#this is the second time where I give some a dumpy accidentally

[void-dude]

Welcome to : I like super heroes and magical stuff so I’m projecting onto new media!!! Hooray!

[alittlebirb]

Some irreverent chaos from the MCC 24 Green Geckos!

Gem saying Oli is too loud and him replying "you can turn me down to zero if you don't want to hear my ~funny bits~!"

TapL saying he didn't vod review Turtle Run and everyone demanding he watch it RIGHT NOW, OPEN IT UP RIGHT NOW

I also need to mention this is the first time I've watched Oli and his sound effects+music is the best thing I've ever heard

"Do we know left from right? That's important to know before we start doing call outs. If you need a reminder just keep an L by the side of your screen." -Gem

Oli and Gem getting excited over saiko posting their fanart for the event

"They really know how to make me look like an anime protag!" -Oli

"Are we doing a cage stream? We will be doing two cage streams! But for this I've been freed from my cage!" -Oli

5up saying he's getting "bored" of SOT and he needs to "spice it up"

THEY'RE GOING TO BE DOING A ROTATING SANDKEEPER???

Oli freaking out over his sound and Gem shutting him down that she "does NOT want to hear about his tech problems right now."

"If you eat a burger, it slows you down." -TapL

"You are the mother duck, we are the ducklings. Go forth." -Gem to 5up in MD

TapL immediately following that up with a series of obnoxious quacking noises

Oli just flying through an empty map after he died, until he finally figures out how to teleport to mid

The disaster of that fight with Yellow, compounded with the fact that Oli turned his narrator on during the fight. That deadpan robotic voice describing their losing fight while Oli frantically tries to turn it off was a work of art.

Everyone just marveling over how cool MD is while watching the last fight

Oli's FAT DUMPY breaking the elevator

"This is it, after all the pvp teams are like, YES!, their mental high note, here is where we crush their mental." -5up, employing psychological warfare in SOM (Sands Of Mart)

The unhabitable conditions of the block rooms, with pillagers and skeletons breaking their concentration every 2 seconds

Oli and Gem occasionally fighting like bickering siblings

Oli accidentally dropping a "fucked up" in Gem's presence and immediately covering it up with "messed up"

Gem giving the brutal review that "our coms are rougher than I thought it'd be, not gonna lie."

"That remix helped nothing and hurt everything." -Gem

TapL spilling a "dollop" of water on his keyboard

"I've had a big scream!" -Oli

"I need to get my energy out in a stabby game, where I can punch and kick and flail!" -Oli

The chat calling them "the green anxiety's"

Half of the team getting frozen during the vote and demanding a recount

Oli beefing with Joel in the chat over the wait for 5up to rejoin

Oli giving Sapnap permission to pee, and TapL truthing that he didn't wash his hands

5up going through the most stressful experience in his life attempting to reconnect to MCC with the weight of 40 people's expectations on his shoulders

Gem calling TapL "our little green boy" as he flies in RSR

"I got a kill on Sparklez, so that's good. Gotta keep the old man down-" -Oli

TapL calling the way Illumina hit Purpled off the edge and won second round "sexy"

Oli coming in and interrupting 5up's pep talk, and Gem shushing him

TapL digging a hole in mid during SB, getting ferreted out by Pink, and then proceeding to slaughter 3/4 Pensioners

Oli asking if they can take Hamnah and Jojo, and Gem just responding with the most affronted "no."

TapL and Gem winning the second round!

"We've got our spirits awfully down for a team that's in 5th!" -Gem

TapL talking about how, when he was rushing to find a Turtle Run vod, he instead found results on a place called Turtle Run in Illinois

Gem being very rudely awakened about the amount of lava present in the BB map

Oli getting lost about how to get down to middle even though that was what 5up's pre-game pep talk was all about 😭

TapL whaling on Captain Sparklez and screaming "I'M SORRY. I STILL WATCH YOUR VIDEOS!"

"I got shot by The Gay." -TapL after getting killed by Scott

"Not THE GAY!" -Oli

"We don't follow rules 5up, we aren't even listening to our own words!" -Gem

TapL producing an AI generated sentence as an example of Things He Would Say In SOT

Oli eloping with Martyn in HITW during the Mega Chicken Vote, making them the only two HITW enjoyers in the dome!

TapL planning to speedrun AR and putting together a hype playlist (which sadly does not include the Jellyfish Jam from Spongebob SquarePants)

Just the wildly different vibes between each stream, with Gem and 5up being very chill, Oli blasting the loudest hype music available, and TapL listening to the MCC Update video on accident

Both TapL and 5up once again freezing??? 5up straight up crashing????

"They should just give us stimulus coins, for the oopsie." -TapL

TapL predicting his win the second time around and dubbing it TurtleGate

Oli narrating his AR journey and consistently improving the whole way through!

Everyone on Green finishing in a row, aside from 5up who finished a single place apart from them

The absolute travesty that was HITW getting chosen over GR. Who decided this. One of you is going to pay for this. 👁👁

TapL saying he's reaching for the moon this HITW round because it was Techno's philosophy, and getting first place!

"How are you feeling?" -TapL

"HOT." -Oli

Gem and 5up asking Oli if he knows what the colored walls mean in SOT, and the dead silence when he says no (as a funny lil joke, just a silly jest)

"No risky things!" -5up

"Oh no, I did risky things!" -Oli

"...I need to be unlocked." -Oli

5up getting locked in at the end, and Oli declaring "that's showbiz, baby!"

TapL putting on videos of cats to relax

"The reddit predicted us 9th...and I guess they were right!" -Gem

"The reddit can read me like a book." -Oli

TapL putting on the Benny Hill theme during DB

This MCC was a straight up fever dream.

Green Geckos finished MCC 24 in 9th place!

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter twenty-three: seduce and destroy

“So are we sure that Joey's gonna be okay with everything?” Sam asked Chuck.

“I'm sure of it,” he promised her.

It had been about a week since they had made that video tape and now that it was in fact closer to Valentine's Day, she, Chuck, and Alex had made the trip on back home to California. Sam may as well have seized the opportunity to take her couch with her back to her mom's house on Catalina Island, but then again, there was no way they could lug it into the plane altogether. As a result, she vowed for another return to New York City soon enough.

An hour long flight early that morning after, and the three of them had landed back in the heart of Berkeley.

Sam thought about Joey back home in upstate New York, and she knew that he wasn't around at that point. It would be some time before he surfaced again, and it would be some time before she could break it to her parents. As a result, she wasn't ready to head on back down to Los Angeles as of yet, given Testament had a whole two months listed there at that lovely studio with the purple plush carpet. Upon their landing at the Berkeley airport and their awaiting a ride from Eric and Greg, she tapped on Alex's shoulder and he took a glimpse back at her.

“What's up?” he asked her; she ran her tongue along the edge of her top row of teeth. Even in the dim pale light from the morning fog, he had a bright twinkle in his eye as if he had just seen treasure: he raised his dark eyebrows at her a bit and those deep eyes brightened even more. The gray streak stood high up on the crown of his head like a little needle.

“You wanna hang out?” she offered him. He bowed his head forward a bit.

“You—wanna hang out—with me?” he repeated it.

“Go for it, Alex,” Chuck told him from in front of them.

“Yeah, let's do it,” she said.

“Okay! Uh—what do you wanna do first?”

“Well, I want to see your old high school,” she suggested.

“Yeah, we can do that. Eric'd have to give us a ride over there, though.”

“We're actually not too far from there, though, Alex,” Chuck pointed out.

“You just want us to walk, Chuck,” Alex scoffed, and Sam laughed at that.

“At least it's not raining, Alex,” she pointed out to him.

He then turned to her with his eyebrows raised again.

“You know, I just got an idea,” he said in a low voice, and he gestured for her to follow him down the sidewalk and towards the end of the driveway.

“And here comes Eric!” Chuck proclaimed right then, but they were already about to round the corner there. Alex led her up the street, up to the corner there. Even on foot, and even from another angle, Sam already recognized that neighborhood. She walked side by side with him all the way up the sidewalk to that familiar block.

“Oh, this is where the studio is!” she decreed, and he looked over at her and eagerly nodded at that. He reached that door step first and he pushed the door open, much to both of their surprise. She bowed inside of there first and he held the door for her.

