#i’m watching a game-movie of Aftermath now and this is RIDICULOUS

[elffees]

Liu Kang and The Guys: okay go back in time to Earthrealm to get Kronika’s crown but you cannot let anyone see you or interact with you. doing so could fuck up the timeline far beyond anything we could ever imagine.

The Guys: *gets spotted by every character in existence and can’t take a literal step without having to fight someone*

[fanficbitch]

Aaron Hotchner // Secrets

I stand at the kitchenette in the bullpen gulping down water and shoving bagels in my mouth. I think I’m on my second one, there’s no way I could be on my third. “Slow down,” I hear from behind me. “You don’t want to choke.”

I turn to see Derek sipping his coffee. All I can do is shrug because my mouth is full of bread. Derek raises his eyebrows at me. “What?” I ask once I swallow all my food. 

“Why are you eating those? You once told me they taste like sandpaper,” Derek says suspiciously. I eye the bagel box and Derek nervously.

“I think they must’ve changed their recipe because they taste good now,” I say. Derek still has his eyebrows raised. He’s not convinced. 

“Fine,” he says. “I don’t care enough to dig any deeper,” he says then walks away. I eye the bagel box one more time. Would a third one really be that bad? No, I can’t. Derek is already on to me.

I nervously twist my engagement ring on my finger the best I can as I walk to my desk, but my fingers have already started swelling. About a week ago, I found out I was pregnant. I was starting to get suspicious when I started craving everything in sight and my period was late. But no one knows, not even Aaron. I know it seems ridiculous to keep this information from my fiancé, but my fiancé also happens to be my unit chief. And if my unit chief finds out I’m pregnant, he’s gonna bench me. 

I know I realistically can’t keep this secret for long, but I just want to get a few more cases in. We are actually in the middle of a case right now that is based in DC. There is a serial bomber in DC targeting popular places like libraries, train stations and movie theaters. We’ve developed a pretty good profile for who we’re dealing with. It currently says that it is a man is 50’s-60’s who probably appears disheveled. We have also discovered that he likes to stay at the crime scenes and watch the aftermath. We’ve looked at pictures that were taken after the bombings occurred, but we don’t see anyone that appears at all of them.

I decide to pull up the photos taken after the bombings on my computer to see if there is anyone that sticks out. I comb over the photos and find one older man, but he only appears at one of the scenes. It’s probably not him, but I still study his face just in case he comes up again. He has long white hair, glasses broken in the middle and wrinkles on his face. 

Just when I click out of the pictures, Aaron shoots out of his office. “There’s been another bombing. We need to move now,” he says. We all jump out of our seats and run out to the cars. I get in a car with Derek driving, Emily, JJ and Spencer being the passengers.

We grab our vests from under the seats and secure them to our chests. “Where was the bombing?” Emily asks.

“Down by Capital One Arena, a game just let out,” Derek says. Within minutes we are at the arena. I run up to the crime scene and see that the bomb was just outside the main entrance. The rest of the team meets us and examines the scene.

“Everyone keep an eye out. You know who we’re looking for,” Aaron says and we disperse. I walk through the crowd and carefully eye each person. All of these people are relatively young, no one that fits the profile. As I scan the crowd, one face sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s the man I saw from the photo earlier today. I’m so shocked that I stare at him longer than anyone normally would. He makes direct eye contact with me then bolts in the opposite direction.

I race after him, trying to push past people. “I’m on him,” I say into my radio, then pull out my gun. The farther he runs, the thinner the crowd gets and the easier is gets to chase him. I can hear people running behind me so I know my team is backing me up. I get close enough to him that I jump on him and tackle him to the ground. I think I have a good enough hold on him, but he manages to get a hand loose and punch me in the head.

I roll off of him and onto the ground holding my head. There is loud ring in my ear that slowly fades. JJ sits in front of me, her mouth is moving but nothing is coming out. She helps me to my feet as the ringing fades away. “Y/N? Y/N? Can you hear me?” JJ asks.

“Yes,” I whisper, “just stop yelling.”

“We need to get you to the hospital,” she says.

“Wait, did someone get him?” I ask, referring to the unsub.

“Yeah, I think Derek has him,” JJ says and I let out a sigh of relief.

We reach one of the free ambulances and climb in the back. “JJ, I can go by myself,” I say as she gets in.

“No, I’m not leaving you alone,” JJ says as the EMT closes the doors. I lay back on the gurney and struggle to see things straight.

“Prep the CT machine,” the EMT calls into his radio and I shoot up.

“No!” I shout. “I can’t have a CT.”

“Y/N, you need one,” JJ says.

“But I can’t,” I say with pleading eyes. JJ looks confused for a moment, but quickly puts the pieces together. I grab her hands and squeeze them. “Please keep it to yourself, no one knows.”

“What about Hotch?” she asks.

A wave of dizziness hits me and I fall back on the gurney. “No, he doesn’t know,” I whisper then slip into unconsciousness.

                                                       **********

I wake up in a hospital bed, with Aaron and JJ standing at the end of it. “Hello?” I ask and they both turn to me.

“Could you give us a minute?” Aaron asks JJ and she leaves the room. Aaron walks up next to the bed and frowns at me.

“We got him right?” I ask, but he chuckles.

“We’re not talking about that right now,” he laughs. He sits on the side of my bed then sighs. “We’re going to talk about the fact that you are nine weeks pregnant.”

“Surprise,” I whimper, but Aaron doesn’t seem amused.

“I don't know if I’m more mad at you as your fiancé or as your unit chief,” he says.

“Let’s start with unit chief,” I say.

“Okay, you are immediately removed from field duty,” he says and I groan. “And I’m disappointed that you felt that you couldn’t tell me.”

“I just wanted to be in the field a little longer,” I say.

“You know it’s not worth it,” he says and I nod. “Now, as your fiancé. How long have you known?”

“About a week,” I say. He takes both of my hands out of my lap and wraps them in his.

“Part of me is so mad at you for not telling me earlier,” Aaron says and my heart drops. “But, part of me is over the moon.”

I give his hands a squeeze. “We’re going to have a baby!” I say. Aaron leans forward and kisses my forehead. He sits back and he has that smile that he so rarely gets. His lips are curved up as far as they can go without showing his teeth. All will be right in the world.

[writerofthecourt]

kenma proposing to you in animal crossing ft. kuroo, bokuto, and akaashi

warning: slight time skip spoilers, some swearing

a/n: this is a reupload because tumblr just decided to erase my post from the tags. i don’t know if this will disappear too, but we shall see. thank you to everyone who engaged with the original post

the moment leading up to it

you and kenma have been dating since high school

you were there when his channel first reached 100 subscribers, and you were there when he finally hit 1 million subscribers (currently 3 million and counting!)

he knew he wanted to marry you the day you showed up at his door unannounced with some movies, green tea, and ingredients for miso soup

he had announced the previous day on stream that he would be ending the session a lot earlier than usual due to feeling a bit under the weather

and now here you were :^))))

made him rest on the couch while you ran around his kitchen trying to get the soup ready

it was at that moment kenma thought, “i want to spend the rest of my life with this person”

soon after, he went out and got an engagement ring and came up with a brilliant plan on how he was going to propose to you

the game plan

he knew you were a big fan of animal crossing, so he thought it would be a cute and fun idea to propose to you in the game

invited kuroo to help out since he was also a good friend of yours

ended up very much regretting this decision

somehow, inviting kuroo also led to both bokuto and akaashi getting involved in the entire process

bokuto wanted to help and be a part of the ‘big moment’, and akaashi was just there to make sure everything ran smoothly (bless his heart)

the moment he opened up his island to kuroo and bokuto (akaashi just watched from bokuto’s screen since he didn’t own a switch or play video games), total. chaos. set. in

he had remodelled his island so that there would be a little cove down by the beach where he would propose to you, and it was going to be romantic and wonderful, and kuroo! would you pleaseee stop hitting his villagers with your net and running all over his hybrid flowers??? there is a goddamn pathway for a reason

bokuto, please stop decorating the cove with garden gnomes. they are not cute no matter how many times you try to reassure him that they are

“but kenma, they’re so cute. [y/n] will love them. tell ‘im akaashi”

akaashi is confused??? how do you play this game?

kenma was this close. this close. to revoking their best friend privileges for his island

“*gasp* you wouldn’t” “try me, bitch”

kuroo keeps getting sidetracked by the discourse and moral implications of the game

“okay, but don’t you think it’s messed up that players put so much emphasis on gathering ‘cute’ villagers to the point that they’ll socially exclude and isolate villagers who do not fit into their definition of ‘beauty’ in order to drive them off the island?” “...” “and doesn’t it bother you that there are shady, black market-esque online trading websites where you can exchange villagers for in-game currency? pretty fucked up if you ask me” “...kuroo, what the hell?”

when everything was finally done and over with, kenma still had to actually ask you to marry him. god, please have mercy on him

the execution

on the day of the proposal, kenma invited you to his island and asked if you wanted to shoot a video with him

you agreed, but the whole time you were there, he was a lot quieter than usual

you asked him over voice chat if he was okay

“huh? yeah, i’m fine” (whaaaat, he totally wasn’t acting suspicious or anything. what are you talking about...)

says he wants to show you a new addition to his island and asks you to follow him

leads you to a cove by the beach, and it’s completely decorated with flowers and other items to give it an ethereal and magical feeling

“wow kenma, this is beautiful! how long did it take you to make this?”

kenma goes quiet for a second before he starts reciting the speech he had written for you and memorized in his head over the past few days

“[y/n], listen. i know i’m not the most vocal when it comes to my feelings and affections for you, but i want you to know that i love and cherish you. i want to spend the rest of my life with you by my side. so...will you marry?”

at first you were a bit shocked by his confession. where was this coming from??? nevertheless, you still happily accepted his proposal, making him the happiest man in the world

kenma had to take a moment to gather himself after that

goes to your apartment the very same day in order to give you your ring. when he slips the ring on your finger, you give him a confused look. his heart drops

“do you not like the ring? i can get you another one if you don’t like it” “no kenma, it’s lovely, but i just thought you were...kidding about the whole proposal thing. i thought it was just for your video” “...so you don’t want to marry me?” “no, no kenma, i will marry you! i love you a lot!”

he audibly lets out a sigh of relief

the aftermath

posted the engagement video a few days later, and the video went viral, getting millions of views

in the end, kenma settled for one (1) garden gnome in the cove. somewhere in the back where no one could really see it unless you were really paying close attention. bokuto didn’t mind

somehow, someone in his comment section still ended up finding it and asked him why there was a garden gnome in the back

posted the ‘making of’ video days later, which also went viral due to the sheer ridiculous amount of crackhead energy in it

in conclusion: 7.5/10 experience, would not recommend

[livesincerely]

I’m very sorry for all of the asks Madam Sincerely, but I’ve just recently gone on a binge of all of your fics, and I don’t think there’s any more questions on the ask game, so can I ask here: Do you have any ideas on future works that you haven’t started writing yet? If so, can we hear some? I was scrolling back through your tumblr to cheer myself up yesterday (my country’s gone back into lockdown) and saw you mentioned a few ideas, like the one in the SubDavey ask? Sorry, just curious <3

No need to be sorry, the asks are lovely! I’m sorry to hear that things have shut down where you are, I’m sure that’s incredibly difficult. Sending all the positivity your way 💕💜✨⭐️💕💜

The Domestic au is the QUEEN of inspiring random story ideas and dangling plot threads. There’s several floating around in the domestic au/ideas for later tags but if I was going to narrow it down to a handful of ideas that have a good chance of existing in the near-ish future, then I’d say 1) the Jack and Davey preparing for college fic 2) the Davey picking Race & Charlie up from the elementary school because Jack’s sick fic 3) the Race and Charlie needing a cuddle pile fic and 4) the bedsharing fic where Jack is struggling under the pressure of fighting for custody and needs some comfort.

I’m just in the mood for some stuff set in the high school/college era of that au, probably because ‘it’s beginning to look a lot like...’ has got me in the mindset. All of these would be one shots, just showing more landmarks in the boys’ history since ‘it’s so easy (too easy) to love you’ sort of just drops you right into the ocean as far as circumstances lol. And also, there’s a lot of family building that goes on before Jack and Davey get together that I’m very interested in exploring! I think Race describes it as ‘eight years of waiting for Jack and Davey to get their shit together?’ Yeah. So definitely lots of domestic au in the upcoming year.

I’ve talked the tiniest bit about ‘there’s you and me (and everyone else)’ and ‘a few letters off’ but after doing the first bits & bobs for each of them, I got distracted by other projects as I so often do, 😅 so I’ll talk about them here. Actually, I’m not even sure if these had working title ideas last time I mentioned them here, it’s been that long lol.

Anyway, these two fics are very similar, but just different enough to need separate fics. The first is a modern, high school au that features different examples of Jack and Davey being the accidental co-parents of their friend group while obliviously pining for each other. I’m thinking it will be individual scenes tied together by the theme; I’ll put the original idea post here and the bits & bobs here. Besides what I already talked about, I also think I want to include a scene where Albert and Crutchie are going on a first date (a pairing that is absolutely inspired by @agentsnickers, you’ve converted me) and they both separately approach Jack and Davey for advice on what to do/wear/etc. Like, a total ‘our-kids-on-their-first-date-get-the-camera’ type thing, plus Jack being an overprotective older brother and giving Charlie a curfew because he’s ridiculous.

“Be home by nine,” Jack says, a little surly. “Nine?” Davey asks, incredulous “They’re seventeen not seven. Eleven o’clock.” “I’m supposed to trust Albert with my baby brother at eleven o’clock?” Jack asks, scowling. “That’s just asking for trouble.” He says trouble in the sort of ominous tone other people reserve for imminent nuclear meltdown or battlefield heart surgery. “What do you think Albert’s gonna do, stick his hand down Crutchie’s pants the moment they walk out the door?” Davey says with a scoff. “It’s Albert.” “Ten-thirty,” Jack eventually offers. Davey nods, then looks back at Albert and Crutchie, who have been following this exchange like a tennis match and are both now a little pink in the face, and shrugs, trying to convey something like ‘pick your battles’. “Great!” Crutchie squeaks out, sounding absolutely mortified. “Great, ten-thirty it is, oh my god, Albert let’s go before theykeeptalking—“

Oh! And I want Davey to full name someone in the ultimate you-fucked-up-and-mom-is-pissed move. I even went and made full names for everyone just to be prepared 😊

Then, ‘a few letters off’ is the Jack-and-Davey’s-friends’-perspectives-on-the-nonsense-that-is-Javid fic. I’ve basically finished the Buttons scene, but I’m also hoping to include one each from the povs of Katherine, Crutchie, Racetrack, Spot, and Albert at minimum.

I’m thinking:

Katherine - catching Jack painting/drawing Davey while Jack tries to cover and deny

Spot - The aftermath of him and Jack getting into a fight with the DeLancey’s and him watching Davey fluttered worriedly around Jack, scolding him for being a reckless but still dabbing carefully at his injuries.

Racetrack - comes home to find Jack and Davey watching a movie, except that Jack’s fallen asleep halfway through, head in Davey’s lap, and Davey is adamant that Race doesn’t wake him.

Crutchie - watching Javid eating lunch together and noting how totally domestic it is: stealing food from each other’s plates, Jack gives Davey his extra fruit cup then swipes his milk carton and Davey doesn’t even say anything because it’s so routine, and how they’re able to move in and around each other effortlessly while eating and holding two separate conversations.

Albert - watching Jack and Davey flirt/bicker from the backseat on the drive to school.

And then some sort of culminating/getting together scene at the end.

There’s the infamous quarantine fic, which I waxed poetically about for all of two seconds and then never expanded on. (Here and here) The reason I haven’t done anything with it yet is because it will be a multi-chapter and between tie fic, take a shot fic, and now the domestic au holiday fic, I’m really at my limit for multi chapters at the mo’. But I do still want to do something with this once I finish tie fic and DAUHF, as take a shot knows no bounds and cannot be quantified by earthly means.

Then, as for the idea I mentioned in the sub!Davey post.... I think I’m going to be able to repurpose the general scenario/concept I was imagining for the final, E rated chapter of Tie Fic, so I don’t think the original idea will ever make it to a final cut. (I won’t say never because anything’s possible lol) But, I’m happy to put the bit I have here! Things don’t quite get E rated in this excerpt, but they’re definitely a solid M. This would’ve been an addition to the Tease series and I think this has been sitting in my drafts for almost as long as the letterman fic, and it hasn’t been edited in at least two years, so yeah 😅

00000

“I really wanted to work on my thesis proposal, that’s why I was in the library most of the day,” Davey says suddenly, pushing Jack down against the couch and straddling him, his voice light and conversational. “It was nice of you to check on me so often, though I’m sorry I wasn’t very good company. I was trying to stay focused, you know how it is.”

Davey looks at Jack expectantly, making it clear that he’s waiting for a response. Jack stares up at him, his expression equal parts confused, transfixed, and aroused. He swallows heavily, then nods.

“But I did warn you, didn’t I?” Davey continues, bracing himself with a hand on each of Jack’s shoulders, rolling their hips together as he presses closer. “That I had a lot of work to do? That this paper is really important to me and that I wanted to get a head start? That I really needed to focus and didn’t want to be distracted? I distinctly remember warning you about all of that.”

He nuzzles down the curve of Jack’s jaw, then nips at his neck. “But you didn’t listen,” he says against Jack’s pulse point. Davey smooths his hands down Jack’s chest, then back up to his throat, tugging at his collar. He unbuttons the first few buttons of his shirt.

“In fact, one could argue that you did the exact opposite of what I asked you to do,” Davey says, working his way slowly through the buttons on Jack’s shirt. “Trailing your fingers across my arm, rubbing a thumb across the nape of my neck, sneaking a hand up my shirt… I would call all of that distracting, wouldn’t you?” He finishes unbuttoning Jack’s shirt and pushes it off his shoulders, admiring his muscular chest.

