the other. They both had the same dark skin color only visible on the slight slip of skin where the bottom of their mask couldn’t reach, their faces covered entirely and eyes impossible to see. But even so, Quinn could still tell based on one of the man’s body posture that he was giddy.

And to be fair, so was she. Staring ahead in awe despite the circumstances, eyes blown wide. Because she’s never been this close to the Colored Spirits before.

Quinn knew exactly who they were. Two superheroes of a local group that were known for always being close together, always working in perfect synchronization. The giddy one in the lighter blues was Maya Spirit, his cooler companion known as Navy Spirit. She’d seen all the talk shows and online articles about their powers before; connecting so closely that one couldn’t use them without the other. People observing how they could only disappear if they were making physical contact with each other in some way, most commonly by holding hands. They would touch and disappear, then reappear when they separated once more.

And they were right here, in her shop!

All these thoughts and observations raced so quickly through Quinn’s head in just a second, but the robber wasn’t patient enough for even that. “I literally have a damn gun at your face, are you stupid!? Go to the fucking back, get me more shit!”

Her eyes finally snapped back at him, the robber’s gun getting closer to her face as he grew more impatient. For a second Quinn thought the last thing she was going to see was this very scene; a gun in her face with two superheroes right behind her killer.

But right before the trigger could be pulled, Navy grabbed the arm of the man and twisted it up, Quinn flinching back a bit at the loud noise of a gunshot going off right into her ceiling. The man frantically looked around the store for whatever grabbed his arm, but no one was there.

“What…?” He whispered to himself, turning back to Quinn with her hands on her ears and her heart pounding. He opened his mouth to speak, to let out his confusion with rage and impatience, but then a hand grabbed at his hair and smacked his head right into the counter.

Oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my-

“Fuck!” The robber stumbled to the side and almost fell to the floor from the impact, gripping the counter before he could fall and pointing his gun at the Colored Spirits. The two of them disappeared again the moment the gun went off, reappearing behind him and punching him right in the back of the head. He groaned as he fell to the floor with his eyesight spinning, shooting his gun off frantically in an attempt to get just one hit. Just one. 

Quinn screamed and took a duck for cover with her hands shielding her head. Loud bangs continued to go off, but the robber didn’t even realize his targets were gone again.

But through the gunshots there was a loud, over-dramatic battle cry right before the bangs finally stopped, followed by the sound of someone getting smacked right into the brick wall. A groan was the only new noise in the silence after the gun was dropped, the alarm from the broken glass long forgotten in the background.

Quinn slowly took her stiff hands away from her head, staying on the ground but looking up at the superheroes on the other side of the store slowly and carefully. There were three of them now.

Oh my God, Quinn thought, Is the entire team here for one robbery!?

She recognized the third person immediately as well. His skin was dark but not as dark as the Colored Spirits, and he was much shorter than them too. His costume had a hood with a stitched on piece of cloth covering his eyes completely, but you could still tell they were shining bright with how wide the boy’s smile was, the bottom half of his face still showing. Red, gold and white was all over his suit, a red cape that only reached to his knees and was covered in yellow stars, and a cloth crown attached to his hood so it stayed on the top of his head. The Royal Guard.

“Did you see that!?” He yelled, bouncing up and down on his feet with unrelenting energy. “I smacked that dude right into the wall at the best time, and I think there’s an indent in the wall now but I’m sure it’s fine, that was just really great timing!”

Maya’s voice sounded light. Lighter than in the clips Quinn had seen before. “You did great, Kiddo.”

The Royal Guard’s smile only grew bigger at the praise, but Navy Spirit seemed to have noticed something suddenly. “I just realized,” he said, “The store’s empty. Where are his other friends now? They have the majority of the store’s goods on them.”

“Oh, remember how Nightmare and I were gonna wait outside to jump them? They took off down the road in some black cars before I came in here.”

Navy sighed. “...And you didn’t chase them.”

“No, cause Nightmare already was, and I heard like, a bajillion gunshots coming from inside. I had more pressing matters to attend to, thank you very much!”

Royal Guard’s smile beamed with pride, his hands on his hips in a superhero pose. Navy and Maya seemed to share a look before Navy caved in. “Alright then, understandable. However, I think your assistance will come a lot more in handy on the road now. You’re the one with super speed, so you can catch up to the cars easily, and if the people driving them are logical, chances are they’ve split in different directions by now. Maya and I can take care of things here, but how about you contact Nightmare and see if you can help him with the cars?”

“Sounds easy, hardly a task at all! Later, nerds!”

And just like that, Royal Guard had sped out the front doors leaving nothing but a blur of himself behind him.

Quinn slowly lifted her head from the back of the counter. “...Can I get a picture with you two?”

***

“There’s two black Ford Focus ST’s on the roads right now. I’ve got one that was down on 67, but if SLEEP’s radar is right, the second one is going down Lincoln Avenue and heading to the highway. That’s the one I want you to catch, got it?”

Roman nodded before realizing that Virgil couldn’t see him, his voice going through the phone call system Virgil had installed in each of their suits. “Got it, I’ll head over there now and give them a firsthand look at Artemis!”

“Just don’t chop off any faces, we don’t wanna kill the guys. Get them away from the wheel but don’t crash the car, you’ll cause a pretty damn deadly pileup. Pull it over safely-” Virgil paused for a moment as Roman jumped roof to roof trying to search for the car with the directions he was given. “...You do know how to drive, right?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re barely fucking sixteen and poor as shit, that’s why!” Virgil suddenly seemed slightly panicked on the other side of the line. “God damnit, do you need me to drive over there? I can call Navy or Maya to come take this one to get back all the loot and shit and I can help you over there with the driving. I know you don’t have a license, so don’t even try that one!”

“Relax, Robert Downer, I’ll be just fine!” There it is, Roman thought, spotting the car matching Virgil’s description perfectly. Just before it got on the highway too. “Navy taught me how to drive his car plenty of times before, which isn’t exactly legal, but I know what I’m doing! I’ll call you if I need anything else, but I spotted the car, so it’s too late now!”

“...Fine, fine, but don’t cause a fucking massive crash in the busiest street in the entire city. I’ll find a way to kill you, don’t test me.”

“Bye, Nightmare!” With that, the call finally ended, Roman jumping across three more buildings before coming perfectly in line with the car. He sheathed his sword Artemis from its place around his waist and jumped from the roof, landing straight on the hood of the car so hard his feet dented into it enough to give Roman a balanced footing. He saw the driver of the car’s eyes widen before trying to jerk the car back and forth to shake him off, Roman burying his heel into the hood for balance.

“Get off, you fucking freak of nature!” The driver yelled, and for once in his life, Roman decided to listen. But not in the way the guy wanted.

He quickly jumped off the hood of the car and stabbed Artemis right through the roof, cutting open a slit that he could slip through to enter the car. Another robber in the back of the car punched Roman square in the jaw, smacking his head against the window with force the moment he jumped in. Well that wasn’t very nice.

Roman grabbed Artemis’ hilt and went for an aimless swing while his vision danced, but despite Roman’s powerful speed, his hand was stopped right in its tracks with a strong grip.

Suddenly, the robber was right in his face with a broken scowl, full of anger and hurt alike. “You really want those damn human’s approval so bad, don’t ya?” His grip on Roman’s hand tightened, grabbing his face as well. “Even after all they’ve done? You’re one of us, you know exactly what they’re fucking guilty for! But we want a little cash to get by and suddenly we’re the fucking bad guys!?”

All Roman could feel on his body was the unusual heat on his wrist. Scalding heat that felt like a burning iron plate was wrapped around his arm, leaving Roman’s only reaction to be to scream. Artemis hit the ground as he struggled to get away from the burning, his eyes slowly focusing in his haste. When he looked down at his wrist to see the problem, the first thing he saw was the robbers hand a lava red. Steam came from between his fingers.

Of course he has powers.

Roman’s head went into the back of the window once, twice, three more times as the robber slammed his head back continuously, saying his lament through gritted teeth. “Traitorous little bastard is all you are! It’s all your friends are! You’ve experienced the pain they cause first-hand and you’re still on their side! Boot-licking pieces of shit!”

The side of his face where the man was gripping started to burn too, a scalding, unbearable grip, and Roman’s body went limp from pain. His vision was dancing and his mind could only think of the heat, the unbearable burning like his hand and face were taped to a gas oven.

The robber smiled. “You’re about half as strong as they make you seem. What, you don’t like pain? Don’t like being left without your little buddies to come save you? Are you scared?”

“Dennis, just fucking kill him so I can drive straight!”

“Not yet, I wanna see the face behind the mask.”

That phrase brought adrenaline through his veins, sheer panic being able to give him strength. Oh no, Roman’s mind yelled, Do something focus just get him off of you!

Roman screamed louder when he bent his burning wrist to grab the burning robber’s hand in his, adrenaline rising as he bent his arm back in one swift motion. Before the robber could even processed what happened, Roman grabbed his face with his now one good hand and bashed his head into the window, shattering the glass entirely. The man fell to the floor when he let go, faint breathing the only sign he was actually alive.

Oops, too much strength.

“Denni-” The driver didn’t even finish his sentence before Roman grabbed him by the collar with his one good hand and threw him to the back of the car, grabbing Artemis and piercing the blade right in the side of the man’s pants, pinning him to the seat and switching places as the driver. The only conscious robber yelled from his place as he tried to get free, but hey, he should be grateful he wasn’t bleeding like the other guy.

“Alright, time to get us off the road!” Roman grabbed the wheel with his unburnt hand in the 2 position like Logan had told him before purposely ignoring the “two hands on the wheel” rule just this once. He pressed his right foot down to step on the gas and-

......And-

...Oh no.

Roman scooted down to where his head was at level with the bottom of the steering wheel, only then finally being able to step on the gas and stop a pileup, the car behind him honking its horn loudly. No matter how much Roman tried to maneuver himself, he couldn’t see through the window and press the pedal at the same time. He frantically tried to search for a lever to pull the seat up, but he couldn’t seem to locate it anywhere. In a sudden panic, Roman called into the air: “NIGHTMARE!”

The gadget in Roman’s mask started to ring, and the phone was picked up in a matter of seconds. “What’s up, Princey?”

“So, I might have a, uh...a slight dilemma?”

Virgil went quiet. “And what would that be?”

“You know how I said I could drive the car off the highway?”

“...Yeah?”

“...I can’t reach the pedals.”

The screeching of tires was heard in the background as well as the voice of another man yelling, Virgil yelling back, then the slamming of a car door. “You can’t what!?”

“I can’t reach the pedals! The driver’s tall and I’m short!”