“There's no one here,” he declared with a chuckle. “There's no one here and yet the door's standing wide open.”

He shut the door behind him, and once they had taken off their jackets and hung them up on the wall there, he gestured for her to follow him into that main room once more. But rather than congregating around the sound board and the telephone there, he kept on going onward to the far side of the room, towards the door there.

“What's in here?” she wondered aloud as he held the door for her. She ducked into the large spacious room with a long smooth linoleum checker board floor and a long low pool table. On the far wall stood a low minibar.

“Eric told me about this room here,” he replied, and then he turned to her. “You shoot billiards much?” he asked her in a soft voice.

“Not really.”

“Aw, man! It's real easy. I'm not a big sports fan—never got the sports bug growing up but I don't mind a little shootin' pool, though.”

The pool table stood long and low there on the floor before them, with the balls already in place in their respectful triangle; Alex took two long dark cues right off of the rack on the wall, and he handed one to her.

“You don't really think of it as a sport, either,” said Sam.

“Nah, it's more of a game of wits,” he explained as he approached the triangle there on the table top. “When we were recording The New Order, Eric showed me how to do it.”

“All I know is you can't get the pure white ball in,” she told him.

“Nope, otherwise you get a scratch,” he replied and he lifted the rack: all fifteen balls stayed in place. “The eight ball's last to go into the hole, too, lest the game is over...” His voice trailed off and he hesitated with his free hand rested upon the table's edge.

“What's the matter?” she asked him.

“Hey, you know what—seeing it's just you and me in here,” he told her, “and I'm seven months away from turning twenty one—and you're twenty four now—” He stooped down and opened the fridge door; and he handed her a beer bottle.

“As long as you don't drive home,” she said as she took the bottle.

“Nah—we're not too far from my parents' house,” he replied as he took a bottle for himself.

“I don't know if you can walk home drunk, though,” she confessed.

“You can't.”

“A little job for me then,” she concluded as she pried off the bottle cap and she was met with that intense smell of fresh hops straight out of the bottle. She took a small sip where Alex guzzled down a straight shot first hand. He shook his head about and then he looked over at her with his eyes bright and bold with life.

He set the bottle down on the side of the pool and launched the white cue ball forth to the closest point of the triangle. All fifteen balls sprawled out over that green surface.

“Okay, so—you wanna start from the bottom with the number one ball,” he said, and he lingered right next to her as she brought the tip of the cue to the solid yellow. They hung over that side of the table together, such that the front of his shirt brushed against her back. She could feel his hips within range of hers, and yet he never brushed up against her.

She extended her left arm out and cradled the tip of the cue between her fingers.

“Yeah, just like that,” he said right into her ear. “Now just tap it.”

She did, and that yellow ball rolled over to the corner pocket.

“That was excellent,” he remarked as he stood upright and rounded their corner of the table for the second one up. He lingered close to her with each of her shots, while she watched his face take on a serious expression with each of his.

“Alex, I like—half expect to see you with a cigar hanging out of your mouth,” she confessed at one point, and he stuck out his tongue in disgust at that. In between his shots, he took a swig from the beer bottle.

That first round he hit the eight ball into the far corner, away from the door and in the direction the minibar.

“Do it again?” he offered her.

“Please!”

He pressed a button on the side there and there was a soft grinding noise. All those gentle marble noises caught her ear and all fifteen balls gathered into a glass slot right by their knees, and together, they set them all back onto the green surface. He handed her that black triangle and she brought them all back into that familiar shape right before them.

“Solids and stripes are forever, dear Samantha,” he said in a low voice as he rounded the side of the table and back towards the minibar. As so long as he didn't overdo it, she was sure that he would be fine with another one.

She got that first shot that time around, and she knew that he would have the eight ball in the corner that time.

“You get a scratch with the white cue ball,” she reiterated.

“I'd like to scratch my white balls with the pool cue,” he retorted, which in turn made her giggle. He tapped the cue ball which rolled forward and hit the red stripe right square in the middle. He took a rather large swig of beer that time, and another when she accidentally made that black eight ball fall into one of the holes.

“Aw, damn!” she scoffed.

“It's okay, it's okay,” he assured her as he pushed the button again.

One more time around and she was sure that he had had his fill of beer: she had already barely finished her first one as he took another large swig from the bottle. She peered up at the dimly lit but high ceiling overhead and the sight of fluffy blue and white clouds painted over the tiles.

“I never realized just how much I love this studio,” she remarked once she took a shot. “I like, really love this place.”

“Same here,” he added as he strode over to the other side of the pool table for another shot.

“Remember how kinda dumpy and dingy the hole in the wall was?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said as he took a swig from the bottle. “It was cold in there all the time, too!”

“Right? At least this place has a heater.”

“I mean, Samantha—I could not get warm. Louie couldn't, either! You know it's cold when the guy keeping rhythm and working out more than us can't even keep warm.”

Another shot from him, followed by her.

He took another swig from the bottle.

Three more stayed there in the midst of the table, the black eight ball, the solid blue, and the cue ball. At that point, after what felt like fifty swigs from the beer bottle, he rubbed his eyes and held the pool cue close to his chest.

“You okay?” she asked him as she held onto the cue with both hands.

“Yeah,” he replied, and he swallowed, complete with a tilt of his head. He fluttered his eyelids a bit and then he bowed forward. He extended his arm out before him: his aim seemed a bit more off than before with the cue ball and the solid blue. He let out a low whistle, and then he took a shot. The tip of the stick slipped out and the cue ball spun around about an inch from the solid blue.

He stood upright so she could have a shot at the eight ball in the center hole. He sniffled and rubbed that full tip of his nose.

“Call it a draw?” he asked her and even from across the table, she could see it in his eyes. There was no way he could drive home, or even so much as walk home, especially since he wasn't even twenty one yet. She set the cue down on the edge of the pool table, and she sauntered over to him, complete with a slight sashay to her hips.

“I don't want you to go,” she begged him as she set the pool cue upon the edge of the table.

“It's funny, I—don't want me to go, either,” he replied; he staggered back a bit and leaned back against the wall. He showed her a little grin right before he let out a soft hiccup.

“I wanna—I wanna do something with you,” she sputtered; something had overcome her right then and there. Cliff was gone and Joey was back home in upstate New York recovering from awful. Here she was, face to face with Alex and a bottle of extra hoppy beer.

“When do you guys plan on releasing your new album?” she asked him in a low voice.

“Hopefully the springtime,” he replied as he licked his lips. “That's the hope, anyways. The plan. What we've got in mind for ourselves.”

“Alex,” she started again.

“Huh?”

“How many bottles of beer have you had so far?”

“Just—a couple,” he replied with a hiccup.

“You sure about that? 'Cause—I'm looking over here at the table and I'm counting three.”

He bowed his head and stifled a belch. She chuckled at that. Whenever Joey drank too much, it was obvious that he didn't want to do it. But Alex had let himself loose a little bit, and all for her.

“You know, my boyfriend is away,” she told him. He hiccuped and fluttered his eyelids so as to keep himself awake; she inched closer to him and she could smell the hops on his breath. He raised his eyebrows at her and locked eyes with her.

“And I—like that he's away from here.”

He rested his hand on her shoulder and he stroked her arm. She had nestled up close to him twice and both times he wasn't nearly as willing to get down such as this.

“What're you doing?” she asked him when she felt his hand on her hand.

“If we pick the forbidden fruit together, would you eat it?” he asked her; his speech was slurring a bit.

“Maybe,” she replied as she cozied up right before him: she eyed that prominent Adam's apple and the point of his chin. Maybe it was in fact the alcohol talking but she wondered if his skin really was as soft as it looked. Not even twenty one years old yet and yet something about him warranted something more. He was already loosened up: she could see it in his eyes. That soft look of love, albeit the look on alcohol. But she could sense it between them: all the times Joey let go still hung fresh in memory.

But then he blinked a few times, and his eyelids hooded more and more with each time. He moved in closer to her lips as if he had been waiting this whole entire time to do it. But she lunged away from him.

“Alex,” she stopped him and she put both of her hands on his chest, “—Alex, what're you doing?”

