#nosy little alien

[bamsara]

bam i put a bunch of your IZ stickers in our little free library (hiding behind the books so zim jumpscares you when you take something) and there's this kid who just hovers and tries to copy them into her sketchbook when she gets dropped off at the park and my HEART oml. I had to tell u, it's just real precious.

do you have any idea how absolutely heartful this is. this is precious indeed. I'm gonna be thinking about this all day

[kenananamin]

Where did Nanami go?

a small collection of events where the people around nanami wonder if he's been abducted by aliens where they switched his brain after seeing how different he is with you (but they love it and keep hoping to see more) fluff, nanami being the best boyfriend, fluff literally just typed this all in one go and did not edit. lol enjoy!

nanami is the 'i'm not reading all that, im happy for you or im sorry that happened' person to gojo. but you send one long long message to nanami and gojo glaces to nanami's phone and just sees his whole screen covered in one long blue bubble. he asks if you're ok or if he needs to step away to call you but all nanami says is no and starts reading the message. gojo sees nanami read a bit, then types a small reply, presses enter for the next line, reads some more, then another small reply, and repeat. is he replying to every single sentence in your message?!

gojo gets curious so he leans a bit closer to actually see the message. it was not an emergency... but your review and interpretation of the 2009 movie Mother?!

gojo leans back shocked. nanami would never reply to such long messages he'd send. if the message was longer than 4 lines, then nanami might never even reply to it. but he's carefully reading your message as if it was the latest report that would be the difference between life and death in the next fight. he's replying to every single point you're making and are those emojis?!

gojo is floored, truly baffled and entirely speechless.

gojo wonders, what movie can i watch that might interest nanami and get him to reply to me in a message longer than a sentence?

———

gojo and itadori walk out of the school with nanami. it's time for nanami to clock out but gojo and itadori are heading out to try a new restaurant that evening. nanami gets a call at 6:01pm while he's still walking with them and stays back a few steps to answer your call. nosy gojo perks up his ear to listen if nanami's voice changes when he answers your call. it's not too different but gojo swears it did change a bit as if there was a little smile on his face. there was.

you ask nanami if he'd like to join you for dinner at a restaurant after work and nanami just asks for the address and says he's on his way. he excuses himself from the guys and gojo wiggles his eyebrows as nanami says he's got somewhere to be. yuji continues to talk about the last movie he saw that he loved but megumi kept rolling his eyes at.

gojo and yuji get to the restaurant after their leisurely walk and see nanami - wait! nanami setting the table?! they're both shocked bc even though their steps were unhurried, it's not like they took a long time to get to the place. you walk into the restaurant and spot nanami wiping what would be your side of the table with his hand, wiping anything that might have been missed by the cleaning cloth.

"kento!" you smile and jog to the table. he looks up and smiles when he sees you, but the smile drops when he spots the open mouthed gojo and yuji you just passed by. you stop walking and turn to see who or what he's looking at.

gojo snaps out of it and goes to introduce himself to you before leading the group of three to the table that nanami is now standing next to. he had heard about you because he pestered nanami enough to tell him about your existence and your name, and that's really all gojo knew. he asks nanami how he got to the restaurant so quick and nanami blandly replies that you work nearby and he wanted to get there first aka he lightly jogged but gojo didn't need to know that.

nanami was kind of expecting it but it still surprised him a bit when you extend a courteous invitation to gojo and yuji if they'd like to join you both for dinner. what was not a surprise was that gojo immediately sat down. yuji hesitates a bit but you tell the young man to sit and assure it's ok. nanami sighs but decides to just roll with it and goes to slide out your chair so you can sit. gojo and yuji give a quiet 'ooooohh' to the action and nanami just shushes them and sits next to you.

nanami is stiff at first and you notice so you slide your hand to hold his under the table. gojo notices the action though and feels like giggling and kicking his feet for his friend. it still takes a while for nanami to relax a bit but he eventually slumps a bit in his seat and smiles a lot easier after a few drinks w you. gojo and yuji stick to their sodas and nanami is happy to order wine for you both.

gojo and yuji make easy conversation and everyone genuinely has a nice dinner. nanami is ready to say bye to the guys as you finish a conversation with yuji about a show. gojo and yuji excitedly watch you both walk away as nanami keeps a hand on your lower back to lead you down the street then moves to hold your hand. they start giggling out loud, a little too loud, when you step even closer to hold his arm with your other hand and lean your head on his shoulder as you walk back home.

———

yuji excitedly goes to nanami to ask if he can join you guys after work. nanami is confused but yuji tells him to check his phone. you had asked if he wanted to visit an ice cream parlor and bakery with you and that you had asked yuji for the name since he brought up the place at dinner.

“we were talking about the show hannibal and she recommended a movie if i liked that show so i did the same and recommended something. she said she'd let me know what she thought the next time she saw me but i didn't know when that'd be and i think she read my mind so we exchanged emails,” yuji rambles nonchalantly about exchanging information with his girlfriend.

"nanamin, i thought you didn't like sweets?" nanami confirms that he does not care for them but you like them and he always finds another bread or alternative to eat as you eat your sugar-filled dessert.

yuji gives a thumbs up and that the man has his respect. nanami tries to ignore the comment… but the compliment feels nice. what didn’t feel so nice was two other kids attaching themselves to yuji and nanami for the ice cream.

he gets in the car and looks back at nobara, yuji, and megumi through the rearview mirror and hopes you don’t mind these kids attaching themselves like leeches on your date. and you don’t mind, it was nice to finally meet some of the people he’s talk so much about and you liked hearing new stories about him.

you’re getting a couple samples and pass them to nanami once you’ve tasted a bit. he wouldn’t get a full ice cream for himself but he could do samples... and indirect kisses. you read his mind (bc you were thinking the same) and try to flirt and raise your eyebrows at nanami seductively but shy away and start to laugh instead. nanami know what you were trying to do yet again and he finds it endearing every time you do it. he pulls you in from your waist and leans down to kiss your bare shoulder thinking the kids are too busy looking for their own desserts to notice. they were not busy, they were looking and saw it all.

the kids are shocked, nobara is taking notes bc she wants that romantic gesture, yuji wants to cheer him on, and megumi's eyes widen but he wonders just how long nanami's been hiding this side of himiself. all in all, all three kids want to see this side more and start planning ways to go out with you both again.

———

nobara and maki go shopping for some spring clothes and as nobara is talking about a store she saw while maki got an iced coffee she stops in her tracks. nanami is inside the store they were about to pass and he's standing as still as a statue... holding a couple shopping bags in one hand and a purse on his shoulder. maki follows nobara's gaze and chuckles but prepares to walk away. nobara grabs her arm and pulls her into the store but hides behind a rack to keep watching nanami.

you come out of the dressing room in the perfect little black dress and nobara and maki can't help but stare in appreciation and awe. they were impressed by how you looked but even more impressed when nanami took out his phone and took a picture. even from afar, they could tell it was a damn good picture and that that man knew your angles.

———

gojo wants to go to a club. he knows nanami will say no straight up so he starts the conversation with, "hey you know what y/n might like?" gojo tries to sell the club the best he can but nanami just says ok and walks away.

gojo texts nanami later that night to ask (plead) him if he'd want to go and all nanami says is that you both will meet him there. gojo hums as he gets ready and arrives to the club. he sees you and nanami walk into the dark and loud room but immediately notices nanami's black button-up that has the top few buttons opened and no tie, and your little black dress. it's shorter (and honestly sexier) than what gojo imagined you'd wear in an outing with nanami but he has to admit that his pair of friends were a damn wonder to look at. he discreetly takes a photo of you two and sends it to nanami. it becomes nanami's favorite photo.

gojo compliments both of you and you thank him saying you had told nanami he'd look great with that simple button-up and gojo agrees. nanami blushes a bit at your compliment. gojo asks about your dress and you laugh recalling when you were getting ready. you had asked nanami if you could wear the dress since you weren't sure if it was too short and he just nodded and basically said 'dress slutty, i can fight' (not in those exact words but that's how you registered it and you fell even more in love with the man). nanami really did not care about what you wore, he would definitely voice if something was not appropriate but he has not said anything about any of your clothes since you've met. gojo couldn't even laugh at nanami's response to your question, he was impressed and turns to nanami to give a thumbs up (and writes that down to use later).

———

all the students sit with nanami and gojo in the cafeteria. they're sitting around waiting for their meal after their mission when nanami remembers that he promised to call you after he was done. he had accidentally let it slip that the mission seemed dangerous and you asked if he could spare a moment after the mission to call or text you to make sure he was fine.

he excuses himself and gojo faintly hears your voice before his friend fully walks out of the cafeteria for his call. immediately after nanami leaves, the students huddle closer to the table and start talking about you. gojo is kind of shocked by the student's reactions but they all look at him and in their own way talk about how much they like you for nanami. a cold and serious man has the embodiment of bubblegum on his arm and they loved it. gojo joins his giggling students and nanami waits a moment outside the cafeteria door to listen to his team rave about you before walking back in with a light blush on his cheeks.

[hijinxinprogress]

Everyone in YJ is multilingual (mostly bc they’re nosy)

Everyone on YJ speaks at least 14 languages which is a skill they all use to fuck with the jl and their villains like oh??? We’re having secret conversations??? I would like to be included and everyone’s like wtf why do you speak this fucking random dialect of Russian?? This is Arizona??

They all speak binary for some fucking reason (they’re nerds) Also Kon tells people binary is Tim’s native language which starts a debate on whether it counts as Kons native language)

Diana is swearing in ancient greek under her breathe and Anita laughs before responding in ancient greek so Diana’s time monitoring yj is spent trying to make sure the public knows she did not teach those little miscreants to swear in her native language however she did teach them some technically lethal combat moves which is not better but she thinks it is

Anytime aliens come to metropolis or anywhere else on earth, occasionally Kon shows up and starts speaking to them in their native language so Clark’s like 🤨 …did Cadmus teach you that?? I don’t even know that language and kons so offended bc no?? Bart crashed our fucking spaceship and we were stranded in space for like 8 months…you didn’t notice??? I know their language bc we fucking hitchhiked back to earth (yj also pissed off multiple entire planets of people but 🤷🏾‍♀️) and Batman’s so pissed when Clark complains to him about this bc Tim told him they were doing undercover recon in Eritrea

the jl is trying to translate a threat from the league of assassins while batman is off planet but cissie showed up bc damian was insulting the jl in the leagues dialect and being purposefully unhelpful (he sabotaged the leagues plan like three hours ago and he enjoys making adults feel stupid esp if they’ve tried to baby him) so everyone else is confused when cissie laughs at damians remarks and casually corrects green arrows translation (she also invites damian to blow stuff up with yj which is immediately rejected but he changes his mind when olivers lets them know he can hear them and tries to lecture them)

clark is talking to Diana in kryptonian and he hears a collective gasp of offense from yj and he’s like ?? (Tim followed all the supers around for like a month to teach himself kryptonian and then taught Kon and the rest of yj)

J’onn walked in on Greta and Cassie discussing how to ditch their green lantern in the watchtower break room and snitched immediately bc they finished his secret stash of cookies but he also has inside jokes in martian with them (despite this yj does not listen to him in any capacity)

They all know Interlac (Bart kept cussing in interlac and decided it would be great if yj also did this) but really the rest of the jl is under the impression it’s some fucking code yj made except the speedsters are like Bart ☹️ no spoilers you promised!! and he’s like it’s not even a real language 🤨 didn’t you hear?? Rob made this fucked up cipher and I hate it 😞 it took me like six minutes to learn (they have to let it go when Bart goes oh so you don’t think tims smart enough to create a language on his own?? within earshot of the bats)

Or Anita starts muttering in patois while they’re being lectured by the jl and bart laughs and she’s like 🤨 someone cooked here and I don’t know if I like that 

[stevieschrodinger]

Part One Five

“Robs!” Steve shouts through the apartment, toeing his shoes off at the door.

“Kitchen!”

Steve heads through, and he can’t help but notice something looks kind of off. It looks different in here but he can’t quite put his finger on it, “Robs, did you do something to your apartment?”

“Yeah, I cleaned it.”

“Oooh. Yeah,” Steve looks back through the kitchen doorway, “yeah, that��s what’s different.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too, bitch.”

“Fuckface.”

Steve frowns, there’s a cookbook propped open and actual like, fresh ingredients on the chopping board, “what are you doing?”

“Is that a rhetorical question because-”

“Robs, I have literally never seen you cook anything more complicated than eggs and toaster waffles, what is this,” Steve goes over to be nosy, “chicken satay skewers and bang bang cauliflower- what the actual fuck. I didn’t even know you knew what recipe books were.”

“Fuck off. And it’s for Chrissy, she said it’s her favorite-”

“Oh my god. I’m dead. I’m dead aren’t I. I got into a crash on the way-”

“Steve.”

“Alternate dimension-”

“Jesus Christ-”

“Abducted by aliens?”

