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pengy-pop · 4 years ago

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Writing Dump: Bederia/DressedInPinkShipping

What the tin says, asdfghfds this is mostly just random, disjointed pieces of writing i've done for the Bederia ship that I just have to admit to myself i'm likely never going to finish anytime soon and need to at least get out SOMEWHERE.

Maybe someday i’ll come back to these and finish them, but for now, I just kinda want ‘em outta sight, outta mind ahaaa.

(If context is require for any of these snippets, it will be included)

(Longer pieces WILL be getting their own individual posts; just to keep things condensed and a little cleaner)

Regardless, though, I hope you can find even a little bit of brief enjoyment from these!

Context: Roommates AU i once discussed with a friend of mine involving a Psychic Bede whose powers latched on to their roommate. Gloria. He is constantly having dreams about her future. it turns out She is apparently very accident-prone and it is STRESSING HIM OUT. also; they’re in love with each other. this was just a small disjointed practise piece to get a feel of what the dynamic in this particular AU would be like. Please enjoy the heated make out session.

This went way beyond anything platonic.

Indeed, making out with your roommate of almost five months on your shared couch was the very opposite of ‘platonic,’ and he really shouldn’t be engaging in this kind of behaviour; but—

God, Gloria was irritatingly soft. and it was highly distracting. Her lips were surprisingly soft, too, for once, despite the fact that he hardly ever saw her use any kind of lip balm.

Had she been counting on this?

Gloria’s hand snaked up into his hair, and he promptly forgot his previous train of thought in favor of making a horrifyingly embarrassing noise into Gloria’s mouth. He began to pull away from her mouth to, he thinks, be utterly mortified; but Gloria didn’t give him the chance to as she followed him, taking the opportunity to deepen the kiss, her tongue swiping against his own. A sensation that wasn’t quite as bad as he thought it would be, if the way his heart thrummed in his chest was anything to go by. In retaliation, he began tentatively running his hand up and down her waist, resulting in a hum from Gloria that Bede delighted in.

He wanted to hear more noises like that from her.

He pulled himself away from her mouth, the two of them sucking in heavy breaths of air. Then, in an uncharacteristic act of boldness, even to himself; Bede kissed Gloria beneath her ear, along her jaw. She leaned into him in response, having essentially crawled into his lap by this point, and the feeling of her body arched against his own as she squirmed against his ministrations certainly wasn’t helping to keep any of his repressed urges in check. His body was acting on instinct, and the vague images he’d seen last night in his dream; but he wasn’t sure how long pure instinct and vague images would hold up.

He pressed his lips to her neck, mirroring what he saw in his earlier dream , and Gloria’s reaction was immediate. A stuttered whine left her, and he found himself being pressed even firmer against Gloria, her arms enveloping him. He was spurred on, usuing his limited knowledge and Gloria’s reactions to guide him along as he kissed at her pulse and collarbone; even daring to gently bite the sensitive skin, an action that made Gloria shiver; and set Bede ablaze.

Truly; only Gloria could find a way to bring out the absolute most degenerative part of him. He thought, absently, as he continued to revel in the effect he was having on her.

As he continued to lathe her neck with attention, it was then, however, that Gloria suddenly decided to push things further. She gently ground her hips against his purposefully—and Bede jolted in response. Gloria stilled; pulling him away from her neck to look at him.

“Was that too much?” Gloria’s brows were knitted in concern, despite her flushed face and heavy breathing. “Do you wanna stop?”

No. Never, when it comes to you.

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Wyndon was known for it’s awful weather. It was rare for Wyndon to see a day that wasn’t cloudy or rainy.

Today had been no exception to this; as even though the day’s forecast had been predicted to be a rare sunny day; a terrible thunderstorm raged on outside as two unfortunate souls who had been caught in the abrupt downpour sprinted inside the lobby of a Wyndon apartment building for refuge. Breathing heavily, the soaking pair had trudged across the warm lobby, hardly caring about trail of water they left behind them as they dragged themselves into an elevator and, eventually, down a hallway and to an apartment door.

Gloria cursed under her breath as she fumbled through her bag to produce her key-card, doing her best to dry it off as much as possible as she placed it against the reader; her male companion slamming the door open the second the light turned green and trudging inside with a huff. Gloria followed behind, letting out her own huff of frustration as she flicked on the light.

“—MAN, that was a rush. What a damn day for them to be wrong about the forecast, huh, Bede?” Gloria jabbed the taller boy in the arm as she strode past him, stopping to turn back to him when she heard his indignant scoff, letting out a snort at her boyfriend’s dishevelled appearance. “Y’look like a drowned Wooloo.” Bede shot her a glare as he ran a hand through his dripping hair.

“And you look like a diseased Greedent.” He stepped forward, stopping directly in front of Gloria in the small entrance, her grin never faltering even as she adjusted herself to look up at him. “—Now that we’ve settled the matter of our appearances; if you wouldn’t mind getting out of my way; i’ll be going to use your shower.” He went to push past her, but she threw out her arms, dropping her bag in the process; to block him further. He raised an eyebrow down at her.

“Hold on. This is MY apartment; I get first dibs on a shower.” Her gaze was incredulous. Bede didn’t flinch.

“Yes, well, guest typically trumps apartment-owner, and you wouldn’t want to be a bad host now, would you, Gloria?” His tone dropped when he said her name, and Leaning forward, he loomed over her, droplets from his hair plopping down onto her forehead as he held her gaze intensely, that smug, shit-eating, and also very attractive and distracting smile ever-present across his features. There was a heated silence between them for a moment; but Before she could process whether or not she wanted to kiss him (she did), Gloria found herself ripped from her stupor; pushed aside as Bede stepped over her belongings and strided towards the bathroom. She reached him again just in time to get the bathroom door shut in her face. With a huff, she pounded her fist on the door with more force than was necessary.

“Hey; gimme your clothes, at least. I’ll dry them off.” There was a brief moment of silence where Gloria could hear the shuffling of clothes before the door opened just enough for Bede’s arm to reach out and shove his wet clothes into her arms.

He didn’t give her a response; opting to instead close the door again and start the shower; leaving Gloria by herself once again. With a tired sigh, she left to go retrieve her bag from the hallway and and get into a change of clothes herself.

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When Gloria got home, she found there was a distinct lack of her husband anywhere to be seen; which she found unusual. Typically, when she returned home, she could easily find Bede off in either their kitchen, making them both something for dinner, or sitting idly in their living room, waiting for her return. On some very rare occasions, though, he would come home late, usually from a rehearsal that went overtime or if he’d been filling in a particularly large amount of paperwork for his gym, though the fact that the lights in the house were on told Gloria this was not the case. Upon dumping her sports bag on a chair, she found that the kitchen was also suspiciously bare, without a trace of any cooking being done. Delving further into their shared home, she found the only light in the hallway was coming from underneath the bathroom door. At the lack of noise coming from a shower though, Gloria curiously nudged open the door, enough for her to poke her head in to investigate.

The sight of Bede in the bath was enough to surprise Gloria into alerting Bede to her presence as he met her eyes.

“Oh; you’re back a bit earlier than I was expecting. welcome home.” Gloria grinned, her eyes now sparkling with a mirth Bede knew was coming.

Welcome home, indeed. Gloria thought as her eyes scanned over the scene before her;

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This wasn’t really how Bede had planned for the night to go. Really, he hadn’t even wanted to show up to this frivoulous ‘gathering’; and he’s still kicking himself over the fact that he let Gloria forcibly drag him along with her to it. Because, really, since WHEN did Gloria have that kind of power over him?

He supposed the when and how didn’t really matter anymore, however; as his current predicament was much more worthy of taking up space in his brain.

Gloria was drunk. INCREDIBLY drunk. Granted, he definitely wasn’t completely sober himself, at the moment. If he was, he (probably) would have been LONG gone by now. (At least, thats what he liked to tell himself.) But Gloria was on a whole different level; compared to him. It was obvious, even without her audible exuberance; it was in the way her oversized dollar store cardigan sloppily hung off her shoulders, the way her half undone ponytail hung over her back, the brown locks threatening to turn into one giant mass of knots that made Bede want to recoil from even just looking at it; and finally, the way her tanned skin was flushed red and had taken on a sheen of sweat in her activity. He watched from behind his own drink as she chugged down her latest order with a startling speed he would have been mildly impressed by if he weren’t so distracted by the way a bead of sweat ran along her jawline, or how she squeezed her thighs together as she stubbornly committed herself to drinking the whole glass in one go.

He was suddenly and haphazardly wrenched from his perverse observations of Gloria, however; as she slammed down her now-empty glass triumphantly, causing him to flinch ever so slightly at the impact. Gloria’s trademark, too-large grin stretched across her features as she looked over to Hop, who, surprisingly, didn’t seem to be finding much amusement out of the night’s shenanigans.

“Y’lose again, Hop! Seriously, s’like ya not even TRYIN’ t’beat me!” Hop quirked an eyebrow her way, drinking at a much more sane pace than Gloria.

“Again? Glo, I didn’t even know we were competin’ in the first place.” Despite his words, Hop seemed like he’d been in this exact position before. This irritated Bede, for reasons he refused to acknowledged. He downed the rest of his drink unceremoniously. This action didn’t go unnoticed by Marnie, who sat across from him at the group’s shared table. She looked at him from beneath long lashes for a moment, before they just as quickly flicked back away again. This also irritated Bede.

“Something you wish to say?” He challenged. Marnie simply hummed and reached for the bottle of wine that sat between them both; topping off her glass with a shrug.

“Not really. Jus’ thinkin’ you’ve been s’prisingly quiet.”

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Bede was currently in a pleasant haze. He and Gloria had been traveling from region to region in hopes of becoming stronger; and their travels had most recently led them to the Battle frontier in Johto, where they had managed to dominate together in the double battles; their shared might as a team had ensured their swift victory.

Later that night, Gloria had invited him over to her room to ‘celebrate their hard-earned victory’ as she had put it; and when he’d shown up at her door, she proudly revealed the wide array of room-service she’d ordered for the two of them to share, a selection of both their favourite foods as well as an ice bucket filled with three wine bottles. When Bede questioned her on it, Gloria had thrown him a smug smile. and answered:

“I figured a little bit of splurging couldn’t hurt. Besides, we totally deserve it after all.”

And, well, who was Bede to deny himself a generous spread like this?

So, the two of them indulged, eating together while reminiscing over their recent victories.

And after the food, came the alcohol. Gloria said she couldn’t decide what exactly she had wanted, so she’d opted to instead pick her top three choices of what sounded the nicest.

All of which, evidently, were very sweet, and decadent. Regardless, the two had soon finished off almost an entire bottle of Custap berry wine, sitting comfortably on Gloria’s hotel bed, the gentle glow of the bedside lamp warming the atmosphere further.

Which led him to where they were right now.

Bede could vaguely remember reading on the bottle that the wine had been fermented by one of the winery’s best Shuckles, and it was certainly obvious by just how potent it was. It was enough to make even him feel a bit tipsy.

Tipsy enough to make him feel pleasantly warm and loose. He looked to Gloria, watching as the brunette swirled around the liquid in her glass before downing its contents confidently; exhaling with a satisfied gasp. She then met his eyes, and a teasing grin spread across her face.

What was she planning?

“What’re ya lookin’ at, Bedey?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer before she continued. “Y’see somethin’ you like?” Bede shook his head, the smallest hints of a smile spreading across his own face at Gloria’s tipsy state; the way her skin flushed, and how her distinctly unique natural accent slipped through.

“Not particularly.” He lied. Setting her glass down on a nearby drawer, Gloria pouted, an action that Bede found quite adorable. A simple thought that, had he been sober, he would absolutely not have accepted.

“Whaat? Then what’re ya doin’?” She leaned towards him, looking at him with a comical expression. “You’re alone with a cute girl and you’re NOT starin’ at her? What kinda guy are you?”

“Firstly; it’s rather presumptous of you to call yourself ‘cute.’ Secondly, you make it sound like you WANT me to stare at you.” He finished the rest of his glass, eyes closing to properly enjoy the expensive wine. When he re-opened his eyes, he found Gloria staring silently at him this time. He quirked an eyebrow at her, and he watched the way she ran her tongue over her bottom lip without a shred of subtlety. She shifted from her spot on the bed.

“…’An what if I did?” She looked back up to his face again, her eyes having traveled down the expanse of his person; and her expression was what could only be described as hopeful. Bede swallowed; a new heat blooming in the pit of his stomach, and He didn’t miss the way Gloria watched him the entire time, drinking in his every move.

“Well; I suppose that would imply you were attracted to me. Which, honestly, I wouldn’t blame you. However, considering its coming from YOU; of all people—It’s a rather poor attempt at getting into my head, Gloria. I assumed you were better than this.” Looking down to his own glass,

That is, until he felt Gloria’s calloused hand slip under his chin and lift his face back to look at her again; where her face was now dangerously close to his.

his heart-rate picked up at her heavy expression.

“S’not a joke. I really do think you’re pretty, y’know.” Her eyelids lowered. Eyes slowly and deliberately trailed down to look at his lips; fingers lightly tracing the underside of his chin to run along his jaw. Bede sucked in a breath.

“Wouldn’t lie ‘bout this sorta thing, Bede.”

Oh.

Gloria leaned forward, eyes still locked on Bede’s parted lips, hints of the sweet wine on her breath invading his senses and making him feel dizzy as she continued to inch forward agonizingly and teasingly slowly.

And then they were kissing, and Bede burned. His body acting on some strange instinct as he pushed his lips firmer against her feather-light ones, seeking more of her as she mumbled against his mouth.

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Bede would be the first to say, out loud, that the Galar Gala was frivolous. It was hardly anything more than a superficial event funded by the higher ups of the Galar league to show off their prized gym leaders and champion to the public as though they were show-ponies at a fair. He despised it.

However…He would also be the first to admit, that the Galar Gala was somewhat of a necessary frivolity. To be seen is to gain attention; and attention is something that was required for an elite gym leader such as himself. It was beneficial to his illustrious career to be well-liked by others, and while he hated needing to bend himself to the will of others, his mentor had once taught him the benefits of doing so in moderation. And so with her help, he had adopted a somewhat-agreeable public persona to work with.

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#Pengy Squawks #Pengy Writes #Bederia #dressedinpinkshipping #unfinished works

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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

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This is random but based on your last meta about NTT 55 and the abuse. I wonder if that punch Bruce gives Dick is the beginning of the Batman writers upping his violence onto the kids (Dick, Jason, Tim) and just never addressing it. So like beside sparing and moments of being drug/hallucinating has Bruce shown so much physical violence and anger to them before that issue/moment. Is that the beginning of Batman writers thinking an angry/aggressive/violent Bruce/Batman is popular and creates fans.

Technically speaking, I know it wasn’t the first time but to my knowledge all the prior instances were treated as like….y’know, either a product of being written fifty years ago and nobody thinking twice about Bruce smacking his ‘ward’ or else due to various mind control scenarios, etc.

To be honest, my knowledge of early Batman and Robin stuff is more sporadic….I got into comics when I was ten, around ‘94, and Dick was one of my instant favorites who I latched onto immediately and had to know everything about….but my introduction to him was as Nightwing, and in his new solo series and the Titans books so everything else I kinda caught up on just to have more stories with him. And since it was him as Nightwing that I was drawn to specifically, there’s a lot of early stuff when he was still Robin that I never really dove into in depth.

I mean, new content that was being produced at the time and just was a flashback look at him as Robin, I ate all of that up (lol nostalgia does have a lot to do with my fondness for R:YO and Annual that did my preferred retelling of his origin). But yeah, its not accurate to say he didn’t interest me as Robin, per se, more just that like….there’s only so far back I could go before the earlier written stories just weren’t quite what I was looking for.

So for specifics on any earlier instances, I would look to @northoftheroad or @internal-ethics for that, as their knowledge of Dick and Bruce’s pre-Crisis days far exceeds my own.

But no, to the best of my knowledge, there was nothing before that which came even close to being like it in tone or scope.

I think its more this was symptomatic of the writers shifting to a more grim and gritty Batman, rather than that developing in the aftermath of scenes like this one. Like I mean, I don’t think that scene created a turning point in how writers depicted Bruce’s dynamics, so much as it was the result of writers in the aftermath of that turning point having already been reached.

