#for real though this guy is probably dead because of the traveler

[kapturkaptur]

ding dong ditching an entire civilization

[hellspawnmotel]

well you guys really called my bluff on this one, haha. I have a lot to say on the topic so this will probably turn into a long post but the answer really depends on this: what interests you about astro boy, pluto, and the franchise/tezuka's body of work as a whole? what do you want out of this experience?

if you're just looking for places to read/watch these things and that's it, I'll put some links here at the top so you don't have to dig through this whole mess.

you can read astro boy (original manga) here (there are occasionally missing pages on this website, if/when you run into those you can switch to this one which is harder to navigate but complete)

you can watch/download the 2003 anime (english sub) here

you can read naoki urasawa's pluto here

so you're interested in astro boy but aren't sure where to start: my opinion as someone whose point of view you respect for some reason

it didn't occur to me until recently that for a lot of people who follow me, your cultural touchstone for the concept of astro boy is most likely to be the 2009 american movie. I didn't watch that as a kid, I was 14 when it came out and fully into my "anime is superior to western animation" phase, but I've watched it now and well.... if you like it that's great! I did not. I'm not going to dwell on that, but I think it's worth noting that whatever your opinion on it as a movie is I don't really think it's a good representation of astro boy and its themes. moving on.

the manga

if you want the pure, unfiltered astro boy experience, this is as close as you're gonna get. it's gonna be a little haphazard though because the dark horse publication, which is probably the only way you're gonna find to read it in english, does not order the stories chronologically. I don't think that really matters because there's not a lot of continuity so as long as you understand the basic premise you can read in whatever order you want, and this puts a lot of really good stories first anyway so it's nice too. personally as far as all versions of astro boy proper go, the manga is my favorite. it's not always an easy read, for reasons I'll get into in a moment, and it's not always good either. some stories are phenomenal, some are just plain silly, and some are downright terrible. but given how long it ran for and how consistently and without breaks tezuka worked on not just it but all his other manga too I think that's too be expected. but even the bad ones I think are worth a look! this is the history of manga as a medium right here! and I love the manga, it's fun, funny, wonderfully drawn, compelling, shockingly dark at times, and just a fascinating read for those with an interest in classic comics.

all that said, I think it would be irresponsible of me to recommend it without also including a big fat disclaimer, which dark horse was kind enough to put at the front of the book.

if you have an interest or familiarity with classic/vintage manga, anime, comics, and cartoons, you probably saw this coming, but some of this shit gets REAL racist, most often in terms of how people are drawn. some of tezuka's biggest inspirations were the rubberhose american cartoons of the 20s and 30s, and all that implies. for whatever the opinion of a white american is worth, based on his writing I really do believe he had good intentions- he consistently speaks out against racism and bigotry in general, in astro boy especially. you can tell he was very passionate about it. but I'm not gonna defend the guy either, you can't be drawing people like that, even if it was the 40s-80s. a lot of the experience of getting into tezuka is reading a story where the moral is "racism is evil! end discrimination!" accompanied by straight up racial caricatures in the art. it's baffling and infuriating. if I could I would travel back in time and hire the man a sensitivity reader, but I can't, and he's been dead for 35 years so we'll never know what he would've done about it today. all we can do is take it as an opportunity to learn and do better. but, if all that puts you off getting into the manga or the series at large, I don't blame you!

with that out of the way, the size of the manga might intimidate you. there's a lot of it. lucky for you you don't have to read all of it if you don't want to! I've read the entire thing because I'm a completionist at heart, but I've had several friends come to me for a smaller and more manageable reading list, which is as follows:

(stars for my personal favorites, grimaces for "I did enjoy this one and I think it's worth reading but I don't feel good about recommending it". I also think "the artificial sun" and "atlas" are important reads if you're interested in the history of the franchise because they get referenced a lot, but they are VERY racist and I don't think theyre good enough overall to make them worth putting on the list despite that.)

that was long. next up:

the 2003 anime

I am not quite done watching this one but I'm pretty close so I feel confident in saying: on the whole, it's great! it looks absolutely fantastic for a tv anime from that era, the character and world design is top-notch, and overall it does a really good job adapting the best and most important parts of the manga into a continuous story, although it softens the blow of the darker moments quite a bit (which might be a good thing for you, depending on your tastes). it's pretty beloved by western fans, and for good reason.

I do have my issues with it, for one this might not be a popular opinion but I think they majorly screwed up on adapting the "greatest robot on earth" arc (my favorite arc btw, yes I might be salty), for another they really sand the edges off of uran's character compared to the manga and make her a lot more meek and girly. but that's just my opinion and if this show is the only one you've watched you wouldnt know that anyway. so don't let that deter you if you're interested, you'll be missing out on a pretty fantastic kids show.

so, if you're looking to really dive chest-first into astro boy as a franchise and understand all there is to know: maybe don't start with this one. it changes a lot from the source material and kind of does its own thing. but if you're just looking for a good story thats fun to watch and total eye candy, go nuts!

pluto

pluto by naoki urasawa is an adaptation/reimagining of astro boy's most famous and beloved arc, "the greatest robot on earth". it's also what got me into the franchise and one of my favorite manga ever! pluto reinvents the story as a detective thriller set in the aftermath of what is effectively, and obviously, the iraq war. it's brutal and harrowing, and beautiful and cathartic and hopeful. to me it is the gold standard for "dark and gritty reboot of a children's story" because urasawa adores tezuka and respects the original version, which was always a dark tragedy anyway, just presented differently. you might have seen pluto got an anime adaptation last year as well. I've watched it, it's pretty good! it doesn't change all that much (I don't like the few things they DID change but whatever) but I just think urasawa's artwork, paneling, and pacing are completely unmatched so I'd recommend the manga first. I'm not gonna be that asshole who insists you gotta read the manga over the anime though, if anime is easier for you you're better off having experienced pluto that way than not at all.

(if you ARE interested in both astro boy and pluto and are considering which to get into first, it's important to know that reading the arc pluto is based on will spoil a loooooot of things about the story. so weigh the pros and cons of that before making a decision!)

so, that's basically what I have to say. I haven't watched the 60s or 80s anime adaptations so I can't give insight on those, and I'm by no means an expert on any of this. I only started reading the original manga like three months ago and before that my memories of the other stuff was pretty faded, before I revisited it. if you're interested though I hope this helps, and I hope you enjoy yourself if you decide to take the leap! it's kind of a rabbit hole. I did not know what I was getting into when I decided to reread pluto, but I'm sure glad I did.

if you have any other questions about my personal opinions, feel free to shoot me an ask as well!

[darkpetal16]

So we've got mafiafell wingding and papyrus headcanons, but what about mafiafell sans? Even a crumb would be very appreciated

Oh man. I put these HC undercut for 1.) T/W for toxic relationship and 2.) Spoilers for one of his bad endings in the game.

Mafiafell!Sans is a hot mess and puts the yan in yandere.

Ooooo boy. He’s a walking, talking red flag.

He’s a Judge: a monster born with the Judgment ability. His magic is toxic to anyone with EXP or LVL (including himself, although he has built up resistance) and he can see the truth of anyone’s SOUL.

His ability awakened at a young age in an unexpected outburst that resulted in the death of one of Asgore’s Royal Guards. By consequence, in order to avoid execution, he had to become the newest Judge.

He, essentially, became a glorified hitman for the Dreemur family at a young age, with the added bonus of each of his kills causing magic whiplash and damaging himself in the process.

He’s seen a lot of awful things, and done a lot worse things.

It. . . Doesn’t sit well with him.

He never wanted to take a life. He never wanted to hurt anyone.

But he had that choice taken away from him, and now he’s in too deep. The EXP, in conjunction with his Judgment ability, has warped him in a deeply disturbing way.

He’s volatile, violent, and viscous. And bitter. So, very, very bitter.

He’s got a short temper, but how he acts on it depends on the severity of his rage. For “smaller” issues, it’s an instantaneous reaction of violence. For the big issues, it’s something he’ll stew over and take his time to seek retribution. Basically: If he gets loud fast, the person will probably make it out alive. If he gets quiet though? They’re dead. And they’re not dying easily.

His volatility is a big reason why he always has Papyrus or Wingding nearby for important events.

This does mean that early in the relationship, when none of them know how well he can control himself around you, all of your dates will be secretly chaperoned by either Wings or Pap. You’ll likely never see them, but they’re there for your (physical) wellbeing and Sans’ (mental) wellbeing.

After a lifetime of absolute garbage thrown his way, you are a desperately needed breath of fresh air. He was drowning in misery and you’re the lifeline thrown to him. He will latch on with a zealous fervor.

Any bit of happiness and affection you give him, he’ll greedily devour. The more you give, the more he’ll come to need you until he literally will not tolerate you out of his life.

So do not commit, do not engage, do not give this man any type of hope for a relationship unless you’re ready for that level of emotional dependency. Breaking it off once it’s too late won’t end well for either of you. Because he’s type who can love a doll as much as the real deal.

But if that’s your thing too? If this is what you need too. . . ?

He’s your guy. Loyal. Ferociously loyal. Would fight an army for you. Would go to war for you. Would break any law for you. He supports your wrongs and your rights equally, as long as he gets to be by your side in the process.

He didn’t have money growing up (all money earned had to go into paying back his “debt” to the Dreemur family), so now that he has it he likes to spend it. Especially on loved ones (you & his brothers). Shopping trips are a bi weekly thing, and they always end in a fancy dinner date.

He wants to travel the world, and he’ll gleefully take you with him. He wants to visit a place that’s always dark, and someplace where the sun never sets. He wants to see the auroras, and an endless sea of sand.

He’s always wanted to go to school to learn. Always wanted to learn physics, mechanical engineering, and astronomy. Never could, and he thinks it’s too late now. He’ll always brush it off if you try to encourage him.

But if you take him to college lectures on the stuff, he’s like a kid in a candy shop. You’ll see a glimpse of what he was like before he became a Judge; a childlike level of sincere happiness, and a small smile on his face.

Dates are extravagant. He knows he’s fucked in the head so he’s hoping to keep your attention by impressing you. Maybe if you’re wowed enough you’ll forgive his cracks.

Speaking of cracks, he’s got the most broken bones in the family. Most of the time, Wings or Toriel can heal such injuries but ones caused by his Judge ability don’t heal.

If you ask about them he’ll give you increasingly crazier stories. Anything is better than the truth.

Speaking of stories, he loves to tell them and loves to listen. If you’d like to read, he would genuinely love it if you read him. It doesn’t matter the genre, he just enjoys them with a pure sincerity.

And if you want him to read to you? That’s fine by him. Although you’ll probably have to pick out the books… And forgive him when he stumbles on words. He didn’t have a proper education growing up. What he knows is what Wings has been able to teach him in their very limited free time. 

He can sing! Specifically lullabies, because that was the only thing that could sue Papyrus when he was a toddler. It’s not something he likes others to know, however, he’ll make the exception for you.

He can also cook. Very well. He learned along side Papyrus as something for the two of them to do together. He didn’t have a lot of free time and he didn’t want Papyrus to feel lonely, so he would learn how to cook with him. 

Very good at reading people. Even without his judge ability, he’s an expert at reading, micro expressions, understanding someone’s tone, and interpreting body language. His intuition is above reproach, even Asgore trusts it. 

He learned sign language when Wings lost his voice for a few months. Sans thought it would be come permanently so he stayed up late to learn it and be ready to teach it to Wings. Thankfully, Wings recovered so it’s been a rarely used skill.

Quality time is important to him. If you have something important in your life that you want him to attend, absolutely nothing will stop him from being there. 

Don’t try to get him jealous. Not only will your suitor be killed, but if he thinks you’re doing it on purpose, he won’t let it go. He won’t lay a hand on you. . . he doesn’t have to to discourage you from ever thinking about doing that again.

He’s a hot mess. There’s no getting around this. There is no therapy in his time, and the toxic masculinity expected of him will prevent him from ever admitting his emotional vulnerabilities in any way that matters.

He’ll be tender for you. He’ll be soft for you. He’ll be kinder around you. He won’t raise his voice. He won’t lay a hand on you. He’ll support your dreams, financially and emotionally. He’ll start with you if you want.

But that’s the extent of what he can do for now, and for a long times

And that’s the best he can do.

PLAY IF - MAFIAFELL HERE FOR HIS ROUTE

HC MASTERLIST HERE

[clarionglass]

so i have been bitten by the sam reich!master bug courtesy of some phenomenal art by @northernfireart and uh. as is too often the case i had to write something otherwise if i didn't get it out of my brain i would go absolutely insane

(there may be more vignettes coming if i have ideas..... there are definitely other episodes i'd like to give the Treatment to, plus with the new dw series coming out on the weekend i may have ideas for how to incorporate the dw gang! however, i promise neither more writing or no more writing. that said, this was a lot of fun so there'll probably be more at some stage :D )

this has full spoilers for the game changer ep "escape the greenroom", but hey that's been out for a while now so,,,, if you haven't seen it i'd highly recommend it as an episode!

so, without further ado:

--

Samuel Dalton was a complete fiction, of course, but that didn't mean that when Sam Reich snuck back upstairs to get tied up in the “out of order” bathroom, the Sam that remained on the monitor, laughing at the contestants, was a pre-recording. And if Brennan, Siobhan and Lou had snorted at the idea of a time-travelling evil magician great-grandfather (for good reason), going in with the actual truth of the matter would have sounded like jumping the shark.

