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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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YYH Recaps: Episode 1, Surprised to be Dead

Hello, all you hypothetical readers! It's a beautiful spring day and I have a free afternoon ahead of me, so what better time to start another massive project while I guilty stuff my other WIPs deep into the depths of my hard drive? Yeah. Iffy life choices aside, someone mentioned a few weeks back that they'd love for me to recap a show I have more positive things to say about than negative (RIP RWBY) and ever since Netflix announced that their live-action adaptation of Yu Yu Hakusho is in the works, I've been itching for a re-watch of the anime. With the RWBY hiatus underway, it seemed like the perfect time to fulfill both desires.

Before we begin though, I'd like to touch on a few things that are going to influence this project.

First, YYH is near and dear to my heart. Written by Yoshihiro Togashi in the early 1990s and later adapted for an American audience by Funimation, I had the pleasure of experiencing this story five different ways: as a serialized tale in Shonen Jump, a binge read when I had the money to buy the manga, tiny snippets of the anime on Adult Swim late at night — don't tell my parents ;) — as an after-school treat on Toonami, and then years later as a re-watch when I introduced it to a friend (who, in turn, blessed me by having us watch Fullmetal Alchemist next). I used to keep a Hiei bookmark in everything I was reading, the spirit gun made it into our witch-wolf-space adventures on the playground (middle school was wild), and there was a long period of my life where I tried very hard to teach myself to stand with my hands behind my back, precisely as Genkai does. Spoiler alert: I failed. So to say I love the series is... a little bit of an understatement. I bring this up simply as a way of demonstrating that there's more than a bit of nostalgia attached to YYH for me and that will inevitably cloud my reading of it. How can it not? So that's just something to keep in mind as I work through a series that, like any having hit its 30th birthday, has its outdated, flawed, and other questionable aspects.

Second, but very much connected to the first point, is that these are pretty casual recaps. I summarize and extrapolate, focusing primarily on plot and dialogue (but with the occasional cinematography aspect tossed in). I'm not conducting research on the cultural history here — something that will come up at least once in this episode — I'm not arguing an overarching thesis, and I've never been someone who focuses on the author/production/trivia of a series. I'm here for the story as the story is presented to the viewer. If you've read my RWBY Recaps, this will function precisely the same way, with the only difference being I'm engaging with a finished text as opposed to an ongoing one, so there’s a lot less, “Maybe ___ will happen” theorizing going on.

Third, I obviously recommend that you watch the show yourself (you can find it on YouTube!), but you don't have to know the series to follow along. As these massive paragraphs attest, I tend to be both detailed and verbose, so we'll be covering every major plot point — and most of the smaller ones too.

Finally, I'm working from the dub. I know, I know, the horror. But it's what I grew up on and, honestly, I think it's superior to the sub. YYH's dubbing is in a class all its own and to this day there are very few shows that compare to it. Trust me, it's a good call.

That's enough of the boring chit-chat though. Let's get started!

Our very first episode "Surprised to be Dead" opens on a crowded street. We see lots of traffic, people going about their business, and a pedestrian crossing sign that, crucially, turns red. This is our normality and, like in every genre story, you need to break that normality at some point so that the protagonists can go on their fantastical/supernatural/science fiction journey. YYH eases us into things by first breaking the normality of an everyday afternoon: there's a screech of tires, quick shots of a man pushing a child out of the way of an oncoming car, and then his back is hitting the windshield. We begin this story with a horrible — but otherwise mundane — car crash.

Now, these flashes alone have a fair bit to unpack. Despite later getting a brief shot of the man's scared face right before he's hit, the moment's focus is really on the child. He's the one foregrounded in the initial, slow-mo shot. He's the one who appears in color while the man is kept in shadow. This isn't just a hit, it's a rescue. The camera is also careful to follow the soccer ball this kid was playing with (more on that later in the episode), with it flying through the air as the man is hit and bouncing to a stop in the street, acting as the dramatic finish. It's childhood! It's innocence! It's play on a sunny afternoon! And it's all gone wrong.

This moment is chaotic and even a bit confusing. Not in the sense of what's happening — that is quite obviously a guy being hit by a car — but who the victims are, how precisely this came about, or even why we're meant to care about this beyond a generic capacity to feel for other human (fictional) beings... that's all removed. And it works. As the crash takes place, the camera pans across the stunned crowd and we, the viewer, become a part of that crowd. They don't know what precisely is going on either. We're all just horrified onlookers as a sudden tragedy takes place. We're all watching the same show.

So everyone realizes this guy has been hit. People are staring in shock and someone calls for an ambulance. We see the driver fall to his knees in the street, distraught, shakily saying, "I didn't mean to..." It's a very serious and emotional scene that —

— is immediately tempered by this guy waking up, complete with a cute 'pop!' sound effect when he opens his eyes.

This is YYH's brand, this Very Serious Circumstances skillfully interwoven with casual indifference/comedy. It's admittedly far from a unique brand, but it's an excellent choice given that this is the same attitude that will drive 99% of our protagonist's interaction with the world.

Speaking of said protagonist, our guy wakes up, opens his eyes, and realizes that he's floating. There's a great, disorientating shot from his perspective where everything is upside down, causing him to nearly fall out of the air. Well would you look at that, he's as confused as we are. It's our audience surrogate!

A narrator says, "And so it all begins. This boy's name is Yusuke, he's fourteen years old, and he's supposed to be the hero of this story. But oddly enough, he's dead."

Game of Thrones might have made it popular, but YYH did it better.

(Yeah, yeah, I know one death kick-starts the journey and the other is a shocking twist. Just let me have this.)

Now, it's a weird introduction, right? At least at the end. The announcement that change has occurred, a name, an age... that all checks out. But "supposed to be the hero"? What the hell is that “supposed to” mean? Our narrator gives us the easy, surface answer: "But oddly enough, he's dead." We're capitalizing here on the audience's expectation that death ends a character's journey and though they may have been a hero previously, they can no longer be one moving forward. That function within the story has passed. So it's this intriguing question of, "What kind of hero do you have when that hero is dead from the start?" but as we'll see soon, there's an additional meaning here of, "How can Yusuke be the hero?" As this premiere sets up, Yusuke doesn't act like the hero is “supposed to” act.

Until he saved this kid.

But right now he's just confused: "Okay, this is weird. Stupid weird."

Two EMTs arrive on the scene and are hilariously useless. You know how in any medical drama a doctor will stop CPR after a couple of seconds because obviously you're not going to spend half the episode on realism? Well, that's this only a thousand times worse. One guy just looks at the kid and announces he's fine except for some bumps and bruises. Meanwhile, the kid is sobbing.

"Well, at least one of them is," replies the other EMT, because I guess he can tell Yusuke is beyond hope without taking a pulse or anything? "I hate cleanup," he complains as they load his body onto a stretcher because that's? An empathetic response to have??

Honestly this scene is wild.

Yusuke is understandably upset that he's, you know, dead and all. He starts hounding the EMTs who, unable to hear him, just go about their business of taking the kid and his body to the hospital. "You think you can just do whatever you want because you have that stupid uniform on? You can't just write me off. Listen to me!" and Yusuke tries to punch one of the EMTs in the head, resulting in him floating right through.

What a great way to introduce your protagonist's personality. We see here that when things go wrong Yusuke's default emotion is anger and it starts creeping in even before he thinks the others are ignoring him: "Stupid weird." He has problems with authority — "You think you can just do whatever you want because you have that stupid uniform on?" — is used to others listening when he gets angry — "You can't just write me off!" — and is poised to use violence at the slightest provocation. Yusuke is a guy who, right now at least, is ready to punch first and ask questions later.

As Yusuke floats back up into the air and the ambulance drives away, he finally cools down enough to try and think his way out of this. "It's not like this is the first time you've been in a jam,” he thinks. Yusuke recalls that yeah, something was different about today...

...he actually went to school.

Catch me laughing that this idiot boy equates the weirdness of him dying with going to school. Good lord.

Anyway, this jumpstarts our flashback. We open on a generic, anime middle school (that always feels like a high school to me) where the principal is calling for Yusuke through the loud speaker. Oooo someone’s in trouble! We follow a young girl up to the rooftop and she gets a classic hair-blowing-in-the-wind moment to establish that she's our love interest. Meet Keiko Yukimura.

Keiko finds Yusuke hanging out and immediately starts lecturing him for trying to chew gum and refusing to wear the boys' uniform. "Oh, give me a break, Keiko. I look better in green." Note that it's here we learn her name and it's an easy, casual way to introduce it. I bring this up because Yusuke's introduction via our narrator is very much... not that. It's an on your nose statement about his name, age, and importance to the story, and if you're just starting the show in 2021, it might come across as a rather armature move. Like something out of a kid's show, perhaps. Yet here we see that this was a deliberate choice, considering that YYH is capable of introducing character information naturally when it wants to.

This moment also tells us that Yusuke cares a great deal about his image. More on that in a bit. Because Keiko isn't finished her list of grievances yet, going on to say that his attendance record has hurt their entire class, hurt her as class representative, and if he keeps going down this path he won't even graduate middle school. "Sometimes I think you don't care about anyone but yourself and then you don't even do that right!"

They're legit complaints. Too bad Yusuke is busy looking up Keiko's skirt.

Yeeeeah. Sadly, this is common for anime, particularly a 90s anime like YYH. Even presumably more progressive series like My Hero Academia feature characters like Mineta, whose entire personality is being a pervert, and the creation of abilities that "require" kids/young women to be scantily clad. See: Yaoyorozu. YYH is no different in this regard, with various forms of sexual harassment functioning as a shorthand for how much Yusuke secretly likes Keiko. "Boys will be boys," right? Obviously not.

Like so many others series, the creators get away with it because they’re framing it as a bad thing. It's totally fine because look, Keiko slaps him! This is teaching the viewer how wrong this behavior is. Never mind that this is clearly an established habit between them, that Yusuke laughs off Keiko's discomfort, and that the whole scene is meant to be funny for the viewer. That's the real purpose here; it’s not a PSA on harassment.

That, and to establish the long-suffering love Keiko has for Yusuke in turn, largely stemming from a life-long friendship. "Dumb boy! He hasn't grown up a bit since he was four years old." We see that Keiko's early interactions with Yusuke have given her insight that others lack. As she heads down from the roof she runs into two girls hiding around the corner, too scared to come out lest "the great Urameshi" set his sights on them. Isn't Keiko terrified of what he might do to her? "Or worse, what others might say of it?" Like any classic high school middle school setting, one's reputation is king. Yusuke cares about how others see him — maintaining that tough boy attitude — and the girls care more about what the rest of the school might think of Keiko's interactions with him than the presumed harm Yusuke could do to her. They heard he can summon 2,000 men with just a whistle and that he "kills for fun!" But that means nothing in the face of people talking about you. Despite being one of the most popular girls in school, Keiko is the outsider here via her disinterest in what other people think.

The animation changes here, giving us a good look at how the girls picture Yusuke: tough, scowling, surrounded by shadows, and backed by an entire army.

In contrast, we've already seen what Yusuke is really like.

Keiko laughs the image off too. Yusuke is more like a "lamb" than a killer and besides, he couldn't order around two people, let alone two hundred. "He doesn't have many friends."

"That's not what I heard," says one of the girls.

"Yeah," goes the other. "I think we would know."

Again, rumors rule here, with whispers in the hall considered more reliable than someone who interacts with Yusuke on a daily basis. Keiko doesn’t have a hope of changing their minds.

Oh, as a side note, I love that they gave Keiko Miyazaki-esque hair. It's very emotive.

Yusuke escapes outside where the principal is still calling for him to report to his office. He overhears a conversation around the corner and we cut to two boys, one of which is showing a wallet off to the other. He explains that some bully tried to rough him up, but he said he was Urameshi's cousin and the bully took off, dropping his wallet in the process. The guy's friend is impressed, but what is he going to do if Yusuke ever finds out he lied? Not to worry, he says, that "blockhead" would probably think it's true even if he did somehow hear.

Yusuke, obviously, does hear about this and he, also obviously, does not believe this guy is his cousin. He looms ominously and they scurry up against a wall, terrified and offering him the wallet as an apology.

"You think I want your money?" Yusuke yells.

YYH is, in many respects, a rather simple story, but I appreciate the hints of complexity in these otherwise straightforward interactions. It's not that this guy used Yusuke's name to steal a wallet, he used it as a form of protection against another bully — a far more sympathetic motivation. It's not that Yusuke's fearsome reputation has resulted in any genuine respect because once people think they're safe they reveal how little they think of his intelligence — he's a "blockhead." And Yusuke, though intimidating and violent, is not your average, schoolyard bully. He doesn't care about money, only the insult and the damage this guy using his name might have done to his reputation. There's a little more nuance here than you might otherwise expect.

Also, note how dark the boys' standard uniforms are and how much they blend into the rest of the world. Yusuke, as our protagonist, stands out in his bright clothing. He was right, he does look better in green!

So he's ready to clobber this kid when one of the teachers arrive: Mr. Iwamoto.

Iwamoto demands to know what's going on, but the boys are too terrified to rat Yusuke out. Noticing the wallet on the ground, he assumes that Yusuke was after their money, something that greatly offends him: "Whatever!" Iwamoto goes on to say that, "No good weeds like you should have been plucked a long time ago," making it clear that he considers Yusuke a hopeless case. The positive aspects that Keiko sees, as well as the complexity the viewer sees — to say nothing of his introduction of saving a kid — aren’t considered here.

Notably, Iwamoto exists in part to show us what Yusuke could become. Not a teacher (he's obviously not attending school enough for that!), but a cynical man who is cruel for cruelty's sake. Yusuke is already barreling down that path, ignoring Keiko's advice, terrorizing other students, trying to punch EMTs, etc. If his life (or afterlife...) hadn't changed through that accident, this is the kind of person Yusuke might have grown up to be, and we can see that clearly in the visual parallels between them. Dark haired men dressed in green who scowl with ease and toss out cutting insults. Yusuke is staring his future in the face.

For now he walks off with a final shot, "You shouldn't talk. It makes you sound stupid." This time Yusuke makes it to the school's entrance and tries to enjoy his second attempt at chewing gum, but someone hits him in the back of the head.

"Okay, somebody's DEAD — ah. Sorry, old man."

"That's Mr. Takenaka to you."

Our principal has finally left the office and hunted down Yusuke for himself! Putting this interaction immediately after the one with Iwamoto allows the viewer to compare them. Yusuke might be irreverent towards his principal, but it's clear there's still some kind of respect between them. Yusuke only starts threatening because he doesn’t realize who hit him and once he does realize it's Takenaka, he immediately apologizes. That "old man" comes across as a teasing insult and Yusuke allows himself to be briefly dragged back towards school, rather than throwing a now classic punch. In turn, Takenaka cares enough about Yusuke to try and keep him on the straight and narrow. He utilizes Yusuke's preferred language — violence — but in a casual way, nonthreatening way: slight hit to the back of his head, noogie, pulling him along by the ear.

It's the sort of physicality we're used to seeing in media between a parent and child who are outwardly antagonistic, but actually share a deep bond. Takenaka is also careful to frame their return to his office as a "discussion," not a punishment, and offers Yusuke tea along with the conversation. Whereas Iwamoto considers Yusuke to be a "weed" that should have been plucked from their school long ago, Takenaka is determined to help Yusuke bloom.

If we're continuing the flower metaphor :D

Yusuke isn't in the mood to play along though. He gets away by using a fake ear, startling Takenaka when it unexpectedly pulls free. Yusuke escapes the school grounds and Takenaka, suffering a back twinge from his fall, can't chase after him. Poor guy. I understand that pain lol.

Yusuke heads home where we're introduced to his mother, Atsuko. Most notable in her first shot is the soft lighting that highlights her looks. We're not told how old she is here, but I believe she's around 28 — and she looks it, if not younger. Given that Yusuke is 14, that means Atsuko was a mom at his age. This is a quick and subtle way to tell us about Yusuke's home life. There are more overt details in this scene — it's at least lunchtime and Atsuko hasn't left her bed yet, she demands that Yusuke make her coffee instead of greeting him, it's all meant to imply (before we actually see) that she's an alcoholic — but her age is another way to highlight the broken household here. There's no partner in sight and she clearly had Yusuke as a teenager. He hasn't had a strong parental figure to take care of him. If anything, Yusuke is taking care of Atsuko here.

"Oh great, mother of the year!" basically sums things up.

Atsuko wants to know why Yusuke isn't in school and he says that everyone is pissing him off today, particularly with their preaching. "Dear, if you hate preaching so much you should live on your own... but you can't do that, can you?" Alongside a rough upbringing, Yusuke is suffering from the common problem of being trapped in a dead-end life. He hates his school, his town, and coming home to find his mom hungover. Yusuke has no prospects and, outside of one principal, no one who is actively working to help him find some. Even the little things he hates, like being preached to, are unavoidable because if you want to live on your own, that requires money. Good luck pulling that off as a middle schooler whose only skill is street fighting!

Yusuke walks off in a huff, literally shouting in a street about what a bad day he's having (and hilariously scaring off pedestrians in the process). His shout brings trouble though. A couple guys appear to ambush him, their boss close behind. The music increases the tension, Yusuke's expression is serious, and we even get a Dutch angle thrown into the mix.

For any who don't know, the Dutch angle is a popular film technique to establish that something is wrong. There's tension in the scene, something uneasy is at play, and the world is now literally off center. It's perhaps most famously used in Do The Right Thing to establish the friction between an Italian-American pizzeria and the predominantly African American neighborhood it's based in.

But it's also used a great deal in horror as a way to say: yup, shit just got real. Scary real.

This Dutch angle introduces a character you may not appreciate at first, but absolutely should: Kazuma Kuwabara.

He's initially the comic relief and that's clear in his introduction. Within seconds we move from that intimidating arrival to, well, seeing him. To be clear, I've got nothing against redheads with big chins, but compared to Yusuke's design, Kuwabara is meant to be the funny looking one. His threat level plummets the moment we get a look at his face, especially in a series that will occasionally use looks as a (supposed) measure of intelligence.

Also, Kuwabara is dressed in light blue so, like Yusuke, we know he's important!

Any assumptions that his appearance isn’t meant to imply a goofy, embarrassing personality are put to rest when Kuwabara starts rambling about how they last time they fought Yusuke just got a cheap shot in and he'll definitely win this time. Yeah, he won't. Yusuke is thrilled by this diversion though and we get a shot of him looking almost as creepy as Keiko's friends think he is. Whatever else might be said about Yusuke, he is absolutely a monster in a fight.

Which we see here. If anyone picked up the series without knowing this was a fighting anime, they'll realize it now. Yusuke's choreography is stylized to show off his skill: he disappears with a 'whoosh' and dark lines to suggest inhuman speed,

attacking Kuwabara with a knee to the face, utilizes flying kicks, lands perfect, precision punches, and ends it all with the toe-tip landing we've come to expect of all powerful fighters. Kuwabara never even got a hit in.

Happy as a clam now, Yusuke wanders off whistling and Kuwabara's friends are left to pick up the pieces. AKA, his likely broken bones. I love that they're legit friends though and not just nameless goons for the sake of giving Kuwabara a small gang (though their names won't come up until later). "That makes 0 wins an 156 loses!" one of them cries, trying to get Kuwabara to stop ending up in the hospital, probably. We establish that Kuwabara is The Most Dramatic Ever when he pulls his broken body into a seated position, shouting, "No! I almost had him that time!"

Then he passes out.

Kuwabara, honey, you obviously did not almost have him, but god bless you for the outlook. The most optimistic thing on this Earth is a well-loved Golden Retriever, but Kuwabara comes in at a very close second.

With his dream to one day beat Yusuke in combat established, we cut to Yusuke wandering the street where the episode opened. "Okay, I'm remembering" he says in a voiceover. "After that I met the kid."

The soccer ball reappears as it rolls to a stop at Yusuke's feet. He grabs it and immediately starts yelling at the kid. Horrible protagonist, right? Well, Yusuke is trying to instill in him the danger of using this street as a playground, a worry the viewer already knows is 100% justified. “Listen, kid, that’s dangerous! There are cars going by that will splatter you into the pavement!” It's one of those quick moments where we get to enjoy Yusuke's duality: he's someone who is nearly making a toddler cry, but for rather understandable reasons. He's got the right idea, but needs to go about it in a more mature manner.

Which is precisely what he attempts to do. Sort of. Yusuke changes gears, though whether it's a more "mature" route is certainly up for debate lol. He tries entertaining the kid instead, raising and lowering the soccer ball to reveal goofy faces.

When these fail to impress, Yusuke goes full out by stuffing the ball into his pants, pushing his nose up with a pair of chopsticks he got from god knows where, and generally just putting on a display.

So Yusuke cares very deeply about his reputation... but only when it comes to those who are an established part of his life. Keiko, Mr. Takenaka, and the other kids at school all need to maintain a particular image of Yusuke, one that he's carefully cultivated. But random pedestrians on the street? Who cares about them? Let them talk.

This shows us that Yusuke does indeed have priorities over his own, selfish goals. Namely, the happiness of some kid is more important to him than looking "cool" for a bunch of strangers. Lots of characters with Yusuke's surface attitude would sneer at the idea of degrading themselves for — their words — some brat. But Yusuke, as we constantly see, actually does have that heart of gold. “Well, if all else fails I can still make kids happy.”

Although... I'm not sure what to make of his display itself. I have the distinct sense that there's something prejudiced here that I'm not able to fully articulate, what with the chopsticks, slanted eyes, bald head, and the like, though to be entirely frank I don't have enough knowledge of Japan's history to say precisely what it might be. Or, really, whether it exists at all. Just something to chew on.

What I am sure about though is the importance of having the child label Yusuke as monster — "Yeah, monster! — but in a delighted manner. Yusuke is indeed some kind a monster, someone who disappoints adults and terrifies his classmates, a demon fighter on the streets too, but here that identity is reworked into something positive.

Having successful secured a laugh, Yusuke tells the kid — calmly this time — to go play elsewhere. The toddler stares up at him with the blank expression only kids can manage.

Well, kids and whatever headspace I'm in after writing these metas.

To absolutely no one's surprise except Yusuke's, the kid does not go elsewhere. Instead, he continues kicking the ball down the street, causing Yusuke to exclaim, “Dammit, what’s the use? The kid can get smashed by a car for all I care!” Liar, liar.

The picture becomes desaturated as the kid kicks the ball and it flies into the street, time slowing down to show it landing precisely in the middle of the road. Yusuke again yells for him to stay put, but when has a toddler ever listened? He begins to walk into the road as our driver arrives, speeding, swerving, and paying more attention to the girl at his side than what's in front of him.

This time, we see the accident from the front with both Yusuke and the kid presented equally.

There's a cut to black and when we return we're in the present, Yusuke floating above the policemen now investigating the scene. “So that’s it? I’m roadkill?” As Yusuke realizes he's dead, specifically that he's a ghost, a voice goes,

"Bingo! Bingo! You win the prize!"

A woman has appeared who is quite obviously othered by the standards of the episode so far. Unlike the greens, blues, and browns of the series' modern clothes, she's dressed in hot pink kimono with blue hair to match. She's also, you know, floating on an oar.

“I didn’t expect you to figure it out so quickly," she says, referring to Yusuke's revelation that he's dead. Apparently, those who meet unexpected and/or violent ends tend to take some time coming to terms with their demise. It's a nice acknowledgment of Yusuke's intelligence in an interaction that's otherwise... not great for his self-esteem.

Meaning, this woman is about to drag him lol.

She introduces herself as Botan, pilot of the River Styx and guider of souls to the afterlife. You might also know her as the Grim Reaper.

(Hey, RWBY fans: I originally wrote that as Grimm Reaper 🤦‍♀️)

It's an claim Yusuke takes issue with because 1. Botan is too pretty to be the Grim Reaper and 2. If she was really some god of death she'd be taking this much more seriously, not laughing and saying, "Bingo!" For the audience this does two things. First, it acknowledges our own expectations and validates them. Yusuke's world isn't so far removed from our own that he takes Botan's looks and personality at face value, he also expected a skeleton with a scythe. So don't worry, all the weird stuff in this series is weird to our protagonist too. They'll be explanations. Or, even if there’s not, you’re not wrong for being surprised.

Second, it sets up the very common theme in YYH of undermining those common assumptions again and again and again. We've already seen it with Yusuke, wherein characters who look and act a certain way are, supposedly, destined to be that person and nothing more. Yusuke is meant to be just a "weed," a dumb, violent, angry loser who goes nowhere in life... but we already know he's more than that. Botan is supposed to be scary and serious, but she says nah, I want to be cute and bubbly instead. No character in YYH embodies who they're "supposed" to be when you look past those surface characterizations. They play the part of archetypes — and do keep certain parts of their expected personalities — but they're also far more well-rounded than that. Which yeah, is something most people expect from any story nowadays, but YYH is particularly adept at making you think you're watching Simple Show A only to turn around and surprise you with More Complex Show B.

It's great, trust me.

So Yusuke is pissed that Botan isn't adhering to those expectations, in the same way that he works hard to validate others expectations of him. He doesn't know how to deal with someone challenging his world view yet. Rather than angering Botan though, she just nods and says that this response makes sense for him. “Rather than being scared, or surprised, you yell a lot and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about." Taking out a notebook, she quickly summarizes everything we learned in the flashback — minus Yusuke's complexities: he's fourteen, in middle school, is ill-tempered, violent, hates authority, and is a horrible student.

Typically, Yusuke responds by getting angry and trying to snatch the booklet out of her hands, only for Botan to pull it out of his reach, laughing. The tables have turned! Rather than being surrounded by people who cower at Yusuke's imposed authority, he now finds himself faced with someone who laughs at his transparent attempts to take control of the situation.

Calming down, Yusuke wants to know if the kid he saved is really alright and Botan offers to let him see for himself. That offer produces Yusuke's first, genuine smile.

They fly to the hospital where a doctor is in the process of giving the kid a clean bill of health, his mother crying with relief.

That's enough for Yusuke. “Alright, Botan, I’ve got no regrets, so you can take me to hell or wherever it is I’m going.”

That tells you all you need to know about Yusuke's self-worth, despite his bad boy attitude. His life is a dead-end as far as he can see and most of those around him haven't done anything to dissuade him of that idea. He says he doesn't care if the kid lives or dies, but then instinctively saves him. Post his death, Yusuke doesn't have anything he considers a regret, or anything he'd like to do before he leaves, like saying goodbye to a loved one. Oh, he's also pretty sure he's going to hell and has resigned himself to that without a fight.

Uplifting!

Botan just laughs though, saying that she's actually here to offer Yusuke an "ordeal" that could bring him back to life. See, he wasn't supposed to die today — let alone die saving a kid — and frankly they don't know what to do with him. It's another neat summary of what we've already learned: Yusuke is a far more complicated case than the afterlife assumed and now, when push comes to shove, deciding whether he belongs in heaven or hell is... muddled.

There's a fantastic story there about the problems with an afterlife that reduces a person's entire life to a few surface characteristics recorded in a book, refusing to acknowledge the context of their situation, or their capacity for change. “Run someone with your credentials a thousand times and they never would have saved a kid like that." Except, of course, Yusuke did save him, so those "credentials" are suspect, to say the least. However, YYH is not a story that explores these issues. Instead, I recommend you watch this!

Rather than being upset at the afterlife's low opinion of him (because let's be real, Yusuke shares it), he latches onto a little detail Botan let slip. If he wasn't supposed to die today... then was the kid?

Mmm... no. Actually, without the chaos of Yusuke jumping into the road, the driver would have swerved at the last second and the kid would have not only lived, but actually come out with one less scrape.

So Yusuke is obviously upset by this news! I would be too!! Holy shit, hang onto the "it's the thought that counts" message with everything you've got.

Also, don't think too much about the fact that the afterlife apparently knows exactly what will happen to people, down to how many cuts they accumulate in an accident. Also, don't think too much about where the afterlife foreseeing the crash begins and the unexpectedness of Yusuke interfering ends. That way lies madness. This will never come up again, so just let it go.

Sorry, 2013 me hijacked the post for a second.

As said, Yusuke is understandably upset by this revelation and as he fumes I'm reminded that this series likes to pull some amazing expressions.

Botan reiterates that it's all fine because Yusuke can come back to life. Weren't you listening? He should feel honored, in fact, considering that an offer like this only arrives every 100 years or so. Well, that explains why all of humanity isn't grappling with people coming back to life on the daily. One person every generation isn't going to cause much of a stir.

However, instead of jumping at the chance Yusuke announces that Botan is just like the teachers at school: she doesn't know what she's talking about. “You said yourself my life was kind of pathetic, right?” he says, going on to explain that everyone will be happier now that he's dead. His school won't have to deal with his behavior, Keiko won't have to nag him, and his mom will be able to party whenever she wants. It's a win-win for everyone involved.

Hmm, this feels familiar.

Don't worry, Yusuke doesn't need to experience a whole alternate reality to get the message.

“I’m sorry you feel that way at such an early age," Botan says and she is sorry, because despite her teasing nature that's a legitimately horrifying thing to believe. Yusuke won't budge though and after a little back-and-forth Botan leaves, telling Yusuke he should think it over while visiting his wake. She'll come back once he decides what to do.