“Oh my God, Jesus fucking Christ what the fuck are we gonna do—I’m coming over there, I’ll summon a couple signs and shit and direct traffic and I can come get you before you kill someone-”

“But won’t they figure out you’re lying about your powers that way? You’re supposed to make monsters, not stop signs!”

“I think my damn ‘my-creations-aren’t-real’ secret is less important than you killing twenty people!”

Roman’s heart was beating, turning sharply at a turn he didn’t see until it was too late and almost blowing out the tires. He was frantically looking around to have some kind of visual on where the road was, catching a glimpse of the right side mirror. Roman sighed in relief when he could see the street slightly, where a simple iron rail kept the cars from falling down ten feet into a little pit.

If this moment was in a cartoon, a lightbulb would have gone off above his head.

“Wait, I think I have a plan! You have me on a tracker right?”

“Duh, have you met me?”

Roman ignored him, “How much longer do I have that rail-thingy on the side of the road?”

A slight silence over the phone. “For about half a mile or so.”

“Perfect! See you in a bit, bye!”

“Princey don’t you fucking dare-” The call was ended before Virgil finished his sentence. Gotta make this quick then.

Roman pressed down the lock on the door and opening it up. Roman looked at the rearview for a moment and sped up to get away from the car behind him, hoping he wouldn’t slam into someone in front of him in the process. He counted to three. One...two...three!

He made the car do a sharp turn and drove right through the metal rail.

The conscious robber behind him yelled “You’re fucking nuts!” as the car went over the edge, Roman rising in his seat as they did a free fall. He stumbled over himself for a slight moment when he tried to push himself back up, slipping when his burnt hand touched the leather seat and set his nerves on fire. He pushed open the car door completely, tripping as he used his feet to leap out of the side, the conscious driver still screaming in the back. Metal thumped under his boots when Roman jumped back on the hood of the car, running off and scraping the car with the speed of his feet as he did so. He fell down to the ground and stumbled to get his footing as quick as possible, then, the car was falling straight toward him.

Roman grabbed the front of the car with both his hands, stopping 700 pounds of metal from crashing right into a ditch, gently setting it down.

And he did it all in seven seconds.

However, the adrenaline of the moment did eventually disappear, and the sharp pain in Roman’s hand returned just as bad as before from using it to stop a car. He jumped up and down while shaking his hand around to help with the pain. “Ow, ow ow ow, okay, that hurts.”

“What hurts!? What the fuck did you do, Princey!?”

Roman looked up and saw a taller man with a black, purple and steel suit on, his face covered with an iron mask full of gadgets, but he could still sense the franticness in his eyes. To anyone else, Nightmare would have been the most intimidating man to have swearing at you, but Roman knew better now. He just smiled widely at his mentor. “I stopped the car from crashing all on my own!”

“By crashing it!?”

“Hey, you’re the one that told me to get it off the road, not my fault you didn’t specify how.”

“I’m gonna kill you. I’m well and truly going to murder you.”

“I’d like to see you try, honestly.”

“I’m gonna slap the shit out of- Holy fuck what happened to your face.”

Roman’s right eye was throbbing as the skin under it looked very unnaturally white and charred all at the same time, peeling a little. “Well that’s not a very nice thing to say.”

Virgil stood there stunned for a moment before clicking on the phone button of his mask and letting it ring. “Navy, Maya, we caught all the robbers. Let’s head back to our place and let the cops handle the rest before I blow a fucking fuse.”

“On it, Nightmare! Just hold on a bit, we’re kinda...caught up with a fangirl.”

***

“...So then I caught the car when it fell and nobody got hurt! We’re not counting that one fire-dude that burned my precious face, though.”

“Another individual with superpowers fell to the corrupted end, I see…” Logan looked down at the ground for a moment, processing. He eventually shook his head when he sensed Patton’s worried glancing his way, instead handing Roman a large container of Gatorade. “Drink this.”

“Aren’t you supposed to give him water through the IV?” Patton asked.

“In a normal case of third degree burns, yes. However, Roman’s enhanced resistance abilities make it so he can drink it himself just fine. If he can speak, he can drink a bottle.”

“It’s really not all that bad!” Roman took a breath after drinking a third of the large bottle, “Sure, my hand wants to fall off and run away, but I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

Virgil in the background made some vague hand gestures in Roman’s direction to symbolize his grumpiness as he didn’t have his mask on. Without one of the two masks Virgil always wore around the place, he didn’t have the technology in order to communicate. The masks he built from scratch were meant to analyze his mouth movements and put them into words, a few other complicated controls allowing him to also add the correct tone to his voice. But Virgil just sat in his suit with his helmet on the seat next to him, leaning his head in one hand and looking around the room. He wanted to seem tough, but they all knew Virgil was panicking a little from Roman’s recklessness.

Logan looked back at Virgil on the other side of the L-shaped couch. “He will be fine, however I think that’s enough patrol for one day. Right, Virgil?.”

Virgil nodded slightly and kept looking at the massive TV on the other wall, focusing on some commercials about washing products to keep himself from staring at Roman’s face and hand. Logan continued tending to the wounds as best he could with only a nursing degree under his belt, the burn already starting to slowly mend itself back together like Roman’s powers often did.

“SLEEP?” Logan called, “Could you maybe turn up the heat in the penthouse? Burns need warmer rooms in order to heal.”

Virgil’s handmade AI SLEEP peered out from the corner of the hallway, flicking down his sunglasses slightly as he processed what Logan asked. “Penthouse temperature’s going up to 89, babes.”

Virgil snapped to get SLEEP’s attention and started to sign at him. Get my other mask and a pair of shorts or something, then. It’s already hot as shit in this suit.

“I’m a security system, not a maid, but since you asked so kindly…” SLEEP stared right at Virgil. Virgil didn’t move. He moved closer to him. “Since you asked so KINDLY…”

...Please. He signed unenthusiastically.

“...Then I’ll be so happy to!”

Virgil didn’t even look back at SLEEP to flip him off as he walked away. The only reason Virgil didn’t do more than that was the disapproving dad glare Patton was giving him from the other side of the room.

“Alright, that’s all I can do.” Logan said, taking one last look at Roman’s burned hand and face. “You do not need surgery considering your face is already starting to heal on its own, and since your enhanced resistance makes you immune to sickness, antibiotics and a tetanus shot would be unnecessary. However, I highly recommend you stay here for the night so that no one wonders what happened to your skin before it recovers.”

“Staying a night at multi-millionaire and emo Virgil Raine’s penthouse for a night? My, the horror! How will I ever recover from such a difficult task?! Sleeping on a comfortable guest bed and eating all the food he has? Cruelty I tell you!”

“Ah yes,” Virgil spoke and everyone looked over at him, slowly slipping out of the remainder of his suit with his other black mask covering his mouth again, SLEEP leaning on the back of the couch behind him. “It’s totally not like you basically live here anyway.”

“Your penthouse is comfy and as long as I check into the shelter once a week I still live there. It’s not my fault I know how to get through the window.”

“Yes it is!”

“It’s SLEEP’s fault for not warning you I’m sneaking through your window.”

“I’m supposed to warn him of threats,” SLEEP smirked, “a baby with a star cape isn’t that threatening.”

“I’m not a baby!”

“Virgil, your baby is whining.”

“Oh wow, would you look at the time,” Virgil looked at an invisible watch on his wrist, grabbing the clothes he also told SLEEP to bring and standing up. “I’m gonna go change and let you all fight this ou-”

“Hey look!” Patton pointed to the expensive TV excitedly. “The news is talking about us!”

Everyone looked over to the previously ignored TV, showing a woman in front of the jewelry store they had just been at not even three hours ago. The news lady was with the same fangirl that had stopped Logan and Patton earlier, lending her the microphone. “It was definitely crazy I’ll admit, I’ve never seen any of them up so close, and they did manage to get all my stuff back! I’m definitely really grateful The Core Four showed up when they did.”

“...The Core Four?”

“Core Four?” The news lady repeated, tilting the microphone back to the woman. “Yeah! That’s what I’ve seen the four of them be called anyway, on website formats and stuff. It’s less of a mouthful than their full names, even with the Colored Spirits being shortened. Oh! I actually got to talk to both of them-”

The five of them tuned the woman out after that point, focusing on the apparent team name they never knew they had. Eventually, the banner at the bottom of the screen changed to Core Four Saves Quinn’s Jewelry.

“Huh,” Virgil said, “I guess we’re called The Core Four now.”

Logan pouted slightly. “I thought I was coming up with the group name?”

“The news beat you to it. Rip you.”

Logan glared at Virgil, and Virgil just shrugged. “Plus, it’s kinda catchy.”

“I like that it rhymes!”

“We are the center of this very city, keeping it safe and protecting all that inhabit it! The core! Core Four! I love it!”

Logan caved in. “I must admit, it is...an acceptable name for a team like us.”

“It took them a year to decide on that?” SLEEP said, “Step up your game, missies!”

“Nightmare, Royal Guard, and the Colored Spirits altogether.” Virgil looked at everyone else. “That official? Core Four?”

The other three nodded their heads, Roman smiling brightly. “Core Four!”

