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baelpenrose · 3 months ago

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Nihilus Rex 45: Event Planning

Nils and Lash make up and make plans. For the record, I was SO HAPPY when Light told me what the theme of the Met Gala had been that year. I had wanted to work Paradise Lost jokes into this story so badly and that just lined it up so, so well. Co-written, obviously, by @canyouhearthelight

Nils

I woke up with arms full of Lash, feeling good for the first time in weeks. I was back, motherfucker. My girlfriend and I were working together, Weasel was on his way out, the fibbies were going to be gone soon, and we had ideas for our next step - global event.

At some point I was going to want a major publicity stunt to draw attention to the cause and grab up more followers, but that was further out than we needed to plan for just yet - something to put a pin in.

World cup had potential, for global, for America, maybe the Superbowl? World Series Baseball? I pondered as I fried eggs for me and Lash, and put on the tea. I set on some music as I worked, something quiet and slightly funky.

“Hey, babe, so…” I twitched slightly to the music. “How’s your sister holding up, by the way? And…should we start planning on ‘put Gray down’ contingencies now, or do you want to hold that for later?”

She detangled a part of her hair with her fingers with a thoughtful look on her face. “I think we still need him for expansion and rallying the troops here, at least through… Super Bowl and Oscars? That’s January and March.”

“Let’s start there then. Thoughts on publicity stunt to grab up more followers? Maybe in line with Met Gala next year? Perfect time for it, the sickening display of American capitalist decadence, thrown in the face of the desperate - and we can interrupt it with an easy logo, PFP, announcement of what we’re up to and about if we’ve gotten enough momentum going, a plea for people to join us. By then we’ll have the momentum that people will be afraid, wondering what’s going on. Swap that fear for anger at those in charge, something to believe in, and that’s one hell of an explosive mix.”

She stopped fussing with her hair and grinned in what I could only think of as a predatory way. “Oh, did you see the theme? Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.”

“What a beautiful accident.” My mind was already whirring. “Do you have feelings on Paradise Lost?”

“As our theme, or the work?”

“I mean, we’re crashing a Catholic-themed Met Gala. I’m a scion of the white American upper class very much bringing about their doom. Can you think of a better theme?”

“I like it. Let’s do it.”

I paused. “You want to crash the party and then broadcast from inside with a recorded signal when we do it? Leave before the signal starts?”

She snorted. “Clearly someone doesn’t follow the Gala… The event has more security in the week leading up to and during than the White House at any point in time excluding 9/11. It’s literally the A-list of the A-list in Hollywood and fashion. Crashing isn’t an option, especially if we plan to live through this. Hosting a warehouse Masquerade and using it as cover to broadcast the signal? More doable. Especially if we leave that before the signal kicks off.”

I debated telling Lash that anyone at said Masquerade was almost definitely going to get arrested when the cops traced the signal, so we couldn’t invite any of our actually trusted lieutenants - then realized that that would be a delightful way to get rid of Gray, actually. Bring him, a few of his gun bros, a few of the weird, flaky chicks who’d started following us online who seemed too unstable to actually be helpful…

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Worst case scenario,” she waved vaguely, “cops show up over a broadcast hijacking, most people get out in the scramble, anyone who gets caught literally has no fucking clue what we did, they showed up for a rave. Maybe some light possession charges.”

Or we could do that. That seemed smarter. Of course getting rid of Gray wouldn’t be that easy, I cursed myself.

“Okay. So. We have a plan to get attention, raise the profile, and do some quick attacks during high profile events. I like where we’re going. We’ll have the FBI back on us after we use up Weasel, but by the time that’s done, we’ll have enough fires on enough fronts that they’ll be playing catch up.” I thought about it. “There’s probably? Something to be done with that League tournament in Korea, but I don’t know how to make that more annoying to rich people than to random gamers - data strangles on banking, maybe? Data flow is already going to be weird, there. We can always move it around more, have it blamed on the tournament.”

“Or attack something wholly unrelated, since no one will be looking at it,” she pointed out. “Like with the Super Bowl - we aren’t going after the NFL, we’d go after…. I don’t know, stupid charges slapped disproportionately against minorities or something. World Cup? Global stock market, something along those lines. Just spitballing.”

“Point. Ideally, have multiple things going. Diversions, too. There’s always more police presence around sports events, so if we can cause riots around them to pressure cops it won’t hurt us. At some point, this thing does need to allow allies of ours to either carve out autonomous zones or seize power.”

For what seemed to be a lack of anywhere better to drum her fingers, Lash drummed hers against her chin. “Spin up those who want violence to riot outside, while we attack something completely unrelated but more important? That’s what you’re saying?”

“Yep. Keep Interpol’s eyes on the agitators behind the riots, ideally - try to keep that on Gray’s side of the show. Skulls for the Skull Collector, and Gray for Interpol, since the FBI probably aren’t going to cut it with him. He destabilizes hostile forces, we get a free hand to tear open the IMF while Interpol isn’t looking.” I was already thinking about it, trying to figure out the scale of the forces involved, the institutions that would be clashing. Interpol and local law enforcement often collided over jurisdictional crap, so that would be one angle where we’d get a smokescreen, be allowed to run the game out longer. “And if it keeps Gray too busy to stab us in the back til we can Order 66 him…”

Rather than balking, Lash leaned into the idea. “Who is our current time-delay specialist? We can’t have these connected if we want to use this model - Stochastic, that’s the term you like, right? We need someone to make it look random, like an attack of advantage rather than coordinated efforts.”

“At some point, someone is going to be able to piece it together if they aren’t totally braindead,” I said, mulling over her point, “I mean, financial attacks at multiple major spectator events, with riots that draw local law enforcement? That’s a pattern after a while. But yeah, longer we can draw them off thinking it's stochastic or a chain of copycats rather than a singular entity, the better. Currently our smartest guy for timing is Bishop, but he knows some other people who might know law enforcement analysis or event timing better than we do - I’ll poke him.” I rubbed my temples, still thinking. “Once they do determine it’s a singular entity, and start targeting Gray, we need to at least think about claiming responsibility for the attacks for the credibility. Yeah, raise our profile and draw all sorts of attention we don’t want, but it’ll also draw more people to our cause in ways that…I mean, not the happiest comparison, but those ISIL dipshits were literally crucifying people and they made it work with a little media manipulation and some branding. We can definitely do it.”

“I’ll be honest, part of me feels like you aren’t seeing the big picture I’m pitching,” Lash confessed, scraping the last of her breakfast into her mouth. “I’m thinking varied delays or even lead times to the physical riots, with what seem to be unrelated attacks from the online perspective. Super Bowl riot, same time hit something. Oscars, a week before or after hit something that seems unrelated. League of Legends Worlds, hit something EssKay centric that doesn’t even matter to the U.S, maybe next day, doesn’t matter. Does that make sense?”

I slapped myself. “Yeah. okay…That…” I shook my head, trying to clear it. God. Damn. Had to lay off the drugs. I was tempted to grab an Adderall to feel a little less stupid but I knew if I did I’d be stuck back like this a few days later. “Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Though the advantage of the events as diversions only lasts if we hit while they’re on…” I bit my tongue. “We’ll talk to Bishop and whoever he can dig up, but you’re absolutely right, that’s something to think about. Getting too much attention too fast fucks us over.”

I paused. “Wait. Lead-in or followups, totally unrelated to the initial attacks, do different attacks in different styles. Convince them that everything is being done by different groups, each copying each other. Lead-ins and follow ups can be ‘sloppy’ insofar as they can be low-value targets more meant to cause chaos than actually accomplish anything. Roll a d20 or other nerd dice for number of days before or after strike, coin flip for whether it’s before or after? Convince them that there’s even more random crap happening? At some point people are gonna join in.”

She winked and shot me finger-guns. “Now we’re in the same book. Love the randomizing concept, won’t lie. Nothing they can create a pattern from, since there literally isn’t one. It’s just chance. And the more unrelated the causes seem, the harder it will be to connect them…. Especially if we cultivate imitators, right?”

“Yeah. I have concerns if our imitators start going off on tears and try hitting the same targets we do, but…” I trailed off. “Honestly as long as we don’t trip over them it shouldn’t be a huge problem, and if they get intercepted they can work as a diversion.” Wait, no that was dumb as fuck. We’d have to keep an eye out for imitators as we went. I realized that as soon as it was out of my mouth, cyberspace didn’t work like meatspace, everyone was everywhere all at once if you were doing the same thing. “No, wait, -”

“No, it’s good,” Lash confessed, snagging my plate as she headed towards the kitchen sink. “I hate it, but if we’re willing to throw right wing chucklefucks under the bus, we have to be willing to let the people who don’t coordinate reap the whirlwind.” She held a hand to her chest, carefully placing the dishes in the sink while clearly taking several deep breaths. “I want to vomit from saying that, but if I do, I’ll never get past the hard truth.”

“Focus on the fact that we have no better choices. That this chess game started before we were ever born, and the role in history we were born into was either being blind to it or to try to win.” I said, hoping I was failing to achieve my usual level of eloquence because that also sounded dumber than shit. I could do better than that normally, right?

Holding one last breath, she nodded. “This has to be done. And there are going to be people who think they are doing the right thing - and some might be right - but like those guys who got shot at the bank, stupid games, right?” She suddenly started doing deep breaths again.

“Stupid games, stupid prizes. And if we win, they win the prize that their kids don’t have to do this. Get to live in a better world than the one we’re in.”

That seemed to steady her. “Clean water. Less scarcity. Fewer diseases.” She nodded firmly before repeating. “Less scarcity. I know they say money is the root of all evil, but that’s because scarcity is the true evil.”

“Lack of racists with a monopoly on violence. Probably fewer racists. In general.” I added. “We’re doing a good thing. We’re solving problems. We’re just doing it in…unusual ways. Ways that wouldn’t be necessary if everything awful hadn’t been entrenched for centuries.” It sounded true when I said it, and I wasn’t even on triple my recommended dose of stimulants. That was probably a good sign.

She tucked herself back into the corner of my couch that she seemed to prefer, a careful positioning that never failed to fascinate me in its precision. “Redistribution of wealth is on the agenda, just to confirm we’re on the same page? I know we are, but I like hearing it out loud every now and then.”

“That is very much the goal. Giant universities. Free entry. Libraries. Free healthcare.” I smirked as I cuddled into her. “Men’s fashion that isn’t so fucking depressing. A rule on the books that says if you burn a book you go on the fire after it.”

“Unless it’s indoctrination about Dianetics?” she pleaded, grinning and tugging on my hair.

“No, that gets shelved next to the works of HP Lovecraft like everything else about Cthulhu. Obviously. Every extant copy gets big, bold stamping that says “fiction.” That’s much, much funnier. We still ban all the insane bullshit religious people do to their kids in the name of god though. No more marrying as children, genital snipping, beating for being gay, leaving them alone with priests who interrogate them about sexual sins. All that shit goes away.” I paused. “Offhand, are we actually planning on ruling the world? Like, I get the whole aesthetic, but I have…no interest in actually getting a crown on.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Ewwwww… ruling the world sounds like a ton of work. No thank you. Can we delegate it?”

“So we get to look cool, take over the world, then hand it to someone else. Love that.” I leaned in. “I am so happy we found each other.”

Petting my hair, she leaned over to kiss my forehead. “Me too. Fix the world, find someone to keep it on keel with the knowledge we can take them out of power, vanish to do boring shit and have sex until we die. Love the idea.”

“Boring…Yeah.” I trailed off, eyes wandering. “Hey. After I message Bishop, is there some of that ‘boring’ stuff you’d like to try?”

She abruptly stood up - fair enough given that I’d dropped her on the rug earlier - and walked towards the bedroom, dusky hands grabbing the back of her shirt collar. “I’ll be in here, don’t be long with Bishop.” Even as she said it, the hem of her borrowed shirt showed more and more of her underwear.

Yeah. If that wasn’t proof I needed to hire a time management guy so I could spend less time crunching logistics…

“Bishop. Do you have anyone you know who knows something about…event planning, spacing, and time management who’d like to work on our project? Who would also be a good fit?”

I sent the text, knowing it’d be a bit before Bishop got back to me - he worked during the week. I casually stood up and headed back to the bedroom.

#Nihilus Rex #writeblr #writers on tumblr #afterverse #miys prequel #arcadian inquisition prequel #traumatized characters #modern dystopia #cyberpunk

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moonsquaremars · 6 months ago

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My Folly With The Mormon Church

You gave me purpose for so long. You solved my existential fears until I was forced to outgrow them. However the surrounding chaos, the plagues of my mind.

I surrender. I had to the first time. My father told me from a young age the importance of asking Christ to be saved, or you will be doomed to hell for eternity if you die. That’s pretty heavy for a five year old. I was spooked.

The second time was when I was thrown into the deep end after graduating high school. THE KIDS WERE NOT ALRIGHT. I was a mess.

Ill-prepared, temperamental, homosexual. Frustrated at the world. Frustrated with what was promised to me. My social realities just differed. My social life and upbringing. What was within reach. My stomping grounds. The struggles I had to face with from my home, against my will or control.

The Mormon Church gave me an answer.

Gave me a sense of purpose, sense, reasoning. After all, what could be more important than one’s eternal salvation. I came to the conclusion that homosexuality statistically had to be morally corrupt due to its widespread attitude across cultures and countries. Hell, I read even the Buddhists didn’t support all at. Damn. Even the Buddhists hate me ???

If all we got is Ancient Rome & Greece backing us, I hate to admit we’re doomed. Look at their fates. Maybe I am just a pawn for the demoralization of American society. Being working class is just a double wammy.

Admittedly though, two very close people to me died actually, and they were how I would’ve considered ‘privileged’. Private schools, even fencing lessons.

But they got clipped by God’s Own Hand. He ain’t take me out for some reason yet. I sure have been hoping though, deep down. I guess you could say that’s a source of my self sabotage. And the fear. Oh the fear. The fear of being myself, because it’s morally incorrect and of eternal consequence. Or the fear that was quite literally in my face. Mothertruckers would knock me out around here. I’m an effiminate white boy in an industrialized, working class urban environment.

With unhealthy coping strategies. Maybe that’s why I joined some strange religion, and made it my entire f***ng identity. Now at the ripe, very adult of 28, I ain’t got my cuteness as a defense for much longer.

Not that that necessarily saves you in America anyhow. You could die in a mass shooting in a grocery store. It really is wild like that out here. I think it does something to your psyche.

MY RETURN OF SATURN ♄ ༝༚༝༚

When I read that Saturn in the 9th House Natives (in Kentucky we would say was instead of were, but I’ll speak proper) were energetically attracted to more Traditional types of religions. My jaw bout near dropped. I kinda felt called out. How this book gonna tell me about myself like that?

I was irked. But it only furthered my belief in the ancient art of the stars. You can’t really argue with what’s right in front of you. And I, p

Pause. Had to start playing Saturn by Sza.

Alright. This stream of conciousness has been cathartic but it’s time I focus on the big idea. My health. My future. Rules change as you get older. Adult problems aren’t kid problems. I gotta get real with how my choices and actions have consequences. The strength of my youth is fading. My breathing is getting bad from years of smoking, vaping, clubbing and gaying. It’s time to retreat and try to find redemption from my mistakes of my 20s. I learned lessons. As 2 Chains said it best, I’m Diffrent..

#gay christian #rambles #12th house #9th house #saturn #saturn return #sza #queerstake #mormon astrology #mormon

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boyswillbedogz · 1 year ago

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heyyyy heres a script for a speech on trans rights i have to give in class soon

any suggestions or criticisms are helpful, it has to be between 2-3 minutes and rn measures at roughly 2:50

There are ten stages of genocide. I was nine years old when I realized for the first time that I was in the middle of number six, and a just a few months ago it dawned on me that we’re now in stage eight: active genocide. They. Are. Killing us. And you – yes you – can do something about it, but are making the active choice not to.

Us being transgender people. Transgender is defined by the American Psychological Association as “an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.”

My name is {irl name}. I’m trans, I know, looking back, that I always have been but when I was nine I gained a word to put to it. I use he/him pronouns even though my birth certificate says I’m a girl. But I’m so much more than that simple contradiction. I’m a person. I like sharks and drawing and playing doom. I want to be a tattoo artist when I’m older. I laugh and I cry and I’m a human being.

But some people don’t see it that way.

A conservative political action conference speaker, Michael Knowles, said this year on camera; “Transgenderism must be eradicated.” Yet, he goes back. Claims that when he says this he’s not saying that trans people should be eradicated, just the ideology.

But that’s simply not how it works, and this is the leadup to the excuse of a literal mass murdering. You can’t kill the idea of being gay, only gay people. And that’s what they’re doing, and that’s what they did.

And they have no arguments except the ones being recycled from the attack on gay people. We’re not delusional, a study by the National Institute of Health shows that the brains of trans women more resemble the female sex. And even if that wasn’t the case: gender isn’t real. Sex is but even then it’s not that black and white because there are women with XY chromosomes and high testosterone and vice versa. Gender is a social construct just like money and language and therefore is flexible. DIfferent countries have entirely different ideas of sex and gender. There is so much evidence against transphobic arguments that prove It’s not because you are thinking of the children or because we wish you harm, it's because you are scared of what does not align with your concept of normal.

This basic, basic level of respect that we have to stoop down to beg people for is something that can literally save lives. And they turn their heads and say we’re throwing a fit over nothing.they call it ‘trans activists throwing fits over nothing’ even though The National Institute of Health tells us that data indicates that 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth. Is that something enough or do you not care for the lives of our youth? What happened to think of the children?

I’m one of the children. Just last year I was violently suicidal because I could not see my future in America as a trans person, especially not a black trans person. My future looked bleak in a country where police brutality, homelessness, poverty, bullying, depression, and violent discrimination were all things I’d probably be subject to. Thursday, February 10th, 2022, I tried to kill myself. I went to school the next morning without telling anyone, stuck with this horrible dread in my stomach. I’m in therapy now and doing hugely better, but that doesn’t negate the point that I was so painfully aware that my country actively hated me that I wanted to kill myself.

But it’s not inevitable. You don’t have to go give speeches in front of courts, but you can do something. Support the trans people in your life, be a safe space as a person because there are people in this very school genuinely scared to come out because of the environment we have created. Do research, care. Donate to things like The Trevor Project which will do the talking for you and put money towards mental health for queer teens. We are dying but we are not a hopeless cause. You can do something. Doing nothing will lead to some poor child sitting and watching the news and realizing that we are in stage ten of transgender genocide. Doing nothing will kill us.

#dogz bark #dogz draw #transgender #transmasc #transfem #trans positivity #trans rights #trans pride #transisbeautiful #transrightsarehumanrights

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daeagon · 19 days ago

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here you go, enjoy!

it’s a really random mix of things that I want to watch, things that have been recommended to me, or things that look cool (also some of these are TV shows and Video Games or Podcasts, it’s titled Movies and other media to consume)

I’m always looking for more recommendations, I’ll eventually get to watching these years later.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Wizards of wavernly place

The breakfast club

Queer w bond

Steven Universe

White collar

Powerless

Red dwarf

De wave (the wave in German)

Some like it hot

Psych

Years and years

Blakes 7

Misfits

Bodies

Red dwarf

Batman caped crusaders

Doom patrol

Hiroshima mon amor

Literally everything with Johnathan Groff, NPH and Ncuti Gatwa

Beetle juice

The bounty hunter

The American Mafia

Jeffrey

Queer As Folk

Angles in America

It's a Sin

Outlander

Marchlands

La prix de l’argent

shyamalan movie

battlestar galactica or Mindhunter

miracle workers

C O G

Looking

Assassins odyssey creed game

Nautilis

Marlon Brando movies

Enemy at the gates

Space boy

Lupin

Miss perigrins home for prequileur children

Marco Polo

Stanley parabola

German firebombing

The exorcist

Lockwood and co

The wheel of time

The umbrella academy

The hurt locker

Oceans eleven

The jumper

Watch a phyc drama at some point

Tomboy

One of us is lying

Transmorphers

Transhood

After party

But I’m a cheerleader

Minority report

Kipo and the age of wonderbeasts ????