He put his hand on the small of her back and he brought her face closer to hers: those lips within range of her own.

“You tell me,” he said in a husky voice.

“Alex—Alex, please—you're tipsy,” she told him.

“So?”

“You're tipsy!” She gaped at him. She wanted to laugh but she also knew that he was loose. It loosened up Joey when he so felt like it; she could see it in his eyes and in those slightly parted sensual lips.

“Samantha, I—I—I—I—I—I—I—I—I—I got it!” he insisted and he shook his head about: the gray streak fluttered about like a little feather. He breathed hard as if he had just run a whole mile. He then reached up to his shirt collar and unfastened the first two buttons. He showed her his tongue all the while.

“I've always seen booze as a truth serum of sorts,” he explained, “it makes you wanna—do the things you really want to do but couldn't—because—something was holding you back.”

“Like doing it with me?” she teased him; he undid a few more buttons and he showed off his body to her.

“Make love to me,” he begged her in a hushed tone. “Please—make love to me.”

Sam put her arms around his slender waist, still very soft from childhood.

“You're a dirty boy,” she teased him as she brought her mouth closer to his. “You're a dirty, naughty boy—I'm gonna give it to you.”

“You wanna slap my thigh or should I do it?”

“What?” she sputtered.

“You wanna slap my thigh or should I do it?”

Her hand slithered around his hip and her fingers did the trick with a little squeeze.

“I said my thigh,” he insisted.

“I don't care,” she said in a low voice. “You have a nice ass—such a nice little caboose.”

He hunched his shoulders a bit as she squeezed him again. His hands grazed over the small of her back and then underneath her blouse. Those slender fingers rode up her spine and towards the hooks on her bra. They were about to let loose for real in that room. It was all happening so fast.

It was all so spontaneous and so sudden.

“Eight ball in the corner,” he breathed.

“Eight ball right in the corner,” she echoed as she brought her lips to his. They both had had a bit to drink, especially him, and yet she found herself coming so much closer to him than ever. Their walls lowered a bit more right then and there: she kept her hands pressed onto the seat of his jeans but she could feel something right in front of her. She looked down at his body, at his bare skin right there in front of her.

He had been so sensual up to that point: as if he had been seducing her this whole entire time. She scanned his chest and his stomach, all the way down to his waist and the top of his jeans. She reached down and undid that button for him. Slender and very soft.

“Oh, my god—you're such a babe,” she breathed out.

“So are you, my goddess,” he retorted; she lunged for his warm tender body once again.

“You're such a fucking—babe,” she breathed harder into his ear. “You're so hot. You're so hot!”

“So are you!” he moaned out as he let his jeans fall right off of his hips and onto the floor.

He tilted his head back so she could kiss his neck and nibble on his skin a bit. He gritted his teeth and let out a soft little grunt at the sensation. They were both as loose as anything else; it was as if she knew right off base as to what pleased him. Every little nibble there on the base of his neck coaxed a little whimper from his throat. That big strapping strong boy had been made into jelly by the mere feeling of her teeth. Her hands ran down his chest and onto his stomach.

His skin was like silk, the finest she had ever witnessed before. He gasped and then he groaned even louder as she bit down a bit harder on him. He then pushed her out of the way and he darted across the floor to the window there. He yanked it open and leaned right out there.

“Oh, my god,” she blurted out over the sound of his wretching. He spat and then he lifted himself up for a better look over at her.

“I'm sorry, that—that was the booze—that wasn't you, I swear,” he told her. “Ugh.”

He spat once more out the window.

“Would you like some water?” she offered him.

“Yes please,” he groaned in a broken voice; his little body, previously seen as beautiful, began to shudder and shake from the feeling. She hurried over to the minibar for one of the water bottles and she screwed off the cap before she handed it to him.

“Ohhh, god, thank you.” He tipped it back and took a large drink of it. She rubbed his back and looked right into face: his skin had washed out to a soft pale tone but his eyes were clear again.

“You okay?” she asked him as he took another large drink, and then he nodded at her.

“I think so,” he confessed in a low voice. Sam huddled closer to him as he breathed heavy from that feeling within him. He stood there next to her in his underwear and with his shirt still open and loose all around his body. Everyone else was either gone or somewhere else: she had to be there with Alex from that point onward.

“Any other girl gets you, I'm gonna give 'er hell,” she vowed. “You're so perfect, Alex. I'm never gonna let you go.”

“I'm not perfect,” he told her, “I mean, you just saw me right there. I'm far from perfect.”

“But you're perfect to me, though,” she insisted as she kissed the side of his neck. He closed his eyes and smiled at that. “You're more than perfect to me.”

He let out a low whistle and he took yet another drink of water.

“Besides, I thought you saw Joey as perfect,” he pointed out as his voice broke some more.

“I do,” she stated, “but you are, too.”

He polished off the water and then he stepped away from the window and back towards the side of the room for his pants. Sam walked back with him, complete with her arm around his back in order for him to keep his balance. He picked up his jeans and then he hesitated.

“Do you hear that?” he asked her with partially closed eyes.

“Hear what?”

Silence on the other side of the door. But then there was a soft shuffling noise there.

“Is there someone here?” he wondered aloud. Sam adjusted her blouse before she opened the door for them.

Ruben stood there before the sound board with a clipboard rested before him. He lifted his head and his eyes widened behind his glasses at the sight of his daughter with a strange boy.

“Sam!” he greeted her.

“Dad!” Sam exclaimed.

“Mr. Shelley!” Alex blurted out. “Oh, shit—oh my god—”

“What the hell's going on in there?” Ruben demanded. He flashed Alex a dirty look, especially since he had only his jeans on over his legs, and on part of the way. He hoisted up his jeans and almost face planted right into the carpet, but he caught himself on the doorknob of the sound room.

“Who are you?” Ruben demanded as he pressed his hands to his hips.

“Dad, this is Alex,” Sam introduced him; her face grew warm, and warmer than usual as well. She ran her fingers through her dark hair so as to keep it off of the side of her neck and her face.

“Alex—you look like the kind of kid who I would've avoided while growing up because you just look way too old to be with my little girl—what, with those grays up top there.”

Alex swallowed out of nerves but Sam rolled her eyes at that.

“Where have you been, by the way?” she asked him as Alex closed a single button on his top.

“Here in the Bay Area,” he promptly replied.

“Yes, but where exactly?”

“Berkeley and also up in Castro Valley.”

“Castro Valley, where Cliff was from?” Sam was stunned by that. Alex almost lost his balance once more and he stumbled forth onto the sound board, but he caught himself before he could fall head first onto the telephone rested there on the ledge. Ruben frowned at that.

“You alright, son?”

“Yes,” he stammered as he picked himself up off of the floor. “I mean, no. I mean, yes? I mean—”

Ruben sniffed the air behind them.

“I smell hops,” he observed, and then he turned to Sam still with a stern look plastered upon his face. “Have you kids been drinking?”

“I haven't,” Sam replied, and he turned to Alex as he fixed his pants.

“It's—It's really not what it looks like, Mr. Shelley,” he sputtered.

“Well, what does it look like?”

“Um—uh—uh—”

“I will say this, I do appreciate your manners, though, son,” Ruben said as he placed his hands to his hips.

“Just doin' what I can, Mr. Shelley,” Alex replied as he straightened himself into an upright position. He ran his fingers through his dark hair and tried to keep himself still right there before them.

“Dad, we were just having a bit of fun,” Sam explained.

“Samantha!” Alex sputtered.

“What? It's just the truth, Alex. We were having fun.”

“Uh—yeah. There's a—a, uh, billiards table in there.” Ruben peered into the room behind him and then nodded his head at that.

“I'll be right back,” he told them, and then he doubled back out the fron door. Sam and Alex gaped at one another.

“That was close,” he said in a low voice.

“Yeah, I'll say,” she added as she ran her hands over the crown of her head.

“I don't know—I don't know what happened,” he confessed with a bit of a stutter.

“You got taken aback, that's what happened,” she told him, “but if it's any fairness to you at all, though, Alex—I did, too. I want to know how he found us.”

“I do, too!” he exclaimed. “It was really just the weirdest thing for him to show up unannounced like that.”