[dukeofriven]

Good In The World

I meant what I said with that extended LOTR quote being what the Epilogues are about - about there being good in the world, and it being worth fighting for. Given that I’ve been up to my neck reading Hussie commentary lately I feel like I’ve gotten a pretty strong grasp on what makes him tick - and who boy does this guy love stories about friendship, teamwork, and love, loves them so much he sometimes sounds like Téa Gardner about to lay down a friendship speech on Yu-Gi-Oh. So - while noting that the extent to which the epilogues are and are not Hussie’s work are even more muddled that usual in regards Homestuck - the take-away is this: everything went wrong, in both Meat and Candy, because everyone forgot that - that friendship, teamwork, and love is the only reason any of them survived. The Sburb survivors came to Earth-C as literal gods, beings of inordinate celebrity and power, and then didn’t work as hard as they should have to still be friends and family. We point to John as some kind of recluse but it quickly becomes clear that everyone stopped working at staying together. Karkat and Dave are as much shut-ins as John, stewing together in their own incapacity. Katkat’s self-loathing, so often a hilarious joke in Homestuck is - free of the immediate pressures of Sburb - shown to be intensely debilitating. It undermines him repeatedly in Meat, and requires incipit genocide in Candy to be set aside, costing him everything that mattered on a personal level. Dave made the mistake of many in his position before him, leaning too much on the first epiphany about trauma and not taking the care to continue down the path to further healing and reconciliation with the past. It leaves him desperately reaching for intimacies he too scared of to actually experience. Coupled with an abused kid’s terror of perpetuating harm he lies to Karkat and Jade both time and time again to try and save their feelings. Jade, so utterly fucked up by years of isolation and loneliness, and so endearingly, crushingly full of love makes all the wrong decisions in trying to build a triad (that is - the triad could have worked, but she went about it all wrong) and makes two separate instantiations of Dave and Karkat miserable. Rose and Kanaya have no malice in their actions, but they do what married people always do: pull away from everyone else, and focus on themselves and their new lives. Harmless, normally - or, at least, not seriously harmful - but those lives took them underground and away from everyone else, The two most insightful and level-headed members of the party simply weren’t around when everyone needed them most. Unaware how bad things were getting they missed so many of the warning sides that would have clued them in earlier that everyone was going off the rails - and being as isolated as she was in Meat this left Rose vulnerable to the manipulation most likely to succeed: just like with Doc Scratch she was preyed upon by someone who could flatter her sense of grievance, knowledge, and uniqueness. Terezi wouldn’t have stood by and let things go to shit - but she was doomed the moment she tied her heart to ego personified, and so was absent too.  As for the Alphas, well - their problems were never resolved in the first place, their 'conflict arcs’ interrupted by the arrival of the betas. Only Roxy, element of void, utterly self-contained, a refugee from a dead reality, walked onto Earth-C able to withstand the horror that awaited them: celebrity. Skaia is benevolent, but it is not wise: Sburb seems to have a cherub’s worldview, full of bright colours and heightened stories, but not much maturity. When the victors of Sburb escaped to Earth-C the last thing they needed was celebrity, praise, and positions of note. The issues are all laid out in the prologue: John retired before he ever started working, every one of them richer than any mortal could conceive of. These kids didn’t need parades, they needed to go school. Jane didn’t need honorary degrees from every business school on the planet, Jake didn’t need a TV show centred entirely around his ass: what everyone needed was to be aggressively ordinary. Mundane and unregarded. They needed to put everyone in a group home with four on-staff counselors and take a chunk of years doing nothing but heal. Because everyone was damaged. Other than Calliope - a special case - everybody walked out of Sburb having witnessed at least one apocalypse. Put aside any of the individual traumas and deaths and abuses and sins and just focus on that alone: the death of entire worlds and the burden of saving seven sentient species. Rather than the ultimate Reward being a sit-down with kindly professionals who could help a bunch of kids cope with that, these literal children entered a new world and built new lives on a foundation of dust. The beta kids never finished seventh grade. Jane Crocker never finished high school. Jade Harley, Jake English, Roxy Lalonde, and Dirk Strider never went to school at all. Not one of those four had ever been around more than four humans in their lives until the day they won the game. They couldn’t have. Jade and Jake grew up alone on islands. Roxy and Dirk grew up in the apocalypse. Dirk grew up in a literal box. As Cascade hit Dave and John were the only living humans Jade had ever met who wasn’t her grandpa: and she spent three years alone on a ship with only the Nannasprites and consorts for company. (And Jaspers to chase.) For those four especially, think about they went through within 24-hours: BAM here’s a group of people including your alt-relatives and literal aliens BAM here’s a crazy fucking battle against technicolour chess people, killer dogs, and fish queens BAM here’s a pristine new-ish world better BAM produce thousands of species to populate a new world /TABLE SCRATCH/ Welcome to Earth-C in the year 5000 Celebrity Gods. Here’s your debit cards full of riches. Seriously - this all happens in about a day. And yet people are shocked that things didn’t work out? They were sixteen years old. Four of them had no formal education of any kind, nor had ever been around enough to people to form a softball team. And that’s not even starting on the trolls, who had multiple culture-shocks and traumas of their own the sort through. And yet people are shocked that things didn’t work out? There is, absolutely, a way all of this could have been addressed and become a happy ending. If you don’t like the Epilogues because you’re just sick and fucking tired of tragedy stories - boy do I feel you. Man, don’t get me started on shit like Westword we will be here all week. If you just wanted there to be a fucking happy ending because god-damnit people deserve to be happy - I feel that too. Had that been what we got I can’t say that I’d have been displeased. But if you’re angry because what happened in the Epilogues seems “unreasonable”  all I can do is wave my arms at all the shit everybody went through and ask you why going from that to retired celebrity godhood was good for anyone. What happened on Earth-C was nobody’s fault - not even Dirk’s. Of course he lost it. Of course he took his godhood to its logical conclusions - what possible grounding in real human beings had he ever seriously had, and what in his life was there to make him see people as people? Dude grew up alone in a box with SBAHJ and rapping robots for company - the only voice in his head his own, magnified in the echo chamber of ego and his own blindness to his inadequacies.  Why wouldn’t Jane cling to status quo of her dead world? Really, what did Sburb ever bring her but heartbreak, an excessively baroque Bad Relationship Simulator that took away her home and her position as a corporate heiress for a six month romp through a bunch of dead planets and inter-friend squabbling (We don’t talk about how fucking boring the alpha session was: nothing but undead and emptiness.) She reaches a new world, gets told how smart she is, gets a bunch of degrees - but as Dave himself notes, when you’re rich as can be and have everyone on the planet lining up to do business with you, it’s pretty easy to think you’re actually skilled at running things, especially if YOU STOPPED YOUR EDUCATION AT SIXTEEN AND GOT TOLD THAT YOUR SIXTEEN YEAR OLD SELF WAS THE APEX OF YOUR BEING. Take a moment to remember yourself at sixteen. Try to put sixteen year old you in charge of something meaningfully important - like, mmh, let’s say a regional bank. Uh - oh. Oh dear. Oh it’s on fire, is it? And the fire is spreading? Yeah, that’ll happen. [One glaring issue I’ll note in these epilogues is that nobody knows what the fuck to do about Dad Crocker, so they do... nothing, until Candy reminds you he exists in order to kill him to motivate Jane to do something she probably could have been easily prompted to do anyways by another means. I guess Dad Crocker just... happily let Jane not finish school or exert any kind of parental control at all after that point? On her or anybody else? You want to talk about OOC: what the fuck happened with Dad Crocker, of whom I expected better? And where did Tavrosprite and the Nannasprites go?] My point in all this is that Homestuck is a story about how important love, teamwork, and friendship is, and after the Earth-C victory everybody got lost. Everybody reacted to being Celebrity Gods in their own way, and it created little cracks that widened over time, and when everyone should have been coming closer together - group therapy sessions, even - they got further and farther apart. These emotionally-stunted mentally-teenaged kids with buckets of trauma, the power of gods, and the celebrity to match broke. One by one. All in their own unique ways. The Epilogues are in some sense a musing on the absurdity of adulthood - how its mantel is placed upon you regardless of whether you are ready or not, for reasons as arbitrary as ‘turning a certain age’ or ‘winning a video game.’ In some cases it takes our heroes DECADES of life before adulthood - before real maturity - begins to make something of an appearance, and even then it’s a crapshoot. Love, friendship, and teamwork are what matter in Homestuck: in the epilogues it takes years of monumentally boneheaded decisions for our heroes to remember this, and some of them never do.

Is there still a happy ending at the end of Homestuck? One that lies ahead? I think so. Hussies loves his characters dearly - and yes, he does. Of course he does. He didn’t spend ten years of his life telling the story of one dimensional Brechtian Archetypes to make some otiose point about the nature of narrative: if he had none of you would be feeling as you are now.  The difference between you and Andrew Hussie is that you see his characters like family: you leap to their defence whenever they are hurt, and when they are cut you bleed: “How?” you ask, “Could anyone be so cruel to do this thing?” But Hussie sees his characters as characters, in a story of which he is author, and in which pain and hurt and tragedy can be the vehicles through which good stories can be told: that the light is made all the brighter because of the quantity and quality of darkness that was banished. Candy and Meat are the story of a boy who can only destroy love because he thinks he understands it, and lashes-out when things don’t go as planned. Dirk is just as much the villain in Candy as in Meat, as Calliope makes very clear: the Candyverse is in some sense defined, or at least made more distinct, by his absence. He is a tragic figure on the macro scale - if only he and all the walking wounded of Sburb had been given help when they needed it - but his death in Candy is not a tragedy of ‘what ifs,’ it’s an act of petulance and cruelty by a kid who’ll take his ball and go home if he’s not allowed to play the winning game. His death destabilizes the Candyverse far more than John’s choice to stay, its just that its corrosive effects take longer to be obvious - and the gears he’d already set in motion didn’t cease to turn, though they may have slowed. Dirk destroys love, his effect on both timelines is to push people apart because division suits him, and to push his own view of what ‘love’ is on people who experience it far more expansively than he could ever imagine. He’s a sad little boy who grew up in alone in a box and entered a world that told him he was a literal god with the powers to match - by the end of Meat it’s clear that love, friendship, and teamwork mean nothing to him, only the perfect order of his own fevered imagination. What will bring him down in the end is the reclamation of that feeling at the end of Act 7 - the joy of victory, of having worked together, of the love of family both found and familial, and of the realization that they were none of them better apart. And then some therapists. Some actual therapists. For a good long time. (Also I hope that they find Doc Scratch and beat his sorry ass from here to eternity because that smug fuck has his puppety fingertips all over this thing, and if Dirk really is merging with his ultimate self that includes (as @geekycalligrapher noted) aspects that wound up in Lord English, including a not insignificant portion of one Doctor Vanilla Milkshake, Esq.) (Edit: I did, in fact, do a few edits when I noticed the opening sentences were missing things like ‘the subject.’)

[queenmorgawse]

transmigration for dummies

chapter four. mdzs scum villain au. concept credit to @lee-luca. read on ao3 for end notes.  previous | first | next

About halfway ( according to his questionable sense of direction, anyway ) to Mo Village, Lan Fan catches up to him, hovering about five feet away. Jingyi sees her lips moving, but her words are lost to the whistling wind. “What?” he screams back.

She makes a face and shouts at him, in defiance of at least three Gusu Lan rules, “Mom came back yesterday, she told me to tell you you’ve got to look after me and also share your food!”

“Mom?”

“Yeah! Just because I see her more than you do doesn’t mean you don’t need to listen to her!” She points a threatening finger in his direction. “I’ll tell her if you bully me!”

Jingyi’s only half listening to her. His head is reeling. Since when does the original have a little sister, or a family at all? Whose headcanon is this?!

Lan Fan is still looking at him expectantly, though the effect is a bit ruined by the way the wind keeps whipping her long hair back in her face. “Got it,” he manages to garble out after about thirty awkward seconds of silence. Satisfied, she pours another load of spiritual energy into her sword, willing it to go faster. She catches up to her friends in the front in no time, leaving Jingyi to his existential crisis.

