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ncssian · 4 years ago

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A Favor: Part Eighteen

Nessian Modern AU

Masterlist

a/n: a short update while i try to find my writing rhythm again :))

***

Nesta hasn’t danced in over ten years—yet her body still remembers how to move fluidly and create shapes as if she never stopped. Pole dancing is different, of course: most of it takes place in the air, and she doesn’t have the right muscles developed to support her weight that well. Damn, she should really ask Cassian for help if she wants to keep doing this.

Still, Emerie and Gwyn are gaping by the time Nesta lands on the floor after trying out a basic spin.

She cracks her neck. “What?” she says at their stares.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Emerie demands.

She shrugs indifferently. “Eight years of ballet. Push-up challenges with Cassian.”

The instructor, an overly energetic Australian woman, comes up just then and claps Nesta on the shoulder, making her jump. “That was beautiful,” she praises. “Really, you have the balance of a cat. What’s your name again?”

Nesta introduces herself obediently, and Gwyn and Emerie follow.

The instructor nods. “In that case, Nesta, you keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t worry about your upper body strength yet, it’ll come around with time. You, the redhead,” she addresses Gwyn.

Gwyn straightens.

“I’ve never seen someone with your height and grace at the same time,” the instructor says. Gwyn beams with pride. “Unfortunately,” she continues, “I’ve also never seen someone so prone to hurting themselves on the pole.” Gwyn hangs her head.

“And the pretty girl.” She turns to Emerie last, who looks like she already knows what she’s about to hear. “Well, we can’t all be naturals.” The instructor grins broadly. “Feel free to keep using the poles after class is over.” She nods to their group and moves on to some other students.

Emerie sticks her tongue out and groans. “My tights keep giving me wedgies on the pole.”

“This was your idea,” Nesta reminds her as she reaches for her water bottle.

“Yet you’re the only one reaping the benefits,” Gwyn grumbles. “You never told us you had the body of a dancer and the balance of a gazelle.”

“Cat,” Emerie corrects.

“Guys,” Nesta says firmly. “This class is important for all of us. We won’t look this good,” she gestures to all their bodies, “forever. Gwyn is already pushing thirty.”

Gwyn’s jaw drops. “I’m turning twenty-seven, not getting menopause.”

“Same thing,” Emerie mutters. Gwyn shoves her hard and goes to pack her gym bag, leaving Emerie dramatically rubbing her shoulder. Nesta follows after Gwyn while the rest of the class begins gathering their things, too.

“How’re you feeling?” she mutters lowly as Gwyn packs. They haven’t brought up the conversation in Gwyn’s car since it took place, but Gwyn seems returned to her usual self now, if not even sunnier.

Gwyn’s lips twitch up as she glances sidelong at Nesta. “Perfect,” she says smoothly. “I can’t even remember what I was so upset about.”

Nesta is glad, even though she knows the nightmare isn’t gone. Knows that anytime from the next hour to the next year, it could reappear in full force and drag Gwyn down again. But hopefully it won’t hit as hard as it did before, now that Gwyn has her.

After class, they all pile up in Emerie’s car, a handed-down hunk of metal which Emerie insists on calling “vintage”. Gwyn sticks her head between the driver and passenger seat from the back and wrinkles her nose. “Get me home quick, it smells like a dead banana back here.”

“Oh, is that where I left it?” Emerie starts to turn around, but Nesta stops her with a hand on her shoulder. “I need a shower and a nap,” she pleads. “Let’s go.”

Emerie begrudgingly assents, sticking the key in the ignition and turning it. Nothing happens.

Frowning, she turns it again, but the engine doesn’t so much as choke. She slaps the dashboard like it’ll bring her car to life.

“Amazing,” Nesta mutters.

***

Cassian has imagined more times than he’d like to admit what it would be like when Nesta finally introduced him to her friends, but he never imagined this.

Three tired and hungry girls sit in his truck, alternating between arguing and laughing with each other. He can’t keep up with all of their personalities at once, so he just hones in on Nesta while he drives. Nesta, who Cassian has never seen so carefree or witty with people other than himself before. It both fascinates him and freaks him out, the realization that there’s so much to Nesta he doesn’t know yet. It gives him all the more excuse to spend the next several years getting to know her.

“Don’t tell me what to do with my car,” the dark-haired girl, Emerie, is snapping from the backseat. “Mr. Madani,” she abruptly says, sticking her head forward to look him in the face. Cassian nearly jumps. “Do you know how to change a car battery?”

Nesta shoves Emerie’s face back through the gap between seats from where she sits in the front. “You don’t need a battery change, you need a lifestyle change,” she says. “And don’t call my boyfriend by his last name, he’s not a middle-aged dad.”

Cassian bites back a laugh at that.

“Oh, but if I’m twenty-seven, I’m on the brink of menopause,” Gwyneth speaks up.

“Really?” Cassian says, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror for the first time all drive. “You’re the same age as me?”

He remembers what Nesta told him about Gwyn’s discomfort around men, so he tries to keep his tone casual, distant. If he scares Nesta’s friend away, he’ll never forgive himself.

Gwyn looks stunned to be directly addressed by him, seeming to lose all her sass. “Uh...my birthday’s in a few days,” she says, suddenly awkward.

“That’s right,” Emerie interjects eagerly. “We’re having a rager.”

“We’re having a sleepover,” Nesta corrects. She throws Cassian an exasperated look. “Drive faster, will you? I can’t share a car with these girls any longer.”

“Don’t be fucking rude.” Gwyn flicks a hair tie at Nesta, making her cry out.

Cassian does not understand this dynamic at all, so he shuts up and does as he’s told.

After Gwyn and Emerie have been safely dropped off, Cassian throws his keys into the bowl at the cabin entrance and tosses off his shoes. “I think I finally know what it’s like to be you,” he tells Nesta as they meet the warmth of the house.

“What do you mean?” She unzips her windbreaker, revealing the form-fitting athleticwear beneath. God, he hasn’t even gotten a chance to look at her since he picked her up.

He redirects his eyes to her face. “You know,” he says. “On the outside looking in. I feel drained.”

Her lips quirk up as she hangs up her jacket. “That scared of a couple of girls, huh?”

“They’re your friends. I don’t know what else I expected.” He follows Nesta deeper into the living room, kicking at the ground. “So…” he trails casually. “How was class?”

Nesta responds by rolling her eyes. “I was wondering how long you’d take to crack.”

“What do you mean?” he says, indignant.

“I mean…” She steps up to him and takes his hands, dragging them up her waist to settle on the bare skin beneath her black crop top. “You haven’t said a word about pole-dancing since I told you I was starting it. One would almost think it didn’t affect you at all, and yet,” she tilts her head, “I get the feeling you haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Especially at night, when you’re alone.”

Cassian’s breath goes thin. She knows him too well.

“Cunning witch,” he breathes. Nesta’s smile is slow and winning, which he takes as invitation to slip his hands around her back and pull her in. Her chest is pressed flush against his.

She stares at his mouth, the place she always stares when her mind is five steps ahead of reality. Like she’s already imagining how he’ll take her. “Dreaming about a private performance, are you?”

“Hopefully not right now,” a low voice says from above them.

Nesta jumps, spinning around in Cassian’s arms, but Cassian just closes his eyes and sighs. He opens them to find Azriel sitting in the reading nook that overlooks the living room, various work reports scattered about him.

“Have you been there this whole time?” Nesta demands.

“Unfortunately,” Azriel says at the same time Cassian grumbles, “Of course he has.” Remaining unnoticed is all his brother is good for.

Nesta sighs and rubs her eyes, the mood effectively killed. “I need a break.”

Cassian considers going up to Az and pushing him over the second floor railing as Nesta wiggles out of his arms and heads for the stairs. “And a back massage,” she calls over her shoulder.

“I’ll be right there,” Cassian tells her. But he waits to hear their bedroom door click shut before he also goes upstairs, not towards Nesta but to the reading nook.

“Hey, bro?” He tries to sound lighthearted as he approaches Az. “Do you mind not cockblocking me in my own house?”

Az doesn’t look up from the report he’s reading, flipping a page. “It’s rude to be horny in public spaces.”

“My house is not a public space,” Cassian growls, struggling to keep his temper. “Before you moved in, it was a very, very private space.” For him and Nesta alone, he doesn’t add.

Azriel finally looks up, question in his eyes. “So what?” he says. “You want me to leave?”

Never, is the automatic assurance that nearly comes out of Cassian’s mouth. Of course he’d never want his brother gone, especially when he’s clearly going through… something. But he bites down on the word and takes a seat in the chair across from Az. “I want to know how long you’re planning on staying. For real. You can run from your problems as much as you want, but that doesn’t mean I can provide you with a hiding place forever.”

“Wow.” Azriel’s eyes widen in mock-disbelief and he clasps a hand to his chest. “So cold, brother. I think you caught some of your girlfriend’s iciness.”

Cassian narrows his eyes seriously at Az. “Or maybe I’m being the only adult here.” Cassian now has responsibilities to a person who isn’t part of his traditional inner circle. A person he can see himself making long-term plans with, a person he plans on keeping around. It changes the course of his future in a way that the rest of his family probably haven’t realized yet.

Though maybe Azriel does realize it, because he looks away and murmurs, “No need to rub it in.”

For the thousandth time that month, Cassian wonders what caused Azriel to run away from Velaris. It’s a secret Az refuses to share with even him.

“I’m trying,” Azriel says. His words are slow, unsure. “I’m trying to create space between me and that city, but I’m going to need more time. I can’t tell you how long it’ll take until I can go back. But if you can’t keep me here, I’ll find someplace else to stay.” He shrugs. “It’s not that hard.”

Cassian exhales, feeling sympathy twist deep in his chest for his best friend—and he doesn’t even know what the sympathy is for. “Then take your time,” he says sincerely. “Stay here forever if you want. We can Photoshop you into all our pictures. But don’t think I’m gonna make it easy on you,” he warns.

“You already don’t make it easy on me,” Az mutters. “I can hear you and Nesta fucking all the time.”

“First, don’t ever talk about Nesta and fucking in the same sentence ever again.”

Az blinks in surprise, likely remembering the way they would talk about their hookups before Nesta came into the picture. “Damn, she’s got you bad.”

“Second,” Cassian continues, “I will not hesitate to make you sleep outside if you get on my or Nesta’s nerves.”

“With that attitude, I’ll be out of here by next week,” Az snorts. He crosses his feet and picks up his report again, clearly done with this conversation.

Seeing no hope in rubbing the point in further, Cassian leaves Azriel to his work.

***

Nesta is stripped down to her underwear and getting ready to shower when she notices a missed call from Elain on her phone.

She hesitates at her sister’s name on the screen, wondering what could possibly have encouraged Elain to call while Nesta was at dance class. What happened to the times that Nesta could go weeks without a single person checking up on her?

Looking toward the bedroom door as if Cassian will come in and save her from having to call Elain back, she waits a solid minute before giving up.

Elain picks up on the first ring. “I’m surprised you called back,” she greets.

“I’m full of surprises these days.” Nesta settles onto the bed. “What did you want?” She doubts Elain called just for a check-in, not with the stagnant bitterness that’s been between them lately.

“To have a normal conversation with my sister for once.”

Nesta tries not to roll her eyes all the way back into her head, even though no one is around to see her. “Go on and have it then.”

“I heard from Rhys that Azriel moved into Cassian’s place,” Elain says in her honey-sweet voice. “I’ve been meaning to ask how that’s going for you.”

Nesta’s brow furrows at that voice, the one that Elain uses whenever she wants to give her best first impression—or wants to pry something out of someone. “It’s going fine,” she says flatly. “Az and I get along great.”

That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but…

“You’re calling him Az now?” Nesta can hear the way Elain tries to tamp down on her curiosity, but she’s never been as good at affecting apathy as Nesta is.

“Yeah,” she answers. “Why? Do you miss him?”

Elain nearly chokes over the line. “Why—why would you say that?”

“I thought you guys were friendly,” Nesta says, leaning back into the pillows. “Doesn’t everyone miss him back in Velaris?”

“Oh.” The relief in Elain’s voice is palpable, piquing Nesta’s curiosity. “Yeah, we miss him.” She clears her throat. “He left without telling anybody.”

Nesta fiddles with the band of her panties. “You don’t know why he left either?”

Elain is silent for several moments. “No.” Her answer is quiet, truthful. “I don’t know.” She adds, “Keep an eye on him, will you? I would do it myself, but I’ve been iced out.”

Nesta finds this very suspicious. She can’t bring herself to be interested enough to keep snooping, however, not as the door creaks open and Cassian enters the room. “Will do,” she promises Elain, and makes a quick goodbye. When she hangs up, Cassian asks, “Who was it?”

“Elain.” Nesta frowns at her phone. She wonders if someone like Cassian would be better at reading between the lines of the strange conversation she just had. Maybe he could put his finger on the mysterious relationship between her sister and his brother. But since there are no creeks nearby for Azriel to be shoved into, and it isn’t any of Nesta’s business either way, she decides to give him and Elain time to sort their own shit out.

“What did she want?”

Nesta refocuses on Cassian, who leans against the door appreciating her half-naked form stretched out before him. Without words, she holds her arms open.

He shoves off the door and approaches her on the bed, letting her envelop him into a hug. It isn’t the warmest or most comforting hug, and her arms are stiff as stone, but he melts into her either way. There’s a weariness in his broad shoulders that spikes concern in her.

When Cassian pulls away, she traps his face in her hands and scans it closely for answers. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks. “You fell asleep early during the last two movies we watched and you’re half-asleep now.”

“What are you talking about?” He throws his signature smile her way, but it lacks alertness. “Do I look like there’s anything wrong with me?”

“You tell me.” Nesta shifts so she can slide her hand over the smooth plane of his back, resting her palm on the warm spot between his shoulder blades. It’s her best imitation of a soothing gesture, and it makes Cassian’s lips quirk up lightly.

He hangs his head and sighs. “Is it possible to have growing pains at my age?”

Nesta is confused. “Like, physically?”

“No,” he says. “Just… growing up.”

“I don’t think we ever stop growing up,” she answers honestly. Maybe she’s biased because a part of her is still trapped in that childlike state, and she has more growing to do than most people. “I think it hurts a little every time we have to shift and become someone older. What’s hurting you now?”

Her hand slides up to the nape of Cassian’s neck, gently massaging the muscles there. His head droops even more under her touch. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that when I’m supposed to be taking care of you,” he huffs. But he doesn’t look very inclined to argue.

Nesta squeezes the back of his neck. “I can be the stable one, too, you know. I can take care of you.” She should’ve defeated this misconception sooner.

“That’s not what I meant,” Cassian says, shaking his head. “I meant that I promised you a massage.”

Oh. She nearly forgot about that. “If you tell me what growing pains you’re having, I’ll let you join me in the shower,” she promises. “You can do whatever you want there.”

He looks up at that, dragging his gaze over her mostly-bare figure, and Nesta knows she’s won. “Tell me,” she demands one final time.

Cassian inspects her face, likely deciding how much he should reveal or not. “I’ve been thinking about the future,” he finally says. “It was never something I cared much about before, but now it keeps me up at night.”

Nesta is slow to realize—he’s talking about their future. “You really never thought about the future before?” she asks. At one point in time, Nesta had her life planned out to the age of forty. Her plans hadn’t included this, though.

Cassian shakes his head. “There was nothing for me to think about.”

She runs soothing fingers across his scalp, her heart rate unexpectedly picking up a beat. “And what do you think about now?”

Hazel eyes meet hers with wariness. “Stupid stuff,” he says. “Cars, taxes, insurance.”

At the look on her face, he pulls away from the hand that’s gone still on his neck. “Okay, let’s get you in the shower before I scare you away for good.”

Nesta feels herself being scooped into Cassian’s arms, but she doesn’t quite register it. It’s not until they’re in the bathroom that she remembers words. “I’m not scared,” she says from the cradle of his arms. “I was just surprised.”

Regaining her senses, she squirms until Cassian puts her down on the floor. She straightens. “I’ve never... pondered on the small things like that.”

Except they aren’t really small or stupid, are they? They’re big, inevitable facets of sharing a life with someone. She clears her throat. “The way we live now is already so nice. I guess I forgot things won’t be like this forever.”

Which isn’t the most assuring thing to say from the way Cassian’s face becomes carefully still. But in a blink he’s smiling again, his hands going to unclip her bra. “Don’t worry yourself with that shit,” he chuckles. “I was only dreaming.”

Guilt turns Nesta’s stomach into sludge. She made Cassian share what was weighing on him only for her to brush it off. She wants to talk through it with him until he’s giving her a real smile, but she doesn’t know where to start or what to say. So she lets her bra drop to the floor and steps close to wrap her arms around him.

His breath hitches against her ear, and one of his broad hands comes up to rest on her bare back. “Two hugs in one day?” he says, his amusement covering up some deeper emotion. “I’m either doing something right or doing something very wrong.”

“No. I’m just feeling appreciative.” Her hand returns to that space between his shoulder blades, the spot that seems to disarm him, and pats him there. She gives herself a solid moment to luxuriate in the warmth and size and hard strength of him before saying, “Get undressed, will you?”

One of his hands squeezes her butt. “You need to get off me first.”

She hums in agreement but doesn’t move—hoping he can feel everything she doesn’t know how to tell him.

***

a/n: i bought my eid dress and it’s so pretty yall 🥺

taglist: @hellasblessed @sjm-things @thewayshedreamed @drielecarla @valkyriewarriors @superspiritfestival @aliveahaahahafuck @cupcakey00 @sayosdreams @rainbowcheetah512 @claralady @thebluemartini @nessiantho @missing-merlin @duskandstarlight @lucy617 @sleeping-and-books @everything-that-i-love @cassianscool @swankii-art-teacher @awesomelena555 @julemmaes @wickedqueenoffantasy @poisonous-bloom @observationanxioustheorist @gisellefigue08 @courtofjurdan @theoverlyenthusiasticwriter @wolfiixxx @cass-nes @seashade @royaltykxx @illyrianundercover @queenestarcheron @monstrousloves-explodinggalaxies @humanexile @that-golden-lyre @agentsofsheilds @mercy-is-alive @cassiansbigwingspan @laylaameer01 @verypaleninja @maastrash @bow-dawn @perseusannabeth @dead-on-the-inside666 @jlinez @hungryreadingaddict @anidealiveson @planet-faerie @shallowhighwaters @ghostlyrose2 @chosenfamily-valkyriequeens @rarephloxes

#ncssianwrites #nessian #nesta archeron #cassian #a favor #nessian fic #nessian au

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winterscaptain · 4 years ago

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redamancy.

Aaron Hotchner x Female Reader a joyful future fic

a/n: the moment you’ve all been waiting for...#5 makes an appearance! (thanks to kira @good-heavens-chris-evans for helping me not be a liar and gassing me up so i could post this tonight like i promised xoxo i love you so much) words: 5.56k warnings: descriptions of childbirth (nothing too gross or graphic), swearing, disgustingly sweet family content

summary: “what strange creatures brothers are!” - jane austen. au!august 2022

masterlist | a joyful future masterlist | ajf faq | taglist edited: january 9th, 2021

“Hey, Aaron?” You peer around the wall to the bedroom from your place on the master bath toilet. There isn't any urgency to your query, which would later make you both laugh until you can't breathe.

Aaron has a book in his lap and reading glasses resting on his perfect nose, as is usual for bedtime. He turns a page. “Hm?”

“When you get to a good stopping point, can you grab the go bag?”

“Yeah.” He gets up on autopilot, setting his book down. When he reaches the bedroom doorway, he freezes and turns over his shoulder “Wait. Why?”

“Oh, nothing extreme,” you say, your voice light. “My water just broke and I figured we might -“

Your name leaves his mouth in a laugh, and he trots back to you, helping you up and kneeling to assist you with your comfiest pair of pajama pants. You steady yourself with a hand on his shoulder, stepping into one leg, then the other. Playfully, he snaps the stretchy waistband around you. He's still kneeling before you when he says, “You’re insane, you know that?”

You smile down at him and scrub your fingers through his hair. He leans into your touch like a cat and closes his eyes. “You are too, I’d like to point out.”

He sighs, kissing your belly and resting his cheek on it. “Never said I wasn’t.” He looks up at you. “Is it weird that I’m...a little sad? I’ve loved this part of our lives so much.”

You shake your head. “Me too, my love. And no, It isn’t weird.”

He holds your hands as he stands and kisses your forehead.

“We should probably tell Jack it's go time so he can help the little ones when they get up.”

Aaron pauses for a moment, thinking. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Isaac isn’t going to clearly remember last time, so he’ll probably be nervous, and this is totally new to the girls.” You reach up and he plants a kiss on your lips. You smile, pleased.

A little contraction wave hits, and one side of your face screwed up in discomfort.

Aaron kisses your cheek and says, “I’ll get the rest of the toiletries together.”

You nod, and padded down the hallway, your socked feet swishing a little against the hardwood floors. You knocked twice on Jack’s door, quietly, and waited for his groggy, “Yeah?”

With access granted, you open the door with a little smile, and Jack sits straight up. You cross to his bed and sit down on the edge, opening your arm to him. Though he’s almost seventeen, he scrambled out from under the covers and tucked in close to you.

“Your dad and I are headed to the hospital, and Aunt Jess and Em are on their way okay? If you need anything big, dad has his phone and -“

“Mom, we’ve done this before,” he says with a grin. “I know the drill.”

You push the hair off his forehead and kiss him. “I know it, but it makes me feel better. The little ones haven’t done this before, and they’ll probably be a little nervous. Please help your aunts so they aren’t driven to the drink by your sisters.”

He laughs a little, and surprises you by wrapping his arms around your shoulders and pulling you close to him. “Be safe, mom. I love you.”

Tears prick at your eyes, and you hold him tight. “I love you so much, Jack.”

“Are you scared?”

You press a hand to the back of his head, and he burrows into your neck. “Only a little. I know I’m older, which can make some things difficult, but I’ll always come home to you.”

He nods. “Promise?”

“I promise as much as I can.”

Jack pulls away and swipes quickly at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Hey,” your brow crinkles in lighthearted concern. “What’s gotcha?”

He shakes his head. “It’s stupid”

“I can guarantee you it’s not.” While still a bit of a boy, Jack looks very much a man in the dark, lit only by the light of the hallway as the wheels turn in his head. You pick up one of his hands, and he places your linked fingers over your belly.

“I just - I don’t - Ugh. It’s morbid - Nevermind.”

You huff a laugh. “Baby, remember that one-third of this house hunts serial killers for a living. Nothing is morbid.”

A smile quirks at his lips, but it doesn’t really reach his eyes. “Just be okay? Please?”

You sober and nod, pressing a hand to his cheek. “Jack, do you think I would ever put you or your father into a position that can result in leaving either one of you?”

He shakes his head. “But things happen.”

“They sure do. Your dad will be with me the whole time and he can send you hourly updates if you want. I promise promise promise you’ll be in the loop, baby. I know you like to know.”

Your son’s eyes flicker to the doorway, where a shadow appears. It's Aaron, his backpack on and your go bag in his hand.

“Ready?”

You nod, stand (not without effort), and press another kiss to Jack’s head. “I love you bud. I’ll see you when our plus one arrives.”

The plan is easy: Emily and Jessica are on their way over for the kids, and Dave and Spencer will relieve them after 12 hours. Derek, Savannah, JJ, and Will are only called when the baby arrives, to save them the angst of prematurely wrangling four children between them.

The hospital is only eighteen minutes away, but with the way Aaron drives, it's more like ten.

Time is fairly important - with your body accustomed to delivering babies, having done it twice before, there’s a very big chance active labor would only take a few hours, if that.

Emily and Jess pull up to the house at the same time, both in their pajamas, holding their overnight bags.

“Ready?” Jess asks, kissing your cheek.

You laugh. “Don’t have much of a choice now, do I?”