He stood right there before her with his back to the door frame. Even though he had vomited it all out the window, the look of delirium upon his face and his lazy eyes told her that he was still drunk in the head.

“No one can know about this, though,” she told him in a low whisper. “That you and I were both in there and—doing you know what. No one can know. Not even your parents.”

“No way,” he said with a shake of his head.

“You are my best kept secret after all,” she said as she eyed the base of his neck and the little hickey she had left there for him. “Although, you might wanna do something about—”

“Oh! Oh, damn it.” He buttoned his shirt all the way up but she giggled at the sight of him.

“Hang on a second,” Ruben's voice floated back into the main room there. He gestured to Alex. “You're that kid, Skolnick, right?”

“Yes?” He raised an eyebrow at that, and Ruben snapped his fingers and showed him a smile.

“I thought you looked familiar! I just saw the video for that song 'Over the Wall' literally just last week. You sure are a hard working boy, aren't ya? Mr. Lead Guitarist.”

“Again, I—I try my best, Mr. Shelley,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Anyways, you didn't answer my question, Dad,” Sam recalled, “why are you here?”

“I'm working for the label now,” he announced.

“Our label?” Alex was stunned by that. “Testament's label?”

“Yeah.”

The two of them glanced at one another, bewildered.

“The position opened up right when Sam's mother and I got divorced and I just had to take it up mainly because I love the Bay Area and—I, too, miss Cliff. He was like the son I never got to have. It also pays really well and—” His face softened at the sight of Sam right there in front of him, in her jeans and a blouse, and the fire opal bracelet Chuck gave her and the pendant Joey and Ronnie had given her. “—apparently I get to see my little girl again!”

“So you left the door unlocked,” Alex stated.

“I just went up the street real quick, son,” Ruben told him. “I was coming right back.”

“You still left the door unlocked,” Alex insisted.

“I was coming right back,” Ruben argued, albeit with a straight face. He returned to Sam and his eyes lit up again. “So where are you staying at right now, Sam?”

“Well, he and I just got here from New York City—right now, I've been staying with Mom down on Catalina. I just didn't feel like going back down again.”

“That's a hard trip to do, too,” he remarked. “I mean, I'm preaching to the choir on that, too. Going across the country is already a challenge. You know, I finally found a place in Castro Valley, and I have a spare room, too. You know you're more than welcome to come on over any time you're here in the Bay Area.”

“Yeah, you don't have to stay in a hotel,” Alex pointed out.

“What he said! I'm almost on my lunch break, too. Let me take you out to lunch.” Ruben turned to Alex. “Alex can come along if he so wishes.”

“Oh, that's real kind of you, Mr. Shelley, but—I'm not feeling too good right now. I think I'm gonna go home and lie down. Besides, I want the two of you to have some time together anyway.”

“Hard working kid and he's a gentleman,” Ruben remarked, and then he raised a finger to them. “I'll be right back.” He doubled back to the front door, and then Sam and Alex glimpsed at one another again.

“No one can ever know about us,” she whispered to him, to which he shook his head.

“Not a soul.” She extended a pinky finger to him and he hooked his around it. She gazed into his face as the color washed out again.

“Go have some more water,” she encouraged him in a hushed voice.

“Yeah, I feel like I'm gonna puke again...”

[peantutbutter]

validated parking (fahc/criminal masterminds fic)

summary: You're a Los Santos woman just doing your best to get by.Your day takes a turn for the bizarre when your car gets rear ended by the Vagabond in the county coroner's office parking lot.

word count: 1.5k

notes: 2nd person pov. set during one of the failed attempts during the doomsday heist crimmies part trash.

[ao3 link]

Los Santos is a bitch of a city. It’s crowded, it’s dirty, it’s violent. It’s home. And for all the crime and misery lingering like a storm cloud over the lives of everyone who wasn’t rich or famous, there’s nowhere else you’d rather live. For better or worse, this is your town, and no one can tell you otherwise. That’s the Los Santos way.

You took every opportunity you could while doing your best to avoid the city’s seedy underbelly. It wasn’t that you morally opposed to petty crime — anyone who had anything worth stealing almost certainly fucked someone else over in order to get it — but rather, you just didn’t want to run the risk of getting caught. Nothing destroyed a resume, or college application like being arrested. Or killed. So, you put your nose to the grindstone until it bled and then you kept grinding through the shitty inner city public school system until you were one of the lucky ones who graduated.

You went to college (Go USALS!), graduated with crippling debt and a medical degree, and managed to snag a job working for the Los Santos county coroner’s office. Life still sucks, but you have a job, stable income, an apartment you share with your significant other, and most importantly, your own car.

It’s a shitty little thing. You got the ten-year-old model for cheap, and it came with 150,000 miles on it, but despite the dings in the side and scuffed paint, it’s yours, and yours alone. You affectionately name it Greg and take care of him to the best of your ability. Aside some issues with the coolant, he’s served you well. You love that car more than you can say, and you joke that if anyone stole it, that would be the thing to push you over the edge. Good thing Greg is so dumpy looking, no one would want to steal him.

It’s a typical Monday. You wake up at 7:30, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, take a quick shower before hopping in your car and heading to work. The drive itself is slow and grueling. Accidents on the freeway cause backups, and you sip your coffee as you wait. Traffic inches along at a snail's pace, but by the time the morning radio newscast is finished, you’re back to driving without interruption.

You manage to make it just in time, pulling into your usual space, the middle spot on the front left side of the building. You’ve barely climbed out and locked it when an ambulance screeches into the parking lot. It turns sharply, coming so close you stumble back in shock. You watch in wide-mouthed horror as it rear ends Greg so hard the windows shatter.

The part of your brain that reacts to things like a normal person fights with the part of your brain that was born and raised in Los Santos. Do you run away and get help, or do you run towards the driver and give them a piece of your fucking mind? The Los Santos in you almost wins, but when you look up, lips curled in a snarl to start tearing into the driver, you have a very fast change of heart.

You don���t know what he thinks he’s doing, but the paramedic uniform isn’t fooling anyone. Not when the face paint was still on. For some goddamned reason, the Vagabond, of Fake AH Crew infamy, is sitting behind the wheel of the ambulance looking just as startled as you. You both stare at each other with wide eyes, blinking dumbly in shock. Fuck, if the Vagabond is here, then you need to be literally anywhere else.

You turn on your heel and run, body working on its own accord. The scream you unleash isn’t something you’re proud of, but you just looked the Vagabond square in the eye. He’s killed people for less. If you make it through this, then you’re gonna have a hell of a story.

Heart racing, you duck and hide behind a tree near the building, hoping he’s too busy trying to adjust his parking to pay attention to where you went. Your stomach knots horribly, aching painfully with just coffee to fill it. With trembling hands, you pull out your phone. Not to call the police, but rather to record the whole thing. No one is going to believe you without proof, and you don’t trust the LSPD to find their own asses. The Fakes have killed and evaded the cops for as long as you remember.

You shift behind the trunk, trying to get a decent shot at the parking lot without being seen.

What happens next is entirely baffling.

A purple and orange car pulls into the entrance, and Rimmy Tim (also in paramedic uniform) runs out and joins the Vagabond in the ambulance. He’s in there for only a brief second before both of them emerge. They start racing towards the entrance to the coroner’s office and you have to clap your free hand over your mouth to stifle a gasp. What the hell do they want in there?

But before they reach the doors, they both double back towards the ambulance. You assume they’d forgotten something (guns or knives or some other weapons, probably), and were returning to get them, but Rimmy Tim climbs back in the passenger side. Maybe they’ve been compromised? Maybe they got a sudden call from the Kingpin? You have no fucking clue.

You’re expecting the Vagabond to enter the cab of the ambulance, but instead he wrenches open the passenger door of your car. You have no idea how he managed to rip through the lock like nothing, but he slides in and you almost drop your phone. The Los Santos in you almost wins again at that. Were you not so stupefied by the transpiring events, you very well might have said “fuck it” to your survival instincts in favor of trying to beat the shit out of the Vagabond for stealing your car.

You hear the distinct whooping of sirens approaching. Someone must have called the cops. The suspicious behavior, the face paint, one of the many cars owned by Rimmy Tim at the scene, it doesn’t take a genius to deduce something criminal is afoot.

