#just. doing something while the brain is using the ram is something else that requires more attention

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Ticking Down

https://www.patreon.com/empyreaniris?fan_landing=true

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/182501791735/master-post

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jzEIdDAB4omdO2JcQVMObfrhLJ5kX4ONmSsLypM1ks0/edit?usp=sharing

Ash and soot sprouted towards the sky, like the limbs of a dying tree during winter. Though the impression was gone almost as soon as it had come. And while Celex had managed to repel the artillery fire, the kinetic energy absorbed by the shield had thrown their tank like a child toy which spun, hit the light, and then tumbled across the open ground scarring the dirt as the Tank’s metal frame tore massive clods from the ground.

Adam was thrown off just as the tank began its first rotation, not that he would have chosen to stay on otherwise. In the mass of spinning sky and ground, he caught only flashes of the others, as they too, were pitched from the Tank’s frame. As a robotic AI, fealty was fast enough to highlight Sunny’s body in green even as she tore past his eyes, but even had Adam possessed the speed required to do anything about it, his brain was too muddled to try.

She passed out of his vision, and he hit the ground hard, rolling once, then twice, then three times before slamming into something very hard.

His already cracked suit armor sent a distress signal to his HUD which blinked dramatically in shades of red and yellow. 

Suit operation capacity 37%.

His body throbbed, but still, his helmet had done its job of protecting the mushy insides of his skull.

Adam staggered to his feet leaning heavily against the hard surface that had so rudely stopped his forward momentum: It was a wall, specifically the wall of the Necritorium. 

They had made it to their destination.

And Nechal had already found them a way inside.

Adam was almost positive she had been aiming for the Necritorium gate; to say that the Tank’s path had been fortuitous enough to crash through the massive rot iron facade simply upon the capricious whims of luck, would have been too much.

She had clearly been planning to use the tank as a battering ram either way and while flipping through the air had not been her original intention, the result was still the same. 

“Over here! Hurry!” The sound of artillery fire was enough to drown out any other words she might have shouted, but Nechal’s pearlescent carapace and glowing golden aura were more than enough to catch his attention as she waved him over from the broken gate.

Out in the other direction, a line of silhouettes was gathering before the horizon. The void army had broken away from their individual conflicts and was now funneling toward them in a torrent. Ignoring the urge to limp on his human leg, Adam raced along the wall and towards the gate. 

Others were doing the same.

To his relief, Adam watched Sunny reach the gate first, Vaulting over the wreckage, and past Nechal, followed closely by Ramirez, who was missing good chunks of armor on his thighs and upper shoulders. Miraculously, so came everyone else, limping or bounding their way forward as the void army grew in size behind them.  The tank left only a small gap in the warped gate allowing them through one at a time. 

Surprisingly, through all of the odds, Krill had managed to survive, awkwardly shoving himself through the gap before Adam and after Dzara. Adam was both impressed and shocked. Kanan stayed back and climbed through last, taking Nechal’s hand and squeezing tightly as he passed through the gap.

King James waited for them on the other side, golden shield dented, plume torn, red cloak hanging in tatters even as flecks of blood spattered the golden facade of his helmet.

“No time to talk, those soldiers will be here in moments, and once they spill through that gate we won’t be able to stop them.”

Adam knew he was right.

James pointed, leveling the blade of his spear towards the small gap in the gate through which they had crawled, “That’s as good a choke point as any. Some of us should stay behind, hold here while the others make their way inside, and finish this once and for all. We must make this decision quickly. I will stay here.”

The pronouncement surprised no one.

Holding the line with few men and few prospects against the tide of a much greater army was the legacy of Spartans. But unlike Leonidas at Thermopylae, King James did not have 300 nor the thousands of other Greek soldiers that stood at his side.

“We will stay.” Kanan said, him and Nechal already stepping up to cover the choke point.

“So will I,” Dzara said, though her voice was small.

Celex nodded once, “Never will I have participated in a greater battle. I will stay behind.”

“Make that one more.” The voice was rather unexpected, and the group turned their heads in unison, craning their necks back to watch as the starborn descended from the sky in a whipping cloud of tattered ribbons. 

It was Conn, followed by a ragtag band of other starborn seconds of their alabaster skin singed to blackness by soot and fire.

He stopped to hover a few inches above the ground and surveyed them with a keen eye., “We will help hold the line.” The bedraggled starborn sent a psychic pulse of agreement, though none of them looked particularly eager for what was to come.

Adam couldn’t blame them.

“Hurry, we have little time,” James ordered climbing the pile of rubble as the thundering of feet grew in intensity.

Conn turned to look at Adam, winked and then blew him a kiss, “A final smooch before you go dear.”

Adam made a face, “Choke on a cock, Conn.”

Conn leered at him, “Buy me dinner first.” before Adam could say anything, or even really recognize that he should have seen that coming, Conn turned and floated off towards the gap, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt.

Adam shook his head.

No time for anything else “The rest of you on me!”

Sunny, Ramirez, Krill and Lanus fell into step beside them. He might have suggested Lanus stay back and hold the line with the others, but there was no doubt in his mind that, Kazna would be waiting for them at the end of this, and if they were gong to fight her they needed all the weapons they could get, even if that meant using her own feelings against her.

“STEADY.” James roared from behind them.

Another throb of pain washed up through Adam’s body.

He cursed, there was no time for this.

“STEADY.” James called again 

Adam engaged the medical system in his suit even as they raced into the first, long, dark passageway, and dosed himself with another round.

He told himself it didn’t matter what happened now as long as they made it in time.

They had already lost fifty minutes to the fight and drive here, and now they had a little under an hour to make it to the Necrotorium core.

Together they ran at a near-dead sprint, not speaking, no one had the breath for that.

But it wasn’t simply that that stopped the conversation, but the Necritorium itself.

The front gate lead straight and down into a dark stone hallway lined with pulsating orange light. It was dark there, shadows spilling in opaque inky pools upon the ground. The hallway was long and dark, eating up so many precious minutes as they ran, and so long it seemed to be neverending.

It was only after a good five minutes, that the passageway opened up before them, spitting them out onto a high catwalk overlooking a massive, stadium size pit with an open rooftop.

Golden light spilled in from above, flowing hard and fast like water.

Past the torrent of light, the sky pulsated with distant flashes of light and darkness. 

The funnel of light plunged downward through the open ceiling and into the massive tapering pit, which extended for endless miles into the earth growing darker as it went. The singularity of the pit, far away at the distant end pulsated with throbbing orange light.

And the noise that came from it.

Was a noise that Adam would not soon forget: screaming.

The screaming of a million tortured souls as they were pulled apart piece by piece

A sound that would haunt him to his own dying day.

Dark stone enclosed the edges of the pit hemming them in on all sides. Fealty blanked in Adam’s HUD impatient reminding them of the time 45 minutes remaining. They had to get moving.

“On me,”

Adam shouted.

The makers had given them some speculative schematics of the Necrotorium, supposedly somewhere around 85% accurate give or take a few points in their estimation. If that was the case, the power control room was past the pit, and down a story or two.

It was further than Adam would have liked, 

And he wasn’t sure if they could make it in time.

They had slowed to a jog as they entered the pit, which turned back into a sprint as he urged them onward, following the catwalk in a semicircle around the room, even as more and more souls came spilling down into the proverbial meat grinder. Gold and orange light lit his face as the slow transformation from person to power continued below their feet.

Adam was relieved he had taken another dose, muddling his mind and focusing his thoughts forward.

He didn’t know what might have happened if he had been in greater possession of himself.

And he feared for the others.

But if they managed to continue at this pace then maybe-

The roar drowned out his thoughts, and Adam turned his head just in time to see a tide of void creatures spilling from over the edge of the pit.

His blood went cold.

He recognized these.

Some of them warped construct bodies, others creations by the void itself, twisted and cobbled together.

All of which he recognized from the invasion of Earth, and the Tricar homeworld. 

A massive creature dropped onto the platform before them, spidery legs planted hard against the rough metal. Orange light glittered off the sheen of its smooth mushy body folding in curves and swirls like that of a human brain.

It roared again.

And Adam cursed.

They didn’t have time for this!

[groovycomputers]

What features should an ideal video editing PC have?

Many devices will allow you to edit video; pretty much any computer can handle simple video editing, and even your phone can give you some video editing tools. However, if you want to produce professional quality content, you'll need a high-performance computer to make the video you want. Especially with 4K, 6k and even 8k video, you need a computer that can handle and process all that information. You don't want your computer crashing every few minutes, do you? A superbly customized RTX 3080 video editing PC can thus make a world of difference in your work.

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

The Central Processing Unit is always considered the brain of your PC. All your PC's operating system functions run through the CPU, including functions that matter in video editing programs like Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Sony Vegas Pro.

To make 4K video editing, you'll require a CPU with several processor cores. Each processor core can take care of a distinct task while the remaining CPU works on something else. As a general norm, the more processor cores a chip has, the more it can perform. You can also get a multi-threaded CPU, meaning each computing core is broken into several "threads." These threads allow individual cores to perform more than one task simultaneously, making processing more efficient. For many professional editors, the best video editing build must consist of a multi-threaded CPU. These multi-threaded cores allow you to make complex video edits without overburdening your machine, which might lead to overheating, and failure.

Hard Drive (HD)

A hard drive or HD is the computer's memory represented by the highest number. For instance: if a PC has 8 GB/500 GB, it has 8 GB of RAM and a 500 GB HD. HD is the memory not lost when the system is turned off that is responsible for storing programs and files.

Ideally, a video editing computer should be an HD and SSD – Solid State Drive hybrid. This combination allows the PC to run faster, although it costs just a little more. The slightest memory requirement should be 500 GB depending on the editing frequency. But if you have an intense work schedule, you should get a video editing system with less than 1 TB capacity, like the RTX 3080 video editing PC.

If all this space isn't enough, a good alternative is to use external HDs or cloud storage to save your content. A good HD needs ample storage space since it allows faster data transmission.

Random-access memory (RAM)

A video editor needs a lot of RAM to handle the different high-density files transmitting video information. A professional video editor should have at least 16 gigabytes of RAM on their system to handle large files, and the high-demand programs also used to edit them. If your budget permits, 32GB of RAM is better. You can even boost up to 64GB or 128GB, but this may need to be revised for most editors.

Graphics processing unit (GPU)

A GPU, or graphics processing unit, is usually known as a graphics card. It interprets the digital files and renders them as visual images, whether videos or still images. Unless you're adding effects and graphics, most video editing tasks tend to lean more heavily on a CPU than a graphics card. So if you're on a budget, focus on getting the best CPU you can first and then choose a graphics card. The power of a GPU is measured in video RAM or VRAM. So for 4K video editing, you'll want a GPU with at least 8 gigabytes of VRAM. You can get away with a 4-to-6 VRAM graphics card for videos with lower resolution or faster compression.

Storage

There are diverse storage options, as we've recently covered, but an M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD is the best. An NVMe SSD is considered the fastest type of consumer-grade storage presently available, and while it is expensive, it has a speed nearly 25 times faster than a standard hard disk drive (HDD). However, unless you have an excessive budget, it is recommended to use a dual storage system that uses an NVMe SSD in conjunction with a slower, larger-capacity HDD.

Cooling

Proper cooling is recommended as the best way to prevent your system from overheating. The hot air expelled from the CPU and GPU must escape. Otherwise, the heat increases and overheats the system. Every system case varies in the number of fans it can support, but there is a standard procedure for fan cooling. For better cooling, you should also place fans at the bottom of the case to intake cool air and fans at the top for air outtake. There are also two types of fans: airflow fans and static pressure fans. The former is excellent for air intake, while the latter is better at removing the hot air trapped within the PC. If you truly want to optimize cooling, buy the proper fans for each situation, though the differences are minimal. One final thing to ponder is the number of fan headers available on your motherboard. The fan header powers a PC fan, and while it's best to plug one fan per fan header, it's also possible to connect the fan cables to a fan splitter, which turns one fan header into three or more. 

In conclusion

If you choose wisely, you'll end up with a machine that exceeds the functionality of retail models at a much friendlier price. Plus, you'll have a lot of fun in the process as you assemble a beastly video-editing PC from parts. 

[hongjoongscafe]

But I Still Won

Drabble series

D. 3 {serieslist}

Pairing: idol!seonghwa×photographer!reader(jihyun) (Jihyun is an imaginary person. I am not shipping anybody here. I just like this name.)

Genre: smut, fluff, angst

Summary: she didn't expect to get fucked by her idol... Well, it still happened.

Warnings: mentions of fucking, Seonghwa being an asshole.

Word count: 879

Note: poll for the next part is given below, do vote!

Masterpost

*DO NOT REPOST, PLZ*

In the meeting, they discussed the expectations of the company from the students. It was no secret that their concepts were so edgy. Their photographers and videographers were absolutely amazing. All the students' goal was to at least reach their level if not more. 

Jihyun was fairly confident in her work. She knew it wouldn't be a huge deal for her to get perfect pictures and edit them just the way they liked. But her confidence crumbled when they mentioned that Jihyun and the other student, Jeremy, needed to be around more because they will also be clicking the pictures of the idols on the regular basis for their Instagram and other social media sites. 

The students were required to join them possibly everywhere the idols go. Being around the idols for this much was waking up the new anxiety in Jihyun's guts. Being around Seonghwa was already so difficult for her. But she needed to brace herself and act like a professional if she wanted to achieve something in this passion of hers. 

With these thoughts, Jihyun was roaming around the corridors of the building to make herself familiar with the new environment. There were tiny directions given around for the students' easy passage to the rooms and studios. 

She was in the private studio area, where idols had their own little places to practice their vocals and create music. The most used studio was Hongjoong's followed by Eden's and MADDOX's. There were many other producers too. It was a beautiful and cozy building. But today, the corridor was quiet. Some were back at their dormitory and the others were reviewing the audios of the new ATEEZ album. 

Jihyun's steps halted when she heard someone moaning. The rational part of her brain was screaming at her to leave the corridor and do something else. But curiosity got the best out of her and she followed the moans. 

She stopped in front of a studio room that was specifically for Seonghwa. The door was slightly open. Rather than stepping away, she opened it a bit more without making any sound. But the scene left her mouth wide open. The tears immediately pooled around her lids, threatening to roll out. 

There he was– Seonghwa, ramming into a girl from behind. They were sideways, the girl was bent against the wall. Her hair was nicely tucked in a bun. Her breasts were out of her blouse and in Seonghwa's hold.

"Fuck me harder, please," she moaned out loud.

Seonghwa felt the light cool air hitting his legs. Looked at the door, finding the girl from the meeting looking at them fucking with wide eyes. He saw that Jihyun's eyes were looking at where his cock was disappearing in the girl who worked as a junior makeup artist at this company. This made him moan out loud. 

Jihyun's eyes snapped back at the idol. To her surprise, he was looking directly into her eyes. The chills ran down her spine. She abruptly moved away from the door and ran away, almost falling while taking the turn. 

This whole situation triggered Seonghwa's orgasm. He emptied himself in the condom and let go of the girl who fell on the floor, too tired to stay up. Being the rude self, he didn't help her. 

"Clean yourself and leave within five minutes. I don't have time for this shit," he said and tucked himself after cleaning and sat in his chair. 

Seonghwa had a weird feeling about this student. He felt like he saw her somewhere but his lust-eaten brain could not put a finger on it. He was too rotten and addicted to sex to remember anybody who was not important.

…

Jihyun managed to spend her day at the company without stumbling across Seonghwa. While she was going away, Hongjoong and MADDOX were standing around the lobby and asked her if she could take pictures of them– which she gladly did. 

Now she was back in her dorm room, sitting in the darkroom with her laptop on top of her stomach. She was editing the pictures she clicked for the two friends. During the meeting, their manager gave the two students the email ID for all the idols where they could send the end product. 

Jihyun felt disgusted at herself. How could she think that she was someone different than others; that Seonghwa chose her to fuck. No, no, she was like other girls who gave in to him and let them be a hole for Seonghwa to use. Her fragile heart crumbled apart. 

"Jihyun, you are an idiot! Why would you think you were special!?" She frustratedly mumbled to herself and pulled her hair. 

Shutting off the laptop after completing her task, she thought of sleeping it away. But it didn't help when her dreams were filled with Seonghwa fucking someone else. 

It was shocking for Jihyun. She never thought that Seonghwa would be like this. He never had any scandal going around. He was respected despite his rude attitude. But she was not going to judge, he was an adult who had needs. But she was shocked that she gave in to that need. 

"I won't do this again," Jihyun said to herself before leaving for the company the next day. 

.....

Sanaa's note:

Hello there, Goodies. I hope you all are fine. Well, I found out that Jimin's brother's name is Jihyun. I didn't know that it was a unisex name. But well.

The behavior of all the characters is visualized.

Taglist:

@veneziamadness @cheline @jhmylove @nanibecute

*lemme know if you wanna be added to the permanent or specific taglist*

*original pictures are not mine, I just edited them*

Results of the previous poll:

Poll for the next part:

Have a nice day/night💓

[scarofthewind]

Touch at Midnight || Vampire!Brahms x Reader

A/N: This took so long, I am sure half of you forgot about this mini series I did. I’m sorry this took forever, I was just trying to make it perfect as well as work on requests too. I hope you all enjoy!

Warnings: NSFW, R18+, breast worship, blood kink, biting, oral (m receiving), dom!brahms, rough sex, no prep, reader is under mind control so consensual/non-consensual, mentions of masturbation, plenty foul/dirty talk, creampie

word count: 2.01k Tip Jar (every bit helps!)

Mini Series Masterlist

There was a time in your life that you thought you’d live past eighty and get to watch your children, grand-children and even great-grand-children, grow up. There was a time that you believed in the world being a decent place and that you would make your mark on it one day. Now, you realized just how delusional it all sounded. Now, you knelt before a man you thought you knew, thought you would grow old with, thought you would love forever, your life dangling before you with nothing to spare. 

When you had met Brahms, you never thought anything of him; just that he was a strange man who liked to keep to himself. You’d applied for a job to work under him; to cook, clean and care for him, as though he couldn’t do it himself. During the first few months of your duties, things were tense with you being new and Brahms really trying to understand what kind of woman you were. However, as the months went on into years, you slowly became drawn to the man, often times thinking of him from dusk until dawn. 

Your mistake really.

See, you had no clue that he was a monster; something only silly children believed in. He was soft and gentle before you’d found out- another mistake on your part. Now he stared down at you with dark eyes that were once directed towards you with such kindness and joy that you almost fell for it; you did fall for it the more you realize. You fell for a man with no remorse for taking a human life, a man that could kill you with just one movement, a man that you didn’t know. Those thoughts alone nearly killed you. 

You’d been sitting on the floor in front of his chair he had in the corner of the library, the moon peeking through the window curtains and casting a small amount of light towards his feet. His eyes were the only thing you could see on his face here in the dark; red with an anger so hot you had to pray he’d have mercy on you. You don’t know how long you’d been like this, unable to move as he stared down at you without moving an inch. The hair on your skin rose when he finally spoke, slow but sharp, “You had to be nosey, didn’t you?” Your lips trembled as you contemplated speaking. “I truly had no intention of ever hurting you; you did your work around the house wonderfully. Dare I say that you were the best at it?”

Your heart hammered in your chest at the confirmation of other caretakers before you, all of which were most likely dead. They probably got too comfortable too and went looking around in places that were off limits for a reason. Like his bedroom; where you remember finding a trunk full of blood bags from the hospital down the road. “Please,” you whimpered, watching him blink before shaking his head, silencing you. 

“I’ve spent years in that pretty little head of yours, listening to everything. I know all of your secrets, (Y/N).” You sucked in a breath as he leaned forward in his chair, hovering over your face with a look that only made you want to cower even more. “I’m honored to know how fond you were of me, truthfully I am. I’d grown fond of you as well, but,” he clicked his tongue, reaching out and grabbing your jaw roughly, ignoring your whimpers of pain. “You know too much.”

“Please, I won’t tell anyone I swear! Just let me go and I’ll leave tow-” you were cut off by a sharp laugh; Brahms’ eyes wild and manic. 

“Leave? No, no, no, you’re never leaving me.” His eyes were intense, red as the flames of hell and staring into your own without so much as blinking. “Here are your options; be my personal blood bank until you die, which is usually a couple of weeks, or, prove to me that you’re worth keeping alive. Of course, both require you to stay here with me,” Brahms touched your cheek gently with his other hand, moving some hair from your eyes. 

“You know I care about you, don’t you (Y/N)? Don’t you want to stay with me?” His words had an effect on your mind that made it hard to think. The world seemed to slow, as if you’d been drugged, but you knew that it was just the power he had, manipulating your mind to believe that whatever he said was true. You could feel tears fall from your eyes as you stared into his condemning ones, a soft hush falling from his lips as he wiped the tears away. 

It was wrong for you to say yes, you knew it even though you couldn’t stop it. Yet, some dark part inside of you almost wished he would keep you this way; brain being manipulated by whatever he wanted for the rest of your days. At least that way, you could imagine everything being right; you could day dream on the thoughts he forced inside your head. One’s where you end up with him, one’s where your happy.