“Steve, I can cook a nice meal for my girlfriend, alright, it’s not, like, illegal-”

“Your what?!”

She stops and actually turns to look at him, she’s wearing her absolute dead serious face, “Steve. I like her. A lot.”

“So now you’re what, fucking pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen-”

“Steve! Look. She’s clever. She’s funny. She’s kind. She calls me out on my bullshit and she is extremely hot doing it. She plays volleyball Steve. Volleyball. Have you ever seen girls play volleyball? Not only is it insanely aggressive but the shorts are so tiny they’re on the verge of disappearing up her crack and it’s socially acceptable for me to go out and watch that Steve.”

“Yeah but- you don’t have to like, date her to get all of that-”

“I do. I do Steve. Because I want to. We can’t just do,” she gestures vaguely, “this for our entire lives.”

“But whyyyyy?” Steve whines.

“Because we have to grow up at some point.”

“Yeah but...now?” Steve knows he’s pouting.

“Good a time as any, anyway, aren’t you literally about to go to dinner at Eddie’s uncles place? Literally the only notable family member that he has? His only parental figure and therefore the most important person in his life-”

“You can stop now.”

“I’m just saying that sounds kind of serious-”

“I will throw myself off the roof to get out of this dinner. Don’t test me.”

Robin completely ignores him, “I’ve seen how Eddie looks at you,” Steve scoffs, rolling his eyes, “Steve, that boy looks at you like he’d crawl a mile over broken glass to sniff your farts. Could you just like, appreciate that about him for thirty god damn seconds.”

Steve has a range of acceptable beer. He has picked up a six pack of something from uncomfortably near the bottom of that range. He takes a deep breath as he grabs it off the passenger seat.

Steve’s pretty sure he’s never been inside a trailer once in his damned life, and he has absolutely no idea what to expect. From the outside it looks...cramped. Steve’s certain his entire bedroom is bigger than this whole place.

Steve prepares himself to be polite about whatever he’s about to walk into.

Eddie fucking lights up when he opens the door, it makes Steve skin itchy while simultaneously something flaps about in his stomach, “oh wow, you bought the good beer!” Eddie looks thrilled as he takes it to put in the fridge.

Which he makes it to in about four steps because the kitchen is like, right there. And Steve’s taken one step in through the door and he’s already in the middle of the lounge, which is, efficient, he guesses.

“Here, come sit at the table, Wayne’s about done with dinner.”

“Errr...thanks.” Eddie indicates a place at a cramped little built in breakfast nook type thing, and Steve slides in just as Wayne appears from down the hall.

It was fucking awkward getting in, it’s even more awkward getting straight back out again so he can shake Wayne’s hand, “good to see you again Sir.”

Steve gets a firm handshake, and then not two minutes later he’s eating the first bite of what might be the best thing he’s ever put in his mouth. Wayne Muson makes a pot roast that should win a Michelin Star. Who could have fucking predicted that.

[natequarter]

if other doctors did human nature:

one is badly cosplaying as a teacher at coal hill. susan, not having regenerative abilities, is watching over him. barbara and ian have never met the doctor as the doctor; as far as they know, he's just their crotchety coworker doctor foreman, who STILL won't share his first name. the doctor was on the run from gallifrey when he stumbled upon the family... now he's just on the run from the family of blood. regrettably, barbara got a bit too nosy in the doctor's office at one point, and took his fob watch. can susan recover the fob watch from ian and barbara before it's too late?

two lands jamie and zoe in jamie's era. look it's all very well and good that you know how to navigate eighteenth-century scotland, jamie, but i'm a bit out of my depth here!

if three did this, literally nothing would change, except that now the brigadier is being harassed by two human scientists who are smarter than him rather than one. the master lands on earth and tries to sell the doctor out to the family, only for it to backfire; the brigadier's men try and fail to shoot the family; liz insists the master pay for her therapy. the doctor barely notices the difference when he becomes a time lord again

there are two different ways i'd want to play four as a human. the first is this: harry and sarah have to put up with him. stationed at a naval base, harry and sarah must ward off the family whilst also warding off the doctor's insanity. sarah is disguised as the doctor's estranged younger brother (don't question the crossdressing) and harry is disguised as harry. inevitably things go wrong.

alternatively: rather than staying in e-space, romana returns to the main universe with the doctor. unfortunately, they manage to attract the family along the way; adric must badly pretend to be human whilst corralling two fob watched time lords who have chosen a really bad time to plan their wedding

tegan and turlough have plenty of experience with hiding from aliens, being on earth, and putting up with the doctor, but boy is he annoying as a human

the doctor gives peri exactly zero instructions and then lands them in the 1300s as an amnesiac human in the midst of the black death. peri is at her FUCKING LIMIT

much like three, very little changes for eight. this is the only one i'd still be tempted to set in 1913 à la the vna/nuwho episodes. charley gets to explore the recent past (to her, anyway) whilst acting as the severely amnesiac john smith's caretaker

honestly, rose and jack would be a remarkably competent team to be saddled with the doctor as a human... and he's falling in love with both of them, of course

amy vs the family: amy has won. rory gets possessed by the family but don't worry, it gets unwritten from time. the doctor is never doing that again, ever, yuck, he ate pears, YUCK

i don't think clara could be trusted with the doctor as a human, and if this was bill and nardole, i don't think the doctor would change much as a human. missy is not fob watched because she is in the vault and therefore simply inaccessible. bill continues to get set weird essays. the family are so focused on trying to get to missy (who they KNOW is there) that they fail to realise the doctor is there and simply perish within their three-month lifespans

[brucebocchi]

Spring 2024 anime, Pt. 2: Mixed bags and the gems

hey! i also post this on my ko-fi! this is very much a labor of love, so if you liked what i wrote consider throwing a few bucks my way! also you can find part 1 right here! thanks!

Yes, hello, I'm still here. Between work and AI: The Somnium Files -nirvanA Initiative-, I was struggling to find the time to get this out, but here we are! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go actually watch some anime again.

As always, the OP for each show is linked in the title. Watch them! There were some damn good ones this season.

Let's-a go:

Mixed Bags

Astro Note

I’m going to kick off this section by first stating that on the whole, I’m much higher on the anime in this section this season than I was last time: Nothing that I watched this season disappointed me nearly as much as Metallic Rouge or The Witch and the Beast, nor bored me to tears like The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. This truly is a collection of mixed bags; anime that I found enjoyable or interesting but still left me wanting in one way or another. “Good But Could Have Been Great” is too unwieldy anyway.

Astro Note was eye-catching from the jump: This is very clearly an homage to Rumiko Takahashi’s beloved romcom Maison Ikkoku, with character designs by Carole & Tuesday’s Eisaku Kubonouchi. The colors are soft and bright, everyone looks unique and has a wide variety of hilarious facial expressions, and the OP is a fun time right out of the gate. You come for the lovely visuals and Takahashi homage, and you stay for, uh, not much else.

Takumi, a down-on-his-luck young chef, answers a job posting at a boarding house that promises its residents breakfast every day. It turns out that Mira, the odd but beautiful new landlady, is a dogshit cook and tried to attract a new one with a plagiarized job posting. Takumi doesn’t really care because she’s, like, really pretty, so he takes the job and moves in. He’s soon beset by a cast of wacky characters that includes an enigmatic unemployed salaryman and his precocious son, an indie idol who looks like a hard-drinking Futaba Sakura in her downtime, a nosy neighbor, and a rich, handsome romantic rival. We’re already approaching Maison Ikkoku territory. 

Shortly after moving in, Takumi believes he overhears Mira saying that she’s a widow, which would firmly plant Astro Note’s flag right in Ikkoku’s turf, but it turns out that Mira is in fact an alien from the planet Wid, meaning she is of the Wido race (this is as good of a localization as you can ask for; in the original Japanese he heard “miboujin,” not knowing that she’s from the planet Mibou). So we’ve got some Urusei Yasura sprinkled in for good measure. Her adorable poodle, voiced by Junichi Suwabe (Sukuna himself!) is from the same planet and helping her find a MacGuffin, hidden by the previous owner, that would help her take over as queen. There’s also some blossoming romance!

The alien stuff made for an interesting wrinkle, and it went a long way toward characterizing Mira as an endearingly odd but curious woman, but it often played out in wacky hijinks caused by alien spies, which felt like a designated make-the-plot-happen button more often than not. It paid off splendidly in the last couple of episodes, and I loved how all of the flashbacks of Mira’s mother looked like grainy Showa-era space operas, but getting there took a lot of “oh no, chase that Thing!” sequences. I found myself tuning out on those until they finally became plot relevant.

The central romance was fine, if a little underbaked, but what kept me watching Astro Note was the smaller moments with the ensemble characters. There were moments with both Wakabayashi the salaryman and his son Ren that slapped the apathy right off my face, and a side plot with Takumi and a person from his past was incredibly sweet. I did also love the massive turn the plot took in the last couple episodes, to the point where I found myself almost wishing that the show up to that point was different.

And that’s Astro Note in a nutshell: A lot of good pieces mixed with some filler, weird pacing, and an overall uneven experience in a nice-looking package. A fun little distraction but nothing entirely memorable. If I can give this show one major positive, it’s that watching it finally convinced me to read Maison Ikkoku, and for that I will forever be grateful. Read Maison Ikkoku.

Go! Go! Loser Ranger

I keep running notes for everything I’m watching as the season rolls on, and sometimes I’ll indulge in other reviewers’ early takes and jot down some insights that might spark from hearing outside perspectives. During Gigguk’s opening remarks on Go! Go! Loser Ranger in his early Spring season roundup, I made a note that the easiest way to summarize this show for a western audience is “basically The Boys but with the Power Rangers instead of The Seven.” And then he said pretty much the exact same thing five seconds later. I just want the record to show that.

Indeed, this is a sentai series with some spice. 13 years ago, the invading forces of evil were soundly defeated by the Dragon Keepers, a real-life sentai squad. In the present day, the Dragon Keepers now sit atop a massive organization protecting earth, and also dominating the entertainment industry: Every week, they hold an exhibition match against the remaining rank-and-file footsoldiers, skull-faced shapeshifters known as Dusters. In order to keep their lives, the Dusters were forced to give up their freedom and serve as the farcical Putty Patrol for what is ultimately a pro wrestling show. Sick of being a jobber and effectively a slave, one of the Dusters, known simply as Fighter D, decides the best way to destroy the Dragon Keepers and free his brethren is to do so from within: He’ll morph into a human shape, join their Rangers program as a cadet, and personally slay each of the five Keepers.

Fighter D is quickly found out, though. One of the recruiters, the lovely but mercurial Yumeko, isn’t nearly as dumb as he thought, but she fortunately has the same aim and quickly puts him to work trying to steal the Keepers’ insanely powerful weapons, the Divine Artifacts. He’s also found by the Dragon Keepers and manages to escape, though badly wounded. He’s found in a cave by Yumeko’s hanger-on, the upstart Ranger cadet Hibiki, whose family was badly fragmented by an unknown monster. While he still believes in the Keepers and shares their ostensible goal of protecting humanity, he believes that there needs to be major changes and agrees to let D impersonate him to infiltrate the Rangers. He’s soon embroiled in a prolonged examination trial against higher-ranked Rangers that soon turns into a fight to the death, made only more deadly by the inclusion of a female Duster and the same monster that killed Hibiki’s parents and paralyzed his sister.

Yes, that’s a lot, and everything up until that last sentence was just in the first four episodes. I’ve said repeatedly that I’m willing to be patient with introductory seasons for action-oriented shonen series, because those do usually take a minute to start cooking, but the first season of Loser Ranger is bizarrely paced. The first four episodes were an intriguing introduction, but they might have served better as a movie to kick off the season, because the overwhelming majority of the remaining eight episodes were pretty much just a bunch of people fighting in a fucking parking garage. I was under the impression that the first season was going to be 24 or so episodes, for some reason, so I was willing to be patient with it.

Maybe I should've been patient enough to wait until the second season, because I found myself getting whiplash between fascination and utter boredom. I still don’t know if I even like this show. There are so many moving parts, and many of them are fascinating, but to get bombarded with them so early and so often, only to then keep most of them in the background in favor of way too many new characters fighting in, again, a goddamned parking garage, frustrates me in increasing measure the more I write about it. I really wanted to like this show more than I did.

The production values are seemingly all over the place too. The OP is another Tatsuya Kitani banger, the voice cast is deep and talented (especially for the English dub, holy hell), the puppet outros are a hoot, and the animation is mostly fine. I’m rarely one to complain about CGI in anime (the ED for this show is entirely 3DCG and it fucks), but a lot of it in Loser Ranger, especially as an obvious means of cheaping out on having to hand-draw and -animate the Dragon Keepers’ slightly-elaborate costumes, is baffling. You could make a generous case for it representing them as larger-than-life personalities, but in execution it’s just kind of uncanny. The show looks and sounds fine overall, but little things like that just take me out of it.

