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pucksnsticksnhockeyboys · 4 years ago

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all my focus on you

summary: all of your focus is on Jake, and yet you can’t see that he loves you.

warnings: mentions of injury

word count: 3.2k

note from the writer: this is the first thing I've posted in months and I really like how it turned out. let me know what you think! also I didn’t edit it so sorry ahead of time.

“Who’s Tuna?”

You had heard the nickname tossed around a lot. At least, you were pretty sure it was a nickname. You were new to the world of hockey, having only really paid attention to the sport in the past few months as a result of your roommate, Jess, dating professional player Brock Boeser. Through him, you had met Elias, Quinn, Thatcher, Troy, and a whole assortment of others. But, Tuna still remained a mystery to you. Apparently, he was going to be joining your group out to the bar that night.

“You’ll like him.” Brock declared, giving you the same response he always did whenever you asked, while Elias’ smile turned the special kind of mischievous that only he could ever pull off. You didn’t have the chance to question how he could have been so certain, because Jess called your name and insisted that you start getting ready to go.

You’d never, not once in a million years, admit it that Brock was right.

You did like ‘Tuna’. A lot more than you probably should have. He was fun and outgoing from the moment Brock introduced you to him at the bar. Your heart stopped in your chest when you realized that Tuna was Jake Virtanen, your secret hockey crush. When Jess started seeing Brock, she showed you the entire Canucks roster. Jake’s piercing blue eyes struck out to you from the moment you saw his picture, but other than a ‘oh he’s cute’ and a mental note of his name and number, you kept quiet.

Now, he was standing before you, handing extended for you to shake with a dazzling smile that nearly made you forget your own name.

“I’m Jake.” He said brightly, and you offered your own smile in return as you slipped your hand into his meekly. Your face warmed at his touch, and if you possessed the ability to look away from Jake, you would have seen the shit-eating grin Brock wore. But you couldn’t, and instead you saw the way Jake’s gaze stayed on you, his own cheeks turning red. “What’re you drinking? I’m buying tonight.”

And thus, an amazing friendship grew. Which, for whatever reason, Brock seemed to loathe.

He was insistent that there was something more between you and Jake, which you vehemently denied, and each time your cheeks would burn brightly. It wasn’t as if you didn’t want anything more with Jake, in the few months that you had gotten to know him, he had become one of your closest friends and the person you told everything too.

And your secret hockey crush turned into full blown feelings. Most of your time was spent with him, even if you felt nothing but butterflies in your stomach whenever he was near. Only a few short months after meeting him, you couldn’t imagine your life without him. He was a constant presence in your life, as sure as you were that the sun would rise, you knew that Jake would be there for you.

With a schedule as crazy as a professional athlete’s, you jumped on any opportunity to spend time with Jake and any of the guys on the team, who all quickly became good friends of yours, along with their partners. Currently, you were at a diner, getting a quick lunch with Jake, Petey, and Brock, the two blondes sharing a side of the booth opposite of you.

Jake was in the middle of animatedly telling a story, and you watched with your undivided attention. Well, nearly undivided, since he had swung an arm around your shoulders shortly after sitting down and the simple contact had your heart beating like crazy. Petey had sent you no less than three shit-eating grins, and Brock was openly chuckling at how flustered you were. You were just thankful Jake was as oblivious as he was.

“You’re coming to the game tonight, right?” Jake asked, jostling you with the arm that was around his shouler to get your attention as soon as he finished his story. You nodded, taking a sip of your drink to cover up the fact that you had been openly staring at him as he spoke. “Perfect. Alright, I’ve got to run. I’m supposed to meet with my nutritionist.”

There was a chorus of ‘goodbyes’ as he tossed some cash on the table, enough to cover both his bill and yours, since he always insisted on paying for you. Before he could slide out of the booth, though, he pressed a quick kiss to your temple, an innocent act that had your heart doing cartwheels. You avoided Petey and Brock’s gazes, trying to will the heat in your cheeks away. It was only when the bell chimed on the door signalling that Jake had left, did someone speak up.

“Oh, come on!” Brock groaned, and you shot him a curious look. He ignored you, turning to face Elias, who was grinning in amusement. “I’m just going to tell her. It’s painful at this point.”

“Tell me what?” You question, nerves seeping into you, watching Elias shrug and grin wider. Instantly, your mind thought about the worst, like someone was getting traded or something similar, but nothing could have prepared you for what Brock said next.

“Jake is in love with you.”

“What? No, he’s not.” You spluttered, eyes wide and cheeks warm. Brock rolled his eyes at you, a scoff leaving his lips as if he thought his teammate’s apparent affection was obvious.

“He talks about you all the time.” Petey offered, and you fell silent. Elias wasn’t one to mess around with something like that. Sure, he made sly comments that had you laughing everytime, but this was different.

“He thinks you could never like him back, so we have to listen to him complain about it.” Brock’s tone was serious, but you could hear the subtle chirp. You pursed your lips, dropping your focus onto your plate to avoid meeting either of their gazes.

“You guys are ridiculous.” You settled on saying, though just because you dropped the conversation, it didn’t mean that you stopped thinking about it.

Even hours later as you were walking through the doors of the arena, you were still thinking about it. Though, you were quickly distracted as Jess led you through the crowd to find your seats and watch warm-ups.

Despite your inner turmoil, the Virtanen jersey felt right on your shoulders, now a regular part of your wardrobe. When Jake had found out that you had no idea about hockey, he had bought you the number eighteen Canucks sweater, along with tickets to just about every home game, claiming you were his good luck charm. When he gave you his jersey, he stated that it was to make your hockey experience complete—thought now you weren’t so sure.

Brock’s words from earlier in the day were still bouncing in your head. You had a hard time believing they were true, but then you thought over nearly every interaction you had with Jake. They all had a common theme—Jake was always looking at you with a softness to his eyes that you had, at the time, chaked up to his friendliness. Now, thinking back, you recognized the look. It was the same look you gave him.

A look of utter adoration and total love.

You settled into your seat to watch the game with a wide smile on your face, borderline giddy with the conclusion you had come to. You decided that after the game, when you would be going back to Jake’s for a movie night and a sleepover, a tradition that had been established after celebrating a win too hard one night and you spent the night at his place, and at the following brunch it was decided his guest room would be yours after any home games. Though, if you played your cards right, you wouldn’t be sleeping in the guest room.

Your happiness only lasted until halfway through the first period, and quickly dread formed in the pit of your stomach. The game was back and forth, neither team able to keep possession of the puck for very long. Petey scored first, and you cheered loudly, but clamped your mouth shut when a player on the opposite team—you couldn’t see a name on his jersey, and even so, you didn’t pay attention to any hockey team outside of Vancouver—started shoving Jake. Of course, Jake was running his mouth and shoving back, and it was only when a ref skated between the two players did you let out a breath of relief you hadn’t realized you were holding.

Apparently, Jake pissed off the other team a lot more than you originally thought.

You would have sworn he was being targeted. Everytime he was on the ice, it seemed, that an opposing player would check him into the boards. He wad getting hit hard from all angles, he got tripped twice but only drew a penalty on one—and if you screamed bullshit! at the ref, then who would have blamed you—and got into a fight late in the second after an opposing player shoved into Thatcher.

It was the third period when things really went awry.

It was the final minutes of the period, Vancouver up by one, thanks to Bo’s goal at the end of the second. The Canucks were fighting to hold on, maybe score an extra point to cement their victory, while the other team was getting desperate. And they were playing dirty, too.

You didn’t really register the gasp that fell from your lips as some unknown opponent slammed Jake into the boards, head on, with clear intent to injure him. You did remember jumping to your feet, as if that would make everything better.

Jess, who you hadn’t really acknowledged was sitting next to you in your stress, gripped your arm tightly. You watched in horror as Jake stayed down, hands holding his head as the athletic trainer jogged across the ice with the assistance of Troy Stetcher. You couldn’t tear your gaze away from Jake, but if you could, you would have seen Brock looking worriedly from his injured teammate to where he knew you were in the stands.

It felt like years later when Jake finally stood, and while leaning heavily on his trainer and Troy, he went down the tunnel. You sat down stifly into your seat, leg bouncing in nerves and fingers tapping an unknown pattern as you anxiously waited for the game to be over so you could check on Jake.

Five minute major, game misconduct.

Good, you thought, but you kept your mouth clamped shut as nausea swirl in your stomach. Distantly, you heard Jess say that the opposing player was most likely going to get fined for his actions. You knew hockey was a hard hitting sport, but that was terrible. You had seen Jake hurt before, blocked shots, highsticks, and the sorts—but not once had it taken him that long to get back up.

You couldn’t focus on the rest of the game, you were pretty sure that at some point Quinn had scored, but eventually Jess was leading you down to the tunnel where had to meet the other players. Holly, Bo’s wife, had tried to assure you that Jake would be fine the moment she saw you.

“He’s got a thick skull.” She tried to lighten the mood, but all you could muster was a weak smile and a laugh that sounded forced and foriegn to even your own ears. You listened to the other wives and girlfriends of players chatter about who knows what—certainly not you, you were staring at the door you knew the boys emerged from—for minutes. The girls knew you, how you were always around Jake, acting like a couple but not once taking that extra step, so they knew how stressed you were, waiting for the verdict.

Elias was the first one to exit the room, heading straight to you with a tiny, reassuring, smile on his face. Your arms were crossed tightly across your body, an indicator of just how uncomfortable you were in the moment.

“He’s fine. He’ll be out in a few minutes.” He told you quietly. Though it helped calmed you slightly, you couldn’t get the imagine of him laying on the ice out of your head. You nodded your head in thanks, before he patted your shoulder comfortingly and departed. Quinn was next out, shooting you a pitiful smile. Tanev, Toffoli, and Edler all came out before finally, the brunette you had been waiting for emerged with Brock at his side.

He looked terrible, his tie was loose around his neck, hair a mess from the quick post-game shower he had just taken. His shoulders were slumped, and he looked so tired that your heart clenched in your chest.

“How are you?” You asked quietly once he stopped before you. Jess and Brock left to give you some privacy, but you didn’t notice in the slightest. Your focus was on Jake—like it always was.

“A little beat up, nothing I can’t handle.” He waved off his injured like it was nothing. You pouted for a moment, knowing he was playing down the severity of it. He seemed to sense your disbelief, because he wrapped his arms around your shoulders and pulled you into his chest. You sank into the embrace, reciprocating the hug with a deep sigh.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again.” You threatened into the fabric of his suit, wrapping your arms tiger around his middle. He chuckled lowly, holding you just as tight in return. Your heart was thundering in your chest, your stomach a lightning storm of nerves.

“I’ll try not to.” He assured you quietly, dropping a kiss to top of your head. You thought back to your decision before the game, how you were going to confront both his feelings and yours, and decided that it could wait just a little bit longer.

“Come on, let’s get you home.” You mumbled, pulling away sightly. He nodded and you, and you were pleasantly surprised as he slipped his hand into yours, threading your fingers together, as you headed in the direction of his car.

You insisted on driving, and Jake only protested slightly. The ride was quiet, and you could tell something was bothering him, but chose to stay quiet and let him come to you when he was ready. Or at least until you got back to his home. Instead, you listened to his music play softly from the car as you weaved through the streets of Vancouver, taking the familiar path to Jake’s place.

When you finally arrived, he slipped into his bedroom to change into something more comfortable, and you made yourself comfortable on his couch. When he returned, he was in a Canucks hoodie and pair of grey sweats, and instead of sitting next to you on the couch, he laid across it so his head was in your lap. Instantly, your hand threaded though his hair and you scratched at his scalp, something you knew he loved. His eyes fluttered shut at the action, and he hummed contentedly.

“You scared me tonight.” You said softly after a moment. You tried to will away the tears that welled up in your eyes, remembering how it felt to see him laying on the ice, injured. It tore you in two, you had never felt more sick to your stomach at a sight than you did when he was down.

“I know.” He sighed queitly in response. Not trusting yourself to keep your voice steady, you chose not to respond right away. He reached a hand up, grabbing yours out of his hair and pressing a kiss to your palm, before threading your fingers through his and resting it on his chest.

And then, you couldn’t stop the words from tumbling past your lips—

“I love you too much to see you get hurt like that.” You hated how your voice cracked, and most of all you hated how you confessed your feelings. You wanted to do so during a happy moment, one shared with smiles and he’d tell you he felt the same, but no, you were holding back tears on his couch as he tensed, your words registering.

“What?” He questioned, sitting up abruptly. You would have thought that you had screwed everything up, if it weren’t for the near-death grip he had on your hand. Still, you couldn’t meet his gaze, and instead focused on the coffee table. Gently, with his free hand, he cupped your jaw, turning so you were facing him. It was then that you realized that you were crying, silent tear tracks running down your cheeks that he brushed away carefully as he studied your face intently. “What did you just say?”

“I love you.” You choked out, voice tight. “And I’m new to the hockey thing, so I’m not used to seeing hits like that and I—”

Your ramblings were cut short as Jake surged forward, connecting your lips to his. It took you a moment to react, but your free hand eventually moved to the back of his neck, your other still gripped in yours. The kiss wasn’t heated, but loaded with so much passion and emotion it made your head swirl. Months of casual flirting and innocent touches built to this moment, and you would be lying if you said you were aware of how long you actually were pressed against him.

Eventually, he did pull back, a wide and dopey grin on his face. You smiled just as brightly, the hand on the back of his neck toying slightly with the strands of hair there. Chasing your lips for a few quick pecks that your readily complied with.

“I love you, too.” He hummed, seemingly unable to tear his focus from you. You didn’t mind, not one bit, considering he had you attention from the moment you had met.

“I know.” You grinned, watching as his brows pull together in confusion, a silent question and urge for you to elaborate. With a giggle, you explained. “Brock told me.”

“Of course he did.” Jake groaned, tipping his head back. You chuckled at his dramatics, looking at him with the same fond look you always did. Only this time, you didn’t have to worry about him finding out. Your hand moved from behind his head to his jaw, thumb brushing across his cheekbone. You smiled as he brought his attenton back to you, and you leaned forward to press a quick kiss to the tip of his nose. “You know, he’s been trying to set me up with you this entire time.”

“Yeah, he told me that I’d like you the night we met. He and Petey were planning this.” You explained, watching as he lifted your joined hands and kissed the back of yours, a barking laugh leaving him as you finished your sentence.

“Was he right?” He asked cheekily, swinging an arm around your shoulders and pulling you into his chest so he could cuddle you. You admired him with a soft smile, watching as he grabbed the remote on the couch beside him to put on a movie. Never in a millions years would you admit that Brock was right, but you with the way Jake was smiling, you decided to make an acception.

“Definitely.”

#jake virtanen #Jake Virtanen x reader #Jake Virtanen imagine #Jake Virtanen imagines #hockey imagine #hockey x reader #NHL imagine #NHL x reader #vancouver canucks #Vancouver canucks x reader #Vancouver Canucks imagine

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thebibliomancer · 4 years ago

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #239: Late Night of the Super-Stars!

January, 1984

1984! Can’t wait to make a bunch of Orwell jokes that are poorly thought out and land poorly!

But I guess it’ll have to wait since we’re on Late Night with David Letterman in this issue.

This sure is an interesting turn of events. Although the team we see on the cover doesn’t seem to be the actually active roster. They’re over in the corner box turned away - either from shame or because they’re off doing their own thing.

Because its Assistant Editors’ Month!

A fun-sounding non-event. Although, looking it up, very few books that were considered part of the event actually did anything with it beyond a slightly goofy issue box on the cover.

So we’re going to see some Avengers go on a talk show today.

Superheroes as celebrities! What a novel idea.

Anyway, I learned an interesting detail about the cover that would have totally missed me. The checkerboard strip at the top was a hallmark of DC comics around this time. And the round MC logo in the top right is an obvious spoof of the DC logo from this time.

It’s not much more than a goof for this book but the Captain America book released for Assistant Editors’ Month also had the checkerboard and logo and was a style parody of DC comics.

Last times: Vision went into a robo-coma from walking into an invisible dome created by Annihilus and only recently recovered the ability to talk. New Avenger Starfox hooked Vision up to ISAAC the Titan computer and overclocked Vision’s robot brain so now he can project himself as a hologram and has an even faster computer brain. At the end of Avengers #238, the Avengers got a call from Tigra about some nonsense going on in San Francisco involving Spider-Woman.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye got a whole miniseries all to himself where he met Mockingbird, lost his job at Cross Technological, his girlfriend revealed that she was paid to date him and also hated him, he teamed up with Mockingbird to uncover an evil scheme by Crossfire to kill all superheroes, Hawkeye lost his hearing by putting an ultrasonic arrowhead in his mouth but foiled the scheme plot, and married Mockingbird. He’s had a very busy week or so!

This time: Hawkeye comes back to the Avengers Mansion to show off his cool new wife.

Hawkeye: “Hey, everybody -- your wanderin’ boy Hawkeye has come home... And you’ll never guess what I’ve gone and done!”

I can just imagine Mockingbird replying “Me” with the biggest shit-eating grin. She feels the sort to do that.

When Hawkeye and Mockingbird arrive there’s no one to greet them except the floating disembodied hologram head of the Wizard of Vizh.

Hawkeye has also made the decision, for some reason, to not wear the hearing aid that Mockingbird got him so he can’t hear what Vision is saying when he compliments his new costume.

Mockingbird introduces herself for Hawkeye and Vision tells the two to join him in the medical labs so they can catch up.

When they arrive, Vision raises his volume so Hawkeye can hear and recaps everything that’s happened to lead up to him becoming a robot in a tube who can hologram around.

Vision: “[Starfox] set up a direct link between ISAAC, the world-computer of Titan, to better diagnose my condition. But, instead, my brain became overloaded with ISAAC’s energy-information matrix --!”

Hawkeye: “And you became several with the universe, right?”

Vision: “‘Several with the’ --? Oh -- hah-ha! Very witty!”

Overclocking his brain seems to have done wonders for Vision’s sense of humor.

He even finds Hawkeye funny now.

Vision also explains where the dickens everyone else is (because Hawkeye asks him where the dickens they are. Its so weird for Hawkeye to say dickens).

Jarvis was given the day off to visit his mother, Captain America and Thor are both busy with nonsense in their own books, and the rest of the Avengers are off to San Francisco because of that call from Tigra.

Hawkeye offers to fly out and give them a hand, which Vision declines since they’ll call if they need help.

Instead he asks Hawkeye how he met Mockingbird and Hawkeye recaps the miniseries in only five panels.

He’s better at this than I am...

Hawkeye: “Anyway, Mockingbird and I had made a pretty good team -- so when it was all over, we ran off and got married!”

Mockingbird: “What can I say? The big lug needed somebody to keep him out of trouble!”

That’s the task of a lifetime, Bobbi. But good for you two! Cute couple is what I say.

Vision: “Marvelous! I hope you two will be as happy together as Wanda and I have been!"

Vision and Scarlet Witch probably are the healthiest superhero marriage of this time.

Vision asks if Hawkeye and Mockingbird intend to stay in the mansion, which they do. But it’s cool because Mockingbird has security clearance from working with SHIELD so they won’t need to bother Mr. Sikorsky and agitate his hatred of living in the superhero genre.

After Hawkeye takes Mockingbird off on a tour of the mansion, Vision receives a call from his brain brother, Wonder Man.

Who, very reluctantly, is coming to the Avengers with hat in hand. So to speak.

Wonder Man: “Okay. Here’s the situation -- my acting career hasn’t been going anywhere lately! So my agent, without my approval -- used the fact that I’m a reserve Avenger to get me a booking on David Letterman’s show, and now, they want me to bring other Avengers along with me! My agent really put me in a tight spot on this one. I hate to impose, but -- !”

Vision: “It’s no imposition at all, Simon! I’ll personally call the network and confirm the Avengers’ appearance!”

Wonder Man: “You’re sure it’s no trouble?”

Vision: “None whatsoever! After all, we have many Avengers -- !”

You sure do! Not as many as you’ll have by the No Surrender days. But still.

Also, I love this can-do attitude from you, Vision!

This is a pretty low priority in terms of fighting crime and whatnot but Vision is like THIS IS EXTREMELY DOABLE, I AM THE INTERNET.