One’s where he loved you just as much as you loved him.

This isn’t love, you thought as you made yourself sit up enough to press your lips against his. 

This isn’t what I wanted, you told yourself when he spread his legs in the chair and you unzipped his pants. 

This wasn’t how I was supposed to live, you cried as his fingers moved through your hair, guiding your mouth up and down his cock.

All you could do was prove to him that your life meant more than just being used as food. The buck of his hips every time you swirled your tongue around the tip of his cock made your eyes sting, the length making it hard to take all of it in your mouth. “You look so pretty like this,” Brahms gasped as he felt you take more of his member in your mouth, his eyes scanning your face and his mind going a mile a minute. He knew everything you were thinking as he pushed more ideas into your head, his control on you something he wished he’d never have to do. 

A lulling tug of tiredness waved in the back of his head, knowing that he hadn’t gotten to eat tonight because of the unfortunate incident of you finding his real food supply in his room. Of course, fresh blood always tasted so much better than the crap he had in bags. Brahms felt himself grow bored of watching you try to make him come, you jaw surely was hurting by now. Roughly grabbing your hair, he pulled you off his cock before standing up and pulling you up with him. You barely could get a word out as he turned you facing the front of the shiny, black piano, bending you down to where your front half was pressed against the cool surface. 

He wasted no time in ripping your clothes off of you, throwing them around the room and spreading your legs for his wandering eyes to see. A low growl made your cunt clench as he watched your juices build at your entrance where he drug the tip of his cock across. Brahms gave you no warning before sinking inside you to the base, the air practically taken from your lungs as he began moving immediately, your tight walls getting him off perfectly. “Do you know how many nights I wanted to do this?” He asked as he thrusted his hips roughly, the tip of his cock ramming against your cervix with no signs of easing up. “I’ve watched you, my innocent, precious (Y/N). Your fingers stuffing this filthy whole of yours as you squirm in bed, trying to cum.”

You can feel your walls tighten around his length at his words, your hands trying to grip the flat surface of the piano from the force he was jostling you around with. Your breasts bounced wildly, his hands coming up from your hips to find purchase there. His fingers pinched your nipples, twisting them and pulling until you were soaking his cock in your juices. “Did you know I was watching you touch yourself? I bet you did; you liked it didn’t you? Having someone else watch you fuck yourself until your tired...hmm?” 

“N-No,” you groan, trying to reason with yourself, but the impending orgasm you felt building making it all the harder to. Quickly, Brahms moved you to where you were facing him, your back fully pressed against the piano as he fucked into you at an in-human pace. You couldn’t help the sounds that were coming out of your mouth, urging him to continue. 

“I know what’s in your mind, my love. I’ve seen you think of me while you squirt all over the sheets,” you tremble at his words as his thumb barely grazes your clit. His mouth moving to your breasts, taking one nipple into his mouth and nibbling on it before teasing it with his tongue. With one sharp sting, he sinks his teeth into your breast, a short cry coming from your lips as he eases his hip movements while lapping at the blood pooling from the wounds. “If only you could see in my mind too. Then you could see just how man nights I’ve fucked my fist to the thoughts of this.” He chuckled to himself, licking his lips that were stained crimson. Pulling his head back, he stared down at you with something you didn’t recognize. 

The feeling was good though. Something positive out of the emotional negative you’d been put through. Brahms nearly stilled when you reached up and touched his face, his eyes watching yours for any signs of you trying to get away; all he found was sincerity. Running your fingers through his curly hair, you pressed his head down to yours where he kissed you without another word. From there, the sex was as beautiful as the day you first met him. Then, there had been sun, now there was the moon shining down on both of you. When he had first shaken your hand is was cold but now as he held yours, pinned above your head, it was all warm. 

His teeth managed to find your neck, biting there and feeding a couple of times but other than there, his lips never left yours which were swollen from the heatedness of the kiss. You moaned into his mouth when his fingers circled your clit, your thighs shaking from the intensity of the orgasm that proceeded to wash through you. Brahms made sure to hold you close, swallowing your gasps and cries of pleasure as he eased you through your orgasm. His cock twitched inside you a few more times before he finally came, deep inside you with no regrets. Everything was quiet for a minute, your lips molding against his and the soft pants leaving them was the only sound left. 

When he finally pulled away, you could see the glowing red of his eyes fade, returning to their normal hazel color and looking down at you with the kindness you had once known. His hands moved the hair out of your face and wiped away any tears that still fell, his fingers gentle against your skin. This may have been a different man to you now, but he was still the Brahms you’d fallen in love with years ago. 

That was enough to make you stay.

[hangovercurse]

Crash Into Me

You’d been MGK’s assistant for years, but you never thought you had a chance at anything more with him until one stoplight changes everything.

Request: “ok im so sorry if this is 2 specific but ive had this idea for ages abt pining!colson x an insecure/clueless!reader who has been his assistant forever. she gets into a car accident and calls him hours later to tell him that a temp will be taking her place for a few weeks (bc of injuries) and he's like ?? why?? she explains nonchalantly, then kells kinda freaks out and shows up at the hospital all worried”

Colson Baker X Reader

Warnings: Cursing, car accident (descriptive)

A/N: This was cute 😊

Word Count: 3185

“Alright Kells, I’m out for the night. I’ll email those tracks to the board when I get home and I’ll let you know if I get any updates for tomorrow’s press.” You told the blond man who was sitting on the couch as you put your laptop into your bag. You tried not to yawn as you heaved it over your shoulder, “anything else?”

You glanced at the kitchen clock that read 2 am and let out a small sigh. You were used to late nights given your job as assistant to a rockstar, but most nights you were able to leave before 8 pm. Tonight you and Colson had gotten really invested in the tracks you were editing and lost track of time.

“Y/N,” he turned to look at you with puppy dog eyes. He wanted something that you really weren’t gonna want to give him. “Could you come over early tomorrow to help me pick out what to wear for the Vanity Fair interview?”

You chuckled, “you know they have their own wardrobe department?”

He sighed, “yeah but you know me so much better than all those stylists. I trust your opinion more.”

You rolled your eyes as he tilted his head, begging you. “Fine, but I’m buying us coffee with your credit card.”

He broke out into a smile, “thank you, love you!” He called as you walked towards his front door.

“Whatever, I’ll see you tomorrow.” You told him, taking your car keys into your hands, and stepping out into the LA night. There was a soft breeze that shook the trees slightly, making you smile. It felt nice outside for the first time in a while.

Because of this, you decided to drive home with your windows rolled down, letting the wind flow through your hair. The roads were pretty barren by LA standards, so traffic was pretty much non-existent. You were sitting at a red light, your fingers tapping against your steering wheel as one of Colson’s songs played through your speakers softly.

You reached to turn up the volume as the light turned green. You pressed the gas, your car moving forward into the intersection. Suddenly you heard a loud squeal of brakes, looking over to your passenger window to the sight of two headlights barreling towards you. You tried to speed up to get out of the way, but it was too late.

The truck rammed straight into the side of your small car, pushing your vehicle over into the car next to you. You put your left arm up to shield you from any flying debris, but it was futile. The infrastructure of your car fell apart at the force, the dashboard collapsing onto your right leg. Luckily, your left leg managed to avoid the destruction.

You could barely feel the force of the whiplash due to the pain in your abdomen at the deployment of the airbag. Glass from the car next to you fell into your car through your open window, cutting into your skin.

And then all of a sudden, everything stopped. The truck that had hit you had stopped moving, allowing you to fully assess the damage. Your car was totaled for sure, and your leg was definitely crushed. You cried out in pain, breathing heavy and trying to see straight. You could hear the sound of sirens in the distance, giving you some sense of relief.

When the paramedics got to the scene, you were the last passenger to be taken out of the crash due to your car being in the center. A firefighter had to break the glass of your windshield, which was already cracked, in order to pull you out. When you told him your leg was stuck under the dashboard, he sent a team of men to lift it from your foot and another to pull you out of the wreckage.

They were all amazed you were still conscious but got very worried when you told them you couldn’t feel the pain in your leg. You rode in an ambulance to the hospital, the EMTs helping pick the glass from your skin and assessing your injuries. You made jokes with them to calm yourself down, something that you did with Colson and Rook whenever they got into accidents while you were out with them.

You thought about giving them Colson’s name when they asked about your emergency contact but decided against it. You didn’t want to worry him until absolutely necessary. You figured you’d see what the doctor had to say and if you wouldn’t be able to come back to work, then you would tell him.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the doctor said. In fact, you wouldn’t be able to leave the hospital for at least a week due to your shattered leg, bruised abdomen, and concussion.

The leg would require at least 2 if not more surgeries to repair and you would be on close watch for development of a more serious brain injury. After that you most likely wouldn’t be able to be back on your feet for another 8 to 12 weeks, which was kind of a requirement for your job.

It was almost 5am, so you weren’t necessarily thinking straight when you called Colson from your cracked phone. He answered, his voice conveying how tired he was. “Y/N? Everything okay?”

“Hey Kells, I’m not gonna be able to come in early tomorrow, or at all. I’m gonna start looking for a temporary replacement tomorrow if I’m feeling up to it. Oh! And I couldn’t send those tracks to the board, sorry.” You told him, only half registering the words you were saying.

The confusion was evident in his voice, “what? Why do you need to find a replacement?”

You realized you had forgotten to tell him what happened. “Oh, yeah! It’s kind of funny.” You started, chuckling but then realizing that laughing made your stomach hurt even more. “And by funny, I mean not funny at all. I got into a car accident. Some dude ran into my car in an intersection and now I’m in the hospital.”  

“Which hospital?” Colson asked, suddenly much more awake.

“Hollywood Presbyterian.” You told him, “why?”

He sounded like he was rushing around, which he was. “I’m coming to see you.”

You furrowed your eyebrows in confusion, “why? I’m fine, you don’t need to do that. You have a big interview tomorrow, you should sleep.”

Colson sighed, “fuck the interview, I’ll be there in a few.”

“Colson you don’t-“ You started, but he hung up before you could tell him not to come.

Why was he rushing to see you in the hospital? Sure, you were friends, but he had much more important things to worry about right now. And besides, you were more casual work friends. He wouldn’t even know you existed if you didn’t work for him. Sure, you had a huge crush on him, but he was your boss, you were just someone he asked to do things he didn’t want to do.

 20 minutes later Colson ran into the hospital room, stopping when he saw you in the bed. Your face was red from chemical burn and a few cuts of glass. Your right leg was propped up with basic bandaging around it. His heart broke at the thought of how much pain you had probably been in.

“How are you feeling?” He asked softly, moving to sit in the chair on your left side.

You shrugged, “I’ve been better.”

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” He asked, eyes full of pity.

“I didn’t want to bother you unless it was serious. Figured I’d find out if I would have to miss work before telling you.” You said, squeezing your eyes shut as a headache washed over you.

Colson’s mouth gaped open, “you didn’t want to bother me? You got in a car crash and you weren’t gonna call me unless you would have to miss work?”

You shrugged again, “yeah. If my laptop wasn’t completely crushed in the accident I would’ve just found and sent a temp in tomorrow, but obviously that’s impossible.”

“Y/N you’re kidding me, right?” He asked, exasperated. You furrowed your eyebrows in response, causing a sigh to fall from his lips. “Y/N I don’t give a shit about a temp; I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Oh, I’m fine. A little shaken and these headaches are killer, but they gave me a lot of pain medication so, I’m fine.” You smiled at him, your thoughts racing as you tried to figure out why he cared so much about how you were feeling.

He nodded, hand reaching out and landing on top of yours gently. “So, do they have to do surgery? What all did the doctors say?” He asked, worry in his eyes.

You nodded, “yeah, at least 2 surgeries. One around 11 am and then depending on how that one goes they’ll schedule the next. And they have to watch me to make sure my concussion doesn’t get worse.”

He pulled out his phone, typing away. “What are you doing?” You asked, suddenly feeling very tired.

“I just emailed the PR liaison for Vanity Fair and told them I wouldn’t be able to make it to the interview.” He responded.

“Why did you do that?” You asked through a yawn.

He looked at you like the answer was the most obvious thing in the world, “because I have to be with you right now.”

You were very confused as to why he thought he had to be here. “Colson, I’ll be fine. You should go to the interview. You don’t have to stay here.”

“I do have to be here. I want to be here.” He said, sternly.

“Why?” You asked, trying to keep your eyes open.

“Because I wanna make sure you’re okay.”

“I’ll just call you after the surgery, it’s no big deal.” You responded lazily.

He shook his head, “I want to stay here with you, Y/N. Okay? I care about you.”

You were too tired to process what he was saying at this point, so you just let out a hum. “I need to make sure you’re okay. I need to see you being okay. When you called me, I swear I was gonna have a heart attack if I didn’t see you.” He continued.

You were barely awake at this point, letting out a simple, “I’m okay” before slipping into unconsciousness.

 Suddenly you were back in your car, “Bloody Valentine” playing from your speakers. The sky was dark green, almost like a painting. In front of you, the red light turned green. Like clockwork, you pressed the gas, moving into the intersection. Suddenly, the lights disappeared, and you heard the familiar chilling sound of breaks squealing. You looked over and saw those headlights coming towards you, getting closer and closer, brighter, and brighter.

You screamed at the sight, the familiar paralyzing fear coursing through your body again. “Y/N!” Your name played through the radio. That’s not in the song, you thought. “Y/N!” Colson’s voice rang out again before the truck made contact with your car.

You woke up in a cold sweat to Colson standing over you, hands shaking your shoulders lightly. “Y/N.” He said, relieved when your eyes began to open.

Your entire body was shaking like a poodle and your arms subconsciously reached for Colson, hanging onto his shirt for dear life. “It was just a dream.” He whispered as your eyes darted around the room. “You’re okay.” He reassured you.

“I’m sorry.” You muttered, hands leaving the fabric and moving to cover up your face. “I’m sorry.”

Colson sat on the bed next to you, legs hanging off the side as he stroked your face gently. “It’s okay, baby.” He turned to the nurse who opened the door, a worried expression on her face. He shook his head at her, “sorry, she just had a nightmare. She’s okay.” The nurse nodded but stayed in the room anyways, checking your vitals.

“I’m sorry.” You mumbled again, the words seeming to be the only thing you could say.

Colson shook his head, “stop saying that, it’s okay.” You pouted at him, trying to scoot over so he would lay down next to you, but it was way too painful. “What are you doin?” He asked, a smile on his face.

You sighed, “wanted you to sit next to me but I can’t move because of this stupid leg.” You motioned to the leg in question.

Colson chuckled, “I can sit next to you in the chair.”

“That didn’t work last time.” You whined.

He looked at you with an expression that was both amused and confused. You were definitely still high on pain medication. “What didn’t work.”

“It didn’t stop the nightmare.” You frowned, hand reaching for his. He chuckled, standing up fully and looking at the nurse.

She flashed him an amused smile, “If you want, we can try to move her. I don’t know how much we can do without hurting her ribs, though.”

Colson nodded with a gracious smile, “hear that? We can’t move you because of your ribs.”

You glared at him, “I may be very high right now, but I’m not that high.” You said, making him giggle. “She said you could try.”

Colson let out an exasperated sigh, one arm going under your back and the other under your left leg. “Is this what it’s like taking care of me all the time?” He asked and you nodded your head firmly.

“Yep. Except I am much smaller than you, so you have less work to do with me.” You smiled as he lifted you off the bed, which quickly turned into a grimace. “Ow!” You yelped and Colson quickly set you down, slightly closer to the right side of the bed.

“Fuck, sorry princess. Are you okay?” He asked, voice soft.

You nodded, sucking in your bottom lip to block the whimpers of pain that threatened to escape your mouth. “You probably don’t remember, but one time you were so crossed that you called me to pick you up from a party. But you couldn’t make it out of the car, so I had to carry you into your house. And then you demanded to sleep in your own room, so you made me drag you up the stairs instead of passing out on the couch like normal.”

Colson let out a breathy chuckle, glad you weren’t hurt too much. He carefully sat onto the cot next to you, pulling up his right leg to sit on the bed. His arm wrapped around your shoulders and pulled you into him slightly. You shifted so that you were comfortable, left hand finding his own left hand and holding it. He brought his left leg up onto the bed so he was fully laying with you.

Your head rest on his chest, a soft smile on your face as his thumb rubbed circles on your hand. The nurse left, satisfied that you wouldn’t hurt yourself further. Colson pressed a small kiss to the top of your head, causing your eyebrows to furrow.

“What time is it?” You asked him, to which he responded by pulling out his phone and showing you the lock screen. 8:47am. You nodded, a frown on your face, “did you get any sleep?” You asked him softly.

“I’m fine, I was asleep for a few hours before you called me.”

You sighed, feeling guilty. “You should go home and get some sleep.”

You felt him shake his head from behind you, “I’m staying right here.”

Despite wanting to force him to go home, you couldn’t help the happiness you felt at his stubbornness to stay with you. “You know you don’t need to be here. I won’t be offended if you leave.”

He chuckled, “stop trying to get me to leave. I’m here. On my own accord, okay? I’m gonna take care of you.”

You paused, thinking about the word floating around your head. “Why?” you whispered.

Colson’s face scrunched in confusion, “what do you mean “why”? Because you’re my friend and I care about you.”

“I mean, yeah. But I’m not like a “drop everything” kind of friend, I’m just your assistant.” You muttered.

Colson made an “are-you-serious?” face and let out a snort. “Seriously? You are so much more than you give yourself credit for. You mean the world to me, of course I’d drop everything for you.”

You couldn’t think of a response, his words making your heart race. “oh.” Was the best you could come up with.

“Y/N, seriously, you think way too low of yourself. You’re amazing.” He said, nose burying into your hair.

You shrugged, “you only say that because I take care of you when you’re drunk and help you do all the things you don’t want to do.”

Colson’s expression softened, a frown forming on his face. “I’m saying that because I think the world of you. You’re the kindest, funniest, coolest person I know. I meant it, when you told me you were in the hospital, my heart almost stopped. I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about you being hurt.” He paused, taking a deep breath before continuing, “I wish you could see how much you mean to me.” He mumbled.

You were quiet for a little while, processing what he had said. “You’re only saying that because I’m in the hospital.” You muttered, a frown on your face. You were trying to keep your hopes low, knowing once you were out of here, he would regret saying any of this.

“Y/N, are you being serious right now? I’m saying this because I’ve been fucking in love with you for the past year and a half.” He said and you could feel your breath catch in your throat. “I can’t believe you don’t see it.”

You bit your lip, turning to look up to him. “I just- I didn’t want- you wouldn’t.” You stumbled over your words, taking a deep breath, and starting again. “I didn’t want to read too much into it or get my hopes up. I figured you’d never be into someone like me so I just told myself you were being nice. I thought you only treated me well because I worked for you.” You mumbled.

He frowned, holding you tighter to him, “I am so, so into you. You are the only woman in my life who has ever stuck by me through my worst shit. Like even when I was a total jackass you stayed with me. How could I not fall in love with you?”

You bit your lip, tears threatening to spill at his sweet sentiment. You’d never had anyone say something that kind about you. You’d always assumed people only kept you around because you did stuff for them, but here was the man you were in love with telling you that he cared about you for you.

“I love you too.” You whispered, leaning your head further into his chest.

[akawrites000]

hot vs cold

Hero groaned, pulling on that black tie with curled, tense fingers. They've never been a big fan of formal wear, but this particular assignment had called for such a situation. They looked up at the gloomy sky, mind wandering about to how many side jobs heroes actually had to do. People would think being a hero would consist of mostly fighting off villains- and that's true, but villain was the least of their problems right then; in fact, it had almost been a week since they had a face off with villain. When they weren't paying attention, their thoughts would sometimes betray them, making hero think that they almost missed villain. Almost.

Sweat pooled on their brow as they waited under the hot sun, dearly missing the comfort and familiarity of their hero costume. This particular job requirement was that they act as a bodyguard and protect a high profile individual while they attend some sort of a party that hero couldn't be less concerned about. They preferred being the hero and not a bodyguard for someone who they didn't even know.

Just then, a black limousine rolled out and stopped right in front of the hotel they were staying in; a huge man with sunshades got out from the back, waved their hands at hero, signaling them to get in. That must be my ride.

They got into the car without any fight, and took one look at the rear most seat to check if this was in fact their employer or just a fancy way of kidnapping.

"No staring."

"Wha-

Hero didn't have a chance to speak out before they were crushed by the huge man sitting to their left. They couldn't believe it, why did they have to be squished, with no concept of personal space in a limousine?! This was just absurd.

Hero felt another lithe body press to them on their right, that person in turn being squished by another big man to their left. Hero groaned internally, they were just really bad with close contact with people in general, they could never understand why, but it just felt foreign to them. It's like they never knew how to act, and their mind would settle on the default "freak out" option.

Hero was dragged out of their head when they felt themselves being pushed further to the lithe person on their right, because the big guy decided to squirm in his seat. The sweat pooling on their brow slowly slid down their cheekbone, and hero was feeling hot... everywhere. There were too many sensations ramming into them all at once- their tight suit, which felt like it was glued to their body now thanks to their nerves; being pressed to another person; feeling their body heat. Hero had always had a high body temperature so all of this contact was making their head spin.