Mutt

The Sandman

The imperfections, on Netflix

Dating amber

Bonders

Our flag means death

The bear

I guess there’s a queen movie called bohemian rhapsody

Wheels of time

Over the garden wall

Welcome to nightvale( podcast

Mommy dearest

The Disney 3 musketeers

Within the wires (podcast

Next goal wins

Gen v

What we do in the shadows

Daredevil

Humans

Atlanta/ watch teddy Perkins ep

Office

Ragnarock Netflix series

A civil action

We live here the Midwest

Listen to something to feel

Rez dogs

Bodies

The dads documentary

CW supergirl for trans wom

Thriving a DID story

Renfield

A discovery of witches

Secret headquarters

Scott pilgrim vs. the world

Scott pilgrim takes up

Stranger things

American werewolf in London

Sucide squad

Ark animated series

Jury duty

Agent Elvis

Jessica jones

Prisma

Corpse bride

A haunting in Venice

Fellow travelers

Uncopled

Doctor who unleashed

American gods

Gen:lock

Blues brothers

The office

Parks and rec

The boys

Broadchurch

nativity 2

Bottoms

Dumb and dumber

Arrested development

Dragons of wonderhatch

Rocky horror picture show

Tv girl

Heart stopper

The L word

Tell it to the bees

Muzzle

Sort of

Feel good

She ra

Mean girls

Missing

Queen charlet

One piece

Dead water fell gang

Inside man

Broke back mountain

No way up

Will Trent

The amazing digital circus

Dilf and milf manor

Point of interest

Buzzfeed unsolved

Boom boom sabotage

John mulanine the famous comedian

Mayor of Kingstown

Full metal alchemist

Young justice

Designated survivor

Once upon a Deadpool

Station 11 limited series on HBO

Fahrenheit 451

Civil war new movie

Gangs of London

Mouse going to American movie

Love undercover

Argil

Jeckle and Hyde musical

Jurassic park: chaose theory

The Harry Truman show

The Thursday Murder Club

Sweet tooth

Ultimate Spider-Man show

Rustin

Paris is burning

Paria

Fallout tv show

District 9

Milk (about Harvey milk

Pose

Cinema Fouad

Atomic Blonde

Glee

Watching and Dreaming

The naturals

Bottoms

Gunpowder show on Guy falks

Inception for that bridge in paris

Shadowhunters

Minus one (Godzilla)

Monarch legacy of the monsters

X-men 97

Favorite Streaming Productions From 2024

Below is a list of my favorite productions that appeared on streaming channels in 2024 (in alphabetical order):

FAVORITE STREAMING PRODUCTIONS FROM 2024

"Belgravia: The Next Chapter" - This sequel to Julian Fellowes' 2020 limited series, "Belgravia", aired on MGM+. Set thirty years later, the limited series starred Benjamin Wainwright and Harriet Slater.

"Cross" (Season One) - Starring Aldis Hodge, this crime thriller television series about a Washington D.C. forensic psychologist and homicide detective is based on James Patterson's "Alex Cross" novel series, now airing on Amazon Prime Video.

"The Day of the Jackal" (Season One) - Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch starred in this reimagined adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel about a ruthless British assassin and the MI-6 intelligence officer intent on capturing him. Now airing on Peacock.

"The Empress" (Season Two) - Devrim Lingnau and Philip Froissant star in this Netflix historical drama about Empress Elisabeth and Emperor Franz-Josef I of Austria.

"Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist" - Kevin Hart and Samuel L. Jackson starred in Peacock's limited series about an infamous armed robbery held on the night of Muhammad Ali's historic 1970 comeback fight in Atlanta. Don Cheadle, Taraji P. Henson and Terence Howard co-starred.

"Mr. & Mrs. Smith" (Season One) - Donald Glover and Maya Erskine starred in this Amazon Prime Video remake of the 2005 comedy thriller about two strangers and trained espionage agents, impersonating a married couple, while working for a mysterious organization.

"The Penguin" - Colin Farrell reprised his role as Oswald "Oz" Cobb aka the Penguin from the 2022 D.C. Comics movie, "The Batman", in this HBO/Max limited series about the titled character's rise to power in Gotham City's underworld.

"Shōgun" - This second adaptation of James Clavell's 1975 novel about a shipwrecked English soldier and his association with a powerful daimyo in early 17th century Japan aired on the FX on Hulu channel and starred Hiroyuki Sanada, Cosmo Jarvis, Anna Sawai and Tadanobu Asano.

"Star Wars: The Acolyte" - Amandla Stenberg and Lee Jung-jae starred in this Disney Plus limited series about the Jedi Order's investigation of a series of crimes during the High Republic era.

"Star Wars: Skeleton Crew" - Jude Law starred in this Disney Plus limited series about four children, who make a discovery on their home planet, get lost in the galaxy and go on an adventure to get back home. The series is set during the early New Republic era.

#movies #To watch list #um #yeah #I’ll take more recommendations #I’m tired #jet lag is beating my ass #Or going to

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dustylava · 2 years ago

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English is not my native language, and i have no sense of humor, so, i'm so sorry.

A couple of reasons, why it's not so bad to be a friend of Homelander.

Naturally, the very first reason, is that it is unfeasible to offend you.

Well, it's possible to hurt your feelings, of course, but no one can avoid paying for it. Even if you don't tell John about it yourself, he'll still guess, that someone hurt you. Homelander, in any case, will find out and punish those, who upset his precious flower. Even if it's some old grudge, Homelander will gladly, and completely gratuitously, avenge you. And if someone dares to lay a hand on you... Let's just say, this brainless suicider is doomed to long torment. It doesn't matter to him, who did it and how long ago, only the fact, that this person dared to offend you and how he did it are important. No matter, who it is and when, the degree of cruelty of the supe, will depend on how you reacted to, what this walking corpse did.

If you have long hair.

As soon as you let down your luxurious hair for the first time, Lander will fall in love with them. He will already reach out to touch them, but remembered, that he himself does not like it, when his hairstyle is touched without permission, and ask if he can? And later, when you let him comb your length, he will find a new, favorite way to relax. And if you teach him, how to braid braids, John will be delighted, that he does it, and that you praise him, what a good fellow he is. Just, please, make him be careful. He doesn't want that, but he'll still pull out a couple of clumps of your hair. -John! -Fuck, I'm sorry... I didn't do it on purpose... -Do you even know, how long I've been growing them? It's not like you, woke up, spat on palm and smoothed three hairs! Firstly, it hurts, and secondly, do you even know how much effort it takes? -Actually, it takes me a while to do my ha... -John! -What "John"? What should I do now, glue it back on your head?!

You're both not always smart.

You rarely get to go out for a walk with John. Most often, you just hang out at your house, eat, watch mind-numbing shows, talk heart to heart. Comfort each other, well, you comfort his tantrums, or you laughter, until stomach and cheeks ache. But, still, sometimes you manage to take a walk. Most often, you walk through the forest nearby to your house. This is convenient, because you don't like being in a crowd, and Homelander hates it, when someone is next to you. And it's even worse, if someone sees the two of you together. Not because supe is shy of you, no, but because you are his most intimate secret. You're literally the only part of his life, that Vought doesn't control.

You have been walking for quite a long time. You tell him about different flowers and herbs, and how they can be used. You talk about some animals, he shows you beautiful stones or a view, of how the sun's rays break through the dense foliage. He tells you interesting things and stories. You love such quiet moments with America's main favorite. -Okay, I give up, where are we going? - John tightened his grip on your hand. -What do you mean..? - You raised a confused look at your companion. - I was following you... - What..? I thought you were leading us... - You both blinked at each other in complete incomprehension. And then, both burst out laughing.

If you weren't born in America.

Sometimes, when you talk too much or tell something very emotionally, you can accidentally, without even noticing it, switch to your native language. But John doesn't stop you. He doesn't understand shit at all, but he likes the way you speak your language so much. He even learned a couple of phrases. "I love you" and "everything will be fine, my flower". With his accent, it sounds very cute and funny.

And moreover, he is just delighted, when you cook him dishes, that are not on the American menu, but are common in your homeland. Of course, he doesn't like the whole cuisine of your country, but something of it you have to cook all the time.

If you are plump.

Homelander considers himself a God on Earth. And he likes to humiliate people for their imperfections. And plus size people are no exception. And after meeting you, his attitude hasn't changed. But he loves you. Oh yes, Homelander, dual standards!

The fact, that you are already used to insults and bullying, does not mean, that it does not hurt you. And today is no exception. You didn't want to do it at all, but you had to come to the "big city", on business. And in the evening, when you were tired and overwhelmed with emotions, returning to your hotel room, a group of young men accosted you. They made caustic, sarcastic comments, and openly mocked your figure. Naturally, you have already heard all these statements billions of times, but this does not negate the fact, that it is unpleasant. You are tired of the insults themselves and of their monotony. At some point, one of them grabbed your arm and turned you around to face them. You weren't scared, you were too tired. -You ugly, fat scum, you should be grateful, that God sent us to you. -Yes! No one will ever fuck you, of their own free will! -I bet all my money, that you have a huge, fat bucket between your legs! They laughed loudly, nastily, pointed fingers at you and talked without shutting up. -I didn't send anyone anywhere. - A thunderous voice rang out from behind these freaks. - Now, turn around and say it to m y face, you cowardly bitch. - Homelander grabbed one of them by the head with his big palm and lifted him up. - Is there something you don't like? Don't like her hips? So, stay out of my plate, motherfucker! - And hit him with all his might against the nearest stone wall. The remaining men in panic fear began to beg Homelander to leave them, ask for forgiveness and try to escape. But you can't escape from Homelander. - Don't ask me for forgiveness, but her. Because I won't forgive you, you pieces of shit. Your supe kept the rest of the company alive in front of you. The life and health of these people depended on you. Usually, you act as a good Homelander, usually, you persuade him to mercy. And today, people's lives have once again appeared before your court. -Once doesn't count, does it, Lander? - You bit your lip doubtfully. - Only once..! The dazzling blond maniacally smiled, and purred: "this will be my pleasure for today." Abruptly rose into the air, not letting go of your abusers. You were still in doubt, you were ashamed that you took advantage of your position like that, but you moved a couple of blocks away so as not to be splattered by these freaks. A couple of minutes later, you heard a nasty slap, and immediately after that, John's purring tone and his warm embrace.

In fact, Homelander is just in love with how soft you are in his arms. He is constantly pressing against your tummy and soft thighs. He strokes them, kneads them and gently slaps them. If he could, he would purr, lying with his head on your lap.

If you take any medications on a regular basis.

You somehow opened your eyes. With a tired groan, you reached for the phone, pressed the lock button and went blind. Even the minimum brightness of the screen was too bright for such an hour. 3:56 a.m... You don't want to get up so much, but your dry throat was begging for moisture. Somehow reaching the kitchen, you shuddered. A dark, large figure, with burning eyes, was sitting at the dining table. -How did you get here and what are you doing here..? - You yawn lazily and shuffle to the table. -You left the window open. And I opened the balcony through the window. - John mumbled, not looking up from what he was studying in his hands. - What's that? - He picked up the package of pills he was holding in his hands. -My medicines. - You were still lazily sipping water from a glass. -What are they for? -I'll die without them. You've read the instructions. - You shrugged, but John still doesn't look satisfied. -There are a lot of side effects. - The man raised his eyebrows skeptically. - Do you really need it that much? - Now you've raised an eyebrow skeptically. Your "always welcome guest" sighed, putting down the package. - I just don't want to lose you. -I'll be fine, bun. - You gently kissed John on the forehead.

If you're shorter than him.

Homelander thinks it's pretty cute, how petite you are compared to him. He just loves to hold your hands in his, or take you in his arms. No matter how "heavy" you are, for a fucking Homelander, his precious flower weighs nothing. And yes, he has just a disgusting habit. He puts his hand on your head, as if he is leaning on something.

You were standing near a small lake, looking at ducks. John sighed and pretended, to lean on you. He knows perfectly well how it pisses you off. He likes it. -Do you have extra kneecaps..? -Pfft, what are you going to do to me, you weakling. - You've already brought your foot up, to hit him under the knee, but you haven't touched him. John liked to pretend, that you beat him. It seemed to him like something cute, family and cozy. - Ah! Ouch..! Well, you broke my leg. Well done Y/n, how am I going to explain this to the public now? You both laughed, after which John himself sat down on the grass and sat you on his lap. He put his chin on the top of your head, hugging you tightly around the waist. You'll be sitting like this for a long time. In peace and comfort.

You are allowed more, than others.

Homelander once again humiliated and threatened people. He yelled at them, pushed them and fired lasers a couple of times, to intimidate them. -Hey, you, Superman from Aliexpress! Stop terrorizing people for no reason! -What the fuck?! Who the fuck said that?! - Homelander turned his back to the crowd. His eyes were burning red, and his entire figure was ready to attack. - Who has an extra fucking life in their pocket?! -Enough! They didn't do anything to you, you moron! -What are you doing, you little bitc... Oh..! It's you. - Homelander relaxed a little. - Okay. - He lightly patted your hair, - fuck with you. -Lander, please leave them be. -Nah... - Supe turned back to the crowd, - even for your sake, my dear, I will not spare them. - He paused for a moment, assessing and weighing the situation. - Okay, you're in luck, assholes, I'll deal with you quickly and without your suffering. Consider, that divine grace has descended upon you, in the face of this person. - He quickly nodded in your direction and cut up, burned everyone, in the blink of an eye. -John... -I'm sorry, my flower. - Supe gently hugged you by the shoulders, - they deserved it. - Homelander crowned the top of your head with a kiss.

You're allowed A LOT more.

You met John in the hallway and handed him a glass of warm milk. The man purred his thanks, sealing it with a kiss on the cheek. You're in a playful mood today, so you hugged him and snuggled up to his strong chest. The blond man grunted softly with pleasure, raising the glass to his lips. -John... -Mmm? -John, - you rested your chin on his chest, looking at him. - Please tell me, what is more valuable for you? Milk or me..? - He almost choked. John just froze in place. - Bun? - You looked at him with big, hopeful, expectant eyes. He just stared blankly at you. From time to time, like a fish on land, opening and closing his mouth, trying to squeeze something out of himself. You stood there for a while, and then, you pursed your lips, lowered your gaze and exhaled a disappointed: "I see..." Went to the kitchen sink. Homelander tried to say something, but could not anything. He just stared at you with a confused, frightened look. While you were washing the dishes after your dinner together, and John was still standing at the entrance to the kitchen, holding a glass of cooling milk in his hand, trying to figure out, how he should live now, you almost didn't try to hide a snide grin.

Well done Y/n, great job! You broke Homelander.

#the boys #homelander #john #john homelander #homelander x you #homelander x reader #tw: fatphobia #tw: fat shaming

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isagi101 · 2 years ago

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So Is It Me Or Does Eli Kinda Suck?

So Og Young Avengers was wild and Eli was wilder and with him being shown in Black Panther I wanted to state my unpopular opinion of him. First boy came running into the comic sexists for no reason. It’s so weird because I really wanted to like Eli so much and seeing Eli being added in cute incorrect quotes makes me feel like we could have that but Eli literally wasn’t that good i’m sorry. But I come with receipts.

So here is a long post written a year ago and eddied by younger sibling. <3

So I just wanted to talk about the Og young avengers and just like to make fun and just discuss what I think about them

Eli Elijah Bradley~ So like Eli first since I like him the least and like I really wanted to love him and at most I just have a lot of mixed feelings about him and the direction he took team leadership and just overall bond with the other team. But maybe judging him by just the others is rude or something. I just don’t think he’s whole plot was all that either.

Anway, Eli overall doesn’t have a lot of back and forth with the other characters. He kinda sticks with interacting mainly with like three members at all times and just switches between them. He argues with nate, Quips with Billy and has back and forth with kate.

His interactions with the other characters lack the necessary chemistry that it needs to prove that they are friends, his conversations with most of the team fall flat.

Eli’s character is the Antithesis of show and not tell, his character’s likability relies on him being close with the other characters, but the interactions that he has with those characters leave more to be desired; He prioritizes his relationship with Kate more then the other characters, to the extent that it harms his other relationships. Eli replacing Nate for the title of leader is a direction that I enjoy his character taking because he doesn’t show enough care or support, for someone who is filling the role. The shift in affection between the group is decreased when he takes the role.

Although that doesn’t mean that there was no significant character development for him, I just believe that he isn’t at the level of the former leader(Nate) or many of the other widely praised leaders in Marvel. >:(

Ex. (Eli just discovered to be on drugs, and he decided to leave the team after that conflict, because he didn’t have real superpowers.(Disbanded) They all have those conflicted feelings, but still want to bring him back, during which Hulking is kidnapped. Despite the fact that he was in the leadership role just shortly prior, he decides to leave them to handle the dangerous situation without him )

This is a problem to me because even when Kate calls him out for the fact that he isn’t the only one without superpowers, and he still has skill outside of the super bad drugs,

he still declines. Even when one of the people he is supposed to be close with is in a life or death situation he decides that he wouldn't help, This breaks the illusion that he is close with the other characters. Which wouldn’t be a problem on it’s own however having hindsight, this isn’t the only example that that he...

Ex. (Billy goes crazyyyy, with a thought alone, concerning the others around him. The Avengers then want to keep him contained because it is similar to the previous event with Scarlet Witch,(they don’t know they are related at the time). Billy doesn’t like that they are basically threatening him, for this. This causes a conflict with his team leading to his departure with them. The Avengers then send Captain America on to escort Billy from his home, while exposing his secret identity to his parents, ending with Billy and Teddy being locked up at the Avengers Tower.(This isn’t about Billy i swear xp)From this they then proceed to break Billy out of the cell they hold him in (against Billy’s best judgement) during this scene Eli says If you do have scary powers we want to be on your side, telling them to escape while they deal with the avengers. A great scene because it shows growth on their end as they offer support for him and what he wants, against them previously dismissing him. Cassie comes up with a plan to solve problem, where she says to bring Billy to her so she can then reverse the damage that she caused .That is until Professor Xavier’s boyfriend Magneto enters the picture, like haha im your grandfather and I will totally bring you to your mother, and tries to kidnap them, Eli being the only one who is sceptical of Magneto’s true intentions, interferes. Magneto then dismisses him saying i didn’t want to anyways, so you can shut yo stupid ass up, to which Billy Rebutes with were a team so its all or none. And out of left field Eli is likee umm i don’t remember volunteering to be your ride or die so imma have to disagree with you there. A big battle starts between them, Magneto, and the Avengers, ending with Billy teleporting the team halfway across the world to “”. Eli proceeds to get upset by the fact that he was turned into a fugitive by Billy, who fled from the literal AVENGERS, saying that you could have at least asked firstttt. Billy then offers to return them, but they all decline because now they are apparently ride or die?_?. After this heartwarming moment, Eli then plots with Kate to backstab them and turn them into the Avengers, claiming that the Avengers may in fact have a good reason to locking him up in a cell. To which Kate says that he can go home if he feels that way, but he is all like I hAve tO StAy fOr YoU... )

( Later on when Dr. Doom, Scarlet Witch, and Billy are attempting to give the mutants back their powers, Eli however is against this from the beginning as he feels that the mutants should have a choice in weather or not they should get their mutant abilities back as for some it means that they no longer have to live with that hate they receive for having them, Scarlet Witch aka girlboss aka based aka best character here is like i don’t care because i tried to ask them before and they were like omg no im literally going to try to murder youuuu, like the drama queens they are; anyways Eli interrupts their spell thingy by shooting an arrow at them, because he doesn’t trust Dr.dddddooooooommmmm, for the plot to continue of course, this only has a negative impact as it in term doesn’t save the day, but gives the powers Billy and Scarlet Witch to Dr. Doom. Who then proceeds to kill Cassie, and Eli permanently leaving the team )

Eli multiple times throughout this ark has said that he cares for Billy, and that the team is important to him, but not so soon after does something that hurts them, or says that he was only there to protect Kate, when they’re other priorities at the time(A least it end in him leaving the team and the title of leader, as he proves multiple times throughout this part that he doesn’t deserve the role, as he is more for Kate, and less the team).

And like I talk alot about how Eli interacted with Teddy and Billy and kate obviously. Cassie and Jonas got left out because like he really don’t be talking to them I don’t really remember a time he actually like responded to any of them besides not liking Tommy cause jealously or something.Which is the whole point. TLDR Eli doesn’t talk to anyone but Billy, Kate and Nate. when he does he’s being jealous or barely responds. He’s not a good leader because he proritez his feelings and relationship over the team. He’s Sexist (he gets better i think) And then just dips and doesn’t come back till the freaking wedding. Like.... He has little to no actual development and to was just added to have a black character there.

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rivalsforlife · 4 years ago

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Phoenix Wright: The Truth Reborn: Oh No We’re Doing This Again

hi.

Nearly two months ago, I wrote an essay summarizing and making very wild conclusions about the second Takarazuka Musical. I did this about two and a half years after watching the first Takarazuka musical. As such I did not have the full context for many things from the musical and was relying mostly on my memory, which blocked many things from this musical for my own safety. However, just this week, I decided to rewatch it, because I enjoy tormenting myself. I said I wouldn’t write anything on it. Here I am writing something on it.

Here’s the youtube thumbnail so that you know what you’re getting yourself into. And here, of course, is the link. This is the HD version which may be slightly more pleasant to watch. Maybe.

It was not quite as cringe in a funny way as the second musical to me, and therefore this essay may be less funny, but I feel like I’m doing a disservice to people by providing a summary of the second musical while completely neglecting the first. Quite possibly doing this is even more of a disservice. I just eagerly await the day that the third musical is translated because *that* will be the day that I finally shuffle off this mortal coil. Either way, I want to write this stuff down so that I never have to watch the musical again out of curiosity.

The following essay will contain major spoilers for both the first and second Phoenix Wright Takarazuka musicals, as I will be using many points from this musical to argue my thesis of the second musical. ... like you were going to watch them anyways.

This one broke 8k. I’m dead inside.

Introducing The Director

Again another disclaimer that I don’t have anything against the actresses or the theatre troupe. I DO have something against Suzuki Kei, who I recently learned is the writer and director of all three of the Ace Attorney Takarazuka musicals, and is quite possibly my mortal nemesis.

This man is the one who brought this monstrosity into the world.

