#i feel like humpty dumpty in the way that i will never be put back together again

[thekingofspin]

I feel like 10 the way im shouting at the screen.

"Regenerate, just regenerate, please, PLEASE JUST REGENERATE"

[writeonwhiskey]

the skz house: ch 23 (chan pov)

a/n: thank you @bahablastplz for editing! i really loved writing from chan's pov. i hope you all enjoy this one!!

[ read chapter 22 here ]

Chapter Twenty-Three: Of You

You haven’t spoken to me in days.

A few months ago, this wouldn’t have bothered me at all. I would have been fine with it. I would have preferred it. Here I am now, silently pleading with you at the table to look at me. But you don’t. And it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have said those things to you the other night. I shouldn’t have fucked you like that.

Seeing you hurt as a direct result of my actions has never been easy to accept. In the beginning I brushed it off as being necessary. After you bulldozed through the walls I had up, though, it felt impossible to reassemble them. I’m Humpty fucking Dumpty over here.  

Should I have sent you away when you showed up at our house? Lee Know was in charge of the applicants, so I was floored seeing you walk in behind Seungmin that day. If I’d seen you amongst the candidates beforehand, I would have rejected it...maybe. I would have at least been able to spare you of the bullshit I put you through then, and again now. It’s unfair to you. I know it is.

But once you were here, I didn’t want you to leave. I pushed you away because I needed you to make the choice to go—I’m too selfish when it comes to you, I learned that quickly. I’ve never felt this way about anything before and I honestly don’t know how to cope with it. I feel whole when I’m with you in general, I feel invincible when I’m fucking you…how can this possibly be wrong?

Now I’m left hanging on to the tiniest of threads that connect us and I’m trying not to cling too hard for fear that it will snap from all the weight I bear in this. The thought of losing you terrifies me. And I know it’s inevitable.

I attempt to talk to you after dinner when I see you in the hallway. I want to apologize for my actions, but you cut me off.

“Don’t be. You’re right. We should want to do this and I’m going to give it a try.”

I feel consumed with rage at your words. I want to lash out and scream or punch a hole through the goddamn wall. But I don’t. I let you go.

I have to let you go.  

On Sunday when you come to my room to grab your sheets, you don’t say anything. I deserve it though, don’t I? If I hadn’t taken that trip with you my father wouldn’t have grown suspicious. I wouldn’t have to give you up for the next two weeks when I already have so little time left with you. If I hadn’t opened up to you, this wouldn’t be so hard on both of us. And on top of all that, I’m the one who told you we should be open to this first. I’m reaping what I’ve sown.

Allie comes in a little while later to put her sheets on your bed. The sight of them there doesn’t look right. Neither does she.

I watch as she moves around my room, oblivious to my mood and making small talk. I’m responsive…I think.  I will myself to feel some kind of emotion while looking at her—even if it’s just lust. She’s pretty, I could be attracted to her. If I call her over to my bed right now, she’d come. I could fuck her…but I don’t want to.

My ears perk up when she says she wants to spend the first night with me. As much as I want to object, I don’t. I can’t, really.

After dinner, I quickly shower and get into my own bed with the lights off before she returns. I can’t fall asleep, though. I’m thinking about you. Who are you staying with tonight? Are you sleeping in their bed?

I’m still wide awake when she comes back in, wearing just a towel. I can’t even be bothered to take a gander.

It disturbs me.

She shouldn’t be here. 

“Chan? Are you asleep?” she calls out into the darkness.

I remain silent and still. I hear her change into her pajamas and climb in her—your—bed, and finally feel relaxed enough to actually try falling asleep.

She stays with Hyunjin for the next three days and it feels like a relief. I’d rather be alone. But…being alone, with my thoughts does little to help me. I can’t stop thinking about you. What are you doing? Is Seungmin being good to you?

As fucked up as my mental and emotional state are, on Jeongin’s birthday I can’t keep being a recluse. He’ll be offended if I don’t show up for a little while, at least. So, I join the others in the basement for drinks and karaoke. Drinking to drown my sorrows is not something I enjoy, but tonight I want to. Especially since Allie will be in my room. I don’t want to do anything I might regret—but have you?

I’m one drink deep by the time you come in with Changbin. You seem happy. He offers to get you a drink, which I don’t mind. Then he calls you his girl. Which I do mind.

At that, I finish what’s left in my cup and give myself another heavy-handed pour of whiskey to replenish it. Have you fucked him? I wonder. The thought makes me feel sick to my stomach. I can’t help but feel selfish. In this fucked up situation, I know none of these guys would do anything to intentionally harm you. I know you’re in good hands, but…fuck. I don’t want anyone else on this entire planet to have you.

As the night carries on, everyone’s having a good time and I’m sulking in the corner like a toddler that’s been forced to share his favorite toy. I don’t know how else to feel right now. I am used to seeing you be flirtatious with Hyunjin. Seeing you cuddled up to Changbin on the couch, though, makes me want to snatch you away from him and claim you in front of everyone. But I can’t.

I can’t even be mad at him. He means well. And when he gets up to perform, I’m left smiling at his antics. I couldn’t seriously hate any of them, even if you are involved. I’ve known them for too long. These are my brothers. At the end of everything, they’re the ones who will be with me the rest of my life. Not you.

“Chan-hyung!”

I’m ripped form my confuddled thoughts when Jeongin says my name. I immediately shake my head—I’m not in the mood.

“For my birthday,” he adds. “Stop being boring and old.”

I frown at that.

Then Lee Know is marching towards me, grabbing me by the arm, and pulling me to the other room. I don’t put up too much of a fight—I’m old and boring, after all.

“For your birthday,” I look pointedly at Jeongin to which he beams back at me. “What do you wanna hear?”

“That new song you were finishing up last week,” he says.

“No, not that,” I shake my head.

For my music production minor, I’ve been spending more time in the studio than usual. There’s no better way to get my feelings and frustrations out than through music. Tortured artist and all that.

“Yes, that. It’s my birthday.”

He’s really milking this birthday thing. He connects his phone to the speaker, and I silently curse myself for having sent him the song. Everything I’ve done lately has come back to slap me in the face.

The melody starts to play, and I let out a sigh, trying to shake my troublesome thoughts and get into performance mode. I turn to face the TV; I can’t look at you while I sing this.

“Got so many questions, you seek information. No need to be desperate, we’re just getting started.”

I started writing this song before we even took our trip, but only just booked the studio time to record it. The lyrics cut deeper now than when I originally wrote them. They reveal the way I’ve felt about you. The way I still feel about you.

This is bad, isn’t it?

Do you hate it?

Are you repulsed after the way I treated you?

As I continue singing, I turn around to face everyone. My eyes find you first. You seem taken aback—it’s understandable.

“Locked in sight, we’re in trouble. A lock and a key making rumbles. I know you want me, don’t crumble.”

I avert my gaze before the next lyrics. Looking at you and singing them will make me crumble. But I mean every single word. I never thought I’d meet someone that feels so perfect for me. Why did it have to be like this?

When the song is over, I pass the mic to Rhiannon and retreat back to the bar. You’re performing now. You’re smiling and happy…all the things I wish I could make you. But I can’t. I’m not allowed to. Not for real anyways.

My eyes are so focused on you that I don’t notice Allie until she’s snapping her fingers in front of my face.

“Earth to Chan—you okay?” she places a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m good,” I say, sitting up straight and drinking from my cup.

She’s standing between my legs. Again, I will myself to feel something…anything. Maybe not unbridled attraction, but at least a desire to fuck her. It doesn’t happen. I raise a hand to her waist to test it out, but it doesn’t feel right. I could kiss her right now, get it over with.

“I have class at 8 so I’m gonna head up. You coming?”

I shrug, dropping my hand from her waist.

“Come on,” she says, sliding her hand down my arm to my wrist.

I let her pull me off the chair and up the stairs with her. I guess I could go to my room with her. I probably should.

So, I do. I follow her up the steps, her hand still holding my wrist. We get to my room, and she shuts the door behind us.

“I’m gonna shower first,” I say, in hopes the steam will clear my mind up.

She releases my wrist and I retreat to my bathroom.

I should fuck her. I really should. Even though I don’t feel physically attracted to her, I can think of you to make my dick hard. Then I can fuck her and get you out of my head. I can end this turmoil.

The shower does little to make me feel better. Nothing can make me feel better.

Except you.

I spend far longer than necessary in there and when I get out, I’ve lost all conviction to sleep with her. As I re-enter my room, I’m hoping and praying that she has fallen asleep.

She hasn’t.

“Get some rest…I’m gonna go make a snack.”

“I can make you something,” she offers, pushing the sheets back.

“No, it’s okay—thank you, though. Go to sleep.”

She nods and pulls the blankets back over her.

Downstairs, I sit down on the couch and turn the TV on. I’m not even hungry. I just didn’t want to be in my room with her. I’ve never felt so hung up on someone before, it leaves me at a loss of what to do. If I fuck her, it would only be to help myself move on from you. I’m just not convinced it would work. And I’d hate myself after for it. But have you already moved on? The thought keeps plaguing me.

I remain in place, rooted to the couch, as the others start to file out of the basement. First Han and Charlotte, then Lee Know, then comes Changbin…and you.

He’s drunk. He has one arm slung over your shoulder, and both of yours are wrapped around his waist to support him. You help him up the stairs without so much as a glance in my direction. What are you going to do up there? I want to go up there after you, but I can’t.

The sounds coming from the TV start to annoy me. I mute it and stare blankly at the moving images. I don’t know how much time passes in silence. My attention is drawn to the stairs at the sound of footsteps coming down.

It’s you.

You immediately look away from me and proceed into the kitchen. I shouldn’t follow you. But I’m up and off the couch before I can stop myself. I’m drawn to wherever you are. I’m a magnet and you’re my true north.

With every step I take towards you the voice in my head—my father’s voice—is telling me to stop and turn around and I hate it. I hate that voice. I hate that it wants to steal the one piece of unadulterated happiness I’ve felt in years. You feel like bliss. You feel like hope.

He threatened to make you leave. I swear to God I nearly fucking broke right then and there. He can yell and berate me all he wants, but to threaten to take you away before our time is up? Out of the question. I put up a front, acted nonchalant about you.

‘She doesn’t mean anything, Appa.’

 Lie.

You mean everything.

When I enter the kitchen, you’re grabbing water bottles from the pantry. I don’t have a plan, but I know I need to be near you, so I walk over to the pantry and wait for you to turn around.

The second your eyes land on me, all traces of feeling confused and lost leave my body. I’m found. My body is filled with the purest warmth, and I have to touch you to get more of it. I have to have you. You avert your eyes to the water bottles in your hand and I feel a pain in my chest.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I ask, placing a hand on your waist and pulling you towards me.

It’s an unfair question. You don’t know this inward battle I’ve been fighting since you showed up here. But I don’t know what else to say. It’s less of a question and more of a plea, really.

“I’m not doing anything,” you say softly. “I’m just…existing.”

“That’s all it takes, honestly,” I reply.  

“Chan,” you whisper, shaking your head, eyes still on the water bottles.

You won’t look up at me. Why won’t you look at me? I need you to look at me.

I take a few steps back from the pantry and bring you with me. This is the most I’ve touched you in a week. I’m not letting you go. I hold your waist with one hand and use the other to grab the water bottles, two by two, from your hand and set them on the counter before returning my attention to you.

“I feel like I’m in shambles when I’m away from you,” I admit, hooking a finger under your chin, forcing you to look up at me.

“You’re drunk,” you say, trying to push me away.

I hold on to you tighter, standing my ground.

“I miss you.”

You close your eyes and sigh, shaking your head again. You don’t believe me?

“You can’t.”

“But I do.” I say, bending down to nuzzle my face into your neck.

If you push me away again, I’ll take that as a sign. If you’ve made up your mind, I’ll have to live with it.

I wait for it, but it doesn’t happen.

Instead, you wrap your arms around my neck and pull me closer to you. I take in a deep breath and feel the stars align as the familiar smell of your skin ensnares my senses.

My hand leaves your waist and trails up your back, into your hair. I grab a handful of it and tug back on it. You look up at me with those soft fucking doe eyes that make my insides melt. The complete and utter trust you have in me. I can see it.

I smash my lips against yours, maybe too hard, but I don’t care. I want you. I fucking miss you.

You don’t hesitate to kiss me back, just as passionately. Do you miss me too?

I grab you by the waist and hoist you up on the counter as we kiss. My hands fumble at the waistband of your pajama bottoms. I want you so bad. Why am I nervous? And then, you’re helping me, leaning back and lifting your hips to push them down. I pull them off and toss them on the floor beside us. I scoot you to the edge of the counter and lower myself to my knees.

You tangle your hands in my hair as I rub my nose along your slit, inhaling my favorite scent. You smell so good, baby girl. I use my tongue on you next, needing to have you with all my senses. You throw your head back and let out a quiet whimper as I continue to fill myself with what I’ve been deprived of. What I don’t want to go without.

You.

My hands grip your thighs and as I’m licking, lapping, fucking you with my tongue, the emotions I so desperately willed myself to experience earlier surface. And I know then. I know I’m done for. How can I willingly give this up?

I stand from my knees and pull you off the counter, covering your mouth with mine again.

Do you like the way you taste on me? Your moan says yes.

“My cock throbs every time I see you, y/n,” I tell you, breaking the kiss as I turn you around, groping your breasts over your t-shirt. Your head falls back against my shoulder and litter the side of your neck with kisses. I pull you against me and press my hips against yours. I want you to feel how hard I am. How hard you make me. I could come in my pants right now, without even fucking you.

