#some people are just so draining like i cannoy

[fulloflovebees]

Some people just have exhausting personalities

[twrlvepercent]

nice work, kid

post-hoco / pre-infinity war (the sweet spot)

read on ao3

reposting one of my sweeter fluff fics because the angst fic i'm writing now is draining my happiness

———

A young boy is lost in the stampede of terrified people, fleeing the Stark Expo at the sight of armed robots.

The boy tightens his plastic Iron Man mask, the quiet act rolling back his fear underneath the safety of his hero’s identity.

The crowd has mostly cleared, a few stragglers still finding the exit, and the five-year-old boy is unable to find any sign of his aunt or uncle. He turns around at the sound of robotic joints and sees the haunting, metallic eyes that would remain in his mind for years.

As Iron Man would, he raises a hand to fend off the much taller robot. It falls to pieces under a repulsor blast and the boy jumps back, confused and startled.

The boy's confusion only lasts a second. Iron Man himself glances down at him for just a moment, needed elsewhere.

———

"Nice work, kid."

"Nice work, kid," Tony says, spinning his rolling chair around to face Peter as he enters. "Heard about your decathlon win."

"How?" Peter leaves his backpack by the door and joins Tony at the lab table. "I literally just got back."

He shrugs. "Word travels." Under Peter's questioning stare, Tony shrugs. "If I can't be there, Happy fills me in. That's why the divider goes up."

Peter scoffs. "His motivations are different than I thought."

"First of all, Hap doesn't think you're annoying," Tony says, nonchalant. His next words are lower—Peter only picked up on it because of his enhanced hearing. "I believe the actual word he used was 'insufferable.'"

"I must be hanging out with you too much then, Mr. Stark."

"Uncalled for. I didn't even know you were capable of sass." Tony points a screwdriver accusingly at him. He uses it to point to a metal shelf across the room. "Just for that, you have to grab the spares box from the shelf."

"Fine, fine," Peter says, hands up in surrender. He finishes tightening a screw and gets up, steadying his chair.

"Surprised you haven't already talked my ear off about it. Nationals or not, the team tends to come up a lot."

Peter goes uncharacteristically quiet for a moment and the only sound in the lab is that of paper rustling. "I definitely think that talking about decathlon will have to wait, then."

Tony raises a brow, his project losing his attention as he watches Peter sift through a box of papers. Peter studies one carefully and smiles. "I cannoy believe you keep fanart," he says, a teasing tone underlining his voice. “Don’t you take pride in being, well, rated R?”

"Children are my most loyal fanbase." Tony leans back in his chair and Peter brings the box to the table. He grabs the paper Peter held, tracing his finger over messy lines, colored with cheap crayons. "Most of them are too young for mommy to explain why I'm a terrible person."

Normally, a comment like that would've sent Peter into an illustrated, seven-hour-long lecture on the wonders of Iron Man-slash-Tony Stark. This time, it only gets him a disapproving glare.

In a moment, Peter's attention is on something else. He pulls another drawing from the box, holding it like it’s an award. "Is this one your favorite? Maybe even fridge-worthy?" Peter grins, his words rushed with excitement.

The picture itself could only be interpreted as an Iron Man drawing because of the crude red and gold stick figure that stood next to a much shorter stick figure. The coloring isn't nearly accurate but Tony chalked that up to age.

"You know, picking a favorite drawing has got to be harder than picking a favorite kid."

Peter smirks. "Gotta say, if you pick this as your favorite drawing, you're essentially picking a favorite kid." He flips the paper over and points to a rough signature in the corner. "I did this."

"You did not," Tony says, reaching for the paper in disbelief. There, right on the back, is written Peter Parker, both P's backward. Five-year-old Peter had written thank yu under his name. "Who's Yu?" Tony jokes. "Why do I have to thank him?"

Peter rolls his eyes. "I think I sent this after you, y'know, saved my life."

"Germany?" Tony breathes a laugh. "I think we should sign you up for some drawing lessons. Definitely spelling classes."

"This was way, way, way before Germany! It was at, uh, Stark Expo." Peter pulls out his phone, fingers flying over the keyboard as he searches for a video. "I was five or six."

"You're just now telling me?" Tony asks, incredulous. "I've heard you mention more facts about Legos I think I would ever need and you're just now telling me that I saved your life when you were five."

"It never came up."

"Neither did Legos!"

"Found it!" Peter declares, turning his phone around for Tony to see. The video buffers for a split second but that still is all he needs to see for him to remember.

That kid scared him. Made him wonder how many other kids got hurt thinking they could be Iron Man.

Now that he knows it’s Peter, the video is different. The telltale curls beneath the mask, the surprise when the robot got blasted.

"Good to see your reckless trait didn't spontaneously generate," Tony mutters, almost as a note to himself. "That kid—you—nearly gave me a heart attack that night so I guess it's also good to know you didn't need to be bitten by a spider to do that." Tony eyes the teen critically. “Spider bite really only made you hear good, huh?”

“Among other things.” The video ends and Peter looks back at the drawing wistfully. "Well, thanks for not letting me kill myself."

"Someone's gotta look out for the Iron Man ripoffs."

"And I'm sure 'Yu' does a great job with that."

Tony laughs. When Peter leaves to go back to his apartment, Tony looks for an open spot on the fridge. With a Spider-Man magnet, he hangs up Peter’s old drawing, knowing it’s the one drawing that really matters.

