#sorry if this makes zero sense i’m really bad at reading back what i’ve written ._. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

heraldofzaun · 4 years ago

Text

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'

42 notes · View notes

unforth · 3 years ago

Text

A Non-Definitive and Certainly Incomplete List of the Differences Between the Qianqiu/Thousand Autumns Danmei Novel and the Donghua

@blacktigersprings commented on one of my Thousand Autumn Liveblog posts, asking about the differences between the donghua thus far, compared to the book - they'd seen the 16 episodes, but hadn't read it yet. After I wrote down what I could remember I was like...ya know what, I should just make all this into a post.

This is non-exhaustive. I am a tired person with a bad memory and a lot going on, so I am sure I forgot things. I'm gonna ping @baoshan-sanren since they're the main person I know who is in Thousand Autumns fandom also, and I'm willing to guarantee they will think of things I didn't, and also probably be able to correct me if I mixed anything up. I'll try to edit this based on new info, if I have the time, and I might post it as meta on AO3? I did that with my list of differences between CQL and MDZS and people found it helpful so...yeah. I'll add a link if a do.

Note that all posts like this rely to some extent on interpretation; what I write reflects my interpretation and understanding of events (...to the extent I remember them...) and others may have read/watched the same sequences and reached different conclusions. I've made specific notes where I think I'm raising a point that's more subjective than others.

This contains spoilers for all 16 episodes of the donghua, and for the equivalent parts of the novel. I did my best not to put in novel spoilers for past when the donghua ends, but there are allusions to subsequent events.

Anyway - vaguely in chronological order of when they happen?

(read more)

Overall, the basic premises of the donghua and the novel are pretty different. In the donghua, there are several primary conflicts - the intrusion of the Beimi/Tujue, the competition over access to the Solarity, the competition between different sects' top masters, and the search for that ring that Yan Wushi has. In the novel, these are all things that exist, but they're not the primary plot, and they're all at least somewhat difference. While the novel has multiple plotlines that focus on different things, looking at it as a whole, the main plot is a political one about control of the Empire, and how different sects are pulled into that conflict as a result of how the Emperor relates to Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist sects. Which tradition each sect follows is much more important and relevant in the novel. The Beimi/Tujue plot is still relevant and involved, but it's just one thread in the political milieu. The Solarity, which has different and long name in the novel that I never remember - it's like, "the complete works of (some master who's name isn't in my brain" - is in six volumes, and it's definitely still important, but it's importance kinda fades as the novel progresses (though it's still a main piece at the point where the donghua leaves off). The ring is basically non-existent in the novel - instead of it being in Yan Wushi's possession, it's in the possession of the woman who's birthday party Shen Qiao goes to (...Madam Su? Might be her name? I'm sorry, I'm not great with names, and I usually rely on fandom wikis but this one is sparse) - in the novel, she was a disciple of Hulugu, and then she stole the ring and returned to the Empire. That other Beimi/Tujue disciple (...Dong something??) takes it back and returns with it to his clan, if I recall correctly, so it can be used to unify those clans to make war against the Empire.

In the donghua, Yan Wushi is just...generally portrayed as pretty nice, and the YanShen vibes start pretty early - there's an early sign of playful flirting from Yan Wushi that actually seems sincere? At least it did to me. As a result, the YanShen vibes feel a lot stronger than they do in the novel at a similar point in the narrative. In the novel...I'd personally say Yan Wushi has zero interest, romantically or sexually, until well after where the donghua left off, and their relationship isn't canon until nearly the very end, and is always left more implied than...outright. I would personally say that in the novel, Shen Qiao has some feels for Yan Wushi pre-Sang Jingxing, but Yan Wushi doesn't reciprocate (except maybe at a deep level he refuses to acknowledge). It's not until he's healing post-almost-dying (as in, during the time immediately after when the donghua leaves off - I'm trying to be vague to avoid giving spoilers to people who haven't read it) that there start to be some real clear signs that Yan Wushi may have caught some feels, and even then it's complicated. They're complicated. They're also complicated. It's part of what I love about them, lol.

In the donghua, the fight between Shen Qiao and Kunye is shown "on screen" instead of only being described afterwards, and it's revealed almost right away that Shen Qiao was poisoned. Also, a lot of people help Kunye and they all fight Shen Qiao together. In the novel, this fight is off-screen. It's strictly a one-on-one battle between Shen Qiao and Kunye, and the reader doesn't learn that Shen Qiao lost due to poisoning until Shen Qiao goes to Mount Xuandu to confront Yu Ai.

In both the donghua and the novel, when Yan Wushi is trying to turn Shen Qiao evil, he sets up a mission for Shen Qiao and Yu Shengyan, The object of this mission is to kill a family that serves the Hehuan Sect. Shen Qiao refuses to participate, and helps them escape. In the donghua, they don't actually escape, and the "they serve Hehuan" thing turns out to be a ruse; they actually serve Yan Wushi. In the novel, they're actually Hehuan spies, and Shen Qiao still helps them, and they actually escape.

(RAPE MENTION TRIGGER WARNING) In the donghua, Chen Gong betrays Shen Qiao when that jerk noble whose name I can't remember right now (and it's not in the wiki, god the wiki is so slim, I wish I had time to help with that) hunts him for sport, and he doesn't want to die. In the novel, Chen Gong betrays Shen Qiao when that same jerk noble, who as a reputation for using pretty boys as sex slaves, tries to kidnap Chen Gong as a sex slave, and Chen Gong is like, "no no you don't want to fuck me, I know someone WAY prettier for you to rape." (The fall out remains the same in both - Shen Qiao beats up the guy, nothing bad happens to him, and he and Chen Gong part ways).

In the donghua, Shen Qiao goes to confront Yu Ai at Mount Xuandu by like. Literally walking up to the front gate. And then all the disciples for some reason get mad that Yan Wushi comes, even though he...also walked up to their front gate. Why do they even have a gate??? In the novel, Shen Qiao uses a super sneaky back way, only known to disciples, and so it actually makes some kind of sense when Yu Ai et al are like SHEN QIAO WHY ARE YOU SHOWING THE EVIL GUY OUR BACK DOOR?

(NOTE this one relies more on subtext and thus is very open to interpretation. What's written here reflects my personal interpretation, and others may disagree). In the donghua, when Yan Wushi hands Shen Qiao over to Sang Jingxing, they have a chat that heavily implies that Yan Wushi is kinda-sorta-not-so-secretly thinking that Shen Qiao could win a fight (and is probably expecting Shen Qiao to do so by using the demonic core that has been implanted in him). Sang Jingxing also says things that indicate that he thinks that Yan Wushi is setting a trap for him. In the novel, while it's never all that clear what Yan Wushi's motivations are, it becomes pretty clear by the point of the Sang Jingxing fight that Yan Wushi was serious when he said he didn't care about Shen Qiao, didn't consider him worthy, and doesn't care what happens to him. He definitely handed over Shen Qiao with every intention of Shen Qiao getting tortured and raped, and had no interest in saving him. Shen Qiao only becomes interesting to Yan Wushi afterwards. Yan Wushi is never only playing one game, so he may have thought that being pushed into a corner would force Shen Qiao to use the demonic core, but it also seemed to me like he genuinely didn't care - he'd gotten bored, and was done playing with the "new toy" that was Shen Qiao.

In the donghua, there is a shot of someone - the clothing is pretty unmistakably Yan Wushi's purple robe of ultimate purpleness - pulling Shen Qiao out of a river after he plunges to his almost-demise in the fight with Sang Jingxing. In the novel, Yan Wushi doesn't pull Shen Qiao out of the water, after Shen Qiao destroys his meridians in the fight against Sang Jingxing. Instead, Shen Qiao collapses in the mountains, where he is found by Shiwu and brought back to the monastery for treatment.

In the donghua, Yan Wushi is fighting the four masters who have it in for him, and before the end of the fight, Shen Qiao arrives and tries to help him; he fights the four masters solo to try to keep Yan Wushi from using his powers and harming himself, and when he's about to lose, Yan Wushi...uses his powers and harms himself. In the novel, Shen Qiao doesn't arrive until after Yan Wushi has been defeated; he finds Yan Wushi almost dead and brings him to a small village nearby, where he stays with a nice girl and her...grandfather, iirc...and tries to keep them safe while nursing Yan Wushi back to health.

In the donghua, it's kinda implied that Shen Qiao goes to rescue Yan Wushi because, like...he likes him? There's not really a reason given, just that he wants to, or maybe to keep the ring from going to the Beimi/Tujue? In the novel it's pretty explicit that Shen Qiao goes to save Yan Wushi because he believes Yan Wushi's position in the Empire is critical to the stability of the world - and he wants the world stable, so that there won't be more refugees, starvation, etc. That he also may like Yan Wushi is the case but is almost incidental; Shen Qiao is focused on doing the most good for the most people, and that means saving Yan Wushi, because Yan Wushi is critical to the Empire, and the Empire is critical to the common people. (this is a major part of the political themes that are more prominent in the book than in the donghua).

I can't actually remember when Bian Yanmei was introduced in the novel? But I was pretty sure it was around when Yan Wushi sends Shen Qiao to that birthday banquet? Anyway, Bian Yanmei isn't in the donghua at all thus far; in the donghua, Yan Wushi's only apparent disciple is Yu Shengyan.

#thousand autumns #meta #or something #unforth rambles #thousand autumns spoilers

44 notes · View notes

megumis-lashes · 4 years ago

Note

Hi can I request Megumi with a very touchy crush

Megumi with a touchy crush HCs!

Fushiguro Megumi x Reader ^^

An: Hello! Sorry for the late response but I hope you can enjoy this anyways! Since it’s not specified I made this headcannons since that was easier! If you want anything different in future requests please specify at least: format, POV and gender! If you don’t I’ll just do whatever ^^

Contains: Touchy reader/physical contact, Megumi x reader, written with a female reader in mind but generally left as gn!, angst if you squint lol, possibly mistakes as my genius self is writing this at like 12am, just fluffff :) oh and you’re shorter than Megumi lol. (Oh and sorry if Megumi is a tad OOC in the drabble cuz his reactions can be tricky to write for 😅)

Word Count: 1.7k (I got carried away once again lol)

Soooo.... Megumi with a touchy crush? Sign me up!

Now we all know that Megumi is rather reserved and pretty straight forward so I think at first his reaction to your touchiness may be a bit awkward

Not awkward in the sense that he’s uncomfortable being around you but more as in he’s a bit.... shy

He’s not adjusted to receiving a lot of physical contacts so initially, he wasn't quite sure how to react

His overall awkwardness really depends on how long he’s known you

If he just met you during high school he would probably be a bit shocked at how comfortable you were with casual physical affection

While you would think nothing of it and treated practically everyone you knew (and were comfortable with) like this, Megumi would still be surprised

While Yuuji and Nobara would adjust to your touchiness quite quickly, Megumi would probably stay blushy about it for a month or so until he wouldn't think much about it anymore

it’d be a bit different if he knew you for a while or even knew you as childhood friends

Typically being touchy doesn't become a habit overnight sooo he’d be a lot more used to it and barely think about it

I don’t see him as one to openly accept or adjust to physical affection without being a bit shy

He’d probably tease you or question you about it from time to time and be one to begrudgingly accept affection

Totally be one to act really annoyed by your touchiness but in reality, he treasures the soft moments away from danger

All of this would change when he realizes he has a crush on you though :0

Cue blushy, awkward Megumi and oblivious you featuring another oblivious idiot, Yuuji, and an all-knowing Nobara

Megumi isn’t one to develop crushes immediately or overnight since he must value that person’s personality most of all

He thought of you as purely platonically within these first few months of knowing you untilllll his brain just clicked

He was like.... ‘Oh shoot... I have a crush....”

Having a crush is refreshing for Megumi but also quite distracting with how touchy you are

Instead of just ignoring the affection or casually playing it off, Megumi forgets how to react

Now he knows that deep down he really likes receiving affection from you cuz he realized how he likes you more than just a companion or classmate

Cue Megumi being 10 times more awkward than usual

Normally if you were to walk up to him and throw your arm over his shoulder playfully or something like that he’d either ignore it, pretend it's not happening or just playfully shove your arm off his shoulder

Now he just freezes and is like ‘oh what to do’

Would be that person who googles ‘how to act normally around your crush’ but at the same time think its stupid and stop reading the article like five minutes in lol

He’d probably have one of two reactions:

Cease to function and just stand awkwardly still or

Awkwardly pull away

...

Now as much as Megumi pretends to hate your touchiness, you do know that he’s okay with you playing around so this reaction is pretty unusual

You probably are a little confused as to why he’s acting like this

Like huhh????? I thought we were good?????

Cue Megumi continuing to be awkward for a while

Everyone became more awkward than usual since that day because the friendly atmosphere was put off due to Megumi being even more closed off than usual

He practically avoids you at this point

Ofc you start to feel bad about it

Like did you do something wrong??? Take it too far??

Touchiness has always been in your nature and seeing someone react so sharply to it makes you feel insecure about your habits so you lessen the touchiness within the friend group

and everyone notices

Yuuji misses your playfulness and Megumi is simply overwhelmed and lost within his own thoughts and emotions

Nobara is the most.... suspicious

While examining Megumi lately (not in a weird way she swears) she noticed the sudden change in behavior

That’s when she realized ‘Does the Fushiguro Megumi have a crush????’

Ofc her curiosity gets the best of her so she just has to question Megumi

So she does

After a small mission the team had gone on, she asked Megumi to talk

‘So promise to answer truthfully.’

‘Yes I promise”

‘Do you have a crush on Y/N?’

“Huh’ Megumi deadpans. This came out of nowhere

As much as he wishes to play it cool and dismiss the girl’s thoughts, he physically cannot and instead goes into blushy cannot function mode

Nobara takes notice to this immediately

‘Aha! So I was correct! Take that Yuuji!’

Yes they totally made bets on this

Once again Megumi is lost

‘Huh? Bets on what?”

‘Bets on what?”Are you seriously that oblivious? On your crush! It’s so obvious it’s painful!” She sighed dramatically

Now Megumi is even more lost

Like sure he was confused about where his crush stands but he wasn’t aware that he was obvious????

Nobara goes on to explain how stiffly he reacts to your touches and how his blush doesn’t really go unnoticed

She also explains how you were moping around lately cuz you thought you made him uncomfortable

Shocked at this new found information he rushed out of their real quick to go... idk possibly confess but be more focused on apologizing

AN: Here’s a quick scenario in first person of how that would go since I have zero self-control :0

I was settled on the small bed in my school dorm room. Placed upon a stack of pillows was my laptop, through which played whatever random Netflix show I chose. It didn’t really matter what it was as the media was quickly discarded by my mind and treated as background noise. My mind was swimming with rather..intrusive thoughts. As much as I wanted to relax and shut off my mind for the night I simply couldn’t. My thoughts continued to drift back to a certain ravenette and the issues that had circled around him for a while now. Fushiguro Megumi, a boy I met a few years back when beginning jujutsu. We were friends... or at least I considered us friends and I had taken quite a liking to the boy. Despite his distant and rather closed off personality, I had developed a casual and comfortable bond with the male... or so I thought. All changed when he started acting strangely, almost as if I had hurt him or bothered him a little too much with my habits. Admittedly I was a bit hurt over Megumi’s actions but I was more confused. I had always been touchy, so why the sudden reaction to it?

As if the world was messing with me, a knock sounding from my dorm room door shook me from my train of thought.

“Coming!” I quickly pushed the blankets and began walking towards the door. The person behind that door was definitely not who I was expecting. Behind the door stood Megumi Fushiguro, pacing lightly as his hand slightly ruffled his hair.

“Megumi?! Did you need something?” It was strange to see Megumi at my door as it was nearing 9 PM and he was usually one to avoid unnecessary intrusions.

“Oh hi Y/N. Sorry to bother you so late but I’ve come to apologize..” He explained, carding his hand through his hair nervously.

“Apologize for what exactly?” I questioned.

“For how I’ve been acting lately..” He stated. I shook my head.

“Ahh about that... I’ve been meaning to ask you something..” I mumbled. “Megumi.. do I uhh.. make you uncomfortable? I mean I know I’m kinda touchy and I’ve noticed that you uh don’t-”

“No no no! That's what I’m here to clear up about... Look it's not what you think! You don’t make me uncomfortable I’ve just been too focused on my own thoughts to realize why you may think that...’ We’re both way too oblivious’ or at least that’s what Nobara says..” He trailed off. I sighed in relief. I was happy, albeit a bit confused but still happy that he didn’t despise me.

“Ok ok.. I’m glad you don’t hate me at least!” I smiled, throwing my arm around his shoulder as I did in the past. “I do have one question though!”

“Ask away.” He quietly chuckled, finally at ease in my touches.

“What do you mean ‘we’re both oblivious’? And what does Nobara have to do with this?” I questioned, leaning my head onto the taller male’s shoulder. His eyes widened a bit as he glanced away awkwardly.

“Well, you see... I don’t really know how to say this but..”

“Just spit it out already!” I playfully slapped his back.

“I have a crush on you...” He mumbled looking away.

“....huh” I deadpanned. “That’s why you were awkward all of a sudden? All because you like me? Wait you like me?!” I shook my head, leaving the casual embrace we had settled into.

“Yeah... that’s not a bad thing is it?” He questioned, once again rubbing at his neck nervously.

“No no of course not!” I waved dramatically. “I’ll let you know that I like you too! Quite a lot actually!” I chuckled thinking of Nobara’s words. “Now I understand what she was saying about obliviousness... Now that I think about it you were sooo obvious! I'm ashamed that I didn’t notice sooner.” I sighed, coming down from my small laughing fit.

“ Hey well, I didn’t know how to act! I was trying my best ok....” He mumbled. I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his left cheek, chuckling at his blushy reaction.

“Don’t worry about it! I mean we cleared everything up didn’t we?” I pondered.

“So uhh.. do you wanna be my girlfriend then?” He questioned, looking as flustered as ever.

“I’d love that!” I smiled. Glancing at my watch my eyes widened.

“Hey, it's getting late! Why don’t you come watch Netflix with me yeah?!” I pulled the ravenette into my dorm, leaving him little time to respond. That night we drifted off together surrounded by the noise of old Netflix movies and warmed by the feeling of love.

79 notes · View notes

yeojaa · 4 years ago

Text

up all night.

inspiration: “i'm sorry I keep staring, but you're really the hottest thing i've ever seen in my entire life and i don't know what to do about it.”

i’ve never written for joon before so please don’t burn me at the stake! 🥺 this is dedicated to @sahmfanficbts and ty mucho to @salvejoon and @moonmintrails for reading through this for me 💖 part two will be forthcoming!

pairing. knj x f!reader. rating. general. tags. mc is a recreational drug user (nothing hard! just gummies!) and there’s mentions of like, boning and booze. but generally, just a warm n soft fluff piece. wc. 1.1k.

The neighbourhood bodega is your happy place.

It’s where you go when you’ve had a long day at the office and want to drown yourself in six different types of Ben & Jerry’s, the likes of which it always has in stock and in all the flavours you want (Cherry Garcia, Half Baked, Peanut Butter Cup). It’s where you go when you’re too lazy to make dinner and want to inhale a perfectly made, smooshed down deli sandwich piled high with all your favourite accoutrements. It’s where you’ve cried quietly, standing in the snack section after a terrible breakup. It’s also where you’ve, perhaps, spent too much money on beer after an impromptu decision to wake up with a pounding headache.

It’s somewhere that’s seen you grow up, from your shitty pre-teen days - when you’d had that godawful fringe and those ugly sneakers your parents had bought from the Super A Mart in Chinatown - all the way to now, with your slightly cuter shoes and significantly better hair. It’s watched you grow as much as your family has, a figurative presence in your life that’s shaped you through the years.

It knew when your time of the month was and how much chocolate you ate when it came around. It knew the sheepish way you’d scuff your toes when you were buying things you shouldn’t: beer using a remarkably bad fake ID when you were fifteen, cigarettes during a brief stint during your first year of university, and condoms when all of your friends had started fucking like rabbits and you didn’t want to be left out.

All of that to say, your neighbourhood bodega knows you well and with that comes the uneasy acceptance that someone else - someone with a heartbeat and a brain and big imposing shoulders - knows you just as well, if not better.

Kim Namjoon. Son of Mr. and Mrs. Kim, card-carrying pantydropper, and the guy you’d harboured a crush on for the better half of your adolescent years.

You weren’t really sure when it’d happened - just that it’d followed you from the tender age of thirteen when you’d first gotten flustered over his big dimpled cheeks and slow, tight-lipped smile. It didn’t matter that he was four years older than you - now an astounding twenty-eight - or that he’d witnessed you embarrass yourself since you were old enough to stick your own foot in your mouth. You simply couldn’t help it.

He was cute in a way that snuck up on you, that you didn’t need reminding of but that presented itself at the strangest times.

Like when you’d be half-baked and stocking up on munchies, dressed in running shorts and an oversized tee shirt because you were too lazy to change into anything else. He’d flash that goddamn smile of his as he rang you up, biting back laughter when he’d scan the fifth bag of Goldfish.

Or when he’d catch you huffing and puffing at absurd times, lungs heaving from having jogged all the way from Crown Heights station. He never had to ask what you needed - would only silently pop the locked door back open and let you in to get whatever you seemed so desperate for.

You knew they weren’t the best impressions - little facets of your wayward personality presented like a whirling dervish - so you’d never thought more of it.

After all, he was Kim Namjoon and you’d heard about all the ways he broke hearts. Never on purpose, fortunately, but with increasing frequency since you’d started running in the (surprisingly) same circles. He was as unattainable as the specialty imported chocolate on the top shelf of his parents’ bodega - always enticing but terribly out of reach.

Which is why you’re gaping at him now, a not-very attractive fish out of water.

“What?” You’re not sure whether it’s the fact that you’ve got one AirPod lodged in your ear, but you don’t trust what you’ve just heard. It makes zero sense, like 400-level mathematical equations. You were a political science major, for crying out loud.

When Namjoon responds - in that confident, measured way of his - you have to focus hard on the words. “I asked if you wanted to get drinks with me.”

Drinks. With him. With Kim Namjoon. The Kim Namjoon.

You feel like your brain’s short circuiting and not just because of the THC gummy you’d taken right after work.

“You… want to get drinks? With me?” You know you must sound a little stupid - though you swear you’re not and you think, despite all signs pointing to it, Namjoon doesn’t believe so either.

He laughs as he bags up your purchases: candied almonds, a bag of sour Skittles, chocolate milk, and three things of chips. The sound keeps you occupied, wholly focused on the way it echoes out of that big cavernous chest of his and battles the lofi that’s playing in your ear. You wonder how someone can be so effortlessly charming.