Davey glances up sharply. “Answer me, Jack.”

Jack blinks himself out of his daze. “I-uh, what did you ask me?”

Davey leans forward. They’re so close that he can feel the warmth of Jack’s breath against his face. “I asked you,” he starts, wrapping his arms loosely around Jack’s neck, “whether you thought constantly caressing someone while they were trying to work would distract them.”

It takes Jack a long moment to respond. “Yeah.”

One of Davey’s hands trails up the back of Jack’s neck. “You agree that doing something like that would be impossibly flustering?” Davey asks in that same, unaffected voice—as if clarifying a statement for a news article—threading his fingers through Jack’s hair. “That it would thoroughly divert that person’s focus? That it would leave them feeling unbalanced, frustrated, and downright agitated?

He leans impossibly closer, so close that the barest tilt of his head would press their lips together. “That it would drive them so crazy that all they could think about was how desperately they needed to be fucked,” Davey growls out, and his voice low and rough.

“Christ, Davey,” Jack groans, his pupils blown wide. He leans up to kiss him, but Davey anticipates this and tugs sharply on his hair, holding him in place. “So, we’re in agreement?” Davey continues in his casual voice, letting go of the dark strands and pulling away slightly, ignoring Jack’s groan of disappointment, “that all of those actions would, in fact, be extremely distracting.”

He trails his hands lovingly across Jack’s shoulders and down his chest, his movements unhurried. He licks a hot stripe up Jack’s neck, then sucks hard at a spot just under his jaw.

“Considering both of these facts, I can only conclude that you were distracting me on purpose.” Davey presses a line of kisses along Jack’s collar bone, delighting in the moan that tears its way out of Jack’s throat. He scratches lightly at the tanned skin of Jack’s chest, then sucks a bruise just above his collarbone.

“Were you doing it on purpose, Jack?” he asks, then before Jack can answer, rolls his hips hard and slow against Jack’s, grinding their erections together. Jack’s hands spasm, then tighten, clenching hard against Davey’s sides. Davey continues his ministrations, circling his hips against Jack’s, teasing him with the friction. Then, just as Jack seems to catch on to Davey’s rhythm and starts to move with him, Davey stills. “Were you teasing me on purpose?”

Jack’s mouth opens and closes, his throat working furiously. “I-yeah.”

David hums in acknowledgment, then continues his slow perusal of his boyfriend’s chest. He nibbles lightly across his sternum, then draws the flat of his tongue across one of one Jack’s nipples. Jack arches into him but Davey pushes him back, using his leverage to hold Jack down against the couch cushions. He sits up, admiring the mess he’s made of Jack’s neck and torso.

Jack stares up at him, chest heaving, waiting for Davey’s next move.

....

Davey runs his hands down Jack’s stomach and between his hips, fingers brushing gently against the front of Jack’s jeans.

Jack lets out a guttural noise. “God, Davey, let me—“ he starts, one hand slipping back to kneed at Davey’s ass, the other inching towards Davey’s fly.

“No,” Davey says firmly, moving Jack’s hands back to his waist. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

00000

That’s all that comes to mind at the moment! Oh, and the Brooklyn Davey AU idea, but I got a different ask about that, so I’ll just link it. (Here)

@saysflora

[back-and-totheleft]

‘There’s still a presence out there reminding people not to speak about JFK’s killing’

Oliver Stone is not a fan of “cancel culture”. “Of course I despise it,” the Oscar winning filmmaker says, as if utterly amazed that anyone needs to ask him such a dumb question. “I am sure I’ve been cancelled by some people for all the comments I’ve made…. it’s like a witch hunt. It’s terrible. American censorship in general, because it is a declining, defensive, empire, it (America) has become very sensitive to any criticism. What is going on in the world with YouTube and social media,” he rants. “Twitter is the worst. They’ve banned the ex-President of the United States. It’s shocking!” he says, referring to Donald Trump’s removal from the micro-blogging platform.

It’s a Saturday lunchtime in the restaurant of the Marriott Hotel on the Croisette in Cannes. The American director is in town for the festival premiere this week of his new feature documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, in which he yet again pores over President John F Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.

“I am a pin cushion for American-Russian peace relations… I had four f***ing vaccines: two Sputniks and two Pfizers,” Stone gestures at his arm. The rival super-powers may remain deeply suspicious of one another, but Stone is loading himself up with potions from both sides of the old Iron Curtain.

He has recently been travelling in Russia (hence the Sputnik jabs) where he has been making a new documentary about how nuclear power can save humanity. He also recently completed a film about Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev which – like his interviews with Vladimir Putin – has been roundly ridiculed for its deferential, softly-softly approach toward a figure widely regarded as a ruthless despot.

Dressed in a blue polo shirt, riffing away about the English football team one moment and his favourite movies the next, laughing constantly, the 74-year-old Oscar-winning director of Platoon, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers et al is a far cheerier presence than his reputation as a purveyor of dark conspiracy thrillers might suggest. He is also very outspoken. For all his belligerence, though, Stone isn’t as thick-skinned as you might imagine. I wonder if he was hurt by the scorn that came his way when his feature film JFK was released in 1991.

“I was more of a younger man. It was painful to me,” the director sighs as he remembers being attacked by such admired figures as newscaster Walter Cronkite and Hollywood power broker Jack Valenti for listening to the “hallucinatory bleatings” of former New Orleans DA Jim Garrison when JFK came out. “It was quite shocking actually because I thought the murder was behind us. I did think there was a feeling that 30 years later, we can look at this thing again without getting excited. But I was way wrong.”

Garrison, of course, was the real-life figure portrayed by Kevin Costner in the film; he was the original proponent of the theory that the CIA were involved in the killing of the US president, after his 1966 investigation. Garrison wrote the book On the Trail of the Assassins, on which the movie was partly based.

Even the director’s fiercest detractors will find it hard to dismiss the evidence he has assembled about the JFK assassination in the new documentary. Once I’d seen it and heard him hold forth, I came away thinking that only flat-earthers can possibly still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy all on his own. It’s that convincing.

Stone blitzes you with facts and figures about the Kennedy killing and its aftermath. At times, he himself seems to be suffering from information overload. “I am sorry. There are so many people,” he apologises for not immediately remembering the name of Kennedy’s personal physician, George Burkley, who was present both at Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was first taken, and then at Bethesda, where the autopsy took place. Burkley was strangely reticent when giving evidence to the Warren Commission.

“I think there’s still a presence out there which reminds people not to speak. I’ve heard that in, of all places, Russia,” Stone says. He was startled to discover that the Russians knew all about his new documentary long before it was discussed in the mainstream press. “They said, ‘We heard about it.’ I said, ‘How?’ They said, ‘We have our contacts in the American intelligence business. They are not very happy about it.’”

Stone believes that no US president since Kennedy died has been “able to go up against this militarised sector of our economy”. Even Trump “backed down at the last second” and declined to release all the relevant documents relating to the assassination. “He announced, ‘I’m going to free it up, blah blah blah, big talk, and then a few hours before, he caved to CIA National Security again.”

The veteran filmmaker expresses his frustrations at historians like Robert Caro, author of a huge (and hugely respected) multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson, for ignoring the evidence that has been turned up about the assassination.

“I can’t say [LBJ] was involved in the assassination,” explains Stone, “but it certainly suited him that Kennedy was not there anymore and he covered up by appointing the Warren Commission and doing all the things he did.”

Stone tried to cast Marlon Brando in JFK in the role as the deep throat source Mr X, eventually played by Donald Sutherland.

“I realise now I am grateful that he turned it down because he knew better than I that he would make 20 minutes out of that 14-minute monologue and it wouldn’t have worked.”

Nevertheless, he filled the film with famous faces. He thought that having familiar actors would make it easier for audiences to engage with what was an immensely complicated story.

Getting Stone to stop talking about JFK is like trying to pull a bone from a mastiff’s jaws. To change the subject slightly, I ask if he is still in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He is and is utterly horrified at how Assange is being treated, especially given that Siggi the Hacker, a key witness in the extradition case against Assange, admitted recently that he lied. Stone praises Assange’s partner Stella Morris as “the best wife you could ever have. She really is smart, she’s a lawyer … he has two children. He can’t even touch them or see them. It’s barbaric. It indicates America is declining faster than we know. It is just cutting off dissent.”

The mood lightens when I invite Stone to discuss some of his favourite films. He recently tweeted a list of these, which included Darling starring Julie Christie, Joseph Losey’s Eva starring Stanley Baker and Jeanne Moreau, and Houseboat, a frothy comedy starring Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. “I love films, always have. People don’t know that side of me. I could go on forever.”

Between his darker and more contentious efforts, Stone has made a few genre films himself, for example the underrated thriller U-Turn starring Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez. He notes, though, that even when he tried a sports movie, he ended up right back in the firing line. The NFL was furious about his 1999 American Football film, Any Given Sunday. “They (the NFL) are arrogant, very rich people who close down any dissent, so I had to change uniforms and names… but they got the point.”

Last year, Stone published the first volume of his autobiography, Chasing the Light, which took him from childhood up to his Oscar triumph with Platoon. It was well received but it didn’t make nearly a big enough splash for his liking. “There was a curtain of silence about that. Maybe it is Covid… it was not reviewed by many people,” he says. “I wish the timing had been better. The publisher was terrible. They didn’t really promote anything. So now I have to start over again if I am going to do a second book, which I would love to do. But I have to find the right publisher.”

The book contains a barbed account of Stone’s experiences as a young screenwriter working in London for British director Alan Parker and producer David Puttnam on Midnight Express. “I wrote about it in the book, so you got my point of view. They were not very friendly people. I gave my criticism of Parker that he had a chip on his shoulder. He was from a poor side of the English. There is this phenomenon you see in England of hating the upper classes until they approve of you.”

No, they didn’t stay in touch. “And Puttnam is a Lord, right? He reminds me of Tony Blair. He is such a weasel.” For once, Stone feels he has overstepped the mark. He doesn’t want to call Puttnam a weasel after all. “Put it this way, Tony Blair is a weasel. I wouldn’t trust Tony Blair. Puttnam is a supporter of Blair. Let’s leave it at that.”

On matters English, he isn’t that keen on soccer either. He watched the semi-final between England and Denmark but had no intention of tuning into the final.

“Soccer is a different kind of game. It’s a different aesthetic. It is constant movement. The United States game allows you to re-group after every play and go into a huddle and so it becomes about strategy. I still enjoy it although people think I am brutal.”

Ask him why he so relishes American Football and he replies that he “grew up with violence in America … we were banging – cowboys and Indians, a lot of killing and that stuff. How do you get away from that? We weren’t playing with dolls.”

Stone’s feelings about the US are deeply ambivalent. He is old enough to remember a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s when “everything in America was golden” and part of him still seems to love the country but his mother was French and he talks about the US as a nation now in near terminal decline.

Perhaps surprisingly, his real political hero isn’t JFK. It’s the former President of France, Charles de Gaulle. “He said no to NATO and he said no to America. He understood the dangers of being a satellite country to America. You have no power in Europe. Don’t kid yourself. The EU is just an artificial body that was amazingly stupid in cutting off Russia and cutting off China too now.”

He doesn’t much like Boris Johnson either. “Boris, listen. He’d simply throw you in jail in a second.” He rails against the English for holding Assange in Belmarsh prison.

When he is not on a crusade or unravelling a conspiracy, Stone relaxes through Buddhist meditation. “Moderation in all things,” the man who came up with the phrase “greed is right, greed works” says with no evident sense of irony. He enjoys hanging out with his friends. “I have a nice life. I’m lucky,” he says before quickly adding, “I wish I had been more honoured and respected in my lifetime, but it seems that I took a course that is in conflict with the American Empire.”

Stone’s films have had relatively few strong female characters. Ask if he welcomes the #MeToo movement and the challenging of old gender norms and he gives a typically contrary answer. “It cuts both ways, though. There are reasons for patriarchy through the centuries,” he says. “Tribes tend to have a strong leader. You need strong leaders, but I do see the feminine impulse as being important, especially when situations become too militant. The feminine impulse, I’m talking about the maternal impulse not the Hillary Clinton/Margaret Thatcher version of feminism. They’re men. They’re not women,” he says. “I don’t want women in politics who want to be men. If a woman is a woman, she should be a woman and bring her maternalism. It’s a leavening influence.”

The director deplores the rush to judge historical figures about past misdeeds from a contemporary point of view. “I am conservative in that way… don’t expect to rejudge the entire society based on your new values.”

He met with Harvey Weinstein in Cannes a few years ago to discuss a potential Guantanamo Bay TV series. “At that point, maybe he knew he was on the ropes; he was delightfully charming and humble.” The project was scuppered by the scandal that that engulfed the former Miramax boss, who is now behind bars as a convicted sex offender. Stone’s gripes with Weinstein are less to do with his sexual offences than with the way that he attacked films like Born on the Fourth of July and Saving Private Ryan to boost his own movies.

“The press loved him [Weinstein]. Don’t forget, they loved him in the 1990s,” he says, remembering the disingenuous way in which Weinstein portrayed himself as the underdog taking on the big, bad Hollywood system.

“I think he robbed Cruise of the Oscar, frankly,” Stone huffs at the intensive Weinstein lobbying which saw Daniel Day-Lewis win the Academy Award for Best for My Left Foot, denying Tom Cruise for Born on the Fourth of July in the process.

Stone acknowledges his status in Hollywood has diminished. “All that’s gone. The people have changed,” he says of the days when the studios doted on him and his films were regularly awards contenders. Now, he’ll often finance his work out of Europe. He is developing a new feature film (he won’t say what it is). “Never say die, never say it’s over,” he says of his career.

Stone is based in Los Angeles and also has “a place in New York”. During the pandemic, he still managed to travel to Russia to make his nuclear power/clean energy documentary. “I got my shots over there because the EU is so f***ing stupid,” he says of the of the Europeans’ refusal to recognise the Sputnik vaccine. “It’s ridiculous, part of the political madness of this time.”

Now, he is putting all his energy into his new documentary about nuclear power. He waves away the idea that the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters show what can go wrong – they were accidents.

“Accidents you learn from. If there were not a few crashes, how would you fly?” he says. It’s a line that somehow seems to express his entire philosophy of life.

-Geoffrey Macnab interviews Oliver Stone, The Independent, Jul 15 2021 [x]

[richincolor]

January's New Releases

2021 told 2020 to hold it's beer and what a month January has been! Publishing YA also came out swinging with a slew of new books (many already bestsellers) in what we hope will be another banner year for BIPOC stories. Click below to find books for your TBR list. 

Week of January 5th

The Life I’m In by Sharon G. Flake Scholastic Inc

My feet are heavy as stones when I walk up the block wondering why I can’t find my old self.

In The Skin I’m In, readers saw into the life of Maleeka Madison, a teen who suffered from the ridicule she received because of her dark skin color. For decades fans have wanted to know the fate of the bully who made Maleeka’s life miserable, Char.

Now in Sharon Flake’s latest and unflinching novel, The Life I’m In, we follow Charlese Jones, who, with her raw, blistering voice speaks the truths many girls face, offering insight to some of the causes and conditions that make a bully. Turned out of the only home she has known, Char boards a bus to nowhere where she is lured into the dangerous web of human trafficking. Much is revealed behind the complex system of men who take advantage of vulnerable teens in the underbelly of society. While Char might be frightened, she remains strong and determined to bring herself and her fellow victims out of the dark and back into the light, reminding us why compassion is a powerful cure to the ills of the world.

Sharon Flake’s bestselling, Coretta Scott King Award-winning novel The Skin I’m In was a game changer when it was first published more than twenty years ago. It redefined young adult literature by presenting characters, voices, and real-world experiences that had not been fully seen. Now Flake offers readers another timely and radical story of a girl on the brink and how her choices will lead her to either fall, or fly. — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

Happily Ever Afters by Elise Bryant Balzer + Bray

Sixteen-year-old Tessa Johnson has never felt like the protagonist in her own life. She’s rarely seen herself reflected in the pages of the romance novels she loves. The only place she’s a true leading lady is in her own writing—in the swoony love stories she shares only with Caroline, her best friend and #1 devoted reader.

When Tessa is accepted into the creative writing program of a prestigious art school, she’s excited to finally let her stories shine. But when she goes to her first workshop, the words are just…gone. Fortunately, Caroline has a solution: Tessa just needs to find some inspiration in a real-life love story of her own. And she’s ready with a list of romance novel-inspired steps to a happily ever after. Nico, the brooding artist who looks like he walked out of one of Tessa’s stories, is cast as the perfect Prince Charming.

But as Tessa checks each item off Caroline’s list, she gets further and further away from herself. She risks losing everything she cares about—including the surprising bond she develops with sweet Sam, who lives across the street. She’s well on her way to having her own real-life love story, but is it the one she wants, after all?

One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite Inkyard Press

ISN’T BEING HUMAN ENOUGH? When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.

One of the good ones.

Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind–why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed?–Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there’s a twist to Kezi’s story that no one could’ve ever expected–one that will change everything all over again.

Roman and Jewel by Dana L. Davis Inkyard Press

If Romeo and Juliet got the Hamilton treatment…who would play the leads? This vividly funny, honest, and charming romantic novel by Dana L. Davis is the story of a girl who thinks she has what it takes…and the world thinks so, too.

Jerzie Jhames will do anything to land the lead role in Broadway’s hottest new show, Roman and Jewel, a Romeo and Juliet inspired hip-hopera featuring a diverse cast and modern twists on the play. But her hopes are crushed when she learns mega-star Cinny won the lead…and Jerzie is her understudy.