This man, allegedly, cleared the first four ace attorney games *seven times* before sitting down to write these musicals. He played these goddamn games seven times and did not take in a single word. The man clicked through them mindlessly while watching a badly written legal romance drama in the background and got them completely confused. I genuinely have no idea how this man could have played these games more times than even me and yet managed to get so many characters (MAYA!!!!) completely and utterly wrong. This haunts me every day, truly.

This man played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations, and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney seven times. SEVEN TIMES EACH!! and was told to create a musical based on the series. He played these games seven times each and you know what he said?? You know what he said?? “This sucks, I’m getting rid of all of Phoenix’s backstory, butchering half the characters, and writing Phoenix/Lana fanfiction, but also rewriting all of Lana’s backstory so that she was Phoenix’s childhood friend, and you know what, I’m changing her name for good measure.”

I think this man played the games seven times each and then hated it so much and was so sick of it he tried to write something that destroyed as much of the series as possible while still being vaguely recognizable. And then somehow it became a massive hit because people like me see this and go “what the actual hell” and watch it, or people who haven’t played the games see this and go “wow what a great musical!” and then he wrote TWO MORE, destroying EVEN MORE every time in his wake, until finally, finally, he stopped after making Edgeworth straight and time traveling into the past to face off against a corrupt Gregory. I guess that was the last straw.

I have to issue a disclaimer here that for legal reasons this is a joke. I don’t actually hate this man and would not punch him in the face if I met him because that would be rude, and he is entitled to his wrong interpretation of the games. I don’t know what his thought process was. But allegedly he did play the games seven times according to the wiki. This whole essay here is satire and not slander and I don’t want to offend this guy if he somehow stumbles across my nonsense tumblr post. At the same time: Suzuki Kei blink twice if you need help.

Anyways half the reason that I’m making this essay is because I want to share my fake ao3 page for this musical. The other half will become apparent later.

Sorry if that’s illegible because of tumblr quality it’s not really important. All you really need to know is that it’s a fake ao3 screenshot for the musical. Also in the author’s note I said he played the games four times but it was actually seven I just remembered wrong because I didn’t want to believe it.

at this point you may be like “Grace shut up and get to the actual musical” and okay, fine, let’s start this nonsense. Also note that I may be referencing things from my essay on the second musical very frequently; I’m not going to force you to go read that though because the fact that you’re reading this is enough of a torment already.

The Musical Begins

Unlike the second musical, this one opens with some narration from Phoenix.

Transcript:

Phoenix: I’m reviewing a particular case at the moment. To me, this case... is one I’ll never forget.

Immediately I think this is important because it establishes that this whole musical takes place in a flashback that Phoenix is reflecting on. Why is this important? Because we know, by the time of the second musical which takes place three years later, Leona is dead.

Knowing that Leona is inherently doomed to die of her Sad Woman Disease paints this whole musical in a different light. It’s not Phoenix reflecting on how he got back together with his lover; it’s Phoenix dwelling on their past together, and the opportunities they had, before her life was so cruelly and inexplicably taken away. We don’t know if Phoenix’s reminiscing takes place before or after Leona’s death... but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was after.

Phoenix, still in the present, starts to sing. “A wave appears on the horizon like a mirage, it trembles, then vanishes. Your voice, carried upon the waves, fades upon the shore, erasing the splendor of the past.”

This line actually shows up in the second musical, sung by Lucia about her imprisoned fiance quite possibly. It’s kind of hard to tell what the meaning of these songs even are. They’re too abstract for me I think. But this line appears very frequently in the first musical when Phoenix is thinking about Leona.

Then we enter the flashback time.

Phoenix inexplicably yells at a newspaper saleswoman. This is not relevant to anything whatsoever. Then Larry barges in to the office, looking for Maya. Phoenix describes him as “A real trouble maker, but you just can’t hate the guy”, the latter part of which I think many people would disagree with.

Well, afterwards, Maya comes in. Phoenix describes her like this while making exaggerated “can you believe this shit” gestures.

Transcript:

Phoenix: She’s as ditzy as they come. Oh, and about the outfit... Apparently she comes from a family of spirit mediums. Try not to make fun of her, okay?

Suzuki Kei personally has it out for Maya and I can never forgive him for it. Maya in these musicals is here for pure comedic relief but it’s not even comedic because I just get so angry. How can you play the trilogy seven times and think this about her?? The girl who figured out DL-6?? The girl who told Phoenix to sacrifice her life in order to find the truth?? The girl who put on a brave smile in order to try and cheer up her younger cousin even after she saw her own mother murdered right in front of her eyes?? That Maya Fey?? Ditzy as they come??????

Ugh. Moving on.

Maya and Larry run off, leaving Phoenix to watch the American Broadcast.

Important things to note here are the Godot mug, the little line up of what I think are the messed up little ace attorney figurines beneath the screen, and the fact that while this broadcast is supposedly from and to America the screen is actually not at all showing America. Like literally almost everywhere in the world except North and South America.

The broadcast says that Leona Clyde, age 24, was arrested for murdering the senator Robert Cole! Leona Clyde -- that’s Phoenix’s ex-girlfriend! He runs off to the detention center.

She is not happy to see him.

Leona: Mr. Wright... I’m not the woman you once knew.

Let’s Play A Matching Game

Sorry for the abundance of screenshots that are going to be throughout this section. Phoenix convinces Leona to let him defend her. Some of the conversation seems... familiar.

Leona: No one would defend someone who admits to killing a senator. I’m waiting for a court-appointed attorney.

Edgeworth: Every defense attorney I’ve talked to has turned me down.

Phoenix: In that case, let me defend you.

Game Phoenix: Let me defend you.

Leona: Don’t be ridiculous!

Edgeworth: Don’t be ridiculous.

Phoenix: I’ll never accept that you’re a murderer. Let me prove your innocence!

Game Phoenix: Huh? Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to prove that Miles Edgeworth is innocent.

Leona: I’ve already confessed my guilt.

Gumshoe: He confessed that he did it! In court!

Leona: It’s foolish to think you can win this case.

Edgeworth: My case is near hopeless, Wright.

Leona: (in response to phoenix offering to defend her) No you won’t! Don’t ever come here again.

Edgeworth: Look, just go away, and leave me alone!

Phoenix: You of all people should know. Once I decide to do something, I see it through to the end.

Edgeworth: Once you start on something, you always see it through, don’t you?

Leona: I never thought that you’d be representing me.

Phoenix: Ah, who could have guessed this day would come?

Edgeworth: Not me.

Phoenix: You believed in me. You saved me. And this time, I swear... I swear I’ll save you!

Game Phoenix: Edgeworth believed in me, and I believe in him. I’m the only one who knows the real Edgeworth. I’m the only one who can help him.

I could’ve done a few more, but tumblr is already threatening to murder my laptop.

So long story short, Phoenix manages to convince his lover to let him be the defense on the case. Then immediately after swearing to save Leona, he starts singing a song, which I’m not screencapping because this is enough:

“As long as there are people in this world, there’s only one path I will follow! As long as there is love in this world, there’s only one path I will believe in!”

Edgeworth sings this in the second musical after saying that he returned to California because of Phoenix. Phoenix sings it now after swearing to defend Leona. You draw your own conclusions.

And then we finally get the opening credits. Eleven minutes in.

Just Pretend This Is Narumitsu Fanfiction

Following the credits, we see a beautiful beach. Couples (exclusively heterosexual, of course,) dance and embrace in the background for some time, before revealing Phoenix and Leona, in the Even Further Past, before the LSATs or whatever the ace attorney universe’s excuse for law school exams are.

Phoenix establishes his absolute hatred of change, an important characterization moment.

Phoenix: The view here never changes, huh?

Phoenix reminisces on when they were kids. Leona’s parents were both lawyers (they’re both lawyers) and sometimes they would be like lawyers with her when she was a kid. This inspired her to also become a lawyer after their tragic death of Sickness. They never specify what the sickness is that caused two people who must be relatively young to die while Leona was in her early twenties at the latest. It may be whatever sickness claimed Leona’s life later. Sad Woman Disease. (Sad Man Disease for her father, I guess?)

Phoenix also talks about why he’s becoming a lawyer.

Phoenix: Watching you chase your dream inspired me to become a lawyer too.

So, it’s not “my childhood friend looked sad in a newspaper” because I guess that makes no sense or is too gay or something. But this is another important piece of Phoenix characterization. His entire life so far has been focused around Leona. They’ve been friends since they were kids, and then Phoenix decided to become a lawyer solely because Leona was becoming a lawyer. Not even to try and get back into contact with her after she moved away or anything; just because he’s so obsessed with her that he wants to have the same career as her, then they can run a Mom & Pop Law Firm or something, years in the future, after years of happy marriage and a few children or like whatever the hell.

Well, there’s a few steps they’ll need to get to that. At this point Phoenix still hasn’t confessed his feelings for Leona. He does so here, on this beach.

Leona tries to protest.

Leona: But I’m pushy, selfish, and only care about my goals... You’d get fed up with me.

Phoenix: That’s what I’ve always admired about you. That’s who I’ve been chasing all these years. That’s the only person... I love.

Sooo, Phoenix, your type is pushy selfish people who only care about their goals...? In the first, older lower-quality video translation it was “only care about my work”, too. Hm. Things to think about.

They sing a little duet together. Then we go back to present-day of what’s technically still a flashback. Whatever. Murder is happening.

Back To The Murder

So some plot things to establish: Leona is the legal counsel of Governor Miller, who is running for president in the AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. After the flashback so that Phoenix has some time to change clothes, they show an interview of him talking about the murder.

Governor Miller: I vow to forge a peaceful country with my own two hands, and to prepare myself for whatever may lie ahead.

Reporters: Through thick and thin, he’s a friend of the people!

The Takarazuka musicals are not very good at hiding their killers.

Phoenix: Oh yeah... It’s almost time for the presidential election, isn’t it?

NEVER FORGET, WRIGHT. THIS IS AMERICA. LAND OF THE FREE! god what even was that line.

Anyways, we meet Gumshoe, who is incompetent once again. Maya runs around the crime scene, picks up the murder weapon, puts her fingerprints all over everything, moves things around, all while Phoenix is like “lol get a load of the world’s stupidest girl” or whatever. But who cares about that.

It’s time to get to the only valid part of this musical.

Edgeworth’s Gay Little Villain Solo

You may have seen this one before.

Edgeworth arrives, but not really. It’s like Phoenix heard Edgeworth was prosecuting and immediately entered a dream-like state, where Edgeworth is heralded by the sound of trumpets in Great Revival. He’s played by a different actress than in the other two musicals, since I think she retired in between the six or so months from this musical to the second. She still plays the role well, though, or as well as can be when you’re written in an ace attorney Takarazuka musical.

Shrouded in scarlet solitude... it’s Edgeworth.

Yes, those are six Edgeworths. Yes, they pick Phoenix up and carry him around and dance with him. Yes, it was probably not meant to be at all homoerotic.

He sings a song that’s called “My rule”. I only figured this out later, but it’s loosely based on a “catchphrase” of his in the Japanese version - in game 1 he says something along the lines of “All I can do is get every defendant declared guilty! So I make that my policy.” In DD in his dramatic anime introduction before the trial, he says “I intend to question the defendant with all I have. For that is a part of my creed.” “So I make that my policy” and “For that is a part of my creed”, to my understanding, are both translated from the same line, which I think is like, “sore ga watashi no ruru”, “That is my rule.” (If I’m wrong, please correct me.) In this song he sings about how he’ll reduce all criminals to ash and such, basically talks about his game 1 prosecuting strategy as “my rule”.

It’s very fun and probably if you want to only watch one number of this musical, it can be this one. It starts about 26:10 in the video I linked.

Once the musical number is done, Phoenix and Edgeworth stare at each other, and the background fades into the courtroom, so court begins. I feel like I should note that Phoenix has not picked up any evidence or talked to any witnesses in this investigation except for Gumshoe, since Maya just moved some things around and then Phoenix had some weird fever dream about Edgeworth which presumably took up the rest of the day.

The Trial, Day 1

Edgeworth: Consider it a prelude to the poignant Greek tragedy that’s about to unfold.

Maya: The real tragedy’s your pompous attitude!

Those are the only screenshots I took of this trial day. Here’s a summary, though:

The trial starts off with Leona confessing, Phoenix says “no I think she’s innocent”, and since ace attorney doesn’t care about the defendant’s wishes he’s allowed to proceed. For some reason Leona lets him do this without complaint.

Gumshoe is the first witness, he claims to have caught Leona red-handed at the scene of the crime, standing over the corpse. Phoenix tries to claim that since Gumshoe didn’t see Leona committing the crime, he didn’t actually catch her red-handed, to which Edgeworth responds “What do you think being caught red-handed means?”

Once Gumshoe is dismissed, Lotta takes the stand. She has a photo of the actual moment of the crime, where Leona is holding a knife in the air in front of the victim.

The Takarazuka musicals like to do this thing where the image is blurry and zoomed out, but then Phoenix will go “I’VE NOTICED A CONTRADICTION” and it zooms in really far as the resolution increases drastically in order to show you the contradiction that is impossible to spot for yourself, because they don’t want people figuring out the mystery in this musical based off of a video game where you have to solve the mystery yourself. Anyways Phoenix zooms in on this photo and sees that there’s blood on Leona’s hand, presumably before she stabbed the victim. How did it get there?

Edgeworth suggests the victim was stabbed multiple times. Phoenix says the autopsy report contradicts that. Edgeworth, uncharacteristically, does not update it to suit his argument.

Phoenix concludes that this photo is not showing the moment Leona stabbed the victim, but the moment Leona removed the knife! ... Which somehow casts doubt on her having been the one to stab the victim. Because as everyone knows, anyone wanting to kill someone would never remove a knife, it’s not like they’d bleed out faster that way, or anything.

And this whole contradiction is confusing because presumably if the victim was stabbed and then the knife was removed, they’d know that happened, because then the knife would not be found stuck in the victim’s body, since the victim was only stabbed once. So this shouldn’t be news to the prosecution that someone removed the knife after stabbing. But the investigation was headed by the most incompetent version of Gumshoe ever, so. sure. I guess no one knew.

That at least manages to extend the trial another day.

This Totally Has To Be Illegal

After the trial, Phoenix goes to talk to Governor Miller, aka Mr. Totally The Real Killer. Phoenix asks him why he decided to hire Leona as his legal advisor.

Basically, it’s because her parents were both renowned lawyers. Her father was a Chief Prosecutor, and her mother was a defense attorney. ... a prosecutor and a defense attorney couple... who does that remind us of...

Phoenix points out that just because her parents were good lawyers, it doesn’t mean she’d necessarily be one. Miller says that, sure, but she is actually really talented, and her law school marks were spectacular. Phoenix says “WHY WERE YOU LOOKING AT HER LAW SCHOOL MARKS”, like it’s somehow? suspicious? for a government official hiring legal counsel to look at their law school marks?

Apparently it IS suspicious because Governor Miller freaks out and asks if this is an interrogation. Before Phoenix can press much further, he gets a phone call, and leaves Phoenix alone in a big room.

So naturally Phoenix behaves like a fully grown adult running a law firm.

If all he did was sit in the chair, lift up a desk lamp, and poke his finger on a pen, that’s one thing. But then he leans over, OPENS THE GOVERNOR’S DESK DRAWER, and finds a knife that’s just sitting there casually. It looks like a butter knife. It’s not anything major. Maybe the dude just wanted to butter his toast?

I mean I know Phoenix will dig around in stuff whenever in the games, but he has no reason to suspect Governor Miller at all, much less dig through his drawer probably full of confidential government documents to lift up a knife that he thinks is suspicious. It’s not even covered in blood or anything?

Naturally Governor Miller’s assistant comes in just then, and Phoenix puts the knife. in his breast pocket.

bud. It may look like a butter knife, but putting knives up against your chest is not a great idea. Much less stealing a knife from a governor?

Well, in his panic, he accidentally knocks over a bunch of books on the desk. The governor’s assistant helps him pick them up, and they find a photo. Look a little familiar?

The photo has the assistant, the victim Robert Cole, Governor Miller, and the victim’s brother who died in an incident two years ago. He’s the “Neil Marshall” of this musical, and he died in what was essentially the SL-9 incident. Same general premise, except it occurred in the courthouse, and the names are different.

AND FINALLY WE REACH THE END OF ACT 1. They do a musical number here which is a weird sort of mashup of the main opening credits song, Edgeworth’s Villain Solo, and the love duet between Phoenix and Leona. They are all such different songs that it sounds a little weird.

ACT 2, FINALLY

The act begins on a sour note with Maya playing with the knife and showing off her characterization, which is one of the most infuriating Maya characterizations you’ll sometimes see around the fandom by people who don’t like Maya.

Maya: Let me whip up my special spirit channeler hamburgers!

sigh.

But then we’re saved (?) by the arrival of EDGEWORTH, who is presumably just here to chat. He asks Phoenix if he’s defending Leona in hopes of winning her back, then says to keep out of it, since it’s a very important case and he can’t understand the gravity of it.

Then Phoenix says this.

Phoenix: Would you be saying that if you were the one on trial? The defendant is in a dark prison, reaching out for hope... Can you imagine the loneliness and sorrow of being ostracized?

CAN YOU IMAGINE IT, EDGEWORTH? CAN YOU IMAGINE IF YOU WERE ON TRIAL AND I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO WOULD DEFEND YOU AND BELIEVED IN YOUR INNOCENCE??

Edgeworth responds to this by essentially rehashing his speech in Turnabout Sisters about how he needs to find all defendants guilty because he can’t guarantee their innocence and all that. Maya gets upset and leaves so that Phoenix and Edgeworth can talk about their childhood in private.

Phoenix once again complains about how people change since nine years old.

Phoenix then says that he has something Edgeworth doesn’t: the POWER TO BELIEVE! Then Maya comes in and tries to spike Edgeworth’s coffee, so he leaves.

The Class Trial

Phoenix explains a bit about Edgeworth and his backstory to Maya. Namely, the class trial. Phoenix was accused of stealing lunch money, Edgeworth stood up for him, but instead of Larry, Leona stood up for him. I guess Suzuki Kei thought “oh the class trial, if Leona stood up for him, it would be so romantic, because she’s a woman, and he’s a man”, or something like that.

Edgeworth wanted to become a Great Lawyer Like His Father! But then he turned cold as ice.

Phoenix: His father got too deeply involved in a case... and paid for it with his life. Edgeworth saw him murdered. He was never the same again. I bet he couldn’t forgive the criminal.

Yeah I bet he couldn’t ever forgive the person he thought killed his father all these years, Phoenix. I bet he really hates that person, Phoenix. I bet he has nightmares about that person killing his father or something, Phoenix.

Phoenix: He vanished, then returned without his mercy or compassion. He had become a monster. When he lost his father, he also lost the ability to believe in others.

So like... one of the most chilling things about this musical is that they never actually solve DL-6. This probably roughly takes place 15 years after DL-6, since they were about the same age when the class trial started, and at least Leona is 24 now. The next musical takes place three years from now, and in it, Edgeworth refers to von Karma as his mentor, implying he’s still around and doing things.

So, in addition to everything else going wrong with this musical, DL-6 still happens, but von Karma never frames Edgeworth for it fifteen years later. The statute of limitations runs out, and von Karma forever gets away with his crime. And Edgeworth has no idea.

What changes did they make to DL-6, though, you may ask? I’m desperate to know as well. In the third musical, which I’ve watched because I hate myself but am unable to fully understand because I don’t know much Japanese, there is a scene where Miles flashbacks to DL-6. It’s abstract, but he makes gun-throwing motions at Gregory, followed by a gunshot sound.

Therefore, in this musical’s internal canon, either Miles Edgeworth shot his father, or he believes he did for the rest of his life.

... moving on.

Phoenix: But he still has his humanity. It’s still there, deep down inside!

At least, if nothing else, Phoenix still believes in him. Even this Takarazuka Musical couldn’t touch that.

The Feenie Sweater

Right after this, Larry barges in, and Phoenix leaves him alone with Maya. The musical tries teasing Larry/Maya, but fortunately, Maya’s having none of it.

Maya: You’re barking up the wrong tree.

Props to this musical for not being as bad as it could have been.

After this, the two sit down on the couch, and Maya asks for more gossip on Phoenix and Leona. Larry launches into a story, which turns into a flashback that ends up being narrated by Phoenix halfway through. This one’s about Phoenix and Leona’s relationship.

This is an interesting line in here, “I’ll guide you to the future”, for it loosely referencing the sort of love ballad Phoenix sings with Lucia in the second musical which is about “I’ll take you to that radiant future”, and he later sings to the memory of Leona right around the time of his big spiral into despair.

I’m sorry if you haven’t read my other essay and just said “wait what” to what I just typed.

Leona was getting ready to move to New York to defend the weak “in the big city”. This is rather strange wording because it implies that California does not in fact have a big city. She says some things in her conversation with Phoenix that probably plant some of his later issues.

Leona: This is the first time we’ll be apart since we were kids.

Leona: We promised we’d always be together.

Leona: I’ll be waiting. Waiting for you to come to me.

Haha. Sure would be a shame... if something were to happen... and they wouldn’t be able to be together anymore...

So some dancers wearing black come in and take off their outer jackets, to symbolize the passage of time. They circle around Phoenix and Leona. In this, you can just barely see, Phoenix is wearing a pink sweater beneath his jacket.