It probably has something to do with your crush.

“Is that so hard to believe?” He spares you the sympathy, instead offering a playfulness you’ve never seen up close and personal. It feels nice - sun-warm and organic, like spending a day at the park.

You decide in that moment - in your oversized boyfriend jeans and big sunglasses pushed up in your hair, with your absurd amount of goodies resting on the counter between you - that you want more of it. You want more of Kim Namjoon, even if you’re unravelling his mysteries as you go.

“I guess not.”

“So, drinks tonight then. 10 PM. I’ll meet you at your place.” There are no further questions - just statements that pop off his tongue and sink comfortably beneath your skin. It feels good, if not a little strange. You’re still trying to wrap your mind around the fact that this is happening.

Your lips move before you have a chance to stop them, words tumbling out in a haste you attribute to your high but that seem more like nerves. You hate that it makes you sound so uncertain because you know you’re funny and you sure as hell know you’re cute, but it feels like you’re a little leaguer facing off against Jose Canseco. “Can I ask why?”

He shrugs - an impressive roll of his shoulders beneath the plain white cotton that hugs him in all the right places and makes his skin glow honey gold against it. “You're really just the hottest thing I've ever seen in my entire life and I know I’ll hate myself if I don’t do something about it.”

You thank your lucky stars for the Kim’s bodega then. You promise you’ll never visit another one for the rest of your life.

286 notes · View notes

tryslora · 4 years ago

Text

If I'm lucky, all errors have been caught before posting this year, and I have properly accounted for all variations needed for removing a leap year. Man, leap years are killer to deal with in terms of tracking down tiny changes to formulas! BUT. I think I actually did better this year than last year. Can we not discuss the things I screwed up? Anyway. I really did doublecheck pretty much everything that goes back to the Wordcount sheet.

ANYWAY.

For those who have been waiting for this spreadsheet, here it is! Sorry to be so late. For those who haven't seen this before, please take a look, use if you'd like, and share if you want to. All I ask is that if you make changes and spread the changed sheet around, please credit me as the original inspiration and link back to the original as well.

2021 Word Tracking Spreadsheet

Instructions and explanation are behind a cut/read more to save your feed/dash. This spreadsheet was developed because I found that it helped me keep myself moving forward from year to year, and I've been using it since 2012. I've been sharing it after folks asked what I was using to track my words, and it has evolved over the years into the version below. The instructions include screenshots from the 2021 spreadsheet and have finally been updated because a few things have changed. So. I guess I should update the instructions!

This spreadsheet was designed to allow you to set monthly goals for your writing, and easily track your words on different projects each day. It totals up your words for the day, your words for the month, and your words for the year. As you carry it along year to year, you can even track trends in your writing habits (for example, I’ve learned that I really suck at writing in May/June/July).

I’m going to go through this tab by tab to show you what’s what, and how to set yourself up and work daily.

We are actually going to begin with the second tab: Monthly Totals. This is where your totals are tracked, and where you set your goals. You can either set all your goals ahead of time, or month by month.

On this tab, you can fill in your pledges per month, and your goal for the year in the cells marked in grey. The monthly pledges (see column D) will transfer to other tabs as needed, and will be used to calculate a daily expected word count for each month. If you set an annual goal (you don’t have to!), you’ll be able to see how close you are to making that goal, and whether your pledges add up to the annual goal.

New: You can see your words to goal, and average needed per day to get to the goal.

You can see my usual pledges here. I've lowered my goals recently because I've found that around 500 words expected per day actually encourages me to make more, and doesn't make me feel bad if I make fewer.

The Actual column (B) is calculated automatically for you based on what you fill in on the Wordcount sheet, so let the spreadsheet do the work for you!

===

The next tab we need to take a look at is the first one. This is where you’ll be doing your work, on the tab titled Wordcount.

It may look complicated, but I swear it’s not! It calculates pretty much everything you need, as long as you just keep copying information from row to row.

It’s set up so it’ll work whether you start a brand new project of 0 words, or carry forward a WIP that had words before the new year started. All you have to do is put in the title, the purpose (fest, community, this is all just for your notes), and the due date, then put in your starting word count. When you add a new project, make sure to fill that starting word count (0 or otherwise) down through ALL the prior days so that your totals stay consistent. The way I do this in Excel is to select from the starting total down to the current date, then choose Fill Down. All rows MUST be filled in or else your words will go negative (see above, where the cell G6 has a value, even though the word count did not change that day).

When a day begins, it’s easy. Just copy down the prior day (except January 1st, just start with the one in place) by selecting from column F through the last column after your current WIP and then copy it down to the next row.

For example, if I were ready to start Jan 3rd, I select from F6 through I6 (one after my last project) and copy those cells down (I do it by using the little square in the bottom right to drag it down, but you do what's best for you.

When you finish working on a project, enter its current word count.

Now, let's take a closer look at what's above.

I started two projects on Jan 1st: Title and Title2

Title started with 0 words

Title2 came in from last year with 20 words already written

On January 1st, I recorded 100 words for Title and 1200 for Title2, and the sheet calculated that I wrote 1280 words that day

On January 2nd I didn't do anything on Title, but Title2 inreased to 1300 TOTAL words (NOT new words), so I added 100 words that day.

On January 3rd, I added Title3 with 0 words to start, and I made sure that every row in my new column showed those 0 words.

The sheet color codes for days where you are below target or above target in the Actual Words/Day column. It’ll be white on zero days. You can see at a glance your trends for writing.

It also marks projects that have been added to as green on that day in their column, which is nice if you do a weekly or monthly round up. Again, you can see at a glance which projects you've worked on, versus the ones still waiting.

When you finish a fic, simply hide the column (do not delete it). That’s why copying the entire row from F to after last down is important, so you copy the hidden columns too.

Some information about the other columns.

Target Total is where you hoped to be that year by that date. If you’re not there, don’t worry!! Zero days are OKAY and give yourself a chance to catch up another time. If you need to adjust your pledges, go do that on the Monthly Totals tab and everything will update.

The Daily Target is the total you are hoping to reach to stay on target toward the Monthly Pledge for that month–it’ll be different each month depending on what you pledge.

===

Now let’s move on to some of the fun tracking pieces. Next up are Daily Graph and Monthly Graph, which are exactly what they sound like. I’ll show examples from my 2017 spreadsheet (note, the daily graph will look very up and down–that’s OKAY! Again, let yourself have zero days…).

Daily Graph

Monthly Graph

Please note that the monthly graph has changed slightly. The pledged words are a line, but the actual words are now an area graph so you'll be able to see that fill in, and see your pledge as a line over it. That will give something good to look back on at the end of the year, but I don't have a new example yet!

===

There is a weird little blank tab for tracking AO3 stats, if you want to do so like I do. Feel free to modify as you need, based on your own person fandoms. I just carry data through from year to year so I can see how things change.

===

The last two tabs are my favorite! The Annual Comparison tab becomes useful after you’ve been using the spreadsheet more than a year, because by keeping track of totals year to year, you can start to see what your writing tendencies are. This tab has changed this year!

In the main data, I have added a Range (difference between the current month and the average) and a Median. In both cases, it won't calculate (just like the average) until you're actually in that month. Prior calculations are against the prior year's data.

Just copy in your data from prior spreadsheets, then let the new column for this year calculate on its own. No work needed once you've put in the old data!

Sample data included solely to be able to make it make sense. It won't be in the sheet you download.

The chart has changed! The area chart is your average across all your data. The colored lines are all the years. The current year is in black, with markers, to make it really stand out. So you can see both how you are doing against your prior years and your typical average per month.

And the last tab helps you track your progress toward your pledges. This tab is why I created the spreadsheet in the first place. I did NaNo back in 2011 and realized that being able to see my progress helped keep me writing. I like visuals! It lets me see at a glance how I’m progressing toward my goal each month.

You don't need to fill in a thing on this sheet! It pulls in the pledge from where you set it on the Monthly Totals tab, and calculates your wordcount based on that sheet, and does everything for you. Just sit back and enjoy the charts. Red columns are the expected totals, and blue will be your actual progress. You can see whether you're ahead or behind (and DON'T WORRY if you're behind, it is OKAY).

Yes, that’s my actual horrible progress December 2018. It was a rough month.

Anyway, that’s it! Hope you like it, and if you’ve used it before, thank you for coming back. Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

2021 Word Tracking Spreadsheet

#word tracker #spreadsheet #2021 word tracking spreadsheet #writing resources

66 notes · View notes

love-anddeepression · 3 years ago

Text

You’re not him-Chapter 3

Walking into the library, you see Loki sit down with a bundle of files, going through one of them before exclaiming sarcastically,

"Oh my goodness! Don't tell me the variant ambushed another team of minutemen, wow! HUH and stole their reset charges as well!"

Giggling you walk over to him and stand opposite him. Looking up, he sees you and smiles.

"Hi" you say.

"Hello."

" So, I never took you for the reading type, whatcha reading?" you say, knowing full well how much he loved to read.

" Well, I love reading, but these are files about the variant, Mobius asked me to read them." he explains.

" Oh, well I have to read them too! Do you mind if join you?" you say, a tinge of hope in your voice.

" Oh sure, of course." he replies.

Getting up, he then pulls the chair out so you can sit in it.

" And he's a gentleman too!" you tease, making him blush lightly and chuckle.

Looking down to the table, the first document you see has, in big bright red lettering,

'Destruction of Asgard'

Ragnarok-Class 7 apocalypse.

Shit.

Loki sits down and spots the paper too, picking it up and going through it, you can see how he's trying to hide his emotions, but you can see his eyes tearing up, and his breath hitching.

"I'm sorry." you say quietly.

" It-It's fine, it happens." he says putting it off and handing it over to you.

Going through it, you see just how bad the damage was, and then something caught your eye.

'Zero Variance Energy detected'

"Loki, Loki look," you get his attention.

"What, what did you find?" he asks eager to get away from the topic of his home getting blown up.

"Look, it says there's no variant energy, what if the variant's hiding in apocalypses?" you ask.

" That, that's an amazing idea. Because he can do whatever he wants, and it won't make a difference-"

" -because the place is getting blown to bits and everyone dies." you finish excitedly.

" We-we have to tell Mobius this, oh darling you're a genius!" he says before gathering the files and walking towards the cafeteria, "Come on!" he calls you.

Darling.

He called you darling.

Just great.

" Mobius! We found something!" Loki says and pulls you over and sits you down, before getting another chair for himself.

" What? What did you find?" he asks.

"The variant's hiding in apocalypses." you said.

"What? what do you mean?"

"Are you familiar with Ragnarok?" Loki asks Mobius.

"Yes, the destruction of Asgard and most of it's people I'm sorry about that."

" Yes, very sad, now-" Loki begins, taking Mobius's salad.

"What are you doing?" Mobius asks Loki.

" Let's just say, your salad is Asgard-"

"That's not Asgard, that's my lunch, I want that salad." Mobius whines.

" I could do anything here, I could-" Loki continues, picking up a salt shaker, " push Hulk of the rainbow bridge!" he shakes the salt shaker, adding salt and ruining the salad.

" So the salt's hulk?" you ask.

Ignoring you, he continues," Or, I could set fire to the palace." now he shakes in some pepper.

"No, don't set fire to the palace-" Mobius interrupted.

"-and it would never matter, because-" he pauses, reaching for the can of soda, only to find it empty.

You get up and go over to Casey and ask him if you can take his juice, he agrees. Walking back you hand the juice to Loki, who smiles in thanks.

" Thank you, now, because the apocalypse is coming, Surtur will destroy Asgard, no matter what." He continues, now pouring the juice into the salad.

" No, don't do that!" you and Mobius say together.

"That's the apocalypse, clumsy metaphor but you see what I mean. If everything, and everyone around you for imminent destruction, " he says picking up the shakers again. " nothing I say or do will matter, cause the timelines not gonna branch, cuz it get's destroyed. The variant could be hiding in the apocalypse and do whatever he wants, and we wouldn't know!" he finishes.

"Not bad, good job guys." Mobius says.

"Come on. I'll show you, take me to Ragnarok!"

"I'm not going to take you for a stroll across the promenade much less take you back to your home, I know what you're trying to do, lure me out into the field and then you stab me in the back!" Mobius argues.

Loki spreads his arms out, mouth open, a very offended expression on his face.

"I'd never stab anyone in the back! That's such a boring form of betrayal!"

"Loki, I've studied almost every moment of your entire life, you've literally stabbed people in the back like fifty times!" Mobius says.

"You did try to stab me once." you say smirking.

" I-I what?!" he stares at you

"That's a story for another time, Lokes."

"Well, I'd never do it again!" he says, making you and Mobius laugh in amusement.

"Loki! Get over here!" Mobius calls as you watch, laughing hysterically

Oh, were were you?

Pompeii, seconds before Mt.Vesuvius erupts and you were witnessing a God-child, rambling in Latin about how everyone was going to die and positively horrifying everyone present there.

Suddenly you were all interrupted by a blast from the volcano, Vesuvius was erupting.

" Woohoo! Here we go! Nothing matters! Nothing has any consequence!" he shouts, throwing handfuls of vegetables in the air.

Annoyed, Mobius checks the Tempad, before doing a double take and grinning.

"So how'd we do?" you ask eagerly.

" Zero variant energy, No branching in the timeline, this worked!" Mobius said.

Smiling widely, you shouted, " Hey Loki! It worked! We did it!"

Loki turns around and smiles, out of breath.

" If it were me, this is where I would hide."

You were sipping your lemon iced tea in peace, listening to the men in front of you bicker like toddlers.

"So you're saying, Three Magic Lizards created the Tva and everyone in it?" Loki asked Mobius

" Yes."

"See, every time I start to admire you're intelligence, you say something like that!" Loki argues

"Ok, well who created you Loki?" Mobius asks

" A frost giant of Jotunheim." Loki said, making you almost choke on your drink.

" and who raised you?"

"Odin of Asgard."

"Asgard, Mystical realm, Frost giants- listen to yourself!"

"It's not the same! It's completely different!" he rambles

"A-actually it's exactly the same because if you think too hard about where any of us came from, who we truly are, it sounds kind of ridiculous. Existence is chaos! Nothing makes any sense so we try to make some sense of it, and I'm just lucky that the chaos I emerged into gave me this."

" Ok, what about Y/n?"

" I'm actually a special case, Ravonna allowed me to join the TVA, as long as I bide by the rules, and not be an idiot and possibly blow up the timeline. But the TVA is my life, and it's real, because I believe it's real." you explain.

"Fair enough , you believe it's real, so everything is written, the past, the present and the future"

You soon stop paying attention, and thought about the first time you and Loki said ' I love you'

You both were baking a cake to pass the time and somehow in the process, Loki found himself covered in frosting.

"I'll get you back for that darling!" he said grinning, before hugging you tightly, covering you in frosting too.

Laughing hysterically, you both started flinging frosting at each other.

Holding you close, you felt his breath fan your cheeks, as you lost yourselves in each other's eyes.

"I love you Loki." you blurted out, making him smile.

" Oh my darling, I love you too, so much." he replied before kissing you softly and passionately.

"Y/n! Focus! Come on! I found a lead! Follow me!" Mobius said, calling you over.

"What were you thinking of?" Loki asked.

"Just thinking about a moment in my life, one I really treasure." you say smiling softly.

"Today Love birds!" Mobius called again.

"We're coming! Jerk." you say, while blushing,

You and Loki follow Mobius, before stopping at him looking at a packet of 'Kablooie" gum.

"This, I thought about this."

#loki lokixreader #lokilove #lokiseries #lokispoilers #mobius my beloved

7 notes · View notes

snarkwrites · 4 years ago

Text

01 | gangsta | sweetpea

Notes:

I’d say I’m sorry for starting a 3rd multi chapter series but I’m honestly not. I haven’t written a whole lot for Riverdale, but this idea just kinda came to me and I rolled with it? Anyway, yeah.. If people really like this, I might be tempted to keep this going beyond just the few parts I already kind of have halfway planned.

Huge hug to @twistnet because their writing about Sweetpea kind of awakened and fuelled this and if you’re not reading their fics, you really should tbh.

Summary:

They clearly don’t mix. But sometimes, opposites attract. The only question is will these two’s sparks cause an inferno or go down in flames?

Ugh.. I hate my summaries, thanks.

Pairing:

Andrews!OFC, Alyssa x Sweetpea. Yep. She’s Archie’s sister. I couldn’t resist.

Warnings:

Uhh... teen angst, relationship drama, sexual tension, possible fights / violence here and there and.. That’s pretty much it. Oh yeah and eventually, filth.

Also, this is probably not going to follow seasons 2 through present to the letter. Actually, I’ll venture to warn now, it definitely will not. Because there’s some things in it that I’ve seen so far that make zero actual sense. And there’s probably not going to be a whole lot of Archie,Betty,Jugs and Veronica in here too, because this is me, kind of writing all the side characters into things a little more?

Tagging:

@brithedemonspawn

Other Stuff:

[ faq - tag list doc - soundtrack ]

ONE.

“Sweet Pea, you’ll be working with Alyssa Andrews.”

I didn’t dare turn to look back at the guy. He was probably one of the most intimidating guys in Riverdale High. He hardly spoke to anyone unless it was one of the two friends he happened to have. Neither of them were in this class period.

The teacher, seeming impressed with himself, gave a nod to Sweet Pea and Sweet Pea grumbled, stalking up the aisle and flopping lazily into the empty seat next to mine. Our sides brushed a little when he moved his desk closer after getting a look from our teacher. I tried not to tense up.

Sweet Pea seemed to notice. He smirked at me.

Leaned in a little.

“Relax, cherry. I don’t bite unless I’m asked.” he muttered against my ear. My breath caught in my throat and I was promptly thrown into the mother of all internal uproars. I shoved the book between us wordlessly, not even daring to glance over at him.

I was not about to let him take pride in the fact that he made me blush or rattled me, not even a little.

Our sides brushed again and I pursed my lips, taking a deep breath. Across the classroom, Reggie was already working with one of the other girls on my squad. I watched them laughing and flirting back and forth and I shook my head, rolling my eyes.

“I’m supposed to be his girl and yet.. It’s as if I don’t even exist.” I muttered, mostly to myself. Annoyed at myself for being hurt over it because it shouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Reggie was a flirt. I’d known that going into things. I’d tried not to let it get to me. Tried to remind myself that nine times out of ten, he wasn’t doing it intentionally.

But tell that to Mandy. Mandy automatically thinks that any guy who flirts with her is in love with her, my brain weighed in on the matter and I sighed, drumming my nails against the desktop, glancing over my shoulder at the two and rolling my eyes all over again. I just knew I was going to have to hear about this all afternoon at practice.

“So you’re a River Vixen, huh, cherry?” he muttered after a few seconds, nodding to the cheerleading uniform I was wearing. I could feel him staring at me and sure enough, when I bothered to tear my eyes off of Reggie across the room and in full flirt mode with Mandy, he was looking me up and down. He repeated his question.

Just something about the tone he took when asking it both times that he’d done so had me jumpy. Defensive. He said it with this air of disdain. Making it obvious for the thousandth time since our school merged that he hated Riverdale High.

“Mhm.” I kept my best calm and neutral tone, despite the fact that I knew he was probably being judgemental. Or that he was being a tease. Maybe even both. “I have a name, by the way.”

“I know. But you also have bright red hair.” Sweet Pea shrugged, barely containing the smirk the second he realized that maybe he was getting to me.

“Yes. I realize this. But my name is Alyssa.” I muttered, my voice dropping lower. Trying my best not to let the giant of a Serpent intimidate me because that wasn’t who I was. He chuckled, shaking his head.

“Relax… Cherry.” Sweet Pea smirked at me.

“You just had to do that.” I grumbled quietly, shaking my head. I tried to focus more on the reading part of our assignment for today, but I couldn’t. Between Sweet Pea and the fact that I couldn’t tell whether he was teasing me, being an ass overall or a little of both and knowing that my own boyfriend couldn’t be bothered to butt in on my behalf and offer to switch with the guy because ‘his stupid pride’ and his thing against any and all Southsiders, my mind was already too full.

I finished my worksheet and glanced over at Sweet Pea, watching his eyes move over the page. Watching the way his tongue rolled over his lips as he wrote out his answers on the worksheet in front of him.

I jumped when without even looking at me, he muttered calmly, “See somethin you want, cherry?”

“No, I was actually just making sure you were actually doing the work.” I retorted, biting my lip when the words came a little harsher than I meant. He stopped writing and laid down his pencil, glancing up at me.

“Aw. Is somebody mad because her so-called boyfriend ditched her with a Serpent to go work with one of her little Valley girl clone besties?”

“Eat shit.” I snapped, tensing. Holding his gaze defiantly.

“You kiss your boyfriend with that mouth, cherry?”

My cheeks burned hot. Kissing was about all I did to Reggie Mantle with my mouth. And I never seemed to hear the end of it with most of the other girls on my squad, either. It was as if my sex life, or lack thereof, was the main topic of discussion pretty much any given moment.

,, And probably why he’s working with Mandy instead of you right now. You know he’s getting tired of getting stopped at second base.” my mind taunted me. I took a few deep breaths to really keep from losing my temper and I shrugged, not bothering to answer Sweet Pea.

I don’t think I’ve ever made a faster retreat than the one I made the second the bell to end class rang. I grabbed my stuff up in a hurry, flustered and a little annoyed. Definitely angry.

Reggie caught up to me in the hallway, holding out his letterman’s jacket.

The one I’d been in such a rush to leave class that I’d left behind. I was beyond tempted to shove the jacket back at him and tell him maybe he needed to give it to Mandy. Or Veronica. Or any of the other girls he’s constantly talking to. But I bit my tongue and took it.

I didn’t feel like speaking up, telling him it bothered me when he went into charmer mode only to have him promise not to anymore and then turn to do it all over again not even an hour later. The whole thing was infuriating, more than a little redundant by now.

“You okay, princess?”

Reggie eyed me as he asked the question and again, I heavily debated telling him exactly what was wrong with me, but again I chose not to.

It wasn’t worth the argument.

It hurt, but it wasn’t worth the hassle.

I plastered on what I hoped was my best convincing smile and leaned against his side, letting his arm wrap around my waist. “Yeah. It’s fine.”

I tensed when Reggie spoke up, mentioning the fact that I’d gotten paired to work with Sweet Pea for the semester. “Ya know, you could’ve said somethin, princess.”

“You know how Mr. Keaton is, Reg. It wouldn’t have mattered.” I muttered, my jaw clenching just a little because it irritated me. Did he not see that it went both ways and stop to think that maybe, just maybe… If he didn’t feel like it was important to do on my behalf, maybe I didn’t see the sense in making waves for him?