It sounded bizarre, but the time travel bit was the only part about his new partner in crime that was confirmably real. Admittedly, the jury was still out on “evil”—he gave off a weird vibe at times, but so far, no lines had been crossed, and it had all been funny as hell—so for now, Sam was willing to roll with it. But perhaps most surprisingly, there wasn’t even the possibility of blood relation between Samuel Dalton Reich and the guy who had shown up out of the blue one day with his exact face and a plan to really fuck around with things on Game Changer.

Yeah, the whole alien thing had really ruled out that particular prospect.

There had been various bits and pieces of confirmation that this guy wasn’t human through the time Sam had known him, but the final nail in the coffin for that one was when his doppelganger had looked him dead in the eye and tried on one of the heart rate monitors—sorry, “range extenders”—for As a Cucumber. The damn thing had literally sparked up, then died completely. Trying to process input from two separate heartbeats at once would do that, apparently. 

His doppelganger was a Time Lord, or so he had nonchalantly said one afternoon in casual conversation, though Sam still wasn’t sure if that one was a joke or not. It was hard to tell, sometimes, because he said the wildest things with the straightest face, and so far, most of them had turned out to be one hundred percent certifiably true. The time travel, the space travel, even the changing faces thing—it sounded objectively insane, but the proof was undeniable. 

There were some notable exceptions, though. Saying he’d been trapped for aeons inside Neil Patrick Harris’s gold tooth went just that bit too far to be believable, though Sam did appreciate his double’s slightly warped sense of humour.

It was that offbeat line of thinking that lent itself well to game design, as it turned out. He had a knack for coming up with ideas for Game Changer episodes, albeit with the occasional suggestion that went way beyond the bounds of good taste, and, as in the case of Escape the Greenroom, had devised some blinding twists on concepts Sam had already half-formed. The letter puzzle unlocking the secret door? It was perfect.

Understandably, Sam’s doppelganger had wanted to observe the fruits of their labours in real time, rather than watching the recording later. It happened, sometimes, particularly when it was one of his ideas that had made it through to the episode list—they’d swap places for a session, with nobody being any the wiser. Watching those edits back always felt a bit weird—it was uncanny how flawless the mimicry was—but hey, the guy was right. It was always fun.

Escape the Greenroom, specifically, with its “Samuel Dalton” conceit, provided them with a unique opportunity. Instead of swapping out the camera feed for a recording when the cast piled into the tiny secret room behind the wall, as per the original plan to get Sam in position to be discovered in the bathroom, they could just swap out the people. Sam would go upstairs, and his double would take his place at the podium, ducking out of sight when everyone came back to the main stage to “defuse the bomb”.

Sam was keen—hell, if their situations had been reversed, he’d want to be there to watch, too—but caution raised a flag. “You don’t think it’s too risky?” he’d asked when the subject was first raised. “Both of us being in the same place?”

His doppelganger had shrugged one shoulder with supreme unconcern. “The crew won't notice.”

At the time, Sam had shot him a sceptical look, but right now, Sam-Reich-in-a-purple-tie and Sam-Reich-in-an-orange-tie were standing backstage post-record, clearly visible and and calmly chatting, and not a single member of the crew had given them so much as a second glance. 

…Hardly even a first glance, come to think about it. If anyone looked over their way, their eyes seemed to… not exactly go through them, but slide over the two of them like water. He was tempted to wave to Nico or Ash or someone, just out of pure curiosity, but something in the back of his mind told him that wouldn’t be the world’s greatest idea. He had a funny feeling he wouldn’t like to see what would happen next.

(He’d given the prop bomb back to the crew once the cameras stopped rolling, and though it looked the same as the one he remembered from before he’d headed upstairs, it felt different in his hands. Heavier, more… serious, somehow. He was sure nothing would have happened—but at the same time, he was suddenly very glad that the cast had cut the correct wire with no less than a minute fifteen to go.)

(The jury was still out on evil, after all.)

“Worth coming in for?” he asked instead.

“Absolutely,” his double replied with relish. “Locking those three in a small room for an hour? Brilliant, fantastic. Inspired. It was absolute chaos.”

“Have you seen up there?” Sam asked, a smile starting to spread across his face. “They messed up the set real bad.”

His doppelganger smirked at him. “You know it took literally two seconds from you telling them to escape the greenroom for Lou to smash that guitar?”

Sam shook his head. “Oh my god. Yeah, they were stressed.” 

“Mmm. Some real panic in that room,” his doppelganger agreed, and Sam chose to ignore the faint note of satisfaction in his voice.

He shifted his weight, settling back to lean against the table behind the set, in the exact instant his double decided to do the same thing. It really was freaky how similar they were, down to the smallest mannerism—like looking in a mirror, only weirder, because the face that looked back at him was truly his own face, not mirror-reversed. Even now, it still caught Sam off guard from time to time, but at least it had faded into a more comfortable kind of strange. He had an exact lookalike who was an actual time-travelling alien. Cool. Doesn’t everyone?

The pair shared a companionable silence for a few moments, before a thought Sam had been turning over for a while rose to the top of his mind. He shifted again, this time on his own, and he felt his double’s regard swing up to fix on him like a magnet. 

“Okay, real talk,” he started, and his doppelganger frowned back in an approximation of confused innocence. “What’s all this for?”

“Who says it has to be for anything? Aren't we just having fun?”

Sam hummed, considering. “Yeah. No, I'd believe that, if I didn't sometimes walk into production meetings and find out I'd apparently been very specific about the people I wanted for certain episodes.”

“Point for Sam,” his doppelganger acknowledged with a grin. “You got me. Wasn’t hard to make a few phone calls on our joint behalf.”

“Yeah, but why?” Sam pressed. “I mean, Siobhan, Brennan and Lou are always great comedy value when you put them together, and it was awesome to have them for this, but I get the feeling you’re thinking of something other than making good content.”

“Who, me?”

With that, his double gave him a look of such overdone pantomime innocence that Sam suddenly and thoroughly understood why, not half an hour earlier, Brennan had very seriously threatened to push him down the stairs. 

He rolled his eyes, which earned him a smirk for his troubles.

Dropping the act, his doppelganger continued. “I’m expecting an… old friend, I guess, to show up at some point, and—well, I’d like to put on a really special show for them. I thought it would be a good opportunity to try a few things out, you know?”

Ominous pause aside, that was actually kind of sweet. Sweeter than he’d been expecting, that’s for sure—he was half anticipating the revelation that he and his cast were subjects in some weird experiment. Hey, that still couldn’t fully be ruled out, but still.

“Okay,” he acquiesced. “Well… just let me know, next time? Before you start ordering in my cast like takeout?”

“Who says they’re your cast?” his double shot back with a twinkle in his eye, and Sam snorted.

“Fine. Our cast, then. But seriously, let me know?”

His doppelganger nodded, which, if not quite fully convincing, was good enough. 

“Oh, and do you know when your friend might be arriving?” Sam asked. “Because if you wanted to plan something, we can—”

“I don’t know,” his doppelganger interrupted. “So yeah, we’ll have to move fast when they do get here. But I’ve got it under control.”

He broke off, then shot Sam a mischievous grin. “In the meantime, though, I’ve had this fun thought about time loops…”

[innuendostudios]

new video about Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy, and how everyone* keeps getting them wrong! this video is sponsored by Nebula, a place where you can watch the original version of this video before I had to tweak it for YouTube's copyright bots. (by clicking that link, you can get an annual subscription for 40% off.) or you can just back me on Patreon, which is also cool and good.

transcript below the cut.

I adore Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy. I flirted with making a video about it ages ago, had a draft of a script, but ultimately decided it wasn’t about anything except “here’s a thing I like, and here are its (I thought) very obvious themes.” So I shelved it. But, in the years since, I have seen multiple video essayists on this here website claim that these movies are about growing up and taking responsibility. (I say “multiple.” It’s not a lot. But it’s more than one! And that’s enough.)

These people are 100% wrong.

Lemme lay it out: the Cornetto Trilogy is not about growing up. It is not about taking responsibility. It is the exact opposite, and that’s not subtext. It is three movies about stunted manchildren thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and each, in the end, is saved - is redeemed - by abandoning his character arc and failing to grow or change. It is a three-part love letter to immaturity.

And I guess I have to set the record straight.

Sometimes making a video about a thing you love is an act of appreciation. And sometimes it’s out of spite.

The Cornetto Trilogy is three movies: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. All three are written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright; Pegg stars, and Wright directs; all three center on a relationship between Pegg and real-life best friend Nick Frost, which makes each film a reunion of the core team behind Spaced (excepting, but for a small role in Shaun of the Dead, Jessica Hynes). The three films span three genres: zombie apocalypse, buddy cop, alien invasion; each features a Cornetto ice cream cone: strawberry to represent blood, original blue to represent the police, and mint to represent little green men; this is a joking nod to Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Trois Couleur films, Bleu, Blanc, and Rouge, which were based on the colors and themes of the French flag (I don’t care what you say, Emily: #TeamRouge); that nod is funny because Trois Couleur is high-art drama and these are comedies. All three are parodies of, tributes to, and actually surprisingly good executions of their respective genres. And the hook, the gag at the center of all these movies, is that Simon Pegg plays a character wholly unsuited to be starring in this kind of film.

Shaun, the burnout, is the wrong person to survive the zombie apocalypse; by-the-book British bobby Nicholas is the wrong person to lead an American-style bombastic actioner; and alcoholic asshole Gary is the last person to save the world from aliens.

And I think that’s where people get stuck. Because “schlub finds himself protagonist of a genre film” is the elevator pitch for like a dozen Adam Sandler movies. The genre trappings may be as mundane as parenthood or mandated anger management classes, or as high-concept as action movie, whodunnit, or time travel It’s a Wonderful Life if Clarence were Christopher Walken as the angel of death (that… that makes it sound good, it’s not, don’t see Click; leave Frank Capra alone, Adam). But all these movies have the same basic shape: an extraordinary situation forces a guy to confront his shortcomings, which always stem from having never grown up. And you probably haven’t seen all of these movies, but if you’ve seen any, I bet you have assumptions about how the rest end: even though “Adam Sandler acts like a child” is generally the selling point of an Adam Sandler movie, they all end with some lip service toward becoming an adult: hey man, grow up a bit; appreciate your family a little more; square your shoulders; clean your room. This is so standard, it was parodied mercilessly in Funny People.

And this was a formative microgenre for my generation! Whole universe turns itself upside down to teach some shitty dude to, like, do the dishes and pay his wife a compliment now and then - Liar Liar, Bruce and Evan Almighty (all directed by the same guy, by the way). So I don’t blame people of a certain age for seeing the first act of Shaun of the Dead and thinking “I know where this is going.” And when, at the last minute, it swerves and goes someplace else, you could read that as a gag, a final subversion of expectation, still the same basic shape. But no! No! Once is a gag - thrice??? Thrice is a thematic statement!

So lemme make my case. I’ma take you through these movies one by one - we’ll talk about the manchildren and the expectations set by the genre, and then we’ll talk about that last-minute swerve and what it means. And then you’ll tell me I’m right and apologize!

Shaun of the Dead:

Shaun is a man in his twenties. What kind of manchild is he? He’s the slacker.

What is his problem? He needs to sort his life out. Shaun doesn’t know how to take action. He hasn’t advanced since college - he’s been working the kind of job a teen takes over the summer for like a decade, lives with the same best friend, has the same petty fights with his stepdad, goes to the same pub every week with the same group of people. He can’t make a reservation, he can’t manage a calendar, he’s a washup. This makes his girlfriend, Liz, feel stifled, trapped; he is a weight around her ankle, taking her on the same date week after week, keeping her from living her own dreams, having her own adventures. She gives him one last chance to prove he can sort his life out, and he blows it, and she dumps him.

And then: a zombie movie happens.

The genre forces him to confront his shortcomings: to survive, and save his loved ones, he’ll have to take action, make plans, be decisive. This is a common fantasy: when you feel ground down by the mundanity of life, you might imagine, oh, if only a crisis would happen, like a zombie virus outbreak, where my normal-life problems like “am I gonna make rent,” “is my girl gonna take me back,” “is my roommate gonna kick out my stoner buddy who’s crashing on the couch” become meaningless, and it’s immediately clear what’s really important, what matters. Then I’d know exactly what to do. It’s why disaster movies work as escapism: a necromantic plague - or at least the fantasy of one - is sometime preferable to normal life.

Hot Fuzz:

Nicholas is a man in his thirties. What kind of manchild is he? He’s the hall monitor.

What is his problem? He can’t switch off. He is a hypercompetant police officer with a rulebook where his brain should be. He’s so good at being a cop that he’s spotting and unraveling crimes even on his day off. He can’t maintain a relationship, has no friends, all his coworkers hate him because he keeps finishing their work for them, and his stats show up the rest of the force so badly that they scuttle him out to the country.

Now you might be thinking, “Mmm. A fastidious police officer who can’t have fun? How is that a manchild? Sounds pretty grown-up to me. You’re reaching, bud.” Ohhhh ho ho, smartass, do you remember this scene? [bar scene] Yeah! Nicholas Angel has a five-year-old’s notion of law and order. He’s still playing cops and robbers.

And that’s a problem, because then: an action movie happens.