Falling for male lead Zeppelin Reid is a terrible idea–especially once Jerzie learns Cinny wants him for herself. Star-crossed love always ends badly. But when a video of Jerzie and Zepp practicing goes viral and the entire world weighs in on who should play Jewel, Jerzie learns that while the price of fame is high, friendship, family, and love are priceless.

The Awakening of Malcom X by Ilyasah Shabazz & Tiffany D. Jackson Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)

In Charlestown Prison, Malcolm Little struggles with the weight of his past. Plagued by nightmares, Malcolm drifts through days unsure of his future. Slowly, he befriends other prisoners and writes to his family. He reads all the books in the prison library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam. Malcolm grapples with race, politics, religion, and justice in the 1940s. And as his time in jail comes to an end, he begins to awaken — emerging from prison more than just Malcolm Little: Now, he is Malcolm X.

Here is an intimate look at Malcolm X’s young adult years. While this book chronologically follows X: A Novel, it can be read as a stand-alone historical novel that invites larger discussions on black power, prison reform, and civil rights.

When You Look Like Us by Pamela N. Harris HarperCollins

When you look like us—brown skin, brown eyes, black braids or fades—people think you’re trouble. No one looks twice at a missing black girl from the projects because she must’ve brought whatever happened to her upon herself. I, Jay Murphy, can admit that, for a minute, I thought my sister, Nicole, got too caught up with her boyfriend—a drug dealer—and his friends.

But she’s been gone too long now.

If I hadn’t hung up on her that night, she’d be spending time with our grandma. If I was a better brother, she’d be finishing senior year instead of being another name on a missing persons list. It’s time to step up and do what the Newport News police department won’t.

Week of January 12th

Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne Crown Books for Young Readers

She looks me hard in my eyes & my knees lock into tree trunks My eyes don’t dance like my heartbeat racing They stare straight back hot daggers. I remember things will never be the same. I remember things.

With gritty and heartbreaking honesty, Mahogany L. Browne delivers a novel-in-verse about broken promises, fast rumors, and when growing up means growing apart from your best friend.

The Meet-Cute Project by Rhiannon Richardson Simon & Schuster

Mia’s friends love rom-coms. Mia hates them. They’re silly, contrived, and not at all realistic. Besides, there are more important things to worry about—like how to handle living with her bridezilla sister, Sam, who’s never appreciated Mia, and surviving junior year juggling every school club offered and acing all of her classes.

So when Mia is tasked with finding a date to her sister’s wedding, her options are practically nonexistent.

Mia’s friends, however, have an idea. It’s a little crazy, a little out there, and a lot inspired by the movies they love that Mia begrudgingly watches too.

Mia just needs a meet-cute.

Concrete Rose (The Hate U Give, #0) by Angie Thomas Balzer + Bray

If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison.

Life’s not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav’s got everything under control.

Until, that is, Maverick finds out he’s a father.

Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. But it’s not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child. So when he’s offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. In a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing, maybe Mav can prove he’s different.

When King Lord blood runs through your veins, though, you can’t just walk away. Loyalty, revenge, and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. He’ll have to figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.

Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink Feiwel and Friends

Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Wilson is, on the surface, a town troublemaker, but is hiding that he is an avid reader and secret poet, never leaving home without his journal. A passionate follower of WEB. Du Bois, he believes that black people should rise up to claim their place as equals.

Sixteen-year-old Angel Hill is a loner, mostly disregarded by her peers as a goody-goody. Her father is dying, and her family’s financial situation is in turmoil. Also, as a loyal follower of Booker T. Washington, she believes, through education and tolerance, that black people should rise slowly and without forced conflict.

Though they’ve attended the same schools, Isaiah never noticed Angel as anything but a dorky, Bible toting church girl. Then their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library, a three-wheel, two-seater bike. Angel can’t turn down the money and Isaiah is soon eager to be in such close quarters with Angel every afternoon.

But life changes on May 31, 1921 when a vicious white mob storms the community of Greenwood, leaving the town destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. Only then, Isaiah, Angel, and their peers realize who their real enemies are.

Week of January 19th

Thirty Talks Weird Love by Alessandra Narváez Varela Cinco Puntos Press

Out of nowhere, a lady comes up to Anamaría and says she’s her, from the future. But Anamaría’s thirteen, she knows better than to talk to some weirdo stranger. Girls need to be careful, especially in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico—it’s the 90’s and fear is overtaking her beloved city as cases of kidnapped girls and women become alarmingly common. This thirty-year-old “future” lady doesn’t seem to be dangerous but she won’t stop bothering her, switching between cheesy Hallmark advice about being kind to yourself, and some mysterious talk about saving a girl.

Anamaría definitely doesn’t need any saving, she’s doing just fine. She works hard at her strict, grade-obsessed middle school—so hard that she hardly gets any sleep; so hard that the stress makes her snap not just at mean girls but even her own (few) friends; so hard that when she does sleep she dreams about dying—but she just wants to do the best she can so she can grow up to be successful. Maybe Thirty’s right, maybe she’s not supposed to be so exhausted with her life, but how can she ask for help when her city is mourning the much bigger tragedy of its stolen girls?

This thought-provoking, moving verse novel will lead adult and young adult readers alike to vital discussions on important topics—like dealing with depression and how to recognize this in yourself and others—through the accessible voice of a thirteen-year-old girl.

Your Corner Dark by Desmond Hall Atheneum/Dlouhy

Things can change in a second:

The second Frankie Green gets that scholarship letter, he has his ticket out of Jamaica.

The second his longtime crush, Leah, asks him on a date, he’s in trouble.

The second his father gets shot, suddenly nothing else matters.

And the second Frankie joins his uncle’s gang in exchange for paying for his father’s medical bills, there’s no going back…or is there?

As Frankie does things he never thought he’d be capable of, he’s forced to confront the truth of the family and future he was born into—and the ones he wants to build for himself.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo Dutton Books for Young Readers

“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.” And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

If I Tell You the Truth by Jasmin Kaur HarperCollins

Told in prose, poetry, and illustration, this heartrending story weaves Kiran’s and Sahaara’s timelines together, showing a teenage Kiran and, later, her high school–aged daughter, Sahaara.

Kiran is a young Punjabi Sikh woman who becomes pregnant after being sexually assaulted by her fiancé’s brother. When her fiancé and family don’t believe her, she flees her home in India to Canada, where she plans to raise the child as a single mother. For Kiran, living undocumented means constant anxiety over finances, work, safety, and whether she’ll be deported back to the dangers that await her in Punjab.

Eighteen years later, Kiran’s daughter, Sahaara, is desperate to help her mother, who has been arrested and is facing deportation. In the aftermath, Kiran reveals the truth about Sahaara’s conception. Horrified, Sahaara encourages Kiran to speak out against the man who raped her—who’s now a popular political figure in Punjab. Sahaara must find the best way to support her mother while also dealing with the revelation about her parents.

We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya #2) by Hafsah Faizal Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The battle on Sharr is over. The dark forest has fallen. Altair may be captive, but Zafira, Nasir, and Kifah are bound for Sultan’s Keep, determined to finish the plan he set in motion: restoring the hearts of the Sisters of Old to the minarets of each caliphate, and finally returning magic to all of Arawiya. But they are low on resources and allies alike, and the kingdom teems with fear of the Lion of the Night’s return.

As the zumra plots to overthrow the kingdom’s darkest threat, Nasir fights to command the magic in his blood. He must learn to hone his power into a weapon, to wield not only against the Lion but against his father, trapped under the Lion’s control. Zafira battles a very different darkness festering in her through her bond with the Jawarat—a darkness that hums with voices, pushing her to the brink of her sanity and to the edge of a chaos she dare not unleash. In spite of the darkness enclosing ever faster, Nasir and Zafira find themselves falling into a love they can’t stand to lose…but time is running out to achieve their ends, and if order is to be restored, drastic sacrifices will have to be made.

Lush and striking, hopeful and devastating, We Free the Stars is the masterful conclusion to the Sands of Arawiya duology by New York Times–bestselling author Hafsah Faizal.

Week of January 26th

Written in Starlight (Woven in Moonlight #2) by Isabel Ibañez Page Street Kids

If the jungle wants you, it will have you…

Catalina Quiroga is a Condesa without a country. She’s lost the Inkasisa throne, the loyalty of her people, and her best friend. Banished to the perilous Yanu Jungle, Catalina knows her chances of survival are slim, but that won’t stop her from trying to escape. It’s her duty to reclaim the throne.

When Manuel, the son of her former general, rescues Catalina from a jaguar, a plan forms. Deep in the jungle, the city of gold is hidden, home to the fierce Illari people, who she could strike an alliance with.

But the elusive Illari are fighting a battle of their own—a mysterious blight is corrupting the jungle, laying waste to everything they hold dear. As a seer, Catalina should be able to help, but her ability to read the future in the stars is as feeble as her survival instincts. While searching for the Illari, Catalina must reckon with her duty and her heart to find her true calling, which could be the key to stopping the corruption before it destroys the jungle completely.

The Knockout by Sajni Patel Flux

If seventeen-year-old Kareena Thakkar is going to alienate herself from the entire Indian community, she might as well do it gloriously. She’s landed the chance of a lifetime, an invitation to the US Muay Thai Open, which could lead to a spot on the first-ever Olympic team. If only her sport wasn’t seen as something too rough for girls, something she’s afraid to share with anyone outside of her family. Despite pleasing her parents, exceling at school, and making plans to get her family out of debt, Kareena’s never felt quite Indian enough, and her training is only making it worse.

Which is inconvenient, since she’s starting to fall for Amit Patel, who just might be the world’s most perfect Indian. Admitting her feelings for Amit will cost Kareena more than just her pride–she’ll have to face his parents’ disapproval, battle her own insecurities, and remain focused for the big fight. Kareena’s bid for the Olympics could very well make history–if she has the courage to go for it.

Wings of Ebony (Wings of Ebony #1) by J. Elle Denene Millner Books/Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers

“Make a way out of no way” is just the way of life for Rue. But when her mother is shot dead on her doorstep, life for her and her younger sister changes forever. Rue’s taken from her neighborhood by the father she never knew, forced to leave her little sister behind, and whisked away to Ghizon—a hidden island of magic wielders.

Rue is the only half-god, half-human there, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother’s death, Rue breaks Ghizon’s sacred Do Not Leave Law and returns to Houston, only to discover that Black kids are being forced into crime and violence. And her sister, Tasha, is in danger of falling sway to the very forces that claimed their mother’s life.

Worse still, evidence mounts that the evil plaguing East Row is the same one that lurks in Ghizon—an evil that will stop at nothing until it has stolen everything from her and everyone she loves. Rue must embrace her true identity and wield the full magnitude of her ancestors’ power to save her neighborhood before the gods burn it to the ground.

[straight-outta-hobbiton]

Seven Harry Potter Fic Recs from a Quarantined Hobbit:

Since I’m stuck inside and desperately avoiding my own writing projects, I figured I would post a mini rec list of a few of my favorite fics and kill some time doing that. These fics are pretty much the bar I set for myself whenever I try to write anything, they’re that kind of good. They’re my go-to fics pretty much any time I want to get sucked in— even though I’ve read them a dozen times each, I still read to the end, every time. That’s how much I love them.

In alphabetical order, here’s my list of Harry Potter must-reads:

Again and Again, by Athey: Harry Potter has been living in a steady time loop starting from his birth and ending whenever he dies. In this particular life, he decides to try something new. It’s an older fic— I had it emailed to me by a friend in my junior year of high school from ff.net (though it’s also available on ao3 now), and it has a lot of little things that make me nostalgic for my early days of fandom, tropewise. Tag for Slytherin!Harry, Competence Porn, and Actual Porn, too.

C’est La Vie, by Cywscross: In a similar vein, this particular iteration of Harry Potter is tempted by Fate (lol) into something like a second chance, returning to the age of fourteen in a parallel universe where Harry Potter isn’t the Boy-Who-Lived. One of my favorite OCs of all time is in this fic— the amazing Orion Black, son of Wolfstar— and honestly, I’ve rarely seen such excellent depictions of burgeoning inter-House unity as it’s done here. Tag for Hufflepuff!Harry, Time Travel (sorta), and more Competence Porn.

D.S.S Requirement, by Esama: Let me just start by saying this is a Stargate Crossover, but it’s so good you literally don’t need to know anything about Stargate. The idea is simple: there is the Room of Requirement, some Muggleborns with an interest in sci-fi, and an accidental discovery that intrinsically changes the culture of the DA. It’s not so much about plot as it is a character study. You’re watching a group of children and teenagers— most of whom are generally uneducated in Muggle sciences and the concept of science fiction— as they adapt new and interesting ideas to their lives and futures. It’s technically a two-part series (so far, fingers crossed), with the second part focusing more on how the DA begins to affect the outside world, but the focus is mainly on this simple question: what would a bunch of clever, rebellious, magical children do if they found a spaceship? Tag for DA Shenanigans, Space Race, and Slice of Life Under Umbridge.

Harveste, by haru-chan: This is the first of a series based on a somewhat eldritch interpretation of the Addams Family. It’s a crossover, but the author basically takes all the best parts of the nineties movies and fleshes them out to a wonderfully campy, macabre degree, so feel free to have less than a surface level understanding of Addams Family lore, if that. Harry is discovered at the age of five by Mr. and Mrs. Addams, who promptly adopt him and take him away to their magical home in America, where he’s raised as the middle brother between Pugsley and Wednesday. It’s got a darker tone to its humor, but it’s as funny as it is ridiculous, and incredibly satisfying if you’re into just-desserts. Tag for Slytherin!Harry, Blood Magic, and Nineties Goth-Comedy.

Never Grow A Wishbone, by ShanaStoryteller: First things first: it’s still ongoing. Every update is like a present in my email inbox, because truly, it is the best post-Hogwarts fic I have ever fucking read. The world-building is like if George RR Martin took breaths between blurbs, just enough to get you fascinated without overshadowing the main plot. Draco is the main character, and your following him and all his knowledge of the Wizarding World (as opposed to Harry’s canonical, general obliviousness) as he takes on a new challenge in life— a teaching position at Hogwarts alongside Harry and Hermione in the post-Wizarding War World. You get a really interesting look into the complexities of magical politics and its purpose within their world, as well as a deeper look into contemporary Magical history and its affects on their modern world. All the questions that ruined so much of canon Harry Potter for me are answered in this fic, and on top of that, she’s doing what I’ve been struggling to do for like, five years, which is talk about where all the goddamn Muggles fit in. Also! It’s Drarry, but when they’re grownups and can work their shit out, so it’s extra good. Tag for Court Drama, McGonagall Knows Best, and Professor!AU.

One Hundred and Sixty Nine, by Soupy_George: This is a Hermione-centric time travel fic, and the pairing is Sirius/Hermione (a rarepair for many reasons, but beautifully done here). This is a universe where the war was Bad and Long, and the Golden Trio came out of it more battered than they should have. Hermione, in a desperate attempt to fix the lives of her best friends, does some hardcore illegal Time Turner magic and lands 169 days before Voldemort’s attack on the Potters in 1981. Her plan is pretty straightforward: get the Horcruxes and kill Voldemort before he makes inside the house on Godric’s Hollow. After making contact with the Order, she sets her plan into motion with the help of Sirius, Remus, a young Moody, and a consistently secretive but overall well-meaning Dumbledore. Tag for Time Travel, Subtle Punk Rock, and Slow Burn.

Secrets, by Vorabiza: I have loved this fic since my sophomore year of high school. I found it in the time of fandom-specific fic sites, that’s how long it’s been, and honestly it’s one of the best re-writes (or maybe book seven predictions) I’ve ever read. It’s another Drarry, and it’s a kid!fic, which is a particular weak spot of mine, focusing on the summer before Harry’s seventh year and the aftermath of Dumbledore’s death. It really digs into the what it means to be Sorted into the House you’re Sorted into, and the psychological and cultural implications that Magical society has put on that Sorting. There are spy games, secret-keeping, and a really well-done crowning of Harry as the young man who’s going to lead the war effort in the wake of Dumbledore. Tag for Babies, Not As Big A Dick As Canon Severus Snape, and Family Feels.

Most of these are longish reads, but I figure so many of us have time on our hands right now that might otherwise be spent worrying, so fuck it! Indulge the Harry Potter fan you have living inside of you. Read some good fic.

[redrebecca]

Get It Yourself

When your regular movie night with your friends takes an unexpected turn because your friend Shawn misses his ride home.

Warning(s): I don’t think there are any?

A/N: Apparently my brother can play the Fur Elise thing on the piano so i’m currently adapting to being the least talented sibling and i don’t really like it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, feedback is always appreciated. Have a nice day!

Words: 2.6k

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“Bye!” You shouted as the boys clambered into their cars. They all waved back as they started buckling up their seat belts. You were going to stand and wait for them all to drive off before heading back inside but you had greatly underestimated just how cold the wind was. Shivering, you wrapped your arms around yourself and closed the door behind you, trudging towards the living room and groaning when you saw just how much mess there was. Sure, you loved having the team over for pizza, movies and a few video games, but the aftermath always made you question why you even let them step anywhere near your property in the first place.

You grabbed a bin bag from your kitchen and got to work, scrunching your face up slightly as you picked up the pizza box that was soaked in grease. You were just about to start collecting all of Brian’s beer bottles off the floor when you heard the bathroom door swing open. You spun around with wide eyes, relaxing when you saw that it was Shawn.

“Scared you eh?” He joked, an airy chuckle leaving his lips as he moved further into the room, closer to you.

You huffed, sending him a half-hearted glare, which didn’t work very well as a small smile broke out on your face, only widening the smirk on Shawn’s face. “No, I just thought you’d left with the others.” He nodded slightly, as he scanned the room, taking in the bomb-site that was currently your apartment.