Come to think of it, it’s not that weird for him to have an entire sister he didn’t know was his sister, even though they’d only met about four days into his new life. They don’t look that much alike - he and Lan Fan must take after different parents, even if he doesn’t know who they are either. Plus, with the way the Lan clan literally has the girls and women living in an entirely separate part of the Cloud Recesses, the two of them probably never spent much time in the other’s company outside of training.

The thought makes Jingyi’s stomach churn with unease. Up until now, he only had to worry about not looking too suspicious in front of his fellow disciples. He can probably manage Lan Fan too, if the way she acts towards him is any indication. It’s relatively safe to assume he doesn’t have a father either : if they live in the same part of the Cloud Recesses, they would have run into each other by now, right?

He can fool his friends. He can even fool Lan Sizhui, who knows him best out of everyone here. But can he really look a mother in the eye and pretend he’s her son?

They’re not real, Jingyi tells himself. They’re just people the System created. But even as he repeats this mantra, he knows he’s not convinced. Everyone is too fleshed out, even compared to their novel counterparts, for him to treat them like they’re disposable.

It doesn’t matter, he ultimately decides. He won’t have to get used to having a dad, at least. Lan Fan, though ⎯ he can’t just brush her off. They have a mother, even if he doesn’t know her name yet, and she’s counting on him to protect Lan Fan.

Well, in light of their comparative fighting prowess, she might have to be the one doing the protecting, but it hopefully won’t come to that.

Jingyi spares a thought for Nie Mingjue’s dismembered arm waiting for them in Mo village, and silently revises that statement.

-

Within five minutes of knowing her, Jingyi can safely say this : Madam Mo reminds him of his least favorite middle school teacher. Granted, Mrs Robin didn’t dress this fancy, but she certainly sneered down her nose at people a lot and never pronounced Jingyi’s name right, despite it really not being as hard as it could have been. About halfway through the year, Jingyi had given up and started calling her by her full name, Mrs Robin-Banks, which had earned him about a month of scraping the undersides of tables clean of bubble gum.

Exactly like he used to do in class, he tunes out of her speech about how her son definitely has the potential to be a cultivator, if only a great clan - any of them, of course not theirs specifically - would notice him and take him under their wing…

On his left side, Tao Ming rolls his eyes so hard they actually go white for a second, right before Lan Fan discreetly elbows him in the ribs. It takes all of Jingyi’s self-control not to do the same.

He may have been watching the door for Mo Xuanyu’s arrival, but it still doesn’t prepare him to the chaos that erupts when the man himself barges into the hall.

Jingyi isn’t sure how much of the effect can be chalked up to his own knowledge of the character, but Wei Wuxian is a riot from his very first moment here. While the other disciples look on, half fascinated and half appalled, he leans forward, following the other’s movements. Energy runs through Wei Wuxian like a wire, whether he is scampering about the room to escape the servants or taunting Mo Ziyuan and his parents. Saying he can’t stay still would be an understatement.

As entertaining as the situation is, it is also highly awkward, especially when one of the girls reaches for Mo Xuanyu to help him to his feet, revealing the red footprint at the center of his chest. Despite knowing this beforehand, the sight makes Jingyi sick.

“Did everyone see that? Did you? The burglar is also beating someone up! How heartless!”

While he was lost in thoughts, Wei Wuxian dusted himself off, and is now pointing an accusing finger at his ‘cousin’. Before Jingyi can remember his mission or say anything, Sizhui’s calm voice cuts through the commotion. “Please calm down. Words are more powerful than weapons.”

Yeah, but it’d help a lot if I could punch this guy in the face. If he thought watching or reading about Mo Ziyuan going on his mama’s boy spiel, the entire thing pales in comparison to real life. Jingyi is itching to leap across the tea table and throttle him with his bare hands so he’ll just stop talking, but that might be an infraction unforgivable even for the most un-Lan Lan to ever Lan.

Sensing the shift in atmosphere, Wei Wuxian stays behind Sizhui, peeking out from behind his shoulder with all the offended dignity of a jilted maiden.

Madam Mo’s smile looks plastered on, like the smallest tug would be enough to peel it off her face. “This is my younger sister’s son. He’s not so bright here ; everyone from the Mo Village knows that he is a lunatic, and often speaks strange words that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Cultivator, please…”

“Who said that my words shouldn’t be taken seriously? Next time, try stealing anything from me again. You steal once, and I cut off one of your hands!” Wei Wuxian interrupts. Jingyi winces. Of course, no one here can possibly know the weight these words carry, but let him cringe in peace, okay?

Lan Fan chances a glance towards Sizhui. “Shixiong, should we…” In an attempt to be subtle, she glares towards the fuming members of the Mo family, then schools her expression into a serene one when turning to their leader again.

Sizhui clears his throat. “We will borrow the West Courtyard for the night. Please remember the things that I’ve talked about—after nightfall, close all of the windows, don’t come outside, or worse, walk toward the courtyard.”

Nice try, dude.

To be fair, Jingyi feels a little mean, just letting things happen. Plot-essential as they are, this night did result in the death of four (he thinks?) people.

【Canon events must proceed as they were written,】the System pings, sealing the debate.

-

Things cool down after that. Their little group files out of the hall in their usual orderly fashion and gets to work, evacuating the last of the servants from the West Courtyard and unpacking their supplies. It’s almost pastoral.

Trouble finds them all the same, while Jingyi is checking on the position of the last of the Spirit Attraction flags.

He spots Mo Xuanyu’s ghastly makeup from a mile away. Telling the protagonist off is useless, he knows, but a good little Lan disciple would have to enforce the most basic of the instructions they gave. “Hey, you! Go back, alright? No one’s allowed here until we’ve dealt with the corpses!”

As expected, Wei Wuxian ignores him, hopping up on the roof and making a grab for the nearest flag. Even if Jingyi wanted to catch him, he couldn’t have ; for someone who was dead twenty-four hours ago and received a nasty beating since, the man is surprisingly nimble.

“Give it back!” he still shouts, chasing after him. “Weren’t you a cultivator once? You should know better than to mess with that!”

“I’m not giving it back, I’m not giving it back! I want this thing! I want this!” Wei Wuxian sing-songs back, sticking to his role as the local madman. Where’s the guy’s Oscar, huh? This is Amy Adams all over again.

Fortunately, all his flailing about gives Jingyi time to catch up. He grabs him by the arm, shaking the flag out of his slackened grip. “There!”

“Jingyi, don’t hit him. He’s not feeling well.” Sizhui must have been drawn in by the ruckus, leaving his own side of the flag formation.

“I didn’t hurt him!” Jingyi protests. “He was the one making a mess first!”

Sizhui gave him an understanding look, then turned back to Wei Wuxian. “Young master Mo, it’s getting late, and we’ll start capturing the walking corpses soon. For your own safety, please return to your room. The flag…”

“It’s just a flag, so what’s the big deal?” Wei Wuxian cuts in with a huff. “I can draw way better than this!” Before the other juniors’ astonishment can manifest, he’s sprinted off, leaving the discarded flag lying in the dust behind him.

Lan Fan and a few of her friends giggle from their own positions on the roof, while Tao Ming glares at the direction Wei Wuxian disappeared in. “What a maniac! Why can’t these people even follow simple rules?”

“It’s all right, A-Ming,” Sizhui soothes. “We still have time, so let’s just fix it up before sunset. As long as he doesn’t come back, everything will be fine.”

“Back to work, everyone!” Jingyi adds. It earns him a 【Uncharacteristic willingness to follow orders : -5 points.】alert, which he responds to with a classy middle finger behind Sizhui’s retreating back.

The OOC function really can’t come a second too soon.

-

The rest of the evening goes by uneventfully. Once it’s clear that Mo Xuanyu will not be coming back before dawn, their group wastes no time fixing the flag formation and preparing their weapons. When dinner comes around, Jingyi dutifully shares half of the veggie buns the Mo family servants bring them with Lan Fan.

To his relief, it doesn’t prompt any family bonding for them. Not that they would have had much time to talk, since his little sister spent most of the meal trying to fit as many baozi into her mouth as she could, which would surely not be as tolerated in the Lan clan dining hall.

The handful of corpses that do show up, hooked in by the flags, are more than easy to dispel. Even Jingyi, who can admit he chickens out easily, feels almost bored chopping the slow, clumsy undead to pieces. It’d be a peaceful night, if not for his knowledge that sooner or later, they’d all be summoned to the main hall again to be witnesses to a murder.

-

Bingo, Jingyi thinks when a young serving girl bursts into the West courtyard, shaking like a leaf. Her sobs wake up the few disciples who dozed off following their watch schedule ; they reach for their swords in no time, expecting another wave of corpses. It does nothing but scare the poor girl further.

Jingyi reaches her first. “What happened?” he asks, knowing full well what just went down.

The girl sniffles. She’s really a child, possibly younger than Lan Fan. “I-Madam Mo told me to call you because, because…” She cuts herself off with another sniffle, curling into herself.

“Breathe,” he advises her. “With me, okay?”

She follows suit, obediently inhaling and exhaling in sync with him, until her shaking has subsided enough for her to form a coherent sentence. “Cultivators, Mistress wants to see you as soon as possible. She said…” Another hiccup. “She said the lunatic killed her son!”

[blackgirlbollywood]

Barfi movie review and how I officially fell in love wtih Ranbir Kapoor

I gotta confess I heard about this movie A LOT but I only recently sat down to watch it because I was thirsting after Ranbir ( although  tbh like a good 80% of the movies I’ve watched were because I was thirsting for some actor. I’m basic, I know moving on.)

This is obviously going to have spoilers so don’t read if you haven’t seen the movie

So basically the movie is about the love triangle between Barfi a deaf/mute man played by Ranbir Kapoor, Shruti a girl who is engaged played by Ileana D’Cruz and Jhilmil (which is suuuuuch a pretty name to me idk why I just think it’s really cute) an autistic girl and heriess to her grandfater’s fortune played by Priyanka Chopra. The movie is told largely through  flashbacks and present day interviews with people who knew Barfi.

So in like the early 70s Shruti and her family moving to Darjeeling while she waits to get married in 3 months to this dude named Ranjit and she meets Barfi, the local troublemaker who instantly falls for her but at first Shruti is like fam you need to chill. Eventually he wins her over with his big personality and they end up making out by her lake which was v v sexy. Anyway homegirl’s hatin ass mom finds out about it and she basically tells her to dead the whole thing b/c she doesnt think Barfi will be able to provide a good life for her or her future children because of his disabilities (which was honestly soo rude). 