They just sat there silently, wishing for this agony to just end.

-

Villain was in high spirits, this was a job that paid well, so they enthusiastically got dressed up in a suit that was the dress code for a bodyguard and got into the assigned limousine. They had a mask plus voice changer on for good measure, and nobody questioned that which was good. They were thinking how ironic it was that they accepted this job request, because this was what the heroes did- protecting people, not villains.

So it was an understatement to say that their jaw almost dropped to the floor when they saw hero getting into that same limousine. Villain found themselves gaping at them, their mind betraying them and caring for their nemesis who they met almost every day, in a fight of course.

I can't believe that hero is actually here, so now we have to work together? Do they even know that I'm villain? And they're not even wearing a mask to hide their identity, how irresponsible. Oh, they look good in a suit-

Villain had to stop their mind right there, willing themselves to focus on anything else other than the hero sitting next to them. But these two gorillas on either side of them made that almost impossible as they kept pushing each other closer in this seat that was too small for all of them.

Villain couldn't help but glance over at hero every few minutes, they were being too quiet. The hero they knew was noisy, always running into a fight before thinking, a person that kept jumping around all the time. So seeing them this calm was just... weird.

By now villain was pretty sure that hero didn't recognise them, so they were mentally prepping themselves to talk to them when the gorilla to hero’s left pushed them further into their body. Villain immediately froze. Too close. Hero might as well be practically sitting on them now, villain could feel everything- their breathing, heartbeat, and their body heat, they were practically burning... wait, burning?!

Villain whipped their head towards hero and took in their slumped figure. Their head was downcast so they couldn't really see their face. Hero was practically leaning on them, making no effort to even hold themselves upright and villain was a little worried... okay, a lot more worried than they let on. Hero’s breathing was ragged and villain felt like they had to do something, anything. But hero beat them to it.

"H-hot". Hero breathed out, weakly, pathetically.

Their voice was so low, villain almost didn't hear them.

"Sorry, what did you say?"

Hero propped their head up on their shoulder, lips parted as they gasped in some air, bangs stuck to their sweaty forehead and villain shamelessly drank in those visuals, despite their thoughts clashing with one another. Hero’s eyes were shut tight, while villain’s eyes were wide open, staring at them.

"S' so hot, I can't-" they croaked.

That's when villain painfully realised that hero was having some sort of a panic attack and they needed space. Villain haphazardly pushed at the big man to hero’s left, glaring at him so that he doesn't attempt to move any closer. Then they draped a protective arm around hero, activating their powers and felt weirdly proud when hero almost moaned out at the cold sensation.

Villain brought up their other hand to hero’s face comfortably nestled on their shoulder and gently touched their forehead, cheek and neck.

Hero blinked up at them in slight surprise, eyes opening and then closing as they went limp in their arms, all of their tense muscles relaxing and villain just felt so powerful.

Hero finally looked up at them after regaining a bit of their energy, their face a palette of red, when the car screeched to a stop.

The two of them were ushered out of the car and hero wobbled after the 'mysterious masked person who had saved them' . They were pulled upright by the same person when their balance toppled and they almost ended up kissing the floor, with a "be more careful" from them. Hero felt their face heating up, just how many times did they have to be helped today? A behavior totally unbefitting of a hero.

"Um!" Hero called out and the 'masked person' stopped to turn around and look at them.

Hero was already bowing, words sounding like apologies and gratitude steadily spilling out of their lips in a messed up heap, as they bombarded villain’s ears. Villain wanted to understand, they really did, but all they could pick up were hurried sorries, shy thank you's and the word stranger that kept popping up here and there and how hero was so embarrassed by their own behaviour.

Villain simply scoffed, they had seen far more embarrassing sides of the hero and secretly enjoyed them, their nose scrunching up every time hero called them a stranger and villain couldn't stand it anymore.

As fun as this was, it was time to reveal their masked identity-

"But I'm no stranger to you darling." Villain mocked and the 'goldfish expression' on hero’s face was oh so worth it.

Villain turned around with a smug smile as hero caught up with all of that information and was by their side in a second, screeching into their ears.

"Villain?!"

"Yes, that's me."

Hero groaned, Villain's voice dripped with so much amusement that made hero’s heart flare with embarrassment at that moment.

"I'll punch you after this job." Hero hissed.

Villain smiled, "Is that how you thank people? But lucky for you, I'll accept it and punch you back."

Hero rolled their eyes. "Just shut up. Please."

Villain chuckled and hero couldn't get that voice out of their head. While they were distracted, villain took the opportunity to close in next to their ear and spoke in a sinful tone which should be illegal-

"I-im hot~"

Hero simply tripped on air, falling face first to the ground this time. There was no getting that voice out of their head now. They looked up and glared at villain, who made a funny face and walked away.

Hero hid their face in their hands. "Shit. That's unfair, you shitty villain."

Hero felt another large hand tapping their shoulder and looked up to see one of the gorilla men looking down at them, sympathy written all over his face. Hero took the man's outstretched hand and let themselves be pulled up.

"That was cute, didn't know you both knew each other. But my partner and I," he pointed to the other huge man standing next to the limo and grinning at them, "are totally on your side. That was one underhanded move."

Oh, if hero wasn't embarrassed enough a few seconds ago, they definitely were now.

"Wait, what, how did you-

"I have superhearing." , the man simply said as hero gawked at him, and then started wishing for the ground to swallow them up whole.

BONUS: Every time hero overheated during a fight and felt faint, villain would use their powers to cool them down, and hero would lean into that touch like they could never get enough of it. It attacked villain’s heart every time.

So yeah, my brain decided to give you hero x villain squished together in a limo instead of a bed? New trope? xD

Thank you so much for 260 followers, you all are so precious 🥺❤

[anonthenullifier]

Wanda and Vision are fighting on some Avengers mission and in the midst of a fight, Vision loses their connection after Wanda takes a nasty hit.

I do love some mission angst 😁 Hope you enjoy!

_____

From an outside perspective, the most parsimonious explanation for their synchronization would be hours upon hours of careful training, of learning maneuvers that combine their powers so that Wanda’s strengths support his weaknesses, and he in turn can bolster her. It is not an unfair conclusion, they have spent countless hours (2,327 to be exact) learning this dance, timing the steps that allow Wanda to distract and enrapture with her scarlet bursts long enough for Vision to phase into position and adjust to the best density for neutralization. Except it is not entirely accurate. What no one can perceive is the link between their minds, the flow of information and senses, every move of her body reverberating in his own muscles, every strategy instantly shared and dissected, every emotion linked, their thoughts an unseen ebb and flow.

“Vision,” Captain Rogers’ voice crackles into his mind half a second before it leaps into Wanda’s, her body tensing slightly at the intrusion, “need you up here with me now.”

“Understood.” He turns towards Wanda, not to inform her, the taut line of her mouth betrays her dislike of separating, but to assure her. “I will be back momentarily.”

The cock of her head to the side occurs in time with the flinging of her arm and a pulse of scarlet, another attack drone falling to the ground, its body split open and wires sparking. “I’ll be fine.”

Vision allows himself half a second to brush his fingers along her lower back, “I am aware,” and another half second to lay a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Be safe.”

Her you too is sent through their mental link as he lifts from the ground, rising ever higher until he reaches the approximate altitude of Captain Rogers, Wanda now a speck of red, powers thrown out like a vortex spinning round and round. Vision smiles at the sight, evening out his body to propel himself to the apex of the building where Captain Rogers waits.

“I know you can get here faster than that.”

It is not the first admonishment of his slightly delayed reaction time, “According to Protocol 65, Section 2a all Avengers are required to ensure their teammates are secure before leaving.”

Captain Rogers blinks twice, his equivalent of the eye roll he would get from Wanda or the smacking of lips Sam provides whenever Vision is being too impertinent, “Not sure our definitions of appropriate securing behaviors are the same.” Unlike the others, the man leaves the conversation there. “Need your help breaking the seal.”

A rough visual examination provides clarity to the statement. The hatch they’d strategically selected for entering the building is welded shut, small hash marks and craters informing him that Steve has already attempted to use his shield to break it. “Any parameters?”

“Schematics we got are from five years ago.”

Ignorance is Vision's least favorite starting point, the schematics streaming through his mind almost unusable given they are from before the supposed experimentation they are thwarting started. “I will do a sweep and then return.”

“Make it quick.”

The molecules of his body shift, density plummeting until he is merely a specter able to phase into the building. Even inside, he maintains his incorporealness lest there is some form of weight-triggered alarm. There is, or more accurately, there is a series of intricately threaded traps amalgamating into a tricky puzzle. Only you would be excited.

Whether the upward pull of his cheeks is from his own delight or Wanda’s, he cannot pinpoint the exact source. I would say intrigued more than excited.

He can feel the revolution of her eyes tugging at his own, taking comfort to have received the normative response since it means all is well. Stay focused, Vizh.

Yes, my love.

Heeding her own advice, the link drops to a tickle along his synapses, a ghost of her neural relay intermingling with his, an experience that used to be overwhelming but is now a source of calm. Slowly he begins phasing, twisting, and shorting out the wires.

“Vision, report.”

Even if Vision’s internal timekeeping was not precise, he would know it has been three minutes as that is the threshold of Captain Roger’s patience on a mission. “I am in the midst of disabling a sophisticated,” his heart begins to race, ramming back and forth as if trapped. “A um,” next comes a cloak of terror, the acidic taste of rising bile not his own, and though his muscles feel frenzied, his hands are calm minus a subtle tremor. “I believe Wanda might-“

Wanda’s slightly frantic voice shudders into the comms. “I need back-up.”

Instantly his body begins to respond, wires falling through his fingers until Steve’s voice shackles him in place, “Sam!”

“On it!”

As if nothing else is happening, as if his pulse is not racing nor his mind down in the battlefield, his stationary arms screaming to swipe without rhythm at the threat, Steve calmly states, “Vision, report.”

“I am,” he strives to keep his voice even, unaffected, knowing how their leader responds to any show of hesitancy, “disabling a sophisticated system of traps.”

“Keep at it.”

“Affirmative.”

He moves with urgency, three fourths of his mind honed in on the delicate puzzle beneath his fingers, while the other quarter remains with Wanda, trying to make sense of the chaos even she is overwhelmed by.

A force crashes into his chest, muscles screaming and lungs struggling to function. Vision straightens out, hand instantly running along the raised texture of his suit, but there is no injury, no threat before him. He reaches out to Wanda and is met with nothing.

His heart stops. Half a second, he reaches out. Nothing. Half a second, another reach. Silence.

He was born into this world alone, separate from humanity, so this is not a new feeling...except it has now been more than a year since he was ever truly alone in his mind. It is deafening.

An uncoordinated and risky pulse of energy sears away the last of the wires, the Mindstone buzzing as he builds up energy. “Captain, move to the side.”

“Um...roger that.”

Vision increases his auditory processor, waiting until he hears the subtle scrape of Steve’s boots to the side and then he unleashes the blast, the hatch door flying off into the distance. Mission etiquette, under Protocol 66, dictates he inform Steve of his flight trajectory, but Vision bypasses it under his own personal Protocol Wanda, bursting out from the building and flying in a straight line to where he left her, phasing and blasting away everything that gets in his way.

When he lands he spots Wanda immediately, slumped forward with her right arm splayed out in an unnatural curvature. There are approximately fifteen hybrid beasts between himself and Wanda, four actively engaged with Sam. Vision inhales, clenches his fists at the still absent mental link, and then he begins a waltz uniquely his own, body twisting and turning, hovering and diving, molecules solidifying and then dissipating as need be until there is nothing in his way.

“Wanda,” he falls onto his knees, hands easing underneath her torso to pry her off the ground before cradling her head to his chest. “Wanda…” An anatomical scan confirms she is breathing, her heart is thrumming, though both slower than they should. Other than potential cracked ribs and bruising, physically she will recover.

This is not comforting since the silence remains.

Vision runs his fingers through her hair, “Wanda.” There is no stirring, no sign of understanding or of her brain functioning to the level of cognitive awareness. Even when they are having a ridiculous spat over something, she still holds tight to his mind. He isn’t even sure he can think without her there to watch. Sam’s presence over his shoulder encourages his next thought to be internal, only for Wanda. I am afraid.

A non-synthetic neuron fires in his temporal lobe. He keeps going, urging her mind to act. I need you with me. Another electrical impulse, this time tracking deep into the amygdala. I love you. The flash of recognition cascades along the neural pathways of her brain, alighting his own into a frenzy of hope. Wanda, please come back to me. Four seconds of silence and then he feels the comforting spread of her powers in every crevice of his mind. There you are.

Though her eyes remain closed, it does not stop them from rolling or make him miss the infinitesimal quirk of her lips. Little melodramatic, Vizh.

All of his worry bubbles up into a half sob-half laugh, arms closing tighter around her until she winces . “Sorry...sorry ,” he loosens his hold, “you may have some broken ribs.”

“Kinda figured.”

The static of the comms precedes a fed up, “Is anyone going to report what is going on down there?”

From behind him Sam clicks his own device, “Just an operation love bird winding down.”

A strained, defeated, “Roger that, Sam.” causes Wanda’s nose to scrunch up, her head shaking slowly from side to side. “You’re getting written up again.”

The only demerits to his otherwise pristine mission record exist solely due to moments like these. “More than likely.” Careful not to aggravate her injuries, he slopes forward, lips hovering just over hers. I regret nothing.

Good. The rush of endorphins as their lips meet is amplified by their mental link, allowing them to move without thought or debate, when his head tilts right, hers goes left, their minds together and love perfectly synchronized

[crystalelemental]

Grid Analysis!  Doing all of them in one post, because I don’t want to flood things too bad.

Candice!  She was first alphabetically in the system.  Her grid is solid, but predictably, you can’t get everything you want.  Fleet Feet and Inertia are required.  Hail MPR is required, and is out of the way.  Good news: she gets guaranteed crit after setting Hail, so you set up a bit and then get guaranteed crit for sync.  Bad news, you can’t get Super Preparation without giving up Hail MPR.  So she has some give and take, despite her great options.

Brycen’s grid isn’t great, so you kinda have to decide between Hostile Environment on Ice Beam for like a 30% freeze chance, or just taking all the buffs on Haze alongside Heavy Hail for sync buffs and his powerup nodes.  It’s not great, but he’s at least capable of buffing offensive stats for the team this way.

Sophocles got good effects, but nothing easily accessed.  Static Shock and the powerup node there means not getting Cakewalk and both Trip Up effects.  The better one is of course requiring the worse one, so you can’t realistically just take one.  Even at the bare minimum, he’s giving up a decent amount for something else.  It’s a bit sad.

Grimsley!  He’s got nothing at 2/5, he’s a need for 3/5.  At that point, he can receive Haymaker, both sync powerups, Risky Counter to speed up the sync cooldown, and both MGR and Aggravation on Iron Head.  He cannot receive Harry without giving up a sync damage node.  Grid’s okay.

Elesa is another requires 3/5 for performance.  At least for any damage and tech-centric focus.  She works fine for a debuffer at any level.  What she gains is another 20% chance to lower all stats, flinch chance on Thundershock, powering up Max Move if foe is paralyzed, and her sync damage nodes.  Frankly not bad.  She doesn’t have MGR9 on Thundershock so frankly it’s irrelevant.

Sonia retains an MPR and Master Healer on Potion, and Hostile Environment at 2/5.  That’s really good.  The problem is that while Sonia can do many things, she cannot do everything she wants easily.  She needs MPR on her trainer move and Crit Squad to function as a buffer, but that demands giving up a Master Healer due to their awkward placement, as well as giving up Endurance due to its awkward placement.  As an offense, she gives up most of her Potion support.  On Stall, she barely gets all the Potion stuff and Endurance.  Hostile Environment sounds great, but it’s often too far out of the way to see use over the rest.  Still a great support, but definitely hurt by the grid’s placement of some skills.

Nessa!  This is the saddest grid I have ever seen.  She needs MPR trainer move to max crit and attack.  That’s far, far right.  She needs left to get MPR Hail, and there’s only the one.  She wants to go up and to the left for Super Prep for the sync nuke, and this completely foregoes her speed control and Ramming Speed and other such multipliers.  Nessa’s grid is outright bad.  This is upsetting.  Candice got a better grid.  Granted, Candice has no attacking move worth anything, so Nessa is still a better unit overall, but yikes.  At least she retains the MPRs and Pep Rally at 2/5.

Leon!  He actually gets what I consider the essentials.  MGR and Ramming Speed for Glacial Lance, MPR trainer move, second Cold Snap for a 50% freeze chance, and buffs either move or sync damage when foe is frozen.  He cannot get both.  He also can’t really get the Hail stuff without sacrifices.  You can give up the trainer move to get something for Hail, but he can’t get the damage buff and Snow Shelter, without giving up Ramming Speed.  He also, surprise, loses a ton at 2/5.  He keeps his multipliers if foe is frozen, which he can do naturally 30% of the time, but it’s a big loss to not get the extra 20% chance for it.

Lusamine can’t quite get everything she wants, but she gets everything she needs.  The definitive set is all four powerup nodes for sync, Brain Sync 5, and Double Down 9.  You can go MGR on Prismatic Laser or Crit Strike 1.  You cannot get Propulsion with either.  Alternatively, for off-type shenanigans, you can go with On a Roll Mirror Shot, Discombobulate, and Hide and Sync.  Hide and Sync should be a 100% bonus, compared to Brain Sync’s 50%, and Double Down doesn’t work off-type.  So it’s a fair trade, if you get the accuracy debuffs.  Two shots at around 50% each is good odds to rapidly debuff, but it’s notably limited.  But, you do get all four sync nodes while doing this.  Though you may want to give up one to get the extra +10 accuracy for Mirror Shot.  Naturally, at 2/5, she loses basically everything.  She retains Precognition and Weird Vibes for Psychic Terrain, MGR on Prismatic Laser, and two of the sync damage nodes.  That’s it.  It’s not terrible, but you lose a good amount of what takes her from solid to ridiculous.

Overall, most of them need 3/5, but that’s a bit standard overall.  A few work well with 2/5 just by virtue of their base kits being so good.  Elesa, Leon, and Lusamine are the only three I’d say successfully build exactly what they want from the grid.  Everyone else has to make concessions, with some being worse than others.  I think Nessa’s got the worst grid of the 5*s here, and among most.  It’s just an absolute disaster, her good options are just so spread out.  I think the distance from Hail MPR to trainer move MPR is the most devastating.  It’s so expensive just to get those two required pieces of her kit, that it throws off the rest.  The common grids have no trouble because...commons.  3/5 happens naturally.  Candice is the obvious winner of the grid battle, and while Brycen has a more accommodating grid, it leads to less impact than Sophocles will make.

[mihidecet]

To Lean on Somebody

Set in a Dream SMP alternate universe where everything from before the festival didn’t happen (I’m not in denial you are ;-;), two friends find a moment of comfort and honesty.

I am begging you, on my knees, to not take this as ship content. PLEASE let us normalize platonic cuddling and being close with your friends without it being sexual I am pleading.

I am but a touch starved dumbass, I hope you enjoy <3

It happens one late evening.

Quackity enters Schlatt's office at around midnight, tired, stressed out from the upcoming meetings, and almost lets all of the documents he's holding fall to the ground in surprise. 

He hadn't expected to find the light still on and for a moment he stares, eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights, at the ram hybrid still intent on finishing his own reports. And for a moment - right before Schlatt's eyes raise towards him, right before he notices he's not alone in the room anymore - Quackity just sees him. Shoulders tense, hair a mess and way too long, some curls reaching the tip of his nose, the darkness under his eyes as if he's been punched. 

Yellow eyes blink slowly at him. 

"What are you still doing up?" Schlatt asks, monotone betraying nothing of the tiredness his whole body is emanating. 

"I could ask you the same thing." Quackity quips back, moving closer to the table to place down his finished work - Schlatt's eyes soften for a moment, gratefulness evident only to a trained watcher. 

"Are you almost done?" The younger man asks, leaning into the desk to peer at the document still under his president's hand. At Schlatt's positive hum, Quackity simply hums back. 

A thought hits him, a plan subtly forming in his brain as his eyes move from the document to Schlatt's hand as he tucks a stray curl behind his right horn with a huff. 

He ponders for a moment. Meditates on possible outcomes. Prepares for the worst.

"Do you want me to cut your hair?" Quackity's voice asks, out of the blue, the traitorous fool, before he can figure out a way to properly construct his question. 

Schlatt looks up, blinks at him. 

Looks back down at the document, only silence passing between them as Quackity both tenses up and laughs at himself for the silliness of the question. 

"Sure, why not. Shit's getting annoying, anyway."

Quackity discusses with himself the benefits of cutting his friend's hair at one am, and finds no reason why he shouldn't do it. It's not like he's that tired anyway, his brain always takes a while to turn off after he's finished working, and this way he can make sure Schlatt won't change his mind. 