It doesn’t happen all at once: he goes out to the country and finds they do things a bit differently there. They are (ostensibly) less concerned with rules than what than the rules are for: if the purpose of drinking laws is to keep the streets safe and orderly, and letting some people off with a warning or allowing kids drink so long as they do it inside achieves that end, the rule can be bent. That’s a judgment grown-ups can make; I mean, they’re the ones who wrote the rules in the first place. So be lenient with shoplifters, don’t hassle people for speeding; this isn’t the Big City, you can use your better judgment. But Nicholas never got past doing whatever Mom & Dad said; obedience, and trusting whoever’s up the chain, is his entire moral framework. He can’t accept that bending the law could be more righteous than following it.

But also maybe there’s a criminal conspiracy murdering people and writing it off as accidents and the police chief might be in on it. Or maybe Nicholas is so desperate for a big case with no moral ambiguity that he’s seeing things where they aren’t. 

The genre forces him to confront his shortcomings: either there’s nothing going on and he needs to chill out about procedure, or the department is corrupt and he’ll have to go rogue like it’s Point Break - and this is how he experiences Point Break. [“paperwork”]

No matter what, he’ll have to bend the rules, which he constitutionally cannot do.

The World’s End:

Gary is a man in his forties. What kind of manchild is he? He’s the delinquent.

What’s his problem? Pfffft. What isn’t his problem? Gary is a manipulative, narcissistic, lying, self-destructive, ignorant, violent, thieving, shit-talking, unapologetic asshole who peaked in high school when being all those things was still kind of badass. The greatest night of his life was the drunken pub crawl after graduation he and his friends didn’t even finish, and he’s been tumbling downhill ever since. He’s spent his life ruining everyone who knows him until there’s no one left to ruin but Gary King. So now it’s time to bully the old gang into going back home with him to relive that night by finishing the pub crawl, because, in his own words, it’s all he’s got. And he and his friends have to confront how home has changed since they left - the bars have gentrified, not everyone recognizes them; the defining, epic deeds of Gary’s youth have been forgotten. You can’t actually go back because that place doesn’t exist anymore.

And then: a sci-fi movie happens.

Turns out the town’s been taken over by aliens, and all the people who couldn’t conform to their new order have been replaced with robots! That’s why no one recognizes them! And that’s why the pubs all look the same: the aliens are homogenizing everything! And it’s clear, if they can’t get Gary and his friends to play ball, they’ll roboticize them as well! The obvious move is to get the hell out of town, but Gary keeps inventing excuses to stay and finish the pub crawl, and they sound pretty sensible because the group’s already five pints in. The genre forces him to confront his shortcomings: sooner or later he’s gonna have to give up on recapturing his youth and do what’s best for him and his friends now, even if it means running back to the city where all his problems live.

So there we have it: the characters cross the threshold into an unfamiliar world where an external conflict cannot be addressed without resolving the tension within. The slacker will have to get his shit sorted, the hall monitor will have to break the rules, and the delinquent will have to do what’s good for him. And, to an extent, all three know this! The movies Wright and Pegg pay homage to exist in these stories - Shaun knows what a zombie is, Danny keeps Nicholas up watching Point Break and Bad Boys II, and Gary and friends know bodysnatcher movies so well they have philosophical debates with the robots about whether “robot” is the PC term.

So, yeah, if you turned the movies off there, I could forgive you for thinking that’s where they’re headed. But you goofballs watched them to the end and then made content about them, what is wrong with you???

What actually happens in the second halves of these movies?

Shaun twigs that he’s in a zombie movie and, at first, tries to play the part - his survival plans are miniature hero’s journeys with him as protagonist, wherein he’ll save the day by neatly confronting all his flaws. He’ll resolve parental conflict by saving his mom from his zombified stepdad, resolve romantic conflict by showing his girl he can come through when it counts, and resolve internal conflict by being a man who saves the day. And all his plans suck! It’s just the same plan he always comes up with! Dragging around the same useless liability of a bestie, collecting the same group of people, and holing up in the same pub! He doesn’t save his mom: his stepdad apologizes, resolving their conflict for him, and then survives in zombie form but Shaun’s mom gets killed; most of the friend group gets killed because the crisis does not actually suspend but in fact amplifies their personal grievances; and he doesn’t save the day, just manages not to die long enough for the military to show up.

But… well, Liz wanted adventure and now she’s had enough for a lifetime, so… she’s down to just be boring with him for a while - sit on the couch, watch TV, hit the pub. Beats running for your life. Tensions with the roommate are gone cuz roommate died, but rent is covered cuz Liz moved in. Zombies don’t get eradicated, just folded into normal life, so Shaun can mindlessly play video games with his bestie forever, and it’s not a problem that bestie doesn’t have an income cuz he doesn’t need food or shelter.

The zombie apocalypse doesn’t make Shaun sort his life out, it changes the world til he doesn’t have to.

When Nicholas discovers that, yes, there is definitely a murderous criminal conspiracy inside the police department, he recognizes the only way to bring about justice is to become what Danny has always wanted and go Dirty Harry on the town. It’s either that or just swallow the crimes. But he does neither. He and Danny go on an epic shooting spree, recreating famous movie scenes, taking out the entire criminal organization against all odds, and spouting badass one-liners… but everyone who helps them is a cop, they don’t actually kill anyone, all perps are formally arrested, and they fill out all the paperwork. I think he even properly signs out the weapons. He never switches off, never breaks a rule, does absolutely everything by the book, only… louder. And this violent showdown saves him from the chill town with lax rules he thought he’d moved to. Now he, with his five-year-old notion of right and wrong, is in charge of the police department.

The buddy cop actioner doesn’t make Nicholas bend the rules, it changes the world til he doesn’t have to.

Gary knows exactly how a movie of this sort is supposed to go and spends the whole movie running from it. Friends and secondary characters keep sharing these poignant moments with him, because they know this story, too: yeah, he’s gonna reject help at first, but sooner or later he’ll hit rock bottom and then someone will get through to him. And, as the night goes on, and the characters get drunker and drunker, and Gary passes up more and more opportunities to abandon the pub crawl and go home, these moments take a tone of desperation. They start to sound more like interventions; like, Gary, we all know you’re going to come to your senses but could you hurry up with it??? How many of your friends need to literally die for you to shape up? Are you gonna get them all killed?

And the answer is: Gary will never shape up! To Gary the Human Dril Tweet, his friends trying to save him, psychiatrists trying to treat him, and aliens trying to assimilate him are all the same thing. He doggedly makes it to the end of the pub crawl and confronts the alien overlord who tells him all the technological advancements of the past few decades - all the efficiency and homogenization that’ve changed the face of his home town - are their doing. The Information Age is an intervention on behalf of Earth, a pan-galactic effort to save humanity from itself. And the reason they’ve been replacing people with robots is some people are too fucked up to go along with it.

And here’s Gary, King of the Fuckups, brashly declaring that fucking up is what makes us human. There is no freedom without the freedom to ruin your life. We are endowed by our creator with the right to be drunken, ornery pieces of shit.

He tells the aliens to piss off and he’s so fucking annoying that they do, and they take the Information Age with them.

Now… I know… ugh… I know a lot of people love this movie, say it’s the best of the three. Some friends who’ve struggled with mental health or just being an adult under late capitalism really identify with Gary, and the valorization of being a mess. I see you, you’re not wrong, I get it, I really do. But can we just… not “but” but “also” can we… can we also admit that this ending is… this is Space Brexit.

Like, literally it’s an alien invasion but symbolically this is Gary rejecting the adult world of rules and authority and doing what’s best for the community and that’s how Brexiters view the EU. And people keep telling him “Gary, this is in your best interest” and Gary says, I don’t want my best interest! I am registered in the anti-Gary’s Face Party and I will cast my vote by cutting my nose! I choose to do what’s bad for me.

And, like a true Brexiter, he chooses for everybody.

Now tell me that’s a movie about growing up. Gary collapses human civilization in its entirety rather than change, and in the world that follows, he thrives… by being an immature, irresponsible bag of garbage.

To Wright and Pegg, growing up is death, and these are movies about being alive. These characters don’t cross the threshold back into the ordinary world with the ultimate boon of character growth; all three stay in the extraordinary world. The zombies remain, the robots remain, Nicholas is offered his London job back and chooses to stay in the country. These are stories about normal life spontaneously turning into a genre film, and they are made with deep love for those genres; why would they end with leaving those genres behind? Because it’s what Adam Sandler would do?

So there you have it. I rest my case.

“Okay Ian. Why does this matter?”

…what was that?

“You’ve made your point: these movies aren’t about growing up or taking responsibility. So what?”

Uhhhh.

“Bring it home for us.”

…

“Why do you care so much?

[breath]

I wrote the first draft of this script when I was around Shaun and Nicholas’ age, and “so what?” is why I shelved it. Now I’m Gary’s age, this video’s been in the back of my brain the whole time, but I got this far and “so what” is where I got stuck, again. This is why the CO-VIDs came out quicker, cuz I let myself end with “so that’s interesting!” and got on with my life. But there’s clearly something sticky here, more than “someone is wrong on the internet.” (Also, to the YouTubers I’m vaguebooking, who said these were movies about growing up - I’m way more annoyed at the folks I’ve argued with on Twitter about this, you just made a better rhetorical device; you do not owe me an apology!) (Also, to the commentariat: I am not extrapolating this from like two data points, this is chronic and recurring and has been bothering me for years.)

There are a few directions I could take this to give it some “cultural weight.” I could put on my social justice hat and talk about how the “crisis of adulthood” doesn’t play as broad comedy unless you look like Adam Sandler or Simon Pegg, or put on my class analysis hat and talk about how signifiers of adulthood are, traditionally, ways of spending and accruing capital which are, today, often inaccessible to people under 40.

And that’s all legit, but here’s the real deal: I’m just mad at Gary. The world changed around Shaun such that he could stay a child. And Nicholas ended up somewhere he could stay a child. If you missed that, you’re wrong, but whatever. But to say that Gary grew up grinds me, because Gary chose this. The whole movie is people telling him to grow up, and he says no! He says it out loud! He says it to the literal end of the world. To walk out of the theater and say “that’s a movie about growing up” is more than a mistake, it’s a refusal. It’s trying to “fix” the movie by fitting it into a more familiar shape, so it doesn’t say what it says, so Gary isn’t who he is, who he chooses to be.

I’m being cheeky when I say this because he’s a fictional character, but saying Gary grew up is enabling.

Gary says there’s no freedom without the freedom to ruin your life, which is the problem with alcoholics and libertarians: it’s not just your life, Gary! You live in a community, a culture, and an ecosystem! Your actions - everybody’s actions - impact other people! That’s just the way the world is! You can’t shit yourself at the bar without other people having to smell it. We’re all fuckin’ connected, man! You don’t want anyone’s will imposed on you; you spend the whole movie imposing your will on everyone else! You say humans don’t wanna be told what to do, and then you decide humanity’s future by yourself with no input or consent from anyone!

People point to Gary ordering water in the last scene instead of beer as evidence that he got sober, like that’s proof that he did grow up in the end, which are you fucking joking??? Getting sober is a shorthand for maturity the way buying a house is, it doesn’t signify anything in and of itself! Gary drank to escape the adult world of rules and responsibilities! So, yeah, under normal circumstances getting sober would mean he’s made peace with that world and is ready to integrate. But that’s not what happened! The thing he was escaping doesn’t exist anymore! He literally destroyed it!! People died! Probably millions! Now he lives a happy life LARPing as Omega Doom - no I don’t expect you to catch that reference! He doesn’t need to drink! He is literally reliving the best day of his life forever. And even if it did mean personal growth, the idea that a person could make what would be, unequivocally, the most selfish decision in human history, and then spend his life celebrating the outcome, oh but if he overcame a personal demon in the process then on balance that’s maturity? That is lightspeed solipsism! Who are you if you think that way? Are you all Adam Sandler???

And none of that makes this a bad ending, or Gary a bad character. I mean, he is the reason The World’s End is my least favorite, and I don’t like the ending, but I don’t think it’s bad that I don’t like the ending. Rather than watch another addict pull his life together or destroy himself, we watch a downward spiral with so much gravity the whole world self-destructs alongside him. And that’s why The World’s End is the most interesting of the three: it is a bold choice, and I think we are free to feel however we want about the conclusion Gary engineered for himself. I don’t think it’s valid to pretend it didn’t happen.

In the context of the trilogy, we see that Shaun’s immaturity is mostly a problem for Shaun: he would be, at worst, a footnote in the lives of the people who love him; “yeah, I liked Shaun a lot, but I couldn’t carry him through life anymore.” Nicholas is the kind of overachiever that is useful if pointed in the right direction; juvenile code of ethics aside, he is, empirically, helping the community (within the entirely fictional framework where that’s a thing police do). If the world hadn’t changed to turn their flaws into strengths, they would still be relatively harmless. Gary is what happens when immaturity isn’t harmless, and shows us how a world built by that immaturity would look.

There is an appeal to Gary King, a wish fulfillment. Letting your id fully off the leash because you no longer care what anybody thinks - it’s why some people drink, and it’s why some people would like to drink with Gary. But if that’s not just your Friday night, not just your twenties, but that’s your life? There is a destination at the end of that road, and it’s Gary doing something truly ugly. And we see that ugly thing the way Gary sees it: as awesome. But then you see the reality: the Monday morning after the Friday night. We went out with Gary and he did something terrible.

And I’m not telling you to hate Gary for it; I’m not saying Gary can’t be forgiven. In fact, seeing it for what it is is the only way Gary could be forgiven, because, if he “grew up and took responsibility,” there’s nothing to forgive.