“Oh,” You said, bringing his attention back to where you were stood, an empty coffee mug in one hand and the half full black bag grasped firmly with the other, “How are you getting home? You came with Geoff right?” His hazel eyes widened, almost comically as he began fumbling with his jean pocket for his phone.

“What are you doing?” You asked with a chuckle.

“I’m gonna ring Geoff, tell him to turn around and pick me up.” He murmured already scrolling through his contact list to try and find the number he needed.

For a moment you were going to let him, which was before you remembered how Geoff had been complaining about how exhausted he was as you two sat and watched the others play a match of FIFA. You knew that having to drive Shawn home as well as Brian and Teddy was not going to help how tired he was.

Walking forward, you plucked the phone out of his hands and placed it on the coffee table next to yours.

“Hey! What are you doing?” He exclaimed, confusion lacing his voice.

“Don’t worry, you can stay over here.” At his surprised expression you began to explain. “I’ve got the pair of joggers and the t-shirt that I forgot to give you back after I did your washing, and I’ve got a spare toothbrush in the bathroom that you can use.” You assured him.

“Are you sure?” He raised an eyebrow. “I can just get him to come and pick me up.” He said, shuffling forward on the couch and reaching out for his phone again. You stopped him by grabbing his arm. “Shawn you’re staying.” He sighed, sending a muffled “Thanks.” before he returned to his original position of being slumped against the back of the couch.

“But,” You added, looking around at your cluttered living room “You have to help me clean-up.”  

He scoffed at that, grabbing the TV remote and scrolling through the channels. “Na-uh, not happening honey.” He emphasized what he said with an adamant shake of his head. You hated that you blushed slightly at the nickname that fell too easily from his lips.

You sighed in defeat, knowing how much of a stubborn child he could be “I’ll make you pancakes for breakfast.” You muttered. Now this got his attention, his eyes met yours and you could almost see his thought process - a result of his lack of poker face.

“With whipped cream and strawberries.” You added, knowing that he had never, ever turned that offer down in all the years you’d known him.

Instantly, his eyes widened and he practically leaped off the couch. Snatching the bin bag out of your hand he started chucking pieces of rubbish and half eaten pizza slices into it. 

You joined him, the two of you working together to get your room back to the state it was before the boys had come.

However it hadn’t taken long before you were holding the bag open from one corner of the room with Shawn stood on the opposite side trying to throw random pieces of litter in. When he eventually did get one in, the two of you did a ridiculous celebratory dance, both laughing your heads off as you ran and hugged each other. Your laughter died down after a few minutes and the two of you stood in the middle of nearly clean sitting room, arms still wrapped around each other, his warm breath on your neck, relaxing you as you rested your cheek against his chest.

It wasn’t long until the piece was disturbed. On the coffee table, your phone buzzed, the sudden noise made the two of you flinch and pull away from each other. You were going to ignore it but before you could tug Shawn back in for another one of his comforting hugs, he was releasing you from his hold and moving towards the bench to pick up your phone. After being best friends for years you had no qualms about letting him read your notifications, it happened many times especially when you were driving and you’d tell him to type your reply. His eyebrows furrowed and a few lines appeared on his forehead. “Who’s David?” he inquired, his eyes scanning the notification before they stopped on something which he stared at in disbelief, a mix between a sigh and a groan left his lips “And why are you on tinder, you promised you’d never join a dating app. Do you realise how dangerous they can be? There was a news story the other day ab-”.

You stepped forward and clamped your hand over his mouth to stop his concerned rambling. You appreciated his protectiveness but it normally annoyed you. “Yeah well when I said I wouldn’t it was because I didn’t really want a boyfriend but now…” You sighed, trying to find the right words “I just don’t want to be alone anymore, I just want someone who I can share my life with.”

You looked up and met his understanding eyes, they searched yours for a second before you felt him lick the palm of your hand. You squealed, pulling your wet hand away from his mouth. “Shawn!” You explained, disbelief coating your words at the fact that he had just licked your hand. He did nothing but grin down at you.

“Give me back my phone.” You huffed, sticking out your hand that didn’t have Shawn’s saliva on it.

“Why? Oh so you can text David.” He mocked, doing a horrible impersonation of your voice. You kept your hand held out and your gaze firm.

“Give. It.” You demanded slowly. His grin widened and you could tell he was trying not to laugh, because to him, your intimidation tactics never worked - the whole height and muscle difference between the two of you made it very hard for him to be scared of you. It was something he loved and something you absolutely loathed. He dramatically shook his head, the universal sign for ‘no’.

“If you want it, get it yourself.”

Hoping to catch him off guard, you lunged for your phone. Only for him to hold it up high above his head.

It was times like this that you really hated his height. Knowing that you would never be able to reach your phone, you extended your arm up to his face and wiped the drool from your hand onto his rosy cheeks. His face scrunched up but he didn’t move his arm any closer to you. You took a step back and crossed your arms over your chest. You clenched your jaw when his smile grew even wider, his eyes still looking forward and not at you.

Oh so he was enjoying this? Your next plan of action was to poke his stomach, hoping that he would bend over which would make your phone more accessible. But no, instead he chuckled and replied smugly, “If you wanted to feel my abs you could’ve just asked.”.

So you tried tickling his sides, to which he only replied with “Not gonna work sweetheart.”. After you had exhausted every method you could think of - you had even pushed your dignity aside and jumped - you stepped back and sighed. You groaned when you saw his smile widen once again. With hands on your hips you scanned the room looking for any form of leverage, smiling to yourself when you saw his phone still lying on the coffee table. Quickly walking over, you grabbed his phone and turned towards him. Your eyes met his brown ones instantly and you couldn’t hold back the smirk as his eyes widened.

“You want this?” You questioned as innocently as possible, gesturing at his phone that you had clutched in your hand. He glanced at the phone before looking back at you. Shawn nodded hesitantly and cautiously held his hand out. Without a word and whilst not moving your gaze away from his face, you slipped his phone into your bra underneath your sweatshirt. Shock crossed his face, his mouth dropping open slightly. You had never been this confident around him before. “G-give me my phone back.”.

You tapped your index finger on your chin, pretending to be in deep thought. “What was it that you said earlier? Get it yourself.” And with that you turned towards the kitchen, grasping the top of the bin bag and taking it with you. It didn’t take long before you heard the hurried sound of Shawn’s footsteps as they followed you into the kitchen. You tensed at first when you felt an arm wrap around your shoulders before you relaxed knowing it was just Shawn. You were too busy stacking the plates that you had left on the draining board that you didn’t realize what Shawn’s intention was. When you felt his fingers accidentally brush underneath your collar bone you immediately caught his wrist and brought his hand out from under the neckline of your sweatshirt. An accusing expression covered your face and he lowered his head in defeat.

“Nearly.” Shawn muttered, nodding slightly to himself. He then sauntered back through the door and jumped onto the couch. You continued to clear the sink whilst trying to control your breathing and desperately attempting to wipe the blush off your cheeks.

After you had put all of the bowls and plates back in their usual places, you went and joined Shawn on the couch, chuckling to yourself when you noticed he had decided to put on Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. When you had first became friends, for your birthday he had bought you the DVD collection of all the Harry Potter movies. As a result of the amount of times you’ve had to watch them with Shawn, you were almost certain you knew every line of Deathly Hallows part 2 and Chamber of Secrets. However whenever you would mention this to Shawn he would always deny this because ‘You didn’t know the snake parts.’.

You settled beside him and it wasn’t long before he had tugged you closer to him so you were tucked securely into his side, his hand resting across your stomach. This wasn’t unusual for the two of you. Through years of friendship you had become inseparable, your friends often joked that it was never a party if the two of you weren’t there. As cliché as it was you liked Shawn but you pushed it aside every time, reminding yourself that he had said countless times in interviews that he didn’t have time for a girlfriend, and although it hurt whenever he said that, you understood where he was coming from, knowing first-hand how hard it was to try and organize things with him.

About half an hour into the film, you felt Shawn’s intense stare. You ignored it for a bit until you eventually couldn’t, craning your neck to see him easier, you sent him a questioning look, silently congratulating yourself for not blushing when you met his hazel brown eyes.

“C-can I kiss you?” He stuttered. You sat up in shock, expecting anything but that. Was it possible that he liked you?

“Can I, please?” he shyly asked, quieter than before, his insecurities taking over as he began to ramble “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Oh my god do you even want to, I’m so sorry I-I just couldn’t help it. Should I go, I can g-“His words were cut short when you pressed your lips onto his. It took him a second before he reciprocated his soft lips moving against yours. His large hands moved to tilt your chin up slightly to give him better access which made you gasp. He wasted no time, slipping his tongue into your mouth, finally exploring a place he’d wanted to get to for way too long.

You broke the kiss first, desperate for air. Shawn whined at the loss of contact so you moved towards him and pressed your forehead against his, his eyes fluttering shut. He carefully manoeuvred you so you were sitting on his lap. You tilted your head and kissed him again, but this time with slightly more passion than previously, Shawn quickly followed your lead, responding with more intensity than he had previously. You felt his hand slip under the hem of your t-shirt, and rested it above your hip bone, his calloused fingers rubbing circles on your warm skin. He slowly moved his hand up until he was close enough to your bra to get his phone.

When you moaned into his mouth he took it as his opportunity, quickly grabbing the top of it and sliding it out of your bra. You hadn’t realised what he was doing until you felt the absence of the cool phone against your chest, gasping and pulling away shortly after.

“Please don’t tell me that was just to get your phone” You blurted, you couldn’t care less if you sounded desperate in that moment, you just really needed to know.

“What, god no! Honey I really like you, I would never take advantage of you like that” He panicked, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“I-I like you too” you smiled, Shawn did too “Can I have my phone now?”

He hesitated “As long as you don’t text Daniel and I get at least ten kisses” he says seriously

“It’s David actually” You giggle slightly at his raised eyebrow, him clearly not finding that funny. “I’m kidding Shawn, and anyways, there’s not much use in a dating app any more, I mean I’ve got you now” you tap his nose causing him to scrunch up his face, making you laugh, to which he smiles at, loving the sound of your laugh and loving the fact that he was the reason behind it.

“Are you asking me to be your boyfriend” he asks, a large toothy grin on his face as he does so.

“I guess I am, is that alright with you Mendes?”

“I think I can manage that, yeah.” He teases admiring the way your eyes and nose crinkle when you laugh. “And anyway miss, I believe you owe me at least ten kisses” He jokingly puckered his lips and closed his eyes. You reach out to place your hand on his cheek, 

“Better get to it then hadn’t I?” he hums in agreement before you bring your lips down to meet his

[bigsnzstanacct]

D/ream Da/ddy SnzFic D*mien 1

I wrote a DD sneeze fic. I wanted to do a date each with all the dads and I may yet get to it but idk, I feel like I’d have to replay the game to get the style down again.Anyway!

Fyi His name is Cary… because that’s as close to “character” as I could get with a real name. Actually he uses a first initial. P. Cary. (The P is for player.) (Maybe the name is why he has daddy issues?) (dream daddy issues *eyebrows*).

Also Amanda is the Player Character’s daughter. That’s probably the only info you need if you don’t watch the show.

— Damien 1

I awkwardly fidget with my clothes. That’s what you do right, before you walk into your weirdly hot neighbor’s giant Gothic house? Right? Before you talk to your neighbor who walks around every day in a cape and waistcoat, and yells at Dead, Bath, and Beyond employees for insufficiently Victorian clothing, and could probably out vampire Brad Pitt in that Brad-Pitt-is-a-Sexy-Vampire movie… before you walk into his house, you fidget, right? That’s definitely normal. I’m sure it’s normal. Positive. Even if you are well-dressed, even if for whatever reason you put on your navy suit, even combed your hair into something approaching presentable, and if you happen to have worn the tight suit pants that show off the results of your squats well, that didn’t make things weird, right? Just one Dad visiting another Dad’s house, no ulterior motives here, no matter how single and attractive the Dads are—or at least one of the Dads are, and—

And all of a sudden there’s a crash of thunder, which came out of nowhere I swear, and then he door is open and there he is…

“Oh, hello, Cary. Delighted to have you.”

It’s an imposing sight. Damien standing there, in front of his big, scary, weirdly beautiful house, tall, lithe, pale, right on the edge of gaunt. Tall black doorframe towering over him, that waistcoat accentuating his tight, grab-able waist, the cape emphasizing his broad shoulders… the hard ridge of his jaw, the cascade of his hair. And those eyes. Purple eyes. That must be color contacts, right?

“Uh, Cary?”

OH THAT’S RIGHT I HAVE TO TALK.

“H-hey Damien! I, uh, thanks for… is there always a clap of thunder when you open the door?”

My dumb mouth.

“Usually.” Damien responds. I almost say something but then… I see the twinkle in his eyes.

“You’re… messing with me!” I exclaim, exasperated.

“Of course I am, didn’t you read the weather forecast? There’s supposed to be sporadic storms all day today. Lucky you came in before…”

And then it’s as if the whole sky opened up, because there’s a downpour out of nowhere and I have to sprint up the stairs and into this house before I get drenched. “H-heh, missed it by an inch, huh?”

I take in the house. It’s large, imposing… yes, creepy for sure but… also… really impressive. Full of oil paintings that ought to be full on Scooby-Doo terrifying, but… nope. They’re weirdly inviting, below the thin veneer of terror they inspire. Sort of like Damien himself.

“Might I interest you in a tour of the premises?” Damien asks, shocking me out of my reverie. Amanda told me I had to talk, and here I am, in Damien’s house, staring and not talking. Great job, Cary. I nod, apparently under the desire to convince Damien that I’m mute. Luckily, he loves talking about his house, and fills the silence much better than I could. I like that in a man. Good at talking. Definitely on my top ten qualities. “I’d love to show you…” Damien says, “well… a bit of a surprise, but. You’ll just have to stay for tea, until the rain clears up, I simply must show you… well, first, my bedroom. Not um,” he pinks up. The blush looks good on his pale skin. Can he hide anything from people? “Not to be… forward in any… it’s just, the best painting’s there. And I thought you might want to see. It’s an authentic 19th century painting, based on a scene from Tennyson, one of his dialogues, and it seemed like you liked the other paintings. Nothing more, of course.”

I’m pretty sure he’s walking a little faster now, and I bet if I wasn’t behind him I’d see that adorable blush again. Too bad the cape blocks the view of his ass… Geez, I have sex on the brain. I need to get laid. Or maybe it’s just spending time with all these guys… how is it that every single dad on this block is hot? And most of them are single! It’s almost like somebody planned it.

Damien shows me the painting, which, yes, I love it. And somewhere between the painting, and the library, and the fanfiction—don’t lie to me Damien, I know a slashfic when I see one—and the butterflies and the tea… I start having fun. I start having a lot of fun actually. I finally regain the use of my mouth, so I can actually talk, and once I’m talking we’re having a great conversation! The whole Victorian thing isn’t Damien’s whole personality or anything, it’s just something he really likes. And there’s something really charming about having a hobby he’s so passionate about. I wish I had any hobbies I was passionate about, besides of course the niceties of lawncare. And puns. I am passionate about puns. I’m a Dad, after all.

“…and it’s finally cleared up so… I can show you the last thing!” Damien says, excitedly. “If you’d like? I haven’t taken up too much of your time? I of course have the greatest deference for the leisure time of my houseguests, I wouldn’t want you to think I’m expecting you to bestow your entire afternoon upon me.”

“Oh, Damien, I’d love to bestow my afternoon on you.” Why does that sound vaguely dirty? “Lead the way!”

And so lead the way he does, walking me out into… oh no.

Well, not just oh no. It is beautiful. It’s gorgeous, it’s a whole garden of what seems like every single kind of flower in the world, it’s absolutely incredible. It’s just my allergies, and more than my allergies it’s…

“Oh no, you don’t like it. I… usually this is the part they like best, but… we can go back in if you…”

“No, no!” I interrupt, my voice blessedly free of the taint of allergic urge… for the moment. “No, we don’t need to go back in, I really like it here this is… this is incredible, Damien! I was just…” I rub at my nose quickly, hoping against hope that it won’t betray me again but… my nose always betrays me. My nose is my nemesis. Or at least the nemesis of me looking cool. Or sounding like a human, instead of—what did ‘Manda call me?—a fifty-foot-tall moose monster slash air cannon with a side of a large lion-type animal purring, weirdly?—Oh. Damien’s staring. I’m doing that not-talking thing again. “I was just taking a moment to take it all in, that’s all.” I say, all in a rush. For a second doubt flickered in his eyes, but Damien seemed to buy my explanation for the moment so all’s clear on the western front. For now.

Things go surprisingly well. Damien’s telling me what all the different flowers mean, and how the Victorians used flowers to express the feelings they were too awkward to express with words, and honestly that sounds pretty excellent to me. I manage to pull out that knowledge of flowers I gained once from watching a history channel special while half asleep, which seems to impress Damien (3AM History Channel to the rescue once again!). And Damien’s telling me all about how he put together a bouquet to express “I feel slight regret at having mistaken you for a human being when you are in fact a rotting skunk carcass in a suit and an Edwardian monocle,” when I felt…

IT.

Oh no. Oh no. IT was coming. I felt it. It was already too late. I felt it taking me over, rooting itself in my toes, radiating out from the tips of my nostrils to send a shiver down my spine, taking control of every ounce of strength in my body, stretching my mouth like loading a cannon, shutting my eyes as I shook my head, faintly protesting against the all-consuming power taking hold of me. It was coming. It was inevitable. It was unstoppable.

I was about to Dad Sneeze.