I’m going to withhold judgment until the second season, but for now I can’t say I’m too impressed by the debut. Maybe just watch the first four episodes and put a pin in it until season 2 drops.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night

I’m beginning to worry that Metallic Rouge’s catastrophic narrative failure may have permanently made me nervous about any original anime to follow. It’s an unfair comparison to make, especially considering it aired at the same time as the bombastically audacious Bang Brave Bang Bravern, which I consider one of the best of the year so far and even one of the better anime to air so far this decade. At the same time, though, the millisecond I start to suspect that an original anime is losing its footing, as soon as the one synapse fires that tells me that this show may not be able to stick the landing, I start to get cynical. The good news is that Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night isn’t even in the same time zone as Rouge’s disappointment. The bad news is that it still never fully lived up to what it could have been.

Right from the jump, this felt like Doga Kobo flexing in between seasons of Oshi no Ko with yet another gorgeous showbiz anime. The debut episode is one of the best I’ve seen in some time; an immaculately animated and brilliantly storyboarded mission statement showcasing the self-doubting illustrator Mahiru and the disgraced ex-idol Kano meeting and finding new inspiration in one another’s work (if you’ve been reading Beat & Motion, this may sound familiar, except they’re both high school girls). It was a masterclass in depicting powerful self-expression and the spark of a truly fateful encounter. What followed was also pretty good, but...

Mahiru and Kano band together (pun intended) to form the multimedia collective JELEE, also enlisting social-outcast musical prodigy (and Kano stan) Mei, and NEET VTuber Kiui along the way. We see a lot of the nitty-gritty of trying to get a new act off the ground, as well as the reality that any new artist or creator nowadays is, ultimately, at the mercy of the internet. It was a treat to watch these four all come together, as was seeing the emotional bonds they forge with one another while also navigating their own personal issues, but it frequently came at the expense of an actual plot. That sort of thing is fine, I do love me some good slice-of-life, but I feel like the show planned on something a bit grander. While we’re focused on so many of these really lovely moments of character growth and interpersonal drama, everything about JELEE’s ascent, y’know, the main plot, just kind of happens, and before you know it everything turns out okay and the season’s over. It really felt like the writers had a big plan but ended up just laying down the tracks while the train was already in motion.

As mentioned, I’m not nearly as down on the anime in the “Mixed Bags” section this season as I was three months ago, but just thinking about how the plot sagged around the middle and rushed towards its ending leaves me frustrated. Unlike JELEE itself, Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night feels like less than the sum of its parts. This show feels like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle; what you can make out of the image is gorgeous, yet not only was it never completed, but someone clearly put a few of the pieces together wrong as well. There are plenty of themes in the story and character writing that could have blossomed into something amazing, like impostor syndrome, finding community and identity through fandom, young sapphic love, gender identity, and so many more, and it may have been possible to resolve at least a couple of these in 12 episodes, but Jellyfish seemed either incapable of or uninterested in actually getting there beyond a few vague overtures.

I know I sound harsh here and I didn’t mean for this review to be mostly complaints; I did very much like this show, but I wanted so badly to love it. And it probably isn’t entirely fair of me to grade this show based on what it could have been instead of what it is, but so much was plainly left on the table that I’m not really left with another choice. I still recommend it much more strongly than anything else I've put in the Mixed Bags section so far this year, but be forewarned that you may be let down. This is a pretty goddamn good anime that could’ve been pretty goddamn incredible, but it just couldn’t get there.

Mysterious Disappearances

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I know what I’m about. If a new series rotates around a protagonist who looks like that, I’ll at least give it an episode or two.

Sumireko is a former child-prodigy novelist, now in her late 20s working at a bookstore with the sharp-tongued Ren, as she continues to fail at getting published again. On the eve of her 28th birthday, Sumireko accidentally takes home a book that was droplifted in the store, and shortly after reading it aloud she finds herself reverted into the body of a child. Suddenly struck by inspiration once again, she disappears from work for the next week, furiously typing away at her next novel. Ren manages to find her and tells her that she’s under a curse: The book is an otherworldly object known as a Curiosity, and its power can be deadly to those who use it. Though Sumireko is desperate to hang on to her newly-regained youth, Ren manages to smooth-talk her into changing back and handing over the book. Now aware of an extradimensional threat to daily life, Sumireko teams up with Ren and his little sister Oto to track down and neutralize more Curiosities before they cause widespread havoc.

This series is alright, if questionable in a lot of areas. I recognize that I’m not entirely the target audience; while I love a good supernatural mystery, each of these Curiosities is rooted in East Asian mythology and contemporary urban legends, very few of which I was familiar with going in. To those on that side of the world (or to Westerners with that specific special interest), I’m sure it hits different, but I got lost on a couple of occasions. Mysterious Disappearances also runs into the same pacing issues that I found with The Witch and the Beast last season, where the plot structure is effectively episodic, but each mystery can last a few episodes at a time, so if you’re not particularly invested in the subject at hand, you’re SOL for another week or two.

This show also just plain doesn’t look very good. The animation is nothing impressive and there’s something off-putting about the overall look that I can’t quite put my finger on. It looks retro in ways that probably weren’t intentional, like a 20-year-old digipaint anime that was upscaled from 480p. The audio element is great, at least; the music, sound design, and cast are all fantastic (between her turn as Sumireko in this one and her supporting roles in Reincarnated as the 7th Prince and Kaiju No. 8, Fairouz Ai has put in great work this season), and that’s a good thing because this one isn’t a looker.

If you couldn’t already tell from how the main character looks, Mysterious Disappearances is undoubtedly horny as hell, but often distractingly so. I do have to praise Sumireko’s design to an extent; for a large-chested anime lady, she at least hews closer to how a tall woman with somewhat appropriately large breasts would actually be built and how her clothes would actually fit. She looks like a more realistically-proportioned Nami. There’s no shortage of anime characters with gigantic boobs, but few that make me actually go “oh, this woman definitely has back problems.” There are a lot of slow-tilting shots up female characters’ legs towards their chests to the point where I tuned the dialogue out because I couldn’t believe they just kept on doing it. I skimmed through the manga, and though there is far more semi-gratuitous nudity as compared to the anime, I still somehow found the latter much more distracting with its attempts at fanservice. I also don’t really care for how the “camera” looks at Oto and her middle school classmates either; I found myself just getting nervous whenever a scene focused on them.

For its problems, there’s at least a series of solid emotional cores here. Similar to Sumireko’s desire to regain her youthful creativity, the wielders-slash-victims of these Curiosities are largely vulnerable individuals who are trying to make the best of their lives in spite of past traumas like bullying, neglect, and disability. All serious issues, no doubt, and the story tries to handle them as well as possible, but once you see through the pattern of “awful thing is happening, we get to know the character, then we learn their tragic backstory and there’s a tearful resolution while we move closer to advancing the overall plot,” it can feel a little cloying in the long run. Not that those resolutions can’t be potent; I really liked the endings of the stories of the missing hairdresser and the rogue VTuber, but as a plot formula it can ring hollow.

Mysterious Disappearances is a fine if unspectacular series of supernatural mysteries with an okay overarching plot, and your mileage may vary depending on your existing knowledge of East Asian occult and superstition. It’s also not that fun to actually look at, even if you happen to be into tall redheads with huge racks. Uh, not that I would know.

The Gems

Girls Band Cry

When Bocchi the Rock! made its unexpectedly earth-shattering landfall a couple years ago, it was inundated with a deluge of comparisons to the previous landmark girls-in-a-band anime, K-On!. It felt a bit trite at the time, and feels even more so in retrospect; each show is its own thing and they both stand on their own merits. And now here’s my dumb ass, reviewing a new girls-in-a-band anime, desperately trying not to compare it to Bocchi.

It’s really not a fair comparison either way; the focus being on an all-girls rock band is really the only thing they have in common. Rather than Hitori “Bocchi” Gotoh, a perpetually-anxious recluse looking to join a band so she won’t have to get a real job after high school, we have Nina Iseri, who is… difficult. Nina has just moved to Tokyo after running away from home, but her train arrived too late for her to get her apartment key, and to make matters worse, her phone’s dead. While charging at a local coffee shop, she finds out that Momoka, the now-former frontwoman of her favorite band, is playing on a nearby street. After some ups and downs, they decide to form a band together, and butt heads more than a couple times.

Along the way, they recruit more members, each with their own issues: Subaru, the drummer, is struggling with the expectations placed on her by her grandmother to become an actress, Tomo, the keyboardist, is exacting and a little too opinionated to keep a steady role in a band, and Rupa, the bassist, is a soft-spoken foreigner who remains a cheerful enigma despite losing her parents. And Nina and Momoka are both flat-out stubborn in ways that do not mesh well with one another. There are a lot of yelling matches and many angry tears shed as the band Togenashi Togeari comes together: yes, the “Cry” in the title isn’t just for style points.

I will say that it’s refreshing that Girls Band Cry does not sugarcoat what an absolute pain in the ass Nina can be when she’s dug in: She ran away from home because she’s utterly convinced of her own righteousness, and it’s your damn problem if you think otherwise. She is avoidant and oppositional-defiant, and everyone else just has to deal with it. She may not pick her hills well, but by God will she die on them. Props for having a protagonist this openly messy and unpleasant. Plenty of musicians, or really anyone working in a group for that matter, can be abrasive and stubborn, and TogeToge’s growing pains are a necessary element of their development as a band. 

I know the bar isn’t very high for 3D computer-generated anime when it doesn’t come from Studio Orange, but this is easily one of the best-looking 3DCG anime I’ve ever seen. Between this and Trigun Stampede, I’m blown away at how expressive characters can be in CG, and how they react to what’s around them in real-time more consistently than you’d see in most 2D animation. Speaking of which, Girls Band Cry isn’t entirely in 3D; much of the OP as well as several flashbacks and background characters are hand-drawn, and they look so goddamn good that I’m almost left wondering what could’ve been. Not that I’m disappointed in the slightest; when the 3D animation hits, it REALLY hits in gorgeous synaesthetic waves that so perfectly depict an intersection of sound, light, and emotion. Hell, even the transition cards are huge eye catchers. Not everything looks brilliant all the time; the pets in particular are uncannily low-res and almost look like they got plucked out of KamiKatsu.

Of course, this is a band show, so the audio element has to be on point as well, and I’d say Girls Band Cry is up to snuff. The anime is part of a larger multimedia project, and the entire main cast consists of audition winners performing under mononyms, and they knock it out of the damn park; they’re pretty goddamn great for supposed newcomers. The music is a blast as well, not just in performance scenes but in the background as well. Togenashi Togeari already existed in the zeitgeist as a virtual band before this show went to air, so they already had a small discography out there before the show went to air and I’m looking forward to digging into it.

Infamously, this show isn’t particularly easy to watch. Not in the thematic sense, but literally: You cannot legally watch it in English anywhere in the West. Despite its popularity, Girls Band Cry was never picked up by any Anglosphere-based streaming platforms, for whatever reason, and the only official English subtitles out there are from an Indonesian streamer. So, much like the days of VHS trading and the early internet, we’re forced to rely on community translations. Far be it from me to encourage piracy (lol), but if you can find a good fansub, Girls Band Cry is very much worth your while. Pinkies up, motherfuckers.

Kaiju No. 8

I don’t watch Demon Slayer or My Hero Academia, so this was my designated Shonen Jump action show of the season, and it came with a ton of buzz: The way I see it, if I can pick up a volume of the manga at Target, the inevitable anime adaptation is gonna be a big deal. I’ve not read Kaiju No. 8 yet, but I’d say the anime lives up to a good amount of the hype.

Japan has had to handle a constant threat of kaiju for many decades now, and as a child the way-too-aptly-named Kafka Hibino made a promise to his best friend Mina that they would both grow up to lead the Japan Anti-Kaiju Defense Force in charge of eliminating the threat. A couple decades later, she’s a national hero as a captain in the Force, while Kafka is in the private sector at age 32, cleaning up the enormous corpses and viscera Mina and her division leave behind. He hasn’t given up on his dreams, by any stretch; Kafka has failed every single enlistment application he’s submitted since he came of age, but he just keeps on trying.

Kafka and his work kohai, the upstart JAKDF hopeful Reno, manage to survive a kaiju attack at the end of a shift with minor injuries, but when they’re in the hospital, a potato-sized flying kaiju shoves itself down Kafka’s throat, causing him to transform into a kaiju. Fortunately, he’s able to change back to his human form just in time to pass the first round of Defense Force exams, with Reno warning him not to let anyone in on his secret during practical exams.

Kafka is pathetically weak in his human form and is repeatedly shown up by the daughter of the Defense Force’s director general, the young hotshot Kikoru (Fairouz Ai once again), but he manages to save her life when a training exercise goes haywire and forces him to transform and share his secret with her. Reno and Kikoru get in, no problem, while Kafka manages to squeak in as a cadet. Of course, without exposing his little-big kaiju secret, Kafka can’t do much to help in terms of actual combat, but he does frequently act as an unofficial tactician in directing his squadmates on the battlefield and, in a very smart writing decision, applying his professional knowledge of kaiju anatomy to help them identify and target weaknesses. 