“Oh,” I think to myself, “Is that the Feenie sweater? Are they including it here as a reference to the games?”

Then the dancers keep moving.

THAT IS NOT THE FEENIE SWEATER. That is a pink sweater with a sexily drawn woman on it.

This is the other half of the reason why I decided to go through with making this essay.

This is so incredibly funny to me. Suzuki Kei Who Has Played The Games Seven Times has seen the hand-knit bright pink sweater with a giant red heart on it seven times. The sweater Iris, Phoenix’s girlfriend, lovingly knit for him that he wears all the time even though it is one of the tackiest, cheesiest items of clothing to ever exist. And so, when the costume designers were designing the clothes for College Phoenix Wright, they asked themselves: “Should we include the Feenie sweater?”

and “NO,” someone must have shouted, “NO, we can NOT include the Feenie sweater, it is PINK and it has a HEART on it and it’s TOO GIRLY. Phoenix Wright is a MANLY MAN. He would not EVER wear something PINK with a HEART on it.”

“BUT,” someone else said, “it’s a REFERENCE to the original games, where he DID wear a pink sweater with a heart on it! We MUST include it to pander to the fans!”

“WAIT,” a third person interjected. “I have a BRILLIANT IDEA. We can keep the pink... But to make it VERY CLEAR he is a heterosexual, masculine male... we put a sexy woman on it.”

And Person Three Got A Raise.

Thank god we’re finally halfway done this musical.

We Just Have To Go On With Our Lives Now

There’s plot or something happening. Leona breaks up with Phoenix inexplicably over the phone. Probably because of that freaking sweater. Imagine wearing that. God.

Eventually we go back to Phoenix talking to Leona, and he asks about the Jack Lyon case, which is the rip-off version of the Joe Darke case. Leona is pretty cagey about it, but Phoenix proves that she was there in the gallery that day. Leona refuses to answer, claims again that she killed the victim in her case, and leaves.

This makes Phoenix sad, so he starts singing.

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

If this sounds familiar, it’s the part where I started absolutely losing my mind in the second musical because this line had never shown up before then, I’d forgotten it was in this musical, and Phoenix was screaming it alone in a red room, so I thought he was like desperately resorting to a necromancy ritual in hopes of bringing Leona back to life.

Instead, this line actually has CONTEXT, though it does just end up enforcing my theory. This is Phoenix mourning what he used to have with Leona, wanting to bring the “old her” back, because he’s devastated that people sometimes change. There are several flashbacks of their college days where he’s wearing his Sexy Woman Sweater. He does succeed in winning her back at the end of this musical. Before she dies, of course.

Phoenix in musical 2 still believes that he can bring back what he used to have with Leona... even beyond death. That’s something affirmed by this musical. I’m very grateful to it for somehow managing to enforce my nonsensical theory.

Doctor Ema

After this, Phoenix returns to his office, and meets with someone new.

That’s right! Only now, halfway through the musical, do we actually get to meet the Ema-equivalent to Leona’s Lana-equivalent. Her name is Monica Clyde. She has little rainbow heart stickers on her briefcase, which is the closest thing this musical has to acknowledging that gay people exist.

But what does this little briefcase contain, you may ask? Scientific investigation tools? No.

A full surgical toolset. Because you never know when someone’ll get sick, or when someone will need an entire operation in front of you. I guess.

So yes, Monica Clyde is not a forensic scientist in training, but a doctor! She decided to become a doctor because of her parents, who passed away of The Sickness, and so became a doctor in order to save lives like theirs.

Once more this has much darker and deeper implications than the musical is even aware of, because Monica is so anxious about treating sick people that she carries a full surgical toolset around with her at all times, scared to lose someone like she lost her parents... and then sometime in the next three years, Leona, her big sister, is going to die.

Of what? The strange Sickness that claimed her parents? A car accident? A botched spur-of-the-moment surgery? Whatever it is, Monica was unable to save her, even when she’d been training her entire life for it.

Monica is not mentioned at all throughout the second musical. It’s as if she does not exist.

Because unlike Ema of Rise From The Ashes, Monica is not at the heart of this story. She is, primarily, a plot device here to make Leona not trust Phoenix so that he can angst about their relationship.

What a mess this world is.

The Trial, Part 2

Rather than try to prove Leona’s innocence, Phoenix wants to link the current case to not-SL-9, the Jack Lyon case. He does this by showing this picture.

Senator Cole, the victim, is in this picture. His younger brother whose name I’ve forgotten, the victim of not-SL-9, is also in this picture. They are brothers. It is apparently novel that they are in the same picture, and somehow makes their cases linked.

As well, Governor Miller is in the picture. I guess you could say like... Governor Miller’s legal counsel is the defendant, so that’s another link? Even though the Governor would presumably know a Senator, so this isn’t an unusual group. Right now Phoenix has absolutely nothing to prove that these two cases are linked other than “hey, these two victims are brothers”, but apparently it works. So they spend a lot of time talking about not-SL-9, since Leona has confessed to the murder on day 1 and there is absolutely nothing indicating that she can’t be immediately declared guilty.

They hid the fact that Monica was a hostage in this not-SL-9, meaning that some of the case records were forged. Here’s Edgeworth’s reaction when this comes out.

Edgeworth: This is an outrage! I’m the most influential prosecutor in America! There’s nothing I don’t know!

In RFTA, when Edgeworth learns he’d been using forged evidence to give a man the death penalty, he is devastated, his entire worldview is shaken, he sees himself as a monster who could end up becoming horribly corrupt if he isn’t stopped.

Musical Edgeworth goes “I DIDN’T KNOW SOMETHING???”

It’s certainly strange characterization, but I guess Edgeworth is further behind in his character arc than in RFTA, so... ugh. Fine.

Phoenix calls Monica out as a witness to prove she was involved in the case. This causes Leona to panic, and try to dismiss Phoenix as her attorney, like Lana in RFTA, but Edgeworth interjects to call Monica in anyways. He and Phoenix have a little moment.

Edgeworth: You said to believe in others. I suppose I’ll try believing in you. Try to keep up.

Phoenix: Edgeworth!

So Monica comes to the stand to testify. We get to see this picture of Monica being held hostage, and not-Joe-Darke’s incredible eyeliner.

Lots of it is very similar to the actual RFTA, except instead of the victim being stabbed on the knight with the giant knife, he’s instead stabbed with a regular old knife. Leona still refuses to admit to what really happened, until Edgeworth convinces her to believe in Phoenix.

Edgeworth: Your attorney is a runaway train with a one-track mind. Yet he placed all of his faith in you. Believe in him. You owe him that much.

Leona testifies, and says that when she found the victim, he was stabbed with a scalpel.

Here is where things get weird.

Scalpels Can’t Kill People

So basically earlier in this trial, they talk about how Leona knew that the knife that stabbed the victim was double-edged despite being buried in his chest. The judge questions if this means Leona killed him, but Phoenix is quick to say no, she was searched when she entered the courthouse and couldn’t have concealed a knife.

Yet, Monica was able to bring in her surgical toolkit which contains several sharp knives, scalpels, scissors, etc.

This is the first major contradiction.

Leona continues to say that when she found Monica, and the scalpel stabbed in the victim, she also ran into Governor Miller, who if you haven’t been able to tell yet is the Gant-equivalent of this musical. He offered to help her with the cover-up, etc.

The next bit goes a lot like RFTA. Phoenix accuses Governor Miller, who barges in, says Phoenix has the decisive evidence in his pocket. This is the “butter knife” that Phoenix took from his office when he dug around in confidential documents and stole it for no particular reason. It has Monica’s fingerprints on it! ... And Phoenix’s and Maya’s too probably because they were handling it without gloves, but they don’t mention that part.

Leona cries about how she shouldn’t have trusted Phoenix because he was apparently now blaming Monica, Monica looks terrified, she and Leona have some good sister moments but it’s not as good as it could be if the story was actually about Leona and Monica like how RFTA was about Lana and Ema. But Phoenix has the decisive piece of evidence that can turn this around.

It is this:

Phoenix: Scalpels are made for medical incisions, not stabbings. So how did it stab the victim?

...

... What?

So like. Yes, scalpels are made for medical incisions. Medical incisions often involve cutting through flesh, very easily. As a result, they are sharp. Extremely sharp. As in: their purpose is literally to stab people, very specifically.

Yes, they’re easier to control, so that surgeons don’t regularly stab people how they’re not supposed to be stabbed, but it’s not like, impossible to stab someone in a killing way with a scalpel? Admittedly, I have never tried to kill someone using a scalpel. And I do not have experience using a scalpel for surgeries because I am not a surgeon. But I’m pretty sure, if you take a sharp scalpel, and you stab someone in the chest with it with a reasonable amount of force... they die.

Like, is this a particular kind of scalpel that is not very sharp? Is the problem that the blade doesn’t match up with the initial wound? But even then, we don’t have the original unforged autopsy report or even a picture, so how would Phoenix know what the original wound looked like to say it didn’t match up? And even then why wouldn’t Phoenix say that instead of SCALPELS CAN’T STAB PEOPLE???

This is his decisive contradiction and it makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE TO ME!!!

Well Darn I Guess Scalpels Can’t Kill People

This is such a decisive piece of evidence, that scalpels can’t kill people, coming from the man who thought “caught red-handed” does not involve being caught standing over a corpse with blood on your hands, that it causes Governor Miller to confess.

Unlike Gant, who created the murder with Neil Marshall both to ensure that there was decisive evidence to convict Joe Darke, a serial killer who had not left any decisive evidence behind, and gain control over the prosecutor’s office in order to pull similar stunts to get criminals convicted using false evidence, Governor Miller does not have that as his motive. After all, he’s not a police officer. Instead, he ended up accidentally killing not-Joe-Darke, and then set up the incident in order to get Leona on his side. As her parents were both influential lawyers and very respectable, having her and her parents’ reputation on his side could help him become President of America Where This Takes Place.

So, let’s just take a moment to run over some of the things that made the original Rise From The Ashes great, in my opinion. Just for fun.

1 - The heart of the story between the Skye sisters. Lana closing off to protect Ema, Ema wanting to get through to her sister and get back to the way things used to be. Phoenix, in this story, is more of a bystander to this plotline rather than in the heart of it himself.

2 - Edgeworth’s Character Development. Basically RFTA creates an interesting transition between Turnabout Goodbyes and JFA. It causes Edgeworth to re-evaluate everything he knows about being a prosecutor. So quickly on the heels of Turnabout Goodbyes, it crushes the last bit of hope in him. It compares him to Gant, who also hates criminals, and forces him to wonder if his hatred of crime will one day lead to him being a criminal himself. He’s already convicted one person on forged evidence; how many others could there be?

3 - The Ends Justify The Means. ... wait come back, don’t leave. What I found neat about this case was also Gant’s motive. At one point he was presumably an honest person who hated crime and wanted to stop criminals. But over time in the police force, he became corrupted. He wanted to have all criminals convicted. So what do you do when you don’t have the evidence to convict them? Joe Darke was a serial killer who has killed several people and may have killed more if he’d gone free. The only way to stop and convict him was by using forged evidence. Other criminals could hide evidence to get away with their crimes, so people like Gant would make it up to catch them; but then when do you stop? What happens if there’s no evidence because someone is truly innocent? When does the line between “this person is a criminal and I want to stop them” and “I just want to convict everyone I’m dealing with” become blurred? This is also something he shares with Edgeworth and helps to advance his character.

All three of these things are either lessened or outright ignored in this musical. Leona and Monica’s story takes a backseat to Phoenix and Leona’s Love Story, with Monica only showing up halfway through, and mainly as an excuse as to why Leona is withdrawn. Edgeworth doesn’t seem to blame himself for the forged evidence he used, and doesn’t have a crisis questioning his morality over it. And Governor Miller’s motive is purely power. Unlike Gant, who would have become Chief of Police whether he solved SL-9 or not, Miller needed Leona to win the presidency. And instead of asking her to help him with his campaign like a normal person, he just blackmailed her instead.

... How do you play the games seven times and miss this much?

The Case Finally Ends

god. we’re almost there.

The case ends, Leona is declared not guilty but will still face trial for covering up murders and such. Probably less of a sentence than Lana because she was not involved in ongoing police corruption? Either way she’s dead in three years, so she’s got something a bit more concerning coming up.

She’s led away. Phoenix sings a bit about Leona before being interrupted by Edgeworth... who has something important to tell him.

Edgeworth: You awakened within me those once-cherished emotions I had discarded. I see visions of a distant, nostalgic past.

So basically this is the unnecessary feelings of the musical. Something along the lines of “seeing you again and fighting for my former ideals is making me question many things about myself.”

How does Phoenix respond?

Phoenix: Edgeworth... Try talking normally for a chance.

Sure, we were all thinking it, but that’s a little cold, Phoenix.

Edgeworth tries a smooth recovery.

Edgeworth: I don’t do... idle chit-chat.

This doesn’t accomplish much. So he leaves to allow Leona to visit with Phoenix alone. He’s got to go change for something more important coming up.

Leona and Phoenix decide that they’re going to get back together once Leona is done her sentence! They make a promise that is very funny if you know she’ll be dead in three years.

Phoenix: I’ll be waiting. For you.

There are a lot of hugs here, I’m not screencapping them all. There are also several moments where their faces get very close together and like, their nose brushes the other’s cheek or something, but they never actually kiss. Is it because the actresses weren’t comfortable with it (valid), or they thought kissing would be too much for the musical (sure, whatever), or since both characters are played by women the show staff did not want two women kissing on stage (probably the real answer)? I don’t like watching kisses, but I kept bracing myself for one and then it never happened, so.

Phoenix ends the main part of the musical with one last musical number starring my personal favourite piece:

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

I like to think that at this point, this is present-day Phoenix, after finishing his reminiscing, still desperately wishing he could bring Leona back from death.

But alas, he cannot. And so, after one last daydream of them dancing together on the beaches of California, singing about their love, the musical ends.

Dance Time!

This starts at exactly the two hour mark, if you’re interested in watching what is, once again, one of the only fun parts of this musical.

Seriously, Edgeworth’s actress kills it here, when I first saw this I went “oh, this is why I saw so many people being gay for her on twitter.”

Edgeworth’s song is an encore of “My Rule”, so it’s lots of fun. Afterwards Phoenix gets another fun piece.

Then we get to the love ballad part, which I can probably overanalyze, I feel like I haven’t done enough ridiculous over-analyzing in this essay in comparison to the other.

Uhhh so the fog represents how Phoenix feels lost in this world without Leona. You can see it in the second screenshot separating the two of them, representing the barrier of death between the two of them. Idk it’s midnight I’m getting worn out from having to think about this musical for so long.

But his mourning over Leona’s death becomes even more apparent in the credits, where Phoenix sings that one line again:

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

I’m not fixing that screenshot, I think it’s oddly fitting, in a way. That’s me right now.

Then at the very end, he sings this song.

Phoenix: I’ll spend... this eternal life... soaring through... the heavens!

Technically, this refers to his name Phoenix, but let’s dig a little deeper. He spends the rest of his life soaring through the heavens... the heavens that Leona went to after her untimely death, perhaps?

Overall, the musical becomes much more interesting when you just see it as a prequel to the second musical. This musical establishes many core concepts of Phoenix’s character: his refusal to believe in the concept of things changing, for one, and also his extreme dependency on Leona who he was never separated from since they were kids and where he based his entire life around her dreams and ideals. All he can think about is her. And in the end, he promises to wait for her in California.

Yet, to paraphrase Miles Edgeworth, all that is waiting for him is her death. Their dream of opening up a Mom & Pop Law Firm will never come true.

Thanks again for bearing with me even though this wasn’t as funny!

#ace attorney #phoenix wright the truth reborn #idk maybe someone wanted to know what the first musical was like without actually watching it?#my essays #my posts #i'm TIRED i'm going to BED goodNIGHT #this is less funny jokes and more actually criticizing the musical #because so much of this is like. wow. you really thought that was a good idea huh #just skip to the feenie sweater part honestly that's the funniest part of this musical

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nicknellie · 4 years ago

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Anonymous requested: Can I request a one bed trope for willex?

Oh, you absolutely can request that! I’m a sucker for this trope and I think this is my second time ever writing it (first for this fandom) so this was a lot of fun to get into. Thank you for the request, anon!

Champagne and Roses

Alex was never trusting Luke to book a hotel again. There was a reason Flynn handled admin for the band despite not being in it, and that reason was that all the actual bandmates were useless at it. Still, Luke had found a hotel that he had described as “super insane, like bro, it’ll be awesome, I promise” and had insisted on being the one to book it so nobody had the surprise of what was so good about it ruined for them. But it looked like Alex was set to reap the consequences.

Technically, Julie and the Phantoms were on tour, but what they were really using the opportunity for was something more akin to a road trip with just their nearest and dearest. Alex, Luke, Julie, and Reggie were there to attend their shows and meet-and-greets, Flynn had come along as their manager, but Carrie and Willie were also tagging along for the fun of it. So far they had stopped off at six different venues around North America, and they were on their way to the seventh, namely the hotel Luke was so pumped about.

He hadn’t stopped talking about it since they’d got in the tour bus the previous night, and it was starting to drive Alex a little insane. He was sat on one of the bus’s plush sofas with a cushion clamped over his ears as he tried to drown Luke’s voice out, but it wasn’t working all too well. Sat next to him, Willie was clearly trying not to laugh at him.

“I know I said I wouldn’t tell you guys anything about the hotel,” Luke was saying, the biggest grin plastered across his face, “but just wait until you see the pool. It’s gigantic, and there’s like a thousand slides. And Reggie, bro, you’re gonna love the breakfast buffet they set out, from the photos on their website it looks like they’ve got literally everything.”

“It sounds expensive,” Flynn called from the front seat, sat between Julie (who was taking her turn at driving the bus) and Carrie, who was somehow managing to paint her nails immaculately in a moving vehicle on the highway. “If you’ve blown the band’s budget on a hotel, Luke Patterson, I’m going to hop back there and murder you.”

“It wasn’t that expensive,” Luke said, looking sheepish. Still, Flynn’s threat shut him up a little – Alex decided it was probably better not to ask how much Luke had spent on the booking. “Besides, I saved money by booking shared rooms instead of individual ones.”

That grabbed Alex’s attention. If ever they were away as a band they shared rooms – Alex would buddy up with Luke and Reggie, and Julie and Flynn would be together – but this time there were two extra people in the mix, and Alex didn’t really see how it would work having Willie and Carrie share a room when they hardly spoke to each other outside of this kind of setting.

“Who’s with who?” Alex asked, removing the cushion from his ears and setting it down next to him. A moment later, Willie reached across Alex’s midriff, plucked the pillow from the sofa, and put it behind his own head, laying back comfortably. Alex’s pretended that he wasn’t blushing profusely at the brief touch.

“Well, we can probably change it if we want to once we get there, but I’m with Julie, Flynn and Carrie are together, Reggie’s got a room to himself, and you’re with Willie.”

Alex had no idea how to react. The moment Luke had spoken, his mind had imploded. At every other hotel they’d stayed at so far, everyone had got their own room, purely to give themselves some alone time because they were spending every minute of every day together on the tour and it could get a little suffocating. To go from that to sharing a room with Willie of all people?

Luke had to have known what he was doing. He knew how Alex felt about Willie, so this plan had to have been formed in the deep dark corner of his brain that was designated for doomed matchmaking. It wasn’t like Alex had never shared a room with Willie before, but they had always chosen to, it had never been forced upon them like this. He couldn’t help but wonder what Willie made of it, if his heart was hammering the same way Alex’s was, if the thought of sharing a room made him giddy and nauseous all at the same time too.

He cast a quick, careful glance in Willie’s direction, only to see that his expression had remained completely unchanged, which was unhelpful. Complete neutrality could mean anything. Still, Alex supposed it was better than Willie looking annoyed or disgusted or downright angry at the thought of sharing a room together.

This was silly, Alex told himself. He had shared a room with Willie before, they’d had the occasional sleepover and it had always been lovely. There was no reason that this time should be any different. He tried to calm himself, school his features into something resembling nonchalance.

“Alex,” Reggie said, sounding concerned, “are you feeling travel-sick again? You look like you’re about to vomit all over Willie.”

Apparently nonchalance hadn’t worked.

Alex seized the opportunity. “A little bit of fresh air might be nice,” he said.

Julie pulled over a minute or so later and Alex hopped out of the tour bus. They had pulled off the highway a while back and were now on a much smaller road lined with tall hedges and completely deserted except for their bus. Alex let a gentle wind wash over his flushed face, closed his eyes, and let himself calm down a bit.

It would be fine.

“Hey,” came a voice behind him, startling him. Alex jumped and looked to see Willie stood beside him, his hair blowing elegantly behind him. Not for the first time, Alex wondered how he managed to look like an angel constantly. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Alex replied, trying to smile. “The roads were getting a little twisty. I’ll just take a minute to cool off. I’m fine, though.”

He leaned back against the cool metal of the tour bus and felt Willie do the same. He could feel Willie’s side pressed against his and his heart starting beating faster at the slight contact. Their fingers brushed gently together and Alex felt a smile tugging at his lips.

