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kingexpl0sionmurder · 5 years ago

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An Accidental Series Of Fortunate Events - Kaminari Denki - Smut

Author: @kingexpl0sionmurder Rating: NSFW 18+ Pairing: Kaminari Denki / F!Reader Words: 6,000 Warnings: Swearing, unprotected sex in an uncomfortable place (aka a vehicle), Denki is an idiot, I make a thinly veiled jab at The Walking Dead cause fuck that show, I was inspired after watching Zombieland, Kirishima with dark hair because who has time to bleach and dye when there are zombies running around?

AN: Another collab piece for the BNHarem server! This month’s theme is Apocalypse, and I got a chance to try my hand at Denki this time around. I think it came out pretty good! Shout outs to my pals @unbreakablekiribaku and @420bakubaby for your encouragement, and to all my loves over in WAP, you know who you are! <3

Check out the rest of the pieces in this collab HERE My Masterlist Buy me a Ko-Fi? ------

Denki sighed, adjusting his backpack as he trudged along the highway. It had been months since the disease had ravaged the country, a plague that no one had foreseen taking the lives of nearly every person in Japan.

He assumed he couldn’t be the only survivor, but he’d yet to see anything that told him otherwise. He didn’t even really understand how he could still be among the living if he was being honest. Denki’s life had always seemed like an accidental series of fortunate events. He got by on sheer luck. He couldn’t help but feel like he wasn’t supposed to be here.

He had tried to search for his friends with the panic hit. The chaos, the recently deceased coming back to life and hungry for humans, the whole thing seemed like something out of a terrible movie or a graphic novel turned TV show that was way too long and drawn out. The only person he’d managed to get a hold of was Sero, and their call had been cut short when the towers had gone down. And that had happened right after the entire city had lost power.

Being a pro hero, he went out into the streets to try and help, attempting to get people to safety and fighting those...things? Zombies? It felt so surreal to even say, even though he had experienced it first hand, watched as the man he saw at the convenience store around the corner from his apartment every morning full-on sprinted at the lady who always walked her Shiba Inu down to the park on Saturdays and ripped her throat out with his teeth.

Shuddering at the memory, he weaved around an abandoned car in the road, peering cautiously into the front seat to make sure that no one was hiding inside and hungry for flesh.

He kept a mental list now of things he had to do, rules he’d made for himself to keep surviving. Double-checking his surroundings was one of them. So when he heard the sound of tires on pavement, the revving of an engine from somewhere behind him, he was prepared, quick to run behind a car that was resting on its side, pressing himself against the undercarriage and listening closely.

Unless the walking dead was able to drive, he finally had an answer as to whether or not he was the last one alive. The question was, was this person going to be a friend or foe?

He heard the engine start to quiet, the sound of the vehicle slowing just beyond where he hid, and braced himself, his first unclenching as lightning coursed along his palms. He chanced a glance over the side of the car when he heard the transmission shift into park, and the sound of the truck door creaking open. What he saw nearly took his breath away.

You were standing on the road, a sawed-off shotgun in hand, your hair tied back and away from your face. Your tattered tank top was streaked in dirt and dried blood, your legs in dark jeans that were tucked into black combat boots. You were beautiful, and you were staring right at him, the gun pointed in his direction.

He ducked back down, his breathing ragged as he tried to figure out what to do now. Did he attack? Did he try to talk to you?

“Hey, Blondie! You gonna hide back there or come out and face me?”

He went rigid, eyes wide. Time to turn on the old Denki charm. He stood, breathing deeply and schooling his features, turning to face you. “Hey, sweet cheeks, what brings you to a place like this?”

You blinked at him, your mouth in a straight line, and he felt his confidence waver. “What does it look like? Just trying to survive. Are you an idiot or something?”

“Hey, no reason to be so harsh, babe. I’m just doing the same as you.” He cocked his hip out and rested his hand on it, shooting you a wink. “I was beginning to think I was alone out here.”

Your eyes drifted away from him and scanned the road, the sound of birds in the distance the only other sign of life. “You’re alone?”

“Course I am. What about you?” He didn’t dare move, trying to keep from staring down the barrel pointed at him. You were just a few feet away, and one pull on the trigger would blow him to pieces.

“There are others. I’m just on a supply run.” You were studying him, looking thoughtful. “Why aren’t you armed?”

He raised a hand, letting the electricity flow down his arm so you could see. “I’m always armed, angel.”

Rolling your eyes, you nodded. “Nice quirk.” You looked impressed, and he couldn’t help but preen a little. Your gun lowered slightly and he felt himself start to relax. “You got a name, blonde?”

“You can call me Kaminari.” He let his hand fall, chancing a step forward. “I don’t mean any harm. Like you said, I’m just trying not to die. Could you maybe put the gun down?”

“Nervous?” Smirking, you lowered the weapon, and he heaved a sigh of relief. “Alright, Kaminari. Why don’t you come with me? You hungry?”

“Starving.” He slumped a bit, finally feeling like you weren’t going to kill him. “I had some jerky for breakfast this morning but it wasn’t great.”

“Tch.” God, you sounded like Bakugou when you made that noise, and it made him miss his explosive friend. “I’ll bring you back to meet the others. If they decide they like you, maybe you could stay with us. We might be able to use that quirk of yours.” You turned back towards the truck you’d arrived in, making to get inside. “No promises, though.”

Denki hesitated for half a second. What if the others you were with didn’t like him? He knew he could be a pain in the ass sometimes. Ultimately he decided to go with you. If your group didn’t like him he could just continue on by himself.

Hurrying around the car, he shrugged off his backpack, opening the door and sliding into the passenger seat beside you. “Hey, you didn’t tell me your name, doll.”

He watched as you settled into the seat, pulling the seat belt across your chest and buckling it. Your eyes met his and you shot him a smile that made his chest tight. “It’s Y/N.”

The car ride back was mostly silent. He was itching to ask you things, the chatterbox in him just wanting to burst forth and talk at you for hours. It had been difficult, being alone, since he’d always been such a social butterfly. When all you had to talk to was yourself for months on end, things could get kind of boring.

However, he didn’t want to scare you off or make you think he was some kind of weirdo, so he stayed mostly silent. He did ask where you were from originally, and about the others you were with, but your answers were short and lacking in detail, and he didn’t want to pry.

“Didn’t you say you were on a supply run?” His eyes were trained on the road ahead, keeping a lookout for the lumbering undead.

“Yeah, I hit up a drug store in the next town over.” You gestured to the back seat. “Medicine and bandages, bottled water, and some canned food. We only take what we need at the moment. We never know how long we’re going to be in one place, so we try to keep it light.”

“That makes sense.” From what he gathered, your group wasn’t large. There were only about 5 of you, so he assumed it was easier for you not to have a large number of things to carry around with you.

“Yeah, we’ve found a house in an abandoned neighborhood to stay in for now. We spent a few days combing through the houses in it, and it looks like the area has been empty for a while.” Your fingers tapped on the steering wheel as you turned the car and took an exit ramp off the highway. “I’m kind of hoping we can stay for a while. It’s nice to sleep on a mattress, and it’s got running water.”

“Oh man, a shower sounds so freaking nice.” Leaning back against the seat, he glanced over at you. “It’s hard when you’re on your own, there’s no one to watch your back.” He shivered when he pictured trying to shower and being attacked by a zombie while he was butt ass naked. “Even going to the bathroom is a risk.”

Snorting, you made a right turn and scrunched your nose. “Imagine dying with your pants around your ankles?”

“My literal worst nightmare.” You both burst into a fit of giggles, and Denki felt the awkward tension in the car ease a bit.

You started pointing out landmarks and abandoned stores. “We’re thinking this was one of the first neighborhoods to evacuate when things got bad. The houses are upscale, so we think they might have been tipped off early. Kind of sucks that the rest of us weren’t prepared at all compared to them.”

Nodding, Denki agreed. “It was absolute chaos in Musutafu. I was on the streets trying to help and just watching people rip each other apart. I’ve never seen anything more terrifying in my life.”

“You’re from Musutafu? So are a few of the people in my group.”

Denki watched out the window as you turned down a side road, the remains of a gated communities’ security booth on your left. The door looked like it had been blown off its hinges, and the windows all around it had been smashed. “Did you check the whole neighborhood?”

“Yeah, we started at one end and searched through all the houses. We were mostly looking for survivors, but we didn’t find anyone.”

You followed the main road as he gazed at the abandoned mini-mansions. Tall grass swayed on every lawn, an obvious tell that it had been some time since there had been any landscaping done. Denki tried to picture what this neighborhood would have looked like before disaster struck, picturesque, with luxury cars in the driveways and well-manicured lawns, kids playing in the street, housewives lounging by their in-ground pools. It was jarring to think it would probably never look that way again.

You pulled the truck into the driveway of a large house at the end of the road, stopping in front of a closed gate. The tall fence connected to it wrapped around the property as far as he could see, and he could just make out a low man-made rock wall just beyond it, like someone had busted up giant slabs of concrete and stacked them all the way around, just to reinforce the fence. He had a feeling that was something that your group had constructed.

“Before we go in, I just want you to know, our self-proclaimed leader can be kind of a dickhead.” You moved to take off your seat belt and shot him a look. “He’s smart as fuck though and he helps protect us, so he’s not all bad. Just keep your head down and don’t provoke him and you’ll be fine.”

“Sounds like someone I used to know. I can handle it, don’t worry.” He cracked his knuckles and grinned at you. “I’m a pro at dealing with dudes like that.”

Eyes rolling, you shook your head. “It’s your funeral.” You got out of the truck and moved to the fence, using a key from your back pocket on the padlock keeping it shut. Denki unbuckled his seat belt and slid into the driver’s seat, watching as you pushed on the gate and walked it forward, clearing the way. Denki drove the truck forward far enough so that you could close the lock the gate behind you. He made to move back over but was surprised when you climbed into the passenger seat. “Just keep going up, we’ll park in the garage.”

He followed your instructions, creeping up the driveway and towards the house, his foot pressing on the break when he noticed the pathway to the garage was blocked.

“Or not.” You sighed. “Just stop here.”

Denki put the truck in park, eyebrows furrowed as he took in the scene before him. There was a car up on cinder blocks, blocking the entrance to the garage. Someone was lying underneath it, their jean-clad legs and black boots the only part of them he could see. He shut the car off and handed you the keys, sliding out of the car when you did.

“E, you’re blocking my spot.” You called, rounding the truck. “Come help me with this stuff and meet the new guy I found.”

“Sorry, Y/N. I’m trying to get this thing to run for us. I didn’t expect to still be working on it when you got back but I’m having trouble.” That voice was familiar, and Denki’s lungs seized in his chest. “Wait, did you say new guy?”

He watched as the man shuffled himself from under the car and stood, his hair long and dark, with red at the tips. Red eyes, pointy teeth. Eijirou Kirishima.

“Kiri?” Pain bloomed through his chest like his heart had stopped beating. He never thought he’d see any of his friends ever again, but here he was, one of his best bros in the entire world.

Kirishima looked up at him, a million emotions flitting across his face before it split into the blinding smile he was used to seeing on his friend’s face. “Denki?”

Denki launched himself at his friend, throwing his arms around him, relief flooding through his entire body. Kirishima picked him up, laughing and hugging him tightly. “Holy shit.” They stayed that way longer than necessary, swaying back and forth and mumbling into each other’s shoulders.

“Thought you were dead, dude. What the fuck?” Red Riot finally put him down, rubbing at his eyes and sniffling,

“I’m a bad bitch, they can’t kill me.” Chuckling wetly, he slapped his friend on the shoulder. “What, you give up on the box dye now that the world is ending?”

“I missed you, dude.” Kiri sighed, choosing to ignore the jab and reaching up to muss Denki’s hair.

“So...do you guys know each other?” Your voice broke them from their reunion.

He had almost forgotten you were standing there. Kiri seemed to be in the same boat. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, Y/N. We’ve known each other since we were 15. Went to UA together.”

“Does that mean-” You started, but Kirishima cut you off.

“Oh my god.” He turned to look at Denki and grinned, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting towards the house. “HEY, SERO?!”

Denki knew he was going to cry for real now. His best friend was alive. The one person that he had been wishing to see this entire time was here, and Denki was going to get to see him again, all thanks to you. If he hadn’t run into you on the highway, this never would have happened. Swallowing thickly, trying to keep his emotions in check, he blinked up at Kirishima. “Sero is here?”

“Bakugou and Mina, too.” His formally red-haired friend turned towards the front door and threw an arm around Denki’s shoulders as they waited for the rest of the group to arrive. “The Bakusquad is back together.”

It had been so long since Denki had felt this relaxed. He’d showered and had a hot meal, and now he was lounging on a couch pressed up against Hanta Sero, his best friend. Kirishima and Bakugou were on the opposite couch, leaning against each other. Even though Bakugou had his normal stoic expression on his face, Denki knew he was happy.

Mina was at his feet, chattering on and telling you about UA, and how Denki used to go stupid when he used his quirk too much. Her story came complete with her shooting a thumbs up, crossing her eyes and crying WHEEEEYYY, which had Sero and Kirishima in tears of laughter. Bakugou even cracked a smile, and Denki kind of wanted the floor to swallow him up.

“Hey, do you need to tell her that, Mina?” He kicked his foot out, toes connecting with her back.

“Aw, are you embarrassed, Kami?” Teasing him, she poked his shin, before turning her gaze back to you. “Last I remember, our little Chargebolt here was in the top 20, so I’d say he’s got a handle on his quirk now.”

Denki felt his ears get hot, and he chanced a glance over at you, blushing even harder when you smiled at him. He’d only known you for a few hours and he was already smitten. Sure, it had been a while since he’d had any human contact, and it was hard to jerk it when you were fearing for your life at every moment. So it was only natural that he wanted to catch the attention of the prettiest girl he’d laid eyes on in months, right?

Sero pulled him up not long after, pushing him from the room and out the back sliding door. He leaned against the railing on the wooden patio, his neck craned so he could look up at the sky, and Denki settled beside him, mirroring his posture.

“I can’t believe we found you, man.”

Huffing a breath, Denki nodded. “Yeah, I know. I thought everyone I knew was dead. When we got cut off, I went out to help and figured I’d run into you, but shit was so crazy and I just...I don’t know. I wasn’t ready for that, dude. I became a hero to help people, not kill zombies. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I had to take their lives, even though it was clear that their humanity was gone, you know?”

Humming, Sero bumped their shoulders. “I get you. It’s fine. We all had to wrestle with that. It was hard for all of us.” Sighing, he gripped the railing and hoisted himself up to sit on it, swinging his feet. “The four of us were together, so we decided to stick that way and headed out of the city. We tried to find you, and I was looking for Shinsou too but, we didn’t want to stick around too long.”

A comfortable silence washed over the two of them before Sero continued.

“We found Y/N not long after that, holed up in a convenience store, wielding a shotgun like a champ. She’s badass.” Sero let out a low whistle. “Man, she gave Bakugou the business as soon as he opened his mouth to snark at her. I’ve never seen him shut up so fast. Even Kiri can’t get him to be quiet like that. That’s when we decided to join up with her.”

Denki snorted a laugh, leaning back on his elbows and looking at his friend. “She pointed that thing straight at me and I panicked and called her like 6 different pet names.”

“You’re lucky you’re alive, Kami. She must like you.”