Although imagine how sad it is from Wonder Man’s perspective. His agent put him on the spot pulling sorta-rank to get Simon some media attention but the media is like ‘ok but do you have something better?’

This man is trying to improve his career and the David Letterman show looked at him and said ‘ok but what else have you got?’

Oof!

Anyway, Vision uses the superpower of being wired into the phone system to call up some extra Avengers who aren’t very busy right now.

He calls Black Panther, Beast, and Black Widow.

Their varied responses are pretty funny.

But Black Panther’s is probably the best. He interrupts a meeting with his advisers to take the call and then he’s like ‘yeah sure I can drop everything I’m doing to appear on David Letterman!’

T’Challa really would rather be doing anything but kinging.

Beast initially protests that he’s too busy with the Defenders to just jump on some Avengers business but...

Beast: “The Letterman show? Hey, why didn’t you say so?”

And Black Widow is unbusy sunbathing at the Waldorf Towers while between missions. She doesn’t really want to make a television appearance (it’s kinda counterproductive for a spy, I would guess) but Vision mentions something that has Natasha agree to be there.

Based on what happens later, I guess Vision mentions that Hawkeye will be there.

A couple hours later, ELSEWHERE, well if it isn’t our ol’ friend and punchline Fabian Stankowicz!

Remember this goofus? He attacked the Avengers right when everyone was feeling bad about Hank Pym? Iron Man easily beat him up while the rest of the Avengers breezed on by. Or when he attacked Wasp’s cool superheroine brunch? Which was a hilariously terrible idea because he got between She-Hulk and breakfast foods. Also, nobody took him very seriously there either.

I guess the Avengers didn’t bother to press charges either time because he’s not in jail. He’s at his home working on some machines while his dad criticizes how he spends his time.

Dads, amirite?

Granted, what he’s criticizing is Fabian’s tendency to pick fights with superheroes. And... granted. Not a great use of his time.

But apparently Fabian can afford all the robot suits he keeps attacking the Avengers with because he won the lottery.

So he has a pretty good position to shoot down his dad’s protests, really.

Dad Stankowicz: “Fabian, I’m glad your poor mother didn’t live to see what’s become of you... It would’ve broken her heart!”

Fabian Stankowicz: “Aw, gimme a break, old man!”

Dad Stankowicz: “‘Old man’? This is the way you talk to your father?”

Fabian Stankowicz: “What do you want, egg in your beer? Was it you who won the state lottery and got us out of the Bronx? No, it was me! I won the money, and I’ll say how it’s spent! And I’m gonna use it to make a name for myself! Me... Fabian Stankowicz!”

And when Fabian sees an ad saying that the Avengers will be on Late Night with David Letterman, he has an idea. A wonderful, awful idea.

Also, who the heck puts egg in beer?

I’ve looked it up and I get that it’s a saying but apparently the saying is based on people actually doing that! Why??

The next afternoon, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the show 30 Rock and this issue of Avengers both happen, this issue of Avengers is happening.

A CBS page shows Black Widow to the green room where the other Avengers are already waiting.

Also: I know that it’s all the Avengers who weren’t busy (even though T’Challa really should have been?) but this is a fun roster.

Hawkeye, Wonder Man, Beast, Black Widow and Panther?

Heck, I could imagine this being the Marvel equivalent of the Justice League International team, one more geared for some light-hearted comedy?

Except we’re in 1984 so this predates that.

But you have Beast and Wonder Man, your comedy duo best buds. You have Black Panther and Widow being varying levels of straight man to the nonsense. And you have Hawkeye who can be very serious or very ridiculous depending on how hot-headed he’s being at the time.

This team could be hilarious!

(Avengers International. Think about it, Marvel.)

Outside the green room, our ol’ buddy ol’ punching bag, Fabian Stankowicz is in disguise as a repairman with a mustache as cover for installing some devices in the studio. Then he puts on a beard to disguise himself as Perfectly Normal Bearded Audience Member.

I appreciate his intiative although I doubt any of the present Avengers are gonna recognize this guy on sight even if he wore a t-shirt that said “I’m Fabian Stankowicz.”

Fabian Stankowicz: Boy, this is gonna be so sweet, especially after the way the Avengers made me look like a chump those last two times! This time, it’s gonna be different! This time, I’m going to have a ringside seat for the defeat of the Avengers!

Or at least the Avengers that were available to show up on the Tonight Show with David Letterman.

Y’know, I like Fabian Stankowicz. He’s just smart enough to be dangerous and dumb enough to be entertaining. I think there’s a place for an ineffectual doofus with delusions of grandeur in the foe Rolodex of any superhero team.

Meanwhile, back with said Whoever Was Availables, Black Widow and Mockingbird are meeting for the first time.

And luckily, they’re both mature adults who don’t act like you’d usually see in media when the missus meets the ex.

So with a fight to the death NOT happening in the green room, Hawkeye gets to asking Mockingbird about the errand he sent her on which was why she wasn’t in the room when Black Widow first showed up.

Presumably using every bit of skill in espionage at her disposal, Mockingbird got a copy of the questions Letterman will be asking during the show.

Because Hawkeye will be fielding the questions and he has made the decision not to wear his hearing aid. And has also made the follow-up decision that not only will he not be hearing anything tonight, he’s also definitely going to be fielding all the questions.

Mockingbird: “Why won’t you wear a hearing aid?”

Hawkeye: “No can do, sweetheart! The fewer people who know I’m half-deaf, the safer it’ll be for all of us!”

(I don’t really get this reasoning but okay, man)

Mockingbird: “Then why not let someone else be spokesman? This is supposed to be Wonder Man’s big night!”

Hawkeye: “Sure... but I’m the only active Avenger here! Give me a kiss for luck!”

Not for nothing does Mockingbird think that he can be impossible sometimes. And she’s only known him a couple weeks! She’s already come to the correct read on him in that short a time.

David Letterman starts the show with an opening monologue.

David Letterman: “Tonight... What can I say? Tonight is something really special! In fact, it’s probably the most special show we’ve had since our 'camping with Barry White’ program! Yes... hard to believe, isn’t it? But with all due respect to Mr. White -- I think that this show may be our greatest ever. But, as they say, ‘that’s for history to decide!’”

Imagine being a talk show host and getting to introduce the Avengers. Pretty neat.

I like that bandleader Paul Shaffer is wearing a Captain America jersey. Although that makes me wonder once again what merchandising is like for Marvel superheroes.

Clearly it exists but did Cap sign off on a jersey mimicking his costume? Does he see any money from that? Or at least did he get to say that all profit goes to such and such charity?

Letterman introduces the Avengers for the audience.

(Fun how you can get a sense of their personality just by how they’re sitting. It’s the little touches that make a comic fun.)

Hm, I wonder how well the marvel public follows superhero roster changes.

I know that sometimes new Avengers rosters have gotten attention with press conferences and everything. And sometimes they just swap in and out members as personal business comes up.

Some of the people in the audience may not even recognize Black Widow as an Avenger. Becaaaaause, wait I don’t think she ever was one. She’s assisted on some missions and they were ready to vote her in when she vanished to go do a SHIELD mission.

Okay, better example, does anyone remember that Wonder Man- oh wait, he very publicly burst out of a crate in front of Avengers Mansion during press furor over a roster change. Also, he’s a pre-successful actor.

Black Pan- no, no. He was framed for killing the Avengers his very first day on the team. There was a manhunt.

And of course, everyone knows Beast was on the Avengers. He got around. Romantically.

David Letterman mentions that this group isn’t even all the Avengers because some couldn’t make it (read: were busy with more important things).

Which leads to a funny cut to audience where Beard Fabian is annoyed that this group is who got caught in his revenge scheme.

Fabian Stankowicz: Blast it, where’s Captain America? Where’s that &#%$ She-Hulk?

You better wash your brain out with soap before She-Hulk finds out you thought that about her. She’s dunked people into the garbage for lesser offenses.

Beast decides that this Late Night interview is the best time to reveal that he’s quitting as a reservist Avenger to focus on his version of the Defenders.

Letterman: “Wow, that was some bombshell the Beast just dropped, Hawkeye! You’re group spokesman... What do you think of that?”

Hawkeye: First question -- ! “Well, David, the Avengers is a non-profit organization, fully sanctioned as a peace-keeping force by just about ever international organization you could think of!”

Letterman: “Eh-heh-heh! You don’t say!”

Oh god, Beast’s bombshell messed up the order of questions and Hawkeye is firmly sticking to script because he can’t hear.

My god, Hawkeye.

Letterman: “You know, I was just about to ask you something along those lines. You wouldn’t be psychic by any chance -- ?”

Hawkeye: “No, of the founding members, only the Wasp and Thor remain as active Avengers.”

Letterman: “You little dickens! You’ve been peeking at my question sheet, haven’t you? All right, I might as well as my next question which is... ‘I hear you were recently married! Is that true?’”

Hawkeye: “Yes, Dave... just a few weeks ago!”

Letterman: “How about that!”

Did Hawkeye just think they were going to blaze through the questions? Even if Beast hadn’t preempted the first question, did Hawkeye think that there would be no follow-up questions? No discussion?

I’ve been on the fence on whether the jokes about Hawkeye not hearing the questions are poking fun at deaf people or at Hawkeye and yeah, Hawkeye is definitely the butt of this joke.

Fabian Stankowicz loses patience for this very dry question and answer session and decides to start his attack nnnnow.

One of the studio cameras is secretly A GIANT LASER. Because. And it blasts the stage.

Mockingbird is watching this on a tiny screen in the Green Room and goes out to help only to run afoul of some kind of mechanized steamrolling dumpster.

Back in the studio, Wonder Man has found his new nemesis.

Move over, Grim Reaper. You’re one-dimensional and everyone especially me hates you. Hello, laser blasting camera.

Wonder Man: “Let me at that thing, Beast! It’s ruining my guest-shot!”

Beast: “You’ll have to wait your turn, Wondy! It just shredded my favorite shirt!”

Priorities!

You know, this was supposed to be about Wonder Man and he only got to say two words during the interview portion.

Dangit, Hawkeye.

Apppppparently, the audience is just assuming that this is all part of the show. A cliche, sure. But it makes sense.

Would you really have the Avengers on a talk show and just have them talk? That’s a waste of perfectly good superheroes.

Also.... apparently? David Letterman used to run things over with a steamroller a lot? So a steamroller looking contraption crashing through the wall to attack the Avengers does seem like something that might happen?

Also, Paul Shaffer decides to just roll with it so as not to panic the audience.

The show must go on, after all.

The steamroller also starts firing missiles at Beast, as ya do.

Beast: “Hunter missiles? I don’t believe this is happening on network tv!”

Wonder Man tries punching the steamroller to no avail but which does give Black Panther a chance to pull out the tried and true “Wonder Man’s fists carry as much bludgeoning power as Thor’s hammer!”

Y’know, originally, that was a flex that set Wonder Man as a threat to the team but after he joined, that never really seemed to actually be the case.

Imagine if Wonder Man always hit as hard as Thor’s hammer? Like, he’s minding his own business and then the Gorr the God Butcher arc happens and Wonder Man is like ‘huh, why do I suddenly feel like my punches could destroy planets light years away? That’s a very specific feeling!’

Fabian Stankowicz takes advantage of the spectacle chaos to walk out of the audience, plunk himself down into one of the interview chairs, remove his entirely convincing beard, and introduce himself to David Letterman as the guy who is definitely to blame for all the action setpieces going on.

Letterman, like Paul Shaffer, just decides to roll with it. Humor the guy. Ask him why he’s doing this.

Fabian Stankowicz: “Why? To prove it could be done! To show what one incredibly gifted individual can accomplish...”

Letterman: “... To get your name in the papers?”

Fabian Stankowicz: “That too! After all, the Avengers have battled Zodiac... the Masters of Evil... Doctor Doom! I want to make as big a name for myself as those guys!”

Letterman: “Seems to me that ‘Stankowicz’ is already a pretty big name!”

Badum pish?

He asks Fabian to explain all of his devices and Fabian is happy too.

I mean, he’s being a supervillain for the notoriety and supervillains already love to hear themselves talk so he’s double dipping into the ‘I will exposit everything at the drop of a hat’ well.

And imagine, Fabian built all this stuff in his garage with lottery winnings.

The steamroller thing isn’t just a steamroller, it’s also got a gravity generator. Which, I guess, makes sense if you’re expecting to go against a She-Hulk or a Thor. A regular steamroller isn’t going to do more than annoy.

Wonder Man fighting so hard against the roller makes it increase gravity so much that Simon and steamroller just fall through the floor.

Hm. I wonder what’s filmed in the studios the floor down. They’re about to have an exciting guest star in that steamroller.

Black Widow (still tangling with the laser camera) points Hawkeye towards Fabian. Although she has to shout and Hawkeye still doesn’t really get it but is happy to shoot an arrow at someone that Black Widow is vigorously gesturing at.

Alas, Fabian is one of those prepared villains we’ve been hearing so much about.

He built a force field too, and the arrow just bounces right off.

(Hey, uh, Hawkeye? What kind of arrow was that? Because it looks technological and you just shot it at this guy’s head)

Truly, can nothing stop this insidious yet not very menacing criminal genius?

Oh, I guess David Letterman can.

Knocks him out with a big knob.

It’s just plain big.

Prop comedy, amirite?

The audience seems to love it anyway. I looked up a clip of the big doorknob and it didn’t meet with this much applause. Maybe its because it was used to do violence this time?

Was the giant door knob a beloved part of Late Show lore?

David Letterman: “I guess that’ll teach you not to mess with David Letterman!”

That’s a line with weird energy to it.

Anyway, it would be a sad day for this random assemblage of backup Avengers if they were upstaged completely by David Letterman and his big knob.

Black Widow and Hawkeye finally manage to blow up the laser camera.

I’m not sure why it took them this long. Sure, the camera could apparently move, based on motion lines in previous panels. But the world’s best marksman couldn’t nail it sooner?

But the important thing is that eventually, they did do it.

The floor starts rumbling as well as Wonder Man flies back up with his belt-jets with the trashed roller and a shit-eating grin.

Wonder Man: “Sorry this took so long -- But I guess I’m a little rusty at tackling big hunks of tin like this!”

Fabian Stankowicz: Rusty? It took me a month to design that, and he totaled it in less than five minutes!

But since everyone’s focus is on Wonder Man (for once), Fabian tries to sneak away.

And runs smack dab into Mockingbird who has a lot of justified anger over almost getting run over by the roller earlier. But she just throws him over to some police that have finally shown up.

Letterman tells the audience not to try any of this at home, just in case any of them have gravity-generator osmium steel steamrollers lying around? And cuts to commercial, presumably so that some basic tidying can happen.

Hours after the filming of the show concludes, the Avengers TV Squad have returned to the mansion, with Vision wishing he could have taken part of this assistant editors month special issue.

Vision: “What became of Stankowicz?”

Black Panther: “Well, with all the charges NBC is leveling against him, the only machinery he’ll be dealing with for some time will be in the New York State Prison library!”

So, he attacked Avengers Mansion. He attacked Wasp’s superheroine brunch at the Van Dyne residence. That’s all well and good. He attacks the Avengers again in the NBC studio and the man is going to jail forever.

I guess the Avengers really haven’t been bothering to press charges on Fabian. But a massive media corporation isn’t so kind.

Since Hawkeye is technically the active Avenger (even though Vision’s hologram head is RIGHT there) he has to follow up on the thing Beast said about quitting the Avengers reservists.

Beast says its not right for him to be an Avengers reservist if he’s also trying to turn “the Defenders into a for-real group!”

Uh, Defenders fans? Wasn’t the appeal of the Defenders them being the not-team team? How did people feel about Beast going ‘ok but what if they were more like other teams instead?’

Meanwhile, Wonder Man is pacing, waiting for the Late Show to come on so he can see how he did when WOMP WOMP the show is interrupted by a special news bulletin.

Wonder Man is aghast that his big break isn’t even airing but when the special news bulletin is about a burning chemical barge, his hero instincts that he has suddenly swell up.

Wonder Man: “This... This is awful! What’re we standing around for? Let’s do something! We’re Avengers, aren’t we?”

Black Panther: “That we are, Simon! Let’s go!”

Beast also decides, hey, one more time won’t hurt and accepts his Avengers ID card back from Hawkeye.

And as they’re headed off to the Quinjet, Beast has a hopeful note for Wonder Man.

Beast: “Hey, Wondy -- remember, there’s a three-hour time difference between the coasts! If we can get this mess cleaned up in time, maybe some folks in California will still see you get your big break!”

Wonder Man: “And if we don’t -- ?”

Beast: “Well, that’s show biz!”

Pretty enjoyable issue! Like, sure, its a good for Assistant Editor’s Month. But if you’re going to do a goof, then you can do worse than bringing back Fabian Stankowicz for a third time’s not the charm.

Speaking of charm, having the Avengers appear on a talk show is a charming concept. Not a whole lot was done with it except the joke about Hawkeye answering the wrong questions but its still a fun idea.

And having the Avengers off busy lets us brush off some Also Avengers that haven’t been in play for a bit. That’s a fun idea that I wouldn’t mind seeing some more.

Have the reservists called in because of a situation happening when the Avengers are already busy.

Heck, I’d like to see a situation where the silliest and least regarded Avengers are the only ones available to respond to an emergency. Have them bounce off each other as a group. Maybe they’re mutually aware of their bad reputations.

Anyway, I expected this issue would be ridiculous but it was also enjoyable. Didn’t mind it at all. And (though by a different writer) the Hawkeye miniseries was very enjoyable too.

This is just feeling like a good era for the Avengers team.

Next time, apparently The Ghost of Jessica Drew. So she’s some kind of ghost spider? Nobody tell Carol Danvers.

Follow @essential-avengers because I typed this post partially while a cat was lying on my wrist. That’s dedication. Which you can’t spell without cat. Also, like and reblog if you think its likeable and rebloggable.

#avengers #Mechano Marauder #Hawkeye #mockingbird #Wonder Man #Beast #Black Widow #Black Panther #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #the one wherein they appear on david letterman #pretty fun

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dripkingpetey · 4 years ago

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bestfriends forever-b.boeser

oh god here i am once again with a brock fic😐 i’ll be trying to do the requests that i’ve been getting over the weekend but please don’t get mad at me if i don’t end up getting to them. oh also! the flashbacks are in italics just an fyi!

brock boeser x oc!

2436 words

“Come play hockey with me Kyia!” Brock exclaimed at his bestfriend from his bedroom window over to hers, they were next door neighbours, with the windows in their respective bedrooms facing each other.

Kyia still remembers it like yesterday, Brock always asking her to play or hangout with him. Except right now, Kyia was in her car crying, she had just dropped off her bestfriend at the airport and he was heading to Vancouver. Obviously she was happy about Brock going to the NHL with the Vancouver Canucks, she didn’t want to leave him though. Brock and Kyia have been bestfriends even before they were born, with their mothers being bestfriends. They have never had to be separated before, even when Brock went to college for hockey, she ended up getting accepted into the same university.

It took awhile for Kyia to stop crying but when she did, she started driving home, thinking about all of the memories with Brock even though it was likely that she would see him in a couple of weeks. She started playing her and Brocks playlist, they had started it when Brock got his first iPod after a hockey tournament when they were 9.

“Kyia! Come over I have something to show you.” Brock waved his arms furiously to get Kyia to hurry up. “Okay, okay I’ll be over in a sec.” Kyia giggled at how excited Brock was, slipping on her shoes before making her way over to Brocks house.

“Look it’s got all of these cool songs that we can make playlists with too.” Brock exclaimed enthusiastically as he hooked the iPod up to their family computer, making a playlist title ‘Kyia and Brocks swag times’ which was quickly denied by Kyia and changed to ‘Brock and Ky’s playlist’. “You’re boring you know that right?” Brock mumbled. “Yeah but you couldn’t live without me.” Kyia grinned at Brock as they searched up all of their favourite songs to add.

Though that playlist has had many different versions for each year, they always put every song into the original playlist, making the total amount of songs over 1000.