I’m helpless when it comes to you. Can’t you see that?

“Tell me to stop,” I plead, resting my cheek on yours and thrusting my hips against you again.

You shake your head and lean over on the counter, poking your ass out at me. You’re such a good fucking girl. I slap your ass with the palm of my hand, watching as it jiggles in the dimly lit kitchen. I grab a hand full of it, squeezing tightly.

I push my shorts and boxers down and grab my cock with one hand, holding your hips steady with the other. I rub my cock up and down your slit, groaning at how wet you are. Your pussy is always so wet and ready for me. Do you need me just as much as I need you?

“Every time before I fuck you,” I say, teasing your opening as you moan, “I tell myself I can live without it.”

I ease myself inside of you and we both let out the biggest sigh of relief at the same time.

“But I can’t,” I continue, slowly withdrawing. “I fucking can’t.”

I thrust myself back inside of you with as much force as I can and all hell breaks loose.

I realize the precarious situation we’re in. In the kitchen. But I could not care any less. My cock is home inside of you. This is where I’m supposed to be. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

I keep thrusting into you and you fuck me back. You want me just as much as I want you, don’t you? But do you need me like I need you? I can’t ask you that, so I just fuck you harder instead. It’s not healthy to communicate this way, but I can’t bring myself to say these desperate words to you. You take each thrust of my hips without running away and I love it. I fucking love—

No. No. I can’t.

The sound of your hushed moans, combined with the knowledge that we could be caught at any second, have all of my nerves standing at attention. You grip the edges of the counter as I grip your waist, pulling you back against me as hard as I can.

Mine.

Right now, I don’t care if you’ve fucked Seungmin or Changbin or both. They can’t hold a candle to what we have when we’re together like this. That much I’m certain of.

You’re mine, y/n.

You stand on your tiptoes and arch your back. I grit my teeth, and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to shake off my release. I need more. But even with my eyes closed, I can picture how you look in front of me. I have every curve of your body memorized; do you know that? The dimples on your back that I love pressing my thumbs into when I grip your hips. The thought makes me growl as I pummel into you harder and faster.

You’re perfect. I need you to know that. With every thrust, every grunt, every moan. I need you to know.

“Chan,” I hear you say and my eyes snap open.

I see your hand buried between your legs, rubbing your clit and working yourself to an orgasm.

Yes. Please, baby girl. Come on my cock.

I feel your pussy, my pussy, clench around my cock as your legs start to shake and I let myself go too; thrusting into you with reckless abandon as I come.

I’m convinced there’s no better feeling in the world.

I’m glad you stayed.

I’m glad I didn’t see your name on the list before you showed up.

Your legs continue to quiver as I lay myself across your back, leaving my cock inside of you.

I don’t want to move.

I don’t want you to leave me.

[ read chapter 24 here ]

a/n: HOW ARE WE FEELING, MY LOVES? poor baby chan is stuck between a rock and a (constantly) hard place. i am so so so excited to hear your thoughts.

[queenofbaws]

Back to being annoying with my hyperfixation. Could I please get jossam for any one of the dialogue prompts?

After everything that had gone down, his head felt like it was full of sludge. Not whatever weird, gauzy, cotton-daze bullshit Cochise talked about after a migraine, but straight up sludge. It was as though someone had sawed his skullcap off, poured in a handful of liquid concrete, then went along their merry way to leave him scrambling for a way to keep himself upright.

Everything behind his eyes felt heavy. Thick.

Sludge, Josh thought as he lowered his head into his arms to block out the emptiness of the room the rangers had sequestered him in, that about summed it up.

"None of us are supposed to go to sleep, you know."

Through the sluggish ooze of his thoughts, he noticed the effect her voice had; there was a distance between him and it, however, making him feel like a scientist taking down observational notes instead of...well. Whatever he was anymore.

The chair beside his was pulled from the table, the legs scraping against the linoleum. Sam smelled like smoke and sweat and antiseptic - hardly the kind of thing you bottled and sold - but even so, he could feel the way his pulse quickened in his wrists. His heart triphammered beneath his ribs. All the fight and flight had gone from him by then, and he'd never been one for freezing or fawning, but still that adrenaline remained, begging him to do something, anything.

He kept his heavy head in his arms.

Sam let out a quiet breath. A sigh. He'd watched her climb her way out of the mines, hand over hand and foot over foot; he couldn't begin to imagine how tired she must've been, how exhausted. And yet here she was, sitting in the dark with him, flinching every time the watercooler in the corner bubbled.

"Until they can figure out if we're concussed or...you know."

For someone who'd spent the last nine months or so gestating a mad scientist scheme, it took him an awfully long time to connect her two statements together. He told himself it was the sludge - the come-down from whatever break he'd suffered down there in the belly of the beast - not him, never him.

She was quiet for a long, long time beside him. "You scared us all back there," she admitted after a while, her tone light despite the sandpaper rasp in her throat. "Including me."

A lifetime passed.

"Especially me."

He dug his fingers into his arms, strengthening the wall between them. Already his eyes were shut, but he squeezed them tighter for fear of catching the slightest glimpse of her expression. After everything he'd survived, there was no question in his mind that would kill him.

She took a deep breath. One of her nostrils whistled faintly with the effort. With that same scientific distance, he found himself wondering how hurt she really was, whether things had broken inside of her that couldn't be put back together, Humpty-Dumpty style. He wondered too, how much of that was his handiwork.

"Don't scare me like that again, okay?" she asked, and then there was a weight on his shoulder that could only be her head, a pressure around his middle that could only be her arms. "I can't lose you too."

And even the heaviness of his own thoughts, the thick, sludgy mess inside his head, couldn't protect him from the hitch in her voice. Or the tears he felt soaking into his sleeve.

[i-logophile]

So I made that playlist for Game of Shards (and just generally, the turtles), and I've decided to explain the TGP-specific songs in excessive detail bc y'all don't understand the depths of my hyper-fixations.

For the most part, the playlist is in chronological order; however, some of the songs are grouped by general vibes (e.g., songs for Leo's various timeouts in the darkness are all grouped together as opposed to being chronological with the story), and whenever it switches perspective, it may go back to previous chapters (e.g., the first 40-ish songs follow Leo through Ch. 1-7, and then it jumps back to Ch 2 for his brothers' POVs). Instrumentals/OSTs are scattered throughout as interludes between scenes and/or perspectives.

Tbh I don't even mind if people actually read this; I just wanted to write this down lmao

If y'all have any suggestions or song recs, feel free to put them out there! (I reserve the right not to add them to the playlist tho—no hard feelings 🙃) I will probably continue adding to this list because I keep finding more and more songs lol

TGP spoiler alert (duh...). Also TW for mental health issues in some songs.

ROTTMNT Movie

1. "Everybody Loves Me" - Okay, but this song is just like LEO all the way. 2. "give a little." - Leo, stop that angsty middle-child nonsense (saxophone slaps tho). 3. "Expectations" - I ain't got much to say about this one tbh. I feel like it fits the vibe though. 4. "Doomsday" - Leo's getting frustrated with all this leader/hero business. He wants to go back to the simpler times when all he had to do was look pretty and smooth talk. 5. "Not OK" - Leo's tired of being told what to do. the lyrics "Sorry can you please repeat the question? / I'm broke, and I never pay attention" really give that Leo+Raph scene in Leo's room in the movie. 6. "ight bet" - Leo gets cocky and impulsive. 7. "One Wrong Turn" - It's not so much the lyrics as the theme of the song. In other words, Leo, you done fxcked up. "Something funny that I've learned / Is just how quickly fate can turn / How one simple mistake can take you out (out, out, out) / Something funny that I've found / Is just how quickly worlds burn down / Make one wrong turn and you can't turn around ('round, 'round, 'round) / One wrong turn can burn things to the ground." 8. "The Tornado" - LISTEN TO THESE LYRICS. They fit the movie perfectly, especially "Every fiber in me screamed out, but I couldn't make a sound / The whirling of a vortex, a violent carousel / It sounded like a freight train was draggin' me to hell / And this was my prayer / "Save me from this terrible nightmare!" / That was when I saw my family with my eyes shut real tight / Would they know how much I loved them if this was how I died? / No, I vowed I'd not be murdered by a monster in the sky that night." 9. "Otherside" - Leo's existential crisis following the Invasion Pt. 1 10. "When I Die" - Leo's existential crisis following the Invasion Pt. 2.

TGP Ch. 1: Leo Reminiscing

11. "Hold It Down" - More existential crisis, but now with that ever-familiar side of guilt and regret. 12. "Humpty Dumpty" - Something's wrong (*cough* PTSD *cough* chronic injuries *cough*). Leo's trying to push through it. 13. "Home" - The lyrics "When I fall, will you show me who I'm meant to be? / Because I'm getting tired of who I've become", "I'm not a hero or a child, I'm just something in between", and "Days passed as I would start to scream / I'd hear the words around my head like they were circling / You'll never be who they all want you to become / Oh will I make them proud enough / Or am I even worth the love / Don't let my self-doubt take my pride away, yeah / Because my spirit felt the cuts / And my ego lost its luster just as fast as I could say" hits my soul. Poor Leo. 14. "Growing Sideways" - Leo's brothers all seem to be healing, why isn't he? 15. "Superkid" - Leo's a ninja, a hero, yet something is still wrong—he realizes it's him. He surveys the damage to the city and thinks of the struggles his family has faced. He blames himself. ("So, hide your face / Smile at the people even if it's fake / 'Cause they can't know your kryptonite / Fly around the city, make 'em think you're fine / But you can't save them.") 16. "Tread On Me" - Leo's trying to take responsibility, but he's drained. "Lotta miles, lotta folds, I'm still tryin' to just get back up / Don't you tread on me / I could hardly sleep / So I don't / And I can hardly speak / So I won't." "I'm tryna live in the moment like you told me / I'm tryna control it without givin' it up / I'm a soldier and I'm on my feet for now." 17. "Porcelain" - It's the glass theme, guys. 18. "One Winged Airplane" - Self-deprecation with just a touch of despair. ("Even though I keep on fallin', I just pick myself back up / I just keep puttin' my all in, even though it's not enough / I've lost so much already, so what? I'm not afraid to show up.") (I'm biased toward the ADHD songs ngl.) 19. "Corner of the World" - Depression(TM): Leo Style. ("It was tough when he was younger, but he finally got it down / Convincing everybody he's a comic, he's a clown / 'Cause he hides it so well that it can't possibly be found / He's constantly let down, but he says that he heals / He laughs and jokes about it, but it isn't real / He just mirrors the emotions that he wish he could feel / But if no one ever noticed, it's a victory still.")

Ch. 1: Leo's Run

20. "Run Away to Mars" - The song's a vibe, and it fits the scene, what can I say? 21. "Run" - Leo was getting stir-crazy in the lair. Luckily, he can go for a nice run while he waits for the pizzas. ("Something isn't right, I can't hear the inner me / But my shell is doing well, so nobody intervenes / Convos feel like interviews, I get through by any means / Mirror on my face, I'm just displaying what you give to me / Every day I fantasize of burning it all / Go somewhere where I would never be a burden at all / Take every penny that I ever earned and give it away / Disconnect the telephone and disappear in a day.") 22. "run little hero" - "Run, run, run, run from your friends, from your family / Like they're the next calamity / Cut them out like profanity, – into insanity / Running from your commitments / You're running up on the price / You better run little hero / 'Cause you're running out of time." Also, the last lyric of this song killed me. 23. "Run Boy Run" - Just a run, a nice, chill, definitely-not-gonna-have-consequences run.

Ch. 1: Leo and the EPF Van (plus ~panic attacks~)

24. "Paranoia" - Leo notices a black van. Again. And again. 25. "Overwhelmed" - Pretty self-explanatory if you know the song—though this is a different cover than the OG, so a bunch of the lyrics are different. (Personally, I like this version better.)

Ch. 1: Leo v. Mark and Clark

26. "OH WELL" - Everything's gone to shit. 😃 27. "life is good" - Leo cannot, in fact, dodge tranquilizers. "Face down, but I can feel my body moving / Is this real or am I in an illusion / Get up get up I’m only human / Pupils dilated like I’m bout to lose it / so crazy so I turn off the news / Living in a lie and we can’t see the truth / Every one fighting tell me which side are you" 28. "Redecorate" - "I don't want to go like this / At least let me clean my room. / I don't want to leave like this / 'Cause the last thing I want to do is / Make my people make decisions / Wondering what to do." 29. "alive (it's a lie) - demo" - As Leo succumbs to the tranqs, he can't help but think of his brothers, all seemingly on the road to full recovery. Meanwhile, he's stuck. Some ninja he is.

1. Interlude

30. "Sinister Intentions" - Get it? Bc the EPF has sinister intentions? Somebody stop me

Ch. 3: Leo Wakes up and Meets Bishop

31. "Lucky Charms" - Leo wakes up in his cell and thinks lots of lovely self-loathing thoughts. ("Wish I could say, wish I could say / That this won't last forever / But every day, but every day / It never seems to get better / I hate myself but I don't want to / I'd ask for help but I'm too strong to / I got some feelings I've been fighting / Always hiding the truth.") 32. "Now That We're Alone" - Bishop and Leo vibes all the way.