“Do you have worms in your ears, lady? I did decide!” but Botan is long gone.

We cut to that night where Yusuke has indeed decided to attend his own wake. Maybe because of Botan's advice, maybe because he's just morbidly curious. We’re not given insight into the decision.

Atsuko is a mess, to put it mildly, not dressed for the occasion and sitting slumped against the way, staring vacantly as the guests offer their condolences. Yusuke is surprised by the fact that his entire class is here, but quickly writes them off when he sees two of the boys laughing. I'm on the fence about this detail, which I'll unpack in just a second.

First though, Yusuke sees Keiko exiting the house, inconsolable in her grief. She collapses on the ground with her two friends trying to offer comfort, despite the fact that they had nothing good to say about Yusuke himself. Good on them.

Before he can think too long on this though, Yusuke is distracted by Kuwabara's arrival. Unlike Keiko's crying, he expresses his grief through yelling. Specifically, yelling at Yusuke. For dying. For daring to "run away." His own friends are physically holding him back as he charges into the wake, screaming, “Who am I gonna fight now, huh? Who am I gonna fight?" It's not really about the fighting, of course. At least, not the fighting alone. "You’re supposed to be here for me," Kuwabara finishes, the punch he's thrown at Yusuke's photo going limp and catching his first tear.

You know, for all the goofy expressions, this show really is gorgeous. Just wait until we get to the fight animations.

Kuwabara's reaction is why I hesitate to write off the classmates like Yusuke has. Granted, we have no reason to believe that they care for him as Kuwabara does — they're nameless background characters defined only by their terror of "the great Urameshi" — but it's still a split second taken out of context. We don't know what they were laughing at, or if laughing is a part of their grief. God knows I personally laugh at the most inappropriate moments. If you tell me someone has just died there is a very good chance I will laugh awkwardly as I try to process that. It’s just a reflex. All of which I bring up not because these side characters are important, but because Yusuke's perception of his own worth is. The point of each of these moments is to show that those around him have always cared for him, even if Yusuke didn't notice. It's nice to think that extends to his classmates too. The variety likewise exists to show us how people grieve differently, with Kuwabara's friends not understanding that this is how he's working through the trauma: “This place is for mourning!” He is mourning, even if his way of mourning isn't as socially acceptable as Keiko's. So if screaming and throwing punches is valid, crying is valid, staring stoically in a drunk stupor is valid... why not laughter too?

Not likely, perhaps, but possible.

As an additional possibility to chew on, watching this premier again, it struck me how more emotional Kuwabara's scene is compared to Keiko's. Don't get me wrong, crying and calling Yusuke’s name gets the point across, but it's two seconds of generic grief compared to a much longer scene rife with intensity. When Kuwabara arrives the music swells and everyone is forced to pay attention to him. His grief is loud, violent, and given symbolism with his fist and the photo. There's more effort put into his reaction, frankly, so it wouldn't surprise me if fans started shipping them after this. That grief combined with an "enemies to lovers" possibility is a pretty potent mix. To be clear, Yusuke/Keiko is the (oh so obvious) canonical endgame and in the fandom Yusuke/Kuwabara can't compare to another slash ship that will turn up later, but this is a good example of how writers can craft some Very Gay Scenes without realizing it. When you have the girl crying prettily for a second and the guy absolutely losing his mind over Yusuke's death, questioning his purpose now, his support network, and then collapsing in grief... don't be surprised if your audience goes, "Oh hey, maybe they'd be a good couple instead."

But I digress.

The only people who are unquestioningly happy about Yusuke's passing are Mr. Iwamoto and his co-conspirator, Mr. Akashi. You know Akashi is another bad guy because he has bucked teeth and "ugliness" is an easy way to code for evilness. YYH is not immune to those mistakes :/

These two are really something else though, standing in the middle of a wake and claiming it's “too bad that car wasn’t big enough for them too," referring to Kuwabara and his friends. Wow! What stellar members of the academic community. Iwamoto goes on to say that Yusuke dying at least accomplished something good. Not, mind you, saving the life of a child, but rather looking good for their school's reputation. Akashi agrees, but says it's likely Yusuke only accidentally saved him while trying to steal the kid's lunch money. Remember, that accusation of theft is the one thing Yusuke has said outright that he does not do.

He's pissed listening to all this — wouldn't you be? — but knows by now he can't do anything about it. In another fantastic shot, Yusuke hovers his hand over Iwamoto's shoulder, desperate to grab him, when Takenaka's arrives there instead.

“What do you suppose is more disgraceful? That boy showing his misery, or your insensitive and idiotic words!”

HELL YEAH. You tell 'em, Mr. Takenaka.

Yusuke gets his third shock of the night at this passionate defense. Takenaka leaves the teachers to go pay his respects, but admits to Yusuke's picture that he just can't speak well of him. He was surprised to hear that Yusuke gave up his life for another and it's a fact that he acted selfishly. Though he doesn't say it in as many words, Takenaka explains that he's not grieving because Yusuke was a good person, but because it's so clear to him that he might have been. “Why didn’t you stay? You could have made something great out of yourself.”

Normally, "Why didn't you stay?" is just something for the living to grapple with, as the dead obviously don't have any say in what happens to them. But Yusuke does. It's here that the lighting grows soft again and Yusuke considers Takenaka's words. Keiko and Kuwabara grieve for who he was, but Takenaka grieves for who Yusuke could have been — someone that might still exist if Yusuke decides to undergo this ordeal.

Atsuko adds fuel to the emotional fire, breaking down and hiding her face in her knees.

Finally, the kid Yusuke saved arrives with his mother. Because yes, Yusuke saved him in every way that matters, considering no one else knows — or will know — that he'd have lived anyway. I like that the show doesn't allow that knowledge to undermine the emotion of their arrival, or what Yusuke’s act meant to them.

The mom tells her son to pay his respects and the kid thanks Yusuke for saving him, and for "making faces." He clearly doesn't get what's going on here. This is confirmed as the two leave and he asks his mom if he can play with Yusuke again tomorrow. “I know some people sounded angry at him, but he’s really nice!"

They're probably just crying because they want to play with him too, he thinks, which just makes his mom join in. Everyone is crying in this club tonight.

Those words are the cincher for Yusuke and with a brief montage of all the grief he's witnessed, he makes his decision.

We cut to later that night where Yusuke floats above the city, admiring the moon. Botan reappears and he asks, “Have you ever not known about something that seemed obvious to everyone else?” Yes, everyone has experienced that at one point or another. She asks if he's made his decision and Yusuke agrees to try and come back to life.

Emotional revelations out of the way, we're allowed another tone shift as Botan yells with joy, speeding off and causing Yusuke to grab hold of the end of her oar, lest he be left behind. Cranky as always, he demands to know where they're going. "To the spirit world, of course!" They're off to see someone who can explain the ordeal and give Yusuke the tool needed to complete it. Just hang on and enjoy the ride.

Thus ends our very first episode! Ah, the nostalgia. This is part one of a four arc series, with the anime cutting out a lot of the filler stories found at the start of the manga — a smart decision, I think. They primarily do the work of teaching Yusuke what he learned at the wake, so if you can accomplish that as quickly as the adaptation did, all the better. Especially since Yusuke needs to grow a great deal beyond the basic understanding that people might, sort of care for him, and that work will occur primarily through a job he's going to take on. The series isn't really about his death and it's not about an attempt to come back either — it's about what happens once you get that second chance. So this is the setup, but it's important setup all the same.

No need to skip ahead though. I've blathered enough for one recap. I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you when the writing gods next bless me with energy! 💜

#YYH #Yu Yu Hakusho #YYH recaps #mymetas

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snarktheater · 4 years ago

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Hey, d'you have any French book recs? I'm trying to work on my French, and rn I have downloaded one of my favourite book series' French translations, but I figured maybe books already written in French might work better? Also have you read the Ranger's Apprentice series? 1/2

RA's def flawed - the books' narration does like to point bright arrows at the protagonists' intelligence, and the last few books def have the tone of 'old white man trying to write feminism', although at least he's trying? - and it's aimed more to the younger side of YA, but it is still a very fun series, and I can ignore the flaws fairly easily, at least partly due to nostalgia? This rather long lol but I'm wordy.

I'll start with the second question: no, although every time the series is brought up I have to check the French title and go "oh, right, I've seen these books in stores". But I've never purchased or read them. It sounds like something I probably would have enjoyed as a teen but I just missed the mark, and these days I'm trying to drown myself in queer books, so that probably isn't happening.

As for your first question, geez, I haven’t read a French book in years, so this is gonna skew middle grade/YA, though that may not be so bad if the point is to learn the language. I will also say that as a result, these may read a little outdated.

I'll put it under a cut, even if Tumblr has become really bad with correctly displaying read mores. Sorry, mobile crowd.

It's also likely that old readers of the blog will have seen me talk about most of these. I don't feel like going through old posts.

One last thing: while I was curating this list I took the time to make a Goodreads shelf to keep track of those.

The Ewilan books by Pierre Bottero

(It's a testament to how long ago I read these books that these are not the covers of the edition I own, and I can't even find those on Google. I'm settling for a more recent cover anyway since it'll make it easier to find them, presumably)

There are at least three trilogies (that I know of) set in the same world.

The first trilogy is essentially an isekai (so, French girl lands in parallel fantasy world by accident) with elements of chosen one trope, though I find the execution makes it worth the while anyway.

The second trilogy is a direct sequel, so same protagonist but new threat, and the world gets expanded.

The third one is centered around a supporting characters from the previous books, and the first couple of books in it are more her backstory than a continuation, though the third one concludes both that trilogy and advances the story of the other books as well.

Notably these books have a really fun magic system where the characters "draw" things into existence. It's just stuck with me for some reason.

A bunch of stuff by Erik L'Homme

I have read a lot of this man's books, starting with Le Livre des Etoiles.

They also skew towards the young end of YA, arguably middle grade, I never bothered to figure out where to draw the line. They're coincidentally also using the premise of a parallel world to our own (and yes, connected to France again, the French are just as susceptible of writing about their homeland), but interestingly are set from the point of view of characters native to the parallel world.

It also has a very unique magic system, this one based on a mix of a runic alphabet and sort-of poetry. I'll also say specifically for these books that the characters stuck with me way more than others on this list, which is worth mentioning.

This trilogy is my favorite by Erik L'Homme, but I'll also mention Les Maîtres des brisants, which is a fantasy space opera with a pirate steampunk(?) vibe. I think it's steampunk. I could be mistaken. But it's in that vein. It's also middle grade, in my opinion not as good, but it could just be that it came out when I was older.

Another one is Phaenomen, which was a deliberate attempt at skewing older (though still YA). This one is set in our (then-)modern world and centers a group of teens who happen to have supernatural powers. I guess the best way to describe it is a superhero thriller? If you take "superhero" in the sense of "people with individualized powers", since they don't really do a lot of heroing.

...I really need to brush up on genre terminology, don't I.

The Ji series by Pierre Grimbert

This one is actually adult fantasy, though it definitely falls under "probably outdated". It is very straight, for starters, and I'd have to give it another read to give a more critical reading of how it handles race (it attempts to do it, and is well meaning, but I'm not sure it survives the test of time & scrutiny, basically).

If I haven't lost you already, the premise is this: a few generations ago, a weird man named Nol gathered emissaries from each nation of the world and took them to a trip to the titular Ji island. Nobody knows what went down here, but now in the present day, someone is trying to kill off all descendants from those emissaries, who are as a result forced to team up and figure out what's going on.

I'm not going to spoil past that, though I will say it has (surprise) a really unique magic system! I guess you can start to piece together what my younger self was interested in. Which, admittedly, I still am.

Once again, this one also has a strong cast of characters, helped by rich world building and the premise forcing the characters to come from many different cultures (though, again, I can't vouch for the handling of race because it's been too long).

The first series is complete by itself, though it has two sequel series as well, each focusing on the next generation in these families. Because yes, of course they all pair up and have kids. Like I said: very straight.

A whole lot of books by Jean-Louis Fetjaine

OFetjaine is a historian, and I guess he's really interested in Arthurian mythos especially, because he loves it so much he's written two separate high fantasy retellings of them! I'm not criticizing, mind you, we all need a hobby.

The former, the Elves trilogy (pictures above) is very traditional high fantasy. Elves, dwarves, orcs, a world which is definitely fictionalized with a pan-Celtic vibe to it. The holy grail and excalibur are around, but they're relics possessed by the elves and dwarves with very different powers than usual. Et cetera.

Fetjaine also really loves his elves (as the titles might imply), and while they're not exactly Tolkien elves, there's a similar vibe to them. If you like Tolkien and his elf boner, you'll probably like this too. And conversely, if that turns you off, these books probably also won't work for you.

This series also has a prequel trilogy, centered around the backstory of one of the main characters. I...honestly don't remember too much about it, but I liked it, so, there you go, I guess.

I said Fetjaine did it twice. The other series is the Merlin duology, which, as the title implies, is a retelling of Merlin's story. Note that Merlin is also in the other trilogy, but it's a different Merlin; like I said, completely different continuities and stories.

This one is historical fantasy, so it's set in actual Great Britain, and Fetjaine attempts to connect Arthur to a "real" historical figure...but, you know, Merlin is also half-elf and elves totally exist in Brocéliande, so, you know. History.

Okay, that's probably enough fantasy, let me give some classics too.

L'Arbre des possibles et autres histoires - Bernard Werber

Bernard Werber is a pretty seminal author of French sci-fi and I should probably be embarrassed that the only book of his that I read was for school, but, it is a really good one, so I'll include it anyway.

It's a novella collection, and when I say "sci-fi" I want to make it clear that it's very old school science fiction. It's more Frankenstein or Black Mirror than Star Trek, what we in French call the anticipation genre of science fiction: you take one piece of technology or cultural norm and project it into the future.

It has a pretty wide range of topics and tones, so it's bound to have some better than others. My personal faves were Du pain et des jeux, where football (non-American) has evolved into basically a wargame, and Tel maître, tel lion, where any animal is considered acceptable as a pet, no matter how absurd it is to keep as a pet. They're both on a comedic end, but there's more heartfelt stuff too.

L'Ecume des Jours - Boris Vian

(no cover because I can't find the one I have, and the ones I find are ugly)

This book is surrealist. Like, literally a part of the surrealist movement. It features things such as a lilypad growing inside a woman's lungs (and, as you well know, lilypads double in size every day, wink wink), the protagonist's apartment becoming larger and smaller to go with his mood and current financial situation, and more that I can't even recall at the moment because remembering this book is like trying to remember having an aneurysm.

It is also really, really fun and touching. Oh, and it has a pretty solid movie adaptation, starring Audrey Tautou, who I think an international audience would probably recognize from Amelie or the Da Vinci Code movie.

I don't really know what else to say. It's a really cool read!

Le Roi se meurt - Eugène Ionesco

Ionesco is somewhat famous worldwide so I wasn't even sure to include him here. He's a playwright who wrote in the "Theater of the Absurd" movement, and this play is part of that.

The premise of this play is that the King (of an unnamed land) is dying, and the land is dying with him. I don't really know what else to say. It's theater of the absurd. It kind of has to be experienced (the published version works fine, btw, no need to track down an actual performance, in my humble opinion).

The Plague - Albert Camus

You've probably heard of this one, and if you haven't, let me tell you about a guy called Carlos Maza

youtube

I'm honestly more including this book out of a sense of duty. The other three are books I genuinely liked and happen to be classics. This book was an awful read. But, um. It's kind of relevant now in a way it wasn't (or didn't feel, anyway) back in 2008 or 2009, when I read it. And I don't just mean because of our own plague, since Camus's plague is pretty famously an allegory for fascism, which my teenage self sneered at, and my adult self really regrets every feeling that way.

Okay, finally, some more lighthearted stuff, we gotta talk about the Belgian and French art of bande dessinée. How is it different from comic books or manga? Functionally, it isn't. It really comes down more to what gets published in the Belgian-French industry compared to the American comics industry, which is dominated by superheroes, or the Japanese manga industry, which, while I'm less familiar with it, I know has some big genre trends as well that are completely separate.

The Lanfeust series - Arleston and Tarquin

This is a YA mega-series, and I can't recommend all of it because I've lost track of the franchise's growth. Also note that I say "YA", but in this case it means something very different from an American understanding of YA. These books are pretty full of sex.

No, when I say YA I mean it has that level of maturity, for better or worse. The original series (Lanfeust de Troy) is high fantasy in a world where everyone has an individual magical ability but two characters find out they're gifted with an absolute power to make anything happen, and while it gets dark at times, it's still very lighthearted throughout, and the humor is...well, I think it's best described as teen boy humor. And it has a tendency to objectify its female characters, as you'll quickly parse out from the one cover I used here or if you browse more covers.

But still, it holds a special place in my heart, I guess. And on my shelves.

The sequel series, Lanfeust des Etoiles, turns it into a space opera, and goes a little overboard with the pop culture reference at times, though overall still maintains that balance of serious/at times dark story and lighthearted comedy.

After that the franchise is utter chaos to me, and I've lost track. I know there was another sequel series, which I dropped partway through, and a spinoff that retold part of the original series from the PoV of the main love interest (in the period of time she spent away from the main group). There was a comedy spin-off about the troll species unique to this world, a prequel series, probably more I don't even know exist.

Les Démons d'Alexia

Something I can probably be a little less ashamed of including here.

Some backstory here. The Editions Dupuis are a giant of the Belgian bande dessinée industry, and for many, many years I was subscribed to their weekly magazine. That magazine was (mostly) made up of excerpts from the various books that the éditions were publishing at the time; those that were made of comic strips would usually get a couple pages of individual scripts, while the ongoing narratives got cut into episodes that were a few pages long (out of a typical 48 page count for a single BD album). Among those were this series.

For the first few volumes, I wasn't super into this series, probably because I was a little too young and smack dab in the middle of my "trying to be one of the boys" phase. But around book 3 I got really invested, to the point where I own the second half of the series because I had canceled by subscription by then but still wanted to know more.

Alexia is an exorcist with unusual talents, but little control, who's introduced to a group that specializes in researching paranormal phenomena, solving cases that involve the paranormal, that kinda stuff.

As a result of the premise, the series has a pretty slow start since it has to build up mystery around the source of Alexia's powers, but once it gets going and we get to what is essentially the series' main conflict, it gets really interesting.

Plus, witches. I'm a simple gay who likes strong protagonists and witches.

Murena

There was a point where my mtyhology nerdery led me to look for more stuff about the historical cultures that created them, and so I'd be super into stuff set in ancient Rome (I'd say "or Greece or Egypt" but let's face it, it was almost always Rome).

Murena is a series set just before the start of Emperor Nero's rule. You know, the one who was emperor when Rome burned, and according to urban legend either caused the fire or played the fiddle while it did (note: "fiddle" is a very English saying, it's usually the lyre in other languages). He probably didn't, it probably was propaganda, but he was a) a Roman Emperor, none of whom were particularly stellar guys and b) mean to Christians, who eventually got to rewrite history. So he's got a bad rep.

The series goes for a very historical take on events, albeit fictionalized (the protagonist and main PoV, the titular Lucius Murena, is himself fictional) and attempts to humanize the people involved in those events. Each book also includes some of the sources used to justify how events and characters are depicted, which is a nice touch.

It's also divided in subseries called "cycles" (books 1-4, 5-8 and the ongoing one starts at 9). I stopped after 9, though I think it's mostly a case of not going to bookstores often anymore. Plus it took four years between 9 and 10, and again between 10 and 11. But the first eight books made for a pretty solid story that honestly felt somewhat concluded as is, so it's a good place to start.

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missbeautyandherbeast · 5 years ago

Text

By Any Other Name

Draco Malfoy X Gryffindor!Reader

Summary: You hated Malfoy and he hated you and you were okay with that. It was natural. The Malfoys and the Lupines hating each other. It was fine by you... so then why did you care when he got hurt?

A/N: Alright y’all. Here it is! A small piece to what I have coming for you guys. At the moment we’re gonna keep it in book 4 because... well I want to. A few notes: 1. I gave the Reader a last name (and something very close to my own) 2. Because I’m American, so is the reader (it’s explained) 3. Yes, I am a Gryffindor (but I have a problem with the House system, but I won’t get into that now) Please let me know what you think! Do you guys want a seperate blog dedicated to this?

HP Tags: @coffee-addicti @ilikestuffproductions @msmcsmutt @ravn-87 @artemismohr18 @whygz @crazywritingbug @dolphincommander @bisexualbumblebeesstuff @fuzzy-panda @bitemebro522 @zombiesnips-blog

Fourth year at Hogwarts and of course Malfoy stood right there on the train as we shipped off. I didn’t say anything as he and Ron and Harry got into it again, though I wanted to. It had been four years and the only person that Malfoy hated as much as Potter, happened to be me.

Our families had been rivals for... centuries. In a desperate attempt to break the cycle, my parents moved to America, with me. I had no contact with Malfoy or his family... until I got my letter to Hogwarts. Then the time came to go back and be who I was meant to be.

When first year came, there was a blond-haired stood beside me in line alphabetically, and though he didn’t talk to me, and scared off other students, I did manage to get a smile from him. I knew his nerves matched mine. We had reputations to live up to. It gave me hope that I wasn’t alone.

Then I found out he was a Malfoy.

And I was a Lupine.

Slytherin and Gryffindor.

I guess it started then. Every class we had together we had avoided each other. Shunned each other. I refused to rise to his bait, and I suppose he grew bored. We hated each other in silent. Unlike Harry, Ron, and Hermione—who I was quite close to, but not completely taken with—I sighed and shook my head.

That was, until third year and the entire Buckbeak incident happened. Then I wasn’t quiet anymore. I was almost worse than Harry about making snide comments to the ‘Slytherin Prince.’ I hated injustice and I was tired of being quiet about it. And Harry wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, and Hermione wasn’t the most vocal... I on the other hand was both, and it infuriated Malfoy to no end. Because there was one thing that I had on him:

I was a pure blood. And he couldn’t do anything about that.

Our rivalry grew. Every day it was something different. Every class we had together we challenged the other. I won most, but the few he did win he wouldn’t let me live down. Our duels left him angry and brooding and me grinning and smiling all day.

Maybe I could see why our two families didn’t get along. He was too easy. It was almost fun. It also helped me in my classes—to beat Malfoy at his game I had to be smarter than him.

_________________________________

The Fourth Year

“You’re a pathetic excuse for a pure blood,” He sneered as I got off of the train.

I snorted a laugh and rolled my eyes, Harry and the other two had gone on ahead, leaving me with Malfoy and his two goons.

“Careful Malfoy, I don’t think I’m a mirror,” I quipped, a wicked grin on my face.

I could see him grow red as he looked for a comeback. I simply walked off.

“You won’t win! No matter what you do!” He shouted.

“I don’t have to win!” I turned around, still making my way towards the school. “I just have to beat you!” A smile stayed on my face for the rest of the night.

_________________________________

I watched as Harry turned away and Malfoy rose to cast a spell against him. I drew my own wand to counter him, but there was no one to cast a spell on but a small silvery ferret, where Malfoy was standing.

I stared at the small thing, a smile growing on my face. This was almost too easy.

Moody came then, started scolding the little ferret Malfoy, holding him by his tail and I itched to tell Moody that’s not how you’re supposed to handle any kind of animal—even if it was Malfoy—but McGonagall beat me to it.

Something, that was beyond any rivalry, gripped my heart when I saw Malfoy, now human again, curled up on the floor in pain and fear. I was about to reach my hand out to help him up, but Hermione gave me a nudge. A reminder.

“Don’t talk to me,” Ron said quietly as we sat at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall.

I was almost to lost in thought to notice that he had said anything.

“Why not?” said Hermione in surprise, drawing me from my thoughts.

“Because I want to fix that in my memory forever,” said Ron, his eyes closed and an uplifted expression on his face. “Draco Malfoy, the amazing bouncing ferret . . .”

Harry and Hermione both laughed, and a smile touched my lips as I ate quietly. I didn’t quite agree, and I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I should be laughing at his misfortune. It was almost too easy. The entire situation was a gift from my ancestors, and yet something was... off.

“He could have really hurt Malfoy, though,” Hermione said. “It was good, really, that Professor McGonagall stopped it —”

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe I didn’t like the idea that he had gotten hurt... or could have gotten hurt worse than he already was. But why did I care again? We were enemies. That was that. And yet...

I tuned out Ron yelling at Hermione at her comment.

“Hermione’s is right guys, it could have hurt him,” I muttered.

I looked up from my plate and Ron and Harry were staring at me like I had three heads. Hermione was indifferent, the look on her face like she knew something.

“Any why do you care? You hate him more than the rest of us.” Harry pointed out.

“I compete with him yes, and he’s a pain, yes, and I wish I never had to see him again... but he doesn’t deserve to...” I trailed off knowing I was fighting a losing battle.

“I’m off to the library,” Hermione stood, pushing her plate away.

“I’m gonna go too,” I stood, pushing away my half-eaten plate.

“But why? You don’t have homework!” Ron complained.

“I’m not doing schoolwork,” Hermione said in passing as we left.

As we walked down the hall Hermione didn’t stop looking at me. I sighed and kept to my own thoughts, trying to unravel the dilemma that the situation presented.

“You like him,” she nudged me.

“What? No! I don’t!” I deflected. “Me!? Like a Malfoy!?”

She laughed.

“It’s okay, I won’t tell the boys. But if you want to check on him, he’s probably in the infirmary complaining.”

“Why would I—”

“You really think I believe you want to go to the library?” She raised an eyebrow. “You hate the library. You study in your room at all costs,”

That was true, I preferred my own space and to study in the comfort of my own bed and room. It was hard enough focusing, let alone focusing on things in a place I wasn’t comfortable in.

“I just... I don’t know Hermione... seeing him like that. No one deserves that. I know Malfoy is... Malfoy... but injustice is still injustice?” I offered. It was some sort of explanation.

“Go,” She ordered. “I’ll see you later.”

I debated a moment more then decided.

“Thanks, Hermione. I owe you one,”

“Just go!” She shoved me off and I changed directions heading towards the infirmary.

Thinking that this was the stupidest thing I ever had done, I, for once, shoved every preconceived notion about Malfoy that I had and went to go and see if he was... okay.

Ugh.

I could hear him complaining as I entered the hallway that held the infirmary. A smile touched my lips as I neared the door. Some things would never change.

“Can I help you, dearie?” Madam Pomfrey asked.

“Here as a visitor,” I smiled sweetly.

“For who? Mr. Malfoy?” She raised an eyebrow at me. She had seen both of us in here as a result of our little rivalry.

“Against my better judgement, yes.” I sighed.

She let me in and immediately his eyes snapped to mine. His eyes were puffy and red, like he had been crying. He looked pitiful. I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t have it in me.

“What are you doing here? Come to make fun of me?” He snapped, crossing his arms.

“Where’s your posse?” I asked, folding my arms as well, cocking my head back. “I thought sure they would be with you.”

“Am I their keeper?”

“I thought so.” I smirked.

“Whatever, Lupine,” he rolled his eyes.

We remained quiet around another as time stretched out. There were so many things that I wanted to say but didn’t. I wanted to ask if he was okay, if he needed anything, if he was still hurting. But I also wanted to laugh and make fun of him. I wanted to put him down and never let him live this down. I wanted to write a letter to my parents so that they knew...

And I did none of that.

“You make a cute ferret,” I noted and turned to leave, wondering why I went in the first place.

Part 2

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yes-i-have-thoughts · 3 years ago

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So, I have a head cannon question. Might I hear some of your Shally head cannons? (Or just Wally head cannons if you don't have any shipping head cannons). ;)

Why not both?

~WALLY~

- He's a bi-racial kid that was kicked out of his house as a teenager and bullshit his way into an apartment before picking up small jobs to pay for it--first janitorial duties around the apartment building, then expanding out to eventually get hired at JDS

- Joey found him after he got fired from his last job hiding in an alleyway trying not to have a panic attack. His rent was due in three days and he only had three dollars to his name but it's fine, he'll find a job in that span of time. It's fine, he doesn't have to go back home. It's fine, his landlord will understand. He won't cuss him out again, it's fine, it's okay, fuck why can't he stop crying-

- Joey went back in the store he was hiding beside and brought him a candy bar to calm down again. Ever-prideful Wally just barely let his walls down and admitted that he was a little behind on the rent and wasn't sure what to do. Joey asked if he had a job, he said no, he got one almost then and there

- He was pretty clearly the baby of the studio when he first arrived, though the studio itself was pretty young at the time--the art department was one person, the writing department was one person, accounting was one person. He got pretty close to all of the tiny staff and took it pretty hard when Henry left a year later. (He later came to view him in a pretty poor light, but the reason for that is a headcanon for another day...)

- He's always a little scruffy-looking and his bangs are always in his eyes, sometimes to the point they can't be seen through them. Abby once gave him a hair clip to tie them back with and new hire Shawn seemed totally distracted the rest of the day after bumping into him once

- It really blows, being the only janitor of an ever-expanding studio. A lot of rooms go uncleaned and he has to bust his butt the next day to clean them, which means other rooms go uncleaned. Joey keeps telling him he's going to hire help. He never does.