Emily sets her things down and wordlessly hugs you. You wrap your arms around her as best you can.

“Walk me out?” You ask.

She slings an arm around your shoulders and you walk back out the front door. She situates you in the passenger seat, and you offer her a small smile.

“You know,” she starts with a bit of a laugh, “every single time I’m just as nervous as I was when Henry was born.”

You reach for her hand, and kiss the back of it. “Me too.”

Everything goes according to plan after that. You sit in the car with your stopwatch while Aaron packs the car, checking the car seat base and putting everything that needs to go up with you in the trunk. Jess and Emily get set up on the couches in the living room, ready to settle in for the night.

You're uncomfortable, sure, but it isn't unbearable yet. This is the tedious part.

Miraculously, none of the little ones wake up in the commotion. The magic of white noise machines is never to be underestimated.

“Time?” He calls from where he leans into the back of the car. He's handling the last details, in full field operations mode.

You turn around. “5 minutes, 15 seconds.”

“Alright,” he looks up at you and grins widely. “Let’s go, baby.”

+++

Brienne breezes in and checks your charts and your dilation. “It’s go, time, here I think, Momma.”

You sigh and readjust. “Do I have to lay down?” Comfortable as you are, epidural all finished, you still feel a little restless. The alternative is worse - you’d delivered Isaac without any pain management, and thought it was the end of days. You didn’t, and won’t, make that mistake again.

“Not necessarily, but if you’re going to shuffle around I would suggest a squat for the sake of your blood pressure.”

Another contraction hits, and it knocks the wind out of you. You squeeze Aaron’s hand so hard you fear you’ll break it, and inform him for the third time that morning that you hate his guts.

“I know, honey. I’m sorry. I know. I’m the worst. Just breathe, okay?” He presses his forehead to your temple, giving you something to focus on.

It sounds like you tell him to fuck off, but you aren’t sure. The wave crests and then falls, and you slump back against the pillows. “Okay, maybe I do want to lie down.”

Everyone stifles a chuckle, but you didn't have it in you to be prideful. While you still have a few seconds, you double-check the plan. “Hey Brienne, we’re still good to tie today, right?”

“Yes, ma’am!” she says, way too chipper for the small morning hour. She speaks quickly, knowing she has to finish her thought before your next contraction. “Soon as we’re all done, we’ll do a really quick procedure and everything will be squared away. If, for some reason, we have to do an emergency cesarean, we can do it right then as well.”

Brienne is a great obstetrician - she never pulls punches when the news is difficult or stressful. Her straightforward nature immediately endeared her to your whole family.

It's too much to think about, seeing as another contraction sneaks up on you as you ponder. It felt like only seconds since the last one.

You're so tired.

Brienne gestures to Aaron. They developed a bit of a language over the last two deliveries, and he presses a kiss to your temple. “You gotta push, babe.”

“God, Fuck. I hate you, Aaron. Goddamn you. I’m never letting you near me ever again. Fuck.” A stream of expletives continues to leave you as you push and push and push.

He only holds your hand and reminds you to breathe and push. He also tells you how much he loves you in between agreeing with your damning assessments.

If he's honest, he always thinks your ire during childbirth is hilarious. It is kind of his fault, and he can't fathom the physical trauma, so he figures this is a fair role to fill while you do the hard work.

On a small trough in your final set of contractions, you catch your breath enough to ask for his other hand. This is the hardest part, and it always makes you a little nervous.

“Aaron, come here. Please.” He drapes his arm around your shoulders, and you grab his hand where it hangs by your collarbone.

“You’re almost there, darlin’! We’re gonna be crowning here in a second.” You can't see Brienne, totally locked into her task, but her update is a relief.

You lean heavily into Aaron and he rests his cheek against yours. While this is a shorter labor than both Isaac and the girls’, you're exhausted. Bone-deep tired and hot and cold all at once.

“You’re doing so well. You’re a superhero. I love you so much.” He whispers his words against you, and you wail as another contraction hit. Your choice of a walking epidural doesn’t knock the pain out entirely, and it still totally sucks. But again, better than the alternative.

“We’ve got a little Hotchner head! Keep going!” Brienne pats your knee and grins at you, and you follow instructions. “Do you want to catch, Dad?”

Before he can answer, you tell him, “If you move, I’ll kill you,” through your teeth. Aaron shrugs and looks over your head at Brienne, who suppresses a smile.

There can't be any blood left in Aaron’s upper extremities at this point. In the midst of actively disliking him and your presence in your life in that particular moment, you're so grateful for him you could cry.

Well, you could cry for a great number of reasons, but that’s definitely one of them.

A few minutes and a pretty bad time later, a strong cry fills the room and you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. Aaron releases you as you unbutton your gown to expose your chest.

“Your time to shine, Aaron.” Brienne holds up the umbilical cord clamp and snaps it together twice like a dad at a barbecue. With a smile, he stands and rounds the bed.

You tried to peer over to see, but you're only able to see Aaron and Brienne.

A smile eats up his whole face.

“Hi!” His voice pitches up, and you start to cry.

You just love him so much your chest could just burst. Aaron is always the first person to greet your children as they come into the world, and he never fails to deliver a warm welcome.

“Right here, right?” He looks to Brienne, and she nods. He cuts the cord, and the nurse crosses the room for measurements.

Aaron returns to you and removes his own shirt, ready to take the little one while you finish delivery. After his crew neck is thrown to the side, he gathers you up in his arms again.

There’s nothing you can do but melt into him. His skin is warm and he smells good, whereas your skin felt clammy and you probably smell like a horse’s ass.

Brienne’s voice comes to you faintly from the other side of the room, iterating the specs of the newest addition. “Baby Boy Hotchner, 5:37am, August 13th, 8 pounds, 14 ounces, 21 inches.”

Okay I'm not crazy. He’s actually huge.

Aaron scoots even closer as you lean away to get a better look. Brienne sets the still-squalling infant on your chest with gentle, warm hands. Your eyes blur with tears. Aaron isn't any better off, keeping one hand on you and another on your son, his own tears tracking quietly down his cheeks.

Your son.

Brienne sighs and says, “Alright, last bit here, and then you’re done.”

You nod and Aaron takes him off your chest, leaning back with one hand under him and one hand over him. Fluid and other questionable grossness be damned, he ducks his head and presses his cheek to his son’s head, an ineffable joy radiating through his body.

Aaron’s hands almost completely cover him - with his little knees tucked to his chest, he looks like an angry little loaf of bread.

The afterbirth is the easy part, but then it was before, too. All the Hotchner kids are massive - even the girls were bigger for twins.

You always make fun of Aaron for “ripping me to shreds, and not in a fun way.”

(Okay, fine. Maybe a little in a fun way. Sometimes.)

There’s a little more pressure, and you look down at Brienne’s outline behind that infernal green medical paper shit. “How’s it going down there?”

“I’m getting these suckers tied off so we don’t have any more happy accidents. Don’t mind me.”

Aaron stifles a laugh and you roll your eyes, still weepy. The nurse passes him a warm, wet washcloth, and he begins to wipe the ick from his son’s skin.

Brienne finishes up and helps you get adjusted with ice packs and that excellent postpartum underwear. When she's satisfied, she removes her gloves and presses a hand to your bare shoulder. “Beautiful work, momma. He’s perfect.”

You put a shaky hand over hers. “Thanks.” A little watery laugh leaves you. Ouch. “I’ll miss you.”

And it's true. Brienne has been a semi-permanent fixture in your life for close to six years and has become a friend. You wouldn’t have any reason to see her again outside of regular check-ups.

She squeezes your shoulder twice. “You ever need anything, you know who to call. Let someone know when you’re ready to put his name down, and they’ll finish off the birth certificate.”

With that, she shepherds the nurse out the door, and you're alone with Aaron.

“So,” you say.

He smiles, his eyes still trained on the little body who has quickly quieted and is snoozing on his chest. “So?”

“Gimme that.”

His laugh is warm, and he places little one on your chest again. You prod him awake, feeling only a touch bad about it, and offer him a snack. He latches right away, and you tip your head back in sheer relief.

“Thank God.”

Aaron nods in agreement. “That’s one less thing to worry about.” He shakes his head as if shaking something off - no doubt remembering the meltdowns night after night trying to nurse Isaac.

Little one is still naked to the world, so you point at the little blue blanket folded across the room. “Can you grab that for me?”

Aaron just looks at you for a second, as if seeing you for the first time. “Of course.”

He crosses the room, throws the blanket over his shoulder, and grabs a diaper. While the little one is distracted, he deftly maneuvers the diaper into place and drapes the blanket over him to keep the chill off while maintaining skin-to-skin.

You pull the blanket back a little so you can see his squishy little face. “Can you call Jack?”

“Do we want to call him now? It’s pretty early.” Aaron leans over to his backpack and pulls his phone out, finding a couple requests for updates from Jess. First things first, he turns the camera on you, and you give him a thumbs up. You detach the little one from your nipple for a second, framing his face with the blanket. Aaron gets a good photo of a yawn and fires both pictures off to the BAU group chat before checking Jess’s messages.

4:12am How we doin? 4:18am Jack’s up with me. He can’t sleep. Em is dead to the world - she gave up about an hour ago. Give us an update when you can.

6:02am He’s adorable!!! He’s got your nose though, which is unfortunate. 6:02am Kidding. Maybe.

Aaron laughs a little, and he looks at you. “He’s up with Jess.”

You nod. “Go ahead and call him. He’ll worry, honey.”

He nods, and dials the second number on his speed dial. Jack picks up on the first ring. “Dad?”

“Hey, bud.” Aaron can't hide the smile in his voice. “Your brother is here and your mom wants to talk to you.”

“Can I come see you?” Jack’s voice wavers a little, and Aaron knows it's relief, rather than anxiety. Much like his son, he was more than a little concerned for your safety. Now that it's over, he can finally relax.

That alone is enough to make anyone emotional.

Aaron checks his watch. “Are you too tired to drive?”

“No, no. I’m good. I slept a little after you guys left.” he's quiet for a second. “Can you hand me to mom?”

“Sure, bud.” Aaron nods at you and you smile. He starts to pass the phone over to you then -

“Oh, dad?” Jack’s voice is only a little urgent.

Aaron pulls the phone back to his ear. “Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, bud. I want to talk to Aunt Jess when you’re done with mom, so don’t hang up, okay?”

With that, he hands you the phone and fresh tears roll down your cheeks. You know this part comes in waves - the emotions. Your hormones are in shambles, and you forget how intense it is every time.

“Hey, Jack.”

“Are you okay how did it go what happened?” All the questions come out in a rush.

You chuckle. Ouch. “Slow down there, kiddo. We’re just fine. It went really smoothly, but the last part happened kind of all at once and I denied your father personal freedom and geographic agency, so we didn’t get a chance to update you.”

He laughs, and it warms you. “It’s okay. I’m really excited to meet him.” There’s a shuffle, and you assume it's his keys.

Baby boy is finished eating, just nosing around your chest at this point. You shift, and Hotch catches the phone and holds it to your ear so you can use two hands, bringing little one’s head right under your collarbone, tucking him up again. “He’s excited to meet you, too.”

After Aaron has a chance to debrief and game-plan with Jess (“If you bring the little ones over here before 10am, nobody will have any fun.”), Jack is on his way.

In the meantime, Aaron sets his phone on the side table and sits on the edge of your bed. “Are we sticking to the name we picked? Does it feel right?”

You nod. “I think so. What do you think?”

You do your best to inch yourself over - Ouch - so Aaron can have a little more space. He stretches out on the bed next to you, on his side with his arm folded under his head. A very large hand covers yours, pulling the blanket down to little one’s chin.

“He looks like you,” he says.

You snort. Ouch. “Don’t lie. All your damn kids look like you.”

“Alright, fine.” He relents with a wide smile. “He looks like me.”

He's quiet for a moment, tracing the apple of little one’s cheek with his finger. His smile morphs into something soft, pensive. It's the look he always has when he's in awe of his children. “What do you think, little man? Is your name Elliot David? How’s that sitting with you?”

The Elliot David in question just makes contented little staccato sounds from his chest, his brown eyes looking here and there, surprisingly alert. He lets out a little cough, and both you and Aaron let out an, “Oh!” simultaneously in that drawn-out way parents do when their kids surprise themselves.

You look at him and stifle a laugh just for the sake of your exhausted muscles. Aaron’s smile soon turns shaky, and tears fall onto his elbow where it rests under his head. He takes a big breath, and it catches on the way out.

“Oh, honey. Come here.”

You adjust again, bringing the head of the bed down with the little remote. As you recline, you only need one hand to keep Elliot secure. You raise your other arm, and Aaron scoots under it, resting his head in the crook of your chest and shoulder. He snaps some buttons on your gown in the absent-minded interest of keeping Jack relatively unscarred.

Aaron’s bare arm is warm under your fingers. You trace little patterns into his skin as he stares at the back of his son’s head. Elliot’s impossibly small hand catches Aaron’s finger in that death grip only babies seem to have.

Aaron doesn’t care he's nearly twenty-four hours without sleep, missing a shirt, and really hungry. The only things that matter in this moment are right here in front of him.

There’s no need to speak.

A nurse stops by and drops off the bedside cradle, speaking quietly. “You can put him in here when you’re ready to get some rest.”

You look up and thank him. “Oh, and we’d like to finish the birth certificate in a few hours. Will that be alright?”

He nods. “Just fine.” He checks your charts and leaves a few moments later.

Soon after, the door slips open, and Jack’s head pops in. “Hi!” He stage-whispers. “Lemme see him.”

Aaron is stuck where he is, still locked in by Elliot’s grip, so Jack crosses to your other side, pulling up a chair as close as he can get it.

There is a sense of finality to this meeting. Elliot is your last child, and this is the last time the Three Musketeers will sit together, meeting the newest member of their family.

“Oh man, Mom. He’s so cute.” Jack coos and ducks so he's eye-level with his baby brother. He traces a finger along Elliot’s tiny, straight nose. When he rests his head on your upper arm, you kiss his head. All three of you sit there until the sun rises, watching Elliot fall asleep. Aaron follows suit eventually, his breath fanning slow and even across your chest.

+++

The three of you are relatively well-rested by the time your family comes to bombard you.

Elliot woke twice in the early morning - once to be fed and the other to be changed. Jack retreated to the recliner after a certain point, and Aaron threw on a sweatshirt and curled up next to you for the duration. They're still out cold, while you rest somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.

One of the nurses on rotation pops her head in. You wave at her with the tips of your fingers.

“Your family is here to see you.”

That wakes you up. You make an ‘eek’ face. “All of them?”

She nods. “Three at a time?”

“Please.” You reach over and pick up a neatly-swaddled Elliot and tuck him into your elbow. You check the corner, where Jack still sleeps. You're sure a train could drive through the room and he’d still be out. That kid has sleeping superpowers - being sixteen only helped.

Jess is first, holding the girls’ hands while Isaac trails a little behind.

You put a finger to your lips and point to Elliot. “He’s sleeping, so you have to be really quiet, okay?”

Caroline clambers up on the bed with a few reminders to “be gentle with Mom and don’t lean on her too much,” and peers over you. “Is Daddy sleeping?”

You look to your right, and sure enough, Aaron is out like a light again, performance evaluations on his chest, his hand relaxed around his pen. “Yeah, baby. Daddy’s sleeping because he's awake for a really long time helping me with Elliot.”

Newly reminded of the main event, Caro plants herself by your knee while Sophia sits by your hip, taking the good real estate. You look over at Jess and wink. She slips out, closing the door softly behind her.

You scoot over so you're flush with Aaron’s side. “Come on up here, bubba.”

Isaac gives you a little smile and perches at your side. “He’s so small.”

“Yep. And look at that,” you brush your fingers down Elliot’s nose and tap his cupid bow before doing the same to Isaac. “You have the same nose.”

Isaac smiles and raises a tentative hand. He hesitates right before he reaches the dark brown peach fuzz that sits in unmanageable cowlicks on Elliot’s head.

“You can touch him, bub. Just be gentle.” Isaac’s hand smooths over Elliot’s head with next-to-no pressure. “Do you remember when Sophia and Caroline were born?”

Isaac nods. “It was super cool.”

“It was super cool.” You kiss his forehead and adjust your hold on Elliot. “Sophia, love, can you hand me the pillow that’s by Daddy’s knee.”

She nods and very carefully presents it to you. You show her how to stuff it under your elbow so you can relax while supporting Elliot’s head. Caro is clearly enamored, her eyes never leaving Elliot’s face.

“Babies are really delicate,” you remind a wiggling Sophia. “Their heads are too heavy for their little necks, so sometimes they need a little help.”

At the mention of ‘help,’ Aaron’s eyes snap open. “What’s up?”

You suppress a laugh as he realizes all of his kids surround him like the children of the corn. He presses a hand to his face, recovering. “Oh. Hi.”

Caro beams at him, and he beams right back. He puts his files down and pats his lap. “Come here, my little love. I’ve got a really good view over here.”

She very mindfully picks her way over your shins and into her father’s lap. He lifts her so she's flush to his chest. His cheek presses into her hair, and he shows her where to find Elliot’s little baby toes under the blanket.

“Are his feet very very small?” Caroline’s whispered question almost makes Aaron cry again.

“Yes. They are very very small. So are his hands. Here, look.”

He reaches over and peels back a layer of blanket, exposing one of Elliot’s (very very) small hands, pressed flat against the fabric. Aaron wiggles his finger under it and presents it to the kids. “If you look really carefully, you all have the same hands.”

All at once, three pairs of hands appear, flipping their palms up and down as each one individually assesses the similarities.

“And if you look even closer,” he says, flipping his palm down, but keeping Elliot’s hand aloft, “I have the same hands as all of you, too.”

Caroline looks up at him, awestruck and he nods. She places her hand on the back of Aaron’s and - lo and behold - they're the same shape, just significantly different sizes.

Satisfied, Sophia drops her hands, leaning on them to get a closer, yet stable, look at Elliot’s fingers.

She gasps, but to her credit, keeps her voice soft as she says, “Look at his tiny little nails!”

“Lemme see!” Aaron supports Caro as she thrusts her body forward to get a better look.

Jack stirs in the corner, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. In full voice, he says, “Oh, hey guys.”

Three big shushes come from the kids, and it takes everything in you to keep your laugh locked away. You keep your eyes trained on Sophia (who looks downright offended at Jack’s volume) knowing if you look at Aaron you’d be done for.

Jack makes the same ‘eek’ face you made earlier. “Sorry, sorry.” He creeps over, standing behind Sophia and putting his hands on her shoulders. She giggles quietly as he drops close to her ear. “Cute, huh?”

She wrinkles her nose. “He looks a little funny.”

“He’ll start to look more like a person in a few weeks,” Aaron says with a smile. “You looked pretty funny the day you're born, maybe even funnier.”

He winks at her, and she dissolves into a fit of giggles again, leaning back against Jack. As she did so, her brother wrapped her in his arms and rested his chin on her head.

Isaac runs his hand over Elliot’s hair, gentle and repetitive. He, like Jack did hours earlier, rests his head against your shoulder. You press your cheek to the crown of his head, soaking it in.

“I like him.”

A smile breaks your face in half, and you peer around to look at Isaac’s face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s cool.”

Your bottom lip disappears into your mouth as you fight back tears, still ready to flow without fair warning. You don’t want to scare them. “I’m so glad you think so, bubba.”

Elliot has once again taken Aaron’s finger hostage, and it takes more than a little negotiation to get him unwrapped and tucked back into his blanket. You have no idea how Elliot manages to sleep through all the commotion, but then again, he’ll have to get used to it.

Jess pokes her head back in. “Ready for some lunch?”

Four heads whip around and nod vigorously. Aaron deposits Caro on the floor, while Isaac presses a heart-wrenching kiss to Elliot’s head before gingerly getting his feet back under him. Jack just lifts Sophia and she hangs off his hip, only a little too big.

He walks to you and kisses your cheek. “I love you, Mom.”

You bring your hand up to his temple, the back of your fingers brushing his hair back. “I love you too, my Jack.”

One side of his mouth turns up in a smile, and he leaves the room with Sophia, leading the rest of the pack down the hallway.

+++

It's safe to say Dave immediately covets his namesake. You plop Elliot into his arms right away, and say, “This is Elliot David Hotchner. He’s been very excited to meet you.”

Dave full-on cries, letting the tears just fall onto his shirt as he bounces Elliot all around the room, talking to him about all the ways he’ll spoil him rotten.

It’s easy to name him after Rossi. When you finally decided on a couple of first names, it was a no-brainer to pair them up with David. He’s your family, like they all are, but you're acutely aware that Elliot will have the smallest amount of time with Dave, no matter how much time that will be.

When Dave is ready to give him up, he reluctantly passes him back to Aaron. Dave crosses to you while Aaron offers Elliot a knuckle to mouth around on.

Dave kisses your cheeks and embraces you. He leans back to look at you, keeping his hands on your face. You cover his hands with your own and close your eyes.

You're taking a lot of mental pictures today.

He presses a kiss to your forehead, and you're sure you see Aaron’s one-handed camera work out of the corner of your eye.

“Thank you, bellissima.”

“You’ve more than earned it,” you remind him.

“Dealing with you two for fifteen years? You’re damn right I have.”

+++

a joyful future tag list: @arganfics @quillvine @stxrryspencer @agenthotchner @wandaswitxh @hurricanejjareau @fics-ilike @ange-must-die @ughitsbaby @rousethemouse @criminalsmarts @dr-reid-ismyspiritanimal @shrimpyblog @genevievedarcygranger @ssaic-jareau @saintd0lce @good-heavens-chris-evans @angelsbabey @gublergirls @writefasttalkevenfaster @venusbarnes @vintagecaptainspidey @micaiahmoonheart @ogmilkis @thatreallyis-americas-ass @marvels-agents100 @newtslatte @risenfox @mrs-dr-reid @captain-christopher-pike @joemazzello-imagines @pinkdiamond1016 @sebbybaby0 @pan-pride-12 @hotchlinebling @lee-rin-ah @sunshine-em @word-scribbless @jdougl-love @sageellsworth05 @emmice9 @nohalohoseok @giveusbackourbucky @bauslut @yourlovelynewsbian @sparklingkeylimepie @aili28 @kingandrear @reader4027 @spnobsessedmemes @rogers-mouth @dreila03 @forgottenword @aaronhotchnerr @ssa-morgan @hotchnersgoddess @buckybau @phoenixfyre374 @sana-li @tegggeeee @abschaffer2 @ssacandi-ass-prentiss @thatinspiredgirl @songbird400 @dontkissthewriter @ellyhotchner @a-dorky-book-keeper @lotties-journey-abroad @mrs-joel-pimentel-23-25 @laneygthememequeen @ahopelessromantic @violentvulgarvolatile @andreasworlsboring101 @mooneylupinblack @ssareidbby @violet-amxthyst @bwbatta @roses-and-grasses @synonymforlame @lcvischmitt

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popcorn-kitten · 4 years ago

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new hiveswap info and development timelines just dropped on the Kickstarter ✌️

Over the years, a lot of misinformation, as well as deliberate disinformation, has spread around about the history of Hiveswap. The purpose of this post is to clarify these matters for backers who've been wondering what the truth is.

The Kickstarter was planned by the What Pumpkin business development team in mid-2012. One member of the team was a crowdfunding specialist who led the planning process and managed the contracts with the developer. Prior to the Kickstarter opening for pledges, What Pumpkin worked out a plan for a flexible game concept that could be refined according to how much the campaign ultimately brought in. As Hussie was still working on Homestuck full time at this point, the plan was to hand over his game concept and story outline to a development company that could deliver the project.

The crowdfunding campaign finished out at a gross total of $2,485,506, as well as a gross total of $207,930 from PayPal pledges. But because of platform fees, as well as the costs of producing and shipping merchandise to backers of the campaign, the effective budget was significantly lower than the gross pledged total:

The above deductions from the gross total do not include taxes.