“If you don’t want to share a room with me, that’s fine,” Willie said. He rushed the words out as if he didn’t really want to say them, avoiding eye contact until he’d finished speaking. Then he turned to look at Alex – Alex was bad at reading expressions at the best of times, and all he could make out of Willie’s right then was something close to nervousness. He just couldn’t pinpoint why.

“No,” he assured Willie quickly, “I don’t mind. I do. I do want to share with you, I mean. It’s cool. We’re cool.”

“You sure?” Willie asked, sounding unconvinced. “Because the moment Luke mentioned it you freaked.”

Alex felt himself blush faintly. “No, I told you, it was just the roads getting too twisty. I’m not worried about sharing with you, if that’s what you think.”

“So we’re okay?”

“Of course.”

“Great,” Willie said. He beamed, and Alex couldn’t help but smile back. It was impossible not to smile when Willie did. “I’m going to head back onto the bus. Take as long as you need – I don’t think any of us want to clean up after you again.”

“That was one time and it was four years ago,” Alex protested, though he couldn’t help but smile at Willie’s teasing. At that, any nerves he’d had were gone; how could he be worried about being with Willie when doing just that was so easy? “I’ll come back in a minute.”

As Willie disappeared back onto the bus, Alex closed his eyes and leaned his head back again. His panic was replaced with butterflies in his stomach, silly with excitement at the thought of what the night might hold. Not much, he reminded himself, it was just sharing a room with a friend. Still, he suddenly couldn’t wait.

To Luke’s credit, the hotel was amazing. They arrived there in the late afternoon, checked in, and had their luggage taken up to their rooms for them, leaving them free to explore the hotel. The pool looked bigger than the actual building, with six different slides, people zooming out of them gleefully every few moments. They found the restaurant, which was currently preparing for dinner, and the smells wafting from the kitchen were to die for. There were bikes to hire (Julie suggested a group bike ride which led to mixed responses from the others, ranging from Reggie’s immediate enthusiasm to Carrie stating monotonously that she’d rather do literally anything else), an enormous duck pond nearby, and a small cinema which that night was showing some generic action film Alex had never heard of. Overall, Luke had really outdone himself with the booking.

They busied themselves for the rest of the evening, splashing about in the pool (or, in the case of Alex, Willie, and Carrie, relaxing by the side of the pool on the sun-loungers) and spending far too long in the mini arcade that Reggie had stumbled across. Luke hadn’t been wrong about the food either – the staff set out an enormous buffet that had every food Alex could think of. Alex tried to stick to a regular meal because mixing so many different foods felt strange, but Luke’s plate was piled with pizza, curry, and a slab of chocolate cake.

The evening had been so hectic and jam-packed that by the time Alex and Willie bade farewell to the others, he had almost forgotten all his whirring thoughts surrounding the shared room. But by then he was too full and tired to be too bothered anyway. It was just sharing a room with Willie – what could go wrong?

Willie pushed open the door to room seventy-three and entered ahead of Alex, flicking the lights on as he went. Alex was exhausted and his vision slightly blurred as his eyes kept closing, but he could still make out that this room was nothing short of luxurious. There were chocolates on the pillow, complementary tea and biscuits, a bottle of champagne cooling in a bucket of ice, a vase of roses, a flat-screen TV so big it looked as if it would fall off the wall, and a gorgeous king-size bed with rich red satin sheets.

It took Alex far too long to realise that there was something a little off.

He looked around again. Chocolate pillows, tea, biscuits – that was fine, that was normal. Flat-screen TV – expensive, but every hotel room he’d ever stayed at had a television. But champagne, roses, only one bed… Alex felt the pieces click in his mind.

“This is a couples room,” he said.

He was never letting Luke book a hotel ever again.

Willie looked just as bewildered as Alex felt. They had both frozen in the doorway when they saw the room, but now Willie headed in cautiously, picking up the champagne and one rose as if trying to work out whether they were real. He smoothed down the bedsheets, not that they were rumpled, and then turned back to Alex. His expression was infuriatingly neutral and hard to read again.

“Yep,” he agreed, “definitely.”

Alex carefully followed him into the room and looked around. Those old nerves about sharing a room with Willie came back – if they had to share this space then surely it was going to be incredibly awkward. Especially since they weren’t even dating.

“Do you think there’s been some sort of mix-up?” he asked, eyeing the singular bed. It looked invitingly comfortable, and Alex was knackered. He wanted nothing more than to just crawl in and sleep beside Willie as the room was clearly telling them to do. But he couldn’t do that, not if Willie wasn’t comfortable with it, not if there had been a mistake.

“I don’t know,” Willie said, shrugging. “It’s definitely the right room, otherwise the key wouldn’t have worked. I could go and ask at reception if there’s a different room, if you like? With two beds?”

There was something in the way Willie said it that caught Alex’s attention, but he couldn’t identify what it was. But he could see that Willie was watching him carefully, looking for all the world like all he wanted was to make sure the night went well. He thought, Alex realised with a start, that Alex wouldn’t want to share a bed with him. It nearly made Alex laugh, but his nerves stopped him.

He did want to share the bed, but the idea terrified him.

He shrugged, trying to seem indifferent. “If you want. It’s up to you, I don’t mind.”

“You sound like you mind,” Willie countered.

“I don’t.”

They stared at each other for a minute or two, sizing one another up. Alex didn’t want to seem like the idea of sharing a bed with Willie made him uncomfortable, but equally he didn’t want to seem too eager. He wasn’t sure what the middle ground was – indifference maybe? But if he seemed like he didn’t care at all then it could look like he simply didn’t feel one way or the other about Willie.

He decided he was reading too much into it, worrying about it too much. So he was the one to break the silence.

“I don’t mind sharing a bed with you, Willie,” he said. “It’s late and I’m exhausted, I could sleep anywhere right now. And I’m sure you don’t really want to go all the way back downstairs just to ask if they have another room. It won’t make any difference. We can share a bed – we’ll be fine.”

Willie blinked, seeming surprised, but then he smiled lightly. Alex felt his heart flutter despite his exhaustion – it was incredible how Willie could have that effect on him no matter what.

“Okay, hotdog,” Willie agreed, nodding resolutely. Just with the use of the nickname, any tension in the room dissipated. Suddenly they were just two guys about to share a bed and it was completely fine. “You’re right. Let’s get some sleep.”

They took turns getting ready for bed in the bathroom (which was far bigger than a bathroom had any business being, Alex thought) and eventually settled down into the bed, side by side, plenty of room between the two of them. Though the day had been hot, the night had turned cold, and the satin sheets were doing very little to keep them warm. Alex burrowed further into the covers, pulling them up to his chin and trying to settle himself. He was still a little nervous, it would have been impossible to be completely chilled out about the whole situation, but he was too tired to really notice.

There was total silence for a few minutes before Willie quietly said, “You talk in your sleep sometimes.”

Alex turned to his right to face him. Willie was laying on his side, facing Alex, one hand under his head on the pillow and the other hidden by the duvet. The top he wore was oversized and revealed most of his collarbone, his hair was mussed as it spilled out over the pillow, and he had the sweetest little smile on his tired face. Alex, heart hammering, mirrored his position without realising he was doing it, but he did register that his movement brought them much closer together.

“Do I?” he asked, voice low and hushed.

Willie giggled gently, nodding. “Yeah. I’ve heard you on some of our sleepovers.”

“What do I say?”

“Nonsense, mainly,” Willie told him. “But sometimes you talk about the band, that’s always sweet. It’s a change from you calling Luke and Reggie annoying so often. And it’s nice to know you love them really.”

Alex grinned. “Of course I love them. They’re my brothers and Julie’s my sister. Although I am still annoyed at Luke for this whole thing.”

Willie’s expression changed abruptly, from amused to… what was that? Hurt? Had Alex said something wrong without realising it? Oh god, had he just changed the tone of the situation back to awkward?

“I thought you were okay with this,” Willie said. His voice was a different kind of quiet. Small now in a way it hadn’t been before.

“I am,” Alex said quickly. “I’m more than okay with this.”

“Then why are you still angry at Luke?”

“Because he knows how I–”

He stopped himself abruptly. He knows how I feel about you. That had been what he was about to say. The late hour had loosened his tongue and he had almost ruined everything. He stopped, changed course, started again.

“He knows how I get nervous about this kind of thing. If I’d been sharing a room with him and Reg like normal then there wouldn’t have been this whole problem.”

“Why is sharing with me a problem?” Willie asked, brow furrowed in confusion. “Would you have been like this if we were just sharing a room, not a bed?”

Alex opened his mouth but couldn’t think of anything to reply with that wouldn’t prompt further questions. He couldn’t see this night ending well for him at all. It was barely midnight and already he had offended Willie by saying the wrong thing. How was he meant to carry on from this?

“I wouldn’t have been so worried if there were two beds,” he admitted slowly. Willie deflated, nodded, curled into himself slightly. It broke Alex’s heart. “But it’s not because I don’t want to share a bed with you.”

“Then what is it?” Willie asked pleadingly. “Just tell me, Alex – whatever the reason is, it won’t change anything between us. I won’t hate you or anything like that. Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

Alex couldn’t help wondering from that if Willie had already guessed. And if he had then there was no point in pretending anymore. Perhaps he wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been so tired, his brain working so slowly, but he made his decision then and didn’t back down.

Willie’s hand had come out from beneath the covers and was now resting in the space between them on the mattress. Alex placed his hand over it and linked their fingers. He heard Willie gasp quietly and didn’t stop to think whether that was a good or bad sign.

“Luke knows how I feel about you,” Alex said. His voice wavered nervously and he couldn’t look Willie in the eye, but he still felt a thrill knowing that he was finally saying this, taking an enormous weight off his shoulders. “He knows that I’ve liked you for as long as I’ve known you. He knows how much this could mean to me, but also how nervous I’d be. I don’t know if you feel the same way, Willie. If this is weird or I’m out of order or anything like that then you can tell me to stop talking. I was just nervous because Luke did this, got me this close, without telling me about it and it threw me off. You threw me off. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you or made you uncomfortable. But that’s what’s on my mind.”

Alex finally took his eyes of his and Willie’s interlinked fingers to look Willie in the eye. Willie’s eyes were sparkling, an incredulous half-smile on his face. Alex took that as a good sign.

“Really?” Willie asked.

Alex swallowed heavily and nodded once. “Really.”

Willie said nothing. He just used their intertwined hands to pull himself closer to Alex and rest his head on his chest. Alex was glad his heart was on the other side of his chest, otherwise Willie would have been able to hear how fast it was beating. Willie had thrown an arm over Alex’s waist, holding him close, so Alex’s wrapped his around Willie’s back. He felt Willie sigh contentedly, and on a burst of confidence he pressed the lightest kiss possible to the top of Willie’s head.

“Does this mean you like me too?” Alex asked. He was fairly certain, but it was always good to double check.

Willie chuckled and Alex felt his heart swell with love. “Yeah. I like you too, hotdog.”

“So the couples room worked out after all, I guess,” he joked.

Willie tilted his head to look up at Alex, looking for all the world like an angel on Earth.

“Definitely,” he agreed. “But I think we finally use this bed for its real purpose and get some sleep.”

“Goodnight, Willie.” Alex reached over and flicked off the little bedside lamp, plunging them into total darkness.

“Goodnight, Alex.”

Taglist (if you want to be added or removed just let me know): @ace-bookworm @williexmercer @willex-owns-my-heart @itstiger720 @the-reckless-and-the-brave @that-one-newsie @bluedarkness @lookingthroughmirrors @tmp-jatp @salty-star @julieandthequeers @lmaohuh @sunnysbright @sylphrenas

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traincat · 4 years ago

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I feel like I've read a ton, but I'm honestly still pretty new to comics rn. That being said... What is one more day? Ik we don't like it and it happened a while ago, but that's about it [,=

Time for Spider-Man History With Traincat: Highly Controversial Storylines! And that feeling is totally normal with comics with huge canons -- you can read a ton and still have some fairly big blindspots in your understanding of the total picture. That being said, this is kind of a big one, both in terms of Spider-Man history/canon and in terms of how Spider-Man fandom functions. I would say probably no other storyline has had quite as much impact on how the fandom views and interacts with the source material as One More Day/Brand New Day. It's been the Wild West out here ever since it happened. (Which was in 2007, so like, yes, fairly long ago, especially when you look at how Spider-Man canon has evolved since, but in the grand scheme of things, also kind of recent. One More Day is not old enough to rent a car.)

So when people talk about Spider-Man's One More Day, they're usually actually talking about two related arcs: One More Day and Brand New Day. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be covering both. For the sake of transparency, I am going to admit that I think One More Day, as a self-contained story, is good, actually. This is controversial! I admit that! But I stand by my stupid opinions on this blog, for some reason. I think One More Day when you examine it on its own, by which I mean you ignore the decade and a half worth of canon that came after it, as a Spider-Man story and as a PeterMJ-centric story holds up under scrutiny and that people who don't like it don't like complicated love stories and might actually throw their own mothers under buses. No offense to the OMD haters. Little bit of offense to the OMD haters. Brand New Day, which is the continuation of One More Day, on the other hand -- largely bad. Very largely bad.

But let's backtrack. One More Day is a four issue crossover storyline that takes place directly after Civil War, during which Iron Man and Captain America got divorced and divvied up the superhero community and Spider-Man made some startlingly bad decisions and made a fugitive out of himself and his family in a manner that got Aunt May shot, and Spider-Man: Back in Black (Amazing Spider-Man #539–543) which examines Peter's actions immediately after Aunt May is shot and ends with him humiliating the Kingpin in front of an entire prison. One More Day consists of Amazing Spider-Man #544 -> Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24 -> Sensational Spider-Man v2 #41 -> Amazing Spider-Man #545. In One More Day, Aunt May is dying, all of Peter's efforts to save her have thus far failed, and, consumed by guilt, he is rapidly running out of time. Approached by Mephisto, a literal demon from hell, Peter is offered a deal: Aunt May will live -- and Peter's identity, which was previously revealed to the world at large during Civil War, will once again be hidden from the memories of all but a select few -- if Peter trades him his marriage to Mary Jane. Peter and Mary Jane struggle with this, but eventually both agree to the deal. The clock strikes twelve, the deal is done, and Peter and Mary Jane's marriage fades into history.

(ASM #545) A reasonably simple premise for a story that caused so many problems -- most, I would argue, not actually the original story's fault. So obviously, this was an unpopular move -- Peter and Mary Jane had for a long time been a fan favorite Marvel couple, and in a fictional universe where most relationships are doomed as soon as they begin, the enduring Spider-Marriage was sacred ground. And then, with a snap of its fingers, it was gone: Peter wakes up in Aunt May's house, no longer married, with Mary Jane out of the picture. (She would not return to the book on any sort of consistent basis for over 50 issues.) In the wake of One More Day began Brand New Day, which is basically what it sounds like: a promised "brand new day" of "exciting" Spider-Man content and a publishing schedule where Amazing Spider-Man came out three times a month. (Which sounds good on paper but I think in practice caused more problems than it created good storylines.) Peter, newly single again, had new love interests! And also Harry Osborn was alive again for some reason! I generally like Harry's post-BND stories so that part's fine with me.

But overall? Brand New Day is a mess. It knows it wants to tread new and exciting ground with Peter -- tell new stories! ensnare new readers! make them fork out for a book three times a month. -- but it doesn't know what those stories should be. Readers who were invested in Peter and Mary Jane's relationship -- a major facet of Spider-Man comics for decades at that point -- felt rightfully betrayed that the marriage could be so easily traded in and that Mary Jane herself, perhaps the second most important figure in Spider-Man comics after Peter, could be tossed aside. From a personal point of view, I think Brand New Day fails in large part because it abandons what has always made Spider-Man such a compelling series, and that's the mix of Peter's personal life with his vigilante life. BND sees Peter with new friends, new jobs, new love interests, etc -- it is very much a brand new day! But it isn't a better day compared to the stories that came before it. I do like some post-BND stories, especially American Son (ASM #595-599) and Grim Hunt (ASM #634-637), but compared to pre-BND where I think the majority of canon is good, it's a very lacking body of work that is hurt by the way it divorced itself from the PeterMJ marriage as Spider-Man's central relationship.

"But Traincat, I thought you said you liked One More Day?" Yeaaaaah. I do. This is why I keep saying I like One More Day on its own merits, and not on the merits of the stories it opened the doors for. I like a good romantic tragedy in fiction, and the way Peter and Mary Jane's final scene in One More Day plays out is beautiful. I like the idea of Peter caught in this impossible situation, being asked to choose between two women he loves more than his own life. A really common criticism I see leveled against One More Day is that Peter should have chosen his relationship with Mary Jane over May's life, which is -- okay, I think it's weird that people keep insisting on this, not in the least because by asking Peter to sacrifice his aunt's life they're essentially demanding he commit a callous, out of character act in order to further his own interests. It's also weird because the thing is, Peter already chose Mary Jane over May -- that's what gets them into this situation. It's literally in the scene where May is shot:

(ASM #538) When the gun goes off, Peter's spider-sense kicks in, and he covers Mary Jane, leaving May in the path of the bullet. He does choose Mary Jane over May, regardless of whether he realized what he was doing. And that's why he can't make that choice a second time. His actions in One More Day do make sense for him as a character, whether or not any individual reader likes them, and Mary Jane's actions make sense, too -- after all, she's the one who ultimately tells Mephisto that they agree to the deal when Peter can't bring himself to voice it.

A lot of people also like to nitpick One More Day by going, well, why could (x) or (y) with life saving powers save Aunt May which is like -- yeah, I guess, but if we're going to ask that about this specific comic book near death setup, you kind of have to do it with every single one, and I'm not going to stake every single moment of comic book drama on whether or not that gold kid from the X-Men was busy at the time. Comics are soap operas in flimsy paper form: serialized longform storytelling that relies heavily on melodrama. Sometimes you have to go with things. Sometimes you sell your marriage to the devil. Stuff happens. That in and of itself doesn't make One More Day a bad story -- and while some people blame the Spider-Marriage's dissolution entirely on One More Day, I think that's a little shortsighted when you look at the history of Spider-Man since the turn of the century. It's clear -- and Marvel themselves have been perhaps a little too open about this -- that Marvel in the past few decades has had trouble with the direction they want to take Spider-Man. They WANTED Spider-Man to appeal to a distinctly youthful audience that they didn't think they were actually reaching -- understandable, considering that Marvel nearly went bankrupt around 2000 and was saved by Ultimate Spider-Man, an out of main continuity series which retold Spider-Man from the beginning and focused heavily on Peter as a teen -- but the problem was Spider-Man in the main continuity was at that point in canon a happily married man who was pushing the dreaded 30 whether or not they wanted to admit that. This is also why Marvel has continually pivoted away from Spider-Man having kids, because they feared that making him a dad would age him too much and make him unrelatable to their coveted audience of Teens. (This is also why almost every new Spider-Man property, especially the live action movies, perpetually stick him back into high school, despite that occupying a very small slice of 616 canon.) So around the year 2000, they started trying things in relation to the Spider-Marriage, which was viewed as a major problem -- after all, what's more adult than being married and liking your wife. First, they had Mary Jane presumed dead. Then, they had Mary Jane and Peter separate. Then, when Mary Jane and Peter had only recently gotten back together, One More Day struck. If One More Day specifically hadn't gone the way it had, it's pretty clear that the Spider-Marriage was going to go one way or another -- it's a little bit of a shame it happened when it did, because OMD is the end of J Michael Straczynski's run, and JMS wrote a really beautiful Peter and MJ relationship. But Marvel as a company and especially editor in chief at the time Joe Quesada viewed Peter and Mary Jane's relationship as a major problem in how they wanted to portray Spider-Man and thought that striking the relationship from the books would allow them more freedom in their portrayal of him as younger and more relatable to their Desired Audience of people who I guess really wanted to see Peter sleep with characters who weren't Mary Jane.

(ASM #546. Younger! Fresher! Less attached! Kissing random women in the club!)

The problem with One More Day has always been in the follow through -- from the content of Brand New Day to the pacing of events to the fact that Marvel withheld key information for such a long time that it allowed misinformation to thrive. After all, what does it MEAN to trade Peter and Mary Jane's marriage to the devil? It altered the events of canon in Peter and the majority of other characters' memories so that the marriage didn't exist, but it left people wondering -- did the relationship as they remembered it existed? How much of Spider-Man canon was altered? And the answers didn't come for over 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. One Moment In Time or OMIT (Amazing Spider-Man #638-641), which revealed that while Peter and Mary Jane never got married in the altered canon they did continue their long committed relationship up until just after Civil War, was published in 2010, so essentially readers were hung out to dry without answers for three years. That's a long time to string people along, but not as long as it took Marvel to confirm that the popular fan theory that Mary Jane retained her memories of the original timeline as part of her own deal with Mephisto was also true, which happened this year. I would say, at least from my perspective, a lot of the frustration doesn't come from the individual One More Day storyline so much as how Marvel has continually dragged out the aftermath, using the promise of a Spider-Marriage return to keep fans on the hook. Which is why One More Day continually comes up in discussion of current Spider-Man, because Spencer's run has relied very heavily on imagery from that period with a serious question of whether or not there actually was going to be payoff, something which is still up in the air.

This has been Spider-Man History With Traincat, brought to you by anonymice like you.