It had been two weeks since Denki had met you on that deserted highway, and you’d reunited him with his friends. Bakugou had been talking about moving on for a few days, but the rest of the group seemed to be comfortable and happy in the house, so he hadn’t been pressing the issue much.

There hadn’t been one attack since Denki had arrived, and from what Mina had told him, they’d only seen a few of the undead since they’d found the place, so no one seemed to be too bothered by it. It still left him feeling uneasy, so used to having to be on alert at all times.

That was the least of his worries when he got to spend time with you, however.

He’d become your official partner when you went on your supply runs, under the guise of keeping you company in the truck when you ventured out into the world. He really just wanted to spend time with you and get to know you better. You had opened up to him more once you realized he was trustworthy, his friendship with the rest of the group enough to prove that to you.

The crush that he had developed on you that first day just seemed to grow more as time went on. He was in too deep, and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself. In any normal circumstances, you would be completely out of his league, so he knew he had to take this opportunity while it was in front of him.

He really did like you, situation aside. If he wasn’t constantly holed up with you in that house, or that truck, watching your back as you raided abandoned pharmacies and big-box stores for food and clothing and medicine, spending most of his waking moments in your company, he still would have grown fond of you in the way he had. It might have taken longer, but when every day could possibly be your last, there was no reason to pussyfoot around.

Unless your name was Denki Kaminari and you were a goddamn coward.

He was tired of hearing Mina and Sero complain that he was being a pussy, and that he should just make a move. He knew they were right, but there was this little voice in the back of his head that kept repeating the “what if’s”. What if you didn’t like him and you left the group because things got too weird? What if you did like him and he got nervous and fucked shit up? He needed to get out of his own head and just...do something.

He didn’t expect that you were going to beat him to it.

“So,” you said, one hand on the steering wheel and your other elbow leaning against the door as you drove, the window cracked enough to let the breeze blow your hair around. “Are you ever going to kiss me, or are we just going to play this waiting game forever?”

Denki choked on his own spit, sputtering and coughing. “I’m sorry, what?”

Shaking your head, you paused, and he assumed you were waiting for him to stop wheezing. “I mean, am I reading this wrong? You’re into me, right?”

Pushing his hair back from his forehead (which you had generously cut for him the day before), he chanced a glance over at you, steeling himself. ‘Well, yeah, ever since you pointed a gun at me and almost made me wet myself.”

You snorted, rolling your eyes. “Don’t be a wuss, Denki.”

“I love it when you insult me, baby.” Wiggling his eyebrows, he licked his lips. “So, what? You’ve been waiting for me?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I didn’t want things to be weird, but I knew I couldn’t be wrong. I see the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.” Biting your lip, you turned to look at him for a moment. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since you shot me finger guns and called me babe.”

Rubbing at the back of his neck nervously, he hummed. “Most of the time that scares women away. Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with you?”

“We’re all a little crazy, I guess. I think that’s why we’ve survived this long.” Your smile was contagious, and he couldn’t help but grin back, his arm moving across the center console, his hand open and palm up.

You adjusted your grip on the wheel to the other hand, reaching out with your right and letting your fingers slot between his. He squeezed your hand, his eyes fixed out the windshield as you took the familiar highway back towards the house.

The ride back was comfortably silent, your fingers intertwined the whole way. Denki’s heart was pounding against his ribcage as he tried to think of what to do or say next. You, however, had other ideas.

You turned onto the main road that led into the once gated community. He furrowed his brows, confused when you make a left down an unfamiliar street. The houses here were just as abandoned, all of their front doors marked with a spray painted red x.

“We marked them after we went through the houses, so we would remember where we’d already checked. It took us about a week to get through the entire neighborhood.” You explained, somehow knowing what he was thinking.

The road ended in a cul-de-sac, and you pulled the truck around in a circle until it was facing the exit, letting go of his hand so you could shift it into park and turn off the engine. He watched as you unbuckled your seat belt and shifted the seat back away from the steering wheel, his lungs seizing as you climbed over the center console and into his lap.

“Not that I’m complaining, but-” He hands moved to grip your waist and keep you steady as your straddled him, your knees on either side of his hips.

“I’m going to get my kiss, and I’m not going to do it in that house with the rest of those idiots around.” Your hand moved to his hip, fingers pressing the release on his seat belt. He let go of you long enough to pull the offending nylon belt off of him, the sound of the metal slapping against the door as it sprung back into place nearly startling him out of his skin.

“Yes ma’am.” Swallowing thickly, he pushed a piece of your hair away from your face and tucked it behind your ear.

The next few moments were in slow motion, eyes fluttering shut, and chests pressing together as you moved closer. His palm slid to cup the side of your neck, your head tilting slightly as your lips finally met.

It took Denki every ounce of control he had not to let his quirk discharge when he finally got to taste your lips. It was everything he’d been hoping for and more. You tasted like the Dr.Pepper you’d gotten when you’d stopped at the pharmacy, and he could smell the scent of your shampoo now that he was close enough. He was addicted almost instantly.

Your lips were soft and pillowy, and he pressed you closer, wanting more. The feel of your hands on his shoulders, nails raking down the front of his t-shirt, and the quiet moan that left you when his right hand squeezed your hip was almost his undoing, but he held on. He would take this at whatever pace you wanted. You were in control.

You pulled away, gasping for air, your nose brushing against his and breath mingling. “You okay?” It was probably a stupid question, but he had to ask. If you felt anything like he did, then you were doing just fine.

“Mmm.” His sentiments exactly. Your tongue darted out to wet your lips, a smile gracing them. “I kind of want more. Is it too soon? Maybe.”

“Well,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ve been telling myself for weeks that we could all die tomorrow, and that I shouldn’t be scared and just go for it, so if that’s what you need to hear…”

“Yep, that’s what I needed.” Blinking at him and biting your lip, your hips ground down against his, the sound of his groan filling the truck. “Fuck it, right? You only live once, and all that shit.”

“Fuck, yes. Bless up, Drake.” He let his hands dip under the hem of your t-shirt, the calloused pads of his fingers sliding over your soft skin.

You sat back and ripped your shirt over your head so suddenly he wasn’t prepared for the movement, and he grabbed your waist again to steady you. “I’ve waited too damn long, Denki. Please, I need you, okay?”

Nodding, he swallowed down his nerves, wanting to show you how much he needed you, too. “You got it, princess. Whatever you want.”

“Shirt off. Pants, too.”

As hot as the moment was, the next few minutes were filled with a lot of giggling and awkward movements as you both tried to undress in the passenger seat of the truck. Denki had the advantage because he was still sitting in the seat, and he just needed to pull his pants and boxers down around his thighs.

You, on the other hand, had your ass pressed against the windshield as you pulled off your boots and tried to tug your skinny jeans down your legs. He tried to help as best he could, keeping you upright and tugging on the denim one-handed until you were able to step out of them. Black lace panties followed, and then you were back on his lap, your mouth pressed to his as your hand wrapped around his aching cock.

Breathless and still laughing, he moaned as your tongues battled for dominance, his hands roaming up and down your sides as you tugged on his hair. Warm fingers moved between the apex of your thighs, dipping through your folds, causing you to break the kiss, throwing your head back. Denki took the opportunity to mouth at your neck, teeth grazing along your skin, biting and sucking marks into your flesh. He inserted one finger inside of you, groaning as your body squeezed around the digit. You were warm and so wet, and he imagined what it would feel like, your muscles clenching down around his cock when he was buried inside of you.

He timed the thrusting of his fingers with the slow drag of your hand around his cock, your moans filling his ears as you rocked back against his hand. He inserted a second finger, scissoring them and stretching you out, taking his time to prepare you. He wanted this to be good, but with the way you felt around him, the way your body felt pressed against him, and the noises you were making, he wasn’t sure how long he was going to last.

Thumb rubbing against your clit, he added a third finger, the lewd squelching noises coming from your cunt enough to make his eyes roll back. You were chanting his name in his ear, your forehead pressed against his shoulder as your body rolled against him, your strokes losing momentum. He couldn’t wait any longer.

Pulling his hand from you slowly, he lifted you to sit back a little, adjusting himself and guiding you back towards him. You raised up on your knees, hands on his shoulders to steady yourself, cheeks flushed and lips swollen from biting down on them. You looked so beautiful, and he thanked whoever it was that put him right here in this moment with you.

You smiled at him, and he heard your shaky intake of breath as you lined yourself up and sunk down on his cock. You moaned in tandem, your nails biting into his skin as your grip tightened, hips stilling as he bottomed out inside of you. Denki was grateful for the cracked windows because the breeze that blew through the car felt nice against his burning skin, the beads of sweat dripping down his temple turning cold, and making him shiver.

The realization that even though the windows were cracked open, there was no one around to hear the two of you. Grinning, he thought of all the ways he could make you scream once you were ready for him to move, and he couldn’t wait to hear you cry out his name.

You didn’t keep him waiting long, your cunt squeezing around him was all the indication he needed to start moving. Holding onto your hips tightly, he bucked up into you, reveling in the way you moaned, his toes curling as your hips ground down in sync with his.

Your body welcomed him in with little resistance, gripping his cock, the warm and wet slide as he plunged in and out of you making him dizzy. He focused his attention on unclasping your bra with one hand, pulling it down your arms and letting your breasts spill free from their confines, his head ducking down and his mouth immediately latching onto your hardened nipple.

Your moaning became louder, pussy clenching around him like a vice, unintelligible babbles spilling from your lips as he sucked, teeth grazing the hardened bud, his other hand massaging your other breast.

“Denki, Denki...please. Fuck, I need to come, please.”

Grunting in response, he let your nipple go with a pop, back straightening as he sat up. His fingers brushed along your cheek, turning you to face him properly, his thumb pulling on your bottom lip. “Need to come already, Y/N?”

“Yes, fuck, feels so good, Denki. Please.” Your tongue darted out to lick the pad of his thumb and he shivered again. He could feel the blood in his body traveling south, the wrecked look on your face as you bucked down against him driving him to the edge.

He used his now spit slicked thumb to rub against your clit in tight circles as he slammed into you, teeth nipping on your earlobe as he rasped in your ear. “God, fuck, come for me Y/N. Come on my cock, baby.”

Later on, he would tease you and tell you that even though you were a few blocks away, he wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of your group didn’t hear the noise you made when you reached your end. Your entire body locked up, trembling violently, the cry of his name that left your lips throwing him over the edge as well. He buried his face in your shoulder, his arms wrapping around you as his cock twitched, filling you with thick ropes of cum. It was so much that he felt it leaking out of you as you slumped together to catch your breath, even though he was still inside you.

After a while you sat back a little, peering at him with your face still flushed, tears clinging to your lashes.

“You alright?” He brushed the wetness away with his thumb, biting his lip as he gazed at you fondly.

Nodding, you pushed your hair back from your face, a small smile on your lips. “I’m great. That was perfect. God, why did you wait so long, Denki?”

Rolling his eyes, he leaned forward to kiss you softly. “Good things come to those who wait and all that, you know?”

“Okay, but you were just scared I’d reject you, weren’t you?” You pinched his arm playfully, giggling at him when he winced and rubbed at the red mark you’d left.

“Maybe, but it was worth the wait, wasn’t it?”

“You could say that.” Reaching up to pat down his mussed up hair, you fixed him with a serious look. “At least if I die tomorrow, I’ll know I was given the best dicking down I’ve ever received, and that it was from a top 20 pro hero to boot.”

“You just want me for my hero status, babe. Admit it.” He grinned, tickling your side.

“You caught me, Chargebolt. Now, let’s get cleaned up and get back before Bakugou comes looking for us and finds out we fucked in here. He’s going to be so pissed.”

“Let him be pissed.” Denki wrapped his arms around you and pulled you back to him, his lips finding yours again.

And for a few moments, he forgot that the world was ending and that the two of you could be ripped apart in seconds by hungry flesh-eating zombies

You were another accidental fortunate event that he’d stumbled into, and if that’s all that his life was meant to be full of, well, he didn’t mind it at all.

#kaminari denki #kaminari denki x reader #bnha x reader #bnharem collab #kaminari denki smut #mha x reader #mha smut #mha #bnha smut #bnha #kingexpl0sionmurder writes #denki kaminari #denki kaminari x reader #denki kaminari smut

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collectorscorner · 4 years ago

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Marvel’s Black Widow: MCU Easter Eggs and References Guide

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains Black Widow spoilers. We have a spoiler-free review here.

The MCU is finally back on the big screen! Marvel’s Black Widow was supposed to be the official kickoff of Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but then the pandemic happened, it got bounced around the release calendar, and Disney managed to release three MCU TV shows before Natasha got to take her curtain call on the big screen.

But that’s thankfully behind us, and Black Widow delivers terrific blockbuster action in the mighty Marvel manner. And you know what that means! Let’s try and spot all the cool MCU references and Marvel Comics Easter eggs in Black Widow.

The Prologue

Setting this prologue in 1995 gives us the approximate age of Natasha. If she’s supposed to be about 11 or 12 here, that conveniently makes the character the same age as Scarlett Johannsson, who was born in 1984.

The general premise of Natasha’s childhood, in which she was the daughter of two Russian spies is highly similar to that of the FX series The Americans.

This seems to be the late summer of 1995, which puts it roughly around when Captain Marvel was taking place (the official word on that is 1995, but little details in it, like Stan Lee reading a Mallrats screenplay could place it in 1994).

Young Natasha is played by Ever Anderson – the daughter of actress Milla Jovovich and Event Horizon director Paul W. S. Anderson. You will not be able to unsee her resemblance to Milla.

The first song choice in the movie is young Yelena’s fixation on Don McLean’s fixation on “American Pie,” a song about (among other things) the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson. That being said, “American Pie” is about a larger loss of innocence, a theme that weighs heavily throughout this film.

Before Alexei turns the radio off to play “American Pie”, the station is set to 105.1 FM. This is WQXK, a country station based in Salem, Ohio that serves the Youngstown market. Natasha and Yelena’s American home is likely based in Eastern Ohio.

There’s an episode of DuckTales playing on TV in the background while they have dinner. We can’t tell what episode it is, but DuckTales ruled, and the new series was even better. And hey, we get some payoff later in the movie when they play an aircraft crash for laughs while having everyone just casually walk it off.

Alexei was working undercover in the US at the North Institute, which he burned to the ground before making his escape. In Black Widow Vol 3 #1, Natasha decided to retire to Arizona but she and other Red Room victims were hounded by the North Institute. Spurred to investigate the situation, Natasha returned to Russia where she discovered much of the terrible truth behind her past Red Room manipulation. This was a story that also featured Yelena (and Daredevil, believe it or not).

There’s definitely an early SHIELD logo on the trucks chasing the family to the very end there.

The plane number is 258. In Incredible Hulk #258, we get the first appearance of the Soviet Super-Soldiers (later named the Winter Guard), a communist superhero team created for the sake of rivaling the Avengers. The original lineup was Ursa Major (more on him in a minute), Darkstar, Vanguard, and the fifth Crimson Dynamo (more on this, too). Over time, Red Guardian joined their ranks, though it was Josef Petkus and not Alexei Shostakov.

This is a perfect cold open, the kind that James Bond movies excelled at, and it’s far from the only Bond parallel we’ll get in the film.