Ch. 3-7: The Darkness (AKA Leo's timeouts) & Bishop's Interrogations

33. "Black Water" - Just listen, you'll get it. 34. "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" - Leo goin' crazy, y'all 😜 35. "Timebomb" - Leo's thoughts toward B-Man during literally every interrogation. 36. "Panic Room" - All bets are off when the lights turn off. 37. "Talking To Myself - demo" - He misses his family, your honor. 38. "Pretty Little Smile" - Leo's trying his best to hold it together. 39. "Ship in a Bottle" - Leo spiraling about Bishop and the EPF and his brothers and... 40. "SAD (Clap Your Hands)" - Thinking specifically of Leo doing the Cup Song here.

2. Interlude

41. "Solas" - Felt like this one was properly somber, but still a good transition into the frantic energy of Leo's brothers in Ch. 2.

Ch. 2-6: Donnie, Raph, & Mikey Want Their Brother Back

42. "Enough" - Donnie is angry at everything. He just wants Leo back. 43. "Me Myself & I" - Donnie regrets fighting with his family. 44. "Happy Song (Low Key)" - Mikey's gonna keep smiling if it kills him. 45. "Brightside" - Mikey tries to hold the family together while dealing with his own issues regarding Leo's capture. 46. "I'm Doing Fine" - Raph struggles under the leader's mantle.

3. Interlude

47. "Glacial Basin" - An appropriately unnerving prelude to Bishop's plan(s).

Ch. 8: Bishop Tries To Manipulate Leo

48. "Twisted" - Leo is (high on pain and painkillers but also) so confused. Come on, Bishop, you're hurting his concussed, drugged-up turtle brain.

Ch. 9: Bioagent-X

49. "Control" - Leo gets angry at Bishop, escapes, and finds his brothers, but he doesn't know what's going on with himself. (I know this song's kinda overused in a lot of fandoms, but I couldn't not include it. I mean, it makes sense here, doesn't it??)

Ch. 10: Turtles v. EPF

50. "Clouds" - Bioagent-X takes its toll. The EPF attacks. 51. "CHOKE" - The plan falls apart. Leo is taken once again. Angst, spice, and nothing is nice.

4. Interlude

52. "Fade (Interlude)" - It's a sad moment, dammit.

Ch. 11-12: They Are All Struggling

53. "everything is falling apart again" - I felt like this song fits Raph very well, especially here. One of his themes in TGP was that he felt like things were falling apart, and since the first half of this chapter is from his perspective following the disaster that was Ch. 10, this was the perfect place for this song. 54. "Gravedigger" - Leo is throwing reason and caution to the wind. If he's his own gravedigger, why not dig his grave as deep as possible and make it even more difficult for the EPF? 55. "Dark Room" - Back home again to his cell and the darkness and Bishop's manipulations. "Way down we go / To the dark room / Where your pain's the only one to greet you / Down we go / To the mind that / Will deceive you. / Only out to get you." 56. "Numb" - Leo struggles with despair. 57. "Headlights" - Leo's had enough. "Is it only me or do you / Ever feel like you've had enough? / Screaming at the top of your lungs / These days it's so dark and I can't get my head right / Mind is spinning out of control / Running, but there's nowhere to go / These days it's so dark that I can't see with headlights."

5. Interlude (and Ch. 12)

58. "Rain, in Your Black Eyes" - I know it's long, but this is my favorite instrumental piece. It's solemn but gradually hopeful. This song follows Leo regaining his Ninpō in Ch. 12.

Ch. 12: A Small Spark, A Blue Flame

59. "Power" - Leo uses his Ninpō and faces down the EPF with his escape in sight.

Ch. 13: Mind Meld

60. "Brother" - They've found him (granted, in the Mind Meld). (And, yes, I know the song's overused yada yada, but it fits.) 61. "can you hear me?" - Leo's gotten this far, but he can't get out alone. 62. "No Chances" - "We want you home in one piece now / We come for you, no chances"

6. Interlude

63. "The Last Survivors" - Cinematic and dramatic.

Ch. 14: Leo Holds On

64. "Come Home" - Leo's trying to come home. 65. "Bones" - Leo plays a desperate, painful game of hide-and-seek while his Ninpō fades in and out of his control. 66. "Bleeding Out" - This song makes me specifically think of when the EPF overtakes Leo after Bishops turns off the lights. 67. "My Tears Are Becoming A Sea" - Leo sees his brothers' light in the impenetrable darkness.

Ch. 14: Hamatos to the Rescue

68. "Flares" - Leo's family is here for him. 69. "Edge of Rain" - Hamatos v. EPF (Take 2)

Ch. 15: They Got Him Back

70. "Call Your Mom" - Yes, I know the song's about Noah Kahan's girlfriend, BUT "Stayed on the line with you the entire night / 'Til you let it out and let it in / Don't let this darkness fool you / All lights turned off can be turned on", "Waiting room, no place to stand / His greatest fears and wringing hands and the loudest silence / If you could see yourself like this", and "Don't wanna drive another mile wonderin' if you're breathin' / So, won't you stay, won't you stay, won't you stay with me?" IT FITS DAMMIT.

Ch. 16: Bishop's Boutta Get It, Guys

71. "Start a War" - Okay, but why does this song describe Game of Shards (not just TGP) so well? I think specifically of the lines: "Bang, shots fired. / Pain is what you desire. / The pen is mightier than the sword." ;)

7. Interlude

72. "Nuvole Bianche" - The send-off. For now.

Once again, feel free to suggest other songs. You may have noticed that some chapters/scenes didn't have any songs, so if you think you know a song that would fit somewhere, lmk! (I'm particularly salty that I haven't found songs for any scenes with the Krang Sister :P)

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #44: BETTER A WIDOW...

May, 1989

VisionQuest continues

Vision forgot to put his skin on today...

And Hank Pym's 'I'm not like the other superheroes' jumpsuit is awfully maroon today.

Anyway.

Last times on West Coast Avengers: John Byrne took over the book and a bunch of things changed between issues. Tigra, Wasp, and Dr Pym rejoined the team.

Then, a fake-Ultron attacked and Vision was kidnapped and unpersoned while the West Coast Avengers were distracted.

Mockingbird showed up to Explain It All and took the Avengers to the secret Vigilance base where Vision had been taken due to fears he'd try to take over the world again.

Only the West Coast Avengers arrived Too Late. And Wanda found her husband disassembled, his parts strewn everywhere. It'd be way too much gore for comics if he weren't a robot.

Even this splash page is kinda too much, even with robot bits.

My boy! Look how they massacred my boy!

;_;

The various scientist who were just taking Vision apart are very concerned that Scarlet Witch and probably the Avengers are here instead of somewhere else being distracted.

And Wanda is not sympathetic. In fact, she's as angry as someone would be if they found their spouse turned into a pile of anatomy.

Mockingbird, who has still more exposition to exposition, explains this was the end goal of the kidnap Vision scheme. To erase Vision along with any top secret data he may have picked up when he was the internet for a hot minute.

Wonder Man shows up with project head Cameron Brock under arm and tells him to exposition more.

And since Vision has already been taken apart, Brock has no problem spilling the beans.

Vigilance is not a KGB operation but they are involved running the detention cells, which is why Mockingbird thought it was a KGB operation.

Brock reveals, he's not KGB and he's not SHIELD either. He's CANADIAN.

DUN DUN DUNNNN

Wonder Man jokes about the concept of Canadian spies, showing that he has never heard of Wolverine. He then jokes about Australia, because he's going for all the hits.

Brock goes 'well actually my deputy chief is Australian.'

And he explains that Vigilance is actually a truly worldwide joint venture. Almost every security network on Earth sent a representative.

The Americans, the British, the French, the Russians, etc etc.

The kind of global cooperation almost unheard of -- all to specifically fuck up Vision.

Brock reiterates what he told Mockingbird. As long as Vision wasn't on the Avengers, everybody was willing to grit their teeth and let bygones be whatevers. But as soon as he rejoined (because Hawkeye was a sad sack who couldn't keep together a team), all the intelligence agencies put aside their differences to fuck up Vision.

Global peace, just like Vision wanted when he took over the internet. What ironies.

Wanda claims that Vision can be put back together. He is a robotty robot so clearly they just reassemble him and good as new.

Hank Pym shows up just to say nuh uh.

This is a theme in this issue. People showing up in the nick of time to say nuh uh.

Even though Hank is an expert in robotics despite being a biochemist and even though he's more familiar with Vision's systems than almost anyone, he's skeptical that humpty dumpty can be put back together again.

If Vision's brain was erased like Mockingbird said, Hank has no idea how to deal with that.

Wanda says that they can just borrow some brain patterns from Wonder Man again and use the backup memory file that Vision kept in the Avengers' computers.

Again, with this idea that Vision's brain is a computer that can be uploaded to external storage. I feel like that's at odds with how Vision has been portrayed in the past.

But it doesn't matter.

Vigilance wiped the Avengers' computer systems with a virus. Both the East and West Coast teams. There's no back-up.

(This is where John Byrne put in a backdoor, as some writers do when writing something that may be contentious. In this case, his backdoor to get out of this was that there's a copy of Vision's brain in the Titan supercomputer ISAAC. From the time that Vision linked with ISAAC.)

(John Byrne also uses the idea that Vision's brain can just be backed up as evidence that Vision isn't a real boy and is just an overly sophisticated appliance. The idea that he introduced. Sigh.)

With all the problems on the table, Hank says lets ignore the fact that Vision's unique personality is probably gone forever, erased by magnets or whatever. Just putting all the pieces back together is going to be hard enough.

Heck, the Vision was built from the base of the original Human Torch, the most sophisticated android ever created. That might be beyond Hank's level of skill!

And then Wasp shows up and goes nuh uh!

Not about Hank not being able to do it but about the thing he said about the robot Human Torch.

The shocking prisoner she found in the detention level that was so shocking it had to wait until this issue to reveal?

It's Phineas Horton, allegedly!

He supposedly died in Vision's backstory but we're about to take a big dump on that.

Vigilance wanted an expert in Vision's systems so they tried to find associates of Phineas Horton that might have worked with him on the Human Torch.

Instead they found the actual dude. Just casually not dead.

Hank is like okay weird that Vision thought this guy was dead but he could have been mistaken. Either way, hot damn, the exact expert we needed is right at hand!

And Dr Phineas Horton says nuh uh. He's already here so he didn't pop in just to say it but he's complementing Wasp's earlier nuh uh.

He's definitely the real Dr Phineas Horton (this man will later be retconned to be an imposter, womp womp, retcon tennis) and he doesn't recognize Vision's systems at all.

Vision is definitely not Horton's creation.

DUN DUN DUNNNNN

Elsewhere, Hawkeye didn't get the memo about waiting just outside the lab to pop in and nuh uh things so he's wandering around the backlot of the Vigilance base.

And I say backlot because aside from the main areas that Mockingbird saw and the stuff related to disassembling Vision and holding people prisoner, this entire base is just a mock-up. Just enough actually functional stuff to fool Mockingbird into thinking it was a fully operational secret SHIELD facility.

Hawkeye also wonders how the Vigilance team was able to capture Vision, which I also am wondering.

But he hears Tigra growling and follows the sound to find her having cornered a couple of Vigilance guys.

Vigilance Person: "You're Hawkeye! Help us!" Another Vigilance Person: "For god's sake... stop her!!"

Hawkeye calls Tigra's name which makes her swing her attention from nameless asshole 1 and 2 to pounce at Hawkeye.

I guess one of her uncontrollable cat instincts is to kill birds.

(Despite the narrative caption promising that all kinds of horrible injury is about to happen to Hawkeye, he's fine when we next see him and Tigra. Typical sensationalism, tsk tsk.)

For some ding dang reason, the narrative cuts to Absolom College in Texas where some shadowy collegiate figures are trying to choose a suitable subject from a list of mutants.

Forty-one candidates are rejected before Scarlet Witch is chosen for whatever this is all about.

If you're curious and have trouble with the tiny headshots, here's how the judging sorts out:

No: Angel, Avalanche, Blob, Caliban, Callisto, Cannonball, Cyclops, Destiny, Firestar, Forge, Iceman, Karma, Multiple Man, Magma, Malice, Mandrill, Marvel Girl, Mastermind, Mesmero, Mystique, Nekra, Nightcrawler, and Pyro.

Too powerful: Apocalypse, Magneto, and Rachael Phoenix.

Too weak: Banshee, Black Tom Cassidy. This category is reserved for the Cassidys, I guess.

Too unstable: Beast, Cloak, Dagger, Legion, Quicksilver.

Dead: Colossus, Cypher, Dazzler, Havok, and Rogue.

No longer viable: Magik, because she retconned herself back to a young girl in Inferno, or something.

Unverified: Sabra, Sabretooth.

This was hard because the marvel wiki didn't have them all. I had to go looking other places and at one point just pull up a list of Marvel mutants and check everything that fell between certain letters. Because, thankfully, this is alphabetized.

What's funny about the dead category is that Cypher is the only one who is actually dead. Everyone else just faked their deaths and moved to Australia.

Back at the plot, some paramedics take Dr Phineas Horton away for treatment. Because he was an old man and Vigilance was keeping him in a KGB-type detention cell. He's not in a great state.

Wanda asks Hank why Dr Phineas Horton IF THATS HIS REAL NAME (lol, its not, retroactively) would say that Vision isn't his work when we all know that Vision was repurposed from the body of the robot Human Torch.

Hank has no idea but he's also distracted by the police coming up and asking what they should do with the Vigilance dudes that the West Coast Avengers captured.

And Hank says 'fuck if I know, let them go, ain't no law'

Specifically, since Vigilance was every intelligence agency working together specifically to fuck Vision, they all have government approval and nothing they did is wrong. And/or have diplomatic immunity because they're from Canada or whatever.

Project head Cameron Brock smugs about how Hank figured out how untouchable they all are.