Brock had sent a snap to Kyia almost as soon as she got home, it was almost like he knew. Kyia opened it and it was a photo of Brock smiling with a heart emoji in the text bar. It wasn't unusual for Brock and Kyia to be saying I love you and stuff to each other, they’ve always said it and it would be weird for them to stop. Kyia didn’t want Brock to see that she was crying even though he knew, she responded to him with a text that said. “I miss you so much already, how was the flight?” Knowing that Brock had already taken off and wouldn’t see the text till he landed in Vancouver.

“Did you have a fun day?” Kyia asked over FaceTime to Brock, he was in his hotel room in Vancouver, getting ready for the start of training camp. “Yeah, traveling was exhausting but I got to meet some of the guys on the team today and they’re all really nice.” Brock smiled at you, the same beaming smile that could always cheer you up whenever you felt down. “That’s good.” Kyia said, not knowing if she should really tell Brock how she was feeling. “You should go to bed, it’s getting pretty late in Minnesota.” Brock said while running his fingers through his hair, referring to the 2 hour time difference between Vancouver and Minnesota. “I guess you’re right.” She mumbled, wanting to be with her bestfriend right now. “Ky, I miss you too. We can see each other soon, if I make the roster after training camp. You can fly to Vancouver with my parents for my first game.” Brock tried to make you feel better even though he missed you even more. “I guess, goodnight I love you.” Kyia said even though she didn’t want to end the call which resulted in Brock having to hang up after he said goodnight as well.

It was hard on both Brock and Kyia, not being able to see each other almost everyday. Brock was focused on training for the upcoming season and Kyia had been busy with all of the school work she had, which all resulted in Brock and Kyia barely talking for two weeks, not to mention that the time difference made it even harder.

“I made it! I made the roster!” Brock exclaimed over the phone to Kyia which reminded her of when he made the roster for UND’s hockey team.

Brock rushed right to Kyia’s dorm room, knocking quickly as she got up to answer it and she was met by a big grin on Brocks face which quickly turned into him pulling Kyia into a tight hug. “I made the team.” Brock exclaimed, she was the first person he told after he found out. “You did it!!” Kyia was proud of him, she knew how hard he had been working for a spot there and he did it.

“You did it!” The same words came out of Kyia’s mouth as she teared up in happiness for him. “Holy fuck, you did it Brock.” There was a giant grin on Kyia’s face and she was sure Brock did too. “Yeah, I can’t believe it too.” Brock sighed along with a light chuckle. “Okay I gotta go tell my parents, do you want to FaceTime later?”

“Wait, I’m the first person you told?” Kyia had expected that Brock would tell his parents first and her after. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I tell my bestfriend first?” Brock smiled even though she couldn’t see. “Awh, I love you, go tell your parents.” Even though Kyia knew it, it was still nice to hear that Brock was her bestfriend. “I love you too, you might want to start booking the plane tickets.” Brock joked but that’s exactly what she did, Kyia rushed to her computer to look at flights after he hung up.

It was all-star break and Brock hadn’t been home in Minnesota for weeks, so he took advantage of that. Despite going back to Minnesota for Christmas, he was already missing it there, especially Kyia. “What are you up to?” Brock asked over FaceTime to her while sitting in his old truck he had in Minnesota. “Not much, just planning to sit around in bed all day.” Kyia mumbled. Brock being all the way in Vancouver was much harder than she thought it was going to be, it sucked to not see him and it was taking a toll on her mental health. “Fuck I gotta go, me and Petey are going out for lunch. Talk to you later?” Brock lied, knowing his plan was all coming together. “You know where I’ll be.” Kyia sighed while taking a sip of water. “Love you, I’ll talk to you later.” They both said at the same time.

Brock almost started giggling because that’s how excited he was to see Kyia. Her parents already knew so hey let him slide into their house, moving quietly before opening Kyia’s door to surprise her. “I’m home!” He exclaimed but quickly furrowed his eyebrows together when he saw Kyia crying, she didn’t even realize Brock was in her room till he started speaking. “Are you okay?” Brock said quietly, hugging Kyia while she was laying on her bed. “No, but I’m better now that you’re here.” She mumbled with a slight smile at Brock, she was crying about him, about how much she missed him and wish he never went to Vancouver. “I missed you.” Kyia laughed while turning around so she could give her bestfriend a proper hug. “I missed you even more Ky.” Brock chuckled as he tucked the loose strands of Kyia’s hair behind her ear.

Brock would be lying if he said that he didn’t want to kiss Kyia right in that moment, with their faces inches away, looking at Kyia’s beautiful smile, their faces getting closer and closer like two magnets. But he knew he couldn’t do it, he would chicken out.

For the next three days, Kyia seemed like she had been brought back to life. The sad, Brock missing Kyia was gone, it was like Kyia was herself again.

“She’s so much happier when she’s with you, you know? It’s been tough for her for the past couple of months.” Brocks mom, Laurie said quietly to him as they watch Kyia play with his dogs. Brock didn’t know what to do, all he could do was sigh, sigh and worry about how Kyia was going to be when he goes back to Vancouver and Kyia would be here by herself again. “Brock?” Laurie asked, trying to get his attention off of Kyia. “Yeah mom?” Brock quickly snapped out of it. “You know that she’s in love with you right? And I think you feel the same way.”

“But-” Brock tried to say something but quickly got cut off by his mother. “But we’ve been bestfriends forever.” Laurie mocked Brocks voice as he slumped down into his chair. “I know the two of you have never confessed it, you probably don’t even know that you’re in love with her. But I can see it.” Laurie said as she looked at Brock who was lost in his thoughts, staring at Kyia as he took Lauries words in. “Maybe I am.” He mumbled quietly and Laurie laughed. “I’ll leave it up to you two.” Laurie sighed, getting up and patting Brocks knee as she headed into the kitchen.

It was the night before Brock had to fly back to Vancouver and Brock and Kyia had to spend every last moment together, before he had to go back for god knows how long. “I’m gonna miss you.” Kyia mumbled and pouted, she was laying on her bed on top of Brocks chest, tracing little circles on his chest with her fingers while he played with her hair. “Me too Ky, me too.” Brock sighed, closing his eyes so he doesn’t start tearing up.

“What if you went to Vancouver with me?” Brock asked while him and Kyia were both half asleep. “Just for like a week or two.” Brock quickly added, hoping she would say yes.

“I could.” Kyia mumbled, looking up at Brock who was smiling at her. “All of my classes are online this semester anyways.” Kyia said as she watched Brocks face light up even more. “This is gonna be so fun.” Brock chuckled and kissed the top of her head.

It was a couple of days after Kyia and Brock got to Vancouver, Brock tried to show her around to get Kyia used to the surroundings. “Hey, do you mind if a couple of the guys come over for drinks later? They said that they wanted to meet you today while we were at practice.” Brock asked while looking over to see what she was doing, chuckling when he saw that she was playing with Milo and Coolie once again. “Yeah, I just gotta get ready though.” Kyia looked over to smile at Brock, she didn’t want to admit it but she was falling hard for him, those feelings have always been there but being in Vancouver with him for some reason just fuelled it.

“Ah yes, so this is the lovely Kyia we always hear about.” Jake smiled at you before introducing himself. “So you talk about me huh?” Kyia raised an eyebrow playfully and everyone watched Brocks face turn into a light shade of red. “He never stops talking about you.” A tall blonde swede who she later learned was Elias, sighed with a chuckle before getting a little punch from Brock.

“So, who wants some drinks?” Brock said quickly, trying to steer the conversation to a different topic. “You know what I want.” Kyia smiled as Brock went over to the kitchen to make her drink as well as grabbing a couple of beers for Elias and Jake.

Kyia learned a lot about what Brock was like on the ice and in Vancouver, not that he was any different than normally, it was just fun to hear the stories of him in Vancouver.

Elias and Jake had headed home, leaving a tipsy Brock and a drunk Kyia alone. “I love it here with you.” Kyia smiled as she heard those words come out of Brocks mouth. “Me too.” Kyia slurred while sitting closer to Brock, snuggling her head into his chest as he rubbed his thumb along her waist.

“I really missed seeing you everyday.” Kyia mumbled and pouted at Brock. Their faces were inches apart once again, and both Brock and Kyia were fighting the urge to just kiss each other. “Can I kiss you?” Brock asked quietly, cupping his spare hand onto Kyia’s bright red cheeks. “Yeah.” Kyia said with a smile before Brock pulled himself closer to her, kissing Kyia softly as she returned the favour. Neither of them said anything after they pulled away, they just sat there and cuddled till Brock had the guts to say something. “I love you.” Brock mumbled, expecting Kyia to be asleep. “I love you too, not as friends, more than that.” Kyia said softly as she looked up to see Brock smiling at her. “Me too.”

Brocks favourite thing to do in the off-season was going back to Minnesota and spending everyday on the lake and that’s what was happening right now.

“Hey.” Brock grinned while sitting down next to Kyia. “How many beers did you have?” Kyia sighed, quickly folding down the corner of the page she was reading and placed her book down so she could pay attention to Brock. “A couple.”

Brock leaned his face right up to Kyia’s and kissed her face over and over again before whispering some nonsense as she giggled and smelt the alcohol in his breath. “I love you too Brock.” Kyia quickly pecked his lips before he rested his head on her chest. “What if we got married?” Brock mumbled, not expecting Kyia to hear it even though he wanted her to. Kyia didn’t know what to say, she knew that Brock was the one but she didn’t know if he truly meant it or he was just drunk. “Actually?” Kyia questioned and Brock lifted his head up to look at her. “Yeah.” Brock grinned because that’s all he knew what to do. “One day,” Kyia smiled as Brock laid his head back down on his chest and she played with his blonde hair.

#brock boeser #brock boeser fic #Brock Boeser x oc #nhl canucks #vancouver canucks #canucks #fic #hockey #canucks hockey #hockey imagine #nhl imagine #nhl #brock boeser imagine

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kuiperblog · 4 years ago

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I spent some time (and money) playing Genshin Impact

I've spent some time with Genshin Impact over the past few weeks. (It's probably come to about 60 hours and 60 dollars that I've spent.)

All of the things that need to be said about this game has probably already been said by others: yes, it's very much similar to Zelda: Breath of the Wild in terms of the open world exploration and visuals. It's also a free-to-play gacha game where you have to put money into the slot machine if you want to be guaranteed to get the characters you want, and you have a limited amount of daily stamina to get rewards from certain repeatable content.

The thing that seems to be under-acknowledged is that Genshin Impact is largely two different games: an open-world exploration game that you’re largely free to play through at your own pace, and a “grind to make the numbers go up” game where your progress is mostly limited by daily missions and activities. These two games are sort of intertwined, but I think I’ve managed to decouple the two, and it’s greatly enhanced my ability to enjoy Genshin Impact.

Genshin Impact is at its best when it is an open world game where you wander around, discovering treasure and puzzles and shrines and fighting groups of enemies who are guarding chests. This is the part that takes after Breath of the Wild: it does a great job of filling the overworld with content in a way that, every time you finish a task, you need only to pan the camera around to see another activity off in the distance that you can do. And if you don't see anything to do, just climb the nearest mountain and pan the camera around to look for a glowing point of interest. This, too, is very BotW-esque: you can climb any vertical surface (how high you can climb is limited by your stamina), then jump from the peak using your glider. Scattered around the world, you will find orbs (usually cleverly hidden within environmental puzzles), and you feed these orbs to a statue in each region to raise your character’s stamina so that you can climb mountains more easily.

The environment has an incredible amount of verticality, and I had a lot of time in one particularly mountainous region (pictured above), gliding from clifftop to clifftop, then walking around the "mid-tier" of the mountains where everything was connected by suspension bridges, and finally exploring all of the valleys. And of course, I was constantly switching between the different "tiers" of the environment: I would begin gliding from one clifftop to another, but then I would pan the camera down and see, "ooh, there's a chest down in that valley. Let me take a 'small detour' to obtain it," and then I would parachute down from the sky before climbing back up to see what other goodies were hidden in the world.

Genshin Impact, like Breath of the Wild, is all about seeing an interesting landmark in the distance, walking in that direction, and repeatedly getting distracted by detours and other smaller points of interest on the way there. You can stumble across a random torch, think “there’s probably a bunch of other torches in this area that will give me a reward if I light all of them,” and you will be right. No matter where you are in the world, there’s always multiple things that you can see in the distance that make you say, “ooh, I want to see what’s over there. I bet I’ll find another korok seed blue wisp.” It’s kind of great.

The thing that it actually does better than BotW is that everything you do in the overworld feels like it is giving you forward progress, whether it’s hunting for hidden treasure or fighting enemies. In BotW, there are genuinely some enemy encounters where you will just fight a bunch of enemies and afterwards go, "Great, I just wasted half of this sword's durability, and all I have to show for it is a much crappier sword than the one I used to kill these enemies." In Genshin Impact, there is no weapon durability, and every enemy drops materials that you will eventually use to "ascend" your characters and weapons (essentially raising the level cap), so even time that you spend fighting trash mobs isn’t wasted (though there are usually faster ways to progress, so I don’t fight every single enemy I come across). Every chest that you open gives you progress toward raising your "adventure rank," which determines how high you can raise the level cap. The open world is fun to spend time in, and it always feels like you are making progress.

In fact, exploring the open world is so much fun that it's easy to forget that there's actually a main questline, though the questline is actually quite enjoyable. (And, unlike BotW, that main questline actually involves a large amount of story where you meet and talk to different characters, like you would in most open-world fantasy games!) There's voice acting and cutscenes and an interesting story that explores the different cultures in this world, including an interesting contrast between one vaguely-western European region where you meet characters with names like "Jean" and Bennet" and "Noelle," and a China analog where the characters have names like "Chongyun" and "Ningguang” and "Xingqiu" (who you can see pictured below).

The cultural influences aren’t merely aesthetic (though they are definitely reflected in the fashion and architecture of these two regions).

There are also “character” story quests where you will, for example, meet a character who is a book nerd and help him track down a volume of a novel he’s been trying to find. In the process of helping the book geek, you will meet with the merchants guild to engage in financial speculation and market manipulation, and also there are some combat sequences where you get to play with the book nerd character and find out that he’s also pretty good with a sword and water magic, and hey, if you’d like him to be a permanent part of your team, maybe you could consider spending some money on the gacha slot machine for a chance of getting him?

(By the way, if all of that sounds like a bit much just to help some kid track down a novel, it should be noted that this game is set in a time where books are quite a prized commodity: there’s also a story set in the game’s “vaguely western European” region that involves helping a librarian character track down overdue library books, and I don’t think it’s spoiling anything to tell you that part of this quest involves entering a dungeon and fighting a bunch of enemies.)

These “character stories” do feel like a pretty obvious way to get you to care about and “try out” characters that are locked behind the paywall, but I’m glad they’re there, as they are easily the most endearing part of the game’s story. I’ve been content with my main squad of 5-ish main characters without the need to dig into the game’s roster of ~25 characters (with more to surely be added with each update).

There’s a finite amount of content, in the sense that eventually, you will explore all of the open world and uncover all of the secrets, and do all of the main questline and all the character sidequests and whatnot. (The game does have some repeatable and “daily” content...but we’ll get to that later.) The game’s open world and story seems to represent about 60 hours of content, from my own estimates (and estimates I’ve seen by others), and it is worth noting that more content is on the way: the game currently has 2 regions, but the map (and the game’s lore) has room for a total of 7 regions, and of course I’m sure that more characters (and accompanying side stories) are on the way, since getting you to pull for new characters is how the game makes money.

I enjoyed my time with that game very much, and will probably be coming back every time there’s a major update that adds a new region. It’s also worth mentioning that while some of the activities in the open world are one-time puzzles, there are many chests throughout the world that do respawn every few days, so there is still stuff to do if you want to keep exploring the open world even after you’ve cleared everything.

All of what I’ve described above could be a regular AAA game that I’d be perfectly content to spend $60 on (and, as it just so happens, I have spent approximately that amount of money on it, because I wanted to recruit the mischievous bard archer whose ultimate ability is to summon tornadoes, and the chuuni thunder princess whose ultimate lets you fly around as an electro-charged raven and zap everything. I don’t regret that purchase.)

This leads into the “second game” that is Genshin Impact.

One of the main “rewards” for exploring the open world of Genshin Impact (as well as doing the main questline and the side quests) is that nearly everything you do (including opening random chests in the overworld) gives you experience toward raising your “adventure rank.” Adventure rank 1-20 is when you are mainly progressing to unlock the game’s features. This is done pretty well, for the most part: tying various features to the game’s progression system ensures that you’re not inundated with too much stuff to do right out of the gate, and it gives you an incentive to keep progressing the main quest to continue advancing your adventure rank.

The final “feature” that the game unlocks for you at adventure rank 20 is that you now have the ability to ascend the game’s “world level.” At adventure rank 20, you ascend from “world level 0″ to “world level 1.” (From this point on, every 5 adventure rank you gain allows you to raise the “world level” again: at adventure rank 25, you hit world level 2, at adventure rank 30, you hit world level 3, and so on.)

This is where you encounter the second game within Genshin Impact, which is a game that is basically about watching numbers go up.

You explore the open world and do quests to raise your adventure rank, which lets you raise the world level. Raising the world level raises the level cap for all of your characters. Raising the world level also makes all of the enemies stronger, but this is good because it means they drop better materials, which you need in order to ascend your characters to hit the new level cap. This becomes the main “gameplay loop” of Genshin Impact: you want to raise your adventure rank, so that you can become stronger and so that the enemies become stronger so that you can become stronger faster.

This is where the complaints about the “stamina” system come in. You see, the part of Genshin Impact that is just about watching the numbers go up is all tied to your adventure rank, and the open world has an essentially finite amount of adventure exp. Early on, your adventure rank grows quickly because the story quests and sidequests give you generous amounts of adventure exp, but eventually the main soure of renewable adventure exp becomes tied to daily quests and the game’s energy system.

The game is filled with overworld bosses, short dungeons, and “leylines” (which are basically random points on the open world where you can spawn and fight through waves of enemies). You can do these as much as you want, but they only give adventure exp (and other rewards) if you spend energy, which you get a finite amount of every day. You get 180 energy per day, and each activity costs 20-40 energy. (Also, energy constantly regenerates and you can only store 120 energy at a time, so if you don’t want to “waste” energy by hitting the cap, it means you have to log in multiple times per day to spend it.)

This means that, at a certain point, your “adventure rank” progress is gated by energy/dailies. (For me, this happened at around adventure rank 30.) Of course, you can spend money to get extra energy. This is what has a lot of players upset. (The game’s energy system is called “resin,” and doing a google search for ‘genshin impact resin’ or simply pulling up the Genshin Impact subreddit will probably turn up pages of such complaints, if you’re interested in reading such things.)

The thing is, the “energy system” doesn’t really impede your ability to explore the open world, which is where this game is really at it’s best. In fact, there are people who have gone through the entire world and found all of hundreds of hidden orbs even before ascending to world level 1.

When I say that Genshin Impact eventually becomes a game about watching the numbers go up, I mean that quite literally: at world level 3, I am fighting the exact same enemies that I was at world level 1; they just have bigger numbers over their heads. I am using the same characters and abilities and doing all of the same activities, but now instead of killing level 18 goblin archers to collect “firm arrowheads,” I’m killing level 45 goblin archers to get “sharp arrowheads.” The difference between these two items is that “firm arrowheads” are required to ascend my archer up to level 40, while “sharp arrowheads” are required to ascend my archer up to level 60. Eventually, I’ll graduate to fighting even higher levels of goblin archers to get “weathered arrowheads,” which will let me ascend my archer up to level 80.

It is worth noting that the game’s “loop” of watching the numbers go up is quite satisfying: while it is easy to describe the game in a reductive way that makes it feel dumb and arbitrary, I’ll admit that once I graduated from fighting level 35 slimes (who only drop “slime condensate”) to fighting level 40 slimes (who were then able to drop “slime secretions”), and then used those “slime secretions” to upgrade my my wind archer’s attacks to do more damage, it felt good.

Whether it’s leveling your characters, ascending your characters, leveling your weapons, ascending your weapons, level up each of your character’s individual talents, leveling each of their individual pieces of equipment...it just feels good to make the numbers go up, and to keep making the numbers go up, you have to raise the world level to make the enemies stronger. Every milestone feels like a significant achievement, and it’s great at giving you the constant feeling that you get when you “prestige” in a game like Call of Duty: the game ratchets up in difficulty, and you once again get to go through the process of grinding your characters up until you slowly accomplish the task of once again hitting the new level cap.

