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hwxnghyynjin · 2 years ago

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What's Your Favourite Scary Movie?

Pairing: bang chan x reader, felix x reader Genre: horror, angst, fluff, based on the movie franchise 'Scream' Warnings: character death, blood, gore, threats, swearing, attempted murder Words: 5,424 Taglist: @alphadisaster

Jiwoo walked around her kitchen, making some popcorn so she could have a snack while watching a film. As soon as her popcorn was done, she grabbed the bag and put the popcorn into a bowl.

Before she could sit down, she got a phone call. She put the bowl down onto the kitchen surface and picked the phone up, answering the phone. “Hello?” she said, eating a piece of popcorn. “What’s your favourite scary movie?” was all that was said on the other end.

“Is this a prank call? Because if so, it’s not very funny”, Jiwoo said before hanging up the phone, putting it back on the stand. She grabbed the bowl of popcorn and sat down, but as soon as she sat down, the phone rang again. She got up and answered the phone, getting frustrated.

“What’s your favourite scary movie? And don’t bother putting the phone down this time”, the person said down the phone, making Jiwoo sigh out of frustration. “What do you want?” she asked, sounding more harsh than she intended to. “What film are you planning on watching?” That question creeped Jiwoo out because, how does the person know she was going to watch a film?

“Also, nice pyjamas”, now Jiwoo was definitely scared. She hung up the phone and put it down, grabbing a knife out of the knife block. That’s when she heard glass smashing, and she hid behind the counter. She was breathing really heavily, afraid of whoever was in her house. Well, her parents' house but they were away at the moment so she was home alone.

Faint footsteps could be heard as Jiwoo tried to keep quiet, but it was really hard since there was someone who had broken into the house. “Come out, come out wherever you are”, the person said, his voice distorted so his actual voice couldn’t be heard.

The footsteps got closer, and Jiwoo could see the top of the person's head over the kitchen counter. Well, she couldn’t see the person's actual head since they were wearing a mask. The person walked around the counter, and Jiwoo crawled away so she could stay hidden.

She soon found the chance to escape, running quickly towards the front door. She opened it, running out into the dark night. She didn’t get very far though as a knife was thrown at her back, hitting her right in the middle. She fell to the ground with a scream.

The knife was removed from her back and she was dragged by the ankle, her hands trying to grab onto something to stop her from being dragged. She was put on her back, the masked figure standing above her. “What do you want from me?” she screamed, tears streaming down her face.

“I don’t want anything. I just want to make you suffer after what you did to me”, the masked figure said and Jiwoo frowned, confused about what the person was on about. The masked figure held the axe in the air and struck her in the stomach, her screams echoing in the air.

Her parents arrived home a few hours later, their car stopping in front of the house. Her father got out of the car and was about to enter the house when he saw the broken window. He ran into the house to see if Jiwoo was still inside but he couldn’t find her anywhere. That’s when he heard his wife screaming his name.

He ran out of the house and ran to where his wife is, and that’s when he saw Jiwoo. She was hanging from a tree, her face bruised and pale. She was being hung from a rope, her clothes were bloody and she was holding a bloody knife.

After that night, everyone was warned to not go out at night at a certain time, and to always keep your doors and windows locked, and not to answer the phone, no matter who is ringing.

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“Hey, Chan”, Felix said as soon as he saw him. The freckled boy smiled at him, showing his pearly whites. He was about to get up to give the elder a hug but he couldn’t, realising you were still clinging onto his arm. “Hey don’t move, I’m comfy”, you said as you narrowed your eyes at Felix.

You and Felix are really close, he’s been your best friend for nearly 8 years now. Because of how close the two of you are, some people think you are a couple but you always tell them you’re just friends. Like yes, you love him but you love him as a best friend.

“Hey guys”, Chan said as he sat between Changbin and Minho. “Did you hear about what happened to Jiwoo? It’s awful”, Chan said as soon as he sat down. Everyone agreed as they all frowned, the atmosphere now heavy.

“I mean, yeah she wasn’t exactly the nicest person in the world but, she didn’t deserve what happened to her”, you said as you looked down at the table, Felix rubbing your arm. “She called me short once”, Changbin said, to which Hyunjin replied, “that’s because you are short, shorty”.

Changbin and Hyunjin started bickering, Jeongin laughing at them.”Guys stop, now’s not the time for this”, Chan said, making the two stop bickering. “Did you hear about the new rules? We shouldn’t go outside at night after a certain time, we should always make sure our doors and windows are locked and we shouldn’t answer the phone, no matter who is ringing”, Chan said, looking around to make sure everyone was listening to him.

Ever since Jiwoo was murdered, everyone has been really wary about going out by themselves or staying indoors by themselves, making sure that they had someone with them to keep safe.

“Chan, you dated her for some time, didn’t you?” Seungmin asked him, everyone looking at Chan. “I did for some time. But things got… complicated and I broke it off with her”, Chan said, and no one pushed him to talk about it.

The day went on as normal, but Chan was quiet for the remainder of the day. No one bothered him though, assuming he was still upset about Jiwoo’s death, so you didn’t question it.

Later that evening, you all went home, making sure to lock all your doors and shut all your windows. As soon as Minho got home, he fed his cats, gave them attention, and then made himself something to eat. All of a sudden, the phone goes, making him pick it up, putting it to his ear. All he heard was the sound of heavy breathing, so he just assumed it was a prank call and put the phone back on the stand. He completely forgot about the rule about not answering the phone, and he felt stupid.

A few seconds later, the phone went again, startling him. He answered it again, this time speaking into the phone. “Hello?” he said, sounding rather annoyed. “What’s your favourite scary movie?” was all that was said, confusing Minho. “Jokes on you, I don’t like scary movies”, Minho said and hung up the phone, tired of the person's bullshit.

He wasn’t expecting the phone to ring a third time, and he picked it up, screaming down the phone. He didn’t care about the ‘ignoring the phone’ rule at this point, just wanting the person to leave him alone.

“Leave me alone!” Minho shouted, starting to feel scared. “Buddy, you know you’re in danger after breaking the ‘not answering the phone’ rule”, the voice said, and Minho knew his life was in danger. He hung up the phone and ran to hide somewhere. That’s when he heard the sound of glass breaking and the sound of faint footsteps.

“Where are you?” the masked figure said, walking around the house. Minho’s cats ran up to them and started hissing and scratching. “Hey, get off me you dumb cat”, the masked figure said and that made Minho angry. He got up out of his hiding place and grabbed a knife. He charged at the masked figure but before he could hit them with the knife, the masked figure moved out of the way, making Minho trip over something.

The masked figure grabbed Minho, taking the knife off him and stabbed him in the shoulder, making him scream. He dragged Minho into a room, closing the door and locking it. The sound of stabbing could be heard as Minho’s cats continuously meowed and screamed, scared for their owner. “You’re a fucking traitor”, the masked figure said before slicing Minho’s throat open, blood staining his t-shirt.

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The moment you heard the news about Minho, you let out a scream of horror. No, this can’t be happening. This isn’t real. Minho can’t be dead. You refused to believe he was dead. Your heart sank the moment you were told, tears streaming down your face.

You were currently sitting on a couch between Felix and Hyunjin, holding a beer in your hand. You were at Felix’s house, resting your head against the back of the sofa. “Hey, where’s Jisung?” Seungmin asked as he walked into the living room holding a can of beer, taking a sip of it.

Not even a few minutes later, Jisung came running into the living room, panting. “Sorry I’m late”, he said as he tried catching his breath, his hands on his knees. “What happened to your leg?” Felix asked as he pointed at Jisung’s leg. There were scratches on his lower leg.

“Oh, uh, I was scratched by a cat”, he said, sounding rather unconvincing with his words. Nobody questioned it though as Jisung got himself a beer from the kitchen, opening the fridge.

“Who knows which one of us is going to be next. I don’t wanna die”, Changbin said as he downed his drink, crushing the can and throwing it in the bin. “Who knows who the killer is”, Chan suddenly said after a moment of silence, everyone’s focus now on Chan. “What do you mean?” Hyunjin asked, wondering what Chan was talking about.

“Minho has cats, right? And Jisung said he was scratched by a cat”, Chan said and everyone looked over at Jisung. Jisung scoffed in disbelief, he can’t believe Chan is accusing him of murdering Minho.

“Are you being for real? I didn’t kill Minho. Never in my entire fucking life would I ever lay a hand on him, let alone murder him. Also, these scratches on my leg? A cat scratched me on the way here and I had to run away from it”, Jisung tried explaining but Chan wasn’t having it. “Please, don’t lie, I know you killed him”, Chan said and Jisung lunged at him, inches away from his face.

“You better shut up unless you want a broken nose”, Jisung threatened, staring at Chan. There was so much tension in the air, it was starting to get uncomfortable. Chan muttered something under his breath, and Jisung must have heard it and didn’t like what he said, because he ended up punching him square in the face.

Blood was pouring out of Chan’s nose, and he was pretty sure it was now broken. Chan was about to lunge at Jisung but you stood in the middle so Chan couldn’t get to him. “Stop it, now. Minho was murdered and you two are acting like fucking morons. Grow up or get the fuck out, your choice”, you said, and Felix smiled at you for stopping them.

For the rest of the time you were at Felix’s house, Chan and Jisung avoided each other as much as possible. It was really awkward for the rest of you as the atmosphere was heavy and tense.

Chan had drunk one too many beers and he stumbled over towards where Jisung was sitting. Jisung looked up and saw Chan and rolled his eyes, waiting for yet another earful from him. “Hey Jisung, what’s your favourite scary movie?” was all he said, his words slurring. Jisung just looked up at him with confusion, wondering why he asked such a question.

“Uhm, I don’t know, Halloween I guess?” he replied, though he only said Halloween because it was the first film he thought of at that moment. He doesn’t actually have a favourite scary movie, he’s not really a fan of them. He only said that to get Chan off his back.

Chan didn’t say anything else and turned around and walked away. Jisung was really perplexed about what just happened, but he tried to forget it. Jisung wanted to stay longer but his night had been ruined so he decided to go home, wanting to forget about everything that’s happened. He just lost his best friend, his soulmate, and Chan accused him of killing him? What kind of sick fuck would do that?

As soon as Jisung got home, he locked his front door and slid down against it, sitting on the floor. He cried and cried for what felt like hours, just sitting on the floor and not bothering to move. He suddenly felt something nudge his leg, and looked down to see his dog, Dareumi. Jisung picked her up and held her, Dareumi licking his tears away.

After what felt like hours, Jisung got up and carried Dareumi with him. He went to his room, placed Dareumi on his bed and got changed out of his clothes and into some pyjamas. He put on a pair of checkered pyjama pants and a plain black t-shirt. He did his usual night time routine, washing his face and brushing his teeth, and then proceeded to get into bed.

As soon as he got into bed, the phone started ringing, making Dareumi jump. Jisung held Dareumi close to him, stroking her to calm her down. The phone kept ringing as Jisung started getting scared. He tried covering his ears to block the noise out but it didn’t work. After a while, the phone stopped ringing and Jisung sighed out of relief.

He got himself comfortable under his covers, getting ready to fall asleep when the phone started ringing a second time. He got out of bed and left his room, making his way towards where the phone is. He grabbed the phone and threw it against the wall, breaking it. He watched as it smashed into pieces, small fragments of plastic flying everywhere. He went back to bed, getting under the covers. Dareumi made herself comfortable on Jisung’s bed, curling into a ball and falling asleep.

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Jisung woke up, sun rays beaming in through the crack in the curtains. He got up and rubbed his eyes, yawning as he stretched his legs and arms. His feet pattered against the floor, leaving his room.

Dareumi followed behind him, her little legs bouncing up and down off the ground. The white little fluff ball barked, making Jisung laugh. “Ok, ok, I’m sorting your breakfast out now”, he said, putting dog food in a bowl and setting it down on the floor, as well as a bowl full of water. Jisung didn't have lessons until later that day so he was probably going to play video games with Felix. Well, after having another crying session.

After about 30 minutes of crying on the sofa, there was a sudden knock on the door. Jisung wiped his eyes and got up, walking towards the door. He looked out of the peephole to try and see if he could see who was out there, but he couldn’t find anyone. Confused, he opened the door, poking his head out. There was no one around, so he thought someone was messing with him or he was hearing things.

He closed the door and turned around but as soon as he did, he came face to face with a masked figure. The masked figure stabbed Jisung in the shoulder, earning a scream of pain from him. He was pushed against a wall, the side of his head hitting it.

The both of them fought, Jisung trying to stop them from stabbing him again. Blood was dripping down his body, soaking his t-shirt. Dareumi heard fighting so she ran from her food bowl and saw her owner getting attacked, so she bit the masked figure in the leg, making them yell. They fell to the ground, holding their leg as they groaned in pain. That gave Jisung the chance to pick up Dareumi and run out of his house, running as far as he could. Jisung felt himself getting faint, his legs about to collapse under him but before he could fall to the ground, he felt someone catch him, and he passed out in their arms.

--------------------------------

Jisung woke up to a bright light hovering over him, squinting his eyes to adjust to the bright light. He tried sitting up but there was pain in his shoulder, making him wince. He felt movement in the chair next to his bed, startling him. He looked to the side and saw Felix, who had a worried expression on his face.

“Oh my god, you’re awake”, Felix said as he sat forward, a slight smile forming on his face. “You weren’t answering your phone so I knew something was wrong, and when I was walking towards your house, I saw you running, holding Dareumi, and that’s when you collapsed”, Felix said, explaining to him about what happened.

“Where’s Dareumi?” Jisung asked, panicking. “Don’t worry, Dareumi is fine. She’s being looked after by a nice neighbour”, Felix said, reassuring Jisung. Jisung let out a sigh of relief, sitting up properly on the bed.

The door opened, revealing Hyunjin, Seungmin and Jeongin. Jeongin opened his jacket and brought out a bunch of snacks as a grin formed on his face, giving them to Jisung. Jeongin knew the hospital food wasn’t great so he went to the convenience store on the way to the hospital.

Jisung noticed Hyunjin was limping a little, making him suspicious. “Hyunjin, what happened to you? You’re limping”, Jisung asked as he raised his eyebrow slightly. “Uhhhh, I was bit? It’s no big deal though, it’s only a small bite”, he said as he scratched the back of his neck. Jisung didn’t say anything else as the others started a conversation.

While they were talking, you, Bang Chan and Changbin were sitting outside, waiting their turn to see Jisung. You were sitting next to Chan, your legs touching. Changbin was sitting opposite you, playing with his fingers. “I hope Jisung is going to be ok”, you said to no one in particular, Changbin agreeing with you. Chan didn’t say anything though. You thought he was either deep in thought or just didn’t know what to say.

Without thinking, you rested your head on Chan’s shoulder, startling him. He realised it was you leaning on him so he rested his head on top of yours, holding your hand with his big one. Chan could smell your shampoo, which was a fruity tropical scent.

Suddenly, you heard laughing coming from Jisung’s room, and you knew Jisung was going to be ok.

--------------------------------

“Fuck! Why didn’t the bastard just bleed out and die?! If that stupid dog didn’t bite me, I would have killed him”

--------------------------------

The moment Jisung left the hospital, he knew he had to confront Hyunjin. Did Hyunjin really try to kill him? He had to find out for himself.

“Hey, Hyunjin”, Jisung said the moment he saw him. Hyunjin sat opposite him, holding a cup of coffee in his hand. “What did you want to talk about? You sounded very serious on the phone”, Hyunjin said, taking a sip of his coffee.

Jisung took a deep breath and hesitated to speak up. He had to, though, if he wanted to find who the killer was. “Did you stab me?” Jisung said, making Hyunjin’s eyes widen. He scoffed at the question, wondering what the hell Jisung was talking about. “Why would I stab one of my friends?” Hyunjin asked in disbelief.

“You said you were bitten, and the masked person who stabbed me was bitten by Dareumi”, Jisung explained and Hyunjin sighed. “I was bitten by my aunt's dog because I accidentally annoyed him a bit too much and he nipped my leg. I promise you, I’m telling you the truth. I’m not the one who stabbed you, or am I the masked killer”, Hyunjin said and Jisung sat back in his chair, feeling stupid for assuming Hyunjin was the killer.

Suddenly there was the sound of laughter coming from the other end of the coffee shop, and Jisung saw you and Chan sitting opposite each other, holding hands. Since when did you and Chan have feelings for each other? Jisung thought you and Felix were secretly dating.

You laughed at something Chan said, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear. You sipped on your coffee, the vanilla taste hitting your taste buds. You had a question for Chan but you were too scared to ask. Chan knew there was something wrong just by looking at your face.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Is there something on your mind?” he asked, rubbing his thumb over your hand. “Do you think the killer is still out there? I mean, they tried to kill Jisung. We already lost Minho, I don’t want to lose any more friends”, you said, looking down at your intertwined hands. Chan made a face of annoyance which you didn’t see, fortunately to him.

“Hey, don’t worry, I’ll protect you. I’ll make sure no one, and I mean no one, hurts you”, Chan said as he smiled at you. You smiled back at him, touched by his kind words. You finished your coffee, standing up to put your now empty coffee cup in the bin. On your way back to your table, you saw Jisung and Hyunjin sitting in the corner of the coffee shop and you walked over to them.