After determining the final budget for the game, What Pumpkin signed an agreement with the contracted game company (hereafter “GC”) to develop Hussie’s game concept. WP and GC entered into a development contract on November 30, 2012, shortly after the conclusion of the Homestuck Kickstarter. WP paid $788,000 to GC in late 2012 for development.

Because there was an understanding that delivering the complete game development documents would take some time, during which it would be difficult for GC to make meaningful progress on the Hiveswap game build, GC inquired about getting involved with other Homestuck-adjacent projects to do immediate work. WP let GC know about the Act 7 animation plans. With an assurance that this work could be done in parallel with a flexible timeline and would not impact the development cycle of Hiveswap itself, Hussie and What Pumpkin saw this as a good opportunity to establish a working relationship with this organization prior to the start of development and agreed to contract GC to do animation work for the Act 7 project. WP and GC agreed that this project would have a separate budget from the Hiveswap Kickstarter money, paid for from WP’s regular operating funds. As the existence of this animation itself would not be revealed until its release in 2016, this was not publicly announced at the time. GC and the lead animator on the project specifically requested not to be credited upon release of the animation.

Hussie initiated the “Megapause” on April 14, 2013 in order to devote his full attention to finalizing the Hiveswap development documents. What Pumpkin soon provided its story documents so that GC could formally begin core systems development. In July of 2013 WP and GC mutually agreed to push back GC’s deliverable dates without penalty. Hussie would share an update in 2013 detailing the state of predevelopment:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14293468/homestuck-adventure-game/posts/708686

In 2013 following receipt of WP’s deliverables, GC enthusiastically assured WP that it was positioned to begin development. GC would deliver its first prototype in early 2014.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qSXwWKD5Km1yL-3Cj_W5IevW-IA978zJ/view?usp=sharing

This prototype, linked above, was sent to WP on 2/18/14. At this point, it was becoming a significant concern among backers that WP had yet to show proof that the game was being made, so WP was looking for any sort of tangible progress update from GC that was suitable to share with the public. But Hussie and WP found the quality of the prototype somewhat alarming, and decided that sharing any shots from the game would only cause embarrassment for GC. Nevertheless, WP was still willing to assume that this was a very early draft of something that would develop into a more promising product soon, and gave GC some more time to improve on it.

But the improvements didn’t come. No other advancements on the prototype were ever made. After waiting weeks with no update other than assurances that progress was carrying on smoothly, Hussie initiated the “Gigapause” both to take care of personal matters and later to get directly involved in the development of the game himself. He decided to move to southern California from the east coast in hopes that working directly with the GC could help them overcome whatever obstacles they were facing with Hiveswap’s development. GC responded positively to the prospect of Hussie’s involvement, but when he made the move and tried to coordinate a time to visit the GC offices and meet, GC insisted it was a bad time due to office renovations and a busy schedule. Here is a timeline with quotes from emails exchanged between Hussie and GC:

May 12, 2014 - from Hussie to GC

“Just letting you know I actually moved to the west coast recently. I'm only an hour or so away from LA now.

I could drive down and check out the office, see how things are going with the game and animation in person some time soon. Is there a time that would work for you guys? In a week or two maybe?”

May 15, 2014 - from GC to Hussie

“That's awesome about being on the west coast. It'd be great to have you come to the studio.

Dev has slowed a bit on our end, as we wanted to take a step back and really evaluate what was needed and the best way to achieve the features that have been coming online in the docs. We're continuing to break that all down so we can build and plan most effectively moving forward. We also wanted to find some simple formats for input from your writing team for dialogue content and are getting that squared away.

The best time to come by would actually be right after E3. Things are a bit nuts until then.”

May 18, 2014 - from Hussie to GC

“[Name redacted], sounds good. I'll set aside some time after E3 to make the drive down. As we approach the date, just let me know what works for you.”

E3 was June 10-12, 2014. GC did not invite Hussie to visit at this time.

Hussie and WP representatives were in LA over July 4th weekend, 2014. When they inquired about visiting the offices again they were still not welcome. A GC representative insisted that they meet at a restaurant instead. Yet GC continued to telegraph that they were receptive to the idea of inviting Hussie to the office well into the summer:

Aug 18, 2014 - from GC to Hussie

“We'd love to set up a new time for Andrew to come to the studio as well as a skype chat to meet the other team members.”

Despite apparent enthusiasm about meeting with Andrew in their email correspondence, GC continued the pattern of refusing to meet at the office or supply any signs of progress on the prototype.

Over that summer, GC delivered several pieces of concept art that WP had been requesting since January. Hussie did his best to present this publicly as a positive development as WP felt it would be counterproductive to the project and harmful to GC to publicly detail the development troubles at the time.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14293468/homestuck-adventure-game/posts/883860

There was no indication from GC that the Act 7 animation project was in any way in conflict with Hiveswap development. GC was enthusiastic about taking on this project, and bidded against other animators for the contract. They saw it as a useful tie-in to concept art work on Hiveswap, as GC leadership conveyed in an email to WP in early 2013:

WP also does not have any reason to believe that the Act 7 project in practice created a conflict that was not disclosed by GC to WP. Act 7 was a 2D animation project, and Hiveswap at the time was a 3D game, so it did not pull GC’s programmers or 3D artists away from work on Hiveswap. GC never mentioned the development needs of a separate project at all to WP, or cited any such reason as distracting from work on Hiveswap; GC instead repeatedly provided WP with various assurances that everything was still fine with Hiveswap.

Had GC communicated that they had scheduling conflicts or some other impediment preventing them from developing Hiveswap, WP would have terminated the contract even sooner.

WP moved to terminate the agreement with GC late summer of 2014, and Hussie pivoted towards establishing a new independent game studio while consulting with a designer who had stepped up into a leadership position during the GC development period. That individual lived in NYC, which is why that location was chosen to establish the new studio rapidly. They helped build the studio through a local network of professional contacts. While this “What Pumpkin NYC” studio shared a name with What Pumpkin, it’s important to note that all of WP NYC’s studio staff save for the aforementioned individual were hired without any prior affiliation with WP and thus had no association with the GC contract. WP documented this development on Kickstarter on October 30th, 2014. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14293468/homestuck-adventure-game/posts/1035099

At this point, negotiations were very amicable; both parties agreed the project simply wasn’t turning out to be a good fit for GC, and were both ready to move on. There were no signs given at all that WP was about to have trouble recovering the remaining funds.

WP is legally permitted to discuss details of the resolution of the dispute only under very specific circumstances. WP may make additional disclosures outside of this post to individual backers in accordance with legal obligations.

Following resolution of the GC contract, in Spring 2015 the WP NYC studio was running at full capacity on Hiveswap. The main problem was the fact that WP management was blindsided by the revelation that much less money would be coming back than expected. The WP NYC project manager had designed the schedule based on the good faith presumption that most of the development funds would be recouped. When it was finally revealed the return was far short of what was expected, and the repayment plan could in no way keep up with the schedule as currently drafted, it threw the project into a period of chaos as plans were quickly redrawn. The length of Act 1 was slashed, and other modifications were made to try to fit the rest of Act 1 into the newly shortened runway. But in the end, the revisions still weren't enough to save the game as it existed, and the studio needed to be closed in order to reserve what funds remained to finish the project in some form.

This may have come across as a sudden or spontaneous decision. Part of this is because the WP NYC senior staff and WP ownership were doing everything in their power to save the project, including injecting WP regular operating funds into the project, until it was determined that going any further would be disastrous for the future of Hiveswap. Another is that WP was legally unable to give any detailed disclosures about the financial troubles, even to many of the WP NYC staff.

It should also be noted that originally the NYC studio was not going to be permanently closed, but only frozen for a reassessment of the project. But during this freeze period, there were some dramatic events. One staff member behaved in a destructive and threatening manner. For the protection of those involved, details shouldn't be disclosed. But these events made navigating the post-freeze issues impossible. Communication between ownership, management and staff broke down because of these events, and the freeze turned into full closure. This version of the project was then abandoned for many reasons, including these events.

Some misinformation claims that at the time the WP NYC studio was shuttered, its iterations of Act 1 and 2 were complete. This is wrong. Act 1 was very far from a shippable state and absolutely no work on Act 2 had been completed besides some concept and 3D art. Here you can see a video documenting one of many major bugs with critical path progression in the final build produced by WP NYC, where it becomes impossible to re-focus on the Simon Says toy if Joey fails and then exits out of the puzzle:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M2mmkMx8Wkwp1VU_5IpMKDvngmUFS0IG/view?usp=sharing

At the point the WP NYC studio was frozen it was still difficult to finish a full run of the critical path without the debug tool, and the UI was far from complete. With that build, Act 1 ended the moment Joey passed through the portal on Earth. The current version of Act 1, where Joey makes it to Alternia and meets Xefros, is more indicative of the original length of the NYC version of Act 1. Not only did it need to be slashed from what the original script proposed, the NYC version of Act 1 still wasn't that close to resembling a shippable product after those changes were made.

Because of the amount of time and resources already devoted to this project, WP was initially very reluctant to lay anyone off or scrap the work being done. It was for this reason that the studio stayed open for months after the contract with GC was resolved; WP made every effort to deliver a game with that team, but at the time WP NYC was shuttered, the funds just weren't there to keep the studio running at its current burn rate and schedule slips. The game was never going to reach delivery with the funds available. The studio urgently needed to be frozen for a full reassessment, and then it was closed after the freeze due to the reasons stated above. This was the only course of action that could have saved the project.

To WP's knowledge every artist whose work was used in the final release of Act 1 was included in the credits. The final version of Act 1 was in large part built off concept art and storyboards drawn during the WP NYC era, and many of the artists who made them continued to work on the team that produced the final version of Act 1; the roadmap for the completion of Act 1 was specifically planned because WP had determined that the existing 2D concepts could easily be refined into a final product that would both be visually appealing and more economic to produce. Unfortunately due to the transition to 2D WP no longer had a place for the 3D artists or the original 3D engine, and all of those assets were dropped. They were not used as a basis for the finished assets in Act 1, and visual similarities to WP NYC 3D assets are due to the fact that final Act 1 assets are in large part refinements of the original concept art. Any artist whose work was used incidentally was included in Additional Contributions.

Both the GC and NYC phases of Hiveswap were setbacks to the overall fulfillment of the project, but not insurmountable. WP reorganized the budget to establish a new version of the studio, and Act 1 was released two years after the closure of NYC.

As an addendum, WP has identified the primary source of a disclosure to a well-circulated document of the Hiveswap development process. WP has been aware of a pattern of false claims this former employee has made since the end of their employment at the beginning of 2014. As this individual was not present during the end of the development contract with GC, nor the WP NYC development period, all of the information they have shared is based on speculation and conjecture.

At this time, WP does not wish to invite more controversy into the lives of anyone previously involved with this project, and considers these matters to have been resolved long ago. The goal for years has been to turn the page on flawed attempts by earlier studios, and simply move forward and bring Hiveswap to completion without sparking the chaos, disruption, and threats to personal safety that would have resulted from disclosing many of the details stated above. Doing so would only make it more difficult for the staff to rebuild the project during these periods immediately following the termination of the GC agreement and closure of the NYC studio. Since preservation of the project was the primary responsibility to the backers, making destructive disclosures that put the project at risk along the way would have been at odds with that responsibility. This policy also served to protect individuals from personal or professional harm, including those who were responsible for serious setbacks with the project. Please respect the privacy of any persons affiliated with GC and WP NYC.

#homestuck #hiveswap #kickstarter info #nothing was edited or changed from the original

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aro-comics · 3 years ago

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Fashion Analysis (Part 5: Aromanticism & Fashion?)

[Note: This post is a part of a series analyzing self-expression, fashion, aromanticism, and how they interact with other parts of identity. For full context please read the whole thing!]

Aromanticism and Fashion?

Now that we have gone through LGBTQ+ History with fashion, and the importance of self expression - I think we’re in a good place with all this context to discuss how aromanticism and fashion can intersect. (and again, as a disclaimer, all of this is purely speculative!).

Personally, I think there may be a few philosophies on how Aromanticism and Fashion may interact. You can look at it a few different ways, either considering the influence amatonormativity may have on our methods of dress, but also the context in which Aromantic communities are forming (online).

On the influence of Amatonormativity

Up until this point I’ve been side-stepping the consideration of amatonormativity – but it does impact self-expression, I think, and it’s worth discussing it’s relation to aromanticism.

I had a discussion with one of my aroace friends about the idea of wanting to avoid “attention” in the romantic and/or sexual sense growing up. There is an inherent tie-in with wanting to appear desirable (as shown in the beginning of the comic, and also reinforced through many pieces of popular media), with romantic outcomes. In both of our experiences, I believe it made the idea of being seen as conforming to beauty norms an uncomfortable activity.

And looking back to lesbian fashion history too, we can see this subversion of heteronormative expectation is tied into a lot of their community’s means of dress. Which leads me to wonder - will we also see this with an emerging Aromantic sense of fashion? How could this impact clothing choice, and general expression as it relates to an amatonormative society?

I want to note that personally, outside of professional contexts, I like to dress femininely in a subversive and “alternative” way. I LOVE the idea of being hyperfeminine as a performance, being a living, breathing, work of art, while simultaneously creating an aesthetic that would not consider “attractive” in an amatonormative context. And another aroace friend has confirmed feeling this way with me too! She mentioned she likes to dress in a way that will make women go “wow, we love this outfit” but at the same time cause *conservative straight old men* go “what are you wearing” (to paraphrase our conversation).

I think some good examples of this from my personal experience would be the following:

1. I love aggressive, graphic liner - generally makeup is thought of as something that feminizes the face, something that softens. But I also like to use it to create the angles and shapes that adorn my face, something abstract for the sake of being beautiful. Like mentioned before, I don’t want to appear romantically attractive to anyone, and I think that for me, at least, this is a part of using femininity to subvert these expectations.

2. I love ethereal-looking, avant-garde sheer dresses, not in the sense that they could be romanticized, but in the way they again make me feel detached from the idea of beauty for the sake of appealing to anyone else. Instead, for me it feels like beauty as a wild, untameable form of nature and being.

But … maybe I should mention the unconventional tastes are partially tied to the fact I spend a lot of time in creative spaces because of my degree, and overall I am exposed to more diverse ranges of self-expression to begin with! Either way, though, I am curious what other aros have to say, so feel free to let me know your experiences with this. I’d love to provide an update with thoughts from other aros!

Forming Community Online and its Possible Impacts

The online nature of the development of Aro Culture leads me to wonder if this medium of interaction will influence the development of our fashion, much like how it influences the development of fashion overall. For example, with tiktok, the app is often credited for its major influence on modern fashion trends (and leading to the emergence of microtrends).

Most visual designs are being affected by the way social media algorithms work too. The “allegria style” created by facebook, otherwise known as the “flat gangly limbed drawing style beloved by tech companies”, has exploded in popularity. Regardless of how one might feel about the widespread adoption of this style of illustration, it’s clear that it has significant advantages that have led to its popularity, one of which is its ability to be “consumed” or visually understood at high speed due to its graphic nature and simple design. Basically, when people look at things on their phones, and they’re scrolling quickly, they’re more likely to understand what they see and interact with what they see if it’s easy to visually “read”. And I truly believe that this is influencing most forms of design, including fashion (which subsequently, will influence aro fashion). If you’d like to learn more about this subject, sources 14, 15, and 16 provide more insight into how social media algorithms have influenced design and visual culture at large.

I think another factor to consider here is the effect of seeing the whole world at once - having the influence of all different media, visuals, and pop culture at the same time has created a very unique environment for development. As one example, the wider aspec communities have developed with the existence of our flags (which are purple and green centered for ace and aro respectively). This would be knowledge that wouldn’t be so easily spread through the whole community in a pre-internet era, and I personally (THIS IS ONLY MY THEORY) feel this is part of the reason there is a far stronger connection to these colours within aspec culture. It’s something that unifies us and was one of our first introductions to the community (since most of us probably looked up the definition of aromantic, or asexual, online), and I think for this reason these colours hold special significance and are present in a lot of of our means of self expression and communication with other members of our community.

Obviously, the formation of symbols and ways of self-identification will occur anyway (many symbols exist for other members of the LGBTQ+ community too), but I do think being online has a particular influence on the ways community symbols are communicated, and create a different context in where these cultural symbols take shape.

[Note from Author: For Part 6, click here!]

#NotAComic #Fashion #FashionAnalysis

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heraldofzaun · 4 years ago

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This is my “Viktor has never been a stereotypical evil villain, you guys are just mean” post.

Hi. Well. That says it all, really, but I guess I should elaborate. I think that Viktor has always been a victim of society [cue Joker meme], it’s just that what society has shifted over the course of his lore update.

With new lore, it’s very clearly Piltover casting him out for his (in my opinion, pretty unethical from the get-go) ideas on free will/worker safety/etc. and that subsequently making him worse. But with his previous lore - what I run off of on this blog - I’ve seen a lot of commentary about how he’s always just been “evil”, or that his motivations weren’t defined, etc. And while I can agree that his old lore certainly has less of a word count (5x less, actually) and doesn’t make his motives crystal-clear, it’s just not true that his original incarnation was just a villainous scientist. (Nor is it true that he was perceived as one by his old fans!) It takes a little bit of looking at Blitzcrank’s lore, and the Journal of Justice (hey, remember that?) to see, but it’s there... So, here goes. I’m sorry for how long this ended up being (2k words!) - it ended up touching on a lot more than just Viktor.

Viktor’s always been stolen from. (Except for Blitzcrank’s newest lores, which contradict Viktor’s new lore, which... That’s a topic for another time.) It’s always been Professor Stanwick Pididly (now Professor Stanwick) who’s done the stealing - originally, he was a professor at Zaun’s “prestigious College of Techmaturgy”. In new lore, he’s a professor at an unnamed academy in Piltover. I think the best way to track the new/old changes is bullet-points, rather than writing this all out. Tumblr doesn’t allow T-charts, sadly.

Professor Pididly in old lore:

Zaunite professor.

Stole Blitzcrank (well, the accolades for developing Blitz’s sentience) from Viktor and Viktor’s doctoral team. (While this is headcanon, I’ve always assumed that Stanwick was Viktor’s (and Viktor’s team’s) doctoral advisor. I can’t quite imagine how else he’d pull off stealing a group project like that.) Viktor subsequently withdrew from the college and “barricaded himself in his private laboratory”. (Which is his house in my personal take, because really - what sort of doctoral student can afford a lab?)

Blitzcrank’s case reached Zaun’s legal system, resulting in a “legal maelstrom” (Blitz’s original lore) that ended with Stanwick presumably being legally declared Blitzcrank’s creator.

Blitzcrank’s lore states that “most now know the truth” in regards to who his creator is. This is important for later, so stick that in your back pocket.

Pididly is referred to as “Professor Pididly” in JoJ issues 3, 18, and 23, which are given the dates of August of 20CLE, March of 21 CLE, and June of 21 CLE.

Side note: According to Orianna’s judgment, which is dated May of 21 CLE - stay with me here, it’ll make sense - Blitzcrank entered the League “years before”. As League at this time was mostly running in time with the real world, this makes sense - Blitzcrank was a 2009 champion and Orianna was released in 2011. Judgments seem to be dated to a few days before a champion’s release, in order to tie with the lore - one had to be “Judged” before made a champion... but I’m rambling. Anyways, years before, back pocket.

Is referred to as “Chairman Pididly” in JoJ issue 27, dated August of 21 CLE. “Chairman” seems to be a title given to those in political power in Zaun. Another example is Chairman Magnus Dunderson, Zaun’s “Chief Executive” (issue 5). (I could’ve sworn that there is canonically a “Board of Executives” in old lore Zaun, but scrubbing through the JoJ on the wiki hasn’t turned it up - just Blitzcrank’s lore mentioning the “Council of Zaun”. Maybe it was fanon? Anyways.) Back pocket!

Also stole some work from Viktor in order to revive Urgot. Urgot’s revival was reported on in issue 3 of the JoJ, and the confirmation that it was from Viktor’s work is in Viktor’s original lore.

Professor Stanwick (Pididly? I feel like they ditched his last name because it was “too silly”, also because Stanwick sounds British-adjacent anyways and that’s Piltover’s “thing” - but anyways) in new lore:

Piltovian professor.

Stole Blitzcrank from Viktor alone, who made the robot to help clean up a specific chemical spill. Viktor went to Zaun for a few weeks and came back to find that Stanwick had “held a symposium on Blitzcrank and presented Viktor's research as his own”. Viktor subsequently continued on his studies, culminating with him later being expelled for “violating basic human dignity”. Viktor returns to a laboratory that he had in Zaun.

Blitzcrank’s case is solely a university matter. Viktor petitions Jayce to help support his claim, but Jayce is Jayce and doesn’t help out. The “matter [is] decided in Professor Stanwick’s favor”.

Blitzcrank’s lore doesn’t really say anything about if people know that Viktor made him (them, technically, but Riot doesn’t get to make the robot non-binary), but I guess it’s implied in the 3rd iteration? (That would be the first new one, after the IoW retcon making most champions’ 2nd lores being the same lore with any reference to the titular League of Legends removed.) He works with Viktor in that one. It doesn’t fit with Viktor’s updated lore at all, actually, because it mentions Stanwick absolutely zero times. (A post for another day...)

Has nothing to do with Urgot, since Urgot’s different now.

So, the general plot of “professor rips off a student” is there, it’s just got an added layer of “professor rips off a foreign/out-group student” in new lore to tie into the overarching idea of Piltover exploiting Zaun. (Is Zaun considered foreign? Yes? No? It’s sort of textually implied sometimes to be another city, but can it actually be when it’s physically underneath Piltover? Is the metaphor in new lore a class thing, then? Is it both? Am I supposed to take Viktor’s Russian accent into account when reading this text? I don’t know.) Anyways, so far so... same, in the broad strokes. Unless Viktor’s villainy in old lore is specifically because someone from his city ripped him off, I don’t know how you can compare new/old lore and say that old painted him as a villain.

But what about the everything else I put there? We’re getting there - that’s part of Viktor’s in-universe stuff. I’m taking a quick detour out of universe, to Jayce’s very first lore...

Which had Viktor stealing a techmaturgical device from Jayce. While I can’t cite this, sadly - thank you, Riot deleting the old forums and me not having the patience to look through archives at the moment - there was a backlash around this on the forums. Why would Viktor, a character who’d been stolen from, steal in turn? So Jayce’s second lore, the one that most people were familiar with before the new lore update, was made. Now Viktor stole a crystal after trying to partner with Jayce, Jayce was less well-established as an inventor, he had a bit more character... All good things. (Also, this is probably where the new lore direction of them being former college colleagues come from.)

Also, as an aside: this is the first use I can see of crystals specifically being described as arcane power sources... The only other discussion of magical crystals was the Brackern... which was then merged into magical crystals having to be from the Brackern... Which means that...

But anyways! Clearly Viktor fans didn’t see him as a villain in 2012, or at least not one that would victimize others in the same way that he’d been hurt. They made such a fuss about it that Jayce’s lore was changed to paint Viktor more sympathetically! (When’s the last time that there’s been that much backl- oh. It’s Seraphine again. Anyways.) So, again, Viktor’s perception as an evil scientist mostly seems to have come from people who weren’t really familiar with his lore. So... case closed?

Except that I also want to talk about in-universe things! Everything that I told you to put in your back pocket! Because this post is already over a thousand words and I have thrown myself firmly into this vortex.

Viktor’s victimization by society [Joker meme] is actually probably worse in old lore, which is a fact that I think has been pretty overlooked. While new lore Viktor gets kicked back down to Zaun and gets his work stolen in academia - with Stanwick presumably never being questioned on whether or not he made Blitzcrank, because there’s that whole “Zaunites are bad” thread that is both in and out of universe... Old lore Viktor sure does get it worse, although I admit that this requires some interpretation of canon. His thing with Blitzcrank was, again, a “legal maelstrom” - and with Blitzcrank being considered a Zaunite celebrity before this court case, it seems relatively easy/logical to infer that this maelstrom was a very public case.