And so I absolutely understand the frustration that a lot of players hit once the “the wall” where only way to keep making the numbers go up is to sign in every day to do their dailies and spend their energy, or spend money to get more energy. I myself was a bit annoyed, and even spent a couple dollars’ worth of the game’s premium currency so that I could gain more adventure exp to make the number go up faster.

But I quickly realized, “No matter what my adventure rank is, I’m still fighting the same goblins, slimes, wizards, and electro cubes that I was fighting 10 hours ago.” Even if my progress is being arbitrarily gated by an energy system, on a moment-to-moment basis, the gameplay is pretty much the same.

And at that point, I basically abandoned the game within Genshin Impact that is “make the numbers go up,” and went back to playing the thing that made me enjoy Genshin Impact, which is the game of “wander around in the open world, look for activities to do, collect all the orbs, open all the chests, and fight the various enemies that I fight along the way.” Doing this still makes the numbers go up, just more slowly than if I was spending energy on all of the game’s repeatable content. And that game continues to be quite fun. Eventually I’ll run out of things to do, and at that point I will probably put down Genshin Impact until the next region comes out and gives me another few dozen hours of open-world content to explore.

Most people I’ve seen recommend Genshin Impact do so with the caveat that before you go in, you should be aware of the gacha system so you don’t spend too much money, and maybe stay away if you lack the self control to avoid dumping too much money into it. In my case, the money I’ve lost to gacha games has always paled in comparison to the amount of time and mental energy I’ve lost to playing any game that has “dailies” that make me feel obligated to sign in once a day (or more than once a day) so I’m not “wasting” a resource that the game is giving me for “free.”

Now that I’ve resigned myself to not particularly caring about the numbers in Genshin Impact, it’s not such a big problem for me, but if you are the kind of person who is going to lose a ton of mental bandwidth to any game that has “dailies” or an energy system, be aware that Genshin Impact is one of those. Also be aware that playing the game at higher “World Ranks” is pretty much the same experience as playing it at World Rank 1 in terms of the enemies you fight against and the abilities that you use, and if you’re able to cross that mental hurdle (like I eventually did), you can loop around to not really caring too much about the game’s energy system (which prevents you from getting frustrated by having your progress, but perhaps more critically saves you from feeling like you need to log in every day for fear of “wasting” energy).

#genshin impact #gacha #video games

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seiin-translations · 4 years ago

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2.43 S1 Chapter 3.3 - The Dog’s View and the Giraffe’s View

3. OLD BUDDY

Aoki’s 1000 IQ mind is hinted at here

Also what are the main tags for this fandom???

Translation Notes

1. Pun on Oda’s name. Here the “Shin” is 神 (god) instead of “伸” which is the first kanji in Oda’s first name

2. Okuma’s name 大隈 shares the same pronunciation as 大熊 which means “big bear”

3. The 伸 in Oda’s first name means “lengthen” or “extend”

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“Odaaaa! I’m beggin’ you, play futsal. You can definitely be in the amateur bracket on a pro level.”

“Odacchi! Why aren’t you doing softball? You’re even more reliable than our regular shortstop. Oh, don’t be so modest. I’m not kissing your ass. What’s the point of that?”

“Oda, why volleyball of all things?”

“You don’t have to play volleyball.”

“Oda! No, Oda-Shin!” (1)

The seasons changed, and it was now midway through June. In this rainy season, Oda shook off the group of male scouts who were wearing mud-stained uniforms and jerseys and hot on his heels, and took refuge in the student council room. It sounded good for those who called it a June tradition, but for those who were targeted, it was just a dirty thing.

“I’m comin’ in. Let me hide out a little here.”

Aoki, who seemed too tall for his own good as he tucked himself on a folding chair and stared at documents, looked up. The sign reading “Vice President” stood on one corner of the desks arranged in a square.

“Oh. I can hear it from all the way in here. You’re a popular guy.”

“The member list has already been turned in. I don’t know if they’ve been told by now. Even if they didn’t, I don’t feel like doing anything other than volleyball.”

“Well, no need to be so hard on them. You should be happy that they value you so much.”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it…I only dabbled with soccer and baseball in gym. I seriously don’t know why people are giving me so much credit.”

“Is that different from not being aware of your own ability?”

“If it’s volleyball ability, I’m more than aware of it.”

Hearing such a servile and submissive line from himself, he immediately regretted it right after he said it. Aoki was silent for only a moment while looking down at the papers.

“…Did you see who will be participating in volleyball? A whole bunch of stuff came out just now.”

He changed the topic, acting as though he hadn’t heard anything. I’m never a match for how he reads too much into things.

He pulled up the chair that was diagonally across from Aoki, the corner of the desk between them. In addition to him, there were only a pair of underclassmen officers sitting in the corner working on something.

The main event organized by the student council in the first semester, the Seiin Ballgame Festival, was coming in two weeks. The boys’ volleyball team were futilely eliminated from prefecturals at the beginning of the month, and the road to Inter-High and Nationals had just closed. Another one of the three major national championships was the “Spring Inter-High Volleyball” in January. The ballgame tournament during this period was by all rights nothing but a nuisance to their club activities, because they had to restart immediately to prepare for the prefectural qualifiers in September, right after summer vacation.

But for this year, he felt that this cushion was appreciated. He was practicing as usual, but he couldn’t quite switch gears. The handout distributed in class right after the prefecturals was undoubtedly one of the reasons. He had stuffed that handout with the title “Second Future Course Survey” into his locker without filling it in.

“It’s gonna be interesting this year.”

Aoki was handed a clipboard that holding several sheets of paper. It was the list of names for each event in the ballgame tournament.

“The ones with the double circles are pros.”

“Pro” of course didn’t mean pro athletes. It was the internal term for this ballgame tournament that referred to those who belonged to the corresponding sports club for each event. The maximum number of pros was set at three people for each team. The antonym of pro was “amateur”, and those who had experience in middle school or dropped out of their clubs were sometimes called “semi-pro.”

Classes A to F were divided vertically through the grades for a total of six teams. A supreme general would be nominated from the third-years of each team, and they would compete for overall victory with the total points from all the events. Since the captains of the main sports clubs were luckily scattered across the different classes, it was an event that got somewhat heated with the power struggles between the sports clubs.

He viewed the boys’ volleyball participant roster in order, starting from Team A. Team A didn’t have the double circle—for softball and futsal, where there were many qualifying members, there was competition among the members for the pro slots, but sadly for their division, they actually fell short of the number of slots.

“Oh, B’s got a killing.”

Team B also didn’t have any double circles, but when he looked at the remarks column, he saw that there was an awful lot of rugby team members. “So, are these remarks self-reported?” “No, the executive committee collected it, but the tally was a bit late.” “You’re spending a lot of energy on unnecessary things.” “You think so? Information gathering is fun, though.” In the remarks column, in addition to the current club the student belonged to, information such as their club activities in middle school and outstanding results in the school physical fitness test were added. If one were to see this list without knowing Aoki’s character, one might be a bit horrified.

The rugby player called Okuma of Class 2-B had a face and name that matched (he thought it was “大熊” (2), but he guessed those were the actual characters). At the level of a ballgame tournament, just having a big guy in front of the net was effective to some extent. Three rugby players over 180 centimeters in the front row might be a rather formidable opponent.

Next, Team C had three double circles in a row—3-C’s Aoki Misao ◎, 2-C’s Kanno Akito ◎, and 1-C’s Kuroba Yuni ◎.

“…What’s with this bias? Isn’t this all-star team against the rules?”

“It’s no more than three. That’s not against the rules.” Aoki said carefreely. “It’s just a coincidence that there are three people in C class this year. I didn’t manipulate that, so I don’t need you complaining about it.” Isn’t that an implicit admission that he manipulated in the other cases?

“Well, worst case scenario, I might drop out. I also got work on the management side. I’ll leave it to Kanno to cover for Kuroba.”

“Don’t drop out. It’ll be boring without you.”

When Oda said that without missing a beat, Aoki looked at him with slightly widened eyes. That unconcerned attitude of Aoki’s always irritated him for an instant.

“It’ll be interesting…We’ll definitely beat you.”

He declared provocatively. Aoki smirked from the corner of his mouth.

“We’re not going to go easy on you, you know?”

“Of course. If you hold back even just a little bit, then I’m never going to talk to you again.”

“Aw, come on, give me a break.”

Aoki was 193 centimeters, Kanno was 181 centimeters, and Kuroba was 184 centimeters. Oda remembered everyone’s numbers, which were filled out on the entry sheet for the most recent tournament. Aoki, who would undoubtedly be the tallest of all the participants in the boys’ volleyball division, was the center, and Kanno, who had a good balance between offense and defense, was placed on the side. Kuroba was still quite inconsistent and capricious, but as long as he went with the flow, he would display outstanding offensive power.

The ballgame tournament was like an escape for his feelings, and he was more of a passive participant than anything, but…he was getting a bit excited. For a small club with eight members, they could do a four-to-four minigame at most, not being able to do a proper intragroup game. Even if it included amateurs, under the rules of a proper six-person system, they can compete with that lineup. There was no other opportunity like this.

The problem was the strength of his own team, but if they had someone who they could use even just a little…he skimmed past the next two teams, D and E, to finally reach the F team he would be leading. At the top of the list was Oda Shinichiro ◎ of 3-F. About four people were chosen from each grade below, but there were no double circles besides Oda. Compared to Team C, he couldn’t help but feel discouraged.

“…Haijima?”

That name was there.

Haijima Kimichika of 1-F. He of course didn’t have the double circle.

When he looked up from the list, Aoki nodded as if to say you finally noticed that? It seemed that this was the climax of “it’s gonna be interesting.”

“I didn’t think he’d choose volleyball. Wonder what brought that on. He’s been running away from you ever since that thing happened.”

“He’s not running away from me, and wasn’t that thing because of your assault?”

“I told you, it wasn’t assault. I was just telling him to be a little more careful about how he should speak to third-years.”

“With your foot?”

“Well, the foot was unintentional.” What’s the definition of assault where you do that and don’t call it assault?

After the incident in early April of the new school year in which Aoki kicked Haijima’s butt hard, every time they happened to catch sight of each other in school, Haijima was the one who acted casual…From our point of view, it’s blatantly obvious that he’s changing his route and escaping. He was big, so he could be recognized immediately even from a distance, but he wondered if he didn’t know he stood out. If you’re just unconsciously enjoying the benefits of that height, give it to me…He thought. Even here, his desire as a captain to have Haijima on the team and his personal feelings of jealousy mixed with each other.

The first practice day for Team F was next Monday. After one week of team practice, the ballgame tournament would arrive.

“I wonder if he’s gonna come.” What kind of face would he have if he came?

“Well, he might be the type who shamelessly comes with a face that says ‘My friend signed me up for an audition without asking me.’”

“Oi oi, that’s harsh…”

Contrary to his gentle appearance, Aoki had quite a sharp tongue. According to him, he had a principle of not holding back what he wanted to say and not doing what he didn’t want to do. But if you asked Oda, there was a part of him that thought, Is that so? Are you saying everything you wanted to say to me?

“…Hey, you already handed that in, right? The future course thing…”

Even if he thought it was better to think about it later, it got stuck in his head for a long time. There were invisible pebbles strewn about. It felt like those pebbles were plugging up the holes where energy was spouting out from.

Since it was the second future course survey, there was a first one as well, but at that time there was only the choices of literature or science and national or private schools. However, this time there was a column for writing your specific university of choice. For the time being, since this was a university prep school, there was hardly anyone who chose to find a job or go to a vocational school.

There was a pause, as though the sudden topic had caught him off guard, but Aoki’s tone didn’t change when he opened his mouth.

“Oh, not yet. I haven’t decided yet.”

It was a shock to be lied to. You were the one who already handed it in. I asked while knowing it, actually.

However, all he said was, “…I see. Well, you’ve still got time.”

The rumor had also spread to Oda’s class. First choice, the Kyoto University’s faculty of law—Apparently, there was someone who peeked at Aoki’s handout that had been handed into the staff room. Who would have thought it’d be Kyodai? He was shocked that he was that smart. No, I knew that, but still.

It was at that time that he had the belated realization that until that point, he almost never talked to Aoki about anything other than volleyball. We’ve seen each other almost every day for more than two years, so isn’t that pretty weird? In the first place, volleyball was the only thing they had in common. Except volleyball, their interests didn’t intersect at all (to be precise, volleyball was Oda’s only interest). Oda only ever brought up volleyball and never asked Aoki what his interests were, or what he wanted to do in the future.

I mean, Kyodai? Supposing that we won the prefectural representative rights for Spring Inter-High, you couldn’t retire until the main tournament in January. Even if you studied for the entrance exam in your spare time while you’re not doing club activities, will you be able to get into law school at Kyoto University? ——He only thought those things and couldn’t say it aloud. Because, what would he do if Aoki announced that he was going to prioritize entrance exams and retire? He probably couldn’t see him out quietly. He felt like imposing his own convenience and telling that he couldn’t retire because they barely had enough members. No, I’m sure Aoki will prolong his retirement as long as he can and stick with me. But, that only increased his debt to him.

Hey, how do you feel about being stuck with me? If you take away volleyball, then I’m just a boring person.

“Hey, do you…enjoy being with me?”

“What?”

He sounded half-crazy, as expected. He felt like it was an extremely sissy question and wanted to crawl into a hole.

“Ah…what’s wrong, Shin? You’re acting weird.”

“Weird?”

Apparently, it was weird for him to worry about anything other than volleyball. Even he himself thought so. As far as his path after high school was concerned, he could cite a number of intercollegiate powerhouse universities he was interested in as long as it was volleyball-related. But he was at a loss as soon as he stepped away from volleyball. He wondered if he lost in the Spring Inter-High qualifiers and retired, he would finally have to find something else he wanted to do, and though it was impossible to assume that they would fail the qualifiers, the idle thought flashed across his mind. Though he still only wanted to think about volleyball right now, his mind was too distracted to focus on one thing. If anything, the time when he couldn’t only think about volleyball has arrived.

Bzzzz, the seat of the chair beneath Aoki started vibrating. “Mm, ‘scuse me,” Aoki put his hand on his behind. His hand that was as long and thin as his physique operated his phone.

“Geh, a summons text from the president. I gotta go.”

“I’m going back too. Sorry to bother you when you’re so busy.”

“Yeah, but our conversation—”

“No, no, it’s done.”

He didn’t think he was convinced, but Aoki didn’t try to dig in any further, putting his phone away and got up as Oda stood. When they stood in a line, Aoki’s shoulders would be what was in his line of sight. It was somewhat easier when they were looking at each other, but the fact that he had become accustomed to the gap in their lines of sight made him feel mixed feelings in its own way.

Oda was 163 centimeters tall. The difference in height between him and Aoki was exactly twenty centimeters. The gap hadn’t been filled at all since he entered high school. He sometimes hated that his parents really named him Shinichiro. (3)

163 centimeters was barely taller than the average height of a typical girl, and while having a small build meant having a small build, he wasn’t extremely small. In other sports, there were plenty of male athletes in the 160 centimeter range who flourished in international competitions.

But for a volleyball player, and furthermore for an attacker, it was a fatally insufficient height. Even if he could manage it in high school, it would never work beyond university. He hadn’t told anyone yet that he was going to play volleyball until high school, but he was seeing the end in himself.

Why volleyball of all things?

But…there’s only one reason for that, isn’t there?

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#2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu #2.43 book 1 #2.43 translation #2.43 #2.43: seiin high school boys volleyball club

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96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

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The anti-racism consulting industry does deserve both some sympathy and some credit. Its intention, to prod white Americans into more awareness of their own racism, is beneficent. And their premise that white people are often unaware of the degree to which racial privilege has enabled their success, which they can mistakenly attribute entirely to merit and effort, is correct. American society is shot through with multiple overlapping systems of racial bias — from exposure to harmful pollution to biased policing to unequal access to education to employment discrimination — that in combination sustain massive systemic inequality.

But the anti-racism trainers go beyond denying the myth of meritocracy to denying the role of individual merit altogether. Indeed, their teaching presents individuals as a racist myth. In their model, the individual is subsumed completely into racial identity.

One of DiAngelo’s favorite examples is instructive. She uses the famous story of Jackie Robinson. Rather than say “he broke through the color line,” she instructs people instead to describe him as “Jackie Robinson, the first Black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.”

It is true, of course, that Robinson was not the first Black man who was good enough at baseball to make a major-league roster. The Brooklyn Dodgers decided, out of a combination of idealism and self-interest, to violate the norm against signing Black players. And Robinson was chosen due to a combination of his skill and extraordinary personality that allowed him to withstand the backlash in store for the first Black major leaguer. It is not an accident that DiAngelo changes the story to eliminate Robinson’s agency and obscure his heroic qualities. It’s the point. Her program treats individual merit as a myth to be debunked. Even a figure as remarkable as Robinson is reduced to a mere pawn of systemic oppression.

One way to understand this thinking is to place it on a spectrum of thought about race. On the far right is open white supremacy, which instructs white people to fight for their interests as white people. (Hence the 14-word slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”) Moving to the left, standard-issue conservatism tends to discount the existence of racism and treat all problems in pure color-blind terms, as though racism has been banished. To the left of that is standard liberalism, which acknowledges the existence of racism as a problem that complicates simple race-neutral solutions.

The ideology of the racism-training industry is distinctively to the left of that. It collapses all identity into racial categories. “It is crucial for white people to acknowledge and recognize our collective racial experience,” writes DiAngelo, whose teachings often encourage the formation of racial affinity groups. The program does not allow any end point for the process of racial consciousness. Racism is not a problem white people need to overcome in order to see people who look different as fully human — it is totalizing and inescapable.

Of course, DiAngelo’s whites-only groups are not dreamed up in the same spirit as David Duke’s. The problem is that, at some point, the extremes begin to functionally resemble each other despite their mutual antipathy.

I want to make clear that when I compare the industry’s conscious racialism to the far right, I am not accusing it of “reverse racism” or bias against white people. In some cases its ideas literally replicate anti-Black racism.

Glenn Singleton, president of Courageous Conversation, a racial-sensitivity training firm, tells Bergner that valuing “written communication over other forms” is “a hallmark of whiteness,” as is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.”

This is not some idiosyncratic oddball notion. The African-American History Museum has a page on whiteness, which summarizes the ideas that the racism trainers have brought into relatively wide circulation.

“White” values include things like “objective, rational thinking”; “cause and effect relationships”; “hard work is the key to success”; “plan for the future”; and “delayed gratification.” The source for this chart is another, less-artistic chart written by Judith Katz in 1990. Katz has a doctorate in education and moved into the corporate consulting world in 1985, where, according to her résumé, she has “led many transformational change initiatives.” It is not clear what in Katz’s field of study allowed her to establish such sweeping conclusions about the innate culture of white people versus other groups.

One way to think through these cultural generalizations is to measure them against its most prominent avatar for racial conflict, Donald Trump. How closely does he reflect so-called white values? The president hardly even pretends to believe that “hard work” is the key to success. The Trump version of his alleged success is that he’s a genius who improvises his way to brilliant deals. The realistic version is that he’s a lazy heir who inherited and cheated his way to riches, and spends most of his time watching television. Trump is likewise incapable of delayed gratification, planning for the future, and regards “objective rational thinking” with distrust. On the other hand, Barack Obama is deeply devoted to all those values.

Now, every rule has its exceptions. Perhaps the current (white) president happens to be alienated from the white values that the previous (Black) president identified with strongly. But attaching the values in question to real names brings to life a point the racism trainers seem to elide: These values are not neutral at all. Hard work, rational thought, and careful planning are virtues. White racists traditionally project the opposite of these traits onto Black people and present them as immutable flaws. Jane Coaston, who has reported extensively on the white-nationalist movement, summarizes it, “The idea that white people are just good at things, or are better inherently, more clean, harder working, more likely to be on time, etc.”

In his profile, Bergner asked DiAngelo how she could reject “rationalism” as a criteria for hiring teachers, on the grounds that it supposedly favors white candidates. Don’t poor children need teachers to impart skills like that so they have a chance to work in a high-paying profession employing reasoning skills?