- Well...That is until Wally slips up and vents to Thomas about this problem. Thomas ripped into Joey about it the next time they had a meeting and the next day there were some sudden new janitors around so now Wally has an excuse to slack off that's not just spite

- As I said before, no one knows what his age is. He keeps changing his story. The only person besides Wally himself that may know his real age is Joey, and he's refusing to tell. "It's not my business to say," he'll say if asked. Is he protecting Wally or himself?

- He rigged a Bendy cutout to scare people who try to get into his office one too many times since the constant happening broke his lock and he had to sacrifice a paycheck to get a new one, which he was not happy about. There was a fair bit of startled shrieking before people finally left him alone.

- His office is also his safe space. If he has to get away from people for a while for whatever reason, he hides out there. Oddly enough people are more likely to leave him alone when the light in there is on then when it's off. Strange...

~SHALLY~

- So imagine this. You're a new hire, you're still getting used to American accents, people are still getting used to your accent and you get a job as a toymaker at some big fancy animation studio that has a toy shop on the same grounds for some reason. This was Shawn on his first day.

- Luckily for him there's a pretty fucking cute janitor that immediately offers to show him around before dropping him off at his new workplace

- Yeah Shawn's pretty gay. There's a lot of angst going on in the background about that too-he's been hiding it for years and then Wally shows up in his line of vision and it comes crashing back to the surface. His first day of work was...A little weird. At least he doesn't have to see him every day...Right?

- It was pretty slow to get started at first. Shawn wanted to avoid Wally, Wally was under the impression Shawn didn't like him so he avoided him back. It took Shawn practically breaking down Thomas' door to passive-aggressively ask him what the Hell happened to his tool belt for him and Wally to iron things out and start up a friendship

- Long story short, Wally was there at the time and got to watch this scruffy blond Irish prick that was maybe 5' 7" if he stood up straight tell off his 6-foot-tall semi-boss who was build like a brick wall. Even Wally didn't have the guts to tell off Thomas. Hell-Joey Drew himself usually backed off under his scrutiny!

- Now I'd just like to add here that Thomas isn't a bad guy. He's just very intimidating. This didn't stop Shawn, though.

- So after that spectacle Wally just had to meet this Irish boy. They hit it off the same day, went out for a drink the night after and were pretty much friends by the end of the night.

- It took two years for Shawn to confess to him. He didn't even do it on purpose--he'd had one drink too many one night and told him point-blank how he really felt about him. Wally shrugged it off at first, then realized he was serious and found it...A little awkward. After a night of thinking though he wound up telling a very confused Shawn later the next day that he felt the same way.

- As of "right now" (whenever my kinda-sorta AU takes place), they're still new to the whole dating undercover shtick. The only person that knows about it is Thomas since Wally is incapable of keeping his mouth shut. He hasn't said anything, though, instead happy to listen to Wally ramble about his boyfriend while he works at pipes. Though it's a little annoying when he does it when they're supposed to be working.

#I forgot my answer tag #Ellis Headcanons #BATIM #Bendy and the Ink Machine #Wally Franks #Shally #This is probably hours late because I didn't see it until now I'm sorry-

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ducktastic · 4 years ago

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2020 Gameological Awards

Over on the Gameological Discord, we have an annual tradition of writing up our games of the year not as a ranked list but rather as answers to a series of prompts. Here are my personal choices for the year that was 2020.

Favorite Game of the Year

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into Paradise Killer. I knew that I liked the vaporwave resort aesthetic from the game’s trailer and figured I was in for a Danganronpa-style murder mystery visual novel with an open-ended murder mystery at its core. Those assumptions were… half-right? The game definitely plays out like the exploration bits of Danganronpa set on the island from Myst but with far simpler puzzles. What I didn’t expect was to fall so deeply in love with the environment—its nooks and crannies, its millennia of lore, its brutalist overlap of idol worship, consumerism, and mass slaughter. It makes sense that the world of Paradise Killer is its strongest feature, since the cast of NPCs don’t really move around, leaving you alone with the world for the overwhelming majority of your experience as you bounce back and forth between digging around for clues and interrogating potential witnesses. And despite what the promo materials indicated, there IS a definitive solution to the crimes you’re brought in to investigate, the game just lets you make judgment based on whatever evidence you have at the time you’re ready to call it a day, so if you’re missing crucial evidence you might just make a compelling enough case for the wrong person and condemn them to eternal nonexistence. Am I happy with the truth at the end of the day? No, and neither is anybody else I’ve spoken to who completed the game, but we all were also completely enthralled the entire time and our dissatisfaction has less to do with the game and more to do with the ugly reality of humanity. I’ve always been of the mindset that “spoilers” are absolute garbage and that a story should be just as good whether you know the twist or not and any story that relies on surprising the audience with an unexpected reveal is not actually that good a story, but Paradise Killer is a game about piecing together your own version of events so I feel that it’s vital to the gameplay experience that people go in knowing as little as possible and gush all about it afterwards. Just trust me, if the game looks even remotely intriguing to you, go for it. I’ve had just as much fun talking about the game after I finished it with friends just getting started as I did actually solving its mysteries myself.

Best Single Player Game

I honestly missed out on the buzz for In Other Waters at launch, so I’m happy I had friends online talking it up as Black Friday sales were coming along. The minimal aesthetic of his underwater exploration game allows the focus to shift more naturally to the game’s stellar writing as a lone scientist goes off in search of her mentor and the secrets they were hiding on an alien world. It only took a few hours for me to become completely absorbed in this narrative and keep pushing forward into increasingly dangerous waters. In Other Waters might just be the best sci-fi story I experienced all year and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi novels, regardless of their experience with video games.

Best Multiplayer Game

Look, we all know this year sucked. 2020 will absolutely be chronicled in history books as a fascinating and deeply depressing time in modern history where we all stayed inside by ourselves and missed our friends and family. It was lonely and it was bleak. Which is why it made my heart glow so much more warmly every time I got a letter from an honest-to-goodness real-life friend in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Knowing that they were playing the same game I was and hearing about their experiences and sending each other wacky hats or furniture, it lightened the days and made us feel that little bit more connected. Sure, when the game first launched we would actually take the time to visit one another’s islands, hang out, chat in real-time, and exchange gifts, but we all eventually got busy with Zoom calls, sourdough starters, and watching Birds of Prey twenty-two times. Still, sending letters was enough. It was and still is a touching little way to show that we’re here for one another, if not at the exact same time.

Favorite Ongoing Game

Zach Gage is one of my favorite game designers right now, and when I heard he was releasing a game called Good Sudoku I was sold sight unseen. The game as released was… fine. It’s sudoku and it’s pleasant, but it was also buggy and overheated my phone in a way I hadn’t seen since Ridiculous Fishing (also by Zach Gage) seven years ago. Thankfully, the most glaring bugs have been fixed and I can now enjoy popping in every day for some quick logic puzzle goodness. Daily ranked leaderboards keep me coming back again and again, the steady ramp of difficulty in the arcade and eternal modes means I can always chase the next dopamine rush of solving increasingly complex puzzles. It’s not a traditional “ongoing” game the way, say, Fortnite and Destiny are, but I’m happy to come back every day for sudoku goodness.

Didn't Click For Me

With Fortnite progressively losing me over the course of 2020, finalizing with my wholesale “never again” stance after Epic boss Tim Sweeney compared Fortnite demanding more money from Apple to the American Civil Rights movement (no, absolutely not), I dipped my toe into a number of new “battle pass”-style online arena types of games, and while Genshin Impact eventually got its hooks into me, Spellbreak absolutely did not. With graphics straight out of The Dragon Prince and the promise of a wide variety of magic combat skills to make your character your own, the game seemed awfully tempting, but my first few experiences were aimless and joyless, with no moment of clarity to make me understand why I should keep coming back. Maybe they’ll finesse the game some more in 2021, or a bunch of my friends will get hooked and lure me back, but for now I am a-okay deleting this waste of space on my Switch and PC.

"Oh Yeah, I Did Play That Didn't I?"

I remember being really excited for Murder By Numbers. Ace Attorney-style crime scene investigation visual novel with Picross puzzles for the evidence, art by the creators of Hatoful Boyfriend, and music by the composer of Ace Attorney itself?! Sounds like a dream come true. But the pixel-hunt nature of the crime scene investigations was more frustrating than fun, the picross puzzles were not particularly great, and the game came out literally a week before the entire world went into lockdown which makes it feel more like seven years ago than just earlier this year. I remember being marginally charmed by the game once it was in my hands, but as soon as my mind shifted to long-term self care, Murder By Numbers went from hot topic to cold case.

Most Unexpected Joy

I was looking forward to Fuser all year. As a dyed-in-the-wool DropMix stan, the prospect of a spiritual sequel to DropMix on all major digital platforms without any of the analogue components was tremendously exciting, and I knew I’d have a lot of fun making mixes by myself and posting them online for the world to hear. What I didn’t expect, however, was the online co-op mode to be such a blast! Up to four players take turns making 32 bars of mashups, starting with whatever the player before handed them and adding their own fingerprints on top. It sounds like it should just be a mess of cacophony, but every session I’ve played so far has been just the best dance party I’ve had all year, and everyone not currently in control of the decks (including an audience of spectators) can make special requests for what the DJ should spin and tap along with the beat to great super-sized emoji to show how much they’re enjoying the mix. Literally the only times my Apple Watch has ever warned me of my heightened heart rate have been the times I was positively bouncing in place rocking out to co-op freestyle play in Fuser.

Best Music

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Only one video game this year had tunes that were so bumpable they were upgraded to my general “2020 jams” playlist alongside Jeff Rosenstock, Run the Jewels, and Phoebe Bridgers, and that game was Paradise Killer. 70% lo-fi chill beats to study/interrogate demons to, 20% gothic atmospheric bangers, 10% high-energy pop jazz, this soundtrack was just an absolute joy to swim around in both in and out of gameplay.

Favorite Game Encounter

It’s wild that in a landscape where games let me live out my wildest fantasies, the single moment that lit me up in a way that stood out to me more than any other was serving Neil the right drink in Coffee Talk. Over the course of the game, you serve a variety of hot drinks to humans, werewolves, vampires, orcs, and more, all while chatting with your customers and learning more about their lives and relationships. The most mysterious customer, though, is an alien life form who adopts the name Neil. They do not know what they want to drink and claim it doesn’t make a difference because they cannot taste it. Everybody else wants *something*. Neil is just ordering for the sake of fitting in and exploring the Earth experience. It’s only in the second playthrough that attentive baristas will figure out what to serve Neil, unlocking the “true” ending in the process. Seeing the typically stoic Neil actually emote when they tasted their special order drink? What an absolute treat that was.

Best Free DLC of the Year

It’s still only a couple of days old at the time I’m writing this, but Marvel’s Avengers just added Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, and THANK GOODNESS. Almost every character in the game at launch just smashed the endless waves of robot baddies with their fists and that looks exhausting and uncomfortable. Hawkeye (the game calls her Kate Bishop, but come on, she’s been Hawkeye in the comics for over 14 years, let’s show her some respect) uses A SWORD. FINALLY! Aside from that, I’m just having a blast shooting arrows all over the place. She and Ms Marvel are the most likable characters in the game so far, so I hope they keep adding more of the Young Avengers and Champions to the game, and if the recently announced slate of Marvel movies and tv shows are any indication (with America Chavez, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all coming soon to the MCU), that seems to be what Marvel is pushing for across all media

Most Accessible Game

Nintendo is, first and foremost, a toy company. They got their start in toys and cards long before video games was a thing, and they still do more tests to ensure their video game hardware is childproof than anybody else in the industry (remember how they made Switch cartridges “taste bad” so kids wouldn’t eat them?). This year, Nintendo got to rekindle some of their throwback, simplistic, toys-and-cards energy with Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, a Switch collection of timeless family-friendly games like Chess, Mancala, and Backgammon, along with “toy” versions of sports like baseball, boxing, and tennis for a virtual parlor room of pleasant time-wasters. The games were all presented with charming li’l explainers from anthropomorphic board game figurines, and the ability to play quick sessions of Spider Solitaire on the touch screen while I binged The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix made Clubhouse Games one of my most-played titles of the year. Plus, local play during socially-distant friend hangs was an excellent way to make us feel like we were much closer than we were physically allowed to be as friends knocked each other’s block off in the “toy boxing” version of Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

"Waiting for Game-dot"

I get that everyone loves Disco Elysium. I saw it on everyone’s year-end lists last year. I finally bought it with an Epic Games Store coupon this year. This year was a long enough slog of depressing post-apocalyptic drudgery, I didn’t want to explore a whole nother one in my leisure time. I’ll get to it… someday.

Game That Made Me Think

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Holovista was an iPhone game I played over the course of two or three days based on the recommendation of some trusted colleagues on Twitter and oh my goodness was I glad that I played it. What starts as a chill vaporwave photography game steadily progresses into an exploration of psychological trauma, relationships with friends and family, and the baggage we carry with us from our pasts. In this exceptionally hard year, I badly needed this story about spending time alone with your personal demons and finding your way back to the people who love and support you. Just like with Journey and Gone Home, I walked away from Holovista feeling a rekindled appreciation for the people in my life.

#video games #holovista #paradise killer #animal crossing #animal crossing new horizons #spellbreak #good sudoku #fuser #dropmix #in other waters #marvel's avengers #avengers #clubhouse games #coffee talk #2020

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seven-oomen · 4 years ago

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Love and Monsters Lore/Meta/Headcanons

Spoilers ahead!!!! I feel like I shouldn’t have to say it but obviously this will have spoilers for the movie.

Okay so strap in kiddos because I have spend my entire day rewatching the film, writing down all the little lines I could find and I think I’ve build a pretty decent understanding of its lore despite not having much information to fall back onto from other sources. (I don’t think it’s an easily accessible movie and there’s no wikis or whatever yet.)

Alright so here we go:

Part 1: The apocalypse

The apocalypse in this universe started 7 years before the story starts. An asteroid called Agatha 616 was headed for Earth. And in response Earth send up a bunch of chemical bombs to break up the asteroid.

It worked, a little too well. And those chemicals came back down on Earth and mutated all Cold-blooded animals. (Insects, fish, arachnids, reptiles, amphibians) From what we can tell, that’s all the chemicals affected. Warm blooded animals like Mammals and Birds don’t seem to be affected. But the source material isn’t very definitive on this.

In the opening story Joel talks about how 95% of humanity basically got eaten to death by the mutated creatures. Even Clyde alludes to humanity being unaffected by referring to a line said by the governments/scientists at the time; “We’re the lucky ones, or so they said.”

To me that makes sense, insects in particular are so vast and so well adapted that if they ever got to the size of a truck, they would dominate pretty much all other species around them. That might also explain why we don’t see many mammals or birds around. I’ve been looking, haven’t found them just yet. Aside from Gertie the cow and Boy the dog.

One of the places were the apocalypse seems to have kicked off is in Fairfield, California. Clyde calls it ‘basically ground zero’ and is amazed that Joel (and Aimee by extension) even made it out of there. Although a part of that may be because I believe the whole “cast” is from the area between Sacramento California and San Fransicsco. I have my reasons for that, which I will explain in headcanons.

Another, based on a news clip in the beginning might be Washington DC and I think it slowly escalated from there, going Global in a matter of days. I think the highest concentration of humanity fell first (cities), which would make sense as more humans generally also means a lot of insects and other scavengers. Conflict would be high in these areas and a lot of people would die at once.

Joel also talks about how the military and the ‘big ones’ basically cancelled each other out and died out after another. Which again makes sense to me, you’d want the most dangerous creatures to be taken out first. A cockroach the size of a tank is definitely a priority. Although how one would kill a cockroach that size is also very questionable, considering what they can survive.

I think humanity held out for several months before they were forced into hiding by the mutated creatures and the news articles that seem to be around throughout the world and in the beginning seem to suggest that as well.

Part 2: Joel’s Journey

Now I am not an American and a lot of places have names that I know nothing about. So I had to Google it, rehear it and figure it out. But Joel’s journey takes him to Jenner Beach, we know based on a sign post that he passes Fulton and is headed off towards Sonoma Coast State Park. Based on those signs I have a made a trajectory of about 85 miles and approximately located Joel’s colony.

I’ve also circled Fairfield here to indicate where he started out. Now as I said, this is guess work based on what the movie gave me from the sign post.

Sonoma Coast state Park (30 miles), Fulton (6 Miles)

And from what the characters in the movie have been saying; Jenner Beach. So yeah, it’s guess work and I might be a couple of miles off, but I like to think this gives a good perspective.

7 days seems to sort of check out though, considering the terrain is rough and hilly/mountainy, you’d constantly have to hide, and you’d need to sleep/forage. But you’d be walking pretty slow still. I think you could make the journey in 5-6 days as well on foot.

Part 3: Clyde and Minnow’s Journey

Now these two are far more difficult to figure out because we don’t know much about them. Wikipedia indicates Clyde is a survival expert, so that’s the official title that I went with as well. He says he had a son named Elliott and that he was in a colony with Elliot, Minnow, and Minnow’s dad. Minnow also indicates that their colony was in a subway station. They were mostly headed North.

I think the most likely candidates for their ‘home base’ were Sacremento, but then why did they cross Joel’s path and didn’t head for Yosemite/ Mt. Whitney if they wanted to go to the mountains?

Or another likely candidate was Richmond. Which is what I went with. This is more headcanony though. Only because they mentioned going to the North as opposed to going East, towards Mt. Whitney. Maybe Sacremento and it’s valley are a no-go zone? That would sense, large open spaces are probably where larger creatures reside.

Part 4: Headcanons

Okay this last section is purely headcanon material and not at based on facts. So please don’t shoot me. (Yes, you may copy the headcanons if you like, I don’t mind.)

Clyde is a survival expert, hunter, and doomsday prepper in the city. He used to lead rich tourist/people onto expeditions into the wilderness of California.

His son Elliott was a State Ranger in one of the local wildlife parks/reservations. He was also very gay,

Clyde is a simple but open minded man who loved his son/family. He really didn’t care his son was gay and supported him.

They lived just outside of Richmond.

Their neighbors was an Indian Transman (as in his ancestors were from India). This was Minnow’s father.

Minnow was one when the Apocalypse hit. (This is somewhat canon actually.)

Her father carried her and gave birth to her, getting a hysterectomy a few months after.

Her father was also a great archer and used to teach people how to use a bow and arrow. He was also a great horseback rider.

When the apocalypse hit they tried to sit it out in Clyde’s shelter but due to circumstance were forced to leave and eventually ended up in a colony in Richmond. Which operated from a subway station.

Elliott and Minnow’s father fell in love and paired up, raising Minnow together. Clyde became her grandfather figure.

They stayed there for about 4-5 years until an attack decimated the colony, including Minnow’s father and Elliott.

Clyde and Minnow have been surviving out on there own ever since and were slowly traveling up North until they found Joel in a Sandgobblers hole.

Part 5: Creatures

We know the following about the categories of creatures:

Insects: Have terrible peripheral vision

Lizards: Can’t climb for shit

Amphibians: Like to hide and lure in their prey

Sandgobblers: Bad asses, find prey by sound and vibration, their queen is bad news and has a fin.

You can tell if a creature is kind by looking into its eyes.

Bouldersnails are friendly, sensitive, but can crush your ass in a heartbeat.

And that’s what I have so far. Feel free to reblog and add to it if you’ve found more or want to enter a counter to some of the things I’ve found.

#love and monsters #love and monsters meta #love and monsters headcanon #ben says stuff #my theories

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dickshardblog · 5 years ago

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For Russia With Love: The Tara Reade Story?

There are three women I know of now whose name is pronounced Tar-uh Reed. Tara Reid is an actress who starred in the Sharknado franchise. Tara Reed is an artist and designer. She designed my favorite coffee mug. And now I've learned that there is a Tara Reade, who used to work for Joe Biden.

When I heard about the allegation that Tara Reade made against Joe Biden, I was deeply disturbed. Were Biden's hands on shoulders, close-ear talking, hair petting, and hugs something more than just an overly-affectionate guy with boundary issues and a lack of understanding of personal space? It had always looked uncomfortable, but innocent, to me. And, if it's innocent, I find it strangely endearing, despite the fact that I don't personally like to be touched by strangers.

He's not just overly familiar with females. For every picture of Joe Biden petting a little girl's hair, there's another of him with his arms around a man, gazing into his eyes, or practically kissing his ear. I could do a Google image search and come up with some pretty compelling visual evidence that Joe Biden is in love with several men. He's not. At least, I don't believe so. Some people are huggers. And Joe Biden is a hugger extraordinaire.

I think the world no longer tolerates that, but I also think it is both innocent and changeable behavior. Unlike Trump, Biden does have some sense of self-awareness, can listen to criticism, and make changes.

I'll be honest: I really don't want the allegations to be true. I do have that bias, and I will freely admit it. I always have that bias. No matter who it is. Like any regular person, I don't want sexual assault to happen. I would hope we all have that bias. I hope that none of us would wish a woman had been sexually assaulted so we could have some ammunition against a political opponent. But I know better. There are plenty of people who really hope Biden did exactly what Reade says he did. And we all know it does happen, of course.

Tara Reade's story, when I first heard it, sounded credible. In a public, yet deserted hallway, Biden pinned her to a wall, groped her, kissed on her, and asked if she wanted to go somewhere else. When she reacted negatively, he said, "Come on, Man, I heard you liked me." Shit. That sounds like Joe Biden, I can hear him saying that. So, it sounds bad. I agree that we should listen to women. We should take them seriously. We should look into their allegations and dig until we find the truth. I let other people do the investigative journalism. I found their articles, checked their sources and compiled a pretty decent collection of truths that form a pretty cohesive picture.

Here's the truth that I have found:

In 2009, Reade wrote an article commending Biden's work on the Violence Against Women act. The same year, she wrote another article claiming that she'd left DC because her husband had received a job offer to manage a Congressman's campaign in the Midwest, and she'd moved with him.

From late 2016 to early 2017, she had a Twitter account using her newly married name, Tara McCabe. She used this platform to praise Biden on multiple occasions. She retweeted him saying, "My old boss speaks truth. Listen." This Twitter account also featured a lot of anti-Russia, anti-Putin sentiment.

Then, in 2018, she writes in an Op Ed for Medium which praises Russia and Putin, that she left Washington because she "saw the reckless imperialism of America and the pain it caused through out the world," and because she loved Russia with all her heart. In this article she describes Putin as a "compassionate, caring, visionary leader."

She wrote several pro-Russia, pro-Putin articles during this time, gushing over him, saying, "President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image projects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity. It is evident that he loves his country, his people and his job … President Putin’s obvious reverence for women, children and animals, and his ability with sports is intoxicating to American women … And like most women across the world, I like President Putin… a lot, his shirt on or shirt off.”

Then in 2019, she's all in for Bernie Sanders. She wrote another article, with yet a different reason for leaving, this one with the harassment allegation attached. "Then, I went to Senate personnel for help. No one helped me. I resigned or I would say, I was forced to resign." The report she says she filed doesn't seem to exist.

When she started attacking Biden publicly, she also resumed denouncing Putin. Putin was bad again. When the media dug up her old articles praising Putin, she deleted them. Too late, of course. They can no longer be found where they were originally published, but copies were made. She now claims they were part of a novel she was writing that was set in Russia. They were clearly op-eds, not notes for a novel. No novelist I know of publishes their novel notes as op-eds while they're working on the book.

There are a whole lot of other inconsistencies, people she says she told about the incident denying any knowledge, her brother pointedly changing his story, an old neighbor of hers coming forward to say she wouldn't trust a word Reade says, and countless other glowing red flags. But this blog is already so very long, and I haven't even gotten to the meat of what I want to talk about yet. This has all just been background, the evidence I followed to form my theory of what is going on with this. And I want to get it down before I read it somewhere else.

I've got a theory! It could be Russia!

Okay, hear me out. Here's what I think might have happened:

Sometime in late 2017 or early 2018, Reade somehow becomes involved in communications with Russia, a political operative, maybe even someone in the government. Hell, perhaps even Putin himself, a highly unlikely prospect, of course. But not outside the realm of possibility. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Putin maintains a stash of burner phones and carries on flirtatiously with American Women in his spare time. It's the stuff of spy novels, sure. Yeah, it's far-fetched, but allow me my fantastic imaginings. I am a fiction writer, after all.

But a Russian political operative of some kind becomes romantically involved long-distance with Reade. Of course it's not a real relationship, not on the Russian side. They are just using American citizens as sleeper agents they can prompt to stir up shit when it would cause the most damage.

Reade is manipulated to turn against Joe Biden and encouraged to back Bernie Sanders. Now, an aside at this point. I like Bernie. I would vote for Bernie, I'd love to see him as President. I don't believe that Bernie Sanders or his campaign are involved in any collusion with the Russian government in any way, and both he and his campaign openly discourage Russian meddling. None-the-less, there still exists evidence that Russia has interfered in ways favorable to Sanders and his campaign. Russia doesn't want Bernie Sanders as President, but some of Sanders more rabid supporters are very easily influenced by carefully placed fake news stories and are extremely useful at stirring up political infighting on the left. Alright, back to my theory.

At this time, she's also advised to stop praising Russia, so as not to raise any suspicion. And, finally, to drop that allegation bomb on Joe Biden right when it would do the most damage. Hopefully to allow Bernie Sanders to overtake Biden for the nomination, but, failing that, at least send Joe limping into the General.

Yes. In a nutshell, I think the Tara Reade allegation is simply more Russian meddling of the same sort that has been going on all along. I think, in some form or another, she is a Russian agent. Maybe there is no spy novel romance going on. Perhaps she's just being paid. But this whole thing stinks of Russia, and Russia's fingerprints are all over it.

But, hey, what do I know? I'm just a fiction author with a good imagination

#tara reade #joe biden #allegation #metoo #putin #bernie sanders #Russia #russian meddling

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koala-otter · 4 years ago

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the teacher and the scientist au: worldbuilding

I am writing some original stuff right now, and as a break where I can keep writing, I’m going to explain some of my worldbuilding/choices that I make when it comes to my modern “the teacher and the scientist” AU. The hope is that it will be fun for others to see what goes into a fic, or give people ideas for their own fics!

*a quick note: I am a white Latina! I have no East Asian heritage! I studied for a while in Beijing and speak Mandarin Chinese fluently, so I kind of defer to my experiences there when making worldbuilding choices in fic (because I believe strongly in writing what you know, especially given the damage you might cause by writing what you don’t know), but will also do research online or through friends on other countries and cultures that inspired the four nations in ATLA. But all of this is just to say that while I do put a lot of thought into this stuff, I am by no means the authority on any of it, and I am open to criticism and of course always want to make sure I’m not doing anything harmful with my writing. I promise to listen and adapt if you approach me about literally anything in my fic or in this post.

Ok now let’s get into it!

1. The setting: Ba Sing Se’s Natural History Museum This is based on a combination of the Beijing Museum of Natural History, the American Natural History Museum in New York, and Beijing’s Forbidden City/Gugong. Beijing I think is probably the biggest inspiration for Ba Sing Se with the ring system and centering of the palace (and I mean the Earth King’s palace is pretty directly based off of Tiananmen Square), so it seems like a pretty solid model for a modern Ba Sing Se to me.

2. The field trip I went on so many field trips to the Natural History Museum when I was little, and they were always the absolute most fun of the year. And I feel like we went to the planetarium basically every time? It was kind of fun to recall and try to capture the experience of being a little kid on this trip in this fic

3. The Lower Ring & the Middle Ring I put Zuko and his students as coming from the Lower Ring for a few reasons. Firstly, I couldn’t imagine Katara and Aang living in either the financial district that is the Middle Ring or the ostentatiousness of the Upper Ring. I think if they were in Ba Sing Se they’d work and raise their family in the Lower Ring (I will be getting into their jobs in later installments of this story, so I won’t explain them here!), which means Bumi goes to school in the Lower Ring, which then means Zuko has to work there in order to be his teacher and for this entire concept to work out (and also the reasons explained in the actual fic where he lived there with Iroh and wants to give back). And the museum is in the Middle Ring because I wanted it connected to the university, which canonically is in Ba Sing Se’s Middle Ring.

4. Sokka as an astrophysicist Because Sokka is a smart kid and a huge science nerd, okay??? And Yue and the space sword. It makes sense. Also, because Ba Sing Se = ATLA’s Beijing, I think of Ba Sing Se University as Beida （北大）or Peking University, which is China’s first national university and one of the most, if not the most, selective university in the country (disclaimer: I did not study at Beida!!). But yeah BSSU is the Earth Kingdom’s most illustrious university and one of the best research institutions in the world, and Sokka’s a tenured professor there. My boy’s world-class brilliant.

5. “Teacher Zuko” Ughhh I really struggled with this. Basically, I was taught in learning Chinese to address teachers as “Surname 老师 (lao3shi1),” which is “Surname Teacher.” But! I didn’t want to give Zuko a surname, because that seemed rife with opportunities for missteps (there’s a lot that goes into surnames of literally any country or culture, from geography to family history and occupations, and I didn’t want to co-opt anything that wasn’t mine to use). So I knew the kids would call him by his first name. But “Zuko Teacher” sounded off. And in Chinese, titles like Mr. or Miss or Mrs. go after one’s surname, while in English it’s the opposite, so I figured for this fic it was appropriate to implement the English convention. So! “Teacher Zuko.”