It was the zeitgeist, you know? Personally, I blame Frank Miller for a lot, as he spawned a ton of imitators who saw what a hit he produced with his take on Bruce and I think a lot of writers just hoped that a similar take would net them a similar reception. But to be fair, its not like it was just him, since the only reason he even was a huge hit in the first place is that his Batman resonated with what a lot of people were looking for at the time.

Like, Tim still living at home and then with his dad still being alive for a decade after he first appeared…it wasn’t an accidental divergence from the first two Robins being orphans that Bruce took in and made family….it was part of the point of Tim. There is a tendency IMO (and I’m guilty of it too) to get so focused on the in-universe dynamics and character choices that we forget at times that none of these characters do anything other than what the writers write with intent, and Tim’s origin was a product of that.

He wasn’t written as initially having more of a strict partnership or mentor/protégé relationship with Bruce as opposed to the familial structured ones Dick and Jason had, like…..I just mean….that wasn’t the result of Bruce keeping him at arm’s length at first because of his grief after Jason’s death. Its more the other way around. That character choice, for Bruce to keep him at arm’s length, and Tim having an origin that allowed for Bruce to do that as Tim didn’t live with him or need to be around him as often as Dick and Jason had….all of that was the product of DC and the writers wanting a less familial relationship between them, initially. Because it was all part and parcel of the whole “I don’t do family, I have allies and that’s it, I am grim and brooding and alone and I like it that way except also I don’t like anything, how’s that for a riddle, Nygma.” *waves hand at the previous* Y’know. That bullshit.

Like….a huge part of why Jason was so insular to the Batman franchise and had so few friends among the superhero community and made so few appearances in other titles like Titans….you can explain that any number of ways in-universe, but ultimately that goes back to the fact that DC didn’t want to ‘lose’ another Robin to another book the way Dick eventually migrated over to being more associated with the Titans in the 80s than with Batman. Again, its not like that wasn’t an editorial choice too….they’re the reason Dick was kept away from the Bat titles, its more like….

Here, let me lay it out like this. Basically, as far as I’ve ever understood and interpreted it, it goes like this:

Dick and his group of Titans become successful in their own right, making the Titans a new separate and successful franchise in and of itself, independent of their mentors….and being the face of the Titans, DC wants Dick more strongly associated with the Titans so they create in-story reasons for Dick to stop being Robin and to come up with a new identity that’s more associated with Dick Grayson: leader of the Titans than with Dick Grayson: ward and partner of the Batman.

And initially, there was no real conflict between Bruce and Dick about this, they were on good terms, Dick gave Robin to Jason himself….because Dick’s departure wasn’t the inevitable result of character conflicts or some narrative reason that he had to be limited just to the Titans instead of still being a steady presence in Batman’s book….rather, it was all just made to allow for DC to keep two of their franchises separate and distinct from each other, because they didn’t want to cross-pollinate and make the success of each franchise linked to or even dependent on the other one.

And Jason was just as much a product of these decisions. Jason didn’t have a lot of ties to other books because Bruce kept him so decisively by his side, nor did he and Dick not appear together a lot because they disliked each other or didn’t have a relationship….rather, all of that IMO was an end result of the DC editorial decision to have a Robin who was almost exclusively linked to Batman in readers’ minds, with no clear, visible ties to other books or franchises that would result in him being anything other than one half of the Dynamic Duo.

(And personally, I’ve always thought this is where they really screwed up with Jason and his stories. DC claimed to want to kill Jason off because readers didn’t like him, which isn’t quite as factual a claim as has been indicated at times….but regardless….DC failed to factor in that perhaps why Jason wasn’t as popular as Dick or found as compelling by readers at the time was that DC didn’t prioritize…..giving Jason his own distinct identity and presence aside from just being Bruce’s sidekick.

Its like, DC wanted to make another Robin because Dick was so well-received, but Dick’s popularity meant eventually there was reader demand for him beyond what Batman’s book could allow for while still be focused on Batman, ergo Dick was moved elsewhere and Batman got a new Robin……who DC accidentally sabotaged from day one by deciding they wanted a Robin whose purpose was to be part of Batman’s narrative….failing to recognize that a character without a clear narrative of his own….is never going to be as interesting or compelling as others who are allowed to exist independently of their mentor).

And THEN came the zeitgeist shift. The gradual, tonal shift of reader priorities and interests (or at least, as DC interpreted them), with DC shifting their own priorities around in order to better capitalize on what they felt would be most profitable in the newer social climate. As far as they seemed to think, what readers really wanted were brooding, violent anti-heroes who were solitary and needed no one….which doesn’t really fit either Bruce Wayne: Family Man, or Bruce Wayne: Has Strong Ties to Others Outside his Franchise which Makes Them Strong Allies.

Hence, the retcon of Dick being fired from Robin instead of moving onto another identity by his own choice…..so that Dick’s reasons for not being present in the Bat franchise would be more due to emotional estrangement, thus validating the image that Bruce was (mostly) on his own, and that was the way he preferred or thought he needed it.

And then when Crisis allowed for a ton of possibilities in changing character backstories and even natures, DC made huge changes to Jason’s character….making him the grim, gritty ‘darker’ sidekick that was a better tonal fit for the darker Dark Knight they wanted to promote, and simultaneously doubling down on Dick’s own estrangement by compounding Bruce’s errors with him, as he gave Robin to Jason without asking and gave Dick all the more reason to feel he didn’t have a place there and to stay away.

And herein lies the danger of allowing your audience (or your perception of your audience and their wants) dictate your story-telling, rather than just letting your writers tell their damn stories without you constantly trying to make it a paint by numbers scenario and get more bang for your buck.

Because only a year or so after making huge changes to Jason’s character and basically re-envisioning him from the ground up, DC still felt that Robin wasn’t as well liked or as popular with readers as they wanted him to be….shockingly, I mean considering that if you think your readers only want dark heroes oozing over with violence and barely suppressed wrath, I don’t know how you convinced yourselves Robin was ever going to fit into that paradigm without re-envisioning Robin, rather than Jason himself.

Like, you can make the sidekick of your would-be dark, gloomy antihero as angry and violent as you want….but if at the end of the day, he’s still decked out in a costume that’s meant to be cheerful and fun, with no change from the iconic look that for decades now has been associated with a playful, mischievous counter-balance to the Dark Knight’s dourness….

Basically, no one’s going to go home happy is all I’m saying. DC was never going to get the success they wanted from that, because they shot themselves in the foot from the get go by wanting it both ways. The name and image recognition and built-in audience that comes from a reputation and public awareness that took literally decades to establish…..at the exact same time they wanted that very same character to be popular with the =readers they thought didn’t want the kind of content largely associated with Robin..

(IMO they could have actually gotten closer to what they wanted and killed two birds with one stone by like….building up Jason with his own distinct identity and narratives….which in turn could have led into Jason deciding Robin wasn’t the right fit for his own mission and reasons for being at Batman’s side, and thus building his own persona and mantle distinct to him just like Robin was distinct to Dick….but for the time being, still being Batman’s sidekick. If DC weren’t so insistent on it being Batman and Robin or nothing….they could have had Batman and someone else…whose new name and mantle could have been more along the lines of whatever they felt better conveyed the grittiness they wanted to sell via the Bat franchise.)

But anyway, so then Jason is killed off, with the in-story reasons really just being the cause and effect mapping of DC’s actual editorial direction to make Bruce fit the idea they’d built up in their own heads of what people really wanted Batman to be….

And yet bizarrely, they still didn’t wind up happy with the results. Apparently, Robin itself wasn’t the issue, just as Jason himself had never really been the issue. And once again, barely a year or two later….

They created Tim, but they still weren’t giving up on their obsession with this lonely, brooding Bruce who needed no one and coincidentally had no one…so they made sure to keep clear boundaries in place, initially. This is Bruce’s student, not his son, they were insistent. Just so everyone’s clear. See? He has his own dad. He even hires an actor to play his uncle when his dad is in a coma, just to keep CPS off his back because he knows Bruce would just take him in himself if that happened, and that’s not what Tim wants see, because Tim has his own dad, he doesn’t want Bruce to be his dad, ergo there is no danger of Bruce being paternal and affectionate and having *gulp* feelings. Of the positive variety.

And incidentally, well, not incidentally at all, since my whole point is all of this is always the result of clear, deliberate writing choices made to match editorial directives……regardless of the in-story explanations of Tim being so much more independent and operating solo so much more than his predecessors, like….because Bruce spent so much time brooding and being unapproachable and Tim needed more stimuli, what’s a bored superhero in-training to do, y’know….

Well, aside from all that, there’s also the factor that Tim was so much more independent than his predecessors had been while Robin because a) DC at least had learned from their mistake in not allowing Jason to have much of an identity of his own, b) the rapid expansion of both Marvel and DC in the early nineties, following what they called a speculators’ boom (basically both companies convinced themselves comics were about to be worth their weight in gold because a bunch of speculators had taken to buying up issues they thought would be worth a ton in the future, all pretty much due to the fact that some guy managed to sell a rare, first edition of X-Men #1 for a shit ton of money. Comic book companies are stupid. Have I expressed that enough in this one single post? LOL).

Anyway, so b) due to the rapid expansion of both the Big Two, DC was pumping out a ton more books than they had previously, which meant they had room for both a Nightwing solo book and a Robin solo book, so a huge part of the perception of Tim’s independence stems completely from the fact that he had a book to showcase these independent adventures in, without Batman or another team like the Titans being present (and still the priority).

(Which again, like. I’m always insisting that just because we didn’t see much of Dick and Jason bonding or hanging out on page before Jason died, didn’t mean it didn’t happen - just that there was no place to put scenes like this that didn’t involve either Batman or the other Titans, given that those were the only two titles they appeared in. Similarly, there’s no reason to assume Dick and Jason didn’t both go off on their own at times between issues and have adventures on their own or investigate stuff at their schools or any of the stuff Tim did in his solo title…..its literally just that before there was a solo Robin title to show Robin having solo adventures……the only place for these things to happen was…..off the page).

Bottom line, everything about Tim was constructed from the get go to be as unthreatening to the idea of a dark, repressed, brooding Batman as it was possible to get while still being Robin.

And yet…..even that didn’t last, weirdly. As over time, editors and writers desperately seeking the secret ingredient that would make this franchise really gel with readers the way they so desperately wanted it too…..over time, various someones stumbled into getting away with scenes where Alfred, Bruce, Dick and Tim still managed to be warm and familial with each other regardless of all that…

And shockingly, someone at some point figured out: Eureka! Readers love this!

So they doubled down, as they usually do, the second there’s profit in the air because yay capitalism…..

And thus its again, regardless of in-story justifications….

Not remotely a coincidence that Dick’s adoption, Cassandra’s creation and clear trajectory to being included in the Batfamily either officially or unofficially, Bruce’s initial offer of adoption to Tim even though Tim wouldn’t actually accept until years later, our time…..

Like, there’s a reason that all of these things happened in basically a five year period, real time…..even though prior to this, new additions to the Batfam, let alone official inductions, were more like a once every ten years kinda thing.

For a brief window, DC figured out the magic formula for writing a family is writing them as a family, and hark, ‘twas a blessed sight indeed.

And then someone was like, hey, y’know what’s missing? What if we bring Jason back?!

…….and then DC managed to pretty much wreck every progress they’d made towards having a brain, as they fucked that up in the most spectacular fashion possible by completely missing the point of why or in what ways readers most likely would want the missing and dead member of this family to show up alive and well.

*headdesk*

And over the years since then, the kids’ various official statuses have shifted left or right without rhyme or reason, following the whims of every new writer or editor to think: Eureka! I’ve done it! I’ve cracked the code! With frequent reversions to Bruce the Brooding Billionaire Bastard, loads of Not Good Parenting and downright abusive behavior, and a shit load of confusing contradictions.

Meanwhile, me, sitting here:

“Hey DC, maybe the problem is that you just can’t shove something like “adopted a gaggle of gremlins” into the bottle after uncorking that and letting readers see that its out there and a possibility…..so what if you just fucking committed to the one and only thing that’s managed to net you a positive reception every time you do this same dumb song and dance routine: actual family acting like actual family, actually.”

Anyway, how’s that for yet another

“How did Kalen’s Post Get From Point A to Side Tangent Z, Section 4f, Sub-Paragraph D13?”

#abuse cw

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tentendeservedbetter · 5 years ago

Text

home is where my team is - Chapter 1

Summary: It wasn’t supposed to be like this; none of them wanted to end up on the same team as one another. They never interacted with each other, having the most classmate relationship out of all the team, and they didn’t know how to after they were assigned. They were too different, from their abilities to their personalities.

One is loud and confident. One is shy and passive. One is stubborn and quiet.

If you were to ask any one of Team 8 back then, they would agree that their team combination was a random gamble made from the head of the village, a simple copy of their parent’s team; but even then, they knew they were a family, a tight-knit family unlike most teams, and they were sure as hell going to stick together through thick or thin.

This story revolves around Team 8 and their journey from 12 year old Genins to one of the heroic Shinobi of the Leaf to fight in the Fourth Great Ninja War. Follow the ups and downs of one of the most renowned tracking teams from Konoha, and how they tackle tough mission, family drama, angsty adolescence, and …one another.

Characters: (Main) Hinata Hyuga, Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame, Kurenai Yuhi,

Pairings (much later on, but will be explored): NaruHina, TamaKiba, background KurenAsuma, ShikaTema, SasuSaku, InoSai, etc.

Read also here: AO3 | FFNET

Next Chapter

A/N: Yeah, so remember that post I made about writing about team 8 growing up with one another rand exploring their dynamics….well here it is! I finally wrote the first chapter woooh! Check out the alternative formats that I provided to read more details about this fic before commencing, because there are some notes I made there; but other than that, here it is! a team 8 fic! I hope you all hop on for this ride!

***

The metallic part of the blue headband sitting on his forehead gleamed brightly under the pale yellow lights of the bathroom as he adjusted it with a hand, staring at the rectangle mirror. It was his first time wearing it- he just had to make sure that it sat perfectly straight, for all to see.

After another few minutes of untying and retying the blue fabric around his head, he was finally satisfied with the tightness of the band as well as how his brown hair, short and spiked, was overtop. He grinned stupidly at his reflection, his red markings lifting with the smile as he zipped up his hoodie, leaving just enough space for his collarbone, protruding with the fine mesh liner on top, out.

He looked good.

Really fucking good.

Watch out Konoha! he thought as he flashed a pose, glancing over her shoulder towards the mirror, his index and thumb over his chin as he tried to look cool. Kiba Inuzuka is here to stay! First Genin, and then-!

"Kiba!" The voice of his elder sister called out from outside the door, interrupting the beginning of his monologue. "Mom said that if you don't get your ass downstairs right now, she's gonna take that headband and break it in half!"

You'd think she'd learn to be nicer after Dad, Kiba thought bitterly as his smile fell, keeping the words to himself, knowing there were prying ears all around him, human and non-human.

There were many skills that the Inuzuka clan specializes in, their mastery of those techniques making them prime trackers in any reconnaissance mission and manhunt; and while animal training and handling is what they are often known for, taming even the most feral beast, there are many personal skills that only the clan members could really hone and specialize in that relates to their animal counterparts instincts. Touch, smell, hearing, you name it; if the dogs can do it, then you can bet your bottom ryo than an Inuzuka can too.

Most only concentrated on honing their smelling skills, scent being one of the easiest ways to identify approaching foes and friends. Everyone and everything has a scent, and it was the most obvious identifier that people tend to overlook. Even water, scientifically known as being an odourless liquid, have distinct smells only if you can tune the chakra in your nose hard enough.

His mother, however, had not only the strongest sense of smell of the clan, an obvious trait for the leader of their clan, but she had the additional skill of having the hypersensitive hearing of a dog, honing her chakra to connect to her eardrums while keeping it up with her nose. The ability to do both at the same time is pretty outstanding, considering the amount of control you need to streamline chakra to different channels, the slightest faltering potentially leading to damage to your senses.

Kiba remembered the nights he would try to escape from home to meet up with a few boys to hang out; he had left his sweaters and shirts with the strongest scents underneath the blanket of his bed, before attempting to slowly, and quietly, cross over the wooden floors of his room towards the window. Every single time, he tweaked his technique, eventually figuring out which boards made the most noise and mapping the perfect route, making sure it was the dead of night when everyone, including his mother, would be in deep sleep. Every single time, he would attempt to reduce the number of steps he took towards the door, making his steps more agile and fast, yet delicate, with each movement, not wasting any time.