DiAngelo’s answer seems to imply that she would abolish these high-paying professions altogether:

“Capitalism is so bound up with racism. I avoid critiquing capitalism — I don’t need to give people reasons to dismiss me. But capitalism is dependent on inequality, on an underclass. If the model is profit over everything else, you’re not going to look at your policies to see what is most racially equitable.”

(Presumably DiAngelo’s ideal socialist economy would keep in place at least some well-paid professions — say, “diversity consultant,” which earns her a comfortable seven-figure income.)

Singleton, likewise, proposed evolutionary social changes to the economy that would render it unnecessary to teach writing and linear thought to minority children. Bergner writes:

I asked whether guiding administrators and teachers to put less value, in the classroom, on capacities like written communication and linear thinking might result in leaving Black kids less ready for college and competition in the labor market. “If you hold that white people are always going to be in charge of everything,” he said, “then that makes sense.” He invoked, instead, a journey toward “a new world, a world, first and foremost, where we have elevated the consciousness, where we pay attention to the human being.”

Whether or not a world along these lines will ever exist, or is even possible to design, is at best uncertain. What is unquestionably true is that these revolutionary changes will not be completed within the lifetime of anybody currently alive. Which is to say, a program to deny the value of teaching so-called white values to Black children is to condemn them to poverty. Unsurprisingly, Bergner’s story shows two educators exposed to the program and rebelling against it. One of them, Leslie Chislett, had to endure some ten anti-racism training sessions before eventually snapping at the irrationality of a program that denigrates learning. “The city has tens of millions invested in A.P. for All, so my team can give kids access to A.P. classes and help them prepare for A.P. exams that will help them get college degrees,” she says, “and we’re all supposed to think that writing and data are white values?”

Ibram X. Kendi, another successful entrepreneur in the anti-racism field, has a more frontal response to this problem. The achievement gap — the long-standing difference in academic performance between Black and white children — is a myth, he argues. The supposed gap merely reflects badly designed tests, he argues. It does not matter to him how many different kinds of measures of academic performance show this to be true. Nor does he seem receptive to the possibility that the achievement gap reflects environmental factors (mainly worse schools, but also access to nutrition, health care, outside learning, and so on) rather than any innate differences.

Kendi, like DiAngelo, argues that racism must be defined objectively. Intent does not matter, only effect. Their own intentions are surely admirable. But the fact is that their insistence on denying that America provides its Black children worse educations inhibits working toward a solution. Denying the achievement gap, like denying the gap in how police treat white and Black people, seems to objectively entrench racism.

It’s easy enough to see why executives and school administrators look around at a country exploding in righteous indignation at racism, and see the class of consultants selling their program of mystical healing as something that looks vaguely like a solution. But one day DiAngelo’s legions of customers will look back with embarrassment at the time when a moment of awakening to the depth of American racism drove them to embrace something very much like racism itself.

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nwslwiki · 5 years ago

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what does it mean for a player to be allocated?

note: there are two kinds of allocation in the nwsl; one is allocation as in federation players (what i’ll be discussing in this post) and the other is what i usually refer to as “new allocation” which is explained in a different post here. in the navigation page, this is referred to as “federation players” and the other allocation is “new allocation”

so what is this allocation? this kind of allocation is when the canadian and american federations agree to pay the nwsl salaries of select players each year so the club does not have to.

who is allocated this year? the list is posted here.

how do they decide how many players can be selected by the federations? i don’t think there is a maximum or minimum of players that can be allocated, but i do know that the usa has allocated up to 26 players in the past. this year’s number is 23 for usa. canada allocated nine. to see which players were allocated for each year in past nwsl seasons you can look here.

i thought mexico used to allocate players? they did! the last season mexico added players was the 2015 season. for more info on that, including speculations as to why they stopped, you can read here.

why is [blank] player on/not on the list? these lists were due from the federations at the end of november and disclosed to the players and club teams on december 1st. this could explain why some players who have gotten a decent amount of playing time (for example, lynn williams or jessica mcdonald) were excluded from the list or players who have gotten less playing time (for example, morgan brian or diana matheson) were included on the list. ultimately, the list is made at the federation’s discretion and they do not have to disclose their reasoning.

as far as i know, this list cannot be changed and these are the only players that will be allocated for the 2020 season.

can allocated players (federation players) be traded between teams normally? do they need some sort of approval from the federation or league? do trades affect a player’s allocation at all? trades will not affect the allocation status of a player. trades involving allocated players (federation players) can happen between teams without any prior approval from the leagues or federations. example: mallory pugh traded to sky blue fc from the washington spirit

for further explanation on trades you can read the posts in my “trades” tag here.

is there a limit on how many allocated players (federation players) each club team can have? there used to be only a certain number of “allocation spots” that each team had but that was done away with a few years ago.

when someone is newly allocated, how do they decide what team gets the player? if a player’s rights are already owned by a team, they stay with that team when they become allocated. the team can trade them as they would any other player. if a player is newly allocated and did not previously belong to an nwsl team, their rights are automatically granted to the highest-ranked team in the “distribution ranking order”. example: mallory pugh’s rights were automatically granted to the washington spirit when she left ucla because they had the number one spot in the distribution ranking order

if tierna davidson was allocated (made a federation player) last year does that mean she wouldn’t have been able to go in the college draft? the rules are unclear. i assume the distribution ranking order takes precedence over the college draft which is why she was not allocated. by allowing her to go as the top draft pick it could have been seen as a way to legitimize the draft, but that is all my own speculation.

is it true that allocated players aren’t allowed to leave the nwsl? under jill ellis’ coaching, uwsnt players were “strongly suggested” against leaving the nwsl or they risk losing their spot on the national team. more sources on that in this post. vlatko andonovski, the new uswnt coach, has expressed interest in players currently overseas but it is unclear if he will insist fixtures of the uswnt stay in the nwsl. source. there are no similar restrictions on canadian players as far as i know.

is there a limit to how many of these allocated players (federation players) can be protected in an expansion draft? yes! last time there was an expansion draft (orlando, 2016 season) teams could only protect 10 players and only two of those could be american allocated players. there was not a limit on canadian allocated players. for more information on expansion rules in the past, you can check my “expansion draft” tag here.

when the new rules are released for future expansion drafts, i can do a write up further explaining them if there is interest.

why does the nwsl do this? other leagues don’t do this so why does it exist? previous iterations of the nwsl failed for a multitude of reasons but one recurring problem was that american and canadian national team players wanted to get paid more than their non-national team counterparts because they felt that they deserved it. and they did! but teams would spend exorbitant amounts of money trying to get certain players and they would be left with very little money to sustain contracts for the rest of the team. when ussf was creating the nwsl, they elected to allocate players like this so north american federations would pay the club salaries of their players and give the clubs some financial relief.

ussf (the usa soccer federation) partially owns the nwsl but has recently discussed relinquishing control. if they did this, would they stop this system where they pay the club salaries for allocated players (federation players)? it’s impossible to know. i imagine if they did, they would rewrite the rules for the “new allocation” (explained in this post) so that canadian and american national team players could qualify. they would probably also increase the allocation money cap for teams to accommodate the new players.

does the allocated list mean that players who aren’t on the list won’t make the olympic roster? no. last year there were 22 players allocated by the usa and there were three players named to the 23 player roster that were not on the allocated list for the 2019 season. (tierna davidson, jessica mcdonald, and ali krieger. casey short and mccall zerboni were allocated but did not make the world cup roster.)

if a player is playing for the national team but isn’t allocated (a federation player), does that mean they aren’t getting paid for their national team play? no. the only thing allocation does is subsidize their nwsl contract. allocation status does not interfere with the money the player receives for national team duties. there are two separate contracts; one as an allocated player (federation player) for what they do in the nwsl, and one for what they do on the national team.

how much does an allocated player (federation player) make for their nwsl contract? as of the most recent source i can find (july 29th, 2019), the nwsl contract for an allocated player (federation player) is a range of $67,500-$72,500. source.

for more information on how pay for allocated players (federation players) compares to the “new allocation” you can read this post. note: there are different numbers for how much allocated players (federation players) are paid than i used in this post. i cannot find my source for those numbers so i instead used the numbers on the most recently verified source i could find.

for further comparison: nwsl minimum salaries are $20,000 and maximum salaries are $50,000. the total salary cap for a team (excluding money used for allocated players (federation players) and “new allocation” players. those contracts do not count against a team’s salary cap.) is $650,000. source. players are also usually compensated with other benefits including housing and some degree of transportation during the nwsl season. there are caps on these numbers per team and teams vary in how much they choose to spend. if people are interested in me explaining these numbers and how the teams use that money, you can contact me and let me know.

if you have any further questions about this or something else, let me know here! you can also dm me on this blog.

check my navigation page here before sending me a question

#nwsl #uswnt #canwnt #portland thorns #orlando pride #chicago red stars #Christen Press #tobin heath #mine #federation players

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jimsmobilemechanicsposts · 4 years ago

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WORKSHOP OR MOBILE MECHANIC? WHICH IS BEST FOR YOU?

Over the last few years, mobile mechanic services have grown exponentially. They have taken a large role in the vehicle service industry, primarily because of the many advantages that are associated with them. However, many people still consider this emerging service with reluctance. They question is whether a mechanic that comes to your house is as good as a mechanic who operates purely out of his or her workshop. In addition, they may also think that such a convenient service is ultimately more expensive. Workshop mechanics, though incredibly inconvenient are the tried and tested method. So, which one is better? Here are some key arguments you should consider when comparing the best workshop mechanics to the best mobile mechanics near you.

EFFICIENCY

The first element we will consider is how effective each option is for a local car owner. Most workshop mechanics operate on a “First come, first serve”, walk-in policy. This can get very annoying for car owners when they arrive at a mechanics workshop to discover that it’s full. Waiting in a line is no way to spend your valuable time, especially when you lead a busy life. However, with a mobile mechanic, you won’t have to worry about this. Appointments can be scheduled at your convenience, making this method the most efficient way for you to get your car repaired.

PERSONAL ATTENTION

What happens if that one mechanic that you know very well (and who is the most qualified individual in the entire workshop) is busy when you arrive? Chances are good that this mechanic won’t be able to leave the client that their attending to and cater to your needs. That would be extremely unprofessional; as such, you will most probably have to settle for another random mechanic who is available (unless you’ve got the time to come back tomorrow, which most people don’t). This may be the case with workshop mechanics. However, with a mobile mechanic, you get to choose whichever mechanic you want. When you book an appointment, you won’t have to worry about who will arrive and their level of expertise. You can choose the best man for the job, from the company’s roster.

COST AND EXPENSES

One of the main reasons why people may consider workshop mechanics over mobile mechanics is the assumption that mobile mechanics are more expensive. Mobile mechanics work at your convenience, so surely they should cost more. Once you do your research you’ll find that this is not always true. Most mobile mechanic companies operate out of fewer physical locations than their workshop counterparts. As such, they will not be limited by the costs that workshop mechanics will experience (e.g: rent, electricity bills, water bills, etc.). Due to this, the best mobile mechanics are priced the same as most comparable workshop mechanics in Sydney. So why not choose the more convenient option if it’s going to be the same price? In addition, with a mobile mechanic, you save on fuel costs. So, if you total it up you’ll find that a mobile mechanic’s service would actually be cheaper.

At Jim’s Mobile Mechanics, we are equipped with a team of qualified and experienced mechanics. All of these individuals are ready to operate at your beck and call. So, book an appointment with one of our mechanics by calling 131 546 today!

Here is more information on The Main reasons why your car isn’t starting and how a Mobile Mechanic can help.

#bestmobilemechanicnearme #bestmobilemechanic #bestmobilemechanicsydney #mobilemechanicservice

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catflowerqueen · 4 years ago

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Hydrotherapy, Now with More Donuts (Supplies Pending)

It was funny, really, how much could change in a year’s time—even when mystical, magical, trauma solving/inducing therapy trains weren’t involved.

Sure, that first year after leaving the Infinity Train was hectic, full of the general chaos that followed a new life joining the general population of planet Earth. It was only further compounded with the fact that, typically speaking, those new lives didn’t come pre-packaged with twelve to thirteen years of personal history and trauma. Lake’s first year of freedom had been full of various appointments: appointments with school officials trying to gauge her grade level and then sway her into enrolling when they found out just how much she excelled in the STEM areas (she wasn’t quite as good as Tulip and didn’t enjoy it to nearly the same extent, but, hey, it was inevitable that after all those years reflecting her as she studied, Lake would have picked up a thing or two. Including, as a side note, the ability to read texts backwards and upside down, which she thought was actually a way cooler skill). Appointments with various different government officials and agencies to get her an official legal status, identity, and living situation figured out so that she could actually go to school. Appointments with numerous legal teams, all working together to make the previous things possible.

…Seriously, there had been so. Many. Legal teams. It seemed like every little thing had needed its own department to take care of it, and there so many different departments that the variety was almost overwhelming. Why did there even need to be so many? Like, Lake guessed it made sense to separate some things. After all, she remembered the sorts of things she’d overheard Tulip’s parents say when debating whether they needed to look into hiring a divorce attorney or if they should give couples’ counseling one last shot back when their fights had started to get more serious, and she could see how if there weren’t separate departments, then stuff like “inability to make or stick to schedules” and “spending too much time at work instead of with the family” would constantly be set aside in favor of, like, murder trials, which would mean kids like Tulip would be stuck in the limbo of a deteriorating family situation indefinitely… but why did there need to be so many?

There was even a department for “Tree Law.” It was apparently a very involved and complicated department, even though Lake only knew it existed in the first place because one time when she was complaining about how complicated the legal process was, Jesse told her about the camp he went to the previous summer. It was called “Camp Lawful Laurel,” and was apparently dedicated exclusively to the study of tree law. When she asked him why on earth Jesse would ever go somewhere that sounded so extremely boring, he explained that it was because one of his “friends” from swim team had asked him to. Apparently, the guy’s parents wanted him to do something “educational” over the summer so that he could “improve his CV,” whatever that was, and he figured that the high cost of the camp would be a pretty good way to show off his displeasure at not getting to spend the summer playing video games with his friends instead, and to get some petty revenge on his parents. But he didn’t want to be alone all summer studying with the “boring nerds,” so he’d asked Jesse to sign up, too—mostly because the first three people he’d asked had turned him down. But then the “friend” ultimately decided to go to a way cooler, but equally expensive, camp focusing on marine biology (where they got to hand-feed actual sharks!) and hadn’t bothered to tell Jesse until it was too late and his parents already submitted the non-refundable admissions fee—one that, because of how expensive the camp was, he’d had to help pay for using his own money that he’d been saving up so he could buy a really cool-looking dirt bike. The same dirt bike that he’d taped a picture of on the wall across from his bed, so that it would be the first thing he’d see when he got up in the early, early morning for his dog-walking gig, to remind himself just why he’d consigned himself to the torture that was an early morning wake-up on the weekends, earlier than he even had to get up for school or practice.

Honestly. If the Infinity Train hadn’t picked him up when it did, Lake had a feeling it would have only been a matter of time before he got forcibly dragged on and then immediately tossed into some sort of “Pillow Car” just so that he could get some adequate sleep for once in his life.

Anyways, the other appointments she had were with various doctors, mainly to try and address her unique “skin condition” that was previously unknown to the scientific and medical fields, and that had medical professionals even now calling every other day in the hopes of scheduling appointments with her wherein she would be poked and prodded mercilessly as they tried to figure out what, exactly, caused her chrome-like sheen and seemingly metallic feel and weight. It was something which she was no way interested in, and she’d begged off of as soon as she could. Though, to be completely fair to the doctors, it did seem like most of them were simply concerned about the ramifications of her “condition” for her general health and quality of life, rather than for any sort of malicious purpose, or to treat her like some sort of lab experiment. Given the way one of the dermatology specialists had been a little too insistent on brushing off the whole thing as “just a rather extreme allergic reaction to metallic body paint” and asking her whether or not she’d tried to emulate one of those living statue performers you see “on TV prank shows, or when you take a train up to those big cities like Chicago,” putting a special emphasis on the word “train,” she had a pretty strong theory that she wasn’t the first Mirror person that the doctor had seen, and privately wondered why someone like her, who seemed so professional and put together, had ever ended up on the Infinity Train.

But… Lake guessed that maybe that was kind of the point; that the reason that doctor seemed so put together was because she’d taken a ride on the train. After all, Lake had seen the effect such a trip had on Jesse—how much he’d grown and changed, and how he was taking those lessons seriously. Like, he’d cut his toxic “friends” out of his life so that he could spend more time with her and Nate. He’d told his swim team that he preferred free-style over butterfly, and asked his coach for the chance to see if he could qualify for that, instead. Or if he could at least put him on the roster as a backup free-styler, since school pride was a thing and he did want to give their team the best shot at winning, even if that meant him doing the butterfly. He’d even quit most of the extraneous clubs he’d been a part of, electing to only stay a member of the swim team, the tutoring club (mostly because he actually got paid for his tutoring sessions, and he’d started saving up for that dirt bike again—in addition to the tutoring looking good on whatever this CV thing was that Lake kept hearing about), the wildlife photography club, and the “Eraser Kids” club.

Though, honestly, that last club had kind of disbanded as an actual “club,” per say, after the president—who was only really in charge by virtue of being the oldest of the four kids total comprising the club (including Jesse and the semi-reluctant Lake)—finally admitted that he and the other non-Jesse or Lake member hadn’t formed the club because they had any real interest in eraser shavings, but because they’d been friends with Jesse since they were toddlers, and had noticed over the years as he’d gotten busier and busier, and they’d thought that the only real way they would be able to effectively guarantee spending time with him these days was to create an actual club with a defined schedule and meeting time that Jesse would be able to adhere to and plan around. After seeing Jesse quit all those other clubs, and hearing him cite his disinterest in their contents as the main reason why he quit them, they’d felt guilty about their ruse and come clean. After some apologizing all around, the three of them became even closer—and the other two kids welcomed Lake into their fold easily. They turned out to be pretty cool to hang out with, even though they still brough up eraser shavings from time to time as an inside joke.

Of course, the other main reason that Jesse opted to quit all those extra clubs was that he had a new time commitment, one he actually shared with Lake: they both had regularly scheduled appointments with therapists—actual, licensed professional ones who did not also double as types of transportation. She and Jesse had each met with their own therapists bi-weekly at the start, but Jesse’s had tapered off to bi-monthly after about half a year, and her own had switched to once a week by her tenth month of freedom.

It still surprised her sometimes that it was actually the therapy thing, more than anything else, which was the catalyst for all those other appointments. Lake hated Mace, and she would always hate Mace, but even despite the fact that he, and Sieve, tried so hard to kill her, she thought what she hated the most about him is how perfectly Mace laid out all her thoughts and insecurities about trying to live a life off the train back when Alan Dracula was protecting them all with his horns back in the Wasteland. After all, the high of freedom and adrenaline she’d been riding after giving herself an actual name and meeting Nate wore off pretty quickly when Mr. and Mrs. Cosay arrived at the lakeshore, looking a bit frantic. They’d been worried that Nate, too, had run off somewhere when they’d returned to the house from searching for Jesse—a search which had started anew after Nate swore he’d seen him finally return, only for Jesse to never come back inside (having been picked up by that blasted train yet again)—only to find that their younger son was now also missing. But their worries had given way to elated tears once they reached the trio of children and found both sons safe and relatively sound, immediately enveloping them in hugs and scolding Jesse to “never, ever, ever do something like that again, young man!”

Lake had taken a few steps back, suddenly feeling extremely nervous and out of place, Mace’s horrible words echoing in her head, and she’d frozen up in fear when Mr. Cosay finally glanced up from his son momentarily and caught sight of her. She froze up when he abruptly let go of his son and headed toward her, determination clear on his tear-stained face, and for a moment she was terrified he was going to attack her, or blame her for his eldest being gone for so long. It was, after all, basically her fault that he got called bac to the Infinity Train. But he didn’t do anything of the sort; instead he embraced her in a hug of her own, whispering his gratitude that she’d helped looked after Jesse while he was on the train—apparently, Nate had shared the stories Jesse told him about her in the brief period he’d returned home the first time. And if they hadn’t entirely believed him before, then actually seeing a person who seemed to be entirely made of metal and could corroborate his and Jesse’s stories was some pretty convincing evidence.