And from there we get a whole lot of early military training and bonding, and not just with Kafka, Reno, Kikoru, and their division’s vice-commander, the giggly Hoshina: There’s also, uh, Man-Bun! And Muscles! And Shark Teeth! And the Token Women! You know, those guys. Yeah, this is ostensibly an ensemble cast, as any good battle shonen should be, but I really didn’t get much from anyone outside the main few characters other than identifying features. I’m sure we’ll get more out of them in subsequent seasons but I have little to work off of right now.

The main three are great, though: Kafka definitely has shonen protag brain even at his age, but he’s still necessary representation for schlubby guys in their 30s who still have hopes and dreams (we exist and our stories matter), and for as serious and focused as Reno likes to think he is, he makes a great tsukkomi whenever Kafka starts acting up. Kikoru is already an icon as well; she’s basically Asuka Langley Sohryu for the zoomer generation. I feel a little weird about the fact that she’s literally half Kafka’s age and still acts kinda tsundere around him, but this is a shonen at the end of the day.

I have some small nagging issues with the story here and there, but nothing that outright ruins the show for me. Like plenty of others, I’m far more fascinated with the ins and outs of how Japanese society adapted to living with kaiju threats outside of just military preparation and response; Kafka’s initial job in kaiju cleanup was actually really neat and I’d have loved it just as much (and possibly more) if the series had just focused on that. I want some damn world building! I also am not crazy about the focus on the Defense Force’s powerscaling in the form of “Unleashed Combat Power,” but I also just plain don’t care about powerscaling to begin with. Wasn’t the entire point of power levels in Dragon Ball Z that it’s pointless to define someone’s fighting spirit by a number? Maybe they drop it later.

This show looks pretty darn good! Production IG clearly put its A-team on this one; the character animation is cartoonishly bouncy and expressive in ways we rarely see outside of Trigger productions, and the big-ass kaiju are all mercifully in outstanding 2D (though I wouldn’t complain about CG; the OP is entirely in 3D and looks exceptional). The silliness of the animation really came through in one of the funniest scenes in any anime I watched this season. Some of the textures can look a little distractingly muddy at times, but hey, these are big ugly monsters we’re looking at. Make those bastards ugly.

On a certain level, I can appreciate the effort put into this show to try to make it a crossover success; the manga is popular and kaiju films remain one of Japan’s greatest cultural exports. Streaming new episodes on the fetid corpse of Twitter was certainly a decision. I can also appreciate wanting to load up the soundtrack with popular Western artists; my problem is that they went with acts I actively avoid like YUNGBLUD (with writing by Imagine Dragons!) and OneRepublic. Suffice to say, I don’t care for the OP and ED on a musical level, but I know that I’m coming at this with a conscious bias. I’m sure they’re hits over in Japan, and for all I know there are music fans over there with the same tastes and disposition as me who think that some Japanese acts I learned about through anime like, say, Bump of Chicken or Queen Bee, are “coworker music” or whatever. I’ll live.

Kaiju No. 8, at the end of the day, is another battle shonen with guns and big monsters, but sometimes that’s all you need. I’ll be coming back for the next season.

Train to the End of the World

Spring 2024 was a banner season for girls anime. From the veteran director/writer duo that gave us cult hits like Squid Girl, Shirobako, and Prison School (and individual credits on a laundry list of classic and cult-favorite anime across the board) comes an original anime that’s not quite Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, nor Cute Girls Doing Amazing Things, but Cute Girls Being Fucking Weirdos in a Weird World.

7G technology has arrived in Japan and immediately wreaked unknowable chaos. Geography, flora, and fauna have all warped beyond recognition, and in the town of Agano, every human above a certain age has become a talking animal. Shizuru, a still-human high school girl, has been looking for her best friend Youka ever since they got in a fight two years ago and the latter ran off, just before the 7G cataclysm. She finds out that Youka has been spotted in Ikebukuro, and with the help of a babbling train conductor who managed to briefly turn lucid, learns to operate a two-car commuter train to get the hell out of dodge. Just before Shizuru leaves, train stocked with Agano’s famous goya melons, she’s joined by her classmates: The soft-spoken Nadeko, the temperamental bookworm Akira, and the rambunctious gyaru Reimi. Youka’s dog, Pochi, also joins for morale purposes. Along the way, they see just how warped Japan has become, with locals in the various towns ranging from mushroom people to zombies to Lilliputians to characters from their favorite anime, and more.

Try as I might, a summary does not do Train to the End of the World justice; this show is as offbeat as offbeat gets. It makes no bones about how flat-out weird it wants to get and actively revels in it. It’s not really interested in making the girls into a new generation of moe icons either; they are unabashed weirdos, in the ways that really only high school girls can be, and they handle the bizarre situations foisted upon them in similar fashion. They get into arguments about dumb shit, hurl insults at strangers, and occasionally just talk about poop. The writing in this series is fascinating, and it really shouldn’t come as a surprise coming from someone who also has script-writing credits for classics like Cowboy Bebop and Ranma ½ on her resume. The dialogue is punchy and comes at a breakneck pace in ways that you really only get in original anime like ODDTAXI.

Train to the End of the World is an incredible dichotomy unto itself because it clearly comes from a very literate way of thinking but has a blast being really goddamn stupid sometimes, in the best ways. It draws on a lot of inspirations of the epics of yore, gleefully cites the western literary canon, and ponders the future of the human race, and then has the girls negotiate their release from a Gulliver’s Travels situation by threatening to flood a park with urine. It is at once Homer and Homer Simpson. This show is funny in ways that are hard to articulate; comedy is so intrinsic to the show that it only has so many laugh-out-loud moments, but much more often I found myself shaking my head and remarking “this show is fucking hilarious.”

As a complete story, Train to the End of the World isn’t exactly generation-defining, but that’s perfectly fine. It’s an experience more than anything. It has really nice character moments and some heartwarming stuff in there, but I was mostly there for the weird shit. The ending was just okay, but I didn’t feel any poorer for having seen it; I’ll dive right into the cliche and say that it wasn’t about the destination but rather the journey. I had an absolute blast for the whole ride.

Now that I’ve made you read all of this, I’m going to go ahead and admit that I haven’t seen Squid Girl, Shirobako, or Prison School, but I kind of have to now, because I was bowled over by this show. This series revels in surrealism, so your mileage may vary, but it’s at the very least worth checking out. It may not have a lasting impact outside of some similar cult favoritism, but this was still my personal favorite new anime of the season.

Wind Breaker

A few weeks into the Spring season I felt like I was missing something. I gave Wind Breaker a shot and I realized about halfway into the first episode that what I was missing was just some dope-ass fisticuffs.

Haruka is a bit of a delinquent. His hair and eyes are heterochromic, and because he’s judged so harshly for his looks, he decided to lean into it and become the nogoodnik everyone thinks he is. He’s moved to a new town to join the local high school Furin, where he hears he’ll have to fight his way to the top, but as soon as he arrives in town he sees a young woman being harassed by a group of creeps. He takes them out on his own and in return receives a free lunch from the cafe she runs despite his protestations. After she teases him more than a little (his ass is NOT used to positive attention), the creeps return with more goons in tow, and Haruka is backed up by his new classmates. To his surprise, the locals shower the Furin boys with praise, and he then learns that Furin’s gang, Bofurin, exists solely to protect the town from outside threats. And Haruka thinks that is the coolest shit ever.

From there, Haruka gets to meet more of the Bofurin boys, and because of his standoffish personality, rebuffs their praises from the fight. Again, his ass is NOT used to positive attention. We get to learn the hierarchy of Bofurin, and it’s not exactly as Haruka expected: This is not a might-makes-right dogpile at all; it is a structured organization that protects its own and puts its community first. Soon enough, though, they happen upon one of their middle schoolers being hassled by a neighboring gang, and they organize a tournament on hostile ground to resolve their differences.

I am an absolute goddamn sucker for the “delinquent with a heart of gold” archetype, and Haruka is just a big ol’ tsundere from the opening minutes, so Wind Breaker hit like fucking catnip for me. For a show about gangs of delinquents, this could actually be a good example of positive masculinity if you look at it in a certain light. It’s very heavy-handed with the message that nobody can achieve greatness on their own and that surrounding yourself with the right people can change your life for the better. It’s not a rare theme in Japanese media by any means (it’s a central theme of the Persona series as well as another ultra-popular shonen series I’ve been reading in secret), but I really appreciate it being delivered through the lens of channeling brute strength and fighting prowess specifically to protect the vulnerable.  

At the end of the day, though, it’s really just about guys bein’ dudes.

The production values on this are phenomenal and I have to commend CloverWorks for turning in yet another banger. The cast is deep and plenty talented (there’s a lot of Jujutsu Kaisen in there, and it should surprise nobody that the goofy, silver-haired leader of Bofurin is voiced by Yuichi Nakamura). The animation, shot composition, fight choreography, and lighting effects are all absolutely gorgeous, and it’s clear that they see this as a potential franchise. At least, I would certainly hope so, because what we actually got from the first season left me a little hungry. The tournament arc was juicy, and it went a lot longer toward introducing the ensemble cast than the two other action shows I just talked about, but it lasted about an episode too long for a 13-episode season, and the ending came at an awkward time. I was left wanting, but what I want is a second season, so I guess it did its job.

The issues with pacing and the weirdly-timed ending meant that Wind Breaker was a bit of a fence case for me between this section and the last, but my memories of watching it are almost uniformly positive, so into The Gems it goes. This show rocks. Dudes rock.

[cattimeswithjellie]

I do like the fact that in a session where there were three permadeaths, they were all so very different.

There was the useless, senseless accident that was Jimmy's death. Jimmy's death was unique because it was both preordained and fiercely denied. After three series with Jimmy the first permadeath, it's almost a game in itself to make it not happen again. People were willing to die to keep Jimmy from going out first. Bdubs, who was barely Jimmy's ally, literally begged Jimmy to kill him when Jimmy's timer ran into the single minutes. Scott jumped off a bridge to give Jimmy just a bit more time to live. Grian and Joel were on deck, ready to spoonfeed more life into Jimmy with their own deaths if they needed to, just to keep that canary chirping a little longer. But none of it mattered in the end, because Jimmy's foot slipped in a moment of excitement and he was too startled to pearl or bucket clutch or do anything to save himself. Gone in an instant for no reason and no chance to say goodbye.

There was Joel's death, a helpless, hopeless race against time and an implacable enemy. Joel made some serious tactical mistakes in his final episode. His gleeful killing alienated him from his allies, antagonizing the Clockers by killing Cleo, annoying the Nosy Neighbors by killing BigB. He griefed Scott's base with TNT twice, once tactically and once just because he wanted to blow stuff up. By the time he was down to the wire, there were lots of people who wanted him dead and barely anybody who wanted him alive. Even Grian, his Day One ally, eventually realized that trying to keep Joel alive was a losing proposition when Scott and Scar and Martyn and Cleo could siphon away Joel's time much faster than Grian could ever donate it. But even knowing that it was hopeless, even knowing that a _best case scenario_ would barely carry him into the next session, Joel fought desperately til his last second ticked away.

And then there was Skizz's death, premeditated and proud, carried out at the hands of a friend. Skizz had been dying from the very first day of the server. His Session One was absolutely atrocious, losing four hours right off the bat to back-to-back Bogey kills. No matter how well he played after that, no matter how many kills he got or plans he came up with, Skizz was never seriously in contention to win the game. And he knew that. He came up with alternate win conditions for himself. He set a goal to affirm every person on the server and he did. He set a goal to make the team he led a force to be reckoned with, and he did. And most importantly, he set a goal that somebody from TIES make it to the end of the game. By Session Seven, it was clear that Skizz wasn't going to be around to bring that goal to fruition himself. Time was not on his side, and his skill was just not there. Skizz is a clever redstoner and a good entertainer, but he's no PVPer and his bow skills are mediocre. Every time he tried to get a kill, he wound up losing more time. So when it came down to the wire, he didn't beg for his life or fight for more time, despite knowing his friends would give it to him. He called his team together and he gave them his new strategy. Someone from TIES needed to make it to the end, and it couldn't be him. But they could take his resources and his time forward with them, so long as he gave them up willingly. By sacrificing himself for his team, Skizz lost his last 20 minutes of life, but he put his team one step closer to that final goal.

There's probably only one session left, which means it's going to be choked with permadeaths that don't get focused or remarked on very much. Each one will be different though, each one will have its own flavor. In a series like Limited Life, the end is never in question, but the ending is unique to each player.

[nonexistent-morals]

canon Madara meets fanon madatobi.

Madara wins (he absorbs Kaguya or sth or imagine she doesn't exist) and he made infite tsukuyomi possible.

