#car launches need to go back to the 'first day at school' vibe they had in the 2000s theyre literally my fav

[skitskatdacat63]

Fernando Alonso | R25 Launch

#GOING ABSOLUTELY CRAZY OVER THESE OHMYGODDDDDDDD #LOOK AT HOW SMALL AND POLITE HE IS 🥹🥹🥹 #LITTLE KITTY SITTING ON THE GROUND #you have to understand that theres pic of fisi and their test drivers from the same day #but nando is the only one sitting on the ground 🥺🥺 like fisi is sitting in a chair and the others are standing #and then nando's are just him sitting cutely on the ground AAAAAHHHHHHHH #car launches need to go back to the 'first day at school' vibe they had in the 2000s theyre literally my fav #theres a lot of other pics from this launch i think are very cute but i think theyll be contained to my renault boys comp post :) #fernando alonso #f1 #formula 1 #formula one #we do a little bit of f1 #fa14 #renault nando

[dukethomas]

Summary: Duke’s parents recover and come home. Written for Duke Week 2021 Day Six: Family Bonding.

I was going to write something angstier for this prompt, but it actually turned into just the comfort part of hurt/comfort. Sometimes I need a good cry about something good happening to characters I love.

Also read it here on AO3!

-

His parents were back.

His parents were back, and Duke could cry and cry and cry forever. He sobbed into his mom’s shoulder for who knows how long when he saw them. His mom pat his back—he was taller than her now—and murmured to him, “It’s okay, baby bird. We’re here.”

The use of the nickname he hadn’t heard since he was in elementary school made him sob harder.

His mom and his dad were, were okay, their mouths weren’t contorted into unnatural grins and they didn’t carry that gleam of hatred and they said they were so sorry and they loved him so much and wow, hadn’t he grown up so much—he turned out to be the spitting image of his mother, didn’t he think?

Duke didn’t think he’d ever stop crying.

“I missed you,” he blubbered. “I missed you every day, I swear, I tried so hard to find a cure or something—”

His dad smiled at him, softly, tears in the corners of his eyes. “And you did. We’re right here, Duke. You brought us back.”

He had to call Jay to pick them up, because his parents no longer had licenses and Duke didn’t trust his hands to not shake in the full force of his joy.

-

In the days that followed, Duke didn’t go out as the Signal. How could he? This all felt like a fever dream; he’d been wanting this for so long. If he didn’t spend every waking moment with his parents, he feared they could revert back to what they were, and it would be a dream after all.

Jay took a few days off of work, and Duke called in sick for a few days at school. The Thomas family glowed with genuine grins, because they were whole. They spent the time catching his mom and dad up on what they missed, and having fun playing games or going out the rest of the time. To his dad’s chagrin, Duke had gotten much better at chess, but no one could beat his mom at Monopoly.

Then life came crashing down around them. Jay had to go to work, Duke had to go back to school, and his parents needed to begin a new chapter of their lives. Unbeknownst to Jay and his parents, Duke skipped his first day back at school to chase down a string of thefts he’d read about in the news.

He could never stay away from Signal for long. Gotham needed him, needed all the help it could get.

It wasn’t a difficult case, by any means. Mad Hatter was about as subtle as a barge. Still, Duke embraced the thrill of hunting them down, as the trail of clues led him right towards a newly opened costume store, Wonderland Haberdashery.

Again. Subtle as a barge.

“What are we waiting for?” a man dressed as a giant white rabbit complained.

The dormouse next to him shushed him loudly. She hissed, “The boss’ signal.”

Duke took that as his cue. He launched into action, running forward with a well-timed punch to the rabbit’s face. “You’ve got one right here.” (Those jokes never got old.)

He let himself loose, using all of his training as well as his own metahuman power to demolish his way through the storybook-themed goons. He couldn’t fight the grin on his face; he was having too much fun. His heart reached a thunderous frenzy in his ears and he loved every second of it. These guys couldn’t touch him.

When the time came to knock out Jervis Tetch himself, Duke obliged with glee. He’d just finished tying him to the wall when his phone buzzed with a notification.

It was three, school was over, and he should be heading home. His parents should be home.

His parents were home. It still felt surreal.

He ran into Jay’s apartment and kicked off his shoes faster than he ever had when doing a superheroic change of clothes.

“Hey Mom! Hey Dad! I’m home!” he called. When he heard no response, a chill went down his spine, and he rushed to the living room. There, his parents sat on the couch, fixated on the TV. The news channel was on, talking about an altercation at—oh.

It was talking about him.

“That’s you,” his mom said without turning back to look at him.

A wad of bile as large as a stone formed in his throat. He knew Bruce probably had contingencies for if anyone guessed his identity. Deny it, prove that he was in school, get a shapeshifter to pose as Signal in the same room as him. But he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Yeah.” He couldn’t, he wouldn’t lie to his parents. “Are you upset?”

He’d imagined this scenario many times. What would his parents say about his vigilantism? He was risking his life every time he was out there, and no parent would want that, but he was helping Gotham. He was helping Gotham’s people, just like they had taught him to do.

“Let me take a look at you,” his mom told him, beckoning him towards the couch. Duke listened, sitting in between his mom and dad. His mom cupped his face with her rough hands, and he leaned into the touch. “It’s dangerous,” she murmured; Duke squeezed his eyes shut.

A firm arm reached around his shoulders, holding him tight. His dad. “But you’re happy,” he said.

Duke nodded, his chin trembling.

They dwelled in a moment’s pause, until he was being hugged from both sides. Duke opened his eyes to see his parents with faint smiles. “We couldn’t be there for you,” said his mom, “but you found yourself.”

“I did,” Duke whispered, crying for the millionth time this week. “I did.”

“We’re so, so unbelievably proud of the person you’ve grown up to be, baby bird. We just wish… we just wish we could have been here to see it happen.”

-

His parents laid down some ground rules. No more skipping school unless he had all his assignments done and he had straight A’s. He had to be home for dinner, and after sundown he was off his shift. He could join night shift with the other Bats only twice a week in a limited capacity, and he had to go to sleep before midnight on school nights. And he would tell Jay his secret.

That had been the hardest one. Duke could barely get the words out, suddenly filled with shame for not telling Jay earlier.

But as it turned out, Jay already suspected it. “I’m no genius, but you’re disappearing constantly. I can never find you. Wayne takes you out of Gotham all the time. That’s not just an internship, Duke.” His jaw hardened. “But don’t think that I’m going to be the cool cousin now and let you break any of those new rules your parents set. Safety first.”

Duke rolled his eyes and hugged him. “Love you, man.”

“Love you too, rascal.”

He had to let Bruce know. He’d been keeping in touch with Bruce throughout all of this, but sparingly. He got the vibe that Bruce was keeping his distance out of respect for him and his parents.

Well, no more of that. Duke shot off a text to Bruce to let him know he was coming, then pocketed his phone. “Hey, Mom? Dad? You wanna ride with me on my motorcycle to Wayne Manor?”

He wouldn’t have actually done it (it was too big of an identity risk), but it was worth it to see his parents’ briefly stunned looks before his dad started chasing him with a noogie at the ready.

Jay drove them all to Wayne Manor. His mom and dad walked out of the car tentatively, scrutinizing their surroundings. Duke fidgeted with his shirt, wondering what they thought. For all intents and purposes, this was his home, if only for a little over a year.

Duke rang the doorbell, ready to greet Alfred, but it was Bruce who opened the door for once. The way he held himself struck Duke. It wasn’t extravagant and flighty like Brucie, nor grim and tense like Batman. Duke’s family were some of the very few to see Bruce Wayne as he really was, without a persona.

“You took Duke in while we were… unavailable,” his mom said before Bruce could say hello.

“Yes,” replied Bruce calmly, wearing something on his face Duke didn’t often see. Vulnerability. Anxiety .

His dad held out his hand. “Doug Thomas. Thank you. Thank you for taking care of our boy.”

“It was a pleasure.” Bruce shook Duke’s dad’s hand. “Duke was a delight to mentor and guide. I’m glad he has you both back.”

Duke grinned. “He says I’m a delight but he didn’t think so every time I snuck out of the Manor to track down a lead.”

“You were supposed to be on bed rest.”

“And I rested, in a bed, after I solved the case! I do it every night when I sleep—that’s working overtime on bed rest, Bruce.”

“And you won’t be pulling any of that with us, young man,” his mom told him in a stern tone.

Duke quickly made his eyes as wide, pleading, and innocent as possible. He would never, he was about to say, when Bruce told them to come in.

“A better man than I expected him to be,” his dad said once Bruce had moved far enough he wouldn't hear. His mom hummed in agreement. “And Duke, you felt safe with him?”

Duke snorted. “Define safe.”

“Smartass,” Jay muttered, behind the three of them. He’d been through the tour already. He had a begrudging respect for Bruce, but he wasn’t impressed.

“And who taught me to do that, ever since I was a little kid?”

Duke yelped as he dodged a smack from Jay. “I’m fragile, don’t hurt me!”

“You’re not fragile,” said the amused voice coming from down the hall. Cass, here because Duke asked her to be. Because he wanted his family to meet his family.

“Oh! Mom, Dad, Jay, this is Cass.” He dragged them over to meet her. “She’s like… she’s my sister.”

Cass nodded, observing Duke’s family. “Good to meet you.”

At his parents’ confused glance, he told them, “When you were gone, I made new friends, but I also found new family. Cass isn’t your daughter or Jay’s cousin, but she’s my sister.” In his chest, he felt a weight alleviate, one he hadn’t even been aware of. “Wait until you meet Damian. Remember how I always wanted a baby brother when I was a kid, but you guys kept telling me that I was enough of a handful?”

As he kept introducing his parents to the family he made, he felt a warmth grow within him, tickling his ribs, infecting his lungs. It was like he couldn’t do anything but beam from ear to ear, now that he had almost everyone important in his life gathered together. (He would introduce them to Izzy, Riko, and the rest of the Robins soon.)

His family had been shattered, but Duke had picked up the pieces and created something new. And it could never be the way it was, but that was okay. Duke was happy with his family the way it was now.

His parents were home; all his family was home. Duke couldn’t be happier.

#dukeweek2021 #duke thomas #doug thomas #elaine thomas #dc #batfam #crys writes #this doesn't actually have..... a plot. but that's okay <3 #me writing duke and his parents: so how do normal people without my specific parental issues act

[mackeydoodledoo]

I Only Swim Free: Chapter 1

Pairing: Bela Dimitrescu x (Fem!)Reader

Summary: You’ve done swimming all your life. You’ve gotten to your dream college on a scholarship for your outstanding freestyle technique back in high school. Relationships never crossed your mind however, that was before you met your swim team captain: Bela Dimitrescu.

Warning: Awkwardness, fluff; not really warnings but might as well leave them here

A/N: Another original idea from @su-lilly-reblogs because I’m running out of ideas to make stories for our lovely women. Also, this is a series! Originally this was going to be a one-story thing however, I was moving for this to be a series! So, Enjoy!

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

You step out into the floor, all eyes become glued onto you. Although you’ve felt confident in the beginning when you got your acceptance letter and scholarship to attend your dream college and get accepted into the 5-time state champion swim team. What you didn’t expect was your captain. 

“Y/n Y/l/n,” she smiles, “Bela Dimitrescu, captain of the Dimitrescu University Swim Team. They told me that we’re getting a rookie. I’m impressed you got a scholarship too.”

“Well, great to be here,” You lightly chuckle, trying to not gawk too much

“Bela you should have her do initiation,” one of the team members says

All of the other current members began agreeing to the idea as well.

Your heart dropped. 

Initiation? Why haven’t I heard about this one? Is it one of those kinds where it’ll just catch you off guard? 

“Oh don’t worry little dolphin,” Bela smiles, taking notice of your change in expression

“It’s just where you show off your swimming skills,” another one of the members call out, “Nothing to worry about! If you got a scholarship for this, then you must be one of the best swimmers back in high school!”

Oh, well that helps a lot.. But in front of all of these really experienced college-level swimmers? Especially in front of the captain? Gah... Guess I have no choice... Plus, I wasn’t one of the best swimmers in high school.

You place your swim bag onto the bench closest to you, however, reaching into it to grab your swim cap and goggles. You put your swim cap on and begin walking toward one of the stands to leap off of to initiate your swimming style.

“So, what’s your swimming style?” another member asks you

“I only swim free,” You say, monotonous, getting up onto the stand.

I’ve never heard of one of my girls saying she only swims free... She’s already  impressive.

Bela smiles slightly. 

“Just do three laps y/n, ready,” Bela announces

Bela watches you lift your butt toward her. Bela begins blushing. 

Girl’s ripped... God what am I thinking?!

A beep sound goes off and you launch yourself into the water. With ease, your form dives into the water with no resistance. One stroke after the other, Bela watches in awe as your muscles flex each time you lift them above the water. The girls watched you in amazement as to how fast you were able to move in the water, despite how the water would often move against your body whilst swimming.

Impress them y/n. You’re almost there...

You could feel your lungs beginning to burn as you were halfway back around the third lap.

Go beyond your limit y/n....

Your palm plants itself along the wall of where you launched yourself. You take in a deep breath as you almost ran out on the last stretch. You remove your goggles from your eyes and look up; Bela holding out her hand towards you. You grab onto it as she helps you out of the pool.

“That was insane y/n, how’d you do it?” One of the team members asks

“I’ve swam all my life,” You say, chuckling, “Also, my family helped me build muscle for it.”

You look around and your eyes land on Bela, coincidentally hers land on you as well. She gives you a wink before she begins walking away, approaching whom you believed was the coach. You think nothing of it before you’re dragged back further into the pool area by everyone else. You just answer as many questions as you can.

“I also swim freestyle but I don’t think I’d ever be able to swim that fast,” One member states

“Well, I’m not sure how much I can tell you, because it’s also in your willpower to tell yourself to keep going,” You add

“Okay okay give our rookie some air,” the coach comes along, “I’m coach Donna Beneviento. I welcome you to the Dimitrescu University Swim Team. Practice begins tomorrow at 6pm sharp. We practice every Monday and Thursday, same time.”

After practice, your new teammates had made their leave to deal with the academic aspect of college. You step out of the changing room in front of the shower in some shorts and a sports bra. However, right from across you Bela steps out of the shower as well; only wrapped in a towel. You feel your cheeks heat up before the both of you had to forcefully look away from each other. However, you couldn’t help but catch one more glance. You didn’t want to help it at all though. 

“S-sorry Captain,” You say, walking yourself over to the mirrors

"Bela,” she says, “It’s after practice. You may call me Bela after practice.”

“You sure?” you ask, scuffing your hair to look slightly messy

From the mirror’s reflection, you, again couldn’t help but look up to admire Bela’s figure however, you didn’t realize that she had let her towel fall to her ankles. So you were basically seeing her bare naked.

“Oh my god!” You yell, startling Bela

“What?!” She asks, turning to look at you through the mirror

“I’m sorry,” You clear your throat, trying to not make eye contact with her, “I thought I saw something on the mirror.”

You try your best to hide your deep red cheeks from Bela’s view.

“Have you never seen a naked woman?” She asks, finally slipping on some of her clothing

“Not-not really,” You stutter

“Hope that was a good show for you,” Bela teases

Oh shit... She knew I looked at her naked arse didn’t she?...

“Shit,” Bela growls

“What’s the matter?” You ask her, turning to her, finally getting the oxygen you needed to breathe when you noticed her having clothing on

“I thought I packed a hoodie,” She sighs

Your hand immediately dives into your duffle bag and you managed to pull out a hoodie from it.

“See if this’ll fit,” You say, “If it fits, it’s yours.”

You watch her take your band hoodie and put it over her. It was slightly bigger on her however you couldn’t help but crack a smile. 

“What?” Bela smiles, hoisting her backpack over her shoulder

“N-nothing,” You clear your throat once more, “You look good in it is all.”

“You think so?” Bela asks, blushing

“For sure,” You smile

The both of you exit the locker room and begin making your way out to the parking lot. 

“Hey, can I ask you a weird question?” Bela asks

“Sure,” You say

“How did you get so ripped?” She asks

“Oh- I- uhhh...” You begin

Bela giggles at your response to her compliment.

“I- perks of having your family own a gym,” You say, “They practically trained me since wanting to do swimming. If you want to work out with me sometime, I could pull some strings and get you to be a guest with my membership. If that’s something you’d be interested in.”

“I’d like that sometime y/n,” Bela smiles

“By the way, would you wat to- I don’t know- maybe-”

Before you could finish your question, a car pulls up in front of the both of you. You watch the window roll down and see a male in the driver’s seat. 

“Hey babe,” He says, smiling, “Who’s the kid?”

“She’s the newest member to our swim team,” She says, getting into the passenger seat, “Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow after classes y/n.”

Your heart sank as you watched the car drive off... After all of that flirting with her in the locker room... 

If she has a boyfriend.... Then what the absolute hell was that in the locker room? 

However, you don’t linger on it as you get into your own vehicle. Although you had just gotten out of a long practice day, you hook up your music to your car’s radio and input directions to where your family runs the gym you had mentioned to Bela. Surprisingly, the gym your family runs is 10 minutes out of the campus.

“Hey kiddo,” Your dad says as he watches you enter the gym, “How was your first day of practice?” 

“Oh, it was great,” You exaggerate, “Everyone was kind of impressed with my swimming technique. I guess those training sessions with you are beginning to pay off pops.”

“See,” He says, smiling, “Are you going to be home for dinner tonight?” 

“No, I gotta head back to my apartment after this one,” You reply, “I want to get ready for my first day of classes tomorrow.”

You had managed to find an apartment close to campus that was affordable. you weren’t about to find a roommate and live in a building with shitty water supply.

“Fair enough,” He says, “Well, help yourself kiddo. Gym’s nearly empty today.”

He was right; at most there was five people in the entirety of the gym. Normally, it would nearly be packed. You just assumed people had lives outside of the gym. You did too, but you felt something in you that you did not enjoy feeling. You began punching the life out of a punching bag, hoping it would get your frustrations out.

Are we jealous? Why? She has a boyfriend, you shouldn’t be complaining.

You were also confused, why Bela had given you “a show” in the locker room, talking to you nearly all of practice.... You were a rookie and she was the Captain... 

When you had finished your workout, you went back to your apartment. You decided to make a late night snack as you felt famished after workout. You put in your earbuds to try and get your thoughts away from your encounter with Bela’s boyfriend earlier.

“Shower” - Crimson Apple

It gave you a nice chill evening vibe. However, although it helped very little, you still couldn’t help but be confused on what happened to you earlier today. However, once you looked at the time, you finish up your small meal and head off to bed, hoping the day’s classes are able to get your mind off of your confused self. 

Throughout the day, you could only think about what happened yesterday between you and Bela in the locker room through your music. You also couldn’t wait to get in the water after your classes, as the song you were listening to was used in a Swimming sport-themed anime.

“Splash Free” - Style5

You cross the street and come across a castle-like building.

“Is this- the art building?” You ask yourself, “My lord this place is gigantic.”

As you enter the building, you were in awe, even the interior was regal. However, with some modern modifications. Like the elevator, you press the upward arrow button and the elevator doors open. You step in and press the number ‘4′, hence you were going to the fourth floor. Your major is Photography with a minor in Asian studies, concentration in Japanese. As you get out of the elevator, you begin heading to your last class of the day. You were more of a morning person. Thus, you had all of your classes before 6pm. 

Chapter 2

#bela dimitrescu #bela dimitrescu x reader #bela is my wife #daniela dimitrescu #cassandra dimitrescu #alcina dimitrescu #resident evil village

[thatpinkbetch]

Bkdk Fic Rec

I’ve been inspired to write a fic rec! This one goes out to you @lonely-rabbit

At like, the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 I stayed up until 4am every night reading fics, and because I’m such a loser, I made a word doc to keep track of all of them so I wouldn’t forget them.... I tried organizing it by length but it got messy cause I’m ridiculous and cluttered, so sorry! (I’ll save my own for the end alskdjflsdkfj gotta self promote you know). This is going to get...really long, so I’ll put it under a read more! Also, just a heads up, these are all on ao3, in case that’s important to anyone!

Disclaimer: Any fics with mature or explicit content I will add a bolded warning for, even if it’s only a little bit. Normally most fics will be tagged as such, but some fics that are rated as teen I’ve found to be more suggestive than some of those rated as mature, so I will try to point it out where it feels necessary, for anyone who wishes to avoid it.

Fics under 1k:

Illuminate by TheQueen (269 words)

Summary: Bakugou watches the first firework launch and fights to keep his face neutral

Very short, plot is about a case of amnesia, also very cute and well written for that length! Not angsty at all imo

sweaty hands holding secrets - shounentwink (563 words)

Summary: Someone said Midoriya holds secrets in his hair.

It’s not true: He holds it tightly in his hands. Bakugou’s seen it.

I really like this writer! You’ll see quite a bit of them in this post alkdsjfalskdjf

Fics 1k - 10k:

Many sunflowers later - Jeka (2395 words)

Summary: Scholar Midoriya Izuku comes back to the person he left behind after his journey through the kingdom, the mighty dragon clan leader Bakugou Katsuki.

Day 1 of Twin Stars Week 2020: Fantasy AU.

First of all, fantasy au!!! Second of all, jeka!!! (I need to read more of your stuff!!) Anyways, so cute, such lovely, pretty writing, wonderful story telling, and they’re so in love TT_TT

Boom Badoom Boom - warschach (3429 words)

Summary: Izuku's working the kissing booth at the school fair, it just so happens Katsuki has been crushing on him since the first grade.

“Did you—“ Izuku parted his mouth with no sound leaving it, “Did you pay?”

“Yea.”

“For a kiss?”

This one’s a little silly but I love it still. It’s got a “kids in the 80′s over summer vacation” vibe, I think. I love warschach! I should read more of their writing... They have SUCH good bakudeku content! *It’s rated teen but there’s some suggestive content, just a heads up!

Hopeless Ramen-tic - lalazee (7155 words)

Summary:  Midoriya is a cute guy who works at a ramen stall and Bakugou is thirsty as hell, but has to hide it by being an asshat. Another love story.

Ah, so good TT_TT so much sass, such good plot development and story telling for a simple concept *It’s rated as teen but again, it can be suggestive at times!

I’ll share this with you, so leave it behind - yabakuboi (3508 words)

Suammry: For the sake of the story, All Might is never in need of a successor, and, when Izuku saves Katsuki from the sludge monster, encourages young Midoriya down a different path. Thus, Katsuki and Izuku part ways after junior high, as Katsuki enters U.A. and the Midoriyas move overseas. It’s later that Katsuki realizes that there’s something missing, that he drove that something away.

Years after, Katsuki finds him in the last place he looks, in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store of their childhood neighborhood.

So soft, so sweet, so good if you just want to curl up in a comfy blanket and drink hot cocoa and feel warm and cozy and a little in love

The Secret Deku Box - yabakuboi (2241 words)

Summary: “Y’know, Bakugou never, ever talks about girls,” Kaminari says, his voice thoughtful.

“And I wonder why that is.” Ashido rolls her eyes.

“I’m just curious!” Kaminari whines. Kirishima drags the box out, unlabeled and unassuming, the lid not even fully clasped over the edges. “The guy has to— Whoa, what’s that?”

Kirishima realizes a little belatedly that this is a serious breach of privacy, and Bakugou will actually murder all of them. “Nothing!” he cries, attempting to shove it back under the bed, but Ashido snatches it away.

“Please be his porn stash!” Kaminari whispers as she whips the lid off.

Cute, funny, in canon, in character, and a must read I would say! 

daisy bunches and heather branches - halcyonwhispers (5862 words)

Summary:  izuku falls in love with the foul-mouthed tattoo artist next door.

Not another flower/tattoo shop au.... aldskjflaskdjfd Okay but punk!Bakugou is ALWAYS a smart move imo

the best part of me (is the worst I can give) - halcyonwhispers (5668)

Summary: Whole sentences usually make up people’s Words, but Katsuki got stuck with a name instead.

Izuku’s name.

I am such a sucker for soulmate aus when it comes to these boys TT_TT *There is some mature content, just a heads up!

Hard to Say - halcyonwhispers (8390 words)

Summary: Izuku is a Halfling, born after his faerie father spirited away his mom and then left her behind. Never quite fitting in with the humans or any of the supernatural beings in his small town, Izuku hoped that going to a diverse college in the big city will help him finally make friends.

Katsuki’s family has been powerful witches for generations, and he’s no different. Talented and a proclaimed genius to boot, he knew he shouldn’t waste his time on this dumbass (disgustingly cute) half-blood.

Or,

two idiots fall in love and don’t get that the other’s awkward cues are just a result of romantic tension.

I am ALSO a sucker for fantasy/mythical creatures au and I LOVED this one - Bakugou absolutely unable to handle how cute Midoriya is? Perfection - but it’s unfinished, and I don’t think it ever will be continued, unfortunately TT_TT

lots to unpack (throw away the whole suitcase) - shounentwink (4315 words)

Summary: “How’d you know?” Midoriya asks.

There’s a hunch to his shoulders that wasn’t there three hours ago. Freckled shoulders are kissed sunburnt and red: he looks like someone ran him over and left him like roadkill in the sunlight. Bakugou’s working with insurance today, but he could see the sparks of green lightning even from his elevated position in their shared agency. Midoriya’s holding his thumb, cracking it over and over — it looks like he’s rubbed it raw.

“Dunno,” Bakugou says. “Maybe you’re just easy to read, nerd.”

I love this one so much, it was one of the first ones I read, it’s so good, and it’s another that really affected how I view their relationship! Idk this one just hit for me

hang the moon from us (it’s a no from me) - shounentwink (1200 words)

Summary: Midoriya’s gonna get sick of Bakugou one of these days, and then the whole ruse will be over, and the balance of power will tilt beyond salvation, but that day isn’t today and it looks like Bakugou knows it.

What an asshole.

Once again, I’m a sucker for the fantasy au... But even more, the diction, the details, the imagery...it’s absolutely all stunning here. I wish I could write this pretty

In Which Bakugou Finds His One Tru Luv - Erina (5862 words) This is the first one of a series called The Misadventures of Explodo-kill Agency!

Summary:  Welcome to the Explodo-kill agency! We can destroy your buildings, crash your cars, and help you solve one of the seven mysteries in life: who is Bakugou Katsuki's mysterious boyfriend?!

I’ll admit I’ve only read the first three but by god they are the funniest fics I’ve ever read in my life. I see that Erina has added more since the last time I checked it out! Tbh I was only interested in reading the purely bakudeku ones... (My favorite was the second one!! SO funny and cute!)

i still do - raeryn (9646 words)

Summary:  He’s losing him to pieces, but Izuku still tries to make them count. In which a battle leaves Bakugou Katsuki with amnesia, and Izuku finds himself picking up the pieces.

So, this one makes me cry. TT_TT

One Thing Straight - winningshot (9899 words)

Summary: They totally aren't.

Hints of their relationship is found in all of their friends’ social media accounts, but majority of their fans still think that Katsuki and Izuku are in relationships with anybody but each other.

It was amusing up until it became sad.

Lmao it’s a little salty but I guess I can be too. This is a social media fic! There’s multiple ships in this one, too

A Demolition Boy & his Cryptid BF - kewltie (8472 words)

Summary: Bakugou of the Demolition Squad is famous for running one of the most popular Youtube channels on the web that regularly blow shit up and jumped off a perfectly good building for shit and giggles. He's also famous for his Cryptid BF™, never appearing on camera except for a few bodyshots and all information on him is kept locked up tighter than Fort Knox, therefore drawing all sort of attention and curiosity toward his mysterious boyfriend.

Deku from Deku Explains is a hopeless chatterbox who is known for uploading 20-30 minutes video that talked about his favorite shows and comics and have one of the most devoted following on Youtube. He also can't seem to shut up about his boyfriend Kacchan, who regularly make his presence on the channel as a disembodied voice.

They should theoretically have nothing in common except a shared platform to host their content and an army of fans with an endless curiosity and devotion to their Youtubers. Vidcon is where we lay our scene and the internet is about to get a rude wake up call.

Okay kewltie is SO GOOD and very creative! The formatting is phenomenal, it’s like you’re actually experiencing a social media melt down in real time lol

be my good luck charm - writedeku (6785 words)

Summary: See, the thing is, Midoriya Izuku had been born with a curse. It’s not a curse that’s particularly visible. He doesn’t have horns, or a tortured face, and it’s not the kind of silly curse like a friend of his had way down south in Diagnor, wherein the girl had been born without the ability to say the word duck. Midoriya Izuku is just extremely unlucky.

(Or the AU in which Izuku's the world's unluckiest travelling merchant, and Katsuki is someone who may be able to help him. For a price, that is.)

Oh I adore this one! It’s so cute and such a good narrative! Nice and warm, and Bakugou trying his damnedest to be suave, and it somehow working because Midoriya is just as flustered. *Another one rated as teen but some suggestive content.

Smells Like Victory - majjale (2377 words)

Summary: Bakugou takes two steps into the room and stops, clapping a hand over his nose. “Ugh, what stinks like Deku in here?”

"Good afternoon, Bakugou. That would be the amortentia."

I must admit, not a fan of HP, but majjale...TT_TT majjale writes these two boys so well. This one is really, really good!

Cherish Me - Justaperson1718 (2376 words)

Summary: “What?”

Izuku looked back down at his menu and flipped the page, a small smile on his face. “Nothing.”

Katsuki glared at Izuku from across the table. “If it was nothing then you wouldn’t be staring at me.”

“It’s just a little funny watching you try to look your best for our date when you always look great anyway,” Izuku explained. He wouldn’t look up from his menu while he spoke, but his words remained ingrained with confidence nevertheless. He considered what he was saying to be fact, and nothing else. “Even when you’re not trying in front of the cameras, it’s still hard to take my eyes off of you.”

This is a sequel to a fic that’ll be in the next section, because it’s longer, called Manage Me. Please read that one first before this one! (Not part of a series, but they’re the same story line)

Fascinating - Justaperson1718 (1556 words)

Summary: “I’m not staring at you,” Izuku replied, his eyes focused intently on Katsuki. He’s still wearing his pajamas, sitting on his knees in their shared bed. He was awake moments before Katsuki, and waited eagerly for the other to awake.

Katsuki glanced over his shoulder after his shirt was on and glared. “You’re fucking staring at me right now.”

Izuku shook his head, humming his disapproval quietly. “I’m watching you.”

“That’s the same damn thing,” Katsuki said while searching for a pair of pants in the dresser. “Your eyes are fixated on me like I’m your life’s fucking goal or some shit.”

“I just like watching you get dressed.” Izuku tilted his head to the side and smiled softly at Katsuki’s confused stare. “I know, it’s weird. But I like it.”

*There is a little bit of implied mature content, but overall, it’s just so sweet and intimate, and I just simply adore this one.

in a place once filled with gold - dorenamryn (9226 words)

Summary: It felt strange to remember such details, for they were things a friend should know, and as far as Katsuki was concerned, he and Deku hadn’t been friends in a very, very long time. He could admit, with reluctance, that they were on the path there, now, even though they would never make it. Katsuki would die before they could get the chance.

or: There is a garden growing in Katsuki’s lungs, and he is helpless to stop it.

“Hanahaki disease” okay, I can explain myself. Okay, I can’t. In any case, you got angst with a happy ending if that’s what you’re into!

Kaleidoscope - DPRenFTW (5141 words)

Summary: Izuku is a witch. He just needs to find his familiar. Enter a boy that is a wolf, and a wolf that is a boy - with wild red eyes and sharp smiles.

And Izuku thinks:

"Oh, it's him."

Just as beautiful and fascinating as the name implies! I seriously recommend for the beautiful writing, the gorgeous world, the mythical creatures au, and the lovely bakudeku romance!

Learning Curve - sensiblysilly (4222 words)

Summary: Deku and Katsuki’s first kiss goes rather differently than planned.

And Katsuki’s quickly learning that relationships can be unpredictable - especially when taking into account the variable that is Midoriya Izuku.

This really is just a careful handling of a teenage romance where perhaps one of them may have shit they’re still working through. It’s really sweet, and a careful study at boundaries and the building of a relationship. I actually stumbled across this while looking for another with the same name and ended up pleasantly surprised. Kacchan can has a little validation, as a treat.

4/20 is a national holiday - Ereri_Garbage (

Summary: Izuku is a drug dealer that doesn't really accept the fact he's a drug dealer, Katsuki is hot as hell as shouldn't be allowed a facebook.

Happy (Late) birthday Katsuki and happy (late) 4/20. I actually half assed an edit on this one so it took longer to post than I thought it would.

Uummmm lmao yes I have a sense of humor. ;ALDSKJFLSKDJF Okay, I say that, but this is not a crack fic, it’s a good story that I enjoy with good writing, and *it has mature, content, obviously for multiple reasons here. It’s rated as mature but there are borderline explicit moments imo. It’s a fun fic and funny, too! And, ngl, it really does remind me of college... But forget about me, the bakudeku is wonderful too of course :)

Drinking Watermelon - warschach (8906 words)

Summary: For whatever reason, maybe divine fate, Izuku turned and looked over his shoulder and waved to them.

Katsuki’s heart full on stopped right then, and his fingers forgot their duty on the rails, and his body neglected its job to keep Katsuki balanced.

Izuku’s summer sweet smile fell into concern as Katsuki went airborne and cracked his skull on the porch.

or Katsuki works as a camp counselor, and Izuku is a boy made of summer heat and sunlight.

Love it when people have Bakugou as absolutely enamored with Midoriya; it’s so good and true. Anyways this one makes me like summer camp story lines. It’s funny and also cute and great writing! *It’s got explicit content, just a heads up. Warschach stories just have this youthful 80′s vibe, I don’t know how else to explain it.

there are listed buildings - semiautomatichearts (3309)

Summary: Katsuki first sees colors bloom when he is only three years old. It is timid Izuku, hiding behind the cover of his mother's leg who looks upon him with wide eyes, and Katsuki's world explodes in shades of greens and pinks and blues, and he is so startled, he begins to cry.

His life is then on defined in color, in shades his peers can't see, by the forlorn, timid stare in Izuku's eyes that always lets off more than he is willing to tell. There is a schism driven between himself and his fated other, and Katsuki strives to be better than fate, better than what is defined for him. He is more than the written pages of a book, to be cracked open and read by the gods.