He chuckled, rubbing his chin as he leaned against the locker next to mine when we stopped at mine so I could switch out my books. I stopped digging through my books and notebooks to gaze up at him. “It’s not a big deal.” I shrugged it off.

Honestly? It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t see any difference between the jerk of a Serpent I’d been paired to work with and Reggie at this particular point in time. ,,I just had an easier time telling one of the two where they could shove it.” my brain saw fit to point this out and I quickly shoved out the intrusive thought.

Reggie wasn’t a bad guy. He just had a few glaring flaws.

At least he wasn’t out late at bars or getting arrested. Or whatever it was that Sweetpea called himself doing as a member of an actual gang.

All I had to go on, of course, were my brother Archie’s interactions with the gang thus far. Outside of Jughead Jones, of course. But to put it technically, Jughead couldn’t really be considered an actual Serpent. Merely one by association.

Reggie seemed content with my answer, pulling me closer as we walked past the section of the hallway where Sweetpea and his friends' lockers were. Glaring at Sweetpea as if he had some kind of point to prove.

What Sweetpea did was petty. And if I were in a better mood and the guy hadn’t spent all morning making his mission to drive me up the wall, I’d have laughed.

“Hey Cherry?”

I stopped and turned back, my hand on my hip. “Again. My name is Alyssa.” I reminded him firmly. We locked eyes and I bit my lip, squirming a little under the intense once over he gave me before meeting my gaze again a few seconds later. I dropped my gaze quickly.

Wait, was I blushing right now?

Why was I blushing right now?

“Leather would look better on you.” Sweetpea rubbed his chin thoughtfully, locking eyes with me again for a few seconds when I dared to look up, thinking the whole staredown was over. What surprised me was that as he was letting his eyes roam over me, sizing me up, I actually felt my stomach flipping and flopping lazily. My breath even caught in my throat a little and despite everything, I felt my cheeks burning just slightly at his words and that look in his eyes when they met mine all over again.

I eyed him with a raised brow. When Reggie practically growled from beside me and I had to throw my arm out to stop him from storming over and Sweetpea smirked, I gave him a dirty look.

“ You think you’re slick, Serpent? Talkin to my girl like that?” Reggie was seconds away from storming over. Starting a fight. A fight that I knew would get him benched during the game tonight. I cleared my throat, tensing in front of him. “Reggie, don’t.”

“Why the hell not, huh? Did you hear what he said to you?” Reggie looked down at me. It was clear he was wound up, the fuse was lit. All I could do was roll my eyes. Keep quiet. Because if I opened my mouth right now, I was going to wind up arguing with Reggie. And it was over something stupid. Pointless. I knew what Sweetpea was up to right now. If Reggie didn’t, that wasn’t exactly my problem.

Yes, I was still very bitter about his lack of a solution in class earlier. That was it. That was the entire reason I wasn’t about to step up and defend my relationship with Reggie after Sweetpea’s remark called it to question.

,, now he says something. It only took Sweetpea being an ass. Questioning Reggie’s role as my boyfriend. Oh no, he couldn’t stop me from being paired with Sweetpea earlier, when he knew it made me uncomfortable. He wanted to make it into my fault that I said nothing, too.” the thought came, making me even more irritable, especially when I couldn’t shove it out.

Sweetpea smirked when our eyes met again and I bit my lip, quickly dropping my gaze. God forbid I stir things up even further…

,, why does it feel like I’m gonna come undone when he looks at me like that? He’s clearly doing it just to get under Reggie’s skin, there’s no way in hell he actually wants me.” I found myself thinking, only to get annoyed by the fact that yes, it did bother me to know that.

XXX

“The guy spent the whole period hitting on another girl. Right in front of her. I mean, it’s her fault if she’s too stupid to take that as a huge hint.” Sweetpea finished his tangent and promptly raised his brows, swallowing the food he’d shoveled in as he’d been ranting to Toni and Fangs.

Toni and Fangs shared a look.

“I knew he liked her. I called it.” Toni teased triumphantly, high fiving Fangs.

“What the fuck? No!” Sweetpea practically growled the words. Glaring at both Toni and Fangs when they gave him a look as if to say ‘Riiiight. Sure ya don’t.’ but said nothing. “I’m just pointing out she’s obviously too stupid to see what’s obvious.”

“And that little dig in the hallway was what?” Toni questioned, laughing when all Pea could do was open and close his mouth and then finally take a very aggressive bite of his burger. “It was me, stirring her up. Look, she’s hot. That’s it.” Sweetpea insisted firmly.

“If that were it, you wouldn’t always be glancing over at her. Getting that angry look whenever you see her around with that prick Mantle.” Fangs pointed out, earning him a glare from Sweetpea. Fangs continued, despite it. “And the whole reason you moved the fight from Andrews house to that vacant lot after you saw her in the upstairs window.. Why did you do that, again?” smirking when Sweetpea clenched his fists and grumbled at him, answering quietly, “I didn’t think it’d be right for her to have to watch her brother getting his ass handed to him. That’s it.”

A throat clearing had the three looking up.

Alyssa stood there, a hand on her hip. Glaring down at Sweetpea who flashed her a smirk.

“See something you want, cherry?” Sweetpea teased, taking a handful of fries from his plate, biting into them. Holding her gaze steady. A little annoyed with himself at the way his heart fluttered and sped up just the slightest as he did this.

“It’s.. You know what? Nevermind. Call me whatever, I don’t care. But no. I don’t. I did come over here to tell you whatever it is you're up to, I don’t appreciate being dragged into the middle of it. I know you’re only doing this in the first place to wind Reggie up. I’m not stupid.” Alyssa said the words with a jaw clenched tight. Glaring at Sweetpea.

Until he licked his lips and Toni happened to see the way her eyes followed the movement helplessly and began to really sit there and quietly assess the situation. Smiling to herself as her own suspicions formed exactly as to why Sweetpea’s actions as of late bothered Alyssa Andrews so much.

She kept it to herself.

Sweetpea chuckled and shrugged. “Don’t know why it bothers you. The guy’s an asshole. Do better, Cherry.” he waved his hand dismissively at her as if he were shooing her from the spot she stood in at the end of the table. Alyssa glared and folded her arms, tapping her foot as her mouth opened and closed for a minute or two.

Then she turned sharp and stormed off. Finding her own table with Reggie and the rest of the football players and cheerleaders.

Sweetpea found himself staring at her, shaking his head. Clenching his fists. “I don’t get it. How does she not see her whole thing with that asshole is one sided, huh?”

“The more important question to ask, Pea, is why in the hell it bothers you so much? They’re Northsiders man, leave ‘em to whatever it is.” Fangs shrugged everything off, taking a sip of the soda in front of him as he leaned back in the chair lazily.

Sweetpea ignored his friend and found himself watching the table Alyssa sat at again. Watching her. The way she threw her head back to laugh. The bright little smile that gave him the distinct feeling that yes, she could certainly be a handful if she really wanted to and she were really being her truest self. He glared at Reggie when the two locked eyes after a few minutes.

And while the advice his best friend Fangs gave him was a good idea in theory, it was not an idea good enough to stop Sweetpea. Even though Sweetpea knew good and well that it probably should’ve been.

He needed to just let go.

He’d die before admitting it, but knowing he’d never have a chance with her only made him want her so much more. Enough that maybe the thought took root.. Maybe he could keep stirring things up. At the very least, Reggie wouldn’t have her all to himself anymore after it all played out. ,, and anybody is better than that fucking prick Mantle.” Sweetpea shoved the thought out of his head as soon as it came, because he knew deep down it was a lie.

He wanted her. All to himself.

#sweetpea fanfiction #sweetpea fanfic #sweetpea imagine #sweetpea imagines #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale imagine #riverdale fanfic #my writing ; sweetpea #my fics ; sweetpea #my fanfiction ; sweetpea

24 notes · View notes

nat-20s · 4 years ago

Text

MEDIA THAT I RECOMMEND YOU CONSUME INSTEAD OF SUPERNATURAL FOR BOTH HEART AND HEALTH BROKEN DOWN BY TYPE OF MEDIA AND WHY YOU MIGHT LIKE IT IF AT ANY POINT YOU, LIKE MY POOR POOR SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD SELF, WERE INVESTED IN THIS ABSOLUTE GARBAGE FIRE OF A SHOW

with apologies to anyone on mobile who’s readmore function APPARENTLY doesn’t work

(I haven’t watched supernatural for at least five years and, given any sort of luck, I will never do so again, do not @ me)

hello babes. I am talking to you know bc I keep seeing supernatural, unironically, on my dash, and I think we can all do better. I see what’s happening and I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU3i_o5Xd4g

Supernatural is fudge stripes. You are Megan. We can fix this.

So a list of alternate things that I think are overall better written/characterized/just generally more enjoyable that might scratch some of those itches:

TV SHOWS

Good Omens

okay look if u were on tumblr last year u probably already watched this show but like. If u haven’t, it’s only six episodes babe and there’s a large enough fandom that u can go down a fanart hole for days on end

Basic summary: the antichrist has reached that lovely young age where he’s supposed to bring about the apocalypse. An angel and a demon who have decided that actually they like the world as is, thank you very much, try to stop the end times. They’re not very good at it though, which makes for a comedy of errors.

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: theologic (mostly christian) exploration/parody/imagery without inherently being a religious show. Fighting off the apocalypse narrative, which I think pretty much always goes hard as hell, but that’s just me. There’s a gay angel who’s socially awkward. There’s a fun very British demon. Touches on the hierarchies of heaven and hell, with framing Heaven as a bureaucracy and blurs the differences between angels and demons. Pining. Tenderness. A deep nostalgia for 80s music, though in this case it’s specifically queen, and who doesn’t love queen. Main character has a weirdly strong bond with his black vintage car. Satan is (sort of) fought.

Gravity Falls

sometimes...things that are kids shows...with a set story and a predetermined ending...are better

(also this isn’t relevant to any of what I’m talking about but I really appreciate that Gravity Falls specifically went against the thing that most begged me about ATLA aka that a 15 year old girl would be like yeah I’m into a 12 year old boy because the 12 year old boy has a crush on me and I apparently don’t get to really have a say in this. How does that make sense.)

Basic Summary: Twelve year old twins Dipper and Mabel go to stay with their Grunkle Stan for the summer in a small Oregon town called Gravity Falls. Turns out this town is filled with all sorts of strange phenomena that they often have to confront, work around, learn about, or befriend!

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: The core focus of the show is a close sibling duo, but like It’s obvious that the siblings actually like and love each other and while they have their spats it’s still incredibly clear that they deeply care about each other even with their differences LIKE SORRY SUPERNATURAL YOU CAN’T JUST TELL ME THAT SIBLINGS CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER AND THEN THEY SPEND ALL THEIR TIME FIGHTING AND LYING TO EACH OTHER AND GENERALLY ACTING LIKE THEY CAN’T STAND EACH OTHER’S COMPANY BUT THEN OOOHHH YOU CRY ON TOP OF THE HOOD OF A CAR EVERY THREE EPISODE AND SUDDENLY THEY’RE SOULMATES OR WHATEVER

Anyway. Yeah. GF has a solid sibling dynamic. Monster of the week that builds up to greater over-arching plot. A little bit of body horror, you know, for humor. Fair amount of meta humor playing with the tropes of the genre. A Good Ol Big Bad that tries to pit the siblings against each other. Have to fight the apocalypse (you’ll see this point on like a good half of these recs, I really like ‘what are we gonna do about Armageddon’ media). Interesting creature design. Planned, satisfying ending (which supernatural absolutely does not have, but I still think if it had ended with the season 5 finale like it uhh pretty obviously was supposed to, that would sort of counted. Don’t revive shows that have clearly already told their stories kids.) Tie in media that gives you some fun extra stories when you miss the characters. (yes I read some of the supernatural novels when I was a c h i l d, yes I’m pretty sure there’s one or two of them still buried somewhere on my laptop, no I don’t wanna talk about it.) Older father figure (?) who owns a tbh kind of shitty shop. Both already in place and found family.

It’s a good show, and it’s two seasons. John Mulaney Voice: I dunno it’s 40 episodes

MINI REC ALERT! (mini recs are basically things that I’m not gonna go into detail about for whatever reason [probably either due to i’m not familiar enough with it OR I just don’t like. Have a bunch to say about it in regards to how it will scratch the itches presented to u by spn] but still seem like a Good Watch)

Mini Rec: Over The Garden Wall. Spooky Kids Media! Episodic! Miniseries so you can watch it in like 2 hours! Cool ass Animation! About two brothers encountering said spooky stuff! Big Bad tries to pit brothers against each other! Might haunt you for the rest of your life! Check it out!

The Haunting of Bly Manor

I think about this show every goddamn day of my life. (Also not relevant but Greg Sestero makes a brief cameo in it and I was like hi greg my friend greg!)

Basic Summary: An girl named Dani, while staying in London, decides to take on an Au Pair job for two young children, an older brother named Miles (age 10) and the younger sister Flora (age 8) at the spoooooky and mysteeerious Bly Manor, and she gets far more than she bargained for.

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: Okay so supernatural doesn’t actually do this but I know I KNOW why we let ourselves be queerbaited in 2012. Four words for you: CENTRAL! GAY! TRAGIC! ROMANCE! You want some pining? Some tenderness? Some LOVE? Some dealing with internalized homophobia but no, like, actual violent onscreen homophobia? HAVE I GOT THE SHOW FOR YOU. If ur favorite episodes where the ones that make you sob (for me it was kevin’s death on god), I recommend this show. If you wished that supernatural literally ever had consequences or perma deaths or didn’t retcon major plot events like every five goddamn episodes so that there could be some exploration of like grief and trauma through the lens of/ higher stakes of horror, I recommend this show. If you really do stay up at night picturing a supernatural that wasn’t made by dumbass cishettie white men hack writers but was actually allowed to have Dean and Cas be in love over the course of the show so they could have like actual development and not the most homophobic gay reveal of all time, I recommend this show. Hell, if you just want a banger ghost story in general, I recommend this show.

As for what they actually have in common: horror setting/aesthetic without actually being all that scary most of the time. A strong sibling duo, though they’re not nearly as much of the focus of Bly Manor. Found family. Strong themes of grief. Questions of what turns someone into a monster (and done much better) An actual, much better noble sacrifice done out of love. Escalation of stakes until there’s a big final confrontation. Semi-big bad trying to tear this family apart. Found and pre-installed family. Sad orphans.

Watch this show. Vibe with me. Cry with me. Yell at me about Owen Sharma

MINI REC ALERT!

Haunting of Hill House- spiritual predecessor to Haunting of Bly Manor, though they’re not actually the same universe/story. However, it’s made by the same dude and has a shared aesthetic/sensibilities/some of the cast. This is only a mini rec bc I haven’t actually seen it, but I’ve heard good things and that it, while much more heavily leaning into family dynamics, has similar themes of exploring Grief and Trauma through ghooossstttsss.

Community

Okay I know that this may seem like a Wild rec considering community is a school sitcom with basically Zero paranormal elements but just like. Hear me out. And no this isn’t just because I think it’s a realy good show and I want more people to watch it, though that is a factor. If I was just recommending comedies that I think are good and more people should watch regardless of them serving as a replacement for supernatural I would demand you all go watch Galavant and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I’m gonna demand it anyway. Everyone go watch Galavant and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Now back to your original program:

Basic Summary: A group of students at Greendale Community College form a Spanish study group, and things quickly go Off The Fucking Rails in the best way possible.

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: All right I’m gonna be real honest this rec is for all of my (correct) bitches who’s favorite episodes of Supernatural were French Mistake, Changing Channels, and/or Mystery Spot. You think if Supernatural would’ve been fucking fantastic if it had been a committed comedy instead of a CW melodrama that occasionally landed some admittedly really fucking funny episodes/concepts, Community (and the movies on this list) will gently take you into its loving arms and give you everything you desire. It’s about the Meta comedy. It’s about the discussion, exploration, and subversion of common tropes within the format. It’s about the grand use of group/ found family dynamics in order to max both the goofs and the heart. It’s about fantastic callbacks. It’s about having one of the few “asshole with a heart of gold” leads I can actually stand because. You know. Growth. It’s about the INCREDIBLE genre and pop culture parody. Which genre do they parody, you ask. All of them. They parody all the genres. The glee parody episode is a fucking masterpiece of television. If you don’t want to watch a show that features a Halloween party where everyone turns into zombies and the ABBA discography blasts in the background, you can stop reading right now, because I can guarantee you won’t be interested in a damn thing I have to say.

MINI REC ALERT: The X-Files. I’ve also never seen this but a: everything I’ve seen out of context has been fantastically weird and delightful b: it appears that there’s a general consensus that Scully and Mulder are one of the only valid straight couples so it’s probably pretty fun and c: let’s all be honest. Supernatural was already basically an x-files rip off, it had like half of their original writers swiped from the x-files crew, I’m pretty sure if you liked especially the first couple of seasons of supernatural, you’re gonna like the X-files.

Subcategory: TV SHOWS ( A WHOLE TWO OF ‘EM, OR MORE LIKE ONE AND HALF IF YOU WANNA GET TECHNICAL) I’M SPECIFICALLY RECOMMENDING FOR THAT COCAINE HIT OF PURE UNADULTERATED UNCUT 2012 TUMBLR NOSTALGIA

BBC Merlin

Yes, I know the show ended in 2010. Yes, it still provides that 2012 Tumblr nostalgia. 2012 Tumblr is a feeling, not an actual time period.

I love this stupid show. I plan on rewatching it all over the month of January. I harbor a deep amount of fondness for it. It’s why every time I see literally any depiction of Merlin I get just so fucking excited, and why I’ve consumed as many ridiculous Arthurian adaptations as I have (side note: my two favorite other ridiculous Arthurian legend adaptation are Avalon High, a DEEPLY silly DCOM that is required viewing to level up friendship with me, and The Kid Who Would Be King, which is the only movie that I think truly understands the comedic potential of playing a King Arthur Adaptation mostly straight but everyone in it is 12. I’m not sure it intended to be as fucking funny as it was, but again, they’re all middle schoolers. I have never been more jealous of an actor than I was of the 22 year old that got to play a 16 year old dumbass Merlin who was sometimes also Patrick Stewart and did all of his magic with ridiculous hand gestures That should’ve been me that should’ve been me that should’ve been me. Also Sword in the Stone by TH White is pretty good, because Merlin knows germ theory in the fantasy 400’s and he just uses it to be petty mostly. Also listen to High Noon Over Camelot by The Mechanisms. Also Also I tend to prefer family friendly adaptations because they don’t have the uhhh. You know. Incest and sexual violence of the original legend. Love to Not have that shit!) Whether you watched it initially and are due for a rewatch, or you’re intrigued enough by the concept of the show to watch it for the first time, you should join me on this wild wild ride.

Basic Summary: You know who Guinevere, Arthur, and Merlin are, come on. BBC said let’s make em all YOUNG let’s make em SEXY let’s make em FAMILY FRIENDLY and let’s make magic REALLY SEEM LIKE A THINLY VEILED ALLEGORY FOR BEING GAY BUT TO THIS DAY IM NOT SURE IF THAT WAS INTENTIONAL OR NOT BUT IT SURE SEEMS LIKE IT WAS. @ THE BBC MERLIN CREATORS WHAT IS THE TRUTH BECAUSE THERE WAS SOME INTERVI-

Basic Summary but like a bit more helpful: A BABY version of Merlin (and by baby I mean like 20 year old.) is sent from his small town to the big city the Kingdom of Camelot to find his destiny. Staying with the town physician and friend of his mom’s, Gaius, he ends up as both his assistant and personal manservant to Prince Arthur. But in a kingdom where magic is punished with death and the prince seems hell bent on getting himself into situations that are going to kill him, the young sorcerer has his more than his share of work cut out for him.

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: Primo supremo queerbaiting. Like, yeah, okay, it’s queerbaiting, you know it’s queerbaiting, but you watch some of the scenes and ur like okay. I know why I let this bait me. Obviously with a modern show, I would expect more, I would expect better, I would raise my standards, but I gotta admit. Some of these scenes are fuckin compelling as hell, and the subtext is like barely sub. Monster of the week shenanigans. Some awful CGI creatures but like a charming awful. Like the kind of awful that tells you their very limited budget was more focused on cool swords than realistic creatures. Episodic stories build into a more overarching plot, with things getting darker in season 4/5. Shitty father that end up eating shit and while the son of said father is rightfully conflicted and upset over the death it’s cathartic and victorious as all hell for the audience. Multiple hot evil women, and I love hot evil women. There’s also nice hot women, which is a bonus. These women don’t all immediately stupidly die, so that’s a nice change. Also like a LOT of sarcastic humor and shenanigans if u like Sass Merlin is there for u personally name a more iconic line than “Oh I’m sorry, how long have you been training to be a prat, my lord?” AND THAT’S IN THE FIRST FUCKIN EPISODE brilliant amazing fantastic show stopping. Also you know those like dumb hijink episodes where like Dean was possessed by the spirit of a dog or some shit? You bet your bottom fuckin dollar BBC Merlin has those kinds of storylines. Also I know some people go to spn bc it had that HUGE fanbase and like BBC Merlin’s fanbase is still SURPRISINGLY poppin even though it’s been a decade since there was new content so like. Have fun!

Doctor Who but Specifically the RTD Era

Look I’m not here to say that the first four seasons of reboot doctor who are the only good doctor who or inherently better than all the rest (though the RTD era is my favorite personally) BUT when ur seekin that sweet sweet superwholock frenzy nostalgia, this is the ‘who’ that is being referred to. Also like. Stan 9. We should all collectively stan the ninth doctor. Chris Eccleston, the Objectively Best Famous Chris, deserved better.

Basic Summary: An immortal alien that goes by “The Doctor” travels across time and space with a variety of different companions, often to try and save the day or fix a (sometimes self created) mess. It’s distilled campy sci-fi with a family friendly tone that has made me cry on several occasions.