He's the only one left in the world. Bored king decides to be nosy so uses his rinnegan to peek into other dimensions (because that's a thing he can do because alien ninja magic). If he'd made different choices, walked different routes, the what ifs.

He finds one where he's the shodai Hokage and he's making out with Tobirama on his lap. why?? Him??

He changes places with fanon Madara for reasons.

This took a bit to get written out, but i hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

The thing about being a god in a world of dreams is that eventually you get tired of your own. And for Madara, life at this point after the war has been won, and all things are said and done, after he's had his dream, he's bored. Bored and alone, so like all gods do when Boredom strikes, he's decided to just have a little peak at the other perfect worlds.

First he dipped into hashirama's dream, easily taking the place of the false madara in it, and they had their usual dance on the training fields, and then they went to lunch with his family (mito, tobirama, hashirama's children and izuna). Its funny how hashirama's perfect world has his little brother alive and well, but i suppose thats exactly like hashirama, alway kind and thoughtful.

But even so with how nice a dream it is, there's one thing that with absolute certainty that bothers madara. Senju tobirama, ever observant even in his brothers dream, except its not just his brothers dream, but both of theirs. Tobirama's and hashirama's dreams are connected as are really anyone from founding of the village who are here now. Its a jarring realization.

Madara leaves after the lunch letting false madara go back to his dream life, not because he wants to, but because tobirama had been giving him this look of suspicion when his brother wasn't paying attention . Somehow how he's missing something about tobirama's part of the dream, and clearly its enough to make him scrutinize his actions.

So now madara is watching his false self parade around hokage tower, doing paperwork, giving orders, and currently walking into the white haired senjus office. It makes him wonder if this part of the dream is hashirama wanting them to get along or tobirama scheming.

Madara's not really paying any attention to their conversation, he's to busy looking at tobirama's body language, which is far to relaxed for any of their original interactions in real life, and his facial expressions are also more easy to read. It really is fascinating in a morbid sort of way, it makes him feel uneasy.

By this time fake Madara is sitting on the edge of tobirama's desk, tobirama is looking up at him with a very small amused smile, and this time he decides to listen to what he says.

“really madara, at work, in the middle of the day when we have a meeting in 30 minutes?” tobirama says it in fond tone, madara didn't know the senju demon was even capable of sounding like that.

“You and i both know that 30 minutes is more than enough time, especially from someone as competent as you.” Its odd hearing his own voice coming from another person, even if hes not real.

At this response tobirama rolls his eyes at him, soft smile still on his lips, looking so very pleased with himself and pulls the fake madara in to him by his waist, and Madara can only watch as tobirama begins unfastening his pants, and its at this point he decides to leave the dream. Madara is left with so many more questions than answers.

[tinydefector]

Klik Away pt 2

Did I just binge write this before bed yes I did, becuase I may slowly Turning into a prowl simp.

Prowl x human reader

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: forced proximity, swearing.

Prowl masterlist

Chapter1 chapter3

Chapter4

Request and ask open, read pinned post

___________

 Small eyes slowly flicker open in the large, minimalists room. The deep purr resonating from prowls chassis in low rumbles that shutters their whole body. They gaze meets with Prowl's chassis, slowly look around in the quiet room only to shout as the flyt chirps beside their head, leaning down to get a look at them. It makes the human panic and try to bolt from Prowl's side. 

Prowl onlines with an irritated rumble as the human bolted upright shrieking, panicked flailing waking him at the uncontrolled movement. Optics flashing in annoyance, Prowl sat up quickly to swat the flyt away with a massive servo.

"Cease that infuriating racket," he snarled, engine growling. Green buzzed around them, chittering unhelpfully, making thrilling noises as the flyt knocks things off a bench before landing up on one of the window ledges where Green makes a Shrieking noise. Prowl swatted at the flyt. "Silence, you insufferable pest! i'm rechargeing, now cease your squawking."

His field pulsed in agitation, systems still booting up as he comes around to consciousness fully. Prowl glared down at the thrashing human, servo unyielding despite fragile construction. 

"Settle," he ordered gruffly. Recharge-added processor lacked patience for hysterics this early in the cycle. As Green finally subsided, Prowl watches the human, his optics focus in on their breathing. 

"What is that thing?" they whisper while pressing closer to his hull, back pressed against him as they pull the cloth closer, their eyes linger on the flyt that glares down at them. 

Prowl cycled an irritated ventilation at the pathetic display, engine rumbling low. "That 'thing' is my pet, Green," he replied curtly, optics lingering on the flyt as he grumbles in annoyance. His optics move from Green to meet the trembling organic pressed against his plating. 

"She is not harmful, merely curious." Why did he allow the human to curl closer, relying on his frame for security against a mere flyt, Yet...he found no compelling reason to move, systems adjusting to the softer form pressed against him, Prowl found that he didn't quite mind it but would never admit that. 

Green lets out another collection of nosies, but gentler this time. Prowl shot the flyt a glare. “Green Out” he snaps and the flyt does as he's told. Prowl's engine idled in a deepened rumble. 

"It's not going to eat me?" They ask slightly worried, over the flyt. Prowl rumbles in slight amusement. A reluctant chuckle rumbled from Prowl's engine housing at the absurd suggestion. "No she won't, she enjoys her food enough" he clarified, a hint of condescension entering his tone. 

“She mainly eats skitter or larger bugs she's no threat. Less you irritate me" His field pulsed contently. armor clamping unconsciously protectively around the tiny form. Green flys back over, alighting delicately on Prowl's extended arm to chirp inquisitively at the human.

Prowl made a derisive noise. "Yes I know they are in your spot, you will have to deal with it" he rumbles softly to his pet who seems rather disgruntled over her spot being taken. 

It seemed Cybertronians cared for little aliens. Yet this one relied on him, and Prowl had Green for a while now. His engine rumbled ponderously as Green nuzzled tiny plating.

Green takes off again scuttling thought the apartment knocking over something else which makes Prowl growl out at her again. 

The two lay there stifle beside each other before Prowl decides it's time to get up. His joints creak and pop as he moves off the berth. Leaving the human there curled up as he goes about the apartment.

Prowl's joints ache in protest as he rose from the berth.

The human remained curled amid his mesh cloth, Leaving them be, Prowl proceeded through his habitual morning defrag and systems checks, Green buzzing around him before she returns to his berth. 

The flyt chips and goos at the human in her spot before she decides they would make a rather comfortable pillow. Curling around them, her wings flutter out as she settles against them. 

Small hands come up to scratch the dragon like pet, a small smile crosses their lips as they begin patting her like she was an oversized dog. “Who's a good girl, yes you are you are” they coo at Green as she preens in delight at the attention given to her. 

His hab suite gleamed pristine as ever despite this unwelcome guest marring perfection. Prowl did not understand the strange fluctuations plaguing his routines since acquiring the human.

Prowl moves into what could be called a kitchen, grabbing a cube of energon, he tops up Green's food which has the flyt scurring out for fresh food. 

He makes his way over to his data pad as he starts typing away on more reports when his optics catch a glimpse of them, they are standing in the hallway, how they got there he has no clue, but he watches them as they look around curiously. The mesh cloth is wrapped around them, bare feet pad across the metal floor. 

Prowl's fingers froze in mid-report, sensors drawn inexplicably to movement in his hab suite entrance. "Do not touch anything in my hab," he called out evenly, they turned toward him with large eyes, an alien visage stirring strange sensations in Prowl's processors. 

" without asking," he continued, tone measured where before frustration leaked through. "Your tiny servos could damage equipment, and I will not suffer disruption." His words held no heat, merely statements of fact. 

“you think i can damage stuff, you have a mini dragon who throws things” they shoot back. Prowl shoots them a glare before continuing his reports. 

Illogical. Alien. Intrusive little thing. 

They do as they are told not touching anything, they pull the cloth they had now claimed as their blanket around their form more as they slowly make their way towards him. "Can you lift me onto the table?" The ask softly.

Prowl stared down at the tiny human swathed in fibre mesh, the polishing cloth he had left on the table. “Very well," he agreed after a klik, modulating his field to soothe as massive servos carefully encircled them. Their fearlessness intrigued Prowl to no end as he lifted and deposited it gently atop his workspace.

"Remain still. I would not endanger you through haste or inattention," Prowl rumbled, settling back into analysis of security updates while one digit lazily spun circles around the tiny human, as captivated by its presence as it was by observing him.

Green makes her way over to the human flooping down on them as she cuddles into them, it nearly makes Prowl jealous seeing his pet taking to the human. “Traitor” he mumbles under his breath. 

They sit there watching him type away despite not knowing anything on the data pad. "What are you doing?" They ask this time, their hands scratch over Green's scales as the flyt rolls around enjoying the scratches. 

Prowl cycled a ventilation, reining in irritation at the interruption as he explained patiently, "I am reviewing security protocols and updating patrol schedules in the wake of recent events" He spoke more slowly than normal, modulating semantics for organic linguistic comprehension. "My task is to track down the traffickers, you werent the only illicit ‘goods’ they were smuggling and trying to sell, so now i need to review records" Prowl continued, turning the datapad to display glyphs, colors and schematics meaningless to the tiny being. 

"Can you understand any of this." His tone held not unkindness, the human shakes their head. Still, patience remained, digits type as Prowl sorts throught files, enjoying strange sensations of teaching another. For now, differences faded behind growing fascination with all things alien.

They shoot him a look. "So your like an alien space robo cop or something?" They ask as they continue watching him.

A surprised chuckle rumbled in Prowl's chassis at the creative interpretation. "In essence, yes," he replied, doorwings twitching amusement that such a primitive mind could comprehend his function, however crudely. 

"I spearhead security and enforcement for this district." His optics gleamed fondly down at both the human and Green. "In your terms, I suppose 'space robo cop' adequately translates my designation, despite lacking nuance." Amusement continued lacing his rumble, bemused by bizarre scenarios that brought an alien under his guard. 

 "So that's why your such a stuck up prick when grumpy, you need to drink some coffee" they giggle and it earns them a glare from him, he can tell they are trying to make him bite back but he's not going to fall for the bait this time.

Prowl cycled an irritated ventilation at the organic's impudent remarks, frame bristling with restrained offence. His engine revved a growl on the verge of rebuking tongue before biting it back harshly.

"Watch it petro-rabbit," he retorted icily, digits flicking them lightly. reflexively before easing at the tiny form's lack of fear. He pulls them closer to his chassis so he knows where they are, Green follows suit wanting cuddles from the human. 

"I require no 'coffee' to perform my duties with utmost skill and precision," Prowl continued, modulating the field carefully despite provoked ire. “christ Copbot chill out it was a joke” they state before settling back into watching him work. 

Prowl is rather content right in that moment, perhaps.. just perhaps he would let the human stick around, only because Green liked their company. 

[alwaysonf1]

lewis is doing what?

Pairing: Charles LeClerc x Hamilton!OC

Genre: Slice of Life; Fluff

Word Count: 3k

Warning: Changes in the timeline for the sake of the story.

Rating: PG-13

Author's Note: This is my first F1 fic, which makes me nervous so why not start with a series.

Many Drive to Survive haters like to pretend everything that comes from the show and what it’s about are beneath them. That they couldn’t possibly care, and that the only important thing is the race on Sunday. And yet the day after the latest season drops you can find them amongst the chaos trying to figure out what the hell were all those hints about a new form of content that F1 plans to release. 

Interwoven with the usual storylines and mild dramatics there was a lot of talk about how drivers show their families the support they’re given. How they show up for them in their careers and bits of their lives. It was weird at first, but then it sent off alarm bells when an almost fourth wall breaking moment happened where the Netflix team was blatantly dismissed. 

“I think we have this one Netflix, but thanks for the help.” Those were the exact words spoken by the head of marketing as she closed the door to a room where you get a glimpse of team paraphernalia but see no faces. 

Every social platform that you can find an F1 fan on has it trending and the conversations (and screams into the void) are fast paced. But Twitter is where the real unhinged and brain cell losing behavior is happening. 

And the most accurate guessing.

Almost everyone within the community is discussing what that snippet could mean. Is it the end of DTS as they know it? The end of it completely? Are F1 and Netflix severing ties? Will F1 be taking over? Is this some little game they're playing with their viewers to keep them tuned in? Is it something completely different? What the actual fuck is going on?

In the middle of those questions are those who think themselves a genius or are delusional enough that they can’t help but form some wild ideas of what’s to come.

Someone must be retiring. Multiple people are retiring. There’s going to be a reality show ala Keeping Up with the Verstappens, where everyone learns that Max’s little trauma dumpy memories with Jos are just the surface level of how insane that man is. Someone is getting married. Someone is getting married to another driver. A nepo baby is going to become the “voice of the fandom” and host a show about the drivers during race weekends and it’s going to be all the wrong things. A dating show for all the singles. A behind the scenes at the lives of drivers and their families, but like Family Feud. And the penultimate dude bro dream of them getting to spend the season hanging out with drivers and get confirmation that their toxic thoughts that alienate most of the fan base is true.