The Opening Credits

There’s all kinds of stuff happening in the opening credits, including the film’s villain Dreykov being inserted into photos with various world leaders, including President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and others. The Red Room’s influence knows no national boundaries, it seems.

The overall effect is to imply that Dreykov and the Widows have been putting their fingers on the scale for quite some time.

It’s also a nice touch that many of the “news broadcasts” we see here are from MCU staple WHIH.

There’s a shot of some vials with blue liquid, which allude to the Red Room’s attempt to create Captain America-esque super soldiers, which they succeeded with to some degree with the Red Guardian, but also makes us wonder if they tried enhancing any earlier Widows.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

The opening credits are set to a version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Malia J. You may have heard her covers of Seal’s “Crazy” and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” in trailers for shows like Bloodlines and The Handmaid’s Tale.

We wrote more about the Black Widow version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” here.

When Does Black Widow Take Place?

This movie takes place in 2016, shortly after the events of Captain America: Civil War. General “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt) is here to remind us all that Natasha is still in trouble with the government.

What’s kind of neat about this is that it’s the first Marvel “prequel” that feels like it is designed to be watched in its chronological sequence (minus that post-credits scene, of course). Captain America: The First Avenger makes more sense as a flashback interlude between Thor and The Avengers, while Captain Marvel makes more sense as a breather between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. But Black Widow feels like it should be watched right after Civil War.

Thunderbolt Ross

Natasha brings up Ross having his second triple bypass. In Captain America: Civil War, Ross talks about how he had his first heart attack while playing golf and it gave him perspective and convinced him to retire from the US Army. It seems chasing down Cap’s allies hasn’t been so good for his health.

Red Guardian

We know that Alexei has been active as Red Guardian since at least 1983 or 1984 based on the tales of fighting Captain America he tells while in jail. He was apparently sent to the USA for undercover work in 1992, and then imprisoned a few years after their 1995 escape back to Russia.

Red Guardian’s knuckle tattoos say “Karl Marx” which is kind of adorable but…shouldn’t they be in Cyrillic/Russian characters and not Latin/English? Is this to troll his capitalist opponents so they can read them as he beats their asses?

Red says he fought Captain America in 1983 or 1984. The simplest explanation is that he’s lying but…what if he isn’t?

Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he’s telling the truth and there really was yet another secret Captain America active in the ‘80s. Now that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is done, we know that there was at least one “replacement Cap” and the comics indicate there were others. Or maybe it’s just Steve in the timestream…maybe we’ll find out one day, but we wrote much more about some possibilities for this here.

Ursa

Red Guardian breaks the arm of a man named Ursa… Ursa Major (Mikhail Ursus) is the name of another Russian superhero in Marvel Comics, whose mutant power caused him to turn into a literal talking bear. He became a staple member of the Soviet Super Soldiers/Winter Guard along with a Red Guardian. While the movie doesn’t depict him like the comics, Red Guardian does joke about him being a bear.

Taskmaster

This is a very different version of Taskmaster than the one we got in the comics. Marvel Comics Taskmaster has “photographic reflexes” and is a man named Anthony Masters. Here, in addition to the new gender (Dreykov’s daughter is named “Antonia” as a nod to the comics character), Taskmaster is cybernetically enhanced to make those “photographic reflexes a little easier.

There is precedent for a female Taskmaster. The series Deadpool MAX reimagined Deadpool in a cynical, dark, and very adult (albeit absurd and humorous) way. This lent itself to Deadpool-adjacent characters. Taskmaster was depicted as a woman roughly in her ‘50s who trained Deadpool and warped his mind.

There’s also Finesse, a member of Avengers Academy, whose powers are so similar to Taskmaster that she believes him to be her biological father. Unfortunately, due to memory problems, Taskmaster doesn’t know for sure and refuses to offer any DNA to find out the answer.

In the course of Taskmaster’s action scenes, we see her mimic a number of Marvel heroes, with a particular focus on those who played a part in the recent (by this movie’s timeline) Captain America: Civil War including Hawkeye, Captain America, Black Panther, and even Natasha.

We have more on Taskmaster here.

Who is Mason?

Rick Mason first appeared in his own 1989 graphic novel called Rick Mason: The Agent. Mason was a SHIELD agent mostly remembered for being the son of Phineas Mason, the Tinkerer. Granted, the Tinkerer we saw in Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t nearly old enough to be Rick’s father in the movies and he looks nothing like him, so I wouldn’t expect any secret connection.

In the comics, Rick was practically forgotten about and killed off-panel. His son was one of the victims of Nitro’s explosion in Stamford, Connecticut from the beginning of the Marvel Comics version of Civil War.

Melina Vostokoff

The Melina Vostokoff of the MCU is pretty different from the one in Marvel Comics (who created by Ralph Macchio and George Perez in 1983). There, she was known as (we shit you not) Iron Maiden, and she was at least a former Widow-esque agent as she is here in the film.

Yelena Belova

Yelena and Natasha’s first meeting being over a bio-weapon/agent is very faintly similar to Yelena’s proper introduction in the comics, a 1999 Black Widow comics story where they were explicitly fighting over a bioweapon, not a “mind control antidote” as we see in this film.

The “face swap” trick that Natasha and Melina pull in the film’s final act also has the faintest of echoes of another early Yelena story, where Natasha “swapped faces” with Yelena to try and break her mind and get her on the side of the angels.

What Happened in Budapest?

“You and I remember Budapest very differently,” Clint Barton famously told Natasha in The Avengers during the Battle of New York. But now we know what went down…

Basically, Taskmaster’s origin story is tied to Natasha’s superhero origin. To fully defect from the Red Room and go to work for SHIELD, Natasha had to assassinate Dreykov…which meant the collateral damage of Antonia.

Of course, that led to Clint and Nat getting hounded by Red Room agents, which led to them hiding out for days together.

And before that, they were in that safe house apartment that was currently occupied by Yelena, hence the arrow damage to the walls.

Crimson Dynamo

Yelena (probably on purpose) refers to Alexei’s superheroic days as when he was “the Crimson Dynamo.” Sure, this is cute, but there really was a Crimson Dynamo in Marvel Comics! Crimson Dynamo is primarily an Iron Man villain, lots of different Russian agents have worn the Crimson Dynamo armor. It…didn’t end well for any of them.

The original Crimson Dynamo was Anton Vanko, otherwise known as the old man dying in the beginning of Iron Man 2. Although his son was known as Whiplash, Ivan Vanko was more of a cross between Whiplash and Crimson Dynamo. In the comics, “Ivan” was an alias Anton used.

We’re gonna choose to believe that Yelena isn’t just making this name up and that the Russians really did have an armored hero called the Crimson Dynamo, and if we’re lucky we’ll get to see him in a flashback of some future MCU project. After all, there’s that Armor Wars series on the way…

Also, there’s one thing that Crimson Dynamo has over the Red Guardian: he was immortalized in the lyrics of a song by a member of The Beatles. Paul McCartney and Wings have a tune called “Magneto and Titanium Man” which involves “a robbery” where “the Crimson Dynamo came along for the ride.” It’s great, and it’s on Wings Venus & Mars album.

Thor

Yelena’s line about how a “god from space” doesn’t “need to take an ibuprofen” after a fight is kinda priceless.

Mutants in the MCU

Dreykov tells Natasha that they were searching for the “genetic potential in infants.” Sure, this could mean anything like how athletic someone might grow up to be, but is there a chance they could also have been searching for a mysterious x-factor in a baby’s DNA?

James Bond

Natasha is watching one of the lesser-regarded Bond flicks, Moonraker. Of course, she still knows every word.

Dreykov gets a classic “Bond villain monologue” wherein a baddie spells out his plans for world domination before a hero who he surely thinks is either neutralized or could be swayed to their cause.

Antonia/Taskmaster is a Bond Girl! Olga Kurylenko played Camille Montes, a Bolivian agent with a vendetta in Quantum of Solace.

Remnants of the Red Room

Black Widow was written by Eric Pearson, who also wrote Thor: Ragnarok.

So… Natasha probably couldn’t taste that peanut butter and jelly sandwich from Endgame, right? That’s too bad.

It doesn’t seem that “Fanny Longbottom” is a thing from Marvel Comics, but as Mason points out it is most certainly a real name. Also, Yelena’s dog in the post-credits scene is named “Fanny.”

We get an explanation for Natasha’s blonde look in Infinity War here, as Mason gave her the hair dye. But the way it’s presented here feels slightly like a sisterly tribute to Yelena, which is really sweet.

Natasha makes a crack about “the cavalry” as Ross’ troops close in, but folks hoping that’s an Agents of SHIELD reference are probably going to be sorely disappointed.

Dreykov’s pheromone trick that he has implanted in the Widows (and Natasha in particular) leads to this scene playing out like when RoboCop tries to arrest Dick Jones in the classic 1987 film.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Natasha tells Dreykov with a smirk after getting him to monologue his evil plans. This is as close as we get to a Black Widow catchphrase – she also ended a veiled interrogation with Loki using the exact same words in The Avengers.

The Post-Credits Scene

Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) is back after her appearances in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. If we had to hazard a guess, she’s putting together a team of “Dark Avengers” or “Thunderbolts” for the MCU.

Florence Pugh is indeed confirmed to appear in the upcoming Disney+ Hawkeye series, as well.

We went into much more detail about what the post-credits scene means for the future of the MCU right here.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Marvel’s Black Widow: MCU Easter Eggs and References Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

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ryanmeft · 5 years ago

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Movie Review: Joker

The Joker is ubiquitous in pop culture, possibly second only to his nemesis. If there is a Batman-adjacent project, the Joker will show up at some point, and often be the most memorable element. That’s held true for portrayals by Cesar Romero, Mark Hamill, Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger. Joaquin Phoenix’s turn in the role takes a different tack and makes the villain the central character. It does not make him the hero, and that is an important distinction. Todd Phillips’ film walks a thin line between exploration of the character and adoration of him, and manages to stay upright.

There will, of course, be debate about that, a thing which in and of itself speaks to the unique creature the film is: can you imagine walking out of Avengers and debating anything other than which moments were the most fan-pleasing? I did that after Endgame, and was, on a superficial level, satisfied. Joker is aiming for a more cerebral level. There were times I could see the point and times I could not. That alone is noteworthy. I can’t imagine feeling philosophically conflicted about most superhero films. Is it possible I am giving it bonus credit simply for having thoughts in a typically thoughtless genre? Entirely possible.

One thing I noted is that when the credits roll, Phoenix is not credited as the Joker, but as Arthur Fleck. Fleck is a clown-for-hire who dreams of being a stand-up comedian, but keeps the lights on, barely, for himself and his mother by spinning sale signs or cheering up sick children. We meet him as he is mugged by a group of teenagers for no reason; they break the sign he is twirling, and his boss insists he stole it. His life is a series of such incidents, a pattern of trusting the world will do the right thing and finding it won’t. You sense that, deep down, he knows this. He reacts to each new disappointment not with shock or anger but with simple, resigned acceptance.

His life is one of quiet drudgery leading inevitably to a pauper’s grave, and it is dominated by his mother, played by Frances Conroy, who I have personally not seen since she was owning the brilliant Six Feet Under. We meet her here as a defeated old woman, gazing lovingly at TV interviews being given by Mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) whose attitude toward the poor is derived from the real-world remarks of many right-wing politicians mixed with the savior-ism of the left. She worked for him, years ago, and is convinced he will answer her letters and lift her and her son out of poverty. This is one of several places where the film breaks with society’s stereotypes of the down-and-out: Fleck lives with his mother and does his best to care for her despite his own limitations, and the situation is not seen as especially pathetic. Another is that Fleck is regularly single, but being unlucky in love isn’t a significant contribution to his transformation; a brief relationship with a single mother (Zazie Beets) ends sadly but is not greatly important to his fall.

That transformation is played out slowly, and there’s no one moment that allows us to go “A-ha! This is it!” He discovers things about his true parentage, and then discovers there may be even more secrets to those secrets. He learns his mother may not be all there, and is keeping things from him. A moment is needed to highlight Conroy, who must shift her persona a couple of times during the film. We’ve all likely known an older woman who is oddly obsessed with something she’s seen on television; it has become a cliche, and most cliches have some basis in fact. Conroy feels sympathetic, and yet when we learn she may be unstable and possibly abusive, we also believe it; there is more than one person in her.

The film’s world views are not what Outrage Culture decided ahead of time that they would be. Prior to the film’s release, there were those who watched the trailer and decided it was glorifying sexist societal outcasts and the acts of violence they sometimes carry out. If you go into the movie expecting it to be that, you can probably find evidence of it. For myself, I don’t subscribe to the notion of deciding what a film I have not seen is and is not. I’ve seen it now, and as with almost every film that addresses mental illness in any way, there are things it does well and things it does less well. The slow transmutation of a simple sad sack into a mad anarchist is movie-plausible, if not real-life-plausible. Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver use some convenient shortcuts to let us know how close to the line Arthur is. He’s on seven medications and asks for more; more crazy, of course, requires more pills. He is gaunt and skeletal, with Phoenix losing a lot of weight for the role, to the point where his joints seem misplaced; another shorthand, as you rarely see a character who is both mentally ill and has any meat on their bones. There’s still a basic idea that external forces are needed to produce a real breakdown; the idea it can just simply happen, due to imagined events or to nothing at all, is simply too opaque for a visual medium to capture. The drama concerning Fleck’s parentage veers just this side of soap opera, but rights itself in the end. This is set against a backdrop of economic unrest, and the eventual furor the Joker stirs up resembles Occupy Wall Street on steroids.

What the film gets right is the way most people who end up suffering from a damaged mind get that way not because of one bad day---the cause Joker famously attributes his origin to in Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel The Killing Joke---but because of the slow accumulation of wounds that by themselves would not be serious, or would not be serious to someone with a different brain. The most tone-deaf criticism I have heard is that the things that happen to Fleck are not realistic; that they are contrived simply to make him sympathetic. If someone believes that people are not casually cruel for no reason, I would venture to say they have lived a charmed life. As someone who has spent time in both retail wars and the vastly overhyped halls of many a Comic Convention, I didn’t find anything people did to Fleck to be beyond belief. Robert De Niro plays a late night host who mocks Fleck’s botched attempt at stand-up to score cheap laughs of his own, and that of course is found everywhere. It is, for instance, easy to write a negative review by personally attacking the people involved. The film is not denying that some people are just horrible. Rather, it is saying that maybe, just maybe, the casual cruelty and anger that is so easy to find doesn’t help. We are also, of course, not meant to sympathize with the path Fleck takes, but to recognize that when people are monstrous, they create monsters.

There are criticisms that can be leveled at Joker, and since this is a positive review, I obviously disagree with most of them. Yet one stands out: the idea that the movie glorifies a murderer. There are ample movies and TV shows picturing the common fantasy of not taking it anymore, in which good guys kill anyone and everyone who looks at them funny while obliterating huge parts of the world around them. People die at the hands of heroes for doing their jobs on the regular, and how many innocent bystanders do so when Iron Man rips through downtown New York? Those movies reduce such sequences to cartoons, so we may go away satisfied and empty-headed. The greatest perspective trick movies often pull is not any camera wizardry, but in convincing us that psychopathic mass murderers are heroes. Will Joker start a new wave in film of Watchmen-like introspection on the reality of worlds full of colorful people with powers? Certainly not; we like our candy too much. Yet I will continue to dream of a Batman film in which the question asked is not why Joker kills, but why Batman keeps letting him escape to do it.