He wonders if it is possible for colors to bloom for someone who will never love you back.

Ah...soulmates :) So interesting how bakudeku fits into soulmate aus like this one when they’ve known each other as kids! And when they’ve had this complex push and pull thing going on all their lives! The writing is beautiful, and so is the story!

Promise Ring - bkdkwritingsdump (3579)

Summary:  The midwest in the 1950′s is no place for boys who like kissing boys: something Izuku and Katsuki know all too well growing up there. However, the undeniable bond between the nervous science geek and the aloof delinquent will still find a way to blossom in such a desert.

Cute, sweet, makes my gay heart ache. Longing not just for the one you love, but just to feel right loving them. Very pretty story line, lovely story telling!

Fics 10k - 30k:

Fishy - warschach (19417 words)

Summary: Izuku’s convinced his hot co-worker/neighbor, Katsuki, is a mermaid-or merman- you gotta consider genders even with mythical creatures- and plans to prove it.

(or this is kinda like the show ‘Monster Quest’, except Izuku actually finds said monster, falls in love, and have sexy times.)

Another warschach! I love this one, I love how they write bakudeku, particularly as college students, their stories (at least, the ones that I’ve read) always feel so warm, like a summer’s day, but not a lazy one, one that’s playful? If that makes sense? *This one is explicit, another heads up!

Manage Me - Justaperson1718 (10756 words)

Summary: Izuku caught himself moving forward, his head tilted somewhat to the side, and his eyes shot wide open. His gaze met Katsuki’s half-lidded eyes now that he was no longer in a dreamlike state, and seeing the way Katsuki was looking at him—waiting for him—made him realize Katsuki would’ve let him do it. He might have even wanted him to do it.

“You’re both doing fabulous!” the photographer called out to them, packing his camera into his bag and getting ready to leave. “I just got word that what we have now should be good, so we’ll stop there. Thank you for your time! Lock the door on your way out after you change.”

The pair stayed frozen in place, with Izuku’s arms around Katsuki’s neck and Katsuki’s hands resting on Izuku’s waist, while the photographer and his supervisor left.

“Kacchan,” Izuku cooed once they were gone. “Did you want to…?”

Love the story, love the bakudeku! Very, very good bakudeku TT_TT very sweet *There is some mature content in here as well

point to a map (we’ve been there) - cosmicfuss (10589 words)

Summary: Serendipity / sĕr″ən-dĭp′ĭ-tē Serendipity is the occurrence of an unplanned fortunate discovery. Two men find themselves on a subway, hot coffee on one while the other is in the middle of a screaming match. After that they can't seem to stop finding each other, no matter how far they go.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; this fic owns my entire soul. I love the story, the ease of their relationship, just how lovely they are together. It’s another kind of nice, fluffy fic you’d read on a bad day where you come home and curl up in a blanket and listen to a ten hour video of thunderstorm white noise. *Again, some more mature content in here

Partners - tsukithewolf (13619 words) Another series! Two parts to this one this time

Summary: It is said that in Musutafu there is a charm that one can buy at a temple that will lead you to your destined partner. They say that if the charm works, you would be able to follow the red string of fate to the person you were meant to be with. And if the person returns your feelings, they would be able to see the string as well, proving that both were meant to be.

Three-year-old Katsuki and Izuku misunderstand what the word "partner" means and discover the charm and the rumor behind it is not only true, but more than expected.

Gets a little heavy, depression, bullying, suicidal thoughts, etc. But it must get worse before it gets better, that kind of thing. I also just adore the second part (called Bond) - maybe because it’s much fluffier, what about it?

Learning Curve - iknewaman (10304 words)

Summary: “Izuku.” Uraraka repeats as she motions at the person stood next to her. Green curls, average height, and, well. Up close, not such a bad smile. Uraraka points a thumb at Bakugou and enunciates slowly, “This is Bakugou. He can speak sign language too.”

Wait. Sign language?

The stranger— well, Izuku— looks at him with a raised brow. Their free hand lifts up as they make a slight motion of the hand.‘

Really?’

*

Bored out of his mind at a house party one night Bakugou is introduced to Izuku, a deaf student who offers to help teach Bakugou sign language in exchange for a favour-- or well, is prompted into asking for a favour.

Ah, I really want to explain this one a little bit? I’d never been into fanfiction ever, only really getting into it with these boys. This was the second one I read, I remember, and it caught me off guard, and it intrigued me. It really surprised me as to what fanfiction could be. Ngl I had biased perceptions of fanfics - I used to be one of those people who thought fanfiction could never be good writing - and this one slapped me in the face with it’s subtle beauty and creative story and heart melting capabilities, and very, very real relationship and growth. Anyways it’s so cute how happy Deku is to teach Kacchan sign language TT_TT Make sure to read the tags!

The Keeper and the Sun God’s Heir - SurelyHeavenWaits (12746 words)

Summary:  The Titans' have stolen something important from Izuku, heir of the Sun God, and he wants it back.

This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one this one- Oh my god this one. Okay so what, I was a Percy Jackson kid, what about it? I love the mythical aus, particularly the god ones. But beyond that, the writing is so beautiful, just like the world, and the imagery. The bakudeku...absolutely stunning. The story itself? Incredible. Cannot recommend more. *There is explicit content in this, though I will say, it’s all in the last chapter, and all of the story is in the first two chapters. There’s also a second part as it’s a series and it’s short but it’s cute and sweet TT_TT

seven days - aaAAAaaahhhhHHHHH (10094 words)

Summary: There’s something about the green haired boy, an aura that just drew Katsuki in before he even knew his name.

[Sometimes your mind forgets, but your heart remembers]

Heed my warning: DON’T read this in front of other people. I bawl every time I read this one TT_TT I know I said I don’t like angst but AJLSKDFJALSKDFJ it has a hopeful ending! I mean yeah you’re gonna cry but...hope? :’) (that username really says it all tbh)

Fics 30k+

Notice me, nerd - useless_donut (40000 words)

Summary: Bakugou is in love with Midoriya. He doesn’t hide it, in fact it’s so painfully obvious that the entire class of 3-A has him figured out in a matter of months (days, in some cases). Too bad Midoriya is the most oblivious motherfucker out there, and Bakugou is too damn stubborn to actually ask him out.

Will the class of 3-A survive the sexual tension? Who will snap first? Someone put Bakugou out of his misery, please, before everyone else dies of second-hand embarrassment.

(a love story as witnessed by the class of 3-A)

Love the idea of Bakugou being brazen and brash, cause yeah, he is. So fucking funny though how that translates to him flirting. Gotta say, thought I was gonna cringe, but his “I’m gay af” outfit really ended up being A Look. Love the mutual pining, it really is strong in this one. *Okay, mature content in this one lads.

While You Were Sleeping - Belkacaramelka (71197 words)

Summary: The one where quirkless fanboy Midoriya Izuku rescues Pro Hero Todoroki Shouto, gets mistaken as his fiancé while he is in a coma, and gets caught up in the most unlikely fake engagement... until his childhood enemy and Todoroki's classmate Bakugou Katsuki tries to catch him out, and they both end up discovering a lot more about each other than they'd expected.

Quirkless AU based on the film; endgame BakuDeku. -- Katsuki didn’t know when the change had happened: how he had gone from asking why Todoroki chose Deku of all people, to wondering why it was Todoroki that Deku chose. Troublesome Deku, who cooed like an idiot at cats, tripped at a random catcall and sang badly. Who, despite everything, proved that it wasn’t the quirk that defined a person. Deku, who was too much, not his, and undeniably off limits to begin with.

Update: Epilogue added

*This one has mature content. If you can, please, for the love of god, read this fic. It’s like, tied with my favorite bkdk fic perhaps ever. It’s based on the movie of the same title, a nineties romcom with Sandra Bullock, but Belkacaramelka has so effortlessly made it into it’s own story, fit it so perfectly inside of the bnha world. I definitely stayed up until 6:30am reading this one. It’s got such good badass Midoriya, who is also sweet, and really really good reconciliation between bakudeku.

All Gifted - fitzefitcher (39129 words)

Summary: The thing about gifts is that they're meant to be given, they're meant to be shared; so Izuku will take his gifts, so freely given to him, and share them with all he holds dear.

Izuku is born without any gifts, as his kind often are, to a witch mother and salamander father, on one sweltering night in July.

This one is unfinished...and I highly doubt it will ever be. But what has been written is incredible. Once again, I’m a sucker for the magic/mythical creatures aus. But the relationship is great! The characterization is great! The found family trope that was building up is great!

under a hollow sun - umbrage (40572 words)

Summary: Midoriya is cursed with emptiness.

Misfortune leads him to a man of ancient magic and endless rage.

To stop an unfathomable evil, their mismatched halves must become whole.

Uuuggghhhh this was so good! I don’t think it’s going to be finished either :( Once again, fantasy au, more amazing writing, on point characterization, incredible pacing, makes you hungry for more story.

all the savage soul requires - majjale (58032 words)

Summary: Bakugou seems to have exhausted his patience for words and no longer acknowledges that Midoriya exists, so Midoriya crosses his legs, stares down at his hands limned in firelight, and makes a list of things he knows.

One. His name is Midoriya Izuku.

Two. He is a Godmarked, future god of life, heir to the divine throne.

Three. The gods have been fighting Death for eons, and now he's coming for recompense with everything he’s got.

This is majjale, so of course, the writing is more than beautiful; it’s absolutely breathtaking. This may be my favorite fic ever - unfortunately I don’t think it will ever be finished either TT_TT There’s the gods/fantasy au, which you know by now I love. But the characterization of our two boys is absolutely perfect, and I mean that as literally as possible. And the story being crafted between the two, the memory loss, the obvious history muddled by it all, it was so dense, and the PINING, so incredibly written, flowing so naturally. It wasn’t even close to being done, but it was wonderful, still is wonderful. 

My Writing: (You can skip this if you hate shameless self promotion)

You’re too damn flicking cute (1815 words)

Summary:  Bakugou is certain his shitty boyfriend is instigating kisses. Maybe it doesn't help that he keeps giving them away like it's a damn going out of business sale, but the stupid nerd is too fucking cute. Either way, like everything else, this is a competition, and he's going to win it.

Please don’t read this unless you’re going to the dentist afterwards! I’ve been told it’s so sweet it’ll give you instant cavities >_>;;;;

Bakugou Katsuki, you smooth motherfucker (10118 words)

Summary: Everyone around him knows that Bakugou Katsuki has a very special way with words. To the untrained ear he is loud and crass; to those that speak Kacchan, he is caring and inspiring. Yet there are rare moments, moments so fleeting you blink and you miss them, where Bakugou’s words pierce straight through Midoriya’s chest, and surprise everyone around him.

Goddammit, if only he would say them to Midoriya’s face.

Or, the five times Bakugou said something nice about Midoriya, and the one time he said something kind to him (but that was too long of a title).

I think most would consider this my best published fic; it’s one of those snapshot fics, “the five times where x did this, and the one time where they didn’t.” The recurring comment I get on this one is both of them being super in character, so I think that’s it’s defining characteristic! Bakugou and Midoriya have never known a life without the other, and in a perfect world, they never will.

Here, let me fix that (11247 words)

Summary: Bakugou honestly never thought he’d see Deku ever again. And now that they were together in this tiny compartment, alone for the next two and a half minutes, he had no clue what to say. He’d just apologized, right? So perhaps he could leave it at that and carry on with the original plan to never see the green-haired man that reminded him of dense forests, late night adventures, and tear-stained faces, ever again.

Ha! Who is he kidding? These bitches are soulmates.

I’ve gotten some critiques on this one, so sorry in advance if it’s not to your liking! Basically, what if Midoriya never got his quirk? Obviously, life would find a way to put them together because, as previously stated, these bitches are soulmates.

Plenty of Time (16654 words)

Summary: Bakugou found what little sleep he got restless and filled with nightmares that he forgot the second he opened his eyes. Tonight was the first time in a long time where he just had a normal dream - and it happened to be about Deku.

How fucking typical.

In other words, two dorks realize they have feelings for each other but don't know what to do about said feelings.

Ah, my first fic. Very simple, boys being boys, kinda like a slow burn? Idk how to explain this one, just boys figuring out their feelings and trying to figure out what to do about them. Been told these two are a little stupid but I think that’s valid.

We’re all time bombs waiting to explode (39223 words)

Summary: We have now entered the slipstream of time, into an alternate dimension where it neither is, nor isn’t, the 80’s. Two teenagers, burdened with the weight of adolescence in the modern world, find themselves struggling side by side, in part because of each other.

Bakugou, the most popular boy in school, has everything he could possibly want; status, power, and an unbreakable will. Having been dragged along behind him all the way to the top, Midoriya can’t help but wonder how (and why) he ended up standing beside his childhood friend-turned bully-turned friend again, weighed down by their complicated past and present. As the tension between them grows every day, and the arrival of a new, pretty face causes it to peak, it won’t be long before something - or someone - snaps.

I am...very bad at titles, and summaries apparently. This was my Heathers au, but it very quickly diverges from the original (I don’t do sad endings....) *This one has mature content, including implied sexual activity, drug use, and underage drinking, along with other heavy topics; please read the tags! Though tbh Midoriya is 17 for a couple weeks before it hits his birthday halfway through, so keep that in mind I guess? I kind of went heavy with this one, but I think the pay off was immense. This is the one with the most amount of comments stating it’s their favorite bkdk fic ever (and I cry). It’s a rough start, with a rough journey, but so is bakudeku! There’s a lot of petty drama, and then all of a sudden it’s Not That Petty and very much Far Too Real. Many have cried reading the ending, I cried writing it. My sister says it’s her favorite of mine. Now, I did kind of push this out without polishing it so much because I was losing my willpower, so if it feels lacking, that’s one hundred percent my fault.

Okay that was a lot! It took me a couple days...I hope I wasn’t too annoying with all my opinions! Please have a nice day. and enjoy some good reads, even if they aren’t the ones in this post!

#bakudeku #katsudeku #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha #bnha #bkdk #fics #my writing #god i really hope i didn't fuck up any of this #i spent a long time on it alksdjflaskjdflkasdjf #this is 39 fics without my own #and 44 including mine #i can tell i've forgotten some but #idk it's hard TT_TT #anyways it's 2:30am #if i go to bed at 4am one more time i'm gonna throw myself down a flight of stairs #i hope this is good enough as is! #most of this was written very late so I hope it doesn't sound...crazed

[graffitiskies]

━♡ guess the 26 year old july baby just arrived to dallyeog! it makes sense, because jeon yooseul is just as wild as the month of july. wait, why do they remind me of bae suji? beyond that, they seemed audacious and impartial upon first glance. i heard someone say they’re sort of stormful and brusque though. i hope they get acquainted here in complex #3 / apartment #0722 / floor # 2 ; she seems to have a lot going on with her job as a rideshare driver.

tw: missing persons

hey everyone!!!! ;u; i’m so glad to be joining you at this ungodly hour (it’s literally after 4am here SMH!!) but hey when the muse hits you IT HITS YOU LIKE A CINDERBLOCK and i for one love when i get a weird burst of sudden muse for a new character hehe :> anyways, that character would be jeon yooseul, a somewhat asocial rideshare driver who’s been living at dallyeog for about a year now :0 pretty much all the info i have for her is below, but in case you’d rather not read a big stretch of text all together, here’s some individual page links: x, x & x :)

profile / stats basic

full name - jeon yooseul nickname/s - yoo, yoojwi ( from her aunt due to her quiet nature ) age - twenty six dob - 07/22/1994 gender identity - cis female orientation/s - pansexual / demiromantic blood type - o born - gyeonggi-do, south korea  grew up - pohang, south korea nationality - korean occupation: rideshare driver languages: korean, conversational japanese, very basic english

personality

label - the thunderstorm traits - audacious, stormful, impartial, brusque, enigmatic, aloof aesthetics - long drives with no destination, concealed crying fits, lonely shadow puppets on the wall in the waning sun, wind and raindrops in your hair, smudged lip balm, beat up messenger bags, the jingling of keys, continental drift, being left on read western horoscope - cancer chinese zodiac - dog alignment - chaotic neutral mbti - the logician ( intp-t ) enneagram - the philosopher ( 5w4 ) disc type - the architect ( Dc )

appearance

fc - bae su-ji ( bae suzy ) hair - deep brown and usually worn naturally, with little effort put in. eye color - black build - slender clothing style - simple, aimless - lots of blacks, earth tones and neutrals. owns a few leather jackets. piercings - both ears in multiple places tattoos - a small heart on her left ring finger, a heart topped with a cross on lower part of the back of her neck

familial ties

mother - jeon hyesun ( status unknown ) father - jeon soonil ( status unknown ) siblings - younger brother jeon yoohwan ( 20, currently in university ) aunt - im darae ( 49, living in pohang ) uncle - im jongho ( 52, living in pohang )

biography

yooseul was born in the muggy, oppressive heat of july to two very kind, yet very naive people. they were both young; barely 19 when they had yooseul, and were in no position to take care of a child. however, they still took on the challenge, as it was simply the kind of people they were.

while the pair meant well, they were always leaving yooseul with her aunt and uncle before traipsing off on another adventure. they loved traveling the world doing all kinds of thrilling, but reckless activities. climbing infamous mountain peaks, visiting the sites of active volcanos, boating down the amazon river with scarce supplies. the little girl would overhear pieces of arguments between her aunt & uncle and her parents. yooseul’s aunt and uncle tended to look out for her even more than her parents did, and were adamant that all the traveling was actively harming yooseul’s development. her mother and father remained steadfast that their daughter wouldn’t even remember this stretch of her life, due to how young she was.

when yooseul’s brother was born, everyone was a bit hopeful that yooseul’s parents would slow down with their jet-setting lifestyle, but if anything, it seemed to kick them into high gear. it was as though having a second child made them feel as though the clock were ticking on their lives, and off they were again on another adrenaline rush.

as yooseul grew enough to truly comprehend and lament her parents’ absence, it was only then that they seemed to finally understand the effect they were having. then again, anyone would probably start listening when their young child is on their knees, begging and crying with an intensity of someone’s whose heart was truly breaking. the trips slowed to a crawl and became every once in a while, rather than every other weekend. yooseul grew passive about them by age seven, as they were so infrequent, so when her parents told her they’d be going on a hiking trip to the south korean evergreen forests, she honestly didn’t think much of it.

she hadn’t seen her aunt and uncle in months, and she and her brother could fly kites in their spacious garden. it was a handful of positives, or so yooseul thought. ( tw begins here ) the days stretched on at their house, and it seemed to be taking a bit longer for her parents to return than she’d anticipated. she could tell something may have been wrong by the hushed conversations her aunt and uncle had, coupled with teary phone calls to people that yooseul couldn’t seem to make out.

she learned the truth while eavesdropping on a news story about her parents; apparently they had gone out hiking as planned, but they had never returned back to the hotel they were staying at. several searches had been conducted in the forest, but only scant, inconclusive traces of the couple were found.

as she was just a child, yooseul knew only hope. her parents would come back one day. why wouldn’t they? they’d been hiking before. they knew what they were doing. days turned into months, and optimism turned into doubt. the evergreen forests were so large and covered so much ground - and who knew if they were even still in there?

( end of tw ) her aunt and uncle did what they could for her and her brother, as the two had gained custody of the children due to their frequent care of them. while her brother was able to develop at a relatively normal pace, yooseul withdrew inside of herself for the most part. the hope she had once known had shifted into stinging pessimism. she loved the family she had left of course, but she was terrible at opening up about what she was feeling, and she was so reluctant for people to see any weakness in her. she had to be the strong one, and it was so much easier to be strong when you let emotions roll off your back entirely.

yooseul had difficult focusing on the things that went on around her, especially in school. she never really made socializing a priority, and her grades were abysmal. it was honestly a wonder that she graduated at all, but her aunt and uncle didn’t want her to be without a secondary diploma, so they refused to let her fall back irretrievably far.

trying to enter the workforce was even worse. she’d sworn off university, and all the small trade jobs she got never seemed to last more than a couple of months, mostly due to her lack of interest. she simply drifted from one meaningless wad of money to the next, either saving it up in a jar for goals she didn’t have or slipping it into her aunt’s purse when she’d refuse to take it directly.

having no prospects might have seemed like a downer of a life to live, but yooseul didn’t really think of things in those terms - she was solely focused on existing in whatever moment she was in and doing whatever she wanted to do. after her aunt and uncle surprised her with a fairly nice kia k8 (as they knew it was something she’d never buy for herself), she leaned into late night drives for comfort. there was something about being alone, feeling the wind ruffling through your hair, some mindless song on the radio recorded solely to push false emotions, watching the lines on the road come at you like knives when you push the limits of the car’s engine. it felt free.

after hearing word of a new rideshare app launching from her uncle, yooseul decided to apply to be a driver. she had nothing else going on at the moment, and those late night drives she enjoyed so much could actually make her some money.

she’s been doing it for a few years now and enjoys it as much as yooseul can enjoy something. the social aspect of it can be a bit awkward, so she loves nothing more than when her passenger keeps their face locked on their phone in silence. she’s since moved out of her aunt and uncle’s place and intro her own apartment at dallyeog. she figured it was finally time to move on, as her brother was now entering college and hadn’t really needed any help taking care of for some time now. maybe, deep down, she’d stuck around so long for sentimental reasons, but she’d never ever admit that.

wanted connections ( first come first serve )

anniversary of an uninteresting event ( open ) - yooseul never talks about it, but y/m saw the story about her parents on some exploitative talk show where they launched a ton of conspiracy theories about what happened. you want to set the record straight, but she doesn’t really wanna hear it.

be quiet and drive ( open ) - y/m orders a ride from yooseul with no set destination in mind. they’ve just had a really awful day and want to zoom through the city towards the sunset without looking back. lucky for them, that is just yooseul’s vibe.

needles and pins ( open ) - y/m and yooseul knew eachother before she moved into dallyeog, possibly even dating back to childhood. they actually know her better than most of the people she’s around now, which makes her mighty uncomfortable. she feels as if they hold some sort of key to a past she thought she’d locked away forever.

cherry waves ( open ) - nobody knows how y/m and yooseul came together, but every time they come into contact, they both immediately lose themselves. sitting on the beaches of busan with a bottle of whiskey, tiptoeing on the edge of dallyeog’s rooftop hand in hand, or ending up a tangled mess of flushed skin and kiss-swollen lips in the back of yooseul’s car; wherever they are, time doesn’t seem to exist.

battle axe ( open ) - yooseul can be a little abrasive when she’s irritated, and maybe that’s why y/m likes pushing her buttons so much. maybe they just like to challenge her attitude of not caring about anything. 

passenger ( open ) - somehow, every time y/m orders from the rideshare app, they end up with yooseul as their driver. it’s not that she doesn’t get them there safely and on time, but she can be...rather scary. maybe all it would take is a few conversations, and they’d see she’s not so bad, and maybe even bump up her rating to three stars?

hole in the earth ( open ) - yooseul did the unthinkable when she and y/m were together a few years ago: she actually opened up. she told them things she never thought she’d tell anyone, and y/m didn’t really understand the weight of that decision for her, betraying her trust. seeing y/m again now is just reopening old wounds and pouring on the salt.

digital bath ( open ) - for whatever reason, it is way easier for yooseul to have lengthier conversations over texts, snaps and other various digital means of communication. perhaps it’s not having to see the person’s reaction in real-time and therefor not having to process any of her own emotions. y/m is one of the only people who actually indulges her on this, and now they have become somewhat friendly as a result.

this is all i have for the moment, but i am v enthusiastic about brainstorming things based on chemistry and character traits or of course scooping up one of your open plots! 

#dallyeog:intro #/omg this got v long & i apologize ;-; but if you'd like to plot please do like this and i'll come invade ur ims!! unless disc*rd is easier #/in which case just ask and i'll be happy to share :^)

[n-ctarinenga]

Flower Boy [ boxer!calum ]

flower boy series | pt.1 | word count: 5,659 | masterlist

"Thank you so much! I'll have these to you as soon as possible. Goodbye!"

Talia grins, as she farewells the family whos portraits she had just finished shooting.

As much as she loves photography, there were only so many matching outfits and unhappy children a person could handle in a day, and with the family that had just left her studio, Talia had reached her limit.

Draining days were something she had gotten used to, business booming lately thanks to the kind words of a handful of past clients. With doors only opening just under a year ago, Valentine Studios didn't exactly have the longest history in town, but Talia liked to believe her dedication and skill made up for lack of experience.

Her mother hadn't really approved of the move, her ideals for her daughter being stuck a few decades in the past.

With the thought of her mother flashing through her mind, Talia couldn't help but sigh as she moved to pack up her camera for the night.

After the great disbandment of the Alisley family, it was nearly impossible for either of the Alisley children to communicate with their mother, but that didn't stop Yvonne from making her annual call to her kids, mostly about the percentage paid out to them every couple weeks from their father's estate royalties, which in Talia's case, was this morning.

From that point onward, it felt like the universe had decided to torment Talia today.

Starting off with the phone call, and most recently manifesting as a set of twins who refused to do any form of posing with their parents, Talia couldn't wait to go home and sleep so she could start the next day fresh and away from the negative vibes of the current day.

Once her backdrops had been rolled up,  and her camera was safely stored in its bag, Talia finally had time to let down her dark brown hair, the two bright streaks of red framing her face. She took great pleasure in turning all the lights off, and locking the door of the studio behind her.

Taking a second to relax in her car, Talia looks at her phone, scrolling through til she reaches the contact of her brother, Brandon.

The Alisley family were estranged from each other these days, but that didn't mean that Talia and Brandon had stopped being lifelong best friends.

The two had always been close, only a couple years between the siblings. Growing up in a world surrounded by adults until they themselves were well into their teens, they were practically a package deal until they had both moved into their own apartments a few years ago.

As of late, while Talia was diving head first into Valentine, Brandon was knee deep in The Vault, the gym he had started not long before Talia opened her own business.

Sitting in her car, Talia contemplated calling him for a moment, her finger hovering over the call button as she thought.

With both of them being so busy, they had barely had time to catch up over the last couple months, and after the day she had had today, Talia needed a bit of chill time with the only other person in the world who could understand her situation.

Their father always joked they could communicate telepathically, and after not seeing him for so long, Talia missed speaking her native tongue.

Deciding to make her way over to the gym, Brandon always telling her he was there any Friday night she would try to make plans with him lately, Talia constructed a plan for what she would do once she finally had convinced her brother to stop throwing himself into his work every Friday night.

With The Vault situated downtown, it was a bit of a drive in Los Angeles traffic, but with the thought of the Thai food just up the street from the gym in her mind, Talia couldn't find it in herself to care about the lengthy journey.

The radio softly played one of the many playlists made on Talia's phone as she drove along, windows down and the breeze lightly whipping her hair around as she did her best to relax while she had the chance.

While most people were finishing their work week, Talia, being the head photographer at Valentine, was still one day away from her own weekend, working every Saturday since the studio opened. This made it easier for families to get together for their shoots, not having to worry about getting back to work and getting the kids back to school, and Talia could tell her clients appreciated it, which made the extra day of work worth it to her.

Propping her head up, with her left elbow resting on the top of the door, Talia can't help the frown that flashes onto her face as she approaches the gym.

Expecting to see only Brandon's car and maybe another employee's, the full parking lot beside the building confuses her. How many people would be at a gym after hours?

The confused frown on Talia's face lingers as she parks her car next one she definitely recognised as Brandon's, climbing out and locking it before pocketing her keys and approaching a man who looked slightly familiar, noticing he was one of Brandon's employees as she got closer.

"Johnny," Talia smiles politely, the man turning to her with wide eyes as he recognizes her, "what's happening here?" She asks.

Johnny stutters for a moment, looking around like he rather be anywhere else in the world at this exact moment.

"Oh, here? Just some regulars here for a get together. Your brother left a few hours back though." He says quickly, tripping over his words slightly, almost like he was making a story up as he went along.

Suspicion courses through Talia at the deflective words of the man much taller than she is, and if she didn't already know him, she probably would have been intimidated by his size alone.

"I just parked next to his car though, and it's kinda odd for Brandon to leave the gym open." Talia laughs awkwardly, not trusting of the excuse she was being given when she knew her brother better than to leave not only his business open, but also his car unlocked outside it.

"I think I'll just check things out for myself thanks Johnny." Talia states, before taking a step forward towards the entrance.

Sensing her disbelief, and his face turning to one of panic, Johnny takes a step sideways, blocking the door from Talia's path.

"Brandon said that you were banned from Friday nights. I'm sorry Talia." He finally says, and Talia can't help the look of surprise that covers her face.

"Me? Banned from the Vault? I hardly think so mate." She laughs, taking advantage of the height difference between them to duck under Johnny's arm, easily pushing the door open into the gym.

Immediately, Talia is met with a wall of noise.

A crowd, some seated, some not, surround the central boxing ring at the center of the building. The usual smell of cleaning supplies and sweat is amplified by the stench of beer radiating through the whole building, but even then, the thing that grabs Talia's attention isn't the crowd or their behavior, but instead, what they're watching.

In the center of the ring, two large, well built men circle each other. Talia watches on in horror for only a moment before one man launches his fist forward towards the others stomach, and it's in this moment she realizes that the men aren't wearing gloves, but thin bloodied wraps.

The crowd roar with a wave of life as the punch connects, the second man doubling over and leaving himself exposed to an onslaught the first delivers without hesitation.

Even with the presence of Johnny behind her, the only thing Talia can see is the pure violence playing out in front of her, realization growing by the second as her eyes finally break away from the ring to where her brother stands at the back of the crowd.

She can't help but think her father might have been right about the telepathy, because almost as if he could sense her eyes on him, Brandon's own find her.

All of the colour drains from Brandon's face as he excuses himself from the black haired man he's talking to, running around the outside of the crowd to reach his sister, who stands frozen in place.

He says nothing as he grabs Talia's hand, pulling her sideways into the office room to the right of the building, easily tugging her past the back of the crowd that still stare focused into the ring.

The clinical white lights above them come to life as Brandon flicks the switch beside the door, shutting it behind him quickly before he turns back to Talia.

"What are you doing here?" He asks quickly, inspecting her as if she was a wounded animal ready to pounce.

Fighting her disbelief at the situation and his question, Talia's eyes go wide as a wave of anger washes over her at his question.

"What am I doing here? What the fuck is that shit, Brandon?!" She throws back at him, her voice louder and stronger than she expected it to come out of her.

Waving his hands panicked, trying to get her to lower her voice, Brandon tries to shush her, which only makes her more ticked off.

"Look you weren't supposed to see that-"

"Answer my fucking question or I'll start screamin' it." She threatens, cutting him off mid sentence.

An angry and frustrated expression settles on his face as Brandon let's out a huff, not knowing how to word his explanation and remaining silent while he tries to find the right words.

"Is this why you've been blowing me off for months? You got some fucking fight club bullshit going on here instead?" She questions further, her voice breaking slightly with stress.

"I can't tell you all the fucking details in one breath, Talia. I wasn't exactly expecting you to find out like this."

Brandon argues, throwing his hand up in annoyance, which only confuses her more.

"What makes you think you have the right to be angry at me when you're the one that has the explaining to do?"

"Fuck! Alright! I get it!" He whisper yells harshly, face twisting in anger and making the siblings look even more alike than usual, Talia taking a step back at his sudden outburst, "look, the money is gonna get cut off one day, I'm thinking about my future, OUR futures here. That's what this shit is about."

"And what exactly is this shit, Brandon?" Talia asks, aggressively pointing towards the door that barely separated them from the crowd.

"It's boxing. Same shit you see on TV, just, not as commercial."

"This isn't the same shit as on TV! Those guys aren't even wearing gloves!" She argues, smacking the back of her hand as she speaks.

"Bare knuckle and wraps get better bets, the guys make their own decisions on if they do it or not." Brandon defends as he crosses his arms.

Talia shakes her head in annoyance, her face twisting. Everything was happening so quickly, meaning she barely had enough time to process all the information being thrown at her.

"You're scared of mommy cutting off the royalties so this is what you do instead?" She asks.

"The money is gonna get cut off and it's gonna be sooner rather than later. Do you expect me to suck up forever? To hide Sam til she dies too? Mom hates both of us now and you know it just as well as I do."

Talia feels her throat tighten at his words. Her stomach felt like it was close to emptying its content as the gut punch of his words hit her at a hundred miles per hour.

"Shut the fuck up. You know I love Sam and you know I don't want to do it just as much as you don't want to. But you're right, it will be sooner if she finds out about this." She spits back.

Taking a step towards him, arms crossed, Talia holds steady eye contact as she looks up to her brother.

"You're not the only one she can fuck over. When she finds out and cuts me off too, what the fuck are we gonna do, huh?" She whispers harshly as the crowd outside the room bursts into life again, the next round starting.

Brandon breaks the eye contact between them as he stares at the ground, fists clenched at his sides as the obvious stress of the situation flashes across his face.

"She won't, not yet."

Talia rolls her eyes as her arms uncross, leaning back against his desk.

"Mom always finds out."

"She won't this ti-"

Brandon is interrupted by the office door swinging open, a tall man with blonde hair and a panicked look on his face ignoring Talia to address Brandon the second his eyes land on him.

"Hood's broken Knight's nose." He says in a rush, causing Brandon to groan, following the man out the door before turning back to Talia.

"Don't leave this office, I'll be back soon."

Talia throws her brother a sarcastic thumbs up before he rushes off, the door clicking shut behind him.

Talia felt like her mind was in the worst spin she'd ever experienced. Finally the late nights, the astronomical bills being excused as gym costs, the secrets, they all made sense.

As angry as she was with her brother, she was more worried about him than anything.

Seeing the crowd, the action in the ring, it was more than just the sparring she would see from time to time as she made the rounds to check in on things. These people were out for blood, and would throw as much money as they needed at it to make it happen. This wasn't the kind of thing she ever expected Brandon to be involved in, and it shocked her that he's involved in that world obviously as more than just a spectator.

Sitting down in the office chair, Talia rests her elbows on the desk in front of her, covering her face with her hands as she tries to take a deep breath to calm her nerves, but jumping as the crowd outside roars again.