So all of Zaun gets to see Viktor crash and burn in court. I’d say that’s a bit worse than just academia seeing it, as is the case in new lore.

And then there’s Blitzcrank’s lore flat-out saying that “most now know the truth” about who made him. (While this lore does predate Viktor’s existence - isn’t it odd to think about a Blitzcrank made by a faceless team of generic doctoral students, rather than Viktor... and a faceless team of generic doctoral students? - I see no reason not to take it as canonical for Viktor’s original lore. There’d been minor lore touchups before, so if Riot wanted Viktor’s creation of Blitzcrank to be an unknown... they could have edited Blitzcrank’s lore.) But Viktor’s still on the fringes, and nothing in his lore (which, again, was written years after Blitzcrank’s) seems to acknowledge that by the time he enters the League we have confirmation, date-wise, that it’s been years since the truth came out. (Orianna Judgment, etc.) That’s to say: people knowing that Viktor made Blitzcrank does nothing for him - he gets no apologies or anything like that.

Of course, if you take League lore as happening concurrently and nix the Judgments and the League, I guess that this is tenuous - but working within the framework of when he was released, it seems clear to me that the implication of all this lore is (whether it was intended by Riot to be read this way or not) that no one in Zaun cares that Viktor was stolen from. It’s an open secret. No one’s seeking justice for him. But it gets worse...!

So, it’s generally known that Stanwick didn’t make Blitzcrank by the time that the JoJ is running. And he’s just a professor for most of the run of that part of the lore, until... Issue 27. In which he becomes Chairman Pididly, someone who is now implied to have political power. (I have to assume he gets the position due to the political goodwill from Noxus that his revival of Urgot must have brought Zaun, but that’s just interpretation.) But! Even though most people know that Stanwick didn’t make Blitzcrank - that he stole Blitzcrank - he ends up not losing his university job (he’s still Professor Pididly for most of the JoJ, after all) but... gaining political office!

All of this is to say that Zaun is so crooked that you can have the fact that you stole from someone and ruined their life revealed... and get a promotion to government! You can shatter an idealistic man who had a “hope to better society” and make him into someone like the Machine Herald and face absolutely zero repercussions. I think that that is significantly worse than how new lore Viktor’s victimization by Piltover consisted of an academia-only dispute that left him with just some bitterness... New Viktor was, after all, kicked out of Piltovian academia for ethics violations, not for Blitzcrank.

Everything surrounding old lore Viktor is a bit harder to piece together, since you have to look through a few lores and make a few inferences, which is why I think that people don’t realize exactly how bad he had it... (That and time erasing memories, or people being new to the fandom, or people not being interested in Viktor, or...) But he had it bad, and I’m honestly disappointed that we never got to explore much of Zaun’s particular brand of corporate corruption in canon. Now they’re the perpetual underdogs, both victims and villians, and Riot isn’t quite sure how to write them beyond constant exploitation from Piltover. (Even the chem-barons have taken somewhat of a backseat lately in new lore, from what I’ve seen - Piltover seems to be the primary cause of Zaun’s ills, because the combined region is now an upper city/lower city metaphor about class. The chem-barons just seem to be written as a result of Piltover’s ignoring of Zaun - because Zaun seems to be more of an undercity than a sovereign city or state, but that varies depending on whatever piece of lore you’re reading and... Another post, another time.)

So. TL;DR: Viktor’s always been a character who was victimized by a city, be it Zaun or Piltover. Viktor’s always been a character more complex than just a maniacal villain, although it takes more work to see that in his old lore as compared to his new. (His new pretty much screams “we are trying to make him and Jayce morally grey”, after all.) This victimization is arguably worse in old lore, as it’s implied that he went through a very public legal case that ended with Stanwick taking credit for Blitzcrank. In addition to that, Stanwick’s subsequent shift to politics implies that Zaun is so corrupt that most everyone knowing that he’s a thief isn’t an issue at all. He’s untouchable.

Viktor’s always been the result of an idealistic man being crushed by a society that doesn’t care for him and his dreams. That’s nothing new.

#headcanons | beneath the mask #worldbuilding | a smog shrouded city #//lightly seasoned with 'i have my qualms about new lore' seasoning.#//all quotes are from respective lores. i am not fully citing them because if i use apa format for a league meta post i'll simply expire.#//oh also fun fact ionians are referred to as 'peaceniks' by zaunites in that same JoJ issue i pulled the dunderson info from.#//which is cool because that's somewhat canon info (other than zaun being german for fence and some other vague name choices) that...#//zaun was probably intended to be somewhat eastern european flavored from the getgo. so. hc validation.#//admittedly the nik suffix as it is used there is an english variant borrowed from russian/yiddish so... you could argue against me i guess #//but i think that's a much further stretch than my interpretation. anyways i've rambled more than enough.#//you can tell where i started getting super conversational here + when i stopped caring about if i stuck to 'stanwick' or 'pididly'

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hyrule-kingdom-updates · 4 years ago

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writing question: how do you structure each arc esp in terms of the grand story? i’ve tried to write big fics before but despite my dramatic plans for the beginning and end, i only have overarching ideas for in between with no clue abt the nitty gritty. how do you turn “x should develop across the story”, “y should be foreshadowed early on” etc. into a proper series of events?

BIG SPOILERS FOR HKU UNDER THE CUT

Ok so first, pretend you are writing the shortest fic in existence. That way, you lay out ONLY the most essential features of your main plot.

Then lay out ONLY the essential details that connect these important plot points

That’s pretty much the basics of what you need to figure out before you start anything else. If you don't have that figured out yet, work on that before anything else.

So the inbetween stuff is basically how you keep the audience intrigued between these parts of the story. You can use different plot points or "twists" to create a system of highs and lows, like a wave. That way, the story is dynamic, people are interest, and it's not boring.

It’s not about being unpredictable, but you just gotta go through trial and error with finding out where to place what details when, so that you can have adequate pay off.

Generally the rule of thumb is, the bigger the ultimate reveal, the earlier on you should lay clues and foreshadowing. Obviously try not to do it to a point where it’s too obvious, as the tool of a plot twist is mainly to get the reaction of “I SHOULD have seen that coming, but I didn’t!” instead of “I would NEVER have seen that coming!”

If you got all that, just place it in your brain for later as we add more to our little diagram.

So let’s structure where we place our “plot twists” and important beats. These have to be essential to connect your bigger plot, or developing one of your character, otherwise they’re just useless and you should cut it. I’m gonna start with the stuff that affects the plot. (Again, trying to be as simplistic as possible.)

So these beats in the story are essential to connect the main plot points, if you take them out, it doesn’t make sense. The specific cosequences for these “plot twist” are the connective glue that you wrote down earlier. For example, the consequence of Siv protecting Zelda is him solidifying his trust and love for her in that moment, thus his relationship with her develops him into a caring protagonist. The consequence of Zavis being revealed as a spy is Siv starting to question the relationships he’s made, and they start to break down over time. The consequence of the fourth tie being revealed is that it leaves the only intact and ultimately consistent relationship in Siv’s life to be Calamity canon.

Also you might notice that I redaced one of the plot twists for spoilers. BUT, I think this is a good moment to point out that you don’t necessarily need to reveal the information that your characters learn as they happen, because I think setting up forshadowing for the twist itself AFTER it happens can be pretty interesting. The reader knows that something has happened, but now the mystery of exactly WHAT it was can drive the plot further. Anyways.

You have these point, and now you have to figure out what to put inbetween. Again, you have to create highs and lows, and general your twists are your highs (points of extreme action and tension for the reader), so now we establish your lows (points of comedic relief and relaxation for the reader).

But, SURPRISE! You already did that! Your lows of the story are determined by the areas inbetween your plot twists!

Now if you don't like where your highs and lows are, that's alright, you can move stuff around, again it's a process of trial and error. But the name of the game is pacing, but that's like a WHOOOOOLE OTHER essay about how to pace things, but we're here for deciding where to put arcs so we'll just breeze by that right now.

You also might notice in my badly drawn diagram that the height of the crests of each wave are different, and you'd be right to notice that. It's because I'm assigning a sort of "value" of each plot twist, as as the writer I know how important the impact of wave one is. Generally the rule is the further along you go, the more value ro tension a point has to offer. It'll kinda look like those five act structure graphs your english teacher showed you in fifth grade.

So now FINALLY, you can get a general sense of where to have arcs in your story.

Not every arc is gonna be the same, that's just a given, but you can get a general sense of where certain arcs are based on what you made.

Maybe if you're going for a lighthearted tone, you want every arc to start on a low, and end on a low, like an episodic format. Or maybe if you're going for a tone that's more serious or myserious, you'll be more prone to end arcs on highs. You can problem guess which one I lean more towards.

Quill Boys and co arc: Start on the low of Siv and Zavis hanging out, being pals, end on the high of Zavis' reveal as the spy

A lark flies into the woods arc: low action as Siv and Astor talk, the high of Larc's decision is revealed.

Hollow knight but not that hollow knight arc: The tension continues to rise in the battle, and then a low after the battle is won, but then the high of Link's truth is revealed.

That's how I write my arcs, but sometimes depending on where I want the tone to be, I'm stretch out multiple low-high-low arcs to give the reader a break. But you'll notice as we approach closer and closer to the climax, the frequences of the waves increases, and the length of the breaks decrease. So when that happens, you might need to break your arcs in highs and lows that art part of a bigger wave, similar to how i did #a lark flies into the woods and #Hollow knight but not that hollow knight.

For another example of breaking up arcs to show part of a wave, I did #sibling fights hollow knights and destiny rewrites and #long ago and long away, with the "high" of Zelda's plan being what splits them down the middle.

AGAIN. THIS IS ALL TRIAL AND ERROR AND WILL NOT WORK FOR EVERY TYPE OF STORY. THIS WORKS FOR ME BECAUSE MY STORY IS BASED ON THE IDEA OF UNSEEN INFORMATION AND ULTIMATELY BEING "UPDATED" ABOUT IT, SO THE REVEAL OF INFORMATION PROVIDES A CONCLUSION TO AN ARC

BUT JUST ENDING AN ARC WITH A PLOT TWIST DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MAKE IT GOOD. TRUST ME I'VE MADE THAT MISTAKE SOMETIMES [BUT I AM ALSO STARING INTENTLY AT TV SHOWS LIKE SHERLOCK AND LIKE 60% OF DISNEY]

Now, on that final point about foreshadowing. Let's look at those values again?

So, the more impactful you see your plot twist or development, the earlier you should set it up (generally, anyways. there are exceptions)

This is an example for the Zavis, Zelda, and Fourth Tie twists. I value the fourth tie as the highest, so I establish it subtly very early. I also value Zelda's plan as pretty high, so I establish Terrako pretty early, and her reveal gives an explanation as to why she's so focus on fixing Terrako, and also explains her reaction to Zavis' reveal. Zavi's twist is important, to who he is, so I set him up right by his first introduction

Link's twist is important, but I personally wouldn't value the tension and high of it as much as Zavis'. In addition, I already have a long establish plot twist revealed with Zavis, so I think I want to surprise my audience a bit more by foreshadowing Link's tie only a few arcs before the reveal. Astor's impact is almost better if there's nearly no foreshadowing to him at all, (especially on a meta level) so I think I'll make one off hand mention to him existing and leave it at that.

I think for the most part, the more impact the event has on the development of your story/character, the earlier on you should foreshadow/hint at it.

And I breezed by a lot of shit, like I didn't even TOUCH the character related twists like Sooga and Revali. And there's shit about pacing and timing and conclusions and beginning to arcs and their relations...but I think that's a good enough starting point for your ask.

So keep your arcs dynamic do follow the highs and lows of your story. Make sure they end conclusively (cliff hangers are ok, but don't assume a plot twist in of itself is a conclusion) and foreshadow shit earlier depending on how big of a twist it is

#hku spoilers #out of character

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plush-anon · 4 years ago

Text

SCOOB! Stream of Consciousness Review

Here we are folks - I finally review the originally cinematic, fully CGI animated Scooby Doo Movie (one year later... I did not queue this as I thought I had last June - damn you, Tumblr. I’m not changing much here, so enjoy as it was intended).

Created by a team who have professed their affection for this mystery team and their meddling dog too, will this be a lush experience fit to satisfy any Hanna-Barbera fan? Or will it be a hot garbage cash-grab, littered with Easter eggs and references that do nothing to hide a meatless mess of outdated memes and shallow character development?

LET’S

FIND

OUT

Below this cut is my entire stream-of-consciousness review on the SCOOB! Movie, as experienced. SPOILER warning here - I’m digging into everything, no plot points spared.

Here we go~

And we start off with a decent shot of the California coastline (looks like the kids backstory is front and center), some 90s hip-hop synthwave song about California, and OH SWEET JESUS THESE MODELS LOOK TERRIBLE

Ahem

Yeah, this is a problem right off the bat - some of these people in the opening shots look remarkably unfinished - think three shades above “Rapsittie Kids: Believe in Santa” level - and the animation on them is less than stellar.

On the plus side, we do see a fantastic variety of ages, sizes, and races - there’s a brief blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Sikh man on roller skates playing a sitar - but when the designs look rushed in the opening shots, it’s not a fantastic sign. At least they’re brief, but it’s hard to see if this is a lower level of the film’s style due to rushed animation, or if they didn’t care to polish it up as much, given that it’s maybe a 30 second scene.

Still, kudos to actually going for variety in the crowd shots. Minus kudos to making most of the clothes look like Play-doh draped over a Barbie doll. I’m not even kidding on that one, the clothes are super basic and barely have any sign of texture or creasing or even fabric/cut variety. Almost reminds me of the first Toy Story movie’s design for human clothes, yeesh.

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Ahh, our first introduction to Scooby Doo at a Greek gyro food stand. That’s foreshadowing right there folks! 😉

Sadly, he is really weirdly animated in his run sequence - he looks out of proportion as he’s running on his hind legs, and the human animation has really bad consistency - some background characters are really janky, while others actually move really nicely. The characters we immediately focus on seem to be pretty smooth at least, but that’s still very strange.

On a side note: Ruby and Spears Sub Sandwich shop. Nice 😁

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They are reaaaally pushing the super over-the-top dramatic music for a bike cop chasing a dog that stole gyro meat

Why

It’s not even interesting chase music, just generic super-hyped-up chase music

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And now we finally get to see a young Shaggy, standing next to a tie-dye food stand called Casey’s Confections that… sells meat. Hm. Guess WB hasn’t learned after all these years 🙄

Unfortunately, I’m not a huge fan of the kid they got to play him, Iain Armitage. He’s not a bad voice actor by any means, but he just doesn’t sound right for Shaggy. I know that as a kid he’d be much less likely to have a cracking/squeaky voice, but he sounds… it’s hard to pin down a word, but - precocious? Darling? Either way it doesn’t quite match, especially given how Shaggy sounds when he grows up via Will Forte. Just… no connection there.

I tie it down to the particular vocal twangs and nuances the gang usually has. I’ll touch base on that note later I think, once we hit the teenage versions of the gang, but for now I’m just not feeling it.

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On the one hand, I empathize deeply with Shaggy and his Spotify’s unsettling ability to pinpoint his insecurities with song choices, and also deeply enjoy that one small gesture where his fingers kind of shake & tighten around his phone while he takes a deep breath to calm himself- it’s a very nice, subtle sign of frustration

On the other hand we just passed two guys with no nipples and an unerring likeness to a Ken doll in those Barbie movies, so I’m distracted by that now

(between this and Fred’s no-nipples in Happy Halloween SD!, is WB just terrified of giving men nipples in animated movies now? what gives?)

Also distracted by the thrifty lesbians who bought those two shirts that come together to make a heart in the middle, on the store’s 2 for 1 day

happy pride y’all!

---

Finally got context for the two sand piles!

Very, very sad context, but still! Progress!

Basically Shaggy’s practicing talking to people in order to learn how to make friends, since he either has no idea how, or has never had a friend before. So he’s trying to learn the right way to do it since his own attempts have failed

And him talking to these sand piles not only counts as practice, but he’s using them so that his mom thinks he’s spending time with friends like he told her

Ow :)

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So ketchup leather is apparently a thing that exists

I’m learning so much today!

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Given that Shaggy has no friends at this stage, but he’s still called Shaggy, I’m kind of wondering if that was a mean nickname that everyone called him, but he was just grateful for the interaction/pretended it was from friends, so he kept it 🤔

Actually, take it back, his mother is calling him that. Family nickname, maybe…?

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Shaggy has Blue Falcon (classic) and Dynomutt funko pops

noice

---

Oof, you can reaaaaally hear the age in Frank Welker’s Scooby voice. Can we get Scott Innes back? He sounds almost identical to his performance 20+ years ago :/

Also talking waaaay too much - even SDMI Scooby wasn’t this wordy, and he NEVER shut the hell up

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Okay wait

So Shaggy met Scooby on Halloween day - then met the rest of the gang hours later?

Huh. And here I was thinking it would have been a few weeks minimum

Although I have to say there is a lot here to work with, if it paces out how I think it does

Shaggy meets Scooby. Bare hours later, he buys him a collar (instead of his mom? weird) and asks him to stay with him, despite not really knowing him. Then, only a couple hours after that, he finally makes some friends… but only when Scooby is with him.

Given that it looks like the gang are all around the same age in the same neighborhood, there’s a solid chance that they’ve taken classes together at the same school. If none of them met/knew/made friends with Shaggy then, but only did so AFTER Scooby came into the picture, that might lead to the argument we know about later when they split up; afterwards, S&SD go to the bowling alley, then get abducted by the Blue Falcon, plot continues. This could make it seem like they were only friends with him at the start because he had a dog.

And the brief scene earlier with the music device shows that he tries to tamp down on his anger/doesn’t really address it - could lead to something more later

hmmmm 🤔

---

Wait what

These two kid bullies just came out of nowhere, stole Shaggy’s candy… and then started on about how Halloween is only a marketing ploy to get companies to rot your teeth and go to the dentist more, before throwing the bag through a window and telling the two that ‘your blood sugar will thank us for it!’

Are - are these the brainwashed children of a Karen? Is that what I’m seeing?

I mean we could have had a Red Herring cameo, but apparently informing children about candy conspiracy theories is more important :/

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Daphne: It’s Halloween - no one should go home without their candy

FD&V: *none of them have candy/candy bags*

???????

(Wouldn’t it make more sense if the bullies had stolen their candy too? What the hey man)

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I do find it neat that we actually get to SEE the wires the ‘ghost’ uses to fly in full effect - that’s actually pretty cool, and not really something we get to see up close in older Scooby shows. Most of those just have the bad guy randomly flying about, and the wires revealed after the fact

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Actually, given how FD&V react to this ghost almost immediately… have they already been solving mysteries? It seems like it, given how smoothly they move together to capture him

That’s kind of odd in kids. Like, even in PNSD they weren’t perfectly in-sync on stuff

This then leads to the gang solving mysteries together… in spite of the fact that all Shag and Scoob did was hide in the wardrobe that had the stolen goods, while FD&V captured the dude

Granted, they do ask Shag and Scoob if they wanna join in and say yes, but that seems like an strange jump after what could have been a one-time deal

I just find that a touch odd - esp when they could have had a five minute scene or so of them wandering around the house, touching on some old SDWAY traits. Heck, show that they’re SCARED in some way, and don’t immediately move to tackle what looks like a murderous spirit at age 8-9 or so. Even just showing the kids learning about each other would be enough, but what do I know. I’ve only watched Scooby Doo everything since I was 4 🙄

---

Ahhhh, and now for the updated rendition of the theme song

Where they’re all still kids doing everything the teenage gang did in the theme song

It doesn’t look as good as the OG, though - kind of like a computer game simulating the SDWAY intro using the PNSD kids in CGI. It’s honestly strange to see, and a little jarring - especially when we then transition to the older teenage gang right in the middle

Like, we don’t get to see you guys age through the song as you’re chased by/catch different monsters? That could have been pretty neat honestly - shows how long they’ve been doing this

Tho I gotta admit, seeing the Spooky Space Kook with his OG sound effects is pretty awesome, brief as it waoH MY GOD FRED WHY ARE YOU HAVING A ROMANTIC BEACHSIDE DATE WITH THE MYSTERY MACHINE

THAT WASN’T IN THE ORIGINAL AND NO ONE ELSE GETS A CHARACTER INSIGHT SHOT LIKE THIS

WHY

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Huh, looks like Ruby & Spears gave up their subway sandwich shop for a coffee shop

That apparently the gang goes to in order to eat malt shop food

okay?

----

Ah, and here’s where we finally look at the voice acting of the older teenage gang. Buckle up folks, cause I gotta lot to say

We’ll start with Fred, bc honestly? I think Efron actually fits him pretty dang well. He’s got a different cadence from Welker, true, but as far as an update goes? I think he’s a solid fit. Very much in line with the all-American kid that Fred’s kind of been slated as for the past 50 years or so, but updated more for the modern perspective. I call it solid (and possibly a replacement for whenever Welker decides to retire).

Next? Oof. Velma is, IMHO, the weakest casting. Velma, no matter her voice actress, has ALWAYS had some form of nasal twang to her voice - that’s part of what makes her Velma to begin with, and helps her stand out. Nicole Jaffe, Pat Stevens, BJ Ward, Christina Lange (PNSD), Mindy Cohn, Kate Micucci, Linda Cardellini -heck, even Haley Kiyoko from ‘The Mystery Begins’ and Sarah Gilman from the ‘Daphne and Velma’ movie understood this! They all had that nasal twang to their voice - differing between actresses, of course, but still recognizable as Velma. Gina Rodriguez though? Honestly, it just sounds like she’s acting it straight. Not bad acting at all, by any means - she just doesn’t sound like Velma, and doesn’t seem to be trying to. (Honestly wondering if she was only hired bc she voices Carmen Sandiego in the reboot cartoon for the lolz fun reference! type connection)

Daphne is sort of similar in voices, but hers is more of a pitch her voice hits - Heather North, Mary Kay Bergman, and Grey Delisle Griffin all have that pitch they hit naturally when speaking. Amanda Seyfried? Does not - in fact, her voice is actually deeper than I was expecting - but it’s not quite as big a difference as it is for Velma. It fits her character type okay, and she does well with it overall.

And finally, the most controversial one: Will Forte’s Shaggy.

I’ll go ahead and say this: he’s not Scott Menville levels of bad Shaggy voice acting. If I were to place him on a list, I’d probably put him around Billy West level - kind of sounds similar via vocal tics (voice cracking, likes and zoinks, etc), but his own voice just overtakes the impression he’s seeking to hit. When I hear him speak, I don’t really hear Shaggy; I just hear Will Forte trying to do an impression of Shaggy.

In comparison: when Scott Innes took over for Shaggy, it was like Casey Kasem’s, just a touch more of a twang to his voice and just a dash over-the-top - but it was still Shaggy, and you didn’t doubt that for a minute.

Same thing for Lillard, but maybe moreso - he was pretty much the most perfect casting for a live-action Shaggy there could be at the time Scooby Doo (2002) was made. Him taking over for Kasem from there made perfect sense: he was honestly the best cast Mystery Inc member of the live-actions, and a lot more recognizable to the general public as Shaggy than Scott Innes was. He could also do different emotions with Shaggy that not a lot of the other voice actors had the chance to do (mainly bc script), so for future stuff they have that flexibility, if they wanted to play around a little more.

With any luck Forte will get better over the course of the movie, but honestly the casting could have been so much better with Matt Lillard and Kate Micucci.

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Shaggy Rogers, evading taxes since 2020

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siMON COWELL??!?

WHAT THE

WHY?!?!?

ALSO HIS CHARACTER DESIGN STYLE IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE REST OF THE GANG WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON?!!?