Verdict: Recommended

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

You can follow Ryan's reviews on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/ryanmeftmovies/

Or his tweets here:

https://twitter.com/RyanmEft

All images are property of the people what own the movie.

#joker #Joaquin Phoenix #batman #heath ledger #movies #frances conroy #jack nicholson #mark hamill #cesar romero #todd phillips #brett cullen #DC comics #zazie beetz

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iffeelscouldkill · 5 years ago

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Adjusting [Part 3: Campbell]

A/N: It liiiives! Here is a long overdue Chapter 3. As compensation for the wait, this chapter is longer than the other two chapters put together :D

I originally drafted this chapter some time ago, but then once I started serialising the fic on AO3, decided that I wanted to rework the middle part. I wound up redrafting most of it over the past few months, and it was a bit of a slog at times, but I'm much, much happier with the final result. A big big thank you once again goes to my wonderfully encouraging beta @dragonsthough101, and to @whelvenwings for writing with me and listening to my Fic Woe and helping me fix That One Section that I was struggling with!

A heads up that this chapter contains some quite heavy conversations about wartime under an oppressive regime, loss and regret. There are no graphic descriptions of violence, just a lot of fairly grim introspection. It probably goes without saying, but I'm not a military veteran myself, so I based all of this on the podcast canon and my own imagination.

Please take care of yourselves, and I hope you all enjoy 💜

---

Summary: It turns out that there isn’t a blueprint for quitting your job, turning your back on the organisation that you’d built your life around, committing treason and abandoning your friends and family to go travel across the galaxy with a band of wanted criminals. Fortunately, RJ now knows some people who have been there.

Or: Five times that RJ McCabe shares a late-night drink with someone on the Iris 2.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Read on AO3

---

About three weeks on from the Iris’ flight from New Jupiter, Sana calls a crew meeting. It isn’t their first by any means, but until now, crew meetings have either been about the division of chores or about pooling information to convey to the resistance movement. This one is different.

“We’re making another stop-off,” she tells the crew once they’re all assembled, Arkady looking half-asleep and disgruntled at the earliness of the hour. “I’ve arranged to meet a… long-time contact of ours. I know that we need to be careful about who we trust outside of the crew on this ship and confirmed members of the anti-IGR resistance, but… he’s a friend. An old friend.”

RJ raises their hand. “Is it Ignatius Campbell?” they ask, feeling like they’re on a quiz show.

Arkady revives slightly and snorts. “Got it in one, kid.”

“Don’t call me that,” RJ shoots back automatically. This is old, well-worn banter between them at this point.

Sana blushes slightly. “Right. I forgot that of course… you and Park know exactly who Campbell is.” She gives them a sidelong look, and RJ suspects that she’s remembering her fractious exchange with Campbell after Elion, and thinking about exactly what they would have heard.

“If it’s any consolation, we’ve been trying to forget about the recordings, too,” Park offers, slightly abashed, as he always is when this subject comes up.

RJ finds it awkward, too, but doesn’t see any point in pretending that they weren’t at one point on very different sides. Or that listening to the recordings from the Rumor wasn’t literally their job. But Park is right – they have been doing their best to forget about those long days and nights spent cooped up in their tiny office, replaying audio over and over. Know thy enemy had practically been RJ’s motto back in those days, but the Rumor crew aren’t their enemies any more. And RJ wants to move on from the person they were back then.

“I’ve spoken to Campbell a couple of times since… Well, since Elion,” Sana continues. “Trying to smooth things over since we-”

“Accused him of backstabbing us?” Arkady volunteers drily.

“To be fair, we really didn’t have any other good theories about what was going on,” Brian puts in. “None of us would have ever jumped to ‘an invisible robot nanoswarm’ as the source of our leak.”

Sana nods. “I know, and Campbell understands that, too. That’s why he’s willing to meet with us, and help us out – with supplies, and with information about the situation on Telemachus as well as some of the other Regime planets.”

“What about payment?” Violet asks. “We’re pretty light on funds at the moment, and we don’t have any cargo to trade either.”

“Campbell has agreed to effectively give us the goods on credit, with the understanding that we’ll pay at a later date,” Sana replies. “We’re also trading a little information in exchange for what he knows. Nothing top-secret, just a bit about the Regime’s movements, to help him keep two steps ahead.”

“And did you ‘barter’ with him to get him to agree to that deal?” Arkady asks, raising her eyebrows in a significant way.

Sana reddens a little, but says with dignity, “I don’t know what you’re implying. But yes, we did haggle for a bit.”

“Nice to hear that you two are back on ‘bartering’ terms,” says Arkady with a smirk.

Krejjh, looking between Arkady and Sana, grins as if Ferin has come early.

Ignoring this, Sana continues, “It’s obviously too dangerous for us to land on any of the IGR planets, so I’ve arranged to meet Campbell on Halton Station, in the Neutral Zone.”

Brian instantly perks up. “Dude! We’re going to Neuzo? Wait, isn’t Halton Station-”

“Where Thasia and Emily Craddock grew up,” Krejjh finishes eagerly.

“Yeah. To be honest, I picked it half because I knew the name, but it happens to be in a particularly convenient location for us, too,” says Sana. “It’s also not that populated, so there’s less chance of us attracting unwanted attention.”

“Does this mean I’ll be able to go outside?” Krejjh asks, practically vibrating with excitement. “Oh, for the gentle caress of the wind! The touch of the ground beneath my feet!”

“I don’t see why not,” Sana says with a smile. “Just try to keep things, uh… low-key?”

Arkady snorts eloquently.

Later on, RJ is on joint kitchen cleaning duty with Violet, who is chatting aimlessly about the rendezvous with Campbell.

“…it’s just going to be Sana, Krejjh and Arkady going out to meet Campbell on Halton Station,” she says. “It’s still not safe for Brian to set foot on Neuzo, and having a huge group would definitely attract unwanted attention. So, I guess we won’t get a chance to meet Campbell this time, unless he comes back to the ship.”

“Is that likely?” asks RJ.

“If things go well between Sana and Campbell, I guess,” Violet says with a small smile. “At least, that’s what Arkady thinks.”

“So, are Sana and Campbell… a couple?” RJ clarifies. Violet laughs a little, moving a dishrag in slow circles over the countertop.

“Not that I know of? My impression from Arkady is that they’ve always been close, but never actually, uh… been romantically involved,” says Violet. “Then, after Elion… well. We didn’t really know who we could trust, and… Campbell was one of the only people who knew about our destination and had our new IDs. Or at least, so we thought.”

“Mmm,” RJ responds, which seems safer than ‘Sorry for being part of the evil government eavesdropping operation that made you paranoid and destroyed your friendships’.

“But now it seems they’re patching things up, so maybe…” Violet smiles brightly. “It would be great if they could make it work.”

“That’s true,” says RJ with as much enthusiasm as they can muster. Romance has never held much of an appeal for RJ – it’s nice for other people, but RJ realised some years ago that they just don’t feel the thing that people have devoted endless poems and novels and movies to, and trying to get invested in other people’s romances feels similarly awkward. But RJ likes Sana, and she deserves to be happy.

Violet, who is sensitive to that sort of thing, seems to pick up on RJ’s train of thought. “Sorry, I realise we might seem a bit… romance-obsessed on this ship sometimes,” she says with an embarrassed smile. “If it gets to be too much… feel free to tell us to knock it off any time, really.”

RJ thinks about working under the IGR, and the way that no-one ever felt safe being themselves. They’ve already started to take this new freedom for granted – but that doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten the way things used to be.

“It’s fine,” they say.

---

This time, it’s not unsettling dreams or racing thoughts that are keeping RJ awake. It’s just energy. It’s midnight, but they feel as tense and jittery as though they’ve just downed four mugs of that overbrewed sludge the IGR used to serve employees in the breakroom.

A lot happened during the day. A huge amount of planning went into the rendezvous with Campbell on Halton Station, and even though RJ wasn’t part of the group who went out to meet him, they were involved in every other part of the endeavour.

Halton Station might be in the Neutral Zone, but they’d already established that the IGR was willing to cross huge lines and even violate the Treaty in order to get what it wanted, and the crew of the Iris is wanted on every IGR planet. It’s impossible to be too careful. Park and RJ had advised Sana to the best of their knowledge on steps that the IGR might take to try and survey the area, on the resources that they might try to use.

Meanwhile, Brian and Krejjh – both over the moon at being back on Neuzo, where they first met – had taken it in turns to tell stories about Ryedell Station, where Brian once worked as a bartender alongside his friend Alvy Connors.

Inside the Republic, the Neutral Zone was referenced only sparingly, and always characterised as a den of vice and iniquity. RJ had hardly ever thought about it except to be glad that they’ve never had the misfortune to set foot on any of its stations. But hearing stories about a place where humans and Dwarnians co-existed alongside each other, talking, trading, bartering… It’s made RJ realise just how narrow their world was until recently. And it’s sobering.

Sure, they’ve been watching Dwarnian soap operas, which deal with a completely alien (literally) species and set of cultures – but those are overblown and feel removed from RJ’s day-to-day reality. This doesn't.

So, RJ processes by pottering around the kitchen, making a late-night cup of tea. The light in the kitchen is kind of busted and it only emits a very dim glow – Sana has been swearing that she’ll tackle it once they’ve got the supplies from Campbell, but RJ finds it soothing, particularly at this hour.

It does make them jump, however, when the door suddenly slides open to admit a tall, dark shape.

“Apologies,” says the man, in a rough voice accented with a slight drawl. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Ignatius Campbell,” says RJ in realisation. His voice, though RJ has only ever heard it over comms (and recorded comms at that), is pretty distinctive. Also, process of elimination dictates that there’s only one person this could be.

“The very same,” says Campbell, inclining his head forward. The door slides shut behind him. “And you must be RJ McCabe? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

RJ would like to say something witty like ‘The one and only’, but doesn’t really think they could pull it off. Instead, after a few dumb moments of deliberation, they manage, “You can call me RJ.”

Okay, so maybe they’re more tired than they realised.

Campbell raises his eyebrows a little. “Well, then, you can call me Ignatius.”

RJ doesn’t think so. Even Sana still calls him ‘Campbell’ – well, at least as far as RJ knows. Does his presence on the ship mean that the rendezvous has “gone well” like Violet and Arkady hoped?

The water comes to a boil, and RJ busies themself with pouring it out. “Would you, uh, like some tea?” they ask, mostly out of politeness – Campbell doesn’t really look like the tea type.

“Actually, I was planning on drinking something a bit stronger, if you don’t mind of course,” Campbell says, pulling out a battered metal flask from the pocket of his heavy brown coat. “It’s not moonshine,” he adds, at RJ’s slightly sceptical expression. “Just whiskey. You’re welcome to some, if you want.”

The opening notes of ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ immediately start up in RJ’s head, and they inwardly curse Violet, who has a habit of humming it when she’s nervous. And when she’s happy. And when she’s been spending time with Arkady.

“I’ll pass, but thanks,” says RJ, taking their tea and sitting down with it at the table. Campbell manages to locate a mug and pours his whiskey into it, but stays standing, drinking it slowly and staring into the middle distance. It puts RJ a little on edge, but they force themself to relax and remember that Campbell isn’t a threat.

It’s harder to resist the impulse to run through the collective intelligence that the Intergalactic Republic had on the man known as Ignatius Campbell. Known contact and long-time associate of the crew of the Rumor; expert forger; suspected aliases include Alexander Cole and Jonathan Johnson. Based in Telemachus, but with an extensive network of affiliates and possible connections across multiple galaxies.

As if picking up on their thoughts, Campbell suddenly asks, “You used to work for the IGR, right?”

RJ tenses. “Emphasis on ‘used to’,” they reply.

Campbell waves a hand. “Don’t worry, this isn’t me trying to accuse you of anything. God knows everyone on this ship has stuff in their past they’d rather not go back to – me included,” he says, a little darkly. “No, I was just wondering what kind of intel they might have on me up there. Any good rumours?”

“Most of it was inconclusive,” RJ tells him, but thinks back anyway. It already feels unnatural trying to access the headspace and knowledge that they had while working for the IGR, after going to such pains to put it behind them. “W- They suspected you might have links to the notorious pirate Kim Hoff and her Bald-Cat gang, potentially as a supplier of intel or documentation, but nothing was proven.”

Campbell gives a low chuckle of amusement. “Believe it or not, I’m not the one on this ship with links to Hoff,” he says. “Though I can’t say we’ve never crossed paths.”

In response to RJ’s look of confusion, he elaborates: “She was Brian Jeeter’s thesis advisor.”

“You’re kidding,” says RJ in disbelief.

Campbell lays a hand on his heart. “I swear – you can ask him about it. For all that he might seem mild-mannered and harmless, Brian Jeeter has some interesting connections.”

“I’ve heard about his run-ins with the Dwarnian mafia,” says RJ, partly to show that they aren’t completely uninformed.

“Yeah, that’s another good example,” says Campbell. “There’s a reason why I’ve kept doing business with the Rumor crew all these years: they have some damn good stories to tell.”

RJ snorts in acknowledgement. If it weren’t for the fact that they’ve listened to some of the Rumor crew’s insane exploits (and been present for one or two of them) they wouldn’t have believed half of the stories that they’ve heard since they came aboard the Iris.

Neither of them says anything for a while, and RJ contemplates taking their tea back to their room so that they can carry on thinking. But the prospect is dull and a little claustrophobic, and part of them wants to take this opportunity to find out more about this person who is obviously so important to their crewmates.

“So…” says RJ, and Campbell’s gaze flicks over to them from where he’d been contemplating the cupboards. “What’s got you up so late, drinking whiskey in the kitchen with a total stranger?”

One corner of Campbell’s mouth quirks up. “You’re not a total stranger,” he points out. RJ just raises an eyebrow, and Campbell relents.

“Not sure, really – Sana and I were talking, but then she wanted to crash, and I wasn’t quite ready to sleep yet. Got a bit too much going round in my head.”

RJ nods; in other words, a very similar reason to their own. “So I take it you’re staying the night?”

This immediately makes Campbell flustered, and RJ can’t make out his face very well but they imagine that he’s probably gone red. “I – I mean I am, but I promise that there’s nothing improper- It’s just for the one night. And we’re bunking in separate rooms,” he says in a rush.

RJ snorts and manages to keep from rolling their eyes – just about. “Calm down. I wasn’t trying to imply anything,” they tell Campbell. “I only asked because I’m on breakfast duty tomorrow morning, so I wanted to know how many people I’d be cooking for.”

“Oh.”

“Also, ‘improper’? What millennium is this, again?”

Campbell coughs, and says with the air of someone trying to pull the conversation back on track, “So – what about you? What has you up in the kitchen past midnight?”

RJ sips their tea, stalling for time as they try to decide how much to say about what has been keeping them awake. They settle on,

“I guess I’m… learning a lot about the universe that I never had the chance to before. Working for the… for the IGR, you’re told that only you have access to the real facts about everything – Dwarnians, the war, the upper limits of science and space exploration – and that anyone who tells you differently is lying or trying to confuse you. I prided myself,” they stress, bitterly, “on the thoroughness of my research. On having all the information. Now I realise just how little I really knew.”

