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askthestans · 2 years ago

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Hello Pines brothers. I come to you about an old question: about being a father and guardian. Stanley, know that you would be a wonderful father and a wonderful parent. Of course, you are not perfect in many ways, but you know the basic things about forgetting about someone: feeding, washing, proper sleep and safety. Unlike your brother, who can't even take care of himself, let alone anyone else. Stanley, have you ever considered adopting a newborn baby in the past?

Stanley: Well, Lu (can I call ya that for short?), you're right. I may not be a dad, but I'm somethin' even better: a Grunkle. See, people think parents are the most important people in a kid's life. And they are, don't get me wrong! But a Grunkle (or Graunty, for that matter) is so important, too. We're like backup parents or grandparents, minus dumb rules like goin' to bed at a reasonable time or limits on sugar intake, with added fun and law-breaking!

And you're 100% right: Ford can't take care of himself. Why do ya think I know about parenting so well? I had to look after this nerdy runt for years of my life! When we were kids, guess who had to protect ‘im from bullies and brush the sand outta his hair? Me. When we were teens, who had to make sure his late night science fair project candy stash was stocked and that he got enough sleep? This guy, that's who.

Never mind the thirty years I spent gettin' him back from sci-fi sideburn land. Oh, he whined about *raises voice an octave* "openin' that portal was too dangerous, Stan!" and "ya almost tore apart the fabric of reality!", but without me, Ford'd still be sleepin' in some slimy alien's armpit and chewin' on chicken-flavored tentacle strips for dinner.

If I thought workin' on fixin' the portal was hard, I was not prepared for takin' care of this guy after he got back. Oof, I'd take the task of carin' for Little Dork Ford or readin' theoretical physics textbooks over...

*He gestures over at Ford, who's working at the desk in his lab.* Ugh, whatever this wrinkly, musty, grumpy old creature is. It's Little Dork Ford, but now it sheds everywhere, has an ego, and it gets into even more trouble somehow.

Stanford: *Is currently busy at his desk, scribbling away at some experiment notes.* You do know that I can hear you insulting me, Stan?

Stanley: See? Ego taller than the Empire State Building, all to cover up insecurity as deep as... hey, Ford? What’s the world’s deepest ocean trench you told me those underwater aliens or whatever hide in?

Stanford: The Mariana Trench.

Stanley: Yeah, that place! Thanks, Sixer-

Stanford: *Reaches into sliding shelf behind his desk, pulls out The Norton Anthology of Shakespeare, Third Edition. He turns around without a word, narrows his eyes, and holds it up so Stan can see what it is. There are little post-it markers sticking up in neon colors from the pages, each marked similarly to “Quotes to Share with Stan #33″ His expression turns into a wicked, depraved smile.*

Stanley: *Backs away and starts sweating.* ANYWAYS, let’s take this conversation upstairs! AS FAR AWAY FROM FORD AS POSSIBLE!

*Stan drops a smoke bomb, rips the laptop they use to answer AsktheStans questions off its charger, and runs into the elevator of Ford’s lab.*

*The elevator, being old and rickety as it is, takes a long time to close the doors and start lifting. Stan holds the laptop with one hand and furiously, desperately smashes the up arrow button with the other, swearing profusely at how slow it is.*

*Meanwhile, a figure with six fingers looms in the dissipating smoke just outside the doors, outlined in the occasional neon blue flash of machinery he walks past, pacing closer, a book opened in his hands like a preacher about to read scripture at a demon.*

Stanley: Not again! *Screams and cowers as Ford nears and the doors are still closing, slowly, slowly...*

Stanford: “Thou ominous and fearful owl of death, Our nation’s terror and their bloody-”

*The doors close just before Ford can reach them.*

Stanley: *Lets out a sigh of relief and wipes his brow.* Whew! That was close. Hopefully he’ll calm down before this old elevator gets back down and up again. Heh, I have a good hidin’ spot just in case, though. I made sure to find one after last week’s event where I interrupted his dumb ‘married to science’ joke.

*Stan keeps talking as the elevator creaks upwards.* Sorry, your question... uh... adoptin’ a newborn baby. Hm...

Come to think of it, I actually did try to adopt a newborn once! It was a few years after I got established here at the Shack, had some extra money, was feelin’ a little lonely, wanted someone to teach all my good moral lessons and tell stories of the good ol’ heist days to...

So I went to the nearest adoption agency and asked about it. I even had a name picked out: Stanford Sherman Pines! I thought, just wait ‘til I get Ford back, and he sees this cute kiddo that’s named after him. Heh, just picture his face-

*The elevator doors open to the stairwell just down from the Gift Shop. Ford is waiting just outside. The book is still open in his hands. His eyes are unblinking.*

Stanford: “The period of thy tyranny approacheth. On us thou canst not enter but by death-”

Stanley: *Rips Ford’s glasses off, digs into his own pocket, and throws awfully convenient salt into Ford’s eyes. Stan politely tucks the glasses back into Ford’s coat pocket with a little tap, then slams the down arrow elevator button this time.*

*By the time Ford gets back up from hunching over in pain, the doors close in his face again. Stan starts talking again.*

L-long story short, they saw my criminal history, and said no. I told ‘em they were makin’ a mistake! I, Stanley - er, well, I was pretendin’ to be Stanford at the time - Pines, would make a great dad! I mean, look at how well I took care of Dips and Mabes over last summer! They only went to jail once. And I even made ‘em Stancakes a few times!

But oh well. A few years later, Soos showed up at my door and got hired. I mean, he’s not my son, just my favorite employee, but he’s as close to a kid as I could ask for. With him, the little Pines twins, and Ford, I got all the kids I need! Seriously, ya might think I’m a big kid myself, and you’re right, but compared to those four, I feel like a mother hen.

Just doin’ the laundry around here is like a constant cycle of scrubbin’ food stains and science experiment chemicals. And who do you think all these dorks come to when they need a shoulder to cry on?

*The elevator door opens up to Ford’s lab again.*

*Stan winces, then when nothing happens, he peers out. Ford is nowhere to be seen. Stan lets out another sigh of relief, then starts walking out of the elevator. The laptop is still in his hands, the camera showing the empty elevator behind him.*

Looks like Ford finally gave up! Heh, salt! Didn’t think that would work, but it just goes to show ya, when in doubt, and when your twin brother who spent thirty years survivin’ in a hellish slew of dimensions comes after you for tellin’ the truth about his awful insecurity issues...

*Unbeknownst to Stan, behind him on the camera, a figure pops down from the service access hatch in the elevator roof, landing as silently as a ninja, rising from the still dissipating smoke as a shadow, the only light on the figure being glasses agleam with blue glow.*

Salt will do the trick! Yep, that’s all it took. I’m sure he’ll get me back for it later, but ya never know! Think he’ll forgive me? Hah! Of course he’ll forgive me! He’s my twin brother. Deep down he loves me, ya know?

*The figure comes up right behind Stan into the light, quiet as a ghost. It’s Ford, eyes puffy and red, tears streaming down his face, salt glistening in his eyelashes, but he’s still expressionless and unblinking.*

*Ford’’s pain is indeed great, but the stinging salt of betrayal can always be soothed by the sweet taste of revenge.*

Stanley: Ah! I’m sure he’ll forgive me. And if the salt doesn’t work and he’s still mad, I can always fall back on old reliable, right? *Stan makes a motion, as if kneeing someone in the crotch.* I did that once before, and he deserved every moment of-

Stanford: Care to let me finish?

*The laptop’s camera turns into a blur of machines and shadows and the sound of screaming. The laptop is set back down on the table and left streaming. Ford walks past slowly, book raised, reciting line after line of Shakespeare, screen glitching until all movement stops.*

*An hour passes. Eventually, Ford comes back and sees the laptop is still on. He leans down to speak, smiling innocently.*

Stanford: Oh! I forgot about the laptop. Apologies, internet stranger! My brother and I just had a casual argument, is all. Don’t worry, I didn’t kill him. He’ll be fine.

*A scream erupts from somewhere further back in Ford’s lab. Ford turns around, eyebrows furrowed in irritation.*

Stanley, if you wanted to avoid getting locked in a room with a barghest, you should have thought about that before you sassed me and threw salt into my eyes!

*Chuckles and speaks to the camera with his mouth behind his hand.* Actually, the barghest is a pretty friendly creature. Demonic looking thing, but give it a nice belly rub or a bone, and it’ll be wagging its tail in no time. But Stan doesn’t need to know that.

Now, if he’d interrupted my marriage to science speech again, well... let’s just say I would have locked him in a pitch black room with a far worse creature.

*Shrugs.*

I’ll just leave this on for you all to listen to the sweet symphony of justice. Also because I need someone to bounce some ideas off of. What do you say? Want to help Dr. Pines - world-renowned supernatural expert - plan a new DD&MD campaign?