Wasp is like uh geez are you sure, Hank? They kidnapped Vision and reduced him to piles of bits. And Hank says they sure did but we can't do anything about it. We didn't know we were fighting the law but the law won. Can't fight city hall. Best they can do is call Agent Sikorsky, the Avengers' government liaison, and whine about it.

Hawkeye and Tigra rejoin the group, having missed the plot, and Hawkeye covers for Tigra by downplaying the incident as Tigra getting "a little carried away."

Since the West Coast Avengers can't do anything except take Vision's various components home and try to put him back together, Hank proposes they do just that. Just leave Vigilance and go home to pick up the pieces.

Scarlet Witch has one thing she wants to do first.

And she blows the Vigilance base the fuck up.

Good thing everyone was already outside.

I'm not through this arc yet. I'm not even through the issue yet. But I looked at marvel wiki and Vigilance only has two appearances. This issue and the previous issue.

So I'm going to maybe jump the gun a little and talk about why, however things play out from here on, this story is going to be unsatisfying.

I don't like that the Avengers just have to shrug and accept that the government(s) killed Vision and there's nothing they can do about it.

It's a lot like how many spider-fans are still pissed about One More Day. It's not just about the marriage. Spider-Man made a bum deal with the devil and he's never going to get to redeem himself as things stand.

Sometimes cruel things just happen and there's no recourse except to pick up the pieces and try to live your life. But the superhero genre tends to be more active than that. Situations can be punched. There's always someone that can be punched.

If the Implied President of the United States is behind an evil plot to use a mutant powered UFO to take over the country, you don't shrug and decide he's too big to fight. If you're Captain America, you chase him to the Oval Office and unmask him. For one, particularly bizarre, example.

I don't know that it would make a better story if the Avengers COULD fight Vigilance in some way but it would feel less empty.

This whole thing feels less like a story and more writer fiat. Just like starting the team with Tigra and Wasp and Dr Pym back so Byrne doesn't have to do the legwork to get the team where he wants it.

An evil governments conspiracy kidnaps Vision and takes him apart so he can be rebuilt in Byrne's preferred way, everyone stands around talk talk talking about how this change is totally irreversible and the Avengers also can't do anything to the people that did it. And then Vigilance fucks off to never be heard from again.

There's more legwork done but only enough to get the change on paper. Because having Vision change like he is going to (spoilers: Vision is not going to be a pile of parts forever) and have it happen between issues is too much for the audience to buy.

Also on topic, also spoilers: this is going to lead to one of the big OH NO WANDA HAS GONE CRAZY stories which was apparently the only research Brian Michael Bendis did before Disassembled. And it may not be a good story but it may have been a better story if Evil Crazy Wanda had gone after Vigilance. Instead of what she does do. Which is apparently try to have sex with Wonder Man.

Byrne is going to ragequit the book at some point so I'm not sure how much of that is his fault. But what a blatantly obvious plot point to leave on the table.

Anyway. That's my feelings about VisionQuest. Before we even see how it falls out. It's a drastic change jammed into the book without respecting the audience enough to make it a good story.

You know when a writer really wants to write to a certain conclusion and has to expend walls of text assuring the reader that this is clearly the only way this could possibly go down? That's what this all feels like.

So that rant having been ranted, let's move onto the beginning of another dumb plot point.

When the West Coast Avengers arrive back at the West Coast Avengers Compound, they discover a distress signal has been activated from the guest house - where Wanda and Vision have been living.

Understandably, Wanda assumes the worst. That Vigilance has come after her children too, she runs to the guest house.

The racist governess Miss Bach tries to tell Wanda that babies Tommy and Billy vanished into thin air after she put them into the bath. But when Wanda runs into the bathroom in a panic, she sees that her two babies are happily splashing around in the tub.

... Add John Byrne onto the list of artists that just can't draw a baby to save his life.

Miss Bach insists that she looked everywhere for the twins but Wanda assumes that the governess was playing a sick prank.

So she fires her ass, right on the spot.

Miss Bach appeals to Wasp that she was telling the truth. But Wasp can't tell Wanda not to fire her own personal staff. She at least promises Miss Bach that she'll get the proper severance pay.

Then we time skip two days later, where Wanda is sitting outside Hank Pym's lab while Hank tries to reassemble Vision.

It's apparently not as hard as Hank feared, just tedious. Each piece has only one place it can properly go so its just a matter of trying to find the proper place for hundreds of thousands of pieces.

Wanda wishes that they could contact the Real Professor Horton not that lying fake. Y'know, the real dead guy who died in Vision's backstory.

Scarlet Witch: "If that central fact was now to become untrue... everything we think we know about the Vision would become equally suspect."

Wonder Man says he wasn't around at the time but he loves poking holes in the Celestial Madonna Saga. That's his Thing now. So given what he's heard, he thinks Vision's backstory is sketchy if only because they heard it with the help of Immortus, who is a sketchy, manipulative man.

But then there's a loud WUMP as well as CRASH CLANG tinkle! THUD! from within the lab.

Hank sealed the lab behind a bunch of airlocked doors to prevent contamination to Vision's kibbles 'n bits and it'll take three minutes to open them all.

Or.

Wonder Man just forces them all open.

And then a robot hand shoots out of the lab and shoves Wonder Man to the floor.

Ohhhhhh! It's just Vision! He wandered off without putting on his pants or his skin!

Wanda caresses Vision's bare skull, begging him to say he recognizes her.

Terminator Vision backhands her.

Boo. Boo to you, skinless Vision.

Wonder Man grapples Vision, saying he's going to put him down for a nice nap until they can finish fixing him. But he's hesitant to use his FULL POWER on his brother so skinless Vision tosses him across the room.

Elsewhere in the building, Hawkeye is sitting around thinking about how weird Tigra has been.

What we missed off-panel is that he just used a gas arrow when she pounced at him, knocking her out until she calmed the fuck down.

That narrative caption promising horrible violence really lied.

After coming back from the Vigilance base, Tigra has been hiding away in her bungalow.

Hawkeye isn't sure why he promised to cover for her but WHOOPS INCOMING A-PLOT.

He hears the ruckus going on in the lab and hustles down to see skinless Vision hoisting Wonder Man around.

Hawkeye shoots a constrictor arrow at the rampaging synthezoid but Vision just flexes his way free.

Wonder Man tells Wanda she's got to use her bullshit win-button powers to win because brute force isn't working and that's all he knows.

Wanda refuses to use her powers against Vision because she's worried that she doesn't have precise enough control of her hexes and that she might make him blow up.

She DID blow up a building a couple days ago. But she was really mad at that building.

And while Wanda is paralyzed, refusing to help, Vision picks up Hawkeye and shakes him upside down.

Its pretty funny.

I will say that it does make sense that Wanda would be hesitant to use her powers on the robo-man she loves. Its similar to how Wonder Man is pulling his punches.

But I do note that Wanda has been pretty useless this entire story. She was hypnotized to be unable to fight Fake-Ultron. Not sure why that was actually necessary but it was the explanation. And now she's not able to participate in the fight against skinless Vision.

She did blow up a building though.

I also have to say that Skinless Vision is a pretty intimidating antagonist.

His arm shooting out of the smokey lab to grab Wonder Man. Striking Scarlet Witch with no trace of emotion. Staggering around in the shadows as he moves on the collapsed Wanda. The way he tosses around Wonder Man and Hawkeye using just his robot strength, not his density powers. His robot noises being more audible without his skin in the way. Just the way he looks like a flayed corpse.

I gotta give props where props is earned because otherwise this post is going to be just bitter. And props, skinless Vision is alarming.

Anyway. Back to the plot. Where Scarlet Witch refuses to help.

Wonder Man: "You've got to take that chance, Wanda! Trust that your power won't permanently harm someone you love! But do it now! Before he kills Hawkeye -- or me!" Scarlet Witch: "No! No! Forgive me! I can't! I just can't!!" Dr Pym: "That's all right, Wanda..."

Hey, thank goodness for Hank Pym.

And that answers how Vigilance kidnapped Vision.

The device Hank has is a neutralizer that Vigilance used to shut Vision off for kidnapping reasons.

All the ruckus Wanda and Wonder Man heard in the lab was Hank reactivating Vision and then Vision smashing stuff up because when he's activated without his brain functioning, he defaults to defensive actions.

Hank only just regained consciousness and shut Vision back down.

SO THATS ALL EXPLAINED.

Skinless Vision is more of Brainless Vision. Head empty, no thoughts, just lashing out.

Hawkeye decides that this is his cue to call Washington and yell at Avengers liaison Sikorski.

Hawkeye: "Look, Sikorski, I don't care if I woke you out of your death bed! I want to know what you paper-pushers are gonna do about the Vision!" Sikorski: "Do? You seem to be missing the point, archer. We've already done it. The Vision has been rendered harmless. He presents no further threat to the security of this nation... Or any other, for that matter. You Avengers are now at liberty to reprogram him to suit whatever function you wish."

Wow. What an asshole.

He's still better than Henry Peter Gyrich but only because Gyrich would have said the same things and been 1000% smug about it.

God I hate Gyrich.

I'm glad Abigail Brand shoved him out of an airlock.

Anyway. Implication seems to be that Sikorski was In On It or at least was told after the fact and agreed 'yeah, excellent decisions all around.'

Vision isn't a dude. He was a malfunctioning appliance that had to be reset to factory settings so he could get back to Fighting Crime Or Whatever.

Hank argues that a) the Avengers can't just reprogram Vision that easily, b) the Vision they knew has effectively been killed by death of personality, and c) even putting aside all that, this is going to fuck up Wanda.

Which Sikorski acknowledges and says he regrets. That specific point.

What an asshole.

Anyway, as long as the Avengers called him to yell at him, Sikorski has some information he should have told them earlier but I guess he forgot or he's just shit at his job.

On top of killing Vision, the government has also decided that the West Coast Avengers and Vision need direct government oversight and have sent someone to take over the team. And the West Coast Avengers either accept this or the government cracks down on their future activities.

OKAY HAVE FUN WITH THE NEW GUY BYYYYYYE

And judging by the silhouette, it seems like the new guy is an old guy. A guy they can all get along with.

But silhouettes often lie in comics and this is the opposite of all that. A new guy that none of them can get along with.

When the government issued an ultimatum our way or the highway to Captain America and he quit and became the Captain, the government gave the Captain America name, costume, and shield to John Walker.

But recently, you may have noticed that good ol' Steve Rogers is back in his old costume and name and shield. Well, the government gave Cap's the Captain outfit to John Walker and dubbed him U.S.Agent.

And by editorial mandate governmental order, he's joining the West Coast Avengers.

Yeah, actually, it was editorial mandate.

According to John Byrne, editor Gruenwald, who created John Walker, insisted that Byrne put him in the West Coast Avengers book.

A captain-esque guy on every team!

John Byrne, who rankles at any degree of editorial meddling, had him written in as being forced on the team by an uncaring asshole higher power so he can annoy everyone on the team and not fit in.

John Byrne is not subtle sometimes.

Buuuuut. Like I said with the Worst Roster. A team having friction is very often more interesting. And there's a kind of poetic irony to Hawkeye having been the asshole constantly butting heads with Captain America getting his own Brand X Captain America to be the asshole to butt heads with him.

It rhymes.

So VisionQuest continues for another issue but AS OF RIGHT NOW I have to say it takes a sharp dip in quality after the first issue.

The first issue really jumped into things with a newish team suddenly assaulted by a Fake Ultron and having Vision stolen right out from under them.

Issues 2 and 3 are in full justification and retcon mode so it all bogs down into walls of text and explaining how this sequence of events is the only sequence of events.

I'm actually excited to see U.S.Agent here to shake things up and be a pebble in the team's shoe right when they're already going through the identity death of a beloved teammate.

Just please. Fewer walls of text.

Follow @essential-avengers for all these posts but only all these posts. Like, reblog, and comment perhaps.