As soon as the man is done with his paperwork, he escorts him to his bathroom, where he has all the things he needs. 

"Are you sure you can cut hair?" Schlatt asks, eyeing suspiciously the scissors and clippers Quackity is taking out of a specific drawer. Quackity just sighs with a smile on his face, waving his worries away. 

"Now, we don't really have a proper place to do it. You can sit on the chair and lean back, or we can use the bathtub." Schlatt turns towards him, a sardonic smile on his face as he crosses his arms over his chest.

"You know, if you wanted to get me naked-"

Quackity raises his index finger towards him.

"I will stab you. I'm giving you enough time to get ready and when I'm back I'm cutting your hair or something else. Up to you."

Schlatt chooses the bathtub. 

Sue him. 

He needs a bath anyway, this is just saving time. Also, there is no way in hell he is bending over backwards to have his head fit into the sink, his back is already fucked up enough. 

For all that he jokes around Quackity, he knows that what they have can live through this situation. They're friends, in a way that honestly baffles Schlatt a bit too much. He doesn't know what he did to deserve somebody that clicks so well with him. Not that he's gonna say that out loud, but-

Maybe he should have just gone to sleep. 

He is tired. But the prospect of a bath - and of freedom from his overly long hair - is too tempting. 

When Quackity enters the bathroom again, he's silent. He makes no note nor quip about Schlatt's decision, he just goes and grabs what he needs and places it down on a chair, moving another one so that he can sit right behind Schlatt. 

Everything is very still and silent around them, which could be weird and awkward but it's not. They're both tired, and there's not much to talk about that they can't talk about when they're both awake. 

Quackity grabs a small plastic bowl and scoops up some of the water in the tub.

"Tilt your head back a bit?" He asks and his voice is so quiet, so soft - it's the voice he uses when he's helping Fundy with his projects, or when he's reviewing Tubbo's blueprints.

Schlatt raises his chin a bit, unsure of how much is required, until Quackity's hand gently rests over his forehead, pressing down just a bit as the man whispers.

"Close your eyes." 

The water runs through his hair once, then a couple of times as Quackity repeats the process until his hair is properly wet - never once does water get in his eyes, even though Schlatt does feel it linger over his forehead, unable to move due to Quackity's hand. 

His brain is tired, and the most he can think of is that it's a nice gesture. 

Then Quackity grabs a bottle of shampoo - which smells oh so nice, like lemons and something spicy that makes him want to smile and reminds him of summer - and starts to lather his hair. 

And oh. 

The way his fingers run through his hair, slowly, picking up stray strands to make sure all of them are getting cleaned. The way the pads of his fingers press gently against his scalp, rubbing small circles at the nape of his neck, then behind his ears. 

The way he traces the edges of his horns, where bone melts with cartilage and skin, before lightly pressing down and rubbing some more foam into it. 

It takes a while, but Quackity's subconscious eventually brings him to much simpler times, and a familiar but long forgotten tune erupts from his heart in the form of a gentle hum. 

Forgetting he should be cutting some hair, his hands move to his friend's shoulders, tense and rigid as if they were made of stone, and he figures that he can allow himself to try and lessen the knots of tension there too. 

About a minute later, he catches himself pressing down on Schlatt's trapezius, huffs out a breath at himself and returns to the main task at hand. 

Washes out the shampoo, then grabs some more and begins his lathering process once more - he just wants to make sure the hair is properly clean.

Meanwhile, Schlatt is in paradise. 

He hadn't realised how much he needed something like this before, but oh does he not want this to end ever. 

He feels relaxed, content in a way he'd forgotten he could be. 

Each and every point of contact that his scalp has with Quackity's fingers are like beacons of calmness, turning his body into putty at an embarrassingly quick speed - his entire being concentrating around this focal points of just touch.

He doesn't realise he's crying until a quiet sob makes his shoulder shake. 

Sudden fear grips at his insides, because oh no, not him, he is not crying because his best friend is washing his hair and treating him with a gentleness and kindness he doesn't deserve-

"Are you cold?" Quackity asks from behind him, the slight edge of worry in his tone, and Schlatt instinctively shakes his head no, realising his mistake as he does. 

There's a perfect chance of saving it.

"A bit." Is what he tries to say, but his voice is thick with the tears he's been crying, it cracks in all the wrong places and it ends with a chocked sob. 

Fuck, he is a mess. 

When all that follows is a stunned silence, Schlatt feels his walls slamming down, shoulders tensing up as he moves away from Quackity.

"Fuck, shit- get out. Get out. Right now."

Nothing, no answer. Not enough venom.

"Get the fuck out!" He yells out, arms wrapped around himself, another sob working its way up his throat but he stomps it down- fights with it for a good second as he waits, too aware of the fact that Quackity is still in the room. 

A moment passes. A shiver runs through his body, despite the room being heated up and the water still being definitely warm.

 There's a sudden point of warmth as Quackity places a hand on his shoulder, slowly, lightly, as if dealing with a wounded animal. 

Schlatt doesn't know what to do with himself. All of his instincts yell at him to fight back, to yell, to hurl insults until whoever is behind him will leave. 

But this is Quackity. His best friend. 

So when Quackity pulls him back, gently, he lets himself be brought back. Back, until his back is against something soft - Quackity's sweater, which has got to now sport a wet and soapy patch on the front. 

Still, his friend doesn't seem to mind. 

"I've got you" he whispers, and his words are like the final dent in the dam of his emotional walls. 

One hand moving to grip at Quackity's arm, Schlatt almost doubles with the strength of his next sob, a gut wrenching sound that leaves his throat raw and heart weeping. And he cries. 

All the stresses, fears, doubts, all the stuff that had been piling onto his mind just come crashing down - and he would have toppled with it, if it hadn't been for Quackity's firm but kind grip on his shoulder steadying him. 

And he sobs, lets himself cry - because at that point, who even cares? Once he would have shrugged, shaken his head dismissively: nobody cares. 

But the thing is, Quackity cares. 

Quackity, with his bright smile and infectious laughter, with his gentle touches and firm hugs. 

A solid anchor in the tempest of emotions he is finding himself stuck into. 

Quackity holds him, free of judgement, lets him cry his heart out and then more.

And when things calm down, he picks up his hummed tune - a lullaby of sorts. 

Between one sniffle and the other, Quackity rinses his hair out. Starts cutting his hair, brings it back to a respectable length. 

Spends too much time carding his fingers through the strands, then takes out a hair mask and spens even more time massaging it into his scalp. 

There are a couple of times when exhaustion - physical and emotional almost make him fall asleep in the water, but he stays awake, if anything to not miss a single moment of the experience.

And when Quackity whispers to him to turn towards him, they both have red rimmed eyes. Neither makes a comment on that. 

Schlatt raises his hands from the water, shakes out some excess droplets, and figures it's the least he can do as he places both palms on his friend's cheeks and wipes away the couple stray tears he finds there. 

Quackity smiles softly, ever so softly, and leans into the touch, eyes briefly closing. 

"Thank you, mi amor." Schlatt croaks, wincing a little at how weird his voice sounds after crying for so long. 

Quackity huff out, eyes crinkling with humour; when he answers, his tone is so thick with fondness it makes Schlatt melt.

"You're a dumbass." 

Despite it all, Schlatt finds it in himself to smile cheekily, hands coming to rest at his sides as Quackity goes back to working.

He lets him do his thing, not wanting to disturb the process. It would be rude to do so. 

When Quackity places his scissors back down, it feels like the moment is ending, and yet his fingers go back to his face once more. 

Gently tracing his horns, thumbs resting on the side of his temples as he rubs circles with the rest of his fingers on his scalp. 

Then, moving his palms to rest on the sides of his head.

Schlatt, who'd been keeping his eyes closed, opens them right on time to find himself staring at Quackity's chin. A split second later, lips press against his forehead, fingers still rubbing circles through his hair. 

A sudden rush of emotions overcomes him, the tenderness almost too much, and his eyes water again as he grips at Quackity's arm like a lifeline, holding on through the onslaught of feelings that hit him like a shockwave. 

Quackity lingers, and whatever he is trying to convey Schlatt feels. He understands. He squeezes his eyes and squeezes Quackity's arm, hoping, needing his friend to understand that yes, he knows, he understands, he feels the same.

And when Quackity leans back, eyes shining, a bittersweet smile on his face, Schlatt can't help but chuckle wetly. 

"I'm going to wait outside, alright? I don't want you to get cold. Let me know what you think of the cut, alright?" Quackity says after a moment, then stands up and leaves, gently closing the door behind him. 

He understands, it's all a bit overwhelming. 

What's important is the fact that they understood each other. 

Schlatt raises from the water, quickly drying himself up - his muscles ache from staying in the same position for too long, and his heart aches for a whole another reason, but he feels better than he's felt in a long while. 

He shoots a look in the mirror: his hair isn't getting into his eyes anymore, and it looks good. The length is enough for his hair to actually start to curl up at the bottom, and once it'll be dry he assumes it's going to feel very soft, due to all the care it went into it - and products, but still. 

He fixes his clean shirt, smoothing away inexistent dust, and ignores how puffy his eyes look. 

That was one hell of a haircut. 

[baldrambo]

Someone made a post on Reddit calling Bob Will’s father figure. I think that discounts Hopper and Jonathan. What are your thoughts on that subject?

Anonymous #2: Do you think that if Bob were alive, Jopper would never happen? If no, then how do you think Joyce and Bob would split? 

I got both asks almost back-to-back and figured it would be a lot easier to just handle them together. I sort of turned this into a Bob meta (apologies to the two Anons for the length, lol). There’s been a lot of Bob discussion cropping up lately and I wanted to use this as an opportunity to discuss the character (and why I’m troubled by the recent discourse in general) while answering the asks as I go.

I’ll start with a gutsy statement: Bob has achieved God-like status in this fandom.  Similar treatment has been extended to Benny, Alexei, and in some cases, Barb: all inherently decent secondary characters. Bob was probably the most fleshed out of all of them because he was around the longest, which made his death even harder to watch.

But what do we know about Bob besides being inherently decent? We know he hates scary movies and likes Kenny Rogers. He went to high school with Joyce and Hopper and everyone called him Bob the Brain because he’s so smart. He founded Hawkins AV Club! He was also bullied mercilessly as a kid in part because he didn’t fight back. That’s about it.  What are Bob’s hopes and dreams? Has he ever suffered any traumas prior to the events of S2? What are his weaknesses?  Has he ever been in any other serious relationships? Does he have any vices? No one is perfect, not even Bob, he just wasn’t around long enough for us to learn about any of that. So, it’s easy to look back on him as this Perfect Guy™ when he just had the tactical advantage of being a secondary character. We will never know the answers to any of these questions, nor do we know the answers for Barb, Benny, or Alexei because they all served a limited purpose within the narrative. 

In my opinion, Bob’s limited purpose was to jump start Joyce’s character arc beyond “protect Will!” What Joyce wants to find is her soulmate, a parental figure for her boys, someone who makes her feel safe.  Bob was the beginning of her search for this. He planted the seed in her mind about moving away, about having a “normal family.”  And it drove her entire arc in S3.  At the end of S3, yes she picked up and ran because Hawkins was dangerous and she wanted to protect her kids, but also because of this idea that had taken hold of her: maybe if she physically fled the trauma and the death, maybe she could find that feeling of hope again that Bob made her feel.

But planting the idea isn’t the same as fulfilling it.  An ideal isn’t reality BECAUSE we as humans are not perfect, and nor are relationships, or life.  So, if Bob had lived, would he have been the right one for her? Would they have stayed together? No and no. And that’s the point.  It takes more for a relationship to work than just “this guy is really nice and wants to parent my kids with me.” Relationships involve a TON of work. It involves being vulnerable with someone, opening up to them. They require romantic chemistry and sexual compatibility.  They require mutual understanding and compassion and working through things as a team. Sometimes it involves fighting and saying hurtful things and apologizing.  You need to love them and fall IN love with them, over and over again. Two people just being inherently decent isn’t going to cut it.

Joyce is a fierce, independent, headstrong woman.  She needs a man who challenges her, who she can bounce off of, not steamroll.  She’s also a bit neurotic and anxious and needs someone who understands what she’s been through, knows how to help her tackle it, and listens to her but doesn’t coddle her.  She needs someone who makes her feel safe, but also feel passion.  She needs someone she can be vulnerable with most of all.  And that wasn’t Bob, it was never supposed to be Bob.  The Duffers have gone on record about why they killed him off: because he would have interfered with the Duffers intended endgame. The endgame being that Joyce find this partner/parental figure for her boys, with someone else.

In my opinion, even IF Bob had lived, even IF given that opportunity, the two of them wouldn’t have made it. Joyce probably would have moved with him to Maine. But then she would have woken up one day, looked over at him, and realized that she was only with him because he was a good guy and helped her with her boys, not because she was in love with him. And it would have been over. Jonathan saw it, and it’s why he didn’t approve of the relationship.  And I think it’s why Joyce is carrying his death so hard: she didn’t *really* love him, the way she thinks she should have, the way he loved her, and the guilt of that, of him dying for her and the Party, of the helplessness she felt watching him die (and that hope he represented for her crumbling away), is crushing her.

Unfortunately, Bob’s purpose has kind of gotten lost in the weeds after s3. By allowing him to achieve this God-like status, it’s like an expectation has been created that no one can live up to: the Perfect Guy.™  I’ve been seeing, more and more, certain parts of the fandom turning Bob into a battering ram used against Jopper as a ship, and particularly Hopper as a character.  Using Bob as a juxtaposition to try to promote a narrative of Hopper being an awful guy and/or as a partner for Joyce is (besides being passive aggressive) a false comparison. Hopper is at the inherent disadvantage of being a primary character.  We know what all his faults, vices, weaknesses, and traumas are. And he isn’t just carrying his own trauma. He carries El’s and he carries Will and Joyce’s without complaint, because he loves them. The casualties of this are his peace of mind and his emotional stability.  Bob didn’t have to carry any of that, grapple with any of that (as far as we know) and we don’t know what his faults are. IF placed in Hopper’s shoes, would Bob be a different guy, too?

So, to the first Anon, the post on Reddit saying Bob is Will’s father figure is a prime example of this: it does discount Hopper and is intended to do so specifically to try to paint Hopper in a bad light. Jonathan just ends up as collateral damage within the confines of the false comparison being drawn. Bob did act as a temporary father figure to Will, he gave him advice, he tried to be a support system for him.  But so has Hop.  Hopper traded El’s life for Will’s. Brought him back to life in TUD.  Went to the appointments at HNL for nearly a year to be a support for Will and Joyce. Carried him out of HNL in S2 and helped El close the gate, in part, to save him. The comparison turns all of this into a zero-sum game when it isn’t one and when they are two different characters with two different roles to serve.

So, I think Jopper was always going to happen. The reason why is that Hopper DOES fulfill what Joyce needs, he just does so imperfectly. But that’s the beautiful thing about it, and it’s realistic.  It’s a journey for the two of them, a journey that involves Joyce putting Bob’s ghost to rest (by saving Hop when she couldn’t save Bob) and Hopper finding a way to cope with his past and atone for some of his wrongs.  Even IF Bob had lived, I still think Jopper would eventually have found their way to each other. It started with Bob, it just isn’t supposed to end with him and treating Bob as if he is something he’s not doesn’t change the narrative.

Tldr Bob is easily placed on a pedestal because we don’t know much about him. I don’t think he was right for Joyce, nor was he intended to be, and his death was inevitable as a result.  Comparing him to Hopper defeats the limited purpose he served within Joyce’s arc and using him to create fandom drama bothers me.

Thank you for the asks!

[ladywinterwitch]

Dead Girl Walking

Pairing: Sebastian Stan x Actress! Reader  (Teather AU)

Summary: The reader is the sobstitute in a off-Broadway production for the Musical Heathers. The female lead can’t do the show, so she gets called in her place where she’ll met the male lead, a charming blue eyed man.

Warnings: musicals, cursing, mentions of smut, mentions of drugs, making out, Seb’s a little minx, other people from the Marvel cast are in here.

Word Count: 5007 (long AF)

A/n: Okay so the idea obviously came to me when I was listening to the song Dead girl walking from the off-bway musical Heathers. It’s my favorite song from the musical and where I find it really enjoyable and funny to listen to, it made me wonder how two actors would be dealing with the performace which is A LOT. I recommend you to see this video if you want to understand better how the dynamic works and to listen to the song.

The songs mentioned in order are Beautiful, Candy Store, Freeze Your Brain, Big Fun, Dead Girl Walking and Seventeen (reprise) 

ps: Yes, that’s an actual gif from the show

                                                (gif not mine)

It was a normal day, calm, average. You woke up, read a few times a script for a new audition, went out for lunch with your best friend, came home and started to read some pages of your last purchase, Stephen King’s Gerald’s game.

Now you were chilling on your sofa, with your cat sleeping near your feet, when suddenly the cellphone rang, scaring the shit out of you.

You jumped a little scaring off your pet which ran away. You sighed and streched to reach your phone on glass coffe table in front of you. The number was unknown, but you answer anyway.

-Hello?- 

-Y/n? Thank God, that’s the right number.- You recognized the voice of the director of the theatrical show you auditioned for, Heathers. Unfortunately you didn’t get the part, but you were called back to be a reserve for the main role.

-Theresa? Is everything all right?- you asked, sitting straight and putting your legs down the sofa, two of your fingers used as bookmark.

-Yeah it’s just, you got anything planned tonight? Or, well, right now?- the woman asked a little nervous. You could hear noise in the background.

-No, no. Absolutley nothing, uhm, why?- you basically jumped up.

-Perfect. Then we’ll wait for you at the theatre in like, ten minutes, yeah? See you.- Before you could ask anything else, she hang up. 

-Fuck.- you cursed loudly, literally throwing the book on the table and running to your bedroom. How the hell were you supposed to be ready and get there in ten minutes, when you were in your pajamas, had messy hair and didn’t have a bit of make up on? 

You think quickly and take from the wardrobe a military green dress and a pair of heel boots. Comfortable and quick, but still presentable. Then you rushed to the bathroom, brushed your theeth and your hair to make them look at least deacent. You decided to stuff into your bag you mascara and a dusty pink nude lipstick and you went to your car. You had already put on the musical’s playlist, listening to it while you drove there, just in case.

-

You arrived some minutes later, parked the car in a miracolously free spot and went inside. You entered the stage room and saw that the cast was rehearsing the song “big fun”. Theresa, which was at her director spot under the stage, turned around and when she saw you she motioned for you to come closer. You did, while the others continued to perform.

-I’m sorry, I’m a little late.- you apologized keeping your voice low. She shook her head.

-Don’t worry, our JD hasn’t arrived either.- she said with an hint of irritation, referring to the leading male part. She sighed recomposing herself.

-You can already imagine why I’ve called you, but still. Our actress for Veronica just broke her ankle, so she won’t be able to perform for a while. Are you still available? Tell me right away because you either would have to jump right on the stage and reharse all day until tonight or I’ll have to call reserve number three, which to be honest I wouldn’t be really thrilled to do.- she askedlike someone who definetly didn’t have time to lose.

You were in seventh heaven. You wanted that part so bad. You didn’t have a long resumee yet, and a show so popular like Heathers would’ve opened many doors to you as well as helping to make yourself know to the public. For a moment you didn’t even realized what she had just said. She gave you a side eye and you suddenly came back to your senses.

-Yes!- you said a little too loud, gaining a few eyes from the crew in the pit, but not from the cast on stage who were still singing. You calmed down a bit, before widening your eyes.

-Wait, you said tonight?- Theresa checked her phone while answering with a ‘yes’. You felt stupid for forgetting that.

-Tonight’s the premiere, honey. C'mon now, get on the stage, you have to rehearse and meet the cast.- you did as you were told, going up the stage. The guys were dressed with their own clothes and a man was on the piano. They were just singing and not doing the whole thing, which worried you a little, despite the fact that you knew all the choreographies and lyrics thanks to the rehearsals you did with the ‘backup’ cast. So you didn’t knew anyone from the actual one.

-Guys, we have our Veronica.- you head a few ‘thanks God’ and sighs of relief. 

-Five minutes break then we resume.- she clasped her hands going off the stage to make a call. A little group of people came to you. There were two blonde, fair skinned girls and one with dark curly hair and dark skin.

-Hey, I’m Scarlett, I play Heather Chandler. Those are Elizabeth and Tessa, and they play Heather McNamara and Heather Duke. Nice to meet you..?- she efficiently introduced herself and the other two girls with enthusiasm. You smiled at them, waving slightly.

-Y/n. And well, you already know I’ll be Veronica Sawyer.- you chuckle a little and they smiled. Then two guys joined you introducing themselves as Chris and Anthony, which respectively play Kurt and Ram, the two stereotypical frat boy douchebags. But they were all but that, instead they were both quite attractive and funny, and nice above all.

Then Hayley, a nice british girl, introduced herself too and said she was going to play Martha. You honestly could’ve never pictured her as a stereotyped loser with a few extra punds like the character. She was too pretty and definetly not fat. She had curves and she was stunning. But you knew that the voice was the main requirement to be choosed in this type of castings so you imagined that that was the reason they choosed her. Also, the make up would’ve done the rest.