*Another scream. Demonic howling and the sound of rattling chains ensue.*

*Ford laughs, brings the laptop with him, then sits back at his desk, humming Dead or Alive’s ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’ as he scribbles away, occasionally asking the viewer their opinions on what monsters to use in said campaign.*

#stanley pines #stanford pines #gravity falls #yeah so uh Ford's starting to scare me even as the writer of this blog #but you know what I need more dramatic nerd moments in my life and so do you #he survived thirty years in the multiverse somehow #you can't tell me this man doesn't have a dark side #he pursued bill for 30 years #he holds grudges and he holds them well #ford is an owl #an ominous and fearful owl of death

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callipraxia · 9 months ago

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Further Interview Analysis: the "Ford Plan," and Bill's Blind Spot

I didn’t sleep again the night after the “musical Weirdmageddon” post, and wrote a lot of loopy stuff the next day, and posted none of it. But then I slept, so yay, time for an attempt at some actual analysis! Original interview is, as before, here, with credit and thanks to @fordtato and @hkthatgffan.

"I think that Bill was trying to find Ford, but I think- I always think of Bill as like, this guy who has, like - you know, he’s stirring the pot of soup that is the Ford plan, and he’s got like 900 pots of soup across the universe of different things he’s working on, and at any given moment, he’s so cocksure that it’s all gonna work his way eventually."

Bill’s a trillion years old, so it’s like, Ford disappearing for thirty years is like- [snaps fingers] is like somebody saying they’re ghosting you and then texting you the next weekend, you know what I mean? He’s like- he’s like [handwave] “Ford’s gonna- Ford’s gonna be back. Ohh, [air quotes] we had such a big fight, Ford’s sooo mad at me,” oh, you know, “our will-they-won’t-they-take-over-the-universe relationship, like, he’s gonna- he’s gonna march off in a huff, and he’ll be back, ‘cause we’re- is Ford gonna find anyone else in the multiverse that strokes his ego as well as me?” Is there anybody else in the universe that’s gonna make Ford feel as important as Bill? No, of course not, Ford needs validation, and so Bill knows Ford’s gonna be back eventually.

...so, Bill still had a "Ford plan," did he? Like, some active plan that involved using Ford in some way to escape the Nightmare Dimension? Interesting.

I always interpreted his cliche-villain-gloating routine when Ford confronts him about being a liar as the point where Bill was ready to discard Ford altogether. If he had wanted to - if he could have been bothered - after all, he probably would have had a very high chance of somehow manipulating Ford out of the realization that he'd been played: Ford had been literally worshiping Bill a few days earlier. He was basically a cultist, and he was not only someone who'd spent way too long talking to Bill, he was also someone who could only confront Bill on Bill's turf, so to speak. But Bill didn't even try to turn it all around, because (ran my reasoning) he'd gotten what he really needed: the Portal existed, and you can't close Pandora's box. The technology was there. It would not, from Bill's trillions-of-years perspective, have taken very long to find some way to manipulate someone else into rebuilding the Portal once it existed even given Ford's attempts to hide the plans. Bill was scribbling on the Journal in invisible ink after Ford's last entry, before he buried it but after he wrote all about his plans in some detail, even drawing a map to J2. The Journal separation plan would have been laughably easy for Bill to work around. So at that point, I assumed that the only reason Bill didn't arrange for Ford to - if I may be blunt - kill himself the first time he blacked out was because Bill was basically getting off on the psychological torture and wanted to see how long he could keep it going/enjoy himself until Ford literally died of exhaustion. Ford certainly seems to think he'd have been killed if he had lost the game of 'hide and seek' in the asteroid field. I thought the idea that "Bill used Ford until he used him up, and now he was done with him" was basically canon, and that Bill paid no more attention to him from that point onward than you would pay to a broken Solo cup in the trash until Ford did something unexpected - ie, survived the Multiverse, came back with a death ray, apparently took out a few Henchmaniacs, almost shot Bill himself, and then survived the experience.

But here we have what I suppose amounts of authorial commentary which seems to directly contradict the idea that Bill didn't even regard Ford was worth finding and/or killing. Bill was looking for Ford, all those years - not all that intently, apparently, or really very long from Bill's point of view, of course, but still - and Bill still had a plan for Ford. Bill also, if I'm reading that right, seems to have really just expected Ford to come back, of his own free will, to join him eventually, not to kill him.

Of course, it's possible I'm reading that wrong, and Bill just knew that killing him would also give Ford a massive ego boost and that Ford would have to eventually reenter his orbit in order to attempt to do so. It's also true that Bill just not being able to accept rejection in no way, by itself, implies he wasn't planning to go "hahahaha, no" and kill Ford fifteen seconds after he finished begging Bill for forgiveness. But the 'Ford plan' bit seems to undermine that. Let's assume the hesitations and half-sentences are Hirsch improvising, not Bill actually cutting off a thought he might not like the end of. So was Bill genuinely never planning to kill Ford after he bumbled into the Nightmare Realm back in '82? And if not - what in the world was he planning to do to him once one of the Henchmaniacs caught him, then? And why do I have the feeling that whatever it was would have made murder seem both a) kind and b) not at all disturbing by comparison?

Also gives us, in a way, some insight into Bill. Kinda. We've always known that there's this...level, this very deep, seldom-relevant but very important level, on which Bill doesn't quite understand how people work. We see it primarily in the mistakes that Bill makes with Stan and Mabel. Maybe there was nothing he could have said or done in the situation with Stan to save himself, Stan had reached the point of literally suicidal determination and there's really not much you can do to budge someone at that point and especially not once their consciousness has already caught fire, but with Mabel - in Sock Opera, all Bill needed to do to win was keep his mouth shut for three more seconds. He was clever enough to see how Dipper and Mabel's relationship could be exploited to get Dipper to do what he wanted, but he did the exact opposite of what he should have done to get Mabel to do what he wanted, because for one thing he underestimates Mabel and for another...it comes back to that elusive Thing that Bill can't or won't understand about the deeper levels of humans. Or maybe it's Things, plural, and a distinct one for each person, but there's something there at the bottom of the personality that Bill apparently can't jive with.

With Ford, for instance, he clearly underestimates the power of genuine self-hatred and remorse. Bill may feel bad in some way about what he did to his homeworld, but look at the actual words of the Axolotl's prophecy: he feels that way not because he has realized at some point that what he did was fundamentally wrong, but because he wants to go home and can't. Essentially, his regret is for his own inconvenience. And in a lot of ways, I can see how that could have translated into him feeling he did, in fact, know all he needed to know to push Ford's buttons, because while it's never spelled out for us, it seems, based on his habit of carrying around family photographs on his person apparently since college despite not getting on well at all with his family, that there was maybe some tiny part of Ford that also wanted to "go home," and not just to flip off the town. Ford was also someone who deeply feared the consequences of his actions, if you read between the lines in the Journal - his worries about a 'Close Encounter' with the government, his scrawling that he must not lose his nerve on some early Portal notes, his talking more and more about Fiddleford losing his nerve in a way that starts seeming kind of projection-y - and Bill could certainly understand that fear perfectly well: we see Bill panic outright in the finale when he realizes he's out of options he's going to remotely like. In the unlikely event Stan would or even could save him, Stan obviously wouldn’t have done so so on Bill's own terms: Bill would have been stuck making an honest deal for once, or else left with the options of "die" and "take a one-in-a-million shot and do his invocation of the 'Ancient Power,' possibly putting himself squarely into the hands of an enemy whose full aims he probably does not know." But then, that's Bill's flaw - the things that drove him to become what he did were revenge and the fear of Death, of the ultimate loss of control. His arrogance makes him think he can take most any situation, no matter how disadvantageous it might seem, and twist it around sooner or later, but Death - well, that's it, ain't it? Or, as Horace might say in a really old translation:

When life is o'er, and Minos has rehearsed The grand last doom, Not birth, nor eloquence, nor worth, shall burst Torquatus' tomb.

(Horace, Ode 4.7. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. John Conington. trans. London. George Bell and Sons. 1882.)

Bit different from most translations I've read, but close enough and in the public domain I believe, so we'll go with that. It's possible that Bill's...unique...state of existence may actually make dying an even more terrifying prospect for him than it for the rest of us. He became what he was to escape limitations, including mortality - but after all that killing and burning and transformation, he found out that he might not ever die, but that he could still be destroyed. And even when he found his own 'territory', it started decaying around him, which proved that dimensions, too, can die even if nobody is apparently actively trying to destroy them. What happens to him then? That's what he's afraid of, and he cannot quite grasp that others might be able to overcome that fear in service of either another principle or another fear. That's where he keeps running into trouble in the series timeline, too. It never occurred to him that Gideon might have enough humanity to want Mabel to actually care about him, instead of just about possessing her - much less that Gideon could want that enough to risk death for it. It was inconceivable to him that Dipper and Mabel could voluntarily turn their backs on even a blatantly false paradise to willingly walk into a living hell, just because it was the right thing to do. And as for Ford and Stan....