This wasn't something she was familiar with, and the uncharted territory this laid out in front of her felt like a minefield. Both her brother's lies, and the violence they were hiding.

With her anxiety peaking as she sits deep in her thoughts, she nearly yelps as the office door flies open, a tall man coming in and looking around for someone, before their eyes finally land on Talia.

If the sharp jawline, dark eyes and deadly look on his face didn't take her breath away, the ripped and bruised skin under his eye sure did.

A seemingly permanent scowl was set on the man's face, and his height and all black outfit just added to the intimidating stance he has as he lets the door swing shut behind him.

Talia couldn't help but notice that the man is attractive, even with blood dripping down his face, noticing his hair closely cropped to his head, apart from the wild bleached curls that fell onto his forehead.

For a brief moment, the angry look on the man's face softens upon seeing the smaller woman sitting behind his boss's desk, but it's instantly replaced by a look of confusion.

"Who the fuck are you?" He asks, his voice deeper than she expected with an unfamiliar accent laced into his words.

Slightly taken back, Talia frowns, withdrawing from the desk and standing up behind it, her defensive nature quickly taking over.

"I'm Talia Alisley, who the fuck are you?"

This time it's the man that's taken back, his eyebrows shooting up as he scoffs, arrogance in spades and tension building by the second as Talia crosses her arms in front of herself.

"I'm Calum Hood," He says, and Talia freezes.

Hood. Was he the Hood that the blonde man was talking about? The one who apparently had broken the nose of the guy Brandon was checking on?

"and I'm guessing you're the precious little sister." He comments, and this time it's Talia that raises her eyebrow. Did Brandon mention her to these guys?

"Too right I am, so don't fuck with me and we should be fine. Brandon said he'd be back soon." She replies, sitting back down with her arms still crossed and the scowl on her face settling in while in his presence.

Deep down, Talia knew it was probably a bad idea to piss off the guy who was not only bleeding, but the cause of a broke nose two rooms over, but her pride and defensive nature was far more powerful than the anxiety swirling in her stomach.

"No need to worry about that, princess." Calum rolls his eyes in annoyance. If Brandon was gonna send him to his office, he could at least show up instead of wasting his time, and give him a warning.

Talia was thankful in that moment for the low light of the room on account of the desk lamp being off, hiding the blush that made her ears burn. Yeah, he might be a dickhead, but he was still an attractive dickhead.

Slumping down into the chair opposite Talia with a huff, Calum shakes his head, while Talia stays stone faced across from him.

"You alright?" She asks after a moment, referring to where blood still sits on his cheekbone.

Calum frowns at her attitude change, not aware of the injury that he sustained from Knight's ringed hand landing a right hook before Calum landed his own.

In his defense, Knight should have known better than to touch his gear.

With the confused look flashing across his face for a longer period this time, Talia can't help but roll her eyes.

"You're bleeding under your eye, bro." She points out.

As Calum reaches up to touch his cheek, the door opens, the blonde man from before walking in with Brandon in toe as Talia thanks her lucky stars.

"Not gonna lie I thought you would have left by now." Brandon says, looking at Talia first while her eyes stay on the actions of the blonde man opening a medical kit on the desk.

"Oh don't worry, I want to." She comments.

"So do I, can I go now?" Calum directs towards Brandon as the blonde man touches an alcohol wipe to his cheek, making his aggressive expression falter slightly.

"Once Luke says you're okay and once I've dealt with you, yes." He sighs, rubbing a hand over his face.

"Look," Talia says, standing up and holding her hands up in surrender, "obviously you've got a lot of shit going on here right now so we'll deal with this tomorrow." She gestures between them, walking around the desk and past the three men.

Letting out a sigh, Brandon sends her a look of appreciation.

"Thanks T, text me when you get home." He replies, to which she sends him a short nod.

"Luke, can you walk her out?" He asks, turning to the man getting up from kneeling in front of Calum.

"Yeah, no worries." He smiles, taking his gloves off and throwing them in the bin.

Walking out the door with Luke, Talia winces at the loudness of the crowd, thankful for the taller, now calm, man standing between them and herself.

"I'm Luke, by the way." He smiles kindly, holding his hand out for Talia to shake as they make it to the door.

"Talia. Gotta be honest, I wish this was under better circumstances." She smiles tightly back at him, shaking his hand.

"Yeah," he laughs, "me too."

As they make it outside, Talia leads Luke around the building to where her car sits, right next to Brandon's.

"Well, this is me."  She says, signalling to her car with the keys in her hand. "Thanks for walking me past all of that."

"No problem. Drive safe." Luke says with a small wave to her, and she gives him an appreciative smile.

"You too. See you 'round, Luke."

Climbing into her car, Talia sighs, relaxing only slightly in the familiar surroundings.

As she pulls away from the curb, Luke sends her a final wave before walking back into the gym.

Driving away, the adrenaline of the situation starts to wear off, and the reality of the situation starts to sink in.

"God, I'm gonna fucking kill him." Talia mutters to herself, turning the radio up and going over the night's events in her head as she drives back to her apartment.

The next morning, Talia awakes with a rock of dread weighing down her stomach.

Her mind immediately flashes back to the events of the night before, and as she showers, gets dressed and locks her apartment door, it almost felt like she wore the dread of the impending conversation she needed to have with her brother as a scarf tied too tightly around her neck.

Instead of heading straight to the studio and editing the photos of the last few days as usual, Talia instead took a deep breath as she started heading back towards Vault, having a couple hours to hopefully get answers before her first clients for the day were set to arrive at eleven.

The parking lot beside Vault sat a lot emptier today. Only a handful of cars sprinkled around, and just like last night, Talia pulls into the space beside Brandon's car.

Taking a moment before walking in, Talia leans back in her seat, closing her eyes.

She was scared. Of Brandon's explanation, of possibly having to accept whatever the fuck she had witnessed last night, of walking out more confused than she was about to walk in.

Her and Brandon had grown up play fighting, and catching an odd round or two when their dad decided to watch Friday Fight Night, but violence had never really been part of their lives in a physical form. Apart from a questionable wrestling phase when she was 14, Talia couldn't even remember the last time she saw two people in a ring together that wasn't casual sparring when she would frequent the gym in its early days.

None of it compared to what she saw last night.

With what happened still fresh in her mind, Talia climbs out of her car, pushing the door shut behind her.

Johnny doesn't stand by the entrance this morning, meaning Talia easily walks into the gym, the door squeaking slightly in protest as she pushes it open.

It's almost like nothing had even happened. All the equipment that was pushed against a wall last night now sits in its normal place, the shelves of alcohol behind the check in desk now stocked with protein powders like less than twelve hours ago the counter wasn't a very convincing bar.

Hearing her come in the door, a couple people look up from what they're doing, sending Talia a polite smile before returning to their work.

Calum Hood is not one of these people.

Almost like the universe had put a glowing neon sign over his head, Talia's eyes instantly wander towards where Calum stands next to the black haired man she recognized as the same person Brandon was talking to last night when she arrived.

Noticing her too, Calum’s encouragement of his best friend is interrupted by his eyes catching a flash of blue hair in his peripheral vision.

While he knew any animosity towards the woman who could probably have him fired with a few fake tears was a bad idea to hold onto, he couldn't help but feel annoyed upon seeing her in what he thought of as his domain.

Face settling into a frown as she looks across the room to the man who easily got on her nerves last night, Talia almost doesn't notice Brandon coming up behind her.

"Hey." He greets quietly, holding a takeaway cup of coffee out to his sister. "Time for that talk, huh?"

"Yeah. Think so." She takes the coffee with a nod of thanks, and hesitantly follows him to his office.

Talia couldn't tell if Brandon was trying to suck up to her with free coffee, but after sitting down at the chair in front of his desk and taking a sip, tasting vanilla latte, she knows he is.

"So, where should we start?" He asks, settling into his seat with a heavy sigh.

Talia scoffs lightly, raising her eyebrow.

"The beginning would be good."

Brandon nods, looking down at his desk to avoid meeting her eyes.

"The fights started around one, maybe two months after we opened, so we've been hosting them for about fourteen months now."

Talia's eyes go wide, disbelief covering her face as she places her cup on his desk forcefully.

"You're telling me you've been hiding this shit for over a year?" She asks, anger already starting to build.

"Yeah, and if you haven't fucking noticed, it's not been the easiest thing to do." He snaps, before holding his hands up, taking a deep breath and rolling his seat back slightly to calm himself, too much tension already in the air.

Talia bites her tongue, looking down at her hands before she signals to him to continue.

"A friend of mine, Ashton, he was part of an illegal boxing league running out of a rundown place up in Hollywood. I saw him fight there a couple times, saw the conditions myself. The guy running the show was a complete asshole to his guys, but they all needed the money, so they stuck around." He explains, voice quieter than before.

"One night we got to talking. I asked Ash if  he thought we might be able to make our own ring, give people a safer place to earn their money. Then we figured out how much we could earn from it, and with shit going so wrong with mom, I figured that if she pulled the rug out from under me, I could use the league as a safety net."

Piecing together the timeline in her head, and doing the best to absorb the information given to her, Talia remains silent and slowly nods along when needed.

"Him and I have built this thing from the ground up, and it's working for us. I manage the books, he manages the guys, and we take care of the admin together. With my connections to the rich assholes who have more money than they know what to do with, and with Ashton's connection to the guys who need that money and want to do it, we're doing really, really well, Talia."

This time it's Talia who avoids eye contact, looking down to her shoes as she curses the logical side of her brain for seeing sense in his story.

"How many people do you have fighting for you?" She asks.

Brandon let's out a heavy breath, waving his hand slightly.

"Around twenty, twenty five. We keep the doors open for the more occasional guy who needs the cash that week."

"And how often are the nights like last night happening?"

"Weekly. Every Friday, normally."

Seeing the hesitation on her face, bottom lip pulled between her teeth, Brandon sits forward to bring her attention to him, her eyes flicking up to meet his.

"I know this is a lot, and I don't expect you to be okay with it, but I do want you to know I'm being smart about this."

Talia sighs, taking a sip of her drink before speaking.

"I know you, so I don't doubt it. It's just so dangerous, Brandon. You can't expect me not to be worried about you."

Brandon laughs lightly, trying to lift the mood slightly.

"I would never expect you not to worry. It's not in your nature."

A small smile tugs at the corners of Talia's lips, and it's enough to ease his mind.

"Anything you want to know about the ring, the business, any of it, I'll answer as best as I can. I trust you more than anyone and I want to do everything I can to make you feel okay with this, and make up for holding it from you."

Talia hazards a look to her brother, seeing on his face that he's been open and honest with her.

"You know I always ask too many questions." She smiles, joking lightly as she referenced something she would hear almost daily from her mother growing up.

Brandon shakes his head as he laughs, taking a sip of his own drink.

"If you get too much for me, I'll just pass you on to Ashton. It's what normally happens around here." He shrugs slightly, before tilting his head.

"Actually, do you want to meet him? He should be around out there." He asks, and Talia mulls the idea over for a moment before agreeing. After all, it would probably be best to know who she would castrate if something happened to Brandon.

"Sure, might as well." She agrees, downing the last of her drink and tossing her cup into the small recycling bin under his desk.

Standing up and following Brandon out of his office, Talia can feel her nerves already starting to act up, and does her best to shove them down as she follows him towards the bench press where the black haired man who she now assumed was Ashton, and Calum stood.

"Hey, guys. I got someone for you to meet." Brandon says, catching their attention as they approach.

Ashton sends her a warm smile as she steps out from behind Brandon, which is a nice contrast from the cold glare Calum sends her way, which she ignores to return the smile instead.

"Ashton, Calum, this is my sister, Talia. Talia, this is the demon on my shoulder Ash, and my blue rock em sock em man Calum."

"We've met." Calum says bluntly, while Ashton raises his eyebrow.

"And we haven't. Nice to meet you, I assure you Brandon's told us nothing but good things." Ashton grins, holding his hand out for her to shake.

Talia takes his hand and can't help but notice how strong his grip is without what looks like any effort, and laughs lightly.

"I'd hope so, but I can't promise my staff have heard the same about him. It's nice to meet you too." She returns, letting her hand drop to her side before she acknowledges the man beside him.

"And yeah, charmed." Talia prods lightly, seeing Calum trying to hide the roll of his eyes from Brandon.

"Talia is gonna be spending more time around, getting to know the workings when she can. I said if she annoys me too much I'm gonna pass her on to you, so fair warning." Brandon informs them, tapping Ashton's arm as he directs his sentence to him.

"Fantastic." Talia hears Calum mutter, not loud enough for the other two to hear it, but just enough that she does.

This time, it's Talia that rolls her eyes at Calum.

As conversation is made, Calum can't help but feel hyper aware of Talia, and the sun shining in from the high windows casting sunbeams through the few red hairs that fell out of her bun and framed her face delicately. He would admit that Talia was pretty, beautiful even, but not audibly, especially not in front of the girl who felt no hesitation in sending him a death glare every few minutes.

The small group spend ten or so minutes talking with each other before Talia's phone rings, letting her know she should start making her way to the studio.

"Looks like I should be getting to work." Talia says, slipping her phone back into her pocket.

"What do you do, if you don't mind me asking?" Ashton inquiries, genuine interest in his tone, making her see why Brandon was such a fan of him.

Talia believed she could read people well, and from her first impression of Ashton, she got nothing but good vibes.

"I'm a photographer, I own my own studio called Valentine." She smiles proudly, and Ashton nods his head in approval.

"My girlfriend works just down the road from you I think! It's not far from Dominion Books, right?"

Pleasant surprise spreads across Talia's face as she nods, happy to have found a common link.

"Yeah! I think I might have seen you there in passing now I think about it." She smiles.

Brandon watches on with joy as he sees both Talia and Ashton getting along, so happy about it in fact that he didn't even notice Calum looking like he would rather be anywhere else in the world.

Talia says her goodbyes to the men before turning to leave, her attention being called back before she makes it too far.

"If you ever need a fill in hunk for a photo shoot, you know who to call." Ashton jokes, sending a wink in her direction.

"Yeah, you can get your brother to pass you my number any time." Calum says sarcastically, surprising her but also making her scoff as she takes a few steps backwards before turning around.

"In your dreams, darlin'." She calls over her shoulder.

As the door swings shut behind her, Calum feels like his feet are glued to the floor, the eyes of his best friend burning into him as Brandon excuses himself to mock throw up against the wall.

"What's that all about between you two?" Ashton asks Calum quietly, picking up his water bottle as Calum picks up his own, holding it up and speaking casually before taking a sip.

"No idea what you're talking about mate."

TAGLIST |  @spicycal​​ @calmlftv​​ @irwinkitten​​  @mrandleer​​ @candidcal​​  @lukeskisses​​  @wallflowercal​​  @brooklynsninenine​​ ​ @whereveryouares​​ @everyscarisahealingplace​

#calum hood #calum hood fanfic #calum hood imagine #5 seconds of summer #5 seconds of summer fanfic #5 seconds of summer imagine #5 seconds of summer blurb #5sos #5sos fanfic

[stonerbughead]

Maria watches friday night lights (#36)

5x13, the series finale i have heard nothing but good things about - I made it y’all! *wipes tear* this is a show i will definitely rewatch! It definitely feels like the kind of show that’s so layered that every time you go back you’ll pick up something new. I love shows like that.

i haven’t been on tumblr on my computer in a long time but im gonna go through and add “read more”s to all of these recaps! 

(thanks to anyone who read these nonsense recaps! if you enjoyed these...in addition to my currently-on-hiatus riverdale podcast @bodysuitsforbughead, I have another teen drama-centered podcast in the works, follow @LeftyTeenDrama on Twitter and @leftistteendrama on Instagram to get updates when it launches! I’m taking a break on working on it till i move but it’s gonna be a big part of my 2021 projects. I’ve already recorded one episode with two of my favorite people in the world and it’s gonna be amazing. It will be about a variety of teen dramas, but FNL will definitely be included.)

and without further ado, my final FNL ramblings under the cut:

And we open with one last montage of shots around Dillon from a car, with a “Christmas in Texas” song playing. Amazing. 

Oh wow, I love the “FIVE DAYS TILL THE CHAMPIONSHIP” vibe. The build-up is already here. A shot of Julie in the stands watching practice! 

It’s super uncomfortable that people are talking to Vince about his “future teammates” on the Panthers before the post-season is even over.  “I don’t really wanan talk about that. I want to talk about how the East Dillon Lions are gonna win State.” “Is that a promise?” These Texas sports journalists are WILD. this is a teenage boy whose school’s funding just got cut right before the biggest game of his life! Can we have some sympathy?!

“I hear they’re taking the cream of the crop for the Superteam so I’m gonna be honest with you, what are you gonna do?” EXCUSE ME SIR? I repeat, TEENAGE BOY. Tinker’s response of “you’re an asshole” and storming away was more than appropriate!!!

“No comment”ing his way out of there like a champ.

Ah, the age-old tradition of decorating a Christmas tree while arguing about a five-year football coach contract in Dillon or a dean of admissions job offer at a prestigious Philadelphia college. Julie’s just sitting there with Gracie like ooooh boy 

“Here is where we put our tree, not Philadelphia! It’s a Texas tree.” OMG STOP IT. Lol Julie putting her hands over her ears.

YAY MATT SARACEN IS AT THE DOOOOORRRRR im so excited

Wow I did not expect this proposal to come that quickly into the episode! Like i knew it was coming in this episode but aw. They’re so soft! Just like, oh i’ve been thinking about you nonstop since our perfect Chicago tryst and oh look here’s grandma’s ring let me casually get down on one knee in the town where we fell in love. And after she was just talking about how much she misses Matt to Tyra the episode before? That “yes” she gave feels so certain because of it. Aw.

The grandma’s ring really fucks me up because you know how close Julie and Grandma Saracen have gotten over the years. My heart!

“Oh my God, your dad must’ve flipped.” “...What do you mean?” OH NO Eric Taylor is totally the type to care. “...When you asked him to marry me.” Oh I knew this proposal was too early in the episode, im dying!

“You need to go man to man.” Ugh Julie i liked Matt’s plan of just going and telling them much better. His look of fear when he repeats “man to man.” dead. 

Wow no theme song??? That’s how you know it’s gonna be a long series finale!

Andddd here we are, a bickering Riggins “I may or may not be going to Alaska.” “Is it because you raw dogged Tyra last night?” i literally gasped.

LMAO Mindy trying to say Tim and Tyra are incest now that Mindy and Billy are married and then Tim and Billy immediately being like “nope, no blood lines, that’s not how incest works.” Someone should send that memo to all those anti bughead stans about bughead and falice

“What do you think about me taking Stevie for the day?” “I’m fine with that. There’s no going back, I’m going to get the bag.” LOL Mindy spoken like a true parent also YES to Tim and Stevie spending time together.

Poor Jess not realizing that asking Eric if she can follow him to the Panthers is a much bigger question than she thinks se’s asking.

AWW Tim and Stevie at Grandma Collette’s. How cute. 

“Seven’s back in town?” “Yeah, he and Julie got engaged!” 

Tim/Tyra and Matt/Julie double date?? Aw I love that Tyra knows that Matt and Julie got engaged. I really love Tyra and Julie’s friendship. 

I’m laughing really hard at Matt’s speech to Eric trying to ask permission. This is so funny. 

Eric’s like, “is this kid serious rn?” 

Not to be that northern bitch but don’t kids get married at 18/19 all the fucking time in Texas?? I feel like it’s more common in even more rural parts of like...any state.

“The answer to your question is gonna be no today, it’s gonna be no tomorrow, and it’s gonna be no until the sun burns out.” LMAO wow i didn’t see this coming

“This was really just a courtesy, we were hoping for your blessing.” YES MATT.

OH BOY Eric did not just try to speak FOR his daughter, im not about it. “My daughter’s answer to you is ‘no.’” That’s some patriarchal shit right there.

“We’ll never know if we’re East Coast people if we don’t try it!” “We have a MUCH BIGGER problem.” Dude, it’s Matt Saracen, the softest boy who has loved your daughter for years, i actually think the fundamental decision of where you and Tami continue your future might be slightly more pressing. 

“I don’t know why you’re yelling at me! I think we agree on this!” IM SCREAMINGGGG 

Aw, Tami getting teary-eyed at Grandma Saracen’s ring. “It’s just, y’all are so young.” I know but this is a TV show universe so we let teen marriage slide for the right couples, ok. 

Tami and Eric wanna take Matt and Julie to A CONVERSATION DINNER??? This is gonna be so funny. 

Aw, Vince got his dad a ticket to state? “I want you to be there.” if this fucker doesn’t just come and shut his mouth

Oh wow Becky’s mom is finally coming back? And yay Becky’s finally over her Tim crush. “So friends?” “I say family.” AWWW MY HEART.

“You guys were our age when you got married.” ARE YOU SERIOUS? “It was a different time.” Y’all have no leg to stand on here.

“Marriage requires maturity.” Says the man who won’t let his wife take a huge job offer. What, who said that? (Okay the way Tami’s watching Eric give this speech about compromise, thinking she’s thinking the same thing.)

“You guys got married when you were my age, and how many times did you move? How many different things you’ve gone through and look how you’ve made it work. You guys are my inspiration.” AW. I wish my parents had a stable enough marriage to be able to say that LOL but nope.

OH NO poor Tami getting up from the table because she’s emotional! Because she’s clearly always thought of her marriage that way too but maybe not lately AH

Eric, babe, that’s your cue to follow. 

Oh shit, Jess’s family is moving to Dallas? Well, damn.

Eric saw Vince not take a ticket for his dad and came to his watering hole to hand deliver it? “Young man gets a chance like that maybe once in a lifetime.” and mic drop, walk away.

Luke casuaklly meeting Becky’s mom for the first time while coming by to try to win Becky back. “I love you. I’m so sorry.” AWWW. growth!

YES cheers to Matt and Julie! “Here’s to Mr. and Mrs. Saracen.”

“Always thought you’d be the first person to say that.” AW

Yes halfway through college, go Tyra!

Awwww, Matt being like “let’s dance” and pulling Julie up. So cute. Yes, Tim asking Tyra to dance. 

“I got plans.” “I don’t.” OMG is Tim saying he’ll just follow Tyra? Damn.

Why tf is Buddy calling Eric first thing in the morning to tell him about Buddy Jr.’s cast and “staying here el permanente” and GETTING HIM TO SIGN A CONTRACT BEFORE THE GAME? Y’all are shady as fuck!

I love that seeing the Braemore papers made him stop, tell Buddy off, and not make a decision in that moment. What’s gonna happen???

“I won’t be a part of your Superteam after all.” Hopefully Eric won’t be either! Aw Jess thanking him “for the greatest experience of his life.” “I think it’s been mine too.” AW.

Eric’s gonna give a coach in Dallas a good word for Jess? So beautiful. Yesss!

AW Julie and Matt decorating the Saracen Christmas tree, and Grandma trying to get Julie to wear her old wedding dress!

Emotional at this hug between Julie and Mrs. Saracen. “I love you.” “I love you too.”

Awww Vince finally being glad that Jess is part of the team...at the moment when it’s about to end.

Yess Tyra and Tim picnicking on the land? 

And YES to Tyra going into politics, I could see it! “Along the lines of Mrs. T. Except bigger.” YES GURL.

“I’ve been in love with you since I was five years old.” AWWW that is so precious. 

“I’m gonna build a house exactly where we’re sitting. I’m gonna get a job. And I’m never gonna do anything illegal for the rest of my life.” Oh, Tim. my heart!!!

“Maybe one day, our dreams can merge together.” THAT’S SO BEAUTIFUL. What more does one really want? Oh, these beautiful life-filled shots of them drinking beer on the land where Tim wants to build a house. Art!

Oh shit, Eric’s racing to get to Santa in time to be there with Tami and Gracie?! “You scared me half to death. What’s going on?” 

“I turned the contract down. It’s your turn. I want to go to Philadelphia. Will you take me to Philadelphia with you, please?” YESSSSSSSSSSSSS what they deserve! What Tami deserves!!!! My heart!!!!

Ugh, the imagery as they get to State is amazing. The boys taking in the field, the players suited up praying and getting in the zone beforehand. The screaming in the stands waiting for them.

“You may never know how proud I am of you.” “You changed my life, coach.” AW.

Eric’s pre-game prayer overlaying the image of the Lions bursting out onto the field! Yes yes yes!

The way they slowed everything down with just music, and focused in on the faces of so many characters - Vince’s dad showing up, Eric and Tami saluting one another from stand to sideline, Becky cheering in the stands excitedly for Luke, Matt and Julie holding each other, Buddy on the sidelines screaming, Vince’s mom jumping up and down - just absolute perfection. 

And we’re back in, with actual in-scene sound at 26-21 with 3 seconds left on the clock??? Jesus!

AH and every single character watching the football fly in the air, WOW the DRAMA.

Holy shit, they fast-forwarded to one of Eric’s players in Philly catching a football eight months later in Philly??? THIS SHOW IS SO GOOD. WOW.

Tami looks like such a badass strutting around campus!

YES Tinker is on the Panthers! Take that, bullying reporter! 

Aw, the East Dillon Lions sign coming down. :( feels.

Nooo Luke don’t go to the military! Noooo I hate that. Poor Becky. They’re the exact type of couple who gets caught up in that really sad cycle - too poor to really have many other options, so the whole “free college when i get out!” thing starts to look really attractive. smh.

But i love how they used the championship ring he gave Becky as a way to signal that the East Dillon Lions did, indeed, win the state championship eight months earlier...and that Jess is wearing the ring on the sidelines of a new field where she’s working with the coaches! amazing!

Yay Matt and Julie live in Matt’s beautiful Chicago apartment? Perfection. They really look so good in that city together. 

New beginnings in a new city together for both Tami and Eric AND Matt and Julie? I’m living! It’s what they deserve!

Tim and Billy building Tim’s house and drinking beers! “Texas forever.” “Texas forever.” MY HEART.

“Clear eyes, full hearts.” SILENCE. “Ah, we’ll deal with that later.” LOL

Yesss Tami coming out to meet Eric on the field!!!

“Ready to go home?” “Yeah, let’s go.”

And the lights go off on the field. End show. AMAZING. Truly, an epic series finale! An epic show! I will definitely rewatch and i am so glad i finally did! Thanks to anyone who gave a shit about my ramblings.

#maria watches friday night lights #friday night lights 5x13 #mine

[agreatperhaps12]

There are a lot of misconceptions about Warren Peace. Five times Layla Williams saw through the bullshit, and one time Warren returned the favor.

happy holidays, @katiewont :) 

Misconception No. 1: Warren Peace loves a good fight.

Warren Peace does not go looking for fights. Fights find him.

See: Stronghold chucking a lunch tray at him the first week of class. Dumb and Dumber challenging them to Save the Citizen. Stronghold’s date going full supervillain at homecoming and nearly dropping a school-size anvil on an unsuspecting suburb.

That’s just the highlight reel for September.

When another villain interrupts Warren’s History of Heroism midterm with another school invasion, Warren’s first thought is: Could everyone around here chill for five fucking seconds.

No. Literally, not ever. See: three weeks later, when Warren is standing in line for lunch with the entourage of freshmen he’s long since given up trying to shake off. It has not even been five minutes since Warren and Stronghold defeated their latest challenger at Save the Citizen, and Zach is already doing a clumsy live-action replay.

To Stronghold, “Did you see his face when you were like?” Zach swings his arm with the spectacular confidence of someone not standing in a very crowded cafeteria. To Warren, “And then you were like—” Zach mimes shooting fireballs from his fists, complete with sound effects. “Totally brutal. You looked scary, bro.”

“He always looks scary,” Ethan says, smiling at Warren like that’s a compliment.

Warren glares down at his tray. He and Stronghold have been defending champions of Save the Citizen for over two months, Hero Team every time. He doesn’t get how people are still managing to make him feel like the bad guy about it.

“How was play-pretend battle?”

Layla has emerged from the crowd to stand beside Warren, with a smirk that makes a stupid something flutter behind his sternum. Layla stopped coming to their Save the Citizen matches after their dozenth victory, because “violence should be the last resort in any hostage situation” and “Save the Citizen completely undermines a valuable opportunity for Sky High students to learn strategic negotiation skills.” Warren doesn’t know what she does with the free period. 

Take me with you, he thinks.

“The match was epic,” Zach says. “Will got to throw a car.”

A bashful smile overtakes Stronghold’s dumb, Labrador face.

“And Warren almost barbequed Evans,” Ethan says.

Jesus, could they shut up about it already.

“Really,” Layla says, eyes on Warren while he pays for his food.

“Yeah,” Warren says, in a deadpan to rival Magenta. “It was epic.”

Layla frowns, but instead of launching into the pacifist manifesto that Warren is expecting, she holds up her bagged lunch says, “Want to eat outside?”

Before Warren can answer, Stronghold says, “Outside?” like he’s never heard of such a place. “It’s freezing out there.”

“It’s almost forty degrees,” Layla says, “and I had to come in early to finish a project, so it’s been over—” She checks the clock. “—five hours since I’ve felt roots under my feet. I’m eating outside.”

“Okay, but like.” Stronghold glances at Warren. “Do… you want me to come?”

“No, you’ll just be a baby about it,” Layla says gently. “Warren doesn’t get cold, do you?”

She looks to Warren for confirmation of a fact that Warren is one hundred percent sure he’s never told her. He shrugs to hide his wrong-footedness.

“Great.” Layla claps a hand on Stronghold’s shoulder and uses it to steer him toward the others, who are already sitting at what used to be Warren’s personal lunch table, once upon a time. She shrugs on her jacket, flips her hair out, and looks to Warren. “Shall we?”

Warren follows her outside warily. Sitting down across from her at the picnic table closest to the edge of school grounds, he says, “So, what is this, exactly?”

Layla pauses in uncurling her lunch bag. “What do you mean?”

Warren shrugs. “We don’t really hang out. Alone.”

They did, a little. Back when Layla was using Warren to make Stronghold jealous. But that pretty much ended with the homecoming debacle—after which Layla and Stronghold spent a few weeks trying to get their romantic relationship off the ground, decided they worked better as friends, and went back to normal.

“What are you talking about?” Layla says. “We hang out at the Paper Lantern all the time.”

It’s true that Layla eats at Warren’s workplace a few nights a week, when her mom is too busy with day-saving to make family dinners at home. But Layla is always doing homework, and Warren is always doing Work work, so, “I don’t think that counts.”

“It does,” Layla says confidently. It’s the kind of confidence that only Layla can pull off, because rather than coming across as arrogant, she gives the air of a mysterious woodland nymph, whose secret knowledge mere mortals wouldn’t understand.

“Okay,” Warren says, because he has precious little personal experience to back up any assertions about how friendship is supposed to work. “But this isn’t the Lantern.”

Layla raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to go back inside?”

“No,” Warren says. He doesn’t want Layla to leave, either. There’s a sureness about her that Warren finds comforting. She’s never been afraid of him—probably because she could kick his ass. Warren likes that about her. But he also likes to know where he stands with people.

By way of explanation, Layla says, “Did you know that when you get stressed out, literal steam comes out of your ears?”

“What?”

“Mm-hmm.” Layla pulls an apple out of her lunch bag. “A little. It’s easier to see when your hair is pulled back.”

Warren brings a self-conscious hand to the rubber band he used to tie his hair up during Mad Science Lab.

“It happens a lot when Zach is doing his Save the Citizen play-by-plays,” Layla observes. “Thought I might spare you an entire lunch of that.”

“Oh.” Warren’s hand drops into his lap, blind-sided by the unexpected kindness. “Thanks.”

“Any time.” Layla maintains eye contact while taking a bit of apple. Warren shifts in his seat and drops his eyes to his pizza. “You could tell Coach Boomer to assign Will a different partner,” she says after a moment. “Save the Citizen isn’t mandatory.”

Yeah, except it kind of is. No one’s ever voluntarily stepped back from a winning streak like Warren and Stronghold’s. Benching himself would never be worth all the extra side-eye in the halls. Not to mention the explanation he’d have to give Boomer. What kind of superhero-in-training refuses to fight?

Except for the one Warren is currently sitting across from, of course. Who’s looking at Warren with such doe-eyed earnestness that it almost squeezes a “Yeah, maybe” out of him. But Layla is a difficult person to lie to, so he says, “I thought we weren’t going to talk about Save the Citizen.”

Layla sits up a little straighter. “Right,” she says. “Consider it forgotten.”

“Thanks.”

Not that Warren doesn’t trust Layla, but she is the kind of person to press points she thinks are important. Before her mind can cycle back to Save the Citizen from some other angle, Warren says, “Sorry I dragged you outside in the middle of November.”

Layla tilts her head to the side. “You didn’t drag me. I dragged you.”

“Yeah, but for me,” Warren says, and there’s that stupid fluttering feeling again.

“And for me,” Layla says. “I wasn’t lying about needing to get out for a bit. Being inside all day, with the linoleum and cinderblock.” She wrinkles her nose. “It’s creepy quiet, when you’re used to feeling everything alive around you.”

He’s never actually thought about it, before. How Layla has her finger on the pulse of something so vast and intricate, even when she’s not bending it to her will.

“Even in November?” Warren says. “Isn’t everything, like… dead?”

Layla laughs. “No. Just taking a long nap.”

“Huh.” Warren looks around the grey-brown landscape of the schoolyard, with its bare branches and faded grass, with new eyes. It’s a nice idea, that all these lifeless-looking things are just waiting to wake up.

Misconception No. 2: Warren Peace doesn’t give a damn about his bad reputation.

Anyone who dyes a single streak of hair, wears fingerless gloves, and walks around like he’s got nothing to prove has something big to prove.

For Warren Peace, that is: I do not give a fuck about my family legacy.

Before starting high school, Warren figured a couple kids might recognize him, by name or by strong family resemblance. But Warren’s dad had already been locked up for a long time. It wasn’t like he made the news anymore. Worse came to worst, Warren thought he might have to field a few awkward questions about it.

Homeschooling did not prepare Warren for how big a household name Barron Battle was.

The first week of school was all open seats around Warren in class and at lunch, cold and curious looks over shoulders on the bus, “Check it out, that’s Barron Battle’s devil spawn” and “I can’t believe they even let supervillain kids in.”