And then she takes Shruti to see some logger guy that she used to mess around with back in the day  who she didnt marry for the same reason (like we really need to talk about older female characters in movies who dont marry the love of their lives and then up being bitter and hateful towards young people in love). 

Anyway, Barfi comes over to Shruti’s house wanting to propose to her and ask for her parents’ blessing and honestly this scene had a young bitch in tears because he came in so confident and sure that everything was gonna go his way but Hatin Ass Mama gives him a cold dose of reality and completely shits on him. And then to make it worse he sees Shruti with her Flop Ass Fiancé and that breaks him even more. She tries making some weak ass excuse but anyway she marries Count Flopula and she and Barfi go separate ways.

Meanwhile shit just keeps getting worse for my homeboy Barfi. His dad’s kidneys are failing so he has to quickly hustle some dough to get him a surgery. Naturally he decides to rob a bank but when that doesn't go well he decides to kidnap Jhilmil for ransom which was funny b/c some-one else was already kidnapping her and he just comes along like well shit lucky break

So he actually gets the money for his dad’s operation but because this movie has no fucking chill his dad dies before Barfi can get to the hospital. Feelin all sad and shit Barfi decides to leave Jhilmil with one of her old caretakers and dip but Jhilmil just ends up following him so that doesnt work out. So then he ends up taking care of her and then they live together for 6 years which was so so sooo cute. Like honestly the scenes where he and Jhilmil were living together were honestly my favourite parts of the movie.

Anyway so one day he runs into Shruti who at this point is predictably depressed because her marriage to Count Flopula is dull as shit and the whole time she never stopped loving Barfi. Then she starts hanging out with Barfi and Jhilmil and basically visiting them everyday which was low-key awkward for me to watch because like Shruti sis, you had your chance with him girl now please stay in your lane.

 So anyway one day they’re out at this festival and Barfi is paying way more attention to Shruti so Jhilmil just gets completely over it and dips (which, me too girl, you not going to pay more attention to your old thing in my face and just have me stand there like a lame). Finally realizing Jhilmil is missing, Barfi runs around trying to find her but can’t so Shruti reports her missing which ends up starting a whole bunch of bullshit b/c this cop that’s been looking for Jhilmil for 6 years shows up and arrests Barfi for kidnapping and they proceed to beat the shit outta my mans in jail trying to force him to confess (thanks a bunch Shruti). 

So then they get another ransom letter while they’re interviewing Barfi, and while the cops and her dad were trying to hand off the money Jhilmil is somehow killed. Which I was in complete disbelief off like no tf they didnt. I was fr fr ready to swing on the director(Anurag Basu square tf up bitch!).

 So then the head inspector wants to pin Jhilmil’s death on Barfi even though he clearly didnt do it but the cop that arrested Barfi tells Shruti to take him away so he can escape because he grew really found of Barfi over the years of chasing after him for other shit.

So Shruti does just that and at first she’s hella geeked b/c with Jhilmil “dead”, she now has Barfi all to herself (which Shruti girl get help b/c that is really messed up). But her time with Barfi ends up being not what she thought it would be at all because he’s (naturally) super depressed about what happened to Jhilmil. Like he doesn’t believe that she’s really dead so he keeps looking for her. Eventually they end up at the group home that Jhilmil spent most of  her life at and they discover that she’s actually alive! (Yay Jhilmil!) And I really screamed at that part because he was so so happy when he saw her and the scene where they’re just standing with their foreheads touching like, I was so emotional. 

Anyway we find out that the whole thing (the first attempted kidnapping and the ransom letter)  was a scam between Jhilmil’s dad and the owner of the group home. Her dad wanted to get her inheritance b/c Jhilmil’s grandpa left him and her mom dust and they faked her death so they could get Jhilmil away from her alcoholic mother and make sure she was properly cared for which was sweet but still a little fucked if you ask me.

Anyway Barfi and Jhilmil end up getting married in one of the cutest (i know i’m using cute a lot I promise I have a more advanced vocabularly) weddings ever and Shruti basically spends the rest of her life alone, regretting that she didn’t end up with Barfi (which is hella sad but, you made your choice sis) . So cut to the present where Barfi is old and really sick in the hospital and everyone is worried that he’s going to die. Jhilmil shows up and honestly she didnt even look that old, they literally just gave Priyanka a dusty salt and pepper wig and glasses and was like you’re old now. So she’s climbs into bed with him and then, Notebook-style with Shruti narrating, they..die? (Like really Anurag Basu?) I mean the credit roll with all the happy memories between Jhilmil and Barfi was everything so I guess it makes up for the ending (but next time do better hoe)

So finally thoughts; I fucking LOVED this movie. It was such a full adventure and it looked beautiful! It just made me feel so happy watching it despite some of the really sad parts. If you liked the movie Amelie (which is probably one of my favourite movies) you’ll definitely enjoy watching Barfi because they’re really  similar in cinematography, soundtrack and tone. Like they both left me feeling very warm and hopeful. Also s/o to Ranbir for his acting in this like, my man really put his foot in that and also to Priyanka because bitch! What a change. Like when I started watching I had to google if that was really PC b/c I’ve literally never seen her look like that. Also it was really confusing too beause at first I wasn’t sure how old Jhilmil was supposed to be  because she looks a smooth 13 years old and the thought of a love story line between her and between her and Barfi was like girl no, but then I understood she’s supposed to be like 18 or older. But anyway I’m glad I watched it and this just proves that sometimes thirst watching really can help you uncover something great!

[caribouv]

32 days of May.

It's called the Cool Zone. Shit that is super interesting to learn about but terrible to live through. How anyone is not glued to twitter and live feeds right now is beyond me. This will be in history books as the riots during the 2020 covid pandemic. So many takes, and in no particular order:

Mad about looting? Can't wait to teach you about Wall Street. Mad about ANTIFA? Can't wait to teach you about WWIII. Sorry WWII vets, memorial day was literally last week but you're all terrorists now. Oh and if you think looting or ANTIFA are bad, let me remind you more people die of the flu every year.

The looting? I don't know how I feel about it and I don't care to think much more about it. Frankly, I don't care about small businesses or anything. I drastically and without conversation always prefer tactical destruction of property, but I'm not going to bemoan expropriation of wealth by the working class.

The idiots who come to clean up the next day? Boot licking isn't the right word for it, but it is so fucking pathetic. Could you imagine providing your free labor to clean off CHASE bank or some $50 million high rise as they are literally and actively pillaging everything about your life? If it was 2011 I would 100% be there actively blocking clean up efforts of certain targets and/or heckling/viciously harassing these idiot proles. I would literally dress up like a king and go encourage my peasants to scrub harder.

The shit about ANTIFA is hilariously fucking stupid. It's an idea, not an organization. It is copy/paste the same shit they pulled with OCCUPY and "black bloc" tactics, opps I mean the criminal organization known as Black Bloc. And literally, these are Black Lives Matter protests, not ANTIFA protests.

People and protesters alike equating property destruction with violence is and continues to be frightening. It de-legitimizes the outrage of people and cuts off property destruction as a valid tactic. It's pretty fucking concerning. Imagine targeted destruction of the District Attorney's office, District Attorney cars, local jails, local police department office, corrupt politician cars / offices, police labor union lawyers' offices, etc. Now imagine if they couldn’t stop it.

These idiot protesters literally keep seeing cops taking a knee and think it’s a sign of solidarity. No you fuckers he is putting his gas mask on because the tear gas is coming. I literally watched it happen in Sacramento the other night, texted my friend the tear gas is coming the cops are gonna cause a riot - sure enough I am Nostradamus.

If I woke up tomorrow and my boss told me that today at my job I had to shoot rubber bullets and throw tear gas at people protesting racism because one of my coworkers killed someone in cold blood, I would simply quit that job and do something useful like stock grocery shelves.

My new thing is dead baby jokes repackaged as dead cop jokes. What's the difference between a truck full of bowling balls and a truck full of dead cops? You can't unload a truck full of bowling balls with a pitchfork. HHAHAHAHA man someone get me a mic.

Bunker bitch president. Literally went to go hide in a bunker as protesters got within 10 yards of the White House lawn.

A gang of 25 chubby white dudes walking around with clubs and baseball bats that I can only describe as brown shirts in philly. White supremacist boogaloo types have repeatedly been trying to infiltrate as medics to spread covid and/or beat the shit/kill protestors.

The police killed a protester in Kentucky. And it was literally a sweet old BBQ man. I think he's the 8th death now? It's just so so so so important to protect property above human life. Sarcasm obviously, and this is why exactly why tactical property destruction needs to be on the table.

Covid is still going on. I'm 100% down and always down for the protests, but shit these protesters gotta take way more precautions and take covid / sucking coughs way more seriously.

Sacramento curfew at 8pm tonight. FUCK YOU STEINBERG YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHEN TO GO TO BED.

[afcterrence]

I don't know what you see.. Depending on who you are you might see a fit guy, an angry person, a skinny dude, or even just another gym selfie . What you don't get to see is the blood, sweat & tears (literally). && NO!! Don't you dare feel sorry for me ! . - If it wasn't for my problems, I wouldn't be the person I am today! - if I don't decide to fight, challan myself or keep going... I wouldn't be this person I am in front of you . The gym had been the 1 thing I go to when I need confidence, to center & find myself . I dare anyone to go to the gym & try to keep up with me. The reason I look like this still after not working out for 3 years is because I try to kill myself when I'm on the gym. . No joke 3 hours, 4 hours How do you beat someone who's chasing death . Mostly because I HATE MYSELF ! . HATE the way I look HATE the way my life is HATE where I am right now . So if you're fat, poor, weird, Virgin whatever the fuck... Use that hate, fear, disappointment as fuel STOP running from your . This is not even my final form bro Just a representation of where I'm at for where I'm going . Sometimes I take pictures for the future & this is one of them . 3 months from now when I'm jacked as FUCK I'll look back at this and laugh along with my haters . But I promise you this.. I'm not staying here ! . My mindset is limitless... Way bigger than my body, my bank account & my current goals . If you're still reading this I want to leave you with this: 🔑 Take action based on who you aspire to be, NOT who you are now ! 🔑 https://www.instagram.com/p/B0Rjf-DAFW4fMjIH5SzZ2HITjUTBoiZ238wStI0/?igshid=xxvoeoahrmyf

[wahbegan]

Gather ‘round, children, while i hyper-analyze everything in the SECOND IT (2017) trailer

As before, i’ll put this under a READ MORE both to have mercy on your poor souls and in case i need to edit anything later

1. All right, so it opens up with EDIT: Oh, i’m an idiot, shout-out to @final-gurl for pointing this out, but there’s a quick flash of what looks like Stan at his Bar Mitzvah, so i guess the narration is from him and not from Bill as i previously thought. That actually adds extra poignancy to his speech since he is in some ways the one most affected by It. Stan’s Jewish faith is something that isn’t touched on a whole lot in the book, it’s implied that his parents aren’t very strictly orthodox and maybe not even kosher, so it’s nice that they’re giving it more of a prominence in the film.