Campbell nods, slowly. “All repressive governments control their people’s access to information,” he says. “The better to make sure that no-one gets any ideas of their own.”

“Yeah, I know,” says RJ, a little wearily. “I’m not under any illusions about what the IGR really is. Not anymore.”

“But you were,” Campbell points out. “Sure, maybe there were things you could’ve questioned and didn’t. There are also folks up at the top of the whole operation who have access to all the information and make a very different choice with it. At the end of the day, you still thought for yourself when it counted. You got out.”

RJ eyes Campbell warily. “I’m not fishing for reassurance here,” they tell him. “You don’t have to make me feel better.”

Campbell holds up his hands in apology. “I know,” he says. “It just sounded to me like maybe you were being a little harsh on yourself.”

RJ shakes their head and searches for the right words. “When I joined up with the Rumor crew on New Jupiter, it wasn’t some heroic stand,” they say eventually, quietly. “It was a strategic decision I made to survive. If I’d stayed where I was, I would have been killed on sight.”

“The crew of this ship knows a thing or two about survival,” Campbell tells them. “They’re not all on some grand moral crusade.”

RJ knows that Arkady worked as a guard for the IGR, that Violet used to be a government scientist, that Krejjh fought in the war on the Dwarnian side. But on nights like these, the gap between their experiences still feels vast.

The others, they all have this bond, a camaraderie forged from venturing out into the deepest parts of space, from facing near-death experiences and defying the Regime side by side. RJ might have tagged along at the end, but they don’t have that history. They haven’t earned that bond, yet.

RJ realises that Campbell is still watching them – considering, almost. Their first instinct is to break eye contact and look away, but instead they meet his gaze, raising their chin slightly. RJ thinks they see Campbell’s mouth twitch into a small smile.

“You know that I served in the military,” he says suddenly. It isn’t a question.

“Yes,” RJ replies cautiously.

“Do you want to know why I left?”

“Uh…”

RJ is well aware that Campbell fought in the war. They vividly recall the argument with Sana where Campbell angrily spoke about losing ninety percent of his first unit. RJ remembers listening to that exchange in their cramped office with Park, and looking over at him, wanting to ask for more information. But Park’s brow had been furrowed, his expression dark as he stared down at the wood of the desk, and the question died on RJ’s lips.

Park had fought in the war, too.

RJ doesn’t feel like they have a right to Campbell’s story any more than Park’s, but apparently, he's offering. “If you’re… okay with telling me,” they say uncertainly, pressing their mug between their palms until it’s a little painful. “I’m… sure it was nothing good.”

Campbell gives a short nod, his expression grim.

“I enlisted in the military in 2178, two years before the coup,” he says. “My first unit, they were… a really good group of people. Some of the best I’ve known. When the coup took place in 2180, we were excited. The old government had left the military drastically under-funded and over-stretched. The Regime promised better funding, better resources, more troops – of course, they accomplished that via the Mandate, but they made that seem like a great thing. A stable career path; an opportunity for everyone who was able to “serve the human race”. As they put it.”

RJ nods slowly. “I know. They’re pretty big on teaching that as part of the history of the Republic,” they say. “‘How the Intergalactic Republic transformed our military’.”

“Yeah, well, I experienced it first-hand. And for about a year, everything was as promised. But then my unit got word that we were being redeployed to the Dwarnian stronghold of Nreech-shlegga.”

RJ frowns. “As in… the Battle of Nreech-shlegga?”

“The very same,” Campbell confirmed. “But this was years before that battle. We were told that it was a small outpost, largely unmanned – an opportunity to score an early victory over the Dwarnians and make an incursion into their territory.”

RJ feels a sick sinking feeling, and unconsciously grips the edge of the table with one hand. “What happened?” they almost whisper, although they know the answer.

“On the basis of the briefing we were given, we stormed the stronghold,” Campbell says, and RJ suspects that he might not really have heard their question, lost in the memory. He’s not looking at them anymore, staring down at his mug, but he doesn’t drink from it. “Of course, Nreech-slegga was the exact opposite of what we'd been led to believe – it was an extremely well-defended military stronghold. My entire unit, barring myself and six others, was wiped out in less than an hour.”

Campbell is silent. RJ breathes out quietly, trying not to interrupt his thoughts by drawing attention to themself. Their throat is dry, but they’ve drunk all of their tea and daren’t move to make some more.

Several long minutes later, Campbell shakes himself a little, seeming to come back into the present. “Sorry,” he apologises gruffly, taking a swig of whiskey.

“Don’t apologise,” RJ says quickly, and then clamps their mouth shut, in case they sounded overly familiar. But Campbell nods, and they think they see his lips quirk upward slightly.

“What did you do… after?” RJ ventures, after another long moment of silence. They hate to pry, but they’re still not clear on why Campbell decided to tell them this in the first place. Maybe he’s not sure anymore either.

Campbell nods again, once, as if agreeing to something inside his head. He meets RJ’s eyes again. “Would you believe me if I told you that I defected from the military?”

“Of course,” RJ says immediately. “After what they did to your unit? Your superiors must have known the reality of the situation, but they withheld crucial intel. It cost the lives of dozens of good soldiers.”

“I notice you haven’t considered for a moment that the IGR might have had a good reason for giving those orders,” Campbell points out. He sounds amused.

“I—” RJ falters. “I mean. How could they have?”

People died needlessly, they want to say. But they know that while they were on the IGR’s payroll, they came across all kinds of evidence of similar incidents and found ways to rationalise them, to explain away the devastating loss of human life. Like the planet where the inhabitants were left to starve without aid after their food supply was consumed by ants – because of “improper paperwork” and “budgetary concerns”. Or the fate of the original Iris, in which an entire crew had been murdered in order to silence one man.

Why had it taken RJ so long to see the Regime for what it really was?

Because it’s easy to make excuses, to explain things away, when it’s not your life on the line, RJ’s brain supplies. When you’re not the one they’re coming for.

“If you see any of the Rumor crew, or Agents McCabe or Park, shoot to kill.”

Until you are.

“You’re right,” Campbell says, and RJ stares at him for a few seconds, having lost the thread of their conversation. Their head feels heavy and over-full, their mind whirling. “My superiors had perfect intel on the situation in Nreech-slegga and knew the full extent of its defences, but they lied to us because they wanted to test the Dwarnians’ response times on their own territory. We were just cannon fodder to them.”

The phrase rings a bell in RJ’s mind – they remember him using the same words to Sana in ‘Report 6: Parallel’. They nod mutely.

“But in the wake of The Nreech-Slegga Disaster, as it became known – though only among the troops, as official reports of the incident were largely suppressed – they told us that they’d been fed false intel by double agents working for the Dwarnian Federation. They even used it as an excuse to purge a few members of the rank and file who’d fallen out of favour.

“I could tell something was off about it all – if the Dwarnian counter-intelligence efforts were so effective, why tip their hand so obviously? Why waste them on eliminating a single ground unit? But at the time, I couldn’t envision a life for myself outside of the military. And I was afraid to follow that train of logic any further, for fear of where it might lead me. So I stayed enlisted – for three more years.”

“Three… years?” RJ echoes in shock. “But…”

“Why would I stay?” Campbell finishes for them. “It takes a lot of guts to choose a different path to the one you’re on, to leave behind everything you know. I didn’t have them, then.” He stares off into the middle distance, mug held loosely in one hand. “A lot of people who fought in the war didn’t really believe in the Regime’s cause. They had their own reasons, and I told myself I had mine.”

Campbell raises his mug to drink from it again, and then – evidently finding it empty – picks up his flask and drinks directly from there instead. “But I spent a hell of a lot of time regretting those three years.” His voice is a low, bitter growl, almost too low to hear.

A more profound silence descends this time, and RJ isn’t sure how to break it. Their instinctive response to hearing how Campbell lost his first unit had been to assume that he would have left the military and refused to serve under the regime that caused the deaths of his comrades – just as many people would question why RJ had stayed and continued to work for the IGR after Park was taken away.

Like Campbell said, at the time, they thought they had their reasons. It's only in hindsight that those reasons become a lot harder to justify.

It takes a lot of guts to choose a different path to the one you're on, Campbell had said. RJ can't find it in them yet to think of their decision to turn against the IGR as something that took "guts".

But no matter how adrift they've been feeling since then, they also haven't regretted it for a moment.

“Apologies,” says Campbell abruptly, and RJ looks up from toying with their mug, surprised. “I probably shouldn’t have dropped all of this on you at once. It’s just been… on my mind, what with the renewed crackdowns from the Regime, and skirmishes breaking out everywhere…”

RJ’s stomach turns over. They knew that there were protests on Telemachus, and a couple of the other large planets as well, the ones that were harder to control. But they hadn’t realised it had broken out into all-out fighting.

They realise that Campbell is still looking at them, and try to force their mind back to the subject at hand. “No, it’s fine – it actually helped. Uh, it’s nice to hear…” They trail off, not sure if it would be presumptuous to say, ‘a story similar to mine’. RJ isn’t a war veteran. It’s not the same thing at all. “That is, I uh, really appreciate you… trusting me with this.” There.

Campbell gives them a slight smile, and then ventures, “I’m not sure how well it’ll go with the aftertaste of whiskey, but… can I take you up on that tea?”

“Oh! Sure!” RJ jumps to their feet so quickly they almost upset their chair. They do their best to cover it up by holding the box of tea out to Campbell, who raises his eyebrows. “What kind would you like?”

“Uh… Why don’t you choose,” Campbell suggests.

“Oh, if you’re sure…” RJ looks down at the tea, wondering what kind would be appropriate to give a former-soldier-turned-forger after a heavy conversation about serving under an oppressive regime. They decide to go for vanilla and honey.

As RJ is busy boiling the water again, making another cup for themself at the same time, they realise that Campbell never actually told them how he came to leave the military. They wonder if it would be pushing it to ask him, or whether it would be best to leave the topic alone.

They procrastinate by pouring out the water, then finding a spoon to stir the tea with. “You can leave it in for as long as you want to – three minutes is usually a good amount of time,” they tell him, handing over the mug and the spoon.

“Thanks,” says Campbell appreciatively. “It smells good.”

“You’re welcome.” RJ goes back to pour out their second cup of jasmine green tea. Campbell gives a little chuckle to himself, and RJ looks over, curious.

“Oh, it’s just – I realised that after all that, I never finished my story,” Campbell explains. “But uh, I’m sure you’re sick of hearing-”

“Actually, I was wondering-” RJ begins, and then stops awkwardly. “Uh. That is. I’d like to hear the last part?”

“All right then,” says Campbell. His manner is a little more relaxed than before, and RJ senses that this part of the story is easier for Campbell to tell.

“I served in the military for three more years,” he says, “after the Nreech-Slegga Disaster. I rose up the ranks a little bit – but not that much. I wasn’t great at taking my superiors’ orders without question, especially when they were irrational, stupid orders. A lot of soldiers who started out below me on the pecking order quickly got promoted ahead. But that was fine – I never wanted to be in command. I knew there was all sorts of corruption in the upper ranks of the force – bribery, dirty deals, a comfortable life lived on military funds.

“But the breaking point really came when I was put into a situation that reminded me vividly of the Nreech-Slegga Disaster – a campaign where we were given almost no information about the situation on the ground, and were ordered to go in, guns blazing, and mount an attack. I refused to lead my men in blind – I demanded more information from the officers in command. And when they ordered me to go ahead with the offensive regardless… I left. I couldn’t watch it happen again.”

“Where did you go?” RJ asks.

“I disappeared,” Campbell says simply. “I had an old friend I’d never completely severed ties with who had links to the criminal underworld. Not, uh, Sana,” he adds quickly. “We met later. I went underground with a new identity, and set about methodically erasing every trace of my former life. Officially, I’m listed as Killed in Action during the offensive that I refused to participate in. I honed my skills as a forger at the same time.”

“Did you have, uh…” RJ realises partway through asking the question that it might be an uncomfortable subject – well, another uncomfortable subject. “…family? You don’t have to answer that,” they add awkwardly, but Campbell is nodding.

“My parents had passed away, but I had a brother I’m close to. I wasn’t able to make contact for several years. But now I… see him, occasionally. And his kids, my nephews.” He says the last part softly.

“That must be nice,” RJ says without thinking, and then flushes when Campbell looks at them quizzically. “Um, that is…”

At that moment, the door slides open and a voice says, “Hey, I woke up and I wasn’t sure where you’d – oh! RJ, sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

Sana stands framed in the doorway, wearing loose sleeping clothes, her hair twisted into a side braid. Because she’s Sana, rather than being embarrassed or discomfited, she immediately shifts into Concern Mode. “Is everything all right?” She looks between the two of them, obviously curious as to how they came to be talking in the kitchen.

“Hey, Sana. Everything’s fine, we were… just having tea,” RJ says.

“I think mine’s vanilla and honey,” Campbell adds, lifting his mug. Sana seems tickled by this, grinning broadly.

“All right, well I’ll leave you both to it, if you’d prefer – I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, it’s okay–” RJ says, at the same time as Campbell begins, “Actually, I’d be happy to come back to–”

They both stop, and RJ presses their lips together in amusement and then stands. “I’m gonna head back to my room. It was… really nice talking to you, Mr. Campbell.”

Campbell gives an exasperated huff at being called ‘Mister’, which makes RJ smile. “Likewise,” he says.

“Goodnight, then, RJ,” says Sana, standing to one side so that RJ can get past her. “Don’t be afraid to come and knock if you still can’t sleep.”

RJ nods, though they have no intention of doing anything of the sort. “I will. Oh, and Campbell?”

“Yes?”

“Do you like eggs?”

This throws Campbell for a loop. “Do I… like eggs?”

“For breakfast tomorrow. Sana said there would be some eggs in the supplies we were getting, so I figured I’d make eggs.”

Campbell laughs a little with surprise. “Sure. I’ll eat pretty much anything.”

“Great.” RJ looks back at Campbell. “See you at breakfast.”

What they really mean is:

Thank you.

#TSCOSI #The Strange Case of Starship Iris #RJ McCabe #Ignatius Campbell #Sana Tripathi #Violet Liu #late night tea drinking and heart to hearts #war stories #I want to promise that RJ will get a break from chatting to traumatised war veterans in the next chapter but uhhhh #let's just say I can't promise that quite yet

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the-desolated-quill · 5 years ago

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A Stronger Loving World - Watchmen blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t read this comic yet, you may want to before reading this review)

When people read Watchmen for the first time, I’d be surprised if any of them expected the story to end like this.

A Stronger Loving World opens with the aftermath of the fake alien arriving in New York and slaughtering millions. Three splash pages of harrowing artwork by Dave Gibbons. Corpses littered everywhere. Blood in the streets. Giant tentacles wrapped around various landmarks. It’s an extremely unsettling opening and lets the reader know that Gibbons and Alan Moore are not fucking around here. Doctor Manhattan and Laurie arrive to see the carnage and deduce that Adrian was behind it before heading to Antarctica to confront him. After several confrontations involving Manhattan getting disintegrated again and Laurie pulling a gun on Adrian, it’s revealed that Ozymandias’ plan has worked. The nations of the world have put aside their differences and decided to cooperate for fear of an impending alien invasion.

This then leads to the big moral dilemma. What Adrian has done is despicable, but he has succeeded in bringing about world peace, and revealing the truth behind the giant squid runs the risk of dooming the world all over again. So what would be the heroic thing to do?