While you were talking to them, Chan was still sitting down drinking his coffee. He watched as you laughed along with the two, and he frowned. He didn’t like seeing you be happy with anyone else, he wanted to be the only person who can make you happy. He stood up, a bit too quickly and harshly, knocking the chair over. Everyone in the coffee shop looked at Chan, and he left the coffee shop, running out. You watched as he ran away, and you wanted to chase after him but you didn’t want to accidentally anger Chan just in case he was in a mood.

Chan ran into an alleyway, leaning against the brick wall. He rested his forehead against the brick, his hands balled into fists. He started hitting the wall lightly, until the hits got rougher and harsher. The brick cut into the flesh, breaking away the skin, causing blood to appear.

He yelled out of frustration, hitting the brick one last time before moving away from it, walking out of the alleyway. He saw you walking out of the coffee shop with Hyunjin and Jisung, seeing you playfully hit Hyunjin at something he said. “I’ll make sure that no one can hurt you, y/n, my love”, Chan said as he smiled to himself.

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You were at Felix’s house, sitting next to him as the two of you played video games. You were currently losing against him, Felix laughing as he raced towards the finish line. You decided to distract him by sitting on his lap, startling him and almost dropping his controller. That gave you the chance to race by him, crossing the finish line.

“YAY I WIN”, you shouted, doing your celebratory dance. You always sit on Felix’s lap so why does it make him feel different this time? While you continued doing your celebratory dance, Felix was lost in thought.

You saw Felix lost in thought and that’s when you realise just how attractive and beautiful he was. His freckles, his pink plump lips, his cute nose. Wait, Felix is your best friend, which he has been for years, why are you thinking about him like that? You can’t possibly like him, can you? Besides, you and Chan kind of have a thing going. Was it really a serious thing though? Or was it just a distraction to take your mind off Felix when in reality, you were actually in love with your best friend? Probably.

You poked Felix’s cheek, startling him. You laughed at his expression, he looked like a lost puppy. “You were lost in thought so I decided to poke your cheek”, you said, explaining yourself.

Suddenly, the phone rang and you and Felix looked at each other. It was dark outside and you remembered the rule to not answer the phone after a certain time. The phone kept ringing after a couple of minutes, and you and Felix were scared.

You decided to go over to the phone, picking it up and putting it up to your ear. You knew you shouldn’t have but your curiosity got the best of you. “H-hello?” you said into the phone. All you heard was the sound of breathing, and then a quiet voice.

“y/n?” it was Chan, and he sounded… upset? “Chan, are you okay? What’s wrong?” you asked, wondering why he was calling at this hour of the night. “Oh, I just wanted to make sure you’re ok because I went to your house but you weren’t there”, Chan said and that made you smile.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. I’m actually at Felix’s house”, you said and you didn’t see the change in expression on Chan’s face. “Oh, you’re at Felix’s? Well, can you pass the phone over to him?” he asked and you didn’t think much of it, passing the phone to him. Felix grabbed the phone and put it up to his ear, expecting Chan to talk to him as normal. But what Chan said made Felix hang up the phone, throwing the phone across the room, startling you.

“Hey Felix, what’s your favourite scary movie?”

There was a knock at the door, and you jumped at the sound. You were about to go and answer the door when Felix stopped you, holding your arm. “Don’t. Go and hide somewhere, I’ll answer the door”, Felix said and you were about to argue when you saw the look on his face. You obeyed and ran to his room, closing the door.

Felix walked slowly to the door, hearing another knock on the door. He grabbed the door handle, opening the door slowly. He opened the door fully and to his surprise, there was no one there. Furrowing his brows, he closed the door and turned around. That’s when he heard glass breaking and Felix ran to grab something to use as a weapon.

He grabbed a baseball bat, getting ready to swing as he walked towards where the sound came from. He walked through the house, looking in different rooms. Suddenly, he felt something hit the back of his head, knocking him to the ground. He groaned in pain, moving his hand to the back of his head and felt wetness. He looked at his hand and realised it was blood.

Felix was grabbed by the back of his t-shirt, being dragged into a room. He yelled for the person to get off him, trying to hit the person but he couldn’t. You heard Felix’s yells, and you ran out of his room, not before grabbing something. You ran to where the sounds were coming from and that’s when you saw a masked figure.

You jumped onto the person’s back, making them drop Felix. You didn’t know the masked figure was holding a knife though, the person dropping the blade as it hit Felix’s leg, making his scream.

The masked figure tried getting you off them, slamming you into the wall. They ended up flipping you over, dropping you onto the ground. The masked figure went back over to Felix, climbing on top of him. He started hitting Felix across the face and slamming his head into the floor.

Felix tried grabbing the mask, his hands flailing above him. The masked figure grabbed one of Felix’s hands, twisting his wrist, making him cry out in pain. Tears started streaming down Felix’s face, his vision getting blurry. Luckily Felix’s other hand was free, and he managed to grab the mask. He ripped it off the person and his nightmare came true. The person under the mask, and the person who killed Minho and tried to kill Jisung was his friend, Bang Chan.

“You fucking murderer! You killed Minho, you sick bastard”, Felix snapped, anger taking over him. All Chan did was laugh. “Minho was a traitor. He’s the person Jiwoo cheated on me with.. And I tried to kill Jisung because he broke my fucking nose. Now I’m going to kill you too, because you’re in love with y/n when she’s mine and only mine”, Chan said and wrapped his hands around Felix’s throat.

Felix gasped for air, hitting Chan’s hands to try and get him off him. He kicked his legs out, struggling under him. He felt himself becoming unconscious, and he was worried he was going to die. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live until he was old and wrinkly, and had kids of his own.

His eyes started closing, his struggling started to become faint. Suddenly, Chan felt a sharp blow to the back of his head, making him fall off of Felix. Felix started coughing, holding his throat. He looked up and saw you, who was holding a broken vase. You had smashed the vase over Chan’s head.

You helped Felix off the ground, holding his hand. You ran out of the house, running as far away from Chan as possible. Felix still had the knife in his leg, and he pulled it out with a groan, keeping the knife so he could use it in case Chan ran after them.

“y/n, honey, don’t fucking run away from me”, you heard from behind you. You didn’t want to turn around, scared that you would see Chan getting close to you. You didn’t let go of Felix’s hand, even if your hand was getting sweaty.

You didn’t think as you screamed at the top of your lungs, not caring if it strains your throat. “Help! There’s a murderer chasing us”, you screamed, hoping someone would help you. Suddenly, it started pouring down with rain, drenching you. Felix felt himself falling, but luckily you caught him, draping his arm over your shoulder. You let him lean on you for support, his leg still bleeding.

By some miracle, you heard sirens in the distance, red and blue lights in the darkness. The sirens got closer and closer, a police car coming up behind you. You and Felix stopped running, walking backwards away from Chan. “I have you now”, Chan said as he went to grab you but before he could, a gun went off, hitting him in the shoulder.

He turned around and saw who shot him. He wasn’t expecting to see Changin, an angry expression on his face. “Chan, you’re under arrest for murder now get on the fucking ground”, he ordered and Chan got on the ground, his hands in the air. You silently thanked Changbin, smiling at him. You knew he was training to be a police officer but you didn’t realise that he was able to shoot a gun.

Chan was arrested and you all got on with your lives. Jisung went to Minho’s grave every week, on the same day at the same time, bringing Minho his favourite flowers, which were daisies. You and Felix got together after realising your feelings for each other, and Hyunjin and Changbin still bicker with each other. And Seungmin and Jeongin? Well, they’re still Seungmin and Jeongin, never separating even for a minute.

Jisung had moved into Minho’s parents house since he didn’t feel safe living in his house anymore, even though Chan was arrested, he just wanted to be around Minho’s family. It would also give them the chance to get closer to each other, looking after each other and give one another emotional support.

You might have lost a friend who means a lot to you, and lost someone who you thought was your friend but turned out to be a murderer, but you also gained a lover, who is also your best friend.

#bang chan imagines #bang chan scenarios #bang chan horror #bang chan angst #bang chan x reader #bang chan #felix imagines #felix scenarios #felix horror #felix angst #felix x reader #felix #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #stray kids horror #stray kids angst #stray kids x reader #stray kids

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belphegor1982 · 7 months ago

Note

HEY WAITAMINUTE IS "underture" a reference to the music term "overture"? Mayhaps a Scanlan WIP?!?!

srryok bai now

Yup, kind of! It's the first CR I got an idea for - in March last year, for TLOVM, as I hadn't even watched most of the first campaign yet - and, incidentally, the only one out of five fics (/comics, if you count Scar Tissue) and 2 WIPs that doesn't begin with the letter S :P (not even on purpose, it just happened!)

Okay, so this fic exists because of three reasons:

• "Underture" is a title on the Who's concept album Tommy (and yes, a play on "overture"!) because the titular lad is Going Through It (and being made to taste drugs iirc). I discovered that album around 2002 and love the word.

• One of my favourite fics overall (like, all fandoms) is @plothooksinc's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) "Underdark", which has Leo and Mikey fall under the city in complete darkness and try to make their way back to their brothers (and the surface), with Mikey as the 1st person narrator. It is hilarious and super tense and glorious and one of the great classics in the entire franchise's fandom, imo (or should be). Since I read it in the mid-to-late 2000s I had no idea that "Underdark" was actually a D&D term and was gobsmacked when I learned! The more you know :D

• And the main reason this WIP exists is because I essentially went "wait, what if "Underdark", but make it Vax and Scanlan". Of course, now it took a life of its own and there's going to be a Structure to it (start in media res, and then alternate "how we got there" chapters and "so what's happening in the creepy dark in the present" chapters). With a healthy dose of getting to know each other and going from essentially work colleagues to friends 💜

Here's a little excerpt from page 2, so literally the start of the fic (for context, Vax got washed down a mine and wakes up alone in a tunnel):

And, somewhere in the distance, a familiar voice.

“…help?”

Vax scrambled up, finding purchase on the slippery rock wall nearby, chasing sound rather than sight. The world in front of him was little more than blobs in varying shades of black. His ears were more reliable than his eyes right now.

“Where are you?” he called. “Are you okay?”

“Define ‘okay’?”

Vax bit back a tart comment. Damn Scanlan and his utter and complete inability to be serious.

“Like, not hurt? Can you move? What’s your position?”

“Not… great.”

“What do you mean?” Vax asked sharply, still half-feeling his way along the wall. Scanlan’s voice was getting clearer, or at least closer; it also sounded breathless, strained, small in a way it rarely did. Vax could only hope most of that could be chalked up to the sore throat he’d been complaining about for the last couple of days.

There was a scrabble and a gasp. When Scanlan spoke again his pitch had climbed a few notes.

“I mean I’m kinda hanging off a cliff? Or some kind of ledge, anyway. And uh, my fingers are getting real tired, if you know what I mean.” A short, nervous laugh. “I really really don’t want to lose fingernails. It hurts like a mother and it makes playing the lute really difficult.”

“Hang on and keep talking,” said Vax, straining his ears and trying to ignore his pounding heart. “I’m on my way.”

“Okay. Usually, not really a problem, but uh… Aw, crap.” There was a strangled sound, like he’d choked up on a cough, and some more scratching. “You know me, I talk – I talk real good. B—big fan of talking. I’m a great talker, too. Talker, singer, player – give me any instrument and it is on, baby. I mean I’ve never tried the double bass, you know, those big-ass cellos. Got curious but the bow alone is almost bigger than me, so that sucks. Plus they’re really expensive. Vax?”

“Yes?”

“Hurry?”

Vax practically ran around a corner and stared into the dark as hard as he could. The tunnel in front of him kept going in a downward slope, the ceiling gradually getting lower; there was a pathway of sorts along the wall, but most of the rocky ground seemed to disappear, as though erased from existence, into the starkest black Vax had ever seen. Rivulets of water trickled into it from the walls and the ground, slithering between protruding rocks, the only movement he could discern.

Wait… Not quite the only movement.

Vax bolted towards the fingers he could see grasping at a small rocky ridge a foot or so below the edge.

“Shitshitshitshit,” he could hear Scanlan chanting, his breathing now frantic and his voice gone beyond squeaky. “Vax…!”

Three things happened almost instantaneously:

Vax reached down and grabbed one of Scanlan’s arms just as his fingers lost their grip on the ledge.

In a last-ditch attempt to find a hold of something, Scanlan’s other hand shot up and closed around the clasp of Vax’s cloak.

Vax belatedly realised he’d miscalculated as Scanlan’s weight and his own momentum carried him past the edge and into the black.

(welp, they're dead :P no they're not but they certainly think so for a hot second)

#sometimes I write #critical role #vox machina #vax'ildan #scanlan shorthalt

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dnowit41 · 1 year ago

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Dirk Nowitzki's journey from Germany to Dallas to the Hall of Fame

By Steve Aschburner

His shot became his signature, that signature became a statue. It’s planted there now for the long term, emblematic of Dirk Nowitzki himself, who came to the Dallas Mavericks a quarter century ago and never left.

Resplendent in white bronze, 24 feet high, over on the right wing of Victory Plaza outside the American Airlines Center, Nowitzki is immortalized in the shooting form that earned him so many of his 35,223 points (regular and postseason). It earned him a bevy of admirers, too, among peers and rivals like Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and LeBron James who adopted the big German sharpshooter’s one-legged fadeaway as both a tactic and an homage.

“The Dirk,” as that shot has been dubbed, is here to stay. Both as a weapon – “the equivalent of what Abdul-Jabbar did with his sky hook,” one opposing coach said the other day, both awed and irritated by its effectiveness – and as a tribute, frozen in time, the distillation of 21 seasons and 1,667 games logged with the only NBA team for which he ever played.

One city, one franchise? Only Utah Hall of Famer John Stockton (1,686) ever played more.

It’s funny, though, how a player celebrated for staying planted in one place for more than two decades could have traveled so far and covered such ground in the process. It showed in his game, the way he developed, refined and tweaked his unique style until he had dragged the whole position with him.

“Watching him play, I remember thinking, he’s just getting better and better and better,” said Hall of Famer Kevin McHale, one of the NBA’s greatest power forwards. “And he really changed things around the way the position is played.”

It showed in Nowitzki’s influence, a European prospect who came over younger than most of the imports who preceded him and shined so brightly that, well before he was done, he was regarded as the best player ever from that continent. Fifty-one Most Valuable Player trophies had been handed out in NBA history before Nowitzki won the 52nd as the first Euro. Now guys from Greece and Serbia have taken home four of the past five.

“Every tall kid around the world saw Dirk,” Mavs owner Mark Cuban said, “and realized they could play basketball and not have to be a back-to-the-basket center. Dirk paved the way for players of any size to be multi-positional and have a variety of in-game skills.”

Certainly Nowitzki, 45, moved geographically in a career that spanned half his life, from Wurzburg, Germany, to Dallas and now to Springfield, Mass., where he will be inducted Aug. 12 into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame with the Class of 2023. He has been there once before, in 2018 when a pair of his point guards – Steve Nash and Jason Kidd – were both enshrined. This time, those two will be official Hall presenters for their tall teammate. Nowitzki’s guest list for the weekend – after wife Jessica and their kids Malaika (10), Max (8) and Morris (6) – ran “a couple hundred, I think” at least in invitees, if not attendees.

His speech is pretty much done. “It’s been fun,” Nowitzki told NBA.com recently by phone from Germany. “Really what you’re doing, you’re reflecting on the whole journey. Who’s meant the most, who’s done what. I’ve actually found it cool to sit down in the evening after everyone’s in bed and I sit here for an hour and think about that stuff.

“There will be a little nervousness. But I’m also going to enjoy standing up there and looking out at this amazing crowd of family and friends and great athletes. I’m going to try to enjoy it as much as I can.”

From Germany To Dallas

His father, Jörg-Werner, competed internationally in team handball. His mother Helga and his older sister Silke played basketball.

“Growing up I was always in gyms,” said Nowitzki, who mostly played handball and tennis. “I was tall, and I played basketball in school. I had a cousin who was with a club team, so I went one time to practice and I got hooked. I wasn’t very good but I could move pretty well for a big guy and I had decent touch for my size. It didn’t come that hard for me, and I loved it from Day 1.”

After joining DJK Wurzburg, Nowitzki was spotted by Holger Gerschwindner, a former national team player turned physicist, trainer and coach. Gerschwindner offered to work with the lanky lad, got the family’s permission, then began to hone every aspect of Nowitzki’s game.

One part guru, one part Svengali to Nowitzki’s Trilby, Gerschwindner favored unorthodox techniques and drills to coax out his players’ abilities. For instance, he would invite an old friend who played the saxophone to the gym, then instruct Nowitzki and other teen players to dribble and move in rhythm with the music (“dance the game,” he termed it). He gave them books and swapped out weight training with morning rowing on a local lake.

“Holger was a little bit mystical figure in Dirk’s orbit who thought completely out of the box,” said Golden State assistant coach Ron Adams, an international scout for Portland in 1998. “He’s a little full of himself and some people look sideways at him, but they let Holger do his thing for the most part in Dallas.”

At 19, Nowitzki had developed enough to be invited to the Nike Hoop Summit, an All-Star event pitting the top international prospects against a squad of U.S. high schoolers. The game was held in San Antonio, but the foreign players convened and practiced in Dallas.