6. Sokka’s appearance Sokka’s one of those hot, young professors that appear only in popular media, or once in a blue moon. He finds out from Katara that white sneakers are an easy way to look in the fashion know while remaining marginally professional for class, and they become a staple of his uniform. I picture him in Stan Smiths. (And of course they’re a little beaten up! It’s Sokka!)

7. The gaang’s ages Okay, so, I can’t find the actual post where this is broken down, but I think canonically it makes sense that Katara and Aang were 22 and 20, respectively, when Bumi was born. I put them in this fic at being maybe a year or two older in this fic, so let’s say 23 and 21, when they have Bumi, in Katara’s second year of med school. So when this fic takes place, as Bumi is six years old, they are 29 and 27, and Sokka and Zuko are then 30 and 31.

oh my god we’re only 700 words into a 4,000-word fic why did I decide to do this to myself

8. Sokka looking at his watch and having a penchant for exact minutes He’s a master scheduler. That’s it.

9. “My Uncle Mushi lives in Chin City” This was just kind of an opportunity to integrate more from the ATLA universe! Obvi “Mushi” is Iroh’s refugee alias, but whatever another kid can have it, and yeah Chin City is that terrible village with all of those wacky people from “Avatar Day.” So we know the kid’s uncle is wacky. Fat chance of going on a field trip to visit him.

10. Zuko calling Bumi talented There’s that scene in the episode where they go to the Sun Warriors that Zuko calls Aang “a talented kid.” Bumi’s Aang’s son, so I figure by the transitive property Zuko would describe him the same way.

11. Zuko’s scar I don’t know why but I often forget to mention Zuko’s scar in other fics! Either way, I find kids usually respond to people’s differences better than most adults do. Kids just see things and comment on them, which, yeah, can be rude by societal standards, but I’d imagine it would be very refreshing for Zuko after going much of his life with people trying to avoid either staring at the left side of his face or talking about what happened. Also, I didn’t really want to get into the cause of the scar. Obviously Ozai did it. I don’t have an idea of how. Other fics have done that better. Explaining it within the fic the way Zuko would explain it to his class seemed like a good way to tell the reader, “Hey yeah it’s the same cause as in the show,” but then not have to get into it.

12. Sokka hates intro classes Ughhh no one likes intro classes, and I’d imagine it’s even worse for professors. Prerequisites are often too easy for the kids intending on majoring or too hard and meant to weed out the kids who can’t stick with the department’s program. College is funny.

13. Aang volunteers in Zuko’s class From what I can tell, parental involvement in schools is only getting bigger. And Aang is a great dad and I think he’d take any opportunity to get involved with Bumi’s school.

14. Zuko’s backstory I should probably take the time to explain this! Basically I think of this story existing in a universe where after they moved to Ba Sing Se under circumstances comparable to their being refugees in the show, Iroh and Zuko actually stayed in the city, and Zuko got his education there. And yeah! My boy went to BSSU, too!

15. Stargazing at the South Pole and seeing the moon at the North Pole Oh my god the pure amount of thought that went into this. I worked with the assumption that A:TLA takes place on Earth, and that then the rotations of Earth, and the rotation of the moon, are the same as what we experience now (I’ve thought about this extensively, especially as it pertains to the hemispheres and the seasons, but I don’t want to talk about it here, we simply do not have either the time or space). So the South Pole is essentially the same as our Antarctica/South Pole, except that it is capable of sustaining human life for an extended amount of time, and in theory has greater biodiversity (clearly I have also thought about this extensively, but again, we have neither the time nor the space for my theories). I had to read a NASA report on the phases of the moon as seen from the South Pole! And it turns out you can’t see much of the moon down there, and it is always in crescent form. but yeah, you see a lot of stars (but in the opposite rotation of what we see in the Northern Hemisphere), and I thought that was intriguing, especially given the importance of moon imagery throughout the show. Thus, Sokka’s first seeing the moon in the Northern Water Tribe, which ties in perfectly with his meeting Yue, his first love: “You could say the moon was my first love.” (Which someone pointed out in a comment on Ao3, and it absolutely delighted me that they noticed!)

16. Pipsqueak Just looking for more people from the show to serve as first graders in this fic. Someone commented that they pictured him the same size as he was in canon, and I laughed out loud.

17. Tuyanjing I was trying to think of constellations that look like badger-moles, and I honestly just thought, “Ursa Major. Badger-moles look like giant bears.” And “Tuyanjing” (土眼睛) is my own translation of “earth eye,” which was meant to be a nod to the animals’ connection to Toph and their blindness and earthbending.

18. All the stars & mentioning the Fire Nation & Water Tribe navigation I was initially going to write something in this scene about ancient constructions, like the pyramids, that were built using the constellations, and then create some elaborate metaphor about them and Zukka. But the only coherent thought I had about it was that it was “Too Much Work.” Instead I realized okay sailors always use the stars for navigation, and the Water Tribes and Fire Nation are the only nations we’ve seen with boats, so let’s go for that, and it works out because if you squint maybe you’ll read something about the stars guiding them to each other. Maybe we’re evoking thoughts of star-crossed lovers. And then we mention the moon again, and Zuko’s really seeing it for the first time, kind of like Sokka did, so hey I don’t know maybe that’s a symbol of something. Maybe.

And that’s really it I think! Hopefully this was at least entertaining if not entirely informative. I don’t normally write stuff out like this, but it is a good reflection of my thought process while writing most fics. Again, I am open to any kind of communication about the above as well as anything else I’ve posted! And I’d love to hear about any of your own ideas that help you with worldbuilding and writing your own fics :)

#atla #writing stuff #my writing #zukka #the teacher and the scientist

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notjanine · 4 years ago

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2020 in books!

the only kind of new year’s resolution i made as a naive baby last january was to try to read 40 books for the year. (i read 37 in 2019, for context.) well, with all of my commuting time eliminated and an increased need for immersive escapism, i ended up surpassing that goal three times over lmao (thanks library ebooks!)

idk how to summarize my year in books in a way that makes sense but

(f) = fiction, (nf) = nonfiction, (p) = poetry.

books that rewired my fucking brain:

braiding sweetgrass by robin wall kimmerer (nf)- GOD?!?!?! good. dr. k is right. ostensibly a book about plants, but actually a book about shut up and go outside. consumerism and capitalism are doing their damnedest to fuck you up, but you can just choose to value different things. take care of yourself by taking care of your environment. etc etc.

wasp by richard jones (nf)- lissen. when i got this book, my wasp-phobia was so severe that i had to put it away face down on a high shelf because there are wasps on the cover and i couldn’t bear to RISK even GLIMPSING them. now i am like... a wasp evangelist. (also due to the bugs 101 course on coursera it’s so good.)

wag by zazie todd (nf)- i have a dog, but i am NOT a Dog Person (i.e. i love my dog, but please keep yours away from me, thanks.) this book helped me understand my little guy better, plus it gives actionable tasks and activities to do with and for your pup! plus, y’know, learning about things you’re scared of helps to lessen that fear. i’d recommend this to anyone who has, wants, or regularly interacts with a dog.

a closed and common orbit by becky chambers (f)- is this series complete fluff? absolutely. am i fundamentally different after reading this one? maybe.

the best we could do by thi bui (nf)- this is so far outside of my personal experience but somehow still made me come to peace with my relationship with my mom?? and it’s barely even about that?? idk. this is probably objectively the best book i’ve read this year.

books that were just fun as hell:

mexican gothic by silvia moreno-garcia (f)- this book made me YELL out loud

death on the nile by agatha christie (f)- i grew up on agatha christie shows, but never actually read her before this year! she really was That Bitch. read this before the movie comes out

cosmoknights by hannah templer (f)- i read this in one sitting through the worst headache i’ve had in years. it is a goddamn DELIGHT. this book has everything: spaceships. mech suits. fighting the patriarchy. a perfect otp. fun art in bright colors with clean lines. onomatopoetic WAPs from before the song gave that hilarious context. 800 lesbians. this is an antidepressant in graphic novel form.

stiff by mary roach (nf)- ms. roach is like the 4th most represented author on my bookshelf because she 1. stays writing about shit i’m interested in and 2. manages to talk about gross and ridiculous things without resorting to sensationalism. it takes skill to write a hilarious book about corpses.

black sun by rebecca roanhorse (f)- excellent sexual tension between a horny siren pirate and a hot doomed... monk, kinda? set in the pre-columbian gulf of mexico with magic and shit.

cuisine chinoise by zao dao (? n/f)- this graphic novel about chinese food history/mythology is BEAUTIFUL.

the color of magic by terry pratchett (f)- you’d think a hardcore douglas adams stan would have gotten to this sooner, but no, i had to date a nerdy white boy to get here. it’s fun though! i’m not gonna read them all, but this one was good. bonus: contains one (1) great himbo.

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir (f)- like 500 pages of action and mystery and jokes and space necromancy. harrow the ninth gets a special mention bc it has a meme reference that took me out so hard i had to close the book, lie down, and groan for an entire minute before continuing.

other minds by peter godfrey-smith (nf)- i love octopuses. on one tma bonus ep, jonny sims says that if a creature can choose to do evil, then it’s a Person. octopuses are People. but anyway frfr this has an explanation of the evolution of consciousness that is cool af. (this one is much better than the other recent popsci octo book which i will not name out of politeness.)

the perfect predator by steffanie strathdee and thomas patterson (nf)- i read this bc my microbiology prof recommended it and it’s cool as heck! it’s got adventure, drama, mystery, Science-with-a-capital-S. i’m biased bc i’m a bit of a microbes nerd, but i had a blast with this. (but only bc we know going in that everything works out okay; if i hadn’t known that, i would have been TOO stressed!)

books that were a little less fun but still very readable:

my sister, the serial killer by oyinkan braithwaite (f)- i couldn’t find this as funny as other people bc i, too, have a beautiful sister who’s an insufferable narcissist, so it hits a little too close to home, but. it is a wild ride.

piranesi by susanna clarke (f)- idek what to say! i went into this one blind just bc it had a cool cover and title, so i guess i’d recommend that for other people too.

the sixth world series by rebecca roanhorse (f)- monster hunting! a post-apocalyptic take that doesn’t feel tired.

the shades of magic trilogy by v.e. schwab (f)- easy escapism. some ideas feel a little first draft-y, but idk, it’s also a pretty simple premise (which isn’t a bad thing). it’s a decent urban fantasy set in ~georgian?-era london. very actiony. suffers from a bit of i’m-not-like-other-girls disease, but i didn’t even notice until book two or three, so.

the only good indians by stephen graham jones (f)- starts off a little ??? (and reeks of being Written By A Man) but picks up. the pacing’s great and there’s just a super fucking cool monster.

robopocalypse by daniel h. wilson (f)- this reads like a tv miniseries so much that i can’t believe it isn’t one yet.

confessions of the fox by jordy rosenberg (f)- not my usual cup of tea, fiction-wise, but still compelling. a fresh take on the white-male-english-professor-self-insert? but not insufferable. gets weird!

spinning silver by naomi novik (f)- rumplestilstkin, but make it interesting! a great, richly-told fairy tale, but like, large scale. good to read on a cold day while you’re wrapped up in a blanket with some hot tea.

interior chinatown by charles yu (f)- compulsively readable. a couple things bugged me, but not enough to make me dislike it. a fun companion piece to how to live safely in a science fictional universe. i like this guy’s style.

cannibalism by bill schutt (nf)- COOL. mostly covers the animal kingdom (fun), spends too much time on the donner party (less fun), ends with a SPICY take on prions that i cannot get out of my head!!!

buzz, sting, bite by anne sverdrup-thygeson (nf)- BUGS! broad but not overwhelming, neither dumbed down nor overly scientific, short enough to finish in a day or two. recommend this to literally everyone.

books that made me want to read everything else in the author’s ouevre:

the time invariance of snow by e. lily yu (f)- this FUCKS but it’s too short!!!

an unkindness of ghosts by rivers solomon (f)- okay this book is SO good and so well-written and interesting and blah blah blah all the good things, but... the whole time, i was just like?? why???? why is this what you’re choosing to write about??? (i did also read the deep and blood is another word for hunger after this one, and i did like them both, especially the latter, but i think they can do better! like i think they could write a perfect book and i am gonna be *eyes emoji* until then.)

the space between worlds by micaiah johnson (f)- a fine debut novel, but i want to see her do something a little more... idk, refined? i think she overreaches here, like it’s a little... idk looper? this is how you lose the time war? there’s a better comparison, but i can’t think of it, but you get the idea. and then halfway through it shifts gears to mad max. there’s something weird about one of the central relationships, like it’s not complex enough to take as long to resolve as it does. idk idk. there are just a lot of little nitpicky things. it’s not bad! but i think she can do better and i look forward to finding out.

postcolonial love poem by natalie diaz (p)- thinky! like i tried to read this before bed, but it’s not the sort of thing to parse out while you’re falling asleep, it requires more attention than that.

books that Learned Me Somethin:

smoke gets in your eyes by caitlin doughty (nf)- i am a self-professed death obsessed weirdo, fascinated by death and mourning, but i didn’t know all that much about what happens to a body between the dying and the funeral! this book isn’t big, but it covers a lot and doughty’s writing style is engaging and honest. it’s very memorable.

queer by meg-john barker and julia scheele (nf)- i’m gonna be totally honest and say Queer Theory is above my intellectual pay grade, but this book takes you by the hand and explains the basics.

vitamania by catherine price (nf)- LMAO my fellow americans, never take a supplement. this book is great and well-researched, but normal folks don’t need to read it, just listen to season two of the dream podcast, which definitely cribbed from this.

vegetable kingdom by bryant terry (nf)- this is a fine cookbook, my favorite of his that i’ve read so far. gets a special mention bc i had a religious experience just reading one of his kohlrabi recipes. absolutely gutted that i didn’t have an opportunity to try it this year, since the pandemic put the kibosh on all family bbqs.

the best american food writing 2020 edited by j. kenji lopez-alt (nf)- this really is just a great collection.

are prisons obsolete? by angela y. davis (nf)- yes.

i moved to los angeles to work in animation by natalie nourigat (nf)- before reading this, i had basically zero knowledge of how the animation industry works. now i know like three things.

the secret lives of bats by merlin tuttle (nf)- BATS! okay this book is more about the adventures of being a bat scientist than it actually is about bats, but there are bats in there. insectivorous bats basically shit glitter, you should know this.

books from valuable perspectives:

hood feminism by mikki kendall (nf)- a breakdown of who’s getting left out of feminist spaces, why that’s happening, and why it shouldn’t be happening.

all you can ever know by nicole chung (nf)- a (transracial) adoptee’s take on adoption and learning more about her birth family. the personal storytelling of this one really stuck with me.

motherhood so white by nefertiti austin (nf)- a single-mom-by-choice’s take on the foster system/adoption process. walks you through some things i always wondered about and some things i wouldn’t even have thought about.

this place by kateri akiwenzie-damm et al (? n/f)- i, like a lot of non- native americans, only know that history in broad strokes. getting this many highly specific stories in one dense and beautiful book felt like a lucky find. and taking that perspective into the future in the context of that history is v good.

empty by susan burton (nf)- eating disorder stories are important to me bc i care about food so much. this one is so relatable- not in its specificity, but rather its generality. it’s easy to empathize with her perspective because it’s like, Oh, i don’t have that exact problem, but i struggle with different problems in a very similar way. (feels like the opposite of roxane gay’s hunger, in a way.)

obit by victoria chang (p)- this exploration of grief is... woof.

short story collections are hard to evaluate bc you’ll never read one where every single story hits but i generally enjoyed these:

a thousand beginnings and endings edited by ellen oh and elsie chapman (f)

how long til black future month? by n.k. jemisin (f)

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado (f)

books i revisited:

the broken earth trilogy by n.k. jemisin (f)- i read the series backwards this time and like... i can’t really find any faults in these books, man. they’re just the best.

everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too by jomny sun (f... but is it really?)- half of this book’s sales are from me buying it for other people bc it’s the only way i know how to say i love you. i reread it every time just to make sure it still feels right and it always does.

other honorable mentions:

white is for witching by helen oyeyemi (f)- not to pit two bad bitches against each other, but this book does what akwaeke emezi’s freshwater was trying to do. it’s a little weird, a little haunted, a little of a lot of things. read this only in the dead of winter. (and with stephen rennicks’ score for the little stranger playing in the background.)

homie by danez smith (p)- there’s a lot going on here, but this just made me crack a smile a couple times in a way that no other book of poetry has ever done.

the murder of roger ackroyd and murder in mesopotamia by agatha christie (f)- That Bitch!

blues by nikki giovanni (p)- she sure has some Things To Say

the three-body problem by cixin liu (f)- interesting concepts, but... idk something’s missing? felt weirdly soulless to me. i’m probably not gonna read the sequels. but it did make some points!

the sisters of the winter wood by rena rossner (f)- i’m a slut for shapeshifting, okay. but this is a good fairy tale, it works!

parable of the sower by octavia butler (f)- i read this in march, when the pandemic was just kicking off and boy that was not the right time. def my least favorite of hers so far, but an octavia butler i don’t love is still better than a hell of a lot of other books. no idea when or if i’ll get to a good enough headspace for the sequel.

faves:

saturnino herrán by adriana zapett tapia (nf)- i got to learn new things about my mans and see some of his paintings i’ve never even seen online! GOSH.

on food and cooking by harold mcgee (nf)- yeah yeah, i’ve already mentioned this book half a dozen times on here this year, but i don’t care. this book lives off the shelf in my home bc i reference it like every other fucking day. this book is a part of me now.

#long post #final total for the year will be 120 by the end of the day!#and i had a pretty good hit rate. would probably recommend at least half #and only outright hated four

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bard-of-worlds · 4 years ago

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Truth Between Worlds Ch1 /It Begins

A black background, Danny is in the rubble of a building on his hands and knees as he seems to be struggling with pain as to his right Tucker is trying to get to him as to his left a giant stone Dragon is rearing its head back with its mouth open as the GIWS watch from behind Tucker wounded as Sam is behind them, a shadow with bat wings behind her.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

A white hared teen in a black jumpsuit with a black tail in place of his legs flew through the air over the town of Amity Park. Another slow night, nice. But I can’t help but fell something is coming, something that will change me. Danny thought as he flew. He shivered suddenly released a breath of cold air. He looked around and saw a ghost octopus flying towards the far right side of town and smirked. “Hello misplaced aggression!”

Danny flew after the ghost and smirked as he charged up a blast when suddenly the octopus dodged and fired back at him, hitting him and sending him falling before he caught himself and stabilized his flight.

“That’s new, they never did that before.” Danny said as he shot after the ghost, seeing it at the edge of his sight. He fired a few blasts and the ghost fired back and they flew downwards towards the ground and it reached down with its tentacles and grabbed a rock it threw at Danny who blasted it into dust but some of it got into his eyes. He rubbed it away but when he looked up he saw that the ghost had used his distraction to slip away.

He flew in the direction that it had gone and after a few moments he had reached a decrepit construction site that had been left abandon. This is great, a ghost octopus able to fire blasts and smart enough to find a way to distract me so it could get away, just wonderful! He thought as he looked around for a few more moments before scoffing and letting his legs reform and drop to the ground.

“I can’t believe that it got away from me, this is perfect Phantom, real good.” Danny muttered to himself as he looked around and looked around the site, down into the foundation and frowned, he took a step towards it when he suddenly went to a knee as his head started pounding. After a few moments he got back up and shook his head as the pain in his head lessened and he got his bearings. That was something, I mean I’ve been getting headaches for the last few weeks but that was even stronger than normal. I gotta get something

as he was about to investigate farther he heard what sounded like a car coming towards him. Not wanting to scare anyone or give any would be ‘groupies’ a chance to see him he went invisible and flew away, not bothering to stick around. A car drove by moments later and a light from a flashlight went around the construction site.

“Nothing, thought I saw something, must have been a my eyes playing tricks on me, well once tomorrow’s done I can either get some help or I can say goodbye to this place.” The drive said as he panned the light over the site and after a few passes back and forth he drove the car away and the site was left as it was before Danny and found it.

Within the foundation the ghost octopus had slipped into a cave and looked out into the darkness as the light panned over the darkness and grinned as it moved out of the cave and bounced off the opening. It looked confused before it went still as heat came from behind it.

“IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME SINCE FOOD HAS COME OF ITS OWN ACCORD.” A voice boomed behind it and the ghost turned around and screeched as it saw what was there.

Outside above around the construction site the screech died out and the few animals that were still around looked at the

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Danny sighed as he walked into Casper High, his head still bothering him. what the hell is wrong with me, I mean I haven’t felt like this since just after the accident! Danny thought before he looked around and spotted the busses were dropping kids off and heading towards the back of the school. “Of course that half day and trip, they must be waiting until it’s time to leave, hope they’ve got a book to read.”

Danny sighed before he walked in, hoping his headache would go down. As he moved through the school towards his locker, he dodged the other students and paid them no more mind then they did him. After dodging Dash and his fellow football jocks bothering a band member Danny reached his locker and had just finished getting ready for class when suddenly….

“Hey Danny.” A voice from behind him caused him to turn and see a girl his age with light skin, black hair, purple lips and violet eyes with a black choker around her neck, a black tank top that exposed her midriff with a purple oval in the center, black striped skirt with a green crosshatch design, purple leggings, and black combat boots. She had on a pair of black bracelets around both of her wrists. She looked tired and her eyes looked like she had been crying and Danny felt his heart break a little as he looked at her. I can’t believe this, she doesn’t deserve any of this! Her parents are slime and only care about appearances and now this, her only alley in the family? I don’t care what I will after to do I will help her however I can! Danny thought as he fought to keep his feelings from showing and kept his face kind.

“Hey Sam, I guess the news is bad.” Danny said as Sam nodded as she tried to gather herself back together and sighed.

“Grandma has maybe a few days left according to her, the doctors think it will be longer and then there’s the fact that she wants to talk to me today after school.” Sam said and Danny looked at her and Sam looked away. “Strange as it is, she’s at peace with it.”

Danny looked at her concerned and worried about just what was else bothering her, knowing that she wouldn’t look away because of what was happening to her grandmother. “Sam what is it? You know you can tell me if anything is bother you.”

“Yeah….. is it bad that I’m so scared that my parents might send me away to a boarding school to turn me into a 60’s housewife once she’s dead? ” Sam asked and Danny shook his head.

“No Sam, it’s not.” Danny said and put a hand on her face and smiled at her. “People are complicated, that’s a truth I’ve learned over my life and about my other secret."

“Thanks Danny.” Sam said as she looked at him and sighed. “I…. can you come with me after school, Grandma asked me to bring someone I trusted with me.”

Danny looked away and blushed. “I’m honored that you trust me.”

Sam looked away with a blush and smirked, trying to play it off. “Why shouldn’t I? And what’s wrong with that you?”

“Headache since my run last night and the kalamari I had for a snack almost went down the wrong pipe.” Danny said with a scowl and Sam sighed.

“Again? That’s a bad sign.” Sam said and Danny chuckled and grinned at her.

“Hey Guys!” A cheerful voice caused them to turn and see Tucker, an African-American teen with turquoise eyes, black hair, and black glasses. He had on a long-sleeve yellow shirt and green cargo pants with a black belt and brown boots along with a red beret and a backpack. “Isn’t it great that we have a half day, and because of Vlad of all people! And there’s a sale at the Tech-Shack that starts after lunch so life is good!”

“Tucker, get real.” Sam scoffed and Tucker frowned and looked at Danny who stared stonily back. They didn’t notice the new school janitor move closer to them, close enough that he could hear what they were saying.

“What I miss?” Tucker asked in total confusion and Danny sighed as Sam face palmed at his obviousness.

“Why would Vlad give us a half day?” Danny asked and Tucker frowned and looked from Danny to Sam

“I don’t know, why?” Tucker asked in total confusion. “Is he trying to score points with Danny or some other reason?”

“So Danny could be there if something happens.” Sam answered with her arms crossed and Tucker’s mouth dropped open.

“Oh, I did not see that. Okay let’s see if I can find anything about the building they’re taking down.” Tucker said with a shrug as he brought out a PDA and started to type. “Done! By the time the bus leaves I should have something about what’s being destroyed.”

“That’s the best we can do, we just have to hope this is just another business thing and not an other thing.” Danny said with a scowl as Sam sighed.

“Why do you think he’s trying to score points with Danny?” Sam asked and Tucker grinned.

“Well there is the weekend cruise next week remember?” Tucker asked and Sam sighed as Tucker started to stare into space, knowing exactly what he was thinking about. “The ship has free wifi, the best food and a two pools, one inside and outside! I can’t wait until I can see the girls in their suites!”

Sam snorted and was about to say something however before she could speak some called out from behind them

“Ahh miss Samantha, there you are on this gloomy day.” The voice caused the three friends to turn to see three teens their age walk towards them, a boy leading two girls. Each of them was what most people would consider ‘goths’, pale and a somber air about them but Danny wasn’t too sure about that, something about that wasn’t ringing true to him. The boy was Bob ‘Belphegor’ Jonson, a tall teen with black hair and eyes and always dressed in black cloths with a black coat that went to his knees. To his right was a red head girl with a curvy body in a black shirt and skirt that was only one inch longer then regulations and she hair in a bun while in school but they had seen her about town with her hair down to her waist and she seemed to always have red painted bedroom eyes above blood red lips and talked with a sensual purr to her voice and while she had been named Helen but preferred the name Hecate. To Belhegor’s left was a blond haired girl with blue eyes, black lips and the same figure as Hecate who wore a red shirt and tight black pants and her hair short and was named Lyla, but only answered to Lamashtu.

“Wonderful, Bobby and his bimbos, just what this day needed to start it!” Sam said as she glared at the three other ‘goths’ as Paulina always called them. The three had been trying to get her to join their ‘coven’ for years, ever since puberty they had been after her with more fever.

“Oh Sam, why won’t you come and embrace your true self?” Lamashtu asked as Sam glared at them and snorted.

“Your way, is not mine.” Sam said and Belphegor smiled in what he felt was inviting but made Sam shudder and caused Danny to glare at him.

“But it could be your way my dear, all it takes is to but take a single step and invite the change in.” Belphegor said with a smirk and reached out with a hand towards her but dropped it when Sam glared at him.

“I think I know my path better then you.” Sam said and Lamasthu giggled.

“But then they say no fool is like the fool who’s lost their way.” Lamasthu said as Hecate laughed as Belphegor sighed and shook his head.

“Well this time my dear I will let you go without showing you the truth, but you will learn it one day.” Belphegor said and Danny looked at him with a hard look.

“Sam is allowed her own choices, and I’ll be helping her make them, every step.” Danny said and Sam looked at him with a smile that Hecate saw and scowled.

“Come Belphegor, let’s leave the poser with the normals.” Hecate said with a sensual purr and as she turned away, a scoel on her face. That one has always been different since that accident a year ago, but this is pto much! Will we have to break their relationship before we can finally gain a fourth? She thought as she add a swing in her step that drew the eyes of the other boys beside Danny as the blond laughed musically as she walked away.

“Your right, Hecate, Lamashtu. We have better things to do with our time before 2nd period.” Belphegor said as he turned

“What about 1st?” Tucker asked and Belphegor snickered as they walked away.

“Study hall.” Hecate called out as the three walked away as she and Lamasthu laughed.

As soon as they were out of hearing Lamasthu scowled and it kept all her voice low. “Why can’t that girl understand we are the people she should be with, she looks so sexy I so want to see her after we’re through rocking her world!”

“And she’s a brunet, we so need one in the group!” Hecate said with a pout and Belphor laughed a little.

“Don’t worry my pets.” Belephor said as he put an arm around both of the girls and started to smirk. “I have a feeling that soon that will happen.”

Back with Danny, Sam and Tucker Sam stared at them as they walked off before scowling and slamming her locker closed.

“I don’t know why I don’t slug that bastard and his bitches!” Sam snarled as she clenched her fists. “Or better yet, send the GIW after them! There has to be a way to send them!”

“Calm down Sam, I get it.” Danny said smoothly. “I hate Joseph too, have for years. And ever since he ‘realized who he is’ I’ve always felt he was slim, but let’s not give the teachers a chance to actually do something to us, and we have a half day because of that Vlad thing.”

“There’s that at least, all we have to do is see a speech and then I can get to the hospital.” Sam said as she smirked and Tucker chuckled a little. “What is it Tucker?”

“Nothing, it’s what Danny said. The teachers probably punish the rest of the school because they have to do something to control the school after being up the A-List’s assess, I wonder what Dash’s smells like?” Tucker said with a laugh as they walked to class, none of the three noticing the new janitor had overheard them and was scowling at what he had heard.

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A black limo pulled up to a building on the edge of town and as soon as it stopped a man with short white hair and a goatee got out and wearing a black suit with a scowl on his face got out and walked towards a foreman before three Bulldozers and two backhoes and a standing before a gate connected to a stone wall, a four story house painted brown could be seen through it, the building had black stone gargoyles on it, at least ten a story with a large one on the roof with a few stone heads pointed over the wall here and there.