The director interrupeted your conversation saying that it was time to resume the reharsals, so you all got in position, this time adding the dancing to the singing.

-

You started with the song “beautiful”, then the Heathers trio sang “candy store” and so on, until you got to your personal favorite, “Dead girl walking”. It had gone all pretty smoothly, the director intervening a few times to give advices and correct something.

-Okay y/n, you’re on your own now, I’ll sing for JD. Start at the note.- the piano man said and you nodded, clearing your throat slightly to prepare yourself. He started to play and on the right timing you began to sing, standing next to him since your partner wasn’t there to perform and doing it on your own would’ve been kinda awkward.

You performed beautifully and at the end the crew even clapped. You knew that was one of the hardest songs, so you felt a pinch of pride at their reaction.You blushed a smiled grateful.

-I see you found my new partner in crime.- you heard a deep, amused, voice coming from behind you. You and the rest of the cast turned around. A guy was standing on the door jamb with a smirk. He was tall, had brown hair, a little long just under his ears, and they were pulled back. He was probably the most attractive guy you’ve ever seen.

-What an honor for you to join us mortals. And you guessed right, Sebastian. Y/n will be your Veronica. Probably for the rest of the plays.- Theresa said shocking you. Your head snapped towards her which was looking at you with a grin. You smiled widely, a hand covering your mouth from the surprise.

-What about the other girl?- you asked walking to her. She shrugged.

-We don’t know when she will be able to walk and dance again, plus, your talent is pretty much the same. Only you’re nicer.- she confessed, you shook your head a bit in disbelief and gave her a hug.

-Thankyou, that’s an honor.- you thanked her sincerely. She nodded and tilted her head to the side.

-Don’t thank me, thank your preparation. Now go meet your partner. He’s a bit presumptuos, but he’s good deep inside.- 

You left her with the some other cast member and got closer to the group that surrounded Sebastian. Chris saw you coming and smiled.

-Hey y/n, congrats. We’re happy you’re going to stay with us.- you laugh a bit.

-Thankyou Chris, I still don’t realize it.- 

-Aw c’mon, you deserve it. In any case, we’ll leave you talk, from Veronica to JD.- Tessa held your arm for a second before going away with the rest of the people.

At that point you were left alone with Sebastian. You felt a bit intimidated for some reason. You didn’t know if was for his confident behaviour or the amused look that he was giving you.

-Well, hello there.- he clearly checked you out, keeping his smirk. You understood that he didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, it was just his way to be friendly.

-Hi.- you said a bit embarassed. 

-I would say congratulations, but it would be probably the tenth time, so I’ll just settle with nice to meet you.- he offered his hand and you shook it a few times, a lopsided smile on your lips.

-Likewise.- he didn’t take his eyes off of you. Before you could talk again, one of the producers spoke to everyone.

-All right folks, it’s time to get ready. The people will arrive in two hours and the stage must be prepared. To the changing rooms.- Your eyes widened and your heart started to race.

-Hey now, don’t panic. You were amazing earlier. Just take a deep breath. It’s time to get ready. It’s going to be alright.- he spoke in a reassuring tone that made you automathically smile a little. He started to walk away, then turned back for a split second.

-Well, actually maybe a few drops of alchol would help, just in case.- you laughed and he winked at you.

-

You shared the room with the four girls. It was a bit chaotic, but everyone did their thing professionally and without losing time. After a good forty-five minutes of make up, which was included: foundation, mascara, eyeliner, blush, and a pale cherry lipstick. The red lipstick was actually a tint, because you would have to kiss a lot and certainly there wouldn’t have been time to clean the mess and re-apply it over and over.

 The rest of the time was left for the hair to get done. First they tied up your hair with a few bobby pins, then applied a bald cap fixing it, and last but not least, they slipped on a raven black, shoulder lenght wig on your head. The hairstylist started to curl the black locks in loose curls at the tips. In the mean time the make up artist gave the last touches to the make up and then applied the tiny mic at the top of your forehead. applying some foundation to try to blend it better with your skin tone. 

During all the process you talked and had fun with the girls. You found out that Scarlett was dating Chris, that Tessa was excited because her new girlfriend would’ve been here to see her perform, that Hayley was originally from London but came to New York because her dream was to be on Broadway and that Lizzie was from a family of actors but that she was the only one who sang.

When the hairstylist had finished curling and styling the wig, she applied a blue hairband with a very simple knot on the right side.

Lastly, it was time to get dressed. You thanked God when you finally stood up from the make up chair, you couldn’t take to be seated anymore. The costume designer took yout plastic covered costume from the trolley hanger and uncovered it. 

-Tak off the robe, please.- the lady asked you nicely.

-Sure.- you responded right away taking it off. She passed to you a blue lacy bra and you rose an eyebrow. She shrugged.

-You know, that scene.- she responded, and you understood right away. She covered you with a jacket and you took off your current bra putting on the blue one. It was a bit tight, but it wasn’t uncomfortable thankfully. Then she helped you put on the rest of the costume which consisted in a plain white shirt, an electric blue elegant jacket, a light grey pleated mini skirt which barely arrived at your mid-thigh, a pair of white parisian stockings that reached just above your knees, and last but not least a pair of black heels. Not too high, thankfully.

You heard a whistle and turned your head. The girls were all ready except for Hayley which was still getting her, probably fifth, layer of clothes fixed. Scarlett wore red, Tessa green and Lizzie yellow, as their characters. They looked stunning.

-Look who’s gonna kick all asses tonight.- Tessa said. You all laughed. The costume designer helped you fit into a loose wool pullover with some ygly designs on it, then a scarf and an equally loose pair of brown sweatpants above your current costume. You started to feel a bit hot, but your told yourself that it was just for a few minutes of the first song.

-You don’t look bad yourself.- you talked back. Then there was a knock on the door.

-Girls, it’s time. Y/n on stage in ten.- a member of the crew opened the door and then quickly went away.

You breathed in and out to calm yourself down while you and the girls went to the backstage.

-So, all here? Good, good. So, just a few words.- Theresa spoke and you felt a hand on the small of your back. You tought that it was one of the girls, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You looked at your side, and got face to face with an incredibly sharp jawline. You turned back to look at Theresa, not wanting to embarass yourself, even if Sebastian’s touch was making you freak out a little.

-We worked very hard to get at this point. So behave and don’t screw up, kids. Love you all! And break a leg!-

A few seconds later you and the cast got called for the first song, 'beautiful’.

-See you later.- a shiver ran down your spine when he whispered in your ear. You looked at him. He had his hair back, just like before. He was now wearing combat boots, black jeans, a black t-shirt and a black long coat. And a smirk was painted on his face. The perfect Jason Dean.

You hated yourself for letting him have this effect on you, so you got your shit together and smiled seductively, gazing him straight in the eyes.

-Later, bad boy.- you teased referring to his role. had just a flash of his amused expression before walking away. You got on stage and began to sing.

- September 1st 1989. Dear diary…-  at first you were alone on stage, then some extras joined you, then Ram got introduced.

Anthony wore a pair of blue jeans, a white t-shirt, nikies and a red and white bomber jacket with a big W on the left side. He hit the prop lunch tray you were holding with a fakely innocent ‘oops’.

-Ram Sweeney, third year as linebacker. And 8th year of smacking lunch trays and being a huge dick.- you talked to the audience as planned with an annoyed tone.

-What did you say to me, skank?- he got closer, menacing. You jumped a bit and put on a scared face.

-Aagh! Nothing.- you responded quickly. You sang a few words of the chorus and then Hayley got on stage. She was almost make up-less and with some baggy and pastel colour clothes, glasses and and ugly liliac t-shirt with an unicorn at the front which could’ve easily made anyone at least two sizes bigger. She was almost unrecognizable.

-Martha Dunstock. My best friend since diapers.- you talked again to the audience, then to Hayley. 

-We on for movie night?- she replaced her british accent with the american one and pitched her voice a bit.

-Yeah! You’re on Jiffy Pop detail.- 

-I rented the princess bride.- she responded timidly. You laughed slightly raising your eyebrows.

-Ooh! Again? Wait, don’t you have it memorized by now?- you cross your arms against your chest, listening.

-What can I say, I’m a sucker for a happy ending.- she answered sadly. Then Chris came running from the right part of the backstage, and smacked Hayley’s prop lunch tray just like Anthony, and like him he was dressed with the same pants, shoes and bomber jacket except for his shirt that was grey. 

-Martha Dumptruck! Wide load, aah!- he screamed mockingly.

- Kurt Kelly, quarterback. He is the smartest guy on the football team, which is kind of like being the tallest dwarf.- you addressed the audience again, gaining a chuckle. Then you returned to spoke to Chris.

-Hey! Pick that up! Right now.- you ordered loudly. 

-I’m sorry, are you actually talking to me?- lucky enough that you knew that he wasn’t a real douche, because at this point you would’ve already slapped him. You noted to make Chris compliments later.

-Yes, I am. I want to know what gives you the right to pick on my friend. You’re a high school has-been waiting to happen, a future gas station attendant.- you said with the most insulting tone you could master. He furruwed his brows and narrowed his eyes a bit, looking down at you. 

-You have a zit right there.- he states. All the extras laugh out loud and you all resume to sing. 

Then after a brief instrumental pause everyone but you start to chant softly the name ‘Heather’. Scarlett, Tessa and Lizzie walk slowly on stage, almost in slow motion.

-And then there’s the Heathers. They float above it all.- you start to talk to the public as a narrator while you introduce them one by one. 

-Heather McNamara, head cheerleader. Her dad is loaded, he sells engagement rings.- the spotlight is on Lizzie, then it shifts to Tessa. 

-Heather Duke, runs the yearbook. No discernable personality, but her mom did pay for implants.- you continue, then do a shot pause and the light shifts on Scarlett, which was in the middle. Their costumes were basically the same: very short mini skirt, a white shirt underneath an elegant short jacket, parisian white stockings that reached above the knee and black high heels. The only differecies were the colours, yellow, green and lastly red. 

-And Heather Chandler, the almighty. She is a mythic bitch.- the music gets a bit faster while you keep going. Another piece of song goes on and you get introduced to the Heathers, you ask them to sit at their table so that no one could pick on you and in the end they accept and decide to transform you. So while another chourus goes on, you four get behind the scenes and the costume designer is quickly at your side, helping you to take off the scar, pants, pullover and to put on the heels, fix any eventual crease and in the end she brushed a bit the wig while you put on a rosy lipstick. Just in time, you go back on stage after Scarlett, Tessa and Lizzie.

The song ends and there’s a little banter between you and them which want Veronica to give Martha a fake love letter form Ram to bully her. You refuse and they get angry, which leads to their song.

After another song, finally is JD’s turn to be introduced. He and Veronica meet in a gorcery shop and you start to eat some red licorice while he was drinking a frozen slushie. He looked charming. You were also having a lot of fun, which was ideal for your chemistry. A few lines later he began to sing.

-I’ve been through ten high schools, they start to get blurry. No point in planting roots ‘cause you’re gone in a hurry. My dad keeps two suitcases packed in the den, so it’s only a matter of when.- he begins, and boy, was he talented. You smiled at him, not only because you felt like it, but also because it was in the script. 

-Freeze your brain, suck on that straw get lost in the pain. Happiness comes when everything numbs, who needs cocaine?- he sang a few words, then came back to talking. 

-Care for a hit?- he raised the plastic glass, pointing the straw towards you.

-Does your mommy know you eat all that crap?- you smirked teasingly. He tilted his head to the side, raising his eyebrows.

-Not anymore.- he resumed singing along with the music. -When mom was alive, we lived half way normal, now it’s just me and my dad, we’re less formal. I’ve learned to cook pasta, learned to pay rent, learned the world doesn’t owe you a cent.- the note got a bit high and his voice changed in a more teasing tone. 

-You’re planning your future, Veronica Sawyer. You’ll go to some college and marry a lawyer. But the sky’s gonna hurt when it falls, so you better start building some walls.- he sings the chorus towards the audience, then the song ends, and on the last note he snaps his head towards you, his arm stretched offering you the slushie.

-Try it.- the public applaudes and the lights go off, giving you the time to prepare for the next song. It’s a very crowded and messy song, set in a house party. At some point you refuse to obey Scarlett’s Heather Chandler and she says that you’re over. You go away from the party feeling lost. The song ends and the lights go off to give the time to the everyone in the cast to get away.

You were slightly getting more and more nervous for the next song, which woul’ve been a lot more challenging, both to sing and perform, considering that you had to basically ride Sebastian in front of the audience.

You were left alone on stage, if you didn’t consider Sebastian pretending to sleep on the higher stage behind you on a mattress.

-The demon queen of high school has decreed it. She says Monday, 8 am I will be deleted.- you start, the music fastening a little. -They’ll hunt me down in study hall Stuff and mount me on the wall. Thirty hours to live, how shall I spend them?- You walked near the lockers, your voice dripping worry.

-I don’t have to stay and die like cattle,I could change my name and ride up to Seattle. But I don’t own a motorbike.- you stopped suddenly, a lopsided smile sppearing on your face -Wait.- you looked at the audience.

-Here’s an option that I like. Spend these thirty hours getting freaky!- you hit the fist high note, pointing at Sebastian’s, fake, sleeping figure.

-Yeah! I need it hard, I’m a dead girl walking! I’m in your yard, I’m a dead girl walking! Before they punch my clock, I’m snapping off your window lock. Got no time to knock! I’m a dead girl walking..- the line getting softer.

You went up the stairs to the upper stage and walked towards him. He opened his eyes and sit up, straddled.

-Veronica! What’re you doing in my room?- he exclaims confused. You went closer and he got on his feet. Now he didn’t have shoes, had a pair of white boxers and a white tank top.

-Shh...- you put a finger in front of your mouth, shushing him seductively. -Sorry but I really had to wake you. See, I decided I must ride you 'til I break you ,'cause Heather says I got to go. You’re my last meal on death row, so shut your mouth and lose them tighty whiteys!- you start with a sweet tone that goes higher and stronger ‘til you hit the last note. You pointed at his boxers.

-Come on! Tonight I’m yours, I’m your dead girl walking! Get on all fours! Kiss this dead girl walking!- You pushed his shoulders with your hands until he got on his knees in front of you. The public laughed slightly.

He looked up at you, starting to caress your tighs with his surprisingly soft hands. They were going up and up, until he reached your ass cheeks. He wasn’t taking his gaze away from yours.

-Let’s go, you know the drillI. I’m hot, and pissed, and on the pill.- you snapped your head towards the audience, raising an eyebrow, gaining a chuckle. Then you returned your attention to Sebastian. -Bow down to the will-Of a dead girl walking!-

You both got on all fours and you gave him a little push to make him sit back, and crawled between his legs. 

-And you know, you know, you know. It’s 'cause you’re beautiful, you say you’re numb inside, but I can’t agree.-  You changed tone and got sweet, placing a hand on his heart. -So the world’s unfair? Keep it locked out there! In here it’s beautiful, let’s make this beautiful!-  

He looked at you and smiled, then exclaimed  -That works for me!- 

An instrumental moment began, and you both knew what would’ve come next. So you just did it, without thinking too much. He cupped your cheeks and forcefully pulled you to him, kissing you. You responded right away, trying to think straight and follow the script you started to take off your jacket and then his t-shirt, leaving him in his underwear. If your faces weren’t stuck together you woul’ve probably been jaw dropping at his tanned and muscular figure, but there wasn’t time for that. You pulled away and started to sing again.

-Yeah! Full steam ahead,take this dead girl walking!-

-How’d you find my address?- he asked scared. The public laughed.

-Let’s break the bed! Rock this dead girl walking!- you ignored him.

-I think you tore my mattress!- again, the crowd laughed.

-No sleep tonight for you, Better chug that Mountain Dew! Get your ass in gear, make this whole town disappear!- you motioned a ripping movement with your arms and hands. 

-Okay, okay!- he gave up, still scared.

You got on his lap, your legs on each side of his hips. The only thing that separated your intimate parts were your panties and his boxers, but it wansn’t actually enough.

-Slap me, pull my hair, touch me there, and there , and there and no more talking! Love this dead girl walking!- you hit another high note. This moment should’ve been arranged between you two before, like every performer ever does when he had to play scenes like that, but you had to improvise now.

It all happened rather quickly: He gave you a not-so-light spank on the butt, then put his hand in your hair and gently pulled to expose your neck, to the first 'there’ he cupped your breasts, then your ass and at the last one he tore open your shirt, that thankfully had clasp buttons and not normal ones.

In the end your lace covered breasts were exposed to him. You didn’t even had the time to blush, 'cause you started to ride his lap automatically following the script. He helped your movement with his hands on your hips.

-Love this dead girl walking!- you sang.

-Yeah!- you said together. -Yeah!- thrust -Yeah!- again.

-Ow!- he cried when you grazed on his neck with your teeth as you were planned to do, and then one last harsh thrust.

-Yeah!- you hit the highest note and the song ended. The audience cheered as the lights went down. You and him wnr behind the scenes while the crew collected the clothes and came back to the backstage, you didn’t dare to look at him as you both were getting dressed again with the help of the assistants.

-

The rest of the show went perfectly, even if you had a little bit of trouble looking in Sebastian’s eyes after that song. After the ’Seventeen’ reprise the show ended. You all came back on stage for the salute, and after that you went straight to the dressing room to change.

Scarlett was kind enought to let you borrow one of the two dresses she brought from home for the after party. You choose the first, which was mid-tigh, rose gold and sparkly, and had a collar to which the spaghetti straps were attached, leaving the back bare til the lower part. And abviously high heels. You fixed your make up and put on a quite deep shade of pink on the lips, then you were ready.

The girls continued to tease you about Sebastian. They haven’t seen the performance really well, but they did see the faces of you both when you came back to dress up. And that was enough. You shushed them while finishing to fix your now wig-free hair.

You arrived and many poeple made theri congratulations and compliments on your performance. Then you went outside to take a bit of air, your champagne in your hands.

-Hey. Nice play up there.-  you had learned to recognize that voice by now. You turned around. He was wearing a suit, the first few buttons of his white shirt unbuttoned.

-You weren’t that bad yourself.- you smiled briefly. He inched closer and whispered to your ear.

-Y'know it was a miracle that I didn’t get hard on the last bit. Your pussy grinding against my cock like your life depended on it.- you blushed from head to toe. You felt fire on your cheeks and not only there, if you’d had to be honest.

-And I know you did enjoy that too. The little wet spot on my boxers is proof. Am I wrong, babygirl?- he asked, his voice like velvet. You were a bit taken aback, but finally decided to do something. Fuck it.

-No.- you answered. The courage, didn’t even know where that came from. All that you knew, was that in that exact moment his lips were on yours, his hands on your waist and yours on his chest, leaving the glass to fall to the ground.

Someone must’ve heard that, 'cause Chris went outside to check and found the two of you quite occupied. He smirked and closed the door, going to Anthony to retrieve those twenty dollars they bet on you two.

This was a bit of an experiment. I really like Broadway songs and this looked like fun to write, so I did it. Obviously the musical’s plot, characters and lyrics do NOT belong to me in this case. Hope you liked it ;)

[au-tumn-al]

So after 110 hours, I finally beat Persona 5 Royal. Before going into complete FFVII mode, I wanna lay out all my thoughts.

Blah, blah, blah, spoilers for everything under the cut.

To start off, I loved Royal. The gameplay was so much fun and it felt like such a natural evolution from vanilla P5. Probably my favorite change was what wad done with Baton Pass. Trying to pass to your entire party was very fun and very satisfying, especially if Joker got the ×4 or even ×3 and got to abuse a possibly charged Hassou Tobi lategame. It was pretty broken, but I don't mind things being broken once you go to the effort of figuring things out. Speaking of broken things—

Showtime attacks are super cool. I didn't know what to think of them at first because of how stupidly strong they are, but after I got to some harder boss fights where doing about 1k damage per attack would only get rid of about a small fraction of the shadow's health, I wasn't complaining.

(Also, I never actually got to see Joker and Violet's showtime. Oops.)

The fact that the damage scaled like that was really good, especially once you get into the third semester where party members have severe and colossal damage moves and even healer Morgana can do 150 damage per basic attack without buffs on an enemy without debuffs. The enemies' damage output remained kind of sad though, but uh....you can't win 'em all ;;

To finish showtime talk, Joker and Crow's showtime was heccin' great. I never skipped it. It was Batman in my animu JRPG so it was 10/10. It also did way more damage than most of my party members' showtime attacks so ey. It finished off that Yoshitsune request boss too with around 2.4k damage so I'm obligated to like it. On that note, how is showtime damage calculated? Do certain showtimes do more damage, or does it just depend on the offensive stats of the party members using it?

Technical damage was beefed up too, and I probably should have tried to take advantage of it more than I did but I never figured out how to make technical damage reliably knock an enemy down. I know that there was a way to do it but I never figured it out. Yes, yes, I know it was because I skipped tutorials but everything else was so busted, I never felt the need to go back and read said tutorials. I did read that book about technical damage though in-game, but it just added more technical combinations.