Well, on one level, he's right about Ford. When he met Ford, they did have certain things in common: frustration, ambition, deep and secret regrets, loneliness, and fear of facing the consequences. Ford's desire for respectability and honor from those who had rejected him his whole life may have extended this even further for him than it went for Bill in some ways: he couldn't even admit to himself that what he was doing was totally self-interested, whereas Bill, like Stan, has long since come to terms with his own selfishness. And like Bill, Ford probably didn't even have the ability to see that no matter what he did, it would never be enough, and would never really satisfy him. But death? Ford doesn't fear death. Never really has, as far as I can tell, but he certainly doesn't now. The way he lives his life, the man might as well be courting death - sending it roses every week and buying all its drinks at the bar, so to speak. He and Bill both fear the consequences of their actions, but 'consequences' are a category, and it's just as possible to be afraid to live as it is to be afraid to die. And Stan...Stan is harder to be sure of. Certainly Stan's priority is always for self-preservation. He's probably depressed to some degree, and he will risk life and limb without hesitation when he perceives a threat to that which he loves, but that's something that usually happens in a crisis. He doesn't hesitate because he doesn't think about what he's doing, which is what makes the Final Deal such an incredible gesture for me - he not only had plenty of time to think about what was going to happen, but he had to actively take steps himself to enable it to happen. To me, at least, that seems the hardest thing...but then, the whole situation in the Fearamid is one that brings to mind some of my worst fears, to the point that I find the scene difficult to watch and I almost scrapped an entire 22,000-word story once just because it required me to write about a small part of it. I'm sure Bill risked death, in some fashion, to become what he is, and I'm sure he was afraid of failure every time - but he was less afraid of a bad outcome that might come from leaping at the chance for some semblance of life, any semblance of life, no matter what that might look like or how long the odds might be, than he was of doing what he knew would lead to...wherever even destructible gods go, when they go. This is why the Stans were the thing he couldn't account for, really. He couldn't conceive of having a priority higher than self-preservation, of overcoming his worst fear - and that was what destroyed him. Maybe, anyway.

It's sort of funny, actually - I started writing a completely different post yesterday about how to develop a new character based on some of Hirsch's remarks, and in the course of it, I made the remark that I found it hard to fathom how you could write any of Gravity Falls, at all, without knowing ahead of time that it is the story of (if I can make so bold as to quote my own story's dialogue) "the Faustus of New Jersey and His Knucklehead Brother and the Hazard Sign From Hell," and without at least a fairly good understanding of who those three people are and how they got there. If one looks at the story that way, I suppose you could say the events after their starting situation are also the story of these three being thrown up against the places where their real deepest fears lie, and seeing who has something he really, really will not compromise on...or at least, it did at the start of this paragraph. But did any of them, really? Bill blatantly fails that test, of course - Bill runs, just like he's been, in a way, running for his entire miserable existence. Ford comes close to what might have been a couple of breaking experiences for him - either surrendering to Bill or, had the memory wipe worked the way he thought it would, with living with whatever the fallout of essentially killing his brother would have been - but the universe was kind and stacked the deck just enough to let him cheat his way out of that one, at least for the most part. But what about Stan? He didn't want to die, but we already knew that he'd risk it for the kids, because we've seen him do that before. The way he went about it this time arguably took more courage than the others, when he just went in swinging at an immediate and obvious threat, but it was still an escalation on an established thing. Stan's real worst fear isn’t death - it’s of being alone again, of losing his family. That's the principle that overrides self-preservation for him. What would have happened if he'd been in Ford's shoes - required to take up the role not of the sacrifice, but of the one who performed it, giving up one member of the family to save the others? Could he have done that?

...though that is wandering from the topic I was originally talking about, isn't it. Which was that yeah, Bill is, in his way, as fallible as anyone else despite his immense resources - which is gonna be a fun topic to get into when I get around to the post in this series about writing higher intelligences, but that's also not the point, which was that Ford was never going to go back to Bill the way Bill thought he was, because Bill's inability to understand other people's ability to do things that he can't is a serious blind spot for him. It's the thoughts he can't have that doom him (probably...hopefully, anyway...), fortunately for the rest of us.

#gravity falls #gravity falls characters #ford pines #stan pines #bill cipher #gravity falls analysis #inspired by the Hirsch interview #rambling happened #my ramblings

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talltoontales · 7 months ago

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<-On a Dime->

--------------------

[Story 27 || Week 24]

Written: 06/10/2024

Prompt: "Kaboom" went the costal banana factory. "Splash" went the dozens of radioactive bananas as they landed in the ocean.

Prompt By: r/Accomplished_Dot9224 (Reddit)

[This is a story in the world of "Time to Spare" (02/17/2024)]

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"Some days, I really don't like being a superhero."

// // // // // // // // // //

You walk onto the rooftop. You see Luke Arling, A.K.A. the hero Streak, in his civilian clothes sitting on the edge of the roof halfway through a six pack of orange sodas. Luke hands you a soda as you take a seat next to him.

Now, don't get me wrong. Beating the baddies, helping people, fighting the good fight, I'm always down for. I've also been doing this for a couple of years now, and I know that sometimes the bad guys win one, and people get hurt. Those days definitely suck, but that's the gig. Gotta take the good with the bad.

But sometimes, it feels like I'm the only normal guy out here, relatively speaking. Most heroes are either in life-or-death mode twenty-four-seven, on a gloom-and-doom carousel, or kind of an asshole.

If I had a dollar for every time I had to meet someone for a team-up on a windy or rainy rooftop in the middle of the night, I'd have to start putting it on my taxes. And they always do that thing where once they're done with the conversation, they just disappear.

Side note, I can go from Miami to New York City in about thirty minutes, give or take. Yet, I still have no idea how I lose track of some of these guys.

No joke! One time, I had to team up with Spades for a high-profile villain situation. Reminder, he has no powers. He's just peak human, really smart, and has a bunch of cult money. While his cop buddy was doing his spiel, I kept my eyes on Spades the entire time, and the second, the SECOND I blinked, dude was gone! Drives me nuts!

You also can't trust some heroes. Not in a--

"...they might be secretly evil..."

--kind of way, more like--

"...they are WAY too ready to put a bullet in your back..."

--kind of way. I mean, I get it. It was for the greater good, it was a time-sensitive situation, and you knew I'd probably survive it, but a heads up before injecting me with a poison would've been nice, Alchem-bee! Had me tasting copper for two weeks! And don't get me started on--

~One~Rant~Later~

--and some of these guy's backstories are just...just too sad, man. I mean, It's not unusual for heroes to have a little baggage; the best ones do, but you get to listening to 'em after a while, and maybe it's just me, but I'm less sad about what happened to you and more surprised that you're still alive!

Not only that, but you chose to become a hero! If I went through half the stuff some other heroes have been through, I'd have burnt the world to ash and taken Haven and Hell along with it. Spiral went to therapy for about a month. Seasoned vet-level hero therapist, and at the end of it, the therapist had to temporarily shut down her practice because she needed therapy.

Now, I'm not perfect either. I'm no ray of sunshine, always smiling and junk. I've fought a few heroes. Had a couple of bad days after a loss. I mean, I got my powers after my sister's professor went nuts from testing on himself and blew up the school.

Now, I sometimes phase out of reality if I'm not paying attention. I've died twice and had to be told about the second time months after it happened, and I think two versions of my future self started some sort of multiverse war, which is concerning, to say the least.

But...I dunno, maybe I'm the odd man out. Maybe after all that's happened, the fact that I still see myself as just a guy trying to help is weird. I run around the world in a white and red jumpsuit with goggles powered by an energy that no one can understand.

In two years, I've been through enough superhero drama and shenanigans that some heroes think I've been around for waaaaay longer, but somehow, I don't let it get to me. I dunno how I do it, I just do. I bet some guys think I'm some kind of psychopath, an emotional time bomb waiting to go off, just one bad day from--

Notification pops up on Luke's phone. As he reads it, he begins to grin ear to ear.

Oh. My. God! This is the best thing I've ever seen in my life! Have you seen this yet?!

Luke holds the phone up to your face.

MAGS (GF): Guess who's baaaaack? <Int. News Alert // Beaches Gone Bananas> Mutant Fish have been seen battling various cybernetically enhanced primates on Dandi Beach, located on the west coast of India. Sources in the area believe that this is closely involved with an explosion at a nearby abandoned banana factory. The few bananas recovered before the battle have been confirmed to emit a strange kind of radiation. Luckily, the beach was closed for cleaning due to...

Oh, you know this has got Maniac Macaque written all over it. I knew he survived the volcano collapse somehow. You can never keep a weird villain down for long!

Luke starts texting Mag back before running off in a flash of light for a few seconds, returning in costume.

Hey, I ape-preciate you letting me ramble for, like, four hours. I peel-ly needed this more than I thought.

Another notification pops up.

Aw, Carp! Utopic's there! Guy's a wooden board, he's gonna waste a primetime pun situation! Look, I gotta split, but next time you swing through town, lunch is on me. Just no shrimp.

No pun, I just can't stand the taste of 'em.

Luke races down the side of the building. You look off into the distance, seeing a streak of white light speeding into the horizon.

\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\

"Some days, I really LOVE being a superhero!"

. . . . . . . . . .