2. Now intercut with the speech is just various scenes of The Losers being The Losers, they never go swimming in a watering hole in the book either and the rest are just fairly generic walking shots, so it’s hard to analyze anything here, although it is nice to see that this movie is definitely making The Losers the focus and not the clown. We also see Bill and Bev talking a bit I assume when they first become friends, so that’s cool. This appears to be in the daytime at...their school? Maybe? Rather than her first scene hanging out with them after the movies at night right before the sink scene in the book but w/e nitpicking I dunno but either way it’s cool that they show her being added to the group cause she’s the second-to-last inductee to The Losers, the last one being Mike Hanlon. Which brings us tooooo

3. The Apocalyptic Rock Fight and yes that is what Stephen King calls it i’m not just bullshitting this out of my ass is clearly shown in this trailer and it does look way more epic than it did in the 1990 miniseries so i’m very happy about that. It’s not in a gravel pit, it’s down by the stream, but besides that it’s almost exactly like I pictured it from the book, and the shot composition is really good, I can’t fucking believe they got Oldboy’s cinematographer for this movie but I digress. Anyway, it looks to just be Henry and his two besties Belch and Vic rather than the whole gang of dudes he was with in the book, but that makes sense since they really only show up for that one scene and there’d be no reason to include them in the movie and no time to get into their little backstories at all, the audience would just be like “who the fuck are these people”

4. When Stan says “when you’re alone as a kid,” during his speech, it flashes over Ben Hanscom walking with his backpack from behind, like a “victim-being-stalked” shot, so I assume this is when he’s on his way back from the library and he’s followed and attacked by Henry Bowers and His Merry Gang of Pre-Teen Psychopaths (that one i did just bullshit out of my ass), as well as Eddie mysteriously being drawn to 29 Neibolt Street, which i mean i know is obvious and i’ve talked about before but they seem really to bank on that scene a lot like they’re clearly putting a lot of work into it and banking on it being terrifying which i think it should be

5. When Stan says “monsters,” we get a micro-second long flash of several less-than-savory human characters. First up is the couple in the car. I couldn’t tell you off-hand who they’re supposed to be, it could just be a random couple illustrating Its control over the people of Derry, i’m not sure. Next is Henry and His Merry Gang of Pre-Teen Psychopaths, who, probably due to the nature of some of their more disturbing actions, seem to have gotten an age upgrade to just be Henry Bowers and His Merry Gang of Teen Psychopaths. The one with the long black hair we see creepily grinning at Richie is Patrick Hockstetter, who i talked more about in my first trailer breakdown. Then we have the kid in the baseball cap i’m assuming is Henry’s right-hand man Belch, due to his being described as always wearing a cap in the book, then Bowers himself, and then who i assume is Vic. Vic is an interesting character he’s like The Merry Gang of Teen Psychopaths’ token nice member. Not nice, per se, but he’s the one who says i believe it’s either him or Belch cause both are sometimes freaked out by Henry’s behavior, but i BELIEVE Vic is the one who says “Jesus Christ, don’t actually cut him!!” when Henry begins carving his name into Ben Hanscom’s stomach and seems to be on the fence about defecting to the Losers towards the end. I say it’s him cause, once again, i know for a fact long black hair is Patrick and Mr. Mullet is Henry, and Belch is the one always wearing a baseball cap. Anyway, after that, we have based on the location, who i’m assuming is Norbert Keene, the pharmacist who Eddie Kaspbrak gets his asthma medication from. What’s weird about this shot is Norbert Keene isn’t....eeugh well he isn’t exactly nice but he’s not a bad guy, either, he’s the one who ends up telling Eddie basically that he doesn’t have asthma, his medication is a placebo, and his mom has Munchausen by Proxy. Here he’s grinning like a right sleazeball fucking paedophile so maybe he got an adaptational villainy upgrade? Or maybe they just deliberately picked a creepy shot. Who knows

6. Quick shot of the Losers investigating what i assume is 29 Neibolt Street, and then them all biking towards something. Probably 29 Neibolt Street as well, since Mike appears to have....some kind of gun? Now they do attack it with a gun at 29 Neibolt Street in the book, but it’s just Richie and Bill that go there, and it’s Bill’s Dad’s gun (guess how much good that does). What Mike’s carrying looks like some kind of zip gun? And if the silver canisters he’s wearing a bandolier of are supposed to be its ammunition i frankly have no idea what the fuck it is. EDIT: @final-gurl also pointed out it looks like it may be a flare gun.Due to time constraints they may have merged the scene where Richie and Bill attack it with a gun and the final confrontation with it in that house where Bev shoots it with a slingshot, but that doesn’t explain why the gun is now Mike’s or why it’s now a probably flare gun

7. This next bit is AMAZING okay so i don’t remember a scene like this ever happening from the books but this appears to be the big sewer entrance in the Barrens where they go in before the final confrontation, so like the entrance to Its lair, basically. Now even though this doesn’t look to be that or any scene from the book per se, it does give a really good sense of the characters. Bill is determined and all business, all about killing this motherfucker that killed his brother (he also doesn’t talk much, presumably to hide his stutter as they did during the first trailer), Stan Uris is Stan is kind of the Agent Scully of the Losers, he’s the last to accept anything supernatural, he’s the least able to deal with the truth, he’s the most anal-retentive and fact-oriented, and in general the most “adult” of the Losers. He’s also quiet and withdrawn. This is all sort of implied to be why he committed suicide oh spoilers in 1985 rather than go back to face It with his friends, because his mind just isn’t the kind that can deal with things like eldritch abominations. I mean he grew up to be an accountant for God’s sake. Anyway, Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier does fucking horrible impressions and accents, is infamous for them in fact, and it often gets him in trouble with the bullies. This looks to be his “Pancho Villa” voice he’s doing here, which is frequent throughout the books. He’s also the snarkiest. Eddie is a hypochondriac, mainly due to his incredibly overbearing and emotionally abusive mother. All this is very nicely demonstrated in what i think is the best indication of their characters we’ve gotten so far. Betty Ripsom, the girl they mention, we never see her death, but for some reason Pennywise is particularly fond of using her voice to taunt other victims from the drain, notably Bev in the sink scene and Betty’s parents in another unrelated scene

8. The two really quick flashes appear to be Bill in 29 Neibolt Street which we’ve also seen a lot and then also Stan Uris completely in the dark looking terrified of something so i assume that that’s when he gets locked in the Standpipe with It in the form of the children who drowned in it. That’s a really great scene, too and i’m happy that it looks like they’re adapting it because that’s the only thing really i could think of that this could be from

9. Pennywise taunting Eddie from 29 Neibolt Street. Since Eddie’s already been running away and is looking back over his shoulder, and turning into a clown and presenting balloons to his victim is usually something he’s done after he’s already terrified someone and they’ve run away. So this is probably he’s been the Leper chasing Eddie and Eddie has just gotten away. Pennywise and his balloons look weird and out of place in the shot special-effects wise, which i talked about a little bit more in my other post but yeah makes sense from a plot point of view.

Anyway, that’s it for now thanks @dirt-goddess for saying you love it when i nerd out you’re like literally the only one lmao and once again shout-out to @final-gurl for the corrections

[notagreenlantern]

So.. ... can you sum up the space opera for us?

Yes. But you are all gonna wish I didn’t do it... Gather round, because I am incapable of being brief...

It all started when avillainous bug dude named Annihilus (spelling? Who knows. Someoneknows. Not me), who chilled in the Negative Zone until he noticedthat the regular universe was expanding, and this cause the NegativeZone to shrink (because comics!) and he went “Fuck this shit!”And decided to invade the universe outside the Negative Zone. Heunleashed the Annihilation Wave.

This wave of reallyferocious supercharged bugs and ships and what have you, tore throughmost of the universe, leaving the Skrull Empire crippled (like, theyhad nothing going for them. They didn't even have a single ruleranymore, it was just complete shambles. They had no business goingthrough with an invasion of Earth after this, but they did. BecauseSkrulls??? IDK).

The wave also killed everysingle Nova Corps member, except for my babe Richard Rider, who hadto take over the entire Nova Force (don't ask me, this goes intostuff I don't know. But it's like the entire power of the corps whichis usually shared between the members of the corps. And like it candrive someone mad to have all of it, but the Worldmind is helping himnot go mad [this is an important plot point for later]). There's alsothe Worldmind, which is an A.I. as well as the memory bank of theentire culture and civilization of the planet the Nova Corps wasfounded on, Xandar. This Worldmind is sort of in Richie's head or thehelmet. I don't remember. Anyway. They get along very well. Worldmindis only interested in protecting itself, and Richie is very muchinterested in not letting the frelling bugs overrun the galaxy.

Richie also runs into Draxand a girl called Cammie (who is... Not that important in the end?).Drax is not Drax the Destroyer. Except he is. But he also isn't(COMICS!)

There's also theseplotlines involving the Super-Skrull (I actually started to miss him,he wasn't in the story at all towards the end. Actually, the Skrullsin general were not present for a lot of it in the second half. Thefailed Earth invasion probably had something to do with that), andRonan the Accuser(for the life of me I can't remember his plot atall, but he drags Gamora into the story). These two later on have tointeract on several occasions, and it is always great. I ended upreally liking both of them as well.

Quasar is killed (he getsbetter).

The war starts. Likeactual war. It is made clear that Richard gets the commander role andthat he is forced to take a lot of hard decisions, and this is wherehe grows up, and becomes an adult. A lot of characters show up. PeterQuill (formerly Star-Lord. It's a whole thing), Gamora, Ronan andDrax are on Richie's team, and he's later joined by the Super-Skrullfor a bit, Phyla-Vell who takes over the mantle of Quasar, a bunch ofGalactus former heralds (like two, it's not a bunch. Surfer dude goesback to being Galactus Herald. Surfer dude and Galactus are thencaptured by Annihilus, who tbh has some help), also help Richie out.