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: Monster of the week that, you guessed it, builds into bigger overarching plot style narrative. Fighting off the apocalypse, but like every couple of weeks because worlds are in danger a LOT. A semi-tragic romance that made people go absolutely buck fuckin wild bc pining n shit. Wamen, but they aren’t fridged. (actually for real though none of the main women die and I just think that’s really fun and flirty even though I could go on a COMPLETELY SEPARATE rant about the injustice of one of the character’s ending YES season 4 is my favorite season and one of my favorite pieces of media ever and I am currently actively recommending it to you YES im still fucking pissed over how it ended YES we exist) Specifically, a Wonderful and Very Excellent woman named Donna who goes on a spa trip that doesn’t end up going very well. That seems like a highly specific example, and it is, but it did happen in both shows. (Also, to anyone that continued watching SPN after like idk season 9 what happened to Donna? I always liked her and I know she became a recurring character so like DM whatever probably injustice was the end of her story line pls and thank you) I’m also extra specifically recommending for Supernatural Fans and also The World At Large: Season Four of Reboot Who. I rewatched it last year and it still goes so fucking hard. Donna Noble is the best character in existence. In regards to the appeal for SPN, personally I think the best part of SPN was when people who are soulmates went on adventures and tried to save the day and it was a good mix of banter and sincerity AND GUESS WHAT’S BASICALLY THE ENTIRETY OF SEASON 4 OF DOCTOR WHO. It’s so good y’all I wish Everything was about soulmates going on adventures and trying to save the day.

OKAY TV SHOWS DONE TIME FOR M O V I E S which I don’t have nearly as many recs for but uhh here goes

What We Do In The Shadows/ Shaun of the Dead

I’m lumping these two together bc my reasons for recommending them are largely the same, and I would call them tonally similar enough that if you like one you’ll probably like the other

Basic Summary (Shaun of The Dead): Uh-oh! London’s had a break out of some of that good ol’ zombieism. Shaun and friends decide to hunker down in a local bar, but they have to get there first. Will they survive? Will they fuck up some zom zoms? Who’s to say?

Basic Summary (What We Do In The Shadows): Some vampire roommates dick around. I think there’s technically, like, a plot, but it’s really just about some vampires Doin Their Thing. Vibin.

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: This is kind of similar to the Community recommendation, in that supernatural had the opportunity to be one of those things that was both a parody of a genre but also just a really good example of the genre. WWDITS and SotD are both those things for vampire and zombly movies, respectively. Have the aesthetic and some of the themes of a horror but is not actually all that scary. Horror Comedy is a god tier genre and I don’t know why it’s not more widespread. Fun monsters/cast of characters in general, so at least one person in it is probably going to make you go “oh gender” ya know? With SotD you have the fantasy power trip that comes with like any piece of media that involves hunting monsters. With WWDITS I go “yep that’s how bisexuals dress” and I Will Not Clarify which character I’m talking about.

MINI REC ALERT: All of Taika Watiti’s filmography. Thor:Ragnarok is one of like 3 marvel movies that I consider genuinely fucking fantastic completely independent of the MCU and my own tendency to be like “hurr bdurr I love. Superheros”. For the one that is most tonally like Supernatural But Significantly Better and Written By Someone Competent I think I would say try out Hunt For The Wilderpeople. It’s got a reluctant curmudgeonly father figure and I KNOW some of you motherfuckers were so invested in spn when you were like 16 bc you had daddy issues. This is a callout post for my friend [REDACTED], who I should text to watch Hunt for the Wilderpeople, actually.

MINI REC ALERT X2!!!: Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I’ve never seen it but it has both Winona Ryder AND Keanu Reaves so like. Goth bi rights.

Happy Death Day (and Happy Death Day 2 U)

happy death day was one of those movies that I saw the trailer, went “eh”, heard other people say it was great, watched, and went holy fuck this slaps. Not nearly as much of a slasher film as the trailers implied if im remembering the trailer correctly

Basic Summary: Our main character Tree keeps waking up on the day she was murdered. The day resets every time that she dies. That’s right, it’s a time loop storey babey!!!!!!!!!!!

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: If you were anything like me you were foolishly lulled into supernatural for way longer than you should’ve been on the promise that the characters would idk like grow and change and become better and learn lessons and some of that would be through the power of receiving love and kindness. You know. Like how good writers would do it especially if their main characters are kind of dicks that really should make some changes. Well, Happy Death Day fucking delivers on that promise in SPADES. It’s about growth! It’s about change! It’s about making the active decision to become a better person and putting effort into doing so! There’s heavy themes of like grief and trauma and acknowledging them and facing them head on in order to move on and the negative consequences of refusing to do so and just trying avoid it until it goes away. There’s a romance that makes my dumb little self do the pleading face emoji. Tree is also one of the only good asshole with a heart of gold characters. I also think media is improved by having at least one character that is a Good Good Boy (note: Good Good Boy character does not have to be a man.) and Happy Death Day has Carter. Oh on that note: Tree Voice: I’ve only had character for (the same repeating over and over) a day but if anything happens to him I’ll kill everyone here and then myself. Also the movie is funny so like hell yeah.

that’s all I got for relevant movies right now

BOOK RECS

jk i’m illiterate. Everyone should feel free to go ahead and add their own suggestions for this section The best I can do is uhhhh I think y’all would probably like Mira Grant’s novels, particularly the Newsflesh stories, bc sibling dynamics. Also the book The Haunting of Hill House is really good. Ballad of Black Tom slaps? There’s of course the Good Omens novel that the show was based on. I’m about to recommend some podcasts after this section which will include to Welcome to Nightvale because of course it will and the tie in novels for that slap, especially It Devours!, and I’m pretty sure they work as stories even if you know nothing about the podcast. Also also I think you should read “The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet” by Becky Chambers It’s not thematically similar to supernatural at all but it’s one of my all time favorite sci fi novels and only like four people have read it which is a goddamn TRAVESTY.

Anyway yeah that’s it that’s all there is. Onto the medium that is like books but I can fold laundry or cook while consuming their narratives.

PODCAST RECS

Okay so this is getting uhhh wicked long so I’m gonna limit myself to only three full blown recs and a

mini rec

Alice Isn’t Dead

Fuck me running this show is so good. Literally hands down my all time favorite (and scariest!) horror podcast. Mamma mia, that’s a good fuckin story. The Book version is also good and has fewer Weird events but some further character development so I recommend them both.

Basic Summary: After her wife Alice disappears mysteriously, Keisha takes up a job as a long haul trucker, traveling all across America in order to find her, but ends up finding so much. Pursued by a deadly creature she calls The Thistle Man, the stakes of her journey are raised.

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: okay so I have a lost of bullet points of things that appealed to me specifically about supernatural and how no other shows covers all of them which sucks bc it means I basically Yearn for a show that’s supernatural but good. Alice isn’t Dead, however, hits the most of these bullet points AND is so fucking good. It has monster hunting. It has stopping a cataclysmic event BUT also discussion of the cyclical nature of events such as these and how the fight never truly ends but you can make some fucking progress nonetheless. It has a central gay romance that’s actually a central gay romance. It’s the ONLY show on this list that really hits that the weird and dark underside of americana vibe but specifically the americana of not like suburbs and shit but that eerie haunted feeling you get when you’re hours into a late night drive on open roads with no civilization around and an expansive sky and it just Seems like something should be watching you. Have you ever been out for a walk at midnight and encountered a deer and you looked into each other’s eyes and it felt like it was telling you a message that you couldn’t possibly hope to parse? Have you ever felt an incredible sense of deja vu eating in a restaurant you couldn’t have possibly been in before, because you’ve been to a thousand diners a thousand times just like one, and there’s an incredibly sense of homogeneity even though you’re 2000 miles away from anyone and anything that could possibly know you? Have you ever traveled to an area that seems to be stuck in a bubble of time, the only thing that shows any evidence of having aged past 2006 being yourself, and you wonder how your cell phone even works around here? THAT’S the spooky americana I’m fuckin talking about! Messed up road trips! Too much goddamn space! America is scary because it’s big and Filled With Things but also Not Enough Things! Fuck yeah!!!!! That time bubble fuckin EXISTS in Wyoming the most recent song on the radio I heard was fuckin Hey Soul Sister!

Also has a thing where like are there even good guys and bad guys in a conflict or is it all just one umbrella nightmare that you’re trying to stand against in anyway possible (u kno..like how the overarching structures of both heaven and hell were kinda fucked in spn? No spoilers but similar shit be happenin in Alice Isn’t Dead). Exploration of what makes someone into a monster, like how do you go down that path? Also this is the only show on this whole damn list that southern gothic music really suits it so points for that.

The Magnus Archives

You know I had to do it to ‘em.

Basic Summary: Jonathan Sims has just become the Head Archivist at the Magnus Institute, a “research” “facility” that looks into paranormal/esoteric/unexplained phenomena.

John Mulaney Voice, Again: Nobody knows what the archivist is going to do next, least of all the archivist. He’s never been in an archives before, he’s just as confused as you are.

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: Oh fuck this document is over 5k long I said I wasn’t gonna do this hhhhh so lipton lightning round: Slowburn Gay Romance but Actually Canon, Monster Hunting but Hey What Even Is A Monster Anyway, Acts Somewhat like a Loosely Connected Horror Anthology until it DOESNT, Little Things Build to Bigger Narrative, Characters Be Goin Through It (On God These People Need Therapy), Trying to Prevent/Fix The Apocalypse (X2!!!), Smug Asshole Big Bad, Horror as a Metaphor For Various Shit, Basically if you thought that the Men of Letter concept slapped and you think it should’ve been the whole damn show including being Deeply British you would probably really fuckin like TMA. Also if ur like the ideal piece of media is a horror tragedy but also like it’s a wacky sitcom but also also fuck cops. U will like tma.

Welcome to Nightvale

IF ANY 2012 TUMBLR FANDOM DESERVES TO MAKE A MASSIVE COMEBACK AND BE EVERYWHERE AGAIN AND ABSOLUTELY FLOOD MY DASH IT’S WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE WHY DID WE ABANDON THE SHOW THAT TREATED US THE MOST KINDLY DID YOU KNOW THAT EPISODES 108-110 ARE THE BEST FUCKING BUILT UP NARRATIVE REVEAL THAT I HAVE WITNESSED IN MY LIFE DID YOU KNOW THAT IT CONTINUED TO BE REALLY FUCKING GOOD AFTER MOST PEOPLE STOPPED LISTENING DID YOU KNOW CECIL AND CARLOS ARE MARRIED AND THEY HAVE A DOG AND A TODDLER NOW BECAUSE OF ALL THE GAY PODCAST PROTAGONISTS CECIL GERSHWIN PALMER LOVE OF MY LIFE ELDRITCHIAN CHEERLEADER AND CERTIFIED BIMBO KEEPS FUCKIN WINNIN BABY. DID YOU KNOW THAT CECIL THINKS PEANUT BUTTER IS A ROCK.

Basic Summary: Welcome to the sleepy desert town of Ņ̶̏ight V̶͚̰̮͗̔̊̊ale! Community radio how host Cé̵̟͚͕̗̞̙͂͑̽̄́c̵̤̼̞͈̪͓̍̽̋̚̕͜il Pǎ̵̧̨̢͚̻̈̂̄̇͐̇̊̀̆ͅl̶͚͎͕͉͖̬͓͑́̐̒̍̿̈́͢͜͝ͅm̸̧͙̟̖̠̳̬͋́͋́͌̚̚ͅȩ̙̖͎̖͂́̒͐͜͞r̢̢̛̰̻̮̺̩͙̼̈́͋̀͘ is here to k̠̠̰̦͙̯̥̎̄̆͌̎̀̿̔̌̚ê̷̢̬̥̞̩̯̘͒̽̈̓͐̂̔̍e̶̡̝̗̺̫̪̜͆̓̿̈͌͌̆͒͞ͅp̵̹̗̬̼̠̬͙̏͐͐̉̅͊͊́͟͞ͅͅ ỷ̛͙̞̦̦͖̑̉̌̎͞͡͡͝ͅo̧̧̥͎̻̥̲͇͋́́̔̈͌͞ǔ̸̬̯̫͇̦̮͕̤̲̯̽̔̀̔͆͋̈́͘̚ up to date all the local happenings, including w̸̢̢̢̧̡̡͍͖̻̳̹̼̼̰̬̭̱͔̲͙͍̰̠̥̺̝͖̺̖̼̮̼̞̳̞̜͉̤̯͇̖̳͖̠̙̺̲̤͇͈͚͓̮̭̱̭̩͚̟̥̬̟̻̝̼̖͚̘͐̆̅̂̃̈́͆͊̉̏͒́̈́̋͗͑̄̉́̐̌́̿̌͛̾̎̊̾̃̈́̉̔̍̐͛̕͘̚͜͜͠͠é̵̢̡̧̨̨̡̧̨̡̛̹̥̥̞̮̯͙͈̻̝͓͖͙̦̰͍̖̜̲̰̞͎͈̭̯̳͕̗͓͈̭̫̼̯̪̞̯̰̲̘̭͎̪̱̗̝̝̞̤̱͉͙̯͎̬͎̙̜̗͉̩̦͕̪̳͇͙̺̙̰̠͚͎̜̠͔̬͎̺̣͕̜̊̓̃̐̂́͂̎̐̾̔̽̀̉́̍̊̂̿̎͂͐̎̐̄̍̔̋̐̃͗̈́͂̀̒̊̎͘͘̕̚̕͜͝͝͝͠ͅͅa̸̡̧̡̡̨̡̨̛̛͙̣̘̳͎͖̥̝̟̱̩̥͙͉̝̲̙̮̩̩̹̱͔͎̥̹̻̜͚̭̬̳͚̤̙̖̯͎̱̫̞̪̻͖̱̞͔̭̻̺͚͚̯̬͓͓̳͇̳̦͓̞͈̮̤̭̣͉̲̞͚̘͗̆̃͌̅̍͊̓̈̇̌̒͊͑̊̏̊͌̈̓̿͗̒̏̒͊͒̏̃̎̒̀̅̾̍̀͘͘͜͝͠ͅt̵̢̡̨̧̧̛̛̛̯̤͓̘̻̤͓̪̰͔̪̝̫͎̻͔͈͎͔͙͕͈̰͓͍̀̏͒̆͋̈́̈́͂̔͋͆͂̅͗̍̆̍̆̔̑͊̏̈͒́̽͊́̿͂́̓͛̽͐͌̌̐̈̇̃̓̆̍̅̃̔̚̕͜͝͝͝ͅͅh̸̨̨̡̢̢̡̢̧̡̧̢̡̨̡̭̜̬̬̙͕̗̙̻̯̠̘͙̻̥͉͚̼̗͚͇͉̰͍̥͉̗͎̬̫͖͉͔̼̮̯̞̫̬̟̻͉̖̙̥̫͖̬͚̟̜̭͇͎̭̘̝̲̤͕͎̰̭̗̯̮̤̙̙̯͍̞̭͚͔͎̞̹̲̟͉̩̭̖̱̠͍̺͈̟̩̋̆̈́͆̍̆̄̏͜ͅͅȇ̸̢̢̨̨̧̛̜͍̺͎̬̪͙̻̝̣͓͈̺̩̳̟̲̠̣͈͎͎͈͉̙̪͖̳̺͇̹̊̍͊͑̿͊̌͛̿̓͊̾̀͂͛̉͆̾̽͆̈̏͛̊͛̍̈́̇͋̔͂̑͐̂̿͊̽͑͘̚͘͝͝͠͝ͅͅŕ̵̨̡̨̨̢̧̡̧̨̘̟͙̦̲̲̪̦̙̼̠̳͚̞̦̞͖͚͇̳͖̲̭͕̜̫̳̖̙͖͉͎̘̘̤̠͈̬͕̝̻͚̥͍͕̠̥͙̙̪̖̯͍̘̘̲̣̹̜̪̲̭̟̮̫̖̤̰͔̩̩͉̲͚̟̝̦̬̪̘̬̮̱͔̻̦̼̃̐̂͋̐̅̋͒̉͛́̅̈́̒̒͆̑̆͊̒͒̀̍̈́̍͌̍̏̔͋͌̒̍̌͛̓̈̂̐̕͘͘͜͜͝͝͝ͅͅͅ ̶̢̡̨̛̠͇̹̯͕͍̻̟̼̼̗̩̱̗̙̱̥̜̬̫̜͎͉̺̣͓̟̯̱͖̣̞̠̝̥͍̲̳̙̠͔̹̘̲̲̻̖̈́̊͋͜͜ą̵̡̧̟͕̬̳̜͈͈̳̝̜̣̬͔͈͈͎͉͍̯̟̞̺͎̝͇̰̥͖̬̯͙̤̬̼̲̦̯̭͓̠̺̳̱̰̮̎͋͆̈́͌͆̎̉̓̇̐͋͋́̃̉̈̄̏̓̉̿̅̒̉̒̉͂͛̄̀̇̒͊͛́͊̎́͆̌̆́̌͂̈́̽̋͛͗̑̊̀́̍͊̌͆͊͐͆̅̒̊̉̾̄͛̑̕͘͘͘͘͝͝͝͝͠͠͝n̸̛̾̍͑͛̅̒̾́̌̍��̡̛̛̛̛̙͎̬̦̠̼͓͈̝̇̋̇̓̏͛̔͛̈́͆̿̌͐̿͊̿́͒̍̃̀̈͐̐̆͐̉̒̂̉̀̅̇̾͋̍͒̋̈̌̿͒͐̍́͗̀̌̌̚̕̕̕͘̚͘͘̚͜͠͝͝͝d̴̡̢̢̛̛̛̺̠̳̬͎̞̲̣̲̱̳̪̹͉̝̠̱̗̙̫̠̹̼̙̝͉̲̟̮̙̙̮̻̹͈̦̙̞͚̜̙̖̞͓̙̭͉̃̽̌̅̔̾̈́̒̽͑́̒͋̓̈́͆͋̽̒̃̽̋̐͌͂̍͑́̽̋̍͗̋͗͂̅̽̈̈̾͐̄̃̕̕͜͠͠͝͠͝ͅͅ ̵̡̡̢̛̛̗͚͍̺͇̲̳̯͓̰͍̙̮̙̜̟̞̣̼͕̝͔͙̺̫͈͈̠̻̘̱͍̦̭͔͈̤̺̗̮͕̦̞̘͍̯̻̝͓̤̳̫͔̩͉̬̈́͋̈́̐͒́̔́́̿̓̆͐̎͆̇͒̄̈̿̓̑̾̏̔̿͊̌͆͒̒͊̓̅̓́̔̅̀̀̀̃̿̂̑͂͆̅̎̾̏̓̂̈́͛͌̇̾͌͐̈̂̆͐̅̓̍̓̃̆͗̃͛̏̒̌̀̅͊́̽̐̆̿́̌͘͘̚̕͘̕̕͜͜͜͠͝͠͝͠t̷̢̥͓̄͗̾̄̅̚͜r̵̨̡̨̧̧̢̛̛̛̛̛͍͙͚̥̱̞̜̦̜̼̺͉̠̬͎̰̻̜̼̫̤͓͖͖̤͇̞̥̖̈́͊̆̓͊̑̑̋̒̈́̔̆͆́̐͛͑͊͋̇̈́̓̑̍̏͐͛̽̋̎͑̃̈́͒̇̂̇̌͂̀̍̊̇̓̋̈́̌̏̕͘̚̕̚͝͝͠ǎ̴̡͓͓̯̘̥̱̱͖̦̺͓̘͉͖̞̟̦͈̜̥̰̘̞͈̦̠̼̯̙̭̼͚̟̖̲̠̝̜̐̅͆̏̈́̍́͂̃̾͑̓͋̽̄̾́̾̆̾͒͋̎͂̈́͘̕̕̚͜ͅͅf̷̢̡̡̧̢̨̡̧̢̢̧̡̧̫͖̖͇̲̫̮͕͉͓̩̪̳̹̩͎̖̟̤̤̲̟̪̫̻̻̖̟̦͉̼͎͖̭͍͖͎̖̳̳͙̜͉̝̘̺̖͚̙͉͕͙̯͖̞͚̮̲̻͉͙̺̭͓͎̤͙̦̦̺̯͕̜̰͍̳̙̦͉̪̥́͋̓̅̀͋͐̀̄̊̆̉̒̐͒̀̏̈̇̊̉̆̐̏̾̀̀̓͛͆̍̾͗͌̀̄̔͒̀̍̈́͆̔̒̑̏̍̏͆́̾̐̂͋̂̔̂́̓̓̌͌̉͛́̒̐̽̏́̑͊́̌̆̂̑͋̇̈́͌̑̿̅͗̚̕͘̕̚͜͠͝͝͠͠f̴̨̨̛̹͌̂̓͌͛̀͑̾̓̍͗̽͆̉̊͗̇́̍͌̊͐̔̈́̊̇͆̄̃̑̕̕͘͘͘͠͝͝͝͠i̴̧̡̢̢̧̢̨̨̧̧̧̛̛͎̗̳̦̘̙͓̦̙͔̜̼̘͇͇̺̭͉̠̩̟̤̥̘͙̤̩͔̪̱̻͈̪̼̼̞̠͎̟̹͕̻̭̤̪̲͕̟̺̻̻͖͕͚̣͇̖̰̝̩͈̤͕͇͕̝͙̙̪͔̗̫͇͎̙̲̲͖̗̘͉̲̣̤͎̔̐̆͒̄̈́̀̎̃̃̅͆̌̈́̽̈́̅̈́̑̄̇͒͐̀̐̀̒̍̀̓͌͗̓̽́͗̓̎͂͛̅̑̔̀͛̈́̽̾̃̊͊͆̄̍͑̍̆̌̾͗̄̊̽̉̅̆̀̎̀͑̿̎̋̄̆̃͐̾̏͛͒̍̋̅͘̕̚̕̕͜͜͝͝͝͝͠ͅͅc̷̛̛͚̝̻̣̞̓́̃́̀̃̓͗͌̂͛́̒̊͑̓͆̇̈́͑̏̆̀͌̑͂͂̄͌̉̔̋́̎͒̿͗͒͛̇͛̿̎̍̕̕̕͝͝͝͝͝ ̴̢̧̢̡̨̢̡̨̡̢̢̛̺̘̹̯̤̩̘̯͔̞̟̬̠̣̟̻̥̜̤͔̥͕̠̥̞͎̗̩̱̮͉͔͎̲̯̱̙̜̥̳̮͔̦̣͖͔̜͉̗̪̳̹̦̤͇̣̙͕̯̫̖̝̼̹͍̠͎͓̗͎̦͓̲̯̱̠̰͇̮̹͔̝͉͙̹̜̹͈̹̥͖̣̳̲͖̓́͌̈́̈́̀͌̄͂̌̾́̍̔̊̓̿͋͂͋̈́̋́́̒̓̀̒̃͂̀͑̐͛̆̆͒̈́̅̿͊͌̍͗̌̌͆̂͌́̉̏̒̓͊̾̒̓̋̽͐̏̾͘̕͜͝͠͝ͅͅr̸̨̢̛̪̞̬͓͔̥̤̣͔̭̥̙͉̦̗̠̳̩͙̂̈́͑͑̿̋̓̀͋͆̋̕͝͝ë̴̢̡̨̬͈͉̖̞͔͎͓͖̼̘̬͕̰͈̥͈̝̩͎͉͉̫̜͚͕̤͔̟̯͓͎̟͙̜̭̩̗̮͎̗̤͇̝̩͎̜̺̯͕͇̝͎̯͙̖͙̮̗̮̘́̑͑͛̂̅̄̌̽̓̒̾̿͆̏̏͐͛̾̂̃͑͆̅̄̿͋̅͂̈́̽͋͒̎͐̒̓͆̌̉͑͊́̀̈̾͛̋͑̋̎̈̀̽̀͊̏͘͝͝͝͝͠͝ͅp̴̧̧̡̢̢̢̛̛̛͚̟͓̖̭̪̻̪̲̬̥̙̥̰̼̹͎͕̪̞̮̺̰̬̘̫̤͉̦͙̮̖̙̹̻͔̖̮̲̞̣̻̜̠͇̬͚̱̦̼̲̮̀̂͌̍̈̒̍̋̌̏͐̓͛̉̂̈̀͑̈́͊͗͋͗́̂̎̎̃͆͒̅̑̇́̈͐̾̀̔̒̉͑͒̅̓̈́̋͋̀̍̄̿̌̀̉͆̇̔̈́͗̋̄̓̇͗̎̉̆͊̒͗̚̕͘͘̕̕̚͜͜͝͝͠͠͠͠͠ͅͅͅơ̶̢̡̧̨̡̛̛͔̦̼̰̠̯̰̟̲̣̜͙̲͙̪̱̱͕̺̪͈͉̺̻̙̥̲̩̲̩͔̠͚̩͓̞̠̯̟̫̣̗̦̰͉͚͙̺͎̼͖̥̙͈̯̲̝̞͎̻͕̮͔̰̖͔̭͙̩̼͔̫̹̘͓͔̜̘͍̍̅̄͋͑̋̍̊̉̄̈̽̈͐̀͌͐̆͊͂̐̋̃̎͆͛̐̀̂̿̈́͂́̈̌͐̇̀̒͋͑͐́͌̐̇̊͆̀͂͋̏́͋͆̏͗͂͑̂̓̽͘͘̚̕̕̕̕̚͘͜͜͠͝͝ͅͅͅr̴̨̨̨̧̨̛̘͕͈͔͙̠̬̯̩̗̰̗̬̦͈̗̝̣͓͓̟͕͙͈̠̘̻͓̭̝̘̦̦͓̭̘͙̻̙̼̩̰̝͈̱̝̱̬͉͙̣̖̮̲͈̙̱̩̣͕̦̰̮͔͈͓̙̮͍̳̟̠̞͎̱̣̰͕̩̝̲̝͐́́̍̈͐͋̐̑̌͋̓̈́̈͗̿̈̈́͗̑̚͜͜͜͜͜͝ͅͅţ̴̢̨̧͇͉͎̣̬̣̝̗̬̹͇̮̞̈́̐̌̇̈́̌͊̐̅̂̌̂͒͌́̈͌̂̊͗̍̿͑͋̎̓͂̀̎̎͒̾̏̒͌̃̄͋̌̾̍̈́̐̏͑̊̍͑͆̉̓́̆̌̾̓͊̊̈̑͘̚̕͘͘̕͝͝͝͝͝s̴̢̢̡̛̬̹͚̻͉̦̦̣̦̠̜͕̤̳͓͙̟̬͕̘̦̿͗̉̏̒͆̓̄͊͌͛͂͑̒̃͛͘͜͝͝!