[hella1975]

hella would you like to tell the class (me) about your touya playlist

i dont WANT to im GOING TO bc i literally am acting posessed rn and have no say in the matter anymore. fuck my stupid baka life. anyway id like to preface this by saying to anyone who actually knows anything about mha that some of what i say might be fanon hcs and not canon, and that's bc ive absorbed mha content in possibly the most insane way possible and at this point even i dont know what's canon and what's from the hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction ive read in a short amount of time. like i am in free fall rn i have bigger problems to be quite honest

touya's playlist song-by-song!

so off the bat, this playlist is much more somber and angsty than you might expect of dabi and that's bc i already have a playlist specifically for his identity as dabi, and that leans way more into songs that have his VIBES and/or i feel like he'd listen to. this one however is just pure devastation bc alas he is fucked in the head.

the archer - COMBAT HE IS LITERALLY READY FOR COMBAT! his whole personality the reason he was PUT ON THIS EARTH was to fight and be a hero he was never supposed to be a child he was never supposed to be HUMAN he was always always defined by his ability to fight his skill as a firewielder his need to surpass all might. i say i dont want that but what if i do? he just wants his dad to love him, to acknowledge him, and if this is what it takes then by god he'll do it until it literally kills him BUT ALL OF MY HEROES DIED ALL ALONE! HIS DAD IS THE NO.2 HERO AND HE'S THE FIRST PERSON TOUYA NEEDED SAVING FROM! THEY SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME THEY SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME CAN YOU SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME? HE'S NOT THE FIGHTER HE SAYS HE IS HE'S JUST A CHILD. and then the most sickening bit: all the kings horses and all the king's men couldn't put me back together again. his body literally falls apart on him and the childish reference to humpty dumpty is just the reminder that he was only thir-fucking-teen when that happened. who could ever leave me. who could stay

the view between villages - this song is obvs 'being in your home and feeling it all coming back at once' and for noah kahan that's specifically the drive 'between villages' but for touya this song really makes me think of sekoto peak and just the todoroki residence as a whole. it's this beautiful lush forested area and it's where touya todoroki dies. he asks for his dad to come and see a technique that he's learned, something that's finally his, something shouto can't do, and enji isn't there and it kills touya. his quirk malfunctions and he burns himself alive and takes this beautiful landscape with him and enji isn't there. a minute from home but i feel so far from it. the death of my dog the stretch of my skin it's all washing over me im angry again. the things that i lost here the people i knew! they got me surrounded for a mile or two! losing my mind!

strangers - what started it all. he is yet another 'i tried to be good am i no good?' character and im not okay about it at all in the slightest. please, i just wanted to be good enough. i tried to be good and it set me alight. i just wanted to be yours. and then touya dies and they FORGET ABOUT HIM there's no public backlash there's no inquiry there's hardly even a funeral shouto doesn't remember him natsuo and fuyumi are hardly allowed to mention him the world consciously actively and purposely buries touya todoroki his memory restricted to a polaroid in evidence and then he returns. he returns ugly and scarred and barely held together. am i making you feel sick. and through it all, his mother is in a mental hospital, watching him on the news, crying and waiting up for him. dont think about it too hard or you'll never sleep a wink at night again.

ptolemaea - this song captures 'the breaking point' perfectly and that's just very touya especially for sekoto peak. promising a fire any fire im on fire im on fire im on fire what have you done stop stop make it stop ive had enough stop stop stop stop STOP I AM THE FACE OF LOVE'S RAGE. and so dabi was born in fire and anguish and agony. also if u take the doctor and all for one angle with this song about how they wanted touya as a second shigaraki and they took him from sekoto peak then the whole 'you poor thing you sweet mourning lamb there's nothing you can do it's already been done' is v much giving that angle of them taking advantage. blessed be the children each and every one come to know their god through some senseless act of violence.

be an astronaut - i talked about this song the other day bc the lyrics are kinda inexplicable but it fucking GUTS me and i could not tell you why. like the desperation of the vocals is just ughhhh give me a song that sounds borderline hysterical and ill eat it up regardless of what it's about. replace 'astronaut' with any specific character's motivation and you've got a prewrapped blorbo song right there. touya you were born to be your father's destiny and you'll do that or die trying. but there's an overarching air that it's a pity, it's a waste, it's hopeless. the song is almost MOCKING. all touya wants is revenge on endeavor, and yes it's blind and hateful and consumes him, but still is it really so much to ask? but he doesn't even get that much. the way the manga is going, touya will die and endeavor will be redeemed. nothing dabi did ever mattered. touya todoroki never mattered. it was always as ridiculous as a child saying they want to be an astronaut

waiting room - he got away from the abuse he opened his eyes and took down his father from the pedestal he put him on he acknowledged that his dad wasn't the hero anyone thought he was he already admitted the scary thing; that endeavor is not and never was good and everything he fed touya was wrong. it's for the better that he knows these things. it is. it's for the better. he's glad to be away from home. he is he is he is. it's for the better i know it's for the better i know it's for the better

christmas kids - YOU'LL CHANGE YOUR NAME AND CHANGE YOUR MIND AND LEAVE THIS FUCKED UP PLACE BEHIND BUT I'LL KNOW!!!!!!! 'dabi' and 'touya' are such wildly different people because dabi genuinely believes that touya todoroki is dead. he died at thirteen at sekoto peak and dabi was born. they aren't the same. touya was the weak, abused child who just wanted to be good. dabi is the villain ready to spill blood in his name. but at the end of the day, dabi is touya and touya is dabi. he can pick another name, go wherever he likes, join the league of villains if he wants, but that will always, always be true

i bet on losing dogs - this is just perpetually playing when i think about him. he's doomed to fail. he's not going to make it. i already know he isn't but oh god he deserved better

a burning hill - okay i was feeling funny like yes 'im tired of wanting more' 'im a forest fire and i am the fire and i am the forest and i am the witness watching it' is v touya coded and the general exhaustion of this song is horrific on its own let alone applied to a character that has been through so goddamn much, but also... it's literally a burning hill.... sekoto peak was a burning hill.... ha.... haha

mary on a cross - so glad u specificaly sent this ask bc the tbosutuals are SO insane about this song. like yes like all ghost songs it's technically just about horny sin but i will always, always associate this song with character death. specifically (and this is why it upsets me so much) this is one of the few character death songs of mine that isn't objectively sad, and that's because it reminds me of their LIFE. like it feels like a flashback in the moment of death of all the beautiful things, and it was beautiful it was brilliant, but they die anyway. they dont get to make it despite despite despite. and THAT'S why this song will always fuck with me. so yeah. touya. admittedly he's not on darya's level yet bc this will always be her song but for me to even touch this song with another character speaks volumes

cigarette daydreams - the ultimate 'you were too young to experience what you did' anthem. the vibes of this song are so dismal it sounds like what rain feels like. you were only seventeen. touya was 13/14 when he died and he woke up from his coma as dabi when he was 16/17 (pretty sure it was 16 but 17 works better with this song so shhhh). and then he's just. unaccounted for until he's 24. he's nothing and no one on the streets of japan and in the criminal underworld and he's just a fucking kid. a scared, traumatised, in constant pain kid.

hearing damage - hiiii it's me and this song again <3 similar to cigarette daydreams im going crazy about vibes again. like this song is so unsettling it's like static it FEELS like a dissociation and that's a really common coping mechanism for someone who's experienced high levels of trauma/constant stress to just pull the shutters down and tap out of the bad thing happening. like ive said before even if it isnt confirmed or denied yet that i know of i do firmly believe that dabi's just been on the streets since he was a teenager and i just think this really fits.

class of 2013 - rei never saved him. that child still screaming for their mother to help them never ever goes away. he's this big scary villain now, covered in scars and piercings, but every single day he has to fight and keep up a mask and watch for threats. do you think he thinks about her then? him, tired and so so hurt, and her fading away in a hospital because, just like him, she broke under the weight of enji's ambition? they're the two family fuck-ups, the two that couldn't take it, do you think he misses her? just once, could she wash the dye out of his hair and save him?

go home - KILLING MYSELF. this song is fine whatever im not talking about it any more than i did in that post but i will say this is very burn it all down by dorothycanfly dabi specifically bc that fic has been haunting me since i finished it crying my eyes out at 4am this morning god bless <3

georgia - kind of a dabihawks angle bc im a sucker for them but also just in general 'if i fix you will you hate me' dabi NEEDS this hatred of endeavor. he quite literally has nothing else down to his SKIN. he's made his entire life's purpose and quite clearly intends to go out in a blaze of glory WITH his dad. that's it. that's the endgame. kill endeavor. kill himself with him. how fucking sad is that. like it's PATHETIC in the worst way. he's clawing at this fucking revenge plan and pretending it's this grand, badass thing as if it's not just the small hands of touya reaching up from the grave for his father one last time. if i fix you will you hate me, because if someone took this from him, if someone gave him a will to live outside of this fury, if someone fixed him, then all of this would have been for nothing.

maggot - this is a more deranged 'i tried to be good' variation imo like i did everything right i made my bed i walked for hours i took my pills and you love me right? you need me? but what if im just a corpse and you're a maggot feeding? what then? is it still love? is it something more? or is it disgusting? he was only ever wanted for his fire. no one actually cared about touya.

everything i wanted - NO ONE CRIED NOBODY EVEN NOTICED I SAW THEM STANDING RIGHT THERE KINDA THOUGHT THEY MIGHT CARE. THEY FORGOT ABOUT HIM. THEY BURIED HIM. ON PURPOSE THEY BURIED HIM BECAUSE HIS MEMORY AND HOW FUNDAMENTALLY THEY FAILED HIM MADE THEM UNCOMFORTABLE. IT WAS LIKE HE NEVER EVEN EXISTED. YOU DONT EVEN REALISE SHOUTO HAS ANOTHER BROTHER UNTIL NATSUO BRINGS IT UP FIVE FUCKING SEASONS IN.

the family jewels - i dont htink i need to elaborate on this one lmao. obligatory complicated family dynamics anthem

seventeen - like cigarette daydreams i know he wasn't specifically seventeen and im not purposely picking songs that focus on that lmao. i love this song so much like the vocals of 'you don't know fuck about my family, could never tell you what happened the day i turned SEVENTEENNNN' scratches SUCH an itch in my brain im obsessed with it. like there's a mystery to it bc she never elaborates on what actually happened but clearly it's something bad. i really like that side of it like i love the mystery and for so long in the anime dabi is a HUGE mystery like there's no backstory reveal until SEASON SIX that's INSANE for such a main character to not get even a HINT of backstory for so long.

father - I HAVE THIS DREAM THAT I AM HITTING MY DAD WITH A BASEBALL BAT AND HE IS SCREAMING AND CRYING FOR HELP AND MAYBE HALFWAY THROUGH IT HAS MORE TO DO WITH ME KILLING HIM THAN IT EVER DID PROTECTING MYSELF! literally one of the most insane lyrics of any song ever im being deadly serious there is so much to unpack there so much to consider so much packed into one line. it has more to do with me killing him than it ever did protecting myself. WHAT

body terror song - body horror dabi hours! this man is 70% fourth degree burns that are only still attached to his healthy skin by fucking medical staples. i dont even want to consider how much chronic pain he has. every fic that has him having to redo/adjust a staple feeds me bc im so compelled by his character design. how is he not high off his shit every day just to cope. it's heavily implied he doesn't even have TEAR DUCTS anymore so when he cries it's just blood. he loses his fucking personhood to the flames so much that he renames himself cremation because that's what he is now and the anime just... never addresses it. never says if it hurts or not. this ALONE would be my cause for killing endeavor for leaving him in this state let alone the million other layers to it i cannot BELIEVE some people say it's unjustified sorry im not gonna go off on a tangent but ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING

dirty night clowns - i adore this song i couldnt tell you wtf it's about but it makes me feel uncomfortable in my own skin and i thought that was fitting for dabi. i really dont have much else to say like i do think this might just be one of those 'i have a personal interpretation of this song based solely on vibes' and it makes no sense to anyone else LOL

just take my wallet - YOUR MOMMA'S CRYING! YOUR MOMMA'S CRYING FOR YOU! WHAT'S THE SOFTEST WAY TO SAY YOU TOOK AWAY MY FRIEND? i feel like this is another 'touya into dabi' song like rei is crying for her son but touya is dead. there's only dabi now. dabi killed touya to become something that could ruin endeavor, and that's all that matters now

[empty-pizza]

thoughts on gideon the ninth chapter thirty

yeah, this isn't good for my theory. culprit reveals are about surprise. if we're actually seriously discussing the possibility that harrow is the culprit, that severely lowers the chances that it really is her. it doesn't completely erase them, but damn. not sure how the book is gonna play it from here on.

if harrow is not the culprit, then what? because again, when you put something as clear and obvious as A HEAD HIDDEN IN HARROW'S STUFF and let's be real harrow would not hide it that sloppily when gideon lives there too and why would she even keep the head, then it's gotta be a red herring. harrow wards her doorway, doesn't she? but if i can think of a bunch of ways for harrow to have committed the locked room murder that happened to jeannemary, then there's surely a way someone could have put a head in here. one is not exactly coming to mind for me yet, but there could be something.

palamedes is so based, saying he'd help camilla bury a body.

gideon says harrow didn't kill the fourth or fifth. i suspected she did. not sure where this is going.

ooh, gideon didn't just see the parents commit suicide, but killed them. wild.

okay, she didn't really cause that. whatever. there are SO MANY unknowns in that situation. what is in the locked tomb!! why did they kill themselves! did harrow cause it!

palamedes stop trolling me and claiming to be the culprit smh. you can't just do that. it made me realize that most of my predictions for Harrow as culprit had to do with Isaac and Jeannemary, and there actually could have been a different culprit behind Magnus and Abigail's deaths. hell, maybe palamedes is double trolling and he really did kill them.

that piece of paper gideon found still does need to be explained. also, the corpses in the incinerator. the paper, sorry, FLIMSY, is the kind of thing that might not even be explained this book, but honestly i feel like the incinerator corpses are as important to this book as the named characters who died.

wait what

wait what

oh okay, he was already dead, that makes sense. maybe the rest of his body was in the incinerator, and that explains why the corpse was months old technically. wait, were there two bodies in the incinerator? not sure.

humpty dumpty ass can't believe dulcinea said "i'll never be able to put him back together now"

the question is, how did harrow find out? did she seek it out, did the magic stop working on its own, or did protesilaus try to kill harrow?

since we've gone back to "harrow is not the killer" this means that "harrow is the killer" is a little more possible, again (i am coping and want my theory to be right)

ianthe can't do it like gideon but she did just make a good pun. "a head" lmao.

bingus

[marshmallowprotection]

Chloroform Girl by Polkadot Cadaver kinda reminds me of bad story ending 2 in Ray’s route

Chloroform girl, how have you been? Don't let me catch you sleeping again You're only alive because I like you (Because I like you) It's been three years since you've seen the sunlight But I know you're having fun Bound, gagged, and chained up in my basement

I see what you're saying but the song feels more surface level of what people think that ending is more so than it does it actualization of what the ending is.