The Vagabond slides over and exits through the other side of your car and you have no fucking idea why he did that. He dashes around the front of your car and pulls a goddamn gun out of nowhere. The handful of people still in the parking lot let out terrified shrieks at the sight, and you’re equally frightened that he’s going to shoot up your car.

Mercifully, he doesn’t. He runs back to the ambulance and disappears into the cab. It begins to reverse out of the parking spot, and it pulls out of the parking lot, flipping on the sirens just in time to speed away from the arriving cops. You carefully emerge from behind the tree, watching the flashing lights disappear down the road. Someone at the entrance runs up to one of the squad cars and points down the way they went. You make out the faint crackling of a radio, and the squad cars at the tail end of the procession peel off in pursuit.

You begrudgingly give your statement, more concerned about dealing with the damages done to your car. That’s really an expense you don’t need right now. You talk to the tow truckers who come to take away Rimmy Tim’s car to see if they can take your car into a mechanic as well.

By the time you finish talking with the police you’re over an hour late and desperately need a beer, or a cigarette, or something to calm down. You go through the motions of your job for the rest of the morning, vacant look in your eye as you keep replaying the events over and over.

You call your partner just before lunch and by God they’re the light of your life. They take their lunch hour to drive over and eat with you.

The two of you are sitting on the steps of the building with your lunches in your laps. You stare blankly at the empty spaces where your car and the Vagabond’s stolen ambulance had been just a few hours earlier as you stab absently at your salad. “So,” your partner says after a few minutes of chewing in silence. “What the hell happened, exactly?”

Their voice brings you back to the present, and it takes you a moment to process the question. You lick your lips, trying to figure out the best way to explain what happened. “So you know the Vagabond?”

Their eyes go wide and they lean forward. “Yeah,” they say carefully, not entirely sure where this is going.

You actually have to bite back a laugh as you realize just how ridiculous the words coming out of your mouth really are. “I think he almost accidentally stole my car?”

[spotlightsaga]

Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews… Fargo (S03E03) The Law of Non-Contradiction Airdate: May 3, 2017 @fxnetworks @fargo Ratings: 1.169 Million :: 0.36 18-49 Demo Share Score: 9.5/10

**********SPOILERS BELOW**********

A little word of advice… You know, besides the worst cities in America for heartless bastards, bright lights, big skylines, and broken dreams are Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Miami… Never cut checks to a man sitting behind a desk snorting massive rails of cocaine assuring your fate is fame and fortune. The businessman in me, who is still very much learning as I go, understands that this is probably not exactly what one would refer to as ‘business savvy’. Wanna know a secret? I’ve actually watched 'The Law of Non-Contradiction’ three times, not because it struck me as an incredible piece right off the bat, even though I admittedly love every second of it, but because I feel like taking on shows like Fargo, American Crime, American Gods, etc, deserves my full and upmost attention. There are details in the details within those details that sometimes bring you to Point B, and sometimes they lead you to nowhere, but who’s to say that Point B is where you should’ve been heading anyway? Maybe nowhere is exactly where you were supposed to be after all.

My appreciation for 'Fargo’ runs deep, but I don’t just hand out praise just because I expect a series or an episode of that series to be good. A lot of times I’ll watch a show with an impact like Fargo, and I’ll be too tired to truly give it the TLC that it needs. I won’t 'get it’, those are the moments when I know it’s time to turn to a comforting Dick Wolf series, no offense as I love it all and believe that there’s a place for almost anything. With the 'Law of Non-Contradiction’, there’s really not a whole lot going on… In terms of pacing, Fargo is never in a rush to get anywhere. It’s the nuance of the show, and the irony that it plays as straight forward like a doomed, violent pulpy tale where things will turn expected and drastic corners right when they need to, even if that’s exactly what you are expecting… And in this particular story, the main focus is Gloria Burgle. We stay with her on her quest to hunt down a lead that could crack the case of her dear (sorta), grumpily departed step-dad (sorta, as Burgle would say in her best version of 'Minnesota Nice’) Thaddeus Mobley, who she knew her whole life as Ennis Stussy. While Gloria is the obvious epicenter of the episode, she searches for clues in a dumpy part of the 'should-be’ glamorous part of LA, tracing a young, naive Thaddeus Mobley (Thomas Mann - A man I sing high praises of, he’s a keeper) and his tragic tale of lesson learned in and around Studio City.

Young Thaddeus is tricked into signing away his book advances to a slick talking, trashy LA producer, Howard Zimmerman - they even got the name right (Fred Melamed) and his *at the time* sexy sidekick, the young, manipulative, cocaine fueled Vivian Lord (Francesca Eastwood), whose job is to lure him in, keep him put, keep him high, while Zimmerman bleeds him dry with the promises of making one of Young Thaddeus’ books into a major motion picture. While all this is going on, Gloria is in the present navigating the same streets and hotels that Young Thaddeus lost his mind, his dreams, and his faith in human beings… A beautifully sad, perfectly simple, but brutally honest parallel cross-narrative, stained with cocaine, dead-ends, tears, desperate Santa Clauses (yes plural), fear, illumination of a different kind, anxiety, a horrible act of well deserved violence and vomit… A perfectly edited dual-vomiting cut-scene that leads to an accidental clue… The 'Dennis Stussy & Sons’ name barely visible from all the repeat usages and beachings on the back of the inside rim of the toilet, the D faded to almost nothing… Reading 'Ennis Stussy’.

Now, all of this would make for a fantastic tale of 'Fargo’ by itself, but the show decides to add another fork in the narrative’s road… Gloria is reading one of Thaddeus’ novels and it plays throughout the episode like an animated dream, beginning and ending as Gloria sleeps and wakes. A robot roams the world after a crash on a foreign planet, with no master to give it purpose or direction. After surviving millions of years, he sees the fall and rebuilding and falling of humanity, ultimately an invasion, and a group of aliens that beam up the robot and honor him for being the oldest sentient being ever. The only thing the robot says… 'I can help’. He’s told his journey is complete and he is to shut down operations, ending his life with a single switch on the inside of the top of his head. Is this an exercise in futility? Im not sure, it’s nicely weaved in and gives the whole episode an existential punch… Along with a visit to a very old and very disabled Howard Zimmerman (now played by Roger V Burton), of whom a nurse claims that she wasn’t sure on the details but he was involved in a horrible accident that left him unable to walk and speak without the assistance of a wheelchair or a voice-box for the ghastly hole in his throat. Zimmerman gives a compelling speech about 'quantum science’ and being made of particles that roam freely, and every now and then collide into each other. He used to think these collisions meant something, but now… Well, 'don’t let the door hit you on the way out’. All is tied up when the once cocaine-fueled, seductress Vivian Lord, now a down on her luck, regretful diner waitress (Frances Fisher) finally meets with Gloria and tells the story of Young Thaddeus’ Hollywood demise and barbaric reaction. Gloria realizes that none of this is connected to the death of her (sorta) late, step-father and the world keeps turning and moving and atoms & particles continue to collide.

It maybe true that we are but nothing in a vast special construct of rocks and stars and suns and moon… But coincidences are something aren’t they? I mean they ARE really something, they have to be, right? Once upon a time I had traveled from city to city, Midwest to West Coast and back again and again, finding myself stuck in Kansas City. I was cold, almost had a job, but was told I couldn’t work without pants I couldn’t afford. I considered stealing them, but I was a tourist in the ghetto, and couldn’t risk the possible drama. The job and potential to continue to stay in Kansas City faded away, the person I was with locked me out of the roach infested hotel room, the now demolished Cherry Street Inn in The Government District on 9th & Cherry in Downtown KC… Funny, I had a key, but the latch was on. I reached in and grabbed the bag belonging to the person inside and pulled it into the hallway just to set it on fire, Angela Bassett 'Waiting to Exhale’ style… So I was willing to do that, but not steal a pair of black pants I should’ve packed anyway. Human emotion is a strange thing, wouldn’t you say? My stuff was thrown out of the back window, half of it at least. My birth certificate and social security card were kept and sold. It was November and it was cold. A jolly, homeless man of color kept appearing asking me, 'Why ya so down, Ginger Boy?’ I told him my tale and he would point me to where I could food, he’d disappear, he’d show up again when I was close to frostbite and he showed me to a shelter. He’d disappear again and out of nowhere, weeks later, he walked me to a market where I could get fruit and vegetables at night. It sounds crazy but the man would just appear out of nowhere, he never asked for one thing, just directed me to the vital things I needed at that time to stay alive.