IS HE SUPPOSED TO BE THE SD CELEBRITY CAMEO

IF YOU WERE GOING TO DO A CAMEO FROM AMERICAN IDOL WHY NOT RYAN SEACREST

HE TOOK OVER FOR CASEY KASEM ON THE AMERICAN TOP 40 WOULDN’T THAT MAKE MORE SENSE

aaauuuggghhh

---

Also he’s there as a potential investor in Mystery Inc as a detective agency

A music industry professional… is interested in funding a detective agency.

Like… did he miss out on Josie & the Pussycats? Is that why he’s here?

----

Wait a minute

Oh noooooo

I know why he’s here

I remember this spoiler

Shit

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And once again, here is your reminder to tell Simon Cowell a great big fcuk you

Only this time it’s for making Shaggy and Scooby feel worthless and saying that friendship is worthless and cannot be counted on for anything worthwhile

Simon Cowell: Professional Dickhead

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Welp, at least this gives a solid reason why they leave: Simon Cowell was being a professional dickhead, and the gang didn’t really say anything against him or interrupt him on his whole ‘Shag and Scoob are worthless spiel’

Or, well... Daphne stepped up some, but more to say ‘they’re our friends!’ rather than ‘that’s entirely wrong, our friends aren’t worthless!’ Better than nothing, but yeesh

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Ahhh, Takamoto Bowling - the emptiest bowling alley in the evenings this side of Coolsville

(no seriously, the past few times my dad has taken my sister and me bowling pre-pandemic, no matter the day or time? it’s ALWAYS got more than 6 lanes of people there, what the heck)

Also Scooby wears three bowling shoes, which honestly makes more sense than I thought it would - that pup goes spinning and sliding every which way on a normal floor, bowling alley floors would be like ten times worse

----

here’s a nice little detail - when Scooby sees one of the bowling pins peek out with red eyes and he yells that to Shaggy, Shaggy actually squints and walks closer to see if it actually does have eyes

aww

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Huh, okay

Panicked Will Forte Shaggy actually sounds more like a good Shaggy voice than normal talking Will Forte Shaggy

I can dig it

---

Still kind of underwhelmed by the Shag and Scoob disguise scene - wouldn’t it make more sense to have them like, dish up hot sauce or something on a plate that nonsensically makes the robots overheat before they discover their ruse?

Idk, maybe they’re off their game after Simon ‘Dickhead’ Cowell

---

Carlton Way - must be named after Fred’s only other voice actor, Carlton Stevens of PNSD

Also Hanna’s Barber Shop is next to Barbera’s Pizza! Cute.

And… Pitstop’s Pink Perfume ad. Wait, who is that? *assorted googling noises*

...ahhh, Penelope Pitstop from Wacky Races! Who, according to Wikipedia, was revealed to have Greek ancestry in the 2016 Wacky Raceland comic book, having been born on the island of Aegina

Now I’m wondering if we’ll see her in this too, given Cerberus...

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Honestly kind of fascinating to see the gang with a police radio in their van

Also fascinating to see that only main characters are allowed clothing variety and texture/creases/folds

---

it’s actually really sweet to see Fred, upon hearing that Shag and Scoob are likely in danger, immediately makes a 90 degree turn in traffic

---

It looks like they changes Dee Dee’s name a hair - now it’s Dee Dee Skyes, instead of Sykes

It works well for the Falcon aesthetic, so that’s cool

----

Shaggy, after Dee Dee tells them that Dastardly’s trying to kill them: Scoob, someone thinks we’re important enough to *mimes slitting throat*!

Scooby: It’s nice to be wanted.

Excellent! This movie has captured Shag and Scoob’s blasé attitude towards death! Now we’re onto a solid Scooby film :D

Dee Dee: Hmm, I hear that!

And they even have a friend to share in their attitude! Splendid!

----

Christ, I can work photoshop better than Blue Falcon can, and I don’t even know how to use photoshop

I will give major kudos on his costume tho - it maintains the important elements of the OG Falcon, while still updating it with more bird-related aesthetic, like the feathered appearance of parts of his costume, the split cape resembling the tail feathers, and the talon gauntlets & boots. neat!

---

Yooo, Dynomutt, I thought secret identities were still a thing with Superheroes, what the hey are you doing giving it out to a duo you literally just picked up behind a bowling alley

Ngl, I’m kinda hoping we get some scenes where Dynomutt messes up a little like in the OG cartoon - this one feels really serious, which is kind of strange

---

Okay now I want to see older!Blue Falcon come in for a cameo

Mainly bc I’m getting the feeling that this one is a major dumbass, and not in the fun and friendly himbo kind of way 😑

---

Wait, THAT’S our first look at Dastardly? That’s a bit abrupt, isn’t it?

Also his ship must be pumping thousands of gallons of toxins into the air, that smoke cloud looks hideous. Forget logging into his mom’s Netflix account like the trailer said, EPA should probably be hunting him for sport with a laser cannon, jesus fcuking christ

---

Honestly kinda want a plane you can pilot like a motorbike now

---

Welp, it looks like we have a fun, mustache-twirly, puns-aplenty, loves-to-be-bad kind of villain on our hands folks! This is gonna be FUN AS HECK

---

Eurgh, this scene - the super-stiff-but-stretched-out ‘yeeurgh’ faces really squick me for some reason, but I can’t really pinpoint why

---

I have decided I highly dislike the Brian Blue Falcon, or Brian Falcon for short, and would like to see Dastardly tie him to some railroad tracks

---

North St for Heather North, and… wait… Funland Carnival? Like where Charlie the Robot hung out?

Apparently that’s in Romania.

A very yellow-greenfilter Romania at that.

Like, I’ve seen blue washes on movies trying to portray evening in the middle of the day so they don’t actually have to shoot at night, but yellow? That’s normally used for deserts and hot days and uhhh

NOT for evenings in a country with landscape like THIS

odd

(I mean I guess they got the mountains and trees right, but still. Yellow filters make a place look arid, which Romania is Not, to my knowledge)

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Dude, Brian Falcon is such an idiot even Shaggy and Scooby, commonly portrayed as the idiots of Mystery Inc, look at him like he’s a moron.

(They are Not Amused.)

Also Brian Falcon is an absolute coward. That’s new. Even Shaggy and Scooby face off against the robots directly in a Whack-a-Mole game and destroy some. Dude, get your head in the fcuking game already, yikes

Woah, Laff-a-Lympics, Wacky Races, Hex Girls, The Banana Splits, Penelope Pitstop, Space Stars, Posse Impossible, and Hong Kong Phooey easter eggs in one shot

Geezus

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Another nice moment: when cornered by Dastardly, Shaggy moves to stand in front of Scooby to protect him

---

Dastardly (to Shaggy): I don’t care about YOU. You’re not REMOTELY important!

*proceeds to shoot Shaggy THROUGH the ceiling and up into the highest car on a Ferris Wheel where Brian Falcon is hiding like a man baby*

Welp, so much for a fun and zany villain. Time for this Plush Anon to kill a bitch *cocks shotgun*

I will, too - kudos to the animators for hurting me so badly with the face Shaggy made right before being shot because

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Ehehehhehe, yess, the infamous ‘Dick’ scene

Dastardly: No, I’m a DICK. With a D!

You sure are, you sack of dildos with a D!

This scene had to be put in on purpose - if this had been released in theaters, I just know the adults would be dying in laughter 🤣🤣🤣

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Shaggy: Brian, do something!

Brian Falcon: Like what?

Shaggy: Like, drop some F-Bombs!

love it 😂

---

Is it like movie law now, that if there’s an action scene with a Ferris Wheel in the background, it has to fall off and roll down a mild incline like a wheel? Because it kinda feels like it

---

Aha! Dastardly said his drats! Perfection.

Now to shoot him through a ceiling to make them matter even more :D

---

OOF.

Well that hurt.

Poor Shaggy - basically internalizing now that he’s the worthless one and weak link of the group now that Scooby is considered more important

---

Holy fcuk I’m crying

Shaggy just broke Brian Falcon down to his deepest insecurities without even trying while talking to him

He even used the words ‘imposter syndrome’

Shaggy hon, you’re the best

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Oh hey, Fred, Daphne, and Velma! It’s been a while since we saw you guys again, what are you doing?

Arguing about the metric system and realizing that Shaggy and Scooby reminding them to eat periodically helped them keep a clearer head...

And using the word ‘hangry’.

But then looking through a ridiculously cute photo album of the two and a video the gang took together (the video is honestly really heckin’ cute, 10000/10 would recommend)...

And then getting pulled over so Fred can have a brief ‘oo-la-la’ montage about the pretty blonde cop who honest-to-gods looks like a Barbie doll.

Where Daphne then describes how ugly Dastardly is...

Right before the petite blonde cop who’s maybe like 5’7” at best rips off her outfit to reveal it was Dick Dastardly this entire time, all 7ish feet of him.

And then kidnaps them all along with the Mystery Machine while he makes terribly fun dorky puns

…

...SO BACK TO SCOOBY AND SHAGGY...

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...where Scooby is making kissy faces in the mirror while wearing his Blue Falcon uniform

Hrm, that’s not really better is it

We actually see Shaggy reading (OG) Blue Falcon’s autobiography, and making hurt but snide comments about Scooby’s ego

Which are actually pretty clever tbh

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Cooooooongratulations, Fred Jones! You are now officially a full-on himbo!

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Alas, poor Daphne. While your knowledge of the tropes of your show might have served you well in other places, this was to be a theatrical release once upon a time, and so such knowledge falls to ruin.

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You know, I just realized - we’re never really told HOW the Cerberus skulls work, both in how each skull can be used to find the others, and, presumably, in releasing Cerberus itself. We’re given a brief glance-over of Scooby’s ancestry (and I mean REALLY damn brief), and a quick mention that these are supposed to be Cerberus’ skulls being stolen, but… that’s it. Nothing else is given.

Now, I read the first few chapters of my SCOOB! Junior Novelization, and it actually went into further detail about the skulls themselves and what Dastardly’s initial plan was early in the book - open the gates of Hades and obtain the seas of treasure therein. It acted as an introduction both to the climatic endgame we’ll face at the end of the movie, and to Dastardly, who uses the same disguise trick he used as the Barbie cop when he stole the first one in South America.

(They actually DID plan to use this as Dastardly’s intro, but cut this… 3 minute scene for time. Yeah. See below video for the details - honestly think they should have kept it in. Saves time later and definitely more show than tell, compared to what we got)

youtube

I feel like that would be a better introduction to him than the one we got - hell, it would have fit in quite neatly after the revamped theme song montage. They could have the scene with Dastardly finding/stealing the first skull as an introduction (as above), then have him answer a call or something. Exposit openly ��You found the key! Excellent! Now where are we going next?”

THEN cut to the diner/coffee shop scene we had earlier. We still wouldn’t know exactly what the key was/entailed off the bat, and they could still have FD&V find out on their own - maybe by hacking the little robot instead? IDK.

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The final skull is on Messick Mountain.

Cute.

On a side note, I do love how Dastardly’s ship interior looks - very dieselpunk

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Velma just hacked into Dynomutt… somehow, and I finally get my wacky Dynomutt shenanigans! Hazoo!

...sadly that was really dang brief. Realistic, yes, but still too brief.

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Eyyyy, we finally get the whys of why Scooby is needed! … really dang fast.

Also Fred says Jinkies.

----

Hey, Muttley popped up! In a shrine… to his demise… that we find out he reached when Dastardly pushed him forward into the Underworld to steal the treasure of Alexander the Great in a portal he rigged up… only for both of them to find out it was a one-way deal unless they used the key to be able to come back. The key, of course, being Scooby Doo, descendent of Peritas, Alexander’s dog.

Eh, workable enough-ish. It’s interesting to see that Dastardly, despite how much he disliked Muttley in the older cartoons, still cares about him to a certain extent.

---

Pfff, Fred’s a poor man’s Hemsworth XD

---

Sweet, we’re in ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ now!

---

O W W W

You guys really had to do the ‘me or them’ thing with Shaggy and Scooby… and tHeN hAvE sCoObY cHoOsE tHe FaLcONs?!? Just because they said he was important as “the key” and gave him a spandex costume.

Over at least 7 years of friendship.

Booooooooooooo

---

actually no I’m Not Done Yet

This whole scene is a mess.

Shaggy’s turn was really dang fast… but I can still see how he gets to it. It’s at least a day between Scooby being chosen as a pseudo-sidekick and the island arrival, during which Shaggy’s talk with the main adult (who has taken up the mantle of his favorite superhero) essentially confirms his feelings of worthlessness and leaves him to stew for HOURS on end (on top of another adult, Dastardly, who also calls him “not even REMOTELY important” at the carnival before freaKING SHOOTING HIM THROUGH THE CEILING NO I AM NOT OVER THIS). Tie that to a teenager who also believes his only friends have come to think he’s meaningless baggage, and suddenly his entire support system is vanishing underneath him to one of his former idols without ANY sign of hesitation from Scooby’s part (with the exception of the collar scene, but I don’t think that that means the same to Scooby, given how quickly he bounces back)

Scooby tho… hrm. It could be that he’s clinging to the good feelings Brian Falcon inspires in him (by choosing him as the next possible Dynomutt), as a way to overpower how FD&V hurt him, while also building on how he came to love the duo because SHAGGY loved them so much. But the movie doesn’t frame that up… at all?? At least compared to Shaggy.

Idk, maybe I’m missing something, but this scene is a mess through and through

Boooooo

----

Scooby: *tries to leap into Brian Falcon’s arms like he did with Shaggy but falls*

Brian: Uh, what are you doing?

Scooby: Rhaggy never missed.

Damn straight he didn’t

---

oh hey, it’s Captain Caveman

I was wondering when we’d see him.

---

AAAUUGGHH

It’s that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene from the trailers I sobbed over - the one with Shaggy holding Scooby’s collar

Fun fact it actuALLY FADES INTO THE FLASHBACK

THAT WAS NOT A TRAILER THING THAT’S ACTUALLY HERE IN THE MOVIE

---

Oh No

Fred is here, alone, after that whole scene with Dastardly saying he had a use for Fred

...while that’s likely Dastardly in a Fred suit (that sounds creepy just typing it), I’m still going to enjoy this brief but absolutely lovely hug Shaggy and Fred share...

(seriously tho, look at this, it’s a genuinely close, squish-your-lungs-out kind of hug, I love it)

...as well as Shaggy, who's still hurt from his fight with Scooby, immediately gearing up to go help him after hearing Dastardly’s trying to kidnap him.

----

Brian Falcon and Scooby Doo now have to take on Captain Caveman in gladiatorial combat in order to claim the final skull of Cerberus

I love cartoons sometimes

----

Captain Caveman just put the smackdown on Brian Falcon and punched him into the ground up to his CHEST

Then smacked him so far into a wall he cracked the stone around him!

GodDAMN is this satisfying 😆 altho minor question here: how did he gain the rank of Captain? Do cavepeople have a naval force?

---

He just whirled Scooby around his head, then spun him so fast his costume broke off

I may have to look into some Captain Caveman stuff now, that’s fantastic

---

Shaggy and Fred - sorry, “Fred” - just smashed through to the colosseum in the Mystery Machine

And Dynomutt just fired missiles at Captain Caveman to smash him into an Amigara-shaped hole of himself

I REALLY love cartoons sometimes

---

Oh No

Just as Shaggy starts trying to apologize, “Fred” kicks him in the back, rips off his disguise to normal Dastardly self, and kidnaps Scooby atop the skull, before revealing he destroyed the Falcon Fury jet

New tagline for this movie? Shaggy Rogers and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day

...at least the rest of the gang is back together?

---

Brian Falcon: *Immediately tries to blame Shaggy for inadvertently leading Dastardly to them, while storming up to get in his face*

Fred: *upon realizing BrianF is blaming Shaggy for everything, without a SINGLE moment’s hesitation, immediately leaps in to defend Shaggy and physically push back Brian Falcon several feet*

We stan one Himbo, theydies and gentlethem

Also?

Velma (sneering): What kind of hero blames other people for his problems? *Walks over to comfort Shaggy with Daphne, while Shaggy looks dumbfounded they’re defending him bc he also blames himself for Scooby’s kidnapping*

This. This right here, is the kind of Mystery gang content I wanna see.

I don’t care how the rest of this movie goes now, this scene right here is ambrosia to the Scooby fan’s soul, and therefore makes this entire movie worth it, outdated memes, lingo, and all

---

Cackling rn - Fred and Brian Falcon are in a point-off a la the Spiderman meme 😂

or, more specifically, the post-credits sequence of Spiderverse where they’re arguing about who started pointing first

It gets better when Velma and Daphne try to pull each other off of their pushing fight, and Velma grumbles “Toxic Masculinity” I’m crying

---

WOAH

More super Shaggy stuff here (apart from being flung through a building roof without a scratch) - he pushes apart both groups effortless, and even knocks them back several feet

If we estimate Dynomutt as… we’ll say 450 since he’s made of metal, Falcon at 220, Dee Dee at 160, that’s about 830 lbs on one side

Then Fred, Daphne and Velma on the other (hmm, 180, 150, 130?) would be around 460 lbs

Dang boi

---

Oh honey no, it’s not your fault

But dang if he didn’t get a good message from it, one I’ve done my best to transcribe here:

“I was afraid that... things were gonna change. And they did change. But like, that’s okay! People can grow. But it doesn’t mean that we’re growing apart. Because the one thing that will never change is that Scooby Doo is my best friend! Ten years ago, a little boy made a promise to a stray puppy that he’d never leave him no matter what. And I’m gonna keep that promise! Now it’s time we stopped that mustachioed menace from opening the gates to the {underworld} and letting loose that fearsome {Cerberus}. So what do you say we get out {of here}, and go get my always-snacking, never-lacking, often-napping dog back? Who’s with me?”

Honestly not a bad message for kids. Things will change, people will change, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop being friends. (Obvs real life exceptions apply, but that’s not a bad note honestly)

...shame that that conclusion comes right the FUCK outta nowhere

How, exactly, did he come to this conclusion? WHEN? What inspired him to realize this, what was the impetus for this specific line of thought, that it’s okay for friends to change?

It kinda feels like this should have been either the happy ending speech given after they’ve saved the world, or one at the start of the third act, like if Shaggy arrives when Scooby thinks he’s chased him away and ruined everything, and Shaggy & the gang still save him. And Scooby asks him why he did that - when Scooby tried to change himself to fit what Brian Falcon wanted, instead of treasuring the friend he still had, or maybe why Shaggy reacted the way he did. THEN Shaggy gives the speech we hear, a la:

“I yelled at you because… like, because I was scared. I was scared that... things were gonna change. And they did change. But like, that’s okay! People can grow. But it doesn’t mean that we’re growing apart. Because the one thing that will never change is that YOU’RE my best friend! Ten years ago, a little boy made a promise to a stray puppy that he’d never leave him no matter what. And I mean to keep it!”

At least that would make a little more sense to me. Again, not a bad speech, but a little rearranging would help to really hit home.

---

Okay, now we’re back with Dastardly in Greece, and suddenly the background people all look MILES better than the ones at the start of the movie. Did they just forget to polish the first two minutes of film, what the heck?

Also, Dastardly’s ship is literally the entire length of the Greek ruins presented o_O

---

HOLY SHIT THE SKULLS TURNED BACK TIME AND MADE THE RUINS INTO AN ENTIRELY RESTORED PALACE WITH THE GATES OF THE UNDERWORLD BEFORE THEM

They’re also colored a very atmospheric neon arrangement that’s surprisingly quite tasteful ^.^

----

The Mystery Machine can fly now!!! eeheeheeeheeheeheeheeee

----

And so we finally see Cerberus, a massive, towering figure with sharp teeth and pffffffhahahhahaa why are all three heads wearing Spartan helmets

To its credit, they’re also wearing basic body armor, wrist guards, tail spikes, etc, but the helmets are killing me 🤣 who thought to stick that onto the dog? Did Hades forget to remove the armor after winning the Gods’ Pet Costume Contest, or was it like that horse in the ATV costume - it felt safer so it didn’t let anyone take it off?

Or was this a precaution against Herakles coming back? These are questions - hilarious, hilarious questions 😁

---

Awww. Scooby immediately runs to the battered Mystery Machine to rip the doors open for the gang!

And… wait. THIS is where that wonderful hug was in the trailers? I thought that was at the end of the movie when everyone was safe!

This now does not bode well. But we’ll worry about that later. Time to enjoy this gorgeous wonderful hug of the entire gang, and Shag and Scoob apologizing to each other for fighting 🥰

Yet another scene to make the rest of this movie worth the rest

(halfway wanna frame this shit and put it on the wall, it’s that lovely)

----

Fantastic! Dastardly is now in Hell, where I’ve been wishing him this entire movie! :D

And dang… he actually apologizes to what he believes is a dead Muttley. Who is, naturally, snickering at all of this. The two bicker predictably, but eventually hug and make up, too happy to see each other to resort to old habits. Honestly a nice little scene, all-in-all.

---

Back to the gang and they’re doing the glowy eyes in the dark bit! I actually haven’t seen that in a Scooby movie forever, it’s neat.

Also Fred is now going full Liam Neeson over his van, war paint and all, using the tire cover as a shield and… holy shit.

HOLY SHIT

THE ASCOT IS BAAAnnnnnd it’s gone. Boy, that was… short.

Fred just ran full-tilt at Cerberus, screaming like a mad man, before getting flicked away by its big toe, and losing the ascot and makeshift shield. It punched so hard his facepaint came off

It was fun while it lasted y’all

---

Heyyy, Shag and Scoob just came up with the plan, and it’s actually solid! I’m so proud, and so is the rest of the gang! Also willingly going to distract Cerberus while the rest figure out how to close the gate and stuff Cerberus back in

I love my boys 😊

---

Annnnd there goes Brian Falcon like the coward he is

To… call his dad? And admit he isn’t a hero.

Only for Dynomutt to point out Shaggy and Scooby are taking him on and are terrified.

This then cuts to Shaggy and Scooby running around in a chariot and gladiator wear, running back and forth a la the door gag from Cerberus to the OG SDWAY theme

I think I love this movie

(although they’re hinting at Dynomutt being resentful of OG Blue Falcon essentially abandoning him to his incompetent son, and I really wish it had been touched upon more

that’s actually rather heartbreaking, when you stop to think about it, and there’s a lot that could be done with an additional two minutes of screentime)

---

Huh, another good message for kids: it’s okay to fail and be scared, so long as you keep going and try to do what’s right.

Two good messages for kids in one movie. Not too shabby, on the whole.

---

Brian Falcon just flew in and punched the three-headed dog, then jumped into its mouth as it tried to eat Scooby, resisted the MASSIVE JAW STRENGTH, and got them out of there safe and sound

Finally, something heroic!

I was wondering where Dastardly and Muttley got off to - apparently they’re off to take a money bath.

Aight

---

Shag and Scoob have now convinced the Rotten Robots to turn into bowling balls to knock Cerberus off their feet a la the classic marbles pratfall back into the underworld

That is a sentence I just wrote

----

OH FCUK NO

ABSOLUTELY NOT NO

YOU ARE TELLING US THAT AFTER ALL OF THIS - ALL OF THIS - ONE OF THEM HAS TO STAY IN THE UNDERWORLD TO LOCK THE GATE

THAT OCTOBER LEAKER WAS RIGHT WHAT THE HELL

LITERALLY SO

I mean i know its a kids film specifically Scooby Doo so happy ending but what the literal FUCK

---

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGHHH

SHAGGY NOOOO

“Buddy, back when we were kids, you saved me. Now, it’s my turn.”

and he dOES THIS WHILE HOLDING SCOOBY’S HEAD TENDERLY IN HIS HANDS

AND WHEN EVERYTHING REVERTS IT’S JUST RUBBLE AND RUIN AND SCOOBY’S LEFT SOBBING OPENLY AT NOTHING

AND THE GANG ALL COME TO CLING AT HIM AND CRY OVER THEIR FRIEND WHO THOUGHT HE WAS WORTHLESS MOST OF THE MOVIE AND THOUGH THAT THE GANG THOUGHT THE SAME ABOUT HIM

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHH

---

WELP, TIME TO COPE WITH INAPPROPRIATE HUMOR

Shaggy: I yelled at my dog, got him kidnapped, and ended up helping the bad guy to open the gates to Hell. Guess I’ll die.