And every single time, without fail, his mom would be waiting at the end of the road where the path splits in four. And every single time, without fail, she would kick his ass before dragging him by the ear back down the road to the house.

And every single time Kiba asked how she knew that he had escaped, she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "You're always so loud, stomping all over the floors like that! I can hear your footsteps every single time!"

In hindsight, those escapes trained him to become much more agile and calculative than he ever was before, his mother's reprimands being more of a driving force for him to be a better shinobi than to deter him. When he got his trusty ninken during the last year of the Academy, he trained him to be just as agile and strategic as him, to the point that he had eventually learned to evade his mother with his trusty sidekick.

But today was the day he turns into a man, goddammit! He's officially a Genin, a full-fledged shinobi of the Hidden Leaf! He wasn't some little kid; he was an adult, an agent of his own life, and he can do whatever the hell he wanted to! There's no way he was gonna let his sister, or his mom for that matter, boss him around!

Kiba opened the door much more aggressively than he intended to, but stopped it before the knob could hit the bathroom wall with a loud sound. His eyes narrowed at his sister, who had taken the position of squatting down on one knee, petting his dog, Akamaru, who usually stood valiantly while Kiba was inside the bathroom, ready to attack anyone who dares interrupt him, was wagging his little white tail happily while his tongue stuck out. Only his sister could reduce Akamaru to the cute little puppy that he was.

It annoyed Kiba to no end.

"Stop that!" Kiba said harshly at Hana, wanting to show Akamaru that he was still in command, but his voice cracked at the end, puberty not being so kind to the preteen, while Hana stood up slowly, hovering over Kiba by a good six inches, an amused smirk on her face, making the red markings on her face that were the same as his rise up as well. Akamaru immediately bounded away from Hana go Kiba's side, happily barking at him before sitting and patiently waiting for his next move.

He had assumed that she had already left for work, yet her long brown was left out, unlike in her usual ponytail she would wear, and she had no bag in sight indicating she was ready for work. She immediately plugged her nose with her hand, flinching slightly when Kiba took another step out of the bathroom, yet she maintained her stature.

"God, could you put anymore cologne?" She asked mockingly, as she wafted the air with her free hand, to dissipate the smell.

"What, why?" Kiba quickly replied defensively, while Hana shook her head.

"You smell like you doused yourself with a bottle of eau de garçon," Hana replied.

"Eau de l'homme," he corrected as he crossed his arms over his chest, trying to puff his chest out to make himself look bigger despite his sister still hovering over him. It didn't help that his sister's arms, fully exposed thanks to the white tank top she wore, were essentially the width of Akamaru's body. And his body is pretty big, but it was mostly leaner muscle. Hers, on the other hand, were both big and filled with muscle.

The gods clearly have favourites.

"You're far from a man, kid," she mocked, lightly pinching one of his cheeks, pulling it up and down playfully. "And what you're wearing proves that."

"What's wrong with my cologne?" Kiba nearly cried as he pulled out of her fingers, the pain of her pinch leaving his cheek stinging and red.

"I swear, no matter what generation it is, preteen boys abuse cologne like it's nobody's business," Hana said with a sigh before letting go of her nose and grabbing ahold of the hood of his sweater, pulling him closer. She inhaled sharply, before asking, "When was the last time you've washed this sweater? Actually…" Another quick inhale. "When was the last time you took a bath?"

"I did this morning," Kiba lied, trying to pull away, but to no avail, his sister had unfortunately inherited their mother's iron grip and simply held on tighter without budging.

"Liar," Hana replied without missing a beat, an eyebrow raised as she tried to force her smile into a frown. "You still smell like sweat from your training yesterday. When did you actually take a bath?"

There was a slight silence between them as Kiba tried to stare his sister down, but her piercing eyes broke him and he glanced away, heat rising up his neck.

"Yesterday morning," Kiba mumbled in defeat and Hana immediately let him go, simply waiting for him to continue. His strong facade broke as easily as it came, and he couldn’t help but continue in a whine, "But I jumped into the training ground river afterwards!"

"The river still carries bacteria," Hana groaned, shaking her head. "You have to take proper care of your body."

"Yeah yeah," Kiba waved off her comment as he tried to slip away down the hall so he could go to the main floor, a talk she had had with him before, but she immediately put her foot down to impede him.

"I'm serious, Kiba," Hana continued, a much more serious tone to her voice, one she rarely used unless she absolutely needed to command the room. "And your body is the only vessel you have in this life. Keeping it in tip top shape, whatever that may be, is important not only for your health, but also your line of duty as well."

"Yeah, I know," Kiba nodded along, the intensity of her voice made him uncomfortable as he shifted slightly on his feet. Hana looked at his for a moment, narrow eyes shifting over his headband to his face.

"You're now a Shinobi of the Leaf," Hana replied slowly. "You are no longer a child. And you no longer belong to yourself and to the clan anymore; you belong to the Village as well."

"To protect and serve the Village first," Kiba dully repeated the words he was forced to learn for his theory class, the Shinobi Rules. "A shinobi must set aside his emotions in order to be in shape to serve and protect their village with a sound mind and a doubtless heart."

He expected Hana to be satisfied with his words and let him get on with his day - hell, even he was surprised he still remembered that rule, being one of the longer ones from the book.

Instead, he noticed her eyes falter slightly, her eyebrows twitched inwards, as if more taken aback by his words than happy.

"Yes, exactly," she finally said, her voice sounding somewhat solemn, before her face softened as she reached over his head with a head and started mushing his hair aggressively. "Look at you, actually remembering what you learned at the Academy!"

"Stop, you're gonna mess up my hair!"

"It already looks like a mess," Hana replied before letting go. Kiba immediately ran off down the hallway, Akamaru trailing with as much speed behind him as he bounded down a flight of stairs.

"Have fun," he could hear his sister call from the top floor as he reached the end of the stairs, the bathroom door shutting behind her immediately afterwards as he smiled to himself.

I will, he thought to himself as he ran down the long stretch of hallway towards the dining room, the smell of cooked meat growing stronger with every step, enticing him and making him salivate slightly.

"What's for breakfast?" he asked as he slid the door open quickly, thought he already knew the answer just from the scent - a fresh pot of tea, omelettes with vegetables, rice fresh from the rice cooker, and a whole lot of bacon.

His mother was sitting at the opposite end of the table facing towards the door, a hand on her hip and a half of a chopstick in the other hand as something sharp grazed the side of his ear, a modest thwunk behind him from the wall. The mood of the room shifted immediately, making the hair on his neck stand up while goosebumps ran down is spine, as he froze on sight, taken aback by what had just happened. Even Akamaru started to whine, and he could see him cower his head under his tiny paws, trying to look away.

"You know the rules, Kiba," Tsume said with a growl, her voice authorative and strong. "No breakfast for people who sleep in!"

"B-but Mom-" Kiba started, but she didn't let him finish.

"Rules are rules!" She said, as she took another pair of chopsticks from the table and started to pick out the long strips of meat from the plate, streaked with crisp browned line from the pan, and onto her rice bowl. There were only three strips left on the plate. "If you don't come downstairs by the time Kuromaru is finished eating, you don't get any food!"

He eats before I even wake up! Kiba cried as he gawked at his mother, at a loss of words. He glanced over to Kuromaru, Tsume's companion ninken, who stood straight looking out the sliding door to the backyard nearby, basking in the morning light. He looked over towards Kiba, looking ethereal in his black fur highlighted with yellow streaks of the sun, and moved his head fully to look with his left eye, the only eye that he could use, the other covered with an eyepatch. Kiba could have sworn that the old dog smirked at him, a sparkle of amusement flashing over his yellow pupils.

Kiba tried hard not to let Kuromaru get to him, but he knew the dog thought more than he would say- and right now, he was mocking Kiba for being scolded by his mother like a little pup.

"C'mon, I was busy training late last night!" Kiba exclaimed as he took another cautious step forward, ready for his mother's next move. "Today is-"

"Your first day as a Genin," Tsume interjected. "But as a Shinobi, you can't just lounge around and sleep in when you have duties to perform. When I was your age, I had countless missions where I had to wake up at the crack of down with only a few minutes of rest in order to track down enemies and-"

Here she goes again. Kiba tried not to roll his eyes. He felt that his mom always over exaggerated her experiences on the field in order to scare him into obeying, and maybe some of the things did happen? But she didn't have to do this spiel first thing in the morning. He tried to tune her out, but curse his sensitive ears- the words were still processed by his brain.

"- and you can't sleep in for mission deadlines!" Tsume finished, as she took another chopstick full of rice from her bowl, satisfied with her spiel.

Kiba watched her for a moment, glaring at her swallowing the rice, before asking in a dull voice, "...So can I eat?"

"No!" Tsume exclaimed as she slammed her chopsticks clean onto the table, a loud bang resonating from the wood.

"C'mon Mom, I'm a growing boy! I need to eat!"

“No!”

“Please Mom!” Akamaru barked, trying to show his support, and Tsume glared intently at the puppy, making him once again cower and take a step back behind Kiba’s leg.

“Hush now, pup,” Tsume said to Akamaru, putting her finger over her lips.

"Why are we fighting so early in the morning?" Hana called from the end of the hallway, the creaking of the floorboards growing louder as she approached the entrance of the dining room, peering through with a slight curiosity.

She looked fresh and ready for a new day, her hair pulled back with two strands left to shape her face, and opted out the tank top for a long sleeved shirt. She gave Kiba a quick smile of acknowledgment (that Kiba returned with a frown) before brushing past him towards the dinner table, slipping the messenger bag off her shoulder.

"You got a shift at the clinic today?" Tsume asked in a calmer tone as Hana took a seat at the table, nodding to her mother’s question as she set her messenger bag against the leg of her seat. “Shirogane is really making you work.”

"Yeah, but it can’t be helped,” Hana replied as she reached over to the pot of rice from Tsume, using the small white spatula to scrape the fresh rice into the bowl that sat in front of her. Kiba could feel a low growl from his abdomen, and he held onto it, trying to subdue it in front of them. “We’re getting a group of new resident students today, and he wanted me to teach them. I’m going to be there more often now, so I can keep Kiba in check while you're gone on missions.”

"I'm still here, you know!" Kiba exclaimed, annoyed how they both ignored him, but they continued their conversation without so much as a glance.

“Oh right, the new veterinary students you were talking about,” Tsume said as she slid the plate of omelettes towards Hana, who took her chopsticks to pick it up. “Isn’t Isamu’s daughter in school to be a vet too?”

“Yeah, his eldest,” Hana nodded as she started to mix the egg with the rice, steam still floating on top of it, mixing together into a beautiful concoction. “She only started last year, so she has a few years before I could take her under my wing, if she survives.”

Tsume chuckled, as she picked up her cup of tea, saying, "She has a good head on her shoulders. She'll be fine."

"Hey, why does she get to eat!" Kiba finally interrupted their conversation, his annoyance at its peak, gesturing (but not pointing, he still wants to keep his finger) at Hana, who took a satisfying bite of her omelette rice. "She only got ready after I woke up!"

Tsume immediately slammed her cup onto the table when he finished, silence falling immediately over him.

“Hana gets to eat because she actually keeps track of time and never showed up late to a mission or her work for the past six years,” Tsume said with a cautious tone. “You, on the other hand…”

She suddenly raised her hand, the other half of the chopstick she had used earlier already in her hand, steadying her arm to throw it the way she would throw a kunai.

Kiba readied himself to dodge the throw, but the chopstick never came straight his way; it zipped at an angle above him, missing him by the tip of his hair. Kiba followed the trajectory of the throw towards the wall above the doorway, and found the red wood sticking out right beside the clock that hung up there. He shifted his eyes towards the clock, looking at the hands, reading the time.

9:30, he read. 9:30…

“I’m late!” he yelped, and Tsume tutted as she watched her son scramble over towards his bag that sat on the side of the couch.

“It’s your first day and you couldn’t even get ready on time,” Tsume hummed.

Hana in the meantime was eating her meal slowly, savouring the moment as she watched the two bicker. After watching Kiba chaotically try to look through his bag to make sure he had everything, she finally said, “Mom, look at him. Just let him take something for the road.”

“Yeah, for the road!” Kiba agreed, slinging his bag over his shoulder quickly.

Tsume scowled at Hana, before looking at Kiba, observing him with piercing eyes. After a moment, she shook her head lightly.

"Fine. Take it and go," Tsume sighed, running a hand on the side of her brown hair, attempting to tame the spikes only to make it bounce back up. "This is the last time I'll let you eat after sleeping in!"

"Yeah!" He exclaimed as he scooped up the last three strips of bacon from the plate and ran towards the door quickly, Akamaru waiting until he passed through the frame to follow him.

When Tsume was sure he was out of earshot down the hall, she sighed while softening her face, "I don't know what I'm going to do with that boy."

"Are you going to tell him the real time?" Hana asked, and Tsume shrugged.

"Nah, he'll figure it out himself."

There was a slight pause between them as they listened to Kiba scramble about at the front, trying to find his shoes so he could leave.

"You know, looking at him be this young and become a Genin is unsettling," Hana suddenly said after swallowing another bite, pausing in the middle of picking up a piece of egg with her chopsticks as she glanced over to Tsume, who took another long sip of her tea. “It’s hard to believe I looked that small when I became a Genin. I can’t imagine Kiba being responsible for half the things they’ll make him do.”

"That's only if he becomes a Genin," Tsume replied with a slight grimace on his face. “You know who’s going to be his Jonin leader?”

“I heard, but it can’t be too bad for him,” Hana said with a small smile, fondly remembering her first day after graduating from the Academy. “He might be spunky, but Kiba knows how to work well with others. You made sure of it.”

Kiba quickly slipped on his sandals, strapping them on tightly and zipping the backside up, making sure they are securely on before he leaves. He opened the door, letting Akamaru bound out onto the small set of stairs leading down to the path towards the front gates. Once he was sure he had everything he needed, he took one last look at the mirror that hung on the wall above the shoe rack, making sure his headband sat on properly.

"I’m off!" Kiba quickly called out as he shut the door behind him before stuffing the three strips of bacon in his mouth. "Le'z gwo A'amaru!"

"Yes!" Akamaru barked in agreement and they took off side by side, the morning sun shining down on their faces as they run down the road, trying not to trip.

***

"Yo, Kiba! Where’s the fire?"

Kiba stopped in his tracks, the heel of his foot skidding the dirt road, quickly turning over to the source of the voice that was behind him. He followed the familiar scent towards the side of the road, and saw a boy around his age continue to walk at an even pace, an easygoing grin on his face as he approached Kiba.

“Itsuki... why so ...slow?” Kiba managed asked between pants, trying to control his breathing rate as he stood still as adrenaline caught up to him. Akamaru caught up right beside him, panting with his tongue out, waiting for his next move. “Aren’t we... late?”

“Nah man, we still got another hour until it’s 10,” Itsuki replied, his black eyebrows pulled in, confused at his friend’s words. “Did you run all the way here?”

“Dude...I swear it was 9:30 when I left,” Kiba replied, now his eyebrows contorting in confusion. Itsuki looked over to the watch on his right wrist, reading the hands along the plate.

"Nah, dude," Itsuki said, a grin on his face as he extended his arm, showing the watch face to Kiba, letting him read it. Indeed, the small hand was on the 9, with the smaller hand only halfway through it's round. Kiba couldn't comprehend this conflict of time, when it struck it like a pound of bricks on his head.

She changed the time! Kiba thought, eyes furrowed and gritting his teeth in anger, a little image of his mother mocking him with her laugh popping into his head. It could only make sense...the must have changed the living room clock to throw him off. He knew for a fact that he woke up on time; he gave himself plenty of time to get ready before leaving for his first day as a Genin!

Itsuki laughed at his face, the brown of his pupils twinkling with amusement. "Did your mom move the clock ahead again?"

Akamaru let out whine when he heard his words, and Kiba leaned down to pick the exhausted pup in hands, sticking him on the part where he would zip up his grey sweater, letting his hang his head and paws out. Itsuki took the opportunity to give Akamaru a pat on the head, while Kiba replied through gritted teeth, a bit flustered at having to admit it, "Yeah she did."