I remembered the day it came over me. I had been on guard for it. I had been vigilant. I had declared: I wasn’t going to fall prey. I might not be a cool dad. I could embrace the finer details of tree-pruning. I could expertly attempt to fix sinks, call the plumber, and have the whole thing fixed before Amanda or her mom got home. I loved Dad puns. But I was not going to be a Dad Sneeze Dad. No way. No how. It wasn’t going to get me…

I was on a date with Amanda’s mom when it struck. I was’t event trying to be a Dad then! I was being a Cool Guy Who Happened To Be Married And Have A Kid. I was going to get laid that night. (I still did. *wink*) I was just getting into the precise details of the color my steak should be on the inside when an urge came over me like none I’d ever felt before, and urge that was utterly beyond my control. Before I even knew what was happening, my face was exploding with a sound that terrified even me, let alone how the roar terrified half of the patrons of the very swanky restaurant I was treating my wife to (that I also, purely incidentally, happened to have a coupon for.) I was worried in the aftermath that a) I no longer had a face because I’d blown it off in the sneeze, or b) we’d be kicked out of Chez Frenchtaliano Surf and Turf. (A) wasn’t the case, but (B) was a near thing.

My Dad Sneezes had gotten worse since then.

But there was nothing to do, and as long as I’d managed to forestall it, among all these flowers? It was going to be a Dad Sneeze for the ages. I hitched, I gasped, I wheezed. I caught Damien’s terrified expression through shutterclicks as my eyes fluttered, and my head tipped back, and the feeling reached it’s apex and…

“HHHAARRRRRRRRRSSCCHHHHHHHOOOPPPPPFFFAAAGRRLLL!!!”

A ridiculous, thunderous, earth-shaking, category 9 Dad Sneeze exploded from my face.

My eyes stayed closed a moment after the sneeze, as I enjoyed the wash of euphoria that came over me after every monstrous sneeze, the momentary afterglow before I had to face the crowd I’d terrified. I sheepishly opened my eyes, half-afraid I’d blown down half Damien’s garden to find…

Damien’s eyes closing, his eyebrows going up, up, up, mouth falling open, the architecture of his nostrils flaring and twitching towards a…

“WWWWHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAASSCCHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”

Have you ever thought about what a vampire would sound like if it roared? That’s what Damien sneezing sounds like. Not a match for my own, it would probably only terrify three, four mallgoers on the outside (my record is roughly twenty-three; it had come on suddenly and I was in the middle of frantic Christmas Week Unprepared Single Dad Shopping), but a true Dad Sneeze nonetheless. I have to give the man his respect.

“Well! Excuse me!” Damien exclaims, giggling a bit. “I’m so sorry, I’ve just… did you know the Victorians were the first to identify the phenomenon of ‘sympathetic sneezing’?”

I can’t help but smile. There’s nothing to make you feel like you didn’t ruin a date neighborly hangout in a lovely Victorian garden with your galumphing sinuses than an equally (well, not quite equally) calamitous nasal eruption immediately following.

“Nice sneeze.” I say, raising my hand for a high five.

“Nice sneeze,” Damien responds, aiming for the elbow with flawless technique. Did the Victorians high-five? “Shall we… adjourn to the indoors, or…”

He seems almost hesitant to go inside, and to be honest so am I. As long as he’s cool with putting up with my…

“I mean, as long as you’re cool with putting up with my…” I say, miming the Sneeze of Doom I’d just unleashed.

“As long as you won’t mind my echoing call. We shall resound through the garden together! Now, have I explained to about the white crocus?”

“N-nuhh… you h-have… h-haveehhhhh… ehhHHH… EEEEHHHHTTTRRRRUUUSSSSCCCCHHHHHKKKKKKBBBBP!”

“WWWHHHHHEEEEYYYYYYYSSSHHHHHAAAAAAAA!!”

[marshmallowprotection]

Hi, could you please write about MC being kissed (lips!!!) by Yoosung, Saeyoung, Zen+Saeran before they're together (kinda like they couldn't resist and just had to kiss her) and Mc runs away from embarrassment but they think it's because she doesn't like them and then like resolve. (sorry bit boring but you write really well and no one writes this hc) Love ya ❤️❤️keep writing so well.

Coming up!

Yoosung Kim 

Okay… so, what the heck just happened? 

All he did was kiss you but you ran off before he could well, apologize. Yoosung doesn’t know what the heck he was thinking but he is also embarrassed by his actions! He didn’t think he would kiss you this soon or at all. The both of you were just hanging out and playing a game together and you managed to beat him. It caught him off-guard but the way that you laughed and the way that you smiled really set his heart on fire in such a way that he just. couldn’t stop himself from leaning in and stealing a kiss from you. 

Needless to say, your face was red hot and you were tongue-tied when he pulled away. 

“I… um, we… so, that happened.” is the most that Yoosung can manage in the heat of the moment. “I didn’t mean to uh, kiss you out of the blue like that but you were just… so cute.” 

Words aren’t coming to mind for you. All you can think about is that he just kissed you! Your heart is beating out of your chest and you decide to book it out of his apartment because it’s hard to breathe when you’re replaying a memory over and over in your head like a pause and play feature on a DVD menu. 

“I’m sorry, Y/N!” he calls after you but it’s to no avail. 

Yoosung buried his face in his hands and groaned. You ran off like you didn’t want that to happen. Did he just mess everything up kissing you like that out of the blue? He’s had this crush on you the entire time you’ve known him and he thought that maybe someday he might have the courage to ask you out on a date but he always wound up asking you something else int he heat of the moment. 

He spends the rest of the day worrying about a hundred different things in regards to you. He tries not to message you or anything because he assumes you might not want to talk to him. 

It isn’t until two days later that you’re standing at his front door with fingers digging into the cuffs of your sleeves that you manage to blurt out how you actually feel. “I’m sorry about running off in a hurry! I just- I was really embarrassed. I really like you! Like, I like you a lot! I know you probably didn’t get that from me running off like that. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you- liked me like that, Yoosung. So when you kissed me I was really- haha, just really… um… you know.” 

Yoosung is relieved to hear those words. He reached out and took hold of your shaking hands that you were trying to hide from him. “I-I’m happy to hear you say that. I really like you too, Y/N. I didn’t think you liked me like that, either.” 

Zen

As long as Zen has known you he has been interested in you. There hasn’t been a moment that he didn’t love the way that you spoke to him or the way that you smiled in the face of disaster. Everything about you has driven him crazy for months, and honestly, he’s just happy that you’ve wanted to hang out with him whenever he has the time for you instead of work. He cherishes those little moments because you’re always so close to him and the way that you laugh at his little attempts at flirting with him, it makes him hopeful for a time when you might like him back. It’s okay if you didn’t, he just wanted to dream. 

Except, one evening he got it into his head that he just couldn’t hold himself back any longer. You were telling him about something you were excited about him and he felt so happy to see how happy you were, and without even really thinking it through, he just leans over and stole one little kiss. 

You look like a poor deer in the headlights when he pulls away, with wide eyes and blushed cheeks. 

“Wow,” you managed to say. 

“Wow,” Zen echoes right back. 

When he opens his mouth to say something else that’s when you manage to stutter some kind of excuse and book it out of his place. Zen doesn’t know what to make of your reaction. He thinks that you might have been embarrassed with the whole thing, but then again when he was flirting with you, you weren’t as quick to react like that. Which in turn, made him assume that you didn’t like him the way that he liked you. Look, It was depressing to think about. 

It’s left in that window of uncertainty for a couple of days. You speak with him off and on but he never bothers you about the kiss. He thinks that you need space to think about all of that before you address it. It isn’t until you come to visit him that weekend that he even gets an answer. You’ve literally come to his door, standing in the rain, staring up at him with so many feelings. 

You don’t have a lot of energy bursting at the seams but with all of your courage, you manage to muster out everything that you’ve been holding in for months. “I like you, Zen! No, I really-really-really like you. I never thought you would ever be interested in like that, so when you kissed out of nowhere I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was just- really embarrassing to be so open about my feelings, I kind of resigned myself to nothing ever coming out of it and-” 

Zen presses a finger to your lips to gently shush the negative comments that were coming out of your mouth. “Of course, I like you, Y/N. I wouldn’t have kept you so close otherwise. You’re perfect, even when you’re flustered like this. Why don’t we pick up where we left off, then, what do you say, Jagiya?” 

Saeyoung Choi

Seven doesn’t know what it is about you that makes him feel the way that he does but he knows that he would never want to lose you out of his life. Knowing that he’s tried to ignore the budding feelings in his chest for as long as he could but that day he couldn’t stop himself from leaning in and stealing a kiss from your lips. You were playing games with each other, toying back and forth with horrible jokes until the other couldn’t handle it anymore. When he got to see the way that you shined so bright that was it for him. With your faces inches apart, he just leans in and takes the leap of faith. 

It seems like the world is perfect at that moment. 

Seven does pull away after a moment. When he sees how pink your cheeks have become he’s a little pleased with himself, but you haven’t said anything. It spurs him to brush your hair out of your eyes and sighs, contentedly. “Wow. Y/N, you are so out of this world.” 

“I- I gotta go, excuse me,” you whispered, hurriedly, before you ran out of the room. 

It left Seven to groan and press a hand against his forehead. There he goes again, screwing everything he’s ever loved up once again for what had to be the umpteenth time in his life. He tries to play it off when Saeran comes into the room and asks him why you had run off so fast as if he had finally pushed you to the limit of stupidity. 

It really does feel like that so Seven just kind of hangs his head in shame and tries to play off his fears. What’s worse is that you don’t really respond to any of his messages besides from the home that you got back to your apartment safely. 

It really puts a wrench in his heart, and it makes him go back to this dark place for a little while. 

And it isn’t until a few days later when he musters up the courage to come and see you again that he finds you standing at his door. He had been coming to you but you had come to him instead. You’re breathing hard as if you had run the whole way here. Your cheeks are flush, and the look in your eyes is determined. 

“Um, Y/N? Are you okay?” 

Rather than answer his question, you instead launch yourself at him and steal a kiss of your own. 

He’s totally caught off-guard. “Wow! Um, what a passionate greeting… what… what was that for, Y/N?” he asks. 

“To make up for running off,” you admit as you look away from him. “I didn’t mean to do that I just got overwhelmed with everything. I really didn’t mind that you had done that. I had been wanting to kiss you for a long time but I never felt brave enough to do it. So… when you did it… I didn’t know what to do, so I just ran. I knew you might have got the wrong impression when I ran off so I- I had to come back and explain myself.” 

Seven is relieved, and he can’t help but laugh at how embarrassed you feel, because he feels just as ridiculous for thinking that you didn’t like him. “I think we should make up for that last time, what do you think, Y/N?”  

Saeran Choi 

It could be said that you were the first person after his brother that accepted him after everything that happened with Mint Eye and the aftermath of that destruction. Most of the others were a little wary of him even if Saeyoung had vouched for him, it was just this unsaid thing that Saeran saw in their eyes. It was different with you, at least, he wanted to think that. You had been at his side throughout your stay in Rika’s apartment, and for Saeran, it felt like you were just being kind to him because Saeyoung had asked you to be that way. You were his best friend, now, after all. 

But the way that your eyes shined when you spoke to him as if he was a normal person made him feel alive again. Saeran wouldn’t give anything in the world to make that go away. He liked it the way that it was. With you at his side every now and again. Your company was something that he craved but he would never admit that outright. It was difficult for him. And yet, despite that, the two of you were very close. 

It started out as a normal day. You two were hanging out and everything was as typical it could be, just watching a movie together and cracking jokes about how awful the thing was... it was one of those moments when Saeran could let his guard down and you would never press hard to make him feel like he had to open up or anything. You say something at that moment that’s particularly one thing that strikes his heart dead through the center.  

He doesn’t realize he’s taken your face in his hands and kissed you until he’s pulled away to catch his breath. 

Your heart is pounding out of your chest. Of all the things you expected him to do you never thought he would outright kiss you. In a lot of ways, you’re happy, and in others.... you’re nervous as hell. You’ve wanted to do that for months but you never wanted to get into his personal space. But now that it’s happened you don’t know what to do, so you just run off. 

It’s quiet for a few days. 

It isn’t until Saeyoung messages you and asks you what happened do you realize that you really messed things up. Because he tells you that Saeran has been really distant, and by that, he means a lot more than usual and it’s been that way since you left their place. 

It’s that realization that makes you get your ass in gear and pull out all of the strength that you have to be honest. You head over to his place to sort all of this out. 

Your head is bowed and you feel pretty awful about running off like that in the midst of everything. Saeran had taken a chance and you must have incidentally made him feel awful. Which was never your intention. “I’m sorry about running off, Saeran. I’ve just never really been all that good at telling people how I feel… especially somebody like you, who I actually really do like a lot. When you kissed me I just didn’t know what to do. I should have just been honest about my feelings instead of getting embarrassed. I guess it made the wrong impression… since you’ve been holed up for a while, at least, that’s what Saeyoung said.”

Saeran sighed. The way he held himself is pretty tight, and his shoulders are lined with tension. He thought you had come here to let him down slowly but when he hears that you like him it changes the way he’s thinking a lot. “Wait, you… do like me?” 

You nod your head, still embarrassed. “Um, yeah. I like you like that, Saeran. And if you aren’t too mad at me for leaving you hanging, I’d like to try that kiss again?” 

“…Alright.” 

💜 Mod Kait 💜

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Spider-Man: Far From Home Thoughts Part 2 a.k.a. Spider-Man Euro-Trip

I apologize for the delay in finishing up this series. Life got in the way so I’ve speeded through getting this series of posts wrapped up.

In this part I’m going to discuss the movie unto itself rather than as MCU Chapter 23. In essence it’s more about Peter’s character and world unto themselves rather than how they are furthering along the over all MCU narrative.

I plan on covering this more in an upcoming post but, Peter’s characterization, for all the inconsistencies there were when you took Civil War into account, was overall more consistent in Homecoming.

However when viewing Far From Home after Civil War, Homecoming, Infinity War, Endgame and then this there is distinctly something off about how Peter is played.

Peter seems much more...shallow in regards to his responsibilities as a hero.

His arc across the film essentially boils down to him just wanting a fun vacation with the hopes of wooing MJ (I’m too tired to write Michelle every time otherwise I’d not dignify her character with the nickname) but at the same time being presented with a crisis that demands he step up not just as a hero but into Iron Man’s shoes and gradually accepting that.

Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaall me crazy but....um...doesn’t that rather conflict with Peter’s attitude in Homecoming. I can understand the idea that he needs to now be more than just a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man in a post-Endgame world and recoiling from such an abrupt burden foisted upon him. But...he seems reluctant to basically cut into his fun time and his chance to hook up with a girl (even though that chance is very remote).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, ‘he’s a teenager though’.

But ignoring that lazy handwave justification (being ‘a teenager’ isn’t carte blanche to write him however), the Peter Parker of Homecoming was eager to leap into bigger scale issues (even if he wasn’t ready for them) and in general forgo his personal gratification or personal needs for the greater good. Which is you know...what he does in the comics too; just mentioning that to save me repeating it later in the adaptation section. But you need not even look to the comics to tilt your head in confusion about this characterization, simply watch the previous films.

As for other elements of Peter’s characterization and in this film in general...well..the term ‘undercooked’ would about sum it up.

For starters his desire to date MJ is entirely out of nowhere. Could it have something to do with her becoming comparatively more likable and less mean spirited than in the last film, to the point where her snark and cynicism mostly disappears once she learns Peter is Spider-Man (we’ll get to that)? Maybe...or maybe it’s just lazy and contrived romance writing, but refer back to ‘Part 0’ for a neat video discussing that.

Much more egregious is what is in theory supposed to be the emotional core of the movie, Peter grieving Tony.

It’s underexplored to the point where it’s just there, referenced enough to pay lip service to the idea but ignored otherwise when inconvenient, which is to say the majority of the movie.

It’s so perplexing because the film dwells upon dealing with the aftermath of Tony’s death (fuck Steve I guess) and yet Peter himself doesn’t. There are a few moments where he looks sad, but there are only one or two scenes where his grief is on real display and they are respectively briefly at the start of the movie and in the third act

Overwhelming more attention is given over to Peter not wanting to step up to Tony’s shoes or date MJ than him actually being sad his father figure is dead. It’s like the film pays lip service to him being sad and grieving him whilst it’s more the film itself that’s sad for his loss. It doesn’t even try to imply that this grief is why Peter wants to be normal for awhile, that something you have to headcanon from the movie.

Now of course the film NEEDS to acknowledge Tony’s death because Tony was such a huge part of Homecoming which this is a sequel to. It wouldn’t be internally consistent for it to NOT bring that up.

However, putting aside how the film doesn’t have Peter address his realistic grief properly, there is a difference between addressing Tony’s death and building the entire plot of your film around him.

Because as already talked about, this movie is dependent upon Tony and his legacy. The villain is a dark reflection of Iron Man and his scheme revolves around trying to become his successor, whilst Peter is played as a foil to him because he is Tony’s successor but initially doesn’t want to be. Meanwhile memorials to Tony are shoved in our faces, literally from the start of the credits.

Much like Homecoming, but maybe worse, this robs Peter and his personal journey of sooooooooooooo much independence. T’Challa gets to be his own man in his own movie but Peter not only starts out in Tony’s shadow but grows to BECOME Tony’s shadow, though the movie will try to deny that.

This is even true of the villains. Vulture was a reflection of Tony who’s motivation was built around Tony. In this film Mysterio is much the same. In a vaccuum (or an Iron Man movie) this wouldn’t be that bad.

But because we’ve seen this before in the last movie and once again Mysterio isn’t a reflection of Peter himself. This Mysterio is robbed of his uniqueness and doesn’t work as a SPIDER-MAN villain beyond the fact that they are both heirs to Tony’s legacy. In other words Mysterio only works as a Spider-Man villain in so far as he is a reflection of Tony and so is Peter.