Donnie Nelson, son of Mavericks coach Don Nelson, served as a volunteer assistant coach for the overseas team. A stint with Athletes in Action playing internationally during his time at Wheaton College piqued the younger Nelson’s interest in the NBA potential of foreign-bred players.

“We scouted Europe more than anybody, really,” Don Nelson told NBA.com last week, calling from his home in Maui. “Donnie got the international team to work out at the YMCA in downtown Dallas. So for a full week, I’m watching Dirk work out. He was the most unbelievable young player I’d ever seen.”

Other teams perked up after Nowitzki scored 33 points with 14 rebounds to spark his team’s upset of the Americans, including Al Harrington, Quentin Richardson and Rashard Lewis. But as the 1998 NBA Draft approached, the Nelsons were ready.

“We hid Dirk for several weeks before the draft,” Nelson said. “We made a commitment that we were going to draft him. We just wanted to keep him from going anywhere else to work out. He was going to be ours. He was happy with that. So he hid for a week in Donnie’s basement.”

The Mavericks held the No. 6 pick that year but had more ambitious plans than simply taking Nowitzki at that spot. They arranged a deal with Milwaukee at No. 9, in which Dallas picked Michigan’s Robert (Tractor) Traylor and the Bucks took Nowitzki. They knew Boston had interest, leaving the Celtics to draft Paul Pierce at No. 10.

The Bucks also sent the No. 19 selection, Pat Garrity, to Dallas, which promptly packaged Garrity to Phoenix for a young point guard named Steve Nash.

The Early Years

The 1998-99 NBA season is one that lots of folks would like to forget. First of all, there was no 1998; a labor lockout wiped out training camps and the season’s first two-plus months. The new CBA that was wrangled in January was followed by a frenzied 50-game schedule that began in February. Summer leagues, orientation, September individual work and scrimmages, everything an incoming rookie needs for that first difficult season was off the table.

Then there was Nowitzki, who had just turned 20 and, by his and Gerschwindner’s admission, was probably one or two years ahead of schedule in trying the NBA.

“It was right after they drafted me,” Nowitzki said, “that I had the doubts. Should I go to the NBA? I was skinny, I had played second division in Germany. Can I make this jump?

“I talked to Nellie and Donnie. I got to meet Steve and Mike [Finley], and they all assured me, being a young team, we could grow together. So before I left from home, I said I’d come. But I wasn’t able to sign a contract because of the lockout, and that worked out kind of perfect for me.

“I got to stay home. I got to train with Holger. I got to play first division in Germany for a couple more months and really developed my body a little more, my game. Then I got the call in late January from Donnie. ‘Hey, the season is on. Get your butt to Dallas!'”

Let the record show, in his NBA debut on Feb. 5, 1999, Nowitzki shot 0-for-5, made two free throws, got no rebounds and passed for four assists in 16:20 of an overtime loss to Seattle. That first season, he averaged 8.2 points and 3.4 rebounds while shooting 40.5% overall and 20.6% on 3s. The Mavericks finished 19-31 but the Nelsons made good on their commitment, using Nowitzki in 47 games and starting him in 24, including the final 14 when his minutes doubled to 32.9 per game.

“Super nervous and anxious,” he recalled. “I didn’t know what to expect. We had a week of training camp maybe. I didn’t know all the plays or the defensive calls. Then we had five or six games in a week? It was insane. Looking back, it was good for me to get adjusted and learning. But it was tough to go through.”

There was one bright side: Nash. The unheralded playmaker from British Columbia by way of Santa Clara had been buried in the Suns backcourt his first two seasons. He and the German rookie clicked instantly.

“Well, they both loved to drink beer, so I’d say they clicked,” Nelson said, laughing. “They hung out. They both were single at the time.”

It was a lot more than that, Nowitzki said.

“We came to Dallas on the same day,” he said. “We didn’t have any friends. We lived in the same apartment complex. His family is from Europe, and he loved soccer. So we had that and we completely bonded. We went to dinners. I was feeling homesick so he’d take me to movies, out to eat.

“On free nights, we’d go back to the gym, train, lift, run, shoot, play 1-on-1. We just worked our way to be better and better every year. Steve knew the league, the routines and how to get ready. So I learned a lot from him.”

In his second season, during which Cuban bought the franchise, Nowitzki doubled his output to 17.5 points and 6.5 boards while shooting 46.1% overall and 37.9% from range. He averaged 21.8 in 2000-01 as he and Nash became a devastating pick-and-pop combo, and the Mavericks won 53 games in the first of 11 consecutive years of 50-plus victories. The next season, the guard and the forward were All-Stars.

“The crazy part still is, when he got to the NBA, people were upset that he didn’t play like a traditional center,” Cuban said. “They asked why he wasn’t a rim protector. It’s insane to look back at that now.”

Nash went back to Phoenix in free agency in 2004. Finley was gone a year later. Jason Terry came in, and later Kidd. Their coaches changed, from Nelson to Avery Johnson to Rick Carlisle. But Nowitzki was the cornerstone and he was on a roll. He went to 11 All-Star games in a row and 14 overall. He was a 12-time All-NBA selection. In 2006 he led Dallas to the Finals for the first time. The next season, the Mavs won 67 games and Nowitzki won his MVP award.

The coaching changes, never easy, panned out for him. Nelson tapped into Nowitzki’s rare combo of size and ball skills, using him as a lengthy small forward. He was 26 when Johnson took over, demanding more toughness, post work and even defense from his offensive star. Carlisle, who coached him from 2008 until Nowitzki retired in 2019, was a combination, wanting “a lot of free-flow offense and a lot of structured, detail-oriented defense.”

“I always thought, what if I had gone someplace else? Bulked me up and just put me under the basket and made a center out of me. With Nellie, that never happened,” Nowitzki said.

Johnson perfected Dallas’ use of Nowitzki at the “nail,” the center of the free-throw line where he posed the maximum threat to opposing defenses. It enabled him to punish smaller defenders that would switch onto him, without the time and grind to work into the low post, and likely draw a doubling big man.

“The spacing was good,” he said. “I wasn’t the greatest passer, but at least this way, I knew where my spot-up shooters were. I knew the big guy was in the dunker spot underneath. And if nobody came to double, I was going to just shoot over the little guy.”

As for Carlisle, that partnership produced the highlight of their careers and Cuban’s tenure, Maverick fans’ warmest memories, one of the city’s happiest sports celebrations and a reason so many junior-high kids named Dirk are running around.

“I came in the fall of 2008,” Carlisle said last week, “and the main thing was, ‘Dirk’s got about 4-5 years in his prime. We’ve got to figure out a way to win a championship."

‘Now I’m The Old Guy’

Nowitzki was 14 years old when Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and the rest of the Dream Team colonized the basketball world during the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

“I was already an NBA fan and with Jordan winning his first championship in 1991, I became a huge Bulls fan,” Nowitzki said. “Then obviously ’92 happened. I had posters in my room of [Charles] Barkley, Shaq later on, Jordan of course, Bird.”

He had a poster, too, of Detlef Schrempf, the native of Leverkusen, Germany who was drafted eighth overall in 1985 by an earlier Dallas regime. Schrempf, a 6-foot-10 forward, grew up in Centralia, Wash., and spent four years at the University of Washington. He played 16 seasons, averaging 13.9 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game. Later playing for Indiana, Seattle and Portland, Schrempf made three All-Star teams, one All-NBA squad and twice was named the NBA’s top Sixth Man.

Of the 27 NBA players born in Germany, Schrempf is the closest precursor to Nowitzki.

“Of course, Detlef was also one of my favorites. Everybody in Germany knew how good he was,” Nowitzki said. “And then my first game in the league, it was against Seattle and Detlef. The way he treated me there, introduced me to his family, he couldn’t have been nicer. He gave me his phone number and told me to call if I ever had any questions.”

Other notable European players have made their marks before or since. Players such as Sarunas Marciulionis, Drazen Petrovic, Vlade Divac, Andre Kirilenko, Rik Smits, Toni Kukoc and Tony Parker right on to Domantas Sabonis, Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic.

Now Nowitzki is their flag bearer, a role that makes him almost as proud as when he carried Germany’s flag in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“I got to play with [Mavs forward] Maxi Kleber my last two years. How special is that, a kid from my hometown comes to us? We spent a lot of time together, before the season we trained together and he had a lot of questions,” Nowitzki said.

“And [Toronto guard] Dennis Schröder, when he got in the league, he actually worked out in Dallas before the Draft. I went there, got to see him, got to meet him and gave him my number. Told him when he had any questions to call me up. So we’ve basically been in contact his entire career.

“Now I’m the old guy. It changes so fast. Twenty years have flown by.”

Dirk Stays With Dallas, Wins 2011 Title

This bond of Nowitzki with Dallas, Dallas with Nowitzki, is something to savor now, full of giddy moments and fuzzy nostalgia. But it was forged in hard times, ordeals that are only appreciated in retrospect and even then with a wince. The early days with the Mavericks had been a challenge for Nowitzki, but nowhere close to what he and the team’s fan base endured a few years later.

In 2005-2006, Dallas won 60 games. Nowitzki averaged a career-best 26.6 points, finished third in MVP balloting and – with teammates such as Terry, Josh Howard and Jerry Stackhouse – once again was the lone All-Star.

“Dirk played with Jason Kidd near the end of his career and Jason was still a great player, but he did not play with a bunch of Hall of Fame players in their prime,” Carlisle said. “Nash left before he really hit his stride. Dirk carried an amazing load with the Dallas Mavericks over a period of two-plus decades that may never be rivaled again.”

Nowitzki was his usual stellar self in leading the Mavs in the 2006 playoffs to series victories over Memphis, San Antonio and Phoenix, with his Game 7 work to beat the Spurs overtime in the West semis most remarkable. He and the Mavericks took a 2-0 lead over Miami in the Finals. Then Dwyane Wade happened, the young Heat star binging at 39.3 points and shooting 73 free throws over the final four games.

The Mavericks regrouped to win 67 games in 2006-07. They were so good, with Nowitzki as MVP, they dragged Howard to his only All-Star selection. Heavily favored against small-ball, eighth-seeded Golden State, Dallas was upset in six games, including defeats by 12, 18 and 25 points. Their old mastermind Nelson was working the Warriors’ sideline at that point, and his insider defense on Nowitzki saw the Mavs star score just eight points on 2-of-13 shooting in the elimination game.

“It would have been unbelievable to win in ’06,” he said. “And then losing in the first round in ’07 to the Warriors, those were some tough, tough losses. Gut-wrenching, to the point where I was embarrassed and disappointed and didn’t want to leave the house for a couple weeks.”

In fact, the only thing that blocked him from a hasty retreat to Germany that spring was the NBA, asking him to stick stateside for a couple of weeks until the MVP presentation.

Another first-round loss in 2008, to New Orleans this time, cost Johnson his job. Carlisle came in but two more abrupt exits followed, to Denver in the 2009 semis and to San Antonio in 2010.

Nowitzki was 32 and, for the first time in his career, a free agent. Three years earlier, a perennial All-NBA forward had accepted a trade in hopes of winning a championship elsewhere: Kevin Garnett left Minnesota after 12 years and insufficient help to finally win in Boston. Was Nowitzki next?

“I always wanted to make it happen,” Nowitzki said. “I met with Mark [Cuban] and we both got a little emotional about what we’d been through together. And he said, ‘Let’s finish this together,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t want to be anywhere else.’ I ended up signing a four-year deal and we won a championship in the first year.”

The 2010-11 Mavericks did more than that. They delayed and possibly altered the trajectory of LeBron James’ grandiose Super Team plans in Miami. The “not one, not two, not three…” hubris of that initial public appearance of James, Wade and Chris Bosh became the thud of “not one” when Dallas and Nowitzki beat the Heat in six games.

Said McHale: “Kidd was really, really smart. Just knew how to play. Some of the guys were older, too. They had a blend of guys who just played so well together. They would do this 2-3 zone when I was [visiting Carlisle] in camp and I told Rick, ‘Your zone sucks. You’ve got to stop using that.’ Hell, they played that zone in the Finals. They had a bunch of high-IQ guys. And pro’s pros. They were not going to beat themselves.

“But the thing I remember the most was Dirk making these unbelievable shots down the stretches of games. He’d make a crazy shot to give them breathing room all the time.”

At this point, Nowitzki believes the elation of 2011 never happens if not for the heartbreaks that came before.

“In 2011, I was the finisher I needed to be in the final moments,” he said. “In ’06 and ’07 I just wasn’t quite there yet to make the big baskets. It wasn’t fun to go through those years when we were favorites but it’s part of my journey and it made me a better player and person for sure.”

Nobody quibbles with that last part. Nowitzki’s lack of drama and pretense drew mentions time and again from people contacted for this story.

“He was the greatest superstar teammate that I’ve ever seen,” Carlisle said. “He had a really humble demeanor, he knew who he was, he knew what his responsibility was.”

Shawn Marion, the 2011 teammate who refers to Nowitzki as the “7-Foot Rainbow Assassin,” also said: “His ego never got in the way of what the biggest goal was. He’s a quiet leader. And he had a bit of a joker side to him too.”

And over the years, with Nowitzki now focused on family, a low-demand Mavericks consultancy and a relaxed TBD future, those close to him have reconciled the global icon vs. Mavericks fixture split.

“Dirk became very Americanized,” Carlisle said, “where Germany and Europe could feel like he was theirs, and the people of Dallas could feel like he was theirs. And no one needed to fight about it.”

#Mavs

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mantrabay · 1 year ago

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Far Beyond Hereafter 2

They were nothing if not colorful.

They had this impressive office garnished with wallpaper having pictures of their various businesses and the names associated with them.

This franchise had been in existence now for over 5 years.

It was coping to an extent but there was an underlying desire to go beyond that.

A glorified high tek office routine secretly horrified everyone.

Lambent shroud, ICloud expert in the group was perhaps the zaniest of them all.

He had a fetish about hazes and how the term could be used.

Haze was his buzzword and

of course his very own in the ether mate.

He had a virtual sidekick called “Shadow.”

They used to speak to each other in rhymes.

“Hi there, going nowhere shadow.

I’m really stuck. Yuck!”

The other members of the group would tease Lambent Shroud.

They’d speak in groans n puns too.

You’d sense lambent was a little uncomfortable with it all.

The other members of this amazing group were all tall, had numerous quirks, and spoke with crystal clear clarity.

They stood out even when alone.

Their high IQ, articulacy, and physical presence were obvious requirements for this enterprise.

They were constantly with each other hatching plans.

But Lambent may have had a begrudging “one who leads” complex.

But was the cordiality apparent and only for appearances?

Team leader Renee is Hazy and Albert is Rainbow.

The brain sessions were more often than not impromptu.

Hazy, Halcyon and Amber would seem like cerebral archers the way they bounced informal sessions off each other.

The other pairs, bright spark subgroups would have these on the spot conventions.

“Sparks would fly.

High IQ flashes sky high.

We never ever say die.”

Eerie notion, pie in the sky.”

The smart seven chipping in one by one generating a certain heat.

Even fleeting cabals.

Their brain cliques they nicknamed “Bouncers,”

Or “Pools.��

“Blessing and a boon. Under a shimmering moon. You’ll be lifting trophies soon.”

Lambent the awkward rhymer.

Wonder world had a strained crease on his face.

“Crackpot scheme, halbaked dream, eccentric team.”

In reply.

And so the banter used to go until someone ran out of ripostes.

There were daily meetings also on security updates devised by the team.

But there was much nod and wink, subterfuge.

Amber Leaf the accountant controlled the cash flow, dividends, “watertight insurance,” wages, general outlay.

But one got the impression that there was something afoot.

Amber and sylvan nudged;

“Should we rhyme as we speak or maybe tweak til next week.

Isn’t Lambent leaning a lot on his Shadow.

The Alter Ego.”

Who is this Shadow to begin with Amber pried?

An umbrella term!

A watchful eye was maintained.

This most unusual group of mental giants were so astute that they crossed checked each others scheduling and tasks.

It all seemed so foolproof.

Turnover was quite considerable and there were really no grounds for complaint at any point.

But despite the cliques they could anticipate future trends which made sense but by the same token was spooky.

Betimes who actually did what with whom had a blurred demarcation.

When you have such active brain cells, another pseudonym for the catalyst co-op you might be forgiven for thinking at times it might seem monotonous.

“ Heck! What kind of service is this?

Fly in my soup. And that fish is off! And that’s not all.”

Sylvan Zephyr the ambassador was entrusted to diffuse awkward clients.

Shrieking and clamoring, heated exchanges over the phone subside after a protracted row.

One wonders why

Lambent Shroud had this uncanny smirk and one wonders at this stage why?

The wiles of his smiles were like a form of contagion in the region.

A comic contagion if you will was never far from the surface.

“I’ve just had this idea. We could have a different decor.

Like stick on flourishes.”

Halcyon Xanadu peeped.

Once again there’ we’re nods, some almost quasi-religious.

This may seem strange.

Another shuffle, cabal.

Lambent Shroud when not spinning joke shop rhymes, chatting with his shadow might suddenly burst into paroxysms of disdain.

Despite the cerebral nature of this undertaking each member of this esoteric business cult had their finger firmly on the economic pulse, the till.

“I keep checking my apps as asked though I leave the cash flow in reality to Amber.”

Hazy plume, who had the unenviable task of being the all-seeing-eye supervisor, and to keep the ideas surfacing from drifting into vermillion clouds.