Shared elements with supernatural that you might Vibe with: Honestly, probably bc Nightvale and Alice are by the Same Dudes, a lot of these points are the same as Alice Isn’t Dead, but it’s less scawy and more funney. Also hits the “horror, but make it kind of a sitcom” vibes. Doesn’t have the same road trip vibes, but DOES capture the exact weirdness of South Western USA, so I’m still giving it “fucked up americana” credit. If you’ve never been to New Mexico ur like this is an exaggeration clearly no desert town is subject to like ACTUAL cosmic horror and unexplainable sights but I’m telling you New Mexico is just Like That. (I highly recommend visiting the land of enchantment if you ever get the oppurtunity it is a deeply odd and wonderfully unsettling experience.) Look man it’s gay it’s a horror comedy cecil has a wonderfully soothing voice and it hates capitalism so fucking much like oh my god so much what more could you want.

MINI REC ALERT: Wolf 359! I have nothing deep to say about this I just like it and my gut tells me that y’all would enjoy it too I know there isnt much for physical descriptions in the show but I know in my heart that the main character is so so pretty and so so stupid. I KNOW yall like some himbos that experience character growth.

Okay since It’s my party and I’ll speak if I want to rapid fire list of podcasts I just like and want more people to listen to even though I’m behind on like all of them shhhhh: The Penumbra Podcast, BomBARDed, Dungeons and Daddies, Stellar Firma, Wonderful!

SONG RECS

okay these aren’t like replacement recs or anything they’re just really good and I almost certainly would have put them on some sort of supernatural playlist in 2013 but I don’t, like, have a good playlist for them now so I’m subjecting y’all to them also they all have the youtube link for ease of access

Woah There Kimmy- Felix Hagan & the Family

Devil’s Backbone- The Civil Wars

Blood On My Name- The Brothers Bright

Awake O Sleeper- The Brothers Bright

The Bottom of the River- Delta Rae

Old Number 7- The Devil Makes Three

The Bullet- The Devil Makes Three

In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company- The Dead South

Bartholomew- The Silent Comedy

Pomegranate Seeds- Julian Moon

Curses- The Crane Wives

Tongues & Teeth -The Crane Wives

OKAY THAT’S IT! THAT’S ALL FOLKS! FUCK!

#long post #if you didn't want this blame of-mice-and-mentality for enabling me posting #supernatural

47 notes · View notes

hecallsmehischild · 4 years ago

Text

Recent Media Consumed

Books

Half-Bad by Sally Green. Man, this is grim. It’s good fantasy, and the writers breaks certain writing conventions to convey the story better, which is fascinating. But it’s so grim. There’s two more books in the series and I want to get ahold of those before I say more.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. Did I say Half-Bad was grim? This is grim. Grimdark to the max. But also a fascinating premise, that the crime of murder and its accompanying guilt manifests an animal companion that marks you for the rest of your (shortened) life? If you can stomach some of the imagery and if you do well with being plunged into unknown terminology and figuring it out on the go from context, this is a good read.

Dropped titles: Pursuing God’s Will Together by Ruth Haley Barton and How Should We Then Live by Francis Shaeffer. One was a recommendation, one was semi-assigned reading because I’m a non-voting member of a ministry board. In both cases I got about halfway through. I have the gist of both books and I’m enjoying neither. At all. I started to avoid Audible altogether. The moment I gave myself permission to stop listening to them and pick up the next Thomas Sowell book on my list, I was right back on reading, because I’m actually interested in what Sowell has to say. Note to self: it’s ok to drop books that you find uninteresting. (this preceded a Sowell binge reading session)

Dismantling America (and other controversial essays) by Thomas Sowell. I was surprised at how much more of an edge Sowell has in this book, but the appearance of the edge here makes a certain amount of sense. This is the first collection of newspaper columns I’ve read by him, and he has way less time to make his point in a column than he has in a book. With that in mind, his points have much less groundwork than I’m used to reading from him when he spends a whole book on a topic (though I’d guess that each point he makes probably has a crapton of citations in the printed book, like the rest of his work. He’s quite thorough about his research). This is probably not the best title of his to pick as a first read, but it’s good and interesting. My main take-away point from this book is that politicians look out for politicians, and expecting them to do anything else is naive. And, in fact, many things attributed to a politician’s “stupidity” is far from stupid, in fact they are brilliant within their set of incentives and constraints. It just rarely aligns with the general public’s best interest. Thinking about it again, it MIGHT be a good first book. It sums up a lot of his views into bite-sized digests. It just doesn’t substantiate each and every claim as thoroughly as some of his other books do. That’s my grain of salt.

Compassion Versus Guilt by Thomas Sowell. More of the same, a collection of essays by Sowell. Different ones, on a different theme. A couple that sound like they could have been written by the authors of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, his satire is on point.

Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell. This was a fascinating read for me. This book traces 8 groups of ethnic migrations to America. I descend from Scottish, Irish, and Russian Jewish immigrants, and seeing what the different groups had to content with over the years was very enlightening. A few things that stood out to me were; each immigrant group seems to have very different cultural strengths and foibles, inter-group violence is not new (but not always in the directions modern people would think), almost every group has its own upper class that disdains and reviles its lower class, and each ethnic group is far more variable and differentiated than the general category (“the Irish” or “the blacks” or “the Jews”) makes them out to be. More and more I’m coming to mistrust the general racial category as referenced by either political party because it seems to be a linguistic expediency that sacrifices the truth of a situation for a fast rallying point.

Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? by Thomas Sowell. I’m not even sure what to say about this book. It’s short and punchy and gives me a lot to think about. Sowell definitely has zero sacred cows. Toward the end of this book he addresses some of his critics who piled onto Ethnic America, which was interesting. Also, while reading this, I have begun to realize how much of a disadvantage I am at in analyzing arguments because I’m unable to understand how people slice numbers into statistics to make their point. I’m at the mercy of the conclusion they draw at the end of the statistics because, until they summarize their findings, I really don’t understand what the raw numbers are saying. I’ve had this feeling for a while, but in this book, Sowell dissects some of the foundational studies and statistics that buttressed later civil rights cases, and I realized that if I just read the statistics and data from those cases and the statistical rebuttals that Sowell has side by side, I would not understand what was being argued at all. I can only rely on the end conclusions put into words at this point, but the written conclusion is not the proof, the numbers are. This gap in my understanding is disheartening, but I hope to continue sponging up knowledge in the hopes that I will be able to think more critically in future years.

Maverick, a Biography of Thomas Sowell by Jason L. Riley. My parents pre-ordered this for my birthday a few months ago and it arrived a few days ago. I have torn through it. I think I got a more cohesive overview of Sowell’s progression through his body of work and added several titles to my wishlist. The biography is fairly minimalist on Sowell’s personal life and focuses more on his ideological clashes with… well, everyone, left and right, people he disdained and people he admired. Maverick, alright. Also Riley takes a look at how each of Sowell’s books (or grouping of books) came about, for what reasons, and what was going on at the time.

People of the Book edited by Rachel Swirsky and Sean Wallace. This is a compilation of Jewish sci-fi and fantasy short stories and can probably be summed up best by this paragraph in the introduction: “These stories allow us to identify with, although briefly, so many different characters and places, they entertain us and they give us comfort. And yet, the tales in this anthology often have a melancholic tinge, similar in tone to the minor keys of our musical liturgy. We don’t want to be too comfortable, too happy. Because that might bring some bad luck onto us, might tempt the evil eye.” I also sensed a whole lot of anger in the undercurrent of these stories, and that saddened me.

On deck/currently reading: The Brothers Karamazov, The Rational Bible: Genesis, re-read of Basic Economics, and War Nerd.

Shows

Dropped series: Hilda. The first season was lovely on so many counts. The second season’s antagonist… bothers me. So does Hilda’s behavior. And given how much time I spent on Star and its accompanying disappointment, I’m not really interested in continuing Hilda any further. I’m shelving it at this point. There are other things I’d like to watch.

Infinity Train Season 4: Now retitled “The Wormhole Judgment Line” I believe, lol. It’s hard to top season 3, but it was a solid story. Good. Interesting. The resolution with the villains int he last episode felt kind of out of nowhere and I’m really not okay with Morgan’s behavior even if the plot wants me to feel sorry for her, but those things aside, it was enjoyable. I hope Infinity Train is picked up again, I’d love to see more.

On Deck: The Mandalorian or Wandavision

Movies

Jiang Ziya. Okay whatever this studio produces in this line of movies, I will be watching it. I definitely don’t understand all the significance of what I’m seeing but it’s creative along COMPLETELY DIFFERENT lines than US animation and it’s an absolute joy to behold.

Raya and the Last Dragon. Suffice it to say, it would take an intensive blog post (or a movie review of the style I used to do as one half of The Storytrollers) to cover all the things that bothered me about this movie. I will take the thing that bothered me the most and be brief: I find the moral to be terrible. I take major issue with the idea that repeated blind trust in the face of repeated betrayal will reshape the world, given that I extended blind trust to people who never changed for many years. I take issue with the worldbuilding, I take issue with some of the designs, and I take issue with the moral. I was exceedingly disappointed in this movie.

Profile. Now THIS was a good movie. I would not be averse to seeing more movies shot like this, using the computer desktop as both film set and character. In addition this was an interesting topic, though I was tense for the whole movie, afraid the main character was going to slip up. Very good, very tense movie to sit through.

Mighty Ira. So, this is a documentary about one of the great leaders of the ACLU. It was interesting to see this, especially since it shed more light on the whole Skokie situation than I’d heard of before. Good watch. Informative.

#child loves movies #child loves shows #child loves books #recent media consumed #mind your peas and queues

6 notes · View notes

what-is-your-plan-today · 5 years ago

Text

CSI Rogers and Barnes Ch12: An Excelsior Turn Of Events

Part 1 Co written with @icanfeelastormbrewing

Episode Summary: Steve, Katie and Bucky head to Tony’s lab to find out what was on that Pen-Drive. Fury’s back, being Fury and then they discover some other stuff that’s gonna make you all go “arrrrrrgh!”

Episode Warnings: Bad Language words.

Episode Pairings: Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark

Song for Episode: A Thousand Trees by Stereophonics

A/N: This is another LONG chapter guys, but there’s a LOT going down as we really are ramping up to blowing this popsicle stand (Or case…) Again we’ve split into 2 parts for you to read either all at once or separately, however you wish.

Oh, and we KNOW Steve was in a uniform here, and not a suit, but damned the only pics out there of the beautiful bastard in a police uniform are when he has that damned moustache (huh? you know I’m talking to you…) so, yeah, we used one of him in a suit because like who CARES?????

With a special birthday dedication to the handsome man himself, and of course the beautiful @jtargaryen18

As always we live for re-blogs and comments

Series Master List // Main Masterlist

It only takes one tree to make a thousand matches, only takes one match to burn a thousand trees

When Steve, Katie and Bucky arrived at the lab and entered the main room they found Banner, who was reading something on a computer screen while muttering something unintelligible.

"Good afternoon Bruce. Trouble experimenting?" Katie greeted the scientist.

"What? Oh… hi Katie." he stuttered as he stood up and approached her reaching his hand to greet her. "I was just.... I was just thinking I have to heat up the cube to 120 million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier." he explained absentmindedly fiddling with the reading glasses he had just taken off.

Katie looked at him puzzled. "The what?"

"Are you trying to achieve heavy ion fusion?" Bucky suddenly asked.

"Oh hi, Sergeant Barnes. Captain." Bruce greeted both men when he acknowledged their presence. "Yes, you could say that. Just on every reactor in the lab." he answered Bucky's question to what the Sergeant nodded knowingly.

"What just happened?" Steve whispered leaning over Katie who simply shrugged.

"Look, Bruce. We really need to speak to Tony. Is he in?" she asked.

"Oh sure. Yes, he's in his office. You know the way." he said pointing at one of the corridors with his glasses.

Steve and Katie nodded at the scientist before heading towards Tony's office. Bucky followed their steps after patting Bruce on the back and stating "I've read about your work in antielectron collisions. It is unparalleled."

Both Katie and Steve turned to look at Bucky giving him a questioning look.

"What? I do my readings." he shrugged as if it was something so obvious he couldn't be bothered explaining.

When they got to Tony's office, they could hear him talking to someone on the phone. His voice getting louder as Katie knocked on the door twice, before cracking it open just a bit. Tony looked up as she turned and gestured with her head for Steve and Bucky to follow he in.

"Of course you can quote me on that, I just said it." Tony waved, greeting them and signalling for them to take a seat as he finished talking on the phone. He surely wasn't amused by the person at the other end of the line, as he rolled his eyes continuously and sighed when he finally hung up.

"Sorry, that was the wedding planner. Told her to tell the man at the venue to go to hell..." he offered, while rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Wedding planner?" Katie asked, surprised.

"Oh right, yeah, we've set a date..." Tony explained. "Maybe if you were home some time, I could have told you earlier." he added grabbing a foil packet from his desk as Katie rolled her eyes and took a breath at her brother’s snarky comment. Steve gently rubbed her back, signalling for her not to rise to his bait.

"Blueberries?" Tony offered his guests. But they all refused with a nod of their heads, so he leaned his head back and

"Weddings are great" Bucky said with a huge grin. When he felt everybody staring at him, which was happening a lot that day, he added "As long as they're not yours..."

"You're invited Manchurian candidate and your Toy Boy " Tony snorted.

"What?" Bucky asked with a frown.

"Yeah, Doc is invited too..." Tony replied, a knowing smile spreading on his face.

Bucky was going to ask Tony what he was trying to imply when the landline on his desk started ringing.

"Sorry guys..." he apologised as he pressed the button to answer. "Stark...Yes, hold please..." and he pressed the button again.

"He likes to watch the light blink" Katie explained to Steve and Bucky who were looking at each other.

"Yup. Why are you guys here so late anyway?" Tony asked, sitting on his office chair.

"We need to speak to you, Tony..." Steve trailed off as Tony frowned.

"Oh God..." Tony looked at Katie "You're pregnant aren’t you..."

"What? No..." she protested.

But Tony ignored her, glaring at Steve instead "You knocked her up?"

"Not that strange an idea considering the amount of times they..." Bucky opened his big mouth to speak.

"Shut the fuck up Bucky!" both Katie and Steve shouted at the same time.

There was a pause as everyone fell silent.

"This is serious Tony..." Katie finally said.

"I went to see Fury today...." Steve helped her.

"Oh, how's the Goth Pirate doing?" Tony asked casually.

Bucky sniggered. He knew Howard had been close to Fury and therefore Tony and Katie had known and been around him since they were kids.

"For once in your life will you shut up and listen?" Katie was starting to lose her patience.

Bucky saw that Tony had noticed Katie's facial expression and frowned, suddenly concerned "What's the matter kiddo?"

"Fury gave me this..." Steve said, showing Tony the pen-drive.

"What's on it Cap?" Tony asked, looking between the Captain and the pen-drive on his hand.

"We don't know yet." Steve replied.

"Yet?"

"It's encrypted." Katie explained.

"So take it to tech..." Tony said leaning back on the chair and crossing his arms.

"When it arrived Fury opened it. Before the encryption started scrambling there was a clear message that it be handed to Katie and only Katie because it concerns..." Steve trailed off.

"It concerns stuff about Dad." Katie finished for him.

At that Tony frowned, not understanding where she wanted to get "Dad?"

"Yeah...Fury thinks... " Katie took a deep breath before continuing. "He thinks that mom and dad’s deaths might not have been accidental."

"That's absurd..." Tony frowned.

"Maybe, but until we open it we won't know..." Katie looked at him.

Tony took the stick and looked at it. "And there were no clues, nothing, zip, nada as to who sent it?"

"Nope. Might as well have been delivered by a ghost..." Katie sighed.

"Well, let's see what the ghost wants." Steve said with determination, nodding at the pen-drive.

Tony plugged the stick in and they all watched as the screen filled with a load of random numbers, which didn't seem to make much sense to any of them, nor did they appear to look like they were going to stop filling the screen randomly anytime soon.

Tony started talking about running an algorithm or something to crack it, much of the jargon he used was alien to Steve but he did remember what Fury had said about the message on the pen-drive, “My guess is it will be a date or a combination that means something to Stark.” But so far Katie looked as lost as he was as she was staring at the screen intently frowning.

"This requires insight" Tony mused "It looks like the programme the CIA uses to choose targets."

"They look like random numbers to me." Bucky quipped leaning over Katie's and Tony's heads.

"They're not random...there's a pattern." Katie muttered without taking her eyes from the screen.

"Like what, what do they represent?" Tony asked, looking at her.

"They don't represent a thing...it's what's missing." Katie explained, borrowing a notepad and a pen from Tony's desk and scribbling something.

Steve frowned at what she said and then spotted what she was trying to say "There's no 6s or 1s..."

Tony and Bucky pointed at the same time "4s....0s..."

"Exactly..." Katie said, as she wrote down the different possible combinations with the missing numbers.

"What the hell..." Bucky asked, watching her stop at one combination as she drew a circle around it.

Katie simply grinned at him and looked at Tony, showing him the notepad "14.605..."

"What are the dots?" Bucky asked.

“A stuffed Llama…” Steve muttered and Bucky glared at him as he shrugged, a small smile flickering across his face.

“She’s not a llama she’s a goat…” Bucky started to argue until Katie shook her head.

"Whatever she is it doesn’t matter as they aren't dots, they’re zeros. Actually, it should read 14.605.000" she said looking at Bucky and then at Tony.

"Fuck, of course..." Tony said with eyes wide open as Bucky looked at Steve, who simply shrugged. He had no idea what that number meant but clearly it was significant to the siblings. Tony nodded at Katie "Go on, type the numbers."

Just as Katie had finished typing the last digit the numbers on the screen stopped moving and the image faded to black for a couple of seconds. Everyone in Tony's office was holding their breaths when a video recording started, showing a white haired old man with a wrinkled face, with a beard and a moustache. His eyes tiny and sparkling behind his smoking glass glasses.

"Do you know him?" Steve asked.

Katie shook her head slowly, looking at the screen while sweeping through her memories trying to find something that stated the contrary.

"Wait. I've seen that guy." Bucky intervened. " I just can't seem to figure out where from..." he mused.

"Miss Stark. Please listen carefully as following this message the drive will wipe. I knew your father, he was a good man and I'm hoping I can trust you like I trusted him. I've been watching the case from afar, hoping I was wrong but after the latest killings it all seems to be leading to one conclusion. We need to speak in person. You can contact me on the following number to arrange to meet but we have to be discreet....."

Katie grabbed a pen and rapidly scribbled down the number the man was showing on a piece of paper he was holding up to the camera with both hands.

"Take care Miss Stark, and trust no one...."

And with that, the screen went still and the drive wiped.

"So this adorable grandpa knew dad?" Tony asked.

"Apparently...is he from the police?" Katie asked, turning to look up at Steve.

"I don't know. I've never seen him, and I spent a lot of time with Howard" he replied as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"But I have...he's been at every crime scene to date...like some kind of dead famous actor or a series creator, you know, when they get to do cameos for fun..." Bucky suddenly quipped, everyone looking at him in disbelief.

"That told us nothing...I thought you said Fury told you it contained information?" Katie protested, looking at Steve, frowning.