After about twenty-four hours it all dies down. Everyone is still wondering, but they don’t feel like they’re losing their minds while they try to be the one who can say they were right when they news drops.

As if timed, the second that F1 drops in trends the F1 admin drops a graphic with the faces of six people who are clearly positioned like the thinking face emoji on every platform that they use. In the captions it says: Week in the Life - Sibling Edition.

If Twitter was home to the first wave of screaming, it belongs to Tumblr the second go round. Everyone is so excited for the content that someone must have thrown up from how aggressively happy they feel. Everyone is talking about who they want it to be and what content they’d love to see from which sibling. Those who make gifs are especially excited to get everything they can, though they won’t be outdone by those whose brains and fingers will be entities on their own once they get hold of a singular moment that will inspire the fic of everyone’s dreams.

Those who always have something negative to say are there as usual, but they aren’t as loud or upset as they often are. Being nosy doesn’t stop just because you want to pretend that you only care about the race, as if someone doesn’t have a file of screenshots from all the times, they’ve attacked the character of a driver for something not race related at all.

The reaction to this is the kind that instills faith in what is being done. The kind of thing that tells all the upper management who didn’t like it that it was a good idea, but also puts a certain bit of weight on the content team. They need this to deliver. Need to keep the hype, especially since the first episode doesn’t drop until the start of December and they’ve already recorded half the series so a failure could stop the rest.

So once the Singapore GP ends, Daniel Ricciardo’s face is no longer gray. You get to see that goofy smile and wink. You’d think they told everyone he was getting a permanent seat with a three year contract with the reception to it.

It’s Charles Leclerc for Japan. 

Lance Stroll for Qatar.

Carlos Sainz for COTA.

Alex Albon for Mexico.

And coming off his first P1 of the season, Lewis Hamilton for Brazil.

For the next week or so if a tweet isn’t about excitement, disdain, or shock in regard to this new F1 exclusive content, it has a certain main character at its center.

[alien-til-i-stage]

🍥 Nadohan Intimacy Levels 🍥

Airin 🌑 ( @apriciticreveries ) - 45%

"Airin's a pretty cool person, and they're always so sweet when I'm around them. I don't spend as muchhh time with them as I really want though, haha. However if they ever wanna chat when I'm not busy, I wouldn't be able to refuse that!"

Akane 🍓 ( @aakaneeee ) - 40%

"To be honest, while I know them, I don't know them too well as a person. I always see them around ANAKT GARDEN but I never get the courage to say something, haha. From what I do know from them, they are really admirable!"

Aoki 🌀 ( @bluemoonscape ) - 87%

"Ugh, Aoki? God don't even get me STARTED on him. He's so annoying! He's also! Such a showoff! Like yeah we get it you're sooooo awesome or whatever. You're like sooooo talented and admirable, yada yada. I don't get why so much fuss over him sometimes. Hey, he's not gonna see the score right?"

August 🐟 ( @junebluues ) - 55%

"I know he's a hot topic right now because of how funny his joke is what not but... He scares me a little bit... He gives me the vibes... Of a cult leader or something... Like as if he could and would turn everyone into puppets for his goal or whatever... Nice guy though, he is funny and interesting! Aside from the weird vibes..."

Daian 🍵 ( @apple8ees ) - 79%

"He's such a guy! Ok wow that sounded. Rude of me. He's a very friendly guy and overall really nice to be around. I don't think there's ever been a bad moment between us haha. Though I will say, I feel a little guilty sometimes. I don't think he... Knows... About... You know... But it's not my job to tell him... It's not..."

Ish 🍰 ( @chevalperd ) - 86%

"Oh! Ish! She's such a sweetheart! She can be quite a handful for the aliens though at times, but it's so hard to be mad at her over it sometimes haha. However, I won't lie, there are moments where. I feel really guilty, about her. Oh about what you asked? Um, nothing... Too important... I guess. Aside from that, Ish truly is someone you can't help but love. She's a good kid. I wish her nothing but the best."

June 🎭 - 55%

"While I know we have interacted before, at season 9 of ALIEN STAGE on set, our relationship isn't too personal you know? Outside of those few times, we never spoke properly. He's such a talented person though, but I'm sure you know that as, again, he did win a whole season, hehe. It's hard not being impressed!"

Kay 🪦 ( @imperfectnothing ) - 82%

"Kay? He's one of my close friends! In fact I think he was one of the first people at ANAKT that I truly knew first. Not to say I don't know others, but he was easily recognizable with his white hair haha. Hard to not memorize him. I won't lie though, there's something odd about him sometimes, but I don't understand it... Maybe it's just how he is! I quite envy his relationship with Daian. He's such a... Good brother... Ha."

Kel 🥂 ( @ninewhordows ) - 36%

"Kel... Hm... I haven't spoken to them in... I don't actually remember! Kel is usually alone and just sticks to themselves a lot. Which I don't get... I'd shrivel up and die if I had to be alone! It makes me worry about Kel sometimes, but also I don't know if it's really my place to do so, you know? Though I do get really curious about what's going on in their mind. Ha, that's just my nosiness seeping in, hehe."

Mercury 🪐 ( @soulful_roses ) - 15%

"Ugh... Mercury... I've tried to be cool with them but... It's hard to. I'm sure you're aware, we uh, used to date. For reasons, I won't talk about, but I still don't like Mercury. I can NOT stand her ass anymore! I used to care or like him but since then it's been just, AHHHH. You know? Ugh whatever, I don't like Mercury."

Neli 🏵️ ( @fried-clown-shrimp ) - 78%

"Neli! Oh she's such a dear... She's so sweet... And so young too... I can't help but feel like, she's eerily similar to myself, haha. I feel bad you know, I only started talking to her because Minski told me to, but since we've been talking, I've grown to really care for her. However, I can't forget what I'm told to do. I... I really hope... She can forgive me if I cause something to happen to her... Or our relationship..."

Para ☀️ ( @solei-eclipse ) - 55%

"Oh Para! Oh they're so cool... I'm way too shy to ever actually speak to them, but I do really admire them. I think I've only ever talked to them once or twice, but even then, that's enough for me to call Para a friend if they wanted!"

Plip 🍥 ( @awaggaa ) - 97%

"Plip... Yes them... Hehe. Um I mean uh, yes Plip. Plip is one of my very highly respected... Friends... And I have very... Professional... Feelings towards them... Yes."

Toon 🌹 ( @nottoonedin ) - 69%

Star ✨ ( @starry-skiez ) - 90

"Star is one my of favorite people at ANAKT. He's such a kind and loving person... It's hard not to love him, haha. I really do admire him, like a lot! I honestly can't find a single thing negative about him, heh. Although sometimes he acts a bit strangely, like he says stuff I thought he would never say, you know? But I think he's just tired or whatever when that happens."

"She's one of my favorite idols of all time... Ignore that we're in the same class hehe. She's so cool and so admirable... I make sure to buy any piece of merch she releases and anything I can get my shoes on in general..."

Vant 📜 ( @ivanttakethis ) - 70

"Vant is a very dear friend to me! They are a very interesting person, however my owner, Minski, doesn't really want me around them too much. It's because of their bad medical health and such, but I always try to stay safe around them! They have a lot of talent and skill! It makes me want to try to do better!"

Zen 🌸 ( @verdantlights ) - 77

"Zen... Haha I like to think we have a pretty fun dynamic. Um, since Zen isn't here, I'll put the bit aside, but. They really do mean a lot to me, you know? I uh, he reminds me a lot, like someone else... Who I miss dearly. They've also been a constant in my life, with everyone changing so much and all getting new relationships with others, I can at least rely on Zen to not change. Right?"

Andri - 1%

"I don't want to talk about them right now."

[satureja13]

One night (or whatever time of the 'day' it was in the vastness of space surrounding them) Jack heard a rustle behind the panels! Jack: "Kiyoshi - wake up! Did you hear this?" Kiyoshi, who was sleeping way too comfortable with his mate tugged tight in his arms, pulled Jack even closer to him: "Mhh... hm? what?" Jack: "There was something rustling behind the panels! Maybe it's an alien creature coming after us!" They scrambled out of bed. Poor Kiyoshi still half asleep.

Kiyoshi: "Maybe we have an engine damage? This is an old ship. I hope we won't have a breakdown out here ö.ö " But Jack was sure: "It sounded like an alien creature." With all the weird theories Jack's world consists of, Kiyoshi didn't even bother to ask Jack when he ever actually heard an alien creature rustle to recognize the noises they're making...

They shoved their bed aside and opened the panel. Kiyoshi had a hard time convincing Jack to stay behind - and safe. But eventually he obeyed. Even though he's a werewolf (and the Super Soldier after all!) he's not invincible. And a stern and commanding Kiyoshi is undiniably hot!

And really, there was an open vent hole - leading into a narrow shaft! Too narrow for them to enter... (luckily ö.Ö')

They closed the hatch and secured it, then moved the panel back in place. Jack: "What are we supposed to do now? We should check the others' quarters to make sure they're safe!" Kiyoshi: "Don't you think maybe the Little Ones crawled in there, nosy as they are? To spy on us?" Skully chuckled from his perch on the sideboard: "They might be nosy but they are far from being that subtle! If they'd want to watch you, they'd barrel right in hahaHA!" Kiyoshi: "Where he's right he's right."

Jack: "But see! If it's not them, it is an alien creature - and it's coming after us then!" Kiyoshi: "Jack. We are the aliens out here... Did you ever think about that? Let's sleep. Your shift starts soon. We'll figure something out, hm? I'll message the others so they can check themselves." Jack: "You drop stuff like that and think I can sleep?"

Kiyoshi: "I'll hold you and watch over you." Jack: "Tch. Well, it's reassuring that you are on the side with the hatch. It'll eat you first." Kiyoshi: "I'd be not so certain about that. You are tastier :3 " Jack poked Kiyoshi in his side but snuggled closer nonetheless.

Soon after, Jack fell sound asleep. Because he did feel safe in Kiyoshi's arms. Aliens in the ventilation shafts or not... While Kiyoshi wished he could taste Jack just once again. And maybe he put a chaste kiss on Jack's forehead. That must do.

And Skully hummed 'I'm not in Love' by 10cc.

'I like to see you, but then again That doesn't mean you mean that much to me So if I call you, don't make a fuss Don't tell your friends about the two of us

Be quiet, big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry…

I keep your picture upon the wall It hides a nasty stain that's lying there So don't you ask me to give it back I know you know it doesn't mean that much to me

I'm not in love, no, no (It's because) Ooh, you'll wait a long time for me

I'm not in love, so don't forget it It's just a silly phase I'm going through And just because I call you up Don't get me wrong, don't think you've got it made, ooh

I'm not in Love - 10cc

If this isn't the perfect song for the two of them then I don't know which :3 It's also from Awesome Mix No 1 (OST of Guardians of the Galaxy 1)

From the Beginning 🔱 Underwater Love 🔱 Latest

Current Chapter: starts ▶️ here Last Chapter: 'Here comes the Sun' from the beginning ▶️ here

📚 Previous Chapters: Chapters: 1-6 ~ 7-12 ~ 13-16 ~ 23-29

[shakingparadigm]

do you happen to have a link to the PBH goodbye post?? i saw someone else say it was on his twitter but i can't find anything that looks like him saying goodbye and i'm so nosy ;;

Ah, I think I might've assumed wrong, my bad. I was referring to this specific tweet of his, but after reading it again it's not explicitly a goodbye message, just a thank you. I was a little carried with the replies since it sounded like they were bidding him goodbye 😭

"There will be many more alien stages in the future" Yes. Hopefully with you in it!!!

[crazyunsexycool]

My little love

Chapter 25

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x enhanced!reader

Word count: 3.7k

Warnings: gun use, angst!!!!!, sad Lottie 🥺, crying Bucky 😭, talk of sexual assault, little bit of fluff.

A/N: im really doing everything in my power to make this series last as long as possible 😂. I just love them I never want to stop writing for the Barnes family!! Anyways I made myself sad writing the second half of this so yeah…

Series Masterlist

The music thumped along and pushed people to dance either on or off the dance floor. Strobe lights blinking in different colors cast shadows across the room. You wore a black dress that hugged your curves in all the right places with a slit up the skirt, leaving little to the imagination. With your own abilities you added your metals to the dress in decorative chains.

You moved freely to the rhythm of the song that was playing while Sam was in front of you with his hands on your waist. He pulled you in closer as you wrapped your hands around his neck. Sam dipped his head so that you could hear him over the music.

“Let’s move to somewhere more quiet.” He says as his eyes dart behind you and he gives a little nod.

You give a nod of your own before his hand falls to the small of your back and he’s leading you to the vip section.