I think this is the only way the trilogy could have ended. I mean, you make stories about boys who get older and older and don’t grow up, it eventually becomes a problem. There’s only two ways to resolve it: you either end with a guy actually sorting his shit out, or you go for broke and show what happens if he doesn’t. And I think some of us boys saw that and said, “no, noooo, they did grow up! all three of them!” rather than say, “haha! hahaaa! ……………shit.”

[babyaiker]

Mutuals come get y’all juice! I’m finally posting about the big man Xavier!

Anyway ya! Red dead insert oc. I’ve lived 10 years of my life convincing myself self-inserts and fandom ocs were cringe, I’m healing I’m thriving let me be

I plan to post more about him in the future so I at least gotta give a general overview (under the cut teehee)

(Bonus appearance from @meeks-just-wants-to-scroll ‘s oc Malt in the first image)

Info!

Full name is Xavier Holden

Son of the real background character Judge Meredith Holden

Has multiple pen names/nicknames such as “Gorrister” and “Lorenzo”

Born in Rhodes, Lemoyne 1867, Currently 32 (1899)

Around 6ft ish, mmmmmm big boy

Outlaw traveling with the Van Der Linde gang since 1895

Prefers to paint and hunt rather than kill and rob though

Primarily uses a Springfield Rifle, with only a Cattleman for protection

Better at fighting hand-to-hand in a self-defense situation

Owns a gelding horse named Saffron

Dark Bay Shire, Gentle giant, likes eating random herbs

Symbolic animals are an octopus (high honor) or squid (low honor)

Xavier’s weirdly calm and diplomatic for an outlaw. He’s pretty closed off, but is more than happy to listen to whatever you have to say. He’s much more skilled with providing stability and comfort for others rather than fighting. Others either regard him as a trusted confidant, or a nosy gossiper who has dirt on just about everyone (both are true).

Trivia!

Is absolutely sweet on Kieran, canon can eat my entire ass those two are getting a happy ending because I said so

You may not see me post too much about them as an item on here. It’s not because I’m embarrassed, but because it’s just personal to me, that’s all. I’ll still joke/reference it though and post some of the art I do!

Lip-scar is maybe canon? It’s more so a reference to my bestie’s possible rdr2 oc, tho it’s not official (she stabbed him in the face a lil but it’s okie)

Absolutely abides by rdr2’s rule of “overweight equals high health and low stamina”. Throw this guy off a cliff and he’d probably be fine.

The fact he’s an artist is very important for like his entire character/backstory don’t forget that bit

Half original character half self insert. I project a lot of my flaws, beliefs, and gender identity onto him, but our personalities are fairly different. Plus we share just enough physical characteristics that I could cosplay him with the help of a wig and fake beard.

[wolfsbaneandthistle]

Enith first developed space travel around 500,000 years prior to the modern period. This early era of space travel, called the First Enlightenment period, is survived almost solely through it's planetary colonists.

The Corldaxians of Enlightenment period had one goal- to send as many people as possible to nearby habitable planets. Ostensibly, the purpose of this was to set up an extensive empire with infinite resources so that Enlightenment period civilization could exist, as it was, forever. The real motivation behind this was the fear of what they assumed to be an exponentially growing population, and of the internal collapse of the state.

Enlightenment Corldaxians sent out hundreds of colonial trolleys with thousands of people aboard, all to colonize planets their ships wouldn't reach for hundreds of thousands of years. The majority of ships used cryofreeze to keep their colonists alive for the journey, with a good bit of variation on the specifics. All of them, with the exception of the earliest ships, packed the materials needed to make a wormhole generator.

Enith had set up a wormole gate on the edge of it's system towards the end of the Enlightenment period, but it had the knowledge and ability to create them halfway through shipping the colonists. The plan was to have the colonists construct their own wormholes upon reaching the edge of their planet's solar system; then land, set up their colony, and contact Enith through a micro-wormhole com set. The ships that did not have the materials for this on their leaving had another ship sent following them.

Many of the ships did not make it to their destinations. But some did.

The surviving colonists woke up, set up their wormholes, and landed on their planets. Many encountered barely habitable planets that needed thorough terraforming to support a decent population. Some encountered planets that weren't habitable at all, or were habitable but didn't have any native life, and a rare few encountered planets with life already on it. A few of those were even met by sapient life.

The colonists were lucky that, when the first of them contacted Enith, it was once again going through a period of space exploration. The First Enlightenment had collapsed not long after the last colonists left, and Enith had been in and out of dark ages ever since. The wormhole generator, luckily, saw a fair amount of upkeep every couple of millennia and was able to be repaired. Then duplicated, then updated as Enith entered it's modern period.

When Enith was contacted by it's long-lost colonist, it quickly sent more colonists and supplies. The problem was... well... it had been 500,000 years.

The colonists were met by people who barely looked like them, who rarely spoke the same language as them, and who often chastised them for dressing or acting how they always have. They were similar, but that was all that could be said. Enith had changed and the colonists had not. Their way of life was dead and gone, and they were the only memory.

First contact had to have been funny though. I mean imagine you went to an exoplanet to colonize it and when Earth sent some more guys for you and opposite Homo Heidelbergensis pops out with a grey alien behind it.

Hilarious.

A colony ship contacts Enith every couple of decades now. Bitriem's colony was the first to encounter native sapients, and they contacted Enith around one and a half thousand years ago. Zornxia and Atiske were two other early contacts, and the most recent contact was with the Umblans.

The people who were sent to colonize Umblan are still alive in the setting of The Little Bird. Diaf is probably in contact with a few of them. But while they made contact with Enith, while they have access to the full network of planets Enith has made, they're still alone. Isolated, because everything they once knew is gone.

Humans had the same strategy.

Enith is on the Sagittarius branch, though the cluster of systems the Enithian and Teth Tias governments inhabit is just about the closet you can get to Orion.

Hán was on one of the first generations of ships to be sent towards Sagittarius. Cereza's two times great grandparents were shipped out later than her.

Earth didn't send them out with wormhole tech. No one has heard from Earth since waking up.

What would you do if everything you ever knew was just gone? Unreachable, unknowable for the rest of your life. Not just what was your life, but all of Earth. Of humanity.

What would you do if you were stranded, alone, quite possibly the last humans in the universe?

[fountainpenguin]

Riddle watches New Wish - Post #5

They're so cute...

OH, she set them up!! Here we go!

Wanda making squeaky toy noises when Cosmo hugs her is all I've ever wanted.

"We're real, all right! ... Real fairies. Not real humans."

BUDAWHAAAAAAAA-? Thank you Cosmo for just confirming elastic skin, which has been one of the most important headcanons in my worldbuilding. I did not expect you to do that for me, but... thanks?

Pfft, Wanda changing her legs.

ERG??? Is that you?

Okay, there's that "We've been retired for 10k years" implied time travel bit; I think I remember that from the story bible + early convos with my friends, so at least I came prepared to expect that.

This is either time travel - which plays perfectly into my established "Cosmo ate a time key during dinosaur times and has been running around through time unsupervised for ages" headcanon anyway, LOL - or they're flat-out lying to Hazel, seeing as the audience already knows Timmy is confirmed as a recent godkid, so... Hm.

SLDKFJSD I love how the guy who accidentally sent his baby stroller down a steep hill is wearing a #1 Dad hat. "My expensive stroller! ... I mean, my baby!" - Yeah, we're still in FOP. All the parents are terrible here.

Setting her up as loving french fries and then turning her into a fly who found french fries was clever.

Cosmo once again being so close and yet so far to his mark. Good to see him back!

Me when I return my would-be murderer's daughter, who is a bug.

I AM SO GLAD that even in 10,000 years, Wanda's small talk skills have not improved far beyond "I'm Human McRealPerson" and "My husband is a grilled cheese sandwich" from back in the day, sdlkfj. That's my girl!

oh no, the Venus flytrap gift they brought over is about to go so wrong.

Yep, she's still goin'. Talking about the carwash.

GIRL check your fingers.

OH MY GOSSSSSSH, he's dressed for a classy party in Fairy culture. Cosmorella? We thought you were dead!!

... That's an ant? I would've guessed tick.

It's a guy ant? Buddy, are you sure you're supposed to be foraging?

Let's go!!

SDLKFJSDKLFJSLKJF noooo... No, no, no, no, no... Not the thing I use to symbolize memorials for the dead, c'mon!

It IS an accurate item for a Fairy house- these were all over the place in Fairy World during the old show, AND in that color, though you usually see more than one "wand" per pot.

I'm super impressed the artists studied the old interior design customs. Huh.

Cosmo lives here. Also, BABY!!

OOH, I'm excited that Cosmo and Wanda's window overlooks Fairy World because it's kind of a portal. I did something super similar with a rat cage in an upcoming Frayed Knots scene, where Anti-Cosmo and Wanda are godparenting together during school. Nifty!

He even confirmed it's a spell on the front door! Wow. Somehow, Past Me nailed that.

"We can choose which world we go out into!" -> /Me with my 'fic where Kevin Crocker is confused that Shirley's Pizza Parlor has an exit on the other side that goes to Retroville.

Cosmo: We lived in Timmy's fishbowl for 20 years. Wanda: It was 7.

You are both wrong- it was like 68 <3 But honestly, I forgive you for not wanting to tell Hazel time was frozen for 50 years. I don't think she'd like that. Actually, I don't think she was born yet, because my vision is time freezing at the end of Season 4, and Dale was rescued in Season 2, so... Yeah, she wasn't born. Still, you don't wanna just drop that on someone.

That's actually very funny that Cosmo and Wanda are struggling because they're out of practice during their retirement.

THERE'S THE SIGN!! Way to go.

Oh, and the credits are done in a similar style to the old ones? Even the colors? That's so cute! That's also nice that Hazel's VA was a story editor too- That probably helps with the passion and vision.

That was cute. I liked it. Huge relief to see something well-researched and made with love after "Fairly Odder" was a struggle for me.

I've got a little more time tonight, I might be able to get one more episode done before bedtime.

[theaceace]

Ok so when Rose gives the heart back to unity once more rendering her the vortex and then she dies in her sleep, something goes wrong (either because Desire set a sneaky trap or because it's close enough to breaking the rules of Endless not hurting family) that there's an explosive reaction, and when the chaos dies down Rose is still in the dreaming even though that definitely should have woken her up and Dream is nowhere to be found

Now Rose is stuck in the dreaming, and after a quick five minutes of panicking, comes to the conclusion with Lucienne and Unity that she'll have to track Dream down and get him to fix this. Lucienne needs to return to the palace to keep the dreaming running smoothly, Unity despite seeming chill about it has just DIED and also has never actually used any of her vortex powers the way Rose has and I'm basically just handwaving the fact that Rose is going to have to search for Dream on her own

Or not entirely on her own! Matthew is there, because every young woman embarking on a solo adventure needs a sassy talking animal sidekick, them's the rules

So Rose and Matthew set out on a trek through the dreaming, and this is the point where I could get wildly creative if I had the brainpower, and come up with fantastical dreamworlds

Because this is an AU and I say that being the descendent of an Endless should have some perks, Rose can still travel between dreams, she just can't affect them/the waking world or bring down the walls between dreams the way she could before. She's more akin to Matthew or Lucienne than a vortex, despite being human and aliveSo they spend a while chasing dead ends and leads that go nowhere until they wind up in some dream set in a pretty normal pub, and in true dreamlogic fashion there are people in clothes that come from a mishmash of the last 7 centuries, eating by rushlight while on their phones. But! Rose looks over and there's Dream! Amazing, they found him!

Matthew's like uhhhhh, I've spent a lotta time with the bossman, Rose, I'm not so sure that's - but it's too late she's already marching over

Meanwhile, Hob has been having a really nice dream in which his Stranger enjoys his company and didn't stand him up and doesn't wander off to 'inspire' any upstart playwrights and smiles at him like he did when they finally met up again a couple of weeks ago or whenever it was. He really wasn't expecting it to be interrupted by a girl rushing over to grab his Stranger's shoulder all excited about how we've found you Dream we were so worried are you ok???

And look. Hob is pretty used to rolling with the punches. After seven hundred years on planet earth, you gotta be. But this is, he hates to say, a pretty fucking weird turn for his dream to take usually it turns more toward his Stranger bending him over the table ahem

Also there's a talking bird. Why not

Rose has now realised that this Dream is not, in fact, the real Dream. BUT that means this guy must know Dream! Maybe he can help out? And Matthew is like wait, wait a second. You. YOU'RE the guy the boss went all starry-eyed (literally) over???

Hob reckons uuuuuhhhhh probably not? Took him seven hundred years to admit they're friends, and Matthew is like holy shit that hussy

Anyway I want Rose Hob and Matthew to go on a roadtrip adventure to save Dream is what I'm getting at. I was to continue the glorious tradition of Hob learning things about his friend (😍) thanks to other people and not from his friend himself (😭). I want Hob to play accidental therapist to Rose like he does to his students. I want Matthew to mock him mercilessly. I want Hob to sometimes be an asshole. I want them to BOND

And I want them to make it to the house of secrets and the house of mysteries where Hob is forcibly reminded that he was raised a Catholic medieval peasant when he sits down for tea with Cain and Abel (who think that Gadling would be an excellent name for a gargoyle if Morpheus ever makes another).