The thing about believing his stories about the train with the infinite number of cars that acted like something between a therapy tool and a horror show was that, well, it meant that they also had to believe that someone—something—had thought their son needed therapy. That there was something—maybe a lot of somethings—about their son’s life and mental health that they had missed. Something that they weren’t able to help him with—or, at least, that Jesse hadn’t thought they would be able to help him with, since he’d never shared anything like that with them—and that the only person/thing that had noticed and offered any sort of help had likely created even more problems for him. Or, well, no, there was no “likely” about it; The Infinity Train, despite its best intentions, had definitely created more problems for him, given that he’d actually reboarded it in the first place. That wasn’t even mentioning the fact that a lot of those new problems, in turn, were created as a response to someone else whose problems were very much tied to the way the train was supposed to run to begin with.

The Cosay family decided pretty much immediately that everyone involved needed some actual therapy to work through everything—and that Lake was included in that “everyone.” Of course, in order for Lake to get therapy, she would need to have an actual, legal identity, as well as a place to live, and things just spiraled from there as appointments were made to make other appointments so that Lake could actually have the life on Earth that she so desperately craved, and everyone could try and heal from the trauma.

It actually ended up being harder to find a good therapist than anything else. For all that Jesse’s parents believed him and Lake about the Infinity Train, it was understandably a bit harder to find a professional who would be able to listen to it all without assuming that the whole thing was just some sort of hallucination or delusion, especially when they were all a bit wary of revealing Lake’s origins or letting any of the doctors she’d needed to go to in order to get all her paperwork straightened out delve too deeply into her physiology or how it worked—especially after that one dermatologist who obviously knew what she was pretty much told them that it would be better to stay quiet about the whole thing due to just how insistent she was about her “paint allergy theory.” But that encounter had also made them realize they weren’t alone in this endeavor: People got on and off the Infinity Train all the time.

Jesse had. The dermatologist had. Even that one lunch lady Lake briefly saw (and who actually did turn out to be Mrs. Graham—and hadn’t that been an awkward lunch encounter. At least she hadn’t forced Lake or Jesse eat any celery) had. And since the point of the train was to help people heal and resolve their traumas, that meant that even those who gained new traumas on board would still be in a better place mentally afterwards and could go on to heal and lead productive lives in the normal, Earth way, right? So that just meant Lake and the Cosays had to figure out how they did it. And while they hadn’t had the chance to ask the dermatologist, and Mrs. Graham hadn’t even been an option until they’d already figured some things out, there was one other possibility available to them.

At first Lake was a little reluctant to contact Tulip, but… well, she knew Tulip would help her out. She had before, after all, even after Lake had tried to trap her in the Mirror World forever. Tulip had wanted her to be happy, to have a better life. She’d even apologized that the first car Lake had gotten to see after fleeing the Chrome Car was a boring one! (Which in retrospect, and after coming down from the initial rush of freedom, she could totally agree with. Banks were pretty boring, especially ones run by pencils who didn’t have mouths and, therefore, didn’t offer free lollipops because they had no use for them. She still kept that pen-chain, though, as a memento. …Also, because she was right that it would look totally awsome painted black and used as a bracelet—which, honestly, had been her first thought when she’d swiped it from the pencil people. It hadn’t even occurred to her the danger it possessed as a reflective object until she’d gotten off the train and caught Jesse trying to use one to make awkward small talk with his own reflection one day when the entire family was sitting in yet another boring law office, waiting for yet another lawyer to come and decide her fate. She’d never been more thankful for her awesome fashion sense than in that moment.) But more than that… she knew Tulip could actually help her and Jesse out in terms of finding a good therapist.

Mr. And Mrs. Olsen… they were good parents. They weren’t the best parents, and there were definitely things they needed to work harder on, but… they did the best they could. Even with the whole divorce thing, and how badly it was handled in the lead-up, everything they did was an effort to protect Tulip and ensure she would be okay. Tulip didn’t know this—or at least, she hadn’t before running away—but those arguments Lake had overheard as she reflected Tulip’s sleeping form from the blank screen of the turned-off television, the ones the Olsen parents had about whether they should try again for couples’ counseling or go straight for the divorce attorneys? They happened because they didn’t know if it would be better for Tulip in the long run to have both of her parents living together, even as they struggled and needed help to get along, or whether it would be best for them to just have a relatively clean break so that Tulip didn’t have to deal with any more fights in the house. That was why they’d actually been able to make a compromise, for once, and agreed to try a period of separation first; it would keep the fights out of the house and away from Tulip while they tried to work things out in a calmer manner, and if they did, ultimately, end up divorcing—which they had—then it would hopefully help Tulip ease into the idea. Which… it hadn’t, really, but that wasn’t all on them.

They’d tried to help their daughter, to engage with her. To get her interested in a life outside her room. They’d noticed her grades dropping and correctly guessed that it was because she was upset by the recent changes in her life. That’s why they’d come up with the contract, and the promise to send her to Game Design Camp if she brought her grades up. And, yeah, that had fallen through in a spectacular manner, but… they were only human. They were trying their hardest. And Lake knew that they would try just as hard for their daughter once she finally got off the train.

Which meant that they would have tried to find an actual, licensed therapist for her—especially since they’d already been debating on finding her one after camp ended if she still didn’t seem to be adjusting well. Given what ended up happening, there was no way they didn’t follow through on those plans. Even if Tulip was feeling better and more adjusted now about the divorce, there was no way the train didn’t leave any sort of negative experiences or memories on her, like it did on Jesse. Or on Lake. Or, heck, even on Nate, and he’d never even boarded the thing! And given that Tulip, like Jesse and Lake, had the same sort of concrete evidence of her story being real (the exact same evidence, actually, if in reverse—that being Lake’s existence on Earth and non-existence in the Olsen family mirrors, respectively), they would have shown the exact same concern that the Cosay family had in trying to find a good therapist who wouldn’t immediately claim that the whole thing was just a hallucination.

After coming to that realization, all (most) of Lake’s fears fell away, and it was pretty easy to contact Tulip for help. She knew all the passwords and usernames for Tulip’s social media accounts, after all, so it was a simple matter of sending her an email from her own address, and then giving her a brief update of what had happened after they separated, where Lake currently was (and that she’d named herself Lake), and then asking Tulip to either send an email to the account Jesse helped Lake set up, or to call Jesse’s phone.

The ensuing conversations were enlightening. Lake didn’t really feel like telling Tulip everything that had gone on—mostly because she still wasn’t quite sure where exactly she stood with Tulip, like, if she actually wanted to try being her friend and let Tulip get to know her the way Lake already knew Tulip—but Tulip seemed elated that she’d made it off the train. Though, how much of that elation was just the general “I’m glad you’re getting to live your own life now” kind versus “I’m glad that you, specifically, who is a denizen, managed to get off that hell-train” kind was unclear—mostly because Lake wasn’t entirely sure whether Tulip even knew about the restrictions denizens had in regards to the doors. Though, honestly, she probably didn’t—if Lake herself hadn’t known, despite technically being a denizen, then there’s no way Tulip could have. In any case, the elation was good because it meant that Tulip was, indeed, willing to help out in any way she could—which turned out to be a lot.

Lake’s predictions about the Olsen parents had been spot-on. After Tulip got back and they’d been able to assure themselves of her physical well-being, they swiftly dedicated themselves to trying to ensure her mental well-being. They’d already done loads of research on good child psychologists for the divorce stuff, and they quickly set to work on weeding down the list even more in light of Tulip’s new issues—in addition to doing further research into some doctors they’d skipped over before, now that the whole divorce thing was the least of Tulip’s problems.

Though, surprisingly, this still involved them trying to contact Megan’s divorce attorney. Apparently, he’d given her a list of good child psychologists to try out when Tulip had first come up during one of their appointments as they were figuring out the issue of custody. They thought that if they contacted him again, then maybe he would be able to help them find one who specialized in runaways, and how they could more easily integrate back into society when they returned home (because even though Tulip hadn’t meant to be gone for so long, that was still five months of life on Earth that she had to catch up with—including a lot of missed school). But, apparently, he’d never answered their emails. When they tried calling instead, his secretary informed them that he’d announced he was going on a sabbatical or something right around the time they’d sent their first email. She hadn’t heard from him since, so he probably hadn’t even seen them in the first place. But she’d had a few suggestions of her own, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Tulip told her that there had been one option that really caught her parents’ attention, some sort of boarding school called “Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.” It was apparently really good for runaway situations since it was small and offered daily therapy sessions along with schoolwork. They’d thought it might be easier for Tulip to go there, at least through the summer, so that she would be able to catch up with all the schoolwork she missed without worrying about being held back a grade—thus losing even more of a connection with her friends, such as Mikayla. Ultimately, though, they all decided it would be better to look somewhere else. Eleanor West’s school was in a completely different state, for one thing, even farther away than Oshkosh was, and Tulip and her parents were reluctant for her to be that far away when she’d already been gone for so long. Her parents also didn’t like the fact that Tulip wouldn’t be allowed to actually see the school until after she was already enrolled—the proprietor didn’t allow her to sit in on the initial meeting, and she didn’t even let her parents take a real tour of the school. Ms. West claimed it was for the students’ privacy, but how would Tulip know if she would like it there if she didn’t get to see it for herself, or to at least hear some firsthand testimonies from current students? So, they ended up going with just enrolling her in a summer school program and getting her a normal therapist closer to home.

Well. Normal aside from the fact that said therapist had apparently also boarded the train at some point during their childhood, and then channeled their experience into becoming a child psychologist in the hopes of being able to help other children so that they would never even need the train in the first place. But they were just as good at helping former passengers, too, as Tulip apparently wasn’t the first former passenger to find themselves in that doctor’s care.

Given that a lot of Jesse’s issues had stemmed from peer pressure, he and his parents thought that maybe Ms. West’s school would be a good place for him to start over, to learn how to make new friends of Lake’s caliber and to get him away from the toxic influences of his current “friends.” The distance, as in the case of the Olsen family, was a bit daunting, but the thought of a new start did appeal to Jesse, so they all took a trip to go check it out. (And, as Jesse later admitted to her privately, he and his parents also thought it might be better for Lake, too, since the population of Ms. West’s school was a lot smaller than the local high school. That meant that Lake could get a tiny taste of the normalcy and stability of life on Earth and being surrounded by humans all day before being thrown in the deep end. “After all, both of us know how bad you are at swimming,” Jesse had told her, a mischievous grin on his face that fell to a slight wince as he tried to playfully jostle her shoulder and forgot, yet again, that she was made of metal and wasn’t easily pushed around.) The whole family went on that particular scouting trip, because even if Lake and Jesse wouldn’t be allowed to sit in on the interview, there was no way the Cosays were going to leave them and Nate home alone for so long. The kids could just hang out in the nearby town for a while and meet up with the adults when they were done with the appointment.

But, just like Tulip, she and Jesse ended up not going there after all—mainly because Ms. West had caught sight of the kids as she was seeing the older Cosays to the entrance after their meeting, and then seemed a bit too interested in Lake, and had become very insistent, borderline demanding, that she and Jesse enroll in her school. Seriously. It was like some sort of switch had been flipped in her personality. And the lady’s never wavering stare after the initial shock of seeing Lake was both rude, and a little creepy.

They ended up emailing Tulip again and asking her to see if her therapist had any therapist friends in Arizona with similar experiences. There actually ended up being quite a few to choose from, and Lake was enrolled in Jesse’s school to start attending the next fall.

So, that was Lake’s first year of freedom—a whirlwind of appointments to figure out her legal identity to go along with the personal one she was still carving out for herself—one which let her leave her past on the train behind so that she could actually live.

Except… as the next year would show, things weren’t that simple.

Sure, there were no actual trains involved—be they either magical or mundane—but, as her therapist had warned her during her first session, the train would always be a part of her. She could move on from her experiences, sure, and the passage of time would inevitably dull some of the memories, but it would never fully leave her. Not entirely.

At first, she was furious about it—after spending so much time trying to get off the train, almost dying due to the flecks and the train’s own unfair coding, after finally, finally getting out and starting to establish her own identity… only to find out that it could never truly be her own, free from the taint of the Infinity Train? To say she took it badly would be a gross understatement. But… well, a lot can change in a year.

The therapy helped. Like, a lot.

One of the big things that she and her therapist worked on was how to deal with her emotions and problems in a healthier and more constructive way than she had been up until that point. There had been more than one destructive outburst from Lake during that first year. It would have been one thing if they had just happened after particularly long appointments with the various lawyers trying to determine her fate on where she would stay, or how to get her an actual identity. It wouldn’t have been great by any means, since it was embarrassing to lose her cool like that in front of Jesse—and especially in front of Nate—but it would have been understandable. Thing is, though, she would sometimes have those outbursts after smaller, inconsequential things—like the adult Cosays making her and Jesse turn off the TV by nine o’clock every night, or the teachers not letting her sit in the seats closest to the windows without giving her any reasonable explanations as to why. Or at least… not any explanations that she thought were reasonable. Which, in itself, was actually quite telling about what the core of her issues were. At least, that’s what her therapist thought—and after a few days of stewing in her room after that particular session, she reluctantly conceded the point.

Due to her experiences as a reflection, and especially with what happened with the flecks on the Train, Lake had a lot of problems trusting others. It was pretty easy for her to understand why she had so many problems with authority: The flecks had left a pretty big impression on her, and given their whole “conform or die” deal, she got why that would extend to teachers, or even the older Cosays. She couldn’t feel safe trusting them because doing so made her feel like she was losing control of her life, even though the reality was that everything they were doing so far was in an attempt to actually give her a life. This was pretty much literal in the case of the attorneys—if she didn’t have documents, an ID, proof of citizenship, etc., then she could have problems with the prime world’s equivalent to flecks (not to mention that she wouldn’t be able to get a job or buy a house or anything when she was older if she didn’t have a paper trail to back things up—she’d spent a lot of time in that bank car, after all, and even though things were slightly different for sentient pencils than they were for humans, she knew enough that stuff like that was expensive, and she wouldn’t be able to take out loans or anything if she didn’t actually have a legal identity). But even for the smaller things… the curfew was in place so that she and Jesse wouldn’t be tired in the mornings, and could actually be functional during the day and get enough sleep to stay healthy. And the thing with the windows was… well, okay, technically that one had been mostly for the other students’ benefit—it turns out that the way many of the classrooms were positioned made it so that they got tons of natural light, and apparently the glare caused by the sun reflecting off of her shiny, metallic body was inadvertently blinding the classmates who sat closest to her and making it hard for them to concentrate on their own work. …In addition to maybe causing some deterioration and problems with their eyes themselves, especially later on in life.

But revealing that particular incident to her therapist was actually pretty revealing in itself, as it turned out that a lot of her issues weren’t just with authority, and how to manage those necessary relationships in healthy ways, but also somewhat with the concept of empathy itself. Or, maybe not so much “empathy” as “the understanding of the consequences your actions can have on others before you act.” There had been, after all, a lot of things she’d done on the train that she now deeply regretted… but the most important thing that Lake could do—at least, according to her therapist—was to work through those regrets, to analyze and understand them so that she could move on and do better.

As her therapist had said during their first ever session—and then repeated during that first session a month or so in when Lake really started to get into the hard stuff that she usually tried to keep hidden from everyone—she wasn’t there to judge the morality of Lake’s actions. Not only were there species and cultural differences between the two of them that the therapist would never be able to understand, but much of what Lake had done on the Infinity Train was out of a sense of self-preservation. If she hadn’t acted how she did, she likely would have been killed. And at the time, she wasn’t really in a place where she could have stopped to list the pros and cons of each action, or consider the consequences—and with her upbringing, she didn’t really have the experiences she needed to do so, anyways. After all, before Tulip had helped her escape the Chrome Car, the only people she’d had to worry about affecting were herself and Tulip—and even then, Lake only really had to think about Tulip in terms of making sure she herself knew enough about what was happening with her prime’s life to make sure she was an accurate reflection for her own safety, rather than Tulip’s. Not to mention the fact that Lake was still a teenager, and teenagers weren’t really known for their capabilities to act like completely rational beings. But at the same time… when she’d actually gotten to meet Tulip face-to-face, she hadn’t cared one bit about the fact that her leaving meant that Tulip would be trapped—even as she’d admitted to Tulip how boring it was to be stuck on the reflections’ side of the mirror.

Yeah, she’d done all that because she wanted to live her own life. But by doing things in the manner she had, she’d actually put herself in far more danger than she probably would have been otherwise. After all, Tulip had been extremely sympathetic once they’d gotten the chance to actually sit down and talk to each other. Even after admitting to Tulip’s face that she wanted to trap her in the Mirror world forever, Tulip had still helped her—and, in fact, was still helping her even now! So maybe if she’d actually stopped to talk to her about her desires after switching sides and opening the door, rather than just immediately running away, the two could have worked out her solution with the multi-tool way earlier, and in a more peaceful manner. Like—sure, the mirror person assigned to One-One might still have called the flecks on her eventually, given that he was even more of a stickler for the rules than his prime was… but it probably would have given Lake a head start, and it may have even made Mace and Sieve be less intent on outright killing her (although she kind of doubted that last part).

Beyond that… there was also the lizard girl to consider. She was completely innocent in everything going on in Lake’s life, but Lake hadn’t stopped to think for even a moment about the girl’s own struggles, or why her pet’s death would have been enough to get her picked up by the Infinity Train beyond that self-admittedly insincere apology as Lake tried to steal her number. If she’d succeeded… what would have happened to the girl? Would she have been able to get a new number? Or would Lake’s actions have trapped her on the train for the rest of her life? If Lake had stopped to think about it, then maybe she could have tried dipping into the coding skills she’d learned along with Tulip to try and program the machine to give her a number of her own without having to get anyone else involved. Or she could have tried to use the porters to send a message to One-One or someone to try and get help in a calmer manner.

Sure, One-One hadn’t really been the most helpful when he’d actually shown up, but… in retrospect, it didn’t seem like it was because he didn’t want her to be able to live her own life. He had, after all, been instrumental in helping her escape the Chrome Car. It was more like he just didn’t understand why she wouldn’t be happy to keep living as a denizen and help other passengers while she lived her own life, the way that he and Atticus had done while helping Tulip. Or like how she’d realized that Alan Dracula was doing, and how he wouldn’t be happy the way she was now if the two of them had actually made it off the Infinity Train with Jesse that first time. After all, One-One himself had seemed a lot happier to be in his rightful place as conductor, watching over passengers and trying to help them get home. And from what she’d gathered about the process of making train cars, each one of them was tailor-made down to the smallest detail—including which denizens would be able to fit into that world and find it a comfortable place to live. But even then, One-One didn’t seem to care that denizens could and did move between cars—just look at Terrance, and all the places Randall and The Cat had gone!

If Lake had just taken the time to talk to him peacefully… well, she still might not have been able to get a legitimate number without resorting to that loophole with Jesse, considering that One-One was still very much bound in some ways to his programming. In hindsight, that paradoxical loop he’d gotten caught in when Jesse returned to the train was very reminiscent of the scene from that one game Tulip liked with the other British-sounding, spherical robot and the infamous lemon rant. The one where the protagonist—on the advice of another robot who had been the villain for the first third of game, but who had to team up with the protagonist in order to defeat the game’s ultimate villain—tried to use logical paradoxes to defeat said British-sounding, spherical robot, and the only reason it didn’t work was because he was too dumb to actually understand them. Or, maybe a better example would be some of those stories she and Jesse had to read for English class last semester—the ones by that Asimov guy who wrote about robots. Specifically, that one story of his called “Liar!” Anyways, the point was that One-One’s issues weren’t anything personal—even as much as it hurt to admit it. And getting back to the original topic… if she had been able to talk things through with him more peacefully from the start, maybe he wouldn’t have started freaking out so much when Jesse came back.

And… even before One-One or the lizard girl… there was something else she’d done that was probably far worse, whose consequences she definitely could have mitigated had she thought things through: hijacking that one old dude’s escape pod. If she’d taken a moment to just think, then maybe he wouldn’t have been stranded out there on top of the train, without having the benefit of One-One’s videos to know what was going on or how to get home… or even the (relative) safety of waking up on the inside of the train. She had no idea what happened to him; if he’d eventually managed to get inside the train, or if he’d fallen off the top—or been eaten by one of those weird bug creatures that lived outside—and she hadn’t even tried that hard to stop him from fleeing after she pulled him out. Yeah, she’d instinctively reached for him, but… she could have, like, called out or something. Or just… not hijacked in the first place. Not the way she did.