That’s just awful characterization as it means both characters are in truth reliant upon another character, who’s dead might I add. It’s not even an element of their characters either, it’s how these versions of them were constructed from the inside out. At least Vulture and Peter were both working class, that was something! Even the dynamic of the traitorous mentor is problematic because that again is a reflection of Peter and Tony’s relationship. Tony Stark is fundamentally critical to contextualizing everything about our protagonist and antagonist.

This is especially insulting since Marvel Studios has something of a reputation for building their movies around their central protagonists, to build them up as much as possible. First Avenger, Thor 2011, Iron Man 2008, all constructed around Steve, Thor and Tony, everything comes from their characters outwards creatively speaking. They are the centre of their worlds.

In the MCU Spider-Man movies Peter Parker is the centre of his world, but it’s a moon orbiting Planet Stark within the constellation MCU.

And it’s so on the nose too. Him being the next Iron Man was obvious enough with how many times that phrase was repeated in the movie but once Peter started playing with Tony’s toys, to build a suit for himself, with a holographic web shooter that looked like a holographic repulsor gauntlet, to the same soundtrack from Iron Man 2008  it was utterly obnoxious. They pay lip service to the idea that actually they aren’t doing that but it’s just obviously not true. It also comes complete with a rote and cliché line about Tony only giving his life because he knew Peter would pick up his mantle. Which is entirely false by the way he didn’t give his life for that at all.

Going back to Mysterio for a moment, there are many more issues with his role in the movie. An obvious one was his plan. Let’s ignore whether or not he could believably put his operation together less than a year after Endgame, his end goal doesn’t make sense.

He wants to join the Avengers and have access to Tony’s satellite network. Okay I guess that maybe makes sense but he’s faking his credibility as a hero to do it. Eventually the lie would obviously be exposed whenever a real world threat occurs.

Peter also grows to trust him waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too quickly being cavalier about Beck knowing his identity. In fact he’s unrealistically cavalier about that throughout the movie. He makes out with MJ on a London bridge, London being a city famous for how much CCTV there is. He doesn’t care that random SHIELD agents know his face or name and that’s to say nothing of chilling out in a bar unmasked but in costume with Mysterio surrounded by strangers. More attention was paid to Michelle knowing who he was than anyone else in this movie and yet we have to contrive a reason or him to wear the Noir costume for toy sales.

Speaking of that bar scene it’s maybe the worst scene of the film.

I have never in my life seen a more obvious and badly executed exposition dump in my life. You know how it’s totally cliché for the villain to tell the hero his master plan? Try the villain is telling his own henchmen his master plan even though they all already know it so it’s literally just there for the audience. And that Master plan comes complete with stock footage from Iron Man and Captain America movies and the whole room now knowing who Spider-Man is. It’s just so poorly executed.

Now to be fair, there were a few things that were good regarding Mysterio.

The most obvious is his costume and the fantastic action set pieces involving him, especially the one in Berlin. They could’ve done a lot more stuff like that though so it was a tad underwhelming

  is a little something to be said of the Peter/Beck dynamic. Holland and Gyllenhaal have truly great chemistry.

POSSIBLY that great chemistry could lead to some veeeeeeery young viewers actually being fooled by the reveal that Mysterio is the villain.

But I doubt it.

Even though there were some people who apparently hadn’t seen Frozen or any number of movies to deduce from the trailer who was the villain, if you were watching in context it was painfully obvious.

Further working against the movie was cultural osmosis.

On one level Mysterio is a fan favourite Spider-Man villain who’s made his way into a massive number of adaptations, even being the primary villain of some video games. He was a major villain in the iconic Spider-Man 2 video game and in Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions. He’s appeared in practically every single Spider-Man cartoon. People were talking about Bruce Campbell playing him back in the 2000s and very early 2010s.

On another level we live in a day and age where the internet and nerd culture is so prevalent that as soon as Mysterio was announced as a villain Joe Average on the street likely picked up just by the chatter around them that Mysterio was a villain, if they didn’t just google his name at some point.

So as a twist in the movie unto itself (remember I’m not looking at this as an adaptation) it simply didn’t work. It worked even less than the truly obnoxious ‘this is a movie about being young, and Spider-Man is young don’t ya know’ vibe running across the movie, kicking off with the crappy high school level youtube video tribute. More than this there were many times where the whole movie felt like a big budget Disney Channel original movie spinning out of a Disney channel sitcom. This was more evident in the funny yet also annoying Ned/Betty relationship and the just plain annoying teachers.

Then again that might just be the curse of the overly jokey MCU formula which is very much a formula now whenever Coogler or the Russos aren’t making the movies. I wouldn’t have minded if Spider-Man was making the jokes but he wasn’t it was just ‘funny antics’ happening around him. In that sense this felt more like one of the Ant-Man movies more than anything else, especially in so far as the comic relief supporting cast (Flash the mathlete being especially pathetic).

The cringe humour was even employed so that Marvel could have their cake and eat it regarding the resolution of the movie.

See early on in the movie Aunt May throws a banana at an unsuspecting Peter which allows us to set up his ‘Peter tingle’, i.e. the spider sense. It’s explained that he was caught unawares of that but is never the less able to dodge bullets.  This boils down to:

‘This power will only work when convenient to the plot so shut up.’

That’s simply pathetically lazy writing. It doesn’t even try to explain how or why the spider sense (I refuse to use the cringe gag name ‘Peter tingle’) is inconsistent. It just is, as is the use of it in the movie. It’s literally not mentioned again until the final act of the movie where, wouldn’t you know it, it winds up saving the day. We don’t even get a cool visual or sound effect to showcase it, we just know from dialogue he has this power and must be using it.

Finally let’s talk about the mid-credits scene.

To begin with it showcases just how much Feige clearly likes the JMS run, more specifically the half that was wrapped up in editorial mandates. Hence Spider-Man’s identity goes public. Now unto itself this could be used to make a compelling future movie...but not a good Spider-Man movie. Spider-Man becoming a global celebrity with no anonymity is arguably worse than him being a billionaire’s surrogate son or being a globe trotting agent.

The only real positive of the scene is the return of J.K. Simmons, the greatest casting choice of any modern superhero film probably. His return was welcome and delivered wonderfully. A cherry on top of an otherwise shitty cake.

Ultimately Far From Home was a fluff piece Marvel movie. Not a bad time killer but something only enjoyable if you turn your brain off.

P.S. Isn’t it great how the trailers lied to us by giving us whole scenes not in the final movie?

[moonnfairie]

Proximity

Real Life!AU - Chapter 8 (final)

Author: softmochijm

Pairing: Reader x Jungkook

Word Count: 4,902

Warnings: Alcohol use, if you squint incredibly hard, smut.

A/N: Hello everyone!~ I hope you enjoy this chapter, because I had a hell of a lot of fun writing and adding something a little different to it. I also have a few more notes at the end of this chapter so check that out too when you’re done. I love you all and this series so much oh my goodness.

You know what Gguk...

I love you too.

The words echoed in your head as you were lying in bed even a week after the wedding. You wanted to give in completely to your swooning heart, but knew in the back of your mind that it wouldn’t be right to forget everything you had with Yoongi just like that.

In a strange series of events, you ended up falling for the both of them. You honestly had no idea that this would even be possible considering you thought you wouldn’t even experience what love truly felt like until you were nearly old and frail (an over dramatic estimate, of course), but here you were feeling compellingly strong emotions for both Yoongi and Jungkook.

You tossed in your sheets, mentally beating yourself up for allowing yourself to get in such a predicament.

You’ve always had a connection with Jungkook, since the day you both met. It’s like you knew within your soul that you would form a strong bond with him. Every time you two were together, you only felt uplifted, joyful, and content with life. He made you smile and laugh, and was there for you whenever you did have tears to cry. He learned everything about you effortlessly, knowing when to push and motivate you and when you’ve had enough, knowing when to take you on spontaneous adventures and when to let you relax in your room to escape the outside world. It seems as if though he may have been ridiculously oblivious to your feelings for him, he knew exactly what he felt for you, he probably didn’t want to ruin everything you both had going for each other.

And when things got unfortunately rocky between you two, you went to Yoongi to confide in. You shake your head knowing you approached him for convenience, but knew in your heart that whatever you felt for him was absolutely genuine. He treated you like you were the only girl in this entire world, and your heart soared over it. You feel so selfish to have accepted it all knowing that even he knew where you were in your feelings: stuck between two men. You respected that he didn’t push you into a certain direction and that even after the night at the hospital, he never bothered to bring up the question you still couldn’t answer to this day.

But as much as you know you’d want to say yes, you knew it wasn’t the right decision for yourself.

Jungkook told you to aim for not a sliver, but wholesome happiness. You wanted that too, you wanted it for everyone, but you also know that you simply can’t please everyone.

It’s going to take some time to come to terms with the aftermath that letting down Yoongi will bring upon you, but in time, you know that things will heal, and hopefully he will too.

You will speak to Yoongi about this.

Summer was slowly approaching it’s end, and you figured what better way to celebrate it than rallying up all of your friends and welcoming them into your home. You rarely held parties, if you could even call them that, the closest thing to it were your movie nights. But considering everyone’s schedules were about to get insanely busy, you wanted to at least get together one last time before everyone got into conflicting schedules.

Knowing Jin and Yoongi might feel awkward with just you and your group, you decide to invite Jin’s other friends as well.

You immediately frown at Yoongi’s fast and blunt response, feeling your chest get heavy. In no way were you trying to imply anything with that text, especially with the way that things were left between you two, but you take the heat and (try) to wait patiently for another text.

You throw your phone on your bed before you can get even more worked up over these children, and take deep breaths to calm yourself down. You were scared about Yoongi, considering how now he’s actually showing you the cold shoulder. This is all your fault, you say to yourself, only contacting him through a group chat after so long, so it’s only fair he treats you like this. However, it’ll get you no where to sulk in your room for the rest of the day, so you decide to get up, get ready, and prepare the house for tonight.

In the midst of the chaos that’s going on in the kitchen with Jin and you cooking, you feel your phone vibrate in your back pocket and your heart starts to race. Is it Yoongi trying to back out of tonight? Or is he going full force and telling you that you just can’t be friends anymore?? You hastily run to the sink to wash your hands and pull your phone out to sigh in relief (and slight disappointment) over seeing Andrea’s name in the notification.

You audibly groan and roll your eyes, leaning your head on the nearby wall. How did she even hear about it?

Well, there’s that. In some twisted way, you do feel bad for her, considering Jungkook may have been one of her only good friends in a while, especially after losing you. Though you don’t care to check in on her, you can tell she hasn’t really been out and about with anyone, so you give in.

Just so he doesn’t freak out to see his ex show up at your door, you text Jungkook a heads up.

Despite being caught in a whirlwind of emotions, reading Jungkook’s text to you slows everything down and makes you feel calm. If everything goes to shit tonight, you at least have him to confide in after the storm.

You continue to cook with Jin, yelling and laughing at each other, sharing this wholesome time together after what seems to be like forever. You may live in the same house but he’s always out working or socializing, and you purposefully try to be out at all times, but when you get the chance, you always try to make some time for each other. Jin has been your guiding light your entire life, acting between a parent or the protective older brother when he needed to. You loved him for everything he was, kind, smart, hardworking, annoying. He always talked sense into your life, and you knew he was always right.

Especially when it came to his friends.

To Yoongi, especially.

“So you’re going to tell him tonight, right?”

You’re taken back by the sudden change in conversation and his annoyingly cunning way of knowing what’s going on in your life.

“I guess so. He deserves to know everything and I deserve to take a lot of blame for it” you sigh as you’re adding chopped up vegetables to the noodles that you’re stirring.

Jin walks over to where you’re standing and pats your back. “I wouldn’t say that, however true it may be.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Listen, in life you’re going to date people and it either works or it doesn’t, simple as that. Your case might have been messier, but he already understands that. I warned him, going into this. He knew all along. Just have some closure and that’ll be that. He’s a big boy, he can handle himself.”

You sigh even deeper now, nodding your head while taking in everything that Jin said. You already know what to do, there’s no more time to be scared.

It happens tonight.

Surprisingly, Jin’s friends are first to arrive, greeting you one by one as they enter the door, Yoongi coming in last. You spare him a quick, small smile and greet him hello and he reciprocates the small gesture, closely trailing behind Namjoon as they make their way to the living room. They weren’t kidding about fortnite, you just didn’t expect that’d be the first thing they’d do when arriving.

After watching them breeze through a couple of rounds, you see Yoongi’s gummy smile forming on his face again. You haven’t seen it in a while. You haven’t seen him in a while, but it makes you happy to at least know his friends can do that for him, especially when you’ve failed to do that for a while.

Before you could blame yourself more, your front door barges open to an overly excited trio of boys holding alcohol and bags of chips. Jimin is the first to step in and give you a big smile, Taehyung shortly following to rub your shoulder comfortingly, then Jungkook, gazing admirably into your eyes. You feel the blush rush into your cheeks, looking down to the floor smiling until he walks up to you hold you into his warm, welcoming embrace, one that wasn’t lopsided now that his arm was finally healed. He pulls back to look at your face even closer, smirking as he sees you getting lost in his big doe eyes. All you manage to croak out is a tiny “hello” and he laughs at you, patting your head as he helps put the food and drinks on the dining table nearby.

You clear your throat in attempts to catch everyone’s attention, the older boys attempting to tune in but their eyes still glued to the flat screen in front of them.

“Well, we’re all here now! I mean.. except for Andrea, but that’s whatever. Let’s eat!”

“Shhh yeah yeah we’ll be there in a sec I’m about to kick Yoongi’s ass” Jin quickly retorts, and Yoongi scoffs right next to him, hearing a couple gunshots on the screen shortly followed by Jin wailing and the older boys screaming and laughing with glee at Yoongi’s hidden gaming skills.”... Now we can eat” Jin continues, pouting teasingly at the boys but giggling as he makes his way to the table.

It’s nice to see everyone here all together, even if they’re from Jin’s and your own friend group, you see mostly everyone mingling, smiling, and having a good time. On the other hand, you have Jungkook and Yoongi on opposite sides of the room, trying to speak to whoever’s next available that isn’t remotely close to each other, catching them make eye contact every now and then, and quickly looking over to you. You try to be nonchalant about your obvious spying, quickly looking at your phone when one of them looks at you, but you know it’s no use. You’re blatantly standing off to the side watching everything go down.

However, Jimin breaks the ice by offering to pour the drinks, and Taehyung turns on some music on your sound system. Everyone happily obliges, and you join the huddle at the countertop shortly after.

This is where you get more comfortable.

Everyone seems more loose now, talking in one big group, laughing at joke after joke, and you’re peacefully watching it all until you hear loud thumping on your front door through the relatively loud music that’s playing.

“Y/n my love!!” Andrea shouts while running to hug you. You keep your arms to your sides, softly laughing to yourself at how hard she’s trying to be your friend again.

“Hey Andrea, come on in” you say with a small but genuine smile as you move to the side as she walks in. She looks over to the group of boys sitting in your living room and raises an eyebrow at you teasingly. “How in the world did you get so lucky to be involved with seven gorgeous men??”

“To be fair, one of them’s my brother, three of them are my best friends, and the other’s I don’t know as much. They’re just chill people, really.”

Andrea smirks at you and you embrace yourself for whatever comes out of her mouth next. “Ah, chill people for sure. Like Yoongi, I’m sure you already know how chill he is, don’t you y/n.”

“Andrea please don’t make me regret my decision to let you over.”

“Fine, fine, I’m only teasing. I’ll grab you a drink?”

“Please.”

A couple more drinks and everything seems bolder to you. The conversations going on, the music, Jungkook staring from across the room. You try to hide it, but you’re eyeing him back. There’s a look that you’re both sharing, and it’s screaming “I want you.” As a friend, as a lover, as everything you could have wished for your entire friendship. Taehyung snaps him out of his gaze every now and then to continue whatever conversation they’re holding, which causes you to scan the room to find Yoongi, staring right back at you. Maybe after all you’ve already drank you’d think you could finally say something to him, so you stand from your seat to walk over, but you’re stopped by a sudden grip at your wrist, turning around to see Jungkook incredibly close to your face again, your heart beating insanely fast in your chest.

“Hey” he says with a full grin, making your heart melt.

“Hi, Gguk”

“I haven’t been able to talk to you all night, you’ve been a very popular host.”

“Yeah I’m sorry, I’ve just been keeping an eye on everyone making sure they’re alright and what not.”

“As you should be” he smiles again, the wrinkles by his eyes looking immensely adorable. “But someone’s definitely been keeping a close eye on you too...” his voice trails off as he nods in the general direction of where Jin’s friends were standing now.

Confused, you respond “Jin? Yeah I guess he would be.”

“Oh, no, not Jin. I meant Yoongi...” he looks around the room and you follow, not spotting him anywhere.

“I’ll go find him” you say with a smile, and as you turn to walk away, you feel his fingers lightly brush on yours as you separate from his touch. This comforts you only temporarily, as you remember that there might be a reason Yoongi can’t be seen right now. He might be outside trying to be away from the crowd, but as you peek at your front porch, he isn’t there.

You run back inside to check the kitchen and bathroom but he isn’t there either.

“Could he be on the roof...?” you ask to yourself, and slowly make your way up the stairs, wobbling slightly from side to side. You find that the hallway lights are on, something you know you didn’t do yourself because you left them off before heading downstairs earlier.

Cautiously, you walk down the long hallway, seeing the doors to all of the bedrooms open, but gasping when you see the bathroom door closed shut. Relieved, you make your way over to the door to knock on it but you’re abruptly stopped in your tracks to hear low voices coming from inside.