“That’s good. Mightn’t be such a bad idea if we made a few spot checks on our hubs.”

Albert, alias Rainbow chimed.

Creativity was this seamless mesh.

But with all the paraphernalia at each desk perhaps sight was being lost of the original concept.

Maybe this might explain the present fractious undercurrent, stilted atmosphere that appeared to dwell within this epicentre.

“YAWN YAWN YAWNS.

WE USED TO DREAM MINT LAWNS.”

A vocal scat from Lambent or the uncanny “Shadow.”

Now and then at any rate.

“Muffled squeaks, awh, so sad,

yikes, bah, too bad.”

The rub, the nub, the hub.

Sometimes the puns were flaccid where they once had flare.

After 5 years the wide-eyed optimism of wanting to bring the green utopia to the steel and concrete jungle of modern city life had somehow peaked, or maybe approaching it.

This wasn’t always obvious, however.

“THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.

HOLY SQUAWKING CROWS.”

Halcyon Xandu.

“I just got a text from one of our hubs. One of the hub computers crashed and there was even some steam generated.

Volume of loud noises reported but calm was restored.”

Suddenly everybody awakened from their stupor despite the seeming hive of activity.

“As far as I can gather the crash was cleared fairly quickly.”

Xanadu again.

Tho a creeping suspicion crossed her face.

Everyone rushed towards a center spot on the floor.

A buzz quite unusual swept across the tight nuclear pulse clique.

There was always a certain surge about this place even during a lull.

All this very macabre in a mild sense conduct might seem like a scheme being cobbled together.

By someone but who knows what that someone is if a someone at all might be.

A prevailing milieu that was taut, tense, tho teasingly trivial constantly at tangents.

“Utter breathless oath,

unearthly surreal cache,

burst of universal apogee indelibly trumpets,

exalted plot as moonbeam stepping stone,

Mecca to a hue-laden vortex,

that sequesters sun-drenched harbors, gurgling stream meanders, moss-fleck tides,

mesmerizing shroud of lambent bayou,

hazy plume on silver waterfall,

scarab mountain chain at sapphire dawn.”

Sylvan Zephyr throwing down the gauntlet and eschewing his tentative role as tactful go-between.

You’ll have noticed the no corresponding taper of sounds known as rhyme.

A sleight of hand from the scheme team within the dream team was at play.

The following day wonder world cocoon did a whirlwind inspection of the various hubs.

Not best pleased.

It looked as if all the hubs were splitting up into subhubs.

The staff were being secretive in all the business operations.

Even certain ideas from headquarters which hadn’t been released yet.

Wonder world spotted rough outlines of change from the corner of her eye relating to the above tract.

Ominous thoughts lurking.

She began to detect a pattern.

“Holy charging elephants.

I smell a rat.

That’s that. Everybody get out of here.

is that clear?”

The complex jewel sensor super sensitive alarm system which had been added to by each member rang out.

Mysteriously each member incognito ( sometimes) installed extra features.

Ashen volcanic smoke left little to the imagination.

The 7 member cluster eschewed safety protocol.

But somehow managed to escape against an anarchic, chaotic backdrop that surged at breakneck speed.

“What about our valuables, valuables?

Or are they “EXPENDABLES.”

Diplomatic Sylvan Zephyr not so diplomatic.

This incendiary incident shook the other hubs, the people in them and the surrounding area.

The thunderstruck brain camp, most of them gazed incredulously at what was unfolding.

A sky tower inferno of cinder spewing incidents, boom laden choirs with puns, warnings, alerts, rhymes, ones and zeros,

volcanic cackles, surreal demolition, and on the spot disintegrated havoc never seen before.

It ended in a gradual stepwise motion before collapsing into a gradual “Black Shadow Plume.”

This plume decided to hover over a “Smirk” like structure redolent of “Someone.”

In many ways what was left of their business center looked like

the nirvana they as a group were trying to fuse with urban vim.

Renee nudged Albert who squinted at the corner of his eye.

They both spotted “Lambent Shroud” with a retinue that included other hub members, heading towards a country signpost!!!!

At least he was in that coveted dream lead role.

Renee opined. “I hear Lambent whispering to himself about missing something .. ..no longer a puppet? and the sidekick?”

Albert now clued in on this earth shattering denouement that engulfs layer upon eternal layer of tiered narrative.

Renee, Albert, Amber Leaf the reliable and infinitely shrewd person on money flow now swop knowing glances and scrutinise what is left of a once ornate “Landmark” project.

“Where do we all go from here I wonder?

But should we actually be asking that question at all?

We shouldn’t have the nerve or gall!”

Albert reflected with a “Stick On Smirk.”

As the local fire brigade arrives a “Haze” of a more “endowed” kind descends on Renee, Albert, Amber.

1’s and 0’s of a massive kind beckon!!!

And a nearby shop’s cash register tolls triumphant.

Three straight fingers now in sync!!!!!

Short Story Extract And Photos

All My Own Work

Endless Gratitude to all who read, like. and consider this post.

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anthonybialy · 4 months ago

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Kevyn Adams Generally Manages Buffalo Sabres Poorly

You’ll tell me the two previous Sabres coaches were a developmental guy known for guiding players who couldn’t drink legally and a soccer executive. Then you’ll tell me the general manager previously ran a hockey school. There’s now a contest to see how long one can hold the same undeserved title. Kevyn Adams proves that continued employment may not be tied to results. The tendency would be as baffling in anything else as in sports.

The question of why the disappointing worker who hires other workers with the unrelated background keeps his job while the disappointing coach with the unrelated background didn’t has defined this particular depressing offseason. Adams was presumably involved in hiring the erstwhile bench boss who got canned after another underwhelming campaign, which in turn prompts concerns about whether he knows what he’s doing, either. Everyone wonders but those in charge.

We’re waiting for Adams’s talents to transfer like the payoff for tanking. It’s theoretically inspiring to apply expertise from other jobs to a new one. But universality is not universal. Even if, say, an usher had the potential to make squad alterations, it still might be wise to go with an established hockey guru. Hiring someone who’s previously performed the actual tasks is the policy of 31 franchises.

Panic is best focused into motivation. The Sabres should be acting like they’re trying to locate a kidney. But they’re still not racing around to find the most experienced hockey officer possible. I wish Terry Pegula pursued a skilled manager like he does taxpayer money.

There’s more hockey after the regular season. The chance to keep playing seems like a dream as wild as finding the city of gold. The team of blue and gold is stuck reviewing questionable draft choices and trades. At least, they should be. A decade of ineptness was just the start.

Applying financial principles to personnel might motivate an owner who’s deeply invested in winning money. The false economy of hiring a bargain manager leads to less revenue. Seats are as easy to obtain as merchandise. Spending money to make money is one of the oldest notions in business. But Pegula can’t get past the first part.

This will also be the last time Adams is a general manager. Determine qualifications by asking how quickly he’d get a similar role if we ever got our dream of him getting fired. Imagining him ever serving as another franchise’s general manager is slightly less preposterous than the concept of ever again seeing Ralph Krueger behind a bench.

Like Adams, I’m hoping his job is saved by Lindy Ruff. It’s nice to share common ground. We also both want this team to win, although his questionable actions have made that outcome elusive. The sole source of inspiration will be able to yell about his disappointment in a cathartic release on behalf of us.

Prophets of hockey doom are hoping to be wrong. No Sabres followers who anticipate despondency are pleased with the prediction. That’d be like claiming the world will end then being glad when it happens so you can gloat. We call that the Jerry Sullivan standard. But noticing regrettable patterns does not mean those who perceive reality correctly favor those repeated lousy occurrences.

The problem of precedent has rendered hope obsolete. This continually disappointing team conditioned its followers to be exasperated. The Sabres are successful if conducting obvious scientific experiments counts.

Downcast Sabres fans aren’t negative: the team’s performance is, and they simply notice. True negativity comes from excessively optimistic fans who set themselves up for disappointment. This is the definition of an organization that needs to prove they offer an upside first. If they acquired players who picked up on tendencies as proficiently as fans do, they might make the postseason.

The cheapest option possible embodies the franchise’s brand. A manager executing the owner’s vision is great if that means making transactions that’ll lead to a parade with a trophy as the grand marshal. But trying to win sounds pricey. The Pegula way is to hire someone without proper abilities so they can spend as little as possible on someone who’ll do the same. The combination of meager qualifications and gratitude for having the job means Adams will always do his boss’s bidding. It’s not like he’s able to do more.

Exile has been unparalleled for awhile. No fan base has ever endured this. Sabres diehards who claim their woe is unique aren’t exaggerating while venting on social media: going at least four presidential elections between nabbing a playoff slot is an extended ongoing shameful league record an Eighth Amendment violation. Sisyphus had too rosy a perspective to cheer for the Sabres.

The all-time exclusion tally should inform every single discussion. Everyone’s noticed but those capable of remedying it. Staffers don’t seem too concerned. They reflect the culture created by the proprietor. A level of dreadful consistency that’s classified as historical hasn’t inspired the Sabres to make massive renovations in the present.

Actions are the important part, which is bad news for the side in question. They can claim they’re out to win and certainly mean it, but hiring decisions don’t match. Nonchalance from a team we used to enjoy decades ago is a sign they don’t care about us even if they’d plead otherwise. Incompetent indifference from the front office makes it sure seem like they don’t care. The Sabres shouldn’t feel surprised when fans offer their own version, namely apathy.

#Kevyn Adams #NHL #hockey #Buffalo Sabres #playoffs

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rjmhereunderprotest · 8 months ago

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There's No Power Greater than X: Rebuilding My Xbox Library

This wasn't the post I intended to come back with, but it's a recent enough experience of my that I felt like documenting. I'm still working on something else that's more substantial but I just feel like talking about this.

Recently, I've been trying to write more Text Let's Plays as a means of keeping myself writing, creatively active and enabling to use my love of gaming to do so. I'd be remiss if I also didn't say I was inspired by a good friend of mine who writes hilarious recreations of his playthroughs. Mostly horror games, he subjects himself to that a lot.

I decided to do the same and my latest choice was to return to my golden age of console game playing. Namely the Original Xbox where I started more regularly playing video games and buying them outright. The reason was simple enough, I played "Halo: Combat Evolved" and I've gotten every Xbox ever since. I've wanted an excuse to revisit the console and this was it. I thought it would be a simple enough process, but it turned out to be... much more complicated.

So this is my short, as possible, look into what started as wanting to replay an old game I loved and share it with my friends online, into a sudden nostalgia trip that reconnected me with some old gaming memories and a desire to rebuild what was once forgotten, my Original Xbox Library.

Dragoons Improvise

I think it's best to start with what game I chose to highlight for the Text LP that started all this, MechAssault.

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One year post its launch, Xbox got an upgrade, Xbox Live which would change online gaming forever, for better and... well, a lot of worse if the screaming racist Twelve-Year-Olds on "Call Of Duty" are any indication. MechAssault was among the first games to be heavily advertised as compatible with the service.

I've never cared about multiplayer to any major extent. I don't have good experience playing with complete strangers online. I'm just not good with social interaction in general and competitive play brings out the worst in me. So, it's just never been something I've been able to stick with. MechAssault appealed to me for only one reason, giant freaking robots! I was casually aware of the BattleTech universe but it was so impenetrable on PC, MechAssault promised an easier way to play around in these cool walking tanks and I had a lot of fun with the game when it first came out.

My choice to play MechAssault for the text Let's Play was easy enough on this grounds, I could even do its sequel right after. But I quickly ran into some complications. First and foremost, I can't play MechAssault on any modern console.

Here's the rub, MechAssault was successful in pushing units, and so was its sequel to a moderate degree, but not enough to continue the franchise. Despite owning the IP and studio in charge of it, Microsoft never released a third game in the MechAssault series for consoles or PC. And even though the game was an Xbox Exclusive, its never been made backwards compatible. Its sequel is, but only for the Xbox 360. So even that has complications.

For some people this is a problem, because they probably chucked the old Xbox out the door a long time ago. Not me, I've of course kept mine. Well, I've kept the replacement I got when the original Xbox we got suffered some sort of power surge that caused its output port for the power cable to melt. After that, the thing just never worked again and any attempt to turn it on makes it start smelling of burning rubber and plastic. Not ideal. Suffice to say, I'm glad I still have the replacement Xbox that has held up much better over the years.

So I have the console I need to play MechAssault, what I don't have is a TV that's really compatible with it. The Original Xbox uses a different AV Input than most modern TVs, known as a composite, something that took me a lot of time to figure out actually. It's entirely different from Component wires and of substantially lower quality.

Here's where the real problem kicks in. While I CAN make the Xbox's composite cords work on a modern Flatscreen, as all I need to do is plug the yellow input into the green component output, that forces me to unplug the Xbox 360's component cords. Which is a pain in the ass to do for my TV, not to mention awkward. I attempted to see if I could finagle things a little. I got myself a composite cord switch box, thinking I could make the issue less of a hassle and maybe even re-hook up my old Playstation 2 console in the process, since it also has a composite cord.

Yeah that didn't work, the switch box is fine... but it doesn't read being plugged into the the green component output so great. There's also another problem associated with the composite cord in general, it needed to be reset constantly. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be able to properly register that the green component output is compatible with the yellow composite input. It goes to a blue screen as if the connection has been lost. Replugging it in returns the video, but again, this is a hassle I don't care to deal with constantly.

However, I can at least play the Original Xbox Console so I can still do the Text LP while I wait to figure out a solution to these problems, right? All I had to do was put the MechAssault Game Disc in when I was ready to start my Text LP and we'd be off to the races. Now I hadn't played MechAssault during the time I was waiting because I wanted to come back into the game with fresh eyes, no prior playthrough, no figuring out the controls again, just as blind as I can make it. Surely this is not a recipe for disaster!

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The game won't start. It will not start. I can put it in a dozen different times, close and reclose the disc tray, clean the thing off so there is no fingerprints or whatever. The disc will not play. I try out several other games at this point, concerned this is a console problem. Nope, they all work. They more often than not require me to pull the damn Yellow Video cord out and place back in, but the games all work! After a lot of trial and error and consulting threads online, almost ripping open the old Xbox and even contemplating getting a new one, I come to the very simple obvious conclusion. It's the MechAssault disc! It's borked! Something is wrong with it!

The nearest I can tell, upon closer examination, the inner part of the disc, near the hole, has some damage on it. Damage that is not consistent with other games in my collection. It's been scratched off or something. At some point the game was damaged to an irreparable degree. It can't be played because it can't be read. You cannot believe how absolutely devastating this was.

So where do I go from here? Simple, I take advice from one of the Characters of the MechAssault game itself though. Because the game opens with you crash landing, losing a ton of your mechs and being stuck behind enemy lines with no back up, the first thing your commanding officer tells you is to suck it up, "Dragoons Improvise." And that's what I decide to do.

I find out there is a way to upgrade your Original Xbox, and even your Playstation 2, to Component Compatible cables. You can also make both consoles and the Xbox 360 HD Port compatible, but those ports are being used by other consoles right now so, that's not a viable option at the moment. The point is, I can make all three of these older consoles work with my flatscreen. All I need to do is get some compatible cables for them and I find plenty online for decent prices.

The next step is a decent switch box, and thankfully there are a ton I can use. I'm hopeful it will be more successful this go around at least, the last time I tried something like this the HDMI switcher wasn't compatible with either of my Nintendo Mini Consoles. This one is more analog though and its dealing with component cables, so no digital screw ups. It's also a bit more high end than that one was, so I was more confident it would work especially after checking reviews for the thing.

I pass the time waiting for the items to arrive playing the one Xbox Game that doesn't seem to be affected by the blue screen issue that requires me to unplug and replug the Yellow Video Input from the green component outlet.

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"Heroes of the Pacific" is one of many World War 2 Air Combat games that exist in the ether. It is... average in many respects. It hosts a decent list of planes, but its mechanics aren't the best and frankly "Secret Weapons Over Normandy", which released two years prior, is superior to it in everyway. From the gaming mechanics, the upgrade system for the planes, the plethora of aircraft you can pick and especially the voice acting. HotP has some of the most phoned in voice acting ever, let me tell you. But its at least functional and I managed to beat all of its levels on the highest difficulty setting while playing the thing again. So I feel like I've more than proven my capability in powering through a frankly just okay by even its era's standards.

Once my items arrived, I hooked everything up, switching out cords and fixing up the various systems, a lot of tedious stuff frankly. The end result was excellent though. The switch box worked perfectly. No blue screen when starting up games, no black and white picture, no loss of sound, all the problems I encountered just trying to get the various wires and outputs to work with each other were gone. And now, all my older consoles were hooked up to the same component connection. Everything seemed good to go.

I am now only waiting on one thing, my replacement copy of MechAssault. Which is not as hard to come across as I fear it will be. Sure, it's not on Amazon at a decent price or at all like I hoped... but it is on EBay, in a Platinum case in fact. I'm wary though, I haven't used EBay in a long time. I tried selling stuff there and rarely got any takers. And you're mostly dealing with third party people miles away and not directly with the company itself. It can be a crapshoot. However, I have little choice.