Onto other changes though, it could have been because I was playing on hard, but status ailments became about 10 times more useful. ...Actually, no, it was definitely because I was playing on hard, but even so, I felt like more bosses were weak to them when compared to P5. They went back to being mostly immune to them, especially in the new semester, but during and before October or so, status ailments became invaluable. It could have been because I sucked that much, but my party members, and even sometimes Joker, would get left with double or even single digit HP by near everything, even if I debuffed and buffed. Queen got regulated to a forget bot, but man it carried me through some boss fights. ... i.e., Kaneshiro's fight. Well, that and Mona's confuse.

I liked the Will Seeds too. They were a fun way to kind of change up the palaces and for me to hunt down. Even though yeah, they are pretty broken (especially with the accessory you get from the 2nd palace being able to get rid of elemental weaknesses for whoever has it equipped, not to mention the ability to give charge or concentrate to another party member), I still can't say I used them over my SP adhesives most of the time. I used the one that got rid of elemental weaknesses on Crow, but that was just because I could only use him and Joker at the time and did not want enemies to get another move on him to get another chance to hit either of them.

The changes to Mementos were amazing. Like the rest of them, they were pretty busted, but still. Amazing. I feel like I'm in the minority with this, but I didn't mind Mementos. In fact, I kind of liked going through the grind of going through it. Although...tbf, I kind of liked Tartarus too. Its 264 floors were a bit much, but I liked being able to turn off my brain, put on a podcast or YouTube video in the background for me to listen to then go through Tartarus in one or two in-game nights.

Back to Mementos, collecting stamps and flowers for Jose was fun, and being able to change the cognition for Mementos was busted. Since you can get EXP from auto-killing, you get over-leveled very fast. It doesn't help that you have to backtrack floors for stamps since they randomly generate, so you get even more money, experience, and items. On the bright side though, no, I didn't need to wander around singing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" with Mona and Skull for an hour and a half trying to find the materials for the Eternal Lockpick (which was renamed in Royal to Permapick ... I guess???)

Because of the changes you can make to boost item, money, and EXP gains, Mementos became the prime grinding area. Even more than the card shuffle thing in P3. Since you got so much EXP from ramming shadows even without leveling up EXP gain. I put all my stamps into getting more items and money until I couldn't anymore and I had near max every single crafting item, and never had to worry about the cost of anything ever. Combined with the money gains from killing shadows, you can also pick up sellable treasure from the item cubes in Mementos and it can end up selling for well over a million yen. So getting to max didn't even require Joker abusing the confuse status ailment or abusing the shadows with "You can do better than that."

I didn't mind the Mementos music, even when I was playing the game without something else playing for me to listen to, but now that Mementos does have new music, yeah, I realize now how much better it is. I wouldn't listen to it alone like I would Rivers in the Desert or anything, but it was a nice change. I listened to one of the songs before the game had its western release and didn't like it all that much, but actually playing the game while hearing it made me actually like it.

I got to level 99 though before the game was over. It made it so Joker and Crow were able to tag-team the Reaper then kill it in 3 turns. I had thought that trophy would have been a lot harder to get lol. It was pretty weird seeing the Reaper in such clear lighting though due to the new Mementos area though, I have to say.

Onto the bosses though...

I loved the changes to the bosses (except the 5th one but that's just because I hate everything about the 5th palace, even if Royal did make it about a million times more bearable).

Kameshida having cognitive Shiho and Mishima as helpers for the boss fight was such a good change, and made him about that much more hateable.

Madarame's boss fight in vanilla P5 was the hardest boss in the game for me, even on normal mode, but it was made so much easier in P5R. Madarame didn't bring back his painting form, but instead brought back elemental versions of himself specifically so the player can abuse Baton Pass. Baton Pass combos are extremely satisfying to pull off, so I enjoyed it immensely. Honestly, having that as the second boss in the game was so much of a better decision than what was in P5. That, or I'm still salty about all the deaths I had from fighting him the first time.

Kaneshiro was definitely harder, and I was a little stuck when he called his cronies out to guard him. Mona and Queen using confuse and forget while Skull and Joker attacked Kaneshiro made it a lot more bearable though. I also kept using spotlights on Joker so the enemies would attack him. He had Shiki Ouji equipped and they only ever did physical moves when my status effects missed, so I was never at risk for losing the fight. ... And then of course Skull and Queen finished it off with a showtime attack after Mona got yeeted.

Sphinx mom was a lot easier. I didn't know that the right dialogue choices made it so Oracle would guard you until someone told me, so I was sitting there surprised at how much easier it was lol. I did get stuck at the end though because it didn't look like I was damaging it. I thought Oracle needed to bring back the crossbow so I just kept buffing and healing. It took about 10 minutes for me to get bored and start attacking it again and it turned out I could attack it, but it was just that sphinx mom's HP wasn't visually moving before eventually going down. Joker still used Shiki Ouji which had learned an immunity to wind so. Easy victory (ignoring the part where I'm a dumbass).

I switched to easy mode for Okumura. I just did not care at all. I hate his palace, I hate the music, and the enemies could range from being easier to kill than the enemies in the first palace to being a pain in the ass, so I wanted to have it be over. If I didn't have an unreasonable hatred for the 5th palace though, I probably would have liked the change. It was challenging without being complete BS, at least much more challenging than how it was originally in P5. Having the enemies run off though did get pretty annoying when I was trying to beat it legit but I was just so done at that point, it was more on me than the game lol.

Part of the reason why I was so eager to get through Okumura's palace though was to get to Sae's palace. Because I love Sae's palace, and just in general, the entire month of November. It has amazing story bits, still the height of P5's story if you ask me, a great palace, and Whims of Fate is one of my favorite tracks from P5's OST. Sae's boss was even changed to when she spins the wheel, whatever element it goes to, she uses that element and her resistances would change. I loved that, and it was extremely fun to take what you more or less should have learned about enemies' attacks and their correlating weaknesses and use them for a boss fight. So much better than the original where you don't need strategy at all other than "hit her hard lol."

Shido's boss fight was changed to be super climactic. They made it easier for the sake of Joker being able to confront the dude that got him a criminal record and directly ruining his life, and I can't complain. It felt amazing to 1v1 him. The game fixed the possibility of being screwed by it by having him attack in a certain order like the twins do in their special fight, so that was nice at least.

Yaldabaoth's boss fight was the same. Still easy enough, as long as you're careful. Or...not careful but extremely lucky. I wasn't able to finish it off while it was charging up its almighty attack, but my entire party ended up dodging it so it didn't even matter lmao. Now that I think about it, it very easily could have been because of that one Will Seed accessory that makes you dodge attacks but... I don't care. I was still super lucky I didn't get wiped and be forced to start the fight over starting from the Holy Grail.

The new boss... Uhm... It was taking way too long so I ended up cheesing it with Haru's third persona's new move that basically makes you invincible for a turn halfway through the fight. ^^; Noir was a Vault Guardian bot, Queen just healed and took advantage of one of the tentscles' nuclear weaknesses to Baton Pass to Crow when she could, and then Joker and Crow did all the work. Crow's third tier persona's almighty move kicked ass and you know what else kicked ass? Hassou Tobi abuse. The other 2 phases weren't even really fights, so at least that kept it from dragging too much, despite all the phases it had.

When Joker and the boss had that punch-out fight though, I lost my shit. I was laughing so hard I started to cry and my back was hurting. I don't even remember why I thought it was so funny, but I was laughing my ass off. I couldn't even press X to get Joker to punch because I was laughing so hard. Right before it happened, I joked to my sister that a tutorial would pop up and suddenly the gameplay will have the controls from that P4 fighting game and you have to learn that in order to have one last showdown. And then I got the prompt to punch. Then Joker punched. And I started laughing.

11/10 would punch Adam Kadmon man again

On the topic of the new stuff though...

Kasumi/Sumire/Violet was pretty fun to use but badly, badly overshadowed by both Joker and Crow, at least during boss fights. She offered to join the party before Shido's palace and she really should have joined then. Maybe she would just be absent for the Mementos dungeon & Yaldabaoth/Holy Grail boss fights, but she should have been there for Shido's palace. I liked her wanted gimmick of being the crit'er, but when you get her, Mona's third tier persona learns an AOE Lucky Punch, Joker already has high crit, and I would always baton pass to Crow because of his severe almighty AOE ×3. Plus, the way I built my Joker with practically exclusively two personas, Yoshitsune and Kuguya Picaro, he was already the phys and light attacker except with the addition of being able to have an auto-concentrate at the start of every fight (I have no idea why—it's something with Yoshitsune but idk what it is), the charge skill, Yoshitsune's nature of tripling the effect of charge, and the additional electric damage. She should have been a party member before the new semester. Obviously this isn't the case for everyone, but for me personally, I didn't often find use for her, especially since she can't do colossal or even severe magic damage. She is a very good physical party member, but again, Joker already covers that better than any other party member can, including Skull.

Crow was a great party member though. I used him in every request and boss fight after I got him. I was a little salty he couldn't switch back and forth from Loki and Robin Hood but I suppose if he did, he'd make Violet even more obsolete lol. I liked Loki while playing P3, so I'm glad I was able to use that persona again. He had Debilitate which was amazing. Queen learns Checkmate when getting to the third tier persona, which is an AOE version of it, but honestly, whenever I was fighting a boss that I thought needed it at that point in the game, I didn't need it to be multi-hitting. Plus, it costed about 90 SP and no way I was using that over her healing, defense buffs, and nuclear damage.

But anyway, back to Crow, I loved using him. He basically turned into my almighty damage dealer, even with his somewhat weaker magic, at least compared to his strength stat, but considering the final boss fight, it was extremely helpful. It did take up a lot of SP, but I had 5 Somas, a ton of SP restoratives, and had basically asked Kawakami to make me either curry or coffee every single night I was able to, so I pretty much had an infinite supply of it.

It helped that P5R made Akechi a much more likable character too. I liked him all right in P5, but didn't find him all that sympathetic, and thought that the characters treating him so sympathetically was extremely jarring considering all the horrible shit he did (which includes making orphans of both Haru and Futaba). That still kind of holds true, but since you can actually build a social link with him outside of the story, you can see more of his character and it improved him in leaps and bounds. Not to mention that his 8th confidant rank was....something else ^^; having a section of the new story too with just Joker and Akechi, (and kind of Sumire too, but mostly just those two) was awesome. I loved seeing them team up to punch Adam Kadmon man in the face. Plus, having more time with him in the Phantom Thieves without pretense had him going "I am surrounded by idiots" basically the whole time he was there. Like—I even felt disappointed that Akechi was actually dead and he didn't survive. That's a huge improvement over from me wishing one of the dialogue options was "fuck you lmao" during his death scene at the end of Shido's palace when he asked the Phantom Thieves to promise him to change Shido's heart.

For Sumire though, she had a good character arc. Like her gameplay though, she was badly overshadowed by both Akechi and Maruki. Even still, I liked her character arc and everything, and her social link. Even if I ended up liking Kasumi more in the end anyway rip

That's kind of all I have to say about her, oof. She was good, but other elements took attention away from her pretty badly.

Maruki though... Maruki was amazing. He was a fantastic antagonist because I got to punch him in the face, his palace was amazing, I loved the music, the different sections were cool, and I even liked the color maze bridge puzzle thing. I definitely wouldn't like it so much if I ever replayed it, especially if I try to get that final Will Seed, which wasn't hard, but did take kind of a while, but I don't think I will be so it's not a problem.

He had such good motivations, and the fact that he didn't ever actually hurt anyone other than when he punched Joker in the face made him really sympathetic and redeemable to me. At the end of the day, all he actually wanted to do was make people happy and not have to suffer, and was willing to destroy himself in order to achieve it. But just like with every belief, it went too far and he took away people's free will and ability to pick for themselves. The kind of moral question about the entire thing was very interesting, and I kind of wish it was more further addressed. There should have been Sojiro or some other character that was perfectly happy in Maruki's alternate reality so they could challenge the Phantom Thieves in a way Maruki wasn't able to. Still, what was done was really good and I liked it a lot.

...

Even all that said, I have no idea why the hell Joker could not use Satanael. There was such a perfect opportunity to use it once Maruki evolved his persona to Adam Kadmon, a giant persona. Hell, it was still small when compared to Satanael. It's after beating Yaldabaoth so Joker should have access to it. It would have been epic to be able to use a giant Satanael in a normal-ish boss fight. I'm sure there are some explanations as to why, but the game never mentions it or even acknowledges Satanael so it doesn't count and I'm still bitter. The writers forgot that Joker has a persona literally as big as a cognitive god and that kind of broke some immersion for me. Immersion completely went out the window once Joker and Maruki started punching each other but STILL. Satanael's not that great a persona, but having it show up in the story again would have been so awesome to use a persona about as big as Shibuya more than once.

Hardly comparable to my beef about Satanael, but I wish that while the party members were acting as Phantom Thieves, or at least while they're in the metaverse, the names on their text boxes would change to their Phantom Thief names. There's no reason why they didn't, especially since the characters exclusively use their Phantom Thief names to call each other anyway. It's not a huge deal or anything, but I would have liked it.

I loved Royal, and totally think it's better than P5 vanilla. Its new semester kind of takes away from the superb ending of the vanilla game, but the new stuff still makes up for it. Don't get me wrong, you can still get the original ending from the vanilla game in Royal, at least I'm pretty sure you can, but it involves you missing out on all the new content, including Violet as a party member and getting Crow back, plus Joker's showtimes so it's not worth it imo

I wasn't actually looking forward to the game when it was announced, or even planning on getting it, but I had the Phantom Thieves' edition pre-ordered for me as a Christmas present so I wasn't going to...not play it lol. I'm extremely glad I got it though, even if I otherwise wouldn't have, and now that I have finished it, I'm very happy with the game. The gameplay's improved by leaps and bounds, and the new content was all amazing.

... And I got to punch Maruki in the face.

I did end up getting the platinum trophy for Royal too, so despite the Phantom Thieves den thing, I don't see myself going back to it, at least any time soon. It was an amazing experience, but I can set my sights back to FFVII now lol.

...Although, I did hear you can fight the twins and Lavenza so uhhh maybe i won't be shelfing it so soon—

[damn-daemon]

Critical Mass Preview

Help me, Tumblr, you’re my only hope!

Here is segment from the first chapter of Critical Mass. I would really appreciate if you read it over and let me know your thoughts! 

Tagging my Star Wars gals @chuck-hansens and @marvelousthronewars​

DV-7892 did not necessarily prefer space. When she was given an order, she followed it as any good soldier should, but there was no denying the little spark of personal expectation that found its way into her chest. Dry environments were better than wet, warm was better than cold. If all their targets could be found on systems with agreeable climates, missions would go that much easier, but that was not the way of things.

But space, she found, was always agreeable to her.

The general feeling she got from the other troopers was that space was a terrifying beast. It was cold, dark, empty, and lifeless. Some had admitted a sort of terror at the idea of being confronted with such a void, especially in a small fighter such as the one she occupied. One crack in the hull, and that could be it. There was no chance for recovery in the throes of space.

But within the darkness, she found a calm that she could not quite connect with in the barracks. Perhaps it was merely the emptiness, the quiet that she was not afforded anywhere else, but sometimes, some part of her wondered if there wasn’t more to it. The thought was brief and quickly snuffed out by more important tasks at hand, yet it always lingered somewhere in the back of her mind, an idea discarded yet still within sight.

Sometimes she found herself staring at a distant star and wondering what was there.

A series of taps returned her mind to the present.

‘You’re doing it again,’ the code spelled out.

DV-7892 sighed, reaching down to the metal bar beneath her seat and producing her own series of taps.

‘You don’t know what I’m doing.’

It was a First Order code, used by all troopers when a mission required radio silence. DV-7892 and her TIE gunner, DV-7896, used it frequently to pass the time. Alone in their TIE, many assumed they would simply speak with one another, given they sat back to back, but both preferred the silence and the concentration required to communicate with the code. They had started using it with one another when they were young, and the method had stuck.

‘Staring into space wistefully at the stars.’

‘Wistfully,’ she corrected. ‘Only you would make a spelling error in code.’

‘That wasn’t disagreement, Demo.’

Demo. Short for demonstration. To save on time, all troopers gave each other nicknames, though they never spoke them in front of their superior officers.

Her unit, Knight Squadron, was an experiment of General Hux’s. He took the best of the stormtroopers and subjected them to harsher training, grueling environments, and unthinkable tests in order to form the perfect elite unit. Only four had passed the first class. Many had been transferred to other units; many others had died.

DV-7892 was the stormtrooper he used to show off his accomplishments, to demonstrate them as it were, and that was how Demo came to be.

DV-7896 was simpler. He was her gunner, and so that was what he would always be. Gunner was the best shot that the First Order had ever seen. If he missed anything, it was because he meant to.

For the past fifteen years, they had been watching one another’s backs, an unstoppable force amongst the other troopers. Whenever they set their mind to something, it was only a matter of when it would be accomplished, not if.

Demo shook her head at Gunner’s remark, choosing to let silence fall again.

They had been drifting in space for the better part of six hours, watching a derelict ship that drifted just outside a local asteroid belt. She hadn’t consumed any food or water during that time, and her legs had been utterly still since they began their watch, but Demo knew the instant it was necessary, her body would perform exactly as she wanted it to. They had trained for this as well, but for far longer. Six hours was nothing.

‘Still want to be in there?’ Demo tapped, there being the ship. Currently on the bridge of the old freighter they were watching, their other squad mates, DVs-7956 and 7977, were transmitting a distress signal. If everything went to plan, a local band of pirates would pick up on the signal and investigate. The group had grown confident as of late and had the audacity to attack a First Order cruiser.

A message needed to be sent.

‘I would like to see their faces before we space them.’

Demo’s reply was cut short by the arrival of a ship dropping from hyperspace. It was an ugly thing, once a Corellian freighter, but over the years, the pirates had crudely retrofitted various ship parts to the outside, making it more of a junk heap than any of the ships they pillaged. Several living pods had been haphazardly welded onto the frame at various points and two plasma cannons had been attached to either side. They made for a ship far larger than the one the pirates were currently occupying, and Demo briefly wondered if they had ever actually been fired. The electrical output alone would be enough to cripple the ship.

Another ship arrived soon after. It was a smaller fighter, an old A-Wing from the Imperial age. Though nothing had been added to it, the ship sported an unappealing array of colors.

‘Ships aren’t big enough,’ Gunner tapped.

He was right. The freighter was unlikely to ever fly in atmosphere, its awkward fittings making the ship’s balance highly unstable. There had to be another ship that the crew returned to, but they were smart enough not to send it after a simple distress signal.

Demo considered her expectations defied.

‘Breaking radio silence.’

She reached forward, flipping a small switch on her console. Demo listened to the static briefly, waiting for any indication that something was off, before communicating with their squad mates via the same code.

‘Parameters changed. Clear out crew, board freighter. Await further instruction.’

Demo did not wait for a reply as she switched the comms back off.

Quietly, she watched as the freighter docked with their decoy transport, the smaller thrusters awkwardly shifting the bulky ship into place as its top hatch attempted to connect to the external dock. There was no sound in space, but she could still hear metal grinding against metal, a teeth-clenching sensation. The pilot was a novice, or drunk. Either way, the boarding party did not appear to have any concerns about potential danger.

‘This is what’s been attacking us? Someone needs a demotion.’

Demo tapped twice against the bar, effectively ending their silent conversation. They did not have time for distraction now. She had to wait for the signal. Their squad never said what the signals would be, but they always knew what they were when they appeared. The group had a talent for intuitive communication in that way, which had made them an effective force in the past.

She leaned forward in her seat, keeping an eye on the A-Wing that circled their ship in a lazy orbit. Its turns were slow, at ease, the pilot was clearly not keeping an eye out for anything. They would never notice the lone TIE resting in the shadow of an asteroid.

So, they waited.

The bridge of their decoy ship lit up momentarily, before the glass of the viewports burst, sending thousands of shrapnel fragments shooting into space, as well as several bodies.

They never had been subtle.

Without her gaze ever leaving the A-Wing, Demo brought the TIE to life, shooting into open space from their hiding position within seconds of the explosion. Despite the relaxed flight patterns of the pilot, they were quick to notice their ship converging on their position, kicking their thrusters to life and rapidly fleeing the scene.

“Round him up, Gunner,” Demo finally spoke, tongue feeling dry in her mouth. The A-Wing may have been an older model, but it still had a speed advantage against them. DV-7896 took quick, calculated shots on the ship’s starboard side, easing the panicked pilot toward the asteroid field. It would make pursuit more difficult, but keep the ship from hitting lightspeed and warning the others.

Once amongst the asteroids, the TIE’s maneuverability took center stage. The A-Wing was still in a panic, attempting dangerous turns that nearly rammed the ship’s frame into the closest asteroid, but they never managed to lose Demo. She piloted the ship around the debris with practiced ease, capable of keeping her eyes focused on the ship ahead while completely avoiding the dangers to their left and right.