Well there’s no point asking these characters because as the graphic novel has been emphasising again and again, these guys are not heroes.

This is an extremely complicated moral conundrum with no real right or wrong answer, and I very much appreciate how Alan Moore doesn’t try to shove one down our throats. I also like how each character comes to their decision. Doctor Manhattan is of course a godlike being who sees beyond our world and so shares a somewhat similar view to Adrian’s. That the deaths were justified because the end result is peace. Rorschach on the other hand cannot square what just happened with his own rigid morality, and refuses to keep the secret, vowing to tell everyone the truth, which leads to Manhattan killing him. Nite Owl meanwhile, being weak willed and pathetic as ever, decides to go along with Adrian’s plan, but it’s less to do with him agreeing with Adrian and more to do with the fact that the moral implications are so hard to comprehend that he doesn’t even want to try, instead taking the path of least resistance. Finally Silk Spectre, so shocked by everything she’s learned and witnessed, clings to the one stable thing she has. Dan. The two then have sex, serving as a dark inverse of the sex scene in A Brother To Dragons. In both instances, sex is used as a metaphor for power, but whereas the motivation in the first was Dan overcoming his own inadequacies, the second is both Dan and Laurie desperately trying to retain whatever shred of power and independence they have left after such a shocking and twisted act of mass murder.

It’s great because it demonstrates just how well Moore understands his own characters and how well we’ve come to know them. They behave exactly as we would expect them to and there’s something oddly satisfying about that despite the moral ambiguity of their decisions.

In fact lets discuss Rorschach for a bit, considering he’s the only one that refused to keep the secret. Bit surprising considering the horrid things he’s done throughout the graphic novel. What’s so different about this? Well it could be the sheer scale of it. Could be that he didn’t believe those who died truly deserved it according to his own strict moral code. Except I’m not entirely convinced. In the extra material provided in The Abyss Gazes Also, there’s a letter written by a young Walter Kovacs about his father. Or rather the person he imagines his father to be because he never actually met him. Apparently his parents split up because ‘he liked President Truman and she didn’t.’ Interesting in and of itself that Rorschach, a right wing bigot, was fathered by a Democrat. But wait, it gets more intriguing. He then goes on to write about how he believes his father was an aide to President Truman before talking about the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the US dropped atomic bombs, killing millions. Except here he expresses that he believes that Truman did the right thing because it ended the war and saved millions more lives. Curious, wouldn’t you agree? So, in Rorschach’s mind, what made the nukes in Japan morally justifiable while Adrian’s giant squid in New York wasn’t? We can only really speculate at this point. Some think it’s because Rorschach has realised that there is no place for him in Adrian’s new world order, which I guess is kind of true, but I think it runs the risk of romanticising the character again. It could be that the nukes were a last resort whereas the squid was preemptive... maybe? Personally I think it’s just good old fashioned racism. Rorschach had no issue with the millions of Japanese lives lost because they were Japanese. The enemy. This is different. This time millions of American lives have been lost. To him, this is more than just mass murder. It’s an act of treason.

We may never fully know the reasons behind Rorschach’s actions, but it’s nonetheless interesting to discuss.

I also appreciated that we do get a moment where Adrian questions whether he did the right thing, expressing his doubts to Doctor Manhattan, to which he receives a cryptic response about how ‘nothing ever ends.’ (does Manhattan know what happens in the future? We’ll never know). It’s a nice moment that helps to humanise Adrian a little bit and remind us that he’s as flawed as all the other characters. The arrogant bravado he displays when he succeeds in achieving world peace could easily have slipped into pantomime villain territory if there wasn’t just this small moment near the end, possibly as the scale of the things he’s done dawns on him. Like the pirate captain in The Tales Of The Black Freighter, Adrian means well and his intentions are noble, but his actions are either highly questionable or just downright villainous. This is basically what Watchmen has been talking about since the start. Once you start taking more frequent steps outside the bounds of what is legally and morally acceptable, it’s not long before you’ve effectively joined the criminals yourself.

There’s a lot to like about A Stronger Loving World, however I do have a few complaints here and there. Yes, lets talk about that giant squid.

If there was ever a moment where Watchmen jumped the shark, this is it. And quite frankly I have no idea what Alan Moore was thinking at the time. So Adrian wants to unite the world together using an outside force that will encourage everyone to put aside their differences and team up with each other. Okay. Makes sense so far. But the plan itself requires so many leaps of logic, it kind of loses all credibility. Take for example the idea that it was cloned from a psychic’s brain. Well that came out of nowhere, didn’t it? Yes this is a world where a giant naked blue guy can manipulate atoms, but the story explained to us how this was possible, allowing us to suspend our disbelief. Now suddenly we’re supposed to believe that human psychics exist with no build up whatsoever. It’s just dumped on us, which makes it feel more like a convenient excuse than an explanation. Yes they do kind of foreshadow it with Adrian’s pet lynx Bubastis, but it’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it? It’s one thing to genetically alter an existing animal. It’s another thing entirely to create an all new creature with psychic abilities as though this was Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Not to mention, in order to explain how in God’s name someone can go from inventing electric cars to creating aliens, Alan Moore has to resort to a gigantic infodump in order to make sense of the bloody thing. The initial teleport incinerates people, then the psychic ‘death throes’ or whatever cause others to go mad and start killing each other, and then those even further away have bad dreams or something. Presumably the person furthest from ground zero probably has a moment where they forget where they put their car keys and leave the gas on. It’s just overly complicated and way too daft.

Also I can understand Adrian kidnapping scientists, but why artists and writers? And why tell them the creature is for a movie? Was no one a tiny bit suspicious of the amount of work, resources and effort being put into this supposed ‘special effect’? What about the fact that they were taken from their homes and put on a tiny island? Don’t they have families? Are any of them concerned about how ridiculously secretive this film production is? And more to the point, why let the rest of the world believe them to be kidnapped? If you’re going to go with the Hollywood movie cover story, why not just tell people that’s what they’re doing? I guess you could argue that Adrian was concerned this would draw unwanted attention to his plan, but... what?... them getting kidnapped wouldn’t have drawn attention?!

And then there’s just the sheer randomness of it. Why aliens? He doesn’t even plant the seeds for this anywhere. Maybe have some fake UFO sightings or something. He just dumps a dead alien on New York’s doorstep. Also, if genetic engineering is common knowledge, why would people assume it’s aliens? Surely government scientists testing the thing will discover it’s of terrestrial origin. Which leads to the biggest flaw. Would this plan really have worked? Killing millions of people in one city? Would that be enough to unite the world? Perhaps in the short term, but there’s no way you could possibly sustain that lie for so long. Plus, call me cynical, but considering how quickly Russia mobilised when Manhattan left the planet, surely it’s more likely they would take advantage of the situation while America was reeling from this act of carnage. If Adrian is supposed to be the smartest man in the world, I’m amazed he didn’t consider any of this. Maybe he has contingency plans in place, but I don’t know. It all seemed pretty final to me. He genuinely believes that this will fix everything. It just makes him look a bit stupid.

The whole giant squid plot has got more holes in it than a colander. Which is why (and I know I’m going to get some flak for this) I much prefer the version in Zack Snyder’s adaptation than I do the graphic novel. I don’t want to go into too much detail because I’d rather save that for when I review the movie, but I do honestly think Adrian’s plan in the movie makes more sense than the source material does.

Another side effect of having to explain the alien is that Silk Spectre’s story never gets proper closure. There’s a moment where Laurie confronts her mother over the fact that the Comedian is her father, but it all just feels a bit rushed and unsatisfactory. Especially when she starts talking about wanting to change her costume and start using guns, implying she’s going to be more like the Comedian in the future. It’s just too big of a leap in my opinion. One minute she’s distraught that her father was her mother’s rapist, the next she’s following in his footsteps. It’s such a sharp turn, it practically gave me whiplash.

That being said, I did like the little detail of Dan taking Sally Jupiter’s porn magazine, which I think implies how superficial their relationship is. They’re together because of the power and sexual rush they feel in their superhero identities, not because they actually love each other. Maybe that was what drew Sally to the Comedian despite everything he did. Who knows?

I also really like the ending. I haven’t been talking about the New Frontiersman in these reviews because it’s largely been inconsequential up until now, which is kind of the point. Seymour, a downtrodden, inconsequential man working a soul sucking job at a right wing newspaper, is suddenly given the power to change everything. Will he reveal the contents of Rorschach’s journal and thus expose Adrian’s plan or keep quiet in the name of peace? I want to believe it would be the latter, but considering his livelihood depends on his racist editor having material to rant and complain about, it would seem the world is truly doomed.

As Doctor Manhattan said, ‘nothing ever ends.’

Hey guys! Thank you so much for reading these blogs. It took longer than I thought to write them, but honestly I think it was worth the extra time because there is just so much about Watchmen to unpack and I really enjoyed analysing this story. I’ve been wanting to review Watchmen for ages now and I’m very proud how these have turned out. I personally think it’s some of the best stuff I’ve ever written. Next I’m going to be reviewing the movie adaptation directed by Zack Snyder and then after that the HBO TV series. In the mean time, please feel free to like and reblog and share your own thoughts and feelings about Watchmen. Which character did you find most interesting? Do you think Adrian did the right thing? What would you do in Seymour’s shoes if you found Rorschach’s journal and discovered the truth about the giant alien squid? I’m genuinely curious :)

#a stronger loving world #watchmen #alan moore #dave gibbons #dc comics #review #spoilers

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wolfenm-marveling · 6 years ago

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There are three big reasons I have not and don’t want to see Endgame ....

For one, I wrote a lengthy article about that will run in June at Sequential Tart (I'll update this post with the link when it goes live *EDIT* Here it is: The Subject of Character Death, Revisited - http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=3362 ). The other two, I'll talk about here; they involve Steve and Bucky.

I know what you’re thinking: Wolfie, how can you form an opinion on a movie you haven't seen? Well, I do have mental health issues (undiagnosed and untreated because I have no insurance or job, yay), so when the film was released in China, I found someone to spoil me so that I might make an informed decision as to whether or not I could *handle* seeing it, given some worries I had (and especially since 3 hours without a bathroom break was not going to work for me or my companion). I determined from that convo that it would be a Very Bad Idea for me to see the film.

Even seeing the constant posts about it -- especially ones that called it a “beautiful” or “perfect” end, etc. -- was triggering anxiety and mental anguish / circular thoughts (admittedly in part because there were similarly “bad” things happening in other fandoms of mine -- it was too much at once). And I'm STILL having massive issues with circular thoughts about it.

This essay isn't meant to tell anyone they’re wrong about how they perceive / feel about the film, BUT, while I know I shouldn't care what other people think, the sitch still makes me feel how I feel: frankly, a bit disturbed that people are loving things that are making me so awful. I feel like I've stepped into some sort of Bizarro world -- like I'm somehow in the wrong universe. It’s very distressing. (I mean ... they call it mental *illness* for as reason, right?)

In this franchise where I once found such great joy, I now find little more than anguish. It’s actually been making me physically ill to see the posts -- or to look on my massive Marvel collection; I've had to box much of it away for now. Hopefully some day I can enjoy it again. (I can't exactly stop using my $60 Captain America backpack I begged for, for my birthday, though. :/)

I find that when my thoughts get like this (like I'm on a runaway train that keeps revisiting the same stations), the only thing that helps even a little is to sort out my thoughts on the page -- even if I’ve done it before, as I have with this in the comments section of friends posts. (You may have seen other people express similar thoughts, too.) And really, I don't want to rain on my friend’s parades, so I figure I’ll post it in my own space, and then if people ask me my thoughts, I can just point them here. And hopefully this post will help others who are similarly struggling (I know there are at least a few).

As for the old chestnut “It’s just a story/ a fictional character”, well, for one thing, let me repeat: mentally ill here. If I could control how I feel, I wouldn’t BE mentally ill. But also, I'm a writer who feels writing is a sacred calling, so when I feel a story is badly told, I tend to take it personally. Yes, I know my opinion is not the be-all, end all -- if you think it’s a good story, yay for you. Me, I feel betrayed by this story in a way I have rarely felt before (the other biggest instance having happened the week before the film's release, so double-whammy, yay).

Warning: if you read any further, I assume you either saw Endgame or don’t care about Spoilers.

(*edited to add* If you need some solace too, check out @antiendgame to find other people who are upset.)

The first upsetting points for me were the Noble Deaths (and, in Loki’s case, lack of resurrection) -- I hate that trope with the fire of a thousand suns. But that’s what I wrote the article on (including how 2012 Loki’s escape doesn't make me feel any better), so no more on that here.

Now, let me preface the rest of this by saying no, I wasn’t expecting a romantic presentation of Stucky. And as hard as I ship them fanon-wise, I don’t actually hate Steggy -- I adore Peggy in her own right (and like the idea of them being a threesome with Bucky).

What I DO hate is that Steve abandoned Bucky for her.

Aside from Steve’s moral compass, Bucky was the impetus behind pretty much *everything* Steve did in his trilogy. He found the missing soldiers because Bucky was amongst them. Bucky’s death broke him -- and finding him again in Winter Soldier seemed to give Steve, who was clearly depressed, new life. Despite Sam insisting Bucky was Gone, Steve wouldn't kill Bucky to save the world. And in Civil War, Steve fought other dear friends, and was willing to throw away his own freedom, to protect his best friend. So how the FUCK is them being *separated pretty much forevermore* a satisfactory end to that story???????

TL;DR, the Captain America movies were about the repeated separation and reunion of Steve and Bucky … and yet we barely got to SEE them together before Steve said sayonara to the man he’d been best friends with for over a for over a decade, to go be with a woman he’d known for about a year.

A woman who’d already had a family without him.

Yeah, we can say her family still exists in the original timeline -- but I have seen soooo many different explanations of how the time sitch works out, it’s not even funny.

Really, that’s the third reason I don't want to see the movie: I HATE time paradox, and this movie sounds riddled with it. Also, as I understand it, the writers and the Russos are saying different things, with the Russos saying it’s a different timeline (which apparently Steve would be going *back* to after the shield pass, for some reason, and yeah, that bothered me, that he didnl't even give his best friend that momento, and sent their last onscreen moments together talking to SAM), and the writers saying no, the alternate timelines were only a thing when the Stones were in play. So yeah, Steve could spend the rest of his life with Bucky then ... but that means he also would have erased Peggy’s family (and maybe her work). Unless he was the man she married all along.

Either way, it would mean that Steve let Bucky suffer, and let HYDRA infiltrate SHIELD, neither being things I could see him doing.

And if it IS a branched-off timeline, I LOATHE that time theory, because it means NOTHING WE DO MATTERS. There’s always a version of us that’s our worst selves, and people who suffer because of it. That’s hella depressing. (Even if it would explain why I feel like I'm in the wrong world.)

At any rate, the ONLY end I really wanted was to see Steve and Bucky get to be together, no matter how -- “just friends” would have been fine. It was literally the thing I wanted most in the whole damn MCU franchise (aside from seeing Loki be redeemed and then fight alongside the Avengers. *sigh* At least I didn't have high hopes there ...). I would rather Steve had taken Bucky back in time WITH him, even if Steve still married Peggy; time paradox issues aside, I could have lived with that -- yes, even if it meant we didn’t get The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. (And honestly, how much am I supposed to look forward to that anyway, when Sam has been such an *inexplicably* uncompassionate asshole to Bucky in WS and CW? A guy who runs meetings for people with PTSD holds a grudge against a guy who was brutally mind-raped? It's like they made him OOC for the lolz!)