"Damn, go Ms. Inuzuka," Itsuki said with a light laugh as he put his hands into the front pocket of his shirt. "I'm glad my mom isn't a drill sergeant!"

"Yeah, yeah," he waved off his comment with a huff, something he hears often from his friends who have known him for so long. Tsume truly was ruthless with her rules; she even went as far as to pull this stunt on him.

Kiba walked alongside his friend, taking in what Itsuki was wearing. Now that they officially graduated from the Academy, it only made sense to wear clothes that would suit their new job. When Kiba had first met Itsuki back when he was in normal school before Shinobi school, he would often be prim and minimal, with a shirt tucked into his pants with a belt, his hair coiffed to the side in a side part as his mother liked it. Kiba’s ferality has worn him down, though; he wore a deep red hoodie that warmed his tan skin with short sleeves, his blue headband fastened on his upper left arm, and black pants that went up to his knees, pockets lined on both the top and the bottom. He was wearing the grey armour mesh tights underneath, up until midway to his calves, and he trades his usual runners for black sandals. His black hair was free of any gel, spiking up in a slight slope upwards, revealing a hoop earring on his helix, a sort of present from himself to celebrate graduating from the Academy, something his mother completely disapproved of but it was too late.

Kiba had considered getting a piercing, the needle they used on Itsuki looking enticing, but he knew that Tsume and Hana would have ripped the earring off as soon as he walked through the door, both doing it for different reasons; for Tsume, it would be without asking permission, and for Hana, it would be for infection control.

“Look who’s up ahead,” Itsuki pointed out, and Kiba immediately looked up, noticing a different scents that was also familiar waft in the air. Kiba grinned, as Itsuki yelled out, “Natsuo! Hold up!”

Another boy around their age with ashy brown hair glanced back at them after hearing his name, his headband proudly gleaming under the sunshine.

“Yo,” the brown haired boy, Natsuo, said with a lopsided grin, pulled up the sleeve of his long blue sleeve underneath his loose tank top and giving Itsuki a props. They had all been friends from before entering the Academy, thought the duo had met Natsuo a year beforehand. Despite this, he was still close to them, making up a three-quarters gang that they usually were in.

“Look at you, showing off your headband,” Kiba teased as he gave a playful punch to his shoulder, before Itsuki put him a light headlock, while Kiba attacked his brown locks by ruffling them. “Save the theatrics for us, Michy!”

“Chill out!” Natsuo exclaimed with a laugh as he slipped out of the headlock, running a hand through his hair. “Oh and what, you're not showing off your headband?”

“I'm allowed to show it off," Kiba chuckled, flicking the plate of Natsuo's headband lightly, square on the Konoha symbol .

A specific scent was suddenly in the air that caught his attention, and he could feel his heart skipped a beat when he recognised it instantly. It was a soft, flowery scent, mixed with the freshness of the Konoha pines found in a certain part of town, and despite it being extremely faint, his nose was able to amplify it a bit more. He tried his best not to look around to follow the scent, instead using his eyes to quickly scanned around them. They were quickly approaching the source of the scent at the opposite side of the road, and Kiba could feel his back straighten a bit more.

“Oh oh! She’s close!” Akamaru barked excitedly from inside his jacket, moving his head around to see if he could catch a glimpse of the person emitting this smell, now already in their immediate area. Kiba glanced ahead to the road, trying not to look as to not draw his friend’s attention, but his eyes betrayed him as it caught sight of long purple hair coming out of a store with a bag in hand.

“Don’t look now Kiba, but I think that’s your future wife,” Natsuo mocking before Kiba elbowed him harshly in the side of his ribs, feeling the tips of his ears burning.

“I’m going to call her over,” Itsuki snickered, and before Kiba could refuse, he yelled out, “Akane! What are you doing loitering around?”

A girl immediately looked towards them as they approached her (well, they were walking towards her, Itsuki had to drag Kiba by the arm), her brown eyes fluttering up towards them as her pink lips broke into a smile.

“I’m getting some dango,” Akane replied, her voice smooth and high, as she lifted the bag up towards the boys, a hand on her hips. “You guys want some?”

“Do I?” Natsuo said as he took the bag from her hand, and perused the contents, taking out a tupperware with the dango inside, still fresh with steam.

“Ah!” Akane exclaimed immediately when she looked over at Kiba, and she took a step closer. Kiba had to stop himself from taking a step back, and refrained from holding his breath. “Akamaru! You cute little thing!”

“Pet me! Pet me!” Akamaru barked happily as Akane started to scratch the back of his ears, cooing at him.

“Stop, you’re spoiling him,” Kiba replied after finding his voice but didn’t make her stop, allowing her to pick Akamaru in her arm as she cradled in one hand.

“But Kiba,” Akane pouted at Kiba, blinking her eyes in a fluttery way. “He’s so cute!”

“I am!” Akamaru barked in agreement, his tail wagging as Akane continued to rub his neck, scratching it just where he likes it.

“What the hell are you wearing, Akane?” Itsuki asked after taking a bite of dango from the tupperware, gesturing mindlessly at her clothing.

Akane’s eyebrows pulled into a frown, and she scowled at the boy. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“Nothing,” Itsuki said with a slight shrug. “It’s just weird.”

“I think what Natsuo is wearing is weirder,” Akane replied with an eye roll. “He’s wearing a shirt over a shirt. That’s stupid.”

“I didn’t know you were the fashion police,” Natsuo scowled as Akane swiped back the bag from his hand when he reached his second dango, still balancing Akamaru in one arm.

“What do you think, Kiba?”Akane asked in a lighter voice, smiling at him as she swayed slightly. “How do I look?”

She was wearing a sleeveless faded green shirt that went up to her waist, her blue pants sitting on her hips, the mesh armour shirt covering her abdomen. So far, it was normal, though she had wrapped her hand with white bandages up until her past her wrists, despite never wearing them before and not being that keen of taijutsu, and the sleeves of her mesh armour shirt went up to her elbows. Her headplate had been taken off of the usual blue fabric and was stitched onto a black one, and hung around her neck loosely. Her sandals were a black like her headband, but there was an extra layer underneath to make her taller, though Kiba wasn’t sure if it would help her with her abilities or were for show. Probably like Itsuki's earring, it was for show.

But despite this, he immediately thought that she looked, to put it frankly, Cute as hell.

Out of the group, Akane was the last one to join, completing the quartet when they entered the Academy. She was an outgoing girl, with a sharp mouth and equally sharp eyes, having a particular sense of humour that suited them very well. Not only that, but she was one of the cutest girls in the class, akin to the likes of two other girls in their class, a Sakura Haruno and an Ino Yamanaka. But where they were failed to be cute naturally, she excelled at it incredibly - to people who didn’t know her. She was hot-tempered with Kiba, persistent with her way, and while Kiba would normally not be complacent, his crush on her let her get some leeway with certain situations (plus, he was kind of into it).

They weren’t dating, actually, far from it, and he wasn’t even sure if it was a mutual feeling to begin with. He wouldn’t mind dating her, though, and he was planning to ask her out after they got used to being a Genin. He didn’t want to rush anything, knowing they had time. Right now, he was focused on being a great ninja, the likes of what his mother is, and his foremothers as well.

Kiba went with a neutral route, grinning and shrugged, “It’s okay. Not as good as what I’m wearing.”

Akane tried to hide her smile at his joke, giving him a slight nudge with her elbow, both hands being full, saying in a light, sugary tone, “Shut up!”

"We'll see how long you'll last in it," Itsuki said with a grin, as they continued to walk down the road, still trying to make it on time to the Academy. Akane handed back Akamaru to Kiba, who immediately placed him back in his sweater, not wanting to tire the puppy out so soon in the day. He could see Akane walk beside him, a step closer into him, but it was probably so she could see the others properly while talking.

“This is it, huh,” Itsuki mumbled mindlessly, and they all looked at him curiously to continue. “We’re officially Shinobi from this day on.”

“Damn right, we are,” Kiba said cockily, a grin on his face. “Can’t wait to finally go on missions and get out of Konoha for once! Maybe even leave the Land of Fire!"

"You might not get out all that much to begin with," Akane hummed beside him, trying to keep up with their longer strides. "We'll probably get simple D rank missions around the Village or in the farmlands."

"Aw, that’s right- so we won’t even be fighting then!” Natsuo groaned with a frown. “What’s the point of learning all this ninjutsu if we won’t be using it on anyone!”

“Let’s wait and see what we get,” Kiba replied. “But there’s no way I’m not going to be stuck with some lame missions. Isn’t that right, Akamaru?”

Akamaru barked in agreement, and Akane laughed, "Hopefully we can work together!"

"Yeah, but usually D-rank missions only need three-man squads, right?" Itsuko replied lightly. "Three out of four of us might end up on one team, and the last one left is gonna end up with randos."

"It alternates a lot, it's not permanent," Kiba said, mindlessly patting Akamaru's head gently, an unconscious habit when he was was hanging off the neckline of his sweater or hoodie.

It made Kiba slightly antsy at the thought of separating from his friends since he found out this information; they have been through so much together, through the ups and downs of their Academy years, through every endurance testing to written exams. And now to potentially be separated from one another despite not needing to be made him anxious.

Kiba was an easy going guy, he knew how to make friends easily, but it was always with like minded people. What if he had to work with someone stubborn and gets in his way? Or someone passive and won't take initiative? He worked so long with his friends that it's hard for him to imagine them separating and not working together as often.

"The least they could do is split the group in half," Kiba continued lightheartedly, with his usual grin. "Don't worry about it."

***

They made their way up the staircase to the third floor where there now old classroom was, the sound of students chattering and laughing could be heard through the closed sliding door leading into their classroom. When they walked in, the class was nearly filled with students, the right bench in the second row to the lower floor being empty.

Kiba scanned the rows of the students as they walked down the steps to the empty seats, plenty of familiar faces crowding around benches to talk to their friends. He noticed, however, the slight buzz in the air, bitter and confused glances over towards the direction of the wide windows against the other side of the room, some people whispering amongst themselves.

"Sup," Kiba greeted a group of boys nearby the entrance they walked through, at the top row of the classroom, who were also gawking towards that direction. "What's going? Why's everyone looking paranoid."

"Dudes," one of the boys said, ushering Kiba and his friends closer. "You're not going to believe this! Guess who passed the Academy exams?"

Before Kiba could ask who, he heard a familiar voice drawl out from the other side of the classroom, "Naruto, what are you doing here?"

Kiba leaned over to look at the window side of the classroom, and he saw the familiar spiky ponytail of his classmate, Shikamaru Nara, slouching over the second bench from the top of the room. He could only see another one of his classmates, the prodigious genius of his year, Sasuke Uchiha, sitting further along the bench closer to the window, but that was not who Shikamaru was talking about, no. He leaned even forward to see past Shikamaru, narrowing his eyes.

Lo and behold, in his obnoxiously orange tracksuit and spiky blond hair to match, there sat Naruto Uzumaki, class clown and world class idiot, with the biggest grin in the world as he held his headband plate with one hand, showing it off.

"This isn't a class for drop-outs, you know," Shikamaru continued, shoving his hands in pockets.

"Do ya see this Shikamaru?" Naruto said loudly and confidently, flashing the headband up and down. "See, it? It's a Konoha headband, which means I passed! From now one I'm going to be a shinobi training alongside you! Believe it!"

"I don't believe it," Itsuko said in a hushed voice, watching the spectacle before them. "I could have sworn Naruto failed."

Kiba tutted slightly, annoyed at what he was seeing. Naruto was the last person he expected to see. They were all there for the same final exam; he saw it with his own eyes, he couldn't conjure up a Clone, and when he did, it was a blanched body with no energy or Chakra whatsoever. How did he end up passing, out of the blue?

“Hey, Kiba” Akane asked, in a hushed tone, a slight grin on her face. “What if you end up working with your friend over there?”

Kiba grimaced at her words. He only hung out with Naruto for a bit, whenever they wanted to skip out of class to go to the training hall, Naruto and Shikamaru being the only ones who would be willing to do so with another one of their classmates, Choji Akimichi. Naruto and Kiba weren’t friends, no, far from it; they were just acquaintances, at most, and even then it was limited to being his classmate, and those few times they skipped together. Naruto was a fun guy, he won’t lie, and he knew how to goof around and have a good time; but that’s all he knows what to do. At some point, his slack in ninjutsu and fooling around got old real quick- Kiba had to detach himself from being associated with him, not wanting to be pulled down with him. It didn’t help that he was an easy target for many to make jokes about; Kiba didn’t want to put in the spotlight with him, he still had pride.

It doesn't matter, Kiba thought. I'll be fine as long as I don't have missions with him!

Before he could reply, the door they had entered suddenly slid open with a loud bang, and the sound of angry struggle was heard.

"Move Billboard Brow!"

"Shut up Ino-pig!"

Kiba looked over at the door, and could feel his temples stinging immediately. Great, more annoying people…

Two girls, one with long pink hair flowing and one with long blonde hair in a ponytail, tumbled through the door frame in unison, luckily landing on their feet. Two girls, stood in place for a moment, sweat dripping down their flushed faces, panting hard as they leaned on their knees.

“Not bad, Sakura,” the blonde girl managed to say between pants, not bothering to look at her companion.

The pink haired girl managed to smirk crookedly, but was panting equally as hard, and she said, “I told you Ino...I’d beat you.”

He heard Natsuo let out a low whistle, and Kiba could see Natsuo staring at the two girls, eyes ogling at the blonde girl, Ino Yamanaka. He elbowed him to draw his attention away, and said in an annoyed tone, “What are you, a pervy old man?”

“Can’t I check them out, dude?” Natsuo mumbled back to for only his ears, annoyed at Kiba policing him, and Kiba rolled his eyes.

The pink haired girl, Sakura Haruno, ran across the top floor towards the stairs that led in between the benches along the window wall and the centre benches. Ino followed right behind her, stopping at a step above her, pushing Shikamaru back away from the second row bench near the window. Kiba could feel a grin on his face, and he settled a bit on his spot, waiting.

“This ought to be good,” Itsuki said, knowing full well what was going to happen, and they all watched with anticipation.

Naruto attempted to get up from his seat to greet them, but before he could a ‘hey’ out of his mouth, Sakura pushed him aside, saying as she pointed at the empty space between Sasuke and Naruto, “Hey Sasuke, is anyone sitting there?”

From the distance, Kiba couldn’t see Sasuke reaction, but he knew the name was like opening a floodgate; the moment the Uchiha prodigy was mentioned in any vicinity, you could be sure there would be a group of girls that would gather around him, vying for his attention. Kiba could admit it himself, Sasuke was a pretty boy, with jet black hair and side bangs shaping his face, and onyx eyes that gave him an air of mystery, his face more chiselled and refined than the average boy their age. That’s not to say Kiba was jealous of the attention Sasuke receives, no, far from it; he doesn’t know how Sasuke goes about his life and training without a flock chasing after him, and he knew he wouldn’t survive if he were Sasuke.

Speaking of a flock, there was one forming around Sakura right now, her question triggering other girls from their class to gather near the bench, forming a chain to keep one another out.

“Listen up, forehead!” Ino said, with a clenched fist, being one of said girls who like Sasuke. “I walked into the classroom before you, so I get to sit next to Sasuke first!”

“Actually, I was here before either of you,” another girl said, crossing her arms over her chest. “So I get to sit next to Sasuke!”

“No way, I was here before all of you!” Another girl piped in. “If anything, I should sit next to Sasuke.”

“Don’t you want to fight for a spot next to Uchiha?” Kiba whispered to Akane, who let out a small chuckle.

“Maybe you should try,” she replied with a small wink, making his heart skip a beat, as the group of girls started to argue loudly with one another. Suddenly, there was a silence over the group of girls as they turned their attention from one another back to the bench.

Kiba could see what they were staring at, and he was surprised to see it as well; directly in front of Sasuke, on top of the table, was the spunky blond squatting down to be face-to-face with the raven-haired boy. Tension filled that area immediately as Naruto glared at Sasuke, and Kiba could only assume that Sasuke was returning the look with as much intensity.

"Naruto!" Sakura exclaimed angrily, fists clenched up in front of his chest. "What are you doing to Sasuke!"

"That idiot," Kiba said, eyes never leaving the scene. "Is he trying to pick a fight right now?"

Before the girls could start yelling at Naruto, there was another hush that fell over them a few gasps amongst the crowd. Even the kids who weren’t paying attention to them looked with wide eyes, mouth agape at what they saw.