Now she was snapping at him, but Steve didn't take it to heart. He knew she was pissed and he could understand where she was coming from. It had been an exhausting day for both of them but more to her and alone the fact that her parents could have been murdered was more than enough to rile her let alone everything else that had happened. To say she had the right to be angry and frustrated would be an understatement.

"He did, that's what he thought..." Steve replied cautiously.

"I mean we don't even know who the fuck he is!" she snapped again.

Steve was about to say something to appease her anxiety but just as he squeezed her shoulder Bucky spoke.

"One way to find out, Doll face..." he interjected. “Call him."

So Katie picked up the phone on Tony's desk. Steve, Bucky and Tony looked at her expectantly but Katie frowned as soon as she put the earpiece close to her ear "Yeah, he'll call you back..." she told the person who had been on hold all that time before pressing the button to finish the call.

"Oh, shit...I forgot...I like the red light..." Tony apologised. Steve saw Katie take a deep breath before calling the number and putting the call on speaker. As soon as it picked up a robotic voice said "Meet me tomorrow, 2pm at Green-Wood Cemetery. Bring no one but the Captain."

The recording finished and only white noise could be heard. Katie slammed her hand against the button to end the call. She was about to explode, Steve could tell as she stood up straight and tried to call the number again, but nothing came from the other end of the line.

"Burner." Steve sighed. "Chances are he's destroying it as we speak." he said hugging her from behind and placing a kiss on her head.

"FUCK!" Katie yelled, slamming the handset down. "We know nothing more than we did before!"

"Ok Kiddo, I want you to go home and rest. There's nothing else you can do now." Tony tried to calm her. "Are you coming with me tonight or shall I rent your room to someone else?" he continued, testing the waters with his joke.

"Right, coz you're definitely running a bed and breakfast." she repeated the same exact words Tony had been bugging her with for the past week.

"Well, it's not like I see much of you lately. Not even managed to tell you all about how I’m having a civil war with the venue guy or that we set a date yet" Tony whined. "Come on, Pepper will be thrilled to share the details with you. Although I'm warning you, you may need to put your shades on to look at the new rock I bought her."

“You bought her a new rock?” Bucky frowned “Why would you do that?” “Because it was a few years old and…well we should have set a date ages ago so I kinda re-proposed…”

"And that's my brother for you, ladies and gentlemen." Katie snorted. “Ostentatious bastard…” “Don’t start snapping at me!” Tony looked at her, his own temper flaring slightly “Look, I’m as pissed as you are, especially if this guy has information on mom and dad, they were my parents too you know…” “Oh get to fuck Tony!” Katie snarled “You’re such a-“ “Ok, ok…” Steve said, stepping in quickly before the pair of them really went at each other. They were so different yet in other ways extremely similar, and both had developed that infamous Stark temper from Howard, along with his stubborn streak, which made for some spectacular brother-sister arguments as he had seen many a times over the past decade. But now wasn’t the time. They were going to need each other, and he didn’t want them at odds. He turned to Katie, his hands falling to her shoulders "Tony's right, doll. Go home. Spend some time with Tony and Pepper. It'll do you good." he encouraged, trying not to push too much.

Steve knew she was restless enough as it was but, although he'd be more than glad to spend the night with her at his place, he also knew being with her family would be a perfect distraction for her already distraught mind. God, it was only half past six but he had the feeling his meeting with Fury had been weeks ago. Could anything more happen in a day?

Steve saw Katie hesitate and decided to help Tony out. He knew the man needed his sister as much as she needed him.

"Look, we can't do anything more until tomorrow, sweetheart, you should go..." Steve said, taking both her hands in his.

She bit her lip and looked at him until Tony spoke.

"Cap, you can come too...if you want." he shrugged, sensing Katie's hesitancy.

"YESSSSS BOY!" Bucky suddenly shrieked with joy at the fact he had the apartment to himself as he fist pumped in the air but a second later he stilled, pouted and jokingly asked "What about me?"

"Go to the mortuary or something, I dunnno, wherever you and Sam...." Tony deadpanned, waving his hand. "And for fucks sake stop eating my blueberries!"

"Erm, are you sure Tony?” Steve asked. In all honesty he was taken aback by Tony's offering, was that an olive branch? Well, if it was, he would be more than happy to take it as the prospect of spending his free time away from Katie was really not all that great.

Tony shrugged “Well you two are…you know, together. And I suppose you’re better than Shitweasel…”

“Yeah as far as bars go, that’s not particularly high…” Katie frowned. Tony glared at her and Steve once more jumped in.

“Well, that would be great " he nodded, “It’ll be nice to spend some time with you and Pepper. I just need to nip home first thought and get some stuff..."

"Like you need clothes." Tony scoffed, earning a glare from Katie and a snigger from Bucky which made him turn to look at him again "I told you to stop eating my blueberries, Robocop!"

Steve rolled his eyes "I'm not sitting all night in my uniform."

"Yeah, as long as you don't sit on my sister." Tony muttered.

"What?" Steve asked.

"Oh, I was just thinking out loud." Tony brushed him off. "See if I could find something in my closet that fitted you. But then again it might not be spangly enough for your liking”

**** "What a sight for sore eyes, young lady." Pepper teased Katie as soon as they walked into the apartment.

They had dropped Bucky at the flat earlier and Steve had changed into a more casual and less conspicuous outfit and grabbed his overnight bag, one he would have never in a million years imagined he would be taking to Tony's. Katie's car remained back at Sarah's. Seeing the events of the day they had decided it would be better if she didn't drive. They would sort that out the next day, after meeting their new informant.

"You only saw me on Friday, remember?" Katie protested as she hugged her brother's fiancé.

"You're right. And from what I've heard a lot of things have happened since then. Hi, Steve." Pepper said before moving to hug Steve, who greeted her back.

"You could say that." Tony said, entering the living room. "But the prodigal son, sorry daughter, returns. Much to her brother's joy."

"Oh, cut the crap Tony. I saw her on Friday! It’s only Wednesday!" Katie glared at her brother.

"Don't mind him and make yourselves at home." Pepper said, inviting them to take a seat on the couch. "I'll take your bag to Katie's room." she offered Steve, who handed her the bag after thanking her. He had always liked Pepper and how easily she could handle Tony.

"Drinks?" Tony asked. "Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. In the meanwhile... Gin, Kiddo?"

"Always." Katie answered.

"Rogers?" he asked, looking at Steve as he prepared Katie's drink.

"I'll have a beer, thanks." he answered, trying to suppress the feeling of awkwardness of being at Tony's as his sister's boyfriend.

"Somebody told me you had a big blinding rock to show me." Katie told Pepper as soon as the woman was back in the living room.

"You know your brother. He likes to push the boat out." she said stretching her hand for Katie to look at the ring.

"It's an exclusive cut. The Infinity Stone." Tony boasted.

Steve looked at Katie and he could instantly tell she really couldn't be less interested, instead she rolled her eyes at her brother's bragging. She made a comment about it being very big, more out of courtesy than because she really liked those flashy pieces of jewellery, Steve knew she wouldn't like anything so gaudy. Wait, why was he thinking about that? He tried to wipe the image of his mother telling him about the ring out of his mind and focus on the conversation Katie, Tony and Pepper were engaged in.

"So, you finally set the date?" Katie asked the couple, who grinned at her excitedly.

"Yup. 20th December. Pepper wanted a Christmas wedding." Tony explained.

"That is not entirely true, Tony" Pepper protested. "I wanted for us to get married as soon as possible and your brother suggested we could do it right before Christmas." she explained to Katie.

"Well, that's certainly sooner than I expected." Steve said.

"Well, if I don't kill the wedding planner and the venue dude before, we'll have a Christmas wedding. It will be like Christmas but with more me." Tony smirked.

"You know, guys, I can't be living with you when you're married...I appreciate you putting me up but I need to think about what I'm gonna do seriously." Katie spoke softly, turning her eyes to Tony.

"What do you mean, Kiddo?" her brother asked

"You guys are gonna be newlyweds.” She smiled “You should be building your home together, you won’t need me here.” “Kiddo, you’ll always-“ “I know, I know Tony…” she smiled at him “But, I was saying to Steve before, the lease on my apartment in DC is up in a few weeks...I'm not sure I'm gonna renew." she explained.

"You’re not gonna go back to DC?" Tony was now frowning.

"Not until this case is solved and we have no idea when that's gonna be." she said looking at Steve who shook his head.

"But you could cancel that lease and then need to be back there a week later." Steve looked at her. "I told you, just leave it as is and come stay with me."

Steve didn't know why but he could tell Katie was hesitant about it. And then back up came from the most unlikely source in the entire Universe.

"That's not a bad idea..." Tony mused as Steve looked at him with an expression of utter shock on his face. "You wanted that role in DC so badly...you'll kick yourself if you don't go back...give it till Christmas. If this is still going on...then you can make a decision as to whether you stick with it or go back." Tony told his sister.

"And then we have the added complication that I can’t stick with it and be under Steve's command when we’re together, it's against regulations. So we’re either stuck as a secret for fuck knows how long, or I go back to DC or I have to find another precinct." Katie sighed, rubbing her forehead.

Steve could see she was getting worked up again as she was rambling and decided to calm her down. "Ok, look, let's tackle this one problem at a time ok? You got a few weeks yet. I told you, you're welcome to come stay with me Sweetheart."

"Aww. That's so sweet Steve." Pepper spoke this time. "You're so cute together. Are you seeing them, Tony?" she asked her fiancé.

"Yup. Seeing, still working on believing." Tony wise cracked. "Yet, I must say if dad could see them he'd be jumping for joy. He always wanted you to end up with golden boy here, Kiddo."

Steve rolled his eyes at Tony's comment, but he was indeed very pleased to hear he would have had Howard's approval. Not only was he Katie's father but his mentor and the man he had always looked up to, considering his own father had passed away when he was still a baby.

Katie was looking a little upset again, clearly thinking about her dad and the possibility he could have been murdered so Steve decided to change tactic a little and asked something he had been dying to ask since they left the office, but for some reason had forgotten about.

"So, I'm curious...the number 14605...how did you know what order the missing digits had to be in?"

He saw Katie grinned before answering "Oh, it’s a number dad used to quote all the time..."

"14 million, six hundred and 5..." Tony offered

Steve was now utterly lost “I'm not..."

"When I was 4 I asked Dad how many stars there were in the sky. He said 14 million, six hundred and 5...just a random number, but I believed him. It was only when I got older I realised he had just made it up, and then it became a bit of a joke." she explained, her green eyes sparkling again at the childhood memory of his father.

"Yeah, like when dad asked how many times he had to ask you to tidy your room before you would do it..." Tony quipped.

"14 million, 605..." Katie finished, grinning widely.

"And like when mom asked how many eggs dad wanted on his breakfast..." Tony started again.

"14 million 605..." she repeated.

"How many dresses you tried on for prom..." Tony continued and the siblings smiled to one another for an only answer.

"All right, dinner must be almost ready. I'll go and check it" Pepper cut in.

"Right. Good to go on this end. The rest is up to you." Tony told her as he sat up and waved for Katie and Steve to follow him to the dining room.

Following their dinner, they retired to the large lounge in Tony’s penthouse, the 4 of them chatting and sharing another bottle of wine. Well, 3 of them chatting as Steve noticed that as the night ran on Katie was participating less and less. She’d clammed up, gone in on herself as she often did when something was bothering her. Tony had noticed too as Steve caught him looking at his sister more than once with a concerned expression on his face. Eventually she stood up and said she was tired and heading to bed. Steve agreed, eagerly considering he too was whacked and they bid Pepper and Tony a good night and headed down to the spare room, or Katie’s room as it now was.

“C’mere…” Steve said to her gently as she shuffled down under the soft duvet. She sank into his arms, snuggling into his chest as his hand gently ran through her hair, his lips pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. She stayed silent for a moment and then he felt her shoulders beginning to shake as her soft sobs hit his ears. With a sigh he turned onto his side, brushing her hair back off her face. “Hey, look at me.”

She raised her eyes to his and he placed a soft kiss on her lips. “We’ll work this out sweetheart I promise”

“You don’t know that.” she shook her head “You can’t make promises that you don’t know you can keep Stevie…” “Well, I promise I’m gonna do everything I can to make this ok.” he appeased, wiping her cheeks with his thumbs “Trust me.” “I do, you know I do.” she sniffled “I trust you with my life but…how is any of this ever going to be ok?”

“Let’s see what our mystery guy has to say first.” he said gently “It could just be a load of conjecture and…” “I don’t believe coincidences Steve, not on stuff like this, you know that.”

Steve merely sighed and fell silent, unable to think of anything else to say he simply pulled her closer, his legs tangling with hers as she pressed her face into his bare chest. He ran his hand softly up and down her back underneath the shirt she was wearing, his chin resting on her head.

He lay away long after the events of the day lulled his girl into an exhausted sleep.

**** The next morning Katie and Steve arrived together at the station. They had gone to Tony's in Steve's car the previous night and besides there was no point in even trying to deny they were together though they still had to be careful to not be touching or doing anything that wasn't keeping a professional front.

Katie went straight to her computer. Steve had talked her into ignoring Wanda as they drove in. They’d had enough having to put up with Tony's snarky comments during breakfast about them sharing a bed under his roof.

He tried to keep verbal exchanges with Wanda to a minimum. It hadn't been difficult, the redhead had handed him his mail without even looking him in the eye and had basically sat behind her desk without engaging in conversation with anyone, which was very out of character. Tension really could be felt in the air.

Clint and Nat just said hi, nothing more, no sassy remarks or interrogation of any sort. Steve was definitely getting more nervous by the minute, but tried to brush it out of his mind as he entered his office and closed the door behind him.

"Briefing will be interesting today." Bucky turned to Katie.

"I don't think I can be in that room with the bitch." Katie whispered, nodding in Wanda's direction.

"Thanks for the money." Natasha said, startling Katie.

"Fuck, Nat. Where did you learn to be that stealthy, in the KGB?" Katie asked, still trying to catch her breath.

Natasha laughed and explained to her the little bet she had with Clint about who would blow cover first and that she had won, twice.

"I should be surprised you know but I’m not. Nothing gets past you two" Katie shrugged as she nodded at Clint, who was having an argument with someone on the phone about a pile of logs that needed cutting.

They all waited for Barton to finish his call before going to the kitchen for coffee and a few minutes later Thor appeared, with his characteristic “Greetings, Morons.”

"I bet he can smell coffee from three blocks down the street." Clint quipped, opening the cupboard to grab a packet of pop tarts for the police officer.

“So I see it is out about you and the captain.” he said, grinning widely at Katie.

“Good news travels fast." Katie muttered.

Bucky at that moment thanked God that Wanda wasn't in the kitchen.

“I knew on Monday.” Thor informed as he shrugged.

Katie glared at Clint and Nat. Bucky flinched. Nat had assured him the bet was only between her and Clint and they hadn't told anyone.

“We didn’t tell him…” Nat protested.

“No one told me.” Thor said, “I figured it out.”

Not that was rich, Bucky thought. How the fuck can the bungalow have figured it out by himself. So he decided to ask. “How?”

“Oh the Captain’s doodles on his briefing notes.” Thor shrugged “Changed from random little shapes to stars…and we know that’s his little nickname for you…he did buy you that necklace after all…”

Bucky saw Katie’s hand fly to the silver star shaped pendant around her neck, her mouth hanging open slightly.

“You clever bastard…you should be a detective.” Bucky snorted.

“No, I prefer the action. We get a lot more fights on the front line…and you know how I love fighting…” Thor said, after laughing loudly.

"And here I was thinking Banner was the smartest person I knew. Just yesterday I was telling him..." Bucky started but couldn't finish as Thor cut him in, excitedly.

"Aw, good old Banner. How's he doing? I tell everyone I know him. Hey, he's a friend from work. That's what I tell them." Thor rambled just before his phone beeped.

They all saw him grunt at the name on the screen of his phone “I am sick of this” he mumbled before dialling a number angrily.

"Noobmaster. Hey, it's Thor again. Listen bud, if you don't drop this immediately, I'm gonna fly down to your house, come down to that basement you're hiding in rip off your arms and shove them up your butt!"

They all looked at him dumbfounded as he finished the call and, without further explanation, put his phone in his pocket again and bit a pop tart.

"Are you ok?" Clint said, squeezing Thor's shoulder.

"Yes. I'm fine. Why?" he asked "Why, don't I look all right?"

At that he paused, reached for his phone and pulled a face. "Sorry. Heimdall got a message for me. Erm, Fury is here." he informed.

Then, all of a sudden, Bucky saw Thor vanish as quickly and suddenly as he appeared. It was almost as if some magic beam from another world transported him in and out.

Exchanging glances they all hurried into the office and true to word, Fury was there.

“I swear Heimdall sees everything…” Natasha mumbled, and they all agreed.

Fury nodded to everyone before calling Katie over.

"Stark, may I have a word with you? In your Captain's office?" Fury asked her.

"Yes, Sir." Katie answered softly.

Bucky saw her looking at him, puzzled, before following Fury to Steve's office but he could only shrug. Then Bucky noticed Wanda was going bright red and he glared at her as the door of Steve’s office shut

“What did you do?” he asked. He was fuming.

But Wanda shrugged and simply turned back to a file cabinet she was sorting. Bucky, Clint, Nat exchanged a glance.

"Oh shit…"

****************************************

Continued in Part 2

#csi rogers and barnes #csi au #steve rogers #steve rogers x oc #steve rogers x original female character #bucky barnes

36 notes · View notes

miracle-sham · 5 years ago

Text

Plan D for Dicey.

| {MaribatMarch2020 – Week 1, Day 6: Unconventional Weapon} |

| [Ao3 Link] | | [Masterlist Link] |

| Triggers/Warnings: D&D typical Violence, kidnapping/imprisoning of Player Characters, Explicit Language/Swearing, (Also not so much a Trigger/Warning but this a gen/platonic fic). |

| The Wayne (bat)family attempt to play their first streamed session of Warriors and Warlocks. Unpredictably, things go surprisingly well. |

| Word Count: 4323 |

==–==

| A/N: So firstly, I got really carried away writing this so it's being posted a day late. Sorry! But fun fact, this means I'm posting this on my birthday, so wooh! Also if you can't tell yet, I'm a massive D&D geek (been playing for roughly five years now but I still fell like a complete noob whenever I play or DM :P). And DC has its own version of D&D (W&W/Warriors and Warlocks) and upon reading Day 6's prompt, my immediate thought was the improvised weapons mechanic from D&D. Also also, I originally intended for this fic to be MariTim (hence the tags) but I got caught up in all the platonic fun of the family playing D&D I kinda forgot to write in the shippy bits? |

| A/N cont.: Writing this was actually a massive challenge because at the start of this I had absolutely zero idea on how to write a D&D session as a ficlet. So this might be a bit more clunky and unrefined compared to my normal work (or that could just be my self-doubt talking). As I mentioned earlier, I got really carried away writing this because I love D&D so much. I would have written more but this ficlet is long enough and late enough as is. But if I were to continue this ficlet in additional parts, I definitely can already think of so many ways to improve writing this sort of fic (and maybe next time I won't forget to add in shippy stuff). Anyway, thanks to those who read these A/Ns, and I hope you guys enjoy reading this! |

| If you want to be tagged in future oneshots/fics, or a specific Au, then comment or send me a DM/ask! |

| Also side note, Don't Like? Don't Read. Also also, please do not criticise any of my writing. This was written for fun and receiving criticism, even in a compliment/criticism sandwich, is the exact opposite of fun. |

==–==

Marinette, with Tikki on her shoulder, bursts into the Wayne Manor games room, barely able to contain her excitement. As the first in the room, she can't help but glance across the square conference U-table already set up with everyone's character sheets, dice equipment, other equipment, and snacks and drinks. Bounding over to her designated seat (right side, place nearest to the DM's section of the table), she pulls her chair out and sits down.

The rest of the Wayne (bat)family, including Steph but sans Alfred and Barbara, slowly filter into the room and take their designated seats. Jason takes his seat next to Marinette whilst Dick takes the seat directly opposite. Steph nabs the seat beside Jason, Damian stakes a claim to the seat next to Dick (despite it already being his designated seat), Cass sits down in the seat beside Steph, leaving Bruce to take his seat next to Damian.

Tim's the last of the family to enter. He slips into his seat, the DM's seat—as he is the most experienced Warriors and Warlocks player at the table—and grins downright ferally at his players.

He looks up at the cameras and recording equipment that is set up in the middle of the open space in the square U-table. “Hello and welcome to Plan D for Dicey, the first-ever Wayne Family Warriors and Warlocks fifth edition stream. We weren't quite expecting so many people to petition that we stream our sessions after a few people—” Tim fake coughs twice, “—Dick and Marinette—” Tim fake coughs twice again (whilst Marinette and Dick both grin and wave cheerfully at the cameras), “—rambled about their characters and some highlights from previous sessions, on Twitter. So we decided to give this a go and see how the session pans out whilst being streamed. So as a word of warning, prepare yourselves for the Venators, probably one of the most dysfunctional parties in W&W to miraculously band together.”

As soon as he says this, the rest of the table burst into grins and cheers (excluding Bruce who despite also smiling, looks like he's just aged five years). Marinette's side of the table all high five each other in their excitement.

Tim pauses for a second. “For anyone unfamiliar with who I am, I'm Tim. And as you can probably tell from the table set up, I'm the Dungeon Master for this campaign. That's because I've been playing W&W for just over five years now and have had experience DMing before. But for the rest of the players here, this is their first campaign and by extension first time playing. So before we begin our session, first let us introduce our players and their characters.” He nods to Marinette's side of the table.

She immediately slaps her hands on the table, pushes her chair out and stands, she waves at the cameras again. “Hi, I'm Marinette and my character is Nella Septa-Punctata. She's a Protector Aasimar Celestial Pact of the Chain Warlock, and she has a Sprite Familiar called Tikki. Nella's Chaotic Good and a little anxious but she tries her best to be a kind and heroic adventurer.” She then sits back down, scraping her chair back in again.

Jason raises an eye at Marinette's antics but shrugs. “I'm Jay, I play a Winged Variant Feral Tiefling Gunslinger called Rehodros. He's Chaotic Neutral, verging on Chaotic Evil at times, and he only joined the Venators because they helped save him from backstory related stuff and he ended up getting reluctantly attached to them.”

Deciding to also stand up from her chair as well as slap the table with both hands, Steph smirks at the cameras. “I'm Stephanie, my character's Speilsol Leyer, and she's a Chaotic Good Variant Human Ancestral Guardian Barbarian with the Tavern Brawler Feat. She lives for beating up bad guys and doing good, even if it goes against the law.”