I want Abel to offhandedly mention something unspeakably horrible in the basement, but when Rose opens that door it just leads into a big fancy hallway? They go through anyway, and something feels different about this dream. Matthew is all 'I got a bad feeling about this' because Patton Oswalt loves Star wars and I think it's funny. Maybe they see a stuffed raven with a white breast in a room of taxidermied animals

So they keep looking, and eventually Hob finds a door leading to a basement, cracks a silly joke about finding something unspeakably horrible down there to cover up the fact that he's actually fucking terrified (he's come to accept that this is not a dream in the traditional sense, although it took way longer than it should have), and heads down the staircase

(It's the snow globe)

And here I start to run out of momentum a bit but like. I think Hob Rose and Matthew deserve to come together to roast the shit out of Dream while Lucienne tracks their progress from the library with Unity and Merv, who are also roasting the shit out of Dream, and all roasting comes to an abrupt and choked end when they get to the basement

Maybe Dream has been reduced to a cloud of swirling black sand in the orb, or maybe he looks almost exactly as he did in reality, maybe the Dream Team have to get him out but in order for that to happen he has to allow them to help, or maybe he needs to free himself because something something it's a metaphor idk. Maybe Dream, in whatever state he's in, panics at the sight of his bae friend, his raven, and his niece all outside the glass just like Jessamy was. Maybe he tries to throw them all out of the dream, but he's weakened himself as though he really were trapped in the circle again, and Rose is able to stand her ground against him.

And idk I don't really have an ending beyond 'Dream gets out and everyone is OK and also Rose and Hob end up being exasperated penpals over Dream's... Dream-ness.

[phoebepheebsphibs]

NOT THE SHAKY LINES AROUND DRAXUM TOO (That alone gives me angst pangs 😭) HHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'm perfectly normal about this guy what do you mean :')

HECK YEAH HUG UR SON GOAT DAD

This does beg the question though- have you thought about where Draxum was during the invasion? (within the lore/au/etc of this story/comic, at least?) Why WASN'T he there when Mikey almost died?

food for thought :3 and fun

I love this comic so much 😭 uyghjdfqwseuhghugsivyjbhkjdcvb

(Real quick cuz I love this detail— but if you look closely you can see that the shaky lines surround just Draxum in one panel… but then spread to Mikey too when he starts crying.)

I heard one theory that Drax was out of the country getting magic supplies and junk… I like that idea, of him traveling to Japan to learn about ancient Yokai culture and legends…

But personally I think he was just. Busy. Or trapped. Similar to how Cass was there, she just wasn’t “there” there. I assume that he was either at the school, at his apartment, or down in the Hidden City somewhere. He probably wanted to find the guys but got caught up in the Krang attacking wherever he was, and didn’t get a chance to call them or check in until a fair amount of time after everything was done.

{For my comic of Draxum’s Nightmare, however, I like to think that he was doing nothing in particular. He was relaxing, enjoying his day, plotting some mad scientist stuff, and didn’t even hear about the Krang attack until hours after it was over. He was maybe in the Hidden City shopping and renovating his lab, doing some fine work, maybe getting a new robe too, and of course filing paperwork with the Council of Heads so that he was no longer a wanted (goat) man. And then when he goes home to his apartment, via portal of course, he turns on the TV and sees the news. His heart drops as he realizes what he missed. Draxum is not a begging man, but he actually begins to pray that they all made it through safely or survived, because of course they’d be in the middle of it. His phone blows up with texts from April and Mikey and Donnie and Raph and probably not Leo except for a meme that says “I lived, sheep man!” with him giving a peace sign while he lies on a stretcher with a leg cast and arm cast and enough bandages to qualify him as a mummy. But they lived. They are okay… mostly. They didn’t need his help after all. Sure, it might’ve been easier if he was there, but there’s no point in dwelling on the “what ifs”, especially since it all worked out. Splinter calls. Cassandra calls. Mikey calls. He goes to help them and hears about the entire battle… not like he was worried, he’s seen what they can do— MIKEY DID WHAT.

Oh.

Oh heads.

And his greatest fear haunts him. Because… he wasn’t there. And one small mistake could have cost the life of the one Hamato that saved him… changed him… accepted him. When no one else did. When everyone saw him as either a failure or a villain… and he could have lost that one precious child.

And he could have helped, he knew what to do! He knew how to use that kind of magic and he’s had experience opening portals to other dimensions!! HE COULD HAVE DONE IT BUT MIKEY DID AND HE HAD NO IDEA HOW TO DO THAT AND IT SHOULD HAVE KILLED HIM—! …Mikey should be dead at this very moment.

And Draxum would never have had a chance to say goodbye.}

I hope you enjoyed that haha

:D

[jessicafangirl]

The First Chapter of My Ghost Fic is here!

Please be kind. I've not written anything for this group before but god damn do I love Copia and this idea hit me and I decided to do it.

I'm a wordy bitch. You've been warned. You can also read this on Archive Of Our Own here

@nequissimus-canis asked to be tagged which was very kind. This is also dedicated to @foxybouquet who I blame for so many amazing things that I've learned and who enables me beautifully. You are my fave Ghestie.

Music Eternal, Fire Infernal.

Jennifer Travers is at the tail end of 40 and decides to do something spontaneous. Unfortunately things REALLY don't go as planned. Her life is in now in danger and the only place of refuge is a satanic church. She knew the band Ghost already, but she didn't know until that day that all of it was real and it would lead to something that would change her life forever, in more ways than one. And it would lead to some revelations for Copia Emeritus too.

Chapter 1

“The cemetery here is close to 300 years old. It contains some interesting residence that have a history that will send a shiver down your spine.” The tour guide’s Maglite flashed along the path and caught one or two of the “residence” headstones as he droned on in a bored monotone. As the group walked through the dark, Jennifer realized this was not one of her best ideas. Her breath was visible as she huddled in her hoodie. Let’s go on the spooky ooky tour, she thought to herself. Let’s troll through an old graveyard at night. Hey there’s a satanic church nearby…what could go wrong? All of that sounded great on paper but the reality was really kind of fucking miserable. This guy knew literally nothing about what he was talking about. Jen could have done a better job…not that that would have been hard.

She sighed and tightened the straps on her backpack. At 47 walking while carrying a backpack weighted down by her Switch, iPad, and clothes was not as easy as it used to be. But she wanted to travel light. This trip was something she’d promised herself for a while. After the year she’d had, a spur of the moment trip to the east coast to visit some of the older and creepier parts of the country was something she decided to do. She shoved some things into her bag and hopped on a plane. And now here she was probably going to break her leg because she decided to take a night tour like a moron.

It was pretty though, she had to admit as she and the four other suckers crunched through dead leaves. Very Universal Horror. She could almost see Dwight Frye and Colin Clive digging up one of those old graves if she squinted right. In the distance she could see the large, sprawling church that looked like it belonged in Romania and not in New York State. The guide had said that the Ghost project was in residence. When he’d said that it had cemented her decision to go on this insane tour just in case she could catch a glimpse of the band. She’d loved their music and the whole mystique but hadn’t realized it was a REAL church of Satan until…well…there was the church. She’d never seen a concert in person either, but the videos she’d caught online were interesting. The current lead singer was apparently a sweetheart for a satanic pope. She could hear her elderly, right wing mother screeching about how just having that thought was going to send her to hell. God knew the list her family had was already long enough for what was wrong with her, what was one more thing.

Jen realized she’d lagged behind as she’d kept looking up at the church and hurried to catch up. Even though the guide wasn’t the best he had a flashlight, and she had no freaking idea where anything was around there. That extra 20 pounds she wanted to always lose was felt hard as she rejoined the group. “The church you see is of course part of the Satanic Church of Emeritus. I’m sure some of you are fans of the band Ghost and if you aren’t you can find out information about the church and the band through this website…” The tour guide literally rambled off a web address and Jen raised an eyebrow. Were they supposed to write that down in the dead of night?

They kept walking and the guide led them into another area of the cemetery, this one with large tombs and statues spread out along the grounds. This was obviously the more well to do section and Jennifer was awestruck by how beautiful it was, even if it was slightly crumbling. The moon was shining down brightly now, full and clear, so she could walk without too much risk of falling on her ass as she was want to do. Her Converse sneakers weren’t really made for uneven ground, but so far, she was doing okay. As the tour guide rambled on Jen pulled out her iPhone and started taking some pictures of the statues. The one of the grim reaper was wonderfully gothic and even had a skull carved inside the stone robes that made it up. She headed over to another area where the largest crypt sat with a giant letter E carved over an archway entrance that had rose bushes on either side. They were old bushes that had grown nearly as tall as the entrance. The flowers were large, red, and smelled amazing. She loved roses but even she was surprised at how big the thorns were on those plants. It was almost like they were there not for the flowers but for some sort of deterrent to keep people from trying to get in or maybe even vandalize the tomb. When she leaned over to take a whiff of one blood red bud, she noticed the sharp little daggers were half an inch long and nearly that thick.

Jen took a picture of the entrance, her eyes taking in more of the designs that could be seen in the stonework not covered by the plants. Sigils…inverted crosses…pentagrams and peeking down from the roof were even a couple of gargoyles. Ah…yeah…satanic church. She slipped her phone into her back pocked of her jeans and ran her fingers through her short red hair, cracking her stiffening neck and realized she should get back to the group. According to her phone and watch it was nearly midnight.

But when she turned around, she realized the boring tour guide and the tiny group were gone. “Did that dip wad just leave me?” She said aloud. God, he really did suck. She headed back the way she came and sure enough the cemetery was empty save for the graves and her. “Well…this is the start of every god damn horror movie I’ve ever seen.” She mumbled to herself. Jen realized she’d been doing that a lot more over the last year or so. But now it was getting to be a habit. Being alone so much you just sort of did it, maybe to remind yourself you had a voice.

With a heavy sigh she took out her phone and checked the battery. She was still at a good 80 percent, but the bad news was her cell service was nowhere to be found. “And now, your life as directed by Wes Craven.” She spoke. “Fuckery doo…okay…” She looked up and was thankful that the moon was still pretty bright. With a heavy sigh she headed out of the graveyard. Jennifer headed towards the direction she was fairly certain they had come from. There was…sort of a path through the trees. The starting point was down towards the bottom of the heavily treed hill where a parking lot sat, not really used. She’d been brought there by a van for the tour. If that ass left in the van before she got down, there she was going to set fire to something. Probably the van if she found it again with the idiot inside.

About twenty mins of walking later she crossed her arms in front of herself realizing her KISS Destroyer hoodie wasn’t near enough of a layer over her thin t-shirt. She was also realizing she was well and truly lost. “If I hear Ki ki ki ma ma ma at any moment I will crap myself.” She said through slightly chattering teeth. The moon decided it had done enough work for her and was now covered in black, oppressive clouds. Jen pulled her phone out and turned on the flashlight. Still no signal. She pondered what she’d done to piss off the universe. She came to a steep downgrade and carefully picked her way down. Luckily it wasn’t too bad for too long and evened out. Unfortunately it led to a thick patch of trees. Jen started praying to whoever was listening that there were no ticks or spiders around. Then she wanted to punch her own face for even thinking about ticks and spiders.

The phones light was barely helping due to the canopy of leaves and how close together everything was. After another few minutes though she heard something. It sounded like talking, movement. This didn’t look like it was near the parking lot though. Did lumberjacks work this late? Was this even a place lumberjacks would be? That made her remember how Dexter wound up ending and she got momentarily depressed. Then she heard the voices again. Well, people was a good thing, right? In the middle of the night in the woods. Jen realized caution might be a good idea.

She headed towards the voices, keeping her camera pointed to the ground and discovered the woods thinned out a bit here. There, in a tiny patch of cleared ground three men stood and one man was on his knees, hands tied behind his back. Jen’s eyes got wide as she saw the large gun in one of the men’s hands. The man on his knees was crying. “I swear to god Donnie…I didn’t want to do it. But they had pictures. I couldn’t…” The man on his knees sobbed. He was balding and looked like he was in his 60s. His face even from this distance was bruised and bloody.

“Shut the fuck up.” The one who was Donnie she assumed spoke harshly, kicking the man in the stomach and making him double over. “I don’t give a god damn about pictures. You sold us out. We’ve got a fuck ton of problems now. But we’re about to have less of one.” He spit on the man’s face and nodded to the other man with the gun. He was tall, unemotional, with a face as blank as a robot. His eyes were so dark they could have been black. He calmly raised the gun and shot the man in the head once and then in the back for good measure. The man fell to the ground in a heap.

Jen hadn’t even had time to react it had all happened so fast but in that moment when it hit her she stepped away in shock and horror, her foot cracking a twig and flashing her phone up towards them, the fucking light like a beacon. The murderers turned and looked straight at her. The one with the gun raised it and fired, but it missed her. And that’s all Jen needed to find the inner strength to sprint back the way she’d come.

“Get that bitch.” Donnie told Blake, the man with the gun and his partner Gary. “I’ll take care of this trash. Hurry the fuck up.”

Gary nodded, straightening the glasses on his head. He and Blake quickly moved towards where the witness had been. There was no way there was anyone else around. This spot was used specifically because no one ever came down there. They weren’t quiet running through the brush and trees. There was no need to be.

Jennifer was running like she never had before. Small branches slapped at her face and arms, and she nearly tripped three times. In her head from far away she thought about every idiot teenage girl who had tripped and died she’d made fun of in a slasher movie. “Sorry…” she thought as she cried. The crying was a problem and something she couldn’t stop or had control of. It was making it harder to breathe and she needed to breathe to run. Running was important as she scrambled up the now incline, her fingers digging into the dirt to make sure she didn’t slide back down. Where the fuck could she go? What the shit was she supposed to do?