Dee Dee: Well actually, this is more Dastardly’s fault because -

Shaggy, yelling as he slams his hand against the lock: GUESS I’LL DIE!!!

----

Ah, so the writers wrote themselves into a corner, and the only way out was a Deus Ex Machina (at least, I think I’m using that term correctly…)

Because to get Shaggy back, a giant statue of Alexander the Great and Peritas appears out of nowhere - literally, since it definitely wasn’t there before - with an inscription Scooby has to read to get Shaggy back.

This would have been a lot more effective if we’d seen it when Dastardly arrived in Greece - maybe even as the marker for where the gate to the Underworld was. Have Alexander facing one way, and Peritas facing the other. You open the gate on Alexander’s side, and come home on Peritas’ side. Having this unfold into the gate gives it more purpose than “magically appears right the fcuk outta nowehere” and you could have a pun with the “backdoor” escape. Everybody wins!

And if that’s too good for ya, how about a brief lingering shot by it at some point as Dastardly flies into Greece, behind where the gate materializes, or directly across from it on the plaza? Maybe have one of the gang kick it after Shaggy leaves, and say ‘This is all your fault! Why would you make something like this?’

It’d still be a magical contrivance, but at least it would make some fcuking SENSE.

(Granted it DID lead to this hilariously ominous shot, so maybe I shouldn’t complain:)

---

Velma: I finally figured out what you guys are! You’re the heart of Mystery Inc.

Me: YEAH BABY! *flips over table* I’VE BEEN SAYING THAT SHIT FOR YEARS AND NOW, I’M FCUKING VALIDATED AT LAAAAAAAAST!

----

Shaggy: *rips off Dastardly’s face to reveal…*

ALL: SIMON COWELL??!?

Me, choking on food: I’m sorry WHAT?!?!?

Velma: *takes off mask again to reveal*

ALL: DICK DASTARDLY?!?

Dastardly: Drat! No one ever goes for the double unmasking.

So I was right all along - Simon Cowell truly was a Dick this entire time.

-----

And so we close on the gang unveiling a Mystery Machine paint job on their official detective agency building, Brian Falcon living the good life as the DJ at their party, the Falcon team gifting a sleek new Mystery Machine to the gang (which honestly looks pretty unique - it’s not the classic, but it is something new that isn’t awful, so kudos there), and the gang on their way to another mystery.

So, at the end of the day is this a good Scooby movie?

Meh? *waves hand in meh motion* But it definitely had its moments.

This Scooby film is flawed as heck, no doubt about it - the plot has a MAJOR problem with telling instead of showing, some parts feeling out of order or WAY too short, and of course the deus ex machina ending. I honestly would have loved some more time for their first mystery as kids, where we actually got more character moments/bonding from Fred, Daphne, and Velma as they solved it the more traditional route, as well as not framing FD&V as super duper mystery solvers right off the bat???

The stuff with Blue Falcon isn’t AWFUL, per se, but it is ridiculously satisfying to see him get smacked around. Captain Caveman was honestly one of the funniest bits in the movie, same with Dynomutt.

As far as the character stuff? It all felt fairly natural, progression-wise. Shag and Scoob don’t have this big break-up with the gang - they’re hurt by the literal Dickhead’s comments the gang don’t speak up against, and go to blow off some steam together. Shag and Scoob don’t have this giant blow-up argument - it builds over the film into a hurt spat they both recognize they overreacted to almost immediately. The gang (FDV) go looking for them almost as soon as they leave, and, upon hearing they’re in danger, turn and head towards them to save them, realizing how important the two are to Mystery Inc along the way. They defend each other, help each other, have some of the Best Dang Animated Mystery Inc hugs I ever did see - THIS feels more like the Gang I’ve been waiting for forever to come back to DTV (and in a rough sense, did). While I do wish we’d gotten more screen time of FD&V, what we got wasn’t too bad.

Weirdly enough, at the end of the day, I’ve actually grown more accustomed to Forte’s Shaggy - it feels like it fits this different style a touch more than I originally thought, and holy hell if I didn’t come close to tears at that ending gate scene, he knocked that one out of the park. Velma still doesn’t feel much like Velma, but I did get used to it by the end. I kept cracking up at Efron’s Fred, and no complaints on Seyfried’s Daphne.

Jason Isaacs as Dick Dastardly absolutely killed it. Blue Falcon Crew was okay (excepting Mark “The Racist” Wahlburg - it was just him talking, no real effort. You could recognize Wahlburg right off the bat, acting as a goofy douche) and freaking Captain Caveman was awesome. Apparently they combined both Billy West and Don Messick’s recordings for Muttley (awesome!!!), so this may very well be Don Messick’s final role in a Scooby Doo film.

It got off to a rough start, but ended well enough. The animation was solid, the writing has some unexpectedly clever and funny moments sprinkled throughout, with some pretty fun action sequences on the side. Watching this, I really do believe that the people working on it love Scooby Doo and all things Hanna-Barbera… at least in their own way.

I ended up buying this instead of just renting it ($5 more, why not) and I am honestly glad I did so. Despite its flaws, it has some great moments with the gang as friends, and I have been Craving That Shit for DECADES

And if these writers/directors ever did another Scooby film? I think I’d be up for giving them a chance - at least so long as we got some more absolutely BEAUTIFUL hugs with the gang

I hope you enjoyed this stream-of-consciousness reaction to SCOOB! (2020)... a whole ass year LATER, admittedly (I didn’t switch my Save Post to Queue, curse my hubris), but hopefully y’all’ve been entertained. Good night everybody!

#scoob!#scoob 2020 #scoob #scooby doo #plush reviews: final thoughts #note to self: never use queue for the big posts

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crimsonbluemoon · 5 years ago

Text

Working For Love: A TerrorMoo Story 12/17

....I really need to like, put a reminder on that I need to post these updates on Saturday. I apparently missed last week. I apologize.

If it makes you feel better, Bels and I have like...50% of the second Libahunt book outlined? Hope that makes you smile.

Previous Part

Start from the beginning

Brian didn’t like to keep things. ‘Traditional relationships’ didn’t matter to him, because like every good story, all things had to end.

He didn’t talk to the people he did when he was in high school, though none of the friendships ended in dismay or from fighting. They simply went onto different plot lines, Brian cheering them on all the while. He’d put effort in all of the romantic relationships he’d managed to snag, but never felt a deep sadness when they ran their course. Some were pages of his life story, while others only took a few lines. But they were all important in their own right, and deserved their places in his novel. Brian didn’t see the end of relationships, romantic or platonic, as a failure, but a happy journey that had reached its destination. He was sure not all of his partners saw it in the same light, but he wasn’t responsible for their mental happiness. Brian could only cherish the moments in his memories, and look forward to whatever would come next in his story line.

Maybe he thought the same about Brock at one point. The feelings were forming differently, sure, and Brian’s slow attempts at courting him was a change of pace. They’d been playing their cat and mouse game for seven months, the longest Brian had chased someone for their affection. It was a slow brewed romance that left him room for more smiles, more hand brushes. The rare times he got to scoop Brock into his arms for a hug after their group hung out was worth the wait. There’d been no kissing, no declaration of feelings to one another. Signs were hanging brightly over their heads, to the point that even Nogla could point them out. Nogla didn’t even realize he was dating people half the time until Brian mentioned they’d broken up. Romance was normally blazes of hot fire that sizzled out just as fast, which Brian didn’t mind. Brock’s was a slow burn, warming Brian from the inside long after they separated for the night.

But despite these little signs that pointed to how different Brian treated Brock, he didn’t think much about it. They were simply sailing the same river he’d been down with others before, affectionate waves gently pushing their boat to their final destination. Brock was still healing, Brian wasn’t in a rush, and so he saw no reason to really look at the differences.

One night in October changed all of that.

“This place is dead.” Brian’s head pulled up from its resting spot on the front desk at the familiar tone, not even realizing he’d started to smile at the sight of Brock until the other gave him his own quirk of shy lips. “Hi.”

“Hey handsome.” By now, the pet names that he’d given to Brock were easy to come out, his heart purring at the rosy complexion the popped over Brock’s cheeks each time. Again, a slight variant from his other romantic interests (as pet names were never really his thing), but Brock was just too reactive not to use them. “What a sight for sore eyes. I thought I wouldn’t see you tonight. You had that parent-teacher conference thing, right?”

“It just got out. Most of my parents came earlier in the night, so I was able to clean up my room before the event was over.” Brock’s tie was slightly off-center, though it didn’t matter when he slid a finger into the knot and yanked it loose. The hair that always curled at the ends when he worked out was a little more put together now, though some of the rebellious strands were starting to curve in protest.

“And your first thought was to come to the gym? Not sure if Tyler would be keen on you running in loafers.” Brock’s ‘teacher’ look was a rare form Brian got to see, and he took his time appreciating the image without shame. His mind drifted, but not to the sexual thoughts he was sure he might have with anyone else (teacher-student role play had always been a favorite of his mischievous side). Instead, they settled on how lucky those who Brock had dated were to come home each night to the scene now presented to him. The button up was too loose on Brock’s slimmer form now, no matter how often Brock claimed it was his normal size. The cuffs were yanked open, and Brian knew from previous conversations that they rarely stayed buttoned throughout the work day. Brian’s thumb absentmindedly rubbed along his own wrist, eyes focused on the little cuffs with unexplained fondness. Had anyone ever buttoned Brock’s cuff for him in the morning? Or was that too intimate for him to share with someone else? Brian had never done it with any of his past relationships, whether it was because their jobs lacked a formal attire or they rarely stayed the night. Hell, Brian wasn’t sure he would have offered if they had. It was such a strange thing to focus on, with no sexual pay-off.

Still, Brian couldn’t stop rubbing his wrist, the tips of his fingers itchy with a desire to fix Brock’s cuffs.

“I didn’t come here to work out.” Brock’s laugh was warming, lacking any of the awkward shyness that once graced his voice when speaking with Brian. The development in their friendship had been easier when they started to text outside of the gym, allowing them to learn more than basic fitness facts about the other. They spoke daily, Brian ignoring the kissy faces from Scotty or Anthony’s ‘whip’ noise whenever his phone chimed throughout work. Both had made it their business to point out how different Brian’s treatment of Brock was compared to other relationships. Brian waved off their observations, not sure why their knowing smiles made his pulse race and skin prickle.

“Come to look at my pretty face?” Brian teased, framing his chin in his palms before fluttering his eyelashes. It got another pleasant laugh from Brock before he shook his head.

“Not exactly, though it is about you.” Brock pushed his hand into his pocket to pull out his phone. The smile he gave Brian this time around was charged with a nervous kind of energy before he dropped his gaze, tapping a few things on his screen. “I wanted to share something my students helped me make. You, um-shoot, they said the share button would be- you remember how you were saying your workout playlist was boring now?”

“We just talked about it last week. I’m not a goldfish, sweetheart.” He really liked how red Brock got over that pet name, nearly dropping his phone from his embarrassment. He recovered quickly, but the swallow he needed to take before speaking had Brian’s smile wide with pride. So that was a keeper, for sure.

“Right, er- so I’ve been thinking about that. And, well, I did something. It took a little longer than I wanted, cause the kids said it’d be easier to just share it on the app, but- there. Check your email.” Finally Brock’s head popped up from his nervous fingers to look at Brian, who quirked an eyebrow at the suspicious behavior. But Brian was nothing if not adaptable, so he shrugged and powered up his phone to refresh his email. The loading bar only took a second, and then Brock’s email appeared. It was a pre-set message, one that always came when someone shared from a social media site. This one was from Spotify, the music app both of them used. Curious, he clicked it, and it took a moment to realize what he was looking at. “Half of the songs were recommended by the kids, since I ran out after about ninety. But I listened to all of them before I accepted them on the list!”

Brock’s explanation was almost background noise while Brian scrolled through the selection, stunned at the variations. Brock had made him a work-out playlist. Brock had made him a work-out playlist with over two hundred songs. Some he knew, maybe even told Brock they were his favorites (and Brock remembered them, because that was the kind of guy Brock was) but there were dozens that he’d never heard of before. The selection was endless, and implied that Brock had put in hours of effort to make the playlist. Which made no sense, because Brock was already busy with his job and his working out, so to spend all this time on Brian-

“Brian? Do you like it?” Brown eyes were watching him in concern when Brian lifted his head from the list, that pretty mouth snagged between perfect teeth again. Brian’s eyes drew to the image like a moth to fire, wanting to pull the lip from it’s canine jail and seal it between his own. The fierce desire he had to kiss Brock rocked him, nearly swaying his knees at the force it took not to jump over the counter to do so. Brock had put his time and effort into such a sweet gesture, and he somehow thought Brian wouldn’t like it? That he would possibly dismiss it or even reject it? What kind of selfish prick had stolen Brock’s happiness before that way? Insecurity wasn’t as prevalent in Brock’s words and body language anymore, but here it roared like a wounded bear ensnared in a trap. Brian wanted to yank him close and surround him with affection until the shadows of the past were burnt away.

“I love it.” Except ‘it’ wasn’t the word that had been running through his mind when he answered Brock’s question. Warmth and happiness sprouted up in Brock’s face, hands trembling from joy before he shoved them into his pockets with a bashful shrug of his shoulder.

“I-it was nothing, really.” But this- the chemistry and attraction and emotion between them- it was something. Something Brian had never thought he’d want. His heart pounded hard as realization bloomed through his chest. Stunned, he silently watched Brock’s humble aura, catching the pleased smile he tried to hide when ducking his head. Brock wasn’t like everyone else Brian had ever talked to, because Brian had never felt this with anyone before. Another wave of emotion crashed into him, his knuckles turning white when grabbing the counter to steady himself.

Brian loved Brock, and he hadn’t even gotten to kiss him yet. God, was this what traditional love was? Getting weak-kneed because of a playlist? Having a fuzzy mind from a half-smile? Butterflies when simply being near them? It was terrifying and new, something Brian didn’t know how to deal with. Didn’t understand the process to which someone sorted through the emotions and overwhelming desire to run away and huddle as close as possible at the same time.

“I’m glad you love it.” Brock’s face glowed with affection when looking up at Brian, his smile crooked before his nose wrinkled at the strange expression. It was awkward and quirky, nothing that should have made Brian want to keep the man who owned the silly look. But he did. Oh God, he really did.

Brian wanted to keep Brock for the rest of his story.

Ugh the fluff in this story is going to kill me. But not the next chapter. Mwhahaha. Hope you liked. As always, like, reblog, and let me know what you think!

#Terrormoo #Soft boys #Terroriser #Moo Snuckle #<3 #Crimson drabblez

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notthatiwilleverwriteit · 5 years ago

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Hi 👋🏻 I hope you're doing okay and staying save with everything that is happening in the world right now. how are you coping with it? and if you don't mind answering I'm interested to know if this update didn't happen what would you wanted she li and mo backstory to be? I've seen your post that you didn't expect that, so I'm quite interested to know what you would have wanted it to be or what would you add to it 😊

Hello, dear anastasia-blue-april!

The world has definitely changed a lot in a short amount of time, but I’m coping pretty well. I had a little moment of panic in the beginning but it passed as I think the overall situation calmed down. Social distancing itself isn’t a problem for me, so all is relatively well. I do a weekly supply run and take good care of hygiene.

I hope people are following the instructions to take care of themselves and those around them. The important thing is to remain calm and patient. Everyone is having to put up with various inconveniences right now, but we will surely get through this!

Thank you for your concern, and I hope you’ll stay safe, too!

“what you would have wanted it to be”

The latest update of how SL and MGS met seemed to divide the readers. Some were happy with it while others were disappointed. The fandom had been waiting for this revelation for quite a long time, so a lot of different theories had been put together and expectations were high. Personally, I’m hovering somewhere between the two ends of the line but leaning more towards “disappointed”. There were things that I loved and found interesting in the chapter, but as you said, it wasn’t what I had expected. Now, I can roll with this version of how it all went down but overall, it left a bit of a “...wait, that’s it?” aftertaste in my mouth.

I have talked about my thoughts regarding MGS and SL’s past a couple of times by now:

Overall thoughts about their relationship

Development and what might have happened in the past

What might have happened (vol. 2)

My “main” theory of how SL and MGS were acquainted and how MGS ended up owing SL has pretty much always been connected to how MGS was treated as a child by other kids (ch. 242):

His father was in jail which automatically made him a criminal in other’s eyes. MGS was a son of a criminal, so surely he must be a bad kid, too. If something happened or went missing, it was easy for people to think that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Of course, a child doesn’t know how to handle that kind of situation. When they’re wrongly accused of something they lash out. It’s not unheard of if they even attack other kids physically which is what seemed to happen in MGS’s case. Not only was he made guilty based on prejudice but he also felt very sensitive about his family and father.

Unfortunately, that kind of reaction only made things worse for him. Lashing out and getting violent confirmed people’s prejudices after which it’s that much more difficult to turn things around. No one was listening to MGS, and all they saw were his (re)actions. He was seen as a problem child with whom you shouldn’t associate and who wouldn’t amount to anything respectable.

That’s where I imagined SL coming along in some way. My main idea was that SL was running his own group and took notice of MGS who liked to keep to himself. MGS was ostracised by others, and being discriminated against had planted the first seeds of bitterness and anger already in him. I thought SL would have picked up on that and taken advantage of his emotions. He would have offered MGS a place in his gang which had given him at least some kind of group to belong to. I don’t think it’s a far-fetched idea at all that a kid who’s being pushed out and rejected by the “good” will be picked up by the “bad”.

Of course, yet again, that would have been another step in the wrong direction. Associating with people like SL would have worsened MGS’s image and reputation in other’s eyes even further. Juvenile gangs aren’t also the ideal environment to better one’s image of themselves. I could have imagined how being involved in a gang life had stoked and fed MGS’s negative image of himself and self-esteem. He wasn’t a criminal or a bad kid by any means, but when you hear those kinds of things about yourself for long enough, you start to believe that’s what you’re good for. It wouldn’t have been difficult for SL to tip MGS over in that sense and tie him to his gang by his own volution.

Joining SL would have also made MGS owe him on a level that was pretty deep. Being picked up by someone and given a community of sorts to belong to is one of hell of a debt that’s not easily paid back, if ever. That’s not just doing someone a favor but rather you’re a part of something from that point on. And I imagined the way SL saw it, the only way MGS could have ever repaid him was his absolute loyalty. Anything short of that SL would consider not enough and betraying him after SL had “saved” him.

Another theory of mine that I thought could be interesting albeit perhaps less possible was about them meeting as kids before middle school. Maybe MGS and SL had started out as somewhat friends. Maybe as a child, SL had been seen as an odd weirdo by other kids, and MGS had been the one who befriended him one way or another. Maybe he would have seen SL being treated like he was and decided to stand up for him or reach out for him.

But in a lot of ways, SL was already heading in the wrong direction. It seemed like his home life was quite miserable. He also struck me as a kid who’s very peculiar but in a creepy way. Maybe his quietness and stare made other kids uncomfortable. Maybe he had violent tendencies that seemed...disturbed. I have always also had this idea that even as a child, SL’s mind just worked...differently. Maybe his sense of right and wrong was a bit warped even back then, and no matter how good of a friend MGS had been for him, he couldn’t have prevented how SL ended up. Admittedly, the whole “you owe me” and “I saved you” would have been a challenge to work into all of that, but I think it would have been interesting and given their relationship and SL’s character even more complexity.

“or what would you add to it”

As we all know, nothing that I had been thinking ended up happening. Well, I guess it’s still too early to say “nothing” since most of how their relationship progressed after SL saved MGS is still hidden from us. Maybe there will be something about how being in a gang at such a young age molded MGS as a person. But I would say most of what I had had in mind didn’t happen.

None of that is, of course, to say there wasn’t anything in the chapter that I liked. I was disappointed by the origin of “I saved you”/”you owe me” but I found MGS’s guilt very interesting. I still haven’t completely wrapped my head around it but I think carrying that kind of burden all this time definitely added an interesting layer to his character. And of course, as a MGS enthusiast, I’m always down for some of that! It broke my heart how that incident had been weighing on him so heavily and how he had been carrying it by himself. The overall themes of guilt, confession, and atonement/absolution are very interesting to me. I’m excited to see how things will progress for MGS from now on.

It’s difficult to say what I would add or change about the chapter if I could. If I couldn’t have any version of what I had thought their backstory was, I think I would change the origin of MGS’s guilt. I don’t know if I’m the only one but the deal with the homeless man and mentions of the accident left me confused. It also didn’t help that different versions of translations seemed somewhat inconsistent. It remained a bit unclear to me what were all the things MGS was feeling so guilty about exactly. I can recognize the overall “why” but details were left a bit hazy.

Either way, I would most definitely keep the idea of MGS having this crushing feeling of guilt, but maybe its origin could have been different? I had this idea that maybe MGS had accidentally done something that would have gotten him in trouble. He hadn’t meant it and it maybe hadn’t completely been his fault. Maybe it could have been one of those cases in which he would have easily come across as the responsible one. And given his situation, no one would have probably believed him anyway. Maybe it could have been something that - if found out - would have worsened MGS’s situation regarding the prejudice considerably and required his mother to get involved. Maybe MGS could have felt like he didn’t want to burden her and that whatever had happened had been his fault. Maybe he was alone in the situation and didn’t know what to do.

And that’s where SL would have stepped in. MGS would have known of SL, him being a transfer student, and his reputation but not really more than that. SL would have happened on the scene of MGS being scared and panicked and thinking he was going to be found guilty of something bad he hadn’t meant to do. Maybe SL had suggested he took the fault for MGS or “made it all go away”. He could have said it was no big deal for him and MGS could join his group since he seemed to be alone anyway. Or something along those lines. Maybe later if MGS tried to oppose SL’s orders, SL would remind him of the favor he had done and threaten to reveal who the real guilty one was.

Maybe the chapter could have still been about the homeless guy attacking MGS and him doing something in panicked-hazed self-defense that ultimately resulted in the man being knocked out or somehow injured. And that’s when he spots SL watching them...

But this chapter is what OX decided to go with, and I can live with that. It was a plot revelation that ended up becoming one of my least favorite ones, but either way, I’m happy we finally got to see this part of MGS and SL’s history. Given the pacing of 19 Days, that in and of itself is a small victory that I’m grateful for. I’m also happy about what a big development point this marked for MGS’s character and Tianshan.

Thank you for your question, dear anastasia-blue-april!

#19 days #mo guan shan #she li #answered ask

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onegayastronaut · 5 years ago

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Thorn At My Side (Leslie Willis aka “Livewire” x Reader)

Requested by anon: Hiii Can u pls write Fem Reader x Livewire where Y/N saves Leslie's life in the battle with Reign and gets injured. And Leslie is taking care of reader some fuff in the end

Word count: 1293

Leslie has always assumed that being an asshole would push people away. Everyone who had come in her life had all been extraordinary disappointments, so there was no reason to let anyone get close to her. The moment she became Livewire, she knew that she had been gifted with power. Real power this time, and not just with words.

She knew that teaming up with Supergirl and her band of self-righteous paramilitary agents would be a bad bargain for her. All this talk of doing good for everyone else and not just looking out for herself was getting really old, really fast. All she wanted was to become Livewire again, and Leslie only when she felt like it. However, that day wasn’t today as Supergirl has called in another favor that was too big for her to handle. Of course, she had already heard about Reign, but keeping the citizens of National City safe was not on her list of priorities at the moment. Supergirl was one of those people that just happened to get on every last nerve, and Leslie ground her teeth together in frustration. She knew that a “no” was only going to arouse suspicion from the DEO regarding her everyday activities, and being left alone was one of the perks of being an asshole.