“Mayor Masters, hey. Look I know we should have gotten the wall down but.” The foreman began when the black suited man exploded

“Why haven’t you started yet?! This place is part of the new industrial park and we need to break ground within weeks!” Vlad Masters barked and the foreman looked over his shoulder behind him and Vlad looked and was able to see an old man standing between the machines and the wall holding onto a grey walker. “Of course, him!”

The old man huffed and puffed as Vlad walked towards him and glared at him. “I don’t care what you say, this land is mine! As long as I breath I will protect this place!”

“I offered you a perfect settlement and then I had to pass a motion that forced the issue, you don’t even live in there!” Vlad said as he looked at the man who glared back.

“I’m not supposed to live in it, I’m supposed to protect! As long as I live I will protect the……..” The man began before he went still and fell backwards. Vlad looked at the man laying down before he dropped to his side and felt for a pulse. Finding none he tried to get the man’s heart beating but after a few moments he stopped and sighed and shook his head.

“Mayor Masters?” The Foreman aksed as Vlad walked away and looked tired.

“Call an ambiance, this man was right, as long as she drew breath she protected this place.” Vlad said solemnly before he stopped and looked around as he thought he heard a roar from a long distance away. Looking around Vlad saw the other workers were spooked as well, and given how the town was that was saying something on its own.

“Did you hear something sir?” The foreman asked and Vlad shook his head.

“No, I didn’t hear anything.” Vlad said as he reached out with his senses and didn’t feel anything at all like a ghost beyond the few traces that he had left for the law he had made to have this place fall under his new law. I never thought that the old man would die like this, but all in all good for me! I’ll use a quarter of the money to give him a nice funeral and then……….why am I having a problem believing that this will be something simple, why do I think that this will cause more problems than I know? Vlad thought as he looked around and moved towards the podium being set up. “Why do I have the feeling that I should contact the GIWS sooner or later?”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

“Move it people, calm and orderly, first ones go to the back, we full up a bus we go to the next, we’ve got all of them so don’t worry there’s room for all.” Mr. Lancer , a bald man in a blue shirt and black pants and a goatee said loudly and as Danny came out of the school with his backpack on and looked around the yard and saw that the A-Listers, were staying towards the school’s front doors, waiting until they could sit up front and the new janitor watching them.

“Of course they do the something they always do, use the system against us.” Sam muttered as she stood there with her own backpack and Danny laughed a little. “Hey where’s Tucker?”

“Said something about grabbing a book, his search bot should be finished and there he is.” Danny said as he looked around and saw Tucker walking towards them with his backpack in one of his hands. “Hey Tuck, got by without Dash seeing you?”

“Guys, I found something on a blog about the city’s myths and history, it’s something.” Tucker said ignoring what Danny had said, something that caused looks of concern to be shared between Sam and Danny.

“Hey guys, want to sit together?” A voice caused them to turn and see Valarie Grey, an African-American girl with long, curly hair and dark green eyes and a little curvy figure and was wearing yellow sleeveless shirt and orange skirt with white tennis shoes and had two bracelets on each wrist, one yellow and the other orange. She had been an A-Lister until her dad lost his security company when a ghost dog that his one of his customers had trained and used as a security system until Valarie’s dad had a more high tech replacement and the whole pack had been put down. The dogs spirits had merged together into the ghost dog, Cujo as Danny called and it had rampaged until it recovered it’s favorite toy. Unfortunately Vlad had found out about how Valarie blamed everything on ghosts and given her a high tech suit and she had been on a one woman crusade against all the ghosts in the world, until Danny had to destroy it but it had been upgraded by Technus. Since then she been a terror for any ghost that fell into Amity Park, from accidents to attackers all were her enemy and subject to destruction, Danny couldn’t count the number of times he had to save ‘good’ ghosts from her, but recently it had spike to once every other day, and he didn’t want to know if she delivered some to Vlad he never heard about.

“Hey Val, didn’t think you weren’t going?” Sam asked and Valarie shrugged.

“Yeah well my dad might become the head of security to the complex while it’s being worked on so I might as well go and see what it is.” Valarie

“Miss Valarie, with my please!” Lancer called out . “Next Bus!”

“And Lancer is on my case lately.” Valarie said as she walked off and Danny frowned.

“Think Lancer and the others are stepping up protecting the A-Listers more than normal?” Sam asked and scoffed when Danny looked at her. “Come on, this has to be because she defended that girl a few days ago from Paulina.”

“The new girl, Kimiko right?” Danny asked as the three friends moved towards one of the buses, hoping to keep Lancer or any of the teachers from noticing them.

“Yeah, I mean I always thought they were just bad teachers, but maybe they’re just sell outs.” Sam said as she eyed the few teachers around them and Danny felt his headache spike and kept a sigh in as he realized that Sam might be onto something. “But what’d you find Tucker?”

“Come on, I’ll tell you the bus.” Tucker said and moved towards the bus and they were soon in the back and noticed that they had the fewest students as the A-Listers claimed a bus for themselves and Danny shook his head as the convoy of buses started.

“Okay, this was…..interesting.” Tucker said as the bus moved off. “The demolition is in the area of the city that was called, Rich Clan Road, a kind of gated community that was proposed about one hundred years ago.” Tucker said and looked at Danny and Sam. “But after the first three buildings were finished the development fell through and the company went under, the three houses did have residents lined up but all three families died and then the houses were in limbo beyond a single caretaker. But until about twenty years ago people would always report seeing lights from the buildings, and the one that Vlad is flattening was the first finished.”

“Anything else?” Sam asked and Tucker looked concerned. “Tucker……”

“Okay, okay.” Tucker said and released a deep breath. “A while back I wanted to look into old town legends, there’s a story about how people would hear a strange roar once or twice a year that started about thirty-five years ago but stopped twenty years ago. The tale goes that it started after a circus came through town burned down, and they never found all the animals or attractions; among them was a supposed lion; a lion cub that responded to orders otherworldly if you know what I mean and what’s worse is that the records of missing pets dropped drematicly around here twenty years ago to .”

“Oh hell.” Danny said and Sam winced; once or twice they had seen some of the Zone’s ‘animals’ feeding on each other and self-aware ghosts. And what was worse was he had found a few ghost ‘Animal’ eating from garbage or dead birds in Amity Park . From what Frostbite said that was normal and a reason for Kingdoms to gather to gather, to protect themselves as Lairs could be broken into if the ‘animal’ was strong enough.

“And Freakshow proved that people can control ghosts.” Sam said and then went still. “Twenty years, both stopped twenty years ago?”

“Right after the Fenton family moved in with their ghost tech, yeah.” Tucker said and Danny winced.

“Okay, so what about after they made their greatest invention?” Danny asked and Tucker shook his head knowing what Danny meant.

“No sightings at all, not surprising really. Only person even went there, until about three months ago when Vlad passed a law that any abandoned house that hasn’t been lived in where ghosts are detected is to be demolished to ‘chase away any spectres’.” Tucker said and Sam sighed. “Yeah, those are my thoughts exactly.”

“So Vlad wants to do something with the land, any ideas?” Sam asked and Tucker looked down.

“It’s supposed to be a new industrial park.” Tucker said and held up a hand to cut Sam off. “And before you say anything about it, while only the first three buildings were finished, the other lots were cleared of all plants and they all have at most half-finished buildings and were left to grow wild.”

“Anything about that circus?” Danny asked as he looked out the window and frowned. Wait, I’ve seen some of these structures before….. Danny thought as he started to feel worried.

“Nothing, it was long ago but I checked the Index of Circus, government agency to keep an eye on those things, don’t ask why, but nothing.” Tucker said and shook his head. “But something about that name……. I don’t know.”

“What name?” Danny asked as he looked ahead and frowned as his mind was recognizing the general location but he wasn’t exactly sure how.

“The name of the circus, I don’t know……. “ Tucker said with a shrug. “I’ll look over the name and see what my database back home has.”

“You have a database?” Sam asked and Danny turned his head and looked at Tucker who grinned.

“Custom built, got the parts from the salvage lard, I head there once a week and get a few pieces to sell online, built up a good offline system.” Tucker said with a smirk. Danny listened with one ear as he felt that strange feeling he had last night and then as the bus turned a corner he realized where they were going.

“Oh hell.” Danny breathed and Sam and Tucker turned to him in concern. “This is….”

“Danny?” Sam asked as she put a hand on his shoulder and Tucker looked at him.

“This is where I started to get sick last night on my walk.” Danny said and Sam eye’s widened and Tucker looked between them

“How’s you get sick?” Tucker said and Danny looked around before he spoke.

“Calamari that I had for a snack last night.” Danny answered and Tucker winced and looked around the street as the buses stopped and looked at the construction machines. As the buses stopped Danny could see a news van with a reporter setting up and he wondered if the school was here for a publicity stunt for Vlad.

“Well maybe this won’t be so bad.” Tucker said as they got out of the buses and looked towards Vlad standing before a podium. Danny said nothing, he just looked around before going still, causing Tucker to walk into him. Following Danny’s eyes Sam and Tucker found what Danny had, an ambulance that was driving away and without its lights on, the sign that whoever it was carrying was dead.

“Hey Fen-turd, you and your losers have a fun time so far?” A nasal voice caused Danny to scowl as he turned and saw the A-Listers coming towards them in their usual arrogant swagger. Leading the way was Dash Baxter the quarterback of the football team, a musical blond teen with blue eyes in a red-and-white letterman jacket, with a black t-shirt underneath and dark blue jeans and white shoes. Next to him was Paulina, the captain of the cheerleaders; a tan skinned Latino girl with curly black hair that went to her waist had a seductive figure. She was wearing her usual cloths, a pink shirt that reveals her midriff, light denim capri pants and white flats.

“You know I expected them to be up front you know?” Kwan said. Kwan was an Asian teen with black hair and eyes and was wearing the same clothing as Dash and next to him was Star, another cheerleader with a figure like Paulina and had hips-length golden blonde hair with spiky bangs and turquoise eyes and was wearing a white T-shirt with a thin orange collar, orange cuffs, and a backwards P in the middle, dark orange jeans, and white flats.

“Just ignore them guys, they don’t matter at all.” Danny said as he started to move and ignored them, after the last year he had finally wised up and thrown the ideas about the school social hierarchy was nothing but trash.

“What was that Fen-turd!” Dash growled and Danny just waved him off. “Running away with your tail between your legs like that sister of yours, always running her mouth!”

Paulina giggled a little but stopped when she saw Star had paled and turned and saw Danny slowly turn, a hard edge in his eyes that scared and shocked her.

“If it isn’t the Asshole-Listers I didn’t hear you, how have you been lately, forced some students to do your homework or something?” Danny asked sarcastically and Dash actually looked shocked and Sam smirked.

“Now Danny; don’t taunt the stupid.” Sam said with a cold edge to her smile as she looked at them, glad that Danny had finally decided to let loose. “After all this is the best they will ever have it, once they’re out of school it’s all downhill.”

Paulina looked at Sam and Danny as they seemed to exclude a sense of rage and danger as she tried to catch her breath and suddenly Star was in front of her.

“Guys, I know Dash went a little far with that, but let’s not give the teachers something alright?” Star asked with big eyes and Danny calmed down and looked at Sam who nodded and they walked away.

Vlad looked over the students and then he saw Danny and his friends move away from the A-Listers and he smirked as he caught enough of the reaction between Danny and the so called popular crowd that he could only smile, Danny was so much like him that once he tour him away from Jack and Maddie was his it wouldn’t be too long that he’d have a perfect heir.

“Everyone can hear me, this is on?” Vlad asked into the mike and as he heard his magnified voice he smirked. “Excellent. This place has been a blight on Amity Park for years, a gaping wound on our city that time has finally caused to be healed, and it’s going to be a major part of our future! This is the site of the new technology park, a development that will bring in new jobs and new members of our family once construction is finished! I don’t have to tell you that chance can be terrifying, but it can also be a good thing!”

Vlad looked at the students as they looked at him, a smirk threatening to break out on his face as he saw Danny and Sam both trying to figure out what he was after. Poor little badger, you wouldn’t understand my plan until it’s done. After all this is chess, and I am just making my opening moves. Vlad thought with a grin. “This place was never finished, the people these houses were meant for died before they even stepped into them, so let us watch as we return this place to history! Start the construction of the newest part of Amity Park!”

At Vlad’s scream the bulldozers started and as the students cheered they crashed into the wall and revealed an overgrown garden with over twenty black stone statues of gargoyles at least five feet tall here and there, some on stands of white rock. Each gargoyle had bat wings on their backs, clawed three fingered hands and two clawed feet and mouths barred in grins of savage looking teeth.

Danny looked at the statues as the bulldozers moved towards them and frowned.

“You think Vlad would want to recover the statues at least, maybe sell them at an auction or something.” Sam said and then Danny went still and paled. “Danny?”

“Dude?” Tucker asked and Danny shook his head.

“Guys, move slowly towards one of the buses, now.” Danny said calmly. “I think I saw one of those statues move its head.”

Sam and Tucker looked at each other and moved backwards slowly, hoping that Danny was wrong this once but knowing differently. As one of the bulldozers speed up and charged at one of the statues it suddenly came to an abrupt stop as soon as it hit the gargoyle. The drive could only look on in confusion that turned to horror as the statue turned its head to look at him before it roared and flared its wings.

As soon as the first gargoyle roared the others started to screech and move, some taking flight and flying at the crowed who screamed and ran towards the buses.

“Keep moving, get to the buses!” Lancer roared and looked around when he realized that Valarie was gone from his sight. Danny was lost in the rush, pulled away from Sam and Tucker who had gotten onto a bus and as Dash, Paulina and Kwan piled onto a bus and Dash closed the doors, locking it in place As one of the teens pounded on the door a gargoyle came towards them but as it reared back a blast of red energy hit it and sent it flying away.

“GET AWAY FROM THEM!!” A voice roared as the Valarie in her Red Huntress guise, her black and red armored form riding her hoverboard appeared from above the bus and started to fire away at the gargoyles and the teens cheered, especially when Valarie shot the locked door and it fell inward. The other teens climbed into the bus, most of them glaring at Dash, Paulina and Kwan, Star amongst them. As the drive climbed into his seat he looked at the kids and saw that he was over capacity and cursed himself for what he was about to do.

“EVERYONE HOLD ON!!” As the words died down the bus drive started to drive, the other bus following him as the other teens who couldn’t get on ran after them, some cars the construction crews and the single news van following behind them, the back doors open and full of teens who grabbed those who couldn’t get on

Danny saw the bus’s carrying his friends away from the battle from the side ally where he had ducked into when he had gotten to the back of the pack and willed a white ring that spilt in two and transformed him into his Phantom form and shot into the air and blasted a gargoyle that had attacked Valarie’s back. Valarie heard the explosion and scowled when she saw Danny hover there firing at the other ghosts as far as she was concerned.

“Phantom! I knew you had to be behind this!” Valarie snarled as Danny looked at her with an exasperated look.

“Of course, because I’m blasting what I control, sure it’s all part of my plan!” Danny said sacristy and went intaglable to avoid a gargoyle but it shoulderslammed him anyway and carried him to the ground. He looked up as it reared back but Valarie shot it’s head off.

“I’m the only one who gets to destroy you spook!” Valarie spat as she flew at another gargoyle and used the energy blade between it to cut off its head and as the head roared at her the body decomposed. The head is still ‘alive’ but the body was destroyed., so headshots! Valarie thought as she started to fire at the heads of the gargoyles but only two went down. “What the hell?!”

A roar caused Danny to look towards it and see thirty more gargoyles coming towards them, ten of them hovering in front of the mansion as the other twenty charged at them. “What, are they protecting that place, why?!”

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Vlad meanwhile had gotten to his limo drove off, setting in the back as he watched from a drone he had launched as he had left, scowling as he watched the feed. “Oh I do hate it when I’m right about this, I can only hope that the area won’t be too damaged once this is done.”

Vlad looked upwards as he heard the sound of jet engines and smirk. “Well let’s see what will happen when the GIWs come out to play!”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Danny dodged another blow from one of the flying Gargoyles and stole a look at Valarie and saw twelve GIW skysleds with four loaded out for bombardment and cursed. “HUNTRESS, UP NOW GIW BOMBARBMENT INCOMEING!”

Danny shot skyward and Valarie looked at him for a second before willing her board to climb skyward as well and moments before that happened missiles hit the gargoyles and the mansion, covering all of them and the mansion in an explosion that almost caused Valarie to be blown from her board.

“What the hell?” Valarie breathed and looked and saw the mansion had been destroyed but the gargoyles had gone still and they had turned towards the mansion, the missiles having turned it into rubble, the stone creatures not moving. Those stone things are still, was the mansion the source of their life? What the hell are they, they can’t be ghosts but what? Valarie asked as she moved her board forward an inch before a bolt of blue energy flew past her.

“FREEZE!!!” A voice barked from the direction of the other skysleds and Valarie turned and saw four skysleds face her and she stared as she saw that their weapons were pointed at her and she grew angry as she tried to comprehend

“What the hell are you doing, I’m not a ghost!!” Valarie said as she looked at the GIWs who only looked at her and tried to figure out what they were doing.

“Red Huntress by order of the Federal Anti-Ecto Control Act, Article 4, Section 2, subsection B you are under arrest!” Operative K, a brown skinned bald man in the uniform of the GIWs, a white suite with black tie, black gloves, boots and black sunglasses said as others GIWs aimed at her as four skysleds aimed at Danny as he hovered there and formed two blasts with his hands.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Valarie demanded as she prepared herself to react to whatever the GIWs did next.

“The Anti-Ecto Control Acts also limits what hunters can use.” Danny said as he looked at the GIWs and scowled. “Maybe even how many ghosts one can capture, it’s all about control with them.”

“Quite ghost. Surrender for experiments, lots of painful experiments.” Operative K said and Valarie went pale as she heard that.

“Experiments?” Valarie said pale and her eyes dilated and then she gritted her teeth as parts of her family history flashed through her eyes and she prepared herself to go down fighting at least when suddenly…..

“RROOOOAAAR!!” A savage roar came from the mansion and as the rubble was flung away and a dust cloud covered the land. As they watched two large wings made of black stone suddenly burst out of the clouds, a black stone serpentine head on a long neck connected to a body with a crest and four long legs with that ended in four clawed hands and a tail that ended in a spiked ball, a black stone dragon as long as the mansion was that roared and fired a blast of black energy from its mouth at the bombardment skysleds as twenty of the gargoyles screeched and shot towards the GIWs while the rest of them charged after the buses.

“Procedure Omega operatives!” Operative K barked and the GIWS began firing against the charging gargoyles that swarmed closer and started to claw at their foes and destroyed a few of the sky sleds sending GIWs falling to the ground. Danny could only look at the carnage and swallow. This is beyond anything I could have imagined happening today! Wait those others are going into town! Danny thought as he looked around and then looked towards the center of town.

“Huntress, go after the gargoyles heading into town, go and protect the people! I’ll try and handle this but just go!” Danny called to Valarie who looked at him and readied her gun as she looked at him as the GIWs tried to handle the Gargoyles.

“And why should I listen to a ghost?” Valarie barked and looked at the gargoyles as they moved into town. But he’s right damn it! if regular people are hurt and I could have stopped it from happening! She thought as she grimaced before scowling at Danny. “Fine! But not because I agree with you ghost!”

As Valarie flew away Operative K saw and overheard everything and notice the treason of the Red Huntress before a gargoyle roared and charged at him but he dodged it and saw that he had lost all of his bombardment sleds and two of the others. “All forces fall back, contact base and request all operatives to sortie!”

As the GIWs fell back, Danny stayed and fought on, blasting apart ten of the gargoyles before the Stone Dragon took notice and roared, taking flight and charging at him. Danny dodged to the left and three gargoyles slammed him to the ground. As he struggled to get free he looked up and saw the Stone Dragon hovering, its head pointed at him and its mouth open as it built up a charge.

Danny tried to struggle free but after a few moments he realized he couldn’t and tried to figure out how to survive. Think Phantom, think! How can you get out of this how can you…….Danny went still as he realized just what he had to do.

“One chance!” he called out as the Dragon released its blast as he went intangible moments before it hit and the blast destroyed the Gargoyles and sent him down and into the ground, but Vlad’s drone didn’t see him as the explosion kept what was happening from its sight.

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Smash. A glass dropped from Vlad’s hand as he watched with widened eyes as the Dragon took flight and the Gargoyles followed after it. I can’t believe this, so that thing was able to best him. and it’s coming into town! Vlad thought as he quickly pressed a button and sighed when he heard a siren in the distance and saw people look up and start running towards the nearest safe location, cars all moving in the same direction as they abandoned everything else to get to safety.

“Well at least the public safety announcements worked.” Vlad muttered as the limo entered into a garage attached to town hall and he moved towards his office to handle this, smiling as the security guards the GIWs had trained moved to prepare to defend the seat of government. “Maybe I should look into getting a station set up near the school……….. in a weak they’ll probably have enough on the teachers there to blackmail and get those people blacklisted.”

Vlad walked into his office and looked at his secretary who was waiting for him.

“The shields are up at all shelters sir, the GIWs just contacted us, all operatives have been deployed and the police are getting whoever remains to the safe zones.” She said as she walked into the office after Vlad, the glow of the shield visible through the windows.

“And them?” Vlad asked as he sat down and called up a holographic screen with a map of the town showing the shelters and the Gargoyles path into the city. He frowned as he looked at the screen and frowned.

“The Fenton’s contacted us and that they’re taking their Assault Vehicle to backup the GIWs.” She said and she looked out the window and took a step back, Vlad frowned before he heard the sound of blasters firing and he realized the stone creatures had reached the town hall.

“Do activate the secondary defenses, and call me if something changes.” Vlad said as the woman nodded before running away and the doors closed automatically. The ringing of his phone caused him to look at it and sigh when he saw the number.

“Ahh Amy! It’s a little bit of a problem, you missed something when you looked over the property, it seems the town is under attack by a flock of stone Gargoyles led by a Dragon of all things!” Vlad said and listened to the reply. “Yes I’m sure the town can survive the problem, the GIWS are out in force and I expect him to handle this the second time.”

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Danny shook his head as he got up from where he had fallen. “Okay Phantom, that wasn’t the worst thing that you’ve ever been hit by, so walk it off! Now where am I?”

Danny looked around and beyond a few slivers of light from above it was completely dark. Danny formed a ball of energy and as the light from it chased away the darkness he saw he was in a natural cavern with a large mass at least five feet tall at least twenty feet away from him that Danny saw move up and down slowly and rhythmically. Yikes, that’s something. If it didn’t react to me then and the chaos above its sleeping deep! And speaking of upstairs I need to get back to it! Danny thought as he silently flew upwards and hit a barrier as he reached the celling. “What the hell?!”

“This is?” Danny muttered to himself as he felt along a strange barrier that kept him from moving through the stone. Okay, this is acting like the ‘Zone, but this is the human world, so how do I get around this? I mean how on earth could someone make this place impassable for ghosts one way but not the other…….. that’s a mouse trap or a prison……wait prisons have prisoners….. Danny’s thoughts trailed off as realized just where he was.

“YOU CAN NOT LEAVE THIS PLACE HALFLING, ONE ONLY MAY LEAVE.” A rumbling voice caused Danny to turn and stare. The mass was unrolling into a large brown lion at least ten feet tall with a mane of crimson flames and claws of black obsidian, two tails that ended in rubies that blazed with a crimson light and it had two eyes of jade flames and saber fangs of obsidian. “THIS PLACE HAS BEEN MY PRISON FOR MANY YEARS NOW, BUT WITH YOU I MIGHT FINALLY HAVE ENOUGH ENERGY TO ESCAPE!”

“Okay, so how can I help you get us out of here?” Danny asked causing the lion to chuckle. “What’s so funny?”

“YOU MAY WILL HELP ME BY BEING MY FOOD HALFLING, AS ALL OF YOU HALFLINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE.” The brown lion said bluntly and Danny pales more and looked at the creature as it slowly padded towards him, moving away from it.

“With me, wait you want to eat me?!” Danny said as the creature nodded its head as it stalked towards him. Wonderful, first a stone dragon and now a giant lion wants to eat me! he thought as he looked around, trying to find any hint of a way to escape.

“YES, SINCE I ESCAPED FROM MY FORMER CAPTIVES I HUNTED THE FLESH OF THE LOW BORN HERE AND GREW STRONGER AND THEN HUNTED THE HIGHBORN UNTIL A MIDDLE BORN TRAPPED ME HERE AND SIPHONED OFF MY POWER TO CREATE THOSE THAT ATTACK THE MIDDLE BORN ABOVE US.” The lion rumbled and Danny prepared himself for a fight, the lion only looked resigned. “THEN YOU WILL NOT LET ME SLAY YOU SWIFTLY THEN.”

“Sorry but I have a real problem with helping those who try and kill me!” Danny said as he took flight and the lion looked at him with what Danny thought might have been respect.

“THEN SO BE IT. KNOW THAT I AM VOLEO! LET US DO THE ONLY DANCE THAT MATERS, THE DANCE OF BATTLE AND EVOLUTION!!!” Voleo called ut and charged at Danny, throwing two orbs of fire from its tails that he shot and dodged as he flew about the top of the cavern, taking shots that didn’t faze his foe. Voleo looked at Danny and flicked its tails until it had formed twenty fireballs that it sent at him.

Danny scowled as he sped up and dodged the fireballs as he tried to figure out a way to defeat this thing. My running blasts aren’t doing anything, if I can charge a shot then maybe but I’ve never really tried to charge it while I was moving! Still first time for anything! Danny thought as he flew and cupped a hand, forcing a blast but letting his energy build up instead of releasing as it reach the maximum he fired it, hitting Voleo’s right hind leg and blasting it off, causing the ‘lion’ to stumble and fall to the ground.

“YES!” Danny called out with a smirk that fell when the leg flew back towards Voleo body and remerged with it as it got back to its feet. “No.”

It looked at him with a tense air for a few seconds before it reared back and slammed it’s front legs down and four spears of rock flew at Danny, one of them scoring a cut on his right side, the wound oozing greenish red blood.

Danny held back a snarl and fired a few bolts at the Voleo and the lion slammed a paw down and shot stone arrows that intercepted the bolts. As Danny flew around the chamber the lion looked at him and roared, sending a flash of heat that almost sent Danny to the ground.

“An Ice powered Halfling, then this is over.” Voleo rumbled as Danny tried to struggle to his feet and as the lion moved closer. This can’t be the end, I won’t let it! I have to fight back I can’t let this thing eat me, if it does then who will protect Amity?! Who will protect Sam……SAM!! Danny thought as he reached beyond what he knew and grasped something that had always been within him and it exploded in a wave of black energy that sent Voleo flying away from Danny.

Voleo looked up and saw Danny standing there, a cloak of black energy surrounding him as he got up and a black energy scythe formed in his hands and as his eyes blazed red.

“What is this, wait you’re not a!” Voleo bellowed and roared as it fired a blast of lava at Danny who disappeared and sliced down with his scythe taking off Voleo’s right foreleg and as the lion moved away Danny appeared and sliced down and Voleo sent a stone pillar at him that he sliced through and tore through it and Voleo moved away and looked at Danny, two fangs showing from his upper mouth as he grinned at Voleo.

“So that is what you are, then this is not as easy as I thought it would be. But I took the battle dance seriously, so may evolution favor one of us!” Voleo said as it roared and charged at Danny but Danny disappeared and bisected Voleo and it roared as it condensed into a spark of brown energy that hovered as Danny collapsed to the floor, his eyes closing as the energy scythe and aura died down.

A few moments later Danny woke back up and held his head, his transformation dropping as he woke up. “What happened…..wait where’s that Lion and how’d I detransform?”

Danny looked around and saw the hovering spark and looked at it as he saw what color it was. That has to be the lion, but what happened to it? And why am I dawn to it? Danny thought as he approached the spark and touched it, going still and screaming as a well of energy blasted upwards, breaking the ceiling as the energy well climbed high into the atmosphere.

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Sam looked around the gym as everyone huddled in small groups as she leaned against the wall as Tucker tried to get a signal through the barrier as the teachers tried to keep the students under control. Of course they act like they care about everyone when a crisis happens, otherwise it’s only the A-Listers who matter! Sam thought in disgust as she looked at the teachers as Tucker typed away at his phone. “Any luck?”

“Nothing, I can’t even get a single channel or update and the net’s down!” Tucker said and shook his head with a disgusted expression. “I thought these things Vlad donated let wireless signals through.”

“That’s what the specs we read at the Fenton’s said……. But give a guess why that is here; think about where we are.” Sam said with a snort and Tucker looked at the teachers and nodded.

“Yeah, I can see that.” Tucker muttered and looked back at his phone and tried to work around the blockage.

“Yeah, that’s for sure.” Sam muttered as she looked around and caught sight of Belphegor leaning against the wall of the far side of the gym with Hecate and Lamashtu around him, a strange and smug look on his face. And then there’s them. I’ve always thought that those three are wrong somehow but how they’re reacting to this is not right……… maybe I can get the guys to see what I’m talking about with them, maybe we should look into them. Sam thought before she heard Tucker cough a little. “What is it?”

“That.” Tucker said point towards the teachers. “Look alive, the only good A is coming towards us.”