You lean your head onto the door to hear muffled conversation going on, picking up a voice that seems to be Andrea’s. She’s speaking to someone, maybe on the phone? You can’t really tell who, because you can only pick up Andrea’s high pitched voice. You’re about to knock when you hear her make lewd, drawn out sounds and you’re frozen in shock. You want to tell her to stop, to get out, to leave your house, but your throat feels as if it’s shut tight, and you’re stuck motionless.

Your head is spinning wild when you hear a soft “Yoongi..” through the door, and from that it feels as if you’ve sobered up in seconds, barging down the door to find Andrea messily making out with Yoongi.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” you scream at the top of your lungs, hoping someone from downstairs would hear you to witness what’s going with you because you just can’t believe your own eyes.

They both yelp out your name at the same time, Yoongi rushing to push Andrea off of him.

“I-I don’t know, I had too much to drink, y/n, there’s just too much going on-”

Andrea coldly interrupts him “You said you were into me, Yoongi. Don’t even lie right now!”

You are absolutely stunned at what’s unfolding in front of you. At this point you don’t know who to believe, but to your luck Jungkook ends up running to your side, pulling you close to him by your waist and jaw dropping at the sight of both Yoongi and Andrea on your bathroom floor together.

“What the hell are you two doing?!” he yells, eyes fixated on Andrea only.

“Hi Jungkookie. It’s a shame we had to see each other like this.”

Yoongi looks over to her and retorts “You’re so fucking sick!”

All attempts to keep your cool have been lost when you lose yourself completely. “Get the fuck out of my house Andrea! NOW!”

Everyone falls silent, even the music downstairs has stopped as you’re sure they’ve suspected something going on upstairs.

Andrea stands up, brushes her skirt, and walks out and downstairs without a word. You’re comforted to hear Jimin’s muffled voice say “I think it’s best if you don’t come back,” and after a few more seconds, you hear her grunt as she slams the front door shut.

You close your eyes and take deep breaths, counting to five each inhale and exhale. You were disappointed to find yourself still in the middle of this scene: both Yoongi and Jungkook looking at you with wide, concerned eyes.

“I guess it happens now” you say lowly, both boys nodding in agreement.

You always fantasized about being with the boy you love up on your rooftop every single summer night. It was still a gorgeous night at that, stars shining beautifully above, wind dancing in the trees with the leaves rustling like calm ocean waves crashing on the shore. This is everything you could have wanted, but in this moment you never imagined having two boys you’ve fallen for up here with you at the same time, discussing the weird predicament you all have wound up in together.

“I’ll start” Yoongi announces lowly, keeping his gaze away from both you and Jungkook.

“I drank more than I should. My thoughts were clouded. I was... jealous... of the two of you.”

You look down sullenly at his confession. Of course he would be, you left things unfinished between the two of you so of course there were lingering feelings.

He continues, “but... I’m really in no position to get in between the two of you. I never was. And with Andrea I just... I don’t know, I said ‘fuck it’ because I thought it’d help me forget about feelings at all. But I was wrong, I know I am wrong. I am so sorry for hurting you,” at this, he leans forward to make eye contact with Jungkook, “and you too, dude.”

Jungkook reaches from behind you to pat Yoongi’s shoulders lightly “Andrea’s... interesting... it’s not your fault, bro.”

There’s a stillness in the air between you all now. Your adrenaline high is going down, and it seems the boys on either side of you are also relaxing as well.

You’re next to speak.

“Yoongi... I’m sorry if in any way I lead you on. Everything I felt for you was genuine, without a doubt. But I guess my thoughts were clouded too. I haven’t been thinking straight about any of this until-” you look to Jungkook and he smiles at you, pushing loose strands of hair behind your ear and nodding as if encouraging you to continue. You look back to Yoongi.

“until I spoke to Jungkook on the night of his accident. Right now, it’s probably the best if we were to remain friends. I know it’s going to sting for the both of us at first but... you deserve to be happy, Yoongi. I probably can’t give that to you right now.”

Yoongi nods acceptingly, smiling peacefully at you. “I appreciate it... and I know.” He gets up to make his way back into the house, but turns back to look at you and Jungkook before doing so.

“Thank you for everything” and he waves goodbye.

Jin is at the front porch quietly talking among his friends while you’re saying goodbye to Taehyung near the front door.

“You sure you guys are going to be okay cleaning this all up?” Taehyung kindly asks, and both you and Jungkook look at each other, smile, and nod. “Don’t worry about us, Tae. Everything will be fine here.”

“Wish I could say the same for us.” Jimin comes stumbling out of the bathroom, holding his stomach. “You know what, I’ll be fine. I just have to lay down...”

You all laugh at him and hug each other goodbye, waving everyone off as they leave your front driveway to hop into ubers.

Jin walks in on you and Jungkook practically studying each other and clears his throat, catching your attention.

“Sooooo uh, I’m sleeping over at Yoongi’s tonight. You can clean up tomorrow if anything, y/n. Just have a good night tonight”

You’re confused as to why he’s speaking speaking to you in almost a teasing tone, but both you and Jungkook bid him farewell as he exits the front door.

“And then there were two” Jungkook jests, and you giggle as you turn around to pick up loose trash on the floor. For the most part, there isn’t really too much to clean, but considering everything that happened tonight, it left you feeling rather exhausted.

You yawn and stretch your arms over your head as you make your way up the stairs, confused to hear Jungkook call out “good night!” to you from the living room. At this, you spin around and peek your head over from behind the wall.

“What, you’re sleeping on the couch Gguk?”

“I mean... yeah? Your parents’ bed isn’t an option and I’d rather not sleep in Jin’s...”

You start to blush again. You’re very thankful that he’s this considerate to know it’d be respectful to sleep downstairs. Not knowing where the confidence came from, you tell him “You can sleep with me... i-if you wanted to.”

You hear a small gasp come from Jungkook’s mouth, eyes wide in surprise, but he gulps and then smiles, saying “As long as it’s alright with you”

You both then head up the stairs together, grabbing Jungkook necessary toiletries and some of Jin’s old clothes for pajamas. Jungkook smiles and thanks you before rushing to the bathroom and closing the door. At this, you run into your bedroom, lock your door, and scavenge through your drawers to find the cute pajama set you had recently bought from the local lingerie store. Why were you doing this, you didn’t know, it’s not like anything was going to go down between you two tonight anyway... right?

“I guess I have to just... look nice to sleep.” you say to yourself aloud, hoping Jungkook didn’t hear you just say that through the doors.

You slip into the set quickly, brushing your hair and checking yourself out in the mirror to make sure you look “presentable.” You get lost in your appearance until you hear Jungkook trying to open your door, knocking lightly and calling your name gently.

“O-oh, sorry Jungkook, let me just...” you walk over your door to open it, and the both of you find each other gawking at how good the both of you look. Mind, Jungkook is only wearing a rather fitted white tee and shorts, but it’s still a sight to behold. You manage to forget you’re wearing a satin set until Jungkook gulps and blurts “That’s a pretty fancy set of pajamas to sleep in, y/n. Wish I could relate” you both chuckle, averting his eyes as you welcome him into your bedroom. You find him admiring your decorations wall to wall in it’s quaint yellow glory. String lights attached on opposite walls, sunflowers hanging from your shelves, banners from your favorite bands taped to your closet doors. Jungkook turns to you and beams in delight “this room is so you, y/n. It’s very pretty and comfortable.”

You jokingly huff “so I’m just comfortable to you now, huh Gguk” and he laughs at your remark. God, his laugh is god tier, adorable, and contagious, you find yourself giggling too.

“I mean, I guess you could say so, considering we are where we are today because we’re comfortable with each other, right?”

You simply nod, “Right.”

The both of you climb under your sheets at the same time, facing away from each other at first, listening to each other’s breathing.

You both want to be the first one to speak, to confess that everything you’re feeling now is everything you’ve been wanting to feel for an insane amount of time. But you’re both nervous, scared, but happy and excited. You feel like a child again, feeling nonstop butterflies growing in your stomach, just knowing that the person you love is right behind you in your own bed.

You both blurt out each other’s names at the same time and laugh, and you turn around to face him. Feeling your motions, he does the same, still allowing some space in between you with your arms folded out in front of you.

“You know, despite the craziness, I had a really good time tonight, y/n.”

You smile wide. “I’m glad! And, well, same here. I should really stop feeling bad for Andrea...” as you say this, you look at the wall you’re facing instead of him and frown, but he reaches out to grab your hand, causing you to look straight back at him.

“Don’t blame yourself. That girl is insanely unpredictable. At least nothing went too far, and we were able to talk about everything in the end. That’s what you wanted anyway, right?”

You nod, gripping onto Jungkook’s hands tighter. “Yeah, it was.”

He pulls you even closer now, the both of you meeting in the middle of your bed, the closest you’ve felt to him ever. His pupils are blown out, yet his breathing is calm. You feel comfort at how warm he feels. You feel comfort at how you’re here in this moment with Jeon Jungkook.

He lets go of your hands to caress your face, Jungkook slightly chuckling as he feels just how warm your cheeks are, but he doesn’t say anything. You stay like this for a while. Wordlessly speaking to him everything you want to say through your eyes, your auras. Everything just feels so right.

(recommended mood music: slow dancing in the dark - joji)

But then his eyes slowly close, leaning in as he pulls your face forward so your lips can finally meet. You see galaxies and supernovas exploding with stars behind your eyelids, and feel lips as soft as rose petals themselves pressing against your own. They feel plush with every kiss, getting deeper and deeper as he swipes his tongue against your bottom lip for access. You allow the kiss to become deeper, tasting how remarkably sweet his tongue is against yours.

Jungkook moves his hand behind your head to hold you by your hair, gaining a firmer grasp to kiss you even more passionately. You’re not used to this, as you’ve never really done this before, but his actions elicits a soft moan from you, and you both stop to laugh at each other playfully.

“I... can’t believe we’re doing this” Jungkook whispers

“Honestly, neither can I”

“Are you sure you’re... okay with this?”

You stutter out of pure excitement “Yeah, of course I am, I wouldn’t be here if-”

Jungkook interrupts you with a rushed, needy kiss, catching you by surprise and filling you with pure desire. Throughout your whole friendship, you’ve always felt as if there was an obstacle between you, like you were never able to get close to him because of something or someone else. And now here you were, physically closing all of the distance that there ever was between you.

You reach your leg over to straddle him from underneath you, breathing deeply as you both break the kiss to press your foreheads together, gazing into each other’s blown out eyes. He’s staring up at you like you’re the most ethereal human he’s ever seen on this planet, reaching to cup your face and whispering aloud

“I love you y/n.”

“I love you too, Jungkook.”

You continue to kiss each other desperately. His hands exploring the rest of your body, moving down the curvature of your waist and back, playing with the silky material of your pajama set as he reaches every inch of your body, holding you close and refraining from letting go any time soon.

The night continues in intoxicating bliss, sinuously turning and twisting in your sheets with Jungkook, languidly dragging out every single emotion and action the both of you are drowning each other in, until the both of you feel the earth stop spinning for those unspoken, shattering, few seconds of electricity that courses throughout the both of your bodies simultaneously in the confines of each other’s arms and tangled legs.

You fall to your back slowly, peacefully, content, but Jungkook pulls you back closer to him so you can rest on his chest. Both of your breathing patterns slowly fall into a comfortable rhythm as your eyes slowly fall closed, and in your last moments before dozing off, you feel his innocent kiss against your forehead, welcoming you into the deepest sleep you've ever had.

A/N: In respect to keeping this series smut free, I omitted the possible lengthy bedroom scene lmao. Other than that, this chapter actually wraps up everything I had planned for this series ♡  Thank you to those who have followed along and enjoyed, you all mean the entire world to me.

[kyogre-blue]

Summer 2018, season start

Took a while to get around to this because I was playing video games instead.

Angels of Death, ep1 - Dropped. Confusing, kinda gory, and really confusing. I’m not really a big fan of these super convoluted small-scale setups (I like broad fantasy worlds instead), so I don’t see any point continuing.

Calamity of a Zombie Girl , ep1?? - Dropped. The first “episode” is 80 minutes long. Is it a movie...? Anyway, it’s a horror movie, but the human characters are dull and the monster girls undermine any sense of horror. Also, hey, it’s the Tower of Druaga character designs. It was annoying, so I dropped it after about 20 minutes.

Planet With, ep1 - Dropped. I’m not a fan of this kind of wackiness. It’s just not my genre. (I mean, the parody of Eva and RahXephon was spot on, but like... I don’t enjoy it.)

Lord of Vermilion: The Crimson King, ep1 - Dropped. That in media res beginnging was horrible and killed my interest with how confusing it was. (The designs remind me a little of Caligula, but in red.) Then we follow it up with a second confusing scene of Shakespeare, which is already a poor idea. Props to them for showing the big disaster and the aftermath tho, instead of just having it as the distant backstory that explains the magic powers.

The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar, ep1 - Dropped. Starting with a naked chick is an immediate negative. Another negative for the weird “big brother, father” fetish. The pseudo Ancient Greece setting is a bit interesting, I’ll admit, but it makes the... German? terms for magic even weirder.

How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, ep1 - Ongoing. This show is amazingly stupid. And there’s so much ridiculous fanservice. And yet somehow I found it at least mildly amusing. The demon lord design is very cute (if generic), which I guess helped. Also, the lack of social skills and substituting villain dialogue joke is a classic.

Overlord S3, ep1 - Ongoing... I guess. The first seasons were moderately engaging, but definitely not to my taste. It continues in the same trend of the main cast being both OP and casually evil, plus with a side of sex that doesn’t interest me (bonus: the girls really want to fuck!! but they’re virgins!! that’s hot right).

Holmes of Kyoto, ep1 - Queued. It’s nice and peaceful, and I like Yagashiro. But I don’t think I’ll watch it weekly, at least for now. I’m doing other stuff, hahah.

Phantom in the Twilight, ep1 - Queued. I actually like the style of it and the lead is quite proactive so far. I’m just not in the mood for it right now, so I’ll marathon it later.

Angolmois: Record of the Mongol Invasion, ep1 - Queued. I didn’t read any summaries, so I thought this would be about Mongol characters. It’s actually about Japanese characters defending a border island from a Mongol invasion. Looks kind of interesting, just not quite the right setting for what I’m into right now.

We Rent Tsukumogami, ep1 - Queued. Kinda slow and not too interesting, but I do like this kind of setting and the ayakashi stuff.

[mwolf0epsilon]

What are the Top 10 most undignified (and hilarious) villain defeats you've ever seen in media?

Oooh boy, I’ve never really thought much of villain defeats, mostly because getting them out of the picture has always felt somewhat satisfying to me, no matter the execution.But there are at least 10 assholes I think got what they deserved in pretty funny ways. I’ll be counting down from 10 from least satisfying to most satisfying:

10 - Mitch Conner (South Park: The Fractured But Whole) - I don’t know, there’s something very unsatisfying about Cartman getting away with shit despite all the horrors he puts you through in the game. So when Mitch Conner was finally defeated by, you guessed it, Cartman himself and his other character Mrs. Conner, it didn’t sit well with me.Sure, Cartman makes a complete fool of himself in front of a crowd, but the people of South Park aren’t smart. They don’t realize they’ve been conned, which unnerved me to no end. And the worst part? You’re left with no other option but accept it for what it is and carry on with your day as if nothing happened. Bullshit.

9 - Lord Business (The Lego Movie) - It’s an undignifying defeat in a very different way to the rest of the villains on the list, mostly because it breaks the role completely. Emmet’s speech at the climax of the final battle hit me hard when I first saw the movie. As an artist I understood what it was like to feel unmotivated and overlooked when there were better artists out there who could do so much more than I could. Lord Business felt like a more personal villain to me in terms of what his role really was.So his defeat, ending with him turning good and still getting blown up, just to get back up again and fix things? It certainly is undignifying to a villain, but not so much for an actual person, which is why I enjoy this defeat so much, yet don’t really count it as much of a villain defeat, rather, turning a new leaf.

8 - The Fabrication Machine (Shane Acker’s 9) - There’s something somewhat sad about this defeat that I never could put my finger on until recently. The Fabrication Machine is the result of corruption, a machine taken from it’s creator and forced to endlessly build for a cruel man. Its revolt was innevitable and its next acts were monstrous…But seeing it defeated at the end, through the same means it took the lives of more than half of the stitchpunks? It left me with a bitter taste in my mouth afterwards. Perhaps because it felt to me like the B.R.A.I.N. could have been so much more if it had just had the chance instead of being forced into a life of slave labor…

7 - Handsome Jack (Borderlands 2) - This one has an explanation and a half. Handsome Jack is one of those villains you love to hate, because they are exceptionally good at being a villain. So why would I place him so low on my scale? Well…If you listen through his final dialog you don’t get the option to kill him yourself. Lilith does, and it angered me to no end that she’d cut him short when I’ve always loved hearing the final monologue of a well written villain. It felt like your victory was being robbed from you, and while Jack getting shot for his troubles was indeed an undignified death after the hassle it was to end him, it was still not a sweet victory…With that said, fuck you Lilith, why couldn’t you just let me savour the moment?!

6 - Scar/Gaston/Clayton (Disney’s The Lion King/Beauty and the Beast/Tarzan) - At number six we have a bit of a tie. Scar, Gaston and Clayton were always three villains I vividly remembered as a kid. They were charming, they were cunning, they were terrifying when they had to be, at least in the perspective of 7 year old Eps. They also had very satisfying defeats that, because they held the same meaning to me, ended up being placed kinda low on my scale. It doesn’t feel fair putting them above one another so they share the same level of scrutiny. They are also low because I don’t think they got enough after what they did.They make up for it for having pretty brutal deaths tho, which are still somewhat satisfying when I watch them to this very day. Their blind ambitions got them in the end.