It was treat or be treated like dirt, and Warren chose the former.

Fast-forward to junior year, and Sky High students know Warren Peace for the asshole he is, rather than the asshole his father was. Warren is comfortably back to pretending like his dad doesn’t exist. It mostly works.

Except during a History of Heroism unit on the most notorious villains of the twentieth century, when Warren’s class is staring at a PowerPoint slide that depicts the leveled Brooklyn neighborhood where Barron Battle and the Commander had their final showdown.

Warren ignores his classmates’ not-so-covert glances as Mr. Magnificent rattles of statistics like ‘seven dead and dozens injured’ and ‘nearly one billion dollars in damages.’ Magnificent has to pause his lecture to silence the white noise of whispers that has swelled up, and Warren wants to sink through the floor.

It’s like the first week of freshman year all over again. Warren is projecting I don’t care vibes so hard, there’s a good chance he’ll spontaneously combust.

What feels like an eon later, the classroom lights come up. Warren shoves everything into his backpack and heads for the door before anyone can try to talk to him. As usual, Layla is out of Hero Support early and waiting in the hall to meet Warren for lunch. Her patent sun-bright smile slips as Warren escapes the classroom.

“Whoa, where’s the fire?” she says.

“What?” Warren stops up short. “Nowhere. There’s no fire.”

“I was kidding,” Layla says, and winces at herself. “Poor choice of words. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Warren rakes his fingers through his hair. “I can’t come to lunch today. I have to—work on something.”

Normally, when Warren is feeling like shit, there’s nothing he’d rather do than sit with Layla in their little oasis of calm at the schoolyard picnic table. But right now, Warren needs at least thirty minutes to pace around the empty auto shop classroom, literally and figuratively cooling off, before he subjects himself to more human company.

“Okay,” Layla says, hugging her notebook to her chest and looking at him critically. “Are you—”

“Yeah. It’s—whatever. I’ll see you later.” Warren shoulders his way through the crowded hall toward the shop room, head down.

Smooth, he thinks at himself. Very smooth.

Shut up.

Warren assumes the first chance he��ll have to apologize to Layla is the next day at lunch. But when Warren shows up for his shift at the Paper Lantern at five, Layla is already sitting at her usual table. Weird, because Layla usually doesn’t come to the Lantern on Thursdays. Weirder, because when she does come, she typically arrives sometime after eight, when the dinner rush has mostly cleared out.

“What can I get you?” Warren says, drawing his pencil out from behind his ear as he approaches Layla’s table. They do try to maintain some appearances of an employee-customer relationship, to appease Mrs. Zhou.

“Hmm.” Layla examines the menu. “I’d like one kung pao tofu, one green tea, and—” She looks up at him. “—for you to explain why you fled your History of Heroism class today.”

“I didn’t flee,” Warren says. “I stormed out.”

“All right,” Layla agrees easily. “Why did you storm out of History of Heroism?”

Warren crosses his arms. “None of your business.”

“Okay.” Layla holds out her menu.

Warren blinks. “What?”

“You’re right, it’s not my business,” she says. “I just thought you might want to talk about whatever it was.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay.”

Warren squints. “Okay…”

“Okay,” Layla says again, and flaps the menu in her hand.

Warren takes it slowly, waiting for the catch. But Layla just pulls a binder and notebook out of her backpack. “Honey with the tea, please,” she says, and clicks open a pen.

“I know,” Warren says, and leaves Layla to her homework. He spends most of the next half-hour trying to untangle why he feels disappointed rather than relieved.

The thing is, Warren sometimes gets a “What was that about?” or “Dude, what the hell happened back there?” from classmates after he goes nuclear. Like after his cafeteria fight with Stronghold in September. Those questions always feel voyeuristic. Prickly and probing.

With Layla, though, the question feels less invasive and more inviting. For the first time, Warren wants to explain himself. He wants Layla to understand. He doesn’t want her to see him as some moody, unapproachable asshole. But he also doesn’t know how to approach her, or the subject, now that he’s already shut it down.

He’s been talking himself in and out of going back over to Layla’s table for ten minutes when Mrs. Zhou sidles up to the pass-through window where Warren is brooding.

“If you’re going to stand around making eyes at your girlfriend, take your fifteen and go over before the dinner crowd arrives,” she says.

Warren’s face heats, and he looks around to see whether anyone is in earshot, even though he’s pretty sure none of Mrs. Zhou’s whitebread suburban customers understand Mandarin. “She’s not my—never mind.”

Deciding he’d rather be having any other conversation besides this one with Mrs. Zhou, Warren forces himself to walk over to Layla’s table and sit down.

“We learned about the Barron in class today,” he says, abandoning any attempt at preamble, “for a lesson on notable supervillain takedowns.”

If Layla is surprised by Warren’s sudden attempt at conversation, she doesn’t show it. She hooks her pen through the spiral of her notebook, closes it, and waits for him to continue.

“Magnificent was showing pictures from the last time Dad and the Commander fought in New York,” Warren says, “and people were looking at me like I was involved somehow, even though all that shit went down when I was still in diapers, and those people have been in my classes for three years, like—I know, we all know Barron Battle is my dad, why can’t everyone fucking get over it already—”

Layla lays a hand on his forearm, cutting Warren off and drawing his attention to the fact that his clenched fist is smouldering like a hot coal. “Shit. Sorry.” Warren shakes out his hand, and Layla pulls back. He wishes she wouldn’t.

Layla waits for the red glow of Warren’s knuckles to dim and then says, “Mr. Magnificent is an idiot. It was totally inappropriate to include your dad in a presentation, especially without asking you first.”

Warren shrugs. “A lot of people’s parents end up in his presentations,” he says. “They’re just usually on the right side.”

“He still should have asked you,” Layla says. “Also, you helped save the entire school in September. If people still think you’re anything like your dad after that, they’re idiots and you shouldn’t care what they think.”

Warren wants to say “I don’t.” What comes out is, “This is high school. Everyone cares what everyone thinks.”

“I don’t,” Layla says.

Warren wants to contradict her, but from what he can tell, Layla genuinely doesn’t. “You have to care a little,” he says.

Layla raises her eyebrows like oh, yeah? and points to her characteristically Whoville-style twist of braids and glittery clips. “You think these hairdos made me a lot of friends in middle school?”

“I didn’t go to middle school.”

“Well, they didn’t,” Layla says.

“Then why do you wear your hair like that?”

“Because I like it.” Layla twirls a stray piece of hair around her forefinger. “And I don’t need to be one of the pretty girls to feel good about myself.”

“You are pretty,” Warren blurts, and immediately has to suppress the urge to set himself on fire.

Layla’s eyes go wide. The last time Warren saw her blush this deep, he’d just called her out for crushing on Stronghold. But instead of straight-up embarrassed, this time Layla’s blush is weirdly, shyly pleased. “You think so?” Her chin is tilted down so that she’s looking up at him through her eyelashes, which is not fair.

“Me?” Warren points at himself, like an idiot. “I don’t—I mean, I do, but it’s not just—you are pretty. People know that. It’s an objective fact.”

“Really.” Layla’s cheeks are still pink, but her smile has a playful slant now.

“Yeah,” Warren says, more defensively than he intends. Christ, he was so much better at this when they were fake-dating, when none of Warren’s smirks or swagger could mean anything. Now, without the protection of pretense, everything feels altogether too personal. Warren is not good at personal.

“Thank you,” Layla says, and bites her lip in hesitation before tacking on, “you’re pretty, too.”

Whatever that comment is—reflex, or politeness, or something else—it is officially too much. “I have to get back to work,” Warren says, overloud in the quiet restaurant, and bangs his knee on the underside of the table in his haste to stand up.

“Okay,” Layla says, trying to hide a smile behind her hand. Before he can turn away, she adds, “Warren,” and points to either side of her head.

Warren stares at her blankly for a second before he catches her drift, yanks his hair down from his ponytail to hide his surely steaming ears, and practically runs back to the kitchen.

Misconception No. 3: Warren Peace thinks he’s got the best power.

“I feel like I should warn you,” Layla says as she turns the key in her front lock, “my house is kind of crowded.”

Warren frowns. “I thought you were an only child.”

“No siblings,” Layla says. “A lot of roommates. You’ll see.”

What Warren sees is a menagerie that would do Ace Ventura proud.

“Watch out for the—everything,” Layla says, leading him through a flock of peacocks, a few dogs and several cats that slink by too quickly to count.

“Why… is this?” is the only semi-coherent question that Warren can formulate as he shoos a parrot from his shoulder and shakes his pant leg free of a fox’s jaws.

“You’re not the only one who has to live with your parent’s superpower,” Layla says.

Layla’s mom, apparently, is a zoolinguist. The only place in the entire house not overrun by furry or feathered residents is Layla’s room.

“Wow,” Warren says as he crosses the threshold.

Layla’s bedroom is situated on the back corner of the house, and the two external walls and ceiling are all paneled glass. Presumably to usher in maximum sunlight for the greenery that crowds almost every inch of space besides Layla’s bed and desk. Warren has to shed his winter coat immediately to avoid overheating in the humidity.

“Yeah,” Layla says. “Sometimes I forget how weird it is. Will’s the only friend I’ve ever had up here.”

Layla is the only friend Warren has ever had in his room—which she immediately declared “entirely predictable,” on account of the punk rock posters plastered across his walls. Layla’s room is way more predictable, if you ask Warren. Or at least, Warren would have predicted this, if he’d known literal greenhouse was a legitimate option.

“It’s nice,” he says. “Peaceful.”

“Isn’t it?” Layla takes Warren’s coat and hangs it on a hook behind the leaves of an elephant ear plant. “Mom had the place renovated before we moved in. I think she figured, if she was going to let every animal in the neighborhood have the run of our house, it wasn’t fair to exile my plants to the backyard.”

“Do they all live here all the time?” Warren says, pointing at the floor to indicate the veritable petting zoo downstairs.

“Some of them,” Layla says. “Mom is good at finding homes for most. I think donations from her fans are single-handedly keeping every shelter in the city afloat.”

It’s rude to ask about superheroes’ secret identities, but context clues give Warren a pretty good idea who Ms. Williams might be. Charismatic Megafauna is basically a one-woman PETA operation, liberating animals from factory farms and delivering them to free-range pastures as often as she commands her elite squadron of apex predators to take down baddies. She’s a more controversial figure than the Commander and Jetstream, but she does have an extremely dedicated cult following.  

“Her power sounds amazing,” Warren says.

“Most of the time,” Layla says. She collects a watering can from beside her bed and begins to fill it with a knee-high spigot beside the door. “But there’s a lot of animal suffering in the world. It can get exhausting for her to be tapped into it all the time, you know?”

Warren pauses to consider. “Yeah, I guess that would be overwhelming.”

Layla turns off the tap and carries her watering can to the closest table laden with potted plants. “Everyone’s superpower looks spectacular on the news,” she says, with a very un-Layla-like smile. “No one’s around to see it when your power makes you so sad you can’t get out of bed.”

“Except you,” Warren guesses.

Layla drops her not-really-smile. “Except me.”

Warren shuffles along the row of plants beside Layla while she waters them. He waits until she finishes refilling the can and starts a new row before asking, “Does that ever happen to you? Your powers getting you down.”

Layla studiously waters a flower with orange starburst petals. “Plants have more…auras and vibes than thoughts and feelings,” she says, and tickles the flower under one leaf. The plant visibly perks up under her ministrations, and Layla smiles. For real, this time. “Their pain doesn’t feel as sharp to me as animals’ pain does to my mom.”

“But,” Warren prompts.

“But sometimes, yeah,” Layla says, and moves on to the next plant.

Warren casts around for something comforting to say, but comes up with nothing better than, “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Layla says, “but it’s the exception to the rule. Most of the time, I wouldn’t give up feeling this—” She rubs her fingertips over a browning leaf to paint it green. “—for anything.”

Warren shouldn’t be jealous of Layla’s powers. Especially after she’s just admitted what a burden they can be. But Layla has also just confirmed what Warren has long suspected: Superabilities, even the ostensibly powerful ones, are not created equal. Warren’s pyrokinesis is, fundamentally, a weapon. A blunt tool to wield when the situation calls for violence. Layla’s power, on the other hand, seems more like a sixth sense. A trapdoor to another plane of reality.

How much of Layla Williams’s worldview draws on the alien insight of plants that no other human being, least of all Warren Peace, could ever possibly understand?

Layla interrupts Warren’s inferiority spiral with, “I’ve never talked about this with anyone but my mom.”

Warren watches Layla coax a stem into standing up straighter. “Not even Stronghold?”

He should not take as much pleasure as he does in Layla’s dismissive laugh. “Especially not Will.”

“Why not?”

“For a long time, he didn’t have any powers, and he was so jealous of mine, it seemed mean to complain about them to Will.”

“And now?”

“Now, he’s in the honeymoon phase with his new powers,” Layla says, “and it seems mean to bring him down.”

Not even Warren believes Stronghold can be that fragile. “I’m sure he’d get over it.”

“Maybe, but, you know. The things we do for our best friends,” Layla says, with a what can you do shrug, and returns to the faucet for another refill.

“So, why tell me?”

Layla chews the inside of her cheek. “I guess because you already have a complex about your own powers the size of Texas, thanks to your dad.”

“What?” Warren balks. “I do not.”

Layla squints. “Don’t you, though?”

“No. I—shut up.” Warren looks away, feeling hot all over.

Layla bends down to turn off the tap. A moment later, her hand on Warren’s shoulder startles him into looking back at her. Her big, brown eyes are wide with sympathy. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not upset,” Warren snaps.

“Okay.” Typical Layla, letting him feel whatever he’s going to feel and say whatever he’s going to say and refuse to throw hands about it.

Warren’s spark of anger sputters and dies. He huffs out an exhale. “It’s not only about my dad,” he admits, quietly, mostly to the floor.

Layla’s hand remains on his shoulder while she waits for an elaboration. Warren very carefully does not acknowledge it in any way, for fear it might stop.

“Fire is...useful,” he says. “But it can only destroy things. I can’t create. Not like…” He waves a hand around Layla’s room. “All I’m good for is fighting, and sometimes I wish—” Warren shoves a hand through his hair. “I dunno. It’s stupid.”

Layla’s hand squeezes his shoulder. “First of all, you are not your power,” she says. “No matter what Boomer or anyone else says. Second, fire is creative. It creates light and warmth.”

“If I’m ever transported back in time to an era before electricity, I’m sure that’ll be extremely handy,” Warren says, aiming for wry and not quite making it, because the tickly feeling that flitters to life in his chest whenever Layla says nice things about him is going wild.

Layla rolls her eyes. “Third of all, you do not need a superpower to create and nurture things.” Before Warren can stop her, Layla has pushed her watering can into his hand.

“What?” he says. “I don’t know anything about plants. I’d probably kill them all.” He holds the watering can out to Layla, who does not take it.

“Don’t act like you don’t have a book of Keats in your backpack right now,” she says. “If you know ‘To Autumn,’ you already know the most important things about plants. Everything else is technicalities.”

Warren gives her a doubtful look.

Layla sighs. “Trust me. Which you should, because I know literally everything about plants, and I’m a very good teacher, and I would not let you hurt any of my babies. Okay?”

Layla holds out her hand, and Warren has to channel all his concentration into keeping his cool enough that he doesn’t burn her when he takes it in his own. Layla grins, and Warren feels a little light-headed with the thrill of it.

“Come on,” she says, and pulls him toward the row of potted flowers where they left off. Warren follows, as helpless as any of the flora around them to resist the benevolent force of nature that is Layla Williams.

Misconception No. 4: Warren Peace doesn’t get scared.

This illusion is at least partly on purpose. Part of the do not fuck with me ethos Warren has been cultivating for the better part of three years.

In reality, plenty of things scare Warren. Like the idea that everyone is right about him after all, and he’ll end up on the Superheroes Guild’s Most Wanted List someday. Or that deep down, a kernel of grudge in his mother resents Warren for taking so closely after his father. But those are more midnight-existential-crisis concerns than acute fears.

Warren gets scared during battles, too. But the initial kick of adrenaline always seems to knock his consciousness clear of his body, such that he spends most of the fight controlling the firestorm of his fists from somewhere above the action. He usually doesn’t realize how freaked out he is until after the fact, when his brain plugs back into his body and he thinks, huh, my hands won’t stop shaking.

It’s rare that Warren feels, in real time, the bass-drum beat of his heart and a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. But that’s exactly what happens every time he gets close to asking Layla out on a date.

He’s come close so many times. He’s had the tickets in his jacket pocket for weeks. But the prospect of actually asking Layla invites the prospect of Layla saying no, and Warren—can’t.

Sometimes, he can almost convince himself that she would say yes, despite the fact that Layla is kind, beautiful, mystical Layla, and Warren is social-pariah, problem-child Warren. Like last Tuesday, when Layla said “you’re such a disaster” with such heart-stopping fondness, while she pulled a rubber band from Warren’s hair to replace it with one of her own, more comfortable fabric hair ties. Or last Friday, while they were watching a movie at Layla’s place, and she tucked her socked toes under Warren’s thigh on the couch. Or yesterday, when she held her hands out over the picnic table for Warren to warm her pink fingertips between his palms.

And always, in the back of Warren’s mind: “You’re pretty, too.”

But whenever Warren opens his mouth to ask, his tongue goes dry and his palms go damp. It’s such a stupid thing to be afraid of, it makes Warren want to close his head in a locker. Worst case scenario, Layla turns him down. They’d still be friends. She wouldn’t be cruel. She’s Layla. But Warren isn’t used to having so much of himself caught up in another person. The idea that Layla isn’t equally caught up in him provokes a strangled, withering feeling in the pit of Warren’s stomach that he can only imagine would intensify tenfold after the actual rejection.

So, Warren’s been procrastinating.

But time is running out.

It does not help that Stronghold’s flock of freshmen is currently obsessing over Winter Formal like a bunch of… well, freshmen.

“You guys asking anyone?” Zach says at lunch, one day when freezing rain is lashing Sky High too hard for even Layla to sit outside. Zach hooks an arm over Magenta’s shoulder, as if to underline the fact that she’s already spoken for. Magenta rolls her eyes but doesn’t shrug him off.

“I would ask Larry,” Ethan says, pushing steamed vegetables around on his plate with his fork. “If I could stop going full-puddle every time he looks at me.”

Layla and Magenta make sympathetic noises.

“I think I’m gonna ask Abby,” Stronghold says, eyes cast over at a table where Warren assumes this Abby must sit. He hasn’t bothered to keep up with Stronghold’s latest romantic fixation. They’re already two—three?—full crush cycles past Layla. Warren can’t believe he ever felt threatened by a kid with the attention span of a housefly.

“She’d totally say yes,” Magenta says. “I overheard her about how hot you are during the Shapeshifting Students Association meeting.”

“Really?” Will says, at the same time Layla goes, “Magenta!”

“What?”

“Gossip.”

“Okay, Mother Williams,” Magenta says. To Will, “We’ll talk later.”

Layla looks intent on pressing the matter, but Ethan says, “Do you have a date, Layla?”

Everyone turns to Layla, except for Stronghold, whose eyes inexplicably flick over to Warren—who glares him into dropping eye contact.

“No,” Layla says, unconcerned.  

“Not yet,” Zach says. “Just a question of who asks first.”

Warren’s heart stutters, and he swallows back a “What?”

Luckily, Stronghold has less restraint. “What?” he says, like he wasn’t ogling another girl 0.2 seconds ago.

Zach looks at Stronghold like, Are you kidding? “Layla’s hot,” he says slowly. Magenta nods in agreement. “Chen, Robinson, and Feinstein are all thinking about asking.”

“And those are just the ones we’ve heard about,” Magenta says.

“Where are you guys getting this intel?” Ethan says. “We’re your only friends.”

“You can hear a lot from the inside of a locker,” Zach says.

“Or from the vents,” Magenta adds.

“Who’s still shoving you in a locker?” Layla says, frowning at Zach.

“Don’t deflect,” Magenta says. “Who are you going to take?”

“I don’t know,” Layla says, very pink and very determinedly acting like she’s not. “I didn’t know I had options until right now.”

Warren didn’t know he had competition until right now. In his defense, he deliberately pays as little attention as possible to rest of the Sky High student body, except for the five freshmen who invaded his space last fall and refused to leave. But of course other guys want to ask Layla.

Fuck.

“What about you, Bucky Barnes?” Zach says, throwing Warren an upward nod. “Got your eye on any hot junior goths we don’t know about?”

Warren scowls. “No.”

“Warren’s too cool for school dances,” Magenta says.

Stronghold frowns. “He took Layla to homecoming.”

“Only to make you jealous,” Layla is quick to correct.

Warren’s eyes snap over to her, but Layla isn’t looking at him. Just stabbing at her salad with her fork and letting her hair partially obscure her still pink cheeks.

An uncomfortable, sour feeling settles in Warren’s stomach. He makes himself look back at Zach. “I don’t do school dances. I have a thing anyway.”

“What thing?” Magenta says.

“A thing,” Warren says, with enough finality that even Zach knows better than to push it.

That is, until Stronghold corners Warren at his locker after final period to ask, “What thing do you have to do instead of Winter Formal?”

Warren continues loading books into his backpack. “A thing.”

Stronghold, in a bid for Warren’s full attention, shuts his locker door. As soon as Warren turns a glare on him, the kid goes bug-eyed.

“I am so sorry!” he says, reaching out to open the locker, only to remember that, duh, it’s Warren’s and he can’t. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Warren must be spending too much time with Layla, because instead of picking Stronghold up by his shirt collar, he merely swats Stronghold’s hand away and unlocks his locker.

“It was only—I know someone who was hoping you’d ask them to Winter Formal,” Stronghold says, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Warren fixes Stronghold with a flat expression. “You’re not my type.”

For an aspiring superhero, Stronghold flusters extremely easily. “Wh—not me!” he says, and then leans in and lowers his voice. “You know.”

Warren, who is not in the business of getting his hopes up—no matter how many summersaults his stomach is doing—raises his eyebrows.

“Layla,” Stronghold murmurs, so low that Warren has to read his lips.

Summersaults, cartwheels, handsprings. Warren’s stomach is performing a full-on gymnastics routine. “Did she tell you that?”

“No,” Stronghold admits, and Warren’s stomach immediately flops. “But I am something of an expert on Layla Williams.”

Warren, who has an entire September’s worth of evidence to the contrary, makes a psh noise.

Stronghold squares his shoulders and ticks off on his fingers: “She hangs out at the Lantern all the time. She eats lunch with you, alone, every other day. The way she talks about you—”

“She talks about me?”

“Dude.” Stronghold lays a hand on Warren’s shoulder, looking so delighted with the irony that it takes everything in Warren not to ignite. “You’re so stupid. She’s totally into you.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“Right.” Stronghold’s hand immediately slides off. “Seriously, though. If you don’t ask Layla to the dance, someone else will.”

“Noted,” Warren says, like he isn’t already tying himself into knots over that exact possibility.

“You’re gonna ask her, then?”

Warren heaves a sigh. He can’t believe he’s about to confide in Will Stronghold, of all people, but at this juncture it seems like the path of least resistance. “I have tickets to something that night, and I want to ask Layla to go with me.”

Stronghold has the audacity to look innocently perplexed. “So, why haven’t you?”

“I’m, you know.” Warren pushes back his hair. “Waiting for the right time.”

Stronghold looks dubious. “It’s a date, not a prom-posal.”

“I know that,” Warren snaps.

Stronghold blinks, and something seems to click in his head. His expression goes slightly amused and, even worse, sympathetic. “You’re nervous.”

“I am not,” Warren says, but it sounds like a lie even to his own ears. “I’m just waiting for the right moment.”

“Okay, well.” Stronghold blows out a breath and puts his hands on his hips. “Any chance the right moment might be, like, today? Around now-ish?”

Warren narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Because Magenta texted me five minutes ago that Andrew Chen is standing next to our bus, waiting for Layla.”

Warren’s heart lurches. “You should have led with that, Christ.” Guess he’s doing this now. Is he really doing this now? He has to, so he is. Warren slams his locker and swings his bag over his shoulder. “Where is Layla?”

“Magenta said she stayed after class to talk to Mr. Boy about—oh, okay, then. Bye! Good luck!” Stronghold calls after Warren’s retreating figure as he strides off down the hall.

Warren is so preoccupied with figuring out what he’s going to say to Layla when he finds her that he nearly runs into her as she exits Mr. Boy’s classroom.

“Warren,” she says, blinking up at him in surprise. “Hi.”

Warren, who suddenly feels like he’s stepped on stage with no lines prepared, takes a second to remember how to breathe before he gets out a “Hi.”

Layla stares up at him expectantly. Right. He’s supposed to say more words.

“I wanted to talk to you about something.”

A pucker forms between Layla’s eyebrows. “Sure. I actually wanted to talk to you, too.”

Warren clenches the tickets between sweat-damp fingers in his pocket. “Okay. Do you want to…” He jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the mostly empty hallway.

“Okay.”

Layla follows him out into the hall, and they stand in semi-awkward silence until Warren says, “You first.”

“All right.” Layla tucks her hair behind her ears. She already looks embarrassed. Not good. “So, I might be way off base here, but I get the feeling you’ve been working yourself up to asking me to Winter Formal?” Her voice lilts up like a question, but she must find all the confirmation she needs in Warren’s expression, because she immediately continues, “and I just wanted to make it clear that you don’t have to.”

When Warren opens his mouth, “Oh” is all that comes out.

“Yeah.” Layla hooks her thumbs through the straps of her backpack. “I know school dances aren’t really your thing—and they’re not exactly mine, either. So I didn’t want you to think homecoming set some sort of precedent, that you have to ask—”

“I wanted to ask you,” Warren says, finally unsticking his throat.

It’s Layla’s turn for surprised silence. It takes a full two seconds for her to get out, “You did?”

“Yeah, but—not to the dance. Here.” Warren pulls the tickets out of his pocket. His thumb has smudged the ink of the top ticket, so he hands the bottom one to Layla. “Town hall is holding a fundraiser gala next Saturday to raise money to build a park on an empty lot in my neighborhood.”  

Layla takes the ticket in both hands and stares down at it.

“There’s going to be food and music and dancing,” Warren says, heart rate accelerating. “I think they’re going to auction off dedications for benches and flower beds and stuff. There will probably be a couple boring speeches by some government officials, but.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I dunno. It sounded like it could be fun.”

Layla still hasn’t said anything, and Warren’s heart is throwing a fit in his ribcage, so he adds, “It’s the night of Winter Formal, though. So if you wanted to go to the dance with someone else and hang out with your friends, I totally—”

“No,” Layla says, looking up at him with bright eyes and a wide smile. “I’d love to go.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Warren says, too overcome by the cold flood of relief pooling in his gut to say anything more substantive than, “Cool.”

Layla carefully slots her gala ticket into the front pocket of her backpack. “Took you long enough,” she says, angling a teasing smile at Warren. “I couldn’t take another week of you opening your mouth like you were going to ask me something and then not saying anything.”

“Thank Stronghold,” Warren says, wondering what his life has come to, that those words just came out of his mouth. Must be the generosity of giddy relief.

Layla’s nose scrunches up in tickled confusion. “Why?”

“He warned me that Chen was gonna ask you to the dance this afternoon,” Warren says. “Sort of lit a fire under my ass.”

“But Andrew—” Layla breaks off with a laugh and shakes her head. “Will.”

“What?”

Layla takes Warren’s hand and starts walking them down the hall. “Andrew Chen’s been sick with the flu all week,” she says. “He’s not even here today.”

Warren’s mouth hangs open for a few seconds. “Stronghold.”

Layla laughs again and swipes her thumb across the back of Warren’s hand, and a great, soft warmth blooms in Warren’s chest.

Well. If he has to be indebted to Will Stronghold for something, this is as good a favor as Warren could have asked for.

Misconception No. 5: Warren Peace is not a touchy-feely person.

Warren himself would have sworn by this one, until a month ago. He has never, in all his life, considered himself a cuddly person. By any stretch.

It turns out that in order to identify as a cuddly person, you need someone to cuddle. Or, more specifically, someone you have permission to cuddle.

Dating Layla Williams finally gives Warren that permission.

He expected it to be harder, weirder, more awkward to transition from being someone who looks at Layla and thinks I want to put my arm around you, to being a person who can actually reach behind her back and curl his fingers over her hip bone.

It’s not hard at all. The first time Layla kisses Warren, up on her toes with her hands fisted in the lapels of his suit, in the dark of her front porch after the fundraiser gala, there’s a shift. A gravitational kick that sends them into closer orbit around one another, so that now it’s routine for Warren to wrap Layla in his jacket and tuck her into his side as they walk. Steal her hand to press her knuckles to his lips. Knock his knee gently against hers under their picnic table.

“Who knew Warren Peace was such a cuddle bug,” Magenta says, tipped back in a papasan chair to peer at Warren upside-down.

Warren is sitting on the shag carpet of Stronghold’s basement with his back against the couch to let Layla play with his hair while they talk over a movie. She’s just tied off an elaborate braid, so now his cheek is resting against her knee while she twirls the fine hairs at the nape of his neck around her fingers.  

“Call me ‘cuddle bug’ ever again and I’ll roast you like a marshmallow,” Warren says, too sleepy and comfortable to put any real heat behind the threat.

Magenta, true to form, doesn’t so much as blink. “Hate to break it to you, but an elegant Dutch braid kind of undermines your whole tough-guy act.”

Warren simply shrugs. It’s an occupational hazard of dating Layla, spending a lot more time around her—their?—friends outside school. Warren resisted at first, but at this point, it’s more exhausting to continue holding them all at arm’s length than to let them have the run of his life.

“Layla, in general, kind of undermines his whole tough-guy act,” Zach says. “You know he wrote her a poem for Valentine’s day.”

“Read her a poem,” Warren says. What else was he supposed to do? He couldn’t very well get Layla clipped flowers.

“That’s still sappy as hell, dude,” Ethan says.

“It was very sweet,” Layla says, leaning forward to plant a kiss on Warren’s forehead.

Warren unsuccessfully tries to bite back a smile.

“He’s preening so hard right now, oh my god,” Magenta says.

“Shut up.”

“Don’t tease him, or he won’t come back,” Layla says, but Warren hears the smile in her voice.

“Please. He’d go anywhere you go,” Magenta says, and as Layla’s fingertip traces the shell of Warren’s ear gently, always gently, Warren doesn’t even attempt to contradict her.

+1 Misconception: Layla Williams is a just happy, go-lucky hippy chick.

Outside Layla’s bedroom window, everything green is tucked under snow and the weight of waiting for spring. On the other side of the world, everything is burning.

Record-setting wildfires have raked Australia for weeks. Neither Layla nor her mom can directly feel what’s happening to the outback. But Layla knows her mom must sense it like she does, every time a singed koala or graveyard of splinterlike tree trunks appears on the news: a gnawing sensation that something on the far edges of her mind is vanishing into smoke.

The worst part is knowing there’s nothing Layla can do. Even if she had the means to get to Australia, there’s no way to salvage the aftermath of a forest fire. Layla wields incredible power over living organisms. But it’s like conducting an orchestra. Not much to be done if the entire ensemble is already dead when she takes the stage.

Actually, the real worst part is knowing that the inferno currently eating up Australia isn’t an outlier. The warming world is parching landscapes and revving up hurricanes, and every weather-related threat to her beloved biosphere is only going to get much, much worse. It makes Layla feel horribly, inescapably small.

To avoid sitting around the house and chewing her nails down, Layla takes on more volunteer shifts at the animal shelter. Helps Magenta with outreach for the Shapeshifting Students Association. Spends a couple Saturdays with the local river cleanup volunteer crew. Cooks dinner on the nights her mom is actually home. Overstudies for an exam in Hero Support.

It’s all a good distraction, but at the price of exhaustion. Layla feels emotionally sore. Like she’s been doing the psychological equivalent of running springs.

Case in point: “Layla?”

Layla blinks herself out of her middle-space-stare at the picnic table. “Hmm?”

Warren frowns. “I said, are you coming to the Lantern tonight?”

“Oh, no,” Layla says, and winces her apology. “Will’s coming over to study for Hero Support.”

“Why? You’re gonna ace that thing.”

“I promised Will I’d help him review.”

Warren’s frown deepens.

“What?”

“You should take a break,” he says.

Layla hides a yawn behind one hand and waves the other dismissively. “I’m fine.”

Warren gives her a flat look. Most of his expressions are pretty flat, but Layla has gotten good at reading the subtleties. This one says, quit your bullshit.

“What?” she says.

“You—” Warren spends a couple seconds struggling to find the right words. “Your hair is in a ponytail.”

Layla replays that in her overtired mind, wondering whether she heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

“No sparkly clip things. No scrunchies. You didn’t even do the thing where you wrap a little piece of hair around the elastic to hide it,” Warren says, as though that clarifies anything. When Layla’s expression makes clear that it does not, Warren sighs. “Babe. You’re exhausted.”

“Am not,” Layla says, and feels totally betrayed by her own body when the words are stretched out by a yawn. “Coincidence,” she says, in response to Warren’s unimpressed eyebrow-raise.

“Layla.”

“It’s fine,” she insists.

“Take a break,” Warren says, more insistently. “Stronghold can survive cramming for one exam on his own. Let baby bird learn to fly.”

“He’ll drop like a rock,” Layla says mournfully.

“Probably,” Warren says. “But you don’t have to be there for everyone all the time.”

Layla studies her bitten nails. “It makes me feel better.”

Warren’s ever-warm hands take hold of Layla’s, making her look up. But whatever he has in mind to say is interrupted by the bell. Warren gives her fingers a brief squeeze before releasing them, so that they can collect their things.

“Tell Stronghold to find himself another tutor so you can have a night off,” Warren says, hooking an arm over Layla’s shoulders as they head for the front doors. “Please.”

Layla does not. Which is why, when she says “come in” to the soft knock on her bedroom door at eight o’clock, she expects Will. Instead, she gets Warren, hovering on the threshold with his usual carefully concealed uncertainty, like he’s a vampire who has to wait to be invited in.

“What are you doing here?” Layla says, sliding off her bed. “I thought you had work.”

“Got someone to cover my shift,” Warren says. He’s holding what looks like a magazine. “This was more important.”