Sam sniffed, spelling the familiar scent of cat and looked up and saw Star walking towards them and frowned. What does she want? She’s the only one of the A-Listers that I don’t hate but she follows Paulina around and…..well that’s enough really. Sam thought with a slight scowl as Star walked towards them.

“Sorry to bother you, but have you seen Valarie? I know she was on Lancer’s bus but I couldn’t see her anywhere and…….” Star began but Tucker interrupted her.

“GOT IT! I’ve got signal! Let’s see what’s on the news, oh hell.” Tucker said causing Star and Sam to look at the screen and pale. As kids around them heard and gathered they looked down as well and as the gathering was noticed and Lancer started to walk towards them.

“ to those just turning in, again this is Lance Thunder, so far reports from all shelters show that the shields are only holding the creatures partially back but there’s reports of something bigger…….Oh god! Folks I’m at Main Street and the Fentons, the Red Hunter and the GIWs are fighting the gargoyles but there’s a black stone Dragon flying towards us! The people are evacuating to nearby shelters and this reporter is joining them!” Lance Thunder’s voice came over Tucker’s phone as

Sam looked at Tucker as the kids around them heard and started to talk to the others as Lancer made it to them with a scowl, but Sam was only paying attention to the fact that Danny wasn’t fighting, that meant something had happened to him.

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Vlad looked at the battle that had spilled into Main street and scowled. This shouldn’t have happened, everything was perfect! I can’t believe this, but at least those evacuation plans from when the town was taken into the Ghost Zone works. Vlad thought as he watched a screen in the mayor’s office and looked up as his secretary came into the room with a look of fear. “What is it?”

“Sir, the GIWs called, they want authorization to prepare something called ‘Operation Exodus’?” She said and after a few moments of silence she looked up and saw that Vlad was looking at her in shock, his pupils dilated.

“Exodus?!? Call them back and tell them that if they even call me back with that propsual then I will send everything to Washington!” Vlad barked as he shot up from his chair and she fled from the room with Vlad’s glare following her.

“Exodus, of all things!” Vlad said as he leaned back into his chair. I thought I told them not to even think about making that thing! Once we survive this, I need to find out just what those idiots have been doing! Vlad thought as he glared at the holo map and wondered how Amity Park would survive this day.

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Valarie strafed the Dragon and it roared as she blasted away at it; the evacuation of people from this part of town had almost been but when the Gargoyles had reached the area and attacked, the GIWs had made it and were only attacking the stone creatures and the and the Fentons had rolled up in their Ghost Assault Vehicle and started to blast away, saving some of the GIWs who had lost their skysleds and had used it as a rallying point as they escorted the civilians from the area as they all fell back towards the nearest shelter and she thought they could handle it but then the Dragon had appeared and the other gargoyles had surged forward, somehow stronger then before

“Come on Mads, we can get this thing down!” Valarie looked down and saw Jack Fenton trying to charge the nearest Gargyole but Maddie Fenton held him back.

“Stay there Jack, we need to protect the people, once their safe we can come back for samples!” Maddie said and Valarie hid a shudder as she blasted at a Gargoyle.

“Of course those two are like that.” She muttered as she surfed on her board and dodged another Gargoyle as she fired a few blasts as she looked tried to figure out what was happening. I really need something to see what’s happening around me, maybe I should try and make a drone or something! Valarie thought as she flew around the battle and tried to figure out something and smirked as she saw the Assault Vehicle destroy one of the Gargoyles, blasting its body apart and destroying its wings and arms. YES! If we take out the smaller ones first then we can gang up on the bigger…… wait. What’s that thing doing? Valarie thought as she looked on in horror as she surfed around and could only look on, shocked at what she was seeing. As Valarie could only watch with horror as the Stone Dragon charged up and fired a blast of black energy at the Gargoyle that the Fenton’s had destroyed, and within moments the gargoyle got back to its feet, fully recovered. “FUCK!”

The Gargoyles roared and charged at the Assault Vehicle as the GIWs started to fire away as the Fenton’s activated their vehicles weapons to meet the horde as Valarie surfed down shooting, thinking the last thoughts that she ever thought she would ever. Where are you Phantom?! Valarie thought as she tried to surf past a Gargoyle only one from below her struck and destroyed part of her board, sending her falling and it retracted into her suit as she landed on the Assault Vehicle and started to lend her blasts as the Gargoyles.

“You okay Huntress, when can you get airborn again?” A voice caused her to look down for a second and saw that it had come from one of the GIWs. Valarie saw an update on her mask about her board, it would need a few minutes to recover and then she could get back into the sky and strafed the dragon

“Soon!” Valarie said as she looked at the Dragon as it stood there and seemed to just look at them as the Gargoyles ran into their fire.

“How long?” The Agent asked as he battered down a Gargoyle and shot its head off

“Just Soon!” Valarie called out as she started to fire blasts from bother her arms at a Gargoyle that tried to get around them to attack the civilians running away from the battle.

“Not detecting a lot of trust lady!”

“You did try and arrest me earlier, so don’t expect me to give you my tech-specs!” Valarie spat and she heard the Agent

“Wait, What?!?” The Agent asked in shock.

Farther back Lance Thunder and his camera man were standing far enough behind them to see but not hear the byplay but Lance winced with each Gargoyle that the GIWs sent down.

“I so don’t get paid enough for this!” Lance said as he covered and saw the spit take the GIW agent had done. “There’s a story in that I think.”

“ROOOOOAAAARRRRR!”

They all turned as the roar echoed around them and they saw the Gargoyles break contact and move towards the Dragon as it reared back its neck as energy started to spill out it’s mouth and they realized what it was going to do.

“hell, Everyone get to cover! If you Fentons have anything that can block it’s blast then now’s the time to use it!” The agent barked and Valarie willed her suit’s shielding systems to form an energy wall just in front of the Assault Vehicle moments before the Stone Dragon released a large energy blast that she barely held back. She panted as the GIWs kept shooting as the Gargoyles as the Dragon looked right at her causing her blood to freeze as she looked at the stone thing as it flared its wings. It leap at her, and she tried to form another shield wall but her suit showed that she was too weak and she winced as she prepared to jump off the Assault Vehicle when a wall of brown stone suddenly shot up twenty feet and the Stone Dragon slammed into it.

“Hey, I’m getting a big energy reading!” Jack called out and before they all heard the roars of the Gargoyles and the slice of something and a roar from the Dragon as the wall broke apart. Valarie stared in awe as from the dust Phantom appeared swinging a brown long sword with magma veins on it. He had on gauntlets of brown metal that went from his hand to his elbows. As a Gargoyle charged at him Danny slashed in in two down the middle and stood there, slowly raising his sword and pointing at the Dragon who roared as the Gargoyles charged at him.

Danny raised his sword and stone pillars rose from the street and shot at the Gargoyles like arrows and the flying ones were destroyed as the others could only watch. The Stone Dragon reared its head back and roared, moments later the Agent who had been talking to Valarie’s free hand went to his earbud.

“What…. Oh hell! Listen up! All the Gargoyles are leaving the shelters!” The Agent barked out and started to recheck his riffle. “I want everyone to rearm themselves and get ready, if they’re leaving the other shelters alone because that thing roared then they’ll be coming here! Before that happens we need to get the civilians out of here! You staying or coming Huntress?”

Valarie looked at him and tried to figure out what to do when her suit detected motion come from all around them. “Too late, we’ve got incoming!”

The Agent and the others looked around at the rooftops and saw Gargoyles all around them snarling and looking at the cowering civilians and swallowed before he made a choice.

“Okay, fighting time! Fentons, move this thing backwards and use every weapon, everyone else protect the civilians!”

“Got it, if I see a shot I’ll take Phantom down!” Jack said and the Agent looked at him before paling and grabbing Jack through the open window. “Hey, what’s the deal?”

“Leave Phantom alone, that stone things are the threat!” The Agent barked at Jack and he felt the stares of the others on his back.

“Agent Z, are you sure sir?” One of the other GIWs asked as they fired at the Gargoyles as they tried to protect the civilians.

“Directive 1; Protect the People above all else.” Agent Z said and kept firing with his riffle as he backed up and the Ghost Assault Vehicle moved backwards as Jack used the inbuilt weapons to blast away the Gargoyles.

Valarie jumped off the roof of the Ghost Assault Vehicle and formed up her board and started to fly upwards, blasting away at the Gargoyles as they flew at the people, the GIWs and the Fentons adding their fire to hers.

Danny meanwhile had finished off the last Gargoyle and pointed the sword at the Stone Dragon with one hand and a pillar of black and red stone sprouted from the ground and tore away the Stone Dragon’s left wing as it tried and almost succeeded in dodging what Danny caused to form under it. It roared and flexed it’s other wing and the Gargoyles broke off from attacking the civilians and flew at Danny. He looked up and jumped at them, spinning around and slicing with the sword and he destroyed one Gargoyle with each blow, landing one handed he pushed off and spun around in the air and landed looking at the Stone Dragon and shot at it. The Stone Dragon opened it’s mouth and shot balls of black energy that Stone Danny dodged or sliced apart until he sliced off the Stone Dragon’s right back leg. As it tried to balance itself as Danny ran around beneath it and sliced off it’s left foreleg, as it tried to balance itself Danny jumped upwards, his sword glowing red and he cut through its head. The rest of the Gargoyles flew towards him when he jumped and trust his sword into the base of the neck and red veins raced up the neck before it roared and melted away, revealing a gemstone where the head had been that glowed black. Danny pointed his free hand at the gemstone and fired a sphere of red energy that hit the gemstone and exploded, the Gargoyles eyes stopped glowing and fell to the ground as the dust settled and the gemstone was revealed to have been destroyed.

Danny blinked and looked around. What the hell? The last thing I remember I touched that spark and then……. wait what! Danny thought as the last half hour coming back to him and he looked down at the sword in his hand as it disappeared along with the gauntlets.

He looked around, noting the GIWs and his parents as they aimed at him and decided to freak out later before going transparent and flew away, a frown on his face. Somehow when he formed his legs into a tail; it felt weird.

The people cowering behind the GIWs and Fentons stayed where they were before they started to scream and roar in happiness as they realized they were safe! Lance Thunders looked at his cameraman with a shocked look on his face. “Tell me you got that, tell me you’re still broadcasting?”

“You saw and heard it here folks!” Lance said with a smirk as his cameraman gave him a thumbs up. “The threat of the Stone Gargoyles and the Dragon is gone, thanks to Amity Park’s Phantom!”

Valarie saw a squadron of GIW skysleds coming and speed off, not willing to risk that these GIWs wouldn’t attack her, a strange feeling going through her. What happened today, I think I need to look into the Ecto-Act a bit. And the next time Vlad sends me out after a ghost I’m going to ask Phantom about it. She thought as she flew away.

On the ground Agent Z removed his sunglasses and looked at the Red Huntress as she flew away, a frown on his face as he tried to figure out just why his agency had decided to go after the girl, one thing was sure, there was something very wrong with the local branch.

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“WOOHOOO!”

“PHANTOM KILLED THE DRAGON, YESSSS!” Dash exclaimed and smiled.

“Where’d you think he got that sword from?!” Paulina asked with stars in her eyes. “Do you think he has matching armor?”

“It was a broadsword, the kind of sword Excalibur was said to be, the old weapon of knights!” one of the nerds said and a few of them got strange looks on their faces. Sam smirked and Tucker slammed a fist into his palm and grinned. A siren from outside caused Sam to smile as she looked at the doors as one of the teachers opened it and Sam moved off, the usual habit of the school closing after a major ghost attack was a godsend since now she could go and visit her grandmother at the hospital.

Tucker moved to follow her when someone dropped a hand on his shoulder. Looking back he saw Mr. Lancer looking down at him with a frown.

“Let’s talk about how you got around the blocks we put in place Mr. Tucker.” Mr. Lancer said frostily and Tucker winced as he tried to figure out how he would get around this.

“Isn’t that illegal under the town’s laws?” Tucker asked weakly and Mr. Lancer just looked at him stone-faced.

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Danny flew back towards the construction site and saw a bulldozer blocking a building and went through the walls and saw nobody was in it smirking he transformed back to human form. He leaned against the wall and panted. What was that, where’d that sword come from……… Danny’s thoughts died as he saw a door in his mind, it opened and the sword and gauntlets were there, waiting to be called upon. As Danny focused on the armory he saw something beyond the sword and gauntlets but her couldn’t see it clearly, but the sword and gauntlets were as clear as day and he knew what they were . “Volcanic Arms!”

As he cried out he held out his hand and his lava surged up to his elbows and formed the gauntlets, the sword formed in his right hand. Looking at the hilt he saw a ruby on one side of the pummel and a brown gemstone on the other. He looked at the veins of magma on the blade and saw them pulse with light as he held it.

“Amazing, but how do I?” Danny muttered as he looked at the weapon in his hands and the gauntlets on his arms. Strange, it’s like I know what I can do with these things…… he thought as he started to swing the blade around for a few moments before he raised his free hand and a column of red crystal grew to his palm. He looked at it and grabbed the top and broke off the top and put it down on the ground and willed the column to drop back into the earth, a little bit of dirt messed up the only sign something had been there.

“Amazing!” Danny breathed as he pocketed the shard and walked off. Maybe I can use this to make something from this……..any way I wonder why I’m so thirsty, and what was that? He thought as he walked back towards his home. His phone buzzed and he pulled it out and saw a message from Jazz and he smiled.

SkyBoy; Hey sis, heading home. Will tell how I survived if asked, see you there.

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Sam walked into the hospital and stared as she looked around and saw a lot of people waiting or being helped as doctors and nurses moved around.

“Do you need help?” Sam looked to the side and saw a tall Japanese woman with her black hair in a bun and a sensual figure in a white lab coat over black slacks and jeans walk towards her rubbing her eyes with glasses on her forehead. She squinted at Sam and then brought her glasses down and then winced. “Oh it’s you Sam, hear to see her.”

“Hey doctor Kobayashi, how’s the hospital handling this?” Sam asked and Maiko Kobayashi laughed bitterly.

“With those government hacks commandeering the other entrance because of ‘security concerns’ we’ve had to get everyone through admissions. Thank god we set up the emergency entrance seperatly after the first time this happened.” Maiko said bitterly and Sam winced.

I can’t believe what happened, the GIWs are terrible fighters but to have actually stood their ground instead of running, I might have misjudged them a little. Sam thought as she walked and stopped when she noticed Operative K was talking on a phone near the bathroom and moved closer to listen in.

“…..Yes, we’ve got no choice anymore. The others will hear about this, we have to purge the labs of all our research and what we were able to get from the Fenton’s.” Operative K said and nodded. He started to turn and Sam slipped into a nearby room and closed the door, leaving it open slightly so she could hear him as he walked past the room.

“Yes, we need to send copies of all the research to the secondary base……We can’t let those fools in Washington stop us now, once we have the tech right we’ll show them the truth. No the creatures weren’t ghosts, they were based on the secondary power, also Phantom was detected wielding the same power. Yes we have to prepare Exodus no matter what Masters says.” Agent K voice came and stopped and Sam felt the door twitch as Agent K slammed his free hand against the door. “Agent Z did what?! I suppose the directives do say that…….. keep an eye on him, we need to be sure that he never finds out about Exodus, he wouldn’t understand.”

Sam left the room a few moments later, worried about what she had overheard and moved to the elevator and quickly was carried to the floor she wanted. After a few minutes walking she entered a room and saw her Ida Mansion laying on a hospital bed connected to a heart monitor.

“Sammy, with what happened at our unhonorable mayor’s ceremony I was worried that you wouldn’t come today.” Ida said as she reached over and grabbed Sam’s hand. Sam smiled back at her and looked at her with a look of concern.

“I couldn’t stay aware grandma.” Sam said as she looked at Ida looked away. “Grandma?”

“I’m not.” Ida whispered and Sam looked down at Ida with a look of concern and confusion.

“What are you saying?” Sam asked and Ida looked at her and sighed

“I’m not your grandmother, I’m your godmother and guardian.” Ida said and Sam gasped as Ida looked down and away from her. “I’m sorry that I never told ya, I wanted to before this all happened but I couldn’t every find the time or figure out the way.”

“what?” Sam asked and Ida smiled at her and rubbed her check.

“I took you in you because your mother, your birth mother was a friend of mine.” Ida said with a laugh that turned into a cough and she reached for a glass of water that Sam grabbed and hurriedly handed it over. As Ida took a drink Sam looked at her, shocked and confused.

“What….. why didn’t you tell me?” Sam asked as she stared at her…. God-mother? It doesn’t matter, this woman raised me more than Pamela and her husband did and this explains everything about why I’m so different from them. Sam thought as she looked at Ida who looked back.

“I let that idiot son of mine convince me to let him and his wife take the lead, but whenever there was a decision that needed to be made to take care of you I made it.” Ida said and gripped Sam’s waist. “Never doubt I love ya Sammy, I kept secrets that’s true, but they were to protect you and never doubt that I love you.”

“Grammy.” Sam whispered as tears came from her eyes.

“No tears Sammy, this isn’t the end just yet, this is just see you later.” Ida said forcibly. “Now listen, I set it up so you’ll be emancipated, and with what I know you’ll be fine once you’re out of their hands. I left a book that will explain everything you need to know, it’s in that language that you and your friends needed to talk to Big Bad.”

“Big Bad……that’s! You knew.” Sammy breathed in shock as Ida laughed.

“I knew from day one Sammy, I had been watching you all and when it happened at school the first time I knew it.” Ida asked and Sammy could only stare at her.

“How….” Sam asked as she tried to understand the roller-coaster of events, tried to make sense of what Ida was saying and she could only look at her shocked.

“I’ll explain next time we see each other Sammy, I promise.” Ida said before she looked out beyond Sam’s shoulder and smirked. “But my lawyer is here to talk to you so go on.”

Sam looked behind her and saw a woman in a business suite looking into the room and smiled slightly at her.

“Miss Samantha, I’m the lawyer that Ida hired. My name is Rachel Lortong, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Rachel said as they shook hands. “There are a few papers that you need to sign, a few I’s to dot and well it won’t take long.”

“Go Sammy, no matter what happens we will see each other again.” Ida said and waved her off. As Sam left Ida looked at the ring on her finger, and called up all the efforts of strength she had left. “Come on Ida, just ten minutes more than you can rest until your back.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Belphegor walked around the destroyed battle site with a wide grin with a backpack in his hands as the sky darkened. Oh this was wonderful, I can’t believe that my grade had to miss this wonderful carnage! But I always thought that this place was something, but to think I never found the time, what I could have done. Belphegor thought as he wondered through the ruins towards the building that had been destroyed by the GIWs. “This is amazing, I mean I knew that my beliefs were true with the ghosts but this, this is proof!”

He bent down and picked up a piece of the stone gargoyles, moving his thumb over it and smiled. Oh what I can do with you my pretty! All those old books I bought over the years said there needed to be a spark to give the power, being around ghosts wasn’t enough, a few of these each and then we’ll really be cooking with true power! And if I can gain enough to craft a few items or even just alchemy, then I might be able to rule this town! He thought as he took off his backpack and started to put as many of the stones as he could fit into it. As he reached the limit of what he could carry and move quickly he grinned as he stood up and looked around. “Oh, this is perfect; I don’t know who made these wonderful toys but I am sorry that they were dealt with so easily, my own plans have to reflect that.”

“Hey, don’t hog all the good ones Belphegor!” Hecate’s voice caused him to turn and see both of the girls walking towards him with bags around their shoulders, each one having taken some of the stones from the destroyed gargoyles.

“Don’t worry sis, we’ll share everything. And this is only until we can find out where they’ll move the rest of these things.” Lamashtu said with a giggle.

“Yeah, but if we can’t get anything else then we should grab what we can and leave before anyone comes and confiscates this stuff!” Hecate said with a pout.

“I wouldn’t worry me dears.” Belphegor said as he moved ever closer to the ruins of the building the gargoyles had come from subconsciously as he looked at the girls. “With the pounding the GIWs took, it will be a while before anyone will be back here, but I suppose you’re right, we should leave once I look over the this place.”

As he turned around and walked into the ruins he heard a crack and within moments fell through the floor. He dropped ten feet and hit the dirt with his feet and started to look around, wondering what he had found. The chamber he that fallen into was lined with glowing crystals and at the far end was a tome bound in chains with an open door way behind it. He stared at it hungrily as his meager senses could tell that it was something special.

“Master Belphegor, are you okay?!” Looking up he saw Hecate and Lamashtu looking down at him from the edge of the hole. He grinned back at them and looked around the chamber and saw a small corridor

“Perfectly fine girls, I found something that I think will help us.” Belphegor said as he walked towards the book and as he touched it the chains shot off and he felt something connect with him, something that told him that his life was forever changed moments before a unseen wave of something went out from the stand. He picked up the book and felt a rumbling. Looking around he saw the cavern start to collapse and ran for the door he ran up stone stairs and behind him he heard the sounds of falling rocks, all he could do was hope the girls were safe. He saw a door and bashed into it, breaking through it into a wooden hallway in a Victorian style. Before he could take what it looked like the grounds started to shake and he looked around and saw what he hoped was a door to the outside and he ran towards it, ramming his shoulder into and he ran into the yard, the girls seeing him waved and they ran towards where they had parked Belphegor’s car, hoping to get away.

“What’d you find down there?” Hecate demanded as they drove away, Belphegor ducking the car into a side street as civic vehicles and Belphegor handed her a book as he drove. She looked down at it and frowned as she read the text. “This is Greek…… Mageía av petra…. That means Magic of Stone!”

“Could this have anything to do with those wonderful, wonderful things Master Belphegor?!” Lamashtu asked and Belphegor started to cackle.

“Girls we might have finally made it.” Belphegor said as they drove towards the main part of town.

#Danny Phantom fanfiction #Truth Between Worlds

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poignantpulchritude · 5 years ago

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Silly Pleasures-Chapter 5

I starred at the text for fifteen minutes before I walked into Molly’s room.

“I don’t know what to do,” I pouted, collapsing onto her floor like a toddler. She looked down at me from her prone position on her bed. Molly was no doubt irritated that I interrupted yet another episode of Made in Chelsea with my frequent interruptions. She should be happy I at least had clothes on this time.

“With what?”

Instead of answering, I shoved my phone in her direction, urging her to take it from me. She looked puzzled at the device in her hand, glancing up one moment to speak, but she decided against it and went back down to the text at hand.

Hiya Jeanne! Interested in getting drinks Friday night???

“I’m confused,” Molly finally stated. I gave her a blank look, waiting for her to continue. Along with knowing a great deal about my life before London, Molly also knew that very few boys were in the picture ever since we started living together over a year ago. I kept my male interactions mostly virtual. Any message from a boy, besides Keith, was shocking. “Who is this anyways?” she finally asked, noticing there was no name at the top of the message

I mumbled his name under my breath.

“Huh?”

“Harry,” I whispered again.

“Who the fuck is Harry?” she asked, confused. I just looked long and hard at her before something clicked in her head. She suddenly leapt up on her bed to stand, her skull almost touching the ceiling. “No!” she yelled with eyes wide and voice alarmed. “No fucking way! You’re lying! Oh, my god! Yes, yes, yes!” She continued the squealing for a few more moments before she jumped off the bed and got close to my face, kissing my checks ardently. “I’m so proud of you!”

“Help me!” I whined back at her.

“Oh, this changes everything! Okay. Okay, we can do this.” Molly took a deep inhale and exhale before continuing on. “So obviously, the answer is yes! But your-“

“I don’t think I can say yes,” I interrupted her.

“What! Why?”

“I’m so awkward around guys that are cute! You should have seen me at Dallas’s yesterday,” remembering my abnormal behavior towards Harry and feeling embarrassed all over again.

“I’ve never understood this with you! Like…you sort of flirt for a living? May I remind you that you literally masturbate on the internet for crowds of people!”

“That’s different! They pay me and I don’t meet them!” I defended. “Besides, they are extremely horny so they are less focused on me and instead are paying attention to Phoebe, their ‘horny cum slut,’” I told her, raising the pitch of my voice to match a girly stereotype.

“Eww stop!”

“That’s my shtick, it’s what paid for this flat!”

“But you don’t need to be so vulgar about it, I already have to hear it when I’m home,” Molly sulked. I was immediately concerned.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think it bothered you that much. I’ll by some more sound proofing equipment-,” she cut me off before I could finish.

“No, it doesn’t bother me terribly. It just reminds me sometimes of how little I get shagged on the daily. And I hate the c-word.”

“Cum or cunt?”

“STOP!”

I smiled jokingly at her at her reaction. As I spoke my next few words, my tone became more serious. “I’m just shy,” I said quietly, “He was really nice and I don’t want to mess it up. I don’t even know what ‘it’ is. To make it worse, there are so many logistical problems to even begin to fantasize about going out with him.”

“Well, you should try. Don’t count yourself out before you even know.” She gave me a sweet, yet slightly pitiful look. I so often made excuses to avoid situations that had the possibility of being painful or upsetting. If I never leave my comfort zone, nothing is scary-and I was okay with that. Molly clearly had different ideas for me. We made extended eye contact and I could tell that this was her way of urging me to take my phone from her hand.

“Should I pick the location or have him do it,” I conceded. Molly smiled brightly, before starting to draft the most appropriate response. “And you’re coming with me!”

“Okay, maybe we shouldn’t be doing shots in the back of the Uber, Jeanne,” Molly communicated to me on our way to a fancy bar in North London. I was taking swigs of vodka from a flask shaped like a tampon on our way to meet Harry. With the help of Molly, I was able to solidify plans with him to have drinks at a bar in his area of town. I begged Molly to come because I knew myself well enough to know that meeting Harry Styles by myself at a bar would give me severe anxiety. Though she at first was against the idea of her joining me, I could tell that she was secretly freaking out inside. Luckily, the whole hang out was more casual, with his other friends already invited.

Even though I had backup in the form of my best friend, the liquid courage that good Russian vodka delivers could not be forgotten tonight. Molly quickly ripped the tampon from my hand as I went for a third swig. “C’mon now, you are not getting blacked out before even saying hello to him,” she chided sternly. To keep my mind off of the impending meeting, I started to fiddle aggressively with the frays in my demin shorts. Though it was September and the air was getting less and less friendly, it was hard to force myself into jeans, especially when going out drinking. Molly also encouraged me to show my personality through my clothing, so paired with the jean shorts were black cowboy boots, just in case people couldn’t get from my accent that I was American. On top, I settled on a white, long sleeve bodysuit, tight, but also practical. Molly looked much chicer than I did, in nice dark jeans and an expensive top. I looked a bit like I didn’t belong, though she assured me I stood out because I was different.

The vodka started to buzz through my veins when the Uber pulled up in front of the cocktail bar. “Should we wait here and I’ll just text him to come out and get us?” I asked her nervously. She gave me an annoyed look before pushing me out of the car first. I took a few deep breaths before finally turning towards the bar and walking inside.

Far from your average pub, this bar was sleek, with marble counters, leather booths, and bartenders that looked down on you if you ordered well liquor. It was comfortably crowded for a Friday, with people lounging in the elegant booths all around the room. As I searched the space nervously, I heard my named yelled from somewhere to the right. I spun to see Harry walking happily towards me. I noticed that even though he was such a well-known face, few people were gawking at him as he walked over. It must be a place he frequents, I thought.

It hurt to look at him. His hair was pushed high up his head and managed to look purposeful yet messy. My mouth dried up when he went in for a hug when he reached me. The shock I felt quickly melted away to awe when I noticed how good he smelled and felt how soft his cotton shirt was. But-

“Are you wearing a sweater vest?” I asked as I pulled back from the hug, not actually greeting him. He looked down at me, I was quite a bit shorter than he was, and smiled wide.

“It is! It’s Gucci,” he told me proudly, pointing out the animals scattered through the design.

“Bitchin,” was my only response. Nailed it. Molly cleared her throat softly to notify Harry of her presence.

“Oh hi, I’m Harry! You would be Molly then?” Harry asked sweetly, leaning in to hug her. Molly blushed deeply as he spoke to her, trying her very best to make coherent conversation.

After the brief introductions, he pointed towards the back corner of the room where five other people were sitting around a large, blue leather booth with drinks dispersed around the small tables before it. As we walked, I jumped slightly at the feeling of Harry’s hand lightly between my shoulders, guiding my way towards the group. My body suit was thin enough that I could feel the rings on his left hand. The pads of his fingers were rougher than I expected, surely calloused from frequent guitar playing. I covertly turned my head to look back at Molly behind us to see her mouthing words of encouragement and clapping excitedly. I did my best to hold in the shiver of excitement, not wanting him to feel just how jumpy he was making me.

“Everyone, this is Jeanne and Molly! We have here, Sara, Pixie, Francis, and then Nick and Eliot, who you’ve met Jeanne.” I wasn’t sure if our brief interactions were really considered meeting, but I smiled politely anyways and waved at the group. “Did you want a Mule?” Harry asked me as we took a seat and he caught the attention of a waiter. Molly sat down strategically, ensuring that I sat next to Harry near the end of the booth so she could prevent me from avoid Harry’s questions or jumping into conversations with other people.

“Oh, sure, that sounds great,” I smiled up at the waiter. Once he left, I looked back at Harry and muttered, “You remembered.”