As for “Oh, but Bucky knew and he was okay with it!”

Uh, if he was okay with it, it's just because the writers *wrote* him that way for their own convenience, so they could do this ending. I have been besties with someone most of our lives. We broke up a few times, but we managed to keep finding our way back to each other. We don't live in the same state, so we rarely see each other, but at least we DO sometimes, and we write each other. If this person said they were going to go live somewhere with no way to communicate with me ever again, so they could be with someone they loved, of course I wouldn't want to say don't leave, because I'd want them to be happy, and wouldn't want to stand in the way … but that doesn't mean I'd be “okay”. in the slightest. And I wouldn't WANT other people I care about to go through such pain, much less think it beautiful to watch.

Plus, as I always say, this is fiction -- I don't need *that much* “reality” in my escapism. Temporary angst is my bread-and-butter -- it’s cathartic -- but I need a happy ending to be the payoff. To me, A TRULY happy ending for Steve -- and the one that would have been the best payoff for the narrative we’ve spent a decade watching -- would have been for him to not have to choose between the two people he loved most.

Edited 5/11/19 to add: For all those who are all “Oh, they’re just friends, they aren't gay”, I am more or less fine with sexual Stucky staying fanon; they still love each other platonically, are SOULMATES, ACCORDING TO THE SCREENWRITERS THEMSELVES (Christopher Markus and Steve McFeely), who wrote this as part of the intro to the graphic novel Captain America: White - “…Of course, this is still a rollicking adventure tale, and no adventure is complete without a love story. And yes, these books have one – the longest, most tortured one in Marvel history, in fact. We’re talking about Steve and Bucky, without smirking or innuendo or raised eyebrows. Platonic though the relationship may be, from the meet cute to the tragic separation, their bond has all the elements of a classic romance. These two men love each other – as any pair of friends who faced exclusion, combat, inhumanity, and death would. Their bond stretches across half the twentieth century. The loss of it gnaws at Steve throughout the modern day, and it slices his heart in half when the Winter Soldier rears his tormented, homicidal head. Just as Jeph and Tim’s earlier Daredevil: Yellow, Spider-Man: Blue, and Hulk: Gray all dealt with the major love interests in the heroes’ lives, so too does Captain America: White. Steve and Bucky are each others’ soulmate, if you will, because no one on Earth understands what either of them has been through as well as the other does. The book deals deftly with the strengths and weaknesses that relationship engenders. As the Red Skull himself says to Bucky, “The captain has a … ‘soft spot’ for you. A spot I intend to put a bullet through this very evening.” Soldiers fight for their country. They fight for themselves. They fight for each other. And sometimes they die for these things, too. The ones who don’t carry the memory of the ones who did for the rest of their days. Steve Rogers is no different.”

So he's gonna leave his soulmate (no matter the nature of their love) behind forever? FUCK THAT NOISE. I am completely baffled ow two writers who see Steve and Bucky that way would go on to give them that ending.

And retouching the whole for Bucky “knows and is okay” thing, the Russos also said that Bucky is too damaged still to be Captain America. Uh, THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE THEY REALLY THINK HE’S OKAY.

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douxreviews · 6 years ago

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American Gods - ‘The Ways of the Dead’ Review

Mr. Nancy: "Well praise Jesus and four more white zombies!"

Stop me if you've heard this one, but a Zombie and a Leprechaun walk into a swingers party...

This was by far the Bryan Fuller-est episode of American Gods since Bryan Fuller left the show. Not just the tonal soundscape during the lynching, which couldn't help but invoke 'The Bone Orchard,' but also in the way it used its imagery and the episode's plot's relationship to the larger story being told. I, for the most part, liked it.

As was the habit in season one, we stop off for an episode in a small town and explore a god or situation that wasn't really part of the novel but could be seen to be existing alongside the book's events. It makes me wonder if some portion of this episode's conception had its roots before Fuller left, as it's exactly the sort of world exploration that he liked to do, and which seems to have been the main point of contention between him and Neil Gaiman.

But, of course, I may be wrong about the extent of that contention, and perhaps Neil plotted this one himself. Who can say from the outside.

So, in the town of Cairo there exists a funeral parlor run by modern day manifestations of Anubis and Thoth. Mr. Jacquel and Mr. Ibis, respectfully. This isn't news, we've known that for some time. Shadow has made his way to the City of Cairo, and is staying with them for a bit. So far, so canonical. But this week we learn that the town of Cairo is also home to the vengeful spirit of Will James, a black man who was lynched, shot, and apparently burned after a white woman whom he had been observed passing in the street was later found murdered. Since that day, Will has been disfiguring the bodies of black men who die in the town, in retribution for the other black residents of the city not helping him as he was being murdered.

The way that Will James appears in the modern day is the most Fuller-esque use of imagery on display here, incidentally. The flaming head on top of a pole, presented in full view in all its strangeness is very much in keeping with the confrontational way strange imagery was presented as just existing during season one. It made me realize how much I'd been missing season one's visual style this year.

I think that this narrative thread could have benefited from a little more clarity. Apparently, Will James' desire for justice is sated by possessing Shadow and making a speech about injustice at a funeral attended by about ten people. So, is that it? Will the local dead no longer be disfigured post-mortem by his angry spirit?

And as long as we're asking questions, is Mr. Nancy correct in his insinuation that Ibis and Jacquel have been assisting the spirit in order to get more dead bodies in the door? Was it just a coincidence that the latest victim was Ruby Goodchild's brother, leaving Ruby with nothing to stay in town for? Why was Nancy following Jamal Goodchild? Did he know what was going to happen, or did he cause it?

I think that mainly the show was trying to open a discussion about race and faith in America, but I was left unsatisfied with how little we got to know about anyone involved's motivations.

But that was just the A-plot. Meanwhile, Salim, Ifrit, and Wednesday take Wednesday's recently acquired magic spear to the king of the dwarves to get its magic fixed. They get there and Alviss, the aforementioned king of the dwarves, looks at it and says, 'sorry, I can't help you, I'm the forge guy. You need the magic rune guy.' Wednesday and company leave, having accomplished nothing at all. Honestly, this whole plot thread was a complete waste of time, outside of Alviss being played by Lee Arenberg, fka everyone's favorite character on Once Upon a Time, Grumpy.

The road trip scenes with Wednesday, Ifrit, and Salim have some quality bitching and I like that they're addressing what it means for Salim to be a devout Muslim in a world where he knows for a fact that all the other gods are real. It still felt like a waste of time in this episode, however. Also, Ifrit's irritation at Salim's faith in Allah seemed to come out of nowhere.

And then there was the C-plot. This was without question the best parts of the episode. Laura and Mad Sweeney get to New Orleans and go clubbing with Baron Samedi and his lovely partner, Maman Brigitte. Laura gets a mostly finished potion to restore her humanity, and of course they end up having graphic, meta-physically partner swapping sex. You know, the way everyone does on their first trip to New Orleans. I loved Samedi and Brigitte's relationship. I love the way they interacted with Sweeney and Laura. I really love that Laura saved herself from Argus' dimension, wherever that was. And there aren't words for how much I love that they're acknowledging Sweeney and Laura's incredible chemistry together. I'm 'shipping those two so hard. Also, holy crap but Pablo Schreiber is ripped. I had no idea.

Quotes:

Wednesday: "I have things to do and people to see. And I shall be seeing them and doing them alone."

Ifrit: "Thomas Jefferson said all men are created equal. But he still owned slaves."

Ifrit: "Look, there are many gods, Salim. And they are all as selfish as that one is with his women."

Bilquis: "I am sustained by the tranquility of love." Reverend: "God's Love?" Bilquis: "Something like that."

Salim: "Your truth, it is not my truth."

Laura: "I have a long history of really shitty impulse control."

Wednesday: "So the twelve saffron robed monks chanted as one, 'Have a little melon, Kali baby.'"

Bits and Pieces:

-- Mr. Jacquel's absence is getting increasingly awkward. Moreso since I can't seem to find anywhere online the reason for it. Was he just prevented from returning by his Star Trek: Discovery commitments? Was he part of the Fuller fallout like Gillian Anderson and Kristin Chenoweth?

-- Their workaround at the moment is to have Anubis only appear in canine form. Which works I suppose, although that was clearly a Doberman and not a jackal.

-- That said, how wonderful is it to have such a huge percentage of the cast, both gods and mortals, played by actors of color?

-- I don't understand what Bilquis wants from Ruby Goodchild. It can't just be that she wants to absorb her, or she'd already have done it. It seems a little convenient that Ruby's brother and grandmother are both dead now.

-- Minor point, but they confirmed my theory on Sweeney's luck getting worse the farther he's away from Laura and his coin. It's nice to be proved right.

-- Strange coincidence, but Maman Brigitte also turned up in last week's episode of Cloak & Dagger. I'd never heard of her before. Also, popular Constantine antagonist Papa Midnite is basically Baron Samedi with a different name, and now Constantine is on Legends of Tomorrow. I think my universe is contracting.

-- Wednesday made a tiger balls reference to Mr. Nancy! That was a nice little nod to the book.

-- The postcards of the hanging were an oblique reference to a real life event in Duluth, Minnesota in 1920. They took pictures of the lynching of three African American circus workers who had been accused of rape. And they did indeed sell them as postcards. That's the reference Bob Dillon is making in the first lines of the song 'Desolation Row,' which was covered by My Chemical Romance for the Watchman movie. 'They're selling postcards of the hanging/ They're painting the passports brown/ The beauty parlor is full of sailors/ The circus is in town.'

-- It's a small detail, but I love the choices Orlando Jones is making as regards when he slips back into an African accent and when his accent is modern American.

1940s mens styles really work on Ricky Whittle

Another good installment, held back from being great by virtue of wasting a little too much time on the unnecessary details of one plot, and leaving another plotline too vague. Still absolutely worth an hour of your time, though.

Three out of four postcards.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

#American Gods #Shadow Moon #Mr Wednesday #Laura Moon #Mad Sweeney #Mr Nancy #American Gods Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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therewillbesparkles · 6 years ago

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wexpertyst · 4 years ago

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How the COVID-19 is going to change the Mobile app Features?

The entire world is going through the novel coronavirus pandemic crisis. Countries have enforced lockdowns, refraining citizens to come out of their houses unless they have to get essential commodities. Staying inside the house, social distancing, and not coming in contact with others is the new normal and we have to learn to live with it until the cause is removed from the root.

In these times, the only thing that has come to the rescue is a mobile phone. People have turned to their gadgets for all sorts of entertainment, work, and infotainment. These are handy and the best medium to stay connected with people. Although people have been asked to maintain social distancing all over the world, they can stay in touch and feel close to each other through their mobile phones.

Trends of Online delivery apps

COVID-19 has led to people becoming hoarders, getting all the essential items from the grocery stores, leaving nothing for the others. We can take the example of the United States here when people started buying toilet papers and other edible items like pasta, and there was nothing left on the shelves. Buyers who were late to the stores ended up empty baskets as nothing was left on the shelves. This is when the buyers turned to online shopping and started ordering groceries online. Online shopping apps like Shipt, Instacart, and Drizly saw a relatively high spike. To make such online delivery apps, Xpertyst provides android app development services. Let’s take a look at some online shopping apps that have been doing exponentially well since coronavirus seeped into our society.

Instacart, one of the vastly used app saw another hike in the number of downloads in March. The downloads jumped to an all-time high in February when the app install count crossed 51 percent. Another 49 percent rise in downloads was seen again in March.

Let’s take the second case of Target owned app called Shipt. This app also like Instacart saw a growth of 34 percent in February 2020 and a further rise of 37 percent of installs in the first three weeks of March.

The people of the U.S. were not only getting their groceries delivered, but they also started using food delivery apps to get food delivered to their houses from the restaurants, rather than going and picking it up themselves. The major food delivery apps that witness a substantial rise in downloads included the likes of Doordash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, and postmates.

Take a look at the graphic representation of the growth of these apps:

Trends of entertainment apps

While the population is stuck at home and doing nothing as of now, there is no source of entertainment for them. Earlier, they could go out and enjoy their evening with friends and family. Now they have all turned to online apps, that provide entertainment. It is safe to say that music apps, like Wynk, Gaana, Spotify are among others that have a high number of installations in this period.

Meanwhile, the music streaming apps that are thriving during these tough times include Musi, Grovepad, young radio, and DrumPad.

Trends have seen in social media apps

Social media is one of the easiest and most used ways to stay connected with people, personally and professionally. People have been turning to these apps in times of coronavirus. From TikTok to Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, there has been an enormous spike of 23 percent in the month of January in the U.S. alone.

Look at the percentage increase of the installs of each popular social media app:

Talking about the world-famous app TikTok, the app saw a spike of 32 percent in the new number of installs during the first three weeks of March.

Snapchat was up 49 percent during the same period of time.

Instagram also witnessed a huge surge in the number of downloads, which was 48 percent in February and 25 percent in the first three weeks of March.

When compared, social media apps saw a much higher percentage rise than entertainment apps.

Take a look at the graphical representation of growth in social media app installs:

Trends in the downloads of video apps

Who doesn’t like to watch an engaging video in their free time? YouTube is like a sensation, letting anyone watch videos for free. Having considered one of the biggest video apps in the world, the app saw a huge surge in installs in these few months. Other video apps that have seen significant growth include the likes of Hulu, Netflix, Pluto TV, and Tubi TV, with a growth percentage of 33 percent.

Fitness apps

Are you also one of those, who have been missing out on their workout sessions and are feeling the guilt of not being able to work out at home? Well, it is because of people like these that fitness apps have seen big growth in the number of downloads. People are not only downloading these apps but are also paying for their workout regimes. The evolution of home fitness has made people realize that they don’t need to pay hefty amounts at the gyms, as they are capable enough of taking care of their fitness themselves at home.

With health and lifestyle taking the front seat in everyone’s lives in these modern times, people have gradually become more conscious about their workout routines. They don’t want to miss out on a single day routine. While they cannot take the help of their fitness instructors at this point in time, they have turned to apps for support.

Take a look at the growth of these apps in the Indian market during COVID-19:

Apart from all these diverse sections of the app, there are applications that have been designed to help people work efficiently from home. For instance, online meeting apps have come into being to make it easy for a large group of people to connect online all at once. One of the most successful work from the home app is the Zoom meeting app, which lets a large group of people come online at the same time and allows them to do a video conference or a video meeting. Teachers have been taking online classes and are able to teach a large number of students all at once.

The new novel coronavirus has led to people working from their home spaces. Since lockdown has been imposed in most parts of the country, people cannot travel to their workplaces and have to work from home. In such times of crisis, mobile applications have come to their rescue, allowing them to stay connected with their colleagues and clients.

Let’s take a look at some important applications that have been growing and doing good business at this time.

The most popular, or one can say the app that almost every working person has downloaded in these times, Zoom has outshined every other app. It increased to 57 percent in February and to a whopping 266 percent in the first three weeks of March.

The not so old app Skype for Business also saw a great deal of jump in its downloads. The increase in its installs went up to 51 percent in February and 66 percent in the first three weeks of March.