Kiba was taken aback too, but his grin widened even more at the spectacle, trying to suppress the mocking laugh that swelled up in his stomach. A boy in the row in front of Sasuke was moving his arms around, and his elbow landed square onto Naruto’s back, pushing the blond forward unwilling and…

Made his lips lock with Sasuke’s.

Tension in the room flared, and the rest was expected; the flock of girls, with their menacing glares and cracking their knuckles, ganged up on Naruto and well...let’s just say the poor guy got a few bruises here and there.

“What a dumbass,” Akane said mockingly. “He got it coming to him.”

As if the gods were just waiting for this to happen, the door at the front of the classroom slid open, and entered their now ex-homeroom teacher, Iruka Umino, with a folder under his arm, wearing his usual attire of the long blue sleeved shirt underneath his faded green Chunin vest. He looked at the students with a confused look, the group of girls still flocking around Sasuke and Naruto now lying along the stairs, the light scar across the bridge of his lifting with his scrunched up nose.

“What happened here?” Iruka asked, and the group immediately replied with a quick ‘nothing!’ before dissipating. Sakura had managed to shimmy her way next to Sasuke during the disorder, while Naruto got up quickly at Iruka’s voice, clamouring up into the seat.

Iruka didn’t buy their word, but he didn’t press on, and he looked towards the rest of the classroom, with a slight smile growing on his face. He continued, “It looks like everyone is here! Can you all please take your seats!”

The students did not hesitate to take their places along the benches immediately, the previous tension that was in the room now replaced with excitement. Kiba slipped into one of the benches, and Akane sat beside him, with Natsuo and Itsuki following suite. He picked Akamaru out of his jacket and placed him on top of his head, as to not squeeze him against the table.

Iruka walked up to the desk in front of the chalkboard, setting down his folder, and waited for the classroom to settle into silence for him to begin.

“From this day forward, you are no longer Academy student, but shinobi of the Leaf,” Iruka said with a light voice, shifting his gaze between the students. “However, you are only at the level of Genin, a junior ninja, and there your journey of being excellent ninja is still ahead of you. Soon you will all be able to take missions for the Village. But due to you being brand new shinobi, we will be putting you in 3-man squads, with each team having a Jonin sensei to guide you!"

What?! Kiba thought, his eyebrows drawing in closer as he slightly shook one of his legs up and down impatiently, leaning onto the table. They're assigning us to teams?!

"You will have to follow your sensei's orders in order to complete your missions," Iruka continued with the same smooth rhythm. He picked up the folder and opened it, holding it in one hand. "We tried to balance each team's strength and weaknesses to form an equal squad with various members."

"What!" A few kids shouted at the same time, Natsuo joining as well, and the class went into a slight frenzy.

"Aw man, we're being assigned into teams?" Itsuko said with a slight huff. "What if Iruka-sensei splits the group? What if he only puts three of us in a team and leaves one in a group of randos?"

"I hope not," Akane mumbled. "You think he'd do that?"

"Nah, he would only split it half and half," Kiba said with a slight wave of his hand. "Iruka-sensei wouldn't do us like that."

Would he? Maybe he would split their group up, considering that they were being split to make the powers equal. Maybe it's to combine their different skills to have an optimal team situation.

"Settle down, everyone," Iruka said in a louder voice to overpower the chatter and everyone stopped talking, though the glaring faces still remained. "This is so that team would be well balanced and have optimal chance of completing missions! They were already premade, so there is no way to change your assigned teams."

The classroom was filled with groans, but nobody objected. When Iruka was satisfied with their silence, he looked down to his folder, and said, "Now, I'll call out each team number and the members of that squad. First up...Team 1!"

"God, I sure hope I don't end up with Naruto," Kiba heard Itsuko said in a hushed voice as Iruka continued down the list, and Kiba nodded along. Anyone but Naruto.

"Next up is Team 6," Iruka said, and Kiba could see Iruka's eyes flicker up towards their group before returning to the paper. "Akane Moritaka...Itsuko Akabane…"

C'mon, Iruka-sensei, split us in half, Kiba prayed in his mind, keeping his eyes planted on Iruka as he started to call out the last name.

"And Natsuo Hirota."

Kiba could feel a weight over his shoulders when he heard the last name called. He gritted his teeth slightly, feeling overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time.

Great...he's the one who's going to end up with randos.

"Kiba..." Akane started, leaning over to him, but Kiba just smiled at her, not wanting any sympathy.

"It's cool," he said courtly, leaning into his arms as he did before, maintaining his voice level. "There has to be a reason they made that team."

"Let's hope you got a good team," Natsuo said in a hushed voice.

"Team 7," Iruka continued, paying no heed to any whispered words. "Sakura Haruno...Naruto Uzumaki."

Kiba could see Naruto clenched in fist in a happy motion, a stupid grin on his face while Sakura banged her head on top of the table, misery surrounding her like a cloud. He crossed his fingers.

Please don't put me on their team...please don't put me on their team...

"And...Sasuke Uchiha." Now it was Sakura's turn to smile brightly, Naruto banging his head on top of the table. Kiba grinned, happy he dodged a bullet.

Before Iruka could continue, Naruto got up from his seat, and proclaimed in his whiny, loud voice, "Sensei! Why does an outstanding shinobi like me have to end up with that guy!?"

Iruka stared at Naruto for a second, before his eyebrows pulled into a frown, and he placed his hands on his hips, leaning forward as if talking to a child.

"Because Sasuke's grades were the best of all 27 graduates," Iruka started with a cool voice. "And yours was dead last. We have to balance out the teams, remember? You do understand, right?"

Snickers ran through the classroom, and before Naruto could sit down, Sasuke said in the lowest of voices, "Just don't get in my way...dead last."

Kiba had to stifle his laugh as Naruto readied himself to fight Sasuke with a yell, Sakura having to stand up to push him down into his seat.

This team is a mess, Kiba thought to himself as Iruka-sensei told them to settle down, taking a few more minutes for Naruto to actually sit down and instead glare at Sasuke. How are they going to go on missions if all they do is argue?

"Okay, moving on," Iruka said with a slight sigh, looking at his clipboard. "For Team 8… Kiba Inuzuka."

Please let me have someone good on my team.

"Hinata Hyuuga. And Shino Aburame."

Kiba could really feel the weight increasing over him as his jaw opened slightly gaped at the names Iruka called out. He could hear all his friends giggle and chuckle, and he turned to glare at them.

"You got the two weirdos," Natsuo whispered to Kiba. "Nice one, Kiba!"

"Shut up," Kiba hissed, as he started to scour the classroom, looking for the faces to the names Iruka called out.

He spotted Hinata Hyuuga almost immediately, her sitting in the back row as she often did, alone with no one near her, with her short deep blue bangs covering her forehead, her forehead protector around her neck, almost covering her chin. The oversized wooly jacket she wore hung over her, and she didn't look up, staring at a spot on her desk with her big, white eyes, and fidgeting her index fingers together.

Harmless and shy, she wouldn't willingly hurt a fly, and everyone in the class knew it; they didn't understand why she was in the Academy to begin with, her benign ways counteracting the shinobi lifestyle. It was her revered Hyuuga name, the ones with the fame Kekkei Genkai, the Byakugan, that forced her to be a shinobi. But even then, as the so-called 'princess' of the clan, Kiba would have assumed that the clan wouldn't let her out of her sight and wouldn't enroll her as a field shinobi- either she had no fear of being hurt or her clan didn't care whether she died. He wouldn't bet on the first option.

He continued to look, and near the front, on the bench on their aisle, was the boy they called Shino Aburame, all alone with no one around, the rest of the classmates sitting there keeping a good amount of space between them and the boy. Kiba couldn't see his face, only his coiled, tall brown hair being seen poking out of a light grey trench coat that covered half his face and nearly went passed his wrists loosely.

Hinata, he's fine with, her silence and fidgeting being weird, though not being a big deal for him, but Shino was a different issue. He was a weirdo and everyone knows it; he wasn't loud or outgoing, he didn't talk for the most part, and he always wore those black sunglasses indoors and outdoors, never revealing his eyes.

The only time Kiba ever interacted with Shino was when he was playing football with his classmates, and he was ready to kick the winning goal, when Shino told him to stop. He did stop, mostly by surprise because it was the first time he heard Shino speak, and he wasn't expecting his voice to be as loud as it was, and Shino walked up towards the ball, leaning down to pick up…

A ladybug. A tiny, red ladybug, that had flown on top of the ball and would have literally been apart of the winning goal if Kiba kicked the ball. Shino picked the bug up, and said in a low voice to Kiba, without ever looking at him, "Watch what you do next time. You almost hurt an insect because of your lack of perception."

And with those words, Shino walked off the field towards a tree, never turning back, and leaving Kiba frozen in confusion, before it was replaced with anger. Confusion over the entire interaction, and anger because of how Shino called him a dumbass for not using his eyes. Kiba wanted to argue with him, but he didn't know what to say- and Itsuko had told him to let Shino be Shino, and to just ignore him, he does these types of things often.

Out of all the people in the world, why these two though?! Kiba buried his head into his folded arms, careful not to tip too far and make Akamaru fly off his head. Bug boy and the quiet girl- do the gods hate me or something?!

"Team 10," Iruka's voice broke his thoughts, and he glanced back up to the.

"Ino Yamanaka. Shikamaru Nara. Choji Akimichi."

Kiba could hear the blonde girl's cry of pain at her name being read along with the two other boys from across the room. At least he was not the only one who had a problem with his squad assignment.

After Iruka went through the rest of the list, he finally finished by saying, "The Jonins should be arriving this afternoon. In the meantime, we'll have a break. Make sure to be back by 1 o'clock sharp!"

"Yes sensei," Kiba mumbled with the rest of the students as they got up from their seats, trying his best not to break face as he stood up and bowed with the rest of the class.

#hinata hyuga #kiba inuzuka #shino aburame #team 8 #kurenai yuhi #hinata #kiba #shino #team 8 fanfic #naruhina #tamakiba #kurenai #hana inuzuka #tsume inuzuka #hinata hyuuga #my fanfiction #homeiswheremyteamis

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goingoverthegardenwall · 5 years ago

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Chapter 3: Schooltown Follies

Since there have been stories, there have been stories that anthropomorphize animals. Folks have imagined creatures behaving as humans in every corner of the world, in myths and fables and fairy tales from ancient cultures to today. So by the turn of the 20th century, when a mycologist known for painting incredibly detailed images of fungus decided to instead write and illustrate stories about animals in contemporary clothes, it wasn’t exactly a new idea. But perhaps that makes it more impressive: despite the multitude of animal books for children that have been published in the last hundred and fifty years, the work of Beatrix Potter still stands out.

She’s not alone, of course: no good conversation about humanized animals in Western kid lit can last long without mentioning Richard Scarry or Margaret Wise Brown or Arnold Lobel. And Peter Rabbit’s extended family is quite British, which puts it at odds with the nostalgic Americana of Over the Garden Wall: it’s not for nothing that our assortment of animals in Schooltown Follies includes a raccoon and an opossum. But the timeless quality of Potter’s work is still felt in this episode in two ways. First, while the show has a cartoony lens, the school animals are far more anatomically accurate than Beatrice or the frogs of Lullaby in Frogland, evoking Potter’s signature field guide style. And second, there’s a mischief to Potter’s animals that makes them feel more like real children than the cute but bland residents of Scarry’s Busytown, and mischief is the name of the game when Greg comes to schooltown.

Schooltown Follies is full of clever tricks, but perhaps its most clever is introducing animals with human qualities (they wear clothes, play instruments, and walk on their hind legs) but not giving them voices. It’s generally great comedy fuel, showing the inherent ridiculousness of a school for sorta normal animals, but it more importantly allows the episode a silent movie feel, with plenty of physical humor enhanced by characters without dialogue. That style completes the episode’s subversion of Beatrix Potter’s oeuvre: she wrote stories about naughty animals learning that they should behave, but in this vaudeville version, the only way to save the day is by misbehaving.

“Then I’ll do what I need to do, I guess.”

Despite being one of our three main characters, Greg trades a full character arc for a comic relief role. At the beginning of Over the Garden Wall he’s a chatty kid who never gives up and loves fun, and at the end he’s a chatty kid who never gives up and loves fun. This doesn’t mean he’s fully static, as he matures enough to accept some responsibility to others instead of seeking entertainment for himself: he abandons a potential happy ending to try to save Wirt with the Beast, and returns his stolen Rock Facts Rock in the last shot of the series. But even this obligation to help out is present early on: Schooltown Follies is the first of his two focus episodes, and the foundation of his eventual heroism is established right here.

And frankly? I think it’s okay if he’s not that dynamic. Greg doesn’t change as much as Wirt or Beatrice because he doesn’t have nearly as much to overcome, and he still contributes to the show without forcing the crew to juggle three distinct arcs. Our older kids are on a shorter timer to grow up, and have clearer negative traits (Wirt’s got no confidence, Beatrice is a jerk), and while we can accuse Greg of lacking social cues, he’s so young that it’s not indicative of a larger problem. He’s just acting his age, albeit in a heightened way for entertainment, and to lose that innocence this early in his life would make this show a serious downer.

“Heightened” is the general mood of Schooltown Follies, where Greg’s less realistic behavior fits much better than The Old Grist Mill’s bottom-of-the-barrel aside. This is an episode where Two Old Cat, an old-timey bat-and-ball game that evokes a similar old-school era as our old school, involves searching for actual old cats, somehow finding them immediately, then realizing one is too old to play and must instead be taken care of by a raccoon in a newsboy cap and overalls.

While there’s plenty of humor to go around in Over the Garden Wall, this is the only fully silly episode. Our other lighthearted outings come with dark twists: Songs of the Dark Lantern introduces the Beast, Lullaby in Frogland reveals Adelaide, and Babes in the Wood turns out to be the most somber episode of the series with context. Here we almost get a parody of such a twist, with characters repeatedly mentioning a wild gorilla on the loose apropos of nothing, then revealing that the gorilla is Miss Langtree’s paramour trapped in a suit. It’s a ridiculous setup to a ridiculous punchline, aided by casting Thomas Lennon for a few lines of dialogue (his read for “I. Was. The gorilla” was worth every penny), so there’s never any sense of danger. Jimmy Brown and Enoch are equally harmless in the end, but I doubt any little kids watching are gonna get nightmares about the ape suit.

This mood is enhanced with song, but among the many musical moments in the series—Mad Love is the only episode without singing in some form—Schooltown Follies stands out by not letting any of the numbers finish. We begin and end the episode in song, but Greg doesn’t have the last lines for Adelaide Parade figured out, Langtree’s Lament faces numerous interruptions before being cut short by the bell (they actually did a full version though!), and Potatoes and Molasses gets stopped first by Mr. Langtree, then by the end credits. Even Miss Langtree’s piano rendition of last episode’s Patient is the Night halts when Greg mashes the keys. It’s the perfect atmosphere for an episode about a kid who loves fun, but is easily distracted and hasn’t developed good planning skills.

Which isn’t to say that Greg is dumb, but that he’s prone to winging it in a way that sets him apart from Wirt. While Wirt rambles his thoughts aloud, Greg takes action without telling anyone why, making his decisions appear random in a medium that often explains motives concretely to young viewers. Wandering in his own direction has become a running gag by now, and while he sets off to make the world a better place, he instead plays outside with animal truants. He’s jolted back to his quest by the bland food and dull atmosphere of lunch hour, and his irrepressible energy lightens everybody’s day without much effort. When Mr. Langtree steps in as an antagonist, Greg decides once again to do something about it, this time saying explicitly that he has no plan, but everything works out again. We get an excellent joke from his decision to rob Langtree right after he becomes sympathetic, but as usual, Greg has bigger ideas behind the humor that he just hasn’t articulated.

While Greg is busy delightfully saving the day, Wirt and Beatrice ease into a sniping side story that establishes their relationship for the next few episodes. They got off on the wrong foot in The Old Grist Mill and twisted that ankle in Hard Times at the Huskin’ Bee, so by now Beatrice doesn’t even try to hide her disdain and Wirt gets fed up with it. This is the perfect type of subplot, one that develops our characters and fits into the theme of the episode—Wirt’s rebellious obedience bounces off Greg’s rebellious call to disobey—but doesn’t distract from the main story.