“How could I forget the girl with the crazy tattoo and three condoms,” he responded, amused.

“Well, I only have one tonight so I’m breaking protocol.” I wanted to slap myself in the face at my words, but he seemed to enjoy the banter, eyes crinkling with laughter. I relaxed a bit, reveling in the knowledge that my random bursts of wit were pleasant to him.

“So, you said you are a model? Will I be seeing you in any shows soon?” He asked politely, trying to make genuine conversation about London Fashion Week starting in a few days.

“Definitely not!” I laughed, passing off my discomfort for humility. “I do, alternative modeling I guess,” I replied, as vaguely as possible. “Not runway.” He opened his mouth to clarify my answer when a Moscow Mule was placed in front of me. I took that distraction as an opportunity to move on. “I am a student though.”

“Oh really, what are you studying?” he inquired, sufficiently interested enough that the modeling questions seemed done for.

“Getting a PhD in History,” I affirmed proudly. His thick eyebrows rose, clearly impressed at my words.

“Well that tattoo really makes sense now,” he pointed to my left arm where my snake tattoo was hidden beneath fabric.

“Yup, thinking about Ben Franklin gets me wet.”

Harry choked on the beer he was swallowing as I spoke and I couldn’t help but giggle. Molly whipped her head away from a conversation with Pixie to glare at me. I ducked my head in shame at her gaze. “Oh shit, sorry Harry. I’m really vulgar on a normal day, it only gets worse when I-,”

“You’re good, you’re good,” he laughed, finally catching his breath. “Just a bit shocked is all.” I smiled awkwardly. “Speaking of tattoos, how’s Cecilia?”

“Oh, she’s good! Healing up nicely I think. How does Eliot like his tattoo?” I asked, referring his friend across the table.

“It’s fantastic! I’ll have to head back to that shop for some work sometime.” 

“Absolutely, they are brilliant.”

“You and your tattoo artist seemed very close, do you go to him often?”

“Yea, he’s done all of my tattoos here in London. That’s probably why we started dating.”

An awkward pause followed. That comment was a mistake on my part.

“Oh, you have a boyfriend?”

“No, no, no. I should have clarified, we dated for about a month around January.”

“Cool, cool,” Harry said slowly.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked politely, though I already knew the answer.

“Uh, no. That ended a while ago.” Harry’s tone became tinged with sadness at his own words.

In an effort to liven up the mood I responded, “Well, I don’t have a girlfriend either so we are in the same boat there.” That brought Harry mostly out of his obvious stupor, I could see his shoulders relax again.

“What is your favorite vulgar word?” Harry asked out of nowhere.

“I’m sorry?” I replied confused, tripping on the switch of conversation back to myself.

“You called yourself really vulgar, and saying you’re wet isn’t terribly vulgar. You can do better than that I’m sure.” My eyes widened at his words. I could not understand why this was the conversation he wanted to have. If Molly was in-between us, she surely would have pulled me aside and scolded me for even thinking of responding. But, alas, Molly was three people away.

“Okay, but are you prepared for how much you will cringe?” I asked him, getting excited from the alcohol in my veins. These types of conversations relaxed me immensely, I felt like I was talking to a close friend-not a godly man in a sweater vest that smelled like summer fruit.

“Bring it on.”

“Okay, so it’s my favorite because it’s used as a term of endearment. Just remember that, to me, it is an endearing phrase.” Harry looking at me in anticipation, nodding at my qualifying statement. Instead of blurting it out in front of all of his friends, I leaned over to whisper in his ear.

“Oh, not this again!” Harry noted loudly, before I could speak, referencing our first meeting at Paradise. I playfully slapped his shoulder and he grinned back at me. As I leaned towards his ear I was thankful that he could not see the flush in my cheeks in response to his smile. The heat was radiating off of his skin as I whispered the vulgarity in his ear. As soon as the last syllable left my lips, he slammed his drink down on the table, inadvertently getting everyone else’s attention. “How is that endearing? Who calls you that?” he asks shocked. From my peripheral, I saw Molly lean her head down on her hand in embarrassment. I could tell she knew what we were talking about, clearly not meeting her standards of sweet, date conversation.

“I have lots of fans,” I responded humorously.

Harry leaned closer to me, blocking the view the others in our group had of my face. He attempted to make his face stern, but his voice was light as he said, “Now listen, you aren’t actually a prostitute, right? I can’t be catching a charge; my second album still has a few months to go.” I cackled at his words and pushed him lightly again.

“No, I’m not, stop with that now,” I playfully chided.

Harry looked at me silently for another moment before continuing. “I knew that night at Paradise you weren’t behaving that way just because you were drunk.”

“What do you mean?”

“All flirty! I thought for a minute at Union Jack that I completely misread you, but now I can tell I’m right.”

Choosing to brush over the knowledge that Harry thought I was flirting, albeit effectively, I fell into the trap to flirt more. “How do you know I’m not drunk right now?” I asked, feeling the alcohol in my veins, but knowing full well that I was far from drunk. He did not respond, and instead gave me a knowing look. I shrugged, “Well, I did take shots in the car on the way here,” and took a big sip of my own drink. Harry bellowed out a laugh in response.

Around 11, I felt it was time to depart from the bar and head home. Molly gave me pointers before meeting Harry that I should ‘leave him wanting more’ which meant leaving before he got tired. In an interesting turn of events, the vulgar conversation with Harry completely erased my nerves. The entire rest of the night I teased and giggled with him like we knew each other years prior. It was so weird, at one point, I entirely forgot he was a famous millionaire, only noticing because of the radio DJ sat beside him. He just became Harry. When I stood to leave, I accidentally brushed against Harry’s hand that was outstretched to place his glass down. This left a trail of goosebumps from the edge of my shorts down to my right knee up. I felt giddy.

The entire group walked outside together to wait for cars and to say proper goodbyes, free of the more confined space. Molly ended up bonding with Harry’s group, getting the numbers of everyone and promising to pass them onto me. Even though these people were also well known socialites, I felt completely comfortable in their presence. Harry did not strike me as someone to hang out with people he did not truly enjoy being around. Our car arrived first, just as I was finishing up hugs, ending with Harry. I was enveloped in his warmth again and his arms were tighter on me than earlier in the night. “Are you sure you don’t want to pop by Nick’s?” he asked, my stomach fluttering at the hopeful tone in his voice. I needed to keep him on his toes and I also knew I should really get home and get online. Bills do not magically pay themselves and nights were my most lucrative times for work. I shook my head.

“I should really get back home, I’ve got some work to do,” keeping it as ambiguous as I could. He released me as I moved to get into the car behind Molly. “Bye Harry.”

“See you soon, cum bucket!”

“Harry!” I squealed, looking back at him, as Molly roughly pulled me into the car. I could see through the windows of the car his beaming smile, so I decided to roll the window down and stick my middle finger outside. I heard a loud, hiccupping laugh on the sidewalk in response. Delighted and giggling, I turned back fully into the car to see Molly glaring at me.

“Cum bucket? Really J?” I heard the Uber driver snort in front of us, but try to hide it with a cough. I didn’t respond to Molly, choosing to lean my head onto her shoulder and muffle bits of my laughter. I slowly felt her body shake too. “You’re so nasty, but I guess he is too,” Molly said, laughter and awe in her voice. “But, Jesus, how is that endearing?”

#Harry Styles #harry styles fanfiction #one direction #one direction fanfiction #fan fiction #silly pleasures

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elysianecho · 5 years ago

Text

The Meeting: An Excerpt

Summary: Roxy found Bucky. She doesn’t tell anyone. Not even Steve.

Pairing: Bucky x OC (platonic) Steve x OC (established and from afar)

Warnings: Some angst, some fluff, descriptions of a panic attack, brief mentions of blood, hallucinations, and a fender bender, PTSD and memory issues. Guilt. (I think that’s it?)

Word count: 5900~

A/N: So I’ve been working on a Steve x OC fic for a while, and I had this idea and really wanted to write the interaction with these two and then it ran away from me.

OC is Roxana Mercer. Born with wings and the power of lighting.

Here goes!

~~~~~

“No, no...Ah--” Roxy tried saying the word again, but still received the same hand waving and the same angry phrase. The older woman behind the booth clearly frustrated with this apparent dumb American. Roxy rubbed her hands down her face and took a deep breath. She would not lose her cool with this woman. She would not.

Roxy went to open the translating application when a smooth voice came ringing through the chaos. The man talked with the vendor for a moment before chuckling to himself and turning vivid blue eyes to Roxy.

“She’s been trying to let you know she doesn’t have pineapples as they are out of season and hard to come by,” he said, still grinning. “What were you trying to ask for?”

“Not pineapples. How on earth did I-- nevermind,” Roxy shook her head and looked back to the brunet, “I was asking if she had red apples; all I see are green.”

He nodded and turned once more to the lady. His voice was almost velvet to Roxy’s ears, in stark contrast to the shoulder-length hair, rough stubble on his face, and faded cap. Not to mention his jacket and jeans looked like they had seen better days. In just a few moments, he’d managed to defuse the tense situation and even had the lady giggling as she playfully swatted his arm. She even smiled at Roxy and, according to the translator, apologized for being rude.

The stories were true. Bucky Barnes could charm the pants off just about anyone.

In the end, Roxy had her apples and everyone was breathing a little easier. She stepped away from the booth and her new translator followed suit.

“American, huh?”

“That obvious?”

“Eh,” he tilted his head and smiled, “Your accent wasn’t bad, but from what I heard you need to work on sentence structure. And maybe get the right word.”

Roxy hung her head and nodded. He assured her that with practice she’d be a professional in no time at all. He stood with one hand in his jacket pocket and pointed out some good vendors in the open market, the best in his opinion, most of his weight on one foot and shoulders relaxed. Eyes that were constantly watching their surroundings, crinkled at the corners when he smiled at Roxy. She couldn't help but return the smile.

“Well thank you very much, Mr.--?" Roxy said, holding out her hand. He took a breath and his smile became tight before he shook her hand.

“Just call me Bucky."

“It's nice to meet you, I'm Roxy. Now, if I'm not mistaken, that's a very American accent you got there, Bucky," Roxy said, he hung his head slightly, still grinning.

“Yeah, I'm a transplant. What about you? What brings a lovely dame like yourself to Romania?” he asked. Roxy raised an eyebrow. Oh, this was going to be very interesting.

Five weeks of trying to get him to talk to her. Five weeks of showing him she was not a threat. Five weeks, three times she lost him in the city, four times he threatened her and one time she believed him. One panic attack in the park.

She was fine. Perfectly fine taking pictures of dew on grass, moss on rocks, and one grumpy ex-assassin petting a dog with the biggest grin on his face. She watched as Bucky threw a stick and the scruffy stray bounded after it. She listened as he called the dog a good boy and threw it again.

In her five weeks there she’d seen him be the sweetest customer to vendors and shop owners, effectively terrify three middle school boys from picking on a classmate, and feeding and loving every stray animal in the city. She’d approached him several times and he seemed mostly tolerant of her presence. He hadn’t left the country yet. Some of their conversations were just small talk, twice she’d begged him to translate for her, and some were harsh. Those were the ones where she had tried to get him to open up to her; she talked about Steve, the Commandos, never Hydra. Some days he smiled in remembrance, but never divulged anything on the topics, other days he struggled to understand what she was talking about and told her to fuck off.

Now she was giving him space. It had been ten days since she spoke to him; she had been playing tourist and hadn’t even followed him around. She was surprised to see him at the park that day but decided to get some good pictures of him before going back to her macro shots. A yelp and apologies broke her concentration on a beetle and she saw Bucky helping a lady up and getting a handle on the dog. He threw the stick in another direction before apologizing again and blushing when the lady winked at him as she went on her way. Roxy quickly adjusted her settings and zoomed in on the bashful face of Bucky Barnes. That was definitely one she would show Steve later.

She lowered her camera as a wave of nausea swept over her.

Steve.

Her heart ached and she took a deep breath. It had been five weeks since she’d seen him.

Since she’d lied to him.

She pursed her lips and willed herself not to cry at the thought of it all. Steve, Sam, Roxy, and Natasha had all been working on finding Bucky. Roxy was the one who found a good lead and kept it to herself. She’d scoped it out and by pure happenstance, he had appeared. The story was that the lead was ages cold, but she’d found clues to a suspected Hydra ring and was going undercover to get more information before the team came in guns blazing. Solo. No details. Limited communication. No one liked the idea; even Nat had offered to be backup, but Roxy knew that if anyone else came along, Bucky would run and they would be left at square one.

A scream erupted, tires squealed, and metal crunched against metal. A horn blared and the smell of smoke filled the air. Roxy jerked her head up, adrenaline rushing, ready to fight, but when she saw the tall blond fall out of the car, catching himself and looking her dead in the eyes, everything in her turned to ice.

Steve.

Blood poured down his face onto his shirt. His eyes wide, disoriented and betrayed as an onlooker made to help him up off the concrete. She could barely make out what he was saying: why did you lie to me?

One hand grabbed her shoulder and another forced her to look into steely blue eyes. No green; not Steve’s. Roxy looked back to the accident to see a tall blond man talking to the woman he had rear-ended, but it was not Steve. There was no blood, no betrayal. Then why did her chest hurt?

“Roxy, look at me. Breathe.”

She looked up to the steel-blue eyes again and found concern. Why was Bucky so worried? What scared this gentle puppy?

“Roxy!”

Her voice wouldn’t work. The air around her buzzed and her lungs felt like they were in a vice. Bucky jerked his hand away from her face with a hiss.

Oh.

The breath she took came as a sob. And more followed. Her hands found her camera as she sank to the ground. Bucky moved it to the side and waved someone off.

“We’re okay. Anxiety attack, she’s gonna be okay,” he said to the person before turning back to Roxy, “You’re gonna be okay, doll, c’mon. Just breathe, that’s it.”

She wanted to laugh. The Winter Soldier was helping someone come down from a panic attack and called her ‘doll’. Good Lord. Her mind seemed to catch up before her body did. She coughed and slowed her breathing down. It was another minute of steady breathing before she realized he was rubbing her back and had moved her hair to the side. Roxy sniffed and wiped her face on her jacket sleeve. She grimaced.

“Well, that’s attractive,” she muttered. Bucky chuckled.

“C’mon. Let’s get you cleaned up, Mercer,” he said, grabbing her camera as he stood and extending a hand. She raised an eyebrow and took his hand. She didn’t remember telling him her last name. He raised an eyebrow back at her and smirked.

“You really think I haven’t done my own recon? I just wanted to see how long you were going to stick it out,” he said, handing over her camera. Roxy nodded as she inspected her equipment to find minimal scratching on the DSL screen; the lens seemed fine.

He started to walk and she followed, wiping tears away with her clean sleeve. Roxy didn’t really notice where he was leading her until she heard the rattling of keys and the creak of the door as he stepped aside so she could enter. She did.

The Winter Soldier let some girl who had been tailing him into his home because she had a panic attack.

What?

Bucky moved some books and newspapers off the couch and offered her a seat. He gave her a water bottle from his fridge and a box of tissues. She blew her nose as he sat down on the other end of the couch. She took a drink once her nose was clear and her face was dry. Silence hung overhead in the apartment and made it feel even smaller. Roxy jolted when she heard a chuckle beside her.

“What?” she asked, looking at the smirking man beside her.

“I know this isn’t the best couch in the world, but you can at least try to relax,” he said, scratching at his growing beard, “If I was gonna kill you, I would’ve done it the day you said ‘I’m here to help’.”

Roxy scooted back from the edge and leaned into the couch. Her body felt like it was on high alert, ready to attack, defend, whatever was needed. But as she looked at Bucky sit with his back against the couch arm, one leg bent leaning on the backrest, and hands clasped on his stomach, she just shook her head. This man was something else.

“So why didn’t you?”

His eyes narrowed slightly and he pursed his lips. Fingers tapped on the back of his metal hand as he thought to himself. Roxy could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. His chest rose as he took a deep breath.

“I don’t do that anymore. And because I think…” he took another breath, jaw set, and continued, “I think I do need help.”

Roxy turned to face him fully.

“Where d’you wanna start?”

~~~~~

“Wait, wait, wait...”

Roxy stopped shredding the chicken and turned to Bucky who opened a can of soup and dumped it into the bowl. He just grinned.

“You mean to tell me that Steven Rogers had that voice before the serum?” she asked. He just chuckled and nodded as he dumped frozen peas in the bowl.

“His voice stopped cracking before mine did. I was so mad. Imagine-” he turned to her, leaning a hip on the counter, “a voice fit for a linebacker coming out of a kid who looked like he would fall over if a strong breeze came through, and me at 18, trying to get a date with a dame and my voice cracks.”

Roxy slid down and leaned against the cabinets in the tiny kitchen, unable to control her laughter at the thought of it all. Bucky laughed along with her, but pulled her up after she wiped her tears away. The casserole would never be done otherwise.

Moments like this had become more frequent in recent weeks. Roxy had rented an apartment adjacent to Bucky’s so she could be available if he needed her. She’d been in Romania for almost four months and progress with Bucky’s memories had been slow but improving. He had been keeping journals and sketchbooks before Roxy had shown up and, after a couple of weeks of talking, he’d felt comfortable enough to share them with her. She had explained at the beginning of it all that she was not a trained therapist or psychologist in any way. She just wanted to be a friend. Thankfully, he accepted her offer.

Roxy had contacted Rhodey and told him there was an enhanced Hydra operative that wanted out. She asked how she could build a case for him in case they came back and the gracious U.S. government wanted to lock him up. He hadn’t seemed too confident about the scenario but gave her a few pointers anyway. The team still thought she was undercover. Communication was scarce and guilt had started to eat at her resolve like acid.

As much as she had been there for Bucky, he had been there for her as well. Nightmares plagued her and once he had to forcefully wake her before she caught the building on fire. She had woken up several times to hear yelling from his apartment. Needless to say, the neighbors loved them.

“My Lord, I would have died. He was such a cutie!” she said, finally putting the completed concoction into the oven. Bucky laughed.

“He would’ve died if you’d said that to him,” he said, shaking his head. He grabbed the bowl and utensils, put them in the sink, and pushed up his sleeves. “He was always hopeless with women.”

“He’s still hopeless. I called him ‘cutie’ once and he turned red and could not function for a solid minute,” Roxy said, setting a timer on her phone. Bucky dropped his head and muttered something about being a dope.

“The best part of it-” she giggled, “-we were in the middle of a raid. Pretty sure he got punched in the face, too.”

Roxy’s face was starting to hurt from all the grinning, but when Bucky threw his head back and clapped a hand to his chest, she had to laugh with him. Her phone rang in her hand and she had to wipe tears away to see the name. Her heart leaped.

“Hey, I’m gonna take this, okay?” she said, putting a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. His laughter had died down to giggling, Bucky Barnes giggled, and he nodded and waved her on. She answered as she closed the door to her friend’s apartment.

“Hey, hot stuff, how are ya?” she said. She went into her apartment and flopped on the couch. She didn’t hear a response for a moment and was about to say something when she heard a deep sigh.

“Hey, babe…”

“Steve? What’s up? You sound upset,” she said, as she grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest. Her nerves started bubbling up again. Had he found out where she was? She rifled through her mental files and found her prepared speech. Why she didn’t say anything before now, why she didn’t want to tell anyone else exactly what Bucky’s been going through, please don’t be mad. She heard another sigh.

“It’s...ugh, it’s Ross. And Tony and Nat, of all people. And Peg--” he took a shaky breath before he continued, “Rox…”

“When d’you need me?” she said.

Roxy knew that meeting with him for even a few hours would be dangerous for the mission. She knew that if Steve heard she found Bucky he would demand to see him. Bucky wasn’t ready. Roxy’s case for him was growing daily and she felt confident that, with some actual legal help, he would be accepted again. Maybe even join the team. She hadn’t mentioned going back to America yet; Bucky was still not ready.

Roxy agreed to meet in London and got her plane ticket at that moment. ‘I miss you’s’ were exchanged, and then Steve was called away by Sam in the background. Roxy let her hand fall to her side and sank further into her couch.

She hadn’t gotten any details really about what Ross was going on about or what happened with Peggy, but something in Steve’s voice made her heart ache. If Ross was involved it had to be big. And for Steve to sound like that… Roxy texted Nat and asked if she knew anything on the matter; she didn’t know anything about Peggy either. Her alarm went off for the casserole. She took a deep breath and went back over to find Bucky getting the dish out of the oven.

“Heard ya comin’,” he said, setting it down on the stove. He turned to Roxy, but the smile he had fell. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “Something not good. I have to go to London for a few days, Buck. I know this is short notice, but Steve’s not doing good and I-- I want to be there for him.”

“Alright. Your boyfriend, Steve, right?” Bucky said as he threw a dish towel over his shoulder. He got plates down and silverware was ready on the counter. “I think I used to know a guy named Steve. You ever get that feeling?” he asked, turning around.

Roxy’s eyes were on the couch. She was trying to swallow the guilt, the worry, the exhaustion. This happened. They would be talking about Bucky’s past, the conversation would lull or one of them would leave the room for a moment and he would only remember parts of the information given to him.

“I forgot again, didn’t I?”

Roxy looked up at him. He leaned on the island, his arms crossed, his face neutral, but his eyes were troubled. His breathing was controlled and he swallowed once. She shook her head.

“It’s okay,” she said. She walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his metal one, he only tensed for a moment. “Is it okay if we watch something mindless? Like Three Stooges or something? I think we both need a break.” She was grateful for the chuckle she received.

“TV’s in your room. It’s up to you, Rox,” he said, “But you gotta make a decision soon, I’m starving. Look at me, I’m withering away!” He let his body go slack while Roxy still had her arms around his and nearly pulled her down. She just giggled and shoved him. He raised an eyebrow in challenge.

“Oh, you wanna fight? Fine, I’ll just take this whole thing to my place,” Roxy said. She made to grab the dish but was blocked by Bucky who started scooping his portion onto his plate. She just chuckled and waited her turn, but had to physically shove him out of the way so she could get at the casserole before he claimed it all for himself.

The earlier part of the day was spent in laughter and the end of the day was spent just the same. Threes Stooges turned into Abbott and Costello and that somehow turned into both RED movies, with Bucky and Roxy both critiquing the action in the movies.

The next day was not so happy.

Roxy had packed everything she needed for her trip, went over her mental list five more times, grabbed her keys, and went to Bucky’s apartment. He always locked his door even if he was home, so they had given each other a key to use. They both had gotten used to letting themselves in, so Roxy did just that.

Bucky sat on the couch in just jeans and still damp hair in a small bun. He traced his scarred shoulder with his right hand and was flipping a combat knife with the other. He stared straight ahead; brow slightly furrowed and he chewed on his bottom lip.

Roxy stood in the alcove of the door and watched him for a moment. He hadn’t noticed her and she was debating on whether she should leave him be or talk to him. He scowled. He bit his lip so hard she thought he made it bleed. He dragged a nail down a scar with so much pressure it left a glaring white line.

“Bucky.”

He blinked.

The knife stalled in his hand and he swallowed hard. Roxy slowly moved toward him, watching his facial expressions morph rapidly. She ghosted her hand over his metal arm and, with the lightest touch, ran her hand down to where he had stopped the knife. He let her take it.

“Why do I remember you?”

Roxy set the knife on the table and looked at him. He didn’t look at her. She saw the dark circles under glassy eyes and the red marks on his neck where he’d been scratching. His right hand had stilled, but his left was clenching and unclenching.

“I barely remembered my name this morning, but I know you,” he said, swallowing again. “Why do I remember you?”

“I don’t know,” Roxy said, hopping up on the table. He glanced at her before scowling at the floor.

“It could be because I’m new and your brain is processing newer information better than old. It could be because I see you every day and having a constant is usually comforting. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m the one asking you to remember. And seeing me causes you to think about your memories, good or bad,” she said, still watching Bucky’s face. He had pulled his right knee up and was biting his thumbnail, brows still drawn together.

“Maybe I’m just that annoying.”

He scoffed, but his brow unknit itself and he rubbed his eyes.

“Don't give yourself so much credit," he said, dropping his hands to his lap. His shoulders relaxed slightly and Roxy took it as a sign that he had come out of whatever funk he'd been in. Or was coming out of it at least.

“Alright," Roxy said, as she stood and moved to him again. She smacked his raised knee.

“C'mon, we gotta go grocery shopping. You are in desperate need of more than just peanut butter bars," she said, “You do have to put clothes on, though, I don't wanna fight every female in Bucharest."

“I don't wanna," Bucky mumbled, head down and picking at his fingernails. Roxy raised an eyebrow.

“Don't want to put clothes on? You literally just need a shirt-"

“I don't wanna go...out," he said.

“Tough cookies, you gotta," she said, smacking his knee again. He lowered it and sank deeper into the couch, a pout forming on his face. “C'mon, Buckaroo, you need provisions."

“I've got stuff…"

“Yeah," Roxy scoffed, “Enough to last tonight. Dude, it’s Tuesday. It’s grocery day.”

Somehow Bucky managed to sink even lower into the couch cushion. Roxy sighed and rubbed her forehead.

“Fine, break your routine. You can have whatever’s in my fridge when you want it. I’ve got some hamburger that needs--”

“I’m not taking your food!”

Roxy blinked at the volume change. Bucky looked at her like she had grown seven other heads.

“I’m not gonna be here for, like, three days. At least. It needs to be eaten or it’s just going to go to waste.” Bucky’s face scrunched at that, and his mouth pulled into an exaggerated frown. Roxy knew she had him.

“But you need it more than I do--”

“Ha! You eat, like, three times as much as I do!”

“You callin’ me fat, Mercer?”

“I’m callin’ you a glutton.”

“I am not a glutton! And you need it more than me, you’re smaller…”

As Bucky’s voice died, his eyes glazed over and he seemed to look through her. It sent a small shiver down her spine, and she took a half-step back. He licked his lips and a rage that Roxy had only seen once before filled his eyes.

“I leave him alone for five fucking minutes--”

And then he was standing.

Roxy took another step back at the sudden movement. Her fingertips sparked and her spine tingled with another, more violent, shiver but she knew the rage was not directed at her. She took a steadying breath through her nose. Bucky’s eyes flickered between hers before looking above and behind her as he raised a hand and splayed his fingers out.

“Five fucking minutes and he’s part of some crazy science experiment because he wants to prove himself. To himself,” he scoffed and shook his head, “I knew I shoulda got him a leash before I left, I knew it. Cause he’s so damn full of ‘fight me’.”

Bucky shook his head again and marched into the kitchen. He yanked a notebook off the shelf and a bag of chips were thrown to the floor. He slammed it open on the counter and grabbed the pen inside, but threw his left elbow back as if he hit someone.

“Fuck off, Morita, you have no idea what that little shit put me through,” he scribbled as fast as his hand would let him. “Gonna get him a chain out of fuckin’ vibranium…”

Roxy could only watch as he continued to mutter to himself and furiously write what was happening to him. She had witnessed this once before, but that time had been about Peggy putting the whole team to shame with one-armed push-ups, and ‘Steve’s subsequent swooning’ as he put it.

Roxy took another breath and unclenched her fists; when she’d done that she didn’t know. Her vision blurred with tears and she blinked them back. She had watched him struggle with this for nearly three months. It had been two years since the fall of SHIELD. Since Bucky pulled Steve from the river after giving him a beating that landed him in the hospital. Two years Bucky had to watch and feel and write what was happening in front of his eyes that no one else could see.

Bucky had admitted to her that he hadn’t left Romania after her introduction because he knew he needed help. He just didn’t want to ask.

Roxy watched as the muttering and scribbling slowed to a stop and he braced his hands on the counter, his shoulders still tense and head lowered. He jerked his head around when she sniffed involuntarily. Her face was contorted as she tried to hold everything in, but when she saw Bucky’s worried face she ran to him and wrapped her arms around him.

As much as he had been through, as much as Hydra had done to him, he never stopped to be truly concerned with his own wellbeing. Roxy couldn’t help but wonder what James Barnes was made of because he had one of the biggest hearts she had ever seen.

Bucky held her and smoothed her hair down as she cried into his chest. Her heart ached for him. She wanted him to be able to sleep without night terrors plaguing him. She wanted him to see Steve and recognize the man that he had influenced so much. She wanted them to meet and be truly happy again.

She was so tired of watching her friends suffer.

Roxy felt Bucky kiss the top of her head as she calmed down and she smiled. What a dork. She sniffed and apologized as she backed away from him. He kept one hand on her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

“You still need to eat that hamburger in my fridge.”

Bucky never went to the grocery store. Instead, when he heard Roxy was leaving that afternoon he went into full-blown ‘mama bear’ mode. Roxy was not prepared.

He went through her bags, much to her ignored protest, and added things to her luggage. Snacks, mostly. He went through a list of his own about weapons, where to hide them, and what they should be made out of to pass through a metal detector unnoticed. Roxy had to go behind him and remove three pocket knives (which he knew would be fine on the plane), the pistol she kept under her bed, and ten plastic knives in five different places (“Because no one’s going to question plastic knives,” Bucky said. He just put two in at a time and forgot about the others).