She’d shoved her phone back into her pocket, not wanting the light to attract the two killers on her tail. She didn’t have service anyway even if she had a second to call the cops. She didn’t know anyone here. She was alone and it was dark, and she was going to die.

She broke through another barrier of trees, and she knew she had gone a different way than she’d come at that point in her scramble to get away. Jen tried to breathe, to calm her heart, but she felt like she was going to have a stroke. She glanced to her right and then her left, and that’s when she saw it. There was a gate, black wrought iron and it was open. She ran to it and glanced beyond it and realized the path led into part of the Emeritus church. The sprawling building loomed large above her suddenly. Well…the devil or death? Which did she want? Right then the devil was looking good. Jennifer quickly made her way down the pathway. There were little black iron solar lights that lit the stone walkway which was thankfully flat. Her legs were burning as bad as her lungs at this point.

The path led to two metal doors and Jen realized she may still be screwed if they were locked. She skidded to a halt and took a chance to look behind her. There was no one yet…but that didn’t mean anything. She took another breath and said a little prayer…not sure who might be answering them where she was trying to get into and grabbed the door handle. That’s when she heard the sounds of footsteps from far away, voices murmuring low. “Please please please…” she begged and pulled on the door handle. It swung open. She didn’t hesitate, she went in and pulled the door closed behind her.

Jen’s wide blue eyes glanced around the dimly lit hallway she found herself in. The air smelled of incense. It was cool inside the building and the sweat that had broken out during her run immediately started to get chilled and she shivered from a combination of that and pure fear. Her adrenaline was pumping. The men would figure out there was only one place she could have gone. She needed to hide. She turned right and moved quickly hoping not to run into anyone. Jen entered through another set of double doors, these not metal but stained dark wood. So far, she’d not seen anyone else and for that she was grateful. She just needed to hide away somewhere and think, just calm down and think. Maybe the church was empty…maybe they were on tour or something…

The double doors led to a short hallway that opened into what could only be called a small chapel. Though instead of a cross or a Jesus crucifixion scene in front of the pews there was a large statue of a very beautiful devil. His wings looked like they were carved out of black stone, maybe ebony or onyx though that would be a lot of onyx. The rest of him was marble. His horns wrapped backwards on a head covered in carved ringlets of hair like a really majestic goat. There was real red velvet draped over the statue whose right arm was raised, two fingers extended. His other hand was outstretched as if beckoning you. Jen was unnerved as she looked at it, the chill on her skin seemingly growing. Then she heard a door slam, and it pulled her out of wherever her mind was going.

The room smelled even stronger of incense and was lit with black candles and a low light from a red and clear crystal chandelier that hung from the ceiling. There were pews, the pulpit area and over on the far right what looked like a small, dark wood confessional. That was the only place she could really try to hide in she saw. She glanced back once hoping it was just some friendly neighborhood satanist that had closed a door and then moved quickly to the confessional. She opened the door and closed it quickly, ignoring the seat and sitting on the floor. She drew her knees up to her chin and felt the tears on her cheeks again, not able to stop them. Jen tried to breathe quietly, tried to calm down. They’d hear her sounding like a dying elephant if she didn’t get this under control. And that’s when the divider slid open making her jerk.

A softly accented voice spoke through the partition “Hello…hi?”

Jen realized there was a priest or someone on the other side…oh shit she’d dragged someone into this. She whispered as low as she could, realizing that the man couldn’t see her where she was hunkered on the floor. “I’m..down here…please…I just need to hide.”

“Sorella…” The man’s voice took on a note of concern. She glanced up and saw an eye looking through the partition. It was white as the ivory of the statue. It widened in surprise. “What is the matter dolce signora?” He asked her.

Jen swallowed thickly; how much should she say? She needed to hide. This guy could just as easily say “Here she is boys. Hail Satan.” But for some reason his voice made her think he wouldn’t. “There are….men…they’re after me. Please I just need to hide until they leave…they’ve got a gun…maybe more than one.” She had to warn him.

She saw a bit more of his face then as he leaned closer to the divider. It was dark but she could see him more clearly as he appeared to be studying her. Jen recognized him as the paints on his face came into view, the green eye and the white. Holy crap this was the guy. This was the lead of the band. And he was taking confessions? What the hell would satanic confessions deal with? And good god this was all really happening to her. A wave of nausea came over her and she had to fight the bile coming up her throat.

“Signora, are you hurt? Have they harmed you?” He asked her gently.

Jennifer shook her head. “No…no…I just need to hide.”

She rested her forehead on her knees. Italian…he was speaking Italian mixed with English. That’s what the accent was. It just kept becoming more surreal. She remembered the accent from the concert videos. He didn’t have it when he sang. But he had it when he was talking to the audience.

She heard it then, the door opening to the chapel. Footsteps. Two sets of them. It was them. It had to be them. She saw the dual-colored eyes glance up at the sound and she started shaking. Well, this was it…spur of the moment decisions have led you to a satanic church and dying horribly. Great job girl. Here lies Jennifer Travers…she fucked up a lot. Only she wouldn’t have a tombstone, it would be a shallow grave in the woods where she’d end up feeding a group of feral badgers with her rotting corpse. Maybe they would be cute badgers. Fuck.

He looked back down at her. “Signora,” he whispered softly, “Stay here, do not make a noise, si?”

Jen nodded, realizing she was trusting a complete stranger with her life at this point. What else could she do?

Blake and Gary glanced around the chapel, starting to move through the pews, looking for where the woman could have gone. Blake glanced at the statue of Lucifer and paused, feeling like the thing was watching them. He knew what the place was, but he’d not been inside. Gary touched his shoulder and he nearly jumped. He pointed towards the confessional booth and nodded. They started heading that way when the door to the priests side opened.

Out stepped a man in black robes with gold and blue satin accents. Golden upside-down crosses where stitched into the fabric. He wasn’t tall, but he had a presence that was only made more intense by the fact his face was painted like a stylized skull. His brown hair was brushed back from his face, greying at the temples with thin lines on his face showing he wasn’t exactly a young man anymore. Blake was weirded out though by the eyes when he saw them. Ringed in the black makeup they were different colors. One green, one white, both of them staring at him and Gary in a way that made him as unnerved as the devil statue.

“Benvenuti Fratelli,” the man said, his black gloved hands raised, pressed together and giving a little bow. “I am Papa Emeritus the 4th…are you here for confession?” He asked them, one brow raised. “I was just getting ready to lock up for the night.”

Blake looked at Gary. Gary was the talker. He glanced at the strange man shaking his head. “No we’re not here to confess. We’re looking for someone. Anyone else come through this way? Anyone try to break in?”

Copia Emeritus lowered his hands while studying the two men in front of him. Something in them reeked of malice and he could sense it. It was part and parcel of being a Papa. You knew who to protect your flock from when you were in a church like theirs. He wouldn’t have needed to hear the terrified sorella in the confessional’s words to know these two were dangerous. He saw the bulky outline of the gun in a holster beneath the tall ones jacket. He’d seen enough crime films and series to know what to look for when it came to that too.

He pursed his lips. “It’s not really possible to break in here. All are welcome at our church.” Copia walked closer to the men, away from the hiding place of the woman and making sure their eyes followed him. “Even you signories if you wish to join us.”

Gary gave a cold smile. “We’re not really the church going type.” He replied.

Copia nodded, returning the smile with as much of a chilly demeanor as the man in front of him. “Well, that is too bad, si? Perhaps someday.” He gave a slight shrug. “But as I said, I am getting ready to lock up for the night.”

The double doors opened then, as if on cue and in walked three figures in all black, silver matching masks on their faces, each a devil with no eyes. One was bigger than the others but all three looked as though they could bench press a truck. Copia glanced over “Ah, tempismo perfetto.” He turned to the new arrivals. “These gentlemen were just leaving, would you be so kind as to as to show them out? Grazie.” With a graceful wave of his hand he motioned for the two men to head towards the doors.

Blake looked at Gary and Gary gave a subtle shake of his head. He knew she was here somewhere. There was nowhere else she could have gone. But they couldn’t do anything right now…there were too many people, and it would be too big a mess. And the silver masked figures were making the hair raise on the back of his neck. He moved and Blake followed him as they walked out. Gary turned to the painted faced freak. “We might stop back now that you mention it.”

Copia raised a brow. “Of course, as I said all are welcome. We’d love to have you.” He gave him another slight bow as they walked out into the hallway, the doors closing behind them, his smile making his face look even more skull like for a moment.

Gary narrowed his eyes, trying to ignore the weird feeling creeping up his spine at the entire group of freaks. Donnie wouldn’t be happy about losing the woman, but then again…he knew she wasn’t really lost. She was here somewhere in the freak house. He followed Blake and the three silver masked weirdos.

When the doors closed behind them Copia moved to slide the lock in place. He took a breath and let it out slowly. He hadn’t expected a confrontation like that tonight. Nor had he expected a frightened woman cowering in his confessional. He needed to find out what had happened, the whole story. And he needed to make sure the lady was okay.

Copia very slowly opened the door to the confessional area and saw her with her head laying on her knees still, shaking like a leaf. She looked up suddenly and he saw the tear streaks on her face. Her face has a few cuts and marks on it from dirt. Her knees and hands were covered in it as well. Her blue eyes were the color of the satin on his robes, but they were rimmed in red from her tears. They were wide and terrified as they looked up at him.

The Papa crouched down, taking a knee next to her and held out a gloved hand. “Cara, they are gone. You are safe here.” He said softly. She was scared and looked at any moment she’d try to bolt away. He couldn’t have her doing that since the safest place she could be right then was inside the church. “I’m Papa Emeritus the 4th….but you can call me Copia.” He gave her a small smile.

She didn’t seem to be convinced yet that she was actually safe with him. He noticed the front of her hoodie and gave a slight nod, his smile growing, “Ah, you are a fan of singers in makeup, si?”

Jennifer realized what he was talking about. The irony was actually funny as she took a breath and wiped her eyes. “Yeah…yes…I grew up listening to them.”

Copia nodded. “I did as well.” He decided this was working, get her mind on something else. “Who was your favorite cara?”

Jen found her breathing was getting easier. She wasn’t trying to gulp air into lungs that didn’t want to work. “Uh…I always liked The Starchild…but The Demon was great…he was a vampire first though.” Rattling off Kiss trivia…she’d nearly been shot, and she was talking about Gene Simmons and spewing blood.

The Papa nodded, “Well, due to my position I must go with The Demon as a personal favorite, eh? But The Starchild has a voice…” Here he placed two fingers to his lips and did an air kiss. “Bellissimo.”

Jennifer laughed…she actually laughed. Just another surreal experience in a night filled with them “I guess you would be team demon.”

“Si, I would.” He reached closer to her with his hand, “Cara, would you like to go somewhere more comfortable than the floor?”

She nodded then and he helped her to stand. Her legs were sore, and she was glad he offered her a helping hand. She nearly stumbled but he steadied her. “Sorry…I’m…I ran up the hill and it wasn’t great.” She let go of his hand and looked at her own, covered in dirt and cuts from clawing up it.

Copia saw the state of her more clearly now. It was obvious she’d been through an ordeal already. She was still shaking though she’d calmed down some. “I can imagine.” He said, “May I have your name?” He asked her.

“Jennifer…Jen…I’m…” She felt a little woozy. “I’m…okay…I think I may need to sit down.”

Copia took her arm. “Jennifer you are safe here as I said. We are a haven for those in need and trouble.” He led her over to one of the pews. “Here, allow me to take your bag.” Jen slid the straps off her shoulders and watched Copia place it next to her. She sat down on the cushioned seat.

Copia examined her a bit closer. She was pale, very pale. He realized whatever had happened she was going into or was already in shock. “Jennifer,” he said her name and she glanced up at him. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Jen wanted to tell him. She needed to tell someone and the nice guy in the skull make up was right there. But when she started thinking about it her lungs started to ache. “They…they killed…oh god they killed that guy…” She managed to get out.

Copia’s eyes widened. Oh Dark Lord…she’d witnessed a murder? “You saw this happen cara?” He asked, sitting down next to her.

She shook her head yes. “They shot him…twice. I…I couldn’t do anything it happened so fast.” She turned and looked at him. “They saw me and they…they shot at me. And I ran.” Her voice was breaking, she couldn’t breathe as the image of the man’s head basically exploding came to her unbidden. She was trembling so hard that she thought she was going to break apart. But she couldn’t stop it, she tried but she couldn’t.

Suddenly she stood up and started backing away from the nice satanist. She’d just told him what had happened. “I’m…I shouldn’t have…” She was rambling and Jen found herself growing dizzy. They’d want to kill him too now, right? She’d just signed this rock stars death warrant, hadn’t she? The nice devil guy with the pretty green eye. Oh god there were black spots in front of her.

Copia stood up and moved close to her. He’d been to enough concerts to tell when someone was about to collapse from heat exhaustion or something else. And right then she was having a hell of a panic attack, something he was personally familiar with. “Jennifer, you’re okay…it’s okay…” He moved closer to her slowly.

“No…no…not…okay…” Oh god, she couldn’t feel her legs. The blood rushed from her head, and she felt herself buckling. She started to hit the floor and felt arms catching her, heard the rustling of fabric as she was caught before she could. The scent of incense was stronger than before. She glanced up and through a haze she saw a skull staring down at her and three silver-headed demons. Before she blacked out completely, she realized…she felt safe.