****

Sam’s hand stayed firmly on your thigh, skin in skin as the slit on your skirt exposed more of the area once you crossed one leg over the other. The contrast from the main floor to the vip section was incredible. It obviously was empty with the exception of you, Sam and a group of about five men. It was a lot more quiet. In fact it was a perfect place for an arms deal.

The men sitting across from you kept their eyes on your chest or thigh and they stared at you as if you were nothing more than a piece of meat. You ignored it however and kept your attention focused on the deal Sam was working on. While he sat up straight, partly due to the suit he was wearing, you sat back and kept a hand on his shoulder. It was meant to look like a loving caress from one lover to another. That was the cover.

“5 million is cheap if you consider that the weapons were made with alien technology.” The leader of the group, Paul, said. He was tall and slender, almost creepily so. His hair was jet black and greasy and it stuck to his cheeks since it fell to his shoulders. He also had a subtle Portuguese accent, but it seemed like he was working towards getting rid of it, at least hiding it well enough.

“But 5 million for what, ten guns? And they’re not even the full gun they were, what did you say?”

“Re-engineered.” You provide, causing Paul to throw you a deadly glare.

“I’m willing to do the 5 million but I need at least 15 guns and I want a demonstration first.”

“We have a video we can show you right now.” Paul says as he snaps his fingers so that one of the men that was standing around would give him a phone. Sam lifted his hand though, and stopped it.

“I want a live demonstration. Matter of fact I want to shoot the gun myself.”

“Mr. Barron I assure you that everything is in order.”

“I don’t know baby, it seems like they’re trying to con us.” You mutter as you lean forward and rest your chin over Sam’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you stay out of it you nosy bitch.”

“I’d be very careful about how you speak to her.” Sam’s voice is low and steady, it’s a little frightening. The only reason you were undercover was because you both resemble the actual Mr. Barron and his partner. With the help of nano masks you’re able to take their place for this meeting.

“Mr. Barron please, you must understand that women are sensible creatures and while your girl here is absolutely lovely to look at, I’m sure she would much rather be down on the dance floor. Isn’t that right?”

“No it isn’t. But I’m willing to forget your disrespect if you show us the guns and let us try them out.”

Paul scowls in your direction before looking back at Sam. “Fine. I’ll take you to the warehouse myself.”

Sam stands and offers you his hand to help you up. The two of you follow Paul out of the club and into waiting cars. You’re driven through the streets of Portugal until you’ve left the city behind. The car stops in what looks like an abandoned warehouse and the door is opened for you. During the journey you could hear Bucky, Steve, Clint and Nat talking in your ear and making plans.

Although not your favorite footwear for missions you were wearing stilettos. Fortunately for you though Nat had forced you to train with heels for moments such as this. So even though the ground was a mixture of cobblestones and loose dirt you managed to walk around as if you were on a catwalk.

“Right this way.” Paul says as he pounds on a metal rolling door and it begins to slide to the sides.

The warehouse seems abandoned on the outside but the inside is another story. The warehouse is massive and filled with people, machinery and crates filled with guns. You adjust the necklace you were wearing to make sure the small camera was capturing everything.

“Right this way.” Paul sweeps his arm towards another set of doors. This time further into the belly of the building and then down a flight of stairs.

The basement has been transformed into a sort of shooting range. There are large chunks of concrete missing from the walls, from where you assume the gun blasts had hit.

“Here you go.” Paul holds out a rather large and bulky gun for Sam to take.

Sam looks over in your direction and you give a little nod before he takes the gun. He aims and shoots. It’s more like a canon than a gun and if Sam wasn’t as strong as he was he would have been sent flying backwards. Sam gives a nod of approval as he inspects the hun closer.

“Give us the word and we’ll move in.” Steve says over comms.

“Paul, you have yourself a deal.”

Paul gives a satisfied smile to Sam before they shake hands. All the while you can hear the team starting to move. Sam is aware that the team is moving in but you can actually hear them on the floors above. You’re already working your chains into a weapon of your own as the doors at the top of the stairs burst open. The room descends into chaos with all of Paul’s men shooting without looking first. Instinctively your hand goes up as your chains mold into a shield just as bullets rain down on you and Sam. The gunfight is a blur but it ultimately ends with you and Sam taking down everyone in the room.

“Everyone ok down here?” Steve asks as he walks down the stairs.

“We are.”

“Good.” He looks both of you over. “Unfortunately we aren’t done here. Most of the guns were already shipped out. We have to follow it and stop the shipment from arriving at its destination.”

You really didn’t like the idea of being away from the kids so soon after the CIA incident and now you’d be away for a little bit longer.

“How long?”

“Another 12 hours at most.”

You give him a nod and start heading upstairs so that you could change into your actual mission uniform. On the main floor of the warehouse you walk past a group of people that have been arrested. The flashing lights of police cars and ambulances illuminate the area. Clint gives you a thumbs up as you pass by and Nat gives you a little nod. Undercover was not your specialty, it always made you nervous that you would make a mistake. Fortunately this time there wasn’t room for error. The one thing you do notice is the lack of Bucky.

It had only been a few short days since he had to sit with Everett Ross and since then there had been limited contact. On his part, not yours. You weren’t sure what was wrong but the only person that he would say more than one or two words to was Steve. Even then he didn’t say much. You sighed as you climbed up to the jet and grabbed your gear to get changed. By the time you were done everyone was on the jet and ready to go and track down the shipment. Once the jet was in the air you moved to the communication station and called your dad through a secure line. You let him know that you would be gone one more day, fortunately since he was retired he was fine with staying with the kids for longer.

“Mama, when are you coming home? Is daddy coming with you?” Henry asked. That was another issue. You were fine with giving Bucky space but the kids didn’t understand why he was slightly absent.

“Hi my sweet boy. We have to stay out a little longer but I promise when I get home we’ll do something fun.”

“Is daddy going to be here too?”

“I’ll let you ask him.” You turned to find Bucky glaring at Sam for some comment about how much fun he had with you dancing. It was all teasing on Sam’s part but you knew it annoyed Bucky. You hold up the head loser and hand Bucky the and give him an expectant look while he stares at it.

He reluctantly took the headset from you and put it on. “Hey bubs.” He greeted Henry and you walked away to give him some privacy.

“Give him some time. He’ll snap out of it soon enough.”

“I can give him all the time in the world, it’s the kids that don’t understand what’s going on. I wish he would just talk to me, Steve. Even just a little bit. But he just shuts me out everytime I try to make sure he’s ok.”

Steve pats your shoulder and gives you a sympathetic look.

“Let's just focus on the mission so that we can go home.”

“Morning mama.” Lottie whispered. “Mama, habe suwpwise.”

You stirred in bed. By the time the second part of the mission ended and you got home, it was already late at night and the kids were sleeping. After a quick shower you went straight to bed and fell asleep quickly. Now you were being woken up by Lottie’s sweet whisper and her gentle caresses. She placed a soft kiss on your cheek before resting her head on your chest. Your sweet girl always loved to cuddle after being separated due to a long mission.

“Good morning my sweet Angel.”

You’re met with happy blue eyes when you finally open yours. Her chubby cheeks and messy black hair take up all of your attention.

“Hi.” She says with a giggle.

“Hi. Did you say surprise?”

“Can habe it now, mama.” She moves away from you on the bed and you instinctively reach out for Bucky. Sighing sadly when you realize he isn’t there again. The door opens and you turn to see Henry walking in with a bowl in his hands. You’re about to say something to him when you’re splashed with something right on your chest. You gasp at the cold sensation and turn to see Lottie holding a now empty bowl in her hands. When you look down you realize that there is milk and cereal all over you, the bed and Lottie.

“Oh no.” you say when you see Lottie’s bottom lip begin to wobble and tears start falling. She had been a bit more emotional than usual and you’d hate to think it was because she was missing her daddy.

“Sowwy mama.”

“It’s ok sweet Angel, it was just an accident.” You say as you sit up. The mess of milk that hadn’t been soaked up by your shirt rolled off you and fell onto the bed. “Did you guys make me breakfast?”

“Yeah, we wanted to surprise you like on mother’s day.”

“Oh sweet boy, that is so nice of you to do. Is there more cereal?”

Henry nods.

“Ok, how about I jump in the shower and clean myself and Lottie up quickly and then we can have breakfast together?”

“Ok.”

“Kay.” Charlotte sniffled as she put her arms out for you to grab her. Henry carefully walked back out with his breakfast in hand while you and Charlotte cleaned yourselves up.

****

When you walked out to the kitchen you found that three bowls sat on the table along with cereal and milk. Henry sat on one of the chairs patiently waiting for you. You settled Lottie on her booster seat and opened your arms for Henry.

“Thank you for breakfast bub, that was very sweet of you.”

“You’re welcome.”

You take your seat and Henry insists on pouring everything and setting it in front of you. He gives you a genuine smile, one of the few he has given since the CIA broke in.

“You both are so sweet for making me breakfast. Where did you come up with the idea?”

Henry shrugs one shoulder. “We wanted to do something nice because you’re sad.”

“Sad?”

“Yeah because daddy isn’t here.”

“Oh, I-uh I-”

“It’s ok mama. He’ll be back soon, I know it.” Henry said confidently before turning his attention back to the food in front of him.

****

After breakfast and watching a movie with the kids you left to look for Bucky. It took a while but you found him in the garage Tony had prepared for him so that he could work on the motorcycle you gifted him for Father’s Day. You lean against the doorway and watch as he tinkers away on the frame. After a few minutes Bucky stops what he’s doing and he finally acknowledges your presence by looking at you.

“How are you?” You ask him. The question is stupid but you aren’t sure if you’ll be met with resistance or not. At the same time you’re also upset because Bucky has shut you out. The tension in the room is palpable. On one hand you want to be gentle but on the other you’re not opposed to an argument.

“Fine.”

“Could have fooled me.”

He averts his gaze back to the job at hand and he turns his back on you while looking for a tool.

“Why are you here?” He asks.

“Because I’m worried about you. The kids miss you.”

You watch as his head lowers at the mention of the kids.

“Henry is confident you’re coming back home soon.” You step into the garage and close the fort behind you. “Is he right in his assumption?”

He stiffens at the mention of his son and you know this is where he’ll shut down on you.

“Bucky, just talk to me. That’s all I want, please don’t shut me out.” You say as you walk closer to him. Your instinct is to reach out and touch him but you know better than that. “I understand that what you went through wasn’t easy-“

“Do you really?” He snaps at you. He’d never done that before but his eyes are dark with rage. “Do you know what it felt like to not have control over your own body?”

“I said I understand. I know that I will never truly know what it felt like. You’re safe now, you’re safe with me, just tell me what’s going on.”

You looked at each other for a while. It was like when he first came to the compound. You sigh and give a little nod in understanding that he wasn’t going to say anything, you turn to leave.

“I wanted to hate her.” He says before you open the door. Bucky turns in your direction but he won’t look at you.

“Who?”

“Charlotte. When you told me she was my daughter, I wanted to hate her.” He admits with a whisper and you know he feels so guilty about it.

“Why didn’t you? Why did you step up to raise her?”

“Because I heard you.”

Your eyebrows furrow as you try to understand what he’s talking about.

“After you told me and I walked out, you went to see Lottie in the med bay. I did too, I wanted to look at her and prove to myself that I didn’t have any paternal feelings towards her but I heard you. You said that I’d come around and that I was just scared but that I was a good man.”

“You are a good man.”

“I’m not!” He shouts. “I did horrible things. I don’t deserve to get the girl and the kids and be happy. The CIA coming in here reminded me of that. Someone will always come after me, after them because of me. So don’t tell me I’m a good man.”

“I guess this will be a point of disagreement for the rest of our lives then.”

“Why do you even think so highly of me?” Bucky whispers.

“The first thing you did for that little girl you wanted to hate was buy her a pink teddy bear in hopes that it would bring her comfort. You didn’t even know you were her father. You’re there for Henry whenever he has a nightmare and you’re willing to spend hours chasing them away. You’ve taken care of me whenever I’ve gotten sick or been hurt during a mission. So despite everything that hydra did to you and made you do, you are good. Nothing will ever change my mind about that.”

You were both silently crying and you wanted nothing more than to hug him but you knew that the interview with Ross had taken a toll on him.

“Can I hug you now?”

Bucky nods and takes you in his arms, holding on to you tightly. Like you’re the only thing that can keep him grounded.

“You can always talk to me. No matter what, I won’t judge you.”

“I was embarrassed and I thought you’d be ashamed of being with someone who was used like that. I had never been sure if they’d sexually assaulted me but seeing Lottie I couldn’t deny it anymore.”

“I could never be ashamed of you. I’m so proud of you for everything you’ve overcome. I know that the way you’ve had your kids was not normal but you’re such a good father. No one can take that away from you.” You say as you cup his face, using your thumbs to wipe away the tears.

Bucky nods before resting his forehead against yours.

“I’m sorry for pushing you away.”

“Apology accepted baby.”

“Sergeant Barnes, Agent Y/L/N, your presence is needed for the debrief for last night’s mission.” Friday announces.