Maybe that man was my more assisting and meaningful 'Ray Wise’, you know, '6 flights since Tuesday!’ He was a conversation when Gloria needed it the most, or a comforting glance/buffer at the bar when the scummy LA Cop (or fellow law enforcement agent) was looking for a cheap thrill instead of actually trying to help Gloria on her circular quest. Maybe signs are really sent from some higher power or cosmic entity that is everything science wishes it could explain, like the box Gloria found in her hotel room that switched on and off, green to red… Maybe that box was there to connect Gloria’s dreams to her current reality. Maybe our collisions DO mean something, and maybe they mean nothing at all, or maybe, just maybe they give us exactly what we need. Or maybe when we’re cruel to something helpless and weak one too many times, those collisions of atoms that give the world a tiny spark in its ultimate infinity, dwindle like the end of disappointing sparkler on the 4th of July. Maybe.

[h0ldthiscat]

How To Talk To Your Son

Read it here or on AO3. 

2016. Look in his eyes for the first time in nearly fifteen years. He doesn’t look the way you thought he would. More like Mulder than you anticipated, which is startling. He also looks a little like the dumpy woman fluttering about the porch, still in disbelief that a government helicopter just landed on her front lawn. He looks like her in way that old married couples are indistinguishable from each other, in the way that dogs start to look like their owners. Or is it the owners who start to look like the dogs?

“William?” you ask, even though you know.

“Yeah?” His voice hasn’t dropped yet.

“I’m Agent Scully, I’m going to need you to come with us.”

He looks to the woman on the porch, her colorless brown hair coming loose from its braid. “What is this about?” he asks.

“There’s not much time to explain,” you say, “but there’s a man in this helicopter who’s very sick and we think you might have a certain… element in your genetic makeup that can help him.”

His blue eyes flash--at least those are yours--as he tries to process. Then he says, “Okay.” Just like that, he believes you, and finally you think you understand how Mulder feels, after all these years.

2015. “Just think about it,” Walter says, and you do. You really do.

You have forgotten what it would be like to come home not smelling faintly of antiseptic and bile every day. You and Mulder are friendly. It wouldn’t be terrible to work with him again.

2014. Don’t think about him as much as you used to. Recall less and less the way his tiny fingers seemed curved in a perpetual half-fist, ready to close around anything that came into his path.

You can’t remember anymore whose father you named him after. Yours, Mulder’s, or your son’s own. Well, you could hardly name him Fox. I mean, really.

2013. Do not answer the phone when Mulder calls. Talk to your mother every day, like some sad woman in a book you read once. Silently assess the measure of her. She’s survived everything you have, but she had to watch it happen to her daughter. It’s worse, somehow, to see your suffering through your mother’s eyes. Guiltily, remember how long you waited to tell her about the cancer.

“I thought it would just go away,” you say one night on the phone in your new apartment, your mother an arm’s length away in Bethesda. “That if I didn’t tell you it wouldn’t be real.” Don’t tell her how you pictured it shriveling up like a grape and becoming a raisin and one day sneezing it out into a tissue, curling your lip at the dark mass in your mucus, and then tossing it into the trash.

“Dana, dear, you’re a doctor. You know that’s not how it works.”

She is the only person who calls you Dana anymore. You asked everyone at work to call you by your last name years ago. Tell them you’re used to it. They comply, except for one intern who calls you “Doctor D.” For some reason, it doesn’t bother you.

Huff: “I know that’s not how it works, Mom.”

She suggests, not for the first time, that you get a cat. You try to laugh it off even though the thought grips you with a cold hand and makes your stomach roil. To get a cat would be admitting defeat and you are not there yet. Quickly think of a reason you have to go and wish her good night with a smile in your voice.

Answer the phone without looking two minutes later when it rings again, assuming it’s her. Start to apologize for your quick sign off. Realize it’s Mulder. Grip the phone with both hands like you used to when a phone was big enough to hold with two hands. Listen to each other breathing for a while.

Say his name, Mulder, like an invocation. When you worked together you learned that many demons can be summoned by the mere utterance of their name at a certain time of day under specific conditions. Allegedly. Feel as if you are summoning him now. Say it’s nice to hear his voice, because it is.

Meet up for coffee two days later and enjoy yourself.

2012. Leave. Take his picture, nothing else.

2011. Feel as if the world is coming to an end when the internet connection goes out one night at the house. Mulder hems and haws, fiddling with the router. He’s emerged from his study. He can’t hole up and scour the deep web without an internet connection, of course.

Say: “It’ll probably be back in an hour or so. You know reception is spotty up here.”

Lounge on the couch with a book for the first time in ages. Notice the swell of your breasts beneath your tanktop and feel incredibly sexual all of a sudden. Stand and take off all your clothes, chilly in the breeze from the open window. Feel like a different person, the kind of woman with a name like Jacquelyn or Isobel with an o. Go to the front room, where the router is. Pose behind him in the doorway and say something ridiculous like, “Why don’t you quit working on that and come to work on me.”

He looks up and says, “Come on, Scully, quit messing around and help me with this.”

Wipe your eyes with the backs of your hands and put your clothes back on. Announce you are going back to the hospital, there is something you forgot to do and it’s got to get done before morning.

Stay there for three or four days until you spill coffee on both your extra sets of scrubs and can’t justify going out to buy new ones. Say you’re sorry and almost mean it when Mulder clutches you and says he was so worried.

Then why didn’t you call me? Don’t say that.

2010. Go to a support group for parents who no longer have children. That’s how they word it, a carefully constructed aphorism because no one wants to say they’re dead. No one wants to talk about tiny faces caked in pallid makeup, every indentation on their lips outlined, little boys buried in their boy scout uniforms, girls in their first communion dresses.

You and Mulder worked a case once--somewhere in the midwest--where a series of graves were upturned and their clothes stolen. Men, women, and children thrown haphazardly back into their padded box-beds in various states of decomposition. Local law enforcement had found a ripped piece of a communion veil on a tree. You touched it without gloves on because you needed to know what it felt like. Soft, impossibly soft, more precious than the top of his head with his swirl of dark hair like his father’s.

Dana, would you like to share today, the group leader asks. You say no thank you and get yourself another cup of coffee. You are jittery on the drive home. When you pull up in the driveway, all the lights are turned out. In the living room, pick up a pillow and scream into it until it feels like your throat bleeds.

2008. After the snowiest winter you can remember (although your memory’s not so good these days), go somewhere warm. Bermuda. Puerto Rico. Belize. Hawaii. The week before, stand in dressing rooms at the mall and tilt your head at your reflection in the mirror. Is that you? Is that what you look like? She’s not so bad, you suppose. Turn profile and admire the curve of your ass. Push your breasts together, then apart.

Decide you have aged well. Buy a long, flowing coverup. “Forget” to pack it.

2006. You begin to write him letters, advice for primary school and how to talk to kids who seem mean. How to do taxes and establish a line of credit. The lyrics to a Dionne Warwick song. You never send them. They live in a box in the guest room. You paint it a bearable sort of green and during a fight you accidentally refer to it as “William’s room.” Mulder just sort of stares at you, stunned.

2005. Buy a house. Pay in cash. Pick out furniture at Pottery Barn and Pier One. Think that things are finally looking up. Knock on wood. Lay between sheets you finally own again and think blissfully, I could get used to this.

You do not.

2004. Toast miserably to nothing on election night.

“Four more years,” Mulder intones sarcastically.

Snap at him, “What do you have to be miserable about? You can’t even vote.”

2003. On his second birthday, stare at a stain on the hotel wall while Mulder takes you from behind, his hands like vice grips on your waist. Let him finish quickly and sloppily kiss your shoulder and then go to the bathroom to clean up. Think about finishing yourself off. Slide your hand between your legs and realize you don’t feel like you used to. For years you were the only one who knew yourself, but it’s different now.