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the story! If you have any comments, critiques, or criticisms, please don't be afraid to let me hear 'em (as long as they're constructive (or comical)). Also, if you have some spare time, check out my blog for more stories like the one above. Stay safe, drink plenty of water, and be kind to yourself and others. ToonMan, AWAY!

[Last Week's Story || Next Week's Story]

P.S. For the record, I know that the date for this story doesn't fit for last week, but I do have a story for last week. I just...lost the plot a bit.

I realized that the editing is gonna take a while, and my week's about to get not real great. So, I decided to get something down for this week so I wouldn't end up trying to rush a story out at 11 p.m. on Saturday.

If everything goes well, I should have the story done and posted early next week unless I walk into a complete catastrophe.

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sonicasura · 4 days ago

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The deep layer was where the Omnitrix dedicated space to memory files it didn’t want to revisit as often. By definition of its existence, the AI never forgot anything like it’s organic users did. And it was having a very difficult time preventing some of its defense protocols from harming the human child who intruded. Because—of course—Dart would chose someone else’s safety over their own by protecting him!

————————————

What does an artificial being fear?

Non-existence apparently and being misused.

[User] checked every run away memory vault before Raz did because this type of place was very private. The Omnitrix never lied to them. But, it never offered the more concerning experiences it had went through during the first few years Ben wore it. The human teen could only watch as a memory revealed how scared the Omnitrix had been when it’s SELF-DESTRUCT went off for the first time.

Except instead of building up for thirty seconds to destroy the device itself… a bug caused it to keep charging the detonation. Azmuth had been willing to let the charge build enough to destroy its home universe, once upon a time. The Omnitrix had barely Ben sapient back then and he was willing to erase every living being from existence to—start over. Their mentor was a far different being, but the memory hit way too close to home for them at this moment.

Another memory (“Begin, End, Begin”) showed how the Omnitrix went to the edge of the universe to fight a madman. How it had even felt it’s own universe being erased via something called the Annihilargh, how later on yet somehow earlier it ended up creating the universe? Ben frankly pushed the alien device to its limits just so it could save him.

———————————

Raz was worried as the mind’s (co?) owner kept growing more concerned as they checked memory vaults. When it came time for one of Dart’s memories (the memory vault shuddering keeping still), they let him check it first.

The slideshow showcased [User] escaping those very angry aliens yet the people around them vanishing. He had so many questions.

Both of them viewed a really confusing memory.

Watchless meets Userless.

It showed Ben in his room relaxing when a portal of sorts opened up, an older man wearing a lab coat walking through. For some reason—the Omnitrix held great anger toward that man. Even more so than Albedo.

The next slide showed Ben rescuing another version of himself, one wearing a hoodie and looking freaked out being saved.

(“Is that…?”

“Do you know that Ben?”

“He’s from a universe without the Omnitrix. Most call him No Watch Ben, but I just call him Ben. I’ve met him—or maybe a version of him. We’re friends.”)

The third slide showed something akin to a bomb going off, various other versions being… erased. Ben Prime was erased too—but the Omnitrix phased onto No Watch Ben’s risk.

A fourth slide was incredibly burned as a conflicting system alert went through the Omnitrix. [User: Ben Tennyson deceased?] [Biometric matches Ben Tennyson.] [Warning, Multiverse Event occurrence.] [Not original user.]

————————————

The green circuitry around them grew dim upon exiting that particular memory. Dart. Dart couldn’t even imagine how it felt for the Omnitrix to survive Ben being erased. But, from the way the recreating universe memory (and wasn’t that a different can of worms to open later) went on… Had it brought the original Ben back? That must have been awful period for it.

—ROB’d Anon.

The Omnitrix maintains its users health. What happens when it’s user goes through so many extreme risks? What happens when it survives and he didn’t, even if briefly? (Everytime Ben went with Paradox he nearly died.)

Oof. Again having your erased is the worst way to go. Someone really needs to ask the Omnitrix if they're okay.

#sonicasura #sonicasura answers #asks #anonymous #ben 10 #ben 10 series #ben ten #ben ten series #oc #psychonauts #psychonauts 2 #omnitrix

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smokeybrandreviews · 4 years ago

Text

Tomorrow Should Have Died

So i was planning on reviewing The Tomorrow War because it’s a new film and i like new films i can watch without having to brave the plague. I saw a preview for this thing a while back and had real low expectations for it, figured it’d be dumb fun like Independence Day. Imagine my abject horror when it turned out to be so much worse. Okay, first things first, the good stuff. Chris Pratt is good and so is J.K. Simmons. Betty Gilpin and Yvonne Strahovski work miracles with what little they have. The sound design is exceptional, probably the best thing about this sh*t flick, and the actual effects are on point. The problem with the movie is the script. It’s f*cking terrible. Oh my god, so much dumb! Here’s a list of sh*t that made me irrationally angry, in order of plot progression.

Eleven minutes in and i hate it. How are you losing a war to anything if you have mastered the ability to traverse space-time? How the f*ck is your technology so advanced, that you have found a way to exceed the light speed limit and literally break physics, but lose to a bunch of rabid, interstellar, komodo dragons? This is the dumbest f*cking contradiction I have seen all year and i am offended that whoever decided to make this film, is asking this of their audience. Sh*t is patently absurd. These f*cking things don't even have written language, man, and you really expect me to believe they have pushed a human race that has harnessed the power of time, to the brink of extinction?

Eleven minutes, bro. Eleven f*cking minutes.

Seriously, you can create a time machine, you should conceivably have the ability to harness gravity or one of the other fundamental interactions. Why the f*ck haven't you designed a miniaturized rail gun that uses modern tech or materials to build? You have worked out the science in the future, go back to the past and build miniature or handheld doomsday devices for use in the field. Why isn’t everyone running around with f*cking Megatron fusion cannons on their arms? Why the f*ck am i fighting aliens with ARs and Glocks?? The fact that there is an active time machine built from tech on hand from thirty years into the future, means cats could have spent their time building actual weapons to kill these f*cking things instead of betting the literal human race on a time displaced draft. This movie is dumb as rocks.

The way they describe how their time travel works is dumb. I mean, it isn’t, but i can guarantee this sh*t is going to be a problem later. I can feel it in my bones. They are definitely going to contradict this sh*t because multiverse theory is the only way to make movie time travel work and they are trying their damnedest to not do that.

This f*cking thing is over two hours long and the first drags. I hate when cats attempt to develop characters and they just fail at it. I'm sitting here trying to figure out why I should care about any of these people and i still don't have an answer after half the goddamn movie is over. Like, why should i care about Chris Pratt? He’s the main character and the writing has done nothing to endear him to the audience in a whole ass hour.

Also, the reason he’s so mad at his dad is stupid. Dude did right by his kid by bailing because he would have been a terrible father. Pratt’s character would have known that as a father himself. He didn’t have to like it and, of course there’s animosity there, but you’re an adult. Your dad knew he was lousy. He did you a favor by walking out. It wasn’t like he didn’t help support you or make sure you went without. As far as i can tell, dude was there in every way by physically. Because he couldn’t. Because he was f*cking shell-shocked from fighting in Vietnam. Where they raped innocent women and set babies on fire. Holy sh*t, this cat is an unlikable protagonist after this one scene. Which brings me to my next thing...

Pratt f*cking abandons his family?? Word? After that entire scene with his dad and the very obvious trauma he has suffered, he turns around and abandons his own kid because he lost his job?? Word? Like, for real? You expect me to believe that the Chris Pratt who cussed out his pops, was willing to go on the run from his future conscription, abandoned his own family because he lost a teaching job?? What the f*ck, movie? Do you want me to like this asshole or not? More than that, how the f*ck you mess up your character so bad in what i imagine is just five pages of actual script? Nothing we know about this character would ever even hint at him doing this to his family, to his daughter, so why the f*ck would he? Why the f*ck would you, as a write, believe we, as the audience, would just accept that sh*t as a forgone conclusion?

You got ropes on a Queen and you don't kill it? How the f*ck you make it that deep into the hive to even do-si-do the b*tch to the surface? We just watched these things tear through Miami to the point that they needed a whole ass bombardment just to survive and you not only go into their hive, their home, with no heavy ammo, but you somehow lasso a queen and drag her to the surface. Alive. If you can do all of that why not just drop a nuke down there and blow them the f*ck up? Why do you need a live Queen for your science? Shoot the b*tch, take the juice of her corpse, and end this sh*t! Why is all of this stupid recklessness necessary??

Okay. Okay... F*ck everything i just said, right? Why the f*k did you bring this Queen b*tch back to your base? You don’t have a different offsite lab to do this sh*t? You gotta bring her to your stronghold? Isn’t this a military operation? Why aren't their security protocols and sh*t in place to stop this stupidity? You don’t bring the enemy home. You take them to black sites for sh*t like this, not to the goddamn Pentagon!