Beatrice is helpful in opening up Wirt’s snotty side in a way that allows us to cheer for him. Until now his biggest conversation partner has been Greg, and it’s tough to side with Wirt when he’s mean to Greg, but Beatrice is an equal in terms of sparring, and her rudeness is a more understandable motive for Wirt to be obstinate than Greg’s playfulness. Our last episode had him aimlessly suggest staying in Pottsfield, and he’s similarly bound to this new location, but his different attitude changes the entire story. After two episodes of dithering, it’s nice that they let Elijah Wood play a character who’s funny on purpose for a spell, reveling in annoying Beatrice.

And even though he doesn’t know what to do, we actually get our first heroic moment from Wirt here. Greg saved the day in Grist Mill, and the situation resolves without much issue in Hard Times, but Jimmy is saved from the gorilla costume because of Wirt. True, he only interferes after being commanded to by Mr. Langtree, and he clearly has no idea what to do, and he trips over his shoelaces rather than contribute in an intentional way, but it sets the stage for his rescue of Beatrice in our next episode. Deep down, when he’s not overthinking it, the kid is capable of bravery when it’s asked of him. And it’s wonderful that for all his differences from Greg, both share an impulsive approach to heroism when they decide to help others. It’s almost like they’re related.

Beyond getting a few good digs in at Wirt, Beatrice extends her meanness to Miss Langtree, which makes her pestering of the boys feel less personal: it’s not that she hates them, she’s irritable with everyone. But we also get the first hint of her warming to our heroes, letting Greg have his fun at the concert and telling Wirt to finally tie his shoes with just a tiny speckle of fondness. While she gets a bigger friendship moment in Mad Love, when she’s essentially forced to get to know Wirt better, it’s neat to see Beatrice gradually come around instead of flipping a switch after a major story event.

We’re about to get our next big Plot Episode, introducing the Beast and adding new doubts about the Woodsman, so a silly episode is just what we need. It’s our third in a row where something sinister turns out to be okay: obviously the gorilla is an example of this, but Mr. Langtree is similarly an intimidating presence who ends up being a regular man. Even the creepy squirrels from the opening shots of the Unknown’s dangers in The Old Grist Mill return as comic relief. We’re fully primed to look for goodness where we see wickedness. Just in time for us to learn to fear merry opera echoing from the woods.

Rock Factsheet

Greg’s spiel on hot dogs might not summon the Rock Fact Rock, but it certainly evokes the stone’s spirit.

Where have we come, and where shall we end?

Adelaide Parade and Potatoes and Molasses will both get dark reprises, and the former also gets the rare jolly reprise as well. But we unfortunately don’t get a harrowing future scene featuring Langtree’s Lament.

Two Old Cat is part of a list of bat-and-ball games mentioned by a rambling background teen in The Unknown.

#schooltown follies #over the garden wall #otgw #steven universally #beatrix potter

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dcarhcarts · 6 years ago

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This.....is the 1000th post on this blog, and I definitely waited until that could be true to post it, and that’s honestly? Very fitting. Seriously, you guys are a m a z i n g and I have literally never done a milestone before so I can’t tell you what it’s supposed to look like?? But we’ve somehow Miraculously (tm) managed to reach 100 followers and - anyway, this is going to be me very unprofessionally gushing about everyone because....I love you all and you’re all amazing aaaaaa. I’m??? Literally so blessed to have made friends and write with all of you. Y’all with multiple blogs, I’m only tagging once so I don’t spam your feed ok? And - as usual, this is going to get Long, because everything I do gets Long apparently. I tried to do it chronologically but IDK how well it worked oops.

THE LOVES OF MY LIFE, THE SUN IN MY EYES, MY MOON AND STARS

@ccrrupticn / D!!!! you are?? literally the reason I made this blog?? Without you, this thing would n o t mcfreaking exist omg!! You’re such an amazing writer (seriously, you manage so many muses and you give them all such distinct voices??? witchcraft???) and also so ???ridiculously kind! I love gushing to you about our Kids and you’re honestly A Saint (tm) for dealing with all of my blog construction/life related breakdowns, my crazy crossover headcanons and crashing into your inbox rambling about musicals <3 I miss talking to you so hmu whenever you come back if you want!!

@personnages / Lynna!! You’re like an Actual Angel. I think you were the first person!! who talked to me?? And You were So Nice and Welcoming that you literally soothed half of my fears coming into rpc like immediately?? You basically helped me figure out how diminutives work and you’re responsible for me adding at least 3 of my muses and I cannot tell you how much I love you and every time you pop onto my dash/feed/discord/etc, it just makes me happy inside <3 Definitely 100000% will follow you to every blog (if you’ll have me lmao) regardless of fandom!! i’m super excited about all of our ship/friendship roulettes and you’re just an absolute joy to talk to.

@nikolacvnas / LYDIA goodness you are a W O N D E R. Probably the best? Historically based blog I’ve ever encountered, and definitely one of my favorite parts of the Anastasia rpc!! The care and research and attention to detail that goes into your portrayals are a s t o n i s h i n g? Your Tatya is divine, your Maria is So Lovely and I Cry For Joy that you write Dima honestly. I’d been eyeing your blog for a little bit before I made my own - and I was honestly a little scared of you when we started cause you are a GODDESS and I am a potato, but then we talked??? and you’re hilarious and a ridiculously kind person and I love you? And of course, I love your dog (the cutest in the universe).

@mythostold / LESLIE~ Different blog, same story~ Man, I’ve been following you since maybe day two of this blog being active? No matter which fandom you end up in and which muse you write, you have such!! good!!! takes!!! For one, I love reading your meta posts??? Like you’re just so incredibly passionate about your muses?? And your writing style is so good aaaaaaa it’s so atmospheric. And on top of all of that - you’re??? such a sweet and incredible??? person??? And I love talking to you boo <3

@lifeawoke / NAT BBYSWEET <3 <3 <3 I have told the story of how I did a victory dance when you followed me to d e a t h probably but it’s t r u e your writing is amazing and your blog is amazing and y o u are amazing! You are the Natasha to my Sonya, and literally every time you send me a musing I’m like immediate-goofy-grin-heart-eyes???? It’s honestly a crime we don’t have more threads but like you’re an absolute joy to talk to and meme with and I adore you/your portrayal of beautiful bratty Natasha even if she drives my Sonya up the wall <3 You are Definitely the Funny Mutual lololol I crack up so much talking to you <3

@valianceearned / CARP you’re an amazing person/writer and holy h e c k am I impressed by your OCs!! They’re all so well thought out and developed? Your bios are so detailed and so much love and care is put into all of your characters. And your writing is so Lovely and it’s also very aesthetically lovely like holy heck the amount of work you put into both the content and the formatting? I am agog, I am aghast!!

@gearsandlevers / Callie!!!!! YOU ROUND ALL THE CORNERS I STRAIGHTEN THE CURVES!! love your kids so much. Your Violet is a delightfully clever and likeable kid, your Evan might have literally walked off the stage two seconds ago, and you’ve put so much thought into your cinnabon stoner Henry. Your dialogue is amazing and I love our headcanon sessions lobbing ideas back and forth with you!!

@spareisms / HEY MAGGIE GUESS WHAT YOU’RE WORTH MELTING FOR!! You’re like the sweetest person alive??? How are you an Actual Real Life Disney Princess?? Your Anna is so well characterized and multi layered and I love how she an be so flawed but so brave and just how human she is. I’m very excited for your Anne Shirley too!! You’re a great writer (and a super sweet person aaaa) and I love you!!

@gcneralvaganov / Deanna, I have just one question: How? Have we only known each other for like 2 months???? It feels like my dash would literally be incomplete without you?? You play such deeply complex and incredibly flawed muses with such a great depth of respect and humanity. I love all of our AUs (we.....probably have a dozen by now), our long fix-canon tangents, and....look the inevitable conclusion to this whole thing is that we should....basically just write Anastasia tbh??? You’re incredibly funny and kind and talented and I’m so glad I yeeted myself into your IMs that first time 2 months ago! I love you, I love your muses, (Dima and Anya love their Dumb Boyfriend), and I love writing with you!

@ncvaflows / ALEXA YOU ABSOLUTE LEGEND YOU. You??? Unlocked Ultimate AU Mode Ro and it’s like I c a n ‘ t stop?? First off, I cannot believe we literally own the same books and like the same barbie movies. How are we not literally the same person?? (Maybe w e ’ r e Anneliese and Erika lmao). Honestly from day 1 you’ve been so welcoming and lovely and I’m so glad we crashed into each other’s IMs yelling at top volume about random ya lit/movies/aus!! I adore literally all of your OCs (is everyone a b s o l u t e l y sure they’re not canon??? hmmmmm a Mystery)???? In the words of Li Shang, “You WRITE GOOD????” Anyway you’re amazing and I love you <3

WHILE IT’S DEFINITELY MY FAULT FOR BEING AN ANXIOUS BEAN WE REALLY NEED TO TALK MORE OFTEN CAUSE I LOVE YOU

@curtainrisen / Rebekah, dude, you’re a wonder. Your muses??? So diverse, and your voices for them? Super on the nose and amazing. I love your Helene and how human she is, and I really gotta toss more of my kids at you (Super excited for Duke!!). You’re real chill to meme with and I love talking/writing with you!!

@heartlosttravelers / Tor!! I love that you stan Raoul de Chagny So Hard ( the pure cinnamon roll boy deserves it honestly) and you’re super cool and great to talk to! All your muses are a m a z i n g and I always love the read when you pop up on my dash!

@damerusse / Marie!! You’re hella chill. Your memes???? 10000000% actually legendary. Meming with you cracks me The Heck Up. Lily is forever the puppy dealer, that is all, thank you, gnight. Ok for real though - your Lily is pretty Legendary too and you really got all that Spark and Fire right down. You’re amazing, and I love stalking your threads on my dash!

@lionhvrted / Fortune, my buddy my pal, we really be Out Here making Jane Austen plots even m o r e rom-com. Like. How did we manage that??? We might be literally magical lmao. We don’t have a ton of stuff going on at the moment but I love our dumb pining kids and I love the justice and humanity you give to your Caroline, and Fitzy loves his (future) wife.

@guvernantka / P R U E I already love our Exasperated Big Sis / Annoying Lil Sis / LITERALLY WHO EVEN ARE YOU YOU SMELLY DUMBASS LIL BRO IN LAW dynamic. You have the Best Sense of Humor (tm) and I’m always catching you when it’s like 12 in the morning here so I’m always cracking up silently in bed trying not to wake my roommies up.

@anastcsie / I LOVE OUR ANGRY SMOL AND DIRTY TOL YOUNG-BUT-OLD MARRIED COUPLE AND THEIR OLDEST DAUGHTER NAMED MARIA ALREADY. I love your Anya and how feisty and fiery she is (Dima, needless to say, loves his wife) and I love how chill (and hilarious!!) you are as a person. We do have a tendency to turn into angst monsters 24/7 but honestly that’s half the fun!!

@asundrop / Polly!!!! ok so I know we haven’t really done anything w/ Raps (yet muahaha) BUT b o y was I hella excited when I found someone willing to yell about CDrama with me??? Thank you for being the Eternally Stoic/Always Annoyed Ancient God to my Tiny Dumb Fox Princess?? I love them and I love you (you’re hella cool) so there!

@moretreasurewithin / KAAAATE goodness it’s only been a couple of days but I’m So Comfortable talking to you already? You’re just honestly really amazingly kind and I love screaming about Anastasia with you. We gotta get more going but I love your Dima and Maria Already (tm) and I love your sense of humor (here’s to torturing Dima with ties!!) and I can’t wait to get to know you better!

@annastrxng / AAAA somehow I managed to chat with you and then?? We never got anything going and it’s definitely mostly my fault cause of that High Anxiety (and also the fact that I got Immediately Busy) but you are literally So Nice and The Most Understanding and super great to talk to!! I hope we get something going in the future!!

@soulcrossed / ROSE we have the same name I keep forgetting this lmao BUT ANYWAY. All your muses?? Amazing. You gotta throw more of them at me. Your Sophie?? Are you Actually Diana Wynn Jones in disguise?? I love our crazy au/headcanon sessions and I love/hate that you’re The Worst Enabler and I’m inevitably going to end up with the other two Hatter sisters on this blog lmao.

I HAVEN’T TALKED TO YOU TON YET BUT HI!!! YOU SEEM CHILL!!

@alonecour / @steeledstark / @professor-of-predators / @sclskinn / @dulcettc / @volaticoux / @frxncaise / @argelfrasterr / @i-wrote-myway / @zharptiitsa / @villainsfall / @anyaromanovarp / @agoodandloyalrussian / @aliquisinter

AND EVERY ONE OF Y’ALL AMAZING PEOPLE OUT THERE I’M ADMIRING SILENTLY FROM AFAR EVEN NOW BECAUSE I CHICKENED OUT OF TAGGING YOU LAST MINUTE CAUSE WHAT IF YOU’RE LIKE “LMAO WHO IS THIS WEIRDO TAGGING ME??” (p.s. this is 100000% permission to slide into my IMs/like a plotting call/etc. I honestly think y’all are hella cool and probably love you already)

#follow forever #( milestone )#( ooc ) ✵ ~ CHANDELIERS AND CAVIAR ~ /#((................you know i made more friends than i thought i would coming into rpc as an anxious smol))#((I LOVE YOU ALL YOU'RE ALL AMAZING))#((thanks for putting up w/ me & my Super Anxious Self))#((ok i'm just gonna post this before i forget and reblog something and miss the 1000th post))

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evotter · 6 years ago

Note

jan, march, sept + one of your choice, love. have a great day, u icon

thank u kyra i adore u

january: what was the first fic you posted this year?

the first fic i posted this year TECHNICALLY was the epilogue of a different path. the first standalone was chewbacca (aka my introduction to the jily world once again and i have such a soft spot for it)

march: do you listen to music whilst writing?

yes! pretty much always; if it’s not music, it’s a TV show.

september: share a comment or review which still warms your heart?

quite literally anything you’ve left on any of my fics BUT there are a few that i hold dear to my heart. i’ll post them under the cut cause they are LONG :’)

ancient: the first fic you ever posted online?

hahahaaaaaaa. it was my own version of rick riordan’s the son of neptune before the actual book was published. it was on ff.net, and the first chapter got 7 reviews, and i felt so good about myself after that lmfao. who knew i’d still be writing 8 years later?

ask me questions!

OKAY so i have 3 top favorites:

from a different path:

okay so i had seen this in someone else’s bookmarks the other day, thought it was an interesting concept—especially since i too love slytherin!percy and strongly subscribe to ofswordsandpens’ headcanons about it—but didn’t give it another thought until i was listening to a video about the cursed child and went: wait, there’s a percabeth hogwarts au that i saw somewhere. and immediately i hunted this down and i’m just in awe? i tore through it. belatedly, i realized that i made a mistake: i didn’t write down my thoughts as i was reading, which is definitely a disservice to you. however, here are a generalized list of things that i loved.

first of all, with hogwarts au’s, there are three main aspects that i look for: plot, characterization, and quality of writing. normally, fics of this size lack one or more of these key factors, but i was astonished to find that the plot is tremendously tight and intriguing (my lip bled from biting it so much because i’ve been stressed to the max), you write these characters with such distinct voices i can easily picture them saying everything—except, of course, now in a little british accent—and your writing flows so well, it feels almost like i’m reading an actual harry potter book, just with percy and co. you also do a masterful job of weaving together aspects of the pjo universe with the established canon of hp.

and there are so many specific things that i love. primarily, the way you write the relationships in this story; not just concerning percabeth (though i will get to that in a minute), but also with each of the interactions between all of the characters. i applaud you for how you handled luke/annabeth and rachel/percy, and the friendship among them all is just incredibly well done. i especially love how well you wrote connor and zoë and just, a lot of characters that i don’t often think about when i think of pjo. grover and percy’s friendship especially is heartbreaking, i just. he’s so protective because he loves his friends and holy fuck i also love how you wrote grover in this. but i just adored how you wrote annabeth/percy—the love between them, both platonic in its early stages and the romantic all throughout, was doubly apparent. i ached when they kissed each other’s cheeks, and i inwardly cheered when she kissed him in the locker room. there was just such a natural progression, to me, of their relationship. and man did i dig it. i’m excited (and maybe a little scared) to see where you take their relationship in the future.

boy, this is getting long. sorry. but some more just little quick things: loved the b99 reference, with both of their competitive natures playing out in a similar way to jake and amy’s. i kind of want to go back and see if i can find any other references that i missed because i was just too engaged in the story to catch them. also, zoë’s death killed me all over again, thanks for that. i like how you’re working the kronos plot in, and i can’t wait to see how the Final Battle plays out. what else? oh! professor hestia? beautiful. eventual maybe professor percy? outstanding. percy kissing the top of annabeth’s head? breathtaking. rachel being a quidditch commentator? earth shattering. (truly i cackled when i saw that.) mrs. o’leary being a cat? incredible. how you incorporated percy’s water powers? stunning.

ooh, this exchange was beautiful and had me cackling it was so in-character:

“None of us are dying.” Connor clarifies. “Not you, not me, not Annie, not the rest of us.”