Cass decides to take things one step further and moves to sit on the back of the chair, balancing it carefully as to not let herself fall. She waves at the cameras. “Hi, I Cass. Play Balabitara. Neutral Good, Kalashtar Shadow Monk.” She then sits back down on the chair normally.

With one half of the table introduced, Tim nods towards the other side of the table.

Dick winks at the cameras, “I'm Dick and I play Niriwyse, a Chaotic Good Eladrin Glamour Bard who's along for the ride and just wants to have a good time.” At that, he wiggles his eyebrows.

Scoffing, Damian glares at the cameras. “I am Damian and my character is Rokian. He is a Firbolg Circle of the Shepherd Druid and is Lawful Neutral in the sense that he believes the only laws that should be obeyed in the world, are that or the laws of nature. He begrudgingly joined this party of adventurers after they saved an animal friend of his.”

This leaves Bruce as the only one to have not introduced himself and his character yet. He smiles his Brucie Wayne smile at the cameras. “My name's Brucie and my character is called Chirop. He's a Chaotic Good Bugbear Swashbuckler Rogue. He comes across as very gruff, but he's just a big old teddy bear at heart.”

Tim coughs under his breath. “Alright, with our introductions over, let's get on with the show.” The lights in the room suddenly dim and turn a dark red shade whilst creepy echoing organ music begins to play from hidden speakers. “Last session, our brave party of seven adventurers were captured by the evil Lich Dreldaz whilst trying to rescue the beautiful princess Theophania—”

“—Timothea!” Corrects the rest of the table.

Rolling his eyes, Tim continues. “—from the cursed castle in which she has been trapped in, by Dreldaz.” He pauses, steepling his fingers as the dim red lighting becomes a dark grey shade. “The Venators awaken, only to find themselves shackled to the walls, in individual stone brick cells and stripped of any and all equipment bar the clothes on their backs. From what you all can immediately tell upon waking, these cells are small, cold, dark and dingy. What do you do?”

The seven players all exchange glances between themselves.

“I'd like to look around my cell, see if I can find anything or if I can get an idea of what the cellblock we're in looks like?” Jason announces after a few seconds.

Tim nods. “Roll a perception check, please.”

Jason narrows his eyes Tim. He reaches towards the red and black dice set beside his character sheet and picks up the D20. He shakes the dice in his hands before rolling it into the dice box. It lands on a 7. “Alright so because I don't have my gear any more, that means I don't have my eyes of the eagle right?”

“That's right,” Tim responds.

“Mmk, that's a seven then, plus my perception modifier… Fourteen total.” Jason glances up at Tim once he finishes calculating.

Humming, Tim glances down at his Mysterious™ DM notes. “With your Darkvision, you manage to make out that there are two small barred windows on the walls adjacent to the wall with the cell door. The door luckily has a barred window in it too, but you're too far away to glean anything from peering at it.”

Marinette purses her lips and double-checks her character sheet. “Is there anything magical about the darkness in these cells?”

“Roll an Arcana check to see.” Is Tim's response.

She reaches over to the pink and gold dice set beside her character sheet and picks up the D20. She shakes the dice in her hands before rolling it into the dice box. The D20 lands on a 16. “Sixteen! Wait, plus my arcana modifier, uh…” She scans her sheet for the relevant modifier, “plus six, so that's uh… oh heck maths, uhh I think that's twenty-two total? Yeah.” She nods to herself at calculating the maths.

Jason snorts and addresses the cameras. “This is why you should stay in school kids!”

Huffing, Marinette elbows him in the side. “Fight me!”

Not evening flinching at the elbowing, Jason pats her on the top of her head. “Friendly fire, Mari! Friendly fire!”

Tim waits for silence with his best poker face on. “As far as you can tell, there is nothing magical about the darkness!”

“Really?” She furrows her brows. “Alright then.”

He smiles in response.

Dick glances down at his character sheet then up at Tim, he taps his fingers against the table idly as he speaks. “The walls of the cells are stone? So I can use my Cli Lyre to cast Stone Shape and create a hole in the stone where the metal shackles connect, which would free me, right!”

Clicking his tongue, Tim shakes his head. “Nope, you don't have your Cli Lyre on you right now, so you can't cast any spells from it.”

Cursing under his breath, Dick frantically scans his character sheet for anything. He reaches his spells and freezes and slaps the spell sheet (and by extension, the table). “Ah hah!” He crows, “I will cast Knock on the shackles!”

Tim raises an eyebrow, then looks down to flip through his spell cheat sheet. “When you cast the spell, it makes a loud knock that's audible for up to three hundred feet. Are you sure you want to cast this?”

Dick falters and furrows his brow, then glances around the table at the rest of the party. “I think I'll wait and see if anyone else has a way to escape this first? Wait we can all hear each other speaking from our cells, right?”

“You can indeed.” Tim answers.

“I got nothin',” Jason admits, putting on his Rehodros voice, which is just his normal voice but deeper and with a raspy—almost hissing—clipped tone.

Steph, using her Speilsol Leyer voice (which sounds like she's putting on a weak German accent), shrugs. “I could try breaking the shackles? I'm strong enough to do cool things like that?”

“But that will also be fairly loud.” Bruce points out, speaking with a gruff tone of voice (which is significantly different from his gravelly Batman tone of voice) for Chirop. “If I had my lockpicks, it would be easy to escape stealthily. But without them, I can't see a way for me to get out of these shackles.”

Damian wrinkles his nose. “I might be able to summon creatures, elementals, or fey but what I get is determined by the DM and may not be entirely helpful. However, I could try wildshaping?”

Tim smiles cryptically and the lighting behind him changes from dark grey to lime green. “You could.”

Damian nods. “Alright then, I will use my wildshape ability to transform into a spider.”

The lime green light fades to flickering orange-red light. “As you try to use your druidic abilities to magically assume the shape of a spider, you feel a burning sensation around your wrists, right where the shackles are. You are unable to transform and take…” Tim pauses as he pulls out his black and red dragon dice and rolls a D6 behind the DM screen. “Five points of fire damage.”

Cursing under his breath in Arabic, Damian glares at Tim. He crosses out his current hp and writes down the new amount.

Jason taps Marinette on the shoulder. “What about Nells, Mari? She got any tricks up her sleeve to escape?”

Marinette startles at that, having been chewing her lip and staring intently at her character sheet since her arcana check. She licks her lips then glances up. “I might…”

She taps a small stat block card with a pencil and turns to Tim with an intense stare. “Is Tikki nearby?”

At that, Tim grins widely and raises a finger. “That,” He says, flipping through his notes, “is a very good question.”

“Because on my notes, here it says that last session Tikki was invisible when we all got captured.” Marinette picks up her session notes journal and shows it to him.

“Would you say Tikki followed after you when you got caught?”

Marinette tilts her head to the side and Tikki whispers in her ear. Of course, the cameras inability to record kwamis means it just looks like she's thinking instead of listening to a flying red bug deity. “Yep, I would say that. I would also like to telepathically communicate with Tikki and ask if she can come and pick the locks because we gave her a spare Thieves' Tools kit last shopping session in case she needed to pick the locks during an invisible scouting mission!”

“Indeed you did, so Tikki flies over to your cell and will try to pick the locks on your door first. So roll a d20 and add Tikki's Dex bonus.” He instructs.

Marinette nods and picks up the dice, cupping her hands underneath it so Tikki can shake then roll it without it looking suspicious on camera. Tikki shakes the dice and drops it as Marinette separates her hands. The dice lands in the box and rolls a 16. “Plus Tikki's Dex mod, that's uh…” She scrambles for the Sprite Familiar statblock card, “Plus four, so dirty twenty!”

“That's enough to pick the lock. Do you want Tikki to enter the cell and try to pick the lock?” He asks.

She nods and repeats the roll with Tikki, this time rolling an eleven. “With mods, fifteen.” Tikki then returns to her place on Marinette's shoulder.

“Tikki barely manages to get the locks open. The shackles open and you land on the cell floor.”

Marinette punches the air. “Wooh! Freedom!”

Cass then waves her hand in the air. “Shadowstep out?”

Tim cocks his head to the side. “As you don't have Darkvision, you can't see outside your cell but you manage to use your shadowstep ability to escape the shackles. Then by peering out the barred window in the door, you manage to shadow step into the cellblock corridor.”

Marinette and Cass share a high-five.

“Let's go free everyone else!”

==–==

It takes them ten minutes to finish freeing everyone else, and start making their way out of the dungeon cell block. The Venators now make their way through the bowels of the castle, searching for the armoury in which all their belongings have been stored.

“As you push open the grand oak doors, the faint scent of sickly sweet rotting food and fire hits your noses. The doors reveal the next room to be a grand dining room with a long oak table, set as though prepared for a grand feast expecting many a guest. It's adequately lit but the two corners of the room above the door seem to glow with a dim greenish glow.” Tim pauses in his description as lighting changing to a dim greenish light behind him; he rolls a D8 four times (6, 7, 2, 4), behind the DM screen, followed by the rolling of a D20 four times (3, 19, 13, 18).

“Oh god…” Dick mutters,

Jason huffs. “What are you going to torture us with now, oh great DM?”

Tim smiles cruelly. “Four rays of fire are shot towards the party from somewhere within the dining room. First attack is an eight versus Chirop's AC?”

Bruce sighs in relief. “That's a miss.”

Tim continues to smile. “Mmk, the rest of the attacks are, twenty-four versus Balabitara's AC, eighteen versus Niriwyse's AC, and twenty-three verses Rokian's AC. I assume those hit.”

Damian narrows his eyes at Tim, whilst Dick winces and Cass pouts.

Tim rolls a D6 nine times, behind the DM screen. “Balabitara takes four points of fire damage, Niriwyse and Rokian both take eight points of fire damage.”

The three all jot down the damage taken.

Still smiling, like the truly evil DM that he is, Tim clasps his hands together. “Two skulls, enveloped with green flames, descend from the ceiling. One hovers over the grand table and the other hovers but the top of the opened doors, giving itself cover.” He pauses, then grins. “With the surprise round over, everyone roll initiative!”

Out of habit, all seven players, and Tikki, roll their D20s in almost perfect sync. Dick rolls an 18, Cass rolls a 9, Jason rolls a 14, Bruce rolls a 16, Steph rolls a 17 with advantage, Damian rolls a 2, Marinette rolls a 10, and Tikki rolls a 14.

“Twenty or above?” Tim asks.

“Twenty three,” Bruce announces.

Jason rolls his eyes. “Twenty-one.”

Dick grins, “Twenty one as well!”

Tim scribbles down the rolls on the initiative table. “D'awww, you both rolled twenty-one. Anyway, fifteen or above?”

“Tikki rolled an eighteen.” Informs Marinette.

“I got nineteen!” Steph exclaims.

Jotting down those rolls as well, Tim asks “Alright, anyone ten or above?”

Cass signs her roll, ‘fourteen.’

“Thirteen.” Marinette answers.

Tim glances at the initiative table, then at Damian. “And you Damian?”

Damian scoffs. “Three.”

“Okay.” Tim then rolls a D20 twice. “Chirop! You're up first!”

Bruce looks slightly bewildered. He clears his throat. “Can I grab the nearest sharp pieces of cutlery and sneak behind a chair?”

Tim nods. “Roll stealth.”

He rolls an 18. “My stealth modifier is plus thirteen, so thirty-one to stealth.”

Tim whistles, “To the rest of the Venators, it looks like Chirop just vanishes into thin air.”

“Are any of the enemies close enough that I could move into melee range?” He questions.

“There's one floating Flameskull hovering five foot in the air, with your Long-Limbed trait, it's well within reach,” Tim informs.

Bruce narrows his eyes. “I would like to stab the Flameskull with the sharp cutlery, knives are preferable.”

“Roll to hit. As knives are close enough to daggers, I'll say you can get away with adding your proficiency bonus as well.”

Bruce rolls, with advantage, a 19. “Plus my modifiers, that's twenty-eight to hit.”

“That hits.”

Bruce rolls for damage, 2. “That's two, so seven.” He then rolls for Surprise damage, 8 (5, 3), and Sneak Attack damage, 24 (6, 2, 5, 6, 5). “That's a total of 39 piercing damage. Then I'll use my bonus action to stab it again,” He rolls a 16, “Twenty-one to hit.”

Tim puts on his best poker face. “That also hits.”

“Then that'll be…” He rolls a 1. “One damage from the second attack.”

“The Flameskull you hit screeches in fury as it crumbles to bone dust.” Tim then proceeds to make a horrific screeching sound, for immersion of course.

“What the fuck, Timbo?” Jason asks, wincing.

Dick cringes. “At least you aren't right beside him! My poor ears!”

“Rip us closest seats.” Mumbles Marinette, wrinkling her nose.

“Rehodros, you're up next!” Tim announces gleefully, ignoring his suffering players.

Jason narrows his eyes at Tim, “I want to run over to the table, grab any food on the table that's not rotten, and yeet it at the nearest Flameskull.”

Tim hums, “Okay, the only non-rotten food you can find, is a block of aged cheese and a bowl of hardened sugar cubes.

Snorting, Jason cracks his knuckles. “Oh, I have to pick the block of aged cheese.”

“Roll your attack then. But make sure you only add your Dex modifier to the attack as you're not proficient in improvised weaponry.”

Jason rolls to attack and also gets a 19. “Twenty four to hit.”

Tim snorts. “Yeah, that definitely hits, go ahead and roll damage.”

Jason nods and rolls a 1D4, managing to get max damage. “Four! Wooh! Plus my Dex mod, that's nine damage!”

“You lob the cheese at the Flameskull, managing to cause a couple of cracks to form on its skull. It turns it's furious gaze to you, intending to intimidate you but the effect is somewhat hindered by the melting cheese covering half of its skull.” Tim flips through his notes and marks down the damage taken.

“Okay, then I want to grab the bowl of sugar and using my extra attack to throw that at the Flameskull, in the jaw.” Jason smirks and switches to his Rehodros voice, “You look like you've got a sssweet tooth, bonehead!” He rolls to attack and gets a 12. “Seventeen to hit?”

“That will hit.”

Jason rolls a 3 on the D4. “That's eight damage total.”

“As the bowl of sugar starts to melt from the heat of the fire, the sickly sweet scent of hot sugar begins to emanate from the Flameskull. The Flameskull does not look happy.” Tim pauses to glance at the initiative table. “Niriwyse! You're up.”

Dick glances down at his spell list and beams. “I'm going to cast Vicious Mockery. And say,” he puts on his Niriwyse voice, which is just his voice but higher pitch and with a British Estuary accent, “Green is so not your colour!”

Tim hums, then flips through his notes. “What's the spell Save DC on that again?”

Quickly checking his spell sheet, Dick answers, “DC 16.”

“Mmk,” Tim responds non-committally, before rolling a D20 twice from behind the DM screen. “That, unfortunately for you, is a nat 20. Which means it takes no damage and suffers no disadvantage. The Flameskull turns to you briefly, to cackle in your face, before turning its attention back to Rehodros.”

Dick frowns. “Aww that failed, welp I'll use my bonus action to give Speilsol Leyer inspiration.” He clears his throat and puts on his Niriwyse voice to sing. “Let's get down to business! To defeat, this skull! Did they order heroes, no they asked for none! We're the saddest party you'll ever meet! But you can bet before we're through, Flameskull, we'll make dust out of you!”

The rest of the table burst into cheers and groans.

“Beautiful, Speilsol Leyer, you get 1D10 bardic inspiration,” Tim confirms. “And now it's your turn. Show the audience what you've got.”

Steph giggles. “Okay, okay, I've got a really dumb idea.”

Tim raises an eyebrow at her.

“So, firstly, is there anything on the walls, like paintings? Wall sconces? Y'know.” She asks.

“There's a painting of a naked elven lady on one wall, and a taxidermied fox head on the other,” Tim informs.

Steph bounces in her seat. “Cool! So I'm gonna rage! Rip the taxidermied fox head off the wall, then run and leap up into the air to bludgeon the Flameskull with the fox head!”

“Right. Make an athletics roll.”

Rolling a D20, she gets 13. “Twenty one!”

“You manage to jump into the air with expert grace. Roll to hit.”

She rolls a 16. “That's a twenty-four to hit because I've got the Tavern Brawler Feat so I've got proficiency with improvised and-slash-or unconventional weapons!”

He snorts. “That'll definitely hit, roll damage.”

Steph picks up her D4 and rolls it, getting a 3. “Do with my strength modifier and Rage damage, that's ten damage! And uh, that's the end of my turn!”

Tim scribbles down the damage taken, he then checks his notes quickly. “The sugary cheese-covered Flameskull starts to cackle madly. It casts fireball on the party, everyone make dexterity saving throws.”

On cue, everyone in the party rolls their D20s. Tikki rolls an 18, Damian and Marinette both roll 16s, and Dick rolls a 4.

Before Bruce rolls his dice, he proclaims, “I'd like to use evasion!” He then rolls and gets a 5. “Fourteen total.”

“Evasion too!” Cass declares with a smile, she rolls her D20, getting 18. She then signs her result, ‘twenty-seven

“Shit!” Jason mutters, staring at his roll of 2.

“Nat one?” Tim questions.

Jason shakes his head. “Natural two, so seven total.”

“I also got seven,” Dick adds.

“Seventeen,” Damian announces.

“I rolled a nineteen and Tikki rolled a twenty-two.” Marinette pipes up.

Steph frowns at her roll of nine. “Eleven…” She glances at her character sheet again. “Wait, no! I get advantage on dexterity saving throws!” She shakes the dice in her hands and blows on it for good luck, then rolls it into the dice box. It lands on an 18. Fist pumping the air, she cheers. “Yes! Dirty twenty, fuck yeah!”

“Alright. Niriwyse and Rehodros both take…” Tim rolls a D6 eight times, behind the DM screen. “Twenty-three fire damage. And everyone else except Chirop and Balabitara take half that, so eleven damage. And of course, Chirop and Balabitara take no damage whatsoever.”

“Wooh,” Bruce cheers.

“Wait a second!” Jason interrupts, triple-checking his character sheet, “I've got fire resistance!”

“Then you also take eleven damage instead of the full twenty-three.” Tim corrects. “And that's the end of the Flameskull's turn. Tikki's up now.”

Marinette tilts her head to the side as Tikki whispers in her again. “Tikki is going to hold her turn.”

Tim nods. “Okay then, it's Balabitara's turn.”

Cass smiles sweetly. “Jump and punch?”

“Roll an athletics check then, please.”

She rolls a 13, and signs her results, ‘eighteen.’

“You barely manage to leap within melee range of the Flameskull,” Tim narrates. “Roll to hit.”

She rolls her dice again, rolling a flat 17. Again, she signs her result, ‘twenty-six.’

“That will definitely hit.” He acknowledges.

Cass then rolls damage, gets a 4, and signs the total, ‘nine.’ She glances down at her character sheet, and then back up at Tim. “Second attack?”

Tim nods again, still jotting down the damage taken. “Go ahead and roll.”

Rolling again, she gets a nine, so she signs the result, ‘eighteen.’

He hums, “That'll also hit, roll damage.”

She rolls and gets a 3. ‘Eight,’ she signs.

Tim chuckles, “As you punch the Flameskull twice, the skull shatters and turns into sugary and cheesy skull dust.”

Cass grins and fist-pumps the air as the rest of the table breaks into cheers.

“Everyone breathe a sigh of relief! Encounter over.” He comments. “And I think we've reached our halfway mark, so we'll take a quick five minutes break to grab something to eat and drink, and we'll continue on after the break.”