2001. Split in two with the weight of him, the size. When Monica wipes the sweat from your brow and tells you you’re doing great, you’re doing wonderfully, Dana, joke: he has broad shoulders like his father. Do not scream where the hell is Mulder, even though you want to. Breathe the way you’ve been taught, the way they do in movies and the way you did on a yoga mat in that studio above an Indian restaurant on K Street, imagining this moment in a hospital bed and not some shantytown near the thirty-third parallel.

Wonder why John has that terrible accent if he was born here, where they drawl their r’s and their e’s sound like i’s. Try to scream. The pain is a bubble in your throat and you want to bite something, want to push your shoulders back and together until your arms snap off and you dissolve into stardust. But you don’t, and neither does he, all eight pounds nine ounces of him, wailing into the darkness in late spring.

He is perfect.

2000. Feel him growing inside of you. He is the size of banana, your obstetrician tells you. Hate how people always liken fetuses to fruit. Why not little animals or the shipping boxes at the post office? Your baby would fit in a standard large overnight envelope, the kind with the accordion sides. You’ll take it? Lovely. And how will you be paying today?

1997. Nod somberly at the diagnosis and wonder how to tell your mother that you won’t be giving her any grandchildren.

[foolgobi65]

finn, the last son of krypton

so theres this photo set for a superman au where finn is clark and rey is lois and i cant stop thinking about it so heres kind of a bare bones (still too fucking long) way of how it could work out. this is like ... part one.. because its too fucking long and strange and its 3:30 am 

first, since its got aliens and i needed a way to give luke the ~legend~ status he’s got in canon, i figured he could have telekinesis 

maybe there’s a mutation, and some humans develop powers. anakin skywalker is turned by senator palpatine, who seizes power in a coup, turns public opinion against mutants and uses darth vader to purge anyone with powers

there is no empire, really. there is a State of Emergency, and certain aspects of the constitution are rewritten. term limits, are taken out. 

luke and leia are born and split apart. bail organa is a senator from washington maybe, raises leia who can feel people’s emotional state (useful, for when she becomes a spy and later general of the underground resistance. until luke tells her, she thinks its just intuition) 

luke is a fighter pilot, whose big victory is when he gets in a (smuggled) plane and shoots down a nuclear bomb right before it hits san francisco

they say he saved a million lives that day, and so he can’t understand how he could have failed ben. how all that power couldnt save his students when he most needed it. 

han solo is still a smuggler, but since there never really is a war, he just ends up aiding the shadowy rebellion. 

leia runs for congress, then for senate, taking her father’s old seat. sometimes, she misses the rebellion 

she declines to run for reelection when the first order starts making some noise. she is appointed director of the cia. 

which brings us to the first order! people who are still afraid of mutants and what their freedom might mean, an extremist organization driven underground that is seeking to make its ugly return

there’s an underground bunker full of scientists trying to figure out how to self induce the mutations, in order to create an army of complacent, superpowered warriors to protect them and attack their enemies. 

so, now that that’s out of the way, imagine a universe where the last son of krypton doesn’t crash in smallville, where he isn’t taken in by the kents. 

where maybe he crashes outside that first order bunker, and two scientists come out and find a spaceship, and a child inside

they look at each other and once theyve gone past their first thought (aliens!!) they wonder at his genetic code

the first order runs tests, but they don’t see evidence of the normal superpower mutations. in fact, the alien child seems to be fairly weak compared to normal human children of the same age

(always knew we were strongest, they mutter, smirking.) 

the first two scientists, who happen to be married and like the look of the baby’s face decide to keep it (him). to raise him, because they didn’t think they could ever have children of their own

it’s all fun and games until he turns 10

at age 10, the boy who was once kal-el begins to develop powers beyond imagine. 

one day he can see through bodies, trees, buildings. another, he can hear the bees buzzing in a field five miles away. he tears the car door off its hinges

his previously “loving” parents, freak the fuck out. 

immediately, he’s taken to the underground bunker that before he had only known of as his parents’ workplace. he is tied up and tested on

he is more powerful than any mutant, and he has been allowed to grow up as an individual for too long to be controlled.

they try their best anyways. 

his parents tell him he’s disgusting, that he’s terrifying, that he’s a monster. they tell him he is unworthy of love. 

at some point they realize that he needs the sun, and so they take it away. he spends the rest of his time with the first order inside the bunker where they test him, torture him, break him. 

he grows to be afraid of what he can do, believe that he is too powerful to exist. that he should be dead, but continues to breathe only due to the benevolence of the first order

(they’re trying to crack his genetics again, and use the information in the spaceship he arrived in. they can’t understand kryptonian, so its slow going.) 

years later, commander poe dameron, intelligence operative and get away driver extraordinaire sneaks into the bunker trying to figure out what they’re doing, is captured but somehow escapes with the person the first order brands as FN-2187 (only people get to have names) 

anyways they escape in a dumpy ass truck, and when poe asks his new buddy what his name is, he replies “i dont know” 

he carefully doesnt think about how his parents once called him clark. he doesn’t get to be clark 

“imma call you finn, then” finn smiles. 

eventually, they stop at a safe spot and poe asks finn if he’ll come with him. finn, who doesn’t know anything except that he is a weapon, doomed to destroy all good things, says no

(poe is the first good thing he’s known since Before) 

he runs. 

finn has a 5th grade education, but Before, he used to be sickly and spent a lot of time in the library. he walks into one and begins to read. 

for a few months, this is all he does -- somehow the powers have affected his cognition so he can read and understand more and better than anyone in the world. he befriends the local librarian, who thinks he dropped out of school young and wants to help get him back on track

she shows him the nearest homeless shelter, which is where he sleeps. she brings him two meals a day that they eat together as she helps him learn math and science and history and literature 

behind his back, she informs someone about this genius, troubled boy she knows, and when someone comes to the library and tells finn that he’s special, he runs again

this time, he decides to run to mexico, because he wants to learn more. he works and lives and learns, and without knowing or understanding he grows strong. one day, he makes a mistake and misjudges his strength, revealing himself. he runs again

over time finn begins to learn control, mainly because he’s so afraid. he travels from place to place and realizes how Good people are, how dangerous he could be to them. he falls in love for the first time, with humanity. he lives in the anxiety that one day he might accidentally become the monster the first order insisted he was. 

eventually, he gains enough control that he realizes he could use his abilities to help, even though he knows he shouldn’t. even if he didn’t hurt anyone, finn knows that they would only react in disgust, anyways. 

he whispers this to himself everyday, that he can’t he shouldn’t he wont, but in the end, he does. he helps, and then he runs (again and again) 

at some point, he learns to fly. it becomes the only one of his powers that he enjoys, that isn’t touched by the fear.

(its FLYING) 

but at the same time, he learns -- he lives, and smiles and loves but most importantly, he listens. finn’s got a way about him that make people want to open up, and so they do. people tell him their stories while he sits on their stoops, and he begins to write them down because he wants to remember. he keeps a journal. 

one of these stories is so fantastic that he sends his write up to a local newspaper, just so someone can please interview indira she’s so freaking amazing and he wants everyone to know!

instead, they ask finn if he’ll just do it himself. finn begins freelance reporting, talking to people in the places he runs to and sending write ups to the local english language paper. he falls in love a second time, now with his chosen profession. 

someone, somewhere tells finn to find home. that he needs to stop running and set up roots. they tell him to find a big city with lots of people he can write about and stay. to try, at least. 

finn, skeptical, agrees, but only because yakov glared really hard and said he wanted weekly postcards and expected them from the same location for at least 6 months. 

finn doesnt know why this was effective, only that it was. yakov’s 15 grandchildren do. 

so finn decides to maybe stop running, and figures metropolis is as good as any place to try. he sends his portfolio to the daily planet because that was one of the newspapers he used to read in that library After. its one of the papers he’s kept up with over all these years.  

on his first day he bumps into daily planet star reporter rey, a known crusader for justice and one time winner of the pulitzer prize. 

she’s partnered with him for his first story and doesn’t like it until they clear their first scrape. it’s only when she decides to trust him that she smiles

and when she smiles, finn feels something weird, a type of warmth even greater than that first moment he soaked in the sun’s rays. 

this, he realizes later, is the beginning of how he falls in love a third time. 

at the time, its the moment he decides to stay. 