5 - Frank Fontane (Bioshock) - In the middle of the scale we have Frankie “Atlas” Fontane himself. I see him as the perfect medium between unsatisfying and satisfying because, while technically you’re not the one who gets to kill him in the end, it felt pretty good watching the little sisters he’s tormented for so long going to town on his sorry excuse for an ass.Big and strong won’t do you good when the juices that keep you going get stabbed out by needle-weilding angry children. Sucks to be you buddy, now would you kindly shut the fuck up and let Jack live his own life?

4 - D-Reaper (Digimon Tamers) - This one comes off as a bittersweet defeat. It’s no less satisfying but the aftermath of the deconstruction of the D-Reaper is what kicked me in the gut.On one hand I was happy to see this programming mishap gone, on the other I was upset that the only way to do it involved sacrificing the Tamers’ digimon as well. It was a good defeat but the price always felt heavy to me in the end. It’s why Digimon Tamers is my favorite incarnation of the Digimon Series. It always felt heavier in context of self-sacrifice and trying to make things right. A++ final battle, lots of angst and self-reflection moments, good final villain, and very clever execution of its termination.

3 - Chakal (The Book of Life) - For me, bigger is usually better. I’m a sucker for stupidly big characters, so having a villain who is ridiculously big compared to his enemies? It was awesome to see so many people determined to defeat the towering beast that was Chakal, even more so when Manolo, Maria and Joaquin worked together to defend their home town. The final part of the battle however, took the cake.Manolo’s clever thinking and Joaquin’s quick reaction was the final push for Chakal’s imminent defeat, via a well placed bell tower and a LOT of explosives. This one felt satisfying to me because of just how much of a kick those explosives really had. They were just as powerful as Chakal himself, which we don’t really take into consideration since Manolo came out alright thanks to the medal…But consider this: Nothing was left of the bandit king, so yeah, he was completely desintegrated.Go big or go home right? Or in this case, don’t go home at all because you are GONE for good.

2 - Thighten (Megamind) - Lets face it, Hal Stewart was the biggest animated creep of 2010. He’s one of those so called Nice Guys who flirts awkwardly with very creepy subtext, then when he doesn’t get what he wants, he reacts violently just because he’s bigger and stronger.The more of him was on screen, the more disgust I felt of him, because it was obvious he didn’t care about Roxanne or anyone else, just of himself and his big ego. So seeing this guy, who’s gone and become the perfect picture of brawny asshole, being outsmarted by someone physically weaker than him? It felt satisfying to no end. Big isn’t always better. Sometimes clever is all you need.

1 - Ernesto de la Cruz (Disney Pixar’s Coco) - From the moment it was revealed Ernesto killed Hector without a second thought just to steal his songs and guitar as a means to rise to fame, I knew I HATED him, specially because I’d begun liking him during his bonding scene with Miguel. It felt like I’d been backstabbed. He’s a pretty well written villain in the sense that you don’t realise he’s the villain until he is exposed as such. He’s charismatic, funny and cunning. Also very ambitious and willing to put himself before others, which is a terrifyingly bad mix. Re-living his undignified death after being tossed around by a pissed off flying jaguar was definitly well deserved, and the loud crash of the bell hitting him marked the end of his many victories in life.

[cult-of-kai]

The Game is Rigged, Y’Know

Thoughts on episode seven, ‘Valerie Solanas Died For Your Sins: Scumbag’:

As it turns out, this episode isn’t about Andy Warhol being a cult leader after all. It’s about Valerie Solanas being a cult leader, one who loses her following as she loses her mind. Will all the historical cults serve as cautionary tales?

Let’s get Lena Dunham out of the way first. Full confession: I’ve never watched ‘Girls’ or indeed anything else Lena Dunham has ever been in, but I’m aware of what she wrote in her book and reasonably familiar with the discourse around her. Valerie Solanas? She was a back-when radical feminist who wrote something called the SCUM Manifesto and shot Andy Warhol, and she’s the subject of an indie movie from the ‘90s. That one sentence pretty much exhausted most of my knowledge about the woman. So did Lena Dunham do a really good job playing an irritating footnote from pop art history, or did she just give a really irritating performance? I truly don’t know. What I do know is that her voice is like nails on a chalkboard any time she yells. I will say that her final scene, the one where she confronts her hallucination of Warhol, is easily her best. There were a couple other nice beats- the sadness in her face when we first come upon her in a john’s car, the odd interesting line reading- but I’m mostly just glad it’s over with.

Really, though, there were flat-out too many flashback scenes for my liking. Our main story line is too compelling for all that interruption. And while I am a feminist, SCUM’s misandry is really off-putting. Are there grains of truth in a few of the things Valerie said? Well, yeah. Their whole operation is pretty ridiculous, though. The whole Zodiac thing? What the hell is that about? Who came to March’s Devil’s Night party in ‘AHS: Hotel’? Is Bebe lying? And if she’s not, the SCUM women suck at making their point. The Zodiac Killer has been attributed seven victims- three (heterosexual) couples and another man. Bebe says the SCUM women didn’t kill the lone guy, but still- of the three couples attacked, two of the men survived. The first Zodiac killings also took place six whole months after Solanas shot Warhol- who didn’t die, by the way. In reading and watching reviews and recaps of the episode, I’ve seen a lot of people assume he was killed. He was badly wounded and barely survived, and he suffered aftereffects for the rest of his life, but he didn’t pass away until complications from a gallbladder surgery took him in 1987. Valerie survived him by 15 months. Pneumonia got her.

There’s quite a strong thread of homophobia vs. misogyny running through this episode, and that feels really timely. You have Valerie using slurs and Beverly reminding Harrison that he knows what it’s like to be marginalized because he’s gay, but both Bruce and Harrison respond by laying emphatic claim to manhood and, implicitly, status in patriarchy. These same two gay men are also the only victims the Society for Cutting Up Men actually, you know, cuts up. (I guess Ivy is over her squeamishness!) Also in the mix is Warhol, who dismisses Valerie’s ambitions and declares himself her legacy because the murder attempt is all anyone will remember about her.

The modern narrative drops us straight into the aftermath of Meadow’s shooting spree at Kai’s rally. Thanks to somebody’s cell-phone video, everybody knows she was the shooter- despite the fact that she was supposedly already missing under mysterious circumstances? And Harrison talks about her keeping a diary that can’t exist. Wouldn’t somebody want to see it? Anyway, Kai’s plan is working so far. He wins his city council election by a landslide. Beverly goes to visit and discovers that he’s amassed a crowd of tiki-torch assholes to do his Project Mayhem bidding. Their subsequent conversation does not allay her fears of losing her half of the power they’re supposed to be sharing, and she opts to plan a little mutiny with a girl gang consisting of Winter, Ivy, Bebe, and herself. SCUM, Part 2! So now the expected Kai vs. Beverly showdown has rather unexpectedly become a men vs. women showdown, and it’s well on its way- but Beverly holds far fewer cards than she thinks she does.

Back to Bebe, briefly. We got Frances Conroy as the wily older version of Valerie’s lover- Moira O’Hara tease!- and it seems we’ll have her for more than one episode. She’s such a delight and I can’t wait to see what kind of mischief she gets up to. And while we anticipated Frances, Jamie Brewer was a surprise. It’s nice seeing her, too.

The quiet scene between Kai and Winter in their rotting parents’ bedroom is both really good and really chilling. There is so very much left unsaid, but Evan and Billie are enormously effective in giving us the undercurrents. It’s buried in his hyperbole about heavy crowns, but Kai issues his sister a warning here. My suspicion? I think he’s out to eliminate Beverly now that he has national attention and doesn’t really need her anymore. The next episode- entitled ‘Winter of Our Discontent’- looks like another doozy.

No Ally (or Vin) this episode, although we hear she’s refusing to talk. Ivy is super unconcerned about the possibility of Ally spilling to the police or the Feds, but the tossed-off detail that she’s not is actually a little stick of dynamite. It means that *Ally is undermining Kai’s plan*. He assumed the truth would be dismissed as the ramblings of a madwoman. Nope! So what is Ally up to?

[missingverse]

Missing  Chapter Four

The train took its sweet time bringing Arnold back to Hillwood, he paced up and down the carriage all the way. Once he left the station he pedaled his bike home as fast as he could, lungs burning and muscles aching but no worse than the rising panic that he was going to get to his house to find Helga was not there.

She would manifest back in the house. She had done that before, he knew. He had a feeling she was there, waiting for him to get back.

But what if she wasn't?

…..

Helga's parents appeared on TV just once, a month into her disappearance. They went through the motions of asking for help bringing their daughter home, but it was hard to feel sympathy for them. Miriam looked even more out of it than usual, yellow in the face, slurring her words, staring vacantly into the camera. Probably sedated with more than liquor.

Bob, though...

Bob didn't look like a grieving father. He looked angry, not distraught. He gritted his teeth and let his wife do the talking, clenching his fists in full view of the camera. When a journalist asked if there was any chance Helga had tried to get in contact, he huffed through his teeth and looked away. That moment was when roughly half of America decided Bob Pataki was a murderer.

They got a hard time in the aftermath. Cranks from online crime communities regularly turned up on their doorstep demanding that Bob confess. Helga's sister dropped out of her senior year of college because people kept asking her about her father. Miriam stopped going outside, and the amount of glass bottles found in the trash doubled.

Nobody shopped at the beeper store (which was by now a general electrical goods store where most kids got their first phone, but not anymore) and gradually Bob stopped going to work. The store remained locked up, until it was broken into, thousands of dollars of merchandise stolen and the outside coated with red paint. Someone had crudely scrawled the words WHERE IS SHE across the placard.

They stuck it out for a long time; Bob had insurance, he had the store cleaned up but he didn't reopen. They got their groceries delivered and put up with the stares and whispers when they did venture outside. But after a while it got too much for them. When Bob's car was stolen and found burned out outside the store, they packed up and left Hillwood. Nobody bothered to find out where they had gone, and although online sleuths tried to puzzle it out the remaining Patakis were largely forgotten.

…..

He tossed his bike carelessly under the stoop, ran up the stairs with a cursory greeting to his Grandpa and threw open his door, half-convinced Helga wouldn't be there...

...she was. Looking no worse for wear, just a little sulky.

“I don't know what happened....” she began. “I...”

She was abruptly cut off when Arnold crossed the few feet separating them and pulled her into his arms. He held onto her tight, just to make sure she was still there. She felt solid enough, but he squeezed her hard, just in case.

In elementary school she had been taller than him. Now her head fit neatly in the spot under his chin where his neck met his head. There was something reassuring about that.

She stood there and let him hold her for who knows how long, before gently prying his arms off of her and stepping back.

“You should sit down,” she told him, and sure enough his legs did feel like they were buckling under him. “Did you bike all the way back?”

“No,” he told her breathlessly. “I just hurried back....we're not doing that again.”

“Okay,” she agreed. She was looking at him like he had gone slightly mad, and maybe he had.

After catching his breath, he went downstairs for dinner. He renewed his promise to his Grandpa to check the pipes (he didn't need to, pipes were fine, Helga just liked tapping on the walls). As he chewed a hard lump of lukewarm meatloaf he puzzled out what to do next.

She reacted to the trees. The hills.

There was a stream in those hills. Wasn't a big one, but it swelled when the weather was bad. And there had been early summer storms the week Helga went missing.

It wasn't a new clue, exactly. He had seen it mooted before on sleuth blogs, along with a topography map of the general area. The stream could have carried Helga's shoe into the drainage ditch if there was enough rainfall. But the stream had been dredged for other clues and nothing else had been found. It was nowhere near big enough for her to have fallen in and drowned, that theory had been thoroughly debunked by professionals and amateurs.

What else is there?

Then a thought struck him; Helga's 'boyfriend.'

…..

Patrick Castle was thirteen, and for the girls who gossiped that was exciting. It was a triumph for any girl to have an older boyfriend, glamorous even. The fact that they weren't actually dating didn't seem to matter. Anyone who asked Helga about it got a derisive snort and a roll of her eyes.

It was curious; when they were nine they were so eager to date, and crushes seemed all important. Arnold's own crushes had lost much of their lustre when he turned ten and realized that dating at that age was kind of ridiculous. Not to mention Ruth was known for dating much older boys, and Lila moved away when her father remarried. She wrote once, he wrote back, and that was it.

Rhonda wanted to date older boys, she talked about it a lot back when she actually talked to people. She seemed angry that Helga had managed to get something she wanted without even trying, and at the same time strangely proud that her 'friend' had this elusive status.

Patrick had been interviewed after Helga went missing, and he denied that they had ever dated. He'd spent time with her because she was on the baseball team, he saw her as a little sister. And in any case he had an alibi for that weekend; he was in Washington State with his family.

…..

“...Castle?” Helga wondered, scratching at a spot above her right eye.

“Ring any bells?” Arnold pushed.

“Sort of,” Helga answered. “We dated?”

“Everyone else thought so. You wouldn't give anyone a straight answer. And he denied it when you went missing.”

“Then we probably didn't,” Helga said, tracing circles on the carpet with her shoeless foot. “Who dates an eleven-year-old anyway? Even I know that's creepy.”

“That's what the peanut gallery says too,” Arnold told her, flicking through a bunch of comments on a blog post about Castle. “That's why he wasn't ruled out as a suspect. Do you have any memories of him?”

“Sort of, they're blurry,” she answered. “I think he walked me home a few times after practice. I can't recall much else.”

“I found his Facebook,” Arnold told her, switching tabs. “He's on a college break, he's working as an assistant coach for the Little League.”

“You're going to talk to him?”

“Worth a shot.”

The Little League practice field was closer than the industrial farm, so he felt less cagey about letting Helga tag along. She hopped into the basket without complaint. They found Patrick Castle in seconds, helping a very small bespectacled girl with her swing.

He was good-looking, Arnold had to admit. Sandy-haired, classically American square-jaw-and-straight -nose-and perfect grin with perfect teeth. Arnold had never seen him at thirteen, but if she was anything like he was at nineteen no wonder the girls had lost their minds.

He looked over at Helga; she was staring at Patrick, frowning slightly and rubbing that spot on her head again. Dimly Arnold wondered if ghosts could get headaches.

“Can I help you?”

Patrick had crossed the field to the bleachers without Arnold noticing, and he jumped. Of course Patrick would notice, he was the only other near-adult watching practice.

“Uh, yeah...” Arnold stammered, caught off guard. “....you're Patrick Castle, right?”

“I am,” Patrick answered amiably. “What can I do for you?”

“It's about Helga Pataki....”

At the mention of her name, Patrick's face clouded over and he turned his back.

“I'm not in the mood for this today,” he called over his shoulder, a hard note to his voice. “Get your kicks some other place.”

“What? No,” Arnold said as he stumbled down the bleachers after him. “I just wanted to ask some questions.”

“They all want to ask questions,” Patrick growled. “Not today. There's kids here. I told the police everything I knew and that info is online. Get it there.”

“Look, I'm not from the web, okay?” said Arnold. “I was a friend of Helga's. I just wanted to know....”

“What?” Patrick turned to face him, fury marring his all-American good looks. “What could you possibly want to know?”

Arnold could see Helga out of the corner of his eye. Why were they there?

“I wanted to know what she was like with you,” Arnold shrugged, helplessly. “Like, was she okay? Was she in trouble? I figured you'd know.”

Patrick's expression softened, and he glanced around at the kids on the field who were watching them now with morbid childish interest.

“Over here,” he said, beckoning Arnold (and by extension, Helga) into the nearby dugout.

When the kids had stopped paying attention and went back to playing baseball, Patrick started talking.

“We never dated,” he began. “I told the police that, and it's true. I wanted to, but she wasn't interested. Said she was too young for me. She was right.”

“Why did you want to date her?” Arnold asked.

Patrick shrugged and smiled.

“She wasn't like any other girl I knew,” he said. “She was different. Special. Real smart, didn't take any bullshit....how could you not fall for a girl like that?”

He might have expected Helga to look pleased with this praise, but she didn't. She just looked sad.

“Hell, I wasn't the only one,” Patrick continued with a rueful laugh. “I was just the one she put up with. We did some stuff together besides baseball. We went to the movies, ice-cream after big games, that kind of thing. I brought her home for dinner a few times. My mom loved her.”

“Sounds like you were dating to me,” Arnold said.

“That's what the police said,” Patrick laughed. “But it wasn't like that. She just seemed like she needed it.”

“Needed it?”

Patrick broke off, looked over the field at the kids pitching and swinging as hard as their half-grown limbs could manage.

“I've been in the Little League since I was ten,” he said. “Junior coach when I was too old to play. This is a good crop of kids this year, but there's always one. See that one?”

He pointed at a little boy wearing a catcher's mitt, skinny and short with a head of unkempt curly hair.

“That's the one that comes to baseball because he's got nowhere else to go,” Patrick said. “There's always one. Helga was that one.”

Arnold blinked, and looked at the boy a little closer until he could see what Patrick was seeing. Mismatched socks and a hole in the collar of his shirt. A head shorter than everyone else. Eyes that were sunken in from lack of sleep.

“Officially we're not supposed to interfere unless we notice something we can report to CPS,” Patrick continued. “We do what we can here, keep an eye on them. 'Course I wasn't old enough to do anything for Helga...but how could I not? I mean, she had friends and all, but she had no-one that treated her like she was special. And she was special.”

Helga was rubbing the spot on her head with increasing irritation.

“All I did was take her out a few times, treat her to things, walked her home after practice. She deserved that much, right?”

“Yes, she did,” Arnold agreed, swallowing down the lump in his throat.

Even Patrick looked like he wanted to cry. But the head coach finally took notice that his junior was shirking, and called him over.

“I suppose, though, it's only the special ones that disappear like that, right?” he finished before walking away.