They hit a brief straightaway. Many pilots would have taken the time to center their shots, and missed as the A-Wing rounded another asteroid, but the mere seconds were all Gunner needed to fire. The ship took a hit on its back thruster, careening into another asteroid and exploding in a brief ball of fire before the vacuum of space wiped the evidence away.

Demo pulled the ship out of the field, twisting around and returning to the decoy ship.

“You’re getting slow,” she said, flipping the comms back online.

“I just pull the trigger,” Gunner replied, his deep voice muffled by his helmet. “You were the one taking your time.”

“Fuse, Seven,” Demo called out over comms, for DVs-7956 and 7977, respectfully. “Are we in the clear?”

“One moment, Commander!” was the reply from Seven, interrupted by static and grunting. “Ship’s clear. You may board when ready.”

Demo landed the fighter in the ship’s docking bay, noting the other fighter that was already there. Had the pirates had a single functioning cell in the brains, they might have thought to check around before heading straight to the bridge, but apparently nothing was too good to be true for them.

Despite the all clear, Demo and Gunner kept their blasters at the ready, waiting for the potential missed target, but the hallways were quiet as they made their way to the Corellian freighter. Unsubtle they may have been, but their squad mates hadn’t let them down yet. They were Knight Squadron, through and through.

“This place smells like a garbage chute,” Gunner noted as they entered the ship.

Seven and Fuse awaited them inside, standing side by side in the black uniforms that identified the squadron. On each of their right shoulders was a clearly marked saber in red, the patch of their unit. For the time being, only four soldiers had attained the patch, yet every member of the First Order knew it when they saw it, and made certain to steer clear.

At the feet of her squad mates was a bloodied human, more than likely the pilot of the ship. He stared up at them with wide, terrified eyes. He was young, younger than them at any rate.

“Are there coordinates for the main ship in the nav computer?” Demo asked.

Seven nodded, his helmet jiggling slightly. “Yes, Commander. The pilot was ready to break out as we came on board.”

“Then why is he here?”

“Kid insists he can help us get on board,” Fuse replied, picking at his blaster. “We thought to leave the decision with you.”

Her blaster fired once, and his body crumpled to the floor.

“If we needed help, we wouldn’t be here,” Demo said, sliding into the pilot’s seat while Seven grabbed the co-pilot’s. Gunner dragged the pilot away while Fuse tended to the hole in his right shoulder. “You injured, Fuse?”

“Shrapnel caught my uniform. No physical damage.”

“That was quite the explosion you rigged,” Gunner said, bumping Fuse on the shoulder. “The general probably saw it back at base.”

Seven shook his head. “My ears are still ringing.”

The jump to lightspeed lasted no more than ten minutes, bringing them to a halt before a heavy freighter that orbited a large, unnamed gas planet; the dark colors of the freighter stood stark against the bright orange of the planet beside them. Like the other ships they had encountered, the large freighter was a jumble of various parts welded onto the ship, making its silhouette grotesque in appearance. The size had nearly doubled from the patchwork.

“Fuse, tell me about our guns,” Demo said, observing the ship. She half expected it to disappear at any moment. They were missing an A-Wing after all.

“They’re more for show than anything else, Commander,” Fuse’s voice crackled over the comms. He’d disappeared into engineering after they had jumped to lightspeed. “These things haven’t been fired since they were welded onto the hull. The connections are all there, but I don’t know what kind of damage these things have seen.”

“What are our odds?”

“Forty-sixty if I’m being optimistic, but the force alone might sheer the ship in two.”

“So we should fire from inside the freighter.”

Gunner sighed. “Strap in, everyone. Commander’s got an idea.”

There were no docking codes requested as the ship approached the bay, no cannons fired up in warning. A single Toydarian was smoking a death stick in the back corner as he sorted through scrap on the floor. It was only after all four members of Knight Squadron had stepped onto the platform that he decided to acknowledge any presence in the room.

“Abandon your escort again, Jeso? Next time, why don’t you-”

He paused as his gaze landed on them.

Gunner fired one shot.

The squad crossed over the bay, heading to the blaster doors on the far end. Seven jammed the doors shut, and the four troopers proceeded to jog down the empty hallway, taking a quick turn down another before halting.

“Do it, Fuse,” Demo ordered.

“Fire in the hole,” Fuse replied, pressing a button on his transmitter.

There were two explosions, one as the plasma cannons fired straight back toward the main thrusters, and another as the transport itself imploded, the cannons, as Fuse surmised, having taken too much damage over time. Unable to contain the blast fully, they backfired. As a result, the squad watched as the blast door flew down the hallway before jamming itself bulkhead.

“That’ll do it,” Gunner said.

From there, everything fell into place. Two by two, Knight Squadron moved through the hallways, Demo and Gunner in the lead while Fuse and Seven brought up the rear, clearing the ship of enemy targets. This was the unit’s element, what they had trained for since before they could remember. Synchronous movement unimpeded by mediocrity, ignorance, or pride. Every part had its place in the whole. The DV troopers trusted one another completely, able to focus on their tasks without worry of exposure from a different angle.

The explosion had put the ship into chaos. Most of the pirates they shot were simply running in panic, shouting in various languages about what was going on. What few armed individuals they found never got a shot off. No one was expecting an incursion.

The bridge doors had been sealed by the time they arrived. It seemed some sense had returned to the remaining crew, and communication had been reestablished.

“Seven. Fuse. You’re up,” Demo said. The two troopers ran up to the door, as Demo and Gunner took a knee, each leaning against one side of the hall. They kept their blasters trained ahead, waiting. Every target that made its way into their line of sight was dropped from a blaster bolt before they got the chance to take cover.

Feeling a tap on her shoulder, Demo moved forward around the corner, taking cover as another small explosion tore the door off the bridge.

As one, the unit moved into the bridge, firing rounds as those who attempted to fight back. It left two targets untouched: a human and a Gran. Demo surged forward, holding her blaster in one hand as she grabbed the human with the other.

“Are there any more ships?” she demanded.

“I…I don’t…”

Demo thrust her blaster into his chest and fired before grabbing the Gran.

“Are there any more ships?” she repeated.

“Two!” the Gran shouted, arms raised, his trio of eyes wide and panicked. “There are two, but they aren’t in the sector!”

She shoved him against the console, moving to the comms panel. A single shot fired off. Gunner joined her soon after, having left Seven and Fuse covering the door.

“Check the logs,” Demo ordered, fingers dancing on the keyboard as she entered a familiar code. “Get me those ships.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Demo stepped back from the console, releasing her blaster to leave it hanging from a strap attached to her hip as she fell into a parade rest. The small transmitter fired up, revealing a hologram of a young officer, rigid and stern, with an air of superiority that managed to travel across the lightyears.

General Armitage Hux.

“DV-7892, my system indicates you are outside your sector of engagement. Explain your deviation,” the hologram demanded.

“Sir, Knight Squadron engaged the enemy at our previous coordinates, but intel indicated that the two ships baited were part of a larger sum. On my orders, we traced the ships back to their origin point and have since taken control of what appears to be the main base of operations in this region.”

Hux looked thoughtful. “Casualties?”

“At least fifty hostile targets, sir. No casualties on our end,” Demo replied, glancing briefly in Gunner’s direction. He nodded. “Sir, with your permission, I would like to engage to ships that are not currently present. We have their coordinates.”

The general waved his hand. “Leave them. Such small things aren’t worth our attention. Without their main source of power, these bandit scum will turn on one another and disappear from the system.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Return to the Finalizer. Supreme Leader Snoke has requested our presence.”

[greenhanded-redthumbed]

Mr Appleigus

The men of the Appleigus family had a strict motto. Mr Appleigus the senior, deceased at age seventy-eight and not to be confused with his son, the current Mr Appleigus, had made a point to pass on this saying when his junior was about nine years of age and sobbing over a scraped knee, albeit a rather bad one. 

The boy had fallen from the branches of the Jacaranda tree in their front yard - not hard enough to break anything - but with enough speed and awkwardness that one of his old, gnarled ladder rungs had dug its bark deep into his skin. Perhaps it wasn’t fond of being stepped on. 

Mr Appleigus, having carried his son inside, applied rubbing alcohol and a particularly large band-aid created with the intention to either be used on a child or comically plastered on an adult en route to a hospital. 

“It’ll be alright,” the senior Appleigus had assured as he smoothed down the band-aid, “It might have cut deep, but it’ll heal. You gotta be strong, deal with a little pain & you’ll be as good as new. A little patience and a few bandaids and you’ll be able to get up from anything that doesn’t kill you.”

Mr Appleigus, the junior, had remembered and applied this advice throughout his life, from the time he turned twenty right up until his current age of fifty-nine (when he was a teenager, he could see no use for such a blindly optimistic and simple metaphor so he’d chosen to ignore it until he once again saw the pertinence of simple, blind optimism shortly following the conclusion of his school years).

He was, fifty years later, now facing a different kind of band aid.

“There’s been a significant break to the hip on the right hand side,” the doctor said to him. He’d seen her puzzling over the clipboard that held his x-ray results as she hovered just outside the door to his room. So the scans would be pretty fresh in her mind. He still found it slightly disconcerting that she felt no need to glance down at the papers.

After a brief pause, presumably to let the news sink in, she continued on, “It will require surgery. For people your age, we usually recommend a replacement. Especially with your history of problems.”

Mr Appleigus nodded. It seemed fair enough - he didn’t consider himself old, as neither he nor his brother had any sons, and only his niece was continuing the Appleigus name, he still considered himself the junior Appleigus - but a hip that didn’t ache when he walked up the stairs to his apartment would be nice.

He signed the surgical forms - if he died the doctor wasn’t responsible, he’d pay the money, in case of complication contact the other Mr Appleigus as next of kin - the usual. They kept him in the hospital for a week for the operation. The other Appleigi (a lasting family in-joke only the teller seemed to find funny) came to visit, his niece Sophie even brought him flowers. They were pretty blue ones - in a little pot so they could keep growing rather than withering in a vase.

“You can take it with you,” Sophie said practically (but not optimistically of course, she was a sweet, darling niece, but still a teenager), “When you go home.”

It seemed humans were far less cynical than hospital forms - the maths were in his favour at fifty-nine. The rising likelihood of death only kicked in during the final years of human frailty. And even then, people still expected to leave the hospital room alive.

He did manage to, of course. (It is always of course with adults in hospitals. They have too much optimism to face their own mortality. The doctors will fix it! They can fix anything!)

He had a brief recovery period and a new scar across his right side, but in return he could climb stairs without quietly nursing his ache. His perseverance could be shifted back to his work. Now he could spend perhaps a minute more shifting through financial reports than usual!

In truth, rather little changed. After a few days he stopped noticing the lack of ache. It was as if it had always been.

At the ripe old age of sixty three, Mr Appleigus decided to take up cycling again. The cause, however risky for his aging bones, was Sophie’s new habit. The darling girl had invited him to join her in cycling along the paths circling the nearby lagoons. (In truth, a series of attacks on young women had prompted her father to suggest she take a partner. He still felt honoured to be the first person she could think of willing to get up at six in the morning to cycle with a girl who kept at least one headphone in for the entire journey.)

It wasn’t the infamous attacker that caused the incident, but a rather innocent basketball. 

As the two Appleigi (Sophie smiled wryly at his nickname of Cycling Appleigings, so it seemed the family sense of humour would outlive him), had lazily made their second lap, the lull between the opening determination and final rush to the finish taking full effect, the ball had rolled across the path in the same lazy manner. The calm of the morning echoed in its slow, wobbly rolls across the uneven ground. It was easy enough to pedal around, with Mr Appleigus moving to follow Sophie’s arc with smooth, easy strokes of the leg. The clumsy child chasing it was not so predictable. They bumbled, small and quick with tunnel vision focused only on the bright orange of his plaything. While not a parent himself, Mr Appleigus had in him the same instinct found in almost every human over the age of fifteen. He saw the small, reckless child and swerved.

The bike went sideways, wheels rising violently from the tar like a wave against the coastline as his body hit the root-ridden path. The whole colossal wreck of metal and limbs fell thankfully clear of the child. Dimly he heard shouting - the cries of parents chasing their child with the same tunnel vision he had chased his ball - but it was drowned out by the sharp pain in his arm. The physical sensation tore apart any coherent sense of sound or sight beyond bright flashes of both. 

Mr Appleigus slowly regained his full ability to see and hear clearly on his route to the hospital. He found himself in a similar hospital bed to his previous visit. Though this time it was a different doctor.

“We’ve found a series of fractures up your left arm and to your shoulder,” the doctor said. This one checked the clipboard as he spoke. Perhaps he was new and nervous. Perhaps he was old to it and liked to get things right, “It needs to be reset in places. With multiple pins to keep it stable.”

Mr Appleigus nodded. He didn’t really understand anything beyond the fact that the doctor was promising him a working arm. He agreed and signed almost exact copies of the forms before. His brother and niece came to visit again - his brother apologetic that he could be injured on bike rides it was his idea he went on. (Sophie wasn’t apologetic. She would still be his favourite niece, he thought, even if he had more than one.)

While unapologetic, Sophie brought him another of the potted plants - another tiny geranium-esque flower, though this one had dark pink blooms instead of blue. 

“You can start a collection,” she shrugged, “a window box. But inside the window.” Still a teenager then, with the blunt and seemingly meaningless humour he was yet to understand. 

His arm took longer to recover from than his hip - maybe as this time it was multiple bones in multiple pieces. Still, he got back to normal eventually. And got back to his morning bike rides in no time. 

When he was sixty-five and his hands started shaking, he wondered if something went wrong with his bones. Maybe band-aid hadn’t quite covered the wound. He was surprised to learn it was Parkinson’s disease - early on-set. It always seems good to be diagnosed early, but they can’t cure it. It’s not like cancer, they can’t rip it out. All they did was medicate. 

As Mr Appleigus was coming to accept this, a doctor - this one not in a hospital room, but the office of his local practitioner - offered him a second option. A new trial surgery - one with even more forms to give the doctors deniability than usual - that will hollow out his arms, and fill them with prosthetic pieces. A few nerves replaced with tiny wires. His main joints replaced with carbon fiber copies. They said it would stop the shaking.

So he said yes.

(Sophie stopped by his apartment and brought his still-living flowers to his hospital room.) He stayed in hospital for a month, and his brother visited once a week and brought Sophie fortnightly. (She had her new university classes to juggle. Apparently first year engineering kept one very busy.)

This was the first surgery that felt different. He could not forget that his nerves were wires or joints prosthetic. He could feel them. Always. But they gave him a steady hand. He could keep working - he was reaching that ever-elusive retirement age, but he liked the money and the substance to his otherwise empty weeks. It was just a band aid that needed to stay on. But, then again, it wasn’t much different from the previous surgeries. 

He had a few more surgeries as he aged - his heart was weak, so they’d printed new arteries and added clamps to keep it’s beating stable. His lungs grew weaker, so they patched them up like sails of flesh, with the wind controlled by a sharp electric shock if they got too slow.

The doctors and their never-failing optimism kept him together with their band-aids. 

When he turned eighty-one, they told him he had Alzheimers. That he would start to forget. Not everything - and not immediately. Just that for a brief moment of time, his brother’s funeral would slip his mind. Or he might be convinced he’d eaten twice already, but actually have forgotten to all day. And of course, he’d have to stop working in the office. He didn’t really do anything there anymore apart from simple filing. But he really didn’t have much else to do.

When the doctor’s told him they could fix his brain - put his memories into a series of microchips of his most important memory and give him a RAM as stable as computers - Mr Appleigus said yes.

Despite being almost the same size as he was at fifty-nine, Mr Appleigus felt very small. Sophie still visited him when she had time - she had a job then, just like him. He learned to keep his sentences short - usually yes or no replies. She wasn’t as blunt with him as she used to be - while she pretended to understand him, he knew when she couldn’t. She might have asked him to repeat himself once or twice, but after that simply guesses.

Appleigi was too many syllables to pronounce, but after many tries Sophie smiled and he knew she understood. 

“I’ll have to bring you more flowers,” she said, noting that the old plants had finally died. He noted a niceness to her voice that hadn’t been there when she was younger - she’d started to grow up. Maybe she was already grown. His eyes were heavy. Everything dimmed. The machine memories were brighter, but the sight and sound swam past him. As if he was lying on the bicycle path again, only instead of sharp pain he was faced with a vast numbness. A letting go.

Mr Appleigus stopped noticing how his body moved. He stopped feeling the stairs beneath his feet. He stopped comprehending the files the chips in his brain and carbon fiber finger joints typed out on their own.

He didn’t notice his coworkers start to complain about a growing rancid smell. Or the putrid liquid seeping out from the gaps in his plastic skin. Or even the foul sloshing at each step. Not even the maggots wriggling between his copper nerves.

Mr Appleigus didn’t notice his niece set a pot of bright orange geraniums beside him in his favourite chair. He had no memory of turning to her, his mind sending a greeting that came out as an olid smacking of over-ripe lips.

By the time Sophie Appleigus, with a towel wrapped around her lower face and arms clad in dishwashing gloves up to her elbow, drove a screwdriver through his skull and dug through his rank, rotten brain for the chips put there when there was still something to bandage, Mr Appleigus was already long gone.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh Ep 23 S3: Always Put Guns on Your Satellites

Ah, I’m finally back at my home computer after a little hiatus there. In case you are curious, I went to San Fransisco and then spent about 2 weeks trying to find a single parking spot. But, I’m back in my normal place now, where trash trucks aren’t driving around, breaking the speed barrier at 3 AM and where I don’t have to parallel park at a 45 degree incline. I got my fill of good food, chilling out, getting completely rained out by a freak storm in May, and walking about a mile vertically to go three feet horizontally, it’s time to sit back, relax, and talk about an anime that came out 20 years ago.

Y’all...what were even doing 2 weeks ago? It really does feel like three years.

If memory serves, we are currently in the midst of not one, but 3 Apocalypses. Lets just place em down in case you forgot

1.) The Millennium Item Apocalypse, where if one person gets all 7 (or was it 10?) of the items, the world freakin ends. This is briefly on hold because Bakura, our Millennium item enthusiast, hella died about 24 episodes ago and none of these people have brought it up or tried to contact any sort of governing authority even though Yugi and Tea both witnessed the murder about 7 hours ago (which, for Marik’s credit, did take place over international waters, touche). So, for now, Bakura’s spirit is kinda holed up in Pharaoh’s puzzle necklace so he’s just...chillaxing.

2.) The God Card Apocalypse, where if one person gets all 3 God Cards, the world freakin ends. Briefly on hold because everyone got stuck in a VR universe, and Marik felt like staying on the blimp instead because I dunno maybe he wanted to take a nap or something.

3.) The Matrix, where Seto’s Dad is going to launch a bunch of machines to trap the entire human race in this VR zone against their will and become a slave to the machine overlords. Somehow this is a thing that has been happening in the background this entire series but has only been revealed like...last episode.

Bro is reminding me that I forgot to mention that all these duel monsters are becoming slowly more and more real but like...eh.

There’s three concurrent Apocalypses right now. Don’t forget. There’s three of them.

Anyway, Seto Kaiba has decided it’s about time he deal with his Daddy issues/prevent the Matrix.

While Kaiba has decided to confront his Father, the rest of the people on this show have no freakin idea what to even do so they’re just arguing with eachother in Domino square and getting no where.

Also, I nearly forgot, Joey can’t even beat up Noah currently because Noah switched places with Mokuba, because this isn’t Yugioh unless we start switching brains like it’s as easy as turning your T-shirt inside out.

Of course, in this case, Mokuba didn’t exactly *switch* places with Noah--Moki’s brain is just...floating around this world somewhere. I don’t know if he got stuck in a Monkey or if he’s just...dead...but it just makes absolutely no sense to me how your soul can get sucked into a VR game and now lives tron-style in VR while someone else steers your body which isn’t any more connected to the machine itself, so I’ll just assume he’s dead. It’s just easier to say Moki died, it’s happened so many times to this kid at this point.

Basically, Mokuba is here, but in not-spirit. In every way but spirit.

And about those brain pods--does Yugi’s pod take up 2x the RAM because he’s got two people in that bean or has Noah seriously not noticed this like at all? because there's two dudes in one pod and Noah has just acted like that’s a completely normal thing that can happen.

(read more under the cut)

Anyway, the A team has sort of all turned into the B team because only Kaiba’s can really have any active involvement at this part of the arc, so Yugi decides to take a break and enter brain fort. Which, I assume he does just whenever he’s bored. It’s just kind of weird when he decides to do this, without warning, in front of a large group of other people.

Anyway, it’s Yugi, so he somehow turns what is so clearly Kaiba’s problem into this selfish need to carry the torch by himself for no reason.

Like, Yugi is the main character--I get that--he’s gotta be some sort of moral standard because this is a protagonist in a kid’s show, but it is such a stretch for him to still think that there’s any good left in Noah after all the events of this arc. It just comes off that every time Yugi tries to see good in Bakura, or Marik, or the Kaiba family even, he’s maybe doing it out of guilt.