“What is… this?” Layla says. “You know Will’s going to be here any minute.”

“No, he’s not,” Warren says. “He’s at Magenta’s”

Layla narrows her eyes. “What did you do?”

“Told him to go find another study partner,” Warren says. “Since you’re already prepared.”

Layla crosses her arms and sinks her weight into one hip. “I told you, I want to help.”

Warren adjusts his grip on the magazine. Layla hears the paper stick to the sweat on his fingertips, but his determined expression doesn’t change. “Then help me.”

Layla blinks. “With what?”

Warren holds up what turns out to be a gardening catalog. “I want to get my mom a couple of indoor plants for her birthday,” he says. “Something pretty but doesn’t require a lot of attention, because she’s gone so much. I thought maybe you could help.”

Layla stares at him. “I love shopping for potted plants,” she says slowly.

Warren exhales a short laugh. “Uh, yeah, I know. And you are a good teacher, so.”

He rolls the catalog up between his hands and looks at Layla with guarded hope that shoots a bolt of affection like heat lightning straight through her stomach. She needs to sit down.

“Come in, then,” she says, and ushers him through the door. While Warren is taking off his shoes, “Just so we’re clear, you are not going to make a habit of rearranging my schedule behind my back.”

Warren stands up straight, dead serious. “Got it.”

Layla indulges a smile and leans up to kiss him. “I’ll forgive you this time, though.”

They sit on Layla’s bed, flipping through Warren’s catalog, as well as a stack of magazines that Layla has pulled out from under her desk. Warren loops his arms around her waist and hooks his chin over her shoulder, listening intently while she explains the care and keeping of flowers. It’s comfortable and easy and requires just enough idle attention to avoid falling into a slump. Layla could do this forever, she thinks.

Not an hour later, Layla is lying with her chin propped on her hands, which are folded over Warren’s chest, struggling to keep up conversation through yawns of increasing frequency.

“You can go to bed, you know,” Warren says, dryly amused, and tucks a strand of hair that has fallen out of Layla’s loose ponytail behind her ear.

“I might fall asleep right here on top of you, if you keep talking about it,” Layla says, closing her eyes and pillowing her cheek on her hands.

She feels, rather than hears Warren’s hitched inhale, and suddenly feels more acutely awake than she has all week.

Three seconds pass before Warren murmurs, “You can. If you want.”

Layla very carefully keeps her body relaxed and does not open her eyes to avoid breaking the fragile moment. “Mmm-kay,” she says, and adjusts to find a slightly more comfortable position. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” Warren says, one hand splayed between her shoulder blades, his other thumb smoothing the hair back at her temple.

Layla is so keenly aware of every point of contact that she thinks she might stay awake after all. But within minutes, the soft touch pulls her down into sleep.

#layla williams #warren peace #sky high #my 11-year-old self would be proud #first het fic ever #but i caught feelings writing this and guess now i ship ForestFire #i think it got angstier than your original adorable prompt intended but #what else is new #apologies for the climate change existential crisis that popped up at the end there #i might have been projecting

[themostexpensiveboningknife]

2020

Failed party, money in drawer, communicate, move house, move boxes, drive in van, walk to shops, buy noodles, think it’s the end, see whole bus of soldiers in Beijing, new area, walk in darkness, think about leaving, leave, think its temporary, in taxi, post stupid photos, check and check again phone, think people with goggles on my plane are over reacting, take off my mask to eat, keep taking off to loosen, arrive back in London. Tube. Cold. Pub. Party at WeWork. Exhibition at Dulwich Gallery. Farringdon. Drugs and drinks. Brockley, South east London. DJ. Ethiopian food. Morley’s Peckham. Walking on the River. Photographer friend’s house. Canal cycle. National Gallery. Car crash, Dalston. Omar Souleyman. Corsica Studios. Meet girl, back to my friends, back to hers, sex. Morning up to mum’s best friends birthday, Covent Garden restaurant. In a van, Sunday roast. Chisenhale Gallery. arebyte Gallery. Getting worse in China, seems nice and easy and calm in England. Camberwell beers and more. Second-hand book shops, Charing Cross Road. Courtauld. Leafed through a book about a man who lived his entire 86.5 years in East London. Still talking to the same girl back in China. Both believe I’ll be back soon. Chicken wings. West London, meal. South London pub. DJing somewhere inside. Kent, see grandma. Rave, Bermondsey. Friends from Israel and Germany arrive. More drinks, more drugs. Mixing friends. Gay bar in Bethnal Green for old friend’s birthday. Acid, confused and hilarious. Tate Britain. Serpentine. Cranes on the bridge. Liverpool Street film screening. Feels shallow, but good. Begin regular E Pellici sojourns. Primrose Hill with Dad. Beer festival with Keaton and co. Peckham, school friend’s house, bad vibe. More drinks, more drugs. Working on first music compilation with Slowcook and Fafa. Begin watching all of the Studio Ghibli movies. Watching Breaking Bad. At some point have huge argument with my brother, it went like this: He came home from work and I was sitting watching Breaking Bad, he asks, “Have you been like that all day?” I either took it in the wrong way or picked up on a sly dig. It was probably me, but at this point I was pretty self-conscious and worried about going back to China and whether or not I would have a job back there. Was getting surprisingly pissed off with my brother mentioning his work, felt like an affront to me. Weird. He goes crazy (he has a short fuse), punching a wall, ready to fight me. My mum is pretty upset. A few days later I go into his room and try to patch things up. Turns into a deeper chat. He feels like I haven’t been a good brother to him, he gives the example of not looking out for him on his first days of school. I say I’m sorry, it’s because I’m a bit scared and insecure. In retrospect I regret a little laying so much weakness on the table, seems his interactions/ways of acting around me have changed a bit. Still not sure how I feel about it all. Considered getting a gold tooth with Matthew. Play with cats, enjoying them more and more. Rave in Dalston, good music from Asia and beyond. Looking at magazines. Not doing much work at all. Being out and about instead. Go to Norfolk. It’s beautiful, but get way too drunk on first night, sick everywhere, wake up naked in sick. Massive fucking shitshow. Majority of people there have no choice but to act weirdly around me now, which is understandable. Still some nice aspects. One girl there surely hates me a lot. Tate Modern. Art stuff by self is good. Corsica Studios, semi-art, semi-music event. Mr. Bao for first time of many. Radio in Tottenham. Take drugs. Pubs. Drive to Asda with brother to stock up on food. It’s March and the reality of the pandemic is hitting. More canal cycling. First and only group chat on Zoom. BH Funk. Probably have taken cocaine and messaged one of three or four girls numerous times by now. If there’s one, in the cold light of day, horrible and disgusting thing I’ve done too much this year it’s this. Incessant messaging of poor girls that I know will react (although increasingly they don’t, I manage to alienate even close friends in this way). Southbank and The Mall with Nick. Reading about Wuhan. List of good texts. Continuing to do some writing. Making WeChat posts for guī WeChat, including mix series and miniessays. Greenwich park with Matthew. Grime quiz online. Delivering food regularly for my mum’s school. Hackney Marshes with Luan. Epping Forest with Mum and Dad. By this point probably have woken up feeling sorry for myself in Ludo’s flat, after untold amounts of alcohol and cocaine. Online rave. Beijing artists only mix. Go to Switzerland, pass through Italy on the way. Its breath taking, the mountains, the expanse of scenery, not used to it. Climbing up mountains with no one around. Rolo and Patrick and Rita smoke too much weed. I really, really, really still hate smoking it. Feel a bit annoyed how long we spend sitting around while they smoke, but this is way outbalanced by the uniqueness of where we are and the beauty all around. Producing more and more, actually getting somewhere. Cooking more and more food. Reading more and more, like: Black and British, The Corrections, Real Fast Food, Bass, Mids, Tops, Zadie Smith, Olivia Lang, Graham Greene, JG Ballard, Monica Ali, Mo Yan, Jenny Zhang, John le Carre, Naked Lunch, Nabokov, Bukowski, Zora Neale Hurston, Wiley, Bitcoin, Murakami, Judith E. Butler, The Painter of Modern Life, Maupassant, Chekov, Video Art, Gravity’s Rainbow (couldn’t finish), Anaïs Nin, The Net Delusion (couldn’t finish), The Establishment and how they got away with it (couldn’t finish), Roddy Doyle, The Secret of Scent, General Intellects, Women In Love, The Intelligent Investor, Lyndon Johnson. Victoria Park more often than I can remember. To Chrissy’s house. Mile End Park. Very regularly sitting on the river in Wapping. Bring the chessboard and play Ludo sometimes, people smile and look at you differently when you’re playing chess and drinking beers versus just sitting and drinking beer. I May Destroy You. Industry. The beautiful wide expanse of Hackney Marshes. My incessant quest to reach 1000 followers in Instagram. More cycling, and I hate to say it but it really was: Here there and everywhere. Margate with my Dad to see my grandma in hospital and saw the Turner Prize exhibition. Light blue like scrubs, the sky and sun felt eternal. Swimming in dirty water. Make a DJ mix of old 2000s Road Rap. Eat cheese in Peckham. Cycle along the canal north, keep going and going through Tottenham, past Enfield keep going, it’s mad how quickly it becomes quiet fields on all sides, arrive to some kind of lake, swim and then back to the centre of town. Outside a Hawksmoor church in Shadwell ate chicken with Karim and Ludo. DJing. From my bedroom window saw a big crane in the middle of the night sitting on the canal. Begin developing the second DCCY compilation this time with BULLY magazine. Go to a house in an old school in Camberwell. Discover new secret riverside spots in East London. Finally give up my apartment in Beijing. Mile End park. Cycle further and further East to a pedestrian bridge I didn’t know existed. Get onto the beach and into the Thames water. Interview Akito. Begin writing more, after few months of wiling away the summertime. My friend Emmy gets married in Rwanda, I give him some money as a wedding gift which he tells me he used to buy his wife’s dress. Protests in HK always on TV. Get more into finances, crypto and trading, and just saving in general. Had sex with an old friend. Now meeting a girl I first knew years ago in Beijing. More secret river spots. Keaton has his baby, Noah. More times on Hackney Marshes. Barbican conservatory. Watching more films, try to watch all the films of some directors including: Jia Zhangke, Bong Joon-ho, Edward Yang, Wong Kar-wai, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Decide to watch all of the infamous lauded series, go through Breaking Bad, The Wire and The Sopranos. Go to the seaside for a few days, camping also. Henry Wu album launch in a car park in Bermondsey. Go to visit Keaton’s baby for the first time. Good photography exhibition at Photographer’s Gallery. Go to Wallace Collection again. August. Go to Berlin. Swimming in Berlin lakes until I get an ear infection. It makes me drowsy and lethargic, but still seems to spend all my time cycling around the city. On one night cycle for hours to a rave on the outskirts of the city. Like a lot the abandoned airport in Berlin. Oh yeah, vaping. Found a dead bumble bee. Speak with Nevin about projects. Write a piece about the future of the art world for a magazine being started by Nevin’s friend in Canada. Go to Lithuania. Walk around Vilnius, get too drunk by myself. Get to the Curonian Spit and Nida, beaches and new friends. For the Nightlife Residency project. For a short while life is like on a desert island of new food, new people, new locations, quiet and new meaning. Go to the Russian border on the beach. Cycle to the road boarder and get stopped by the police. Go nude on the beach for the first time. Sauna, sand dunes and forests. DJ out for the first time in ages, this time with Nono. To Kaunus and try nice and stodgy Georgian food for the first time. Hackney Wick back for party. Meet a ginger girl online and go on a date. Wallace Collection again. Free beer and pizza. White Cube. National Gallery, Titian. On BBC Radio London with my Dad. Riverside beers. Saw a lost swan near my front door. Meet Keaton near his work, one of many times. Making more and more music, getting better. Decide I need more organisation and clarity, put everything I’ve done on a blog. More or less long since given up on my job at M Woods. But don’t really begin looking for anything new because it’s still sunny. At some point I start getting benefits money. Go to see La Haine in the cinema. Someone blocks me on WeChat because of me. Some pub somewhere. Sunday walks and breakfast with my parents. Go to an exhibition in Woolworth Road with Muzi. Realise how nice it is to run to Victoria Park along the canal. Vicky Park in general. Dinners at friends’ houses. Museum of London. Walking with Michael in some countryside near London, surprising how quickly things turn green. Break onto a pier in Wapping with Jack. Battersea Park. Tate, Bruce Nauman. Old Street Weatherspoon’s with Keaton, drugs. Central London cemetery. Chinese in Camberwell. Chinese in Aldgate. Italian in Camberwell. More and more exercise, running, weights and yoga with my brother. Sadie Coles. Nick, Central London. Gucci Mane. Hampstead Heath more because Ludo and his flatmates are nearby. Ludo’s now house more for days and nights of you guessed it. Borough Market more, with Emma. Alexandra Palace walk and famous sandwiches after. Tate Britian new lights. More time at Muzi’s. Signing up for cycle courier. LYL Radio show. Shave head. Take acid and it hurts my stomach. Camden Arts Centre with Muzi. Christmas party with friends. Birthday. Cake with Muzi, presents and Indian takeaway from family, walk in Vicky Park with Ludo and Karim plus battered sausage and chips. Christmas at home nice and warming meal. Evening to Ludo’s place with more friends. Boxing day with Matthew, pints and then more at his house in Peckham all night long. Next day is tough! Giant turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey curry. Buy first NFTs. New Year’s Eve stay in at Muzi’s, one drink and a cake.

[davidcxrenswet]

🔮 - your muse and mine visit a fortune-teller (outcome up to muns!)

In a small town like Normal there just wasn’t a lot to do. Normal teenagers spent most of their free time either at Marie’s for burgers and shakes, at the drive in, or down by the Sticks if the weather permitted it. This meant that Harvey Vance had to get a little creative when it came to date ideas for him and Mariana Diaz. It seemed silly to put this much effort into a high school girl that had a hustle involving selling nudes to the other teenage boys in town, but somehow that girl had gotten a grip on him and Harvey wanted nothing more than to romance her in a way that no other boy in town would. He liked her. He liked her a lot. Last thing he wanted was to lose her to one of the other schmucks around town. So Harvey tried to go out of his way. He set up impossibly romantic dates in the most mundane areas around town, spent every last penny he earned to treat her with exquisite experiences. But his options were dwindling fast, and he was finding it harder to come up with something unique and different to woo her with. 

So inevitably he had to result to some more cliche options. That afternoon wasn’t even the most ideal time for a date. He was supposed to go to the sheriff’s department later that evening to do a late night shift assisting with some filing followed by some “house work” his mother insisted he needed to help with that night which in turn would keep him from spending too much time with his paramour. So that meant he needed to come up with something fast and simple as an excuse to get a little time with her. Any other guy would probably use this as an excuse to get Mariana in their bed for a couple passionate minutes, but Harvey was still holding off on sleeping with her. Not because he didn’t want to perse, he just wanted to be 100% sure of his feelings before he bedded her. And while he was becoming more and more sure of them... He wasn’t sure where she stood, and he didn’t want to give himself to someone who didn’t love him back. 

With all this in mind, he chose what was probably the worst place to go on a quick little date -- Psychic’s Strip. The strip mall had a bit of a reputation. It was the congregating place for all the kooks in Normal that seemed convinced of “paranormal” happenings in town. Despite the things he’d seen while tailing the Murder Club, Harvey still wasn’t completely sold on these supernatural happenings, so he mostly avoided places -- and people -- like this. But he was running out of places to take Mariana to that were exciting, as well as running on limited time that afternoon. And if her involvement in the group gave him any indication, she was possibly into this kind of stuff too. But above all, it was also one of the few places they would run into a lot of people from school. They still weren’t out and open with their relationship, and Harvey wanted to keep it as secretive as he could. Seeing a lack of familiar faces when they’d first arrived, Harvey reached out to grab Mariana’s hand almost instantly, lacing their fingers as he’d dragged her along. “Okay,” he started in a somewhat unsure tone, “I know this isn’t the best place for a date, but... I don’t know, I thought we could try and find the weirdest thing we can and just have some fun with it.” As he said the words, his nose wrinkled at the neon signs claiming fortunes could be told. 

For the most part it was a pretty lowkey date. They had spent most of their time just walking along the strip, eyeing the different establishments lining it. It was for the most part faith healers and psychics -- scammers really. Harvey didn’t want to wander across the threshold of any of the storefronts, leaning away if Mariana so much as swayed in their direction. He’d laugh and scoff and shake his head at all their promises of healing and palm reading. But after a while of walking back and forth, their conversation going light and silent, he was beginning to worry he’d bored her with his choice of place for them. He cursed himself for having chosen this over a walk in the park with Sasquatch. At least you know she loves Sassy... That would have been a sure win in comparison to this. Frowning at his thoughts, Harvey looked up in time to see another gaudy display of neon signs in the window of another psychic’s store. His stroll slowed to a stop as he stared at the signs promising great power and authentic tarot readings. It was the kind of stuff his parents had always warned him of. Witchcraft and satanism, that’s what these soothsayers were to most southern white Christians. If it weren’t for his fear that he’d messed up gravely in entertaining Mariana that afternoon, he wouldn’t have had the thought.. But the more they stood there, the more he felt like he needed to do something unexpected. 

Without a word Harvey ushered Mariana towards the store, puling the heavy door outward and holding it open for her. At her curious glance, he shrugged. “I said we were gonna find the weirdest thing and have some fun with it, didn’t I?” Harvey said, a sort of mischievous lopsided grin pulling at his lips. His dimpled deepened as his entire expression flashed with a sort of daring glance, as if tempting her to try and think of something better to do there. “Let’s see what ‘the cards’ have in store for us.” He winked playfully at her before ushering her inside. There was a part of him that almost welcomed the idea of going inside if only for the air conditioning. It was hot outside, another humid midsummer day, and so the icy cool air within was more than invited. The odd smell inside the establishment wasn’t. He tried not to grimace at it -- something herby but also funky. He couldn’t place it but he also just didn’t want to. Pulling Mariana along with him, they entered the space and headed towards an empty counter where they assumed they were supposed to meet the “fortune teller”. 

The whole room was dark, dimly lit for atmosphere. The decor was gaudy, in all jewel tones and clearly meant to give this whole “new age” spiritual vibe. Everything just looked cheap and outdated to Harvey. There had been a bell when they opened the door, likely to signal the workers that a customer had come in, but no one had come to greet them yet. As they quietly waited, Harvey pulled Mariana into his arms, her back to him, leaning foward to rest his chin on her shoulder. He was worried now more than ever that he had epically failed at this date, only made worse the longer they waited for some kind of employee to greet them. 

Harvey was ready to give up and drag Mariana out, thinking maybe a heavy make out in the backseat of his car would be the only way to salvage their afternoon, until they heard the sound of a bead curtain being pushed over. From somewhere in the back a woman had appeared, dressed in head to toe in flowing fabrics dyed a deep purple and black. Her makeup was so heavily caked on, Harvey had to stop himself from gawking. Releasing Mariana but keeping his hands on her hips, he offered the woman before them a grin as she greeted them. She introduced herself as Madame Serena before asking what kind of service they wanted. She specialized in tarot and palm reading among other things. Harvey just wanted the cheapest experience to treat Mariana to before he made up for it with the aforementioned make out session. Madame Serena of course attempted to upsell the hell out of them, but Harvey stood firm. It had been a long ten or so minutes before she ushered the pair into a dark room in the back where a round table with three chairs sat. Two of the chairs were on one side, while a lone chair sat opposite them. It was obvious where the pair was to sit, so Harvey pulled out one chair for Mariana while Madame Serena got her cards out for reading. 

There was a long introduction where she explained to the pair how tarot worked. Harvey wasn’t really paying attention. Instead he was fixated on Mariana’s expression, trying desperately to read it and see if she was having fun or not. As per usual, the girl wasn’t the most forthcoming. Her expression was sometimes so neutral when they were together, it irritated him to not have an inkling of how she was doing. So he reached out to grab her hand and played with her fingers while he passively listened to the fortune teller. Soon she was launching into the reading, setting out cards and reading out their meanings to them. It was all standard sounding, a little too broad or generalized to seem mystical. Harvey eventually tuned it out as he watched Mariana’s expression as the woman spoke to her directly. She really was the most gorgeous girl in town, how the hell had he convinced her to go on more than one date with him? He was really beginning to wonder if their budding relationship was some crude prank by the MC. 

“He certainly has strong feelings for you, though you don’t need cards to see that.” 

The words had drawn him from his fascination with Mariana’s microexpressions. Harvey turned to gape at the fortune teller. “I’m - what?” 

The woman just laughed as he blushed and stared back at her. “He hasn’t taken his eyes off you this entire time. Obviously he likes you deeply, though that’s not what I’m seeing as I look into your future.” Harvey scoffed and leaned back in his chair. If he’d allowed himself to look at Mariana, he may have caught sight of a satisfactory smile. At least he assumed she was sporting one - he decided to not look at her after the fortune teller embarrassed him. Clearing his throat, he watched her unimpressed as she continued. “I see a great love for you two. You’re certainly well matched, despite what others - and maybe even you yourselves think. You’ll find happiness together. That is if you can get past certain trials.” This piqued Harvey’s interest. He sat up a little straighter, though flashing a somewhat skeptical glance at the woman as she continued. “There is something from your pasts which haunt you - things lost and things gained. If you allow these things to consume you, then your relationship won’t last. But if you let them go, then your love with thrive.” Madame Serena’s eyes narrowed as she looked down at the cards. It was almost comical, looking so concentrated as if somehow she was going to “see” something more. It was all for stupid show - what she was saying was, once again, very vague and generalized. Was this really worth the hefty fee? 

“There is only two outcomes for you, one is happy and one is sad, but both paths are strewn with... Death and chaos. There are dark times ahead for you two.” She stared wide eyed at the two and for a second Harvey thought there was genuine fear and concern for them in her eyes. She spent a particularly long moment just really staring hard at Mariana, a scrutinizing gaze that Harvey couldn’t really read. He felt uncomfortable, and he wasn’t even the one she was staring so pointedly at. He spared a glance at Mariana to see if she felt uncomfortable as well, but the most he could make out was annoyance from the look of it. “You two should tread carefully going forward,” Madame Serena finally concluded after a moment. Her gaze shifted to Harvey and he was caught off guard by it. There was an edge in the way she stared at him, as if she was trying to mentally say something to him. He could swear she was almost giving him a warning look, a gaze riddled in fear and concern for him and him specifically. He swallowed under the intensity of it. “Very carefully, young man.”

“Erm, thank you Madame Serena,” he said after a moment, clearing his throat. He felt Mariana’s hand in his shortly after that, squeezing it slightly tighter than she had earlier. He didn’t have time to really think about it because Madame Serena was whipping out a phone with a card reader attached, spewing out an ungodly price for their reading. Harvey quickly swiped his card and pressed the appropriate prompts on the screen to secure the transaction before standing up and leading Mariana out of the store. He didn’t even stop to offer the woman another parting glance or anything before pulling Mariana out into the scorching North Carolina heat. It sizzled off the asphalt as he directed her to the car. There was an uncomfortable feeling settling into his stomach, and he wanted to be as far away from Psychic’s Strip as he could get. 

Engine roaring to life, he offered Mariana an apologetic grin as he cranked up the AC. “Well that was... Something.” He tried to laugh but it came out awkward and choked. Gripping the steering wheel, Harvey’s mind whirled as he tried to think of a way to salvage their short date. “She was definitely a phony,” he said after a moment, turning back to Mariana. As her hazel eyes shifted towards him, he reached over to gently cup her chin and lead her across the console to meet him for a soft kiss. “I mean, if she could really see our future.. Then she’d have seen the very hot kiss I’m about to give you,” he added with a crooked grin. He wasted no time in leaning across the way to engage Mariana in a long, slow kiss. This had been a monumentally terrible idea, and he needed to quickly make up for it if he’d hoped to take Mariana Diaz out again. 

#ship: harviana #c: harvey vance #idk man it's 2 am. #karolinadeanwrites

[guylty]

My annual social media Lent is coming up. From Ash Wednesday I will abstain from Twitter for the next 6 and a half weeks (until Easter Sunday), allowing me to recalibrate a little and concentrate on other things. Such as my blog – or RAnet. That means I need blog fodder. Almost four weeks have passed since The Stranger launched on Netflix. Enough time to assume that most fans and readers have watched the show and will not be spoiled by the discussion of the show. Moreover, some more in-depth discussions have already started in the comments. Last weekend, for instance, we got into the intracacies of the “bar scene” in episode 4 of TS, talking about the casting, costuming and directing of that particular scene and how we, as women of a particular age reacted to that scene.

However, it would probably make more sense to start at the beginning. So anyone who’d like to discuss TS with me, you are welcome to write your observations, reactions and opinions in the comments. I know I am kind of launching into this without announcement. But by doing this episode by episode, I hope you can follow along and catch up with individual episode if need be. I’ll also try and summarise every episode at the beginning of each review post so we know what we are talking about. Hm, I may need to rewatch the show for that. The hardship!!! However, the discussion will probably focus on the plot… eh… Adam. Anyhow, I hope you’ll join me and share your thoughts either here – or your own blog, if you are blogging, too.

The Stranger – Episode 1 Recap

Prior to the trailer, TS starts with teenagers at a bonfire party, culminating in a naked boy escaping through the dark forest. The plot then begins with the Price boys driving in the car to the football club where younger son Ryan is trying out for the A team. While at the club, daddy Adam briefly speaks with his wife Corinne on the phone. She is away at a teachers’ conference while Adam looks after their sons. In the clubhouse, Adam is approached by “a stranger” who reveals a devastating secret to him: His wife faked her pregnancy a couple of years ago. He is shocked and disturbed.

Once back home after football training, Adam can’t resist checking the details the stranger passed on to him, and sure enough, his suspicions are confirmed – there is a credit card payment for a fishy website called Novelty Funsy, and the ultrasound scan of the miscarried baby does not quite match the ones of his two sons. Meanwhile, Adam’s elder son Thomas heads out to the bonfire party with his friends.

The next morning, police woman Johanna investigates a bizarre crime scene of a decapitated alpaca in the city centre. With her DS, she drives to a nearby alpaca farm to confirm where the animal came from. On their return trip their attention is attracted by some pieces of clothing in the forest. They follow the trail of clothes and find a naked body. The young man is still alive.

Adam meanwhile looks after his day job – he is the legal advisor to an obstinate tenant who refuses to move out of a house that has been earmarked for demolition. Upon his return, Corinne arrives back from her conference and Adam receives confirmation that the mysterious credit card payments are for a website that provides fake pregnancy products. He immediately confronts Corinne. She does neither deny nor explain why or what she did, only hinting that there is more to it than he thinks. The Prices spend the night in separate bedrooms.

The next morning Adam observes Corinne taking a phone call outside the house. She later suggests to Adam that they talk later that day after a school awards ceremony where she will explain all. However, Corinne never shows to the event. Adam receives a text message asking for some time apart.

The episode ends with Thomas revealing the decapitated alpaca head in his cupboard.

  Episode 1 – Discuss

So, first of all – I have watched the first episode about three and a half times. Twice on my own, once with hubster, and finally today a quick run-through for the sake of the recap where I fast forwarded through a lot of scenes, focussing on Adam mostly. I couldn’t help it… My first response to the show at the very first viewing was – WOW! I remember that I was fully engaged during every minute of it – even the scenes and story lines that Richard did not feature in. Granted, I was most interested  with the “grown-up” arcs, not least because anything involving drugs and other goings-on with teenagers makes *this* mama really worried. But having said that, I think the first episode was very effective in establishing the storylines and the characters. Hence the show spends most time following Adam (Richard Armitage) – as a father, as a lawyer and as a husband. Then there are the two police officers who also are presented as round characters – the middle-aged senior officer Johanna (Siobhan Finneran) approaching retirement who has just decided to split from her husband, and her much younger partner, a gay black man. Adam’s son Thomas also gets a good bit of screen time with his friends, making him more than just secondary. Other secondary characters include first and foremost Dervla Kirwan as Corinne, Stephen Rea as obstinate tenant Martin, and Jennifer Saunders as Johanna’s BFF Heidi.

So, the first watch was highly exciting and addictive, so much so that I basically binged the whole show. On second and subsequent views, I found the episode not quite as fast and exciting anymore – only natural, as a lot of time was actually spent setting up the characters and the various story lines: Johanna waking up in bed to her snoring husband; Johanna meeting Heidi in her café; observing the teenagers at their bonfire party; visiting Dante in hospital…

RA is the natural focal point from the get-go. Not only for fangirls, I might add. The show is really good at setting him up as the perfect family man who obviously has great rapport with his sons, both the “difficult” almost grown-up older son, but also the younger lad who needs a different kind of care than a young adult. I found the casting really great, with Thomas definitely matching the tall, dark, handsome vibes of TV-dad Richard, and younger boy Ryan more a mirror of his blond, curly-haired TV-mum. They all have great chemistry together, and found Misha Handley (Ryan) very natural and convincing. Jacob Dudman as Thomas was also great.

… really aged well… hehe

RA really shines in the confrontation scenes, both with the stranger and with his wife, when he has to convey both suppressed anger and outright fury at having been deceived. Both his major scenes with Corinne are very convincing, and I appreciated the decision to make Adam extremely angry, on the verge of volatile, when Corinne refuses to explain her actions. Adam’s anger is immediate, raw and confused and Armitage really draws the viewer on his side with his emotional outburst. So much so that I basically missed Dervla Kirwan’s nuanced acting in that scene. On second and subsequent viewings, once you know how the show ends and why she doesn’t want to talk immediately, you start to notice the little things: her refusal to talk has more to do with fear than with anger or denial. She is afraid of actually addressing the fact that the reason for her faked pregnancy will also bring another secret out in the open, and the subsequent discussion (which she had successfully avoided by faking the pregnancy in the first place) will now have to take place. What might have looked as callous or dismissive at first viewing, conveys much more detail the second time round: there is a sadness to Corinne that Kirwan expresses very subtly – in a slight pause, or the tiniest glance into the mid-distance. The same applies to their second and much calmer confrontation the next morning. What might have looked almost callous on first viewing, gains much more weight when you watch it with prior knowledge of the plot. When Adam says he has lost trust in her, Corinne replies “it hurts, doesn’t it?“. The question tag really stood out to me on first viewing. It confused me. Why is she phrasing it like that? It of course became clear in episode 4, but again, Kirwan really gave it a spin by loading it with subtle sadness that doesn’t only confuse the viewer but also Adam. Armitage here kept his response at just the right level of confusion without giving away how much Adam really recognises or understands what she was hinting at. RA reacts with great detail expressions. No words are needed. And in hindsight you can see how he begins to wonder whether she knows about his affair. Loved it.

Let’s talk a bit about Armitage’s look in this show. Such a spectacle!

Yes, I like details like that. The jury is still out on whether this is a prescription that Armitage wrote into the script himself 😂, or whether we just had a costume department that is on the ball. Yes, it’s time for the presbyopic lenses. Happens to most of us at around middle age. 🤓 I found it a lovely detail that makes Adam more relatable. Because – a dad bod he has not.

Even if he claims he does. I find this a rather attractive package for a middle aged family man. Also:

Bonus WRP. Needs no further elaboration

But to get back to the look and style – I enjoyed the casual style of Adam. Once again, it felt right – nothing too fancy, with windbreaker, jeans and shirts, and even a tracksuit at home, the perfect attire for a father of two (pre-) teen sons. I was surprised how good RA looked in other colours than just black and blue. The red polo shirt was very nice on him.

I can’t say I am as convinced of the costumes provided for Corinne. In fact, I think there were some rather sledge-hammer style decisions going on there, putting the wife and mother into rather dowdy, pale pink mom trousers and giving her a hole-pattern, fluffy knit jumper. Then there was that turquoise dress that went slightly longer than her knees – apparently the work wear for female teachers in English private schools, judging by an equally frumpy outfit for Corinne’s colleague and friend Vicky? (This observation I will come back to in a later post once we get to episode 4.) It just kind of made me think that Corinne was made to look older and less casual than her husband who even attends to his client in jeans and shirt…

Police officer Johanna Griffin OTOH looked *real* and great. (I kept double-taking because O’Brien’s severe look kept coming back to me.) And I loved Heidi’s funky style – very much the slightly crazy café-owner with a café as stylish as herself… And can we also mention the Price’s residence here? There were only quick first glimpses of their house – but oh, that stylist made it a gorgeous family home. The garden was beautiful but I can take it or leave it. Too much work – I don’t like to get my fingers dirty. But the dining area with the floor-to-ceiling windows and the sleek white kitchen? Big win, especially because it doesn’t look like a showroom but has photos on the fridge and a mess on the counters.

So episode 1 gets a big thumbs up from me – for introducing us to almost all the characters (some held back for more surprise later on) and establishing the plot. Yes, there is a lot going on here, which I haven’t even all mentioned in the recap: the stranger dropping her first bomb, the Price family life, the secret in Corinne’s past, the tenant who refuses to move out of his home, the colleague who has trouble with her pre-teen daughter, the teenagers who are partying under the influence of drugs, the mystery of the boy who was hunted through the forest, the curious story of the decapitated alpaca, an almost-comic police duo, a police officer who is splitting up with her hubby, her friend, the funky café owner, the gregarious neighbour, the busybody football trainer… Too much? I’d say a lot of it is deliberate overload to distract us, yet give us some extra info about the characters, their work, their life and their environment.

The strategy definitely works when you watch the show for the first time. You are busy dealing with Richard Armitage’s overwhelming handsomeness taking it all in. The questions only really pop up when you watch again.  Such as: When stoned Mike takes the alpaca for a walk into the city centre, why is there no CCTV footage? I mean, nowadays there is hardly *any* urban area that does *not* have CCTV on shops and banks or traffic spots. How come no one saw him decapitating the alpaca, in a city centre? And how did he manage to decapitate it anyway`- it’s hardly a one-chop job?Likewise and with hindsight we know now that Corinne’s text message was not sent by her at all: But how did the sender actually know the password to Corinne’s phone to send that message? I mean, don’t all people lock their phone with a password these days? Possibly nit-picking questions, but that’s the fun of it, isn’t it? You can enjoy a show immensely – and still want to pick a few holes into the plot just to see whether you are cleverer than the writer 😉.