TRANSLATIONS: Benvenuti Fratelli - Welcome Brothers Sorella - Sister Cara - Dear Si - Yes Signora - Lady

[kozykricket]

subnautica 2!! now lets see how much i can guess right!!

okay so. subnautica 2 news yippee!! ill get right to the point: -ill be talking about what we know, and speculating based off of what we vaguely know. and also giving some opinions on stuff maybe -here be spoilers for both subnautica and below zero. the games story+lore are cool!! trust!! -also the reason its subnautica 2 is because below zero wasn't a full on sequel, it was moreso a really big dlc. like how uh pokemon black 2 and white 2 arent a new generation. anyways.

ill be using info from the steam page, if you're wondering wtf i mean by some things

okay so ... we know early access comes out in 2025, it has multiplayer, itll be a hefty big game with big hardware requirements, and they plan to give it content updates in early access, probably akin to like, slime rancher 2 is doing rn. they say 2-3 years of early access is their roadmap "Throughout Early Access, we plan to release a number of updates that add new content to the game — Such as more biomes, creatures, craftables, features, and narratives." ANYHOO to the juicy stuff. the game takes place on a NEW PLANET and the premise is that... your AI assistant suspiciously tells you "hey go to that planet" even though its uh, allegedly dangerous for humans but we'll get back to that THE BIG GAMEPLAY THING: does anyone remember the old Transfuser concept that was never implemented beyond some models and such in the first game? I think they even tried to bring it back in below zero, but ... they never could quite figure out how to make it work. okay but what WAS the transfuser? The idea behind the transfuser was to obtain DNA from creatures and use them to modify yourself for enhancements, such as mesmer DNA scaring off prey, or jellyray DNA making you glow! They were only basic concepts, the features were never implemented.

But, well... I should call it the Biosampler now! It's real now! and.... It seems its the main gimmick of your adventure in this game! The store page states "The ship's AI insists you carry on the mission. This world is too dangerous for humans to survive… Unless you change what it means to be human." as well as "Use your Biosampler to take samples for study. As you learn more about this world, evolve your genetics to adapt your body for survival." So, yeah! Seems they really were determined to get that concept into something real. and i LOVE it. freakin cool stuff but... thats the main gameplay. im here to be like matpat and say i think ive SOLVED the STORY ALREADY??? REAL?? so, not only is there that big creepy thing dragging the protagonist down in the teaser trailer, but the image of... assumedly the same creature, and is named subnautica_2_keyart_banner

...gives me some vibes that this thing is an important sort of... Big Bad of the game. and yknow what my bold prediction is? "You are a pioneer traveling to a distant world, but something is amiss. The ship's AI insists you carry on the mission. This world is too dangerous for humans to survive…" Hm, an AI giving suspicious instructions. Something is amiss. Listen, I'm not saying its this big squid guy, but I'm saying its this big squid guy. Dead serious, I mean cmon we had a telepathic creature talking to us trying to get us to reach it in the FIRST GAME, and we also had an ALIEN in our HEAD in the SECOND GAME. so i think a reasonable evolution / different take on Al-An, the weird but friendly alien stuck in your head because he didnt think of using your PDA, is... a not so friendly alien creature that definitely does think of using your PDA. I think it'd make a lotta sense, and... while I'm against the idea of having a straight up evil creature in subnautica, since yknow, the game wasnt designed for horror and evil to be its big thing... rather just, natural, primal terror from... creatures just doin' what they do in nature. (Shoutouts to this rockpapershotgun article from after the first games full release) but like... for one, you'd think it'd just want us to die. and could probably do that pretty easily, unless... its trapped. or needs help, or wants something from us more than just Dinner. Yes im saying that the plot is basically fnaf security breach dlc. THE MIMICCC is real, and its a squid now. I could see it being pretty fun if it only had SOMEWHAT of a hold on your AI or PDA... and so you'd sometimes get conflicting information. genuine tips, and then ... "you should go to that freaky deep cave over there haha" but also, it may have reason and capability to intentionally try to get on our good side instead of seeming trustworthy. They do say "What creatures, intelligent or otherwise, await your arrival?" on the steam page. also im just A BIG FAN OF THE TROPE OF LIKE. AN ENTIRE PLANET CRASHING SHIPS DOWN ONTO IT LIKE THAT. SOME SIRENS SONG TYPE VIBES i love the first subnautica and both risk of rain games for being... very similar in uh, being stranded on a planet where, oh hey, it turns out that theres been ships crashed here because, basically no ones allowed here! and theres just, a big history of. mysterious planet with stuff happening around it but just like. okay its just the bermuda triangle but for space lets be real. but now, instead of the planet wanting you OFF of it like in the first game, it wants you ON... MORE speculation: "...diverse ecosystems and unique creatures. But something isn’t right. The world is out of balance. What happened here? What happened to you? And more importantly, where are you?" this is mayhaps the most intriguing line on the page. theres tons of references to Mysterious Lifeforms and even mysterious ancient ruins (yess!!!! love those) but this, feels significant. I think the main story themes will be ... how creatures adapt to their environment (and you yourself adapting to overcome the situation, via awesome dna shenanigans) (the indomitable human spirit as well) and... of the balance of said environments / ecosystems. Why is it out of balance? Well, if they're doing something similarish to the first game, maybe... we could have something akin to the whole kharaa and warpers situation. Remember, warpers were just designed to attack and eliminate anything that was infected. Basically every creature there hates them because of that. Poor things, just doing their job... but... what if... this psychic-squid is trying to use its powers to control more creatures on the planet? Not all of them, of course. Many would just like to kill us because they're hungry. But some... may be brainwashed into disrupting the ecosystem... but also, then that'd kinda confuse me on the motivations of this big guy. Maybe it doesnt have any motives! Maybe it wants help, though ... I think that'd be too much of a repeat of the first game. But maybe they wanna go for that!

[isabeljkim]

What the hell is going on with Day Ten Thousand:

Day Ten Thousand was weird enough that I felt like it deserved directors commentary, even though I’ve stopped explaining myself mostly except when I do.

Here’s a disclaimer before we begin: don’t read too much into it. I've noticed our culture wants to explain young womens’ art as some sort of public confessional booth and our current culture has a fetish for the autobiographical. Fuck that. I didn’t write three different POVs and three interlocking nonlinear narratives about the nature of storytelling as a psychic technology to be told that my writing isn’t a calculated Craft with a capital C. Now whether it is good Craft is a decision for you, not for me. 

Anyway. 

Day Ten Thousand is a satire of an Isabel story by way of Vonnegut pastiche. We’ll come back to this. 

I called Day Ten Thousand “psychoanalysis bait” on twitter so I shall put all my cards on the table so that your psychoanalysis is at least accurate. Note that these are only my cards, because other people deserve their privacy. I guess you could probably Google all of this but like, jeez. Don’t.

I had a pretty regular time in college except for the tangential deaths. 

When I was twenty, I was the opinion editor for my university newspaper and a girl who was a friend of a friend killed herself by walking in front of a subway. There was then a sort of a small suicide bubble which was a little bit public because we were an Ivy, and one of my opinion columnists was kinda suicidal, and I, without any training, ended up in charge of writing a front page editorial about the mental health crisis on campus on account of the dead kids, etc, and talk to administration about the dead kids. 

I hate talking about dead kids. Don’t ask me about it, or about the reporting. I don’t want to talk about it. 

The whole thing sucked shit and it’s why I’m a lawyer now and not a reporter. 

If this was a story that would be the only fact, but this is reality so I have to mention that a couple years later a guy I knew got literally hate crimed and murdered in a forest. I found out about that because I saw his friend crying in public and didn’t stop to ask what was wrong. Later I heard about this in the news, and realized my acquaintance had been Literally Fucking Murdered. A few months ago I had been arguing with him in the literary magazine editors meeting about whether a poem was good or not. I think he won that argument. Then he was murdered for being gay. 

These were my introductions to the specific emotion of “sometimes people die and you don’t feel like you get to feel bad about their deaths and you still think about it a couple times a month seven years later.” 

You can probably guess where the subject material of this story came from.

Day Ten Thousand was a story about inevitable deaths, and the difference between a death in a story and a death in reality, and about…the way a death marks a narrative and a real life and how it becomes fictionalized over time. I also saw a clean way to finally do my deep time / far future story, which was something I had been thinking about on and off for a couple of years (the original version was about a shaman in the deep-time era who has a vision about having to do a murder re: preserving genetic material for the future, but it never really gelled in a way that made sense). 

I had also been wanting to write something a little metafictional, because I felt like I was writing the same story over and over (if you’ve noticed my stuff getting weirder, that’s why. I was on a bit of an experimentalist kick late last year and early this year). 

So it’s a satire of an Isabel story. I’m self-aware enough to note my obvious recurring motifs: time travel, dead people, grief, people who have a weird relationship to each other, a third-act twist, the tendency to punctuate with in-universe facts to imply emotion, to tell x in order to show y, egregious and blatant use of the second person. And then there’s the stuff that you wouldn’t know, but I do: I dislike writing in the first person, I wanted to do something nonlinear, I think a lot about stories about stories, about the idea of a story as a technology, I find myself dropped into recursive fate-like thought patterns. So a lot of this story is both my self-deprecating poking fun at myself and my habits, and also my thesis statement about…what is the point of fiction if not to make sense of the past and the future, I suppose.

The reason it is a Vonnegut pastiche is because I like Vonnegut a lot and I was trying to do something Slaughterhouse-5-ish with drastically less fucked source material. Sorry Kurt. 

There are three stories happening in Day Ten Thousand, and a secret fourth story. Each story is a suicide loop. The protagonist is trying to break a specific loop by telling a story. This story is about accepting what you have to, and changing what you can. This is a story about letting go and also not letting go. The emotional range of each narrative affects the other psychically, because by changing the vibe of the metanarrative, the individual narratives are allowed to change. 

The story in the archaic is a story that is being told postmortem, it is all hypotheticals based on fact. The story in the future is a singular narrative happening in real time until it isn't. And the story in the present is a guy telling the story about the future, which requires him to tell the story about the past as well, and mostly what Dave is doing here is avoiding the question, but it reflects how Dave thinks about the girl dying in front of the train. 

Does that make sense? No? That’s fair. That’s a postmortem explanation of what actually happened. What actually happened is that I rewrote Day Ten Thousand six times, each time more frustrating than the last, each time with the neutral-ish narrator taking up more and more air. And over time the narrator became a participant, and that’s what created the secret fourth story between “you” and the narrator. 

I had thought there were only three loops that needed to be escaped - the past (archaic, pinned story), and the future (space station, mutable fact), and that the present (the narrator’s world) was something that was static (pinned fact). After all, the girl’s already dead. She’s already stepped in front of the train. 

But the narrator isn’t doing so hot. The narrator is also Dave. And the narrator is telling the story to someone. Somewhere between version one and version six, I realized the only version of this story that makes sense is the one where the story is a conversation, and that you and I, as the narrator and the person at the other end, were also in a loop. 

So. That's whats happening.

I’m not sure if I love the ending. But I rewrote it six times and this one felt as final as it is going to get. I am done reinventing the fucking wheel. You know how it is with spaghetti. Promise I’ll write you something normal next time, I think I’ve gotten the avant- garde out of my system for a few months. 

And hey, I know I said all cards on the table but people deserve their privacy and that includes the kid i used to be when I was twenty, sitting in the shitty little windowless opinion column office, writing about suicide. 

Anyway. Day Ten Thousand is about stuff and things. Themes. So it goes. 

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you later. 

If that was too depressing for you, here are some fun facts: 

The main character is Dave after 2001: A Space Odyssey because I had wanted to make a “I’m sorry Dave I can’t do that” joke, but I couldn’t shove it in :( 

I just thought that phlebotomist was a funny word but I also fucked myself because I misspelled it every time. 

I reread half of Slaughterhouse Five to write this but then my copy got returned to the library automatically so I didn’t finish it. (yes, I’ve read it before, like three times)  

I took one single evolutionary anthropology course in college and it shows.  

I did end up looking at the wikipedia page for “the wheel” for this and then wondering exactly what I was doing with my life. 

About half the facts in this are real, and I read a couple of papers for a couple of things in it (that I promptly then ignored), but the rockets-rome-horse’s ass thing is specifically a story that my friend Max H. likes to tell. 

[turbofanatic]

Any fun twists on Midna herself or the Twili. How...Into his missing goth GF is Fuzzbutt?

@badlydressedwriter

Poor Fuzzbutt is extremely infatuated... and it's probably not healthy. He'd never gone far from Ordon and suddenly got thrown into an emotionally charged situation where she was the only person he could rely on. And then she turns out to be hot? He did not have a chance and I think she's savvy enough to realize it. I get the feeling Midna has a bad habit of toying with people's emotions, though she clearly matures by the end of the game.

Since she's now more aware of this she decides to cut ties, but the real reason she breaks the mirror is that Hyrule Kingdom was DUMPING MONSTERS INTO HER REALM, even if she wanted to stay with Fuzzbutt she's got to destroy that gateway.

Could they meet again later in a healthier situation and figure out their relationship properly? Yeah, and they may not end up together. Life's like that sometimes.

Ilia is out of the question for romance with Fuzzbutt in Bad Moon because she likes girls. They're good friends though and they try to help each other out with their trauma from the whole ordeal. But it's been a few years and Fuzzbutt is still wandering around deeply unmoored and fighting monsters (I'm making Link's Crossbow Training part of this).

Midna does show up again in the War of Eras, AKA, I Take Hyrule Warriors Too Seriously. She becomes friends with Ravio and Tiny, and the three of them make a dark magic "good guy" trio. She also is very frustrated and has no respect for time paradoxes so she's more than happy to tell Tiny everything, including the fact that Ganondorf's not actually dead which sets into motion Tiny's paranoid attempts to prep the next hero... yay time travel!