Thanos, and a fairy (whichaccording to wikpedia was a creature created at the same time as theuniverse was created) join Annihilus because Thanos is bored and justwants to see how it all plays out (no seriously, that is hismotivation). They kidnap Moondragon. I don't remember why.

I am making this way toodetailed. I need to rein this shit in...

Thanos turns Galactus intoa weapon. Moondragon convinces Thanos that Annihilus is playing him.Thanos is about to disable the Galactus weapon, so that Galactus canfuck up Annihilus. At this point Drax, who found out aboutMoondragon's kidnaping from Phyla, caught up with Thanos and pushedhis hand through Thanos' chest and pulled out Thanos' heart. It wasbloody. And extremely bad timing.

Elsewhere there was somepolitics shit going on with the Kree? The Kreeleadership made a dealwith Annihilus? Ronan was not impressed. He and Super-Skrull went tothe homeworld of the Kree and fucked things up there. They found outthat the leaders had killed... I can't remember what it was called,but some sort of head in a jar or something? Something that usuallylead the Kree anyway. Regardless. The Kree made Ronan the leader,despite his protests.

Richie meanwhile got readyfor a suicide mission, but first sent a detailed message to ReedRichards about the annihilation wave, and that if Richard failed, thewave would reach Earth

In the end, the war iswon, the Annihilation wave is stopped, Richie put his hand downAnnihilus throat and pulled out Annihilus heart (there were a lot ofhearts being ripped out of people... Technically not people since nothuman...)

Richard went home to Earthfor a little rest. It did not go well.

Ronan impressed with PeterQuill's performance during the war, made him security advisor orsomething.

Now, let's see if I canexplain this... The Kree homeworld had some sort of security net,something computer based security system, which was damaged duringthe war, to patch it up, Peter took an offer from some sort of spaceknights (no seriously. Space Knights. I have to look that up. Itsounds badass and awesome) which had a fix that would be patched intothe Kree system. However it turned out this was an evil plot and itall got infected with a virus (techno something the virus wascalled), created by a lot of robots called the Phalanx.

This kicked off three tiein books leading up to the main book + the Nova series which startedafter Annihilation. One tie in featured Star-Lord and the notGuardians of the Galaxy, not yet anyway. Another was about Phyla-Velland the third about some dude named Wraith. We are pretty much gonnaignore Wraith completely in this summary. Unless I suddenly rememberthat he was super important... I doubt it.

Phyla is the new Qusar andshe has some serious self doubt issues, about taking over this role.Also her girlfriend is Moondragon, and Heather is having issues withheadaches. But it's Phyla who starts hearing a voice telling her shehas to find “the chosen one”. So she and Heather head off to dothat, chased by the Phalanx, who also finds out she is looking for achosen one. Moondragon is turned into a literal dragon.

We get a quick re-cap ofPeter Quill's history and some shit he did where he had to make achoice which led to the death of a lot of people, and how that madehim retire the name Star-lord. Anyway, he ends up with the Kreeresistance movement, and they assemble a team for him, to infiltrate.And they had to do it without as low tech stuff as possible becauseanything technlogical can be infected by the techn-something virus.

This virus also infectspeople, and it doesn't brainwash them, they can still act likethemselves, but they want to do things for the Phalanx (brainwashingand/or mind control are pretty huge things that creepy me out alot... Like actual things I'm terrified of creep me out. Which... Iknow, irrational. But whatever). So they are more or less under mindcontrol. Ronan is controlled by them, for a while. He breaks free romit eventually.

It is revealed that theleader of the Phalanx is actually Ultron, who builds a massive toweron the Kree homeworld and then projects a shield preventing anyonefrom coming in or leaving Kree space (which is huge and includes alot of planets). Ultron's motives are... Badly explained.

Phyla and Moondragon find“the chosen one”. The chosen one turns out to be Adam Warlock.Ultron shows up. Ultron kills Moondragon (fucking asshole!). Someonenamed the High Evolutionary (also an asshole and a huge dick) joinsPhyla and Adam as they escape from Ultron.

Meanwhile Richie almostburns to a crisp. While he is being healed, a Kree woman is deputizedand made a Nova. Gamora is brainwahsed and hunting Richard. Richardis infected with the virus. Gamora kills the woman who was made anova. Richard fights off the virus, and with worldmind keeps it atbay. Rich manages to escape Kree space and ends up on Knowherewhere he meets Cosmo the dog (who isa good dog). Stuff happens there. I'm not going to get into it.

Iam only halfway through Annihilation Conquest here. Jfc. I have gotto stop being so fucking verbose.

Iam so sorry.

Alot of stuff happens. Like a lot. A lot I can't even explain.

Youknow what, let's just skip to the important bit. They defeat Ultron.

Peterdecides that the galaxy needs guarding and he assembles the Guardiansof the Galaxy, and they take up residence in Knowhere. Which is thehead of a dead celestial, floating at the edge of space, and whereCosmo is head of security. The important point is that they haveteleportation technology there.

Meanwhilethe Kree are very defeated after first the Annihiltion wave, and thenthe whole Ultron business.

Richie gets into a fight with Galactus. Worldmind crashes. Richie goes backto Earth and gets involved in the Invasion business. He meets up withDarkhawk who works as head of security at Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S wherealso Richie's brother Robbie is a scientist. They get Wendell back,though he is kind of an energy being.

Theyalso get Worldmindback, but after the invasion is over Worldmindstarts to go crazy, after crashing, and having put so much energyinto not letting Richie go mad, it itself went mad. It was alsoheavily influenced by Ego the living planet (IT'S A PLANET WITH AFACE! WHY????). There is a whole storyline about Worldmindconscripting hundreds of humans to becoming nova corps members.Richie opposing this, because he doesn't want to send young untrainedpeople out into war, and everyone just calling Richie jealous. Richieis then stripped of all of his powers (wich is why he got to beQuasar for a bit).

TheGuardians meanwhile do a lot of guarding the universe. Mostly bydealing with rifts in space. Drax and Phyla go off to findMoondragon. Phyla makes a deal with Oblivion, stops being Quasar andstarts calling herself Martyr and has a pretty dramatic personalitychange.

AdamWarlock, is. Adam Warlock. They somehow pick up Jack Flag..... Fuck,what happened to Jack Flag???? I don't think he showed up in the lastevent? Where was he???

Anyway.The Guardians had their own series, so while everything is eitherleading up to soething or interconnected with the over arching plot,they had a few solo things the got to do. Just like Nova. Though Novagot more solostuff to do than the rest.

Alright.Now we get to the really complicated bit.

Fromwhat I gathered from the backstory recap, the Inhumans got shit on alot. Especially lately, with people attacking them and then findingout that Black Bolt had secretly been a Skrull for months, and thatlots of Skrulls were n the moon where they used to live. So theInhumans decided that enough is enough “fuck everyone else, we aretired of being treated poorly” said Medusa. They had been createdfor war, so after they retrieved the real Black Bolt the Inhumans dida serious number on the Skrulls, before going to the Kree where theydecided that they now ruled the Kree (I can not be expected to gointo the actual politics). Also to make it a proper royalarrangement, Crystal was betrothed to Ronan and they got married, anddespite Crystal repeating like a million times that it was just apolitical gesture and an arrangement. I think they actually startedto are for each other? She definitely started to care for the Kreepeople, much more than the rest of her family.

MeanwhileVulcan was a mad king. I really can not go into the politics oof theShi'ar because I can't remember how to spell their name. Anyway. Theyescaped from all the recent disasters, so they were still a strongempire, an empire ever growing. Anyway. Vulcan brother of, fuck,what's his name? Havoc? Something Summers, and Scott Summers (Iassume you know their names. Why am I telling you...) had somehowtaken over leadership of the Shi'ar empire, instead of Lilandra  whowas sister to the previous emperor?

Eitherway, Vulcan is mad and my favorite mad king. He decides he's gonnaconquer all of the universe, because that's the sort of thing a manlike him would decide to do.

Now,on Vulcan's side he has the Imperial guard which is a group thatalways protects the emperor, like they are totally loyal to them nomatter who they are or what their actions are (and for some reasonall the imperial guard members are like counter parts to DC's Legionof Superheroes???? according to wiki... I am unfamiliar with most ofthe legion. And mostly just wondered why one of them reminded me ofBrainiac). The leader of the Imperial guard is Gladiator (and I likedhim... And for a purpe dude with a mohawk he was pretty hot... I meanIliked him for other reasons than just how shallow I am)

Theresistance against Vulcan consisted of a very random group of people,some of them x-men. Havoc was there. A woman with green hair whoseemed to be dating Havoc, I think her name might have been Lorna (orsomething). Someone who may or may not have been a future relative ofJean Grey?????????? and some other people I can't remember at themoment. They called themselves Starjammers.

TheStarjammers had Lilandra and were protecting her. They found outabout the wedding between Crystal and Ronan, and the green hairedlady had some connection to Crystal they decided to flee to Kreespace to attend the wedding. The Kree still had that shield, thoughnow they operated it, and they let the starjammers through, and thenput it up again so that the Shi'ar ships that followed were destroyedupon impact with the shield. I think that is what happened. I am notsure.

Anyway,Vulcan got really mad and saw it as a sign of aggression that hisships got destroyed and decided that he would have a war against theKree, and the Inhumans who were still the leaders of the Kree.Because they had promised Ronan that they would evolve the Kreepeople (because Comics?).

Sometime passed before the wedding. At the wedding day, a suicide bombertook down the shield protecting the Kree space. The Imperial Guardattacked the wedding, and kidnaped Lilandra.

Thisstarted the war between Vulcan and the Inhumans.

Somany things happened all over the place. I have to try and keep thisshorter. So I don't think we need to summarise the Darkhawkstoryline. We're skipping Blastaar and the Negative Zone and hiseventual move into regular space. We are gonna skim past some thingsI'm not entierly sure when they happened chronologically. Most ofRichard's storylines. Which is mostly battling a Worldmind gone mad,getting his powers back, and not much else connected to the war.

TheGuardians tried to get the both parties in the war to see the factthat the universe was fragile after the recent disasters, and thatall the rifts in space were a bad sign. But both Inhumans and Vulcanrefused to listen to them, because they had never heard of theGuardians.

Vulcangot more and more mad.

Gladiatorturned against Vulcan. I don't know if he was in love with Lilandra(maybe he was and I missed it in the backstory recaps), but it'sheavily implied.

Lilandrawas rescued. She was also brought to the throneworld and about to bereinstated in power, when sadly she was assassinated.

Afew of the Guardians traveled through time in a side plot, whichactually tied into the main plot, but is too complicated to get intoright now.