There is probably so much more to discuss, but for the sake of getting the discussion started, here is the post. What is your take on the first episode of TS? Any agreements with me, or disagree? Other points of interest? Let me know in the comments!

Let’s Talk About… #TheStranger – Episode 1 My annual social media Lent is coming up. From Ash Wednesday I will abstain from Twitter for the next 6 and a half weeks (until Easter Sunday), allowing me to recalibrate a little and concentrate on other things.

#Adam Price #Richard Armitage #The Stranger

[suitofvibraniumarmor]

Yours Truly [Part Seventeen]

Summary: The school year begins; Sadie accepts a date with a co-worker. Pairing: Chris Pratt x OFC, Chris Evans x OFC Word Count: 1580 Warnings: None? A/N: This fic was previously posted on my multi-fandom account; in honor of OC Appreciation Day, I figured I would queue it all up for your reading pleasure throughout the day! This was a collab with @captain-s-rogers , and I will link her chapters at the end of all of my posts! Some GIFs were difficult to find again, so if there’s no credit, they’re from Google Image Search or from the original post. 

August 12

Caroline,

It’s the first day of school, which means we can officially make phone calls to each other at will! I’m sure our letters will be more sporadic, but I’m still enjoying writing them.

Speaking of, forgive me that it’s been a while since my last letter. With inservices last week and nothing to do between but read and forget about Farmer Pratt on my downtime, there hasn’t been much to tell. I want to do like you say and go for it, but I look at Layla and I know how much it would mean to her to have her whole family back. Doesn’t mean I can’t sit for her every now and again, and I’m sure I’ll see her at the school. You’d be proud of me if you knew what I said to Chris on open house night, though. I’ll tell you about it when we actually talk on the phone, which I’m hoping will be soon.

I’m so excited for you – getting the President’s endorsement is HUGE! Chris deserves it though … about as much as you deserve him. I suppose I can’t really comment on that right now in my current situation, can I? I’m guessing that after the latest debacle (yeah, I did catch that much on the news) that you and Charlie have called it quits for good. So, hey, there’s the silver lining in all of this!

Well, I suppose I should touch up my lip gloss and head to the school. The kindergartners will come in small groups for just a couple of hours today, and then tomorrow it’s on to full days. Can’t wait to start teaching these little ones!

Yours truly,

Sadie

Having small groups of kids on the first day helped orient the kindergarteners to the new daily routine. Sadie could review the classroom procedures and rules with four or five of them at a time and it was far easier to manage than the whole class at once – especially for the ones who had not attended preschool and weren’t accustomed to being away from their parents in such a structured environment.

After her second group, Sadie had a lunch break and some plan time. She re-filled her water cup, ate a sandwich, and then set to work straightening a few things in the classroom. A knock on her door caught her attention just as she was getting ready to go meet the kids from her third group at the front of the school.

“Mr. Denning,” Sadie smiled. “How’s your first day going?”

The P.E. teacher smiled back. “Not too bad – always a little boring, going over rules and whatnot, you know. Especially for the older kids.”

“I would imagine,” Sadie nodded.

“You know, you can call me Cooper,” he told her. “That’s my first name. And maybe I could call you Sadie?”

“Of course. I don’t mind it at all, but I never know who prefers to stay on a last-name basis when I’m in a new building.”

“Fair enough,” Cooper nodded. “Listen, I don’t mean to be forward or come out of nowhere, but I enjoyed getting to know you a little better at inservices last week. Would you maybe like to have dinner with me tonight? No pressure or anything, just a friendly back-to-school meal at the diner. If that goes well, then maybe we can see where things goes next.”

Sadie considered him carefully. Cooper Denning was nice, a gentleman, and didn’t give her any creepy vibes. His offer was more than reasonable; not even necessarily a request for a date, just a simple invitation for dinner with the possibility of a date another time. Taking a deep breath and deciding it was time to move forward, Sadie gave him a polite smile and a confident nod. If nothing else, perhaps she could make a new friend.

“That would be nice.”

Cooper smiled, too. “Great. In the interest of keeping it friendly, how about if I meet you there at six o’ clock?”

“Sounds great,” Sadie agreed. “I need to go get my kiddos from out front, but I’ll see you tonight.”

Cooper waved and headed back for the gym. Sadie couldn’t say she was excited for her dinner with him, but she was looking forward to doing something besides spending the evening alone.

At the end of the day, Sadie was feeling better than she had in weeks. All of her small groups had done so well, and she was going to be able to get out of the house for supper. Chris and Layla were still on her mind, but she seemed able to push them to the back burner for now. They were figuring out their lives, and she had to figure out hers.

Of course, her peace couldn’t last. She didn’t mind in the least that it was interrupted by Layla excitedly running up to her in the hallway outside the main office, but she would have been happier had Emily not accompanied Layla.

“I have my own desk!” Layla said, jumping up and down excitedly. “And this is my backpack and ‘member this dress? You made it for me!”

“That I did,” Sadie said, unable to stop her smile. “Your first day must have been really good, you are full of energy!”

“Yep!” Layla said, galloping in circles around Sadie.

Emily spoke up then, telling Layla to calm down, and taking the girl by the hand. “Sadie, I’m glad we ran into you. Chris was going to call, but since we’re all here – are you available to babysit Friday night? Chris and I have a – a thing, and Layla’s been asking to spend time with you.”

Sadie nodded, although she felt somewhat hesitant. “Yes, of course. I’d love to.”

“Yay!” Layla cheered, beginning her galloping again.

Emily looked slightly irritated. “Layla, sweetheart, calm down, please. I already asked you once. Let’s get home.”

“Bye Adie! See you tomorrow at school and Friday at my house!” Layla called over her shoulder.

Sadie couldn’t help but chuckle to herself. It was nice to know that in the midst of everything changing, Layla was exactly the same.

The diner wasn’t terribly busy when Sadie pulled up, still dressed in the same clothes she had been for the school day. She had touched up her makeup once at home, fluffed her hair, and readied a few things for the next day before heading back to town.

Cooper was waiting for her on the sidewalk in front of the diner. He gave her a modest side hug when he saw her, then opened the door, letting Sadie pass by first before following her to a booth by the window.

They chatted casually about their respective first days, made their orders when the waitress came by the table, and then Cooper launched into telling her about some of the older kids in the school, starting with the ones who had younger siblings in kindergarten. Sadie appreciated having the background on her students, and Cooper made the stories especially entertaining.

In the middle of their meal, the bell over the door rang. The sound caught Sadie’s attention, and her eyes darted from Cooper to the door. The two people she had pushed to the back of her mind were once again at the forefront as she watched the Pratt family walk into the diner.

Chris and Emily were on either side of Layla, each of them holding her hand. Layla was grinning, Chris was smiling, and Emily was about as happy as Sadie had seen her in any of their few interactions. Once they got up to the counter to make their to-go order, Chris lifted Layla into his arms, balancing her on one arm while placing one hand at the small of Emily’s back to guide her closer to the counter.

Sadie’s attention was no longer on Cooper at all, and he noticed. He waved his hand in front of her face; she snapped back to attention.

“Sorry,” she said, blushing. “I, uh, got distracted.”

Cooper gave her a sympathetic smile. “Sadie. You can be honest with me. I know about you and Chris – thanks to Libby Anderson, I think the whole school probably does.”

“Fantastic,” Sadie sighed.

“Hey,” he said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “Don’t be embarrassed. We all know that Libby is a gossip. I’m just sorry you had to be the subject of her gossip this time. I do want us to be friends, and if that’s all this becomes, then that’s just fine.”

Sadie couldn’t have been more grateful for how understanding Cooper was about the entire situation. She kept her eyes focused on him for the remainder of the time the Pratts were in the diner, and that helped to cope with the presence of the seemingly happy family.  

Once the table was cleared, the new friends didn’t linger. Cooper walked her to her car and thanked her for a good evening.

“Thank you, too,” Sadie replied. “I’m sorry if I made things weird, or disappointed you at all.”

Cooper waved her off. “We both have a new friend, that’s a good thing. I’ll see you at school tomorrow, yeah?”

Sadie nodded. “Yeah, for sure. Thanks again.”

“Anytime.”

She got in her car and left then, anxious to work through her new feelings over seeing the Pratt family in the diner, but not so anxious for loneliness to set in again once she was home.

Part Eighteen

#chris pratt #chris evans #fanfiction #collab #new to this blog

[taylorroger-s]

ten things [2] // borhap!roger taylor x reader

a/n umm?? holy fuck the first one got way more love than i expected it to. thank you for all the kind words, it’s really motivating. this one is pretty fluffy, but no romance just yet ;) if y’all wanna request stuff (headcanons, one shots, and the like) you need only ask. just, no lemons. i trust y’all know what that means.

oh, and if any of you want to be added to the taglist, you need only ask

enjoy :)

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and the way you cut your hair

“i swear meddows, you need a haircut.” you shook your head at the drummer, flopping back on the low couch after hours of listening to the boys record. it had been three weeks since freddie's party, and you had been spending more and more time with the band.

john was highly witty, played guitar in addition to bass, and was always doing a little dance while he played his instrument. he loved throwing peanuts in brian's wild mane, especially since he could barely feel them. you two would laugh while brian struggled to find out why you kept on avoiding eye contact with him and giggling like maniacs.

brian, in your opinion, was a total genius in both guitar and astrophysics. while it wasn't his turn to play, he would answer all of your questions about the cosmos, almost always  launching into some in depth tangent about how stars are formed or a similar topic. you learned more from him in a few weeks than what you'd studied during all of primary school. it was truly satisfying to see someone who found their calling in life.

freddie of course was completely indescribable. he had a strong sense of self and wouldn't let any naysayers compromise his confidence or attack the band. you often said he had the voice of an angel who learned to walk on earth. you were enamored by his groundbreaking ideas that only made the band more recognizable. it was clear to see why mary loved him.

roger turned out to be less of a wanker than you assumed. you both had a chuckle once you realized that he too studied biology at east london polytechnic. he wouldn't let anyone fiddle with his drum set, nor did he let anyone drive his car. his ability to hit ridiculously high notes while still drums perfectly was considerably impressive. he always knew what to say to induce the most laughter, leaving the whole gang in stitches once everyone started cracking jokes at each other. once you found out his middle name was “meddows”, that was your permanent nickname for him. but that didn’t mean you didn’t hate him.

that day was just like any other. brian spun idly in his chair, curly head of hair bouncing with the beat of deaky's newest bass riff. freddie was fast asleep on the couch, head resting in mary’s lap. you were next to her listening to deaky play, flipping through a thick novel you had borrowed from brian on how moons are formed.

the air smelled faintly of cigarettes and cheap perfume, thanks to roger smoking with his arm around another lanky woman. she had his blond locks wrapped around her finger, other hand resting on his knee. it seemed like he had a different girl by his side each time you saw him. in the back of your mind, you couldn't help but wonder why he never stuck to just one.

mary was fast asleep at your side, head cradled in your lap. she looked so peaceful, letting out little puffs of air in a steady rhythm. they had been working late into the night, you and mary there to keep them company like usual. truthfully, you all did more goofing off then recording. whenever someone was behind the glass, the ones waiting would make ridiculous faces in hopes they would crack and have to restart the recording.

but the long day had taken a toll. freddie had gone with miami to pick the gang up some food, drastically lowering the energy that shook through the room in his presence. without his vibrant spirit, the world felt like it was moving slowly through molasses. after meeting him, your world would never be the same.

the comfortably silent atmosphere was broken by an abrupt ringing coming from a phone mounted in the wall. you all glanced up in unison, brian about to pick up the receiver before roger’s current plaything hopped to her feet and held out a hand to stop him.

“i’ll get it!” she announced, nearly skipping her way to the far wall. Brian slowly sat back down, glancing over to you with a quizzical look in his eyes. You shrugged back, yet you kept a keen eye on her back, suspicious as to why she rushed to pick up the call. she must have expected it, and told whoever was on the other line to call her at the studio. strange. you didn’t think much more of it, just wanting to return to your book and be a pillow for your dearest older sister.

but the latter ended due to your sister being a painfully light sleeper. her face contorted as she tried to go back to sleep, but the groupie’s incessant chatter made sure that did not happen. deaky and roger seemed to be the only ones without a significant reaction to the girl. roger readjusted in his seat, taking another long drag from his cigarette.

mary soon sat up, stretching arms high with a deep sigh escaping her lips. a patterned quilt was thrown across her shoulders, brought by you from home in anticipation of situations like that. “‘morning m, slept well?” she stuck her tongue out at you and leaned back on to your lap.

“could have used a little more. how do these boys manage to live with little sleep and still manage to play like that?” you couldn’t help but giggle at the dazed look on her face, blonde hair tangled on one side of her head. after planting a quick kiss on her forehead, you opened your book and flipped to where you had left off. A beat passed before roger’s plaything hung up the phone, striding over to him with her hip swaying gently. she slid onto his lap, interrupting his subconscious air drumming along with deaky’s riff. he shifted uncomfortably from the sudden intrusion, but didn’t hesitate to wrap his arm around her waist and whisper playfully in her ear. she giggled lightly and pressed her lips to his, before pushing herself back off the chair and brushing off her skirt.

“i’m gonna head, catch ya later rog.” she announced, throwing a wink in the drummer’s direction. he gave her one back, baby blue eyes following her until the door to the recording studio swung shut. mary’s sleepy gaze switched between roger and the door, brows furrowed slightly.

“who was that? christ, how long have i been asleep?” she shifted and curled up against your side, chin resting in the crook of your elbow. her eyes struggled to stay open as she waited for an answer, goofy smile fixed on her lips.

“that is meddow’s newest plaything, no clue her name. it’s been an hour. give or take.” mary groaned and placed her head back in your lap. “why do girls fawn over him constantly,” mary mumbled into a blanket, trying in vain to fall back asleep. roger raised his eyebrow at the two of you, cigarette barely an inch from burning all up. he took another puff, blowing the light gray smoke out through his nose before reaching over and sticking it in the ashtray. brian and deaky had wandered into the recording space, experimenting with ways they could change the sounds of their instruments. muffled laughter could be heard through the thick soundproofing, only sound besides mary’s even breaths since she had fallen back asleep, and the infrequent turn of a page from you.

“it’s totally the hair.” the sound of his voice startled you, still laced with a cocksure tone. he grinned at your bewildered expression, still surprised that he decided to answer you. That soon wore off and you rolled your eyes.

“definitely not. it’s so long. and shaggy. And always so messy.” roger laughed, getting up to sit next to you and mary on the couch. he smelled of cigarette smoke mixed with a lemony sort of cologne. or was it shampoo?

why am i thinking about how he smells? freaking new-girl-every-night meddows.

“pfft yeah right, y/n. you’re just jealous because my hair is prettier than yours.” he flipped his blond locks over his shoulder, grinning at you with a sideways smile. you narrowed your eyes at him, turning back to you.

“in your dreams .” you muttered absentmindedly, one hand brushing the hair covering the face of your sister. a small sneeze came from her sleeping form, not disturbing her slumber in the slightest. you loved your sister more than anything in the world, she had been there for you through thick and thin. from learning to ride the underground to rushing university applications, she had been by your side every step of the way. at that moment, you were sure you would never love anyone as much as you loved her, and that no one would love you as much as she did.

the band did make you feel a great deal more loved than you had with just mary by your side, even after just a few weeks. vivacious freddie always had a kind word or sincere encouragement to give. sweet deaky had biting sarcasm and self deprecating humor that never failed to cheer you up. brian would listen to your rants for hours, and you two would argue over the validity of astrology between songs.

as for meddows, you hated him. you hated his cocky demeanor, promiscuous rockstar attitude, and nonchalant ignorance. he had no sense of commitment, the only people who he was loyal to being the band and no one else. all he did was break hearts and chain smoke. you could not imagine a redeeming trait existing under all that muck.

“it adds to the vibe. i like it long.” he lit his second cigarette, blowing a small puff of tobacco smoke in your face. you scrunched up your face, shooting him a dark scowl. roger just laughed at your angered expression, taking another drag from his cigarette.

“i swear meddows, you need a haircut.” you shook your head, turning away from the long haired drummer boy. freddie finally burst through the door, breaking the brief silence that had fallen over your side of the studio. him and miami had pizza boxes in hand, jackets slick with rain from the outside.

“hello children, sustenance has arrived! where is my love mary?” you waved freddie over, pointing at the sleeping woman on your lap. he knelt at her left, pressing a soft kiss to her temple. she was slowly starting to wake once freddie had re entered, smiling sleepily at him by her side. brian and deaky came through the recording space door, laughing at the stupid was deaky had arranged brian’s hair. roger stood, joining deaky in poking fun at brian's multiple pigtails tied by loose rubber bands. mary had moved to sit by your side, freddie’s arm wrapped around her. you strode up to miami, striking up a conversation while the rest of the group had their own fun.

munching on some pizza, you smiled at the scene in front of you. everyone was so relaxed and happy. your heart swelled. you knew, deep in your heart, that you had found your family.

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like i said, pure fluff. but plot is coming in the next part. should be up saturday or sunday.

taglist!!

@afirstclassloser @isabella-bby @guiltyissues @emothrash @moveimbi @thatgeekspeak @ilikecoffeecupsmorethancoffee @maiauniversetime @allieburakovsky @70srogertaylor @therealwatermelon @rogersfalsettos @cosmiclunas @anamcg317 @dreamer821 @bibahbubah @sabbrriiinnaa

#queen #roger taylor #bohemian rhapsody #ben hardy #benhardy!roger #roger taylor x reader #roger taylor imagine #bohemianrhapsody #ben hardy x reader #ben hardy imagine #benhardy #rogertaylor #borhap #bohemian rhapsody movie #fanfiction #fanfic #ten things

[iambuckyrogers]

3 Nights... (Chapter 1/7)

Summary: After your friend bails on your trip to Australia a week before you were due to fly out, your best friend Steve swoops in and saves the day. Unbeknown to you, he’s harbouring the biggest crush on you, but will it get in the way of your holiday?

Word Count: 1325

Chapter Warnings: a few swear words

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Authors Note: Like 95% of my other stories, this has ties to my life and a holiday I went on recently with a friend from high school. It's VERY loosely based on a couple events that transpired and gave me inspiration for my first (published) series :) hope that you enjoy it, if you wish to be tagged in future parts send me an ask/dm and I’ll add you! Likes, reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated <3

*****

Steve took the stairs to your apartment 2 at a time, pressing the buzzer when he reached the top.

“2 seconds,” your voice floated over the intercom. Steve leant back against the wall and folded his arms. Crazy to think it had been just a week since you had rung him in tears, your best friend had bailed from your trip to Australia and left you all alone.

“I’m not letting you run off to the other side of the world by yourself,” he had said and offered to accompany you.

“Steven, I’m a grown woman I’ll be fine,” you argued though your voice betrayed you.

“No, you won’t. I worry about you,” he had admitted, heart clenching the moment he said the words. You had known each other for a couple of years, meeting through a mutual friend at a college party one night and ever since then, Steve had been completely smitten. Eventually, he had convinced you to let him go with you but, it wasn’t until after he hung up that he realised what a huge mistake he had just made. Now, he was stood outside your, apartment shifting from foot to foot as he waited for you. Not long later the door opened to reveal you struggling with 2 huge suitcases, a handbag and a smaller suitcase.

“Oh my god,” Steve sighed as he lunged forward to grab the door before it slammed on you.

“Well, I didn’t know what I might need,” you explained, your lips curling into a smirk. Steve simply shook his head, helping you to carry your numerous bags to the cab. The trip to the airport wasn’t long, checking in and clearing customs was surprisingly quick, so in no time you were stood at the gate waiting to board the plane.

“Thank you for coming,” you whispered, looking up to Steve.

“It’s my pleasure,” he replied, pressing a quick kiss to your forehead, “besides, who will make sure you don’t do anything stupid if I’m not there.”

“Ha ha,” you mocked. The line began to move as tickets were scanned and people boarded the plane.

“Here we go!” you squeaked, eyes crinkling as you scrunched your face in excitement.

*****

After a stopover in Dubai, you were on your way again, en route to Brisbane, Australia. Steve was just drifting off to sleep when the plane shuddered and his stomach dropped. You grabbed his forearm, nails digging into his skin.

“I hate turbulence,” you whispered looking up at him, your eyes wide.

“It’s alright,” he soothed, prying his arm from your death grip and slipping it behind your shoulders, pulling you into his side. The plane bumped and jolted again and he could feel your heart beating erratically.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Bucky convinced me to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well…” Steve told you about his childhood, all the stories that you hadn’t heard before in the hopes of taking your mind off of the turbulence. Sure enough, it worked, halfway through reciting his various childhood allergies he looked down at you and you were fast asleep. Carefully, he reclaimed his arm and settled into his own chair. He couldn’t sleep, just in case you needed him, but that was fine by him.

The rest of the flight was surprisingly smooth and you landed in Brisbane right on time. After collecting your bags from the carousel you made your way to the bus station to meet your connection to Byron Bay, a small coastal town a few hours south of Brisbane. The bus was pretty empty, there were a few other international travellers as well as Australians from other states. Despite there being plenty of seats you sat next to Steve, not a breath of space between you due to the closeness of the seats and Steves board frame, but he certainly didn’t have an issue. The bus grumbled down the road, unfamiliar scenery speeding past the windows but Steve didn’t take any notice, he was too entranced by the look in your eye as you took it all in. Like a kid in a candy shop, you looked out the window, your mouth agape in wonder. The bus entered a long tunnel, seemingly going on forever until finally, Steve could see daylight. You emerged and the city of Brisbane grew around you, buildings rising from the ground, certainly not as expansive as New York but impressive in its own, foreign way. You were still enthralled with the world around you, watching as the urban sprawl gave way to forests of greenery, lush tropical trees dotting the side of the road. After about an hour you roused Steve from a light sleep, tapping him frantically on the shoulder.

“Stevie look! We’re crossing the border-“ you paused for a moment, “now!” Sure enough, there was a small sign reading ‘STATE BOARDER. NEW SOUTH WALES” that flew past the window as the bus drove along. The unbridled joy in your face was enough to get Steve excited.

It was another half an hour before the bus pulled into the bus station.

“Welcome to Byron Bay!” the driver announced. You practically launched yourself out of your chair the moment the bus came to a stop. The first step outside the air-conditioned bus was suffocating, moist air enveloping you in a stuffy embrace. Every pore in Steve’s body simultaneously screaming for him to get back into the bus. He pushed on, collecting your luggage from the bus and meeting you under a nearby tree.

“Alright, so we’re here,” he stated.

“No shit Sherlock,” you laughed brushing a sweaty strand of hair behind your ear.

“What’s the plan, chief?”

“We walk,’ you grinned. You hadn’t organised to a hire car because Byron was so small, you were convinced you could walk everywhere so you opted to save some money.

“It’s only like a mile and a half to the accommodation,” you argued.

Not even halfway there, a wheel on Steve’s suitcase hit the edge of a curb and snapped off its axel, leaving him with one functional wheel and a whole lot of anger.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” He yelled, kicking his suitcase along the ground.

“You tell it Steve!” you jeered, earning a look of pure hatred from Steve. He forged on, half dragging the broken suitcase behind him, grumbling profanities. After trudging up and down a couple more hills you finally arrived at your accommodation, with all of your suitcases intact and an enraged Steve bringing up the rear. You took a moment to take in the sight before you. Atop a hill, nestled between tall palms and native shrubbery sat a small white cottage. A set of wooden stairs led to a veranda which wrapped around the front porch. A wrought iron daybed took centre stage, covered in floral patterned pillows it looked good enough to sleep on.

“It’s beautiful,” you breathed out and Steve couldn’t agree more, it truly was as picturesque as it was described in the ad.

“Shall we take a closer look?” he gestured for you to lead the way. The inside was just as beautiful as the exterior. Painted in muted pastels of green and yellow, the topical vibe could well and truly be felt. Pictures of rich tropical forests adorned the wall and, like outside, floral pillows decorated the bed.

“Wait, there’s only one bed?” Steve noted, looking to you quizzically.

“Oh, I probably should have mentioned that me and Y/F/N were just going to share. Is that ok? I can always use the pillows to make a bed on the floor if yo-“ he cut you off quickly.

“No no I could never ask you to do that! We’ll make it work,” he assured you, while on the inside he was having a full blown panic attack. This was going to be a lot harder than he first thought.

NEXT CHAPTER

#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers #marvel #marvel fic #marvel imagine #marvel x reader #steve rogers fic #steve rogers au #steve rogers imagine #3 nights #steve rogers marvel #captain america au #marvel au #steven grant rogers

[where-theres-smoak-2]

Dark Phoenix Spoiler Review.

Ok so I promised I would make a spoiler review once the movie came out everywhere. Also its been a few days since I saw the film so I’ve had time to think it all over and get my thoughts in order. Like I said right after I saw the movie, It was a great movie I really really enjoyed it. Did I think it was the greatest Xmen film ever? Well no I still think that’s DOFP (particularly the Rogue Cut). But it was still in my opinion right up there with Xmen, X2, First class and it was better than Apocalypse and miles better than Last Stand. It was a little hard to rank because it was very different from other Xmen films, it wasn’t as cheesy, comic booky style this one was much darker and very gritty. But anyway I will be going through the film talking about the good parts and the parts that I thought it could have done more with. The rest is under the cut as there are SPOILERS I should also mention that I talk about some spoilers for Avengers Infinity war and End Game and also for the season two finale of Fox’s show the Gifted. As fair warning this is long really long I have alot of feelings and thoughts so can I make a suggestion stop reading for a moment. Ok now pop into your kitchen make yourself a cup of tea or coffee or hot chocolate or hell even pour yourself a glass of wine. Then come back get nice and comfy on your sofa or bed or in your computer chair where ever it is you are and read this review. Alternatively if you can’t be f*cked with that just carry on scrolling ;) But if you do want to read a ridiculously long review written by a girl who is very much in her feelings well I’ve got one right here for you so read on. 

The Flashback and The Space Mission. 

The opening shot of the film is a flashback to when Jean is a child and she’s in the car with her parents. After getting bored with the choice of music on the radio she uses her powers to turn the radio over. And then all hell starts to break loose and she loses control of her powers causing the car to crash and for it to seem like her parents were both killed. We then see Charles bring her to the school and we have that conversation about breaking things, I actually think these opening scenes did a really good job at setting up the tone for the rest of the movie and it really gives us an insight into Jean and why she fears her own power. I mean it starts out innocent enough she’s just a little girl who wants to listen to something else on the radio so turns it over but then she brings about her parents deaths. I also think that conversation between her and Charles was very important to the rest of the film. When he says ‘whatever you break I can fix’ and she gives that very ominous reply of ‘not everything.’ Its very foreshadowing for what happens later in the film because there are a lot of things Jean breaks and no Charles can’t fix it all. 

So then we flash forward and see a space shuttle being launched into space. Not long after one of the, I’m not sure what they’re called but lets say NASA operators, notices a solar flare heading for the shuttle which causes problems with the shuttle. Now I personally feel like solar flares is probably something NASA should have checked for before sending their shuttle full of astronauts into space. But who knows maybe they just weren’t able to pick it up until the shuttle got closer or maybe the flare just moved really fast and wasn’t there when they checked before the launch. I also appreciate that if they had discovered the flare before then there wouldn’t have been a movie and where’s the fun in that so on this occasion I will forgive this fictional NASA for their error. But anyway I’ve gone off on a slight tangent there so bringing it back. We learn from Hank that the X-Jet isn’t designed for out of space travel and that it wouldn’t be safe to try but then the president calls and he needs the X-Jet to be able to get to out of space so we see Hank reluctantly agree. It was a small scene but I did love how Hank just nodded than he beasts out. It sure did put me in the ‘yes its go time lets go on a mission baby’ mood. I also liked that we saw that convo about the X-Jet maybe not making it to space because it added so much more tension to that scene. Despite seeing the trailer and knowing that they do make it there I forgot that in the moment and I was sat there on the edge of my seat thinking oh lord are they even going to get to the shuttle or is the X-Jet going to explode from the pressure. 

The scene of them launching into space, along with the rescue mission and then their arrival back was one of my favourite sequences in the film. For me it was very reminiscent of the film Armageddon’s launch. Like seriously go watch that scene then watch the scene of the Jet heading into space and you’ll see what I mean. Even the score (which by the way is amazingly breathtaking, like seriously Hans Zimmer out did himself.) was very similar to the score for that scene in Amrageddon. Again go listen to Gap for the Dark Phoenix film then listen to The Launch  by Trevor Rabin they really do seem to both have elements that are similar to me. All of it reminded me of those moments in Armageddon when you’ve got the X-Jet coming out of the baketball and shooting off into space, the news reporters, the people gathered around looking at their tv screens or up at the sky and then switching to the xmen in the jet enjoying the ride into space. Also when they return and everyone is cheering them. Those scenes along with the rescue itself were like a little mini space rescue movie within the movie and I loved every moment of it. But yeah definitely gave me Armageddon or even Independence Day vibes there. The rescue mission itself was also very well done. I liked how the whole team played a part and they worked well together like a well oiled machine. Hank flew the Jet, Raven gave the directions, Scott blasted the thrusters and stopped the shuttle from spinning, Storm closed the holes in the shuttle, Kurt teleported Quicksilver in and the astronauts out. Quicksilver got all the Astronuats to Kurt, Jean held the shuttle together while Kurt rescued the last Astronaut. Every one of them had a role and they utilised each of their powers in a way that worked for the storyline. Also the effects for each of their powers were really cool and again well done. I’ve seen some reviews from critics saying that the effects were sub par and badly done but I’d have to disagree I actually think the special effects are some of the best I’ve ever seen and were a highlight of the film. 

So next I want to talk about the Phoenix Force and the scene where Jean comes in contact with it. The SFX for the Phoenix energy are the best of them all. The way it moved was both incredibly menacing and somehow stunningly beautiful at the same time. Also the moment when Jean pulls the energy away from the X-Jet and her family and into herself made me hold my breath. One thing this film got right was how it built tension. I mean pretty much from the beginning of the film they were building the tension slowly, the scenes in the flashback and the ominous conversation between Charles and Jean, NASA discovering the ‘solar flare’, not knowing if the X-Jet will get to space, rescueing the astronauts, finding out one was left behind, knowing they only had 30 secs to get that man left behind, Kurt arriving back without Jean every one of those moments took the tension up another notch and then it comes to a head when Jean is overcome by the ‘solar flare’. Also seeing her team’s reactions was very emotional particularly Scott and Raven’s  and then when Scott is cradling her in his arms and she slowly opens her eyes. You would think you’d feel relieved but you don’t because as an audience you know whats coming next and you know she should be dead and so instead of that moment dissipating the tension it only racks it up some more. And then it’s kept up throughout the rest of the film you never get a break from it. 

So they arrive back home to cheers and its made pretty obvious that the Xmen are very much loved you know they are the world’s heroes. There are kids with faces painted blue and the little girl with the mystique doll and people holding up signs with their favourtie Xmen’s name on it. The Xmen are being celebrated, Mutants are being celebrated. I mean that shot of the little boy with his face painted blue was really touching to me I actually got wierdly emotional about it because in previous films we’ve seen how much being blue has affected Raven and Hank (and to some extent Kurt) how they never thought they would be accepted looking the way they did and yet heres this kid who not only accepts them but so badly wants to be like them that he’s painted his own face and for some reason that punched me right in the gut with all the feels. I loved that they were getting that validation after everything they’ve been through and struggled with that that part of them was also being celebrated and loved. 

However as we see from Raven and Charles’ conversation this adoration and love comes at a price. Raven points out to Charles that they are taking bigger and bigger risks and wonders if its because of Charles’ ego. But while I do think that factors into it I also think the situation is a little more complicated than that. I mean think about it what do you think would have happened if the Xmen had said no to rescuing the astronauts. How quickly would the world have started to turn on them, you just know that the next days headlines would have been ‘Xmen Leave Astronauts To Die’. And just like that they’d be the bad guys again. I do think this is also shown in Hank’s sudden turn around when the president calls, and the convo between Jean and Raven, its also pretty obvious that no one else in the team feels particularly good about going on this mission. Everyone thought it was a bad idea but as I said they can’t say no. They worked so hard and fought so hard over the years to get to this place where they are accepted but now they are trapped in this damned if they do damned if they don’t situation. So I do understand Raven’s frustration at the situation and I think she’s also frustrated with Charles because she feels like he cares more about the image of the Xmen than he does the actual people in the team and to be honest in that moment he did come across that way. Now I don’t think they portray Charles as a bad guy here more as someone whose ego combined with good intentions are leading him to make alot of bad mistakes. That is one thing I have always loved about the Xmen films that despite having superpowers and being portrayed as mutants and different the films have always focussed on how they still have very human flaws and failings and are often influenced by very human feelings.  So anyway that’s the beginning of the film, that’s our set up, you know the whole reason for the space mission was to bring Jean into contact with the Phoenix and now we can move on to the next stage of the movie.