My ideas for the Twili aren't super unique but here they are. They're formerly related to the Gerudo and built both Majora's mask and the Fused Shadow to break into the sacred realm (the eye designs and backstory of the dark interlopers and ancient tribe are very similar, there's also Gerudo patterns on Zant's clothes even before he meets Ganondorf but one could argue that's just a flashback and maybe not accurate). Also it's concerning how hard the light spirits came down on them!

[laurancezvahlslefteyebrow]

Good Morning council it’s been a while

@xerith-42 @gonedreaminggg @cinnamontoastcroonch

I wanted to talk more specifically about what happens to certain SK characters after Shad’s eventual death, as well as the difference between premature and full shadow knights. i never really got around to this so i figured now is as good a time as any.

Ok first and foremost, full SKs:

I know some of you had liked the idea of full SKs dropping dead once and for all after Shad’s death, and at first I did too. But then I got to thinking. Technically speaking, they’d already earned their immortality. Yes the rest of their SK abilities were lost, but I like to think they remain immortal, a final gift of sorts from Shad due to their loyalty. Only issues? Well first off, they’re immortal, not invisible. They can still die, they just don’t age. Second, unlike PMSKs, they don’t have half a soul. They have no soul. They’re essentially walking husks of their former selves. They’re basically zombies, wandering the earth aimlessly, with one goal. Finishing their task. For most, like Gene, their task is fulfilling Shad’s wishes. Ie, killing Aphmau and her gang. So, if you were to approach them they’d be extremely aggressive, even if you had nothing to do with Aphmau. These guys would eventually need to be rounded up, they’re too dangerous to be left alone.

As for the few full SKs that weren’t loyal to Shad, (Vincent, Zenix, and Sasha) they’d also be husks, but they’d be non violent (Zenix… for the most part). I’m sure the Phoenix Alliance would probably try to find a cure for them, though I’m sure that’s unlikely.

Then we have the 2 PMSKs that actually died and were resurrected, Vylad and my oc Eseryt (i’m counting her bc she’s canon is my rewrite). Now the only reason they aren’t walking husks is because they never gained their immortality and thus still have the other half of their souls. Only thing is, half a soul has a tough time piloting a body alone. And so, they remain motionless and cold. Not dead, but comatose. Though they’re minds are very aware, moving a million miles a minute, panicking probably. They can very faintly hear and feel the things around them, but it’s muffled and far away. Eventually Eseryt is awoken by being given Kul’Zak’s relic (i’m sorry it’s not vylad 😬), the reason this works is because A) Eseryt is Kul’Zak’s incarnation and B) that relic contained a fragment of Zak’s soul, which was then bestowed upon Es. She’s awake, but less of herself, though not much less of a person, she now has more soul than most SKs.

Now Vylad is different. In order to wake him they needed to travel to the Yggdrasil Forest and convince the elder and council to left them have a sapling. This was very hard to do. The only real reason they eventually gave in was because these people had just vanquished the one thing that was a threat to all of them. Anyway, a ritual is preformed and Vylad awakens, also less of himself. He goes on to live a semi normal life, but one night while in a bout of sleeplessness, he unknowingly admits to Garroth that he wishes they wouldn’t have wasted the sapling on him and that he wished they would’ve just killed him. This absolutely shatters Garroth.

And on that cheery note! Laurance!

Now Laury is different. Not only was he premature, but he also never actually died. He was just transformed. Meaning, his body never needed to be resurrected. In the beginning he falls unconscious just like the others, but eventually he wakes up on his own. Though it is a slow process, taking weeks maybe even months for him to get back on his feet. When he first wakes he doesn’t know what’s happening. He’s feverish and scared and barely conscious. Eventually the fever leaves him and he’s left feeling like less of himself. More numb than usual. And he has to come to terms with the fact that he can hardly see or walk, that he’ll never guard again, and that his closest friends the past couple of years are both on their deathbeds and no one knows how to save them (he wakes up quite a bit before vylad and es). His only solis is that he’s finally with Aph and Garroth again, and he can finally meet his daughter.

I’m sorry that was a lot but I had to finally get it all out

thoughts? prayers perhaps?

[scenetocause]

For the director's cut thing: At the end of Climb up to your lips, you implied Max F and Logan might be A Thing, and I'd love to hear more about that if you want to share ❤️

idk if i'll ever actually finish the logan perspective thing i started writing midway through the main story bc actually when i looked back at it i was like these are really just my own background notes what do you think you are jrr tolk himself you don't have to publish stuff you wrote for your own reference. but hey if there ever was a medium for all your stupid lore and self-fanfic then it surely is a o three dot org (note to old men fantasy writers etc) so maybe i will.

basically the thesis is that logan, like oscar at the start, is lonely and can't get what he wants, which is a boyfriend. both him and oscar have resigned themselves to never being able to reconcile their ambitions in f1 with anything that fulfils them in that way and sort of let their friendship settle as a pseudo-standin where they can hang out and be each other's person to take to things, go to dinner with, whatever and just live in suspended animation until something (???) happens and they get disney prince rescued.

something does happen for girloscar which is that she isn't so much disney prince rescued as like, dragged into a bath by a wet cat. and she can't believe this is happening because she's fancied lando for ages, used to pine at him from the alpine pit wall so much she got caught by otmar once, who mistook it for trying to steal secrets off mclaren and she had to make something up about the front wing.

she's so excited to be teammates with him but also so, so mortified and trying really hard to be normal about it. logan's thrilled to be in f1 at all but also realising that deal he had for fucking about a little bit with some of the f2 guys was just fucking about for them when their girlfriends weren't on the travel budget and definitely won't survive being in different paddocks.

oscar gets lando and logan gets lonelier. at the same time, his season's falling apart and everyone's announcing his career dead before it feels like it's had a chance to start. he has to rely on benny and james and benny starts to, gently, put distance between them to keep it professional, manage logan's expectations. so he clings to james, at the same time as knowing this is probably the worst possible way to try and keep his seat and that it's going nowhere, the team principle not a viable fuckbuddy, let alone anything more.

enter jenson button. hot dad, sympathetic ear, special advisor to williams. whiskey supplier. a man who's there to help you celebrate your first f1 point and certainly isn't going to argue if that involves a bit of fucking your brains out. lovely, sweet, gentle, funny jenson who makes logan feel special and loved and sweeps him up from his flat in london in fancy cars to go to fancier restaurants as though he deserves the champagne.

and then goes home to his wife and kids.

somewhere along the way, hurting during the 2024 season, logan has to break it off. he wants what oscar and lando have, not this. it was glamorous and exciting and giving him the confidence he was part of this world he's fighting to stay in, for awhile but then it starts making him realise he'll only ever be the number two in that situation, forever out of contention for the real prize. it's all a bit on the nose.

so he stubbornly struggles through 2024, single as fuck and finding himself taking rather than giving advice to oscar about things to stick up your arse, which feels lonelier than ever before. in miami the combination of his and oscar's shit weekend and lando's good one leads to him coming out for a few drinks and ending up fucking one of the mclaren pr guys. he has a meltdown when he sees the papaya shirt on the floor the next morning.

pr guy's very discreet about it, although he keeps smiling at logan every time they cross paths and logan's about 85% sure there isn't actually a need for him to follow oscar so closely, actually. logan's shaky position makes someone being so into him about as comfortable on his skin as sweaty fireproofs but that doesn't stop him being desperate enough to fall into bed with the guy again once he has something to celebrate. once he realises he's charlie-from-marketing's jenson figure.

he's not an asshole so he does take the guy on a few dates, try and romance him a bit. maybe he, too, can find love with a mclaren twink, it worked for oscar after all. but it just doesn't click, the guy doesn't really understand him, too in awe of the fact he's getting screwed by an f1 driver to notice the bedsheets are ikea and one of the pillows is pretty badly tearstained. that logan's barely clinging to his ride, feels like he is what they're saying; one of the worst ever, not even brave enough with the car to crash as spectacularly as latifi.

logan doesn't exactly break it off but says he needs them to take a break while he's negotiating his contract, can't risk anything. it's not a huge surprise when a few week's later it's obvious the guy's moved on with ollie bearman. like his last relationship, it's all a bit on the nose.

2025 gives him time to work out what he really wants. f1 might not be it, life might be better somewhere else. he starts talking to formula e teams, wondering if a life in papaya might not be that bad after all provided he didn't have to see oscar and lando mooning over each other. and that's not even fair because oscar asks him to be her best man and he's stoked, especially because lando's is max and they've stayed in touch, still hang out. max is doing a few bits racing gts, initially as a quadrant thing but then it turned out he was more than good enough to be in demand as the pro to a gentleman driver who was so eager to get back in a race car he didn't really negotiate on price, even.

logan avoids asking him about it but max is fucking hype about how mint the 24 hours of spa is. fucking mental, mate. you're throwing it up eau rouge with a bunch of blokes who wear suits, like proper suits not race suits, all week in the pitch dark and it's shitting it down with rain and you think: i shouldn't be enjoying this, should i? should really be driving into the pits and saying no thanks, that's absolutely mad, can't be doing that sort of business. but then when it's happening you're like, properly into it, aren't you? got a podium in misano, mate, it was mad. blowie off one of the mechanics, that didn't happen in f3 did it haha mind you guess they would've been a bit of a nonce back then wouldn't they. you should come to a race i'll get you vip, they'll go mental for an f1 driver being there mate, they went mad when bob dropped into brands and he was only there five minutes.

logan doesn't say that he thinks he has a lot less star power than lando but they do give him vip anyway. he's never been to magny cours before, it feels weighted with that type of european history the classic race tracks do, like another thing that might find out who he is and reject him.

even if the circuit isn't embracing him, max does. complains about logan being so fucking tall, mate, it's annoying, i swear you were smaller than me once. he wasn't but max can pretend that, if it helps. max is jangling with nerves, rushing between trying to sort things out with the team - because it's not like, you know, f3 and that, you have to set the car up so the other bloke can drive it the best he can and then you just sort of have to cope with how it is. actually, that's quite like f3 innit? do you remember in fucking silversto- nah, let's not think about that right now.

it's nice. it's nothing to do with f1. even with the quadrant logos, that's max's thing, no weird haunting of lando around and it's not like logan dislikes the guy, at all, it's just that it's nice that this is all theirs. logan can breathe out, relax, laugh properly for what feels like the first time in ages because no one's scrutinising his every move and max gives him a headset and tells him to listen out for when he's boxing, put the fucking kettle on, yeah?

logan falls asleep on max's hotel bed, listening to him recount the whole story of a race he just watched. max tucks him in, rather than the trophy and if they wake up hugging that's no one's business but theirs. didn't used to do blowies in f3, either but when there's something to celebrate and max really is so small, so cute, so unselfconscious about everything because it's just them, yeah. doesn't have to be a massive fuss like bob and oscar, do you want a lift back to the uk? i've got space since bob moved his fucking golf clubs out the boot finally.

oscar and lando get married a week later and it's very oscar and lando. logan didn't have a date to bring, didn't even think about it before he saw george's girlfriend and kelly and the sharp stab of whoever lewis' guy is. logan knows there's no point being jealous on that scale; he couldn't be lewis, on any level but everyone wants, don't they?

max doesn't have a date either. probably doesn't need to hold logan's hand while they're waiting for lando and oscar to do their vows and max is crying and maybe logan's crying too. they have to stay behind to clear up the flower petals, getting tutted at in french while max rolls his eyes and says they should try being told off at Viry, fucking hell.

if they're later to the reception than is strictly necessary because as they were leaving max turned round and said "do you think, mate. you know, we could - one day" and logan decided to stop living on borrowed time and properly make out with him against the harbour wall. have to stop because they're getting dangerously close to third base and max is breathy and gasping and telling logan he can have this. they always were equals, each others' biggest rivals, maybe they're meant to be here, bright eyed and hair disarrayed and grinning at each other, not the places they've been struggling.

oscar's definitely onto them, makes some really crude comments about it being traditional for the best man and head bridesmaid to fuck, innit and logan has to tell her to fuck off and bother her husband. they are properly cute, though, aren't they? never thought bob would be able to hold a relationship together but she's properly straightened him out, who knew he just had to get pegged- fuck, pretend i didn't say that. oh, how did you know, too?

logan and max normally stay with lando and oscar when they're in monaco. but there's only one spare room and this doesn't feel the moment to drop that announcement, as well as they do not want to hear what those two pervs are doing to each other tonight. so they're in different hotels but everything in monte carlo's pretty much the same place, pick logan's on the basis it's nearer the casino and they can go for a late night, last drink once they've got oscar and lando's very drunk dads into a cab.

kissing when they're in fancy suits is hot. fucking when they're out of them is hotter. when logan slides home into max's body and sees him gasp, feels his hands curl on logan's shoulders as they both moan and if it's too much like lovemaking then, well. maybe that's what they're doing. creating something, between them. something that's all theirs and they can choose without anyone else's decisions or approval. no need to wait in limbo or have to guess what happens next, which is that they come on each other and then curl up together, max sprawled on logan's chest all happy and sated and real.

he doesn't wait for the f1 decision, to make plans. racing drivers aren't patient and he finally feels like one again, especially every time his boy brings home a trophy like it's theirs. logan starts adding to the collection, too. both of them get to push, at last. they've always been good at doing that for each other.