I think of that ending less in the vein of torture and more in the vein of having broken something beyond reason and realizing way too late that you can't put it back together. Suit Saeran thought he had to be strong, and the only way to be strong in that place was to be the worst monster he could think of. He put on a suit because that is representative of his father, and he repeated the words of his Savior and his mother. He became cruelty itself because that is the only way to survive.

I am the strongest is a melody that is a desperate plea to be the strongest in the way he has to be. When that doesn't go according to plan and follow the route that brings us to the good ending, we are subjected to a pitfall. His so-called strength becomes his undoing.

In doing so, he not only destroyed himself but the one person who had faith in him, but by the time he realized that, he was in too deep, and the only thing he can think to do is do anything in his power to draw a reaction out of you but he's never going to get one because you cracked under the pressure of his misery and the torture. He keeps trying and trying over and over to pull a reaction out of you with the cruelty that has allowed him to survive in this place, but you'll never give it. You don't have a reaction to give because you've given up.

We should definitely pay attention to how miserable the ending is because what he's doing isn't right, but it's a lot deeper than just somebody relishing in the "pleasure" pain can cause. Focusing on that aspect doesn't let you see what's under the surface. The truth in his agony and why he acted like that to begin with. To be the best monster he could be to survive was the only way to live given the fact that gentle love and warmth was destroyed under the heel of his savior all for a kiss and a few lies. He was the strongest but it was never worth it.

Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and couldn't be put back together again. MC was crushed and couldn't be put back together again.

[bestworstcase]

clearly the wonderland stuff has hit critical mass because it’s 6 AM and i’m lying here wide awake trying to line up thoughts in order of which ones i want to write out most except i keep bumping into more SO LIKE. send help i am losing my grip

- kernel of a thought i’ve been gnawing on for a while now that there’s a pattern to the wonderland allusion that i can’t quite put my finger on yet. but it’s like—there’s a sort of temporal wobbliness to what and when that feels like it might be something but also just continual swirling it all around D4, D6 and D7, looping in the aaiw stuff and the red queen by constructing new associations (the queen of hearts was the red king, the duchess’s baby becomes the jabberwalker, the cat leads to hatter leads to hatta, the caterpillar lives in the forest where ruby loses her ‘name’, the beach is the garden is the pool of tears is the island for hunting the snark (<- are the mice the bellman’s crew lol. what are they hunting) and like the connecting thread here is mirrored pairs, the tweedles and hatter/hatta and the immanent reflection of the self in mirror-written jabberwocky, with the cat emerging as both the cheshire cat and humpty dumpty to the jabberwalker’s poetry (<- which draws another circle around neo and the jabberwalker in that the cat belongs to the duchess and the duchess is fanatically concerned with meaning in a way that sits kitty-corner to humpty dumpty’s determination not to let denotative meaning get in his way) and then there’s this undergirding idea of ascension and like—never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them otherwise. the you you wanted to be when you were still you. it’s a matter of perspective, i’m afraid. & they want to get to the tree but can’t but the intertextual layer of the narrative has them oscillating back and forth between primarily D6 and D7; they are so close to winning the game but they can’t see the forest for the tree—and the tree functions like looking glass gardens and perhaps more saliently like the red queen, in that alice wants to meet the red queen but cannot find her until she turns about-face and walks away. (“her tree” huh.) (the blacksmith is the tree is the queen; all the ways about here belong to her and, of course, a cat can look at a king. or a queen.)

- the speaker, the subject, the jabberwock; the knight, jaune, the jabberwalker? (<- also occurring to me suddenly that the reason the only critters from the first stanza not present in the marketplace are the raths is, the duchess’s baby turns into a pig—and a rath is a sort of green pig—and neo is both lost and driven by wrath—and her constructs have recently gained the ability to outgribe.)

- in light of the jabberwalker being the story’s [unwritten, unfinished] ending i am feeling SOME TYPE OF WAY about specifically houston!worst day of my life bc like. man. “once upon a time/i knew who i was/some of it was true.” “i feel as if i’m caught between/what i say and what i mean” “could there be someone else to blame/for why it always feels the same/inside this woman i became” MAN.

- actually yeah no no more equivocating someone on the writing team saw this musical during the houston run. i don’t care who i don’t care to confirm i just know in my heart where all the brainworms live. what’s your title/what’s your purpose :)

- c o r n w i n k l e

- laughing hysterically forever about what this implies about ozlem OH YOU MEANT DIVORCED DIVORCED. LOL. LMAO

- ahem.

- wonderland—more precisely hunting of the snark—has a particular invocation of the rule of three (anything said thrice is true) and given the obvious fun rwby could have with an idea like that i’m wondering if we’ll see it repeated in the ever after in some capacity, whether as a literal narrative rule within the ever after or thematically. it occurs to me that it might have done already; “i am a huntress” is repeated thrice before crashing into ruby’s existential dread and uncertainty (<- the beaver loses count and mathematical panic ensues, which incidentally is also the part of the poem where the jubjub bird appears and, further incidentally for the bees people in the audience, is also the bonding moment in which the friendship between the butcher and the beaver becomes so homoerotic that there’s academic discourse about whether the beaver might actually be female, so make of that what you will.)

- the lively carpenter is not the blacksmith so Question Mark. the thing is the walrus and the carpenter is the tweedles’ poem so its inclusion fits the 4/6/7 focus and it connects to both the forest without names and the red king directly, and perhaps to the jabberwalker in the more roundabout sense that where jabberwocky is a poem about slaying a creature the walrus and the carpenter is about people behaving monstrously. who’s the carpenter and what are the oysters

[channeleven]

Revisiting The Secret of NIMH 2

 A long time ago I did a review of The Secret of NIHM 2. In that review, I essentially echoed the complains others had over the film, many, many others. Called it a cash grab, fan fiction, hits harder when time after you see others basically saying the same thing and you feel partially responsible.

Of all the things to hold Nostalgia Critic accountable for is influencing general perception of movies for years to come, whether he was the loudest voice at the time or did it earlier than others where traction would be had by that time. The Secret of NIMH 2 is among his many casualties and they're still trying to recover, held back only by a number of washouts who forgot what year it was. Wanna know what got me to review this movie? A Nostalgia Critic type review that was released on July 24th... 2024. Yikes.

I was on the fence when it came to NIMH 2, but then I saw a video created by my good buddy Timey that defended the film, and credibly as well, and if you ask me you should check her video out first.

Now, for the movie in general, is it really as bad as people claim it to be? To that it's a resounding... sorta. There are some issues with this movie, but half the time people focus on less important things or just go solely by its connection to the first NIMH alone, if not regurgitating everything Nostalgia Critic said just differently enough to not make anyone side-eye.

I'm just saying, if Bobsheaux were to do a review of this movie, I imagine him just copying Nostalgia Critic's points questioning logic where it doesn't need to be questioned, use a rat puppet in his place and maybe charge two dollars just to watch it. He can't possibly be that destitute.

Whatever I may say about this movie, while it's not great, it's not the worst movie ever, not even close to being the worst sequel, a guilty pleasure at the most, and if you want an idea to what that's like for me, here's a list of my personal guilty pleasures: https://letterboxd.com/channeleven/list/guilty-pleasures/

But shameless plug aside, there's no better place to start than the beginning... of the film... 's inception.

Background

The Secret of NIMH 2 came out during a period where video/DVD rentals/purchases were on a continual rise. Companies like Disney would begin putting out sequels for the sell-through market in order to capitalize on the success of their properties. Lacking the same budget as the movies they followed (why put in extra effort for the home video market in the event ticket sales outdo rental payments, and the whole shebang behind shares?

While a lot of these sell-through movies aren't great, at best don't have the same staying power as their theatrical contemporaries, I mean companies weren't making fine art here, they were out making a profit, a necessary evil for them, you'd be a fool to expect anything more. But you don't have to always see it that way, if these movies made up your childhood or you can look past the obvious dips and enjoy a movie for what it is, more power to you, I'd probably relate depending on what movie's on the table anyhow.

Back on topic, The Secret of NIMH, the first, its success cannot be understated. Breaking new ground when it comes to storytelling and having gorgeous animation to boot, I can see why a lot of people loved that movie, and MGM would feel the same to the point they would try to continue it in some way, but with conservative spending.

The Secret of NIMH 2 was the second to last movie put out by MGM's animation division, one of four to be exact. MGM Animation originally produced a sing-a-long series of tapes, along with a handful of cartoons based on IPs they owned at the time. But regarding the movies, they first began with Babes in Toyland, which I only saw the latter half of and became one of many films that I could never figure out until recently.

But I swear that Roger Corman took the design of Humpty Dumpty for Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time.

This was followed with An All Dogs Christmas Carol which is based more on the All Dogs television series, something that Bobsheaux never even touched upon in the slightest, at least as far as I know. Anyway, that and NIMH 2 came out the same year before ending with a mousified Tom Sawyer in 2000.

NIMH 2 was directed by Dick Sebast. Sebast primarly did work as an animator for Disney productions like The Rescuers and Winnie the Pooh, later doing work for various Hanna-Barbera and Ruby Spears cartoons among other small roles. On one hand, he was involved with X-Men Evolution and even directed nine episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, those that at the very least aren't considered to be on the lower end. But on the other hand he is also somewhat attached to shows and movies I'm not particularly fond of, here's looking at you Sonic SatAM and Ultimate Avengers. The last thing he's credited to is the DreamWorks movie Home, where he was not credited, but chances are he doesn't mind that.

The film's story is credited to three people. Sam Graham and Chris Hubbell appear to be a writing team, sharing nearly the exact same credits. They had contributed in some capacity to the writing of films like Oliver and Company and The Little Mermaid, they wrote a later season episode of the Beetlejuice cartoon, four for The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest and wrote the teleplay for Night of the Twisters. But like Sebast they also have a BTAS connection, writing for one episode of that series, you wanna know what it was? You ready?

I've Got Batman in my Basement

Yes, what is generally agreed upon to be the worst BTAS episode of all time, you have them to thank for that.

But what about the third person? Jymn Magon is attached to quite a bit, but for more notable ones he was tied to Quack Pack, a product of its time at best, and was also attached to cartoons produced at DiC entertainment's French division Les Studios Tex, handling The Wacky World of Tex Avery, hated as that show is and serving as the headwritter for Archie's Weird Mysteries, a show I thought was cool, but then realized it's an E/I show using a cool premise to trick people into learning things. As far as other movies go he wrote Casper: A Spirited Beginning and Casper Meets Wendy, all two of those live-action Casper TV movies, An All Dogs Christmas Carol, I mean granted he did the story and part of the screenplay for A Goofy Movie, but you wanna know what else he was involved in?

Titanic: The Legend Goes On

Yet another punching bag of many years ago, he served as a consultant on it just for the record. If you want my opinion on the film there's an uncut version that, while not a great movie at least is better held together than the more commonly spread cut version.

As far as the cast goes it's a who's who of celebrities who were falling or fell off long ago and are looking for some easy money. Among them being William H. Macy, Ralph Macchio, Harvey Korman, Eric Idle, and we do get two returning actors, Dom DeLuise who was clearly never picky when it came to movie deals, and Arthur Malet in his final role... before he would retire and die in 2013.

I also wanna single out Meshach Taylor as I used to watch Designing Women reruns, but you may recognize him Mr. Wright from Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide. And speaking of Nickelodeon actors, the second, or third if you count the 1994 pilot Arnold Shortman, Phillip Van Dyke was also in this. Also Hynden Walch, who you may recognize as Penny Sanchez from ChalkZone... and nothing else. But something tells me her presence here and what she became known for later on had given her some slack relating to who she played. Lastly, it's important to note that the voice of Mrs. Brisby, Elizabeth Hartman, had passed away under very dark circumstances. She was played by Debi Mae West in the film, and she is perhaps best known for playing Meryl in Metal Gear Solid, and she does a decent job in this movie for whatever it's worth.

If it wasn't obvious before, Don Bluth had no involvement in this movie, but whether he was on or not wouldn't affect the quality of the movie because throughout the 90s he had begun to lose his touch. You may argue Anastasia was an outlier among his more mediocre movies, and that MGM greenlit this movie because the Bluth name was more or less redeemed for a time, but that's a stretch. You already know how this movie turned out, so I'm not gonna go into the impact, it's a byproduct of trying to be like the biggest reviewer out there and share his opinions on movies, and it's never going to stop. I'm delaying the inevitable by rambling on and on about behind the scenes stuff, I should stop.

Okay, the movie, finally

As something different, I'm gonna do my best to try and explain the issues people have with the movie, it may not work, but it's different.

NIMH 2 would center on Timmy, a character who served a purpose in the first movie, but was otherwise relegated as part of a goal had by Mrs. Brisby to help him, while contending with the rot... whatever the first movie was about.

The movie would begin with a recap of the first, and this is where red flags are raised for most people, as it presents Mrs. Brisby's husband Johnathan as the main hero. As much as I'd love to bitch in the name of a cartoon rat, I think I know what they're going for here. Mrs. Brisby is the main player in the rest of the first NIMH movie yes, but Johnathan Brisby was the one who helped free the rats from NIMH, giving them the means, the will, to start their own civilization, he may've even lent a hand in the creation of Thorn Valley.

You may say Mrs. Brisby was also instrumental in helping Thorn Valley, I mean you may be right, but don't act like Johnathan had no influence either, if anything I give the movie props for trying to provide extra focus to the rest of the Brisby family, bar certain stretches. And in the case of Timmy, who spent the entire first movie sick, it's a good way to better flesh him out, what more is there to him?