==–==

| Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little oneshot! Comments, likes, and reblogs are much appreciated! |

| @maribat-march2020 | | @vixen-uchiha |

#Miraculous Ladybug #Maribat #ML x DC #DC x MLB #Timinette #MariTim #Timari #MaribatMarch2020 #MaribatMarch Week 1 #MaribatMarch Day 6 #MaribatMarch Unconventional Weapon #Plan D for Dicey #PDfD #Sham's Posts #Sham's Writing #Sham's Fics

87 notes · View notes

janiedean · 5 years ago

Note

Hi! I'm the Plato anon for before. First of, thank you so much for your offer, but I think I managed on me own. Second, could you elaborate on the "analysing as YA" vs "analysing as an adult" approach? I assumed that "discourse people" on this website generally don't go beyond "antagonist is bad because they are against the hero!" out of ignorance/lack of interest except to score Internet Fame Points, not that it was due a specific mindest. I also don't really read YA (except Tiffany Aching)

TIFFANY ACHING!! T_T ANON LET ME HUG YOU it’s like the only YA I actually liked in my entire life apart from nick hornby’s one book but that wasn’t typical lmao

THAT SAID, well your discourse people point is pretty much part of it but since I’m here and I can rant have the entire thing I was too tired to hash yesterday ;) so, in order:

first thing, we need to establish that ya books and **adult** books generally have different target audiences which is fine and good because obviously if you want to write a thing you’ll do that for An Audience That You Have In Mind; this doesn’t mean that adults can’t read ya or that teenagers can’t read **adult books** because everyone can read what they want (and personally for one I never cared for ya in my entire life not even when I was the target audience), but it simply means that some books are meant to be liked by one category first and eventual others later and they need to be talked about in that specific context first and everything else later - then there might be books that are aimed for kids/young readers or sold like that or that can be read on more than one level which can be appreciated for different things later in time (for example I read huck finn at sixteen and I absolutely loved it but it was a book that here is seen as good reading material also for eight year olds, and at eight I wouldn’t have liked it for the reasons I did at sixteen, and if I read it now I would still like it, while a bunch of the books for kids I read when I was seven is stuff I enjoyed then but forgot now and probably was good for that age but didn’t stick with me);

second thing, that means that when I discuss a young adult book aimed at teenagers I will never hold it to the standards I would hold a book aimed at a general adult audience, especially if it’s the kind of ya like dunno as stated the vampire diaries aimed at teenage girls which is obviously the kind where you have the fantasy world with the hot dark guy who swoons the high schooler protagonist off her feet etc because that stuff is basic teenage girl fantasy 101 and like... I’ll expect a bunch of romance tropes, the usual push and pull, the guy eventually being into her, the protagonist being someone a fourteen year-old can see herself in, probably a few sexual elements thrown here and there and so on, because that’s the shit marketed at fourteen year-olds who want to read that and like... it’s really not that deep. I can’t ask the vampire diaries to be moby dick because it’s not meant to be. or, if I read percy j/ackson - which is another thing I have zero interest in but I know about because I see tweets from the author - I expect to have a bunch of teens coming into their own coming from different backgrounds because the author wants to represent properly a lot of categories so most of his readers can have someone they can see themselves in and like if a thirteen year-old who suspects being lgbt or whatever sees themselves in the gay kid from per/cy jackson guess what that’s what that book is for, so I won’t judge it on like... being a faithful representation of greek myths or how good the style is or whatever, because even if to me it’s not top notch writing or has a plot idc about it has to be for teenagers and pre-teens, not for me, a thirty year old who again didn’t even like pre-teen aimed literature when she was a pre-teen;

third, I can extra clarify it using the damned hp discourse, as in: when I say I’m tired of people not reading anything else or reading everything like hp, it means that they read it when they were growing up/were teens and it was aimed at them which is fine, but then twenty fucking years later when the people in question are way beyond their twenties (guys I’m almost 32 and I remember when the first one came out come on) when talking about any single piece of media in existence (movies, comics, other books) use hp characters/situations as the terms of paragon - like guys I had to read sn/ape comparisons with theon and ky/lo ren on the basis that THEY’RE GREY CHARACTERS as if sn/ape is the only grey character that ever existed, people keep on talking about vold/emort as the only bad guy that ever existed and so on, and like... you can’t talk about, idk, asoiaf or any book aimed at an adult audience like you’d talk about hp, because at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if I read comparisons between sn/ape and ivan karamazov and I think I don’t need to specify how completely nonsensical that would be;

now, with all of this explained, what I mean is: ya in general - which is not a fault per se of the genre since it’s aimed at teens and pre-teens - tends to have... very fixed narrative schemes depending on which teens it’s addressing - like, stuff like tvd or twilight is obviously the romance teenage girl fantasy where you have the girl fighting to be with the dark beautiful supernatural creature in question, per/cy jackson is more like I’ll give you a bunch of relatable characters having cool adventures against bad guys with the occasional redemption so we can see that people are redeemable but you still have right vs wrong, hp is sort of like that in the sense you get relatable-ish protagonist with relatable friends growing up throughout the entire thing and fighting on the good side vs the evil side including the usual death of the mentor plus people who seemed bad actually not being bad™ except that PJ has more povs and better rep from what I gather but that’s not the point so it’s basically the growing up journey for the young protagonist(s) the kid sees themselves in, then there’s stuff like hunger games where you actually have the dystopian worldbuilding just written to be enjoyable by younger people who don’t want to get too depressed (and ngl I haven’t read the books but I’ve seen the first two movies and guys the way everyone ignores the classist commentary in thg to discuss the love triangle is... a staple of the problem tbh) but still try to introduce deeper themes and have more nuanced characters and at the same time are still written to be enjoyed maybe by the more adult side of the target, and at the same time I can’t say that thg is the same as 1984 when it comes to target audience because 1984 doesn’t make the ugly dystopian themes more accessible using the love story/teenage protagonist etc;

at this point the problem is: if you only ever read ya and nothing else in your life (which is what a lot of people here do - guys again when I got here in 2011 if people didn’t discuss hp they discussed john gr/een, the only *adult*-aimed book I see discussed on tumblr is asoiaf... because of got X°DDD) then you end up seeing every other piece of literature expecting what you do out of a young adult and then you expect adult literature out of young adults/ya to approach certain implications the way an adult novel would, which is... frankly ridiculous;

specific examples: I see blogs which are principally about like ya fantasy books ie acotar or shadow/hunters or whatever shitting on grrm because AAAAH HE’S PROBLEMATIC/MISOGYNIST/HE HAS VIOLENCE AND RAPE IN THE BOOKS BLAH BLAH and like... spoilers: if I wrote a fantasy series aimed at fourteen year-olds who want their fantasy romance with the hot dark guy who is maybe a tiny bit problematic but turns their leaf for them I would hold back on blood and violence, if I wrote a fantasy for adults where I want to be realistic about misogyny I will not, and the fact that grrm gets judged on what happens and not how he writes it (and again, saying that a guy who has 1/3rd of his pov characters female except that it’s actually 50/50 because there are no throwaway povs except for mel while guys have a lot more of them and all the female povs have narrative weight [and mel has it before she gets one] and all of them have a different personality and he also has the same trope [brienne and arya] in two people with wildly different personalities and needs which is basically a goddamned miracle is a misogynist because there’s misogyny in his fantasy world is ridiculous imvho) which is.... exactly expecting of asoiaf what you’d expect out of acotar, when grrm and acotar’s writer write for wildly different audiences. now, if I had read acotar at 15 and asoiaf at 15 I’d have had no doubt re asoiaf being more my thing because again the subgenre acotar goes for is not my thing because I never related to that fantasy while brienne is my rep, but in general a 14yo girl who likes the acotar-like stuff will not care for grrm.... which is normal because grrm writes for adults of both genders, not teenage girls (I mean teenage boys also have their own subgenres for which the same rules are valid), and someone who likes percy jackson (aimed at both genders but like... pre-teens early teens) who doesn’t gaf for grrm won’t because it’s not aimed at them unless they like grrm for other reasons ie idk they realize that they relate to jon snow idk but you see my point, so like tldr that’s what I mean with if you only read ya you’ll expect adult writers to handle their themes like ya writers would and like... sorry but if I write stuff for adults I won’t feel the need to specify that the bad guy is B A D with neon lights because an adult should grasp that from the narrative, I don’t need to make sure it’s obvious bc it’s aimed at kids;

reverse: when I see people saying ‘the vampire diaries is problematic because it’s about people who are a hundred years old preying on teenage girls so we need to stop teenage girls from reading that kind of thing because it makes them think it’s okay to go with someone that much older than them’, we’re at the opposite problem in the sense that you’re asking a young adult novel what you would ask of AN ADULT NOVEL when there’s no point in it. like, a teenage girl knows perfectly that damon salvatore doesn’t exist and vampires don’t exist and werewolves don’t exist - the entire point of tvd is that she gets to fawn over the hot supernatural dude who changes for the better thanks to the female protagonist she most likely sees herself in and she gets to have a few nice fantasies about that which is like... normal for people who are developing their sexualities, most people wouldn’t actually want damon salvatore the way he’s exactly in canon irl because they know it’s a fantasy and so it should stay. like, sorry but as someone who watched the show because ian somerhalder is hot in her twenties and tried the first book and gave it up at page 30 because I couldn’t do it, I can 100% assure anyone that the biggest issues with tvd books are that the writing is really fucking bad (for my standards at least), with the tvd show that from S4 the writing spiraled downwards and no one wanted the magical vampire pregnancy witch twins ridiculousness, but none of the content actually was shit that anyone would take seriously like that and I wouldn’t expect tvd to approach that subject realistically. if I read a vampire book aimed at adults who actually wants to write such a relationship as creepy WELL YES OF COURSE I’D EXPECT IT TO BE OBVIOUS ABOUT IT BEING CREEPY, but if it’s aimed at freaking teenagers... it’s a fantasy and not really that deep, take it for what it is and let teenage girls enjoy thinking about smooching damon salvatore (or stefan or whoever) without assuming they need to be protected from Horrible Vampire Fiction™, same as no one goes bitching about unrealistic sex scenes in serialized romance books because people read them because they’re unrealistic and escapism, not because they expect nobel prize worthy exploration of themes from them;

now, ^^^^^^ would not happen if people actually read variedly and studied some decent lit analysis in school - but like, after I had to read I think at some point that of mice and men is ableist... THAT’S the damned point - with ya you can take a lot of the plot at face value, with adult lit you can’t and you have to see motivation beyond the action of the characters and you can’t do that if you only read books aimed at pre-teens/teenagers where obviously that’s... more spelled out than it would be in a book aimed at an adult audience;

that by the way also means wildly missing actual adult themes discussion in ya, because again, I haven’t read thg but from the two movies I’ve seen it’s fucking obvious that the whole thing is an anti us-classism commentary from how the districts are built to how the games are rigged to pretty much everything in the worldbuilding, but all the discourse I see on tumblr is about either the love triangle or katniss being miscast or president snow being a jerk and whatever else, but I never once saw anyone saying ‘heeeeey the people in katniss’ district are an in your face metaphor of poor people in the us of a belonging to certain categories while the first few districts are absolutely the 1% and the entire point of it is that she wants to tell you A CLASSIST SOCIETY IS BAD AND WILL LEAD TO REVOLUTIONS’, which to me was... like, glaring, it was literally what 90% of the entire thing was about and no one ever discusses it in a fandom-wide sense (I mean... I saw a bunch of hg posts back when the movies came out, I never saw this brought out), which... is a problem because it means that the moment people are put in front of a ya product that actually tackles that kind of issue.... they go and worry about the love triangle (which seemed to me the excuse to draw the people in the story) not about the social commentary, and like, maybe a twelve year-old won’t catch on the social commentary, a twenty-year old especially from the us should, and I don’t see that happening;

and sorry but that is because if you only engage with content aimed at a younger audience than your target first you assume that every piece of literature should be consumable/readable/enjoyable by a younger audience (and sorry but no, some of us don’t want to write stuff making sure teenagers like it) and then ask of actual ya media to cater to their *adult* needs and not to the needs of the target audience because wow obviously if you’re 25 you won’t want out of literature what you wanted at fourteen;

and this also is valid for children’s media because again, I’m cutting it short, but adults watching st/even universe and sending people death threats because they don’t agree with their opinion of a cartoon aimed at an audience that’s at moooostttt eight years old is a thing that shouldn’t even fucking exist, and if you think steven/universe is that important at an adult age you need to re-assess your priorities;

tldr: adults should not expect media aimed at kids/teens to cater to their interests and shouldn’t analyze it the way they’d analyze a piece of media aimed at an adult audience and should not presume that every piece of media should have the scope/schemes of medias aimed at kids/teens because some of us don’t want to read that.

now, I’ll leave you with a nice short anecdote which hopefully will further clarify what I mean and add to another point which would be, kids and teens don’t give a fuck about what you, an adult, do: when everyone was in a frenzy about my little pony back in 2013 or so I had to see a ton of posts like ‘AAAAAH MEN/BOYS WHO ARE INTO MLP ARE STEALING THE SHOW FROM YOUNG GIRLS HOW DARE THEY ENJOY IT WE NEED TO KICK THEM OUT’ with added people saying that a ten year old male kid who tried to kill himself bc his friends bullied him bc he liked mlp deserved it and the likes, my only thought was that... when I was 8-10 in elementary school and was actually the target for cartoons and stuff, sailor moon was the rage between all girls my age me included, we’d spend recess playing pretend (and I’d get stuck playing sailor mars bc no one wanted her, sad) and our hugest first world problem in existence was that we needed technically a mamoru and of course no self-respecting boy in elementary school would have admitted under death threats to watching sailor moon because it was a girls’ thing (aaaaah gender roles in the early-mid 90s, how fun) so everyone despaired because ofc no one wanted to play mamoru... and the few times any guy actually showed up like HEEEEY I WANNA DO IT BUT PLEASE DON’T TELL MY FRIENDS I LIKE SAILOR MOON we’d all be like OMG YOU’RE OUR NEW FAVORITE PERSON PLEASE YOUR SECRET IS SAFE because we couldn’t believe we found the magical boy™ who wanted to do it, and if anyone had told us that the kid in question was stealing sailor moon from us we’d have laughed in their face.

like.

kids don’t ask of media what you, an adult do, and it’s unfair of you, an adult, to ask children’s/ya media to cater to your damned interests, which are amply catered to by the tons of adult literature around which also forces you to push on your views and read more challenging things and to not read/watch stuff at face value, which is why I would really appreciate it if the amount of 20yo people on here who I consider adults engaged with more adult media and let themselves be challenged instead of just going back to ya/kids’ things, which are good for teens and kids and can be enjoyed by everyone but should not be the only goddamned genre you measure all other literature against because then you get people saying that lolita is pro-pedo when it’s exactly the goddamned contrary, but if you think that pov character = protagonist = good guy (which is... staple kids/ya stuff for obvious reasons) then you decide that humbert humbert is someone you’re supposed to root for. too bad that you’re not and the author was an actual csa victim so it’s a completely ridiculous reading that wouldn’t happen if you didn’t read lolita the way you read hp.

... okay, I’m done, sorry for how long this was, I hope it cleared things for good xD

#literature for ts #janie rants #idek #Anonymous #ask post #suicide attempt cw

39 notes · View notes

falseroar · 4 years ago

Text

Is This Your Card? Part 7: A Good Man

((The District Attorney decides to follow Abe’s advice and question the other guests. The Colonel’s version of events is questionable, and the butler thinks he might have a lead.

Warning for swearing, same as the original dialogue of WKM, and discussion of a death.

Links to Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.))

You didn’t have it in you to tell Abe the other fear that came to mind when you saw him draw your card from Mark’s pocket. The thought that it could have somehow led to his death was terrible enough without the lingering questions it left behind. That hadn’t been the same pocket Mark put his cards in after dinner last night, you were fairly sure of that, which could mean he had taken them out and looked at them again during or after the party.

What had he thought, when he saw that single word written on your card? He must have known who it was meant for, what it might mean.

What had crossed Mark’s mind when he put it together, when he realized you were a werewolf?

The sound of raised voices was a distraction you didn’t know you needed, and you followed the sound of Damien’s voice to the theater room you had noticed before.

“How can you be so flippant?!”

“Flippant? I’m taking this matter very seriously.” You recognized the drawl of the Colonel’s voice, who sounded relaxed in the face of Damien’s anger.

“Oh, don’t give me that horseshit! I know you hated him, but…God damn it, he reached out to you!”

“Oh, what do you want from me?”

“I want you to care!” Damien’s voice cracked with the plea as you approached the door and peered in, uncertain whether to interrupt or walk away.

“Just because I’m not weeping like a child doesn’t mean that I don’t care.”

“I can’t believe…” Damien gestured with his cane, momentarily lost for words. “You come find me when you pull your head out of your ass!”

Damien turned toward the door suddenly, pausing for a brief second when he saw you standing there before he muttered a brief “Excuse me,” his eyes unable to meet your own as he brushed by.

You looked over your shoulder as the mayor walked away, wringing the cane in his hands as he always did when he was upset, and decided against following him. You’d learned over the years that when Damien was like this, it was better to give him his own space to cool down first.

Instead, you walked into the room and spotted the Colonel sitting in the corner, head turned toward the window where it was so dark outside you could barely believe it was still morning and not the middle of the night.

At the sound of your approach, he angrily said, “Damien! I don’t—oh.”

He stood, his tone friendlier as he said, “Ah, good to see you again! I had hoped to have a talk with you after last night’s festivities. But…you’re probably here to help the hunter’s ‘investigation of murder.’”

You both looked up and toward the windows at the sound of thunder, the lightning briefly illuminating the expansive grounds outside. When nothing followed that outbreak, he asked, “How’s the eye doing?”

You reached up and gently brushed a fingertip against the swollen skin around your eye. Abe certainly hadn’t bothered with holding back his punch last night.

“All the better for you asking about it. You…wouldn’t happen to remember why he punched me, would you?”

“Ah, a little too far into the drink to remember, eh?” The Colonel chuckled. “Does he really seem like the type to need a reason? Anyway, I’ll help you, I’ll tell you what happened to our dear friend Mark.”

Did he mean to sound so sarcastic with those last three words?

“I remember the events of last night clearly, especially when we were playing poker and he said,” here the Colonel jumped into an imitation of Mark, or at least a loud, overbearing version of him. “’Oh, look at me! My name is Markiplier now! Forget all my friends or the people that helped me along the way, just look at my money! Oh, I need to pay people to be my friends!’”

“I don’t remember it going that way—”

“Who’s telling the story, me or you?”

“Okay, but is the voice really necessary?”

“…Yes.”

“’Everyone just received terrible reminders of their past, but do I care? No! I just pay all my problems to go away! Glug glug, oopsie-poopsie, I can’t hold my booze! Gotta go off to the little boys’ room, who wants to join me? I’m going to go up there on my stairs, my house has more than one staircase, oh look at me and how great I am, oh no, there’s someone already in the little boys’ room! Oh no, it’s the delivery guy and he’s killing me!’ And dead.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Hold on.”

“That’s how it happened. Probably,” the Colonel said with far too much self-assurance.

You sighed and rubbed your forehead, wondering where to start.

“The delivery guy?”

“Well, obviously whoever sent the package is behind Mark’s murder.” The Colonel paused to give space for the thunder and lightning to do their thing before continuing. “I clearly remember Mark leaving the poker game early, and did you ever see him come back?”

Well, no, you couldn’t remember seeing Mark during any of the shenanigans going on after the game was over, but that didn’t say much. Still, maybe someone else had noticed Mark leaving early—that could narrow down the suspects if true.

“You mentioned everyone receiving terrible reminders of their past. Do you mean the cards?”

The Colonel waved his hand as if to dismiss his own words. “I just mean, Mark was the only one of us who wasn’t bothered by the cards he got, and look what happened to him.”

A suspicion that had been forming for some time now made you ask, “Colonel, how many cards were in your envelope?”

“Two, same as everyone else I suppose,” the Colonel answered. He shrugged. “A Tarot card and a card with something written on it, not that either bothered me as much as it did some of the others.”

Thinking back, the room had been very quiet when everyone opened their envelopes, but you were so thrown by your own card that you hadn’t paid much attention to the others.

As if sensing that, the Colonel placed a hand on your shoulder and smiled as he said, “They’re just words on a card. They don’t mean anything.”

Easy for him to say, you thought to yourself, and asked aloud, “What did yours say then?”

Without hesitation, the Colonel pulled a card out of his pocket and showed it to you. There was only a single name typed on it, which you read aloud.

“Dave?”

“Good man, good soldier. I served with him back in the day.” The Colonel gave the card a sad smile and slipped it back into his pocket. “Buried him myself.”

“I’m…sorry to hear that.”

“Oh, there are worse ways to go than blood loss. At least I didn’t have to put a bullet in his head to make sure he stayed down, eh?” The Colonel laughed, or tried to, but the sound was so close to tears that you wondered if his tinted glasses were hiding something.

Strange, that the death of Dave would bother him so much, but losing a friend only this morning barely registered. It certainly sounded like the Colonel and Mark hadn’t been on the best of terms, and shock and grief hits everyone in different ways, but you couldn’t blame Damien for being frustrated.

“I should go and check with the others,” you said, and the Colonel nodded.

When he spoke again, he sounded much more like his usual self. “Can’t just take my word for it, but I’m sure someone will back me up. Just be on your way and investigate the entire house—although you might want to start with the kitchen and something for that eye.”

“…Right. Thanks.” You resisted the urge to touch your eye again and turned toward the door while the Colonel eased himself back into his chair and went back to staring out the window.

“I’ll be here, when you’re done.”

You paused in the foyer to check your reflection in a mirror hanging there and winced. It was a bad bruise, and with the zero effort you had put in cleaning yourself up this morning after last night, you looked like the definition of a rag-a-muffin. If you showed up in the courtroom looking like this, no judge in the city would have hesitated to have you thrown out.

“You have looked better.”

Jolted out of your thoughts, you looked left to see the butler standing near the base of the stairs, just out of sight of the mirror’s reflection. Benjamin cleared his throat and tried to sound a bit more professional as he continued, “You’re just the person I was looking for. Come with me, I need to show you something.”

You did not move. “What exactly do you want to show me?”

The butler hesitated. “It’s…difficult for me to talk about. It’s better if you see it for yourself.”

Against your better judgement, you decided to follow Benjamin down yet another hallway. For a moment, you were afraid that he might take you back into the room where Mark’s body still lay, but he must have led you in a different direction than you’d been in before because none of this part of the house looked familiar.

How big was this place?

“Now if you’re looking for answers, there’s really no mystery at all. There isn’t a single detail of this house that I’m not privy to,” Benjamin explained as the two of you walked together. “And not a single guest that I’ve not personally vetted.”

“You think you know who might have killed Mark?” you asked. You saw the butler’s eyes glance upward, but for the moment the storm outside was quiet.

“I believe I may have found a vital clue, at the very least.” The butler stopped and turned on you suddenly. “Now I warn you, what you are about to see is not for the faint of heart.”

He looked down a flight of stairs leading into darkness and took a breath to steady himself. “A domain of evil, but in we must go. You first.”

You looked from the stairs to the butler, waiting to see if he was serious, but as he stood there holding the waist-high gate to the stairs open for you, you could practically smell the fear washing off of him. Reluctantly, you walked down thick, polished steps that turned to stone on the first landing to match the rough stone walls, and went down again into the darkened cellar.

A single light barely illuminated barrels and some furniture, and for some reason yet another chandelier, as if this place didn’t have enough of those. Your eyes rested on the wine racks, but seeing nothing amiss there you looked down to find a single broken bottle.

“Avert your eyes!”

The butler dashed down the last of the steps, broom and dustpan in hand, and went straight for the broken glass.

“I’m so sorry you had to see this!” he wailed, sounding genuinely devastated as he began to sweep. “Master would be so displeased! If only he were still alive!”

His wailing cries echoed off of the cellar walls as you backed away and then made a hasty retreat up the stairs and away from…whatever was going on down there.

At the top of the stairs you took a breath and tried to shake off the discomfort that whole encounter had left you with, but it wasn’t working.

Why did he think a single broken bottle was a clue? After last night’s party, it was more surprising that the house was still intact, much less as neat and orderly as he had managed to make it in just a few hours’ time.

But who would have gone down into the wine cellar last night, except for the butler? And you somehow doubted that guy was up to breaking anything, and certainly not letting a mess stay out in the open for just anyone to see.

You eased your way back down the stairs quietly, not that you needed to bother. Benjamin was so wrapped up in his weeping and sweeping futilely to get every last shard of glass up that he couldn’t possibly hear your return.

He certainly didn’t see you stop and close your eyes before taking a deep inhale.

The air in the cellar was cleaner than you might have expected, although it was more open and airier than the average basement. There was still a definite mustiness in the air, possibly from the barrels, along with the sharp ting of alcohol from the faded stain on the ground.

More importantly, you caught the whiff of Mark’s terrible cologne from last night, so overpowering that it took you another second to recognize the last smell that barely lingered in the air, already faint and growing dimmer with every disturbance caused by the butler’s movements.

Gunpowder.

((End of Part 7. Thanks for reading. I might have been too tired to think of a better title or tags when I scheduled this post, ha...

Link to Part 8: What Little Chef Saw.

Tagging: @silver-owl413 @skyewardlight @withjust-a-bite @blackaquokat @catgirlwarrior @neverisadork @luna1350 @oh-so-creepy @weirdfoxalley @95fangirl @lilalovesinternet-l @thepoolofthedead @a-bit-dapper @randomartdudette @geekymushroom @cactipresident @hotcocoachia @purple-anxiety-blog @shyinspiredartist @avispate @missksketch))

#markiplier #fanfiction #wkm au #werewolf au #monster hunter au #wkm district attorney #wkm colonel #wkm butler #dave #scene of the crime

20 notes · View notes