“I might have to dispute that.” Annabeth says, from Percy’s other side. “Call me ‘Annie’ one more time, Stoll, and I’ll kill you myself.”

Connor only grins at her. “Sorry, love. No more ‘Annie’. Can I call you Beth?”

“No.”

“Anna?”

“No.”

okay, so i just finished chapter nine and i am blown away. sorry for how long this comment was, but a fic of this magnitude truly warrants it. i can’t wait to see what happens next.

i leave you with just two words: “holy shit.”

from a different path:

god, oh my god, am i the only dumb bitch who didn’t get what the prophecy was??

anyway, i stumbled on this fic last year, patiently waiting for its completion, and now that i’ve rediscovered it, i’m so glad i finished it all in one go! i couldn’t imagine the tension of waiting for the next chapter, especially since the tension is so well-crafted!! i hardly noticed the tonal shift even as the story got darker and darker as it led up to the war, and in that way i was reminded of how extremely similar it felt to reading the hp books for the first time! you nailed percy very well i might say, and the awkward-yet-caring relationship he has with his dad. i daresay you gave connor and zoe more characterization than rick riordan himself, and the percabeth you wrote is perfect to the nth degree. i appreciate that you didnt bother with all the love triangle and unrequited feelings nonsense as well.

but i have to say, even as i cried at sally and paul’s wedding, or at dionysus’ quiet mourning for castor, what really struck with me most was the way you handled silena. for that, i have no words. that was a job extremely well done. thank you so much for blessing us with this fic.

from chewbacca (a comment from u!):

A girl in a bright yellow hooded raincoat stumbles into the cafe on one of the slowest nights James has ever seen. Her coat is dripping all over the floor he’d just cleaned (but it’s fine) and when he leans over the counter he sees that her boots match the coat.

First of all!!! Thats the best opening line in the world and nobody can convince me otherwise. I want to become a publisher just so that if you ever write a book, I’d be able to publish it. ( like omg, what an honor??? )

She looks like sunshine, standing there with the amount of yellow in her wardrobe. Briefly, James wonders if that’s her favorite color. It’s got to be.

Im going to quote this whole fic but I really love these lines? Like, you have this distinct style of writiting that I aim to acheive and you’re literally such a rolemodel!!! These are my favorite kind of fics to read. Funny story but I was going through a ‘no thanks Jily’ mood ( a horror, i know !! ) but your fics are just,,,,exceptions? You could write about trash and I’d love it and ask for you to sign me up.

“Say it again, but convincingly this time.”

ooof this dialogue??? let me breathe

This is the longest he’s stood still since he started working. It’s actually a miracle.

and the funniest person award goes to YOU. also, the most talented and cutest but thats neither here nor there.

james taking care of fleamont, switching off the lights gives me just a nice and realistic vibe? its so simple but i love how you added it.

honestly at this point, ive been sucked again by the fanfic. it feels less like a fic and more like a masterpiece that belongs in a museum but anyway.

“James is supposed to be helping.

James is on his phone.”

ugh i love ur mind. im rereading and its so nice and lovely. even if its like 1am and im exhausted, this fic is sustaining me.

“Do it off the clock, would you?”

PEAK HUMOR

have i mentioned how much i love that scene with euphemia? she seems like such a lovely mom. i love ur euphemia the most. and ahh, both of them just rushing to the hospital ? another 100% good scene.

“Euphemia smiles too, but looks at Fleamont rather than at her son. “Yes,” she says. “It really does.””

fic? or shakspeare? HMMM

A girl in a bright yellow hooded raincoat stumbles into the cafe on one of the slowest nights James has ever seen // “Get fucked.”

the fic!! has made a circle!!! i love how it begins and ends along the same lines. I really want to know how??? are you so talented im in love.

i just really love this fic, okay? i love how james is just the kindest, lily is allowed to have feelings, its just so soft and warm. and it makes someone feel loved, want love anyway.

the dynamic between the characters are just so real and great and im astounded, in short.

your sirius is everything. so many fics potray him as a dick??? which is first of all #rude and also, not at all true. you made me love these characters even more so i sincerely hope you never stop writing.

you’re such a beautiful writer and the way you string words together is just poetic and gorgeous and all the other good adjectives you can think of. i read your spiderman x reader too and i was a goner for you. EVERYTHING YOU WRITE IS SO GOOD. i read it so long ago but i can vividly remember peter whipping the mask off and she just going wtf stop on the window ledge. what im trying to say is that you leave this lasting impression on people that make them remember random scenes and words / prose long after they’ve read it which is a remarkable feat, i believe.

and im so sorry im not on tumblr rn bc i cannot keep recing this fic but i have told my friends about your writing and they loved it too. you’ve got like a million fans. when i do get back from my hiatus, im going to keep recing your fics and people will cry because their universe will shift thanks to the newfound joy of your presence in their life.

lastly, im more of a dog person and that, more than anything, should tell you how much i love this fic. i love u. and basee on your writing, i want to hug you, be your best friend and make you cookies bc again

WOW

#thelaziestgeek #answers #friends!#<3

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destiny-smasher · 6 years ago

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Kingdom Hearts 3 impressions

So, uh, I will ONLY be talking about stuff up until the very start of the second World, and only AFTER the break. Kingdom Hearts 1 was an incredibly important and influential piece of media when I was growing up. I was writing fic based on Smash Bros. just before KH rolled onto the scene was like, “Yo, Disney and Final Fantasy, BAM, fuckin’ random? fucking RADDDD” and I was all about it. You had FF characters remixed with OCs remixed with Disney characters, and the villains were all crossing over to form the League of Bad Cartoons, it was a great time. And then Nomura realized his gamble was a win and decided to waste the next 15 years of everyone’s time shoving in every trope he liked, every IDEA that felt “cool” together into a mish mash of whatever the hell this “narrative” has become. Suffice it to say, I’ve got beef with Kingdom Hearts as a “story.” It just occurred to me today that a big part of this is thematic/tonal.

But it’s also VERY rare, maybe even unprecedented, for a piece of media like Kingdom Hearts 3 to come around. For years, then months, then weeks, then days, I told myself, “It’s not real, that game doesn’t exist, I won’t believe it until I’m literally playing it” and just could not be bothered to be hype or interested, if only because Nomura’s “vision”, from my perspective, warped something I admired in my youth into a fucking train wreck, leaving me very little to feel emotionally invested in outside of Aqua and by proxy the two lads she is trying to protect. (also I GUESS I’m slightly invested in Axel/Xion/Roxas.../Namine? for similar reasons now that I think about it?) Well, guess what? Kingdom Hearts VERY WELL might be real, and I very well might be about three hours into it. And for all of the beef I have with the plot, I am fucking relieved that those three hours have felt/sounded good, as a video game. NOW we’re gonna talk about the first World. --

When I first heard that Olympus was gonna be the first World in KH3 I was disappointed and BAFFLED. We’re visiting that place a THIRD time? And why THAT World? Turns out, there’s actually some substantial thematic relevance and that’s actually A-OK, not to mention that starting with a familiar world after ALL OF THIS TIME is not such a bad way to kick things off. First off, structurally, I actually really enjoyed the way this world played out. Two of my biggest problems with KH as a video game series have been that worlds feel like empty, vacant, haunted houses, and that said worlds are usually small and linear with a lot of pointless backtracking. Olympus fixes all of this. There are NPCs. Actual fucking PEOPLE in this world. Sure, they’re just people in danger, calling for help, but they’re THERE for once! And they have vocies! EVERY line of dialogue (except for like one “plot” moment) has actually been voiced so far! About time. Also. This World is not as linear as most KH Worlds. In fact, it help more open and dynamic than ANY World in any KH game so far, not to mention it featured three, THREE (wtf) unique and distinct types of settings. The city, the mountain, and Olympus. Nice. ALSO also. The music. We’ve been here before. We KNOW that Olympus theme from earlier games. And as you traverse the city, up the mountain, you hear this more sweeping, movie-like version, and it’s like “oh whoa nice” aaaaand then you get TO Olympus and it KICKS in, the old song, up to modern snuff. That was great. That was a thing that really helped convey “Kingdom Hearts is back, baby.” The World was big, compared to typical KH worlds. It had multiple nooks and crannies to explore, side-paths to go down, treasure to find hidden away. There is a LOT of verticality. Running up walls and seamlessly hopping over things in the environment makes traversal more enjoyable than it ever has been. Even though a lot of the World is technically a linear path it’s not structured like a path. Going off and exploring rewards you with items and the like, and the World is big enough to actually feel like you have places to poke around in. Having said this, WHY is there no...map? Like. You literally COLLECT Maps from Chests like you used to. But near as I can tell, there’s no way to pull up an actual MAP, to seer where the main path is, to see where the side paths are. It’s boggling. Maybe the game has the option hidden away somewhere but if so, that’s just silly. And if there’s just no actual map option at ALL that’s just...baffling. There were barely any load times for how much SPACE there was to navigate, and things looked very shiny and pretty, and ran at a smooth 60 fps MOST of the time. Tech specs aren’t everything, but when your brand is built on “looking pretty” it sure af helps when you bring scale AND a smooth framerate to match. It’s weird, and a bit jarring, sometimes in a good way, to see all of this stuff rendered in modern tech. Stuff looks...a little too plasticy a lot of the time, (which actually ought to pay off when we get to Toy Story?) but the environments so far feel rich and vast and detailed all at once in a way we just have never seen the series, because we’re basically jumping from PS2-level tech to PS4. So that difference in production is more noticeable for the wait -- I just wish things looked a bit more...I guess cel-shaded? Like the original trailer. Things (specifically, characters) look a little too flat/plasticy at times, for how pretty things are. Combat seems to be as flashy as ever and I’m sure I’ll feel differently as I get further in and unlock more options but it’s still too easy, simple, and mashy for my tastes. I am HOPING we get more moments that require quick reflexes and specific tactics like the harder moments of older KH games. The amusement rides mechanic is...weird. It’s given NO context in universe. And they last a little too long/feel too overpowered for how easy they are to utilize. Similarly, there are frequently seemingly random party-member tag-team attacks that...just seem like “press triangle to win” moves. I wish they entailed more interaction, and/or felt less common/random. I like the IDEA of these kinds of moves, especially ones that change your controls/method of attack for a few seconds (like Hercules’ team attack) but the execution makes them feel too cheap and easy to abuse, with combat that’s ALREADY skewing on the “too easy” side for the genre. I like the “form change” for keyblades, and that you can swap keyblades in the middle of a fight. Really hoping this allows for some good tactical stuff later -- buuuuut that would also require the game to ASK OF ME to do more than “mash X,” which KH as a brand typically does not do... Characters SPEAK in reaction to gameplay moments, when you initiate things in the environment, etc. It’s a nice touch that makes them feel more like characters in an RPG. Donald and Goofy are ALWAYS in the party, alongside the Disney member(s). NICE. Maybe KH3 is putting its best foot forward, but overall, I was pleasantly surprised with Olympus. It single-handedly corrected MOST of the issues I’ve ever had with Kingdom Hearts level design. I only hope the momentum keeps going. Moving on, Gummi Ships. What little I played is easily the best they have every been. I love having an open world with optional places/fights to explore, while still giving me those shmup-like bursts of action. The Gummi Phone seems like a fun mechanic, and taking selfies/photos makes SENSE for this game because of how visually detailed it is -- but the pleasant surprise was how I took selfies with Donald and Goofy and they REACTED to it, starting to pose and commenting on it. On the other hand, the loading screen being nonsensical “social media” posts from KH characters...I don’t like it thanks go away. x’D I’ve spent only a few minutes in Twilight Town and INSTANTLY I am so much more enamored than I ever was in previous games. Not just due to the bump up in visual fidelity, but also because -- GASP -- NPCs??? Are you trying to tell me this is an actual TOWN that people LIVE IN?? Holy shit, Kingdom Hearts, I never knew! For all of this stuff I liked, though, KH3 is still...a KH game. Which means after you get through the intro, after you gear up to land in Olympus, the game flashes the title: “Kingdom Hearts II.9″ ...no. Just no. Fuck. Stop doing this shit. Whenever an Organization 13 member (or EX member) shows up and starts speaking all cocky in riddles like the flamboyant anime jackass they are, whenever Mickey starts dead-ass blathering about weird nonsense whenever the plot HAS to acknowledge “oh right Sora golly gawrsh ya FURRGOT this random bullshit a-FYUCK better shove this expository throwaway dialogue right in here before we go n’ furrget again!” whenever Kairi continues to be irrelevant and invisible after ALL THIS TIME whenever Rikku has to say some obligatory thing about his darkness or his copy of himself or Ansem or whatever whenever the plot informs Sorta/Dornold/Goffy about another convoluted ridiculous THING that we already know about and they MAYBE already know about because it is OBLIGATED to because this game’s entire purpose has become to “wrap things up already Nomura” I am reminded of the freshly opened scar on my heart from how much SHIT this series has dragged itself through for...what? Nothing worth all of this, IMO. Thankfully, these moments feel less and less pressing in KH3′s opening hours than they certainly could be, though I’m sure the closing hours of the game -- once they’ve tidily gotten all of that silly, inconsequential DISNEY CONTENT out of the way (even though that’s the BULK of the game environments and HALF of the series’ identity/purpose) -- those closing hours will surely be packed to the gills with all of this crazy crap. Maybe by then I might finally care enough to finally get the catharsis I’ve waited over a decade for. I dunno. I’m just relieved the game looks, plays, sounds, and feels as good as it does so far. EDIT: almost forgot to mention this since it hasn’t actually come up yet BUT I picked up a BUNCH of “ingredients”??? Like. FOR COOKING??? Which is one of my all-time favorite mechanics in a video game?? (thanks Paper Mario) So I’m at LEAST excited to see what THAT is all about.

#KH3 #Kingdom Hearts 3

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caveatauditor · 6 years ago

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My favorite albums, days 1-10

Friends have requested that I share my favorite albums on social media, preferably with vaguely autobiographical blurbs accompanying them, so to avoid polluting the wholesomeness of my Facebook timeline with music geekery, these are they until I change my mind. I excluded albums from this decade because the decade isn’t over, so the ten gems that follow represent an attempt to make history conform to me.

1. Lil Wayne, Da Drought 3

Two discs of Wayne freestyling, bloviating, and holding a conversation over a bunch of sampled and/or stolen and/or obscure music, arranged randomly because in theory the mixtape goes on forever in both directions, a gorgeous tapestry whose details happen to consist of delectable beats and wild free-associative blather. Wayne raps like a child in a candy store, eschewing parsable semantic content in favor of puns and stray impulses and improvised phonetic twaddle and whatever he feels like saying in the moment; likewise, the beats don’t cohere, sonically or in sequence, instead sticking as many hooks as possible wherever possible as often as possible; the overall result comes off like a transmission from the filthiest corner of the id. The ultimate triumph of mid-‘00s mixtape culture, Da Drought 3 is fabulous aural wallpaper and hardly an album at all, so of course it’s my favorite album.

2. Joni Mitchell, Hejira

Given how beloved this album is among a surprisingly large number of my friends, I almost went with the equally astonishing Hissing of Summer Lawns, but let’s be real now--Hejira is flawlessly, magnificently beautiful like nothing else I’ve ever heard. The guitar lines lap and peal over breathtakingly wide, sweeping expanses of empty space--space like the open road, like the southwestern desert in the winter, like the urge to travel and stay on the move, like the empty human heart. The lyrics use the familiar musicianly trope of going on tour as a springboard for a set of travelogue meditations on solitude and perpetual motion, a condition imposed partially by circumstance and partially by internal existential need; she’s moving before the ringing opening chords of “Coyote” and she’s moving after “Refuge of the Roads” pensively winds down. The latter song in particular contains several moments that always, always make me cry, especially during the first verse (“We laughed at how our perfection would always be denied”) and the third (“A thunderhead of judgment was gathering in my gaze”). I’ll never use “relate” as a verb, but I’ve often taken refuge in the road. I always take this album with me, though.