[geekade]

Legion of Spoilers - Chapter 2

“Well, we know where we’re going, but we don’t know where we’ve been….”

“We find your powers, we see your triggers. But what matters most: We make you whole.”

Accompanied by a voiceover that suggests this may already be a memory, David and his rescue team arrive at the impossibly lovely institute Dr. Bird runs to teach people like him and Syd to understand and master their powers. Noah Hawley has hinted that Legion takes place in an alternate universe, and Summerland appears to be this world’s School for Gifted Children, with Dr. Bird as its Professor X. By way of introduction she explains to David that humanity has begun to evolve, and that the government maintains “divisions” dedicated to tracking and studying people with superhuman abilities. Her people rescued him from Division Three. Bird goes on to explain that David’s “symptoms” are evidence not of mental illness but of telepathy and possibly telekinesis. She teaches him how to “turn down the volume” on the thoughts he’s been hearing all his life and promises that tomorrow the “memory work” will begin.

“Memory work” turns out to consist of revisiting actual memories in a plexiglass shed equipped with a kind of analog telepathic LAN table. David is accompanied by Dr. Bird and Ptonomy as the latter shepherds them through a series of memories that can’t seem to go long before turning odd, sinister, or outright frightening. The series continues to tease out the events that preceded David’s institutionalization and begins to expand on his childhood. David and Amy (and an adorably dumpy beagle) shared what appears to have been a happy rural youth, and his memories of her and their mother seem untainted. But a strangeness permeates recollections of his father, whose face is hidden in shadow. And whether he is reading a bedtime story about a matricidal boy or driving them out for some late-night stargazing, young David seems to regard his father with rather more awe – or fear – than anything resembling the ease he shows with Amy or his mother.

Legion’s characteristic quick cuts also give us glimpses of David’s life shortly before Clockworks, which in this episode alternated between counterproductive sessions with the ill-fated Dr. Poole and attempts to self-medicate. With Poole, as with Kissinger and Bird, David is uneasy and evasive, ducking questions with halting, clumsy deflections which may or may not include actual time jumps. He’s much more at ease with Lenny, whose friendship predated their concurrent hospitalizations. In this episode’s flashback she greets David after one of his appointments astride a stolen stove. They wheel it to The Greek (Eddie Jemison), and Lenny convinces him to accept the stove in exchange for a vial of blue liquid. A creepy amphibian humidifier transforms this liquid into the Vapor. As Lenny settles into her high, muttering “Red leather, yellow leather,” David looks over and sees her briefly replaced (possessed? transformed?) by the Devil with Yellow Eyes.

This time viewers move through David’s memories with Ptonomy and Dr. Bird, whose experience of them is as disjointed and disorienting as ours. Flummoxed by the tangle of his past, Dr. Bird arranges for David to undergo a neural scan to map his memories. The scan – an alt-universe MRI apparently assembled with spare parts from the Fallout universe – instead reveals a large amygdala and a pattern of neural activity that doesn’t correlate with typical memory recall. This activity culminates in a spike that sends Cary Loudermilk scurrying from the control room, leaving David trapped in the machine while the Devil with Yellow Eyes comes close enough to touch him. In his panic David teleports the entire machine out into the yard.

The neural activity spike Cary witnessed was David non-corporeally projecting himself to the source of the voice he’d heard calling him. It belonged to Amy, who was spelling his name for a recalcitrant administrator doggedly denying he’d ever been a patient at Clockworks. Amy seems to hear David call her name, but he’s powerless to intervene as The Eye finds her. Syd talks David out of his intended one-man rescue mission, promising that they’ll be better equipped to help once David has a grasp of his powers. That’s no comfort to Amy, who ends this episode in a grimy, decrepit room facing The Eye and an aquarium-like box filled with inky, eel-like slitherers.

Legion’s second chapter is preoccupied with wholeness. It’s a core tenet of Summerland, where Dr. Bird promises to make David whole by reconnecting him with the power everyone else wrote off as a dangerous delusion. By assimilating the events and emotions that accompanied its appearance, Bird believes all her charges can master their powers. (It remains to be seen, however, whether this mastery itself is Summerland’s ultimate goal; Ptonomy alludes to David’s possible value in the war but does not elaborate.) Ptonomy is trying to assemble David’s memories into something recognizably linear and coherent. Amy is tracking him down to make their family whole again. And Syd and David continue to build a romance out of the few intimacies possible when physical contact is out of the question.

David resists the call to wholeness, constrained by fear and circumstance. He lacks the resources and ability to confront The Eye and save Amy, and his power is just as likely to accidentally injure her as it is to take out Division Three. He has bifurcated his consciousness to avoid the Devil with Yellow Eyes: No matter how many times Ptonomy replays David’s time-jump memory glitches, there’s a greater-than-zero chance no single timeline exists to be reassembled. And however positive and well-intentioned it may be, Dr. Bird’s insistence that David has experienced no delusions, only unacknowledged manifestations of his powers, contains a terrifying implication: If Dr. Bird is right, the Devil with Yellow Eyes is real. David can no longer write off the apparition as a mere hallucination, and even Syd finds it difficult to speak of the creature she glimpsed while her consciousness was in David’s body. Fortunately, this does nothing to impede their nascent romance, whose incompleteness may be its security. Pieces are manageable, but anything still in one piece is just moments away from being shattered.

QUOTES

·       “The human race is beginning to evolve.”

·       “Why is it blue?” “It’s always blue.”

·       “How do I know they won’t kill her?” “Because she’s bait.”

ODDS & ENDS

·       David is munching on a Twizzler when he emerges from Dr. Poole’s office, the same candy he stole from Lenny last episode to flirt with Syd. In spite of this possible evidence to the contrary, I refuse to believe Lenny is just in his head.

·       Lenny proposes a heist on Dr. Poole’s office, perhaps foreshadowing the unfortunate event referenced by Dr. Kissinger?

·       When David and Lenny do the Vapor, there’s a birdcage in the living room. In later scenes the bird and the cage are missing.

·       In rather disappointing news, The World's Angriest Boy in the World is not a real book. Thepassage we hear is a great (if chilling) riff on how warped and violent children's stories can be.

·       “Snik-snak” is equal parts Wolverine and Vorpal Sword and my new favorite onomatopoeia.

·       Both Cary Loudermilk’s computer and daughter share the name Kerry. (Paging Indiana Jones.)

·       Thanks to his astronomer dad, David can casually name-check Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Boötes, Canis Major, Lupus, and Telescopia, and they talk to him.

·       I’ll start calling them mutants when the show does.

·       The lyrics sung over the opening scene are from The Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere,” whose video shares a certain aesthetic sensibility with Legion. Surreal animations, nested images, and time jumps play over a man who never stops running. David Byrne described the song as “a resigned, even joyful look at doom.”

FAN THEORIES, or WHAT THE HELL I THINK IS GOING ON

·       I was wrong about Syd being unreal and I may be wrong about Lenny being real. Whoops.

·       I’m much less confident this week about the significance of colors, although I continue to believe they indicate something, even if that turns out to be nothing more than Hawley adopting the comic book convention of a single outfit and/or signature shades.

·       Nevertheless, this week’s Colorwatch: That weird bird in David's vapor flashback was colored almost identically to the Clockworks orderlies’ uniforms. In both past and present tense Amy is wearing pastels, suggesting a childlike innocence or vulnerability. Summerland is dominated by fresh green, white light, and pale wood, with the exception of the sleeping quarters and lab. Dr. Bird dresses in neutral tones of cream, ivory, and beige. David's father's pickup is red and white, the same vivid red that recurred throughout the previous episode. As David ages through childhood, his clothes progress from primary colors to mostly yellow, perhaps alluding to the Devil’s imminent appearance. The stove Lenny steals is orange, a shade similar to the scarf Syd always wears. Lenny wears olive green, red, and black, and settles into her Vapor high muttering “Red leather, yellow leather.” Finally, while Chapter 1 dealt primarily in solids and the occasional stripe, Chapter 2 has introduced more complex patterns and textures, as the plot thickens and David begins to grapple with the complexity of his situation.