As she was running around undoing all his extra packing, he talked to her about how to “watch your surroundings, try not to walk alone if you can help it, you’re meeting your boyfriend, right? Take him everywhere. You packed your cute underwear, right? Make sure you use protection. Do you have any? You may want to buy some when you get there--”

Roxy had zipped up her suitcase and hauled it off the bed only to drop it on her feet. She knew her face had to be blood red as she whipped her head around to Bucky who sat on her dresser, arms crossed and kicking his feet. She just gaped at him as he blinked at her.

“What?” he said, “Don’t tell me you two haven’t done it yet. You’ve been dating, what, almost two years?”

“That doesn’t matter!” she said, her voice squeaking, “And that’s none of your business, James!”

He leaned toward her, tilted his head, and his eyes narrowed slightly.

“My God, you haven’t…”

“I--that’s--it’s a choice! One that neither of us have made yet…” she said. Her face and neck felt like they were on fire as she tried to move the suitcase. It slipped again.

“Tell me you’ve at least done something physical with him?” he said, searching her face.

“That’s none of your business!” Her voice raised almost two full octaves as she twirled to face him again in what she hoped was righteous fury, but her eyes felt wide as saucers. He merely nodded and smirked at her.

“Okay, you have, that’s good. At least you two aren’t completely hopeless,” he said, shaking his head.

“First: what makes you think people need to be sexually active to make a relationship work?” she asked, crossing her arms and jutting out a hip, “Second: I didn’t tell you--”

“Down and to the right, Birdie, you were remembering something,” he said, with a devilish grin on his face, “And I never said anything about needing to be sexually active, I’m merely suggesting that it might be good for you.”

Roxy rolled her eyes and huffed at him. He giggled.

“Besides, I’ve never seen you go that red. Whatever you thought of had to be good.”

“Get out!”

He laughed as she threw her pillow at him. The fire in her blood came back with a vengeance at his words and she chased him out the door. He took the stairs three at a time and shut his door so quick that it almost came off the hinges, but she could still hear him laugh after she shut her own door. Roxy turned and huffed again, going to her suitcase and setting it by the door. She threw her phone charger into her backpack.

She would be lying if she wasn’t looking forward to having Steve’s hands on her again; to feel his warmth. A hug, a kiss, holding his hand, his hands in her hair, his nails scratching lightly on her thighs, his teeth on her neck…

Roxy shook her head like a cat, her hair flying a bit, and hid behind her hands. Even though Bucky was no longer in the room to see her self-induced embarrassment, she could feel that he was still laughing. The jerk.

After she composed herself and finished packing her carry-on, she texted Bucky and asked if he was still going with her to the airport. She threw on a jacket, wrapped her scarf around her neck, and turned to see Bucky leaning against her door frame eating a granola bar.

Roxy jerked and reached to her thigh where her gun should have been. Bucky just smirked.

“I thought you were supposed to be an Avenger. What did I tell you about paying attention to your surroundings?” Bucky said, gesturing to her with his snack. She made a mocking face, grabbed her backpack, and stuck her tongue out at him as he grabbed her suitcase.

They caught a bus to the airport and Bucky was not happy about leaving her at the door, but Roxy insisted. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets, his shoulders were raised, and his mouth was twisted in an attempt to pout. The two stood by the bus doors while people were filing off, Bucky’s eyes were darting around at all the people and it was Roxy’s turn to be ‘mama bear’.

“Please, Buck, if you need to talk, text me first and the second I can I’ll call you. If it’s an emergency, call. Don’t hesitate. Just call me. I don’t care what time it is. If anything changes, I’ll call you. Please eat whatever you want from my fridge; again, it’s just gonna go bad if you don’t. And don’t forget you’ve got that job on Thursday, do you want me to text and remind yo--”

“Oh my God, Roxy, my memory may suck, but I’m pretty sure you’re not my mother,” Bucky said, holding a hand out to stop her tirade. She blinked at him, mouth slightly open and phone in her hand to set a reminder. A smile grew on her face and she hung her head.

“No, but I think I’m turning into mine,” she sighed and put her phone up, “Gah, I’m gettin’ old. Don’t scoff, I know exactly what I’m saying. Now shut up and hug me, Grumpy.”

Bucky tensed slightly when she hugged him, but relaxed quickly and gave her a squeeze that lifted her off the ground. Roxy smiled. He had gotten so much better with physical affection. Or affection of any kind, really. When they started this journey, Bucky was hesitant about receiving hugs or playful smacks on the shoulder. Giving such affection was another story entirely.

Bucky Barnes was a hugger.

And he gave solid hugs, too. Spine-cracking, soul-repairing, big-brother, ‘best-sleep-you-ever-got-with-a-cold’ hugs. He understood that hugs needed to last more than the typical two-second hug received in most greetings.

Roxy loved his hugs. His hugs reminded her of Tony’s hugs and she desperately missed her brother and all her friends. Once she pushed through the anxiety of not really knowing what she was walking into, she buzzed with excitement that she would see her friends again. If only for a moment.

Bucky put her down and ruffled her hair. Big brother indeed.

“Be careful, Bird,” he said as she stepped back from him. She smiled.

“I will, ya big softie,” she said. She slung her backpack on her shoulder and grabbed the handle of her suitcase, “Be back in a couple days, Buck.”

Roxy shot him one last smile and made it to the front doors before his voice boomed over the cacophony of the airport:

“Don’t forget the condoms!”

She stopped dead in her tracks, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was too late. People knew who he was talking to just by her reaction. The fact that she reacted. And the fact that her face felt like it was on fire was a good sign she was blushing like an idiot. She did not turn to see if Bucky was still standing there, grinning like the devil he was. She marched on and tried to focus on finding her plane.

#bucky x oc #Bucky Barnes #steve rogers x oc #Steve Rogers #platonic fluff #enhanced oc #bucky x reader #steve rogers x reader

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duhragonball · 5 years ago

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Dragon Ball Super Movie 1: Broly (1/2)

This ended up taking longer than I expected, so I decided to break it up into sections. The first Dragon Ball Super movie premiered in Japan on December 14, 2018, and then in the U.S. and Canada on January 16, 2019.

After Resurrection F, just about every episode of Dragon Ball Super aired, and this movie takes place after all of that. So just to get everyone up to speed: Beerus had a friendly tournament with his counterpart in Universe 6, and the King of Everything liked the idea so much that he threw his own event called the Tournament of Power, which saw eight universes square off in teams of ten. But our universe was short-handed, so Goku arranged for Frieza to be brought back to life for one day so he could participate, and then Whis revived Frieza for keeps after Beerus was pleased with Frieza’s performance.

This movie is important for a few reasons. First, it features Aya Hisakawa as Bulma, the first time the role has been recast following Hiromi Tsuru’s tragic death in 2017.

Second, this movie reintroduces the Broly character. In the DBZ films, he was a side-story, non-canon villain, but this movie works him into the main canon. Well... as canonical as Dragon Ball Super gets, I suppose. Similarly, this movie also does the same thing with Gogeta.

Third, this one currently stands as the highest-grossing Dragon Ball movie ever, and one of the top-grossing anime films of all time. I looked at the Wikipedia list, and it’s at #12. But Resurrection F is at #19, so I think it’s safe to assume that any future Dragon Ball movies might break the record. Even so, I knew this one was a bigger deal when I went to see it. Res F only played in my town for three days, I think. Broly ran for maybe three weeks and I couldn’t see it on the first try because it was sold out that night. If it’s true that Akira Toriyama came out of retirement because of how bad Dragon Ball: Evolution was, then I think it’s safe to say that he’s exorcised that demon.

Fourth, this movie’s box office success and popularity led to the downfall of American voice actor and sex pest Vic Mignogna. Vic has played Broly in all of his past movies, as well as the video games and any other localized Broly media. But he’s also garnered a reputation over the decades for creeping on women and girls at fan conventions. DBS: Broly put him in the limelight again, and I’m pretty sure this caused a lot of people to ask why we’re still putting up with this perv in the year 2019. A few weeks after the movie premiered in the U.S., RoosterTeeth cut ties with him and re-cast all the parts he played for their shows. A week later, Funimation did the same thing. Quite stupidly, Vic tried to sue his way out of this mess, taking Funimation and two of its voice actresses to court for defamation and conspiracy, and the case was dismissed with prejudice on October 4. The last I heard, he was doing public appearances in the basements of creepy malls. Maybe there’s still venues willing to do business with him, but as I understand it, most anime conventions have recognized that he just isn’t worth the bad publicity.

Anyway, it’s kind of weird to be doing this with a movie that just came out eleven months ago. This will probably be more text-heavy than usual, since I have a lot of things to say about this movie that I never got around to earlier in the year.

For example, what the hell is this thing?

All right, so the first... I dunno, fifteen minutes?... of this movie is a flashback of what Planet Vegeta was like before Frieza destroyed it. For clarity: the main story of this movie is set in Age 780, the same year as the Tournament of Power in the DBS TV series, while this flashback takes place in Age 739.... I guess? The Dragon Ball Wiki contends that Goku and Broly were born in Age 737, and they look about two years old in this part, but I dunno.

Anyway, King Cold has come to Planet Vegeta to inform King Vegeta that he’s retiring from the space-villain business and putting his son Frieza in charge. This was always very satisfying to me, because I never quite understood King Cold’s role in the Frieza organization. Turns out he used to run the whole thing, and then he handed it over to Frieza, which allows him to retain a lot of power without actually having to run things directly.

It also explains why the Saiyans lasted as long as they did under Frieza’s rule. Conquering the Saiyans happened under King Cold’s regime. Once Frieza took over, he spent some time reconsidering that decision. Anyway, Frieza hands out scouters to King Vegeta, explaining that they’re the new latest and greatest technology for detecting and quantifying powerful fighters. He even shoots down some Saiyan snipers just to demonstrate how well they work.

King Vegeta doesn’t like this turn of events, maybe because he had hoped King Cold would grant the Saiyans independence when he retired. But there’s no much he can do about it, so he consoles himself in his son, Prince Vegeta. The tests show that Vegeta has enormous potential, and the King is certain that his son will one day grow powerful enough to overthrow Frieza and rule the universe himself.

Then he sees another life support tank with another Saiyan baby in it, and he throws a hissy fit about it. See, Saiyans in this era raise their newborns in these tanks, and this particular tank farm is for babies singled out for having elite fighting potential. The guys who run the place explain to him that Colonel Paragus’s son had exceptional test results, which may even exceed Prince Vegeta’s. The King tries to see for himself, but the measuring device overloads and explodes.

Then this lady walks up and tells him Broly might possibly become the next Legendary Super Saiyan, which doesn’t exactly put the king at ease.

So King Vegeta orders Broly to be shipped off to the planetoid of Vampa. When Paragus learns of this, he demands an explanation, since you only do that sort of thing for weaker, low-class Saiyan babies. That’s what Raditz said way back in DBZ episode 2, you know, but Broly’s already been shown to be far stronger than this. Also, Vampa’s a dump and everyone knows it, so even if Broly subjugates the planet, no one would want to buy it, so what’s the point. King Vegeta explains that Broly is probably some kind of mutant, and no matter how strong he may be, he’ll eventually lose control of that power and become dangerous. At least this way he’ll be on Vampa instead of being dead. But Paragus thinks the king is only doing this out of jealousy. He can’t handle that a mere colonel’s son tested better than the prince, so he’s sweeping Broly under the rug.

So Paragus hijacks a spaceship and flies to Vampa himself to rescue Broly. His plan is to desert King Vegeta and the Frieza Force and raise Broly on some other planet until he can make Broly into a great warrior. Another Saiyan named Beets tries to talk him out of it, but ends up getting roped into the hijacking. Paragus foolishly crash lands the ship on Vampa, and when Beets says he can’t repair the ship, Paragus shoots him so the rations will last longer. I like this scene, because when they first arrived on Vampa, Paragus made Beets come with him, fearing that he’d take off and leave them if he stayed behind. Beets swore he’d never do that, but Paragus doesn’t believe in trustworthy Saiyans. So his shooting Beets is just proof of his cynicism towards his own people.

Then we flash forward another five years. That seems kind of fishy to me, but okay.

Bardock and his comrade are on their way back to Planet Vegeta, because Frieza ordered them all to come home. Bardock is suspicious, because if Frieza had orders for them, he could have just relayed them by radio, and if he has weapons to distribute, then there’d still be no need to have every Saiyan on the planet at the same time to hand them all out.

I know people don’t care much for the Dragon Ball Minus version of Bardock, but it does make a lot more sense than the “Father of Goku” version. This movie expands on the Dragon Ball Minus comic by explaining Bardock’s reasoning in greater detail. The other Saiyans simply can’t believe that Frieza would do anything drastic to them, mainly because they work for Frieza and do what he wants. But Bardock knows that the Saiyans dislike Frieza, and that the feeling is probably mutual, and he might just be planning to do something about it.

Then one of his pals mentions that Frieza’s administrators have been asking around about the Super Saiyan legend, and that’s the final piece of the puzzle. Bardock realizes that Frieza’s worried about a Saiyan uprising, which normally wouldn’t be a threat, unless a Super Saiyan emerges.

The point I’m driving at here is that he doesn’t really need psychic powers to see all this coming. He just happens to be smart enough and paranoid enough to figure out how Frieza thinks. It’s not as dramatic as “Father of Goku”, but it’s still effective.

The thing I tried to do last year was to write a fanfic that combined this version of Bardock with the “FoG” version. Basically, to have Gine in the story and have her cope with her husband having doomsday visions. I really ought to get back to that sometime.

As for Frieza, his people report that the Super Saiyan and Super Saiyan God are nothing more than old stories, but Frieza insists that he had to be certain. Even so, he plans to blow up all the Saiyans anyway, since he’s got them all together in one place. I don’t know, maybe he only asked about Super Saiyans because he was afraid this upcoming attack might provoke a Super Saiyan survivor.

Moving on, if you know the story of Dragon Ball Minus, you know what’s coming next. Bardock meets up with his wife Gine, and I dig this chubby Saiyan working at the meat-packing place. I think that’s my favorite part of this movie, really, just seeing all the diverse kinds of Saiyans running around on this planet. Fat ones, thin ones, weak ones. That one lady looked like some kind of scientist, and the guy in King Vegeta’s court looked like a butler or something. It’s a nice change from DBZ, where every Saiyan extra ended up looking like Raditz, more or less. And every Saiyan from Universe 6 looked like they were made of noodles.

Bardock asks about their kids, and Gine explains that Raditz has been assigned to off-world duty with Prince Vegeta. As for Kakarot, he’s still in his tank, which just sort of sits in the middle of their home. Bardock plans to steal a space pod and send Kakarot to another planet, since he thinks Frieza’s going to blow up Planet Vegeta soon, because he believes the Legendary Super Saiyan might appear.

Gine is upset with this, obviously. What really threw me when I first watched the movie was how all these characters speak of the Legendary Super Saiyan. No one seems to quite believe in the idea, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that they don’t particularly care if it’s true or not, since it would have happened so long ago. But there’s a forboding sense that it could happen again. King Vegeta are looking forward to it, because they think their sons could fill that role. But Bardock and Gine dread it, because that dumb story convinced Frieza to kill them all, and it’s going to get their son shot into space. Anyway, anytime someone mentions the Super Saiyan in this movie, someone else always goes “You mean the Legendary Super Saiyan?” No, mate, I was referring to the ordinary kind you see on every street corner.

Anyway, this was why I started writing my fic, because this legend was such a big deal in early DBZ. No one in-universe seems to know anything about the previous Super Saiyan. Even if the guy never existed, you’d expect there to be some details. My assumption is that this was all lost over the past thousand years, to the point where all anyone remembers is that some Saiyan got tired of being nice and decided to go ape shitt. And that run of destruction was so memorable that people still talk about it a thousand years later, even after everything else got forgotten. For me, that’s a writing prompt, and I’ve spent the last four years trying to write a story and build an OC who could make Frieza nervous enough to blow up an entire planet of his own henchmen.

So when I watched this movie, I sort of worried that one of the characters might drop some new, unwanted lore about the Legendary Super Saiyan. Up to this point, all we knew about the legend was what Vegeta recalled, but for all I knew Gine studied up on the subject when she took that mythology course at Saiyan University. “Super Saiyan? You mean like Topotay, the seven-foot-tall heteronormative man who hated cooking and never left his home planet?”

So Bardock prepares the pod, and when Gine asks him why he’s bothering, especially when they can’t save themselves, he explains that it’s because he spends all his time fighting that he wants to try to save something for a change. I like that a lot, because so much of the Saiyan culture in DBZ is extrapolated from Raditz and Vegeta’s perception of it, which is slanted towards ultra-violence and ruthlessness-as-virtue. And sure, there’s plenty of that. We get a lot of it in this very movie. But there’s two sides to the coin. Paragus was genuinely worried about his son, and Beets seemed to be sympathetic to him as well. Bardock embraced his wife in front of someone, and now this. Character traits aren’t hard rules. It isn’t out-of-character for a violent man to crave peace once in a while, or for a brutal warrior to finally appreciate compassion, especially when he thinks he’s about to die.

The big twist here is that Bardock sent Goku to Earth to save his life. He was not, as Raditz assumed, deployed to Earth by the Saiyan government to conquer it. In fact, Bardock chose the Earth specifically because it was far enough out of the way that he didn’t think Frieza would bother with it. Gine would later contact Raditz to inform him of all of this, but she left out the details of why they did this, probably for fear of being overheard on the communicators.

In orbit, Frieza’s aides point out that the Saiyans make up half of their fighting force, but Frieza doesn’t care. He knows the Saiyans aren’t going to quietly tolerate his rule forever, so it’s better to deal with them now. That’s how afraid of the Super Saiyan he is. He’d rather blow up half his military than worry about it. Presumably, King Cold never cared in the first place. He could barely rememer what a Super Saiyan was, even while he was watching Trunks turn into one.

Anyway, Frieza does the fingerbang thing, Bardock tries to stop it, but he fails and gets zapped back in time to the Episode of Bardock special, and the planet explodes. We’ve seen this moment maybe a dozen times by now, but I do like the part where Frieza monitors the destruction on his scouter, and the number of power signals coming from the planet count down to zero.

Elsewhere, Prince Vegeta’s group hears about this, and they find the whole thing suspicious, because the official story is that the planet got hit by a meteor. Vegeta and Raditz don’t particularly care. They both have brothers off-world, but they dismiss them as unimportant weaklings.

Then we finally flash forward to the main story of the movie. Baby Kakarot has grown up into Son Goku, the hero of Earth, and Vegeta lives here too, and he’s married the richest lady on the planet. They both turned into the next Legendary Super Saiyan, and recently they just got done teaming up with Frieza to win the Tournament of Power, proving that their universe deserves to exist. But Goku and Vegeta still want to get stronger. Goku, because he wants to fight all those strong guys he met from the other universes, and Vegeta because he’s convinced that Frieza will attack the Earth again now that he’s returned to life. Also, Beerus and Whis are here, for no particularly good reason. That seems to be the Dragon Ball Super brand in a nutshell. What made Movie 14 so good was how they introduced them as new characters, made them the focus of the story, and had them shake things up. Since then, they just hang out on the sidelines and eat snacks.

This works out, though, because Bulma gets a call from Trunks about someone breaking into her lab and stealing the six Dragon Balls she had collected, as well as the Dragon Radar. They quickly realize it was Frieza’s henchmen who did it, and so they head off to find the 7th Dragon Ball before they do. Whis wants to tag along, but Beerus doesn’t, so she leaves her baby behind and asks him to keep an eye on her. D’awwwwwwwwww.

On the way to the ice continent where the last ball is located, Goku asks why Bulma was collecting the Dragon Balls in the first place. She admits that she wanted to ask Shenron to de-age her by about five years. Just five? Bulma figures that if she makes herself too young all at once, people will think she had plastic surgery. Why not just get plastic surgery? Wait, I’m asking the wrong question here. Don’t people already think Bulma already had work done? She hasn’t aged since the Cell Games.

So what does Frieza plan to wish for? When he first appeared back in early DBZ, he wanted to become immortal. His aide, whose name I have forgotten, asks if he’s going to try that again, but Frieza says no.

I’m confused by his reasoning, but Frieza explains that while he was dead and in hell, he realized that it was torture being unable to die or move, so immortality holds no meaning for him. Okay, but that only happened to you because you died. Does Frieza think that becoming immortal would leave him unable to move? Or is he just afraid of getting trapped in some situation where death would be the only release, like when Garlic Junior got trapped in the Dead Zone?

At the very least, I’ll give credit where it’s due: it looks like Toriyama finally gave Frieza a bit of character development to play into his resurrection. My big complaint about Resurrection F was that Frieza came back to life and immediately went right back to doing all the stupid shit that got him killed in the first place, and it seemed like the 15 years he spent in hell had no effect on him whatsoever. He wasn’t afraid of dying again, nor was he dismayed by the knowledge of what awaits him on the others side. Now, in this movie, he at least has some perspective. Shenron could make Frieza immortal, but he can’t make him stronger than Goku, so maybe he’s worried that Goku might throw him into a black hole or something.

Even so, it was weird to watch this movie and see a Frieza who utterly does not care about becoming immortal, because he seemed so obsessed with it back on Namek. But now that I’ve watched DBZ in Japanese, I’ve noticed that Frieza never seemed all that concerned about it. He’s not Voldemort, who was terrified of death and sought to conquer it, or Kars, who wanted to eliminate his few remaining weaknesses. Frieza only seemed to want immortality back then because it was the only thing he could think of that he didn’t already have, and maybe to screw with Vegeta, who saw the Dragon Balls as the only way to beat Frieza. Still, I find it odd that Frieza isn’t even a little worried about what’ll happen to him when he finally kicks the bucket. His aide suggests that he might wish for an invincible-but-still-mortal body, and Frieza says that would take all the fun out of “the game”. So I guess he’s adopted an Android 17 outlook on life? Well, so be it, but he knows he’s going to get hung up on the happy fun tree again whenever he dies of old age, so why doesn’t that weigh on him? In Movie 15, he seemed to think he only ended up there because he died on Earth. Does he think if he dies someplace else, that he’ll go to a better hell with free wifi and room service? If I were Frieza, I’d be doing some serious churchin’ up.

Anyway, his other, cooler aide, Berryblue, already has this figured out: Frieza wants to wish to be taller. Specifically, five centimeters taller, so that it won’t be too conspicuous. I really like Berryblue, even though this is about the only thing she does in this movie. Both of these aides appeared in the flashback, implying that they’ve been with Frieza for decades and somehow survived his fifteen-year death. There would have been no need for someone like her on his Namek campaign, but the absence of characters like her was exactly why I never cared much for Frieza’s classic henchmen. They were all jacked up thugs constantly licking Frieza’s boots and not much else. Berryblue’s not afraid of this guy at all, probably because she changed his space-diapers when he was little, and if he kills her, he won’t have anyone to bring him space-wine from the ship’s space-cellar.

So why doesn’t Frieza just use his second form, the one he used to fight Piccolo on Namek? That form was like eight feet tall, but also fuck Frieza’s second form. He only had those forms to regulate his power, and these days he doesn’t even use them. He wants to be taller in his default state. But he doesn’t want to be too tall all at once, or it wouldn’t look natural. This from the guy who went out of his way to turn mustard yellow at full power.

Personally, I’m torn on this whole gag. It is kind of funny that Frieza is after the same dumb kind of wish that Bulma was, but it’s also kind of stupid that Frieza is after the exact same thing that Commander Red wanted way back in the original Dragon Ball. The problem with bringing Frieza back is that no one knows what to do with him. They already had him attack Earth again, die again, and come back again. We’ve even seen him team up with the good guys. But DBS ended with him going off on his merry way, and it looks like he’s rebuilding the Frieza Force, but that feels kind of hollow while he has Goku and Vegeta on his mind. Having him make another go at the Dragon Balls is a solid move, except the Dragon Balls alone aren’t a motivation because you still need to have something to wish for. This whole “5cm taller” thing just feels like a gag to cover the lack of an actual answer to the problem.

Meanwhile, let’s check in on these two. The green lady is Cheelai, and the orange guy is Leemo. They’re in the Frieza Force, but not as warriors. Leemo’s just a transport pilot, and I don’t really know what Cheelai’s official job is, but their current assignment is to search the galaxy for strong warriors to recruit for Frieza’s army. When you think about it, Frieza’s pretty bad at this whole “private army” business. King Cold left him the entire Saiyan race, the Ginyu Force, Zarbon, Dodoria, and whoever else. First, Frieza wiped out the Saiyans, which made up half of his soldiers. Then he deployed his finest troops to Namek, where they al got taken out by Goku and Vegeta, two of the Saiyans he neglected to kill. Then Frieza gets himself and King Cold killed on a pointless revenge mission, leaving Sorbet to try to keep the whole thing going. Across a fifteen year period, Sorbet probably loses a lot of good soldiers to insurrections and desertion. Then Frieza comes back and assembles an army of 1000 warriors, and he kills all of them on another pointless revenge mission.

So yeah, in this scene, Cheelai laments that there just aren’t many warriors out there with a power level greater than 1000. Well there used to be, until Frieza got them all killed. Now he’s down to scrubs like Leemo, who’s worked for Frieza for decades, but can’t fight worth a damn. According to Cheelai, she only joined up because she stole a spaceship or something, and knew the authorities wouldn’t chase after her if she was in the Frieza Force. Really? I don’t think Frieza would go out of his way to personally avenge or rescue her if the Galactic Patrol caught her.

There’s a cute gag here where Cheelai mentions how Frieza turned out to be shorter than she expected, and Leemo warns her never to say that again if she values her life, recalling how Berryblue mentioned that Frieza used to execute some of his men for mocking his height behind his back. Gee, why could Frieza have a staffing problem? This is why Cell is the best villain. He’s plenty tall, and he’s not so friggin’ insecure, and he can handle his own shit.

Anyway, the pair pick up a distress signal and it turns out it’s coming from Vampa, where they find Paragus striking... a pose. Yes. It’s like he knew he’d be wearing a shower curtain over his legs for the rest of the movie so he wanted to flaunt his goodies now while he still had the chance.

Paragus is now old and grey-headed, but he still has a power level of 4200, which is weaker than Nappa, but still good enough that Leemo and Cheelai are thrilled to take him back on their ship. But then they get attacked by the giant head lice on Vampa, and Paragus calls for Broly to save them...

...And Cheelai is astounded by his power, which is too high to measure on the scouter. That... doesn’t mean a whole lot these days, unless they increased the scouters’ range since the Freiza Saga. Hers doesn’t explode, at least, so they managed to improve that much in the past twenty years.

So on the ride back, Cheelai spends some time with Broly and gives him ration bars, or maybe it’s just candy, I dunno. Paragus tells Broly to thank her, but she finds it too formal, and teaches the “Okay” sign as she tells Broly to just say “thank you” and leave it at that.

Aboard Frieza’s ship, Paragus explains that he had to cut off Broly’s tail because he was getting too powerful, and that Broly would have these surges in power where he would lose all control of himself. To deal with these, he put a shock collar on Broly’s neck, and he keeps the remote in his fanny pack. He demonstrates how it works, and Leemo and Cheelai are horrified.

But they’re not so horrified that they balk at their reward for finding these two. Apparently everyone in DBZ outer space gets paid in ball-point pens.

After Leemo and Cheelai leave, Frieza explains to Paragus that Planet Vegeta was destroyed a long time ago, though he neglects to mention that he did the destroying. Not that Paragus cares, since he gave up on ever going back there because of King Vegeta. Frieza mentions that Prince Vegeta is still alive on Earth, and offers to help him get revenge.

Notably in this scene, Frieza refers to Prince Vegeta as “Vegeta IV,” which makes his dad King Vegeta III. It’s nice to finally have that settled after all these years.

I hadn’t noticed this until now, but there’s another lady on the ship besides Cheelai and Berryblue. Probably not that remarkable, since Cheelai already explained that Frieza was hiring more women now that he couldn’t afford to be picky. There are sources that say Frieza’s organization just didn’t allow women, period, but I always find those sort of absolutes hard to believe. There’s also been talk that Frieza’s species has no gender, which is entirely plausible, but then why should Frieza bother with making sexist hiring policies?

Wait, maybe Frieza got frustrated with it. Like, he kept misgengering his staff, and he didn’t like looking foolish, so he just went, you know what, no women. That actually makes some sense, especially in light of this movie, where he’s on a hiring spree for his ultra-important campaign to grow two whole inches.

Oh, wait, I just remembered that tough-looking lady they introduced for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. I guess she was working for Frieza the whole time, but maybe he made special exceptions for quality talent. Or he separated his crews by gender, so whenever he boards a different ship someone has to tell him which pronouns to use. This is why Cell’s the best villain, because if you tell him your pronouns, he’ll just fucking remember instead of being a jackass about it. All thanks to Piccolo’s cells. Also Nappa’s.

When Broly and Paragus come down for some food, Cheelai invites them to their table, but Paragus isn’t interested in chatting, and Broly doesn’t seem to know how. Cheelai asks him why he’s still wearing the green fur around his waist, but when she tries to touch it he flips out, and she backs off. Mostly, I just like this shot of Cheelai here.

Also this one, where she gets upset with Paragus for not allowing Broly to tell his tragic backstory. But we’ll have to save that for the second half of this review.

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