The MechAssault game does arrive though, a little later than I hoped it would, but it does show up and it does work, confirming that my console wasn't at fault. However, this experience sorta sparked something in my mind. I replaced my damaged copy of a game I loved relatively easily and for less than what most games cost today. And in the time waiting for the new copy to come, I was looking more and more into the Original Xbox's library, remembering a bunch of games I had used to play but only ever rented, if at all.

And I thought to myself, why don't I have these games? A lot of them I either enjoyed or were up my alley! Was I still so caught up on renting back in the day I didn't consider just... owning the damn thing?

It wouldn't be the first time I bought an older game for the Original Xbox online long after they stopped making them. In response to my revulsion at what had been done to the Wolfenstein games by Bethesda, destroying the lore of the series and ruining the character of the greatest Nazi-Killing Hero that ever lived, BJ Blakowicz, I had wanted to replay my favorite game of the series, Return to Castle Wolfenstein. But my desktop had given up the ghost and and my laptop is not suitable for gaming off of steam. So I looked to find the console port of the same game and realized it worked on the Xbox 360! Awesome! I could play my favorite game again!

I never considered I could probably find more old games that I loved. I had recently gotten "The Simpsons Game" for the Xbox 360 on Amazon, but the prices on EBay tend to be little less harmful to my wallet. So... why not fill out my library a little while I'm at all this? Watching a bunch of old commercials for the Xbox's life cycle of games sorta convinced me to at least give it a shot. So I started to assemble a list of games I was interested in reconnecting with. A project I called "Rebuilding the Library" concerning all the old games that I felt were missing.

Target Rich Environment

The thing about EBay is that you can find almost anything you want... and that's the problem sometimes. You really have to sort out which things are worth going after in the end and which, honestly are just wastes of your time. Not to mention some thing might not be what you're after and you should really pay attention to what the descriptions and titles say.

Let's just say that a lot of people were selling game cases without the games inside them. Or they were just selling manuals, or they were just selling the game sans all of that. You'd think that last one means you're getting a bargain, nope. Sometimes they can cost just as much as a complete in box entry, at least when you factor in shipping.

That's also what kept me off EBay so much. The sellers can sometimes SEEM like they're giving you a great deal, but their shipping costs can run into insane amounts. I find it hard to believe at times that shipping can honestly cost more than the game you're shipping itself.

Let's be fair, a lot of these people aren't Amazon, they don't have the option to ship for low prices and still make a profit. I just sometimes wonder about the justification for the shipping prices at times. Especially if they offer little benefits for how much they're asking.

Which, I sometimes ended up ignoring through my own ignorance which might have made some of these headaches a little less of one. A number of the sellers offer tracking for your items if you pay more in shipping. I did not see this on my first go around with a lot of these. So I was kinda left in the lurch for a number of them just hoping they'd show up. Most of them did. I probably could've avoided one of problems I encountered had I been more thoughtful about tracking.

I don't think I would've paid more for tracking for most of the items in the end though. I might have just decided to go to Amazon if that was the case as they tend to provide tracking when one of the third-party sellers leaves the shipping up to one of their resource centers. EBay is for when you're trying to get a decent enough bargain after all. That's the whole point of the auction system, which I wasn't using for this to be clear.

I decided early on to not get anything outside of Canada if I could help it. By the end of things I think I ordered something every single province. So I can definitively say my collection is the accumulation of every corner of the Great White North.

However, I quickly decided to be picky about which games I ultimately got. There were some I intended to get from the outset, but others I eventually decided weren't worth the expenditure. These usually fell into a few categories that got them excluded.

First: Too Expensive, at least two of these games were simply asking too much even for me and I found them ultimately in a cheap capacity on steam. As much as I would've wanted to have "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth" on Xbox, I was able to get it for dirt cheap on steam and it probably works better there anyway. The other is... well it's a bit more adult I think and I don't think I just want that hanging out in the open. Besides the PC version isn't censored.

Second: I already have it on Playstation 2, this is redundant. That's what got Scarface kicked off the list. While I was okay with getting a game I already had on the computer, getting it for a console that, as I explained, I now had access to again as a result of my other purchases, seemed completely pointless. The same was true of another game that I do have for the PC that is simply not good enough on the console anyway.

Third: They're just not well reviewed or interesting. That's what got Predator: Concrete Jungle kicked at least. As much as I love the idea of playing the Predator in any aspect, I remembered too much of not being impressed with the game to buy into it this go around. It also was too expensive. Shadow Ops: Red Mercury just ended up feeling too mediocre to bother with.

Fourth: It belonged to a Genre I wasn't into. Every sport game got knocked off the list more or less as a result. Even the iconic DOA Volleyball game. If I want softcore porn of those characters, I have the internet. I can get that for free.

Fifth: They're available on Xbox's digital store front and there's no sense in wasting money on something I can probably get for cheap and with easier access to later one.

In the end I was looking mainly for inexpensive titles that were iconic, had cult acclaim, I had played before but did not own or at least seemed interesting to me regardless of anything else. Now there was an ultimate to exception to this basic rule of thumb concerning price, but that was only because it was apparent after a while I had no choice. A few of them also came from Amazon when I found them at a more affordable price.

In any case, with my reasoning for what didn't end up in getting picked up I think it's time to get to the point of all this. Keep in mind, a lot of these are of the shooter variety, but they're not all the as atypical as you might think. And even still, I like to think I got a wide range of titles all the same. So let us take a look.

The Haul

Yeah, it's a fair amount. 27 titles, maybe that sounds like a lot, but I got some of these for a bit of a steal honestly. A good number of these have always been on my radar in one form or another. It's just I finally got around to reacquiring them. If you want call some of these impulse buys, I won't dispute it, but they are more or less games I felt I missed or had missed out on. Each of them is a little piece of the history of the Xbox and Gaming overall. So, let's look over them in no particular order.

"Whacked!" was one of two games on my list from the start. One of the first games Xbox used to promote the Live Service. A party game centered around a twisted cartoon world's game show with contestants who centered their personalities around the seven deadly sins. The game is probably most known for Lucy, the lovely lady in blue on the cover who runs around most of the game naked save for censorship bars over her private bits. Yeah she's not in that outfit you see for very long.

Oddly enough though I didn't pick her as my main, my favorite character is a little off to her lower right, Eugene, the green penguin/duck with the goggles and trapper hat. He's a Canadian, he's my favorite color and he's a total nerd. It's like he was made for me. He also represents the Sin of Envy, constantly coveting what others have and secretly hating those who belittle him. Hmm, perhaps I should reconsider why I feel he's so relatable then.

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As you can see in this audition tape that doubled as one of the game's trailers, this game relies heavily on madcap Looney Tunes humor. It's emphasized in a ton of the commercials that would play between rounds of the game show as well as other cutscenes where the characters interact. Whacked!'s gameplay isn't terrible though, it's rather varied from simple death matches to collecting stars, king of the hill and even dodgeball. However, it wasn't well advertised. I only probably ran into it because stuff like this was what I was drawn to. The concept of a Looney Tunes-like world that was centered towards older audiences just intrigued me... oh yeah and Lucy was hot so that's probably what got me to at least rent it out. But I actually enjoyed the humor and the game enough to keep playing it back in the day. It's still popular enough in some circles and it's even backwards compatible with the 360, but it's still a cult hit.

This was the second game that got on my radar. Bloodwake is boat combat based action title. Similar to something like Twisted Metal, but on the water and there's a more involved storyline besides a demolition derby of death. You play as a pirate in a South China Sea-like setting where you are trying to get revenge on the man who sunk your previous ship. No spoilers, but it's your brother because that's how these games go. I played this way back in the day as it was part of the second wave of titles released post the Xbox's launch. It was different and fun to play. I guess it just didn't get the numbers needed for a sequel, if any were planned. But the game showed the power of the Xbox for the time as its water effects were a standout in the graphical department. I got this because it was one of the best early experiences I had with the Xbox that wasn't centered around Halo.

It's a racing game, I'm not big on racing games. I didn't get it for the cars. Hell I didn't even really want this game in general. But I had no choice. I had to get this game in order to buy...

Jet Set Radio Future, in a era where Skateboarding was king on video game consoles, this game dared to focus on rollerblading... and graffiti... and jamming tunes! While I am not the best at extreme sports games, I had enough good memories of briefly playing the demo and a big enough desire to own this damn thing at last that I decided to finally fork in. I would've gotten it on Xbox 360's marketplace... if it hadn't technically been delisted from there. Actually, I think it was the original title anyway, not this game which is its sequel. So... yeah, it is what it is. Hopefully this game isn't too different from some other extreme sports games I played back in the day, but at least now I own it so if the itch to commit vandalism against corporate cops and their tanks hits me, it's right there.

Grand Theft Auto's original console outings always had a problem for me in one area, targeting. I could never make its lock-on system feel comfortable back in the day. When IV came out with a more traditional aiming system, it was far easier to get into. I think, however, I will be able to better adjust this go around. The real reason I got this double pack though is simple enough. Yes, I could get the remaster. Yes they've probably fixed it since its terrible launch. I don't care though, they took out some songs and I want the full V-Rock list when I'm riding around Vice City, plain and simple. Of course this brings us to a bit of a detour.

Well I can't just get these two games and not pick up San Andreas! That makes no sense. I could've gotten the Original Xbox version as well and even played it on my Xbox One. But it just would've downloaded the 360 version anyway from what I hear. So, this is cutting out the middle man in my eyes. Either way, no cuts to the radio's choice of songs. That's alright with me.

These two are the most expensive games on the list by far. Godzilla's fighting games were some of the best kaiju brawling one could find on any console. Destroy All Monsters Melee actually is from the states as I could not find it being sold in Canada anywhere. This thing is just that expensive and that coveted. The box is damaged so that's probably why they cut down the price just a little. As a major Godzilla fan, I was determined to finally own these and given I was already spending a good deal by this point, I just stopped caring and gave in. Whatever. I can finally beat down Gigan as Rodan, that's a win in my book.

By the by, did you know that ATARI logo is sort of a lie? Infrogrames bought the Atari license back in the day. Then they changed their name to Atari! They're still in business today even. But these games have been out of print forever, explaining their high price tag. There's just not many people willing to sell them at this point.

I probably could've gotten the sorta remake/sequel for the 360, two games for the price of one, but everyone only cares about Butcher Bay anyway. Starring Vin Diesel himself as everyone's favorite see in the dark career criminal, Riddick has to escape the absolute worst prison in existence. Playing this game was an experience back in the day in brutality. First person melee fighting is always tricky to pull off, but this game accomplished it. It also helped that it was fairly competent stealth game. I just generally like sneaking up on people neck snap them.

My connection with the game runs deeper than my initial playthrough. You see, the people who made Butcher Bay, some of them went on to found another studio entirely. The studio that made the terrible Wolfenstein reboots. In fact, I recognized their handiwork in the Concentration Camp level. To the point I felt like the game was less Wolfenstein and more just a reskin of this game. Down to the overly flowerly in-game narration. Which is fine for Riddick, just not for Blazkowicz. I think that's why I got the game, to remind myself of when I didn't have bad memories of this sort of playstyle.

I have a lot of 007 games. I just really like me some fun spy action and no one does it better than Bond in my opinion. From Russia With Love was the game that harkened back to classic era of the franchise, with Sean Connery himself! The game even has a jetpack to fly around in! None of the newer games gave you a jetpack! This one had been in my Amazon Wishlist for a while, I just finally decided I had an excuse to get it.

Another Rockstar game, but based on a cult classic film this time. I could've sworn I had this for the Playstation, but it's not on there in any of my memory cards. I might have deleted it or maybe I only ever rented it. I don't know, I could just be mistaken. This one caused me some trouble getting though. The first buyer from Amazon gave me the entirely wrong game! I had to return it to get my money back, which was a pain in the ass to do because of a garbage ass courier service. However, I think it worked it out. This copy came from a nice person off EBay who was trying to pay off some vet bills. That kinda made me happy to know I had helped someone out in the end.

I have the Evil Dead game for modern consoles, but I've always wanted/preferred the single player experience. These two games are highly different from each other in play style, but all I knew was that I wanted to finally play as Ash and kill Deadites without having to do it with other people. As a major fan of the Evil Dead franchise, I couldn't ignore these titles anymore than the Godzilla ones at the end of the day.

This was Free Radical's other less successful game IP besides Timesplitters. Second Sight had you play as amnesiac who wakes up in a research center of some kind with a lot of people want to kill him and psychic powers as his only real defense. It's not their typical run and gun shooter you expect from Free Radical, it's certainly more original. Sadly the game didn't sell well, shame too. You know there was a short period of time when psychic powers were all the rage in gaming mechanics. It looked like it would be the next big thing too.

Now this was a creepy as hell game. You play as a prisoner on death row who unfortunately arrives on the day a hellmouth just opens up under the prison. There's all these crazy cool monsters that are based off of various executions and ways people can die in prison. And there's a morality system that determines what ending you get that reveals how guilty you actually are. It was an awesomely scary game and I'm glad to own it again.

I have a huge affinity towards the Weird West subgenre. Just something about the mix of setting and tropes associated with it works wonders. And getting to fight vampires and other monsters in the wild west is a friggin awesome concept they should honestly do more of. I have no idea why I missed out on playing this game when I enjoyed the demo well enough. Especially knowing this was the start of High Moon Studios, the guys who made my favorite Transformers games. Although hearing it from them, that was sorta the problem. No one wanted to invest in Darkwatch, even after it reviewed well and sold decently. Before you knew it, Activision buys up High Moon, forces them to work on franchise only IPs, the original founders leave and soon after they produce Deadpool, they're all shoved into the CoD mines! Honestly, I'm noticing a pattern with a lot of these games at this point, are you?

Brute Force is a squad-based shooter where you can switch between four characters with unique abilities that are suitable for a variety of encounters and enemies you run into while playing. But the truth is, I played it because it had a crocodile man and I wanted to play as the crocodile man and that's really all that anyone cared about in the end I think. It has a crocodile man.

Mace Griffin is an ex-Space Ranger who was framed for a crime he didn't commit, was dishonorably discharged, imprisoned and when he came out all he could do was find Bounty Hunting work. The game is all about you clearing his name. For me I just felt it was cheap enough to get and, well, I like bounty hunter games. It's a cool enough concept to overcome some average scores. I think it will be fun enough for me at the very least.

I remember when conspiracy theory nonsense was just that, nonsense. Alien abductions and Area 51 used to be quaint little silly things to use in sci-fi. Now conspiracy nuts are considerably more racist and insanely dangerous. Maybe they always were. Area 51 was another of Midway's arcade games they translated to consoles. It used to be a lightgun on-rails shooter about aliens attacking the infamous secret military base. Now it's an FPS about that, but starring David Duchovny. That's right, Fox Mulder himself! I've never been into alien conspiracy garbage, but at least not I can laugh at the concept of Mulder fighting aliens on a fake Moon soundstage. Oh don't worry, we still went to the moon, but what we found there was too terrifying for any human eyes to see so we just faked the broadcast instead. OOOOOoOOOooHhhhhH! Spooky! See? It's dumb but at least it's not bigoted!

I have the two other games in the series, I bought this for completionism sake. We never got to see the end of this series, the proper end, with Bastogne and heading into Germany and all that. Instead Gearbox dumped all their money into Borderlands, left Aliens out to dry and impotently tried to save Duke Nukem. Thanks Randy. Thanks a ton. Oh well, at least now I have every entry in a once promising franchise.

The top-down squad-based strategic stealth game for PCs, becomes the action-stealth FPS game for consoles. I'll sum up why I have this succinctly enough. I enjoy taking down Fascists in video games, simple as that. Let me shoot at Nazis and I'm golden more or less. Not all the time, you need to at least make it fun and good, but killing Nazis is a good baseline.

I actually have this for the PC, but again my Desktop died so this is basically once again trying to play the game again more easily. I know people have a lot of thoughts about depicting this historical event, but for me I just try to view it as game depicting said historical event. No more, no less. It's best not to try and take your politics from video games. Especially when they don't have the time to examine all the complex context surrounding the mission gone wrong in question.

Speaking of controversial sources, Tom Clancy! Look, the guy wrote books to appease a very certain demographic, everyone right of center specifically, but there's no deny that his game studio didn't put out great hits. The Ghost Recon series is one of those and collecting the entire series as it started on consoles was a major goal for me as I've been a fan of the series for a long time. You have your standard locales for our titular Special Forces to visit, Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Kazakhstan, all the good hotspots for bad guys wanting to destroy America. If you want an action thriller movie to play around in, Ghost Recon is always your go to. And with these guys, I now basically have them all.

On the other side of the spectrum, Rainbow Six 3. Ghost Recon deals with special operations behind enemy lines. Rainbow is all about reactive counter-terrorism in mostly urban environments and indoors. Where things are more tense, closer and personal. They're very good tactical squad-based games. I've never been into Rainbow Six as much as Ghost Recon, but it's one of the central pillars of the Tom Clancy gaming library, next to Splinter Cell as the third column. So yeah, I picked it up because I already have all the Splinter Cells for the Xbox, might as well not leave Rainbow out of things.

Retro-active Final Thoughts

This all started because I just wanted to play one game, but then I guess I realized I wanted to play a lot of games. Games I had missed out on or just plain missed. I haven't had my Original Xbox hooked up in years and I guess prospect of being able to more regularly play it now just hit me hard enough to shake loose whatever else was holding me back from collecting these old favorites and curiosities.