3. Jandek, Blue Corpse

I’m cheating here: Jandek is a relatively new discovery for me, and I’m still working through his ridiculously massive catalog, but I’ve listened to him with sufficient fascination enough over the past year and a half that he deserves a spot. Fans say that Blue Corpse is a good starting point because it’s his most accessible album, but accessibility is a relative concept when we’re talking about experimental atonal lo-fi acoustic quasi-blues fuckery, so let’s just call it his most carefully sequenced--side two builds the way a second side should, starting with an extended harmonica solo before leading into his cover of “House of the Rising Sun” and the album’s ten-minute centerpiece, the lonely, furious “Only Lover”. I love this album so much I could easily imagine a better one lurking in some dank, unexplored discographical corner.

4. Janet Jackson, The Velvet Rope

As a sophomore in high school I heard The Velvet Rope and immediately decided this was the sexiest and most sophisticated music I had ever heard. I was right! To this day I hold a special place in my heart for R&B that confounds the traditional banger/ballad distinction--there are no ballads on this album! With its swirly synthesizer and xylophonesque keyboard chords, “Empty” sounds like a conventional slow song until you notice the second layer of hyperactive drums clicking maniacally atop the core rhythm track: nervous energy disrupting and complementing preternatural spiritual calm. “Tonight’s the Night” is a great cover because the act of covering an established hit mirrors the act of initial erotic exploration, of navigating your way through a series of gestures you knew about before trying yourself; the way she sings “Cause I love you girl ain’t nobody gonna stop us now” is defiantly blunt, unshowy, matter-of-fact. Those are the lyrics! She’ll sing them. Breezy, mechanical, exquisite, The Velvet Rope captures the fragility of intimacy.

5. Fall Out Boy, From Under the Cork Tree

I first became aware of Fall Out Boy in middle school, when the girl whose locker neighbored mine put up a bunch of Pete Wentz posters on the inside of her locker door. I envied her brilliance and poise, since she was obviously way smarter and cooler than me, and I’m pleased to say she was right: this daft, idiotic, magnificent album captures a world of teenage crushes, fixations, stupid feelings poorly rationalized, awkward proclamations blurted out and immediately retracted, aftershave clumsily sprayed on to impress a special someone, the scent of cheap perfume, lipstick stains on your pillowcase and friction in your jeans. It’s so flushed and clumsy it automatically enters the realm of hormonal teenpop utopia, with the crunchy guitars mirroring the anguish in eternal adolescent Patrick Stump’s heart. Pete Wentz writes solecistic, self-aggrandizing lyrics because teenagers in love are supposed to utter howlers like “The only thing worse than not knowing is you thinking that I don’t know” and (sigh) “Turn off the lights and turn off the shyness”. It’s an ode to the enduring power of romantic absurdity, in all its most entertaining guises.

6. Duran Duran, Rio

Like From Under the Cork Tree, only glitzier. Occasionally I play a game with select friends of mine where we try to guess whether a random snippet of doggerel is a Fall Out Boy or a Duran Duran lyric. “It’s just like a scene out of Voltaire twisting out of sight”? Obviously Duran, for citing French philosophy is such a New Romantic move. “We’re well-read and poised/we’re the best boys”? Self-defeating self-objectification is Pete Wentz’s favorite rhetorical device. “The sun drips down bedding heavy behind/the front of your dress all shadowy lined/and the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart”? Too florid; gotta be Duran. “Couldn’t cut me deeper with a knife if you tried/just take a look before you run off and hide”? No clue--blood and betrayal could go either way. “Let’s fade away together one dream at a time”? “Some people call it a one-night stand but we can call it paradise”? Well!

7. PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love

As a senior in high school I heard To Bring You My Love and immediately decided this was the sexiest and rawest music I had ever heard. I was right! To this day I know no harsher or more beautiful approximation of what it means to yearn for the sublime. The tiny guitar figure in “Working for the Man”, half-concealed beneath the drums and muffled, thumping bass, devastates because it’s creepy and horrible; the maximalist guitar roar in “Long Snake Moan”, almost as loud and thundering as her distorted vocals, devastates because so would getting run over by a tank. On the rest of the album, she hits every mood between those two extremes, including rapture and delight in addition to all the abrasive ones.

8. Fleetwood Mac, Tusk

I almost went with Tango in the Night, given how my generation seems to have discovered and reclaimed it, with “Seven Wonders” popping up in Balearic dance mixes and American Horror Story. Tusk, however, is a giant compendium of whirring gears and rotating spokes and plinky keys and strummed acoustic guitars and tinkly music boxes and billions of other moving parts, and the totality of the sound correlates with a draining, overwhelming emotional extremity. Lindsey Buckingham fills the space with a bunch of tightly crafted miniatures, distilling his imagined ideal of the Fleetwood Mac sound into the searing anger of “What Makes You Think I’m the One” and “I Know I’m Not Wrong” (Lindsey Buckingham in a song title), but Stevie Nicks gets all the big statements: the thundering “Sisters of the Moon”, the incomparable breakup ballad “Storms” (“Never have I been a blue calm sea/I have always been a storrrrrrm” always makes me cry), “Sara”. Meanwhile, Christine McVie’s “Brown Eyes”/“Never Make Me Cry” couplet is the axis on which the album’s sequence turns. Tusk resonates because it conflates the singer-songwriter confessional urge with the band’s collaborative dynamic, creating a communal space for them all to bask in their shared hate for and exhaustion with each other.

9. Crunk Hits

I needed a compilation, and this magnificent one brings to life my favorite radio format: mainstream hip-hop in the mid-‘00s. Crunk and R&B were everywhere back then; to me this album sounds like New York in the hot, lazy summers of ’05 and ’06, when these songs confounded with their unprecedented hedonism and aggression and delight. Definitively singles-oriented, this music saturated a subsequent generation of hip-hop fans, so that album artistes in this decade like Young Thug and Playboi Carti have internalized crunk’s valuable lessons about shamelessly exposing the id. I couldn’t omit an album whose first five songs are Usher’s “Yeah”, Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz’s “Get Low”, T.I.’s “Rubber Band Man”, Chingy’s “Right Thurr”, and Ciara’s “Goodies”--damn! It’s practically a greatest-hits album for the entire decade.

10. Steely Dan, Gaucho

When I bought this album in seventh grade, I wasn’t aware I was buying the fleetest, shallowest, most efficient howl of anguish ever set to music. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are only ironists insofar as they’re romantics who mask their feelings in inscrutable form. The question with any of their albums, which are basically all flawless, is to what degree they’ll reveal their bleeding hearts, and on Gaucho there’s such a gash in the fabric the blood spurts out everywhere, staining the shag carpet, dripping through the singer’s sleeve onto his fancy leather shoes. The modest functionalism of their slick California studio-rock, the tasty licks and glossy keyboards and sparingly deployed saxophone and sudden sharp bursts of guitar, hardly enters into a dialectic with the desperation and horror of the songwriting--it’s the perfect musical expression for these feelings, as perfection that’s slightly disfigured is so much more devastating than total abrasion (when critics use “Bret Easton Ellis” as shorthand for the demented luxury porn we’ve enjoyed and suffered through this decade, what they really mean is “Steely Dan”). No matter how many glass tables you smash, how many ashtrays you inhale, you’ll never feel as shitty as this record.

#lists #favorites #best albums ever

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scrawnydutchman · 7 years ago

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Why “Justice League” is One of the Best Shows Ever Made

Let’s talk about one of the hottest topics of the week . . . the Justice League. What is perhaps the most exciting and mindblowing crossover superhero team in comic book history, the idea of DC comic legends like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and many others coming together to fight off the baddest villains in the DC multiverse is an idea too good and too profitable to pass up. The team has seen many incarnations across many mediums over the years. Many are heartfelt and memorable, others we’d like to forget. But Today I‘m talking about my introduction to the team; Bruce Timms animated run on the JL and the rise of the larger expanded DC animated universe, also known as the “Timm-verse“. After all, what better time to talk about this show than it’s 16th anniversary?

Oh, also the JL movies out I guess. Yeah, cool.

Premiering on November 16th, 2001, the Justice League animated series was an in-canon spinoff of the previous highly praised series Batman TAS and Superman TAS, both also produced by Bruce Timm. It offered everything it’s predecessors offered and more with tighter, more concise animation with fewer errors, faster paced action, thicker plots and schemes and best of all an unforgettable dynamic between the main cast. For all these reasons, It is easily my all time favorite TV show, and it gets even better with Unlimited. I’ve been thinking a lot about just how amazing this show is and watching some episodes in retrospect, it hasn’t gotten old in the slightest. Here are just some of the reasons why Justice League and Justice League Unlimited kick so much ass.

1. A strong showcase of multiple DC characters

When writing a long format piece like a film or television show, juggling multiple main characters is no easy task. It’s a great challenge to make each character involved feel real, distinct and like there really is crucial difference between them and the rest of the cast. Without doing this, there’s no real reason for an audience member to pick their favorite outside of who is the most physically powerful (hence Power Rangers). The best way to go about it without resorting to clichés too often is to make a central theme of the show all about interaction; express each characters personality in how they react and perceive each other. This show gets it, and as a result has excellently portrayed DC icons really show their chops in a way where everyone can pick a favorite based on their personal preference. It’s hilarious to watch the stern, cynical, no-nonsense Batman work off of the lighthearted, goofball Flash, and it feels extra sweet when in spite of their comedic banter they really express that they have nothing but respect for each other. The Flash is made all the more goofy by Batman and Batman is made all the more bruiting by Flash. Then of course you also have the noble boyscout Superman, the proud but compassionate Wonder Woman, the militant authoritative marine Green Lantern, the spunky and hard hitting Hawkgirl, and finally, the stoic and softspoken Martian Manhunter. All of them become lovable for different reasons and bring their own signature charm to the show. Not only do they work well off of each other, they each get a healthy dosage of screentime to do something silly, something badass, something sad, something touching. This show perfectly balances these heroes to really make them seem like a team and it becomes a fun discussion to talk about who in the group is your favorite. Not like a lot of other DC properties where they constantly insist Batman should be your favorite because he can beat anyone, solve anything by himself and really, if not for him the rest of the characters would apparently be incompetent assholes. Here he’s WAY more interesting because he still has badass moments but he‘s allowed to need help every once in a while. It also helps that the show has SUPREME acting talent like Kevin Conroy, Phil Lamarr, Clancy Brown and George Newbern.

This element of the show only gets better in Unlimited by the way. the team expands to lesser known characters like Green Arrow, Vigilante, Vixen and so on, and each one of them gets their fair share of badass likeable moments and nobody ever feels like they ever get too much or too little exposure. Except the Question and Star Girl. the Question should have been on screen way more often because he’s the best part of Unlimited and Star Girl was the worst part of it because everytime she appeared she was a snarky condescending bitch who ended up getting her ass kicked more than anyone else.

2. Great Action (and Animation in General)

*this show has more than a few bitchslap moments and I love it for that*

Now, I’ve mentioned before and still hold onto the opinion that Justice League is the best work of Bruce Timm’s. I know many people hold Batman TAS to that stature for it’s intense drama and theming, and I certainly agree it is groundbreaking, but JL and ESPECIALLY JLU perfected what Batman TAS established. Batman TAS was the first look into what would become the DCAU and it very clearly shows that the show writers and animators were still trying to find their voice. If you watch the Batman TAS (especially earlier episodes) with a trained eye for animation you’ll notice more than a few consistency errors, with awkward stills and elements of character designs dropping out of frame here and there. JL and JLU is consistently more crisp and the errors are MUCH farther and fewer between. Not to mention the action and pacing are just better. I LOVE Batman TAS, I never want to make the impression that I don’t, but it DID have a tendency to move a touch too slowly at times, especially for what were supposed to be intense action scenes. In justice League the fighting is dynamic, it’s snappy, it‘s crackling with energy and creativity. Every punch, every kick, every spit in the eye really feels painful due to how quickly and smoothly it happens; you feel the weight of all of it. Each and every fight has a genius setup and plays further into enhancing how badass every character is. Not to mention the stakes are always high, be it on a physical level of how many people could die in the process or what the fight represents in who is in the right and who is in the wrong. One of the best examples is the fight between Superman and Captain Marvel. The context is Superman thinks Luthor is hiding a sinister motive because he can’t find it in himself to trust him, while Captain Marvel is defending Luthor by saying he believes in the merit of giving people the benefit of the doubt. The physical fight really came down to a difference in ideology and Superman losing sight of who he was. The fights are never random; they always serve the theme of the show greatly and the outcome of them further instills the drama of the subject matter. Going along the same example, Captain Marvel delivers a chilling and biding speech at the end of the episode that gives the conflict a bitter sweet resolution. I love it.

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Oh, did I mention it’s all in GLORIOUS frame by frame? Yeah, this is right up there with Avatar: The Last Airbender as some of the most glorious and high quality animation to ever hit the airwaves. The easing, the anticipation, the reaction, the timing, it’s all on point.

3. Great plots, better execution

This show has TONS of iconic episodes and plots, whether they be wholly original or inspired by a comic book plot of the same name (like “The Man Who Has Everything”, the only Alan Moore adaptation approved by the man himself). The conspiracy about Superman murdering president Luthor, the invasion of Darkseid, the dark heart, the hijacking of the annihilator armor, both fights with the android Amazo. I honestly can’t think of a single bad episode of this show. I think the reason this shows stories are so strong are largely due to the reasons I already listed above. They play largely into character interaction which usually perpetuates some sort of central theme of the episode (and in some cases we get a showcase of a one time appearing DC character like Captain Marvel or Deadman). They also showcase well choreographed, well animated action that perfectly compliments the conflict and feels very deliberate. This shows greatest tool however, is how it uses escalating stakes. when making an action oriented show or movie, in order to keep the action truly compelling, you have to make it feel like there is something being lost as a consequence of the action. The reason why so many people don’t like Superman is because they don‘t see the drama in it if they feel like he can never lose. But this show ALWAYS makes sure there is something to be lost like mass destruction, the health of our heroes, sometimes straight up death. Or sometimes the fight results in a greater lesson being learned. The point is, the fights are never inconsequential. Something changes as a result of what has transpired. This seems so blatantly obvious but You’d be surprised how much media just throws a bunch of mindless shit at the wall and thinks it’s engaging because there’s a lot of shit going on and that‘s the only thought you have to give to it. This doesn't just apply to the physical fighting either. Everything that goes on is governed by character decision making, NOT by coincidence or happenstance. It’s such an easy trap to fall into to just have shit happen to people out of nowhere and on any other given day it would have never transpired, but real compelling storytelling happens as a result of who is in control of the situation, not nobody having it. So much of new fiction has an issue of “this guy robbed a bank JUST as Spidey was swinging around one day“ or “they were in a bad trap but luckily Batman had JUST the right gadget for the occasion” and other deus ex machina shit where the only reason the day is saved is basically because the heroes got lucky, but here each and every hero involved actually influences something in this show. It also helps that they made the DCAU more balanced physical wise so that more characters are actually a presentable threat to Superman. Also, though not completely necessary, this show will often reference previous episodes as justification for characters actions which makes for great continuity.

Conclusion:

Justice League and Justice League Unlimited is fantastic for all the same reasons many shows out there are fantastic. It gracefully juggles attention between a diverse set of characters, it perfects the Bruce Timm animation style with crisp and consistent animation and it has high stakes manifested by the characters being in control of the conflict. It certainly isn’t the first to accomplish any of these things, but it IS one of the very few shows ever put out to pull it off just so darn effectively. For those reasons among many others, Justice League is EASILY my personal favorite show of all time. Bruce Timm Himself once said it’s his favorite of his productions because it’s the only one he can go back to and still wholly enjoy every time, and I wholeheartedly agree.

#animation #justice league #cartoon #justiceleague #bruce timm #dc comics #DCAU #superman #batman #BatmanTAS #superman tas #television

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