She could have made a smaller hole in the pod and then asked Alan Dracula to help strap her down as it reversed and went back to maintenance with the guy still safely inside. Or she could have even just ridden the pod with him to his intended car and then slipped inside for its return trip after the orientation video finished and he left the area. There were so many better things she could have done, and there was no way for her to apologize for any of it—either to him personally or to any family he might have left behind—since she didn’t know his name, or where on Earth he came from. But… that was just something she was going to have to learn to live with, and it was part of why she needed the therapy in the first place: Both so she could move on for herself, and so that she could learn to be better so that nothing like that would happen again.

To help facilitate this, her therapist suggested that she write out apology letters. Even if she never sent any of them out—and, really, the only one she actually could send would be to Tulip or to one of the Cosays—it might help her to work through some of her feelings, and maybe help her consider things that she hadn’t thought of before in regards to the Infinity Train. Putting herself in someone else’s shoes like that could help a lot—like how going into Jesse’s memories helped her to understand him a little more, despite how unconventional and, frankly, invasive that process was in hindsight.

In any case, the letters did seem to help. Writing to people she’d met on the train, apologizing for the things she’d done that may have hurt them… it helped to take some of the weight of guilt off of her shoulders. Mainly because a lot of the time after writing and re-reading the letters, she could see how absurd some of her adventures had been, and how absurd some of her feelings of guilt were. Like… recently she’d written an apology note to the carrot people whose dance she’d refused to join. She knew it was probably a silly thing to feel sorry about, but, at the time of writing, she’d been in kind of an emotional slump, second-guessing everything she did on the train and trying to figure out what, if anything, she could have done better as she’d travelled through the train, both on her own and with Jesse.

But after writing the letter, she realized that, yeah, it really was kind of a silly thing to be sorry about. After all, she hadn’t been rude to them or anything in her refusal—she just hadn’t wanted to dance at the time. And it wasn’t even because of her memories of having to copy Tulip’s dancing, either, during that year where her parents had made her take that dumb ballet class in an attempt to help her with her “clumsiness” before they realized the issue was that she needed glasses. She hadn’t even been thinking of Tulip at that point. Instead, she’d been thinking about how pretty the sky in that car was, and how nice it was to hear the dance music in the background as she explored, and how she didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere by being too close to the source of the beautiful music. That’s why she’d even offered the carrot-person who’d invited her inside a little smile as she’d waved him off. She really had been thankful for the offer, after all, even though she ultimately didn’t accept it. And that was okay.

It had been a bright little moment of calmness on the train. A moment where she’d been happy, and worry-free. And the more she thought back on that moment, and found more moments like that as she continued to write her letters, the easier it got for her to feel more at peace with her situation, and her complicated relationship with the Infinity Train. She still didn’t like it, the way that it just plucked people out of their lives and put them in danger when their problems could just as easily—and far more safely—be solved by seeking help on Earth… but she didn’t really hate it anymore, either. Ultimately, the train was just trying to help. It just… had a very weird way of showing it. But sometimes, maybe that’s what people really needed. If they didn’t have the courage, the ability, or the knowledge to seek out help themselves… then it made sense for someone else to try and step in. That carrot person and Alan Dracula had done it for her, and then he and Lake had helped Jesse—and he’d helped the two of them, too. And there were plenty of other denizens who’d helped along the way, or who’d at least been kind or funny even if they didn’t really help directly.

Like… Lake could remember this one mirror person she’d actually really liked, when she was little. The mirror person was part of the paramedics, or something, and she’d been really comforting and helpful after that one incident where the reflection of Tulip’s grandfather tried to kidnap her. It had been really weird, and really scary. Apparently, Lake’s last prime before Tulip had been the girl’s grandmother, and, because of how much time they’d had to spend together with all the reflective surfaces in their primes’ house, and how long the two primes had been married she’d had a really close relationship with that other mirror person. Supposedly, at least.

The grandfather’s reflection hadn’t taken it well at all when Lake’s former prime died and she’d opted for reassignment rather than becoming a fleck or paramedic. Thing is, though, since mirror people often got reassigned to the same general prime families—something about it being easier for them to reflect their primes, since similar mannerisms and body language tended to run in prime families, and, since not everything could be completely reset upon reassignment, the muscle-memory stuff made it easier when their new primes started to find reflective surfaces independently since both prime and reflection would still be kind of uncoordinated in that little kid way.

Anyways, since her old prime died while Tulip’s mom was pregnant with her—like, only a few days before Tulip’s birthday, actually—it was pretty clear to everyone (even Lake’s own former self, apparently) that Tulip was going to be her reassignment, so the guy had basically just had to bide his time until his prime inevitably got the chance to hold his new granddaughter at the next family reunion. And the second that Lake was in his arms, reflecting Tulip’s own position, and his prime walked away from the mirror he was standing in front of… his reflection tried to take off with her.

Thankfully he didn’t get very far, since apparently there was another reflective surface nearby where more of Tulip’s family was standing, and one of the primes happened to be facing away from it at such an angle that the mirror person assigned to them could grab her and keep her safe without endangering themselves by breaking character, since the whole place was busy enough that none of the primes realized that someone was being reflected when they shouldn’t have been. But the guy who’d grabbed her managed to escape into the crowd, so one of the flecks got the delightful job of standing in as Tulip’s grandfather’s reflection until they either caught him or an emergency reassignment could take place. As for Lake, she was put into protective custody for a little bit and had her own stand-in until they either figured things out or his prime was far enough away that he wouldn’t be near Tulip in any reflective surfaces, which would have necessitated the two of them to be in close enough proximity that he could have tried again.

Lake had been really scared, since, well, she’d been a little kid herself, and hadn’t really known what was going on. But the paramedic had stayed with her, and made sure she was all right, and answered her questions about what was going on, and why her prime’s grandfather’s reflection had tried to take her. She’d talked about things like love and loss, and how some mirror people took it hard when the primes of their friends died and their reflections got reassigned elsewhere, forgetting them entirely. Or how even if they opted to become a fleck or paramedic and didn’t lose their memories, the relationship still wasn’t the same since they had even less time to hang out together, since they couldn’t even have those purely physical moments of hanging out together in reflections anymore—which was actually why a lot of flecks and paramedics quit and got reassigned after only a few years of service.

She was also the one who told Lake exactly what happened to the mirror person who’d tried to kidnap her when it was finally safe for her to return to reflecting Tulip—the guy had been caught and sanded. Thinking back on it… that entire incident was probably a major part of why Lake tried to escape when Tulip made it to the Chrome car. The thought of forgetting everyone she loved, and then getting in trouble—getting killed—just because she wanted to see them again (though, granted, that dude had gone about it entirely in the wrong way—and it actually made Lake wonder if the two of them actually had been as close as he’d claimed, or whether she’d chosen to get reassigned specifically to get away from him, like those cases on TV where people went into witness protection or got new identities so they could get away from their abusive exes or whatever)… being stuck only looking at friends from afar because they couldn’t join her in reflections anymore… having to choose between that pain and an entirely new life on the chance that your prime did something stupid and got themselves killed… it really made her question the whole set up.

…There was also the fact that she never saw that paramedic again. Not just because she hadn’t actually needed to see one—that would have been one thing, and she probably wouldn’t have been so bothered if it was just that. But… part of that paramedic’s explanation of her kidnapper’s probable motives had included the fact that she could empathize with him a bit. Apparently, she’d already planned on retiring and getting a reassignment before the whole kidnapping attempt, for the exact reason that she could no longer stand seeing her friends being in pain and missing her without her being able to do much to comfort them after her own prime’s passing. She was just waiting on the news that someone from her old prime’s family had gotten pregnant, or that one of their partners had gotten pregnant, so that she could get reassigned as the eventual baby’s reflection. And since it had been years since that incident, it had probably happened by now.

Anyways—the original point was that through writing letters and having therapy sessions, Lake had slowly come around to acknowledging that not all of her experiences on the train were bad ones, and that she didn’t have to deny them, or the people she’d met, in order to be her own person. Which was a big change from last year.

And, as has been stated before, but cannot be stated enough… A lot can change in a year.

But what hadn’t changed much in a year, or in the previous year, for that matter, was how much Lake loved relaxing by the lake that was her namesake.

That’s actually what she was doing right now—relaxing by the lake as she waited for Jesse to come back from swim practice. Normally he didn’t have them on Sundays, but there was a big competition coming up and his coach wanted the team to be as prepared as they could, since they were facing their biggest rivals. Typically, she would spend times like those hanging out with Nate or playing videogames or something (or catching up on the homework she’d procrastinated on), but today Nate had invited a friend over and they’d decided to monopolize the gaming systems. She’d spent a little time watching them, but then they’d decided to break out the really old PC games and had started playing Shrine Circus Tycoon—reminding Lake of the Lucky Cat Car, and a few other apology letters she probably needed to write.

Like her most recent one, addressed to Randall.

Randall had always been… interesting to encounter on the train. He was always really friendly and amicable, but he had some really, really weird priorities. On the one hand, it made it really easy to get his help with things, so long as you could navigate the conversation properly. On the other… because of how fixated he could get on certain things (mainly donut holers, despite seemingly not knowing what donuts actually were beyond their relative shape), it made talking to him and getting things done extremely difficult when you were in a hurry and just wanted some straightforward help. That’s honestly why Lake had gotten so frustrated with him in the Lucky Cat Car. She’d been annoyed about the whole “rigging the game in favor of passengers” thing, sure, but it was the way he’d immediately blown past the unfairness of the situation in favor of his donut holer fixation that made Lake lose her cool and storm off.

Randall hadn’t deserved her frustration: he was just doing his job as both a denizen and employee of The Cat. And considering some of The Cat’s rules, and the fact that her car had a debtor’s prison on board, there were some pretty major incentives for Randall to stick to the rules The Cat set forth. Also… well, Randall had sort of bent the rules for them already—the fact that he’d whispered when telling them that the games were rigged in Jesse’s favor more than likely meant he wasn’t supposed to be sharing that information, and considering that’s actually what led to Lake and Jesse starting to outright cheat at the games, he probably was more at risk for any other creative punishments The Cat might have thought of if she’d ever caught wind of what they were doing and where they’d gotten their information. Beyond that… well, it had finally gotten through Lake’s head that it wasn’t that the Infinity Train itself had anything against Lake personally; its very design meant that a lot of denizens were perfectly happy being denizens, and helping out passengers, and might not even be able to conceive of doing anything else—like she’d already realized about Alan Dracula and One-One.

So, yeah, even if she would never be able to apologize to him directly (and, privately, wasn’t entirely sure that Randall would necessarily understand that said apology was for her brief outburst and not, say, because she decided not to buy a donut holer from him), she still figured that she owed him one anyways. Besides—it was good to reminisce about some of the better people and denizens she’d met on the train at times.

And speaking of people she’d met on the train…

“Hey, Lake!” she heard call behind her, making her immediately flip onto her back from where she’d been sitting sprawled chest-down, check pressed against her arm and fiddling with a pencil as she tried to think of exactly what to say that could actually keep the aquatic denizen on-topic. She sat up, and, just as she’d thought she would, spied Jesse waving an arm at her as he jogged over.

“Jesse!” she called, lazily waving back. “Is practice finally over?”

“Yeah, we got out a little bit earlier than I thought we would,” he said as he flopped down beside her. “I wanted to surprise you at the house, but Nate and his friend said you’d come out here, so…”

Lake made a sound of assent, turning back to stare out over her namesake.

“Were you writing apology letters again?” Jesse asked, after a minute or so of staring at the beautiful view afforded by the waters.

She gave a sheepish grin in response. “Yeah… did the stack of papers give it away?”

“Well, I mean… more the crumpled-up balls of it, but…” her friend said cheekily, making her shove him in response.

He winced a bit—though, honestly, he was being a baby about it since she hadn’t even pushed him all that hard—but he was still smiling a little when he asked “Who is it for this time?”

“Randall,” Lake admitted, looking back over the lake as it rippled just the slightest bit—which was a little odd, considering the lack of breeze. But, then again, there may well have been a slight one that she just couldn’t feel all that well. While her metallic body didn’t mean she lacked a sense of touch, exactly, it did mean it was a bit dulled in comparison to normal human skin.

“Oh, Randall!” Jesse exclaimed, oblivious to Lake’s musings about the weather. “He was pretty cool!”

“You think every denizen was cool.”

“Not all of them!” Jesse protested. “Like… I don’t think Perry was cool!”

“Yeah, but you totally did for most of the time we spent with him—not to mention you still rave about his trick and loophole about the hands every few days!”

Jesse blushed. “Well it was a pretty cool loophole… except for the fact Alan Dracula didn’t like it…” he muttered, twiddling his forefingers a bit. Then he cleared his throat. “Anyways… Randall was really cool. Like, he was always down to hang out and take pictures, and he didn’t mind me accidentally falling into him, like, three times, and he always knew exactly what he wanted in life, y’ know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Lake admitted. “That’s… kind of why I’m writing him this apology letter, actually. It’s just so hard to get into his headspace sometimes!”

“I know what you mean,” Jesse said, turning to stare over the water. “But, I think it’s okay if you can’t? He seemed pretty nonjudgmental, overall. And, like I said—the falling into him multiple times thing? He was totally cool about it. So, he’d probably understand if your letter wasn’t perfect.”

“I guess,” Lake sighed, even as she briefly glanced over her recent attempt and then crumpled it up to add to the growing pile of rejects.

There was silence for a while, as both friends tried to think of what to say—Lake on her paper and Jesse aloud—before Jesse coughed into his hand.

“Maybe trying to say your apology out loud would help?” Jesse suggested awkwardly. “Like… doing that rubber duck thing that you told me Tulip used to do with that ferret-guy on her book covers?”

Lake raised a brow, and Jesse glanced at her and started rubbing the back of his neck as if to forestall the embarrassed blush that had started to rise there. “It’s just… Sometimes, I like to come out here and imagine that those dark spots in the water are Randall’s eyes. It helps me to practice talking to people and asserting myself since I kind of, uh, don’t really feel comfortable doing that in front of a mirror anymore.”

Lake didn’t know how to respond to that—with a joke, or sympathy, or a brush off—but before she had the chance to decide, she nearly fainted from shock when she heard a familiar voice say, “Oh, well you should have mentioned that’s what’s you were trying to do!”

It took a few moments of stunned silence before their bodies caught up with their brains enough to truly understand the ramifications behind that voice sounding as familiar as it did, and when that finally happened the two of them slowly turned back around to face the lake, and then their necks craned up, and up, and up…

…Until their eyes finally focused on the form of Randall, in all his watery glory, rising out of the lake before them and towering over the duo with a smile on his face.

“I did always wonder why you were craning your neck like that—it looked very uncomfortable!” the denizen continued, blithely unaware of the total shock shared by the two teens sitting on his shore. “From now on I’ll try to make it easier for you to see my eyes.”

“I—what the—?!” Jesse spluttered, unable to form a coherent sentence as he scuttled backwards in complete surprise.

Lake, meanwhile, was no less surprised, but admirably covered it up by jumping to her feet and giving the coherent, if short, demand of “How?!”

Randall, completely misinterpreting the demand, answered seriously, but no less cheerfully, “Oh, I know I’m rather tall, but it’s easier than you’d think!” He shrank down fully into the lake before expanding its banks a bit—nearly to the teens’ toes, in fact—so he could pop his face back up to be closer and more level to Lake’s and Jesse’s. “I’m very flexible, you see!”

Jesse gave a dull sort of nod—his brain still unable to fully comprehend the absurdity of the situation before him, and latching on to what little bits of sense and rationality it could. Lake’s brain, meanwhile, had latched instead onto more familiar territory: anger at the unfairness of life, especially as it pertained to her own wishes and circumstances. “No!” she all but exploded, stomping her foot in childish, petty jealousy. “I mean, how are you even here?! How did you manage to get off the train without a number?!”

“Oh, well that’s simple!” Randall said, shuffling back and rising up a bit to better get himself in the proper mindset for storytelling. “I couldn’t help but overhear the two of you discussing apology letters, so I suppose that’s a good place to start! See, after you left my booth in the Lucky Cat Car, my buddy Randall told me that I’d been a bit forceful in my donut holer pitch. After mulling it over for a little bit, I realized that Randall right. So, I left my friends Randal and Randall to man the booth while Randall and I went after the two of you—since I had an apology to make and Randall would be able to give a much better pitch, you see, since he has a much better head for business than I do. Well, we finally caught up with you and, wouldn’t you know it! When this passenger here fell into Randall that second time, he must have accidentally swallowed some of him because, there he was, sweating my friend Randall! Randall and I got briefly sidetracked giving Randall a handshake, and then, wouldn’t you know it, by the time I let go I’d ended up by that house of yours, in full view of this beautiful lake.

“So, I thought to myself, ‘Randall, that would be an excellent place to set up a satellite donut holer distribution center!’ I told Randall my plan, and he was in complete agreement. So, when you got back on the train, Randall decided to hitch a ride back with you to establish a supply line—since, like I said earlier, he has a much better head for business than I do!—while I set up shop here and think up a better pitch, as well as an apology! Honestly, it’s taken a bit more time than I thought it would, but I think I’ve finally got the perfect one!”

Randall nodded decisively, lightly hitting a watery fist to an equally watery hand and completely missing the incredulity on Jesse and Lake’s faces as he shrunk down again once more to Jesse’s eye level. “As an apology for my earlier forcefulness, as soon as Randall establishes that supply line for donut holers, I’ll offer you the premium pick of the first shipment at half-price! How does that sound?”

He held out a watery hand towards the human, who—despite still being extremely shocked by this turn of events—took it (was enveloped within its surprising warm depths) with a hesitant “S-sure, Randall, that… that sounds great!”

Then the two of them looked to the side after hearing the “Clang!” of Lake’s palm meeting her forehead as all of the revelations about Randall she’d been thinking about not even ten minutes previously—like his one-track mind when it came to donut holers, and the fact that one had to keep that in mind if they wanted to get anywhere with him in conversation—came rushing right back to her.

And along with them came the new realization that, for all that a lot could change in a year… Randall would always remain the same.

Perplexing, amiable, and obsessed with donut holers.

#infinity train #fanficiton #writing #hitting a birdie on infinite par #aka #born on the train

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co-mixed · 5 years ago

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Storm/Gambit

Probably the most popular shipping question is whether or not you support any non-canon ships. I never actually thought about that much, until recently. I’m mostly a canon ship supporter: regardless of whether or not I like a couple, if it’s canon, I’ll see it for what it is. Of course there are cases, when I wish things went differently, and honestly, there were some Marvel break ups I took harder than I should have. But I’m so used to Marvel Universe by now, that its never ending movement doesn’t worry me anymore (if anything, “Dawn of X” only loosens the stakes). Anyway, the point here is that I’m in the zone of total canon acceptance with Marvel. That said, I caught myself coming back to one particular non-canon ship that kind of stuck with me. I know there is a fair share of people who’d like that to happen, and I guess I’m one of them.

Storm and Gambit.

Before all the Rogue/Gambit fans get a chance to argue, I wanna clarify, that they were the endgame from their first shared scene, and that shows. I remember reading up on their story what was it… about 17 years ago, and it couldn’t be more obvious. Honestly, it’s not easy to picture them with anyone else (we’ve seen how they do without one another). Besides, the difficulties of their journey only made it more clear. I just think that marriage is not the best idea for them, because I never wanted them to join the pantheon of COUPLES. You know, like Sue and Reed, Jessica and Luke.

But this is not about them. This is about Ororo and Remy, because in-between on again off again Rogue romance, and all the dramatic love stories Storm went through, it would’ve been interesting to see a fun adventurous relationship between these two. What comes to mind is actually Rhett’s quote from “Gone with the Wind”

- Did you ever think of marrying just for fun?