TheInhumans having lost the one thing that could have turned the waragainst Vulcan (Lilandra taking back the ower) decides to use a lastditch plan. A terrigen mist bomb that would “evolve all of theuniverse like it evolved the inhumans, exept the kree which areimmune to it so why they thought it would work on  anyone else is amystery” It was a fucked up plan. The bomb was also powered byBlack Bolt (there's a whole plot about the Inhumans weapons andshields and stuff being powered by Black Bolt's voice. I can't getinto it), and it was a suicide mission. Crystal decided that fuckthat, that shit is fucked up, teleported with Lockjaw to the bomb andturned it into just a immensely powerful bomb. She and Black Boltwere about to teleport away again when Vulcan attacked in person. Sheand Lockjaw teleported away.

BlackBolt and Vulcan fought. The bomb exploded killing both Black Bolt andVulcan. As well as opened up The Fault. A massive hole in space whichopened up to the Cancerverse.

TheShi'ar surrendered.

Thena lot about politics.

Gladiator,against his will, was made the new emperor.

Therewas a lot of stuff with the Inhumans and the Kree which is lessimportant right now.

Richardhad a run in with Monark Starstalker (seriously what happened to thatdude? Can he come back?). Also Darkhawk. Also the Sphinx x2. Also hebrought back Namorita.

Everyoneexplored the Fault and took readings of it.

AdamWarlock turned into Adam Magus the evil version of Adam Warlock.Peter Quill tried to stop him using a cosmic cube, but Magus fooledhim into thinking he had been stopped.

Alsothere was that thing with the chuch of universal truth which Icompletely forgot to talk about. I have forgotten to mention so manythings. So much happened.

Ahuge cocoon hatched and Thanos came back to life.

Quasarwent deepest into the Cancerverse and discovered the evilcounterparts of Earth's heroes. An evil Quasar went to visit Earth.Richard Rider and Darkhawk took care of him. Darkhawk was badlyhurt... Oh my god, I have to check what happened to Chris! He nevergot to see Richard Rider again.If he even survived. Or maybe he waskilled off later on. I doubt he was much more than a d or c-listhero.

Thecancer verse started to come out of the fault, first just monsters,but soon enough the real infection from the cancer verse started andthe evil counterpart heroes showed up.

Okay,so the deal with all of this is...

Theuniverse has death and life these are constants and they are alwaysat odds, but they keep a balance. In the cancer verse death waskilled off, meaning that universe no longer was in balance. Andthings just kept growing, hence the name. They filled that universeto the brim and now that the fault has opened they want to get outand start to fill up the next universe. This means finding the marveluniverse's avatar of death (=Thanos) and killing him at a specificplace in a ritual.

Idon't think I need to get into the ending of it.

Sothat's it. I am sorry I can't do short and concise. And it bothers mehow much I left out and forgot about...

[blerdd58]

Dealing with a bad break up - This shit helps #TRUST the process

To the guys who have been dumped, here is why you ought to shut down the lines of communication COMPLETELY and IMMEDIATELY by going no contact - Understand first that she has almost certainly had the break up on her mind for some time before delivering the news to you - that is to say, she made the decision BEFORE announcing it to you, could have been days, weeks, months, I've even heard of cases where she pondered carrying it out for a year or more in advance. Point is, the girl already 'knew' deep down that it was over, the only lingering question from then onward was, of course, "when?" Ask yourself how many times she actually had a heart-to-heart with you and discussed breaking up. If none, then you go ghost for being so considerate to blind side you with the sudden newsflash that it's over out of nowhere. If you two did discuss splitting, if it seemed apparent that the relationship was headed straight for a gruesome ending, then you still go no contact to remove yourself from a situation that no longer benefits you, especially when your emotions are still raw and the wounds are fresh. In either case, she has had time to prepare for life without you, and you likely have not, unfortunately, so this will probably blast you like taking several rounds from a semi-automatic. You'll probably want to stop her from going through with the break up, but that's why it's crucial to comprehend that she has weighed out her options for a good deal of time now and is determined to follow through with her decision by the time that she tells you - it was NOT a snap decision. She's probably consulted friends, family, co-workers, people on forums, you name it, she's analyzed it to death...quite literally. What you want to avoid is getting trapped in that purgatory where you recycle and replay the break up from every possible imaginable angle - "what just happened? why did she do this?", questions which typically all funnel straight into the pit of despair (translation: FALSE HOPE) in the form of the question - "can I win her back?"  The answer to that is "perhaps", but I'll get to that in a moment. What you do once she tells you that she wants to go separate ways is you quietly accept her decision, agree with it, and move along like it's no big deal. Why do you do this? Well, for starters, this will get her to question her decision much, much more than if you fight it or accuse her of being (insert derogatory term). She's EXPECTING you to fall apart. Crying or begging is probably the worse way you can react, but all of those - fighting, crying, begging - ALL OF THEM will confirm to her that she made the right decision and that you NEED her in your life. Take a moment to think about how much power you are admitting to her having over you by behaving this way. Do you really think your ex wants to run straight back into the arms of a dude who cried like a little girl once she said it's over? And if it did work, she'd be getting back with you out of PITY and NOT out of STRENGTH. How much longer do you think the relationship would last for after that took place? Furthermore, how enjoyable do you think the relationship would be within that frame - you, the one who now has to be on his best behavior and not fvck it up, the one who has to PROVE HIMSELF or momma dukes is gonna kick you to the curb again, and her, the supreme judge, the one holding the whip, ready to shoot you down again at the drop of a hat as soon as you screw up once more. She's done it before, you can take it to the bank that she'll do it again. As I wrote somewhere down below, you DO NOT want to remain friends with her after the break up. She may extend this olive branch to you, but understand that she is doing this for HER and NOT FOR YOU - she's doing to it relieve herself of the guilt of breaking up with you and/or keeping you on the backburner in case it doesn't work out with whoever else she gets involved with. Remember, she's been preparing for some time for this day - YOU HAVEN'T! What she probably wants is to let you down as lightly as possible, so she will offer to remain friends and that maybe, just maybe, one day you two can get back together, just not now... This is in all likelihood COMPLETE BULLSH1T. Don't let her keep you around for emotional support as she jumps back out into the market in pursuit of a new guy(s). She will keep feeding you false hope while you stupidly wait on the sidelines for her to make up her mind until she lands herself a new dude, then you're out for good - "Thank you former boyfriend turned emotional tampon, but I have a new guy now. Are you mad at me??? Gosh, I hope not! You're going to make the best boyfriend for some girl some day!! I miss you soooooo much!! Hope you understand!" and just like that you're gone, no longer of any use to her as she'll now have someone to satisfy her both physically AND emotionally. You're dead weight dude. Beat it (no pun) By going no contact you are sending out a few messages of your own. First, you are not a revolving door. A girl who you are romantically involved with is either with you or she is not. These are YOUR TERMS - STICK BY THEM. You do not put up with wishy-washy behavior (ex. "I need some space" "we should take a break") Sh1t or get off the pot girl. There's no in between. Life is too short and your time is too valuable to be with a girl that cannot make up her mind about you or simply does not care to be with you any longer. Second, you have more value and self-respect than to ask/beg a girl who has dumped you to take you back. When a girl dumps you, this ought to be treated as the highest form of disrespect because she is essentially saying "I know you through and through, I know the REAL YOU, not a glimpse of you from a cold approach or from a few dates, but the TRUE YOU, and I want that person, YOU, GONE, OUT OF HERE, OUT OF MY LIFE." If you were fired unexpectedly, would you grovel back to your boss and beg for your job back? If you didn't have any other options and lacked any self-respect, yes, probably. If you knew you were desired elsewhere, you had options, or you simply weren't willing to continue contributing for someone who no longer desired your services, of course not. Talk all the smack that you want about Lebron James, but for the sake of argument, how do teams react when HE goes on the market as a free agent vs some third year Eastern European shooting guard whose played a total of 12 games his entire career? See my point? The former can create his own destiny, the latter has to take whatever he can get. Third, be on the look out for "bread crumbs" from her post break up. This can be a text or a phone call that will essentially lead to nowhere, although it will probably increase your sense of hope that maybe she's preparing to run back to you. Chances are, she's just checking in to see if she still has you in her back pocket or out of sheer guilt, and to that I ask you, how does it make you feel that your ex girlfriend actually feels bad for you because she is depriving you of what she has the audacity to believe are the cancer-curing properties of her v@gina? You don't chase, you REPLACE, as Biggie Smalls once wisely said. She had her chance, and she blew it. With that all said, to reiterate, what you do is you shut her out COMPLETELY. She wanted out, she got it. Let her live with her decision. You might be thinking now "but wouldn't no contact make me look butt hurt?" The answer to that question is "who cares??? There is no more 'us', only YOU. Her opinion of you does not matter any longer, only what you think of yourself." You should only take her back if she returns begging for you back, admitting that she made a massive mistake, but remember, she dumped you, and if she did it once, she very well can (and probably will) do it again - this is why it's not advisable to get back with her. Plus, you will have to live with the resentment that your girl rejected you on the most fundamental level possible along with all the issues that led to the break up to begin with. Since she's had her time to emotionally unplug, you need yours, and no contact is the best way to do it. Now that you are broken up, realize that YOU DO NOT OWE HER ANYTHING. NOTHING. Not a single response to any of her texts, not picking up when she calls, NOTHING. Don't text her, don't email her, don't call her, remove her from all social media, DO NOT STALK HER SOCIAL MEDIA, and go ghost. Don't respond to anything she sends in your direction either. You need to heal, and she's only going to interfere with the process. Screw closure if you didn't get any. I say the best closure is to assume that you need to work on improving yourself in every way possible and GET ON IT. Work out relentlessly, excel at your job, rekindle any relationships with friends or family that may have fallen by the wayside while you were with her, immerse yourself in hobbies and interests, become the best possible version of YOU. The discipline required to do this is not easy, not by a longshot, but ride it out, ride out the pain, the anxiety, the fear, the sadness. Why? Because that is training in itself for when you get back out into the dating world. You will now have a crushing break up under your belt, but I assure you, it's for the best as you will have first hand knowledge that you CAN and you WILL get past the chaos, it won't kill you much as it may seem like it will, plus it will make rejecting anyone in the future who does not meet your standards much, much easier. The way to fulfilling the commonly peddled phrase that the next girl will be better is by following through with an extreme devotion to improving yourself. If you stick by it, you will actually see that your ex has, in fact, done you the biggest favor in the world by knocking you on your @ss and forcing you to rise stronger than ever. Remember, no contact is NOT some sneaky little strategy to get your ex back - it's to get YOU BACK!!!