“Of course we do.”

“Come, the faster we get it done the faster we can go home.”

“Really?” You asked, your eyes wide and bright with hope.

“Really.”

You walk into the apartment first. Giving Wanda a hug and thanking her for watching the kids. As soon as she leaves Bucky steps in much to the delight of the kids.

“Daddy!” Henry shouts as he runs full force into Bucky’s embrace.

Charlotte however steps closer to you and wraps her arms around one of your legs. She watches as Bucky and Henry hug and then looks up at you.

“Hey, doll.” Bucky says after kneeling in front of you. Lottie looks at her dad but moves to hide herself behind your leg.

“Sweet Angel, are you ok?”

Poking her head out from behind you, she looks at Bucky. “Dada no hate?” She asks quietly and you can see Bucky’s guilt written all over his face. Of course she would know about that conversation in the garage.

“I’m sorry, doll. You’re so special and daddy loves you so much. I could never ever hate you.” Bucky says softly. Charlotte moves away from you and wraps her arms around Bucky’s neck.

“Dada so good. Is best an lobe you dada.”

Bucky begins to cry quietly and Henry moves to hug him from behind. You can’t help but also join the hug pile on the floor in the middle of the living room. Even Alpine joins in.

“Can habe seepover?” Lottie asks as she pulls back in order to get a better look at both you and Bucky. Her best pout and pleading eyes on display.

“Of course we can. Dada needs lots of cuddles.”

“Can gibe them.” Lottie says proudly.

“Me too.” Henry adds.

“Me three.” You say as you pull Henry into your lap and kiss his temple. “What about a movie night? We can have snacks and all the cuddles.”

“Yeah!”

“Alright let’s go get our comfiest pajamas on. Come on sweet Angel, I’ll help you get your pjs.”

“No, dada do it.” She says as she tugs on Bucky’s arm.

Bucky gets up after giving you a kiss on the cheek and lets Lottie drag him to her room.

“I told you he’d be back soon.”

“You did, sweet boy. Why don’t you go get your pjs and I’ll start on the snacks.”

“Just no cereal in bed.” Henry quips as he stands up.

“It was your idea in the first place not mine.”

He giggles and runs into the hallway.

****

After snacks were made and everyone was changed, the kids chose the movie they wanted to watch. While the movie played you and Bucky sat against the headboard. Your attention was split between the movie and the kids singing and dancing along to all the songs from Encanto.

You knew there was a deeper conversation that you and Bucky needed to have but for now you were just happy that he was where he belonged. As the night went on and the movie ended and a new one was chosen. Henry was already tucked into your side. Lottie made her way to her dad’s lap. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and yawned as she found a comfortable position. With her back against his chest she settled to watch more tv until her head lolled to the side and soft snores filled the air.

Most importantly her pink teddy bear held securely in her arms.

Ch. 26

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[teenandbeyond]

I've noticed your predator/alien franchise doesn't have anything for xenomorph. Let's change that lol. Could I get something that has a similar storyline like the one that says dark reader on it the one where the reader is obsessed with aliens.. It's made me curious tbh

Xenomorph x Dark. Reader

Mx. Anonymous, you read my mind! I was wondering when someone would request this! And you don't need to apologize, since it's fanfiction, we're just gonna say eff reality for a moment (even though the whole thing is fictional...but you get it).

Want more from me, my Infinites (I'm trying out a follower name thing lol. I'll probably shuffle through random ass names until one works)? 𝙈𝘼𝙎𝙏𝙀𝙍𝙇𝙄𝙎𝙏

☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆

👽Discoveries👽 (Aliens)

Warning(s): Dark Fic (dunno if it came out as dark as I wanted), Non-con details, unprotected, triggering(?), size difference, I don't know where I went with this (this is what happens when I write parts at different times, I guess)

Sometimes experimentation leads to temptation...

✨✨✨✨✨✨

"You're crazy, [Last Name]!"

You tapped the end of your pen against your lip in thought before smiling, "Maybe, but crazy gets better results than normal. Ask any of the greatest geniuses, they'll tell you."

You were labeled as the crazy scientist because you suggested cross breeding. Between Xenomorph—or Aliens, the term used for common folk—and humans.

'It's impossible!'

'It's wrong! Don't you have any morals?' they cried.

'You want to talk to me about morals? Ha! Who are the ones who take creatures as they please and experiment to their heart's content, past what's necessary, simply for nosiness and fear of not knowing everything?'

You always shut them up any time they felt a need to comment on you.

"Sometimes the most impossible things can be made possible," you muttered as you scribbled something in your many notebooks dedicated to this theory.

You could admit you were pretty obsessed with Xenomorphs, you found them fascinating. You studied them with a passion.

You wanted one...and the opportunity came when a group of scientists arrived with a captured Xenomorph.

They were studying it to come up with a defense against them, you, among a few other scientists decided to spectate.

And all hell broke loose.

Turns out, someone from the group had gotten infected. You had to figure that out when a man's stomach burst open.

There was panic as the other scientists fell victim, until the newest creature was contained.

The two aliens were to be stored away since the team leading the experiment was now dead, until someone else decided to take it over.

That was your opening.

You took the fully grown one to your private lab, where everything was already set up.

The huge cylinder it was in was a little heavy, but you made it work. You pushed a button that would release an anesthetic-type liquid into the fluid the creature was summered in.

Once it was confirmed to be unconscious, you released it and properly restrained it, tail and all. You loved risks, but not when the result could stop your experimenting from proceeding...you can't test things if you're dead.

"Now...let's get your vitals connected to my database..." you tapped away at your screen until the patches and machinery you'd connected to it did their job, "There you are...and you are a very healthy Xenomorph."

You went through a few experiments of merging DNA samples, but something was missing. You couldn't figure out what it was.

You were disturbed from your deep thoughts by a pathetic escape attempt behind you.

"Oh, you're awake. I should introduce myself," you approached the alien carefully, "I'm your caretaker. And you're all mine for the time being."

It continued to struggle, hissing at you as you calmly took off your lab coat and put on gloves.

"Now, for a physical examination..."

Your hand slowly trailed down the alien's head and jaw, raising a brow as its struggle turned hesitant.

You heard a rumbling sound from its throat, the mouth covering muffling it.

"So...you aren't completely adverse to touch, hm?"

Then you explored its shoulders and arms, you trailed lower to its sides.

"Everything seems to be in order so far...You really are a beautiful specimen..." you sighed in fascination.

You were mesmerized and edging towards getting aroused.

And the alien could smell it, it was reacting.

Visibly reacting.

You smirked, "Oh...well, look at that. I've made the discovery of a lifetime."

So much research had been done, but never have sexual organs been found on an alien. But you supposed it wasn't common for someone to show arousal in their presence.

"Standing at attention just for me...What should I do with you?"

You were absolutely breathless.

But who could blame you, you were stretched to your limits. And there were still quite a few inches of it that didn't fit inside.

There was some defiance at the beginning, but this alien would just be the next being to know you always got what you wanted in the end.

And the hotter you got and the louder you got, ashamed defiance turned into lustful acceptance.

You balanced on your hands best you could, your feet also supporting you, but they were beginning to become less reliant the more they curled.

Its skin felt cool and smooth, a stark contrast to your heat and muscle. It made you shiver in the best ways as you slowly slid up and down.

"I think I might—keep you."

You were becoming more obsessed by the minute, perhaps your rationality was being manipulated by the smell of sex and sweat.

Or maybe because the alien tried and failed to keep itself quiet, sensitive to your every move.

A cute little virgin it was.

All yours to use as you've wanted. You could possibly get a sample once you were done, see if it gave different results.

Everything was in your control, until it wasn't.

The alien decided it'd had enough of your slow pace.

It thrusted up in quick strokes, making your body move so quickly it looked like it was shaking.

With a groan, your nails dug into its arms, then you gasp as it breaks out of its restraints.

For a moment, you think it'll attack, and it does.

It flips you under and bullies itself back into you, forcing in every inch.

A brutal attack that leaves you trying to catch your breath.

With a growl behind its mask, it pummels into you.

With fascination, you feel the bulge it creates and swear you can see it, but you're a little disoriented right now.

Your vision flashes from the pleasure and pain, your body is tingling.

"You—You're my discovery to keep," you grin.

[intertexts]

OKAY BECAUSE I HAVE STILL NOT WRITTEN DOWN ALL OF MY THOUGHTS AND THEYRE JUST KIND OF FLOATING AROUND VAGUELY IN MY BRAIN SOUP.... holds out my hands like a starving victorian child. tell me about your william first death thoughts <3 what the hell sent that boy over a cliff edge. how long did he stay at the bottom. what was his first glimpse of the spirit world like. etc etc etc !!!!!!

GOD. WIWI TIME. you KNOW this is going to be an indecipherable soup of thoughts. if i was saying this all in person u know i would have like. pages of notes with a billion little paragraphs going a billion directions & arrows pointing all over the place. but. let's see what we've got. i love being normal about william wisp!!!

you know my thoughts on those damn wisps. first off. like before i even get started i cannot overstate how "something alien that loves you and wants you but doesn't have any conception of how humans work or how their affection hurts the thing they want " they are to me. they are a little kid who's trying to catch a lightning bug and crushing it in their hands, except they want to crush it and they don't get how killing a lightning bug is bad. they are going oh we like this kid he's nosy and curious (and he also wants to be dead? hey, we're dead! awesome! i see no problem with this!) we want him dead :)

the thing that i guess has slowly solidified in my head as to how the hell that boy went over a cliff......... god this is going to be so incoherent. you're in for it.

i do really love the folklore of will-o-the-wisps-- hypnotically leading you astray and off paths and down places you'll never return from. i think also that the wisps actively tugging him in that direction in some form resonates in a really painful way with the "haha! william wisp everybody wants to manipulate and use you for their own goals and you keep falling victim to wanting to trust people and getting fucking hurt by it (said in the haha jonathan you are banging my daughter cadence)" thing. how many of the pivotal choices in will's life were made because *he* wanted them. how much of what's happened to him is him getting tossed around from person to person!!

simultaneously: god you know he fucking killed himself man. you know he did. i'm not even-- staring at u with a hopeless expression and my hands in my hair. like. obviously he did. william wisp boy scout. william wisp always prepared with 1 million useful tools. william wisp grew up running around in the woods. william wisp who loved hiking and was always outside. you don't do that accidentally, unless you're an absolute idiot in a very precarious situation, neither of which i think apply to him. he still... chose to follow the wisps. i think. like, that decision Was His. he wasn't hypnotized out of his gourd or something. in my mind maybe it was a bit less of a "this time i'm really gonna do it" and more of a "this is interesting and beautiful and compelling and i honestly don't really give a shit if i die? maybe that's what this means. maybe that's what the woods are telling me that i'm right and i shouldn't be here after all." actually yeah no i just arrived at this conclusion myself and im fucking. yeah. kemuri voice if you weren't a coward you'd have killed yourself already. wisps voice yeah you know how you think about bleeding out sometimes? yeah you should do that. that would be good. that's all you've good for. it would be the best thing you possibly could do right now (to them it IS. they want him dead so they can have him!!!!). yeah c'mere come this way yeah keep following me. look at that drop. look at how pretty it is.

so. i guess. there's your answer to what i think happened there!!!!! regardless of being influenced the choice was his, ultimately. i think it takes away frm his whole narrative if it was not an intentional decision. to do that. & also i think his parents & the people around him Know That. stares at his dynamic with his parents. staring at it. (also just. william wisp clinical depression. he's just fucked up that way even with good parents even outside the deadwood horrors. he's just like that. important to me. passively suicidal long b4 he fell in the deeply miserable high schooler way. god he must have been like.. fourteen fifteen? sophmore when it happened? but GOD the deadwood horrors also. growing up being absolutely alienated from everyone around u except a handful of people.....)

I HAVE NOT ACTUALLY LIKE. thought about how long he was there for very much. but i think it was quick for him and long, like, objectively. in my head i have been thinking that it just. happened while he was alone and he came back alone but i don't know if he would tell his parents. would he tell his parents? i don't know if he'd danny phantom it or if he'd come back limping and pale and brown with dried blood and go hey mom? in a choked wobbly trying to hold back tears voice & accidentally phase through her arms when she tried to hug him.

either that or i think he should come back while the cops are crouched over his body. early morning freezing cold his parents crying a couple yards away no paramedics because they couldn't make it through the forest and there's no nearby safe helicopter landing space. just open his eyes laura palmer style. the like,,,, finality of it to everyone around him. they Knew He Was Dead. not that laura palmer did that but i'm picturing that opening scene of them finding her washed up body u know.

regardless: i don't think he saw the spirit world until... god. when's the first time he did in canon. his second death? i don't think he knew Anything. i don't think the wisps gave him shit!!!! he just woke up no heartbeat no breath falling through floors and phasing through people nobody to ask about it. his parents didn't know anything he didn't either!! anyway. leaving you with this.