Beastique

Ok so if you are not a fan of Beastique you might want to skip over this section because I am a huge Beastique shipper so in the next couple of paragraphs I am going to be gushing, crying and sighing over what could have been. After everyone arrives home Charles tells them to go enjoy themselves as they have earnt it. And so the younger folks go off and throw a party and we get a scene between Hank and Raven who are together in the lab. During this scene they are watching the kids on the screen (which as a side note did anyone else find that a little weird that they were spying on the kids like that? I mean I guess it kinda makes sense considering there were also school kids there and they had a fire and I think alcohol so some supervision was probably warrented but I also found it a bit strange.) But anyway they start by reminiscing about how they too used to throw party’s like that and how they are the last of the First Class team. Which leads to that scene. That scene where she’s trying to convince him to run away with her.  My God my poor Beastique heart. I mean I went into this movie knowing what was going to happen to Mystique they spoilt that pretty early on so this scene was very bittersweet for me. I also liked that it was Raven who was asking Hank to leave with her as oppose to the other way around. In previous films I did feel like it was mostly Hank who was trying to put effort into their relationship and who was chasing Raven so it was nice to see the roles reversed a little and see Raven showing her feelings. I just thought that scene was so sweet, I mean she wanted to leave with him and for them to have a life together. It really made me long for might have beens and it made Mystique’s eventual fate all the more sad and tragic because she could have had that life if she and Hank had left together. But she didn’t want to go without him and once Jean disappeared she knew she couldn’t leave without making sure she was safe first. Which brings me to her death scene. Like I said I saw this coming but I said before I went into the movie that so long as we got some scenes that showed that Raven and Hank had spent the years that had passed happy and together I’d be happy which we did. The one other thing I wanted was an I love you and let me just say... I didn’t mean like that!! Now I will however hand it to them they wrote Raven’s death scene very well. I know JLaw’s portrayal of her wasn’t the most popular but I personally loved her portrayal of her I liked that more vulnerable side of the character and that it was different from the original it was one of the things I liked most about the prequel series that with all the characters we got to explore other sides of the characters that were in my opinion more complex and nuanced than the originals more than just this is the good guy and these two are the bad guys. Don’t get me wrong I love the originals as well but I liked getting that other side of them. But anyway I do think it was a satisfying end for Raven’s character. She died protecting her family. The scene itself was very well shot and played the tension and shock value brilliantly and her goodye scene with Hank tore me apart. His just utter disbelief and him reapeating no no no over and over and her whispering out I love you as her last words because she just has to say it to him in that moment. It was incredibly sad and both actors did a fantastic job with the scene. 

One thing I do wish when it comes to Beastique as a whole is that they had spent more time on it, this couple have been criminally underdeveloped throughout these films. I mean they set it up brillantly in First Class I left that film very much feeling like they had that whole first love/ love at first sight/ starcrossed lovers vibe. But then they kinda dropped the ball on it. I mean if you were going to do this relationship then do the relationship don’t give me no half baked thing and don’t start what your not going to finish. I do feel like a lot of their scenes were filmed but then ended up on the cutting room floor I mean I will always both be very bitter about the Beastique scenes from the Rogue Cut being cut from the theatrical realease and very grateful that we did at least get to see those scenes in that extended format. I will confess that Beastique or the lack thereof has been one of the things that has frustrated me most throughout this series of films. Mainly because they always gave me just enough to keep me invested in this ship but never enough to fully satisfy me.  Don’t these people know that I am an obessed fangirl whose hapiness and misery in life revolve around these fictional ships and I demand to be fed. Of course they did give me nearly everything I ever wanted for Beastique in this installment. I mean guys my OTP were having the lets run away together talk and then we got I love you’s as well so I should be a very very happy shipper right now, but unfortunately that’s the eternal plight of the obsessive fangirl sometimes you get everything you ever wanted for your ship and then it is snatched away from you. The Kinberg giveth and the Kinberg taketh away again. But anyway emotionally unstable rant over with, the obessed slightly crazy fangirl me has been put back in her box and rational reviewer me is back so let us continue. 

The Drawbacks 

Ok so I will and can admit that this film did have a couple of issues. And I’m going to talk about them here because the two biggest issues I had with the film have happened by this point in the film. My first issue with the film, which I touched on a little above, is that I feel like they should have spent just a little more time building the relationships between the various characters before Jean loses control at her father’s house and before Mystique is killed. In particular I feel like Scott and Jean and Hank and Raven needed just a couple more scenes for each couple to show the growth in both relationships. But also I think there needed to be more scenes between Raven and each of the members of the rest of the team. And again with Jean and each of the other members. I mean it wasn’t a huge problem we still got enough to know that Scott and Jean were in love and to feel the impact on the relationship when Jean went Dark and Scott’s desperation in trying to get her back. We got enough to know that Raven and Hank were in love and felt that impact of her death and to make sense of Hank’s decisions and motivations after. We got enough to know that this group of people were a family and what was happening with Jean and what happened to Mystique was tearing it apart. So yes we still got enough for it make sense but I feel like with just a few extra scenes spent building those relationships it would have added just a little more punch to those emotionally charged scenes.

The thing is when me and my sister left the cinema one of the first things she said to me after ‘that was good,’ was ‘but it seemed really short it was only like an hour long.’ At the time I argued that no it must have just seemed short because it was fast paced but actually she was right this film wasn’t even 2 hours long (the runtime was 1hr 54 min) making it the shortest in the prequel series. And to be honest I don’t understand why they didn’t make it longer. I do feel like the film suffered a bit from the shorter runtime and alot of the issues with the film could have been fixed if they had just added an extra half hour and brought it to around the 2hrs 30min mark. They would have had more time to develop those relationships and also explore the backstory of the Alien villians a little which is another place where the film fell a little short. The film was very fast paced and I do wonder why I mean they were not messing about they got right into it, It was only like 10-15 mins in when Jean was infected with the Phoenix. I do wonder if some of it was down to the reviews from Apocalypse saying it was too slow in places so they tried to conteract that in this film and went too far the other way. It does appear like a lot of stuff was cut out there were several moments from the trailers and screenshots that didn’t appear in the film. For example when Scott asks Charles tell me what to do and Charles bursts out I don’t know what to do. I don’t remember seeing that in the film. Also that screenshot of Eric in a wheelchair and Hank, Storm and Kurt are with them that wasn’t in there either. Now me personally one thing I would love is if when they release it to DVD they do the same thing they did with DOFP The Rogue Cut and release an extended version of the film. 

So the next thing that bothered me was that there wasn’t enough Quicksilver. His scenes have been highlights of the previous movies and I was hoping to see that big Quicksilver sequence but sadly we never got it instead we got two smaller scenes (which I loved them both) before Quicksilver is badly injured and taken out of comission for the rest of the movie. I am happy they gave us that scene at the end that showed us he was ok. But I do wish we had gotten more scenes with him. That being said I have learned that the reason why Quicksilver had such a small part in this movie was because Evan Peters had conflicts in his filming schedules for this and American Horror Story. So I can forgive them for the smaller part as it wasn’t really the film producer’s fault. I have decided instead I am just going to be grateful that he was in the film at all and appreciate the scenes we did get. Obviously it was disappointing that we didn’t get a conclusion to the whole Dadneto storyline but then I read an interview where Simon Kinberg talked about why and he said that he chose not to do it because with the limited time they had with Evan Peters he didn’t feel like there was enough time to do the story justice. To be honest I actually have a lot of respect for him for making that decision and sticking to it I mean he could’ve caved and done a rushed scene where it gets resolved but it wouldn’t have given the storyline the time and attention it deserves. As he said it was the story that deserved to be told properly and I think that him deciding that if he couldn’t give that storyline the attention and time it needed to be done well then he wasn’t going to do it all shows that he cares about and has a lot of respect for the characters. I am also glad that as they couldn’t do the story they didn’t have any scenes with Quicksilver and Magneto because that would have been too painful to see them in the same space and not have that reveal. So yeah as disappointed as I am that we never got any Dadneto scenes I can appreciate and respect Kinberg’s reasons behind it. Personally I’m holding out and praying for a solo Quicksilver film.   

Every Hero Has a Dark Side.

So as all of the promo posters for this movie suggest this theme of a person’s inner darkness is played on throughout the movie. The thing I really liked about this movie was even though the main focus was on Jean and her struggle with this Dark Force that had taken over her all of the characters have moments where their darker side comes through with varying degrees. I mean during the fight scenes no one was holding back because they were up against a friend or family member I mean I really got the sense that they were gunning for each other which for me was both surprising and horrifying which you know I think it was suppose to get that reaction from you. But yeah every character had that darker moment. So starting with the ones that had less of a conflict going on to the ones who had some really dark moments (I am not going to include Jean, Mystique or Quicksilver here because I want to discuss Jean in her own section and the other two weren’t really in it enough to have much to talk about). Storm doesn’t go that dark but has that moment of doubt about Jean where she goes to Scott and says that she thinks Jean did mean to kill Mystique and has that line about how sometimes you think a person is something but then by the time you learn they are something else its too late. It’s obvious Storm is very conflicted about the whole Jean thing but in the end she goes along with Scott because its Scott and she has a bond with him and Jean. I do wonder if in the previous version Storm also goes against Jean as I did feel like there were hints that she also believed Jean was a lost cause and should be killed but ultimately sided with the Xmen because Scott asked her to so I do feel like Storm’s darkness is displayed in her considering killing Jean and turning her back on her as I feel she more went along with the team out of support for Scott than out of actually wanting to rescue Jean. Scott’s dark moment came later and again like Storm wasn’t so overly done that it seemed wildly out of character. That was when he tells Eric ‘if you touch Jean I will f*cking kill you.’ You know what? He meant it, I believed he meant it in that moment. Actually little tidbit for you but in the cinema like 50% of the audience gasped and the other half made oooh sounds at that moment. I actually loved that scene I think it showed Scott as being someone who was strong and would protect the ones he loved at any cost like I knew that he would kill anyone who tried to hurt Jean. Scott’s story in this film is one of desperation. I mean you have to look at his journey in the story. The woman he loves is doing all these awful things to their own family, He had to watch her kill someone who had a maternal role in their lifes who he had love for, and then I think Hank’s decision to go after Jean had a big effect on Scott as well. I know the film seems to set Charles up as Jean’s father type figure but in regards to Scott especially when you look at their relationship in Apocalypse I would argue that Hank has that more paternal bond with Scott. Charles is definitely a mentor role but I do think we need to remember that its Hank and Raven who helped raise these kids up too. So for Scott this man (Hank) who he does have a father/ big brother type bond with, a man he would ordinarily turn to in tough times and who he admires is trying to kill the woman Scott loves. Scott must feel so betrayed and like Hank has turned against him too. I really think the characters darkest moments though (and this includes Storm) come out in their fight scene against each other when they are trying to get to Jean. Like when I saw the two sides approaching each other I thought oh they’ll hold back a bit because they won’t want to accidently hurt each other. But nope there was no holding back and actually it did seem like they wanted to hurt each other. There was a lot of hurt and anger behind those scenes and I was actually shocked by how agressive they were being towards each other. It was horrifying and heartbreaking. Ok so next on are list is Kurt. Oh lil baby Kurt. Kurt is one of those characters that is so sweet and innocent and so very child like that you can’t imagine him ever doing anything that could be deemed even a little dark despite his father being a literal demon. But there is one moment in this film where poor little Kurt just snaps. And I loved it. It also made sense to me in that moment it was the only way I could ever see Kurt being agressive like that. I mean again if you look at his journey in the film so far, he’s had to leave behind one of his team mates during the space mission which he believes at the time had lead to her death only by some miracle she survives and he thinks its all ok. Then he finds out that actually she wasn’t fine at all and being hit by that energy has changed her, he witnesses Jean who is like a sister to him kill Mystique who I feel like she very much had a mothering type role in all of the younger team members lifes. He also sees Jean actively hurting other members of his family. Which he must have some sense of guilt over because in his mind he left her behind. Then he has to watch the world that had come to love and admire and basically worship him and his team mates turn on them and treat them once again as dangerous. And I think the final straw was the man who tells him his son used to be a fan, the same man who lets them go when the aliens show up because he trusts that the xmen can protect them, is killed. Kurt knows that this man has a son at home, a son that once admired Kurt and hero worshipped him, a son whose now going to have someone come to his door and tell him his dad is dead. Kurt is such a soft soul that he was able to feel a connection with this man and his child and so when that man dies Kurt is devastated and it leads him to snap and go full on BAMF on them all. I mean I loved his fight with that alien woman. My favourite part was when they were on the train tracks and she’s all yeah I’ve won, I’ve got you, I’m gonna kill you and Kurt just gives her the look. The ‘uh uh b*tch I’ve got you’ look then teleports away leaving her dumb ass to get hit by a train. Again another side note here but I actually laughed at that moment when she got hit by the train, I don’t think I suppose to but yeah me and my sister just looked at each other (the only time we did make eye contact during the film) and just smiled at each other then laughed. I mean in regards to Kurt I was conflicted during his fight scene because one part of me really wanted to see him rip that woman to shreds, I wanted to see how powerful he was and I loved them showing him using that power in a different more offensive as oppose to defensive way. I wanted to see him win that fight naturally. But at the same time when I thought about everything he had gone through to lead him to that moment of snapping I just wanted to wrap him in a hug and wish he could go back to being that innocent childlike cinnamon roll. Because its tragic what happens to him, well what happens to them all really they are all put through hell in this film and its a very tragic and sad story but one that I thought was told well. 

Ok so next one to talk about the dark side with is Charles. Now Charles is the anamoly I think in this story because where the others all primarily start out good and then throughout the film slowly become darker Charles is the opposite way around. When we see him again in this film after Apocalypse he is well he’s a bit of a douchbag. I do wonder how much the events of Apocalypse have played a part in his new attitude I mean being mindf*cked by Apocalypse like that must have had some impact on him. But anyway he’s enjoying having his ego stroked by all these powerful politicians and influential people. He’s getting awards and being on magazine covers and he’s eating it all up, having a good old feast. Which again makes sense for his character in this storyline as he says to Raven when she says ‘you enjoy it don’t you’ and he replies ‘as oppose to being hunted and despised well you know actually I do’. He knows that things are going well at the moment the world believes they need the X-Men but Charles also knows as he says they are only one bad day away from being hated again. He does care for his team and want to keep them safe, I mean he does express concern for Jean when she does return but he’s also willing to go to extreme measures to achieve that dream of complete acceptance. When he says its all about a means to an end and Raven says something about even if it means risking the teams lives to save their people (meaning the humans) and he replies yes I got the sense that he would be willing to sacrifice one of the team if it meant keeping what they had gained and built over the years.I’m not saying he wouldn’t be distraught if something happened to one of his team or that he wouldn’t grieve but he’d consider it a sacrifice that was worth being made for the greater good. He considered the danger he was putting the team in as an acceptable risk. There is also the fact that he lied to Jean and manipulated her mind. Again you could understand why, he was trying to protect her and he had good intentions but they were really misguided you know waht they say ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ and this is truly shown within Charles’ storyline. Charles’ story in this film is once again one of tragedy and was designed to warn of the consequences of letting your ego and selfishness get in the way. It was about a man who had good intentions but in the end he let his ego lead him down the wrong path and a lot of people suffered for it. He’s not set as the villian of the story but as the cautionary tale, at his core he’s still a good man. It was incredibly sad to see him watching everything around him unravel and know that a lot of it was down to his own choices. Of course as the film goes on he does try to redeem himself by attempting to get through to Jean. I said above that I thought he would be willing to sacrifice one of them but as the film goes on this changes because the more things fall apart the harder he fights for Jean and the rest of his team. Unfortunately he’s never really able to fully turn things around as Jean said in that opening scene he can’t fix everything she breaks and I do think come the films end Charles himself is broken. 

Ok Eric. Here’s another one that is set to a different formula this film. Where in most of the other films he’s pretty much the bad guy from the get go or at least morally grey, in this film when we first see him he’s used his time to move on from his vengence and has built a homeland for mutants. He looks like he’s doing really well for himself. But then it all goes to hell when first Jean then Hank show up. One thing I will say is I liked how Eric was willing to help Jean no questions asked when she first showed up. I mean obviously he did ask questions but he was still willing to help her even if she didn’t answer. Like you could see he wanted to help her and he answered all her own questions despite how troubling they were. Of course he does eventually have to cast her out in order to protect his people. Then Hank shows up and he learns that Jean killed Raven. Another thing I liked were those scenes between Hank and Eric who up until this point had very much been at odds with each other but their love for Raven unites them. It was something new and unexplored and so it felt fresh it was interesting to see that dynamic. Obviously Eric going a bit dark isn’t really that much of a shock considering his previous actions in other films but I do think it was well done here. Again as with all of the characters his motives for it made sense. I do think that the point of Eric’s story in this was to show that even when you escape your inner darkness and better yourself you can always be pulled back into it again by trauma. Eric is also the figure for how trauma can turn someone into a morally flawed person its always been his story how he tries to be a good man but circumstances and tragic occurences in his life always bring out that vengeful spirit in him, that darkness. He’s very much the equivalent of the frankenstein story, are you born a monster or do circumstances make you one. 

Now its time for Hank. I loved what they did with Hank’s character in this movie. I loved that they gave more time to him and I loved that we got to see that darker side. Now I’ve put him last because I do think that out of all of them his was the most drastic change in character so for him this was the darkest he’s ever been. Again it made sense for the character. He was in love with Raven and has been for years and the tragedy of this story is that he lost her when they had finally got there shiz together and were happy. Also he clearly has a lot of guilt and regret over not leaving with Raven when he had the chance. I mean it comes through real strong in that moment when he tells Charles ’Raven was going to leave and I convinced her to stay.’  He is utterly destroyed by Raven’s death and on top of that he’s lost all faith in Charles who is one of his longest companions, some of the blame for her death he puts on Charles. Because it was Charles’ choices that led them to that moment and it was Charles who physically stopped him from taking out Jean with that taser which may have prevented Raven’s death. I think for me one of the saddest storylines in this film was seeing that rift between Hank and Charles. I mean if you think about their history Hank has always stood by Charles. I mean just take a look at DOFP when Charles had no one else he still had Hank. Hank acted as Charles’ carer for years and was with him even in his darkest moments and yet this is what makes Hank get up and walk away from him. Because Charles himself can’t even admit that he was wrong. I mean that scene in the kitchen between them was amazing, both actors were amazing I felt their pain and grief. I felt the tension between them. It was awful to watch these two characters who have been through so much together get torn apart. But again, and I will keep saying this, it was done well. It was done with alot of care and attention and respect and you know alot of thought and heart was put into this film. So anyway Hank decides that Jean needs to be killed and you know Hank is a genius he knows that without Charles he doesn’t have the resources to find Jean by himself. So he goes to Eric for help in finding her. Which makes sense from a strategic standpoint. He and Eric might have their issues but Hank knows that Eric loved Raven too and that he has resources so Hank uses that to get the help he needs. Now the fact that Hank wants Jean dead is naturally kinda dark. I mean this is a woman that he has known since a child and who is very much like family to him. But I also believe that after Jean killed Raven Hank made up his mind that Jean was gone as he says ‘Jean isn’t Jean anymore.’ In his eyes Jean died up in space when she was hit by that solar flare and whatever this thing is that looks like Jean now this thing that killed the woman he loves it isn’t Jean. So he’s not just grieving Raven he’s also grieving Jean too and again I think this comes through when Eric says ‘if I find her I will kill her’ and Hank answers ‘I know’. I mean that scene did make me tear up a little because you can hear the pain in Hank’s voice and you see the tears in his eyes and you just know this is cutting him up inside. He’s not making this decision lightly it is effecting him deeply. Seriously though hats off to Nicholas Hoult because he did some serious to God amazing acting in this film. I mean Beast has always been one of my favourite characters especially since First Class so I am a little biased but I really did think his performance in this film was so emotional and he did a really great job in all of his scenes. I also loved that ultimately he was able to overcome that darkness and in the end did what Raven would have and protected Jean. It was another moment that just gave me chills I mean when the aliens are like give us the girl and he just growls out that ‘no!’ It was so powerful and like I said I got literal chills.  

Whose Got The Power!? 

They all do, oh boy do they. One thing that alot of the other X-Men films got criticism for was not utilizing all of the characters powers very well. There was always one character that got left on the sidelines I am pleased to say however that is not the case in this film. Every one of our characters gets the chance to fully display their powers and you know what its epic. The special effects for each of the powers are fantastic. Also I loved how creative they were with how they used their powers I touched on it a bit in the first part of this review but they do cover all aspects of each of their powers and not just one facet of them. For example with Storm they don’t just show her pulling down lightning bolts. We do see her do that and its electrifying (pun intended) but we also see her use her powers to freeze over the holes in the space shuttle or to quite literally at one point blow her enemy away with the force of the winds she’s controlling. With Hank they show us his super intelligent side of his powers when they are talking about the modifications he’s made on the Jet and him treating Jean but also show his strength and fighting finesse. Scott uses his powers both in a productive way when he stops the shuttle from spinning and in a destructive way when he’s blasting his foes to hell. Kurt uses his to rescue people and to teleport people in front of trains we again see both the defensive and offensive sides of his powers. The same with Quicksilver we have one scene of him rescuing another of him attacking. Mystique we see her shapeshifting but we also explore more of her leadership skills too. Charles uses his power to both communicate and to control. Eric uses his in close quarter hand to hand combat but to also crush things around people or to pull subway carts up and use them as a shield and battering ram. Jean uses her powers for literally everything, it seems like there’s nothing she can’t do and we get to see it all. So yeah I definaitely got excited and went full fangirl whenever I saw them use their powers and it is alot. 

The Train Fight. 

Ok yes I am going to say it, I am going to put this statement out there for everyone to see. This was the greatest fight sequence in any superhero film ever. And I mean ever. And yes I am including those huge epic battle scenes from Infinity War and End Game. Which don’t get me wrong were epic but this scene for me was even greater than those and here’s what I think gives it the edge. There are less characters involved. Now you might think that would lessen it but I actually think its an advantage for this film. Because there are less characters involved it gives it a much more intimate feel than those other battle scenes. Because there are less characters you can focus on each of them more and follow them through the battle more closely. There is less confusion of what is happening because you can focus more on those characters and what each of them are doing. Yet it still manages to be as dramatic and exciting and just downright cool and epic as those other scenes. I mean I just I don’t think I even have the words to describe just how epic that scene was. But I will try. 

So I am going to start at the very beginning of the scene where they are all on the train chained up. The thing that is poignant about this scene is at this point all the characters are still at odds with each other. You can feel the tension between all of these characters and the discord. We also get a quite sweet and really emotional scene between Charles and Hank where Charles finally tells Hank what he wants to hear. He was wrong and he’s sorry. This becomes a turning point because it has a huge part to play in what happens next. So right after we hear banging noises and over the radio the security following the train inform the guards in the train that they have multiple hostiles on the roof. Then Eric says she’s coming for us. In the trailer this is actually really misleading because there you think they are talking about Jean but actaully in the film Jean is on the train with them and the ‘she’ coming for them is Jessica Chastain’s character Vuk who wants the Phoenix Force herself and her people who are an alien race who can shapeshift and seem to be nye on near indestructable. I mean these guys are really hard to kill trust me which really helps in building the tension. But anyway they say to the guards let us go because we can help but they refuse until most of them are killed and one guard smartly decides to let them go. There comes another of my favourite moments which again is a small but very powerful one. Once they have been released, the door is blown off and in walk our alien adversaries. Our X-Men all stand up and form together and do what I like to call the superhero stance, you all know the one I mean. The one that tells you they mean business and the bad guy better watch out. Again this is another moment where I just got chills. I said earlier that Hank and Charles’ conversation was important because of what it meant for later scenes and this is the one I meant because it makes Hank change his mind and he refuses to stand aside and let them at Jean, when Eric asks him what he’s doing he replies what ‘Raven would have’. This also causes Eric to have a change of heart and so you get this moment where the people who were at each others throats about 10 mins before are now choosing to band together and fight for each other and it is a truly intimate and beautiful moment. And then all hell break loose and the epicness begins. 

A highlight of this fight and something they do really really well and something that makes it really fun and interesting to watch, is that it is on different levels of the train. You have them fighting in the train carts, you have them fighting on the roof of the train, hell you even have them fighting on the damn tracks and on the bridges along the train tracks. They’re in the train, they’re on the train, they are the train. But in all seriousness it is so well choregraphed and has a great progression. 

Some highlights of the scene were Eric firstly crushing the train cart around the aliens and then just with a casual flick of the wrist tossing it away like it was no biggy at all. Two when Vuk shows up and Eric brings out the big guns literally. He uses his powers to point an arsenal of assault rifles at her then just blasts the crap out of her. She just stands there calmly taking it all and then heals right up in a very sinister and creepy way. But the shot of Eric there with all the rifles assembling around him is again just an epic moment and very very Eric if you know what I mean. Micheal Fassbender is so good at playing Magneto always so sauve and smooth. 

Kurt fighting that female alien and then leaving her on the train tracks. We really got to see his powers in this scene and in some ways it was remencient of Azazel in First Class in how he uses the powers. He grabs a person and then teleports them somewhere else before they get he chance to get their bearings and its that very fast get a shot in then teleport and get another shot in kinda style. Though naturally Kurt isn’t anything like his father character wise, he is far too much of a sweet little cinnamon roll I do think a little of his darkness came through here. 

Jean waking up and saying ‘I know what I have to do, protect my family’ then rising up out of the train and shielding her friends before lifting the train from the tracks and smashing it back into the earth with the aliens inside. The special effects for that scene were amazing and it was just a really cool scene to watch. 

It’s An Alien Invasion

So the true bad guys of this film are the aliens who come after the Phoenix Force. The race isn’t actually given a name in the film but from what I understand they are a race called the Skrulls which are shapeshifting aliens who seem to be ridiculously strong and impervious to harm. Their home planet was destroyed along with the majority of their people by the same cosmic force that now inhabits Jean and they have spent years tracking it across the universe hoping to capture and harness its power so that they can remake their home world. When you take just this part of their story you actually feel quite sorry for them. I mean at least I did like these poor aliens watched their home and all the people they love get destroyed just out of the blue one day and they are the last few survivors and they just want to start over anew. It must have been so traumatic for these poor guys. Of course any sympathy I had for them was soon thrown out the window when I realised that their way of getting their world back was by using the Phoenix Force to remodel Earth into their home planet which means wiping out all humanity. Then I was all like these peeps need to die. 

I will say that I think a little more time needed to be spent on this group of people. I get that they were going for the mysterious vibe with them but I think they might have been a little too mysterious. I mean I think they did enough with the main one Vuk. I also understood the backstory and why they were doing what they were doing but there were I think about 7 other aliens or so (I don’t remember the exact number) but we don’t get to know any of the others really. We only have time with Vuk so I do think they would have benefitted from building up some of those other background aliens. 

That being said there were some good things about the villians. There arrival was a good scene. It was very creepy and again very like those Alien invasion films. That shot of them creeping out of the trees through the darkness was very very spooky and chilling. Also the scenes where Vuk is killing and torturing people by putting her hand on their chests was also very disturbing. I mean overall as villians they did come across as frightening and creepy and yes mysterious but I do also think they could have been built up a bit more. As I said above in the review this is one thing they fell short on and I do think it could have been combated with making the film longer. 

The Dark Phoenix

Sophie Turner let me fall to my knees and bow before you, you absolute Queen. Sophie did so good, so so good with this film. Sophie played this role masterfully. It had so many waves through out the character development and she sold every one of them and made it so believeable. From that elation she displays when she first gets back and she wants to party and drink and you can see she’s on top of the world, to her pushing Charles out of her head and causing him injury, to her joy and childishness when she sees her father again to the rage when she goes up against her friends. I brought every damn thing she was selling me. I also liked how the Phoenix powers slowly emerge within Jean. At first we get subtle signs of it like when she is floating out in space right after being consumed by the energy and those little cracks appear on her skin with the firey glow under them. Or when she does open her eyes and for a brief moment they also have a fiery colour. Then it continues to grow bit by bit until eventually by the end of the film she’s full on glowing and vapourising sh*t like a BAMF. But I liked that it wasn’t just a case of she gets hit by it and all of a sudden she’s super powerful and turning stuff to dust right away they reveal it to us slower, showing us a litlle bit then a bit more which again adds to the tension and anticipation and makes you want to see more to want to know just how much more there is, how powerful is this power and what is Jean going to do with it? 

So lets walk through Jean’s transformation into the Dark Phoenix and talk about her journey throughout the movie. So I already covered her flashback scene above so we don’t really need to go into that so I think we should start with is right after she gets linked with the Phoenix Force. Once they’ve returned home Jean is sent for a medical exam with Hank to make sure she’s ok. Hank sees that everything is ok but there’s an anomaly in her powers. She’s grown so powerful that the machine isn’t even picking it up anymore, she’s literally off the charts powerful. Hank tries not to let it trouble him too much and just makes a quip about how he needs to build a better machine and sends her on her way. I just said above that Sophie did a fantastic job at showing the fluctuations and changes within her character’s moods throughout the film. Well in these beginning scenes Jean is very much feeling elated and powerful. There’s one part of the film where Charles says that Jean is ‘all desire and rage’ and at this point we see more of the desire part of it. She has that heated moment with Scott where they kiss which actually reminded me abit of when Jean kisses Logan in Last Stand. Then they go to the party and she wants to drink and dance and you get this general feeling of desire from her she wants to have a good time. It’s almost like she’s high on the feeling you know that feeling of being on top of the world that you get. Again another side note here but just wanted to say I loved that cameo of Dazzler and her powers looked real cool. But anyway back to Jean, so then things around her start to blur and she can feel that power building up in her and the voices start and its that same feeling she got in the car with her parents and it frightens her. She clutches her head and tells the voices to be quiet but then the power explodes from her knocking the people around her to the ground and blowing over trees and she’s then unconcious at the center of this charred circle. This then leads to Charles looking into her head while she’s asleep and having to confess to Hank and Raven what he did and informs us that the walls he put up or the scaffolding as he called it is starting to come down. Jean walks up and is none to happy to find Charles in her head and pushes him out after a bit of a battle for control that leaves Charles needing medical care and Jean to leave because we learn that she heard her father’s voice and she realises that her father is still alive and did not die in the car accident like she believed. Although we saw a little of that rage during her argument within her head with Charles she is still very much at this stage driven by desire. This time its her desire to see her Father again. Which as an audience and as Charles knows this is a very bad idea considering the unstable mood she’s in. Upon meeting her father what she learns is that her Father gave her away, when she looks at the photos and sees loads of her mother but none of her she realises that her Father knew where she was but did not come looking for her, her rage builds and during the heat of their fight her Father tells her to come all the way in and to not forget what she did. Upon reading her father’s mind she learns that she killed her mother. This was another thing that Charles had manipulated her mind into forgetting in an effort to protect her. Unfortunately that now means all of that pain and horror of realising what she did to her mother comes out at this moment when she’s unstable. So when the X-men show up they find her emotionally distraught. This is when all the rage comes and with it the desire to hurt those she feels have wronged her and unfortunately that person she feels is Charles who lied to her and kept the truth from her. Her rage is directed at him and anyone who stands with him. So when the police cars show up she sees them as a threat and destroys them which leads to Storm throwing the lightening bolt at her and then things just escalate. At one point she even throws Scott across the lawn which really shows how out of control she’s becoming and how the power is warping her mind. One thing I do want to touch on quickly is that I don’t actually think this cosmic force she comes in contact with is necessarily evil on its own. When I first saw the trailer I thought it was a case of shes overtaken by this evil energy and that turns her evil but having seen the film I actually don’t think that’s the case at all. I don’t see the energy as being evil or good its just powerful. It’s like Charles says when he gives child Jean the pen it’s what you choose to do with it. I also don’t get the impression that the power has a mind or feelings of its own. I don’t think it was there or that it destroys things because it has some kind of cognitive ability and it gets enjoyment from destruction and has some sinsiter ulterior evil motive. I actually think its more like a product of nature like a tsunami or hurricane or volcanoe. It’s powerful, it’s destructive but it’s not got a mind of its own that overtakes Jean’s. No what I think happens is that Jean absorbs this energy and it’s so powerful that it causes her mind to become unstable and for her to go a little crazy. Her mind breaks under the pressure of the power, basically its just too much to handle.  

Things do calm down for a moment though when Raven approaches Jean and tries to talk her down. For a moment it looks like its working. Jean is clearly still struggling but she’s not throwing things and people about or destroying the buildings around her anymore. But unfortunately for Raven the voices in her head are back and Jean can once again feel the power rising and taking over and it blasts from her implaing Raven on some shards of wood in the process. In this moment all of that rage disappears and instead she’s left with the horror of what she’s done and the knowledge that not only did she kill her mother she’s now killed someone else who she had a maternal like bond with. So unable to face it she just runs. She goes to Eric looking not only for a safe place to lay low at because now she’s being hunted for attacking the town and the cops but because she’s looking for advice. She knows that Eric is very powerful and that he too has used that power to hurt people and she also knows that he turned things around and stopped. She goes to him because she too wants to know how to stop because she’s not evil she’s been corrupted by this power. That’s what her story is about how power corrupts and how those with it need to be more careful with it and choose how to use that power. It’s a metaphor my friends. As she says to him that power feels good and of course it does. She must feel like a god. Like she can do anything she likes she could raise civilisations out of the ground or turn the whole world to dust. She can destroy any threats with a wave of her hand she is unstoppable, she can do anything her heart desires and that is filling her with a feeling of euphoria and elation. And because it feels good she craves it more. So when those army guys show up in their helicopters two things happen. One she feels threatened because she knows they are there to take her away and that fills her with that rage again. Two she craves to use her power again to show these men who are threatening her that she’s the one in control, she’s the one with the power. Which leads to that amazing scene of both Jean and Magneto vying for control over the helicopter. Once the helicopter makes it away Jean attacks Eric and just flicks him away. Again this is coming from anger her mind is warped and she believes he should be on her side because she was just trying to stop the bad men and doesn’t understand that there are consequences to her doing that for Eric and Genosha. That land was granted to them by the government and if they go around attacking the men who were sent there by the government then they will take it away from them again. All of this leads to him casting her out which again she’s angry about because he’s suppose to protect mutants, protect her. 