Arriving at the DEO was always something new considering the fact that she wasn’t going to be locked up in a cell right away. From the corner of her eye, Leslie caught sight of you and immediately called you over. “Hey, if it isn’t Agent (Y/L/N)!”

“Hello, Livewire. It’s nice to see you again. Are you helping Supergirl with a new case?”

“Only if it means that you’ll also be on the team.”

“Agent (Y/L/N) has more important duties here at the DEO than babysitting a supposedly reformed villain.” Alex intervened on your behalf before Livewire could flirt with you any further.

“Fine, then I’m no longer willing to help you with whatever’s going on.”

“Wait, what? You can’t refuse because --”

“Because what? Don’t you forget that I’m free and clear because none of you were smart enough to keep me locked up. You can’t force me to do anything.”

“Okay, fine. Agent (Y/L/N) is on the team now.” You could feel Alex resisting an eye roll at Livewire’s behavior, but you didn’t mind. Even though you knew that Leslie was a criminal, you couldn’t deny the fact that she was very fun to be around.

-----

“So...Agent (Y/N), how are you doing?” Leslie slid across the counter to stand right next to you.

“Just waiting to hear if there are any updates on Reign. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. Sit here and wait. I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

“So bossy, I love it.”

As you walked away, you couldn’t help but look back at Leslie to see if she was still looking at you. She took the opportunity to wink at you, and you snapped your head around so she couldn’t see you blushing. Maybe Colonel Hayley was right after all; having villains in the office was very much a distraction. Not to mention a very snarky thorn at your side whenever you didn’t seem to be preoccupied with work.

-----

“Agent (Y/L/N), how are you doing? We have a situation.”

“Hey Brainy. Did we catch sight of Reign?”

“Yes, we did. She was sighted on the outskirts of National City. I was told to come to you as soon as I received news.”

“Thanks, Brainy. Where’s Livewire, I need to bring her along with me for this mission.”

“She’s downstairs talking to the other villains. I can call her up now.”

“No, it’s fine Brainy. I’ll go get her myself.”

Once you got to the lower levels, you were surprised to see Leslie talking to a prisoner that was behind the door. “I thought you were the loner type.”

“Oh how nice of you to join us, Agent (Y/N). Would you like to sit?”

“No, Brainy just found Reign. We have to go and stop her.”

“Oh finally, something to do. I thought I was going to go gray in here before someone actually gave me something to do, you know.”

The ride to where Brainy had located Reign was nerve-wracking, to say the least. Being a relatively new agent, you really wanted to prove to everyone that you could handle villains on your own. Your nerves prevented you from hearing anything that your team leader was saying about the mission.

As soon as your feet hit the floor of the warehouse, you immediately started heading towards the back of the building. It didn’t make sense for Reign to be hanging out towards the front of the building when she had a mission to accomplish, so searching for her in the back made more sense. You were vaguely aware of the fact that Livewire was somewhere behind you, but your attention was focused on what might be ahead. From the distance, you could hear agents clearing the other areas of the warehouse. With every confirmation that the warehouse was clear, your heartbeat increased a little. Something was wrong, you couldn’t explain why but something made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Brainy has yet to be wrong when it comes to finding the location of a villain, so it made no sense for him to get the wrong location of where Reign was today. You were so focused on what was ahead of you that you didn’t see Reign come down behind you.

“Well, well, well, I haven’t seen you around before. It’s insulting to be hunted by a baby, you know.” You spun around and shot a Kryptonite round at Reign, but she dodged it with ease. “See, someone who doesn’t even know how to properly take down a Kryptonian. Oh look, you brought a friend.”

“(Y/N), get outta here, I’ve got this.” Sparks jumped out from Leslie’s hands, but before she could let out a lightning bolt, Reign let out a razor beam. Leslie was able to jump out in time, but you got thrown against the wall. All you saw was a piece of your body armor smoking before you passed out.

-----

As you and Leslie were confronting Reign, your fellow agents heard the commotion and made their way to the part of the building the noise was coming from. Before Reign could finish you and Leslie off, another agent fired a Kryptonite round straight in her back, bringing the villain down.

“Tie her up. Send a medic in here, we got an agent down.” Your fellow agents ran up to you to see how bad the damage was. You were still out, but breathing.

“What happened here?”

“That flying bitch shot lasers out of her eyes and hit (Y/N). I don’t know how bad the damage is.”

“Agent (Y/N) is tough, she’s able to handle a hit or two.”

Throughout the ride back to the DEO base and your stay in the hospital wing, Leslie never let go of your hand. Alex let her stay with you until you woke up, mainly because she saw how concerned Livewire was for you. When you finally opened your eyes, Leslie didn’t let go.

“How are you feeling, (Y/N)?”

“Better than you look, that’s for sure.”

“I thought I told you to get out of the way.”

“Didn’t Alex tell you? I’m just as bad at following directions as you are.” Hearing Leslie laugh only confirmed one thing for you -- developing feelings for a reformed villain was probably not the worst thing that could happen to you.

#livewire #livewire x reader #livewire imagine #leslie willis #leslie willis x reader #leslie willis imagine #supergirl #supergirl x reader #supergirl imagine

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p-artsypants · 5 years ago

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Longest Night (26) Escaping

And Marinette had thought Highschool had been hard. Right now, in this moment, she'd give anything to go back to those petty arguments and gossip fueled drama. But she couldn't. Instead, she and Adrien were trapped here, being punished, humiliated, tortured, for being heroes, all broadcasted for the world to see. At least she and her kitty were in this together. For now. Whump!Fic

Ao3 | FF.net

Happy Thanksgiving! (To those of you that celebrate it.)

Today I am thankful for having an amazing group of readers that continue to make me laugh with their comments and hang in there when it gets rough. I’ve received so many fan pieces that I’ve actually cried. I keep waiting for that one comment that’s like ‘you’re a sick twisted weirdo’ to come, but it never does. So I thank you!

Despite what this fic may say about me, I am a Christian, so there may be some…religious tones coming up. I don’t want to impress my own faith on cartoon characters, but…I just thought I make that statement so you can understand my decisions in the future.

We are officially out of the torture section of the fic, but this chapter and the next(?) are still pretty gory. But judging by the comments, that might be a good thing. (There will be some recap of the last chapter though.)

*Cracks knuckles* Time to put my blackbelt to use!

—

It was a rough day at the Agreste mansion.

Nino had risen for school far too early, after not having slept much. He showered and dressed before coming downstairs and picking through the pastries in the kitchen for breakfast. He came into the living room, being the first one there, and sat on the couch to watch the stream for an hour or so before going to classes.

Except what he saw on the screen made him drop his croissant.

Or better, what he didn’t see. Adrien and Marinette were gone.

The website showed three live videos. One of each of their cells, and one of the ‘torture chamber’. The footage of the cells had a green hue to it, being shot with night vision cameras.

But those feeds were just a dark green blankness, while the torture chamber was empty.

Afraid he might of missed something, Nino rewound the stream, checking to see what happened.

Then he caught it. First Marinette turning her camera in, and then Adrien doing the same.

So what next? He brought back to the live feed, and waited.

And waited.

Tom came in, yawning. “You’re up early.”

“Marinette and Adrien turned their cameras away.”

Tom frowned slightly, and then shrugged. “Maybe they got tired of people watching them, and they wanted some privacy.”

“I don’t think—look!”

About twenty minutes after they had moved the cameras, Adrien was being pulled back into big room. The stream to the two cells cut off completely.

“Where’s Marinette?” Tom wondered with panic.

“Isn’t life just so unfair?” Salo said, shoving Adrien into the room. “You actually made it out! But your precious Lady threw you to the dogs. That’s what she’s always done, hasn’t she? Let you take the hits, let you get hurt or straight up die? As long as she sets things right, who cares? You can take all the hits, all the trauma. You’re her meat shield. You don’t matter to her at all. You’re just a tool. A sidekick. And she left you behind, because you’re a dead weight.”

Adrien wasn’t protesting.

“Come on dude! You know Marinette cares about you! Don’t let her get inside your head!”

“They got out? Marinette’s out?” Tom breathed.

Salo snapped in front of his face. “Bah, he’s so out of it, I doubt he can even hear us.”

“Did someone put something in his food?” A man spoke from off camera.

“No, it’s a sign that he’s dying. Close to death, people get really disorientated and can hallucinate. It’s a common sight down here.”

After that, Nino didn’t really stand a chance. Dignity be damned. He sat with his head in his hands, and just cried.

Hours passed, and slowly the others in the hours came to check the stream.

Tom updated them on the development, since Nino couldn’t even speak.

Gabriel was livid. Watching Adrien be flogged, what little life he had left in him fleeting with each lash, it was unbearable.

But what could they do? There were no leads.

And where was Marinette?

Gabriel had lost his mother to old age. He remembered sitting in the hospice room, just waiting. Each breath sounding like the final pull on a bow of a cello. All he could do was wait for the symphony to end.

Despite the living room having Alya, Nino, Tom, Sabine, and Gabriel all gathered together, it was quiet. Nothing but the ticking of the clock, and the crack of a whip and a scream every minute.

Gabriel couldn’t bare watching, but he couldn’t leave the room, because he didn’t want to miss a second of his son’s heart still beating. So he took to pacing.

Any minute could be his last, and it was agony just sitting and waiting.

A little before sunset, the assembled were startled by the rapid ringing of a doorbell.

Gabriel snarled in anger. How dare someone interrupt such an important moment!

They went ignored, for a minute, before the ringing became more and more insistent. The interloper was not leaving.

With a huff, Gabriel stormed into the lobby to yell at them.

Curious, Alya, Nino, and Sabine followed, but kept in line to see the television.

“Who is it, and what do you want?” Gabriel snapped at the intercom.

“I-I’m so sorry!” A teenage boy was standing at the gate, and he was panting. “My name…is Tanner Chevalier, I think we found Ladybug!”

Gabriel’s eyes widened, but he didn’t get his hopes up. “What do you mean?! Explain yourself!”

“Yes sir! My brother and I were walking home from school through Montparnasse, and I heard someone banging on an old utility door. My brother had this hunch that it might be Ladybug or Chat Noir, and so we asked. They couldn’t talk, probably because her mouth was sewn shut! But we asked if she could knock once for yes, and she did and we couldn’t get the door opened so my brother went home to get our dad and a crowbar but I came here to tell you—“

“You came and told me first? Not the police?”

The boy curled in on himself. “Sorry, I just—everyone kind of knows that the police haven’t been doing a very good job, so I thought I’d tell you first…”

“No no, Tanner was it?”

“Yes?”

“You did good. Don’t go to the police. Anyone with any leads in the case have been killed. I will take care of this.”

“Oh!” The boy said, producing a piece of paper. “Here’s a map we made with the door on it, and our contact information, if you need to ask us anything.”

Gabriel opened the hatch so he could drop the slip in. “This is…if you’re right, I will be indebted to you.”

“My mom almost died during an akuma attack. We’ll call it even.” And at that, the boy took off again.

Sabine was right behind Gabriel at this point. “I’ll call the police,” she stated, her phone already in hand.

“Don’t.”

She blinked at him. “Don’t?! What do you mean don’t?! This is the first real lead! You can’t think that boy was lying, do you?!”

“No, I’m certain he wasn’t.”

“Then what are you doing?! My daughter—Marinette’s right behind a door in Montparnasse! We have a map!” She just groaned and unlocked her phone.

“I said don’t!” He barked. “I’ll handle this!”

Tom peered out of the room at the shouting, ready to protect his wife, while Alya and Nino looked on in horror.

Sabine, a normally pretty understanding woman, became frantic. “How the hell do you expect to do anything on your own!? Do you have an army at your disposal?!”

He grabbed her shoulders and gave her a shake. “I am the only chance we have at saving them!”

Sabine stared at him wide-eyed, before Tom rested a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Gabriel. You’d better explain yourself. Now.”

Gabriel let go of Sabine, taking a deep breath. “I…I will explain my actions. All of them. Once Adrien and Marinette are safe and in the hospital, I’ll tell everything. But right now, I just need you all to trust me.”

The other four watched him, but didn’t try anything.

Gabriel lifted the lapel of his jacket. “Nooroo?”

A little purple kwami came out, and Alya and Nino, the only others in the room that knew what a Kwami looked like, froze in shock.

“Would I be able to make two akuma, without Catalyst’s aid?”

The little kwami looked hesitatingly around at those gathered.

Gabriel snapped his fingers by him. “Focus Nooroo, we are on a time crunch.”

“Yes, sorry Master. You…you can make multiple akuma on your own, but you know they become a lot harder to control. Especially if they have different goals from each other and you. If you plan to akumatize Marinette and Adrien…they’ll most likely work together, but they will be extremely volatile…and they could potentially break free from your control.”

“That’s fine. We just need to give them the strength and means to get out. They’ll be akumatized for a hour at most.”

Nooroo nodded in understanding. “Then it should work.”

“You…” Sabine spat, with venom. “You’re Hawkmoth?!”

Gabriel sighed. “Yes, I know it comes as quite the shock but—“

Sabine didn’t let him finish that sentence before ramming her knee into his groin, and then elbowing him in the back of the head. “Does anyone else have a Miraculous in this room!?”

Nino sheepishly raised his hand, before Alya elbowed him, and he lowered it back down.

Gabriel caught his breath. “…I deserved that. I agree. And I owe you all an explanation…but we have to work quickly if we want to save them.”

Alya stepped forward, showing her necklace. “Trixx, let’s pounce!” In a flash of orange, Rena Rouge stood in Alya’s place. “As cool as Gabriel Agreste has been the last few weeks, I still don’t trust Hawkmoth.”

“Fine,” said Gabriel with a huff. “Don’t believe me. But don’t you dare try to stop me from saving my son.” He removed his tie, revealing his brooch to the room.

Tom snagged his wife and stepped back.

“Nooroo, Dark Wings Rise!” A flash of purple light took over the room, stunning the others for a moment. Then, Hawkmoth was standing in the room, in all of his unholy terror.

It was one thing to hear him confirm it, but to see the suit and the mask, that changed everything.

Sabine let out a sob.

That urged Nino to transform into Carapace too.

“Alright,” Hawkmoth began. “Rena Rouge, Carapace, I need to get to my butterflies. You are welcome to follow. Tom, Sabine, I recommend you return to the living room. I promise, I mean no harm.”

Tom steered his wife towards the living room. “I guess we have no choice. Just know we still expect that explanation, Gabriel.”

Hawkmoth nodded once, and headed to his office.

Rena Rouge and Carapace followed silently, as Gabriel activated the hidden elevator. They travelled together to the dark room filled with little white butterflies.

“I want to be angry, but my fan girl is freaking out.” Whispered Rena.

“Would one of you pull up the stream, please?” Hawkmoth spoke softly, as the window opened.

Carapace held out his shield, a screen lighting up on the inside.

Adrien cried out in pain as the stream came up.

“He’s still with us,” Hawkmoth said with a tightness in his voice. “We can’t waste anymore time.” He coaxed a butterfly to his hand, evilizing it. “Don’t go far, my little akuma, I have a friend for you.” He made another, and together they headed out the window.

“And now we wait.”

Looking back at the stream, it was then that Marinette was escorted into the room. She looked dirtier and even more exhausted, if that was possible. Her feet dark with dirt and bruises.

“That would be one lash a minute, over the ten hours you were gone...so, 600? Does that sound right?” Salo spoke.

“Technically 487, madam,” Said a voice off screen. “We broke for lunch.”

“Oh yes, I’m glad someone was taking count. You know, the science of lashings is very interesting. The more time you give the body between strikes, the more time it has to clot blood, and deal with pain. And if you spread out the lashes over more parts of the body, the less likely a person is to suffer nerve damage or organ failure. We did make sure to spritz him down with rubbing alcohol, so he shouldn’t get infected.”

“They’re in Montparnasse.” Hawkmoth announced. “I’m feeling a lot of frustration and anger, but it’s hard to pinpoint one source.”

“What do you mean?” Rena demanded.

“There’s a lot of upset people over here. And a lot in pain from the hospital.”

“But there’s got to be a stronger feeling somewhere, right?” Asked Nino. “Marinette and Adrien should be angrier and in more pain than everyone else.”

“Yes, I agree. I’ll keep looking.”

The assembled winced as Marinette was tied up too, and her flogging began.

Hawkmoth grit his teeth. “Damn them. That just brought up the anger of everyone in Paris.” He grunted in pain. “It’s overwhelming!”

“Don’t you dare give up!” Rena scolded. “You said you were our last hope! You fail, and I’ll—I’ll beat you to a pulp!” It was a weak threat, she knew.

“I’m not giving up!” Hawkmoth barked back. “I’m just—stating that it’s not as easy as it seems.” He groaned. “It’s like having thousands of people shouting at once, and trying to pick out one voice. Now, quiet. I have to focus.”

His explanation did make sense, she supposed. But Rena was still on edge, and worried that this wouldn’t be enough.

They waited, as Hawkmoth stood silently with his eyes closed. He looked increasingly nauseous as time went on.

“How many was that?” Asked Salo, from the stream.

“150, on the nose.”

“How do you feel, Little Piggy?”

Marinette’s voice was barely audible, but Hawkmoth heard it. “…I have…a bone to pick…with you…” She managed between trembling breaths.

“Oh honey…you’re not doing anything to me. Even if I just stood here, unarmed, undefended…you wouldn’t be able to hurt me. You’re too weak.”

“Why would she say that?” Said Rena, aloud. “It doesn’t answer the question, and it’s not much of a threat…”

Hawkmoth gasped. “That clever girl!”

“What? What is it? Did you find them?!”

“Not quite, but I will!” Said the man, grinning maniacally. “I wasn’t looking deep enough!”

“Deep enough?” Rena parroted.

“The catacombs.”

Deep deep underground. Sealed off from the city by forbidden entrances. Almost impossible to get to unless you knew how. Or if you were small, like a butterfly.

The two akuma found their way down through a sewer grate, and then followed the trail of pain.

Hawkmoth doubled over once they were underground.

“Mr. Agreste…?” Rena wondered carefully.

“This…these feelings…” He gasped. “Are so strong…they have to be…”

The akuma slid under the door of a small closet, and melted into the thick metal collars around both of their necks.

His eyes shot open as he was overcome with the most putrid, raw, painful anger he’d ever felt. It made him heave. Then Hawkmoth took a massive breath and stood slowly. “I’ve got them.”

“You found them!?” Rena shouted, grabbing onto his jacket.

“Yes, but we still need to get them out.”

“But…they both looked so weak. Can akumatizing them really be enough?”

“I think so.” He assured. Then with a deep breath, he gathered himself and activated the connection. “Ladybug…Chat Noir…”

On the stream, the butterfly mask was barely noticeable. Marinette sat up a little straighter.

“It’s been a long time. We’ve all missed you. I’m sorry it took me so long to find you. It wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. You’ve taken care of Paris for so long. Now let me take care of you. In exchange, I ask that you go home and get healed. No Miraculous required. What do you say?”

Marinette smiled, relieved tears flowing from her eyes.

“Yes, Hawkmoth.” And a purple smoke engulfed them both.

—

All she could see was purple. Her wounds soothed, her muscles strengthened, her exhaustion waned. It was almost like being Ladybug again. Almost.

“Lady Lacrima, named for the tears that brought me to you. I am giving you powers you are familiar with. The powers to create. Though you may summon as much as you like, you are bound to those only made of metal.”

“I can make due, Hawkmoth.”

“Grimalkin,” He addressed Adrien. “A bastardization of your hero name, I gift you a version of your old powers. With just a touch, you can destroy. It’s not as powerful as your old cataclysm, but you can use it as many times as you’d like.”

Grimalkin’s reply was a pleased growl.

“I look forward to seeing you soon.” And with that, he ended the connection.

Lady Lacrima stood, the anger that had been on a rolling boil for the last month, now hot as magma, and lethal to the touch. She offered a hand to her companion. “Are you ready Kitty?”

He purred in response, nuzzling against her hand.

“Then after you.”

With just a touch of his finger-length long claws, the door blew open.

Lady Lacrima cracked her neck. “This’ll be fun.”

Of course, when a door is down off it’s hinges, it’s bound to make a lot of noise. It was Pasolini that came to check.

The flashlight landed on them, and then soon dropped on the floor. “Don’t—Don’t come any closer! I’m warning you!”

Lady Lacrima smiled. “Oh, you hear that, kitty? He’s warning us.”

Pasolini spoke into the mic on his lapel. “We’ve been compromised! Ladybug and Chat Noir have been—“

Hawkmoth had been kind enough to replace the yo-yo on Ladybug’s waist with a whip, and with a snap she caught Pasolini around the neck, silencing him.

“Hush…we’ll let them all know we’re here soon enough…but first…we want to pay special attention to you.” She wrapped the whip around her wrist, bringing the man closer to her. “We pleaded and begged for help, we were humiliated, tortured, starved, and driven to madness, and you didn’t care. You laughed at our suffering, and willingly pinned me in place day after day as that bitch scarred me for life. So now the question is…what do we do to you, to make up for it?”

Pasolini had grabbed the end of the whip that was choking him, and pulled on it in an attempt to speak. “Let…me go…”

Lady Lacrima tilted her head to listen.

“Let me…go…and I’ll…I’ll make it worth…your while…I..I promise!”

Lady Lacrima looked at him flatly. “You promise? What would you do?”

“Money…power…protection…anything you want…I can get it for you.”

She smiled at him, pulling the whip tighter. “I want my innocence back.”

Pasolini only had a second to think before a knife materialized in her hand, and she stabbed it through his eye. The cord around his neck prevented his cry of pain from escaping.

Grimalkin let out a sound that was a cross between a laugh and a hiss.

Lady Lacrima forced the man down to his knees, and rested her foot on his shoulder. “I suppose we’ll make this quick. We have a lot of revenge to inflict.” She pressed down her heel, forcing the man to face ground, then she summoned a javelin. With a mighty heave, she sent it through his shoulder and into the floor, pinning him like an insect.

Grimalkin chattered, circling him like a jungle cat.

Another javelin and another pin. Then she released her whip. “I’m sorry, love. You’ve been so patient. Why don’t you finish him off?”

Grimalkin let out a sickening snarl before brandishing his claws.

“What are you doing?!” Pasolini asked, his voice hoarse and full of terror. “Please!”

But Lady Lacrima and Grimalkin were beyond mercy. There was no compassion, no hesitation, no empathy.

Only dark horrible thoughts that could only stew in the minds of tormented souls.

Though he only had use of one hand, Grimalkin tore into the flesh of his tormentor, pulling out muscle and tissue with ease.

Pasolini screamed like a little child, blood splattering over everything.

As the blood landed on Lady Lacrima, her suit sizzled and stained, giving her red spots.

Finally, the man’s suffering came to an end when Grimalkin placed a boot on his rib cage, took hold of his spine, and ripped it out of his body.

Lady Lacrima petted him like he was an innocent kitten. “Hawkmoth didn’t give you a baton. Guess you’ll just have to use that.”

Grimalkin bared his fangs in a smile.

Another flashlight shone down the hall, the figures in shadow. But Salo’s voice pierced through the darkness.

“This bunker is off limits. You have three seconds to run before we open fire!”

Lady Lacrima and Grimalkin shared a loving look, and then they turned and walked towards the light.

“Three…”

Salo could hear something scraping on the wall, and see sparks flickering.

As the intruders approached the group, Salo could hear some of her men gasping in shock and fear. There were only three of them between her and the intruders.

“T-two…” she continued to count down, pretending that she wasn’t afraid of what was only a few feet ahead. They stepped into the light, and Salo swallowed thickly.