[metalempire]

so for another original topic i havent done to death already i’m going to talk about how xenoblade 2 isnt as good as the original. big shocker i know but stay with me here. alright so now all the anime losers with shit taste have left that means only people who’ve played xc1 and have taste remain, with that out of the way i think its safe to say that no one is spoiled massively by knowing fiora dies in the like the first hour of the game not too long after joining the party. now this scene is one of many great ones in the game, and one of the best at that, the song “engage the enemy” is practically made for this scene and honestly this game’s soundtrack dwarfs its’ sequel pretty handily there too. the execution of this scene is what sets it up so well though, fiora isn’t expected to die initially since she’s a playable character and fits nicely into your earlygame party trio, with shulk as the break setup and support, reyn as the tank and toppler, and fiora with the quick arts that play off of that topple. so losing her permanently as that particular party member and playstyle is already a blow you feel as the player, but also isn’t expected from the typical rpg. not only this but the story up to this point and even the gameplay has been building up the monado and its’ ability to defeat the mechon, as you never play any situation where you lose holding it, it eventually damages dunban due to its’ power, but that just sells you more on how incredible the monado must be, and then shulk gets it and can use it perfectly and gets visions to avoid lethal situations. the monado is now yours as a player, and it’s getting even stronger and revealing new powers to you. the first boss appears and rather than being a demonstration of the monado’s power by asking you to use what you’ve learned so far with it in conjunction with your arts, instead the game does something you don’t expect (again) by making the first boss a forced loss scenario, where metal face cannoy be damaged by the monado, and wrecks your shit for a minute or two. you are made to feel as powerless and helpless about the situation as shulk, reyn and dunban do, and you are forced to watch in the same state as they are when fiora’s brave stance is ultimately quashed and she is brutally killed. you see the vision of her defeat, but to add insult to injury, you see her being killed, the blood on metal face’s claws, and the mechon going like scavengers to her corpse, while the party is unable to do anything about it. it’s heartwrenching as a scene and leaves an impact like no other on the player and the characters. 

now to sort of emphasise what this scene does so well in shock value and using gameplay and story together to immerse you in the events unfolding, lets look at a similar scene with a somewhat similar outcome from xenoblade 2, the true forced loss scenario of that game, jin’s awakening and the subsequent capturing of pyra/mythra. this scene takes place later on in the game, and is the main goal of the antagonists anyway, so seeing it as a possibility was always in the player’s mind, but also that the game itself has complete dissonance in its story and gameplay. boss fights like akhos’ first encounter play out in the gameplay that you win, then you seemingly lose in the cutscene, all that effort being meaningless. you drain a boss’ health to zero, but the resulting story acts like the gameplay just didn’t happen. what should’ve been a forced loss scenario doesnt play out properly and doesn’t catch you off guard properly like with fiora dying, but just seems like the game doesn’t know what it wants you to feel. an earlier example is defeating morag in gormott, then the party flees her rather than beating her like they did in gameplay. the game does a poor job of setting up a proper outcome based on gameplay, if you lose in these fights you have to do them over, even if the outcome in cutscene is the same as if you hadn’t beaten them. so when jin presents a forced loss scenario, its not built up properly, doesn’t subvert expectations as much, on account of you expecting that regardless of how well you do in a fight, there’s a good chance the gang loses anyway, so when jin just transforms out of nowhere and overpowers the gang and expositions his abilities to you in real time, rather than leaving it a mystery like metal face does, you don’t feel as helpless since you know his powers are just anime bullshit and that the game keeps defeating you all the time in cutscenes anyway. the aegis’ strength doesn’t get as built up as the monado since the game keeps tearing it down in every cutscene and downplays it, only using mythra’s awakening in uraya to really show it off. there’s also the lack of an impact in regards to the fact that losing pyra and mythra is more of an inconvenience than anything, and you know that you’ll get them back since that becomes an established goal, and that you don’t lose the main character’s weapon, or the heroine(s) of the story. 

fiora returning as a mechon hybrid is a genuine surprise since you see her die outright early on and the story is about avenging her death. again, the player is less involved in the scene where fiora dies, rather than with the scene where the aegis is taken from rex, since the game has built dissonance rather than harmony between gameplay and story, and its presentation of its antagonist is harder to take as seriously when he’s expositing his fucking powers to you as he uses them to effortlessly win, when previously akhos did the same thing with obrona throughout his encounters in uraya and explaining specifically why You Can’t Beat me, as opposed to xord and metal face who, once they speak, allude to the fact that You Can’t Beat Me, but leave it as a mystery for the player and party to unravel instead, making learning their weakness and defeating them feel more satisfying than getting a sudden power upgrade to match the anime bullshit. i mean, what sounds more possible to overcome with the right knowledge of said ability, having the blood of homs to prevent the monado from damaging the face units, or Literally Being Able To Manipulate All Elementary Particles AND Move Past The Speed Of Light. xenoblade 2 just becomes more absurd than the original, and as a result its story really has less of an overall impact on the player experiencing it, and doesn’t truly immerse them in that experience. 

also vandham dying has like zero impact on the player compared to fiora. fiora had a genuine spot in the team up to that point, whereas vandham not only gets his blade taken by rex later on, but he cant resonate other blades anyway, so he has only one option, so he’s already outclassed by rex as your attacker, since anchor shot is just that valuable earlygame. and by this point you already had a full team good to go. so his death is not a good counter to this post either, since it barely has any impact and outside of roc and the garfont mercenaries side content, it is never acknowledged in the story ever again and has barely any bearing on the rest of the plot, as well as being followed up by a fucking Mythra Being A Weird Tsundere scene that gives some strong fucking whiplash