All of a sudden, the aliens understand science? We spent this entire movie establishing that they are mindless beasts with teeth, eating the human race into extinction but now, because the plot demands it, the Queen one understands what the people are doing? That the green sh*t they made is plague that can murder them all? How the f*ck she even know what science is? They don’t even have language, dude! How the hell she know they made a death plague for her people?! F*ck it, whatever, bro. Next you're going to tell me she let them capture her just to get inside the lab or some sh*t because these rabid f*cking animals, who have demonstrated no military command abilities or even the barest of higher cognitive functions, are tactical geniuses.

Okay, so the Queen b*tch is a tactical genius. So, in the initial future drop, the team was murdered by a bunch of these things because they were sent to a lab where they were trying to make the death plague. Now, hat i am about to say is all assumption on my part because none of this, and i men NONE of it, is ever confirmed by the movie. So, they get to the lab and everyone is dead but the green per-plague is still there. That mean they had a Queen there. It’s established after this that Queens can call for backup and the Males will lemming their way to her. I deduce that’s how this lab got overrun; Queen got loose, called for her boys, and they ate everyone. That happened. That was the first thing we see in the future. This b*tch does the same f*cking thing on the home base lab so now the males are overrunning The Pentagon. You motherf*ckers knew this was a thing because it literally already happens. Why the f*ck would you do it again? AND it gets worse... Home base, The Pentagon, is the f*cking rig where they house the goddamn time machine! You brought a hostile enemy leader, still alive and coherent, to the heart of your resistance operation, to the core of your time travel operation, knowing that at any time this b*tch can scream and have your whole ass base overrun with teeth and poison darts? Look, if the future is this stupid, they deserve to die, okay?

At least they commit to multiverse theory, even if it contradicts the entirety of their already established time travel rules.

Okay. Okay... So they create this toxin to kill all the monster things and send it back in time to be mass produced Put that sh*t in bullets and send it back to the future or whatever. But, because of the aforementioned stupid, that plan is bunk. Time machine go kablooey. And now we are at the "all is lost" moment at the end of the second act." Solution to the problem in hand, no way to save the future because the only way back to the future was a casualty of idiocy. Right. So... just wait. F*cking just wait. You know when these assholes show up, you know how to kill them all, you even have a plague ready to be mass produced right now. You have thirty f*cking years to refine that formula, to make it cheaper to mass produced and develop variants just in case immunities start to crop up or something. There are people from the future, stuck in the past, because of the egregious future error. They have all of that intel and they are just alive. The second this dude got back to the past with that antidote, the future was saved. The war is over. Like, even if you don’t know where the ship is, you have a sure thing that will murder these white f*cks and three decades to produce, weaponize, and store that sh*t. The war is won. The Prime timeline is absolutely safe at this point. Because that's how time travel works. You have the nuclear option, right now, to averting the end of the human race, ready to be mass produced. Yo have the knowledge from the future on where these things will first appear. You still have all the future tech brought over from the beta timeline ripe for reverse engineering in order to improve the weapons of the present. There is no scenarios where we lose this war, the second Chris Pratt plops back into the present with that plague. None.

Why is everyone so dejected?? Why are there f*cking riots all over the world?? None of this makes sense. How can you assume the world ends and the war is lost just because the communication with that version of the past is cut? Wouldn’t you expect that sh*t? You just altered the entire timeline by sending Pratt back with the antidote. That future is effectively gone. How can you communicate with a place in space-time that doesn’t exist anymore? Hell, even if it’s because the time machine broke and everyone over there is dead, you have the f*cking antidote now! Multiverse theory, bud. The fact that those time displaced assholes didn’t disappear, means multiverse theory is real and you have the opportunity to Future Trunks this sh*t so why panic? Why are there no leaders n television assuring their people that this is a thing? Why are there no scientists publishing papers about how sh*t is going to be fine? Bro, I'm just so tired...

How these cats just fly into Russia on a big ass cargo plane and not get shot down? This is 2022. Putin still hates us. This sh*t would cause a World War.

So you find this ship and you don’t tell anyone where it is? You decide to just kill them all yourself? Motherf*cker, what happens if you die? Did you back up the enzyme formula somewhere or did you bring all of it with you on this stupid f*cking mission? Did you leave notes or even text your location to anyone in authority, just in case haphazard attempt goes sideways so someone else can make a more organized attempt? Or just drop a nuke on the site from orbit? If one asshole denied you funding for your mission, why didn’t you ask someone else? Why didn’t you ask f*cking Putin? Because governments are bloated down with bureaucracy? My dude, people from the future came back and interrupted the world cup to tell you that aliens are going to exterminate the human race in three decades. If you tell anyone in a position of power that you know where these little sh*ts are, they’re going to listen. Especially since everyone decided to riot because the future changed/we lost the time war/ the timeline imploded.

Why would a terrestrial saw work on an intergalactic star ship? That doesn't make any sense. This f*cking thing survived a crash landing into earth intact and a goddamn circular saw cuts it open? Fine, whatever. On to the next stupid thing.

Bro. Bro, they just blow the f*cking thing up. Motherf*cker spent the entire movie, time jumping form the past to to the future and back to the past, just to get this plague to kill them all, and a bunch of C4 just blows them all up while they sleep. Why the f*ck was everything even f*cking necessary? At this point, when the dude comes back with that claw the first time, the future is saved. Analysis on that one claw gave up the location of the hidden spaceship where these things had been in stasis for millennia. Which was blown up with C4. No plague needed. No goddamn time draft needed. No casualties needed after that first wave. The second that dude brought back that claw, it should have been under a forensic microscope so actual f*cking scientists could figure out what a high school kid id in a matter of minutes. I hate this movie so goddamn much.

I hated this goddamn movie so much. It’s f*cking boring and the dumbest thing I've seen all year and i watched Army of the Dead. It’s pretty and the performances are decent, but there is absolutely no substance to any of this sh*t. It wants to be Independence Day and Edge of Tomorrow and The Great Wall. all in one, while infusing time travel family drama but it’s so f*cking confused trying to juggle all of that, it drops the ball on the most important part; The script. This thing must read like a fever dream induced by peyote because, in execution, it’s a wet fart. This f*cking thing is all over the place with no regard for any insular universe logic. It contradicts itself from one scene to the next and it’s goddamn offensive. I’m sure there is someone saying that i am overthinking this sh*t and that it’s just supposed to be dumb popcorn fun. I get that. However, i can’t just turn my f*cking brain off and mindlessly drool over sh*t that insults my intelligence the way this movie does. It’s dumb as f*cking rocks, man, and i want those two hours of my life back!

#The Tomorrow War #Some ol' bullsh*t

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portalford · 6 years ago

Text

If You Get Lost (You Can Always Be Found)

AO3

Stanford Pines is six years old and lost.

This wouldn’t have happened if Stanley had listened to him and taken the roundabout path instead of trying to cut through the boardwalk, but he hadn’t, and they had, and now Stanley is nowhere to be seen.

He doesn't cry. Crying attracts attention, and attention leads to bad things, so he doesn’t cry. He's sure Stanley is looking for him just as hard as he is looking for Stanley.

“Hello there. Are you lost?”

A grey-haired woman is walking towards him. Several pearl necklaces (probably fake) clack against each other as she leans down to see him better.

Stanford shoves his hands in his pockets and stands to his (admittedly unimpressive) full height. “Yes,” he says. He speaks clearly and makes eye contact, because adults like when he does that. “I’m looking for my brother. He looks like me, but without glasses. Have you seen him?”

“I can’t say that I have,” the woman says. “What’s your brother’s name?”

“Stanley Pines.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Stanford Pines.”

“Oh, are you twins?”

“Yes.”

“Aw, how wonderful.” She's looking at him the way old people sometimes look at their fluffy lap dogs or a particularly cute baby. He wants to scowl or use a really big and impressive word or something because he's six, almost six and two-thirds and definitely not a baby, but he doesn't. This woman is only trying to help. “My cousins are twins,” she continues. “Inseparable, the two of them.”

“I wish I could say the same for my brother and me.”

The woman laughs. Her left canine is gold. “Yes, that would–“

“STANFORD!”

The unhappy-sick feeling that Stanford has been trying to ignore for the past five minutes vanishes so fast it’s almost like it had never been there at all.

“Is that your brother?” the woman asks.

“Yeah, that’s–“

“STANFORD, WHERE YA AT?”

“Stanley! I’m at the edge of the boardwalk.” Stanford stretches up on his toes, trying to see over the milling pedestrians.

The woman squeals as something barrels past her, slamming into Stanford and going down in a heap.

“Stanford!” Stanley grins, showing off a missing tooth. “I told ya to keep up!”

“I was keeping up,” Stanford complains, fixing his glasses. “You told me we were going straight through to the beach.”

“Yeah, well, there was this huge guy with really cool tattoos I wanted to see,” Stanley says, unrepentant. “Shoulda been paying more attention, Poindexter.” He pulls Stanford to his feet.

“I’m glad you’ve found each other.”

Stanford glances back at the woman. He’d practically forgotten about her. “Me too. Thanks for your help.”

“I hardly did anything, but you’re welcome.” She fixes Stanley with a stern look over her glasses. “You look after your brother now, young man.”

(Stanford doesn’t know why she’s acting like he can’t look after Stanley just as well. After all, he’s not the one who ran off).