Like Yugi isn’t naive at this point - he set a guy on fire once with Russian Whiskey in a freakin burger diner, and even if you don’t consider Season Zero canon, he also set PaniK on fire and left him to die in the woods (and that nut ABSOLUTELY died), so it just doesn’t make sense to me that he’d helplessly fall victim to a thousand evil assholes who pretended to be his friend. Instead, it’s sort of like Yugi’s trying to overcompensate for the amoral weirdo residing in about 98% of his brain right now.

Overall, TL;DR, Yugi is kind of a weird guy.

Love him, but he’s sort of a walking disaster with some very selfish motivations and I forget. Not about the walking disaster part of course, that part is like clearly very obvious, especially when we find out his grand masterplan.

Also, this happened,

Again, I would be absolutely fine if Tristan just remained like this, talking like the librarian out of Terry Pratchett, taking Serenity to prom just like this.

Anyway, these guys had absolutely nothing to do, so the show invented something on the fly.

If you could copy-paste any card, why not just copy-paste 24 Exodias? Like I get they don’t have God cards here but they have all the other ones, right?

Like I don’t understand the danger here, you can just keep playing cards infinitely because there’s no rules when you’re outside the game. Just keep slapping stuff on your duel disk like it’s that fanmade Yugioh game that they made for real life VR headsets. Youknow the one that was so bad that it became like a viral video, where everyone is a really low poly Yugioh character but they only have like 4 character models, and for some reason one of the four is Yugi but as a girl in a miniskirt? And they’re on the blimp for some reason, and none of them can stand up straight so they kind of duck walk everywhere? That one? The one with Joey saying “It does what it do!”

Like I feel like if even I saw that video show up on my twitter, everyone else has seen that video of just this really bad VR game and I don’t remember what it was called but feel free to google it, it’s a fun 10 minute ride.

Anyway, the mayhem of that viral video is kind of what this entire VR arc is turning into. More and more as we break reality and completely ignore the rules, to the point where now we’re just slapping whatever cards on our duel disk--cards we shouldn’t even freakin have because we identified at the beginning of this season that no one has a deck here.

But anyway, back to the only person who got out of the VR zone, lets see what Noah’s up to. Ah, the real world, where all we ever had to worry about was magic.

This password was so obtuse even Noah, who is literally a computer, forgot it. Wow.

So now that Noah has escaped the computer, he decides to walk down the hall to log onto yet another computer so he could use his hands instead of...however he was using computers in the digital zone.

He could have done this from within the Orb, right? Like this part didn’t really require him stealing Mokuba’s body? We know he’s already connected to Kaiba’s network so he could become ascended and open the Door of Truth, so I’m assuming it would also have the ability to just log onto this computer in his own ship?

Noah does seem to be just winging it through this entire arc, but he could have done this sequence, and THEN stolen Moki, and THEN hightailed it out of there. It would have saved him some problems later. But wtv, lets hack a satellite, that good ol Kaiba pastime.

Also, fun fact, Kaiba went through all that work to get rid of all the weapons and then forgot about his space stash?

Like was there just SO MANY weapons that he overlooked it, or is he just keeping this here, just to have? Just in case, youknow? Like why does Seto Kaiba have access to The Bomb? Why would we leave a horrible nuclear missile in the hands of a teenager who freaks every time he plays cards? This child who is so unstable, that he knows he was married to a paper card in a previous life but doesn’t feel like talking about it? That crazy kid?

Like usually we have a set of two keys for this type of thing and two different people turn the key at the same time, we don’t just leave them in the Seto Kaiba headquarters with the kid who turned all cards into guns. Are all of Seto’s handlers actually just spies from other countries trying to keep Seto from nuking the planet? Is that the real answer to who the hell Roland is? Is he just a nice spy that makes sure Seto plays enough cards to forget that he could blow up the world if he sneezed too much and pressed the wrong key loading up Duel Disk Myspace?

The implications.

Meanwhile, Kaiba is the only one on this show smart enough to just walk into Gozaburo’s office, where I assume this guy has just been hanging out the entire arc.

Yep, that’s right, they’re going to do a card duel with a chess champion because this show has to shoehorn in those cards. Just one more card fight. Just cuz. Just one more completely pointless card fight between these two people, to show...that Seto can beat his Dad? Seto’s beaten his Dad like every opportunity he’s had to beat his Dad I don’t...exactly know why this was necessary. Would’ve been a much bigger emotional beat for Seto to have just walked away, but that would have also been a much different Seto than the Seto we have.

So basically, if Seto loses, Gozaburo threatens to erase Seto’s mind entirely, which we’ve already pointed out has been so wiped at this point that it would be all of 700 KB and it would just be a single corrupted pixel picture of a dragon.

Anyways, Marik finally conquers his greatest enemy.

Oh. OK. This is a thing he can do now. Welcome back to the show, Marik.

Anyway, Marik has decided it’s high time for him to just go flippen spaz and start breaking stuff. For no reason. I don’t think he fully comprehends that he’s underwater and should not blow up the boat.

Or maybe he FULLY comprehends that? Either answer for him would feel correct.

Also, while I don’t cover cards here, Kaiba’s Dad has decided that the only way to beat his son was to pretend he’s Yugi Muto and reenact the pilot.

It was weird. It was sort of like watching someone audition for a role they don’t have.

Lets go back to Noah.

I knew this arc was going kinda long but how did they end up in freakin Guam???

Marik, who has no concept of technology because he grew up in a tomb and is currently possessed by an ancient force of evil, is still able to recognize a good countdown clock when he sees one. Before he bashes it to pieces because of course he can.

Marik almost saved everyone else’s ass, but unfortunately doesn’t understand that the monitor is not actually attached to the workings of the computer. Much like my Mother.

Bro brings up that this a very Metal Gear thing to only use helicopters to travel over the ocean and hot damn we got yet another Metal Gear reference in just before this arc closes. These weird war crime children.

Ps I like that they drew in the shadow of the bangs across Moki’s eyes as if that would somehow make Moki look sinister. lol.

But, much like the Grinch, Noah’s heart grew...well, it grew.

I wouldn’t go as far to say it grew even a full size, but youknow it...kinda made a weird little fart and bloated a little bit.

So like with Tristan turning into a monkey, it does seem a lot like Noah is just turning into Mokuba and that’s why he’s decided to save everyone. Least in my mind that’s what it looks like. Maybe if he really did take Yugi’s body, Noah would have lasted maybe 5 seconds before being doubled over with endless anxiety and guilt. Would’ve solved a lot of their problems.

I’ve been watching a cat while commuting 4 hours a day and this is actual footage of what my charger cable looked like after the cat went Marik on me and decided the cable deserved to die at 3AM after the freakin SF garbage truck went supersonic and woke up the entire neighborhood.

(the cat is fine, btw, we went and hid all the other cords, dumbass cat)

So what does Noah do? He decides...it’s time I fessed up. And he does it in the worst way, during a time when literally everyone else in the VR world is fighting multiple card enemies/their Dad.

Way to be, Noah, way to be. On the other side of town, Yugi was visibly sweating and had this facial of expression of like “Wow, maybe Noah is just a freakin psycopath?” Which, I dunno, kind of seems like the sort of thing we figured out 23 episodes ago, right at the same moment we met Noah.

Anyway, that’s all for this episode. Really seems like the only person who actually DID anything was Noah who just...decided to throw a bunch of missiles directly at himself because he can’t think things through. I guess Marik did some stuff too, but honestly, I have no idea if Marik thoroughly understood that he just guaranteed that he was absolutely going to be destroyed by rockets. That Loki.

Hey if Noah DOES manage to destroy everyone on this boat, he prevents 3 whole apocalypses and that would default him to hero status. He’ll kill off like 3 major villains and maybe even Shadi. And who doesn’t want Shadi to die (who I assume is already dead but wtv) I mean that’s not going to happen, but like...way to try and save the world Noah, you’re doing your best life.

Anyway, if you just got here, here’s a link to read these recaps from the very beginning, fair warning, there’s 2.5 seasons.

[ghoultyrant]

More Metroid fangames

Back on Zebes and Metroid: Between Worlds are a couple of Metroid fangames I’ve worked through in recent weeks. They share the same engine, made personally by the lone developer, so it’s not surprising they share several faults, but overall I’m fairly impressed.

Back on Zebes is the less impressive of the two, which isn’t surprising given it came first. It’s reasonably accurate to think of it as a cut-down, simplified version of Super Metroid. The simplistic plot is pretty much ‘Samus has to go back to Zebes again, because Mother Brain and company are up to their prior plots again’, with no attempt made to explain why the planet literally exploding hasn’t made this plot impossible from the start. That’s okay, because Back on Zebes is more like a test run or prototype than anything else; it shows that the creator can assemble a game-like program successfully, and anything beyond that is gravy.

Most of the power-ups are familiar, though the exact physics are generally different from what you’re used to. Particularly notable is that unlike official Metroid games, enemies and projectiles that are off-screen are fully-functional/existent, which once you’re aware of it makes many of the game’s long corridors a bit of a joke: just fire blindly ahead and everything will die without you ever being in danger. As for the actually new power-ups, you’ve got a ‘magnetic shield’ that makes you immune to most sources of damage, but which is disabled if you fire a Missile or go into Morph Ball -surprisingly, firing your beam is fair game, though your ability to abuse this is limited by your invulnerability having an ‘ammo’ supply that drains quite quickly. The game uses this invulnerability for the fairly obvious ‘you’re supposed to turn invincible and walk across these spikes’ quoteunquote ‘puzzles’ common to games that include such a concept, but more unusual and creative is that a few rooms require you use it so you can activate the Speed Booster. It’s a nice little twist on two familiar concepts!

The other new thing is a fire beam or flamethrower, which has a short range but rapid fires, and more importantly some blocks can only be destroyed by it. This isn’t particularly inspired, but... well, it’s not like Metroid Prime did any better with its own flamethrower, aside the looks department. Nor is it like the main games have done a lot to experiment with the beam space. There’s certainly room for creativity in the Metroid beam set, but it’s genuinely difficult to find it. So hey, fair enough.

Back on Zebes generally attempts to approximate, rather than recreate, bosses and minibosses, and in one notable case a Super Metroid miniboss is outright replaced with one patterned after a Zero Mission miniboss. Crocomire, for example, has a regular health meter, and merely steps back as his health drops, instead of shoving him back being how you kill him. The first Torizo instead jumps you in the corridor just outside the Bomb room, instead of the Chozo Statue shedding its stone shell to attack you. For the most part, the results are unsurprisingly lackluster, with Draygon in particular being underwhelming for how exploitable his pattern is. (Admittedly, Super Metroid’s Draygon isn’t actually not exploitable) Kraid also stands out in a bad way, but instead for the fact that the game forces you to consistently ride Kraid’s spikes -an idea that is okay by itself, but made instantly horrible by the fact that the engine has no mechanics for you riding the spikes, instead having them magically slide right out from under you. This makes the fight much, much harder than it would otherwise be.

Ridley and Mother Brain are notable oddities. Ridley is an aerial duel on a timer, where you’re forced to Space Jump indefinitely because the solid ground is all under super-lava that hurts you through your Gravity Suit. This is probably the most challenging fight in the game -it’s also the one that most bluntly illustrates that the game assumes you’re using a controller, as only a portion of the keyboard controls can be edited, and doing the boss with a keyboard is quite literally physically painful. That issue aside, it was reasonably enjoyable and an interesting realization of an unusual possibility that’s long existed in the Metroid series but never been explored.

Mother Brain actually has a weird fake-out element. You fight her brain-in-a-jar form, it works out roughly as you’d expect, only once you’ve defeated that form... the self-destruct starts. Okay, the engine is clearly not suited to form changes for bosses and whatnot, that’s a little disappointing but not terribly surprising-

-and then partway through your (timed, remember) escape you stumble into Mother Brain on her body. Surprise!

Overall, Back on Zebes isn’t a game I’d recommend playing unless you’re wanting more context on the development process that lead to Metroid: Between Worlds. I enjoyed it for that aspect, but the actual core gameplay is fairly lackluster; enemies are quite sparse past the first third or so of the game, and non-boss enemies are almost never a real threat. Bosses themselves are generally simplistic, and not an elegant simplicity. Instead, the simplicity of bosses is often what makes them extraordinarily threatening: there’s not a complex pattern that once understood can be mastered reasonably readily. There’s just Phantoon constantly trying to ram you, his wonky flight physics making it very difficult to consistently avoid being hit, with periodic plasma eyeballs thrown out to make things even harder. The graphics and music aren’t going to pull you in, being primarily reused assets from Super Metroid, with a little bit of Zero Mission and Fusion thrown in. The narrative is barely there, and the creator clearly doesn’t speak English as their first language. I could go on for longer, but I think you get the point.

Still, there’s glimmers of an awareness of what a good game looks like, even if this particular game isn’t a strong implementation of this awareness.

Which brings us back to Metroid: Between Worlds.

As noted earlier, Between Worlds has a lot of the faults of the prior game due to having the same engine. It’s still a game that assumes you’re using a controller, to your physical detriment if you insist upon a keyboard, such as because you don’t have a controller compatible with a PC. The animations are less-than-great, with many enemies having no animation at all beyond their sprite sliding around, and Samus still doesn’t animate properly when firing while running. (She goes into her firing pose for literally one frame and then goes right back to pumping both arms)

Even so, it’s vastly improved on virtually every level.

The plot is a bit more sensical and fleshed-out. Samus is returning to SR388 because it turns out the Metroid problem wasn’t properly dealt with during her original trip in Metroid 2; while the game doesn’t give an explicit timeframe, it’s not difficult to guess this is meant to be occurring sometime after Super Metroid but before Fusion. That’s reasonable, even if it would probably be wonky if you tried to insert such a game into the canon timeline.

For the first half-ish of the game, that’s really all there is to the story. I’ll come back to that in a minute, though.

The gameplay in the first half is more polished than Back On Zebes. Enemies are more consistently existent, and more consistently relevant. Save points all fully restore you, which makes the process of hunting Metroids much less tedious than it might otherwise have been. There’s a fairly steady stream of microbosses in the form of Alpha and so on Metroids, which while simplistic in a broadly similar way to the Back On Zebes bosses that simplicity is much closer to elegance. As bosses were probably the strongest part of Back On Zebes, this is distinctly a good thing!

The first half-ish does drag a bit. It’s reasonably enjoyable, but I was starting to wonder if it was worth the effort to actually complete the game a good half hour or so before things picked up, because new things were being doled out at a slow pace and if it weren’t for the Metroid counter I’d have thought I was about to hit the endgame.

Then things picked up.

You pick up a power-up deep in SR388, and a self-destruct timer starts up. Okay, a little abrupt, but not completely unprecedented in a Metroid game. You keep running, and you hit Spore Spawn. O...kay. Sure, timed boss fight. If you played Back On Zebes first (I hadn’t, but whatever), this isn’t even surprising. Okay, just... kill Spore Spawn and then get out.

Oh.

Um.

Its HP is dropping... really slowly. Was I supposed to collect more Missiles first? Am I missing some trick in how to damage it even when its core isn’t exposed? Do I need to restart?

Boom, everything explodes.

And instead of a Game Over screen, you get some narration from Samus. The Space Pirates have stolen your armor, and it’s time to escape and get a replacement.

Yes, a Zero Suit Samus sequence ensues. I was fairly impressed. It hadn’t seemed likely to be within the technical ability of the creator from what I’d seen up to that point. It’s not anywhere near as good as the similar sequence from Zero Mission, but the basics of sneaking through a Space Pirate ship are kind of there. No alarm for being caught, but you’re stuck stunning Space Pirates and running. The Paralyzer even has a cooldown period, if a clearly kludged-together one.

But it gets better, as you take some sort of teleporter or something and it turns out the game has more twists. In addition to the map you’ve been running through so far, there’s a whole other map area, a dark mirror to the one you’ve been operating in, a Phazon dimension. And that notion of it being a Phazon dimension isn’t a simple recoloring of art assets: your HP actually ticks down so long as you’re wandering this place!

This part is actually a much more effective stealth sequence than the Space Pirate ship area. The game may not have any kind of ‘you’ve been spotted!’ mechanic, but it doesn’t really need one when you’re on a fairly strict timer and can’t waste time on enemies, let alone risk them hurting you.

You eventually find a Phazon Zero Suit, which is of course a black version with a distinct resemblance to one of Zero Suit Samus’ alternate costumes in the Smash Bros games. That’s a pretty clever allusion! Just don’t think too hard on why SR388′s dark doppleganger happens to have a Zero Suit that perfectly fits Samus. (Though, if we’re going there, one has to start questioning Samus’ power-ups in general, so is it really fair to hold this against this fangame?)

Anyway, this Phazon Zero Suit is not complete immunity. This makes narrative sense -for starters, Samus is still wandering around with her head exposed- and mechanically it’s used to lessen the urgency of your exploration of Dark Phazon SR388, not remove the threat of Phazon entirely. That’s pretty good design! It’s especially impressive when you consider that one of the wonky elements of Metroid Prime and especially Echoes is how your final suit upgrade is the mandatory removal of the omnipresent threat of the Hostile Environment. In Echoes’ case getting the Light Suit outright makes Dark Aether the safer place to be, since you still get to benefit from Light Crystals healing you! That’s exactly the sort of subtle problem I’d expect a fangame to faithfully recreate, not sidestep.

It is possible to eventually get a Phazon Suit that does render you completely immune to Phazon, but it’s a hidden, technically-optional bonus. I wouldn’t want to try to complete the game without it, but it is possible, at least in theory, and that makes a world of difference in the experience, especially if, like me, you actually end up not finding the Phazon Suit until you’re already through a fairly significant portion of Dark Phazon SR388.

On the topic of Samus’ actual Power Suit, this is a non-trivial misstep with the game. When you transition to the Zero Suit sequence, Samus makes an allusion to going to the ‘Golden Temple’. If you happen to regularly pause to look at your map and pay attention to map names, you’ll know that’s the Chozodia-esque place you had to pass through. If you don’t do one or the other of those things, you’re going to have to flail somewhat blindly.

Fortunately, while this is a misstep, the game is actually surprisingly careful in minimizing the damage. I actually ended up reloading a save after a bit of exploring regular SR388 when I managed to find my way back there as Zero Suit Samus, convinced I’d gotten myself into an unwinnable situation and the actual answer was back in Dark Phazon SR388, but it turned out that was unnecessary and my belief incorrect; the world is actually carefully constructed to funnel you toward the Golden Temple, with a particularly blatant example being a horizontal line of bombable tiles that seem to serve no purpose when first passing through in a Power Suit. (Unlike in Zero Mission, Zero Suit Samus can’t break bomb blocks in Between Worlds) This prevents you from haring off into completely the wrong area and potentially getting trapped.

It’s possible there is a way to get stuck permanently in this sequence, but it’s not nearly as relevant a concern as I’d have expected from a basically-one-person game.

Getting back the Power Suit of course involves a fight against the Zero Mission ghost statue mirror... thing... which is actually a pretty enjoyable fight! How you go about doing it is completely different from the Zero Mission fight, but once you’ve wrapped your head around the mechanics at work it’s an interesting twist on things. Certainly, it’s a lot less frustrating the Zero Mission’s version of the fight.

The rest of the game from there is largely focused on hunting down the myriad Metroids hidden in Dark Phazon SR388, with a few actually hidden away in regular SR388 in places you couldn’t previously access, but while the game would probably have benefited from somewhat reducing the sheer number of Metroids to kill, it starts making an effect to actually make different Metroids challenge you in different ways. Zetas that have spikes interrupting their floors, complicating the fight. Other Zetas where the ceiling is low, giving you less time to get under them to attack them. Etc. It’s all a bit primitive -it would’ve been nice to have some new attacks or other behavioral variation in later Metroids- but it’s reasonably functional all things considered.

Also, the game has a fair few non-Metroid bosses to fight. If you’re coming at it from Back On Zebes, you’re going to recognize several of them, with a cringe being merited for Kraid returning and still having his spikes slide right out from under you while you have no ground to stand on aside said spikes. Most of them are better-tuned now, though: I actually quite enjoyed fighting Phantoon in Between Worlds, for example, because his flight physics were a lot less janky. When he killed me, I came away feeling like the death was very much on me and I should refine my skills and understanding for next time, which is how a player should basically always feel when dying in a video game.

Ridley remains a timed aerial-only battle, but this time it’s fairly obvious the room is slowly getting smaller, instead of there being an explicit timer in one corner. It’s still a fight that makes it ridiculously obvious the game was tested first and foremost on a controller, and is still a great concept with a reasonably solid execution.

The endgame is also put together surprisingly well! It’s actually decently atmospheric. The final boss itself probably should’ve been tuned a bit differently, but overall Between Worlds manages to do a fairly good job of a Metroid-like largely-silent story being told through the game environment and so on.

If you’re looking for something as polished as, say, AM2R, you’re probably going to be disappointed, but all things considered... Between Worlds is actually a pretty good game in its own right, and I’m genuinely interested in seeing what the creator makes next, be it another Metroid fangame or something original using their engine.

See you next mission.