The Xbox in general has been a huge part of my life and I suppose this journey was about making my library of games feel more whole. And the best part is, it's not really over. I still have to play through all these at some point and the prospect of that is exciting all the same. I know it's nostalgia fueled, but I did learn a lot about these games and the console as I looked them up. There was a lot of variety on the old Xbox. Even within a single genre. It's hard to look back to that moment of time and then to now when gaming feels so... different.

I'm not sure if this little expose has truly been as interesting or worthwhile to write as I believe it is. But I'm happy I got my thoughts down on it. And I do hope that, maybe like it did for me, it brought back some memories for you. I don't know if all of these games will hold up as well as I want them too, but it just feels nice to look forward to playing these games again all the same. And I enjoyed hunting for them, even if some aspects of it were frustrating.

Well, that's all for now. Next time I'll probably have something more substantial for you all. Until then, keep on gaming. Whatever console your passion is, I hope it's bringing you hours of fun. Who knows, maybe one day you'll step back into it like I have and discover some things you didn't know you were looking for.

#xbox #video games #retro gaming #collection #nostalgia

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the-blind-geisha · 2 years ago

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About Demon King of the Desert

First, let me say it shocks me how swiftly this story got off the ground and gained this crazy following.

It beat Contract out of the water in less than a year and all from people who don't know or care too much I'm using a character from another franchise.

I appreciate that all. Truly.

It's amazing to read comments from folks who said 'they didn't know about Overlord at all but certainly love the character or are tempted to check it out'. Or they just become Demiurge fans in general. ♥ That's amazing. I love it, as I do feel his character gets little to no attention in the source material.

However, problems are arising on and off on my other social media accounts, so I figure I'd address them here.

-- Demiurge is from Overlord. An anime/ Light Novel Isekai series. I know one person said they couldn't get my notes to load well in chapter 1, so they missed that part when they found my art on DA, so I'll post that comment again here. Yes, he is his own entity in that story, and has no relation to the source material. I could change his physical appearance as I have some of his abilities, and he'd be 100% mine. As is in that story, he's only about 50%. So keep that in mind. -- The story took a bit of a backseat lately because of other projects I'm interested in and, also, the end of the year is just all around hectic for me. I barely have the emotional or physical energy to work on stories/art as I'd like and mostly do other things. Is it on hiatus? No. But I can't say I know when I'll pump out another chapter. The last one was horribly rushed, and I didn't like that. I kinda hate how much like 'filler' it reads to be honest. I do have a small memo pad jotted down to explain the easy end to the story. It's there. I have it. But writing the scenes to get there is a challenge. Bear with me. lol I have ADHD and sticking to one project out of many is hard. Very hard. -- Unless you think you can use HTML to downsize a proper gif/image, do NOT submit it into your comments. I just had to block someone who kept putting large images from Overlord into the comments and it was getting annoying. It may look fine on mobile, but I use PC way more than mobile. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't use my phone unless I'm away from the PC. Again, the story is NOT from that universe. At all. Do not make references to it. -- I do not want children near my mature works or my space at ALL. If you cannot handle the themes of this story without writing/thinking goofy things, then it's obviously not for you. I don't want you reading my stuff if it explicitly states 18+ and you're under 18 or just emotionally immature. -- The Alpha/Omega is a theme presented in the story with very little in your face A/B/O dynamics. Sexual themes are not as frequent as I had originally planned. The main reason for this is the story was meant to be 10 chapters at best and come to a swift, and more horny conclusion. I was writing it away from Overlord because I wanted to heal from fandom abuse at the time. It was a cathartic piece that blossomed into it's own world. Like all my stories, however, it grew legs and ran off on its own--giving more story than sexual themes. Odd as it is to say: I love sex to be given at the right time. I love the build up of it. But I put the tags in there to warn there are scenes of it all the same. It might sound like there's sex in every chapter, but I promise, there's not. -- I do not want it posted anywhere other than AO3 or Wattpad! As of current, it's only posted on those two sites. If it ever gets reposted anywhere else, it is not my doing. So please. Notify me and or report it!

I thank you all again for your support. ♥ I will return to it when possible. I promise!

#thanks for the love all the same #i just didn't expect to get so many out of nowhere questions about it today #but i promise. it'll be ended probably next year #and we can all move on to another fantasy. ♥#but thank you so much so far for the love. truly #mod talks #writer woes #the demon king of the desert

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yellowmagicalgirl · 3 years ago

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Reunions and Revelations

On their third day at Arcadia Oaks High, Aja and Krel have their memories of the previous timeline restored. Krel is insistent upon seeing Douxie again, and Aja is a little confused. After all, even though they were friends she didn’t think they were that close.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Tales of Arcadia franchise. If I did, Rise of the Titans would be extremely different.

Have I seen the movie? No, but I’ve seen spoilers, which lead to me coming up with an idea that I shared with the Klebuckets server, and @gayspiderman convinced me to write said idea.

This fic is not canon compliant in that Akiridion kissing does not lead to pregnancy any more than kissing between two humans leads to pregnancy. (And also not canon compliant in that again, I did not actually watch the movie and do not want to.) That being said, this is probably the most RotT-compliant fic I will ever write.

AO3

FFN

Mother’s three rules did not help. Being prepared for change and embracing their mistakes had only led to them being sent to Principal Levit’s office, and playing with their phones had resulted in detention. All Aja wanted to do was go home, even though she knew when she got there she’d have to deal with another lecture from Varvatos and Mother about staying inconspicuous.

Aja found her and Krel’s path blocked by three humans.

“Aja and Krel, right?” the tallest of them said. “I’m Jim, and these are Toby and Claire.” He gestured with his head to the boy and girl standing beside him as he said their names. Mother had definitely been wrong when she’d claimed that girls on this planet were invisible. “I’ve been trying to do this for a couple days.”

“And what is ‘this?’” Aja asked.

Jim pulled a small disk out of his pocket. Along the top half of the disk were the words “for the good of all”. Along the bottom half were a series of scuff marks, like words had been marred out to no longer be legible. Some parts of it looked eerily similar to Akiridion technology, and yet other parts were far too different.

“It’s a school tradition. Touch the disk, and you’ll do well on your finals and everything because you’ll have the entire school backing you up.”

Aja didn’t believe that was real, and she didn’t care about finals. But, if she complied, then Jim, Toby, and Claire would hopefully get out of her way. And so Aja looked closer.

Oh.

Of course that was why the amulet looked almost like Akiridion technolgy, because Krel had been involved in building it. These weren’t three random humans who were taking up Aja’s time, they were her friends from the future. A future that, hopefully, wouldn’t fully come true. Hopefully she’d be able to save her Mama and Papa, and Tronos, and Buster, and Toby, who was once more alive in front of her.

“What did you do to my sister?” Krel demanded.

“Krel, just touch it,” Aja said.

“No, I don’t want to.” He lowered his voice to a hiss. “That looks like an inferior form of Akiridion technology! I think they’re disguised bounty hunters!”

Ah, so he had recognized his work on the amulet, but not that he had been the one who worked on it, and definitely not that Douxie had been helping him. Of course not. He didn’t remember. Well, that was easy enough to fix.

Aja grabbed her brother’s wrist. He fought back as she forced him to touch the amulet. For a brief moment, his eyes flashed with blue-green light.

So that was why he had been so concerned.

Krel smacked his forehead before dragging his hand down his face. The gesture looked familiar, but also like it belonged on someone else. “I was clearly wrong when I said it was inferior. But, seriously? School tradition? That was the best you could come up with?”

“Just in case it didn’t work,” Toby said.

“Why wouldn’t it work?” Aja asked. “Wait, did it not work on the trolls?”

“No, it worked on them,” Claire said. “I have no idea why Douxie’s been so worried about it not working on the two of you and Varvatos.”

“Douxie’s been worried about me?” Krel smiled and looked away as he tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. That was... odd.

“Yeah, he even stuck around extra long passing out flyers for the Battle of the Bands on the day you guys arrived, since he knew you two’d be showing up,” Jim said. Krel smiled a little wider. “Everyone’s been trying to herd you two towards me so I could unlock your memories. If we hurry, we could go meet up with Douxie before he has to switch shifts from the bookstore to the bistro.”

“I mean, we should probably go make Varvatos remember, maybe then he won’t try and demand Eli’s thumbs anymore,” Aja said. “Plus, we might be able to fight off bounty hunters better!”

“Or,” Krel said, already walking ahead of the rest of them. “We could go find Douxie so he stops worrying. I mean, Varvatos is just waiting around the Mothership so it’s not like we’d have to worry too much about him getting into trouble. It’s not like the bounty hunters will actually show up for another week, anyways.” He stopped walking, wrapped his arms around himself, and frowned. “Um, where is it? I didn’t ever actually go there, since Bellroc burned it.”

“Come on, it’s this way,” Toby said, beginning to walk in the opposite direction that Krel had been walking in. Krel sighed, probably in relief, but why? Why was he so concerned?

They exited the school and made their way down the street.

“So, when you said everyone’s been trying to herd Krel and I towards you, does that mean the entire town remembers?” Aja asked.

“No. I can only unlock the memories of people I had a strong enough positive emotional bond with in the first timeline, and I have to be holding onto the amulet for it to work,” Jim said. “I tried unlocking Señor Uhl’s memories so he wouldn’t give Toby and I detention for skipping class for trollhunting duties, and it backfired.”

“Why isn’t he principal? Who even is Levit?” Aja stole a glance at her brother as he walked silently beside her. He looked nervous, and she wasn’t sure why.

“Well, since Strickler went to our side early in the timeline,” Toby said, “he decided not to kill the guy who was our principal at the beginning of the year. Which also means I didn’t have to worry about him flirting with my Nana.”

“Why would he flirt with your Nana?”

“Well, the only reason why Strickler flirted with Jim’s mom in the first place was because he was the trollhunter,” Toby said.

Aja’s jaw dropped. “You’re not the trollhunter anymore?”

“Of course he is,” Claire said. “It’s hunters, not hunter. But, Toby’s got the Daylight sword. Eclipse, too.”

“I guess it makes sense why you can’t command daylight anymore with the amulet Douxie and I made, since daylight would be Toby’s to command.” Krel tucked his hair behind his ear again when he said Douxie’s name. Why was he doing that? “But does it still have any other powers or is it just for unlocking memories?”

“Oh, yeah. I can still summon armor, and I’m using it to store my daggers. Though, I think the issue with daylight summoning is more the fact that the Green Knight still has Excalibur.” Jim frowned, and Claire put a hand on his shoulder.

“And none of us are going to get controlled by him. Him or his sister,” she said. Come to think of it, Claire didn’t look as sick as she had when Aja first met her during the...

“Hey, did we go through a bunch of time loops at the science fair?”

“Yep!” Toby said. “Though, like, Steve and Shannon and everyone doesn’t remember them since they didn’t have their memories protected. Just us, Blink, and my Wingman. And Vex wil, too, when he remembers.”

“Thank Deya we got Saturday detention with Shannon the first time around,” Claire said. “She’s been a major help, but I’m not sure if we ever would’ve bonded enough if not for that.”

“And we’re here,” Jim said, holding open the door to GDT Arcane Books. Aja glanced at her brother. There were tears in his eyes. But why? He hadn’t even been this emotional when he had reunited with Eli in their first timeline.

“Douxie?” Krel called out in an incredibly soft voice.

A broom clattered to the wooden ground.

Aja looked up in time to see Douxie standing on the top floor of the bookstore next to the fallen broom. He spun around and brought a hand to his mouth. He then ran and vaulted over the railing, using magic to slow his descent. At the same time, Krel ran to Douxie. They hugged tightly. Upon closer look, Douxie was crying just as much as Krel was. Aja could hear the two of them whispering to each other, but she couldn’t make out the words.

Aja knew they were friends, just like she was friends with all of the other Guardians, but she hadn’t realized they were so close. Then again, she knew that Douxie was skilled in music and wizard technology. Perhaps Krel had finally found someone who truly understood him while Aja had been ruling as queen. It was good for him to have a close friend.

Right as their hug began to grow a little long, Krel took half a step back and placed his hands on Douxie’s shoulders. Krel then used them as leverage as he pressed himself onto his toes to kiss Douxie.

What.

What?

“Uh, did they get together after I died or something?” Toby asked. Aja looked away from the kissing couple to Toby and the others. They looked just as perplexed by the situation in front of them as Aja felt.

“No, there was no time,” Jim said.

“Then,” Aja sputtered. “Then when did that happen?”

A/N: To answer Aja’s question, Douxie and Krel finally confessed their feelings to each other either shortly before or during the events of RotT. However, because everything was so tense and chaotic, they chose not to reveal the change in their relationship to any of their friends until after the titans were defeated. Instead, of course, Jim reset the timeline, so they didn’t get the chance before their dramatic romantic reunion. If the kiss described above isn’t their first kiss, then it’s probably their third kiss at most - though it’s not like they need to actually count them.

#tales of arcadia #tales of arcadia spoilers #rise of the titans #rise of the titans spoilers #trollhunters #3below #aja tarron #krel tarron #jim lake jr #toby domzalski #claire nuñez #krexie #hisirdoux casperan #why yes i'm putting a disclaimer up like this is ffn i'm a little spooked by the paid post bullshit #my writing

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morrpeko · 3 years ago

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i’ve had Donatella Aquato on the brain lately, lads.

a big issue i (and a lot of others) have with Donatella is how passive aggressive and guilt-trippy she is towards Raz. And how it’s just kind of... played off? which is fucked up

so here are some hcs/concepts for some Donatella lore/character development for your consideration

(contains spoilers for the whole Psychonauts franchise)

aight so first things first: i want Hollis and Donatella to reconcile. I picture them going to the bowling alley and having some drinks and just kind of bickering the first time but as time goes on they just start vibing and going out for drinks more often (sometimes Milla will join too!)

they’re all friends your honor. its not a picture-perfect friendship; they don’t always agree and at times things can get a bit heated and they argue but they balance each other out.

Hollis enjoys the occasional Aquato-brand whimsy and acknowledges Dona’s skill as an acrobat/athlete while Dona really admires Hollis’ more grounded demeanor and her leadership skills. she’s also grateful that this person who she sees as level-headed and a good leader is one of the people who’s looking out for Raz and helping him in areas (i.e. irt psychic stuff) that she herself cannot

i think a little while post-psychonauts 2 Hollis approaches Donatella with an offer of being a pseudo-instructor for physical education for the junior agents (and maybe the senior agents too-- the ones that aren’t too stuck up/prideful, that is)

and Donatella’s like “well don’t expect me to give away any family secrets but i can help you stretch these children; i’ve done it like 5 times already i’m basically an expert”

P.E. instructor Donatella arc is basically what i’m getting at here like think of the potential for goofs. think of the junior agents thinking they’re hot shit only to get dunked on by a gaggle of gangly acrobats who’re like “god you can’t just do a backflip? it’s so easy what the hell”

as for how her treatment of Raz gets addressed:

it doesn’t happen immediately; it takes a lot of conversations with Hollis and Milla for her to start thinking “hm. maybe the things i’ve said to my 10 year old son about how he ‘betrayed’ us after he fuckin ran away bc he was unhappy and thought we’d hate him if he flat out told us he was psychic are not that great actually”

i think a pivotal moment would be Hollis opening up a little (and I mean a little itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie little bit) about her strained relationship with her family for Donatella to start to have that ‘oh no. what have i done’ moment that Augustus has during the first game

that line from the maternity ward in Hollis’ mind; the one from the parents that are like “when will (this baby) achieve our unfulfilled ambitions?” really sticks out to me. i think Hollis and Dona being able to relate to that in the sense that their parents wanted to live vicariously through their children and their children’s achievements would be real cool

i like to imagine that Donatella was a gymnast before she met Augustus. her mother was one of those moms that push their kids really hard in sports/pageants/etc so they can swoop in and share in the glory without really doing anything

so Dona had to put up with having that type of mom her whole life. her mother was very strict and controlling in all aspects of her life-- she wasn’t allowed to wear make-up, she couldn’t eat certain things-- it was uber fucked up and she hated it, but she also put up with it because it’s her mother

until she gets injured and sidelined during training for a competition. Dona’s mom rips into her for getting hurt (which is awful bc she was more pissed that Dona couldn’t compete than she was concerned bc her daughter got injured) and they get into a massive fight that ends up with Dona leaving the house despite her injuries bc she’s just so pissed

the Aquato family circus also happened to be in town so heh... u know.... funny how these things work out huh

When Dona meets Augustus they don’t go from strangers to madly-in-love like instantly. in morrpeko’s house we don’t do ‘love-at-first-sight’ tropes; we need history. we need to fan the embers before they burst into flames my friends

so over the course of a season (spring-summer probably) they become friends. they bond over... gymnastics and acrobatics and stuff. everything’s going great until the Aquato’s are getting ready to leave

both Dona and Augustus are kind of devastated bc they were best friends by this point!! they don’t want to say goodbye, but they’re young and have no other choice.

so they part ways and it’s real sad

.......until next spring/summer when the circus comes back into town!!!

and they’re so happy to see each other again! they make up for lost time and hang out all the time! and Augustus is thrilled bc he thought she would’ve forgotten about him by now and Dona missed Augustus bc they were partners in crime, and she like the circus and all the performers there! everyone was nice and they just seemed to be good to each other like a big family and Dona’s like “god i wish that were me”

cut to the Aquatos leaving for the second time; Augustus and all the other performers and Nona promising to be back next spring/summer

and Dona finds herself wishing she could go with them, but she doesn’t. and she has to spend the next half a year tolerating her overbearing mother and her stupid rules and how she would take credit for everything her daughter did like she wasn’t even there.

those months alone made Donatella realize how unhappy she was. and her coming to the realization that she doesn’t want to keep being miserable and she might want to be an acrobat. so she makes the mistake of telling her mother

and her mother is livid. she shuts her down and guilt-trips and manipulates the shit out of her, and by this point Dona knows that her mother doesn’t care about her being happy, she just cares about what she achieves and flaunts her like a trophy

so she makes a decision. a decision that frightens and excites her in equal measure, and she just gets more resolute as spring/summer approaches

and the next time the Aquatos leave, she’s going with them, damn it! she’s taking charge of her own happiness. and even though it hurt back then, and it still hurts now, now that Dona is a lot older and has a family of her own, she doesn’t regret it

but when she realizes that Raz might’ve felt as awful as she did when she chose to leave? that he made the decision to run away because he was miserable and unhappy? that Dona might’ve unconsciously been saying the same kind of shit that her mother said to her? she’s devastated

she’s mad at herself and she just wants to undo all the awful things she’s ever said but she can’t. because you can’t change the past and you can’t just magically fix everything. so once she gets her shit together she starts pulling her kids aside and apologizing. promising to do better by them and vowing to not lie or hide things anymore

and that’s all i got cause this entire thing has been a big stream of consciousness

thanks for reading

#psychonauts 2 #donatella aquato #morrpeko's writing tag #fun fact i have a draft of a donatella & raz reconciliation fic on my notepad app of my phone #will i finish it? perhaps #not likely but perhaps nonetheless #also near the end my brain burnt out so i dont think i was able to convey just how gut punching i imagine the last 3rd of this being #and also iiidk if i articulated everything like how i wanted to but im tired so i have decided to pass away (dies)

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the-hero-of-jk-its-len · 3 years ago

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A Flower by Any other name. - Chapter two: I meet the hero.