Stanley is puffing out his chest, unintimidated. “That’s my job, lady.”

“Then keep doing it.” With that, she turns on her high-heeled boot and is soon lost in the crowd.

Stanford suddenly finds himself the recipient of a rough and comprehensive dust-off. He slaps at his brother’s hands. “I can brush myself off, Stanley!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Stanley ruffles his hair, sneezing as some of the sand flies into his face. “F’real tho, Stanford, I’m sorry I lost you. I think I shoulda paid more attention, too.”

Stanford smiles. “That’s okay. You found me again.”

Stanley slings an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close. The last of the unhappy-sick feeling goes away. “I always will, buddy."

*****

Stanford Pines is seventeen years old and lost.

He doesn’t know how to feel

(angry, betrayed)

or what to do

(move on you have to move on)

or why he wants to cry so much

(you’re sad).

He’s not sad. He’s not.

His brother (twin, protector, best friend only friend) ruined his dreams to try and save his own and that’s all there is to it.

It’s out of his (both of their) hands now.

Things were said, choices were made, and all they can do is move on.

He crawls into bed, shuts his eyes, and recites pi backwards from the 300th digit so that he won’t (can’t) think about anything else.

It still feels like something’s been ripped out of his chest and thrown away, and he’s not sure he’ll ever get it back.

*****

Stanford Pines is twenty-eight years old and lost.

He’s been lied to so many times that he doesn’t even know where to start. Fiddleford is gone, his plans are gone, and his sanity seems well on its way to following the rest.

The only thing that isn’t gone is Bill.

Bill is always there, always watching (can’t sleep can’t sleep) always waiting (trust no one) always ten steps ahead and waiting for him to slip up.

He doesn’t know what to do.

He knows what he has to do

(stop Bill stop the portal stop the madness stop stop stop)

is save the world, but he doesn’t know (anything) how to go about it.

He’s in so far over his head he feels like he’s drowning and he wants to cry, but he can’t because

(tears feel too much like blood)

there’s too much to do.

He wakes up with bruised ribs and scraped knuckles and he looks at the blood and ink and tears in his journal and he flips back, way back to before everything went wrong, back

(when he was seventeen, because maybe things have been going wrong ever since he lost the one person who truly looked out for him and oh god was he only ever meant for this?)

to the start. He sees what’s left of the sketch he made of a boat, months (years?) ago.

He remembers a photograph.

He remembers what it felt like to trust someone.

He finds a postcard, and he writes a note.

*****

Stanford Pines is twenty-nine years old and lost.

He’s kept track of the days since he fell (was pushed) through the portal, and he’s terrified of forgetting where he’s been, what he’s done, who he is.

(He remembers Fiddleford with his memory gun, steadily erasing piece after piece of himself and what’s left of a person when their entire history is gone?)

He thinks he might know the answer to that question, and he thinks he doesn’t want to.

He has no history here, after all. He’s a drifter, a vagrant (an outlaw). He has no name, no title, no… anything.

Nothing. He’s nothing.

The universe is enormous, he used to tell Fiddleford. We’re all just specks, really.

If only he’d known.

*****

Stanford Pines is older than he was yesterday and lost.

That’s how he keeps score now – in days, hours, minutes. I survived. He lost track of the weeks/months/years a long time ago, and they aren’t important anymore.

He’s not important. He never was. He understands that now.

The only thing that matters is killing Bill, saving the universe.

(If the screams and nightmares and laughter bouncing around inside his skull stop as a side effect, well, that’s just a bonus)

(He’s pretty sure he’ll die with Bill anyway, and that’s certainly effective, if unfortunately extreme).

It’s hard to know for sure where you’re going in the multiverse. Ford hasn’t really known where he’s been for… some time.

He’ll find his way eventually. He has to.

*****

Stanford Pines is fifty-eight years old and lost.

This dimension is his home, and it’s the most unfamiliar place he’s ever been. Everything is just slightly left of familiar, minus his house, which is so changed he barely recognizes it as his at all. It’s even worse than the Uncanny Valley Dimension, because at least that place was supposed to be that way.

This place feels like it should be home, but it’s not. He doesn’t feel at home, not at all, and it hurts more than he wants to admit.

(Maybe he’s just forgotten what home is supposed to feel like. Maybe he lost himself in the universe after all).

And as if that isn’t enough, he has family he never knew about, never even imagined. It’s been years since he's interacted with children, and longer still since he’s had family. He doesn’t know what to do. What do they expect of him? How should he act?

They’re twelve, almost thirteen, and he doesn’t let himself think about how he never got to see their formative years, never got to watch them learn and grow almost to their teens. In the grand scheme of things, he’s lost far more than the early years of two short lives, but this loss seems heavier somehow.

They help him find where his brother keeps the coffee (two cabinets away and a shelf above where he used to keep it) and teach him about smartphones and music and movies and it all really just makes his head hurt, so he hides in the basement whenever he remembers to do so.

(He tells himself it’s because he has more important things to do than watch a musical with a twelve-year-old, and not because those “important things" feel tired and worn and more like a weight than a vocation).

*****

Stanford Pines is fifty-eight years old and he’s lost everything.

He’s been tortured and terrified and today he cried for the first time in years because the world ended, and then it didn’t, but it might as well have because his brother is gone.

Stanley took the fall for his mistakes, and there’s nothing Ford can do to help him in return.

He can’t even thank him for anything (everything), because Stan won’t know what it’s for.

He remembers being six years old and lost in a crowd, being twenty-eight and lost in his own head, being thirty-forty-fifty and lost in the multiverse, and how Stanley never hesitated to come and find him and try to bring him home.

He remembers how no matter how frightened and adrift he felt, Stan was always there to ground him.

(Even when he was wandering the multiverse, he had an old photograph and old memories and the fragile hope that Stan had moved on, found a place and a life for himself and was happy somewhere back on Earth.

That hope was all he had some days, because he lost assurance for himself a long time ago, but he never quite lost it for his brother).

(You found me / I always will).

Now Stan is gone, and there’s nothing to stop him from falling apart.

*****

Stanford Pines is fifty-eight years old and he thinks he’s finally found his place.

He’s sitting upright against the chair in front of the television. It’s still on, but no one is watching it. His brother is slumped against his shoulder and his niece and nephew are sprawled out across their laps. Stanley is snoring and probably drooling on his sweater and he can’t feel most of his left leg where Dipper’s head is resting and he doesn’t remember ever caring less about physical discomfort in his life.

He shifts to prop Stan’s head up a little more, so that his brother’s neck won’t hurt as much when he wakes up (the logical thing, of course, would be to wake Stan and the kids so that they can go sleep in their own beds but Ford is definitely not going to do that), and he’s pretty sure he just waved goodbye to feeling the entire left side of his body for the next few hours, but that can’t be helped.

For the first time in

(thirty years? Forty? There’s no calculation for human experience, he knows that, but he still feels the need to quantify, to assess, to put a name and number on the past however long it’s been and file it somewhere he’ll never have to look at again.

He knows it doesn’t work like that, but he thinks about it a lot)

a long time, he doesn’t feel like he’s searching, chasing something.

For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like he has to.

He’s been given a second chance, a place to belong, and that’s all he ever really wanted anyway.

He’ll stay here as long as they let him.

#gravity falls #gravity falls fanfiction #stanford pines #stanley pines #my writing #me: please stop with the melodramatic stream of conscious i'm begging #me @myself: No #i wrote this on my phone in the car and you can absolutely tell

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smokeybrand · 4 years ago

Text

Tomorrow Should Have Died

Eleven minutes, bro. Eleven f*cking minutes.

At least they commit to multiverse theory, even if it contradicts the entirety of their already established time travel rules.

How these cats just fly into Russia on a big ass cargo plane and not get shot down? This is 2022. Putin still hates us. This sh*t would cause a World War.

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musetotheworld · 8 years ago

Note

Hi, I sent a prompt but my old, stupid iPad is playing up so you either didn't receive it or received it 12343 times, lol. It was: Kara travels to a new Earth and meets the second incarnation of Supergirl, who is also Kara and Cat's daughter. This experience inspires her to reveal her feelings to Cat. Thank you!

Kara knows it’s probably dangerous, but when she was overwhelmed by the weight of responsibilities and expectations of her Earth, she’d bring out Cisco’s device and hop worlds for a few hours. At first she just checked in with Barry on Earth-1, but eventually that got to be no better. When she’d show up there, she’d end up helping with whatever mess he’d gotten into lately.

And it’s not that she didn’t like helping, Barry was a friend and a good man, and Kara was always glad to help out. But he didn’t usually need the help, and it seemed to turn into trading one set of responsibilities for another. Not exactly the restful escape she’d been thinking of.

So after a while, she starts visiting other worlds instead. She gets a list of ‘definitely avoid’ Earths from Cisco in exchange for a signed photo of her pod, and off she goes. And it’s always interesting, seeing where she pops up and what’s happening on all these different Earths. So many things are different each time, but it’s fun seeing what’s the same as well.