This is when she is found by Vuk who wants to manipulate her into using the power for Vuk’s own needs. By this point Vuk has learned enough about Jean to know what things to say to manipulate her. She plays on the anger Jean has for Charles and also puts the notion in her head that all of the X-Men want her dead because they don’t understand her and what they don’t understand they seek to destroy. So when the X-Men show up she has this deep sense of mistrust for them. On top of that she has fully given into the power and embraced it let it overcome her. She’s also had this woman standing there telling her that she’s the most powerful being in the universe and that she needs not answer to anyone they all should answer to her. So when she comes in contact with Eric again she lets her anger at him out telling him that first he cast her out and now he seeks to kill her and she destroy his helmet and throws him from the building like he’s nothing. And in this moment you can see her rage. Next comes Charles and we get that very disturbing scene where she forces him to walk to her. It comes right after he tries to win her back by reminding her what he said years ago when she first trying to learn to control her powers that she feared. You can do anything you set your mind to. Her reply is ‘then show me, walk to me.’ I get what she’s saying here, she knows that Charles can’t get up and walk to her and that’s her point because despite him saying that, there are some things that are beyond your control and that you can’t do no matter how hard you put your mind to it. In her warped and corrupted mind its another lie he’s telling her, she sees it as him trying to manipulate her again and once again while being egged on by her new alien agony aunt, her rage over takes her. In an effort to mock him and prove that actually she has ultimate power now and she can unlike him do anything she sets her mind to she uses her powers to force him to stand from the chair and walk up the stairs to her. It’s a scene that is thoroughly disturbing and uncomfortable and upsetting. And it’s suppose to be, you’re definitely suppose to be feeling all those things during the scene and I think it is suppose to show you just how twisted the power is making Jean. That being said I do feel like this scene could be quite triggering for some viewers so if you are reading this review having not seen the film yet and you do think that is something that would trigger you but you still want to see the film then this would be your moment to go to the bathroom, just when you get to the bit where Jean and Vuk are on the balcony above Charles in his chair and he starts talking about doing anything you set your mind to get up and go then, by the time your finished with your toilet break it’ll be over as it’s thankfully a short scene. So with that trigger warning over lets continue. Eventually Charles does get through to Jean when she reads his mind and gets reminded of the fact that even though her father said she was a lost cause Charles still believed she wasn’t and she remembers all of the good things he’s done for her over the years. Essentially she’s reminded of the relationship she has with him. It’s another really poignant beautiful moment and Sophie does a brilliant job of portraying all the emotions Jean is feeling in that moment. Also it just looks really beautiful she’s got all the flame like glowing energy around her and the cracks in her skin and her eyes that are glowing have tears gathering in them. So anyway she asks Vuk to take the power and free her still believing that Vuk just wants it to rebuild her own world. Charles then realises that Vuk wants to destroy this world and that if she keeps absorbing the power from Jean it will kill Jean but Jean either can’t let go or doesn’t want to.  In comes Scott to save the day who blasts Vuk back into the stars she lands back on earth with a thud on top of a roof unconsious. Jean collapses to the ground and then they all get captured by the military for being bad little mutants who have between them made a right mess on the street outside. Of course these guards are unaware of the alien force that has come to destroy the world but its ok they’ll learn about that one the hard way in a few scenes time. So this is the turning point for Jean in the movie. So far we’ve seen her elated and overcome with the desire to just enjoy herself, to becoming enraged at being lied to by both her father figures, to feeling overcome with guilt and self loathing after killing Raven to that rage returning with an added shot of paranoia that everyone including her family are out to destroy her to realising that actually her family are there for her not against her and this power is the thing thats destroying her to making the decision to let that power go. 

So for most of our little train journey Jean is unconcious however when she does wake up its to the knowledge that the family she has know come the trust again is in danger from the alien species who are trying to get to her and who she now knows were truly the ones who were manipulating her. And so she simply says ‘I know what I have to do now...protect my family.’ Then rises up out of the train like the phoenix she is she puts shields around her loved ones then proceeds to lift the train off the tracks and then slam it back into the earth with all the aliens inside. When she lands next to it the skrulls all charge at her. And so begins another of my favourite scenes. While we have already seen some great things from Jean’s powers so far in the film this is the moment where she really does just let it all go and unleash the power. She does what Charles told her to do all those years ago she takes this power/gift and she chooses what she’s going to do with it which is protect her family. It’s a very empowering moment for the character. Also let me just say um Thanos who? Because damn the Phoenix knows how to vapourise things. I thought that moment in Infinity War where Thanos snaps his fingers and they all turn to dust was terrifying but this was even more so. At least with Thanos it looked like they went quite peacefully not so much here in fact it looked angonising for them.  But yeah in a terrifying display of power Jean just turns all of them to dust and then Vuk shows up and grabs her by the throat trying to absorb the power again. However Vuk realises real quick that she’s not going to be able to handle the power and tries to break away but Jean tellls her that if she wants the power she’s going to have it and forces her to hold back on again. Then Scott gets too close causing the skin to start flaking off his hand which Jean repairs but Vuk points out that if Jean destroys her then she’ll destroy them too. So Jean lifts them both back into space and unleashes the power destroying them both. Supposedly she has sacrificed herself to save her family. Also that moment when she explodes and it takes the form of the Phoenix is the best shot of the film. It is so beautiful and magnificant just amazing. Again another side note but if any of you watched the xmen spin off show The Gifted did that moment when she tells Vuk if you want the power remind anyone else of when Reed tells Reeva that if she wants the power of the Von Struckers she’s got it then blows up in her face destroying her? I most certainly got the same vibe from them both. But anyway to wrap up this section. I really liked how they tackled this storyline in this film. I loved the fact that Jean was the central part of the story this time. The focus was on her and her story. Yes there were other storylines obviously but they all played into hers with hers being the center of them all. Charles’ story was centered around Jean’s, Scott’s was, Storm’s, Kurt’s, Eric’s and Hank’s even the alien subplot were all causes of Jean or her actions. This is how it should be with Jean at the center and others being effected by her. I mean most of the time even when she wasn’t in a scene she was being talked about so it was still essentially about Jean. It was one of the things that I was most disappointed by in the Last Stand that Jean was just a side story to the main storyline about the cure. But not the case here they did it right here and put her front and center. Also as I said Sophie did a great job at portraying all the different shifts within the character and it was another thing I loved that the character was so nuanced and tumultous. I just think they told the story really well it was a story that I was invested in. It was tragic and emotional and entertaining. 

And So It All Ends. 

So the first thing I will say is that I did think the ending was a bit sudden. It was almost like they got to the part were Jean sacrifices herself and then realised that the film wasn’t going to be 2 and half hours long and they’d best wrap it up quick. However I’m not mad about the ending. So the end is basically them showing us where all the remaining characters are with a voice over from Jean. We get that shot of Scott putting up the Jean Grey School sign. Then we flick to Hank walking through the halls of the school. We see Quicksilver and Kurt in the hall and then Storm is teaching a lesson so we know the rest of the X-Men all end up at the school together. Hank then goes into an office and sits at the desk where there’s a photo of Raven. Two things I want to interject here is one this did give my little beastique heart some soothing balm even if it was a little sad but aww Hank’s little smile when he looked at the picture. Two I loved that in the picture she was in her true blue form because one thing Raven did struggle with in her relationship with Hank in the previous films was that worry thst maybe he didn’t love the real her and was more in love with her blonde haired normal looking self. So yeah I loved that Hank was remembering her in her true form. But anyway we learn that Hank is now Headmaster which I did think you know good for him I felt like that is a role he’ll be good at and I do feel like he deserves it. It did however beg the question of where the hell was Charles. Turns out he’s in Paris and you Cherik shippers know who else is in Paris don’t you? Now me personally I don’t ship Cherik romantically as such I mean I’m not like a hard core Cherik shipper like I am a Beastique shipper. However I will admit there were moments throughout the films where if they had gone in that direction I wouldn’t have been surpirsed. I have always loved Charles’ and Eric’s relationship and so I could not have chosen a better ending for them. There was something so right about that scene.  I teared up when Eric said that all those years ago Charles saved his life and offered him a home and now he wanted to do the same for Charles. I loved the call back to First Class, I loved that Eric gave Charles that aknowledgement of what he did for Eric and I loved that their last scene together was them playing a game of one of their iconic chess matches. So yeah very happy with how they brought those character arcs to a close I thought it was very fitting. Of course the very final shot of the film is where it pans up into the sky and then shows a phoenix flying across it briefly indicating that Jean isn’t actually truly gone.

There were a couple of things that the ending leaves unclear however. Firstly did Charles get forced out of the school by the rest of the X-Men in retailiation of what he did with Jean or was it more that he was so broken by Raven and then Jean’s deaths that he just couldn’t bring himself to return there. Did he feel like he failed Jean and Raven and so to prevent himself of letting down another student he’s just removed himself from the scene. Who knows. 

Did he know that they were changing the name of the school, was he the one that suggested it, how does he feel about it? 

What is the human’s attitude like towards mutants has it been completely destroyed  by Jean’s actions or did they hear about the alien invasion that they were all saved from and are now happy about the X-Men again? Was the anti-mutant attitude the reason why Charles left was it a case of it wasn’t safe for him to be there because there was a lot of public animosity towards him? So yeah those are the questions I was left with at the end there.  

Critical Critics

Ok so we are nearly finished with this review I promise there is just one last thing I want to touch on first. Also fair warning I might be getting a little snarky here. So you can imagine my surprise when I left the cinema having rather enjoyed the movie to find that the critcs had reviewed this film badly. I was actually to be honest kind of disgusted with the critics on this one. I mean I‘ve never put much stock in what the critics say anyway and I’ve never let it influence whether I see a film but checking the reviews after I‘ve seen a film has become something of a ritual for me and something I enjoy. However this time it just made me angry because even if you didn’t think this film was the best, even thoguh it had some small problems it did not deserve the amount of bashing and hate it was getting. I mean a 22% on RT is just ridiculous. But anyway what I did was I went through some of the reviews and picked out some of the most commonly occuring criticism that the critics gave the film and I’ll give you my opinion on them and why I thought they were wrong or why I agreed with them if I did. 

1) It’s a repeat of the Last Stand. Ok when I read this one my reaction was genuinely and exuse my language here but b*tch where? I was honestly confused by the accusation because there was only one similarity between the two storylines that I could find. That’s how Charles put blocks in Jean’s mind that are then broken down by the power causing Jean to become angry and mistrustful of Charles. But even the way it happens in the two films is different. In TLS it was a central point of her storyline and Charles did it because Jean had developed another personality (basically she had a multiple personality disorder) and he was trying to keep it in check. Here he puts up blocks to make her forget about her past trauma. In TLS the blocks coming down are essentially what unleashes the Phoenix and causes Jean to go dark. In DP the blocks coming down only serve to cause a rift between Jean and Charles and explain her anger at him. It’s not made a central storyline at all. There are also so many differences. The whole storylines are different hell the characters themselves are very different. Jean going dark in TLS as I said was a result of her split personality there is no outside force its all from within her. In this film it is still a story about Jean’s mental health but it is influenced by an outside force and while TLS is a story about mental health essentially this version while covering that is more about how power corrupts. In TLS Jean is a side storyline in this one shes the focus of it. I could go on and on about the differences but this post is already approaching the length of a novel so. Maybe I’ll do a separate post comparing the two at some point. So yeah sorry but this statement of it’s a repeat of TLS is just plain wrong it isn’t anything like TLS. 

2) It’s unemotional and boring. I mean I can’t really say anything about the boring part. I personally didn’t think it was at all boring but if they found it boring then I’m sorry to hear that I don’t know what they find intersting so I can’t really say they are wrong on that as finding something boring is very much down to personal preference what one person finds interesting can send another to sleep. However in regards to the unemotional part which I saw come up a surprising amount it’s another thing that I don’t understand how they can say that. This film left me emotionally wrecked. I mean it makes you feel so many different emotions, sad, tense, anxious, awe, heartbroken, fear, anticipation, happy, nostalgic, so many emotions. Also the emotions of the characters are very much what drives this film. Every one of the characters actions are driven by their emotions. It’s their grief that drives Eric and Hank, Jean’s rage that drives her, Scott’s desperation, Charles’ fear of losing everything they’ve worked for. So this is another comment from the critcs that I just disagree with, I’d even go so far as to argue that this was the most emotional Xmen film they’ve ever done. 

3) This isn’t like the other X-Men films. This one actually made me sigh in resignation and at one point even wet myself laughing. That second part came where I read one review that complained it was more like a drama than an Xmen film and the reason why that made me laugh was because it made me think of an interview of Tye Sheridan’s way back in 2018 where he said that with this film they were aiming to make it more like a drama than a superhero film. So yes mr critc man it was more like a drama but you know what it was suppose to be. This argument for why the film sucked just didn’t make any sense considering one of the main points they were trying to get across in their entire marketing campaign for this movie was this isn’t like any other X-Men film you’ve ever seen. So yes well done critics you just criticised a film for achieving exactly what they set out to achieve. Sorry like I said might get a little snarky but this one really frustrated me with its own stupidity. I mean the fact that this wasn’t like other Xmen films is what made it good it’s one of the things I liked the most about it because it meant it wasn’t stale it was something new and something fresh. It was suppose to be a darker film, a gritty drama and that’s what we were told we were gonna be given and that’s what we got. So this is just the critics looking for reasons to hate the film.

4) There isn’t enough humour. Ok see the above two. This was an emotionally driven dark drama! It wasn’t suppose to be funny. I get that these critics are used to the gimicky slapstick comedy that most superhero (especially the marvel films) have. But as we’ve already covered they were aiming to do something different with this film. They were serious subjects they were covering in this film and I’m sorry but throwing jokes and running gags in there would have ruined the movie. It would not have been at all in fitting with the tone of the film. Also you can bet your ass that if they had thrown jokes into it then all the critics would be complaining about how out of place they were considering the tone of the film and they would have been right in that instance because it would not have worked. Also there was humour in this film it just wasn’t placed evenly throughout the film because as I said the bulk of the film was very serious, very dark and very gritty and levity would have been out of place. But the beginning part and end both had quite a bit of humour. Quicksilver’s ‘we’re doing space missions now cool.’ Nightcrawler’s excited childlike ‘We’re going to space?’ ‘Yes Kurt we’re going to space.’ Again was funny. And again from Kurt when they were heading into space and he screams ‘I’m not enjoying this as much as I should.’ It was funny. Quicksilver’s ‘I did most of it, Jean helped at the end but it was mostly me.’ Fuunnny. Hank’s ‘it means I need to build a better machine.’ Yup funny. When Storm asks how Jean is and Scott replies thirsty while collecting her third drink also funny. Speaking of Jean ‘Do I intimidate you baby?’ and Scott’s ‘Always’ reply yup you guessed it also funny. Again at the end of the film when Quicksilver tells the kid to ‘slow down, safety first.’ This ladies and gentleman is what you call humour and yes it was in the film and yes they put it in appropriate places and in the right amount without it ruining the tone of the film. Which is something that these supposedly professional critics should have recognised. Just because a film isn’t very funny doesn’t not mean it’s a bad film. 

5) The special effects were bad. Um no that’s a lie. Plain and simple.

6) The alien villians had no back story and Jessica Chastain’s performance was wooden. Ok going to shock you all a little here but parts of this I do agree with. Or at least I can see where they are coming from. Because yes the Skrulls needed more development. However I thought Jess’ performance was far from wooden in fact she did a very good job with what she was given. Also they did have a backstory. It just wasn’t an overly complex one. Their home planet was destroyed and so they want to use the Phoenix force to remake earth into their home planet. So again it might be poorly developed but saying they have no back story at all is another lie.     

7) This film sucked ‘insert a marvel film here’ was better. Now this is just unforgivable to me and in my opinion downright rude it really made my blood boil, but I came across several of the critics reviews that literally just had a couple of lines saying that the film sucked and then spent the rest of their review talking about how great a particular marvel film was before finishing up with a that’s why I can’t wait for the Xmen to finally come under the marvel umbrella where they belong. Umm ok first off they’re not under the Marvel umbrella yet so that comment is completely irrelevant, secondly I don’t give a crap about how great you thought Captain Marvel was I came here to read a review about Dark Phoenix. These are the worst of all the reviews because they don’t even bother to give you reasons why they thought Dark Phoenix was bad they just state that it was and then move on to talking about Marvel. In fact some of them are so vague about Dark Phoenix that it makes me wonder if they even actually watched the film. I also hate that they seem to think that Marvel can’t make any mistakes and every one of their films are incredible like I’m glad you liked Captain Marvel mate but if you take a look at the audience rating for that film you’ll find it’s lower than the one for Dark Phoenix.  

8) The storyline was badly written, rushed and the film was too short. Again I do agree with some of this. I personally didn’t think the film was badly written, It was a simple storyline and not overly complex but I think that’s what it needed if you had tried to make it too complex of a story it would have lost some of the emotional punch from it. You’d have been too busy trying to figure out what was going on in the story to appreciate the characters emotions and realtionships. However I do think the film could be longer and the shorter length did mean that it was somewhat rushed. However that being said while I agree with them I didn’t think it was as big of an issue as the critics were making it out to be. 

9) The feminist agenda was too strong. Hmm this one is... I mean if having a female lead is considered a feminist agenda then sure Jean Grey did come across as strong. But lets be honest this comment is just plain stupid. I mean the only part where I can see this comment being even a little relevant or right is Mystique’s line about it should be X-Women. Which actually got a lot of laughs from the audience at my viewing from both males and females so I don’t think it was that much of a big deal but I will admit it did come across as a little out of place and as if it was there to appeal to feminists but it was one line and was no more in your face than that scene from Endgame when you have the all girl team up in the final battle that leaves you wondering how the hell they all conveniently got in the same place at once I mean don’t get me wrong I loved that scene but you can’t deny that it was there to serve as a feminist agenda. See I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with having one line or one scene that promotes women’s power in fact in some instances I think its needed. So yeah this was another one that was baffling to me because I just didn’t see this film as being some grand feminist message, it was a film with a woman at its center and as the lead role but what the hell’s wrong with that. 

10) There were too many continuity errors. Let’s be honest X-Men is not known for having a good continuity. I mean it’s no wonder why just take a look at the comic books themselves I mean if the source material is a mess then I suppose its not that strange that the films would be. After all spotting continuity errors in X-Men films is all part of the fun. However this is again something that I disagree with mainly because the two things mentioned are 1) Jean already had the Phoenix powers at the end of Apocalypse so how is it she’s only getting them now when in space in this film. Well yes she did have them in Apocalypse and the reason for it is in the films the power that she comes in contact with is not the Phoenix. It is never at any point in the film referred to as the Phoenix. It is only referred to as ‘a cosmic force.’ or ‘This thing’ or as a ‘solar flare.’ The reason why is because in the films Jean is the Phoenix. We the fans often call it the phoenix force and I think that comes from the comic book I don’t know for sure as I haven’t read it but as I said the film doesn’t.  Also the power doesn’t change her powers really it just makes her stronger and amplifies them. She could do all the stuff she was doing before just on a smaller scale. Yes there are a few newer elements to her powers I don’t think she could turn people to dust in Apocalypse when she destroys him in that film it looks more like she’s melting him away with extreme heat than just causing someone to turn to dust like she does here. Also if you look at the effects for the two Phoenix’s they are very different. In Apocalypse they are more like flames where as here they have more of a space substance look about them, its much darker in colour and doesn’t look like literal flames. So yeah that’s not really a continuity error. The other thing is that the ending doesn’t match the ending for DOFP where Logan wakes back up in the new future. Well Logan wakes up in the year 2023 we’re only in 1992 at this point so there’s plenty of time for that future to come about so again not really a continuity error.  

11) There were too many reshoots and problems in production for this film to be considered good. Yeah this was actually something I read more than a few times. And again its just stupid. It’s also very telling.  But again if they had said ‘this part’ was bad most likely due to reshoots or the story seemed off because of the reshoots and them changing the story I wouldn’t be mad about these comments and yes some of them do say that they felt the reshoots caused a problem with the flow of the story. Fair enough you have given me a valid reason there. But most of them don’t do that they literally just say this film has reshoots and other production problems so its bad. I’m sorry but thats not a reason. Tell me how the reshoots effected the film to make it bad don’t just state that it had reshoots so that’s a criminal offence and means I can drag the film through the mud without any solid reason behind my dragging. 

Ok so what was it? Why did this film get so much hate and bashed on so badly by the critics if it wasn’t as bad as they say I mean what’s their motive for that? Well I have two answers for you here. Obviously these are just my own opinons on it. But I think the clue lies above in the last most commonly brought up comment in the critics reviews. Firstly I think alot of it is saving face. What you have to bear in mind is that these are the same people who spent the last two years of the film’s production reporting on those reshoots and the problems in production and every time they reported on reshoots or test screenings that haven’t gone very well they would also pass judgement on the film that they themselves hadn’t even seen yet. They would tell us that this film was going to suck. They’d tell us not to get our expectactions up. They’d tell us it was just going to be another remake of Last Stand. Then the film came out and it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as everyone thought it was going to be. Apparently those test screenings and reshoots payed off some. Only now these critics have a bit of a problem because if they now report that the film was actually decent they all look like dicks for judgeing the film too soon and without seeing it. So what do they do? Well they just tell everyone that the film was bad. Hopefully with a bit of luck people will read the critc reviews and decide to not see it for themsleves and then well no one will ever know right. I also think that’s why a few of them brought up the reshoots so they can basically go look see we told you about those reshoots we were right you know you can trust us. Well actually you can’t because this was a dick move  and I really do belive it is just them trying to save some face as its the only explaination for why the critic reviews are so vastly different from the audience reviews. I mean when I was reading the audience reviews even those who said that they hated the movie admitted that they still thought the critic’s were way too harsh on the film. 

There is another more controversial reason why they might be giving it bad reviews and that is simply Disney propaganda. It’s them saying look at what a terrible job Fox did with this film we’re going to do a much better job come watch our versions of the Xmen when we do them. I mean you just have to look at the press and reviews for Captain Marvel and then for Dark Phoenix. Now I’m not going to express an opinion on what I personally thought of Captain Marvel as this is a review for Dark Phoenix but what I will say is that there is a very obvious bias here. The Captain Marvel audience reaction was worse than that for Dark Phoenix yet the critics were praising it and every news story was going on about how wonderful it was and anyone who didn’t like it was suddenly a troll. However with Dark Phoenix the critcs are slamming it into the ground and the news stories covering it aren’t much better. What’s the difference between the two films. Well one is owned by Disney and the other is by Fox and I’m sorry but I don’t think that’s a coincidence.    

Ok so here’s the very last thing I will say. I really enjoyed this film again I don’t by any means think this was the greatest Xmen film but I would still put it at the higher end of the spectrum. Also I mentioned my sister a couple times in this review who came and saw the film with me. Now she is more of  a casual fan. She has seen a few of the other movies but she doesn’t really watch them more than once and she’s definitely not as obsessed as I am. But I asked her opinion on it as I was curious as to how an outsider would view the film. She said that she loved the film. She also said that in her opinion it was miles better than End Game and the nice thing about it was that if you haven’t seen the other films you can still enjoy this one as a standalone movie. So it seems like this film is more accessible to a wider audience but it also works really well as part of the series too. Well there you have it my review for Dark Phoenix is complete. To anyone who is still here and actually read this to the end a big thank you and a pat on the back. I think I covered everything but if there was something I missed and you want to know my opinion on it feel free to ask. I hope others did enjoy the film and if anyone has read this without seeing the film I would really recommend it and would implore you not to listen to the critics because they have judged this film too harshly. As I say in all of my reviews these are just my own opinons It’s totally cool if you don’t agree I respect everyones views and believe everyone is entitled to express their own feelings. I am also aware that people will interpret things differently and take different things away from it so if you do have  a different opinon again feel free to let me know what it is and why you feel that way I’d love to hear it. Anyway until next time guys.      

#xmen dark phoenix #Dark phoenix #dark phoenix review

[hybridequalist]

If you dont want to do this or if its not clear im sorry, but could you please do an eddy brock x sister reader where she broke into the lab and got her own symbiote (thats female? Granted idk how gender works for symbiotes just know most people refer to venom as male) and while eddy is freaking out shes totally calm + like "haha lol so this is happening now thats fun" and calls hers darling, sweetheart, love, etc. And is a major pacifist so they made a deal of no killing at day one, just fluff?

So I know this isn’t really what you asked for…but my brain just ran away with this. It’s looking to be 3 parts as it stands right now, so let me know if you’re interested in the rest or if you want me to try again.

My first request…*SQUEE*

    “When you asked me to help you with a ‘work thing’, I didn’t think we’d be breaking and entering.”

“It’s just to gather evidence. We’ll be in and out.”

    You rolled your eyes.

    “Edward Charles Allan Brock, that is a load of bull and you know it.”

    “It is not!” Eddie hissed at you, glancing worriedly at Doctor Skirth in the driver’s seat. “I just wanna expose Drake and that’s all.”

    “Like how you ‘just wanted’ to do a piece on Wilson Fisk’s paper trail back in New York?”

    “That was different!’

“As if!”

“We’ll be pulling up in a few minutes,” Doctor Skirth interrupted, glancing back at you and Eddie with undisguised anxiety. “Try ducking out of sight when we pass through the checkpoint, okay?”

You shot Eddie a look before jerking your head towards the trunk and unbuckling your seatbelt to roll under the backseat, willing yourself to become invisible.

This was not your first rodeo handling your brother and his many misadventures: you had grown up playing attorney for him whenever he got in trouble and honestly should have been paid for the number of close scrapes you’d gotten him out of. He’d promised when he moved in with you after the New York thing that he’d behave and for a while you’d believed him–especially after Anne hit the scene. But you should have known better: Eddie’s overwhelming sense of justice was his fatal flaw and was always bound to get him in trouble–and hurt those he loved in the process.

By some miracle, you all made it past the security checkpoint and into the main building without being spotted. You even got some nice backstory about alien creatures and a comet as the doctor lead you both from the parking lot and through the main building. But as the doctor was badging you and Eddie into the lab, someone called her name and you felt a spike of panic in your gut.

“Don’t touch anything!” were Doctor Skirth’s last words to the pair of you as you hurried into the laboratory.You hated that the second she said it, you immediately knew that your brother would be touching all the wrong things.

The lab was lit eerily blue, making it hard to see much aside from shadows of various unrecognizable scientific instruments. Eddie immediately took out his phone and began snapping pictures, leaving you to watch his back. You hardly breathed as you both walked past a wall of glass cages, some containing human figures. One of them caught your eye and you paused, looking at what seemed to be a mass of white, slimy tentacles. Somehow, you couldn’t take your eyes off it. It looked dead, but something about it–perhaps its alien shape or apparent lack of a real body–made you unable to cease staring. You felt at any moment it might twitch or give some sign of life…

A sudden thud jolted you from your trance and you whirled around to see that Eddie was as the far end of the hall, looking in horror as something clawed at the glass. He immediately reached towards the access panel on the door and you felt your heart drop into your shoes.

The alarms were immediate and the shift from the dark blue lights to vibrant reds left you covering your eyes instinctively. You faintly heard glass break and squinted just in time to see your brother tackled to the ground by a screeching figure with long, tangled hair.

“Eddie!” you screamed, sprinting towards him.

“Maria! Maria, stop!” you heard him crying out. You were only a few paces away when something large and black shot out from the attacker’s back, whipping around and launching you away. You felt your back slam against something initially solid that shattered out from behind you, the air driven from your body as you hit the floor. Something writhed underneath you and you lurched just enough to roll onto your side, finding yourself staring at the white-tentacled thing again. Except this time it was definitely moving.

You couldn’t scream–you were still trying to restart your lungs after crashing through the glass door. All you could do was watch as the slimy thing lashed out its tentacles, coiling around your wrist. The panic gave you enough adrenaline to push up onto your hands and knees, crawling away without a care as to how much glass laid around you. Most of the tendrils slipped off you as you flailed, but a few broke off the creature and coiled tighter, clinging desperately.

You heard footsteps through the screaming alarm and froze, whipping around to see shadowy figures rush into the lab.

HIDE!

You instinctively curled into a ball, hands clasping together behind your head. There was some shouting and then just as quickly as you’d heard them come in, you heard them leave, shouting something about “the asset” getting away.

GO QUIETLY!

You jumped to your feet and ran back out the way you’d come in, moving at top speed. Through the parking lot and straight out to the road, you didn’t let up on your wild sprint until you dropped to your knees, out of breath on the sidewalk.

WE NEED TO KEEP RUNNING!

In a minute. When I’m not going to vomit.

Remembering all your PE lessons from High School, you put your hands behind your head and shakily got to your feet, trying to focus on inhaling through your nose. When your heartbeat settled and the taste of bile retreated you heaved a heavy sigh. And then panic seized you.

“Eddie,” you breathed. “Oh no. Oh please…don’t be dead…”

EDDIE WILL BE FINE. HE HAS HELP.

You whirled around, looking for whoever had spoken, but aside from distant headlights there were no signs of anyone.

PLEASE DON’T PANIC. YOUR HEART RATE JUST SPIKED DANGEROUSLY HIGH.

Same voice. Slight echo. Feminine. And it definitely wasn’t coming from somewhere around you.

“…who are you?” you whispered. “Are you inside my head?”

IN A SENSE. AS FOR MY IDENTITY…I AM UNSURE. I’M…NEW.

“Then what are you?”

ALIEN. BROUGHT HERE BY THE HUMANS. I…I WAS NEAR DEATH. HOST-LESS. STARVING. THEN YOU CAME. OLD SELF TRIED TO GRAB HOLD. I AM THE PIECE THAT MANAGED TO STAY, MANAGED TO BOND. BECAME…ME.

You frowned. There was an alien inside you. Or some part of one. So far, though, you weren’t getting any bad vibes off this…being. All it had done so far was get you out of the Life Foundation’s labs and nothing in its voice and mannerisms. Wait, was it an “it”?

I PREFER THE FEMALE PRONOUNS, IF YOU DON’T MIND.

Okay. She.

She could hear your thoughts?!

WE’RE BONDED AT A CELLULAR LEVEL–OF COURSE I CAN HEAR WHAT YOU THINK. WE EXIST SYMBIOTICALLY, SO WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE AT ANY TIME.

Huh. Convenient.

MOST OF THE TIME.

Wait, so if you’re “new”, then how do you know all this?

ANCESTRAL MEMORY. INSTINCT. IT WOULD BE HIGHLY INCONVENIENT FOR MY KIND TO NEED TO TEACH ALL OFFSPRING HOW TO BOND, ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING HOW ALL SPAWN ARE JUST PIECES OF THEIR PARENT THAT BECAME INDEPENDENT. NURTURING ISN’T IN OUR NATURE.

That’s really sad, actually.

ONLY TO THOSE WHO HAD SUCH AN UPBRINGING. I AM RELIEVED THAT MY KIND DO NOT EXPERIENCE THE PERIOD OF HELPLESSNESS THAT YOURS MUST ENDURE–THIS “CHILDHOOD”–BUT I CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR SYMPATHY. YOU DID NOT HAVE MUCH OF ONE EITHER, AS FAR AS I CAN SEE.

Not after my mother died. My father no longer really cared…Eddie got the worst of it, though. I think our father blames him for mom dying…

That last thought jolted you out of the mental conversation. Eddie. Where was he? Did he make it out? Frantically, you scrambled for your phone and pressed the speed-dial for your brother. Every ring made your tension mount higher until finally you heard him pick up.

“Yeah?”

“Eddie! Where are you?! Are you okay?!”

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Just feelin’ a little funny is all.”

He was slurring a little. Had he hit his head?

“I got home a bit ago. Called Doctor Skirth, but she didn’t answer. Been kinda woozy too. Maybe I’m gettin’ sick, I dunno.”

HIS SYMBIOTE HAS NOT REVEALED ITSELF YET, your alien commented. IT MUST BE SEEKING NOURISHMENT, TRYING TO HEAL FROM THE HARM THE LIFE FOUNDATION INFLICTED.

“But where…where are you at?” Eddie asked, still sounding almost drunk. “You’re not home, but you gotta be safe if you’re calling.”

You were about to answer when you heard the phone clatter onto some surface.

“Eddie?” you ask. No response. You tried again, but still no response. You could hear some rustling and what you recognized as the freezer being opened.

AS I THOUGHT. LOOKING FOR FOOD SO IT CAN HEAL ITSELF. HANG UP–YOUR BROTHER WILL BE UNAVAILABLE FOR QUITE SOME TIME.

Reluctantly, you followed the symbiote’s advice. Glancing out at the horizon, you noticed that the sky was getting lighter. Morning was probably only an hour away and you were beginning to feel the exhaustion of staying up as well as running all the way here.

It was time to go home.

You thanked your Uber driver as you stepped out from her car, suppressing a yawn as you climbed the steps to your apartment complex. Your symbiote had been fairly quiet throughout the drive, occasionally asking a question about the people and shops outside the window and you had tiredly tried to satisfy her curiosity. Now as you came to your door, you braced yourself for some kind of destruction on the other side. Your symbiote’s genetic memories had been full of violent scenes of her kind on the hunt and you didn’t know what to expect.

It turned out to be not nearly as bad as you’d feared: the fridge and freezer both stood open and a bag’s worth of half-defrosted tater tots were scattered near the kitchen island. There was no sign of your brother until you peered into the bathroom.

You weren’t sure what to make of his situation: he was passed out in the bathtub, toothpaste foam smeared on his bottom lip and the fallen shower curtain draped over his shoulders.

I’D SAY THIS IS A FAIRLY OKAY WAY FOR THINGS TO HAVE TURNED OUT, your symbiote commented with a mental chuckle. NO PILE OF BODIES OR PILE OF HEADS.

You rolled your eyes good-naturedly, trying not to imagine the gruesome scene as you stepped forward, reaching out your hand to shake your fool of a little brother awake.

It happened so fast you almost missed it: a black tentacle shot out from Eddie’s body, aimed straight for your head. Just as swiftly, you felt control of your body wrenched away from you, jerking your arm forward to catch the goopy tendril before it could connect.

“MINE.”

Well, it was definitely a symbiote’s voice, but this one was masculine-sounding and carried a far more predatory snarl. Yours sounded more…well, not necessarily human, but certainly more articulate.

YOURS, your symbiote agreed. NEST-MATE OF MINE. NO THREAT.

Her words seemed to calm the black alien down because the tentacle retreated and Eddie slumped further down in the tub, letting out a sleepy grunt.

WE MUST LEAVE THEM FOR NOW, your symbiote warned. YOUR BROTHER’S SYMBIOTE IS RECOVERING, BUT STILL WEAK ENOUGH TO BE IN HIS PRIMAL STATE. WE WON’T BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH THEM PROPERLY UNTIL HE FEEDS AGAIN. YOU ALSO NEED TO REST–I CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH STRENGTH BUT NOT ENERGY AND YOU ARE DANGEROUSLY LOW ON THAT FOR SUPPORTING US BOTH.

You couldn’t disagree. While the shock of the black symbiote lashing out had jolted you into alertness for a short time, you were already feeling the exhaustion returning.

Promise you’ll wake me if you hear Eddie get up, you thought, meandering towards the bedroom.

IF YOU’RE RESTED ENOUGH…I PROMISE.

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