A.N: Hullo folks!! Len is back at it again, this fic has my head chained around it, oh well, the last one got a bit more traction than I expected, I'm hopping we get a few more people with this one too!! and to the people who followed after the first chapter, thank you!!

Reminder: Aster uses he/him pronouns!! You can exchange his name if you want and i won't mind, and also this isn't beta'd at all because I have no friends in the LOZ fandom.

Disclaimer: I don't own The legend of zelda (gods I wish), the linked universe au or any of the franchises and works I may reference in this fic, this is a work for fans by fans and all credits go to the respective owners.

Summary: Aster grows more, meets the hero and gets into plants.

Word Count: 1129

Warnings: none.

If I had to be honest, I kind of admired the original Zelda.

I may not have liked her very much while playing the games, but if I had to give her anything, it is that she was smarter than I ever could aspire to. I have no doubts that she took to studying ancient technology as soon as they appeared, how a six year old could do that is beyond me.

Which i exactly why I didn’t

Yeah, no.

Kudos to Zelda but I was barely any good with the technology of my world, I am definitely not getting involved with this technology any more than what I strictly need to guide Link in the future.

And talking of which, I have heard nothing of Link, not a whisper, I had assumed he had turned into an apprentice of knight early on, but instead I just keep finding myself bored more every day waiting for him to appear.

In the meantime, I’ve taken to botanics, mother the queen used to have a greenhouse, and after she passed I wasted no time asking for it. Father couldn’t argue towards taking care of her beloved plants, even if I had to have supervision.

Still, somehow, taking care of the plants here, it seemed bittersweet.

The oak was growing nicely.

Not much has changed since that day, the oak has grown, the plants have come and gone with the last five birthdays.

There has been a recent development though, namely, the blond boy carrying a sword in front of me.

Link o’Deya, the son of a retired Royal Knight, and the one who pulled the master sword out during the trials.

He looked… miserable, and I wasn’t sure I looked much better, both trapped into stifling clothes. I had no doubt the head maid had chosen herself when the king had called for Link in an scheduled audience.

The king spoke, but I have the feeling neither of us was actually listening. They shouldn’t expect a pair of eleven year olds to pay attention when my father’s voice is as boring as the words he says.

Either way, by the end of the audience, Link had been moved alongside his family to a new home in the city near to the castle grounds, where he was to present to the castle every other day in order to be trained.

And with that, I finally felt the story begin the dread of knowing that Link had started the ball rolling by pulling out the sword wasn’t lost in me.

The new flowers had arrived.

Apart from caring for plants though, there was something more I enjoyed and rarely got to indulge in working.

Baking.

Back in my first life, I had always had a charm for cooking and baking, so much so that when me and my friends finished our studies we all had pitched in for different areas of buying a small place we all ran together, I was of course, the cook.

But it wasn’t quite as easy to get away with entering the kitchen when you were the young master of a whole castle, it used to be harder when I was younger, admittedly, but nowadays, even as they fuss over me the maids and cooks mostly just allow me to do as I wish in there.

Which is why I was carrying a basket with bread that I had baked only an hour or so ago, fresh cheese, ham and butter too of course.

If I had learned anything from the movies of my first life, was that the best way to make friends was feeding people, and I was at least seventy four percent sure, Link would be hungry after training since early.

Well, that was an underestimation, the truth is, by the time I had gotten there the young boy was still waving his wooden sword around, trying to hit his teacher as efficiently as he could before he was ultimately back on the floor, trying to catch his breath as i got close.

“Sir Arys” I called out to his teacher, watching as he panicked for a second before he found my gaze.

“Young Prince,-” he knelt down in courtesy “- what brings you here your highness, isn’t this the hour at which you typically have your own lessons”.

He was right of course, at this hour i would usually be getting ready for my own swordsmanship lessons, though my lessons could just as easily be called dancing, the fighting style more similar to the one practiced in my past life, “Ah, I received permission today to skip in order to properly meet your newest apprentice”

And Link, who up until now I had seen trying to sneak his way out, had no option but to look back as the knight grabbed him by the shoulder “is that so! Very well then, I shall leave him you care for now my prince.” even then he looked at Link with a clear look that told him to behave.

Seeing his back face us and walk away I turned to the boy next to me, clearly as comfortable as I was in this situation, “I’m sorry for interrupting your lessons” he looked startled by the apology, as if he was expecting to be the one to apologize “I had thought, that by now they would be over and i could introduce myself over food…” At my words he finally locked eyes with the basket, and though he wouldn’t say anything I could see in his eyes the sudden hunger, so I smiled to myself and pointed to one of clear areas of grass nearby.

That day marked the first of many I would appear to eat lunch with Link, and more often than not after that to patch him up while he finished eating.

It didn’t take long before the castle was full of gossip on how good the relationship between us, the young prince and what was sure to be his knight in the future, was.

Which is why the day I wasn’t able to go, I wasn’t surprised by the maid that had guided him to where I was caring for the belladonnas in my greenhouse.

He brought the food this time around.

It was like this for the first few years, both of us preparing for the fate we were both to play, though for him, it was not because he knew of what was coming, but I did, and on my fifteenth birthday, my father sent me to the temple of time, and for the first time since coming to this world, I was in the presence of the goddess, the aura of the place sparkling, and warm, and-

Wait.

I’ve felt this before.

Where-

#💠aster #A Flower by any other name #loz fic #loz x oc #loz x ftm reader #loz x transmasc reader #loz x reader #link x reader #eventually #eventual linked universe #link x ftm reader #link x transmasc reader #breath of the wild au #isekai #linked universe au #I still don't know how to tag #🖋️ The Len Writes

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thevindicativevordan · 3 years ago

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Any thoughts on Grant Morrison's Action Comics run? Beyond T shirt-and-jeans Superman being great.

That whole run reinvigorated my love of the character.

There have been numerous thoughtpieces about New 52 Superman, how he worked and how he didn't but these two entries really do a great job of summing up why Morrison's take on Superman was great. Morrison laid the foundation for a new generational Superman that DC completely fucked up and ran into the ground. I'll always be bitter about that, even if I had tapped out of reading the New 52 Superman books by the end due to how bad they got. Editorial and their idiotic mandates were what screwed over the potential of this take in my eyes.

Now I get that it wasn't to everyone's taste, but I cannot fathom how anyone could ever claim that Pre-Flashpoint Superman was better. If you liked Byrne's reboot better, your guy already got rebooted after Infinite Crisis. For someone like me who really enjoyed the Johns/Busiek era, that era's potential got spoiled after Johns & Busiek left, with New Krypton imploding and the awful Grounded taking it's place. When you get to the point where the best Superman book is the one starring Lex Luthor, it's time to reassess the franchise and figure out where the hell it went wrong.

Which is exactly what Morrison did. For this new Superman, Morrison mined all the best ideas of every Superman era to really give what I consider the ideal "base" for Superman. They also took pains to address common criticisms about Superman, working to correct his pop culture image. People have been complaining that Superman is "too perfect", "too unrelatable" for a long time, so Morrison addressed that. They gave Superman his balls back, and let him reacquire that Golden Age edge he had originally.

There are a lot of complaints you can make about Morrison's Superman, but I don't see how you could accuse this guy of being "flawless" or "bland". He definitely had a personality that you could describe, love him or hate him. Compassionate, but not a pushover. Clearly holding himself back, but unafraid to occasionally let loose. Flaws that were patently obvious, Clark had a temper here that could get him into trouble. There was a real showcase of anger here, of Superman being furious at the way people were treated by the rich and powerful, then doing something about it that I ate up.

I read this run just as I was coming into my teens and it hit perfectly for where I was in life. Did not want a Superman who would smile and tell me it gets better, I wanted a Superman who looked you in the eye and told you he felt that same anger, and then encouraged you to go out and do something about how you felt. That was what this run delivered in spades, and it expanded what I believed could be done with Superman.

While it totally blew my mind to see Superman acting this way the first time I read Morrison's Action Comics run, in retrospect it really isn't that different from how Superman has acted even under Byrne. One of the few traits I've seen carry across Superman incarnations in the comics is that he has a temper underneath that affable nature. "Don't tug on Superman's cape" as the old song goes. This run simply elevated that to the forefront of the character again, for the better in my eyes given I believe "Wrath" is Superman's Deadly Sin.

In fact, one of the strongest features of this run is that Superman gets actual character development over the course of the run, analogous to what Batman underwent in Morrison's Bat-Epic. While the Bat-Epic was merely Morrison re-canonizing Batman's entire history, and applying a retroactive character development storyline that culminated in Morrison's current Batman work, their Action Comics run had them attempt to craft something similar for Superman from scratch. What that meant was Morrison attempting to draw on the most important traits of every Superman era and incorporate those into this new take. So Superman had the Golden Age temper, compassion for the oppressed, and cockiness. The Silver Age supergenuis, proud scion of Krypton who cherished his Kryptonian nature, member of the Legion of Superheroes, and participant in stories that weren't afraid to get weird. Superman's wrestling with his place in the world, the importance of Clark Kent, and making journalism a key part of the character strike me as all being hallmarks of the Bronze Age. From Post-Crisis we got that Clark views himself as human and loves his adopted parents, considering them as equal to his birth ones.

One of the big frustrations for me with the endless origin stories for Superman, is that so many of them follow a predictable and stale formula where Clark puts on the suit and is essentially ready to go. Doesn't interfere with human affairs, is modest and humble, restrained in usage of his powers, it's like Clark has meta knowledge of what he "should" be, despite that he shouldn't have any foreknowledge of what a "superhero" should look like. He operates the same way at the start as he does in the modern day, and that's really boring to me. This Superman, because of the difference in powers and attitude, operated extremely different from his "present day" incarnation. Dangling Glenmorgan over the edge of a building isn't something a fully powered and mature Superman should do, but it works great to make his early days different and exciting to read about, it makes returning to that era something you can do different storytelling with. This run is the only time where I really cared that Superman is "supposed" to be the first superhero, because figuring out what that means here is a big part of how he develops.

We all know the common complaint that Superman is "too powerful" and that "nothing can hurt him" (funny how Thor never gets hit with those accusations), so Morrison made sure to show that this take on Superman could be beaten even if he could never be defeated. Events conspired to force Clark to use his brains as well as his powers to overcome the challenges in front of him.

Examples include him using his heat vision to fry Lex's equipment and escape the military, using his rocket ship to defeat Brainiac, and rallying the population of Metropolis to banish Vyndktvx. Not to say that Clark never used his brains before to win, but this run was very upfront and in your face about how important Clark's intellect is to triumphing over his foes. Can't take seriously the complaint that Superman is too overpowered when Morrison constantly showcased how even a very powerful Superman could get his shit wrecked by his Rogues.

Another example of Morrison addressing criticisms is Kryptonite. A lot of people poke fun at how convenient it is that pieces of Superman's homeworld follow him all the way to Earth. Isn't that a bit of an asspull? So Morrison made Kryptonite the power source of Superman's rocket, giving it a perfectly natural and believable reason both for it to end up on Earth, and for Lex & the military to get a hold of it since Pa Kent gave the military the rocket. That's still my preferred explanation for how Kryptonite ended up on Earth.

It also provides a better explanation for all the different Kryptonite variants. DC can handwave away the different types as a result of Lex experimenting or the different "forces" on Earth such as magic or the Speed Force or whatever creating the different variants. That to me is much more believable than Kryptonite travelling all across the galaxy yet still ending up on Earth somehow.

There have also been a lot of complaints about Superman's villains, and Morrison diligently set about reworking them. By far one of my favorite aspects of the run, was the villain revamps. Nimrod felt like a clean revamp of Terra-Man, making him into Superman's Kraven the Hunter struck me as a patently obvious route to go, wild no one has followed up on that or used him since. Metallo felt like a good synthesis of Johns take of him as an Anti-Superman weapon, and the sympathetic aspects of Corben's origin that are always there, I liked that Morrison didn't make him a total bastard before his transformation like Johns did. Brainiac got some sympathy added to him in that the collected worlds that were already marked for damnation, thus he was "saving" them in a fashion. Clay Ramses embodied toxicity as a wife-beater even before becoming Kryptonite Man, and I thought his backstory was a great way for Clark to still deal with "real" issues via a manner he could punch. Ramses is still the best take on Kryptonite Man. Vyndktvx felt like the greatest realization of the threat Mr. Mxyzptlk could pose should he decide to get serious since Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, plus I'm a sucker for stories where superheroes fight the Devil. Drekken and Superdoom took the only interesting aspects of Doomsday (his ability to evolve and that he can kill Superman respectively), and were much more interesting characters.

And oh my God, speaking of Superdoom, that part of Morrison's Action run has aged like fine wine. I don't know if they caught wind of DC's plans for the character, or if they were just prescient, but everything that Superdoom is playing on is still sadly all too present. What Superdoom is as a character is a condemnation of what DC keeps doing with Superman: killing him off or making him evil.

When you realize what Superdoom (demand for a more violent and "realistic" Superman) and Vyn (WB/DC) stand in for, it makes the frustration Morrison is channeling much more palpable. Those two plotlines are all DC can think of to do with the character, returning to those again and again. Endlessly attempting to recapture the high of Batman and Doomsday beating the shit out of Supes in The Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman. Overcoming these two obstacles is Superman's greatest challenge as conceived by Morrison, because both are out to corrupt and ruin the very idea of him. It's not just a physical death he faces, but a metaphysical one as well. Sadly it's a threat Superman just can't seem to lick in the real world, with more and more takes on "Evil Superman" coming.

Lois and Jimmy are great here, because Morrison actually made the investigative journalism aspect of Superman important. Lois is an active participant in the story, trying to break in to the base where Clark is being held by her father, competing with Clark for stories (I love how Morrison writes the banter between the two of them), and generally being classic Lois. Jimmy though benefitted from being positioned as a peer rather than as a kid in comparison to the two, something I wish the comics had carried forward. It looks like My Adventures With Superman is going with that interpretation at least, so I hope others do as well. Jimmy being Clark's roommate really adds to their bond, and I wish we had gotten more stories with that status quo.

Investigative reporter Clark Kent was so actively used here that it feels jarring reading other Superman runs where they tend to downplay and ignore it. Following Clark as he travels to different areas of Metropolis and actually interacts with people, instead of hovering above them as Superman, makes him feel human. Watching Clark actively pursue stories aimed at bettering peoples livelihoods, and seeing how those stories crossed with the superheroics, was one of my favorite aspects of the run. It's one unfortunately few other writers seem all that interested in, especially the New 52 writers who followed Morrison (I know editorial probably bears a lot of blame for that though).

Besides all that, this run was a lot of fun! The Legion of Superheroes showed up, their connection to Clark restored, and they got to play a big role in Clark's adventures! Krypto the Superdog! Martian colonies! Memorizing all of medicine, Superman performs a lifesaving operation! Lex using a "bullet train" to knock Clark out! 5-D imps! Rampaging robots from beyond! A Phantom Zone Halloween story! John Henry Irons suits up as Steel and kicks ass alongside Clark! Every Superman Rogue teams up to try to kill him, but Lex Luthor saves his life because that's a privilege he reserves for himself! Showcasing their trademark love for the Supermythos, Morrison took us on a tour of Superlore that demonstrated the depth and width of what could be done with Superman. Meanwhile the backups by Sholly Fisch excelled at giving us smaller, more human stories about Superman (the one where Clark meets Pa again via time travel "after" Pa has died always gives me a lump in my throat to read).