#traincat talks comics #long post #*replies

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ofdreamsanddoodles · 4 years ago

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i feel like some people don’t recognize how much isolation plays into the fate’s of gertrude’s assistants, especially her manipulation of gerry & leitner. like, the obvious ones is just if sarah or fiona had someone else to watch their back, they might not’ve have fallen victim to the avatars that killed/trapped them, but if michael felt like he could depend on literally anyone other than gertrude and emma, he probably wouldn’t of had the kind of single-minded loyalty that led him to stopping the spiral’s ritual. it’s only because he’d spent decades placing gertrude and emma’s interpretations of events above his own that she was able to convince him to move forward when the distortion’s ritual was actively breaking his mind. if he had anyone encourage him to trust his own thoughts, he would have tried pushing back, or arguing when gertrude asked him to destroy himself for her. but because the archives had convinced him so thoroughly that all he should do was whatever gertrude thought was right, that’s what he did.

anyways. with that out of the way. let’s talk about the 5D chess gertrude was playing with gerry and leitner and how she used gerry’s hatred of leitner & leitners fear of repercussions to stop them from asking questions

it’s not that much of a reach to assume that they both probably felt they owed gertrude. leitner for letting him hide out in her archives, and gerry for killing his mom. at the end of the day, even if they wanted to go against her, it’d feel like a slap in the face to the “hospitality” she was showing them. even if gertrude had known about gerry for years and had only killed mary now that she was lacking assistants, even if she reminded him of his mom, she was still someone who promised him freedom and gave him purpose when he didn’t have one. (note: this is not a good thing. but gerry had mainly been destroying leitner’s to stop his mom from getting them, which means he has less of a reason to continue now that she’s dead) also, we have no idea how long leitner’s been in those tunnels (please correct me if he mentions it at some point) which means he could have gone over a decade with no one but her to talk to. if gertrude’s behavior is a red flag, it’s unlikely either of them would have really noticed what for, because they just... aren’t around a lot of people. i’m sure they both knew that she was using them, because this is gertrude, but that didn’t mean they felt her behavior was bad enough to warrant leaving.

and if either of them knew the other was working with gertrude, that would change in an instant. if leitner thinks gerry hurt him because gerry was a random person with a vendetta against him, he’s more likely to stay in the tunnels because it’s a safe place literally no one knows about, meaning he’ll be there to help when gertrude tries to burn down the institute, and be a source of information for the next archivist if they fail. it means she can continue to press him for details about the different leitner’s he’s used in order for her (and gerry) to see if anyone’s found them and then use that to their advantage. and, because some random 30 y/o just started beating him up out of the blue, leitner’s not going to be thinking about gertrudes actions because he’ll be too busy worrying if that goth he met is going to come back and kill him. which means that if he finds out gerry was only in the archives because gertrude invited him, leitner’s not going to stay. gerry hates him, and he knows where he lives. that means both gertrude & the tunnels are unsafe, so he needs to find somewhere else to live

and gerry’s the same way! in his statement, he admits to jon he was too distracted thinking about revenge on leitner to really question gertrude, which meant she could convince gerry to strengthen his relationship to the eye without him realizing that all this is just insurance to ensure he’s strong enough to stop the unknowing for her. (or, you know, she could trap him in the skinbook once again providing a resource for the future archivist where elias wouldn’t be watching.) gerry says he noticed that gertrude had a “weird look in her eye” when she talked about the two of them going back to london together, but doesn’t say much about it other than “gertrude doesn’t tell jokes.” yes, she’s doing things that are suspicious, but he has cancer, and there’s other things on his mind. it’s easy for him to brush off any weirdness as something to deal with for later, but it’s unlikely he would have gone to america in the first place if he knew gertrude was working with jurgen fucking leitner.

but if leitner and gerry did realize they were both working for gertrude and actually like, talked about it, they’d learn gertrude wanted to use them for completely different reasons. gerry was told that gertrude had a plan for the dark. as far as we know, leitner was that plan. elias assumes that gertrude had a back-up in case the ritual did work, but even if she didn’t, it gives gerry one very important question: why the hell should he be spending so much time saving the world from a ritual that might not even work? sure, he might still have gone with gertrude if he knew she was suspicious about the rituals being doomed to fail, but i’m guessing that after a point of dealing with his increasingly poor health, he’s going to say “fuck it, this doesn’t matter, i’m going to go to a doctor.” the tragedy of tma is that there’s a hundred ways i could think of to save gerry, and every character mentioned, but none of that could happen in canon because they all require other people

in his statement, eric accuses gertrude of keeping him in the dark to make sure he doesn’t stop being useful, and that’s a fate he mostly avoids thanks to his proximity to mary. even though he dies, eric gets out of the archives because he has someone to validate his experience of how fucking weird everything is, which is probably one of the things that convinces him to quit. i could write so much about why eric choses to stay with mary, but the reality is, he doesn’t have another option. no one who comes to the archives has anyone they can count on, which is why they’re constantly forced to make the choice between the lesser of two evils--like his choice between gertrude or mary. eric wants to choose gerry, and it a better world, he would have, but spending so long immersed in archive-typical entity drama, his only option is to choose the one he thinks can offer him (and gerry!) the best protection.

from what we’ve seen of the interactions between them, gertrude’s brushed aside leitner’s concerns with using one of his books despite the fact it was giving him like, actually harming him, yells at gerry for forgetting something (which, you know, is a symptom of both brain cancer and abuse) immediately following that up with the abuser tactic of “i’m doing this because i care,” then mocks him for asking about passageways in the institute when she knows the tunnels exist. and despite all that, they still stay with her because she’s the closest thing they have to safety. no matter how intentional it was, gertrude spent her time as archivist constantly surrounding herself with people who had no choice but to depend on her, something that almost always led to their doom

#the magnus archives #tma #tma meta #jurgen leitner #gerry keay #gerard keay #gerry delano #i have been thinking about this. for so long #which you can tell bc ive been working on this post on & off for like. two hours #jesus #time to eat dinner i guess #adventures of angel

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amandaoftherosemire · 4 years ago

Text

And Hell is Just a Sauna -- Part One

Fandom: Marvel/MCU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader

Characters: Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff, OMC Joseph

Author: @amandaoftherosemire

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 6,121

Format: Short Series (Complete)

Warnings: Language, violence, references to captivity, implied abuse, angst.

Summary: You meet Bucky Barnes upon your mysterious and deadly escape from a power obsessed cult leader and his followers. Though you carry a secret in addition to the wariness of trauma, you can’t help your attraction to Bucky and his irascible demeanor. As for Bucky, he is drawn to the light he sees in you while he fears the things you’re hiding. Can you trust him with your secrets, and your life? Will you have a choice?

A/N: I haven’t posted anything in five months, so this may be a little on the odd side. I guess I’m working through some stuff?

This takes place in between Black Panther and Infinity War but is not consistent with MCU canon because I do what I want.

I used my old taglist, but only as a way to let y’all know I’m posting again. As always, feel free to ignore me. 😊 Heads up, future parts will get smutty.

Part One // Part Two // Part Three // Part Four

And Hell is Just a Sauna -- Part One

The first time Bucky saw you, you were literally on fire. Not just a little flame, either, but a full-on conflagration engulfing your entire body and crackling with cheerful menace. You’d turned to him, your eyes blazing white in a face painted in flame, and intoned with a voice that both popped and roared.

“Are you a god?”

Bucky’s eyes widened over the barrel of the gun he continued to keep trained on you despite his uncertainty that it could do any good should you decide to attack. Unsure how to prevent that decision, but wanting to try, he responded slowly. “I have no idea how to answer that.”

From the woods around him, Bucky heard a shout. He stood at the edge of a clearing in which you stood at the center, a scatter of charred bodies surrounding you. He went no closer, not willing to discover the hard way what your range was.

Sam was yelling as he walked closer, “Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say, ‘Yes!’”

Bucky was fascinated to see blue flames dance along your teeth as you smiled. He couldn’t explain it, but something about the way the flames whipped and whirled around you was unbelievably beautiful. It was also incredibly terrifying, but Bucky had needed to survive horrors best left undefined, so had long since learned to find the beauty in terror. In the next moment, Sam was stepping into view on the other side of the clearing, his own gun out and ready.

You turned, and with a happy, surprised sob, cried, “Sam!?” The next moment, the fire was flickering into nothing and you were just a lovely woman wearing nothing more than the ash from what had once been a long white dress.

Sam immediately holstered his gun and ran forward. “Y/N? We knew there were prisoners but--"

"Sam," you whispered brokenly as you stumbled on knees turned to jelly toward the concerned face of your friend and former colleague. You hadn't seen him since before your abduction, not long after that last doomed mission in Lagos. When he'd gone on the run with Captain America after the fallout over the Accords, you'd been nothing but happy to hear that he was alive and free. His face was one of the last you’d expected to see upon your escape, but the sight of Sam was a joyous relief.

"What are you doing here?" Your teeth chattered on the question, reaction and your own nakedness leaving you freezing and shaking. You didn't see where the silver emergency blanket came from, but Sam was nevertheless wrapping you in it and then in his own arms, to your everlasting gratitude. You'd never been anything more than friends, but he'd always been a true and loyal one, with a giving heart and wicked sense of humor.

You let him comfort you, the bone-shattering terror of your ordeal hitting you now that it was over. Now that someone you knew and trusted held you, the sick horror of what you'd endured sent tears flooding into your throat. The exhaustion of everything you'd done that day turned your muscles to water and so you didn't resist when Sam bent and slid his arm behind your knees to lift and carry you out of the clearing where you'd hurt so many. Instead, you buried your face in the crook where his neck met his shoulder and let the tears fall.

"Do me a favor and tell the others I've found Y/N Y/L/N and that I'm taking her back to the jet."

Bucky had lowered his weapon when the fire had flickered out with your recognition of Sam, but his eyes were still narrowed with a hint of suspicion. He was pretty sure you weren't a danger to Sam, at least, but that didn't mean he thought you harmless. He nodded slowly and lifted his microphone to his lips to report in even as he fell into step behind Sam as he headed back the way they'd came.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Sam said gently as he walked briskly back to the jet, "but do you know who is in charge of all of this?"

"Joseph." Your voice was a rasp with the tears that still shivered out of you, but all of the emotion had left your tone. "I don't think he survived."

Bucky glanced back at the clearing where they'd left a half dozen charred bodies and figured he knew how Joseph had met his end. When he turned back, you were peeking over Sam's shoulder at him, to his admitted consternation.

"I'm sorry about the dumb joke." The emotion was back, remorse in your eyes and tone as you looked at him. "I wanted to either make you laugh or scare you. I just didn't want to hurt anyone else." With that, you buried your face back in Sam's throat and started crying again.

Bucky tried to resist but his heart throbbed in sympathy, with understanding. He knew all about being forced to do things he didn't want to, both by cruelty and circumstance. He'd be the last to blame another for what they'd done to escape. He was concerned about your apparent propensity for bursting into flame, but he understood why you'd done so, since you could.

"He probably hasn't seen Ghostbusters, sweetheart." You lifted your head, a frown on your tear-streaked face to glare with narrow-eyed suspicion at Bucky, who was at a complete loss as to what the two of you were even talking about. Sam laughed when he saw your face and went on. "This is Bucky Barnes."

Your face cleared in understanding and Bucky wondered who you were that you recognized his name so quickly. "Welcome back, Sergeant," you said softly, with a shy smile that Bucky couldn't help but find charming even as he wondered who you were and how you seemed to know so much about him when he'd never heard your name before.

"At least now I know why we're here," Sam called back to Bucky, his voice cheerful as he tramped back towards the jet. "Nat's got a soft spot for this one; I'm willing to bet she had an idea we'd find Y/N."

Bucky murmured as he kept his eyes on yours from where they peeked over Sam's shoulder at him. "I didn't know we were looking for Y/N."

"I was part of the supply chain." You didn't like the wariness with which this man watched you, but you could hardly blame him, considering your introduction. You weren't normally so dramatic, but he couldn't know that. "Natasha would have noticed when I disappeared."

Sam shook his head with a smile and moved toward the edge of the forest, now in sight. "Why am I not surprised? Were you Nat's secret source?"

"Of course." You couldn't seem to stop looking at the man following you and Sam with such deadly grace and aloof readiness. You'd never seen anyone look so dangerously bored. You were damned if you didn't find it sexy as hell. "She asked me if I wanted to help and I said yes. The Accords are a human rights violation."

Bucky's eyes flicked to yours and warmed as the corner of his mouth lifted just a little. Your heart skipped in the first beat of attraction as Sam laughed out loud. The sound had you smiling even as he replied, "Like I said, not surprised." He turned his head to call over his shoulder, "Bucky, this is Y/N. She used to be support staff for the Avengers, was one of the researchers there. She helped me when Steve and I were looking for you."

Bucky bent his head in acknowledgement and smiled fully for the first time. Now that he had more of a handle on things, he could roll with them. And he'd ever been the sort willing to go the extra mile for a pretty woman. "Pleasure to meet you," he rumbled, and sounded like he meant it.

You thought about the sacrificial dress you'd been wearing when the fire had blown through and carried you out of the building, remembered the fear in the eyes of the henchmen sent to recapture you as they'd circled you like a pack of wild dogs. "Believe me. The pleasure's mine."

As Sam broke through the tree line where the quinjet that had brought them sat, the little bottle blonde assassin behind the controls, he turned to catch your eye. "So, Y/N, are you gonna tell me how you're a firestarter now?"

Natasha turned in her chair at the sound of his voice as they mounted the ramp into the jet. "Good, you found her," she said briskly with a gentle smile for you. You smiled weakly back as Sam set you down in one of the chairs. Natasha turned back around and continued, "Strap in. Steve and Wanda are almost back and I want to be in the air five seconds after that."

Bucky's eyes flicked to you in puzzlement at the sound of a soft hiss, like that of a snake, followed by a crackle or a popping noise. He may have looked elsewhere, but you'd made a soft shushing noise that drew his eye.

That shushing sound was followed by a tired sigh when Sam lifted a brow at you as he went about helping you rearrange the blanket so you could strap in but remain covered. "I wish I knew, Sam," you replied to that lifted brow and Bucky wished he knew why he didn't believe you.

You sat in the sand and watched the ocean crash against the shore, letting the sound soothe you. Feeling hot and itchy most days, thanks to your experience at the hands of the weird cult that had abducted you, this was often the only peace you could find. Most days saw you driving down from the house in the mountains to sit here and let the wind and the waves ease your mind and soothe the soul.

Today, however, you couldn’t seem to settle, upset by the conversation you’d had with Steve that morning. He’d wanted to apologize for overstaying their welcome, and assure you they’d be moving on soon.

After your rescue, they had come to stay with you in the house you’d inherited from your uncle. Tucked away in the heavily forested mountains of Oregon’s Coastal Range, it was big, secluded, and ideal for hiding five fugitives. You’d simply been happy to help, to give them a safe place to rest.

Now you were dealing with the fact that you didn’t want them to leave. You were chilled, sick at the thought of rattling around in the big house with nothing for company but your thoughts and the memory of what had happened in a house in upstate New York. You may have traveled three thousand miles to escape what had happened that night, but you couldn't escape what was now yours, whether you'd wanted it or not.

The soft hiss in your ear warned you that someone was approaching, but you were surprised when that someone flopped onto the cool sand next to you with a huff of irritation. "Huh. What a shitty day at the beach."

Damned if you knew why the surly bitch did it for you, but Bucky Barnes had charmed the fuck out of you by not being the least bit charming.

He wasn't mean, or rude, not by a long shot. He was unfailingly kind and polite and genuinely grateful for the shelter. You could see the good man underneath the pissiness, but Bucky was perpetually baffled and annoyed by most of the world around him. He never complained, really, but he regarded everything with a vaguely hostile skepticism. You could not understand why you thought him adorably sexy, the big, grumbly bastard.

"Good thing we’re not at the beach," you replied with a laughing sneer, your habitual attitude towards him as it prompted that ridiculous half-smile. You fucking adored that sly smirk. "We’re on a beach. We’re at the coast."

Bucky gave you his amused disgust face and made you melt. He picked up a handful of sand and held it up to let it run through his fingers in a rather accusatory fashion. You waved him away. "I would think a Broody McBrooderface like yourself would immediately get this."

You gestured at your surroundings, a lonely beach on a winter day in the Pacific Northwest. Clouds covered the sky and boiled over the sea, turning the waves into a stormy bluish gray that reflected in the eyes of the man that watched you with a reluctant fascination. The wind whipped around you both, tumbling his hair around his sculpted face and making you think of the covers of trashy romance novels from an earlier era. Moody and bleak, a cold winter day at the coast was made for Bucky Barnes.

A long, charged pause as he stared at your profile in disgusted astonishment.

"What?"

You couldn't stop the snort at the sound of pure stupified horror in his voice. You didn't know which part of what you said he found objectionable, but the insult of something clearly offended him. You didn't usually get this much reaction out of him, so you had to assume it was the new nickname.

"The beach," you replied snottily, "is where you go to relax in the sun or swim in the ocean." You tilted your head to fix him with an intense stare. "But we’re in the ring of fire, Bucky, and the ocean doesn’t play with the shore here. We’re at the coast, where the sea meets the land with force." You gestured out at the dark waves as they continued to crash and pound on the sand, curls of violent energy breaking upon the shore. "The beach is for fun; the coast is where you go to brood."

With that, you uncrossed your arms and placed your hands at your sides on the cold, dry sand behind you, bracing yourself as you leaned back, a smirk on your lips. You loved informing him of opinions as though you had just bested him with facts. The way his lips tightened when he was holding back laughter made your heart gallop.

Your breathing joined your heart in its race and sped as well when Bucky's eyebrow quirked in addition to the happiness that gathered in the corners of his lips. "Broody McBrooderface?" he asked, doubt collecting in his eyes and his furrowed brow. His voice was still rich with the disgust that had characterized his earlier question. The combination made you sputter with mirth before giving up and dissolving into a fit of laughter. You fell back onto the sand to wrap your hands around your middle and hold on as you cackled and snickered.

When you calmed enough to look at Bucky, he'd shifted so that he was leaning on one arm, turned towards you to grin delighted at your laughter. He was so pretty, white teeth against the dark brown of his beard, thick hair tumbled in the wind around him. You hoped you didn't look as starry eyed as you felt. Some days it was harder than others to not bodily tackle the man, but it seemed tacky, not to mention gross, to accost a houseguest.

His satisfied smirk turned into a look so hot with promise you could feel it in your toes. "So you don't wanna go skinny dipping?"

You laughed even as you cringed, your body tightening at the memory of underestimating the Pacific Ocean's wilder moods on visits to your uncle during your childhood. You shook your head as a chill at the thought ran down your spine. "I double-dog dare you to jump in that water." Bucky crooked another brow and then surprised you by leaping to his feet in a move shockingly graceful in its deadly arc. He was off in a run in the very next second towards the waves. You sat up to shout after him but he was faster than you'd thought possible. "But don’t say I didn’t warn you about the FROSTBITE!"

If he hesitated for a second, you didn't see it. Fully clothed in the athletic wear he’d donned to run down to the beach, he leapt over a terrifying curving beast of a wave into the now dark gray and, you expected, freezing cold water. You got to your feet to follow him to the edge where the sea lapped at the shore, a little wary to find out how the grumpy super-soldier would react to the Pacific's bite.

The two of you argued all the way back to your car.

"The least you could do is give me a ride back to the house." Bucky didn't seem like the water had really fazed him beyond pissing him off. He wasn't shivering, his teeth weren't chattering, but his jaw was set in severe irritation and his eyes blazed with banked anger. He was so fucking hot it made you crazy.

"My seats will get soaked." You couldn't help it; he was so sexy when he looked like he wanted to murder the world. You didn't know what was wrong with you, but the way he was striding up the beach toward the parking lot where you'd left your car made you shudder with lust. You had to fuck with him a little more, irritate him just that little bit extra. Maybe it was because of what had happened to you, but you needed to toss a little more gasoline on the fire. "I only brought a towel for sand, not for swimming. Besides, I told you it was cold as fuck; you jumped in anyway."

"I can't run home like this, I'm fucking freezing." The look Bucky shot you was so vicious, your heart kicked in response, but in desire rather than fear. He was perfectly bristly and annoyed now, his bright blue eyes blazing and his sculpted cheeks flushed with temper. You could eat him alive.

"You should have thought of that before you jumped in an ocean that is obviously not into your shit right now.” You deliberately kept your tone and demeanor casual as you stopped at the water fountain at the top of the beach to rinse the sand off your feet. “It's not like I would have thought less of you if you'd stopped when I warned you about how cold it was."

Mostly clean and aware based on experience that mostly clean was the best you were going to do, you dropped the rubber flip-flops in your hand and slipped your wet feet into them as Bucky glared at you.

“I would have thought less of me,” he replied with a sneer that made you want to lean in and bite his plump lower lip. “I took a dare. I'll finish a dare.”

Unable to help yourself, you burst into delighted laughter, throwing your head back in the pure enjoyment of him as you nearly stumbled down the sidewalk toward your car. Bubbling and cheerful, the warm chuckles poured out of you until Bucky was grinning at you, albeit reluctantly.

You were somewhat calm by the time you got to your car. You turned to Bucky with a sparkling smile, the laughter still trembling on your lips and Bucky’s heart kicked in response this time.