Lady Lacrima wore an all black suit, insulated with plates to look like armor. She wore a red domino mask, just as she had as Ladybug, but it was broken up with thick black lines running down her face, resembling her namesake. As if she was a reversed Ladybug, blood red spots splattered over her body. A whip instead of a yo-yo dragged across the floor.

Beside her, Grimalkin stalked like a predator. His suit was similar to what it had been as Chat Noir, with cat ears on his head and a belt fashioned as a tail. But instead of small claws at his finger tips, his fingers were coated in metal, making long, razor sharp blades. His bum arm was strapped to his chest in a way resembling a straight jacket. Instead of friendly feline eyes, he had glowing red eyes like a beast, and fangs that looked absolutely lethal.

“One! Open fire!”

Grimalkin darted behind Lady Lacrima, as a shield materialized in front of her. The bullets hailed down on them, drilling against the shield and ricocheting back at them.

“Careful!” Salo demanded over the gunfire, though she could barely be heard.

Lady Lacrima walked over to one side of the hall, leaning one side of the shield against it.

Then the gunfire started to subside as they ran out of bullets.

“Hold your fire,” Salo demanded, withdrawing her handgun. Carefully, she stepped forward, and once she was close enough, she kicked the shield away…only to find a hole in the wall.

Then one of the men behind her screamed.

She spun to face him, finding Grimalkin coiled on him like a snake, his claws in his face and his fangs digging into his neck.

Salo took aim, but a whip took hold of her wrist and pulled. The shot meant for Grimalkin hit one of her men in the leg instead. The follow through with the whip brought Salo around, unbalanced, to face Lady Lacrima who held a knife.

But Salo was a fighter. She didn’t get where she was on looks alone. She grabbed the wrist with the knife, watching the blade inch closer and closer to her face.

Fighting dirty, the only way she fought, she kicked Lady Lacrima in the side of knee, bringing her to the ground. Then she took the opportunity to run, leaving her last henchman to cover her escape.

Salo escaped back into the torture chamber, where the other ten men in her group were assembled, preparing the next session.

“Arm yourselves! Ladybug and Chat Noir have been akumatized and they have no mercy!”

That was the only warning they got before Grimalkin swept into the room, feral and dripping with blood.

“Jesus Christ!” Someone shouted, before opening fire.

Grimalkin ducked and weaved through the room, never letting himself be a target. He locked onto the man that had flogged him the day before and smiled with sinister intent.

“Oh hell no!” The man shouted in protest. But Grimalkin was too fast, and jammed his claws up the man’s nose and pulled forward.

With Grimalkin standing still for the briefest moment, another man with a full auto rifle sighted up.

A red knife tore through his hand before he could get the shot in. The man next to him yanked the weapon away, and took aim at Grimalkin.

Unfortunately for him, Grimalkin was already finished with the poor sod, and leaped at the next available target. The man pointing a rifle at him.

Six shots fired, none hitting Grimalkin, and all hitting Harken, who was sitting behind the computer. Grimalkin grabbed the barrel of the weapon, and snarled. The gun exploded on the man’s shoulder and Grimalkin finished the job.

Lady Lacrima went head to head with a huge man wearing brass knuckles. Each swing of his fists whistled, as she danced around just out of reach. Another man with a lead pipe joined the fight, attacking from behind. But the akuma had greatly enhanced Lady Lacrima’s speed and perception. She leaned back to avoid the blow, and summoned a machete on the upswing.

Cutting through flesh and bone was not easy, but she sure made it look like it. Two pairs of arms, one brandishing a pipe and the other brass knuckles, clattered to the floor.

The room filled with blood curdling screams.

Lady Lacrima moved onto the next closest victim. A bald man behind the camera. As she made eye contact with him, he held out his arms, defenseless.

“Just end me,” he begged.

She stared at him, remembering the pathetic sob story he had concocted earlier when he dragged her back. As an akuma, she found it hard to believe, but decided not to waste the energy. “Make sure you get all this,” she told him, gesturing to the camera, before racing off to do more work.

While all of this chaos was going on, Salo sat under the table in the corner, the safe with the Miraculous in her lap. “Come on…come on…” she muttered to it. “1680, that’s the combo! Work damn it!”

But in all of Marinette’s frantic slamming just an hour before, the lock was jammed.

She looked up to check the state of her men. One was being eviscerated by Grimalkin, while Lady Lacrima strangled one with her whip and had another in the chest with a katana.

It was an absolute bloodbath, and it happened in only a few minutes.

She slammed the safe down in one final attempt to get to the Miraculous.

But it was too late.

A bloody hand enclosed on her ankle, and dragged her out. Salo looked up to glowing red eyes, wide and frantic and bouncing with untapped rage.

She would not go down without a fight. And thankfully, she still had a gun on her hip. She whipped it out and aimed right at his face.

“Let me go, you beast! Or I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.”

Grimalkin opened his jaw, his fangs glistening with blood. He let out an inhuman snarl, and lunged.

Salo pulled the trigger.

The gun jammed.

But Grimalkin wasn’t about to give her a swift death. He grabbed the hand with the gun and pinned it to the floor above her head. Then he growled, activating his power, and a shooting pain took over her hand as she screamed in pain. He knocked her glasses off as he leapt, and crouched next to Lady Lacrima.

“End of the road.” She said, her face blank and emotionless.

Salo pulled her hand, or rather her wrist, to her chest. “How the hell did he find you?”

Lady Lacrima shrugged. “You must have gotten sloppy.”

“Or you gave him clues! I should have killed you weeks ago!”

“You should have,” Lady Lacrima agreed. “You should have let me die with compassion in my heart. But you didn’t. You created a monster. Two of them.”

Salo spat at her. “You’re a product of Hawkmoth! I only avenged my Eddy!”

“After all this, you’re still justifying your heinous actions. You’re so lost in your depravity, that you can’t even see how low you’ve sunk.”

“So what now?” She sneered. “Now that the roles are reversed, what are you going to do?”

Lady Lacrima reach out and caressed the woman’s face, leaving a smear of blood on her cheek. “The roles are far from reversed, Salo.” She stated, holding out her arms. A buster sword, one bigger than any human could wield, materialized in her hands. “I’m more powerful than you could ever hope to be. And you…there’s no punishment on Earth that befits you.”

“Will you kill me then?”

“That depends…do you believe in God?”

Salo scoffed. “What are you, my Nonna? Go ahead, kill me. Let your God punish me.”

Lady Lacrima adjusted the sword in her hand. “He’ll get his turn.”

Salo’s lip trembled as she attempted to scoot away.

“It’s funny. Without those glasses, you look almost human. And all this time, I thought you were a soulless machine. But if you have a soul…you can burn in hell.” And she slammed the blade down, down through flesh and bone and into the cement, separating her legs from her torso.

The woman screamed in agony, clawing at the ground to escape.

Claws ripped into her stomach, pulling her intestines out and spilling them on the floor.

“What do you think Salo? Should we leave you like this?”

Salo didn’t answer, only squealed and cried out as she writhed on the floor like a worm. Her vision was blurred, but she could see the lights above her head.

Then there was a silhouette, holding out long claws. Claws that pulsed and churned with dark energy. They came closer and closer to her face.

It burned. Hotter than any fire she’d felt before. She heard her skin sizzling and cracking.

Then there was nothing.

—

Lady Lacrima looked down at her tormentor’s remains. A head turning to dust, a torso disemboweled…and legs separated from the rest.

She wished she could have done more.

A purple mask lit up over her face. “My dear, you are free. Find your way to the surface, and I will have an ambulance waiting for you. Once you are with the paramedics, I will take back the akuma.”

“No.”

Lady Lacrima felt his fear. “No? What do you mean, no?”

“Paris has gotten lazy with Ladybug and Chat Noir around. And in our absence, things have only gotten worse.”

“You’re not well, Marinette. And Adrien was almost…you need help.”

“And we’ll get it. But we have business to attend too. Thank you for the akuma, I’ll be taking it now. Goodbye.” And she cut the connection.

The bald man who had pissed himself behind the camera trembled as Lady Lacrima looked to him.

“I am Lady Lacrima. This is Grimalkin. We seek Justice, and Justice will be what we get.”

Grimalkin pounced at the camera, destroying it with his touch.

The man skittered over to Salo’s torture table and grabbed a flashlight and the lockbox with the Miraculous. “Here! There’s—There’s arrows on the walls to lead you to the surface! Just follow the trail, and you should come up in an alleyway in Montparnasse!”

Lady Lacrima took the flashlight. “I thank you. I knew it would be smart to spare you.”

The man cried like a child. “I don’t—I don’t deserve it!”

“You will call the police, and escort them down here.”

“Yes ma’am!”

Then she turned to Grimalkin. “Would you be so kind as to open the safe, kitty?”

He just dragged his claw over the lock, and the lid popped open. She took the Miraculous and put them in his suit pocket. “Hold on to these for us, please? I don’t think I could bare to let Tikki see me like this.”

Grimalkin growled in agreement.

Then with a solemn nod to the remaining henchman, she took Grimalkin’s hand, and together, they left.

The hall was just as long and dark, but with the flashlight, she could see the endless tunnels she had wandered earlier. “I tried, kitty. But it’s a maze down here. We’re in the catacombs, you know? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I didn’t want Salo to overhear and move us. But I guess Hawkmoth got my hint.”

Grimalkin let out a happy chirp.

“Well, we don’t have to worry about that anymore. Come on, we’re almost there!”

They came to a ladder that led to a manhole cover. With her enhanced strength, popping it off was a cinch.

It was night now, and a thunderstorm had rolled in. Rain poured as they climbed out of the tunnel and out to the street. Paris was a blur in the torrent. Lights flickered and sounds of the city interrupted by the slapping of water.

Both teens stood, letting the rain rush over them like a healing shower.

Marinette looked at her partner, and let out a breath. Exhausted and relieved, she leaned on his chest.

He wrapped an arm around her showers and turned his face to the sky.

Justice would reign, blood would be shed. But for the moment, they just stood.

Just being free.

Marinette and Adrien being Akumatized by @raealexie

Akuma and rain art by me :)

#longest night #fanfiction #ml #miraculous ladybug #chat noir #ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #ladynoir #adrienette

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hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 4 years ago

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November 8, 2020

My weekly roundup of things that are happening. Topics include another update on my recovery, energy R&D priorities, and the recent election.

Update on my Recovery V

The major news this week is that I am back at my Orenco Station apartment, after having been with my Mom for a few weeks to recuperate.

The news this week has been mostly good. I’ve continued with some special exercises almost every day, and I find that if I skip exercising one day, I will regret it the next. Yesterday I went to WinCo with the walker, a trip that took a bit over an hour. Today I went around the Intel loop, a walk that takes about an hour and involves one major street crossing, without the walker. Although these were successful, they tired me out and required more care with each step than I am accustomed to. Part of the issue may simply be atrophy from not having walked recently. At any rate, I expect to resume regular walking now.

On Friday I went into Kaiser for some tests, and they found sodium and cholesterol to be within normal range, except HDL was a bit low. One of the nurses took me off fluorinef and put me on a schedule to get off gabapentin soon. So far there are no side effects, and once the gabapentin is done with weekend, the only remaining prescribed medication will be linosopril to keep blood pressure low. Speaking of which, blood pressure also seems to be mostly normal range, though on some occasions it still trends high.

Unless there is any more significant news, this will be the last of the weekly updates. I anticipate continuing to make a slow recovery over the next couple months. While the recovery has been slow, at least it has been in the right direction. By now too I don’t expect any more major news.

An Energy R&D Agenda

This week I continued on a longer term project to determine what the appropriate investments in R&D for energy technology are. Needless to say, this is a difficult and controversial area where I will have to tread carefully. Still, we should be saying something about what the right investments are, and that’s what I am working on.

One point I decided upon is that, whatever methodology I use to evaluate technology investments, the methodology should be consistent across technologies. This doesn’t guarantee the right answer, but at least it allows me to give reasons when I say that Technology X is a better investment than Technology Y. I’ll be able to point to papers that say X is expected to be cheaper, or the resource base in larger, or some other objective metric. I am settling on using levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) to measure costs. Even though this metric has its flaws and limitations, at least figures are readily available across technologies.

I’ll need a model to evaluate the potential penetration of a technology. For now I am assuming that a new technology displaces everything that is within the resource base and more expensive. The time variable is important as well, which includes both how long it will take to do R&D and how fast a technology moves when it is ready for the market. I haven’t settled on a good strategy for that yet.

The optimal solution for dealing with climate change is some combination of nuclear, solar, and wind power R&D, as well as insuring deployment where these technologies are already developed. Sorry to give a boring answer, since this is what most analysts have come up with, but it is fairly obvious looking at the numbers that this will be what emerges, as opposed to some combination of algal biodiesel, fusion power, and hydrothermal sea vents. But I do plan on evaluating the more exotic options as well. What we hope to find is that there is an opportunity for R&D into a more exotic option, even if it’s not going to be the “big” solution, because it has a good cost/benefit ratio.

Maybe next week I’ll have something more definitive to say, but this is a big project and I’m not making any promises.

Thoughts on the Recent Election

As you well know, the United States had a Presidential election last week. Joe Biden looks like the likely winner and has been declared such by most outlets now, though there is still a chance (5% according to this site as of this writing) that Donald Trump could re-emerge. Democrats are likely to take the house, and either Republicans are likely to take the Senate or it will be a tie there.

I voted for Jo Jorgenson, who of course won’t win, and I would prefer that Biden be elected among the two major candidates. The main reason is my wife’s immigration situation, where we are less likely to run into trouble under a Biden Administration, though we are not too likely to run into trouble either way. Were it not for this personal consideration, I would regard it a wash between the major candidates.

I would like to see the major initiatives under the next administration be speeding up technological development, increasing the birth rate, and increasing housing production, among many other initiatives as well. I can’t fault the major parties too much for not having solutions on these fronts, because I don’t have clear solutions either, but I can fault them for not having the issues on the radar or for pursuing counterproductive policies.

It may seem like I neglected climate change, which I discussed above and that Democrats have as a key priority next year, but I haven’t. Increasing the rate of technological development, especially nuclear power or renewables for electricity and synfuel production, is necessary for solving climate change. Putting a price on carbon is also necessary. I can give the Democrats some credit for at least taking this subject seriously, but the solution they propose is so round-about and has so many ancillary priorities that I don’t expect it to be very effective. Then again, such is the nature of any political solution.

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ardenttheories · 5 years ago

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With the current update, a few pretty little thoughts have been rumbling around in my head. I definitely think that my previous theory that Dirk isn’t actually the Ultimate Self holds a little more weight with these past updates, particularly when you consider that his biggest hangup as explained by Brain Ghost Dirk is an incredible Destruction of Heart - evidence that he’s still Destroying his own sense of Self and Identity by declaring that none of them can ever have happy endings and that, ultimately, they have no capacity to be normal.

How can you be the Ultimate Self when you’re so throroughly destroying your Self?

But that isn’t what today is about. Not entirely, anyway. No, what we’re focusing on today is a beautiful nugget of thought I had some three-ish days ago, following along the lines of what a Prince of Heart is.

Destroyers of Heart. Killers of the Self. At their worst, they eradicate all Individuality, all Identity - they create Splinters quite simply by fracturing their own Soul and splitting it up into itty bitty pieces. They take the core of a person and they snap it, crush it up, make something else and leave it behind.

They take the very concept of a person, and they erase it from existence (as seen with Lil Cal, because we can easily say that in making Cal’s soul the individual components - Caliborn, Gamzee, Equius, AR - lose their Individuality, the things that make their existences unique, and are therefore erased entirely in place of this being that is Cal) or displace it and remove the identity (as seen with Aranea; if Brain Ghost Dirk had completed his removal of her soul, where would she have gone? Wherever she ended up wouldn’t have been her, and her whole sense and understanding of herself would have changed - or, perhaps, she simply would have been eradicated from existence).

Of course, what we have to consider as well is that a Prince of Heart’s Splinter, by warrant of being a piece of the Prince’s original soul, is also a Prince of Heart. At least in theory.

We also have to consider that the original Prince is also the Splinter’s Self; they’re connected by Soul, fractured as it may be, and while their piece if uniquely their own and can develop as they exist, that tie never actually fades. This is why Dirk can, as his “Ultimate” Self, superimpose himself on the will of ever Splinter and take away their narrative importance. He’s the original, the strongest, and they are all simply parts of him that he can freely use.

Except, of course, that we have one Splinter that isn’t wholly Dirk. One who has found his way into the unreality of the Candy timeline, and secured a small piece of the narrative for himself.

Brain Ghost Dirk, for all intents and purposes, is as much a product of Jake as he is a Splinter of Dirk. Dirk is the basis, the foundation; but only so far as Jake perceives Dirk to be. Funny, how this Dirk isn’t nearly as maniacal as Ultimate Dirk. There’s more a sense of grounded acceptance than anything else, less of a hatred towards Jake as a symbiotic relation to him. There’s moments where he maybe reveals more than he wants to:

DIRK: People like us don’t get happy endings.

JAKE: Is...is that really how dirk felt the whole gosh darned time?

DIRK: It doesn’t matter.

And, yes, this could be him brushing Jake off, a facile remark to quickly sway along the conversation towards something more relevant, but the next panel seems to hold a distinct awkwardness. Something that holds more of a confession than a callous slide along.

This Dirk is Dirk as Jake remembers him to be. He even admits this to some degree - that he doesn’t always know which parts of him are Dirk thoughts and which are Jake thoughts. Nor does he seem to be entirely proud of the fact that it is a Dirk though. It’s not a consensus of “this is right and you should listen”, it’s “yeah, sometimes I struggle with figuring out which parts of me are you and which parts are the big man upstairs”.

He’s definitely still undeniably Dirk. He says nothing matters because they’re gods, because the world comes first at the expense of all else, even personal happiness, and being a hero means making those sacrifices.

But he also absolutely flirts with Jake the literal first moment he can - “Not to say the sloppy drunk look isn’t working for me, because it absolutely is” - and doesn’t that just go entirely against what Dirk does to Jake in Meat? What happened to “I’ll never let you hurt me like that again”?

He’s absolutely still Jake enough, too, to see everything in Candy as still oddly relevant. He doesn’t appear and immediately try to disappear, to make himself dissipate because he exists in an irrelevant timeline. Nor does he even suggest that this is a split timeline - that something here isn’t right and that they need to find a way to the true ending.

What does he say instead?

DIRK: We’ve had this conversation before, dingus. I’m you. And I’m me. But I only exist because of your powers. The fact that I’m manifesting here, in the new universe, outside of a dream, is evidence in itself for just how absolutely boned you are.

DIRK: What are you doing? There’s a war happening. All of your friends are out there fighting, and you’re just here, what...dusting?

DIRK: Taking care of a house that nobody actually uses?

DIRK: You’ve been a useless sack of shit for two decades. I’m here to kick your ass back into active duty.

All things that suggest that this Dirk sees the Candy timeline as something Real and Relevant, is acting on Jake’s own personal desire to do something. This isn’t a Dirk that sees things as some wider game, or believes that there’s a point to plot and relevancy.

He’s disconnected from Ultimate Dirk enough to host none of Ultimate’s memories and plenty of his own, and he’s enough of Jake to be mired in the unimportance of a long-dead timeline. It’s completely likely that he’s locked out of everything to do with the Meat timeline and that his existence is just another show of how immediately irrelevant things appear in Candy (he is, after all, a very irrelevant Dirk) - and that means he’s got no idea what Ultimate Dirk is trying to do. Connected enough to think like him, yes, but it’s also implied that Dirk has always sort of thought like this, that it’s not unique to Ulimate.

He’s Dirk enough to know that sacrifices have to be made and that being a hero means not being happy, but Jake enough, it seems, to try edging towards that sort of better ending anyway.

So, lets recap. We have a Dirk that isn’t wholly Dirk, who thinks enough like him but is still contained within the irrelevancy of Candy and not actively flipping shit about it. A Dirk who, by all intents and purposes, is still very much a Prince of Heart with suitable Princely powers, as seen from his time within the Game. A Dirk with the ability to Destroy Souls and the Self as much as any other Dirk, who is tied to the wellbeing of Jake English.

Allow me to posit the idea, then, that Brain Ghost Dirk ends up being our hero.

What else could possibly Destroy the “Ultimate” Self? Only another Prince of Heart could possibly be able to completely erase all imprints of Ultimate from the timeline. (Of course that isn’t true, but it’s the most poetic and, I find, the most satisfying conclusion to come across). It’s literally what they’re made to do; to Destroy the Self and all it contains even down to the infinitesimal components.

Another Dirk, one gifted with narrative relevancy, allowed to flourish in this irrelevant timeline, already pushing towards plot without going too damn far. One with all the powers of Dirk but - so far - without the overbearing Epilogue Dirk mentality. One that’s more aligned with what we knew of Dirk before all of his corrupted development, and who will likely continue to be this way since most of him is founded on what Jake perceives Dirk to be. One who can’t suddenly go too far because he can only know what Jake knows.

This would bring that old prophecy full circle as well. That one where Jake was meant to be the hero all along, the one to take down the big bad. Lets suggest, then, that Brain Ghost Dirk - as a facet of Jake - does the deed. It’d be poetic both in that sense, and in the sense that Dirk Destroying himself is the ultimate show of a True Prince of Heart.

He’d have reason to do it, too. Jake’s goals are essentially his goals, and he pushes Jake to do what he’s always wanted to do but could never achieve alone. If the two timelines somehow came together, and Jake was made aware of what’d happened in Meat and who Ultimate Dirk was... There’s a chance that, combined, they’d think Ultimate Dirk is bullshit enough to need taking down.

Or, even better. Since Brain Ghost Dirk seems not to care about the irrelevancy of this world, lets imagine he does find a relatively happy ending. One where he eventually becomes aware of “Ultimate” Dirk, or where Ultimate poses some sort of threat. As the one Dirk who’d found a happy ending, however relevant or irrelevant it might be, he might not be so willing to give it up.

Because, hopefully, he’s enough of Jake to eventually see everything that Ultimate Dirk is doing and think it’s an unjust cause rather than a necessary one.

It would, of course, also allow the potential for redemption. A Prince of Heart doesn’t have to actively destroy the Soul or kill it, either. That’s just one incredibly powerful, incredibly terrifying prospect of the Classpect. Brain Ghost Dirk could easily just Destroy the “Ultimate” Self. Strip Dirk back to bare basics and force him to live through the consequences of everything he’s done, confiscate the narrative and ensure that Ultimate is no longer an issue.

He doesn’t have to Destroy everything about the main Dirk. Just the parts that are making him a villain - the same way Dirk did to himself in order to justify becoming Ultimate in the first place.

So, while this latter part was a little more fanciful, I still think the core idea remains. Brain Ghost Dirk is still a Prince of Heart, and Princes of Heart are wired to Destroy the Self. The Ultimate Self isn’t spared from this - if anything, it’s even more at risk. It’s the conglomeration of all Selves, the perfect (supposedly) unity of Identity. A Prince of Heart can have a field day with what that means.

(The way Ultimate Dirk already has, if you consider that he’s just overwritten every other Self with his own Identity rather than become all of them in one unique bit. But again that’s me being highly skeptical that a Prince of Heart can even achieve true Ultimate Self status. Something like it, maybe, or what they think it means to be Ultimate, almost definitely. But to actually be the perfected, unique, wonderous amalgamation of Selves living in harmony? Hell no.).

He could very much be our final hero at the end of it, or at least work towards amping Jake up to that goal. I would assume that’s why he’s suddenly relevant again, why he’s managed to slip through the net. And how perfectly ironic would it be, at the end, if Dirk’s taken down by one of the Splinters he always said felt suffocating? One of the Splinters he’s told us, directly, that he’s no longer afraid of?

#long post//#ardenttheories #homestuck^2 spoilers #homestuck meta #prince of heart #I'll include this here just in case. It's an interesting thing of nothing else and could apply to Princes of Heart in the future #brain ghost dirk

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