Ultimately this didn't get to be the foundation for the next generation of Superman stories as it deserved. Johns made New 52 Superman the scapegoat in Doomsday Clock for a lot of storytelling choices he did over in Justice League, something that pisses me off to no end. You want to tell me that this guy "didn't relate" to people, didn't inspire "hope"?

Like hell he didn't. This guy was Superman in every way that mattered and he deserved better than to be framed as the scapegoat for all the stupid decisions DC made about what to do with him. Greg Pak was able to do some great work with this version after Morrison, and just like how Gene Yang got a redemption work starring Superman, I hope to one day see Pak return to the character. Would love to read a Black Label Superman story by Pak that follows his take on young Superman.

All wasn't lost however. Against all odds, and Rebirth trying it's damndest to sweep everything under the rug, it looks like parts of this era have actually survived to the current Infinite Frontier era. With Morrison being heavily involved no less, both as an ideas guy and as an actual writer.

Superman & the Authority is explicitly Superman coming full circle back to the attitude displayed by his young counterpart under Morrison. Janin has outright said that the costume Clark wears here is reminiscent of the t-shirt and jeans era of Superman, and this book so far feels saturated with an energy level from Morrison I haven't seen in their work for hire since they left Action. Reaching old age and realizing he never really delivered on the high ideals of his beginnings, it's Superman putting together a team to hopefully succeed where he couldn't alone. Scathing in how it criticizes the superhero status quo, this has been extremely entertaining to read. Wish Morrison was writing 12 issues with this team, and that ultimately it will be up to PKJ to deliver on the potential is a drawback (although I've loved PKJ's Action run so far), but I'm glad to see DC finally treating Morrison and their ideas with more respect than was shown during Rebirth.

Jon meanwhile feels like an even more explicit attempt at redoing New 52 Superman. There's the updated new suit, designed to appeal to a new generation with it's streamlined look. Positioning Jon as a Superman who wants to tackle the "real" issues, with Taylor explicitly comparing him to Golden Age Superman which as I mentioned was an era Morrison tried to reincorporate into their reboot. There's the Legion of Superheroes connection which played an important role in Morrison's reboot. The rumors about Jon's sexuality are interesting, hinting that DC is willing to go outside the box with him in a way they never would with Clark. I'm excited to see what kind of Superman Jon ends up becoming, if he can deliver on the promise of the New 52 Superman all the better.

This run deserves to be remembered and to have the lessons it tried to teach respected. Probably my favorite mainline run on Superman, I hope more people come around to liking it as time goes on.

#superman #grant morrison #action comics #new 52

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thebibliomancer · 3 years ago

Text

Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #1: Avengers Assemble!

September, 1984

WHO will answer Hawkeye’s call to join the new team?

I assume Mockingbird? I see her silhouette in the cover box and the assumption was that she and Clint were a package deal? I don’t know what it’s being played like its not a given.

Some good or at least interesting options here for the second team.

Red Wolf, Iron Man, Puck, I thiiiiink Crystal?, Doc Sampson, Mockingbird, Cyclops, Black Widow, Wonder Man, Tigra, Quicksilver, Hercules, Ant-Man, Namor, and the Shroud.

A lot of interesting options. I really want it to be Cyclops and I know its not going to be Cyclops.

STOP TEASING ME WITH AVENGERS CYCLOPS IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GIVE IT TO ME!

Also, this issue #1 of West Coast Avengers. Or at least the first issue #1. The team is introduced in a four issue miniseries before getting an ongoing - and a second issue #1 - about a year later.

This will be moderately confusing for my numbering but I’m brave enough to barrel on through anyway.

Last time in Avengers: Vision became the chairman of the Avengers and announced that due to the threat of the Dire Wraiths, the Avengers would be opening up a West Coast team led by newly married Hawkeye. In one page reminders of the subplot in various issues, Hawkeye and Mockingbird arrived in Los Angeles, went real estate shopping, and set up a new HQ in a nice compound that used to belong to an actress.

The team is only missing one thing.

A team.

Maybe it’s just me but I’d think that you’d get the team sorted out before you spent who knows how much renovating a compound up to the level required for a superhero team.

It’s going to be really embarrassing if you open a new Avengers team and nobody comes.

(Vision agrees and has taken the liberty of reaching out to several likely candidates.)

Mockingbird confirms that Hawkeye has invited her onto the team but she’s not even sure she’s Avengers material, she doesn’t even have powers.

Hawkeye: “Neither does Captain America! Neither do I! If I can be an Avenger -- !”

Mockingbird: “Anyone can, right?”

Hawkeye: “And people wonder why you took the code-name Mockingbird!”

Haha! I do like their chemistry!

He does clarify that its totally not just because she’s married to him (although I would point out that he kept trying to get Black Widow on the team based on them dating) but that she’s totally earned it! She has years of experience as a SHIELD agent!

Hawkeye calls Vision to let him know that the place is all set up and Vision lets him know about the reaching out to several likely candidates biz.

BOOM SCENE TRANSITION TO DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO at the office of private investigator Jessica Drew.

Because, yeah, Jessica Drew did the PI thing as an ex-superhero way before Jessica Jones. And Jessica Jones is probably Drew with some of the serial numbers scratched off.

ANYWAY, she’s talking to hardboiled Tigra, who helped her on the Enselmo case.

Jessica Drew: “I still laugh when I think about the way you ran our pigeon up and down Telegraph Hill!”

Tigra: “That was the best part of the case! After all... bringing pigeons to ground is second nature to a lady who’s half-cat!”

Jessica tries to offer Tigra a job (since this is before the internet and Tigra can’t find a lot of modeling jobs for models covered with fur) but Jessica’s secretary interrupts with a call for Tigra.

The call sounds ominous from Jess only hearing half of it but I’m 99.9% sure its Vision offering Tigra a spot on the West Coast Avengers.

Read Tigra’s replies with that context and you’ll laugh.

Tigra tells Jess that she’s got to book it to LA for business that she has to settle on her own but they’ll talk about Jess’ offer later.

Tigra: “Don’t worry, I’m a big girl... I can make my own mistakes!”

I feel like a little bit of clarification would have gone a long way here, Tigra.

Because Jessica assumes that Tigra is in trouble and decides to call someone to tail (ha) Tigra.

Meanwhile, a car chase in the Mojave Desert.

To cut to the car chase, this is a movie set filming a stunt spectacular car chase scene for what I’m pretty sure is James Bond.

Pyrotechnics are easy if you don’t stress blowing up the stuntman.

Because he’s near invulnerable.

The stuntman (Simon Williams, Wonder Man) does need to have buckets of water thrown on him to cool him off after being in an explosion but he’s otherwise fine.

Cool that Wonder Man found an acting job he can handle. He seems pretty thrilled with it.

One of the staff on set tells Simon that his trailer is buzzing and he realizes its his Avengers transceiver.

He receives his offer from Vision (although apparently a much more vague one than Tigra) and flies off after making sure he has no more stunts scheduled for the day.

An hour later and hundreds of miles elsewhere, Iron Man (the James Rhodes version) is flying around, minding his own business, thinking about how cool it is to have relocated to California to help Tony Stark open a new business, admiring the Standord University Linear Accelerator Center.

Just as he’s thinking that he hopes that Tony isn’t in a hurry to being Iron Man since he’s gotten used to it, Vision cuts in on the secret Iron Man radio frequency to call him in to the meeting.

Iron Man arrives twenty minutes later at the West Avengers compound on the Palos Verdes Peninsula bluffs and paraphrased does an impressed whistle at what a nice place it is.

Iron Man: “Some spread! This looks like the kinda place Tony would’ve hung out... before he lost Stark International! The best part of being his pilot in those days was ferrying him to spots like this! Who’d have thought I’d ever be invited on my own? Then again, who’d have thought little Jimmy Rhodes would grow up to be Iron Man?!”

Future knowledge bums me out a little with this. This is spoilers for a year from now and several issues from now but in the time gap between the West Coast Avengers limited series and the ongoing, Tony does take over being Iron Man again. I hope you enjoy all this while it lasts, Rhodey. And hey, War Machine is only like eight years away!

Tigra arrives and starts acting familiar with Iron Man because she thinks she knows its Tony and they were teammates for a bit.

She ditches the briefly identity obscuring trenchcoat and hat because dammit she has a year round fur coat and its hot in California!

She also might be flirting, although hopefully not as bad as she’ll get later in the ongoing. Spoilers for a year and several issues for now but it is a bafflingly bad subplot that Tigra gets given.

The other reason I bring it up is that this is the exact situation that led Rhodey to quit the Avengers when he became Iron Man. He felt it would be awkward interacting with people who already knew Iron Man well.

I guess he’s more comfortable with it now.

The West Coast Avengers roster that we already know about are all people who either quit the Avengers or don’t feel like they’d be a good fit. Which is just a great start so I’m interested to see if we’ll get justifications for why they’d sign up the minute a franchise opens.

Hawkeye takes Tigra and Iron Man off on a tour while a mysterious shrouded figure watches.

The tour concludes without us seeing the tour, boo. But it comes up that neither Iron Man or Tigra know why they’re here.

Iron Man was just told he was needed but didn’t get any more details. We know that Wonder Man got the same vagueness. And Tigra was just offered a $1000 dollar stipend to fly out to LA and see if she could “help the Avengers out!”

So Hawkeye gives them the sales pitch.

That Captain America made it a rule that except in emergencies, the Avengers’ roster would be limited to six members. But Vision decided that they need more than six Avengers but wanted to keep the team from becoming unwieldy so told Hawkeye to set up an expansion team: the West Coast Avengers!

It’ll basically be the same thing as the original Avengers in terms of by-laws and rights and privileges and both groups will be affiliated but the West Coast Avengers will be running their own show west of the Rockies.

If everyone here agrees to sign up, that’ll make a team of five with a sixth spot to fill.

But Tigra objects that she left the original team because she felt out of her depth and why would that be different here?

Ah, now there it is.

Justify it, Hawkeye.

Except he doesn’t because the intruder alarm goes off.

The intruder alarm all the way in the first basement level, which means their intruder has already penetrated deep into the compound and bypassed a lot of the security systems.

Hawkeye is sure that the intruder is actually a highly organized commando raid and he’s instantly proven wrong with an infrared scan shows just one guy.

Womp womp.

Hawkeye is also sure that however this just one guy got as far as he did, the security system in the next area will totally--

Womp womp.

Hawkeye is fed up at this point and seals off the security levels, forcing the dude back through the domestic areas. He then orders Iron Man, Tigra, and Mockingbird to split up to cover more ground that way and surround the intruder.

Not having much better to do, they do, but everyone has some misgivings in their thinky thoughts.

Iron Man: Hawk sounds like he really gets into giving orders. I don’t know if I like that.

Tigra: I must be some sort of masochist to get involved with Avengers again! They always seem to know what they’re doing... not like me! What am I doing here? What am I trying to prove?

Hawkeye: Should I let the others catch our intruder... or rush in and collar him myself? How would Cap handle this?

Mockingbird: Poor Hawk... He wants so much to be a good leader! I know he can do it, but I wish he wouldn’t try quite so hard! In a way, though, it’s funny... His first act as leader was having the team split up!

Mockingbird is the first to run into the intruder, suddenly being enveloped in a cloud of darkness. She can’t see anything but hears someone moving and launches one of her staves from her spring-loaded sleeve launcher.

Its a near miss, breaking a lamp instead of the intruder, who turns out to be Shroud. Y’know, that friend of Jessica Drew’s we met in that two-parter about saving Jessica Drew’s ghost?

Shroud realizes how skilled Mockingbird is and that he might have trouble if he takes her lightly so he goes right for the Vulcan neck pinch, knocking out Mockingbird. But she hits Shroud in the stomach guts with her second stave as she’s passing out.

Hawkeye then shows up, concerned that he hasn’t run into Mockingbird yet and drawn to the cloud of darkness, except not the Final Fantasy villain.

He shoots a light arrow, except not the Legend of Zelda powerup, into the cloud to no real effect so shrugs and shoots a sonic arrow instead.

Shroud flees the area and Hawkeye finds Mockingbird who tells him to shut up with the EEEEE arrow.

Hawkeye: “Where’d our man go?”

Mockingbird: “How should I know? It was dark!”

Hah.

The cloud of darkness passes through the area of the mansion/compound that Tigra is in and she recognizes it as Shroud’s darkness. She calls out to him but he doesn’t hear her because he’s in another wing about to be tackled by Iron Man who can see Shroud with his in-helmet radar.

Controlling darkness is all well and good until technology.

Ain’t it said, Rumia?

Shroud is also blind so all he knows is that an armored man is lunging at him until Iron Man calls him a fool for trespassing on Avengers turf.

And that’s when he realizes that he done goofed.

Hmm. What is that symbol on Shroud’s hood, anyway? It looks kinda like Aku.

Shroud manages to escape Iron Man’s grasp, sacrificing some of his neat cape. Although, it tears into an even cooler look so is it really a sacrifice?

He decides that he’s just going to get out of here.

Shroud: Have to get undercover and think out my next move. I don’t want to fight Avengers! That could become a life’s work -- and I have better things to do!

I can’t decide whether he means that he’d be at it all day or that this misunderstanding fight would lead him down an unwilling path of villainy as some third-string grudge holder.

Probably the former?

Anyway, Shroud is just leaping over the balcony when Wonder Man finally arrives and spots him. And unfortunately for Shroud’s ribs, he has been cultivating a reputation as a crimelord so Wonder Man flies in and tackles him into a tree.

Womp womp, except for Shroud this time.

Tigra shows up and jumps on Wonder Man from forty feet away to stop him from hurting Shroud any further, explaining that he’s her friend.

Shroud: “I’m certainly glad I’m not an enemy... I’d hate to think how I’d be treated then!”

Hah.

Later, in the medical room, I guess, Mockingbird applies bandages to Shroud’s ribs except on the outside of his costume. Does... does that do anything? Obviously not for open wounds. But for bruised bones, I guess the point is compression. But it feels less than ideal because he’d have to take off the bandages to take off his shirt. Just feels better to apply the bandages under the clothes, MOCKINGBIRD.

What makes it weirder is that we see him a couple panels later pulling his shirt down over the bandages. Which makes me think Mockingbird bandaged him on top of his costume and he had to pull his costume top out from under them and pull it down. He didn’t just stop her because that would be rude?

Shroud explains that Jessica Drew asked him to keep an eye on Tigra because of how the phone call made her act all weird. He followed Tigra from the airport to here and ran into a gaggle of superheroes.

In the meantime, Hawkeye has verified Shroud with a report Captain America filed on him so Hawkeye believes he’s a good guy now.

Wonder Man and Iron Man apologize for going in swinging and Tigra for not just telling Jessica what the call was about. But Shroud tells them no permanent harm done.

Hawkeye decides to offer Shroud the last spot on the team (assuming that everyone already invited is going to choose to stay).

Hawkeye: “That trick you do with the dark is one slick little number... and anyone who can hold his own against us as long as you did obviously has what it takes in the skill department. Besides, what you did reminds me a little of how I introduced myself to the Avengers -- I broke in, too! Come on... What do you say?”

Shroud say... no.

He’s honored and a couple years earlier he would have jumped at the chance. But Wonder Man’s assumption didn’t come from nowhere. Shroud has been spending the last many months building up his outlaw rep so he can take down gangs from the inside.

Like the Green Hornet, I guess?

But since it’d be hard to be an Avenger West Coast AND keep up the fake outlaw thing, Shroud has to turn them down.

Shroud then pulls his cloud of darkness disappearing trick and nopes out.

With all that tied up, Wonder Man asks whats the big thing that Vision called him out for, leading an exasperated Hawkeye to start his West Coast Avengers sales pitch from the top.

Mockingbird: “That’s the spirit, fearless leader! Just remember, it can only get better from here!”

Hah.

So, that was the first issue of West Coast Avengers.

And there’s still no West Coast Avengers team.

Tigra and Iron Man still have reservations about the idea. Wonder Man has no idea why he’s there.

Its an interesting decision to hit the ground walking with this team. But it makes sense. The initial plan wasn’t for the West Coast Avengers to get an ongoing. This limited series was supposed to establish the concept, give a few Avengers affiliated characters something to be doing off-panel, and be able to be pulled in for crossovers and guest appearances as needed.

So the book can focus more on Hawkeye’s trials in actually getting this team going. He’s finally gotten to be a leader of the Avengers like he’s always wanted and now has to deal with all the frustration that Captain America or Hank Pym had with him, and then some.

Still, funny that the West Coast Avengers’ first adventure has them not only not a team yet but spending their time beating up a friend due to mistaken identity.

Will they get their act together by the next issue? Only time will tell. I tell a lie because Chronos never spoils stories. Only me will tell or maybe the Internet.

Follow @essential-avengers for the rest of the West Coast Avengers limited series. And for eventual bafflement when they get an ongoing. Also, like and reblog.

#avengers #West Coast Avengers #essential avengers #Hawkeye #Mockingbird #Tigra #Iron Man #James Rhodes #Wonder Man #the Shroud #Jessica Drew #essential marvel liveblogging

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