“You’re fun, Bucky.” You leaned against the driver’s side door and grinned at him over the roof of the car. “A little bonkers, but fun.” Shooting him a sassy wink, you opened the door and slid in. “Fine, get in the car."

“I know this is a big ask.”

Bucky was sweating, but he was determined not to let you see that. He was asking a lot of you and he knew it. If he didn’t believe it was important, for you as well as himself, he’d never have had the courage.

“I’m really more confused.” Bucky made himself stop watching the way your lips shaped the words when you spoke, your eyes wary and your brow furrowed. “If you don’t mind me asking, why don’t you want to go with them?”

He didn’t think you’d noticed how he watched you, fascinated by the curving whip of your movements, like flame had become part of you. He couldn’t help but focus on you, obsessed with both the magic and mystery of you. How could he stop himself when he could also hear your mutters under your breath? He was concerned yet intrigued by the admonishments to behave yourself.

He’d had numerous fantasies about misbehaving with you.

Bucky’s attention moved to the way your fingers fidgeted with the book in your lap. He couldn’t explain why, but he loved to watch you move. There was a grace and beauty there that he’d rarely seen and always treasured. He’d seen too much ugly and cruel to take anything as pretty or as kind as you were for granted. He'd made a study of you because it soothed him somehow to do so.

Your hands weren't fidgeting in agitation, concern, or fear; all of which he'd seen and memorized. Through trial and error he'd learned how to distract you from whatever had you picking at your cuticles in anxiety and, sometimes, something that looked perilously close to panic, but he could see that wasn't necessary now. You were fidgeting absently, the same way you had been for the entire conversation, not in response to his request.

Bucky was still a little struck by his daring in asking if he could stay when the others moved on. He hadn't known if he'd have the nerve when he walked to the little library where you often sat in the window seat so you could read with your face to the mountain air coming through the open window. But when you'd looked up with a smile when he'd poked his head in and asked for a minute, he'd known even if you said no, he could trust you to be gentle.

"I don’t want to fight anymore."

By the way your eyebrows flew up and your lips parted before you paused, Bucky could see that you were as surprised by the blunt honesty of his answer as he was. But he was asking a lot of you and he knew it. Harboring an international fugitive was only the least of it. You knew his reputation, and that it was based on fact, yet you'd welcomed him into your home. He had to be honest with you if he was going to ask anything more than that already unimaginable kindness.

He smiled at you, but he couldn't stop the sadness, the exhaustion of a century's worth of years from quivering around his mouth. Your eyes, scanning his face under those expressive eyebrows, softened and your lips twisted with wry sympathy. "Of course you don't. Why would you?"

Bucky relaxed back into the plush little sofa where he'd taken the seat you'd offered when he started this conversation. He now knew it was going to be reasonably painless. Something about you almost always put him at ease within only a few minutes in your company. Maybe it was the way you listened to him, both the things he said, and the things he could only speak around.

Somehow he always ended up saying more than he'd intended.

"I didn’t volunteer, you know." You tilted your head in question, so he continued, not sure where the words were coming from. "Not like Steve, who wanted in so bad he kept trying to get past the physical. I was drafted." Bucky laughed a little and lifted his hands to rub them over his face, dragging them through his hair before threading his fingers together behind his head. "I just wanted to settle down to a normal life and try to keep my best friend from dying from one of the thousand things trying to kill him. Instead…" As he trailed off he shrugged and noticed your eyes drop to his chest in what he would swear was appreciation.

The corner of Bucky's mouth was lifting in a crooked half-smile when your eyes flicked to his. Bright and intense, he felt pinned by your gaze as the still forming grin fell from his face. "Instead you got to be a prisoner of war for sixty-odd years," you said, your voice full of the wry sympathy that still lived in the slight curve to your lips, "only to discover that things are still trying to kill your best friend?" In the next instant, that searing stare was gentle with understanding, your eyes warm with concern. "You're a little fucking tired?"

Bucky huffed out another of those little laughs, the only kind he really had these days. A little fucking tired was an understatement if he'd ever heard one, but the fact that you saw that so easily explained why he was even asking this of you. "You get it," he said, that half-smile coming back in a sweeter form. "That's why I'd like to stay here, actually." Your lips had started to curve in response to the little half-laugh, even that much heard only occasionally, when the warmth in his face sparked an answer in yours, charming you with the little glimpse of sweetness under all the salt.

Bucky's breath caught a little at the look on your face, the way the movement of your hands had smoothed as you absently toyed with the hardback still in your lap. He could see you relax by degree in his presence and wondered if you were as soothed by his company as he was by yours. "I don't want you to think you have to say yes," he heard coming out of his mouth, more honesty he couldn't help, but he didn't want you to feel pressured. "I'd rather stay here in the States, but I'm not homeless if it doesn't work for you. If it's a no, I promise, no hard feelings. I have another option lined up. I understand if you don't want to stay alone with a man you barely know."

He was starting to worry based on the soft, gentle look that remained on your face. You normally smirked and teased him, poking at his gruff exterior with a playfulness that had charmed him completely. You may not have known it, but you had him firmly wrapped around your fingers. This tenderness made him afraid you were about to let him down easy. He braced himself for rejection.

"Alright," you murmured thoughtfully, your eyes kind if shrewd as they rested on his face. He wondered what you saw when you looked at him, how much you saw beneath the surface. "If you wanna stay, we'll have to have a few ground rules, a couple of understandings."

Bucky's face lit up in surprised delight as his heart began to pound. He hadn't really expected you to say yes, and so hadn't prepared for the rush of excitement and satisfaction that ran through him at the prospect of getting to know you without feeling like he was being watched by his friends. His heart speeding a little, a hot shudder of anticipation working through him at the prospect, he shot you a bright and reckless grin. "I was afraid you were gonna say that."

Something dark and hungry moved in a flash over your face. Bucky's heart raced in answer despite his uncertainty that he'd even seen the lightning fast emotion. He wanted to be your friend first, but he couldn't deny he'd found inside himself a well of desire for you so deep he'd yet to find the bottom. He could only hope you felt some fraction of that for him.

"First and most important understanding," as you spoke your eyes flattened and your mouth tightened, your gaze on his face reminding him of the first time he'd seen you, "I am not afraid of you." The words were a warning, not a threat, but the hair on the back of Bucky's neck stood up. "If you're going to live here for the foreseeable," you continued, your face softening again into something lonely and sad, "I need to be clear on this point. I have no reason, whatsoever, to be afraid for my own safety. Not anymore."

The hollow tone to your voice was a chilling counterpoint to the fingers wrapped in white-knuckled terror around your book. Bucky could see you were trying to tell him that you were still dangerous, despite how deceptively harmless you looked when not bathed in flame.

"The fire?" Bucky didn't know he still had that much tenderness inside him for anyone, but he could hear the gentle sympathy in the two words clearly. By the tentative smile teasing the corners of your mouth, you could hear it, too.

"I would tell you if I thought you weren't safe." You looked sick with worry that he'd reject you and Bucky could see that he was right; the two of you needed each other. You went on in a little rush, your eyes dipping to your hands still clutching the book in your lap. You frowned as you spoke and he watched you deliberately uncurl your fingers as though you were carefully calming yourself. "I don't believe you're in any danger here. I will absolutely tell you if that changes."

Bucky always preferred when people were matter of fact in their questions about him and his issues. He figured he should start there and see how you responded. "Can you control it?" he asked, his voice unconcerned, his posture unchanging from his easy sprawl against the corner of the couch.

Apparently, you also liked plain speaking as you smiled a little more, this time with a wry exasperation that piqued his interest. "Some. More persuade."

Bucky's heart throbbed as he asked the question he knew you'd least like to answer. He wished he didn't feel like he had to, but he needed to know how not to incite the blaze. His voice soft as a whisper, as tender as a touch, "What set it off that night?"

The look on your face sent a chill down Bucky's spine, your eyes empty and cold and nothing like the warmth he'd come to expect and adore. Your voice as hollow as he'd ever heard it, you answered with just enough information to somewhat explain. "Joseph was going to hurt me."

Upon your recovery from the forest surrounding the house in upstate New York where you'd been held against your will, it had become clear that you'd been snatched up by one of the occult offshoots that often split from HYDRA. As HYDRA was itself founded as an occult offshoot of the Nazi war machine, it wasn't really a surprise that it so often shed more of the same. The one that had taken you, however, had apparently been particularly weird and cultish, the leader, Joseph, convinced of his own superiority and seeking the power he believed to be his due. You hadn't spoken much of what had happened to you while held captive by them, by him, but Bucky could recognize pain and trauma when they were right in front of him.

"Since I won't be hurting you," he said gently, the words both reassurance and promise, "it shouldn't be a problem." When your eyes, blurred with memory, focused back in on his face, Bucky's lips curved slightly, the smile sweeter than any he'd given you yet.

Your lips curved in response as a soft sigh that didn't come from you whispered at the edge of Bucky's hearing. His ears perked even as he kept his eyes on yours, his expression betraying nothing but the warm appreciation he always had for you. The next moment, however, his attention was caught and held by the grin you flashed, sparkling and friendly. "That's what I was thinking," you chirped and looked happier than he'd ever seen you.

The sight had his body tightening in lust even as his heart squeezed. Bucky had always been a romantic with a love of making a pretty girl smile. Being able to make you smile like this made him feel like he was getting another piece of himself back. Still, he wanted you to know that you could trust him with more than just your physical safety.

"Do you wanna tell me about it?" he offered, his voice gentle again.

"Maybe," you said, and Bucky cursed himself when your smile dimmed. You shrugged and looked back down at your hands where they'd tried to tense around the book. "I might need to. You gonna tell me about you?"

"Some." He answered quickly, without hesitation, though he grinned sheepishly when your eyes lifted to his in suspicion. "Probably."

When your eyes remained narrowed on his even as the corners of your mouth twitched with suppressed humor, Bucky narrowed his eyes back at you. To his surprised delight, that sparkling smile came back. You stretched the denim clad legs you'd had curled under you out and relaxed into the pillow at your back.

"Then rule number one," you said cheerily, an interesting heat in your eyes, "is that you continue to be your usual hostile self. It revs my engine." The cheer on your face took on a darker edge, your smile more like a dare. Bucky's eyes narrowed once again, but this time his gaze glittered with desire, with the urge to take that dare.

"Does it?"

You bit your lower lip as his voice rumbled through the air and into you. Bucky could swear he saw goosebumps erupt over the skin of your arms when he spoke, the desire riding him clear in that quiet question.

You laughed, a little breathless, and grinned at him, a cheeky taunt all over you. He was dazzled by the flash of your smile, the sparkle in your eyes, the whipping movements of your hands as you gestured while you spoke. "Rule number two is that you make yourself at home." You pointed a mock stern finger at him and made him smile. "Don't be a houseguest or stand on ceremony. I want you to be genuinely comfortable. If you have to stay under house arrest for now, you should be able to do so as painlessly as possible."

There you went being sweet and kind in addition to being sexy and adorable. Bucky didn't know if he could take it. He was beginning to think he was in over his head but he couldn't find a thing not to like about it.

"Steve keeps me in line." Bucky smirked as he teased. "Once he's gone I'll make you regret that."

You looked delighted with him and Bucky could have wept with gratitude. Spending time with you was helping him remember parts of himself he'd thought long dead, like the boyish flirt he'd once been, but he was equally grateful that he seemed to be good for you, too.

"Okay," you purred as you smirked back at him, "in case Steve has kept you in line in other ways, rule three is you clean up after yourself. I will be very annoyed if you start leaving dirty dishes or clothes around once he's gone." One eyebrow lifted in mock warning and Bucky could have cuddled you.

"He’s the slob, actually." Bucky huffed out a laugh and shook his head. "You're making this too easy, doll."

He couldn't be sure, but for a moment you looked shy and a little vulnerable. Bucky's heart squeezed again as he quivered with the conflicting desires to both ravage and protect. When you glanced at him from under bashful lashes, he felt torn between.

"Am I?" The murmur of your voice was rich with something dark and exciting, something that lit up his ear and made his stomach tighten.

Bucky's voice was husky on his reply as he offered both clarification and escape route. He wanted everything on the table before the negotiations came to a close. "Any other rules?" His face spread in a hot, almost feral grin, one that left no doubts as to what rules he was asking about. "Any other lines you don’t want crossed?"

The corner of your mouth lifted in a grin equally hungry, equally reckless. "Nothing comes to mind." Your eyes reminded him of sultry whispers, heated words. "I think we can play it by ear from there."

Bucky felt his heart race in exhilaration and wondered what he'd gotten himself into. He couldn't wait to find out. "I’m happy to dance to your tune."

Part Two here >>

Taglist:

@hellzzzbelle @bucky-the-thigh-slayer @cheekygeek05 @lbouvet @diinofayce @bibliophile1773 @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @miraclesoflove @nerdy-bookworm-1998 @destiel-is--endgame @irritated-bisexual @peaceinourtime82 @badassbaker @walkingtravesty97 @fashionworld12 @readermia

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky x reader #bucky fanfiction #bucky fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic #mcu fanfiction #mcu fanfic #and hell is just a sauna #pantswrites #short series

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thhimble · 4 years ago

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baby don’t hold out(it’s cold outside), ii

Henry cavill x reader

part i: here

Warnings: none yet. A bit more cheese. A bit more nerdier. I tried to keep the reader as blank as possible, but i think she might be a bit of a nerd, so a heads up for that. Hopefully it doesn’t throw anyone out of the fic too much.

Tags: @harrystylesholland, @spideysimpossiblegirl , @laurakirsten0502

baby don’t hold out (it’s cold outside), ii

It’s not a big deal, you tell yourself, standing outside of room 208, your nose and ears burning from the warmth inside compared to the cold outside… from how long you spent lingering in the snow, trying desperately to figure out a solution that you knew, really, wasn’t there.

Clara was right, after all, you did help make the lists, you helped write and organise and plan… and your options are—

Henry pops into your head, pitch a tent? Camp out in the lobby?

Your options are basically zero.

And you’re an adult not a pre-teen girl screaming over a hot boy. You can do this. You can absolutely do this. He isn’t fucking Adonis.

With a snort, you bury a laugh into your scarf. He’s just a guy. Just a really attractive guy. With really nice hair. And shoulders. And eyes. And—

Ugh, you think and blow out a breath, staring down the tauntingly-silent, somehow loopingly-mocking numbers staring you down from the upper middle of the door.

Fuck you, 208.

If numbers could personally offend, 208 was well on its way.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt personally victimized by 208.

208 stays silent, cursive and nailed to the door.

You resist the urge to lift your hand, yes, hi, I have. Let me introduce myself—

With another snort lost to your scarf, you close your eyes and pull in a steadying breath—

And lift your hand.

“You got this,” you mutter into your scarf. “You totally, absolutely got this.”

You’re a rock. Captain America’s shield. Mithril.

Sam carrying Frodo up the face of Mount Doom.

You knock.

There’s a noise inside, a shuffle—

You are absolutely not at all interested in running away.

You glance at the stairs you came up.

The door opens.

You feel like Frodo, holding the One Ring over the lava.

Henry’s in the same soft, dark blue sweater, but the dark of his hair is a little softer than it was earlier and his sleeves are pushed up over his forearms and he’s in socks and it’s all so— so—

No. You’re totally Samwise.

“Hullo,” Henry says with this slow smile that absolutely does nothing to your insides. “Thought maybe I lost you to a tent after all.”

“It was a close call,” you lie, swallowing around your heartbeat. “But the ground’s frozen. For you know. The tent thingies. That go in the ground.”

You make a weird hammer motion with your hand, it doesn’t at all look like a jerking-off motion. It doesn’t.

His smile goes crooked, his eyes flicking from your face down to the shift of your hand. You tuck it back into your coat pocket and decide you hate him. Him and his stupid, crooked smile.

“Stakes,” he says, with that stupid smile that looks like he’s trying not to laugh.

“Yup, those,” you say with a forced laugh. “Tent thingies.”

He snorts a laugh, but steps back, his hand spreading wide on the door, the thick of his arm holding it open for you as he tilts his head into the room.

“Come on then, girl scout. In you go.”

You hesitate before you remember you’re totally Samwise Gamgee and you heft your metaphorical Frodo and push past him into his— your— whatever— room; ignoring the heat of him, size of him, smell of him, so close to you.

(You’ve been here before, anyway, in the bar that first night, with his mouth to your ear; buy you a drink? But it’s somehow, no less staggering.)

Objectively, it’s a nice room, from the zero-point-one second you glance over it before your eyes land on the bed—

The bed you’ll be sharing with him—

No, nope. There’s no way you can get into that bed with him, you think. No way you can lie down and pretend that you’re not… at least a little bit attracted to him.

Like, a bit.

You glance down; the floor is a tanned-wood colour, but there’s a nice grey rug spread out in front of a gas fireplace, that’s not all that thick, but maybe…

Henry clears his throat behind you and you startle a little, lost in the maybe of camping out on the floor.

No stakes required.

There are plenty of pillows on the bed, you think, with a quick glance. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

“About earlier,” he starts, and your eyes dart up to his, startled out of your thoughts again. “I know you’re not…” he huffs something like a laugh, crossing his arms. “Well. You aren’t thrilled, yeah? But listen, I’m not in the habit of being a prick, so I’ve made a few calls, and there’s a chance one of the other hotels a town over can bring a spare cot by. They’re going to give me a call back. But until then, I have no problem sleeping on the—”

“I can take the floor,” you interrupt because really, he’s not— it’s not his fault, is it? You were the one dicking around outside and avoiding— not avoiding, just… circumventing the inevitability of him and what he does to… a large portion of the human population. Regardless of gender or orientation. Apparently.

What he might, maybe, sort of, does to you.

It’s not his fault, exactly. (Maybe his parents though, maybe you should write in a complaint, a strongly-worded letter: dear Mrs and Mr Cavill, how dare you?)

Henry pulls a face and scoffs. “You’re not. Don’t be daft.”

“I’m not daft,” you parrot back, pulling your own incredulous face. “I’m serious, you’re,” you wave a hand over him, a vague Henry-shaped circle. “All you, like. And I’m… good with a little pillow-pile on the floor. It’s like, you know, girl’s sleepover. But—”

But in the bedroom of a totally-not-Adonis.

“All me like?” he questions, his brow tilting up.

You make a noise in your throat. Pressing your lips together beneath your scarf. It’s too hot in here, you think, with the gas fire on and the whole— whole man in front of you in this stupid small room with its stupid one bed.

“You know. You’re like. Big.”

“Big,” he says with a slow-widening smile, and crosses his arms. It does nothing at all to his biceps. You totally do not look.

You roll your eyes, because muscles don’t just happen, and— and you know what? It is his fault, you think, he made the very conscious decision to become a brick shithouse.

That’s absolutely on him.

(Your metaphorical Frodo gets a little lighter, you think you might actually make it.) Blaming someone else usually helps lighten a load, doesn’t it?

This is his fault. Who cares what Clara says?

“Yup,” you say and pop the p with a finalizing sound. “So that’s settled then, yeah?” you say, copying the way he says the word, and step away from him to unwind your scarf and drape it over one of the two chairs in the room that sit in front of the fireplace and little coffee table; they’re actually sort of soft-looking, maybe you really could just sleep in that. You aren’t six-foot-whatever like he is, you have a much better chance at fitting into it in a comfortable sleeping position in one of them.

He absolutely isn’t going to out-nice you. No way.

Chair-bed or bust.

“This chair looks nice, look, the pillows are soft too,” you press your hand onto the cushion, it’s not as soft as you hoped but the pillow fairs better; it’s soft and there’s a nice little decoration of holly and ivy, too; the words Merry Christmas stitched in a looping cursive in the middle of it.

“You’re not sleeping on the bloody chair,” he huffs behind you.

“Well,” you start, floundering for something to say, unzipping your jacket and turning to look at him to buy time. “That’s your opinion.”

He doesn’t roll his eyes, but you think it was a very close call. “Listen,” he starts and pulls in a breath. “There’s no way I’m sleeping in that bed with you sleeping anywhere else. I promise I can sleep anywhere, benefit of having a big family an’ all.”

You shrug off your jacket, stealing a moment to gather your thoughts, moving back towards the door to toe-off your boots, thankful they were dry from the amount of time you spent lingering downstairs and then in the hallway before finding the nerve to even knock.

“And I promise I really don’t care about where I sleep. The tent? Totally could do it. It’s just the ground—”

“Is frozen, yeah,” he finishes for you. “I got that bit.”

You meet his eyes, it’s mostly an accident, you weren’t avoiding it, exactly, you were just… lowering the probability of eye-contact with him by avoiding his general upper face-area.

“Please take the bed.” His face does this… this honest thing that does something to your insides and you think, damn, he might out-nice you after all.

But screw that.

“Is this you trying to be a gentleman?”

He blinks and then grins, standing a little straighter. “I am a gentleman.”

You burst out a laugh and then cover your mouth to catch the pitch of it, grinning behind your hand. “Sorry,” you snort and shake your head. “I mean, okay. Sure.”

“I am. Private school, got all the lessons. Pulling out chairs. Door-opening. Arm-offering. Know all the proper forks and everything,” he teases and you can’t help but laugh as he grins at you. “My mum would literally kill me if she ever found out I took the bed and made a girl sleep on the floor.”