Like when she steps out onto Earth-50 for the first time and sees the CatCo tower in the distance, just as bright as it is on her Earth. It wasn’t always there, or at least didn’t always bear the distinctive logo, but most of the time it was a familiar sight on unfamiliar worlds.

Kara is just about to head into the city from where she’d appeared a safe distance from the outskirts when a rushing noise overhead gets her attention. Apparently there are aliens on this planet, possibly even another version of herself. It wouldn’t be the first time, and Kara steels herself against another pang of hurt that always seems to come after meeting herself and sharing the loss of Krypton with someone who understands.

Except this time it isn’t another version of herself standing there, though Kara can see a resemblance. And more than that, this woman has the House of El crest emblazoned across her chest, marking her instantly as family. The suit reminds Kara of Astra’s uniform, the uniform of Krypton’s military guild, but it’s softer somehow, not as severe. More like Kal-El’s than Astra’s, especially with the cape flowing from her shoulders. It looks nice, and Kara is tempted to copy it for herself when she gets home.

Kara’s own suit isn’t visible, she’d learned the hard way that it just made her stand out when blending in was the far better option. So there’s no matching recognition in this woman’s eyes, no instant camaraderie like Kara feels surging through her at the thought that maybe someone else had survived on this world.

“Iieu?”

Kara is sure she’d misheard at first, that after so many years only rarely speaking Kryptonian she’d somehow forgotten it completely. But no, she remembers that word completely, whispers it every night as she begs Rao to look over her parents. Over her mother.

“What?” Kara asks in shock, because this girl is her age, maybe a little younger. It can’t be her daughter, can it? How would that even be possible?

“Ieiu, what happened? Why do you look so young?” the questions come quickly, and Kara struggles to keep up. A child, a daughter, someone who carries on a tradition from light years away. It’s everything Kara hadn’t known she wanted so badly, everything she’d never thought possible.

“I’m from another Earth, not this one. I’m not actually your ieiu,” Kara admits, knowing she needs to correct that assumption before anything else. “Who are you?” A look of surprise crosses the woman’s face, and rather than answering she pulls out a phone to type out a message, probably to whatever version of Kara lives on this Earth.

Sure enough barely twenty seconds of silence pass before there’s another rushing noise, and now Kara is face to face with another version of herself in an outfit similar to the one the younger woman is wearing. Except this time she’s visibly older, aged in a way that Kara hasn’t seen from any other version of herself, even the ones who hadn’t spend decades in the Phantom Zone. She looks to be in her mid-thirties, where every other version of herself Kara has met still looks twenty-five. And that’s as much of a shock as anything else Kara has seen on this Earth so far.

“Who are you?” the older version of herself asks, speaking English rather than the Kryptonian Kara longs to hear. It’s been so long since she’s had a proper conversation in her native language.

“My name is Kara Zor-El, I’m from another version of Earth,” Kara says, standing straighter and speaking with all the weight of the name she carries. It might only be another version of herself standing there, but she still reacts to an older Kryptonian in a position of power with instinctive respect. “I mean you no harm,” she promises in Kryptonian, adding the formal gesture for a peaceful meeting when the older Kara seems unmoved.

“Ieiu, she looks just like you from your old pictures,” the girl whispers, breaking the growing tension between the two Karas.

“Hush, Hannah,” Older-Kara says quietly, and the girl falls silent, watching curiously. “Why are you on my Earth?” The question is pointed but no longer openly hostile, and Kara relaxes, just the slightest bit.

“I have a device that allows me to jump worlds, I use it sometimes to explore the possibilities,” Kara admits, flushing when the older woman gives her a look that speaks volumes about how stupid she thinks the practice is. It’s at very least a pointless risk, and Kara knows that.

“I see I’m foolish and headstrong in every version of myself,” Older-Kara says, earning a sheepish look in response. “I’m half tempted to take you to meet my wife, she’s the one who managed to smack the idiocy from my head years ago. But she’s in meetings all day, and I’ve been strictly warned not to interrupt unless the world is ending again. You have no intention of destroying my Earth, do you?”

“No, not at all!” Kara rushes to reassure her. “I usually just wander around for a while, see what’s different and what’s the same.”

“I’d imagine there’s a good bit of difference in this world,” Older-Kara says with a wry smile. “The fact that you still look twenty-five proves that much.”“Oh, I am twenty-five,” Kara says, looking down self-consciously. “My pod got stuck in the Phantom Zone, I arrived later than I was meant to,” she explains when the older her sends a questioning look her way.

“That’s horrible,” Hannah breaks in, and this time her mother doesn’t hush her. “Stuck all that time, you must have missed out on meeting Mother.”

“I guess so,” Kara says, not wanting to explain the differences and subtleties of the multiverse to them in the middle of another serious conversation. “But it’s okay, I had a great family take me in when I arrived.”

“Still, missing out on Cat’s particular brand of care is a shame,” Older-Kara says, and suddenly Kara can’t breathe.

“You married Cat Grant?” she manages to gasp out in disbelief, immediately trying to figure out how that could have happened. Her first reaction is one of disbelief, but then Kara starts to remember the little flashes of what had always seemed to be mutual attraction, the ones that had never been acted on for too many reasons to list.

“Yes, we met in college,” Older-Kara says with a puzzled frown. “Why is this so surprising to you?”

“Um, she was my boss,” Kara says, still processing the information.

“That would make it complicated,” Hannah says with a smirk, and Kara finds herself liking her. She can see Cat’s influence in her sense of humor and confidence. And now that she knows that Hannah is Cat’s daughter, she can see the resemblance there as well.

Older-Kara seems to follow the glance and unspoken question, and before Kara can even consider asking is answering. “Cat and I performed a full binding marriage ceremony when we married. It allowed us to have children, and split the blessings of Sol and Rao between us.”

“What does that mean, split the blessings?” Kara asks, not having heard of that particular effect of a binding. Then again, she’d never heard of a Kryptonian and human binding before either.

“I age faster, she ages slower, for one,” Older-Kara explains, gesturing at herself in way of explanation. “From what we’ve managed to test so far, we’re aging at roughly the same rate, much faster than Kryptonians on Earth and much slower than humans. That’s the most noticeable difference, though my abilities are slightly weaker than they were before the binding, and her senses are slightly better. The binding seems to have balanced us, somewhat.”

Kara absorbs the news silently, letting her mind think through all of the implications of that. She’d been so afraid of ending up alone as the world aged around her, but maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe she can live an almost normal life. And even if that life isn’t with Cat, though the part of her that’s finally admitting to the attraction hopes there’s a chance for that, at least the possibility is there to share with someone.

“I think you broke her, Ieiu,” Hannah laughs, and after a moment Older-Kara joins in. It’s not teasing, more understanding, and Kara manages a smile as her brain finally manages to catch up completely.

“I um, I think I’ll have to save the full visit for another time,” she says as she pulls out the reality portal. “I think I have some pressing conversations in my future.”

“Visit us any time,” Older-Kara says with a knowing look. “And if you get the girl, bring her with you. Seeing two Cats in one room would undoubtedly be an event to remember.”

Kara laughs and agrees as she calibrates the device to take her home, suddenly desperate to see if the possibilities she’s imagining could become reality. Or, well, could become her reality.

#supergirl #supergirl fic #supercat #supercat fic #prompt fill #I'm off work for the week so don't get used to me posting this often lol

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dracox-serdriel · 8 years ago

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Supergirl: Alternative Mon-El Secrets

So, right now, the Supergirl fandom seems to think that Mon-El’s secret is only about his identity back on Daxam (e.g. being the prince rather than a guard for the royal family). But what if his former identity isn’t the only thing that he’s kept secret?

Below the cut for length and spoilers through 02x14 Homecoming.

Let’s Start with the Facts

Mon-El arrived in a Kryptonian pod, which seems odd, given that multiple conversations have suggested that Daxamites traveled through space. (02x04 Survivors, 02x09 Supergirl Lives) So, why wasn’t he in a Daxamite spacecraft?

Mon-El arrived wearing very simple clothing - a red shirt, black pants. (02x01 Adventures of Supergirl)

Mon-El’s spaceship traveled through the Well of Stars, a place where time doesn’t pass, and it took him thirty-seven (37) years. This is strange, given that Kal-El’s journey took far less time, anywhere from one to ten years, though most versions put it at two to three years. What’s up with the discrepancy?

He crashes to earth and his first impulse is to send a message to Daxam. (02x03 Welcome to Earth)

When he first wakes up, he doesn’t know what happened to Daxam. He claims that the reason he left the planet was because Krypton’s explosion made him “get out of there in a hurry.” (02x03 Welcome to Earth)

When he discovers that the name of the planet they’ve been stranded on is Maaldoria (Slaver’s Moon), he insists that they get out of there right now. This might not be relevant, though, as he said they should leave repeatedly before he knew the name of the planet. It just seemed important that they leave now that he knew they were on Maaldoria. (02x09 Supergirl Lives)

When asked what he would do if he saw his father again, after assuming he was dead, Mon-El said that he would run because his father wasn’t a good man. (02x14 Homecoming)

Now, the Questions...