Now, his selection as the rats' golden boy is kinda forced, I'll give you that, and some claim it should've been Martin in the lead, as Don Bluth also would've suggested, but I also see what they're trying to do here. Timmy is just coming into life with a greater purpose, and he feels he isn't ready for it. Martin who had more experience feels he is better suited for what's in store for Timmy, which would be a setup for what happens later in the movie.

As far as him being the chosen one, I mean I get citizens of Thorn Valley expressing optimism and fate for the next in line in the Brisbys thanks to their help. A little overblown, sure, but these reviewers going on and on about how Mrs. Brisby is a god they prey to you'd think they'd see something of her in Timmy. That would explain that celebration at the start of his arrival.

As for the cautious nature of Mr. Ages, he has faith in Timmy, but wants him to work to earn his reputation, to not just base himself solely on the achievements of his family alone, to have the experience and discipline to back it up. You don't become a hero in a day, you gotta work your way up. At least that's what I feel like they're going for.

Along with Timmy there's also Jenny, who is considered to be one of the film's few objective positives. She has enough personality and tact so she wouldn't feel out of place, as well as some importance to the plot. She had escaped NIMH and would inform Thorn Valley's higher ups about what's currently happening. For when they refuse to act on it and for those who say they should throw caution into the wind and do it... you wouldn't last one presidency, if conflict is the first thing. Yes it's ideal to help, but as the first movie shows, there will be bodycounts, and the rats escaped NIMH to live.

Oh but, building up Timmy. Perhaps he wasn't ready yet and his training amounts to protecting Thorn Valley from outside dangers, and that them going back to NIMH may lead to NIMH finding their way to Thorn Valley.

Up to this point I've ignored the musical aspects, and yeah... the songs are pretty bad. On paper they're decent, but in practice... you know what, no, I'd still take off-key singing over the autotune or swapped voice they used in The Loud House Movie. It seems like the songs are used just to help bolster the length, or because that's what kids were into, even if it doesn't fit in the context or tone of the film that came before.

I mean say what you will about Ferngully 2, at least it began as a musical of sorts.

Now as for Jeremy who is seen helping to scam forrest animals by pretending to be the Great Owl, I dunno, I guess they had to have him do something and justify him being within reasonable distance so he could rejoin Timmy and Jenny. So basically plot convenience, guess they backed themselves into a corner with that.

Getting to NIMH, remember how Martin acted earlier on? And how even more we were led on to believing one particular scientist was the big bad? It's a good ol' bait and switch, sorta. Anyway blah blah blah, evil Martin, agreement, blah blah. The rest of Thorn Valley would arrive, presumably realizing Timmy and Jenny were gone they would set out to find them and then they were like, fuck it, we're here, we may as well see this through, fruitless to go back now.

Alright let's talk about this. Martin was jealous that he was not considered to be sent to Thorn Valley, early on it was shown he knew where it was, hence how he could get out there. One can assume he traveled to NIMH to prove himself by stopping them, and either he got caught and experimented on, or his selfish desires led him to become corrupted.

Martin being the bad guy actually has more weight than people want you to believe. It plays a part in Timmy's character where he cares deeply for his family, Martin especially, so to realize the one behind all of this was his own brother, it hits hard. Compared to it just being a generic scientist that few of them know beyond some aspects, it gives this film one above sequels/d2v movies by representing an emotional connection, you don't get that as often, and while that is offset by a very goofy song it's still there.

It also says a lot in regard to Timmy's character, where he would be willing to help his brother even in spite of his corruption, "I have my brother back!". For his bravery, proving himself and potentially destroying NIMH for good, he is given a statue alongside his father for helping to bring the rats to where they are now, literally and figuratively.

Of course some of you may say "Wait a minute where the fuck is Mrs. Brisby's statue for the millionth time!?"

Alright I'm gonna be real, I'm aware of what she has done in the movie, benefit of the doubt to naysayers that maybe she did enough to warrant one. Maybe it's an oversight, maybe the extent of what she did was big but not statue big, she wasn't trying to prove herself against Johnathan Brisby, she was just trying to help her family and those close to her and faced her own journey to do so. I don't know, I really don't know, but there's a reason somewhere, I can feel it.

Animation

The animation in this movie is about what you'd expect for a straight-to-video film, not amazing but above average compared to others like it, and those others typically came out in the 2000s whereas this came out in 1998. It's not bad, but not mind-blowing and people would turn the other cheek given this is riding off of a movie best known for its animation.

Final Thoughts

A lot of people really hate this movie, and for a time I did too and I made a review to that effect. But the fact that even to this day people are still complaining about this movie and bringing nothing new most of the time it comes down to the same thing... it's getting old, and maybe this movie isn't as bad as Nostalgia Critic made it out to be.

The Nostalgia Critic had a negative impact on movie reviews, you can owe the reputations of certain films to him. For instance Garbage Pail Kids was more relatively obscure until he did a review and got more people to talk about it. The same effect occurred here as well evidentially as few could do anything more than just echo what Nostalgia Critic said in the name of a movie, of all things.

Once you take that away, you're left with a movie that, yes, isn't great but is far from the worst movie of all time, let alone one of the worst sequels. I'm being blunt here, because after seeing the same reviews multiple times and looking more into the movie, things just don't add up. Is this really that bad, or are we just regurgitating what we heard before with no variation? Only credit I can give to this is that most of the time they don't throw Don Bluth into the discussion, and since this movie came out as he was still alive there goes that go-to.

There's more to a movie than what you hear from the reviewer of the week, and people need to have the confidence to go against the grain if there is something that is getting missed. High risk, high reward.

[uniquejellyfishqueen]

A bandaid wouldn’t be able to cover a metaphorical bullet wound forever. Eventually the wound would either get infected and then you would die, or it would burst back open and never stop bleeding.

If she used black and white for the tortured poets department to imply that because she is broken and battered and wounded that she had lost her colors, but then in that same album she is saying that she is just now getting color back in her face

When you heal, and really heal you have to rip yourself open to the darkness inside, all the painful things that made the wounds in the first place, sometimes those wounds have multiple attached that make up a pattern or web inside that you didn’t even know you were harboring until you took a moment to break yourself apart and put yourself back together just like Humpty Dumpty. But to do that you have to open up the wound again to fix it at its source, you can’t sugar coat it, you can’t cover it up to make it look pretty on the inside only and then feel ugly on the inside and never show your true colors. To show the true you, the authentic version, the colorful version is how you heal the wound. It has to hurt before it feels better. Because thats the thing, it was your wound to begin with not anyone else’s. And if you worry about fixing others wounds before yourself you’ll never be strong enough to heal yourself. Hence the perpetual people pleaser lyric. Or you’re losing me perhaps is about the fact that she was killing herself from the inside out by pleasing everyone but herself. Carrie Underwood did say “I guess it’s gonna have to hurt. I guess I’m gonna have to cry. And let go of some things I’ve loved to get to the other side.”

Her outfits are patterned with colors starting to appear in them. Just like getting color back in her face her true colors are finally starting to surface from within. And it’s her own pattern, it’s never gonna look like someone else. But that is part of the healing, it’s okay with knowing you’re different.

Maybe that is the point of the song ME! She was searching for the true her and to achieve that she had to face the darkness first to come out in the light.

In personal experience, i have realized something that I really wish I would have listened to and looked at way harder. I think advice not only should be listened to but also looked at. once you hear it you need to visualize yourself in the situation and take a moment to process the advice and see how it aligns to your perspective. Therefore I have been trigger happy in all my decision making in my life. Freaking yikes, man. So the thing that I realized is this.. if you start to heal and see that the broken version of yourself isn't really who you are at the true core how can you be okay with staying with a partner that never wants you to find your center? A partner that never wants you to bloom into what you're meant to be. They water you enough till you bloom enough that you don't die but don't give you nearly enough sun to thrive.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Album Review: Wild God

(PIAS)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

During the chorus of "Song of the Lake", the first track from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' incredible new album Wild God, Cave finds himself in a familiar place: telling a story. "And he sang the song of the lake / And all the king's horses and all the king's men," Cave beckons. You expect him--and perhaps he expects himself--to jump into an English nursery rhyme, using the fable of Humpty Dumpty to somehow comment on the bleakness of the human condition. Instead, he tells us to "never mind, never mind." It's a moment that sets up what the man himself has described as the unbridled joy that pervades Wild God. If throughout his career, Cave has been a troubadour of everything from murder ballads to real life-inspired funeral dirges, on Wild God, he's more preacher of the gospel than shaman working with evil spirits.

It is and will be forever impossible to separate Cave's music with the unfathomable grief he's experienced this past decade, the loss of of two of his sons. Though he knows grief is a non-linear process, Wild God represents the ways in which he has received a newfound sense of optimism and hope and perspective on life. On "Frogs", he's walking home, gazing wonderous at the sight of a frog in the gutter, "leaping to God, amazed of love, amazed of pain, amazed to be back in the water again." On "Joy", Cave at first confronts an all-too-familiar feeling: "I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head / I felt like someone in my family was dead." Accompanied by French horns, piano, and an omnipresent backing chorus, he shares that "a ghost in giant sneakers, laughing stars around his head"--maybe his son, maybe a stranger, and either way, funny--tells him, "We've all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy."

Cave also sounds invigorated back with The Bad Seeds, sounding like this. Two of their previous albums, 2016's Skeleton Tree and 2019's Ghosteen, were primarily ambient and electronic, staring trauma in the face. Even 2013's Push the Sky Away was moored in minimalism in comparison to the band's back catalog. Indeed, they haven't sounded this upbeat since 2008's Dig, Lazaurs, Dig!!!, trading that album's sexed-up goth garage rock for time in the church. The songs are bolstered by drummer Thomas Wydler, who has apparently put behind him the health problems that prevented him from joining the band on tour in the 2010s. His crisp snares and meaty beats are front and center, even delving into hip-hop on "Conversion" and "O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)". In conjunction with the backing vocals, the drums make the songs anthemic. On the album's title track, the protagonist is searching for people to believe him and believe in him, Cave in beckoning and wailing mode: "He's moving through your body like a prehistoric bird!" If the backing vocals on Skeleton Tree sounded like a Greek chorus, on Wild God, they sound like a gospel choir, begging us to "Bring your spirit down!" On "Conversion", Cave's lines are syncopated with the chorus's repetition of "Touched by the spirit / Touched by the flame," as propulsive as an MC, a tangible contrast to the song's abstract hues of synthesizer, piano, and flute. And on piano ballad closer "As the Waters Cover the Sea", everyone prays for "peace and good tidings to the land."

That Wild God is a bright album doesn't mean it's lacking in realism. Two of its best songs dive back into earthbound pain. On "Cinnamon Horses", beside circular prickles of acoustic guitar, Cave waxes on the complexity of love through contrasting imagery, "cinnamon horses and the turpentine trees." And then there's "O Wow O Wow". It's dedicated to another deceased loved one, ex-Bad Seed and ex-girlfriend of Cave, Anita Lane, who passed away in 2021. At first, Cave's obscured by vocoder, singing whimsical, beatific verses like, "The country doctor whistles across the meadow / The schoolboy he hops up and says gee whiz!" (Carly Paradis gives us a whistle to aid the story.) But during the song's outro, we hear a recording of Lane in conversation with Cave, reminiscing on the past. There's Cave, again, making us look at death straight in the eyes, but preparing us for a universal truth, asking us to consider that life is beautiful not in spite of it, but because of it.

[diary-of-an-addict]

I’ve always been partial to the poem about people being in your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime.

It’s funny because even with my liking to this poem I often forget that I am a season person.

I’ve always struggled to make and maintain lasting relationships. It’s almost as if the majority of not all the people I encounter no matter how much I want them to stay around are merely there to either teach me a lesson or be there and gone when things benefit them.

I learned this lesson again recently. It was my daughter 1st birthday and of course I have a new group of friends found where most adults do in my place of employment so that’s who I invite. Yet attending a 1 year olds birthday isn’t exciting. And neither is supporting your supposed friend on the first anniversary of what was likely one of the most traumatic days of her life, but they don’t see those thoughts those feelings. Or maybe they do and they just don’t care.

I often find myself remembering a time when my life was much more hectic yet I was so happy the people in my life some still even around like family to me. The people who continue to cheer me on from a far but always show up when you need them. Why is it so easy for me to forget about them and be so upset about those who obviously don’t even care.

I feel like I’m drowning within my mind. My thoughts float away from my mind and quickly as I think them lately.

It’s like I have a flickering bulb in my brain one minute it’s on then the next it’s blank. I’ve felt this shut off once before. Unable to remember door codes I had set the day before.

I’m sinking into the darkness and I have no where to turn so here I am again writing words. I come here every couple months spill the thoughts that flow through my mind. I wonder if anyone reads this probably not so I just continue to write.

Pointless complaints about a mind so broken even humpty dumptys men couldn’t put it back together again.

I’m a burden. A strain on my family, a menace as a mom, a train wreck as a daughter, used to be the only thing I did right was work and I can’t even do that anymore.

I drown my sorrows without the ability to stop but why would I want to it’s the only thing that seems to care and want to take away this pain I’m in.

You always hear check on your strong friends. Don’t forget to check in with the happy one of the group. Blah blah blah yeah that’s me smiling on the outside while inside I want to die of a thousand cuts. Never allowing anyone to get close enough to me to know the darkness that lies within. Maybe that’s the problem I don’t let people be lifetime friends. It must be my fault why people can’t be there for me. I’m too awkward, annoying, clingy. Too soft spoken to express my needs or boundaries then when I do if they are questioned I just put them back in the padded box they came from because why do my needs care when they obviously are interfering with what someone else is trying to do.