“Ah, so it’s a sexist thing?” you tease back, trying to kill your smile with a tsk. “That’s not very gentlemanly.”

“What? No,” he blinks and frowns. “That’s not— that’s not what I meant—”

You try to bite back a smile, but he must see it flickering on your mouth and huffs at you. “Very funny.”

“I thought so,” you say with a grin and step around him to look for your bag, which you find by the bed, of course. Because he’s a gentleman, apparently.

You lift it up and over your shoulder, following where Henry points out the side tables with drawers and the closet near the door.

You set your bag on the bed, pulling out your toiletry bag and trying to ignore the feeling of him looking at you.

He pushes out a breath. “We could also just… be adults about this and share the bed?” he hedges, crossing his arms again and looking at you like he’s gauging you for something. You meet his eyes for a too-long moment where something prickles warmly inside your stomach before he shifts again, his lips quirking. “Then my gentlemanly ways would remain intact and neither of us will end up on the floor— or a chair—with a sore back.”

You hesitate, eyes flicking to the bed and then back to him.

“I snore,” you lie because the bed— any bed with him in it, is still a big, fat nope. “And I’m a cover-hog.”

He snorts, scrubbing a hand over his face and shaking his head. “Impossible is what you are.”

“It’s a character flaw.”

Henry huffs a laugh, pushing his hand through his hair and shaking his head. “How about we just wait to see if I can get a cot from another hotel? If I can get one, then this is all rather moot, isn’t it?”

Moot, you think. Probably.

Just like any and all attraction to him. That’s moot. Pointless. He’s probably so used to people looking at him like that, that he doesn’t even register it.

It makes you feel a bit better, honestly.

You shrug because you don’t want to keep arguing with him when ignoring him generally works so much better for you.

It’s a tried-and-true solution to the Henry-Problem.

“Sure. You think you’ll get one?”

He shrugs, tugging a hand through his hair; you like it, you think, the loose, slightly curling bits you haven’t seen before. He’d had his hair different last time, a bit shorter, a bit straighter.

“I promise I’m doing my best?” he offers with a half-wince.

That, and the lift in his voice carries enough meaning.

Not sure at all, then.

Well. He still isn’t going to out-nice you.

You’re Samwise fucking Gamgee.

The bathroom is nice, a bit small, but nice. You plop your toiletry bag on the vanity and glance at Henry’s stuff, already neatly set on one side of the sink. You touch the edge of a cologne bottle, resisting the urge to pick it up to smell it.

Yes, your brain supplies. Absolutely.

That would be creepy, wouldn’t it?

The bathroom already kind of smells like him, anyway; it’s distracting and you let your finger slide off the cool glass of the cologne and look at yourself in the mirror, instead.

There’s nothing going on tonight, no real distractions until tomorrow— you and Clara had planned it that way. It seemed like such a good idea at first, hadn’t it?

Arrive, unpack, relax. Explore a bit. Give into the comfort and mood of the holiday season at the inn while watching the snowfall from a safe, warm distance.

Have a bath. Read a book.

You stare at the shower accusingly.

You’re sure your room had a bathtub.

You mourn a little for the lost opportunity of your quiet room and your e-reader with a hot chocolate or a bit of wine and a bubble bath, before pulling in a breath and righting yourself, fixing your clothes before reaching for the door.

Back out in the room, Henry’s sitting in one the chairs by the fireplace, looking mostly relaxed, watching the fake-glow of the flames, his knees spread in that manspreading slouch so many guys do. You want to hate it on principle, but his thighs are—

Thighs, you think. They’re thighs, get a grip.

Henry looks at you, you look at him. The moment stretches out.

His eyes are… your belly does a little flop and you take a step backwards.

“I’m going to check on Clara and Sam,” you say and take another step back towards the door.

“Already did,” he says from the chair, a little frown between his brows as he sits up. “I thought maybe we—”

“Yeah, but I’m the Maid of Honour,” you interrupt and force a smile as you slip towards freedom. The room is way too small and warm, isn’t it? Unbearable, almost. “It’s like, my job.”

(You know the room isn’t that small. The whole place is rather decently sized. It’s why it won out, after all. The reigning champ of all the hotels and inns and lodges that had been potential venues over the months of planning.)

But it still feels too small. And he’s all you can smell.

You’re definitely not running but you ignore his countering: I’m the Best Man! that follows you out the door— because it just doesn’t suit the narrative of your excuse.

If he noticed your e-reader in your hands, he was nice enough not to say anything.

Ugh, you think as the door shuts behind you lean against the door for a stretch of a moment, standing in the quiet hall and hoping no one comes out of their rooms to see you standing there.

Thankfully, you’re granted that moment of quiet before you push off the door and head down the stairs and towards the main sitting area.

The stair railings are covered in garland, set with twinkling lights and you let yourself relax the further you get from the room and the problem you left in it.

See, you think, ignoring a problem always works.

Downstairs in the main lounge area, there’s a little area set up with carafes of coffee and hot water and hot chocolate.

You pour yourself a mug, slip into one of the over-large sofas in front of the burning, crackling, stone fireplace and wiggle your sock-covered toes towards the fire.

I can totally do this, you tell yourself, and pretend, for a moment, that you’re way more sure than you feel.

#henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill x you #baby it's cold outside

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overclocksaa · 3 years ago

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@avengerled / steve / “i’m a risk taker! i take risks!” everything’s gonna be okay / accepting

Anything he says right now is going to make him the world’s biggest hypocrite. If he says No, Steve, you’ve never taken a risk in your life, it makes him a liar. Steve jumps off of roofs on his bike and from planes with no chute at least five times a month, and that’s when things in their business are slow. His whole quote-unquote origin story boils down to an experimental treatment that killed or drove mad everyone else that was a part of it. Steve doesn’t just take risks, he drags risk into an alley and beats it up and then takes the spare change in its pocket.

On the other hand, calling Steve out for this will just make Tony himself look bad, and open the floor for commentary about his own risky behavior. Of which there is...A...Sufficient amount. And one thing Tony does not want to do is defend his own risky behavior as justifiable because Steve’s literally acting like he’s never done something that looks both dumb and doomed from the start.

So it’s a very good thing, really, that he’s acting as a load-bearing support for a two-year-old (who doesn’t really need him to do it, anyway - she can fly, after all - but had insisted with her new favorite word, up!) so she can slap her newest neon-colored crayon scribble drawing on the fridge with a magnet and not pay any attention at all to this nonsense that will definitely get him into trouble. If they start this, it’s going to be a never-ending cycle of metaphorically pointing fingers at each other for every last risky thing either of them have ever done.

But Tony is not a smart man. Oh, he’s a genius, sure enough, he can do polynomial equations in his head while having an unrelated conversation while doing delicate soldering work while under fire. But he’s never seen an argument he’ll back down from, and he’s never been called submissive and reserved.

Halley gets her picture pinned to the fridge with the magnet she’s chosen (an oversized glow in the dark stegosaurus that is not at all biologically accurate) and he holds up a hand for a high five for a job well done. She’s not, he’s sure, at the peak of what she’s going to be (she’s a toddler, after all) but damned if that doesn’t sting when she takes him up on it. Being on Team Completely Human in this family is the biggest reality check he can have, he thinks. "I wouldn’t say you’re...Not a risk-taker.”

There, that’s diplomatic. And, to a degree, fairly true. Tony will still argue Steve’s always been brave where Tony cannot, and has therefore given Tony courage when he’s most needed it. They are where they are to begin with because Steve broke the rules first. Steve is, as well, working on giving him an ulcer for the stunts he pulls in the field. Tony’s here playing dad to an overpowered toddler he’d kill and-or die for because of it. But there are things you can set your watch by when it comes to Steve, because those things will literally never change. His lack of a poker face, for example, or his steadfast resistance to things like taking a break or a vacation.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me you’re not thinking about that hotline again.” Tony had been in California, getting his shit together, when all that had been going down, but will he ever let it go? Absolutely not. “You and Sam are really not subtle.”

Also Sam may or may not have also brought it up in conversation to Tony, since he was the one that resurrected it during his own time as Captain America. Which had felt like pointed hinting then, and feels like it now.

#avengerled #. ic asks #. earth 616 #. avengerled / steve / i know this whole damn city thinks it needs you but not as much as i do #// honestly as much shit as has been talked about the hotline #// as much as it keeps being brought up again #// i think tony might as well accept the inevitable tbh

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johnkrrasinski · 5 years ago

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No Light, Dead End;

full masterlist

Pairings: Steve Rogers x female!reader

Word count: 2,812

Warning: SMUT!!!! slight dub-con. slight dark!steve but with feelingsᵀᴹ.

Summary: takes place after civil war and before infinity war because who is she? we don’t know her. after the avengers were divided due to the accords, you went on the run with steve, natasha and sam. during on the run, your relationship with steve had been going through a rough patch until one day, you decided to leave him. but he made sure that you knew who you belong to.

a/n: this one is for @mariessecretfantasies‘ 500 follower writing challenge! i chose prompt #8 ““No light, no light in your bright blue eyes. I never knew daylight could be so violent.” No Light, No Light- Florence + the Machine” i wanted to write something anguish but with a hint of darkness, just enough to spice it up. cause we all love possessive, slightly crazy steve, right? 😌 please leave a like & comment! enjoy.

You stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door behind you. You just had another quarrel with your grouchy boyfriend, Steve. He wasn’t always like this though. He used to be the heroic face of America after all… Used to be. He was a man with perseverance, sagacity, and altruism. All his life, he wanted nothing but to help others. To serve his country. But all that changed since the Accords.

The whole country decided to turn its back on their favorite golden boy aka Captain America. The man they used to look up to and call out for when miscreants exterminated the city and when aliens invaded the planet.

He was a man with assertive morals, never doubting his purpose and his will. And the whole world agreed. Until his best friend, Bucky Barnes was accused of the bombing of the UN in Vienna and was shortly located where he had been hiding for the past couple of years.

Steve Rogers had faith in his former best friend who could barely remember him when he said that he wasn’t the one who committed the crime. But the whole country didn’t. And so, through all the battle at the airport in Germany, and the unauthorized flight to Siberia and the grievous alteration of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to a group of wanted felons, you stuck and stayed with him.

You had faith in the man you fell in love with a year ago and you knew his true heart. That deep down, no matter what the world paints him to be, you will always believe that he was still the same selfless hero. A battered soldier with nothing but pure intentions. He had lost so much in his stolen lifetime, so you understood his desperate wish to keep his best friend alive and out of heavily guarded prison.

And so, after the final battle with Tony Stark in Siberia, Steve and Bucky agreed that it would be best for everyone if Bucky went back to cryostasis chamber until Princess Shuri finds a way to fix him. King T’Challa had made peace with the fact that Zemo was the one who murdered his father, and he realized that Bucky was only a victim just as much as T’Chaka was, so he allowed him to stay in their land and agreed to mend the broken man.

After Bucky was back under the ice, Steve went back to The Raft and reunited with Sam, Wanda, Scott, and Clint, releasing them out of the Arctic prison facility. Whilst, Wanda and Vision agreed to lay low and started a secret life together in Scotland, Clint and Scott went back to their residents under prohibition.

You, Steve, Natasha, and Sam on the other hand, went on a run, as a group of uncivilized nomads, living in crummy motels and working vigilante jobs in the dark. You changed your looks and camouflaged within the crowds. And this was the turning point.

Your relationship with Steve hadn’t been the same since the fallout. He became rougher around the edges, sterner, and crueler. Some days, you couldn’t even remember what his genuine smile looked like anymore. How his eyes used to gleam so brightly, you could see your lucid reflection on them. How he’d hold you so tightly, you felt nothing but his warmth after he passionately made love to you for hours.

How did you get here? You had lost count of how many times you had fought with Steve Rogers. Small sparks of fire growing into a massive one, burning the entire house down. You could feel the heat all over the room when his voice roars so loud and your words cracked through your lips due to the unwanted tears threatening to fall.

Hurtful words were tossed, if the walls could talk, they’d tell you the lunacy that echoed night and day when you and Steve are going at it. You two were crazy, mad people in love. Or at least you used to be. Not only him who changed after the Accords, but so did you. You became more reticent, more practical, and more indignant.

Whenever you were on stealthy missions, Steve would always order you around like you were nothing but a fellow soldier. He’d talk down on you like there was no history between you when you disagree with him. Whenever you made the slightest mistake, he’d deprecate you like you were a delinquent, untamed child.

Sam and Natasha were aware of the lingering tension in the room when you two were on bad terms, but they didn’t know how excruciating it could get behind closed doors. Whenever you stared into his electric blue eyes, you didn’t find the same vivacity or earnestness anymore. All you sensed was rage and darkness.

Darkness so steep and hollow, that sometimes you’d find yourself getting lost and trapped in them. Like he could devour you and crush you by a single fist of his palm. Deep down, you wanted to get your Steve back. The considerate and faithful man you fell in love with. The man who would bring you flowers from his morning run because they just reminded him of you. The man who would kiss your shoulders in the morning to gently wake you up, because he didn’t have the heart to disturb your peaceful state, but he needed to hear your voice.

Often times, you’d wonder if it was still possible to go back to the way you used to be. But he had been so hardened by the arduous circumstances now, that it sounds like a fairytale if you could go more than 5 minutes to have a decent conversation.

“Fuck you, Steve! You don’t fucking get to tell me what to do, you hear me?”

“Yes, I do! I’m your Captain. Watch your language.”

“I don’t fucking care. You are not the Captain anymore. You ungrateful asshole! I can’t believe I stuck with you after you became a criminal. You don’t fucking deserve it. You don’t fucking deserve me.”

“What are you gonna do, sweetheart? You’re gonna run back to the compound and sign the Accords? Well, guess what? The first thing they’re gonna do as soon as you show your pretty little face, is they’d cuff you up. And when they lock you up in the Raft, I’m not going back to save you ass.”

“I don’t fucking need you to. I’d rather be locked up in the middle of the Atlantic ocean rather than spending one more goddamn second with your grumpy, irritating ass.”

He stayed silent. His back was to you now. His shoulder slumped as he leaned his hands on the table. He listened to your hasty movements as you stormed into the bedroom that you hadn’t shared in a while. Since you two had been at each other’s throats nearly every day, he’d sleep on the couch while you get the bed.

The truth is, Steve still loved you just as deeply. But things had changed, and he couldn’t pretend that everything was okay just because he was still madly in love with you. He had to be tougher now, he constantly had to watch his back. He couldn’t afford to be distracted even for just one second when the whole world was looking for him and the entire country wanted him penalized.

He also had to be hard on you, because you knew that if any of you let your guard down, you’d be doomed. You could be caught. Or worse, you could be killed. Not only the villains who wanted you dead now… Thaddeus Ross had made it clear that if it’s necessary, he wouldn’t hesitate on shooting any of you on sight.

So he tried to forget the man that he was, stripped himself out of the Captain America mantle, and lived as Nomad now. He was fine with that, although it took him a while to get used to the slummy hotel rooms or sometimes, abandoned safe houses. And Nomads don’t maintain a lovey-dovey relationship and kiss each other dearly while cleaning each other off in the shower.

No, Nomads creep in the shadow and have each other’s backs in combats. Even if it means one of them had to be the meaner guy. As long as his allies were safe and returned in one piece, then that’s all that matters. He couldn’t care any less if they no longer liked him as a comrade.

And the thought of losing you terrified the shit out of his soul. The kind that he couldn’t shake away because somewhere, deep down, he knew it was inevitable. This line of work didn’t promise him safety insurance. Literally and figuratively, now that he was no longer claimed by the government or the Avengers.

So if talking to you as if you were nothing but a fellow soldier will remind you that you both no longer had the luxury to plan your next date night or cuddle in the sheets at night to keep each other warm, then he was going to do what’s necessary.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t hear you pack up your bags and stepped out of the room with your travel bag in your shoulder. You didn’t have that many personal belongings anyway. When he stole the Quinjet, you couldn’t go back to the compound to pack up all of your stuff and say your farewell to the rest who stayed, so along the way, you bought just enough clothes to have something to wear other than your battle gear. So most of your things were left in the compound, just like the entire journey over 5 years with the Avengers.

Steve and you had said a lot of things neither of you really meant when things were heated up, but he could live with that as long as you were safe and he could keep an eye on you. He’d let you have your moment of tranquility, knowing that when daylight comes, you’ll have to fight another day and bleed.

He thought that tonight was just another night where you two claw each other’s skin but would act as if nothing happened last night in front of Sam and Natasha. You had threatened to leave more times than he could count but you never did it. Just like the rest of the things you said. Meaningless contempt.

But this time, you were out of your mind. You really could be such a force to be reckoned with sometimes. That’s why he fell in love with you in the first place, but it would often drive him crazy too. And not the good kind.

He turned around and saw you sprinting toward the door. You were dressed in all black; black jacket, black shirt, black jeans, and black sneakers. He was confused at what you were doing but he maintained his calm posture and stayed in the same spot where he had been standing, with his hands on his hips.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“I’m leaving. I can’t spend one more goddamn second with you. I’m done.”

Steve didn’t even try to hide his panic. He really thought you were joking or maybe you were going somewhere to calm your head, then you’d come back. But no, you were really leaving this time.

“Hey, hey! Don’t be fucking ridiculous. You are not going anywhere.”

“Yes, I am. And you can’t stop me.”

“Stop acting stupid and just calm down for a sec.” He reached out for you but you flinched, not wanting to hear any more of his bollocks.

“Get your fucking hands off me, Steve. Before I break every single one of your fingers.” You swatted his hand.

Suddenly, his demeanor changed. You saw it in his eyes, the flash of that shift. The one that you had been seeing a lot these days. The alteration from Steve Rogers to Captain America. Or more suitably, America’s Golden Boy to The Most Wanted Criminal. You’d be lying if you weren’t a tad frightened by that darkness in him, but you weren’t going to lay it out on your hands and present it to him. You were no coward.

Rest in peace, to your naive bravado… Your headlessness had backfired.

Steve slammed you into the wall behind you as he grabbed you by the throat, inching his face closer to yours. You could hear his labored breathing, sweeping on your skin, his eyes glared at you, locking you in place.

Your hands immediately went to his, trying to break free out of his tightening grip, cutting off your airway. “S-Steve…” You tried to get him off of you by striking his face, but he still wouldn’t relent. He immediately dragged you to the couch, as you nearly stumbled on your feet.

“You think you can just run and leave me? Stupid girl. Looks like you need a reminder of your place.”

“St- Steve! Stop!” As your back hit the couch. You tried to stand on your feet but was abruptly stopped by his hand on your shoulders, pushing you back down. “Shut the fuck up.” He grabbed your waist as he turned you around, so you were reclined on your chest. His hand immediately went to grab a fistful of your hair as he whispered into your ears, “you really wanna push my limits huh? Riling me up like a stupid little brat, thinking you can get away with it. Hell no. I’m gonna show you the consequences of your foolishness, little girl.”

Then he slammed you back down as he immediately pulled down your pants with your underwear along with it. You thrashed your body, trying to push him away but it was futile. Steve lifted up your hips, so you were standing on your knees. Then you felt a harsh smack on your ass, eliciting a raw yelp out of you. He did it once more, and more, and more, until your tears started to leak out of the corner of your eyes. You lost your ability to speak, trembling from the excruciating pain.

Just when you thought the torment was over, you heard the clank of his buckle as you instantly turned around to see what he was doing. The hastened glance was enough to verify your fear. You immediately pushed yourself on your hands and attempted to get up but you couldn’t as he quickly pushed you back down with his massive hand and held you there. His other hand went to his cock as he lined himself up to your entrance, intruding your body violently without any warning.

His hand that was on your back, went to your other hand along with the other, to pin them behind your back as strictly as a cuff. Then he began to drive his hips into you until he was fully seated. He groaned due to the pleasure. He slammed back into you and out. He repeated his motion until you couldn’t help but feel the tightening coil inside of you. He startled you in your hazy state with another spank on your ass. You squealed.

“I can feel your cunt tightening around me, little girl. See? I told you you could never leave me. You belong to me. Only I can make you feel this good.” He gritted between his vigorous thrusts. You couldn’t even focus on his mortifying words anymore when you could feel your climax was approaching. You were so close. A few more slams by his hips and then, you fell apart.

You moaned in pleasure as your release was prolonged by his still unrelenting thrusts, attempting to reach his own climax. You closed your eyes in bliss, as you could feel the fight in you had drained. You couldn’t think of anything else or remember the way you ended up being fucked hard on this couch. You were still lying in the same position, with your face pressed on the couch and hands restrained behind your back as you heard Steve groaned from behind you.

You could feel his warm cum unleashed deep inside you as Steve pushed a few shallow thrusts to deplete every drop of semen. When he was completely finished, he pulled out of you and unloose your wrists as he sat on the couch. You were paralyzed. Despite him not holding you down anymore, you still couldn’t find the energy or will in yourself to move or carry on with your plan.

You were too wearied to start any altercation anymore so you just laid there as your eyes started to droop. Before you were completely dazed out, a gravel voice whispered to you like the sound of the wind blowing; subtle but crystal. “I’m not done with you yet, babygirl. I’ve got all night to remind you who you belong to.”

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