Background

The main argument against this romance is that Storm and Gambit meet under confusing circumstances i.e. he saves her when she’s reverted to her pre-teen years. This happens in Uncanny X-men #265-267

Nanny reverses ‘Roro back to childhood, removing all memories of her adulthood. However, Storm breaks away and hides in Cairo, Illinois. Meanwhile, Shadow King is after her (isn’t he always?). When he lures Storm into a mansion, with the help of his hounds, they attack her, but she jumps out of the window into an outdoor pool. She is pulled out of the water by Gambit. They run away to her hideout.

They stick together, since Remy is also on Shadow King’s radar now, battle him, and run away to New Orleans. There they spend some time doing the Robin Hood thing up until Nanny catches Gambit. Storm rescues him, also growing up to her teens.

Before you get any ideas, I have to mention that right away Gambit knew who Storm was. Yes, you could say that he took care of her, but you can easily say the opposite. They still have a fantastic dynamic, where they easily play off each other’s phrases (but that’s Claremont for you, right?). And normally Ororo’s all “I shall meet you at the monorail”, but her kid self is way less dramatic.

The two have a lot in common, and they have fun in general. Storm even feels like she finally belongs somewhere. And later, she is the one to sponsor Remy’s acceptance to the team.

To sum it up, with this storyline there is potential, and I have no idea where they were going with that originally. Let’s try and figure this out.

After Storm’s unfortunate (but ultimately successful) trip to Genosha (she was kidnapped along with New Mutants and turned into a mutate, but grew back up), she goes back to leading the X-men. Before that though, we get this panel:

New Mutants #97

That’s she actually gets Gambit to join the team, even if just for a while. And we assume they already familiar enough, since when she’s uneasy about whether or not she’s made right choices as a leader, Remy is the one to give her a pep talk. Okay, that’s a completely “friend” thing to do, and I pretty much see no chemistry here. Except for, you know, the fact that one of Gambit’s mutant abilities is to be irresistible.

X-Treme X-men

During X-Treme X-men series ‘Ro and Remy spend plenty of time together, even considering that his and Rogue relationship gets pretty serious, and Storm has a lot going on. But let’s not skip anything important.

Originally in this Claremont’s run, Storm forms a team to go after Destiny’s journals. Of course Rogue is on the roster, which kinda means that eventually Gambit will show up too. That he indeed does. At some point, around issue 4 or 5, the team has to go help out Gambit, because surprise, he’s accused of a murder. That’s pretty much when we see where both ladies’ beliefs are. Rogue doesn’t for a second buy the fact that Remy would kill (even a mafia leader), Storm, on the other hand, doesn’t have much faith in the guy. So yeah, Rogue is goin all true love, while Storm lacks trust. At this point that’s not out of character for her, because the whole operation runs of lack of said trust.

Not to feel too bad for her though, around the same time ‘Roro gets a lot of attention from Bishop, and starts seeing Davis Cameron. A lot is going on in this book, but team Gambit/Storm gets two unforgettable moments.

in X-Treme X-men #4:

And in X-Treme X-men #32

Yes, I know that both times the writers here have to remind us (and him) that Rogue is his soulmate. In this department it would be hard to compete with her really. And I wouldn’t want Storm to. After all Rogue literally saved Remy from death twice in this run only, and there was a hint of resentment in him, but it doesn’t really go anywhere, just dissolves as many other stray phrases.

Either way, Storm and Gambit, they are friends, and we get some good moments out of two of them, when they’re together they seem to have a great chemistry.

Storm 2014 #9

What would I want them to be?

They would never qualify for a serious relationship by any of my standards. Basically, they are too much alike in a sense that he, for the most part, lives the life she would want to. Free of responsibilities like not letting the whole order of nature get out of control. But they still are pretty interesting together, it’s easy for them to understand each other, and talk things through, even though we get only glimpses of that. They are always honest with each other, so they would’ve made a pair that won’t ever have to deal with couples therapy. Also, it’s always jokes and flirting with them, even when they’re both in a relationship, hell, even when she was married.

When they need support, they’re there for each other:

X-men Vol 1 #326

X-men Gold #6

But at the end of the day it’s always gonna be Rogue for him, and now he’s in the ever after zone really (or in a way in a narrative limbo).

As for her… I guess I’ll have to make a whole new in-depth analysis of her ‘ship choices to determine that (she has a lot to choose from).

With the comics anything can happen, so I should probably say that we’ll see where it ends up.

#marvel #marvel comics #marvel community #storm #ororo munroe #remy lebeau #gambit #storm xmen #x-men #marvel couples #marvel content #comicships #marvel analysis #long reads

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luckycheesefoodie321 · 5 years ago

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Prince of Tennis (2019) meme

I was tagged by @hardworkingprocrastinator aka @rupru-russiaxprussia whom I do believe I ranted with about the Imperial Pair ship, and the unexpected potential of Si Yang x Qi Ying… so thanking you kindly for another excuse to rave about ChinaPuri… sooo uhhh time for some fun times!!

Tagging: I have 0 idea who to tag because we a smaller fandom

Warning: I have not watched or read the original manga/anime soooooo I’m in an even smaller subset of the fandom babeyyyy!!! It has also been a couple months since I watched the show, so there is a strong chance I’ll have forgotten names and situations, and just general thoughts I have... BUT WHATEVER time to rant to the thirteen people who’ve watched ChinaPuri!!!

Questions:

1. Favorite character(s)? 2. Favorite school team(s)? 3. Favorite coach(es)? 4. Favorite supporting cast member(s)? (characters who aren’t regulars, aren’t on tennis teams etc.) 5. Favorite original character(s) in the adaptation? 6. Who do you think enacted their role best? 7. Favorite singles match? 8. Favorite doubles match? 9. Favorite story arc? 10. Most amusing tenipuri scene(s)/moment(s)/running joke(s)? 11. What did you like most about the adaptation? 12. What do you think the adaptation could have improved on? 13. Any other thoughts you want to share?

Answers: THIS ISH GETS LONGGGGG SO CUT OFF NOW

1. Favorite character(s)?

MU SI YANG BABEYYYYY!!! I already love a stoic glasses boi, but Mu Si Yang (again not TeniPuri Tezuka, just ChinaPuri Si Yang) may be one of my favourite takes on the stoic glasses boi… like I don’t often enjoy live action versions of anime, especially because the acting is never the best (and granted this one too, had some okay performances) but the guy who plays Mu Si Yang melted my heart… he was the stony-faced serious captain, who could deliver a subtle joke that left you snickering… but he was also the determined, earnest, crazy talented leader with his own hidden struggles who just wanted to take his team and friends as far as they go into competition… which is an essential part of any good sports drama… and he captured it so perfectly… and I love him.. he’s so beautiful too… I would fall in love with him in a heartbeat, and I don’t often say that about characters (like I love them but never in love ya dig?)

Zhou Zhi was a close favourite…basically I just love the two genius senpais…

2. Favorite school team(s)?

Oh god… Yu Feng maybe? We spend the most time with them, they have the most screen time of all the other teams…we have a whole training arc where they’re continuously winning against the struggling to evolve Yu Qing…very reminiscent of the Karasuno-Nekoma rivalry in that they help each other get better… I would’ve loved to see the rivalry/camaraderie develop even more so that when Si Yang leaves, the relief at having this network of tennis friends would’ve been that much more powerful…

Also I really enjoy Xu Ziping’s hustle… I love the story of Yu Feng…they had a shitty coach and had to make a deal to keep winning in order to even remain an official team… and when Yu Qing faced Yu Feng, I really couldn’t tell who I wanted to root for because I knew there was real weight behind every loss for Yu Feng…

After that, maybe No. 6… they’re so chill, they’re not straining for each win and just enjoying their time on the court…and the Old Coach dude was a great character to introduce...

3. Favorite coach(es)?

Maybe No. 6’s coach… I legit can’t remember his name but he oozes skill and experience without all the stress of younger coaches who bend over backwards for success… and while, again, the circumstances surrounding his appearance was a bit waffle-y in execution (which is about par for live action adaptations), I love that he serves as a sage outsider who can assess in three seconds what kind of player Lu Xia is, and what he needs to do to improve… I love me a good wise character who still knows how to inspire people in a fun way but you never, for a second, doubt that what they’re saying is legit advice, even if their mannerisms are goofy…

4. Favorite supporting cast member(s)? (characters who aren’t regulars, aren’t on tennis teams etc.)

Oh I mean…Stretcher Bros for life amirite? They were great…they were just hanging out, trying out.. Huang Jing is kinda jerk-ish, but he’s the starting antagonist who turns out to have a pure heart and a genuine love of the sport (kinda like Tsukishima Kei from Haikyuu!! or the GoMs from Kuroko no Basuke)… and Xiu Wen is such a soft boi who wants to shower in peace without girls being in the locker room…

Put these two besties together forever…and I just love how cuddly they are with each other…no hesitation to hold hands or hug…it’s gooood

5. Favorite original character(s) in the adaptation?

Um…idk who’s an original character??? Again never watched the original anime/read the manga!

SO IMMA CHANGE THIS TO FAVOURITE SHIP!

5.5. Favourite ship? (Get ready my friendsss issa long one)

Si Yang x Qi Ying my friendssss… a super unexpected pairing that came outta nowhere!!! Because the trailer clearly shows (or maybe it doesn’t and I forgot) that Lu Xia and Qi Ying are gonna be THE THING but then we get hit with the surprise senpai-kouhai/team manager ship and I’m like uhhh were you planning this or am I reading into it too much???

Like y’all they were flirting right in the beginning… that whole bit where she stands outside the change rooms and Si Yang confronts her, and she begs him to add Lu Xia to the team (even tho he already did) and he was weirdly teasing her about the roster when he had no reason to, and she was kinda bantering back with him and she fully called him out later on… i was like, umm this is a vibe

They just kept getting thrown together in weird ways…aside from Lu Xia, she’s probably had the most interactions with Si Yang of all the other team members… she’s the only one he calls Xiao~ like the boys in the tennis club have their nicknames like Dachi, Ah Mu, Ah Yan, but only Qi Ying is Xiao Ying!! he’s not a nickname guy… and maybe if it were a girl/cheerleader thing, you’d think he’d call Peng Xiang, Xiao Xiang BUT NO… only Qi Ying gets called Xiao Ying!!!

AND ANOTHER THING: other than Lu Xia, he’s the only one concerned for Qi Yang, despite what he says, when she gets caught in the rain and gets sick… he fully visits her in her room, and receives the call about her health after they send her to the hospital… he says everyones worried BUT YO they’re straight up just bored and end up having a pillow fight…sooooo can’t be that worried…

AND ONE MORE THING: Qi Ying, I get she’s this weird mascot/team manager figure on their team (even tho she’s meant to be a cheerleader but they never invite Peng Xiang to any of their team dinners or their training camp) BUT WHEN SI YANG RETURNS HOME, THEY SEND IN QI YING TO GREET HIM and they have this whole charming convo where she teases him...and they were chatting as if they always had this banter going on but they’d only talked like 3 or 4 times on screen before then, so there’s this whole relationship she has with the tennis team (not just Lu Xia) that is implied but we don’t really see it! And when she teasingly calls him Captain Si Yang after he returns to China, he had the softest smileeee!!! HE TOTALLY DOES HAVE A SOFT SPOT FOR HER!! He didn’t want her to think he wasn’t happy to see her... and then she leads him to their surprise party in the club room and he just keeps saying Xiao Ying… like damn you keep trying to establish the Lu Xia x Qi Ying ship (and it is a decently strong ship) but Si Yang x Qi Ying is soooo good!

After this Rival Pair, and then Golden Pair - our resident married couple

(POST Here: all the gay faves they didn’t even try to hide)

(POST Here: almost confirmed ships by the end)

6. Who do you think enacted their role best?

I…I think this is obvious… NEXT

Jk… other than Si Yang, I really enjoyed the guy who plays Lu Xia - Peng Yu Chang… he played the typical “stoic, super talented/genius sports idiot” type prolific in sports anime (like Furuya from Daiya no A, Kageyama from Haikyuu!!, Midorima from KnB)… but he was never too stuck in his head, and he was never mean… too often there’ll be a moment where this type of character is played too seriously, gets stuck in their own head, and lashes out at anyone they deem getting in their way, especially when they feel they’re stuck in a rut… which Lu Xia is in, for essentially the entirety of the show, in one form or another…

But PYC played Lu Xia as this mildly cocky, but still incredibly enthusiastic young genius who is looking for the next big challenge so as to further himself, but is so obsessed with this one opponent (his dad), that he can’t see the bigger picture and realise his entire way of playing is a mirror of the very opponent he’s trying to overcome… but even at the height of his stagnation, he’s never mean to Qi Ying, who tries her best to support and encourage him… while he does distance himself from the team, it’s not an active dismissal of their assistance or support… he can play a straight faced comic when embarrassed/discombobulated (like Si Yang when faced with Yan Juice), but also always participates in most of the weird antics his team is up to… and it never feels OOC and thats clearly a result of Peng Yu Chang’s subtle acting…

ALSO PENG YU CHANG IS IN OUR SHINING DAYS, A SUPER UNDERRATED CHINESE FILM THAT HAS SO MUCH POTENTIAL TO BE ADAPTED INTO LIKE, A ONE SEASON SHOW AND I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU WATCH IT

7. Favorite singles match?

Oh pfft… please… PLEASE IS THERE EVEN A QUESTION it was arguably the best match of the whole show, it was what we were all waiting for, a super tension filled, super hyped up match because it features my favourite character, who has simultaneously been promoted as THE BEST PLAYER ON THE TEAM but also super injured and avoiding over-exertion… MU SI YANG…against his personal rival, whom had never tasted defeat before, and subsequently trained like crazy, throwing all of the money at professional players, FOR A YEAR, in order to be ready to face him… JI JING WU

That’s right baby, its the Imperial Pair Match (I do hope I’m using all these nicknames correctly..I just tried to pick them up from the anime/manga to save time writing out their names XD)…

This match is everything you ever want in a match…it’s a gritty, no-holds-barred, all-out, clash-of-titans-style face-off between probably the two most talented players in that whole (province? Prefecture? Idk China regional names) BUT YEAH THESE TWO ARE CLEARLY TOP TIER PLAYERS WHO FINALLY GO HEAD TO HEAD… it’s a year in the making, Ji Jing Wu is in peak physical condition, but Si Yang is not…and yet we see Si Yang powering through the literal agony of an arm injury that threatens complete destruction of not only his tennis career, but his general usage of that arm… and for glory and to bring his team to the national stage, Si Yang lays it all on the line… and he still gives Ji Jing Wu a run for his goddamn money… he matches him hit for hit, and at one point he was even WINNING…and had it not been for his arm, I swear up and down that he would’ve beaten Jingwu…

BUT THAT’S NOT EVEN THE BEST PART… i mean, all sports anime and just shounen anime in general have those moments where the characters are down and out and summoning the power of friendship and determination to their side to go above and beyond the physical limitations of their bodies… NO THE ACTUAL BEST PART WAS JI JINGWU’S RESPONSE TO THE WHOLE SITUATION

The goddamn respect he gave Si Yang.. this is his rival, the only person he’s ever viewed as equal and even superior to his own skills (at least as far as people the same age as him go)… Jingwu wants to beat him so bad… and he’s heard the rumours about Si Yang’s injury, and he even sees for himself how bad the injury is… but as a skilled player who recognises skill himself, he does not do Si Yang the disrespect of going easy on him… what kind of arrogant prick has that kind of nerve to give less than their best to someone who is giving them 120% effort… no, Ji Jingwu doesn’t hesitate to hit back full power, even as he’s yelling at Si Yang to stop before his arm is utterly destroyed… because the last thing any person of talent would want, is to see another person lose such an incredible gift… but even worse than that, have that person realise someone was going easy on them... it was so goddamn beautiful… and when Jingwu grips Si Yang’s hand and raises it high because he and everyone there knows who the real winner of that match is…they all know that they just witnessed something incredible, and he wants everyone in the stands to not only acknowledge it… but remember it…

And then he proceeds to fund Si Yang’s surgery, his flight, his meals, his rehabilitation, AS WELL AS take care of his team… and if that isn’t love, idk what is… like they don’t even disguise the hard core DEDICATION AND LOVE... Jingwu has obsessed over Si Yang for a year and it goddamn shows

Honourable Mention: I really enjoyed Zhou Zi versus the demon child whose eyes go red…we finally get to see Zhou Zi stretch his legs and push himself and I LOVED THAT… like he’s actually trying his best and that’s dope… also the match against the captain of the team his little brother his on… he basically led this cocky motherfucker by the nose for 5 games, pretends to be losing, and then destroys him in the following 7…

OH AND I GOTTA SHOUT OUT MY OTHER GLASSES BOI YAN ZHIMING VERSUS HIS BEST GUY FRIEND FROM YOUTH… that was a beautiful evolution of Ah Yan transcending but also evolving his data tennis against his childhood friend and it feels good ya know?

8. Favorite doubles match?

Oh pfft anything with the Rival Pair… they bicker like cat and dog, but then you put them on the court together, and suddenly their chemistry is through the roof… also Baiyang and Qiao Chen are a stronger couple than Qiao Chen and Yu Xing Zi and that’s the damn tea

(Same two posts for why that tea)

9. Favorite story arc?

Oh man… ummm training arc with Yu Feng was fun but it was definitely beaten out by the “village raises a child” arc when Si Yang leaves, so literally all their previous opponents step up to encourage, train, or otherwise intimidate Yu Qing into giving it their all, improving, and ultimately winning the finals… plus this arc gave so much depth to the network of teams who all have the same aspirations, in the end, and want to push forward the people who beat them to not let their loss be in vain…and that’s pure…

10. Most amusing tenipuri scene(s)/moment(s)/running joke(s)?

Yan Juice... especially the first time NEXT

Honourable Mentions: When Lu Xia gets stood up by Xinglong Lu Xia running interference on Qi Ying’s admirer in the final ep When Zhou Bros run into Lu Xia in the dressing rooms Stretcher Bros trying to become Painter Bros

11. What did you like most about the adaptation?

It captured the essence of a good sports anime: power of friendship, ridiculous action sequences of outrageous moves that would never be allowed in real life, determination and guts is all you need to succeed, that all-or-nothing mentality of high schoolers who suddenly have tunnel vision and no future thinking whatsoever, and decide to risk life and limb for one match… plus it kept a charming and comedic beat running throughout, really endeared you to the characters, and their struggles... AND NO ONE WAS MEAN... well I mean Ya Jiuxin was an angry bitter jerk for a hot second, but he ended up being endeared towards the lil fluffball kouhai of his, and we all know he loves Xinglong in his heart of hearts... other characters like Jingwu, or demon child, or Zhou Yu’s captain were cocky or arrogant, but they were never mean to each other, and respected each other’s game play even if they were defeated.. a couple were poor losers, but they didn’t throw a fit or try to get revenge or anything like that... everyone, in general, had some decency to them, and in fact all of Yu Qing was a super nice...sometimes too nice and self-deprecating that you wanted to smack them...

12. What do you think the adaptation could have improved on?

This is mostly just a consequence of live action adaptations of sports anime where they have to condense a whole lot of story that is already condensed from the manga into a palatable show that anyone, not necessarily pre-existing fans of the original source, can enjoy… the story around the characters seemed waffle-y and disjointed… sometimes things would happen but wouldn’t connect smoothly to the next thing that happens… there was this whole implied close relationship between Qi Ying and the team that just was never shown… I would’ve preferred they made her an official manager, so it would make sense that she’d be so close to the team, when for whatever reason, Peng Xiang wasn’t…even tho they’re both cheer captains…

The match sequences were cut down a little too much (tho I get why)… I would have loved that final training arc to be extended, to fully flesh out how discombobulated Yu Qing was when Si Yang had to leave, and how forcefully the other teams picked them up and got them better… so to develop the dynamic between the teams before this would’ve been good, but obviously they can only got the core actors of each team at a time… hence that barbecue scene… but if they’d pulled off something like the Haikyuu!! Tokyo training arc, or even something like in KnB where the teams were thrown together in wacky hijinks or impromptu match situations to develop their camaraderie (and they sorta tried to but nothing really came of the interactions), it would’ve made the final training arc THAT MUCH MORE heartwarming and I would have cried..

13. Any other thoughts you want to share?

I’ve already said enough. The end.

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