A Sketchy Ride Right now, as Mon-El tells the story, he and the prince needed to escape Daxam the day that Krypton died--because it was being pelted with meteors. This particular exchange is interesting:

PRINCE: This is a Kryptonian ship. The emissaries?

MON-EL: Dead. And so is their planet.

-- 02x04 Survivors

It seems like the reason this Kryptonian pod was on Daxam was because there were Kryptonian emissaries who likely traveled to and from Daxam with this ship. That would explain why there was any exchange at all about the emissaries when attempting to flee in the middle of a planet-wide disaster.

So, firstly, what happened to the emissaries? Maybe they died in the general chaos and destruction, but that seems a little... convenient.

Secondly, why didn’t Daxam have a spaceship to take the prince (or anyone) off of Daxam during a crisis? This seems like good common sense for a space traveling people. If not a spaceship, then at least a transmat or something that would enable people to escape to safety. I suppose it’s possible that the Daxamite fleet of spaceships was decimated, leaving the Kryptonian pod as the only option. But again, that seems... weird. Right? After all, the pod was just sitting out in the open. There was nothing protecting it from meteors but dumb luck.

It’s possible that, in order to save their prince, the Daxamites stole the Kryptonian pod from the emissaries, essentially sentencing them to die in the chaos. Or they might’ve executed the emissaries in order to secure the pod.

It’s also entirely possible that the Daxamites had nothing to do with it. Maybe Mon-El didn’t escape during some epic meteor shower (a dicey situation to fly out of anyway). Maybe he and the prince (or guard, whoever) in the story made a plan to steal the Kryptonian pod so Mon-El could escape before Krypton exploded. Maybe they didn’t steal it at all. Maybe the Kryptonian emissaries were in on the plan to smuggle Mon-El out of Daxam, either to save him from the coming chaos... or because he wanted to run away.

But if Mon-El ran, why did he send a distress signal to Daxam almost as soon as he woke up? It’s possible that he knew how long his journey would take (decades), which was more than enough time for his troubles to pass. It’s also possible that whatever he was running from was a limited-time event.

For example, Daxamites have arranged marriages from birth--you reach a certain age, and BAM, you’re latched to that person. What happens if the selected mate has died (or presumed dead) before the appointed age? I doubt you’d never get married because of that. It’s more likely that you’d somehow acquire a new mate to marry. If that’s the case, then Mon-El may have only intended to be gone for a few months to a year in order to avoid his pending latching. By the time he returned, his selected mate would be married to someone else... and that’s hardly his fault, right?

Possibility summary: Stolen Pod, Cohooting with the Emissaries, Mon-El Ditching Daxam for a reason other than impending doom

Dress the Part Mon-El arrived in a simple red shirt, which might be because he was traveling light/running for his life. But it also might be because he was dressed as a guard (either as a disguise or because he actually was a guard). He isn’t wearing any sign or seal on his clothing, which seems like a requirement for royal families, right?

One theory is that Mon-El betrayed the prince, stealing the pod to escape and leaving the prince to die. I find this hard to believe because the first thing he does when he wakes up is beam a message to Daxam. Chances are, if you betrayed the Royal Family, you wouldn’t call up that planet again and hope everyone’s forgotten about that little misstep.

(I suppose Mon-El might’ve been escaping to Daxam, rather than from Daxam. But that seems like another ball of wax entirely.)

But if he cahooted with the emissaries to escape, a disguise would’ve been in order. He might’ve disguised himself as a guard to sneak out of the palace to evade his looming nuptials--or pretty much anything at all.

Another theory is that Mon-El was not coming from Daxam at all. He might have originated from Daxam, but he could’ve been in the Well of Stars indefinitely. It’s possible that he was born and raised on Daxam before becoming a member of The Legion Of Super-Heroes. In the mythos of the comics, Mon-El’s counterpart (Lar Gand) was dying from lead poisoning and asked Superman to send him to the Phantom Zone (where, like the Well of Stars, time does not pass). This enabled him to survive in stasis until a cure for his fatal Lead “allergy” could be discovered. Depending on the series, Mon-El/Lar Gand winds up getting his cure either in the 20th, 21st, 30th, or the 31st century via the Legion and returning to his life as a superhero.

For reference, a few nods to the Legion have come up. In the Flash, when traveling to Earth-2, they see a Legion flight ring in their multiverse collage. In Supergirl 01x15 Solitude, there is also a Legion flight ring displayed in the Fortress of Solitude.

So what if Mon-El, newly cured of his lead poisoning, crashed lands on earth with a super-sketchy memory? He runs away and spends the rest of the day trying to contact Daxam, his birth planet. We know precious little about him before Kara informs him that Daxam is gone. She mentions that Daxam was showered with debris from Krypton - and he insists that was why he left. But... what if that’s not true at all? What if he couldn’t remember why he left Daxam, and all he can remember is bits and pieces of his old life (protecting people, that Daxam had a monarchy, etc.)? He could’ve taken Kara’s information - about debris falling and danger - and sort of... creating an origin story. Not because he wanted to lie.

But it’s not like he’s lying entirely. It’s just that he honestly doesn’t recall, or because his mind is all jumbled, or because what he does remember makes him sound insane. (Such as time travel/Flashpoint.)

Obviously, parts of his memory return, as he can give Kara advice about Alien Gladiators and such... and he tries to tell her something “about Daxam” when he’s dying in Cadmus custody... but all that comes later. It’s possible that his memory takes time to return.

Possibility summary: Betrayal, Pretending him he was a guard, Time-traveling Legionnaire/Legion of Superheroes (31st century or 20th century), Flashpoint woes

What’s in a name? So, in the comics, Mon-El is an invented name. He had amnesia. He saw similarities between himself and Kal-El, so he took the surname El. And he landed on a Monday, so he decided his first name would be Mon. Hence, Mon-El. But there was never a Mon-El of Daxam in the comics. He was Lar Gand of Daxam who called himself Mon-El when he had amnesia here on earth.

The show, on the other hand, has had the mysterious aliens searching for “Mon-El of Daxam,” which suggests that his name isn’t something he invented on earth... unless, of course, the mysterious aliens searching for him are from the future and know his name (but not his location???) because of it.

Is it possible that Mon-El, when he woke up, had either no recollection of his name, or knew he shouldn’t provide his real name? If so, perhaps he took the last name El from Kara--he mentions specifically that he recognizes the Kryptonian Glyph (for the House of El) on her chest. Mon might be because he woke up on a Monday, or because it was the only thing he could think of at the time. Thus... Mon-El.

Possibility summary: Amnesia, Invented name, Time-traveling bounty hunters

Travel Delays Traveling from Krypton/Daxam varies wildly. Kal-El takes about 2-3 years (sometimes not even that long). Kara took 24 years, but she was trapped in the Phantom Zone, not traveling toward the planet... not until Indigo used her pod to pull Fort Rozz out of the Phantom Zone (01x15 Solitude). So why did it take Mon-El 37 years to travel from Daxam to Earth?

Even if Daxam was on the opposite side of its own galaxy from Krypton, that wouldn’t account for his time issue. Time doesn’t pass in the Well of Stars (where, on the show, Mon-El passed through). So was he trapped in the Well of Stars until someone/something shook his pod free, just like Kara’s? Or did he travel through the Well of Stars -- not aging, but traveling -- and it took him frickin’ 37 years to get to earth? Why?

This is a supporting argument for Mon-El as a Legionnaire theory. He waited in the Well of Stars until his lead allergy could be healed. Whoever healed him sent him to Earth.

Possibility summary: Legionnaire, Really bad travel guides???

Daddy Issues Mon-El has only mentioned his parents a few times. One time he mentions both his parents, but only in passing.

KARA: My parents gave me so much. And I was so loved. My dad was a scientist and my mom fought for justice. They were proud, strong people. Good Kryptonians and even better parents. And that's the way I want to remember them.

MON-EL: And why shouldn't you?

KARA: Because... They weren't perfect. And no matter how smart they were, or how hard they tried, they couldn't save us.

MON-EL: Yeah, you never met my parents. They weren't exactly role models.

-- 02x04 Survivors

Another time he tells Kara about his father, but only after she asks him a direct question.

KARA: If your father walked through that door right now, after all these years that you thought he was dead, what would you do?

MON-EL: I would run.

KARA: Run?

MON-EL: Because he was not a good man, so...

-- 02x14 Homecoming

He doesn’t elaborate on why his father wasn’t a good man. He also mentions nothing specific about his mother. So perhaps he fled Daxam (or wherever) to escape his parental units?

Then there was the Dominator bowing to him (02x09 Supergirl Lives), which obviously confuses him somewhat... which makes sense if they were bowing to him because of his parents allegiance rather than his own.

Possibility summary: Escaping bad parental units, Escaping the family name

#supergirl theories #supergirl meta #mon el meta #supergirl mon el #mon el secret #mon-el secret #supergirl secrets #out there theories for supergirl #possibilities and so on #random ideas #mon-el #mon el #supergirl

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