I fucking hate myself and i wish so badly I didn’t but I do. I try so hard to be the person everyone wants me to but while doing so I’ve lost sight of myself. The things I love, and simply enjoy to do. Im miserable in my own skin but the sad thing is I don’t see another way.

[yellowhollyhock]

Roches songs Donny analysis

Us Little Kids

Two three four

Humpty Dumpty go Humpty Dump dah dah dah

Remember how Donny likes to take apart the toaster? I imagine he was the kid who took apart whatever he could get his hands on. Probably sometimes his brothers' toys. His intention was always to put it back together! Chances are that didn't always end up happening.

I think, considering how little they had to call their own, breaking each other's things would be a big deal for the turtle tots. Maybe especially Donny, as much as gift giving is how he expresses himself. Whether he breaks something or something of his is broken, it cuts a little deeper than it probably should.

I get so sad

Just thinking of you

All the good time we had

I hurt your feelings

You hurt my feelings

But we had fun too

That's not so bad

SAINW. Mikey 'where the shell were you?!' Leo 'Raph. April's guys didn't say anything about you being here.' Raph 'Don? No way!' (zero anger towards him no questions immediate relief and acceptance. I'm fine) Things were so tense and in such a short time there was only so much he could understand, let alone do. I imagine he's a lot more sensitive about their relationships after that incident.

At the same time though--this never happens. No matter how much thy fight (they all do sometimes) this family has each other's backs. We had fun too--that's not so bad.

Is there a reason

These things happen

Like a snow day in July?

Sometimes I might cry

But then I snicker

That's the see saw

You and I

This really makes me think of Mikey. The idea of a see saw, like wow you really crossed a line this time, no we're not talking I'm annoyed--wait no please keep laughing keep smiling the world is so dark I need the light in your eyes. Forget it I'm not that annoyed.

Snow day in July--Leo going cold and being on everyone's case after Ch'rell goes to prison, when it seems like they should be relieved and celebrating.

See saw, us little kids, see saw

Look what we did

Watching the sun go down on a game

I wish we made up

I wish we made up

Sun go down on a game--Battle Nexus. Leo gets poisoned, Master Splinter's in prison--okay problems solved. And Mikey is the Battle Nexus champion! That's... good and bad. hoo boy forget being annoyed about him bragging how are you going to deal with what this causes between him and Raph. "I don't wanna see this."

Donny always seems particularly sensitive about conflict in the family. Doesn't like to be around it. Rolls his eyes and pouts. "One big happy family" <- the most sarcastic and bitter sentence we ever get from him I think. Normally his voice is like honey but boy his expression can be vinegar when he's upset.

Cool thing though--they did make up! They do make up, every time. His family deals with a lot of grief, but this isn't one of them, this particular regret. They always stick together

there's a lot he doesn't tell them

don't have to make up if you never fight can't fight if you never bring up problems

Wherever you are

I hope you're happy

Is that a stupid thing to say?

It is the simple things that matter

Perhaps I'll find you another way

Remembering what it felt like when Leo was away with the Ancient One. Also, thinking about Cody after Fast Forward. And Kirby, and Sydney, and the Ytlantians. I'll find you another way.

Leo most of all, though

Watching the sun go down on a game

I wish we made up

I wish we made up

Down down down

I feel lonely

Off and on now

But didn't I

When I was younger

Stand in my shadow

Without a friendship

Little worried

What I'd become

Can you imagine how the way they grew up affects them as adults? It's all great to think as one, to fight like a well-oiled machine. Until you have a job and you're trying to change the world but you're just one rusty gear turning uselessly. The turtles depend so much on each other--they had to. But then when they're adults with sever trauma, going separate ways because they just have different ways to go, all of a sudden no one can know what they're thinking just from sharing a look. Raph isn't here to speak up if something's unfair, do you even know what you think is unfair? Mikey's not here to be your resilience, you had a sense of humor you're sure you did, where is it? Leo's not there to be your courage--you always believed in your brothers, you always believed in yourself. Right? Or were you just borrowing his belief?

Shadows are a ninja's friend, but spending your childhood there has consequences

See saw, us little kids, see saw

Look what we did

Watching the sun go down on a game

I wish we made up

I wish we made up

Down down down

I wish we made up

I wish we made up

Hey, there were good times. There are good times ahead. That's what see saws do. Down and back up

[fandoms-in-law]

Queen Alice

@maritimecorpse suggested I rewrite Alice in Wonderland for the 400th fic I'm posting to AO3. This isn't a rewrite so much as playing in the world after remembering that the book does describe a chess game that ends with Alice able to become a queen.

Summary: Alice made it to the other side of the board and became a queen, now people are wondering how she'll get her army made.

/\/\

Now I'm no genius at chess and rarely ever play. I couldn't immediately recall where the pieces all begin or precisely how they interact.

But that's of no consequence here, for though our darling Alice played the game, she never realised what game it was. Of course she thought her day in wonderland was fragmented but a lot of days feel like that, especially when you're young and lessons make up your days.

Since her adventures following the white rabbit, Alice has carried on dreaming. She's been forever curious, wanting to know everything or figure out the answers to everything whether they're right or wrong.

We've mentioned chess already, and perhaps the average reader doesn't know why, or the average person who has seen the movies but not the books and probably assumed the story rotated around a card game instead of a mix of chess and nursery rhymes. After all, the Queen of Hearts is always there, and that's a playing card, not usually seen as a mixing of the queens in chess and the nursery rhyme about tarts being made.

It is however the reason that Alice finds more and more unusual reactions the next time she encounters Wonderland and the areas related to it. Because Alice made it across the board and changed from being a pawn into a queen, only she never gained the team beyond that; No king to defend as he hides behind walls, no rooks or bishops to work beside, nor knights and pawns to command in defence, just Queen Alice a victor with friends made along the way.

“You definitely don't know what's going on, dear. I assume you figured out the way you want to go at least?” The Cheshire cat is back, just his head, hanging in the air beside her as Alice is off again wondering why it's so important to know the locations of countries.

Glancing over she nodded confidently. “It's the way my feet are going.”

“A solid plan for deciding where to go.” He agreed. “You've cause chaos as nobody knows how you're going to form your army, let alone who you've claimed as your king.”

“Kings are rather stationary. Perhaps the Hatter would like that role. He has said he's stuck waiting for teatime forever more so he can't get much more stationary than that.” Alice mused, thinking back over her adventures. “But for the kingdom and army, I'd much prefer to just let people decide if they'd want to join me. Why not just make a group of friends instead of an army?”

The Cheshire cat laughed and she had to check he remained with her and didn't vanish with the noise. It seemed like he'd actually gained the rest of his body. “You've been managing that already. The Duchess has already been making comments over joining your lands and I believe the faux turtle and the gryphon would like to as well.”

“Then they can. Have you heard how Humpty Dumpty is doing? Have the kings men been able to put him together?” She enquired, not doubting for an instant that the cat would know these things even if he hadn't been around them at the same time as her.

“Not yet, but they're still trying. The horses have however given up and started making noise about the endeavour being pointless.” He sighed.

Alice nodded, going to say something more when she was suddenly getting yelled at by someone storming across what she now recognised as a garden, arms waving quite wildly. The recognition also made her realise that while walking with the Cheshire cat she had been walking over flower beds and apparently bent or broken a good many flowers.

It was unquestioned that the cat had dissolved into the air just as soon as the yelling began.

“What do you think you're doing? Damaging all my plants. Those pretty maids were almost in full bloom before you destroyed them.” The gardener yelled, gesturing back to the broken plants which did indeed look more and more like small fainted ladies the longer Alice stared at them.

“I do apologise. I was simply distracted discussing things with the Cheshire cat.” Alice offered, smiling in the hopes it would calm the gardener down some.

The gardener was not calmed and instead turned, glaring across the garden at a fence opposite. “Bad enough I can't get Miss Not a Peep over there to stop her sheep tramping the cockle shells, now I've got someone talking to invisible cats. Carry on with you. Stick to the grass on your way out!”

“Can I know your name please?” Alice asked, but did make her way towards the gate that she could see a sheep unlatching from the other side of it. The scene was reminding her of a rhyme but she wasn't quite certain which one.

“It's Mary.” Came the curt response.

Alice nodded slowly. “Well then Mary, I hope you won't find this impolite but perhaps a different type of fastening on your gate would help keep the sheep away?” She suggested, pointing to the one that was just trotting over to the flower beds.

Before anything could be done towards removing the sheep or finding a more secure gate fastening, it was opening again to a shepherdess Alice could only assume was the one Mary had been complaining about. “Has anyone seen my sheep? I've lost a number of them, you see.”

“There's one over here.” Mary stated, hefting said sheep over her shoulder only to dump it in front of the woman a moment later. “I keep telling you to look after them better and stop them destroying my garden.”

The shepherdess nodded, all too willing to agree. “I'm trying my best, Mary, but it's difficult when they escape in ways I can never figure out.”

“I'll come and look for the rest with you.” Alice decided. “I'm Alice. What's your name?”

“Little Bo Peep. Are you the new queen establishing herself?” She got a curious look from Mary at Bo Peep's question.

She nodded, “Yes. I'm rather just letting the establishing happen around me however. It's far less stressful that way and I've seen how frustrated the other queens are on the daily.”

“Then I'd be grateful for your help.”

As I began, Alice has been dreaming a lot, if you ask her family, ever since she first mentioned a white rabbit in a waistcoat, but there's good reason that a queen would need to be present in the places she gained her title.

[lilkittay]

GET BACK

there was a time in my life where i had a very close deep platonic friendship with a person. at times, i felt simply that i wished they were closer by and not far away. i struggled to explain or understand what my feelings for them were, or if they were even reciprocated. they could never replace my partner, my feelings were of a "i would like to be close and share resources but in a platonic way and with separate living spaces but in the same city" to hang out more but not drive anyone crazy.

our friendship for years was stable, they were a rock i could rely on. or so i thought.

i went through a major change in my life, and at the same time my partner also began a major change in their life. different, and our paths were each our own and very different terrain and yet we could support each other side by side.

my friend decided they needed to have their ownl crisis, they decided not only to mimic the change in my life, but to mimic the change in my partners life as well. and to execute these changes simultaneously.

it felt like a lot of things. one up us? special snowflake olympics? not wanting to be left out? reenactments of childhood traumas where our personal struggles represented siblings ordeals. ohh not this time i wont be pushed to the back burner. im gonna be the pan of grease on fire that ruins dinner! psh.

the one thing it never felt was genuine. no matter how much they tried to convince the kitchen sink their struggle was real, it was fabricated and they built a whole fantasy world in their memories to convince themself of its truth. too rushed. too much haste and later searching for reasons, grasping at any threads, and making up stories by tangling that mess together.

sunk cost fallacy. wont give up the one last thing in it all either.

get back to where you once belonged

it felt crazy. it was crazy. they became crazy. crazier and crazier... it had always been and only became more like watching some kind of sad mockery of a mountain of misguided misunderstandings.

their mimicry/mockery of our struggles, always generating a bigger crisis than what we were struggling with, made me feel as though the tears sweat blood and pain of my own journey were meaningless. unseen. every word i shared met only with some personal anecdote, some self-centered blather. i didnt matter at all and they didnt understand what i or my partner were going through, despite bumbling along in our wake...

the damage is done and sorry will never put humpty dumpty back together again

the creature that replaced my friend i hardly recognize. i swear i was once best friends with a real person, not some overthought persona. not some piecemeal shattered psyche.

i don't care about cartoon card games

i stepped back a bit, put in a little distance for a while just to get a clearer view.

apparently in my absence they reached for the nearest human object in orbit and now theyre "dating" theres so much pathetic desperation there and now its my fault some other person is stuck with it.

i haven't had enough time to process this into words to begin to describe the underlying deeper implications of such behavior, or its underpinnings, or how i feel about it. it isnt mentally healthy.

im not happy for them

as usual, this crap always comes when my path in my career life is taking its own turns. When my growth there hinges on me breaking through the few walls made my neurodivergence that i have to dismantle brick by brick to understand the things i just dont get.

never me always thee

because i was given a different instruction book than everyone else but im playing their game

even if i had my old friend back, im not sure they could help me through this. my partner is here for me serving their role and being always my better half so that is as it should be. no complaints there

but i must face this alone. so much of it is going to be laying bare my own flaws and shortcomings to myself, and having them laid out before me by my leaders. flaying raw my ego and emotions. my friend is incapable of true, dedicated support. no insight. no hint any thoughts or fucks are given.

its all mememememe in there. i swear it wasnt always that way... sigh

never time for me. never time for a halfass attempt at it being about me only me. without payment without exchange without forcing on me their needy needs when i am vulnerable and theyre not welcome.

and fuck. will this ever get better. i dont know.

my old friend helped me through a lot of the past few years of my life in invaluable ways.

then their bff irl died and i guess i filled the void. at first i was bittersweetly honored to fill that role. but i never knew what that friends role was.

i dont know what anything is, im just a tourist

sometimes i feel like i think it would do me some good to go camping alone and just get away from everyone. take my bike, and my tent. hug my partner and say feed the cats and ill text you odten so you dont worry. and just go be alone with myself.

and remember what it was like.

and find out if i still like being alone with me

get back to where i once belonged

it used to feel like talking to my friend was like i could let them inside my head and show them the carnival in there and they could share that space and see me but now i wonder did they ever see anything at all?

no.

this time im owning my crisis. nobody is going to steal it. nobody is going to copy it. nobody is going to yell louder through it and invalidate my existence.

help me dont trump me

get back.