Next comes the GoToMeeting app, which again saw a significant rise of 53 percent in February and 85 percent in March.

How the COVID-19 is going to change the Mobile app Features?

Technology and apps have got a new life from here on. It’s been a long since we used to step out without a mast and greet our friends with hugs, and all the new things that are seeping into our daily lives are here to stay, being the new normal. Everything has become virtual and all the love that we want to shower on our loved ones is being done virtually.

Take a look at the new ideas people have come up with to keep the ball rolling:

Since we have friends that are now long lost, apps have come up with ideas to arrange house parties on video apps, where you can connect with a number of people at the same time and enjoy their company. From virtual weddings to virtual baby showers and birthday parties, everything has become a part of the digital world. Social distancing has brought everyone close on social media.

Job interviews are no more held in person, as people are now applying for jobs like as they used to before, but are being interviewed on video apps. Video conferencing has also become the new big deal in the industry.

Movies are now being live-streamed for movie buffs as they cannot step out, or go to the theatres like old times to enjoy a movie.

Even the celebrities are coming close to their fans as they are doing live concerts from home, which is being viewed by millions of people from the comfort of their homes.

People have started using even those apps, that were never used before. For instance, elderly people who had not been using mail have switched to emails from other apps. Boundaries between work and home are slowly blurring, making everything convenient and easy at home.

Mobile app features that will help in mobile app success

Ever since the havoc of Coronavirus has been created, people have turned to certain apps to stay connected and informed about one’s health. According to data collected worldwide, the average weekly time spent in apps grew by about 20 percent in the first quarter of 2020. This shift of people towards technology has given a new area of advancement to companies.

All companies should follow the online trend and try to respond as quickly as possible to meet public demand. Let’s take the example of fitness apps that are thriving at this time and are coming out successful. One of the most successful fitness apps is that of yoga called “Down Dog.” It is giving free access to all of its other apps to its users, on the purchase of one app. Apart from this, the app has also worked on its assistance efforts and is providing quick and secure assistance to its users. The founder of the app, Carlos Ormachea said, “France, Italy, and Spain need a lot of help right now. And because we dynamically generate the content, it was relatively quick to translate all of it. More than 400,000 people have downloaded our app in those areas in the last few weeks.”

All companies should rethink their role and offer services best suited to the needs of their users. An educational tech application in Indonesia called “Ruangguru” started offering free online courses along with 30 GB of data to the users, in partnership with a local telecom company. The goodwill of the company rose like anything when it was recognized worldwide in one of the addresses of Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

This is the time when food delivery apps are doing great, after a big downfall. As the lockdown is opening in certain countries, people have started ordering food, which is taking the delivery business a notch higher.

In times like these social apps have become the basic need, or we can call it a necessity. It informs all users about what is happening around the world and helps them stay in touch with each other. However, there are certain features that should be kept in mind for the smooth functioning of these apps. Keep reading for these features:

Adapting to the needs of new users is very important. The new features to be added to an app should be in retrospect of what the users are looking forward to at this point in time.

Communicate all the changes to the user, that you are making to the app. A shift in the app functions might not be accepted by the users immediately, therefore, they should be told about the shift in advance so that they are mentally prepared for the same.

Help them track the COVID-19 positive cases near them. This will not only help them stay away from the infection but will keep them informed about the zones that should be best avoided.

Should give the numbers or the latest figures of coronavirus positive cases, so that they are well informed about the complications of going outside.

Grocery delivery is a must-have feature for all apps. We have seen how the big names in the industry like Amazon, Paytm, and others gradually shifted to delivering only essential items to their customers. This helped them perform well, even during the times of pandemic, and come out victorious. When people were witnessing empty stacks at the grocery stores, online shopping sites came to their rescue.

Applications that became a big success during the pandemic

COVID-19 has contributed to the success of certain tech giants as their apps have performed significantly well in the past few months. These times have brought in certain changes in the way people were looking at apps and using them. This is a revolution of the tech industry and many Mobile app developers have revamped their apps to make them easier and more convenient to use. While there are companies that have hit the rock bottom and bid goodbye, letting go of their employees, there are others who have understood the market strategy and keeping their work in sync with the new norms of the industry.

Take a look at the industries that have soared high during these times:

Grocery apps

Educational apps

Healthcare apps

Social media apps

Digital payment apps

Entertainment apps

Conclusion

COVID-19 has been in the world for quite some months now, but it has brought a major and visible change to the world of technology. Changes are being made in the work procedures and all other office work handling, people are becoming more dependent on the internet and on apps. From watching DIY tips to making online payments in the blink of an eye and conferencing with family or colleagues has become so easy. We might have never been so much dependent on technology and would have never made full use of mobile applications, as much as we are doing now. As soon as the pandemic gets over, businesses are going to come out glorious, doing very well in the online world.

This pandemic has brought a digital transformation, which is going to have a huge impact on how things work in the near future. The app's popularity has grown leaps and bounds and there is nothing stopping the applications to perform better with each passing day. People have started becoming more dependent on the apps and the manual work is gradually decreasing, with everything coming online and in the form of mobile applications. Apps are going to be the next big thing in the world.

Xpertyst is a Mobile app development company and is developing different types of mobile applications for last few years and have extensive knowledge of domain features, if you are looking for social media app development services, write us at [email protected]

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marcazoshop · 4 years ago

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Vikings No One Loves A Warrior Until The Enemy Is At The Gate T-Shirt

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Garbage Pail Kids At 35: The Kids Are Alright

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This story appears in the Den of Geek x eBay special edition trading card magazine.

Garbage Pail Kids gave birth to my anti-authority streak. I was in fifth grade waiting for art class to start and showing off my prized Ashcan Andy to enraptured classmates when my teacher walked in the classroom, sighed, confiscated the card and proceeded to rip it up. “This junk has no place in an art room,” she stoically declared as Andy was transformed into sad confetti before my eyes. Years later, I came to realize that this demonstration was all about jealousy – these cards had instantly engaged students in art in a way that her years of teaching never could.

And let me be clear here: Garbage Pail Kids are most definitely art. Often grotesque and always eye-catching, the unfortunate children showcased on these cards fostered an interest in painting, illustration, and design for generations of kids since Topps first introduced them back in 1985 (their pun-heavy names also were a gateway for subversive humor). After 35 years, Garbage Pail Kids have become a cultural institution—not to mention schoolyard contraband for nearly four decades, an unexpected bonus that would make the creators of these cards—veterans of the counterculture themselves—beam with pride.

To trace the origins of Garbage Pail Kids, a brief history lesson is in order. Although they were best known for their baseball cards, the Topps Company also had huge success with bubblegum cards based on popular films and TV shows. Further expanding their creative pallet, Topps released numerous humor card lines, the most popular of which was Wacky Packages. Like Mad Magazine before them, these stickers showcased parodies of contemporary products with bitingly accurate focus.

In the early 1980s there was no bigger consumer frenzy than the Cabbage Patch Kids. These dolls from Xavier Roberts and Coleco featured an elaborate backstory and cloyingly adorable looks that became the stuff of toy legend (news reports featuring near riots as parents tried to get their hands on the damn things were commonplace in the early 1980s).

Naturally, then, Cabbage Patch Kids were an ideal target to get the Wacky Packages treatment. But the decision was wisely made by Topps execs that Garbage Pail Kids could be a card line of their own. Spearheading the project was underground comics legend Art Spiegelman (who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for his groundbreaking holocaust graphic novel Maus), Raw comics anthology contributor Mark Newgarden, and artist John Pound.

Pound, a veteran of painting fantasy and science fiction book covers, was brought by Spiegelman to illustrate the original Wacky Packages “Garbage Pail Kid” card (featuring one of the dolls pushed into a trash can and touting orders to send the unfortunate soul to the Department of Sanitation). Though this Wacky Pack was shelved, Pound single-handedly painted all the characters featured in the first Garbage Pail Kids set. “They liked the idea sketches I sent in,” he says, “and asked me to do all 40 paintings in two months, which was faster than I was used to, but I got organized and made the deadline.”

Working with Spiegelman, Newgarden, and Topps creative favorite Jay Lynch to craft ideas, Pound’s early characters included the now iconic Adam Bomb, and remain some of the most beloved in the line (for the record, Pound names Adam Bomb, Up Chuck, Jolly Roger, and Mona Loser as some of his favorite creations).

Looking back over three decades later, Pound sees several reasons why Garbage Pail Kids have endured:

“The original concept had strengths: doing a parody of the famous Cabbage Patch Kids, and a name that was both clear and familiar sounding,” he says. “The concept’s rebellious attitude and shock value gave it initial attention. Also, in the ‘80s, Topps products were widely distributed, like in drug stores, variety stores, convenience stores.”

Although he freely admits that “I wasn’t expecting it, but Garbage Pail Kids became a huge hit,” Pound says aesthetic concerns were foremost on his mind when painting these garish figures. “On my end, despite the abundant gross humor and shock value, I simply wanted the art to feel good to look at. And I tried to put love into the paintings.”

The care with which these outlandish cards were created was appreciated by consumers. Fifteen different series of Garbage Pail Kids were produced between 1985 and 1988. There was spinoff GPK merchandise too, ranging from folders emblazoned with images of popular characters to the on-brand/subversively named Cheap Toys. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was released in 1987 with The Facts of Life co-star Mackenzie Astin in the lead. On that topic, The Toys That Made Us and A Toy Store Near You creator Brian Volk-Weiss sums up the flick perfectly: “That movie is so bonkers even seeing it is not believing it. It reminds me in a weird way of a low budget Batman and Robin in that it was like a ton of people were involved with the green light and execution and seemingly had no oversight on any matter.”

But as far as Volk-Weiss is concerned, a new motion picture has plenty of potential. “I would love to see them do a ‘serious’ reboot that would be similar to the first Guardians of the Galaxy film in that they take the characters and the world seriously,” he states, “but the fun and humor and oddness stays intact too.” While there may be a future on screen for New Wave Dave and company, whatever it turns out to be must avoid the mistakes of the infamous 1987 cartoon series – which was produced for CBS but never aired due to the then-ongoing controversy surrounding the franchise (it eventually landed on DVD, and the less said about it the better.)

Despite a lull in any new products that lasted from the late 1980s until 2003, Garbage Pail Kids never really left the public consciousness. If anything, they were inspiring new talent. Enter Buff Monster. The Hawaii native and prolific street artist known for his upbeat, ice cream-inspired work was so inspired by Garbage Pail Kids that he created his own line of sticker art cards, The Melty Misfits. With names like Mind-Blowin’ Owen (featuring a cameo by a very Adam Bomb-esque character) and Bam Bam Sam, these intricately designed stickers—created on the type of antiquated machinery that Garbage Pail Kids were made on—come complete with a retro-styled wax pack and showcase Buff Monster’s own unique aesthetic as they pay homage to the Topps line.

Talking about why he personally connected with Garbage Pail Kids, Buff Monster makes a salient point on why these things were so memorable in the first place.

“If you look at most trading cards, they are less than what they’re about. Having a baseball card is a ‘less than’ experience than watching the game. If you’re watching a baseball game in person, that’s great, but watching a baseball game on TV is actually better because you’ve got commentary, and you’ve got playback, and all this sort of stuff,” he tells us.

“But Garbage Pail Kids stand out because the art was made for the cards, so the card was the thing. The card wasn’t some sub-version of something else. It was the point of making the art in the first place. And so that has always stuck with me. And that is really kind of what it comes down to for me.”

Buff Monster’s The Melty Misfits stickers are a burgeoning phenomenon for the 2020s, just as Garbage Pail Kids were for the 1980s. It’s understandable that he is partnering with eBay for a special pack of The Melty Misfits, some of which will come packaged with a random “Golden Ticket” card that will entitle the recipient to have Buff Monster create a character of their choice.

“This pack that we’re going to do is a nice little introduction to me and eBay working together,” he says. “This is a very easy thing for the completist to get. And that’s good.”

It’s clear when talking to Buff Monster that Garbage Pail Kids continue to inspire. And the cards themselves feel more vibrant than ever, way more relevant today than the doll that inspired them in the first place. Case in point? Recent political and horror-themed Garbage Pail Kids sets (which are really one and the same when you think about it) have brought old fans back into the fold.

Another example of booming Garbage Pail Kids interest is the 2017 documentary 30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story. The film’s writer and (with Jeff Zapata) co-director is Joe Simko, himself an accomplished artist and graphic designer who has worked on the card line and IDW’s spinoff Garbage Pail Kids comic, as well as his own series of The Sweet Rot graphic novels and his Cereal Killer trading cards. Simko vividly remembers when Garbage Pail Kids entered his life.

“I first discovered Garbage Pail Kids when I was 10 years old while riding the school bus. A couple of kids were sharing them,” Simko says. “It was the second series, and I just remember that artwork jumping out at me. Never had I seen such appetizing visuals on a trading card before. I knew instantly they were an attack on the highly successful Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, which dominated the kid’s market landscape at the time. Garbage Pail Kids were such a great middle-school kids protest to that cutesy Cabbage Patch world.”

Simko has been a part of Garbage Pail Kids lore since 2009, and during that time has given the Garbage Pail Kids treatment to everything from Stranger Things to Universal Monsters. “I think my favorite Garbage Pail Kids projects are the licensed product paintings I get to do,” he says. “For instance, the Garbage Pail Kids cereal for FYE was just so great to work on. Doing cereal box signings at the FYE pop-up shop during San Diego Comic-Con was an overwhelming experience. Greeting Garbage Pail Kids fans, when I too am a fan, is amazing.”

When I mention the brand’s longevity to Simko, he is quick to sum up their continued popularity. “Garbage Pail Kids have lasted this long due in part to the dedicated group of collectors who grew up on the series in the ’80s. Yes, there are younger kids buying them today, but the nostalgia it brings to those grown-up kids keeps the spirit and revenue of the Garbage Pail alive.”

Bringing things full circle, he also vindicated myself and everyone else who was ever frowned upon for appreciating the cards’ artistic merits.

“They are a true form of art. To pass judgement on them and reject these cards as ‘art’ because of the subject matter, is to have a narrow perspective of what art is,” Simko says. “Credit goes to the original creators of the Garbage Pail Kids cards during the 1980s, Art Spiegelman and Mark Newgarden. Art and Mark knew the ingredients to make GPK work. And of course the artists, John Pound, Tom Bunk, James Warhola, and Jay Lynch, were the ‘cooks.’ They made it taste and look perfectly gross. Without any of these creative minds, I believe Garbage Pail Kids would not be the success it became at the time.”

Despite being anchored to a fad from the 1980s, Garbage Pail Kids are ultimately timeless. Children of all ages will always take to the goofy grossness that is embedded in the line’s DNA. Nostalgia is a potent thing too, but as recent years have illustrated, Topps is always looking to evolve the IP, be it through virtual Garbage Pail Kids, high-end collectible figures, or just by continuing to bring in great artists to keep the bread and butter of the franchise—the card line—going strong. These Kids may be pushing 40, but in the heart of fans, they’ll never age.

Garbage Pail Kids eBay x Topps Exclusive

The 10-card set created by Joe Simko is the first exclusive from eBay and Topps. Each card is representative of buying and selling on eBay. The set will be available for $19.99 on eBay for one week starting on August 10.

The post Garbage Pail Kids At 35: The Kids Are Alright appeared first on Den of Geek.

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